I believe the children are our future
teach them well and let them lead the
way
show them all the beauty they possess
inside give them a sense of pride to
make it easier let the children’s
laughter remind us how we use to be I
started singing that song a few years
ago as I tried to explain to people
about the children in the world that I
worked with that they came from places
and they will looked at in ways that
made people made it hard for them to
find laughter in their lives this is a
I was raised in New York City in a
public housing project that was located
between at the top of Manhattan between
two rivers the Hudson River and the
Harlem River my parents the wise ones
they were taught me how to fish so I
spent countless hours fishing in those
two rivers they also taught me this
thing that they suggested that I do call
catch and release so when I would catch
the fish I had to throw them back into
the water and I did that dutifully
because I listened to my parents all the
time you laugh I would throw the fish
back in later years later I found out
before the EPA that those rivers were
filled with industrial waste and toxins
and after I learned that I started to
wonder what we throw in those fish back
so that the fish could live or we were
throwing them back so that we could live
the passion I had for fishing was
something that I took with me into my
adulthood but I gained another passion
as I was starting as I was getting older
and that was a passion for working with
children and my work took me to working
in institutions and for years I worked
at institutions for young men who had
gotten in trouble with the law and at
the end of their time we would think we
did great work and at the end of the
time they were with us we would put him
in a van we would drive them back to the
places that they came from and
inevitably many of them would come back
to us
even more sadly many of them would die
the challenge of the the communities
that they were in was such that survival
was a little bit tougher I realized that
that childhood game that I played when I
was fishing of catch and release I was
doing it again I was taking my fish back
and the fish that I was returning with
the young people that I work with it in
the
the toxic rivers were the neighbourhoods
that they had come from we were
confronted with I was confronted with
that as I moved on in my life in my
academic into an academic career and I
began to think about a model that I
called risk immersion and risk immersion
was that young people are surrounded in
many areas of their lives by challenges
and risk factors and their families and
their friendships and the institutions
that they are in in the schools that
they attend and that those challenges
made it really difficult for them and as
a criminologist what we found and what
we report is that often the ones who
have all that going on in their lives
wind up getting involved in gang
activity or involved in violent behavior
and it’s an ongoing challenge for them
to try to negotiate I spent countless
hours doing that kind of work and and
and concerned with how do we make this a
little bit better how do we change that
this risk immersion thing that I had
thought up I thought was new but it
wasn’t in fact it’s not unique at all
there’s 200 years of research this
research that dates back to the 1800s
early 1800s in Europe that looked at
cities in France and in Belgium and in
those cities what we learn is that in
the areas of those cities where there
were high levels of economic and social
disadvantage there were high rates of
crime there was high rates of illiteracy
and lots of other things going on there
that research has been done in the
United States and the late 1800s wev
divorce did work in the city of
Philadelphia and in the city of
Philadelphia he looked at the Negro Ward
there the 17th Ward and in that
community there were the places in that
community that had high rates of
economic and social disadvantage had
those same sets of problems that they
had seen in Europe some 60 years earlier
in the 1940s in the city of Chicago
there were two sociologists that did
extensive research on
mapping crime and other social issues in
that community and what they found was
that there were areas that they actually
called natural areas of crime and by
natural areas of crime they meant that
no matter who lived there
crime was high in that population and
when those populations moved so if there
was an ethnic group there when they were
living there the crime rates were high
and when they moved out their crime
rates went down and in fact the all the
other social problems that were
associated with their economic struggles
seemed to disappear more recently this
work that’s been done by a guy by the
name of Robert Sampson in in Chicago
again very popular place for research
and he concluded that the enduring
neighborhood effect that we see in the
communities in Chicago at least in
across America a lot of that is related
to the social and economic conditions
that are produced by racial and
discrimination and the isolation that
that produces my work is about an issue
that we call the school to Prison
Pipeline you know so there’s a place
that the thing that contributes to kids
being getting involved in the
institutions that we we would rather
than not be in the fuel source for that
rest in those communities and in those
conditions that I’m talking about I’d
like to tell you a story for a minute
because I think it brings home the idea
of where stress and matters in these
kids lives I do a lot of work in schools
in town and I was working and I took my
students to a school to see about
working and then after school program
with them a couple of years ago and
while we were there we were sitting and
we were talking to the woman who runs
the program and she looked up at the
clock and she said oh it’s 2:45 it’s
going to get really busy in here in a
minute
so my students assume assumption was oh
they’re gonna come in and they’re gonna
want to know what she said she well she
said they’re gonna want to know where
they go and my students response was
they’re gonna want to know whether they
go to like tutoring or the gym or to
math or something like that
and she said no that’s not what’s gonna
happen I’m gonna walk over to where
you’re sitting our table I’m gonna push
the phone across the table and they’re
gonna sit in that chair you’re sitting
in and when they sit down they’re gonna
call mom and when they call mom they’re
gonna want to know where they go tonight
to sleep the room got quiet when she
said that my students looked at me they
and and then they couldn’t they couldn’t
gather it we finished the meeting and as
we were walk it out I said to them I
asked them what they thought you know
what what do they think about whether
they want to work there and they didn’t
have an answer till we got outside when
we got outside their response was that
this school that we were at the school
that we were at was in the middle of
studying for the standardized tests that
are used to determine whether schools
are accredited or whether the children
are considered to be proficient they had
been spending the entire day preparing
for an exam while they were thinking
about where do I go to sleep tonight
that kind of stress is not something
that we think about when we declare that
the schools of failures but we declare
them failures very all too often so I
got asked to do a project in town that
was related to my work and we began it
it was built based in a request by a
couple of judges who were concerned with
the number of kids that were coming in
through the court particularly
african-american kids and they were
concerned that there was some bias in
the way that the kid that that kids
would be in treated that’s why they were
seeing so many I decided that I wanted
to do the work in elementary schools I
wanted to go in
two elementary schools and see how we
could make kids more successful there
they didn’t understand because the
courts usually older kids and and in the
middle of our conversations this
post-dispatch put out a newspaper
article that said UCLA report says the
state of Missouri leads the nation in
the suspensions of children of
african-american children two weeks
later they put out another headline that
said the city of st. Louis leads the
nation in the suspension of preschool
and elementary school aged children it
was really quiet in the room when we
would do in the proposal because their
response was we need to go in there and
try and figure out what we can do so we
began a project that that looks at
racial equity and we tried to teach in
it and it’s a partnership with with
schools it’s not like I was going to go
in and give them a solution but we were
going to work in partnership with
teachers and administrators and staff
how do we fix this how do we work
together to find a solution so we did
training around racial equity so so race
mattered it was important that people
understood that race matters in this
community in their school we did
training around trauma and stress and
how race is related to trauma and stress
that kids experience and even more
importantly house trauma related to what
they’re experiencing is teachers in the
buildings that they’re in we’ve done
that work and the teachers turned to us
and said we get it we understand we
understand that the children are
distressed but we have issues in the
classroom we they that we need more
resources we need more to deal with this
we need more to be able to to provide
and respond to their to their their
evidence needs I the work began as
another extension of all the work I had
been doing and I for years I have been
talking about building this thing that I
call a resource quilt and a quilt is
different in my mind and
safety net because nets have holes in
them and you can condom it it’s
different the quilt had cultural value
and it also had meaning for me
personally and and I started talking
about building a resource quilt in town
with people that I work with and I
explained to them this story that when I
was a kid I grew up in that project in
Upper Manhattan and as I was growing up
one year my grandmother from Savannah
Georgia sends us a box with presents in
it and I we opened my sister and I
opened the box and I take this thing out
and I didn’t understand it it had it was
material it was sewn together it was
there was sausage wrappers they were red
they were blue yellow they were
different colors my sister and I didn’t
understand we kind of laughed about it
but my parents explained that that thing
that she had sent us was called the
quilt and quilting was a really
important part of a particularly
african-american heritage because often
all that was available were the pieces
of material to put together blankets to
be keep warm and to make the family
whole so my grandmother had when she
after she had saved all these ratley’s
pieces of material had taken him out of
the box and sewn them together in a way
that made them this thing that she
called the quilt and that quote was
something that was important because it
was an act of love it was a
representation of the love she had for
me and my sister it kept us warm it kept
us feeling that there was something more
there and as I work with people in this
community I said we need to become a
quilt of resources we need to if you’re
an organization you need to be willing
to join in no matter how big you are not
matter how small you are so that you can
be a part of something that doesn’t fall
apart that represents the love we have
for this community we particularly for
the children of this community because
the quilt so I’ve been doing this quilt
thing and it’s been exciting because as
I the the project has offered me an
opportunity to begin to stitch together
the quilt in the middle of this quilt
our foundations that decided that they
would join forces and put their money
together so that we could have the money
to go into schools and to work in to
work with the with the teachers and the
staff and and to helpfully help teachers
to make schools places where they could
teach but even more importantly places
where kids could learn but we also a
joined by other organizations and other
agencies that are interested in this
kind of work there’s a group in town
that is that works out of the United Way
that’s not of the United Way but they
work out of the United Way called ready
by 21 have the same idea the same basic
principle that you need to put in place
resources around kids that go from the
time they’re born till the time they’re
about to get out of college so that they
can be successful because we know that
there is lots of need and that there’s a
lot on the plate here the quilt that I
have up there hiring me let them take
him down is the beginning of something
lots of people in this room probably
work in organizations that do work that
that could support the cute that the
young people of this community you could
join in by either becoming a part of the
quilt and and and already by 21 of the
two of us because we’re all in this
together and if you don’t do that maybe
you you sometimes donate to
organizations you could look to
organizations that are willing to work
together around collective impact that
are working for the same common good for
this work is to me is a labor of love
but what I I find every day is that I
think that this is where I close at that
the children of this community the
children in this community deserve a
light an opportunity to dream in life
they deserve the opportunity to live in
a way that’s not burdened by all that
baggage that comes from social animus
towards a community that doesn’t deserve
that they deserve a right to dream and
have some hope for a future and all I
can ask that we teach them well and let them lead the way
teach them well and let them lead the
way
show them all the beauty they possess
inside give them a sense of pride to
make it easier let the children’s
laughter remind us how we use to be I
started singing that song a few years
ago as I tried to explain to people
about the children in the world that I
worked with that they came from places
and they will looked at in ways that
made people made it hard for them to
find laughter in their lives this is a
I was raised in New York City in a
public housing project that was located
between at the top of Manhattan between
two rivers the Hudson River and the
Harlem River my parents the wise ones
they were taught me how to fish so I
spent countless hours fishing in those
two rivers they also taught me this
thing that they suggested that I do call
catch and release so when I would catch
the fish I had to throw them back into
the water and I did that dutifully
because I listened to my parents all the
time you laugh I would throw the fish
back in later years later I found out
before the EPA that those rivers were
filled with industrial waste and toxins
and after I learned that I started to
wonder what we throw in those fish back
so that the fish could live or we were
throwing them back so that we could live
the passion I had for fishing was
something that I took with me into my
adulthood but I gained another passion
as I was starting as I was getting older
and that was a passion for working with
children and my work took me to working
in institutions and for years I worked
at institutions for young men who had
gotten in trouble with the law and at
the end of their time we would think we
did great work and at the end of the
time they were with us we would put him
in a van we would drive them back to the
places that they came from and
inevitably many of them would come back
to us
even more sadly many of them would die
the challenge of the the communities
that they were in was such that survival
was a little bit tougher I realized that
that childhood game that I played when I
was fishing of catch and release I was
doing it again I was taking my fish back
and the fish that I was returning with
the young people that I work with it in
the
the toxic rivers were the neighbourhoods
that they had come from we were
confronted with I was confronted with
that as I moved on in my life in my
academic into an academic career and I
began to think about a model that I
called risk immersion and risk immersion
was that young people are surrounded in
many areas of their lives by challenges
and risk factors and their families and
their friendships and the institutions
that they are in in the schools that
they attend and that those challenges
made it really difficult for them and as
a criminologist what we found and what
we report is that often the ones who
have all that going on in their lives
wind up getting involved in gang
activity or involved in violent behavior
and it’s an ongoing challenge for them
to try to negotiate I spent countless
hours doing that kind of work and and
and concerned with how do we make this a
little bit better how do we change that
this risk immersion thing that I had
thought up I thought was new but it
wasn’t in fact it’s not unique at all
there’s 200 years of research this
research that dates back to the 1800s
early 1800s in Europe that looked at
cities in France and in Belgium and in
those cities what we learn is that in
the areas of those cities where there
were high levels of economic and social
disadvantage there were high rates of
crime there was high rates of illiteracy
and lots of other things going on there
that research has been done in the
United States and the late 1800s wev
divorce did work in the city of
Philadelphia and in the city of
Philadelphia he looked at the Negro Ward
there the 17th Ward and in that
community there were the places in that
community that had high rates of
economic and social disadvantage had
those same sets of problems that they
had seen in Europe some 60 years earlier
in the 1940s in the city of Chicago
there were two sociologists that did
extensive research on
mapping crime and other social issues in
that community and what they found was
that there were areas that they actually
called natural areas of crime and by
natural areas of crime they meant that
no matter who lived there
crime was high in that population and
when those populations moved so if there
was an ethnic group there when they were
living there the crime rates were high
and when they moved out their crime
rates went down and in fact the all the
other social problems that were
associated with their economic struggles
seemed to disappear more recently this
work that’s been done by a guy by the
name of Robert Sampson in in Chicago
again very popular place for research
and he concluded that the enduring
neighborhood effect that we see in the
communities in Chicago at least in
across America a lot of that is related
to the social and economic conditions
that are produced by racial and
discrimination and the isolation that
that produces my work is about an issue
that we call the school to Prison
Pipeline you know so there’s a place
that the thing that contributes to kids
being getting involved in the
institutions that we we would rather
than not be in the fuel source for that
rest in those communities and in those
conditions that I’m talking about I’d
like to tell you a story for a minute
because I think it brings home the idea
of where stress and matters in these
kids lives I do a lot of work in schools
in town and I was working and I took my
students to a school to see about
working and then after school program
with them a couple of years ago and
while we were there we were sitting and
we were talking to the woman who runs
the program and she looked up at the
clock and she said oh it’s 2:45 it’s
going to get really busy in here in a
minute
so my students assume assumption was oh
they’re gonna come in and they’re gonna
want to know what she said she well she
said they’re gonna want to know where
they go and my students response was
they’re gonna want to know whether they
go to like tutoring or the gym or to
math or something like that
and she said no that’s not what’s gonna
happen I’m gonna walk over to where
you’re sitting our table I’m gonna push
the phone across the table and they’re
gonna sit in that chair you’re sitting
in and when they sit down they’re gonna
call mom and when they call mom they’re
gonna want to know where they go tonight
to sleep the room got quiet when she
said that my students looked at me they
and and then they couldn’t they couldn’t
gather it we finished the meeting and as
we were walk it out I said to them I
asked them what they thought you know
what what do they think about whether
they want to work there and they didn’t
have an answer till we got outside when
we got outside their response was that
this school that we were at the school
that we were at was in the middle of
studying for the standardized tests that
are used to determine whether schools
are accredited or whether the children
are considered to be proficient they had
been spending the entire day preparing
for an exam while they were thinking
about where do I go to sleep tonight
that kind of stress is not something
that we think about when we declare that
the schools of failures but we declare
them failures very all too often so I
got asked to do a project in town that
was related to my work and we began it
it was built based in a request by a
couple of judges who were concerned with
the number of kids that were coming in
through the court particularly
african-american kids and they were
concerned that there was some bias in
the way that the kid that that kids
would be in treated that’s why they were
seeing so many I decided that I wanted
to do the work in elementary schools I
wanted to go in
two elementary schools and see how we
could make kids more successful there
they didn’t understand because the
courts usually older kids and and in the
middle of our conversations this
post-dispatch put out a newspaper
article that said UCLA report says the
state of Missouri leads the nation in
the suspensions of children of
african-american children two weeks
later they put out another headline that
said the city of st. Louis leads the
nation in the suspension of preschool
and elementary school aged children it
was really quiet in the room when we
would do in the proposal because their
response was we need to go in there and
try and figure out what we can do so we
began a project that that looks at
racial equity and we tried to teach in
it and it’s a partnership with with
schools it’s not like I was going to go
in and give them a solution but we were
going to work in partnership with
teachers and administrators and staff
how do we fix this how do we work
together to find a solution so we did
training around racial equity so so race
mattered it was important that people
understood that race matters in this
community in their school we did
training around trauma and stress and
how race is related to trauma and stress
that kids experience and even more
importantly house trauma related to what
they’re experiencing is teachers in the
buildings that they’re in we’ve done
that work and the teachers turned to us
and said we get it we understand we
understand that the children are
distressed but we have issues in the
classroom we they that we need more
resources we need more to deal with this
we need more to be able to to provide
and respond to their to their their
evidence needs I the work began as
another extension of all the work I had
been doing and I for years I have been
talking about building this thing that I
call a resource quilt and a quilt is
different in my mind and
safety net because nets have holes in
them and you can condom it it’s
different the quilt had cultural value
and it also had meaning for me
personally and and I started talking
about building a resource quilt in town
with people that I work with and I
explained to them this story that when I
was a kid I grew up in that project in
Upper Manhattan and as I was growing up
one year my grandmother from Savannah
Georgia sends us a box with presents in
it and I we opened my sister and I
opened the box and I take this thing out
and I didn’t understand it it had it was
material it was sewn together it was
there was sausage wrappers they were red
they were blue yellow they were
different colors my sister and I didn’t
understand we kind of laughed about it
but my parents explained that that thing
that she had sent us was called the
quilt and quilting was a really
important part of a particularly
african-american heritage because often
all that was available were the pieces
of material to put together blankets to
be keep warm and to make the family
whole so my grandmother had when she
after she had saved all these ratley’s
pieces of material had taken him out of
the box and sewn them together in a way
that made them this thing that she
called the quilt and that quote was
something that was important because it
was an act of love it was a
representation of the love she had for
me and my sister it kept us warm it kept
us feeling that there was something more
there and as I work with people in this
community I said we need to become a
quilt of resources we need to if you’re
an organization you need to be willing
to join in no matter how big you are not
matter how small you are so that you can
be a part of something that doesn’t fall
apart that represents the love we have
for this community we particularly for
the children of this community because
the quilt so I’ve been doing this quilt
thing and it’s been exciting because as
I the the project has offered me an
opportunity to begin to stitch together
the quilt in the middle of this quilt
our foundations that decided that they
would join forces and put their money
together so that we could have the money
to go into schools and to work in to
work with the with the teachers and the
staff and and to helpfully help teachers
to make schools places where they could
teach but even more importantly places
where kids could learn but we also a
joined by other organizations and other
agencies that are interested in this
kind of work there’s a group in town
that is that works out of the United Way
that’s not of the United Way but they
work out of the United Way called ready
by 21 have the same idea the same basic
principle that you need to put in place
resources around kids that go from the
time they’re born till the time they’re
about to get out of college so that they
can be successful because we know that
there is lots of need and that there’s a
lot on the plate here the quilt that I
have up there hiring me let them take
him down is the beginning of something
lots of people in this room probably
work in organizations that do work that
that could support the cute that the
young people of this community you could
join in by either becoming a part of the
quilt and and and already by 21 of the
two of us because we’re all in this
together and if you don’t do that maybe
you you sometimes donate to
organizations you could look to
organizations that are willing to work
together around collective impact that
are working for the same common good for
this work is to me is a labor of love
but what I I find every day is that I
think that this is where I close at that
the children of this community the
children in this community deserve a
light an opportunity to dream in life
they deserve the opportunity to live in
a way that’s not burdened by all that
baggage that comes from social animus
towards a community that doesn’t deserve
that they deserve a right to dream and
have some hope for a future and all I
can ask that we teach them well and let them lead the way
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