How Black and Latinx Youth Gun Violence Prevention Organizers Responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on adolescents’ lives. In racially marginalized communities, COVID-19 exacerbated structural inequities. This study explores how Black and Latinx youth gun violence prevention organizers responded to COVID-19 in their community organizing.

Methods: Semi-structured 1-hour virtual interviews were conducted with 22 young people from September 2021 to July 2022. Youth identified as Black (59%), Latinx (36%), or Afro-Latinx (5%), between the ages of 18-22 (Mage = 19.91), and were engaged in gun violence prevention organizing in the U.S. Youth were recruited on social media through their affiliation with gun violence prevention organizations. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns of shared meaning across transcripts.

Findings: We identified three ways that youth responded to the pandemic:

1. Shifting their focus towards community mutual aid

For youth engaged in community organizing, COVID-19 prompted a shift towards community mutual aid. Skinny described “dropping off food for families and stuff like that...lost they job.” Youth felt an urgency in responding to community members' basic needs, such as providing masks and food. These activities represented a significant change from youths’ earlier organizing work, which focused on basic needs but also on structural issues such as poverty and police violence.

2. Reducing access to healing spaces

Prior to the pandemic, youth described organizing as a space for healing with other gun-violence affected youth. The pandemic — and turn to online organizing — made it more difficult for youth to emotionally support each other. Frank noted: “COVID hit really hard, because the work is about establishing connections, having people connect with their community. And that's a lot harder to do with screens.” Many youth lamented the loss of in-person spaces and community support.

3. Complicating youths’ response to police gun violence

Youth all felt compelled to participate in the spring 2020 surge in the Black Lives Matter movement. However, the pandemic complicated youths’ ability to respond. Eliana noted that “even when the protests were happening, I couldn't really go anywhere personally because I lived with my grandma at the time. And I didn't want to put her at risk.”

Youth who protested sometimes struggled to get back into organizing work after COVID-19 lockdowns, as Cameron explained: “to put it really bluntly, the pandemic stopped my [organizing] work completely...with the summer of the George Floyd protests, that kind of brought a new wave of gun violence into the year, because we went so long without anything really major happening, because we were all inside. And so it was kind of weird jumping back in. Just because I lost so much connection with what I was originally doing, I kind of had to start all over.”

Implications: This study shows how Black and Latinx youth organizers shifted their organizing work to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the pandemic may have complicated their organizing and healing work. Social workers, community organizations, and gun violence prevention organizing spaces can use these findings to consider how best to support youth organizers’ wellbeing and organizing work.