Gun violence affects every person who lives in DC in some way. Some are scared when they hear about a recent shooting close to home, some are grieving when they hear a loved one is killed.

A group of residents and local Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners came up with the idea of bringing together the community to talk about what neighbors are feeling in a local gun violence summit on Saturday, June 23rd from 10am to 1pm at the Emery Heights Recreation Center (5701 Georgia Ave NW).

"The goal of the summit is to talk through what the root causes are for the violence and how the community can address them," said organizer and ANC Commissioner Jonah Goodman. They hope to be able to create some action-oriented groups who want to try to tackle this issue together.

You can register / RSVP to the event or just show up.

Excluding a few ANC commissioners who helped bring this local summit together, there will be no other elected officials or representatives from District agencies at the meeting, and they purposefully did not invite MPD to participate in any official capacity in order to help make the meeting about neighbor-to-neighbor dialogue, without campaigning or community vs. agency frustrations.

Dr. Bill Hassan, a longtime Ward 4 resident, will speak about his experiences and the history of our neighborhood and background on changes in Ward 4 over the past few decades.

Then there will be a facilitated panel discussion, led by a violence interruption organizer and 3-4 younger Ward 4 residents who were involved in gun violence or impacted by gun violence. The hope is to hear what led them down that path and what their recommendations to the community are to address it.

The group then move into two break out sessions, smaller groups to speak about the impact on each person and understand how different neighbors are impacted. There will also be the opportunity to create the action-based groups to focus on different areas:

legislation advocacy
community funding advocacy
police and community relations
cultural org / immigrant community outreach and support, and more.

Pastor Gerald Elston of the Brightwood Park United Methodist Church and board member of Ward 4 nonprofit DC Community Carrot.

Take the time to join the meeting, get to know your other concerned neighbors, and work together to come up with solutions to violence in our neighborhood.

Register / RSVP to the event >

The planning committee is made up of the residents below, with additional support from others: