Dave (Oak),
First let me say that I always have enjoyed the posts you have put on here
as well as the off-list conversations we have had. Second, I clearly struck
a nerve with you with my last post and I am ok with that. You ask if I
write for self-promotion, to cause one to reflect, etc. I write to provoke
thought, discussion and action. I write, discuss, teach, and act on things
that make people uncomfortable - that¹s my life, it is who I am.
I didn¹t want to get into a pissing match with you on here, but you keep
pushing, so, here are a few comments, these are in no particular order, just
off the top of my head.
1. You said that I was against surveillance cameras being deployed in AP.
That is 100% false. In exercising due diligence on an important issue
(which I always did during my service on City Council) I raised the question
of the potential violation of civil liberties with regard to cameras. I did
not object outright. Once my concerns were allayed by the experts who
presented to us, I wholeheartedly supported and pushed for their deployment
and I lobbied Sean Kean hard for state dollars to make it happen.
2. With regard to the cameras, you asked, ³where did the money go?² I asked
this question many times in a much more general sense with our $36 million
dollar budget. This is why I pushed for budget hearings. When we had them,
I was the only council person there for the full 8 hours - Loffredo came for
45 minutes. I also went down the Department of Community Affairs in Trenton
and begged them to stop giving us money until we had real fiscal
accountability. I also pushed for a citizen¹s budget committee. It
eventually was formed (I was excluded) and became a bureaucratic shell game
with Terry Reidy stalling both the committee members and the City Council.
Ask Rita Morano how it went.
3. Coming back to the issue of what to do about the violence, which is in
part what started this exchange, here is an example of what could be done.
When Tylik Pugh was murdered outside the middle school, I pushed to get
$250k of the community development fund (money from Asbury Partners) set
aside so that community groups, centers, churches, etc. could come to the
Council with programs to help stem the violence. All I wanted was an
earmark and a commitment to hear out people who were on the frontlines and
then potentially fund what they would present to us. The result? I could
not even get a second on my motion to put it up for discussion.
4. I really don¹t think that people have a clue about what is brewing among
the poor and disenfranchised in AP. Let me give you a few anecdotal stories
from my time on Council:
* I attended the wake of a young man that was gunned down in our streets.
After the wake, I drove four of the young man¹s friends home. I knew two of
them from coaching rec basketball, so they felt somewhat comfortable
speaking with me. I asked them what they thought about AP and the direction
it was going. One of them said to me, ³You don¹t think we know what¹s going
on here? All these new people moving in just want all the poor black people
out of here. Redevelopment? Not for us. But I can tell you this. If they
don¹t make us a part of it, it may get to a point where we¹ll burn the whole
fucking thing down. Maybe if we march down
> Cookman and break some windows and scare some of these white people, then they
> will listen to us.² I shared this story with my colleagues and said that we
> should have community development, crime prevention, etc. on our Council
> agendas EVERY MEETING. I said that the City staff should be working on this
> stuff around the clock. The result? Nothing.
>
> When the young man was chased down the street and shot in the gutter outside
> the Westside Community Center, Susan Maynard came to the next City Council
> meeting and said, ³This is just the beginning. I am seeing Red (read: the
> Bloods) like I have never seen before. You better get a handle on this or
> it¹s going to come back to you.² She was dismissed as an alarmist.
* I always laugh when people both in AP and outside AP say, ³It has to start
with the families.² They are clueless. They simply have no idea of the
harsh reality that exists. After the rash of shootings a few years back, I
was invited by a teacher to visit AP High School to listen to the kids and
hear what they had to say. (Remember, this was the time when the school
board president told me to stay out of the schools.) I went to one class
and met three really troubled young men. One had a father in jail, he had
another 10 years on his sentence for stabbing a guy in the neck. His mother
was an addict. She was now shacked up with the 26-year-old brother of his
classmate and they all lived together. This is a bit extreme, but it is not
completely off the charts. Do you realize how many kids are without two
parents? Do you realize how many kids who do have a parent at home rarely
see that parent if they are trying to work the 2-3 jobs it takes to make
ends meet? You also have to take into account that for decades, women were
the ones that held the black community together. When the crack and heroin
waves hit in the 80s, this shred that community fabric to bits. We are now
two generations out with that crack and heroin mess as the foundation (I say
two generations, because you have kids having kids and it cuts the
generational time in half). ³Start with the familes...² Wake up. To solve
this and turn the tide, you would need an army of hundreds of social workers
with expense budgets who would basically fill the role of parents for many
of these kids and/or support single parents as they reintegrated into the
mainstream. It would cost millions and take at LEAST five to seven years of
work. In the long run, it would be cheaper to do this than to incarcerate
all these kids down the line, but do we really care about that? Prisons and
all the ancillary businesses that flow from them make money for people who
contribute to political campaigns.
* I was taking one of my weekly walks through the Westside and ran into some
kids I knew just behind the Westside Community Center. There was an older
guy there who was a bit drunk. As we talked, discussing the challenges
people were facing in the neighborhood, the guy who was drunk got visibly
enraged. He burst into tears, screaming, ³JIM! I¹m 26 years old and I
can¹t fucking read! I can¹t read! How can I get a job? I can¹t fucking
read!² That is not his fault. He was failed by both his family (if one
existed) and by the school system. In that moment, he felt safe to share
that rage with me and it was controlled. In another situation, it might not
be.
* I was on the basketball courts behind the Middle School one day. I spent
a lot of time there during my years in AP. I was talking to a group of kids
and I asked them why they were joining the gangs. There was one kid in
particular that I was trying to stop from getting involved I lost that
fight. Here is what they told me. They said they joined the gang for three
reasons: it made them feel like they belonged to something (family); it put
money in their pocket; it got them laid. When I reflected on this
conversation I realized that those were things that I wanted as a teenager
too. I simply got them from much different means. But if this is what kids
want, why not help them get it? Make them feel like they belong to
something make a MASSIVE investment in recreation, school sports, dance
programs, Westside Community Center, Boys and Girls Club, etc. I mean a
MASSIVE commitment millions, with dozens and dozens of sports coaches,
life coaches, etc. Help them put money in their pockets jobs, jobs, jobs.
This is why I pushed to get $250K allotted to Asbury Works. Then I got
marginalized by Tamara Richardson, the director, for reasons I still cannot
explain. But this money is not nearly enough. Many of these kids are
unemployable in the mainstream at the moment. But if you don¹t pay them for
doing something, anything, they will hustle on the streets. As for getting
laid, if kids have high self-esteem through being part of something big and
have some money in their pockets, that will take care of itself. Having
said this, we also need to do MAJOR education on birth-control and family
planning.
I could go on with a lot more examples, but I think you get it. I had/have
a range of other ideas to try and intervene at the source of the violence,
but what needs to be done is not popular and will not get you votes. In the
short term will cost serious money, but in the long term will save millions
in tax dollars. BUT... Who wants to listen and more importantly, who wants
to implement? If our society REALLY cared about solving these issues, we
would. We can put a man on the moon, we can do a billion things with our
cell phones and computers that were unthinkable just 10 years ago, we can
create weapons that can destroy the entire planet 30 times over... But we
cannot solve the social injustices of poverty, hunger, joblessness, poor
schools, etc? Bullshit. It is about political and social will. The fact
is that racism and classism are sewn into the very fabric of our nation and
until we get very honest with ourselves about this, we will continue to
nibble around the edges and the cycle of violence will continue. If we
don¹t come to know, understand and deal with the realities present in the
community, there is the potential that it is going to explode and it is
going to be nasty. If you doubt me, watch the footage from London last
week. People may choose to say I am being alarmist, but I would rather err
on the side of caution with this stuff.
5. I am flattered that you went mining for some of my other writing on the
internet. I am proud of the work I have done. I stand by what I wrote
about Martin Luther King and how white people would have hated him today the
same way that white people hated him when he walked the earth. Our American
society has both personal and institutional racism sewn into it. Just
because a black man became President doesn¹t mean that all that stuff goes
away. Our nation has never truly dealt with our horrific past. If you¹re
interested, get the documentary Citizen King (I can loan it to you if you¹d
like). Watch it. Those white guys throwing bricks and M80s at King and his
followers, the one¹s talking about what needs to be done with ³the niggers,²
they are still alive. I go out enough to bars and parties and hear the
racists jokes thrown about. We cannot pretend that this stuff doesn¹t
exist. It does. Let¹s get real and deal with it.
6. You and Dan have taken your ad hominem swipes about me living in Spring
Lake. Regardless of whether I live in Spring Lake, Asbury Park, or on the
moon, it has no bearing on the truths I am sharing. The fact that each of
you raises this shows me that you¹d rather attack the messenger than deal
with the message I shared. Those who know me well, know that it pained me
to leave my position on City Council and to move from Asbury Park. When I
did move, first to Point Pleasant, I did it so I could try to make a family
work for my daughter. When things did not work out between her mom and I, I
moved to Spring Lake because it was half the distance between my daughter¹s
school and her mom¹s house. Those that know me, know I wish I was still
living in AP and was still politically involved. I sacrificed my political
career to be the best dad for my daughter and I would do that again. If I
could roll back time, I¹d try to figure out a way to make it all work, but
that wasn¹t the way things went. Now that I have finally started to settle
into a groove here, I have been brainstorming on the best way for me to
re-engage with AP and serve the people I initially moved there to serve
the poor and disenfranchised.
I hope this clears the air a bit.
Peace, JWK
--
Jim Keady, Director
Educating for Justice, Inc.
j...@educatingforjustice.org
732.988.7322
www.educatingforjustice.org
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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