A community member offers a suggestion for peacefully resolving disputes at the same seminar, held at the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center.

Meetings are hosting in the back room of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center on Kingston Ave.

A seminar participant looks over a worksheet listing potentially problematic ways of describing conflict.

Participants listened as James discussed hypothetical ways of addressing inter-personal conflicts.

The mural was painted in conjunction with the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and the Groundswell Community Mural Project.

Despite the mural's message, there have been more than a dozen shootings in the area in the last year.

A 29-year-old man was shot at 6 a.m. within view of the mural in November of last year.

One year later, gun violence continues to plague Crown Heights. Within the last two months there have been three shootings in the immediate vicinty of Brower Park.

An unidentified male was shot at this intersection, less than block from another recent shooting at Howard Ave near MacDougal St.

The NYCHA development where James Randoll's sister lives is located on the corner of Stanley and Vermont, the site of two shootings that occurred within hours of each other last November. "I see it all the time," said Randoll of the gun violence around Stanley Ave. "It's terrible here."

The intersection of Wortman and Vermont Ave., the site of yet another shooting in the shadow of the Penn-Wortman houses, is just one block from the site of the shootings at Stanley and Vermont.

All three shootings occured within a stone's throw of public playgrounds.

Tygee Graham lost a friend in a shooting two months ago. The violence, she says, is a fact of life in East New York. "When you're in the hood, you face this kind of thing," she said. "I stay out of the streets. The streets don't always come looking for you."

Mara Aragones and her mother, Evelyn Adorno, live in the Penn-Wortman houses, also located on Stanley and Vermont Aves. "I have a six year old child, an autistic child," said Adorno, who lives in fear of stray bullets. "He loves looking out the window, but I can't let him."

On Dec. 2, 2011, a man shot and stabbed with a machete ran three blocks down Evergreen Ave in Bushwick and collapsed at this public telephone.

On Dec. 2, 2011, a man shot and stabbed with a machete ran three blocks down Evergreen Ave in Bushwick and collapsed at this public telephone.

The shooting took place at 3:30 p.m., as elementary students from the Thomas Warren Field School, across the street from where the man collapsed, as students were leaving to go home.

A man was shot outside this apartment building on Prospect Pl on Nov. 28, 2011.

The shooting occured across the street from a basketball court at about 9am.

At Albany Ave and Fulton St a young man was shot for wearing the wrong colored clothes on Nov 25. Now in recovery, the victim has lost a school basketball scholarship.