FORT GREENE — Hundreds of families and community members — including filmmaker Spike Lee — joined in a silent march led by local children Sunday in the wake of recent police shootings, organizers said.
The march started at 10 a.m. at the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park, where several children addressed the crowd using a megaphone, speaking out against police violence and calling on all community members to work together for peace, according to Auressa Simmons, a local mom who helped organize the event.
“Their words were so impactful, it took everything for me to hold back the tears,” Simmons said. “Even from the short sentences, from ‘Guns are dumb,’ to this one girl who broke it down to say, ‘All lives matter, but right now we need to focus on black lives because they don’t seem to be valued.’”
After the children spoke, the group marched to the Barclays Center in a silent protest that spanned two to three blocks at a time, according to Bridge Lower, another local mom who helped organized the event.
The group was joined by elected officials like Council Member Laurie Cumbo and Assembly Member Walter Mosley, as well as Fort Greene resident Spike Lee, who posted several photos of marchers on his Instagram account Monday.
Simmons and Lower said they planned the event after Simmons reached out to an email group for parents at P.S. 11, where her daughter just finished fifth grade, looking for an outlet for children to express their feelings on the recent police shootings.
“We wanted to do something for kids who are internalizing this right now,” Lower said.
Lower and Simmons said they plan on continuing the dialogue by reaching out to local schools and encouraging them to include conversations about social justice in their curriculum.