Live Free Oklahoma is part of a national effort to rethink public safety, but its work unfolds at street level—in neighborhoods where gun violence, trauma and systemic neglect intersect daily. Originally launched in 2023 in northeast Oklahoma City, the organization represents a localized expression of Live Free USA, a national movement that has spent more than a decade advocating for community-based solutions to gun violence and mass incarceration.
At its core, Live Free’s model challenges the assumption that safety can be achieved through punishment alone. Instead, it centers prevention, credible messengers and long-term community investment—an approach increasingly recognized by public health researchers and violence-prevention experts as effective, though chronically underresourced.
Live Free USA was founded in 2011, emerging from organizing and violence-intervention work in Oakland, California, where coordinated community strategies helped reduce shootings and homicides. Under the leadership of Rev. Michael McBride—often known as Pastor Mike—the organization grew into a national network focused on ending gun violence, mass incarceration and what it describes as the mass criminalization of communities.
Rather than operating as a single centralized program, Live Free USA functions as a hub, providing training, advocacy support and investment for local leaders and organizations that implement violence-intervention strategies in their own cities. Education, policy advocacy and funding support form the backbone of the national organization’s work, but the day-to-day activities and interventions happen through local affiliates like Live Free Oklahoma.
That structure allows communities to adapt proven strategies to local realities, an important distinction in a state like Oklahoma where political, cultural, and funding landscapes differ sharply from the coastal cities where violence-intervention programs first gained national attention.
Live Free Oklahoma was founded by Jabee Williams, an Oklahoma City artist and community advocate whose work is shaped by personal loss: his brother was killed by gun violence. Williams’ leadership bridges culture, activism and grassroots organizing, positioning Live Free Oklahoma as both a service provider and a movement-building effort.
“This is the right time because people are tired of watching and hearing about loved ones in our community dying because of gun violence,” Williams said. “Everybody’s asking the same things: how can we help, and what can we do? The support is there. People are wanting to help, not just talk about it.”
In 2024, Williams was named as one of TheGrio’s Heroes. The awards are an annual initiative by TheGrio, a Black-focused media platform, to recognize “everyday heroes”: ordinary African Americans making extraordinary positive impacts in their communities and uplifting Black culture, often without mainstream recognition. Honorees are selected through nominations and work across fields including social justice, education, healthcare and entrepreneurship. Recognition culminates in specials and features around Juneteenth, highlighting their efforts to improve lives and foster community.
The award underscored the visibility of Oklahoma’s emerging violence-prevention work, even as it continues to face challenges around local funding and sustainability.
“Oklahoma has grown a lot. We’ve added population, infrastructure and jobs. We’ve garnered national attention, and that’s a good thing. But, that growth hasn’t reached everybody. There are still neighborhoods dealing with the same pressures [they’ve dealt with] for decades,” Williams said. “The gap between who is benefiting and who is being left out is real. Live Free exists to make sure progress doesn’t only belong to a few.”
The organization’s initial focus has been northeast Oklahoma City, an area that has experienced persistent financial neglect alongside higher rates of gun violence. Live Free Oklahoma deploys trained “Peacemakers”—trusted community members—who work directly with individuals at the highest risk of being involved in violence, whether as victims or perpetrators. Their role includes mediating conflicts, de-escalating tensions and connecting people to services like mental health care, housing assistance and employment resources. The work is relational. It is slow and steady by design, prioritizing trust over enforcement and long-term stability over short-term metrics.
While direct violence intervention is central to Live Free Oklahoma’s work, the organization also invests in community engagement and political advocacy. Events such as the Peace Needs Conference and Peace Expo bring together residents, service providers, and local leaders to discuss what safety looks like beyond policing.
This broader vision aligns closely with Live Free USA’s national priorities, which include advocating for public funding for community violence intervention and shifting the narrative around public safety toward prevention and healing. Nationally, Live Free USA has supported coalitions that have unlocked significant public investment in violence-prevention programs, while also training local leaders through Peacemaker Bootcamps and leadership institutes.
“This model works,” Williams said, “because it has been proven in other cities, with real people. In places like Chicago, Oakland, Richmond and New York, community-led violence intervention has helped reduce shootings and homicides by focusing on relationships and meeting the needs of the community.”
For Oklahoma, that connection provides both legitimacy and infrastructure, access to research-informed practices and national advocacy, while local organizers navigate challenging funding environments.
Despite growing evidence that community-based violence intervention saves lives, programs like Live Free Oklahoma often operate amidst uncertainty. Funding is frequently short-term, politically vulnerable or tied to narrow outcomes that do not reflect the complexity of the work.
“The biggest challenge is funding, resources and understanding what this work actually is,” Williams said. “Community violence intervention isn’t volunteer work, and it isn’t a side project. It’s a profession. People who can step in during high-risk moments are credible messengers; they have to be trained, supported and paid to do this work safely and effectively. If we want real results, we have to treat community violence intervention like the lifesaving work it is.”
Live Free Oklahoma’s experience reflects a broader national tension: community organizations are asked to prove their effectiveness while simultaneously struggling to secure the resources needed to sustain their work. The national-local relationship with Live Free USA offers technical support and visibility, but it does not insulate local chapters from the realities of municipal and state-level funding decisions.
Still, for Williams and his team, the work remains rooted in people rather than policy cycles. “Transformed people transform communities” is a guiding belief of the Live Free movement, one that places individual healing and accountability at the center of public safety.
Together, Live Free USA and Live Free Oklahoma illustrate how national movements are built: not through replication, but through adaptation. The national organization provides strategy, advocacy and investment; the local chapter provides presence, trust and lived experience.
The local leaders of Live Free Oklahoma are well known and trusted in their communities. In Oklahoma City, that means safety work that looks less like enforcement and more like relationship-building. It is a quiet, often invisible labor that happens long before violence makes headlines.
To learn more about Live Free Oklahoma, or to support the work of hiring and training credible messengers, visit livefreeoklahoma.com.
This article appears in Dec 24-2025.