I listened to Mimi and how she went all out to reform a bunch of gang members of which her son was part, amidst the turbulence, and impending danger, not to mention the hostility from the neighbourhood as well as rival gang groups, this woman pushed on. This really wasnt a walk in the park.Listening to her really made me reflect on how I was living my life to fulfill the plan of my creator. The same sun that melts the wax, also hardens the clay. Most times we go through challenges in life that absolutely shut us down, but the truth that every situation can really turn out for good, if we look beyond the now, and believe God to work out everything for good.
Below is the story of Mimi nd one of the gang members whose life got transformed. In all the life of 30 young men, got transformed just because of one woman who was willing to be used by God. Imagine if there were more like Mimi? I believe the whole world will be a better place to live in.
The woman who took on the gangs
How the mother of a former gang
member persuaded others to turn their lives around.
It is one of the most remarkable stories to emerge
from the gangs of Brixton: how a single mother used the power of love to destroy
a notorious street gang that had threatened to destroy her own family.
Pastor Mimi Asher was terrified to learn that her
own son, Michael, had joined the local gang on her housing estate at Myatt's
Fields. She took matters into her own hands. She decided that the best way to
end his involvement was by getting the gang, Organised Crime, or the O.C., to
dissolve itself.
Over a three-year period, Pastor Mimi threw open
her house to O.C gang members. She cooked meals for them, washed their clothes
and even took them on trips to the cinema and swimming pool. For a time, the
leader of the gang, Karl Lokko, or "General Lokks", as he is now known, lived at
the house. He is now a successful musician and acts as a mentor helping young
people leave gangs.
Mimi's story
Myatt's Field estate has been described as a place
that not even the devil would walk through because young people living there at
the estate were terrorising people. That's the estate I was living in. Young
people there were interrogating people, asking them their password before coming
on the estate. It was their way of monitoring who came on the estate.
I had no idea my son was involved in anything
because he was such a good boy. I did not know anything about gangs, nothing to
my knowledge at all until I spoke to a police officer.
The young ones look to the
older ones as role models and they feel inspired because they see them with
cars, and girls, and money. The young ones get recruited or initiated.
Everywhere in London it's the same process.
What I used to do is I would go out there with my
wooden stick looking for him. Random times he would be in conversation with
friends and I would just turn up and tell him to come into the house and because
he was very respectful he would follow me.
So everbody knew that Michael's mum would come at
any time so they felt quite a lot of unease. They would see me on the estate and
they would be hiding because they knew Michael's mum was coming. If need be I
would turn up anywhere. Two o'clock in the morning I would be driving round the
estate looking for him.
I was really desperate to save my son because I
knew that either he would end up dead or in prison and I couldn't live with
that.
In 2010, Mimi Asher received a London Peace Award from
Mayor Boris Johnson
I then started going through his friends and invite
them to my house and cook for them. They would come over and I would try and
have a conversation with them.
All the boys on the estate, I generally cared for
them. I was seeing them as these young boys that had potential to do well but
it's only through things that can happen to them. So it was that drive, that
real drive and passion in my heart. I was desperate to save all of them. The
little money I had I would share with them.
The answer is to try and mums and dads to get
involved and not be passive and leave the government to tackle [gangs]. The
government should provide facilities, rather than cut down. They pour so much
money into the Olympics and yet we have these young people on the estate,
there's little for them to do, little to motivate them. There's no facilities.
It was a big task. sometimes I was afraid for my
own life. there were times I would get paranoid. I had to hold my faith and keep
my head high. But I don't let fear stop me doing what I'm doing.
Karl's story
Karl Lokko is the ex-leader of
the Organised Crime gang - the O.C. - on the Myatt’s Field estate, Brixton
I was in love with that culture. It weren't really
drugs. I believed it was a good way if living for some time.
You take a lie as a truth and I took it as the
truth. There's different reasons, there's different things that will lead a man
to want to join a gang. At the end of the day I never really see it too much as
a gang, I see it as my circle, my friends, my family, my home away from sort of
thing. It was just like a group of friends. That's what you call a gang, really.
There's different gangs, it's just that ours wasn't mainstream.
I wasn't able to join a gang at the beginning I had
to make my own and I was 13. The one I made started off with just three people,
it was M.A.D - Max, Addict and Drowsy. I was Addict.
A lot of people are under the illusion that people
join gangs for financial gain. Don't get me wrong, there are some that join for
financial gain. And once you become the member of a gang and you get older in
that gang you understand that you need money in the society that we live in
today.
So money becomes an objective but that's not the
main drive. There's more of a romance behind it. It's more the fact that you
have an identity, you get self-esteem, you feel that you have a purpose, you
feel that you're needed. A lot of people will have been coming from broken homes
and that could be their family.
What held me for a long time was loyalty. You feel
as if you've all made your bed, so you must all lie in it. I'm not for
punishing. I'm for reformation. I'm not into chastising.
I dedicated seven years to
that lifestyle. I've been cut on my face, I've been shot at a silly amount of
times, I've been chopped in the back, I've been sliced on my chest and by God's
grace I'm still here. That's all it is really.
I've had close friends killed. I never lost them to
natural causes. I have a friend who died the other day to a natural cause and I
didn't really know how to act. That's the first friend to have died of a natural
cause that was involved in any form of gangsterism.
I'm used to mourning the fact that someone's died
but also projecting a hatred to that person who killed them. But I had no one to
project that hatred to cos that guy was in a car crash. Human beings are not
just conditioned by life to kill one another.
The struggle with me was that I'm forsaking my
brothers, and that's how they saw it as well until, by God's grace, I was able
to speak to them and let them understand. And a lot of them were fine with my
change. Everyone wants good for them. If they're really your friends the want
what's good for you.
It's just chaos here. You can lose your life just
for looking at someone wrong. Maybe they're going through something and they're
feeling paranoid.
Pastor Mimi dedicated her time, she showed me love
and she was genuine. I was able to then decipher and see that lies I was fed as
truth were false. I would go and speak to people that may have shot at me and I
showed them that I'm no longer a threat.
I just went over to them genuinely and they were
able to see that, same way I was able see my pastor was being genuine when she
was trying to outreach to me. And they're my friends
(Culled from bbc radio 4 news)
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