Aquil Basheer believed that ending gang violence wasn\u2019t the kind of career you just fall into.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this type of work, you\u2019re usually chosen. You don\u2019t choose it,\u201d he said in 2024 in an interview for \u201cThe Storytelling Project,\u201d an L.A. County Public Health Department program that documented the effects of violence on local individuals and communities.<\/p>\n
Basheer, it seems, was among the chosen. <\/p>\n
A former Black Panther known as \u201cthe Commander,\u201d Basheer founded the BUILD Program and the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute in South L.A., an anti-violence and gang intervention nonprofit. The program announced Friday that Basheer had died. The cause of death was not disclosed, and Basheer\u2019s age was unclear, although he had said he was born in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
Basheer leaves behind a legacy of community-centered advocacy and teaching that go back to the late 1960s in L.A., a lifetime of achievement that Mayor Karen Bass celebrated in a tribute on X<\/a>. \u201cDr. Basheer was more than a colleague and a friend \u2014 he was a visionary leader who dedicated his life to building the infrastructure our communities need to protect and support those doing critical violence prevention work,\u201d Bass wrote, noting his work with the mayor\u2019s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development<\/a>.<\/p>\n BUILD stands for Brotherhood Unified for Independent Leadership through Discipline. The organization lauded Basheer as a \u201cpillar\u201d in both the local and global anti-violence movements, and praised him as \u201ca devoted family man whose strength, compassion, and integrity guided everything he did.\u201d<\/p>\n Basheer started the nonprofit in 1992. L.A.\u2019s warring gangs had just struck a truce following a resurgence in the type of street violence that Basheer called a \u201ccancer,\u201d and as both drugs and drug-war-era law enforcement practices ravaged the Black community. <\/p>\n BUILD offers conflict de-escalation and public safety training as well as professional certifications for front-line gang intervention specialists, public safety workers, mental health practitioners and others who focus on violence prevention, according to its website. <\/p>\n At the core of Basheer\u2019s work was an emphasis on the complex and often unspoken web of emotions that make gangs an option for some young people and also make it hard to see that another path exists.<\/p>\n Basheer embraced the idea that tackling youth mental health and the stresses of living with poverty, violence and racism are essential to helping young Black people see a way out of destructive cycles that force them to grow up far too soon.<\/p>\n Basheer, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, knew this from personal experience, having briefly gotten involved with gangs. He went on to find a higher calling around the time he joined the Black Panthers at the age of 15, among other Black empowerment organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were facing things that the average person would never even consider,\u201d Basheer said in the \u201cStorytelling Project\u201d oral history. \u201cBecause of that, we were forced into a strength that very few had \u2014 but simultaneously, we didn\u2019t realize how much inner turmoil and destruction was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt 17, 18, 19, our mindset was of 30 to 35 years old because everything was about survival, dealing with oppressive struggle, systemic issues of injustice,\u201d he said. \u201cI saw a lot of my comrades murdered, put in the penal [system].\u201d<\/p>\n Basheer also saw how conflicts among Black activist groups at the time risked obscuring the shared objectives of racial justice and uplift. Those lessons would serve him later as he developed and refined his intervention methodologies.<\/p>\n