Javier William Lopez is the Chief Strategy Officer for the Red Hook Initiative (RHI). As RHI’s first Chief Strategy Officer Javier’s current portfolio includes but not limited to: Violence Prevention without Police, Health and Housing, Red Hook Neighborhood Farms, Red Hook Wi-Fi Expansion, Red Hook Houses Health and Housing Campaign, and Red Hook House Capital Restoration Campaign. Javier is part of the local and national “Gun Violence Is A Public Health Issue” movement via supporting new research, program planning and the communications reframing needed to re-classify how society can appropriately respond to Gun Violence in African and Latinx Diaspora communities. Javier, along with many others in the “movement,” views the incidence of Gun Violence in African and Latinx Diaspora neighborhoods is as a result of “unsaid” and “said” racist ideas and policies that have exacerbated the premature mortality rates for members of these communities living in the United States.