That leaves a wide swath of the city where residents feel they’ve been left behind.
“We are looking at a system that really isn’t broke. It just hasn’t had us in mind — or protecting us in mind,” Williams told NBC. “Why don’t we do more to police our own communities?”, which grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, Calif., in 1966, its intent was for Black residents to act as vigilantes in their own communities.
“The Panthers were really focused on potential police violence toward people in the community,” the journalist Mark Whitaker, author of “Saying It Loud: 1966 — The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement,” told Yahoo News. “New Era are just as concerned about the danger that ordinary, law-abiding citizens in the inner city face from other Black folks who might do them harm. … So for young people to help protect other people in the community, I think it's wonderful to see.
Other cities with similar challenges have taken notice. The original Detroit group, under the umbrella New Era Nation, has formed more than a dozen chapters, in cities including Dallas, Atlanta, Cleveland and Baltimore. The movement of self-sufficiency, according to Alonzo, has also attracted interest abroad, in Jamaica, the U.K. and Nigeria.
“We are all leaders, and the opportunity is given to everyone to lead,” he said. “We have chapters in every city, so it’s not going to die with one person. We set up a structure that someone is in charge, no matter what. We appreciate that we are compared to other groups, but if we perpetuate that we are all leaders, it cannot die.”“The lesson of the Black Power period is to stay local,” he said.