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Council Member Williams engages audience on impact of gun violence and community perspectives
2:25:52
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73 sec
Council Member Jumaane Williams engages the audience to highlight the impact of gun violence on communities and critiques how victims are often used to justify harmful policies. He emphasizes the disconnect between those who speak about affected communities and those who actually live with the violence daily.
- Williams asks audience members to raise hands if affected by gun violence
- He criticizes the use of victims to justify policies that harm their communities
- Williams highlights the disconnect between outside voices and community leaders dealing with violence firsthand
- He emphasizes that affected communities have been asking for specific interventions for a long time, but often only receive increased law enforcement responses
Jumaane Williams
2:25:52
Just really quickly, for folks who are in the audience, how many people either have a family member or a friend who's affected by gun violence or a violent crime?
2:26:02
Just raise your hand.
2:26:03
And of those, how many people want us to get rid of the database?
2:26:08
I want to say that because very often victims are brought up in a way that's meant to harm the communities the victims came from.
2:26:15
But quite frankly, if you speak to the victims, all they really want is this to be prevented and they want it to stop.
2:26:21
They also don't want the over policing that often comes with it and so if we wanna talk about victims, think we should speak to victims and bring up what they're really struggling with.
2:26:30
I also am always interested in the representatives of communities that don't deal with this violence and how loudly they speak about or against the communities and the organizations and the leaders that actually live with this violence daily, go to the funerals and console the families who for whatever reason are thought to be, I don't know if it's genetically or socially designed to not have understanding of what's going on in the community and what they need to stop it, things that they've been asking for a very very long time that have not happened, but continually get a law enforcement arrest and generationally the violence is still occurring.