this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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How are you feeling about the meetings and the connections being forged? Do you feel like there's momentum building towards some kind of tangible progress?
Yes, the organizer is someone who has been active in the community for some time. I like the guy, he's extremely charismatic, a bit strange, although a little too religious for my taste.
He was already expanding his organization before the death. He now has a space that he's setting up where younger people can go to hang out or where he can have events. They are hosting midnight basketball throughout the summer just to help people stay busy I guess.
They had discussed the use of grant money to pay chaperones to ensure that they are consistently there. They had also discussed finding opportunities for young people to work. Even going so far as suggesting using grant money to pay kids while they work at local businesses.
As you can imagine there is a high amount of poverty in this town. The kid who was killed was in a car with over 6 lbs of marijuana that was packaged for sale. The driver of the car is in custody and was in possession of 2 handguns. While the one that was killed reportedly had a gun when he ran away from the traffic stop. He was on the honor roll, so it's not like he couldn't work a normal job. There is an abysmal lack of economic opportunity in the area unless you know people, so getting involved in criminal activity is pretty tempting, especially if you're young.
Your last paragraph reminds me a lot of where I live in southeastern Ohio, especially that last sentence. It sounds like you all are doing great work. This was inspiring and motivating to read, thank you!
It was honestly humbling to be in that room. Here's all these different people with these different organizations with huge amounts of experience and training, then there's me, some guy. At the end the host asked if there was anything anybody wanted to add and one of the ladies from an org just says, "People are dying." with a flat tone. That hit everyone pretty hard I think. The mood was already somewhat somber before that. The kid who was killed had actually been attending the financial literacy class. Many of the people in that room knew him because they work at the highschool that he went to.