On Monday evening, the local community members of Newport News, Va., held a #ShutDown757 Unity March on the anniversary of the Black Lives Matter 757 march in 2016.
The march took place within several Hampton Roads cities, including Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, the Daily Press reports. In Newport News, the group blocked lanes on Jefferson Avenue while marching to the police station.
According to the group’s website, the march was aimed at giving the “concerned citizens within the Hampton Roads area a voice, a platform, a way to join in the national fight for social justice.”
Sara Lareau, a member of Black Lives Matter 757, said, “We need to stand as a community of all races, and we need to come together and not hate each other.”
Misty Collins, a former deputy sheriff and animal-control officer with the Newport News Police Department, attended the march to support the police.
“These guys, they get killed,” she said while holding up a sign that said, “Go away cop killers.”
Newport News and Hampton dispatchers said they didn’t have any reports of incidents as a result of the marchers. The only person to be pulled aside by the Hampton police for reported “obstruction of free passage of others” was Aubrey Dwight Jones, the organizer of the event.
Read more at Daily Press.