San Francisco Chronicle | Sudden Trump Cuts leave Bay Area violence prevention groups reeling
(An Excerpt)
The Trump administration abruptly cut funds to Bay Area violence prevention groups this week.
The Department of Justice has summarily cut hundreds of federal grants that channeled $811 million to community organizations doing violence prevention work and helping victims of domestic and sexual violence. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the funds were an example of “wasteful spending.”
Advocates say that among the 365 recipients whose funding was cut are Youth Alive, a violence prevention organization in Oakland that lost a $2 million grant and the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, which lost $500,000 in funding for an Arab Women’s Services program outreach.
Both organizations were told Tuesday via email to immediately stop all work on their federal grant-funded work. The California Partnership to End Domestic Violence estimated that $83 million in grants for various California programs were cut.
Last year, Oakland’s homicides were at a five-year low, a Chronicle analysis found. As part of the strategy, violence interrupters try to mediate conflicts among gangs and other groups, and life coaches attempt to steer participants away from a life of violence. The resources target people who are most likely to pick up a gun. .
The canceled awards were identified through a review process that determined they did not align with the Trump administration’s priorities, according to the Washington Post.
Oakland’s Youth Alive lost the three-year, $2 million grant for its violence prevention work in the city, Executive Director Joe Griffin said Friday. The organization has worked in Oakland for 30 years, developing a first-in-the-nation “Caught in the Crossfire” program where outreach workers meet gunshot victims in the hospital. The workers accompany victims along their recovery journey, connecting them with everything from physical therapy to emotional support and job services. The idea is that if a gunshot victim has somebody guiding them through the healing process, Griffin said, they are less likely to be re-injured trying to avenge their attack.
“What folks don’t realize is that if you are violently injured, you’re much more likely to get re-injured,” Griffin said. “What we found is what we call the ‘golden moment’ at the hospital bedside, and that’s when someone who has been injured finds himself in a place where they’re like, ‘I never saw myself here. And what do I do now? ’ If we can intervene in that moment, we can quell any sort of retaliation that may be happening in the community.”
Last year, Youth Alive helped 113 shooting victims in Oakland and only one was re-injured, Griffin said.
The grant cut also will affect Youth Alive’s violence interruption program, which Griffin described as seeking “to prevent retaliatory violence that stems from” a shooting and works closely with the hospital-based program.
The grant represents about 5% of the organization’s funding. “Our goal is to keep our programs running and to keep our teams intact, and so that’s what I’m dedicated to doing,” Griffin said. “But we have some really hard decisions to make.”