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MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. My family moved to Mount Vernon, N.Y., when I was 6. Our new home was several blocks from one of the citys most recognizable buildings, Grace Baptist Church. Its gargantuan edifice, made of white brick and looming stained glass windows, was where I was baptized only a few months before our move, and it is the only church home I have ever known.

While the cathedral choir sang during Sunday services, I usually busied myself with reading the church programs. For 132 years, Grace Baptist congregants had been telling their founding story the same way: In 1888, five Negro Baptist women, with great faith and courage, founded Grace Baptist Mission in Mount Vernon, New York. I read that line every Sunday, waiting week after week for someone to update it with the womens names.

Their names never appeared.

And so last year, as I was beginning graduate school and in search of a subject for my thesis, I took it upon myself to discover their identities.

Grace Baptist is a powerful and influential church. Its congregation has supported the political careers of many of its pastors and has welcomed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson to its pulpit. It hosted Hillary Clinton on her campaign trail in 2016. Ruby Dee, Earl Graves Sr., Heavy D, Ossie Davis and a long list of other African-American cultural icons have walked on the red carpeting of its sanctuary.

Grace Baptist and its current pastor, the Rev. Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, lead by example in the predominantly Black city, building affordable housing, feeding the poor and working as advocates for Black lives.

And yet for more than a century, the churchs founders have been known only as formerly enslaved Negro women. I was deeply committed to changing that.

I spent 122 days looking for them, ready to uproot a lesson about Black womanhood that I had internalized that Black women are often relegated to the subtext of history. The road to understanding and conquering my fears of erasure directly paralleled my journey to find these womens names. I wanted to name them to prove to myself and future generations that these consequential Black women would not be forgotten.

Black women would guide me through months of research. Church mothers were among my first calls for information. A deacon, Mary Dolberry, helped me operate the microfilm machines in the periodical section of the Mount Vernon Public Library and introduced me to the history room.

A genealogist at the church, Debbie Daniels, helped me understand how these womens names could disappear from their own story. Ms. Daniels taught me American history through census data and demographics, where Black history is at its most treacherous.

She told me stories of the erasure in her own family ancestry. For generations, her family would tell their children that they were descended from Sally Hemings, a woman who had been enslaved on former President Thomas Jeffersons Monticello plantation. After a genealogical search into her family, she discovered they were really descendants of Hemingss older sister, Mary, the first of the Hemings children to be free.

Black women have always had to traverse the tough terrain of racism and sexism. Few saw the value of recording the activities of Black people or women. And back in the 1880s, illiteracy could have also made it hard for the five women and their community to write down their stories.

I also had to leave room for the possibility of oral tradition. Maybe these women didnt exist at all.

Fortunately, I was in the period of American history in which Black people were not just listed as numbers and property. There was a chance for me to find evidence of their lives in Mount Vernon through the 1880 census.

It was in the beginning stages of my archival research that I discovered the first mention of these women. In the 1903 clerk book from First Baptist Church in Mount Vernon were the names of white congregation members who undertook the Grace Baptist Mission. Five colored women were responsible for asking for their help, and they were allowed to hold their Sunday school in the annex of the Womens Christian Temperance Unions meeting space, Willard Hall. The president of this temperance union was a member of First Baptist Churchs congregation.

First Baptist Church and Grace Baptist Church had a tumultuous relationship. The white congregants locked the doors of the chapel when the Mission was behind on the rent that First Baptist illegally charged. There were physical conflicts between their pastors and deacons and a few notices in the local newspapers that warned against directly donating to the members of Grace Baptist Mission during its early days.

Halfway through my search, I had working sociological and demographic portraits of who I was looking for: I knew the five women were established in the community, were married and probably in their 30s, give or take a few years. They also were likely to have been active in social organizations to have captured the attention of white community activists.

In an article from 1894, a journalist from the local newspaper, The Daily Argus, reported that the colored mission laid the cornerstone of its new chapels foundation. The early members of Grace Baptist placed copies of their city papers and church documents in the hollow center of this cornerstone. I was sure the names of the five women were among these artifacts.

Grace Baptists original building, built in 1894, still stands. Its a small white portable chapel that survived a 1939 furnace fire, right before Grace Baptist moved into its current monumental location.

Since 1941, the chapel has been remodeled and occupied by two more churches, Unity Baptist Tabernacle and White Rock Baptist Church. It was disassembled and moved to a new location in the city in 1968 when the Mount Vernon Housing Authority wanted the land for an affordable housing project. White Rock still occupies the chapel sanctuary, only a 10-minute walk from Grace Baptist.

White Rocks pastor and I briefly spoke about opening the cornerstone before the coronavirus crisis that began last spring forced us all into quarantine. But with the uncertainty of a new pandemic, we were wary of being at the church and bringing people in to help gain access to it.

In the end after parsing through century-old newspaper articles, census reports, journals of handwritten meeting notes, maps and city directories I finally had their names: Emily Waller, Matilda Brooks, Helen Claiborne, Sahar Bennett and Elizabeth Benson. They were between 25 and 40 years old when they founded the church. Ms. Waller and Ms. Benson were neighbors, and the only Black families on their block.

I havent found their descendants, but Im certain they are out there. Locating them and talking to them about their heritage is my next goal. And while their names have not yet been added to the church bulletin because we havent returned to in-person services since the pandemic began, soon, their names will be printed for all congregants to see.

In a year that has brought us a pandemic and national conversations about race and racism, I am proud to have identified the five pivotal women, to shed some light on a legacy that wont be lost to history.

[Read about the search for the five women in Ms. Pilgrims thesis and website.]

Read the original:
The Long, Worthwhile Search for the Five Black Women of Grace Baptist Church - The New York Times

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman is more loyal to President Donald Trump than any other member of Congress, according to a Trump Loyalty Index created by the online news outlet Axios.

According to the index, Grothman votes with Trump 94% of the time and never once made a statement critical of the president in a number of high profile scandals including the Access Hollywood tape released weeks before the 2016 election, the very fine people response to white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia and his recent photo op with a Bible after federal officers forcefully cleared protesters for racial justice from a Washington D.C. park.

Grothmans score of 93 was the highest of all Republican members of Congress in office for Trumps entire first term, beating out such high-profile figures in conservative media outlets as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

The Republican member of Congress least loyal to Trump is Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Some representatives elected in the 2018 midterms scored higher than Grothman over a shorter period of time but had not been able to comment as elected officials on some of the earliest Trump scandals.

The other Republicans in Wisconsins Congressional delegation did not score so high on the index. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who is retiring at the end of his current term, scored a 72. Rep. Michael Gallagher scored a 63 on the index. Rep. Bryan Steil wasnt elected until 2018 but his Trump loyalty score is 76.

Rep. Tom Tiffany hasnt been in Congress long enough to have a score while former Reps. Paul Ryan and Sean Duffy arent included.

Grothmans weakest defenses of the president came after the Access Hollywood tape and the Charlottesville rally.

After the tape was released, which showed the future president bragging about sexual assault, Grothman refused to say hed vote for anyone else and claimed to be an issues voter. After Charlottesville, Grothman said that former President Barack Obama stoked as much racial resentment when he invited Rev. Al Sharpton to the White House.

Some of Grothmans strongest statements of support for the president came after Trump said he would institute a Muslim travel ban, when he mocked shithole countries and when he tweeted that progressive women of color in Congress should go back to their countries.

Over his career, Grothman has fought to prevent gay marriage and repeatedly insisted that racism is not aproblemin his Wisconsin district or anywhere in the country.

Grothmans office did not respond to a request for comment.

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Grothman ranked number one Trump loyalist in Congress - Wisconsin Examiner

Cori Bushs stunning primary upset over Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. in Missouris First District underscored a generational split that has cracked through American electoral politics.

Over the last six years, the tension between the younger Black Lives Matter generation and the historic civil rights guard has been well documented as iconoclasts like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson clashed with younger activists over everything from movement objectives and speaking time to paying for protest permits and port-a-potties.

Bush, a 44-year-old single mother, nurse, and leader in the 2014 Ferguson uprising, ousted 64-year-old, 10-term incumbent Clay in the St. Louis-area district. The bout was a rematch of the 2018 race, which Clay won by a 20-point margin. Both candidates are Black. However, Bushs candidacy this time spoke to the moment, with her connections to a movement sweeping the nation following the killing of George Floyd and the sustained protests since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, a city in the district.

Its tempting to paint Bushs victory as solely about the candidates differing engagement with the Black Lives Matters movement. Ferguson activists describe Clay as absent from the local protests in recent years, and Clay has eschewed activists calls to defund the police. Beyond policing, however, Bush also represented an anti-corporate insurgency that has been brewing in the Democratic Party more broadly.

In any primary challenge, you have to tell voters why the incumbent is out of touch, said Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats, a national PAC that supported Bush and aims to challenge incumbent Democrats from the left in primaries. Cori hit him on numerous vulnerabilities, which included that he opposed President Obamas efforts on reining in predatory lending Clay was taking money from the predatory lenders.

Clay is in some ways firmly in the progressive camp, supporting Medicare-for-all and a Green New Deal. But like many other Democrats and Congressional Black Caucus members, he has extensive connections to a cadre of corporate funders. Clay opposed the Obama administrations efforts to fight the payday lending industry, and his fundraising traces deep connections to big banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and lobbyists like the American Financial Services Association. Similarly, news accounts have linked the Congressional Black Caucuss fundraising to companies including BP, General Motors, Philip Morris, and Coca-Cola.

Ahead of the election, Bush and her allies dug in on Clays corporate connections with an anti-monopoly group running ads billing Clay as part of the problem of corporate money Corrupting American Democracy. Shahid said this was part of the core message that helped put Bush over the top.

Bushs victory is of massive import due to her unabashed progressive politics (the Democratic Socialists of America celebrated her victory) and deep roots in racial justice activism. She joins candidates like Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman as Black progressives who have toppled or replaced more establishment Democrats this year.

The Congressional Black Caucus includes some of the most liberal members of Congress, but some may not support certain progressive priorities, such as taking on corporate interests. Bushs win over Clay may foreshadow potential challenges for other Black members who have held onto safe seats in deep blue Democratic districts for decades.

Clay has had a tenuous relationship with the demands of younger Black Lives Matter activists. As the Washington Post noted in 2014, he was among the Democrats who voted not to demilitarize the police. The 2014 amendment to a Department of Defense appropriations bill would have stopped the military from dispensing armored vehicles and heavy weapons like grenade launchers, silencers, and toxicological agents to local police forces. The bill failed by a wide margin, just two months before the Ferguson protests, when police tanks would roll through the city streets.

Its a sharp contrast with the work of Bush, a front-liner in Fergusons fight to gain justice for Michael Brown. Rodney Brown, a community organizer with United Congregations of Metro-East, who also got his start after the Michael Brown killing, says that Bush is a fixture in local activism and that her victory is a watershed moment for the progressive causes theyve been fighting for. Brown describes this election as a natural outgrowth of the last six years of activism and organizing over St. Louis campaigns for new prosecutors, bail relief, and jail closures.

At this moment, we finally have the worlds attention, and were saying like, were here, Cori is in the house, and theyre going to have to listen. Cori had a lot of supporters, a lot of people who love her, and who are going to protect her. Cori has a lot of people who are ready to claim the dream that weve all been speaking about.

Bush has pledged to meld her movement protest politics into her work as a legislative representative.

Almost six years ago to this day, Mike Brown was murdered, Bush said in her election night speech. Murdered by the police in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. I was maced and beaten by those same police officers in those same streets. Six months from now, as the first Black congresswoman in the entire history of the state of Missouri. Ill be holding every single one of them accountable.

Weve been called radicals, terrorists, she continued. Weve been dismissed as an impossible fringe movement thats what they called us. But now we are a multiracial, multiethnic, multigenerational, multi-faith mass movement, united in demanding change, in demanding accountability, in demanding that our police, our government, our country, recognize that Black lives matter.

This movement-based mission, seeking the ideal combination of protest and politics, is aligned with a long struggle for Black freedom. Just last week at John Lewiss funeral, former President Barack Obama lionized Lewiss ability to straddle both worlds and urged more Americans to do the same.

Like John, we dont have to choose between protest and politics, Obama said. It is not an either-or situation; it is a both-and situation. We have to engage in protests where that is effective, but we also have to translate our passion and our causes into laws and institutional practices.

Obama also underscored the need to fight political apathy and vote. We have got to be honest with ourselves that too many of us choose not to exercise the franchise, he said. Too many of our citizens believe their vote wont make a difference, or they buy into the cynicism that, by the way, is the central strategy of voter suppression, to make you discouraged, to stop believing in your own power.

In many ways, Obama was echoing arguments made by Martin Luther King Jr., who favored using direct action in combination with traditional legislative activism. In Why We Cant Wait, King argued that bringing about passage of a new and broad law by a city council, state legislature or congress, or pleading cases before the courts of the land does not eliminate the necessity for bringing about the mass dramatization of injustice in front of city hall. Indeed, direct action and legal action complement one another; when skillfully employed, each becomes more effective.

This idea of a balanced political strategy tempered by traditional legal action and direct action seeks to utilize the benefits of both forms of participation. However, from the end of the civil rights movement until the Ferguson protests, direct action tactics fell out of vogue in Black politics as strategies shifted to voting and lobbying.

City University of New Yorks Frances Fox Piven describes this process by which Black advocacy organizations discontinued the use of nonviolent direct action and were absorbed into the electoral and bureaucratic politics and became the ideological proponents of the shift from protest to politics. Likewise, the Harvard-trained lawyer and civil rights activist Theodore Cross also charted the shift in The Black Power Imperative, explaining that voting, of course, had brought to blacks a brand-new form of power. Now that they had access to the ballot, many black people believed that traditional pressure and direct strategies were no longer needed or necessary.

After decades of political participation premised upon voting, though, many long-standing racial inequalities still remain. Citing this political stagnation, Black leftist critics have argued for a paradigm shift toward a public that is more premised on activism, making the case for candidates like Bush.

After 40 years of this electoral strategy, Black elected officials inability to alter the poverty, unemployment, and housing and food insecurity their Black constituents face casts significant doubt on the existing electoral system as a viable vehicle for Black liberation, Princetons Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor wrote in the book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Not only did the Ferguson rebellion expose the racism and brutality of American policing, but it also exposed Black elected officials inability to intervene effectively on behalf of poor and working-class African Americans.

As just one member in the House of Representatives, Bush may not suddenly enact big change on these issues, but half a decade after the killing of Michael Brown and amid a new push of racial justice protest, Cori Bushs political vision signals a real shift.

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Cori Bushs win over Lacy Clay signals the return of the protester-politician - Vox.com

It is for the best that Ambrose Burnside is not alive, as New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a complaint seeking, among other things, the dissolution of the National Rifle Association. For the hapless Burnside, it is one final indignity. Widely ridiculed as an unimaginative Union Army commander in the Civil War, Burnside has only two lasting legacies. First, his facial hair was so prominent that others would sport what would later be called sideburns. Second, he was the first president of the NRA in the 19th century. Now James wants to leave him with only his whiskers.

Her complaint alleges lavish spending by officers, most notably executive vice president Wayne LaPierre. The list includes hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on himself, his wife, family, and friends. It runs from petty to gross, such as gifts from Neiman Marcus, golf memberships, and private jets. When figures like former president Oliver North decided to side with NRA whistleblowers, they were forced out. The NRA has reportedly spent an obscene $100 million on legal fees and the related costs alone.

If there is any hope for the legacy of Burnside, it comes from James. While she claims the NRA has been smeared with self dealing by its leaders, the same complaint could be leveled against her record as attorney general. I previously criticized her for inserting politics into her state office. She ran on the pledge to prosecute Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump. James had not only used the prosecution of an unpopular individual for her own gain but sought to gut the New York constitutional protection against double jeopardy. The case was then dismissed.

James would later call the NRA a terrorist organization, a claim which is common among internet trolls, but this was the top New York prosecutor engaging in legal trolling. That is what makes the NRA complaint a tragic irony. If taking power to benefit yourself rather than your organization is the measure, the complaint could indict herself. Her demand to dissolve the NRA in order to pander to voters undermines the case presented by her office. While dissolution is simply absurd, James shows us absurdity and popularity can often move hand in hand in New York politics.

Many organizations have suffered dubious spending by officers, ranging from political parties to nonprofits to universities. None were disbanded. Union and religious leaders are often accused of lavish spending on their travel or other job perks. Few have been prosecuted. The National Action Network of Al Sharpton paid him more than $1 million in compensation in 2018 and another $500,000 for rights to his life story. While it is based in New York, James has not tried to dissolve it or other organizations.

Other cases seeking dissolution undermine the case against the NRA. Five years ago, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman tried to dissolve the National Children Leukemia Foundation after finding that 1 percent of around $10 million in donations went to cancer victims, including almost no money spent on its Make a Dream Come True program. Its president turned out to be a felon who ran the organization out of his basement. A settlement was reached and the charity was voluntarily shut down.

The NRA is not run out of a basement, and it spends sums of money on its firearms lobbying and training programs. It is, by any measure, one of the most successful advocacy groups in our history. It has more than 5 million members and is the largest and most influential gun rights organization in the world. Whatever complaints can be raised over the spending habits of its officers, the NRA is undoubtedly a successful enterprise. Indeed, many lawmakers have denounced its influence in Washington, since low scores from the NRA can mean defeat for politicians who face close races.

James is not disregarding the implications of a Democratic official seeking to destroy one of the most powerful conservative groups in the country in an election year. By contrast, she seems to revel in that image. She knows liberals are thrilled by the idea of disbanding the NRA. She is now revered as a hero by those who view no problem in her past declaring the group a terrorist organization and now trying to dissolve the group as a fraudulent organization. It has been a political campaign in search of lawful rationale for years, however, the allegation is not as important as the target.

Those same political supporters, of course, would be justifiably outraged by any clear action of the administration to dissolve liberal organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Misconduct or crimes by its officers would not leave it as a criminal enterprise. Like the NRA, Planned Parenthood is one of the most effective groups defending a constitutional right.

Trying to dissolve an organization engaged in political speech should not occur absent overwhelming proof that it is a criminal enterprise, which is why this has never happened with a group like the NRA. James may point to the voluntary dissolution of the Donald Trump Foundation, a small and mostly inactive nonprofit, or the dissolution of Ku Klux Klan groups in the 1940s, but there is little comparison with the NRA in these cases.

Many liberals celebrating the lawsuit against the NRA condemned Trump for trying to declare the radical movement antifa a terrorist organization. They were as right then as they are wrong now. I recently testified for the Senate to oppose such a designation for antifa. While I have been a vocal critic of antifa and its tactics, it is a dangerous power for the government to openly wield against organizations engaged in political speech.

Burnside will always have facial hair as his lasting legacy. James is turning hers into something much more menacing. It is not that she will succeed in such raw political demands that is the concern. It is that so many want her to succeed in dissolving a real advocacy group in this country.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.

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Turley: The tragic irony of the New York state lawsuit against the NRA | TheHill - The Hill

(Photos: Erin OBrien)

As the sweltering July heat baked the streets of Bed-Stuy Monday morning, mourners dressed in black and white filed out of Pleasant Grove Baptist behind the three-foot-long, cartoon-covered casket of one-year-old Davell Gardner, Jr, who was shot and killed in Brooklyn on July 12. The procession, led by Rev. Al Sharpton, spilled onto Fulton Street with a visible weariness; the weariness of a community wracked by death, facing another loss so horrific it is difficult to even comprehend.

Outside of the church, Gwen Carr, Eric Garners mother, embraced Gardners grandmother. Rev. Sharpton held his hand firmly on the shoulder of Davell Gardner, Sr., the babys father. And Bishop Albert L. Jamison and Kenya Brown, both of whom, during the service, had spoken of losing their own sons, stood next to the Gardner family, protecting them from the crowd. As police stood by, the group stepped into hearses and limousines and drove to the Evergreens Cemetery where they put another young body into the ground.

Gardners death comes in the midst of a summer of drastically increased gun violence in New York City. In the month of June, there was a 130 percent uptick in shootings in the city from the same time last year. In the week after Gardners death in mid-July, the NYPD reported 64 shooting incidents, a 220 percent increase from 2019. Gardners murder, in particular, earned widespread attention, and spurred Mayor Bill de Blasio to announce the Central Brooklyn Violence Prevention plan last week, which combined increased police presence in the 77th and 79th precincts in Brooklyn with community-based efforts, such as peace marches and occupying the corner.

When Rev. Sharpton called on Gardners mourners to stand up and fight to keep people safe, he was engaging with a history of community activism spearheaded by his organization, National Action Network, and local NYC partners such as the 67th Precinct Clergy Council (the God Squad), Street Corner Resources, and the Arc of Justice. For years, these groups have been active in their communities, working to reduce gun violence, and have only increased their efforts in the wake of this summers shootings.

Iesha Sekou is of small stature, but her presence fills up a city block. Dressed in a purple T-shirt with SPF (Speak Peace Forward) printed across the front, last Saturday night she stood with burning patchouli incense in hand, and looked out over the corner of 143rd Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. Gathered around her, her team was getting ready to set out for the night.

Were not here to get upset with people, she reminded them, Were here to support the community, hear them, and give what we can give. To be there and be present, to call for peace and give support.

Sekou is the founder of Street Corner Resources, one of the first organizations to occupy the corner in New York City. Alongside civil rights activists like Hazel Dukes and Rev. Sharpton, she was a vanguard of the idea of community violence prevention in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Initially, she wanted to provide education, job opportunities, and resources to the neighborhood, but as violence spiked, she realized that first she had to work to ensure the streets were safe.

We found that young people were losing life by gun violence, and were becoming more and more gang-involved, she said, We knew that we had to take some action.

In 2005, she took a crate and stood on a violent street corner (or hot spot) in Harlem and began to speak out about non-violence. By embedding herself and making herself seen, she could help deescalate situations that police could not.

We found that we had to build relationships quickly, so that we would know who the players were and who the shot-callers were. The people who call the shots and say who gets shot or murdered, she said.

She went out night after night, weekend after weekend, and got to know the people hanging out on the streets of Harlem. She earned their trust, and soon members of the community were coming to her to help deescalate or disrupt violent situations. She and her growing team were able to provide resources and support, and in doing so were able to prevent altercations or beef before the police were called.

For the past 15 years, Sekou has continued this work, and has expanded her efforts into Street Corner Resources. She has support from the city (in 2019, the organization received $25,000 in New York City funding), and every night, she goes out with a crew of young employees and supporters from the neighborhood, and picks a corner to occupy. The team now has a mobile RV unit, a van, and supplies like masks and hand sanitizer to hand out. Sekous work has attracted national attention her team is now a part of the national Cure Violence organization as well as local attention, with State Senator Brian Benjamin going out to occupy with her last week, and Mayor Bill de Blasio going out with her the week before that.

On Saturday, August 25, she drove her team from the Street Corner offices on 145th Street to the park at 140th and Malcolm X Boulevard. The SCR van, as it arrives, is imposing, and attracts the attention of crowds spilling out of outdoor bars and playing games on the street. A dozen teenage employees of SCR piled out of the vehicle in matching purple T-shirts, and lined up, six feet apart, facing each other in a column. They each had dozens of baggies in hand, filled with face masks and resource cards. Many members of the team were young people Sekou met on the street, who were trying to escape violence.

Some of these young people came because their mother came to me and said, I cant take him anymore. Im worried about him, worried hes gonna wind up in trouble, Sekou said. And we have one kid we met on the street. And he said, I dont want to be involved in all of this jumping and beating up people and running from people. Im gonna go to school, I need help. I need a job. So we told him to come to the office and we hired him.

Sekou spends much of the evening stopping young passersby especially those that scoff at her and offering them employment. During one interaction, patchouli incense still burning in her hand, two women whod initially brushed her off walked away with job applications within five minutes. In her 15 years of work, shes had many remarkable turnarounds, including one in which she encountered a recently released, formerly incarcerated young man on a stoop, and brought him into her organization. He became one of her most dedicated employees.

Stephen Holton is an Episocopal priest who has been running clergy support for Street Corner Resources for over five years. He lives in White Plains, but drives into the city to work with Sekou on weekends. He has seen the Harlem community suffer waves of violence, and sees SCRs efforts as integral to the overall decrease in violence in New York City in the last two decades. He believes that above all, Sekou and her team are setting an example for the neighborhood.

The big picture, of course, is to normalize peace, he said. Sometimes these gatherings are immediately after a shooting. And sometimes it can be just reoccupying a place of violence to make it a place of peace, and to show by our words and actions that living in violence is not actually normal.

Every evening he goes out, he leads the group in a non-denominational affirmation, with the team and passerby in a loose circle. Sekou explains why theyre there over a loudspeaker, and Holton blesses the group. Sometimes, these moments are brief, and simply set intention for the evening. But in the wake of violence, they provide a critical opportunity for the community to come together.

Holton recalled the evening he prayed over the spot where a woman had been shot by a stray bullet just hours before. I remember just dropping to my knees to bless the blood on the pavement where she had died. In that moment, there was a wonderful pulling together around both the sanctity of the lives that had been lost, but also the sanctity of all the lives of the people who were gathered in that circle.

Sekou and her team hope that one day, Street Corner Resources will be able to realize its original intention, to focus on community resources and programs rather than violence. While Sekou integrates this holistic support into her current work helping people get employment and access to public services, and providing counseling for those at risk she wants to be able to do so without an undercurrent of violence, and without the constant threat of death in the community.

I want the organization to continue to exist, but to not have to bury our sons and daughters. Or to watch young people get incarcerated for 25 years, she said. I would like for the organization to have sustainability, so that my grandson and my great grandson, if they came to New York, theyd have something positive to do and a place to be.

Occupying the corner has gained popularity since Sekou stood on a crate in Harlem 15 years ago. Now, most weekend nights, there are dozens of Occupy the Corner sites around the city, with activists like Hazel Dukes, Rev. Sharpton and the National Action Network, Cure Violence, and Street Corner Resources as their vanguards.

As the sun set over the intersection of Nostrand Avenue and Foster Avenue in East Flatbush on a hot Friday night three weeks ago, Monique Chandler-Waterman and Pastor Louis Straker stood on the busy street corner, masks on, and surveyed the crowds passing by them. Pastor Strakers orange polo with God Squad emblazoned across the back glowed in the dusky light, and Watermans energy burst out of her small frame, inviting passerby to stop and chat.

Chandler-Waterman, Pastor Straker, and a crew of teenage volunteers from East Flatbush Village were there occupying to combat a recent uptick in neighborhood gun violence. The corner where they stood was just blocks from where Davell Gardner Jr. was shot. The effect of the recent weeks clearly weighed on them.

We are in several pandemics, right? said Chandler-Waterman. We have Covid-19. We had to isolate inside. We saw loved ones die and have [their bodies] stay with us for two days. Theres a lot of trauma. There was a lot of time to be online. Beef was rising while everyone was inside, then it got outside as well. Then you have the over-policing that was another bottleneck of frustration. And then you have the rise of gun violence and then we have all the disparities with health. Theres just so much happening now.

Chandler-Waterman worked in Public Advocate Jumaane Williams office when he was the council member for the 45th district, which includes East Flatbush. They saw the work that people like Iesha Sekou were doing in Harlem, and decided to bring the Occupy methods to their district, to combat their own rise in crime. Now, East Flatbush Village and the God Squad (otherwise known as the 67th Precinct Clergy Council) receive funding from New York City for their efforts, sponsored largely by Councilmember Williams in 2019, East Flatbush Village received $226,000 in community funding, and the God Squad received $5,000.

At first, they were occupying corners from 10pm to 2am, and focusing only on violence. They realized, however, that shootings could happen at any time of night, and that their efforts could better be focused on education and preventative measures.

We took Occupy and expanded the concept, Chandler-Waterman said. Occupy looks at giving out food when youre dealing with food insecurity, and giving out information.

Theyve expanded their definition to include education, community support, and mental health resources. In everything they do, they work to emphasize how things like better community infrastructure and better community health could be linked to the reduction of violence.

On this particular Friday night, Pastor Straker and Chandler-Waterman stood next to a tent. The theme of the night was Stop the Bleed, a workshop led by the Haitian Nurses Network to teach young people how to treat stabbing and gunshot wounds.

Because were in war, basically, we equip our community members with the knowledge and training of how to stop someone from bleeding, Chandler-Waterman said. Unfortunately, we have to do that because were the first responders.

Suddenly, Chandler-Waterman stopped speaking, and handed the megaphone she was holding to a nearby volunteer. Her eyes darted to a group of teenagers walking by, laughing and roughhousing in the street.

Lets go, she said to Pastor Straker.

The two adults left the tent and followed the teenagers to a nearby park, where dozens of young people were lounging on newly opened basketball courts, under cut-off street lights. The group deflected questions, but let Straker and Waterman walk alongside them. In friendly tones, the two adults reminded the young people that violence could lead to the authorities interfering, making arrests, or closing the park again. They encouraged the crowd to keep calm, and to deescalate anything that seemed like it could lead to violence. They gave their numbers to young people in the crowd, and told them to reach out if they needed anything.

We know them, and they know us, Pastor Straker said. And a lot of times, you know, theyre going through personal things. And they can talk to us more than they could talk to anybody else.

Like Iesha Sekou in Harlem, they spend weekend nights earning the trust of the community particularly young people so that they might be the number they call first, rather than the police.

Back at the tent, several people crowded around a nurse who was demonstrating how to tie a tourniquet with a flashlight and a stabbed dummy. She used a ripped green T-shirt to fasten a tourniquet, and explained to the gathered crowd that the blood loss between the time of an injury and the arrival of an ambulance can be deadly. Citing the Good Samaritan law, she encouraged the crowd to be proactive and try to help when they see someone injured.

Simultaneously, many members of the volunteer crew teenagers from the neighborhood like those that work with Sekou walked through the streets of East Flatbush, handing out masks and information cards. Many smiled at the young people, wishing them a good evening and thanking them for the work they do. In the waning moments of sunlight, groups of people, both young and old, laughed with the volunteers as they took the PPE, and promised to do their part to keep the block safe that night.

Its gonna take a community effort, Pastor Straker said that evening. Public safety is a shared responsibility, and we need to create an ecosystem where we all come together and put our hands to the plow.

In the final moments of Davell Gardners funeral, Rev. Al Sharpton highlighted that in the absence of reliable policing, members of the community need to come together to counter violence and keep people safe. Equally, he said that the community needs to realize when it has fallen short, and when it needs to stand up and fight.

If you can look at this baby and not try to stop this gun violence, then you are not worth anything to anybody, he said.

Organizations like ARC, God Squad, and Street Corner Resources have taken up Rev. Sharptons mantle. They work under the assumption that no one except themselves is going to keep their community safe, and that their efforts are the only things preventing violent altercations with adversaries or with the police.

People are people. Were all human beings, and we deserve to be treated justly and equally in the sight of the law, said Pastor Straker at the end of that Friday night. So were just out here trying to do whatever we can to stop this gun violence madness.

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On the Corner With the Anti-Violence Crews Trying to Stem the Rise in Shootings - Bedford + Bowery