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- [00:00]
Akilah Shirills
Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker. The one stop shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more. For everything you need to see, visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com this is the TED Radio Hour.
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Anoush Zamorodi
Each week, groundbreaking TED talks.
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Akilah Shirills
Our job now is to dream big.
- [00:27]
Anoush Zamorodi
Delivered at TED conferences to bring about.
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NPR Announcer
The future we want to see around.
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Anoush Zamorodi
The world who we are. From those talks we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
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Akilah Shirills
You just don't know what you're gonna find challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy and even change you?
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Anoush Zamorodi
I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading from TED and npr. I'm Minouche Zumarotti. 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. That year, something almost unimaginable happened. Leaders from the two biggest gangs, the Crips and 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?
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Akilah Shirills
Change moves at the speed of trust, right? Deep relationships and trust.
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Anoush Zamorodi
This is Akilah Shirills and I consider.
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Akilah Shirills
Myself to be a peacemaker.
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Anoush Zamorodi
In the 1980s, Akilah was a kid growing up in LA when a cheap, very addictive drug started seeping into cities across the US Crack cocaine. It turned his neighborhood into a marketplace for dealers. Dealers who would defend their turf with violence.
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Akilah Shirills
Crack cocaine came through the neighborhood like Hurricane Katrina. It uprooted families. I mean, it decimated the neighborhood. 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, 9 millimeters and AK47s and tech nines. 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.
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Anoush Zamorodi
Warfare between gangs was a normal part of life for Akilah, who lived in the Jordan Downs housing projects in the Watts neighborhood of la. He remembers being in middle school at the time.
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Akilah Shirills
Markham Junior High School we call Gladiator school. You know, ninth grade year at Markham, My best friend Ronsel Poynter was shot in the head and killed, you know, at lunchtime on campus.
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Anoush Zamorodi
In Watts, the four housing projects were each associated with either the Bloods or the Crips.
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Akilah Shirills
If you wear blue, you're a Crip. If you wear red, you're Blood.
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Anoush Zamorodi
By virtue of where he lived, Akilah belonged to the Grape Street Crips.
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Akilah Shirills
And 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.
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Anoush Zamorodi
The other gangs in the nearby housing projects were the PJ Crips of Imperial Courts, the Hacienda Village Bloods, and the Bounty hunter Bloods of Nickerson Gardens.
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Akilah Shirills
Growing up in the Jordan down housing projects in the Watts section of Los Angeles, I witnessed things no child should ever be subject to.
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Anoush Zamorodi
Akilah Shirrells picks up the story from the TED stage.
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Akilah Shirills
By the time I was 16, I had attended 20 funerals of friends. And 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% of so called gang members are actually committing violent crime more often. They're like surrogate families where protecting one another was sometimes the only way we knew how to survive.
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Anoush Zamorodi
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.
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Akilah Shirills
So my sister Londy, who has always been one of my sheroes, you know, was 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 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, you know, why I felt like so much of the violence was happening in the community. Right. 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. And 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 some of my friends and family members to do the same.
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Anoush Zamorodi
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.
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Akilah Shirills
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, and that somehow we had to stop this killing because no one was winning the war that we were waging against each other.
- [06:51]
Anoush Zamorodi
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.
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Akilah Shirills
Fortunately for us, we had a bunch of the big homies in the neighborhood who were conscious, you know, and who were 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. So 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 gets stronger by the hour.
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Anoush Zamorodi
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.
- [07:54]
Akilah Shirills
That's right, because we knew that cash, they respected strength. If we came over there weak, 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, you know, so growing up in the Jordan Downs, you know, 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. You know, it was like people who knew each other. And so this was like kind of we were starting to coalesce something.
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Anoush Zamorodi
In the late 1980s, black activism and calls for black power were gaining new momentum.
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Akilah Shirills
All your life you've been taught to hate who and what you are.
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Aziz Abusara
You're killing each other.
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Akilah Shirills
Cause you have no love for yourself.
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Anoush Zamorodi
The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan was touring the country, speaking to large crowds, urging gangs to stop the killing.
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Akilah Shirills
You gotta start at home teaching black people how to love themselves and love one another.
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Anoush Zamorodi
In 1990, Farrakhan visited LA and addressed thousands of people, including gang members from both sides.
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Akilah Shirills
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 and saying that, hey, we gotta come together and stop the killing. So Minister Farrakhan was the national voice behind this work.
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Anoush Zamorodi
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.
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Akilah Shirills
Activist Jim Brown offered his 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 a killing.
- [09:50]
Anoush Zamorodi
What happened in those meetings? Like, what do people say to each other?
- [09:53]
Akilah Shirills
So we would get together and, you know, just talk philosophy and theory about what we can do if we actually came to gallery and stopped some of the killing. And everybody is like on the same page saying, like, hey, yeah, you absolutely right. We gotta stop this killing, man. Cause we gotta preserve this next generation of our kids. And at one of our Wednesday night meetings, my brother Daoud 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 a perfect 90 degree angle. This is when we got all up into our symbolism and stuff. And we. 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.
- [10:47]
Anoush Zamorodi
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.
- [11:01]
Akilah Shirills
Now here's the thing, less than 3 to 5% 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 gotta bring your shooters in here because those dudes have to make the agreement. Because when they make the agreement, then it's really over.
- [11:18]
Anoush Zamorodi
So they all met at the local mosque.
- [11:20]
Akilah Shirills
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.
- [11:33]
Anoush Zamorodi
And after several negotiations, tough ones, they came to an agreement.
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Akilah Shirills
Here was the understanding of the ceasefire. Y' all stay in your 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 shooter was like, as long as you ain't infringing on my business, it's all good and vice versa. And our people said the same thing. And it was like, okay, cool.
- [12:01]
Anoush Zamorodi
This agreement set peace in motion. On April 28, 1992, an unofficial peace treaty went into effect.
- [12:10]
Akilah Shirills
Oh, man, it was unbelievable, the 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.
- [12:44]
Anoush Zamorodi
For what, like a party?
- [12:45]
Akilah Shirills
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, it's like it was decades. I mean, we had a three decade war, you know, so the release was just extraordinary.
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Anoush Zamorodi
In a minute, Los Angeles explodes the Rodney King trial and how Akila Shirills helped keep peace between the gangs on track. On the show today, how to talk about peace. I'm Minouche Zamorodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. Please stay with us.
- [13:32]
NPR Announcer
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- [14:05]
Akilah Shirills
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- [14:55]
Anoush Zamorodi
It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zumarodi. Today on the show, how we talk about peace. We were just hearing from activist and organizer Akilah Shirills. 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. But as Aquila explains, getting to peace and then maintaining it, there are lots of roadblocks.
- [15:32]
Akilah Shirills
Peace is not a destination. It's a series of peaks and valleys. And so getting people to understand that.
- [15:39]
Anoush Zamorodi
Ebb and flow is important and sometimes peace gets interrupted. The day after the two gangs agreed to a ceasefire, La erupted with riots. Because on April 29, 1992, the police officers accused of assaulting Rodney King a year earlier were acquitted.
- [15:59]
Akilah Shirills
Officers beating a suspect.
- [16:00]
Anoush Zamorodi
Black communities were enraged. Los Angeles remains under a state of emergency after rioting that left at least 16 people dead, many hundreds injured.
- [16:10]
Akilah Shirills
And so as things started exploding all across the city, a bunch of us know, got in our cars and drove down to the neighborhood because we were trying to stop people from, you know, 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 family. Don't destroy your own community.
- [16:27]
Anoush Zamorodi
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.
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Akilah Shirills
We needed a treaty because we needed to memorialize the agreement that we made between each other. And that was important to us and also something to pass on to future generations.
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Anoush Zamorodi
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, 12.45pm 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?
- [17:44]
Akilah Shirills
It did. None of us came to this work with formal, like, negotiation and mediation skills. You know, we learned in the process while we were doing it. And I would say that it felt historic to me because we were students of history. Like, I am, you know, an avid reader. I mean, I've read everything from, you know, I mean, the Mexican Revolution, you know, Jing Chaoping, the Chinese Revolution. I'm like, I'm a student of, you know, I'm interested in war and understanding peace efforts and stuff. We were real activists and students. And so this was like, it was significant to us, the peace treaty, the document, the agreement. And even now, 30 plus years later, there are very few folks from the neighborhood that was able to parlay their role in organizing the peace treaty so that it actually is serving them today. People sacrificed a lot and gave up a lot. And that's why I don't, you know, I don't take this, 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.
- [18:55]
Anoush Zamorodi
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.
- [19:11]
Akilah Shirills
That's right.
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Anoush Zamorodi
What happened next?
- [19:13]
Akilah Shirills
Well, if you can imagine that the day after the peace treaty, somebody got shot.
- [19:16]
Anoush Zamorodi
Oh, gosh, no.
- [19:18]
Akilah Shirills
But what the commitment was was to consistently Coming back to the table to renegotiate the terms that brought 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 come. Police would tell us, oh, the nickersons did it. And 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 do our research and our intel, and. 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 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? And we instituted, inside of the housing projects, life skills training in each one of the housing development, 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 lock high school. And this was for students who were struggling with credits and stuff. And most of these kids were the gang involved kids. And it totally shifted the quality of life in the neighborhood. 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.
- [21:26]
Anoush Zamorodi
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?
- [21:42]
Akilah Shirills
I would say it is. It's a radically different place. The peace treaty held in its original form for 12 years, and then 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 this, the work is constantly. We have to constantly work to keep, you know, 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 gang members, ex, you know, ex convicts who were reputable folks in their neighborhood to serve as ambassadors in their respective communities. So 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 continue to grow the work. Then I launched the community self Determination Institute, you know, in which we employed, you know, over 80 individuals. 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. He 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 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.
- [23:49]
Anoush Zamorodi
Midst 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?
- [24:08]
Akilah Shirills
Yep. January 10, 11:45pm what happened? You know, my son, you know, it's 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, Bourbon Day athlete scholarship, Humboldt State University. Proudest day of my life. Came home from winter break, went to a party in an affluent black neighborhood on the west side of LA with 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, you know, 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.
- [25:13]
Maoz Inon
But.
- [25:16]
Akilah Shirills
You know, conversation short. He shot my son five times.
- [25:23]
Anoush Zamorodi
Obviously, there's no explaining it, but what do you think was the situation that something, as, you know, the color of a sweatshirt would still incite such violence?
- [25:36]
Akilah Shirills
You know, something happened, you know, to this kid, you know, that caused him 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 facing 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. Right? 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 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, 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 that's not my legacy, and that's not Terrell's legacy. And so I jumped in my car and drove over in the projects and pulled up in the parking lot where everybody was gathering at and told folks that, hey, man, ain't nobody going on no mission for Terrell. I 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.
- [27:21]
Anoush Zamorodi
Oh, God.
- [27:22]
Akilah Shirills
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. Yeah, 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 the trail 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? Because, see, I don't believe that people are their worst experiences. I don't condone what he did, but I don't define him by what he's done, you know, I mean, I hold space, you know, for his healing. Because I tell you, it was the killers, the so called, you know, quote unquote killers that came in the room that helped to bring forth the peace treaty that saved so many lives. And those cats, those, those, those dudes who were the shooters in our neighborhood back then went to jail, paid their debt to society. They're home now. They are some of some of my closest friends and some, and some of the individuals today in the neighborhood who still keep things from going overboard today. And I know the power of redemption, you know what I'm saying? And so we're not our worst experiences. We're not the things we've perpetrated. We're not the things that have been done to us. These things are only informing who we become. They don't define who we are. The cycle of violence remains an extremely concentrated problem with unequal impacts. Residents in low income urban communities of color are 15 times more likely to to be harmed by violence, but yet three times less likely to get help. And for Black males ages 14 to 25, violence is the number one cause of death. Overwhelmed police departments are joining forces with community leaders to say that arrests alone will not end the cycle of violence. Many solutions are being proposed, but what we're proposing is an internal solution. A solution led by those most impacted by violence. A solution that lifts up non traditional leaders to play a key role in creating safety in their own respective communities. In 2014, Newark had been on the top 10 most violent city lists for almost 50 consecutive years. With a modest investment from local philanthropies, I launched a Newark community street team. I hired 16 credible messengers, many of them ex gang members and formerly incarcerated folks who have deep relationships in the Neighborhood. We trained them in conflict resolution and mediation strategies and deployed them in high violence areas and asked them to use their relationship capital to intervene and mediate gang disputes that could lead to violence. We launched a safe passage program to ensure our kids went to school safely, because violence often happens before and after school. We launched the city's first trauma recovery center to provide therapeutic services to victims to help them heal. We also provided mentoring and outreach and case management. You see, safety isn't just one intervention. It's a shared strategy and requires an ecosystem of programs that residents trust. When we started our work In Newark in 2014, the city had 103 homicides. In 2024, we had 37. Now, other cities are primed to replicate the successes that we had in Newark. But very few essential community organizations have the know how to become a permanent part of the city's public safety workforce. Family. We're about to change all of that. With the generous investment from the audacious TED community, we're launching Scaling Safety, an initiative to put the public back in public safety. Our solution is simple. Redefine public safety by investing in a coordinated set of high impact resident led programs that create real, lasting change. We're redefining public safety. We're putting the public back into public safety. You know, we believe that those who are closest in proximity to the violence have to be equipped with the skills, the tools and the resources to actually do the intervention, the prevention and the treatment. And we have to wrap the support around them. You know, peace has to be incentivized. It doesn't happen any other way.
- [32:05]
Anoush Zamorodi
Akilah, how do you do it day after day after day? What's your secret? Is it coffee? Is it sleep? What? How?
- [32:13]
Akilah Shirills
It's spirit. It is spirit, right? I consider myself to be a spirit centered activist. You know, I work on intuition, you know, and by divine law, right? Inspiration, imagination, intuition, you know, all the things that, that, that move me. I feel like spirit has called me to do this work and I don't have a choice, you know, and I've. I was fortunate that I had kids young. My kids are all adults. I have grandkids and stuff and I get to love that. But this is my child now, you know what I'm saying? This work around community based public safety and community violence intervention. This is my life's work. And I'm gonna leave it all on the table. Family. I'm gonna leave it all on the table.
- [33:00]
Anoush Zamorodi
That was organizer and activist Akilah Shirills. You can see his full talk@ted.com on the show today, how we talk about peace. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Anoush Zamarodi. Today on the show, how we talk about peace. And we want to bring up a situation that has felt absolutely irreconcilable to many. The Israeli Palestinian conflict. It's been going on for decades, and today the two sides seem to be more at odds than ever. But there are those who keep slowly, steadily talking about the possibility of healing. Aziz Abusara and Meoz Inon are both peace activists, one Palestinian and one Israeli. In 2024, just months after the October 7 attacks and a few months into the subsequent bombing of Gaza, they sat down eye to eye for this painful but beautiful conversation on the TED stage.
- [34:26]
Maoz Inon
You know as this only four days ago, last Thursday, we buried the remains of my parents. My mom was burned so badly she cannot be identified. I lost them on October 7th. I lost so many of my childhood friends, their parents, their children. Many were kidnapped to Gaza. I was drowning in an ocean of sorrow and pain. A few nights after losing them, I had a dream. I was sleeping at night, crying. My entire body was in pain. And through my tears, I could see everyone crying. The entire humanity was crying with me. How tears went down on her face to our bodies. Our bodies were wounded, damaged from the wall. And then our tears washed our bodies and healed it. Our tears washed the blood from the ground. And then the ground was beautiful and shining. And on that ground, I could see the path, the path to peace. I woke up shaking. And immediately I knew that this is the path I must choose, the path of not taking revenge, the path of reconciliation. And you've been walking this path for decades. We met only once before October 7th. Even that was for two minutes, maybe. But you are among the first ones to reach out, send your condolences, support, and I will always love you for being there for me in my hardest time.
- [36:29]
Aziz Abusara
Maoz, when I sent you that message to offer my condolences after your parents were killed, I was surprised by your answer. Not just to me, but your public answer. Because you said you're not only crying for your parents, you're also crying for the people in Gaza who are losing their lives and that you do not want what happened to you to be justifying anyone taking revenge. You do not want to justify war. And it's so hard to do that. So much easier to want revenge, to be angry. But you are a brave man. I needed much more time. When my brother Taysir, who is 19 years old, was killed by Israeli soldiers, I was angry, I was bitter and I wanted vengeance. I was 10 years old and I thought there is no other choice. And only eight years later, when I went to study Hebrew with Jewish immigrants to Israel, that's only when I realized that we can be allies, we can be partners. And I realized that I do have a choice. Regardless of what other people do, that choice is always mine. And I do not want to take revenge. That when I choose to be angry and hateful, I'm being a slave to the person who killed my brother. These last few months has been like a nightmare that never ends. Everyone I know in Gaza have lost family members. My friend Abdelrahim, he lost 50 people in his family. This photo you can see all these kids have been killed. And in the upper middle photo, the father of these kids was in Israel when they were killed. And he wanted to come back to see his kids one last time. He couldn't. He ended up back to Gaza, but never was able to make it to his house. What's amazing though is Abdelrahim is just like you. I talked to him yesterday and he said, I'm still as committed to peace as I was before. I do not want my story to lead to hate. And even now, as his parents are in northern Gaza, unable to get food, unable to leave, he's still committed to this message. And it makes me wonder, how do you make such a choice in the midst of so much tragedy?
- [38:56]
Maoz Inon
You know, I've been interviewed like a hundred times in the recent months and this is the most easiest question. It's for my parents. It's my parents legacy. And when we put their remains in the ground, I realized that they prepared me for that moment. They taught me what to say and how to act after they will be killed. My father was a farmer. One year I remember that there was a drought. And then the second there was flood. And the third there were insects. And at the end of each of those devastating seasons, my father would always tell me, maoz, next year I'm going to sow again. Because next year is going to be a better year. And my mom was a very talented mandala painter. She painted thousands of mandalas. And from all the mandalas she painted, she. She gave me only one as a present. This is the one she gave me. And on this mandala, this is for you. I made it for you. And on the mandala she gave me, she wrote, we can achieve all our dreams if we'll be brave enough to chase them. And in the last 20 years, I've been chasing and fulfilling many dreams, coalition with as many stakeholders as possible, reaching shared value and common ground between the partnership, writing a very detailed roadmap and executing. And I was partnering with Palestinians, with Israeli, with Jordanian, with Egyptian. And I learned that the first step in reaching a shared society and a shared future is knowing the other side narrative and following your work for many years. Even though I we met only once, I think there is no one in the world that know better how we can take our divided narratives and make them into a shared future and a shared society. So thank you for all what you've done so far. Really, it's amazing, no?
- [41:03]
Aziz Abusara
Maoz. I worked in 70 countries and peace and conflict. And everywhere I worked, I found that we share the same problems. The cause of conflicts are the same. It's lack of recognition, not willing to understand each other, historical narrative. And not having a shared vision for our future and not doing those things is a fatal mistake. We live next to each other and yet we are so divided. We cannot talk, we cannot meet, we cannot have a conversation. There are roadblocks, there are checkpoints, there are walls that divide us. There are societal pressure that makes us not being able to talk to each other. And I know this because my dad's first time ever going to a synagogue was in the United States. When he came to visit me, he went to a Friday prayer, but the mosque was too full and the Muslim community rented a synagogue. So he ended up praying in a synagogue. And he came back and told me and he was so excited about it. And I thought, jerusalem is full of synagogues. And yet his first time ever being in a synagogue is in the States. That's how divided we are, how little we know about each other. But we also must learn to ask hard questions, be honest and willing to listen. My dad's first time to a peace meeting was one that I organized. And when he came, he asked a question that I thought, oh my goodness, how could you do that? He said, did the Holocaust happen? And just like the gasps we hear here, everybody in the meeting was terrified. I thought, I'm going to lose my job for my dad asking the question, and regretted inviting him to the peace meeting. But you know what? Because of that question, one of the Holocaust survivors in the meeting, he took my dad and 70 other Palestinians to the Holocaust memorial. It was the first Time such a big delegation going there and they had this hard conversation later. The Israelis in the meeting ended up coming and having a son similar conversation about Palestinian history narrative. Going to a town that was destroyed in 1948 in the Nakba. I've been working in the last 20 some years and finding ways to ask those questions. In 2009 I co founded Mejdi Tours and later Interact International with my Jewish friend Scott to do that, to give a context, a place where we can build a movement of citizen diplomats, where you can have dual narrative tours, an Israeli and a Palestinian co leading a tour and then in many other dozen of other countries so we can find a framework, we can say how can I learn from you? What is it that we can push each other to do? And maybe that's the question, what have we learned from each other?
- [43:56]
Maoz Inon
Regarding to your further questions, I think it was November that a very, very good Palestinian friend asked me, Maz can ask you a difficult question. I said, you are my friend, you can ask whatever you like. She asked me, maz, maybe your parents house was burned from a crossfire from the IDF and not from the Hamas. And she was literally denying October 7th. And I was shocked. I did not know what to say. And then I stopped for a second and I, I told her, you know what? What does it matter? What does it matter? My parents are dead and they are dead because of the conflict and the war that has been going on for so long and it's our mission to stop it. And I learned so much in the recent months from speaking and dialoguing with Palestinians. I learned that we must forgive for the past, we must forgive for the present. But we cannot and should not forgive for the future. Not to ourselves and to no one else if we want to make the future a better future. I learned that our stories were split in the past with the different chosen son of Abraham. And for many centuries our stories were parallel. And the gap between them is becoming wider and wider as we are getting to the present. And it became to get wider with the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Palestinian national movement and with all the war we've been waging on each other, it's becoming wider and wider. And now in the present it's as wide as ever. Our stories were never apart as they are now. But there is a miracle. There is a miracle. Our stories meet. They meet in the future. We meet in the future that is based on reconciliation and recognition. That is based on security and safety and of course inequality. And now we must use the same steps I used to fulfill, or we used to fulfill our previous dreams. In making this dream into reality, we are all dreaming of peace. We are building a coalition. Palestinian, Israelis, supporters from all over the world. We share the same values and common ground. Right now we are writing a very detailed, informative roadmap. And we are already starting to execute. And what we are doing now, tonight, we are executing the first two chapters of our roadmap. We are amplifying our voices and building our legitimacy as the leaders of the future. And I could not ask for a better partner, for a better companion than you, Aziz.
- [46:50]
Aziz Abusara
When people hear this, and I think we are much stronger together than ever alone. We've been doing so much work on campuses with anti Jewish and anti Muslim hate, with helping people in our own community, finding ways to organize. But I think people can hear this and think, so you can lose people in your family and not be angry. And I think that's a mistake. We are angry. I am very angry. Every time I read the newspaper, I'm angry. Every time I talk to one of my friends in Gaza, I am angry. But the thing is, I do not let anger and we do not let anger drown us in, in hate and wanting vengeance. Instead, I think of anger like a nuclear power. It can lead to destruction and it can make light. And my hope is that we continue to use anger as a way to bring people together, to ask ourselves what can I do to make things better?
- [47:46]
Maoz Inon
And that bring me to the most important. I love you. And it brings me to the most important lessons I that hope is an action. It's not something you find, not something you can lose. It's something you are making. And I came up with a very basic formula, recipe, how to make hope first, like love. You cannot do it by yourself. You are doing it with others. And you are starting. We are starting because now it's we, we are starting by envisioning a better future. And then we are acting to make this future into a reality. It's act. We must act. And through the process, we always need to convince first ourselves and all our coalition and everyone that is willing to, to listen that our actions are effective. It's very simple. It's very simple. And this is what we must do. And I believe that if we will be brave enough and brilliant enough, we can make this future into a reality in the near Future, that by 2030 or before, there's going to be peace between the river and the sea.
- [49:15]
Aziz Abusara
You know, We say today, ideas change everything. And I have an idea. People look at us and think we are divided because you're Israeli and I'm Palestinian, Muslims and Jews. But if you must divide us, people should divide us as those of us who believe in justice, peace and equality and those who don't yet. And our work here is to invite everyone, to invite you to join us into our work, into bringing everyone together to take a stand that says we are not enemies. Do not be mistaken. We lost our family members. We did not lose our sanity. We did not lose our minds. We are here together saying we will fight in the same side for justice and and for peace. Thank you.
- [50:10]
Anoush Zamorodi
That was Aziz Abusara and Meoz Inon. The two of them have co written a book called the Future is A Shared Journey across the Holy Land, which comes out in April. You can watch their full conversation@ted.com thanks so much for listening to our show this week. If you liked it or you got something out of it, please rate us on Apple or leave a comment on Spotify. We love hearing from you. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, Fiona Guerin and Harsha Nahada. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Matthew Cloutier, Phoebe Lett, James Delahusy, and Rachel Faulkner White. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Nisha Hynes and David Greenberg. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Helen Walters, Roxanne Hylash, and Daniela Belarazzo. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr.