Interrupting Violence: One Man's Journey to Heal the Streets and Redeem Himself - Hardcover

Cobe Williams; Josh Gryniewicz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1538166879 ISBN 13: 9781538166871

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2024

Synopsis

Part memoir and part call to action, Interrupting Violence is a blueprint for cities across America looking for a new way to address community violence.

About this title

About the Author

Cobe Williams is the Director of National Programs for Cure Violence Global (CVG), where he trained over five thousand workers in violence prevention. He appeared in the film The Interrupters and People, Vice, Ebony, and The New Yorker. He received a standing ovation at his TEDx event. He serves as a community ambassador for basketball star Joakim Noah's Foundation. Cobe earned a BA at Northeastern Illinois University and is pursuing a Master's in social work. He lives in a Chicago suburb with his wife, Andrea, and their four children.

Josh Gryniewicz is an author, storyteller, comic book writer, and health communicator. He was a contributing author to Beyond Suppression: Global Perspectives on Youth Violence and Crime & Society and a regular columnist with PopMatters. In 2018, he founded Odd Duck, a storytelling for social change communication consultancy, which has advised over fifty violence prevention programs throughout the country. He is the former communication director for Cure Violence.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from the Introduction

This book is my story. It is also the story of two families, interconnected, coping with the impact of trauma across generations and the racist history of Black Chicago. It is about surviving hardship and coming out stronger on the other side. It is about finding ways to resolve this pain transmitted, parent to child, to resolve the cycle of intergenerational trauma for a hopeful future.

This book is my story. It is also the story of a movement that has come of age. It is the story of community activists, often formerly incarcerated individuals, working to undo the harm they’ve done. It is the story of ragtag groups of organizers working out of community-based storefronts in ramshackle strip malls to keep tenuous peace on mean streets. Others like me who have left behind gang life to convene peace talks in church basements on borrowed time to save lives. This is the story of connecting those groups from the Bronx and Brooklyn to Cherry Hill, Baltimore, syncing Englewood, Chicago, and Inglewood, California, with movements in Minneapolis and St. Louis, Oakland, and Los Angeles to form a cohesive revolution in violence prevention. A movement that went from unlit, hardscrabble alleyways all the way to the White House.

This book is my story. It is also a guide for what cities need to know to set up a community violence intervention in their community. It is about the nuts-and-bolts logistics of creating a program. The challenges faced from laying the groundwork to launching the site. It is my story, but it is also a call to action for leaders looking for a new way forward in public health for some of the nation’s most violence-impacted communities.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1538166879
• ISBN 13: 9781538166871
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328