Of all the events planned for Whittington Park this spring, before the heat of the summer moves in, perhaps none will be as significant as a gathering designed to change the hearts and minds of those who would do violence in Greenwood.
The Pre-Summer Peace Rally is scheduled for Saturday, May 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the stage in Whittington Park. The goal is to reach young black men and ask them to stop killing other young black men this summer, to drop the guns and find peace in their neighborhood.
The rally is the idea of Loretta McClee, head of Sarah’s Touch, a Greenwood organization named after McClee’s aunt, Sarah Dallas, who grew up in poverty but dedicated herself to helping others.
Dallas died of cancer in 2015.
McClee, who was raised in what she calls “a one-bedroom shack on Avenue H,” has pledged to help the neighborhood in her aunt’s name.
McClee says her rally is called “decrease the violence until it stops” because the “end the violence” rally that she held last spring failed to do so.
“Last year we had a ‘stop the violence’ rally on March 10, but as you can see, the violence has not stopped,” she said. “So, my prayer — not my hope but my prayer — is to try to decrease the violence, because we’re going through the summer, and the kids are a lot more violent and the adults are a lot more violent during the summer.”
McClee said she expects 100 to 150 people to attend. Organizers have arranged for live music and free food to help draw a crowd, and scheduled speakers Gerald Emerson Rose of the New Order National Human Rights Organization in Atlanta; Clifton Powell, a minister with New Direction Church in Minter City, who at one point in his life was in the streets; Derrick Bowman, another man transformed from living on the streets to helping those who still do; Stacy Regular, a former member of a Chicago street gang who now lives in Greenwood; and Sarnezz Smith of Indianola, a peace movement speaker.
McClee’s purpose in choosing the speakers was to offer a different perspective to young black men and encourage them to see the possible consequences before they act.
“We want them to premeditate on (any idea of violence),” she said. “We want them to stop and think, ‘If I do this, what would happen?’ So we’re trying to make them see the pros and cons. And there’s no pros to it, period. It’s all cons.”
McClee hopes Smith will bring that message to the event while the other speakers will share their experiences of growing up violent and changing to become a productive member of society.
But since this isn’t McClee’s first rally for peace, where does she think it went wrong in the past?
“I think it’s the mentality,” she said. “When you talk to a lot of the guys from certain neighborhoods, they’re not really about stopping. I don’t think we realize how much it hurts us until it hits us. So, instead of me trying to talk to all the adults, I’m actually trying to reach out to the kids.”
After McClee grew up on Avenue H, it took leaving town for her to gain a new perspective on the violence. She saw that people could live without it. After her aunt died, she decided to bring the message home.
“As a mom, (the violence) hurt me,” she said. “Anytime I hear shots fired, I’m fearful because I have two sons. They’re in the school and they’re in the house, but I’m still fearful for them.”
But McClee is clear that she’s trying to make people change their way of life.
“On Facebook the other day, a gentleman told me, ‘When is the gun violence going to stop? When are we going to realize we’re losing people?’ And somebody else commented, ‘Death for a living, If you can’t live like the ’hood, get out of the ’hood.’ So, one mindset is: ‘It’s going to be like this forever.’ And the other is, ‘When is it going to change?’ So, it’s hard.”
“I will take 10% of the crowd (at the rally),” she said. “If we can change 10% of the crowd this time and 10% of the crowd next time, I think we’ll have planted a seed that’s going to flourish.”
McClee will appear before the Greenwood City Council at its April 16 meeting, asking for help in changing minds.
•Contact Gavin Maliska at 581-7235 or gmaliska@gwcommonwealth.com.
