Remembering Jerrald Gallion, Angela Carr, Anolt "AJ" Laguerre Jr.
For the second time in almost a year , mourners gathered Sunday on a small strip of grass in Jacksonville's Grand Park/New Town community and looked out to the Dollar General where three residents were killed in a racist shooting last August.
Now, however, the spot is called Kings Road Memorial Park, and community members honored Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, 29, Angela Michelle Carr, 52, and Anolt Joseph "AJ" Laguerre Jr., 19, through a dedication and soil collection ceremony — a longtime tradition continued locally by the Jacksonville Community Remembrance Project through 904WARD to promote racial equity and create public memorials for victims of lynchings.
The soil came from in front of the Dollar General building at 2161 Kings Road where they were killed. Attendees of Sunday’s memorial deposited it into jars with Gallion, Carr and Laguerre Jr.’s names, which were then given to their families.
“We know we are haunted across America and Duval County by our history of racial inequality and hate,” Alex Rudnick, a project co-chair, said. “We know that we have to tell and name these truths because we cannot fix what we do not name. Today, we acknowledge the lives that were stolen from their families and their loved ones and the survivors who live with that trauma. We dedicate ourselves to making sure that their lives were not lost in vain.”
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Family and friends cried for their losses. Speakers repeated the victims’ names and referenced the impact — or lack thereof — of policy in the year since. Some community members speculated if things would ever change in New Town.
Action, and lack thereof, in the aftermath of the Dollar General shooting
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting that ended with the 21-year-old shooter taking his own life, local nonprofits began multiple fundraisers to benefit the victims’ families and the surrounding community. Dollar General Corp. created an employee fund and later renovated the Kings Road store to include fresh food for sale.
Legislatively , the response to the shooting has not been as robust as some lawmakers would like.
Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman, one of the hosts of the event Sunday, co-sponsored an anti-hate crime bill that would have enhanced penalties for people who commit certain crimes — littering, noise, light projections — if the intent was to endanger other people or their property. Jimmy Peluso, the councilman for District 7, introduced the bill in April and said it was in response to the residents who asked him to take action following the shooting.
“We don’t want anyone to think, just as that sick gentleman did in Clay County, that ‘Oh, I see swastikas. I see Nazi symbols… And so I can march down into a neighborhood and murder and harm,’” Peluso said when asking the council to vote for the bill. “This bill is meant to ensure we’re not giving anyone the power to think that it’s OK.”
The City Council rejected the bill Aug. 14 .
However, change could come through other avenues. The Jacksonville Transformation Coalition, a group of business, government, nonprofit and academic leaders that formed after the shooting, still meets regularly to develop plans for the city to combat all hatred.
Darlene Neal, Grand Park Community Association president, told the Times-Union Sunday that she had not seen any change in the neighborhood since the shooting — and she was not overly hopeful it would come in the future.
“But I keep trying,” Neal said. “I’m going to keep doing what I’m supposed to do, and hopefully the new City Council will do what they’re supposed to do.”
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She said she wanted the city to follow through with the memorial, but the neighborhood also needed health care options, a grocery store and better infrastructure.
“Grand Park has a history,” Neal said. “It is where people love each other. People care about each other. A lot of the older people are still here. We don’t have anything around here… We only ask the same thing they get over there [the Westside, Arlington], the same thing going over here.”
What does Mayor Donna Deegan say a year after Dollar General?
Mayor Donna Deegan attended Sunday’s event but also sat down with the Times-Union Wednesday to discuss city efforts to better the New Town community, as well as the populations left behind after city-county consolidation.
She supported the work of the coalition and said a member of her staff attends its meetings. It is broken into sub-groups that will convene together in the fall.
“If you don't have everybody sort of rowing in the same direction, it's hard to really attack these problems,” Deegan said. “And obviously there are varied opinions about what we should and shouldn't be doing, so we really have to get down to what are the things that we can do, and what are the things that we can agree to, that we can do together. And move the dial.”
She aimed to make such investments through the Capital Improvement Plan , the city’s five-year roadmap for projects countywide. Over the next five years, the current plan includes 10 projects in District 10 where the shooting occurred, ranging from a new fire station, added sidewalks and pollution remediation.
She also aimed for her countywide initiatives for literacy and health insurance that would also boost the neighborhoods, even if it takes more time to demonstrate the worth.
“I think it's wonderful that there's help on the short term, but we have to, long term, create policies and have to have our actions actually follow our words that we're going to do something to make life different there,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: 'Not lost in vain': Victims of racial Dollar General shooting remembered a year later
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