- So good to be here.

Thank you.

- Earlier this month, Church of the Messiah led by Pastor Barry Randolph held its 18th annual Silence the Violence March and Rally.

The event honors innocent shooting victims and brings together Detroit residents, law enforcement and lawmakers to find ways to end the gun violence in our cities and neighborhoods.

"American Black Journal" contributor Deja Moss was there, and she produced this report.

(crowds marching and chanting) - We see You.

That's why we do this.

We see you.

We do this so the world can see, and one Saturday in June, we gotta take it to the street.

- My son, Khalil Allen, was killed July 12th, 2023.

I'm really focused right now on the young people.

The young people that are in gangs, the young people that have stepped out of gangs, what they're missing and what I can do to pour in and fill.

It's one thing to ask them to put the gun down, put the stick down, but what are we doing as a community to pour back into them?

- It's definitely kind of like disturbing in a way 'cause violence is so normal to us, especially with social media, how you can scroll and see senseless violence and stuff like that easily.

So, but over time, doing stuff like this, it helped overpower and change the narrative for it.

- My best friend was killed, and it was over something petty, you know, and they followed him to his mother's home and shot him in front of the home, and his parents had to find him.

Aside from that tragic story and how it makes me feel, you can see it's bothering me now to this day, and I was almost over, almost 20 years ago.

But it still hurts.

I still think of him, his child, and the people we grew up around and how easy it was, or I don't wanna say easy, I wanna say how common it was.

The violence was so common to us that it just, we just became comfortable with it.

And that's the scary part.

- One of my brothers was murdered in prison.

My other brother, he was a part of some violence in the community.

And my father, he committed suicide the day after Thanksgiving.

So gun violence is not just something that's just, oh, random.

These things are happening to us every single day that we carry.

And I could be mean and mad and angry about the things that have affected my family, but I choose to stand against gun violence so that the things that have happened to me and my family don't happen to somebody else and their families.

- Silence the Violence.

- Every day I wake up and I look on the TV and somebody's been shot and murdered, and I know what the family's gonna go through 'cause, welcome to my world.

I know what you're gonna go through.

I hope that we can just all come together and bring this thing down and just learn how to communicate better.

If we all can just communicate together more and learn how to love each other more, it's everybody's, a lot of people's just mad for no reason.

Just love a little bit more.

I changed my ways.

I used to be mad.

I'm still mad, but I know how to cycle that madness and help folks.

- I am really sick and tired of hearing the phrase "Thoughts and prayers."

(audience applauding) And I understand that that's a little weird coming from a bishop.

But let me tell you this, I am tired of people using that phrase an insipid phrase, because they are afraid of taking courageous action.

(audience applauding) Because the state of Michigan deserves better.

And we are the people who are going to make that happen.

(audience applauding) - This ain't no joke to me.

This is serious business.

Yes, we reduced crime.

Yes, we at a 60 year low, but if we lose one life, we have failed.

- We lost our children and we speaking out because we don't wanna hear about nobody else losing their children the way our children was taken from us.

- The goal of this is to one, let the perpetrators of this violence know, hey, we're out here, so we see, we know what's going on.

But at the same time, it's to let the other people know, to empower them.

Hey, you are more powerful than the man with the gun because he's only one.

He's only one.

We or she, whoever it is, they're only one person.

But we are a community.

We outnumber them.

- We know that guns are the catalyst, but people kill people.

So if we can get people to understand, listen, we understand your plight.

We understand your frustration.

But today we need you to understand that we are a unit, a unity.

We are a village, we are a community.

And we're here to support silencing the violence within our community.

We're not taking it anymore.

(people drumming and chanting)