Last evening, I was honored to be one of the guests at the Mayors Against Bullyiing workshop, hosted by Mayor Dick Sears, who founded this organization.

Numerous speakers, including Ken Prouix from Holly Springs Middle, Melissa Derosier, an expert on bullying and its effects on depression, Pastor Jamar Brown from Holly Springs United Church of Christ and I also spoke on my personal experiences with bullying and how important it is to be working on the ground to raise awareness of this issue for our kids. I was amazed by some of the videos we saw, and data, which revealed that 1 in 4 kids are bullied every every day.

The most emotional part of the evening was when we heard from Kiran, a close friend, whose son, Joshua, took his life last March, as the result of years of bulling but most recently had been cyber bullied. Josha, had been suffering from mental depression, and the bullying was too much for him to take. As I said in my remarks, the last year has been very painful for me as well, as I knew Joshua as a bright young man, a tennis player, and saw his great potential. Kiran, thanks for your courage last night, and we will honor the life of your son, by leading these efforts throughout our state.

We now can stand by Mayor Sears, and his Board (I thank Ron Utley and all of them for hosting this event and running this organization) to do prevent this from happening to our children.

We must stand up, talk to our Legislators, and see what can be done at the school level, state level, to make sure that our kids, can live, free of fear, happy, and always with a positive outlook on their future.

Thanks to Mayor Sears, for his outsanding leadership to the citizens of Holly Springs! I look forward to working with him and his team and we will be hosting our next event in Morrisville.