As Jay-Z shut down Brooklyn with his epic concerts at the new Barclays Center, protesters outside voiced their concerns about the 306 deaths and 1,200 shootings that have plagued New York City this year.
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As reported by Amsterdam News:
“We brought caskets to Jay-Z’s opening show at the Barclays Center to highlight the fact that there have been 306 deaths this year and over 1,200 shootings in the urban areas of New York City,” said Andre T. Mitchell, founder and executive director of Man Up! Inc. and national chairman of the S.A.V.E. (Support Anti-Violence Efforts) America Initiative. “We have asked Jay-Z to work with us as an Ambassador of Peace with S.A.V.E. We are trying to save the inner city.”
Mitchell explained, “This was a rally to remind the city that there is not two Brooklyns. There is one Brooklyn. Yet, just blocks away from this spanking-new arena—built with public money—there are neighborhoods being terrorized by ongoing gun violence. We do not oppose enterprise and entrepreneurship, but we want all of Brooklyn and the city to be afforded the opportunity to build a life, live in peace and participate in economic prosperity. The city cannot keep ignoring what is going on in the urban areas.”
Last Friday, S.A.V.E. said theirs was a “humble plea to those in the hip-hop community and industry to help us challenge the pandemic and national health crisis that is gun violence in the inner city.”
As they spoke, uniformed cops, flanked by Barclays security, told the protestors, “Barclays don’t want you here. You can’t have coffins here.”
Demonstrators contended that the area outside the center was “public property, with hundreds of millions of dollars of public money given to the private developers of the Barclays Center. That makes it public property.”
“We brought the caskets to Times Square, Madison Avenue, Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. This is not something new. We hoped to get Jay-Z and other executives in the hip-hop industry to help us in our fight to save the youth. We weren’t protesting Jay-Z—we love our brother … we just wanted to get his attention.”
We applaud Mitchell in his efforts to bring to light the on-going violence in neighborhoods across the city.
SOURCE: ANews
