(FORCE Detroit Founder Alia Harvey-Quinn stands with her team of violence intervention specialists outside of the organization’s headquarters in Detroit.)
By Biba Adams, Contributing Writer
When moderate Americans advocate for common sense gun laws, the conservative argument is often “What about Chicago?” In the 80s, the city in question was Detroit. While the name of the city changes, the idea is the same. It is rooted in racist tropes that Black people are more violent, and that “Black on Black crime” is an issue that goes unaddressed in U.S. major cities.
FORCE Detroit knows how false this argument is.
For almost a decade, FORCE Detroit has advanced community-led strategies that interrupt, prevent, and reduce violence in our communities, especially as it relates to gun violence. The organization leverages advocacy, organizing, and narrative building to create safer, freer communities that support impacted families and prevent future incidents through education and outreach.
In this 10-part series, Michigan Chronicle will examine the efforts of FORCE Detroit and its work in conjunction with other community leaders who have been instrumental in the successful decrease of violent crime rates in Detroit. While the credit for these decreases are often lauded on police departments and prosecutors, these entities aren’t alone in their work, nor would their efforts be as successful without the hard work of organizations like FORCE, who work on a more grassroots level to impact their neighborhoods and, more importantly, their neighbors – the people who occupy the same blocks as they do.
FORCE Detroit’s Community Violence Intervention (CVI) initiatives approach firearm-related crime as a public health epidemic, curable with data-informed, evidence-based, customizable, stakeholder-driven solutions that minimize legal system involvement.
They are independent in their CVI efforts, though, nor are they the first to do it.
One of the earliest violence intervention programs in the city was SOSAD (Save Our Sons and Daughters) which existed from 1987 to 1992. The group was formed as “The Group Without a Name,” by Clementine Barfield, who called together several parents of children killed in Detroit during 1986. Her son Derick Barfield was killed in July 1986 and another son critically wounded. The parents and concerned citizens met at the Church of the New Covenant-Baptist to organize a support group and to fight for gun control, according to the archived records at The University of Michigan.
A city-wide prayer service was attended by more than 1,400 people and the organization went on to conduct programs aimed at reducing youth homicides in Detroit and addressing the problem of teen violence.
Additionally, Detroit 300 is another predecessor of FORCE Detroit. The group of armed citizens who took to the street to track down violent criminals – particularly sex offenders – and make
citizen’s arrest particularly at a time when the city was not afforded the resources to respond in the most efficient way to its backlog of rape kits.
FORCE Detroit is one of the city’s most visible organizations in the current generation of community-led violence interventionist programs.
Since its founding by well-known community advocate Alia Harvey-Quinn, FORCE has been a powerful voice in advocacy and organizing, coalition building, capacity building, and ensuring community voices are heard. The name stands for Faithfully Organizing Resources for Community Empowerment.
Additionally, FORCE is working to create an infrastructure for building peace by establishing new CVI sites to confirm proof of concept and expand their reach. They will provide grant funds, training, and mentorship to bolster partner organizations and support the field.
“The concept of CVI connected to that in a way that deeply spoke to me and spoke to the vision that I have for our community. And that vision is one where community shows up as experts ourselves,” Harvey-Quinn explains. “And then we lead powerful initiatives that allow us to create systems for transformation that speak to us culturally, right that don’t prop up outsiders as experts.”
These initiatives would also “employment opportunities for folks that otherwise wouldn’t be deemed as valuable in our community.”
One of the people who has been employed as a Community Violence Interventionist for FORCE as the leader of a team of violence intervention specialists is Terence “C-MO” Hampton.
“I understand. I understand the people in the neighborhood on a different, deeper level. When I deal with my participants, I look at them in the eyes, and it was once me,” Hampton says, when asked about why he does the work that he does. He adds, “I’m deep rooted in this,” again adding, “This work has given me a chance to change the whole dynamic of my whole outlook on my life.”
Much of the energy at FORCE is about atonement. Being able to change an environment of violence that one has either being on the giving or receiving end of–but where all have been affected.
Karisha Vanzant, a Program Coordinator for FORCE explains, “The work we do is so personal to me because throughout my life, I have experienced violence on many different levels. And being a part of this organization has made me find solutions to all of those different levels of violence. And how we tackle decreasing violence within the city is very important.”
FORCE is clear that Community Violence Interventionists are not police – they are deeply embedded community leaders who are able to influence and be the voice of communities that are hurting.
“One of the major changes that I’ve seen within the community is,” Vanzant says, “allowing communities to be leaders in their own in their own trajectory of their lives. A lot of times, we as a people, different organizations, or just as a collective, don’t allow people to solve their own issues. It’s always ‘what we want or how we see things’ from policymakers. And the community has expressed at a high level that being able to do that for themselves and lead that work – they understand that they are closest to the problem, so they are closest to the solution.”
This is the first of a 10-part series that will dive deeply into FORCE’s mission, the impact of CVI groups’ work, the challenges they face, and the solutions to overarching problems of violence in communities including Detroit.
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