Philadelphia Engages Faith Leaders In Effort To Stop Violence
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The mayor's new office of Violence Prevention held its first training Tuesday designed to get more faith leaders to step down from the pulpits and hit the streets.
Scores of faith leaders and activists gathered at the Philadelphia Anti-Drug, Anti-Violence Network office at 17th and Lehigh.
"The masjids, the neighborhood churches, the mom and pop shops," says Shondell Revell, Executive Director of the Office of Violence Prevention.
He says he attended a workshop in Baltimore and was so inspired that his office asked for DOJ funding to invite speakers from across the country to come to Philadelphia to share their successful tactics for using faith leaders to curb crime and killing in challenged neighborhoods.
"In order to address the violence, you have to address the issues that create the violence," says Revell.
"We are not trying to arrest our way out of anything, but we can't pray our way out of it either, said says Bishop EM Barron of Higher Ground Temple. "We have to put some boots on our prayers,"
Barron says they started doing night walks and victim outreach in Camden and in five years they've seen a marked changed.
"We just started seeing an improved relationship between the church and pastors and the city and with the teenagers and police department," he says.
Will Latif Little is an activist and poet who works in South Philadelphia doing anti-violence outreach.
He says he's seen few faith leaders step up, but he's hoping the outreach will get pastors and imams to join him in the streets.
"Some of them feel it's not their responsibility," says Little, "but it is, it's my responsibility too, so they need to know that one day a week is not going to do it. We need a holistic approach."
More trainings are being scheduled.
