Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - "We want to hear all input. It's very important that the community is a part of this."
Reverend Mark Blue, Chair of the 5/14 Memorial Commission, is reminding members of the Buffalo and Western New York community to attend their first of three public engagement meetings to generate ideas, thoughts, opinions and potential location sites for a permanent memorial to honor the the survivors and the lives lost during the racially motivated mass shooting in East Buffalo.
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"We're going to make sure that everyone has an opportunity, because it's something that we've been looking at, something that we have been hoping brings some peace, brings some togetherness and brings healing in our community. We will never be able to forget what happened, but one thing that we can do is try to go forward in seeing what we can do to end this, not just in our community, but in all communities," says Rev. Blue.
The first meeting is this Tuesday, June 13, 2023 at the Stanley Makowski Early Childhood Center from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET.
The Memorial Commission will also be releasing a survey that the community can fill out with their ideas if they are unable to attend the public hearings.
"We'll be starting publishing that survey to the community through our website. We also are going to have it through a QR code that people can have access to as well. We want to make sure that we not only represent our community, but hear the voices of our community, because this affected our entire community of Western New York."
The Reverend notes that the survey will go live on the Commission's website sometime before this weekend.
The 5/14 Memorial Commission does not have any site plans or ideas of what the memorial will look like. However, the reverend shared his thoughts on what he wants for the memorial.
"I want this to be a living monument that will bring hope, bring some healing to our community, and help us look at what national implications we can do here in Buffalo to help change the course of what's going on in our world. There are still some who are so endowed with this tragedy, that they can't function. Our normal has been disrupted. We want to try to bring, build and bridge the pieces of a normal in which people can come back to. It's our goal to hear what our community has to say and to act upon what the community is saying."