VIDEO | Community members call for end to violence

DOBBINS HEIGHTS — Local children led the way for the 5th Annual Stop the Violence March in Dobbins Heights on Saturday.

The event was started in 2002 by Dorothy Newton following the death of her son, Travis Jermaine Newton, at age 26 after being shot five times in Albemarle in October 2001. Varneice Morrison took over leadership of the march in 2017, who was inspired by her own family’s grief over the loss of loved ones to violence.

Since its inception, the event has been a desperate plea from those secondary victims of violence — the families, friends and neighbors — to stop all forms of violence from gun violence to domestic violence, to bullying in school. The participants shared the awareness that when someone is killed, two lives are lost: the victim, and the one that goes to jail for it.

A group of about a dozen people marched down Earle Franklin Drive to the Dobbins Heights Community Park where they met with a group of about a dozen others who came to see the speakers and sing and dance with the musical performers. The speakers included Morrison, Rev. Dian JacksonDavis, and Sheriff James Clemmons, who each called for people to focus more on improving their communities rather than demonizing police officers.

At the conclusion of the day, they released balloons into the air as a tribute to those who have died as a result of violence.

Thomasina Wall, Newton’s daughter, attended the march Saturday in honor of her mother and brother, and brought along her niece and a child she takes care of to experience the event in the hopes that they will take its message to heart.

“We’re walking for our future, it starts with [the children],” said Wall, a Sunday school teacher. “We’re trying to instill in them to stop the violence. We don’t want them picking up guns and killing people, we want them to call and talk … we want them to know there’s a better way out.”

The protests that raged last summer following a series of deaths of Black people at the hands of police officers, several of which were caught on cell phone video, have moved the topic of the public’s relationship to police to the front of peoples’ minds. Wall said that her mood at the march was a “spirit of peace.”

“I feel the spirit of peace and release here today,” she said. “We’ve got some good cops in Richmond County, our cops are not like that. We have to pray for the nation, because we want the violence to stop … we have lost a lot of young people.”

Morrison has lost her father, uncle, two cousins and a nephew to gun violence. She gave an impassioned speech directed at the children in attendance, telling them to avoid a situation where anyone feels like they need to bring a gun and to never see violence as the answer to interpersonal problems between their peers.

“We don’t have the right to choose who lives and who dies,” Morrison said. “So young kids I’m telling you today, stop intimidating children, let them live — because we’re all a part of God’s body.”

“The mission is big,” she continued. “It’s a lot of work.”

Clemmons acknowledged that law enforcement across the country has made mistakes, and cited George Floyd’s death as an example on the day after Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed Floyd, was sentenced to 22½ years in prison, calling his death a “senseless act.” But Clemmons said that we can’t bring Floyd back, and called on the audience to have a “tough conversation” about policing.

“See, we want to talk about police brutality on one hand of the spectrum and we load the streets, and we march, and we preach, and we pray, and we fuss, and we fight, and yet on the other hand in our own community — where we suffer the same losses at our own hand — we sit silent,” Clemmons said. “We stay dormant, we don’t get out here and say the things we need to be said, but the minute that we’re looking for that 15 minutes of fame to stand before CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and all the others, everybody comes out of the woodwork.”

He pointed to a sign bearing Floyd’s face with the words “rest in peace,” and said, “What about those other faces in our own community that are now resting in peace and yet we don’t speak their names and we don’t see their faces.”

Clemmons said that we “can’t arrest our way” out of the problem, and that instead people have to come together to address the issues that we know are happening all around us if we want to see real change.

“We all know somebody in this community that is suffering, we all know what our children are doing. We know what our nieces and nephews are into, we know who their friends are. Half of them are carrying guns they got from us,” Clemmons said. “Let’s stop the violence by strengthening the family. Let’s stop the violence by getting together and being that neighbor that speaks out on what they see and know that it’s wrong.”