By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times
In his own words, 15-year-old *Leon says he used to be “real bad, doing crazy stuff” including some gang activity and ended up being shot at. “I was in the house, in the living room … all you could hear was gunshots and one came through the window and hit me in the face … it was bad. I was in the hospital for a little while. There’s a new generation out here that goes where the gangs go. Whatever gang you in you are about what they are.”
Leon, who said he began to carry a gun for his own protection after people were picking on him, was eventually arrested with the weapon and was placed on house arrest. But now that is behind him as he plans to fulfill a dream he’s had since elementary school, he said.
“I want to be in the Air Force building airplanes,” he said. “I always wanted to do that since third grade. I used to make airplanes out of paper and watch them glide.”
He’ll return to high school in the fall where he may even join the ROTC program to get a head start on his dream, he said. “However I get there.”
Leon is one of about 50 students at Miles College this summer in a community-driven effort with the City of Birmingham to prevent youth violence through a multi-layered, youth-centered strategy built on investment, prevention that unites city leaders, national experts, and grassroots organizers.
The partnership also includes the Institute of Research for Social Justice in Action and New Direction 360, groups which have a long-standing track record of bridging higher education and community leadership.
*Angela, 16, got into an “altercation” with some girls at her Birmingham City School who were “bothering me and my friend at school and making social media posts” and sent to alternative school for 10 days.
But in the “Safe Summer Series” program at Miles, “I’m learning about myself as a person and I’m learning about staying committed,” she said. “My dream is to make it in life and be better than people expect me to be.”
Alia Clark, chief operating officer for New Direction 360 and a facilitator for Violence Interrupter Program Course, who works with the young ladies, said the day begins with morning affirmations to reassure students “you are great, you are awesome, today is going to be a great day and you are going to win in anything you do moving forward,” Clark said.
After the affirmations, students get a lesson plan which lasts about 90 minutes, about two lessons a day, “then we’ll be able to give them their homework [which] is nothing extensive,” Clark said. “It’s like ‘hey go home and see what’s different about your team members, that you are sitting next to’ … we need for you to get to know someone different that’s not in your neighborhood or from your community in your area.”
The challenge comes when students ‘clique up’ and don’t get to know those outside of their circle, said Clark. The goal is to get the students away from their comfort zones. “Whoever they sit with today, they will not be able to sit with tomorrow,” Clark said. “You’re going to be at different tables with people you don’t know.”
Khalil Tutt, co-founder of New Direction, and a former Newark gang member who spent 15 years in prison – “I had a lot of time to think” – said he knows first-hand what many of the students are facing.
“We have about 10 [students] who are really high risk. They experienced death. They’ve had people die in their arms,” he said. “They’ve opened up to us with certain stuff, that they can’t open with [others] … I ask them ‘do they want to die and go to jail’ and they say ‘no’ and I say we can help you with that.”
Some young men are opening up in front of each other for the first time “which is rare because sometimes kids be shy …” Tutt continued, “opening up and understanding things that you are struggling with, another person is struggling, y’all can bond together and build up together and relate and now push forward.”
Earlier this month, Tutt shared how the program changed his life. “I came from prison. I was part of the problem but now I’m part of the solution. This isn’t just saving lives. It’s saving futures.”
“It is family that is going to be created from this group and it’s going to be a good positive group of men and women to go out there and help reduce the crime and the violence,” he said last week.
*Not their real names
