HELP IS ON THE WAY

By Frederick A. Hurst

Delinda Baymon Dykes brought them in—all five of them—to talk to me about the problems our kids are having. Delinda is the Director of SOURCE (Saving Others Utilizing Resources Collectively for Empowerment), a community based group that voluntarily reaches out to our kids in the streets where they play and fight and too often, die. I sat with them in the Point of View conference room for more than two hours. I listened to what the six had to say about the gang activity in Mason Square and the problems it causes non-gang members.

What they had to say was graphic and chilling: about the ready availability of guns, the willingness of more and more kids to use guns with abandon and the fear that has caused others to arm themselves in self defense. They talked about the street gangs that lay claim to turf and the deadly consequences awaiting those who challenge their hegemony. They spoke of the “few really bad ones” who set the tone for the many who joined in the self-destructive behavior through peer pressure or who felt the need to protect themselves from being victimized by it in ways that made them part of the problem. What were once fist fights and then fist fights that sometimes led to gunfire are now gunfights first. “Why waste time on a fist fight that you know is gonna get you shot if you win. You might as well just shoot,” one young man explained to me.

They had many stories to tell. One older visitor, who had spent many years in and out of jail, described the hopelessness of his own plight. He was determined to reform, get a job and care for his wife and kids but was denied all of the jobs he applied for after the potential employers did a CORI check of his past record. He was surviving on his personal strength and conviction that one day things would be okay but he pointed out to me that there exists in our community an entire and ever growing subculture of young people with records who can never live a normal life. He emphasized that it was not a matter of the members of this subculture losing hope. Hope is not a part of their thinking. As another guest put it, “They just don’t care.” It was life on the streets that landed them in jail but life and survival on the streets is all they know and, for the most part, it’s an addiction they’ve learned to love.

One young lady at the meeting was hoping to save her young brother. The streets had lured him and she feared that, without help, he was as good as dead. She knew violent death. Both her cousin, whose mother and grandmother were drug addicted, and the father of her child had been shot and killed in the streets. She was determined to protect her own seven years old while trying to rescue her brother but she was concerned that the attraction that the streets have for her brother might defeat her best efforts.

The discussion drifted to the role of poverty. My guests said that because they don’t have anything, many of the kids find themselves in the streets trying to get something and drugs have presented many with the short-term means. He explained how some felt they had to kill to “stay on top”, i.e., “to protect their name, reputation and turf,” all of which hold inflated positions of importance in street culture. I challenged him with my own history and that of many of my contemporaries of being raised by a poor, single parent without being consumed by the streets and he easily convinced me that the availability of both drugs and guns made the difference along with the tragic fact that many of today’s youngsters come from homes whose parents and in some cases young grandparents have themselves been affected by one or the other or both.

One young man in his mid twenties told me that guns are everywhere and can be easily acquired. “It’s like going into the store and buying a piece of candy.” Twenty-five to fifty dollars can buy you a cheap, used small caliber pistol (“enough to kill somebody”) and a larger caliber pistol, complete with ammunition, can be purchased new for $200.00. Most frightening is the availability of AK47 type automatic rifles for $500.00. He certainly was circumspect with his observation that the ready availability of guns originated from the White community, where they are originally manufactured and funneled into the Black community for profit.

I can’t confirm the numbers but I gauged the sincerity of the young man and he appeared to know what he was talking about. But he made one thing crystal clear, while guns were, at first, the weapon of choice for a few bad apples, many, many young people, fearful of becoming victimized themselves, are buying guns for self defense, adding to an already hot environment. For whatever reason, our kids feel that we have not been able to protect them from an increasingly hostile environment and they have now taken measures to protect themselves, measures that, ironically, have made their environment even more dangerous.

But help is on the way!

That help, in the name of the Reverend Theodore N. Brown Comprehensive Gang Initiative (RBCGI), was the topic of a recent press conference held at the headquarters of the Northern Educational Services (NES), at which it was announced the NES had been awarded a competitive grant for $263,000.00 by the Massachusetts State office of Public Safety’s Byrne Memorial Fund. In the past these grants were available only to public agencies. NES joined the competition when the rules were recently changed to allow private nonprofits to compete for the funds. NES competed against such powerful entities as the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, the City of Springfield Police Department and the office of the Hampden County District Attorney. Not all of the public agencies were pleased that the State awarded so much money to NES and their dissatisfaction was conveyed to the awarding state agency, which was forced to briefly reconsider. The opposition to NES was further fueled by a disgruntled community group’s effort to take over the grant but the state stuck with NES, which has since incorporated the public agencies into its plans.

A review of the NES strategy for coping with violence in our community reveals why its proposal prevailed. As Reverend Talbert Swan II, who is Assistant Executive Director of NES and in charge of the program’s implementation, explained to POV, NES didn’t just pull a plan out of the sky. To the contrary, its proposal was based upon a well researched and fully tested plan developed by the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ). The study focused on different approaches used across the country to stem the tide of youth violence. The approaches included programs that focused on intervention, suppression and prevention. The intervention programs involved going out into the streets and attempting to steer kids back into the mainstream. Suppression efforts involved law enforcement crackdowns such as is occurring in Holyoke under Chief Scott. Prevention programs were designed to get to the young people before they became involved in negative behavior and strengthening their resolves. The research showed that the most effective models for coping with the issues of youth violence and gang behavior were models that merged the three approaches. The merger concept that NES incorporated into its proposal is based upon the well-researched and tested OJJ model.

Listening to the articulate Reverend Swan explaining the program and how it is going to be implemented was itself exciting. His was the determined voice of a well-informed planner who has enough personal experiences to claim a very special and important connection to the problems involved. RTBCGI (Reverend Theodore N. Brown Comprehensive Gang Initiative) has three working components. The first and probably most dangerous, is the Intervention component, which has been subcontracted out to SOURCE, a community based organization that has a history of working with troubled young Black people. SOURCE staff will go directly to the streets where the young people are and try to steer them according to their needs. The second is a Suppression component, which involves RTBCGI in a close collaboration with local law enforcement agencies, a collaboration that got off to an uncertain start but that has jelled into a “solid” working relationship.

The third and probably most vital is the Prevention component. The Prevention component will operate directly from NES, the Black-run umbrella agency for the initiative. Its title is “Rights of Passage” and it utilizes a well-researched and tested curriculum called “All Stars.” The curriculum is designed to get into the hearts of young people before they have been consumed by risk behaviors and to lead them to a more positive plain. “Idealism” is an important curriculum concept. It revolves around the central question that each young person will be encouraged to examine: “What is your ideal future for yourself?” The curriculum is designed to then show each individual how certain risk behaviors jeopardize their ideal future. “Normalizing” is another key concept. Teens tend to behave according to what they believe is acceptable to their peers. Studies show that what teens believe about their peers is often wrong. Studies have shown that smoking, for example, is viewed by most teens as “stupid” behavior while teens who smoke mistakenly believe they are perceived as cool. The All Stars curriculum is directed toward correcting such misconceptions.

“Commitment” is the final step in the curriculum. Each youngster is encouraged to commit to a specific set of future goals and is helped to design steps to meet those goals.

NES was formed forty years ago by prominent Black community leaders to respond to the needs of Black community youngsters. Run for the last 25 years by the fierce and uncompromising Director, Norma Baker, the agency has been one of the few Black agencies able to survive the White backlash that resulted in direct government grants to the community being shifted to local governments through block grants. Local government very quickly redirected most of the block grant funds away from the Black community. The award of funds directly to NES that otherwise were going to primarily white controlled agencies, represents a welcome recommitment toward keeping the Black community in control of its own destiny.

Asked to compare the RTBCGI to the much heralded Cosby initiative, Reverend Swan described attendance at a Cosby-initiative meeting of thirty-one (31) people. Twenty-two (22) of those present were White and one of the most prominent among them spent the entire meeting dozing. He observed, “Those who were sitting around the table talking didn’t have the vested interest in the young people involved…Most of those who attended will go back to Longmeadow or Wilbraham where they are not affected by the type of things our kids experience. And while the Cosby Initiative may have the stamp of approval from the mainstream media, it does not have credibility with most of the kids. The people involved don’t know the streets.” As for Cosby himself, “You can’t talk about problems without solutions and when you talk about solutions, you must involve people who have vested interest.”

Reverend Swan brings a wealth of history and experience to the task. His father, Fred Swan, is a long term community activist who built a highly regarded community health center from scratch. His uncle, Benjamin Swan, five-term State Representative from the 11^th Hampden District, for years stood shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most prominent civil rights greats as they destroyed segregation barriers and he has never ceased his involvement with the Black community. Reverend Swan’s mother, Delois Swan, will always be highly regarded for her vital role in education and politics in Massachusetts. His namesake and uncle, Reverend Talbert Swan I, Pastor of Solid Rock C.O.G.I.C., was deeply involved in civil rights and community action and could write a history on Model Cities, the Springfield Action Commission, the Concentrated Employment Program and much more. He could help those who are interested to understand how much good came from programs run in the community, by the community, for the community. Even as the mainstream press promotes sanitized, marginal efforts, most recently represented by the “Cosby Initiative”, Talbert Swan II and others, working directly out of the community for the community, are trying to pick up the baton from these warriors and to regenerate the spirit of self-help that began slipping some time ago when our liberal “friends” decided they could help us better than we could help ourselves. n