Organizers of the Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund will say Thursday how they plan to distribute the $4.5 million donated to help the survivors of the racist massacre at the Tops Market on Jefferson Avenue. Priority is clearly the families of the 10 people killed, as well as the wounded.
But Kishia Douglas, who was in the store buying juice when the shooting started, said although she was not physically harmed, there is damage to her.
“I'm not the same person. I lost something,” she said. “I'm trying to figure out how am I supposed to live when all of this is over.”
Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund organizers are proposingto make survivors suffering psychological trauma eligible for compensation, but Douglas and other survivors speaking Wednesday outside City Honors School said they should receive similar priority to the survivors who were physically injured and the families of the deceased. They also criticized how eligibility is being determined, saying the application process should be removed.
Douglas noted she is not eligible for unemployment or workers’ compensation, since the incident didn’t happen to her at her place of work.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” she said.
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Brooklyn Hough did work at the Tops, and fled when the shooting started, reaching safety in a locked bathroom. Now, her paychecks have stopped because she won’t go back to the store. She’s part of the roughly 25% of Tops employees who chose not to return to the store once it reopened last week.
Hough believes the fund should help her.
“This fund, that's called the Survivors Fund, I am a survivor. This is supposed to be for me. This is supposed to be for us,” she said. “Not for the community, because, yes, they were affected. But I should be a priority because I was affected first-hand. I am the one that has psychological trauma.”
Taisiah Stewart was just visiting a friend when the casualties began. Stewart said he looks at his own body differently now.
“Every morning now, I wake up and get a good look at my beautiful brown skin and I think and I think about what next,” he said. “How is this day going to play out? Because one day this beautiful black skin of mine was targeted.”
All three say they just need help to recover from what happened that Saturday afternoon.
Thursday’s Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund town hall will begin at 6 p.m. at City Honors School.
