WASHINGTON — Troubled that the homicide rate jumped more than 50 percent last year in the District, a group of pastors turned out Wednesday afternoon outside the Minnesota Avenue Metrorail station to try their hand at bringing peace.
“This is where the bullets fly. They have organized fights here every day between the schools — gang fights — we want to be out here to break them up,” said Bruce Branch, founding pastor of For Christ Sake Christian Ministries of Southern Maryland.
“We want to be out here to stop any more tragic events. We don’t want another mother to lose a son.”
Metro is not unfamiliar to violence. A teenage boy was shot to death and another was stabbed to death in separate incidents this spring at the Deanwood Metro station. On Sunday, a teenage girl was wounded in a stabbing at the Anacostia Metro Station.
Branch and other pastors are promising to leave the pulpits and walk the tough streets to work more with kids this summer with the hope of keeping them out of trouble.
Teenagers bound for the Metro escalators were buttonholed by the clergy who shared a few words. A few kids stopped and joined hands with the pastors to pray.
“We proclaim peace now over this community, peace over this station,” intoned Reverend Charles McNeill of Unity Baptist Church in Northeast D.C.
The clergy are promising “peace walks” through some of the city’s high crime areas in a show of faith-based support for young people.
“We’re going to go from place to place where we’re needed to try to curtail the violence in the city this summer,” Rev. McNeill said.
