At a time when guns are killing more Americans, José Alfaro is making history as the first Latino to lead a national group in the U.S. that works to stop gun violence.
The number of deaths from guns has gotten so bad that last week, the nation’s top doctor, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, made history by publicly calling gun violence a public health crisis.
Alfaro mentioned that as the new head of Community Justice, the main group working to stop gun violence among minorities, he will be focused on “Black and brown communities across the United States who have been disproportionately impacted for generations.”
Alfaro’s first interview after taking over as commissioner was with NBC News. He said, “This is a public health crisis that is taking away the lives of young people.”
According to the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, 48,204 people died from injuries caused by firearms in 2022. These deaths included suicides, murders, and deaths that were not planned. This is more than 16,000 more deaths than in 2010 and over 8,000 more than in 2019.
Firearms are now the main way that kids and teens die in the U.S., and kids of color are more likely to be killed by them. Eighty-six percent of gun-related deaths in kids and teens who were Black were murders. For kids and teens who were Hispanic, the number was 76%.
Other groups have higher rates of gun-related suicide, such as 63% of white children, 55% of Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander youth, and 48% of American Indian or Alaska Native youth.
Things change when they hit the ground.
Alfaro is the first person in his family to be born in El Salvador and live in the United States. He grew up in Jamaica, New York City. After leaving El Salvador because of the civil war, his parents moved in the United States.
He said that he joined a street group in the 1990s when he moved to New York and didn’t have many Latino role models in his neighborhood. It showed him firsthand how structural racism and other socioeconomic factors, like poverty and a lack of education, which make it hard to move up in society, “create environments where violence can thrive,” Alfaro said.
“Our community is no stranger to gun violence, and these are part of the ways that I think about gun violence; also through the lens of generational trauma,” said Alfaro. “Latinos from different parts of the world are coming to the United States fleeing violence, only to come into communities that have been divested from and encountering violence, as well.”
Some of the most recent mass shootings in the U.S. that Latinos remember are the ones in El Paso and Uvalde, Texas, and the one at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. These were all terrible acts of gun violence that killed many Latinos and hurt the communities that lived in those cities.
“This was very foundational to some of the principles that I use today,” he said.
After leaving the street group, Alfaro got his GED and went to Morgan State University for college. As a young man, he worked as a community schoolteacher in Baltimore City. Later, he worked on local campaigns in Connecticut and on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign.
After that, Alfaro led national organizing efforts at Planned Parenthood Federation of America to support reproductive rights. He also worked to involve Latino communities at Everytown for Gun Safety, which is the biggest gun violence prevention group in the country.
According to a 2023 poll from Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, most young voters (18–34 years old) said that stopping gun violence was one of the three most important problems for them before the election.
Alfaro told these voters that when they choose who to vote for, they should pay attention to how candidates talk about gun violence and how they interact with survivors of gun violence. They should also keep an eye on “they are looking to invest in violence intervention programs.”
“Change does start at the top with our local leaders, but it also begins on the ground,” he said. “So, coalition building is an essential part of the work that we’re looking to do to end gun violence together.”
Source: NBC