GVPanorama: I lost a friend to gun violence when I was in high school. Now, I counsel Chicago students facing similar pain.
GVPanorama: I lost a friend to gun violence when I was in high school. Now, I counsel Chicago students facing similar pain.
"Whatever may be happening outside the school walls, inside, I want students to feel safe."
Latonya Booker, middle, with students; photo via Communities in Schools of Chicago
While on the search for recent gun violence prevention news for our weekly "Friday Finds” feature, we often come across editorials, personal stories, or wider-lens articles that don’t necessarily fit into a current events window. With GVPanorama, we will highlight some of these thought-provoking pieces.
Part of the current reality for proponents of gun violence prevention is that, for the foreseeable future, we can’t always rely on the high halls of the Federal government or the Supreme Court to solve our problems. Hence, the focus has been shifting to local government, grassroots organizations, and ground-up solutions that reach beyond stemming gun sales and deeper into the root causes of violence.
For example: today’s GVPanorama article is an optimistic, first-person story of a survivor, Latonya Booker, who later turned her concern for the violence of her community into her position as Student Supports Manager at the nonprofit Communities In Schools in Chicago (CIS) — where she not only counsels kids who are having trouble academically and socially, but helps those who are dealing with the traumatic after-effects of gun violence.
“Family, friends, and former colleagues sometimes ask how I’m able to help children who’ve lost beloved family members to violence. I tell them it starts with relationship-building, and that sometimes means sharing my own stories.”