As a tribute to Adam’s life, the Walk With Adam Toledo was held on April 18. The walk was community-organized, lead, and attended. With multiple local businesses donating more than 4,000 flowers for the event. Elie Amador, who has been involved with New Life since childhood and now is one of our Pan De Vida Assistant’s said, “I got to watch our huge pile of flowers grow and grow throughout the weekend. Which was a special thing to me as I started to process everything, the flowers became a visual for unity.” She went on to say, “peace is what we want and we are going to get it together”. Hear more about the Walk With Adam Toledo in the video Real America with Jorge Ramos.
We are stronger together and we have to heal together. There have been many different opinions on what actions should be taken to help the healing start on a systematic level. These different viewpoints in the community have been highlighted well in this article by the Chicago Tribune. However, we have seen what proactive violence prevention through street outreach, mentoring, and authentic relationships can do.
We need change that invests first in youth in a way that sees the youth as family, as themselves, and as our future. As Benny Estrada, the director of Street outreach, shares in the article “[Police departments] want to put them in jail and we want to keep them out of jail.” We want our youth to know they have people in their corner, who love them, who will fight for them, and who will walk with them every step of the way. This is our commitment.
