Meeting was just a start

Thursday's community meeting on teen violence attracted many residents

Rock Hill's Emmett Scott Center community room was packed, and enthusiasm was high for finding solutions to youth violence in the city. But this meeting undoubtedly was just one step on a long journey.

Members of a community wracked by violence in recent weeks had to be encouraged by the turnout at Thursday's meeting. Those in attendance included pastors, parents, neighborhood association leaders, police officers, politicians and many other members of the community.

They met to talk about how to stop teen violence, especially the kind that had spilled onto neighborhood streets recently. The meeting came less than a week after a shootout on Catherine Street in Rock Hill that left one teen dead, another injured and one more charged with murder.

The shootout occurred in broad daylight in the middle of a residential area. People cowered in their homes, and schools in the vicinity had to be locked down until local police gave the all-clear.

Days before that shooting, another teen was robbed, shot and killed on a Byars Street porch. Two teenagers and a 22-year-old woman have been charged in that killing, and police are looking for a third teenage suspect.

The gathering produced a number of ideas about how to confront this problem and much useful discussion. Residents clearly are concerned about the safety of their neighborhoods and are ready to get involved.

Melvin Rogers, a Flint Street resident and one of the meeting's organizers, suggested a youth summit where teens could meet each Thursday with a group of adults and talk about what troubles them. Sherman Porterfield, who also helped organize Thursday's meeting, proposed a march from the Emmett Scott Center to Main Street to show that residents are serious about taking back their neighborhoods.

Audience members, building on Rogers' proposal, said it might be better to approach young people in their own neighborhoods or hold meetings at parks in troubled neighborhoods. Others called for more organized youth activities and for joining forces with groups that already have established youth programs such as club basketball, neighborhood block parties and other events to keep teenagers engaged and off the streets.

The meeting ended without a date planned for a youth summit or community march. But the city's Weed and Seed steering committee gathered in the same room after the meeting to start making arrangements.

The changes these concerned neighbors hope to achieve can't occur overnight. More than a few meetings and a march will be required to confront the root causes of teen violence in the community.

That effort will require patience. It must be sustained over many months, maybe years.

What Thursday's meeting might have achieved is the formation of a foundation upon which to build, the stirring of a force and a commitment within the community to try new approaches and work together to find effective ways to stem teen violence. Each new generation will bring new challenges, and the community needs a structure in place to deal with those challenges.

That is an imposing task. But residents won't succeed if they are not committed to the long march.

Ultimately, the goal is not just to take back the neighborhood, but to keep it.