Javon Lomax, We Build The Block director of restorative practices and youth development, in the Brownsville In Violence Out offices in Brooklyn, New York. Lomax is the facilitator of the Heal the Ville healing circles. Samantha Max/WNYC
By Chip Brownlee, The Trace, July 11, 2023
Each meeting begins with participants sharing the highs and lows of their week: pictures of a sonogram for a coming baby, a recent trip down South to visit family, flaring allergies, too many or too few hours at work. The healing circle, as it’s called, is an opportunity to discuss troubles, blow off steam, and think about better ways to respond to conflict or stress, without turning to violence.
“Let’s think about the future,” the circle facilitator, Javon Lomax, told a group of a dozen teenagers sitting in a nondescript second-floor office in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn one night in April. Each of the guys has a history of involvement in gun violence and domestic violence, either as a witness, a victim, a perpetrator, or — sometimes — all three.
The violence intervention and prevention organizations We Build The Block and Brownsville In Violence Out have organized the circle as part of a pilot program called Heal the Ville. The hope is that it will reduce violence between intimate partners, and in doing so, will prevent violence in the streets, too. It’s among the first community-based programs to view the two traditionally siloed forms of violence — community violence and domestic violence — as explicitly interconnected and to take a combined approach to preventing both.
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