Monday, July 14, 2008

Walking for peace in our communities

300 marchers remember those lost to violence and to save others from the same senseless fate
Monday, July 14, 2008
By DEBORAH YOUNGADVANCE STAFF WRITER
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A village gathered yesterday afternoon on the asphalt basketball courts of Mahoney Park in New Brighton.
Setting off to walk together to a rally at Borough Hall, they were a show of strength -- a procession on the sidewalk of more than 300 pairs of watchful eyes, able hands and willing feet.
The Walk of Remembrance in Honor of Youth Lost to Senseless Violence -- organized by local organizations and clergy members in response to the recent, tragic deaths on Staten Island -- sought to shine light into those insular, hardscrabble neighborhoods where fighting is frequent and youth feel they have nowhere to escape, and anywhere else violence erupts.
Wearing T-shirts with the photos of Najea Smith, the 17-year-old Curtis High School nursing student fatally shot in May; William Rios, a 19-year-old Susan Wagner graduate slain in April in Meiers Corners, and 21-year-old Grant Fleming, a father with a tough streak, killed during a robbery in the Richmond Terrace Houses last weekend, marchers carried banners emblazoned with giant stop signs, and vowed to look within themselves for answers and become agents of change.
BRINGING BACK HOPE
"We are certainly going to make an impact from this day forward," the Rev. Tony Baker of St. Phillip's Baptist Church told the crowd before they marched to Borough Hall for more speeches and bittersweet cheers.
"The only thing that matters is to bring hope back to our community."
It was a sentiment echoed even by those the group passed on the street:
"If it keeps up like this, we are going to be extinct," said a man who would only give his name as Brooklyn, nodding in support of the marchers after he unfolded himself from a flashy Porsche in front of the Richmond Terrace Houses. "Nobody else is looking out for us."
Family members of Najea Smith told the gathering that every day was a struggle, living in the New Brighton house where she was born and had nurtured great hope for the future and then was gunned down.
They said they do not want anybody else to suffer the pain of promise senselessly extinguished.
"It depends on ourselves," said Miss Smith's cousin, Eddie Lewis. "If we don't do it nobody will do it."
For Nelson Diaz, the father of William Rios, who will never remove a thick gold chain around his neck with his son's graduation photo in a cameo, the loss was too strong for words -- he just took crisp, short breaths to hold back his tears.
"I'm here to show guns have no boundaries, and they don't only know the ghetto," said Rios's mother, Charmelle Andrews.
"Stop the hurting and killing and heart breaking," read a sign 8-year-old Song Tucker had drawn in bubble lettering on poster board.
The West Brighton girl seemed to understand the urgency of the event with the clear-eyed wisdom of the innocents whose futures depend on its success.
"People get killed and they have families that love them," she said, explaining why she wrote what she did.
"Those people that got killed wanted to do good things."
Deborah Young is a news reporter for the Advance. She can be reached at young at siadvance.com.
© 2008 Staten Island Advance
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1 comment:

SINYPCRX said...

Our future depends more on what happens after the bodies are buried and the marches cease. Will we return to the apathy that has allowed these crimes to occur or will we begin changing how we decide to live and handle our problems. Start with the smallest, even if we can't save everyone, we can implant into the coming generations a greater respect for life, ours and each others.