Over the last two months, two of our friends have been gunned down, Black men whose lives were cut short decades too soon. El-Amin Wilkins was a 47-year-old lifelong Grays Ferry resident who was fighting relentlessly for housing justice with his neighbors and throwing down as a counselor at our youth summer camp. Big D (Edison) Frazier was a 53-year-old fearless advocate who dreamed up and planned cooking classes for young people and had big visions of a food truck business that would provide jobs to neighborhood youth.
Because they were killed, we lost not only our friends and comrades but also the chance to see their visions of a better future come to fruition.
Read the rest of the op-ed by Shawmar Pitts and R Merriman-Goldring in the Philadelphia Inquirer.