Special Guest Speakers

Steve Avalos

Navigator, Homeboy Industries

Steve Avalos walked through the doors of Homeboy Industries in 2012 after being released from prison. He completed Homeboy’s training program and was promoted to the role of Navigator, in which he oversees the daily activities of and mentors a cohort of trainees. He says of Homeboy, “It is a place where there is love for the unloved and hope for the hopeless.”

Steve facilitates Homeboy’s Criminals & Gang Members Anonymous group, and has facilitated the Victim Offender Education group. He participates in the work of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development. He has been recognized by the Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

CHRISTIAN PICCIOLINI

After leaving the American, white supremacist skinhead movement he helped build in the 1980s and 90s, Christian Picciolini graduated from DePaul University and became a respected entrepreneur and peace advocate. He launched Goldmill Group, a global entertainment media firm, and won an Emmy Award in 2016 for his role directing and producing an anti-hate advertising campaign that helped disengage youth from white supremacist ideologies. Most notably, in 2011 he co-founded Life After Hate, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people disengage from violent extremism and sharing with communities the knowledge necessary to implement long-term solutions that counter racism and extremist radicalization. In 2015, Christian published his memoir, Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead, where he details his involvement in the early American white power skinhead movement.

Aqeela Sherrills

Aqeela Sherrills is a spirit-centered activist, working to promote healing in marginalized communities and community ownership of public safety.

Aqeela Sherrills grew up in the Jordan Downs Housing Project in Watts, Los Angeles. A member of the Grape Street Crips, he fled the devastating violence in his community for college. At 19 he began working with football star Jim Brown and co-founded the Amer-I-Can Program, Inc. to heal gang violence around the country by negotiating peace treaties in those cities. In 1992 he brought his message home to Watts itself, and with his brother Daude and a few other key players in the community, forged a historic truce between the Crips and the Bloods in Watts.

When the ceasefire began to fray, the Sherrills brothers created the Community Self-Determination Institute in 1999 to tackle the overwhelming personal and social issues that underlie crime, drugs, and violence, and to draw attention to communities’ Post (and present) Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

On January 10, 2004, Sherrills’ 18-year-old son, Terrell, home from studying theater arts in college, was shot in the back at close range. A Crip may have mistaken Terrell for a Blood because, of all things, he had a red Mickey Mouse sweater slung over his shoulder. Determined that Terrell’s death not be in vain, and understanding that gangs are “a surrogate family when the nuclear family has been broken,” Aqeela embarked on a new phase of work and activism, launching the Reverence Project to develop comprehensive wellness centers in urban war zones in order to introduce those who suffer from high levels of trauma to alternative healing technologies to support individuals on their healing journeys.

Aqeela is also the National Training Director for Californian for Safety and Justice (CSJ), and Chapter Lead for the Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice (CSSJ) initiative, a nonprofit working to replace justice and prison system waste with common sense solutions that create safe neighborhoods and save taxpayer dollars. His primary focus with CSSJ is meeting the unmet needs of victims of crime, which includes healing, recovery and prevention. He also works with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, bringing this same work to other states.

Aqeela is the Director of the Newark (NJ) Community Street Team, the Honorable Mayor Ras J. Baraka’s community based violence reduction initiative. He is a Fellow with the Just Beginnings Collaborative, a national network of leaders and organizations working to end child sexual abuse. Aqeela also owns the Three Worlds Café in Watts and is a partner in Locol, a fast food chain bringing healthy and responsibly sourced food to inner cities. He is a principal in the Ambassadors Hosting Services, a worker-owned cooperative in Watts, providing a suite of professional services to the local community, including conflict resolution/mediations services, event logistics and promotion, retail management and janitorial services.

Aqeela serves on the board of the L.A.U.R.A, Fathers of Watts, The Center for Transformative Change and Murder Victims Family for Reconciliation.

Aqeela still lives in the Watts community. He is the father of 8 children and grandfather of 14.