2,000-strong prayer walk is not the end
23 February 2007
Church and community leaders at last night’s prayer walk from Peckham to Brixton vowed that this will not be the end of their efforts to tackle street violence.
More than 2,000 Londoners from local churches and community groups joined families of victims to take a strong stand against gun crime.
Pastor Nims Obunge, of Peace Alliance, said: “We all need to work together with criminal justice agencies to help vulnerable young people and keep guns off the street.”
Dr R David Muir, Director of Public Policy at the Evangelical Alliance, said church and community leaders are already scheduling meetings with policy makers and politicians in the next few months to take the issue further.
“The community is not going to let this drop,” he said.
“Police, politicians and parents must work together in order to provide both an effective legal framework as well as a moral framework to help vulnerable youngsters and families.”
The two-hour prayer walk from Peckham to Brixton was organised by a coalition of Black church and other Christian leaders after a series of gang-related killings.
It included passionate prayers and speeches from pastors, community leaders and political and police representatives, calling for unity to overcome the problems, expressing condolence to the victims’ families and asking God to forgive the perpetrators of the crimes.
The crowd could be heard singing in Peckham Square which prompted Home Office minister Vernon Coker to say as he addressed them: “I don’t think I need to make a speech, the speech was made with the singing that took place over there.
“You sang ‘we shall overcome’ because you know that if we stand together and work together that you really will overcome.”
The walk was strongly supported by the Mayor of London’s office and the Metropolitan Police Service.
Cressida Dick, newly-appointed Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, said ahead of the walk: “We’re here to say that we will do anything in our power to bring those who committed these crimes to justice and to prevent and reduce violence in our communities.
“We can only do that in partnership with people in those communities – in particular the people of faith and from the churches who can do so much to heal the communities and help people see a different way of living their lives.”
Lee Jasper is Director of Policing for the Mayor of London’s Office and Chair of the Metropolitan Police Service Operation Trident Independent Advisory Group.
He told the crowd: “All the police officers and Government grants in the world can’t solve this problem, only we as parents and people can solve this problem.”
Pastor Isaac Attram, father of Eugene Attram, 16, who was stabbed to death in Mitcham in November last year, urged fathers to talk to their children and gave this message to young people: ”You are the leaders of tomorrow; you have so much to live for. There's no need to join gangs; there's no need for you to kill yourselves.”
