A bevy of balloons went into the air Saturday, each one representing a victim of New Haven’s ongoing gun violence. Speakers at the event noted that those balloons wouldn’t need to be released in Orange or East Haven or Woodbridge — and asked why New Haven’s African-American community accepts that difference.
An even harder question was also engaged: how the shootings, termed a “public health emergency,” can be brought under control and ended.
The occasion was the launch of an ambitious Gun Violence Awareness Month, organized by the CTRIBAT Institute for Social Development. The opening event drew nearly 100 people — politicians, officials, and dozens of families of the victims of violence — to the Monterey Place community center on Ashmun Street on sunny Saturday afternoon.
(Meanwhile, elsewhere in town Saturday, stray bullets hit an 8 year-old girl and an 11 month-old boy in separate incidents.)
“When kids see,” said Minister Donald Morris of the Brotherhood Leadeship Summit, “that adults around them are tolerating murder, then we are on the verge of losing our community.”
While such campaigns have been launched before, this one carries a new sense of urgency.
In addition to mayoral and aldermanic proclamations and a host of public awareness activities in June and July, among other steps announced were a gun buy-back program funded by $1,000 contributions from each of the police commissioners; and a June 22nd “Fatherhood We Care” march from the Q House into Newhalville, an area plagued by the city’s highest number of shootings.
As speaker after speaker took to the podium Saturday, the balloons were being prepared: 509 black balloons marking non-fatal victims of shooting, and 55 crimson red ones marking the homicides committed in New Haven in just the two-year period from 2006 to 2008.
“Let me remind you,” said Shafiq Abdusabbur, CTRIBAT’s founder (pictured on the left with Newhalville Alderman Charles Blango), “‘non-fatal’ means you may not be able to walk, you may have a bullet in your body for the rest of your life, but you live.”
He called urban gun violence nationally, and with a spotlight on New Haven, a rising public health crisis calling for more vigorous responses than have been previously forthcoming.
His son, Ismael, 13, a student at the Amistad Academy, helped prepare the balloons. “I feel very fortunate I am not up there, one of them,” Ismael said. He credited his family for setting standards for behavior and keeping him safe. He has already “had a friend who was gunned down.”
Echoing many others, Donald Morris said the solution had to come not from the police alone, but from a change of attitude.
“Look at each of those balloons,” said Morris, “If those bodies were in East Haven, Orange, or Woodbridge, those communities would have turned the situation around. The people and not the police.”
Sheldon Tucker, a Fair Haven-based community activist with People Against Injustice, said, “These days kids hear gunfire and they don’t even jump they’re so used to it. This can’t be allowed to go on.”
New Haven State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield (foreground), one of many local politicians in attendance, including Aldermen Blango, Greg Morehead, and Alfreda Edwards, praised the grassroots activism. He said that was the way the people in power who make decisions will eventually hear.
He also offered a somber longer-term perspective. “I’m very pleased with this. I used to be a community organizer,” he said. “But it’s one thing to get people out at the beginning. It’s what happens after, how many people stay involved. Then we’ll be able to evaluate.”
The longer term is exactly what Frederick and Lavenita Smith are coping with. Their son, Terence Griffin, was shot and killed on May 9, 2007. Even though a reward of $50,000 was instantly forthcoming, said Frederick Smith, no one has come forward with information in two years. “It was a warm night,” he said. “People were out there. People saw.”
Smith cited a fear of retaliation for the lack of closure in his son’s case.“The street tells you everything that goes on, but nobobdy comes forward because of the fear factor.”
He praised Survivors of Homicide, New Haven’s chapter of a national organization. The group brings together victims’ families. “We meet in the chief’s office,” he said, “which is a good thing. But while we play this waiting game to find out, it’s praise and prayer that keeps me from losing my mind.”
Other parents, such as Tracey Suggs, CTRIBAT’s associate director, and Sondra Whitfield, who lost their 13-year old to errant bullets flying in 2006, offered comfort, a shoulder to cry on, and a refrain of the event’s theme: “Kids have to open their eyes,” said Whitfield, who was brought to tears recollecting her daughter Jajauna Cole, “that there are better things in life than violence.
But how? Morris said a military policing model, in part, needs to be employed, just as GIs held territory, finally, in Iraq. “We need to attack one geographical area,” he proposed.
He outlined a plan to target one community at a time, beginning in Newhalville, “and take our march there, and enroll men, and show those families they are loved. We need to do this ourselves.” He said it might take a year and could involve recruiting mentors and using the auditorium of the Lincoln-Bassett school as a focal point for new programs .
Charles Blango said liked the idea of a focus on his aldermanic area, but he augmented Morris’s approach with a call for the establishment of a vocational training center there. “There’s lack of opportunity in Newhalville,” he said, “and resentment because of that. Many of our kids are good with their hands, but except for going up to Eli Whitney High School in Hamden, there’s no vocational training nearby. That would mean a great deal.”
He said he will work with the school system, now in the midst of announced reforms, to see if something might be done.
Click here for a full list of Gun Violence Awareness Month’s activities and how to become involved.
Visit missyjenkins.com to see what stary bullets can do to innocent people. Missy Jenkins was paralyzed form the chest down in the 1997 Paducah Ky. school shooting and has written a fascinating, inspirational book about it. Give one to every kid in New Haven.