75-year-old Nathylin Flowers came to a rally and march on Tuesday because she feels strongly that the movement to defund the NYPD is an important one.

“What’s going on right now is a horror,” said Flowers.

The rally, which was held across the street from Barclays Center due to an upcoming Nets playoff game, marked exactly one year since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

 

What You Need To Know

  • One year after the death of George Floyd, several civil rights and grassroots organizations held a rally and march in Brooklyn to demand that the mayor and City Council fulfill their promise to cut $1 billion in funding from the NYPD

  • The rally began across the street from Barclays Center and then traveled through the streets of Brooklyn to Herbert Von King Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant

  • Among the participants taking part in the rally and march was 75-year-old Nathylin Flowers, who also attended the March on Washington in 1963 as a teenager

  • Flowers said that the effort to increase police accountability and reduce NYPD funding, so that more money can go towards community initiatives and programs, is just as important as the civil rights movement of the 1960s

 

Flowers told NY1 that she came to the rally because she learned a long time ago that you have to stand up for what you believe in.

As a teen she attended the March on Washington in 1963 and said that being there taught her that persistence is an important part of achieving change.

“What it showed us is that such a thing is needed again. Because look what it took. It took a march in ‘63 to get the Civil Rights Act in ‘64, a Fair Housing Act in ‘64 and a Voting Rights Act in ‘65,” Flowers said.

Flowers was one of about several hundred people who attended the event, which was organized by about a dozen groups, including Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) and VOCAL-NY.

In their ranks are a number of up-and-coming activists including 31-year-old Jawanza James Williams.

“To be clear, defund the police is about also investing in the kinds of initiatives, the kinds of services health care, education, the kinds of violence prevention programs that communities themselves initiate,” Williams said.

To get their message across, organizers invited the family members of some New Yorkers killed in incidents with the NYPD.

Among those who came to the event was Hawa Bah, the mother of Mohammed Bah, who was killed in 2012.

Williams said it is these loved ones and activists of earlier generations that are now guiding him and others towards a different future.  

“We are out here right now following the leadership of parents of people that have been killed in NYC that are guiding us towards this call to defund the police,” Williams said.

The diverse group included people from all walks of life and they eventually took their message to the streets of Brooklyn.

The group walked about two miles from Fort Greene to Herbert Von King Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Both Williams and Flowers said that New Yorkers must hold city officials accountable. They believe this may be the year the city makes real changes within the NYPD.