Maybe things are a little bit safer Monday in areas where gangs hang out in Los Angeles.
That’s because hip-hop artist “The Game” was able to draw hundreds of people, many from enemy gangs, to a town-hall-style gathering to to help end violence in their communities.
“Before we can get our lives to matter to anyone else. We have to show that our lives matter to us! We have been responsible for more of the killing of ourselves than anyone else,” the rapper, whose real name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, wrote in his invitation to the gathering Sunday at a Scientology Center in South Los Angeles.
The Game invited “all Crips, Bloods, ESE’s and all gang members, major figures and gang leaders from every hood in our city as well as the surrounding cities” to a town hall-style meeting in South Los Angeles aimed at curbing violence, and hundreds of people came.
The meeting was held Sunday morning at a Church of Scientology center at 8039 S. Vermont Ave. It got under way before word of the killings of three police officers in Baton Rouge, La.
The Game issued his invitation via Instagram so that gang members and leaders could talk “about our influence on the youth in our respective neighborhoods and how we can serve as better role models to them all and the brothers we stand beside daily.”
Members of the Nation of Islam provided security at the gathering, which was peaceful.
Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck also showed up to the event. Garcetti told the crowd that “we condemn all the acts of violence,” while Beck called the meeting a “great first step” toward curbing violence.
—City News Service