In a community where everyone knows everyone, to lose one of your own can feel like losing part of yourself.
And when several others were injured all at once in the center of the community, the pain lingers long after the incident.
That’s how a large majority of Taft community members feel after Sherika Bowler was killed and eight others were injured in a shooting at the Memorial Day weekend festival in the town center, and two weeks after the shooting, a local civil rights organization is doing what it can to pick up the pieces.
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Kountry Queens owner Tiffany Walton describes the scene as a shooting that broke out at a Memorial Day event in Taft. Ian Maule/Tulsa World
“Even the smallest gestures in times like these help people to know that you care,” said the Rev. Rodger Cutler, president of the Muskogee branch of the NAACP, who is initiating programs within Muskogee County to make its communities safer. “We want to make sure (Taft) is not lost in the shuffle.”
The NAACP will bring a focus to gun violence and mental health — the former with a gun buy-back program partnering with local law enforcement and community leaders and the latter with an upcoming mental health forum with the Muskogee County Health Department.
“Project Rescue Muskogee County,” the gun buy-back program, is a long-term initiative partnering with the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office and the Muskogee Police Department that will hopefully make Muskogee County communities safer, said Cutler, who hopes it can prevent even one life from being taken by gun violence.
“If we get even one gun off the street, that could possibly save a life,” he said. “We believe what Dr. (Martin Luther) King said: It’s always the right time to do the right thing. This is one of the greatest opportunities we can give (Muskogee County residents) to do the right thing.”
Project Rescue Muskogee County, which is still in the early development stages, will be completely voluntary and anonymous, Cutler said, and organizers hope to raise enough funds to pay $100 for every handgun and $250 for every “assault rifle.”
The second initiative, the mental health forum, is planned for Thursday and will bring area behavioral health professionals to the Martin Luther King Center, 300 W. Martin Luther King St. in Muskogee, to discuss trauma in children after major incidents and the stigma around mental health in Black communities.
Cutler said the organizers had been planning the forum for a while already in the wake of national tragedies but that the Taft shooting hastened the need for it.
“Our main focus was on the stigma of mental health, particularly in the Black community,” Cutler said. “We’re taught that it’s just a part of life, but really it’s something we need to address and focus on.”
After the Taft shooting, where many children saw bullets rain down on their families and even other children, Cutler said it was imperative to address trauma symptoms in children.
“Children have been traumatized because bullets went off in Taft,” Cutler said. “We want our children to feel safe and secure so that they can still go out and have fun and participate in life and not be afraid to live in their own community.”
Taking inspiration again from King, Cutler said the Muskogee NAACP is doing what it can to make sure Taft residents and the shooting victims know they matter to someone.
“Dr. King said it best when he said, ‘Our lives begin to end when we are silent about what matters,’” Cutler said. “Our children matter. Taft matters. We can’t wait; we have do deal with these things now because people’s lives are being affected now.”
