WE DEMAND PEACE IN THE STREETS

Dear Readers:

I have not seen this kind of coalition since the election of Mayor Harold Washington and to some extent the presidential campaign of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

My hope is that this peace movement will expand even more and that men in particular unite in taking back our streets from heartless youth who obviously do not value life, but my gut tells me once again, this battle will be led and won by our children--just like in Birmingham, Alabama.

Chinta Strausberg


Pfleger: “We Demand Peace”

'Time to take back the streets'

By Chinta Strausberg


Close to 600 people attended a “We Demand Peace” rally held on Saturday, June 6, 2009, at the Daley Plaza where a coalition of younger and older generation, Christians and Muslims united in calling for an end to the violence that is paralyzing black and brown communities.

Fed up with seeing our streets draped in yellow and black “Police Line Do Not Cross” crime tape, Saint Sabina's Father Michael L. Pfleger took his anti-violence movement to the streets. He reached out to Tom Joyner, 92.3's Tre (The Chocolate Jock), WGCI's Tony Sculfield and other radio personalities who have pledged to promote peace rather than violence.

“This is not a rally,” bellowed Pfleger challenging the multi-racial crowd to “demand peace.” Working the crowd into a frenzy, supporters pierced the air with their signs that said: “It's time to take back our streets,” and “With gun violence, everybody is a victim.”

“We're demanding peace starting with you, in your house, on your block, on your neighborhood. We're demanding peace from the White House to my house...” he stated. “It's time to take back our streets.”

Distraught over the killings of our children, Pfleger has formed a coalition not seen since the election of the late Mayor Harold Washington. In an effort to reconnect with all factions of the community, Pastor has been meeting with street leaders, Muslims, Christians of all faiths, rappers, elected officials, the young and older generations.

Ronnie Mosley, a senior at Simeon High School, said: “We, the youth, must take action.” Quoting Mississippi civil rights worker Ed King who said: “when nobody else is moving and the youth is moving, there is a leadership for everybody.”

Flipping a page in history, he reminded the crowd how it was the youth in Birmingham who captured national attention on how white racists were beating and mistreating blacks in the South. “That's what set the stage for Dr. King and the march on Washington,” Mosley said. “We can check ourselves, our own kids…. The true solution is the youth revolution and that is what we need now,” Mosley said challenging supporters to demand peace.

Agreeing was U.S. Senator Roland W. Burris who said: “We have to stop the violence…. No more guns in our community…. When I grew up, we had fights…disagreements, but we used our fists to settle them and then we'd get up and walk and go home, but now, you settle them and never know you don't get up when one of those Tech 9's bullets hit you in the head.”

Minister Louis Farrakhan and Minister Ishmael Muhammad gave their wholehearted support for the "We Demand Peace" movement. At the rally, Minister Ishmael Muhammad said: “If we're going to bring peace in our community, then as a man thinketh in his heart so is he, and if a man hates his brother, then he is a murderer of his brother.

“So, if we are blood of each other's blood, bone of each other's bone, flesh of each other's flesh, then our young people have to know who they are and who they are by nature to relationship to the creator,” Muhammad said.

“They are not dogs,” he said. “Be yea transformed by the renewal of your mind and when the mind is made new and a new heart is put in us and the old heart of stone is taken out and a heart of flesh is put into us and we live by the two greatest commandants which all of the laws and prophets hang on and that is for us to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength…and love thy neighbor as you should love yourself.”

But it was 19-year-old Johnetta Anderson, professionally known as Awthentik a freshman at Columbia College, who mesmerized the crowd.

Representing the Hip-Hop Detoxx culture and Spoken Word artists, Anderson said: “We see kids dying and hear gun shots and we see the police cars and the ambulance every day, and when we turn our radios on, we got to hear the same thing that we already see…so it's like there is no escape.

“If all we see…and hear (is) negativity, how can they expect positive acts from us if that is all we are seeing and hearing”? Anderson warned youth they must learn how to distinguish between reality and entertainment.

Talking to Generation X, Anderson said: “They say I'm African American but ya'll I ain't never been to Africa. They got these kids looking up to pimps; prostitutes and thugs playing follow their leader.

“They call me an American, but I can see the way America does people and poverty, I cannot relate either. See, they snatched us from our Motherland. Turning us into…orphans, making us unable to stand,” she said.

Anderson said blacks don't know their history especially young boys and have slave mentalities. “We're a lost generation and understands nothing to the fullest and it's sad because the only thing that gets into these kids heads today is bullets.

“They talk about the American dream, but how can we dream when our dream got nightmares…. How can we dream when we can't even sleep….”

Anderson said all too often she's snubbed because she is from the West Side, a single parent household and told how “crack heads come up to me because I'm 19 asking if I sell blow. No, I sell dreams…. I'm OK from being from the dirty West Side because dirt is the only way a rose can grow,” she told a cheering crowd.

Anderson painted a grim picture of Generation X especially “the value of a woman lies in her full hips and a man is not a man unless he's done popped a full clip. Gangbangers do things so a lot of fingers get twisted up. Guns make you a man so a lot of body bags police are zipping up.

“It's a risk just to go to school so a lot of classes are getting cut, and we cannot move forward because this generation is stuck,” she warned. “The child is X because somehow souls have no moms and dads, and we ain't living Dr. King's dream because we're living with what Willie Lynch had.”

Anderson added: “All I can do is pray and ask God to forgive this generation who lacks good sense and respect. The generation without a conscious formerly known as the Generation X.”

Others who spoke were: Harold Davis, activist Kublai Toure, anti-gun activist Mark Walsh, former gangbanger Wallace “Gator” Bradley; Simeon High School student Ronnie Mosley; Phil Jackson from Black Star; Ald. Latasha Thomas (17th), Senator Jacqueline Collins (D-16th); Brother Jeffrey Muhammad and Sister Khaleelah Muhammad. Rev. Wilfredo DeJesus gave the invocation.

Referring to the shooting death of DuSable Leadership Academy senior Lorenzo McKeithen who was killed the day before the Loop rally, Davis chided the horde of reporters camped outside of the school. “If there hadn't been a shooting, would you have been here”?

Davis said what reporters didn't see and report was what was going on inside of the school. “The valedictorian was a black male. The salutatorian was a black male; the Bill Gates recipient was a black male, 12-year attendance was a black male. They didn't report that...,” he said.

Sculfield echoed a similar plea. “Every time a kid dies, it's got to be everybody's kid who dies…. We can no longer afford to let our kids die in the street and close our door and say 'hey, that's not my kid.'” Sculfield added: 'We've got to get the village back.”

Tre, “The Chocolate Jock,” said: “This is the summer to be a parent to your child.” He urged parents to monitor the curfew rules. He also urged men to become surrogate fathers to those boys who are fatherless. That was the norm when he was a boy.

On gun violence and the escalation of shootings, Walsh make it clear: “Here in Illinois, about 1,000 people a year die from gun violence. For every one person killed, two more survived. Injured costs, medical costs, we have to absorb. If a woman lives in a home that has a gun, she is seven times more likely to be shot by a spouse, relative, or a child.”

Calling for commonsense legislation to get guns off the streets, Walsh said: “If you want to go hunt…, don't hunt our children….” He urged congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban on the federal level. He also called for instant background checks.

Toure said “we need to break bread' with gang leaders and bring back peace to our streets. “I'm tired of professional lip service,” he said explaining the only ones who can achieve peace are those in the streets.

Bradley, a former gang enforcer, has turned his life around. “I am putting out an appeal for all you young brothers who are creating all of these block cliques…. “ He wants the state to give permission for leaders to talk to incarcerated gangbangers so they can get the word out to stop the killing.

“This ain't no operating no snitch movement,” Bradley said. “This is movement where we will work” with all levels of government and pastors. He urged gangbangers to call street leaders or ministers “so they can make the right choice” and keep their freedom.

Others attending this event were Dr. Carol Adams, Illinois Secretary of the Department of Human Services and retired Judge Ray Figueroa.