279 - Let the youth live - part one
A serialised interview with DJ Sweet Li - solutions to UK youth violence
Lisa (aka DJ Sweet Li )
hosts the Best In Britain Show podcast.
She runs “Let the youth live” a London based community project seeking solutions to UK knife and gun violence both in the capital and nationally – as this is now a nationwide issue effecting young people.
Lisa and I first came into contact a few years ago via a social media post about my work in Gloucestershire schools teaching personal safety. She immediately stood out to me as an exceptional person – a high quality human being, if you will – rather than indulging in hashtags and empty talk like countless others, she has, quite literally, devoted her life to seeking a proactive solution to the violence that is spreading like a cancer through our society and has gathered a community of like-minded others around her to achieve this.
Though a series of email exchanges, I asked Lisa if she would share her insights, about violent crime in the community and solutions to it, from her street-level perspective dealing with, talking to and seeking to help those directly affected.
She very kindly agreed to this interview which I will be serialising over several parts.
My comments are in brackets. Jeth
How Let The Youth Started
Jeth ( Lisa, I’d like to start by asking you some background info and also what was the initial catalyst for you to become involved in this cause – was there a specific event / experience? Or was it a perception of what you felt you were seeing?)
Lisa: I would say it was a combination of things, yes, my perception of what I was seeing but also certain things happening such as my daughter's boyfriend at the time being stabbed but thankfully surviving.
Then my friend's grandson being murdered on his way to a New Year's Eve party, tragically stabbed. It was around this time 2018 I founded Let The Youth Live- 100 Solutions to keep our youth alive.
Since 2011 I have been working with young people across the UK using my platform Best In Britain to supporting up and coming artists & producers from across the UK. Helping them on their musical journey promotion of their music radio play & performances. Doing this, I realised that the youth have a lot to contend with as even sometimes filming music videos, going to the studio etc they could be ambushed and stabbed and potentially lose their lives.
My eyes were truly opened at my daughter's 17th birthday party. Although we had security on the door, we discovered that a lot of the young people had brought knives with them, hiding them outside in various places and there was an altercation afterwards outside which myself and another mother had to de-escalate and, thankfully, no one was hurt.
Bystander society
Other things I noticed during this time was a new trend of bystanders filming videos capturing the last moments of our youth catastrophically bleeding to death on the street and everyone sharing these videos making them go viral.
(I’ve written about bystander video before, check out these related Journal articles: )
The number of deaths of our youths was, definitely increasing and I knew that we had to look into solutions to keep them alive while we sort out the upstream measures to prevent these issues from happening in the future.
Research, awareness and a solution
I started researching fully into what is actually going on out here. Why things aren't improving, what has worked previously elsewhere to resolve knife crime e.g. gang truce in Glasgow looking into solutions we could be working on right now.
While doing this, I also came across exceptional individuals who were working in communities on life saving initiatives either without any support or maybe no funding, so I set about raising awareness of their initiative, getting support on board to help enable them to roll their initiatives out nationwide.
One life saving initiative being the Daniel Baird Nationwide Bleed Control Campaign we have been working on for the past 4 years with Lynne Baird who tragically lost her son to knife crime.
The media portrayal of knife crime
(Jeth: Is the level of knife crime worse or better than that projected by the media and released statistics?)
Lisa: What I would say is that it would be impossible to accurately measure from either as a source due to a variety of factors. So, my answer would come from my perception of what I see and hear in my own community.
Also, from people and groups that I work with across the UK, I believe it is a lot worse than suggested by the figures and the statistic don't match up.
Trust, fear and street codes
There seems to be a lot of victims who are not reporting these incidents due in part to a lack of trust in the police, also the street code fear of being called a snitch and something happening to them again or their families and friends in response.
Definitely what we're seeing on mainstream media is not the full picture, please check out Scarcity News on You Tube for a more accurate picture.
( https://www.youtube.com/c/ScarcityStudios/videos )
The reality is so shocking, it makes me wonder what more do people have to see or hear about, to actually come together.
Our youth aren't protected on their way to school, we've got knife fights happening on the bus after school, children witnessing stabbings waiting at the bus stop to get home, being murdered at the park, the shops, meeting up with their friends and losing their lives, going to parties being attacked…
All these places a young person should be able to go without the fear of losing their life but it is a reality now and we've left them really to fend for themselves.
There's nothing in place to protect them from violence. The youth should be having fun not having to live their lives like this.
End of part one.
(In part two, we’ll be looking at reasons the MSM news may not reflect reality and the project that profoundly reduced violent crime in Glasgow and how it worked as well as many other related issues. Please subscribe to have part two emailed to you.)
This reminds a lot of my days as a youth worker in Brighton which of course is not on the scale of London or Glasgow but where I got to know many young people who felt they had to go along with the culture of crime because they at least could keep themselves safe if they formed a crew or a gang of their own… also the music they were listening to as well as the films and tv programs they were watching all in my view only encouraged them to continue down that road which inevitably led to much chaos and destruction and to kissing goodbye to any innocence they might otherwise have had.
Massive respect to Lisa for her incredible efforts to do something about these growing problems in our society.. it is down to honorable decent folk to roll up their sleeves and to attempt to come up with solutions as it seems the government have other concerns, the police are becoming less and less helpful and of course engaging worth the police actually puts those young people in potentially more danger than they are already in and so it is understandable that they don’t reach out.
Enough said! Great interview and I have the utmost respect for what Lisa is and has been doing for the sake of the youth!
Amazing work!
Underwolfe
“The reality is so shocking, it makes me wonder what more do people have to see or hear about, to actually come together.”
It sometimes seems that there’s a line, and on one side are the people denying there’s a problem, or knowing there’s a problem, but just shaking their heads sadly, tut-tutting, or enumerating reasons why, very unfortunately, the problem can’t be solved.
On the other side of the line are the people who have become so aware of the enormity and scale of the problem that they can’t bear not to act anymore.
And there are brilliant people, like Lisa, who manage to get others to step over that line and into action or even activism. The fact that activism is a dirty word to some people I think points to the British embarrassment of being fully committed to making change happen, and also our irritation at having our inadequate responses to the big problems pointed out. It can take a huge shove for people to get over that line. I’m thinking Bob Geldof here, and his refusal to let both the public and the Prime Minister off the hook.
With something as horrendous as knife crime, there is a great reluctance to accept that it can really be happening, in spite of the heaping evidence. James LaFond writes (somewhere in his vast repertoire) that street fights are really weird in the UK because people are so sure weapons are not going to be involved. I think that that mentality is really entrenched and there’s a vast unwillingness to accept the situation as it now is. “Reality is an acquired taste” as they say.
Are you aware of MusicWorks in Gloucestershire? Providing inclusive, low-cost access to recording studios and courses to the youth, with a new purpose-built facility in Gloucester: https://www.themusicworks.org.uk/
They say "The Music Works is a Gloucester based charity that exists to transform the lives of young people through music. The Music Works' Hub in Gloucester is an inclusive, community music studio, designed by young people, for young people. The Hub is a brand new facility in Kings Square and the first of its kind in Gloucester. It is a space for you to connect, collaborate and create the music you want with the chance to meet other like-minded creatives”. They have a studio in Stroud, too, at the Old Convent in Beeches Green.
Very inspiring to read this first instalment, and really looking forward to hearing more.