The Power of Listening

Meeting Professor Leslie Harris in her Johnston Hall office felt less like an academic interview and more like sitting with someone who had spent years listening, really listening to Milwaukee. Her space was warm, filled with books, and somehow made the conversation feel bigger than the room itself. As soon as we asked about her work, Harris lit up.

She told us about “Voices Against Gun Violence,” describing it as “a public humanities project, a living archive of stories of gun violence in the Milwaukee area.” The phrase “living archive” sounded less like research and more like a heartbeat. She explained how the project grew out of her friendship with Debra, the founder of Mothers Against Gun Violence.

Over coffee, Debra once told her that people needed a space to tell their stories because news coverage so often misrepresented them. Harris remembered her saying that some media coverage becomes so dismissive that it erases people. That conversation became the spark for their collaboration.

Harris reminded us of that statistics alone never tell the full story. “We can’t understand gun violence through statistics,” she said. Even if crime rates fall, hearing gunshots still reshapes how people understand their own neighborhoods. Numbers can feel clean, but real experiences rarely do. When the topic turned to media coverage, her tone sharpened.

She recalled how Debra learned about her son’s death from a news report that framed it as gang-related. Harris shook her head as she repeated her own criticism: misrepresentation stigmatizes the deaths and harms the survivors.” It was clear she carries that story with her.

She described a girl at a high school event years ago who raised her hand and said, “Everyone knows what is happening to us, and nobody cares if we tell our stories.”

Harris paused after sharing that, letting it sit in the air. There was quiet for a moment. Harris sees gun violence as something that spreads through communities like a contagion: “When gun violence starts happening, it becomes a way people start interacting with each other.”

That image of violence moving like a virus was chilling, but it also made sense. She also described the posters at bus stops across Milwaukee, each with a QR code linking to someone’s story. She said that was one way they were trying to keep the archive alive, even though they’re no longer collecting new stories.

Before we left, we asked what Milwaukee could do better. Her answer was simple but powerful: invest in what already exists. “This is not an individual problem between two people arguing,” she said. “It is a cultural problem.”

Communities aren’t failing. They don’t care they’re struggling because they don’t have the resources they need. Walking out of her office, we both felt like we had been handed not just information, but responsibility. Harris didn’t just teach us about her project; she showed us why these stories matter, and why listening might be one of the most powerful things any of us can do.