The panel discussion at the WFM this August 25th was excellent and should be viewed by everyone to understand what impact the current violence has on our community and particularly our children.

Five days before this panel discussion the community had been traumatized by a drive-by shooting which killed three youths and wounded four more as they came out of a basketball game at the Boys and Girls Club on Genesee Street, just up the street from where the Southside Farmers Market operates every Tuesday.  The objective of the discussion was to help the community deal with the impact of this act of violence and help everyone understand how our young people are impacted in their every day lives.  The hope is to educate the Greater Rochester community and mobilize it to pull together to make the necessary changes to our City to improve our schools, increase job opportunities and reduce poverty to bring people out of this vicious cycle of violence.