ROBERT KINSCHERFF:
Good afternoon all,
and welcome to "Healing in the
Wake of Community Violence,
Lessons from
Newtown and Beyond."
I'm Dr. Robert Kinscherff.
I am senior fellow
in law and applied
neuroscience for fellowship that
is jointly operated/organized
by the close collaboration
between the Center of Law,
Brain, and Behavior at
Massachusetts General Hospital
and the Petrie-Flom Center
for Health Law Policy
Biotechnology, and Bioethics
here at Harvard Law School.
I welcome you all to this
events on behalf of the faculty
director of the Petrie-Flom
Center, Professor I. Glenn
Cohen, and the co-directors
of the Center for Law, Brain,
and Behavior, Dr. Bruce Price
and Dr. Judith Edersheim.
This event, "Healing in the
Wake of Community Violence,"
is also co-sponsored by William
James College and the Science,
Religion, and Culture program
at Harvard Divinity School.
Today we will first
view the film, Newtown,
and then take a
brief intermission
to gather our thoughts
and then hear comments
from panel members
before engaging
in discussion with them.
Now it's my pleasure
to introduce
Martha Minow, professor
of law in the Morgan
and Helen Chu Dean of
Harvard Law School.
Minow is a renowned legal
scholar, human rights expert
and advocate, and as dean,
a calm and visionary leader
in legal education.
And not incidentally
for my life,
was a generous mentor to me when
I was a student at Harvard Law
School.
At the end of this
academic year,
Dean Minow will
step down as dean
and continue as faculty member.
Her active contributions
to public dialogue,
legal scholarship, and policy
and probably most importantly
for folks like me, teaching
and mentoring students.
Dean Minow.
MARTHA MINOW: Hello, and
it is a real pleasure
to be here, although
the subject, of course,
is so serious.
Dr. Kinscherff, I
think you got it wrong.
You were my mentor.
Let's get the facts right.
This is a law school
where words matter.
In fact, our tool
of trade is words,
but there are some
topics where words fail.
This is such a topic.
As we near the fifth anniversary
of the terrible shooting
in Newtown, we just had the
anniversary of the Virginia
Tech shooting, we
can't even keep
track of all of these
horrible, horrific events,
and yet for the people
most immediately affected,
this is everyday,
everyday challenge.
And that's one reason
why I am really
so impressed by this
film, which I had a chance
to see before
because it actually
brings resources to
bear to the subject that
are desperately needed.
And it's another reason why I'm
so pleased by the collaboration
that led to this
particular event
because it will take people
who are experts in words
and experts in healing and
experts in religion and experts
in neuroscience to try
to make sense, but more
importantly, find pathways
beyond the trauma and tragedies
of mass community violence.
And so I give my personal
thanks to the organizers
and to the panelists
who represent
this wide range of
skills and talents
that we need so very
badly right here
in this community and
increasingly, all communities.
So welcome to "Healing in the
Wake of Community Violence."
Thank you for being here.
ROBERT KINSCHERFF:
So now we'll show
the remarkable and
profoundly moving
film, Newtown, produced and
directed by Kim Snyder, who
is with us here today.
Newtown documents the aftermath
of the deadliest mass shooting
of schoolchildren in
the United States,
which occurred on
December 14, 2012.
Newtown presents a complex
story of unspeakable tragedy,
but also of
extraordinary resilience.
And although it is a narrative
of one community's response
to a mass shooting
of schoolchildren
in a suburban community,
it also presents
deeply universal
questions relevant
to all American
communities where
gun violence takes a toll.
The film runs just under
90 minutes and frankly,
some of the viewing
can be difficult.
Any one president is welcome
to step out of the viewing
to take a breath or take a break
for as long as you might need
before returning
to view the film
or to hear from and interact
with the post film panelists.
In fact, you're welcome to
use the break and catering
room next door.
After the film, we'll take 10
minutes break before returning
to hear from the panel.
So now we'll start
the film, Newtown.
Thank you.
Welcome back.
It's now my pleasure
to introduce
our distinguished moderator for
this panel, Dr. Ahmed Ragab.
Dr. Ragab is the Richard T.
Watson associate professor
of science and religion at
Harvard Divinity School,
affiliate associate
professor at the department
of the history of
science, and director
of the Science, Religion,
and Culture program
at Harvard Divinity School.
Dr. Ragab is a
physician, a historian
of science and
medicine, and a scholar
of science and religion.
And if we were to
go any further,
we could probably spend
the rest of the day,
but I know that
he's as eager as I
am to move to the conversation.
So Dr. Ragab?
AHMED RAGAB: Thank
you all for coming.
ROBERT KINSCHERFF: Do you
want this, or are you good?
AHMED RAGAB: Well, this
is actually better.
ROBERT KINSCHERFF: Thank you.
AHMED RAGAB: So I will present
our speakers in the order
that they will speak,
and then I will
step back and listen to the
remarks like the rest of you.
So first we'll hear
some brief comments
from the director, Kim Snyder.
Kim Snyder is a film maker who
in 2007 co-founded The BeCause
Foundation, to
direct and produce
a series of socially-conscious
documentaries.
Her film, Welcome
to Shelbyville,
was nationally broadcast
on PBS in 2011.
Kim a Sundance Institute fellow,
and she produced and directed
her most recent
film, Newtown, which
has been received with acclaim
and was nationally broadcast
on PBS earlier this month.
Our first panelist is
Professor Wendy Parmet.
She is the Matthews
distinguished university
professor of law, director of
the Center for Health Policy
and Law, and associate dean
for interdisciplinary education
and research support at
the Northeastern University
School of Law.
She's also professor of public
policy and urban affairs
at Northeastern University
School of Public Policy
and Urban Affairs.
Her areas of scholarship
include guns and gun violence
as a public health crisis.
Then we'll hear
from Rufus Faulk.
He is the program director
of the Gang Mediation
Initiative of the Boston
Ten-Point Coalition.
The Boston Ten-Point
Coalition is a coalition
of faith communities
founded in 1992
to respond to the rampant gun
violence among Boston youth
at that time.
The Ten-Point
Coalition continues
to collaborate with other
organizations and community
leaders to fulfill its
mission to mobilize community
around issues affecting
youth, especially
youth at high risk for
violence, drug abuse,
and other destructive behavior.
And then we'll hear from
Professor Michelle Bosquet.
She's the assistant professor
of psychology at Harvard Medical
School and associate in
psychology Boston Children's
Hospital.
Dr. Bosquet is neuroscientist
whose current research program
integrates genetics
and epigenetics,
developmental neuroscience,
biological psychiatry,
and social-emotional
processing research
to examine the impact of
maternal and child exposure
to adversity and
trauma and how it
impacts child development
and the emergence
of mental disorders and
intergenerational transmission
of the effects of trauma.
Please join me in
welcoming our panelists.
Kim?
KIM SNYDER: Hello.
And I want to begin by thanking
you and thinking Chrissie
and all of the people who put
this together, my colleague,
Anne, from Transform
Films who was involved
in helping to initiate this.
But it's really an honor
to show the film here
at Harvard Law School.
And I'm only going
to take a few minutes
because I am so curious.
This is an unprecedented
opportunity for me
to hear from experts
and scholars.
I set out four years ago,
just after the tragedy,
in some ways happenstantially.
But I was drawn to a story of
collective grief and trauma
more so than in the beginning,
approaching it as an issue
film about gun violence.
And my producing
partner, Maria, and I
felt that we hadn't
really seen a treatment
of a collective trauma,
this kind of trauma,
the long tail of
it for years out
and really stayed for
three to four years
in and out of that
community building trust.
So what we felt was rare and
important to do here, which
was very tricky, I think
that the whole experience
of a term, I, at one
point came to know
as a layperson and filmmaker was
this term of existential trauma
and what happens
when this trauma that
is so personal and
close to those who lost
loved ones reverberates out.
We hadn't seen
something that really
looked at those ripple effects.
But in Newtown, my experience
was that idea of survival guilt
and all of these
satellite, these silos
of subcommunities that
really were fractured
and broken and frozen was
devastating and intriguing
to explore, certainly
as a documentarian.
And that's why it was
so important to us
to show the perspective of
the doctor and the priest
and the neighbor and
the others that you saw.
So it was very intuitive.
As you could see, the film isn't
a lot of facts and figures,
but it is meant to
open up dialogue.
And we premiered
last year at Sundance
and have really been
traveling on the road
for over a year and hundreds
of community screenings.
And it's been coming in through
this lens of collective trauma
and seeing the reaction
around the country
to this as a story about
grief as much as it inspires--
I'll be curious to
hear your responses
to it-- but anger and
frustration about the issue
of gun violence as well.
It's been just a
remarkable learning
experience in all different
parts of the country.
It's been one
experience to observe
the effects of this within
Newtown, the film itself.
We had a series of careful
screenings, some of them
preceded our world
premiere at Sundance, first
with each family that was in
the film and then went out.
Those experiences
in and of themselves
were pretty remarkable.
And I think one of
the things we saw
was that the rest of the
community that understandably
that first and
second year really
danced around this epicenter
of grief of the families
and were very protective.
And so people like
the Bardens who
had their best
friend, Melissa, were
protected from
understanding or being
able to absorb the grief of
the whole community, which
was so profound for everyone
and therein, the survivor guilt
part.
And I think the film, in a
way, opened up a kind of--
I remember when we
showed it to the Bardens,
their son, James, just sat
back, the teenager, and said,
I learned a lot.
And I think for him it was
like, wow, I had no idea.
I didn't even have the
bandwidth to understand
how affected my friends
and my neighbors were.
So there's been with the film,
an interesting, for some,
I think, cracking
of ice, of being
able to acknowledge one
another in their pain,
and for these silos,
like the teachers were
sort of over here, to kind
of start to be together
in a different way.
So that's been interesting
within Newtown.
And then as we've moved
around the country, of course,
you just get everything from
parents who've lost children
to that sadly growing
club of people
who've been victimized
by gun violence or those
they've known.
And what we're really trying
to do with the film is,
with an impact campaign
and you can follow it
at newtownfilm.com, is
to work with partners
and to really be informed
in rooms like this
by how we can use the film to
talk about community resilience
to acknowledge the
post-traumatic stress
of an entire community
and who's looking at that
and in urban centers as well.
So with that, I'm so curious
to hear your reactions after we
all speak, and I
thank you on behalf
of the families who always say
we know it's a really hard film
to sit through.
We just thank you for
having the courage
and whatever it took to get
you to come and see a film
called Newtown.
Thanks.
WENDY PARMET: It is a
truly remarkable, profound,
and moving film.
I'm so humbled to
have the opportunity
to talk to you today.
And I was asked to talk about
a public health perspective
and what might that
bring to bear on this.
And I knew that
certainly my slides
could not do justice to what we
just saw, nor could my words.
We're at a place right
now where only art can go,
but I did think of a poem that
I think of frequently when I
think about a public
health perspective, which
is John Donne's 1624
"Meditations," because truly
the children of
Newtown were part
of the continent in
which their family
and friends and community
and all of us live.
I'm going to try
in a few minutes
to talk a little bit about
why I think it helps,
what insight I think we gain
from thinking about what
happened in Newtown as
a public health problem
and what that might mean.
And I think the film
illustrates this in many ways,
some of which are paradoxical.
I put up on the
slides a definition
from Merriam-Websters
there are many others.
But what I want to
emphasize here first
is the health of
people, in general.
We're talking about groups
and not just individuals.
And I want to begin by saying
Newtown, your film, both
shows that and also
shows the paradox,
because it is at once
so intimate and personal
and yet also about this
community, this continent that
is affected.
So what do we mean by a
public health problem?
I want to mention several
different attributes,
I suppose, that I think were
illustrated in this film,
one is the magnitude
of the problem,
another is the externalities,
or effects on others.
Another issue is that
these problems are not
individually determined.
We take what is known as
the population perspective,
and we need to recognize that
different populations face
different risks.
We might focus on
prevention over treatment,
and then we might think
about social or even legal
interventions.
And since I'm a lawyer
and this is a law school,
I have to go there.
So gun violence in the US,
let's talk about the magnitude
of the problem.
In an average year,
at a typical year,
there are over 33,000
people in the United States,
over 2,000 children die
due to firearm violence,
a very large number.
Yet it's important to
understand that most gun
deaths in the United States
are actually not homicides,
most are suicides, over 21,000.
Yet over 71% of all homicides
are committed with firearms.
Around 78,000 people a
year are shot, but survive.
So the magnitude is quite high.
Gun violence is much
higher in the United States
than in other
industrialized countries.
But-- and this is a little
hard to say after this film--
mass shootings such
as the one in Newtown
are actually relatively rare.
They're not actually
emblematic of the problem.
This is data from Mother Jones,
and the data is debatable
because you can define
this in different ways,
but they talked
about only 129 events
with four or more fatalities
from a lone shooter since 1966.
A few more slides and
this I have to thank
my colleague, Matt Miller.
And you can see
the total firearm
deaths is that the
gray, suicides below it,
and homicides far
lower than that.
It's also worth noting that
firearm mortality varies
quite dramatically in the
United States by state,
and if we could go down
by county or census tract,
we'd even see
dramatically different.
Newtown is also different
because, actually, it happened
in a low prevalence area.
It is in a state with far less
gun violence than many states
in the United States,
and of course,
it is an affluent community.
Newtown, which moved us so
much, is actually not the face
of gun violence in
the United States,
which doesn't lessen the
pain, but it's something
to keep in mind and
that we need to remember
that different populations
face very different risks.
And I should just add
here that in some ways,
and we know this
in public health,
it's the unusual, risk
the unexpected risk
it moves us the most.
Think about how more fearful
people were in the United
States to Ebola in
the US, very rare,
than to motor vehicle
death, very common.
Gun violence is not
endemic in Newtown,
and that's, in part,
why it was so shocking.
We'll hear later
about communities
where the prevalence
is far higher,
and we can't forget that.
Public health harms are often
harms that happen to other.
Gun violence affects others,
and this film, of course,
show this so greatly.
It caused trauma to family,
community, first responders,
society.
It has costs and I think less
emphasis was made on this--
health care costs,
law enforcement,
and broader social costs.
Think about how we
as a society, all
of us, even those of us who
don't know anyone in Newtown
are affected.
Think about the children
throughout the country
who do lockdown
drills in schools,
and that also probably
started with Columbine.
But what does that do?
The effects, the externalities,
the harms to others
are greater than
we can understand.
But what's less obvious is that
public health problems are not
individually determined.
Now, on the one
hand, that's obvious.
I mean, the children in Newtown
did not cause harm to them.
Individuals can affect but they
cannot control the risks they
face, and sometimes they can
barely affect them at all.
As one of the fathers said,
we did everything right
as parents, didn't do something.
But what's also
important to understand
is that risks are determined
at population levels.
The risks, again, that
families faced in Newtown
are less than the
risks that families
face in New Orleans
of having losing
their children to gun violence.
Different populations
face different risks.
Risks arise at
population levels.
Americans, in general, face
higher risk of gun deaths,
as I've said before,
than residents
of other wealthy countries,
but less so in Newtown.
And there are a large number
of social factors that help
determine these risks, these
so-called social determinants--
economic, social, the
legal environment, culture,
community bonds.
There are so many factors
that affect risks.
Well, public health is often
thought of as emphasizing
prevention over treatment.
So I know we're here
talking about healing,
and healing is about treating,
treating those in the community
who have been wounded.
But I do want to talk a
moment about prevention
because if risks arise at
a population level, then
to prevent these risks,
we need to prevent,
to think about prevention,
we can say upstream,
a primary prevention
at a population level
before it occurs.
And what was
interesting to me and I
think so profound is that
the families of Newtown,
as part of their own
healing, turned to a quest
for prevention for others.
And the way they did it was
their social engagement.
For the families of Newtown,
social engagement, activism,
law reform was a form not only
of personal healing, but also
primary prevention.
They saw changes in the
gun laws and their ability
to advocate for those
changes as a way,
as a means of prevention.
Because they understood that the
risk that their children faced
and that they, of
course, also faced
could not be prevented
at an individual level.
There was nothing
that could have been--
I mean, yeah, if somebody
coulda, shoulda known
done something about Adam
Lanza, but that doesn't get
to the source of the problem.
In 1988, the
Institute of Medicine
said that public health
is what we as a society
do collectively to assure
the conditions for people
to be healthy, and that's what
the people of Newtown did.
And they were turned to law.
And public health laws
are the means by which
many, although not all of
those collective interventions
take place.
Public health laws are
among the most ancient
and well-established
of all laws.
And I think it's
interesting that David
Wheeler, in the film says, let's
honor the founding documents.
Let's honor the
founding documents.
And he talks about the liberty
of his son to have life.
And he seeks laws, he seeks
changes and background checks
and laws about assault
rifles as a way--
and I'm going to that slide--
as a way to honor
that, his son's legacy.
But I want to end on
a tension that I see.
I think it was a tension,
for me, in the film.
It's a tension in public health.
This film showed,
and Newtown showed
how intimate and
personal pain can
lead to collective responses.
But I think we also
have to remember
that there are dangers, that
they can go the other way.
That we can sometimes think
about individual problems
or harms to discrete individuals
and misunderstand that
as the nature of the problem.
We do that often.
We have lots of laws named
after individuals, often
which don't actually
address the issue at hand.
There is a danger that
we can individualize
the source of the harm,
and say, oh, if only
we have locked up Adam Lanza.
We can point to and say the
problem is this one individual
and forget that risks
are at population levels.
So the question and
the paradox for me
is, how do we go
from the personal
to the collective and the
collective to the personal
and back and forth,
from the individual pain
to the collective response
while doing justice
to both, while not
scapegoating anyone,
without falsely
representing one person's
problem as every
problem and forgetting
that different groups
face different risks?
How do we recognize
that on this continent
we are all individuals and
we're all tied together?
So I look forward
to your comments.
RUFUS J. FAULK: Good
evening, everyone.
My name is Rufus J. Faulk.
I'm the program director of
the Boston Ten-Point Coalition.
And to be quite
honest with you, I
found it difficult to
watch the whole movie,
not only having a
three-year-old daughter myself,
but just having grown
up in a neighborhood
in a community where we
experience gun violence far too
often.
I realized how
traumatized I was already,
and I knew my limit
that I couldn't complete
watching the whole movie,
but I knew it was great work,
and I really appreciate
what you did.
And I want to make sure I
honor those victims, but also
the victims who never
get documentaries
made for their loss of life.
I just wanted to start just to
give a little personal context.
I can remember my
first inclination
that violence was
around me was when
an 11-year-old girl
named Tiffany Darlene
Moore was murdered.
And I remembered hearing the
story and then going to camp
and talking to my
friends about it
and then being fearful
that something like that
could happen to me.
She was just sitting
on a mailbox minding
your business with
her friends, and she
was hit by a stray bullet.
She was killed.
And then I remember of
having a sense of fear
that could this happen to me.
It was 1988, and I
was six years old.
So we had six-year-olds who
were talking about violence,
talking about homicides and
feeling that it could quite
possibly happen to me.
And that feeling
doesn't go away,
and you don't realize
how much you're
impacted by those
instances of violence,
those instance of trauma.
Sometimes some people
never realize it,
but as a 35-year-old
man, I realized
that's really where it
started for me, starting
to be desensitized by
the violent events that
happened in my neighborhood.
That feeling of unease, that
feeling of nervousness that I
too can potentially be a
victim of a stray bullet
or a victim of violence
struck up again in 1994
when a young man
who was enjoying
Halloween in his neighborhood
was shot and killed.
He was nine years old.
And mind you this happened
about 0.3 miles from where
Tiffany Moore was murdered at.
This is all happening in
the Roxbury, a neighborhood
in which I grew up in.
And this community had to
suffer through the loss
of a nine-year-old, but then at
the loss of this nine-year-old,
what trauma services were then
available to this neighborhood?
Who seeked out
those young people
who were out there with
him and tried to make sure
that they were able to put the
pieces together to make sure
that they had somebody
to talk to, walk them
through this process?
Because unfortunately,
that community,
which is Academy Homes, has
had to deal with its fair share
of homicides.
And unfortunately,
those homicides
that happened
within our community
are just left for
us to deal with.
We have to deal with these
incidences by ourselves.
There isn't this collective,
this is a Boston issue.
This is oh, that's just a
criminal issue that's happening
within this neighborhood.
That's what happens over there.
And unfortunately,
as I've grown up
and I've matured and been able
to experience certain things,
I've been going to
funerals for my peers
since I was 13 years old.
And then you begin to feel
as if this is your normal.
And you don't
realize it's abnormal
until you have a conversation
with somebody who's
never experienced
some of the things
that you've gone through.
And I say all that just to
say that we're dealing with--
and I'm going to keep
this strictly to Roxbury.
We are dealing with a community
that has dealt with shootings,
has dealt with homicides
for the last 35 plus years,
and there has never been
a sense of this Boston
strong, whereas as a community,
how do we address this issue?
And I think you just brought
up a good point about this idea
of a shock value.
Whenever a shooting happens in
a place that is not expected,
there's this shock, and we're
trying to figure out, OK,
what happened?
How do we address this?
How do we make sure that
this never happens again?
And we have a shooting
of a young man
or a young woman
within our community,
that same level of
shock doesn't exist.
And that same level
of, how do we make sure
that this doesn't happen again?
What do we need to do?
What sort of policy do
we need to put in place
to ensure that this young
person or this community
doesn't suffer this
same level of trauma?
So as a professional, that's
what I've tried to do.
I moved back to
Boston in 2005 after I
finished Temple University,
and had an opportunity
to stay in Philadelphia,
but while I was in school,
I was getting phone calls
of young men and women
who I grew up with personally
or knew on the periphery who've
become victims of homicide.
And I knew as somebody
who escaped it,
I owed it to go back
to my neighborhood
and try to give back
and try to assure
that other folks who
come from my experience
can navigate those
streets as well.
So I started working
for the Boston Ten-Point
Coalition in 2005, and
I was tasked to work
in the Humboldt Ave. area.
And Humboldt Ave. is also where
Tiffany Moore was murdered at,
but you're talking about in
a span of 17 years later,
they're still dealing with an
uptick of gang violence, where
gun violence, where
young people are still
being victimized by shootings.
So 17 years later I
was tasked to work
with these group of
young people and we're
trying to transition them
from being a gang involved
to being a productive adults.
And unfortunately, in the span
from 2005 to 2007, and not just
dealing with Humboldt
specifically, but dealing
with young men and
women from Roxbury,
I had to go to about 43
funerals of young people
that I've either
worked with personally
or knew on the periphery.
And that's when I
knew that we had
to do some things different.
It couldn't just be on
an individual basis.
If I'm working with the
individual, which is important,
but unless I'm dealing
with the environment that's
creating the young person or
creating the environment that's
causing young people to shoot at
each other, then all I'm doing
is creating a vacuum,
pulling somebody out
that someone else is
going to replace them.
So we had to find
a way to be more
sustainable in our approach and
to think about the long game
for how do we end this cycle
of violence in the long term.
So we decided to be more
community based and say,
in order to address
violence, we have
to deal with the root causes
that's actually creating
this violent environment.
And that's where the
prevention piece comes in.
But because the
prevention that's
needed within our community
doesn't have that shock value,
it's not about laws, it's
about creating access.
And we know Boston has the
highest level of income
inequality in the nation.
It's no coincidence
that the same track that
is quote unquote, "the
most disadvantaged"
also has the most
amount of violence.
It's not a coincidence.
So the preventative
measure that we see
is, OK, we have to create more
opportunity and more resources
within this track to
address the violence that
happens within our community.
So that's what
we've tried to do.
We've tried to be preventative.
We tried to bring
more resources.
And in that, we haven't received
the level of support necessary.
There's always going
to be a lack of jobs.
There's always going to be
a lack of quality education
because as an
organization, we can't
deal with that by ourselves.
So that's where
partnerships come in.
That's where those communities
that don't experience
the violence but
want to do something,
that's where you start to
build those partnerships
because Roxbury, Dorchester,
Mattapan cannot tackle these
issues by ourselves.
There has to be a communal thing
and not just within Boston,
within the whole state.
And that's what
has been lacking,
but that's what we're
trying to build,
a small coalition
of the willing.
I'm trying not to
ramble on because it's
an emotional subject and a
subject that we can tackle.
And we find these commonalities
between the trauma that's
felt in Newtown and the
trauma that's felt in Roxbury,
they both hit the same place.
And if we can use that
as a starting point,
then we could figure
out as a community,
how can we begin
to come together
to address the larger issue.
And that's what I really
want to work towards,
and that's what we're
really trying to get to.
But I think a piece that gets
missed is the perception piece.
Perception is rarely discussed
around traumatic incidents,
perception of who can
be a victim, who's
worthy of victimhood.
When we have a homicide that
happens with our community,
the first thing that's
usually tagged or attached
to the young person is this
person was known to the police,
or this was a
gang-involved shooting.
And that immediately
strips the victimhood
from the person
who was victimized.
And that narrative makes it
difficult for communities
to get around and
provide grief and provide
trauma support for
this community that's
dealing with trauma.
Because if you are calling this
person a person of interest
or a person known
to the police, then
you are instinctually creating
it in the reader's mind,
oh, this person may have
caused their own demise,
and that's the worst thing
that you can do for a victim.
You're criminalizing
the victim, but you're
also criminalizing the community
in which they come from.
So perception is
definitely something
that we have to tackle about
who's worthy to be a victim,
how do we support those
who have been victimized,
and as a community, how do
we begin to come together
around the common threads that
joins us and that combines us.
So definitely,
perception is something
that I believe we should
definitely, as a group,
we can start to tackle about
how we frame these issues
and what are the
narratives that we use.
Also one of the things around
prevention, as an organization,
we decided to try to
build a trauma protocol.
Because oftentimes, we've had
shootings in our communities
and every individual
impacted doesn't receive
the necessary
support to make sure
that they have the
mental health support,
so we don't have a
retaliatory situation that
happens right after or we
don't have a situation where
young people or families or
communities who are grieving
are being left out in the
lurch and not receiving
the support necessary,
which again,
create that ripple
effect where just
one instance can cause two
to three more instances
and further traumatize
the neighborhood.
So we're building
a trauma protocol
where we don't have
one individual trying
to be the trauma support
for all instances,
and that's all we had.
That's why I got burnt
out, when I felt like I
couldn't do the work anymore.
I didn't want to go
to another funeral.
I didn't want to go to
no other crime scene
because I was tired of
seeing young people crying.
I was tired of going
to funerals and hearing
the whales of mothers who
have lost their children.
And we had to create a trauma
protocol similar to where
the Boston police--
there's no one
Boston police unit
that is designed to go to
every area of the city.
They have different districts
where they know the community,
they know they have
connections, they know
what services need to be there.
So as Boston Temple, we made
a connection with Northeastern
University to build that
trauma protocol to figure out
how traumatized are
these communities,
are these communities
receiving services,
and what assets already
exist in the neighborhood
to ensure that if a
traumatic event does happen,
how could we make sure that
we're supporting these folks.
So I'm very interested
to hear folks' thoughts,
hear folks' questions,
but as a community that
has dealt with trauma and is
continuing to deal with trauma,
we realize that collaboration is
the way that we can sustainably
and once and for all end this
culture of violence and gun
violence that our community
has been experiencing.
So I thank you for your
time, and I look forward
to hearing your thoughts.
MICHELLE BOSQUET: Good evening.
So I am focusing my talk on
the neurobiology of trauma
and particularly, in the context
of vicarious traumatization
and how do we tend to those
people in our community
who are tasked
with healing those
who've been affected by trauma.
So the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual
on Mental Disorders
provides a definition
of trauma, which
involves exposure
to actual or threatened
death, serious injury,
or sexual violation.
Not surprisingly direct exposure
would count as a trauma,
but it's also important
to note that it's not
just direct exposure, but
also witnessing such an event,
learning about an event
happening to a close family
member or friend, or hearing
repeated or extreme exposure
to aversive details of an event.
So this brings us
to what I think
are often hidden victims of
trauma, which I think came out
very poignantly in the film,
that there are many people who
say jobs are to treat people
who are affected by trauma,
but often, I think their
trauma is not recognized.
So this includes
first responders
such as police officers
and firefighters, EMTs--
we saw that police
officer, that Sergeant who
spoke in the film,
medical personnel,
so those working
in the ER who have
to treat the physical
injuries of violence,
and then mental health
professionals, clergy,
and other community
leaders who are really
tasked with holding the
emotional effects of trauma
from people in their community.
So physiologically, when
we are exposed to a trauma,
there are multiple systems that
involuntarily become involved.
There are various
areas of the brain,
such as the prefrontal
cortex and the amygdala,
the autonomic nervous system,
and the hypothalamic pituitary
adrenal axis, which
produces cortisol,
as you may have heard about.
So in the immediate
reaction to threat exposure,
the response is the autonomic
nervous system kicks in.
And I don't know if any of
you might have even felt
that while watching the film,
this physiological reaction
just to seeing the film.
And you've, I'm sure,
heard of fight or flight,
and there's also
this third, freeze.
So this desire to
either fight the threat,
flee or run away
from the threat,
or become immobilized by the
threat and unable to respond.
And over time, these various
systems have a feedback loop,
if untreated, can lead to
mental health difficulties,
such as post-traumatic stress
disorder, depression, anxiety,
and substance use in order to
self-medicate against those
symptoms as well as physical
and cognitive issues--
exhaustion, physical illness,
sleep problems, difficulty
with concentration, so forth.
And if untreated, post-traumatic
stress disorder, as well
as repeated
exposures to traumas,
so a lot of the healers,
police officers,
it's not just a
one-time exposure,
they may be exposed
to repeated violent
or they most likely will be
over time as well as exposures
to reminders of the events.
So if you're living
in the community where
the event happened, and I'll
give an example a little bit
that you may be exposed
to things that remind you
of that traumatic
event, that can
have permanent influences on
how your body and your mind
respond to stress.
And you can either see a
hyper responsive profile
develop where someone can become
very responsive to stress.
And this can be minor stressors,
the kinds of stressors
we all deal with in
our day-to-day lives
where the person may be
especially irritable or angry,
have sleep difficulties,
become hyper vigilant,
or there can be more
hypo responsive effect,
so having difficulty
having feelings,
connecting to other human
beings, their own family
members, feeling sense of love,
being able to picture a future
can be diminished.
And it can also influence
internal representations
that we have of others in
our community and faith,
so our ability to
trust, our ability
to feel safe within our
own community and questions
that we may have
about God and faith.
So over time, these
repeated exposures
can turn into this
cycle where there
is what's called increased
allostatic load, which
has to do with the physical
effects of the wear
and tear on your body of stress
over time, which can lead
to greater deterioration and
mental and physical health,
engagement and risky
behaviors, poor work
performance, poor self-care,
and impaired relationships,
both in work and in
one's personal life.
And then when it
comes to healers,
there are some unique
challenges that
come with being someone who has
this job of tending to people
who've been traumatized,
one of which
is often the healers live
within the same community
of the direct victims
of the trauma.
So they may know the
families who were affected,
and I think this came
through in the film.
It may bring up your own
feelings of endangerment.
This is my community.
Am I safe here?
Is my family safe here?
Greater exposure to reminders.
This picture is actually
one from Newtown.
It's a memorial that
you often see crop up
after some kind of
tragic event, but if you
have to drive by
it every day, that
can be a constant reminder for
you of the traumatic event.
And then also you
may have the sense
that there's reduced access in
your community to safe havens.
Where can I go?
Home is supposed to
be where I feel safe,
and that now no longer
feels like a safe place,
or maybe it never did
feel like a safe place.
There's also the
challenge of finding
this balance between empathy
and professional distance.
So you need to be
able to have enough
empathy to be able to be
there for the person who's
experiencing pain, but
you can't become so
absorbed in it that you become
ineffective yourself at helping
people who've been affected.
So that means overcoming
that fight, flight,
or freeze response.
If you think about
particularly, I
think about this in the
context of first responders
who are coming on an
active shooting scene.
Not only do they have to
dampen down those feelings,
but they actually have
to act against them
and go towards the threat.
So they don't have the option
of ignoring or running away
from the threat.
Also, if you are
the doctor in the ER
or the nurse and
a patient comes in
and you know that patient,
the amount of emotional effect
that would have on being
able to then do your job,
which is to medically treat
that patient, may be impaired.
It also may make it
more likely that you
identify with the victims.
I think oftentimes
on the news when
I've noticed that when you see
stories of first responders
who have responded to a scene
and there may be a child who
is involved, you can see them
start to break down and say,
I have a child at home that
age, and that personalizing,
I think, makes it a
lot more challenging.
And you mentioned yourself you
have a three-year-old daughter.
And then that can trickle
down to parenting.
So if you feel not
safe in your community,
you identify with
the victims, it
can influence how
you then go home
and parent your own children.
You become more protective,
potentially overprotective.
And then are you able to
take care of yourself?
Self-care, taking
the time to attend
to your own physical, emotional,
mental, spiritual needs
is incredibly important,
but I think often
neglected among people
who consider themselves
healers in these situations.
So I've mentioned this
a little bit already,
but it can bring up these
questions around safety.
So is my community
safe, and how can I
keep those who are under
my protection safe,
particularly when it
comes to violence,
which is often unpredictable?
You don't know when and
where, necessarily, it's
going to erupt.
And then what about your
own safety and your family's
safety?
The thought, that could
have been my child
or that was my child or my
neighbor's child or my friend's
child can be paralyzing.
And then issues of guilt.
If you are on the scene,
could I have done more?
Was I somehow
negligent in my duties
that children died
while I was there?
Am I doing enough
to help people heal?
And if this is
having an influence
on me am I failing my loved
ones because I'm withdrawing
or I'm having difficulty
with my own coping at home?
And I mentioned briefly
before, issues of trust
can really raise questions
about whether you
find other people
trustworthy and who might
hurt you or your loved ones.
And then there's
also the question
of if you recognize that
you are having difficulty
or that it's hard for
you because you're
dealing with this
vicarious traumatization,
who can you go talk to
you about your pain?
Are there people you can
talk to that you can trust,
and why should you trust anyone?
And then I think sometimes faith
can be a very important support
during times of
crisis and trauma,
but it can also be a
time when people really
question their faith.
How could God allow
this to happen?
How can there be a God if
something like this can happen?
And perhaps if you're
someone in the clergy, how
do you provide comfort to
the people in your community
when you don't necessarily
have all the answers yourself?
I think oftentimes
people who are healers
think that they're supposed
to be the strong ones.
They're supposed
to be shouldering
the burden for those
who've been victimized.
And so it can be seen
as a form of weakness
if you feel like you need
help or are having difficulty
coping.
And so what happens if
you show quote unquote,
"weakness," and I think
there's a stigma around this.
What happens if others find
out that you need help?
How do I even know
if I need help?
Of course, if there's something
traumatic that happened,
you'd expect that you would be
upset after, that there would
be after effects, but when
does it rise to the level
that it's important
to seek out help,
and where can I go for help
if I think I do need help?
So I think this has some
implications for intervention
and policy, that
there needs to be
a place for individual treatment
for the healers and a place,
in a way, for people to be
able to obtain self-care.
And I think for people who
employ these healers, there
needs to be proper training
so that they can recognize
that it's important to
provide this kind of support,
when it is that an employee
or someone in their community
needs help, and what kind of
help is appropriate to provide.
And I think there also needs
to be a culture that supports
this kind of reaching out.
So you provide care that's
accessible and private
and that there's a culture
that says, not only is it OK,
but we promote you going
to get this kind of help
if you need it.
And then institutions
don't necessarily
have to be on their own.
I think you mentioned
collaboration,
and I was fortunate when I
was in New Orleans working
on a program, the Violence
Intervention program, which
is a collaboration
between the psychiatry
department at Louisiana State
University Health Sciences
Center and the New
Orleans Police Department.
They see a lot of
violence in New Orleans.
And this collaboration
allowed the police officers
and other first
responders an access
to the psychiatry department
to provide support and training
for the police officers.
And so that was in place
when Katrina occurred,
and the mental
health professionals
were there to provide support.
I believe they even did it on
boats when there wasn't even
a building in order to operate.
And at the societal
level, I think
we need to have more
recognition of this concept
of vicarious traumatization.
We need to de-stigmatize
mental health treatment.
I think too often it's
seen as a sign of weakness,
so there is something wrong.
It needs to be treated just
as important as treating
your physical health
and that there
needs to be proper funding and
resources to support treatment
for first-time responders
so that they can continue
to work effectively, but also
to honor the work that they
do in our community.
Thank you.
AHMED RAGAB: Thank you all
so much for your talks.
I think the movie
and then the talks
bring very important
points about thinking
about gun violence as
a public health issue,
as an issue that's affecting
communities, an issue that's
also causing trauma
for the responders
and for people who are
trying to do something
about gun violence.
And I think, probably, if
there is a dominant theme
that we had in the film, but
also in the talks that we had,
is that we need to have a
larger view of gun violence
and think about
it more generally.
So not only about
the poster events
that come to shock
our consciousness,
but also the other
forms of gun violence
that are everywhere or even
to think about the larger
infrastructure of gun violence.
So in the film, there
was a discussion
of quantitative and
qualitative thinking
about guns in a way in
terms of the types of guns
and the place of guns.
And of course, Newtown
happened 10 months
after Trayvon Martin
was killed, so it
brings in another form of
gun violence, which is really
to extrajudicial killing, to
the stand-your-ground laws
that lead to the killing
of a lot of people,
to also the militarization,
weaponization of the police
force, which leads, again,
to other victimization
of different communities.
And which brings me to my
first question to the panel.
What would the
issue of or dealing
with gun violence as
a public health issue
add to this discussion?
So how can we think about
these communities that
are, as Michelle just mentioned,
the questions of safety
and lack of safety
affecting big communities
or affecting
communities, in general?
And this, obviously, need
to be thought of in relation
to the different
communities, relation
to race questions in the country
where some communities are not
even feeling safe calling
the police to help them.
And how can we think
about solving the problem
or enforcement of gun laws
in an infrastructure that
has the enforcement of laws is
largely racialized, where it is
enforced differently towards
different communities
and where, again, there are
places where the response is
to send in the troops
or the National Guard
or whatever to control
the gun problems?
What does, in your opinion, the
public health approach bring
to this particular question?
RUFUS J. FAULK: You're not
going to touch that one?
Do I push it?
There you go.
I think the great thing
about bringing public health
into the gun violence
space is that you start
to look at the systemic causes.
You're looking at root
causes of gun violence.
Unfortunately, when
we have instances
of violence within
our community,
we are quick to point the
finger at the 15-year-old that
pulled the trigger
broad daylight,
but we rarely talk
about the environment
that created that 15-year-old.
So when you look at it, taking
a public health perspective
and looking at gun
violence, you're
looking at the causes
systemically that
created the environment that
allowed that 15-year-old to,
again, pull the trigger.
What were the system failings
that created that environment?
WENDY PARMET: No,
I absolutely agree.
I think you're going
back, as I started
to say to think about
the social roots,
recognizing that the
issue and your point
about the racialization of
this, the different communities
are affected differently.
So you have to
understand the complexity
that these issues
are multi-factorial,
that they're complex,
that they play out
in different
communities differently.
Another thing that I think
we haven't mentioned so far
but goes without saying is that
a public health perspective
should be evidence based.
There's a lot of
misunderstandings out there
about the nature and
causes of gun violence.
One of the reasons I put the
slide of about suicides is I
don't think most
people understand
that most firearm deaths in the
United States are by suicide.
We need to have
much more evidence.
The federal government has,
for a very long time, limited,
they've not completely
barred, but they've
certainly have limited research
on gun-related violence.
So we need more research to
understand the roof causes,
and we need a
willingness to tackle
some of these hard issues,
which are precisely
the ones you're talking about.
But the last thing
I want to say is
when we look at things at
a population perspective,
it's also important to
recognize that we can make
significant differences
in terms of magnitude
and trauma, individual
lives, even if we
don't solve the whole problem.
People will often say,
well, what difference
is it going to make if you
do xyz, and the answer is,
Adam Lanza, even if you had
had better background checks,
his mom had bought the guns.
And without getting into the
pros and cons of any one thing,
what I want to say is
that may always be true.
There probably is no silver
bullet, no pun intended,
to this problem,
but that doesn't
mean we can't make
interventions,
that although they can't
stop every shooting,
can't when we pulled back
at a population level
lower our incidents.
And that's where the comparative
epidemiological data, why
are gun deaths in the United
States so out of-- what's
different between the United
States and Britain and Canada?
And looking at other
countries is so important
because no country
solves all the problems,
but what can we do
to lower the risk?
KIM SNYDER: I was just going
to add from my perspective,
I think one of the
biggest reasons
and hopefully,
the film will help
to do this, to reframe
it as a public health
issue is behavioral change.
You can imagine in four years
how many people see the film
and say, that thing
you hear all the time,
if nothing happened after this,
if it didn't push legislation.
And one of our goals was to have
this film try to move this out
of this horribly
polarized political space,
which, of course,
it does live in,
but to have behavioral change
so that we know those numbers
that there are upward
toward 90% of Americans that
want background checks.
So for them to begin to think
of it more about the way
we approached other problems
with automobile deaths
or with tobacco use.
And so I agree that I think
one of the things we really
want to push and the
conversations I find myself
having are around research
and the need for increased
research.
And I actually have the
opportunity right now
to have a lot of
conversations with gun owners
that I never had.
And you'd be surprised at how
far I get with middle ground
people, even if I have
different opinions when I say,
but wouldn't you want the data
to back up your assumption
that, for example, if they
say, shooters are going
to target gun-free zones more.
Well, that's not what
the evidence is saying.
So that's something I
feel privileged to be
able to have those
conversations in the heartland
as I show the film.
MICHELLE BOSQUET: I was
just remembering the comment
you had made about how when
there's a shooting in Roxbury
one of the first
things people do
is assign whether or not
that person had some kind
of criminal background.
And I think part of
that is humans wanting
to tell themselves, well, this
isn't going to happen to me
and find some way to
assign blame to the victim.
And Newtown shook that
up because, as they
said in the film, there wasn't
anything we could have done
that would have prevented this.
And I think a public
health perspective
would force us to overcome those
tendencies to try to victim
blame so that we can
make ourselves feel
better and safer by getting
at what the causes are
for the violence.
AHMED RAGAB: Thank you so much.
So now we are open
for some questions
or comments from the audience.
AUDIENCE: My name
is Charlie Homer,
a card-carrying public
health professional
among other things.
I guess I don't quite share
some of the optimism I hear
on the stage about the potential
impact of the public health
perspective.
I think our society
has made a decision
to reject the public health
perspective about gun violence,
otherwise, we'd have
20 years of research
and we would have a
different dialogue, I think.
So again, being in
law school I might ask
is the Second Amendment just
an insufferable, unbeatable
obstacle?
How come somehow in
Massachusetts we actually
are able to sufficiently control
guns in a way that we have?
Again, Mr. Faulk, your comments
were incredibly compelling,
and we do have the lowest rate
of gun violence in the country,
in Massachusetts.
So tell me a little more
about the legal context,
and is there a way that we
can move this dialogue further
and perhaps there's a
psychological fight or flight
concept that we can
bring into that?
So I'll stop there.
WENDY PARMET: You know, gee,
I'm freezing at the suggestion
that this was optimistic here.
This has been so sobering
and certainly this
is not an optimistic
moment for thinking
the tackling these issues.
Law, when we think about
the relationship between law
and gun violence, it's
extraordinarily complex,
so there's the Second Amendment.
There are laws that
impact gun violence
in myriad cross-cutting
different ways, much of which
we don't know because
of the research from
stand your ground laws to
laws that have essentially,
to a large measure, immunize
the gun manufacturing
industry from lawsuits.
The Second Amendment is
probably not the problem
because it's certainly still,
at least for the moment,
it's been construed
to allow a very
wide array of gun regulations,
including the kind we see here.
But law and politics
are intermixed,
and the issue, really,
I think, is political.
We saw that in the movie and
the Congress's unwillingness
to do something.
Now, whether the something
that was going to be asked
was the something that was going
to make a dramatic difference,
we can debate that.
But there's not a lot of
political will, certainly,
at the federal level,
though interestingly we
see great variation by states.
So many states have been
tightening their gun laws,
and other states are
going in other directions.
The Second Amendment, for
me right now at the moment
is more rhetorical, and that's
why I say law and politics
are complex and intertwined.
It serves as a rallying point
to give a legal [INAUDIBLE]
of constitutionalism
of the founding faith
that regulating
guns is inviolate
of our fundamental rights.
And that's very powerful.
It's very rhetorically powerful.
And as for the politics, I'm
not optimistic at this moment.
RUFUS J. FAULK: I think the
public health approach could
allow us to get to the root
cause of why the United
States has so many guns.
What is causing
this level of fear
in which we believe that we
should accumulate so many guns?
Is it the same
feeling of fear that
causes a 15-year-old
to carry a gun that
has someone living in Kansas
feels a need to own 25 guns?
What are some of the root
causes for why which we are
accumulating so many weapons?
That may allow us to start
to have some of these larger
conversations for that problem.
I think that could cause us
to change the conversation.
Again, I didn't take this
as being too optimistic,
but I do see some
sunshine in the horizon
because I think it's going to
cause us to have conversations
that we haven't had before,
honest conversations
about institutional racism,
about perception, about,
again, getting at these
root causes for why
or the connection between
poverty and violence
or the connection between
fear and violence.
And also going across
communities urban and suburban,
rural and having
these conversations
about how violence impacts
these different environments.
Then what are the
commonalities that
are going to drive us together
that cause us to work together
to try to deal with
these issues in a more
uniform or more united way.
So I'm a little bit optimistic,
just a little bit, a wee bit,
a wee bit optimistic.
AHMED RAGAB: Other questions?
AUDIENCE: Hello.
Actually, Rufus, you're
the reason I came here.
RUFUS J. FAULK: Uh-oh.
AUDIENCE: Because
I've worked for DYS,
and I was really appalled by
how many kids were locked up,
and I was also appalled,
really early on when
one of my students
was shot and killed.
Another student
committed a homicide.
It's a young person I
really liked a lot, Michael.
So I felt like I
wouldn't come here
unless there was some talk
about race in this discussion.
I just couldn't come here.
So I guess one of my
questions is, I went to a talk
two days ago, James
Foreman, I think, spoke.
And he said the black
community asked for more police
at one point, and they
also asked for more
looking at the root causes.
And what they got
were more police,
but they didn't get a lot of
help with the root causes--
you know what I'm saying--
which as you know has
played out really badly.
What do you think
needs to happen
for us to start looking
in Roxbury and Dorchester,
Mattapan at the root causes
and to really fixing those.
Because after I worked
with those young people,
I worked in specifically
a facility where
kids have committed homicides,
and I was really struck
by these were not evil kids.
These were just kids
that had so much crap
thrown at them in the
systems they were a part of.
How do we get people
to finally focus
on making those communities
have better systems?
RUFUS J. FAULK: I think first of
all, you put a lot of pressure
on me.
But secondly, I think
it starts with saying
that acknowledging that
the system has failed
these kids and these
populations in this community,
and that acknowledgement
will start
the conversation of, OK, which
system has failed and how?
Has the public school system
prepared our young people
to enter into the local economy?
How does income
inequality or what's
the relationship between our
school systems and income
inequality?
What's our relationship between
the housing crisis and income
inequality, and how do these
instances and these issues
impact the violence we
see in our community?
Like you said, we have
to discuss the race issue
within the city of Boston.
We still haven't gotten over
busing in the city of Boston
because we haven't even had
these conversations about how
busing has impacted
and further segregated,
not only just
residentially, but just
segregated opportunity, where
certain opportunities are just
not being available
to every neighborhood
and every young person within
the city in which we live in.
Again, you meet young
people who get incarcerated
or who are gang involved,
and 99.9% of them
don't want that
life, but they just
feel like that's the
only way for them.
We do have that 0.011%
that need some time away,
but for the vast majority,
the system has failed them,
and they don't see another
opportunity or another avenue
for them to be successful.
And as adults, that
points to us as failing.
How are we preparing our young
people to be productive adults?
Because we have
so many adults who
are unemployed and underemployed
because they didn't receive
the necessary skills or
the necessary support
to enter into the
job market or enter
into the local and
regional economy.
So there are definitely
systemic issues
that we have to deal with.
And the city of Boston, we
haven't done a good enough job
at discussing how race impacts
that, discussing how segregated
our city is, not
only by neighborhood
just by opportunity, how
opportunity isn't given
equally, how zip code largely
dictates your level of success,
how the high school
graduate from dictates
your level of success, how
whether or not your community
has a certain amount
of college graduates
can dictate your community
level of success.
So until we are willing
to tackle those issues
and have honest
conversations, we still
act as if racism
doesn't exist in Boston.
We're such a liberal
city, but we won't even
discuss the lack of
black and brown CEOs
in certain positions.
We don't even
discuss those issues.
So until we can have
those honest conversations
across neighborhoods
and be willing to be
honest with each other
and transparent about
where both of us
feel, both communities
feel all ethnicities impacted
within the city of Boston,
this is going to be
a recurring cycle,
and we're not going to
be able to get, again,
those root causes.
So I appreciate your question.
AHMED RAGAB: We have
one last question.
We have time for
one more question.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, Kim,
thank you for the film.
I just got this
overwhelming impression
that you were just an incredibly
skilled and patient listener.
And I have to say in
the political moment,
I feel like that's a
skill that's really
lacking is listening skill.
And I guess I sort of share
this gentleman's frustration,
and I guess this is also a
question directed to Ahmed,
if it's allowed.
But I just don't know how to
incentivize these conversations
for people who, by virtue
of denial or comfort, just
really aren't interested
in having the conversation.
It's not even that I don't
know whether they're callous
or whether they're just
in their own safe world.
Because locally in Cambridge, I
worked for a Protestant Church,
and the local churches
here are extremely
mobilized around having
these conversations
and taking direct action.
But Ahmed, do you see
a lack of commitment
to this in other areas
of the country in terms
of religious institutions?
AHMED RAGAB: Well,
I mean, I would
say that there is a
bigger problem also
that's related to how violence
is dealt with in general
and gun violence is
dealt with in general.
And I know that in
many cases the argument
about the portrayal of
violence and about video games
and about things like this has
been always the argument that
is levied by a pro-gun
lobbyists, for instance,
or the NRA, et cetera.
But I think thinking about it
in a larger context in the sense
that the habituation that takes
place with the loss of life,
the idea that just the fact
that people die all the time
and that we hear these events,
these mass shootings, again,
and these are not the most
significant numbers of people
that are lost to gun violence.
We hear about them all the time.
We deal with particular
neighborhoods
as if these are places
where just people
die out of gun violence.
So this kind of
habituation leads
to what you're talking
about, which is we're
never going to
solve this problem.
There isn't even a chance
of thinking about it.
But at the same time, what
I suggested in my question
early on is the
larger framework.
I think gun violence
in terms of individuals
having guns is deeply
connected to police violence.
And I think the
fact that the police
has these armored vehicles and
we see police officers walking
with these M-16
military-grade weapons is just
naturalizing the appearance
of military-grade weapons.
And there is a reason why this
one person in a rural area who
uses guns to just
hunt and for sports
now wants a
military-grade weapon.
I mean, there is an
attractiveness to owning
these things, even if
you'll never use them
or you think you'll
never use them.
But you want to own
them, and part of it
is these gunslinging
officers with big guns
that we're becoming
more and more used to
and that we're becoming
blind to how this
is affecting
minority communities
and racially
marginalized communities.
So what I think--
AUDIENCE: It's also apparent in
[? deep ?] American mythology.
RUFUS J. FAULK: Around guns.
Absolutely.
AHMED RAGAB: Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Of course.
But then, again, I mean, what
I'm saying is this is part--
and that's why I actually
believe that a public health
approach is very useful
because you could tackle all
of these things as part of
a larger question around gun
and gun violence,
which I don't think
aiming for simple
legislations as in let's
just legislate background
checks or let's do this piece.
Now, doing these
pieces are important,
but I think public health
approach allows us also
to see the big
picture, and then we
can do pointed interventions.
But I think the big picture is
very important because, again,
it allows us at
least to see how it's
affecting different communities
in a variety of ways.
ROBERT KINSCHERFF: So thank
you all for your participation
this evening.
Let's give Kim our special
applause for the work
that she and her
colleagues have done.
And a second round of golf
claps for our panelists
who generously gave
up their time for us
and brought us their
thoughts and expertise,
and thank you all to you.
