DAY 1 – PARADE & RALLY

Sunday October 2: 3P

12th Annual Ohio Nonviolence Week Parade & Rally.
Event Time: 3P
Parade Location: Begins at the corner of Wick Ave. and Wood Street
Rally Location: Youngstown Amphitheater
Register online below

EVENT BACKGROUND:
Steeped in our current societal woes, the Ohio Nonviolence Week committee follows in the path laid before us by those torchbearers in the faith with our annual Parade & Rally for peace, justice, and equality for all people. Dr. King’s six principles of Nonviolence are embedded deeply within this cause.

We are challenged to share the principles – especially in today’s society and climate, with all who will embark on this way of life. It requires bold action, now, to stand against bigotry, intolerance, hatred and racism. We must choose now to stand on the right side of history and be a voice to those who have been silenced.

PRINCIPLE ONE: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people
PRINCIPLE TWO: Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
PRINCIPLE THREE: Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice not people.
PRINCIPLE FOUR: Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.
PRINCIPLE FIVE: Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
PRINCIPLE SIX: Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

Register for the Parade

FIVE DAY READING CHALLENGE

Sunday, Oct. 2 through Friday, Oct. 7 | Facilitator: YWCA – Youngstown, Ohio 44503

Five Day Nonviolence/Social Justice Reading Challenge and Panel Discussion

The Challenge asks participants to make daily time and space to learn more about the principles of nonviolence and how the community can stand in solidarity and speak up against violence.

Participants who have signed up for the challenge will receive daily reading material via email to help foster their understanding and awareness. Readings will be emailed Sunday through Thursday (October 2-6) and a panel discussion with our community leaders will be held in-person on Friday, October 7, at noon at the YWCA. RSVP online below.

Click here to register for challenge materials or email Michaela Write: mwrite@mvywca.org to receive materials.

PANEL DISCUSSION: The Challenge will end with a panel discussion with our community leaders at noon on October 7 at the YWCA. A light luncheon will be served to those who attend. Please use the RSVP contact form below to reserve your space and lunch!

RSVP to PANEL DISCUSSION/LIGHT LUNCHEON at the YWCA On October 7.

DAY 2 – MINGLE WITH MINNI

Date: Monday, Oct. 3 | Time: 5-9 PM |

Mingle With Minni” Come meet Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine.

Minnijean Brown Trickey is one of a group of African American teenagers known as the “Little Rock Nine.” On September 25, 1957, under the gaze of 1,200 armed soldiers and a worldwide audience, Minnijean Brown-Trickey faced down an angry mob and helped to desegregate Central High.

Minnijean Brown Trickey provides audiences with a fascinating exploration of social change, diversity, and the battle against discrimination and racism. Realistic, but at the same time hopeful, she helps her listeners to understand both how far we have come from that fateful autumn in Little Rock, and how far we have still to go, in the battle for freedom and equality in America.

The fundraiser supports the Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past. Students from Youngstown area high schools participate in a seven day journey to Civil Rights sites in the South called The Sojourn Project. They travel to Atlanta, Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Meridian and Hattiesburg (Mississippi), Jackson, Little Rock, and Memphis, and they meet many of the people who participated in the Civil Rights Movement.

Location: Flambeau’s | 2308 Market St., Youngstown, 44507

Dinner Cost: $25

For tickets by mail or in-person call: Sandy (330) 953-7822 or Penny (330) 207-4467

For online tickets click here.

DAY 3 – POETRY SLAM

Date: Tuesday Oct 4 | Time: 6:30 PM | Location: Hopewell Theater, 702 Mahoning Ave., Youngstown | Info: pennywwells@sbcglobal.net

DAY 4 – ART & POETRY CONTEST RECEPTION

Wednesday, Oct. 5 | The Soap Gallery, 117 S Champion St, Youngstown | 5 PM-7PM | Free and Open to the Public

Reception for the Art & Poetry Contest Winners

The Nonviolence Week committee is sponsoring both an art contest and poetry contest and invites students in the Mahoning Valley to participate. The theme is NONVIOLENCE, and the artwork/poetry must exhibit the message of peace and nonviolence. All entries must be original. Artwork entries will be displayed during Ohio Nonviolence Week, October 2-8. A reception will be held for winners in both contests on Wednesday, Oct. 5, at the Soap Gallery.

Download Art Contest Form Here

Download Poetry Contest Form Here

Please use the form below if you have any questions about the Art and Poetry Contest.

DAY 5 – SIMEON BOOKER AWARD FOR COURAGE

ANTHONY RAY HINTON

DR. VIRGINIA “DEE” BANKS

National Awardee: National Recipient Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on death row in Alabama for a crime he did not commit. “Today, as EJI Community Educator, he’s a tireless and powerful advocate for abolition of the death penalty,” according to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Further, “Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice. I can’t think of a case that more urgently dramatizes the need for reform than what has happened to Anthony Ray Hinton,” asserts Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and the founder and Executive Director of the EJI.

Hinton’s book, The Sun Does Shine, has been adapted for young readers and has just been released. Click here to hear his June 14, 2022, interview on CBS Mornings where he discusses his life since being released from prison, and what lessons he hopes young people learn from his story.

Local Awardee: Local recipient Virginia “Dee” Banks, M.D., is an infectious disease and internal medicine specialist practicing in Youngstown, OH. Dr. Banks, a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1974, has been in practice for 43 years. In addition to currently practicing at Northeastern Ohio Infectious Disease Association (NEOIDA) in Youngstown, she has spent the last two years educating the community on COVID-19 and on disparities in access to and delivery of quality healthcare. She has served as Associate Professor of Clinical Internal Medicine at NEOMED; Director of UPMC-HORIZON Wound Care Center; and Director of Division of Infectious Disease at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA.

Date: Thur. Oct. 6 | Location: Chestnut Room at Kilcawley Center at YSU | FREE Program | Time: 7P

Wine and Hors d’oeuvres Reception | Time: 5:30P | Cost: $25 |
Reception Reservations ONLINE using a debit or credit card or
via mail or in-person, contact Penny Wells at (330) 207-4467 or PennyWWells@sbcglobal.net

Who was Simeon Booker? Simeon Booker was a courageous and pioneering African-American journalist during the Civil Rights Movement who lived in Youngstown, OH, from when he was five until he left Youngstown College after one year in 1938 because African Americans could attend the college but were not able to receive an activities card. His work helped unify the fight for equality. This event was created, in his honor, to celebrate his life-long achievements and to highlight those torchbearers who have risked life and limb in pursuit of the same things Simeon Booker stood for – justice and equality.

Within a few years of its first issue in 1951, Jet, a pocket-size magazine, became the “bible” for news of the civil rights movement. It was said, only half-jokingly, “If it wasn’t in Jet, it didn’t happen.” Writing for the magazine and its glossy, big sister Ebony, for fifty-three years, longer than any other journalist, Washington bureau chief Simeon Booker was on the front lines of virtually every major event of the revolution that transformed America.

Rather than tracking the freedom struggle from the usually cited ignition points, Booker’s Shocking the Conscience begins with a massive voting rights rally in the Mississippi Delta town of Mound Bayou in 1955. It’s the first rally since the Supreme Court’s Brown decision struck fear in the hearts of segregationists across the former Confederacy. It was also Booker’s first assignment in the Deep South, and before the next run of the weekly magazine, the killings would begin.

Booker vowed that lynchings would no longer be ignored beyond the Black press. Jet was reaching into households across America, and he was determined to cover the next murder like none before. He had only a few weeks to wait. A small item on the AP wire reported that a Chicago boy vacationing in Mississippi was missing. Booker was on it, and stayed on it, through one of the most infamous murder trials in U.S. history. His coverage of Emmett Till’s death lit a fire that would galvanize the movement, while a succession of U.S. presidents wished it would go away.

Booker told the story of the century that changed everything about journalism, politics, and more in America, as only Simeon Booker, the dean of the Black press, could tell it.

DAY 6 – 5 DAY CHALLENGE PANEL DISCUSSION

Panel Discussion: Five Day Nonviolence/Social Justice Reading Challenge | 12 PM | FREE

Friday, Oct. 7, Noon | YWCA | 25 W Rayen Ave, Youngstown, OH |
Moderators and panelists to be announced.
Click here to RSVP for the panel discussion & free light luncheon.

DAY 7: BASKETBALL! CHANEY & EAST

Saturday, October 8 | East High School | 2 PM

Details to be announced.

BONUS: ART OF EMOTION AT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER

Friday, October 14:

FREE Nonviolence Art Class: THE ART OF EMOTION |11-12:30P | Open to students in grades K-8

Location: JCC Multipurpose Room, Jewish Community Center | 505 Gypsy Ln, Youngstown, OH
Age Range: Kids K-8th grade
Food Provided: Pizza, water, fruit
Instructor: Emelia Sherin
Activity 1 (40 minutes): Rip Art with upbeat background music to discuss coping mechanisms with emotion and making a big picture out of our ripped up pieces
Activity 2 (40 minutes): Watercolor with classic/low fi music in the background to discuss how one action, such as a brushstroke, can affect our lives and others, like the big picture.
Link for registration: TBA

For nearly ten years annually during the first week of October, the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation, in conjunction with Mahoning Valley Sojourn to Past, has commemorated Ohio Nonviolence Week, a celebration of diversity, social justice, equity, and inclusion based on the six principles of nonviolence as espoused by the late. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolence week includes participation by many local nonprofits working together to develop truly impactful programming.

To help celebrate the week and promote its core messages, we are holding a special art session entitled “The Art of Emotion,” on Friday, October 14, from 11 am to 12:30 pm. Students ages 6-13 are invited to the JCC’s Main Campus to participate in this program that utilizes different music and art methods to teach students about coping mechanisms and how one action can affect everyone around them. The program will be an engaging opportunity for children to have fun and learn about the importance of coping skills and diversity, and nonviolence.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Nic Bush at either 330.746.3251 ext. 114 or nbush@jewishyoungstown.org.

End of content

No more pages to load