Vowing to uplift the depressed and callously hopeless attitudes of far too many young people roaming the streets of New York City’s inner city neighborhoods, the Rev. Al Sharpton has pledged to launch his “occupy the corners” movement in earnest later this week.
Beginning Friday, Aug. 17 and running for four consecutive weekends, Sharpton, members of his National Action Network organization (NAN), politicians, church leaders and other community activist will commence “occupying” city street corners where violence has become all too prevalent.
Loosely based on the tenements of the Occupy Wall Street movement, OTC interventions will consist of organizers engaging residents, responding to instances of trouble or violence and ultimately “taking our streets back.” City-wide patrols will commence around 11 p.m. and span well past midnight to approximately 1 a.m. each weekend.
“OTC is not a patrol,” Sharpton stressed, “but an opportunity to show strong, real-life neighborly support in our communities most plagued by gun violence. I want to spread a climate in our community, so that young people say, ‘What are they doing out there every weekend?’ They’re out there because of the guns. A lot of our young people don’t think anybody cares. We need a presence. You can’t lead where you don’t go.”
With that in mind, one of organizers’ initial and primary targets will be the confines of the New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) and its bursting-at-the-seams 600,000 plus residents— large enough to rate that populous along among the nation’s 25 largest cities.
Over the past year, shootings have risen by 27 percent in NYCHA developments, with little signs of any of the violence dissipating, including a pair of recent toddler-aged shootings that have shaken the fiber of the entire country.
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article courtesy of BlackAmericaWeb.com
