'We should be angry every day': Buffalo's March for Our Lives echoes calls for change across US

In Buffalo, a few hundred people gathered Saturday morning on Jefferson Avenue, a couple of blocks from the Tops Markets store where a racist attack claimed the lives of 10 people and wounded three others exactly four weeks earlier.

Buffalo's marchers met at the corner of Jefferson and Glenwood avenues before stepping off south, pausing briefly at the lawn memorial to the 10 victims outside Tops, and then gathering in a large circle in a vacant lot at the corner of Jefferson and Riley Street, just across from the closed supermarket.

Local march organizers Ekaete Bailey and Cat Moores, as well as WNY Peace Center Executive Director Deidra EmEl and board co-chair Victoria Ross, called on elected officials to take specific measures to address gun safety: universal background checks necessary to purchase a gun; a ban on assault weapons extending beyond the increasing of the minimum age to purchase; and a repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that gives legal protection to gun sellers.

"This is what encourages hope right now," EmEl said of the crowd who brought signs and chanted for peace. "This is it."

The march featured a significant number of white people visiting a part of Buffalo that, according to U.S. census data, is about 71% Black. The avowed white supremacist accused of the shooting at the Jefferson Avenue supermarket wrote in an online screed that he targeted the neighborhood because of its racial demographics.

Rally organizers on Saturday asked members of the crowd to raise their hands if it was their first time in the Jefferson neighborhood, and the response showed significant participation from outside the immediate East Side communities, an encouraging point for EmEl. 

"It was brave because if they can do that, if they can break that barrier of coming out of their comfort zone," she said. "... That's why different communities are coming out to support the idea of gun legislation and not just to support the victims in our African American community, then we have a chance to talk and really start to build bridges."

Poet laureate Jillian Hanesworth, who recited her piece "The Revolution Will Rhyme," shared a different perspective on the crowd.

"Racism is white people's fight," she said. "That's their fight. I need to see them out here because they need to know, they need to see Tops, they need to see the memorial sites and our communities."

Raquel Alston, a local pastor and lifelong East Side resident, attended the march and was concerned about the lack of Black participation.

"This is great," she said of outsiders being there Saturday, "but this also breaks my heart that I don't see people of color."

Hanesworth said she thought the march's location may have been too painful for many in the Black community to experience.

"I think that Black people need grace and need time and everybody doesn’t have it in them to be right here in front of Tops," she said.

Saturday was the first time EmEl could bring herself to walk by the Tops Markets since the shooting. She said it was painful.  

"I'm so angry," EmEl said, speaking through tears. "We should be angry every day, angry every day that our children and our brothers are dying in the street. Because it's happening – we just don't see it."

EmEl commended groups she called "foot soldiers," or community members who day-by-day have helped barricade residents of the Jefferson neighborhood from the lingering pain close by. Stop the Violence Coalition, Most Valuable Parents and Pastor James Giles from Back to Basics Ministries were a few she referenced.

The march didn't go completely as planned. Microphone problems plagued speakers, making it hard to hear beyond the immediate ring of marchers.

And Mark Talley, son of massacre victim Geraldine Talley, was scheduled to speak in the program, but did not.

Talley, who appeared to be the only family member of a victim at the event, told The Buffalo News he thought it was a mistake to hold the march at the shooting site only a month removed from the massacre.

Fragrance Harris Stanfield, who was inside the Tops Markets at the time of the shooting, was the last to speak at the event. She thanked the people who attended for their willingness to take action. 

"This is not over," Stanfield said. "There is so much work to be done."

When Stanfield finished, the crowd chanted: "You are not alone."

News staff reporter Haajrah Gilani contributed to this article.