Unite and stop the hate on our streets

DEAR Editor, In 2022, Birmingham will host the Commonwealth Games.

This will showcase Birmingham as a vibrant, international, multicultural city.

Yet, in 2021, two schoolboys were struck down and murdered within walking distance of their homes, ostensibly because their skin was the wrong colour, leaving a family inconsolable with grief, a neighbourhood in anger, and a wider community in shock.

How can a city that celebrates its diversity comes to terms with racially motivated murder committed on its streets?

‘Never again’ we say after each incident, but how can we come together to make that platitude a reality? Though my work, I am aware of community activists and groups, city-wide partnerships involving the statutory sectors of police, education, the local authority, health and housing, the voluntary sector, and academic institutions attempting to keep children and young people safe at home and in school, out of reach of criminals wishing to groom, exploit and criminalise them, and racists that want to kill or maim them.

The West Midlands Combined Authority’s Violence Reduction Unit is one example. They and others work tirelessly to stop the hate and corrosion in our midst.

This good work needs harnessing so we can join together to call out racism, reclaim the streets and claim the city to be a Violence Free Zone by 2022. I call on the Birmingham Post, an influential member of the Fourth Estate in Birmingham, to be a rallying point for such a coalition.

Dr Geoff Debelle, Moseley, Birmingham