Four weeks ago, Aamir Griffin,14 years old, was shot by a stray bullet while playing basketball in front of his home at the Baisley Housing Development in South Jamaica, Queens. A month earlier, my brother Nick and his wife Erin's best friend, Pedro, was shot in the neck in a drive-by shooting, severing his spinal cord. That same week, my friend and co-worker with the Urban Yogis, Pastor NaRon Tillman, lost his step-brother to a gun shot in the
back.
I knew Aamir from the Urban Yogis program. Baisley is our home base, and our team, Juquille, Jaytaun, Raheem, and our other first generation teachers, Makeesha and Tyrell all live there. Aamir's death is crushing. It's one more beautiful life blown out by a bullet that should never have been fired. Pastor's step-brother's life was gone in an instant, and Pedro's life forever changed.
Since 2012 I've been dedicating time to supporting Erica Ford, the founder of LIFE Camp, in her life-long mission to end gun violence in Queens. Under her banner, Deepak Chopra and I helped to create a program that has spent the past seven years training youth and young adults from South Jamaica in yoga and meditation. Over the years several of these young adults have moved on to
become amazingly skilled and effective yoga teachers themselves, and they bring their skills into public schools and other programs in areas that have little or no access to yoga and meditation.
Erica has grown LIFE Camp into a city-supported crisis-management organization, that up until this summer, maintained four years of no gun violence in our targeted area of Queens. Sadly, we lost Aamir last month, and there have been 30 shootings in the surrounding areas outside of our target zone that desperately need LIFE Camp's crisis-management support.
This giving Tuesday LIFE Camp has asked me, Deepak Chopra, and Julianne Moore, as LIFE Camp ambassadors, to each raise $2,500 to emergency relief. Would you join me in donating? Gun violence is closer to each of us than we realize, and LIFE Camp is at the front lines.
World-peace might be out of our collective reach, but what we can do is work to keep our little neck of the woods safe. This is indeed what LIFE Camp aims to do.
As part of my yearly commitment, I will give an extra $1000 to LIFE Camp once we hit $2500.
There are about 5,400 people on this mailing list. If 100 people would give $25, we can hit our goal, and then I'll add $1000 on top to bring it to $3500. If anyone would like to do matching gifts, let me know, Queens will greatly appreciate you!!
Please use this link to donate, and THANK YOU. Wishing you all Happy Holidays!
With love,
Eddie
