Suzette Hackney, national columnist with USA TODAY, received second-place honors in the over 35,000 circulation category of the Columns category of the Carmage Walls Commentary Prize.
Second-place includes a curved glass plaque and a cash prize of $1,000.
Josh Susong, senior editor of enterprise and storytelling with USA TODAY, submitted three columns on behalf of Hackney for the Carmage Walls.
Here's the letter that he submitted explaining her entry:
In her series American Contagion, Suzette Hackney offers us a unique window into gun violence in our cities. This epic undertaking in 2023 led to the stories you see here, richly told stories about men who dedicated their lives to ending gun violence — only to be killed by a bullet.
Through moments small and large, Suzette takes us well beyond the mere reporting of the facts. She explores the forces behind them across the kinds of places America might have called urban — in Indianapolis, Seattle and Los Angeles.
She shows us neighborhoods defined by red lines and homicide maps, smokestacks and pump jacks. Here, problematic histories meet the problems of today.
As a national columnist, Suzette also has the authority to suggest solutions.
She holds decision-makers accountable, writing: “Wanting to see children survive and grow into adulthood is not a political position. It’s a moral one. Legislators, governors, representatives and senators, are you listening?”
But she does not shy away from the inconvenient truths. Even as hometown heroes die, community outrage and political responses have not been enough to overcome the power of the gun lobby.
These stories required months of in-depth research — about the victims and their backgrounds, their contributions and their communities. They required that Suzette gain the trust of dozens of reluctant sources. She had to piece together each life from the ground up.
That’s because these are men we'll never be able to meet. Maybe if we could meet them, Suzette tells us, we’d see some solutions to gun violence in America. These neighborhood heroes are out there. But we have to be willing to see.
“We do not have a surplus of people like Jose Quezada. We have only just enough,” one man wrote to Suzette, after her story about Quezada. He was shot dead without warning during a community festival in a Los Angeles public park — the same park where he coached youth sports.
“We cannot lose any more without compensatory grief,” the man added, “a compensatory will to act for the light.”
Suzette’s work is not only a recognition of the lives lost. It’s a profound understanding of the communities they served, and the way those communities’ stories have been twisted, neglected or both.
In her reporting trip to Seattle, Suzette went in pursuit of the story of Elijah Lewis, a young man who had devoted himself to stopping violence and building his community. So she sought out his best friend, Edd Hampton Parks.
Parks agreed to talk to her, but first he asked one question: “Why does USA TODAY care about this?”
Suzette invites us into that moment, writing, “Of course this Black man had to wonder why a big national newspaper wanted to write about his best friend, another Black man, in a way that celebrated everything that was right about them. I took a deep breath and gave Edd the best answer I could. ‘Because I care,’ I said.”
This project is American solutions journalism at its foundation.
Take these journeys with her and you will see one more thing she has been trying to courageously show us. This American contagion is not simply a tragedy. It is our responsibility.
It was a call to action her readers took to heart. Some vowed to mentor or tutor youth. Others promised to explore violence interruption programs in their own communities.
“There’s a neighborhood hero in every city and on every corner and in every stairwell in America,” she writes. “We have far more of them than we see, yet not nearly as many as we need. So like each of these men, we must refuse to give up hope. Every one-in-a-million shot can be stopped — by just one of us.”
First column:
His friends believes he could have been the next MLK. A bullet took his life
Second column:
You might think America's gun problem isn't fixable. You never met Jose Quezada
Third column:
America's largest mass shooting is the one happening every day. But we know how to stop it
Among the judges' comments:
