People’s University: Creating Safe and Caring Communities
Welcome
Virginie: Welcome! We represent very different communities here: ATD Fourth World is a very important community; some of us come from public housing, private housing, some of us are going through homelessness and shelter communities. In this meeting today we can feel how rich our togetherness is. Whatever our community is, we want it to be safe and caring. What does that mean?
In our preparations for this meeting, some of us talked about food deserts, violence, failing schools, high rates of unemployment, lack of affordable quality healthcare, etc. What was interesting is that we did not share only what was difficult, but also what we did that was positive. The title is ‘creating safe and caring communities.’ We really want to focus on creating because all of us create a role in our community and some of us really struggle to make their community safer and care for each other.
How did we prepare? We met twice. The first meeting we shared what a safe and caring community means for each of us. We did a “word game." We talked about safe community for immigrants, opportunities, unity, being together, children, that was very rich. The second meeting we prepared some skits that we will present to our guests.
Our Guests
Andrew Tomlinson is Quaker United Nations Representative and Director of the Quaker UN Office (QUNO) in New York. Andrew joined QUNO in 2008 after working in international finance and socially responsible investing in London and New York.
The Quakers have been active at the United Nations in New York and Geneva since 1947, upholding the UN’s work on peace and justice through facilitation and quiet advocacy. The New York office is focused on the issues of peacebuilding and the prevention of violent conflict, and connects with partners doing peace work on the ground and at a policy level around the world. QUNO’s sister organization, the American Friends Service Committee, works with people affected by violent conflict in 15 countries. Quaker agencies in the US and the UK were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947.
Current topics in QUNO’s work include peacebuilding perspectives on the implementation of the new UN frameworks for peace and development, peacebuilding and human rights, civil society inclusion, and reconciliation and dialogue. In 2013, QUNO was named as one of the most influential global actors in armed violence reduction.
Karrie Scarboro is a Community Planning Partner with Brownsville Partnership (March 2010﹣Present) As Community Planning Partner, Karrie works with Brownsville Partnership/Community Solutions for the design and implementation of community development initiatives geared to residents and youth.
She worked closely with a neighborhood senior center to assist and advocate on their behalf when needed. She raised resident awareness of the importance of Safe Routes by making sure children get to school safe daily. To achieve community awareness, Karrie organized and hosted coffee klatches and door knocking to obtain information for feedback on issues and community needs in order to enable project team leaders to make informed decisions on future project developments.
Karrie was part of the team project to utilize public spaces for healthy activities and to reduce crime. The project was called Safe Streets Are Healthy Streets: Role of Crime and Traffic in Neighborhood Health. Also, together with Assembly Rep Latrice Walker, she organized to bring improvements to the NYCHA community such as security cameras, lighting, playground improvements, new windows, and new appliances. She is part of the Brownsville Coalition, with the aim of exposing youth to worlds “beyond these bricks” with job opportunities and by engaging them in the “striving to build a better Brownsville” actions. In addition to public speaking and outreach services, Karrie advocates for all to encourage the youth in the community to get involved in positive things.
Warm-up: meditation exercise (3.5 minutes).
Take a deep breath, open your eyes, and come back into the room. Any time you feel stressed, take time to notice your breath, inhale and exhale.
Presentations from preparation workshops
We met in two groups. One met on the topic of “safe community,” the on “caring community,” and both prepared skits presenting a positive and negative situation.
“Caring community” group
First scene: mother confronts son about letter she received from the principal, saying that he has bullied someone in school. When he tries to defend himself, the mother says she is ashamed and has no time for this. The phone rings and it’s the principal asking whether the mother received her letter. The mother says yes but she doesn’t want to talk about it. The principal says it’s very important that she attend the workshop on bullying with her son. The mom says she is too ashamed of him and doesn’t want that out in public. She doesn’t have time anyway and hangs up.
Second scene: the group continued with the same characters, who are now together in the bullying workshop. The principal welcomes everyone to the meeting to address the problem of bullying at the school. The mother and son are there and we see a student who was the victim of the son’s bullying. The mother is annoyed at first. Then the student speaks loudly, that the son is the one who was bullying him, teasing him because he lives in a shelter. The son reacts that it was the student bullying him. The principal interjects that we are here to get training in how we deal with conflicts and to find ways to listen. The first step, listen, second step, both sides apologize, third step, both sides repair what they did wrong. The student says he doesn’t want to go to this school anymore. The son calls him a crybaby. The principal continues with the workshop and asks the son and the student to go to small groups to work with their family. The mother turns to her son and says they have to talk, and then she goes over to the student and hugs him. The principal says thank you to everybody.
“Safe community” group
First scene: a grandmother and her young grandchild are walking through the neighborhood when a police officer says good afternoon. The granddaughter hides behind the grandmother, afraid. The grandmother encourages the granddaughter by saying it’s alright. The police officer continues his walk, saying, “Alright, have a nice day!” On another day, the grandmother and granddaughter see the police officer, and the granddaughter walks confidently next to grandmother and says, “HI!” to the officer, who says, “How are you today?” She was no longer afraid.
Second scene: a mother and one of her daughters are attending the dance performance of her other daughter in a school, when suddenly during the show, the mother receives a phone call from one of her other children.
While the dancer is performing, she hears that someone got shot 5 blocks away from their house. In shock, the mother passes the phone to her daughter who asks what is happening and whether they should come home right now. The caller says no and urges them to stay there at the school to be safe. The daughter asks to please call back when things are okay. The mother is crying and runs out of the room.
Dialogue
Andrew: Thank you so much for having me here. I am here to listen and learn, I hope you don’t expect me to be providing any sort of wisdom. This is what the work that we do is actually about – this at a different level. We provide for safe and caring communities around the world. To do that we need to understand what that actually means. The most important thing is, thank you all so much. Can we give a hand to everyone?
The thing that came through most strongly for me is that people can be caring even when it’s not safe. In every scene there was caring going on. In some cases, it’s not happening and in some cases it was in place of worse things happening. But the caring is the real part of it. I think, even that’s the first thing. Because whatever we all try to do in our own lives, we can try and make things safer, but for all of us all the time, it’s not going to be that way. But if we have the caring – that’s going to help a little bit. I think that’s stronger than anything else I heard. That’s reality in a world where things are not safe and how hard that is.
Police in our community — safety and caring
Participant: I wanted to ask about the skit with the granddaughter (and the policeman). I think the grandmother tremendously helped the granddaughter because also in my neighborhood, I try to lead by example. I am the manager of my building. I speak to everyone, but, I would do that anyway even if I wasn’t manager. …That little bit of kindness towards each other says a lot. It speaks volumes.
Virginie: We talked a lot during the preparation meetings about the importance of being nice to each other, feeling solidarity. It really makes a big difference in the community. For three years, ATD Fourth World in the US ran a research project on the multidimensional aspects of poverty (MAP). And they talked a lot about that, that there is a lot of police control in the neighborhood. Like whatever you do, you may be arrested or suspected. But when we really need the police to come to protect us, they don’t come.
Participant: They overpolice a lot of the black and brown areas. It’s just totally overpoliced. They might come out and say, you guys should feel safe because you got police there. But no, it does not feel safe. I feel just the same as if I came out of my house and saw a gang standing there. They are just there because that’s where they need to be. And, that is what also irritates the people in the neighborhood. But they have no say-so. If they do say something, there are repercussions. The police department doesn’t listen to us, so for me I just walk past. We know that there’s good and bad people, so I can’t say they are all bad.
Participant: I just want to share an example of basically the same situation. I saw someone pop my NYCHA door. I said, “You’re not supposed to do that.” He said, “I didn’t have my key.” He showed his ID, and he still got a ticket. He said, “I can’t afford that $35 right now,” and he still got a ticket for popping the door. For me it’s like you’re supposed to be surveying the area for way more stuff than someone popping the door to get into their own building. There are things like this that’s just overboard.
Participant: I think we need to take action because of what people say: “Oh, the problem is the homeless, oh, the problem is the poor, oh, the problem is the black people.” No! It is a problem for everybody. We are human beings. We deserve to have safety, security, peace, respect, and no discrimination anymore. The police do their job and when we live somewhere we need to live with the law, to have peace to relax. Don’t have the stress, this is enough!
The environment — lighting makes a difference
Karrie: We did have a lot of police lights in the development. The Brownsville Community Justice Center started the idea to string lights in areas that were darker. Like between light poles, or at the bottom along the floor. They also had on Belmont Ave a 24-hour reflection of slides of kids doing things just to brighten up the community a little bit. I was promised by the Senator that he was going to string lights through the dark parts of the development. He didn’t do it yet, hopefully by next Christmas it will get done. We are working with the Brownsville Community Justice Center and in the Mayor’s action plan they had $30,000 to do something. The majority of people voted for the lights, like individual lanterns to string between the light posts, which were like strobe lights, when you walk down the pathway the lights will turn on.
Participant: I go to my precinct community meetings. And, it frustrated me so much that I stopped going. My co-op has periodic meetings where the police department comes to our co-op to try to bridge the gap between us and them. In our neighborhoods, like you just said, why do we have to talk about these little things that can be fixed very easily? Just put bright lights, let’s start there… My feeling is still, certain areas are treated certain ways. So as a community we need to keep fighting so hard every single day. I get tired, really, but as long as I am breathing I have to keep doing what I am doing.
Participant: That takes people, numbers …
Participant: Yes! Because we are stronger in volume.
Karrie: I was going to City Council meetings and I couldn’t get them on board with me. I started applying for little grants, in little small ways. Like I would apply for things, like, you may not be able to light your entire block, but you could get a little area, just to start. Just to show them, you won’t do it for me, so this is where we start. And to start with that, let’s have some coffee klatches. You have a couple of friends up the block, then every couple of blocks have a coffee klatch. Invite them to your house, go to the different homes and have them apply for a grant, you apply for a grant so at least every other block can be lit up. They will give you this money; you hang up lights however you have room.
Participant: In the first development (we lived in) we had a park, playground, they made sure we had lights because of the kids. At Farragut (Houses), I don’t like it, I do like my apartment, but as for being safe, we don’t have lights. We have light poles but they don’t work. It doesn’t feel safe. You walk through the cuts with steak knives and ice picks and I walk with a walker! So I have to protect myself and the people out there have to do the same thing too … it’s the same thing that we’ve been saying. It’s about the lights.
Mobilizing the community
Participant: It’s hard to mobilize the people to do that. I live in public housing and there’s 400,000 residents. They are getting ready to take public housing and make it private. I was telling people for the last six years to mobilize, but people are going to wait until they are put on the corner to mobilize. It’s very difficult to mobilize people. They don’t see a problem as being a problem until it’s too late.
Virginie: I’d like to read one sentence from the MAP Research, from an ATF activist in New Mexico: “They put you in a crappy place, don’t give you enough services, and hopefully you die in this crappy place because that’s all you deserve.”
Participant: It’s not easy. I am a parent advocate. I do some other activism. It’s very challenging to say the least. You have housing insecurity, food insecurity. You focus on the things you have to do for your housing, food, and if you have children you focus on the things you have to do for them. Those are the issues that are in your face. When you are focused on these, when do you have time to attend a neighborhood meeting? … It takes a full-time presence of someone who is going door to door, I mean like boots to the ground activism. The community challenges are where do you get those people who have that energy and can do it when they are faced with so many other challenges?
Participant: I am also a parent advocate. It’s hard because you want to go to those meetings at the same time you’re a single parent, you also want to be financially secure, you want to be employed, you want to go to school, it’s a balancing game.
Participant: I remember (a woman), every summer there was something for us to do. Because she was that stay at home mom, she was the one who was involved in going to those meetings and bringing information back to those parents who were working and didn’t have the time. So there’s always one person like that in the community … she was the one who wrote proposals every summer for the kids in the community.
People don’t see poverty barriers, but, there’s a reason why these barriers are. The way I look at it, with the mayor’s office or the governor’s office, you are going to pay – now or later. If you (the government) choose not to invest in housing, education, employment, training, then you are going to have the shadow effect. You’re going to end up paying for those other services because people aren’t getting what they need.
Karrie: I’ve done it. I raised seven of my own. With work, every day! And, two checks out of the month, I knew that I would put aside to take my kids to show them somewhere other than the housing development. Then I started just grabbing some of the (other) kids. When my kids got older and things started shutting down in my development – we don’t have a community center. They redid the plan; they took off our basketball court. So I had nothing else to do, I opened my home and turned it into a safe haven for the kids. It was good, good intentions but it didn’t work out too well. Every Saturday me and my neighbors would do. On Thursday and Friday we had movie night or we would go roller skating. Saturday we would go out to clean up the buildings, wash windows. We had so many housing developments on top of each other to where it was so bad for the kids. I try to get kids early enough to try to bridge that gap so that by the time the next generation comes up, these kids will be friends. When I became president of the Tenants Association, I quit my job to do something for the whole community.
Participant: When I was in France I was living in a big building area, two towers and 180 different families. This building had no super, everyone had access to the building, all the mailboxes were broken. The elevator was not working most of the time and the place was not clean. There was no insulation in the wall. I decided, when I heard somebody in a (tenants) association that were fighting for the people inside, to go with them. I fought two years like that and I got one hundred percent winning. I got a super. I got the building to be renovated. We got painting, security code to get inside, we got insulation and cleaning.
Building equality and participation
Virginie: I would like to ask Andrew if those little things we do in neighborhoods in New York and Paris, ask do you have some examples in the communities around the world of what they do to make communities safe.
Andrew: It’s interesting and it’s difficult, in listening often it’s the smallest things that make a huge difference. I walk around with a cane these days and I notice a lot of stuff that I didn’t when I didn’t walk around with a cane! A lot of things aren’t accessible, there’s an office you have to get to and it’s up two flights of stairs. So in a lot of places around the world, it’s whether there’s any lighting at all, but it’s still a matter of the quality of life. Lighting? Very simple thing. But it makes a huge difference.
What a lot of people in those communities are working for is those basic levels so they can find ways of bringing up their families, getting their kids educated and fed. What I hear you mention is that there is the level that you talk to authorities or whoever is responsible for that. But what about the caring piece? Is that just up to us, or the communities, or is that whatever the authorities can do, the police or the building managers? What do they do that hurts caring communities? What could they do differently? It’s really on that side as well, I am really interested in that.
Participant: It was interesting when we were brainstorming for the skit, in the circle around the table was a place where the caring from outside was in the community center, a space where people can have meetings and organize themselves and say what are our priorities and talk about things. We chose the topic of bullying, but when we actually did the brainstorming, there were like ten topics on the table, we could have had ten skits. We had to choose one, but the theme of having a place to dialogue and to be able to help each other was very moving, that was one thing.
The other things that come up, like in City Council you hear the frustration of the agencies, this is how they help the community, the laws, they get the laws implemented, then they realize, now we have to revise the laws because things went too far or things get corrupted sometimes and they have to be reined in. A caring at that level, and what we talk about in ATD, needs the important part of participation. They need to hear what it is we think we need instead of somebody up there guessing what we need. Programs, such as what we acted out – conflict-resolution training. But did it work? Then we have the evaluation such as, we helped so many families, or, whether it did make the schools more peaceful.
Participant: At the least the police, the Council people, they just have to listen. Like the other day I went to a rally for housing vouchers. Housing vouchers! There’s so many homeless people out here. I am not even homeless anymore, but you know what, I am going to continue this fight for homeless people. Just because I moved 90 days ago, I am going to continue. It was so sad to me that I can count on two hands how many people came out there in front of City Hall, probably not even ten of us besides the coordinators. People are not going to come out there unless they know, they have to be reassured, I just don’t know how to do that!
Relationships — caring in schools, in neighborhoods, in institutions
Participant: I was very touched by the first skit about the bullying situation. School is a community, our first community and how people are going to pull together. Working with both sides. I think that when children are little, they need to grow and sometimes they need adults for adults to make peace and build relationships. It’s not like victim or bully; it’s like both are victims of what and we need to help both sides. It is very critical to build relationships from the beginning. They (kids) are going to grow up together, and they need the adults at the beginning, at the early stages, to be able to relate to each other and keep peace. Schools are every day, it’s so important, it’s such a foundation for all of us. And it’s very important to adults. It’s not always done properly; I would love to know more about the conflict-resolution process.
Participant: I was thinking about this yesterday and with the scenarios that were played out, there has to be more of that. You know, I have three kids and they go to school from 7 o’clock to 6 o’clock; that’s literally like their first home Monday through Friday, and their second home is with me. So I think the teachers and the schools, they have to be invested in caring for the kids. I know this is their job, but (the teachers) see my kids from when they wake up, brush their teeth, and get their clothes on until the end of the day. My kids' school is really good. They are hands-on … I am sorry, I am young, but I hate to see this, the phone in the hand. Like I said the human-to-human contact is the solution in every scenario that was played out. There has to be more of that. Once there’s more of that, points will get across.
Participant: The whole theme and thinking about the whole picture made me think about the measures that Virginie mentioned (from the MAP research). At the base of all these things is subjugation. This is intentional so that besides worrying about the lights, the police, safety, security (in prisons) … it is intentional that things are like that so we cannot look at each other as people that can come together and do things together. For me, understanding that it is intentional means what we have to do together has to be different. It’s not only about asking for light, it’s much more than that. There was a very interesting idea, about switching it so that those who are supposed to be for our safety maybe should be about caring. We must change the role of the officer, you are not here to police, you are here to care for human beings. Unless we change the mentality they are trying to put into us, they are not going to change things.
Wrap up with guests
Karrie: I will continue doing what I am doing. I started it and continue what I am doing in the development. As far as hearing people speak about the police, they don’t police the way they used to. They have something called Citizens Academy. I don’t know if anybody here has been in a Citizens Academy? Go to your local precinct. You have to give (in order) to get to know. And, not be afraid, when you are around regular beat officers, those moving around inside their car, you need to know their higher-ranking officer. So I would suggest, you call your local precinct, if you live in a development or whatever precinct area you are in, call them and ask for the Community Affairs Officer. Tell them you heard about the Citizens Academy and you would love to join in. There’s still time. They are still taking applications; they don’t start until the next two weeks. So, I suggest you get in that class, so you’ll know how to deal with police officers, you’ll know how to speak to police officers. Connecting to the bullying theme, if you all feel you are being bullied by the police, get into that class. Some cops are good, some cops aren’t. Just like us, they are human beings, some of us are good, some of us just aren’t. But at the end of the day, if they are here to protect and serve you, and if you feel more afraid of them when you have problems to come and protect you, then we have a problem. I don’t have a problem with calling their superiors and having them removed out of my area. They don’t stay away long, but long enough to know they are not going to come in here and do certain things.
Andrew: When I talk to people in Africa, and Asia, they think that there are no poor people. Everybody’s rich…
Shout out: Wrong!
Andrew: You see they watch and they see life. What I can see as the takeaway from this is yes, there are poor people in the world. But you know? They are fighting trying to change things, and you can too. Right across the world, it doesn’t really matter where anybody is, most people in the world are trying to live with all these things, with poverty, getting the education they need, getting protection for their lives, this is how most people live. Everyone needs to understand that about each other, because there’s a lot of power in that.
The other thing, there are a lot of places in the world we deal with, the women do not have a voice. It’s wonderful to be here and hear a lot of strong women with good voices who are fighting for their communities, for their people, for their rights. And it’s just wonderful, keep at it. It is tough. I want to thank you for being here, to listen and understand a little better.
