Yes We Can: A Young Voice Makes An Appeal To Barack

Movements start with young people who inspire, irritate the establishment and fire words into action. Cecalie Cooper, a student at the University of Connecticut, was among those who made the march from the East End to the City Hall Annex following the shooting death of 14-year-old Justin Thompson. She has penned a letter to Barack Obama to share what a coalition of neighbors are doing to find solutions to the recent violence–as Cecalie writes to “Save our babies”–among them Connecticut Against Violence where law enforcement and the Hip Hop community have joined forces. www.ctagainstviolence.com. In presidential cycles these kinds of letters tend to penetrate White House staffers, but if not, Cecalie is doing what the president promised as a candidate, building change from the ground up. Cecalie’s letter below:

Dear President Obama:
I’m a 23-year-old college student at the University of Connecticut. I am from the inner city Bridgeport, CT with a focus in the medical field. My future aspirations are to become a trauma surgeon and give back to my community, in addition and most importantly the children. I’m an African-American and Hispanic woman who grew up in a disadvantaged community where the resources are limited and the succession of our community is not great.

I have had the opportunity to attend college as a first generation college student, however there are many young adults my age and who are older and many who are younger that will never have the opportunity that I have due to the lack of resources. I am a concerned adolescent, resident, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, motivational speaker, or whoever you want me to be for the youth of my community. There has become a tremendous amount of violence where I grew up and live, recently being the main headline in our local newspapers and news channels has been the murder of a 14 year middle school student by the name of Justin Thompson who was gunned down in the streets of Bridgeport while walking home from a teen bash.

Why am I reaching out to you? In our community, we have activists, concerned parents, residents, teachers, Hip-Hop Dj’s, police officers and promoters, etc. who are trying to put together programs to better assist the children of our community and make them aware of different approaches rather than violence. So I’m asking for help from various people who these children look up to which happen to be our pop artists, entrepreneurs, CEO’s, etc. Recently, there has been a group by the name of Connecticut Against Violence founded by police officer Lieutenant Daniels and Dj Kingsley Osei and basically their mission is to bridge the law enforcement and Hip-Hop together to overcome the violence within the city, state, and one day nationwide. I am truly inspired by the mission of this group and I respect the founders of the group who are taking the initiative to help our youth in the community one day at a time. However, I believe that on a higher level our leaders should assist Lieutenant Daniels and Dj Kingsley during the path to success for the best of our children by funding their movement to be able to provide programs for the children such as peer mentoring, educational tutoring, recreation, gun violence and drug prevention, and many more programs to not only save our youth, but to also better prepare them for a successful future.

For more information about this group you can visit them at www.ctagainstviolence.com or contact Lieutenant Daniels @ (203)-395-4960 or Kingsley Osei @ (917)-416-4601. The main purpose of reaching out to a source such as you is because they want to help the children, but the more people they get to reach out to children the easier it will be to SAVE OUR BABIES. Thank you very much and I appreciate your time.

Best Regards,

Cecalie J. Cooper