Community members and the Indivisible Rockland Organizing Committee marched on Sunday from South Nyack onto the Mario Cuomo Bridge to honor the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Bloody Sunday March and to protest against what organizers call the "executive orders and [other] administrative actions that are dismantling civil rights and liberties."
Between 250 to 300 people showed up at the March, including Cora Carter who was in Selma and witnessed the day’s brutality. She recalled her gruesome memories of the event, and paralleled her lived experience to what is going on in the present day.
"These are memories on how I was treated as I grew up,” she said. “I couldn't go to school with white kids. I couldn't live in the same neighborhood with white kids. I was on the other side of the railroad track, and they blocked us in and denied us to cross the tracks. This is injustice, injustice, injustice. Let me tell you people one thing. It is still going on today.”
Event organizers say it is important to come together and celebrate that we are one nation, indivisible.
"We're honoring the memory of the men and women who left Selma on March 7th, 1965, going to Montgomery where they were going to demand the right to vote,” said Bill Batson, of the Indivisible Rockland Organizing Committee. “On that sad day for our country, Alabama state troopers stopped them and beat them on national television. That moment changed the conscious of our country, and we think it’s a moment today where our conscious as a country needs to change again, so we're reminding people of that important history.”
The marches met halfway with some Westchester County marchers joining in from the Tarrytown side of the Mario Cuomo Bridge.