Latest / Revisionist History / Guns Part 6: “Sin is the failure to bother to care”

Transcript

Guns Part 6: “Sin is the failure to bother to care” · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:22
Speaker 2: I grew up in what we call Calumet Heights neighborhood
0:25
Speaker 2: is just southeast side of Chicago, you know, painted by
0:29
Speaker 2: violence and health inequities, at a time where it was
0:32
Speaker 2: not nice to live in that neighborhood, at a time
0:34
Speaker 2: where it was very dangerous, where it was very gang
0:37
Speaker 2: written in the Yes, there's still a lot of violence
0:40
Speaker 2: today in Woodlawn, nothing like just twenty years ago when
0:45
Speaker 2: I was a child growing up in these neighborhoods and
0:47
Speaker 2: having to watch out for myself.
0:50
Speaker 1: On a cold and rainy winter's day, I went to
0:52
Speaker 1: Chicago to see a young man named Abdula Pratt, big beard,
0:58
Speaker 1: thick plastic glasses, built like a linebacker.
1:04
Speaker 3: What was your past?
1:05
Speaker 1: Where did you decide you wanted to go into medicine
1:07
Speaker 1: and where did you decide you wanted to emergency pens?
1:10
Speaker 2: So I think I wanted to be a doctor since
1:11
Speaker 2: the time that I was a child. I remember having
1:13
Speaker 2: the Fisher Price bag and Christmas and you know, being
1:16
Speaker 2: three four years old and stuff. I grew up in
1:18
Speaker 2: the museums, so the Museum of Science and Industry was
1:20
Speaker 2: a sanctuary for me as a child. The shadow query
1:24
Speaker 2: I did my first dissection of a squid at the
1:27
Speaker 2: age of like seven or eight. Those things fueled a
1:29
Speaker 2: passion for science, a passion for anatomy. And after growing
1:34
Speaker 2: up in a completely one hundred percent African American community,
1:37
Speaker 2: I was in program so I'd be the only African American.
1:39
Speaker 2: But I was winning awards for being the best. So
1:42
Speaker 2: it taught me that I could compete and that I
1:43
Speaker 2: could make change. And when I was a senior in
1:46
Speaker 2: high school, I was working as a temp deliver of
1:49
Speaker 2: grants at on the Chicago's campus.
1:51
Speaker 3: Really good job.
1:52
Speaker 2: I was making like seventeen an hour for that summer.
1:53
Speaker 2: Yeah it was for high school. Oh man, I didn't
1:56
Speaker 2: make that much money again until I was a doctor.
1:58
Speaker 2: So I just let you know how that got at works.
2:01
Speaker 2: But I remember asking people like, Hey, I live in
2:04
Speaker 2: Woodline a lot. I'm in Woodland a lot, and there's
2:06
Speaker 2: a lot of violence, a lot of social equities.
2:08
Speaker 3: You ride your walk two blocks and it's this beautiful campus.
2:11
Speaker 3: But you go ask these.
2:13
Speaker 2: Heads of departments, Hey, who's here fighting for the little
2:15
Speaker 2: people two blocks away where my family is. Who is
2:19
Speaker 2: here who cares about them? And who's doing something? I
2:21
Speaker 2: want to meet them I'm want to ask them these
2:22
Speaker 2: questions about why more isn't happening, And a couple of
2:26
Speaker 2: these heads of departments literally looked me in the face
2:28
Speaker 2: and said, young man, maybe you're the answer to the
2:31
Speaker 2: questions that you have. Maybe you have to take on
2:34
Speaker 2: the burden of sacrificing and making yourself into the type
2:38
Speaker 2: of candidate that can qualify to get here. Go get
2:40
Speaker 2: that three point nine GPA, no excuses, Go fight for
2:44
Speaker 2: your community, learn about the issues, and do it.
2:52
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
2:55
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is the
3:00
Speaker 1: final installment in our mini series on gun Vines. It's
3:03
Speaker 1: about a young man who grew up in one of
3:06
Speaker 1: the most dangerous communities in America, an emergency room doctor,
3:11
Speaker 1: and decided to stay in the same neighborhood where he
3:14
Speaker 1: grew up. How many people from growing up do you
3:24
Speaker 1: know who died?
3:25
Speaker 2: I've got I'd ranked them by closeness to me, because
3:29
Speaker 2: if I said everybody, it'd probably be like in the
3:31
Speaker 2: thirties forties.
3:32
Speaker 3: But yeah, seriously, seriously.
3:34
Speaker 2: If everyone that I knew like knew talked with shared
3:38
Speaker 2: time with at some point, so I really keep it
3:40
Speaker 2: to close friends.
3:41
Speaker 3: Right.
3:42
Speaker 2: So if I say close friends, people who I still
3:44
Speaker 2: have the text messages in my phone, people who I
3:47
Speaker 2: know their family members, their mothers, their fathers.
3:50
Speaker 3: Prior to all of this, fifteen friends.
3:53
Speaker 2: You know, my older brother, you know is the one
3:55
Speaker 2: family member, my closest friend and wealth of day that
3:58
Speaker 2: my brother died and I said, hey, you know I
4:01
Speaker 2: lost my brother and you the closest thing I got
4:02
Speaker 2: to brother. That person was murdered, right, and all of
4:05
Speaker 2: them are leaving behind children. All of them were great
4:08
Speaker 2: fathers who I literally I think many of them. Our
4:10
Speaker 2: last conversations were about parenting in fatherhood. Close teammates, right, So,
4:15
Speaker 2: I've had three close teammates just from my one high
4:19
Speaker 2: school team all be murdered. I've had youth that I
4:22
Speaker 2: mentored with some of the teams that I coached that
4:25
Speaker 2: were murdered, and many of them pronounced dead. Writing this
4:28
Speaker 2: Trauma bab once we were finally able to get a
4:30
Speaker 2: trauma center, some of these close friends I had to
4:33
Speaker 2: pronounce dead myself. I had to tell their own family
4:35
Speaker 2: members that their loved one was no longer here. And
4:39
Speaker 2: as you can Imagine that, just to paint the picture
4:41
Speaker 2: for you. Imagine, you know, walking into a room, you
4:43
Speaker 2: prepare yourself to tell this family member of your close
4:47
Speaker 2: friend that they're no longer here. And the first thing
4:49
Speaker 2: that family member says they see you, and they light up.
4:51
Speaker 2: They forget why they're there for a second. They say, oh,
4:54
Speaker 2: my goodness, a Dullah, Oh hey Dullah, Hey, we were
4:56
Speaker 2: just talking about you.
4:57
Speaker 3: How are you.
4:58
Speaker 2: They forget that their son or daughter was shot. And
5:02
Speaker 2: then now the first words out of my mouth, which
5:04
Speaker 2: is the evidence based way to do it, is to
5:06
Speaker 2: say they did not make it. So now they go
5:09
Speaker 2: from the highest and highest of the lowest of lows.
5:11
Speaker 2: I've had to do that about five times in the
5:14
Speaker 2: last three years. Only one time have I been forced
5:18
Speaker 2: to stop working the shift. But usually I finished these
5:21
Speaker 2: early in my shifts, and I keep working because if
5:24
Speaker 2: I stop, then you think about it all, you know,
5:26
Speaker 2: and you prepare yourself for the worst walking into any shift,
5:29
Speaker 2: especially when you grow up in a neighborhood.
5:43
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I did an episode of Revisionist
5:46
Speaker 1: History called The Standard Case, where I interviewed a Catholic
5:49
Speaker 1: priest named James Martin. He said something I've thought a
5:53
Speaker 1: lot about since if you're a longtime listener you may
5:56
Speaker 1: remember this moment.
5:58
Speaker 4: No, you know one of my professors of more orthology
6:02
Speaker 4: at Boston College who I think you'd really like in
6:05
Speaker 4: terms of his writing, Jim Keenan.
6:08
Speaker 1: I met with Jim Keenan well.
6:09
Speaker 4: The perfect person to talk to. He points out that
6:12
Speaker 4: for Jesus in the Gospels, sin is usually not where
6:15
Speaker 4: people are weak but trying, you know, people are really struggling,
6:18
Speaker 4: but where people are strong and not bothering. So, for example,
6:22
Speaker 4: the Good Samaritan, the priest, and the Levite simply they
6:25
Speaker 4: don't bother. They just don't bother. They could help the guy,
6:27
Speaker 4: but they don't bother. So Jim Keenan said, for Jesus,
6:31
Speaker 4: sin is a failure to bother to love.
6:34
Speaker 1: In the story of the Good Samaritan, a man is
6:36
Speaker 1: beaten and robbed and left for dead at the side
6:38
Speaker 1: of the road, and one by one men of faith,
6:41
Speaker 1: holy men pass by without stopping moved to the other
6:45
Speaker 1: side of the road. They aren't complicit in the attack,
6:48
Speaker 1: they would never do anything like that themselves. They just
6:51
Speaker 1: choose to look the other way, and that, Keenan says,
6:55
Speaker 1: is the sin sin is indifference. Sin is the failure
7:00
Speaker 1: to bother to care. That is what this series has
7:04
Speaker 1: been about. There is a deep river of blood flowing
7:08
Speaker 1: down America's and yet it seems hard to get anyone's attention.
7:14
Speaker 1: The first two episodes of this series were about the
7:17
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's ruling in the Bruin case, where the Court
7:20
Speaker 1: said that New York State's handgun licensing law was unconstitutional
7:24
Speaker 1: and in their decision spent more time talking about the
7:27
Speaker 1: seventeenth century than the twenty first century. You do that
7:32
Speaker 1: when you're indifferent. The President stands up and says we
7:35
Speaker 1: have to ban assault rifles, even though the guns he
7:38
Speaker 1: wants to ban aren't much different from the guns he
7:41
Speaker 1: didn't want to ban. You're that sloppy on a crucially
7:45
Speaker 1: important question when you've given up on any kind of
7:48
Speaker 1: meaningful change. Our success at treating gunshot wounds has lulled
7:53
Speaker 1: us into complacency. That was episode four. We have hospitals
7:57
Speaker 1: in the wrong places for the dumbest of reasons. That
8:00
Speaker 1: was the fifth installment. The deeper I got into the
8:04
Speaker 1: subject of gun violence, the more bleak things seemed to be.
8:09
Speaker 1: So for this our final installment, I went to Chicago
8:13
Speaker 1: and sat down with Abdullah Pratt in a little windowless
8:17
Speaker 1: room in the basement of the University of Chicago Hospital,
8:20
Speaker 1: and he showed me what bothering to care looks like.
8:32
Speaker 2: And unfortunately that was the last words my brother told
8:35
Speaker 2: me before he was murdered. Is looking at me being
8:37
Speaker 2: a first year medical student in Chicago. He reiterated that, like, hey,
8:40
Speaker 2: little brother, this is all good that you got a
8:42
Speaker 2: nice apartment, got awards, you're doing good things, you're chapter
8:46
Speaker 2: president of your student National Medical Association. But there are
8:49
Speaker 2: two types of people in this world. There are people
8:51
Speaker 2: that do for themselves and there are people who do
8:54
Speaker 2: for others. The people who do for them salves, they
8:56
Speaker 2: get rich, they make money, they live somewhere else, but
8:59
Speaker 2: we call those sellouts. And then the people who do
9:02
Speaker 2: for others they get broken by this. They end up poor,
9:06
Speaker 2: they're not able to actually have the impact that they
9:08
Speaker 2: want to.
9:09
Speaker 1: Abdullah's brother's name was Rashad. He was Abdullah's best friend
9:13
Speaker 1: and protector. He was killed when he tried to stop
9:16
Speaker 1: some kids from stealing a car.
9:18
Speaker 2: Well, he said this and la in lesser terms, but
9:20
Speaker 2: he said, maybe if you're smartest that I think you are,
9:23
Speaker 2: and as these awards are trying to say you are,
9:25
Speaker 2: maybe you'll be one of the first people to figure
9:27
Speaker 2: out how to do both, how to be able to
9:29
Speaker 2: you know, protect your family, do well for yourself, grow
9:32
Speaker 2: your initiatives, and do for those at the very very bottom,
9:37
Speaker 2: like your aunties, your best friends on the block, those
9:39
Speaker 2: type of people. He said, If you can do that,
9:41
Speaker 2: I'd be so so proud of you. And you know,
9:45
Speaker 2: to this day, I'm still trying to figure that out.
9:47
Speaker 2: You know, I feel like I'm still that second type
9:48
Speaker 2: of person who's given and still hasn't figured it out.
9:51
Speaker 3: But that's what keeps me fighting.
10:05
Speaker 1: When I met with Abdulah Pratt, I asked him what
10:08
Speaker 1: the busiest night of the week was at a trauma center.
10:11
Speaker 1: He said, weekends, of course, and holidays when people have
10:14
Speaker 1: been drinking a lot.
10:16
Speaker 2: This most recent month, the night before Martin Luther King's holiday,
10:20
Speaker 2: was one of the worst trauma knights I've ever had.
10:23
Speaker 2: You're talking about, like, I think I had like six
10:25
Speaker 2: people pronounced dead from violence all in the night. A
10:29
Speaker 2: few more that made it to the operating room very
10:32
Speaker 2: critical injuries. That's a Sunday night in January, that that's
10:37
Speaker 2: happening the day before Martin Luther King's birthdayly hours and
10:41
Speaker 2: into the day of Martin Luther King's birthday is a.
10:44
Speaker 3: Big surprise instead, Yeah, yeah, my memories certainly right, it was.
10:49
Speaker 3: That may have been more.
10:50
Speaker 1: Did you hear about what happened the night before Martin
10:52
Speaker 1: Luther king Day on the South side of Chicago? I
10:55
Speaker 1: didn't now if that had been a mass shooting, we
10:59
Speaker 1: all might have heard about that. Mass shooting seemed to
11:01
Speaker 1: be the one part of the gun violence epidemic that
11:04
Speaker 1: still grab all of our attention. For good reason. But
11:07
Speaker 1: there are roughly twenty thousand Americans murdered by guns in
11:11
Speaker 1: a typical year. I love that twenty thousand. Only a
11:13
Speaker 1: few hundred die in mass shooting incidents. It's a very
11:17
Speaker 1: small part of the problem. If you could wave a
11:20
Speaker 1: magic wand and end all mass shootings tomorrow, the people
11:23
Speaker 1: who work in trauma centers say they wouldn't notice the difference.
11:27
Speaker 1: And if we want to be cynical or maybe just realistic,
11:30
Speaker 1: we should admit to ourselves that paying so much attention
11:33
Speaker 1: to the smallest part of the problem is a form
11:36
Speaker 1: of indifference. It's changing the subject. The thing that struck
11:41
Speaker 1: me about Abdullah Pratt is that he refused to change
11:44
Speaker 1: the subject. What guns are they using?
11:48
Speaker 2: All of them, so everything from the nine millimeters the
11:51
Speaker 2: glock forties, which are.
11:53
Speaker 3: Very convenient, a lot of them like the glocks on.
11:55
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, gogs don't have safeties on them, so when those
11:57
Speaker 2: guys who are shooting themselves, that's how that's happening.
11:59
Speaker 3: Many times it's with the glocks.
12:02
Speaker 2: There used to be a day where everybody liked the
12:03
Speaker 2: revolvers because the shells didn't fall and so you had
12:06
Speaker 2: less evidence. But now they don't care about evidence, the
12:08
Speaker 2: lack of conviction rate of murders. They don't can many
12:11
Speaker 2: people or killing people broad daylight with no mask on
12:14
Speaker 2: and literally daring people to hop on the stand and
12:17
Speaker 2: testify against them, and of course no one does because
12:20
Speaker 2: we can't assure protection for those people. They still have
12:22
Speaker 2: to live in life, they still have to exist in
12:24
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. You're not gonna put twenty four hour protection
12:26
Speaker 2: on them.
12:27
Speaker 1: The kids were fitting something called a switch on the
12:30
Speaker 1: back of their handguns, a little plastic device you can
12:33
Speaker 1: buy on the internet that makes the gun fire much faster.
12:37
Speaker 1: A handgun is hard to aim at the best of times.
12:40
Speaker 1: With a switch, it's almost impossible to control.
12:43
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot more brazenness of how these
12:46
Speaker 2: murders that happening, a lot less care for collateral damage.
12:50
Speaker 2: So you're looking at people and normally and you can
12:52
Speaker 2: watch the videos. You can find these videos easily on
12:54
Speaker 2: YouTube or on you know, social media of different aspects.
12:58
Speaker 2: But you see these like surveillance, can you know, and
13:00
Speaker 2: the people literally just standing over someone shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting,
13:04
Speaker 2: shooting into the gun just doesn't even you know, and
13:06
Speaker 2: to that person just stops moving or the gun jams
13:10
Speaker 2: or something like that.
13:12
Speaker 1: He said that when he was growing up, a lot
13:14
Speaker 1: of the violence he saw around him was gang related,
13:16
Speaker 1: turf battles, business disputes over drugs that turned violent. But
13:20
Speaker 1: what a he's seeing now is much worse.
13:25
Speaker 2: It's much more interpersonal, meaning that you can trace many
13:28
Speaker 2: of these beasts between local factions down to one or
13:32
Speaker 2: two murders that happened years ago, ten years ago, when
13:36
Speaker 2: they were children, when they were thirteen fourteen, and that
13:38
Speaker 2: unaddressed trauma of you losing your friend at fourteen or
13:43
Speaker 2: fifteen causes you to snap in a way that if
13:46
Speaker 2: you don't have the right support system and you have
13:49
Speaker 2: access to firearms, you become what that minuce, You become
13:53
Speaker 2: that person. Admittingly, these are words they use, the super savages,
13:56
Speaker 2: the vultures. These are words that are coined by the
13:59
Speaker 2: youth themselves to describe themselves in this manner. And now
14:03
Speaker 2: you have a tip for tap. I go kill your cousin,
14:05
Speaker 2: You come kill my brother. I go kill two of
14:07
Speaker 2: your friends. You come kill this person. And it literally
14:10
Speaker 2: goes on and on. We're talking about two three four
14:12
Speaker 2: block territories. We're not talking about whole sides of the
14:15
Speaker 2: cities that are dominated by a cartail or gang. We're
14:18
Speaker 2: literally talking about you know, yelling distance. If I can't
14:22
Speaker 2: hear you call, that means you're not my set. If
14:24
Speaker 2: I scream out my front window and you ask them
14:27
Speaker 2: how did you get here, and they'll tell you, oh,
14:29
Speaker 2: you man, no, you don't know. How can we help
14:31
Speaker 2: stop this? Ain't no stopping this. They killed my friend,
14:34
Speaker 2: my cousin, my brother. I'm not stopping till I'm dead.
14:37
Speaker 2: And so you have high, high at risk, deeply entrenched
14:40
Speaker 2: youth who are going through these things who have been
14:42
Speaker 2: traumatized and their value for life is diminished, And they
14:47
Speaker 2: say things like, when nobody cared when my brother was killed?
14:50
Speaker 2: Who was there to help me? So why should I
14:51
Speaker 2: care about me killing your brother? Now everybody's life doesn't matter.
14:55
Speaker 2: Now you go rob someone and some innocent person gets shot,
14:57
Speaker 2: don'tbody care when my auntie got shot. She got shot
15:00
Speaker 2: just walking from the Save a Lot store into her
15:02
Speaker 2: apartment one day. You know, nobody cared about that. My cousins,
15:06
Speaker 2: only you have a mother anymore. So why should I
15:08
Speaker 2: care what happens to this lady? And it's hard to
15:10
Speaker 2: combat that. It's hard to combat that.
15:19
Speaker 1: I began this series believing in stricter gun control, as
15:22
Speaker 1: you expect I would as a good Canadian who lives
15:25
Speaker 1: in a blue state. Background checks, licenses, age limits, sensitive
15:30
Speaker 1: place laws, on and on. I still believe in all
15:32
Speaker 1: those things in the abstract, But after I sat and
15:36
Speaker 1: listened to Abdulla Prat, I realized that very little of
15:39
Speaker 1: what I thought of as a solution would actually solve
15:41
Speaker 1: the problems. He was talking about, can you really pass
15:45
Speaker 1: a law and make a big dent in this kind
15:47
Speaker 1: of a problem? Expecting laws to handle. This kind of
15:51
Speaker 1: violence is what we do when we're not really paying attention.
15:55
Speaker 2: This is all the scoreboard. Another word that's coined by
15:59
Speaker 2: and by our youth is check the scoreboard. So let's
16:01
Speaker 2: see how many people of yours will you kill? How
16:03
Speaker 2: many people you killed the VARs who's up. So it
16:06
Speaker 2: definitely is a competitive thing. It's a clout thing, an
16:10
Speaker 2: attention thing too. So you can make your name off
16:12
Speaker 2: who you kill, even if you have nothing against that person,
16:16
Speaker 2: just by saying I shot that person. Everybody's mad. Everybody's
16:19
Speaker 2: heard about that. Look at me when you place yourself
16:22
Speaker 2: in the shoes of a young man or woman who's
16:25
Speaker 2: never had a room full of trophies, never had the
16:29
Speaker 2: awards on their mother's refrigerator, they've never had anything to
16:32
Speaker 2: take pride in. It says I'm good at something, I'm
16:35
Speaker 2: a winner at least at one thing. They don't even
16:38
Speaker 2: have that, and they feel like their whole life they've
16:40
Speaker 2: taken nothing but losses to their pride. Every day someone's
16:43
Speaker 2: stepping on it. Every day, somebody's telling them what to
16:45
Speaker 2: do every day. This so when you run into somebody,
16:47
Speaker 2: you're like, listen, I'm not doing that again.
16:49
Speaker 3: Today.
16:49
Speaker 2: Today, I will not take another l And in those
16:52
Speaker 2: different types of situations, something like hey, I'm a big
16:56
Speaker 2: name now because I shot and killed somebody. That may
16:58
Speaker 2: be the first time that anybody gave them any type
17:01
Speaker 2: of respect, any type of admiration and adoration. Unfortunately happens.
17:06
Speaker 2: This may be the first time that girls know your name.
17:09
Speaker 2: So you might have went to high school, you would
17:10
Speaker 2: have wanted, maybe struggled to read, maybe you had learning
17:13
Speaker 2: disabilities that were unaddressed, you didn't have the finances to
17:17
Speaker 2: dress in the nicest clothes, and now you're somebody. All
17:21
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you wake up and people are talking
17:23
Speaker 2: about you on Twitter, in these spaces, these very entrans spaces,
17:27
Speaker 2: or on Snapchat or whatever the case is. And to
17:30
Speaker 2: many that's a powerful position because for once they can
17:33
Speaker 2: control something, they can cause fear in someone.
17:37
Speaker 1: For a thirty year stretch, starting in the early nineties,
17:40
Speaker 1: Chicago didn't have a trauma center on the south side
17:42
Speaker 1: of the city, so if you were shot there, you
17:44
Speaker 1: had to be taken to big hospitals at the other
17:47
Speaker 1: ends of the city north to Northwestern or Cook County
17:50
Speaker 1: or West to Advocate Christ Medical Center, which meant that
17:54
Speaker 1: if you were shot on the south Side, you were
17:56
Speaker 1: far more likely to die in the ambulance before you
17:59
Speaker 1: got to the hospital. We talked about that in the
18:02
Speaker 1: previous episode. Abdullah Pratt was a big part of the
18:05
Speaker 1: fight to finally open a trauma center on the South Side,
18:09
Speaker 1: and during that battle, one case hit him hard, the
18:13
Speaker 1: shooting of a young man named otf Newski.
18:16
Speaker 2: And I didn't know this at the time, but there
18:18
Speaker 2: was a big scene gathered also not too far from
18:21
Speaker 2: where I grew up, and there were people standing around
18:23
Speaker 2: yelling at the police, saying why aren't you helping them?
18:25
Speaker 3: Why aren't you helping them? And this young man I
18:27
Speaker 3: remember driving.
18:28
Speaker 2: Past slowly as I get past the crowd and just
18:30
Speaker 2: seeing him gasping for air, blood all over the place,
18:32
Speaker 2: nobody helping, Yellow tapes starting to be put up, and
18:35
Speaker 2: I remember that just hit me heavily. And it was
18:37
Speaker 2: that day that I found out that there was a
18:39
Speaker 2: law that says that if there's an active shooter event
18:42
Speaker 2: going on, or the shooter the scene hasn't been secured,
18:44
Speaker 2: the police do not allow ambulances in to help. And
18:47
Speaker 2: that's what also galvanized with myself. My med keep team
18:50
Speaker 2: does to try to train lay bystanders not only in
18:53
Speaker 2: how to deal with these gunshot ones, but also in
18:55
Speaker 2: the laws that allow them, the good Samarit to act,
18:57
Speaker 2: the innocent bystander laws that keep protect them from prosecution
19:03
Speaker 2: for trying to help if they're earnestly trying to help them.
19:05
Speaker 2: We trained over seven thousand youth in Chicago South Side
19:08
Speaker 2: and areas that had no other trainings like this going on.
19:12
Speaker 1: Years, people in the South Side of Chicago basically about
19:15
Speaker 1: how to handle a gunshot wound, for help, gums.
19:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, those things. Those those memories are etched into my
19:21
Speaker 2: mind almost as clear as my brother is, the memory
19:24
Speaker 2: of seeing him being pulled out of his.
19:25
Speaker 3: Truck to day he died.
19:27
Speaker 2: So when you look at it that way and you
19:29
Speaker 2: look at the potential, those young men would have been
19:31
Speaker 2: twenty six seven now, they would have been coming into
19:33
Speaker 2: their own maybe helping stop violence.
19:36
Speaker 1: As he talked, he was on his way over to
19:38
Speaker 1: a school not far away, Dallas Elementary, to do one
19:41
Speaker 1: of those training sessions, this time with a group of
19:44
Speaker 1: fourth graders.
19:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
19:46
Speaker 2: Yes, it's in the heart of Parkway Gardens aka aka
19:49
Speaker 2: O Block, right, the most notorious project housing still standing
19:53
Speaker 2: in Chicago.
19:54
Speaker 3: And we'll be there.
19:55
Speaker 2: We're going to teach them actually how to deal with
19:57
Speaker 2: gunshot wounds and do CPR. When I first get there
20:00
Speaker 2: for them, what it's going to be like is them
20:02
Speaker 2: number one saying, hey, who we are. This is a
20:04
Speaker 2: sensitive moment. But we asked them, how many of y'all
20:07
Speaker 2: have lost the loved one, a father, mother, brother, a
20:08
Speaker 2: gun violence. When we've asked that school before, one hundred
20:11
Speaker 2: percent of the hands go up, and that's rare. So
20:14
Speaker 2: for these fourth graders, they're gonna be asked that these
20:16
Speaker 2: hands go up. I'll show you the pictures and videos
20:18
Speaker 2: of it happening. Usually we get like fifty percent, sixty percent,
20:22
Speaker 2: and that's high, that's extremely high. But when it's one
20:25
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the hands that go up and they
20:28
Speaker 2: can name alls my brother, it was Mons, it was
20:30
Speaker 2: my father, it was both my uncles. When it's like that,
20:34
Speaker 2: now we're going to say, well, we're here today to
20:37
Speaker 2: help you all know what to do in that situation.
20:39
Speaker 2: How many of you all, if you knew something about
20:42
Speaker 2: how to help them, would have helped. And then one
20:44
Speaker 2: hundred percent of those hands go so we stitch it together.
20:47
Speaker 1: He's teaching the kids how to be first responders, to
20:50
Speaker 1: do what they can do before the ambulance arrives.
20:53
Speaker 2: Then we teaching the ABC is really simple. A means
20:55
Speaker 2: alert nine one one, called nine one one, tell them
20:57
Speaker 2: you need an ambulance, what's happened where you are, and
21:00
Speaker 2: importantly that the shooter has left the scene. So that's
21:03
Speaker 2: a B stands for bleeding. Find the bleeding. So now
21:06
Speaker 2: you have to see what's injured. So if that means
21:08
Speaker 2: ripping open pa hants, leg or a shirt or something
21:10
Speaker 2: like that to find the hole. It's important because if
21:13
Speaker 2: you start putting tourniquits and hold a pressure on a
21:15
Speaker 2: hole and that's not where the hole actually is, you're
21:18
Speaker 2: actually not even helping them and you could be creating
21:20
Speaker 2: more harm for the person. So then the next thing
21:23
Speaker 2: is see which is compressed the womb, compress the bleeding wound.
21:26
Speaker 2: Teaching them how to play turniquits and things, and being
21:28
Speaker 2: practical to say, you're probably not gonna have a tourniquit,
21:30
Speaker 2: you're probably not gonna have gauze. So this is how
21:33
Speaker 2: I use a tampon. Right, it was meant to go
21:35
Speaker 2: into holes in soaka blood for the young men You've
21:37
Speaker 2: probably never seen this unless you're planning your sister's drawer
21:40
Speaker 2: or something. But we'll teach you how to use this
21:42
Speaker 2: because this is probably going to be at your fingertips.
21:44
Speaker 2: You know, MAXI pads and absorb the pads are going
21:46
Speaker 2: to be at your fingertips. That's what you need. You
21:48
Speaker 2: need to be able to pack these wounds, to help absorb,
21:50
Speaker 2: to give this person time, and so we try to
21:53
Speaker 2: keep it simple. We're not trying to teach them how
21:55
Speaker 2: to be a trauma surgeon. We're trying to get them
21:57
Speaker 2: to feel confident enough to act. Do something. Call nine
22:00
Speaker 2: one one early, sit there with the person, and then
22:03
Speaker 2: nine won will actually walk you through these things. In
22:06
Speaker 2: this past summer, we actually had a young lady, a
22:08
Speaker 2: young Latina lady who one of my best students, and
22:12
Speaker 2: she came to me week two and she's like, doctor Pratt,
22:14
Speaker 2: I need a new kid. Like heirl, you lost your
22:16
Speaker 2: kid already. I'm like, okay, I'll go get you new kid.
22:18
Speaker 2: She's like, no, I didn't lose that promise. I promise
22:20
Speaker 2: I didn't lose it. I said, what happened? She said,
22:21
Speaker 2: I had to use it? And I said, well, what
22:23
Speaker 2: do you mean you had to use it. She was like,
22:24
Speaker 2: oh man, they shot someone right in front of my house.
22:27
Speaker 2: So I got it on video. She shows me the video.
22:29
Speaker 2: She did everything right. She took the time to watch
22:32
Speaker 2: the people leave. She calls now on one on the
22:34
Speaker 2: way out, she goes and gets her kit that we
22:36
Speaker 2: had just given a daze before that, and then the
22:38
Speaker 2: police come right on time, and they're like, you can't
22:41
Speaker 2: be here, you need to move, and she's like, no, no,
22:43
Speaker 2: there's a law that says that I can be here
22:45
Speaker 2: and help, and I have the kid and I don't
22:47
Speaker 2: want to see him die. And they're like, we will.
22:49
Speaker 2: We'll compromise, we'll take the kid, we'll make sure we
22:51
Speaker 2: use it. We just don't want you in harm's way.
22:54
Speaker 2: You can stand off to the side. And literally she
22:55
Speaker 2: has the pictures and videos of them using everything in
22:59
Speaker 2: that kid, to the Turner kids, the guds, the everything
23:04
Speaker 2: strawing out us. And so of course she got her
23:06
Speaker 2: another kid. And I was so proud of her being
23:09
Speaker 2: this young lady was either sixteen or seventeen. She wasn't
23:12
Speaker 2: even a senior yet, so this is like a sophomore,
23:14
Speaker 2: junior or yeah.
23:17
Speaker 1: In the streets of Chicago, an er doctor who has
23:21
Speaker 1: lost fifteen close friends and his older brother to gun violence,
23:26
Speaker 1: is going out to local elementary schools on his afternoon
23:29
Speaker 1: off and teaching fourth graders how to stabilize a gunshot wound.
23:39
Speaker 1: This is what it means to bother to care. Abdula
23:42
Speaker 1: Prat doesn't turn his back on where he's from, or
23:45
Speaker 1: hide behind a wall of indifference or change the subject.
23:49
Speaker 1: He sees a river of blood and he says, maybe
23:53
Speaker 1: there's something I can do right now to stem the tide.
23:58
Speaker 1: Do I know what the equivalent act is for the
24:01
Speaker 1: rest of us who don't live in the middle of
24:03
Speaker 1: the crisis. I don't, But we can at least start
24:06
Speaker 1: by acknowledging that Abdulla Prat, Chicago is also our Chicago,
24:11
Speaker 1: our country, our flesh and blood. We live here too.
24:24
Speaker 2: I just want to feel a youth to feel empowered.
24:26
Speaker 2: Many times, I just want them to feel like they
24:28
Speaker 2: have ownership of their own community and that they are
24:31
Speaker 2: the best position to solve these problems. There is no one,
24:35
Speaker 2: some big chariot, some messiah that's going to come through.
24:39
Speaker 2: That's a politician. It's going to fix your problems. It's
24:41
Speaker 2: going to be on you. That's what history shows us.
24:46
Speaker 1: There is no one, no messiah, no politician who's going
24:51
Speaker 1: to fix your problems. It's going to be on you.
24:55
Speaker 1: No one should have to give that speech to a
24:58
Speaker 1: room full of fourth graders. Sin is the failure to
25:04
Speaker 1: bother to care. Our revisionist history. Gun series was produced
27:10
Speaker 1: by Jacob Smith, Bend, daph Haffrey, Fiara Powell, Tally, Emmin
27:15
Speaker 1: and Leaming Gistuck. We were edited by Peter Clowney and
27:19
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, fact checking by Arthur Gomberts and Kashelle Williams,
27:24
Speaker 1: mastering by Lawn Williams, Engineering by Nina Lawrence. I'm Malcolm Glappa.
28:39
Speaker 1: The vocalists you heard at the end of this episode
28:41
Speaker 1: were Gabrielle Cavasa, Grace Gibson, Sari Jordan, and Lewis Corter.
28:48
Speaker 1: It was recorded at Artists Sound Production, produced by Keenan McRae.
28:52
Speaker 1: Choral arrangements by Luis Gira, drums by Mike Longoria, all
28:57
Speaker 1: other instruments played by Louis Gira. Music for this series written,
29:02
Speaker 1: arranged and produced by Luis Gira. Special guests include Mike Longoria,
29:08
Speaker 1: Jimmy Messer, and camal Humphrey. Samples were cleared by L.
29:12
Speaker 1: Chappelin Music, additional mixing and mastering at P and L Records.
29:17
Speaker 1: Special thanks to John Meistis for connecting the New Orleans
29:20
Speaker 1: based choir voices of Art a Sound with the team
29:24
Speaker 1: at Revisionist History