‘Those In Power Don’t Want Us United’

KHALID SHAH, president of the Stop the Violence/Increase the Peace Foundation, has been criticized for accepting O.J. Simpson’s offer to host a fund-raiser for the foundation. The event was billed as being against both domestic violence and street violence, though most of the the foundation’s work since its founding in 1989 has been with street gangs. Shah, in a conversation with TRIN YARBOROUGH, answered his critics and discussed the connection between street violence and domestic violence.

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Our central focus is against violence per se, especially gang violence, because that’s been the largest part of our work--arranging truces and so on. But our domestic violence work has been one of the nine components of our program for about a year. All of our services are free. We have domestic violence counseling and a 24-hour domestic violence hotline that makes referrals to shelters. We have conflict resolution training and gang members we’re working with aren’t allowed in our computer classes unless they take that training. We encourage them to talk about their relations with women. Most come from an environment where disrespecting women has become very fashionable in music lyrics and so forth. Why has that become fashionable instead of love, respect and romance? One reason is that disrespect is more profitable right now. We try to sort of deprogram them from disrespecting women, particularly their mothers, and that’s included in our written program. But remember, you first have to gain the respect of these guys. Otherwise they won’t listen to you, and they might even shoot you for getting into their business.

I don’t think blacks deal with domestic violence by hiding it. We don’t deny it exists among us. In fact, I think blacks are more open than most groups about problems in their community.

Raising money is always difficult, and raising money is one reason we took advantage of Mr. Simpson’s offer. We didn’t see any of the protesters donating to our work. They should ask themselves: Is my hate for this one individual greater than my love for the many children of our community who need help? But truly, we weren’t being purely mercenary. I cannot say Mr. Simpson is not sincere. In the world we live in today, to be absolutely frank with you, even if I can’t be sure of someone’s sincerity I like to believe the best about them. I hope he is sincere. I hope everyone is sincere, I hope the protesters working against domestic violence are sincere in their love for the community. And I believe they are. If an organization such as the Women’s Progress Alliance [led by Denise Simpson and former NOW official Tammy Bruce] wanted to work together with Stop the Violence on a domestic violence program we both believed in, we would welcome that.

There are very definite parallels between the situations of women who have to deal with oppression by men and of minorities who have to deal with oppression by whites or whatever group is in power. There should always be a coalescence between women and minorities. Women and minorities are natural allies. It was women who led to fight to secure the liberty of slaves. And women had to fight for the right to vote just as blacks did. If I’m oppressed as a minority, and you’re oppressed as a woman, once we start separating oppression itself along lines of gender and race, then racism and sexism and socioeconomic factors enter the picture. Then we have been divided by those in power over us, who don’t want us united.

I believe all women should become active in organizations that truly work to end violence--including violence against children and violence involving gangs. That’s what I’d like to say to women. And to men? I say just exactly the same thing.