![]() One historically plagued by poverty and unsafe drinking water, heavily policed, segregated from the rest of the city by the 33, and the other she remembered so vividly from childhood, where nearly 30 years ago, on Thatcher Avenue, she was part of a troop of kids that ran from house to house until they were called in for dinner. Standing in the Tops parking lot that day, Hanesworth saw the nexus of two East Sides. The day after the tragedy, people gather for a prayer vigil near the scene of the mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market, May 15, 2022. “What we can’t do is have the same old response, and miss the opportunities to address structural, systemic, and institutional racism the ideology of white supremacy which permeates and dominates every level of our country.” Despite historic failures, he believed the paradigm would shift. Six months after the shooting, Nicholas’s decades-long work to address inequities on the East Side was informing community action. In an investigative report put together by the office of New York’s attorney general, survivors described “the extra layer of shock and hardship caused by the shooter’s decision to target a grocery store in an underserved area that is otherwise a food desert.” In the aftermath, amid a nationwide show of grief, East Side residents watched as news outlets and politicians focused on the isolation and mental health impacts of the pandemic, which they say detracted from the real significance of the meticulously planned, targeted violence: The shooting was an outbreak of systematic racism that had been plaguing the East Side for generations. The video camera atop his helmet live streamed 22 minutes of driving, and two minutes of carnage, during which he fired approximately 60 rounds. He posted his “manifesto,” drove to Tops, and immediately began shooting. On May 14, he suited up in body armor and a tactical helmet, armed himself with an illegally modified Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a loaded bolt-action rifle, and several magazines of ammunition. He’d come to town after searching online for the New York zip code with the highest population of Black people, and after logging hundreds of hours espousing white supremacist theories on social media. News organizations quickly identified the gunman, who’d been briefly held for a mental health evaluation a year earlier, after making threats against his school. ![]() “One of the results of that segregation was a tremendous gap in income and wealth building.” He added: “When the 33 was built, it split the Black community.” “Buffalo’s always been a segregated city,” said Pastor George Nicholas of Lincoln Memorial United Methodist Church. Older residents point to long-term disinvestment, including the legacy of the 33 freeway, completed in 1965, which tore through swaths of Cherry, Riley, East Ferry, and West Parade streets, displacing residents, ruining businesses, and destroying the Humboldt Parkway, part of Buffalo’s historic Olmsted Park system. To many East Siders, the violence underscored the area’s living history of segregation prejudicial housing policies, food apartheid, disproportionate policing, and detrimental health outcomes have long disenfranchised this community. “This is going to hurt and it’s going to hurt for a long time.” “She’s gone.” Even as he claimed he didn’t want to be held, his body leaned into Hanesworth’s. In the end, 10 names were called.Ībout two hours later, as she turned to leave, Hanesworth caught the eye of a Black man in his fifties, who told her, “My aunt was in there,” Hanesworth recalled. ![]() The longtime racial justice advocate knew she needed to help direct people to reunification spots forming about a block from the store, and to support her community. “I was there when they started saying who was killed,” Hanesworth, 30, said. It was the only supermarket on Buffalo’s East Side, where she grew up, and the place where, for two minutes, a white supremacist had attacked her neighbors with an assault-style rifle. When Hanesworth’s phone pinged with panicked messages and calls, she changed out of her dress and drove to Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson. ![]() ![]() On the day of the mass shooting in Buffalo last May, Jillian Hanesworth was celebrating her childhood friend’s baby shower. ![]()
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