In the City of Brotherly Love, black men overwhelmingly responded to "A Call to Action: 10,000 Men."
The campaign is being organized by community leaders like Kenny Gamble, who told the assembled peacekeepers:
We are about one thing: stopping the killing.
Destiny brought us together today. For me, today is a business meeting. We need a code of conduct, a standard of behavior. And we as black men need to be able to enforce it.
Earlier this month, the Trotter Group met with Gamble at the headquarters of Philadelphia International Records. We chatted in the studio where Patti LaBelle, Phyllis Hyman, Wilson Pickett, Lou Rawls, Jerry Butler and Joe Simon recorded many of their hits.
Gamble said he and Leon Huff produced "anthems for people who were conscious enough to understand the conditions we were in." He told us:
The root cause of violence is poverty. Violence is an inability to express yourself and comprehend other people. We need to teach children who they are, where their people came from, who they were before they were enslaved.
Gamble said the solutions to violence are education, homeownership, stability and wealth creation:
We must be conscious of what we can give to life; not always taking but giving something to life. The somebody that you're looking for is you. Look in the mirror, and that somebody is you.
In waking up black men to address the violence that's destroying families and communities, Gamble lives the message in his music.
