Following a historic week of legislative reform aimed at addressing racial injustice and inequality at both City and State level, a group of about 50 local residents gathered peacefully at Williamsbridge Oval Park in Norwood on Friday Jun. 19 for a kid-friendly Juneteenth celebration in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

Norwood Neighbors for Racial Justice and allies is an unofficial, local group recently formed and spearheaded by four local, multiracial women, Miriam Neptune, Jatnna Ramirez, Carissa Smith and Pam Sporn.

 

In addition to organizing the Juneteenth event, the first of its kind in Norwood, the group has since penned an open letter dated Jun. 26 to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and local Councilman Andrew Cohen to make three demands with regard to the NYPD budget.

 

The letter calls for the defunding of the NYPD by at least $1 billion, more transparency in general when it comes to annual NYPD budget planning, and the blocking of any new police-related initiatives in relation to the 2021 budget.

 

During the Juneteenth event, each of the four women took turns to address the crowd, while about twenty kids, together with adults of all races, colored in large lettering along the pavement at the west entrance of the park to spell out the words, “Black Lives Matter”. A sign-up sheet was also available for anyone who wanted to take a more active role in the group by writing to legislators and calling for further reform.

 

Ramirez, whose family is from the Dominican Republic, attended the event with her daughter and said the group wanted to come together to celebrate Juneteenth but also to demand that justice be served in the community, and to hear from community members.

 

Overall, she considered the event a success. “I’m really happy that people came out,” she said. “It’s important for organizing to happen at the local community level, really grassroots where people can see a presence, when people can see that it’s not only happening downtown, but it’s happening here in the Bronx, in this community that is mostly Black and brown people, mostly working class people. I think it’s a beautiful day.”

 

Ramirez said it was also nice to create a community space for kids to raise their voices and for them to understand and conceptualize what’s happening around them, and participate in this moment in history. “Some of it may get lost with all the chalk and the painting,” she said when asked if she thought they were fully taking it all in.

 

“Some of them I saw were writing actual names, so not just coloring in the letters but also writing names of people who have been killed by the police. I think that’s also another reason why it’s important.” Because of the police response to protests, Ramirez said a lot of events had become unsafe. She said that in her opinion this was mostly because of the way the police reacted, and was not necessarily the fault of protestors.

 

Earlier that week, statewide virtual hearings commenced to investigate interactions between police and protestors at recent Black Lives Matter rallies.

For its part, the NYPD said the agency took swift action in acknowledging where there had been inappropriate conduct by officers in the handling of some protests, but they also said that in some cases, they had been attacked and provoked, and that some videos circulating on social media only told half the story.

 

They also said there was evidence that some protests had been infiltrated by rioters from out of state who had sought and planned to wreak havoc and cause trouble, and it was this intelligence that, in some cases, determined their approach to policing the protests, including the wearing of riot gear.

 

At various points during the Juneteenth celebration, Ramirez led the “Black Lives Matter” chant and encouraged those present to also take the mic and share with the crowd why they were in attendance.

 

“So many times, we are crying because Black lives are dying,” Ramirez said, addressing the crowd. “We wanted to celebrate Black life, celebrate Black resilience, plus Black Power, Black beauty, Black unity, Black community, Black culture – to say that Black is beautiful, and that we appreciate every single Black life that we have in our lives, and in our world.”

 

She said the community doesn’t need more police. “We don’t need more cops in our schools. We don’t need the cops over policing our communities,” she said, adding that way before the killing of George Floyd, Black and brown communities were in crisis and that what was needed was quality health care, among other things. “We want more schools. We want more counselors. We want more parks. We want clean air,” Ramirez said.

 

Meanwhile, Sporn explained that the Juneteenth event grew organically from a combination of factors. “Miriam and I organized a caravan down the Grand Concourse about three weeks ago and we got a lot of really great response from people in the Bronx,” she said. That rally was held right after the killing of George Floyd and comprised ten cars and two bikes and crossed into Harlem to join a protest at the Harlem State Office Building. The following week on Jun. 6, they marched or drove, once again, with about 40 other people from Williamsbridge Oval Park to Van Cortlandt Park and joined hundreds of others there at a sit-in for racial justice.

At the same time, a spirit of kinship had grown out of a local courtyard singalong group comprising various neighbors from Wayne Avenue. The group had begun singing together and applauding the front-line healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sporn said over time the songs became more political and this provided further momentum for more community action.

Following discussions among the four organizers, the aim was to arrange a follow-up event that would be local yet impactful, meet social distancing guidelines and would be a smaller, safer environment for kids, instead of having to go downtown to Manhattan to protest.

 

“It’s important for kids because to be young at a time when people are rising up against injustice and trying to imagine a different kind of world – this is life-changing for young people,” Sporn said. A Bronx resident for 30 years, Sporn is attuned to the aims of the labor justice movement having grown up in industrialized Detroit. She also participated in anti-Vietnam War protests and attended college during the anti-apartheid movement.

 

“These things shape you for the rest of your life and that’s what’s going to make a difference if this new generation take on this struggle,” she said, adding that her grandson, two nieces, and three great-nieces and nephews were also at the Juneteenth event.

 

“Passing this on is important,” she said before acknowledging that the local Bronx community understood very well the injustice of George Floyd’s death. “There have been many, many in the Bronx,” she said. “We have a history; Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo, Ramarley Graham, all of these young Black men who’ve been killed here, but it’s the deeper fundamental, structural issues that we want to keep pushing on, and we want to keep talking about the lack of funding for the schools.”

In this regard, Sporn agrees with defunding the police and said there should be alternate ways of figuring out public safety. She said, “We need investment in things that will prevent the things police supposedly are there for”.

 

Sporn said she was happy the event was organized by mostly women of color as this typified the make-up of the local, multiracial Norwood community, and connected in a very local way with what was happening across the country. She was also proud that the event had been posted on the Black Lives Matter official website so that anyone across the country could look it up online and see what was happening locally in the Bronx.

 

She said the sense of community spirit around the event reminded her of a similar moment in time when the so-called Muslim ban was announced in early 2017. At that time, Sporn said residents got together and asked local businesses on Bainbridge Avenue to put up posters in their windows that read, “Refugees are Welcome Here,” and that this had been a great act of solidarity.

For Neptune, a mother of two, whose parents fled the Haitian dictatorship, the Juneteenth event was, in part, an opportunity to raise awareness about the dangers faced by Black youth due to prevailing discriminatory practices.

 

Neptune said that in fleeing Haiti, her parents left one terror to meet another silent one. “They had to learn how to be Black in America and they had to teach us how to do that too, and now I feel like I have to teach my kids how to be Black in America and survive,” she said.

 

“They’re not guaranteed to survive their encounters with the police, and they have many other battles to fight. My oldest son has asthma because of the quality of the air in our community. Unfortunately, because of the quality of the housing that we had access to, we have this awful reality to contend with.”

 

Neptune said that living in a system where white supremacy decides whose lives are worth more means the community has to constantly fight for things that should be a human right for everyone, like adequate and well-resourced education, health and housing.

 

For Neptune, the event was also about remembering and understanding how the legacy of America’s racist past has ramifications to this day, a topic which forms the basis of Ava DuVernay’s critically acclaimed documentary, 13^th.

 

“It’s like we’re contending with the same exploitation that formerly enslaved people faced,” she said. “Before slavery ended in this country, thousands of people who were enslaved had to buy themselves out of slavery. They paid the masters who owned them to let them go, so that’s where their first ability to earn wealth in this country went – to buying their freedom, and that meant that once they were free, they started again with nothing, and then they earned what they could to buy their relatives out of  slavery.”

 

Neptune described how even after slavery officially ended, former slaves still had to contend with being kidnapped by vigilantes and police who returned them to the plantations, because of laws that made it illegal for them to be seen anywhere without a work pass.

 

“Everything they did was criminalized, and every time they were in prison, they were essentially enslaved again,” she said. “Their labor was used to build our railroads, our infrastructure. They were sent back to the fields to pick cotton, and so now we have the same thing happening. We have a system that criminalizes everything that we do, and we have a system that is set up to catch us.”

 

Neptune continued, “Our children are caught up before they even leave the schoolhouse doors. There are law enforcement entities that are ready to see them doing the wrong thing, and instead of giving them options and ways to resolve conflicts, [they’re] criminalizing them and sending them into the school-to-prison pipeline.”

 

She added, “And we know that incarcerated people lose their rights, and their labor is continually used and exploited to make clothes, furniture [and] toothpaste”.

 

Neptune said she was grateful for her neighbors and friends who had been coming together in recent weeks to share their grief over the killing of George Floyd, and other Black people in the country, and that it encouraged her to know that they understood why this was important.

 

“One of the things I value about Norwood and living in this area is that it’s a cross section of so many people from all over the world who migrate and live in this community together,” she said. “As a mother of two black children, I want to improve their chances and allow them to live safely in this community without fear, and it’s going to take all of us to do that,” she said, adding that when one person is not safe, nobody is safe.

 

A 2019 New York City Crime and Enforcement Activity report provides the racial breakdown of victims, suspects and arrestees in relation to various crimes, while separate tables provide the racial breakdown of the NYPD itself.

 

According to the 2019 report, collectively, non-White officers make up the majority of the agency. Since the worldwide protests began in early June, there have been reports of mass resignations by police across the country, as well as rumors of unofficial “blue flu” strikes.

 

Meanwhile, a recently circulated, draft report by the City’s health department suggests there may be an undercount in the number of recorded law enforcement-related deaths in New York City between 2010 and 2015.

 

Smith was born and raised in Iowa and moved to the Bronx two years ago. In addressing the crowd, she said, “I’m here because my father is a Black man who is susceptible to dying from both the police and COVID”. She continued, “He literally can’t breathe, having a lung condition that puts him at 30% lung capacity and he’s lived a life stuck in the cycle of the carceral state, which has led him to living in a condemned home because no one wants to rent to them”.

 

Smith said her father can’t get a job because no one wants to pay him very well. “I’m here to celebrate his life, and celebrate the lives of my ancestors who fought for their freedom,” she said. “The poor and working class [are] in crisis now for decades, so this is just the latest of a life cycle of crises and it’s all just culminating in this really odd moment where many of us are stuck at home, and others have to sacrifice their lives for jobs,” she added, in reference to front line workers who she said were categorized as essential by officials but were not valued accordingly.

 

Smith said that the police brutality issue is not a new issue and that people feel outraged, hopeless and demoralized about it. Yet, she said they feel reassured that they are all fighting alongside one another.

 

“I can only go so far alone but if we do it together, we go even further,” she said. “So, I wanted to be here today to fight with everyone in my community, and to continue this struggle so that we have what we need.”

 

Smith reiterated what her colleagues said about not needing more police and instead, needing health care, quality schools and counselors, social services for kids and families. “We don’t need more police,” she said. “What we need is jobs and quality homes so that people can live safe and free from the boot of our oppressors on our necks.”

 

Norwood News has reached out to the mayor, the city council speaker and the councilman for comment regarding the demands outlined in the Jun. 26 letter. Councilman Cohen’s office responded to say that the councilman is supportive of changing the role of police and has been advocating for change since his first term. His office also said that he has been working to preserve funding for social services by diverting funding from the NYPD, and calling for NYPD to take on an equitable share of cuts in the FY 2021 budget.

 

The councilman recently released a statement on cuts to the NYPD budget and calls for police reform. He also spoke to the Riverdale Press regarding his thoughts on removing school safety officers from schools. Finally, he also recently co-wrote, with Council Member Vanessa Gibson, an op-ed in CityLimits on the importance of non-profits.