What happens after a person is shot and killed? After the police are called and the work of the medical professionals is done, after the funeral home doors close and the headlines are tucked away in the archives?
The seven gun violence survivors who participated in this year’s Chicago Survivor Storytelling Workshop answer those questions with revelatory honesty and from vastly different perspectives. Their work stands in stark contrast to typical news stories about gun violence, which tend to follow a sparing formula — one that often fails to capture the long-echoing reverberations a single shooting can have.
In 2023, The Trace launched the workshop in an effort to give the platform over to the survivors themselves, equipping them to tell their stories in their own words. Trace staffers then used these insights to fuel their accountability journalism. This year, the project brought together a group of survivors whose stories aim to inject more humanity, justice, and equity into the systems and supports that activate in the aftermath of a shooting.
Corniki Bornds writes about how she found there was not a single support group for survivors in her neighborhood. In Juan Rendon’s essay, he wonders if his best friend would still be alive if there were more trauma centers.
Delphine Cherry points out how losing her son and daughter 20 years apart and in different parts of the Chicagoland area revealed stark inequities. Her daughter Tamika Howard draws our attention to young people — how disinvestment in their communities leaves them vulnerable to becoming perpetrators or victims of gun violence; how young survivors are often neglected.
Jessica Brown was a teenager in college when her brother and sister were killed. She recounts her heavily impeded, years-long journey to finding out what happened on that horrible day. Melinda Abdallah writes about the community of survivors she has found since her son was killed in Little Village and about the need for everyone to speak up and take action.
For Estela Díaz, who writes about how she was kept from touching her son Zadkiel in the hours after he died, the loss is painfully recent. She faced her son’s killer in the courtroom during the months of the storytelling workshop. At first, she told me she wasn’t sure she could do this program; it was all too fresh, too painful, too present. Yet, she showed up to every meeting, she listened and shared, she looked bravely into the face of the darkest moments of her life and told her story, because, as she told me the day she decided to go forward with the project, “it’s going to help someone, right?”
Every one of the survivors telling their story here lives with their pain, as Jessica Brown said, in every “minute, hour, day, and year.” But they’re opening up their wounds and sharing their stories with you, because they hope that doing so might change something or help someone, maybe even save a life.
It has been a privilege to see them through this small part of their odysseys of grief and healing. As you read their stories, you, too, become a part of their journeys.
— Crystal L. Paul, project manager
From The Trace
- They Lost Loved Ones to Guns. They’re Sharing Their Stories So Things Will Be Different.: Seven gun violence survivors, seven stories of Chicago. How might their experiences drive change?
- Defined and Diminished by Gun Violence: Centuries of inequitable social policy have kept Black Philadelphians dying at disproportionately high rates. Part 1 of 3.
- Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed Against SIG Sauer as Concerns Mount Over Its Signature Handgun: The lawsuit has renewed scrutiny on the gunmaker for alleged defects in its P320 pistol.
- New York City May Require Gun Stores to Post Graphic Product Warnings: The City Council is considering a bill to mandate that gun shops put up signs advising prospective customers about the health and safety risks of owning a firearm.
- In a Deep-Red State, This Lieutenant’s Blueprint for Removing Guns From Abusers Is Spreading: Valerie Martinez-Jordan has trained over 2,000 officers in a Louisiana program to prevent abusers from accessing firearms, even as federal laws become looser.
- Biden Promised Gun Reform. Did He Deliver?: The president vowed to move the needle on gun policy if elected. Now, as he prepares to leave office, advocates reflect on his record.
What to Know This Week
Alan Gottlieb, the bow-tie-bedecked head of the Second Amendment Foundation, visited Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald Trump’s Florida compound, last month. The SAF, which has seen its prominence grow in recent years, is behind dozens of legal challenges, many of them anonymously funded, to gun restrictions. Gottlieb declined to discuss his Florida trip, saying by text that “my Mar-a-Lago conversations are privileged.” In an interview posted online on November 11, he said that his PAC had played a decisive role in turning out gun rights voters for Trump. He said he was headed to Mar-a-Lago for several days to meet with Trump’s transition team and hopefully the president-elect himself. “We have a seat at the table from Day One,” Gottlieb said, “and I am going to make it known what our agenda is and what we are looking for out of the next Trump administration.” — Will Van Sant, staff writer
In a letter to fellow board members, National Rifle Association executive Bill Bachenberg argued that President-elect Donald Trump has “lost faith” in the scandal–plagued gun group, and that it has a “tremendous amount of work to rebuild trust with them, just like our members and donors.” Bachenberg, the NRA’s first vice president, is a Trump loyalist and supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election. [The New York Times]
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning, in what police described as an apparent “premeditated, preplanned targeted attack.” As of Thursday, the shooter was still at large. UnitedHealthcare is one of the largest health insurers in the country; it provides coverage to more than 49 million Americans. [Associated Press/NBC]
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer this week signed legislation that bans openly carrying and restricts gun possession at voting sites. The bill was introduced in February 2023, but did not make it to a final vote before the November election. Michigan is among several states that moved to restrict guns at the polls this year. [Detroit Free Press]
In Memoriam
Isaiah Jeremiah Shackleford, 22, had a lot of people looking out for him — he was the youngest of eight siblings, with a large support network outside his family, too — and a determination to seek out everything life had to offer. Shackleford, known to loved ones as “Zay” or “Zaybo,” was shot last month on Maryland Route 295, driving home to Annapolis from Baltimore; he died the next day. Shackleford was “his own kind of quirky kid,” a family friend told The Baltimore Banner. He was a lifelong drummer, a reliable friend, and a free spirit who liked to do things his own way. “He was love and light,” his sister told the Banner. “He really was just a sweet, shy 22-year-old navigating his way through life, and he was taken way too soon.”
We Recommend
From Border Theater to a Real War on Immigrants?
“Republican-led states have deployed their police agencies to the border, heeding Texas governor Greg Abbott’s call to arms. With Trump’s mass-deportation plans looming, what role will they play?” [The Border Chronicle]
Pull Quote
“We have not addressed poverty, the disinvestment in education, the inability to get jobs, food deserts, housing scarcity, gentrification, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse. We haven’t addressed any of that — but we expect people not to kill each other.”
— Movita Johnson-Harrell, a lifelong Philadelphian who lost her father, her brother, a cousin, and her two sons to shootings, on the systemic inequities — a primary driver of which is racism — at the root of gun violence, interviewed for The Trace’s “The Intergenerational Fallout of Gun Violence”
This newsletter was compiled by senior editor Sunny Sone.
