City Club of Chicago: Teens, Social Media, and Reducing Gun Violence – A Roadmap

October 8, 2024

Teens, Social Media, and Reducing Gun Violence: A Roadmap – Moderated by WTTW’s Chicago Tonight: Latino Voices Host Joanna Hernandez – Nina Vinik (Project Unloaded), Jadine Chou (CPS), Dr. Selwyn Rogers (UChicago Medicine), Olivia Brown (Project Unloaded), Laia McClain (Whitney Young High School)

City Club event description:

The Joyce Foundation is hosting a three-part series, Ending Gun Violence in Chicago: Connecting Policy, Practice and Community, in partnership with the City Club of Chicago and WTTW’s Firsthand Initiative & WTTW News, join us for the final program in collaboration with Project Unloaded.

In Chicago and beyond, there’s no shortage of concern for how social media platforms are impacting today’s teens. From mental health worries to online arguments spilling into offline conflicts, the conversation on how social media can be a problem is vast. But what if teens on social media could also help solve a pressing public health problem?

That’s the idea that’s brought together leaders from Chicago Public Schools, University of Chicago Medicine Trauma Center, After School Matters and the teen-powered gun violence prevention group Project Unloaded. In light of a WBEZ report finding over half of Chicago’s mass shootings involve victims under 20, teens must be part of the solution to Chicago’s gun violence problem. Project Unloaded works to reach teens through social media campaigns and community partnerships and shares with them the facts on how having a gun makes them less safe. In the last year, Project Unloaded reached more than 150,000 Chicago teens through social media campaigns and hundreds more through offline partnerships.

Join us as Chicago leaders delve into strategies to reduce violence that put young people in the driver’s seat of making change.

Speakers

Nina Vinik
Nina Vinik is the founder and executive director of Project Unloaded, an organization working to inspire the next generation to decide against having guns through teen-facing cultural campaigns and community partnerships. Prior to founding Project Unloaded in 2022, Vinik spent two decades working in gun violence prevention. At the Joyce Foundation, Vinik oversaw the distribution of more than $50 million in grant funds to support evidence-backed gun violence prevention work.

Before her role at Joyce, Nina had a successful career as a civil rights attorney with the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc., and the ACLU Foundation of Florida. She also served as Legal Director of Legal Community Against Violence (now Giffords Law Center), and Director of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Assistance Partnership Project.

She chaired the board of directors of the March For Our Lives Action Fund until 2021. Vinik also created the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence, the Fund for a Safer Future, and the Toward a Fair and Just Response to Gun Violence cohort. Nina serves on multiple professional boards, as an Advisory Board member of the NYU Policing Project; an Advisor to the American Law Institute, Principles of the Law-Police Investigations; a Member of the Council on Criminal Justice; and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Nina earned her law degree from the University of Chicago and her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. She lives in Chicago.

Olivia Brown
Olivia Brown, MPH, CHES is a public health professional who works to prioritize what she calls “people-powered, joy-centered, cultural and systems change.” At Project Unloaded, Olivia combines her industry expertise, art activism, and community engagement experience, leading community programming engagements that educate and em