“Our goal is to become and serve as the organization we needed when we were younger.”
— CincyPeace
Cincinnati Peace Movement - A Brief History
Who we are and why we started.
The Cincinnati Peace Movement was founded on a vision shared by three young African American males raised in downtown Cincinnati. As young African American males growing up in the West End/Over the Rhine communities in the early 2000s, it was evident that lived experiences had impacted our worldview as growing adults. Growing up in an environment plagued with gang violence, prostitution, litter, homelessness, and drugs, we were inspired to become the very men and create the initiatives we felt we needed when we were younger. Furthermore, the turning point in our story erupted after a surge of homicides and arrests, which took several friends, former classmates, and teammates from our lives. Years following graduating high school (2013-2014), we noticed that citizens did not take any initiative within our community to address these issues, which had only worsened. On August 5th, 2015, the Cincinnati Peace Movement was officially born as we took matters into our hands and held our first event entitled: “Stop the Violence.” This event we aimed to raise awareness of gun violence in our community while serving as examples and youth representatives. We invited youth from all around Cincinnati and marched through downtown Cincinnati passing out literature and networking with community members and local businesses about our pursuit of a non-violent city.
Though we started on the foundations of anti-violence in the inner-city, CPM blossomed into an organization of many hats. Our ideology is that violence is a consequential outcome of various socio-economic factors. Furthermore, we understood that we needed to address violence directly and indirectly through consistency, collaboration, innovative frameworks, and project-based community development.