A $25,000 gun violence prevention grant from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office had positive results with its largely Harlem-based youth recipients this past summer, participating organizations say.
Emergent Works and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV), two nonprofits, were among the 11 organizations to receive funding for stipends to encourage youngsters to participate in paid productive programming during the months when shootings are traditionally the highest.
“The grant for our youth was very inspiring,” said Emergent Works student coordinator LaiQuan DuBose. “It probably was the most money they received in our program in a short period of time. But it also allowed them to really focus on the work aspect … They understood that they’re getting paid to meet the deadlines.”
Zeek, a high school senior enrolled in Emergent Works’ programming, told the AmNews his stipend helped cover school supplies and winter clothes. Another participant, Dontay, says the money went towards groceries for his mom as well as better clothes for school.
But the grant aims to do more than provide summer spending money. Emergent Works launched during the pandemic to offer technical training and professional development for at-risk youth while working to close the racial wealth gap. Most of the staff, including DuBose, are justice-impacted or formerly incarcerated. The program supported by the grant, T.Rap, engages participants through music production and website design.
Over the summer, participants met at the Emergent Works offices on 54th Street to produce an eight-track album,Don’t fall for the TRAP, which they uploaded to Bandcamp while also developing a site about their work. “It’s a good environment,” said Zeek. “The people [at Emergent Works], they really help you grow. You can talk to them about anything.”
Photos courtesy of the District Attorney’s Office of New York
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Album cover for tracks created by Emergent Works participants. Credit: Courtesy of the District Attorney’s Office of New York
NYAGV dates back to the 1990s when Brooklyn parents organized for gun control after a deadly Prospect Park shooting. The D.A.’s grant went towards the organization’s Miller mentorship program, which teaches gender and racial justice issues to participating teens, with alumni often serving as the mentors.
Mentor Priya Boyce, a former participant, recalled learning how issues like food scarcity and redlining — the discriminatory lending practice once used to keep Black Americans out of certain neighborhoods — contribute to higher rates of gun violence. Now, she teaches others. “I could see it clicking in the mentees’ and mentors’ heads how gun violence is embedded and intertwined, and the ways that we can kind of prevent it,” she said.
Like Emergent Works, NYAGV offered a safe space for participants to express vulnerability. Program Director Frank Teah hosts a masculinity focus group while deputy education director Andrea Gonzales runs a trauma focus group. “Gun violence typically involves young men and boys as perpetrators,” said Teah. “If we can reach them so that the ideas we’ve been conditioned to see being a man as one way [that] this isn’t the only way to be strong.”
Along with the education initiatives, the mentees also put together a magazine and a culminating block party this past August to showcase their creative projects and what they learned. The grant also helps reframe how participants, some who are justice-impacted, interact with prosecutors.
“Our young people in this particular program especially are rethinking what justice looks like,” said NYAGV Education Director Shaina Harrison. “When they see someone from the D.A.’s Office who is funneling money to communities that are disproportionately affected by gun violence to young people who might not necessarily fit the typical printout of what a good kid is, it changes things for them.
“We’ve had young people, whether from Harlem or from Queens talk about being written off because they made some bad decisions, and through this program, have found so much more power in who they are.”
The grants began when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg took office in 2022 and since reached $295,000 in total annual awards stemming from money seized from white collar crimes committed by major banks. Since then, shootings have dropped by 45%.
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