Philadelphia is often called the “City of Brotherly Love,” but it is also a city where gun violence threatens the everyday lives of its youth.
In the documentary Our Philadelphia, filmmakers Kashmir Alston, Melvin Floyd, and Jaylen Frisby, three former students at Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School, explore how their classmates cope with the trauma of gun violence. The filmmakers interviewed other students at Boys’ Latin after the deaths of three of their classmates in separate shootings within two years.
Nora Gross, the producer of the film and Boston College visiting assistant professor of sociology, led the screening of the documentary on Friday. She began the event by talking about her Enduring Questions class, Grief and Resistance: Social Responses to American Gun Violence.
“As we’ve been discussing in my class, gun violence does not just wreak havoc on a body, wounding it in ways that transform how someone can live, or pulling life from it completely,” Gross said. “It injures communities, communities of friends, classrooms, school communities, neighborhoods.”
Our Philadelphia begins with the students telling what seems to be different perspectives of the death of one classmate, but the audience is left in shock as a sentence flashes across the screen: “It sounds like one story, but we’re all speaking about different friends.”
In the film, one student, Elijah McFarland, speaks about how common it was to hang out with a classmate one day and see them die the next. At one point, he lists the names of people he has known who were killed by gun violence, counting them off on his fingers.
The film also addresses how gun violence affects mental health, as many of the students said they experienced depression.
Other students said the death of their classmates motivated them to work harder to be able to leave the place that caused them so much trauma. The documentary shows that gun violence will continue to affect generations of people unless major changes are made.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Robert O. Motley, Jr., BC professor of social work. The panel also featured Frisby and Christina Cho, a former Boys’ Latin teacher.
The panel discussed topics such as what changes could be made to cities like Philadelphia to permanently stop the type of trauma students like Frisby experienced.
“And I think that by bolstering our community organization involvement, we would have been able to reach more students for a longer period of time,” Cho said.
Frisby also said that stopping the trauma that stems from gun violence depends on the support systems people have in their lives. According to Frisby, the effects of gun violence could be mitigated with compassion and support from others.
“Honestly, it just comes down to us loving each other … understanding that we are human beings first and foremost,” Frisby said. “That at some point, at any point, we can always come back together and unify no matter what situation.”
Featured Image by Leo Wang / Heights Staff
