Last Sunday, a group of people who care about the community came together to address the issue of violence that is plaguing the streets of our community.
The meeting, held at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, brought together people from all parts of the city – the West side, Central, Southend, the Valley, and beyond – both men and women between the ages of 25 and 50 who are committed to uniting the community and putting and end to the senseless acts of violence that are impacting the safety and future of our community.
“One of the problems that we have is that the people who grew up in the Southend and the Central area are now living out in places like Federal Way and Kent,” said an attendee at the meeting speaking on anonymity. “It’s crazy to see kids beefing, only to find out later, usually at a funeral or after someone has between shot, that the parents are cool with each other.”
“We can stop a lot of this by connecting the dots,” he continued. “If I know my son is having a beef with the son of somebody I know or grew up with, I can pick up the phone call his mom or dad and have them talk to their son, I can talk to my son and we can work it out. Unfortunately, we’re not making these connections until it’s too late.
“Moms and dads should be able to call each other and squash a beef or at least be aware of it before it gets too far out of hand,” he added.
According to members of the group and social media posts, the group is in the early stages but they are already planning a series of events and actions that will get at the core root of the problem.
“We’re not doing this for the cameras or publicity, we’re doing this because there is too much violence in our community for any family to deal with and we can no longer sit back and hope that people outside of our community will solve the problem,” said one of the organizers. “This is not a photo opp for us. We’re doing this for our youth, our streets and for the love of our city. We are strong men and strong women from the community and we’re looking for other strong men and women from the community to stand with us as we move forward in an effort to stop the bloodshed on our streets.”
