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Brooklyn Residents Memorialize Gun Violence Victims in Candlelight Tribute

By Camille Bautista | December 5, 2014 8:27am
  Life-sized, wooden human silhouettes pay tribute to gun violence victims in the 36th Council District's first "Cut Out the Violence" commemoration. 
Cut Out the Violence Commemoration
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BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — Community members in Brooklyn paid tribute to victims of gun violence on Thursday night, pledging to help reduce the number of lives lost in Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Crown Heights.

More than a dozen life-sized, wooden silhouettes surrounded attendees at Restoration Plaza as part of the 36th Council District’s first “Cut Out the Violence” commemoration, aimed at engaging residents in anti-violence efforts.

The grassroots project uses the painted cutouts created by local teens to memorialize people killed in the district in the past year.

“We’re a very visual society and we wanted people to see the significance of life lost: that this was somebody’s son, husband or child,” said Councilman Robert Cornegy, who has two silhouettes in his office as a reminder of the initiative.

Cornegy, who has voiced opposition to last month’s Ferguson, Mo. grand jury decision as well as a grand jury’s decision not to indict an NYPD officer in the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, addressed ongoing community efforts to ensure citizens' safety.

“Obviously the elephant in the room is the Eric Garner case,” he said.

“People ask, is it true that black communities only stand up when there’s police-involved shootings, and that we don’t work hard to make sure that we’re safe?

“I say tonight [that this] is a testament to the fact that we do this all day, every day…We’re here to make sure that we can heal what’s going on in our communities.” 

The councilman’s office developed the “Cut Out the Violence” project last June in partnership with area youth groups and the NYC District Council of Carpenters, among other supporters.

Elected officials, officers from the 79th and 81st NYPD precincts and organizations including Save Our Streets Brooklyn participated in Thursday's commemoration.   

In addition to the silhouettes, many of which were emblazoned with red hearts and the names of victims, the event included tearful stories from family members who lost loved ones to gunfire.

Tyron Cutner, COO of Bed-Stuy's Project Re-Generation, a youth organization that helped create the wooden figures, recounted the death of his 24-year-old cousin, Qasim Mitchell, who was killed last March.

“I think the most important thing about this project is it keeps the conversation alive,” Cutner told DNAinfo. “When someone gets killed in our neighborhood, we put a memorial up and light candles, but eventually that comes down and people forget. But it happens again, and again, and again.

“These cutouts allow people to not forget and continue to find solutions for these issues, so eventually there will be no need for this project — that’s the goal.”

The silhouettes will be posted at Project Re-Generation's facility, as well as at Boys and Girls High School, where students also joined in the construction, according to Cornegy's office. 

Following speeches from community members, attendees held hands and lit candles as the names of the dead were read. 

“We can heal, we can stop the violence, we can band together to do the work that’s necessary,” said Stefani Zinerman, Cornegy’s chief of staff. “We are the only ones that can save us."

The crowd ended the night by repeating Cornegy's commitment to the anti-violence initiative. 

“We proclaim that in 2015, we will be the most peaceful community in the city of New York.”