100 bullets fired Friday. 9 people shot Saturday. That’s two days in Kensington.

Many of you may have heard about what happened in Kensington on a recent Saturday night, when nine people were shot. But do you know what happened the night before?

That’s when — a block and a half from my offices — more than 100 shots were fired. Two people were hit. Then, on Saturday — in almost the exact same spot as the night before — 50 shots were fired.

Later that Saturday night, less than one mile away, another 40 shots rang out, hitting nine people. Of the three shootings in 48 hours, this is the only one that made the news. It occurred the length of a football field away from an intersection where, just a few months ago, a motorist killed several people with an SUV.

Like neighborhood residents and other nonprofits, my team members and I at the New Kensington Community Development Corporation are under constant pressure from an increase in violent crime in the neighborhood. We are being directly threatened by people selling drugs on either side of our headquarters — a building that serves both as our offices and as housing for more than four dozen families.

After the Saturday night shooting (the only one that made the news), I — like other residents of my community — started receiving emails and texts from friends, family, and colleagues as they went through the now-regular check-ins to make sure I was OK.

Despite the attention the Saturday night shooting received, the morning after, I went to the site where it occurred, and you never would have known it had happened. There was no police tape, no patrol cars; there was just trash blowing in the wind, unsheltered folks, and the world going about its business as if what happened didn’t exist anywhere except on the news.

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It felt as if everyone had already moved on. But moving on is a privilege; it’s only an option for those not directly affected, those who don’t already live in fear as they go about their daily lives.

That Sunday morning after the shootings, I walked home alone along Kensington Avenue. On my way, I passed an encampment of unhoused people, and had to walk on the asphalt because the sidewalk was choked with thick smoke from the fires keeping people warm. Their suffering was real.

By midmorning, I was fielding emails from residents who had cc’ed me on messages they had sent to city officials, sharing their anger and frustration, how they felt they had been abandoned, that our lives did not matter.

A couple of hours later, I went outside to get some air. Barely 100 yards from my house, a pickup truck had driven up alongside a police car. The driver of the pickup was screaming at the officer through a bullhorn. Then the pickup rammed the police car and all hell broke loose. I spoke to a couple of people and asked if they knew who the driver was. They said he regularly came to a nearby park to preach. “Everyone out here is just a moment away from completely losing it,” one man told me.

‘Everyone out here is just a moment away from completely losing it,’ one man told me.

Violence, poverty, racism, and classism are all real in Kensington. We aren’t going to gentrify our way out of this — we will only displace the issues. We aren’t going to pontificate or wring our hands out of this. We aren’t going to arrest our way out of this. Yes, the city, the police, the district attorney all have roles, but they are pieces of a much larger puzzle. That puzzle — that solution — involves a holistic, trauma-informed, community-centered strategy addressing employment, education, housing, addiction, and violence.

One of the hardest things for me to say to my colleagues, to residents, to anyone, is that this will not be the last time — this will not be the last heartbreaking story about Kensington — because I know the structural changes necessary to address these issues take time. But I think these moments are opportunities to pivot toward a reality where we recognize that solutions lie within every stakeholder, whether they are a neighborhood resident, or an official in city government, or anyone else committed to the notion of our shared survival in this city. To get to greater solutions and address the community’s needs, we must be able to take many approaches at once.

We must recognize the trauma of this moment — which builds off the trauma of a lifetime — and how it affects people’s immediate responses to these incidents. As I explained to a police official the day after the Saturday shooting, this is not a time to rattle off statistics or challenge people’s realities; it is a moment for everyone to be present, to listen, and to acknowledge the emotions and feelings people are experiencing. It is an opportunity to build trust, encourage collaboration, and support empowerment.

This is a time to reset. I ask folks who read about the shooting that Saturday night to not allow themselves to simply go about their lives. I ask you to realize that these are not simply the isolated actions of bad actors; this is the culmination of decades of collapse, and this collapse is hurting a whole community.

I ask you to allow yourselves to feel for what Kensington is going through. Feel and hear other people’s feelings. Please don’t move on as if nothing happened, as if we are not human beings who are suffering. Don’t normalize the pain so many in this area are experiencing.

I also ask folks to be part of addressing the structural issues that got us here. I ask that you bring what you have to the table and use it to address priorities identified by the community. We cannot wait for any heroes.

I ask you to be willing to do things differently, just as I’m challenging myself and my organization to do every day. Use this moment as an opportunity to pivot.

Bill McKinney, a Kensington resident, is the executive director of the New Kensington Community Development Corporation.