Pastor Jeffrey Brown Steps Up To The Plate And Demolishes Crime Rates In Boston – TED Talk

Rev. Jeffrey Brown connected with some of societies lowest common dominator to find a solution to the violent crimes in Boston.

What Brown learned is that these kids weren’t turning to violence because they were inherently evil people — they were just trying to survive in a society that had offered them few opportunities to rise out of poverty and other dire circumstances. “I know some of them call it survival, but I call them overcomers,” Brown said. “When you’re in the conditions they’re in, to be able to live every day is an accomplishment of overcoming.”

“If I really wanted the community that I was preaching for, I needed to reach out and embrace this group that I had cut out of my definition,” Brown said, “which meant not about building programs to catch those who are in the fences of violence, but to reach out and to embrace those who were committing the acts of violence — the gang-bangers, the drug dealers.”