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Reverend Dr. Ray Hammond
Pastor, Bethel AME Church
Chairman, Boston TenPoint Coalition

You've got angry, you've got grieving, you've got guilty, you've got traumatized young men who need somebody to really reach out to them. You need to understand that this is NOT an irredeemable situation. And if it's going to be changed, you're going to have to move out of these conversations in the church to working on the streets where the young people are.

We were particularly concerned about violent crime and its impact on the tenor of the community and the willingness to invest in that community, and the ability of kids to flourish in that community. So I think making that very clear is important, and that’s got to come from all sides, it can’t just be the police saying it. Parents have to say it, and schools have to say it, the clergy have to say it, that we stand united against the exercise, the presence of violence in our community.

One of the things we often overlook when we talk about the Strategy is the role that young people themselves played. And by that I mean, their willingness to lay the weapons down, their willingness to counsel friends to decide that they wanted to go in new directions. Some of that was organized, and a lot of it was unorganized, just kids who were tired and decided that they wanted to be a part of the solution and not the problem. I think there very definitely was a shift. Kids themselves got sick of the funerals, sick of the killing. I think they made conscious decisions to put weapons away, tell their friends to put weapons away, try to negotiate and to resolve problems. They were starting to think about the future, think about what was going to happen to their young brothers and sisters.

There’s also the very important question of witness. And I mean by that, that it was young people, particularly from gangs, who challenged us around this notion of collaboration. Because their replies were, "It’s wonderful for you to talk about us not warring over turf and coming together for the sake of this community. We would love the adults around us to give us a viable example. And especially you people from the church, because we don’t know of any people more protective of their turf than church folk." So in a lot of ways they were actually on the money. We couldn’t ask them to come together for the sake of the community if we weren’t willing to do that ourselves.

These were young men who really did want to do some positive and constructive things in their lives and didn’t have a road map and really didn’t see that as being a viable alternative. And I think that made it very clear to me that I and others had a responsibility to show them that there was a possibility for a positive, constructive future, and that there was a road map AND that there were some people who would be willing to walk that road with them.

One of the first meetings we had, [the young men on the street corners] said, "You know, we would have come to church but we really can’t cross other people’s territory. That wouldn’t have been safe. So we appreciate your coming here." And they were absolutely right, if they were going to be reached, we had to go to where they were.

They said very clearly that they saw themselves as being viewed as problems, problems to be either taken away or removed from the community. And they also felt that not just from the police, but they felt it from their families, they felt it from their neighbors, they certainly felt it from the society as a whole. So that they were problems that had to be dealt with. They saw a different viewpoint, which was that they HAD a problem.

It’s important for [the youth] to see the entire adult community coming together on their behalf, not against them, but really on their behalf. What they have to begin to see is that every adult—the teachers, the police officers, probation, the judges, the pastors, the storekeeper, the streetworker, whoever it is—all those people are really working for them because they really believe in them.

If you’re going to be effective you’ve got to be kind of working on all different levels. You’ve got to be working at sort of the larger power policy levels. You’ve got to be working at the community institution level. You’ve got to be working in the street. And it’s exhausting, but I don’t know any way around it.