In response to the mass shooting at the Old Timers Day block party in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn which left one person dead and 11 injured last Saturday, community organizers and elected officials came together on Sunday and formed the Brownsville Rapid Response Coalition. The coalition includes, among others, the Brownsville Community Justice Center, the Brownsville Recreation Center, Man Up, Inc., Brownsville In Violence Out, Brownsville Think Tank Matters, and Elite Learners with the objective to support all community events. On Monday, July 29, the coalition held a peace march against gun violence.
Before the three miles march through Brownsville, which included the street where Zurana Horton, a 34-year-old Brownsville resident, was killed while shielding a group of children during a shootout in 2011, organizers and elected officials addressed activists and community members.
Mr. Williams from Man Up Inc., a non-profit community-based organization that serves inner-city residents throughout New York City, and one of the many coalition partners that have been working tirelessly for years to address the problem, called on everyone to pull together, “It’s our job and our turn to turn up our noise and make our voices as loud as those gunshots were. Those of us who have been in this work we know that violence is a disease.”
Assemblymember Charles Barron called for a multi-billion anti-poverty program for the long-neglected community. New York State has a $175 billion budget, yet only a small percentage goes to Brownsville. “We need to have a multi-billion poverty program in our neighborhoods because poverty breeds violence.” He continued, “We are fighting against a racist, capitalist system; the rich are getting richer the poor are getting poorer, and we are sitting here scrambling over crumbs.”
NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams reiterated that if policing alone could solve the problem of gun violence, it would have been solved a long time ago. He further pointed out the lack of funding for the community organizations that tackle gun violence daily, “The police department is a multi-billion-dollar agency, the brothers that are here, I think, haven’t even cracked $40 million. It has been proven that non-profits solve problems better than the government when fully funded and government moves out of the way.” Addressing the Mayor and Governor, he questioned why they hadn’t labeled Saturday’s shooting as a mass shooting, “Just because it happened in Brownsville to black people that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a mass shooting, they suffer the same trauma as any other community that has a mass shooting.”
Assemblymember Latrice Walker also called on Mayor de Blasio to declare the tragedy a mass shooting, “This is our moment to turn our tragedy into triumph. This is our moment while even though the Mayor has said that this does not amount to a mass shooting, we know that this was a mass shooting! Again, I have never seen twelve people shot in Brownsville at one time.” She requested that people tweet to de Blasio, Cuomo, as well as Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to declare the incident a mass shooting.
State Senator Roxanne Persaud called out the double standard when it comes to mass shootings, “When the shooting happened in California, what was the first thing we saw on Twitter? There is a mass shooting. And everyone says ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the people of California. When the shooting happened in Brownsville, what did people say? That community is prone to violence.”
NYC Council Member Alicka Ampry-Samuel shared her account of what she witnessed on Saturday night, “I was the only elected official that was out here when those shots were fired on Saturday. The last song we played was ‘Family Reunion’ by the OJ’s. And as a community, we sang ‘Family Reunion.’ We all hugged, we kissed, and we said, ‘I’ll see you next year, what a successful Old Timer’s weekend we had.’ We walked off the stage and hugged the young people who were sweeping the street because our young people actually clean after Old Timer’s before sanitation comes out. We get to the middle of the block, and we think we hear firecrackers and come to find out that it was gunshots ten minutes after finishing singing ‘Family Reunion.’ She urged everyone to come together, “This is about us, every single day. I’m hurt, I’m traumatized, but we are going to get through this as a family.”
More impressions from the march:
