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One Brooklyn Health Hosts National Trauma Awareness Month Event: Uplifting Survivor Voices and Strengthening Community Resilience

David Mark Greaves
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One Brooklyn Health Hosts National Trauma Awareness Month Event: Uplifting Survivor Voices and Strengthening Community Resilience

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, May 16, 2025 — One Brooklyn Health Brookdale Hospital is proud to announce the 3rd Annual National Trauma Awareness Month event, held on Friday, May 16, 2025, at the Brookdale Campus’s Kahn Auditorium. The event gathered survivors, healthcare professionals, advocates, and policymakers for a day of reflection, education, and action.

This month marks National Trauma Awareness Month, a nationwide initiative dedicated to highlighting the impact of trauma on individuals and communities. As a Level 2 Trauma Center, OBH Brookdale Hospital serves Central Brooklyn neighborhoods including Brownsville, East New York, East Flatbush, and Canarsie—offering critical trauma care and advancing awareness around healing and prevention.

Led by OBH’s Violence Intervention Through Advocacy and Leadership (VITAL) program, the symposium—titled The Shift—offered a full day of programming. The event featured opening remarks from hospital leadership, a keynote address by Dr. Rob Gore of Kings County Hospital and KAVI, and panels centered on trauma-informed recovery through survivor-led healing, community care, and systems change.

Panels were moderated by respected leaders, including NYS Assembly member Brian Cunningham, who facilitated a policy-driven conversation on building safer communities and strengthening the future of violence intervention in East Brooklyn.

“ How do we transition our workforce to be, to move from violence interrupters to check in, to get early, to be researchers, and those other folks? asked NYS Assembly member Brian Cunningham?” His question sparked conversation about evolving the role of community-based workers.

One of the most powerful moments of the day came during the Trauma Survivors breakout discussion, where community members courageously shared their journeys. The discussion was supported by OBH’s VITAL program, which provides bedside crisis support, case management, access to counseling and culturally relevant mental health services, and leadership development. By connecting survivors to housing, legal aid, and education or job training, the program helps break cycles of violence and foster long-term healing.

“Continued advocacy, clear communication about the impact, and recognizing the leadership and value of front-line workers in community violence intervention are essential. Supporting our workforce requires a community effort to stay connected, build strong networks, and ensure programs provide staff with the resources, benefits, and support they need to succeed,” said Princess Fortin, Senior Director of Organizational Growth & Equity and ( HAVI) Health Alliance for Violence Intervention.

Dr. Rami Abdel-Naby, Chief of Trauma Surgery and Trauma Medical Director at OBH, emphasized the importance of continued education and collaboration in addressing the community’s trauma recovery needs. The only way we can continue being successful as a trauma program and as people who deliver high quality and high standards of healthcare to our community, is by everybody sitting here, because everybody here knows our patients, knows our community, knows what we go through” said Dr. Abdel-Naby.

The day also included breakout sessions like the Wellness Healing Circle led by All Kings Inc., and a Summer Crisis Response Strategy Session led by OBH VITAL—both aimed at encouraging cross-sector collaboration among local organizations, clinicians, and elected leaders.

In closing, OBH Brookdale Hospital honored front-line healthcare workers—including emergency department staff, ICU teams, surgical nurses, and case managers—along with community-based organizations like Elite Learners, God Squad, and Central Brooklyn Development Corporation, for their ongoing contributions to trauma care and recovery.

One Brooklyn Health Brookdale Hospital remains committed to Central Brooklyn to provide exceptional healthcare, advancing education and trauma awareness to help keep communities safe. This important event will be live-streamed for those unable to attend in person. Live Stream link:

About One Brooklyn Health

One Brooklyn Health was established to preserve and enhance health care services in the communities of Central Brooklyn and is composed of three hospitals and their affiliated

facilities, Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale Hospital Medical Center and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. All three hospitals have historic ties to the communities they serve and are working together to build a system that will enable OBH to provide the highest quality and widest breadth of healthcare services to those in need. To learn more visit us at onebrooklynhealth.org.

Ties that Bind

David Mark Greaves
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Ties that Bind

Nonprofits are Creating the Connections
that Make Communities Stronger

Brownsville Youth Dive Into OffshoreWind Construction Training Program

Mary Alice Miller
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Brownsville Youth Dive Into OffshoreWind Construction Training Program

By Mary Alice Miller
On a cool afternoon in early June a group of Juniors and Seniors from Transit Tech High School huddle around schematics. Their instructor, Mr. Muhammad, explained to them the difference between architectural and engineering scales and demonstrated how to use scale rulers.


The youth are participating in the Brooklyn Youth Offshore Wind Training Program, a paid training program that offers Brownsville youth certification and hands-on experience in project management, construction, and wind turbine technician training, preparing them for green energy jobs.


The first of its kind program is administered in a collaboration between the Central Brooklyn Economic Development Corp., National Wind Service Corp., and funded by Citizens Bank and Local Initiatives Support Corp., New York.


The youth participants talked about what brought them to the program.
Honestly, I have a lot of career choices. I wanted to get a job and put some spare change in my pockets. I want to get different experiences.

I don’t want to go to college. I am not too fancy in school, so I might as well do a trade. .All I want to do is graduate from high school and do a trade. As long as I get paid decent money, I am happy.

They had a lot to choose from. They had construction, welding, HVAC… I don’t know what I like right now,” said Christopher, age 17. “Everything doesn’t happen overnight. But if I put in the work and stick around think I will get there over time. I don’t know none of this stuff, and now I am learning about it. I had no idea about it. Very like, true knowledge.”


Kinsey, age 16, said I” am fond of being an electric engineer. I joined this program to broaden my knowledge. I like the electric part of it and getting my hands dirty. I think this program will help me. I think I made the right choice.

I like this program because no only are they teaching me about electrical engineering, but also construction, welding, HVAC. So, if electrical engineering doesn’t work out maybe I can become a welder or a general contractor.”


“I have always been interested in trades, and the trade I particularly want to be in is welding. Welding and carpentry. Ever since I was young, I always found metalwork and woodwork incredibly exciting. I used to play with Legos a lot and down in my grandfather’s basement, he has a lot of pieces of wood and I would glue them together.

My grandfather would show me how to make things with wood,” said Cameron, age 16. “I really enjoy this program. It will help me get closer to my goal. I am getting closer to people I wouldn’t normally get close to. I am building my network.”


Eighteen-year-old Juan said “I signed up for this program to learn more about electrical and plumbing. There are programs at Transit Tech that let us learn about electrical so I wanted to further my education. This programs has met my expectations because even though most of it is learning through reading books a lot of it is also hands on learning.”


“Originally, when they first offered it, I didn’t know what I wanted to choose when they gave out other programs. But when I heard that we can get a lot of certifications like NCCER (National Center for Construction Education and Research) it interested me a lot. That is something good to have in my back pocket,” said James, age 17. “Construction isn’t my first choice for what I want to do.

I want to be a pilot. Construction is something I could lean on if things never work out, like a Plan B. This program is interesting. I am enjoying my time here.”


Michael, age 17, said, “I wanted to participate in something that is hands-on, something more fun I can do. It’s a lot of fun learning about construction. I want to be an electrician. This class is the core instruction for the trades in general. Learning about the other stuff in this class will really help me out in my career and future.”


“I originally wanted to do computer engineering in college. But I wasn’t fully sure what I wanted to do, so I wanted to try different options. This offers construction, more of the hands-on side instead of the IT side. So, I thought this would be a good learning experience to figure out what would be best for me, or a second option. [Computer engineering and the physical space for computer equipment] relate to each other,” said Jason, age 17. “This class met my expectations. I was looking for a hands-on activity and the books at the same time. The environment here is really nice. And we get paid.”


David Muhammad, Executive Director, Genesus Construction Training Center, led the construction training.
“I think that we all need access to these programs for our young people in our community. Construction training programs are not easily accessible in the Northeast unless they are blue states. Construction training and apprenticeship programs are usually offered by the trade unions.

And the trade unions don’t have an open-door policy when it comes to Black folk, particularly in inner cities. It’s the good old boys club,” said Muhammad. “And so we wanted to provide opportunities like this to our community. So we started our own apprenticeship training program. We are happy to provide it.”


Genesus Construction Training Center was established 2010. They have trained hundreds of people through the apprentice training program. Though their non-apprentice program they have trained 6,000.


“Genesus One Enterprise Construction Company has done building construction since 1999. We were at capacity in 2010 when we got a lot of work and a lot of employees. We had a lot of opportunity for employees but we didn’t have that many skilled tradespeople in our community.

So, we need more skilled tradesmen. Our target is to employ and train our people,” said Muhammad. “We couldn’t find more skilled trade people, so we said we would train them. So we started Genesus Construction Training Center.”

Jumaane Williams

Nayaba Arinde
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Jumaane Williams

Publicly Advocating for Grassroots Issues, Wants the Democratic Party to Do Better

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
With decades in the public eye, not adverse to political controversy, Grenadian-American Jumaane Williams is back in familiar territory – campaigning for political office.
As he runs for re-election to be the Public Advocate of New York City, the Democrat with a Working Families Party endorsement wants the Democrats to re-engage the demographic who felt taken for granted, and abandoned and so came out and voted “with their anger, and their fear,” hence Republican Donald Trump became the president.


Democrats are forgoing reliability and replacing it with uncertainty, Williams suggested. Certain kitchen table issues should be top of mind for the party, but are not, he said.
Regarding housing–“I don’t think we could be in a worse situation,” Public Advocate Williams told Our Time Press. “We have the highest rental market in the country. It’s really bad. If folks had listened to us many years ago, we may have been in a different situation.”


As Chairman of the City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, he advocated for “deeply affordable housing to help prevent communities from being priced out of the five boroughs.”
He told Our Time Press this week, “The country has been talking about affordable housing for a very long time. People ignored it. That’s part of the reason I believe we have this wanna-be dictator in the White House, because he was responding to what people were saying.”


Those who ignored the ongoing plight include leaders of his own party, Williams charged, when they are “more concerned about incumbency protection and leadership protection, we get in trouble.


“There was a point when Donald Trump was debating Hillary Clinton, and he said, ‘I know that the system is rigged because I use it,’ and he said, ‘I know Democrats won’t do anything about it, because your wealthy donors won’t allow you to.’

That is one of the truest statements ever said, and we did not prove him wrong, and people came out and voted with their anger and their fear. If we can just get our leaders in the party that I belong to, to just stop trying to stifle folk who are really responding to the people’s needs, we’d be in a much better place.”


Across the aisle, Williams continued, “Republicans allow their populist message to go through. Democrats do everything they can to stifle their populist message. And now Andrew Cuomo, who helped get us Trump, is on the pathway to getting to the mayoralty, because the powers in the party want that.

They don’t want someone who is talking about freezing the rent and free buses. They are more afraid of [that] than Andrew Cuomo, who has harmed the office. That was replicated across the country, and I was hoping that we had learned the lesson, but we are making the same mistake in real time.”


Is there a concern that this may result in folks choosing not to go to the polls
“We saw that happen across the country,” replied Williams. “A lot of folk stayed home. I think that is the wrong thing to do because you are going to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The Donald Trump presidency is legitimately central to the crisis, as we are seeing now.

You understand why people are fed up and say they are not coming out. But there are differences that make it enough to come out and choose somebody who is not going to be as bad as the other person.

But Democrats have relied on that message for too long, and people are tired of it. They are feeling afraid–public safety is something you have to lean into, and they are feeling that they cannot afford to live, and I don’t know how the Democrats allow the wealthiest people in the world to command that message. It makes no sense and is disappointing.”


The Public Advocate added, “Andrew Cuomo has a real shot of becoming mayor because Eric Adams was so bad that he is bringing back Andrew Cuomo.”
Last year, there was talk of Public Advocate Williams taking over as mayor for then-federally indicted, embattled Eric Adams. But Trump got Adams’ charges dropped, and he is running for mayor again—as an independent.


Williams told the paper, “I couldn’t be more disappointed in the disgraceful leadership of Eric Adams, and I think a lot of people feel that way, that’s why he doesn’t have a tremendous amount of support even among Black leaders. All of them have left.

Except maybe one or two. That’s a hell of a sign of bad leadership, that you might have someone like Andrew Cuomo coming back. I hope that people should understand not to replace someone who left in a disgraceful way, with someone who themselves left in a disgraceful way.

Andrew Cuomo is a chameleon. Whatever you believe in congestion pricing, in bail reform, in minimum wage, in mental health–whatever you believe, he has believed in on some point, depending on what was beneficial to him. That is why we are in this position, because that is not leadership. We need someone who is going to take a stand for what is best for New Yorkers first.”


Ultimately, Williiams determined, “I am very concerned, and everybody should be very concerned about what a Mayor Cuomo would look like, and we should do everything we can not to rank him, and leave him off everyone’s ballot.”


With his own ranking list, Williams told Our Time Press, “Brad Lander, Speaker Adams tied for number one. For number two, we think you should choose one of those. For number three–Zohran Mamdani, then Zellnor Myrie, and Scott Stringer.”


Empowered as he spoke on it, Williams did not allow his teenage diagnosis with Tourette Syndrome to deter his trajectory as he worked his way up through the NYC public school system, including Brooklyn Tech High School. He eventually represented Brooklyn’s 45th District in the New York City Council from 2009 to 2019.

After taking over from Tish James in the 2019 special election, he has served as New York City’s Public Advocate since 2019.
Unsuccessfully, impressive numbers notwithstanding, Williams ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2018 and Governor in 2022. Both times, Kathy Hochul got the deciding votes.


In January 2025 , civil rights attorney Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar pulled out of the race for comptroller and switched to the one for public advocate.
Williams now has a primary on his hands.


“It’s going fairly well, but we have got to keep pushing. What we need now is to raise more money. One of our opponents has a little more money than us because she was running for comptroller in a very competitive race, and she decided to change in [January], and she brought that money over with her.”


He added that his opponent, Rajkumar, is “a very big ally of Eric Adams.”
As the incumbent, he added, “We feel good about the race that we are running, but you always want to feel great, so we are not taking anything for granted.”

Kyla Jenée Lacey, “White Privilege” Poet and Storyteller, to Perform at Brooklyn’s Herbert Von King Park for Juneteenth Festival

Fern Gillespie
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Fern Gillespie
When poet Kyla Jenee Lacey’s powerful spoken word performance of her poem “White Privilege” was shown in class by a Tennessee social studies school teacher in 2021, the poem became a lightning rod for White conservatives in fear of “Critical Race Theory” in the schools.
“About 3 to 4 years ago they were firing teachers left and right for having the gall to teach history from a correct lens,” Lacey told Our Time Press.

“Matthew Hahn was one of the teachers who was fired for using my work. He had given his class the Ta-Nehisi Coates essay. Then he was given a warning and then he showed them my “White Privilege” video. He finally won his case. But after he won, the School District of Sullivan County, Tennessee decided to appeal.”

Kyla Jenee Lacey


When the “White Privilege” video went viral, it was the period of the pandemic and the George Floyd racial awakening. Her work continues to be part of the national CRT conversation. She’s been featured on “Last Week with John Oliver ” Tamron Hall and Laura Ingraham from Fox, ” who referred to her as “anti-– racist, propaganda.”

Her work has been discussed in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times and the Atlantic. As a journalist, she’s written for TheRoot.com, BET.com, Huffington Post, and currently has a column with Karen Hunter’s The Hub News online.


Lacey has garnered a reputation as a poet, writer, activist, spoken word artist, and storyteller with an acerbic sense of humor. “White Privilege” is personal for her. She had grown up in Florida since her family moved from Chicago at age nine.

Lacey was a smart young Black girl in honors programs attending predominantly White schools where her teachers sometimes overlooked her intelligence. At 10 years old, Lacey wrote her first poem, and her mother had it copyrighted.

“I grew up 20 minutes away from where Trayvon Martin was murdered. Just to kind of put that in perspective, George Zimmerman’s adjunct professor is literally one of my best friends,” she explained. “You know, even as an adult, I carry people insulting my intelligence as like one of my biggest things. A lot of my teachers didn’t like the fact that they brightest student was their darkest student.”


Lacey’s one-woman show of poetry, storytelling, and comedy has toured to over 300 colleges and universities in over 40 states. Her poems have been viewed collectively online about 10 million times. A Central Florida University graduate with a history degree, she speaks several languages, including French, German, and Spanish.

Lacey lives in Atlanta and is a pet person with four cats and a dog named Precola Breedlove in honor of Toni Morrison’s lead character in “The Bluest Eye.”

As a writer, she continues to be inspired by Toni Morrison. When the Atlantic wrote an article about CRT, Lacey’s name was mentioned in the same paragraph as Morrison’s. It was a phenomenal experience for her. “I cried. My mom taught me how to read, and I feel like Toni taught me how to write,” she said.

“I love the way that she could take words that had absolutely no reason for being in the same sentence and put them right next to each other. It was like the most beautiful combination. I liked how she was able to examine multiple things at a time in her books. I think that she really taught me the beauty of words.”

“White Privilege” continues to be taught in schools and colleges. “I’m hoping that I wrote a work that was able to withstand the test of time,” said Lacey.

Oh am I making you uncomfortable? try a cramped slave ship but wait, slavery is over now, it’s just called the prison system cuz like you’re not racist cuz you don’t use the ‘n’ word, but y’all use n*ggas everyday.
From White Privilege by Kyla Jenee Lacey

Kyla Jenee Lacey is scheduled to have her first one-woman spoken word performance in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 14, at the Juneteenth Festival at Herbert Von King Park on 670 Lafayette Ave. The year’s event is hosted by Baba Obediah Wright and features Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, Javier Gooden and FUSHA Dance Company.

There will be gospel, jazz, R&B, rap, poetry, swing dance, stepping, ballet, stilt walkers, face painting, pony rides, artists, and crafts. The Juneteenth Festival is presented by The Cooperative Culture Collective. Our Time Press is a media partner.

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