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‘We want to change our town’
By Sean Barron
YOUNGSTOWN
Even though violence has diverse forms, comes in a variety of packaging and operates on many levels, they all result in producing a breeding ground for injustice, tearing at the fabric of society and impacting those affected long after the violent act – all while solving nothing and leaving behind no winners.
That was a core message of Sunday afternoon’s sixth annual Nonviolence Parade and Rally that began near Wood Street and Wick Avenue and proceeded to the Covelli Centre downtown.
“We want to change our town; we want to change our voice ... and recognize that people committing violence also are victims,” said Janae Ward, a Youngstown State University junior whose idea it was to spearhead the parade and program.
In 2009, Ward was among the Youngstown City Schools students who went on Sojourn to the Past, a traveling American history program that takes high-school students and adults through the Deep South, where they visit sites and meet people who made significant changes to the nation during the modern civil-rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s.
Upon their return, the students petitioned YSU, the city of Youngstown and the city schools to declare the first week of October Nonviolence Week in Youngstown. In July 2013, Gov. John Kasich signed into law legislation that made the declaration statewide.
Sunday’s parade and rally kicked off Nonviolence Week, which continues through Saturday.
Key pieces in reversing the harmful, lasting effects of violence is to teach young people to love one another while helping them to recognize their inner power, Ward told an audience of several hundred. She also encouraged people to write and post on a board titled “Unforgettable violence” the names of loved ones lost to violence and to call out their names.
A vital component toward healing is forgiving those who wrong a person, said Shirleen Hill, whose 25-year-old son, Jamail Johnson, was shot to death Feb. 6, 2011, at an off-campus fraternity party near YSU while “trying to make a difference in the world.”
Hill said God has helped her to forgive those who took part in the crime so she can better move forward with her life, while imploring her audience not to hold onto bitterness.
A keynote speaker during the rally was Minnijean Brown Trickey, who was one of nine black students to have integrated the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in September 1957 and who suffered many hostile, violent repercussions.
“Young people can make presidents act,” Brown Trickey said, referring to the fact that despite continual threats, the black students remained persistent, which was a key factor in causing President Dwight D. Eisenhower to take steps to end the school crisis.
“There are no winners in war, no winners in school conflicts or individual conflicts. It’s nonviolence or nonexistence,” she said in echoing one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sayings.
La’Rayja Hill, a Chaney High School junior, read her poem “Let America Be Better,” which she wrote to call attention to numerous groups’ struggles and encounters with violence, including Muslims, blacks and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Also important to remember is that many white people also promote nonviolence, she added.
Derogatory, racist, homophobic and hateful language often serves as the soil from which violent acts take root, noted Jeff Steinberg, Sojourn to the Past’s founder and director.
“We need to make young people part of the solution,” he said, adding more white people must be part of such conversations.
In this election’s often hostile, vitriolic environment, it’s crucial that young people continue to stay the course in setting a positive, nonviolent example, said Penny Wells, director of Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past, who added that 71 units took part in the parade.
Making additional remarks were state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd; Mayor John A. McNally; and Dr. William Blake, YSU’s director of the Office of Student Diversity. Acting as masters of ceremonies were Victe’Aria Nixon, a Chaney senior, and Antania Brooks, who also went on the Sojourn journey.