Led by a team with lived experience and high social capital in the streets, the Street Action Network is a cutting-edge effort combining research, community action, and public policy.
Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams in Conversation with the Street Action Network
Jun 5, 2024
Many Paths to Prevention: Transforming Responses to Gun Violence
Jun 12, 2024
Street Action Network is a research initiative led by a team with lived experience and high social capital in the streets that will harness the power of youth and street culture to end gun violence.
Gun violence disproportionately affects Black and Brown neighborhoods in New York City, where young Black men are 88 times more likely to be shot compared to young white men, according to an analysis by Vital City. The Street Action Network is built on the knowledge that the people and communities that experience high rates of gun violence are also the ones with the power and expertise to craft solutions and drive lasting change.
People closest to the problem are closest to the solution, but furthest from power and resources. – Glenn E. Martin, justice reform advocate
Co-directors Javonte Alexander and Basaime Spate will rely on their decades of lived experience as gun violence survivors and members of street networks to lead the Street Action Network. Over the past six years, Alexander and Spate have helped run several large-scale gun violence research projects in Brooklyn, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Wilmington, Del., using an innovative participatory action research model, first coined by Dr. Yasser Arafat Payne of University of Delaware. The model brings the community into every aspect of the research, including designing research questions, recruiting participants, analyzing the data, disseminating the results, and taking action on the findings to bring about real, community-led change. Building on a foundation of this groundbreaking research, the Street Action Network will harness the power of youth and street culture to lead gun violence prevention research into a new era.
‘Kids trying to live’: A novel study in Brooklyn explores why teens are carrying guns
Gothamist
Gun violence spiked during the pandemic in 2020, making headlines, but little is known about why young people carry guns in the first place. In a new study exclusively previewed by Gothamist, our researchers worked to change that, asking 100 young people from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, why they carry. Hear from the research team about how they gained these young people’s trust, the fear that drives youth towards guns, and what policymakers can learn by listening to young gun-carriers.
The researchers behind our report on young gun-carriers in Brooklyn, New York—Basaime Spate, Elise White, and Javonte Alexander—walk through their study on Brian Lehrer’s radio show for WNYC. They touch on the themes of vulnerability and trust, central to understanding the reasons young people carry as well as their relationships with police. “This research here really opened the door…to be able to have those conversations, those vulnerable conversations that they wouldn't normally have when they are out on the block because of the hypervigilance that they are always in,” said Spate.
