Victoria Greene’s 20-year-old son Emir Greene was shot to death on the night of March 26, 1997. Instead of letting her grief destroy her, Greene channeled that energy into changing the lives of families throughout the Philadelphia region. In 2004, Greene founded the Every Murder Is Real (EMIR) Healing Center. The nonprofit organization provides advocacy, educational, legal and support services to families experiencing trauma and grief after a homicide.
 
"The fact that we focus on homicide is important," says Greene. "We teach about symptoms of trauma, how to cope and offer support groups. We focus on such an important issue that is so tragic, is so horrendous, and causes so much damage to our co-victims—the survivors of homicide: family, friends, and neighbors. It affects more than the family. It affects the neighborhoods, the community and the entire city."

EMIR receives a fax every Wednesday from the police department listing homicide victims from all over the city. The staff mails out letters to all the next of kin, describing their services, including legal assistance in trial preparation, in-court advocacy, funeral service referrals, counseling, conflict resolution, support for adults and children, and nutritional advice and food supplies during the trauma period.  

After the letters go out, Greene, Programming Manager Chantay Love and the rest of the EMIR team follow up with phone calls. Though the majority of their outreach is from the Northwest area, they have served families from as far as Kensington, Chester, New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina. 

EMIR’s staff also offers community support when there is a homicide via door to door visits, especially in cases where several murders occur close together in one particular neighborhood. The organization also provides community crisis meetings, bringing the community together to heal and mobilize in a healthy way.  

EMIR works alongside Town Watch Integrated Services, a group that handles crisis response in the community. "When there’s an uproar, we’re the two groups that come together and help the community handle the pain," explains Love.

After eight years, EMIR has grown as an organization, operating continuous cycles of dedicated support groups for the surviving family members as well as periodic holistic programming featuring physical healing through massage, aromatherapy, poetry, theatre, gardening, healing circles and art therapy.  

The organization has partnered with the Live & Let Live Campaign, a coalition of nine organizations promoting a message of peace and working to eradicate the culture of violence. Other partners and funders include the Department of Behavioral Health’s Healing the Family and Community Coalition, Northwest Coalition to Promote Resiliency, the Philadelphia Anti-Violence Anti-Drug Network (PAAN), the Unitarian Society of Germantown and the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown. Mural Arts installed mosaic planters for therapeutic gardening and Nathaniel Lee’s "Mending a Broken Heart Mural" to augment the organization's space in Germantown. Chestnut Hill’s Musehouse, a literary center, invites survivors to participate in memoir workshops and offers a forum for students to tell their stories before an audience. Drexel University's Nonviolence and Social Justice Department have also lent support and assistance.  

We Live, a significant youth peace movement grew out of support meetings. Their slogan is "To Grow Old." EMIR has pledged to help them do just that with the help of the National Guard who mentored students through a Peace Leadership Institute in the summer of 2011.

Greene speaks highly of her youth group. "I want them to be able to take classes on theatre, blogging, online stuff, go on a radio show, do projects on public speaking, do skits," she says. "They can speak their truth to a community about peace and violence. They need to be trained to be leaders."  

Despite the organization's strengths, they face operational challenges in the current economy. Their offices are located in a former parish house in Germantown with a furnished kitchen, but all of the aging appliances are ailing. Meals are donated for the support group attendees by the Green Street Meeting, but the staff cannot warm or reheat the food because the stove does not work and the microwave is erratic. Victoria would also love to fund new positions for workshop leaders and group facilitators—the need for their services has increased beyond the capabilities of the current staff and volunteers. 

Greene stresses the power of compassion in the support groups, "I know when I started going to the support groups after my son was murdered, I realized that’s what we did: we told our stories with no judgment.  Part of that was trying to make some sense out of a senseless act."

EMIR (Every Murder Is Real) Healing Center, 5213 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA. Click here to learn about EMIR’s programming or to contribute.

BONNIE MACALLISTER is a multi-media artist, grant writer and journalist residing in West Philly. Her work has appeared in Tom Tom Magazine, Toronto Quarterly, Nth Position (U.K.) and Grasp (Czech Republic). Send feedback here.