Youngstown students lead weeklong emphasis on nonviolence

By Harold Gwin

The students will conduct nonviolence workshops for leaders in the high schools.

YOUNGSTOWN — A small group of city high school students has organized a “Nonviolence Week” for city schools Oct. 5-9, but they want the effort to spread beyond school buildings.

“We want to see a nonviolence week every year, in the city as well as the schools,” said Janae Ward, a sophomore at Chaney High School.

Toward that end, Courtney Martin, a junior at Youngstown Early College, wrote to Mayor Jay Williams and Youngstown City Council asking that the city declare Oct. 5-9 as nonviolence week in Youngstown.

Williams responded with a proclamation, and council passed a resolution in support of the students’ efforts.

Ward and Martin are part of the Youngstown contingent that went on the Sojourn to the Past journey last spring. The trip immerses students in a study of the civil- rights era, taking them to places in the South where civil-rights history was made and introducing them to many of the people who were instrumental in that movement.

Chaney junior A’Ja Glover, East High School junior Malcolm Brown, YEC junior Gregory Jones and Justin Kalinay, who graduated from Chaney this year, also made the spring Sojourn trip.

The experience includes making a commitment to organize some effort to make a positive change in their school and community when they return.

Past Sojourn participants from Youngstown have focused on voter registration in the city high schools.

That effort will continue, but this year’s Sojourn group opted to organize a nonviolence week as well, Jones recently told the city school board.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator or Vindy.com.