| The Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign offers media tools and resources to support informed discussion, decision making, and action about solution-based reentry programs that foster public safety and support healthy communities. We encourage you to review the diverse materials and consider how you may be able to use them effectively. |
| The Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign acts as a catalyst to encourage solution-based reentry activities. Review this chronicle of public television and community events/actions to gain ideas on what may work in your arena. |
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GOD AND THE INNER CITY Addresses AECF’s Core Results Launched in March 2001, the Making Connections Media Outreach
Initiative (MCMOI), funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF)
offers vital media-based resources and strategies to the Making
Connections Network. Outreach Extensions will assist public television
stations and their partners by identifying relevant content within
MCMOI productions and by creating outreach materials that can be
used as resources to address AECF’s Core Results. This will
enable stations to collaborate with the Casey site teams to help
them reach their goals – and link their efforts to the long-term
development of neighborhoods and families. Core Results AECF hopes that children will be healthier and do better in school;
that more parents will be working and have good jobs; that more
families will be able to save for the future; that more residents
will be involved in community groups and activities. It also
hopes people will feel safer and more connected, and as importantly,
have a voice in decisions that affect their families and communities.
To achieve these kinds of results, the local Casey sites are
moving toward specific, measurable results for children, families,
and neighborhoods. Individuals/Organizations presented:
Eugene Rivers: We had 300 jobs to give out this summer. How come you didn’t get one? Man: ‘Cause there’s no way – how we supposed to know that people got jobs to give like that? When we go in there, we labeled a minority. You know that. Rivers: No, no. Everybody that want to do a J.O.B. got a J.O.B. For real. Man: What you going to do about my record … ? Rivers: …We could advocate for you if you got issues so that if you wanted to get a job on the entry level, we could do that. Man: Believe it or not, I done hit Filene’s, Staples, Marshalls, Gap, Old Navy, anything you can think of off the top of your head. Rivers: Look, I tell you what. I will personally take you up in the joint. Man: All right. Rivers: You suit up, man. I mean, we ain’t going to do the FUBU, man. Man: [laughs] No, no. I don’t go ghetto. I go real professional. Rivers: Okay. So what we do, we go up in there with the gear correct….And we do it, man. Man: All right. Tony Barry [Answering a question about how Eugene Rivers was able to gain his trust]: Well, he didn’t lie to us, you know what I’m saying. He said he would help us get jobs and that’s what everybody wanted when we first met him. We trusted him with that. And when he helped us get the jobs, then we really trusted him. Anybody puts some money into your pocket, you’re going to trust them after that. And he was always cool, you know what I’m saying. From day one, he took us out and did things no one ever did for us. Took us on all types of trips. Mike Zello: [In response to Michael telling him that he’s been crying for the last ten days.] This is because your feelings are coming back. When you’re drinking and you’re drugging, your feelings are numbed. You’re not in reality….Now that you’re not numb, you have to think about your wife and how bad you were to her and you know, the money, and all the money you lost. All those things that we’ve talked about.
Eugene Rivers: The rough kid brings attitude, his adolescence, his anger and disappointment at the failure of the fathers. At the end of the day, this all comes down to the failure of the fathers. In the black community, the fathers fail the kids, and now we see the sins of the fathers being visited upon the second or third generation. Larry: I started [getting high] when I was eighteen. Started smoking crack and marijuana together. Last two weeks I spent about $4,000 [on crack]….I just let it take my job, take everything.
Richard Land: Every social ill in American history that has been rectified by public policy has been rectified by leadership that came and inspiration that came from people of religious conviction in America. That was true of the abolitionist movement. It was true of the labor reform movement, the child labor reform movement, and, of course, in our time, the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement is inexplicable without both the black church and the white church. John DiIulio: I think what we’re witnessing here is a second civil rights movement … of a different kind. It’s more broad-based, multi-racial, multi-ethnic. It’s focused on the poor. It’s focused on those who have been left behind despite the enormous unprecedented prosperity of America in the past thirty or forty years. So long as it remains a movement that is about having sacred places partner in order to serve civic purposes, I think it’s a movement not only whose time has come already, but a movement whose greatest days are ahead of it. I think at the end of the day, you shall know them by their works. Andre Norman: Convince me. Figure like I’m the Parole Board. Why should you be let out? … So convince me why you should be let out other than you said a bro word – I’m responsible. They’re going to go like, yeah and ? Why should you be let out? I’m going to risk my life on your word. Prisoner: Because I’m willing, because I’m willing to do what I need to do to become a productive member of society. Andre Norman: It ain’t a mistake. A crime. Crime ain’t a mistake. That’s intent.
Richard Land: The problems we face in America are problems that cannot be solved with secular solutions alone. We have spent billions and billions and billions of dollars on the war on poverty, and we lost. And the reason we lost is that we haven’t found an adequate replacement for a stable, nuclear family. So, anything we can do to encourage the formation of stable, nuclear families, anything we can do to repair damaged, stable, nuclear families, anything we can do to help local congregations and synagogues and mosques try to substitute for stable, nuclear families is going to massively benefit the children in those families. Eugene Rivers [about Tony]: This one’s one of the sharpest young dudes in the neighborhood…. Tony got a lot of the young people on a basketball team and did enormous work. We work with him. He, in turn, works with the kids….You’ve got natural leadership in the neighborhood. Larry: [Talking about Mike Zello]. He took me in as a son. My dad was on drugs and my dad came to the program. If it weren’t for Pastor Mike, I don’t know what I would be doing right now. I might not even be here. I may be dead right now. I didn’t understand until it happened to me because my dad did the same thing. And I didn’t understand why he had to leave. I said, why couldn’t he be a man and take care of his responsibilities. I have to learn how to be a man. Woman [talking to Eugene Rivers who is helping her to find a job]: Reverend Rivers, anything that I can do in this community to help you, I will. Rubin Ortiz: [Talking about 10-year-old Juan, whom he mentors] He lives with his grandmother. It’s probably a better situation for him because his mother is in and out of the hospital. The environment doesn’t bode well for his future. But I believe that he can live a different path and that he can choose a different path. He’s got some good social support that I think other children do not have, including a grandmother that’s intervening, including a mentor like myself, including a congregation that’s looking after him. And others in the neighborhood who know that we’re trying to hold him accountable, and they step up as well. If he’s out there a little too late, someone will scream out the window, ‘You know you’re not supposed to be out there.’ So, there’s hope. There’s a lot of hope.
Narrator: The [Ella J.] Baker House Staff, who all live in the community, run programs from after-school study to computer training that serve a diverse clientele. Those in need of counseling just drop by….Some of the men Rivers serves are behind bars. After they’re released, Rivers would like to see them come to Baker House in the first forty-eight hours. If they’re not in a program by then, they will almost certainly return to prison. Eugene Rivers: What makes what has happened in Boston unique [black clergy working with the police, parole officers, and other social service agencies to reduce crime] is that we have addressed one of the most enduring, apparently intractable, problems – which is the issue of race and law enforcement. How will black people be policed? Who will police black people? Under what terms politically and socially will the mandate to provide public safety be executed? And what is unique in Boston is that black clergy played a singular role in deracializing law enforcement. John DiIulio: The relationship, I think, of the ministers working with the police, has been successful because each side has played its role. When the ministers, for example, tell you, look, there’s an alternative here. You don’t have to end up, you know, going through the juvenile justice system. This diversionary program, this program that can keep you out of jail, is real, and it’s something you ought to really consider. But, of course, if you don’t want to consider it, there is an alternative, and the alternative is sitting right here wearing that badge. Mike Zello: First of all, I don’t think that Teen Challenge is for everybody. But I think that there is a certain number of drug addicts that come to a breaking point in life, when they are absolutely tired and ready for change. These are the men who say, ‘I’m sick of doing drugs. I want to stop. I’ll do anything to change. I have the will to change; I just don’t have the power to change. I can’t do it. I’ve been just saying no since the ‘80s. But every night, I get high. I can’t stop.’ Cocaine is too powerful physically for these men. So what we believe here is that if you have the will, then God has the power. And that’s where we’re different from a secular program. Mike Zello: Of course, we teach His word. Of course, we teach that He’s going to be there to help you and that He is here to help the guys. But, you have to make the effort. You have to take the first step. You have to want to change your behavior. You have to want to be clean. You have to want to be forgiven. John DiIulio: The motivation behind Amachi is to say, okay, we have this huge population of extraordinarily at-risk children in urban America. Nobody is getting to them. The churches are trying to get to them. What if we took a big secular, wonderful organization, non-profit like Big Brothers/Big Sisters, partnered them up with the churches. The churches supply the mentors, the people of faith. The active match process is through Big Brothers/Big Sisters. What might be accomplished?
John DiIulio: What does it say to you if you grow up in a place where your mom or a dad’s been taken away from you for reasons you don’t understand because they’re incarcerated. You’re told they’re a prisoner or they’re a criminal. And then you may have someone in the household who’s not entirely capable of taking care of you, or there may be people around who are doing things that you know are wrong. And if you go to school, you go to school. But, if you don’t go to school, nobody particularly seems to care much. What does it say about your own worth? What does it say about whether people really love you and care for you. Larry [reading a letter from his 4 year-old son]: Dear Daddy, Mama read me your letters and told me how much you miss me and love me. Daddy, I miss you and love you a lot. I am ready to see you. Daddy, when you get better, can we go fishing and ride the go-carts when you get home? I like to play baseball. Daddy, don’t cry because I love you and Jesus loves you too. I hope that I get to see you soon. Please get better. Write me soon. Love you, Josh. P.S. I say my prayers every night. Rubin Ortiz: I’ve known Juan (age 10) for about two and
a half years. That’s not enough to say I understand all the
issues and I know where he’s at with everything. But, I think
the more I know him, the more I realize how deep issues run in
his personal life, his individual life as well as his family’s.
His father passed away, died of AIDS. His mother currently has
full-blown AIDS. She has cancer, as well. And, when he was four
years old, he witnessed his aunt get shot and get killed in a bedroom
in the house.
GOD AND THE INNER CITY also addresses President George W. Bush’s Executive Order to create the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and asks whether faith-based programs are more effective than government/secular ones. President Bush: We will not fund the religious activities of any group. But when people of faith provide social services, we will not discriminate against them. Reverend Barry Lynn: To me, it’s a simple constitutional issue. Government has to be neutral about religion. It can’t promote it; it can’t deter it. One thing, it certainly can’t fund it. Anthony Brooks, The Connection radio show: Connection listeners, should the government invest in the work of the faithful? Can it do that without playing favorites with religious denominations? And what about that constitutional separation of church and state? Eugene Rivers [on Brooks’ radio show]: I’m not asking them to subsidize my Christian worldview. I am not interested at all in anyone, any taxpayer supporting my religious ideology. And we’re very, very careful in the city and across the country. We have a reputation for a faith-based program that really is concerned with mobilizing a sacred institution to serve secular purposes. So, we talk to Christians and secular folk alike and say, look, our end game is to save lives. Richard Land: My faith tradition teaches me that there is a spiritual dimension to these issues that is not going to be met by government, shouldn’t be met by government, can’t be met by government, that we as Christians would say can only be met by God. Mike Zello: And so one of the dangers of, you know, a faith-based program, a Christian program like Teen Challenge is, we’ll dream about God. And so that is, that doesn’t happen a whole lot here. It happens with a certain amount of guys, because we don’t allow it to. Obviously, we deal with reality here. Very strongly, we deal with reality. And we try to have guys to face their addiction. And have them understand, you have real issues. You have real issues. Yes, you have some spiritual issues. You have some social issues as well. You have some mental issues, as well. John DiIulio: What we do need is better classical, sort of demonstration, experimental research here. You’d expect me to say that as a card-carrying social scientist. But, there, so I said it. But, it is really true. We do need a couple of big studies to see whether if you can – other things being equal – these [faith] organizations are somehow more effective [than government/secular]. Such evidence as there is, is, in fact, a positive. Not uniformly positive, not beyond anybody’s skepticism or reasonable doubt, but certainly a positive.
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