These organizations, including the local NAACP branch, are part of a coalition that's in dialogue about how to improve the Lansing community, including the importance of being active in local groups and being informed voters.

Jones said he was pleasantly surprised by the event’s turnout of about 200 people because information about the rally had only been posted the day before. He said the recent back-to-back killings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, two black men, by police officers prompted the quick formation of this event.

“It means people in the community are seriously interested in this discussion, and I’m glad,” Jones said. “We wanted to join with those communities and the national voice, the cry of police shooting of unarmed black men."

Many people spoke about their personal experiences and concerns regarding police and race relations to an audience of various races, religions, ethnicities and sexual orientations. Anyone was allowed to speak on stage. One of the speakers was Essra Azim, an Egyptian-American Muslim woman who graduated from MSU with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2014.

“I felt like it was my duty to go,” Azim said. “If anybody is going to be discriminated against and they feel like their justice isn’t being served, we need to step up to the plate. Staying silent won’t help anyone. It won’t help the black community. It won’t help the Muslim community. It won’t help the LGBT community. It won’t help anyone. When we’re united, we’re definitely a stronger front.”

Azim said she was actively looking for upcoming local rallies in response to Sterling and Castile’s deaths when she came across this one through word of mouth. She attended the event with three of her Muslim friends, who are all members of The Islamic Society of Greater Lansing.

Jones said he thinks the Lansing Police Department works hard and tries to do a good job, but being more accountable and transparent would instill trust back into police agencies.

“So much is not known with internal investigations with relationships between police and prosecutors,” Jones said. “It’s difficult to deliver justice when the system seems to be so skewed. We think the commission has the ability to hold police accountable for bad behavior...It has the authority and the power. We just don’t think they do what they have been slated to do.”

Jones also mentioned a need for the Lansing Police force to have more officers who are minorities and who live in the city they are serving, not in the suburbs.

According to the United States Census Bureau, as of April 1, 2010, approximately 23.7 percent of Lansing’s residents are black. In East Lansing, the number is 6.8 percent.

Azim said she thinks her message successfully came across to attendees.

“When you dehumanize a race, it’s so much easier to not give them their civil rights and to not give them justice,” Azim said. “So as a community we all have to come together and discuss and interact with one another so that we’re not ignorant to one another.”