A Guide for Fans to Help in Wake of Buffalo Mass Shooting
Buffalo Bills fans have asked, and the team has answered. Look no further than the team's website to discover all the ways to help the city and the families of Saturday's mass shooting victims recover.
The team visited the site on Wednesday as well and announced that the Buffalo Bills Foundation and NFL Foundation have begun to help Buffalo's East Side heal by combining to donate $400,000 to support the community.
A combined $200,000 will go to the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund to address the immediate and long-term needs in the Buffalo community.
The other $200,000 will be donated to nonprofits working on the emergency response efforts to address the immediate needs of Buffalo's East Side residents.
"This is not going to leave people's lives in a month or a year," general manager Brandon Beane said. "This is a lasting thing, and we've got to do our part. ... To walk down there and see where this happened brings it to home, and it's real. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
"It's surreal and it's sickening, but the best thing we can do is what my shirt says: `Love.' And we've got to love one another, and we've got to get past this nonsense that continues to happen in this country."
Added running back Taiwan Jones: "We all feel for these families. A lot of us come from inner cities like this, so we're touched as well. ... I can't imagine how they feel, but we want them to know that they have our support. We just wanted to be here for the community. Collectively, we knew we wanted to be here. We knew our presence was important here. We understand how the community views us. so being out here, being reachable, being out here just to share a conversation and get their minds somewhere else, it's showing them that `we're here for you and we're not just saying that. We're not here for the cameras and stuff. We're here for the community.' "
More than 100 Bills players, coaches and staff members turned out Wednesday.
"Obviously unfortunate circumstances of why we're here but to be in the community, give some hope, share some grief, that's how we're going to get past this," quarterback Josh Allen said. "I'm super happy and glad for our team for being able to do that."
The community was happy to see the Bills perform what they believe was their duty.
"This is bigger than the game of football," Beane said. "This is bigger than all of us. What we do is fun. It can be stressful, all those things, but it's nothing compared to what has happened right down the road here at this Tops [store] and in this community.
"It's not like [coach] Sean [McDermott] and I are coercing people to come down here. This was important for our players and our coaches."
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Nick Fierro is the publisher of Bills Central. Check out the latest Bills news at www.si.com/nfl/bills and follow Fierro on Twitter at @NickFierro. Email to Nicky300@aol.com.
