CRI听力:Baltimore Activists Try to End the Cycle of Violence

Of all the neighborhoods in the city, West Baltimore has been disproportionately affected by the violence this summer.

Its corners are flanked by whole blocks of vacant buildings, often wrapped in yellow police tape. The Western District has seen 43 homicides this year - far more than any other district in the city.

In April, officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man.

He suffered a critical spine injury in the police transport van and died seven days later. His death spawned protests that gave way to violence and looting, and the city's homicide rate began to skyrocket.

The police commissioner lost his job, and half a dozen officers were indicted in connection with Gray's death, but the violence continued.

Derek Bowden, a Baltimore Community Activist stands outside a row of abandoned houses in the city. He mourns the city he once knew.

"It was beautiful. We might have been poor, but we all ate, we all looked out for one another. And now it's devastation. It's like extinction of a people, I don't understand."

The challenges the city faces has produced two very different responses.

A converted laundromat in West Baltimore, just blocks from where Gray was arrested, has been transformed into a safe zone for local children.

Ericka Alston launched the center in the poor, crime-riddled neighborhood in response to the violence that followed the death of Freddie Gray.

"Half a block away someone one was shot and killed. We could hear the bullets, you hear the gunfire and we're in a community where kids know to duck and hide, and take shelter. That's why a safe place was needed."

Across town, in a high-rise conference room downtown, Baltimore police are working on a very different message.

Last month, the Police Department launched what they call a War Room in an effort combat the spike in killings.

Also the 300 Man March, an organization dedicated to promoting peace and empowerment, are mobilizing on the ground, with grassroots efforts to instill lessons of nonviolence.

Every Wednesday at twilight, the group takes an hour-long bike ride through the city, donning T-shirts that read: "We Must Stop Killing Each Other."

Community activism like this is helping some young people learn that there is an alternative to a life of violence.

"We learning to do the right thing and not selling drugs like all these crack heads and all that other stuff that be around here."

Munir Bahar, who leads the annual 300 Man March against violence in West Baltimore, says a cultural shift needs to take place in the inner city.

"It's cool to be in a gang…you get stripes if you get locked up. This is the backwards idiotic sort of culture that exists in the street world and that's really what we're attacking. It's a cultural thing."

Some gang members are going into schools to talk to students about nonviolence or working with community activists to try to change things.

For CRI, I'm Luo Bin.