Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Speaker 1:
I’m going to be super brief. I largely just want to, again, thank everyone for coming out. I’m the producer of this film, but I’m sure you guys know you can’t do something like this by yourself, right? So I want to also thank the Baltimore Legacy Project Youth Crew who’s outside, who took your. I mean, they’ve just been really on point getting B-roll setting up. Really appreciate them a lot. Also, the folks that you saw in the film, thank you so much for trusting me with your voice, your story. I don’t take that lightly. And when I say you don’t do it by yourself, one of the. Oh, I also want to shout out. She’s not in here, but the narrator is actually here too. She’s part of Baltimore Legacy Project Youth Crew in the front. Her name’s Empress. Yep. But someone who is definitely in the thick of all of this with me is there’s several cinematographers, but there was one person who was the lead cinematographer, more or less the director of photography on this project.
They were also the editor who edited all of this. They also edited the trailer that I did, and there was a lot of back and forth. Do this, do this. I mean, that’s a person who I spent really most of my time with in terms of creating this. And I just wanted to give a few moments for him to just say a few words. His name is Imani. He’s making his way up here. His name is Imani. Imani.
And I’ll let you finish explaining.
Speaker 2:
No, great job, everybody. Thank you all for coming out. This was amazing, right? I mean, this was one of the best things I worked with. I’ll be real quick. My name’s Imani Mulayer. I was part of the production crew, but also the founder of the Baltimore Cinematic Universe. And for some people who know it, some people don’t, I can just let you know we are a film studio. We’re new in Baltimore with a core mission is to change division of Baltimore around the world to have a new perception of our city. Yeah. So yeah, I’m a TV producer, lifelong TV producer, two-time Emmy Award-winning. We have a whole staff of award-winning filmmakers. We have a whole advisory board of all the leading industry experts in the city. We launched in December thanks to Nancy from the Parkway. I think she was here. But yeah, there you go.
Thanks, Nancy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Nancy Froctor back there. And since then, we already have four TV shows, one feature film, one vertical series, either in active development or already shopping to major networks. And so I started working with Rashim because I was like, how do we offer this to the Baltimore community? All of our resources, all of our pipeline. So after the success of this documentary, I said, that’s what we can do. So today I want to announce that’s what we’re doing. The Baltimore Cinematic Universe is opening up our film studio to the city, to individuals, to organizations. If you have a story that you need to tell, we do everything from feature films, TV shows, web series, social media campaigns. More importantly, we produce and we distribute. We get it out. We promote and market it. So your video will be seen by the people who need to see it.
And we work at all production levels, all budget levels. We just want to continue our mission to get that real Baltimore out. So feel free. You can contact me directly. I’ll be here for the rest of the evening. We’re online, baltimorecinematicuniverse.com. My email, Imani, I-M-A-N-I at baltimorecinematicuniverse.com. All social media, all that. But yeah, yeah, we’re here to stay. We’re going to make a difference in the city. So hopefully we can do it with y’all. Thank you.
Speaker 3:
All right. If you are a panelist, come on up to the stage. Beyond the Wire. One of the things that I’ve said, and y’all have heard me say versions of this in other premiers, that one of the beautiful things about this film is that I think it gives words, images, narratives to a feeling, to an instinct, to an inclination that I think a lot of people had, but just put words and the images to it. And one of the things that when I talk in general in policy arenas about the work of violence prevention, like the work of it, I think for a lot of people, it’s rather abstract. A lot of people don’t know the work. So what I’m going to first ask each of you to do is to introduce yourself, your organization affiliation work, and then answer this question. When a lot of people think about public safety, they think about the courts, thinking about police, think about jail.
And that’s not what any of y’all do. So in your introduction of yourself, if you can talk about your own contribution to declines in violence and homicides in Baltimore, talk about your work and your contribution to it, because it’s important for the audience to have a concrete sense of what the work is. So I’m going to start at the end with Brother Anthony and then come down this way.
Speaker 4:
I like
Speaker 5:
The plane. Thank you. Good evening, afternoon, everybody. First and foremost, I want to thank God for this opportunity. Of course, giving him all of the honor, all of the praise and all of the glory. I also want to begin by, of course, thanking Dr. Rashim for this amazing opportunity and the great work that she has done and continue to do with this project and helping us control the narrative about the real Baltimore, as we say. So I want to begin with a quote here that kind of just set the tone for me. And those who do this work will already know where this quote is from. And those connected with this facility absolutely will know where this quote is from.
Do your little part. Do whatever you can to help change these conditions because we’re moving into a critical period in history, not just for poor and oppressed people, black people, but for humanity itself. Do whatever little you can, but you need to do something. That quote is from one of my elders, one of my mentors who helped mold and shape me to be who and what I am today. The late great Eddie Conway, Eddie Marshall Conway. And so I’m honored to be here at the Real News Network where his influence is still alive and well in the work that we do. I also want to thank all of these amazing panelists here who are literally the boots on the ground and doing the work that we do. I’m honored to just share space with them anytime we get the opportunity, especially Ms. Erica here. The other two I’m with every day, practically seven days a week.
But Ms. Erica here, we have the lived experience at doing this work. She literally did the victim offender mediation in my own case, who set me down with the families of the victims in my own case, literally. So anytime I have the opportunity to be in the same space with her is a blessing because that got me off to doing the work. I couldn’t engage the work without doing that first after my own release. So right after that, that kind of gave me the license, the permission to do what was in my heart to do anyway, which was kind to help other young 15 year olds in Baltimore City not make the same horrible decision that I made at the age of 15. For the last four years, I’ve had the great honor and privilege of serving as a community engagement specialist for We Are Us where we literally boots on the ground, door to door, block by block, street by street, engaging the people in this city that most people don’t want to engage.
But we’ve been up to that assignment and that task over the last two, three years. As of August 1st, I’ve kind of moved into a new space. I’m now the director of reentry services for the We Are Us organization where I have the opportunity to work more hands-on with the people behind the walls who are preparing to come back home into the community to kind of get their mind, their heart, their spirit right, to let them know that they have a debt to pay as well even after and beyond their release from incarceration to kind of fix some of the stuff that we kind of messed up in our communities. So that reentry space and work is what I’m headed into now. And I’ll leave it at that.
Speaker 6:
Hi everybody. So I’m Erica Bridgeford. And I just got to say out loud, I just now over there realized who he was. I mean, I’ve been engaging with you in community. We’ve been hugging. I did not realize he was the same person in that mediation because the work that we do at the Baltimore Community Mediation Center is confidential work. So from the mediator side of it, we had permission from Anthony and the person that he was in mediation with. A part of what they talked about gave permission for him to tell his story about their conversation and for us to tell the story. But I’ve always told it in anonymity. So I never remembered what his name was. I remembered he was 15. I know what happened, but I never remember what his name was or what he looked like. And this is my third time seeing the film and it just hit me.
I was like, “What he talking? What?” And so over there I had to like. So okay. So I’m just blessed and amazed and shocked at my own ADHD and menopausal brain right now.
But a piece of that too is that I literally meet thousands of people a year. I have trained thousands of people at this point to be mediators and in conflict management. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of mediations. So I’ve been in person and during the pandemic, it was during the pandemic. So we did it on Zoom, but in person, helping people resolve their conflicts, mediate things. We say it’s never too early and it’s never too late for people to sit down and have a conversation about what’s really going on between them. And so even after there’s been harm, even after people have filed assault charges, they still have the power to make the decisions about what does justice look like to them? What does resolution look like? All of that stuff. And so I have been, before I got involved in mediation, so I’m turning 54 years old this year and that’s when y’all ppose to say, “Girl, you look good.
Okay.” My favorite thing to do on any panel because I almost didn’t survive birth, but that’s a different conversation. So for at this point, over 30 years of my life, I’ve been doing something in this city to help nurture Baltimore’s peace and Baltimore’s joy. And so to Dayvon’s point, all of the things that my contribution has been taking the pain of my brother being murdered in the streets of Baltimore, my stepson being murdered, two of my cousins who were brothers being murdered and years apart from one, just since I was 12 years old, seeing people die in the streets of Baltimore, taking that pain and letting it remind me of the purpose that God gave me as my parents called me into being. And anywhere that I go saying, “Oh, if there’s something I don’t like, what is my soul calling me to do about it?
What is my part to do about it?” So I became a mediator in 2001. I became a trainer in 2002. I helped lead the 300 Men March movement. Now Baltimore Peace Movement, which was Baltimore Ceasefire. Funny story. When I left 300, I said, “Y’all not going to get me to lead a movement.” So I don’t know how I ended up leading a movement. I also, when I became a mediator, I was like, “Oh, executive director, that don’t look like the fun job. I’m never doing that job.” And now I’m the executive director at that same place. And so I’m blessed to be standing in my purpose and doing my purpose work. And I know that it is not a mistake that I was born at this time in history in Baltimore City to parents who were teenagers who said, “Let’s have a child that’s going to change the world.” And they intentionally named me after people who they believed were changing the world.
And then they nurtured me as a Black girl born with one hand in West Baltimore. They nurtured me to be everything I could possibly be. I scare them to this day.
I’ve been talking since I was five months old, so they never knew what was going to come out of my mouth. They always had to go meet with teachers because I was challenging authority. My children worry about me. It’s not safe to be in the streets after a murder happened. And that’s when I’m going. And so they nurtured me to not just be physically who I’m supposed to be, but spiritually to walk in strength and power and to not look at it like, “Oh, it’s dangerous.” I look at it like, “Oh, I’m covered. I got a gang of angels, ancestors, spirit gods.” Everybody walking with me. So it never occurs to me that I’m in danger. All it occurs to me is that people are hurting and I’m showing up with love. And I hope that people are open and allow me. I’m grateful that people allow me into their neighborhoods to just give them any little bit of love that they might need in those spaces.
And so like I was saying in the film, and I will keep saying, it doesn’t matter who is in office and what they do in their four or eight years that they have, that time is not enough to see what we are seeing happening right now in this city with these drastic drops. It is decades of work before them. It is people who kept saying, “We love our city. We’re not giving up on our city.” While the narrative is throw Baltimore in the trash, we kept saying, we going in the trash. You see trash, we see gems and value. And we kept pouring love into our city because our city is us. You can’t separate yourself from where you live. If you say, throw the city in the trash, where do you think you going there? I mean, you living in dumpsters now? And so a big part of my part to what’s happening right now is I am aware and I’m grateful that when people see my face, they see a symbol of hope.
When people see me and I say, “Oh, I look broken, but I’m whole, just like Baltimore looks broken and it’s whole.” I’m grateful that one thing I get to be at this time in history is a symbol of hope and hope in action, not just hope in theory.
Oh, that’s right. We’re used to passing mics down. We have our own this time.
Speaker 4:
It’s on. Okay. Well, what is it? Good afternoon, good afternoon, good afternoon. Well, I’m Ebony Harvin. I’m a pastor of New Solid Rock Church, which is located in the Pigtown area. I first want to just give honor to God. Honor to God, honor to God, honor to God. Thank God for all of you guys here. The great doctor that wrote this and put all of us together. I work with We Are Us, and I’m the project manager for the Thrive Academy. And Thrive Academy, I deal a lot with young people. And that’s my passion. I love young people. When I say I love young people, I love young people. And when I see young people, I see me. I see my children. I see nothing but greatness. And I’ve been doing this work for over 25 years. And when I say over 25 years, over 25 years.
Pastor, on Sundays because I’m a talker, I can talk, talk, talk. But this work right here, it’s about doing the work. And doing this work in these streets, as our brother Anthony mentioned, I’m with these two, like six days a week. I’ll say that we can be more in Baltimore City and there’s so much greatness in our city. We have to see beyond what we see. And I was a teen parent. I was a teen parent. And I thank God that I have an attorney. I have a school teacher. I have an entrepreneur. I did lose one of my sons to gun violence. It’ll be eight years on August the 15th, but God, but God, but God, but God. So before that happened, I was doing the work. And after it happened, it slowed me down a little. But now I just work extra harder.
I’m out there doing whatever I can to let another mother know that we’re going to do what we can to save life. We’re going to educate our young people. We’re going to make them see different and see that you can be more in Baltimore City. Some of the other things that I have done, have a used car dealership in Glen Burnie.
Speaker 6:
Come on, hustle.
Speaker 4:
Yes, yes, yes. I’ll say this, you guys. So sometimes when I get this mic in my hand, I’m like, look, let me just be quiet because I’m a little all over the place. But my most important gift, you guys, is just truly loving on our young people and loving Baltimore City. And when I say I love Baltimore City, my children say, Ma, you have so many children. What’s going on? I say, yes, the entire Baltimore City youth, they belongs to me. They belongs to me. So if y’all have any problems with the good, just, hey, let me find Pastor Ebony. So I’m not going to talk too much. I’m going to pass this mic on. But yes, you guys, just always remember this, that this city is so powerful. We’ve been through so much, but the strength, when I say the strength that this city have, the strength.
Baltimore City. And listen, five years from now, every other city that experienced some of the things, the heartache, the pain that we did, they’re going to say, wait a minute, we want to be like Baltimore City. Everybody came together on one accord because guess what? And community is unity. But once we come together, we’re going to be that change that guess what the world need to see. Not just other city that the world needs to see. So you guys, I’m going to pass this on to. He said, don’t pass the mic. I’m passing the mic. Okay. Listen, listen. I said I’m going to pass. I’m going to be quiet. Okay. I’m not passing the mic. Go for it.
Speaker 7:
Hey, good afternoon. My name is Delmont Player. I’m a lot of things. So I’m We Are Us. I’m ICAN. I’m LEC, which is Lived Experience Committee under Carolyn Shrugs. I’m AVP, Alternative to Violence Program. Absolutely. But in a nutshell, I’m the youth that you see out here. So quick story, I went to prison when I was 17 years old. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t write. I became one of Maryland’s most violent and disruptive prisoners. I was sent out of state. I did Fed Time. I’ve been in and out of Supermax. I’ve been beat by the police, rives broke and everything. I was probably one of the worst prisoners in Maryland State history. And I don’t say that. I say that humbly because I want you to understand the pits that I climbed out of. But at one point, something clicked, something changed, because the more you know, the better you have to do.
I’m a Muslim. I’m an FOY, so I’m a husband, I’m a brother. But what I often like to say is that for me, the work really began to resonate for me when the gang culture really ushered into the prison system. I didn’t come in under the gang culture. When I came in, it was man everybody for every man for themselves. But at some point, the gang culture began to usher into the system. And I’ll never forget, I came into the day room one day. And I’m not saying to say this is like when the change started because for a couple years I was already fighting with who I was becoming and who the world had been telling me I was, who the system had been telling me I was, who the court systems told me I was, who the streets told me I was. But I came in the day room.
It was the older guy. They were one of our pioneers from back in the day. And when you get old in the system, it tend to chip away at you. So he wasn’t as active, as agile as he used to be. And I came to the day room and he said, back then they used to call me by my last name. He said, “Lord Player, they won’t let me get on the phone.” And I was like, “What you mean?” He said, “Man, they saying because they was clicked up. This click had this phone, this click.” So what I did, I walked around the day room. I went to everybody on the phone because I get it in. And I said, “I’m at the U. I’m out of you.” So they clips begin to end. Yeah, I’m stealing. So I would hang the phone upside. That means ain’t nobody on it, but don’t touch it.
Let the phones hang. So at some point, about three, maybe four phones was hanging. Somebody came to the day room and said, “Man, I’m trying to get on the phone. Who on the phone? I’m still at the microwave cooking.” Somebody say, “Lord, player.” So he come over to the phone. “He said, Lord, player. “He turned and me say,” Player, “he said,” Player, you on the phone? What phone you getting? “I said,” I’m getting on all of them. “I said,” Yeah, I’m getting on all of them. And I’m with all the dumb, whatever. We can do whatever. “And like I said, God had a plan. Allah had a plan for me because really I suppose died behind those walls. But I noticed that the young brothers from various different organizations was willing to follow me in my ignorance and in my stupidity. And I realized at that time that I’d had about 17 years and nothing had changed.
All the work I continuously put in, it never stopped the next kid or next man from rising to think he can take the throne. So it never really stops. So the next day, what I did was I called a group of little young brothers in the yard and I grabbed a book called Mine is the Master by James Allen. It’s a compilation of all the books he ever wrote. He wrote a lot of people know him mostly for as a man thank you. And I just would read little parables out of that book to them, and then we would just build on it. And from there, it just trickled in my teachers from Moss number six, all that. And it continued to trickle. And then I started hearing about what different organizations was doing in the streets, Peace Movement, We Our Us, Baltimore Brothers, Uncle T Channel for Change.
So what I did is I got all the good men that was in the institution that I was in, and we went to all the various organizations, BGF, Blood, Crip, Murder Inc. DMI, whatever. And we brought them onto a board in a commission. This is how I met Carolyn Shruggs. We brought them onto a board under a program that we ran called GRIP. We would’ve overseas and GRIP was gang response intervention program. And what we did was every time a beef happened, we went on the compound and brought all the gang leaders into a room to squash it. And then there was meetings that took place in the chat when the Nation of Islam chat where I would stand between two knife slingers essentially and tell them that, man, your guys can’t move and they guys can’t over. That’s what I talk about, putting our lives on the line.
So I was mediating conflict behind a wall that spills out into the community. One of my biggest supporters to this day is the men and women that I left behind the prison walls. I still mediate conflict so it don’t spill out here into society. So that’s who I am in a nutshell. And that’s my portion.
Speaker 3:
And again, for me, it’s important for people to hear those stories and hear that context. You know what I’m saying? Because it’s important, I think, to normalize the fact that this work is happening and what it takes. And what I hope people get from these responses is that this is work. Each of the people on the stage, they’re the ones that got to do it, the work that they’re doing. It takes a certain kind of person, pedigree, perspective to do it. Pastor Ebony, you talked about the importance to you of young people and really loving on young people. Could you talk about what are some of the misconceptions that people have when it comes to youth, particularly as it relates to gun violence? What are some of the things that for you, you think it’s important for this audience to know about young people and gun violence in Baltimore City?
Speaker 4:
One thing, we have to stop judging young people from what area they’re from. We have to stop judging them because of their family members. A lot of our young people are judged and truly you don’t even know them. We have to learn how to understand that none of our young people are born murderers. None of them are born criminals. Some type of trauma happened in their life. A lot of our young people are on survival mode. But if you get a chance just to know them, not the costume that they have on, because guess what? I’m going home. I’m 10 years old and I’m going to a house where my mom is out there getting high. I got to take care of a seven-year-old and a five-year-old. I don’t know where my father at. So instead of us judging, how about we just have a conversation with them?
See what they need. How can I help you? Because a lot of times these young people just need some love. They need some support. But as long as we look at them, they coming outside, that little boy bed, that little girl, look at her. But you don’t know their story. So we have to help them rewrite their story. And I’m going to say this real quick. I received my honorary doctorate degree. And at first I was sitting up there like, wait a minute, me? My son went to school all these years. And my son, he said, Ma, let me explain something to you. When I was up there, sitting up there studying at night, you was at a hospital where a child was shot. He said, when I was sitting up there worrying about a test, you was up there praying because guess what? Some little girl or somebody, something just happened to him.
He said, For 25 years, I’ll watch you work hard. And when I said work hard, work hard. He said, when I was sitting up there saying, I’m going to pass this test. He said, look, the test that I thought that I was going to pass, you was up there making things happen, relocating families, relocating young men that got caught up in mess. He said, so you deserve it. So I say on today, you guys, I didn’t. I was sitting up there like, wait a minute. Do I really deserve this? I do. I do. I’ve done over 300 funerals in Baltimore City, but God, but God. So I was able to help that family or help them in the midst of their pain. So I say this back to your question, I’m a little all over the place, so y’all mind me. Okay? All right, y’all got to get a Sunday morning message.
But no, no, no, no. So let me get real back. One thing, just please, please stop judging our young people from where they live. Stop it. When you get to know these young people, you’ll say, My God. Some of these young people have been through some things that in my 50 years I haven’t experienced, but God. And when I say but God, but God, I have a young man, and I’ll say this, he lost his mother and his father. He was 15 years old. He got himself in some trouble. His grandmother said, “What did you do to my grandson?” I said, “I listened to him because a lot of times we got to get to the root of the problem in order to fix a problem.” She said, “Wait a minute. I sent him to this therapist. I sent him everywhere.” I said, “He needs somebody to experience some things.” I said, “See, I’ve been through some things.
Amen. So I can listen. I can relate to him. Okay?” I said, “So instead of us you guys judging our young people, give them a chance.” And when I say give them a chance, just give them a chance. Just listen to him. When you see them young men on the corner, don’t walk past them. Say, “How you doing?” When I see young men, guess what I don’t say? I don’t have to say, “Pull your pants up.” Oh, that’s past Ebony right there. They’re going to pull their pants up because it’s about the relationship. And I’ll say this, when you’re doing this work, I fear nobody but God. I’m not afraid to go to East Baltimore, West Baltimore. And I grew up in Charli Hill. Love Cherry Hill. Amen. When I say love Char Hill, love Cherry Hill. So you guys, just one thing. Just always that young person want.
They want to know that, hey, somebody care about me. Somebody love me. How many want to feel loved? How many want to feel loved? That’s it right there. And that’s All they want. They just looking for someone to love them. And I’ll say this, I love on our young people too. I love the hell out of them. That’s it. There we go.
Speaker 5:
Davon, can I add something to that? You
Speaker 4:
Answer while I’m passing the mic. Okay, let me stop passing the mic.
Speaker 5:
Can I add something to that on the young one of you?
Yes, sir. We took a group of young people to Dr. Rashim’s facility about two weeks ago, about 25 of our young people in the Baltimore Brothers Program to help Dr. Rashim with another project specifically towards youth that I hope she’ll share some more information about. But she started, when we brought them in the room, she started them off with a question that I’m going to ask you. She asked the young people that we brought to her, “What percentage do you think of young people in Baltimore City are involved in crime and violence?” And we heard all kinds of numbers, didn’t we, Doc? One said like 90%. One was like 99%. All kinds of numbers. But the actual facts, the truth is less than 5%.
But there’s a narrative that’s prevailing, that’s pervasive, that young people are not just inherently criminal, but pervasively involved in crime and violence. There’s just not no truth in it at all. And what troubles me the most about the narrative is not just the projection of the narrative, is that some people will allow themselves to be used as vehicles to portray the narrative. I’m talking about people in positions of leadership, authority, and power who make comments about young people that are just not rooted in facts, who take isolated incidents involving young people and allow themselves, their office, their position to portray narratives as if all young people in Baltimore City are doing this. I just wanted to add that to that answer.
Speaker 3:
I appreciate that. No, it’s good. So Erica, one of the things that I think in this kind of Western civilization, Eurocentric cultural environment, oftentimes spirituality gets marginalized. People tend to marginalize it. And a lot of what you talked about in the film and even what you’ve talked about a little bit on this panel so far, the importance of spirituality. And again, that’s another one of those things that for some people can feel abstract. Can you speak to the spiritual impact that the work has had and why that’s such an important aspect of the work?
Speaker 6:
Okay. So I’m going to try to describe it in a simple way, like how I would describe it to children. I used to be a preschool teacher and an elementary school teacher, so I think. Okay. All right. And what you’re talking about is what I call colonizer reindeer games. Y’all like that? Free to use it. Trademark archabrish boy. Okay. Where like, yes. Okay. So we are all more unseen than we are seen. And this is not about religion or who you call God or any of that. It is just a scientific fact. Human beings, what you are as a being, you are more unseen stuff than you are seen stuff. If we remove all of the space out of your human body, your physical mass would fit on the tip of a pen. And I mean, not a writing pen, I mean like a needle pen.
So there’s this physical aspect of there’s more to us than what we can actually see and touch, which means there’s much more going on with us.
And so if you ever wonder if that’s true, if there’s way more of you that’s unseen, your thoughts are an unseen realm. You’re right now having a gazillion thoughts that can never be physically spoken, heard, manifested. But they are a part of how you feel right now. They are a part of how you’re experiencing this. We’ve all been saying the same words to everybody in this room, but everybody in this room have not heard us say the same things because of the unseen part of you that is so vast and that influences the experience you are having as a human being. And so what we do with that unseen part of us that whispers quiet nudges to us about what we could do, what we should do, what we shouldn’t do, make this right, make that left, don’t answer that email. Ignore that person. Call your cousin and apologize.
Y’all know the shit y’all be ignoring.
There’s so much about who we are that when we just manifest a little bit of it, it changes things. And here’s the very elementary example that I used some years ago when the Baltimore Ceasefire Now, the peace movement started that it just occurred to me recently we’re seeing now. So in 2017, people were being killed every 19 hours in Baltimore. And Baltimore had more murder than it had ever seen in its history. And people were saying there’s nothing we can do about it. So murder is this vibration. So I’ve just got finished talking to you about how much you are vibration. So there’s this vibration about murder that makes you feel like you as one person, there’s nothing you can do about that. But there’s this unseen part of you that says, “But I want to do something. I feel like if I was just more kind to people because you don’t know what people are going through.
I feel like if I just shared that post that I saw that was positive so I could add to positive algorithms and the interwebs that are also vibration.” And so I compared it to an ocean because that’s what people would say. “Oh, y’all just spitting in the ocean. This little bit of stuff y’all doing, it’s not going to work. Y’all just spitting in the ocean. “So I was like,” They right. I’m just spitting in the ocean. “But if the ocean is red and the unseen parts of me are nudging me to go take a little dropper full of blue ink and just start dropping it in that ocean, somebody’s going to say,” She crazy. What is she over there doing? “Just like they told Harriet Tubman.
It’s crazy. It’s dangerous. The tide going to come in and take you away. People going to come and try to take your dropper away from you like I can’t go find another dropper and find some more blue ink. You know what I mean? Okay. And while people saying that, somebody is going to say, but that little part where she at is starting to turn purple, it looked like. Right? And somebody else is going to say, I always wanted to put some blue ink in the ocean and they going to come and put their little blue ink. And more and more people are going, they’re putting their little drops in the ocean. And before you know it, the whole ocean is turning purple like it started doing in 2023 when the murder rate was 20% less. And people was like, wait a minute. Something is happening.
And we was like, I’ve been over here at the ocean. Before y’all could see it start to change, I’ve been following my spirit. I’ve been following the calls on my heart. I’ve been healing the things inside me that need to be healed that I know are standing in the way and blocking more of my power, more of my authority, more of my confidence in whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing in this world. And I’m over here working on me while y’all calling me crazy and my blue drops are blessed. And they call more people who say, uh-oh, well, I want to be a blue dropper too. And now that the ocean is purple and looking more blue, people that’s been talking trash about Baltimore want the credit. People that just want to lock everybody up in Baltimore want you to think it’s their policies that’s changing things.
And so the spiritual aspect by science, by universal law, when you are focused on something with strong emotion, you have no choice but to manifest into your physical experience, that thing. That is just how it works. That’s how creation works. And so we have been focused on Baltimore’s joy with strong emotion. We’ve been focused on Baltimore’s love, Baltimore’s value, Baltimore’s gangster with strong emotion. There was no choice but for us to start experiencing in our physical realm, all of the things that we know God created us to be.
Speaker 3:
So Brother Delmont and Brother Anthony, this next question is for the two of you. Both of you mentioned both on this panel and in the movie, the importance of doing work behind the walls and its influence on the work that’s happening in the streets of Baltimore. Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of, and walk through some of the mechanics of the work that happens behind the walls and how that translates out into the streets in terms of the work to reduce violence?
Speaker 7:
I knew he was going to do that.
Speaker 2:
Fight, fight, fight, fight.
Speaker 7:
So growing up in the juvenile justice system, I did Skid Straight. I did Big Brother. I did Choice Program. I did Big Brother. So I did all the youth programs, but none of them worked. The reason why they didn’t work because I didn’t sit in front of men that I resonated with. So the people they would sit me in front of was guys who was nothing like me, had experienced nothing like I experienced, who didn’t have brothers that was in and out of prison, cousins that was in and out of prison, mothers and fathers who were strung out on drugs. Everybody, guys that they hung around with 10, 15 years they sent you. So that’s the one thing that I think make us so impactful with the young men. But to be more specific is without saying names, I’ll give you a scenario of an entire family.
So a father gets locked up when me and my guys basically growing up. His father goes to jail for shooting somebody a couple blocks over. Both of them got sons. So before we even encounter each other, our families is already telling us that we don’t get along. We don’t deal with them. We don’t really know what the whole situation is about. We just inherit a beef. So now we grow up and we condition that we just don’t like these guys. So any little thing triggers the beef. Now a kid goes to jail. A father is already in jail. He goes to jail for somebody that’s involved in his family. So now he got to what we call home field advantage because the father’s already been on the scene 15, 20 years in the prison system and he considered a soldier. So now a young man has to walk into a prison system at 16, 17 years old and contend against grown men who are hardened criminals, who have been serving time for 15, 16 years, who have all kind of connects through the prison system.
So now he has to rise up and rise to the occasion. So situation like this, so now he get in, he has no uncles. He has no big cousins on the yard. So in response to that, since you did that behind the walls, and that’s my homeboy and we out here, we going to address it out here. So since you did that and we can’t get you and you got the prison system and he can’t do nothing to you, we’re going to touch your peoples out here in the street. So we going to send you a message from out here. Every time something happened, we going to hit one of yours out here. So stepping in between it, it don’t really seem like much. But the ripple effect of a lot of people in a lot of those murders, a lot of that stuff come from behind the prison walls.
Orders, hits, because somebody get touched on a yard and they feel like they can’t do nothing. So I’m going to send somebody out there to do something to your mother. There are tapes and phone recordings where they have men on the phone because somebody took somebody off for some drugs behind the wall and say, “Man, go to that house and do something, beat his mother up.” Because since he won’t act like he ain’t playing, people get on the phone, they call people parents and tell them, “If you don’t pay that money, we going to do X, Y, and Z to him.” And so how do they children respond to that? So mediating conflict behind the wall, it has a profound effect. And not just mediating conflict from behind the wall, but mediating conflict from this side. When I was speaking at the situation what happened with one of our elders and I was just saying people so quick to, like Pastor Ebony said, throw the youth away.
And the brain science is real that the brain doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25. That is a true thing. It’s not that. No. Am I saying that I didn’t know that I was doing right from wrong? Hell no. I definitely knew that.That’s why I tried to put on black to try to disguise it. But what I’m saying is you did not know the magnitude of the prophetic effect it was going to have and the ripple effect on yourself, on your family. So when something like that happened with a youth out here, that man got family on the inside. So now we got to be on the phones mediating conflict because if those young men get caught and go behind those walls, they got to stand on business. So it’s somebody back there that want to address that. If just for no reason, just because he got on the phone and heard his mother say, “Yeah, they out here doing that.” He say, “Yeah, when he come back, I’m going to knock his head off just for GP.” So yeah, it’s very important that we are mediating conflict on both sides of the fence because I’m telling you, the ripple effect that it has when somebody is stabbed behind those prison walls or somebody is shot out here on the streets, whether they’re part of organization or whatever, it spins behind those walls and vice versa.
It spills out into the streets.
Speaker 3:
And Brother Anthony, let me add to the question because I think the other thing that I’ve heard you address that I think is important for this audience to hear is WeRS has the Stop the Beef hotline. No law enforcement involvement in that process. Can you talk about the importance of that? Because I think there’s some people who can’t fathom why it’s important in that particular context for law enforcement to not be involved.
Speaker 5:
Absolutely. I’ll say this, right? There’s so much that we do on the Stop the Beef side of this work that you’re just never going to hear about. You’re never going to read about. You’re never going to see on Instagram, Facebook, that part of the work. Because it involves a level of confidentiality where if the individuals involved don’t trust us, not only do you not stop the beef, but you potentially put yourself in harm’s way, as he articulated in the documentary. So all of the people, all of the parties involved have some sort of connection to the criminal legal system. So traditionally, that’s just not going to work with law enforcement in the room. Not only is it not going to work with law enforcement in the room, but we’re never even going to get them to the mediation. If they believe in the slightest way we have any connection to law enforcement, that we cooperate with law enforcement in any way, they’re never even going to be in that room.
That’s just not going to happen. That’s the reality of it. So that’s not to say that law enforcement doesn’t have a role to play in solving crime and violence in the community. That’s separate from mediating conflict, completely separate from resolving beefs and disputes, especially where blood has already been spilled.
So involving law enforcement from that perspective makes no sense at all for us. And you’re never going to hear about that. You’re never going to see two people that called their hotline, that called one of the mediators and said, “Bro, they shot my brother. I’m going to burn half of East Baltimore to the ground.” You’re never going to hear that. And you’re never going to see our response to it. You’re going to see our public response to mass shooting events. You’re going to see that. You’re not going to see what we do behind the scene in terms of who we calling, who we talking to, what we talking to them about. Because that confidentiality has to be there and that level of trust has to be there between us and them. So that’s the reason for the no police involvement. But for this audience particularly also, according to the Department of Justice statistics, over 650,000 people are released from prison throughout America every year.
650,000. I want that number to sink in. These are the number of people that are coming home from prison every year, according to the federal government. In that same report, they said that here in the state of Maryland, almost 10,000 people are in this revolving door of going into prison, coming home from prison every year, right here in the state of Maryland. All of them are coming home to a community near you.
So it only makes sense that we put some effort into rehabilitating the 2.2 million people that we have locked up behind these prison walls. We incarcerate more people in this country than any nation on the planet. There are some states that incarcerate more people than any other civilized nation on the planet. But as a society, we give zero thought. Zero though to the fact that these two million people, the majority of them at some point are coming home. And if there is nothing done to help repair them, then it leads, it produces a cycle of crime and violence that continues. So we got to get to this tendency, the orientation and the mind to return to criminal behavior and conduct. And that don’t stop when they’re released. It actually starts when you send them there. We have to be involved in that. So that’s the part I’ll add to the incarceration piece.
Can I say
Speaker 8:
One thing?
Speaker 3:
So I’ll let y’all say two quick things. After they say what they’re about to say, we’re going to do Q&A and we’ll pass a microphone around. So if you have questions, you can raise your hand. We’ll bring a microphone to you. Go ahead. I
Speaker 4:
Just want to say one thing. When it comes to the Stop the Beef team, in order to stop a beef, you have to have a relationship. And when I say have a relationship, have a relationship. And I deal a lot with young people, you guys. They have to trust you. And when I say trust you, trust the fact that I know that they care about me, they want the best for me. So it’s all about the relationships. So if we are us have a situation, they can reach out to other organizations that’s trustworthy. And one thing I thank God for the organizations that we all work for, we don’t have a foot in and a foot out. Got to be real about this thing. It’s no halfway thing. Either you’re going to be real or you’re going to be fake. And when you are in that position, these young men and young ladies, because there’s a lot of young ladies now that’s carrying guns, you have to be able to put your life on the line.
There’s many a times that our lives just there. Not knowing if we’re going back home, but God. But one thing, relationship, keep that. You have to have a good relationship. And I’m going to be quiet, okay? There we go.
Speaker 6:
About the reentry part, just how important it is to. Just listening to Delmont talk, it’s like, oh, he’s somebody that society would’ve been like, oh, throw him away. You one of the most dangerous and we can’t control you and the choice program ain’t even work. And they’re saying like, okay, throw him away and look at what we have. And so all of the research shows that what happens in the first 48 hours when somebody comes home from prison determines where they’re going to be three and six months later. And so if they come home and they have not resolved conflicts, if they have not rebuilt relationships with the people who’ve been raising their children, if they have not really gotten clear about what does getting a job look like when I come home, I know I’m going to go live with my aunt, but really what’s going to happen when I go there?
If they have not had hard conversations with people who they believe have harmed them. And so when we do reentry mediation and people can two years before they come home, we go into the prison. Whoever they said they wanted to talk to comes in. It took a lot to just build a relationship enough with the Department of Corrections to get them to let us be in rooms with the person who’s incarcerated and who they want to mediate with and no COs can listen and no COs are in the room.That was five good years of Lord Charcotian banging her head against brick walls to be like, no. Because nobody is more institutionalized than people who work within those systems. So all of those people kept saying to us, oh, if y’all come into prison and work with them, they going to be tricking y’all into sending them money and sending them drugs.
And I’m like, boo, it’s just y’all just bringing the drugs in here. I don’t know what y’all talking about.
But when people are coming home, if they have not built strong relationships, if they have not rebuilt trust, if they have not resolved conflict, if we don’t understand that there is no such thing as an offender who has not first been a victim of a lot of things, sometimes it’s a mediation between the son who one of the things he went to jail for is he kept stealing from his mother while he was selling and using drugs. And him and mom are now in mediation before he comes home. So you would go in thinking, oh, he’s the offender, she’s the victim. And we go, okay, what do you all want to talk about? And the first thing out of his mouth to his mother is, how come you always put men before me? And that’s where we’re starting the conversation. And so whatever it is that can be.
And getting into prison is very hard work. It’s as difficult as getting into schools. So just the comparison is crazy. But to get in and be able for people to really have real conversations where there’s no CO presence, there’s no police presence, there’s nobody that works in the prison. There’s just the grassroots volunteer mediators and the people who are having the conflict and need to work it out and make plans about what does a smooth transition home really look like? What is success? What is healing? All of that stuff, what does it really look like? The research shows that people who have that opportunity are in that first two hour session, 8% less likely to reengage with the criminal justice system at all. They can have as many mediations in prison as they want before they come home. With every additional session, it increases by another 10% that they’ll be less likely to reengage with the system.
And all that is happening is they’re building a stronger relationship with the support systems or whatever it is coming home is going to look like. They’re building a stronger foundation to actually, when they come home in that first 48 hours, it’s going to determine a much healthier place they’ll be three and six months later.
Speaker 3:
All right. So what I’ll do is if you have a question, I’ll ask you to raise your hand and a microphone will come right to you. You’ll see a young man in the red vest coming to you with the microphone.
Speaker 8:
Thank you. And just so much respect to all of you for giving hope to Baltimore and our communities. It’s humble to be in your presence today. And I wanted one shout out to Tawanda Jones who’s been doing work in the community to get accountability amongst the police and to reduce the amount of police brutality and violence in our communities that also leads to the violence, community violence. They’re interlinked. And so somewhat in that vein, and I think some of you were kind of touching on this, the fact that our state’s attorney is trying to take out safe streets through the Inspector General’s office, both the state’s attorney’s office and the police trying to grab credit for the things that we all know. I’ve been saying this for a long time, that the only reason we’ve had the reduction in crime is because of folks like you guys doing the work, people who really understand the community and are been a part of it.
But at the same time, I heard you say it takes everybody and everyone has a role, et cetera. But how do you move in those spaces where the police, law enforcement and the state’s attorney’s office are involved? You can’t extract them from everything. We could do it from conflict mediation, et cetera. So the question is, how do you guys move in those spaces to maintain enough of a relationship, but also not to be trapped in it as well?
Speaker 5:
Absolutely. Yeah. Good question. Absolutely a good question. It’s common sense that law enforcement is part of the village. It has its role, its responsibility, its assignment. And that’s why I started with the quote from Eddie Conway that said, “Do your little part.” That’s their part that they have to do. And we hope that they would do that part. We’re not advocating that we don’t want law enforcement to do their job. But what we are saying is that in the work that we do, just specifically in terms of the conflict mediation, that doesn’t work with law enforcement there. I would hope that the state’s attorney is committed to doing his job Right? Because if your idea is that it is acceptable to kill men, women, and children, if your idea is that it is okay, it is cool to harm the elderly in the community, then prison is a mercy for that individual.
But that’s not our job to do, but we will hope that the people whose job it is to do that will deal with that as they should. And they have every right to claim whatever credit that they feel they deserve for doing that. But we are clear in terms of the work that we do. In terms of reducing homicides in non-fatal shootings, we know what we have contributed to because we know what we do on a day-to-day basis throughout every area of the city. So I want to be clear that everybody has a role to play. Everybody has a part to play. There’s no part of the village that gets to sit on the sideline in this and say, “Nah, I’m going to sit this one out.” So we hope that BPD is doing their job and improving that doing they job. Anybody that will say that the Baltimore City Police Department in 2026 is even remotely close to the Baltimore City Police Department from 2015 is just, you’ve been missing.
I don’t know where you’ve been at. Completely different institution, but that’s not our job to talk about. I mean, we don’t talk about it. We let them talk about it. Do y’all job talking about it and we’re going to do what we do over here. We interact. Of course, we interact in the work that we do. We’ve been to plenty community engagement walks with law enforcement. They come, they show up and we politely tell them, look here, we got this.
We’ve been doing this pretty good on our own. Thank you for showing up. They had all of the community meetings, events. We’re in the same space, the same room. So we’re not ducking or not working with each other in a collaborative aspect of doing the work, but we talking specifically about the conflict mediation part. There’s no police involvement in that from our perspective.
Speaker 6:
So the way that I have navigated in all of my work throughout the 30 or however many years with law enforcement specifically and city agencies, state’s attorney, all of that is we just explain to them why it behooves them to do their part in supporting what it is we’re doing. So Patricia Jessame, she was state’s attorney way back in the day. And we did research that showed if people use mediation with us, it reduces the court’s load, right? Because people can make agreements in mediation to drop the charges because they’ve actually resolved whatever the conflict was. And so now the state’s attorney, all they got to do is honor that the people wanted to drop their charges.
And so that made Patricia Jestami set back in the late ’90s a contract every year to fund a position for one of our case workers so that we receive stuff from the state’s attorney when people have conflict. And so when and Ivan Bates comes along, who. When and Ivan Bates comes along, who when we were both on Governor Westmore’s public safety transition team, him and I had very different ideas about what should happen. His office signs a contract with the community mediation center every year to send us money for that position. And I’m not sure he knows it. And I’m glad that he doesn’t know it because from what I’ve experienced, I think that if he knew it, something weird would happen where maybe suddenly we would not get that money.
But in building those relationships and saying, it behooves you. You live in Baltimore too, or you have to work in Baltimore too. And so this work is helping to make your job easier. If we are doing police complaint mediations where a community member who had a problem with the police officer gets to sit down and have an honest conversation with that officer who’s in that community, y’all are saying you need police community relationships to be better so that the murder rate can come down and so that policing can be better. Don’t you want to be seen and saying you support community being able to have these hard, confidential conversations? You know what I mean? And so if you are and honoring individual officers humanity. So Erica Bridgeford is an abolitionist from that standpoint. I think the police department need. I just get rid of the whole thing, do something else.
That’s not where we are in human history right now. I honor and understand that. So I work within while visioning the world that I want, I work within the world that I have. And so from that standpoint, I can honor individual officers as human beings when they show up directly in front of me. And so if you are respecting and honoring what I do, if I show up because somebody got killed on this block and here I am doing a sacred space ritual and I look up and two police cars have blocked off the block because I’m crazy and they got killed in the street. So I’m kissing the ground right in the middle of the street where they were. And the police see that. And without a conversation, they just block off the street so that nobody interferes with the sacred work that’s being done.
I’m going to go over there and hug them and thank them. Thank you for being a human person happened to be wearing a. And you used your authority in that moment to benefit the healing of this community. And so when we treat each other with humanity in the moments that we can and in the work that I do, I’m helping to, when there are those disputes between police and community, I’m a bridge that can help them work on understanding one another as well. While in my personal life, I might be totally against policing, period. You know what I mean? But when I got my mediator hat on, I’m a trusted bridge because in that bridge role, if I hold up one side, this is the bridge and I hold up the side that I agree with, everybody falls into the boundary. So the ethics of our work is very important, whatever your ethics are in it.
And when institutions and agencies and policymakers see that you stand in the ethics of the work that you do without attacking and demonizing them while holding them accountable when it’s necessary, if your humanity shows up, somebody’s humanity is going to show up in that and it’s going to make it go how it’s supposed to go.
Speaker 5:
David, I also want to add this to that. And a lot of times what we get caught up into, we get caught up into the politics of law enforcement, the offices, deceits in terms of the. Because it’s a whole different reality on the ground as opposed to the people who are sitting in the seats running the offices and the administration. It’s a totally different reality. On the ground, BPD has phenomenal community engagement officers that we interact with on a daily basis. I mean, we know them, we got their numbers on speed dial. They have our numbers. So we interact with them daily on the ground. I mean, the real people. And a lot of times that gets lost in the translation of the politics that you see in newspapers and on news shows. And like the chief of school, we are in the schools all day.
We’re in all of Baltimore City public schools engaging young people. So I mean, the chief of Baltimore School Police, Jeff Short is one of us. He’s with We Are Us. So his staff, his team, they do the same kind of work we do from a community perspective, not from a law enforcement perspective. So I mean, just wanted to separate the politics from the community engagement and the people that do the work on a daily basis. They love Baltimore just like we do. And the people with the boots on the ground are doing the work from a community engagement perspective, not necessarily from a law enforcement perspective.
Speaker 7:
Yeah. I was just going to add, when I was growing up, it used to be a thing called officer friendly.
So what we do, we don’t dislike the police. And that’s never to be misunderstood. We love good police. We love good police work. You know what I’m saying? Because if we have a situation with a stop the beef where we need to relocate somebody, we call good police. When we have a situation when a brother need to turn himself in to mediate a conflict because people is in the streets hunting him, we call good police. But again, like Anthony said, you’re not going to really hear about that. You’re never going to hear about us meeting an officer or a couple officers in a house in West Baltimore for a brother to turn himself in. You going to see them on TV walking them into the building like they went and caught him. But we respect good policing, but we have a job to do. I always think about Bill Belichick.
If you ever had been fortunate enough to go to their arena, it’s no signs or nowhere on the wall. Just one thing when you walk in that building and say, do your job. So that’s what we do. We do our job. And then we expect good policemen to do their job when it’s their turn. But when we out and we mediating, we trying to stop it before we even get there. We trying to stop somebody before they pull a trigger to have to engage with the police. We trying to alleviate all that. We trying to cut that off before we even get to that point. Because when you get to the point of no return, then you get into, like he said, a lot of unnecessary politics. So yeah, we work closely with a lot. There’s a lot of, like you said, speed down everything else.
So I definitely want to think that we not, and I often say this when I’m speaking about Stop the Beef because I’m one of the mediators, that the reason why we do no police involvement, because we come from a community and a culture where you’ve seen men from the nation of Islam had to stand in between police and the community doing the Freddie Gray ride. Because our people in our communities have a distrust and a distaste for law enforcement because things have happened that went uncovered, beaten alleys, drugs planning on them. So the last person they want to call is the police. The last person they want to talk to or see is the police. So now you’re starting to see when, because of work like that, you seeing officers sometime may come out and it goes. So now they starting to get to like, oh, when the officer, well, oh yeah, that’s officer such and such.
When I grew up, we knew the officer’s name. High them bright eyes. High them what’s the name? We got out of there because we knew them. They knew our parents. But now they trying to put people in the community to police a community that they don’t know. So when you try to police a people that you don’t know, it’s always going to be conflict. So they got to be boots on the ground also back in the community so you can have an officer so everybody knows. So we come in. You can walk in your community and stop something that I can’t because it’s your community. But if I walk into them little brothers and I say, man, they see me coming. And I go to one of the brothers. And this is real quick. I was just in Hershey Park the other day, literally with some other student because I’m a student support staff member.
Ran into a couple of my little Baltimore brothers. They out there and I jumped up on them. Yeah. Sent a picture to Captain Andrew. And when I was walking off, the grandmother didn’t know who I was, but moms did. So when I was walking off, I heard her say, “Who was that?” She said, “Well, that’s one of the brothers. They everywhere.” And he and Hershey parked acting crazy. I’m just popping up on a whole nother gig. So yeah, you know what I’m saying? But you got to know your people’s communication and relationships matters no matter what you’re doing in this line of work in the community.
Speaker 3:
So after Pastor Ebony makes a remark, we actually have time for one more audience question. Yeah. So Pastor Ebony, you go ahead and then we’ll address what’s happening in the back. Go
Speaker 4:
Ahead. I just want to say one thing. As you mentioned, back in from like 2003 to 2010, police department. And as far as experience, it was hard. Certain things that I witnessed in Baltimore City. And at that time I was a youth pastor. 2018, so I grew up in Cherry Hill. And I’ll say this real quick. My son was murdered August the 15th of 2018. And I would always pray, do the prayer walks for Safe Street and Cherry Hill. Never worked for them. Self-employed. Did 20 something years with Marriott General Manager. However, when my son was murdered and I made it to the scene, I threw my wallet up. So at that time, Safe Street workers, they were trying to find my wallet. The two detective that came in my office at my dealership two days later was like, “Hey, your coworkers, they got rid of all the witnesses.” So I’m saying, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah, one of the officers told me you work for Safe Street, so unfortunately we don’t have anything for you.” And I’m sitting up there.
I’m hurting. Oh my God. And I’m sitting up there saying, wait a minute. First of all, I never was on that payroll. What I do, I volunteer. Bust my butt every day. Hard work dealing with these young people out there. But because they assumed or some of the officers was not doing their job, did not like me. They told these two detective, oh yeah, she worked with Safe Streets. They got rid of all of the witness. So maybe they’re going to figure it out. Maybe they’re going to go and try to hurt them. And I asked that officer, the detective, I said, “Sir, are you serious?” I said, “You just told me that you can’t do anything about my son murder.” He wasn’t in the streets or anything that because someone assumed that I worked with Safe Streets and because they don’t like these guys, they’re not going to do anything about my son murder.
Three weeks later, but I tell you about God.
One of the detective, he called me, he apologized. He was like, “I want to tell you that I’m sorry.” And I was so hurt. I told him, I said, “Get up out my office.” I said, “Leave.” I said, “Leave.” I went down to Southern District and I asked them, the lead detective at the lead office at that time, I said, “Yes, I fight for these children, but wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong is wrong. Right is right. That’s in my book. I don’t care who you are.” And I said, “Because you assume, not knowing who I am, not knowing I work hard.” I’m the general manager at that time, I think at the Fairfield at BWI. I said, “You assume because I’m out here in the community working, that I work with this particular group. So you’re telling these detective not to investigate my son murder. Till this day, the young man has not been arrested.” So when I say that, it’s hard sometime, and I thank God for Colonel Russell because yes, me as a pastor, because of certain things that I witnessed in Baltimore City with the police department, with my own eyes or what they done to young people, it’s hard.
It’s hard. So I’m learning. I would say this year, 2026, I see more officers that genuinely care now in doing their job. My thing is, do your job. Don’t beat them up. That was my thing. Lock them up if they’re doing wrong, but you’re not going to beat them up in my face. You’re not going to plant guns on them. You’re not going to do things like that. So when you say as far as relationship and trust in the officers, I would say today I do. I was a chaplain as well for five years for Baltimore City Police Department. And they had to learn me and I had to learn them. But that’s one thing that I tell you guys. If you don’t know someone, don’t judge them. Get to know who that person is. And this other detective now, he’ll reach out, say, “You know what?
I’m truly, truly sorry. I know it been a long time. I’ve retired, but I’m going to do whatever I can to help you.” So say this, we all go by off of what we experience, what we experience. A lot of these children go off of what they experience. A lot of young men and young ladies that I dealt with in Baltimore City, I had people calling me, “Hey, can you take this gun?” And I’m saying, “A gun?” Well, Sarge said, “If I don’t get a gun, they’re going to plant this gun on me.” So our children experience so much. So then we wonder why they don’t trust the police. That’s the reason why. That’s the reason why. Our young black men have been through so much, but God, you guys, but God. So listen, I’m a pastor, but just to answer your question, I know I’m going to be quiet.
I know I keep saying I’m a pastor, but just to answer your question, it’s all about relationship with the good ones. And I’ll say the good ones. It’s a lot of good ones out here that get up, put that uniform on, that genuinely care. And they are the ones that we have relationships with, that we trust. So that’s it. Yeah. Had to get that off of me.
Speaker 3:
All right. We have time for one more question from the back.
Speaker 9:
First of all, I’d like to say thank you to each and every one of you for the work that you do in our communities. I just left Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, The Lifers Group. Listen to all the things that you just talked about. Listen to the women tell me about the things that you just said, the reentry, the lack of it, the lack of cooperation from the staff, all that. It’s a story that you all know, so I’m not going to repeat it. A couple of weeks ago, me and a couple other ladies did what we called a quarrying call. It was a call to every organization in the city of Baltimore that we knew that was operating and helping our young people, our seniors, whatever community involvement you had. You had an organization we called you out and guess what? See that group up there?
They all were there. They all were there. On the back of my t-shirt, it has a number of groups that were there. And what all we called to say was this. Our young people need us. We are the solution to Baltimore’s problem. You all just said it. You were the solution to lowering those murder rates. We, all of us in here are the solution to what’s Baltimore is going on in Baltimore, not within our young people, with our seniors not feeling comfortable to walk to the store. Our organizations can offer that assistance. All we’re saying is that we can get this done in our city. Let’s continue to have these talks. Let’s continue to have these gatherings. Let’s continue to show up. First day at school was coming up. We got six young men who attacked a 74 year old man a couple of weeks ago at a 71.
You all probably seen it on the news. Guess what? They have not been apprehended, but guess what? It’s going to be groups like We Are Us, Del Mon’s group, pastor’s group. It’s going to be groups like them who go, somebody’s sister.
One of those six men have a mother, a sister, an uncle, a neighbor who knows who they are. Call one of these groups, please. Tell them, let them walk your son. Let them walk your son. Let them talk to your son. Let him do media. Let him do whatever. But try to get them before they kill somebody else. We don’t want them to have a murder charge. They just got an assault charge right now. Let’s get those young people, but also let our young people know accountability is there. It has to be done. But you got the support of a whole community. So if you need to talk to someone to get out of a gang or you’re in a situation where you’ve been bullied into something you don’t want to do, we are us. I mean, I can’t even name the many groups. This lady right here,
You all talk about re-entry. That’s Monica Cooper. Yes, it is. Okay, that’s Monica Cooper. She does the reentry programs. She has an organization called Maryland Justice Project. We would not have a pre-release center proposed now. It hasn’t been built yet because the women in this state of Maryland, they didn’t feel we deserved a pre-release center until Monica got on top of them. Now we are getting a pre-release center so that the women come home can get all the services that you say we needed. Yeah. So there are other people. There’s Mr. Linda Moore in this organization with the Second Good Coalition, who I’m a member of. There’s Delmar. All of you all are members of the Grived Experience Committee. Formerly incarcerated people in this city are doing some great things, you all. We are doing some great things. And all I’m saying to you all is support those organizations that are helping.
Tell your neighbors, tell their children. If they got a little board that they know is doing something wrong, call Muhammad. Tell them, say, “Hey, go. Come walk with me so I can introduce you to little Johnny. Come walk with me so I can. Pastor Ebony, can you come? I want you to talk to Mary Jane or Alicia or whatever her name is. We can do this. Come on now. We can do this.” And that’s what I’m saying. We. We. The we is us. Come on. The we are we. We can do this. Thank you.
All we need. We are we. We are the we. Come on, don’t forget that.
Speaker 5:
Davon, can I add one point to this right here? Yes sir. She mentioned it. And
When Ms. Gwen called me, right? I mean, I had some reservations when she called me. She wouldn’t let me off the phone till she got a confirmation. But I had some reservations and I have to share the reservations because we have to be careful. Just because we are good intention don’t mean that everybody else has good intentions. And there are some people who are deliberately trying to use isolated incidents involving young people to paint a big, broad picture and cut funds. So we have to be careful that we don’t allow ourselves to be used to promote that narrative. That was my reservation. We were there. We showed up at the walk because Ms. Gwen made the call. You can’t not respond, right? But at the same time in my mind is that the enemies of Baltimore, the enemies of young people in Baltimore who are not good intentioned are going to use this.
They’re going to use six young black men and paint the picture that this is all young black men in Baltimore. And I have a problem with that. So we just have to be careful that in our messaging, we are on the same page. That we are not promoting the narrative that this is all black youth in Baltimore City. And I’ll leave it at that.
Speaker 3:
Appreciate that. Appreciate that. So I’m going to just say something quickly. And in fact, Brother Anthony kind of teed up what I wanted to say, which is that all the work that has been talked about in the film and on this panel, this work is under attack. And folks that are familiar with LBS, Sinclair Broadcasting, David Smith, who owns the Baltimore Sun, Fox 45, ABC seven. These are folks for whom are carrying out a political agenda that benefits the law enforcement establishment, Maryland State’s Attorney’s Association, FOP, the Association of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs. These are folks that are tied into a media company and a media empire that is putting out propaganda for the purpose of taking away the resources that funded a lot of the work that you see on screen. So that’s one of the things that I wanted to make sure to communicate because in order to protect the work, we have to fight against the enemies of our community that are trying to take the resources away to do the work.
And one of the things that I’ll quickly add is that one of the things that LBS will be working on in the 2027 Maryland General Assembly is to have legislation passed that will bar the state of Maryland from doing business with Sinclair and any of the things that David Smith owns. So that’s something we’ll be working on in 2027.
Speaker 6:
Ever.
Speaker 3:
And for us, that’s our role in the ecosystem in terms of violence prevention. Our role is to protect the work. And so that’s one of the things I wanted to make sure to share. There will be another screening at the Parkway Theater on August 29th on a Saturday. Please get your tickets. Tell all your friends it’s going to sell out. So get it sooner than later. The other thing that I want to announce is that Rashim and I have been having conversations about, and I hope you don’t mind me sharing this. One of the things that I often have said to her about this documentary is that part of the beauty of it is that it gives humanity to folks that typically their humanity has to be qualified. You know what I’m saying? And because it’s an independent project, that she was able to really give voice to that in a way that folks that are operating within institutional constraints, you often have to think about what are white folks going to think?
What are the institutions going to think? And none of that appears in the documentary. And I think that the evidence of that is that the Department of Corrections is in talks and want to make this available to those that are behind the walls.
So I think it speaks to the importance of these narratives about the power of them and the importance of people actually understanding the benefit of this work and also understanding the importance of protecting the work. So again, please make sure, tell all your friends, August 29th is the next screening. When you go out and it costs money to do it, so please, if there’s QR codes out on the front desk that’ll allow you to be able to contribute, to make contributions. This project, it is independent. There’ve been a handful of folks that have invested, but not nearly at the level that you would get from films of this quality. So it’s extremely important that you all continue to contribute, to promote the work, to provide resources, and also do the surveys. Dr. Rashim is a social scientist, so she likes reading those surveys. She actually does read them.
We’d be sitting together, she’d be reading through the surveys. So it’s really important. So if you click the QR code to be able to fill out the survey, to give good feedback, it really helps the project move forward. Give the panel another round of applause.
All right. Safe travels on the rest of your Saturday afternoon. You all take care. Thank
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