Editor’s Note: This roundup is part of the CNN Opinion series “America’s Future Starts Now,” in which people share how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts offer their proposed solutions. The views expressed in these commentaries are the authors’ own. Read more opinion at CNN.
CNN
—
Concerns about violent crime and guns remain top of mind for American voters, polls show time and again. These issues certainly stick with Kathy Pisabaj, of Chicago, who was 19 in 2018 when she was shot by a stranger and nearly died.
“We believed that if we stayed away from gangs, we would not get hurt,” she wrote. “Gun violence continues to tear apart communities and devastate lives like mine every single day.”
We asked experts working in various fields what they think needs to be done – what can reasonably be done – so that all of us can feel a bit safer.
I grew up in the Tamarind Avenue corridor of West Palm Beach, which is notorious for poverty, drug abuse and violent crime. It’s just a few miles from what was the “Winter White House,” or Mar-a-Lago.
Summer is typically a deadly time of year for communities like ours. Young people are out of school with nothing to do and have easy access to firearms. And when gun violence happens in our communities, it’s not outsiders tearing up our communities. It’s insiders.
In 2015, the rate of violent crime in West Palm Beach was the same as Chicago. That summer, my cousin and I were lamenting the fact that every time we turned on the news, someone we knew had been shot or someone we knew was the suspect in a shooting. We decided to try to do something about it.
I was 26 and working the graveyard shift at an emergency shelter for displaced youth. My cousin, then 28, was a maintenance worker at a local nonprofit. Together, we went on to create Inner City Innovators, a nonprofit with three initiatives.
One of them is our Hope Dealer mentoring program, which combines individual and peer-to-peer mentoring, leadership development, community service and social-emotional learning. We prioritize giving youth (13+) someone to talk to.
Our anti-violence workshops go into schools, community centers, anywhere with kids. We talk…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CNN.com – RSS Channel – HP Hero…