Allan Appel photo
Neighborhood Music School Director Noah Bloom and NMS Production Fellow Ibn Orator Friday.
A young African American musician named Ibn Orator wanted to know if Black and white people, who have such starkly different common memories — the one of slavery and incarceration and the other a rosier patriotic version of the American past — can ever develop a memory broad, shared, and potent enough to be the basis to solve our country’s seemingly intractable problems.
An answer, well, a partial answer to that profound question came during a Friday night book talk from Nicholas Dawidoff, the white, New Haven-born prize-winning author of the recently published The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and The American City.
The answer was: “Yes, for all our enduring troubles, this is a country where historically change has happened. “
That sober but ultimately optimistic exchange unfolded at the Neighborhood Music School (NMS) before an audience of 40 people as Dawidoff was interviewed by fellow journalist and New Havener, Emily Bazelon.
The gathering – the first large public event at the anchoring Audubon Street cultural institution since the onset of the pandemic — was part of Dawidoff’s local tour promoting, through the book, greater understanding of the post-industrial poverty, systemic injustice, gun culture, and the day-to-day grinding hopelessness that drives young men to violence, and to become its victims as well.
Click here for details of the case and Paul Bass’s interview with Dawidoff. And here for Mark Oppenheimer’s review of the book in The Washington Post.
Dawidoff’s deeply researched and passionately personal narrative features how a young, scared, impressionable 16-year-old Newhallvillian Bobby Johnson was framed for murder by the police; how he was jailed for nearly 10 years, and when finally freed, in 2016, was left to struggle without sufficient supports to reorient, to thrive, and to prosper.
Dawidoff flanked by Emily Bazelon (right) and Yale Law School Professor Michael Wishnie.
Although Dawidoff’s story unfolds in Newhallville – the other side of Prospect Street from the East Rock where Dawidoff himself grew up – it is a thoroughly American story, Dawidoff said on Friday night, playing out unrelentingly in Baltimore, Trenton, and dozens of other post-industrial American cities.
The book talk was preceded by a concert featuring Jesse Hameen, longtime local jazz musician and NMS teacher, who grew up in Newhallville playing in such legendary music venues as the Monterey Club.
Halfway through the talk it was Hameen who, in a sense, challenged the bleak portrait Dawidoff’s book presents and elicited the author’s guarded optimism about things to come.
In answer to a question by Bazelon as to the origins of street violence, Dawidoff replied: “Street violence exists on a continuum of hopelessness. If people give up on other people, it is part of a long chain of building hopelessness.”
“In the 1940s and 50s,” Hameen averred, “there were zero teenage murders. Yes, Black community people fought, but there was a code. People hear about the murders [and conclude], that’s life in the community, but it’s not. The majority of African-Americans are good. Only a small number are bad.”
“You said the truth,” Dawidoff replied. “One of the great ironies is that when the gun factories were there, there were no guns! It was the joblessness. It is also completely true that violence is like a shark attack. It takes one, a tiny number [of people] are involved, but it doesn’t take much for the whole community to be affected. The same with police violence and mistreatment.”
And solutions offered?
Dawidoff called out and read sections from his book of the many people of good will in the city — and described in his book – who fought on behalf of people like Bobby, from the street outreach workers to Bobby’s dedicated attorney Ken Rosenthal, “but the problems are too big for individuals” alone to solve, he said.
“It requires institutional effort and leverage.”
Including from Yale University.
“New Haven is famous for having so many nonprofits and many from Yale do generous things,” but the general attitude of Yale is mistaken in that vision is limited to providing an education for its students, he said.
“There are enormous problems in their backyard. Why, for example,” he posited, as an example of what more could be done, doesn’t Yale have “an institute for post-industrial studies?”
Dawidoff also gave shout outs to places like NMS and the new bookstore and community reading room in the Edgewood neighborhood – Possible Futures, which was the group selling his books at the NMS lobby — as places where people from all the city’s communities can meet and genuinely listen to each other.
“One of the things that gives me optimism is that there are many people of good will. What gives me optimism for my kids is that this country is one where change has happened across my own lifetime.”
Ibn Orator, the production fellow at NMS, who had asked Dawidoff the question about the creation of enough common memory to move forward, said he was satisfied with the author’s answer.
“He recognizes how difficult it is, what we all yearn for, a small pebble in a giant ocean, and it’s sometimes barely noticeable, but it’s there. I thought his answer was heartfelt.”
See below for previous Independent coverage of The Other Side of Prospect:
• New Blockbuster Book Explores Backstory Of Newhallville Murder Case
• Book Talk Uncovers Newhallville’s Voices
• City’s “Other Sides” Revealed
Click on the videos below to watch recent interviews Dawidoff has done with Babz Rawls-Ivy on WNHH FM’s“LoveBabz LoveTalk” and with Paul Bass on WNHH’s“Dateline New Haven.”
“ “You said the truth,” Dawidoff replied. “One of the great ironies is that when the gun factories were there, there were no guns! It was the joblessness. It is also completely true that violence is like a shark attack. It takes one, a tiny number [of people] are involved, but it doesn’t take much for the whole community to be affected. The same with police violence and mistreatment.”
I grew up in the city when the factories were still here, paying living wage jobs to people who didn’t go to college, and some who didn’t have a high school diploma. Gun factories in Dixwell/Newhallville, tool factories in Westville/West Rock/West Hills, garment/undergarment factories in Ninth Square/Goatville/East Rock, etc.
When the factories closed up and went down south and overseas in the 1980’s, and crack/cocaine was flooding into this country, the illegal drug trade replaced factories as a source of revenue for young (mostly) men who didn’t have more than a high school diploma, if they had one at all. The illegal drug trade created violence and increased gang activities as a result. We also started having guns flood into society like never before.
Now we have a pandemic and war with Russia in Ukraine creating supply chain disruptions, we should bring manufacturing and assembling companies home and once again employ people with living wage jobs with pensions and benefits in the USA.
We should also go after gun manufacturers and sellers with as much enthusiasm if not more, as we currently go after illegal drug manufacturers and sellers. End the war on drugs, and destroy the illegal market and it’s intrinsic violence, and treat substance abuse as a public health issue and mental health issue, and treat guns as the menace that is killing Americans at a higher rate than ever before. And bring home living wage jobs.