T-shirt memorial sheds light on gun violence in Philadelphia
Exactly 240 T-shirts, representing victims of gun violence in Philadelphia, are on display outside Overbrook Presbyterian Church on the corner of City and Lancaster Ave. Each victim’s age and date of death are inscribed on the T-shirt, one T-shirt for each victim of gun violence in 2016.
In a partnership with Heeding God’s Call, an interdenominational initiative to stop the use of illegal guns, the church established “Memorial to the Lost” for homicides in the city. Volunteers, made up of the congregation and other community members, labelled the T-shirts and set them out, for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This year marks the third year that the congregation has hosted the memorial.
“Many of the folks who see the Memorial are commuting into the city for work and may only do so a few days a week,” said Jeff Bowker, who was the congregation coordinator for the project. “For them gun violence may be an abstraction. Seeing that number of shirts at that intersection makes it more real and more local.”
The memorial means a lot more to the congregation this year as they labeled a T-shirt in memory of James Walke, the son of the church’s building manager. Walke’s murder in Germantown from last February remains unsolved.
“Everybody was in shock,” Bowker said. “I don’t think anybody ever deserves to be shot.”
According to the Philadelphia Police, total violent crime, which includes rape, robbery, and assault, is also down overall; however, homicide is the only violent crime category that has increased over last year.
“It is wonderful when faith based communities try to raise awareness,” said Maria Kefalas, Ph.D., professor of sociology. “It’s a humbling uphill battle. It always astounds me that we don’t do more and pay more attention. We’re more frightened of the Zika outbreak or Ebola or terrorism when those concerns, while real, aren’t as epidemic as gun deaths in the U.S.”
Pennsylvania scores a “C” rating on their Gun Law State Scorecard for not enacting any significant firearms-related laws in 2016, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Currently, the state does not require background checks on private sale long gun purchases, and does not allow courts to issue protective orders to prevent dangerous people other than domestic abusers from having access to guns.
A memorial to Philadelphians murdered by illegal guns (Photo by Luke Malanga, ’20).
No city, county or municipality in Pennsylvania can “in any manner regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammunition components,” according to the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act.
However, Mayor Jim Kenney and the police are working on initiatives outside of legislature to reduction gun violence in Philadelphia.
Focused Deterrence is a violence intervention strategy that helped contribute to a dramatic decrease in shootings and homicides in South Philadelphia, after it was put into action in 2013.
Focused Deterrence uses networks in communities to identify folks that they were worried about, that would engage in gun violence, according to Kefalas. After that, the police would have these individuals on their radar before they were under suspicion or arrested.
“The difficulty is you have to spend a lot of money to do it well, and even then it doesn’t always work,” Kefalas said. “But I hope that if the mayor brings it citywide, that they put the resources to help provide meaningful and sustained turning points for young people who are at high risk for committing violence in our city. Keep them on a better path and make that turning point last.”
The Memorial to the Lost will be on display outside Overbrook Presbyterian until Feb. 11. Then it will continue to be on display outside other churches, as part of Heeding God’s Call’s initiative to display the memorial all over the city. “Just because the shirts are moving on doesn’t mean that we’re done with it,” Bowker said.
Kefalas believes that the next step after a symbolic memorial should be political action.
“I tell my students, ‘You have wonderful passion and wonderful energy but you need to pay attention,’” Kefalas said. “Especially in those congressional races. I think people forget or don’t realize how important that and their local races are. If you care about issues like gun violence, you need to get engaged politically in a skillful way. [You] need to be as skilled and passionate and determined as the other side has been.”
