Unite Milwaukee Summit: Empowering community members to clean up the city's violent streets

MILWAUKEE -- When it comes to violence, we all have a role to play in prevention. State and local leaders held a summit on Saturday, April 9th to connect community members to critical resources.

Unite Milwaukee Summit

The community is channeling the pain and violence they've seen in their lives and on Milwaukee's streets.

"We are losing so many people to the gun violence. Our children don't even get to see their dreams come true," said State Senator Nikiya Harris Dodd.

Tragedies caused from gun violence are what sparked the Unite Milwaukee Summit.

State Senator Nikiya Harris Dodd, and the 30th Street Industrial Corridor hosted the second annual event.

Folks of all ages and backgrounds spoke on how to make peace within the community.

Even Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett had words to share about overcoming challenges.

Unite Milwaukee Summit

"Part of our focus is to reduce strife, to reduce violence that we have in our community is how do we focus on the kids to make sure they don't have these traumatic adverse experiences," said Barrett.

Mayor Tom Barrett

The day-long event was aimed at creating dialogue and teaching tangible skills like diffusing situations.

"There is going to be a trainer today to talk about de-escalation. Often times I think the reason you have the violence in our community is because people don't realize there is a moment where they can come down from being angry and channel that energy in a positive light," said Harris Dodd.

Vendors of all sorts are coming up with interesting ways to give folks valuable resources to make changes in their lives, and impact the community.

It was a day of empowering folks to take back the community collectively.