LYNN — A herd of around 50 men, women, and children marched from Thurgood Marshall Middle School to the Lynn Commons Saturday afternoon for the eighth annual Stop the Violence Peace Walk.
A mixture of city officials, school officials, law enforcement officials, teenagers, and children, all dressed in matching white T shirts gathered together for the first time since the pandemic to advocate the same cause: ending street violence in Lynn.
Ward 6 City Councilor and Stop the Violence co-organizer Fred Hogan said that the Peace Walk started in 2014 after a shooting in the city in which Hogan knew the parties involved. Hogan said that as a community leader and a former football coach, he was affected by watching kids he knew hurt one another.
“It’s really important to me, because when you open the Lynn Item, and you see kids’ names that you know, on both sides, either being the victim or being the shooter, that affects you. Especially when I coached in the city. So we all got together, we got frustrated, we said, ‘hey, we want to do something right. We understand that we can’t stop the violence but if we can save one kid then we did our job,” Hogan said.
After eight years of Stop the Violence marches, community events, and sports games, Hogan said that on a few occasions, he received feedback from young people who were headed down the wrong path, but decided to turn toward non-violence instead.
“When a kid comes up to you, and he says he put a gun down, I think that’s what this is all about,” Hogan said. “He said he would never do it again, ‘Now I’m going to get on with my life and go to school, and stuff like that, I’m going to start my career.’ ”
Sgt. Michael Gorman is assigned to Lynn PD’s Gang Unit. Gorman said that as a law enforcement officer and a community leader, he wants to spread the message of nonviolent de-escalation, while holding those who commit violent acts against others accountable.
“I want to show that you can be a part of the solution, everyone can. We just want to stop the violence. We want police violence to end, we want, boy-on-boy violence to end, and we want girl-on-girl violence to end. We want to end all violence in our society. The problem is they [individuals] get into an argument, and that’s what they want to do, they want to escalate into a violent situation. Our message out here today is we want that all to end,” Gorman said. “By the same token, as a police officer, if you make a mistake, you’re gonna be held accountable. So we want accountability in our community, all aspects of life. That’s our goal.”
As the crowd marched up North Common Street toward the Lynn Commons, cars driving by honked in support, and, on multiple occasions, residents held peace signs outside their windows in solidarity with the message to end violence in Lynn.
Lynn Youth Street Outreach Advocacy leader Antonio Gutierrez is one of the original members of Stop the Violence. He walked side-by-side with Stop the Violence founding organizer Ebony White, who said that as a Lynn mother and a community member, she wanted to take action against the gang and street violence, which she said she saw all too frequently.
“Being born and raised in Lynn, seeing violence happening in my neighborhoods, or seeing friends and family get hurt due to the violence, and also being a mother, raising children in this community, I felt it was my time to get involved in my city. Instead of saying what I wanted to do, I have to show action,” White said.
Gutierrez mirrored White’s remarks when he said that the Stop the Violence Movement brings the community together around the shared value of preserving peace. Gutierrez said that through mourning community members whose lives were lost from violence, or celebrating sports events that bring the city together peacefully, he can see the message spread quickly.
“We brought the community out to mourn, and we brought the community out to a happy occasion. In other words, raising the name of peace, bringing peace to our community, showing love to one another, and showing our young people that it’s beautiful all around. It’s peace, man, just put the guns down, come talk to us,” Guttierrez said. “We have every walk of life and on our committee. It’s not a program, it’s a round table. Nobody sits at the head of the table, and there’s no president. We don’t just talk about it. We’re about to make it happen.”
As the crowd made its way into the Commons, Mayor Jared Nicholson met with the marchers, delivering a brief speech from the gazebo, in which he thanked the organizers, and paid homage to the importance of non-violence in building a better community in Lynn.
“We are such an incredible, incredible community. Our work to build these connections, to let everyone know that we’re here for the community, so that we can, together, work to stop the violence. It’s a beautiful day, and it’s just so nice to see from this committee, from all of you, taking time out of your day, to create these spaces to have these conversations about what we can do together, to keep our community safe. To make it a place where everybody strives to promote peace. We all know that peace is a precondition for the kind of opportunities, we want everybody to share it, the opportunities that you’re building for yourself and your families,” Nicholson said.
