The Rev. Mark E. Blue and Buffalo‘s NAACP branch are hard at work to minimize the community impact of having Tops supermarket temporarily close following the race-motivated mass shooting that left 10 people dead.
Recently, Blue revealed to rolling out how the Black community and its allies everywhere can pitch in to help Buffalo recover.
As the leader of the NAACP here, what have you done to organize and bring people together at this time?
There were many different organizations that came to the aid of this community. There’s an overall outpouring of gratitude and help for the community, but one of the things that we’ve been doing is we’ve been doing some prayer vigils. We just finished one a few minutes ago, we had music, we had different speakers and we want to just let the community know that we’re here and we’re with them.
One of the things the NAACP will be doing is we will be having an opportunity for people to donate to the cause. Because we realized that even after this is over, there’s still some [follow-up] care, there’s still some development, there’s still some hurt that our community is suffering. One of the things that we want to do is be a help to the community, be a help to the families, have more educational programs and more opportunities to let us rise up from this.
We don’t need a hand out, we need a hand up. That’s one of the things that we want to do. But with this being the case, this Tops store is closed. This was the staple of the community when it came down to groceries, when it came down to even [being] a gathering place. People meet up here and they really enjoy coming together. And that’s one of the things that has been robbed and lost because of this tragedy.
Does the NAACP have a link for people to donate?
What I want people to do is go to our website buffalonaacp.org. That link will be established and set up relatively soon. Our people are working on that right now. We have a lot of people who have been calling and asking what can they do, and we want them to support us, support the NAACP in our efforts in supporting our community. So go to our website buffalonaacp.org and that link will be established.
