Skip to main content

Aqeela Sherrills: The Homegrown Watts Peacemaker

"We are here changing lives" | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Support Provided By
Hear more from Edwards about what Watts Coffee House means for the community in "Broken Bread" episode - S1 E6: Watts.
Watts

Several years ago, activist Aqeela Sherrills met Chef Roy Choi when the chef was working with high school students on a smoothie business. "They started selling these smoothies at Jefferson High School and it blew up," Sherrills recalls by phone from Newark, New Jersey. "They went from selling two or three to having lines around the campus."

When the business moved off campus, Sherrills came in as a partner for 3 Worlds Cafe. Following that venture, Sherrills joined forces with Choi again on Locol, which opened across the street from where Sherrills was raised in Watts, which is also the neighborhood that marks the beginning of his journey as an activist.

"I grew up in Jordan Downs Housing Projects and participated in what many social justice activists call the longest running war in the history of this country — urban street gangs," says Sherrills, who now splits his time between Los Angeles and Newark. "In the late '80s, a number of us started organizing to make a change, to end the war in the neighborhood. I had a transformative experience in college. I went back to the neighborhood and started organizing."

Aqeela Sherrills in Watts | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Aqeela Sherrills in Watts | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Aqeela Sherrills with a fellow community member | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Aqeela Sherrills with a fellow community member | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Aqeela Sherrills cooking with his mother, "Mama" Wajeha Bilal, who is also very active in the community. | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Aqeela Sherrills cooking with his mother, "Mama" Wajeha Bilal, who is also very active in the community. | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
The peace agreement between the Crips and the Bloods Aqeela Sherrills helped broker. | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
The peace agreement between the Crips and the Bloods Aqeela Sherrills helped broker. | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts

Sherrills was part of a group that would go on to form Amer-I-Can with former Cleveland Browns star Jim Brown and then organize a peace agreement between the Crips and Bloods in Los Angeles. They went on to do the same for gangs in other cities. Sherrills eventually left Amer-I-Can to launch the Self-Determination Institute in Watts. He traveled the world speaking on violence and peace. Then, in 2003, the oldest of his eight children was killed at a party in Los Angeles while on break from college.

"I'm no novice to violence and death. I grew up around it all my life, but nothing ever prepares you for the loss of your child, man," he says. "That was transformative…it made me question everything."

As a result, Sherrills started The Reverence Project and co-founded Californians for Safety and Justice and Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice. The latter has been integral to the fight for criminal justice reform and worked on passing Prop. 47 in California. Sherrills also works with the city of Newark on gang violence reduction. "We've now had three years of decreases in a row in homicides [and] violence in the city," he says. "Newark is no longer in the top 10 most violent city list."

In his work, Sherrills sees the connection between food and peace. "For years, there have been studies that looked at this relationship between food and consumption and how it contributes to behavior," he says. "A part of our overall strategy around violence reduction is food, is food and water."

Aqeela Sherrills | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts
Aqeela Sherrills | Still from "Broken Bread" Watts

Support Provided By
Read More
Shrimp ceviche sits over a black tostada and is topped with chopped cucumber, red peppers, fresh green herbs and seaweed.

5 Places to Eat and Drink Like a Local in Tijuana

We asked Chef José "Joe" Figueroa of el Casimiro to share some of his favorite places to eat and drink around Tijuana, a multicultural city with an ever-evolving food scene.
Plastic chairs are arranged in a room spaced apart. People sit in them and face the front where a woman is standing in front of a projector, speaking to the group. Behind the presenter is a colorful mural.

How to Support Migrant Families, Wherever You Are

Espacio Migrante director and founder, Paulina Olvera Cáñez, shares five ways we can help support immigrant communities, whether we're at home or on location.
Lilian Meija and José Aguilar stand in front of a mural. The mural features a face painted in blue with strong, dark eyebrows, full lips and determined eyes. A band goes across the face's head with the words "Honduras" over it. To the left of the blue face is a multicolored guacamaya, or macaw. To the right of the blue face is half of a woman's face with large eyes, long eyelashes, full red lips and strong cheekbones.

A Taste of Home: How Tijuana's Honduras 504 Provides Comfort for Migrant Families

Since migrating to Tijuana in 2011, Chef Lilian Mejía's restaurant Honduras 504 has become a touchstone and safe place for Tijuana's growing Honduran community — and has expanded the city's culinary offerings along the way.