{"id":170,"date":"2006-07-14T13:18:08","date_gmt":"2006-07-14T18:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nesson\/2006\/07\/14\/desmonds-way\/"},"modified":"2006-07-14T13:18:08","modified_gmt":"2006-07-14T18:18:08","slug":"desmonds-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/2006\/07\/14\/desmonds-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Desmond’s Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n>From courant.com\n>--------------------\n>Kissing Violence Good-Bye, Desmond Green's Way\n>--------------------\n>\n>Susan Campbell\n>\n>July 5, 2006\n>\n>Let's say - just for the sake of argument - that part of Hartford's\n>antidote for its addiction to violence lies in its residents' diet, and in\n>their breathing habits.\n>\n>Add to that the self-talk practiced by the residents of Hartford - what\n>they say to themselves when no one else is listening - and their focus and\n>purpose in life. It makes sense, once you've talked to Desmond D. Green, a\n>Jamaican native who arrived, with wife Dawn Vaz-Green, in Hartford's North\n>End to start the Reverence for Life Foundation on Westland Street.\n>\n>The foundation, housed in a storefront just off Barbour, is not a cult, nor\n>is it a church. There is no dogma, only seven principles the Greens are\n>trying to teach their neighbors that include exercise, self-acceptance, and\n>showing a spirit of generosity. Psychologist and minister Green - whose\n>cohorts call him the honorary \"Dr.\" - created the first Reverence program\n>for Jamaica's correctional system in the mid-'90s. The slight and energetic\n>man is credited with helping shift that country's penal system from\n>corrective to rehabilitative, at least for a time. In prison, Green\n>encouraged the formation of musical groups - vocal and band - among the\n>inmates, whom he called \"teammates.\" The teammates were then told they were\n>responsible for themselves and their actions. Recidivism dropped, as did\n>violence within the jails.\n>\n>When Green came to Hartford a few years ago to visit family, he thought\n>what works among criminals might just work among people besieged by\n>poverty, violence, and hopelessness. He opened the Westland program a few\n>months ago.\n>\n>Already, the Greens are building good will in the neighborhood. The\n>foundation offers computer training, video classes, a dance troupe, a rap\n>group. The neighbors - mostly young people - are drawn to the activities,\n>and then, sometimes, intrigued by the message.\n>\n>\"We are spiritual,\" says Dawn Vaz-Green, an artist. \"We are not religious.\n>We believe you come with what you need. We believe you are your own\n>enlightenment.\"\n>\n>On a recent rainy Sunday, five young women under the tutelage of Leal\n>Williams, a 20-year-old dancer, practice their routine for an upcoming\n>show, a fundraiser for which the neighborhood women have promised to cook.\n>Williams, who just had a birthday, is wearing a tiara. Her mother, also a\n>dance instructor, bought it for her, and Williams says she's going to wear\n>it forever. She puts the dancers through their paces once, twice, a third\n>time. The song on the boom box is \"Kiss Your Ass Goodbye,\" which the\n>organizers have renamed \"Kiss Violence Goodbye.\" It's hard to escape such\n>cultural harshness. Some of the rappers expected to perform in the upcoming\n>show use questionable lyrics, as well, but they will still perform. While\n>the bullets fly, at least they're off the streets.\n>\n>As the young women dance, Green stands in the door, watching the water\n>collect in the streets.\n>\n>\"Look at him,\" says Dawn Vaz-Green. \"He still gets up every morning and\n>does his push-ups. He's 67, and I can hear him do his self-talk: `I am one\n>with God. I am one with the universal spirit.'\"\n>\n>Later, Green sits on a folding chair - but just barely - talking to the\n>dancers. He claps his hands together, hard.\n>\n>\"That can be annoying because he does that to me, too,\" says Dawn\n>Vaz-Green, and her husband smiles.\n>\n>\"We have to respect the lives that we have,\" he says. \"Nobody else is\n>responsible for us.\"\n>\n>That just might work here.\n>\n>The idea is to attract neighbors to the center's various programs, and\n>teach them the movement's seven principles. Where they go from there is up\n>to them. Williams' father, Angelo Brown, is the program director. He says,\n>\"Even in the midst of madness, there can be peace.\"\n>Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant\n>\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
>From courant.com >——————– >Kissing Violence Good-Bye, Desmond Green’s Way >——————– > >Susan Campbell > >July 5, 2006 > >Let’s say – just for the sake of argument – that part of Hartford’s >antidote for its addiction to violence lies in its residents’ diet, and in >their breathing habits. > >Add to that the self-talk practiced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","p1","y2006","m07","d14","h08"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/nesson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}