By Meredith Dobes
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| Phillip Jackson, executive director of Black Star Project, announces a Stop the Violence Campaign at a press conference. |
They are not here in this room, and they are not here, there, or anywhere in this mortal world -- no longer at school, at home, at work or out with friends. They will never know, never hear this ringing for them inside this small room in a building in Bronzeville because their lives were taken from them, primarily as victims of gunfire, as victims of homicide.
“I can’t call off all the names, but can you
ring it about 10 more times for the rest of the children who died here in
Chicago last year?” asked Phillip Jackson, a community leader and also executive
director of the Black Star Project.
Jackson is one of
Chicago’s activists working to reduce the amount of violence and murder the
city sees each year. Last year, alone, 506 people were murdered in Chicago. One
hundred and eight of them were children. Through nearly 20
years with the Black Star Project, Jackson says he has striven to increase
community and parental involvement in education and rearing children. Recently,
Jackson and the Black Star Project developed, “The Community Plan to Reduce
Violence in Chicago.” It is Jackson’s alternative to the city’s standing
efforts to reduce violence that includes Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recently launched
plan to raise $50 million to aid at-risk youth.
“Today, we want to send a message,” Jackson
said at a press conference recently. “The message is real simple. You don’t
make decisions about us without us. The mayor put together a $50 million
five-year plan he thinks is going to help the situation. We can’t wait for
that. Every time they make a mistake, we pay for it with the blood of our
children.”
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| Ceasefire, another organization, is also working to stop the violence in Chicago. |
“These are all the things the City of Chicago
is doing,” Jackson said. “They’re literally manufacturing the violence you see
in the streets. They pay $2.5 billion each year to manufacture this violence.”
As of March 25, Chicago’s
business community had raised $18.5 million for the city’s plan, according to
Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton. Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times in February that the
plan will require businesses of the city to join together similar to the way
they did for last year’s NATO summit.
“Let’s put our
resources and our time into making sure our kids get on the right track and get
into positive activities rather than destructive ones,” he said.
Jackson’s
proposed alternative plan involves: rebuilding the family; providing positive
mentors and role models for children in violence-plagued communities; providing
a globally competitive education for children in violence-plagued communities;
and providing positive economic alternatives to robbery, selling drugs and
other illegal economic activities. Jackson’s plan,
which is estimated to cost $1.9 billion, has been sent to the mayor, aldermen
and other public and political figures, but he says he has yet to receive a response
from any of them.
Dr. Carl Bell, a
noted psychiatrist and director of the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research
developed “Seven Principles to Reducing Violence and Re-Engaging Youth to
Society” after years of practicing psychiatry and working with communities on
Chicago’s South Side. Jackson’s plan
utilizes many of his principles.
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| Dr. Carl Bell |
Bell’s principles:
rebuild the village/community; provide access to ancient and modern technology;
provide a sense of connectedness; provide opportunities to learn social and
emotional skills; provide opportunities to increase self-esteem; provide an
adult protective shield; and minimize trauma.
“People see behavior, and they don’t know what
the hell it is,” Bell said. “It’s multi-determinant. It’s very confusing to
people. The first thing I had to figure out was what caused it. Then I figured
out how to help people help other people.”
Bell said he has
been able to change public policy through his research and community efforts
about seven or eight times, though most policy changes and implementations of
policy take about 20 years. Bell was the director of Community Mental Health
Council, recently closed by the city.
“I got involved in the real hard research
about violence and drug prevention in ‘90,” he said. “It worked like a charm.
It’s still touted as one of the best prevention plans out there. Nobody’s using
it, but I was able to put it in Chicago Public Schools and show it did work,”
Bell said, adding that he then took the program to some other states.
Bell’s plan
contributed to the 2009 Institute of Medicine Report “Preventing Mental,
Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and
Possibilities,” which was incorporated into the Affordable Care Act also known
as Obamacare.
“Trauma influences a lot of behavior,” Bell
said. “I started with that, with children exposed to violence. As I got going,
I discovered a lot of other things that influence behavior. It’s the helplessness
in the face of violence that causes people to get rambunctious and engage in
risky behaviors.
“If you can help
them transform their traumatic helplessness into helpfulness, that’s one of the
ways you transform trauma,” Bell added.
A large portion
of Bell’s research on youth involves the development of the frontal lobe. The
frontal lobe is not fully developed until a person reaches 26 years of age.
“I refer to children as terrorists, especially
if they’re teenagers, up until age 26,” Bell said.
He relates the
limbic system to gasoline and the frontal lobes to brakes and steering wheels.
“If average people get that teens are
terrorists, you can help them understand that you need a community around,
adults, neighbors, to perform the brake and steering wheel function for them,”
he said. Bell identified different
types of violence, including group, individual, systemic and institutional. The
leading cause of violence is interpersonal altercations. Still, Bell said
that public policy is rarely guided by science.
“A lot of people in government want to do their
work, not cause trouble, and collect their pension,” he said. “Some people want
to do something, but it’s hard, because it’s like the Titanic. It’s going in
this direction and to make it turn two degrees is very difficult because a lot
of the people sailing the boat are used to things the way they are.”
Jackson’s plan,
largely reflective of Bell’s principles of violence prevention, faces this
roadblock, both men say.
“Unless we change our rules as a city and a
country, the rules that govern our children will continue to destroy them,”
Jackson said.
Bell said he
might go back to treating patients while simultaneously working on the
overarching problems of violence, now that he no longer has a facility to
maintain.
“I’m following the practice of medicine and
public health in hopes it leads me to a position to help a whole lot of people
still,” he said. “People didn’t really know how to change behavior. That’s why
it’s so important for me to get involved with violence prevention.”
“I sometimes tell people the joke about two
vultures sitting on a limb, and the one vulture turns and says to the other,
‘Patience, my ass. I’mma kill something,’” Bell explained. “I get like that
sometimes, but I try to stay calm. I know what to do, but nobody’s doing it.
Those are my frustrations and difficulties.”
Bell goes back to
his work. Jackson goes back to his. Chicago and Emanuel continue their same
efforts. And this year’s murder count continues to rise. And at Black Star
Project’s press conference on that cold February evening, the community residents
who attended bowed their heads as the deceased children’s names resounded
across the room.