New Haven Independent

Booker, a 33 year-old former gang member turned family breadwinner and neighborhood youth worker, started the fair last year as part of volunteer efforts to help Fair Haven kids avoid the destructive street life that led him to lose five of his young adult years to jail.

On Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend Booker joined hands with neighbor Cathy Smalls to turn his stretch of Fair Haven into a celebration of the “good” street life — not to mention delicious barbecue.

With hundreds of their own dollars, Booker and Smalls (shown here with her son-in-law Enico Jones and granddaughter Enijah) rented a Dora the Explorer bouncing house and snow cone machine. They helped turn the two small blocks of Chambers Street just off Ferry above Chapel, into a regular neighborhood fair.

Last year, the event was also on Mother’s Day weekend. Booker was in the hospital that day. The night before he was shot breaking up a fight in a bar. Click here to read about that incident and about Booker’s success in turning around his life, in a previous portrait of Booker.

This Saturday’s party was a kind of homecoming delayed, and marking anniversaries and birthdays all around.

Edward Booker’s turnaround has been perhaps the most inspiring of all. In order to talk to a reporter, Booker took a break from the set up for the event aimed at drawing young people not only from Fair Haven but from Dixwell across town — where, starting as an 11 year old, he used to run the streets around the old Elm Haven projects. He is now involved in two legitimate businesses there.

NHI: Before I ask you about the past, tell me about the present. You’re a busy man, aren’t you?

Booker: Well, that’s right. I’m up at six and work until 2 as a painter five days a week. One more year and I’m a journeyman with the painters union, local 187. I come home and I meet some of the ten or so kids I work with in my SHARK program. Stands for Safe Haven for At Risk Kids. [“Shark” is also Booker’s street name or nickname.] The way I was growing up without a father, I know they need someone like me.

NHI: How’d SHARK start?

Booker: [Slightly distracted as two-year-old Enijah Jones led a group in a version of the electric slide.] Officer Shafiq Abdussabur met me in Cody’s[Diner] one night shortly after I got out of jail. He’d seen me there many times before when, you know, I’d show up with fast cars and girls. He’d talk to me, and I’d say, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then go out and do my thing. This time, I was out of jail, and he said, ‘Come on over and I’ll have you talk to kids I’m working with in Dixwell in my CTRIBAT program, who need role models with street cred.’ That was me. And that changed everything.

NHI: There must have been other factors?

Booker: You see this tattoo. I got it in jail. FPC. Stands for family, pride, courage. I have three boys and two girls. I had to stop running, and stand up for them. The five years I did in jail, I did time for someone else. I wouldn’t tell. That’s not the person I am. But when I got out he wasn’t around, but my family was, sending me money, supporting me. It’s time now for me to pay them back. So I credit my family big time, and Shafiq. Without Shafiq, I would be dead.

NHI: So, in addition to SHARK, which you do as a volunteer, with Shafiq’s guidance, tell me about your businesses.

Booker: With this camera, I take videos of kids doing raps, dances. I used to rap and rhyme myself, but now I’m a kind of producer. I ask them what they think of New Haven, the streets. It’s part of my reaching out but it’s also a business. It’s called Hardwork Entertainment. I do a video, and if it’s good, sell it for $5, a hundred copies. We do parties too, and produce. So far, I’ve found two really good performers - Mary Lynn Reese, who sings rhythm and blues and Pooh, who’s a rapper. That’s how lots of executives got started.

NHI: That’s right. You’ve got partners in this?

Booker: My partners are my buddies from when we were little kids, Chris Prescott and Tynell Bryan. I also work with them as a partner in another business, Bryan Brothers Cleaning Company. Tynell can do anything. We paint, sheetrock, restore apartments. I’m painting a woman’s apartment over in Dixwell. She said she’d give me $300. I said to her, No, you need the money yourself. You get the materials and I’ll do it for $100.

NHI: You’re an in-demand guy, especially given the way that cell phone of yours is ringing.

Booker: You’ll excuse me, I hope. Not enough time in the day to do what I want to accomplish. You see this picture of me? In one hand, that’s me, running with the Tribe. And this video camera, and what I can do with it, part of the future. Past, present, future. In five years, I want to set up my own painting business, too, be independent. I know what the streets need.

NHI: Yes?

Booker: Like my buddies, Chris and Tynell, they are setting up a group like SHARK over in Dixwell to be role models for kids. They might call it Up and Coming or Boys to Men. They haven’t decided. The point is when I come home from school, kids like Chawnqua Battle (pictured here with Booker’s eldest child, Edward), he comes to me for a dollar or two, for a soda, just to talk. Kids who live without dads and maybe with crack head moms, they need people to rely on to understand them, to say I’ve been there, there’s a better way.

NHI: But that was not your upbringing, as I understand it.

Booker: No, I had five siblings. My dad wasn’t around, but my mom remarried and I had a step dad. My mom also was an amazing woman, raised five of us, and she had graduated from Yale, in nursing. And you know something amazing? I never knew that. Or if I knew it, I forgot it I was acting so crazy. I went wrong early, at age 11 started to run, and I wasted a lot of time. I mean, one more year, and I will be off probation. I’m going to celebrate; finally I will have a year, after 20 years, when I won’t have to piss in a cup for anyone. Kids need to hear stories like mine.

NHI: I take it you’ve got these other businesses because money is tight, even with a good union job. Would you mind sharing some of that with us?

Booker: That’s right. From the painting work, from the gross amount I make, maybe $600, there’s child support taken out, for my kids who are living with their mother, so maybe I have $300 a week to live on. I need to help support my mom now, who’s 65, my mother, and myself. So I hustle. But the hustles are all legitimate. And I have hood cred to live on too when needed, which is not too much.

NHI: Hood cred?

Booker: You’ve heard of good credit? Well this is hood credit. I have it in the neighborhood, say of Dixwell. I can walk into almost any store there and if I don’t have the cash on me, I still can get a kid I’m working with a slice of pizza and a soda. Why? Because, maybe the week before I bought four large pizzas for a party we made with them.

NHI: If you can tell a kid you meet on the street just one thing, if you have only, say, a minute, what would it be?

Booker: [Pictured: Booker with niece Shaunese, on the right, and sister-in-law Bridget Short, and her little ones Justin and Jordan.] I’d say, first, that I don’t regret the life I lived. I made big mistakes, but I’ve learned from them. Like it says here on my arm, family, pride courage. Believe in yourself and these things.

NHI: If people want to make a contribution to SHARK, for the work you’re doing with Fair Haven kids, how can they do it?

Booker: I think for now the best way is to send a check to Shafiq at CTRIBAT, and note, you know, on the memo line, that it’s for SHARK in Fair Haven. And if people want to be in touch with us for Bryan Cleaning Company or Hardwork Enterprises — we do great parties — the number to call is: 706-7315

NHI: Well, you’re an amazing turnaround of a guy. Great congratulations.

Booker: Thank you. Now would you like a hot dog or hamburger? We’ve got lots.

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