After six years covering the aftermath of violence in Oakland in San Francisco Magazine and on my personal blog, Ice City Almanac, I joined the staff at Youth ALIVE! (YA), Oakland’s primary community-based violence prevention agency with programs for hospital-based violence intervention, school-based youth violence prevention, as well as programs to help victims and survivors of the killed heal their trauma. I had already written some client stories as a volunteer when, in 2015, I became YA’s senior writer in charge of grants and reports, which I enjoyed.
But the best part of my job was helping Oaklanders who had been affected by violence tell their stories, some of whom were my co-workers. When victims were emotionally ready, they often found that getting their story out into the world felt good and contributed to their healing. Sometimes I wrote the stories in the client’s voice; sometimes as letters to the Youth ALIVE! staff member they’d worked with. And sometimes I wrote the stories in the third person.
Here you can read some of those brief stories and letters. They come from both teens and adult. The teens were growing up in Oakland neighborhoods where violence was common and had been for half a century. Some of the young people had been shot themselves. Some had lost loved ones to gun violence. Among the adults were gunshot victims, mothers who lost their sons, husbands who had lost wives. They were generous in their sharing of their stories. And invariably they were courageous people working hard to heal themselves and, in some cases, to help heal their city. It was a privilege to work with them.
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