Our nation is drunk on violence. Cities across America are grappling with a relentless drumbeat of death. On average, 40 US citizens are lost to violence each day. Nowhere is America's crisis of violence more evident than in African-American communities, where homicide is the leading cause of death for males between the ages of 15 and 24. What is the real cost? How do we change it? While some of the solution lies in a greater focus on prevention rather than prosecution, intervention rather than incarceration, there is an even simpler, fundamental premise that we must accept—the lives of African-American men and boys matter. Mitch Landrieu