“This is the great war,” Jamell Henderson told BK Reader in front of the Brooklyn Museum. “Nobody wants to call it what it is, but we’ve been brewing for this moment for a very, very, very long time.”
The war Henderson is referring to is what he calls the “final battle between old America and new America.”
“Old America lives by the principles of seeing Black lives as labor and property,” Henderson said. “New America believes that you and I are in the same struggle. That income inequality is not only impacting you, it’s impacted me. And we’re coming together collectively to show equality in a way that is adherent to the words of the founding fathers of this country.”
2020 has been defined by the pandemic, an extremely divisive president and waves of protests over racial injustice that have swept our nation. BK Reader spoke to some of the many local activists fighting for progress in Brooklyn and beyond.
Jamell Henderson
Jamell Henderson has been a constant face at New York City protests — taking to the streets over the eviction moratoriums, CUNY and Black Lives Matter movement. Henderson has previously run for City Council and is a CUNY Rising coordinator at New York Communities for Change. He believes the number one issue facing Brooklyn is housing.
“The epicenter of Black New York right now is Brooklyn. When I look at the power of Black New Yorkers… it is those of us in Central Brooklyn. We are the final stronghold of Black New York” Henderson said. “We’ve lost Harlem.”
“It’s not a coincidence that Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, Flatbush, East Flatbush, all of the sudden have the things we, the Black Brooklynites, have been demanding for many years, the moment white gentrifiers move in,” Henderson said, adding newcomers weren’t to blame for benefiting from years of community advocacy, but it was an uncomfortable truth.