Philadelphia youth are making videos to talk their peers out of gun violence

What happened

A year-old program in Philadelphia is training young creators to make social media content that steers their peers away from guns, Chalkbeat reported. The UPenn Creators for Community Safety Institute is a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania’s SAFELab and ABRO, the organization of founder Ant Brown, and it helps young people make media against violence, such as skits and rap songs. According to Chalkbeat, the first cohort of 15 dancers, rappers, fashion designers and other makers graduated in August. Their topics included conflict resolution and the school-to-prison pipeline. A new group starts next spring.

The institute’s newest release is a video about PTSD and suicide, Chalkbeat reported. It also looks at how exposure to shootings affects schoolwork. In it, young people call for more art programs and career development opportunities. One of them is 9 years old. Chalkbeat reported that her sister was hurt in a shooting downtown when she was six, and the sister has since recovered. “I do want young kids to put the guns down,” she told the outlet.

Brown told Chalkbeat that young people are impressionable and like to be engaged and entertained, and that reaching them in a positive way can build a coalition of leaders. Dr. Elinore Kaufman, a Penn associate professor of surgery and the institute’s co-founder, treats some of the city’s youngest gunshot patients and sometimes hears that their problems began online, according to the outlet. She ran focus groups with the cohort this summer. She told Chalkbeat that when adults do not take time to understand what happens on social media, chances for prevention are missed.

Chalkbeat reported that the effect on shootings is not yet known. Kaufman will evaluate the program, but she told the outlet that changing a narrative is hard to measure, and that it would be grandiose to expect work with 15 young people to bring down the city’s shooting rate. She also said she sees a lot of potential in involving the young people most directly affected. This fall Brown began taking creators to schools in North and West Philadelphia, and the group will now show the new video at special assemblies, according to Chalkbeat. The outlet noted related efforts, including a local movement of young artists pushing for less violent rap lyrics.

Our reflection

A nine-year-old should be thinking about recess. This one is on camera asking older kids to put the guns down, because she already knows what a shooting does to a family. Fifteen young people in that first cohort learned to say something true about the violence around them, and now they are walking into school auditoriums to say it in front of their peers. On some blocks, being seen asking for peace can carry a price. They are doing it anyway.

The harder part of this story is about the rest of us. Dr. Kaufman said that when adults are not paying attention, the online conflicts that end up in her trauma bay go unseen. So be honest about your own feed. Most of us have watched a fight video to the end, and some of us have shared one or laughed. Plenty of us handed a child a phone and never asked what was on it, because asking is awkward and we were tired. That is not neutral. Jesus said what defiles a person comes from inside (Mark 7:20 to 23), and a taste for other people’s pain as entertainment is one of those inside things. The algorithm learned it from us.

John tells about another crowd too big for what was on hand. Five thousand hungry people. Philip ran the numbers and said two hundred denarii of bread would not give everyone a bite. Andrew found a boy with five barley loaves, the cheap bread of poor families, and two small fish, and he asked the question every honest evaluator asks: what are they among so many? Jesus did not scold the boy for bringing too little. He had the people sit down and took the bread in his hands. When he had given thanks, he handed it out. Afterward he told his disciples to gather the leftover pieces so nothing would be lost.

Kaufman’s caution is that same honest question, and I trust her more for asking it. Nobody should promise that a video at a school assembly will move Philadelphia’s shooting numbers. The multiplying belongs to God. Our part is the boy’s part: put what you actually have in his hands and let him do with it what he will. That lifts the weight of a whole city off a nine-year-old. It also takes away our favorite excuse, that our offering is too small to bother.

Change like this usually starts the way it started here. A young person who has been hurt gets real training and a real platform, then talks to peers in the language they already speak, while adults pay attention and pay the bills. We see it in our hip hop and film work and in the rooms inside juvenile detention where we teach: a young man will often hear a verse from someone who sounds like home before he will hear a lecture from someone who does not. The evaluation matters too. Faithful work should want to know whether it is working.

You can do a version of this where you live. This week, ask a teenager you love to show you what is on their feed, and listen longer than you talk. Find out who in your city teaches young people to make music or film. Give them money or a room to work in. Sometimes the thing they need most is a ride. If you lead a church or a school, open your doors for an assembly the young people run themselves.

The steps below are small. Bring them anyway, and pray for these young creators as they walk into those North and West Philadelphia schools.

There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?

John 6:9

Source: Chalkbeat, “A new coalition of student creators hopes content can stem violence among their peers”