Thomas MacMillan Photo
“I handed out four to five hundred flyers,” Brenda Foskey-Cyrus said as she waited, alone and puzzled, on a Newhallville street corner. No one was showing up to her anti-violence rally.
Foskey-Cyrus (pictured), a Newhallville alderwoman, handed out flyers over the weekend for the rally, scheduled for 4 p.m. on Monday at the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Division Street, near where a young man was fatally shot last week. The rally was entitled “Mothers Against Gun Violence,” meant to inaugurate a new group to combat shootings and killings in the city.
In the end, Foskey-Cyrus didn’t rally moms on the corner. No one showed up. Maybe it was bad timing, or maybe it was the oppressive heat and humidity. Or maybe it was because the daytime killing has everyone on edge.
Instead of rallying moms, Foskey-Cryus found cops making a narcotics bust, a block away. Arrests like that may help curb neighborhood violence, but neighbors also need to come out and work on the problem, Foskey-Cyrus said. She vowed to keep pushing, to organize another event.
At 4 p.m., Foskey-Cyrus arrived at the corner in a long pink skirt and a flowing white blouse. She stood outside Moe’s Market corner store and looked up and down Dixwell.
She pointed at a white house nearby on Division Street, the one where 19-year-old Errol Marshal was found, shot in the head, on July 3. He died on that porch after a shoot-out that injured a second man.
Foskey-Cyrus chatted about the homicide with a woman leaving Moe’s. The woman said that while she wasn’t happy Marshal was killed, it didn’t bother her too much. He had messed with her brother, whom he didn’t even know, the woman said.
After the woman walked away, Foskey-Cyrus said she’s heard that sentiment in the neighborhood: Some people say Marshal got what he deserved. She doesn’t see it that way, she said. “No one deserves that punishment,” no matter what he may have done.
“I have a brother who was murdered on Winchester Avenue 16 years ago,” Foskey-Cyrus said. “This is near my heart.”
“All the shootings happen here,” she said. “We got to get up, being mothers. Mothers got to get up and take a stand.”
Foskey-Cyrus has three grown children and is raising four grandkids at home.
A red flyer was taped to the door of the market advertising Foskey-Cyrus’ rally. The date and time were right, but the location listed was Dixwell and Shelton, three block south of where she was standing. Foskey-Cyrus said somebody else made the flyers for her, and got the location wrong.
She sent her son Ivan down to check out the corner of Dixwell and Shelton. He came back and reported that no one was there, but that a bunch of cops were busy on Gibbs Street. It looked like a raid or something, he said.
Curious, Foskey-Cyrus headed down Dixwell to check it out. On Gibbs Street she came upon a half-dozen plainclothes cops wearing bullet-proof vests. Two unmarked Chevys with tinted windows had boxed in a battered silver Honda. A young man with his hair in braids was wearing grey basketball shorts and handcuffs.
Top Newhallville cop Lt. Kenny Blanchard, who was on the scene, said it was the statewide narcotics task force; they’d made a narcotics arrest. “Just a normal everyday thing.”
Foskey-Cyrus told Blanchard she was supposed to be having a rally for moms against gun violence.
“I love that,” said Blanchard (at left in photo). He talked with Foskey-Cyrus’ twin grandkids, who had shown up. He said he has twin daughters of his own.
Foskey-Cyrus moved on, strolling up Shelton Avenue and greeting people warmly on their porches.
She rounded the corner onto Division and spotted a woman down the block.
“Pat! Pat!,” she shouted. “Where’s the people?” How come no one showed up to the rally?
Pat shouted back with a couple of theories: No one wants to be outside so soon after Marshal was killed in broad daylight. And it’s too hot.
“That boy died out here in the heat!” Foskey-Cyrus shouted back.
Pat had her own excuse for not coming to the rally: She had a kid with a toothache to take care of.
“I ain’t going to give up,” Foskey-Cyrus said quietly as she walked back to the corner of Dixwell and Division.
“You see all those flyers I passed out?” she asked Democratic WardCommittee Co-Chair Geneva Pollock (at right in photo), who had shown up. Pollock wondered if people might still be working. Maybe the rally was just scheduled for too early in the day.
Asked about the narcotics arrest, Foskey-Cyrus said approvingly, “Get ‘em up out of here.” With drugs comes violence, she said. “That leads to shootings, too.”
“I’m glad they’re cleaning up the streets as much as they can over here,” she said of the cops. “It’s still a joint effort.” The neighborhood has to work, too.
She looked up and down Dixwell Avenue: Still no sign of marching moms.
“I’m going to have another event,” Foskey-Cyrus vowed.