‘We need love,’ mayor declares at ‘prayer walk’
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. » Members of local churches held a “prayer walk” Sunday amid nationwide tensions over the death of George Floyd.
The walk was organized by Michelle Williams, Sonia Brown and Regina Johnson, a group that Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison calls “The Prayer Trio.”
Rolison spoke at the conclusion of the walk, which started at Mansion Square Park and ended at Victor C. Waryas Park.
“Right now, more than any time that I can ever remember in my 61 years of life, we need love,” he said. “We need to tell one another, how much we care about them, even if we don’t know them.”
Rolison, a retired police officer, said he “absolutely” believes real change will emerge in relations between law enforcement and people of color.
Floyd, a black man who was being detained for allegedly using counterfeit money, died in Minneapolis on May 25 after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd was lying on the ground, handcuffed. Chauvin has been charged with murder, and three officers who were with him have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.
Of the walk in Poughkeepsie, Jonson said: “God put a fire in us that we just could not quench until we said ‘yes,’ and released his will for this prayer walk. That’s how it happened. We just said ‘yes.’”
Like Rolison, Johnson believes Floyd’s death — which has sparked protests large and small from coast to coast, and even overseas — will prove to be a turning point.
“We have to be the example to everyone else who is so filled with hate and anger,” she said of the need for peaceful gatherings. “It is not that we don’t understand it, but we know there is a better way to handle it.”
Protests in some large U.S. cities have devolved into violence, rioting and looting.