Building an Engaged Community to Prevent and Heal from Gun Violence ; Building an Engaged Community to Prevent and Heal from Gun Violence: Lessons from the Southside

Abstract

Despite dramatic shifts in crime control and public health policy, one persistent pattern remains unchanged; gun violence cuts short the lives of young black males in America's most economically disadvantaged urban communities at unacceptably high rates. The family members, friends and neighbors left behind to endure the pain of sudden and traumatic death rarely have access to the necessary resources to ease their healing and/or interrupt the intergenerational cycles of poverty and violence operating to sustain these patterns. The clustered patterns of gun homicide – characterized by significant concentrations of risk across spatial geography and social networks – increase the burden that gun violence has on the emotional, social, psychological, relational, economic, political, spiritual, and developmental outcomes of families residing in these urban communities. The burden of gun violence is not limited to the toll of victimization; it also extends to the collateral consequences of the criminal justice system responses to highly dangerous people and environments, namely aggressive policing and mass incarceration. The social and educational experiences of youth and families situated in urban neighborhoods and networks of highly concentrated gun death, gun injury and mass incarceration are not well understood by social and behavioral scientists. Extant research has described numerous ways in which neighborhoods matter in explaining why violent crime is more likely to occur in economically disadvantaged areas with high rates of racial segregation and low levels of collective efficacy compared to more advantaged geographical locations. The impact of structural disadvantage that produces persistent racial, social, and economic disparity in violence-related health outcomes has been well documented (Clear, 2009; Harding, 2010; Peterson and Krivo, 2010; Petit, 2012: Sampson, 2012; Sampson and Moreoff, 2006; Starkey, 2013; Venkatesh, 2006; and Wilkinson, 2011). The ecological adaptation processes that those who experience high rates of direct and indirect exposure to community gun violence have not been studied from an intergenerational, trauma-informed, life course, and ecological systems perspective. Community-based participatory action and ethnographic research sheds much needed light on the social and community related processes that promote resiliency among people most impacted by violent gun death and related trauma. This presentation will highlight the researcher-community partnership of M4M, a grassroots community-based effort, operating for the past eight years to improve the conditions and quality of life. The panel will include M4M leaders, an M4M participant, and an Ohio State graduate. The presentation will focus on successful strategies to build social capital in distressed urban neighborhoods, effective outreach/engagement for vulnerable youth/families to interrupt the intergenerational patterns of gun death and injury. ; AUTHOR AFFILIATION: Deanna Wilkinson, Associate Professor, Department of Human Sciences, wilkinson.110@osu.edu (Corresponding Author); Frederick V. Lamarr, Pastor/Executive Director, Family Missionary Baptist Church; Tammy Fournier Alsaada, Lead Organizer, People's Justice Project; Cecil Ahad, President/CEO, Men for the Movement; Dartangnan Hill, Community Activist/Violence Interrupter, M4M: Jerry Saunders Sr., CEO, APDS. ; Despite dramatic shifts in crime control and public health policy, one persistent pattern remains unchanged: gun violence cuts short the lives of young black males in America's most economically disadvantaged urban communities at unacceptably high rates. Since 2009, one south Columbus neighborhood has come together to heal from the violence and unite people in an effort to reduce high rates of gun violence. The presenters will highlight the researcher-community partnership of Men for the Movement (M4M), a grass-roots community-based effort operating for the past eight years to improve the conditions and quality of life. The panel will include M4M leaders, an Ohio State faculty member, an M4M participant, and an Ohio State graduate. We will focus on successful strategies to build social capital in distressed urban neighborhoods, effective outreach and engagement for vulnerable youth and families to interrupt the intergenerational patterns of gun death and injury.