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A photo collage of faces of people lost to gun violence
Courtesy National Gun Violence Memorial

A Crowdsourced Internet Memorial Humanizes U.S. Gun Violence Victims

Tiffany Jow

August 13, 2020
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There’s a formula for homicide news stories: Place a TV anchor at the scene of a crime, and state that a victim was shot by an unidentified perpetrator. Later, run a mugshot of the person arrested for the offense. Based on hard facts reported by police, these simple-to-prepare segments typically focus on how a life was lost, not the life itself. On an average day, 89 people are fatally shot in the U.S., including suicides and accidents. The sheer volume of incidents makes them easy to tune out: We don’t know enough about the victims to care that they’re dead, and we’re definitely not moved to think about how to prevent it from happening again.

In December 2015, after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, killed fourteen people, Steve Tarzia decided to do something about this. Tarzia, an assistant professor of instruction in computer science at Northwestern University, set up the National Gun Violence Memorial, a low-tech online initiative that paints a different picture of gun-related deaths in America. Volunteers create a dedicated page for victims that includes their name, age, and when, where, and how they died. Hyperlinked news stories covering the incident, juxtaposed with photos sourced from obituaries and social media, tell the story of a human being. Tarzia’s team finds them on the Gun Violence Archive, and lists every one—including people who died while committing a crime, underscoring their belief that every life lost is a tragedy. A white lily, a symbol of rebirth, stands in when a photo of the victim can’t be found.

As the website gained popularity, it evolved from a counterpoint to the media frenzy that surrounds mass shootings to a grief support system. Tarzia added a Wikipedia-style feature in which anyone can anonymously add (or delete) a word or phrase to a victim’s profile. There’s also a “Like” button–esque option for users to light a virtual candle for the victim, a forum for people to talk about them, and a photo collage of all victims reported on any given day posted on the memorial’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Tomi Curry, a 23-year-old from Gary, Indiana, who died in a shooting, has more than 375 candles lit in his honor. Visitors have revealed his nicknames (“LaTomi James,” “Tomi Pickles”), personality (“sweetheart,” “silly,” “outspoken”), and messages just for him (“I love you cousin. Even if you didn’t feel it, you knew. I promise I got it down here.”).

Unlike physical memorials—unchanging structures, often imprinted with stark lists of names—Tarzia’s crowd-sourced memorial, updated in real time, holds a distinct value for its ever-changing quality. “The benefits are accessibility and reach,” he says, noting that his team has built tens of thousands of miniature communities centered around gun violence victims. “Friends and family from all over the country can easily find and share a memorial page and visit it regularly. Many visitors have made it a daily ritual to light a virtual candle and leave a comment for their loved one.”

# Journalism# Media# Culture# United States

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Alex Tatarsky on Art as a Means to Live Out the Absurd

It’s late August, and I’m walking on Grand Street in Lower Manhattan. It’s one of those summer evenings that’s cooler than expected, a pleasant foreshadowing of fall. I’m on my way to discuss compost with the artist Alex Tatarsky, and as I head east from the subway, I pass through the dense, networked scents of the edge of Chinatown: the briny tang of fish markets, the sweet snatch of a fresh egg waffle from a rolled ice cream shop, the yeasty cloud that floats around the famous bialy shop. Approaching Abrons Art Center, where Tatarsky is doing pick-up rehearsals for an out-of-town run of their show Dirt Trip, this close-packed olfactory landscape opens up into something with more space: a faint vegetal whiff from a small vacant lot, the not unpleasant chemical tang from a passing truck, and beyond these, the smell of a certain rot rolling in from the East River.

Courtesy Blue Note Records

culture

An Album of Cover Songs Honors the Legacy of Leonard Cohen

Though nearly six years have gone by since Leonard Cohen’s passing, the long shadow cast by his legacy as one of the 20th century’s most esteemed and idiosyncratic singer-songwriters shows no signs of lifting from the public’s imagination anytime soon. From the enveloping warmth of “Suzanne,” to the high drama of “Hallelujah,” to the chilling minimalist and gospel juxtaposition of his swansong “You Want it Darker,” Cohen managed to constantly reinvent himself, leaving behind the rare achievement of a musical body of work whose most impressive moments exist across eras.