'The city needs all of you.' What a former Obama cabinet member said about gun violence in Memphis

Arne Duncan has held some lofty positions in his career. From 2001 to 2008 he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and from 2008 to 2015 he was the U.S. Secretary of Education.

But Duncan believes his hardest, most important work started in 2016 when he co-founded Chicago CRED ― a gun violence intervention nonprofit that offers street outreach, therapy, life coaching, education, and job training in the South and West sides of the Windy City.

Chicago CRED works with people who are at a high risk of being involved with gun violence, and the staffers engaging them come from similar backgrounds. Often, they were once considered high-risk themselves. Since its inception, the organization has served more than 1,600 program participants and placed over 500 people in jobs; and over the next five years, it hopes to reduce gun violence in Chicago by 20% annually.

These efforts are sorely needed. In 2021, Chicago had over 800 homicides, a 25-year high. Memphis has also wrestled with the issue in recent years; in 2023, it had nearly 400 homicides. Earlier this week, Duncan came to Memphis, to speak to community leaders and government officials about what’s worked for Chicago CRED ― and what could work for Memphis nonprofits.

Chicago CRED and Memphis Allies

Duncan spoke on Tuesday at the Breakthrough Conference at the Memphis Hilton, which was focused on community violence intervention and organized by Memphis Allies.

Part of the nonprofit Youth Villages, Memphis Allies offers gun violence intervention programs, and its holistic model closely resembles Chicago CRED’s ― which is no coincidence. When Memphis Allies was being formed a few years ago, its leaders visited the Midwestern organization and were impressed by what they saw.

Memphis Allies also works with people at a high risk of gun violence involvement, using life coaches and engagement specialists who come from similar circumstances and were once also considered high risk. The organization also offers clinical counseling services, and it has partnerships with a variety of other local nonprofits and community groups, which joined it in putting on the conference.

“When we realized that this was going to be an ongoing learning process, in terms of the community violence intervention field, we wanted to make sure that we were bringing others along that learning journey with us,” Susan Deason, executive director of Memphis Allies, told The Commercial Appeal. “We invited a number of community partners to assist us in hosting this conference.”

This was the second year of the two-day event, held on March 26-27, and it boasted an array of leaders from both Memphis and other cities. Both Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Memphis Mayor Paul Young spoke as did Anthony Smith, the executive director of Cities United.

'A marathon at a sprinter's pace'

Duncan spoke on the first afternoon of the conference, after spending the previous night in Memphis and meeting with community stakeholders. Answering questions from Youth Villages CEO Patrick Lawler, he described what Chicago CRED’s work was like.

Achieving discernable success, he explained, is no small task, and it doesn’t come overnight.

“You have to work with huge urgency, but also be in it for the long haul. It’s like trying to run a marathon at a sprinter's pace,” Duncan said. “Obviously, violence is the last manifestation of a whole bunch of other social ills. It's taken us decades to get to these points, and it's going to take a while to get out of it. So, you have to work with tremendous adversity every single day.”

Duncan alluded to other social ills as he spoke, noting that when he started the nonprofit over seven years ago and asked high-risk individuals what it would take to “put the guns down,” they nearly always said an hourly wage of $12 to $13. Many of the people they work with, he emphasized, face extremely challenging circumstances.

“I often say, ‘I don't think we're giving people a second chance. In the vast majority of cases, I think we're giving them a first chance,'” he said. “They're the same people, just a different set of opportunities, a different set of structures, a different set of folks trying to love them and care for them.”

That love and care can yield promising results, as there are former high-risk participants now working as outreach specialists and life coaches for Chicago CRED, helping to run the program. That, Duncan said, is the “ultimate sign you are putting people in a position to fulfill their true destiny.”

He also noted the importance of being data-driven and collaborative, as the organization has an array of community partners. Initially, its leaders were primarily focused on “individual transformation,” which he explained remains the “heartbeat” of the organization. But as program alumni who had changed their own behavior continued to suffer from neighborhood violence, they realized Chicago also needed to look more broadly at violence suppression ― and this required working with groups.

“If we're giving our participants (the chance) to change their lives, but their neighborhood is still a war zone, we're actually increasing their risk, not decreasing it,” he said. “And the only way for us to start to enable that violence suppression was by partnering with other organizations. We couldn't do it alone.”

'The city needs all of you'

The importance of not working in silos was something Duncan emphasized to his Memphis audience.

He praised the efforts of the local nonprofits and community groups trying to reduce gun violence, thanking them for their dedication. He praised Young, whom he met during his visit, saying “You have an extraordinary young mayor."

But he also thinks, from what he learned and saw in Memphis, that its gun violence-focused nonprofits should collaborate more, rather than just compete.

More: Mayors from across the US came to Memphis to talk crime. How their crime rates compare

“As you guys try and scale, there are a couple of barriers. One is collaboration, and I think, honestly, this city has a long way to go,” he said. “You can't ask guys on the street to change their behavior if we're not willing to change our behavior… I just really, really want to challenge this room to… put down the guns, put down the arms, put down the disagreements about anything other than results…  The city needs all of you working at the highest capacity to change lives.”

And Duncan believes that as organizations collaborate, they should set an overarching goal.

“I get a sense for the heart and the passion and commitment of the folks in this room and folks across the city. What I haven't heard collectively, is what the goal is for violence reduction,” he said. “And for me, it's not just picking a number, 5%, 10%. That's the easy part. The [hard] part is looking at your data, looking at your maps, looking at the community violence, looking at the partners and saying, ‘Okay, who's going to hold down this block? Who's going to hold down this neighborhood? What are we going do, and how does all that add up to a bigger piece?'”

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Former US Education Secretary Arne Duncan talks about gun violence prevention