Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I grew up in what we call Calumet Heights neighborhood
Speaker 2: is just southeast side of Chicago, you know, painted by
Speaker 2: violence and health inequities, at a time where it was
Speaker 2: not nice to live in that neighborhood, at a time
Speaker 2: where it was very dangerous, where it was very gang
Speaker 2: written in the Yes, there's still a lot of violence
Speaker 2: today in Woodlawn, nothing like just twenty years ago when
Speaker 2: I was a child growing up in these neighborhoods and
Speaker 2: having to watch out for myself.
Speaker 1: On a cold and rainy winter's day, I went to
Speaker 1: Chicago to see a young man named Abdula Pratt, big beard,
Speaker 1: thick plastic glasses, built like a linebacker.
Speaker 3: What was your past?
Speaker 1: Where did you decide you wanted to go into medicine
Speaker 1: and where did you decide you wanted to emergency pens?
Speaker 2: So I think I wanted to be a doctor since
Speaker 2: the time that I was a child. I remember having
Speaker 2: the Fisher Price bag and Christmas and you know, being
Speaker 2: three four years old and stuff. I grew up in
Speaker 2: the museums, so the Museum of Science and Industry was
Speaker 2: a sanctuary for me as a child. The shadow query
Speaker 2: I did my first dissection of a squid at the
Speaker 2: age of like seven or eight. Those things fueled a
Speaker 2: passion for science, a passion for anatomy. And after growing
Speaker 2: up in a completely one hundred percent African American community,
Speaker 2: I was in program so I'd be the only African American.
Speaker 2: But I was winning awards for being the best. So
Speaker 2: it taught me that I could compete and that I
Speaker 2: could make change. And when I was a senior in
Speaker 2: high school, I was working as a temp deliver of
Speaker 2: grants at on the Chicago's campus.
Speaker 3: Really good job.
Speaker 2: I was making like seventeen an hour for that summer.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was for high school. Oh man, I didn't
Speaker 2: make that much money again until I was a doctor.
Speaker 2: So I just let you know how that got at works.
Speaker 2: But I remember asking people like, Hey, I live in
Speaker 2: Woodline a lot. I'm in Woodland a lot, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of violence, a lot of social equities.
Speaker 3: You ride your walk two blocks and it's this beautiful campus.
Speaker 3: But you go ask these.
Speaker 2: Heads of departments, Hey, who's here fighting for the little
Speaker 2: people two blocks away where my family is. Who is
Speaker 2: here who cares about them? And who's doing something? I
Speaker 2: want to meet them I'm want to ask them these
Speaker 2: questions about why more isn't happening, And a couple of
Speaker 2: these heads of departments literally looked me in the face
Speaker 2: and said, young man, maybe you're the answer to the
Speaker 2: questions that you have. Maybe you have to take on
Speaker 2: the burden of sacrificing and making yourself into the type
Speaker 2: of candidate that can qualify to get here. Go get
Speaker 2: that three point nine GPA, no excuses, Go fight for
Speaker 2: your community, learn about the issues, and do it.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is the
Speaker 1: final installment in our mini series on gun Vines. It's
Speaker 1: about a young man who grew up in one of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous communities in America, an emergency room doctor,
Speaker 1: and decided to stay in the same neighborhood where he
Speaker 1: grew up. How many people from growing up do you
Speaker 1: know who died?
Speaker 2: I've got I'd ranked them by closeness to me, because
Speaker 2: if I said everybody, it'd probably be like in the
Speaker 2: thirties forties.
Speaker 3: But yeah, seriously, seriously.
Speaker 2: If everyone that I knew like knew talked with shared
Speaker 2: time with at some point, so I really keep it
Speaker 2: to close friends.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So if I say close friends, people who I still
Speaker 2: have the text messages in my phone, people who I
Speaker 2: know their family members, their mothers, their fathers.
Speaker 3: Prior to all of this, fifteen friends.
Speaker 2: You know, my older brother, you know is the one
Speaker 2: family member, my closest friend and wealth of day that
Speaker 2: my brother died and I said, hey, you know I
Speaker 2: lost my brother and you the closest thing I got
Speaker 2: to brother. That person was murdered, right, and all of
Speaker 2: them are leaving behind children. All of them were great
Speaker 2: fathers who I literally I think many of them. Our
Speaker 2: last conversations were about parenting in fatherhood. Close teammates, right, So,
Speaker 2: I've had three close teammates just from my one high
Speaker 2: school team all be murdered. I've had youth that I
Speaker 2: mentored with some of the teams that I coached that
Speaker 2: were murdered, and many of them pronounced dead. Writing this
Speaker 2: Trauma bab once we were finally able to get a
Speaker 2: trauma center, some of these close friends I had to
Speaker 2: pronounce dead myself. I had to tell their own family
Speaker 2: members that their loved one was no longer here. And
Speaker 2: as you can Imagine that, just to paint the picture
Speaker 2: for you. Imagine, you know, walking into a room, you
Speaker 2: prepare yourself to tell this family member of your close
Speaker 2: friend that they're no longer here. And the first thing
Speaker 2: that family member says they see you, and they light up.
Speaker 2: They forget why they're there for a second. They say, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, a Dullah, Oh hey Dullah, Hey, we were
Speaker 2: just talking about you.
Speaker 3: How are you.
Speaker 2: They forget that their son or daughter was shot. And
Speaker 2: then now the first words out of my mouth, which
Speaker 2: is the evidence based way to do it, is to
Speaker 2: say they did not make it. So now they go
Speaker 2: from the highest and highest of the lowest of lows.
Speaker 2: I've had to do that about five times in the
Speaker 2: last three years. Only one time have I been forced
Speaker 2: to stop working the shift. But usually I finished these
Speaker 2: early in my shifts, and I keep working because if
Speaker 2: I stop, then you think about it all, you know,
Speaker 2: and you prepare yourself for the worst walking into any shift,
Speaker 2: especially when you grow up in a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I did an episode of Revisionist
Speaker 1: History called The Standard Case, where I interviewed a Catholic
Speaker 1: priest named James Martin. He said something I've thought a
Speaker 1: lot about since if you're a longtime listener you may
Speaker 1: remember this moment.
Speaker 4: No, you know one of my professors of more orthology
Speaker 4: at Boston College who I think you'd really like in
Speaker 4: terms of his writing, Jim Keenan.
Speaker 1: I met with Jim Keenan well.
Speaker 4: The perfect person to talk to. He points out that
Speaker 4: for Jesus in the Gospels, sin is usually not where
Speaker 4: people are weak but trying, you know, people are really struggling,
Speaker 4: but where people are strong and not bothering. So, for example,
Speaker 4: the Good Samaritan, the priest, and the Levite simply they
Speaker 4: don't bother. They just don't bother. They could help the guy,
Speaker 4: but they don't bother. So Jim Keenan said, for Jesus,
Speaker 4: sin is a failure to bother to love.
Speaker 1: In the story of the Good Samaritan, a man is
Speaker 1: beaten and robbed and left for dead at the side
Speaker 1: of the road, and one by one men of faith,
Speaker 1: holy men pass by without stopping moved to the other
Speaker 1: side of the road. They aren't complicit in the attack,
Speaker 1: they would never do anything like that themselves. They just
Speaker 1: choose to look the other way, and that, Keenan says,
Speaker 1: is the sin sin is indifference. Sin is the failure
Speaker 1: to bother to care. That is what this series has
Speaker 1: been about. There is a deep river of blood flowing
Speaker 1: down America's and yet it seems hard to get anyone's attention.
Speaker 1: The first two episodes of this series were about the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's ruling in the Bruin case, where the Court
Speaker 1: said that New York State's handgun licensing law was unconstitutional
Speaker 1: and in their decision spent more time talking about the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century than the twenty first century. You do that
Speaker 1: when you're indifferent. The President stands up and says we
Speaker 1: have to ban assault rifles, even though the guns he
Speaker 1: wants to ban aren't much different from the guns he
Speaker 1: didn't want to ban. You're that sloppy on a crucially
Speaker 1: important question when you've given up on any kind of
Speaker 1: meaningful change. Our success at treating gunshot wounds has lulled
Speaker 1: us into complacency. That was episode four. We have hospitals
Speaker 1: in the wrong places for the dumbest of reasons. That
Speaker 1: was the fifth installment. The deeper I got into the
Speaker 1: subject of gun violence, the more bleak things seemed to be.
Speaker 1: So for this our final installment, I went to Chicago
Speaker 1: and sat down with Abdullah Pratt in a little windowless
Speaker 1: room in the basement of the University of Chicago Hospital,
Speaker 1: and he showed me what bothering to care looks like.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately that was the last words my brother told
Speaker 2: me before he was murdered. Is looking at me being
Speaker 2: a first year medical student in Chicago. He reiterated that, like, hey,
Speaker 2: little brother, this is all good that you got a
Speaker 2: nice apartment, got awards, you're doing good things, you're chapter
Speaker 2: president of your student National Medical Association. But there are
Speaker 2: two types of people in this world. There are people
Speaker 2: that do for themselves and there are people who do
Speaker 2: for others. The people who do for them salves, they
Speaker 2: get rich, they make money, they live somewhere else, but
Speaker 2: we call those sellouts. And then the people who do
Speaker 2: for others they get broken by this. They end up poor,
Speaker 2: they're not able to actually have the impact that they
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Abdullah's brother's name was Rashad. He was Abdullah's best friend
Speaker 1: and protector. He was killed when he tried to stop
Speaker 1: some kids from stealing a car.
Speaker 2: Well, he said this and la in lesser terms, but
Speaker 2: he said, maybe if you're smartest that I think you are,
Speaker 2: and as these awards are trying to say you are,
Speaker 2: maybe you'll be one of the first people to figure
Speaker 2: out how to do both, how to be able to
Speaker 2: you know, protect your family, do well for yourself, grow
Speaker 2: your initiatives, and do for those at the very very bottom,
Speaker 2: like your aunties, your best friends on the block, those
Speaker 2: type of people. He said, If you can do that,
Speaker 2: I'd be so so proud of you. And you know,
Speaker 2: to this day, I'm still trying to figure that out.
Speaker 2: You know, I feel like I'm still that second type
Speaker 2: of person who's given and still hasn't figured it out.
Speaker 3: But that's what keeps me fighting.
Speaker 1: When I met with Abdulah Pratt, I asked him what
Speaker 1: the busiest night of the week was at a trauma center.
Speaker 1: He said, weekends, of course, and holidays when people have
Speaker 1: been drinking a lot.
Speaker 2: This most recent month, the night before Martin Luther King's holiday,
Speaker 2: was one of the worst trauma knights I've ever had.
Speaker 2: You're talking about, like, I think I had like six
Speaker 2: people pronounced dead from violence all in the night. A
Speaker 2: few more that made it to the operating room very
Speaker 2: critical injuries. That's a Sunday night in January, that that's
Speaker 2: happening the day before Martin Luther King's birthdayly hours and
Speaker 2: into the day of Martin Luther King's birthday is a.
Speaker 3: Big surprise instead, Yeah, yeah, my memories certainly right, it was.
Speaker 3: That may have been more.
Speaker 1: Did you hear about what happened the night before Martin
Speaker 1: Luther king Day on the South side of Chicago? I
Speaker 1: didn't now if that had been a mass shooting, we
Speaker 1: all might have heard about that. Mass shooting seemed to
Speaker 1: be the one part of the gun violence epidemic that
Speaker 1: still grab all of our attention. For good reason. But
Speaker 1: there are roughly twenty thousand Americans murdered by guns in
Speaker 1: a typical year. I love that twenty thousand. Only a
Speaker 1: few hundred die in mass shooting incidents. It's a very
Speaker 1: small part of the problem. If you could wave a
Speaker 1: magic wand and end all mass shootings tomorrow, the people
Speaker 1: who work in trauma centers say they wouldn't notice the difference.
Speaker 1: And if we want to be cynical or maybe just realistic,
Speaker 1: we should admit to ourselves that paying so much attention
Speaker 1: to the smallest part of the problem is a form
Speaker 1: of indifference. It's changing the subject. The thing that struck
Speaker 1: me about Abdullah Pratt is that he refused to change
Speaker 1: the subject. What guns are they using?
Speaker 2: All of them, so everything from the nine millimeters the
Speaker 2: glock forties, which are.
Speaker 3: Very convenient, a lot of them like the glocks on.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, gogs don't have safeties on them, so when those
Speaker 2: guys who are shooting themselves, that's how that's happening.
Speaker 3: Many times it's with the glocks.
Speaker 2: There used to be a day where everybody liked the
Speaker 2: revolvers because the shells didn't fall and so you had
Speaker 2: less evidence. But now they don't care about evidence, the
Speaker 2: lack of conviction rate of murders. They don't can many
Speaker 2: people or killing people broad daylight with no mask on
Speaker 2: and literally daring people to hop on the stand and
Speaker 2: testify against them, and of course no one does because
Speaker 2: we can't assure protection for those people. They still have
Speaker 2: to live in life, they still have to exist in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. You're not gonna put twenty four hour protection
Speaker 2: on them.
Speaker 1: The kids were fitting something called a switch on the
Speaker 1: back of their handguns, a little plastic device you can
Speaker 1: buy on the internet that makes the gun fire much faster.
Speaker 1: A handgun is hard to aim at the best of times.
Speaker 1: With a switch, it's almost impossible to control.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot more brazenness of how these
Speaker 2: murders that happening, a lot less care for collateral damage.
Speaker 2: So you're looking at people and normally and you can
Speaker 2: watch the videos. You can find these videos easily on
Speaker 2: YouTube or on you know, social media of different aspects.
Speaker 2: But you see these like surveillance, can you know, and
Speaker 2: the people literally just standing over someone shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting,
Speaker 2: shooting into the gun just doesn't even you know, and
Speaker 2: to that person just stops moving or the gun jams
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: He said that when he was growing up, a lot
Speaker 1: of the violence he saw around him was gang related,
Speaker 1: turf battles, business disputes over drugs that turned violent. But
Speaker 1: what a he's seeing now is much worse.
Speaker 2: It's much more interpersonal, meaning that you can trace many
Speaker 2: of these beasts between local factions down to one or
Speaker 2: two murders that happened years ago, ten years ago, when
Speaker 2: they were children, when they were thirteen fourteen, and that
Speaker 2: unaddressed trauma of you losing your friend at fourteen or
Speaker 2: fifteen causes you to snap in a way that if
Speaker 2: you don't have the right support system and you have
Speaker 2: access to firearms, you become what that minuce, You become
Speaker 2: that person. Admittingly, these are words they use, the super savages,
Speaker 2: the vultures. These are words that are coined by the
Speaker 2: youth themselves to describe themselves in this manner. And now
Speaker 2: you have a tip for tap. I go kill your cousin,
Speaker 2: You come kill my brother. I go kill two of
Speaker 2: your friends. You come kill this person. And it literally
Speaker 2: goes on and on. We're talking about two three four
Speaker 2: block territories. We're not talking about whole sides of the
Speaker 2: cities that are dominated by a cartail or gang. We're
Speaker 2: literally talking about you know, yelling distance. If I can't
Speaker 2: hear you call, that means you're not my set. If
Speaker 2: I scream out my front window and you ask them
Speaker 2: how did you get here, and they'll tell you, oh,
Speaker 2: you man, no, you don't know. How can we help
Speaker 2: stop this? Ain't no stopping this. They killed my friend,
Speaker 2: my cousin, my brother. I'm not stopping till I'm dead.
Speaker 2: And so you have high, high at risk, deeply entrenched
Speaker 2: youth who are going through these things who have been
Speaker 2: traumatized and their value for life is diminished, And they
Speaker 2: say things like, when nobody cared when my brother was killed?
Speaker 2: Who was there to help me? So why should I
Speaker 2: care about me killing your brother? Now everybody's life doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Now you go rob someone and some innocent person gets shot,
Speaker 2: don'tbody care when my auntie got shot. She got shot
Speaker 2: just walking from the Save a Lot store into her
Speaker 2: apartment one day. You know, nobody cared about that. My cousins,
Speaker 2: only you have a mother anymore. So why should I
Speaker 2: care what happens to this lady? And it's hard to
Speaker 2: combat that. It's hard to combat that.
Speaker 1: I began this series believing in stricter gun control, as
Speaker 1: you expect I would as a good Canadian who lives
Speaker 1: in a blue state. Background checks, licenses, age limits, sensitive
Speaker 1: place laws, on and on. I still believe in all
Speaker 1: those things in the abstract, But after I sat and
Speaker 1: listened to Abdulla Prat, I realized that very little of
Speaker 1: what I thought of as a solution would actually solve
Speaker 1: the problems. He was talking about, can you really pass
Speaker 1: a law and make a big dent in this kind
Speaker 1: of a problem? Expecting laws to handle. This kind of
Speaker 1: violence is what we do when we're not really paying attention.
Speaker 2: This is all the scoreboard. Another word that's coined by
Speaker 2: and by our youth is check the scoreboard. So let's
Speaker 2: see how many people of yours will you kill? How
Speaker 2: many people you killed the VARs who's up. So it
Speaker 2: definitely is a competitive thing. It's a clout thing, an
Speaker 2: attention thing too. So you can make your name off
Speaker 2: who you kill, even if you have nothing against that person,
Speaker 2: just by saying I shot that person. Everybody's mad. Everybody's
Speaker 2: heard about that. Look at me when you place yourself
Speaker 2: in the shoes of a young man or woman who's
Speaker 2: never had a room full of trophies, never had the
Speaker 2: awards on their mother's refrigerator, they've never had anything to
Speaker 2: take pride in. It says I'm good at something, I'm
Speaker 2: a winner at least at one thing. They don't even
Speaker 2: have that, and they feel like their whole life they've
Speaker 2: taken nothing but losses to their pride. Every day someone's
Speaker 2: stepping on it. Every day, somebody's telling them what to
Speaker 2: do every day. This so when you run into somebody,
Speaker 2: you're like, listen, I'm not doing that again.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: Today, I will not take another l And in those
Speaker 2: different types of situations, something like hey, I'm a big
Speaker 2: name now because I shot and killed somebody. That may
Speaker 2: be the first time that anybody gave them any type
Speaker 2: of respect, any type of admiration and adoration. Unfortunately happens.
Speaker 2: This may be the first time that girls know your name.
Speaker 2: So you might have went to high school, you would
Speaker 2: have wanted, maybe struggled to read, maybe you had learning
Speaker 2: disabilities that were unaddressed, you didn't have the finances to
Speaker 2: dress in the nicest clothes, and now you're somebody. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you wake up and people are talking
Speaker 2: about you on Twitter, in these spaces, these very entrans spaces,
Speaker 2: or on Snapchat or whatever the case is. And to
Speaker 2: many that's a powerful position because for once they can
Speaker 2: control something, they can cause fear in someone.
Speaker 1: For a thirty year stretch, starting in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: Chicago didn't have a trauma center on the south side
Speaker 1: of the city, so if you were shot there, you
Speaker 1: had to be taken to big hospitals at the other
Speaker 1: ends of the city north to Northwestern or Cook County
Speaker 1: or West to Advocate Christ Medical Center, which meant that
Speaker 1: if you were shot on the south Side, you were
Speaker 1: far more likely to die in the ambulance before you
Speaker 1: got to the hospital. We talked about that in the
Speaker 1: previous episode. Abdullah Pratt was a big part of the
Speaker 1: fight to finally open a trauma center on the South Side,
Speaker 1: and during that battle, one case hit him hard, the
Speaker 1: shooting of a young man named otf Newski.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know this at the time, but there
Speaker 2: was a big scene gathered also not too far from
Speaker 2: where I grew up, and there were people standing around
Speaker 2: yelling at the police, saying why aren't you helping them?
Speaker 3: Why aren't you helping them? And this young man I
Speaker 3: remember driving.
Speaker 2: Past slowly as I get past the crowd and just
Speaker 2: seeing him gasping for air, blood all over the place,
Speaker 2: nobody helping, Yellow tapes starting to be put up, and
Speaker 2: I remember that just hit me heavily. And it was
Speaker 2: that day that I found out that there was a
Speaker 2: law that says that if there's an active shooter event
Speaker 2: going on, or the shooter the scene hasn't been secured,
Speaker 2: the police do not allow ambulances in to help. And
Speaker 2: that's what also galvanized with myself. My med keep team
Speaker 2: does to try to train lay bystanders not only in
Speaker 2: how to deal with these gunshot ones, but also in
Speaker 2: the laws that allow them, the good Samarit to act,
Speaker 2: the innocent bystander laws that keep protect them from prosecution
Speaker 2: for trying to help if they're earnestly trying to help them.
Speaker 2: We trained over seven thousand youth in Chicago South Side
Speaker 2: and areas that had no other trainings like this going on.
Speaker 1: Years, people in the South Side of Chicago basically about
Speaker 1: how to handle a gunshot wound, for help, gums.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those things. Those those memories are etched into my
Speaker 2: mind almost as clear as my brother is, the memory
Speaker 2: of seeing him being pulled out of his.
Speaker 3: Truck to day he died.
Speaker 2: So when you look at it that way and you
Speaker 2: look at the potential, those young men would have been
Speaker 2: twenty six seven now, they would have been coming into
Speaker 2: their own maybe helping stop violence.
Speaker 1: As he talked, he was on his way over to
Speaker 1: a school not far away, Dallas Elementary, to do one
Speaker 1: of those training sessions, this time with a group of
Speaker 1: fourth graders.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's in the heart of Parkway Gardens aka aka
Speaker 2: O Block, right, the most notorious project housing still standing
Speaker 2: in Chicago.
Speaker 3: And we'll be there.
Speaker 2: We're going to teach them actually how to deal with
Speaker 2: gunshot wounds and do CPR. When I first get there
Speaker 2: for them, what it's going to be like is them
Speaker 2: number one saying, hey, who we are. This is a
Speaker 2: sensitive moment. But we asked them, how many of y'all
Speaker 2: have lost the loved one, a father, mother, brother, a
Speaker 2: gun violence. When we've asked that school before, one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of the hands go up, and that's rare. So
Speaker 2: for these fourth graders, they're gonna be asked that these
Speaker 2: hands go up. I'll show you the pictures and videos
Speaker 2: of it happening. Usually we get like fifty percent, sixty percent,
Speaker 2: and that's high, that's extremely high. But when it's one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the hands that go up and they
Speaker 2: can name alls my brother, it was Mons, it was
Speaker 2: my father, it was both my uncles. When it's like that,
Speaker 2: now we're going to say, well, we're here today to
Speaker 2: help you all know what to do in that situation.
Speaker 2: How many of you all, if you knew something about
Speaker 2: how to help them, would have helped. And then one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of those hands go so we stitch it together.
Speaker 1: He's teaching the kids how to be first responders, to
Speaker 1: do what they can do before the ambulance arrives.
Speaker 2: Then we teaching the ABC is really simple. A means
Speaker 2: alert nine one one, called nine one one, tell them
Speaker 2: you need an ambulance, what's happened where you are, and
Speaker 2: importantly that the shooter has left the scene. So that's
Speaker 2: a B stands for bleeding. Find the bleeding. So now
Speaker 2: you have to see what's injured. So if that means
Speaker 2: ripping open pa hants, leg or a shirt or something
Speaker 2: like that to find the hole. It's important because if
Speaker 2: you start putting tourniquits and hold a pressure on a
Speaker 2: hole and that's not where the hole actually is, you're
Speaker 2: actually not even helping them and you could be creating
Speaker 2: more harm for the person. So then the next thing
Speaker 2: is see which is compressed the womb, compress the bleeding wound.
Speaker 2: Teaching them how to play turniquits and things, and being
Speaker 2: practical to say, you're probably not gonna have a tourniquit,
Speaker 2: you're probably not gonna have gauze. So this is how
Speaker 2: I use a tampon. Right, it was meant to go
Speaker 2: into holes in soaka blood for the young men You've
Speaker 2: probably never seen this unless you're planning your sister's drawer
Speaker 2: or something. But we'll teach you how to use this
Speaker 2: because this is probably going to be at your fingertips.
Speaker 2: You know, MAXI pads and absorb the pads are going
Speaker 2: to be at your fingertips. That's what you need. You
Speaker 2: need to be able to pack these wounds, to help absorb,
Speaker 2: to give this person time, and so we try to
Speaker 2: keep it simple. We're not trying to teach them how
Speaker 2: to be a trauma surgeon. We're trying to get them
Speaker 2: to feel confident enough to act. Do something. Call nine
Speaker 2: one one early, sit there with the person, and then
Speaker 2: nine won will actually walk you through these things. In
Speaker 2: this past summer, we actually had a young lady, a
Speaker 2: young Latina lady who one of my best students, and
Speaker 2: she came to me week two and she's like, doctor Pratt,
Speaker 2: I need a new kid. Like heirl, you lost your
Speaker 2: kid already. I'm like, okay, I'll go get you new kid.
Speaker 2: She's like, no, I didn't lose that promise. I promise
Speaker 2: I didn't lose it. I said, what happened? She said,
Speaker 2: I had to use it? And I said, well, what
Speaker 2: do you mean you had to use it. She was like,
Speaker 2: oh man, they shot someone right in front of my house.
Speaker 2: So I got it on video. She shows me the video.
Speaker 2: She did everything right. She took the time to watch
Speaker 2: the people leave. She calls now on one on the
Speaker 2: way out, she goes and gets her kit that we
Speaker 2: had just given a daze before that, and then the
Speaker 2: police come right on time, and they're like, you can't
Speaker 2: be here, you need to move, and she's like, no, no,
Speaker 2: there's a law that says that I can be here
Speaker 2: and help, and I have the kid and I don't
Speaker 2: want to see him die. And they're like, we will.
Speaker 2: We'll compromise, we'll take the kid, we'll make sure we
Speaker 2: use it. We just don't want you in harm's way.
Speaker 2: You can stand off to the side. And literally she
Speaker 2: has the pictures and videos of them using everything in
Speaker 2: that kid, to the Turner kids, the guds, the everything
Speaker 2: strawing out us. And so of course she got her
Speaker 2: another kid. And I was so proud of her being
Speaker 2: this young lady was either sixteen or seventeen. She wasn't
Speaker 2: even a senior yet, so this is like a sophomore,
Speaker 2: junior or yeah.
Speaker 1: In the streets of Chicago, an er doctor who has
Speaker 1: lost fifteen close friends and his older brother to gun violence,
Speaker 1: is going out to local elementary schools on his afternoon
Speaker 1: off and teaching fourth graders how to stabilize a gunshot wound.
Speaker 1: This is what it means to bother to care. Abdula
Speaker 1: Prat doesn't turn his back on where he's from, or
Speaker 1: hide behind a wall of indifference or change the subject.
Speaker 1: He sees a river of blood and he says, maybe
Speaker 1: there's something I can do right now to stem the tide.
Speaker 1: Do I know what the equivalent act is for the
Speaker 1: rest of us who don't live in the middle of
Speaker 1: the crisis. I don't, But we can at least start
Speaker 1: by acknowledging that Abdulla Prat, Chicago is also our Chicago,
Speaker 1: our country, our flesh and blood. We live here too.
Speaker 2: I just want to feel a youth to feel empowered.
Speaker 2: Many times, I just want them to feel like they
Speaker 2: have ownership of their own community and that they are
Speaker 2: the best position to solve these problems. There is no one,
Speaker 2: some big chariot, some messiah that's going to come through.
Speaker 2: That's a politician. It's going to fix your problems. It's
Speaker 2: going to be on you. That's what history shows us.
Speaker 1: There is no one, no messiah, no politician who's going
Speaker 1: to fix your problems. It's going to be on you.
Speaker 1: No one should have to give that speech to a
Speaker 1: room full of fourth graders. Sin is the failure to
Speaker 1: bother to care. Our revisionist history. Gun series was produced
Speaker 1: by Jacob Smith, Bend, daph Haffrey, Fiara Powell, Tally, Emmin
Speaker 1: and Leaming Gistuck. We were edited by Peter Clowney and
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, fact checking by Arthur Gomberts and Kashelle Williams,
Speaker 1: mastering by Lawn Williams, Engineering by Nina Lawrence. I'm Malcolm Glappa.
Speaker 1: The vocalists you heard at the end of this episode
Speaker 1: were Gabrielle Cavasa, Grace Gibson, Sari Jordan, and Lewis Corter.
Speaker 1: It was recorded at Artists Sound Production, produced by Keenan McRae.
Speaker 1: Choral arrangements by Luis Gira, drums by Mike Longoria, all
Speaker 1: other instruments played by Louis Gira. Music for this series written,
Speaker 1: arranged and produced by Luis Gira. Special guests include Mike Longoria,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Messer, and camal Humphrey. Samples were cleared by L.
Speaker 1: Chappelin Music, additional mixing and mastering at P and L Records.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to John Meistis for connecting the New Orleans
Speaker 1: based choir voices of Art a Sound with the team
Speaker 1: at Revisionist History