Lewis said members of the organization are just as outraged as others after viewing the video of George Floyd dying on a Minneapolis street last week.
“It’s got to the point of ‘enough is enough,’” she said. “It does affect the Middletown community because an injustice against one is an injustice to all. We want to send a message of peace, hope and change to the community.”
MORE: Small protest in Middletown ends with rocks thrown after dark Saturday
The organization has reached out to local ministers, city officials and police for the event.
Middletown Police Chief David Birk said multiple groups could possibly organize peaceful demonstrations Saturday in Middletown, and he is urging them to go through the proper channels to get permits.
Birk said he has met with local clergy and the local NAACP chapter to organize “a joint march, a walk for peace,” possibly for June 20.
“We can all get together and walk as one and try to avoid an unneeded violence,” he said.
Sunday’s march in Hamilton is not likely to be the last measure of its kind, according to Patrick Davis, pastor of the Fringe Church, which canceled its service to hold the event.
“I am talking with my team and other local activists and especially those who have been affected by this the most to look at next steps forward,” Davis told the Journal-News on Monday. “As far as what that looks like, we want to do what will be most effective in being part of the solution here locally and not part of the problem.”
MORE: Hundreds march peacefully through Hamilton in protest: What happened Sunday
Davis said the situation is a volatile one, “but I don’t think just ‘cause something is difficult that you avoid it.”
“We’re not going to act like it’s not happening and, you know, we’re not going to bury our head in the sand,” he said.
Churches in the country have been “silent for far too long on addressing and confronting systemic racism in our country,” according to Davis.
“We have been more concerned with self-preservation than with standing up for the oppressed and those suffering injustice,” he said. “These systems as a whole are broken nationwide on a fundamental level. They are broken because we are serving systems more than people. The justice system, the legal system, law enforcement, even the church system is broken. All because we’ve lost the ability to listen and are serving a broken system instead of people.”
MORE: PHOTOS: Hundreds march in protest during Hamilton event that ends at courthouse
