FOR SONS' SAKE

Rodney Brown
Staff Reporter

There's a powerful task force patrolling the streets of Syracuse and the weapon of choice is love.

According to the Children's Defense Fund gun violence has already taken nearly 100,000 young lives in America since 1979. They've been 9 deaths by act of violence in Syracuse this year.

Syracuse's community activist organization Mothers Against Gun Violence (MAGV), a group of impassioned mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, women and now some men says, "Enough is enough!" "We're out there on street corners telling young men we care about them, said Helen Hudson, co-founder of MAGV. "We also reach out to the families of victims, especially the mothers. We want them to know their not alone," she said. "They're not only feeling it, we all feel it."

Hudson's son, Kareem was stabbed so severely that he almost lost his life. Hudson stated, a short time after MAGV began, along with Lakesha Martin-Hargrett; she began to realize there was a great demand for services that focused on violence prevention, education, violence interventions and just some plain old community love. "The need to develop programs that would reduce the rate of violence in our city and surrounding areas while making a positive difference in our communities became a primary focus for MAGV, said Hudson."

After Hudson's son almost lost his life, she pitched the idea to her pastor of getting members of the church to go out in the streets and engage with youth about alternatives to violence. "The Pastor told me the best thing we can do is sit in the church and pray for them," Hudson said. "I left him and went to Rev. Ellison's church and he allowed me to come back and speak with his church members who were already doing prayer walks," she said. From that very day in 2002, Hudson stated, "MAGV was born."

The group is comprised of 32 members with 18 members who have lost children by an act of violence. "The ladies are special- phenomenal," she said. "Some have taken the biggest lost of their lives but still have the strength, compassion and desire to be out in the streets working to save the lives of children." Hudson added this is a tremendous, difficult and very often emotional task as many mothers continue to experience and work through their on grief. Yet this sorrow is impetus of our on unrelenting desire to do whatever it will take to prevent other senseless deaths in our communities.

MAGV Objectives are:

Work on the streets with our young people
Work with Syracuse School District
Work with different organizations and youth to support events that are given
Organize community wide vigils when there is a young life lost to show the community support
Work with Faith Based Community and labor to develop computer training programs for inner-city youth
Being a support for mothers that have lost a child to violence

Hudson is employed with the United Way as its AFL-CIO community services liaison. She collaborates with Syracuse's Probation Agency to help men and women get back into the work force or enter GED programs when released from prison. "I come-out the organize labor world, so helping anyone in this way comes natural to me, Hudson said. "It's all about saving lives- anyway I can."

In response to the question- How would she like to see the organization grow in the coming years? Hudson stated she would like to see more programs and to have MAGV offices located in different parts of the city. In addition Hudson noted she would like to develop after school programs design to help kids cope with the loss of a family member or love one that died from an act of violence. "I will always remember when a 5-year-old child walked-up to me and asked,-Why was my daddy stabbed to death? That rocked me in the heart," said Hudson. "Right, then I knew how important it was for me to create a closure program that catered directly to children."

Hudson also noted she would like to see the organization's membership increase to 200 or more mothers. "It definitely wouldn't hurt to have the streets saturated with loving mothers," she said.

Hudson's take on receiving the 2010 Post- Standard Achievement Award-

"It was a wonderful award but for me personally that's awkward. To me- it's not about accolades. It's all about the safety of our kids. The best award I get is when children say, they love me because I am the constant for them. That's my award."

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