In a tough part of Belfast, youths need help, as they do here
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Julia Steiny
I recently went to Belfast, Northern Ireland, with a team from Providence’s Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence.
The institute has an ongoing relationship with an organization called Forthspring, a coalition of Protestant and Catholic churches trying to rebuild Belfast’s communities after decades of the civil war they call “The Troubles.”
Forthspring’s building is butt up against the euphemistically named “Peace Wall” that divides two once-warring neighborhoods. The residents still don’t cross to the other side.
This was the institute’s second trip in two years to train Forthspring staff in Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles and methods of nonviolence.
Modern Belfast is a curious combination of Dickensian row houses, new construction, a spiffed-up downtown and abandoned properties peppered everywhere.
In those derelict properties, and in parks and on street corners, gather legions of disaffected, angry youth.
The Troubles were just getting started in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many Northern Irish dads disappeared into prison, death or exile. Moms started having babies too young and out of wedlock. As in America, the “trades,” or skilled manufacturing, dried up.
Belfast was once a shipbuilding powerhouse — proud to have built the Titanic, though wry about the boat’s fate. Now the wretched urban schools repel many kids from getting the education that could be their ticket out of poverty.
However horrible the civil war was, at least it gave kids a purpose in life. Anger and revenge aren’t pretty, but they are purposeful. We met one young man who described his failure to pull his enraged, adrenaline-filled brother off of the front lines of a riot. Rage and vengeance will get you up and through the day, even if it kills you.
Today’s youths don’t give a hoot about their parents’ Catholic-versus-Protestant fights. But they’re steeped in a culture that responds to conflict with violence. The Troubles had already divided the city into territories, each controlled by gangs, called “paramilitaries.” Taking the place of sectarian violence is an American-looking struggle over turf, drugs and guns. The kids don’t seem to feel they have anything else to do with their lives.
So Belfast youth are like our disaffected urban youths, only with fewer guns and less drugs — so far — and surly blue eyes looking through pasty faces that need more exercise and vegetables.
The institute brought two of its street workers to Belfast. Their job is to make peace by going into the community after school or at night, whenever or wherever conflict brews or might erupt. These workers know the kids and their families well, and they prevent fights by helping to resolve issues.
On a Friday night, each institute street worker took a small group out into the streets to interact with the knots of boys and young men.
Belfast resident Nicola McWhirter and I shadowed Ajay Benton, an institute worker for four years and a longtime resident of South Providence. McWhirter is 21, college-educated and passionate about dedicating her life to her country’s young people. She’s at Forthspring part time as a youth worker. Like Benton, she gets to know neighborhood kids so they’ll trust her to widen their thinking, guide their decisions and offer the positive advice they’re not getting from other adults.
McWhirter took our group straight to Woodvale Park, in the Protestant Shankill area, where we could dimly see figures darting in and out of the bushes. With all the laughing and chatter, you had to wonder how many kids were hidden in there. Benton approached the visible groups that were buzzing around the benches. Boys, ranging from maybe 9 to late teens, eyed us suspiciously.
Benton talks to kids for a living, so he has plenty of whuzzup ice-breakers and good follow-ups. He’s male, adult, black and cool. So he got through the boys’ angry veneer in moments.
The teens were fascinated with American rap and hip-hop stars, and rattled off names, songs, TV shows and incidents that were mostly news to me. More than once Benton said, “You people watch way too much TV.” The kids were foul-mouthed and sometimes brutal. Big surprise.
We lingered with one especially large group who barraged Benton with so many questions he gave up trying to answer, and instead just made physical contact with as many speakers as he could. The boys grabbed at him for their chance to knock knuckles, grip fingers and bonk shoulders. The boys knew the handshake routines well. The buzz grew and attracted other boys.
After watching Ajay work his magic, McWhirter approached some of the kids she already knew, to make a little one-on-one contact. Eventually, a small group buzzed around her, too. They wanted to talk. What kid doesn’t? Benton and McWhirter were like rain in the desert to these young people.
Everywhere we went, youth workers — Ireland has many more than we do — told us that the politicians, parents and teachers all considered these directionless, angry kids to be someone else’s problem.
So Irish and American adults alike get themselves into arguments about who’s to blame for disaffected youths, who’s going to pay to for them, and what laws can we pass that will make problems with the kids go away. The kids are like the ball that rolls off the court while the players start swinging at each other.
You can’t give a kid purpose. But you can give a kid Ajay Benton and Nicola McWhirter, adults who befriend him and talk through his choices. The world is bigger than he knows, but who’s to show him? If we want better outcomes for the kids, we’ll have to get more caring adults into their lives, one way or another.
Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o EdWatch, Education and Employment, Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.
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