Community leaders and activists in north Minneapolis are once again calling on Minneapolis city leaders to develop a comprehensive safety plan to address shootings in the city.
"The things that we've to tried to share with them over the years that they've just ignored. So we are here and what must we do?" said Rev. Jerry McAfee with New Salem Missionary Baptist Church during the WCCO Radio Morning News on Wednesday.
Rev. McAfee joined northside residents on Tuesday afternoon as city councilmembers Jeremiah Ellison and Philippe Cunningham called for a community response to the city's rising gun violence.
McAfee pleaded with the councilmembers to put aside their differences with Mayor Jacob Frey in order to have meaningful and productive discussions.
"We will do our part as a community with intervention and moving towards prevention," he said. "Prayerfully somewhere along the line we can meet along the way because there is a major disconnect between the mayor, the city council, and many of us who do this work."
We Push For Peace is among the groups organizing across Minneapolis streets to intervene where violence appears to be on the cusp of breaking out.
Trahern Pollard is the group's founder and CEO.
"We try to hit some of those hotspots where we think gunfire is going to be erupting," Pollard told Susie Jones on Wednesday. "The problem is a lot of those young men and some women who are out there, they know us and they respect us. So while we're out there they don't raise their voices. When we leave one hotspot and go to the next, the gunfire starts where we leave from."
Pollard said that they are constantly in need of funding so more people can be hired to intervene where situations are tense.
"When that portion of the funding went out, we tried to be out there but we're not as effective because we don't have the man or woman power to intervene," said Pollard.
Intervening, according to Pollard, needs to begin during the winter months as tensions build between individuals and groups.
"These young men are on social media and being disrespectful to each other. They start threatening each other and those threats lead to what you see right now. When the weather breaks, those threats get carried out."
Rev. McAfee called on Black Lives Matter and other groups associated with them to step to the plate as well.
"If Black lives matter, then Black lives matter need to matter all the way," he said. "It must matter beyond when a police officer does it. Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective received $50 million from the death of George Floyd. They've had no impact in the community at all when it pertains to violence. How does that happen?"