At north Minneapolis peace summit, Stevie Wonder joins plea to end street violence
Young people mired in poverty need help to end the cycle of violence, say leaders at summit.
By Randy Furst and
Libor Jany Star Tribune
JUNE 17, 2017 — 9:42PM
RANDY FURST, STAR TRIBUNE
Musician Stevie Wonder joined a peace conference in Minneapolis and Saturday and urged those there to join the effort.
Several hundred people — parents, pastors and business leaders among them — gathered Saturday in north Minneapolis for the second day of a “peace conference” focused on the enduring problem of young people shooting one another on city streets.
The speakers, including legendary singer Stevie Wonder and civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis, decried the number of young people being cut down by bullets in their own neighborhoods. Part of the solution, they said, is to offer young people caught up in poverty and dysfunction an alternative to street warfare, which has intensified in Minneapolis in recent weeks.
Wonder said that some of the violence has its roots in historical trauma. “You cannot say ‘black lives matter,’ and then kill yourselves,” he said, closing the event by performing renditions of his hits, “Love’s in Need of Love Today” and “Higher Ground.”
“The first thing you must do is stop believing the fallacy of you not being important,” he said. “Because it is completely unacceptable for one to hate themselves so much that anyone that looks like you, you want to kill.”
The conference was organized by the Rev. Jerry McAfee, pastor at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, where the gathering was held, and by Sharif Willis, a leader of the Vice Lords, a Chicago-based gang that Willis prefers to describe as a subcultural organization whose leaders now reject violence.
The event took on new urgency with the fatal shooting of a man early Saturday near Webber Park, less than 2 miles from the church. The homicide was the city’s 15th of the year and the sixth slaying in two weeks.
At north Minneapolis peace summit, Stevie Wonder joins plea to end street violence