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This article appeared in the June 13, 2019 edition of the Monitor Daily.

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How an unusual approach to gun violence is solving more than gun violence

Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters
A woman protests gun violence during the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade June 26.
Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

A remarkable drop in gun violence in the San Francisco Bay Area has underlined an important point: Safety is often built more than enforced.

that gun violence dropped 30% in the region between 2007 and 2017, potentially saving nearly 1,000 lives. The most prominent reason for the drop appears to be a novel approach to gun violence.

One effort, called 鈥淐easefire,鈥 first uses data to identify who is most at risk. (In Oakland, less than 1% of the population is responsible for two-thirds of the gun violence.) Then, it engages with them. This begins with conversations in community centers and churches and continues with mentors who are often former gang members themselves.

鈥淭hey are told, 鈥榃e care about you. You have our attention. And we鈥檙e going to do everything we can to keep you alive and keep our community safe, too,鈥欌 David Muhammad, a Ceasefire consultant .

Tensions between police and communities of color have often evolved from asking police merely to deal with the effects of frayed communities, while cities ignore the causes. Programs like Ceasefire, paid for by a ballot initiative passed by Oakland voters, are about changing that.

鈥淲e have to extend the idea of what public safety is beyond policing and incarceration to include these things like intervention, outreach, and neighborhood empowerment,鈥 one local official tells The Guardian. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the game changer. That鈥檚 the difference-maker.鈥澛

Now on to our five stories. We look at the link between clothes and conservation, how an extraordinary woman is saving lives in Afghanistan, and why so many people are streaming an Italian classical composer.


This article appeared in the June 13, 2019 edition of the Monitor Daily.

Read 06/13 edition
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