By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Staff Writer
Chanting “Don’t shoot our future down” and “Bullets have no names,” a group of about 20 demonstrators lined Capitol Mall on June 30 across from the Capitol to call for an end to gun violence. The demonstrators, most ages 13-21, were joined by Voice of the Youth founder Berry Accius and Brenda Grisham, president of the Oakland-based Christopher Lavell Jones Foundation.
Accius, who has spent more than seven years raising awareness about gun violence in Sacramento, said the issue is rooted in long-standing systemic failures. “We want to feel safe in our communities,” he said, pushing back on the notion that communities of color reject public safety efforts.
He pointed to poverty, a lack of education, food insecurity, and under-resourced neighborhoods as key drivers of violence. “When you’re able to find a gun before you find an opportunity, it creates gun violence,” he said. “When our state and local politicians create budgets that say youth are not centered, it creates gun violence.”
Accius emphasized that gun violence is no longer confined to specific ZIP codes. “It’s in the suburbs now. Our suburban kids have guns. There are big guns in schools – local high schools here,” he said, noting that students have confirmed as much. “Young people should be focused on books and education, but instead they’re wondering if they’ll be the next memorial. The next poster. The next loss.”
He said that every face on a memorial sign was once a child with a future, and that the impact of gun violence ripples far beyond the victim. “There are multiple victims,” Accius said. “There’s the person killed, the grieving family, the shooter, and the community that continues to be traumatized by a lack of resources.”
He also criticized the pattern of activists having to push for youth support every summer as city budgets are finalized and ended his remarks with a pointed observation: “If it were a sea of white children being killed by gun violence instead of Black and brown children, I truly believe more would be done.”
Grisham, who said guns are trafficked between Sacramento and Oakland, came to show solidarity. “People are pulling up, opening their trunks, and taking out guns. We don’t know where they’re coming from. They’re selling bullets to their friends,” she said. “If we don’t come together, we’ll never stop this. We’re losing children every day.”
After the 2022 K Street shooting, in which six people were killed, Accius and hundreds of others marched from the site of the shooting to a site at the Capitol across the street from where Monday’s demonstration took place. Last month, a day before the city passed its budget, Accius and other community activists, including Leia Schenk of EMPACT and Jackie Rose, founder and CEO of the Rose Family Creative Empowerment, urged the mayor and City Council to increase funding for youth violence prevention. Their appeals were unsuccessful.
Tim Poole, who runs a program called Hooked on Fishing Not on Violence, said he had hoped for a larger turnout given how many families have been impacted by gun violence in recent months.
“Just seeing these young people here shows that there’s still concern in our city about stopping gun violence,” Poole told The OBSERVER. Poole, who has been shot five times, said the issue is not new.
“This started many moons ago,” he said. “We might not be able to stop it completely, but the only way we can slow it down is by doing what Berry and I do – creating programs that talk about gun violence, drug use, mental health, and self-acceptance.”