One by one, six tearful mothers and fathers stepped up to a podium on Nov. 23 in a candlelit room at the Bronx County Courthouse. With trembling voices, they told the crowd about their murdered children. The vigil, hosted by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., was part of the National Day of Outrage.

It was a sight unseen along the Grand Concourse for more than two years: a buoyant throng of people waiting in line outside the iconic Loew’s Paradise Theater. Braving a steady rain and defying a dreary economy, nearly 3,000 people turned out for the reopening of the classic theater on Oct. 24.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Christina Rodriguez entered the B/D subway station on Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse looking to buy a MetroCard. The problem was, she only had a $20 bill and the MetroCard machines were not accepting cash.

Rodriguez scanned the station for assistance, but no one was in sight. Rodriguez’s experience at the Kingsbridge Station was not unique. Since the MTA discontinued all of its Station Customer Assistants (SCAs) at all New York City subway stations

After a brief stint in June, the MTA is once again trying out express service for the Bronx 4 line. The new express program has more trains, one more stop and will last seven weeks instead of three weeks.

District Leader Hector Ramirez is actively drumming up support for a 2010 run against 86th District Assemblyman Nelson Castro, the Norwood News has learned.

Former State Senator Efrain Gonzalez, awaiting sentencing following a conviction on fraud charges, will remain a free man into 2010.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz’s office recently boasted of the state assembly’s passage of two pieces of road safety legislation: one banning the use of portable electronic devices (PEDs) while driving, and the other cracking down on drunk driving.

A listing of public and community meetings for our readers in the northwest Bronx and beyond.

An explosion of street violence upended three Bronx communities in recent days, taking the lives of two teenagers and severely injuring a girl, all of whom appear to be ordinary kids guilty only of crossing paths with errant gunshots. (On Thanksgiving, three people were shot on the Grand Concourse, near Fordham Road.)

Crime is indeed down, but that doesn’t change the realities of these tragically truncated lives or the neighborhoods that have not benefited equally from otherwise welcome statistical trends.

There is no single answer to solving this problem, but there are many things that can help and we should try them all and more.

Here are just a few:

• Whatever your opinion of Mayor Bloomberg, he is a national leader on the gun control issue. We should support his efforts any way we can.

• As stated above, there are neighborhoods where the city’s statistical drop in crime has not been felt on the street. When the inevitable budget cuts are proposed to cope with the economic downturn, cuts to youth programs and police should be a last resort, especially in neighborhoods where crime has gone the opposite way of the citywide trend. In fact, we need to find a way to increase funding for youth programs, whether that comes from the city, state or federal government.