President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure initiative, the “American Jobs Plan,” includes a $5 billion investment towards community-based violence prevention programs.
“The crisis on gun violence has destroyed Black and Brown communities for decades. Our pain, our trauma and our lives have been lost for too long without action,” the Community Justice Action Fund said in a statement.
“President Biden’s action today to address this crisis through his infrastructure package is a historic investment in proactive community-based solutions to prevent violence before it happens through evidence-based strategies.”
President Biden has said that gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis. Violence has increased all over the nation over the course of the pandemic. Susan Rice, White House Domestic Policy Council, says that funding for these programs is essential because violence is growing.
“When we had the opportunity to study this further, to look at the scope of the need, the extent of the potential for community organizations to absorb additional resources, and heard the appeal of the community leaders who have been struggling in the trenches for years without much recognition, without sufficient resources doing vitally important work, we were persuaded that this was a very worthwhile investment and one we were proud to make,” Rice said.
Rice said the administration included this funding in the infrastructure plan because the package’s goal is to give all Americans the infrastructure to compete and succeed.
“And part of that means taking care of those who live in our urban environments, where gun violence and violence in the community is a major impediment to economic activity and to economic growth and is obviously costing the lives of many, many innocents,” Rice said. “That is essential to the well-being of our country as a whole.”
