A bus stop is just a bus stop until a classmate dies while standing there

I was 13 years old on a blazing hot summer day playing freeze tag with my cousins in front of my house in Kensington. My mom was sitting on a stoop nearby, talking to a neighbor, but still keeping a watchful eye on us.

Everything was fine until I heard three loud bangs. Instantly, my mother’s demeanor changed, and she screamed, “Get inside, now!” I was confused and annoyed that my game of freeze tag got cut short. But my mother’s authority made me hurry toward the house. As I stepped inside, I asked her what was going on, but all she said was: “Don’t worry about it, they’re just fireworks. How about we continue playing inside?”

Looking back, I know those weren’t fireworks. They were never just fireworks in my neighborhood.

I grew up in Kensington, an area of Philadelphia that a news columnist renamed “the Badlands” in the early 1990s because of the pervasive gun violence and drugs in the neighborhood. Many Kensington residents feel the nickname is unfair, but struggle daily with less-than-ideal circumstances.

I can tell you everything I love about my neighborhood: the food, the culture, the diversity, the hardworking, real people who live and raise their families there. I can’t imagine being born anywhere else. But as I got older, I began to lose classmates to gun violence. Often, they were either going to or coming from school when they were shot. A bus stop is just a bus stop until a classmate dies while standing there. Sometimes I would take a completely different route to school to avoid the violence — or to avoid remembering it.

I moved to Glenside during my freshman year of college at Arcadia University to study media and communications and started living on campus full time. Glenside is less than 10 miles from Kensington, but it is smaller and quieter. There are several reasons why what I used to routinely experience in Kensington is rare here — but even so, gun violence is not something you can just move away from and forget.

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There are so many things happening in Philly that need to change. If it weren’t for the things I saw as a kid, I wouldn’t have my drive and my passion for change, and I wouldn’t be where I am now. I’ve used the experiences I had growing up as a reason to get involved with gun violence prevention causes because I know what it’s like to live in a threatening environment. No kid deserves to feel unsafe — not on their own block, not in their school, not in their neighborhood.

This past year, I had the opportunity to work on a documentary about the impacts of gun violence with PBS News Student Reporting Labs. It’s given me space to reflect on and share my experiences. I’m extremely proud to share my story of an average city kid affected by gun violence. I hope other kids who experience these sorts of things know they have a voice. If I were to go back in time and tell younger me that his voice mattered, it would’ve blown his mind.

As a student producer for this documentary, I interviewed Jessica Beard, a trauma surgeon at Temple University and the director of research at the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. She shared research on gun violence and some evidence-based solutions.

“The things that seem to prevent firearm homicide are universal background checks and permits to purchase,” Beard told me. “Other policies that are effective to prevent unintentional injury and firearm suicide are child access prevention laws and extreme risk protection orders. I think one concern that people feel is that this is political. But the truth is that we have evidence that these things can save lives.”

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“We are living in the time where there’s attention being paid to it,” she said when I asked her what she would say to people like me growing up around gun violence. “Keep in your mind that you don’t have to live like this and that we can prevent gun violence.”

After the interview, I felt seen and heard, and it was amazing talking to a researcher who studies a topic that’s so close to home for me. And I left feeling more hopeful for the future of gun violence prevention.

Working on this documentary has allowed me to talk about a serious issue that impacts communities like mine. Bringing awareness to gun violence isn’t something everyone wants to hear, but we can’t do anything about it if we ignore the problem. These conversations are important because people’s lives are important.

Even if you, too, feel like this issue might last forever, at the very least, I just hope anyone who is in a similar situation as me doesn’t feel so alone anymore.

Ethan Rodriguez attends Arcadia University and is a student producer of a documentary focused on exploring the impacts of gun violence on young Americans from their perspectives. “Run, Hide, Fight: Growing up under the gun,” from PBS News Student Reporting Labs, premiered Oct. 9 on the PBS News YouTube channel, the PBS app, and PBS.org.