Peaceoholics, Inc. is a 501 C3 non-profit organization that provides communities with wide array of services and programs with complete prevention and intervention services for at risk-youth and their families in the Washington, DC area.
Incorporated in 2004, Peaceoholics promotes conflict resolution within gangs & neighborhoods, prevention and intervention services are offered in the following areas; HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and family wellness. Our efforts in support of the youth are directed at understanding problems such as violence in the school’s and the community. We assist youth with developing solutions so that they may live in an environment that is safe and conducive to learning.
Tuskegee Airman Col. Herbert Carter meets and greets female members of the Washington DC Peaceaholics, who were on a Civil Rights Journey in Tuskegee, Alabama, on March 25, 2008. Beatrice Forniss was visiting Col. Carter at the time and also spoke with the youth.
Washington, D.C., has the toughest gun-control laws in the country. For 31 years, it has been illegal in the nation's capital to buy, sell or own a handgun. Residents may keep shotgunsor rifles—but only if they are stored unloaded, and either disassembled or disabled with trigger locks. Even so, Damon Sams doesn't spend much time worrying about restrictions on his right to bear arms. Now 19, the former drug dealer got his first gun, a .380 pistol, at 13, when he started selling marijuana and later crack on a street corner in Southeast Washington. "I wanted people to respect me and be scared of me," he says. He also wanted protection. As a kid, he'd seen his father shot dead in the street. He's been shot himself on two separate occasions. Now an aspiring rapper who works with Peaceoholics, a D.C. group that tries to get kids off the streets, Sams no longer has any guns, but he says it wouldn't be much trouble to get them, ban or no ban. "I wasn't tripping on D.C. laws," he says with a smile.
Washington, D.C., has the toughest gun-control laws in the country. For 31 years, it has been illegal in the nation's capital to buy, sell or own a handgun. Residents may keep shotgunsor rifles—but only if they are stored unloaded, and either disassembled or disabled with trigger locks. Even so, Damon Sams doesn't spend much time worrying about restrictions on his right to bear arms. Now 19, the former drug dealer got his first gun, a .380 pistol, at 13, when he started selling marijuana and later crack on a street corner in Southeast Washington. "I wanted people to respect me and be scared of me," he says. He also wanted protection. As a kid, he'd seen his father shot dead in the street. He's been shot himself on two separate occasions. Now an aspiring rapper who works with Peaceoholics, a D.C. group that tries to get kids off the streets, Sams no longer has any guns, but he says it wouldn't be much trouble to get them, ban or no ban. "I wasn't tripping on D.C. laws," he says with a smile.