Aqeela Sherrills

In 1992,

that the Los Angeles homicide rate reached an all-time high, members of the Crips and Bloods, two of the largest gangs in the U.S., sat down together and brokered a peace treaty.

This historic event ended a three-decade-long urban war that claimed more than 10,000 lives in L.A.

County alone, not including those permanently maimed or incarcerated for life.

I was one of those gang members who negotiated that treaty.

Thank you.

Growing up in the Jordan Down Housing Projects in the Watt section of Los Angeles, I witnessed things no child should ever be subject to.

By the time I was 16, I had attended 20 funerals of friends.

And like so many youths surrounded by violence and poverty, I was desensitized and angry, and joining the neighborhood gang was my solution for safety and protection.

Now, it's important to understand that Black American gangs aren't inherently violent.

Less than three to five percent of so-called gang members are actually committing violent crime.

More often, they're like surrogate families.

We're protecting one another, but sometimes the only way we knew how to survive.

In the first two years of the peace treaty, homicides in Watts declined by 44 percent, changing the quality of life in my neighborhood.

I was just 23 years old, and my firstborn son, Terrell, had just turned seven.

Driven by the belief that our children would not inherit our conflicts, we took the call to peace to 16 more cities, contributing to a national decline in youth violence.

You see, peace was possible because nobody could stop that war but us, those of us at the center of the conflict.

It took months of intense high-state conversations, starting with a handful of brothers from the four housing projects.

During the negotiation,

I asked, who was winning the war that we were waging against each other?