Key to Building Safer Communities: Continuity, Culture
By Keri Blackwell, Deputy Director, LISC Chicago At a recent safety symposium, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn boiled it down into seven simple words: "Investing in community development IS crime fighting." But what does that mean? And how do you do it? For more than 10 years, LISC Chicago has been working with neighborhood partners to support comprehensive community development, which means doing a hundred things at once to help a neighborhood become safer, better educated, healthier, more attractive and more sustainable. Safety is one of the toughest places to show progress, but we’ve learned a lot over the years about how to make a difference. It takes time and consistent effort, of course, but most importantly, it requires a conscious effort to build organizational capacity and expertise around safety: a neighborhood network engaged in a culture of peace. Case study The Little Village neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side is a densely populated, young, mostly Mexican neighborhood with many strengths, but also challenges in the areas of gang involvement and gun violence. Homicides are a brutal reality, claiming 109 lives since 2007. It’s discouraging, yes, but that number has to be balanced against the accomplishments made by local organizations and police, working together to change the neighborhood’s future. It’s a slow process, but one with clear indicators of progress. Over ten years ago, the breakthrough was getting 23 different neighborhood groups, churches and youth organizations to form the Little Village Violence Prevention Collaborative to empower residents with violence prevention strategies and to improve community-police relations. That led to a series of workshops that brought Chicago Police and neighborhood leaders together, not just for beat meetings, but to talk about the nature of their work and help each participant understand the others. It led to new partnerships with gang outreach organizations, and to something called B-Ball on the Block, a Friday-night basketball league that took over hotspot streets for evenings of basketball, barbecued burgers, arts activities and fellowship among neighbors in a safe environment. And it fostered development of numerous community-building activities, at schools, in churches, at youth centers and among police leaders, all aimed at “healing the hood.” The result is a network of networks collaborating and communicating to promote a culture of peace. Most recently, for instance, more than a dozen neighborhood groups have worked together to consciously target recreational and mentoring resources to more than 300 at-risk youth in the 5th to 8th grades, when they are most vulnerable to gang recruitment. Stream of activities All of these things are good, but none is sufficient on its own. What Little Village and other neighborhoods in the LISC network have learned is that this stream of activities, over a period of years, creates something essential to eventually licking the crime problem, and other problems too. The essential element is continuity. By creating a large and diverse group of participants working on the safety issue, talking about it regularly with each other and sharing their methods, Little Village has been able to grow and maintain a culture of peace even when the leadership changed at local organizations, or when the police commander was reassigned to another district, or when a supportive school principal was promoted and replaced. This organizational infrastructure – this culture of peace – meant that such transitions could be weathered as a matter of course. When a new commander comes into the district, neighborhood leaders request a meeting to talk about safety, and the meeting takes place, because that’s how it’s done in Little Village. Every year the summer calendar is filled with community-building activities, not always sponsored by the same groups, but always happening because it’s part of the culture. Lately, new community gardens have been built; basketball and boxing continue; little league is a hit with younger kids; there are multiple arts programs; mothers have organized a church network called Padres Angeles (Parent Angels); the Chicago Police Department honored a neighborhood request for data that could help steer youth onto the right path; and, community-police collaboration was recognized by a national foundation. It’s a process. You create shared tables in a neighborhood where different types of people can come together, voice their concerns, set priorities, and create actions. It takes time and money, yes, but most of all it requires continuity, so that a culture can be built. Because investing in community development IS crime fighting. LISC Chicago’s Keri Blackwell has been working on safety programs with neighborhoods and Chicago Police for the past 10 years. Only this final day of National Youth Violence Prevention Week, SCY wants to thank Keri Blackwell, LISC, and all of its partners this week for helping to spread the word about youth violence prevention and for all of the admirable work they do and change they initiate every day. Stay inspiring and #violencefreeCHI!