EAST LANSING, Mich. — Nearly two years after the devastating shooting at Michigan State University, the MSU community is using art to heal through its exhibition, 'Art in the Aftermath: Healing Gun Violence through Artivism'. The community was invited to take part in one of its programs Friday afternoon at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum on campus called the 'Perspectives on Gun Violence Roundtable'. Over a dozen students and community leaders joined the public discussion as speakers shared their different viewpoints in addressing the issue of gun violence.
Second-year MSU medical student, Andi Nations, was there representing SAFE, Scrubs Addressing the Firearm Epidemic. Nations had just been accepted into MSU's medical school when the shooting occurred.
"I remember getting a bunch of texts from people that I knew asking me if I was okay. And I told them, yeah, I'm still in California. I'd actually never been to Michigan yet," Nations said. "And I remember thinking about everybody that day and thinking about the mass shooting that I went to when I was a first responder at King Estates in Oakland, [California] and the aftermath of that."
It's why Nations shared their experience and how the national organization, SAFE, hopes to prevent gun violence by viewing it through a perspective of public health.
"It is an issue that we see over and over again, and all of us are potential future gunshot victims, and that it's so easy to feel powerless in that," said Nations. "We have three pillars, advocacy, research and education. And essentially what we do is we treat firearm violence as a public health issue, which it is."
They said preventative measures could start with something as simple as a doctor's appointment.
"Every pediatrician should be asking the patient's parents, "Is there a gun in your home? How is it stored?" Because for your safety and everyone else's, these problems are preventable if we work to prevent them," Nations added."And if we're able to ask the questions and get the funding to study them, then we can do something about this problem."
Theirs was just one perspective at the roundtable. Michael Lynn Jr. is the CEO of the Lansing Empowerment Network, an organization that "aims to build a stronger community through collaboration."
"We are bringing together initiatives and the community around initiatives to work upstream on the gun violence," Lynn said.
The organization is able to strengthen the communication between law enforcement and the community by holding a weekly virtual meeting.
"We hold a meeting called Lansing 360 where we bring law enforcement, community groups, everybody from, you know, municipality leaders, mayors, so on and so forth, all to the conversation around gun violence once a week, every Wednesday from 12 to one," said Lynn. "Since we've been doing this for about a year and a half, our numbers have gone down 20% in the City of Lansing."
Discussants also included members of MSU's College of Human Medicine and Advance Peace Lansing.
"People all over the country deal with this. It doesn't matter if you're rural or urban, what your race is, gun violence doesn't really care," said Aron Sousa, Dean of MSU's College of Human Medicine. "And so, it's how we take care of each other, how we protect each other. When people are depressed or or stressed, it's just about taking care of each other."
Lynn and Nations hope the conversations at the roundtable will invite others to view the issue of gun violence with a different perspective.
"I love when people start expanding their minds around how we can affect change with this. This is how, you know, cures come up, how we find penicillin and all these different things from this conversation. What have you tried? What hasn't worked? So, we save a lot of time when we talk about what people have tried, what didn't work, what does work," Lynn said.
"I think it's really inspiring. I think a lot of people are doing this work, and it's important, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, to find the people that are already doing this work, because there are a lot of people who have really good ideas and just need your help," said Nations.
The roundtable was just one aspect of the week-long exhibition, which will be open till Thursday. Events included a student-film premiere Friday night and a spoken-word event which will take place on Saturday. Visitors can even contribute their own thoughts and messages on the nation's gun violence problem to the Soul Box Project in the exhibition.
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