No coverage of BUILD event

On April 12, I was one of many people who gathered for the BUILD Nehemiah action assembly at Heritage Hall. The group is an interfaith coalition of churches from different denominations, which combine their efforts one night a year to force city and state leaders to take our concerns seriously.

This year, 2,000 of us rallied to cap the interest on payday loans, improve the availability of mental-health care and fight crime in Lexington neighborhoods.

I was upset to see no coverage of this event as news in the Herald-Leader, either before or after the fact: the only mention was an opinion piece before the event. Any other civic event with 2,000 people would have been covered prominently in Wednesday’s paper.

The disparity reflects a bias against taking religious people seriously as citizens. It is good that we have separation of church and state, and that we not legislate on narrowly religious grounds. But we were gathered as citizens, to reason with our leaders about the welfare of our civic community.

The Herald-Leader’s silence encourages civic leaders to ignore us. Please give BUILD the attention it deserves as a movement that is both civic and religious.

This story was originally published April 20, 2016 at 7:47 PM with the headline "No coverage of BUILD event."