By turning on your porch lights, you are join in solidarity with the other residents of Oakland who refuse to passively accept rampant violence through non-action. By lighting your porch at night, you commit to working toward a better future, one that is peaceful, equitable, just, and features a strong community at its core. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that” – Martin Luther King Jr
Before our society can be peaceful, equitable, or just, our sense of community must gain strength.
We must begin to realize that our neighbor’s life is interconnected with ours. Your pain is my pain; your joy is my joy. A slain loved one does not only affect the family who is grieving the loss; everyone is affected. Grief for an individual killed needlessly is felt throughout the neighborhood. Fear of retaliation, of an innocent being hit, is not concentrated in one sector of the city. When an individual is robbed, this crime does not solely affect the victim. Everyone in the community is victimized; everyone is forced to take into account the possibility of theft.
The effects of crime are not limited to the criminals engaged in the activity. The whole neighborhood must tailor their habits to take this activity into account. For instance, children aren’t allowed to play in their front yard, teenagers can’t walk home from school, and adults can’t have nice things without worrying about becoming victims. It is our duty, as a community, to do all we can to eradicate crime, for crime lessens our ability to achieve a strong community full of peace, equity, and justice. Crime is the wedge which drives apart communities. Crime destroys the sense of peace, equity and justice.By turning on your light you symbolize your belief in this as well.
Through a concerted effort, we will be able to eradicate crime and build a stronger community. Movement in unison is key; in order for us to be successful we must work together. In the past we were coordinated by a few leaders to accomplish a 
few great tasks. Those in power have taken notice, and I can assure you that movements powered by charismatic leaders are thing of the past. These types of movements are too easily derailed. To have sustained success, we must all be leaders. As individuals, we must take it upon ourselves to learn all we can, use this knowledge to further the cause, and find ways to pass it on to whoever else is interested. By democratic processes, we will be able to allow those who know a little more about a subject than others to pass on this knowledge, allowing others to reject or accept these ideas. We believe civic engagement should occur on more than just a bi-annual basis. We believe decisions made in the community are best made by those who live and work in the community. We believe that, if given the information, any literate citizen can intelligent deduce the correct plan of action. In order to build a strong community, there must be more civic engagement. By turning on your light you show your support for this ideal.
Peace will be gained when we, as a group, decide it is time. Violence begets violence. Peace will not arise from war, no matter how much you’ve been told a war is being waged to bring it to about. To achieve victory, by definition, one side must lose. This leads to a very bitter defeat. Battles were fought because neither side wanted to compromise, doing so by force does not produce good will. In our communities, murders occur at alarming rates because two opposite sides cannot reach a compromise, whether the dispute is over territory, drugs, money, or bad blood is of very little consequence. An essential component of peace is love, which in its most basic element is acceptance. For example, if you love your pet you have come to accept that pet for what it is. It may pee on carpet from time to time or make too much noise when you’re trying to sleep but you are able to look past these qualities, even though you dearly want them to change. We must learn to love our community as a pet. There may be individuals who killed a dear friend of yours in the past, but carrying that grudge poisons the future. Violence begets violence and retaliation will only create more retaliation. Every member of our community has something they’ve carried into the future from the past which does 
nothing but pollute the perfection before us. This acceptance does not mean that seeking change is illogical or impossible, it solely means that you stop trying to change the past. If your neighbor destroyed your rose bush five years ago with his car, you can either hold a grudge for five years and leave the dead rose bush where it lay or accept what has happened in the past, realize it cannot be changed, no matter how much you, try and build toward a better future. As a community, we can either look at all the terrible things that have happened to us in the past and hold a grudge, or we can realize that no matter how hard we try, it cannot be changed and build for a better tomorrow. By seeking peace, you make a commitment to love. By making a commitment to love you strive to accept things as they are and work with what you have in the present to build a better future. By turning on your light you show your support for this ideal.
Equity within the community is a product of striving for peace and increasing awareness of our neighbors. Getting to know our neighbors, and accepting their problems as our own, will lead to a transformation of our community into one which transfers excess from one to another. By truly seeing your neighbors as who they are, human, how can those who have more than they require not feel obligated to give to those with not enough. Once you experience the pain of another as your own, stopping that pain is of the utmost importance. If I broke my arm in front of a hospital while I had full insurance coverage and there was no line in the emergency room, but refused to go because I was too busy people would think I’m insane. The same goes for our community. If you feel pain, and have the means to remedy it, why would you choose otherwise? By seeking peace through acceptance, one will realize that the present is the perfect time for action. Discrediting the have-nots by their past only exacerbates the problem; by seeking peace through acceptance, those who have little won’t stay there for long for they too shall see that the present is the perfect time to affect positive change, no matter what their past transgressions were. Equity only occurs in a strong community. If there is no connection between citizens, then taking more than one’s fair share has seemingly less repercussions; it is a lot easier to harm someone you don’t feel personally connected to. Though not explicitly stated, a strong community fosters a sense of responsibility and discretion. Seeing others as human and feeling their pain as your own helps breed equity. Turning on your light symbolizes you support for this ideal.
A strong community necessarily has a keen sense of justice because of the equity and empathy shared by citizens. As citizens realize their interconnectedness, thus increasing it, we will become increasingly interested in the well being of others and whether laws we helped establish are being respected. Theft is a danger to a community, is demoralizes many individuals in a group and, therefore, cannot be tolerated. It is in our best interest to prosecute whoever violates any law we have on the book. It is also in our best interest to make sure every law we have on the books truly serves the community it is supposed to protect. We must start somewhere, however, the validity of laws is a discussion we need to have, but peace takes precedence.
