‘A vehicle of hope’: Hope and Heal Fund’s Brian Malte on narrative change and firearm violence prevention
by: Lunden Mason
posted on Thursday, December 05, 2024
Brian Malte, Executive Director of the Hope and Heal Fund, is a nationally recognized leader in the gun violence prevention movement and deeply believes all people and communities have a right to be safe and free from firearm-related violence, deaths, injuries, and trauma. Over his 30-year career, he has led community-based movements and strategic policy initiatives to keep homes and communities safe from gun violence. In 2001, he joined the Washington, D.C., office of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, serving in roles including National Field Director, Political Director, and National Policy Director. In 2016, he returned to his home state of California to lead Hope and Heal Fund.
Hope and Heal Fund is a first-of-its-kind, donor collaborative fund investing in a public health, racial equity, and community-based approach to preventing firearm violence and suicide in California. Its mere existence — and its intersectional approach to addressing community violence, firearm suicide, and domestic violence — is a big win for public health and community safety, even being modeled beyond California with the Colorado Safe Futures Fund.
Malte’s experience working on legislative efforts to curb firearm violence taught him that, although policies that promote public safety are important, public health tools like education, community power-building, and narrative change are integral to reducing firearm injuries and trauma and cultivating safer communities. Recognizing this, Hope and Heal Fund takes a multi-pronged approach to prevention: supporting leaders at the community level, finding ways to drive systems change, and generating public health tools like our new, jointly created messaging guide ‘Together is where we save lives’: A messaging guide for California advocates working to reduce injuries and fatalities from firearms.
To learn more about Hope and Heal Fund, and dive deeper into the messaging guide, I sat down with Hope and Heal Fund Executive Director Brian Malte.
Q&A
Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What inspired the creation of the messaging guide, ‘Together is where we save lives’: A messaging guide for California advocates working to reduce injuries and fatalities from firearms?
It was a culmination of 20 years at Brady, some of it here in California. As I evolved in the movement, I became very frustrated at the lack of involvement in decision-making amongst communities most impacted by gun violence. I knew that had to change, and that starts with changing the narrative about this issue. It was born out of the recognition that those most impacted must have a seat at the table and not have others making decisions for them and their communities.
The messaging guide is a vehicle of hope because it is a critical tool that will lead to transformative and sustainable change.
How does today’s media landscape impact advocates’ ability to craft and convey meaningful messages about violence prevention?
I think it’s a heck of a lot tougher every year. Newsrooms are strapped. People are strapped. It seems like everything is changing rapidly. This is a real challenge. And then, social media: We learned during the election, especially, that so many people get their news from social media. It’s a question of, ‘How can we engage social media and reach more people, especially younger people who aren’t engaging as much with traditional media?’ The landscape started to change when we started Hope and Heal Fund, but it’s really changed now. It’s something we have to stay attuned to.
However, having said that, I do have a lot of hope. Narrative change is about putting credible messengers front and center and recognizing that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. Whether it’s traditional media or social media, nothing changes the fact that survivors and community leaders have powerful stories to tell, and they should be the primary spokespeople for their communities. While social media has its own set of challenges, it’s also a great opportunity for community leaders to reach diverse and large audiences.
The messaging guide is chock-full of important takeaways for advocates. From a high-level point of view, what do you hope advocates will gain from the messaging guide?
Well, this isn’t about just getting a quote in the media, it’s an opportunity to tell the real story of a community. I want them to see a few things: First don’t let others define your community. And you have solutions, right? Get those solutions out there. People need to see that there is hope for what many see as an intractable problem.
But I think even more, I’d like to see this be part and parcel of a development strategy for community-based organizations. There are a lot of city and county councils that don’t even know about the many great organizations in their own community creating change and positively impacting lives. These local organizations might not be known if they don’t have the infrastructure, but if they have the right strategy, and if they have the trust and the credibility amongst the community, aren’t they the right entity to receive public and private funding?
There are folks doing great work in communities across the state, and they’re almost waving their hands like, ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ but historically very few people have seen these leaders as part of the solution. We hope community organizations gain confidence on how to amplify their work so they get noticed by the media and access needed resources. Ultimately, this issue is not going to be decided by how much philanthropy financially invests into this movement or any issue. It’s about leveraging philanthropic dollars for greater public dollars, and so this is a way in their own community to lift themselves up and to be seen by elected officials who would say, ‘I had no idea you exist in my own community, doing great work. We should find some funding for you.’ It’s way more than just changing the narrative.
What do you hope the messaging guide is contributing to the overall landscape of firearm violence prevention work?
I see all kinds of messaging coming out of some of the bigger gun violence prevention organizations. And some of it is good, but historically many messages don’t seem to be as informed as they could be. And I’m hopeful that some of these organizations and folks can pick up on [the messaging guide] as well.
There still are good reporters, and reporters I’ve talked to [who] even kind of led me to narrative change. I would always get calls as policy director [from] the same reporters saying, ‘Brian, it’s me again, another mass shooting. I need a quote from you.’ There were quite a few [who’d say], ‘Brian, I’d like to be able to talk about this issue differently, but there’s not a lot of time, and there’s not a lot of resources.’ The other piece is, how do we utilize the guide with some of our close reporters or other reporters who have expressed a desire to report and talk about this issue differently, other than, yes, there’s been another mass shooting?
Efforts are underway to change news narratives surrounding firearm violence. Are there additional channels or methods for communication that you think advocates should be focused on?
I think it’s about how you effectively communicate with the folks in charge in your city or county.
Why do you think the growing firearm death rate among children and teens hasn’t been enough to force change?
This is really disturbing: When I first started Hope and Heal, gun violence was the second leading cause of death for ages 0-19. Now, for I think three or four years straight, it’s the leading killer of children 0-19. Full stop. Where is the outcry? What don’t you all (meaning city council, county council, philanthropy, everybody) get? If you say you’re for public health solutions, you need to be addressing this issue. That’s some pretty compelling data.
The thing that stands in the way is that the traditional gun violence prevention movement has been so focused on politics and legislation — the narrative of pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-Second Amendment, anti-Second Amendment — it appears to many there is no middle ground. And, most people don’t even know that of all firearm deaths, suicides account for about six out of every 10, and that calls for different approaches other than we need more legislation.
That’s why I’m especially proud of the work of this project, including getting gun owners to the table to discuss messaging around preventing firearm suicides. BMSG interviewed pro-Second Amendment people, police representatives, and others together to provide the messages that needed to be tested. I’m really proud of that.
Do you think the messaging guide can be used to bridge that divide? How do we get different groups to talk to each other?
Saving lives and cultivating safer communities is something we can agree upon, and firearm injuries and deaths show up in every geographical area of our country — rural, suburban, urban — firearm violence and suicide is prevelant. No community is immune to decreased community safety or the loss of life due to suicide by firearm. When you toss out the politics of an issue based on prevailing narratives, you can get to solutions and common ground. That’s a huge accomplishment of this messaging guide. And because firearm violence and suicide is intersectional, the messaging guide was able to weave between domestic violence, community violence, and firearm suicide and show that it’s all part of one big story. Yes, we need to focus on each aspect of gun violence, and there are differences among different populations. But all together, it’s a venn diagram.
What are your hopes for firearm violence prevention going forward? What sorts of progress — in messaging and in outcomes — do you hope to see?
The most important thing is to be able to have conversations about this. The messaging guide really allows that on all fronts. But I also think intersectionality is huge. This messaging guide has nothing to do with legislation. Legislation is not the only tool in the toolbelt. The messaging guide lays the groundwork for the things we’re already doing, which is kind of that R&D. What are the new projects, what are the new systems-change strategies we can use to set the stage for dramatic drops of all forms of gun violence and firearm suicide?
So I’m hopeful. I know that I’ll be retired somewhere or doing something different, and this will continue. To me, having been 30 years in the movement, I wish we had made more progress years ago on the issue of narrative change, but here we are and we must run with it.
Just over the last eight years at Hope and Heal Fund, we’ve been planting seeds for dramatic change. I had to be on this journey in order to get there, and I had to hire really good people who could help take us there. And we have. The seeds are being planted for transformative change. We’re nice people, but we’re really pushy. We’re not going to take no for an answer. We demand that people pay attention and fund this issue. We demand that systems and government systems pay attention to the most lethal means of death, injury, and trauma.