‘Took a long time to get here’: the women stopping gun violence in their communities

More and more women are taking up leadership roles in the ‘hyper-masculine’ field of community violence prevention

For more than two decades, Elena Bolds has worked to keep young people far away from the gun violence that has long afflicted her home town of Richmond, California.

She has organized gunfire safety drills for kids, turned her home into a snack store and safe haven for neighborhood youth, and sung at dozens of funerals for young people. As an official neighborhood change agent for the Office of Neighborhood Safety, she chaperoned trips to local jails so young men could hear from incarcerated people and drove program participants to their court dates to ensure they would show up.