To Stop the Shooting, Lupe Cruz Gets Between the People with the Guns

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2019

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Conversations about gun reform are often galvanized by catastrophic mass shootings. But gun violence mostly unfolds as a matter of awful routine: domestic-partner homicides, suicides, and shootings between people who know each other are everyday occurrences. “All this [talk of] legislation, that doesn’t mean anything for us,” Lupe Cruz says, in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. “Most of the guns in this community are stolen. This is the real world.” A onetime gang member, Cruz mediated disputes informally for years before being recruited by an organization called Cure Violence. Their trained mediators, or “interrupters,” will show up after shootings or at funerals, and talk down the people who are likely to retaliate. Cruz now leads Cure Violence projects in Latin America and elsewhere. But she still mediates in her old neighborhood, where the stakes are very high: if her intervention doesn’t work, someone she knows may get shot—maybe right in front of her, which is what happened in November. She is getting tired and would like to “pass on the torch,” she tells the reporter Caroline Lester. But they need her in Little Village.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:14.7	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We've been talking this hour about guns, gun regulation and gun rights, and the shifting
0:23.6	politics that affects so many people's lives.
0:27.4	These conversations often focus around the plague of mass shootings, but in many communities
0:33.0	across the country, gun violence unfolds not as a shocking horror, but as a matter of awful routine.
0:40.5	And gun control, possible or not, isn't going to change that.
0:45.6	People come to Chicago, but they don't really go into the community.
0:49.5	You know, you were talking about guns and all this legislation.
0:53.7	That doesn't do nothing for us over here.
0:57.0	That doesn't mean anything for us.
0:59.6	Because you'll hear about the way most of the guns in this community are stolen, you know?
1:07.2	It's, this is the real world you're going to see.
1:12.8	Lupe Cruz works for an organization called Cure Violence.
1:16.6	The group trains mediators to intervene in disputes and break the cycle of violence.
1:21.6	Mediators like Lupe will show up to a funeral or right after a shooting takes place
1:26.3	and talk to the people who are most
1:27.8	likely to retaliate and try to convince them not to.
1:32.1	And when it comes to gun violence, Cruz has suffered enough to know what she's talking about.
1:37.0	The radio hours Caroline Lester went to talk with Lupe Cruz.
1:40.4	Hi!
1:41.4	Hi!
1:42.4	Fine good to get to meet you, right? It's so good to meet you. Thank you so much. You're
	...

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