Around 150 students, from sixth through 12th grades, participated in free writing workshops at the second annual Writing Our Lives community event held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, at Percy Hughes Magnet School. Students came from the Syracuse City School District and the greater Syracuse area.

A “Stop the Violence” call to action brought together 150 people Saturday, Nov. 13, to the Mary Nelson Youth Center. The theme of the event was to discuss and find solutions to halt violence in the community.

Minority contractors in Syracuse, mostly on the South Side, are banding together to improve access to training and certification programs and to demand more work on private and government contracts. But they face an array of stiff challenges, including shortcomings in expertise, funding and networking.

A one-man recycling operation picks up recyclables from residents A year ago, Tyrone Cannon sat in his living room joking around with friends, drinking a few beers. “Save your bottles,” he told them. “One of these days I’m going to start a bottle return business.” Today, he runs Cannon Street Recycling, a door-to-door pickup service for can and bottle returns.

Raising teenagers is no easy feat, and to do it twice is impressive. Clinton Williams Sr., 63, and his wife, Linda, 61, are raising their son’s three children. Having raised their own children before, nothing pulls the wool over the Williams’ eyes this time around. They are instilling values in their grandchildren that were common in their day, and are …

Linda Dunn’s classroom is a home away from home for her students Danforth Magnet Middle School feels like home to social studies teacher Linda Dunn. Indeed, it is. She not only teaches here now, but she also walked these very halls as an elementary student some 40 years ago. Dunn has had a classroom on every floor of the school …

Student turned to her teacher after witnessing mother’s murder My father murdered my mother in front of me when I was 10 years old. I remember it like yesterday. My mother lay dying, my father demanding she get up, and I stood crying hysterically. My father told my brother to take me back down the hill to his mother, my …

Urban Renewal Agency looks for residents to revitalize empty houses Sometimes having no neighbors makes for the worst kind of neighbors. That’s the case for Khreltz Vest, who lives a couple of blocks east of McKinley-Brighton Elementary School on Pleasant Avenue with her husband, three children and dogs. Both houses next to her home are vacant.

The Kirk Park Colts play hard and give the South Side community something to root for A group of boys outfitted in full football uniforms, none of them an inch taller than 4-feet-10, lines the field at Kirk Park struggling to perform the perfect pushup. “One, Two.” The quarterback of the mighty-mights division of the Kirk Park Colts stands before …

Written by Lionel Logan I have known Sam Robers for many years, and he has proven to me time and time again that he is a man of his word and puts his community first. Sam Roberts is not your everyday politician, but someone who has worked his entire life, just like you and me, and is fed up with …