Unity Rally message to sparse crowd: Work together to improve community

A Unity in the Community rally Saturday in Greensburg attracted few people outside of the speakers and those attending to distribute information about available social services.

But the speakers emphasized the need to work together on a broad front to improve conditions for all people, regardless of race, gender and income status.

“We must stand for social justice. … That is a human right” that people cannot rely upon political figures to ensure, said Michael Pardus, a member of Unity in the Community and Voice of Westmoreland.

People must take personal responsibility, have a deeply felt commitment and be active to ensure those basic human rights, including voting, Pardus said to a crowd of about ­40 people at St. Clair Park.

Ronel Baccus, organizer for the Unity in the Community rally, said she hopes to bring people together when they meet in such settings.

“We have all the same struggles” regardless of the differences, Baccus said.

To help police deal with incidents involving someone suffering from emotional or mental stress, Heather McLean, director of Ray of Hope, a Greensburg-area suicide prevention initiative, said the organization is working on a 40-hour crisis intervention training with state police troopers from a multi-county area.

“Police and law enforcement are up against a lot,” McLean said. “It’s so important.”

Once the officers undergo the training, sometimes on a “voluntold” basis, they understand how important the training is in impacting their behavior, McLean said.

To help some students in Jeannette, Kevin Brezler of Murrysville is working on an initiative to launch an after-­school program bringing art to students. He said he’s getting help from Mosaic Community Church on South Fourth Street and the Steel City Arts Initiative on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Brezler said he is a former teacher at Sewickley Academy, as well as in Minneapolis and the New Orleans area.

The initiative would bring the Steel City Arts representatives to work with Jeannette students on writing music. He said it would be a matter of bringing an organization from the city, with access to resources, to a community in Westmoreland County that does not have the same financial resources.

“Let’s open up to help these people,” Brezler said.

Brezler is organizing a community event at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Mosaic Community Church, 227 S. Fourth St., Jeannette, that will focus on the fight for equity in schools.