Amid a wave of in­tense pub­lic demon­stra­tions in the cap­i­tal city, a mas­sive col­lab­o­ra­tive youth ini­tia­tive is seek­ing to am­pli­fy mes­sages of uni­ty, de­clar­ing that the col­lec­tive voice for peace must be­come loud­er than the re­gion’s strug­gles with crime and vi­o­lence.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, Ma­su­dah Muham­mad, di­rec­tor for Youth Af­fairs and Mo­bil­i­sa­tion in the Net­work of NGOs of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, un­der­scored the crit­i­cal tim­ing of the re­gion­al Youth Em­pow­er­ment Peace Walk.

The peace walk took place dur­ing a tense pe­ri­od for Port-of-Spain. The cap­i­tal has been rocked by high­ly charged demon­stra­tions fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in St Au­gus­tine that claimed the life of Joshua Sama­roo and left his part­ner, Ka­ia Sealy, paral­ysed. Pub­lic out­rage in­ten­si­fied dra­mat­i­cal­ly af­ter it was an­nounced that Sealy is ex­pect­ed to be charged with manslaugh­ter and firearm charges, spark­ing fiery protests out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and a heavy, ze­ro-tol­er­ance law en­force­ment re­sponse un­der emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.