BY DANIEL SCHMIDT
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — For the past 19 years, Oscar Penn has spent the first Tuesday in August trying to help connect his neighbors back into their community.
This year, he wants to do something that has an even deeper impact.
When the One Love National Night Out opens at 5 p.m. CT on Tuesday, Aug. 4, at Friendship Baptist Church, Penn and the Concerned Citizens of Opelika will launch Circle of Love, a support network for families who have lost someone to gun violence, and for the survivors, siblings and children left behind.
“We want [everyone] there, and we want to let the world know that we’re not going to accept this as a norm anymore,” said Penn, who serves as both the president of the Concerned Citizens of Opelika and the Lee County lead for Moms Demand Action. “Our mayors, our county commissions, our police, they’re short-staffed. They can’t police our communities by themselves.”
The idea came out of a conversation Penn had with a mother who had lost a child to gun violence. According to Penn, she told him that counseling was not reaching her, and the problem was not the counselor’s training.
The problem was the counselor had not lived through what the mother had and had no way to connect with her pain and grief.
“If you have not gone through what I’ve gone through, it would be insensitive for you to say, ‘I know how you feel,’” Penn said, recounting the conversation he had with the grieving mother.
He had seen a version of what he wanted in Columbus, Georgia, where a group called Circle of Mothers brings together women who have buried their children prematurely. Circle of Love is his attempt to build something similar in East Alabama, and to open it wider.
“We’re including mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings and children,” Penn said. “We want everybody included.”
Families will be invited to set up tables with photographs of their loved ones, wear memorial T-shirts and release balloons.
While there will be a sign-in sheet for attendees to provide their contact information, Penn said the real objective is for people to organically trade phone numbers and become each other’s sponsors.
It is a model that he compared directly to Alcoholics Anonymous as a way for people to connect with each other when the emotional toll of losing a loved one becomes too much for them to bear on their own.
“If I’m an alcoholic, and I need to call a friend at 2 a.m. to keep me from taking a drink, that’s what we want to do,” Penn said. “So, what we’re trying to do here with the Circle of Love is create a group of people who can share contact information, be each other’s sponsors and turn their grief into strength.”
The invitation is not limited to just Opelika residents, or even to those who live in Lee County. Penn said he is reaching out across Chambers, Macon, Russell and Tallapoosa counties and to anyone in East Alabama or West Georgia who can make it to the church.
Penn, 67, said he is being careful about what the event is and is not. He said that the Circle of Love is not aimed at law-abiding gun owners who use firearms for legitimate means protected by the Second Amendment.
“The ones who are fighting and killing one another, they’re not using those weapons for hunting or protecting their families,” Penn said. “They’re doing things with them that are uncalled for.”
Access is also something that is important to Penn. He said over the years, he has watched people avoid the health department, mental health services and almost every other institution that might help them.
For that reason, Penn said he wanted the event to be rotated through neighborhoods, from Shady Park to Jeter Park, to Bandy Park and other locations, so residents who could not make it downtown could still reach the agencies and resources set up during the event.
This is one of the reasons Penn said he helped start a separate National Night Out event in Opelika in 2023.
He recalled when 17-year-old Terrell Morgan was fatally shot while getting off a school bus on Chester Avenue on Sept. 15, 2022, closely followed by a shooting on South Fourth Street near Bethesda Baptist Church on Sept. 18, that same year.
Penn said he was serving as his ward’s Together Opelika program liaison at that time.
He said frustration has come with the fact that attention comes and goes during and after a tragic shooting death.
“[After Morgan was killed] nobody said a word,” Penn said. “There were no cameras.”
In the aftermath of the 2023 mass shooting at a Sweet 16 party in Dadeville that claimed four lives, as well as a string of local deaths, he said officials filled a room at the courthouse and spoke into the microphones. Then it went quiet again.
“We’ve got to stop being an echo,” Penn said. “It’s time to be a voice and not an echo.”
Some of Penn’s sharpest words were for faith leaders, and he said he would like to see one member from every congregation in Lee County to attend the event.
“As many churches as we’ve got in Lee County, they take up all these tithes and offerings [but] they can’t come right here and support a cause,” Penn said. “When are you going to start living what you’re preaching?”
He said that he believes the response, if it comes, will cross the dividing lines some people may expect it to fall along.
“It’s not based on Black and white, and it’s not based on Republican or Democrat,” Penn said. “It’s based on the heart and the love of mankind. The biggest and strongest resource in Lee County is the people.”
The One Love National Night Out will occur from 5 to 8 p.m. at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, located at 432 Maple Ave. in Opelika.
For more information, contact Penn at (334) 939-1003.
Auburn to host 42nd annual National Night Out
The city of Auburn’s Public Safety Department will host its 42nd annual National Night Out from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 4.
That event will be held on the field behind Duck Samford Stadium, which is located at 1623 E. Glenn Ave.
The free event will include food, inflatables, a petting zoo, music, giveaways and a Touch-a-Truck display.
Auburn police officers will also hold a K9 demonstration, school resource officers will be on hand to meet with residents and local organizations will be in attendance to share community resources.
For more information, visit natw.org, and any questions about the city of Auburn’s event can be directed to Rachael Hamilton at rhamilton@auburnal.gov.
Opelika to host annual National Night Out in October
The Opelika Police Department will host its National Night Out event on Oct. 6 at Courthouse Square. The event will run from 5 to 7 p.m.
This free family-friendly event will feature a meet and greet with local police, firefighters and EMS, food, a kids’ zone with inflatables, entertainment and informational booths with community resources.
More information on Opelika’s event will be published closer to the date of the event.
National Night Out is observed in more than 17,000 communities across all 50 states, United States territories and military bases.
The event is intended to raise awareness of crime and drug prevention, build support for local anti-crime efforts and strengthen ties between neighborhoods and their police departments.
