(Washington D.C. – May 21, 2024)
Have you ever heard of the insurance term, Indemnify…?
It simply means, to make whole again.
And in the insurance world, the goal is to make a policyholder who is experiencing a crisis to feel whole again.
Or in other words, to indemnify them.
By definition, when something is lacking within a person, a body, an entity, a team or an individual, they are living an existence of being incomplete. They need to be restored. They need to be indemnified. They need to be made whole.
Pain is the body’s way of letting us know that there is a lack, that there is a loss of wholeness, a loss of our complete and unchallenged access to full health.
Through this lens, violence in a society
is that society’s way of expressing that they are lacking,
that they have been injured.
Thus, in a sense then, violence is an expression of lack.
Pain hurts the individual, and similarly, violence hurts us all as a society. When pain is felt in the body, it’s not just localized; sometimes it’s felt all over the whole body. When violence is experienced, it may be localized, but the impact can be so great that it is felt throughout a city, a nation, a town, a community.
The President has a multifaceted approach to improving the state of gun violence in America. Among those initiatives is a $5 billion plan to expand Community Violence Intervention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the next ten years.
I had a conversation about all of this with Greg Jackson, Deputy Director of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention for the White House. He shared some insights about this development that may not be widely known. For example, thousands of professionals are being trained nationwide on trauma-informed care.
Recently, the largest investment in youth mental health was made. Additionally, in more than 20 states, law enforcement has been empowered to proactively remove guns and weapons from the homes of people known to be in crisis mode and at high risk of perpetrating a violent incident if family and/or community report to the proper authorities. This is done to prevent tragedies and violence against themselves and/or others.
He shared some insights about this development that may not be widely known. For example, thousands of professionals are being trained nationwide on trauma-informed care. Recently, the largest investment in youth mental health was made. Additionally, in more than 20 states, law enforcement has been empowered to proactively remove guns and weapons from the homes of people known to be in crisis mode and at high risk of perpetrating a violent incident if family and/or community report to the proper authorities. This is done to prevent tragedies and violence against themselves and/or others.
Additionally, there’s funding for community intervention to provide professionals on the ground, connecting on an interpersonal level within the community. Research has found that many situations and/or violent offenders can be de-escalated by trained persons from the community who have intimate knowledge of its workings. These interpersonal efforts have been extremely effective across the country, and more than $12 billion has been allocated by the President towards these efforts. These efforts also include community conversations, shared work and projects, and cross-community meet-and-greets and collaborations.
Greg Jackson said that one of the biggest and best models for the efficacy of this work has been in
Baltimore. Charm City, Maryland (Baltimore), is home to several initiatives that have been used as national models to continue this work. Particularly, the Safe Streets program, among many others, has been exceptionally exemplary.
According to Baltimore City’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, since 2007, Safe Streets has been Baltimore’s flagship gun violence reduction program. Through it, peace ambassadors spread messages of togetherness and encourage positive changes in individual behavior in a way that is seen as real and well received.
All of this has been a part of the President’s new plan to positively impact peace around the country as it relates to gun violence.
This money and these programs will be effective if they focus on indemnifying the community, making people whole again.
You see, when people experience lack, they express themselves in ways that can cause violation. The more severe the lack, the more severe the violation. Extreme lack, extreme poverty, causes extreme violations to occur—because people are simply trying to make themselves whole. They are trying to self-medicate, in a sense. When we don’t have access to proper medicines, we as individuals experiencing pain will do whatever we can to alleviate that pain, that lack, by taking drugs—prescription, non-prescription, alcohol. We do what we can to numb the pain away. That’s exactly what society does when a portion of its body suffers extreme lack.
Sometimes this lack comes in the form of the “them” that is taking our jobs, taking our access to rights, taking our money, our opportunity, we can act in ways that “violate” our collective and shared traditional mode of being.
Sometimes we tell other portions of society to just “get better.” Sometimes we try to tell them to stop their
bad behavior, their acting out, because it isn’t proper. But we never do this with our body. If a portion of our body was in pain, we wouldn’t say “stop having a headache.” We instead would try to appease, improve, and ameliorate it. And only in the most severe cases do we amputate it. We try our best to make ourselves whole—as it relates to our body.
If we could apply this same approach to social ills, we would heal.
We would begin to indemnify.
We would begin to ameliorate.
Emotional intelligence allows us to place ourselves in their shoes. What would I be feeling if I were them? How would I respond if I had literally what they had and had to live? Was forced to make ends meet? Could I? Would I willingly switch places with them? If our answer is no, then that is an indicator that on some level, deep down, we don’t believe they have enough. On some level, we believe that they are experiencing lack.
Continuing on this progression of thoughts, if we place ourselves in their shoes, what would we need, how would we wish it was given to us, how would we access it, how would we want to be strengthened and bolstered to continue the access?
This is emotional intelligence theory at work.
And if the President’s plan accomplishes this bridging, then we as a nation are well on our way toward healing.
My name is Rodney C. Burris. I am the White House Correspondent for BMORENews, a media outlet in Baltimore where our slogan is, “the news before the news.” This column will look at the events impacting our nation and filter them through the lens of Emotional Intelligence theory. Our goal will be to inform, to make aware, to facilitate connectivity, and then to increase the overall understanding of ourselves as a collective as we take a deep dive into the topics affecting our Emotionally Intelligent Nation.
