At church talk, reformed gangster preaches peace

Corey J. Allen

In the wake of 13-year-old Steven Odom’s untimely death, both Boston’s youth and the city’s elders are in need of reassurance that things will get better. As a result, the timing of “Healing the Hood,” organized by the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute and held this past Saturday at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tremont Street, could not have been better.

The event’s keynote speaker was a man familiar with both the streets and the work that goes into bringing them under control: T. Rodgers. Born and raised in Chicago, Rodgers moved to California and as a teenager built a notorious Blood set in Los Angeles. These days, according to his Web site, he deals with “gang awareness, identification, prevention, suppression and school safety.” Recognized as a leader across the country, it was evident that he had the respect of the cathedral crowd.

Rev. Canon Edward W. Rodman opened the event with a quote: “Let there be peace among us, and let us not be instruments of our own, or others’ oppression.”

Rodman reminded the crowd that the change for peace that they seek in the world must first come from within before introducing Keyanna “Ms. Aquarius” Williams, a rapper and songwriter from Roxbury.

“It’s very important for me to perform at this event because I’m from a neighborhood where there is not a lot of peace,” she said. “As an artist, approaching the scene with peace and bringing out hip-hop, I felt this was an event where I needed to be.”

Boston is not known for welcoming outsiders, but Ms. Aquarius, for one, did not view T. Rodgers as an outsider.

“What T. Rodgers has been through is still happening and no matter what city it is, we’re still promoting violence,” she said. “I think a speaker like that is welcome in any city, no matter where he is from.”

Particularly when the speaker brings a message this powerful.

“Name me the only state in the nation that doesn’t have a gang problem,” Rodgers prompted the crowd. “There’s only one state in the nation that doesn’t have a gang problem, and that state is the great state of denial.”

Surrounded by young men, Rodgers began his speech by thanking God for his ability to attend the event and asking the elders in the crowd if he had their permission to speak. Once he got his pass, he told the assembled that his presence was only made possible by the works and sacrifices of his ancestors before acknowledging the youth, telling them the future lies with them and the choices they make in the present.

Rodgers then appealed to the youth to look at the images of themselves and realize those images have been cultivated by someone else — and that it is high time to leave those negative depictions in the past.

“Somewhere we have been taught the hating of Africa and the hating of being black,” he said. “You, my children, are not afraid of anything. You are not afraid of your parents, you are not afraid of the authorities, you’re not even afraid of God. You are a generation of people who were born to do nothing but change. And you have to make a conscious decision if it’s positive change or negative change.”