Kids Company 2.0: London 'gang intervention' worker sleeps with client.

They plunge us into poverty with their racism and mass unemployment and leave black youth rotting on estates to murder and kill each other, then they contract their friends to come and ‘save us’ and such is their racism they refuse all Black attempts to solve our problems. They then recruit their middle class friends to come into our communities to address problems, they have no clue about. preferring their own paternalistic solutions. 

We end up with white middle classes organisations like Kids Company and the one involved here corrupting our kids further. This insidious racism sees these organisation poverty pimping our tragedies. Now lets be balanced about this, these organisations do cater for the reality that some parents are either incapable or unwilling to do what is necessary to look after their children. You know that, and I know it. Some parents circumstances are difficult and stressful, especially when Mom is the sole earner and as such such organisational support can be a life saver. 

But there a minority of us whose attitudes, lack of emotional maturity or selfishness or reckless behaviour, means that we are the problem. So well run ethical organisations doing the work with these families is necessary and can be very effective when culturally sensitive to the community they work with. 

Gang intervention work in London is a total mess. And on the ground black youth unemployment, and homelessness rises and we all know what happens when young people feel failed by society and their families 

We need strong community support organisations what with the current levels of poverty, mental ill health and homelessness being so high. Question is, are these current organisations focused on 'gang interventions' the right organisations? Are they diverse and publicly accountable to the communities they work in? It seems to me over the last decade, local authorities have slashed black voluntary sector funding wiped out hundreds of community organisations, reintroduced a budget for this critical work, one tenth of its original size, called it progress and handed the larger contracts to anybody but black organisations and companies.

But lets take a reality check, some of the problem includes black organisations some of whom, are happy to pimp black pathology for profit rather challenge police and local authority institutional racism that creates the societal and economic context for increased poverty, dysfunctional families, predatory violence, drugs and crime. That's why we have to fund our own solutions and demand more ownership, accountability and creativity in the design and implementation of solutions. 

And that would look like a comprehensive, public health, preventive strategy, where resources and power are devolved down to empower fractured communities. We need institutional assets under our control and I dont mean dependancy 'grants.' Here I'm talking about buildings we buy, or are given and refurbish and service ourselves. It's using our consumer power, to encourage private sector investment, and political political power to ensure fair access to statutory contracts that are aimed at our communities.

But before, we can do any of this, we need to own the problem we have right now and take control of the issue. Nothing can be effectively done, until we assume ultimate and collective community responsibility for our children.

This particular case shows an unethical and ineffective practice of piss poor youth intervention. This Mum is at her wits end and she tries to save her son from the ravages of this project. Black women are under attack by the white psych of black pathology. Some of these project have determined its 'our culture' that is at fault. Fact is the greater the poverty  and the longer it continues to exist, the greater the incidence of violence. It's an universal truth. 

We must do for self. We can't rely on the architects of our children misery to solve our problems. these kids need care and opportunity and its our duty to provide it. 

And the challenge is to the men, all generations of men, fathers or not. 

We need all hands on deck. Grandfathers, fathers and involved uncle, cousins, in laws, friends and neighbours. We need that size of paradigm shift. These are our kids. all of them and that makes this our problem, and any time a community loses control of its moral standing and respect of its own youth, you're in big problems. Respect comes from ethical intelligent, leadership that is emotionally mature and has a abiding passion for education. 

I believe we should consider organising a public meeting with those organisations and local authorities who are making these interventions and hold them too account. We've seen this all before with Kids Company and countless 'Mayoral' projects of a similar nature. In truth it appears these projects are an unofficial social services, with all the power and non of the accountability. 

They are contracted, voluntary sector organisations with no public facing complaints procedures and little if any real community accountability, and yet here they are, intruding massively into our communities, with huge powers conferred on them by the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police Service, local councils, all of whom demand 'intellegence', as a specific requirement of these statutory contracts. 

We must hold them to keen account in the New Year and fully asses the extent of this type of unethical, aggravating invasions of family life . The issues raised here, cannot be ignored and with your support @Blaksox will raise them. 

Or alternatively, we can all ignore this heart rending video, and the cries of our own children, for effective leadership and simply except that we have zero control and prepare for more tragic murders followed by brutal and cruel interventions from these unaccountable, agents of the state

Press Release: Why it's time to close Operation Trident

17/2/2012 6.00am

Black Leaders condemn the launch of Trident “ anti gang unit” as a political stunt by London Mayor Boris Johnson.


Three former high profile members of the Metropolitan Police Service

Operation Trident Independent Advisory Group have called on the existing

Group members to resign in protest at they describe as “the political hijacking

of Metropolitan Police Operational Command Unity Trident” by the Mayor

Boris Johnson.

Founded in 1999 Trident IAG is made up of members of London’s black

community and was established to exclusively tackle gun violence in black

communities. The IAG is the preeminent community police black consultative

forum in the capita and has been instrumental in helping to build community

trust and confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service.

Lee Jasper founder member and former Chair of Trident IAG, Stafford Scott

Of Tottenham Broadwater Defence Campaign, set up in the wake of the

August 2012 disturbances and Viv Ahmun, former member of Boris Johnsons

Mayors Expert Advisory Group on youth violence, condemned the widening of

Tridents brief to tackle “ gang crime”.

Lee Jasper and former Policing Director for London and current Chair of the

London Race and Criminal Justice Consortium said:

“Boris Johnson has hijacked Operation Trident in naked political attempt to

co-opt London’s black community into his enforcement led war on gangs.

And yet under his leadership we have witnessed the worst deterioration of

police and black community relations seen in decades with massive increase

in stop and search and deaths in police custodies resulting in anger that

exploded onto the streets of London last summer.’

He added,

“ Central to the partnership ethos of Trident is the principle of policing by

consent. That principle is sacrosanct to maintaining community confidence

and support. The fact is that confidence and trust has been seriously eroded

by malign neglect of the Mayors Office and increasing levels of institutional

racism within the MPS. No one in London’s black community was properly

consulted about this changes and that includes the Trident IAG.

Trident and the MPS no longer enjoy that trust and confidence. This reality

can no longer be ignored.

Recently the Commissioner quite rightly stated that the MPS cannot deal with

this problem alone and highlighted the need for effective gang intervention

and diversion programmes. Not only does the Mayor have no real prevention

strategy, he has supported local authority public spending cuts that have led

to the sacking of thousands of youth workers and closing down of hundreds of

frontline youth projects. “

Youth violence is on the rise and the abysmal record of this mayor on an

issue, that was his supposed top political priority, has become a real issue.

Simply absorbing Trident into an all encompassing “ gang unit” constitutes a

real disaster for London. In this context the IAG cannot allow itself to be seen

to tacitly endorse a return to the discredited, aggressive and discriminatory

policing strategies of the past. It’s time the Mayor and MPS were forced to

take these matters seriously and I am calling on all members of the Trident

IAG to resign.”

Viv Ahmun commented:

“ Dealing with black youth violence and tackling gang culture in London has to

be done in genuine partnership with black communities and have a real focus

on prevention as well as enforcement.

This Mayor has taken three years to deliver a mentor scheme for a black boy

that has to date matched only 62 mentors. Ray Lewis, the Mayors lead on

Mentoring recently stated he was “disappointed” with the progress of the

scheme. That’s an understatement the black community is profoundly

disappointed.

At the same time I see local councils slashing funding to community

organisations at a grass roots level. These organisations working alongside

the police are the lifeblood of any effective police community partnership.

Boris Johnson has failed to balance his police led enforcement approach with

a multi agency intervention strategy that focuses on harm reduction,

prevention, diversion and rehabilitation.

This against a backdrop of rising tensions between black young people and

the police as a result of issues such as deaths in custody leads me to

conclude that its time for the IAG to stand down and resign forcing the Mayor

and the MPS to consult seriously or not at all. ’

Stafford Scott commented:

‘ Relations between black youth and the police are bad now and are about to

get a whole lot worse. The reality is you can’t police your way out of a ‘ gang

problem’. Deaths in police custody have enflamed police community tension. I

see this move as nothing more than a cynical election ploy by Boris.

 His anti gang policy is all about splintering doors and media opportunities.

We can’t allow Boris to assimilate the Trident IAG into giving a green light to

his heavy handed indiscriminate policy of mass arrests in the run up to the

Queens Jubilee and the Olympics.

 The Trident IAG have been ignored and marginalized and should resign. They

should all reconsider their positions and refuse to go along with this ill thought

out strategy that will intensify the mass criminalization of black youth in

London."

For more information contact:

Lee Jasper 07984 181797

Viv Ahmun 07985 395166

Stafford Scott 07830 133076
(All three are available for press interviews)

Inner city youth violence: more casualties than Afghanistan

 

The last decade has seen inner city youth violence kill more black youth in the UK than British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The current scale of youth violence in UK black communities is rarely understood by white mainstream society. There is a strong view among black communities that if such levels of serious youth violence and murder were occurring in white middle class communities this issue would be a matter of national concern.

The implication is clear: that as long as black youth are killing each other then nobody really cares. I was interested to try to get some scale on the scope and impact of these murders on our communities. How best could this be illustrated was my challenge and so I did a little research and what I found was quite shocking.

The black community experience over the last decade of serious violence and murder is comparable to that of a country at war. The numbers are compelling.

Since 2001 up to the 4th July 2011, a total of 375 British forces personnel or MOD civilians have died while serving in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001. Of these, 331 were killed as a result of hostile action.

Over the same period 298 black men and 67 black women were stabbed to death. 228 black men and 14 black women were shot dead. That’s a total of 607 black people murdered over the last decade.

The reality is that there is what can be reasonable described as a ‘small war ' going on within our communities.  There is no real support from either local authorities or central government for black communities seeking to deal with the wider consequences of such high levels of death and serious violence.

There is no real strategy or understanding from central Government or the media about the crisis we face or how best to deal with it.

As a result our suffering is largely in silence, there is little empathy for our plight and no acceptance that the drivers of violent crime, unemployment, poor schools, bad housing, the fear of crime and the dysfunctional families that result, are in need urgent attention.

What is equally not understood is the profound scale of the social and psychological damage, the damage to community morale and feelings of safety, the rampant fear of violent crime, and the tragedy of young people who survived but are disabled or walking with colostomy bags and razor scars across their face.

This is the desperate reality of black deprived communities. Add to this the fact that the recorded figures whilst accurate on deaths, significantly under records the extent of violent youth crime. Many, many young people are treated for gang related violence in hospital accident and emergency units and refuse to report these crimes to the police.  These are the walking wounded and when combined with the official figures illustrate the sheer scale of violence that deprived black communities are forced to live with.

Young people are becoming increasingly desensitised to this intense level of violence, primary school children understand the vocabulary of violence and the need for protection that is a major dynamic in driving vulnerable young people into gangs.

Whilst pathways to employment and education opportunities have largely been closed down, inner city areas are awash with hard drugs and guns.

In Inuit folklore there is a tale of a wolf hunter who plants a sword in the ice. The hilt is buried in the snow with the blade pointing toward the sky. The hunter covers the blade in blood and waits as wolves smelling the blood begin to lick the blade and as they do so the cut their tongues and bleed to death. Who does one blame for the deaths of the wolves, the wolves or the hunter?

Black youth who live in the most deprived areas in families made dysfunctional by long-term generational unemployment and high rates of income poverty, being taught in failing schools and living with high levels of knife and gun crime can be compared to the Inuit wolves.

The drug and gun importers represent the hunter here. The flooding of our areas with arms and narcotics results in some of these vulnerable bored, unemployed young people being seduced into crime.

They are alienated, angry and unemployed and are easy pickings for criminals that are intent on controlling their local markets and in need of soldiers to provide protection from rival gangs.

One cannot however escape the simple fact that the black community must also accept primary responsibility for the number of single parent families and the dramatic effect of fatherless homes have on the attitude and behavior of black boys. 

Black men who are estranged or disengaged from their families must take responsibility for their offspring. Black women must themselves be open to constructive dialogue with the fathers of their sons. SACYRD will be discussing the possibility of holding a national black family’s reconciliation day next year; such is the urgency of this crisis.

The current disjuncture between the status of black men and black boys must be repaired and reinforced. Parental responsibility is key to beginning the process of turning the tide of violence engulfing our communities.

However, no community immersed in poor neighborhoods, suffering generational levels of unemployment and high rates of income poverty can sustain itself over the longer term without these issues being addressed. Whole families and communities have suffered long tem unemployment in largely workless households over the last four decades.

Our young people have boundless energy and are bursting with ideas and talent. That latent talent is then wasted through want of real opportunity. As a direct consequence of long-term poverty we have seen develop a culture of poverty, bringing with it poverty of imagination, of ideas, ambition and the necessary resources to fully commit to and sustain family life.

Long-term poverty and unemployment, poor schooling, poor rates of health and worse housing all combine into a multi headed hydra of social problems that undermines the human moral propensity to do the right thing and that vacuum is filled by a moral decrepitude. With dysfunctional parents and no real social support, the culture of MTV and Hollywood rap videos become the model for the surrogate family – gangs.

Whole families and large minorities within communities unable to cope with the strains of modern family life, disintegrate and fragment. 

Such areas as we live in become permanently associated with violent crime and deprivation. The places where we live are flooded (some would say that this is a conscious decision by the authorities) with drugs and guns. Add to this an under reporting of violence that would increase the recorded level of crime by around 50% and the real scale of the problem we face begins to emerge.

And in our weakened fragmented state we turn on each other. Even relatively stable families living on such communities find it difficult to repel the culture of despair and the glamorisation of youth violence.

Remember the Inuit tale of the hunter and the wolves?

Government has to fully address the woeful lack of constructive opportunities for employment and education black youth. The economic state of our communities is acting as a recruitment sergeant for violent criminality. The grave worry is that in the current context of the austerity budget and public spending, these social ills will become gravely exacerbated exacting a terrible social and human cost. 

How are we to prevent another failed generation of our communities? The answer lies in America and Northern Ireland and the adoption of Affirmative Action is the only policy response capable of responding adequately to the scale of the current crisis. Overnight, young black people would have thousands of employment opportunities, as did Catholic youth in Northern Ireland when this was introduced in 1991. Our youth unemployment situation is much worse that that of Catholic youth at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland. If it’s good enough for those who face religious discrimination why not those who suffer more as a result of race discrimination? This is the only Government policy capable of having a dramatic effect on all of these issues that would result in bringing to an end, in less than a decade, this cycle of long-term deprivation.

Short-term palliatives and incremental short lived project initiatives, however well intentioned, are not sufficient in scale to address these issues. We should reject these conscience saving gestures in favour of a much more radical approach: Affirmative Action, which is likely to finally break the on going cycle of deprivation characterised by racism, poverty and crime.

In addition to this Government should adopt a proactive public health anti violence policy approach to violence and give the confiscated assets of criminals back to the communities that suffer the detritus of their foul endeavors.

Of course parents and black men in particular must also address the issue of responsible fatherhood if we are to see the cessation of unacceptable levels of violence. But a call for a community to ‘do the right thing’ is meaningless in the context of run down deprived neighborhoods and discrimination in education and the labour market.

Yes there is a war going on in our communities and the loss is unimaginable for most other communities. It is a sad fact that the level of death, injury and other collateral damage is not empathetically understood.

The conclusions some have come to is that Black lives are simply not worth as much to the media and some sections of the Government as white lives.

On that score we are degraded as both British citizens, human beings and as people worthy of compassion.

We need to tackle statutory indifference, institutionalized racism and community complacency if we are to save our communities from a violent descent into the kind of mayhem and chaos we have seen in some US cities.

It’s time for action.

Lee Jasper