August 2005 Hurricane Katrina Completely devastated my city of New Orleans. As the citizens abruptly returned, so did the plague of violence. On December 28, 2006 my brother Dinerral Shavers, a New Orleans Musician was shot and killed. He was the snare drummer of New Orleans’ own Hot 8 Brass Band, the founder of the first ever marching band at one of New Orleans inner city high schools, and a very positive role model around the community. A week following his death a well known filmmaker by the name of Helen Hill was murdered by an invader in her home. The deaths of these two prominent New Orleans citizens enraged a community and helped galvanize a protest to City Hall. Over 5,000 citizens took a stand that day. They were standing against violence, our city’s corrupt criminal justice system, and our strangely silent leaders at this time of high emotions and distress. This crusade birthed an organization by the name of SilencceIsViolence. On that day of January 11, 2007 the organizers of SilenceIsViolence committed themselves to the citizens of New Orleans to fight for safer streets, a sustainable criminal justice system, better city leadership, and to keep my brother’s legacy alive in the city of New Orleans. Following the march I took a semester off from college to work with the organization SilenceIsViolence. During my tenure back in New Orleans I founded, organized, and helped run four of the different programs and initiatives under the SilenceIsViolence umbrella. We started a court watchers program to monitor the progress of criminal cases and push them through our criminal justice system, Programs for Peace which was a program where we mentored inner city high school students on finding alternatives to violence, Youth Music Clinics which helped the New Orleans musicians give back to our inner city kids, and weekly City Walk where citizens walked from one neighborhood to the other as an initiative of taking back our streets from crime. The first fundraiser given was a Concert for Peace. All the local New Orleans Musicians came together and paid tribute to my brother by performing at this fundraiser. This event also marked the Inauguration of the Dinerral Shavers Educational Fund which I started in my brother’s name. The concert was a ticketed event, and we successfully raised over $5,000 which helped fund our programs throughout 2007.