Carlos Davila is a man with a vision. Yesterday at Loy Harris Pavilion in Manassas, the fruition of that vision began to manifest as his organization MCity Entertainment held a fundraiser called the MCity Shutdown. Presented by A.O.D. (Ascend or Descend) and sponsored by such organizations as Jirani’s Coffeehouse, 4 Homes and OTR Jazz Cutz among others, the purpose of the event was to build a recording studio for the local youth of the community to have an outlet to create as well as collaborate with their peers in creative industries through music. We met with the recent Osbourn High School graduate during the festivities to discuss how this was brought together.

“I believed that we really needed to come together. A lot of these young people in the area want to do more, and anything we can do to help we’re going to make happen,” said Davila. “We’ve seen too many lives get lost to these streets so we are working with other groups to help give them a vision for the future.”

When asked about what it took to put an event of this magnitude together, Davila spoke about the community coming together pretty quickly. “We did this in only a month. It took a few phone calls but it was the hard work of people who want to see things get better for the community of Manassas.”

One of the sponsors that we met were A Group of Friends, and organization created by a fellowship of Battlefield High School friends in Haymarket dedicated to social justice initiatives. Bianca Diamond, one of the representatives, spoke about the mission statement:

“A Group Of Friends is to educate and inform the people of societal injustices and to bring equalities amongst minorities,” said Diamond. “We think that everyone should have equal rights. We feel that at the end of the day whether it’s your race, gender or however you identify yourself that you should be accepted by society no matter what.”

Diamond “What we’re doing is giving back to the community. We’re here for them so if there’s ever a problem or issue they know that there’s support and they are not alone.”

Below is a video from a documentary produced by MCity called “We The People,” which highlights the purpose of why they came together to address the issues going on in their city. Click here to view.

If you would like to donate to the MCity fundraiser, please click here for more details.