Providence Students March With Call to End Violence
by Mark Reynolds
June 6, 2010
The distinctive chant resounded along Prairie Avenue — not too far from a handful of locations where violence snuffed out the lives of three young men last year.
Someone yelled “Non” and about 50 others shouted: “Violence.”
“Non! Violence!” “Non! Violence!”
“What do we want to see?” came the call.
“Change!” the group shouted back Saturday afternoon.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
This was the “March 4 Change,” a bold effort by Providence high school students to trumpet their message of nonviolence and tolerance in some of the city’s tougher neighborhoods. The event was painstakingly organized over a period of nine months by student government officers from high schools across the city, in collaboration with schools Supt. Thomas M. Brady, Mayor David N. Cicilline and Police Chief Dean Esserman.
The marchers walked a course of about three miles, moving from Thurbers Avenue to Prairie Avenue to Cahir Street to Washington Street, which brought them downtown to Burnside Park near Kennedy Plaza.
At the junction of Prairie and Potters avenues, they paused for a moment of silence after one of the marchers talked about three teens slain in Providence last year: 17-year-old Angelo Camarena, 18-year-old David Delacruz and 16-year-old John Carlos Tavarez. “Not enough people know that things happen right where they live,” one of the students, Elisa M. Calderon, said later Saturday afternoon. “That showed that things happen right here.”
The origins of the march date to March 2009, when a spate of gang violence and rumors of gang retribution sent chills through the hallways of the city’s high schools. By the fall of 2010, student government representatives in various schools wanted to make a grand statement. They talked to Brady. They also reached out to Esserman for some guidance on mounting their own march. They persuaded local restaurants to support the march with an ample supply of pizzas. Several students composed their own musical harmonies and lyrics for the event.
“Thank you for your efforts to bring peace to our city,” Cicilline told them after they finished the march and arrived at Burnside Park. By then the crowd had grown to about 100 people.
The sonorous voices of two talented young singers and songwriters from The Met High School piped through a sound system. “We can change…change the world” sang the duet, 16-year-old Angella Daluz and 15-year-old Marggines Abreu. “But it starts with you. And it starts with me.”