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[melancholy violin music]
[gunshot, siren wailing]
[person speaking indistinctly over megaphone]
[gun cocks]
*
[woman sobbing]
*
[gun cocks, seagulls crying]
* *
[hydraulics whirring]
*
[distant siren wailing]
- I was born in 1945. I'm what they call a war baby.
My mother was pregnant in Texas, in the South.
And she decided that she did not want her baby,
no matter what it was, born in the South.
And she took the first train smoking and came to LA.
- So, when we arrived here in Los Angeles,
this particular neighborhood right here was majority white.
The schools were majority white.
The elementary schools and junior highs--
all were already white.
Because there was so many of us,
they started taking flight.
[upbeat music]
- To properly discuss guns it's essential to delve
into their historical context.
In 1964, during the Civil Rights Movement,
notable figures, like Martin Luther King Jr.
and President Kennedy,
advocated for the Civil Rights Bill.
This legislation ignited a significant migration
within the Black community
in search of improved opportunities
and a brighter future.
- When I grew up, the neighborhood
was just predominantly Black.
- Maybe 85%, 90% Black, 10% Hispanics.
The neighborhood was...
- A great experience.
My childhood was filled with traveling.
It was good to go from this park to that park.
It was always some type of family picnic
or something going on.
Being able to be amongst each other was a good thing.
- For once, minorities felt the air of freedom.
Things were finally on the up-and-up.
But tragically, this would come to a halting stop.
[music distorting, fading]
- The afternoon fires added to the chaos that is now
Southeast Los Angeles.
Riots, which had quieted down during the dusk,
sprang again into full-scale violence this morning--
- Watts Rebellion, rather than "riot," because it had
a political dimension to it.
It wasn't just the Frye family
that sparked the Rebellion of 1965.
It was the years and years of police abuse
that had built up.
- The Watts Rebellion lasted for 6 days,
resulting in 34 deaths, 132 injuries,
and 4,000 arrests
and ending in the destruction of 1,000 buildings,
totaling $40 million in damages.
- You know, you just had the assassination of Malcolm X,
and you had a lot of movements,
organizations began to rise up 'cause of the Watts Rebellion.
And that was a political dimension of it.
- Watts Riots was just a spark of a continued action
of terrorism and militarism in our neighborhoods.
- After the Rebellion,
several community-improvement suggestions were made
that would improve schools, employment,
and relations with the police department.
But in the end, there was little follow-up.
A new era of do-it-yourself local activism
blossomed in Watts, including reformed street gang members
who joined with the Black Panther Party
to rebuild and monitor police access.
- Sojourner Truth!
- Mary McLeod Bethune!
Marcus Garvey!
Malcolm X!
Martin King!
- We had to fight for our civil rights and fight
for the Civil Rights Movement amongst ourselves,
our leaders, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,
Fred Hampton Sr.,
Huey Newton, Angela Davis, all the rest of them
during this time of the Civil Rights Movement,
pushed the line for our civil rights.
- The Panthers grew out of a street justice,
the pursuit of street justice for watching police
and defending themselves.
The Sons of Watts used to be the Orientals
and the Royal Gents-- Willie Sampson and them.
The El Rukns
used to be Blackstone Rangers out of Chicago.
They converted during the '60s
because there was a Black movement,
street gangs moved to those type of aspects of protect--
Even the Crips even said that they started
to protect their community.
- This was the first time
that I seen armed Black men and women
ready to stand up to deal with oppression,
injustice, and the systemic issues of racial imbalance.
And I seen a power base being developed
that was unapologetic in standing up
for the value and the respect
of what Black people at that time
had to stand on, because we did not have anything else
to stand on.
- It was going to be a point in time and place
to where the conscious mind is starting to wake up.
- The Panthers were a saving grace for the community.
Not only did they fight for what was right,
they also helped feed the youth, teach them,
and celebrate the community.
So why was this a bad thing, you ask?
- Let me be real clear.
The Black Panther Party was the first time
that we said we unapologetically have the right
to combat a system that at that time period
was designed to totally destroy more so the individuals
that were in the movement.
Remember, there was a social movement going on,
a social narrative that was going on at the time,
which was finally bringing in self-determination,
self-reliance, et cetera.
So had the party not developed
and had the nation not developed,
had those components not been put in place,
we probably would have been, as a people, decimated,
because, again, the concept before,
the generation before our mothers and fathers were
of the mindset of integration, were of the mindset of,
we're going to just try to get in that mix,
and hopefully they will accept us at the time.
And that didn't happen.
That was not happening,
especially for younger brothers,
like myself at the time.
I was not buying into the concept
of turning the other cheek.
I dang sure was buying into the concept of, give me a gun,
let me fight this madness,
and let me do what I got to do to get some value of respect
for what I stand for.
- And this is what scared the government--
young Blacks having a mindset
to be able to think differently
and stand up for what's right.
So what did the government do?
Interfere.
- The counterintelligence program was developed
by J Edgar Hoover during the Nixon Administration,
specifically after they had identified
that one of the most significant threats
to the safety and security on a national level
for the United States of America
was the existence of a healthy Black family.
- Shocking.
Martin Luther King was able to touch so many people.
They soon figured out that to his success,
he had a healthy home and a great education.
So, to stop this from happening again,
they decided to fracture the Black family home.
- And so the counterintelligence program
specifically was designed
to infiltrate any environment
where Black leadership was being nurtured,
penetrate that environment, and disrupt it.
And so they did that to the Black Panther Party.
- The FBI accomplished this by sending in an informant--
William O'Neal.
He was sent into the Black Panther Party
to infiltrate the members, particularly Fred Hampton.
- And saw where what had taken place and where he died,
and it was shocking.
And then I was--
I just began to realize that the information
that I had supplied leading up to that moment...
Had facilitated that raid.
I knew that indirectly, I had contributed, and I felt it,
and I felt bad about it.
- FBI headquarters authorized the payment
of a $300 bonus to an informant, William O'Neal,
for uniquely valuable services,
which he rendered over the past several months.
- And that was how they were able to attack
the Black Panther Party
and make people support their attack
on the Black Panther Party publicly.
They wanted to destroy that,
and that's what they created it for,
and it was highly successful.
- The conspiracy of genocide came in,
the conspiracy, meaning trick,
and a genocide,
meaning just do away--to do away with the leaders.
So that left multitude of the Baby Boom generation lost
no leadership or nothing.
Only thing they had leadership was for violence.
- History informs us that over 1,000 years ago,
Chinese monks were experimenting
in their laboratories,
seeking to develop an elixir that would grant immortality.
Ironically, it was during these experiments
that they stumbled upon a mixture consisting
of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal--
boom, the main ingredients for gunpowder.
What was meant to preserve life
has become one of the most destructive weapons
ever created.
[dramatic music]
* *
I'm not a total gun reformist,
but I think there has to be some kind of control put down.
We are infested with guns.
There's more guns in the United States than people.
The number of civilian-owned guns around the world
is estimated at 650 million,
and 270 million of those handguns,
rifles, shotguns, machine guns,
and improvised craft guns
belong to people in the United States.
- If you add up all the Caucasians in the world,
they make up maybe 15% of the world population,
but they dominate the majority of the planet,
of the people of color through their use of weaponry.
- There are 90 guns per 100 Americans,
giving the country the honor
of the highest gun-ownership rate in the world.
- In the UK, you can't have a gun, period.
The police don't even carry guns.
- Unlike the US, the police in England don't carry weapons.
Less than 5% are armed.
* *
- I like the lights.
I like to know that the police are taking care of things.
For kids to have guns, in the beginning, yeah,
I was all for it, because we had to protect ourselves
or so we thought, because the streets was violent.
- And I had to make these decisions when I was a kid.
Did I want to be a robber? Do I want to be a dope dealer?
Do I want to be a car thief?
And I just couldn't see myself
sticking a gun in somebody's face, thinking that...
I could be taking their life,
or I might do great bodily harm to him.
So...
I'm going to be honest with you.
I'm totally for those guns.
- The US stands alone for high gun ownership
and high gun violence,
despite being one of the richest countries.
What's the missing link?
Is it a lack of gun laws?
Or is it something else?
- Every state is not the same.
Texas can have-- as racist as Texas is,
they can have open carry.
- In September of 2021, it became legal for Texans
to carry a handgun without a permit.
- LA can't.
Tennessee can have open carry.
Cali can't. New York can't.
See, in states where it's heavy, heavy, blatant racism,
they let you carry motherfucking guns
out in the open-- Florida.
We don't have it.
Why aren't those laws changing?
- The issue of gun ownership
and gun violence in the United States--
it's a complex and contentious topic.
It's influenced by a combination of factors,
including cultural, historical,
social, economic, and legal aspects.
- With the Kyle Rittenhouse,
it was a very tragic, tragic event.
And the reality is, he got off scot-free
because the Constitution protected his rights.
But the reality is,
his defense put up a damn good defense.
- We, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H Rittenhouse,
not guilty.
- Personally...
I hate that it was going to come down like that.
But watching it from a professional eye,
I knew that he would be found innocent.
- Nearly half of guns in this country
are not locked away properly,
and guns accidentally kill kids in the US
10 times more often
than any other developed country in the world.
- First time I seen a gun?
I'm going to say seventh grade.
Took it out to the field, started playing around with it.
It was one of my dad's guns.
- Many parents of young children
want to keep them away from guns,
but a growing number are now actually putting guns
into their kids' hands.
- I remember one day, Mom telling us
to come inside before the street lights came on
and get ready for bed.
You got to take a bath, shower.
She went out to a club, and I woke up and went
to go look for my pop gun.
I looked for the gun and couldn't find it,
but I found a gun in the back of the TV, which I thought
was my pop gun.
But it was my mama's real gun.
And I was chasing my little brother around the house,
and I slipped and fell and the gun went off.
Pow!
The story went, as she thought my brother was bleeding,
because he had a bad nosebleed when he was a kid.
But then she pulled the cover back,
she didn't see no blood on him.
She pulled the cover back and blood was all over me.
And so I almost bled out, you know?
I think it was about eight years old, nine years old.
- In 2 1/2 weeks, getting ammunition is going to get
a little more complicated.
- Starting July 1st, the change in the law
requires any individual buying ammunition
to go through an instant background check.
- This bill will go one step further,
by requiring that persons wishing to purchase ammunition
first acquire a permit,
then pass an extensive background check.
It is tough for me to fathom
that we can ask people to obtain
a license to hunt in the state of California,
but we cannot ask them to pass a background check
to purchase ammunition,
much of which is principally designed to kill people.
- They have more than enough laws
in the state of California,
and we deal with only the state of California
that we can make a difference in.
The gun laws that they are implementing here
on these young men are laws that are basically being
set up to help perpetuate this new industry called prison.
[indistinct chatter]
- My baby brother was in transition
of leaving the streets and trying to do better
with himself, and he got in a situation
where he let his anger get the best of him.
And now the first offer that the white man
gave him was 8 years.
A month later, they just offered him 60 years.
[cell door clinking, closes]
- Nowadays, if you have any type of possession
of a firearm, right,
and meaning that you don't have any type of license
for this firearm,
you don't have a serial code or a number that's attached
to your name for distribution of this firearm,
you're already getting 10 to 20 years of your life
taken away just off the jump.
- Lieutenant Holloway,
you were outside when the group came up.
What did you see out there?
- I was called down from the upper floors of the Capitol
and went to the west entrance of the Capitol.
And I saw a group
of approximately four male Negroes,
all carrying weapons of one sort or another
with a smaller group behind them.
I stopped them
as they came up the front steps of the Capitol,
and I was handed a pamphlet
by one of the members of the group.
- This is a pamphlet that the man presented me with.
It's called "A Statement of the Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense" on the Mulford Act,
now pending before the California legislature.
- So the Mulford Act just was overt action
in the state of California because
of activity of the Panther Parties at that time
to go to Sacramento with unloaded rifles
just for demonstration and for attention.
But at the same time, it's always been
a part of a white codes to punish Black people
if they thought they had a weapon.
Look at how many Black people were killed
prior to the Panthers and the Mulford Act
for white folks saying, oh, I thought they had a gun,
or, I thought they had a weapon.
[helicopter blades thrumming]
d Growing up in an urban neighborhood,
you're taught to hate the police.
* Last thing I sweat's a sucker punk cop *
* Move like a king when I roll *
I mean, can you blame them?
From unarmed killings to unlawful beatings
and just hands down, treating
the urban community as unhuman.
But as history shows, this was the definition
of being a police officer.
- The purpose of slave patrols was to bring terror
in the minds and the hearts of those Black people traveling,
either with or without a pass.
- Slave patrols,
but also known as patrollers or paddy rollers--
these were white men.
Their function was to police people of color,
especially those who escaped or were viewed as defiant.
- Whites could do anything they wanted to
to those people that were moving about
or those that were actually going to be apprehended.
And it is important that the message be sent
to the other African people, other Black people
in those situations of enslavement,
that they found out what happened to those people,
because that's what it's about.
It was a psychopathic racial terrorism act
on Black people.
* *
- Slave patrols were first formed in 1704
and lasted over 150 years.
This was followed by the vigilante group,
the Ku Klux Klan.
Though there are similarities between the two,
you can't put all police officers in that group.
Many police officers today try their best
on making their community a better one.
- I had a dream,
and that was to become a law enforcement officer.
I have no regrets. It changed my life.
It helped me to mature as a young man,
gave me a different optic, not only the city of Los Angeles,
but for a variety of different communities,
particularly marginalized communities--
what they lacked in terms of resources.
- Living in South Central California in the '80s
was an experience defined by contrasting elements.
On one hand, there was the allure of sun-soaked beaches,
vibrant culture, and a growing music scene.
On the other hand, the region was grappling
with the devastating effects of a drug epidemic.
The presence of drugs such as cocaine and crack
was pervasive,
and their impact was felt in both urban and suburban areas,
leading to a surge of crime rates
and a destabilization of communities.
- When the pandemic was real strong
with this crack pandemic,
it was almost like no way of getting around it.
If you was from the community or if you from the hood
or the neighborhood, some way, this pandemic
was going to catch up to you.
If you was selling, smoking,
buying, using at some capacity,
it's going to catch up to you.
- So when I joined the police department in the 1980s,
Darryl Francis Gates was the police chief.
So I really didn't know what to expect.
I knew that I had friends and family growing up
who had angst with the police department,
that I was going to treat people who look like me fairly
and appropriately.
And so that was my only mindset.
When I became a police officer, I treated people the way
I would want someone to treat my son.
And that was what I did for 20 years.
- In every good thing,
bad seems to linger right behind it.
But what happened next, no one could have predicted.
* *
[helicopter blades thrumming]
[indistinct chatter]
- Videotape obtained by Channel 5 News
shows what appears to be
a group of LAPD officers beating a suspect.
- As soon as it hit the airwaves,
it created a firestorm--
video recorded by a man named George Holliday
from the balcony of his apartment in Lakeview Terrace.
- The verdicts
in the Rodney King civil rights trial are in.
- Lawrence Powell, not guilty of assault,
not guilty of filing a false report.
Timothy Wind, not guilty, not guilty
on the two charges against him.
Ted Briseno, not guilty, not guilty.
14 1/2-year veteran,
not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.
And that's the way things stand right now.
If we go over some of...
- When the police beat up on somebody and you can see it,
it's like-- and they say he's not guilty.
- This is what y'all going to do.
Okay, well, it's more of us than it is of y'all.
Y'all going to have to call for backup while we already here.
[sirens wailing]
[person speaking indistinctly over megaphone]
* *
People were like, y'all going to cheat.
Y'all supposed to be law, protect and serve, huh?
Y'all don't got to serve us. We going to help ourselves.
* *
- Ceasefire amongst each other--
the Blacks, the gangs, and everybody went to go loot.
* *
- We didn't understand
destroying our own neighborhood is gonna be our shortcomings.
- In LA '92, it was families,
whites, Blacks,
because of the injustice that happened
to Rodney King and the fact that you had
various forms of street gangs.
Korean gangs were in Koreatown moving on Korean businesses.
It was just an onslaught of a multicultural rebellion
of people of color and poor whites
at that time of LA '92.
- Today's time hasn't changed from yesterday's time.
It's only getting--it's actually more freer now
to do as they will.
I have a son that's locked up for a longer time
than this man who just recently been found guilty,
gets found guilty for some part of murder or something.
He gets 23 years.
My son got 24 years with no victim.
He's been saying, you got him on camera.
You got people talking to him, telling you the man's
not breathing and he's sitting staring at you like this,
and he got his boys looking at you.
It's the same thing.
It's just more--they feel more freer to do it now.
They have more liberty to kill now.
- Making things better in the community between police,
if you want to change, particularly the LAPD,
you need to get on the job.
You need to get on any police department,
because, listen, DOJ has already told us in a report
that they're recruiting KKK.
They're getting those people on the department.
So why wouldn't you want to be on a department
so that you can make a difference?
Change is going to come from the inside.
- We figured it would get better.
It has only gotten worse,
from the killings of Trayvon Martin,
Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, with many more on the list.
Reckless cops are set free and are given a slap on the wrist.
When will things change?
- [sighs] What it was like growing up in Compton
was fun, hanging with your brothers, your friends
that become teammates playing Pop Warner.
And then there was also a side where you were paranoid
because of your surroundings.
What were the police going to do?
Constantly looking over your shoulder,
difficult stress for a Black man or Latino.
- Los Angeles was chaotic for me,
just living in a gang-infested community.
I guess the good part, though,
was that I was born and raised there, so I knew everyone.
So my kids didn't have to grow up as strangers,
like, moving into a community.
- At this time, the minority communities
were spinning out of control.
Without the safety of police, the communities
had to turn to something that would.
They just didn't know that it would turn into this.
- * I'm a soldier at war, and I dip through these alleys *
* It's that mack, blue and black *
* Got them sights fully stacked *
* These codes gots my back, that's where it's at *
* South Central to my heart... *
- At that time,
gang banging was at explosive Hiroshima time.
You know what I mean?
It was the drive-by shooting. It was the crack epidemic.
It was a lot of people offer Sherm
and young girls pregnant.
- Back in the days when I grew up,
you had to really watch your step.
You really did, because if you wasn't from the red side,
you couldn't wear red.
If you wasn't from the blue side,
you couldn't wear blue, because it was real colorful back then.
[laughs] If you got caught with either one of those colors,
you had to be from somewhere.
- It was brutal,
especially during the late '70s, early '80s.
That was a game changer for me in my community itself.
- But it wasn't always like this.
Gangs were referred to as clubs,
similar to the Boy Scouts or an Elks Lodge.
These different clubs offered an opportunity
to meet and cultivate lifelong friendships
and network with the community.
- Now, Slauson gets the name Slauson in 1952.
The ones in the 40s east of Central were called Crown 40s.
The ones that lived across Central,
on the west side of Central,
mainly in the 50s, were called Roman Pearls.
Roman Pearls and Crown 40s got together, became businessmen.
Then they had Ross Snyders.
You had 20s, Outlaws, and Pueblos.
They were social clubs.
They had club meetings and all that kind of stuff.
Where the turf comes in at
all got to do with going to a party
or you came to visit your cousin,
and you bebopping down the street, somebody looking at--
who are you?
Where did you come from?
And blah, blah, blah, and you get to talking.
Now you could get a pass.
Or if you thought you was somewhere
you was out of line, you're going to get an ass whuppin'.
- If you got my back, I got your back.
And I wasn't going to let nobody happen
to nobody that we were friends,
because nobody mess with my friends.
And that's just the way it was.
- Now, back in the day, we had reputations
for the best fighters.
If you want to gain respect and become known
and have people give you your props,
you had to fight, and fight you must.
It was no way around it.
- That whole aspect of violence and gang culture
is America's culture.
Gates said he had the biggest gang in LA--8,000 members.
Most minorities who are oppressed,
they imitate their oppressor.
Envy, greed...
drives violence.
- Well, the '70s in South Central LA,
we saw the birth of the Crips and the Bloods.
- Crips stands
for Community Revolution in Progress Service.
We stick together with morals and principles.
- It was only supposed to be protect
what's in your neighborhood,
not going out to kill anybody or nothing like that.
- Raymond Washington--
he constituted the Crips protocol,
which one of the main things were,
Crips don't kill Crips.
As we've grown big, as we expanded from the West Side
to the North Side and all the way to Long Beach,
we had everything with that but the Crip Constitution
of morals and principles and structure.
- What changed from then to now
and how they do it,
one, the guys who were actual leaders in the beginning,
in the time that Munson and Raymond
and all them other guys from other neighborhoods came in,
they started off fairly well, but they never really had
full control over their neighborhood.
- And this is where things started to turn for the worse.
Certain Crip members began to branch off
and start their own gangs.
This led to rivals and conflicts among one another.
- Unfortunately, things got so bad,
in the late 1970s,
it was that dangerous just walking to school.
And where I lived at in South Central LA,
we had the Crips in one part of my neighborhood.
But as I walked to school down Avalon,
we started making our way into the Blood part
of South Central LA.
- When somebody asks you those deadly words,
where you from, and you say you from a certain neighborhood,
that just automatically would affiliate.
- It was an incident that occurred in '79--
some 16-year-olds out doing mischievous things.
One of them end up dead.
And he was so loved throughout the community
that it just created a war that haven't ended yet.
- The fights amongst each other
aren't the worst part about it.
It's when the infamous boxcar conspiracy comes into play.
This changes everything forever.
- I've heard about it.
Now, is it true? I don't know.
- Well, Dr. Ernie Smith talked about how they had
a train or something in the Watts area of Los Angeles,
and they let the people know there were guns on that train.
And people from the projects and through the Watts area
went and got a bunch of weapons.
- Well, it's been documented that the cocaine and the guns
and all of the vices that were put into our community
and thrust on our youth
caused much of the uproar in our communities.
- Everybody's world was changing because crack was in,
and the community as a whole was changing.
The love of life, I'm saying, the love of family
was decreasing tremendously.
- And I would agree, because prior to the dope
that came into our community
and the money that could be made from selling that dope,
it was just football teams
fighting against each other.
- * The life of a G hustling *
* Trying to get my play in this game *
* Trying to survive every day on the grind *
* See my pockets to show... *
- There was more street-gang violence
in Los Angeles overnight.
At least five people were killed and six others wounded.
- The '80s was violence.
It's not like they dropped crack cocaine
in the jungles only.
No, crack cocaine,
as you see on these other shows, was all over.
Every hood was being empowered with guns,
and violence was on the uproar.
- This dude pulled out a gun and put it to my head.
- How many times you get shot? - Five.
- It was about territory now.
- It's about getting some money and getting out.
It just happens to be, when you start making the money,
you want more.
And that's when the greed come in.
Your being of wanting to turn whatever
went bad into something good,
and it just didn't end up that way.
The dope game killed everything we loved.
- * I know it's all like a prayer *
* You barely surviving *
* But your players conquer the game *
* And never stop rising *
- Good morning again.
Thank you for coming out.
Our purpose for being here today is very simple.
We are here to, first of all, allow
some young men and women
from this community, who we sincerely feel
has made a concerted effort for peace,
that they are coming together, bonding together
so that we can live peacefully in this community together.
- Now, when the peace treaty came about,
it was about us really realizing
that we have a common enemy.
Our common enemy is not each other.
Our common enemy was the police.
- But blue means Crips, and red means Bloods,
two vintage gangs that have grown
into enormous and loose criminal federations.
- To me, the same formula is,
we're dealing with gangs
and just dealing with our culture, our people.
You don't have to join a gang. You could be your own man.
It's up to you where you stand
and how you choose to move around
- Be your own man.
Don't let some gang or a group of people
kind of mold you and shape you to who they want you to be
because you're going to wake up one day
and say, man, this is not who I really am.
I've become what they wanted me to become.
- But the thing is that there's so many blessings
that, you know what, that we can have,
but it's all about choices.
- You want young men that's going to come out
of this community that's going to come back and better it,
not to keep destroying it.
And I think we done let this self-hatred towards ourselves
go too far,
instead of holding each other accountable
for the hatred we hold to one another.
Because there's no reason why we should walk down the street
and have to fear another man that look like me.
- ...survive attacks, though, shot five times
and paralyzed for life.
- I joined a gang at a very young age,
and I feel a sense of obligation
and atonement,
that it's my responsibility to teach others different
in my community, that there's a better way.
The violence, the prisoners-- it wasn't worth it.
- Look at every nationality that has gangs in it.
The Hell's Angels, and they're into the drug trade--
the heroin and the glass and the speed and all that.
The Japanese have the Triads.
They're into the real estate.
The Hispanics--their gangs are into the drug trade.
They're evolving.
What have Black gangs evolved into?
Nothing.
Well, because we're not putting Black first.
We're putting our bandannas first.
- You see Republicans calling themselves red coats
and the Democrats calling themselves blue coats.
You see the Crips calling themselves blue
and the Bloods calling themselves red.
They get all that from America.
America have a flag. The Crips have a flag.
America have a Constitution. The Crips have a Constitution.
They're just mimicking society.
You cannot take the land from the Native American,
impose slavery on Africans,
exploit Asians and Latinos
without violence, without guns,
and without a culture.
This is America's culture.
- The treaty is still being pushed.
They're trying to push it.
They're trying--all the OGs are trying to push peace
because we've seen
what has happened as a result of the gang wars.
- The streets could either make you or break you
or swallow you alive.
And you could either learn from it or get caught up
and be corrupted by it.
- All gang banging has to stop, even religious gang banging,
even political gang banging.
And when we realize that what we need is unity,
not uniformity, meaning, Nation of Islam,
bring what you do best.
Christian Church, bring what you do best.
Black Panthers, bring what you do best.
NAACP, SCLC--but let's unite
and fight together
to uplift our community.
And we need to stop begging white people to do for us
what our unity can do for ourselves.
And this is what the youth is waiting for.
- Don't try to scare me, Count Dracula.
[suspenseful music]
* *
Here, the secrets of life and death by Dr. Frankenstein.
Memorize them, operate yourself if you're in such a hurry.
- I have other ways of securing your cooperation.
- You're wasting your time. My will is as strong as yours.
- Are you sure?
* *
Look into my eyes.
Look.
- Extensive research shows the power of manipulation
in influencing people.
Over the years, manipulation and propaganda
have been used through media to control individuals.
Media remains the favorite tool,
shaping beliefs through reading
and visual perception.
[hip-hop music]
* *
- These games are so realistic in these days.
It's more like a simulator.
They training them to be killers with a simulator,
I mean, through video game.
I mean, dang, that's how real
these video games can get.
- Right now the video games
have a real tough impact on our kids.
One is because, in their memory bank,
that's all they think about-- is that video game.
Like I said, I have a grandson.
That's all he do-- is play that video game.
And, I mean, now, I perpetrated, too,
because I bought him the video game.
- There's a growing concern that violent movies
and video games have contributed to the emergence
of young male perpetrators of murder,
both in the United States and other countries.
- When children are watching video games
or watching movies that contain a lot of violence
or are listening to music
that pertains a theme of violence,
then they're more than likely
to display some behavior related to it.
It may not be the exact act, right?
But it's the power of suggestion
that comes into the mind.
- The focus of debate
surrounding violent entertainment
with our politicians and other stakeholders
primarily revolves around its production,
disregarding its reception by the public.
- I believe that the gaming industry
has played a part in hardwiring our young people
to want to be excited
about engaging in using deadly force.
A gamer believes that, I can press a button
and start over.
[dramatic music]
* *
[gunshots]
[goofy cartoon music]
* *
- Consequently, the level of violence to which children
are exposed to in their daily lives
and the responsibility of toy makers
in perpetuating this exposure
have become a pressing issue in the industry.
- You've just seen a demonstration
of the most authentic Western toy cap guns in the world.
You can tell they're Mattel. They're swell.
[dramatic music]
- When we were coming up,
the only way that we were exposed
to violent acts
was basically going to movie theaters and TV.
* *
[indistinct chatter]
[people screaming]
But now violence is almost promoted
on a daily basis.
- I watched "Colors" when I was younger.
I'm fascinated by that movie.
I think I saw that when I was in Texas.
* *
I was like, I'll never be in California, you know?
But it was fascinating to me to see these guys run around
the streets and just do all this craziness
and feel like they're on top of the world.
And then, boom, you know, we went to California.
[chuckles] And I started studying, you know?
Not books, I started studying the streets.
I knew where everything was.
I knew who everything was and what street was what.
And it just was like-- it consumed me.
It was my profession to know about that.
- It's a very thin line when you talk about entertainment.
You have to ask yourself, what is exploitation?
What is pushing the negative agenda?
When you watch "Goodfellas" or something like that,
it's a gangster movie, but is it just entertainment?
Now, does that make people
want to become those characters?
That's up for debate.
* *
Psychologists have predominantly concentrated
on studying the effects of violent entertainment,
while neglecting to explore its root,
that is, the landscape of the suppressed environments
we call ghettos, projects, and the hood.
- The media don't give a damn.
They don't care because there's brothers
going to school or something
or there's brothers finna be a doctor later on in life.
- Yeah. - They don't give a fuck.
- If you look at something as simple as Spider-Man...
Peter Parker, you know what I mean?
He had to get the top story. You know what I mean?
He had to be this exciting writer.
You know what I mean?
Their news station has to be better
than the other news station.
- And these inner-city things that's going down--
is the media supposed to care?
The media ain't the ones going through it.
Are they supposed to care what's going on
when we not caring?
- Really, nobody cares
because it happens so...often.
- I'm going to put it to you like this...
* *
What other genre of music does the government manipulate?
I'm going to wait.
Time up. [chuckles] None.
So if no other--
if there's no other genre that the government manipulate,
who's getting paid off this gun violence and these crimes?
- It was reported by some top artists
that they was pulled together
at a special home in California.
And they were surprised when they got to this home
when they saw that the CIA,
national security was involved
in the music industry.
- In today's world, the police have discovered
a powerful weapon in the fight against crime--social media.
It's become the information highway
that leads straight to jail.
- Why are you here,
if not to solve a problem
as existential as this?
- Oh, my goodness.
We have just gotten devastating news.
- Investigators are now saying the accused gunman
barricaded himself inside a classroom,
killing 19 children
and 2 teachers inside that classroom.
- No school shootings in England.
This year there have been no school shootings in Japan.
This year there have been 27 school shootings in America.
- Nowhere else do little kids go to school
thinking that they might be shot that day.
- 17 people killed in a mass shooting
at a Florida high school.
We're learning more tonight
about the 19-year-old suspect's weapons
and about clues from his social media.
- Gun violence is still evident
mainly because of social media.
I think that keeps it cool. That keeps it sexy.
There's no consequences when I'm on camera
or on my phone with a gun,
no consequences at all.
As soon as I hit stop on your phone
or the camera stops rolling, the consequences become real,
because now I have a gun on me, right?
And I'm thinking I can...
at any time, anywhere, any place,
and have anybody around me.
But as we know, that's not the reality of it.
The reality of it is, you pull that trigger one time,
your life is changing.
- Sometimes a potential threat is right there,
posted on someone's page.
It begs the question--
where are the whistleblowers when you need them?
Where is the power of cancel culture
to swiftly remove a dangerous individual from society?
[upbeat jazzy music]
- When Alonzo was a kid, Alonzo grew up
on Curtis Mayfield and all that Black revolutionary music.
I wanted to be a Black Panther.
I saw Black Panthers walking down the street.
*
Music is the most powerful art form known to man.
- Howard should not be put to death
because of a mitigating circumstance.
But he had been incited to kill Trooper Bill Davidson
by listening to a particularly violent form of rap music.
- Because when you keep hearing something repetitively
in your head, you going to start catching on to that.
And I talk to my boys about this.
The music that you listen to, that's the type of lifestyle
that you either want to live,
or that's the lifestyle you have.
- Hip-hop has done more damage to Black and Brown people
than racism in the last ten years.
- Most rappers are artists.
So, therefore, they rap about what they see,
what they experience through their homeys.
So you put that out on wax,
that was your expression to do that.
So, basically, you were the voice for your community,
for your neighborhood, for your era.
[hip-hop music]
* *
- Back when we were growing up in the '70s and '80s,
we had a balance of music, you know what I mean?
You can listen to a "Sexual Healing,"
and then you can listen to a Marvin Gaye.
"What's Going On."
You can listen to a Gil Scott-Heron.
* *
- We had Michael Jackson. [laughing] You know?
We had some old school--
The Whispers and those type of folks that...
they played theirs in the way that they saw it.
But it wasn't to bring us down or to put a curse on us.
I think it was uplifting versus what it is today.
* *
- It's the music executives who are pushing
this poison throughout our community
and causing disruption and murder and violence
in our neighborhood.
- This year's record-tying homicide count
has left police with three explanations--
gangs, guns, and drugs.
But a local woman thinks the root cause
could be something less often mentioned--hip-hop music.
- When you look at the entertainment
and you are rewarding bad behavior--
My son is an artist.
And he said, "Pops, when I talk to the people at Sony,
they asking me, is there anybody I got a beef with?"
- I was getting a major-deal situation,
and I was watching the Bloods and Crips unite.
Mac wore the red rag.
Dub wore the blue rag onstage, right?
So this is showing that there is unity within this
because there is money being made, right?
But outside of that, it was still conflicts and things,
you know, spilling out in the streets.
* *
- "Nobody can stop this war but us."
- This music they have now is garbage.
And it's music that has, I think, created more bloodshed
and violence throughout Black America,
where we have these gangster rappers
glorifying gang violence.
- Kids that are in that life
are really, like, living their life.
It's their reality.
So, for them to rap about how they're really doing it
and whatever, you can't look at it as negative
because it's just reality.
- * So welcome to the ghetto
* Where you can straight get played out like a cello *
* The man got the projects boarded up *
* And the whites and the Blacks all sorted up *
Some gangster rap is influential
to listeners in certain ways.
It never influenced me to go out and do some shit
that I wouldn't naturally do.
It had nothing to do with rap music, none of that shit.
I was just on some other shit, you know what I'm saying?
By the time the rap music came out,
and then it was gangster rap, it was like, damn,
I heard Ice T with "6 'N the Mornin'."
It was like, "6 in the mornin', police at my door."
- * 6 in the mornin', police at my door *
* Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor *
* Out my back window I make my escape *
* Didn't even get a chance to grab my old-school tape *
- This is like the first time I started
thinking about being a rap artist, like, okay,
he just fucking rapped about what the fuck did last night.
Fuck that. Fuck that. Give me a pen and pad.
- When I started making records,
there was so many hood cats calling me,
like, yo, what's up with that music, Ice?
What's going on with that?
You getting paper?
- You mean I ain't got to sell no dope?
I ain't got to go shoot no niggas
and jack no motherfuckers and shit to get the money?
All I got to do is rap?
That's kind of cool deal.
- Players are always looking for new lanes.
So when they see one of their own
with a new lane, they're like, what's up with that?
I mean, why do you think there's so many drug dealers
in the rap game right now?
Because it's a lane.
They're like, yo, I could take this money
and do something legit.
Only a fool wants to keep taking penitentiary chances.
All you got to do is slip up once.
- I just did a song, and I said, hip-hop saved
more motherfuckers than the Super Friends and shit.
[laughs] And it did.
- * 6 in the mornin', we didn't wake up to ask *
* *
- What?
* *
[epic music]
* *
- Violence has been a form of entertainment,
even in ancient times.
The Romans, for instance, used to subject people
to the brutality of lions for public amusement.
Furthermore, the first recorded act of murder
occurred when one brother killed another
out of jealousy.
This begs the question--
is violence inherent to human nature?
- [screaming]
- Now at 11, a Fourth of July celebration turns to tragedy.
[fireworks exploding, indistinct shouting]
- When I was 13, I seen my cousin get smoked
right in front of me.
It was Fourth of July.
Everybody out there playing football, popping fireworks,
and then we started hearing stuff.
And, basically, everybody thought it was fireworks.
We looked down the street, flames this long coming
out of barrels and everybody duck and hide.
And, sadly, my cousin ain't make it.
My cousin was out in the middle of the street.
All his kids seen him like that, everybody.
- Oh, I don't even know where to start.
Do I start at my ex-husband
murdering his current girlfriend
after trying to kill me and the kids?
Do I start at when I got shot when I was a child?
Do I start at the young man that died in my arms
and I prayed over him as he took his last breath?
Gun violence is prevalent.
It seeps into every aspect of our community.
Bullets have no color.
It doesn't matter if you're young or old, straight, gay,
short, or tall.
That bullet will find you.
- I saw my first dead body at nine years old.
On Saturday, when Moms got to go to work
and you got your brother.
I'm probably about 9, my brother about 12.
And you got to stay in the house.
So I decided to sneak out the house, go to the corner store.
And it was a man on the ground,
looked like he was trying to get something out the gutter.
So I just kept pushing, and he came back, he didn't move.
So a nine-years-old child kicked this man foot,
and it felt kind of weird.
And it was a dead body.
And I saw blood leaking. I saw bullet holes.
And I was the one that called the police
to report the incident.
And at the time, 911 wasn't even there.
I had to dial the entire number on the rotary phone.
- I lost my son's father in '76.
I was 5 1/2 months pregnant with my son.
I lost my son September of '99.
And then there's multiple other people
that we know that were close to the family
that have been killed by gun violence,
senseless gun violence.
[dramatic music]
* *
2009, my son...
had just turned 21 June 4th.
July 17th, he went to a party.
While they were letting the party out,
these two young men come down Don Felipe, identify my son.
They were wearing hoodies.
There was two girls sitting in the car.
They saw these guys hand off weapon,
one to the other, and fatally shot my son,
who succumbed to his injuries.
So my life was changed indelibly forever.
My birthday is May 4th. His birthday was June 4th.
When he was born, I held him first
as he came out his mother's womb.
So there was a covenant relationship between us.
* *
July 5th, there was a shootout, and there was a drive-by.
Tragically, my grandson was the one that got hit in the head.
His passing affected us really, really hard
because he was my first grandbaby.
* *
[voice breaking] If I was ever able to see my grandson again,
I think the first thing I would do is just hug him,
kiss him,
tell him that I miss him so much...
*
That I regret not being there the day he left.
[sighs shakily]
* *
- The first time I heard a woman howl--
1972 murder.
Last name Green.
If you was there, you know the first name.
And I was there before the crime scenes were famous
as they are today.
I was 14 at that time.
And I've heard a howl nightly, weekly,
monthly for 40-some years since then.
And what happens is this.
You're always going to hear that mother,
hear that family howl,
and you'll never forget that.
That's the first thing you're going to hear.
- [howling]
- Please, all you young kids out here, young mens,
would y'all please put the guns down.
- Yes, put them down. - Put the guns down.
[indistinct chatter]
- Guns are an evolved tool
that allow people to do more proficiently
what we've been doing since the beginning of time.
I mean, since...
we're on biblical grounds...
Cain and Abel--
the first murder we see biblically...
between brothers.
However you slice it,
this is not just an issue of...
the weapon of choice,
which is a firearm today.
It begins in the human heart.
* *
- I was on my way to work,
and I was driving up Wilmington.
And I had just crossed 124th, and I saw two fire trucks.
You know how the fire trucks being like at a catty corner
so you can't see what's on the other side?
And so I kept on driving, and I went on to practice.
And when I got to practice, my cell rung.
And I looked down at it,
and it was an emergency text...
saying that something had happened to Gabriel.
- That day, May 23, 2005,
I was going to a friend's house
for him to drop me off at the practice,
waiting for him to change his clothes.
And I was expecting a son that year as well.
On the phone, 3:30, broad daylight--
last thing I was looking at was on the phone,
looking at my shoes and fiddling around in the dirt,
not knowing that I was shot in the temple of the head,
not knowing that I was down there for 45 minutes
while the paramedics were there and the police...
bleeding out from the head, not even knowing
and conscious.
So I went through four major brain operations.
They reconstructed my face from my forehead to my cheekbone.
My nose was broken.
I'm more comfortable about it.
This is the reflect of 2005 looked like.
A bullet went through here, came out my right side.
My eyes are sitting on my face.
I'm looking a mess.
So this is what it was looking like,
the aftermath of May 23, 2005,
and the doctor telling me that I've been in an accident.
I don't know what type of accident,
but told me that my vision wasn't there.
And I was all of 22 years of age.
* *
- When I was just five years old
and my brother Saeed was only two years old,
we lost our father due to a senseless act of gun violence
during a robbery at our family-owned cell phone store
in Van Nuys in 2013.
The day started out very normal for my father.
He was an ambitious and dedicated small-business owner
who was very successful.
And the day that my father was killed was anything but normal.
Although I was just five years old,
I knew from that day forward
that things would be completely different.
I just realized that me-- I need to take a stand,
because many people dismiss me.
And that's when I started social media,
and I realized, this is a very big issue worldwide.
- My daughter, her name was Ky Alicia Thomas.
She was killed December 1, 2020.
She was 28 years old.
She had just had a son. He was 3 1/2 weeks old.
Her daughter was 8 years old.
You know, as a mother...
you know, I was upset.
I was shocked.
But as we're getting ready to go,
that instinct told me
that my daughter wasn't going to make it.
* *
We made it to the hospital.
I never got to say goodbye to my daughter,
because when I got there,
they told me that I had to wait.
So I never got to say bye to her.
It's taken a toll on my family.
However, I'm pushing through it.
I found that my faith got me through, however.
Sometimes you don't want to hear that.
And so I know what worked for me
may not work for the next mother.
But if she has a good support system,
let your family love you.
And just don't allow the bitterness
to consume you.
You have to live for the rest of your family.
I had another child that I have to live for.
I have a granddaughter that I'm raising.
And I could be a blessing to other mothers
by them seeing my strength
and seeing the light in me.
Just because, you know, our children are gone,
we always have their memories.
You took my child, but you didn't take that from me.
And I know where she's at.
And that's why I have peace--
is because she's at peace and I know where she's at.
- Facing the possibility of the death penalty,
Roy Harvison stands before a Franklin County judge,
pleading not guilty to murdering his estranged wife
and his former brother-in-law.
- I'm often asked,
what has been so difficult about this.
Death has not been difficult...
because I understand that we all live to die.
And that is just a part of life.
But for me...
what has been challenging is every day after...
my children were murdered...
the things that people have no idea...
that I've had to endure.
[sniffles]
And that I had to go home and have a conversation
with a five-year-old
to explain to him that his mother
was not coming home that night.
[sniffles]
And I believe the most damaging...
out of everything was when...
my granddaughter Royce started talking
and I became Mommy.
And every time she would say, "Mommy,"
I would say, "yeah, yeah," and she would say, "Mommy."
And I would just cry.
That's when I realized I needed counseling.
* *
- A mother that has lost a child through gun violence--
the pain is never going to fully go away.
But in being there, listening to their stories...
Presenting with an open heart and an open mind
for that parent,
not having the answers is okay...
but letting them know that their feelings
and their pain is valid.
- November 2000,
a few weeks before he was gonna turn 22,
he was gonna come over,
but my husband had a toothache, and he said,
"Let's have him come over tomorrow."
That was Friday morning.
And Friday morning we got a call that...
I just heard my husband say, "No, no, no."
And I was like, "What? What?"
He said, "That was Jenny.
She went to pick him up to go to work,"
because his car was in the shop.
And the police were there, yellow tape everywhere.
And they said somebody there's been shot,
in the apartment's been shot.
And so she called us, freaked out.
And we're like... [groans]
We didn't know what to do.
So we just started driving over there.
And then we got another call from her
that said, "Go to the police station,
"go to Northeast police station.
Whoever was shot did not survive."
* *
I remember my body felt like it was out my mind.
My soul was outside of my body looking down,
because I realized...
[voice breaking] The pain that I was about to suffer
was unbearable pain.
It's really the worst pain a parent could ever suffer--
is to lose a child.
I'm talking about a loving parent,
somebody that's your life.
That's your life. Your child is your life.
[sniffles] You nurture them. You want the best for them.
And they're gone, just like that.
And then you realize that somebody
did that and for nothing, for nothing, you know?
It's just-- it's too unbearable.
So that's why my body was-- my mind was outside of my body,
because that first shock, it was initial shock, you know?
And that shock, that shock,
it lasts a long time, and that's what trauma is.
* *
- Tonight we look at the first layer of victims,
the bystanders, the people caught in the crossfire.
A woman shot and killed near the LA Coliseum,
a case of misidentification.
A 13-year-old shot, his father and sister killed
because the boy wore the wrong color hat.
- Mental health means everything.
Anytime you witness so much loss of life,
a lot of people suffer trauma
based on what we've seen growing up,
based on what we're still, unfortunately, experiencing
throughout our nation with the rise in gun violence
and the amount of innocent people losing their lives.
- Gun violence has always been a tragic thing
in Black America.
Recently, mass shootings hit the US like a damn storm.
You know what?
That ain't just about the physical harm.
It's about the mental scars.
We're talking about a rise in trauma
and mental-health cases.
- When we look at it from a mental-health perspective,
we look at it as something that we anticipate
in terms of experiencing violence,
because there's really no just cause
for us to experience it at the level that we have.
- Mental health is, like, taboo in African American culture.
Like, it's just something you don't talk about.
It's something that your parents will deny,
but it's real.
- The truth of the matter is, is that Black folks are scared
of hospitals and mental-health systems
because they experimented on us, and they still do.
Nobody wants to be 51-50'd.
Nobody wants to say, you know,
I'm having an emotional, psychological break,
because you go there.
They don't offer counseling and therapy.
They don't try to lay you on the couch
and listen to your story.
What they going to do is pull out that bag with the pills
and like, which one you one of these are going to try?
- In the small town of Tuskegee, Alabama,
from 1932 to 1972,
the US Public Service conducted a medical experiment
that would become one of the most shameful episodes
in our nation's history.
This experiment was called the Tuskegee Study
of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.
It began with the promise of free health care
and medical examinations.
Fast forward to today,
and the effects of this atrocity
still reverberate within the Black community,
which leads to the reluctance
to seek medical help when needed.
- When you think about generational trauma
and how it relates to gun violence
and police brutality,
you have to look at it from a historical perspective,
from even us coming over here from Africa
and the level of brutality that we experienced.
- One of the most enduring legacies of this injustice
is the toll it's taken on the mental health
of Black individuals.
- Why I understand what most of these young people
go through when they don't have a value of life,
because I went through a whole numbing period of,
I don't have a mother, and she was taken.
I don't have a value for life.
If I take another person's life,
you know, it is what it is at this point,
because I'm numb to everything, because I'm really numb
and don't know how to express that my mother is dead
and my whole world has changed.
- If I were to say all of it in one word,
it traumatizes the individual
and most definitely traumatizes the community
because the young person or the individuals
that happen to see or be a part of that scenario
is traumatized for life.
- When you say the mental health, you then--
you know, once we know that we're traumatized,
there's a form of depression that comes with that.
There's a form of isolation that comes with that.
When you're hurt and you are in pain
and, you know, you believe that nobody really,
really understands the pain you go through,
which sometimes we don't, because it's all different.
- Because you're not mentally able to go make
those necessary steps-- you think you might be,
but it's not like somebody snatched your purse,
especially when somebody killed your child.
That's the whole-- your mind is not set for that.
Your mind is like a total circle.
But when someone kills your child, there's an open,
and it never closes.
It never-- No other child can replace it.
It don't go like that.
There's no medication they can give you to straighten it out.
That don't work.
- Oh, mental health...
Wow. Mm.
Mental health, you know...
took away my oldest child about a year ago.
She was a great person.
She was a great student.
She did all the things we call the American way.
She went to college. She graduated from college.
She got married. She had my first grandson.
And then all it took was...
one thing to go wrong,
and now she was 51-50'd.
I know that it was because of a lot of the trauma
that her dad, me, put her through
when she was just a little girl,
you know, because we all think that...
Sometime what we do to hold your family together
can still create trauma in that process.
And it might not affect them then, but as they get older,
it can affect them even worse.
I can remember the last time that we talked,
and she called me, and she said, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy."
She said, "I love you, I love you, I love you."
And I said, "Baby, I love you, too," you know?
And it was because I took her son by to see her,
and he was really her medicine.
But, you know, in this world we live in,
they said you can't take a child around somebody
who is mentally ill.
Three days later, my baby was--
she fell asleep and never woke up.
And so...
* *
That...
[stammering] Yeah, that was tough.
And so...
Mm.
*
- Studies show that children who are exposed
to gun violence at a young age,
there's many side effects,
short- and long-term negative side effects,
including anger, post-traumatic stress,
withdrawal, "desensitation" to violence.
And if you aren't familiar with "desensitation,"
it basically means you're exposed
to higher levels of violence,
which leads to less internalized stress.
And usually people who have experienced that
prove to have higher levels of violence as they grow up.
And that just continues
the cycle of violence as we know it.
- When there's a shooting in the Black community,
especially with young people or with schools,
we don't see the mental-health professionals
coming and talking to the young people,
to the families, and to the community.
But if the shooting happens in the White community,
we'll see the mental-health professionals
going to the school, talking to the students,
making sure they have everything they need
to make sure that, psychologically,
it's not a permanent impact in the mental-health capacity.
- My help came from learning to believe in God,
just trying to change my whole psyche, my mindset.
I never got the tools--
or helped me with the fact
of dealing with the friends and family members
that I lost in the streets.
Not one person have ever, ever came and told me,
how could we help you with that situation?
- I realized the effect that was having on the kids who
who lived in Watts,
because what I noticed when I would drive around is,
I would see all these memorials
where somebody had been killed,
with candles and flowers, maybe a picture.
And I thought to myself,
how can a child be walking to school,
walk past one of these memorials,
knowing that somebody died there
either last night or within the last couple of days,
and then go sit in their chair in school
and learn their times tables?
That's just not realistic.
- One thing that I am very serious
and intentional about
is making sure that parents
are treated for their mental-health issues,
and effectively,
because when they're treated,
then you're not just helping them.
You're helping generations to come.
People still don't accept that a life experience
can cause us to go off rails for a while,
or the death of a loved one causes someone to not function
the way they were before.
We've got to get to the point where the dialogue
is consistently open about mental illness.
- Mentally, there is this mental diagnosis
that they called--
I think it's post-traumatic stress.
And when you see that, that kind of stress,
that kind of pain go into our community
and you see it for so long,
scientists say that once you suffer trauma
for more than 20 years,
it develops cells in your bodies.
So not only is that trauma
being experienced by us today,
but that trauma, through our DNA,
is passed down into our children.
So our children are born with this resolve,
are born with this pain already ingrained in them.
And this is what we have to stop
and why we have to stop it now.
- But they don't care.
All they see is a Black nigga that's dead
at the hands of another nigga.
But who's getting paid off of it?
The system, the 911 caller,
the police that responds, the coroner,
the jailer,
the judge.
So what does that make us in today's terms?
We are the bag.
Another nigga in a body bag is the bag that they're chasing,
because no matter what crime we commit,
they get paid off of it.
Gun violence, gang banging,
robbery, homicide,
we're the bag that they're chasing.
Next question.
* *
- Well, we need to have more resources
to help educate our babies.
I've always said, how do you educate
a child that lives in a war zone
and don't know that he's in a war zone?
And then you expect for him to get straight A's,
you expect for him to be an honor-roll student,
but he has to go home to an unsafe environment.
He has to be in a condition
where he may witness abuse, drugs, violence,
and still we want him to succeed.
What I've come to learn is that trauma
turns into mental illness.
And mental illness is what we see
all around the world now.
* *
- There's direct services that people need to receive
in terms of trauma support, you know,
and those services have to be, like, pointed and directed
towards certain populations,
you know, folks who are participating in the violence.
Then there's the business
of trauma services and support services.
So these two things have to be cultivated in communities
because I see this as a part
of the public-safety ecosystem.
And in this country, you say public safety
and people say, police, right?
You know, when police are only one aspect of the process.
The hospital, you got the police department,
you got the jail system, you got the courts,
all of these folks are making a gazillion dollars off of us.
We have yet to, like, really organize ourselves
in a way to build, like, institutions in the community,
to where we can accept and receive these type of dollars
and provide services to our own folks.
- My stepfather used to make us do chores every weekend,
and one of those tours was pulling up weeds.
He didn't give us tools or anything.
He gave us some gloves. That was our tools.
Two weeks later, we would have to do the same chore,
which is go back in the backyard
and pull these weeds up all over again.
After a while, I told the man,
listen, we're going to have to dig this thing up,
because if we're just picking the weeds at the surface
and don't deal with the root issue,
this problem is going to continue to persist.
Where there are issues of jealousy...
envy,
where there are issues of discord,
where there is pronounced lack,
where people are unsure of their standing
with God and with others, there's human conflict.
If we don't deal with these internal issues,
these spiritual issues,
this weed we call gun violence...
will never be fully dealt with.
[hip-hop music]
* *
- As a result, Black Men March on LA--
we pulled together.
Within two months, we had a march
from Staples Center to City Hall.
And we had a rally.
At this rally, we had prominent leaders,
prominent politicians,
prominent religious leaders as well
to address police reform.
During this time, we were able to draft four initiatives,
and we placed them out in forms of a petition
to address police reform.
With these four initiatives, I'm not asking
anything punitive against the officers.
I'm asking something that's actually basic common sense.
I'm asking that they be treated
like the regular average citizen.
So, again, the first would be liability insurance.
Secondly, would be self-defense funding.
Third, restrictions on employment.
And fourth, firearm revocation.
So, with Black Men March on LA,
as the executive director of the organization,
these are the four initiatives that we have in place
at this time that we're pushing for.
* *
- Because now people act like it's normal to be murdered.
They act like it's normal
for you to be a victim of gun violence.
They act like it's part of the norm for everyone
to have someone in the family
being a victim of gun violence, and it's not.
We're bringing up a generation
that's looking at that and sees it.
And they're thinking that, hey, why should we do anything?
Why should we say anything? You all said it was okay.
You all are glorifying it.
You all are saying it's part of the norm in every fashion.
And I think we all got to think about that
when we talk about guns.
We got to look at it like we look at other things.
Just like we don't put alcohol in our kids' hands,
we don't put drinks in our kids' hands,
and we will be furious if someone else did it,
furious.
We need to think about that with guns, too.
* *
- Me and my crew, The Fathers in Hip-Hop,
we go out to these foster homes,
and we talk to these young men
and teach them the importance of getting themselves together
and putting themselves in a position
to be able to be good fathers,
because a lot of them themselves,
being in those type of homes don't have fathers,
and it caused them a great deal of pain.
And they take that pain, and they translate it
in these streets to violence.
So we want to catch these boys, we want to catch them as boys
and show them what manhood looks like.
I think if we want to solve some of these problems
that's going on in our neighborhood,
we got to reach out to the fathers.
We got to get the men in the community to come together.
And just as hard as we banged our neighborhoods,
if we could put that same passion, loyalty, and intensity
into fatherhood, I promise you,
we can see a better day in our hoods.
* *
- We need to support these intervention programs,
you know, stopping the violence.
If you start in your community, in your home,
encourage your mom--hey, Mom--
There's many city council,
your own congresswomen or congressmen
have meetings on topics like this.
Either weekly, monthly, or throughout every other month,
they hold meetings like that.
And it is welcome to the public
for anyone who's interested, and you can get involved.
And you can learn all the backgrounds
about the amendments or these rules
or when it's time for voting.
You can learn more deep about them,
and that's how you can help in your community.
*
- So I actually started a softball league
amongst Crip sets because everybody thinking
that it's always a Blood and Crip war
that's going on.
Actually, there's internal wars that's going on
in our community between the Crips,
and same thing with the Bloods--
they have internal wars going on.
But we feel that we can all get together
and try and unite with this ourselves
and be able to unite with the Bloods that's going on,
doing the same thing with our softball league.
We can be very successful knocking down the violence
and gun violence in our community.
* *
[dramatic music]
*
- What we need is,
we need not people like me, not politicians.
We need people with lived experience
who are older and wiser,
but also the young people who get it
to speak out and say, we have to stop killing each other
because that's what needs to happen.
It can't be the politicians.
It shouldn't be the politicians.
It can't only be sports people.
It has to be people in the community
who are respected,
who can say, we have to stop killing each other.
And it's okay to get help,
It's okay to be supported.
And that's, in my opinion, where we need to get.
And I feel if we can get there,
if we can get the right people to be talking to these kids,
if we can get these kids the support they need
while they're growing up,
then that's the only way we'll really see
a decrease in the violence.
* *
- In order to help solve the problems and the issues
that we have going on in our communities,
it's going to take all of us coming together
and working together as one.
We need the community activists.
We need the police department. We need government officials.
We need the whole entire village to come together
and start sharing the different knowledges
that we have in our community to bring this thing to a halt.
* *
- Well, I'm definitely not trying to improve
the way of life in the community.
I'm improving the way of life in the community.
I am saving lives every day.
Yesterday I saved hundreds of lives.
People robbing each other
and hollering out different neighborhoods--
come to find out, it's not that neighborhood
and find out the person who robbed the person.
And, man, can we get this stuff back?
Also, I have a group of ambassadors
at Leimert Park, where we asked the community,
can you not call the police for the homeless situation?
Can you not call the police for mental health?
I have five ambassadors
that walk the Leimert area every day.
They're out there now passing out food.
Can you call 2nd Call, as opposed to calling the police.
Let us deal with the situations first.
What are some of the things that we can handle ourselves
without getting law enforcement involved?
And that's what we do as 2nd Call.
We do those things.
- I would say that the number-one thing
that I think that we can do in terms of helping people
put the guns down is to address the emotional
and physical and psychological abuse,
especially for Black men, you know?
And I ain't trying to create the trauma Olympics and stuff,
with Black women and other people who have been harmed.
But this is a study that says that...
that Black men are the least helped, the most harmed.
And it's time for us to engage our healing journey.
I know that it's possible,
you know, because I see it happen all the time.
And I'm like, there's a level of vulnerability
that we as Black men have to bring to this work
if we're going to be
the real, like, champions for this whole nother--
you know, this next phase of healing and transformation.
*