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A crowd of more than 1,000 people went through Bristol Borough as part of a planned march againstracism, police brutality, and prejudice.

By 10 a.m. Saturday, hundreds gathered at the Bristol Borough Train Station where face masks, water, and sweets were handed out in advance of the march. A pastor spoke and organizers warmed the crowd up with dances and short remarks.

In sticky 85-degree weather and below sunny skies, theBlack Lives Matter Unified Peace Walk stepped off around 11 a.m. and marched through the borough, heading to the Harriet Tubman statue along the waterfront.

The marchers chanted Black Lives Matter, No Justice; No Peace, and I cant breathe as they went on their way. Neighbors handed out water bottles and drinks while showing solidarity with the large group along the route. Police led the way along with march organizers.

On Buckley Street, the group stopped for a short time.

The names of people of color who were killed by police were read through a microphone.

Say their name! a speaker yelled.

Once again we cant breathe. We cant breathe, man. We cant live. Let us see the fruits of our ancestor tree, she said.

The march continued to Bath Street and gathered for a short time at the corner of Mill Street and Old Route 13 for a short speech. One woman thanked the police for being there and read the Bristol Township Police Departments mission statement back to them.

It is the mission of the Bristol Township Police Department to serve all people with respect and integrity, while enhancing their quality of life. The department is committed to service through efficient and effective policing by working in partnership with the community, and in accordance with constitutional rights, to enforce the laws, preserve the peace, reduce fear, and provide for a safe environment, she said, asking the officers to remember that message.

Bristol Borough and Bristol Township officers walked with the large crowd. Some officers were handed water by marchers and struck up conversations. A number of marchers were already friendly with local police and greeted the officers they knew.

Law enforcement from around the Levittown-area and the Bucks County Major Incident Response Team were on hand to provide traffic control and extra security. A New Jersey State Police boat hung near the waterfront during the event.

While the march was packed, many wore face masks and attempted to keep distance from others amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The march went on Mill Street and through the Mill Street Parking Lot before a short rally outside of theHarriet Tubman statue.

I challenge all of you to look around the room. That is the story of someone next to you that feels unheard. Not only in the courtroom, but in the classroom and at the basketball game and when they get stopped by the cops,saidBrittany McClain, of theFreedom Neighborhood One Community Center in Bristol Township.

You are enough, she told the crowd.

James Evans, the pastor at Norton Avenue First Baptist Church in Bristol Township, passionately told the group that a tsunami of justice, peace, home, and righteous is coming. He urged the crowd to unite.

George Floyd died so that we can stand.George Floyd died so we can make a difference in our community, he exclaimed.

Weve come too far, Evans chanted.

Louise Davis, who is a descendant of Harriet Tubman, read a poet at the rally. She said she was thrilled with the size of the crowd and their message at the moment.

Morris Derry, the founder of nonprofit No More Pain and one of the event organizers, led the crowd as they took a knee to mark Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police. In the large group of people, officers from Bristol Borough and Bristol Borough were spotted taking a knee with the marchers.

There was more people here than we expected, said Jamal Evans, Pastor Evans son and a leader of the march.

The past few weeks have made Jamal Evans frustrated and angry over Floyds killing and the violent reaction in some cities. He said recent events spurred him to move past talking and to inspire change.

I felt this would be perfect for brown and black communities, said Keevon Johnson, who helped lead the event.

After the march,McClain said recent events have shown a lack empathy and retraumatized people already suffering, adding that the crowd and support in Bristol Borough was impressive.

After tomorrow where do we go from here? We cant go back where we came from. Pastor Evans said.

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'Say Their Name:' Community Joins Together For Black Lives Matter Unified Peace Walk - levittownnow.com

Hundreds marched in Sayreville on June 6, 2020 for a Black Lives Matter rally. Bridgewater Courier News

SAYREVILLE- More than 300 people made their way to the borough municipal building Saturday afternoon for a Black Lives Matter rally organized by three Sayreville War Memorial High School graduates.

The former students, who are all people of color, said they organized the event to raise awareness about the struggles of African Americans in Sayreville, New Jersey and America as a whole.

"This is important in this town specifically because we feel that growing up in this town, being black students and being black residents, we had to remain silent for things that mattered to us," said Kiera Brown, 20, an organizer of the event. "We can't express how we feel or anything like that because it's a predominantly white town. We feel that we don't have a voice in this town."

Erene Olson, left, Jasmine Ali, Aaliyah Wideman and Kiera Brown, who organized the Sayreville Black Lives Matter rally.(Photo: Nick Muscavage/MyCentralJersey)

Brown, along with co-organizers Aaliyah Wideman, 20,and Erene Olson, 20, said the goal of Saturday's rally was to convey how African Americans feel in Sayreville and to pay homage to those who died because of police brutality.

Aaliyah said Black History Month at Sayreville War Memorial High School was brushed off. She said the black history curriculum basicallyboiled down to only watching the film "My Friend Martin".

"If we can talk in school about American history, then we can talk in school about black history, as well," she said.

Brown said teaching black history is especially important to African Americans in predominantly white towns "because it motivates us, it drives us, and lets us know we can be something in life."

The event drew people of all ages, ethnicityand background, including clergymen, first responders, families with small children andlocal and state elected officials.

A voter registration booth was situated next a table with information on black history education andbracelets that said, Black Lives Matter.

A Sayreville police officer, Lt. James Novak, picked up a bracelet and put it around his wrist.

Hundreds came out to the Sayreville Black Lives Matter rally on June 6, 2020.(Photo: Nick Muscavage/MyCentralJersey)

Novak, who the organizers said played a role in planning the event, said that the message of today is change.

I vow to you, every day, that I will be the example for everyone who wears what I wear, he said.

Before the hundreds marched peacefully down MacAuthur Avenue, Main Street and Dolan Street, several speakers spoke to the crowd.

Mayor Victoria Kilpatrick commended the three women for organizing the event and said that the troves of people came together on Saturday because we cannot unsee the images of George Floyd.

Today we stand together because we cannot unhear his voice: I cant breathe, she said. I am here with you because I cannot, and we cannot, stand idly by. We must intervene, we must interfere.

Kilpatrick said Sayreville is committed to treating everyone equally, to empowering the most marginalized, to listening to the most vulnerable.

It is time to stand up to systemic racism, she said.

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Newly appointed Councilman Vincent Conti also spoke at the rally and said, as public safety liaison, he listen to the communitys needs, concerns and ideas for change.

I want to help, he said.

He said that the death of George Floyd was a disgusting, unconscionable act.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin said that the death of Floyd broke the sacred trust of the nation.

He also said that the officers who killed Floyd are not representative of every police officer.

When an officer does what we saw in Minnesota, it offends all of the officers who we entrust with these great duties and great challenges, he said. It makes their job so much harder.

An activist with a sign at the Sayreville Black Lives Matter rally on June 6, 2020.(Photo: Nick Muscavage/MyCentralJersey)

He also said we cannot forget those who died at the hands of the police so that we can strive for a better tomorrow.

The Rev. Joseph Oniyama, of Calvary Baptist Church in East Orange, said that the promises of politicians listening is a good step forward, but directly asked the elected officials, What are you going to do now to make sure that we will never forget?

Im not asking for the mayor to step down and have a person of color replace her, he said. What Im asking you to do is look at your structure, see how many people of color are in positions in politics to make sure that when you write your laws that impact all of us we have a seat the table.

An activist with a sign at the Sayreville Black Lives Matter rally on June 6, 2020.(Photo: Nick Muscavage/MyCentralJersey)

He said that the words never forget after Floyds death are not etched in stone but etched into our hearts because they have left an indelible mark on the consciousness of this nation.

Jasmine Ali, another former student of Sayreville War Memorial High School, said she had to teach herself about racial inequality because the lessons at her school were inadequate and unacceptable.

It has become known to me that a lot of people in Sayreville went on to not choose to educate themselves on these issues, she said. They chose the more comfortable route on themselves: to pretend that it isnt happening.

READ: Sayreville taps replacement for former council member

Ali, who is pursuing a career in education, vowed that she will someday do better for her students.

"I've seen too many of my fellow Americans acting like what is going on today is completely new," she said, "when in fact it is something that has been happening and is the same thing Martin Luther King pushed for in his day."

Brown, one of the organizers, said that in a town like Sayreville, the reception of a message like Black Lives Matter may be mixed. Some will agree,and others may ignore it.

"But we're going to be heard either way," she said.

Email: ngmuscavage@gannettnj.com

Nick Muscavage is a watchdog reporter for the Courier News, Home News Tribune and MyCentralJersey.com. To get unlimited access to his investigative work that has exposed wrongdoing and changed state law, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

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'We're going to be heard either way': Sayreville Black Lives Matter march draws hundreds - My Central Jersey

HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) Hundreds of people came togetherFriday nightat Fort Monroe in Hampton for a peace rally and memorial.

Black Lives Matter 757 hosted the event in remembrance of George Floyd and others lost to police brutality, gun violence and other injustices. They also rallied to bring change moving forward.

People who spoke to 10 On Your Side said this is only the beginning.

A sea of people stood together against racial injustice at the same site where the first enslaved Africans arrived more than 400 years ago.

Its unreal. Its 2020. I feel like were back in the 40s where racism and milkshakes were popular, said Celia Tracy.

The peace rally drew chants and cheers for equality and justice.

This is not about being angry or trying to lash out, said a man, who preferred not to share his name. Its about preventing other people from having to experience this.

The crowd called for love instead of hate.

Theres so many different subjects we need to tackle, but were going to start by coming together and unifying, said Chanell Taylor.

Speakers also called for police reform, supporting the youth and using your vote as your voice.

Aubrey Japharii Jones, with Black Lives Matter 757, said its empowering to see.

Were not just marching to make noise. Were actually going to the proper channels, the city council, the delegates, senate and taking it all the way to the top, he said.

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Hundreds attend Black Lives Matter 757 peace rally and memorial - WAVY.com

My children are both respite from all the tragedy transpiring in the world, and a reminder of how high the stakes are. When I am with themon our walks, playing in the field, reading them stories, giving them bathsI am not able to fall into the infinite hole of endless scrolling that so often brings me to despair. But also when I am with them, I am reminded of the brokenness of the world that their mother and I have brought them into, and get lost in a labyrinth of anxiety about how I might protect them from it.

I did not have children when the Movement for Black Lives was at its height. At protests following police killings six years ago, I moved through the night with brazen indifference about what might happen to me. I was governed by anger and thought little about the implications of what might happen if I were arrested, if I were hurt, or worse.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Letter to my son

As is the case for many other parents, my children have pushed me to reprioritize, reevaluate, and reorient my relationship to the world. My decisions are no longer singularly centered on me. They are shaped by my commitment to these two small humans who think of me and my wife as their entire world. This is a new reality for many black parents who did not have children when the Movement for Black Lives began, but who have young children now in 2020. So much has changed in our lives even when it feels like so little in our country has. Our children have raised the stakes of this fight, while also shifting the calculus of how we move within it. It is one thing to be concerned for my own well-being, to navigate the country as a black man and to encounter its risks. It is another thing to be raising two black children and to consider both the dangers for yourself and the dangers that lie ahead for them.

A week ago, George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin after Chauvin kept his knee planted on Floyds neck for nearly nine minutes. Floyd, in a distressing echo of Eric Garners pleas five years ago, could be heard telling the officers around him that he could not breathe. Despite Floyds appeals, according to a court document, the defendant had his knee on Mr. Floyds neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in total. It went on: Two minutes and 53 seconds of this was after Mr. Floyd was non-responsive.

Floyds death follows a string of recent incidents in which black people have been killed at the hands of police and vigilantes: Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed in South Georgia by a group of white men who chased him down while he was jogging and shot him as he struggled to escape. Breonna Taylor, who was killed when police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, entered her home with a search warrant looking for drugs that were being sold out of a house more than 10 miles away. There was also the incident involving Amy Cooper, a white woman in New York Citys Central Park who was captured on camera falsely claiming that a black man named Christian Cooper was attacking her. I imagine how easily a different story might have been told if Christian Cooper had not recorded the incident, if Amy Coopers distressed 911 call was the only piece of evidence from that moment. I keep thinking about that shift in the register of Amy Coopers voice, making it sound as if she was actively being attacked while on the phonehow she knew exactly what that inflection would signal to the person on the other end of the line.

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Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter - The Atlantic

Following high-profile police killings of black men in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, fatal attacks on officers by anti-police gunmen and more recently protests in North Carolina after the police shooting of Keith Scott, a black man the United States is being forced to confront its deep-rooted problems with race and inequality.

A strong narrative is emerging from these tragedies of racially motivated targeting of black Americans by the police force. It is backed up by a new report on the city of Baltimore by the Department of Justice, which has found that black residents of low-income neighbourhoods are more likely to be stopped and searched by police officers, even if white residents are statistically more likely to be caught carrying guns and drugs.

In the background, a campaign called Black Lives Matter celebrated its third anniversary. The movement, perhaps best known by its hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, grew in protest against police killings of black people in the United States. It has now crossed the Atlantic, with events and rallies held in the United Kingdom.

What is Black Lives Matter?

The movement was born in 2013, after the man who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was cleared of his murder. A Californian activist, Alicia Garza, responded to the jurys decision on Facebook with a post that ended: Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. The hashtag was born, and continued to grow in prominence with each new incident and protest.

The formal organization that sprung from the protests started with the goal of highlighting the disproportionate number of incidences in which a police officer killed a member of the black community. But it soon gained international recognition, after the death of Michael Brown in Missouri a year later.

Black Lives Matter now describes itself as a chapter-based national organization working for the validity of black life. It has developed to include the issues of black women and LGBT communities, undocumented black people and black people with disabilities.

According to this article in the Washington Post, 1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since the beginning of 2015. A cursory glance at the numbers reveals nothing to indicate racial bias: 732 of the victims were white and 381 were black (382 were of another race).

In fact, on the surface, these figures suggest its more likely for a white person to be shot by a police officer than a black person. But proportionally speaking, this isnt the case.

Almost half of the victims of police shootings in the US are white, but then, white people make up 62% of the American population. Black people, on the other hand, make up only 13% of the US population yet 24% of all the people killed by the police are black.

Furthermore, 32% of these black victims were unarmed when they were killed. Thats twice the number of unarmed white people to die at the hands of the police.

After adjusting for population percentage, this is the picture: black Americans are two and a half times more likely than white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

However, we have to count for distortion of the data, for various reasons. Firstly, it is collected through the voluntary collaboration of police departments with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so not the full picture. Also, police departments dont always identify a shooting if an officer has been involved. Additionally, police-involved shootings that are under investigation are only counted once the investigation has concluded, so many recent incidents are not being counted.

Dont other lives matter too?

The slogan Black Lives Matter, created as a riposte to the institutional racism that lingers on inside the American justice system, has met with its own controversy. Objectors have taken it to mean black lives matter more. The All Lives Matter campaign, for instance, is one among several groups that have sprung up to argue that every human life, not just those of black people, should be given equal consideration.

In the wake of the mass shooting of five police officers in Dallas in July, a new campaign has taken root. Blue Lives Matter, a national organization made up of police officers and their supporters, places the blame for what they see as a war on cops squarely at the feet of the BLM movement and the Obama administration.

But while the data tells a more positive story that the average number of police officers intentionally killed each year has in fact fallen to its lowest level during Barack Obama's presidency hate crime is still a daily reality in the US, and many feel that state-wide policies to curb it should be extended beyond the black community to include the police themselves. Police officers are a minority group, too, former police officer Randy Sutton, a spokesperson for the Blue Lives Matter campaign has been quoted as saying.

Back in Dallas, Chief of Police David Brown has been praised for his efforts to increase transparency and community-friendly policing. He has been credited with a reduction in police-related shootings and fewer complaints about the use of force by police officers.

In 2015, the Black Lives Matter movement launched Campaign Zero, a group lobbying for changes to policies and laws on federal, state and local levels.

"We must end police violence so we can live and feel safe in this country," the group writes on the Vision Zero website. "We can live in a world where the police don't kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions and ensuring accountability."

What next for Black Lives Matter?

So far, the media has focused on the campaigns events and protests on the street, but Black Lives Matter has also been involved in campaigning to change legislation.

As recently as August this year, the movement released more than 40 policy recommendations, including the demilitarization of law enforcement, reparation laws, the unionization of unregulated industries and the decriminalization of drugs.

Its efforts prior to that have had some success. One example is the creation of a civilian oversight board in St Louis City, which reviews and investigates citizens complaints and allegations of misconduct against the police.

Building on the legacy of the civil rights and LGBT movements, Black Lives Matter has created a new mechanism for confronting racial inequality. The movement also draws on feminist theories of intersectionality, which call for a unified response to issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and nationality.

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