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Marek Warszawski: 'A different outlet for pain.' How Advance Peace aims to reduce gun violence in Fresno

The Fresno Bee - 3/21/2021

Mar. 21—Inside a small recording studio tucked within an office complex near the airport, illuminated by purple UV lights and the glow of computer screens, one of Fresno's best-known rappers helps lay down a new track.

Except it isn't Syrup at the mic. Standing behind a folding partition, wearing headphones and nodding his head to the beat is one of the city's most violent gang members. Whose lyrics, rather than adhering to the boastful rap music stereotype, are serious and deeply personal.

"My role is to find the most vicious criminal out there and give them a way to express their feelings," said Syrup, the southwest Fresno native whose real name is Roger Brown.

"Let's take away the gang-banging and talk about your feelings. If your girl left you or somebody died, what's bothering you? Let's put that pain on this beat. You know? Give them a different outlet for pain instead of going out and shooting people."

Within Fresno's hip-hop community, Syrup enjoys celebrity status. The 33-year-old's videos have amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. These days, he's using that renown to reduce senseless shootings as a "change agent" for Advance Peace.

Advance Peace, as you may recall, is a violence reduction program that pairs gang members known to be active shooters with "change agents" (i.e. mentors/life coaches) who greatly expand their worldview while connecting them to social services and job opportunities.

Research published by UC Berkeley'sCenter for Global Healthy Cities found Advanced Peace helped decrease firearm homicides and assaults in Stockton, Sacramento and Richmond — while saving millions of taxpayer dollars in the process. In Fresno, where certain politicians and police think they know better, it took two budget cycles and a mayoral veto before the program was approved and funded last year.

(Too late to address the uptick in gun violence that accompanied the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, someone should remind the dissenters.)

Advance Peace Fresno, which operates under the umbrella of fellow nonprofit Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission, became fully operational a few months ago with an initial goal of trimming shootings by 10% within the city limits. The program manager is Isaiah Green, the former Fresno State cornerback who spent two seasons on NFL rosters, while Aaron Foster serves as coordinator.

"We're affecting lives already," said Foster, a reformed gang member who lost two children to gun violence and helped lead efforts to bring the program here. "I know for sure that if not for Advance Peace, there would have been even more shootings."

Fellowship targets Fresno's active shooters

Last fall, the Fresno Police Department provided Advance Peace with a list of gang members deemed as active shooters. It turned out that between Foster and others, they were familiar with everyone on it. Plus a few who should have been on the list but weren't.

Those names became the primary targets for Advance Peace's 18-month fellowship, beginning in June, during which "change agents" engage with "fellows" (participants) multiple times per day. These engagements can take the form of informal counseling sessions or friendly conversation. There are also group activities that might consist of meeting with a local politician or business leader, feeding the homeless, auditing a college class or visiting an amusement park.

Even something as simple as riding a horse can prove invaluable, and provide much-needed levity, as Foster discovered when he took a few southwest Fresno gang members to visit a horse he boards at a stable near Fruit and Ashlan.

"These guys had never seen a horse before," Foster said. "It was like giving pony rides to grown men — hilarious to see.

"Our whole thing is to take them out of their comfort zone and introduce them to something different, something they've never seen or done before. To give them more breadth and more hope."

Advance Peace's target areas are southwest Fresno and the pocket of northwest Fresno near Shaw and Marks. (I can't think of the latter area without being reminded of the senseless 2015 killing of Deondre Howard, which remains unsolved.) However, getting 25 gang members to commit to laying down their guns and joining a fellowship that may contain rivals is no simple task.

"A lot of the most violent people don't want this program," Foster said. "They have to be convinced they need it, that this is the best thing for them."

'Music can play a really pivotal role'

It helps to have "change agents" like Syrup, who is already well known to prospective targets through his music.

"If they didn't know Roger already, he was a guy they wanted to know," said Marcel Woodruff, an Advance Peace technical adviser and lead community organizer for Faith in the Valley. "Music can play a really pivotal role."

Not long ago, according to Woodruff and others, a Fresno gang member uploaded a self-produced song to YouTube that led to a retaliatory shooting because someone felt disrespected by the lyrics.

Syrup contacted the gang member (who has since taken down the song) and told him about the artistic development program through Advance Peace. The offer: Learn how to write a song and use studio techniques to properly record it.

It was an experience the rapper-turned-agent of change won't soon forget.

"We had guys in here crying," Syrup said. "I mean the hardest guys, the guys who are out there shooting people and all that — crying. They didn't think they could (record a song). But nobody gave them that chance to come to a professional studio."

One verse at a time. This is how you begin to whittle away senseless gang shootings in Fresno.

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