Brother Of Gunshot Victim Still Believes People Can Change

To learn more about Trevon Bosley (center), his brother Terrell (right), and the BRAVE Youth Leaders go to their website.

Two Sides of the South Side

Trevon Bosley says the south side of Chicago is like a tale of two cities.

ou have on one end, you have the the gunshots that you hear here and there, the police sirens, amplifiers that you hear all the time. I know I used to play basketball outside. Like, sometimes you hear gunshots, but in order for my parents not to worry or whatever you would say, that was just fireworks. You would just grow up with that, you know, just just dealing with gun violence all the time, you know, just hearing it, see it just being a part of your daily life. And then also on the south side, you grow up with a lot of love, a lot of culture, a lot of community. 

He says that community is like family.

My neighbors, they still check on me to this day. 

When Trevon was little his mom told him and his two brothers they couldn’t leave the block, not even to go to the park.

Because my parents would be worried. They would call all the time. They were checking in all the time. 

They would play basketball in the alley behind their house until the street lights came on or stay inside and watch TV.

Of course, we heard the shootings and we would see stories on the news. And then they started getting closer to home. Actually, in December of 2005, my cousin was shot and killed down the street from his home. He was just sitting in a car down the street from his home, and someone began shooting at the car.

This is a story about one man’s belief in what is possible … in our collective ability to fight gun violence despite the odds.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Unsolved

Trevon and his older brother Terrell were a lot alike. They both have smiles that light up any room.

He was just like the sunshine in a room. And he just had a love for people that I also have. He was just talking to everybody… He was just someone that everyone loved to be around… 

People recognized him as a talented gospel bass player. And he dreamed of traveling the world with his music.

He played for many well-known, famous gospel musicians. He played at different churches throughout the city. 

The two brothers loved playing checkers and Terrell, even though he was 10 years older, didn’t go easy on Trevon.

I was incredibly stubborn. He was incredibly stubborn. We used to argue all the time, but I think we're probably the same person. He would always beat me and checkers... And I'm like, one day I'll get a chance to beat him and get him back.

But on April 4, 2006, Terrell had loaded up his electric bass and gone to church to rehearse with his band. Trevon and his dad were sitting in the front room. His dad was helping him with homework when the phone rang.

My mother picks up the phone and she was just yelling and crying and we have to run out of the house. She told us Terrell had been shot. So we rushed into the car and we drove straight to the church. When we got there, he was being loaded up into the ambulance and we drove straight to the hospital. I remember my mother crying and telling us to just be praying, praying. We stayed out in the lobby and after a while we heard just everyone yelling and crying or whatever. 

Trevon’s dad came out to the hospital lobby and told him that Terrell didn’t make it. He later learned his brother had been shot and killed while helping a friend bring his instrument from his car to the church. 

Terrell was only 18. Trevon was seven.

I honestly didn't understand the severity of the situation. I mean, I didn't know, you know, at the time, that that meant this wasthe last time I would be seeing him. I didn't know that death is like something that people don't come back from.

But Trevon did notice some changes. After Terrell’s death, his family stopped playing music in the car, in the house. It was like joy had been snuffed out along with his brother. 

Trevon remembers missing a couple weeks of school and relatives coming over to the house all the time. But while people came to grieve, Trevon noticed nobody really talked about what had happened.

I didn't talk to anybody about it. Honestly, none of us did. It just was all unsaid. Like we didn't really communicate at that point. 

Turn Sadness Into Action

It took a few years but as the shootings continued, Trevon’s mom and dad decided they needed to say something to do something.

They began and joined the activism movement. My mom started attending rallies, marches, she started going to different groups and trying to help out. 

(PAM BOSLEY SPEAKING AT AN EVENT)

They got Trevon involved as well. When he was 11 his mom introduced him to a group of teenage activists.

We started turning the energy that we had like whether it was sadness, anger, we started turning it into action…trying to create change, using whatever hurt that we felt to try to be something in the community. 

They called themselves Safety Networks and in 2012 changed it to the BRAVE youth leaders. BRAVE stood for Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere. The group of mostly teens ages 6 to 24 set out to create change because they didn’t want to live in fear.

And we did it through rallies. We did it through protest. We did mentoring programs.

They organized talent shows, poetry slams, and basketball tournaments all while spreading a message of peace. 

Trevon kept himself busy with BRAVE and didn’t really dwell on his brother’s death until he turned 18, the same age Terrell was when he died.

And I realized like, ‘oh my God, I'm still a kid. Like, I don't know what I want to do…’ That's when it hit me like he probably felt the same way. I realized I had many aspirations that I have for myself that's when I really understood the gravity of everything. 

That he wouldn’t have time to accomplish all his goals if he had his brother’s fate. Trevon began to see with new clarity how much more life Terrell could have lived. 

He also began to see that most of the shootings were unprovoked. He figured out the police and the media often blamed gangs, so shootings like Terrell’s could be explained away and ignored. 

He didn't do anything wrong to be killed… A lot of the times media as well as just people will just paint our shootings in the black and brown community as gang  violence gang related just so they can feel comfortable thinking this person has done something wrong. And that's why this happened about when in reality most people in our communities are just killed for living, just living their lives normal. These are lives. These are not just numbers. Each one of these people have a story. My brother had a story. He had a life. He had things that he wanted to do, and that was taken away from him. And the way things are right now, it can happen to anybody at any time.

Trevon Meets The President

Trevon was Terrell’s age, 18, when he took his activism to the next level and people started to listen. In January 2016 after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, CNN invited Trevon and his mother to a televised Town Hall with then President Barack Obama.

I was incredibly nervous…My dream, as a kid was to be the first black president and then for everything to come full circle.

Trevon stood in front of the camera and spotlights wearing a button with his brother’s face on it. He looked the president in the eye and said, on the south side of Chicago, ‘most of us aren’t thinking about life on a long term scale…” then he asked President Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, for his advice.

TREVON: What is your advice to those youth growing up surrounded by poverty and gun violence? OBAMA: When I see you I think about my own youth… But the main difference was I lived in a more forgiving environment when I screwed up I wasn’t at risk of getting shot. There weren’t a lot of guns on the streets. That’s how all kids should be growing up wherever they live. My advice to you would be to continue to be an outstanding role model for the young ones coming up behind you… You’re really important to the future of this country. FADE DOWN

Trevon took Obama’s words to heart.

It really inspired me as far as like life and really the movement, the words of knowing that we're the future of this country. And the first black president told me that. And that was just so my ‘okay, Tre, like you're meant to do something big in this world.’

So Trevon organized more protests, he and a group of demonstrators even shutdown the Dan Ryan Expressway demanding a safer south side one that stopped guns from coming in and jobs from going out. He took opportunities to travel to South Africa and Europe to speak. While he was traveling he got to experience what life was like in places where guns were banned.

When I went to like, Amsterdam, it just the feeling of safety that I felt just knowing not even police had guns was there. It was just wonderful feeling like I don't even have to worry about in a mass group setting and I don't have to worry about something happening was something amazing…I would wish that in America that we could ban guns like they do in Australia and Europe …an assault weapons ban is something that I would like to see… because you shouldn't have a weapon they can take out mass casualties.

In 2018 an expelled student used such an assault weapon (an AR-15 semi automatic assault rifle) to open fire on former classmates at a Parkland, Florida, high school. In the days that followed a group of Parkland students wanted to meet with Trevon and the BRAVE youth leaders.

March For Our Lives

We were talking about just our experiences dealing with gun violence because the Parkland student didn't know anything about that. Like as far as what was going on in Chicago and how we deal with everything on the daily, this was an everyday occurrence. They didn't know what was going on or understood the nuances of it.

That conversation opened the eyes of those students from the suburbs of Miami. Together they connected with other high schools around the country and organized a protest in Washington, D.C., called March for our Lives. Trevon was asked to share his brother’s story.

We took a bus from Chicago all the way to D.C. and I had already had my speech written, but I knew I wanted a chant and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to say, but I wanted to be impactful and one part in my speech already had ‘every day shootings are everyday problems.’ And my mom was like, ‘why don't you just use that in my everyday shootings are everyday problems?’ 

VIDEO: I want to start off with a chant: everyday shootings everyday shootings are everyday problems are everyday problems… I’m here to speak for the youth who fear they may be shot going to the gas station, the movies, or to school… (FADE DOWN AND UNDER NEXT LINE)

LAUREL: Did you have any idea when you went to the march that there would be a million people? 

TREVON: Oh, I had no clue. I had no clue.

I didn't know that this was going to be as big as it was. I was expecting probably a couple of hundred people or whatever. And I'm thinking that it's just, you know, rallies per usual, you know, people get upset, people get mad. And, you know, we go out and we go do our thing or try to get something to change. But I was not expecting a million people at all. 

(BRING BACK IN SOUND OF THE CROWD THEN FADE OUT)

Staying Motivated

But as we all know, the mass shootings and the everyday shootings have continued. And many people Trevon knew have become victims.

During the beginning of the pandemic, my college roommate, he's also from Chicago, his brother was killed. And then there's the funeral for his brother. It was pretty big. It was a mass shooting at his brother's funeral. And then one of our brave youth leaders. She was shot not too far from where we meet, she was shot in the hand. And she survived, thank God.

That one hit Trevon especially hard, because here was someone doing anti violence work who became a target. He felt dismayed and started to slip into a dark gloom.

One of the hardest problems for me and the black community and black and brown community to deal with gun violence on a daily is the sense of hopelessness that comes from living in poverty. We've lived in this situation for so long, so many people don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. And that's pretty hard on me. When you've lost countless loved ones, it's hard for me to motivate you to try to create change and see that something can happen. We voted for people in the past and things have not changed. People say things that they were going to do when they get in office and of course, they didn't do it. And that, you know, just continues the cycle It was just like, is hard because we're doing the work.

Trevon knows on days he feels discouraged he needs to go spend time with the people who love him, or to workout, or to take his girlfriend out to the suburbs for a drive. He says the anti violence movement doesn’t need him damaged.

I don't hide from it and don't run from it. The sense of hopelessness and the sense of not seeing change and just being heartbroken by everything going on is normal. 

It helps to see older activists get back up…

To see that they are still moving, they're still continuing to fight, then I. Okay, Tre. Like you've had some setbacks, but they're continuing to fight. They've been doing this fight for 30, 40 years. So that means you can continue to push there.  

Or he’ll replay in his head the words President Obama shared when he told Trevon he was the future…

I think back to that moment as well as the multitude of other moments that have occurred over the years… These doors have not been open for me for no reason. There is more work to be done is a reason that I should be out here, and it's a reason I should continue to do this work. And I can't sit around and allow people to die.

After everything Trevon has been through he still believes change is possible. And it is up to us to see it through.

I believe that things can change because, I mean, we as a country, we have seen so many things change over time, whether that's slavery, whether that's the civil rights movement, whether that is you voting and all these other things. Vietnam protests, like all the things that we have seen, create change throughout history. This is just one of those hurdles that we have to overcome. And those things have changed for the better. So I know that we can change for the better.

Trevon graduated from college last year and today at 24 lives on Chicago’s south side. He’s working as an electrical engineer and he serves as a mentor with BRAVE youth leaders. And until he can walk the streets of Chicago without looking over his shoulder, Trevon continues to share his brother’s story.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.