Building a bridge over violence

MARY JOHNSON has had this dream for a lot of years. She has
imagined building a bridge across a divide which seemed impossible to
cross. This impossible dream recently came true in a small coffeeshop.

Mary and I have been friends for about 10 years. We met as the result
of murder -- the epidemic of homicide which has been the scourge of so
many US cities for more than a decade.

I met Mary because her son had been murdered, shot to death at a
party. Her story was all too familiar to me. More than a dozen young
people I knew were shot to death during a decade of teaching and
community work in Minneapolis.

It was sad, tragic and an epidemic. Worse, the deaths continue. In
fact, gun violence is the leading cause of death for young people in
Minneapolis and most other US cities.

I was teaching high school when Mary found me. She'd heard about
students in our school who had been shot and killed like her son.
"We've got to do something," she said in her first phone call to me.

That "something" turned out to be a group for parents whose son or
daughter had been killed. We called it Parents of Murdered Children.

I remember well the first day this group met. There were more than a
dozen parents at that meeting. "I'm not sure what we are going to do,"
I said to Mary as people continued to arrive. "But clearly we are
responding to a need in our community."

That group met regularly for several years. Though it started as a
support group for parents, it soon branched out into other activities.
Some of the parents started speaking to classes at local high schools.
Others talked at churches and community groups.

I particularly remember one talk Mary gave at a local church:

"Some nights I still find myself listening for my son to come in the
door." she told the group. "And sometimes I still look for my child in
the faces of the young men I see on the street.

"You never think this can happen to you. It's always another city,
another neighborhood, another person. But not you."

By the time Mary finished she was in tears. So was the audience.

There were other projects as well, including talking to young people
who had been arrested on gun charges. We also worked on a community
theater production which highlighted the hopes od fears of youth in
the city.

But Mary had one more idea. She mentioned it several times to me. "I
want to get the mothers together," she said. "I want to bring together
the mothers of those who have been killed with the mothers of those
who have fired the guns. If you think about it, we both have lost a
child."

A wonderful, wonderful dream, I thought. But to me it did not seem possible.

I was wrong. Mary patiently and persistently pursued mothers around
the city -- mothers of those who have been murdered and mothers of
those who have murdered. It was a process which took several years.

Then, on a recent Saturday evening, Mary gathered mothers and others
affected by gun violence at a small coffeeshop at the corner of
Plymouth and Penn in Minneapolis. There she announced the formation of
"From death to life: Two mothers healing group." The new group was
celebrated with music, dance, stories and a dinner.

One particularly striking part of the event was the exhibit of
photography on the walls. Each photograph was of a mother holding a
picture. Each picture was her son or daughter who had been murdered.
It was a profound reminder of the epidemic of gun violence in our city.

But there was a hopeful air in the coffeeshop. Perhaps if mothers
could gather together the community could gather together. And perhaps
then there could be peace. If there could be peace in this one place,
couldn't there be peace in other places.

If you'd like more information about the Two Mothers group, call (612)
501-3512. Or send an email to twomothers@hotmail.com.