From The Star
What Philadelphia can teach us
Philly's urban streets are becoming less mean, thanks to a group of men who mentor at-risk black youths. `Let us use our arms to embrace each other, not erase each other!' the Men United preach. Philadelphia is listening — and there's a lesson for Toronto, too.
Jan. 8, 2006. 05:48 AM
CATHERINE PORTER
STAFF REPORTER
PHILADELPHIA - It's just 540 kilometres south, but the view from the killing grounds at Dover St. and Cecil B. Moore Ave. in Philadelphia's forlorn and gritty north district is a world away from any one of the scenes where people died by the gun in Toronto last year.
The brownstone buildings that once housed the city's genteel families have long been abandoned; they stand barricaded with clapboards. Crumpled-up chip bags and bottles litter the sidewalks. Fenced-in lots sit empty, the odd "No Loitering" signs emphasizing the barren atmosphere.
It's 7 in the evening and already the street is all but abandoned. Two uniformed police officers huddle by a force cruiser. Down by the corner, there's a cluster of young boys hanging out. Everyone else stays inside — and for good reason. Suddenly, the foreboding silence is shattered. Men United roar up in a caravan of vans and jeeps, a rap song blasting from loudspeakers. Like a group of gang enforcers, nine men in baseball caps and bomber jackets emerge and quickly spread to the various corners — approaching the boys, disappearing down dark streets.
They are likely the only ones on the streets without guns. They pack pamphlets instead.
"How you all doing?" says Ray Jones, a sprightly leader of the group, approaching the cluster of boys who peer at him coldly. "We're with Men United for a Better Philadelphia, a non-violence group. We're here because we're concerned about the homicide rate in the city ...."
If you were expecting a drive-by, this is a love-by — and it's one of Philadelphia's homegrown solutions to its bubbling problem of gun violence.
While Toronto grapples with its rising homicide rate and the mounting number of black men killed by gunfire each year, we could well turn to Philadelphia for a few lessons.
It is far more experienced when it comes to gun play. With 1 million fewer people than metropolitan Toronto's 2.5 million population, Philadelphia witnessed almost five times our homicide rate last year — the vast majority by handgun.
Three days into 2006, its body count already reached seven — five on one day.
Ask its top cop, police commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who is killing whom and he'll tell you that more than 85 per cent of both the killers and their victims are young black men, despite the fact that African-Americans make up only 43 per cent of the city's 1.5 million people.
Most hail from the poorest neighbourhoods in town, where fathers are more rare than health insurance. And most shoot each other over seemingly petty arguments.
"You might bump into a person or look at somebody's girlfriend wrong or have a dispute with your neighbour," Johnson says. "Before, it would have been a fight. Now, it's a shooting."
Sound familiar? Two weeks after 15-year-old Jane Creba was killed by a bullet while Boxing Day shopping on Yonge St., the City of Brotherly Love seems to offer a vision of Toronto's future, if the situation goes unchecked.
A similar shooting four years ago galvanized a group of men here. A young black reverend had been killed in the crossfire between two drug gangs outside a church in south Philadelphia.
Gathering one Saturday morning after his funeral, the men decided that enough was enough. They knew what the problem was and they wanted to become part of a solution.
Their idea was simple: Go to the neighbourhoods where homicides were exploding and talk to the young men. Become the father figures and role models they lacked.
"A nature program showed young bull elephants that were off the chain. They couldn't be controlled. They found out there were no older males around. And once they introduced some old bulls into the herd, it levelled out the testosterone," says Jones, the slim, wily former press secretary for the mayor who helped found the group.
"It's off-balanced. Young men who have no direction, who are angry and misguided and are out on the street corner with no one who can teach them how to be men. All the false bravado, all the reaching for guns — it's all symptomatic of not having a father, not having direction, looking for belonging and a sense of identity in themselves."
Men United started heading out to the city's hotspots — identified for them by police — armed with pamphlets and idealism — hoping to change the course of many lives.
Realizing they needed to provide concrete alternatives, they hired an employment counsellor to hook men up with legitimate jobs. They began to visit penitentiaries to talk to soon-to-be-released convicts. They hired youth outreach workers to venture into schools. And some of their members developed an official mentorship program called "Rites of Passage," in which young men could learn everything from their cultural history to money management.
Since then, their ranks have grown past 400, and chapters have sprung up across the Delaware River to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They include city administrators like Jones, advertising executives, police officers, counsellors, unemployed men and ex-cons, like Malik Aziz, who can recount firsthand that prison life is not all it's cracked up to be.
"What we do is invaluable," says Aziz, another of the group's co-founders.
"We have helped thousands of people. Just the interactions we do every day, giving people help, advice. We'll take an hour off to talk somebody out of popping somebody. That's crime prevention. You can't measure that stuff."
Says Mark Harrell, the group's barrel-chested director: "That's why it works. We've got guys who can tell these young cats on the street: `You don't want to do this and I can tell you why.'"
According to police, the approach has worked.
In every neighbourhood Men United have blitzed, returning one night a week for two months, the violence has dropped dramatically. By the time they leave, women are out on their porches sweeping and sending their children to the corner store — something they wouldn't have dared do before.
And although the city's homicide rate continues to rise every year — jumping from 330 in 2004 to 380 in 2005 — police commissioner Johnson says it would be even higher without the group's efforts.
Then, there's the psychological impact the group has had on neighbourhoods. It's not without careful thought that they hit the streets blaring their theme song "Stop the Violence" and wearing baggy jackets and sweatpants emblazoned with their motto: "Let us use our arms to embrace each other, not erase each other!"
If Jones arrived in his day-job suit and cufflinks, he likely wouldn't reach people the same way. But, these men are also trying to remould the image of a black gangster into one of a caring activist.
"We're presenting them with a concept of black men they have never even fathomed in these neighbourhoods," says Jones. "It's a subliminal message. It's beyond the T-shirts and the hats and the `Hey brother, you can turn your life around.' It's black men taking control of their neighbourhood and their destiny."
Amazingly, Men United haven't faced any personal danger in the four years they've been patrolling the city's most dangerous neighbourhoods. The worst they have endured is hollered curses and cascading diapers from balconies. There hasn't been one shooting. That, they say, is because the gangsters know they aren't vigilantes. And most of them come from these neighbourhoods.
"These guys are our sons, our nephews, our cousins, our little brothers, our dads, our uncles. These are real people and we're not afraid of them because we know they come from us. They live in our homes, they eat our food, we bathe them and clothe them," says Harrell. "We are not going to a foreign land."
Their headquarters is on the edge of north Philadelphia — a five-minute drive from Cecil B. Moore Ave.
After 30 minutes of cruising the streets there on Wednesday night, they climb back into their vans and roar off to another shady neighbourhood five minutes away. It's a public housing project called Blumberg. Three apartment buildings rise up around a central circle, surrounded by small row houses.
The women who staff the security booths here have called Men United for help. Drug dealers patrol the area, selling crack and "wet" — marijuana laced with PCP, a hallucinogen similar to LSD. The result has been a number of shootings.
"We need help," says Linda Bryant, the middle-aged security guard.
As group members take to the streets around the apartment buildings, they are greeted by a chorus of single mothers, each stepping out of he home to talk about problems with their sons.
"I'm so happy you are here," says Debbie Smith, emerging from her cousin's home. There's a bullet hole in the door, a memento left by a group of young men seeking retaliation against her cousin's 16-year-old son over a fight, she says.
"What kind of older male influence does he have?" asks Harrell, the stocky director who looks like he could fill in for a linebacker with the Philadelphia Eagles.
"That's it. None," she responds. "They're all gone," echoes her cousin Attiyah Ross.
Next door, Dawn Dickerson steps out to see what the chatter is all about. Her 22-year-old son was shot in the leg one night two months ago while returning from the corner store. There was no reason for it, she says. It just comes with the territory.
"Hopefully, with some more men in this area, it can change," says Harrell, who leaves her a pamphlet.
"I'll say a prayer for you guys," says Smith. "You all be safe out here," echoes Dickerson.
The underlying sources of Philadelphia's gun violence are even more complex than Toronto's. They go back as far as slavery. Add to that poverty, lack of education, family breakdown and the limitless supply of guns.
Pennsylvania has some of the most lax gun regulations in the United States. There are 31,000 gun owners with permits to carry their weapons on the streets of Philadelphia. There are many more who carry them illegally. During a one-week gun buy-back campaign they hosted last year, Men United collected 1,000 firearms.
A "hot" revolver will go for as little as $25 (U.S.) on a street corner, Harrell says.
Men United's success has the city's top cop sounding more like a social activist than a hardened police officer.
"Police are never going to arrest their way out of the problem we're having," Johnson says. "There has to be a holistic-type approach."
It may seem incredible that something so simple as men talking to one another could solve such a complicated problem. But sometimes it's the simple things that make all the difference.
"A lot of people think these neighbourhoods can't change. Men United show you can," says Jones. "We're building a movement."
For Toronto to address its growing gun problem, it will take more than gang courts and beefed-up police forces, the Philly men say. What's needed is for Toronto men to step up.
"Men have to be part of whatever's going to change in these communities," says Harrell. "Women have long been part of the anti-violence movement. Men have to get out of their football chairs and come onto the streets and assist those women."
Each night, after their patrol for peace is finished, the group gathers in a circle for a final prayer. Then, members pile back into their cars and whiz off to their own homes and children.
When the caravan roars past a single man standing on a street corner, he stands up straight, to attention, salutes the crew with two fingers, split into a V. It's an unfamiliar sight around these parts: a peace sign.
