Kalamazoo

Family fun will be in focus at Kalamazoo’s 4th Annual Anti-gun Violence Community Carnival

Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave's On the Ground Kalamazoo series.
 
KALAMAZOO, MI – Rev. Lenzy Bell remembers when young men didn’t shoot one another.
 
There were always fights, the pastor of First United Baptist Church recalls. But, he says, “We settled it.”
 
“There were all kinds of fights on campus,” he says, remembering his college days in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “… We fought right there, at the party or out in the parking lot. But nobody was going to get a gun.”
 
Rev. Lenzy Bell is pastor of the First United Baptist Church and vice president of the Northside Ministerial Alliance.Playing ball at LaCrone Park in the city’s Northside Neighborhood, he remembers, “I saw guys going at it. But nobody was talking about going to get a gun.”

These days, the attitude of people who have been bullied and pushed seems to have hardened, however – “You’re only going to get beat down one time,” the minister says. And that, coupled with greater access to firearms, has led to tragic and sometimes fatal shootings here.
 
Bell and the Northside Ministerial Alliance are working to stop the violence. The organization of clergy and community leaders will host its 4th Annual Anti-gun Violence Community Carnival from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. The free event will be held on the grounds of Lincoln International Studies School, 912 N. Burdick St. It will feature free games, carnival rides, music, and food.
 
Bell, who is vice president of the Ministerial Alliance, wants everyone who attends to come away with a mental snapshot of what they see there. What’s that?
 
“Families coming together and just having fun,” he says. He wants people to see “the smiles on their faces, the joy that’s in their heart, and the look of relief and relaxation on parents’ faces that says, ‘My kids are out here having a ball. I don’t have to worry about anything.’” The pastor says that’s how it should be for them every day.
 
Parents and city leaders need to see that joy and community spirit. So should people who are involved in gun violence on the streets. They should reflect on how they are making the community unsafe, he says. And hopefully, the carnival will take them back to memories of a childhood where they could run and play freely.
 
Bell says he has been inspired to combat gun violence by any number of national and local incidents, as well as conditions that make it more likely for African-American communities to sink into violent behaviors.
 
Family fun is to be in focus at the Northside Ministerial Alliance’s 4th Annual Anti-gun Violence Carnival on Aug. 24, 2024. A man is shown with young children at the 2023 event.“There are factors that produce the kind of lifestyle that makes it OK for this type of violence to exist,” Bell says. The seeds that were sown have included redlining (prohibiting minorities from buying homes in desirable sections of town), infusing the community with high levels of drugs, and then creating a war on drugs.

“Those seeds are going to grow and this is the fruit that we get now,” Bell says. “Now it’s a refusal to pass common-sense gun laws.”

He says African-American communities didn’t used to have access to AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles. Speaking of his younger years, he says, “The most that anybody in our neighborhood had was a .22 rifle. A lot of the older guys had a hunting rifle.”
 
He also says the entertainment media profits from the release of self-defeating and self-destructive music lyrics. “It’s glorifying criminal behavior. When you see that in the media, in the videos, in the movies, and in the music, then kids are being inundated and now it’s becoming second nature and we’re numb and not even aware of a different reality that once existed.”
 
Free family fun life is to be in focus at the Northside Ministerial Alliance’s 4th Annual Anti-gun Violence Carnival on Aug. 24, 2024. A man is shown with young children at the 2023 event.He says early rappers like Will Smith and L.L. Cool J were not talking about killing one another. But their music has been replaced by gangster rap.
 
Bell says things have gotten a lot better in Kalamazoo with organizations like the Urban Alliance’s Change of Status Program and the Kalamazoo County Group Violence Intervention Program working to make positive change. They are giving young people options to get job skills, housing, and education to change their lifestyles. He also says David Boysen, chief of the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, is a chief “who understands our community, who is not afraid of our community, and who works with our community.”
 
However,  access to guns continues to put young people in harm’s way, he says.
 
Volunteers carry a box filled with bags of popcorn at last year’s Anti-gun Violence Carnival. Food, games, and rides are free at the event.“One thing that we learned in this thing is that for a lot of the shootings that take place, the people who do them are not even on the police radar,” Bell said.

He said some are young people who are confronted by others or who are afraid they may be attacked. But they have access to a gun.
 
“It’s like you just get to that point of no return and say, ‘Man, I’m not taking this stuff no more,’” Bell says, “and the next person (to push) is going to feel some heat.”
 
Asked if he expects Saturday’s carnival to benefit young men who are on the streets and use guns, Bell says it already has. Some participants in the Young Men's Mentoring Program (ages 11 to 19) that is offered by his church and others are expected to work as volunteers at the carnival.
 
Family fun is to be in focus at the Northside Ministerial Alliance’s 4th Annual Anti-gun Violence Carnival on Aug. 24, 2024.“We’ve already reached some of them,” he says. “And now they’re on the other side of the fence. And so we’re bringing them on board to help, so they can see this is what community is all about. And it is also to deter other young men who are impressionable, that could go that way.”
 
Among the event’s organizers, Talanda Ollie, says she is happy to see more organizations from throughout the community partnering with the Northside Ministerial Alliance as sponsors of the carnival. Their support and participation underwrite the cost of the carnival, making it a free event for all who attend.
 
Wide-scale participation also acknowledges that gun violence is not something that is a problem in just one part of town and that its impact is not just limited to young Black men, says Ollie, who is also director of Family Ministry at Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
 
“When it comes to the care, the regard, the love of your fellow brothers and sisters, that is a community thing,” says Ollie, “and more organizations are seeing that and understanding that.”



 
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Al Jones is a freelance writer who has worked for many years as a reporter, editor, and columnist. He is the Project Editor for On the Ground Kalamazoo.