Each day, we open the paper and examine horrible murders that occur right here and throughout our nation. These tragedies can appear to be an all-too-common prevalence, but on the similar time one thing so distant and summary that it barely registers to the common reader.
However every title is an individual who was senselessly killed. Every particular person is a lot greater than a headline: They had been moms, fathers, sons, daughters, cousins, pals. Every had his or her personal distinctive desires, ambitions, loves, hopes, fears, worries, joys, and disappointments, however all had this in widespread: every had a lot life but to dwell when violence took them.
These victims lived in neighborhoods. That they had households and pals. They didn’t dwell in a vacuum however existed as a part of the broader material of a neighborhood, a fragile material that frays extra with every tragic demise. With every new fraying comes a tidal wave of ache, struggling, and trauma for the numerous individuals who knew and liked the sufferer.
That’s the reason I’m so proud to work with the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute based by Clementina Chery. It’s an unbelievable second in life to fulfill a person whose humanity transcends the tragic occasions she has suffered.
If you first meet Clementina, her heat smile and interesting eyes embrace you however what you sense beneath is a steely dedication. It’s, at first, laborious to think about the deep tragedy in her life and the way it has formed her work.
Clementina is that uncommon particular person whose life’s work serves as an inspiration to the remainder of us. Her 15-year-old son Louis was fatally struck by gunfire not removed from his Dorchester residence in December 1993, an harmless bystander caught between two teams of younger males concerned in a capturing.
On the time of his demise Louis, who was involved about avenue violence amongst members of his era, was strolling to a gathering of a gaggle referred to as Teenagers In opposition to Gang Violence. He was a younger man who was fascinated with engineering, who appreciated to learn, and whose desires included turning into the primary Black president of america.
Clementina didn’t enable Louis’ hopes for his neighborhood and his friends to die with him. Amid the large ache and penalties to her household life ensuing from her son’s homicide, she determined that the influence of Louis’ life would proceed by way of a mission to assist the numerous households who suffered comparable experiences search therapeutic. Thus was born the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute.
The Peace Institute connects grieving households and gives sources that assist survivors of murder victims deal with the quick unhappy duties – as an illustration, they supply a burial information – and the long-term assist essential to proceed their lives as they arrive to phrases with ache that can by no means go away them. Through the years, Clementina’s crew has expanded their mission to incorporate advocating for survivors of violent crimes earlier than legislators and coverage makers, and creating finest practices for police departments and different organizations to speak with households.
However Clementina and her Peace Institute colleagues have gone even additional nonetheless. They’ve embraced the perpetrators of those heart-wrenching crimes as they’re launched from jail. A part of their mission is to supply everybody the chance for redemption.
In his ebook “Simply Mercy,” Bryan Stephenson, the founding father of the Equal Justice Initiative, writes that “every of us is healthier than the worst factor we’ve achieved.”
Clementina Chery lives this imaginative and prescient of humanity.
Amid the widespread violence and hateful rhetoric that pervades our society, has there ever been a extra necessary time to heed the message of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute?
We in Boston have been lucky that our cops and neighborhood teams, working along with political leaders, have saved our charges of homicides and different violent crimes decrease than these in lots of main US cities.
However these are statistics. They don’t console households who’re victims of this mindless violence.
The Louis D. Brown Peace Institute is a beacon of hope for our communities, one which factors towards therapeutic and a path ahead for victims’ households, for neighborhoods impacted by violence, and for perpetrators who deserve the possibility for redemption in the event that they need to do the laborious work wanted to earn it. It deserves our assist.
Alan M. Leventhal is the chairman of Beacon Capital Properties and served as US ambassador to Denmark from July 2022 to January 2025.
