New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
New Haven students vow to work against rising violence in the city
NEW HAVEN — Forgiveness. Empowerment. Empathy. These principles, city students hope, will give them a path forward in a violent time. A group of New Haven students have created a resolution for peace coming together in “acknowledgment of the rise in violence that is happening in 2021,” to pledge to do what they can to address it.
“The students of New Haven resolved to learn to forgive so that one’s negative thoughts go
“We will act as mediators to discourage violence in our community and in our schools. We will treat people as equals.” A resolution for peace created by a group of New Haven students
away. To treat each other the way we want to be treated. To empower ourselves to be better and lead by example,” wrote the young people in the resolution.
“We will act as mediators to discourage violence in our community and in our schools. We will treat people as equals.”
As of Feb. 28, there had been seven homicides this year in city, up from one at the same point last year, according to police. There had been 13 shootings, up from 7; there had been 45 instances of shots fired, up from 27.
Officials and residents have grappled with the trend, calling on law enforcement and the community to do something.
The students crafted the resolution with the help of teachers, including Furahi Achebe, who led the gathering.
It will be sent to district officials and the mayor’s office, Achebe said, for their consideration.
Before writing the resolution as part of a recent daylong school-organized workshop on Zoom, the students heard from Chaz Carmon, president of antiviolence organization Ice the Beef; former New Haven police officer and Beaver Hills aldermanic candidate Shafiq Abdussabur; former New Haven detective Stacy Spell, now the project manager for Project Longevity in the city; and city native Dr. Kyeisha Velasquez, a licensed professional counselor.
Carmon suggested the young people bring the love they and others have for material aspects of life — cellphones, video games — and turn that passion toward other people.
We have free will; every act of gun violence, every act of love, represents a choice, he said. Everyone has been wronged in life; answering pain with anger just continues the cycle.
“You are not a punk because you forgave someone. We tend to feel like, if I say ‘sorry,’ it’s a bad thing — and not just for our teens, for adults, too.
Adults have a hard time saying sorry; adults have a hard time forgiving someone who they felt has hurt their feelings, who they felt has done something to them, and now, I want vengeance,” said Carmon. “But it’s OK to forgive. It’s OK to let it go. When you hold that inside, essentially you are hurting yourself . ... When you bottle up that hate and that anger, it hurts you, it disrupts you.”
Carmon suggested young people try to find a purpose in life — something meaningful, that keeps one from making rash, short-term decisions — and generally, choose to love those things, and one another. As a young man, he found it meaningful to work with children, he said, and that’s kept him going over the years. “We wouldn’t have any of these major issues, like gun violence or racism, if we all just loved each other and understood that we are all equal human beings — and we are all part of each other,” said Carmon. “If we take that stance of love, and we put that out on the Earth, it will come back to us.”
Abdussabur walked the students through the process of dealing with being pulled over by a police officer.
He suggested the young people do what they can to set the officer’s mind at ease, including being polite, like one would when talking to a respected elder; stopping immediately; avoiding unexplained, furtive movements; following instructions; and generally, trying not to escalate the situation. A ticket is not a huge deal, he said; it’ll cost you about $100, with months to deal with it.
Abdussabur said, as a Black man in America, he has to do the same things when stopped by officers.
He told a story about being stopped in Georgia by two troopers; he was a college student, and his car had a broken window. His license was in a bag in his trunk; he popped it after being instructed by one of the troopers, who jumped back with his hand on his gun. The bag matched the description of one involved in a recent shooting, the trooper explained.
“It always stuck with me, that motor vehicle stop ... how polite he was about snuffing my life about me making one wrong move,” said Abdussabur. “The unique thing about having anybody that’s in charge of the safety of anybody is that you don’t know what’s in that person’s mind . ... All we can try to be, I guess you would say, is body language speakers. And if you can try to maintain your composure with the law enforcement officer, I think it’ll go a long way (toward) your safety.”
Abdussabur also urged the young people to become involved in politics to pursue the change they’d like to see in society.
Spell called on youths to become involved in bettering their communities, to “occupy the space” of the neighborhoods to spread love and peace, and to challenge elected officials to do right by them.
“The world is crying out for your voices. The world needs to hear your anger; the world needs to hear your thoughts,” said Spell. “Who will take up the mantle to encourage us to build unity? To build collaborative power? ... We can’t sit by and let this destruction go by in our communities.”
Spell raised the example of Tyriek Keyes, a 14-yearold boy killed in New Haven in 2017, as well as the young people under the age of 12 shot in 2019.
“We have to change our communities so our children can walk to the corner store without being risk at violence. We have to change our communities so our youth can prosper, so they don’t have post-traumatic stress syndrome,” said Spell. “If we stay silent and do nothing, the nonsense will continue.”
Velasquez noted that she had grown up across the city, living in several neighborhoods — Newhallville, Fair Haven, Dwight.
She said she lost friends to violence then, and now, as she was friends with a recent homicide victim. There’s trauma associated with that, she told the young people.
“Trauma causes both feelings of anxiety and depression,” said Velasquez. “You might not trust anybody. You might think somebody is out to get you. You might feel like you have no mood; you don’t have motivation. You don’t even want to go to school sometimes or do your schoolwork; you start avoiding things.”
Velasquez said people of color traditionally kick into survival mode when faced with trauma, pushing it aside to try to do what’s necessary to keep moving forward.
She suggested youths find what calms their anxiety and improves their mood, including exercise, seek refuge in music, or spend time with positive people. She offered to talk with young people in need of help processing trauma and violence.
“If you want to live your life differently, you have to change your thought process. So when you grow up in an inner city like New Haven, and you’re functioning on survival mode constantly, you stay stuck on survival mode and don’t progress if you don’t change your thought process,” said Velasquez. “What dictates what you do is how you think, and what you do with it . ... When you’re thinking about coming up with how you guys can create peace in the community as young people, just think of it like this: You’re not trying to save the world, you’re just trying to contribute to peace.”