Exposure Is Key: Solving Violence By Exposing Teens to Opportunites

By Jahmal Cole

In the span of two short years, one man’s dream has gone from idea to acclaim on the national stage. Jahmal Cole got his start by recruiting disconnected youth from barbershops on the south side of Chicago, a mission that has become a nationally recognized nonprofit organization called My Block, My Hood, My City.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9780692909133

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Involved

INTRODUCTION

The greatest issue of our time in Chicago is violence, specifically gun violence. Every other night, I hear gunshots, pop, 7 shots. Twice in the last month, I’ve almost been shot. I look around, and I see shot spotters on poles, blue lights flashing, German Shepherds sniff me when I jump on the Red Line, and more cops are being put on the streets. Millions of dollars are being spent on things that are merely band aids to the problem and quite frankly aren’t working.

Nobody’s talking about solutions. They just throw each other under the bus; and when that fails, they throw more money at the issue, more cops, more technology, and more behavioral therapists.

As a kid who grew up with very little hope, I had role models. They are currently doing life in prison. I know that the solution to violence in Chicago is exposure. Exposing kids to more than their blocks helps them develop a base and foundation to prevent violence. When you show somebody better, they do better. These kids have missed out on family vacations, being exposed to relatives who have master’s degrees, and grandparents who have summer homes in Lake Geneva. They’ve missed out on dinner table conversations about politics and traveling abroad. It sucks when you’ve never left your neighborhood, not even once in your whole life. Isolation leads to narrow mindedness. By taking kids outside of their immediate surroundings, expanding the worldviews of children, my program is showing them that opportunities exist.

I see it in the teenagers’ eyes as we explore safer communities. They aren’t looking over their shoulders like they’re worried about getting robbed. We are literally wiping out the pain and suffering they’re feeling in their neighborhood and giving them the hope of tomorrow.

Millions of dollars are spent on preventative healthcare. There are mammograms to screen for breast cancer and colonoscopy screens for colon cancer. I think millions of dollars need to be spent on exposure.

When you expose kids to more options and opportunities, it reduces their inclination toward violence, giving them the ability to make their own decisions and regulate their behavior.

My fight is to try and get the foundations and policy makers of the world to look at exposure as a key piece in violence prevention. That’s why I wrote this book. This book represents our program, the explorers, and the reason we do what we do. Think of it as a living annual report that doesn’t talk about if a program improved grade level or graduation rates. Rather, I want students to be constantly improving their lives all of the time.

I started my explorers program out of Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, working with the Automatic Transfer Unit. It was there where I developed the idea for My Block, My Hood, My City. The teens I worked with had never left their blocks or their neighborhood. Their entire worldview was shaped by the infrastructure of their neighborhood. To me, that was tragic, and I knew immediately I had to do something about it. So I did. I hope you join me on this exploration of solving Chicago’s biggest problem, violence. If I’m right, I change the world. If I’m wrong, I lived a great life trying to solve this issue.

This is going to be tough, and I admit I might fail. But I’m encouraging businesses, foundations, government, individuals, and philanthropists to bet on me. I’m coming at this with a full set of talents. My team will ask the right questions. We will spend time in the community. We will use analysis. If my explorers’ program doesn’t have an impact on a teenager’s life, at least we dared greatly together.

EXPLORERS

DARRYON

Darryon has 11 brothers and sisters. His oldest brother was shot twice in the forearm with a pistol. Another brother was shot twice in the stomach with a shotgun. His middle brother was stabbed and shot at the same time. He recalls his arm going numb, and he had to lift it up to keep driving.

Darryon is a freshman at Collins Academy in the North Lawndale Community. He is about six-foot tall and weighs about 200 pounds. He’s outgoing and really witty. Some assume that he’s rude because he’s always talking out of turn. During our first exploration, I identified him as a troublemaker for that very reason. After a year of hanging with him, I realize that he’s just very inquisitive and hyper—he’s just got to know, which isn’t a bad quality.

Even though he’s a class clown, Darryon maintains a 3.1 GPA. His name and photo are actually posted outside of the school. I think it’s an awesome accomplishment.

When he isn’t in school, Darryon doesn’t go outside much, nor does he think much of North Lawndale. There’s too much violence going on. It’s a good community when people get together for things, but when we are not together as a whole community, it’s just too much violence.

Darryon lives about a mile away from the school—just far enough to take the bus, but also close enough to walk. He chooses to walk to school every day for the exercise.

To tell the truth, every day I come out the house, I think about my life. When I’m walking to school, I make sure I keep my head up and look around at my surroundings. When I get to school, I feel safe. That’s why I do so many activities at school, so when I get home I’m so tired that I just take a shower and lay down.

Darryon comes from a large family. His mother has eight kids, and his father has fourteen kids. Neither parent has a college education. He lives with his momma and her three kids. Darryon wants to go to college, but he doesn’t know what he wants to major in yet. He’s interested in a lot of different things, including broadcasting and architecture. I wanna go to college so I can achieve something and get my momma out of the ghetto. I don’t want her to be a person that has to go to a nursing home or stuff like that. I want to have nurses in my house.

Even though he’s performing in the highest percentile and has his picture hanging outside of the school, he doesn’t feel the school has the resources they need to have. I just focus and work hard with what we have. I study, and I get mad at myself if my grades are slipping.

I asked Darryon a few questions about Chicago and his neighborhood.

What do you think of Chicago?

If everybody would stop being mad at each other, then it would be a good community. But the way the gangs and things are run, it’s not going to be a good community for years to come.

Do you know who your neighbors are?

I spent most of the summer in my neighbors’ back yard.

What do you think about other communities?

I like the South Loop community you took us to, by the McCormick Place, because it was people out there dedicated to what they were doing. I saw people passing out flyers. I like that mentality.

How can we do a better job working with youth?

We just need a little motivation to do things. A lot of kids don’t get motivation. We’re always told if you’re a boy, you’re going to sell drugs. If you’re a girl, you’re going to get pregnant. We don’t get motivation. That’s how everything has been instilled in us. Most of the time, we don’t have father figures, either.

What would you say are good qualities of the city?

The city is the festivals when we get together. I love the festivals. The youth around my neighborhood. The block I live on the youth don’t do nothing but work and play ball. Sometimes we get into it, but we brush it off.

If you could change one thing about Chicago…

I’d like to change the gun violence. Police killing people, people killing people, kids killing themselves because of gun violence.

I want to play football, broadcasting, and be an architect. I don’t know exactly how to go about doing all of this. It’s like I know how to make a lot of ideas and my drawing skills are good.

What do you need to do to be an architect?

I just need to focus on things in front of me.

As we were driving and I was asking Darryon these questions, we passed by a few cops who were standing on the side of the road, searching for something with their flashlights.

Darryon said, You can tell the way he went down, you can tell he was about to plant something on somebody. Then he went by the sewer. Pops has been to jail too many times. Stepdaddy been to jail five times. I don’t trust none of these cops.

"I see my dad, but he stays with my auntie, and I don’t like going over there because he always asks me for stuff. He’s on house arrest, so he’s always sending me to the store for stuff, running errands. He’ll wake me up and ask me to do stuff. That’s why I don’t like going over there. He just got out of jail in April. He wasn’t out half a year and went back. I talk to him sometimes. He’s proud of me, but when my mom puts stuff on Facebook, he doesn’t like it. But when she puts stuff up like a picture of her and my stepdaddy, he’ll like that picture, saying congratulations. It’s been two days since she put up a post about my GPA, and he didn’t say nothing.

YOUNG E

I live in Englewood: I travel so far to North Lawndale, but I feel it’s a good spot because I get to learn Spanish, PE, and I can learn a lot. I want to play basketball or any type of sport.

What do you think the difference is between Englewood and North Lawndale?

Englewood is kind of more dangerous. Where I live, they shoot around my window, and I don’t think that happens in North Lawndale. When I hear the shots, I just sleep. I try not to pay too much attention to it. I’ll tell myself they are firecrackers sometimes. When I’m walking home, I make sure my head is up and not down and I watch my surroundings. You never know when shots get fired. And it be dark, so I’m scared.

My mom is kind of not working right now, but she’s trying to get there, but she’s been sick. My mom was trying to finish college. I have an older sister and older brother. My sister recently left college, but she’s waiting for some money to get back into college.

What do you think of the communities you visit?

Traveling doesn’t really scare me, because I was told it was dangerous everywhere you go, but I was told don’t go look for trouble or trouble will find you.

What did you think of traveling to Washington DC?