An Interview with Eddie Bocanegra, Senior Advisor for Community Violence Intervention, Office of the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs.
April 1, 2024
Eddie Bocanegra is a pioneer in community violence prevention. He began his work in his hometown of Chicago as an outreach worker at the violence prevention program Ceasefire. At the city’s YMCA, he went on to start the Urban Warriors program, which connects youth with military veteran mentors. As a senior director at Heartland Alliance, Eddie launched READI Chicago, a program that directly engages men at the highest risk of experiencing violence and connects them with mental health supports, professional development, paid transitional jobs, and support services.
Since 2022, Eddie Bocanegra has served as Senior Advisor to the Office of the Assistant Attorney General for Community Violence Intervention at the U.S. Department of Justice. We spoke with him in the lead-up to the DOJ’s 2024 Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI) Grantee Conference.
FSF: Let’s start big picture. In your LinkedIn profile, you include a quote from the Swiss psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.” Why does that quote resonate with you?
Eddie Bocanegra: First, let me say thanks for this opportunity. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation, particularly for this audience. I feel like I owe quite a bit to philanthropy, and I’m hoping that whatever light I can share might encourage your stakeholders to continue to think about this work and the impact of their investment.
I come to this work knowing that I’ve harmed a lot of people as a kid and even as an adult, and having not always making the best decisions as well. Those decisions have had consequences for me, but I am always thinking: how can I do the best with what I have and with what I know?
And so when I think about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, that quote, I think about people that I’ve been so fortunate to work with, people who, in some of the most vulnerable times in their lives, have invited me into their homes and to witness some of their suffering and their heartache. To be in someone’s home or walk alongside with somebody who has lost their loved one, particularly their child, this moment in their lives where it seems like the end of the world has come – even for those family members who have had to stand in a courtroom to see their loved one sent to prison, sometimes for life.
Witnessing that suffering and what people have made of it, what comes out of it. Most people, with the right environment, the right people around them, reassess their purpose in life or find meaning from the suffering. Finding meaning is how they honor those they’ve lost, how they carry their spirit and their memory.
Every year for the last 13 years, in the Chicago neighborhood called Little Village, for Thanksgiving, my church comes together and we do this big meal and we invite all these families that that we worked with in the past. Typically, 300 to 400 people attend, and it’s amazing to see this group of people come together to break bread, and gather together around a quilt with images of people they’ve lost on it.
I know those guys, those young kids, those grown men and women, some lost to suicide and some to overdose, but the majority to gun violence. And it’s a stark reminder of just how privileged I am to be in this space and to see how they’re coming together to create voice for a population that’s been overlooked. So that to me, it’s what that quote really means. What am I doing with what I’ve struggled with, and how am I honoring those that I’ve impacted both positively and negatively?
So that sense of witness and responsibility – how do you bring that into your work with the Department of Justice? When have you felt you’re in a position to contribute something different because of that experience?
The first year that I started doing street intervention work as a practitioner, I attended 24 funerals. That was my first year, 24 funerals.
I was an undergraduate at the time, and I had no clue, no idea of how to support families who have suffered loss. And through that journey, I learned that while loss is loss and there are stages of grieving, there’s a different journey for every person.
And so when I think about that experience and the people that I work with at the DOJ, I would argue that while we might’ve all experienced loss and some of us might have worked in the field, there is something to be said for someone with my background being in these spaces, to help inform our policies, to help inform the kind of programs we want to continue to fund. What I have, and why I was recruited to come here, is experience working in the streets. And experience working in organizing around policy. And experience with research through READI Chicago, the only randomized controlled trial study for this population in this country.
However, I came into DOJ not knowing exactly what to expect. And I would say the first six, seven months, I had this kind of imposter syndrome. I didn’t think I belonged here. I’m like, the people around me are super-smart, and I just didn’t think that this was the place for me. I was starting to question that, even though I knew that I was beginning to contribute to the way they were thinking.
What I did not know at that moment was how much they actually valued that. I want to underscore this: people with my kind of background, meaning people who grew up in these kind of neighborhoods, rough neighborhoods, who’ve been involved in the street gangs or the justice system, are often tokenized, used to just maybe tell a story about the good work they’re doing. And this is true even with philanthropy, we bring people in to talk to our boards — and that’s important because we want to humanize this issue.
But in years past, I couldn’t help but to feel like my recommendations about how to move forward in a certain neighborhood, or what kind of programs or dosages do we need, were often overlooked because I did not have the academic credentials or because of the way that I speak. A lot of that changed once I went to the University of Chicago and I got my degree there, and that was intentional. I competed with the best and I graduated from a top university to say, all right, I got this lived experience. And I have my master’s degree in social work from this top university. And sometimes it still felt like it wasn’t enough.
Coming to DOJ, I would say that from day one I’ve never felt that, never have. I’ve felt very supported in my role. And every single time I’ve made a recommendation or reviewed a document and added my edits, they were always taken into consideration. And in most cases, they took my language — or asked: help us understand this a little bit more.
And that’s important because, even at my level with the position that I hold, I don’t come into spaces saying, look at my title and my qualifications. I’m more like, let me tell you what I’m seeing in the field right now from all the traveling that I’m doing. Let me tell you my experience in this work, let’s take a moment here to unpack this. And for that, I have a lot of respect for my colleagues and the way they’ve approached me and my curiosity and my recommendations as it relates to the CVI work.
In academia, and this is also true in government, we are constantly focusing on best policies and thinking about trying to minimize collateral consequences and so on. But the unfortunate part is that sometimes you look at the policies and you’re like, what really informed this? On paper, it sounds great, but in practice it doesn’t match. And I think a big lesson, particularly for those who are funding research and policy, is that you need the people with the direct service experience to really help inform what’s practical so that you can maximize the investments.
The grassroots CVI work is ultimately very local, and in your work you’ve seen so many different communities and their unique elements. How does a national strategy for CVI work?
We know that community violence prevention takes many forms and looks different in every jurisdiction, but ultimately, our frame is about an expansion of community capacity to address local public safety challenges. It’s like going to somebody’s kitchen, and finding out what ingredients they have. In a few cities we have strong assets, they have the right ingredients, but most cities don’t have all the ingredients yet.
As we’re thinking about preventing violence, we have to think about how to build a holistic approach. First is the importance of building an ecosystem within the community context. And the second is that law enforcement and community stakeholders are co-producers of public safety. So if you think about the investments that we’ve made, it’s been with a clear objective of building capacity, building the foundation for this work. That’s why we have specific Training and Technical Assistance providers to help us do that. We’re also thinking about ways to make a stronger argument about the contributions CVI has made in past and hopefully, with the right investments, to continue to the work and see more impact.
I think that’s where philanthropy comes in. I’ll give you a prime example. In Chicago, I was very fortunate with the READI Chicago program. In the five years I was there, there was over $50 million in private philanthropy supporting this model, which now gives me the ability to say that if we have these things: If we have a workforce, if we have behavioral therapy, if we have case management, if we have victim support services, we can do this.
We often think about how we define success. And I think it’s important that in philanthropy and in government, we reassess how we are defining success. I think success for us right now is building the capacity, the infrastructure that we need. I think success is investing in the people that have been directly impacted by the systems who are survivors of violence, who’ve been on the other side of the law, and think about how we nurture them given the suffering they’ve experienced, how to provide a pathway to redemption. Many of them want to give back but just don’t know how. And even when they do realize how, you still need to equip them. And so that we’re talking about an emerging workforce here, and this administration sees value in this.
The DOJ’s second annual CVIPI Grantee Conference is coming up – what will that look like?
This year, we’re going to have 700+ people coming from across the country to our city of Chicago to be with us for about four days. We’re going to be orienting our new grantees, connecting with those from last year, using this time to network and learn from best practices. What’s the emerging research? How are we thinking about policies given what we’re learning? How should it inform leadership at DOJ? That’s what I’m looking forward to.
I also can’t put too fine a point on saying just how refreshing it is to have this level of government convening folks, many of them survivors of gun violence or who have been on the other side of the system. DOJ is the largest law enforcement agency in this world. It’s so important for the CVI field to see that this level of government, particularly law enforcement, is acknowledging their contributions, that their work is important to public safety after decades of doing this work while struggling to get that recognition.
Anything you’d like to share in closing?
There is one more thing I wanted to share. I’m going to make it personal here just for a second.
When I decided to leave READI Chicago, I went to just about every foundation that was supporting me. The White Sox, for example, the MacArthurs, the Joyce Foundation, and others. I went one by one and started by saying, I want to share some exciting news.
I also said, I know you’re nervous because you’ve entrusted me to manage your resources to implement this program. And you might be like, oh no, what are we going to do? When you’re talking to your board and update them, please relay this message: Sometimes the investment in this work isn’t just about the program or the policy changes or the research. Sometimes it’s really the people who are carrying out this work that your investments are supporting. You’re supporting them in their own development, and you’re creating career pathways for many of them.
Make no mistake, I am here today because foundations invested in this work 15, 16 years ago, when I was an outreach worker and didn’t even know what foundations really were. I’m very grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to meet with many presidents, many program officers, to build trust with them, to demonstrate what’s working and what’s not working, so they can make informed decisions. And ultimately, I am here DOJ in large part because philanthropy invested in my ideas or invested in my leadership, and they’ve done that with so many other people who are now in these positions, whether they’re in local government or the federal government.
So this is really a shout out to the 30+ foundations that are really helping support this work and tell the story. I just want you and your board members to know that.