Gordon on Gun Violence Survivors and Quiet Rooms: Commonwealth Magazine
Eric Gordon, professor of civic media and director of the College’s Engagement Lab, writes an opinion piece describing quiet rooms, or places where gun violence survivors learn about the death of their loved ones and begin their grieving.
The College recently began a partnership with Mass. General Hospital’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention and the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, called Transforming Narratives of Gun Violence.
Gordon, mothers of gun violence victims, hospital employees, community advocates, and Emerson College students created a 20-minute documentary called “Quiet Rooms,” in which five mothers describe navigating their grief and healing after losing their sons to gun violence.
As the country’s attention is once again focused on the obscene spectacle of mass murders, I’m thinking of those mothers right here in Boston, and in every city in this country, who have been re-traumatized by these preventable tragedies. As a society we need to show victims that people do care, and that long after the news cameras go away, they can be supported in their healing without shame.
If anything is going to change in our dysfunctional national discourse on guns, we need to tell different stories that include the voices of those directly impacted. Only then can we translate our outrage, fascination, and ultimately indifference, into care.
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