Youth Worker Ivol Brown Stabbed to Death on Memorial Day as Violence Rages in Some Boston Communities

Ivol Brown, 17, black summer jobs advocate in Mattapan, Ma., was fatally stabbed to death on Memorial Day, no arrests have been made and violence continues in pockets of Boston.

Summer jobs advocate Ivol Brown, 17, was fatally stabbed on Memorial Day while waiting for his mother to take him to work. According to the Boston Herald, Brown, was an inspiration to those who knew him. It is a real tragedy that this young man had a vision, but it never came to fruition because his life was taken. Ivol Brown knew what it meant to get a second chance and he has made a real difference in the lives of many young people.

Ivol spent his early teen years on the streets. He mixed with a bad crowd and spent time locked up on charges of dealing crack in the public schools, his mentors said. But after his release, a youth worker offered Brown a job at a community group. Ivol, then 14, said yes and never looked back. Over the past three years, he evolved from a troubled kid to a cherished leader of Boston’s youth movement for summer jobs.

Now, days before a U.S. Senate vote that could bring $3 million to Boston for summer job programs, Brown’s friends and family, including his mother Merveline, say they will carry the pro-employment torch her son proudly held. “He would say, ‘Let’s go get that money,’ ” Chambers said of her son, who rallied with hundreds of teens in marches and protests in Boston this year in an effort to capture funding for summer jobs.

Brown, a student at Community Academy in Roxbury who worked three part-time jobs, led by his actions, his mentors said. He insisted his 15-year-old sister get an after-school job and helped her land one. In the weeks before he died, he took a stack of pamphlets home from The City School in Dorchester, where he worked as a youth organizer, and instructed his mother to distribute them at the hair salon where she works. Source: Boston Herald

I guess the obvious question I have is whether anyone had the decency to step forward and tell the police who killed Ivol Brown. I am infuriated by the no-snitch attitude abound in many inner city communities. The violence in many cities is increasing and will only get worst. Summer jobs are important, but they won't stop innocent young people from getting shot in many of these cities. Parts of Boston is beginning to sound a lot like the inner city communities of Chicago.