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Guns, gangs and Boston's miracle
PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2005.11.24
PAGE: A25
BYLINE: MARGARET WENTE
SECTION: Comment Column
EDITION: Metro
WORD COUNT: 768
Guns, gangs and Boston's miracle
Eugene Rivers is on the phone from his home in Boston.
We're talking about the shooting in the Toronto church last week -- the
one that's galvanized everybody (yet again) over the crisis of gun
violence in the city. "Have they caught the guy who did it yet?" he
asks.
I tell him no. Nobody will talk to the police.
Rev. Rivers sounds amazed. "If that had happened here," he says, "all
the black clergy would have held a joint press conference, and called
on
the community to co-operate with the police." In the early 1990s,
Boston
had its own crisis with gangs and guns.
Mr. Rivers, a black inner-city Pentecostal minister, led the way in
tackling it. He started by telling some very hard truths. Then he built
strategic partnerships with police and politicians. Gradually, the wall
of silence was broken down. Over a decade, inner-city crime dropped 77
per cent.
On Tuesday, a group of black leaders met with Paul Martin about the
crisis in Toronto. They complained the government has failed to come up
with real solutions for the escalating violence and its root causes,
and
said that sending black youths to prison is no answer. "We are a
community of people who have faced systemic racism, anti-black racism,"
said Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, president of the Jamaican Canadian
Association.
"The black leadership in Canada is using dated and obsolete language,"
says Mr. Rivers. "There is no 'racism' discourse in Boston. We've moved
beyond that." In his view, black churches ought to take the lead in
combatting the crisis. That's what happened in Boston. He says church
leaders have to climb down from their pulpits and find ways to connect
with young men. They've also got to strike a deal with governments:
Give
us the resources for outreach and social programs, and we won't make
excuses for violent crime. "They have to make a decision to engage
this,
and not hide behind the rhetoric of racism." Mr. Rivers argues the
black
middle class has failed its poor by refusing to confront the cultural
catastrophes that sweep boys into thug life. First, there's father
absence, which leaves them unmoored and out of control. "The failure of
black men to discipline their sons has created a generation of de facto
orphans." Next, there are the toxic messages of gangsta rap that
glorify
outlaw life.
Gangsta rap and hip-hop -- which have spread to the slums of Paris,
Brixton and Rio -- moved into the void left by the decline of the
civil-rights movement. "The globalization of thug life," he says, "is
the direct result of the failure of the black middle class to engage
the
crisis of the underclass." Tough words. But the man comes from a tough
place. His father abandoned the family. He got involved with gang life
when he was 12. For a while, as an adult, he lived off welfare fraud.
But there were influential men who saw how smart he was, and eventually
he wound up at Harvard.
Boston's anti-crime initiative has three legs: prevention, intervention
and enforcement. There are a lot of strategies to intervene with
high-risk kids before they turn into thugs. When it doesn't work, the
reverend is unequivocal about the consequences. "The thugs must be
locked up for a long time. They must be made an example of." One of his
challenges was to bring on board the people he calls the "hug-a-thug
liberals" -- those who see only victims, never criminals.
But he also challenged the law-and-order crowd -- the ones who see a
thug in every kid. All sides had to get past the rhetoric and focus on
what works. By now, there are strong networks among Boston's community
leaders, police and politicians; they regularly work together on crime
issues. The police commissioner and the mayor are on the reverend's
speed-dial.
Not everything is wonderful in Boston. Crime has spiked again, partly
because of a population jump among young black men. A new generation of
young cops has to learn they can't be cowboys. "We have to re-engage,"
says Mr. Rivers. "It's a new game." But in Boston, that game no longer
includes the race card. "Black-on-black violence," he says, "is
ultimately a referendum on black leadership. That's what it's really
all
about."
[email protected]
PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2005.11.24
PAGE: A25
BYLINE: MARGARET WENTE
SECTION: Comment Column
EDITION: Metro
WORD COUNT: 768
Guns, gangs and Boston's miracle
Eugene Rivers is on the phone from his home in Boston.
We're talking about the shooting in the Toronto church last week -- the
one that's galvanized everybody (yet again) over the crisis of gun
violence in the city. "Have they caught the guy who did it yet?" he
asks.
I tell him no. Nobody will talk to the police.
Rev. Rivers sounds amazed. "If that had happened here," he says, "all
the black clergy would have held a joint press conference, and called
on
the community to co-operate with the police." In the early 1990s,
Boston
had its own crisis with gangs and guns.
Mr. Rivers, a black inner-city Pentecostal minister, led the way in
tackling it. He started by telling some very hard truths. Then he built
strategic partnerships with police and politicians. Gradually, the wall
of silence was broken down. Over a decade, inner-city crime dropped 77
per cent.
On Tuesday, a group of black leaders met with Paul Martin about the
crisis in Toronto. They complained the government has failed to come up
with real solutions for the escalating violence and its root causes,
and
said that sending black youths to prison is no answer. "We are a
community of people who have faced systemic racism, anti-black racism,"
said Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, president of the Jamaican Canadian
Association.
"The black leadership in Canada is using dated and obsolete language,"
says Mr. Rivers. "There is no 'racism' discourse in Boston. We've moved
beyond that." In his view, black churches ought to take the lead in
combatting the crisis. That's what happened in Boston. He says church
leaders have to climb down from their pulpits and find ways to connect
with young men. They've also got to strike a deal with governments:
Give
us the resources for outreach and social programs, and we won't make
excuses for violent crime. "They have to make a decision to engage
this,
and not hide behind the rhetoric of racism." Mr. Rivers argues the
black
middle class has failed its poor by refusing to confront the cultural
catastrophes that sweep boys into thug life. First, there's father
absence, which leaves them unmoored and out of control. "The failure of
black men to discipline their sons has created a generation of de facto
orphans." Next, there are the toxic messages of gangsta rap that
glorify
outlaw life.
Gangsta rap and hip-hop -- which have spread to the slums of Paris,
Brixton and Rio -- moved into the void left by the decline of the
civil-rights movement. "The globalization of thug life," he says, "is
the direct result of the failure of the black middle class to engage
the
crisis of the underclass." Tough words. But the man comes from a tough
place. His father abandoned the family. He got involved with gang life
when he was 12. For a while, as an adult, he lived off welfare fraud.
But there were influential men who saw how smart he was, and eventually
he wound up at Harvard.
Boston's anti-crime initiative has three legs: prevention, intervention
and enforcement. There are a lot of strategies to intervene with
high-risk kids before they turn into thugs. When it doesn't work, the
reverend is unequivocal about the consequences. "The thugs must be
locked up for a long time. They must be made an example of." One of his
challenges was to bring on board the people he calls the "hug-a-thug
liberals" -- those who see only victims, never criminals.
But he also challenged the law-and-order crowd -- the ones who see a
thug in every kid. All sides had to get past the rhetoric and focus on
what works. By now, there are strong networks among Boston's community
leaders, police and politicians; they regularly work together on crime
issues. The police commissioner and the mayor are on the reverend's
speed-dial.
Not everything is wonderful in Boston. Crime has spiked again, partly
because of a population jump among young black men. A new generation of
young cops has to learn they can't be cowboys. "We have to re-engage,"
says Mr. Rivers. "It's a new game." But in Boston, that game no longer
includes the race card. "Black-on-black violence," he says, "is
ultimately a referendum on black leadership. That's what it's really
all
about."
[email protected]