“It’s not just about the kids putting down the guns,” the group’s founder, Tamar Manasseh, said to The Huffington Post. “It’s about the kids never picking them up to begin with.”

But such attention doesn’t last long, which contributes to the false impression that such actions are rare. The reality is that these organizations are just the visible edges of an enormous anti-crime activist network in black communities.

Another reason they draw so little attention is that communities that protest violence generally don’t have the economic and political resources necessary to engage with elite news media or hire lobbyists in state capitals or Washington. They typically have access only to the mayor’s staff, city council members, district attorneys and other city officials.

But prosecutors and police groups do have such resources. I found that criminal justice agencies represent a large plurality of witnesses at state and national hearings on crime issues. The voices of people living in high-crime communities, however, were largely absent. The result is policies that prioritize the needs of police and prosecutors.

This skewed representation makes it harder for us to see the common interests of anti-violence groups. They share at least one main political message: Efforts to keep young people away from violence would be made more effective by addressing shoddy schools, the lack of good jobs, the easy access to guns and the neglect of urban communities. State and national politicians and groups — not local organizers — simplify this complex advocacy on crime and criminal justice into pro- or anti-police narratives.

In fact, anti-violence activists understand best that the crime problem is much more than a policing problem. Though police in many communities have made great strides in preventive work, their priorities are primarily reactive. This work is crucial, but it’s not the same as long-term crime prevention. Nonetheless, over the past 40 years, state governments and Congress have funneled huge sums of money to law enforcement, while underinvesting in education, employment and empowerment, all of which is needed for serious crime prevention.

Black activists know that all Americans — not just middle-class or wealthy whites — deserve protection by the police, as well as from the police. There is nothing contradictory about worrying that friends or family members might be killed by someone in the neighborhood, and also being concerned that they might get killed by the police.

Grass-roots organizations in black communities lead the efforts to make their streets safe. We need to get rid of the offensive falsehood that black people don’t care about crime, and help create the reforms they’ve long demanded.