Church leaders: We need peace

Faith leaders from dozens of churches, synagogues and mosques gathered Nov. 6 at Dillard University to sign a “covenant” pledging they will work individually and together with city officials to provide mentoring programs, spiritual resources and neighborhood outreach to fight the epidemic of violence and murder in the City of New Orleans.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond, representing the Archdiocese of New Orleans and the 13 Catholic church parishes that thus far have agreed to participate, was one of the prominent signatories of the NOLA Interfaith Peace Initiative, developed in collaboration with the National Urban League and funded by Casey Family Programs.

The mission of the initiative, said coordinator Joseph Givens, is to support New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s efforts “to curb violence and death.”

Faith community is pivotal
The idea is to “expand the capacity and role of faith communities” in bringing an end to the culture of violence, offer a prophetic, spiritual voice to an intractable social problem and bring faith communities together with city efforts to create “a comprehensive peace initiative.”

In the mid-1990s, Givens was the organizing force behind All Congregations Together (ACT), an umbrella group of churches of various denominations that rallied to demand answers from public officials about crime, public education and sub-par quality of life in neighborhoods across the city.
 

Givens said ACT’s proven track record of reducing crime and cleaning up neighborhoods is a model that the NOLA Interfaith Peace Initiative can follow.

When ACT was in its heyday in the 1990s, the New Orleans murder rate dropped significantly as congregations pressured the police department to  do more to make the streets safer, Givens said.
 

“In the end, what we experienced in the mid-1990s – when we were at twice the number of murders here – was a yearly decrease in crime,” said Givens, a parishioner at St. Pius X Church New Orleans. “I don’t expect God to be any less present today than he was then.

“We need to bring the churches back to the forefront on this issue. There are all sorts of strategies to end violence, such as the Cease Fire initiative and all these interventions dealing with re-entry (of inmates to society), but we believe in the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which is resolving issues at their most common, base level.

Take care of your ‘house’
“That principle is rooted in the whole idea of (the prophet) Nehemiah and the wall in front of your own house. Each church takes responsibility for its own neighborhood and its own community. It’s also common sense. We can’t expect the mayor to come into our neighborhoods and do what churches can do. Nobody knows the needs of these neighborhoods better than the pastor and the lay leaders in those neighborhoods.”
 

In 2011, Casey Family Programs launched a “Cities United” initiative in Philadelphia and New Orleans with the goal of combating violence, especially among young African-American males. Mayor Landrieu developed NOLA for Life, which primarily targeted high-risk neighborhoods and individuals.

A political collaboration
Earlier this year, the National Urban League, headed by former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, partnered with Casey to work in three cities – New Orleans, Louisville and Seattle – on crime-prevention strategies.

“In New Orleans, we decided to focus  our efforts on bringing forth our city’s long-standing anchor institutions – the faith-based community,” said Erika McConduit, interim president of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans.
 

Givens, who is a consultant to the National Urban League and executive director of the Isaiah Institute, said he considers it nothing short of a political miracle to have two New Orleans mayors – Morial and Landrieu – working in concert with each other to solve a problem.

“We’ve never had that in the past,” Givens said. “Usually, one mayor tries to get the other one arrested. It shows something positive happening for New Orleans. This is a great example of Mitch and Marc working together. We’ve never had that before.”

Churches will decide plan
Each church will discuss how it can best bring about peace in its neighborhood, Givens said. Some churches may consider opening up its  sports facilities to youth in the community in the evenings, providing after-school activities or mentoring programs or coordinating neighborhood watch groups. Those individual plans, which are due by the end of the month, will be molded into one application for funding from Casey Family Programs.
 

At the covenant signing, Mayor Landrieu said it was vital for all constituents – black and white, rich and poor – to recognize that “we have things happening on the streets of New Orleans that are no longer acceptable, and, for some reason, we have become numb to that either through fear, anxiety or hopelessness.”
 

“The bottom line is, around 1980, something different began happening in the city of New Orleans from that which had happened before,” Landrieu said. “Young men, primarily between 16 and 25, mostly who have dropped out of school and live in difficult situations and had some interaction with the justice department, began resolving their differences – a wayward look, a disrespectful word or something more serious than that – by shooting each other, most often in the head with a gun, and 88 percent of them knew each other.”

‘Relentless drumbeat of death’
That “relentless drumbeat of death” can no longer be ignored or wished away, Landrieu said.

“Martin Luther King did not take a bullet and John Lewis did not take a beating so our young men could end their lives this way,” he said. “In New Orleans, we are tired of running away. We don’t do that any more. Now we run to the fire, we run to the trouble, we run to the pain, because when we run to it, we can cure it.”
 

Landrieu said the city and police department would do their part, but he needs the churches to become active partners in a solution.

“The faith-based community, through your presence here, is accepting the challenge to do your part, because we are all one family,” Landrieu said. “We are so connected that we cannot live without each other. And when we are all doing the right things for the right reasons, all at the same time, we will prevail, because, as the archbishop (Aymond) said, ‘God is good, all the time.’”

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.