It’s rare to see Coach Albert Brewer in a somber mood. He’s usually smiling big or hollering directions to his boxing proteges or asking for a bit of respect and financial support, which he sometimes gets and sometimes doesn’t.
But there he was, at the Pine Bluff City Council meeting, with a startlingly serious countenance.
Brewer is the coach and one-man cheerleader for Gloves Not Guns, an organization that offers young people the opportunity to excel at something wholesomely athletic as opposed to getting caught up in something less.
For one, he was at the council meeting for some public high fives. Accompanied by some of his young boxers, Brewer was basking in the glow created by his team for finding victory in the Arkansas State Silver Gloves Championship tournament. During the moment, Brewer said he was proud of his team’s accomplishments and “highlighted the importance of the program in providing a positive outlet for youth in the community,” as our story put it.
Then there was the more serious part. Sitting with Brewer was 19-year-old Celissia Jackson. The young woman has a bullet lodged in her head from a drive-by shooting that involved the house she was in getting struck by 47 other bullets. Brewer was asking for a stop to the violence.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“We gotta get control of this thing right here,” he told the council. “I mean, it’s just out of hand.”
After recounting the incident, he went on to point out the obvious — obvious to many, anyway — that weapons are too easy to get.
“This is a serious issue we got out here,” he said. “We got to get these guns off the street.”
His comments and the very brave Jackson, who had been in intensive care and is now recovering, were applauded for their appearance.
It will, however, take more than applause or thoughts and prayers to reduce gun violence, which is much more prevalent in Pine Bluff than, statistically speaking, almost anywhere else in the country. Until lawmakers at the state and federal level come to grips with the problem, there is little a city council can do to effect change, although Pine Bluff seems to be making headway with adolescent murders when compared to last year’s horrors. There is that.
Thank you, Coach Brewer for your efforts with your boxing team and thank you and Ms. Jackson for stepping into the fraught public spotlight and pointing out one of the most significant issues in our society. We need to be reminded that gun violence is not something that’s just out there somewhere as a statistic but has very real flesh-and-blood consequences.