Roseland Ceasefire Encouraged by Decrease in Gun Violence Despite Federal Cuts

Roseland Ceasefire Encouraged by Decrease in

Gun Violence Despite Federal Cuts


"What he (Trump) should be focused on is that there are 30,000 deaths from handguns across the United States every year. We can clean up these handguns across America. America has a violence problem. If he wants to be of help, I would also recommend that he sends in the Center for Disease Control. This violence ought to be called a disease, it's nationwide," said U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson on Chicago Tonight, this week.


Treating violence as a health epidemic is what Roseland Ceasefire has done since 2006, when it was founded.


"We believe shootings and killings are not normal. That is a learned behavior that we have to change. Because of the trauma that has occurred in the community we have to take the community as a whole and create a cure essentially by re-traumatizing them back to a sense of normalcy to where they say this will not be tolerated in our community," explains Bob Jackson, CEO and founder of the Roseland Ceasefire Project.


Jackson says it is imperative that everyone in the community is echoing the same thing that violence is not our norm; violence is the anti-norm.


Jackson trained under Dr. Gary Slutkin, who continues to teach that like any other contagion, you have to create some type of preventative cure.


Violence intervention and interruption are working, as crime in Chicago has dropped significantly. Murders are down more than 30% in the past year, despite the outbreak of gun violence that took place over the Labor Day weekend.


"There was one shooting in our area, but gun violence was down in all of our areas over the holiday," says Jackson.


Roseland Ceasefire's funding is for the far South Side of Chicago, which includes Pullman, West Pullman and the Roseland area. Workers also cover south suburban Cook County--including Harvey, Markham, Ford Heights, Calumet City, Calumet Park, Riverdale and Park Forest.

Jackson believes the biggest threat to the decrease in gun violence is President Donald Trump's funding cuts.


The Department of Justice ended nearly $16 million meant for gun violence prevention in Chicago. As a result, Roseland Ceasefire had to layoff 30 of its 100 employees.


"Trump's cuts for violence intervention hit us pretty hard. Some of our key programs, especially, our high school programs, but we still found a way to keep them going. Other key areas in West Pullman and the south suburbs were affected," says Jackson. "It's putting a strain on our workers, specifically, our case managers, but we're still trying to get the job done."


Jackson says he is encouraged to see the number of homicides in his coverage area drop by 100 in the last four years and that Roseland Ceasefire will continue to prescribe the people and assistance needed to keep the epidemic of gun violence from spreading.


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