By Denise Stewart
For The Birmingham Times
With the number of homicides in Birmingham above 20 already this year, community leaders are looking to stop the violence with a conflict resolution approach that has been successful in places like New Orleans and Atlanta.
The murder rate in New Orleans is still among the highest in the country. But Willie Muhammad, a 43-year-old instructor in conflict resolution, said they’ve been able to defuse some of the violence.
“Since 2011, we have successfully resolved 45 conflicts in New Orleans,” Muhammad said. “In many of these situations, simple misunderstandings were turning into threats of physical altercations.”
Muhammad will lead the training in Birmingham Saturday, in hopes of teaching others how to step in without weapons and disarm the violence. The session begins at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Historic Cotton Building in Ensley, at 400 19th Street.
Minister Tremon Muhammad, Birmingham leader of the Nation of Islam, said the training is open to all Birmingham citizens. They are offering sessions in Ensley first because of the rash of violence that has plagued that community already this year.
Birmingham’s first homicide of the year happened in Ensley on Jan. 3. Elie Jameel Miller, 18 was shot at a market on Warrior Road when police say he and his brother were attempting to take a car. A few weeks later, a 58-year old man was shot to death in his yard on 46th Street in Ensley.
Tremon Muhammad says in communities like Ensley, “Someone has to be around to initiate peace. We have to start somewhere.” He says it will be called the Peacemakers Initiative.
It will start in Birmingham with a four-hour session. Willie Muhammad said in that time, he plans to teach several lessons including how to establish intervention and the basic principles of non-violent conflict resolution. The session will also include instruction to help others understand their value and self-worth.
“So many times, brothers don’t have a true understanding of what it is to be a man, so they respond to situations with violence,” Willie Muhammad said.
In the seven years since he began working with peace initiatives, Willie Muhammad said he’s had lots of first-hand experience.
A couple of years ago, while passing out flyers with a mediation team in a New Orleans neighborhood, someone told him about an altercation brewing a couple of blocks away.
“There was this brother who was pacing back and forth. We talked to him, and he told us he was about to go get his gun and shoot some guys on the porch across the street. He thought the guys were scheming a plot to get him,” Willie Muhammad said.
“We got him to hold up for a minute while we went and talked with the guys on the porch. They told us, they were looking at the girls that were talking near that guy. They weren’t paying him any attention.”
Drugs and gangs are at the root of some of the violence in inner cities, but Willie Muhammad said most of the problems stem from misunderstandings – someone upset over a social media post or a comment or even a glance taken out of context.
In New Orleans, the Peacekeepers set up a hotline. They also raised enough money to pay billboards for a campaign called “Squash the Beef.”
Chattanooga mediators, working with the Nation of Islam’s Kevin Muhammad, purchased a patrol car in 2016 and fixed up a donated house to serve as a headquarters for mediators, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Their goal was take back a crime-infested neighborhood called Alton Park.
In Atlanta, mediators are working to combat crime, guns and gangs in The Bluff, a northwest Atlanta neighborhood. They set up a headquarters and placed a large sign with a contact phone number out front.
Because Nation of Islam members are respected in the community and know how to engage people in the inner city, Tremon Muhammad said their efforts will have an impact on Ensley.
“We don’t carry guns, and we don’t carry as much as a pen knife,” Tremon Muhammad said. “But there is something in what we have been taught about ourselves that makes us able to deal with the dark mindset that is out in the community.”
