Don't Give Up on addressing Violence in our City

Even as the City of Philadelphia leaders and residents come to grips with the fact that we’ve had more than 505 people murdered in 2022 as of December 23rd, we still must look to the future with hope.

Surely if we don’t have hope and if we don’t have faith, the only thing we can do is sink. I believe in the power of prayer, and prayer is a very good thing. However, faith without works is dead.

That’s why I’m always encouraged when I learn about organizations that I perhaps had not heard of before that are trying to do their best to help make a difference in terms of bringing the number of violent crimes down.

The organization I’m excited to share information about in today’s column is, The Action for Justice Collective of the Northwest section of Philadelphia. The Action for Justice Collective is actually a nationally recognized gun diversion program.

“The Action for Justice Collective in combination with IDAAY, Archye Leacock and his group, The Institute for the Development of African American Youth and New Journeys CDC are all working together on this initiative,” stated Michael A. Brown, Founder, and CEO of Action for Justice Collective. Brown went on to say, “We’ve come together on the Philadelphia Gaming Initiative to really bring together gaming and e-sports, and we combine that with a life skills curriculum to work with youth at risk of gun violence. Participants in our program have either been victims of gun violence or perpetrated gun violence or are family members of people who have had gun violence committed against them. We work with age groups 12-18. The way our plan was created, we can expand to young people up to age 24 if programming is available for them.”