Three months ago today, the horror of the elementary school shootings in Newtown Conn., stunned the nation. The murder of first graders reframed the issue of gun violence and heightened calls for stricter gun laws. But that has not stopped the violence. So often, the conversation about guns involves the language of policy, constitutional rights and proposed legislation. This is a more personal story.
While the debate rages on about stricter gun laws and background checks, even President Obama says that government alone cannot stop the violence or heal the wounds.
“No law or set of laws can prevent every senseless act of violence in this country,” Obama said at a Chicago school in February. “When a child opens fire on another child, there’s a hole in that child’s heart that government can’t fill, only community, and parents, and teachers, and clergy can fill that hole.”
Clarissa Turner is one of those parents. A mother in Roxbury whose son was murdered less than a year ago, Turner struggles to identify that hole described by the president.
“Who’s doing it?” Turner asked. “I don’t really know who’s really doing it. Why are they doing it? ... It's like there is no value to life anymore.”
Since Sandy Hook, thousands of gun-related deaths have occurred in the United States. They include accidents, suicides and homicides. Each death leaves its mark on communities, families and individuals.
For Turner, every reported shooting death reopens a wound left by the murder of her son on November 29, 2011. He was 24.
“Homicide does not come with directions or instructions,” Turner said. “So when you lose a loved one, you’re winging it. You're trying to figure out what to do next, where do I go from here.”
In the fifteen months since Turner’s son, Willie Marquis Turner, was killed, she has been consumed by what she calls the lose-lose situation of youth violence, and by figuring out how to cope with her grief.
“This pain … is like no other,” she said. “It’s out of our control. When you grieve, it comes. You can be in your car, you can be in the supermarket, walking, you can be anywhere. And you feel that empty hole in your heart.”
It was Turner who identified her son in the morgue. Then came the logistics of burial.
“You have to go sit in a funeral home and pick out a casket to fit your child,” she said. “Then you have to go pick out a plot, to put your child in the ground ... And then after, you have to watch your kids go into the ground. How do you watch your kids go down?”
Turner says her faith in God kept her grounded, but in the aftermath of her son’s death, she yearned for more support.
“It’s not easy to just throw the dirt over your child and keep moving like nothing ever happened,” she said.
So Turner started Legacy Lives On, a non-profit organization that provides ongoing support to families affected by homicide and street violence.
“Those who have been through it, we can come together and we can pray together, and whatever we’re doing--reading the bible, taking walks--just trying to deal with the pain in the aftermath of losing our children,” she said.
Turner and other survivors meet once a week to talk about their feelings, and ways they can support children who have been affected by gun violence.
“Just think, if we’re struggling as adults, around the loss, think about what its doing to the kids,” she said. “A lot of times the kids won’t come and talk to the parents or loved ones about it because they see us hurting, and they don’t want us hurting anymore.”
Recently, Legacy Lives On started offering krump classes for youth in the community as a way to engage them, keep them off the streets, and help them cope. Krump is an energetic street dance that involves jarring movements of the chest, head and arms, and lots of stomping.
There are seven kids in the Legacy Lives On class, raging from age 6 to 12. All of them are related. Two are Turner’s sons -- she has five living children -- the other kids in the class are their cousins. Turner says the word is getting out about the class, and she expects more kids will attend once its warmer out.
The kids in this class are pretty excited to be learning new moves.
“What I like is that krump is not something that just comes to you randomly,” said Alan, a 12-year-old. “It’s like a feeling that you express with dancing. Like you can’t just think that you can krump. You have to know and feel.”
When krump started in Los Angeles in the 1990’s, it was seen as an alternative to gang life.
Krump instructor Chezvaun Cooper, whose dance name is Gully Gospel, explains that krump is both a dance and a coping mechanism.
“It doesn’t even have to be gun violence or you losing somebody in your family because they got shot,” Cooper said. “It could be you being bullied, which I went through, it could be you being depressed, which I went through, it can be a load of different stuff.”
Sigalit Hoffman, a psychiatrist at Tufts Medical Center who works with children who have experienced trauma, said krump can be an outlet for that trauma.
“One of the parts of any trauma focused treatment is helping relieve some of the body symptoms involved in trauma reactions,” Hoffman said. “I think providing that movement can be a form of helping the children physically release from their bodies the painful memories they've been storing.”
Cooper said you can use krump as a way to express yourself all the time – not just when you’re angry.
"Krump, you can use it for whatever,” Cooper said. “So don’t put krump in a box, but more importantly don’t put yourself in a box.”
Turner said that as soon as krump class is over, the kids start looking forward to the next one. She hopes to widen the reach of Legacy Lives On, engaging more adults, and their kids.
“We teach ourselves, and we’re teaching them expression, and how to grieve, and do it safely,” she said.
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