Paul Bass Photo
Covid killed Demelle Turner’s and Marquel Caesar’s chances of throwing touchdown passes this fall. Instead they found themselves throwing soil into garden beds — with a team devoted to preventing violence.
Turner and Ceasar (pictured above) are quarterbacks for the Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross high school football teams, respectively. They grew up together. They played Pop Warner football together. This was supposed to be their big athletic year as seniors; then the pandemic canceled the football season.
Thursday they grabbed shovels as part of a group of young people brought together by New Haven’s street outreach worker program, the Connecticut Violence Intervention Program (CVIP).
The outreach workers have been keeping teens busy, and out of trouble, with an in-person daily program at the program’s Ashmun Street headquarters. The program enlists both young people who have been directly involved with violence as well as those who been traumatized or otherwise affected by community violence.
On Thursday the program’s teens and mentors — adults with street cred who work to defuse beefs and stop shootings — began planting collard greens, kale, spinach, and radishes at a garden the created where a large tree formerly stood before it died.
CVIP leader Len Jahad (pictured) said he got the idea for the garden during a meeting at which someone told him, “Greenspaces reduce violence.”
He wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But it sounded good. He said he was up for creating a greenspace at CVIP.
“Tell me what you need,” said Brent Peterkin, who leads Gather New Haven (the new organization combining the former New Haven Land Trust and New Haven Farms).
“I don’t know what I need,” Jahad responded.
So on Thursday afternoon Gather New Haven community gardens manager Eliza Caldwell pulled into CVIP in a Ford STX F150 pickup filled with what they needed: a yard of topsoil-compost mix along with plants.
Jahad and his crew grabbed shovels and rakes to transfer the soil into six boxes the teens had created in advance.
Meanwhile, Cunningham elaborated on the green-violence-prevention philosophy: “If people see the open spaces being taken care of and lovingly tended, it gives them a feeling of wellness. And if they’re producing food, it’s even better.”
Anthony Perry (pictured) was the first one out Thursday with a shovel, ready to fill his box. Six of the teens each got a box to create and tend.
Perry signed up with CVIP earlier this year after he got shot in the leg. “I’m here as soon as it opens” each afternoon, the Hillhouse senior said of the program. He considers it a fun, safe, constructive way to get out of the house and spend time and to receive helpful life advice.
He was especially interested in learning about growing the plants. He had raked his bed the day before and now put in a plastic liner. He pointed to a critter. “That’s a dragon snail,” he reported.
While the other teens kept moving the soil, Perry worked with Cunningham to set up a hose and begin watering the plants.
Egged on by Jahad’s teasing (“I can’t wait til you get in the Navy!”), against a backdrop of James Brown and other old-school R&B which the kids occasionally turned off, Turner and Caesar transferred the last of the soil from the pickup to the evolving garden. Even though their athletic season has been canceled, they still had practice to attend, to keep in shape.
“It hurts,” Caesar said of the season’s cancellation. “But you should never let that stop you from pursuing your dreams.”
This is awesome! Keeping young people busy, giving them life skills, giving them positive interactions, growing healthy food for their community. There are so many studies proving that nature, green spaces, gardening helps to calm the mind, sooth the soul, and reduce violence. With the ever increasing pressures of the pandemic and it's effects on anxiety and depression and economic downfall, growing healthy food in containers and raised planting beds (to avoid lead and asbestos,) is the best thing people can do to heal themselves and their communities. I hope this program expands and the city supports it on every sliver lot, empty and unused plots of land and the strips of land between the sidewalk and the street in every neighborhood. During World War II citizens were asked to plant victory gardens, to grow food to supplement their food rations. I think it's time for Victory Gardens again.