Article originally posted on the Michigan Chronicle. Read it here.
By: Jasmine West
Detroit’s most serious public safety work often begins long before a siren sounds.
It begins with the people who know which blocks are tense, which young people are grieving, which families are carrying conflict, and which neighborhoods need someone trusted enough to step in before harm spreads. That kind of work rarely fits inside a press conference, but it is the daily labor behind community violence intervention.
FORCE Detroit is now putting new resources behind that labor through a $235,000 regranting initiative that will support a coalition of grassroots organizations working to reduce violence across the city.
The funding will support organizations participating in the Emerging Leaders Detroit Chapter, a growing coalition focused on outreach, advocacy, intervention, training, community engagement, and coordinated violence prevention work. Groups that have signed memorandums of understanding to participate include Black Bottom Gun Club, The Better Men Outreach Program, Fight the Good Fight, Kelly’s Kids Foundation, The GRND Foundation, Motivating Inner New Dreams, Seize The Smoke, Detroit Life Is Valuable Everyday, Team Pursuit, The People’s Action, and Solomon & Harris Consulting.
The goal is to strengthen the network of people and organizations already working closest to the communities most affected by gun violence. For FORCE Detroit, that means moving resources to the groups with direct relationships on the ground and building a more coordinated approach to intervention across Detroit and, eventually, throughout Michigan.
“Community violence intervention is most effective when it is led by the people closest to the work,” said Dujuan Zoe Kennedy, executive director of FORCE Detroit. “This initiative is about resourcing those organizations, strengthening coordination, and making sure we are aligned in how we show up for the communities we serve.”
Community violence intervention has become a growing part of Detroit’s public safety conversation as residents, advocates, and local leaders continue pushing for strategies that address violence beyond arrests and incarceration. The work centers on prevention, trust, conflict mediation, crisis response, and support for people at the highest risk of being involved in violence.
For Black communities in Detroit, the stakes are not theoretical. Violence carries generational weight. It disrupts families, classrooms, neighborhood economies, and the sense of safety residents deserve on their own streets. It also exposes the limits of systems that often respond after harm has already happened.
That is why grassroots intervention work matters. The people doing this work are often the ones showing up after a shooting, talking to young people before retaliation begins, connecting families to resources, organizing community conversations, and building enough trust to be heard in moments when institutions may not be.
Through the Emerging Leaders Detroit Chapter, participating organizations will help expand outreach and recruitment, support advocacy and policy work, take part in training and capacity-building opportunities, identify resources to sustain intervention efforts, organize community forums and town halls, and participate in public awareness campaigns.
The coalition will also engage with policymakers as part of broader efforts to expand community violence intervention locally and statewide, including participation in Advocacy Day scheduled for June 10 and 11.
The regranting initiative reflects FORCE Detroit’s larger strategy to build the infrastructure needed for long-term violence prevention. Many neighborhood-based organizations are already carrying significant responsibility with limited resources. The initiative aims to support their work while helping create stronger communication and coordination across groups.
“This work is about building something that lasts,” Kennedy said. “By investing in collaboration and community-led intervention, we are creating a stronger, more connected network that can respond to violence more effectively and sustainably.”
The announcement also points to a larger question facing Detroit: what does public safety look like when communities are given the tools to protect and heal themselves?
FORCE Detroit’s answer begins with investment. The $235,000 regranting initiative recognizes that violence reduction cannot depend on disconnected efforts or underfunded organizations expected to carry crisis after crisis without support. It requires a network. It requires trust. It requires people who understand that saving lives is not always loud, visible, or immediate.
Sometimes, it is a conversation that prevents retaliation. Sometimes, it is an outreach worker arriving before anger turns into another headline. Sometimes, it is a grassroots organization staying present in a neighborhood long after the cameras leave.
That is the work FORCE Detroit is choosing to fund.
As the Emerging Leaders Detroit Chapter continues to grow, FORCE Detroit says it will work to deepen partnerships, expand its reach, and help ensure community-based organizations have the resources needed to sustain and scale their work.
Detroit’s path toward safer communities will not be built by one program alone. It will be built through coordinated investment in the people who already know the work, know the neighborhoods, and know what is at stake when violence is treated as a community crisis that demands community-led solutions.