One Vision One Life, sponsored by the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, often holds vigils at the sites of deadly shootings in the Pittsburgh area.
The group's goal is to reduce crime and violence through education and outreach, but most times its mission becomes that of healing fractured communities in the wake of violence.
On Friday evening, one such vigil was held for 18-year-old Trevor Greer, who was killed last Monday in a flurry of bullets near Jacksonia Street and Saturn Way in the central North Side.
The crackling blare of the bullhorn is harsh on the ears. The sound cuts through the thick, muggy air of an early summer evening much like the sound of gunfire.
Only this is a sound of hope.
Behind the bullhorn is Elbert "El" Gray, area manager of One Vision One Life, a wiry, older man wrapped in a large black T-shirt emblazoned with a yellow stop sign that reads: "Stop Killing."
He bounces off of the sidewalk in the 300 block of Jacksonia Street with an anxious and unsteady sense of self. He is a man who inhabits two of the elements of grief -- sadness and anger. The two come together almost violently when he speaks into the blue end of the bullhorn.
"No one is exempt from the issue of gun violence," he barks into the microphone.
The words hang there over the heads of children of all ages who are smiling unabashedly as they dart in and out of the watchful eyes of their parents and siblings.
"Every mother who has a son fears when that phone rings at night," he says.
That phone call was too real last Monday night for one mother, when the call and then the inevitable knock on the door by police officers set in motion what would be the homicide investigation into the death of Trevor Greer.
The 18-year-old was sprayed with gunfire from an assault-style weapon at 11:30 that night near the sidewalk where Mr. Gray now stands, his voice booming out of a bullhorn.
"It's African Americans killing African Americans," he announces to the crowd. "Everybody here has been touched by an act of gun violence."
The gathering is not a homogenous group. Black faces are interspersed with the occasional white face, but most seem to be the fresh visages of children.
In a neighborhood that has long been gentrifying itself -- in other terms, richer, whiter residents moving in, while poorer, black residents are moving out -- the old Mexican War Streets and the new converge.
Yet what stands out has nothing to do with race or social class -- it's the white T-shirts. Dotted in the crowd are teenagers, much like Trevor Greer, wearing long, sometimes tight-fitting and oversized T-shirts with the same photograph of their fallen friend.
With a baseball cap covering his head and his hands outstretched by his sides as if greeting passers-by, Trevor Greer stares out from the white cloth.
Jasmine Davis, 19, is wearing one such shirt. Her sunglasses hiding her eyes, she cannot mask the grief of losing her friend.
"You could get mad at Trevor," she says, smiling for a moment, "but you couldn't stay mad at Trevor."
Three young black men wearing large shirts like Miss Davis' walk through the crowd toward her. She points -- they were some of his closest friends. As they walk past Miss Davis and a reporter, who asks if they would like to talk about their friend, they stare forward, acknowledge only Miss Davis and stroll through.
A television reporter who tries to corner them as well is dismissed in a similar manner.
"It's about respect," Le Saunders, of the North Side Alliance of Churches, explains. She, too, gets a turn at the bullhorn. In a familiar fashion, part inspiration from God and part pent-up frustration, she delivers a stirring wake-up call to those at the vigil.
Ms. Saunders' conviction seems to be coming from a much deeper place.
Earlier in the evening, a young man with braids driving a tan Buick pulls up with his music blasting, disrupting the vigil. He unsheathes a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor from a brown paper bag, removes the cap, takes a swig, then pours out half of the beer and places the bottle by a makeshift memorial of balloons, empty liquor bottles and well-wishes in Trevor's honor.
Some in the crowd boo the young man. Ms. Saunders strolls up to the man, as the others admonish him, and simply wraps her arms around him.
A hug.
A simple embrace.
She hugs him and he hugs back.
"Instead of booing, how about loving one another and recognizing their differences out of respect," she says of the young man, who is named Ed. "Once you engage the individual, that's when you begin to get a response."
These vigils are a response. A response to violence that seems to plague the same neighborhoods day in and day out in the same manner Bill Murray faced Punxsutawney Phil over and over again in the movie "Groundhog Day."
The cycle of shooting and then community outrage will inevitably begin again.
"It's the only day I wasn't with him," says Brandon Simpson, 18, a decade-old friend in the short life of Trevor Greer. His light brown eyes accompanied by long eyelashes are part and parcel of his street-cold stare. "Words can't describe him," he says, without his arms unfolding.
Asked whether more of these vigils and a community outpouring will stop the cycle of violence, Mr. Simpson shakes his head and adds: "This is everyday life for us."
Alma Yarbrough's son, 24-year-old George Caldwell Jr. , of Stanton Heights, was felled in much the same way as Trevor Greer.
There was the semi-automatic gunfire, a hail of bullets and then her son lying dead on a sidewalk in Homewood.
Different neighborhood, same story.
Barely more than a month after his death, Ms. Yarbrough, dressed in black from head to toe, grabs the bullhorn. Someone had spoken to detectives during the investigation into her son's death. That information led to an arrest.
She is there to ask people to speak up.
"They knew something about the killing and that helped," she says. "Maybe me speaking will sink that in."
Just as the crowd scatters around 6:20 p.m. with members of the gathering going in their own separate directions, a call goes out over the police radio: A man has been shot in the middle of Perrysville Avenue, elsewhere in the North Side.
Another fatal shooting -- after another vigil.
Mr. Gray of One Vision One Life learns of the incident and goes to the crime scene. He shrugs his shoulders and raises his arms as if unable to muster the words to an unformed question from the reporter he sees.
And then, there by an ambulance, not far from where 19-year-old Damien Blackwell's family hugs one another and cries as his dead body lies beneath a white sheet in the middle of the street, Mr. Gray speaks.
"No one is exempt," he says. "The war ain't over in Iraq -- it's right here."
Moustafa Ayad, Post-Gazette photos"MY BRO 4 LIFE" says the T-shirt worn by Brandon Simpson on Friday night. The front bears a photo of Trevor Greer, killed at this spot last Monday.
Click photo for larger image.
El Gray of One Vision One Life at the Friday evening vigil: "Everybody here has been touched by an act of gun violence."Click photo for larger image.
First Published: July 30, 2007, 2:15 a.m.
