Youth ALIVE! subdirector, John Torres, habló con Claudia Simones de Telemundo 48 News la semana pasada sobre el reciente aumento de la violencia en el condado de Alameda, y nuestras estrategias para apoyar a los afectados. Mira el reportaje de 2:45 minutos aquí:
Now More Than Ever: Community-Driven Public Safety Solutions
Posted October 13, 2020
Our 2019-2020 Annual Report
Stories, results, program descriptions, pics and more!
If you want to see what the community is doing to prevent violence and heal itself, read our new annual report all about our programs for violence prevention, intervention and healing.
It will be a brisk program featuring some of the incredible people our programs support, people affected by violence whose resilience and relentlessness we’re certain will move and inspire**.**
YA!'s Kyndra Simmons Talks Police Violence with Rep. Barbara Lee and BLM's Alicia Garza
Posted August 5, 2020
Kyndra on Facebook Live -
Intervention Director Kyndra Simmons joined Rep. Barbara Lee and Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza on FB Live on June 5, 2020 to discuss police brutality: Watch the entire conversation here.
This August 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Khadafy Washington, in whose memory our program to help families of homicide victims, the Khadafy Washington Project, is named. Khadafy was shot and killed on the campus of McClymond’s High School in West Oakland, just a few short weeks after he had graduated. It was a devastating loss. But Khadafy’s memory lives on in the great kindness he inspired. In the months and then the years after Khadafy’s death, his mom, Marilyn Washington Harris, dedicated her life to serving families who found themselves in the same situation she was in on that awful August day in 2000: alone, confused, shocked, frightened, with no idea where to turn and no one to help her. Marilyn would never let that happen to another grieving mother or family in Oakland. She created the Khadafy Washignton Foundation for Non-Violence and, at Youth ALIVE!, founded the Khadafy Washignton Project, our program that meets families in the immediate aftermath of a homicide to help them through their darkness and pain, to help them obtain victim compensation, plan funerals, and take care of themselves and their loved ones. Twenty years later, Marilyn is still tirelessly there for grieving families in Oakland, embracing them, giving them hope.
In the Guardian, Youth ALIVE! Executive Director Anne Marks, Intervention Director Kyndra Simmons, Man Up! Inc founder AT Mitchell, and Cure Violence CEO Gary Slutkin make the very strong case that effective community violence prevention and intervention have been happening across the country for years; results show that the community can itself can do much to reduce the need for and presence of law enforcement in our neighborhoods. Read their piece here - ‘Time for a New Vision’: violence is a public health issue that requires community driven solutions.
More States and Cities Funding Community Intervention
Posted June 23, 2020
Sherman Spears’ Inspiration -
Sherman Spears in 2013
A July 2019 article in The Trace opens with an excellent summary of how Oakland’s (and Youth ALIVE!’s) Sherman Spears was inspired to create our Caught in the Crossfire hospital-based violence intervention program, which today is seen as one of the most effective approaches, not only to preventing violence, but to helping victims begin to heal their trauma. Read about Caught in the Crossfire here. Read the entire article in The Trace about what happens when prevention funding and support truly get to the people who need them: What Gun Violence Prevention Looks Like When it Focuses on the Communities Hurt Most.
