Slater's Raiders: Walk for Peace


I've posted two YouTube movies made from video and stills taken at two separate "Slater's Raiders" walks for peace in Rochester's Southwest neighborhoods. The first, on 10/24/2007, started from the intersection at Chili/Thurston. The second, Nov, 6, 2007, started from Wilson Magnet High School . For the second, the Raiders were joined by members of the Sector 4 PAC TAC, along with the Genesee NET Lieutenant Peter Leach and Crime Prevention Officers Joseph Travato, Vincent Agnone, and LaRon Singletary. See background information on Slater's Raiders posted below.

Slater's Raiders -- October 24, 2007
Chili/Thurston Neighborhood
Rochester, NY






Slater's Raiders -- November 6, 2007
Wilson Magnet High School Neighborhood
Rochester, NY



Background:


From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle 10/23/2007

(October 23, 2007) — Little more than a week ago, Lenzy Blake carried the coffin of a friend. On Monday evening, he carried a sign with a message that read: "Stop the violence. Stop the killing."

Blake, 49, was one of about 40 people who walked the Hudson Avenue neighborhood near Avenue D honoring homicide victim James Slater. They will walk another neighborhood tonight, another on Wednesday and so on, crisscrossing the city in 20 days.

The goal is to send a message and to offer help — through the Rochester Fatherhood Resource Initiative — for youths to connect with mentors, adults to get parenting assistance, and both to find jobs through Journey Employment Services. After 20 days, the group will evaluate its progress, and likely come back to do it all over again.

For Blake, the walks also are a way to channel the anger.

Blake and Slater played football together. They were tailbacks for the Franklin High School Quakers. They had been friends since, some 30 years — until Slater was shot and killed, allegedly by two teenage dropouts, on Oct. 4 for an iPod, two cell phones and the money in his pocket.

"I was angry to the point I wanted to be more destructive than anything else," Blake said. "I'm still angry. But (the neighborhood walks) allow me to have a conduit to disperse it because ... James Slater wasn't the type of guy who would resort to violence. He may have fought for his life, which I expect any man to do, but I want to focus on what he was about — not the outcome of his untimely demise."

Slater, a 47-year-old community activist, loved the Oakland Raiders, so Slater's Raiders for Peace was born. At 6 p.m. Monday, Blake started walking, along with other former classmates, friends and strangers from across Rochester and the suburbs. The goal is to recruit men for these walks. But the ranks on Monday also were filled with mothers and children.

Solomon Taylor, 47, organized the walks with Blake. Taylor followed Slater at Franklin, even taking his No. 44 jersey. Slater "was one of ours. He was one of us," Taylor said.

"People sit on their hands and say, 'Well, it's not my house.' What if it becomes your house?" Taylor said of the violence that has claimed 41 lives in the city this year. The walks also are to remind adults that, "We weren't raised like that."

The day after Slater's death, Mayor Robert Duffy launched an initiative that put more police on the street, and the city took other steps to curb violence. The city is in the second year of a youth curfew. All those things are good, said walker Keith Crawford, 40 — but an institution cannot fix a child.

"The family structure has to be rebuilt," he said. "... If (the foundation) is not there, anything they try to implement to better the civility or the circumstances on the street, it's not going to work."

Crawford said he has attended antiviolence rallies in the past. This time, he said, has to be different.

Posted: Wed - November 7, 2007 at 12:35 PM          

©