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Northampton Activists Host Event To Honor George Floyd, Call For Police Reforms

rally at Northampton City Hall
WAMC

     The one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by a former Minneapolis police officer will be marked today with an event in Northampton.

    The local activist group Northampton Abolition Now is hosting a standout from 4pm-5pm in front of Northampton City Hall.

   It will feature speeches and conclude with nine minutes and 29 seconds of silence – the amount of time that former police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck.

   After the standout, the group plans to set up equipment to let people testify at the Northampton City Council’s budget hearing.

The activists want the police department’s budget cut by 50 percent and the money transferred to a new city agency that would take over some of the tasks now done by the police.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief spoke with Ashwin Ravikumar, an organizer with Northampton Abolition Now.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.
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