Speaking with HipHopDX in a recent interview, West Coast emcee Bishop Lamont recalled his personal experience with the 1992 Watts Truce among rivaling Los Angeles gangs and explained why he wants to mobilize a similar energy in cities around the country today.

“I was there in ’91, ’92 when the gang truce happened, and it was a beautiful time in the streets,” he said. “We need that again because what they love to spin in the media right now is, ‘Oh, you’re making a big deal about Eric Garner or Tamir, or whatever, but Black people kill Black people everyday.’ All that shit is fucked up and has to be addressed too but stop trying to make that the cop-out for why it’s okay for them to kill us. Any killing is wrong. My thing is, I wanna get the word out from hood to hood, city to city, let’s start the truce up again. That going from city to city, state to state, can become something nationwide and resonate around the world. Once that stops, all them guns could be aimed in the right direction if it comes to that. I’m not saying, I’m just saying. But we gotta empower ourselves from the streets to these prisons. That would send such a message and an energy.”

“That’s where I’m at, that’s my conversation more than anything is needing that truce again, needing that unity,” he later added. “There’s strength in numbers. We gotta figure it out. We all breathe the same air, we stand under the same Sun. We in this together.”

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