Aquil Basheer believes ending gang violence is not a career you can pursue.
“Often in this type of work, you’re chosen. You don’t choose it,” he said in a 2024 interview with The Storytelling Project, a project of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health that documents the impact of violence on local individuals and communities.
Bashir appears to be one of the chosen ones.
Basheer, a former Black Panther known as “The Commander,” founded the BUILD program and the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute, an anti-violence and gang intervention nonprofit in South Los Angeles. The show announced Bashere’s death on Friday. Bashir’s cause of death has not been disclosed, nor is his age, although he has said he was born in the 1950s.
Bashere leaves behind a legacy of community-centered advocacy and teaching that dates back to the late 1960s in Los Angeles, a lifetime achievement celebrated by Mayor Karen Bass in a tribute at the X. “Dr. Bashere is more than a colleague and friend, he is a visionary leader who has dedicated his life to building the infrastructure our communities need to protect and support those doing critical violence prevention work,” Bashe wrote, citing his work with the mayor’s office. Reduce gangs and youth development.
BUILD stands for Fraternity Unified, Independent Leadership through Discipline. The group hailed Bashir as a “pillar” of the local and global anti-violence movement and described him as “a devoted family man whose strength, compassion and integrity guide everything he does.”
Bashir founded the nonprofit organization in 1992. Warring gangs in Los Angeles have just reached a truce as a resurgence of street violence that Bashir calls a “cancer” and drug and drug war-era law enforcement ravage black communities.
BUILD provides conflict de-escalation and public safety training and professional certifications to frontline gang intervention specialists, public safety workers, mental health practitioners and others focused on violence prevention, according to its website.
At the heart of Basheer’s work is an emphasis on the complex and often unspoken emotional webs that make gangs an option for some young people and make it difficult to see that an alternative path exists.
Bashir believes that addressing youth mental health issues and the stress of living in poverty, violence and racism is critical to helping young black people find a way out of the destructive cycle that forces them to grow up too early.
Bashir, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley and was briefly involved in gangs, knows this from personal experience. At the age of 15, he joined the Black Panther Party and other black empowerment groups before continuing to search for a higher calling.
“We were faced with things that the average person would never consider,” Bashere said in a Storytelling Project oral history. “Because of this, we are forced into a power that few others have—but at the same time, we don’t realize how much chaos and destruction is going on inside.”
“At 17, 18, 19 years old, our mindset is that of a 30- to 35-year-old, because it’s all about survival, fighting against oppression, systemic injustice,” he said. “I saw many comrades being killed and sent to prison [system]”.
Bashir also saw the potential for conflicts between black activist groups at the time to overshadow shared goals of racial justice and progress. These lessons served him well as he later developed and refined his intervention methods.
In multicultural Los Angeles, Bashir blazed another trail by acting as a mediator in a tense moment between Los Angeles’ blacks and Latinos. In 2009, for example, he told the Los Angeles Daily News about his efforts to quell conflict between the two communities after a shooting in Pacoima.
But Bashir’s interference is not limited to warring factions. He tries to help those he mentors find inner peace.
In 2014, Basher co-authored Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End Violence. Turner Publishing describes it as “the first book to detail the peace process within gangs.”
In the book, Bashir describes the gang mentality as a battle to find dignity and a sense of purpose while living in a socioeconomic environment that often robs you of healthier ways to experience these things.
“Because society has done something wrong to you, you have the right to balance the scales, as a matter of course,” Bashir wrote. “Falling down in the blaze of historic glory is a way of making your life matter because you think nothing else can. Gang membership is a way of ensuring that you get some kind of honor in life, even if it results in death or jail time.”
Bashir wants to show young people that honor and life are not mutually exclusive.
In a tribute, BUILD shared a nugget from Basheer that set the stage for his work: “Don’t judge the likelihood of something based on the circumstances.”
“His radical wisdom was present in every life he touched, every student he mentored and every community he changed,” the organization said.
Bass said a public memorial to Bashir would be announced at a later date.
