Tributes for Eric
Kin release dove 1 year after Garner death
IN SOMBER vigils and impassioned protest, mourners and marchers marked the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s death Friday. From morning into night, they came to churches in Brooklyn and Harlem, and some took to the streets to express their continued outrage.
But the most moving image was likely the first — when Garner’s youngest daughter and others released a single dove into the air on the Staten Island street where Garner died.
Legacy, 1, and her mother, Jewel Miller, were joined Friday by about 50 supporters outside the Bay Beauty Supply Store on Bay St., where Garner died in a chokehold as cops tried to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes.
The group chanted “I can’t breathe” 11 times — Garner’s final words — before releasing the white dove from a wooden cage. “Eric was really a good man. I’m going to miss him,” Miller said.
Later, Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, remembered her son at a Friday evening vigil at the House of the Lord Church on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.
Carr was joined at the service by the mothers of Trayvon Martin, 17, and Michael Brown, 18 — two other unarmed black men killed in high-profile cases.
“Eric Garner’s name will go down in history as having sparked a movement that changed this country,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton as he addressed the crowd. “We must stay together and we must fight together and we must know that we will win.”
Garner’s widow, Esaw, at a vigil at the Caanan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, dismissed the recent settlement with the city.
“I’m going to keep fighting until someone goes down in handcuffs,” she said. “I won’t stop until I can’t breathe.”
Several hundred protesters paraded through Midtown about 8 p.m., shouting, “Black lives matter,” and “How do you spell racist? NYPD.”
Roughly 20 people were detained near 34th St. and Sixth Ave. after sitting down in the roadway, a police source said.