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Nonviolence week starts
By JEanne starmack
youngstown
It was almost 3 p.m, and the parade was lined up along Wood Street, ready to pull out.
Camia Tubbs, 7, was ready as well.
“I’m excited!” the child said as she stood on the corner of Wood and Wick Avenue, where the parade would turn and begin its march down to the Covelli Centre.
Sunday’s parade was Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past’s fourth annual Nonviolence Parade and Rally, which begins Nonviolence Week in Ohio.
Those who were marching want to see an end to the violence here, and they were honoring those who already have lost lives to it.
Had Camia’s family stopped just to watch a parade? Or, like many other families in Youngstown, had they been touched by violence?
Like so many others here, Camia’s mother, Caretta Byrd, did have a story to tell.
“My sister got killed by her baby daddy,” she said. “And her two kids. One bullet took out her, her unborn child and her son on the passenger seat.”
Byrd’s sister was Helen Moore, 29, who was shot by Curtis Young, 24, on North Center Street on July 31, 2007. Her son, Ceonei, was 8. Her unborn son was due the next day.
“He said it was an accident,” she said about Young, who got life in prison without parole. “But they were arguing all that day.”
While most families look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas, families with holes left by violence are different.
“The holidays are the worst, trust me,” said Byrd. “We were close-knit.”
Nonviolence Week is observed statewide this week because of Youngstown members of Sojurn to the Past, which takes high-school students on a 10-day journey to civil-rights sites in the South each year.
They petitioned the Mahoning County commissioners, the Youngstown Board of Education, city council and the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees to make the first week in October Nonviolence Week, said Penny Wells, director of Mahoning Valley Sojourn.
Last year, they approached state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, who introduced a bill. They testified before the House committee and were with Gov. John Kasich when the bill became law.
At a rally at the Covelli Centre, where everyone gathered under a tent in the parking lot to hear words of encouragement, Schiavoni said he was glad to be a part of it.
“With young people coming together to say, ‘This is not going to happen in my community,’” he said.
“I remind you today that we are the dream,” said student Janae Ward. “Take your place ... for the work is not done.”
“You have the courage to talk about nonviolence in a violent world,” said Minnijean Brown-Trickey, a civil-rights figure who accompanies Sojourn students on their trip in the South. Brown-Trickey was one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of teenagers who were sent in to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957.
“You have taken this to the institutions, and I thank you for being courageous, nonviolent soldiers.”