He entered the restorative justice room with the careful steps of someone who had lived too long in survival mode. At 26, he carried the weight of a life shaped by hunger, abandonment, and the need to defend himself long before he understood his own emotions. As a teenager, he worked as a sicario in Medellín, pulled into a world where fear became currency and silence became armor.
Aquil Basheer believed that ending gang violence wasn't the kind of career you just fall into. "In this type of work, you're usually chosen. You don't choose it," he said in 2024 in an interview for "The Storytelling Project," an L.A. County Public Health Department project that documented the effects of violence on local individuals and communities. Basheer, it seems, was among the chosen.
The San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women is needed now, perhaps more so than ever before in its history, and we urge members of the Commission Streamlining Task Force to maintain it as a standalone body with its full powers intact. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, California women who are full-time wage and salary workers still earn significantly less than men.
But I would argue that free speech is actually the antithesis of violence. It's really a revolutionary way for human beings living in complex societies to facilitate collective action. But when you suppress it, it becomes a pressure cooker, and it's much more likely to erupt into violence. If you're allowed to criticize the government, criticize different ideas, you have an opportunity to change things for the better according to your beliefs.
For months, Donald Trump and his administration have been using violent crime as a justification for ramping up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) operations and sending or threatening to send the national guard to blue cities first in Los Angeles, then Washington DC and, last week, Chicago. But for those who work on the ground to prevent crime, the White House's approaches will do little to address underlying causes.
Police and violence prevention groups are making plans to keep residents safe at the West Indian Day Parade and the pre-dawn J'Ouvert carnival this weekend, just two weeks after a mass shooting in Brooklyn killed three people and injured 11 others. Police have not arrested any suspects for the Aug. 17 shooting. Mayor Eric Adams said retaliatory shootings could follow unless violence prevention groups work with family members of the victims to prevent them.
who has advocated for cooperation between cities and the federal government on crime, asked what a productive relationship with the Trump administration looks like? An excellent question, Johnson said. First of all, he could start by restoring the over $800 million that was taken away from violence prevention efforts back in April. He continued to detail work with community-led conflict resolution organizations and trained mental health professionals that, in some cases, have circumvented the need for a police officer to turn up at that scene.
The term 'tinderbox' has evolved into political shorthand for describing any situation supposedly on the brink of explosion, reflecting a growing narrative of social breakdown.
A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC. A @Doge team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her. It is time to federalize DC.
"There is a gap in the law around the planning of mass attacks that can be just as serious [as terrorism] in their implications for communities, their impact, the devastation that they can cause and the seriousness of the crime."
Revenge is more than an emotion—it’s an addictive behavior. People get hyped about an epic revenge story or cheer for politicians seeking to 'get even'. This satisfaction of payback is a dangerous craving.
In November 2022, two men connected to a Metro safety program beat up another man on a station platform. Video footage shows the violent altercation.
"We Jews make up only 2% of the world's population, and we are always the target," said Yael Bromverg, underscoring the recurrent challenges faced by the Jewish community.
The 2025 Presidential Proclamation for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month attributes a significant cause of sexual violence to illegal immigration, diverging from evidence-based previous proclamations.
