By Robin Chen Delos, Age 18, 2002
Peace in the town
Peace in the world
No more fighting
No more bombing
Please don’t bomb no more
Peace Peace Peace
Peace in the town
And all the way around
No fighting
No bombing in the town
No bombing of people
[and repeat]
Destiny Thompson, 9
She was a warrior, I could see it by the way she carried herself. Destiny. Nine years old and I knew she was already a leader. She had already asserted her leadership in the neighborhood rhythm workshop the Youth Leadership Support Network organized for Petworth youth on a sunny fall day with the wind gentle whispering like brushes on a drum, and the sun so brilliant that kids couldn’t help but run to the park.
She flew over to us, and started drumming. Behind her, a colorful banner with the words “Promote the Peace, Participate” lay next to the intergenerational circle of people drumming. Periodically, Destiny brought the beats to a sudden stop, then counted out a new beat for them to pound out, maybe mirroring the pound of her heart, I thought. Drummer Mad X, who had been keeping the beat for twenty-years deferred to Destiny’s command. He listened to her count out the rhythm, watched her hands on the drum, and followed her lead. So did her little brother, their friends, a little four-year old girl named Essence, the little girl’s uncle, a veteran activist, and me. We could all feel Destiny’s spirit soaring. “A one, a two, a three, a four –now,” she cried, just like a band conductor.
The neighborhood seemed to feel the essence of the drumming following Destiny. A group of high school boys came over to where we were, wearing skull caps that made shaved heads look sleek under the sun, with their Hilfiger pants hanging low. They shyly crowded around and watched, then one came over and started drumming. Another asked me for my juggling balls, and showed me his tricks after I threw them to him. And Destiny’s beat kept marching on and on.
Spotlight on People’s Parades to Promote the Peace…Participate
Articles and Interviews
Interview with Destiny and her younger brother. Petworth DC, October 2001
Why are you out here?
We wanted to come out here today.
Why?
Because there was nothing else to do.
Do you like to play drums?
Yeah, because they are my favorite drums.
What is peace?
Peace means living together and being nice to each other.
Peace is people getting along.
How do you get along with your sisters?
Play with her.
-Destiny’s little brother
________________________________________ Interview with Destiny
Were you at the parade?
Yeah.
What did you think?
It was good. I like the drumming. I know how to play real good and you all showed me how to drum.
Neighborhood reaction to the parade?
They should have liked it because I did
Why were you marching in parade?
So we could have peace.
What does peace mean?
Peace means to me when someone leaves you alone and helps you out. when someone has been messing with you for a long time and you ask them to leave you alone, and when they leave you alone and then start being your friend and helping you out.
What is your neighborhood like? More peace or more violence?
More violence.
Why?
Because everyday I hear gunshots and everybody’s fighting.
Why?
Because sometimes they just want to be mean and hit someone and the other person hits them back.
How can we promote peace?
By doing what you’re doing and let them come here so they can learn not to fight, not do violence.
What do you think about the WTC and bombing Afghanistan?
They should not do that. people only want their freedom. I saw this lady because she was in pentagon and had to go to hospital because her face was messed up.
Don’t be doing violence and don’t bomb everywhere.
how will this stop? (violence)
maybe if they get caught and go to court and get put in jail and learn their lesson. They’d learn their lesson, if they don’t then they get put in jail again.
Should we be bombing Afghanistan?
No, no.
Why not?
Because that would be having the wrong spirit. we should get them for what they’ve done..
Is the bombing right?
no. bush shuldn’t bomb either.
What should we do with this situation “terrorists”?
we should go in a room and talk to each other then we probably be friends and they won’t bomb.
Why aren’t we doing that?
Because we can’t reach them and they don’t listen.
They are evil. we’re evil too.
We shouldn’t fight back.
-Destiny, Age 9
I met her after a neighborhood People’s Parade to Promote the Peace where the YLSN had started out as a rag-tag group of activist artists, musicians, and writers and then grown to a critical mass as youth saw the banners, the crazy cat puppet, and heard the triumphant horns mixed with snappy drums – and joined the procession – pouring out of their homes and playgrounds to be a magnificent streaming ray of hope. Destiny pranced down her neighbhorhood’s streets, running up to every passer-by and car to hand out fliers explaining the simple concept of the parade in the simple phrase, “Promote the Peace, Participate.” However, violence underlies her life’s reality in Petworth. “Everyday I hear gunshots and everybody’s fighting,” she said. Destiny marched, “so we could have peace.” Sitting at my side in the grass, and keeping the beat on a drum, Destiny quietly sang “peace in the town/peace in the world.” She sang with her heart, as a child who knows violence and sees hope’s marvelous possibility within reach. Maybe it was something inside her, waiting to leap out. Maybe the Peace parade helped to kinder it.
Young people pouring out of their homes to march in a peace parade, or youth running to the park to sit in a circle and play drums together shouldn’t be radical, it should be everyday. Or the everyday should be radical. But, as far as I know, Petworth has never seen a parade like the that passed through its streets last October on a pretty sunny day. The YLSN builds an infrastructure where positive community-building spontaneity will occur. Its about Destiny leading us….”And a child shall lead them.” She’s our future, and we better give her an opportunity to exercise leadership now, so she knows. So she won’t make so many of the mistakes our own leaders are fumbling through.
People’s Parade Promotes Peace
By Robin Chen Delos,
DC Free Press, September 2001
Young people marched down the middle of streets and sidewalks, chanting “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!”
A People’s Parade to Promote the Peace was happening in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest D.C.
Colorful puppets and banners accented the march and drew the neighborhood’s attention to the parade.
Thirty-five youth and half a dozen adult supporters participated in the September 7th parade.
“You don’t need huge numbers to have an effect,” Douglas Calvin said. “A small group of people with creative visibility has an enormous effect.”
For three days before the parade, the Youth Leadership Support Network (YLSN) had been working with the youth from the Manna after-school program, teaching them about banner painting, puppet-making, poetry, performance art, and promoting peace in their neighborhood.
The YLSN is a violence-prevention art education media and training organization serving D.C. area youth, said founder Douglas Calvin, 36.
Neighborhood organizing in underserved areas is the concept behind parades. The YLSN bring peace parades to neighborhoods where there is violence, poverty and a lack of affordable housing.
“There is tremendous potential through parades to involve people in helping to find solutions to the violence in their community and the world,” Calvin said. “People’s Parades for Peace are more important now than ever since a war is upon us.”
Parades encourage people already in groups to participate, but “a lot of young people are not in any group, and these events are for them too,” he said.
The children and teenagers in the Saw parade, who ranged in age from seven to sixteen, passed out “promote the peace” flyers to passers-by on the sidewalk and went over to the windows of cars to give fliers to drivers.
Their youth and positive energy reached the people in the community, particularly the many drivers who honked in support, and hailed the parade with the universal peace sign.
“These kids are the future. They’re the future of this city,” said YLSN organizer Jason McGahan. “For adults to see them expressing themselves like this is powerful. And you can see that in the eyes of everyone they pass.”
One young boy, holding a banner he had painted, was certainly infused with the spirit of the parade. As the parade began, he asked, “Where’s the band, where’s the drums?” then shrugged his shoulders and started chanting “Freedom, freedom, freedom.”
Enabling communication among young people is one goal of People’s Parades for Peace, Calvin said. “It’s about sharing positive activities youth are involved in, whether it is violence prevention, performance art, music, or an open-mic.”
“Young people are told in so many ways that they are powerless. They can’t vote, job opportunities are lousy, freedom of speech and student’s rights are at an all time low. And yet if you look at any movement anywhere in the world you see that it is when young people assert their voice that the world changes.”
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