By Janell Williams
Community organization, A Call To Talk (ACTT), will begin hosting meetings at various local churches each Saturday in February to discuss methods to decrease the repetitive gun violence, mass youth incarceration and senseless violence throughout Columbus.
The late Reverend Johnny Flakes Jr. founded A Call To Talk to connect community leaders across Columbus to take proper strides in improving the place they all call home. Though the organization has been dormant for a while, they have been revitalized and hopes to collaborate with other community programs to move forward with needed changes.
“We noticed that there are a lot of people doing the same thing, just in different ways. Our goal is to bring everyone together and use those numbers to push for improvement in the community, said ACTT President Jerome Williams
Some of the topics to be covered in the upcoming meetings in addition to the aforementioned ones include the increased cost of living due to gentrification and local programs created to divert youth gang involvement. ACTT hopes the meetings will serve as a means to, not only voice the listed concerns but to hear from members of different areas in the community about issues that are directly affecting their neighborhoods. They will also feature speakers who have been previously incarcerated for gun and gang violence to inform young attendees of the consequences of the actions they may be encountering each day.
Once the meetings come to a close, ACTT will present a summary of all the community concerns to local political officials and law enforcement in hopes of holding them accountable for taking steps toward change.
The meetings will be held at each location from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. More information about ACTT and the meetings can be found here. Questions about the meetings can be sent to ACTT via email at acttactta@gmail.com.