Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance lost a $2 million federal grant last week that helped the anti-violence group intervene — with a human touch — soon after a family’s loved one is shot and taken to a hospital.
That money helped pay for Peacemakers’ staff. It also enabled the group to visit victims’ families bearing food, money for groceries, a hotel room or a donation toward a funeral, according to Executive Director Myesha Watkins. The conversation that followed could interrupt a cycle of retaliation.
“If we can provide this food to break bread, then hopefully we can change feelings that may lead to further consequences,” she said in an interview Tuesday.
Cleveland City Hall has looked to the Peacemakers to serve as a bridge between the city and the neighborhoods, not just responding to shootings but trying to stop them. The loss of the federal grant comes as homicides are falling — but still high enough to concern elected officials, who held a news conference this week to highlight the issue of violence.
Cleveland Peacemakers appears on a list of more than 300 criminal justice and victim services programs to see U.S. Justice Department grants cut under President Donald Trump, published by Reuters. The department restored funding for some programs while saying that the cuts were “consistent with the administration’s priorities,” the news outlet reported.
“The work will continue,” Watkins said, even without the federal aid.
Peacemakers among dozens of violence interruption groups cut, national advocate says
The federal government notified Watkins on April 22 that it was terminating the Peacemakers’ grant. The reason given: that the Justice Department had “changed its priorities with respect to discretionary grant funding,” focusing on law enforcement, violent crime, protecting children and supporting U.S. victims of trafficking and sexual assault.
Most of the three-year grant, or around $1.7 million, had yet to be spent, she said. The Justice Department gave her 30 days to appeal the decision.
Cleveland Peacemakers is one of an estimated 65 violence prevention groups across the country to lose Justice Department grants, according to Fatimah Loren Dreier, the executive director of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. Her organization helps groups like Cleveland Peacemakers set up violence intervention programs in hospital emergency rooms.
Violence intervention work received infusions of federal aid in recent years, particularly from the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Communities Act that had support from Democrats and Republicans, she said.
“To see that Congress, from both parties, agreed that this money should be deployed in this way, and to have that clawed back, I think is just really astounding,” Dreier said.
Nonprofit serving gun violence victims also hit by cut
The Brenda Glass Multipurpose Trauma Center was set to use about $828,000 of the Peacemakers’ grant to relocate families after shootings, according to founder and CEO Brenda Glass. Most hadn’t been spent when news of the termination came, she said. Glass said she cut her own pay and laid off three workers as a result.
The trauma center also used the grant money to maintain four safe housing units for victims and their families, Glass said. She said that she is negotiating with the landlord who owns those units to keep them open for families.
Her center’s safe units can accommodate larger families and older children than a traditional shelter can, she said. That’s important, she said, because when a teenager is shot, “the whole family is unsafe” — particularly if the perpetrator knows where the victim lives.
Glass argued that her program was in line with government priorities.
“Our government should know that these are taxpayers’ dollars,” she said, “and the taxpayers are the ones that are asking for the help.”
Finding new sources of anti-violence money
The Justice Department cuts come as Cleveland experiences a downswing in homicides. The number of killings has fallen from a high of 188 in 2020 to 127 last year, according to figures that the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office shared with Cleveland City Council.
Elected leaders released those figures this week as they called for a redoubled effort against violence. At a Monday news conference that Watkins attended, City Council members said that gun violence should be considered a public health crisis.
Watkins said that she hopes to make up for the lost grant with local philanthropic dollars. Cleveland used federal ARPA money to create a $10 million endowment for community anti-violence groups, for instance.
Ward 5 Council Member Richard Starr, who sponsored the resolution calling gun violence a health crisis, said that the local private sector could be a source of aid.
“Every day you hear about new changes, executive orders, cuts here, cuts there,” Starr said at Monday’s news conference. “But what we have to do is come together and figure out, with all of our resources, what can we do?”
