Peace March Planned in Response to Surge in Fort Greene Gun Violence

March 27, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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In the wake of Fort Greene’s three shootings this month and a troubling two-homicide total for 2012 that already matches the neighborhood’s total for all of 2011, Council Member Letitia James (D-Fort Greene) and other local leaders have called for a march against gun violence on Sunday, April 1, to coincide with Palm Sunday, according to Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch.

The demonstration will try to put an epitaph on a summery March that brought Fort Greene early blooms and three shootings in as many weeks, two of them fatal.

The march will begin at 3 p.m. at the Walt Whitman Houses at 84 Carlton Ave., where 20-year-old Justin Cherry was fatally shot on March 5, and it will continue to the nearby Ingersoll Houses, the site of two shootings in two days on March 20 and 21.

The March 20 shooting of 21-year-old Jaquan Webb came on a balmy Tuesday night that saw three other unrelated shootings in Brooklyn, all of them transpiring during the same twilight hour as Webb’s. Keison Smith, Webb’s alleged killer, was eventually arrested, according to Patch.

The day after Webb’s murder, in an incident that may have been a reprisal for his death, a 23-year-old who has not been publicly identified was wounded in another shooting at the Ingersoll Houses and his alleged shooter was taken into custody.

The Palm Sunday march will be spearheaded by Council Member James, Church of the Open Door Rev. Mark Taylor, Ingersoll Tenants Association President Ed Brown, Whitman Tenants Association President Isabella Lee and Farragut Houses Tenants Association President Mary Andrews.

It will conclude with remarks and refreshments at the Church of the Open Door, on the grounds of the Farragut Houses across from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.