Last night at a fundraiser for Youth Alive, held at The Crucible in West Oakland, I was invited to read an excerpt from my work in progress and then to introduce the subject of my work in progress, Marilyn Washington Harris. Youth Alive is Oakland’s anchor agency for violence prevention, intervention and healing of the trauma violence leaves in its wake. Marilyn is the creator of Youth Alive’s program that supports families of homicide victims in the immediate aftermath of a killing here. The program is named after her son, who was killed in Oakland in 2000. It is called the Khadafy Washington Project. I read a passage that will come early in the book, about how Marilyn’s family learned of the death of Khadafy, how lost and alone they were in the wake of the killing, and how Marilyn, still in the depths of her grief and shock, began to think of other mothers, other families in the same situation. Because, while year-to-year, or month-to-month, the homicide rate in Oakland can fluctuate, the threat and the reality of death on the streets of the city never fades, and killings occur at a steady pace. Marilyn was keenly aware of the continuing violence across the city and also near and around her West Oakland neighborhood, and within weeks of her son's killing began to reach out to mothers she would hear about in the news, or, as I said in my reading, to follow “the sound of bullets and sirens, to death scenes, to the homes of the survivors, to find the families, to take them by the hand and, with a small coterie of committed, slightly eccentric, helpers, to demonstrate to survivors and the city that in the midst of hate love still exists.” The reading went over well, and Marilyn spoke with power to the crowd of over 100 guests at the event. It was a great night and there seemed to be a good deal of enthusiasm for the project and tons of respect for Miss Marilyn. Now if I can just get the rest of the thing written, find an agent, a publisher, readers. Yeah, that’s all I gotta do…
Comments