Gun violence brought Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis to Allentown on Friday, just as it first brought him into public service at age 16 when someone was shot on the block where he lived in McKeesport, Allegheny County.
The first-term Democrat visited Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley as part of a statewide tour to highlight programs aiming to stem the epidemic of gun violence.
The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, of which Davis is chairman, awarded $2 million last year to Promise Neighborhoods’ Cure Violence initiative run in conjunction with Lehigh Valley Health Network. The fiscal year 2024 state budget awaiting a final vote by the state Senate before going to Gov. Josh Shapiro for his signature includes $40 million for similar violence prevention programs.
“I’m traveling across the commonwealth this week on this Safer Communities Tour to highlight the success stories and the programs and the people who are making a difference in the effort to end gun violence in our community,” Davis said following stops in Pittsburgh, York and Philadelphia and ahead of visits in the afternoon to Wilkes-Barre and, on Monday, to Erie.
“Oftentimes we always focus on the problem, but we don’t recognize that there are people who are working tirelessly every day to solve this epidemic,” Davis said during his visit to Promise Neighborhoods’ offices on West Union Street. “And so we’re highlighting those organizations but we’re also looking for organizations that we scale up to figure out what’s working.”
The 2022 funding, following a previous state grant of $300,000, helped expand Promise Neighborhoods’ and LVHN’s Cure Violence efforts beyond the Lehigh Valley to northern communities such as Hazleton, according to the Lehigh Valley Hospital network.
“We can stop the bleeding, we can repair the injured organ. We can fix your broken bone,” said Dr. Mark Cipolle, chief of the Division of Trauma at Lehigh Valley Health Network. “That’s just treating a symptom. It’s not treating a cause. So we’ve realized as a health-care network, we have to go beyond the doors of the hospital to help our community.”
Promise Neighborhoods and LVHN work to connect gun violence victims, their families and caregivers to resources that aim to interrupt the cycle of violence. That can start with Melissa Mee, a violence prevention coordinator in the trauma department at Lehigh Valley Hospital–Cedar Crest, visiting violence victims bedside.
“Though that may mean the end of a health crisis, it’s really just the start of the next critical chapter in someone’s life,” Mee said. “When I arrive at a violence victim’s bedside, a vacuum exists between what put someone in the hospital and how they react to what happened. What we’re trying to do is interrupt the cycle of violence and connect with people as credible messengers.”
“Letting them know that they’re valued and that there is a way forward,” Mee continued. “It’s the start of a healing process outside of the healing of physical wounds, and it’s the beginning of a collective effort to make a change.”
Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley's Jeani Garcia, who lost her teenage son Kareem Fedd to gun violence, helps introduce Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis on Friday, July 14, 2023, to the nonprofit's Allentown headquarters alongside, from left, state Reps. Jeanne McNeill and Peter Schweyer, both D-Lehigh.Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com
Jeani Garcia, manager of the Zero Youth Violence and Reentry Program at Promise Neighborhoods, stressed the importance of the credible messenger model — focused on community members who offer livable, relatable experience to those dealing with gun violence. She lost her 17-year-old son, Kareem Fedd, to gang violence in 2012; he was shot and killed while sleeping at his Fullerton Avenue home.
“We are able to relate to the individuals, the victims of gun violence, the survivors of gun violence,” Garcia said.
The goal of violence interrupters and outreach workers at Promise Neighborhoods is to prevent the gun violence of even one more child, Garcia said.
“Oftentimes these are conversations that people don’t want to talk about because it means that we have a problem in communities,” she said. “We have a problem. We have a fear, and it’s swept under the carpet. This is how we bring this conversation to light. This is how we bring solutions to light, by coming together.”
Davis, 33, was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives prior to his election in 2022 as the state’s youngest and first Black lieutenant governor.
Other elected officials at Friday’s event were state Reps. Jeanne McNeill, Peter Schweyer and Joshua Siegel, all D-Lehigh; Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk and Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr.; and Lehigh County Executive Phil Armstrong.
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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.