By USCM Vice President Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter
March 19, 2012

As I joined tens of thousands of my fellow Philadelphians to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in January, a striking thought entered my mind.

In Dr. King’s time, the biggest threat to a black man was that a white man, wearing a hood, would snatch him up off the street and take him away to beat him, shoot him, lynch him or burn him. The black man was not safe to walk the streets in many of our nation’s cities. Today, in 2012, black men are still being snatched from the streets, snatched from their families and their children by individuals wearing hoods. Only this time the hooded person is not white, but black. Of the 316 people who were murdered in Philadelphia last year nearly 75 percent of those killed were black men. Around 80 percent of those doing the killing…black men.

Now, you might expect me to talk about this issue. I’m a black man, proud of my race, my history and my heritage. And as mayor of Philadelphia, the largest American city with an African American mayor, I feel an obligation to step forward and talk about these issues. However, this is a problem in cities all throughout America and that’s why mayors from across this country – Black, White, Hispanic, Asian – stand united and are putting this issue on the national agenda. In America’s big cities the majority of homicide victims are African American men, the majority of whom are killed by other African American men. This is a national epidemic, and there needs to be a national conversation on this topic.

If the Ku Klux Klan came to Philadelphia and killed almost 300 black men in one year, my city would be on lockdown. The U.S. Justice Department would be called in. There would be a federal investigation. Congress would hold hearings. And yet I don’t hear a serious, rational, non-hysterical conversation from anyone addressing this epidemic.

This merits a national level conversation because we face a problem that affects us all. Yes, it obviously has a particular impact on the black community, but the repercussions are felt across all sections of society. In Philadelphia, I spend one-third of my budget on the “criminal justice complex” on catching, trying and locking up thousands of black men every year. These are dollars that I can’t spend on schools, recreation centers, libraries, after'school activities or job training programs. It’s just a waste.

But more importantly, this violence is tearing at the fabric of our communities, pulling us apart at the seams, poking holes in our humanity. This isn’t a black problem or a white problem. It affects us all. As Dr. King wrote from his Birmingham jail cell, we are all “…tied together in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We are tied together by this violence, it changes us all, and therefore we all must be involved in the solution.

This is why in Philadelphia collaboration and partnership are at the core of everything we do to tackle the root causes and the symptoms of the violence in our city.

My Administration is working in close partnership with our District Attorney, Seth Williams, to crack down on anyone who carries an illegal gun in this city, putting them on notice that we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law and that if we catch them with an illegal gun they’re going to jail for up to five years. We’re also working closely with our federal partners including the U.S. Attorney, ATFE, FBI, DEA and U.S. Marshals to implement ‘Operation Pressure Point’, a multi-agency crack down on crime in targeted areas of the city which last year resulted in a 31 percent drop in homicides and 17 percent fewer shooting victims.

Let’s be real. We all know that once the issue is in the hands of our law enforcement agencies, part of the battle has already been lost. We must be more focused on prevention than prosecution, on intervention rather than incarceration. This means targeting the highest-risk neighborhoods, engaging citizens and empowering them because the community needs to be part of the solution.

That’s what we have done through “Philly Rising,” a new approach to city government that we’re rolling out across Philadelphia. We go into high crime neighborhoods and ask the folks who actually live there, “What are the problems that need tackling in your community?” They identify the problems, we work with them to build capacity to address them, and through this the community becomes the solution. In one North Philly neighborhood we experienced a 16 percent drop in crime during the first ten months of the program by clearing vacant lots, cleaning graffiti, and demolishing abandoned buildings. We partnered with Temple University to open a community computer center at the local elementary school that residents can use to apply for jobs, providing them with an alternative course of action to crime. As one community leader put it, “We’re turning the ‘hood’ back into a neighborhood.”

We’re building a culture in which everyone feels affected by the problem and everyone can be part of the solution. We’re working with our colleges and universities through ‘PhillyGoes2College’ to target students who are most at risk of not graduating from high school to ensure that not only do they graduate, but that they also understand that a K-12 education is obsolete in a K-16 world and therefore college is essential. We’re partnering with IBM to create “Digital On-Ramps” that will help 175,000 youth and adults in Philadelphia over the next four years access the skills and training that they need to be competitive and reach their full potential. Different levels of government, corporations, foundations, educational institutions, and citizens, all working together to reduce both the opportunities for and the incidences of violence in our communities.

This will be an uncomfortable conversation. There will be awkward moments. There will be those who feel unqualified to speak, and those who will seek to distort the discussion in service of much different motives. But we will speak out, we will address, we will tackle black on black violence in our communities and we will do it together because, again as Dr. King wrote, we are bound together “in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

We will say what needs to be said but hasn’t been; we will do what needs to be done but hasn’t happened. Let the conversation begin.

This essay appeared in the 2012 State of Black America Report released by the National Urban League March 7.