Nonprofit leader: ‘No blame, just change’ to curb gun violence 

Terrance Cooper doesn’t want this story to be about Lansing’s problems. 

He’d rather not see more news coverage about rising levels of local gun violence — like about the 15-year-old boy who was hospitalized last month after being shot in front of a south Lansing liquor store, or the 16-year-old who took a bullet in the arm last week in Delta Township. 

Cooper doesn’t think that the city needs another reminder that at least 49 homicides (and 118 non-fatal shootings) have been reported here within the last 26 months. He also doesn’t want to see another story about a local teen facing murder charges — like the 16-year-old Lansing boy who was charged last week in the recent shooting death of 17-year-old Allayah Walker-Travis. 

Instead, Cooper said that he cofounded the nonprofit People Ready Activating Youth, or PRAY, in 2019 to focus exclusively on solutions. And with nearly $300,000 in taxpayer cash earmarked to help PRAY mitigate gun violence this year, there are plenty still to be found. 

“If you spend too much time on the wrong things, the problem that you’re trying to fix is only going to get worse. This isn’t about the problems. I’m about the work — and getting the work done,” Cooper told City Pulse. “I’m not a talker. I don’t like talking about problems. I like for people to see the actions, see the solutions and see the work, and we’ve been doing the work.” 

The Ingham County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously last week to pick PRAY as the local operator (at least through 2022) of a new three-year gun violence interruption initiative called Advance Peace. Cooper is PRAY’s unpaid top executive. 

Advance Peace was first introduced to the Lansing City Council in 2020 by the program’s founder, Eastern High School graduate DeVone Boggan, as a way to work directly with local at-risk teenagers and interrupt a cyclical and retaliatory cycle of gun violence in the city. Over the next year, PRAY is tasked with hiring up to six people and eventually recruiting a 25-person cohort of the city’s most potentially lethal residents into the 18-month “fellowship” program. 

The nationally renowned initiative, by design, will employ ex-convicts known as “neighborhood change agents” who can build bonds with troublemakers and encourage them to participate in the initiative — which includes travel and educational opportunities, counseling and monthly stipends of up to $1,000 for each participant. Funding for the program is split largely between the city and the county (alongside a few state grants) for a total of up to $535,000 in 2022. 

About $280,000 of that cash can be used to reimburse PRAY for its payroll and operating costs. If all goes well, the contract can be renewed for two more years for an additional $1.4 million. 

Last week’s commission vote marked the end of a protracted selection process — involving at least three other nonprofits — that was initially supposed to have ended about six months ago. Commissioners decided last year against an initial staff recommendation to pick The Village, another Lansing nonprofit, before it finally moved forward this year with a joint operating partnership between PRAY and Peckham Inc. Officials at Peckham pulled out of the deal last month and recommended PRAY for the full contract, which was awarded without a hitch. 

Advance Peace representatives from California are expected to embark on a six-month training process with PRAY this month and further develop the program into next year, county officials said. Afterward, Cooper plans to assemble a team of 10 people who can continue to identify “clique leaders” in Lansing, whom he suspects to be responsible for catalyzing the local violence. 

“I don’t call these gangs. They’re cliques,” Cooper added. “I was in a gang. I grew up in a gang. When you say that, there are rules. You just couldn’t do certain stuff. There were certain people you couldn’t touch. You had to get permission before you did things unless you were at war. These aren’t gangs. It’s more like different groups of friends who all grew up here together.” 

From there, it’s simply about sitting down and talking with people — “building bridges” — and stepping up into a mentorship role that is too often missing from many local homes, he said. 

“My plan is just to talk to the young people — as many of them as I can — and just touch base with them, reach out to them, talk to them,” Cooper said. “Lansing is really small. Get 10 people together, and you can start to reach different families and neighborhoods and groups. Then, you can really start to piece together this puzzle of how these different groups all interact together.” 

Trying to interrupt gun violence on the frontlines of a “warzone” like Lansing is a dangerous job — especially when you’re not a cop and would rather not be associated with police, Cooper said. Building those genuine connections with “high-risk” teens before they decide to end their arguments with bullets can be delicate work. News crews and politicians tend to get in the way. 

It’s part of the reason Cooper declined to elaborate much further on the scope of his plans — and also why it took Cooper longer than two weeks to agree to an interview on the subject. 

“I really don’t want to give Advance Peace any airplay until it actually starts to do something for Lansing,” Cooper said. “We’re working on that gun violence stuff, but it can’t all be public. Once the guys who we’re dealing with find out that it’s public, they’ll stop sharing things. It takes away our opportunity to intervene. They’ll see the public part of this and they don’t want to deal.” 

That lack of specific operational details, however, doesn’t mean that Cooper isn’t working, he explained. Gun violence prevention is only one small aspect of PRAY’s broad, community-centered approach to solving just about every other problem in Lansing. 

“I don’t like talking about it. I like people to see the actions and see the work,” Cooper added. 

In 2011, Cooper, 45, was convicted of armed robbery and felony landing him behind bars for more than five years. Police reports were not immediately available, but Cooper said he robbed a man who owed him money near a south Lansing grocery store, which was captured on tape and reported to authorities. 

The case, which was consolidated with counterfeiting and forgery charges in Eaton County, netted him a sentence of up to 25 years; Cooper was paroled after about five years in 2015. 

Afterward, Cooper said he was set on turning his jailhouse notebooks filled with charitable ideas into reality. He said he helped to form The Village Lansing, then after the atmosphere there got far “too political” there decided to hang out his own nonprofit shingle as PRAY. 

Over the last two years, the group has formed relationships with several other nonprofit organizations to organize citywide food distribution efforts, help the homeless and build a standing mentorship program at Everett High School. PRAY also helped raise $2,600 for seven families whose apartments were ravaged in a fire at the Arbors at Georgetown apartments. 

“There are a lot of moving pieces with PRAY and a lot of different ways we help Lansing,” Cooper said. “The biggest thing is that we can all get along. We never leave anyone out.” 

He added: “I also want nothing to do with politics. That’s when things can start to get messy.” 

Cooper’s mentorship role at Everett made such a difference over the last year that Superintendent Ben Shuldinder said that he personally carved out a part-time support specialist job for him this year. It’s pays $20 an hour and mostly involves babysitting hallways between classes, but more important, it offers Cooper the opportunity to build his teenager connections. 

Cooper shook at least two dozen hands there last Friday and pounded another dozen fists; It seemed nearly every student — even those guided by “disciplinary escorts” — looked up to him. At lunch time, Cooper and The Village cofounder Aaron Blankenburg, another part-time Everett specialist, became the cafeteria DJs. They talked to students about everything from sports to fashion to some of their deeper troubles back home. 

“We never waited on the county. We’ve been here doing the gun violence work now,” Cooper said. “The tools of Advance Peace — that brand and those resources — will be lovely when they come in, but we haven’t been waiting. We just needed to start caring more about our kids.” 

He added: “The most basic way to do that is to stop looking for blame. We’ve all screwed up. Our generation dropped the ball, flat out, and that’s why I’m in the schools. I want to get at them from a younger age instead of waiting until they’re out there mixed up into some bad business.” 

Eventually, Cooper hopes to rent out a downtown office space for PRAY that would also feature a cafe stocked with snacks and drinks, as well as a “fellowship” area for local teens. Everyone would be welcomed — especially those who need a safe place to just be themselves. 

“You can’t wave a magic wand on gun violence. People are going to die,” Cooper said. “I don’t want people to think this is going away in a day. That’s magic Harry Potter shit, and I don’t do magic Harry Potter shit. I do real life. That all starts with showing these kids a better way.” 

Cooper also has a new, solutions-focused motto for his nonprofit: “No blame. Just change.” 

“That means we’re not blaming the mayor or the City Council. We’re not going to blame the police. We’re also not blaming the kids or the parents. We’re taking responsibility,” he said.