The late Cedric Willis is the honoree of a youth-crime forum tonight in Jackson where participants will brainstorm both causes and solutions of violence in the capital city. It is the fourth crime conversation, with participants of various generations gathering in dialogue circles, that the Mississippi Youth Media Project has organized in the last year or so. The student journalists are compiling a long list of potential violence solutions, and asking attendees to pledge to at least one action, as past participants have done. They plan to hold an all-day violence summit in future months to develop a long-term strategy for correcting conditions that lead to violence in the city.
Founding Editor Donna Ladd is a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss., a graduate of Mississippi State University and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was an alumni award recipient in 2021. She writes about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence, journalism and the criminal justice system. She contributes long-form features and essays to The Guardian when she has time, and was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press. She co-founded the statewide nonprofit Mississippi Free Press with Kimberly Griffin in March 2020, and the Mississippi Business Journal named her one of the state's top CEOs in 2024. Read more at donnaladd.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @donnerkay and email her at donna@mississippifreepress.org.
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