“People have always called me AP. Just like Advance Peace. I was born for this.”
April Reed is a Neighborhood Change Agent (NCA) with Advance Peace (AP) in Stockton, California. She met me on an unusually hot (but, as I was reminded repeatedly, not as hot as it gets!) Tuesday in March to show me around her city and what being an NCA entails. Dressed in a black-and-white checkered shirt, black slacks, and shiny new loafers, April had just come from court, where she provided silent support for one of her fellows navigating a gun case.
“It was just an appearance today,” she explained. “But it’s good for them [fellows] to look behind and see someone is there for them.”
Advance Peace is a community violence intervention organization that began in Richmond, California, and has since expanded to several cities across the state. Founded in 2010 by DeVone Boggan, then director of Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety, the program emerged after a striking discovery: fewer than thirty men were responsible for 70% of the city’s gun incidents. At the time, Richmond was ranked among the twelve most dangerous cities in the United States.
Stockton, where April works, once topped that list. The city reflects trends common in places where Advance Peace and other community-based violence intervention programs operate: young Black and Brown men from low-income neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by—and involved in—gun violence. Amid a tough-on-crime wave in California’s political and media landscape, Advance Peace has faced intense criticism and scrutiny. Yet since its launch in Stockton in 2018, the organization has remained resilient, backed by a proven record of reducing gun violence and fostering meaningful investment in the community.
In April’s words, “Our mission is to try to stop the retaliatory gun violence, but also save the youth and the family from the hurt, from the ache, from the pain. That’s our mission too.”
The AP Stockton office is located in a converted bank building and inside, two side offices branch off a large room anchored by a massive table. When we arrived, her team was gathered around the table for their morning meeting. They greeted us with smiles and waves before she ushered me into her shared office and joined her team. April was one of two women at the table.
Women represent a small but growing segment of violence intervention specialists. When Ceasefire Chicago (the nation’s oldest and most well-known violence intervention program) first launched, only 8% of its outreach workers identified as women. By 2024, that number had risen to approximately 20%. While this marks a promising shift for programs across the country, women still remain a clear minority in the field. Research on their experiences is similarly limited; the existing literature, though sparse, highlights both the unique strengths women bring to the work and the distinct challenges they face, including a sense of powerlessness in the face of systems-level barriers, frequent exposure to trauma, feeling a lack of respect from male clients and colleagues, and difficulty maintaining a work-life balance.
April’s shared office bursts with personality; pops of purple and pink and inspirational posters line the walls. Outside the window, children screamed with glee, playing in an office building courtyard. April and her co-NCA, Jasmine, came in after the meeting, chatting about April’s recent presentation at a sister organization. She recounted how good it felt to give someone hope. “One of the fellows over there asked me if I gave up when I got out of prison. He said that hearing from someone who is where I’m from gives him hope.” She also mentioned recognizing one of the staffers from school, prompting Jasmine to pull up pictures and rattle off names—everybody knows everybody in this work.
***
“I just have to get my shoes, we’ll be doing some walking today. It’s hot huh!” April said to me with a grin.
By 11:30 am, the temperature had reached 80 degrees, with heat waves shimmering from the pavement.
The gym, the park, the shelters, and the strip—these were our four stops for the day. April jumped into her car, blasting the AC and her music. She quickly changed into tennis shoes, laughing, “I see you listened to me about wearing shoes today,” while peeling off her professional shirt. “I don’t usually dress this way. If I show up to my fellows wearing this, they’ll be full of questions.”
On the way to our first stop, the Stribley Community Center in East Stockton, April explained that she has a caseload of six fellows, though really, it’s eight, with two not officially on her list. “Right now, two are in jail, three or four are at the gym right now, and two are probably at home waiting on their kids.” According to April, there is growing interest in the Advance Peace program.
Each year, roughly 117,000 people are shot in America. Gun homicides disproportionately affect urban, underserved, and criminalized communities of color. Historically, responses to gun violence have been reactionary, with little investment in the communities most impacted. This lack of support has fostered deeper susceptibility to violence, mistrust of purported social supports, and subsequent legal system involvement.
For incarcerated fellows, NCAs reconnect immediately upon their return home. “We’ll pick them up, get them clothes and food, cause you know when they’re in jail they leave with nothing.” April spoke proudly of one fellow currently incarcerated who earned his high school diploma and multiple certificates, and is now receiving counseling. “That’s why we just don’t leave them in there, because they’re doing reentry programs. When I go in there I wanna know what they’re doing all day!”
Female fellows are less common and April says their experiences are distinctly different. She launches into another story—she has many with her years of experience—“Once I was doing cognitive behavioral therapy with one of the girls and I had to ask my boss to get her some girl stuff, you know, and he was like ‘what, what do you mean?!’” April often connects with potential female fellows through meeting them at court, where she builds trust by first addressing immediate needs like diapers or food, allowing the relationship to evolve organically.
***
At Stribley, Advance Peace pays for fellows’ gym memberships. “Otherwise, they’ll be outside,” April explained. We watched two of her fellows in a basketball game, with April shouting out as if she was their coach. “I come in here and watch their footwork, I’m trying to get an AP team going!” One fellow, a 27-year-old who has been on her caseload for six months, approached us during a break in the game. “He’s the kinda guy who can shoot someone and then come to the game here without blinking an eye. He suppresses things.” He chatted openly about his recent visit to a local university where he spoke on a panel, needing to call his welfare caseworker, and how basketball keeps him focused on not picking up a gun. His teammate quickly called him back into the game. “He’s really charming and he needs to use it for the greater good. Sometimes I give him money from my pocket or yard work just to keep him busy.”
Stribley closes at 2 pm, leaving a whole day ahead for fellows to attempt to find other activities to keep them preoccupied, usually “outside.”
This specific fellow came to April from another NCA’s caseload. The Stockton NCAs collaborate closely, shadowing each other on ride alongs, sharing mediation strategies, and covering for each other’s fellows. “Your fellows are my fellows,” April explains, “just because I’m not around doesn’t mean that person doesn’t need help or someone to check in.” The NCAs often get together to host barbecues, birthday parties, and excursions, showing fellows the strength of the community they are in.
April was proud of how quickly her fellow had just opened up to her on the basketball court. “An NCA knows they’re doing a good job when they don’t have to ask questions. When fellows speak openly about violence, it’s a sign they are reflecting. He said plainly, ‘it doesn’t matter if I go shoot someone’s face, I’ll be here.’” To her, that meant the basketball game was sufficiently diverting his attention away from a potential act of gun violence, allowing him to release any pent up emotions on the court.
April credits her “mother mentoring” approach—a unique kind of nurturing. “He’s got dudes in his life all day long. He needs someone to teach him another way.” April has taken him suit shopping, taught him about hygiene and cologne, and discussed healthy dating, topics that fellows seem to hesitate discussing with male NCAs. She believes the women NCAs offer something vital: emotional safety. She describes that most of her fellows have a “void,” and that the mother mentoring attempts to fill it by encouraging fellows to be vulnerable in the safe and caring environment the NCAs co-cultivate. The approach is about building young men’s capacity for kindness, empathy, and care by bringing a softness that many of their fellows have never experienced, having been harmed by systems, communities, and each other, both through and beyond gun violence.
“It looks like saying ‘I’m proud of you’ and offering a hug. It looks like driving them to and from school, even if it means waking up earlier than necessary. It looks like showing up with a birthday cake and balloons to a skills session, even when they disappoint you. It looks like asking, ‘What do you see for your future?’ Everything don’t have to be so dominant. We’re already coming from the darkness. We need a little light.”
When April and other women NCAs instill values of love, generosity, and a sense of responsibility for one another’s well-being, their mother mentoring does more than stop a singular incident of gun violence from happening. They save the lives of young men at risk of gun violence and protect future generations of women and girls who will be in community and relationship with them. April and her colleagues’ work does not stop at the most acute issue or with the intervention framework they operate within; women NCAs target the entire landscape of violence that harm every member of a community.
***
Our next stop is Mariani’s, a neighborhood bisected by the freeway and wrapped in April’s past. She pointed out old spots tied to prostitution, drugs, and violence. “I used to sell over there,” April said, pointing to one of the restaurants.
Every day is a memory lane for April, who was born and raised in Stockton. At age 9, during what she terms the “dope era,” April was running numbers in her family’s drug business. “I was young, just knocking on doors, passing a bag, getting the money. In my era, you didn’t sit around and do nothing. You got up, and you helped, whether your parents was on drugs or not.” By 11, she was selling “heavy” drugs and joined the Sutter Street Crips, one of the several gangs who claimed territory in Downtown Central Stockton. At 22, she was incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility; both her parents, who were formerly incarcerated, passed while she was serving her sentence.
“It was a learning experience…Just learning more about myself, being away from family, being so young, being around people that got capital murders on their belt, and just meeting them and learning how not to judge a book by its cover. I was around all of these women that did all of these different things, but personally and their personalities, they were good women. They were smart. They were educated.”
While in prison, she studied, took cosmetology classes, and joined the Women Social Council. She didn’t return home until almost a decade later.
“I grew up in there.”
After leaving Sutter Street Crips, April faced criticism. “I had the backlash like you’re not with us no more, you’re not for us no more.” But now, they’re proud of her. “It’s one thing to get out of a gang and the community, it’s another thing altogether to come back and help.” April says this is why she’s an NCA, “You can have the odds against you and still make something of yourself. You don’t have to be confined to your environment. I’m living proof.”
***
We make our way to three homeless shelters located on a four block radius. Given the heat, people are not outside, so we move onto “pill park,” colloquially named for its previous use as a hub for selling pills. When police started raiding the park, buyers and sellers alike were pushed closer to Downtown Central where the market continued. At the park, we run into people that April knows who are not fellows—one of them, Brandon, was a high school classmate. “He’s still out here on the streets. It fucks me up bad.”
It quickly becomes apparent that while her caseload may be eight, April’s reach is far greater. Her community work began before she joined Advance Peace, back when she worked at the Women’s Department clothing store located near a homeless encampment in Mariani’s. This is where she first worked post-incarceration and she began sharing her lessons learned from being in a gang to the women and kids who frequented the store. “That’s how I would find them, the future fellows.”
En route to the strip, our last stop of the day, she spots her twin brother biking down the street. April shouts gleefully, having not seen him in a while. We pull over and she quickly gives him a big hug, grabbing a bag of chips she had just purchased to share with him. “You can be doing good and still be a victim of violence,” she reflects, recounting how her brother once saw a friend get shot in the head and “was never the same.”
***
The entire ride along, April is pointing out different houses and restaurants known for “bullets ringing,” competing gang activity, and a late night spot to eat. This neighborhood is her bread and butter. She points out a YMCA that burned down a few weeks prior, “we were all crying cause I was raised with that center.” She later points to a nail salon where her mom’s friends still work. “I used to run from the police right into that nail shop. They still do my nails to this day!”
We briefly stop at a candlelight vigil site for a child who was recently shot and killed. April sat quietly in the idling car and then said, “This is my community. I don’t care if you just come from under the bridge, I’m gonna give you some love.”
That is the through line in all of April’s work. Spending one day with April shows how deeply love runs in her approach, from knowing the insides and out of the city to being unconditional in her relationships with strangers-turned-friends. Her favorite part of the job? “Walking up and down the street, talking to people. How you gonna forget where you came from if you’re constantly doing this?”
She circles back to her brother, who reminds her of one of her current fellows. “Your brain is so used to this type of survival you don’t know the other kinds of survival. Our survival is getting to work, reading a book. Their survival tactics are different, stealing to eat, killing to live.”
April understands that the trauma underlying her community is at the heart of the gun violence echoing through her city. She emphasizes the need to see beyond statistics, describing people who live in poverty, face daily racism, and experience unstable housing are effectively “led into the streets.” Her insight is supported by research; the disproportionate impact of gun violence on racially and economically segregated communities is no accident. Generations of structural racism have produced under-resourced neighborhoods, eroded protective factors, and created conditions in which gun violence is emboldened.
On the way back to the office, she points to another bank. “My mom was the first woman to rob that bank. Like I had no choice but to do this!” She laughs, then grows serious.
“Everybody needs hope. I give that to my community, my fellows, and myself. We are in a world of hopelessness as it is. Someone’s gotta be here having hope.”
April dreams of becoming the CEO of a violence prevention organization, hiring women, mentoring them, and building a future of “mother mentoring” in community violence intervention. Having lost her female figures to death and her former life, she wants to be that mentor for other women. “I still talk to people in prison now and the thing they’re scared of is not having resources to stay afloat…more women need to get in these spaces so when the next person like me is coming around, it won’t be as hard as it was.”
The values that will lead us toward a more just and compassionate society free of gun violence are the same values that women have long been expected to—and have excelled at—model, teach, and embody. And with women making up only a small fraction of the community violence intervention workforce, it is crucial to highlight the ripple effect of their presence. Their mothering does not just transform the young fellows they work with, it helps untangle cycles of violence, protecting generations to come.
Until then, she drives back to each place we visited that day. Her check-ins and day continue.
Authored by Shivani Nishar
Shivani Nishar is the Co Editor of Public Health is Political. She is a big fan (and friend) of April Reed.
