A search that never ends

Alexis' mom liked her daughter's new boyfriend, Rickey; he brought out a side of Alexis she rarely saw. "He made her giggle and laugh," says Lashawn Randolph.

Lashawn & daughter Alexis. Alexis was killed in January 2015

Alexis was a very determined person, a young woman with a plan. Just out of high school in San Jose, she had quickly moved to Oakland to live with her beloved grandfather, despite his discouragement. Not that he didn't love the idea of having her near. He'd been there the day her mom had brought the newborn Alexis home from the hospital. They'd all lived together when Alexis was a little girl. He says that, of course, he loves all his grandkids, but you can tell Alexis was special, perhaps because of a connection forged in those early years.

But...Oakland is Oakland. No doubt, it is a beautiful place full of thriving, promising young people. But it is also a place where young people find trouble they can't make their way out of. Sometimes mortal trouble. Still, Oakland, with her grandfather, is where Alexis wanted to be.

"I dreaded that," says Lashawn.

But life in Oakland would be more exciting. At least when she wasn't working long hours at UPS. And work was what she wanted right now. College would come, it was definitely part of the plan. But first she wanted to work for a few years, make some money, have some fun.

In Oakland, she met Rickey Livingston. Oldest boy among seven siblings, Rickey's youngest brothers looked up to him. When he would come home to visit, he was all theirs, the kind of big brother who gave them his attention, affection and focus.

"He did that with all his brothers and sisters," says his dad, Rick Livingston. "He was all about family." Rickey loved music and seafood and sweets. He was intelligent, had a wide skill set. "And the dude was handsome," says Rick. "He had it all."

Nevertheless, Alexis had been reluctant to bring Ricky home to meet her mom.

"I'm tough," says Lashawn. "It's always a thousand questions." Rickey took the parental interrogation in stride, handled it with respect. Mom was satisfied.

Rickey Livingston, 20, killed in January 2015

"You could tell he was raised in a family like ours," she says. And then there was that way he had of bringing out Alexis’ lighthearted side. If he made Alexis happy, then Mom was happy, too.

Rickey was 20, Alexis 19. A good looking young couple. They were killed together. Shot in Ricky's car in broad daylight in East Oakland on January 16th of this year.

Now, on the 16th of every month, the families communicate, support each other. It's an unfortunate friendship forged in the most unfortunate circumstances. But so few can understand their plight.

Marilyn Washington Harris understands. Her only son, Khadafy Washington, was killed in Oakland in 2000. He was 18, had just graduated from McClymonds High, in West Oakland. He was killed on the campus there on a Friday night. The Alameda coroner's office is closed on Saturday, but how was Marilyn supposed to know that? She went there, banged on doors. No one was there. It made a horrible, lonely situation worse. She vowed that that kind of thing wouldn't happen to anyone else in Oakland.

For the last 15 years, through the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence, she has dedicated her life to helping survivors of homicide victims in the days right after a killing, and beyond. Over those 15 years, she has taken nearly a thousand mothers, fathers, wives or children by the hand to walk them through the complicated business that comes in the wake of a homicide. She has helped them get compensation and aid available to help pay for funerals, helped them plan the funerals, protected them from exploitation at this most vulnerable time, listened to their pain, confusion, anger and fear. She has been a source of comfort and love, more than a symbol, proof to these wounded families that love is still out there and healing is possible, just when it seems impossible.

"She's been awesome," says Lashawn.

"Marilyn was patient," says Rick. "She told me, 'There are things you need to know. First we'll meet with the Victims of Crimes office, we'll go from there.' She was just very informative, welcoming, you could tell she understood what was important. I listen to her guidance because it is coming from the heart."

When you lose a child to violence, the killing itself is only the beginning of something, of a kind of lonely quest, or a search, that will last the rest of your life. And what makes that quest, that search even harder is that you don't really know what you're seeking. You're not even sure you want to find it, whatever it is. Is it peace? A reason? Is it the past?

There is a phenomenon discovered and documented by researchers and therapists who work with parents of the violently killed. They call it "re-enactment syndrome." Parents who were not there when their son or daughter was killed are wracked with guilt or simply cannot accept the idea of their helpless child dying without them. They are compelled to imagine what happened, with details gleaned from police reports or eyewitness accounts. They place themselves in the story, imagining and re-imagining what they would have done to comfort their dying child. It's possible Rick Livingston has never heard of re-enactment syndrome. Yet he expresses it perfectly.

"When my baby laid on that floor in transition," says Rick, "I wish I could have held his hand, been there with him, touched him, just been there."

It's part of the search for that mysterious something. You think you want peace, but when it appears, you feel guilty. You worry your lost loved one will feel abandoned. You look back to the incident as if searching for an alternate past. That is a search that will never end.

Both Rick and Lashawn talk about a future they will never witness. Rickey's dad dreamed of taking his son to exotic places, "away from the concrete of Oakland and San Francisco." Alexis mom talks about the happy answers she will never get, what college Alexis would go to, what career path her promising daughter would follow. Both young people have had birthdays since their deaths. Each family had a party.

"I was just all over the place that day," says Lashawn.

In one way, each of them is lucky. Lashawn has a support system of family and Alexis' friends who keep Alexis as a part of their every day lives, who text her mom to see how she is doing, bringing up good memories, posting old pictures to her Facebook page. Rickey's dad has his wife and children. And he is a social worker, surrounded in his work by therapists and others whose lives are dedicated to helping people. 

"They've always got my back," he says. "But you don't want to burden people, It's a heavy load to carry. There's orphans and widows, but what do you call when you lose a child? There's no name for it."

That is partly why Marilyn formed a support group. It meets the first Tuesday of every month in a bland classroom at Kaiser in Oakland. Often an Oakland Police Department homicide detective comes to update the families on their own cases or on the state of violence in the city. Mothers and fathers who lost a child a month ago, a year ago, or 10 years ago, come to the group, talk about life, death, their cases, their lost children, their living children. Often there is laughter, frequently anger, sometimes sadness. They always welcome with a rare combination of warmth and great regret new attendees. Rickey's dad and his wife, and Alexis' mom make the long drive to Oakland frequently, one from the South Bay, one from the North Bay, to be with others who understand, who have been there.

"I almost blew up one time," says Rick. "I was literally on the brink, and so they all loved me, got around me. They still call me. It's imperative that people try to support these programs, even a little bit helps."

So far in 2015 Oakland has suffered just over 90 homicides. The number may well surpass a hundred this year. That's a lot of violence leaving a lot of pain in its wake. It's a pain we don't often think about, but one that, unattended, robs the community of vital members, and that sometimes leaves a bitterness that can lead to deeper problems for an individual and a community. Research and real life have shown that violence, especially the trauma it causes, can lead to more violence. But healing can also lead to greater healing.

No Due Process for the Dead, Part 1: Allegations

Part 1: Allegations
 
Often, when a homicide victim in Oakland is very young or otherwise outside the common demographic categories of most victims -- that is, when the deceased is not an African American man between the ages of 18 and 34 -- I will see on Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere that someone has begun a GoFundMe campaign, or some other fundraising effort, to "help the family pay for the funeral.' 

Edward McGowan's obituary

It is a very kind thing to do, but in most of those cases, the families don't need help with funeral expenses. The Victims of Crimes office (VOC) of the Office of the Alameda District Attorney can quickly arrange to pay for the expenses that come in the immediate aftermath of a homicide. There is as much as $5,000 available to survivors to pay for funerals.  

But, if the victim was killed while allegedly committing a crime himself, then there is no financial help available. And there is no due process for the dead, certainly no swift one just when the family needs it. If the police say the victim was committing a crime, then the family is out of luck and on their own.

Because he was killed in a gunfight, in which allegedly he wounded his own killer, you wouldn't have heard much about the struggles of the family of 17-year-old Edward McGowan. Outside his own family and large group of friends, he wouldn't have inspired much lingering general sympathy in Oakland, where he grew up, and attended Frick Middle School and Fremont High. Certainly you would have seen no fundraising efforts on his family's behalf.

But because Edward was said to be in possession of a gun, and to have fired that gun in the course of a drug sale gone bad, they are precisely the kind of family that could use some help. It took two weeks for them to scrape together what was needed to bury their son. It must have been a long two weeks. At Edward's well-attended funeral on Friday at the Chapel of the Chimes, you could see and hear the suffering of his family, the same kind of suffering you would encounter at the funeral of any homicide victim, no matter the circumstances of their deaths or the facts of their lives. I'll have a longer piece about Edward and about this issue of VOC aid being denied certain families soon, about how we might think we know something about the lives people live, or lived, but that often our conclusions about them and their families, including our subconscious ones, are based on ignorance.

However, for now, if you wish to help Edward's family and others like them, I suggest you give to either Youth Alive or the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence, both of Oakland. (I am a board member of the latter.) The founder of the Khadafy Washington Foundation, Marilyn Harris, has been helping all families of just about every victim in Oakland for 15 years now. Staff of Youth Alive also work to assure the families get the help they need. Either of these non profits could use your help.

Donate to Youth Alive.
Donate to The Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence.

Oakland's victims and its healers, sometimes one and the same - The Almanac on KALW

Last night, KALW's The Spot program played part of the conversation I had recently with Brock Winstead on his podcast, The Eastern Shore. I got to talk to a wider audience about the homicide victims in Oakland who don't get much attention, and about the effects of gun violence on victims, their families and the city. It was especially satisfying to discuss the work being done to help victims and the city heal and find peace by the likes of Marilyn Washington Harris of the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence, who works with families of homicide victims, Caheri Gutierrez of Youth Alive!, who works with kids in East Oakland, and Kevin Grant of Operation Ceasefire, who works with gang members and the re-entry population. 

My bit is about 12 minutes long and comes about 17 minutes in, but the first two segments are fun and interesting and worth a listen. One is about a checkers club and the other about a boxer and barber in London.

Here's a link: http://kalw.org/post/spot-kinged-clipped

You can read lots about Kevin, Marilyn and Caheri, as well as families hit by violence, here on the blog.

Here's a story I wrote about the three of them for San Francisco Magazine: No Escape, No Surrender.
Here's one I wrote for San Francisco about Oakland's Ceasefire efforts: Guns Down, Don't Shoot. 
Here's the original, full conversation with Brock on The Eastern Shore - Jim O'Brien on Violence and Its Aftermath

"I signed up for a hard job" - Oakland Mayor Schaaf on a city's responsibility to families of homicide victims

Had a good conversation with new Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf last week. We met Friday, late in the day, for coffee (me) and very spicy hot chocolate (her) at Bittersweet Cafe downtown. She was very nearly on-time, which I appreciate, and not at all rushed once we got to talking. The interview was wide-ranging and much of it will appear as a Q&A in the March issue of Diablo Magazine. 

Mayor Schaaf and her staff had already indicated to me, a couple of weeks earlier, that she was determined to develop some kind of consistent outreach to the families of each homicide victim in Oakland. She's been getting advice on what this ought to look like from Marilyn Harris, whose son Khadafy Washington was killed in Oakland in 2000. Marilyn has since then dedicated her life, her days and nights, to supporting the survivors, mostly mothers, of the killed, in the crazy, in the impossible days right after the killing, when there is so much business to attend to, and very little will to do so. 

Marilyn has told me that when her son was killed, she never heard a word from anyone with the city government, and that if she had received even a sympathy card, it would have made a difference. Among the many emotions families of homicide victims experience, along with self-recriminations, emptiness, fear and shock, is resentment and bitterness toward the authorities, and toward the community. This civic wound needs to be healed or the rift will widen and the families will be lost to us forever. A gesture from the mayor, if it is thoughtful and humble, will help to begin, just begin, that healing. 

This is an excerpt from my conversation with Mayor Schaaf on January 9, 2015, where we talk about this issue:

Jim O'B: As mayor, I'm wondering how you see, what is a city's responsibility to victims of violence and to families of homicide victims.

Libby Schaaf: I think the first thing the city owes them is to do everything within its power to prevent violence from happening in the first place. And whether that is trying to ensure that children have a caring adult in their live, particularly the children that don't have parents in their lives, whether it's to provide places where children feel talented and good and productive and smart, that they see that there is some bright future for them

JOB: But what about in the aftermath, once it's happened. You can't prevent everything, its a city, there's going to be violence and there's going to be killing, and does the city government, does the mayor, have a responsibility to the victims, once it happens?

LS: Absolutely.

JOB: What is it?

LS: As Mayor, I think you know, that I'm committed to responding to particularly the family members of every victim, particularly homicide victims, with compassion, with an apology that your government was not able to keep your loved-one safe, and with a sense that you are not in this alone, that there is help, and there is support and there is a community around you. And to some extent, the immediate family needs that, but I certainly found, as council member, often the whole neighborhood needed that. As a council member several times I led healing circles, for the neighborhood, after an incident happened. And we had crisis counselors available, and I'd always walk in the room and make them move the chairs so it wasn't the government facing the citizens, but rather that we all sat in a circle, and everyone had a moment to share how they felt, and that also this neighborhood had its own opportunity to ask questions about the investigation, about the incident, directly to the appropriate people in the police department, recognizing that a traumatic effect like that is like a pebble in a pond, the ripples extend far, far out.

JOB: I always say, "that bullet ricochets." It hits not just the family but the street, the neighborhood, the city...

LS: But I don't know if you remember when I came to the Khadafy Washington Foundation event, and I gave Miss Marilyn (Marilyn Washington Harris, founder) a pebble, and I said that just as violence has these rings that spread out, so does kindness and compassion, and so it is certainly my hope, as mayor, when I, on behalf of the city family, express love and compassion and caring, for the families of each and every homicide victim, no matter what the circumstances of that death were, it was a loss to that family, and they deserve to feel that compassion and empathy for the grief, and so it's my hope that that too creates the ripples that spread through the city.

JOB: It will make a difference, especially if you come at it without fear, without guilt, but saying "we love you, we are sorry," and then getting back to work trying to prevent these things. It'll be hard sometimes.

LS: It will be hard, I'll be honest with you, I'm very uncomfortable with funerals, I'm very uncomfortable with death and loss.

JOB: Well, you shouldn't be doing this personally anyway...

LS: Well, I signed up for a hard job, and if I can't be tough for my city, who can?

After the Death of Darnell Byrd, Jr, Part 2: "A story that is killing my heart"

"A story that is killing my heart"  

(See Part 1: Between Rumor and Knowing)

Today, a year after the murder of Darnell Byrd, Jr,, his mother, Ultra Humphries, sits in the front room in her house in East Oakland, in the room where Darnell slept, talking about him, about his hopes and dreams, about his ongoing presence in her life. Darnell wanted to be a barber. He had plans to change his own look, to look more professional, more button-down. He was getting serious, he was growing up. Mother and son were scheduled to go shopping for new clothes the day his body was found, with a bullet in his head, on 78th Avenue. He was 24.

Akim, Ultra and Darnell. Darnell was killed in Oakland in 2013

Ultra has turned Darnell's old room into a peaceful sitting room. Warm sunlight filters through the curtains of blue and brown. There are two comfortable couches and a corner shrine to the memory of her only son. Her husband, Akim, sits at her side. They are young, a year either side of 40, a strikingly handsome couple, out in the world they will catch your eye. But if you watch them long enough you will see in the hard, sober set of their faces the weight of this loss. Akim is always a quiet presence until, occasionally, while telling her story, Ultra can't totally control her emotions and her voice wavers, and then gently Akim touches her arm. He picks up the story until she can gather herself. It's never a long time. Ultra is determined for people to know what happened, what is happening in Oakland, and how the families of the killed, especially the mothers, suffer.

"I'm strong," she says. "But I hurt."

For Ultra, it has been, it continues to be, a journey through grief and pain, to forgiveness, and a search for healing and justice. Every week she checks-in with the Oakland detectives in charge of the investigation. When the primary investigator got sick, she insisted that the investigation progress.

"This is not a cold case," she told them. She says they have been responsive, but she does get frustrated with the pace of things.

Her attitude towards her son's killer has shifted over her painful year.

"In the beginning, I felt a lot of hatred," she says. "And I really wished he was dead." But this has been a hell she would not wish on anybody. "I really have to pray for him and his family. Because...God help him. And I really hope that he will turn himself in and repent and turn away from wickedness and evil. If he doesn't turn away, his parents are going to lose their son."

Her faith has kept her intact, she tells me. "Because I have God, it's why I haven't gone crazy."

She's gotten invaluable support from her church, and from two Oakland institutions devoted to helping families of the killed. The Crisis Response and Support Network, out of Catholic Charities of the East Bay, has helped with the rent when Ultra had to miss work. And they have linked her and her daughter up with therapist who she says have helped them both immensely.

And in Marilyn Harris and the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence, she has found a kindred soul and a source of ongoing strength and healing. Since her own young son was murdered in Oakland in 2000, Harris has been stepping into the lives of survivors, often right at the crime scene, or in the first days after a killing, to guide them through the business at hand, to be their eyes and brain when their own eyes and brain refuse to function or believe, and to begin their long journey back to life. Among the many services she provides, Harris leads a monthly grief group for parents of the killed. There, Ultra could being to tell her story.

"The group," she says, "it makes me feel comfortable to speak about my situation, because others are going through the same thing that I'm going through. So they understand. And when they tell their stories, I'm able to identify what I'm going through, because even though they may have lost their son five years ago, ten years ago, they still lost their son, and they're able to tell me how it's gonna be."

It sounds strange, but sometimes her strength frustrates her. "I don't want to wear it," she tells me," but she does want people to know both that she has a painful story and that she is enduring. "I want them to know, even though I've been through the death of my son, you are still able to make it, you can do it. and that's what Marilyn has given me strengh to do."

Outwardly, a year later, she can look fine, normal, like anybody else going about their business. On a day just about six months after Darnell's death, Ultra wandered idly into a local clothing store. She didn't have much money and wasn't really looking for anything in particular, unless some real bargain popped out at her. Eventually she found herself at the jewelry counter chatting with a friendly clerk. Ultra ended up telling the clerk her story, talking about her son's death, witnessing to the clerk about her church.

"She said, 'I saw you when you came into the store," Ultra recalls, "'and you just looked so good, and nice, and you would never have thought that you lost your son.' In my mind, I'm thinking, 'Do I have to look like what I've been through? She said 'You can't even tell.' But if I looked like my story," says Ultra, "I'd probably be missing all my hair, all my teeth, one leg, no hands."

Still, it is important that people know, that they hear. "Just because I'm not wearing my story, doesn't mean I don't have a story that's killing my heart. Because I have one."

One year later, of course Darnell remains a force in her daily life, even as she misses the little things, the mom-things."I can't tell him to take the garbage out, tell him to go the store for me."

She speaks to him still, sometimes just to ask, in exasperation, why he wouldn't listen to her. "Why didn't you just stay home, why did you always have to go out. Why didn't you just listen. I told him not to go in that area. Not to go around there. That's not a good area for him to be in."

And then there are the times when she hears his voice. Darnell speaks to her. "I just keep hearing him telling me 'Moms, it's gonna be okay.'"

When her inclination was to save the insurance money, Darnell gave her advice. Mom, you need to use that money, that's what I gave it to you for. She used it to create this peaceful room we are sitting in today, this room in which Darnell is a presence in photographs and in spirit. One year after his murder, the grief of course still comes, sometimes very suddenly. "I will be in the bathroom putting on my makeup and suddenly have a spurt of crying," says Ultra.

She says she wants to have a quiet day on the anniversary of his death, a visit to his niche at the cemetery and a day of family togetherness. They'll have a bigger event to mark what would have been his 26th birthday in January.

More and more, others who have lost a son or daughter have begun turning to Ultra for advice and she says that actually has helped her heal. "Helping others helps me," she tells me. "I'm a fighter, I go, I have to keep moving, and that's what makes me thrive. I want to be like Marilyn Harris, to be able to motivate and inspire people."

"I still sleep with his shirt under my pillow"

Shoes of Oakland homicide victims

On their own in Oakland: a good time to be reminded of their bad times

Each of them talked about the call. It came at 3 a.m., or at 5 a.m., at 6 o'clock in the evening but it was summer so the sun was up and bright, still shining when they got to the hospital. None of them knew what to do in the moment. Some of them screamed. Some had to be told two or three times. Disbelief was common.

In Oakland, a quiet summer of 2014 has ended with a violent late September. There have been 3 killings, all of them young men, and there was a shootout in East Oakland in broad daylight. Still, homicides in Oakland are down for the second straight year and so it is the best time possible to be reminded of the human pain the killing causes, complacency being our tendency as a city and a species. Last night the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence (along with My Baby Matters and Pleasant Grove Church) held a vigil for last year's victims, and many of their survivors came and spoke. 

With a microphone, before the small crowd gathered in the ampitheater in front of City Hall, they were remarkably strong, remarkably collected, though some cried. They all recalled their last encounter with their son or daughter or husband.

"We were in the kitchen. I'd brought home Chinese food. I asked him if he was hungry and fixed him a plate."

"Thank god the last time we were together we had a great time. We laughed a lot and I told her I loved her. The next time I saw her she was in a white box."

"He forgot his phone and called to tell us. I said it was getting late and it was time to come home. He said, 'Okay, Dad.'" 

One young women held her adorable and fatherless daughter in her arms and recalled times, back in 2006 and 2007, cutting out pictures of her killed East Oakland friends from the newspapers. She never thought it would hit so close. "He might have been into some things he shouldn't have," she said, "but no one deserves to die."

For the dead of 2013, 92 balloons

Some rambled a little, but of course you felt like you should indulge them. One mother had lost two sons within 19 days. A father whose beautiful young daughter was killed just three months ago said, as I have heard so many of them say, "I have good days and bad days. Today is a bad day."

The mother of Alan Blueford, killed by the police in 2012, recalled a conversation with Marilyn Harris. Harris' son was killed in 2000. Since then she has entered the new void that confronts shocked survivors in Oakland, to guide them back to life. Alan's mother told Harris she couldn't sleep and was having nightmares. "Get one of his shirts," Harris told her. "Fold it up and put it under your pillow." It worked, said Alan's mom. "I still have his shirt under my pillow every night."

Mallie Latham was there to lend support. His daughter Shanika was killed in 2012. (See No Manual: after the death of Shanika Latham). Rose Holman was there. Her son Lewis was killed in 2012. (See Life After Homicide: adrift in a churning tide for Rose's story)

John Lois, head of the Oakland Police Department Homicide Division hovered on the edges of the group, took a few calls on his phone, occasionally disappeared around a corner. Several times he was approached by mothers of the killed who knew him and he spoke with them patiently. Many, probably most, of the mothers are aggressive advocates for their lost children; they follow the investigations insistently. Tonight one said, "Oh they know me at the police department. I call them every week."

When Det. Lois spoke, he mentioned that homicides are down this year, which is fine, but it was probably irrelevant to most of the people in this particular gathering.

Despite taking place in the open plaza before City Hall, it was an intimate affair. A family affair. You got the sense that, except for Harris and a very few others, these people are on their own.                      
- J. O'Brien 

Read More - In the October issue of San Francisco Magazine - Guns Down. Don't Shoot. Inside Oakland's Operation Ceasefire by James O'Brien - how it works, whether it is working, and can it survive problems of funding and politics in Oakland.

No Manual: after the death of Shanika Latham

When he watched her, when he was with her, he says she reminded him of himself when he was young, of the way he'd been before his own life had taken a wrong turn.

"She had a lot of the mannerisms that I lost growing up, going through things as an adult, especially after addiction, that lifestyle and the things you see that toughen you."

It wasn't just her mannerisms that struck her dad as free and easy. Before she was shot to death in 2012 on a street in East Oakland, Mallie Latham's youngest daughter, Shanika, a college student one week shy of her 21st birthday, had seemed untouched by the things in life that strip away our joy and our trust in others.

"She had that openness and freshness," says Latham. "She made friends easily. She was just too open, but that was her personality and I appreciated it. She never had conflicts with people. You'd never see her in arguments, which in Oakland is amazing to do. So she had a lot of traits that I admired, that would have been special to me."

This is the loss that confronted Latham when his phone rang on that August morning. It's the loss, the missing light, the missing joy that will haunt him the rest of his life.

That morning when the call came, Latham was at a training, learning to teach parenting skills. He knows how important it is, especially for young men, especially in Oakland, to understand their responsibilities and the opportunities they have to raise safe and happy kids. It was nearly lunchtime and his niece was on the phone, but she was hysterical, unable to communicate. Then his aunt called.

"I knew this was bad," he tells me one gray morning a year and a half later, over breakfast at the noisy Buttercup Cafe in downtown Oakland. He rests his big frame back in the semi-circular booth, chomps on eggs and sausage and home fries. There is an undeniable sweetness in his voice, a lightness that very suddenly can disappear when an image from the past will force him to stop, to turn his head away, just a moment to recover, and then back to the talk of his painful past and his hopeful future in spite of it.

With that call from his aunt relaying a rumor that his daughter had been killed in East Oakland early that morning, Latham, in his mid-50s, had entered the strange, dark world of the survivor, a world where, besides and beyond the staggering grief, there is business to deal with. Business that is equally alien and mysterious.

A colleague drove him to Highland Hospital. But once there, he had no idea what to do.

"There's no manual for that," he tells me. "There's nobody charged with the responsibility to receive you coming in in terror, in a panic, trying to find out, is it true my daughter's dead."

At home that evening, with no idea what to do next, Latham's niece approached him. A year earlier, her brother had been killed in West Oakland. She said, "I know who to talk to, don't worry about it, there's this woman who has an agency, who deals with these situations, she helped me with my brother." Then a friend of Latham called. She told him, "I know a woman, a friend, who knows what to do, who can help you now." They were referring to the same person, the same agency, to Marilyn Washington Harris and the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence.

Once, Harris had been in the very same place Latham was now: reeling, beyond reeling, after learning, back in August of 2000, that the rumored death of her only son, 18-year-old McClymond's grad Khadafy Washington, was true. There was no one to help her then, no one to guide her through the confusing next steps and the beginning of healing. It made the pain worse, the journey even more perilous and dark. She vowed back then that no one in Oakland would have to go through this alone again. In the past 13 years, on a shoe-string budget and with little staff, Harris has helped thousands of stunned survivors of Oakland's killed. She has walked with mothers, fathers and children in the immediate aftermath of their greatest losses. Harris knows the business that must be taken care of. She knows the police, the funeral directors, the city and the street, and perhaps more importantly, they know her, they respect her and the work she does. They know she is tough, honest and tireless in her work protecting and guiding survivors.

In some ways, Mallie Latham was one of the lucky ones. He had close friends, sturdy and attentive, to stay with him, to keep an eye on him. Many don't. Even still, he says it was the presence of Marilyn Harris that kept him sane. She talked to him on the phone that first day, then met him a day later at the funeral home.

"At the time, emotionally, I was so vacant," says Latham. "I was basically just like a robot." But Harris was with him. "I could tell what Marilyn was doing, that I could trust her, and I just told her, 'Take over.'"

A year and a half later, Latham continues to heal. He has started a grief group for Oakland men who have lost a loved one. His daughter was killed only two blocks from his East Oakland home. A few months later, his nephew was killed in North Oakland. A week after that, a homicide occurred right on his doorstep. He knew who to tell the survivors to call.

He credits Harris and the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence for helping him get where he is today.

"If I had had to face the things Marilyn took care of, even with the support I had, even with the people I had behind me, I couldn't have got out of it sane. I wouldn't have been here now. I'd still be somewhere balled up in a corner."

A plight, and a plea, for Oakland

September 12, 2013 - With 11 homicides in Oakland in August and September, and nearly 70 so far this year, Marilyn Washington Harris, as usual, is too busy helping the families of the killed to raise funds for the non-violence foundation she works through. This year alone, she has comforted and guided the families of 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine, 16-month-old Andrew Jackson, and dozens of lesser-known homicide victims in Oakland. I'm on the board and I can hardly get in touch with her these days. That's okay, I don't want to interrupt her work. All of her energy needs to be spent on her clients, or even occasionally on her own needs.

This is not the way Miss Marilyn would talk. She certainly wouldn't talk about herself. But she will talk about her work and especially the plight of her clients and what they need in the crushing, insane days after a husband or son or daughter or mother has died violently in Oakland. They need attention, love, clarity, guidance, information and a knowing ear. They need protection from exploitation, they need a friend, an advocate. And sometimes they need funds. When these sudden, dire needs remain unmet, things go from bad to worse, and the long dark path back to life, work, family, back to the community, gets far longer and far darker. It might even become endless. The city loses not just the person who was killed, but also it loses the survivors in their lasting grief and unhealed bitterness.

Mural representing 2011 Oakland homicide victim Carlos Nava

Councilmember Libby Schaaf, a native of Oakland, understands the need Miss Marilyn fulfills, and its impact on individuals and the city.

"Walking victims and their families through the complicated, heart-wrenching, expensive nightmare of a gunshot’s aftermath is a special calling – a unique skill. Grown organically out of her own experience as the mother of a homicide victim, Ms. Marilyn has become a guide on this tragic journey.

"Not only a guide down this sad road after violence, Miss Marilyn directs those effected away from further violence. Like other Interrupters, Miss Marilyn is a leader – she literally leads people away from the cycle of revenge, retaliation and more victims."

Marilyn Harris has been helping survivors through the muck for 12 years now, pretty much ever since she became a survivor herself, when her only son, Khadafy Washington, was murdered in Oakland in 2000, and there was no one to help and guide her. Khadafy was 18, and had just graduated from McClymonds High. Today, Marilyn gets some funding from the city, a small amount. She gets help from the venerable Oakland non-profit Youth Alive. But hers is now and always has been a nearly solitary, shoestring operation out of donated space with out-dated equipment in the Acorn. 

If Marilyn is to continue to serve Oakland's living victims of homicide, if she is to continue to serve Oakland, she needs your help. Learn more about Marilyn's work with survivors in the immediate aftermath of a homicide, and her ongoing care for them, at the links below. And please consider donating to the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence or, better yet: 

As Councilmember Schaaf says, "We need to fully support Miss Marilyn to show victims the way. We all dream of an Oakland where the Khadafy Foundation is unnecessary. But until we have enough police officers, or jobs, or defuse the gangs, or get illegal guns out of Oakland, or reach our at-risk youth, we must support one who has had success, and who helps lessen the bullet's impact."

I couldn't agree more.

-Jim O'B.
Oakland

Read more on the work of Marilyn Washington Harris and the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence:

No Escape, No Surrender (San Francisco Magazine)
Life After Homicide Part 1 (Oakland Local)
Life After Homicide Part 2 (Oakland Local)
Miss Marilyn (Ice City Almanac)
Anniversary of an End and a Beginning (Ice City Almanac)

Anniversary of an end and a beginning in Oakland

From the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence:

Killed in Oakland, but his spirit lives

Sunday August 4th, 2013 marks the 13th anniversary of the shooting death of Khadafy Washington on the campus of McClymonds High School in West Oakland. Khadafy was 18. He had graduated just two months earlier. He was riding his bike that night. He died quickly, but his family's pain and struggle were only just beginning. 

Thirteen years later Khadafy's mom, Marilyn Washington Harris, and the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence continue to support thousands of survivors of the well-over 1500 people killed in Oakland since that fateful night in 2000. 

Miss Marilyn started in the months after Khadafy's killing by conceiving billboards, which were distributed, 19 of them, about the city, with Khadafy's picture and the blaring question: Do You Know Who Killed Me? They were a stark reminder to a city sometimes in denial that too many of its young men were dying violent deaths. 

Soon she was organizing marches to bring attention to Oakland's problem with violence, and to the lasting pain families of victims endure. Privately, she would reach out to individual families in the immediate aftermath of a homicide, sending them mementos and reminders that they were not forgotten.

Then she began seeking them out personally, at their homes, the hospital, even at crime scenes, taking them by the hand to guide them through the craziness that descends on a family in the days and weeks after a loved-one's sudden, violent death. In their weakest moments, she protected them from exploitation, scraped up funds for the mostly poor families so that they could bury their dead with dignity and grace, and continued to counsel and care for them as they tried to get back to life. Today, as the violence persists, Khadafy's mom is Oakland's primary crisis responder, touching the lives of thousands of suffering Oaklanders. 

Through the life and growth of the foundation named in his memory, we like to think that Khadafy still lives and grows, and that it's his spirit reaching out to the survivors of Oakland's killed, those living victims of homicide, that it is Khadafy's spirit helping them begin the long process of healing, of finding some kind of peace and love in their lives and their city. 

Read more about the work of Marylin Washington Harris and the Khadafy Foundation for Non-Violence in San Francisco Magazine, "No Escape, No Surrender", and at Ice City Almanac "She's gonna help you get through it."

Jim O'Brien
Oakland
Member of the Board
Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence
khadafyfoundation.org

Life after homicide, Part 2: "She's gonna help you get through it"

Part 2

(See: Life after homicide, Part 1: Adrift in a churning tide) 

Just over a year later, Rose Holman still says it's hard to believe her son is gone. Lewis was 21. He was killed in daylight, while riding in a car near Mills College.

"I know it, but then I don't," says Holman. "I still feel like we have had one of our arguments, a falling out. But that sooner or later we will meet up, at a family gathering or something, and we will sit down to talk and then we will be past it and move on."

Sooner or later, maybe much later, it will hit her, though, that there will be no chance to reconcile with her son, or to watch him become the man she hoped he would be. And then all the grief will come tumbling down on top of her again.

That's what the killing does to survivors. More than 170 killings in 2012 and 2013 in Oakland have left hundreds of family members in our community, mothers, fathers, children, sisters and brothers, crushed under the weight of their grief. Over 800 victims since 2006 means thousands of survivors, thousands of Oaklanders hoping something or someone will come along and find them and pull them out from under the rubble of their lives.

For many, that someone is Marilyn Washington Harris a kind-of one woman search party. (See: Miss Marilyn.)That something is the Khadafy Washington Foundation for Non-Violence, the organization Harris founded in the name of her son, killed in Oakland in 2000. Harris is an emergency responder. In some ways she is not unlike a police officer or firefighter or paramedic: where others might run away, she steps into the most tense, fraught, sometimes still dangerous situations to bring safety and healing to survivors, to protect them from further harm, neglect and exploitation in their sudden grief.

"A woman at work told me I should talk to her," says Holman. "She said, 'She's gonna help you get through it.' I didn't know what she meant at the time."

At first, Holman said she resented this woman who was stepping into her life at the worst possible time, telling her what needed to be done, what business had to be attended to. Because there are many things to do when you are a survivor of a homicide victim, many people to deal with: police, coroners, funeral directors, city clerks. Suddenly there is much business to attend to, just as your state of mind has been shattered.

Soon, says Homan, her feelings about Harris changed.

"Because she showed me that love," says Holman. "She said, 'I understand where you're coming from, and you can't do it alone.' She has helped me understand a lot of things."

Rose is now a volunteer with the Khadafy Washington Foundation. And the Foundation has found a gem, a self-professed lover of paper work.

"I love organization," says Holman. "Having things together when people need them, that's just who I am." Now, on a daily basis, she sees Harris working with families, doing for them what she did for Homan in her time of need.

"What I love most about her is she'll let you know the consequences. She says, 'If you are a responsible adult like you say you are, you need to consider this.' She will take you step by step and show you how to do it. If there's someplace you need to go, she'll get you transportation, or take you. I see her working with these young kids who have lost a father or mother."

Holman says she couldn't understand how one person could do so much.

"I saw her at an event," she says, "and I sat down and talked to her and asked her if she needed help. I wanted to take care of her, because I saw the work she was doing. She needed help with the computer. I'm a computer nut, put me with a computer and I'm happy."

Rose Holman will be at the annual Khadafy Foundation for Non-Violence Mothers & Families Luncheon, Saturday, June 29th, at the Jack London Inn. For more info, go to the event's Facebook page.

                        -J. O'Brien

                         Author of Until You Bleed: The Caheri Gutierrez Story

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