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Black on Black Violence

Mike

Well-known member
Leaders lament black-on-black violence
Friday, February 09, 2007

By Ervin Dyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette



From mothers who had lost sons to gun violence to elected officials who pledged to help get guns off the street, a broad swath of neighborhood leaders gathered last night to address the escalating rates of black homicide.


Tony Tye, Post-Gazette
Tim Stevens, head of the Black Political Empowerment Project, calls upon the community to deal with black-on-black violence in Pittsburgh as Mayor Luke Ravenstahl looks on.

"White people are not killing us. We are killing us," said Tim Stevens, head of the Black Political Empowerment Project and an organizer of the Hill District meeting.

"We have become the problem and we must now find the solutions. We have no other choice."

For nearly a decade, it's been the same cry of social and civil rights organizations -- that the violence that hits young black males the hardest is out of control.

The alarms grew louder last week when an analysis of unpublished FBI crime data by the Violence Policy Center revealed that the homicide rate among blacks in Pennsylvania ranks the highest in the nation.

Most of the deaths involved handguns and their use pushed homicide into the leading cause of death among blacks ages 15 to 19, 20 to 24, and 25 to 34.

Pittsburghers are "saddened, angered and disturbed" by those rates, said Mr. Stevens, but the "African American community must take the lead in ending what we have come to call 'black on black violence.' "

Mr. Stevens and the group One Hood, a coalition of anti-violence activists and religious leaders, led the call for last night's meeting.

Around the lobby of the Hill House Association stood imans, ministers, mothers and scores of grass-roots leaders who have tried for years to chip away at the violence.

The meeting was a prelude to the real work, organizers said. That begins on Feb. 20 at the Hill House when concerned residents will come to the table and begin the tasks of creating working strategies.

As horrifying as the homicide rates are, they ripple much deeper, said experts of crime and violence last night. For every victim, there are family, siblings, friends, a community that is impacted. The sense of grief and loss is dispiriting and fuels a vicious cycle of hopelessness that only breeds more violence.

"If this were measles or a flu outbreak, it would be treated differently, but the whole issue of violence is not seen as an epidemic," said Stephanie Walsh, executive director of The Center for Victims of Violence and Crime.

The answers lie in creating a self-discipline and duty to community where residents must feel each other's pain, said Jasiri X, a leader with the Nation of Islam.

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who attended last night, said he could not pretend to understand what crises the young men face but that he would work with the community to try to get illegal guns off the street.

This is just the beginning, said the Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire, a street minister who stood in his Army fatigues with black paint on this face. When the meeting ended, he was headed into a Hill District housing project to pray.

"Enough is enough," he said.
 

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