ITEM PHOTO / OWEN O’ROURKE Members of student government salute the flag in the foyer of town hall at noon on Tuesday to kick off Anti-violence Week.
Anti-violence Week Kicks Off in Lynn
By Thor Jourgensen, The Daily Item, 4/25/07
Participants in this week’s anti-violence education
and remembrance activities pause at noon Thursday to remember the victims of
last Monday’s campus murders in Virginia.
The candlelight vigil on the North Shore Community College lawn will conclude a
morning-long forum in the college’s Lynn campus gymnasium on domestic and
youth violence.
Organizer and North Shore freshman Cara Wayman called on high school seniors
participating in anti violence activities at City Hall Tuesday to discuss the
forum’s themes in their schools.
“It’s time to eradicate
violence in all forms,” Wayman said.
The college forum starts at 8 a.m. and the keynote speaker will be Clementina
Chery, a youth violence prevention advocate who lost a child to gang violence.
Seniors at four local high schools for the last several years have included anti
violence activities in their annual spring student government events.
But this year’s activities come in the wake of the murder of 32 students at
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the domestic violence slaying of Lynn
Vocational Technical Institute graduate Xiomara Robles in March.
Lynn police and
prosecutors plan to increase domestic violence enforcement by forming a task
force charged with reviewing the more than 200 domestic complaints police
respond to every month.
They have tried to head off local youth gang violence by opening a drop in
center for teenagers ages 13 to 19 years old at the Lynn Tech field house. The
center is open every Friday from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
“I know kids say there is no where to go, they kicked me out of the park or
off that corner. Now there is a place to go,” Deputy Police Chief Kevin
Coppinger said.