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How to become a member, is very easy when you get your name added to the Sponsor page that is the first step of becoming a member. We have 21 PK chapters and you can check and see if any one is in your city by going to Location on this site. If not  then we will contact you after you become a sponsor. When you become a 50.00 Gold sponsor we will mail you a Peacekeepers tee shirt. Become a 100.00 Orange sponsor will get you a tee shirt and a PK’s Id membership card .Everyone has to take the PK’s pledge which is given by the founder himself. Every Tuesday at 5:30  eastern standard time on our PK’s Roll Call,at the end Capt Dennis the founder will swear in new PK’s.

Thank you

PeaceKeepers founder attends Macon forum to address police, community relations:

The Telegraph Macon News.

Dennis Muhammad, founder of the national group Peace Keepers, was part of a panel at Macon’s City Hall on Thursday. The community forum was part of the group’s effort to improve relations between the Macon Police Department and the community.

The relationship between Macon police and some in the black community have been strained for some time. That bad blood was made worse with the Dec. 21, 2012, shooting of Sammie “Junebug” Davis Jr. at the Pio Nono Avenue Kroger by a Macon officer.

“The relationship with law enforcement is what brought us here, and the shooting of Sammie Davis Jr.,” said Al Tillman, a community activist and member of the local Peace Keepers group, the organization’s first in the state. He also moderated the forum.

“We are dealing with cases of racial profiling. I think that goes on,” said Macon City Councilman Larry Schlesinger, who was a member of the panel  at Thursday’s forum.

Bibb County Sheriff David Davis was also a member of the panel, which answered questions from Tillman and Macon resident George Muhammad, also a member of the Peace Keepers.

Schlesinger said he has recommended to Davis that when his office consolidates with the Macon Police Department, the sheriff should go through all of the police department’s files to identify problem officers. That comment got an applause from the 45 people in attendance.

“Law enforcement is here to serve and protect,” he said. “I think it is at times more protecting than serving.”

Davis agreed problematic officers need to be rooted out. “If you don’t get the bad apples out on the front end, they’re going to turn into rotten apples and ruin the entire department,” he said.

Dennis Muhammad would not comment on the shooting of Sammie Davis, but did remark that cases of police shootings have increased around the country.

“We have to deal with these controversial shootings,” he said. “You have a problem here in Macon. … Black-on-black violence is on the increase. That’s something we have to address.”

George Muhammad suggested that Davis and Macon Mayor Robert Reichert, who also attended the forum, allow the Peace Keepers founder to give sensitivity training to Macon officers and Bibb deputies. Dennis Muhammad is noted for giving such training in the New York area. Peace Keepers has locations in 10 states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee in the South, as well as a location in London.

Dennis Muhammad sympathized with the job that police officers have. “I understand the challenge that law enforcement has in our community,” he said. “Officers see the worst society has to offer in our community. … You never know what an officer goes through when they see a 14-year-old shot because of his sneakers. … They (police) are suffering. They’re not winning the war on drugs, they’re not winning the war on violence.”

With all the effort to fix the Macon Police Department and its bad community relations, Davis said it’s important to remember something. “You have to remember that there will not be a Macon Police Department. It’s all Bibb County,” he said. “And it certainly will not be business as usual.”

When his office takes over policing duties in the city, he said he knows he has his work cut out to fix the negative perception left by Macon police. “You meet people at those perceptions and work to change those perceptions. It’s a new day and a new organization. Give us an opportunity to change it,” said Davis.

Superman isn’t coming: Grassroots efforts to end urban violence

The unrest started last Saturday soon after 16-year-old Kimani Gray was shot down in Brooklyn by plainclothes NYPD officers. Outraged over his death, local residents took to the streets in East Flatbush for several nights of protest, resulting in over 40 arrests, looting and scuffles with the police.

Then, on Monday, 13 were injured in a drive-by shooting in DC and
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 11: DC Metro Police Officers investigate the scene of a drive-by shooting that took place in front of the Tyler House apartment complex in the 1200 block of North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC on March 11, 2013. (Photo by Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post) (Matt Zapotosky) on Tuesday, 6-month old Jonylah Watkins was fatally shot 5 times in Chicago as her father (the target of the crime) changed her diaper. The stories read like scenes out of “New Jack City,” the 1991 film that depicted the rise and fall of urban drug lords during the crack epidemic.

Tragically, this is the reality of working class African Americans living in inner-city neighborhoods plagued by high unemployment, flourishing drug economies and failing school systems. Rather than waiting for sweeping public policy reform or the arrival of national guard troops (as some have suggested in the case of Chicago), these communities have the most to gain by focusing on grassroots, local mobilization efforts to curtail the violence.

But the national outcry has been uneven. In Gray’s case, attention has been given to his killing because it’s a continuation of police brutality accusations against the NYPD. While the Chicago murder has garnered some national attention, that’s likely because of the age of the victim. In Washington, there was scant media coverage.

The general apathy got me thinking that we need a different model when addressing this violence. Instead of “waiting for Superman,” we need community-based solutions to these social problems. With that in mind, I interviewed three individuals from the black Church, the Nation of Islam and hip-hop communities. While the power of these institutions in shaping black political consciousness may not be as strong as in decades past, they remain three of the most influential forces shaping black values and actions.

When asked about strategies historically used by the NOI that have proven successful, Capt. Dennis Muhammad emphasized the need to “meet the people where they are, which may mean meeting them in the streets, projects, corners and going door to door.” After having been trained by the Nation of Islam for over 30 years, he founded the Peacekeepers Global Initiative, which is described as a community action plan to promote peace, love and unity in communities plagued by crime and gun violence. His organization sends 50-100 men out to patrol neighborhood streets for “One Hour of Power.”

Muhammad’s belief that it is more important to go where one is needed versus only trying to bring young people into the fold of positive programming is also an argument for intergenerational dialogue. He encourages youth advocates “to work hard to bridge that gap between yesterday’s leaders and heroes who are out of step with this new generation of youth who have very little knowledge of their sacrifice or struggle.”

The Nation of Islam has been successful in ways that other leadership groups have not in bridging the generational divide between the Civil Rights, Black Power and Hip-Hop generations. It has long been praised for its capacity to empower young people to think critically about hip-hop and to challenge rappers in the area of social responsibility. How can more of us do the same through our various spheres of influence?

Conrad Tillard, who once served as the NOI’s national youth minister and was known as “The Hip-Hop Minister,” thinks that young people are hungering for models of leadership beyond the ones found in the streets. As a pastor and City Council candidate in District 36 (Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights) of New York City, he seeks to offer them that.

“We need more seriousness of purpose, less entertainment, more austerity and less scandal in order to apply the level of moral force that must be brought to bear order to stop the killings! Our community needs a dramatic “moratorium on mess,” Tillard says.

Jessica “FM Supreme” Disu, a Chicago-based international performing hip-hop artist, argues that community leaders must push for media reform of television, radio stations and daily news because “the United States is over-saturated with messages of violence, fear and death, which is causing our young people to become numb to it.”

Disu co-founded a new initiative called The Chicago Asia Youth Peace Exchange to help expand the understanding that Chicago youth have of global matters. Through the program, six to eight youth leaders will be trained as peace activists and then travel from Chicago to Thailand and Burma for 2.5 weeks to study nonviolence, conflict resolution and inter-ethnic conflicts.

Similar grassroots efforts addressing education, workforce development, family cohesion and health disparities can be found throughout the country. In addition to nonprofit agencies that meet ongoing community needs, residents are also creating online petitions, holding candlelight vigils, cycling and using other mediums to bring national media attention to gun violence.

Sadly, it seems that these efforts rarely garner the same attention that charismatic, national leadership does, which is why so many believed that it was critical for President Obama to speak out about the murder rates in his hometown. It’s as if tragedies in black communities don’t matter to the mainstream press unless politicians or Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Ben Jealous make a statement about it.

Perhaps the media will always be “waiting for Superman” to arrive on the scene, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to do the same.

•To help rebuild the community by partnering with different organizations, agencies and religious institutions to eradicate violence and crime by promoting an atmosphere of peace.

• To rebuild the Family by getting the Men and Women to respect one another- Strong families equals strong communities…….

 Peacekeeper First Disaster Response Volunteer