Shawn was at home, scrounging for change, when he heard the sudden crack of gunshots. Outside, he found a young man lying on the sidewalk, surrounded by neighbors. It was his best friend, Brandon. They lived just a block apart and often spent the night at each other’s houses. They sometimes went out together to buy loose cigarettes, hitting up passersby for quarters.

Now Brandon, not yet out of high school, lay on the ground, bleeding and unresponsive. A man knelt and held his head. It was a gusty December afternoon, mild for the season. The others glanced up at Shawn. But he hung back and said little. He remembers that his friend’s eyes were closed. He would not see them open again.

“I ain’t never really seen anything like that,” he says, his voice sinking almost to a whisper. He adds, “I couldn’t even cry. It took me until the next day.”  

The Chicago police later said that Brandon McKnight had been walking down 66th Street when two men ran up from behind and shot him. He died that night in a local public hospital. It was one of many shootings in Chicago that week, and it received only passing mention in the newspapers. The death of another young Black man intruded only briefly upon the consciousness of a city where such crime was becoming more common. It was soon forgotten. 

But not by Shawn. The hurt of that day still gnaws at him, the details of the killing still fresh in his mind. The killing was both a wrenching loss and a moment of piercing clarity. It took his best friend, but it also reminded him of the precariousness of his own life. “If it could happen to him,” he thought, “it could happen to me.”

Gun violence is surging in the United States. After decades of decline, the murder rate is nearing record levels in many American cities. In Chicago, there were 943 homicides in 1992. By 2013 the number had dropped to 415. But by last year it had risen back to 797, the most in 25 years. Some cities, like Philadelphia, are seeing more murders than ever.

John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/AP/File

Police investigate a double shooting in which a toddler was hit when a man fired at her father as they walked in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood in 2018.

What’s happening? No one knows for sure. Law enforcement officials and experts on violence say possible causes include the strain and disruptions of the coronavirus, the civil unrest of recent years, and a police backlash to the “defund the police” movement. Some also point to more systemic problems, including persistent segregation, growing inequality, and long festering issues in poor Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, among them a deep distrust of the police.

“This isn’t a new problem for our cities,” said Roseanna Ander, founding executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, speaking in a recent panel discussion with violence prevention experts in Chicago. “This has been happening for decades. I think what’s happening in the last two years is that we’ve thrown gasoline on an already raging fire.”

Rising crime – not just murders but also carjackings and “smash and grab” assaults on local businesses – has alarmed residents of Chicago and other American cities and emerged as a major political issue only months before midterm elections. Officials are looking for ways to get tough on it. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has proposed that the city confiscate the property of gang members. In March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams revived a controversial anti-gun police unit that had been disbanded in 2020 amid criticism that it was overly aggressive and contributed to a disproportionate number of police shootings.

But that’s not the whole story. There’s also a growing movement to fight gun violence through community efforts that strengthen neighborhoods, families, and individuals most caught up in it. Led by nonprofit groups, increasingly in cooperation with local governments, these efforts include reaching out to young people most at risk of shooting or getting shot, organizing activities to build trust within afflicted neighborhoods, and promoting norms of nonviolence. They even include mowing vacant lots to make streets feel safer.

“There’s a whole garden of approaches, with different styles and modalities and theories of change,” says Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “What’s new, or seems new, is that we’ve reached the point that relying on law enforcement for all of our public safety problems became too obviously problematic.”

Indeed, this community-based approach springs from a conviction among researchers, neighborhood leaders, and others that curbing violence cannot be left to police alone, but needs more effort to address its causes. It means helping neighborhoods not only wracked by violence but also fractured by poverty and neglect, with underperforming schools, poor housing, too few jobs, and inadequate health care. It means helping young men who have grown up where violence is the currency of the streets, where retaliation is the law, and where threats, taunts, and slights, often amplified by social media, can lead quickly to confrontation. 

Richard Mertens

Shawn (a nickname) uses a printing press to customize a sweatshirt at a workshop run by Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation in Chicago. The workshop, part of the nonprofit’s anti-violence efforts, teaches young men practical skills.

Support for these efforts is growing. In Chicago, for example, the city coordinates the work of dozens of organizations in an expanding network called Communities Partnering 4 Peace, formed in 2016. Last December, Illinois appropriated $250 million over three years for anti-violence programs, a month after Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared gun violence a public health crisis. Meanwhile, Build Back Better, President Joe Biden’s social spending plan, includes $5 billion for community intervention nationwide.

The most popular anti-violence programs, and the best funded, focus on at-risk youth. In recent years, Shawn has been involved in one such effort in Back of the Yards, a mostly Black and Hispanic neighborhood that borders the once sprawling expanse of the Chicago stockyards. It’s where his friend died, in 2015, as gun violence began to rise in the city.

Shawn isn’t his real name. It’s a nickname he gives when the police stop him, he says. “When they dig a little deeper, they’ll find my real name,” he adds, smiling faintly. He doesn’t want to use his real name because he’s worried about rival groups and the risk of calling attention to himself.  

The place where Shawn has been getting help is called Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation. It’s a small Roman Catholic-run organization that cooperates with other groups to provide services to the neighborhood. He’s found refuge there, as well as encouragement, friendship, educational opportunity, and job training. It’s not all gone well, but it’s helped him, so far, avoid the worst.   

Precious Blood occupies second-floor offices at a public school on Chicago’s Near South Side. It is a welcoming place, as much community center as office space. People come and go all day, ducking into a warren of cubicles or, more often, meeting acquaintances in the big, sunny common room just off the main hallway. 

Precious Blood embraces the principle of “radical hospitality.” That means extending a welcome to everyone, especially those whom other institutions – schools, families, the justice system – have failed. “People come because there’s no one else to turn to,” says the Rev. David Kelly, founder and executive director. 

Richard Mertens

The Rev. David Kelly, founder and executive director of Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, started the Catholic-run program that helps young people after a career working in the juvenile justice system.

It’s not easy. Precious Blood strives for what Mr. Kelly calls “relentless engagement.” Many participants are grappling with mental illness; for them, simply getting the medications they need is a struggle. The people at Precious Blood try to stick with them. When young men drift away from the program, as they often do, they are welcomed back. Mr. Kelly describes one young man he has just spoken with that morning, a regular at the center who nonetheless is in and out of trouble and talked to him from a juvenile detention center.

“A lot of people might say you ain’t doing much good,” he admits. “I can understand that. But coming to the center, at least he’s doing that. He’s on that path.” He adds, “We never give up on anyone.” 

Mr. Kelly, who grew up in Ohio, started the program in 2002 after a long career working with young people in the juvenile justice system. He saw that the system did little to address the deeper problems facing these youths and their families. “The criminal justice system isn’t about healing our communities, only punishing them,” he says. He says the causes of violence haven’t been addressed.

“It’s complicated,” he says. “People want to know, ‘What’s the issue?’ There isn’t one issue. It’s compound issues. And when you compound them, things break down.”

Precious Blood addresses this breakdown in ways big and small. It shows movies in parks, organizes free-haircut events, sets up food trucks, and helps poor families find housing or pay for utilities. It hosts meetings for mothers who have children in prison or have lost them to violence. It arranges mental health care for young men in its program – or helps them buy gas or find a place to live. It involves them in community service, such as raking leaves. It offers job training.

Shay Knox is head of outreach at Precious Blood. She’s employed by another Chicago organization, the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, and is an example of how local groups collaborate with each other. Ms. Shay lives in the neighborhood and became involved with young people after a friend lost a son to a shooting. “A lot of them I’ve known since they were little kids, and I know their parents,” she says. She doesn’t just recruit them. She looks after them in all sorts of ways, driving them to job interviews or court appearances, handing out donated coats and hats – or mediating disputes. Most importantly, she says, “We try to give them a place where they can relax and be themselves. And we listen.”

Precious Blood’s specialty is restorative justice. The aim is to strengthen relationships and resolve conflicts by encouraging understanding and trust. Precious Blood organizes “peace circles” in which participants sit across from each other in a big, high-ceilinged room, choose from a collection of “talking pieces,” and share their thoughts and feelings. Shawn has attended circles with other young men from the neighborhood. “It was relaxing,” he says. They especially liked the food at the end.

Nam Y. Huh/AP/File

Kim Smith works on her computer in 2018 at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which has received funding from professional sports teams in Chicago as part of an effort to curb youth violence.

Nam Y. Huh/AP/File

Kim Smith works on her computer in 2018 at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which has received funding from professional sports teams in Chicago as part of an effort to curb youth violence.

Anti-violence programs often differ in philosophy and emphasis, but most follow the same basic strategy. Outreach workers identify and befriend at-risk youth. Once in, participants receive counseling and other help to address lingering trauma from witnessing shootings, losing family or friends, or being shot at themselves.

Case managers offer mentoring and “life coaching” to guide them through adversity. Many participants have dropped out of high school, and so educational programming gives them an opportunity to earn a diploma. Finally, workforce development programs teach them skills and help them find jobs. Often participants receive stipends as an incentive to keep them coming back and to give them a boost toward self-reliance.

Does it work? There’s evidence that it does. Researchers have found that participants in these programs are less likely to be involved in shootings. But an approach that focuses on individuals is expensive and limited in scope: It can reach only a small number of people. 

“They’re seeing gains,” says Andrew Papachristos, a sociologist at Northwestern University and director of the Northwestern Neighborhood & Network Initiative. “But it’s hard to say it’s bringing violence down. It’s not affecting the overall rate of violence.” 

For this reason, some researchers argue that violence prevention needs to focus more on improving communities than on saving individuals. “People understand violence as an individual problem,” says Charles Branas, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. “They think if we just reach a person early enough we can stop that violence. We understand it as a community problem. ... You have to deal with the community problem before more people get exposed.”

One example can be found in Flint, Michigan, where the Genesee County Land Bank has been organizing local efforts to maintain vacant lots. Like many Rust Belt cities, Flint has them in abundance, a consequence of industrial decline and population loss. They often grow weedy and trash-filled, giving neighborhoods a derelict look and making them susceptible to crime.

Started in 2004, the Land Bank’s program, called Clean and Green, maintains 3,600 lots, contracting with community organizations to do the work. Although some studies suggest that this kind of urban greening can lead to gentrification, people in Flint say it’s made streets look more inviting and feel safer. Research from the University of Michigan’s Youth Violence Prevention Center says it’s reduced violent crime by 40%.

“I think the work we’re doing is brightening up the neighborhood,” says the Rev. Lamarr Griggs, pastor of Flint’s Second Chance Ministries Deliverance Church. For a decade the church has recruited parishioners and local youth to pick up litter and mow the grass on 70 lots. Mr. Griggs believes the work has lifted neighborhood spirits and inspired residents to spend more time outside. “I think that’s deterred the crime,” he says. 

Advocates like Mr. Branas say place-based efforts like Flint’s also make good economic sense. “It’s inexpensive, and it’s scalable,” he says. “We can do it in a lot of places. I do think there’s a huge opportunity that we’re not taking advantage of.”

Richard Mertens

Two young men gather lengths of aluminum to use in a workshop run by Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, a nonprofit that does antiviolence work and helps Chicago neighborhoods.

For many young men in Chicago, guns and violence are as much a part of growing up as girls and basketball. Shawn’s father was a member of the Black P. Stones, a large Chicago gang, and eventually so was he. Everyone belonged to a group, Shawn says, if only for self-defense. “If you aren’t, people are going to look at you in a certain way,” he says. “Someone’s going to try you.”

Gangs aren’t what they once were, and the changes have made street life more chaotic and unpredictable for young people. Gone are the old hierarchies that could enforce order in neighborhoods, says Ms. Knox of Precious Blood. Killings, arrests, and mass incarceration have swept away older leadership, leaving a loose collection of “cliques.” “Now there’s no one to listen to,” she says.

Shawn won’t say exactly when he began carrying a gun. He says simply, “I was at the age. I was in the gang. I was ready to use it. Everybody had them.” He’s been arrested twice on gun charges. He once spent six months at the Cook County Jail, an experience he is eager not to repeat. 

The killing of his friend Brandon was only one of many in his life. Among old friends and acquaintances he counts “10 dead, like 30 in jail.” 

“It’s scary ’cause you don’t know when your time comes,” Shawn says, echoing the fatalism of many young men. “It could be your friend who kills you. They know everything about you.” 

The killing of friends, along with the early death of his mother, not only taught him a wariness of the streets; it also filled him with rage. “I was mad at everybody,” he says, “taking my anger out on people.” 

In this, too, he is far from alone. Living with violence, real and potential, exacts a heavy price on young men. It’s why advocates say treating their psychological wounds, including post-traumatic stress disorder, is crucial.

“Outreach has been a thing forever,” says Dorothy Wilson, lead therapist at Chicago CRED, a nonprofit working to reduce gun violence in Chicago. “But mental health has not been part of the picture.”

One of the biggest challenges is offering young men an alternative to gang life without removing them from their neighborhoods. For many of them, the choice is clear, if hard to attain. “The question I get most,” says Mr. Kelly, “is, ‘Can I get a job?’”

Martha Irvine/AP/File

Taqi Thomas (right) patrols the streets of Chicago in 2019 with another member of Cure Violence, an early group working to stem shootings. Other organizations today are building on its approach, offering expanded services to neighborhoods – and individuals – most caught up in violence.

On a late fall day, several young men toil in Precious Blood’s workshop, a small brick building across the street from the main offices. A teen named Josh and an older youth named Willy (they didn’t want to give their last names) are in the basement, crafting talking pieces out of plywood. The shapes are cut with a jigsaw and computerized router, sanded by hand, and then finished with shellac. Precious Blood sells them online.

The work is typical of anti-violence programs. The aim is to teach practical skills, such as operating woodworking machinery, but also problem-solving. One project last fall was building a small greenhouse from discarded aluminum pipes. Maybe more important is teaching necessary workplace habits, like showing up on time.

Willy sits at a small table, bent over his work. He sands with deep concentration while earbuds blare religious rap music. “Anytime I go to the wood shop, I get in my head space,” he says.  

Like Shawn, Willy has been coming to Precious Blood for several years. “It’s like a second home,” he says. He says he’s been trying since he was a boy to distance himself from gang life.

“When I was young we had mini fights, just seeing who was toughest,” he recalls. And yet, he says, “I’m not really a gangbanger.” He describes that life as “selling drugs, shooting at people, trying to make a name for yourself. You’re either the bully, or you know how to fight.” 

Now, he goes on, “I’m really trying to maintain focus, get a job. I like working at the workshop, but [I want] something bigger and better.” He’d like to design video games and has already put some up on YouTube.  

Joining an anti-violence program confers no immunity from violence. One day, Willy arrived early and sat on the front stoop, waiting for the shop to open. Suddenly a truck sped past. Bullets flew. But Willy was only grazed, and he didn’t take it personally.

“If you’re in the neighborhood, you’re part of this environment. ... People from another neighborhood who have a beef with our neighborhood, they’ll retaliate. They didn’t know who I was.”

Upstairs, Shawn runs a six-armed machine that sits like a giant spider at one end of the room. It’s used to print customized T-shirts and sweatshirts, which Precious Blood sells to other nonprofits. Today he’s finishing a batch of hoodies for the Precious Blood staff, printing in white ink on black fabric the organization’s acronym – PBMR. Shawn is tall and lean, with long dreadlocks and a scruffy beard. He has plenty of street smarts, and a dry sense of humor that his co-workers enjoy. “You should be at Second City,” one of them jokes, referring to Chicago’s famous improvisation theater. “I know,” Shawn says, grinning. “I should.” 

He never finished school. He has tried more than once to continue his education, but it has never worked out. “Every time I try to do it, it gets harder and harder,” he says. “I just lost interest.”

He’s learned printing at Precious Blood and, if nothing else, enjoys the feeling of safety the work gives him. “If it’s not here, I don’t feel comfortable,” he says. He’s still haunted by the killing of Brandon and other friends. The streets still feel dangerous. “That’s my reality now,” he says. “I don’t get into no car, no bus.” When he does go out, he walks fast. Wariness like this is typical. He deleted his Facebook postings, he says, but it was too late. “My face is already out there,” he says.

Then, just before the holidays, Shawn finds evening work at a shipping warehouse. It’s what everyone yearns for: a real job. But in January, he’s back at Precious Blood, working the printing machine. Asked what he wants for his future, he answers without hesitation.

“I hope I’m here to tell the story.” 

Luis Echeverria/Reuters

Erika Aifán, a judge with Guatemala's high-risk court and a leading figure in the country's fight against corruption, fled into exile this month in fear for her life. She was the 15th prominent Guatemalan judicial official forced to make such a move in the past year.

One of Guatemala’s most important judges, Erika Aifán, fled the country this month, saying she feared for her life. Her departure was not only a blow to Guatemala’s judicial independence, but it also signaled the shrinking influence of U.S. diplomacy in Central America.

Ms. Aifán sat on Guatemala’s high-risk court, and became at least the 15th high-profile judge or prosecutor to flee the country in less than a year. For more than a decade, Guatemala had been held up as the regional example of how to investigate high-level corruption; the rapid departure of so many independent members of the judiciary underscores the nation’s drastic about-face on fighting impunity.

Biden administration officials had repeatedly praised Ms. Aifán as an example of leadership. Yet, “that support did not have the impact [the U.S.] had hoped,” she told The Washington Post last week after announcing that she was afraid to return home because she risked being detained, despite a two-decade-long career in the justice system.

As Central America backslides from democracy, it is not just the unraveling of Guatemala’s judiciary that is raising questions about the strength of Washington’s regional sway. The region as a whole has become “a testing ground for authoritarian leaders,” says Renzo Rosal, a political analyst in Guatemala City.

In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government has become a byword for overt power grabs and human rights abuses. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has cracked down on civil liberties, suspending them for 30 days last weekend when he declared a state of emergency to combat gang violence, a tool he also used during the pandemic. And in Honduras, the last president’s party jerry-rigged the constitution so that he could run for, and win, a questionable second term in office.

The Biden administration has sought to tackle migration from Central America through its Root Cause strategy, meant to reduce economic inequality, strengthen anti-corruption initiatives, promote human rights, and prevent organized crime, addressing the underlying issues that drive many Central Americans to leave home.

Andres Nunez/AP/File

Residents watch the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on a giant screen at a park in Managua, Nicaragua, Jan. 10, 2022. Mr. Ortega won the election after jailing seven rival candidates.

But while U.S. officials “put out their message or express their disappointment,” says Mr. Rosal, “they don’t follow it up. There’s no real consequence, no teeth” to Washington’s warnings, he says.

Central America poses a complex challenge, says Christine Wade, an expert on the region at Washington College, in Chesterton, Maryland. “U.S. policy in Central America has often wavered between two poles – interventionism and benign neglect. We’re either invading or ignoring,” she says.

“In the post-Cold War era, the U.S. has really struggled to figure out what a constructive U.S. policy would look like in the region.”

“The U.S. can do a lot more”

Ms. Aifán spent the past six years as the head of a high-stakes court specialized in investigating complex criminal cases. She has tried prominent businesspeople, judges, and politicians on charges of corruption and money laundering, cases that have earned her enemies and death threats.

Washington showed its backing for judges and prosecutors like Ms. Aifán in recent years, protesting moves by the Guatemalan Congress and the attorney general, Consuelo Porras, to block corruption investigations, remove independent judges, and pack the Constitutional Court. The U.S. ambassador attended a hearing in a case against Ms. Aifán to demonstrate his support.

But “the sense is the U.S. can do a lot more,” says Maureen Meyer, vice president for programs at the Washington Office on Latin America and author of a recent report analyzing President Joe Biden’s policies in Latin America after one year in office.

Sanctions against Guatemalan politicians could be expanded to target other key players, such as businesspeople, she suggests.

Corrie Welch, advocacy director for the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, says the U.S. should consider cutting its investment aid in light of multiple arrests of prosecutors and a recent law restricting the work of nongovernmental organizations. Ms. Welch also proposes that Washington might oppose International Monetary Fund loans to the Guatemalan government, or even seek Guatemala’s suspension from the Central American Free Trade Agreement. 

Moises Castillo/AP/File

Juan Francisco Sandoval, Guatemala's lead prosecutor against impunity, in 2019. In an about-face for the country's fight against corruption, Mr. Sandoval was charged last November with crimes of abuse of authority, usurpation of powers, fraud, and conspiracy.

Last summer the U.S. Department of Justice launched an anti-corruption task force, and later a tip line, in a bid to identify Central American crimes involving U.S. connections that would give U.S. courts jurisdiction. As the program nears its first anniversary, observers are waiting to see if it has yielded any cases. 

The Biden administration has already cut aid from institutions that obstruct its efforts to strengthen independent judiciaries. Last May, when the Salvadoran Congress voted to sack the attorney general and five Supreme Court judges, USAID diverted aid from the Congress, the police, and another government body, and gave it instead to civil society organizations working on transparency and fighting corruption. Activists say this move should be replicated elsewhere in the region.

How high a U.S. priority?

But Washington’s efforts have not had much visible impact, yet.

In Nicaragua, President Ortega has consolidated his autocratic grip over the country since jailing seven of his rivals for the presidency last year. Honduras’ political crisis, violence, and international criminal links have only become worse since a 2009 coup that the U.S. did little to decry. In El Salvador, Mr. Bukele is using his online savvy to publicly troll the U.S., nixing any chance of back-channel diplomatic talks as he chips away at the few remaining checks on his power. And Guatemala’s internationally backed anti-corruption investigation unit collapsed in 2019, without eliciting a strong response from Washington.

“Because the U.S. failed to push back when these institutions were under threat, that opened a door for them to be dismantled,” says Ms. Meyer. “It’s harder to put something back together than to work to sustain it.”

The halfheartedness of Washington’s efforts to make its influence felt may be explained by Central America’s low ranking in the table of U.S. security threats. “What we know about U.S. policy in Latin America is that other crises preoccupy the U.S. and the region drops off the radar,” says Dr. Wade.

Certainly, Central Americans suspected of corruption and targeted by U.S. sanctions do not appear to be intimidated, says Mr. Rosal. He says he has seen a shift over the past five years in how Guatemalan elites perceive sanctions.

“It’s almost a joke, people getting placed on the Engel list or Magnitsky” list of sanctioned individuals, he says. “They talk about it as if they’re proud. It shows a really troublesome loss of U.S. influence.”

The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. is a Methodist minister whose theories and strategies of nonviolence were used in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. His new book – “Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom,” a collection of his talks and dialogues – is a “how to” guide for the next generation.

In a wide-ranging conversation, edited for length and clarity, Mr. Lawson touched on the war in Ukraine; an FBI investigation of dozens of bomb threats against historically Black colleges and universities this year; last year’s Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol; and lynching, which became a federal hate crime today when President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law.  He told the Monitor that most changes in history aren’t wrought by violence, but by “changes of the mind [and] of the spirit.”

When you speak of “revolutionary nonviolence,” what do you mean by revolutionary?

The old concepts in Western philosophy and politics that put the emphasis upon violence as the key to revolution miss a major discussion. Most of the major changes in the human journey have been changes of the mind, of the spirit, intellectual discoveries, discoveries of where we are in the universe. The biggest illustration of what I’m talking about is the Rosa Parks-Martin Luther King campaign of the civil rights movement, between 1953 and 1973. We shot at no one. We did not take up arms. We rather armed ourselves with the love of God, and the love of ourselves, and the love of others, and insisted that enmity could be defeated.

With dozens of bomb threats at HBCUs this year, how can this insidious intimidation be countered? 

We had the same kind of insidious intimidation in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. We also had the bombings – the overt violence, but also white mobs allowed by the police to try their intimidation of our quiet sit-ins or poster walks. What you’ve described is a steady part of the history of our country.

Courtesy of National SCLC

The Rev. James Lawson Jr. leads a nonviolence workshop in Nashville in 1960. His pupils would go on to be key figures in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.

So, in that history, is the civil rights struggle in the U.S. at a higher or a lower stage now?

We’re at a higher stage and a more perplexing stage. Racism wasn’t talked about on public stages in the ’40s, and the ’50s, and ’60s. Lynching was talked about by the Black press, but the white press stayed away from it largely. I started reading The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor as a high school student in the early ’40s. Neither of your papers really helped me with the issues of lynching and segregation. The Black press did that far better.

Jan. 6 is perhaps a new level of violence that we have never experienced as a nation. One cannot say that that was a legitimate demonstration because it was not peaceful. Across the nation, there ought to be a careful study of the Declaration of Independence. It is a very clear spiritual, moral, political statement about who we human beings are. At what point is that being taught, so that a public emerges in our country which will not do threats to people, threatening bombing, or doing the Jan. 6 business as [a] form of political, social, human discourse in the United States? 

How do you talk to kids about nonviolence?

The Little Rock Nine is the best illustration. I asked them how their parents and the NAACP asked them to behave. And they said, “We were told not to fight back.” So I said, “What the NAACP and your parents meant is not, not to fight back, but not to fight back like the hostility you’re receiving. You’re already fighting back with your character and with your courage of going through the halls of Central High School with often persistent heckling and intimidation.”  

I asked them, “What’s the worst thing that could happen to you?”

One of the girls said to me, “The bombing!” A boy would take a rock or a steel ball and wrap it in paper and hurl it at them.

So I asked, “Is it possible you could stand still, and hold your breath, and then pick up the bomb off the floor, and carry it back to the person who you knew threw it?”

And that’s precisely what a couple of the girls did in their resistance.

What did that resistance achieve? 

One boy was obstinately unbearable with his language. Carlotta Walls told me that [his] “bomb” hit the wall on the side of the room and fell, and she says she was trembling. And she did take a breath. She picked it up and carried it back to that boy’s desk. She said he turned all kind of complexions and could not speak. But the next morning, when she walked into that class, that boy said, with a big smile, “Good morning, Carlotta.”

There are a lot of stories like that. You can discern that there is a way of acting that does help personal and social transformation, and that’s what I call nonviolence or soul force. 

In the book you urge “resisting the venom in our society with a quiet ‘no.’” What about Ukraine?

I have no doubt that in that scenery of Ukraine, all kinds of people are being more faithful to the power of their lives than to the violence. Most ordinary people in the world do not support the power struggles that hurt and maim other people. That is generally work of the kings, and principalities, the power brokers who have not yet recognized the alternative ways to use power.

Ederique Goudia isn’t the type who stops moving. From November through February, her life was like a hurricane’s gust, tossing her about the country between the community that raised her and the place she now calls home.

In early November, Ms. Goudia and an entourage of chefs made their way from Detroit to her childhood hometown of Wallace, Louisiana, a community of nearly 600 about 50 miles outside New Orleans that had been pummeled by Hurricane Ida’s Category 4 strength last summer. Her foodways colleagues Raphael Wright and Jermond Booze, among a host of others from their home in Detroit, rallied around her and organized a day of service for the community, followed by their group’s inaugural diaspora dinner. It was their way of showing appreciation for Wallace, as well as their dear colleague Ms. Goudia.

The day after they arrived back in Detroit, Ms. Goudia and company made a beeline back to the kitchen, where they began working alongside colleagues to prepare 50 family-sized Thanksgiving meals for their food-insecure community members. The meals were prepared through the food security group Make Food Not Waste, of which Ms. Goudia is the lead chef. 

Food relief is about more than physical sustenance for Ms. Goudia and the many chefs who volunteer alongside her. It is a rung on the ladder to stability. And it can be the glue that holds communities together. “It creates a shared song amongst people, of a reset,” says Detroit chef Kwaku Osei-Bonsu, founder of ​​BlackMetroEats and one of the volunteers who traveled to Wallace with Ms. Goudia.

So when the calendar turned to 2022, she and her colleagues donned their aprons once again for another marathon community service event, the second annual “Taste the Diaspora,” an initiative celebrating Black history through food. From late January through early February, they prepared “shoebox lunches,” community events like scavenger hunts, and special kitchen table sit-downs with the city’s foodways participants and other Black-owned businesses. 

Valaurian Waller

Chef Ederique Goudia embraces a statue commemorating the children who were enslaved on the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana.

“Whatever you need”

After Ida hit southeast Louisiana, Ms. Goudia knew she wanted to – had to – do something to help folks back home, but it wasn’t initially her idea to jump into action. It was her friends and colleagues, Mr. Wright and Mr. Booze, who collaborate alongside Ms. Goudia on “Taste the Diaspora.” They were among the first to ask how her family fared, and they were well aware that it wasn’t feasible to get to Louisiana to help right away, as disaster recovery dragged on for weeks after the storm. They then suggested hosting local pop-up fundraisers. Before long, they had gathered a group of 15 or so members of the Detroit food community interested in traveling to Wallace. 

“Whatever you need, we’re there,” Ms. Goudia remembers her colleagues telling her. But it wasn’t immediately clear how the team could help. How do you heal a community that has literally been torn asunder?

That question weighed on Ms. Goudia’s heart as she watched her hometown endure Ida – the fifth-most powerful storm ever to arrive on the mainland United States – from a distance. It sat on her conscience, because she knows small towns like hers don’t often receive disaster relief quickly while efforts concentrate on metro areas like New Orleans and Baton Rouge first. Wallace sits in the middle of a petrochemical corridor and has long struggled with environmental justice issues.

Ida made landfall on Aug. 29. As Ms. Goudia checked on her family, the Detroit food scene leaped into action. For a week in September, they hosted fundraisers every day, including a New Orleans bounce cardio workout at a gym Ms. Goudia works at – an ode to the city’s signature style of music – and a pay-what-you-can pig roast at a local craft brewery. 

In total they raised $8,500 and they distributed it to Wallace residents through the Descendants Project, an advocacy group for descendants of formerly enslaved people in Louisiana’s river parishes. Ms. Goudia’s cousins, Joy and Jo Banner, lead the group. 

By the time Ms. Goudia and her colleagues were ready to head to Wallace themselves, word had spread through the Detroit area. Soon sponsorships began rolling in: The Kresge Foundation, which expands opportunities for low-income individuals nationwide, was the first major group to chip in. Then ProsperUS Detroit, an economic development initiative, pitched in. Turning Tables NOLA caught wind of their efforts soon after and offered to help as well.  

Foodways colleague Raphael Wright describes their effort as “a labor of love.”

“The moment we found out about the hurricane, we instantly said, ‘We got to go down there,’” Mr. Wright says.

The Detroit food community’s support for Ms. Goudia and her hometown was, in some ways, as emotionally overwhelming as watching Ida hit her family. At the same time, it wasn’t surprising. It’s what Ms. Goudia has come to know as the heart of Detroit.

“The hospitality that lives in Detroit, it isn’t a one-off,” says Ms. Goudia. “It isn’t surprising at all, because there is this Southern hospitality that’s here, that’s unmatched.”

So much more than food

On the day of the Wallace dinner, as always, Ms. Goudia didn’t stop moving. She and her volunteers worked through the afternoon to prepare an evening meal of a beet-based African dish, mirliton dressing, baked spaghetti, cornbread tea cakes, and pralines.

As he leaned against a picnic table out front, opening cans of corn, Mr. Osei-Bonsu of BlackMetroEats reflected on his and others’ trip down South so far, and what he hoped the meal would mean for the community.

Healing a community’s emotional wounds through food “is definitely something that’s impactful,” Mr. Osei-Bonsu says. “Today will be about so much more than just the consumption of food. It’ll also be a dialogue.”

Excited, folks were already showing up for dinner before the table in Wallace’s local farmers market was even set. Wallace resident Darlene Percy was among the first to arrive.

Ms. Percy expressed how appreciative she and other community members were of Ms. Goudia and the volunteers’ organizing efforts over the past few months.

“A lot of times, we look at the big cities, and never the small communities” after storms, Ms. Percy says. “With [Ms. Goudia] shedding light and providing resources, I think that’s great for the community – to let everyone know that we were also impacted.”

Ms. Goudia and company consider that a success.

“That was the whole point,” Ms. Goudia says from her home in Detroit several weeks later. To use “food in a way that breathes life into people, that gives them what they didn’t think they needed at the time.” She stops and reflects for a moment. “I think we were successful in that.”

Importantly, she adds, “everybody that came on the trip is now family. Not only with me, but with the residents of Wallace. I was blessed to be able to provide that for them, and with them.”

AP

Soldiers protect a neighborhood that is home to the Barrio 18 Gang in San Salvador, El Salvador, March 27.

When Nayib Bukele was elected president of El Salvador not quite three years ago, the former businessman vowed to tame the country’s rampant murder rate, then the highest in the world. He promised to boost law enforcement and build community centers in a handful of municipalities where violent gangs were deeply rooted. By the end of last year, El Salvador’s murder rate had dropped by half.

An eruption of violence that killed 87 people last weekend has suddenly disrupted that simple narrative. It may also have a wider ripple at a time that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described as “a moment of democratic reckoning” in Latin America.

The rate of violent crime in the region is three times the global average, according to the United Nations. Several countries have tried to solve the problem variously through accommodation of gangs and drug cartels or repressive police and military tactics. But new democratic governments, notably in Honduras and Chile, are taking a softer turn. Their emphasis on human rights and inclusiveness reflects a truth about crime in Latin America: that while violence has thrived amid weak governments, it has found little space within the region’s strongest democracies.

“The state was established to ensure its inhabitants the enjoyment of justice, freedom, culture, and economic and social well-being,” said Xiomara Castro, the first female president of Honduras, in her inauguration speech in January. She said she wanted her fellow citizens “to feel the presence of a state that guarantees their rights so they can live in peace.”

After the weekend attacks in El Salvador, President Bukele imposed a state of emergency as well as severe new restrictions on gang members in prison. Security forces have closed off neighborhoods known to be gang strongholds. More than 1,000 suspects have been arrested.

Critics question whether the halving of the murder rate in El Salvador was really Mr. Bukele’s doing. They note the community centers he promised remain incomplete and underfunded. Similar declines in the homicide rates in neighboring Honduras and Guatemala suggest pandemic lockdowns played a role. A more likely explanation, local human rights activists say, is that Mr. Bukele may have brokered a secret truce with imprisoned gang lords: new privileges on the inside for assurances of quieter streets on the outside.

He denies the allegation. But government documents show meetings between officials and prisoners occurred. In December, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on two Salvadoran officials accused of brokering a deal. If a truce was made, the weekend violence shows it has unraveled.

Meanwhile, Ms. Castro in Honduras and her new Chilean counterpart, President Gabriel Boric, are seeking to strengthen stability through a renewed emphasis on rights and dignity.

In Honduras, which has the highest rate of women and girls killed in Latin America, Ms. Castro has established the country’s first ministry for women and worked with feminist organizations to draft a law to combat violence against women. In Chile, Mr. Boric has vowed to lift a state of emergency imposed by his predecessor on a region shaken by Mapuche separatists asserting Indigenous land rights through violence. On his first day in office earlier this month, he held a ceremony with seven Indigenous groups at the presidential palace. Restoring dialogue with the groups “is vital to the building of a just and dignified Chile,” he said.

In the United States, cities like Chicago and Boston have pioneered models of violence prevention that help victims of gun violence rebuild their lives and gang members find more constructive opportunities. These programs emphasize the restorative value of building on individual worth. As Chile and Honduras renew their democracies, they are showing their neighbors the power of that ideal.