A group of Boston community leaders recently addressed a large audience at Harvard Divinity School’s Religions and the Practice of Peace (RPP) Colloquium, in an event focused on the inspirational work being done in the city’s African American communities to address the effects and sources of gun violence.
For decades the city of Boston has been a national leader in community-based initiatives engaging with this problem, and the event—hosted by Dean David N. Hempton and cosponsored by the Racial Justice and Healing Initiative at HDS and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School—brought participants of this work into conversation with the academic community and members of the public.
In her opening remarks, HDS alumna Rev. Liz Walker, former Boston television news anchor, humanitarian, and current pastor of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church, framed the evening’s conversation within a larger political context:
“While our focus is specifically about the impact of gun violence on African American communities, I would argue that it’s not enough to talk about that without noting the spirit of violence that permeates our culture," she explained. "And most recently the policies and practices of those who govern this country. It is all connected. Nothing good has ever come from violence. Be it wars that pit nation against nation, or man against man, be it an oppressive government policy, or the violence of language.”
Walker then presented the questions that would guide the evening's discussion.
“In what ways can communities respond to the complex challenge of gun violence? And what spiritual and human resources might they bring to bear?”
Clementina Chéry, founder, president, and CEO of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, described her organization’s approach to supporting family members of victims of violence. After the murder of her teenage son Louis, Chéry began the Peace Institute as a way to offer resources for families like her own, who have experienced the trauma of a murder of a loved one.
“When we were told that he was brain dead, my family and I left the hospital empty-handed, physically and spiritually," Chéry said. "Back in 1993, there were no resources and no coordinated response in Boston at that time for families of murdered victims, especially families who look like me.”
The Peace Institute, Chéry explained to the crowd, aims to provide programs and services to families within the first 72 hours of the death of a loved one in order to minimize their hardship and trauma. Notably, the Institute not only consoles the families of victims, but also offers crucial services to perpetrators and their families, easing community reentry after incarceration in order to end the cycle of violence. Chéry then presented her implementation of “peace-play” practices, which is a form of creative expression used to help the family members of victims of violence understand and process their emotions and experiences.
Monalisa Smith, founder, president, and CEO of Mothers for Justice and Equality (MJE), provided an overview of her program’s efforts to empower women and teens in her community. After outlining the difficulties faced by neighborhoods experiencing violence in Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Jamaica Plain, Smith discussed her organization’s approach to ending gun violence.
“We believe empowered and engaged mothers and youth working together with civic leaders and law enforcement are key to ending violence,” Smith said. “We have to go to people who understand the violence in order to develop the solution.”
MJE offers personal leadership training courses, peer-to-peer mentoring, workforce readiness preparation, public speaking courses, and financial education, all in order to empower women to foster peace within their communities.
Stanley Pollack, founder and director of the Center for Teen Empowerment (CTE), highlighted the benefits of uniting youth and law enforcement in order to foster dialogue and encourage peaceful relations. In the 25 years since its founding, the CTE has worked in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Somerville, and has also spread to Rochester, New York.
“What we’re trying to do is change the social environment—the spiritual health of the community overall,” Pollack said.
Young people, he insisted, should not be seen as enemies or liabilities, but as the agents of change. CTE hires teenagers to work as organizers within their communities, acting as intermediaries between police and other young people. Through CTE’s icebreakers and group activities, Pollack explained, youth and law enforcement have been able to develop a sense of mutual empathy for one another, allowing for less combative—and increasingly cooperative—relations. Pollack cited the success of a 29-month period of peace resulting from a pact brokered by CTE members before inviting the colloquium audience to engage in one of the group’s icebreaker exercises.
Following Pollack’s presentation, two CTE participants, youth organizer Tay Johnson and Sgt. Detective John M. Brown, offered their perspectives on the program’s impact. Johnson spoke of his own history with CTE, describing his life before his involvement and his change of perspective after the murder of his older brother in Boston's South End in 2014.
“Something in my heart snapped," Johnson said. "I was deciding: Do I want to act out of revenge? Or do I want to act on change to help prevent this from happening to any of my friends or people that I love?” He continued: “Since I got hired by CTE, I met with many of Boston’s finest police officers … I got to sit down and have dialogues with the police where we’d converse about issues going on in the community, conversing about ideas about how we can solve these issues ... Connections, when you are in relationships, really do change people.”
Before handing over the microphone to Sgt. Brown, he told the crowd that he now aspires to be a social worker and counsel troubled teens.
Brown, who has also collaborated with Mothers for Justice and Equality and the Louis D. Brown Institute, discussed the challenges and eventual triumphs of police participation with CTE, noting the shifts in attitudes among the officers in the district’s Gang Unit after attending the organization’s events. Throughout his address, Brown reasserted his department’s crucial commitment to community policing.
“It’s programs like this, programs like Teen Empowerment, that continue to build these relationships of trust between the police and the community,” Brown said. “Open dialogues, spending time with these groups, showing them what we do as a police department, showing what needs to happen in order to move these cases forward is what it’s all about. It has to be about engagement if we’re going to get anything done.”
Finally, David J. Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHIRJ) at Harvard Law School, presented the CHHIRJ’s website as a resource for community organizers.
“We need to find ways for people in these communities to become more engaged in determining the policies that affect them so that they can in fact lobby and promote the kinds of policies and the kinds of practices that address the needs they have,” Harris told the crowd. The website functions as a database of community programs and initiatives, many of which, Harris emphasized, greatly need to be scaled up.
Indeed, the panelists repeatedly voiced the need for their programs to be brought to scale and the tremendous benefits it would bring to communities, not only in Boston, but in other cities across the United States dealing with gun violence. Throughout the evening, the speakers emphasized the cooperation and collaboration among their organizations. Both Smith and Chéry noted their collaborations with Rev. Walker through Roxbury Presbyterian Church.
The speakers then took questions from the audience. When asked what personal and religious convictions allowed them to overcome the anger and hopelessness that arise from confronting violence, Chéry answered:
“It is easy to give into the anger. Yet research tells us that when we respond to families in the initial intervention with effective and equitable resources, in a caring, compassionate, and coordinated manner, that anger is still there, because anger is still a part of our feelings. But instead of channeling the anger to hurt others, that anger is then channeled to help and to rebuild ... When Louis was killed, yes, I was angry, but I do not allow my anger to guide me.”
Prayer, she said, is a crucial part of her daily spiritual practice.
Lama Rod Owens of the Racial Justice and Healing Initiative at HDS asked the panelists, “How can we be supported more, as students of ministry, to face the violence that is occurring out in our communities, not just in our congregations, but in our actual communities, our streets? What do you think we should be prepared with, armed with, as we enter into the world?”
“I would say that the best thing to arm yourself with is this notion of getting through fear,” Rev. Walker answered. “I think that what happens to us, especially at the academy and in other places, is that you’re in your silo and it’s easy to talk about things, and then you’re a little more reticent to get out into the world. Every one of these organizations has volunteer efforts, and they would welcome you, as you know, to step out into the community and do something.”
Before the evening came to a close, Johnson offered his advice to Harvard graduate students hoping to help young people:
“When working with the youth, you have to be patient, and you have to educate them. Be patient and listen to what they have to say, what they are going through, but don’t lecture them ... Then educate them. If a student like me was showing interest in gang life, talk to them, but don’t try to make them feel bad. Tell them something like, ‘I know this organization called Teen Empowerment, and they have people with your similar background,’ and then you should talk to them about the bigger issues.”
—by Daniel Hornsby
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The Religions and the Practice of Peace Colloquium is a monthly public dinner event open to the public, and local community members are most welcome to attend. For more on Religions and the Practice of Peace (RPP), visit the RPP website.