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United
Communities to Stop Violence
"Parenting
Youth and Families; raising a community"
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~~~~ ..
The Report
.. ~~~~
by Bill Murray
Our
coalition called "United
Communities to Stop Violence" sponsored the second in a
series of community events, "Parenting,
Youth and Families; raising a community," a
community policing dialogue held on Saturday, October 19th, at Bravo
High School.
The theme of the day was:
Issues
OF the community ... Solutions
BY the community
As
community based policing advocates, we
at Los Angeles Community Policing are
pleased thank the many community members who came forward to participate
actively.
Monica Harmon, who did a wonderful job as the event's MC, Everett
Littlefield, who hosted all the "community tables," and
Corinne Simon-Duneau, who handled the registration, all
played especially significant roles.
Though attendance was light, the event was a success. In fact, three
times I was approached by folks from other parts of town who asked
if we'd help them plan a similar event for their areas. Of course
I said we'd be more than happy to assist Northeast, Van Nuys and
Wilshire develop similar community dialogues.
Once again, we heard comments like,
"When's the next one of these dialogues to be held?"
and "When are we going to be doing this again?"
The results? We've a spirited partnership on
the Eastside now,
one which engages a variety of groups coming together as a community
to find shared solutions ... bottom line, we're working together
to reduce violent crime and improve the quality of life.
An exciting program with a unique
format was devised for this successful community conference.
In addition to the agenda, some 30 community tables were maintained
by a variety of organizations throughout the day.
The event appealed to people of all ages, and from every walk of
life. In addition to community members, numerous representatives
from service groups, government entities and LAPD attended.
Knowing a significant number of our participants would choose to
communicate in Spanish we'd prepared a variety of ways the event
would be inclusive. We accommodated this important part of our community
throughout the day.
The format began with an assembly in the school cafeteria where
community volunteer Monica Harmon served as MC. Her welcome and
introductions were followed by an invocation delivered by Father
Robert Dolan, S.J., of Dolores Mission.
He was followed by our featured keynote speaker, Jose Huizar, Member
of the Board of Education, LAUSD, who spoke eloquently about "Raising
A Community."
Mr. Huizar was followed by an expert panel. Each of the members
briefly described the work they do and discussed his or her perspective
on the issues of raising a community.
The panel included:
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Jitahadi
Imara |
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County
Probation Department |
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Gary Liebsack |
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County Recreation and Parks |
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Charlotte Martin |
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City Recreation and Parks |
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John Liechty |
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Los Angeles Unified School District |
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Greg Martayan |
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Commission on Children, Youth & their Families |
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Valentino Paniccia. |
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LAPD's Juvenile Group. |
Next, individual community members were invited to make a comment,
ask a question of the panel, or express a point of view.
Then
the attendees had a hamburger and french fries lunch, donated by
two Lincoln Heights restaurants, "Dino's Jr." (Dino Pantaris),
and "McDonalds" (Jessie Carrillo and Richard Rodriguez).
The second and perhaps most exiting part of the day began after
that ...
Small professionally facilitated workshops, breakout groups, were
held in the classrooms. We held them both in Spanish and English,
and the groups were deliberately kept small ... none had more than
20 people.
These two topics were the general seminar themes:
1) reducing conflict between young people; what to do
2) responsible parenting; family dispute resolution
The guided seminars were designed to engage all the participants
in a dialogue where not only existing programs were discussed, but
related community concerns were heard, issues expressed and new
ideas shared.
Finally, everyone reconvened in the cafeteria to find out what had
been discussed in the other groups.
Representatives from each of the seminars came forward to tell the
attendees what was discussed their workshop. In this way, everyone
who participated learned what had occurred in the other groups.
We discovered the dialogue in the seminars had some things in common,
and some things unique.
Here are the combined results ... the issues, concerns and ideas
... expressed to us by the participants:
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need
to educate ourselves about resources that already exist |
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be
more available to share community resource information |
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be
responsible to educate the community |
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stress
parental responsibility to guide youth |
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improve
outreach - building a community |
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improving
a community begins with improving me |
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establish
more long term plans and goals, not short fixes |
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put
much more focus on prevention, reaching the very young |
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classes
are needed, perhaps mandatory, in parenting |
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mandatory
events / meetings - suggested going into the schools and giving
out citations for non-attendance |
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school
volunteers should visit homes to help parents understand information
about their schools |
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leadership
classes - for women classes of support group to help establish
more self esteem and assertiveness |
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need
to have councelors in schools for younger kids - taught by other
kids? (10 to 21) |
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need
for better male role modeling |
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advertise
for male mentoring |
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find
a way youth can report bullies |
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need
a community program that helps teachers and students get along
- friends vs. authority figures |
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ask
siblings to act as role models, and help with teaching (i.e.
like Boy Scouts) |
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have
more programs going out to schools |
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have
more job fairs |
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planting
the seed - i.e. increase the councilor to student ratio |
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in
the elementary school system begin to get kids interested in
college |
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trade
classes are important |
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target
middle schools |
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more
community involvement, especially from the private sector -
College Institute? |
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public
should have a "I have a Dream" foundation |
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children
have to know there is an "apple" and be shown the
steps to get there |
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more
involvement of local celebrities - we have so many - children
follow a "hero" |
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need
for more parental education and involvement - problems include
single parent families, families who work, competing values |
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come
back to community - mentoring, after school programs - make
kids feel safe |
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hospitality
important |
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involve
and engage the senior citizen community more |
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in
three highest elementary grades have churches, educators create
a program that can teach spiritual, non-denominational values |
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hold
events for older kids in middle schools - "Friday Night
Live" suggested |
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find
and share "best practices" |
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better
coordination of efforts, especially churches for the parish,
their own block |
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expand
the commitment through larger alliances, perhaps using the neighborhood
councils |
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we
have to get people out, involved as volunteers - fund raising,
games, interesting things |
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need
safe places and transportation - kids need to know where can
they go to be safe from gangs |
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more
business involvement needed to sponsor activities and transportation
- this is good for business |
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promote
the "Kid Watch" program - identify "safe houses"
and "safe businesses" |
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promote the "Safe Passages" program - have people
come out of houses to keep eyes on kids as they come and go |
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teach
parents about gang clothes, signals, and attitudes |
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have
a dress code in the house |
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teach
parents to say "No" - to have courage |
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remember
- we reap what we teach at home |
Obviously there's a lot to be done. The challenge now will be to
select some short and long term goals arising from this, designing
meaningful partnered relationships and programs that make sense
for the community ... all geared towards reducing violence and improving
the quality of life.
Will this mean an end to crime on the Eastside? Of course not. But
we have to start somewhere.
This was not a passive event. At every step we'd designed elements
that immediately engaged the participants in helping each other
find the solutions.
See, and that's the point. Because successful community policing
partnerships depend on the active participation of all those
who live and work in the area.
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