Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence

'Politics, petty feuds, and street violence'

Nonviolence Institute Executive Director's Op-Ed in The Boston Globe....

THINKING BIG
Politics, petty feuds, and street violence

By Teny Gross  |  February 12, 2006

I loved every minute of my 10 years as a youth worker in Boston, teaming up with partners inside and outside law enforcement who strived like never before to reduce violence -- an effort that brought remarkable calm to the city's streets in the late 1990s. I left Boston in 2001, and it has been painful to witness from the sidelines the past few brutal years in the city.

There is no polite way to say it: Boston's regression into its old territorial self has translated directly into death. A decade ago a young man in Dorchester told me, ''You adults are the real gang members, easy to feel slighted, fighting petty beefs, vying for attention and credit." It is the beefs on the streets that get the headlines. But the beefs in the offices and agencies are now equally to blame for what is happening.
 

Map of 2005 homicides in Providence

Courtesy of Projo.com

View the map here

About the Institute's Nonviolence Streetworker Program

The Institute's Nonviolence Streetworkers Program is focused on promoting, educating, and training members of the community, professionals, and agencies in the methods of nonviolence related to Gang Prevention & Youth Safety. Through its trainers and streetworkers, the project influences and impacts youth, families, victims, perpetrators, schools, hospitals, and other nonprofits in the community.

The Institute goes beyond its daily work of reducing gang violence by also effectively impacting strategy and policies in the state, and in the capital city of Providence by their involvement with organizations such as the Rhode Island Child Death Review Board, the After School Alliance, The Mayor’s Substance Abuse council, and the Providence Police Advisory Board.

The Institute currently staffs thirteen outreach Streetworkers. They are youth workers who do not have an office. They make daily visits to middle and high schools, provide court advocacy, visit juveniles in the detention center, assist high risk youth with employment searches and provide conflict mediation. Streetworkers are recruited from the diverse groups that make up our city’s landscape, affording ex-offenders the opportunity to serve and save their own communities.