Tookie's Peace Protocol Used To Create New Jersey Truce

(May 2004) Tookie's Peace Protocol, available from tookie.com, was used to help build a truce between rival Crips and Bloods gangs in Newark, New Jersey. With the leadership of the Deputy Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, and Byron “Boogie” Kelley, a local intermediary, they created an organization called SaveOurSelves. 150 members of the two youth gangs gathered in the basement of a public housing building to sign their historic truce, the first of its kind on the East Coast of the United States. Their treaty was based on the “Tookie Protocol For Peace,” devised by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stanley Tookie Williams, cofounder of the Crips, who has been on death row in California since 1981. A spokesman for Mr. Baraka expressed hope that the initiative would spread across New Jersey where Crips and Bloods gang violence continues since spreading from Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.

A prominent Blood leader in Newark, indicating other members of the newly formed SaveOurSelves, said, “This is my family. He’s a Crip and I’m a Blood. No problems now." The speaker was recently released from a 43-month stint in federal prison for gun-related crimes.

Gang leaders took this bold step towards peace two months ago as drive-by shootings and other violent attacks escalated, claiming over 40 lives since the start of this January 2004. The men admit to having committed acts of violence. But they want the violence to stop, for the sake of their own children.

Tookie has invited all gang members to formulate their own version of a truce using his ready-to-print peace accord. “It is great that Newark benefitted from my peace protocol initiative and started a truce. That’s why I am doing this work. To stop the madness,” Williams said from San Quentin's Death Row.

This story made international headlines, carried by USA Today, The London Times, and Reuters.