About two miles north-east of Birmingham city centre, in an area of Aston known for violence among gangs and drug dealers, six gang members are gathered in a building. The older members – 'elders’ – are doing what they have always done, which is teaching young members how to follow in their paths, imparting their knowledge to the next generation.
Tobeijah Atkinson, 'The Rev’, is an elder. He is 27. But instead of giving the youngsters a gun and teaching them how to sell drugs, which formed part of his own education as a gang member, he is teaching them business skills. Another elder, 36-year-old Simeon Moore, 'Zimbo’, who 'started rolling with knives when he was 12’, is writing a school programme about personal development, to encourage young people to believe that their options are not limited to a criminal lifestyle.
Atkinson is affiliated to the Burger Bar Boys, Moore to the Johnson Crew – two of the most notorious gangs in the country with a hardcore membership of about 24 on each side. Two years ago, Atkinson and Moore might have pulled guns on each other. Now they are working together.
This extraordinary change is down to a documentary, One Mile Away. Directed by Penny Woolcock and produced by James Purnell, the former Labour cabinet minister, it charts what happens after two rival gang members – Matthias 'Shabba’ Thompson, 33, from the Johnsons and Dylan Duffus, 31, from the Burger Bar Boys – take the decision to call a truce and campaign for peace.
The gangs share the same Afro-Caribbean background, the same hostility to the police and the same criminal lifestyle – they are from the same community, but are separated by a postcode. The Johnsons are from the B6 and B19 area of Birmingham, and the Burgers from the neighbouring B20 and B21.
The distance between the homes of Duffus and Thompson is about one mile. Each gang has territories – certain streets, certain hangouts – and the appearance of rival gangsters in the wrong place can lead to bloodshed. And it soon becomes clear in the film that not everyone shares Thompson’s and Duffus’s desire for peace.
You can read the rest of the LEFTIST Propaganda here -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9918593/One-Mile-Away-Birmingham-gangs-give-peace-a-chance.html
And we're supposed to celebrate this "DIVERSITY" ?
Show me the WHITE Street Gangs in Britain.
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