Some people hear gunshots and they sit right on the steps of their apartment building or their house like it’s the regular thing to hear. I wanted to be a part of the change.
My name is Kenneth. I grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. It was an area that was plagued with shootings.
I took a life when I was seventeen. While I was incarcerated, I had to make a decision whether I was going to leave prison the way that I came in, or leave as a different person. There was nothing so hard out there that I couldn’t deal with, and I instilled that within me.
I was introduced to SOS, which is an anti gun violence program and as I become a part of it, I saw that I was changing and changing and changing, and becoming someone better.
It’s difficult for someone, say, from an ivy league school to come out here and try to do the job because people are going to look at them like, “Who are you? You don’t know anything about this lifestyle, so why should I listen to you?”
That’s when you tell them, “Look at us. We’ve been on those corners, we’ve been the gun carriers, we’ve been the gun shooters, so don’t let anybody tell you that it’s not possible to change your life we are living examples.”
If you allow a person to enter someplace, the possibility of him coming out with a firearm is great. Because you don’t know what happened in there.
We hear a shooting, we go to where that shooting is at. We hear gunshots, we go to where those gunshots is at.
Alright, we’re gonna check it out and see what happened.
In the beginning, the community was reluctant to assist us, work with us.
Save our streets, Crown Heights. Have a good evening!
Some people still look at the high risk individuals as those individuals that they don’t want to be bothered with, that there’s no help for them.
I got a call that there was a shooting on one of the blocks. We got there and a fourteen-year-old young man was shot in the eye and killed. And it was one of the individuals that we knew, and this young man was in the process of making that change when he was shot, and he wasn’t even the intended target.
Our goal is that one day, Crown Heights might stand up and say, “Enough is enough, we’re not going to accept it in our community.”
Don’t shoot! I want to grow up!
I’ve seen a decrease in the shootings and the killings in this neighborhood, so this is why I take that risk.
I am Kenneth, and I am moral courage.
