Campaign Convo Seeks Gun Violence Rx

When is ​“snitching” about violent crime worth the social and physical risks to the individual speaking up? 

And when is it necessary to protect the community from future gunfire attacks?

Those weighty questions rose to the fore Tuesday night during an hour-long focus group that Democratic mayoral candidate Tom Goldenberg convened in the basement meeting room of Bethel AME Church at 255 Goffe St.

Roughly 20 New Haveners who have been affected by gun violence — because they’ve lost a loved one to a bullet, because they themselves have been shot, or, often, both — came together to speak candidly about why people pick up guns in the first place and about how to to try end the cycle of street violence.

The conversation felt at times less like a campaign stop than a support group. Participants ranging from their teens to their late 50s sat in a circle alongside a foldout table stacked with Dunkin Donuts coffee and muffins and Tom Goldenberg for Mayor lit. 

Goldenberg, one of four Democrats seeking the party’s mayoral nomination this year, didn’t urge those present to vote for him or to donate to his campaign. The attendees — many of whom asked the Independent to remain anonymous for this article — said they showed up primarily to listen and to talk rather than to throw their support behind one candidate or another. Few had heard of Goldenberg before Tuesday night. Many turned out after being invited by Pepe Vega, a local filmmaker who works for Yale New Haven Hospital’s violence prevention outreach program.

“These kids need more — no disrespect — than what people in power are offering them,” street outreach worker Terrence Lee, whom everyone in the room called ​“T Lee,” told Goldenberg. 

Speaking about the importance of finding and funding and supporting mentors with firsthand knowledge of the impact of gun violence in New Haven, he said about the young people in the room on Tuesday, ​“they need us and we need them.”

One of the hardest parts of Tuesday’s conversation centered on the topic of if to speak up to law enforcement when someone you know has used a gun to hurt someone else.

One attendee, who grew up in the Hill and who recently lost her brother to gun violence, spoke about moving to Georgia right after graduating from high school.

“I always say: New Haven raised me, Atlanta saved me,” she said. She worried that she would have fallen into serious trouble if she had spent her post-high school years in her home city. ​“There’s not a lot of things out there that make you want to do better” in New Haven.

“Where does it change?” she continued. ​“It changes with us. … Everybody still want to talk about, ​‘No snitching.’ Someone has to be like, ​‘Enough is enough.’ ”

A woman in her mid-thirties, who had lost two cousins to gun violence in New Haven, warned that speaking out can be a hard and sometimes dangerous thing to do. ​“With change comes a lot, too” she said. ​“My cousin tried to change.” But then ​“he got set up” and was ultimately killed.

“It’s a risk,” the sister of the recent homicide victim acknowledged. ​“But you don’t know that risk if you don’t take that first step.”

Across the circle, a young man just a few weeks away from turning 21 jumped in.

“I got shot before I was 17,” he said. ​“I could have told” police about who the shooter was. But ​“that person could have been going through a lot.”

If you tell, ​“they get a lot of hatred,” he said about the community consequences for the perpetrator. 

Since he was the only victim of the shooting, the young man continued, and since he’s subsequently recovered and is now doing well in life, his turning that person in might cause more harm than good for both him and the shooter.

Yes, you survived, and yes, ​“you don’t always have to tell,” the homicide victim’s sister replied. But ​“what if the next person they shoot, they’re not here no more? You don’t know what else that person” might do if they’re not apprehended for that initial shooting.

Goldenberg acknowledged that dilemma.

“You’ve got a conflict between what’s good for me and the neighborhood,” he said. But, he continued, ​“if people don’t get caught, murders don’t get solved,” more people feel empowered to shoot with impunity, and more New Haveners get seriously hurt.

Another young man whose father had been murdered, and who himself had recently been shot, emphasized how it still feels like a ​“risk” to speak out.

“You can tell, snitch, and still receive consequences,” he said. Because what you say to the police or the court ​“is all on documentation,” and that can make it’s way into the public realm and onto social media.

“You put my life at risk” by releasing such information, he added. ​“It’s a lose-lose situation.”

“Everybody’s got their own free will,” added Lee. ​“In the hood, there’s always been an omen about telling” and ​“snitching.” You can’t expect this young man to tell on the person who shot him, he said, without fully understanding what he and the shooter are going through in their lives.

“It’s a battle,” he said, about when and whether to speak to the police.

That’s why, Lee continued, you need people like himself and Vega and Sean Reeves and others who know first-hand about gun violence in New Haven and who can say to young boys and girls growing up in the city today: ​“It’s all right to cry. It’s all right to respect” your elders and neighbors. It’s all right to put down a gun and not retaliate and get a job to support your family instead of feeling like you have to protect them by settling a score.

“We have to take these kids and provide for them,” he said. 

The event itself didn’t focus entirely on the question of when to come forward to the police. It touched on a range of challenges and responses related to when bullets fly.

“Gun violence is a serious issue in New Haven,” Goldenberg told the group at the start of Tuesday’s conversation. ​“If I am mayor, I want to be able to something about it. And that starts with understanding.”

So he asked those assembled around him to speak to their experiences with gun violence in New Haven, and to tell him what they think needs to be done — by city government or anyone else — to put a stop to the shootings.

And speak up attendees did, passionately and personally and vulnerably and, not infrequently, with a respectful criticism of a West Haven-raised white mayoral candidate with no firsthand experience of gun violence in New Haven.

They spoke about the need for more mentorship, youth programming, good-paying jobs, accessible community centers, and conflict resolution efforts led by trusted community partners.

They spoke about the ​“generational curse” of feuds passed down from parents to kids, fights that retain their fire even as their reason for being has long since been forgotten.

They spoke about bringing a heightened level of ​“surveillance” and community concern to the lives of native New Haveners in the same way that Yale students already have.

And they spoke about the fear and ​“hatred” and exhilaration and just plain ordinariness of carrying around a weapon in certain neighborhoods of New Haven, of getting involved in street life without even trying as early as age 10 or 11.