Examiner Staff Writer
Wayne Carter misses his cousin Jamelle, especially when family and friends gather to play softball.
“He isn?t catching fly balls in center field, and he isn?t hitting home runs,” Carter told a crowd of more than 300 gathered to stand against the specter of murder in Baltimore City. “Our memories will always hold him. Our thoughts will always turn toward him. It makes no sense that a man with a gun would take his life.”
Reading Jamelle Carter?s name among some of the 275 murder victimsfrom 2007, Methodist Bishop John R. Schol announced a plan to start taking back the city?s streets from violence.
“Each has a name, each has a story,” Schol said.
“If we just gather to sing and pray and go home, what good are we doing,” he asked the gathering of Methodist leadership, city officials and families of victims Friday at a prayer and worship service kicking off a Spiritual March Against Violence at John Wesley United Methodist Church in West Baltimore. “When one of our family grieves. We all grieve.”
True to his word, Schol announced a 10-part plan to help end violence, but cautioned it will be the work of “decades” before Project Hope for the City will show true results. The steps include the following:
>> An urban-track discipleship academy for the Baltimore Washington Conference
>> Building four community ministry centers to bring religious, government, charity and business leaders together
>> Providing free counseling to families of victims in partnership with Loyola College
>> A call to pray for the city, it?s residents, leaders and institutions this Sunday
>> A standing “Hope Council” to ensure the Methodist Conference stays on track.
The conference received support by way of representatives of Gov. Martin O?Malley, Mayor Sheila Dixon, and the police chief among others.
“If we can?t find a way to love the guns out of these young people?s hands, to love the drugs out of these young mothers hands, we?re not going to save the city,” said City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
