(00:00:00) What I have been doing for the past few years is not much different than what you've been doing. We've all been looking at the issue of violence. So what I'm coming to do tonight is to talk to you about a perspective on it. I don't know anything. You don't know there's probably no one in this room who could not stand up and talk for many minutes about the issue of violence. As a matter of fact, I know that there are a lot of people in this room who are carrying the luggage of violence heavy luggage. There are people in this room who need comfort from that weight that they carry some of us have been exposed to violence that lasted two minutes and that lasted a lifetime. There are some of us who went through it all of our lives, but all of us are carrying some scars of violence and I want you to know that I know that I have to acknowledge the Minneapolis foundation for even Bringing a group of people in to talk about violence. It's not an issue most places. So I'm really proud of them and I'm proud of you and I'm sorry that you're going to leave here with the amount of knowledge that you'll have because then you can't not do something. You've got too many tools then to throw up your hands like your neighbors are doing and say hey buy me five more locks. I'm staying in. You can't do that anymore because people are going to give you perspectives that only you as thinkers can take and walk back out into communities. You're in a world right now where most of you don't have any bullet holes and won't get any in the next four days. And so what you're going to have to do is to stay intimate around this issue because after a while it becomes something that's over there. There are people in this room who see this as something over there that those people do It's unfortunate. So what I'm going to do for you is to show you how that kind of thinking can move you to where we are right now in Washington DC which is unfortunately considered this year again, the murder capital of the world. I want to tell you how that progressed slowly and much of it had to do with that Baseline thinking those people over there really do stuff like this. You know, none of you need to hear any statistics all of you know, how bad it is. So if I tell you that in Washington DC that there are 250 gunshot wounds and stabbings a month numbers after a while start to get really weird. I can tell you that there are a hundred and forty-three thousand. More young black men in jail than there are in college. I can tell you a number that amazes scientist and that is that there is a fifteen hundred percent increase in penetration injuries gunshot gunshot wounds and stabbings in children under (00:03:16) 14. (00:03:19) Nobody ever deals with the number fifteen hundred percent in your textbooks. You will not be able to find that number. It is called an exponential increase interesting when you look at the violence as you as you as you want to find out what you're going to begin to do. You can look at the fact for instance that that only 20% of the shootings in this entire nation occurred secondary to a crime the other 80% the person knew them. And it was interpersonal conflict that's important. Three out of four of the young black men who were killed in urban cities are shot to death. And it is the major cause of death for black males in the United States homicide. So the real question is why would I as a scientist be talking about this in 1984 the Centers for Disease Control declared homicide and epidemic. soon as you say epidemic you get the scientist attention. It was called an epidemic in 1984 and again confirmed in 1986 when the Centers for Disease Control declared that it was the major cause of death for black males. now At that point in time. We were already in the district looking at what was happening to our young people. So I'm going to walk you through really slowly and show you some things that I looked at and then I'm going to ask you. To walk with me sort of on a road map a blueprint about how to take what I lived with and move it into a societal issue. I guess I started looking at this in 1985 when every morning I had to go to the medical examiner's office because I was the medical liaison for the morgue. And every morning I went to the morgue every morning I saw eight sometimes 10 sometimes on a bad weekend 16 young children on slabs. Women on slabs children on slabs. I have to tell you. That it was the hardest thing I've ever lived through in my entire life. No matter what I've seen in medicine and all the years I've been in it. This was the hardest thing I've ever done. I used to have to leave and go somewhere. To just see some grass or some flowers or a lake or eat a donut. I had to do something to erase what I saw that morning. These were young people. Healthy young people gorgeous young people with big muscles and smooth skin. And and perfect haircuts some of them so young. They had braces on their teeth. and an earring in an in their ear and they looked like my son looks when he falls across the bed after basketball after school. And the only way I knew something was wrong. Was when you turn their heads there were huge bullet holes in the back of their heads in the very beginning and then as time went by. many bullet holes from semi-automatic guns And now as I looked last week torture shootings in the knees shootings in the penis and scrotum shootings in the elbow shootings in the shoulders. So clearly we have moved Beyond just the drug related crime any of these young people who died had as many as three drugs in their system and alcohol. alcohol and crack alcohol crack and PCP in Washington DC in particular And so we all we added them up to what you hear in Minneapolis will call drug-related (00:07:53) crimes. (00:07:56) And that's where the conversation around what they do began. now we have very few who have any drugs in their system. Now, we have young people who are shooting out of bad habit. They are shooting because shooting (00:08:16) works (00:08:18) and when that happens you begin to notice that when you accepted drug-related crimes as over there, you must understand what the power of being able to end any conflict in a heartbeat means in the real world. Where young people are disenfranchised isolated pulled away from the rest of society and they have a tool that works. And then you get bad habit, then you get someone being shot because he cut somebody off on the road. Then you get somebody being shot because he dissed his girlfriend. Then you get somebody shot because he's having an affair with his wife. And that is what we are beginning to see in Washington DC and for a long time allowed those drug related crimes to continue. Without addressing it and thinking about it any deeper than hate the cops can fix this. As a scientist. However, I had to leave I could not begin to think like that had to just get a broader picture of what was going on. So I left the medical examiner's office. I left the morgue. I was the medical officer for the emergency ambulance Bureau. So I left the children laying in the street. That I saw every night and I went to the microscope and try to look at this under the microscope. I started out. In the (00:09:56) schools (00:09:59) and I would go to the schools and I would talk to young kids and and I would talk to them about death and they would say hey yo lady. I'm already dead. Just waiting for it to happen at 14 years old. I went to the churches and except for Sunday morning. They were empty. I went to the community centers. And I saw a little kids who were 5 and 8 and (00:10:27) 10. (00:10:31) And when I said to them, can you tell me your name? John Can anybody in the room tell me anything good about (00:10:42) guns? Oh miss (00:10:45) Knotek, not lady. No a TEC-9 know it has 56 rounds. No, I've no that's a nosy such fluency such passion such beauty such knowledge. About something I knew nothing about. Interesting problem. What do you do with those little children? You try to get them to start talking about targets? and shooting for something but the real statement is you shut up and you listen to them because they know a lot of stuff that you can't know you're not in their world. Ask them to redefine words for you. When you say safe everybody in this room will have an answer safe for these little children doesn't have the word house all the time in it and mommy and daddy and lights on and roof and heat and policeman. It has words in it like loaded Uzi. Children have redefined the term family. It's a new day. Now those little children must be listened to carefully I left the community centers and I went to the funerals. Sometimes I went to three funerals a week. And when I went to those funerals, that's when I noticed this scientist has got to work on something very different these children were walking down the aisle sometimes for the third time in one week. Looking at the body and on their way up so number of people eating KFC on their way back up the aisle. bad picture about death When you eat at a funeral, there is no one in this room who has ever eaten at a funeral. I noticed a couple of things a hundred percent of the funerals. Had a pregnant woman a pregnant young pregnant girl hundred percent. That's something to notice as a scientist as a thinker. I noticed that there were hierarchies of children who went to the funerals if they had something to wear. By the way, while I was looking on my journey, I noticed there were other people looking to and there are other people were very concrete thinkers. They were saying y'all we can solve this more police officers and more jails. If anybody in this room has an accountant who is not yet said that you ought to buy some stock in private jails. He's in a coma because private jails is the largest growing industry in this country concrete thinking around. This issue is the way it's going that's why it's so important for you to be here. It reminds me of a story about a fisherman. They are two fishermen out in the boat and they're going along and they see a dead body in the water Pull It in give it CPR comes back to life. They look out. There's another one bring it in. Give it some Pull It in another one and another and another and another finally one of the fisherman gets exhausted jumps out of the boat and he starts swimming away and the other fishermen says yo, I need your help. This is tiring. I need some help and he says to him. I'll tell you what you stay in the boat. Keep on giving him CPR. I'm going to swim upstream find out who's throwing them in. (00:14:30) That's (00:14:31) who you are. Those concrete thinkers. You see I believe in the police officers in jails right now tell about tomorrow night. When you guys start moving on the initiatives that you thought about after that we can let the policeman go for a little while and give them some rest, but for right now, I don't want my children shot. I don't want your children shot. So we have to talk about police officers and more jails, but limit that timeline somebody's got to be swimming upstream and that's what you're about right now. I have to tell you that I'm gonna I'm gonna not talk a lot more. I want to give you a couple of thoughts that are come up that are coming up for me and some critical questions that I want you to think about and after that I'm going to talk real quickly about a couple of initiatives, but but let me tell you some thoughts. I'm having I've been looking at I have a friend who's very sick. My friend is so sick that they've told her there's nothing more they can do for her. And so she went out and sold the station wagon with the wooden sides and bought a Porsche 928. She has a full-length Black Diamond mink now, and she's very happy. I was walking down the street a couple of and I'm happy for I was walking down the street a couple months ago. And I looked at some young man coming toward me dressed in about $80,000 worth of running suit and about $40,000 worth of sneakers. And I thought to my head he got in a car that all of the people in this room cannot afford to buy and I thought to myself he is exactly like my friend and he's doing what he's doing for exactly the same reason right now. He is living with no concept of the possibility of a future. So disenfranchised so isolated so pulled away from the mainstream. That he is making choices. For the right now. He is terminally ill just like my friend. I have to think about that and I ask that you think about that because it's got to change things around a lot all the choices that that young man makes is going are going to be different than the choice of someone who has a long future in front of them. I also noticed a couple of other things when I look at the young people in the funeral parlor. I think to myself wait a minute. I grew up to be almost 30 years old before I ever went to a funeral and then that person was real old. I have never been to a funeral of anybody my age when I was 14, 15, 16 18 or 20 let alone three times a week. So now the question is for me and for you what kind of behavior happens on a day-to-day basis when you witness your own mortality three times a week when you see your own body in the casket dress like you are same haircut same earring three times a week. What is your behavior? Like Thinking about that a little further. I will tell you that I took that 100% pregnant women and had to really ride for a long time and think about that one. But there are many people in this room who are War babies. I'm a war baby. All of us were born because our parents thought that the men were going to be killed and that they had to reproduce. So then that has incredible implications for young people who witness their own body in the casket three times a week. I'm not advocating teenage pregnancy at all. I fight at hard everyday, but I have to say is a thinker. That I have to ask myself. What behavior is the natural order when you see your own body in a casket three times a week? Somehow it occurs to me that you cannot come to a young man and say hey use a condom. You got to prevent pregnancy. When he is seeing his own body in the (00:19:28) casket (00:19:31) got to get deeper got to ask him about witnessing his own mortality. And what role that plays in life and in (00:19:39) death. (00:19:47) I think that the critical questions that must be asked are coming up for me as perhaps a Visionary perhaps just thinking about it all the time. I'm not sure. I know one thing in four days. I know you will come up with many and I hope tonight I get to hear some of them. One of the questions is what is this doing to the human Spirit very important (00:20:11) question (00:20:13) subtle and very important. I went recently to a college and the college was all young urban kids and the college was an education College Human Services. That's what everybody took four years. This year and last and the year before that. It was different. I asked everybody in that room of 900. How many of you have been to a funeral of two or more kids this year your own age 100 percent of those young people raised their hand. One hundred percent of those young people took business as their course major not one of them was in human services. I think about that and say to myself. Well, everybody said to me, you know, why because of the recession people need to make some money. That is not why people choose to go in business not in the minority Urban population. We have been serving for a long time. And so I have to ask when you go to all of these funerals. What happens to your spirit. Do you still want to touch somebody? Do you still want to try to save somebody's life? Do you still think it's worth it to improve the quality of people's lives. That's an important question. I don't know yet what role it's playing, but I think that University is giving me my first (00:21:49) indicator. (00:21:52) Questions that come up are a little bit more brutal like whose fault is this is this the white person's fault is everybody in this room totally responsible for all of the problems. Okay, then is it black people's fault? Is it Hispanics fault? Is it the mm the Native Americans fault whose fault is this? and then the next question is (00:22:19) then who's supposed to (00:22:20) fix it? That's where we cross the lines. That's when the question gets hard. I am questioning now why the people that I know who grew up under the same circumstances didn't shoot anybody? Why didn't I shoot? Why didn't you why didn't you why didn't you? Critical question to ask there is a man up to all over the country men from the American Cancer Society are doing research on why cancer cells divide so quickly. There's one old man up in Woods Hole Massachusetts who studying why normal cells divide so slowly you must ask the critical question. Why didn't you shoot? Why didn't you resolve conflicts wrong? when we talk about gangs we may have to redefine them. We may have to see them in the space of family values. We may have to talk about the re-creation of the communal family and we may have to turn gangs from negative into positive. We may just have to change the behavior of gangs not the content of gangs. They work. They are the recreation of the communal family. When I asked a wonder why when I was in medical school, why didn't they put self-esteem up there with air and water because when you don't nobody taught me what to do when I run out of air or water, I think they just thought I'd know. the same thing is true with self-esteem young people aren't given the recipe that we had in our psychology books like words, like connectedness and safety and recognition that self-esteem is defined as and yet their behavior in gangs and out of gangs meet every point on that recipe. Maybe we don't have to learn about self esteem. Maybe it's as natural as air and water and when you don't have it you do what you do to get it. critical question what vehicle have we given young people to descent? What vehicle in our institutions what vehicle in our colleges and universities? What is the University of Minneapolis done to help young people descent have they joined the artist with the with the with the physicists have they done any cross-fertilization of ideas and mindsets. Have we taken charge of this huge problem? Have we in our own communities done any cross-fertilization of ideas and thoughts and if we haven't then have all the social workers met and then all the musicians met and then all of the teachers met where's the cross fertilization important? When we look at the situation of our children, I think probably that's where I'm I'm most caught up when I look at the fact that our children. Witnessing violence. I am appalled that we as adults are continuing to allow it to happen. You know, it's interesting when Kuwait got bombed. The United States put on television every night. bombing thing and then after they put the bombing the Tom Brokaw stuff, they would go to a small town in Omaha or Utah or North Dakota, and they go into a school and they show the teacher stopped teaching. And she would begin the process of helping children with the reality of violence. She would help them by bringing in the soldier from the local base. Does anybody remember this or she'd bringing the the reality therapist the movement therapist talk about the war but she stopped teaching because she knew that the war was going to be televised and children should not see that level of violence. Even if it is a billion miles away and even if it never went to full fruition as a war We have young children in urban settings who step over dead bodies on their way to school. No teachers have stopped teaching to help those children process. Every time on the front page that you see an 18 year old who shot? Feel sorry for him and there is a nine-year-old over in the corner processing it. And what he hears is about retribution. He hears screaming and hollering. He sees all the Neighbors come he sees lights camera action. He cannot process this. In anyway, but the Splendor of it all. Every single time there's a shooting remember that nine year old because when that nine-year-old is 16, he will follow in the same pattern. He has not learned not to no one has (00:28:20) intervened. (00:28:24) So the question is when you start asking yourself these questions what kind of initiatives can you do? Well, first of all, what's the deal? I mean if you don't have any bullet holes in your bodies and none of your kids have bullet holes in their bodies and you don't hang with kids who have bullet holes in the body. What's the problem? Well, the issue is a lot. First of all, there are a lot of you in this room who do prevention. And you tell kids now you have to use a condom so you won't get a disease in 10 years. He doesn't think that's going to be a live in 10 years. You shouldn't smoke because you'll get a cancer intent. He does you're going to have to redirect every single move you make based on what these young people are seeing on a daily basis every move you make around prevention. We've gotten to the point now with cigarettes. We don't talk about 10 years from now we talk about right now. You should continue to smoke because those who would control you need you to smoke so you'll have bronchitis and you won't be able to get in line because you'll have to be in the line buying cigarettes. Somebody needs you to continue to smoke so you cannot be in the line to make any money. But worse than that the little nine-year-old over in the corner. It's good sign you into the nursing home. I don't know how he feels about crotchety old people in the nursing home. Something has got to be done to interview intervene for him. I suggest strongly that you build incredibly strong coalition's so that you can collect the data that you need everybody here who has the word Health anywhere in their profession you call up and say I want to have it reportable to my office every time a child dies and create something called a death review board. It has been the most important thing. We've done a death review board is a board that is set up to review why this child died. Where did he fall through the cracks a death review board is (00:30:33) essential. (00:30:37) I have never been to a death review board meeting where we have not created a new policy to save a child's life. That's a rare sentence. Look into the death review boards. I think you should look into the cost of violence. There are those who will solve this only because it's costing too much money in Washington DC. We worked with the GAO and we think it cost 18 million dollars a month. undercount in violence 18 million dollars a month everything from courts. to tourism to healthcare to Lost pay to Lost lives 18 million a month at least When you start putting initiatives into school systems, remember something many of these young people who are in such trouble dropped out of school 3 years before they died. or was shot However, a huge percent of them are still involved closely and intimately with the government perhaps their Income Maintenance. So when you see an initiative going to a school system create a buddy system in an income maintenance office so that you hit all of the high-risk children. Not just the ones who stayed in school conflict resolution curriculums are important for very little kids see what you can do to get a conflict resolution curriculum into your school system where little children are taught how to resolve conflict early. And as they get older looking to peer mediation programs like the wave program in in, Ohio. Peer mediation program should be expanded. I think I think mediations the answer call up the teamsters ask them to come teach these young kids mediation. I have a problem with the issue of guns. I don't know if you know this but Washington DC he does not have one gun store. And it is the murder capital of the world and three out of four shot. Not one gun store. So now the question is look very carefully and think long and hard about guns. There are people in this room who say hey guns don't do it. There are other people in the room say we got to get rid of guns and will solve the problem. There is no fight that you can do to fight guns. What you need to do is to start to put guns in some perspective and help the public put guns in some perspective. And I will tell you that if you decide to take on guns as the issue, you're going to tread water till you get real tired, and then you're going to drop over and that's going to be the end of that story. However You might want to think about the media. The next time somebody shot in Minneapolis, you go to the media and say I'll tell you what tell us where that gun was licensed last tell us where it was manufactured right there in the same article about the shooting tell us where it was seen last legally and get the public to start to say wait a second. The gun was made in Maine licensed in Kentucky and ended up in Minneapolis shooting somebody. Ask your media to work on that for you. For all of you in this room who are counselors. And this is the hardest thing in the world to do because you don't have time to do it every single person that comes in right now in your office who has any history done. You'll say do you have any allergies? Do you smoke do you do any drugs? Do you do you do you do alcohol? Do you do any other illegal drugs? Ask them another question and then shut up. The question is I'm a physician and I and I fight in my house. How do you fight in your (00:35:07) house? If you shut (00:35:12) up you will get some answers that will be so profound. You will get emotions beginning to spill that are so huge that just the question will open many many doors for you that you never ever suspected. You will see the lying. Female who was abused by the man in her life if you just shut up and wait for an answer. You know, I have to talk about domestic abuse for a minute. You know what the problem with domestic abuse is we all lie. There are women in this room who have bruises under their clothes right this second and you see the lion gets so good. That after a while no one suspect. So, please encourage your medical schools and your American Medical Association everybody else to start teaching us how to screen. For spousal abuse and by the way, when you see a man come in with big marks across his face. Doesn't he need some kind of intervention, isn't he giving you the signal you need? see they wear these long shirts in the ties and the cufflinks color and the tie so if it's not as face, you're not going to see maybe his hands but I think that just like women with broken jaws men with scratches need to be noticed and intervened upon. I never talk about spousal abuse unless there's an equal number of men in the room as women and may I suggest that you don't either women already know about the problem if men aren't in the room we're preaching to the choir. I have to tell you some good news. A few months ago and Washington DC. I presented a bill to Congress to help those little children who witness violence the bill passed the house. I was very proud did a little bit of work. It did not pass the Senate and then it went into conference. And with a little more work the bill passed the Senate and the bill has been signed by the president of the United States saying that from now on when a child who has witnessed violence. Is identified they will be given a special intervention to help them reprocess what they saw. We will start in four different cities, and this will be moving you will be reading and hearing about this and I ask you to please be a part of that intervention if you're interested at all in that. Please come and join me because it is funded it is ready, and we do not have anybody together to fix it yet. So please bring yourselves up to me and let me be part. Let me ask you to be part of this project. I don't have anything else to tell you except that. You better look at the equality of the legislation. You know, there were the legislative aide was killed in Washington, DC. One of the congressman's legislative aide and before nightfall. There was a Bill in Congress saying that anybody who gets beaten or shot with a gun in the district will now have the death penalty watch very closely how the legislative process works watch when you looked at Lund Lund that the guy that you when you look at London the newspaper, you do not see a hood you do not see handcuffs you see lunge standing there. Watch that legislative process most of you in this room. If you listen to rap every day would have been able to predict La don't let the truth-tellers go by you listen to rap figure out what they're saying Get a translator. If you don't know what they're saying and figure out what's going on rap music is not to be ignored. It is the truth.