Woman Takes LEAD On Familiar Turf

It appears that New Haven is not following the Seattle model which established a community based coalition to select service providers and design the LEAD program itself.
Many people who participated in the early planning (I was one), expressed concern that the City would co-opt the LEAD program and make it another politically driven fiefdom.
After months of silence, the City has dropped its own version of LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) on our heads.
It will be interesting to see if this version gets certified.
This is not a good beginning for a much needed program.

I do not want to be cynical, but the city is going to fail because it is trying to do a job the parents should be doing. The city is attempting to treat the symptom of a problem instead putting into place a program that treat both the symptom and cause of the problem. Even if the city achieves some success, it will have a never ending supply of clients which means an ongoing taxpayer funded program. It is the parents job to instill a system of values into their children, not the city. Parents need to lead and show their children by example how to live drug free productive lives. If the city wants to help, how about a full court press in the schools and the media promoting the job of a parent. Let us get the message out the parents need to do their job, and that babies should not be having babies. Stigmatize boys and males that call themselves men who are nothing more than sperm donors. Identify these sperm donors through DNA and make them support their offspring. make them think twice before they impregnate young girls by making them pay support. Science through DNA can identify these sperm donors similar to the way it is used to find rapists and criminals, even if the mother refuses to identify them. Teach young girls that unprotected sex forever alters their lives. Stamp out the problem through education and enforcement. Do not treat just the symptom of the real problem.

@Peter99: Read this and tell me if the problem is parents failing to instill values in their children: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

The reality is that people of color have been victimized for centuries and white people have stacked the game in their own favor.

Beneficiaries of White Privilege have a totally different experience and should be reluctant to lecture others.

@Dwightstreeter : I am not trying to lecture anyone, nor am I denying that slavery and victimization took place in a lot of places including the south in the good old USA. That was a long time ago, and if you choose to say we can not escape the past then we as a people are forever doomed to be second class citizens who live in the shadows and feel sorry for ourselves. This is 2017 and we have had a black man elected president of the United States for two terms. Like any ethnic group we have good and bad folks. Some of us, a minority of the majority of black folks also have not instilled in our children a burning desire to succeed. Don't keep looking back for excuses. We have access to a lot of tools that can radically change society now and in the future. We need to educate our kids and get them to adulthood with all their options open. No police record, no babies before obtaining a high school diploma at a minimum and a good job or trade which they have earned through their hard work. Blame the past for failure to succeed if you must, but don't tell me my vision for the future is not possible. Try telling Barak Obama, Colin Powell, Susan Rice or a score of others you can't succeed even if you work hard. It can be done, but we must take the responsibility to do the work to make it happen.

Having lived in Hill North for 2.5 years now I am sure this program will not reap the rewards everyone would like to see. This negative outcome is certain primarily because this is and will continue to be a political endeavor. Those involved are appointed with little to no formal education or training. That's #1. The other glaring reason this will not succeed in Hill North is the residents themselves. This area is overrun with parasites, it is like living in an adult day care. When a woman is allowed to live with her convicted felon boyfriend AND 4 kids, smoke weed obsessively, live on Welfare and operate a drug factory in the Section 8 property, there is no hope of redemption. Good people are terrorized here. Good people are jeered at, assaulted and living from day to day is a nightmare. If we were wealthy or on Welfare, we would have been out of here yesterday. A colleague of mine said it best when he said, when I look at Hill North, those medical buildings YNHH wants to build are looking better all the time. The quicker Hill North is buried under a medical complex the better this city will be.

I have approached some of our officers personally. I care about their welfare as much as the homeless I deal with like MC. I dont want them to have to waste man hours and paperwork on piddly stuff which I realize the city and their bosses require of them. Frontline police need to have more of a say in their work and I read that in a police textbook years ago. I and other New Havenites want to decriminalize sex work, vagrancy, loitering, beer in public, etc. Those arrested are too poor to pay fines and too ill for jail. I wrote a letter to a Yale public health prof (ignored so far) asking for help with lice and scabies issues rampant here...and of course I am begging for subsidized housing ASAP as cold weather approaches. This is all doable by us, the city, and it is in our best interest long and short run.

@Peter: You didn't read the article. Racism and discrimination are ongoing. Do not lecture people about their failures until you know your history.

White oppression for 350 years has damaged Africans and their descendants, along with indigenous peoples and those from South American countries.

@Dwightstreeter: Facts and historical facts cannot be changed just because you do not like them. I choose to not wear the chains of the past, nor limit my life and my goals. I state my opinions like everyone else on this forum. I am, however, careful about what are the facts versus what is my opinion. If you doubt what follows, look it up.

Colin Powell was born in New York City in 1937 and was raised in the South Bronx. His parents, Luther and Maud Powell, immigrated to the United States from Jamaica. Powell was educated in the New York City public schools, graduating from the City College of New York (CCNY), where he earned a bachelor's degree in geology.

@Peter99. I stand corrected as to Powell's upbringing.
The point I was making is that people of color who do not grow up in the US mainland do not suffer the same effects of racism and indignities inflicted on people of color from day one and from the beginning of US history. The health problems affecting people of color and attributable to racism are well documented.
People who come to the US with their cultural identity and families intact, as did Powell, as do many Latinos, arrive with a sense of self and community that was taken away from the descendants of the enslaved Africans. For every Colin Powell, how many people of equal talent never have the opportunity to develop their talents?
Whites have inflicted a lot of damage on people of color, but still won't admit it, much less try to repair it. That's why I repeatedly refer people to Ta Nehisi Coates' well documented article re: the need for reparations.
Yale held a ceremony for the renaming of Calhoun to Hopper, but failed to acknowledge the role of the people of New Haven in protesting for years. Corey Menafee, the hospitality worker who lost his job and was arrested for a felony - all of which was resolved in his favor - was not invited to the ceremony.
Fortunately Katie Couric's interview with him will run next Spring on National Geographic and the whole story will be told, not just the portion that Yale chooses to write in which Yale alone made the change.
You wrote about discrimination as if it had ended and that is simply not true.
You can continue to blame those who are victimized for their failure to thrive or you can admit the deck is stacked against some people and that is not right.

@Peter99: Read Coates and then we can talk.
One success story does not make up for the casualties from Nixon's bogus war on drugs, mass incarceration or exploited labor under the 13th Amendment.
How you feel about yourself and your opportunities is personal.
What other people encounter is objective.

@ Dwightstreeter: All points presented are valid and well taken. There is no question that the deck was and has been stacked against people of color. We need to understand the root causes that resulted in the problems seen today in our community. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the lack of a male authority figure in 80% of our homes. Buying and selling our people like a commodity caused this problem. Our young men need this structure and example in their daily lives. I managed to overcome this problem, but I will also agree that there are many who cannot, and will fall prey to the temptations of the street. There are no surrogates or substitutes for a father figure. Clergy, teachers and others may try but they are not a constant presence. I wish I had the magic answer that would change the thought process that results in our mothers and grandmothers being the authority figure in the house. I do not. All I can say is we need to keep trying. I do not think payoffs, handouts or pandering politicians looking for votes every two or four years are the answer. These are my last thoughts. Peace brother.