Despite what the far-right tries to say, Violence Intervention Programming works, John. The solution to gun violence has never been and will never be more guns.
Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood celebrated an important milestone this month — zero homicides in over a year!
A mass shooting in July 2023 tore through an annual summer block party, leaving two people dead and 28 others injured. After this tragedy, Baltimore ramped up its work in this neighborhood through its Violence Intervention Program, Safe Streets.
Safe Streets has multiple offices across the city of Baltimore and is focused on treating violence — especially gun violence — as a public health crisis.
Across the city, homicides are down about 24% compared to this time last year. That’s on top of a roughly 20% decline in 2023 when Baltimore recorded less than 300 homicides for the first time in nearly a decade.
There’s no ambiguity, this type of programming works.
Treating this epidemic as a health crisis and investing in resources to address the root causes of gun violence is exactly what we’re fighting for, John.
We already made huge progress with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act which included a $250M investment in community violence intervention programs.
But we need more. We need these types of programs implemented across the country in every city and community.
We also need to protect this type of progress from Trump and his army of far-right leaders who believe more guns make us safer. We’re prepared to defend our hard-earned progress and are committed to holding our leaders accountable so that violence prevention programming remains a priority for the next four years.
In solidarity,
Team MFOL
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Your Personal Invite To the Movement Fund 💌💙 At March For Our Lives, we call our monthly supporter program The Movement Fund. Why are monthly recurring donors so important? The amount of one-time individual donations we receive as an organization varies vastly from month to month. Without a steady stream of monthly donations coming in our door, it would be impossible to accurately plan our budgets, create long-term strategies to win a future free from gun violence, plan and execute on-the-ground organizing efforts, recruit and train more gun safety champions, and more. |
