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ternoon at a civil rights conference hosted by Brendan Johnson, the U.S. attorney for South Dakota. Along with the panel discussion before hundreds of people packed into a Sioux Falls theater, the conference included sessions on bullying, the rights of people with disabilities, human trafficking and police and the community.
• Johnson said many people in South Dakota believe in civil rights but some do it with a whisper or hush tones in fear of offending those who might not agree. He said the Justice Department wants to help people raise their voices, and he

invited people to share their stories with the many law enforcement officers in attendance so they can help fight injustice.
• "The way we raise your voice, is not just with talking, it's also by enforcing," he said.
• Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew died in 1998 after he was tied to a fence and beaten because he was gay, said members of the gay, lesbian and transgendered community have been relegated to second class citizens in terms of marriage rights and job discrimination. She said people are not born knowing who they're going to love and who they're going to hate, and she challenged the audience to move past prejudices they've learned.
• "You can make a conscious decision to leave that life behind," said Shepard, the president of the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
• Andre Oliver, chairman of the Sioux Falls Diversity Council, said racism is based on the false belief that people of different races come from different origins, and that one race is better than another or that two races would better off if they were kept

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