Cure Violence and Cities United Merge to Form Bridge Forward

What happened

Two of the largest national groups in community violence intervention are combining, The Trace reported. Cure Violence Global and Cities United will form a new organization called Bridge Forward: International Institute for Public Safety. According to The Trace, Monique Williams, CEO of Cure Violence Global, and Anthony Smith, executive director of Cities United, announced the merger on October 22 at Cities United’s convention in Memphis.

The Trace traced both groups back to their roots. In 1995 Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, came to believe that violence behaves like an infectious disease and that public health strategies could prevent and control it. The program that grew from that idea, now Cure Violence, began in 2000 and has spread to dozens of cities, the outlet reported. Cities United was founded in 2011 by the mayors of Philadelphia and New Orleans.

According to The Trace, Bridge Forward will combine Cities United’s work helping local governments build public safety systems with Cure Violence Global’s public health approach to interrupting violence. Smith told the outlet that the new group, like Cities United, will back the many strategies and organizations at work in a city’s public safety system, whatever model they use, and will not be limited to the Cure Violence model. Emanuel Boo Milton, a violence prevention advocate from Baton Rouge who sits on Cities United’s advisory board, told The Trace he agreed with the idea behind the merger. Cure Violence Global has also announced the merger on its own website.

The Trace reported that it asked Smith and Williams whether funding problems had affected either group and whether money played a part in the decision to merge. The reporting available for this brief did not make clear how Bridge Forward will be led and staffed, or what local programs should expect to change.

Our reflection

The people who will feel this merger first were not at the podium in Memphis. They are the outreach workers who answer the phone at midnight, and the young people they reach before one funeral turns into two. For them a new name on the letterhead raises plain questions. Will the training and the backup keep coming? Will the city keep paying for the work? The Trace asked about money. Anyone who cares about the block should want that answer too.

Dr. Slutkin’s idea, as The Trace described it, was that violence spreads like an infection. Scripture saw that early. Cain kills Abel, and a few generations later Lamech brags that he will be avenged seventy-seven times (Genesis 4:24). When Peter asks Jesus how often he has to forgive, Jesus gives him the same number pointed the other way (Matthew 18:22). He takes the math of revenge and runs it backward.

Then there is Mark 1. A man with leprosy kneels in front of Jesus. Under the law, touching him would make Jesus unclean. Jesus touches him anyway, and the contagion runs in reverse: the man is made clean. That is the shape of the gospel, and it is the shape of good violence intervention. Someone walks toward the infection carrying something stronger than it. At the cross the world’s violence landed on Jesus. He prayed for the men doing it, and it stopped with him. The empty tomb is God’s verdict that retaliation does not get the final say.

Before we admire interrupters from a safe distance, we should be honest with ourselves. Most of us will never fire a gun. Jesus still said anger is murder already living in the heart (Matthew 5:21 to 22). The grudge you have fed for eleven years, the brother you replay on the drive home: that is the same infection running at a lower fever. Repentance is where interruption starts. The Holy Spirit does in us what an interrupter does on the corner. He steps in between the wound and the next decision.

A merger can strengthen the people on the ground, or it can stay a story about org charts. The test comes a year from now, in whether outreach workers in Baton Rouge or Chicago are better trained and better backed. Peace that hangs on a one-year grant is a gamble with people’s lives. Cities that want fewer shootings have to fund the people who prevent them steadily and measure the work honestly. Our JCVI work at We The Revolt tries to reach young people at first contact, before a record exists, and stay with them through re-entry. That only works when the adults around them stay too.

This week, put some weight behind the people who walk toward the fire. Give what you can of your money or your evenings. Then tell your council you want this work in the next budget. The steps below are a place to start.

And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

Mark 1:41

Source: The Trace, “Two of the Biggest Violence Prevention Groups Are Merging”