Boston Ten Point's Season of Peace?!?

Blackstonian Editorial
Jamarhl Crawford Publisher/Editor

The Boston Ten Point Coalition under the leadership of Rev. Jeffrey Brown has for the past several years promoted a "Season of Peace" through flyers and ads on MBTA buses.  This begs the question: Exactly what is the Season of Peace. Questions are many, answers are few.

As a researcher I found it troubling that besides the flyers and bus ads, i can't get any information on exactly what this Season of Peace is. There is no information on what Peace is or how to achieve it, very little or misleading contact information, the flyer directs you to the 10 point website http://bostontenpoint.org and one year's flyer had the 10 Point's office number on it 617-524-4331 but after several calls with no response and after discovering that unless you call between 9am - 5pm you will get an answering machine with not so much as a separate box for the Season of Peace.

If I was a youth who was on my way to committ a murderous act and all of a sudden a MBTA bus goes by with the Season of Peace ad on it and I was moved, what would be my next step. The ad gives no information, no instruction on how to achieve peace and a call to the office will most likely go unanswered.  The Rev. Jeffrey Brown has for years promoted this campaign and talked about it in conjunction with neighborhood walks through Boston's "hot spots". As a resident of Humboldt Avenue, known as H-Block, and after speaking with many of my friends from other Hot Spots across the city, no one has seen the Reverend or the Season of Peace campaign, except on TV when Brown is conducting Press Conferences or on the MBTA ads. Other than that no one seems to know what the Season of Peace is all about or what work Rev. Brown is doing.

On Thanksgiving Day, Thursday November 25th, Rev. Brown held a press conference announcing this years "Season of Peace" in front of the Warren St. Quick Stop convenience store which was the site of a daylight AK-47 shooting which resulted in the death of Mother of four, Tahitia Milton and the shooting of the store's owner on Oct. 23rd. Why would Rev. Brown choose this store, over a month later to hold a press conference announcing the latest annual incarnation of the Ten Point campaign? Has Rev. Brown reached out to the families of the victims of that tragedy? Is Rev. Brown somehow involved in the community response to this instance of senseless violence?

The Blackstonian encourages all of its readers to conduct your own research and draw your own conclusions. What is the Season of Peace?

Below you will see what the Ten Point Coalition has on its website regarding the Season of Peace.

from:  http://www.bostontenpoint.org/seasonofpeace.html
Season of Peace

Season of Peace campaigns are designed to promote anti-violence. This project was launched to send a consistent message of peace to youth who were involved in the violence. The efforts of community members, churches, community organizations, police, probation, transportation department, schools, and youth detention facilities helped decrease violence across the city. The media campaign used symbols and slogans youth use in daily conversations to communicate that violence is not the answer to deal with conflict.
The second part of the Season of Peace is the neighborhood walks component which galvanizes our partners to walk through troubled areas of the city to engage youth and families.

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‘We need a season of peace’

‘We need a season of peace’
By Laurel J. Sweet  |   Friday, November 26, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage

The Rev. Jefferey Brown, of the TenPoint Coalition, speaks to the press on Thanksgiving in front of the Quick Stop market, the scene of an October murder. He announced a campaign called ‘Season of Peace.’
Photo by Mark Garfinkel

Standing in unity before the shuttered superette where a Roxbury mother buying groceries was cut down last month by an AK-47-wielding maniac, local ministers, police and prosecutors yesterday called on Hub thugs to brush the chips off their shoulders and lay down their guns this holiday season.

“We need peace,” said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition. “We are tired of the random violence. We are tired of grandmothers getting shot. We are tired of children getting shot. We are tired.”

It is the fourth consecutive year city officials have appealed to common decency to silence the gunfire, but with the homicide toll at 69 and five weeks left in the year, “if ever we needed a season of peace, this is it,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said.

Murders have skyrocketed by a staggering 60 percent since this time last year, when the city recorded 45 homicides, according to Boston police.

The last few months of the decade have been marred by mass carnage, including the senseless slayings of shopkeepers and Richel Nova, the Domino’s pizza deliveryman hacked to death allegedly by youths in an empty Hyde Park house for the change in his pockets and the hot meal in his hands.

Citing “an attitude of indifference,” Brown said the rising death toll isn’t just about gangs and drugs, “but issues of anger, of rage.”

Tahitia “Tye” Milton, 39, was headed for the door of the Quick Stop convenience store on Warren Street in Roxbury on Oct. 23 when a still-at-large madman gunned her down and sprayed the neighborhood market with bullets from an assault rifle. The owner was also hit, but survived.

This year’s Season of Peace theme, Turn Your Back Against Violence, will be featured on cards and billboards gracing the sides of MBTA buses and subway cars and distributed to small businesses.

“The message is, we need a break,” transit police Chief Paul MacMillan said. “We need a season of peace.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1298942

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Friend advises Chuck Turner: Keep your mouth shut

Friend advises Chuck Turner: Keep your mouth shut
By Peter Gelzinis  |   Friday, November 5, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Columnists

TURNER FALLS: City Councilor Chuck Turner was convicted last week, but has continued his attacks on the federal government even as his friends try to gain a lenient sentence for him.
Photo by Herald file

Chuck Turner still has friends in this city. And at least one sees a formidable problem as the convicted city councilor faces expulsion from his seat and a possible prison sentence.

Chuck Turner’s own mouth.

The Rev. Bruce Wall said he’s been talking with people about going to the U.S. attorney, Carmen Ortiz, with a plea for Chuck to be given community service instead of jail.

“Yes, we have some people who are ready and willing to vouch for him to the U.S. attorney,” Wall said yesterday. “Our worry is, the more Chuck talks, the more he hurts himself along with those who want to help him.

“I understand that Chuck is all about making his arguments against the government,” Wall added. “But he’s been convicted. It’s time for him to just be quiet and allow those of us who seek to help him be able to come to his aid.

“The truth is Chuck has a habit sometimes of pulling the rug out from under those who want to stand with him, pray with him and offer him a bit of grace and mercy. Look, there’s no question in my mind that the community needs his voice and his passion. He’s far more valuable to us, working with a church or community group, than being shipped off to jail. I don’t think I’m the only one praying for that to happen.

“But it can only happen,” Wall emphasizes, “if Chuck finds a way to keep his mouth shut.”

Theoretically, if Chuck stays out of jail, he could remain on the council.

In a month, a dozen of Chuck’s colleagues will take up the matter of expelling Roxbury’s unflappable district councilor from their confraternity.

But they don’t have to make a decision on Dec. 1. The recently drafted Rule 40A is just convoluted enough to give the City Council the option of waiting to see if U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock sends Chuck to jail on Jan. 25 — automatically costing him his seat — or doles out a Tom Finneran-like 18 months probation, coupled with a fine, which could allow him to hang on by a thread.

Mel King, who came within one Ray Flynn of becoming Boston’s first black mayor, at first said he didn’t think he’d go to City Hall to witness that sad piece of history. Then, he thought again.

“Well, now that you mention it,” the 82-year-old former state rep and M.I.T. professor said yesterday, “Yeah, I think I will go.”

With his friend not due to be sentenced until late January, Mel’s hope is that the City Council might refrain from taking any action until after they learn what Woodlock has in store for Chuck.

“I would hope there’s some balance in all of this,” Mel sighed. “I think punishment should be weighed against a history of caring for people, of paying their rent, fighting for decent places for them to love and acting more like his brothers’ and sisters’ keeper than a politician.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1294147

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Parents blast school closings Demand chief alter plans before Nov. 3

Parents blast school closings
Demand chief alter plans before Nov. 3
By Edward Mason  |   Wednesday, October 27, 2010  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage

WEIGHING THE FACTS: The Rev. Gregory Groover, Boston’s school committee chairman, speaks during yesterday’s meeting.
Photo by Chitose Suzuki

An overflow crowd of 600 angry Hub parents lashed out at Boston school chief Carol R. Johnson’s plans to shutter two elementary schools, merge two and a close a high school during a School Committee meeting at English High School.

“By closing our schools, you’re driving a stake in our community,” said Kenny Jervis, a parent at Clap Elementary, slated to close. “We don’t want to go to the suburbs.”

Dozens of parents and teachers clad in yellow T-shirts blasted the decision to close the Early Learning Center day care.

“It would be a disservice to the kids of Dorchester and Roxbury,” said Lisa Kincade, a teacher at the ELC. “I’m asking the superintendent to think about the little ones.”

After earlier community meetings, Johnson had reversed course and scrapped plans to merge two Dorchester elementary schools and shutter a Hyde Park High School, but kept the lion’s share of her ambitious program to remake the city’s struggling schools intact.

Johnson had bowed to the earlier pressure from furious parents angry at plans to merge the Lee Academy pilot school with the Lee Elementary in Dorchester. Johnson made tweaks to her plan ahead of last night’s meeting, such as halting the merger of the Lee schools and allowing the Community Academy of Science and Health — part of the Hyde Park education complex — to remain intact, while possibly moving it from its current location. Green Academy, an in-district charter school, will now replace a current high school in the fall of 2012.

Unchanged are plans to shutter a pair of elementary schools — the Ralph Waldo Emerson School in Roxbury and Clap. The East Zone Early Learning Center would be moved to the William Trotter School in Roxbury and James Holland School in Dorchester. If the School Committee votes Nov. 3 to approve the plan, the schools would close in June.

Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, called the plan a “disservice” and demanded Johnson scrap the plan and start over.

Johnson’s sweeping program for change is part of a dramatic effort to improve the city’s struggling schools. Her proposal targeted several city schools where kids performed the worst on MCAS tests.

Johnson said withering criticism from parents and teachers after the plan was unveiled last month led to last month’s changes, and she wouldn’t rule out more.

“I’m always hearing to the voices of the parents and teachers,” Johnson said. “I’m always taking notes.”

The Rev. Gregory Groover, school committee chairman, said he wouldn’t rubber-stamp the changes: “It’s not a done deal.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1291808

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Minister: The carnage must stop

Minister: The carnage must stop

By Laura Crimaldi | Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage

Photo by Angela Rowlings

One of the city’s leading black ministers yesterday said a grassroots community effort is the answer to the violence ravaging the Hub.
“You can’t cop your way out of this,” said the Rev. Eugene Rivers while visiting Woolson Street, scene of a mass murder that left a toddler and three adults dead and another man clinging to life last night. “If we had 10,000 cops or 10,000 more cops, that’s no guarantee that the individual who went into this house wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
The Morningstar Baptist Church, which is located near the crime scene, was open last night to mourners. Temple Salem SDA Church in Dorchester also was keeping its sanctuary open to grieving friends and family, said Hugues Lafond, an elder with the church.
Rivers said the eruption of violence demands a vigorous response from the community.
“We got to get our hands around the culture of violence because our response currently is not adequate,” he said. “There is no organized, systematic strategy or model that’s being deployed on the streets, community wise.”
The violence facing the city now is more chaotic feeling than the drug wars that erupted more than a decade ago by dealers protecting their turf for peddling crack cocaine, Rivers said.
“Younger people are more violent,” he said.
Calling upon members of the black community to share what they know about the murders with police, Rivers pleaded: “Step up.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1285100

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