By Jala Forest / Broadcast version by Mary Schuermann
Reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration
Kendra Byrd was born and raised on Warren's east side. Gun violence hit close to home for her in 2009 when her nephew was shot and killed. His murder has not been solved.
Byrd, who teaches at Warren G. Harding High School, is concerned that gun violence in her Northeast Ohio city has increased over the last several years.
"There are programs that people are trying to set up to curb violence, to give kids other things to do as opposed to hanging out in the streets," Byrd said. "But in the end, it's an individual thing. Parents have to be more responsible for their own children. People have to be responsible for themselves."
Former students of Byrd's have been killed due to gun violence in the city, as well.
"It is so traumatic. That's the part of education they don't teach about. How many kids do I have to watch have shorter lives?"
Gun violence has been recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a public-health issue. More than 1,400 people are killed by gun violence each year in Ohio, based on data from the CDC and FBI presented by the Giffords Law Center. And that number is trending upward.
Black Ohioans are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and the firearm homicide rate among Black males aged 15-34 is 25 times higher than white males of the same age group. Black men make up 7% of Ohio's population, but account for 64% of the state's gun homicide victims.
Community gun-violence is a form of assault that takes place between non-intimately related individuals in cities and neighborhoods, according to the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a nonprofit that researches its effects. Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by gun violence as the result of income inequality, easy access to guns by individuals living in high-risk areas, underfunded housing and poverty.
"These guns find their way into low-wealth, low-resource neighborhoods in a way that good education and jobs seemingly cannot," said the Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan Jr., the executive director of the Ohio Council of Churches.
The OCC, based in Columbus, is a partnership between a variety of religious organizations throughout Ohio. Gun violence reduction work is the group's priority-it partnered with the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence organization and is approaching the problem by educating the public about the crisis of gun violence and vocalizing its concerns and plans with the state.
"They're working with people to talk about both policies and practices, raise issues with our legislators and our civic leaders to get them to enact what some people say are common sense gun laws," Sullivan said.
In Warren, a city of about 39,000, the median household income is only $27,108, while the federal poverty threshold for families in the United States is about $52,000.
Between 2017 and 2021, there were 47 homicides in Warren-more than 90% were committed with guns according to the city of Warren's annual report. Over the last two years, the police department's Street Crimes Unit conducted house raids, made traffic stops and used confidential informants as a strategy to target those suspected of possessing illegal firearms.
"We were able to take a record number of illegal guns off of the streets," said William D. Franklin, the city's mayor. "Over 400, plus illegal weapons, and we had them destroyed."
Franklin and the Warren Police Department established the Police and Community Trust Initiative in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. The initiative is a coalition between residents and law enforcement officials that focuses on building unity. The group consists of community activists, educators and members of the clergy who were selected by Franklin and Eddie Colbert, who is the director of Public and Safety Service.
"We have set out an initiative to try to increase and promote police and community relationships to build better relationships between the community and law enforcement," Franklin said. "That's an ongoing process."
A spike in gun homicides in 2022 led Warren residents to request formal meetings with city leaders and law enforcement officials to express their concerns about the rise of gun violence in their neighborhoods and the need for better security and protection.
Helen Rucker, the councilwoman at large in Warren, said the city took their concerns into consideration and took action.
"Warren was in a financial position where we could step up," Rucker said. "We have been going through a financial crisis for over 10 years. And now we're able to buy new equipment, new vehicles and cameras and that sort of thing that these residents are asking for. So we've been able to respond better."
In 2020, the homicide rate in Cleveland increased by 42%. Between 2017 and 2019, almost 90% of homicides were committed with firearms. There were 61 homicides in Cleveland through June 2022-52 of those homicides involved a firearm. In early June, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb addressed the issue of gun violence in the city at a press conference, demanding state legislators take action on stricter gun legislation.
"As the mayor of Cleveland, I feel paralyzed and handcuffed by the lack of real comprehensive gun legislation in Congress," Bibb said, "and the fact that we have a state that doesn't give me, as mayor, the tools I need to combat the illegal traffic of guns that plague our city, day in and day out."
The city will use a grant of $1.7 million from the governor's office to pay for programs to keep adolescents out of gangs, to help expand violent crime reduction teams and to buy the National Integrated Ballistics Network, a national database of digital images of spent bullets that are used to match weapons to gun-related crimes.
Like Warren, the city of Cleveland is also attempting to build a bridge among Cleveland law enforcement and its residents. In 2021, Cleveland voters passed cIssue 24, which gave civilians more control of police discipline and policies. The Cleveland Community Police Commission was established in 2015 by a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), following a 2014 investigation of the Cleveland Division of Police. Its purpose is to bring input from residents of Cleveland communities on the process of police reform.
"I think we've got to figure out a way to get good jobs with good benefits [and] good salaries into communities with low resourcing [and] low wealth," Sullivan said, "and help people to have the ability to have sustained lives and communities that are renewable sources of income that keep them going and keep them afloat."
This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation
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By Jabari Gibbs for The Current.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Rural News Network-Public News Service Collaboration
Republicans and Democrats used the final weekend of early voting to urge Glynn County residents to cast ballots in what is expected to be a razor-tight race for Georgia’s sixteen electoral votes for president.
In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 29% of the vote in Glynn and four years later beat Joe Biden by 23% of the nearly 42,000 votes cast in the county. The former president is expected to prevail again this year in this heavily Republican county.
But statewide, the race between the former president and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris could be decided by the narrowest of margins. That’s why in even as red a county as Glynn, both campaigns are scrambling for votes.
On Saturday morning, the First African Baptist Church, just off Amherst Street in Brunswick, hosted a “Souls to the Polls” rally, offering hot dogs, hamburgers and encouragement to prospective voters before they boarded a bus for the short ride to the nearby county board of elections office.
“I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but you know what has to be done,” Regina H. Johnson, a retired Glynn County school teacher, told the mostly pro-Kamala Harris crowd.
Johnson, who helped organize the event, explained the amendments on the ballot, including a proposed Educational Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (ESPLOST) of 1%. “That’s one cent on every dollar spent here in Glynn County…and that goes for anybody who visits,” she said.
For Charlie Middlebrooks, in particular, Saturday was a landmark day.
The 19-year-old recent graduate of Brunswick High was aboard the first shuttle leaving the church and cast his first vote. He was driven, he said, to ensure Trump would not return to the White House.
“The whole thing about how he’s a millionaire — he was born with the money and Kamala Harris had to work her way up. And that relates to a lot of us here, including myself, because we didn’t start out with all that money. Growing up, you got to work, work your way up. That’s the way I was taught. The way a real man does it,” Middlebrooks said.
‘Slept her way to the top’
Keen to win over the undecided and uncommitted, especially in the county’s Black community, Republicans were busy over the weekend, too.
A former reality court television judge, Joe Brown, was the featured speaker at a Sunday rally at Brunswick’s Selden Park. He appeared as part of a five-city tour of Georgia organized by MAGA Black Georgia that includes stops in Rome, Marietta, Savannah and Thomasville.
Brown excoriated Harris, repeating baseless allegations and smears that Trump has often voiced during campaign rallies.
“Now I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have a successful billionaire who’s manipulated all of that running the U.S. government as the chief administrative officer than somebody that has never done that in their lives, that has slept her way to the top,” he told the audience of about 45 people, eight of whom were Black.
Brown suggested that Harris was physically unfit to serve as president, though her campaign released a doctor’s report earlier this month that she is in “excellent health” and “possesses the physical and mental resilience required to serve as president.”
“Some doctor friends of mine tell me that her word salad thing is the result of something they call early onset dementia. It starts in the mid-50s, and maybe it might hit by the early 60s, but she’s 60 years old this month,” Brown said. “It is very alarming.”
Trump has released very little health information, including after his ear was grazed by a bullet during an assassination attempt in July in Pennsylvania.
Brown’s audience was made up almost entirely of White — and very vocal — Trump supporters. For some, however, their backing of the former president wasn’t unqualified.
“Do I find him disgusting at times? Yes, I do. I find his rhetoric to be disgusting at times. I find the name-calling to be disgusting at times,” Carolyn Fisher admitted. “‘[But] I like what he says he is going to do, and I’ve seen him do it between 2016 and 2021. I saw what he did, and I want that back again.”
But Brown’s talking points about uncontrolled immigration and voting by illegal migrants resonated deeply with the 74-year-old Fisher, a resident of St. Simons.
“I’m afraid. I am terrified about the illegal migrants that are coming across our borders, about people who are not even citizens that are voting. I am terrified about it,” she said.
Gordon Rolle, the head of MAGA Black Georgia, vouched for Brown.
“You know, there’s no difference between him and a college professor as far as the information he has to present, but he gets a lot of information from historical documents, but a lot of information that he gives, if you notice that comes from first-hand knowledge of this.”
A former Democrat, Rolle was approached by the Virgina-based MAGABlack to develop an outreach program for Georgia that would target Black males between the ages of 18 and 34.
But feeling that Trump was “the right choice” and frustrated that nonprofits like MAGABlack are barred by law from endorsing presidential candidates, Rolle divorced himself from MAGABlack and moved to MAGA Black Georgia.
“After the election, what we want to do is have an establishment in each community that we’ve been in contact with, and we invite other communities to reach out to us because we consider ourselves an umbrella organization,” he said.
This story was originally produced by Jabari Gibbs of The Current as part of the Rural News Network, an initiative of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), supporting more than 475 independent, nonprofit news organizations.
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It is Election Day and Maine voters are weighing the future of the state's extensive trail system.
If passed, the Maine Trails Bond would inject some $30 million over four years into repairs and maintenance of all public-use trails statewide.
Francesca Gundrum, director of advocacy for Maine Audubon, said the funds are greatly needed as trails are experiencing record levels of use.
"The time to invest in our trails absolutely is right now," Gundrum contended. "That's why we're really excited about this bond measure to help us."
Gundrum pointed out many older trails were designed with little consideration for the long-term effects on wildlife or the growing reality of climate change-related weather events. More than 500 towns, businesses and clubs are backing the Trails Bond with little opposition, which Gundrum noted is a testament to Mainer's appreciation for the outdoors.
Back-to-back storms last winter caused extensive damage to trails statewide, including more than a dozen in the Portland Trails network. An army of volunteers worked to remove debris and shore up river banks and bridges but some areas are still in need of repair.
Gundrum hopes the bond will help encourage younger Mainers to get active in maintaining the trails to better withstand the effects of climate change.
"We all are still dealing with it," Gundrum acknowledged. "I think whether or not it's climate being a driving factor for you, you know there are changes and they're impacting trails and beyond."
Gundrum added the trail system also serves as an economic driver for Maine. The state has long been a destination for hikers and cyclists.
The state has more than 14,000 miles of snowmobile trails alone. Supporters say passage of the Trails Bond could even further boost the state's $3 billion outdoor recreation economy.
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Election Day is finally here, and this year more than 17 million Latinos are expected to cast a ballot.
The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund finds swing states - like Arizona - which have a significant Latino population, will be influential and decisive.
The group's National Director of Civic Engagement Juan Rosa said it is important these voters understand the power they hold.
"The two messages are, one, a message of pride in the growth of the Latino electorate in this country," said Rosa, "and second is the message of empowerment, understanding that we as voters have rights in this country and that our listeners have resources."
Nearly one of every four Arizona voters is expected to be Latino, an almost 20% increase from 2016.
Rosa said while tomorrow will be about participating in the democratic process, issues are likely to come up.
He said his organization is ready to provide voters with accurate, nonpartisan information about electoral participation.
You can reach the toll-free bilingual hotline at 1-888-839-8682 from 4 a.m. until 10 p.m.
Looking past Election Day, Rosa said it is important to understand that final election results could take some time to be called.
He said individual states can take days and sometimes even weeks to count every ballot and ensure they're responding to certain appeals and administrative issues.
Nonetheless Rosa said he wants to reassure voters that the system does work, even if it does take some extra time.
"If you see that you go to bed on election night not knowing, it is not a bug in the system," said Rosa. "That is actually really the way the system works, it is supposed to take a few days for each state, each of our 50 states, to go back and count every vote."
Rosa said every audit and examination of past elections shows there is minimal fraud. Rosa stresses mis-, dis- and malinformation will be a threat this election cycle.
Nearly 70 false election narratives have been made as of early September, according to Newsguard.
Rosa said harmful misinformation will be on the rise after Election Day and recommends to not share suspicious content and consult various reliable sources if you are in doubt.
Support for this reporting was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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