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Solutions for curbing gun violence

Tired of crime and violence? So are we. Here are some resources, opportunities, and potential solutions to our crisis:

Learn more here about Cure Violence, a broad community approach to preventing and reducing gang violence that treats violence as an infectious disease.

The Roca Impact Institute is offering communities and institutions that are committed to ending gun violence a coaching program to learn their CBT-based approach to violence intervention. You can learn more and support their work here.

Drexel University’s Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice operates Helping Hurt People in Philadelphia for survivors and witnesses to violence, from ages 8 to 35. Read more about the program and support them here.

State Senator Art Haywood, representing parts of northwestern Philly and eastern Montgomery County, has demanded Mayor Kenney take action on proposals other communities have used to curb gun violence. You can read these proposals, watch the April 2022 webinar on reducing violence, view proposed legislation, and sign up as an advocate for gun violence prevention on the Senator’s official website.

Read the proposal from former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and Councilmember Jamie Gauthier delivered to Mayor Kenney last year on place-based strategies to reduce crime.

Listen to The Philadelphia Citizen’s 2021 podcast series Philly Under Fire, a deep dive into the underlying causes and possible solutions to the gun violence crisis.

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Solutions for better citizenship

One of the founding tenets of The Philadelphia Citizen is to get people the resources they need to become better, more engaged citizens of their city.

We hope to do that in our Good Citizenship Toolkit, which includes a host of ways to get involved in Philadelphia — whether you want to contact your City Councilmember about tackling gun violence, get those experiencing homelessness the goods they need, or simply go out to dinner somewhere where you know your money is going toward a greater good.

Find an issue that’s important to you in the list below, and get started on your journey of A-plus citizenship.

Vote and strengthen democracy

Stand up for marginalized communities

Create a cleaner, greener Philadelphia

Help our local youth and schools succeed

Support local businesses

The People Left Behind

“They Are Still With Us, In A Way”

In the first episode of a new Citizen podcast about the survivors and co-victims of gun violence, we meet Laura Madeleine, who turned her terror over a school shooting into the Soul Shots Portrait Project. The seventh exhibition of the Philadelphia chapter is on display until August 27

The People Left Behind

“They Are Still With Us, In A Way”

In the first episode of a new Citizen podcast about the survivors and co-victims of gun violence, we meet Laura Madeleine, who turned her terror over a school shooting into the Soul Shots Portrait Project. The seventh exhibition of the Philadelphia chapter is on display until August 27

BY Julien Suaudeau

Aug. 13, 2024

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I met Laura Madeleine at the opening of the latest Soul Shots Portrait Project exhibit, featuring artist renderings of 24 gun violence victims. Most of the portraits, on display at Episcopal Cathedral in West Philadelphia, look straight into your eye as if they were present. They are still with us, in a way, and it feels like they’re holding our gaze, not just so that we’ll remember, but also to demand that we do something about gun violence.

Madeleine’s story of starting Soul Shots — and how it helps survivors and co-victims heal — is the first in a new podcast series for The Philadelphia Citizen, featuring the people left behind after fatal shootings, including parents, grandparents, siblings, children and friends. “Many of these people get asked about the death a lot and feel like they’re made to feel guilty,” Madeleine says. “Our artists ask about the lives.”

Artist Laura Madeline works in her studio on a portrait of Kenyon Lakai Allford, Jr. Courtesy of the artist.

More than 3,300 Philadelphians have lost their lives to gun violence in Philadelphia since 2015; another 12,700 survived a shooting. While shootings are down for the second year in a row, Philadelphia is still on track to record about 200 fatal shootings by the end of 2024.

“What traditional media miss is the vast number of people indirectly impacted by firearm violence,” says Dr. Vivek Ashok, from the Center for Violence Prevention at CHOP. “A single neighborhood murder can affect as many as 200 people in the community.” The victims’ lives are cut short, but those of their loved ones carry on; they grieve, they rage, they remember, they love, they call for change.

This podcast is intended to talk about what happens to survivors and co-victims when the police tape comes down, the news cameras leave and the flowers wilt. How are they doing now? What are they still going through? If one of our civic goals as Philadelphians is to curb local gun violence, we need to listen to their voices, to hear their stories of loss and healing.

Julien Suaudeau is a French American writer. He has lived in Philadelphia since 2006 and teaches at Bryn Mawr College.

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Works that have been part of Soul Shots through the years include portraits of (clockwise, from top left): Jasiyah Makayla Vasquez by Mary Pax, Quadir Sheaff by Gary Sieling, Jerron E. Lewis by Anni Matsick, Dominique Xavier Milton Williams by Rebecca Hoenig, Aveida Ali George by Nancy Agati, Tianna Nicole Valentine Eatman by Mary Pax, and Craig Hatchett by Amanda Lee Condict.

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