Posted on Sun, May. 29, 2005
Contra Costa Times

Let there be no more business as usual in Richmond.

By David Muhammad

GUEST COMMENTARY

As the organizers of the Richmond Black-on-Black Crime Summit, we are a group of civic, business, community and religious leaders who have a transforming vision for the city of Pride and Purpose.

We are gathering on June 4 to call for and establish a new social construct that will reverse the effects of the institutional abandonment of the black community by the social infrastructure that serves Richmond.

Summit planners acknowledge that it was institutional failure that produced easy access to guns, an open illicit drug market, the proliferation of liquor stores in the community, substandard schools, high unemployment, poverty and blight.

None of our social institutions are exempt. Family, community, schools, businesses, government, the health care system, the justice system and the social service system are all culpable. Even faith based institutions and not-for-profits are blameworthy.

The Summit’s theme

We Want Them to Live – challenges the broken commitments that are manifest in Richmond’s social infrastructure, and brings forth a new commitment to the lives of black youth and their families.

Ours is a call for action to the black community.

The Summit is not designed to be a pity party. It is not a forum to complain about problems, but a platform to discuss solutions. And because the problems are comprehensive, the solutions must be far reaching.

The Summit thus launches a movement for transformation, and endorses new ways of thinking about our community.

Therefore, let us:

 Maintain the strong collaboration among community stakeholders that has developed in organizing the Summit. If we are to successfully transform our communities, we must show our young people that the leadership is united.

 Reject the possibility that religious, philosophical, political and ideological differences will fragment and disunite us, and render us ineffective in the struggle to improve our community.

 Train 20 congregations to each patrol, canvas and provide services to one of the 20 street corners identified by the Richmond Police Department as producing 80 percent of the violent crime in the city.

 Establish violence prevention workshops conducted by community members in high schools and the county juvenile detention centers.

 Reopen neighborhood centers with full services, including job-training classes where respected members of the community will assist Richmond residents with the hard and soft skills necessary to secure positions with local employers.

 Provide financial literacy workshops at neighborhood centers, and initiate a home ownership campaign to stimulate economic revitalization.

 Encourage collaboration among civic and community leaders to work together to stimulate support from foundations and corporations to help pay for these programs and services.

Adopt strategies from our neighboring City of Oakland, which raised property and parking taxes recently to provide $6 million annually for violence prevention measures.

Consider the option of having Richmond schools secede from the West County School District to establish a more accountable district focused on Richmond students.

Let there be no more business as usual. If we want what we have never had, we must do what we have never done.
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David Muhammad, a Summit organizer, is the Minister of the Richmond Mosque of the Nation of Islam.