How to talk about peace

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0:42And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Right now, conflict, sometimes violent conflict, is in the headlines, in our feeds, and for some of us, right outside the front door. And when politics feels this charged, the idea of making peace can sound pretty naive. So how do people, parties, or even nations at odds reconcile with each other? Where do they even begin? Today, we are breaking down the slow, intentional steps that move people away from violence and toward cooperation. And we're doing it by going back to a moment in American history, Los Angeles, 1992.

1:41That year, something almost unimaginable happened. Leaders from the two biggest gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, managed to end a years-long deadly feud that had killed thousands of people. The two parties negotiated a peace treaty. But how? Change moves at the speed of trust, right? Deep relationships and trust. This is Akilah Shurils. And I consider myself to be a peacemaker. In the 1980s, Aquila was a kid, growing up in L.A., when a cheap, very addictive drug started seeping into cities across the U.S. Crack cocaine. It turned his neighborhood into a marketplace for dealers, dealers who would defend their turf with violence.

2:28Crack cocaine came through the neighborhood like Hurricane Katrina. It uprooted families. I mean, it decimated the neighborhood. But, you know, you had individuals who were hustling and selling dope that were making, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, more money than they ever made in their entire life. And so, you know, people started buying, went from 22, you know, handguns to, you know, nine millimeters in AK-47s and Tech-9s. And it became a war zone. And that rage and anger, because there was no therapeutic services, no counseling, nothing offered to us to help us to heal from the traumatic experiences that we were all witnessing.

3:11Warfare between gangs was a normal part of life for Akilah, who lived in the Jordan Downs housing projects in the Watts neighborhood of L.A. He remembers being in middle school at the time. Markham Junior High School, we call it gladiator school. You know, ninth grade year at Markham, my best friend Ronzel Pointer was shot in the head and killed, you know, at lunchtime on campus. In Watts, the four housing projects were each associated with either the Bloods or the Crips. If you wear blue, you're a Crip. If you wear red, you're blood. By virtue of where he lived, Aquila belonged to the Grape Street Crips.

3:52And at this time, you know, if you were from Jordan Downs, you were guilty by association. People automatically associated with you with the neighborhood, and then you had to defend yourself. The other gangs in the nearby housing projects were the P.J. Crips of Imperial Courts, the Hacienda Village Bloods, and the Bounty Hunter Bloods of Nickerson Gardens. Growing up in the Jordan Down housing projects in the Watt section of Los Angeles, I witnessed things no child should ever be subject to. Akilah Shirels picks up the story from the TED stage. By the time I was 16, I had attended 20 funerals of friends.

4:28And like so many youth surrounded by violence and poverty, I was desensitized and angry, and joining the neighborhood gang was my solution for safety and protection. Now, it's important to understand that Black American gangs aren't inherently violent. Less than 3 to 5 percent of so-called gang members are actually committing violent crime. More often, they're like surrogate families. We're protecting one another, but sometimes the only way we knew how to survive. Despite the violence and poverty surrounding them, Akilah's family made a plan to get him out of the neighborhood and into college, just like his sister.

5:04So my sister, Londi, who has always been one of my sheroes, the first person in my family to go to a four-year university and graduate. And she made sure that I got all my applications and everything done, and I got accepted to Cal State Northridge. And I went to college at the height of the war. This is in 1987. I get calls from home about friends and family members who have been shot just consistently. You know, I felt like I was escaping the war. And I had an opportunity to really process why I felt like so much of the violence was happening in the community. But I was fortunate that I met a professor who grew up in my neighborhood, who was a professor at Cal State Northridge, Johnny Scott, who took me on as a mentee and made me read the autobiography of Malcolm X, who made me read James Baldwin's The Evidence of Things Not Seen.

6:01And those books politicized me and they gave me courage. And I had an epiphany that if I could transform and transmute my pain into power, then I could help, you know, some of my friends and family members to do the same. On campus, Akilah led the Black Student Union. He started organizing rallies. And later, when he went back home to Watts, he took those organizing skills with him. So I come home from college and my brother Daou and a bunch of my partners is in there. And so I started like kind of talking about, you know, like all of the resistance and movements of the past, you know, from, you know, the civil rights movement to, you know, to the Black Panther movement.

6:43And that somehow we had to stop this killing because no one was winning the war that we were waging against each other. Akilah and others had a vision for getting the Bloods and Crips to sit down and sign a peace treaty to end the war. Step one, well, he had to get his partners in the Grape Street Crips on board. Fortunately for us, we had a bunch of the big homies in the neighborhood who were conscious, you know, and who were, you know, Black nationalists in their philosophy, who supported, you know, this type of conversation and dialogue. So one of the first things that we started doing was marching in all of the housing projects.

7:18So every Saturday morning, we'd go to the housing projects, you know, 20 deep, and we'd march down the middle of the street doing this, you know, call and response chant. I don't know what I've been told. African people are mighty bold. Done destroyed the old plantation. Now we're going to build a new black nation. Black power. Get stronger by the hour. So you're giving them a common thing to rally around. Be like, listen, we do have something in common. We might think we hate each other, but at the end of the day, this is the goal for all of us. That's right. Because we knew that cash, they respected strength.

7:55If we came over there a week talking about a peace treaty, man, they would have ran us out of there, shot at us probably. And so we had an opportunity to check in with some of the individuals that we used to have conflict with. So growing up in the Jordan Downs, Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens were our enemies. We went back decades with these individuals. We grew up together in the same neighborhood, and some of us had kids by the same women. This battle, this war was interesting. It was like people who knew each other. And so this was like kind of, we were starting to coalesce something. In the late 1980s, Black activism and calls for Black power were gaining new momentum.

8:34All your life you've been taught to hate who and what you are. You're killing each other because you have no love for yourself. The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan was touring the country, speaking to large crowds, urging gangs to stop the killing. You gotta start at home teaching black people how to love themselves and love one another. In 1990, Farrakhan visited L.A. and addressed thousands of people, including gang members from both sides. Crips and Bloods went to the sports arena to hear the message from Minister Farrakhan about how we're the greatest generation that our parents have ever produced.

9:16And saying that, hey, we gotta come together and stop the killing. So Minister Farrakhan was the national voice behind this work. Inspired by Farrakhan's words, Akilah and others began gathering on neutral territory at the house of Jim Brown, the professional football player and civil rights activist. Jim Brown offered his house and his celebrity as a way of helping to galvanize that energy and to bring us together. And we had big meetings up there. We would bring different cats from all across the city to talk about this possibility of a peace treaty and stopping the killing. What happened in those meetings?

9:50Like, what did people say to each other? So we would get together and, you know, just talk philosophy and theory about what we can do if we actually came together and stopped some of the killing. And everybody is like on the same page saying like, hey, yeah, you're absolutely right. We got to stop this killing, man, because we got to preserve this next generation of our kids. And at one of our Wednesday night meetings, my brother Daou said, hey, man, you know, trying to organize the city is way too big. There's too many conflicts. He said, let's start with Watts. because the four major housing projects in Watts sit on the perfect 90-degree angle.

10:22This is when we got all up into our symbolism and stuff. And we were like, the hypotenuse runs from the Nickerson Gardens to the Jordan Downs. We were like, if we connect these two neighborhoods, you know, we would create a domino effect for peace across the city. So we started focusing specifically on organizing the peace treaty amongst the four housing projects in Watts as a catalyst for a larger movement nationally. They needed a ceasefire. But for that to happen, they needed a specific group of people to join their conversations. The young men who had weapons and who were committing the worst of the violence.

10:59Now, here's the thing. Less than 3 to 5 percent of so-called gang members are actually committing homicides and murder in the neighborhood. So at some point, it got to a place where it was like, y 'all got to bring your shooters in here. Because those dudes have to make the agreement. Because when they make the agreement, then it's really over. So they all met at the local mosque. I mean, when we showed up to the mosque, the energy was tense because folks knew the conversation that we were coming to have. And there was familiarity, right? Because, again, we all grew up in the neighborhood and we knew each other.

11:31And after several negotiations, tough ones, they came to an agreement. Here was the understanding of the ceasefire. Y 'all stay in y 'all neighborhood, we stay in our neighborhood, and we ain't got no conflict. If we run into each other on the streets, you know what I'm saying? We give each other a pass. You know, their shooting was like, as long as you infringing on my business, it's all good. And vice versa. And our people said the same thing. And it was like, OK, cool. This agreement set peace in motion. On April 28, 1992, an unofficial peace treaty went into effect. Oh, man, it was unbelievable.

12:11The release of energy. that night oh man i mean the news of the peace treaty spread like wildfires through the neighborhood because we all grew up together and went to school together you know but because of the gang conflict in the war we couldn't spend time we couldn't hang out you know because somebody would see you and know that you from the you know from the other neighborhood and shoot at you you know and so the next day jordan down hosted the nickersons and that night man we had 3 000 people people came from all across the city to celebrate. For what, like a party? So we had a barbecue party celebration, and then, you know, it's just like, it was like it became a family reunion, you know?

12:52It's like it was decades. I mean, we had a three-decade war, you know? So the release was just extraordinary. In a minute, Los Angeles explodes. The Rodney King trial and how Akilah Sharrills helped keep peace between the gangs on track. On the show today, how to talk about peace. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Please stay with us.

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14:31This message comes from Mattress Firm. Waking up sore? Mattress Firm sleep experts can match you with a Tempur-Pedic Adapt that absorbs motion for undisturbed rest. Visit Mattress Firm and learn how to get 3 % back with special financing. They make sleep easy. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, how we talk about peace. We were just hearing from activist and organizer Akilah Sharrills. He was a key player in negotiating the historic peace treaty between the Crips and the Bloods in Watts, Los Angeles. This treaty between the gangs had a ripple effect across the city, de-escalating violence in other neighborhoods and ending a decades-long war.

15:18But as Akilah explains, getting to peace and then maintaining it, there are lots of roadblocks. Peace is not a destination. It's a series of peaks and valleys. And so getting people to understand that ebb and flow is important. And sometimes peace gets interrupted. The day after the two gangs agreed to a ceasefire, L.A. erupted with riots. Because on April 29, 1992, the police officers accused of assaulting Rodney King a year earlier were acquitted. PD officers beating a suspect. Black communities were enraged. Los Angeles remains under a state of emergency after rioting that left at least 16 people dead, many hundreds injured.

16:04And so as things started exploding all across the city, a bunch of us, you know, got in our cars and drove down to the neighborhood because we were trying to stop people from, you know, burning down the stores and all that kind of stuff and everything in the neighborhood because we was like, this is our stuff, man. Don't destroy your own community. The rebellion, as it was called, against the LAPD slowed down the final steps of the gang peace process. So it wasn't until 1994, two years later, that the Watts members of the Crips and Bloods actually sat down to sign an official agreement. We needed a treaty because we needed to memorialize the agreement that we made between each other.

16:45And that was important to us. and also something to pass on to future generations. Actually, I printed out the agreement because I wanted to see what it looked like. And it's really, you know, it's like, I suppose, any other peace agreement. The reopening of described neighborhood areas shall begin on the 29th of April in 1994 at a very specific time, 1245 p.m. And the Crip and Blood authorities in the Watts area shall help by their full cooperation to the Watts plan. Did it feel historic that moment? Did it feel like something shifted and changed because the agreement was codified that you had negotiated your way to having a shared document?

17:38It did. none of us came to this work with formal negotiation and mediation skills. We learned in the process why we were doing it. And I would say that it felt historic to me because we were students of history. I am an average reader. I've read everything from the Mexican Revolution, Jing Chao Ping, the Chinese Revolution. I'm interested in war and understanding peace efforts and stuff. You know, we were like real activists and students. And so this was like, it was significant to us, the peace treaty, the document, you know, the agreement. And even now, you know, 30 plus years later, there are very few folks, you know, from the neighborhood that was able to parlay their role in organizing the peace treaty so that it actually is serving them today.

18:28You know, people sacrifice a lot and gave up a lot. And that's why I don't, you know, I don't take this stuff lightly. You know, I mean, I'm dead serious about the work, you know, because I know I stand on the shoulders of a lot of folks, man, who have who sacrificed everything, you know, for me to be here and for us to be where we are today. What happened after you signed the treaty? Because very often we hear, you know, well, it's that the peace can be fragile and it takes just one thing to, you know, for all the work to become undone and for it not to be worth the paper that it's written on.

19:05That's right. What happened next? Well, if you can imagine the day after the peace treaty, somebody got shot. Oh, gosh, no. But what the commitment was, was to consistently coming back to the table to renegotiate the terms that bought us there. And that was the powerful thing that consistently happened. That every time something happened, we got back to the table. And we opened up that dialogue and conversation. And we did our, because in the past, man, somebody would come through the neighborhood and do a drive-by. A couple of people would get shot and they'd come, police would tell us, oh, the Nickersons did it.

19:36And folks would just get over there and go over there and just shoot people down. But now, when shots were fired, oh, folks was like, hey, get on the phone. Call our people over there. Hey, was that y 'all? You know, and we'd do our research and our intel. And then we'd come back and be like, hey, that conflict, you know, that shooting, oh, that was between such and such and such and such. That's not no neighborhood thing. that's between them. You know, everybody stand back. Let them handle it. If we can step in and mediate, you know, the conflicts to a peaceful resolve, we'll do that. And the first two years of the peace treaty gang homicides dropped 44 % in Watts, right?

20:17And we instituted inside of the housing projects life skills training in each one of the housing developments through the community service center. We taught people how to make better decisions with their life, how to manage their bread, how to make hard decisions. Most of our folks in the neighborhood weren't getting basic life skills. So we were doing life skills training for all of the young people, men and women, in the developments. In addition, we were able to secure contracts with the schools. And so we started running programs like a zero period at Locke High School, you know, and this was for students, you know, who were struggling with credits and stuff.

21:01And most of these kids were the gang-involved kids. And it totally shifted the quality of life in the neighborhood. You know, so multiple folks started organizations to be able to access resources to be able to provide a set of quality services for folks in the neighborhood to address the trauma, to address the violence. So after the negotiation, after the treaty signing, that's when the work began to sort of rebuild, I suppose. And so here we are a generation or so later. And has the peace held? Is it a radically different place? I would say it is. It's a radically different place. The peace treaty held in its original form for 12 years.

21:42And then, you know, a new generation comes in and peace treaty is no longer the language that folks use in order to kind of keep the neighborhood together. Now, we've never gone back to the type of numbers, that thousand murders a year in the city. We've never gotten back to that. And knocking on wood, pray to God that we never do. But the work is constantly, we have to constantly work to keep each generation from making the mistakes that we've made. We secured a million dollars grant to be able to hire ambassadors from each one of those neighborhoods, ex-game members, ex-convicts who were reputable folks in their neighborhood, to serve as ambassadors in their respective communities.

22:31So in each one of the housing projects, we had five staff over there providing services. We launched the Grassroots Sports Federation as a way of bringing people together. And we just continued to grow the work. Then I launched the Community Self-Determination Institute, you know, in which we employed, you know, over 80 individuals and millions of dollars in contracts with the city, county and the state, providing, you know, everything from computer skills and technology to dropout prevention and retrieval services in the school. So we became sophisticated in understanding how the system worked, because that's one of the things that Jim Brown always wanted for us.

23:11He was like, in the 60s, he was like, when people was fighting for civil rights, he said, I was fighting for human rights and economic rights. He said, gentlemen, he said, if you give me an opportunity to tell you how your government works, he said, on how to access your tax dollars to provide a set of quality services to your families, he said, you'll never have to go back to drug selling or look over your shoulder around doing any type of illegal activity. He said, because there's more legal money out here than you can possibly imagine. He said the thing that we have to challenge is our scarcity mentality around these things.

23:43Midst being a leader and a negotiator and a builder, essentially, of all this human infrastructure, you had your own horrific personal loss. Your son. It was 2004? Is that right? Yep. January 10th, 11.45 p.m. What happened? You know, my son, you know, is my mini-me, man. It's like people used to say that you had that kid because we were just, we just looked so much alike. Graduated from high school, went to all boys private school, Verbon Day, athlete. Scholarship, Humboldt State University, proudest day of my life. Came home from winter break, went to a party in an affluent, you know, black neighborhood on the west side of L.A.

24:33with some of the kids that he had went to high school with, and they said some kids had crashed a party. Some kids from one of the local gangs had crashed a party, came in through the back door. They had to push everybody out on the street, and so they said they were out there on the street waiting for their parents to come and pick them up. And my son had a red Mickey Mouse sweater that my daughter gave him for Christmas, you know, tied around his neck. And maybe they mistook his red Mickey Mouse sweater for gang colors or whatever. But, you know, conversation short, he shot my son five times.

25:17Obviously, there's no explaining it. But what do you think was the situation that something is, you know, the color of a sweatshirt would still incite such violence? You know, something happened, you know, to this kid. you know, that caused them to have a callous heart. Because you don't just kill someone and you wake up skipping and singing and dancing the next day. You experience your victims' face and dreams and imaginings and flashbacks. Your life is intrinsically connected to your victims for the rest of your life. I mean, him being able to reconcile what he did, you know, will determine whether or not he's able to live somewhat of a balanced life in this world.

26:03right but you know how the streets are man the streets are relentless when folks found out that it was my son that was murdered you know cats from that neighborhood um called my partners and gave us the name address and telephone number of the kid who murdered my son and gave us a green light to go and kill him i mean i my daughter called me and told me that a bunch of the homies and my son's friends were getting together in the projects and they was about to go on a mission for terrell But, you know, that's not my legacy and that's not Terrell's legacy. And so I jumped in my car and drove over into projects and pulled up in the parking lot where everybody was gathering that and told folks that, hey, man, ain't nobody going on no mission for Terrell.

26:44I was like, nobody is going to go kill someone and put another parent through the heartache and heartbreak I'm dealing with. And I was like, we can't do this, family. And it was a transformative moment. And believe it or not, one of my homies told me, you know, and didn't say it directly to me, but it was indirect, saying that, you know, because I wasn't willing to go and kill this kid who murdered my son, he was like, you know, maybe you didn't love your son that much. Oh, God. Right? And I, because, you know, the conditioned response in the neighborhood, you know, is, you know, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

27:22Yeah. But my whole position was that, man, that eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth game has left us all blind and toothless, family. I'm like, killing this kid is not going to bring Terrell back. Or harming somebody that's close to him is not going to bring us any closure, fam. I was like, I want to harness the etheric energy of Terrell, the electromagnetic current that he was, and do something much more profound with his life force in the world. And so I was like, hey, we're going to forgive this kid to save his life. and I hold space that one day I'll be able to meet him and be able to ask him the question, what happened in his life that caused him to perpetrate this act?