Buffalo community calls for systemic change
Recent shooting has brought to the fore Black trauma and neglect that goes back generations
BUFFALO, N.Y. Shenaya Ann Washington and a close friend cleared a small patch of grass at the base of a utility pole on Riley Street. They dug a hole there and planted a red rose bush seedling. Next to it, they leaned 10 prayer candles against the pole.
Washington said she chose that spot to memorialize the victims of last weekend’s massacre at Tops Friendly Market because it is closest to the store entrance she had always used as a part-time worker for Instacart, the grocery delivery service.
Sometimes when she would exit the store, Aaron Salter Jr., the slain retired police officer who worked security at Tops, would help Washington back to her car with the grocery orders, she said.
The shooter, whose racist attack deeply wounded east Buffalo’s Black community, has stolen much more than the neighbourhood’s only grocery store and the sense of peace many residents felt in the cherished community gathering spot.
“He took away people who did for the community, just because of the colour of their skin. It’s an eye opener. It’s a reality check,” Washington said.
During Sunday service, Pastor Russell Bell of the State Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, where shooting victim Heyward Patterson was a deacon, promised his congregation that they would hold a celebration of his life.
“We’re going to be winners if we endure to the end,” he said.
Just over a week ago, a white gunman in body armour killed 10 Black shoppers and workers at the supermarket that has been temporarily closed. Three others were injured in the attack, which federal authorities are investigating as a hate crime.
Long before that 18-year-old avowed white supremacist inflicted terror in this community, Buffalo’s Black neighbourhoods, like many others around the nation, had been dealing with wounds that are generations old. The attack has scraped off the scab hiding Black trauma and neglect that sit just below the surface in what’s called the City of Good Neighbors, residents, business owners and faith leaders said.
Healing will require not only an immediate flood of charity, but also systemic solutions, economic investments and mental health counselling that are long lasting, they said.
“It’s been great to see the outpouring of support, I must say that,” said Jackie Stover-Stitts, co-owner of Golden Cup Coffee, about a block from the Tops on Jefferson Avenue.
For the past few days, the atmosphere around her shop had been festivallike and, at times, a sombre space of mourning. Organizations from across the nation, and even a few global charities, offered food and other essential goods to residents who relied on Tops to meet their basic needs.
“The only concern is that it’s not short lived,” Stover-Stitts said. “It would mean more if we could see, on Monday, that all those people with funds that came down to say how sorry they were could show it by investing in our area.”
Buffalo, with a population of 255,000 that is 47 per cent white, 35 per cent Black, 12 per cent Hispanic and six per cent Asian, is one of the nation’s most racially segregated cities. The neighbourhoods around the Tops market are predominantly Black and impoverished.
Earlier in the week, civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton pointed to racial and socioeconomic inequality that made the Tops a target for the shooter, who officials say drove hundreds of miles to find Black people to gun down.
“If there wasn’t but one supermarket in the Black community, he wouldn’t have gone to Tops,” Sharpton said at a prayer vigil held in Buffalo for the victims’ families on Thursday.
La’Tryse Anderson of Buffalo SNUG, a gun violence prevention organization, canvassed the neighbourhood around the Tops with other volunteers to get a sense of residents’ needs. Some told her they needed groceries, toiletries, replacement appliances and even a utility bill paid.
“I wish I had a magic wand,” she said. “There were so many needs out here, before this (shooting) happened.”
Without real investments in the areas that surround the Tops, Anderson said, “I don’t think we’ll ever fully heal from this.”