(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Good evening and welcome to "Generation Rising".

I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Jennifer Rivera.

Rivera was just 15 years old when she was shot in front of her house in Providence.

At the time, she was the state's key witness in a murder trial and was supposed to testify in court the next day.

The occurrence was all too common in Providence.

That year 30 people were murdered in the city.

But Rivera's death sparked a movement to heal from the wounds of community violence and prevent its spread.

A church on the Southside called St. Michael's banded together to start an organization that would go on to become the Nonviolence Institute.

25 years later, the work continues.

We visited the Nonviolence Institute to learn more about the difficult reality of community violence today and how it affects the mental health of young people.

This episode was generously underwritten by a grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

And a word of warning, the issues discussed in this story may be disturbing to some viewers.

- [Felipe] Brother Rashad, was that you?

- [Anaridis] It may be spring break for these Rhode Island teens.

- Yes, Ms.

Maple.

- [Anaridis] But here in Providence, they're getting a different kind of education.

- When conflict shows up, how do you handle conflict in your community?

- Their leader, Felipe Flip Mercedes is teaching Martin Luther King Jr's theory of nonviolence in the hopes of turning these kids into a force for peace.

We sat down with Bentley Tavares, Sophia Laura, Cariana Castillo, and Jerry Niccolo.

Is violence a problem in your neighborhoods?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Violence is everywhere.

It's inevitable.

But there's a way to obviously lower it or at least try to get people around you to realize that violence isn't the answer to everything.

- Some people only know violence, and they don't take the time to think about their feelings and their anger and why they feel that way.

They just react and react 'cause that's all people know.

- And that's all 'cause when they was little, people start off young.

If you're getting yelled at when you wake up, you're getting yelled at before you go to sleep, all you're gonna know is violence in your life.

So you're gonna yell at somebody.

You know, you're just gonna yell at somebody.

That's all you're gonna know.

- What would you say teenagers are dealing with today?

- People experience very bad traumatic experiences.

A lot of these kids nowadays, like they're with guns.

They're with these things that could kill people.

These are weapons.

These are things that will lead to harm and lead to a process which would make you go to jail.

- [Anaridis] According to the most recent statistics on gun violence from Johns Hopkins, in 2022, guns were the leading cause of death for children and teens in America, taking more lives than car crashes or cancer.

- And I feel like all this violence, it needs to stop in the community.

All of the violence and all the bullying and all that other stuff that really does affect people and their brains.

- A national survey of high schoolers in 2023 found 40% of students had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 20% had seriously considered attempting suicide.

Do you talk about your mental health amongst you and your friends?

- Kids these days feel afraid to show their emotions or say anything that they think is outta line to their friends.

They feel like they can't come to their friends about other stuff 'cause their friends will either joke around with them, or just feel like they're not taking it serious and their friends will never take it serious.

And that's a problem nowadays.

- They feel like they're going to be ridiculed.

- Yeah.

- Or othered by expressing themselves.

- Especially as a boy though.

- As a male.

- Yeah, as a male showing your emotion is already enough.

And then just showing your emotions to your friends as a male too, it's not very cool.

- They set that standard for males for us to be tough and strong and like to just deal with it on our own.

But some people really can't and that's why people end up the way they do.

- Having grown up and having lost family members and friends to community violence, this has always been a really important issue for me personally.

It's even the reason I became a doctor in the first place.

(keyboard clicking) - [Anaridis] Dr. Yvorn Aswad has examined how community violence, violent acts that take place within a neighborhood, impacts mental health in youth.

- PTSD was first sort of like documented and talked about in victims of war, but research over the past 50, 60 years has helped us to understand that young people who experience chronic community violence have the same sort of symptoms and kind of markers as those who have experienced wartime violence.

- [Anaridis] For example, he says a person may continue to be hypervigilant looking out for threats long after a dangerous moment has passed.

Research shows it's a phenomenon that happens on a biological level.

- That when a person's experiencing just high levels of chronic stress, that raises their baseline body cortisol level, which is a stress hormone.

- [Anaridis] Typically he says when a person experiences a stressful event, their cortisol level increases.

And then when the event is over, it goes back down to baseline.

- [Yvorn] But when folks are living in chronic, ongoing stressors, ongoing trauma, that cortisol level just kind of is up and it's stuck.

- [Anaridis] It can be especially difficult for children who are reliant on their caregivers for safety.

- So sometimes these young people find ways to make their own safety, which is to say, I'm going to act tough and I'm going to act strong because I am the person that keeps me safe.

And sometimes it's going to be like, I'm going to withdraw and I'm not going to do anything because there is nowhere in place that there's safety.

- [Anaridis] In teens, Dr. Aswad says the impact of trauma can take the form of outbursts.

- Sometimes a lot of these like really explosive behaviors that you might associate with someone who is younger, but that's because that teenager never got that consoling that they should have gotten when they were a younger child to be able to understand that you don't maybe have to demonstrate behaviors in that way to get what you need, to get your needs met.

You can learn to just like say, "Hey, you hurt me," or, "Hey, my feelings are hurt."

It doesn't have to kind of translate into like, I got to beat somebody up to say that my feelings are hurt.

- It can be a difficult lesson to learn.

Lisa Pina-Warren grew up in Providence.

What did you learn about resolving conflict growing up?

- I remember being taught that if someone hit me or bullied me or took something of mine, that I had to react in the same way.

I can hear my mother's voice saying it.

"Don't come home and say someone put their hands on you and you didn't do anything."

And as a mother, I understand that.

I never want my child to come home and say someone hit them or harmed them.

But it also made me realize that that is what we are teaching our children.

So how do you unlearn that at 10 and 12 and 15 and 25?

How do you unlearn it when from a very small age, even as a toddler, right, he hit you, you hit them back?

You know?

You're teaching violence.

- [Anaridis] Pina-Warren would go on to see the cost of conflicts firsthand.

In 1996, her older brother Louie died in a car crash, following a high-speed chase with the police.

It set her on a different path doing case management.

- I wanted to help young people in the community that we were born and raised in.

- [Anaridis] She remembers a special client named Dion Robinson.

- I had been working with a young man and he was a really special young man.

He had graduated from high school and a car drove by and shot him and he didn't survive.

And that really hit me different.

I lost my brother and I lost friends of mine that I grew up with to the streets or to incarceration.

But when Dion lost his life, I just couldn't make sense of it.

The others that I've lost throughout the years did not deserve to lose their lives either, but I also know that they were making choices that put them in some really bad circumstances and situations.

But Dion was just so different.

- [Anaridis] She held a candlelight vigil for Dion, and at the ceremony she met a man named Teny Gross.

- A former Israeli soldier, a former street worker from Boston.

And he approaches me and he had this crazy curly hair, and he says, "Someone told me to come see you."

He said, "What are we going to do?"

And he said it with such passion, like, "What are we going to do about this?"

And it really resonated with me.

- It was 2003 and Gross had come to Providence to be the executive director of the Nonviolence Institute.

He invited Pina-Warren to join his team.

She would go on to spend 16 years working at the institute.

Today she fills her old mentor's shoes as executive director.

In what ways do you interact with the community?

- We have non-violence training.

We have an outreach team and we have Victim Services.

We try to steer young people from getting involved or taking the wrong path towards violence.

And we also respond anytime there is a victim of violence.

- It usually starts with a phone call for you, from either the police department or the hospital.

And you show up.

- The social work department will call us 24/7, 365 days a year when there is what we call a victim of community violence.

And that can mean that someone was stabbed, shot, they may have been assaulted.

One, we are there to support the victim and/or the family members that may go to the hospital, the community members, friends that may go to the hospital, but also hospital staff.

If there is any type of gang activity or affiliation, outreach workers are there to try to help deescalate the chances of there being immediate retaliation.

Many times we are called and the victim does not survive.

So we are there to support that family when they're given that horrible news.

We are there to help them file victim's compensation, making funeral arrangements, grief counseling.

And then it's day to day, right?

A case never closes.

We have families and individuals that we've worked with that lost someone 20 years ago.

And this is our memorial room.

- What does this room mean to Nonviolence Institute and to the families, more importantly, to have this space?

- So it's a space where loved ones can memorialize their loved one that they lost.

I think sometimes families feel like their loved one is forgotten about.

So we try to make sure that we keep this room.

And we sometimes have families that come and pop in.

They may bring things, I'll show you here, like, you know, little trinkets.

They bring things to honor their loved one.

- What have you discovered about yourself from when you first walked through these doors?

- Probably resilience.

How resilient I am, because I've had to be.

I thought I was done the summer of 2012.

I remember doing a hospital response.

I went into the room with the mom to identify her son that lost his life.

And after a little while, I started having anxiety attacks and I said, "Yeah, maybe I need a change, right?

Maybe I need to do something that's not so stressful and emotional and traumatic."

- [Anaridis] She left the institute for about a year and a half, but a call would bring her back.

- The young person I was working with had gotten killed.

He was shot and killed.

And not that I want any of our youth to go to prison, but I had then received a call stating that they had made an arrest and I was relieved for this young man's family.

And after that relief, in that same conversation, they gave me the name of the person that they arrested.

And it was my nephew.

And that was really, really... really difficult.

This is my brother's son, my brother that I lost.

And I wanted to see his son have a different life.

I wanted to see him succeed and do well.

But it also made me feel like I wanted to come back here because the work wasn't over.

My nephew is still incarcerated.

And I visit him, and we talk regularly.

But you know, my mission and my purpose is to help young people to not make those decisions.

- [Anaridis] That was 11 years ago and since then, she's never questioned coming back.

- When we talk about nonviolence, it really is a skill.

It's not a magic wand.

It doesn't make everything better.

But when you study it and you practice it and you understand it, then it's something that can really change your life.

- [Anaridis] It's a practice she's dedicated to passing on.

At the institute, students are offered a $200 stipend to spend a week learning non-violence.

Despite being Pina-Warren's grandson, Bentley Tavares had his doubts.

- Day one, I came up in here angry, actually.

I wasn't trying to talk to nobody.

I wasn't in the mood for it.

I just wanted to do this for the money.

That's the whole reason I was here.

But as I'm going day on and day on, I'm starting to become more comfortable with the people like Jerry.

I didn't even know Jerry at first, but then I met him in the second day and I started becoming more comfortable and then looking forward to it.

- [Anaridis] On day four of the program, students discuss Martin Luther King's concept of a beloved community.

- What are ways people in your city celebrate?

- What are the healthy things or ways that we celebrate?

Jerry.

- [Jerry] Like throwing a block party.

- Block party.

- They brainstorm the ways a healthy community takes care of itself.

What are some of the tactics or strategies or steps that you are learning to resolve conflict without violence?

- One thing I learned from Flip that I really like is like he says that conflict is like a car in neutral and whichever way you push it is whichever way it goes.

So if you push it towards the bad side, it's gonna go bad.

If you push it to be calm and try and be peaceful, it's probably gonna end up peaceful.

It doesn't always work, but it's always worth the try.

I used to get into fights in school and that was not really something I enjoy doing.

Because now that I look back at it, it's just so stupid.

And the stuff that we would fight over, like fighting over females, fighting over rumors.

And we wouldn't even talk about the rumor.

We would just assume that it was said and just go and react at it.

- You were doing mindfulness.

What was that like?

Had you done something like that before?

- Most people don't really ever get the time to ever just sit down and think about their thoughts, think about what they're really thinking.

They just go on doing stuff throughout their day to distract themselves from their own thoughts.

Yeah, it felt nice.

- Meditating.

- Yeah, it just felt great.

- Can you speak to that transformation that happens when you give people the tools and the knowledge to think about how to take care of themselves and each other?

- It's just giving you the ability or helping you work on that skillset to be able to kind of pause, to be mindful, to really think about the situation before you react on it.

There's so many people incarcerated, including my nephew, that I've had so many conversations with that wish he, and they, could turn back the hands of time and pause that moment that something happened and made a different decision.

Their lives would be totally different.

- How do you envision yourself using these skills when you're out in the real world?

Do you envision yourself being a peacemaker, Cariana?

- Yeah, I envision myself being a peacemaker.

I envision myself not doing violence.

Especially in school, I hope to continue with it because I really see myself as a person that will get to the goal that I need to get to.

- Do you envision yourself as a peacemaker once you're done with this program being out in the real world amongst your community?

- I really do.

Whenever I'm like angry, I usually don't really think about what I'm doing, and so I just do the action.

I was never really called a peacemaker, but now that I have that title, I'm like, "Hey, I can do this."

- There's multiple young people in the room that have a loved one that's incarcerated, and there's multiple young people in the room that lost someone to violence.

And to hear that and to know that that is very common today speaks very loudly to the fact that we have to allow them to express their feelings and to talk about it.

- How does your community grieve in positive ways?

- Healthy?

Therapy.

Big time.

Right.

Jerry?

- [Jerry] How do you talk to somebody in their time of need?

- Talk to someone.

- We have a lot of adults that are still holding on to a lot of life's traumas and hurts and things that they haven't healed from.

- What are the seeds that are being planted in you that are making you think about how you take care of yourself and your own mental health?

- We learn about values.

We've learned how to control our emotions.

- Not a lot of kids get help with mental health problems these days.

Not a lot of kids actually talk about their emotions or issues.

So this is actually a great program coming in here, getting kids to talk, you know, get outta their comfort zone and just figure out what you really wanna do and get your mental health right.

- And I started getting really comfortable and I felt like I could just say anything.

Like I felt like I wasn't being judged at all.

I really like how safe this environment was.

- We have to allow young people to express their feelings and to talk about them.

- So they can be free.

- So they can be free.

- Suicide was mentioned in our story tonight.

If you or someone you love is feeling suicidal, please reach out for help.

You are not alone.

Call or text 988.

The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7.

Many thanks to the Nonviolence Institute for sharing their work with us.

If you would like to get involved and learn more about their programs, please visit their website at nonviolenceinstitute.org.

You can watch this episode and all our past episodes anytime at ripbs.org/generationrising.

I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

Thank you for joining us.

Good night.

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