Hundreds Attend #StayWoke Rally For Justice

CHARLOTTE, N.C.–“It seems as if we’re giving the police department the okay to kill us like we’re dogs,” says Corine Mack, President of the NAACP Charlotte.

The NAACP Charlotte chapter organized this #StayWoke rally in hopes of bringing light to recent police shootings involving Black men.

“I think people are asleep, I think people really want to make excuses about what’s going on in this country,” says Bailey.

Paris Hopkins says her cousin Janisha Fonville was shot and killed by a CMPD police officer.  The officer was never charged.

“I don’t want another one of my black cousins, brothers and sisters to sit here and die again. I just can’t take it,” says Hopkins.

Local activist Bree Newsome, who scaled the flagpole in South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag, charged the crowd to stand up for the victims of police shootings.

“There have been over 500 civilians killed by police, so there is a policing crisis in this country,” says Newsome.

Local teacher Dalvin Sutton says he too fears for his life.

“I work hard. I am college-educated. I follow the law. But I have this feeling that one day I will walk out and I will get killed,” says Sutton.

Charlotte County Commissioners also attended and spoke out.

Including Mecklenburg County Commissioner Pat Cotham, who said, “You can’t feel good, come to this and then going back to your life, that is not enough!”