NEWS .

Two Minutes With... Bilal Qayyum

co-founder, Men United for a Better Philadelphia


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Published: Sep 21, 2006

By the time Mayor Street and a battalion of activists board buses bound for Tuesday's "Rally to Stop Gun Violence" in Harrisburg, their advance team will be five days into spreading their message across eastern Pennsylvania. Yesterday, members of Men United for a Better Philadelphia laced up and set off — by foot — for the state capitol. Their mission: lobby for a "Marshall Plan" that would direct jobs and social services toward at-risk residents in the city's most violence-ridden neighborhoods. At a press conference outside Strawberry Mansion High on the first day of school, Bilal Qayyum, co-founder of the five-year-old group, which has some 600 members, says they'll march some 100 miles through Norristown and Reading but won't be too tired to join the rally.

City Paper: What's the goal of the march?

Bilal Qayyum : We hope to get "One Gun a Month" legislation passed and to raise the consciousness of the legislators, and even the governor. Besides the gun issue, they also need to realize we need real employment opportunities targeted toward men in these [troubled] neighborhoods. I'm trying to keep it simple: Eliminate the guns and bring real jobs here.

CP: How do you teach these shooters to respect life?

BQ: We have change their mind-set, and it takes time, much in the same way it took time to develop the mind-set that it's OK to kill in the first place. They've got to see hope. A lot of these guys, they're unemployed and the only way for them to generate income is to do something illegal. We're trying to chip away at that, figure out how to get them jobs. If 50 to 60 percent of white men were unemployed, the city would stop in its tracks! When they see that there's opportunity, guys on their block getting up and going to work, then they'll think twice about what they're doing.

CP: How much of an issue is the relationship between police and residents in tough neighborhoods?

BQ: There's still a problem in some spots, but with the [police] commissioner's move toward more community policing, it's much less than in the past, and much better than what people think. Of course, the bad guys are always going to be pissed off at the cops, but they're the same ones who are terrorizing our neighborhoods.

CP: Do people across the state even care about what's going on here?

BQ: Two years ago, we did a bus tour of the state — York, Reading, other cities. We found elected officials, a lot of whom were Republican, and residents who understood what we were talking about because there were problems with violence in their towns, too. I mean, we have Bloods in the Poconos now, and the gangs are getting integrated. This is no longer a Philadelphia, urban, black problem.