For some it’s the loss of a child. For others it’s a sincere passion for the community or trying to prevent someone else in Syracuse from going down the same path they once did.

The leaders of community organizations play a key role in improving police-community relations and helping prevent violence here. Three of the most prominent organizations are Syracuse Save Our Youth, Mothers Against Gun Violence and O.G.’s Against Violence.

Here’s a look at how all three got started and what they’re doing now.

Syracuse Save Our Youth

A 12-year-old boy walks into Larry Williams’ Southwest Community Center office and shakes the 58-year-old’s hand.

“How was school today?” Williams asks.

“Good,” the sixth-grader responds.

“Real good or great good?”

“Excellent good.”

“Two great adjectives,” Williams concludes with a smile.

Everyone knows “Mr. Williams.” A lifelong Syracuse resident, Williams is a key figure on the South Side of Syracuse who has dedicated his life to helping local youth choose a path other than gang involvement. He’s now doing the work in a formal capacity as the program director of Syracuse Save Our Youth, a group working to reduce violence and deter gang involvement.

The group, which targets the South and Southwest side of Syracuse, started its work in 2014 through a city grant. The core of its work is collaboration with other community organizations and through the Multi-Disciplinary Intervention Team, a group that meets biweekly to discuss ways to better serve 14- to 24-year-old men in the gang-infested communities.

“We’re doing our best to provide an opportunity for alternatives to a violent lifestyle that a lot of them didn’t create, but they were born into,” Williams said.

“We’re doing our best to provide an opportunity for alternatives to a violent lifestyle that a lot of them didn’t create, but they were born into,” Williams said.

“Many of them are born with barriers, and that sometimes gets in the way of the things you want them to do. They’re not born animals. They’re not born wolves. The conditions sometimes are created as such so they think the only pathway is violence.”

Williams has spent his entire life trying to help stop violence and gang involvement.

Before becoming SOY’s program director, he ran the Syracuse Central School District’s mentorship program and coached local Pop Warner football. He still lives in the neighborhood and said he knows those involved in about 95 percent of the crimes committed.

“Even though I’ve been doing this job for the past three years, I’ve been doing this job for all of my life,” he said.

He’s always been accessible, he said, but now his work is focused on offering employment services, family therapy and educational support for the youth he cares so much about.

“We’re about trying to build avenues and opportunities to deter and to alleviate — I want to say eliminate — acts of violence,” he said. “It’s more than just a program. It becomes a way of life. And we’re trying to change lives.”

Everyone knows “Mr. Williams.” A lifelong Syracuse resident, Larry Williams is a key figure on the South Side of Syracuse who has dedicated his life to helping local youth choose a path other than gang involvement. He’s now doing the work in a formal capacity as the program director of Syracuse Save Our Youth, a group working to reduce violence and deter gang involvement.

Mothers Against Gun Violence

It’s going on four years since Lepa Jones’ son was stabbed to death. She feels the pain every day.

“Losing a child is something that no one wants to ever go through,” she said.

Jones, 39, doesn’t sulk, though. Instead she sees the Oct. 27, 2013, death of Charles Anthony Pitts, a senior at Corcoran High School when he died, as a call for her to be more involved in the community. She’s now the president of Mothers Against Gun Violence, a community organization founded in 2005 that calls for the violence to stop in Syracuse.

“There are mothers and fathers who have lost children before me and there are mothers and fathers who have lost children after me. So my biggest thing is if I can be the voice of so many hurt families and so many grieving mothers inside my community, that’s where God had led me to be.”

“There are mothers and fathers who have lost children before me and there are mothers and fathers who have lost children after me. So my biggest thing is if I can be the voice of so many hurt families and so many grieving mothers inside my community, that’s where God had led me to be.”

Mothers Against Gun Violence regularly holds vigils, including the yearly August vigil, and Jones speaks in schools and at events.

She keeps her son’s legacy alive and preaches a message of nonviolence to the urban community.

“I really want the people in the community to hear. To understand that losing a child is unbearable,” said Jones. “It’s a heavy weight. We need to break the chain of our children losing their lives.”

Lepa Jones, president of Mothers Against Gun Violence, a community organization founded in 2005, calls for the violence in Syracuse to stop. 

O.G.’s Against Violence

A 40-year-old Syracuse man walked by Clifford Ryans on a sunny April afternoon. Ryans recognized him, and while holding his signature “O.G.’s Against Violence” sign, preached a message of nonviolence.

“He’s got to make some changes in his life,” said Ryans, 53, referencing the man’s time spent in and out of prison. “He can’t keep doing what he’s doing.”

Ryans works the streets of Syracuse to preach his grassroots message. He interacts with pretty much everyone he sees and has become a leader in the community fight to curb violence in the city, particularly the South Side. The organization he heads, O.G.’s Against Violence, has grown since its inception in 2015 to become a Syracuse staple and driving force in spreading the nonviolence message.

Ryans began to get fed up with violence in the community after the 1999 fatal shooting of his 17-year-old son.

“Once it touched home, that was a wake-up call for me to get out here and try and do something about it. I wanted to try and make a difference.”

“Once it touched home, that was a wake-up call for me to get out here and try and do something about it. I wanted to try and make a difference.”

He’s been doing nonviolence advocacy since 1999. After a July 4, 2015, weekend in which 10 people were shot in less than 24 hours, Ryans left his job in Binghamton to “go all in” spreading the message in Syracuse.

O.G.’s Against Violence signs are hung in windows of homes around the South Side. Still, Ryans wants to further the visibility of the movement.

Said Ryans: “Like all Americans, I’m sick of the violence.”

Clifford Ryans works the streets of Syracuse to preach his grassroots message. He interacts with pretty much everyone he sees and has become a leader in the community-fight to curb violence in the city, particularly the South Side. The organization he heads, O.G.’s Against Violence, has grown since its inception in 2015 to become a Syracuse staple and driving force in spreading a nonviolence message.

Here’s how you can get involved in the three community organizations working to stop violence in Syracuse.

Syracuse Save Our Youth

Contact program director Larry Williams by phone at (315) 671-5831 or by email (lwilliams@swccsyr.org)

Mothers Against Gun Violence

MAGV meets the first Saturday of the month at the United Way, 515 James St., at 11 a.m. You can also contact organization president Lepa Jones by email (magv02@yahoo.com).

O.G.’s Against Violence

Contact founder Clifford Ryans by phone at (607) 235-4489.