EDITORIAL: Silence in the Face of Suffering Is Sin. By Pastor Kyev Tatum




EDITORIAL: Silence in the Face of Suffering Is Sin. By Pastor Kyev Tatum


Guns to Gardens

A Toddler’s Death. A Community’s Cry. A City’s Denial.

“Bury Your Bullets, Not Our Babies” — A Sacred March Down Mississippi Avenue

Scripture

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3


Reflection

“The foundation of all mental illness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.” — Carl Jung


A Cry for Help — From God and the People



On Friday, April 11, 2025, the heartbeat of Fort Worth’s 76104 community pulsed with sacred urgency. We marched together down Mississippi Avenue—from Allen Street, now Atatiana Jefferson Memorial Parkway, to New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church. This was no protest. It was a pilgrimage. A spiritual stand. A public plea for Treatment for the Trauma that continues to torment our neighborhoods and break our hearts.


We marched for the souls lost too soon.

We marched against every form of violence—gun violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, homicides, suicides, and the silent violence of abandonment and neglect.

We marched because trauma doesn’t stay behind closed doors—it spreads through streets, families, and generations.

And we marched because silence in the face of suffering is sin.


But even as our voices rose in unity, tragedy struck again.

Just hours after the march, 2-year-old Ta’Kirus Davon Jones was shot and killed. A baby. Gunned down before he could even turn three.


How long must we bury our children?

How long, Fort Worth, before we truly care?


This is not merely grief—it is a gut-wrenching call to action.

We are not requesting change—we are demanding it.

“Bury your bullets, not our babies.”


This movement is deeply rooted in faith, watered by grief, and cultivated by love. And it is strengthened by divine partnerships:

• The Ministers Justice Coalition of Texas, proclaiming truth and justice from the pulpits to the pavement.

• Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Guns to Gardens Initiative, melting surrendered weapons into tools of life, healing, and growth.

• Farm Fort Worth, our ministry of the soil—growing fresh food, green jobs, and spiritual hope in the center of a food desert.


Together, we are transforming pain into purpose.

We are tilling the ground where death once ruled and planting seeds of life and liberation.


We will not be pacified by performative concern.

We will not be numbed into normalizing this nightmare.

We will not stop until every child can live freely, play safely, and grow fully in our city.


Walk with us.

Pray with us.

Plant with us.

Believe with us.


For Ta’Kirus.

For Atatiana.

For every baby gone too soon and every family left holding empty arms and unanswered prayers.


Let Fort Worth rise to its spiritual responsibility. 

Special Thanks to Golden Gate Funeral Home of Fort Worth. We extend our deepest and most heartfelt gratitude to Golden Gate Funeral Home of Fort Worth and its visionary CEO, Mr. John E. Beckwith, Jr., CFSP, for graciously providing the hearse and casket services that made our sacred march possible.


Your compassion and commitment to community healing turned pain into purpose and helped us symbolically carry the burden of our collective grief through the streets of 76104. Your ministry of presence reminded us that dignity, even in mourning, can be a form of resistance and reverence.



About Pastor Kyev Tatum


Rev. Kyev P. Tatum, Sr. is a civil rights leader, historian, and the Pastor of New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He serves as President of the Ministers Justice Coalition of Texas and is the visionary behind Farm Fort Worth and the Inner City Coffee Exchange. For more than four decades, Pastor Tatum has walked faithfully at the crossroads of faith, justice, and public advocacy—lifting the overlooked, feeding the underserved, and speaking truth to systems of oppression. From student activism to street-level healing, his ministry is rooted in the unwavering belief that faith without action is dead.

#JusticeForTaKirus

#BuryYourBulletsNotOurBabies

#MarchDownMississippi

#TreatmentForTheTrauma

#GunsToGardens

#FarmFortWorth

#HolyHealingIn76104


— Pastor Kyev Tatum

New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church

Ministers Justice Coalition of Texas


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