From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made this past weekend when two separate shootings left two people murdered in our city.

The first happened when officers say someone fired gunshots into a large group of people.

And a 14 year old girl named Xenia Barr was killed.

Xenia was a student at Doctor Freddie Thomas, middle School.

The school district issued a statement addressing her loss and said, quote, we extend our heartfelt condolences to zinnias, family, friends, classmates and all who knew and loved her.

We join them in mourning a young life taken far too soon.

We grieve the loss of Xenia and the future that was taken from her.

End quote.

Early Sunday morning, the Rochester Police Department says that a car slowed down near a crowd of around 100 people.

One of the passengers leaned out the window and fired indiscriminately into the crowd.

35 year old Shikhar Green was killed.

Five others were also shot and transported to local hospitals.

This all happened less than two weeks after the city of Rochester had implemented a new kind of curfew policy.

Groups of ten or more are not permitted to gather after 11 p.m., the organizer of the annual Puerto Rican festival, Orlando Ortiz, told us on connections last week that he did not believe that the new curfew policy was meant to target people who gathered after the Puerto Rican festival specifically.

But he did say that the new policy, at least, was one that a lot of people have been talking about.

That the Northeast Safety Committee that works very hard on these issues was in communication about.

And this new policy did not prevent a weekend of tragedy.

Festival organizers have worked for years to try to stop the kind of crowds gathering after the sanctioned events are over.

Most of what transpires after the Puerto Rican festival amounts to a street parades and loud parties.

But organizers are concerned that at some point in the night, the street parades transitioned into something else.

And the Northeast Safety Committee wanted desperately to have any kind of result other than the one we just saw.

So what comes next here?

What should happen next?

Let's talk to a number of leaders in our community.

Miguel Melendez Jr is president of Rochester City Council.

He's a member of the Northeast Safety Committee.

Welcome back to the program.

Thanks for having me.

Next to Miguel is Jerome Ward, founder and CEO of Chisel Collective, LLC.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

And Beatriz LeBron is with us, executive director of the Father Tracy Advocacy Center, which is hosted the Northeast Safety Committee.

Beatriz, welcome back to the program.

Thank you for having me.

I'm going to go around the table.

I'll start with you, Beatriz.

Just first thoughts on what we had, what we saw this weekend.

It's complicated.

First and foremost, I think, there are lots of people in the community who, For a community.

What looks like to them and celebration is hanging out.

It might look like loitering and might look like hanging out.

But it is coming together.

After the festival.

And I want to highlight that it's not just the Puerto Rican festival, unfortunately.

Last year, we saw that there was people that were injured at the after the aftermath of the terrorist, which is coming up this weekend.

And so, I think we have to figure out how we allow people to celebrate safely.

I think that that is part of our job as well, is figuring out how we can create routes and the space necessary for people.

One of the things I talked to people this weekend on the street was, you know, we were in New York City, going out at night is ten or later.

So for a festival to end at 11 and you have adults who want to go out after ten, 11:00, and not having anything, leads to these types of things where, you know, so new policy does nothing at le curfew policy.

But did it make it worse?

No, it does nothing.

In my opinion, it does nothing other than, put someone in a position to now potentially get a charge or have to deal with bureaucracy later on because they were hanging out.

And I'll tell you, I said this to Miguel to as soon as it came out, said of me and my family, my children, my husband, my grandchildren stepped off of a back porch where more than ten people, as a unit.

That's just the reality.

We don't know the dynamics and relationships of groups who are outside.

But I do think we need to create space for people to be outside, and do it so safely.

And that's the biggest piece, in regards to the shooting.

You know, as soon as I heard the shooting, I will tell you.

And this is from living and seeing this for the last three and a half years.

There are no random acts of violence on Clinton Avenue.

Everything that I have seen is deeply personal.

So for this to feel like a drive by, that we have not seen.

So that is a shift in what has been happening there with violence.

And I don't know yet if that beef belongs in the northeast.

I think that will be a different side of town.

Great to took the opportunity that certain people initially that they were looking for, were on the northeast side.

So I think getting down to the bottom of what happened there.

We'll have some answers for us.

But ultimately, the biggest piece for preventing all of this is making sure that people have the resources that they need long before they get in a car, long before there's an opportunity to pick up a gun and shoot it.

And when our people are not fully resourced and have what they need, these are the outcomes we're going to keep.

Continue to see people having disregard for humanity.

It's a disregard for their humanity first.

But how do they get there when people get there from not having what they need?

And that looks like a mother not having food or the rent money or just support for that child.

And then that child becomes older and that tells straight from that family.

And then I will tell you, there are so many parents who do reach out to agencies to say, help me with my child.

I don't know what to do.

And the systems are not there for them.

And that's part of the issues too.

So I think it's a very complicated issue.

We don't know who the shooter is.

But what I can say is that anybody who picks up a gun has lost their own touch with their humanity and the humanity for other people.

And I've said this before depression.

And homicide are the same coin, two different sides.

Someone gets to a point mentally where they can pick up a gun and shoot someone and commit homicide.

That person can also harm themselves with depression.

And once they're there, that has to be addressed and treat it.

So I think it's a long, complicated issue, but I will say that part of the issue is the disconnect of all of these systems.

And it's my hope and goal as we continue to move forward and have these conversations that we are starting to look at, how do we connect people so that their journey, they're connected throughout the entire time that they need support and that when an incident occurred.

Because what happens?

This incident occurred.

I saw so much stuff on social media.

First and foremost, we're only talking about one person, the young lady.

And God bless to her and her family.

Another person passed away.

Both families are now forever impacted.

Yeah.

Where is the support for those families long after the hype of this incident has gone down?

And that is where we, as the community to step in.

It's not when the incidents are happening.

It's long after it is no longer in the headlines and people are interested in that story.

Those families have to deal with that trauma, that pain, and it changes people.

I know as a mother, I cannot imagine what the change in trajectory that will do to my own mental health.

And if I have other kids to worry about while I'm struggling with my mental health and I'm struggling in poverty, it changes people.

And we have systems have to figure out how we help carry them.

Long beyond the headline.

Miguel Melendez floor's yours.

Yeah, well, first and foremost, I want to send my condolences to the families.

All of the families.

Right.

Because there's been victims who survived as well.

I want to say first and foremost as well, that, you know, one of the challenges that I have right now is the amount of times these videos have been shared on social media and the amount of impact that I think that continues to traumatize our community.

Not only the victims, but people who are around that situation.

You know, the Northeast Safety Committee was formed ten years ago or so.

Because we as the Latino community, the Puerto Rican community, wanted to find a way to combat the negative narrative.

At that time, we we just had a significant number of, of arrests that occurred, at some of the gatherings that that were popping up.

We had, you know, incidences between our community and law enforcement.

And at that time, we said enough of the black eye.

We need to do something.

So the committee was formed to try to figure out how do we, as civilians, as volunteers, step into these spaces, have conversations with people who might be organizing, who might be playing a loud music, who might be riding around.

You know, we wanted people to ride around safely if they're going to do it, not be hanging out of the car, have your seatbelt on, you know, obey the law kind of things.

And we've never had this level of incident occur after the festival.

And I think it's important to note that we do.

We cannot divorce the two incidents from from each other.

Right.

The festival happens on a particular weekend.

The parades happen on a particular weekend.

Happens to be the same weekend.

But when you go to the festival, there's thousands upon thousands of people celebrating at the festival, enjoying the music.

It's a great, great opportunity for our community to showcase our pride and to have music that is our music played in the center city of Rochester.

But what happens on the street is these are individuals who more than likely did not show up at the festival, at least the starting organizing of it.

Or after that, on Saturday night.

Typically, we do see some people who leave the festival to parade a little bit.

The gatherings, one of the things that we've tried to do is work with organizers to break them up as early as possible.

In the last couple years, Clinton Avenue has obviously been the hub, for where they would like to be.

And we've worked with the city of Rochester and, and the police department to figure out a way to limit the amount of partying that happens on North Clinton, just because the crowd size gets way too big.

And diffusing that, I think the parties have gone elsewhere.

So we're not ending, with this strategy.

We're not ending the the challenge of having people congregate after some of these major events in our city.

But I've never seen in my years, working in this community, volunteering in this community.

Just having someone randomly shoot into a crowd of people.

That, to me, changed the dynamics of what happens.

And we as a community now need to have a deep dive conversation.

All it takes is 1 or 2 people to do an act like this, and for that to deeply impact our residents and the community.

The answers to that, I think we will be talking about some of them in this hour.

I think there's some unknown that we just need to talk to community about over the next year, and really understand why are people gathering in this way?

What could we do to make it safer?

And if there is an opportunity to, provide alternative, resources or supports, to allow people to celebrate with pride, but to make sure that there is some level of safety involved.

I think those are discussions we need to have as a community because we cannot have.

And I'm worried as, as Beatriz mentioned, I'm worried about Kerry Fest this weekend.

Because last year, after, Kerry Fest, unfortunately, we did have an act of violence on North Clinton Avenue.

And so, so how do you how do you find ways to prevent that from occurring again?

Do you think this new curfew, not curfew, this, this?

And do you think the new policy from the city that seeks to prevent gatherings of more than ten after 11 p.m.?

Do you think that failed?

Do you think that was a bad idea?

I wouldn't say it was a bad idea.

I would say that the concept of trying to tell the public that nothing good really happens after 11 p.m.

in terms of, some of the gatherings that that occur.

I mean, I understand that people want to come together and socialize and party.

It's a summer.

But unfortunately, we've also seen after that our situations that have turned violent.

And, you know, whether this was the solution to the problem is a question.

I think the intention of trying to limit the amount of parties in public spaces was a good intention.

Figuring out how you legislate that, I don't know that you can legislate or limit that through a policy.

I think it's more community driven.

We need to be having conversations in community about why this is not acceptable and, and or if you're going to do it, what are the parameters in place that need to be in place so that it can be done safely?

I would remind folks that we had the 4th of July as well.

So we're talking about this past weekend.

Thankfully, no one, was was killed on the 4th of July, but we had multiple people shot.

Center city Rochester on 4th of July.

I also remind people that on the whole, violence has been down in our city.

It has.

And and, you know, these incidences really make us feel some type of way because of how dramatic they are.

But we've made great strides and progress in this space as well.

And before I turn to Jerome, just one last point on the violent, the numbers on violence.

Obviously we work hard on this program, and I hope all of our colleagues are.

I know our colleagues recognize that people are not statistics and statistics do matter there.

They do give you a story.

They can be, I think, skewed.

A few months ago in this program, Justin Morris told us that we had to be really careful over celebrating, declining violence numbers because he said there's still so many guns out there.

He said, when there's this many guns in on the streets, it doesn't take much for something to explode in a violent confrontation and into it.

And his worry was if we don't continue to do a really the hard work of pulling guns out of the community, then we could see more of this.

And so there's not any one answer.

I take that point.

But, I certainly understand the idea that you feel like this is a combination.

It's going to be one policy.

It's not going to be one police initiative.

It's a lot of different things working together.

And probably people want you to say, fix this in one one day.

Sure, sure.

Understand your point there.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, we do have a lot of things that are working.

You know, we're one of the model cities for the given initiative, which is state funded.

That being said, the amount of guns on our street is astronomical.

I mean, people have access to weapons at all.

All different ways and all different times.

You know, we've done a lot to get guns off the street.

Certainly with the introduction of ghost guns in communities across the country, that's also another problematic concern.

We have to pay attention to, and I'm sure we can get more guns off the street.

Right.

And find other ways I know.

And talking with the mayor, we have talked about doing a gun buyback again in this community.

You know, but that doesn't always get the guns.

We're where we're really targeting, right?

So we have to have a comprehensive approach to get guns off the street.

All right.

Let me turn to Jerome Ward, founder and CEO of Chisel Collective.

Tell people a little bit about your background and what you do first.

Well, Chisel Collective, I think, is a social enterprise, community based organization which focuses on emotional intelligence, mental health and financial literacy.

My background is that I have been a vice president for CBS.

I, which is community based safety initiative, nationally for about four years.

Through another nonprofit organization.

I have been seeing this type of violence in multiple cities, 18 of them that I was over.

So seeing incidents like this, it brings me back to the same kind of, you know, understanding is that we've lost as a community when we start seeing these different things happening.

On this level and to this magnitude, when we're seeing people shooting in the crowds and, you know, condolences to the families and sympathies to everyone that was impacted, not just to people that were physically impacted, but the people that are emotionally and mentally impacted by this.

And it was people that were there, people that weren't there.

People that truly care about, you know, solutions and people truly care about the community.

So just understanding this, you know, trying to teach violence and eruption is is a very, you know, interesting path because every scenario, every quadrant of the city, every city is different and the reasons why violence is perpetrated.

So trying to figure out, firstly trying to figure out who and why they're committing the violence, boils back down to, you know, just a environment that is built, environment that exists for these people to exist in, you know, I mean, and unfortunately, the environment is that we've lost our community ties.

When you see incidents like this happen, it shows how weak our we have gotten as a community.

And it's not that we don't have people that are trying.

It's that the concerted efforts of everyone put together, it just isn't adding up to enough to, you know, push the needle back the other way consistently.

And we've been doing a great job.

The people that I've been trying have been doing a great job.

And this is from legislation down to community organizations.

And when you see spikes like this, this is not, a problem of just legislation.

This is a problem of us.

And it comes for us.

Like Beatriz said, with resources, we have people that need mental health.

We have people that have social emotional issues that are deep rooted.

They don't have conflict resolution.

This is the reason why they're resorting to violence in such ways.

These individuals can't have the same conversation that we can have right now.

They just don't have those skills.

They never learned that strength or those skills.

Social media and, you know, the internet has influenced individuals so much that their mental health is completely off at this time right now.

So when you have that and like Miguel said, when you have this influx of guns that are available to everyone, anyone, everyone that can run around, you have conflict resolution issues and disputes.

There's no real way to to really fight that.

And combat that except for being preventative and being preventative.

Looks like us actually getting more interactive with youth and with individuals, more outreach that happens.

We need to contact people get we need to resolve no conflicts where people that can't actively resolve them themselves in order to see these numbers sustained down like they like, we would like to see them.

So let me follow up one point with Jerome here.

And then what we're going to do is I'll read some feedback from listeners.

We're going to talk to our guests this hour about, again, taking Miguel's point, there is not one perfect solution that just changes everything.

But I do want to talk a little bit about what they think can start to move.

Your point about events like this kind of violence showing how weak the communities become.

Also, while also at the same time praising the people who really are working hard to provide the support, the pillars of community that would prevent this.

There's plenty of people trying.

And to Beatriz's point, there's a lot of people hurting.

I could be surprised.

I could be mistaken when we find out the identity of the shooters.

Maybe they are women or young girls, but most of the time it is men and there are girls and women hurting to.

More often it's men who are pulling the trigger.

Yes.

What do you want to do for men?

Young men?

Well, the initiative is, starts with fatherhood, and it starts with fatherhood.

Because all these young men have fathers, they have more social motherhood.

They have mothers.

And supporting them so they can encourage the youth that they are raising in order to make better decisions.

And it also, it was a time when the community was stronger.

And I speak to that as it being week now when the community supported each other house to house.

There was a time when communities walked the school together.

It was time when communities could correct each other.

We've strayed so far from that time where communities, neighbors, are strangers at this time.

Right now, people don't know each other.

And there was a time we had block parties, and block parties were good just to have people know each other.

Yeah, to build social interactions, to get people to understand each other.

So we have again, that's the weakness in the community.

And it starts with us building up the homes, building up the parents and the homes.

So the parents have, you know, the coping skills.

They have, the mechanism they understand, they have the support, they have the people behind them in order to be able to, you know, parent effectively in a manner that's and there's no again, I'm not saying that people are struggling in parenting, but people are struggling in general.

So again, that's going to affect parenting.

It's going to affect work.

It's going to affect everything which affects, you know, the household overall.

So then supporting the youth looks like actually teaching them.

There's no one that's teaching them these skills right now.

Who's teaching no emotional intelligence.

There's only certain organizations, you know, that teach emotional intelligence, certain organizations that focus on deep rooted, you know, mental mental health.

But they see plenty on social media.

They see teaching and certain lessons.

Yes, exactly.

But you can you look on social media and you come across everything.

And I mean, be realistic.

Most of the algorithms are the young kids nowadays aren't the most positive ones, because there's not a lot of positive stuff circulating.

And there no friend groups and environments right now.

So most of the stuff is trendy and a lot of trendy stuff is, you know, stuff that leads to, you know, emotional disruptions.

It leads to, you know, feelings.

It leads to, you know, depression.

It leads to these different things like this that these kids are struggling with what you see, outburst or you see the outcry when these actions happen.

These actions are the community crying for help right now.

And we have to band together.

We have to sometimes we have to teach the community how to help itself.

And that's one of those times what we have to do and where we're at right now.

In the wake of two murders this past weekend.

And again, we should continue to say the name of the people who are who have been taken from us, 14 year old Tanaya Barr, 35 year old Shakur Green and really a number of other people shot and injured and wounded and who are going to be probably recovering for a long time and, and certainly going to deal with a lot of trauma.

The most common kind of response I see online sounds like this email from Charles.

He writes, when I was in college, the administration refused to allow the student government to put on their annual end of the year party.

The party took place on campus and was subject.

It was subject to all campus rules and regulations, but the administrators insisted that it could not continue because of the off campus parties and drinking that weekend.

It was also associated with.

That was how the college reacted to college students acting like college students who had just finished a school year.

I think it's fair to say that this past weekend tends to result in an awful lot of violence and bad behavior year after year, and I think it's fair to wonder why it is that the city refuses to say no.

Sorry, a few people ruined it for for all of you and he's saying no more festival.

That is what Charles is saying, Miguel Melendez, he's talking about the city there.

What do you make of Charles's email?

Well, I think I've received a few of those emails myself.

I'm sure you have.

Let me start by talking about the Great Puerto Rican Festival.

So for 56 years we've had this great institutional festival in the city of Rochester.

It is one of the most prolific cultural festivals in the state of New York.

We've had different strategies to try to deal with the aftermath, but when you're at the festival itself, you'll see that this is a joyful event.

This is a cultural, iconic, community driven event with volunteer board members who put on a great show and, people who come from all over, not just the city of Rochester, to visit this festival, where I will agree with Charles to a degree, is that we do have to have some sort of different strategy for what happens outside in the community, away from the festival.

So sometimes miles away from the festival site.

And I'm and I'm willing to entertain what those strategies could look like.

But involving and canceling the festival is not on my list of things that I would even consider.

Beatriz LeBron I just want to say, those students probably went and had the party elsewhere, and that's just the reality, right?

I for me, this really comes down to The Tale of Two Cities, where asking one part of society who is disconnected from government rules and following the law to suddenly start following the law.

Two separate people, two separate societies.

It's where the solution rises, I do think is the community.

And the relationships.

I think all of this at the end of it comes down to relationships and people having the security of knowing that I need a resource.

I have a network or a system of support.

And I've been doing a lot of thinking about this because really, I tell people I'm tired of being on a hamster wheel.

And programs are funded because we react to the circumstances versus trying to figure out to, to Rome's point earlier, that prevention piece.

And I do think, that was so much there that I would love to deep dive eventually into that, too.

But, we have The Tale of Two Cities.

And how do we get them to come together is we have to just get them to come together and introduce people, and we have to make sure that everyone is being respected.

Right.

So that I have a title.

You mean I have a title?

We deserve both the same level of respect.

And that's where we have to start at, as having those conversations.

And I say all that because you can cancel the farce.

But I promise you, people are still going to gather and they're just even if they didn't have a designated weekend, they're going to find a designated weekend on their own and self-organize and do their thing.

And they're more organized.

And we give them credit for because I have to tell you, there were even I generated fliers.

I was like, okay, we we stepping up in these days.

Which is why, again, it goes down to why can't we just work with the folks who want to ride and show pride again after 10:00?

After 11:00, nobody's going to get up.

I know, folks get up at 10 a.m.

to go to the Puerto Rican parade.

I used to be on that board.

Loved that parade to.

But if I am someone who's on the street all day, I'm not getting up at 10 a.m.

to come to the Puerto Rican parade that is currently being put on.

That parade is being put on by the majority of the other people of society who do follow the law, who do follow a 9 to 5 and are integrated.

That is not for the other folks that we're talking about.

And I do think we really have to figure out how do we bring community together and start bringing that side to to the other side and getting everybody to work together, regardless of where you are at?

Because ultimately, I do not believe that the individuals who go out and ride together in pride also want anybody shot or hurt.

Oh my God, I do not think they want that either.

And I think that's where we start.

And that that's the common denominator.

It's not hey, you're writing and breaking the law.

It's hey, you're writing, but I'm sure you don't want anyone and your crew or anyone around you to be shot because you guys are gathering, and that's what we don't want either.

So how do we work together so that both sides can get what they want?

And again, there are people who are law abiding and they should not have to endure some of these things.

And so it's figuring all of those things out to Miguel's point earlier, who are the culprits?

Who are the little mirrors I call them of these clicks and crews and get them together.

And there are many of them.

Right.

So one person cannot speak for an entire group.

If we need to bring 100ml of these little packs, bring them to the table.

That's what we need to do.

One other point on that, I want to get Jerome's take.

And then what we'll do is we'll break.

And I've got more feedback to share you in the capacity of the work that you do every day.

We have talked to people.

We've talked to you about this.

Yesterday, we were hearing from a colleague who was out there working with you.

You have defuzed violence yourself at times.

You have stepped in the middle of possibly deadly violence at times.

Yep.

Not everyone can do that.

You have to have a lot of credibility to do that.

You do?

But what is it that you see in people in those moments that you are able to take a really possibly deadly situation and defuze?

Well, the first thing I will tell you, and this is from my own lived experience of being what people would call head right.

And then measuring that level of success because I am often criticized for how I approach things or how I can sometimes snap, if you will.

Are you sure?

I am.

But I will tell you that my growth is that, hey, I didn't get up and hit somebody, right?

Because to Jerome's point, I didn't know how to.

No one did teach me how to communicate emotionally when I had a problem.

I grew up and yeah, it was fighting.

You disrespected me.

You looked at me.

And when I tell you I'm embarrassed about it now, I 45.

But when I was 16 and you looked at me the wrong way and we got into a physical altercation, I saw nothing wrong with that, because in my environment that was my societal norm to not let nobody disrespect me.

And so respect for me was like the only thing I had, I had nothing, I was dirt poor, but I had respect.

So you to put respect on my name, that's where that comes from.

So.

So what changed you?

First and foremost, education.

I have to acknowledge education and random people along the way giving me that support.

And that has changed for me, right?

Getting me back into high school and rest in peace to Mr.

Shakur is the board, because that was my principal who took me under his wing after I dropped out of high school and said, no, you're going to graduate, girl, because, I mean, he's going to get you through the finish line, right?

And he meant that if I didn't show up, people call my mother and be like, hey, where she's at today?

Like it sometimes that's all it takes is one person and I. This is why I feel like we've overcomplicated this, because sometimes it just takes that one person and that person's corner.

Right.

And, and I've said this over and over, and I had these conversations at the time.

The current model that we operate out of is that it's programmatic.

It's 9 to 5, and people's lives are not 9 to 5.

Crisises are happening five to at nine the other way.

Right.

And so there's no coverage there.

That's a huge gap that we currently have right now.

And again, I'm determined over the next couple of years to make sure that we realign these resources and ourselves so that if the member is starting with Jerome, okay, Jerome's doing the, social, emotional and conflict resolution training and getting them there, and then they're coming over to do some pre-employment with us, because I believe we we have to create pre-employment to these employment programs, for many reasons.

And then they they're with us.

Right.

But it's it's already a connected program is not me and Jerome at a table meeting having these conversations.

It's already expected that you start there.

We're the second agency.

This is the third because this is what they do.

I should not have to then start learning to do what Jerome's organization does.

I have my own lane.

He has his lane.

Those lanes need to be connected, though.

That's the problem.

We're all going towards the problem well intended, lots of well-intended individuals.

And for me, I will tell you, it's frustrating watching people even criticize agencies about their outcomes because I know that they have outcomes, they don't have all the outcomes and they can't.

But this is why we got to come together.

And this is what is kind of a scary idea that comes to my head.

Listening to Jerome, listening to Beatriz story, you can by name immediately call out someone who intervened to say, I believe in you and you are not going off path here.

Yes, and at different points in my life, who?

Not the same person, right?

Sure.

If you're not the same person, multiple people.

Yes.

And they may be related.

They may be community figures, they may be an education.

They may be a mentor, they may be a neighbor.

But part of what Jerome is saying is we don't have enough of those right now.

So you can do it.

You're doing it, Father Tracy.

You can do what you're doing as literally someone who knows people on the street by name and has credibility.

You can do what you're doing, Miguel.

You can do what you're doing.

But are there enough people?

Because we have now a big population of kids, teenagers and young adults who are hurting bad, and they may not have that person that you described.

Let me tell you, there's enough people.

We just do not have the correct configuration at this time.

We when we say we're working in silos.

I was thinking that there's two part of us working in silos.

When I'm having a staff meeting.

I should not be having a staff meeting with just my staff.

I should be figuring out how do I start inviting other staff agencies so that we're having this conversation about a new change, you know, with Snap that there's so many layers to this?

And again, I'm working on writing all this stuff out.

But to to that end, there are so many community members out here who are always like, we want to help.

What can we do?

And we don't have anything to say.

Yes, here's a volunteer orientation.

Let's get you connected.

This is not a heavy lift either, right?

But you do have to have someone leading this.

And oftentimes what's happening is to Miguel's point, he's part of the Northview Safety Group.

So am I. That's one of 10,000 things we're carrying.

And so it's sort of identifying a model and then having that person sort of coordinate.

But there are so many people in this community.

And your role can be very simply, even if it's a phone call to someone, even if it's I can't meet with this youth.

I live in Pittsford, he's in the city, I have a full time job, but I can check in on a daily basis or even a weekly basis to say, hey, how's it going?

Is there something you need?

Sometimes the resources that people need are so granular.

I mean, so trivial that it's it's literally boils down to a cup of sugar, a cup of sugar somebody might need.

Why do they have to go through, walk to five miles to an agency to go get a cup of sugar or a bag of sugar if they can go to a neighbor?

And that's the other thing too.

I do think because of social media, we've lost the art of just networking with our neighbors.

Like I make making my point to go knock on the neighbors.

New people move in.

Who's there?

Hi.

I'm Beatriz Other right there.

If you need anything, hit me up.

We've we've lost that, and we've lost it at events.

Every time I see events, large community events, which I love, I love when we come together.

No one's initiating introductions and community building.

And I think those are lost opportunities at events.

They're on their phones.

They're not at your block party anymore.

Jerome.

Yeah.

So lot there.

What do you want to respond to?

The floor is yours.

So again, like, just going with what Beatriz said about, you know, us having enough organizations.

We have enough people.

We have enough, systems in place.

We have enough supports in place for individuals.

It's about getting the information out to them.

And again, just, she's an example of community.

She's an example of somebody taking her and saying no.

And just like, we're going to do this and that's what we talk about with community.

That's what's weak.

That's what's lost.

Now, we don't have enough people.

And it does have to be an organization.

It can be an individual.

It can be someone that just took the initiative to help one person.

And again, just helping that one person has a as a butterfly effect.

It's a ripple effect because as someone that got helped myself, it makes me help people as best was being someone who got help.

And the same thing as we all got help.

This is the reason why we offer to help.

We understand the the mentality.

We understand the circumstances around these individuals that need this help, that we understand the, you know, the background of these individuals that are caught in these cycles.

They are stuck in these, you know, mental and emotional ruts that know, lash out.

You know, any child that's know doesn't get what they need.

It lashes out.

This is basic psychology that we're dealing with right now.

So again is think about all the compound factors that go into these, you know, these individuals that we're we're saying that and we're villainized them.

But they've been failed at some point in order to, you know, go forward and have these acts and do these different things.

And we have to as a community, we have to step up and say like it's it's tragic in this eye opening to where we're at right now.

We have to gauge it as a barometer.

And again, it's not just about no instant impact.

It's about a restorative plan.

We have to have a preventative plan and a restorative plan.

And, you know, to the individual's email in reaching out and making that email just shows kind of a disconnect.

It shows a care but a disconnected care.

And, you know, to say we should cancel the, you know, the cultural events that that make our city what it is that makes every city what it is that makes the country what it is, the country is, has, is rich was everyone's history.

It was rich with everyone's culture.

So allowing people to exercise, that is part of the rights that we have and they should be able to, but we just have to come up with ways in order to.

And again, to Miguel's point there to celebrating, this is a form of celebration.

If you look at these events and where they're from, these events look like this.

And there's more people when there's more stuff.

If you're just joining us, Jerome is not talking about the violence is part of the celebration because, you know, the music.

Yes.

The gathering.

Yes.

So, yeah.

So let's be clear about that.

But I just want to be clear.

Yes.

I don't need an email from someone saying you.

I guess because I know you're not.

Yes.

In fact, everybody has been cleared this hour.

The vast majority of people in every neighborhood in the world want peace.

Yes.

They want to be able to live comfortably and knowing that they're going to be safe, their kids are going to be safe.

So on the other side of this very late only break of the hour, we're going to come back with Jerome Ward, founder and CEO of Chisel Collective.

Miguel Melendez, president of Rochester City Council, member of the Northeast Safety Committee, as is Beatriz LeBron, executive director of the Father Tracy Advocacy Center.

And I'm going to read more of your emails.

In response to two murders and more shootings this past weekend, a very violent and tragic weekend in the city of Rochester.

Coming up in our second Our Connection summer sessions looks this week, and how young people see a changing world and what they are learning and doing about it.

And we're going to meet some remarkable young people next hour who recently worked with NASA and the NASA Hunch Academy.

It's a program that allows students to share their ideas about what might actually work in space.

We'll talk about next hour.

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I'm Evan Dawson, host of connections.

Join us in our live audience for a special broadcast of the show on Tuesday, August 11th.

We'll be live at Iberia's Community Resource Center for a conversation about how to create healthier neighborhoods.

We'll talk about how social and environmental factors can affect health outcomes, and we'll put a special focus on the El Camino neighborhood.

You can be part of the live audience.

Seats are limited, so registration is required.

Just go to our website WXXI news.org/connections.

Hope to see you there.

Let me also say now that we're back, this is the actual live show here.

That was me.

I'm recording now.

I'm live here.

Let me just say about Tuesday, I really do think, we should pack that audience there, because there's going to be a lot of important conversation about, I know Angie and the team from my bureau want to talk about El Camino and what it means to actually, intentionally understand how, you know, the expert word is built environment, but how we design, where we live, how it affects people's health, and your ability to get groceries and food and safety.

And why that's so unequal.

So that's, that would be important on any day there.

Then you probably heard yesterday about what's going on with ice and what I Bureau's been dealing with there.

You know, it's a really sort of important time for us to be having these conversations.

We're going to do it there, live on the road.

And listeners, if there's still space, if you wanna be part of the live audience.

So we'd love to see you there.

Let me read a few emails that have come in as our guest this hour.

Talk about what happened in the city last weekend with multiple shootings and two murders, Rick says.

And I just want to express appreciation to each of your panelists for their thoughtful and nuanced articulation of the challenges our society faces in dealing with violence.

The key takeaway for me is we need to address this issue in a consistent and collaborative way.

I'm deeply appreciative and respectful of what your guests are saying.

And Michael in Geneva says, I agree with the guests comments on community.

The number one thing this country needs to do to start to fix problems across the board, including gun violence, is grow the middle class and close the wealth gap.

The more folks struggle financially, the worse poverty is, the worse community gets, the worse crime gets, etc.

when the American dream is accessible and people can live without constant financial stress, everything gets better.

Thank you for all your work.

You agree with Michael there?

Miguel Melendez absolutely.

And and to something Jerome said earlier, you know, we were once a community that came together for multiple reasons.

Block parties, different events that are neighborhood based.

I think one of the challenges we have in this country, and specifically in this community, is how transient our neighborhoods are.

Now.

People are moving from neighborhood to neighborhood across the city.

You don't get the chance to really, meet your neighbors and have a long standing relationship.

So figuring out how we can stabilize communities, stabilize neighborhoods, income is a big part of that.

I think that will help us with some of our other challenges.

Jerome, anything you want to add there?

Yes.

And that goes back to the financial literacy aspect of it.

The reason why we have so many people moving through neighborhoods is because the neighborhood dynamics change.

People's financial situation is changed.

People are facing evictions.

They're facing, you know, just neighborhoods that, again, don't have the stability.

So kids don't grow up together anymore.

They don't have those relationships.

There's not individuals that can see these, youth or these you know, adults out, and they can resolve a conflict because they don't have that.

Like Beatriz said, they don't have that relationship.

Relationships aren't there anymore.

And again, it's part of people and part of as the economy grew and inflation rises, you know, again, just being able to balance money, not just make money, but understanding how to balance money so that they can stay in situations and they can put themselves in environments that they want to live in, instead of people having to succumb to environments that they really don't want to be in, and you're forced to live a certain way.

So now they don't want to reach out to their neighbors because they don't want to really be around their neighbors.

So again, this is a lot of all these issues are intertwined.

All these issues are completely intertwined.

And we have to address them and we have to address them.

Preventatively in order to you know, restore the Beatriz.

Yeah.

And I just want to add to, when we're talking about community, you know, I also think is time is happening and the changes at the federal level, part of our survival is going to be mutual aid.

It's like it's it's always in the back of my mind.

It's there's not going to ever be enough out of government or nonprofits and programs.

And that should not be the solution for community.

We should be looking inward to figure out how do we support each other and ourselves.

And I know for me, I'm giving myself a three year and then I'm retiring from the nonprofit sector.

But my goal is like in these next three years is to figure out how do we realign ourselves as agencies, entities and programs, how do we expand, to have crisis support for people, that's accessible to them outside of the 9 to 5 model?

And the third leg is how do we bring people together and intentionally help them communicate with one another?

It could just be like, hey, I'm Beatriz, my friend, around the room, which is what I do now, and clear and brave new agencies come.

Are you are a service provider.

We use ourselves as the bridge relationship builder, if you will, to break the ice to say, these folks are.

And I'll give you an example, because we're doing it right now, the center for Community Health, we're going to be doing some health forums with our ambassador program, which they're designing based on the ambassadors feedback of areas that they need.

Bringing them into to the ambassadors to say, this is we've identified these groups, there are people they're going to be working with us get to know them, and they're part of your support network.

No, you don't need to reach them just to us.

You connect with them, too.

But we need to be doing that level of community building and walk the block when Miguel is having the Rock the block event where he's bringing actual jobs into the neighborhood, is having liaison to help those folks who sometimes will just come through quietly and then leave.

And sometimes those are the people that need the most support, the most help.

But because of shame, fear of rejection, and a number of other things, they may not speak up.

And can you just in like 30s, just describe what pre-employment services are when you talked about that at Father Tracing?

Yeah, it's literally if you're homeless and still using drugs and you need a job, you can work.

And let's figure out what do you need from there.

It's also not putting certain parameters and being flexible with the individuals.

It does not mean you get to do whatever you want at the job, because again, it's pre-employment.

So yeah, I'll take you with a whole bunch of bad habits.

But my goal is that by the end of your time with us, the end of that year, you're ready to go into the next level of employment.

So it's always about meeting people where they're at and adjusting.

But it's also I've seen it work, it works, I've seen it work.

I've had so many ambassadors, see success not just with housing, but sobriety and employment and this year, for year three, we built it in as a partner with either to go get certified as a peer at the nine month mark or to go get certified to do forklift thing.

But we want you to do something.

So yeah.

And let me read Joe's email.

First of all, Rochester police have said they were faced with what they called large disorderly crowds throughout last weekend.

They said several times they needed to deploy riot control agents trying to disperse the groups.

Joe's asking, why did police close North Clinton?

Didn't that trap people in the larger gatherings?

I don't exactly know the timeline of what happened.

North Clinton was closed with Clinton was closed 6 p.m.. And businesses were notified for weeks on end.

And RPD is part of the strategy of going and talking to folks.

The side streets were closed.

But yeah, they'll just find another location, which is what they did.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

So North Clinton was closed, to be clear on Saturday evening.

Yeah.

I think what the gentleman might be talking about is on Friday, there was, large gatherings on North Clinton in the area of Avenue De, and the, what ended up happening is RPD was on scene to try to break up the crowd peacefully.

And, most of the people were kind of congregated in the area of Morrell in North Clinton.

So there was a large gathering there.

And I think at that point it was about trying to figure out how to contain and then disperse it.

Are you satisfied with how you think RPD handled the weekend?

I mean, I think there's always room for improvement.

Certainly in terms of the Saturday evening, they were partners with us, the North Safety Committee, and trying to control and maintain North Clinton Avenue.

So there weren't incidences on North Clinton after after what happened on Friday.

But as you can see, I mean, the amount of manpower that it requires to, to really deal with gatherings, it's it's a lot.

I think we have to revisit what our collective strategy is.

And one of the things I've talked to Jerome and others, about is how do we get more, civilian led efforts, volunteers to be part of the Northeast Safety Committee or some other efforts so that we can effectively engage community residents when these things are happening?

80s left.

What can the average person do if they want to help?

Well, the average person can, actually, they can reach out to any of us.

The average person can get involved.

They can, you know, see someone make an impact, you know, a smile, maybe an impact.

You never know what people are going through mentally or emotionally.

It doesn't have to be anything you'd actually say.

Heroic.

Just a small things.

Just, you know, focus on doing the small things in your community, see what you can help, see what you can fix, and for people who feel like they're listening to our guest this hour, talk about the need that young people have to have someone who cares about them in their lives.

That might be mentorship.

I mean, I know there's different mentor programs that are out there.

Do you think that those programs can connect people where they're needed the most?

Is that working?

I again, I think there has to be multiple approaches, and that is one approach.

So that approach has to be at the table, and that approach will work for that specific type of student and young person.

That approach will not work for every young person.

Right?

So to the Ron's point, if you are around a young person and connect with them and find out what they need, I will tell you, because of my own 15 year old, she picks up a bunch of folks and cases for me and keeps me working extra hard.

But that's her way of advocating.

Like mom, I my friend, I her overheard my friend their parents are struggling.

Can I connect you?

Yes, your kids can do that too.

And I really appreciate Jeremy's point about the way neighborhoods know each other or don't need to get off our phones more.

We need kids to get off social media, be more, try to get to know each other.

I know, and I know that sounds like the old man.

Y'all in the cloud trying.

But, you know, as coordinated as our community day, we've got networking.

Ebony cloud.

No, I'm with you.

Actually, you're you're serious?

I think there is.

Beatriz LeBron, executive director of the Father Tracy Advocacy Center.

Thank you for being with.

Thank you, Jerome Ward, founder and CEO of Chisel Collective.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you.

Miguel Melendez, president of Rochester City Council, thank you for being with us.

Thank you.

More connections coming up in a moment.

Oh.

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