EJUSA uses its deep experience as state- and local-based grassroots advocates to support organizations engaged in community-based violence intervention programs. We help build campaigns, using our organizing skills, that strengthen our partners in the fight to increase resources for proven community-led responses to violence in communities of color that experience high levels of trauma and violence. And we are changing the way that leaders and people think and talk about violence.

Case Study—Newark, NJ

Under the leadership of Mayor Ras Baraka, Newark has become a national leader in using public health approaches to reduce violence. Local groups like the Newark Community Street Team have helped bring shootings down 30 percent in the south ward of the city.

EJUSA has become a key part of the safety strategy in the city:

• We helped strengthen four local healing organizations supporting crime survivors in the city, driving $1.3mm in new funds to those groups.
• We partner with the Newark Community Street Team to co-host the Public Safety Roundtable, a bi-weekly meeting which centers the community in public safety strategies in Newark’s South Ward. Community and law enforcement discuss the current state of safety, share concerns, and develop policies and collaborative strategies to improve safety within the city and communication with policy leaders.
• Our Trauma to Trust training has trained more than 500 people across the city, including approximately 18 percent of the Newark Police Department. This groundbreaking course brings together violence interrupters, community residents, police officers, and service providers to build trust and collaborate to reduce violence and create a healing partnership.
• In 2019, the mayor launched the Brick City Peace Collaborative, a coalition of city departments, community-based public safety organizations, and community partners (including EJUSA) working to make Newark a trauma-informed city.
• Statewide, EJUSA worked with a coalition of organizations and advocates to push for new legislation that strengthened violence intervention programs. Several of those laws passed in 2019, with more work to be done in the years to come. Watch the call to end gun violence statewide.

This powerful combination of community-based violence intervention, healing work, and trauma-informed practices has the potential to reshape city and state public safety approaches across the country.

EJUSA was proud to support another recent campaign in 2019, this time in California. A coalition, led by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, successfully advocated to expand funding for community-based violence intervention from $9m in 2018 to $30 million. Read the joint letter calling for the change.