To register for this year's Social Living Conference, register today at eventbrite.com
For those of us living in the greater Milwaukee area, the events that transpired on August 5th of 2012 will be permanently etched into our collective memory. I remember my experience first learning of the incident well. I was returning to my car after participating in church services at our family's church downtown and planning on going about our Sunday. Always on Sunday mornings our family has the radio tuned in to the Dewey Gills Big Band show on local independent radio station 91.7. Typically, the entire show serves as Sunday morning time warp, sending listeners into the yesteryear of jazz music, with Dewey's rich commentaries and stories serving as the only modern reference point to a soundscape set somewhere between 1928 and 1950. However, on this particular day the sanctity of my Sunday morning experience would be intruded upon by the profane reminder of the violence and threat that continues to exist in this world.
I recall my initial reaction, learning that there was a live shooter somewhere in Oak Creek, and taking a few moments to consider the nearby proximity of the shooting. As details emerged, Dewey indicated that police were on the scene and that the shooter was inside a Sikh Temple where several shootings had occurred. This was the first I had known of the Oak Creek temple which has since grown familiar to me. The brief report was unsettling. National tragedies of this nature have, unfortunately, had some precedent in recent decades. The physical closeness of the tragedy, and the fact that it was occurring presently, in a place of worship, made the whole ordeal more troubling and immediate for me as I listened on inside my car just outside of my own church.
The flurry of news reports and media attention that followed the shooting was quite persistent over the next several days. The tragic details would be reported along with the related co-ocurring stories of heroism and community responsiveness that so often interlay reportings of human massacre and violence. Six victims. One female. An unhinged debauchery involving a disturbed white
supremacist who would take his own life, becoming the final fatality of the day.
But the day's collateral would also include numerous others who were physically injured and traumatized by the actions of the armed gunman. Included amongst the injured was the heroic officer, Lt. Brian Murphy, who ran into known danger and endured numerous gun shots in his act of pursuing the shooter. One gunshot was to the neck, resulting in near fatal wounds.
Over the course of the following days, the Sikh community would be provided an unprecedented degree of support and regard from a community which scarcely attended to it's existence earlier. The Temple would experience visits from the mayor, governor and the first lady. President Obama formally addressed the tragedy to a global audience. The prime minister of India paid his regards. Over the course of the tragedy, our community would awaken to the awareness of this sad circumstance: somehow it had happened here.
The local outpouring of concern was palpable and sincere. They wanted to do something. By the evening of the 6th, the concern of and curiosity of the community grew and word spread about a candlelight vigil to honor those lost.
Around a thousand well wishers and neighbors affected by the tragedy arrived at the nearby Oak Creek High School for the ceremony. Neighbors from Milwaukee, Cudahy, Oak Creek and elsewhere came to together, covering their heads in Sikh fashion, bearing witness to the loss to traditional Sikh music and chanting.
Beyond the rattled sentiment of troubled community, I recall the almost alarming grace that was embodied by the Sikh community in the hours and weeks following the shooting. Sikh voices on camera asking for understanding and extending forgiveness.
Acknowledging the loss of the troubled and sick gunman among the Sikh family members and congregants that were being laid to rest. Imploring compassion and inviting the community in to their mourning.
Tragedy had struck and the suffering was real. Certainly, the harrowing ordeal would leave its impact upon the Temple. Caution would need to be raised resulting in new security measures introduced. Then came the question, what to do for the mental health needs of the congregation as they re-entered their former place of spiritual sanctity, ravaged by death and gunfire. Although endowed with a longstanding religious tradition capable of providing spiritual direction and guidance, the Sikh community in Milwaukee had only a limited number of internal resources when it came to mental health providers. There would also be limits in the extent to which a community could serve it's own therapeutic needs in the face of a shared and collective tragedy.
Early after the shootings, the Sikh community would be approached by Child and Family Counseling program through Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, who would take a leading role in organizing mental health providers to support the community in addressing the
aftermath of the tragedy. Through telephone calls and emails, a request was made for mental health workers who might be in a position to offer support and aid to the traumatized Sikh congregation.
I was one of the community members who received such a telephone call. Due to my role as the Public Education Coordinator for the Wisconsin Psychological Association and in light my work at Sebastian Family Psychology Practice which caters to the needs of refugee groups and global populations, I was contacted relatively shortly after the shooting with hopes that I might be helpful in the organizational efforts. In particular, there was a need for mental health providers who might have experience with Sikhism or who may know how to speak Punjabi. Although I had no such experience or connections, I offered to aide in any way that I could in support of the community, with either networking initiatives or through providing direct services.
In the upcoming weeks, I would establish contact with a fellow Psychologist, Dr. Puni Kalra,
who assumed a lead role managing mental health efforts for the community. A resident of the state of Colorado, Puni would fly in to Milwaukee on a regular basis over the several weeks following the shooting. During her trips to Oak Creek, Puni joined the grieving community and became an unassuming yet integral part of the community's healing.
Whereas other approaches to crisis response focus on the crisis and on the prevention and management of symptoms of trauma, the approach taken by the mental health response team remained much more strength-based, embracing a growth oriented ecological model that actively engaged the Sikh community, building upon the sense of community and enhancing personal and shared agency in the face of victimhood.
I was privy to efforts that focused on the supporting youth of the congregation. Stories from the day of the shooting were particularly troubling as they relate to the children of the temple. As the gun man began discharging his firearms in the temple, many youth fled the shooter and ran quite naturally to the lower-level of the temple, where a large Sunday school room had been set up for weekly religious instruction. However, on the day of the shooting, the door to the basement was locked an unable to be opened. So as the panic stricken youth ran to seek refuge of the basement, they were turned back and needed to run back up the stairs and risk further exposure to the gunman.
It seemed particularly fitting that this very space would be widely utilized in the reclaiming of lost security that had occurred on that tragic day. On a bi-weekly basis, a team of incognito mental health professionals and well intended community members joined in on organized youth activities at the temple, with the covert agenda of imparting piece of mind and greater social-emotional security in following weeks.
My own experience in this role, serving as a stooge for mental health, was humbling and eyeopening. Early in the process I was provided with some general objectives, which we would pursue through strategic selection of peer building activities and group work. Eery-other week, the mental health team arrange a new activity for the 50 some youth ages five to eighteen that would serve some purpose in strengthening social contacts and in the promotion of emotional awareness and resilience. Activities included the "bully busting" exercises (which identified strategies for students to come together when feeling targeted or when 'bullying' occurs), social outings, and exercises in team building and communication. One objective involved getting the Sikh youth out into the community together to promote healthy integration into the Oak Creak neighborhood and to raise awareness of the Sikh community within the Oak Creek and surrounding area. Mental health professionals were challenged to operate out of our traditional roles. "Therapy" became bowling, trick or treating, and allowing our inner children to emerge when out in the community with these bright and spirited youth. Always, we needed to maintain our perspective as adults and professionals, as youth would spontaneously share their experiences and find healthy ways to open up to a trusted group of caring adult community members.
Given the age range of the youth we were serving, it became quickly apparent that we would need to cater different activities to different age groups or scaffold and structure activities in a way that would promote older youth to take on healthy roles of leadership and mentoring of younger youth. As the group continued, we eventually broke the students up into smaller "teams", consisting of adolescents, pre-teens, and younger children in each group. These became sustaining "families" where students were able to draw support from one another and experience a social network of belonging within the larger group.
Always, we emphasized cooperation and communication between groups rather than competition. This was to prevent rifts from occurring between groups and to help all experience healthycommunity feeling. At the onset of the group, mental health professionals and adult community members remained available and attentive to the emotional needs of the youth. However, by tending to the development of healthy relations through social embeddedness within the group, adults were able to "back off" from the youth and allow the group to be a self-sustaining network. No longer were we the "experts" in the needs of the youth. Instead, peer relations formed and youth were empowered to learn and grow together. Never was the tragedy formally addressed through any overt intervention. However, should need for treatment or therapy emerge in any of the youth, we would be in a position to help assess that need and aptly suited to assist families in accessing needed services.
As an experiment in social living, the coordinated efforts that were initiated through a partnership between the Sikh community and Children's Hospital afford us a strength-based model for community responding to future shootings. As I complete this blog, we are faced with yet another mass shooting in the state of Oregon, resulting in 10 more lives lost to gun violence. It is an unfortunate truth, that we have not seen the end of shootings of this nature in our society. Fortunately, through experience, we have some precedent for healthy community responding.
Come and Learn!
On October 24th, the Milwaukee Affiliate for Social Living will be providing the community with an opportunity to learn from team members that were central in coordinating these noble efforts, with hopes of sharing thoughts and perspectives with interested learners. Dr. Puni Kalra will return to to our state, and head up a panel discussion on the Sikh Temple mental health response efforts that will include the perspectives of the mental health professionals and volunteers who were there and made it happen. The panel discussion will occur at Mt. Mary University from 4 to 5 as a component of the Social Living Conference. Persons interested in registering for the conference can register at eventbrite.com. If you are interested in the free to the community panel discussion, RSVP with your name and the number in your party to MASLCommunity@gmail.com.
Dr. Kalra to be joined by:
related links:
For more information on ongoing efforts of the Sikh Community to promote tolerance and understanding in the Milwaukee area and beyond, visit serve 2 unite
For those of us living in the greater Milwaukee area, the events that transpired on August 5th of 2012 will be permanently etched into our collective memory. I remember my experience first learning of the incident well. I was returning to my car after participating in church services at our family's church downtown and planning on going about our Sunday. Always on Sunday mornings our family has the radio tuned in to the Dewey Gills Big Band show on local independent radio station 91.7. Typically, the entire show serves as Sunday morning time warp, sending listeners into the yesteryear of jazz music, with Dewey's rich commentaries and stories serving as the only modern reference point to a soundscape set somewhere between 1928 and 1950. However, on this particular day the sanctity of my Sunday morning experience would be intruded upon by the profane reminder of the violence and threat that continues to exist in this world.
I recall my initial reaction, learning that there was a live shooter somewhere in Oak Creek, and taking a few moments to consider the nearby proximity of the shooting. As details emerged, Dewey indicated that police were on the scene and that the shooter was inside a Sikh Temple where several shootings had occurred. This was the first I had known of the Oak Creek temple which has since grown familiar to me. The brief report was unsettling. National tragedies of this nature have, unfortunately, had some precedent in recent decades. The physical closeness of the tragedy, and the fact that it was occurring presently, in a place of worship, made the whole ordeal more troubling and immediate for me as I listened on inside my car just outside of my own church. The flurry of news reports and media attention that followed the shooting was quite persistent over the next several days. The tragic details would be reported along with the related co-ocurring stories of heroism and community responsiveness that so often interlay reportings of human massacre and violence. Six victims. One female. An unhinged debauchery involving a disturbed white
supremacist who would take his own life, becoming the final fatality of the day.
But the day's collateral would also include numerous others who were physically injured and traumatized by the actions of the armed gunman. Included amongst the injured was the heroic officer, Lt. Brian Murphy, who ran into known danger and endured numerous gun shots in his act of pursuing the shooter. One gunshot was to the neck, resulting in near fatal wounds.Over the course of the following days, the Sikh community would be provided an unprecedented degree of support and regard from a community which scarcely attended to it's existence earlier. The Temple would experience visits from the mayor, governor and the first lady. President Obama formally addressed the tragedy to a global audience. The prime minister of India paid his regards. Over the course of the tragedy, our community would awaken to the awareness of this sad circumstance: somehow it had happened here.
 |
| Lt. Brian Murphy |
Around a thousand well wishers and neighbors affected by the tragedy arrived at the nearby Oak Creek High School for the ceremony. Neighbors from Milwaukee, Cudahy, Oak Creek and elsewhere came to together, covering their heads in Sikh fashion, bearing witness to the loss to traditional Sikh music and chanting.
Acknowledging the loss of the troubled and sick gunman among the Sikh family members and congregants that were being laid to rest. Imploring compassion and inviting the community in to their mourning.
Tragedy had struck and the suffering was real. Certainly, the harrowing ordeal would leave its impact upon the Temple. Caution would need to be raised resulting in new security measures introduced. Then came the question, what to do for the mental health needs of the congregation as they re-entered their former place of spiritual sanctity, ravaged by death and gunfire. Although endowed with a longstanding religious tradition capable of providing spiritual direction and guidance, the Sikh community in Milwaukee had only a limited number of internal resources when it came to mental health providers. There would also be limits in the extent to which a community could serve it's own therapeutic needs in the face of a shared and collective tragedy.
Early after the shootings, the Sikh community would be approached by Child and Family Counseling program through Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, who would take a leading role in organizing mental health providers to support the community in addressing the
I was one of the community members who received such a telephone call. Due to my role as the Public Education Coordinator for the Wisconsin Psychological Association and in light my work at Sebastian Family Psychology Practice which caters to the needs of refugee groups and global populations, I was contacted relatively shortly after the shooting with hopes that I might be helpful in the organizational efforts. In particular, there was a need for mental health providers who might have experience with Sikhism or who may know how to speak Punjabi. Although I had no such experience or connections, I offered to aide in any way that I could in support of the community, with either networking initiatives or through providing direct services. In the upcoming weeks, I would establish contact with a fellow Psychologist, Dr. Puni Kalra,
 |
| Dr. Puni Kalra |
Whereas other approaches to crisis response focus on the crisis and on the prevention and management of symptoms of trauma, the approach taken by the mental health response team remained much more strength-based, embracing a growth oriented ecological model that actively engaged the Sikh community, building upon the sense of community and enhancing personal and shared agency in the face of victimhood.
I was privy to efforts that focused on the supporting youth of the congregation. Stories from the day of the shooting were particularly troubling as they relate to the children of the temple. As the gun man began discharging his firearms in the temple, many youth fled the shooter and ran quite naturally to the lower-level of the temple, where a large Sunday school room had been set up for weekly religious instruction. However, on the day of the shooting, the door to the basement was locked an unable to be opened. So as the panic stricken youth ran to seek refuge of the basement, they were turned back and needed to run back up the stairs and risk further exposure to the gunman.
It seemed particularly fitting that this very space would be widely utilized in the reclaiming of lost security that had occurred on that tragic day. On a bi-weekly basis, a team of incognito mental health professionals and well intended community members joined in on organized youth activities at the temple, with the covert agenda of imparting piece of mind and greater social-emotional security in following weeks.
My own experience in this role, serving as a stooge for mental health, was humbling and eyeopening. Early in the process I was provided with some general objectives, which we would pursue through strategic selection of peer building activities and group work. Eery-other week, the mental health team arrange a new activity for the 50 some youth ages five to eighteen that would serve some purpose in strengthening social contacts and in the promotion of emotional awareness and resilience. Activities included the "bully busting" exercises (which identified strategies for students to come together when feeling targeted or when 'bullying' occurs), social outings, and exercises in team building and communication. One objective involved getting the Sikh youth out into the community together to promote healthy integration into the Oak Creak neighborhood and to raise awareness of the Sikh community within the Oak Creek and surrounding area. Mental health professionals were challenged to operate out of our traditional roles. "Therapy" became bowling, trick or treating, and allowing our inner children to emerge when out in the community with these bright and spirited youth. Always, we needed to maintain our perspective as adults and professionals, as youth would spontaneously share their experiences and find healthy ways to open up to a trusted group of caring adult community members. 
Given the age range of the youth we were serving, it became quickly apparent that we would need to cater different activities to different age groups or scaffold and structure activities in a way that would promote older youth to take on healthy roles of leadership and mentoring of younger youth. As the group continued, we eventually broke the students up into smaller "teams", consisting of adolescents, pre-teens, and younger children in each group. These became sustaining "families" where students were able to draw support from one another and experience a social network of belonging within the larger group.Always, we emphasized cooperation and communication between groups rather than competition. This was to prevent rifts from occurring between groups and to help all experience healthycommunity feeling. At the onset of the group, mental health professionals and adult community members remained available and attentive to the emotional needs of the youth. However, by tending to the development of healthy relations through social embeddedness within the group, adults were able to "back off" from the youth and allow the group to be a self-sustaining network. No longer were we the "experts" in the needs of the youth. Instead, peer relations formed and youth were empowered to learn and grow together. Never was the tragedy formally addressed through any overt intervention. However, should need for treatment or therapy emerge in any of the youth, we would be in a position to help assess that need and aptly suited to assist families in accessing needed services.
As an experiment in social living, the coordinated efforts that were initiated through a partnership between the Sikh community and Children's Hospital afford us a strength-based model for community responding to future shootings. As I complete this blog, we are faced with yet another mass shooting in the state of Oregon, resulting in 10 more lives lost to gun violence. It is an unfortunate truth, that we have not seen the end of shootings of this nature in our society. Fortunately, through experience, we have some precedent for healthy community responding.
 |
| Oak Creek Sikh Temple today |
Come and Learn!
Dr. Kalra to be joined by:
 |
| Navi Gill |
 |
| Jasvir Singh |
 |
| Ron Pupp, PhD, LPC |
related links:
For more information on ongoing efforts of the Sikh Community to promote tolerance and understanding in the Milwaukee area and beyond, visit serve 2 unite
 |
| Blog author Ben Rader with son Solomon |
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