[music] [music] Latisha Rogers: My name is Latisha Rogers.

Garnell Whitfield: I am Garnell Whitfield, the son of Mrs.

Ruth Whitfield.

John Torrey: My name is John Torrey.

Dr.

Kenyani Davis: My name is Dr.

Kenyani Davis, and I'm the chief medical officer at the Community Health Centers of Buffalo.

Buffalo is such an amazing and interesting place.

And what makes Buffalo and Western New York so important is that Buffalo has the ability to be the microcosm of what the US population will racially look like in the year of 2038 and beyond.

So the truth is, if we get it right here, we can get it right for the nation.

But in order for us to get it right, we have to understand where we came from.

John: Let's begin in 1619, right?

The history of Black people in this country begins, unfortunately, with the beginning of chattel slavery in this country when the first African slaves were brought here to the US.

Well, it wasn't the US at the time but will become the United States.

From there, we ended up having to experience centuries of being owned as well as centuries still of oppression, systemic oppression, racial oppression, and purposeful attempt to try to strip Black people from having rights, privileges, and perhaps most importantly, recognition for, again, hundreds of years.

And as a result of that process, we end up seeing a lot of people who feel comfortable attacking Black communities, who feel comfortable marginalizing Black communities, and who feel comfortable demonizing Black people.

And that history, unfortunately, still continues today.

Latisha: So this isn't my first time dealing with a mass shooting.

August 14th of 2010, I lost my brother at the City Grill shooting.

They kept calling him the groom from Texas.

He got killed on his wedding anniversary, and I was there for that.

And I remember that fear, and I remember seeing my brother get up off the ground, brush himself off, and then he just slowly started bleeding.

I just remember my cousin grabbing him.

Last thing I remember my brother saying is that he couldn't breathe, and my cousin's on the ground giving him CPR.

And I remember seeing the EMT standing over her, watching her, never helped her.

And he finally took my brother's pulse, and he had just lost it.

And I remember seeing the EMT saying, "DOA."

And I just was in a complete like numb and shock, and I'll never forget having to make that phone call to my mother, telling him--telling my mom that he was gone on the ground.

Garnell: My mother was a dark-skinned Black woman.

She grew up in Mississippi, in Grand Island, moved here in Grand Island, so she endured racial bigotry and hate her entire life and fought against it.

Just for her to have died at the hands of a White supremacist is difficult, very difficult, and so, you know, we worked to try to secure justice, whatever that means for her, but also to address those things that caused her death.

Zeneta Everhart: My name is Zeneta Everhart.

I'm Zaire's mom.

You know, in the moment, it was panic, right?

Of course it was panic because, unfortunately, when a mother hears that her child has been shot, right, you're contacted by the police department or something like that.

Zaire's the one that called me when he got shot, while he was laying on the ground across the street from the Tops grocery store, he called me first.

So, of co-- anguish, panic, fear.

I didn't know.

I didn't even know how to feel, and I was--I didn't know.

I was just--I remember screaming at him, and I was like, "What do you mean you got shot?"

And I was like, "Where on your body did you get shot?"

John: What we have to do is significantly improve the stories, the histories, and the commentaries about Black life in this country.

We have to be able to recognize Black people in a wider, in a more holistic, in a more full humane way so that we're able to be recognized by our institutions in a way that shows that these kinds of events are not what we're supposed to be dealing with, are not just frowned upon because it makes people look bad or it makes cities look bad, but it's frowned upon because it's wrong.

Black people don't consider themselves beasts, mongrels, demons, ne'er-do-wells.

We think of ourselves as people, and that humanity has been denied for us as part of our experience here in this country.

We can even think of it globally as well, but certainly here it's part of what has to be done is changing the narrative to appreciate the humanity of Black people as a fundamental understanding for what blackness is.

Latisha: I was a quiet, shy kid.

I wasn't--I was--I think I considered myself a good kid.

I wasn't like bad or anything.

I kept to myself.

I had to be--really, really know you to really show you like my sillier, goofy side.

Loved to read.

I love reading.

As I got older, I started like-- I like to do writing, write short stories or stuff like that, but my biggest main hobby is I love to read and love listening to music, different kinds of music.

I was very close with my big brother, Daniel.

We--anywhere he was, I tried to be right behind him too.

We just kinda hung out, watched movies, watched--I was--used to be a big wrestling fan, so we would try to watch wrestling together, stuff like that.

Garnell: She mostly loved being with her family.

She loved to cook.

She loved to provide for her family.

She loved to encourage people.

She loved to fish.

She loved camping when we were young.

She had four kids living in the projects, and we didn't have a lot.

I remember standing in line for the surplus peanut butter and cheese and those kinds of things, and she would take those things and make gourmet meals out of them.

You know, she was just very good at creating, creating dishes.

She made syrup for us.

Zeneta: Zaire was--ooh, man, he was full of life, right?

That's the nice way the parents say it.

We don't like to call kids bad or, you know--but yeah, Zaire was a curious kid, you know?

He wanted to go everywhere.

He spent days and days just at the park.

That's where he wanted to go.

He wanted to go on the slides.

He wanted to go on the swings.

He was one of those kids at two years old that wanted to swing super high and jump off the swing, right?

That's who he was.

Yeah, he was an adventurer for sure.

One of the things that I guess I don't really talk a lot about is that Zaire's on the autism spectrum.

You know, so growing up and him going to school was--it was a difficult journey, right?

Zaire never really had issues with academics.

He was--he always flourished academically.

He had issues socially, right?

It was the loudness of the room, or you know, it was just too many kids around, and it was too many things happening.

And so that would always play a role in his mood of the day, right?

He was a kid that if he seen me hug someone in a grocery store, he expected them to hug him, even though he's never met this person, right?

So he didn't understand that strangers exist.

He just thinks like, "Well, my mom knows them, so I know them."

Earl Perrin Jr.

: My name is Earl Perrin Jr.

Legacy 514 is a non-scholarship, a 501(c)(3) aid that we started after the occurrence of 5/14.

We started it in the remembrance of our coworker, Lieutenant Aaron Salter.

I and two other coworkers of mine are retired Buffalo police officers who worked with Lieutenant Aaron Salter for some years, and he was a very good friend of ours, very down to earth person, very creative, community-oriented, a true servant if you were to call him that, not just of the community but of the world.

So to have him give his life to try to save others was not even hard to surmise.

I mean not at all difficult to--not farfetched.

He was that kind of person.

So what we wanted to do is have something that had some long-lasting effect, giving back in his name and recognizing him to continue on the legacy of who he was, so we created a scholarship.

Initially, it was just a few guys trying to give a couple dollars, $100 here, $100 there, but it grew so fast to the point where we were able to sustain 10 scholarships of $5,000 each every year.

The scholarships that we created were representative of who Aaron was.

Even though Aaron was an African American who lived on the East Side--he later moved out to Lockport--Aaron was a person that was all inclusive, meaning he didn't choose his friends by the color of their skin.

He chose them by their personality and character, so Aaron loved all people.

So we wanted the scholarship to be reflective of that, given the fact that we did have a certain percentage that we wanted to go to some marginalized members of the community who historically have not been able to achieve those things, but we didn't want to leave out those who were not A students.

So we made this scholarship to be able to fit not the color of your skin but the character of the person, meaning if you're a C or B student, you still qualify.

Do you give to the community?

That's what we wanna know.

Are you concerned about the city of Buffalo?

That's what we wanna know.

If you can do those things and prove to be a person that is creative and community oriented and, again, a servant, then you can apply, and you'll get the scholarship, given the fact that you are chosen out of the ten nominations.

Dr.

Davis: Trauma is the perceived perception of vulnerability at that time, which is why a lot of times when we talk about trauma, if trauma happened in early childhood, it lives with us if we don't heal, right?

When we're younger and we have this traumatic insult, we perceive ourselves as more vulnerable.

So now let's take that as an adult.

When you have repetitive traumas, what you begin to do is you normalize it.

But if you don't know anything else, you don't know that what you're feeling is not normal.

And for many diff--for many years, we used to look at people and we used to dismiss their traumas, whether it's individually, or we used to mute people's voices.

But what we've learned from a healthcare perspective is all of these different microaggressions that one has to experience from a systematic level as well as an individual level absolutely has the ability to accelerate the aging of our DNA.

And why is that important?

Because the DNA molecules and structures, that is the blueprint for one's health.

Zeneta: I'm born and raised on the East Side of Buffalo.

I've seen everything.

I lived in the house where the worst of the worst was, right?

I was raised by a drug-addicted mother.

We struggled.

There was trauma, right?

Divorced parents, the whole, you know, cliched story, but it's true.

You know, my mom and dad broke up.

My mother was depressed.

She turned to drugs, right?

There are things about my story that I don't talk about.

I did things I'm not proud of to make sure my mother's rent was paid, that we had a roof over our head, right?

I dropped out of high school to help my mother pay bills.

Those situations are still happening today, right?

Kids are still growing up in households like that, and they're still making grown-up decisions, like dropping out of high school to work and pay bills, right?

I remember I was 14 years old doing Mayor's Summer Youth.

I used that money to pay the electric bill.

I didn't go out and hang out with my friends, right?

I didn't go out and buy clothes and, you know, do 14-year-old stuff.

Latisha: The biggest thing that I remember is just the fear, the fear that had instilled in me, and I kinda still have that fear because I don't like being in silence.

So just remembering that day after everything kind of settled down I guess you can say.

I just remember being in like complete silence, and I can just remember hearing him walking closer to where I was hiding.

Garnell: Everything that we knew, everything that we were secure in, everything we believed in has been upended.

My mother was the center of our lives.

She was the matriarch of our family.

Never imagined her not being here.

Zeneta: In hindsight, I was thinking, "Wow.

As a mom, you did everything you're supposed to do to keep him from ever getting shot," right?

I grew up in the hood, right?

My job as a Black mother raising a Black child is to make sure he doesn't get shot.

That's my job all day long, all day every day.

Keep them away from gangs.

Don't let him get involved in drugs.

Don't let your kid get shot.

That was my job, and it's like, how did this happen to my kid, you know?

But that's the question that many mothers have every day.

Why my kid?

Dr.

Davis: So health and wealth intersect in a very interesting thing in which I always like to explain through the social determinants of health.

So everybody always talks about what the social determinants of health.

I'm not a smart person, so I always say the most simplistic answer for social determinants of health, it's all the non-medical things that contribute to one's health.

And when you talk about that, that's 80%.

Eighty percent of the totality of somebody's health is where they live, where they work, where they play, not in my doctor's office.

My stethoscope only accounts for 10%.

And the reason why that's important is because every time we talk about health, we always run to medicine, but the truth is, it's rooted in the maldistribution of social, economic, and political resources.

And that's the foundation of what America was built on.

America's history has shaped the health of many racial groups here, which has laid the foundation for health inequities.

And the reason why that's important, especially here in Western New York and in Buffalo, is geographically we're landlocked, and that's mostly the ramifications of redlining.

And the reason why that's important is because it takes seven generations to undo the wrong of redlining.

So that's access to schools, access to clean water, and healthcare.

All of that takes seven generations.

And when I look at myself, I'm only three generations in.

So think about that.

Race determines your health based off of that maldistribution of those three things and that access to power or that access to change.

And that makes up 80% of one's health.

Access looks like connectivity.

Building a brick and mortar and saying, "Here, I've put this building here, and you're gonna come and you're gonna get these services, and everything's gonna be well," is not true.

You have to move past that.

We're not there anymore.

It's about connection and connectivity and feeling connected and being seen not only in the healthcare system but any type of brick and mortar that actually impacts somebody's health.

Dr.

JaNay Queen-Nazaire: My name is Dr.

JaNay Queen-Nazaire.

Wealth is about everyone's ability to be well.

It's more than a notion.

It's not just about how much money you have, but it's about your ability to navigate the world and be included in systems by default.

So if you need good healthcare, you should be able to get that.

But if you don't have it, it doesn't matter how much money you have.

You are not wealthy.

You are not well.

And so when you think about wealth, you want people to have agency and be able to own their minds, their bodies, their products, and participate in community in ways that allow them to live, work, play, and worship freely.

Certain communities have been prevented from obtaining wealth in a myriad of ways.

For example, you have some communities who were denied home loans just by virtue of who existed in that place, Black people.

And the government and banks said, "No, they can't get a home loan."

You have others who go to start or grow their business, and they can't get an operating line of credit to start and grow their businesses.

And then you have examples like in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or North Carolina or Georgia or Florida, where when a community, particularly a Black community, actually generated wealth, was working and had economic security and stability, literal bombs got dropped on those places.

There was an intentional action to disrupt the wealth in those places and for those people, so that's how wealth has been prevented.

An example to describe how generational wealth can happen is homeownership.

So I purchase a home in a neighborhood for, say, $300,000.

This is a big deal for my family.

I beautify that home with furniture, paint, a beautiful yard.

It's lovely.

And then I raise my family in that home, so that home has already gained value just because I beautified it.

Soon as I move in and I get good furniture and put some pretty paint on the wall, it's beautiful.

But then what time does is it provides equity and value, so now 5, 10 years later, my $300,000 home is worth $600,000.

And now my kid is ready to go to college, or my niece is ready to start a business, and I can take money from that $600,000 and put $50,000 to my child's education or invest $25,000 in my niece's business.

Or guess what?

Grandma got sick and she needs money for the health bi--for her health bill because we're still trying to get our systems to work for us.

I actually can support paying that health bill for my grandmother.

So that is how wealth can be passed down generation to generation.

And I still have that home, and it can go to the next generation, and they can pull the value out of it.

Dr.

Davis: Albert Einstein had a very interesting quote that we can't solve problems with the same thought process that we did to create them.

And what's so important to understand about the geography of why that area was targeted-- this wasn't by accident.

When you get traumatic events that are race based, no one did anything but exist, and that takes your safety away.

This particular area, because of those social determinants of health, financial insecurity, transportation, the ramifications of redlining, it deeply concentrated a particular race in one area, which allowed people from the outside to be able to target.

The interesting thing is if you take this particular ZIP code and you put the COVID incidence rates on top of it, STI incidence rates, HIV incidence rates, chronic disease, hospitalizations, you name it, it will constantly overlay the same five ZIP codes.

John: We were enslaved.

Thankfully, we were able to shift out of that.

We had Jim Crow laws.

Thankfully, we've been able to shift out of that.

We had Black codes.

Thankfully, we've been able to shift out of that.

We've had voting right discrimination.

We're still enduring that.

We've had housing discrimination.

We're still enduring that.

So part of what it is to be able to navigate and shift these systems is to see what systems have we been able to change and also what systems are still-- are perpetrating, are still creating systemic inequalities.

Zeneta: It's going back and understanding what caused it, right?

Five fourteen didn't break anything.

It was already broken, right?

The issues have always been there.

I'm 42.

They've been there my whole life, so it's systems, right?

We got to tear down systems, right?

Poverty is a system choice.

Communities that look like the East Side of Buffalo are there on purpose.

It's not by accident, right?

And we have to stop acting like it's on accident, and that's how we fix it.

We have to admit it, right?

Whenever we go to therapy, they say in order to deal with your problem, you've got to admit that there is one.

Dr.

Queen-Nazaire: So restorative economics.

I would love to take a page from the private equity venture capital book when we think about restorative economics.

What that looks like is when I wanna buy a business or I wanna invest in an idea, I take a pool of capital, a pool of dollars, and I infuse it in a person or a product with the hopes that that will grow.

But not only do I give the money, but I ensure an environment that allows them to be successful because I want the business to grow and provide a return on that investment.

And that return looks like more revenue, more jobs, more presence in places, and it's good business.

And so I think the same thing needs to happen in our communities.

We need to infuse capital in people, in places, in communities, in homes, in literal streets, and then cultivate the growth so that we can get the return.

And what that return looks like is a thriving community, a thriving economy where everyone gets to be wealthy and well.

Zeneta: Like, we need a plan for Black people across the board, across the country, right?

And we have to go into these communities and change them simultaneously, right?

Not, you know, we're gonna build a building here, we're gonna, you know, throw some money and help a couple people buy a house and--no, we need a real plan.

That's why, you know, when we hear about, "Oh my god, $100 million for the East Side, $50 million for the East Side," they're throwing all this money into our community, and two years later we look, and we're like, "Where the money go?

Everything look the same.

The community literally still looks the same."

In my 42 years of my life, it actually looks worse than it did when I was a kid, but all these hundreds of millions of dollars are rolling into our community, and it's still the same.

So that's what hope looks like for me.

Hope looks like actually doing something with the money, actually doing something.

We have to change the landscape of Black Buffalo, literally something we could see.

We need to be able to see the change.

We don't see the change right now.

Earl: Oh, hope is easy.

Hope is that thing that allows us to change these young kids from wondering if they can do it to show them that they can do it.

Hope is the kinda thing when you look up and you see somebody else that's willing to walk ahead of you, to lead you up and then pull you up the ladder.

Hope is like when you decide that I am gonna make a change and I won't be known for what I used to be but what I am gonna be from here on.

That's what hope looks like to me.

Latisha: Hope for me, I would say having the faith to see things change.

And I also think of it as hold on, pain ends, because I dealt with a lot of pain from 5/14, but just throughout the years of losing my brother, losing my father the year prior of 5/14.

So I just know that God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, and dealing with all this, I really learned that, the meaning of that.

Garnell: I trust and believe that change is imminent.

It may not come when I want it.

It may not come in my lifetime, but we are now building the foundation and planting the seeds of change and building, you know, a new world.

And so that's what this is about.

I don't need to see the manifestation of it right now.

We just continue to work and walk by faith, you know, and trust and believe.

That's for me-- that's hope for me.

Dr.

Queen-Nazaire: What hope looks like to me is when people see themselves free to live, to work, to play, to worship, when they see themselves able to walk into any place, any establishment and be a part of that and belong.

It's not just like, you know, we have a diversity of folks.

It's literally feeling like you belong in a space or in a place.

That's what hope looks like to me.

Hope looks like to me when we are able to collectively govern ourselves in a way that ensures we are all wealthy and well.

John: Hope looks like a whole lot of people holding hands and sharing connections.

A good friend of mine actually once said this, life is about making meaningful connections.

It strikes me that it is impossible to make meaningful connections if you can't see somebody as the same kind of person as you.

So what hope looks like to me is when I get to see people from different walks of life, from different backgrounds, from different experiences.

This is inside the Black community and outside the Black community when they're able to hear each other, respond to each other, and see themselves and other people.

Dr.

Davis: Hope.

Hope is resiliency.

I think a lot of times we think that hope always has to be this feel-good thing.

Sometimes you have to go through stuff and be able to cling to something deeper.

Hope is resiliency.

A whole person should be able to emote many different emotions comfortably and healthy.

Hope is feeling comfortable doing all of that.

And I'm hopeful that all of us, regardless of your race or your ethnicity or your creed, will be able to have hope and resiliency and it not just be afforded to some people, because the truth is is we can't do this by ourselves.

We've never been able to do this by ourselves.

That's the gag.

When we take care of each other, we all improve.

And I'm hopeful.

I'm hopeful that we all can be resilient.

And in order for us to get there, we have to be aware and acknowledge where we're at now.

female: What does hope look like to you?

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