Chops Porter Institute

Chicago - Street Workers are key "violence interrupters"

Our note: the Providence Street Workers are doing these same activities. We're glad to see allies across the country. And, we're always thrilled when academia endorses the work of front line practitioners like street workers.

The violence virus
Boston Globe Op-Ed
By Susan C. Scrimshaw  |  April 22, 2007

IN URBAN areas across our nation, hardly a day goes by without news of a shooting. Many such incidents start with a rash argument between young people armed with guns. The typical response, when shootings increase, is to enhance law enforcement, but that is only part of the solution.

This deadly cycle of shootings is a public-health epidemic. By approaching it as such -- as a contagious disease of underlying expectations and pressures, one that is both treatable and preventable -- we can make significant progress toward halting it.

Urban violence is spread largely by expectations among youths in many gangs: If you insult or harm me, I must harm you. That powerful peer pressure and behavior is transmitted, like a virus, from person to person and gang to gang -- until there's a violent outbreak, and someone is killed. Then the virus is quiet until another outbreak.

Urban violence is spread largely by expectations among youths in many gangs: If you insult or harm me, I must harm you. That powerful peer pressure and behavior is transmitted, like a virus, from person to person and gang to gang -- until there's a violent outbreak, and someone is killed. Then the virus is quiet until another outbreak.

Boston's Youth Opportunity Area - the origins of YO Boston

Youth Opportunity Area, commonly known as "YOA", was a City of Boston youth program from 1997 to 2000, serving 16 to 24 year-olds in Roxbury's Orchard Park housing development and Dudley Street corridor; and South Boston's 3 public housing developments. Funded by the US Department of Labor (DOL) for 3 years at $2 million/year, Boston's mandate was to significantly reduce the unemployment rate for out-of-school youth in the target area. As such, the majority of the program's 950+ participants were high school dropouts; including youth offenders, gang-involved, substance abusers, teen parents, and other high-risk factors.

Boston had previously applied - unsuccessfully - for these DOL funds with a "school-to-career" model, based on a partnership between the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Private Industry Council. The School-to-Career system, of which Boston was a national pioneer, had been very successful since the 1980's in bringing public school students into the workforce, but had little impact on the youth violence that led to Boston's murder rate peak of 151 in 1991. This was no surprise, given that most youthful offenders and victims had low school attendance rates and little connection to traditional youth providers.

However, in late 1996, an ad-hoc working group of law enforcement officials and high-risk youth providers emerged, known as the "Boston Jobs Project" and led by US Attorney (for Massachusetts) Donald Stern. City, church-based and community-based Streetworkers had been working closely with law enforcement in "Operation Cease-Fire", in which known gangs had a direct dialogue with these leaders and were given a choice of prosecution or reform.

While recognizing the great success of "Cease-Fire" in plummeting gun violence, the civilian and clergy leaders felt that the coalition was too much "guns" and not enough "butter" - the alternatives to gangs, guns and jail had to be real. Many gang members, like the "Vamp Hill Kings" mentored by Streetworker Chops Porter, were saying, "I hear the message loud and clear. I'm ready to change. Tell me what to do next." To their credit, law enforcement leaders like Stern, Police Commissioner Paul Evans, state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, and others, soon began concerted advocacy for "jobs" as a critical tool in sustaining Boston's "Miracle" in reducing youth violence, and the Jobs Project was born.

40 Developmental Assets

Link: 40 Developmental Assets.

40 Developmental Assets�

Through extensive research, Search Institute has identified the following 40 building blocks of healthy development that help young people grow up healthy, caring, and responsible.

Chops / Streetwork photos

Top photo - left to right: a Franklin Field resident, Reverend Eugene Rivers, Streetworker Dorzell "Chops" Porter, in the aftermath of the Eric Paulding murder - the first juvenile killed in street violence after 2.5 years (1997).

Middle and bottom photos: Chops and former Streetworker Program Manager Hewitt Joyner III and members of the "Vamp Hill Kings", circa 1996. These pix are from Hewitt's current web site.