ARTS PROJECTS WE LOVE: Arts to End Violence Festival - Crown Heights, Bklyn

Last night’s gallery opening was part of the Arts to End Violence Festival hosted by the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center as part of their Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) ceasefire initiative.

About 120 neighborhood residents attended the Arts to End Violence gallery opening held in a new art gallery on St. Johns Place, the adjoining church, and along the sidewalk. There was jazz music performed by Pastor Ken Bogan of Greater Restoration Baptist Church, film screenings of work done by filmmakers and students alike, and plenty of enthusiastic mingling. There were also opportunities for attendees to create their own inspiring messages of peace by making their own peace signs for the upcoming peace march in early-June. One guest noted that what was created by the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center was an oasis of peace. Tonight is the last day of the Arts to End Violence Festival. There will be film screenings of six short films and a documentary called Player Hating, which was filmed in Albany Projects. The event will take place at the Launch Pad (721 Franklin) at 7:00 pm. If you can't join the festivities this evening tonight then come to S.O.S. Week (June 2nd-10th)!

Hope to see you in Crown Heights!!

-Chante
(as provided by Amy Ellenbogen, Crown Heights Mediation Center)

(FILM) The Interrupters - Operation Ceasefire

Violence is an American disease and programs like Ceasefire offers a holistic panacea with vigilance!

The film, The Interrupters, takes place in the heart of the midwest, Chicago, IL, where crime has taken so many young lives without an end in sight. With communities paralyzed with hopelessness, the Ceasefire model, first implemented in Boston back in 1996, was the shining ray of hope that Chicago needed.

The film focused on the day-to-day impact that the driving force of the program, the Interrupters, have on the members of the community and the violent instigators. The Interrupters are instrumental vehicles for diffusing situations that can escalate to someone's death, cyclical violence, or worse turning a would-be successful youth into a a future gang member ready and willing to take a life.

The crux of this film is to show the hearts and souls of these Interrupters who put their lives at risk each and every day. The film also shows that these youths and adults that have been written off as being too bad to be saved are truly the ones that need a second chance to make a change into the right direction.

This film touched my heart. I know that violence happens everywhere. I live in a city where it happens so much that I've become desensitized and detached to any news of violence. But this film really put me face-to-face with the victims filled with either rage or disbelief that they survived, the families that weep at funerals asking why knowing that a solution is not within reach and a community reeling from yet another shooting with pleads wondering when will it end.

The Ceasefire model brings a long awaited warmth of a sunrise after a long, dark cold night. It gives promise to a day when we can potentially see a time when the high frequency of violence in our inner cities as a distant memory for the history books.

NYC: Be sure to check this film before it ends at the IFC and Maysles Cinemas this Wednesday!

Special S/O to the Interrupters that walk the streets of Crown Heights (SOS) and Harlem (Operation SNUG) to keep us safe!!

- Review by SR's Chante.