Flynn, King help kick off youth safety program
When Mayor Martin J. Walsh joined longtime community advocate Mel King and former Mayor Raymond L. Flynn in Roxbury yesterday to launch the Boston Peace and Democracy Discussions to reduce youth violence, 10-year-old Iyana Nwaford recalled being within earshot of a shooting at a nearby parking lot.
“I felt scared,” the Tobin K-8 School student said after the adults had finished their speeches at the Julia E. Butler Youth and Family Center. “We weren’t able to go to the park.”
Although crime has plummeted over the last three years, the need to both address violence and prevent it is as critical as ever, Walsh said, and the most effective way of doing that is to engage children in talks with family members, teachers, clergy, police, street workers and health care providers about how to create a more peaceful and democratic city and country.
“Some people ... are using fear and even hate to divide us,” he told the children at the center. “This effort goes beyond the classroom. It’s going to help you understand how to solve problems, resist violence and set and achieve goals.”
To do that, Walsh enlisted the help of King and Flynn, who ran against each other for mayor in 1983, but today are friends — two men who “have seen Boston at its best and at its worst,” Flynn said, but, by his own admission, who can speak only from their own experience.
“The real experts,” he said, “are the kids, who have the most to lose and the most to gain ... Young people power is what we really need to see in this city.”
Based on feedback from yesterday’s launch, a prototype of the program will be piloted later this year for children ages 8 to 13 at select schools in the city. This fall, one ebook on youth violence prevention per grade level will be provided to children ages 3 to 13 citywide, followed by children ages 13 to 18 next January. Future Boston Peace and Democracy Discussions will focus on discrimination and income inequality.