Intracommunity Violence

What about violence in the communty

There are often missed opportunities for building and learning when people assuming we do not care about the crime in our community. Especially since we are all Black, most of (the 7) us are also Black women and femmes, and some of us mothers of Black children

We are at the murder scenes, vigils and funerals including those for our family members and loved ones who have died in these streets. We continue to build non-transactional, genuine, life long relationships with the families who’ve lost loved ones once the cameras are gone. We were there, and will continue to be there. We spend countless hours building relationships in neighborhoods most people won't go to connect with youth.

We’ve helped draft, get passed, fully funded and implemented legislation (The NEAR Act) dealing with community violence for more than 5 years. We've held rallies and marches. We testify every budget season and every performance oversight season specifically to demand violence prevention and intervention efforts in DC and support local organizations.

We were responsible for making sure March for Our Lives went to Thurgood Marshall PCS in Ward 8 (around the corner from my house) instead of less Black schools in NW. We demanded they pai for hundreds of local Black students to have lunch, ride public transportation for free to and from the rally. We did this because Black youth here have been fighting against violence for years but are always left out of the national conversation. That weekend turned into a documentary "Incompatible Allies" (some of it actually shot and edited by Black students) about Black youth addressing community violence that we screened several times with a youth panel afterwards for the past several years and in film festivals across the country. We have been speaking out about gun violence and putting on events focused on preventing and interrupting violence for years.

We do all of this at the same time we fight police violence, because ALL Black Lives Matter, regardless of how we lose them.

Unfortunately, the assumption that we don't care, or do work in this area is really misleading and divisive.

Often people do not know about our work simply because they aren't where we do our work. Pointing fingers at BLM DC doesn’t save any lives in these streets. Community and hard work does. BLM isn’t supposed to be the ONLY organization for everything everyone else thinks we should be doing in their opinion. There are hundreds of thousands of awesome organizations and individuals also working hard for the liberation of Black people. It’s going to take all of us.