BOSS is launching a new project with award-winning, graphic designer, filmmaker and activist LeJon Loggins, to empower violence-impacted community members to tell their own stories on a wider stage, through filmmaking classes held on-site at BOSS Neighborhood Impact Hubs – community healing and restorative justice activities – and innovative documentary, film, and TV project production.
In August 2006, Loggins lost his 23-year-old cousin Laver Crayton in a random act of gun violence in East Oakland. His family turned to The Khadafy Washington Foundation for Nonviolence for assistance to finance Crayton’s funeral. Marilyn Washington-Harris, the mother who lost her son to violence and created the Foundation in his name, became a supportive ally to the Loggins’ family in their grief. Loggins offered his graphic design services to the Foundation by creating obituaries for other grieving families. Since 2007, Loggins has designed over 700 memorial programs, 160 of which honored gunshot victims in Oakland.
Loggins recently approached BOSS with the desire to be part of a proactive solution to violent crime and hopefully, put himself out of the work of consoling families. Working with The Khadafy Washington Foundation for Nonviolence, Catholic Charities, and the Alameda County Victims of Crime Office, he is turning the stories of young people lost to violence into scripts for film and television using the lens of someone who grew up in these communities and experienced much of the same loss.
His company, Bay Vision Media Group, is also launching The Unity Campaign, a series of free, intergenerational community events to bring neighborhoods together with resources to decrease crime and collectively heal – Loggins will bring some of this work on-site to BOSS Neighborhood Impact Hubs in Oakland.
Loggins is committed to widening the reach of these stories by creating a Bay Area-based film production company dedicated to community-based storytelling. Ever since Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station,” Hollywood has turned its attention to Oakland stories and talent with movies and television shows like “Blind Spotting” and “Sorry to Bother You.” Bay Vision Media Group will tell true stories and create them with our local talent right here in the Bay Area.
BOSS and LeJon Loggins are committed to authentically engaging storytelling that honors, heals, and uplifts an entire community. This work reveres the full lives of people who are often reduced into statistics reminding the world that they were here, they were human, and their lives made a difference to a community.
For more information about this project please contact LeJon Loggins - email: LLoggins@self-sufficiency.org or by phone: 510.978.8006
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