Rallying for peace

Hundreds of people gathered throughout the day at Bluff Park at Redondo Avenue and Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach on Sunday, July 10 to peacefully protest in solidarity, promoting “love, peace and equality for all,” particularly for people of color and the LGBTQ community.

The peace rally was organized in response to national outrage over two separate incidents in which police shot and killed unarmed black men. After videos of the incidents involving the deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota spread online, five police officers were shot and killed on July 7 at the end of a peace rally in Dallas, Texas organized by the Black Lives Matter organization.
The peace rally in Long Beach drew people of different races, ages and backgrounds and was organized through Facebook and social media sites to promote “civil equality” as a way to band together all groups of people and “pull those being mistreated and misrepresented into the fold,” according a description of the event on Facebook that further states the rally was not meant to demonstrate violence or hatred.