How to talk about peace

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're gonna find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading from TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Right now, conflict sometimes violent conflict is in the headlines, in our feeds and, for some of us, right outside the front door. And when politics feels this charged, the idea of making peace, well, it can sound pretty naive. So how do people, parties or even nations at odds reconcile with each other? Where do they even begin? Today, we are breaking down the slow, intentional steps that move people away from violence and toward cooperation. And we're doing it by going back to a moment in American history, Los Angeles 1992. That year, something almost unimaginable happened. Leaders from the two biggest gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, managed to end a years long deadly feud that had killed thousands of people. The two parties negotiated a peace treaty. But how? Change moves at the speed of trust, right? Deep relationships and trust. This is Akela Shirelles. And I consider myself to be a peacemaker. In the 1980s, Akila was a kid growing up in L. A. When a cheap, very addictive drug started seeping into cities across The U. S. Crack cocaine. It turned his neighborhood into a marketplace for dealers, dealers who would defend their turf with violence. Crack cocaine came through the neighborhood like Hurricane Katrina. It uprooted families. I mean, it decimated the neighborhood. You know, you had individuals who was hustling and selling dope that were making, you know, tens of thousands of dollars more money than they ever made in their entire life. And so, you know, people started buying, went from 22, you know, handguns to, you know, nine millimeters in AK 40 sevens and tech nines. And it became a war zone. And that rage and anger, because there was no therapeutic services, no counseling, nothing offered to us to help us to heal from the traumatic experiences that we were all witnessing. Warfare between gangs was a normal part of life for Akilah, who lived in the Jordan Downs housing projects in the Watts neighborhood of LA. He remembers being in middle school at the time. Markham Junior High School, we called Gladiator School. You know, ninth grade year at Markham, my best friend, Ronsel Pointer, was shot in the head and killed, you know, at lunchtime on campus. In Watts, the four housing projects were each associated with either the Bloods or the Crips. If you wear …