My son was murdered. Help me save your sons’ lives.

On Dec. 12, 2017, my son was murdered. His name was Shaq Turner.

Ever since then, I’ve devoted my life to preventing senseless killings like the one that took my son from me. I’ve walked door-to-door with police chiefs in vulnerable neighborhoods. I’ve helped mothers retrieve their murdered son’s remains for a funeral in their hometown, pay for a head stone, and start a scholarship in their son’s name. I’ve gone to local homes at 1 a.m. to help talk unstable boyfriends out of keeping loaded guns near the bed.

This is the hard work of violence reduction and support for victims. But if we want fewer dead children and grieving mothers, it must be done.

That’s why Voices of Black Mothers United, for which I’m the Virginia program lead, was such a blessing when they first found me.

They wanted to help me continue the work I was already doing to reduce violence and help grieving mothers at Hampton Roads Mothers Against Senseless Killings (HR MASK) — and they wanted to support women all across the country who’d suffered as I had. They had built a safe space for grieving mothers to speak out on behalf of their children and their peers. They were perfectly aligned with my goal to end the vicious cycle that had killed my son.

But mission and tactics are two very different things. It’s one thing to say you believe in something — it’s another to live it out. Violence reduction is no different.

There are a range of strategies we have for reducing violence. Some of the most frequently discussed involve expansion of youth programs or the improvement of material and social resources for vulnerable teens. These are frequently discussed for good reason: If implemented, they’d be tremendously helpful.

It’s also important that our families are strong. If we want to decrease criminal behavior — and recidivism — we need to make sure fathers are present in the home, and that those homes are good places to grow up. Research shows that violent fathers have a devastating longterm impact on their childrens’ lives. This seems obvious. Of course abuse would harm children.

But it also shows that absent fathers produce children who are vastly more likely to enter the prison system, struggle to complete school, face poverty or abuse drugs and alcohol. If we want to reduce the rate of violence, we must build a political and economic atmosphere that helps build strong homes where fathers can be present, active forces in their children’s lives.

There is no replacement for the family. We need the next generation to learn self-restraint, self-respect and the value of a life. They won’t learn this anywhere but at home.

The most important component of long-term violence reduction, however, is that everybody learns to work together. We need citizens, police, city and state leadership all to listen earnestly to each other — and then move from listening to acting.

It’s easy to make “youth intervention” into a nice idea, something that somebody else does. It’s easy to set aside the reality of commonplace murder just because it hasn’t happened to your family.

What I am asking you today, during National Crime Victims Rights Week, is that you stop and listen. I am asking every person who lives in or near Norfolk, every person reading the words I write, to help us save lives.

I have seen too much suffering. I have seen too much death. Our police officers are weary. Our mothers are stricken with grief. Our fathers suffer. Our children are dying in the streets.

It’s never too late to unify. It’s never too late to show up. Help us build stronger homes, stronger communities and brighter futures for our children. Help us honor the victims of violent crime by listening to the voices of those who survive them.