It was a beautiful, warm and sunny Juneteenth in the City of Oakland. Around Lake Merritt, people were listening to music, riding off-road vehicles, having a drink, smoking a little weed...enjoying life. I was there soaking up the sun while celebrating the end of chattel slavery with my friends John and Juan “Swamp.”
After an afternoon of talking about everything from adversity to political ideology to healing-centered interventions, we meandered through the food sellers strewn alongside the lake. The pineapple bowl stand caught our eye and we made a beeline to the back of the line.
Ahh, pineapple bowls: Half a pineapple with the flesh scooped out, layered with white rice, pineapple chunks, teriyaki chicken and shrimp, all garnished with toasted sesame seeds and sliced fresh green onion. For $20 dollars! Give me 10 of them!
As we waited, we saw another stand in front of us selling Jell-O shots. I was reading the board when the woman in front of me turned to me and said, “Right! I’m thinkin’ of gettin’ me one of them, too.” We exchanged a little banter. I told Swamp that I hadn’t had a drink in about three years, but I was contemplating having a Jell-O shot. John had shifted to talking with the women standing in front of us.
After a long arduous fight against the spread of COVID that had kept us indoors for so long, it was a great time. Couldn’t ask for more.
Suddenly, we heard loud bangs. Then, the sound of collective trauma.
We turned around and saw about 5,000 faces with fear in their eyes, running towards us. All screaming in terror. We looked at each other with bewilderment before reacting. I then realized what was happening. A shooting. Having lived through similar experiences, I ran behind the engine block of a van that was directly behind us. As I crouched behind the van a woman holding her baby crouched next to me. She looked at me, her face awash in fear. She asked me, “Why are we running? Why are we running?”
More gunshots. I ran with the crowd. All I could hear were piercing screams of terror as people ran for their lives. To say that it was a traumatic experience may not be enough to describe all of the emotions I was feeling. My endocrine system was on high alert pumping me full of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. The hormones of adversity and stress.
The traumatic experience of witnessing and being present at a mass shooting is something that stays with you for a long time. It is something that will impact the rest of your life. It is something that was experienced by most everyone around that day, individually and collectively.
There were 5,000 in the crowd, 31 gunshots, 8 victims, 3 arrests, 2 gunmen, and 1 fatality.
Oakland is a majority minority city; 71% of the population belongs to a minority group. It has had a large Black population for many decades, and along with this comes underfunding, unemployment, lack of resources, and overall lack of official interest in uplifting communities of color. This leads to untold amounts of adversity.
Unfortunately, Oakland also has a high number of homicides. In 2020 alone there were 109 homicides, of which 102 were classified as murders. An increase of 71% and 73% respectively over 2019. Before 2019, Oakland had been experiencing a 10-year decline in homicides and murders. In 2018 the city experienced 68 murders, which was its lowest total since 1999, when 62 murders occurred.
This level of individual trauma can lead many to feel unsafe in their community. Prompting people to adapt. Learning to constantly scan your surroundings for danger. Being aware that you can die suddenly is traumatic. What then can this lead to? It can lead to a collective trauma experienced by the people of Oakland.
What is collective trauma? Collective trauma refers to the psychological reactions to a traumatic event that affects an entire society. It does not merely reflect an historical fact, the recollection of a terrible event that happened to a group of people.
However, the collective trauma that I am describing, that the people of Oakland suffer from, is not related to a specific historical event, at least not in this context. It is rather a collection of individual traumas. In a city that experienced nearly 200 murders in only two years, it is not impossible to think that a large number of residents were impacted by one of these violent events. This is collective trauma.
When someone loses their life to violence, it affects an entire community, whether the victim was personally known or not. The entire community is affected, because so many have had a similar experience. So when there is a mass shooting, people react and run for their lives, no questions asked. A classic flight response for self-preservation. When 5,000 people turn and run in fear for their lives at the same time, that is a response to the trauma that the community collectively has experienced.
As a former resident, I understand that Oakland suffers from many forms of collective trauma. However, along with the trauma itself comes the outreach from the community. This results from the empathy residents feel for the victim’s family. When tragedy strikes, the community moves into action and helps comfort the affected family. This creates feelings of support and may help in buffering the stress and trauma experienced after such a tragedy. Positive community action after these events assists in creating resilience in the individual, and the community.
The mass shooting that happened on Juneteenth at Lake Merritt is yet another form of collective trauma that was experienced by the people of Oakland. Some may be saying, understandably, that they will never go out to another mass event in Oakland. However, we must reclaim the space in order to heal and build resilience.
If you ask me, I will be out there the next opportunity I get.
Why? Because Oakland is not defined by collective trauma. Oakland is defined by the collective love that helps its beautiful people overcome their collective and individual traumas.
Oakland resilient! Oakland strong!
(Words by me. Title image: A Turtle's Life for Me)
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