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NACC Clergy Breakfast Report- Nov. 30, 2011

By Vandell M. Park

The recent spate of violence occurring in the minority communities in New York City this year alone has prompted one community organization to action. The New American Chamber of Commerce (NACC), responding to the number of killings across the five boroughs, organized a conference for Clergy with the theme: “The Impact of Poverty, Inequality and Social Exclusion on Youth Violence in America.” The primary objective of the conference was to identify the causes and to provide solutions in order to stem the growing epidemic.

The effort, which took the form of a panel discussion, called for a collective approach by church and community leaders, elected officials and other concerned groups to become directly involved in their communities and schools if youth violence is to be eradicated. It was agreed that inculcating good moral values in the school level will lay the foundation for positive growth and development among the youths. Brian Figeroux of the Law Firm; Figeroux and Associates, said: “What we need is leadership that goes beyond rhetoric, leadership that belongs to the community. The school I believe is the place we should be. I think that we need to go to the schools, empower the parents, empower the teachers, empower the children, and work with them.”

Church leaders were encouraged to make their presence felt in their communities and to urge their elected officials to become personally involved in the affairs of the communities they were elected to serve.

Issues such as absence of God in homes and schools, single parent, inadequate provision of forums for youth voices to be heard, lack of moral examples by community leaders, unequal allocation of funding and economic opportunities and discriminatory law enforcement, have been identified as the primary contributors to the social ills plaguing the communities.

Addressing the issues of the exclusion of God in homes and schools and moral guidance, one of the panelists; Lynn Davis, founder and CEO of Chelynns New Beginnings Foundation, said that “only the Catholic schools inculcate God in their curriculum and that’s not right.” Our children need guidance; they need guidance from their parents and more of our parents today are single parents; the fathers are absent from the home and the mothers are taking on two jobs, being positive role models for these children and this leaves less supervision for the children which gives them more time to be in the streets. They don’t have any mentors, they don’t have enough good role models to look up to, and if God is absent; they stray.”

Another panelist, Paul Muhammad, a community activist from the Nation of Islam, also emphasized the importance of God in both family and societal activities. He said that this nation was founded on religious principles but the government has allowed the nation to drift away from those values: “When we allow this government to dictate to us how to serve our God, we are heading down the path where we are right now. These children are nothing but a product of our continued neglect of our putting God first in our lives.” Citing the constitution Mr. Muhammad added: “Written in 1775 by Alexander Hamilton, he said, “the sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged among old parchments or musty records; they are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

The participants of the conference pointed out that it took just one woman’s action that put an end to prayers in schools, a value that is enshrined in the Constitution of this country and even engraved on the bills of the American currency.
Another area of serious concern contributing the violence among youths is the discrimination meted out to minority communities by laws and law enforcement officials. Carl Dix, founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Foundation, said that the Stop and Frisk policy, implemented by the local police, is part of a system designed to discriminate against minorities and criminalize them, thus forcing minority youths to rebel: “The policy under which the police are empowered to stop someone to frisk them for any reason or no reason at all, targets Blacks and Latinos. They stop some one thousand people each and every day; five out of six of them are Black and Latino, more than nine out of ten of them were doing absolutely nothing wrong.”

Brian Figeroux also noted that the policy makes it difficult for youths to get jobs: “You can’t get a job if you have a criminal record, so this stop and frisk thing is important because the first thing the employer is going to do is a background check and if they see an arrest record, they are not going to hire your child.” Participants of the conference agreed that a collaborative effort in addressing the issues identified and providing a forum for youths to voice their concerns freely, once executed effectively, can stem youth violence. NYPD Compstat Unit weekly report dated November 21-27, 2011, revealed that 463 murders were committed in the New York City area for this year, the perpetrators are our young people; this figure is slightly down from the same period for 2010. Overall, 95, 825 criminal incidents including rape, robbery, felony assault and burglary, were recorded for 2011, compared to 95, 891 for the corresponding period, 2010.