Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence

Harvard Magazine on David & Teny: "Taking It to the Streets"

Harvard Magazine profiled alumnus Teny Gross and Senior Streetworker David Cartagena in their January-February 2009 issue. Click here to view/download the PDF.

Taking It to the Streets
Teny Gross teaches kids nonviolence.

by Nell Porter Brown

David C. grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. With no father around and a drug-addicted mother, he  moved through foster homes, gathering a fragile sense of worth from a gang of friends. “All I aspired to was being important on the street,” he says. “There was nothing about a future.” He spent five years in juvenile detention and a few in prison, and still has a reputation among local cops for living up to his nickname, “Devious,” for once escaping through the police-station roof.

At 37, he is still hanging out with the kids—in the schools, at their homes, the hospital, or the mall. But as a street worker with the city’s Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, he now prevents the very violence he once provoked. 

Providence Journal: He walks the streets to broker peace

by Edward Fitzpatrick, ProJo columnist
01:00 AM EST on Thursday, December 25, 2008

Peace.

It’s a notion we see on Christmas cards and bumper stickers. It’s something we all hope for. But for Teny O. Gross, it’s more than a Hallmark greeting or a quaint idea. It’s the goal he pursues every day on the streets of Providence.

Gross is a street worker, a peacemaker. In this age of “Bring ’em on!” bravado, peacemakers might seem out of step — soft in a hard-line era.