What a moving evening last night! The Louis D. Brown Peace Institute and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery co-hosted a free screening of CIRCLE UP in honor of Survivors of Homicide Victims Awareness Month (SHVAM) Nov. 20-Dec. 20. The event at Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester included a community discussion with filmmaker Julie Mallozzi and subjects Janet Connors and Charmise Galloway.
The conversation ranged from the uplifting – including a teenage trauma survivor who voiced her commitment to helping others avoid the pain she went through – to the tragic as Carla Sheffield cried out at her inability to heal after her son Burrell was shot and killed by a Boston Police officer during a routine traffic stop.
At one point an audience member asked others to raise their hand if they had lost someone to violence. About half of the room raised their hand. It was chilling to me to see that with roughly 90% correlation, the people of color were the ones raising hands and the white folks weren't. We have a lot of work to do.
After the screening some audience members contributed to our ongoing social media talk-back at #CIRCLEUPdoc with one-minute testimonials about the film and #forgiveness, #accountability, and #justice:
Thank you to the Peace Institute and the Center for Violence Recovery and Prevention for sponsoring this meaningful event!