Mensah M. Dean

1 week ago | thetrace.org | Mensah M. Dean

The Trace In Philadelphia, Memorial Day served not just as the unofficial start of summer but also as an ominous reminder of just how perilous the season can be. In the waning hours of the holiday, just before 10:30 p.m., gunfire erupted in a crowded patch of Fairmount Park, a popular gathering spot with skyline views, leaving two dead and nine wounded. Two young people — a 23-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man — were killed.

1 week ago | greenphl.com | Mensah M. Dean

| This story was published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here. The two trash-strewn lots on the 1400 block of South Paxon Street were among the things Dianna Coleman and Verna Williams bonded over. They often mused about how nice it would be to transform the area into an inviting place for their Southwest Philadelphia community. Williams, Coleman said, raised her family on that block.

3 weeks ago | thetrace.org | Sunny Sone |Mensah M. Dean

The Trace As gun violence in the United States has declined from the historic heights of the early 2020s, the national conversation about the crisis has faded, too. But that doesn’t mean the epidemic has been solved — a fact people affected by shootings and those tasked with caring for the wounded know well.

3 weeks ago | thetrace.org | Mensah M. Dean

The Trace The two trash-strewn lots on the 1400 block of South Paxon Street were among the things Dianna Coleman and Verna Williams bonded over. They often mused about how nice it would be to transform the area into an inviting place for their Southwest Philadelphia community. Williams, Coleman said, raised her family on that block.

1 month ago | thephiladelphiacitizen.org | Mensah M. Dean

On April 22, two unrelated but inextricably linked incidents rattled Bill McKinney, executive director of the New Kensington Community Development Corporation, a 40-year-old organization that provides social services to one of Philadelphia’s most troubled communities. After a local business owner called to tell McKinney that two groups of men across the street were fighting and drawing guns, McKinney dispatched some of the violence interrupters from his organization’s Cure Violence program.