![In recent years, there’s been a robust and urgent conversation about how we can best assist soldiers returning from the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many, as we now know, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet we’ve neglected those here. Consider that in Chicago alone over the past 20 years, more than 15,000 people have been murdered. (Chicago isn’t even in the top 10 most violent U.S. cities.) Each has left behind family and friends. Moreover, many of those murders occurred in public places, on the street or in a park or alleyway, and so have been witnessed by others.
Walk into a classroom in any inner-city school and ask how many have lost a loved one to violence or have witnessed a shooting. Virtually every hand will go up. (In a national study, [PDF] the CDC found that 42 percent of all teenagers have witnessed violence in their community.) And most will tell you they’ve never talked about it. In fact, children are often discouraged from sharing their experiences out of fear that if they do they’ll somehow be held culpable for the crime they’ve witnessed. I’ve encountered children who’ve had flashbacks, others who suffered from depression and some who had physical ailments resulting from the stress. A study out of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health has found, not surprisingly, that children exposed to violence tend to do less well at school.
-Alex Kotlowitz (producer of The Interrupters)
Click the picture to watch The Interrupters via the PBS/Frontline site. An amazing look at how one community action group is changing the world by stopping one act of street violence at a time.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzs3h0j2KR1qbmwbso1_500.jpg)
In recent years, there’s been a robust and urgent conversation about how we can best assist soldiers returning from the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many, as we now know, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet we’ve neglected those here. Consider that in Chicago alone over the past 20 years, more than 15,000 people have been murdered. (Chicago isn’t even in the top 10 most violent U.S. cities.) Each has left behind family and friends. Moreover, many of those murders occurred in public places, on the street or in a park or alleyway, and so have been witnessed by others.
Walk into a classroom in any inner-city school and ask how many have lost a loved one to violence or have witnessed a shooting. Virtually every hand will go up. (In a national study, [PDF] the CDC found that 42 percent of all teenagers have witnessed violence in their community.) And most will tell you they’ve never talked about it. In fact, children are often discouraged from sharing their experiences out of fear that if they do they’ll somehow be held culpable for the crime they’ve witnessed. I’ve encountered children who’ve had flashbacks, others who suffered from depression and some who had physical ailments resulting from the stress. A study out of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health has found, not surprisingly, that children exposed to violence tend to do less well at school.
-Alex Kotlowitz (producer of The Interrupters)
Click the picture to watch The Interrupters via the PBS/Frontline site. An amazing look at how one community action group is changing the world by stopping one act of street violence at a time.
-
lecoupdevide reblogged this from xlivvielockex
-
manthk liked this
-
xlivvielockex posted this
