"Please be peaceful for all of us; we have to create a future here!"

And with that, Ty'onna Powell set the group she gathered at Warren's Perkins Park into motion.

Powell organized the "We Matter" protest to echo the hundreds of other ones across the country, demanding justice after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

The incident was a tipping point, and the cause too personal for her not to act.

"Being an African American and especially being the mother of a black son myself, it inspired me to want to get out there instead of being a social media activist actually reach to my own community and invoke change," said Powell.

We asked her about her reality, between police brutality, trying to enact change and a pandemic that has been disproportionately affecting the black community. She said, "I fear for myself I fear for my son, I feel for my siblings who are also black."

For some who came to protest peacefully, the strain of living that reality has taken its toll.

"It's something that's never going to go away, it's been happening for years, and the pandemic is just only a hiccup in the situation, but it's an ongoing issue that needs to be resolved," said David Stewart.

But after only expecting a couple of dozen people to show up, Monday's crowd of hundreds, possibly more than 1,000, proved that Ty'onna Powell has a much bigger crowd behind her and a monumental cause ahead of her.

"I honestly do feel this is the beginning of us moving in the right direction," she said. "I see us going so much further than Minnesota, I see it in London, I see it in Paris, the fact we're able to reach people internationally is amazing."

According to Trumbull County dispatch, there were no reports of any damage, arrests, or incidents during or after the protest.