Maya McFadden Photo
Question: "Who's been shot at or knows someone who's been shot at?"
When nearly 80 students at Clinton Avenue School were asked who had heard gunshots outside their home before, almost every hand in the room went up.
Those were the hands of 6th, 7th, and a few 8th graders at the middle school in Fair Haven during a Thursday morning visit from the FED-UP program.
The state program was created and is run by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in conjunction with Project Longevity, local hospitals, and law enforcement, to remind students that they don’t deserve to see gun violence as a norm and to encourage them to help stop it. The program began in Bridgeport in the summer of 2021 and has reached thousands of students in Bridgeport, Waterbury, and New Haven over the years.
This is the third year Clinton Avenue School has brought FED-UP to its middle schoolers thanks to principal Jamie Coady and assistant principal Patty Gantenbein.
Thursday’s lineup of speakers included Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Courtney Kaoutzanis, U.S. Attorney Vanessa Avery, Police Chief Karl Jacobson, Yale New Haven Health trauma nurse practitioner Maria “MJ” Van Gelder, mother of two gun violence victims LaQuvia Jones, and reformed offender-turned-gun violence prevention advocate Willie Myers.
“Seeing so many people lose their lives to gun violence is not a normal thing in every community,” Avery told the students gathered in the school’s cafeteria. “There are children in Connecticut who don’t have to hear gun shots when they go to sleep at night.”
Trauma Nurse: "Bullets Are Very Dangerous Things"
Maria "MJ" Van Gelder: "We're here to beg you to make better choices."
Trauma nurse practitioner MJ described to the students in detail exactly what happens when people are shot and brought to Yale New Haven Hospital. She spoke about how her work in the local healthcare system allows her to see gun violence’s consequences on a near daily basis.
She told students that when someone is shot they are brought to a trauma room, and are often scared to death. They arrive alone because friends “don’t want to get in trouble” and the victim’s clothes are cut off by medical staff.
“You’re alone, you’re scared, and you’re naked,” MJ said.
On top of that, most young people get stressed because it is sometimes their very first time in a hospital. They’re also often worried about possibly getting in trouble with law enforcement if the shooting was criminal, she said.
“It’s very, very scary,” she said while adding that 50 percent of the time, gunshot victims will need to be brought into a medical operation as soon as 20 minutes upon their arrival.
“It’s very isolating,” she added.
Typically police also ask to speak to shooting victims for their investigation, MJ said.
When involved in a crime, a family’s public assistance, housing, or other benefits can be taken away, MJ said, or housing needs could change due to needing to accommodate possible disabilities caused by shooting injuries.
“We will try to help you, but we don’t save everybody. Bullets are very dangerous things,” MJ said.
She has seen the mental and physical effects of shootings for victims and their families. Stressors like medical bills also come as a result of being involved with guns, she said.
“It’s going to affect every aspect of your life and every single person you know if anything happens to you,” she concluded. “I need you to make better choices. We’re here to beg you to make better choices.”
A Moment Of Forgiveness
Clinton Ave FED-UP team: Karl Jacobson, Maria Van Gelder, LaQuvia Jones, Vanessa Avery, Willie Myers, Patty Gantenbein, Jocelyn Courtney Kaoutzanis, and Jamie Coady.
Despite New Haven having one of the best hospitals and police departments in the area, Kaoutzanis said, the community still experienced 23 homicides in 2023.
Kaoutzanis said that 327 people are shot in the U.S every day, including 23 children and teens.
Students gasped when told that Black Americans are 10 times more likely than white Americans to die by gun homicide.
LaQuvia Jones, the mother of Dashown Myers and Dontae Myers, who were the first New Haven homicide victims of 2020 and 2023 respectively, joined Thursday’s FED-UP event because “I couldn’t save my own, but maybe I can save somebody else,” she said.
She reminded students that when you pick up a gun and shoot and kill somebody, you’re also killing yourself, your family, and your community. “If you don’t remember nothing else, you don’t want whoever who loves you to be put in my shoes,” Jones said.
Willie Myers, meanwhile, told the students his story of being in the streets during his youth, which eventually led him to shoot and kill a man when he was 20 years old in Waterbury. As a result he served more than 27 years in prison.
He told the students that he too grew up in New Haven. He said he understands that the environment can make youth feel like they have no chance or choice. But that self-hate and false sense of character doesn’t have to be their future, he said.
“Don’t be blinded by bullshit. You got to believe in yourself first,” he said.
After Thursday’s conversation, one student asked Myers, “Do you forgive yourself for your mistakes?”
Myers said he begs for forgiveness every day but he understands how severe his mistake was. “I let God handle it,” he said. While in prison he lost his mother, aunt, and uncle.
Jones told Myers Thursday that she believes he deserves forgiveness because he did not become a repeat offender or come out of prison and get back into the streets. Instead, “you chose to be the man on the opposite side now” and thanked him for his work with the youth.
"Who has heard gunshots before?"
Thank you to the FED-UP program and the speakers and especially Maria “MJ” Van Gelder, LaQuvia Jones, and Willie Myers. Their testimony about the reality of their lived experiences with gun violence will make a lasting impression on these young people and may help save lives.
I hope that this program can be expanded to every single 4th and 5th grade class in the city. In my experience, most children in those grades start becoming aware of and potentially at risk of being pressured to affiliate with neighborhood affiliated crews at that point in their lives. We have to teach them the skills and knowledge to resist that pressure, which often comes from friends or relatives to join or identify with a neighborhood crew for a sense of protection, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a need to figure out their sense of identity.
We have to provide them alternative positive and productive mentors, activities, a sense of purpose, and a place to be that is safe, fun, and can teach them life skills to help them resist the negative influences all around them.