Community leaders band together to battle Baltimore's rising crime
BALTIMORE -- Baltimore is ranked second in the country for the highest increase in homicides, with New Orleans taking the top spot.
But while the number of violent murders is climbing, anti-violence activists are working to find solutions to address the city's rampant crime.
Members of the group Leaders of the Beautiful Struggle recently met at the Blk Swan Restaurant in Harbor East to discuss how they could make Baltimore a better place to live.
"The narrative that is put forth in the mainstream media is that Black people don't care about violence in our community," Adam Jackson, the group's chief executive officer, said. "We aren't working to destroy it, and that people aren't interested in building the necessary structure, tools, organization, to defeat it."
Members meet monthly and work toward reversing the disturbing trend of violence in the city.
This time, they invited and intermingled with members of the Black Men's Xchange and the Pride Center of Maryland to get a better idea of their concerns.
"We rarely create invitation to address as a community: How are you doing? What's going on with you? How you feeling? Are you all right?" Cleo Manago, the chief executive officer of the Pride Center of Maryland said. "And then you have a generation or multiple generations of people who no one has checked in—people implode."
That sort of intervention is on the front end of where things sometimes seem to unravel.
"I think people just need to know who are the resources in the community, that they can talk to you as opposed to the police, to actually stop that, on the front end, to actually have front-end intervention," Jackson said. "So, people should have hope in the fact that right now Black people are doing that every day in the community. It's not reported on. It's not talked about. It's lots of murders that have not happened. It's a lot of crime that has not occurred because these people exist."
And that's important because people across the city are still reeling from the atrocities that have disfigured their hearts and changed the course of their lives.
For example, Daphne Alston, the co-founder of Mothers of Murdered Sons & Daughters, received the worst call of her life on July 13, 2008.
That was the day her son, Tyreek, was killed.
"They took my baby's life, you know, and I can let them win," Alston said. "You know, you can't win. You're not going to win anyway, but I wanna make sure you are alright too, the trigger man. I wanna make sure you alright."
Ever since Tyreek died, Alston has been trying to prevent other people from experiencing her pain.
But that is an endeavor that is going to require a collective effort from the city's residents, Alston said.
"Tyreek, I got you," she said. "As long as I have breath in my body, I'm going to make sure that your legacy lives on, and we will save as many young people as we can."