Uvalde: We cannot just be concerned with our little village. We must make the nation a great place to grow up.
Dear community,
We grieve the lives taken in Buffalo, Dallas, Laguna Woods, and now Uvalde, in horrific acts of racist and hate violence against Black people, Asian people, and Latinx people.
We recognize how painful this most recent shooting in Uvalde is for all of us, especially our Latinx community and youth workers, and we feel this pain with you.
We reaffirm the right all people have to safety, especially in their schools, a right we have a responsibility to defend. We also reaffirm that the surest way to cultivate safety is investment in our communities’ development and opportunity. We are grateful to be a part of that here in San Francisco, where we have radically reduced gun violence due in no small part to your direct efforts with our City’s young people and their families.
But here we are again helping our children process the trauma of yet another unacceptable tragedy. As we finish our 2022 Community Needs Assessment, I can’t help but remember the mass shooting at Sandy Hook in the midst of our 2012 CNA. This should not be a cycle. Mass shootings are a national public health crisis, and there absolutely must be meaningful social change before the next one.
We have a historic responsibility to our children to ensure that they grow up in a world free from this senseless violence. We cannot just be concerned with our little village; we must make the nation a great place to grow up.
Our responsibility as stewards of the Children and Youth Fund is to San Francisco’s children, youth, and their families — and to you, the people serving them. We offer our listening ears, our shoulders of support, and also our voices. As public funders with direct access to policymakers, we are always your open conduit to those who must now act on this crisis.
Your voices, experiences, expertise, and human responses to this tragedy matter. We commit to elevating them to the leaders of our City, state, and nation.
Only together can we change the world. It is our fierce, urgent responsibility to the next generation to do so.
In Community,
Maria Su, Psy.D.
