Last October I had to walk to work while my car was in the repair shop. On the way I met Walter, an 11-year-old African American boy who lives on Parsells Avenue, heading for Number One School, right on my way. We walked together and talked about the World Series, but eager for more substantive conversation, I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. "A professional basketball player." "If you can't do that, then what?" I asked. Without missing a beat he said, "a professional football player." Our conversation continued, though I couldn't help but wonder what will become of Walter. Given what I know about growing up black and male in our culture, I was disturbed at the prospect.
That incident took me back to last June's General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Indianapolis. There I heard a lecture by Geoffrey Canada, an African American, who heads the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in New York City, where he grew up. As a result, I am part of a consortium currently trying to bring Canada to Rochester because I think we need his experience and his vision. Though he graduated from Bowdoin College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with "rich kids, well educated, on their way to ruling the world," Canada has returned there to help save its children.
He recounts his compelling story in Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America, which opens a window on the urban ghetto which moved me deeply. Canada remembers his father as not a bad man, just not much of a presence. He drank, couldn't get or hold a job, treated members of the family decently, but Canada's memories of him are at best neutral. When his father moved out, he left the family nothing. For 15 years they occasionally visited him.
It was Geoffrey's mother Mary, to whom the book is dedicated, who kept the family together. She worked when she could, went on welfare when she couldn't. The only difference to Geoffrey was her absence when she worked.
Canada became aware of violence at age four. He had three brothers, Daniel then 6; John 5; and Reuben 2. One day his two older brothers came back from the playground. "Where's John's jacket?" their mother asked. John answered, "A boy took it." She asked Daniel, "And what did you do when this boy was taking your brother's jacket?" Daniel muttered, 'I didn't do nuthin'. I told Johnny not to take his jacket off. I told him.' "My mother exploded. 'You let somebody take your brother's jacket and you did nothing? That's your younger brother. You can't let people just take your things. You know I don't have money for another jacket. You better not ever do this again. Now you go back there and get your brother's jacket." Though his older brothers were both smaller than the playground bully, they got the jacket back. Their mother gathered them around and told them they had to stick together, "she would not tolerate our becoming victims." That philosophy of ghetto parents he summarized as, "Accept it, this is a violent world, so teach (children) to cope by acting more violently than the others."
Canada had a hard time with that philosophy. When he was six he begged his mother to let him go to the store to buy a can of pork and beans. She relented and gave him a dollar. At the store he met a raggedy little boy of 8 with a circle on his head where no hair grew because of ringworm. They walked home together, but on the way back his new friend led him into a back alley and said, point blank, "'Give me your money....My new friend was robbing me." Canada knew he could have hit him with the can of pork and beans in the bag - "'Hit him, hit him!' my mind screamed. But I couldn't. I couldn't hit him. He took the money and just walked away. Why couldn't I bring myself to hit him, to fight back?"
One day older brother Dan was robbed of ten dollars after going shopping for his mother. "We couldn't afford to lose ten dollars," Canada writes. His mother called the police. "They took their time coming and I'm sure were quite amused at this naive family, so serious about catching a petty thief in the South Bronx. This contact with the police shook my confidence in the world....It was nothing they did, it was what they didn't do. They didn't take us seriously....the police didn't care."
Canada tells a story about his right index finger - it goes off on a right angle. He was 12 and when he found a K55 switchblade in the gutter, cleaned it up and kept it. Weapon in pocket he could "Bop" walk, swagger through the dangerous streets and survive. But one day as he practiced pulling it out of his pocket, he cut his finger to the bone. He knew he needed to go to the hospital, but then he would have to tell his mother about the knife and he would have to get rid of it. He splinted the finger with two popsicle sticks and put a bandage around it, telling her he injured it playing basketball. It was healing straight until he hit it again - playing basketball. He kept it from his mother for five years, and has had to live with a crooked finger, a tangible symbol of his struggle for survival.
The story of his grandmother and cherries presents a poignant picture of this non-violent warrior. His grandfather was the pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Harlem. His grandmother was, as he put it, "a Christian woman....They were hard-working, moral people. They were poor." Canada lived with his grandparents during his high school years. "(My grandmother) was determined to save my soul. I was a wild and reckless adolescent whose soul was indeed in peril....She cooled my hot temper and anger over being poor, and she showed me there was dignity even in poverty." They indulged in cherries - eating them in secret since his grandfather would have a fit at the extra dollar they cost. "Later when I went off to Bowdoin College, I would sit in my room thinking about how much my mother and grandmother sacrificed for me to be in college. I would fantasize about how when I graduated and got a good job, the first thing I would buy with my first check in August would be a whole crate of cherries....Grandma died during my sophomore year."
Canada writes, "....Poverty is tough on families in many ways. It's not quite as simple to get out of as people make out. We must be careful to make sure we build ladders so children and their families can climb out of poverty. It's not an easy climb. You can climb all your life and never make it out."
When Geoffrey Canada talks about urban America, he knows whereof he speaks. He has seen the exploding violence of the city and the evolving codes of conduct of the street - from fist to stick to knife - to the new lethal code defined by the gun. He attributes the escalation of urban violence to four factors which serve to reinforce one another.
First, the appearance of crack cocaine, which is both cheaper and more addictive than cocaine itself; its low cost was appealing to those caught in the despair of poverty;
Second, the Rockefeller drug laws of the 1970's with their mandatory sentences for drug dealing. These well-intentioned laws simply drove the drug dealers behind the walls forcing them to use children to do their dirty work selling in the streets. The kids get money, often get robbed and then buy guns to protect themselves;
Third, the availability of cheap handguns which have become part of the youth culture. In the early 1980's handgun sales were down and manufacturers began marketing directly to children and women like cigarette companies. Guns were given more exciting names like Viper. Saturday Night Specials became more affordable.
"Here I was," says Canada, "dealing with children dying every day and trying to solve the problem on the streets, and other Americans were sitting in offices designing new and more effective ways to entice children to use handguns."
Finally, add to those factors a poverty more concentrated and a community more fractured. There was and is a push for more jails - a strategy tied in with economics. He writes, "One person's jail sentence finances another person's mortgage payment or provides tuition for their children. Our criminal justice has become connected to our economic policy, and it's scary."
Canada is a charismatic presence. He is tall and lean and intense. He founded the Harlem Peacemakers Program, a community-wide effort to reduce violence, and the Beacon Schools project which keeps schools open around the clock for community education, culture and recreation - a program emulated across the nation. He has a third-degree black belt and is chief instructor in a martial arts school, teaching karate as well as anti-violence and conflict-resolution techniques.
He was once confronted by an interviewer: "You teach martial arts at your schools. Some people might find that an odd way of working to prevent violence." Canada responded: "It seems counterintuitive; martial arts is about punching and kicking...but you spend a lot of time learning a system of discipline and respect. Good martial arts teachers structure into their classes a worldview that's very much antiviolence. Some kids come into our program thinking they are going to become Bruce Lee in three weeks....The martial arts help you find your center and tell you that no one can move you from that center, no matter what they say or do....The real combat takes place in remaining who you are and not letting others pull you into a violent situation. And that's a very high art form.
"Sooner or later, all my students ask me if I've ever had to use the fighting techniques I've learned, and they're always disappointed when I tell them no. Seventeen years of training, but I've never had to use it - that's why I know that one day I'll be a master at this art. If you can say that you've been in very dangerous neighborhoods, but you've never had to act violently, then you've come to understand something about violence." He concludes, "Violence is a learned response; I know this from my earliest education on the street."
Now why have I spent almost this entire sermon on Geoffrey Canada? Because I believe he gives us a picture of ghetto life from a street level otherwise closed to most of us. Because I believe his analysis of the cause of ghetto violence is right. Because I believe he has developed a program that works - that we might well use here in Rochester.
Canada has been asked, "What should churches do?" He says, "Churches need to raise the volume. We need to stand up and raise our voices in outrage when we find children being harmed anywhere....People hide behind, 'Well, I don't want to get mixed up in politics, because that's not what church is about' - well, it is what it is all about. We have to express outrage at things that are outrageous."
"If the temperature of the bath rises one degree every ten minutes, how will the bather know when to scream?" What does it take to disturb us? What is our disturbance threshold? At what will we be outraged?
I am outraged by our society's counter-productive attempt to address urban violence. Geoffrey Canada warns we are back-loading public spending by investing more in police and prisons and punishment, and less in people and prevention, a front-loading strategy. Let me illustrate by how I spent last Wednesday.
At 3 o'clock I heard Sister Helen Prejean of "Dead Man Walking" fame speak against the death penalty, which disproportionately affects minorities. She has personalized the perpetrators and victims of violence in a compelling way. The death penalty she says, horrible as it is, symbolizes our culture's frustrated and punitive way of dealing with our problems.
We know that even as crime goes down, prison building goes up. We know from President Clinton's anti-crime legislation and from Governor Pataki's proposed budget and from the Monroe County Legislature's prison-building plans we are in for more of the same. Blacks and Latinos make up to 70-80% of those in federal, state and local jails. Canada notes that "William Bennett (former drug czar) said we have so many minorities in jail because they are the ones we can catch." This is back-loading with a vengeance, in Canada's terms.
After hearing Sister Prejean, at 4:30 I went to a meeting at the YWCA's Children's Collaborative and heard the chilling possibilities of what now passes for welfare reform, and its collateral damage to children, more of whom it places at risk. In America it is women and children last. I also heard from women formerly on welfare who turned their lives around, and heard about reforms that provide incentive, not punishment. That is front-loading.
I confess, I am more inclined to listen to the street wisdom of Geoffrey Canada than the politicians who pander to an angry but ill-informed and self-interested public. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., Canada is a kind of Boddhisatva, a Buddhist concept in which those who find enlightenment from the suffering of the world, instead of leaving it for Nirvana, return to help others find their way.
Perhaps, as we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 68th birthday we may be persuaded to join them in the struggle against injustice, so poignantly portrayed in Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun. Surely there is no question about urgency. The murder of comedian Bill Cosby's son this week is a stark reminder of the presence of violence on our urban landscape.
Surely there is no mystery as to how we can help. Our Social Responsibility Task Forces and our School Partnership Program cry out for help. The Rochester Challenge Against Violence, the Childrens Collaborative and Metro-Justice are just a few of the many groups trying to front-load our response to the problems of our community. My young friend Walter and thousands of other Rochester children are waiting.
In the words of poet Adrienne Rich:
"....My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world."
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