MAHONING COUNTY The influx of Hispanic people into the United States and a desire at YSU to connect with minorities served as catalysts for the festival, organizers said. Mo

A panel said ethics programs in area schools would help break the cycle of acceptance of corrupt behavior.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Ohio Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer has agreed to meet with a faith-based community organization to discuss the local criminal justice system.
"We are working to change this community, and people are listening," said H. William Lawson, a leader in the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods.
"People are listening here, and people are listening in Columbus."
Object to sentences: Lawson said ACTION members have sent thousands of letters to Justice Moyer and Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery complaining about what it says are lenient sentences for local public officials convicted of corruption.
Lawson announced Justice Moyer's visit at the conclusion of a three-hour ACTION conference Saturday morning at John Knox Presbyterian Church on the city's South Side.
ACTION, a church-led group formed in 1999 in part to rid Mahoning County of political corruption and organized crime, called the conference to spark an open conversation about justice and ethics in the Mahoning Valley.
"It is time for us as a community to stand up and let it be known without a shadow of a doubt that what was shall not be anymore," the Rev. Michael H. Harrison, ACTION president and pastor of Union Baptist Church, said in a rousing speech at the end of the meeting.
Must speak out: The Rev. Joseph Fata, pastor of St. Luke Church and chairman of ACTION's clergy caucus, said Christians must be willing to speak out and take action against corruption.
"Being a Christian is about a lot more than getting your unscathed, selfish little butt into heaven," he said to roaring applause from the 125 participants.
The meeting included a panel discussion by top city, county and federal law enforcement officials, including Mahoning County Sheriff Randall Wellington, county Prosecutor Paul Gains, Youngstown Police Chief Richard Lewis and Andrew Arena, lead agent for the Youngstown office of the FBI.
Arena said federal and state judges are bound to tight sentencing guidelines that crack down on drug offenses but not on white-collar crime.
"Is it fair for a young black man, he gets caught with a couple rocks of crack, and he's going away [for a long sentence], but a judge takes bribes and subverts the criminal justice system and goes away for a couple years?" he said. "That's the problem."
The only way to change the guidelines, he said, is to "write your legislators, get on their backs."
The conference also included comments from seven members of the Mahoning Valley delegation to the United Nation's Symposium on Transnational Crime in Palermo, Sicily, in December.
Must stand up: The panel said Palermo fought organized crime only after the people of the region were willing to stand up, protest and be heard. The same must happen in Youngstown.
The panel said this region must elect leaders who answer to the people, not to special interests, and must implement ethics programs in area schools to break the cycle of acceptance of corrupt behavior.
Atty. James Callen, past president of the Citizens League, said the Mahoning Valley's top economic development priority must be to create a lawful environment, rather than spending millions of dollars on an image campaign and a downtown convocation center.