After listening to parents who lost their children to gang violence, then hearing of the harsh realities of prison, about 200 boys and girls flocked to the front of the auditorium stage at East High School on Saturday and vowed to live their lives violence-free.
“It opened my mind and made me think,” said Larnell Anderson, 16, a student at Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver.
Anderson joined parents and students from East High and other schools at the fourth-annual “Jail is No Place To Be” conference sponsored by the Denver NAACP Youth Council, Epworth United Methodist Church, the Denver Crime Prevention and Control Commission and the East High Black Student Alliance.
The conference was aimed at steering kids away from crime with frank and serious discussions on topics including bullying, self respect, peer pressure, communication and gangs. Each student received a silver-and-black ribbon to represent his or her pledge to be nonviolent.
The Rev. Leon Kelly, who works in youth gang prevention, told conference attendees how he went from being a University of Colorado graduate to serving time behind bars.
“I ended up in prison. It was a scary thing to go through,” Kelly said. “Prison is real…another whole world. The key is learning from the mistakes.”
Kelly also spoke about the “death list” he keeps to remember the names of 752 Denver-area people whose lives were lost to gang violence. Kelly had audience members hold up wanted posters of criminals that showed how much time each is in prison.
“I look at the number of youngsters who have chosen not to listen. They took lives and now they’re in prison for the rest of theirs,” Kelly warned.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper talked about being a skinny kid who got picked on, then beaten up by a bully. He assured parents the city is looking into creating more after-school programs to start next year.
“Our job is to show you an alternative future,” Hickenlooper said. “We’ll try to support you in every way we can.”
The voices with the most impact were those of the parents and other relatives of young men who have been slain, including Bruce Harrell, Geronimo “Mo” Maestas, Byris Williams, Cruz Castellanos and Casson “Biscuit” Evans.
Many in the audience wept after each family member spoke.
“I hurt and cry every day,” said Dianne Harrell, whose son Bruce was murdered a year ago on her birthday.
“Please make the right choices,” Harrell tearfully pleaded to the students while clutching a photo of her son set in a silver picture frame.
Staff writer Annette Espinoza can be reached at 303-954-1655 or aespinoza@denverpost.com.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it misspelled the name of 3-year-old Casson “Biscuit” Evans.
