Welcome to You Op to Know, The Daily Orange Opinion section’s weekly podcast.  

Assistant Editorial Editor Michael Sessa and Independent Columnist Madeline Johnson discuss the impacts of addressing gun violence as a public health issue.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to submit a letter to the editor at opinion@dailyorange.com.

LEARN MORE:

• Gun violence must be treated as a public health issue

---

TRANSCRIPT

MICHAEL SESSA: Welcome to this week’s edition of You Op To Know, The Daily Orange’s Opinion section podcast. I’m Assistant Editorial Editor Michael Sessa and this week I’m joined by Independent columnist Madeline Johnson.

MADELINE JOHNSON: Thank you for having me.

SESSA: Tonight we’re going to talk about Madeline’s most recent column about the mental health impacts of exposure to gun violence. What made you want to explore this topic for a column?

JOHNSON: Yeah so in the news I saw recently, that two survivors of the Parkland shooting within a weekend killed themselves and also within a week or so after that one of the people affected by the Sandy Hook shooting also killed themselves. So I think it’s really important that we look at not only how gun violence impacts victims, but how it affects entire communities.

SESSA: One of the professors you spoke to introduced the idea of neighborhood trauma. What is that and what sort of work is being done in Syracuse to address neighborhoods that might fit those categories?

JOHNSON: Yeah so, community trauma is what occurs within communities that have higher rates of violence in gun violence. So what Syracuse is trying to do specifically build a sort of sense of community, and have community centers focusing on people having mentors and access to different resources so that they can prevent people who might see the cycle of violence as the only way to get through their lives.

SESSA: You argued in your column that, since changes to gun laws often take so long to happen, we should focus on supporting communities impacted by violence in the meantime. What sort of work is already happening in communities impacted by violence?

JOHNSON: Yeah so, basically what’s happening in Syracuse is that they have members of the council trying to advocate at the same time for different gun reform, specifically in the community, but also putting these programs in place that will sort of after episodes of violence, will have first responders to go in to try to dissolve the situation and things like that. So just trying to attack the issue on all fronts not just only in the community or only with gun reform but in all sorts of aspects.

SESSA: What changes would you like to see in terms of addressing community trauma? What can students or Syracuse residents do to help out?

JOHNSON: Yeah think specifically for Syracuse student it would be really beneficial for them to go out in the community and look beyond campus and maybe perhaps visiting some of the different community centers that are around this area and looking into the different sort of movements that are trying to eradicate this gun violence specifically within the Syracuse community.

SESSA: Cool. Thanks for joining us. And as always, if you have any comments, questions, or if you’d like to send us a letter, you can email us at opinion@dailyorange.com. We’ll talk to you next week!

Published on April 22, 2019 at 9:06 pm

Contact Michael: msessa@syr.edu | @MichaelSessa3