The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Does a Community Heal After Gun Violence?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

What does it take to rebuild after gun violence? "Nekai Walks" director Rico King, Nekai Foster, and YAAACE founder Devon Jones discuss recovery, trauma, and telling that story. Then, sociologist Jooyoung Lee explores the ripple effects gun violence can have on survivors, families, and communities.Donate Today : https://tvo.me/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Who was hurt, where it happened, whether anyone was arrested. But what happened after the headlines move on? No one knows better than Nakai Foster. In 2023, the 16-year-old was heading home from playing basketball in Toronto's Jane and Finch neighborhood when he was shot in the head, an innocent bystander caught in someone else's feud. Now, his injuries were life-altering, but Nakai survived.

And now, a new TV-O original documentary, Nakai Walks, tells the story of his recovery and advocacy. And I was so fearful. And that fear returned to me in the hospital when he could not stand up on his own. We hear from him, dig into the far-reaching effects of violence and how communities are coming together to stop it. I'm Jan Jagannawthon. Welcome to the rundown.

What is it like to rebuild your life after gun violence? And how do you go about telling that story and the larger story of a community dealing with trauma? Nakai Foster, Rico King, Devon Jones. Great to have you in our studios. Thank you so much for joining me. Before we get into things, Nakai, it's great to have you here with us three years ago. You were told that potentially you may not be here, that you may not walk, but here you are. I want to know, how are you doing today?

I'm doing good, man, you know, just started school. I'm here with Mr. Jones and Rico, so yeah, I can't complain. Throughout the dock, there's sort of this journey, you know, of rehab and the emotion, the pain, the strength. You seem to always have this smile on your face as well. How difficult would you describe sort of that journey from then to where you are today? You know, it's very difficult to go through what I went through, but when you put a smile on your face, it's very easy to fight through your battles, you know. When you're running a race with your head down, it's going to be hard to win the race,

but when you're running a race with your head up, it's going to be easier to win the race. So I kind of compare that to me having a smile on my face. Rico, watching the documentary, there is a story of perseverance, it's a story of pain. But it's pretty obvious shortly into the doc when you meet Nakai how quickly we fall in love with you and sort of the journey. But why was it important for you to focus on Nikai's journey? It was important because it was very unique, you know what I mean? And Nakai, you know, gave me access to history. story which it was a miracle, right?

Like, he survived something that most, we talk about it all the time. Like, I can't believe you made it through, and we're so happy that he did make it through. And showing the Kai's story, we get to see a kid from Jane and Finch, and, you know, it reflects on the whole community. And it's, you know, one story amongst hundreds of stories, as Devon will talk about, I'm sure, in a bit. And, yeah, it's pretty much the best way to make a film is, by. by focusing on the character,

because like you see in the documentary, we all fall in love with him. When did you hear about sort of the origins of the story, about Nikai? About Nikai. We heard it, me and Devon were visiting him at the hospital. Like, people always ask me, how do I get access to these stories and stuff like that?

But we're like people in the community. We love the community. We love to help young brothers get out of the get-back culture. And we understand it because we've lived in it, you know, for years and decades. You know, so that's how I heard about Nakai, and we were there in the hospital just visiting him. And one day he told me, can I shoot,

can you shoot my recovery in 4K? I'm like, for sure. In 4K, for sure. Not 1080 is not over the worst. We don't do 1080. All right. What did it reveal about sort of the role of community and what it plays in helping, you know,

overcome challenges that Nakai went through? I mean, like, we're all we got. That's how I was say it. We understand the problem more, and it's our community, so it's our responsibility. Devon, you've dedicated essentially your life to helping racialized youth, steering them away from gun violence. Help me understand how you guys came together. Did you know Rico? Did you know Nakai before all of this?

Well, Nikai I knew. I met Rico maybe a few months before. Actually, we had an idea of doing a documentary to create some awareness around just the pathology of gun violence and its nuances. And I mean, we have written enough reports where we got to the point that a significant media piece, you know, a documentary of some sort would shed light

on this issue. issue that is that is plaguing, you know, disproportionate in the black communities. And when I met Rick when I saw the work that he had done in Houston and in Baltimore, the immediate assumption was that he's the guy to help us tell the story. Nakai says, sort of that Mr. Jones. Yes, sir. Level of respect for this man here. How would you describe Nakai to people who don't know him?

just the word that stands out is hope it's resilience in the words resilience and hope because I mean we were there in Sunnybrook you know I've been sadly enough I've been at Sunnybrook time over time over time with young people who didn't make it and you know young people who make it through

but you know they have real health complications after being shot multiple times and initially when I saw When I saw Nakai, I was like, well, this is not good. This is, and you hear the prognosis from the doctor, we might not walk again, and, you know, and he had to learn to do everything, to talk, walk, make a fist,

you know, and to watch his process and this progression. It was absolutely incredible. So just resilience and hope or the words that comes to mind. When you talk about the people in your life, your mom, is featured heavily in the dock, and she's always hugging you, giving you a kiss, and you always go like, mom, stop. How much of this strength is for your mom in this fight?

A lot of it, you know, my mom was always there for me, along with my sister and my father, too, my grandma, my uncle. You know, like, at home, I have a big support base, so it helped me fight through a lot. Yeah, I feel like I have to do it for them, so I find my strength. How important was having someone like Devon in this?

We talk about access. Right. You know, this connection was already made well before that. But how important, it's not just Nakai's story that you were sharing, we're talking about other people who have been impacted by gun violence as well. But what does Devon add to that? I mean, if wasn't for Devon, I wouldn't have a documentary, right? You know, he was my community ambassador, and he was,

He does such amazing work. And, you know, I really strongly wanted the whole world to see Devon's story also, besides Nikai, because he's helping all these kids, like hundreds and hundreds of kids. I get to see it in person. And, you know, capturing it was everything to me because people have to see the amount of groundwork that's put in, right? You know, it might be a politician getting credit for crime rate reducing

or there's fewer shootings or, you know, much credit to them. I'm not discrediting them, but the work like men like Devon put in the community, that's real work, real groundwork that impacts kids for a lifetime. Devon, what do you tell young people, first and foremost, when they come to you for support, when they see Yase and they say, okay, you know what, I need to come here? What's that conversation like? It all depends where they are on the social continuum. You have young people who are there.

around employment. You have others who are there around, you know, early academic intervention. You have others who are there because there's a level of involvement in the culture of retaliatory reprisal violence. You know, they're just come under custody. Or they're in custody.

You know, so we have young people at various, varying stages of the continuum. And, you know, be family support, you know, employment, training, learning education, case management, public safety, athletics, sports and wellness, you know, the five pillars that drives how we engage young people and community at Yase,

wherever they are on the continuum, we accommodate them. For us, the culture of gun violence is one that we're very attentive to. recently in the community we have a young man that was that was murdered and then that's why the urgency because if we're not proactive in dealing with this culture of retaliatory violence then almost always you know it becomes extremely volatile and tragic you mentioned the shooting that was 17-year-old cashie august jane and finch broad daylight just getting off of the finch lr t Just recently they arrested a 16-year-old. Another 16-year-old, yeah.

And I understand. You knew Kashi. A new Kashi. Where in the system is this failing? Like, for a lot of people when they hear Jane and Finch, unfortunately, they think, okay, well, this is something that has continued to happen. You know the people. We talk about this community just being divided by really one road. We talk about this.

Where in the system is this failing? And not only the people that are being impacted, in the communities here, but in prevention as well. Yeah. I mean, there's a concept at Yase that our clinical, social worker, Dr. Nenekefell is leading around urban violence, trauma, stress disorder. And we have an event at Sunnybrook,

in partnership with Sunnybrook next Wednesday. And we're exploring this phenomenon as it relates to young people with prolonged exposure, of violence, does it imbue that culture or that pathology in them? Young people who, on a daily basis, they're navigating their mortality in these very violent environments with disproportionate issues of gun violence, you know, are they compromised in any capacity? Are they compromised morally?

So we're trying to make sense of why these young people, why they engage in the culture of retaliatory violence, and every step of the way we're putting mechanisms in place that will lead to smart choices, that will mitigate the get back. Social media is a big accelerant. There's another concept we're working with called digital violence accelerant.

You can almost see the chronology with all these incidents. You can see Nikai's story. You can see play out on social media that led to his shooting. Even after the fact they kept going on about the shooting. You're talking about just exchanges on whatever. Just videos about talking about the shooting. Yeah. Or instigating each other where, you know, someone decides, well, you've been sent to me.

So I'm going to come pay back. And the Kai's situation was just that. It was people on social media going back and forth. They show up to the neighborhood and we shoot anyone that they see. Right. You know, that's the level of indiscriminate violence that we're dealing with and navigating, you know. And social media is a big factor in that.

And we're working vehemently, you know, with public safety, DOJ and other entities, and the TPS around how can we filter what exists on these platforms where young people think it's their right because they've been disrespected to act. But there's social, There's social underpinnings around education, around employment, around safety. Some of these young people think they've got to take their safety into their own hands.

That has really compromised the landscape in those communities. Nikai, you've had to adjust, yes, to the physical limitations because of the injuries, whether it's running, dancing, contact sports, although I think I see a clip of you dunking. So it's phenomenal to see all of that. Also, I notice you working with a therapist, Dennis. I understand now you're in school, studying comm, studying broadcast journalism. I don't know if that was necessarily something that you were thinking about, if that was relationships that you formed with RICO and some of the work with Devon.

But what is that path created for you? That path, okay, when I asked RICO to shoot my documentary in the hospital in 4K, I never really knew I would fall in love with the media avenue as I did, right? But once I started to see him filming, I got, I started to get interested. So I started asking him stuff about like camera equipment, right? And then I just ended up getting interested in it, right? Because I'm like, oh, that's cool. And, you know, he started to show me there's another way how to do things, right?

Also, Mr. Jones showed me there's another way how to do things. too. So it's like, you know, picking up the camera and like filming, seeing that you could actually turn that into a career was huge for me. Like, wow. So I'm like, that's why I'll take it in school. I understand you're also doing an internship with Rico as well. What is, what is Rico sharing with you? A lot. You know, how to build a business, scale a business, the stock market, you know? things, even things behind the scenes, how to film, how to edit, how to do the audio management with the microphones. Yeah, there's a lot. I'm curious, for someone who does doc, you know, who's in the doc world, it's very rare sometimes

to, you get close because you're spending, you know, years, months with the subjects of the doc. But did you expect it to be this close? No, no, not at all. Like, yeah, it was interesting how that happened. Right. I guess we spent a lot of time together, you know, and yeah, like I have a hard time explaining it. It just organically happened.

Our characters match, you know, traveling to Ottawa together and a lot of other behind-the-scenes stuff. Like not every time I pulled up to Nakaya had a camera. And he has a lovely family. I love, like, hanging with his mom. His mom is really funny. And me and here have a lot of conversations. His sister is great. Grandma's great.

And, like, my family is back in Texas or, you know, internationally. So I didn't have a family over here. So I used to always go to their house. You know what I mean? So we got really close, like, through that. And the internship was fun, you know. Very fun showing him behind-the-scenes work that got, you know, it's amazing to be part of a documentary now, starting a new documentary.

You know, we're starting development on a new documentary, and he was part of every step. Yeah. You set out to tell the story of one young man's journey, but I am curious, what do you hope people take away from Nikai's story? But is there anything that you learned about yourself throughout it as well? I learned a lot, you know, I learned like I could persevere myself, you know? Right.

It was really hard to tell stories, especially being new to Toronto. I consider myself a Torontoian now. But persevering it through a step-by-step in the documentary, I learned a lot about gun violence also. I'm aware of the topic, and I've lived it, but like, you know, just seeing it in 4K. Just opened up just new dynamics to it. Learned a lot from Mr. Jones, like how to intervene in gun violence,

how to prevent gun violence, and, you know, how to become a better filmmaker. It was a great opportunity from TVO. I learned a lot through development, through production, through post-production, and the team, Shane, was always involved. And it was a great experience. Well, I know this story does not end here. Wish you all the best, Nikai.

Rico, Devon, appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Acts of gun violence aren't isolated. They create ripple effects. But the impact on survivors, families, and communities is often overlapped. looked.

Drew Younglee, great to have you in our studios. How are you doing? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Now, I want to talk about your latest book, The Walking Wounded. It's a result of two years of intense research here dedicated to following the aftermath of those caught in the crossfires of gun violence in Philadelphia. Help me understand.

Why now? Well, so this project kind of came out of another project. So before I wrote this book, I wrote another book about aspiring rap artists in South Central Los Angeles. One of the people who I got really close to got shot, and I learned firsthand by watching what he went through in the aftermath the struggles that he had with his health. And that gave me this question, which is what happens to other people. Is his experience typical? Is it kind of unique? And so that led me to doing a focus study on gunshot victims, and Philadelphia is where I landed after graduate school. And what did we find? The main thing I found was that

One, getting shot is kind of a slow drip. People live with chronic pain, PTSD, various kinds of debilities that diminish their quality of life. And secondly, that the effects are not just born by the individual. They're shared with caretakers, children, friends and family, right? So there are rickishing effects linked to that trauma. You have a unique advantage point when it comes to gun violence, not only with the research in Philadelphia, in California as well, but you're also a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. Help me understand how much of what we see in the U.S., the dynamics there,

are we seeing play out here in the Ontario communities and Canadian cities? So the interesting thing is that when I first moved to Canada, I had this idea that Canada was very different than the U.S. You're not the only one. And in many ways it is, especially with universal health care. But as I investigated more in Canada, in Ontario specifically, I realized that there are many more similarities. The universal health care idea is great on paper when you're sick. You have a small cold or a small injury.

You need to go to a walk-in clinic. But when it comes to long-term rehabilitative care, Canada's health care system, Ontario's health care system, is quite similar to that in the U.S., where the most vulnerable people don't have access to long-term health care. specifically counseling and psychotherapy. So what does that look like? For someone who's shot, who is a victim of gun violence in the U.S., what does that look like versus what they would receive here in Ontario? Well, the short answer is that they don't receive anything.

So in Philadelphia, many of the victims that I met would get shot. They would get patched up in the emergency care. They would get sent out, and they had to fend for themselves. And, you know, the aftermath can be very grueling. You're living with trauma and injuries that affect every aspect of your life. Ontario, it's quite similar. People, unless you have an employer that has really good health care coverage that gives you some access to counseling and psychotherapy,

you are largely on your own as well. Like, you have to pay out of pocket. So that's one of the big gaps in Canadian health care is that mental health care is not guaranteed for trauma victims. I'm going to actually push it back a little bit. There was a program I run out of Sunnybrook. It's fairly recent looking at, you know, a lot of the victims that come through sometimes were not, it wasn't their first time. Usually someone who has been shot once, they had seen people come back.

And they started a program where they said, it's same things that you're pointing out, if someone comes into a hospital with a heart attack, you know, they don't just patch them up and send them on their way. They've got, you know, they've got perhaps a social worker, they've got some rehabilitation. And so they've started to do that. And they look at it as, to me, it seems like a bit of a intervention, maybe late stage at that point. I am curious, what does early stage prevention look like for something like this? I mean, early stage prevention really looks like identifying the most at-risk neighborhoods. If we look at a map of any major city where there are shootings happening, they tend to be concentrated in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, places that have the highest proportion of, racialized people, black indigenous in Canada, the highest rate of incarceration, the highest rate

of interactions with police. These are communities that have trouble accessing, affordable housing, right? So there are all these kind of like unmet needs, and shootings are really like this downstream symptoms. So if we really want to get serious about changing gun violence patterns in Canada and elsewhere, where we have to address these upstream causes and try to make more resilient communities in the first place. One of the things that you talk about in your book is language.

You use the word victim rather than survivor. Help me understand sort of the thought process there. Yeah, so there's been this shift kind of in recent years to use survivor as a term to refer to people who have survived something violent and horrific. And I totally empathize with that move because it seeks to empower people who have been through trauma.

But the other part of it is that when you spend time with people in day-to-day life, you realize how difficult their lives are, right? The injuries, both the body and mental health, can grind away at your quality of life. Your interactions with the justice system and the health care system, which often turn their back on victims in the aftermath, leave people feeling as if they're victims. So I don't feel, I use the term survivor, or I don't use the term survivor because, the people I spent time with refer to themselves as victims, firstly.

But secondly, when you look at this constellation of factors, you know, and their long-term health next to their interaction with the justice system, right, that often requires them to go through this kind of traumatic process of appearing in court, testifying, right, and facing the person who injured them, and the health care system that is non-existent for people who are seeking support for their trauma, then you see why victim is often a more appropriate term. I'm curious about when I think of a shooting that we recently had seen, it wasn't that long ago. A lot of people view that perhaps as a isolated incident or, well, that happened in that

community, that doesn't surprise me. Whereas when we talk about the U.S., we talk about mass shootings, if we call them that, but they get different type of attention. Why is that? Well, it's because of the victims, right? It's the identity of the victims. So when shootings happen in racialized neighborhoods, specifically to young black men, there's this kind of stereotypical assumption that the person must have been involved in something that got themselves shot. And when massacres happen in schools and other communities that are less diverse, that have

a higher proportion of white victims, there's this immediate outpouring of grief and sympathy, because there's a presumption of innocence of the people who are sustaining their injuries. But the reality is when you spend time in trauma units, in hospitals, and talking to young people who are coming in and out with injuries, you realize that a lot of times they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their injuries are sometimes connected to forces that are totally outside of their hands. They're connected to neighborhood rivalries and things that are happening in the places that they live that are not necessarily connected to who they are or what they're doing.

And the other side to that is that when somebody is involved in street activities and they get shot, a lot of them, that's a very important moment for intervention, because many of the young people who get shot and survive have this kind of reckoning. They realize how precious life is, and they want to make a change. The problem is, again, if the health care system doesn't support them, if social safety nets are not there to support that transition, then it becomes very difficult for them to leave that life behind. I am curious.

Have you had any personal conversations with victims? What have they shared with you? Yeah, I mean, I have through different people that I've kind of known over the years in communities. And, you know, the experiences are strikingly similar. It's a life-changing event that knocks people out of the labor market. It changes their relationships to loved ones, right? It makes them more withdrawn. It makes them scared to kind of engage in public life, right?

So it's a horrific experience. And I think a lot of people forget that because of improvements in emergency care, most people who get shot in 2026 and thereafter are going to survive. So the onus is really on us to think about better ways to support them and also to prevent these shootings from happening. You write and you talk about the ricocheting through families and neighborhoods. Talk to me a little bit more. We talked about the direct impact there, but what impact does that have on those where

living in those communities, in proximity of violence? It has a huge effect, and I think we actually underestimate the impact of gun violence on various communities and people around the victim. So we tend to think about victimization as if it's only the person who suffers the physical scars from the shooting. But in my work, I show how caretakers who overwhelmingly are black mothers bear the brunt of stress, depression, trauma that comes from caring for a child that's critically wounded. It's also experienced by children who now are living in a household with a parent or a loved one

who's living with long-term PTSD and scars. And it's also shared by friends, people who care about the person who's been shot. So there's really a much broader rickishing impact outside of just the person who gets. shot. We talked about health care. We talked about a little bit about education and prevention and getting the communities. But what do those supports actually look like, not just for survivors, but for those families, friends, communities carrying the aftermath of gun binds? Is there a policy gap that you're looking at right now, particularly here in Ontario that you're saying this is an easy fix here? I think the biggest one is the lack of long-term mental health care. So there are

reports in Canada that say that there are upwards around 5 million Canadians who are seeking mental health care or who need it but can't access it. And so that's a really big problem. So this is bigger than gun violence. There are many people who are suffering other kinds of injuries or just stressful life events who need mental health care. And there are a number of different, a constellation of things that flow from not being able to access mental health care. So I think that would be the first and most impactful lever to kind of go after is to make sure that the most vulnerable people who need mental health care can access it. Jew Young, you're going to leave it there. I appreciate your insights. Thank you so much for this. Thanks for having me.

So what do you think communities need to prevent violence and better support the people affected by it? Let us know in the comments or send us an email at rundown at tv.o.org and make sure to check out Nakai Walks the documentary on tv.o.org or the TVO docs YouTube page. Until then, I will see you tomorrow. You're not imagining it. Historically, women's health has been under-researched and underfunded. Did you know it took until the 90s for ADHD and girls to be studied? And it can take decades to be diagnosed with endometriosis. How did we get here?

This season of Mestreated, we're exploring that and more. And speaking to those working on solutions. I'm NAM Kiwanuka. Join us for a new season of Mestreated on October 1st. Watch Thursdays at 8.30 p.m. on TVO. listen to the podcast or stream us anytime.