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In the heat in the afternoon, two 16-year-old boys from North Philadelphia signed a contract. Engraving their names on a piece of paper, they promised to make a truce.
Over the months so far, teenagers have been dueling. Messages drifted back and forth between their phones, their inboxes on social networks were full of threats. The two eventually met at nearby Six Flags. There a boy raised a hostile warning: Next time he will bring a gun.
When Alicia Corley, one of the boys’ mothers, learned of the confrontation, she panicked. It had been only 16 years since she had tragically lost her 5-year-old daughter to a gunshot wound.
For families like Corley in North Philly, gun violence is a daily part of life. In a sense, the city serves as a microcosm of a larger public health crisis. As of September, 14,516 people in the United States had lost their lives to guns this year, making 2021 the deadliest in decades. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young black men and teenagers are 20 times more likely than their white counterparts to die from firearms.
Desperate to prevent her son from becoming a statistician, Corley is looking for a way to protect him. She came across Philly Truce, an iOS and Android app that allows Philadelphians in crisis to press a “get help” button. In this way, users connect with trained mediators who provide a range of services, including empathic listening, referral to comprehensive services (such as mental health care) and conflict intervention. The app offers an informed trauma alternative to contacting the police, which in some cases can escalate violence.
By contacting the program, Corley gained access to free mediation services, which eventually allowed her son to come face to face with the other boy. After listening, the teenagers realized that they were more similar than different. Threats of intimidation and violence quickly gave way to open dialogue and understanding. By the end of the meeting, they had agreed on a peace treaty: a truce in Phila.
The founders of this exchange are Stephen Pickens and Mazy Kasher, a native of North Philly, friends and co-founders of the Philly Truce app. Pickens, a first aid officer for the local fire department, and Kasher, a hip-hop performer, met in high school three decades ago. Today, the two men are in their 40s and have become central pillars of the local black community.
“In parts of Philadelphia, people are prisoners in their own homes,” Pickens said. “People have to be careful in certain neighborhoods just to sit on their own steps.”
For most of their lives, Kosher and Pickens felt as if gun violence was imminent. “We are hopeless. We shuddered and somehow accepted the story that this is so in the city. That’s the way it is between black and brown people, between poor people and the police, “said Kasher. Like many people who have experienced the echo of a complex trauma, numbness felt like the only coping mechanism available.
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