Local residents fed up with violent crime in the city are doing their part to make a change. They’re taking part in a campaign to help stop the escalating violence in the City of Brotherly Love.
Police say there were 324 murders in Philadelphia in 2011 and 60 homicides so far this year in addition to numerous shootings.
“We are averaging about 1500 shootings per year,” said Bilal Qayyum, president of the Father’s Day Rally Committee. “So when you put all those aggregate numbers together we have a crisis around violence in the city.”
Qayyum and the Father’s Day Rally Committee along with Ray Jones of the Philadelphia Safety Net have joined forces with about a half dozen other local grassroots organizations. They’re coming together to launch the “Live and Let Live” campaign. The goal is to promote peace by changing attitudes about violence.
“In some neighborhoods it’s the way you behave, its acceptable behavior,” said Qayyum. “A lot of them have attitudes when they see their friends or they live in the environment where there’s a lot of violence. They begin to say, ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to live to be 20, 25 or 26-years because I’ve got three or four friends that have been killed.’”
The campaign includes posters plastered in neighborhoods and businesses plagued by crime, lawn signs, billboards, facebook and a web page.
Ray Jones of the Philadelphia Safety Net says his group has already taken 1000 guns off the streets since January in exchange for food vouchers.
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“There are a lot of guns out there too unfortunately,” said Jones. “But we just keep doing our little piece and with this message campaign we want folks to reexamine how they are living and we can save some lives.”
“Live and Let Live” plans to have 35 billboards up in the city over the next year. The group says several elected officials have agreed to pay for some of them. They hope to get more financial support from other organizations as the campaign gains momentum.
