The ethos of peace powers Street Corner Resources (SCR), an anti-violence nonprofit organization based in central Harlem. “Peace and blessings” is a common greeting used by both staff and passersby, the message “I Am Peace” is emblazoned on the staff’s T-shirts, and bold black letters spelling out “Speak Peace Forward” adorn the back wall of one of the organization’s two buildings on 145th Street.
The neighboring building hosts the office of Iesha Sekou, founder and CEO of SCR, but Sekou herself is more likely to be found meeting with her staff next door, greeting visitors on the benches outside, or sitting in one of SCRs’ vans en route to the myriad events or meetings that make up her hectic daily schedule.
Since founding the nonprofit in 2005, Sekou has overseen its expansion to provide a variety of services, including summer and afterschool programs for youth, a robust violence intervention program, legal aid and housing referrals, and a monthly open mic night called the Peace Café. It’s all aimed at promoting peace in a neighborhood that has long suffered from the devastating consequences of poverty and violence that plague many of New York’s Black and brown neighborhoods as a result of decades of disinvestment.
In many ways, SCR represents the new face of violence prevention emerging in New York City. Research has shown that community-based nonprofits partly contributed to the decline in violence in American cities between the 1990s and the 2010s, and the city’s recent investment in anti-violence initiatives has put these groups at the center of a new public safety infrastructure to address gun violence, alongside policing.
While her organization has benefited from this newly available funding, Sekou will be the first to tell you that none of this support came without a fight, one that continues to this day.
Beginnings of Street Corner Resources
Street Corner Resources emerged from Sekou’s earlier community work in Harlem—more specifically, from her brownstone on 136th Street, where she lived for around 30 years. Sekou made the space a safe haven for young people, especially those who had run away from home and were vulnerable to violence.
“I had the typical brownstone stoop, and kids would sit up on the railing, they would sit on the stoop, they would sit in the downstairs garden area [where] I’d put some chairs down…my house was the house,” Sekou explained, recalling the various activities she organized, like homework and college application sessions, weekend brunch, and Kwanzaa celebrations.
This sort of community organizing came naturally to Sekou, who grew up in an activist household. Her mother frequently tasked her with making signs for the various protests they attended. After spending about a decade in Florida to attend college and work in adult education, Sekou moved back to New York in 1984.
She first encountered the scale of the gun violence crisis in Harlem when she began working at a series of welfare-to-work programs as an educator, where many of her clients were young mothers.
“They were losing their sons. A number of young people were getting shot and killed and losing life. And I was helping these women to bury their children,” Sekou said.
Alarmed by the devastating toll of this violence and frustrated by the failure of existing programs to address it, Sekou’s own mother inspired her to create her organization.
“One of the things my mother said was that, when you see something that you want to see different, then you be the person to make it different,” she said.
While Sekou said starting an organization from scratch initially seemed “far-fetched,” her mother pointed out that she already had the seeds of an organization through her house. They chose the name Street Corner Resources because it spoke to how Sekou had built a space where young people could hang out, feel safe, and access resources to secure a better future.
Fighting for funding
In its early years, SCR operated with very limited funding, mostly from small donations. Sekou focused her attention on young people, drawing on her background in education and experience running youth summer programs. She arranged activities like games of chess, or dance and music workshops.
She also sought to intervene against violence more directly. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, she and a few other neighborhood residents stood at the corner of 129th Street and Seventh Avenue, across the street from St. Nicholas housing.
“We were out there to disrupt the violence. To talk to young people, to get them to think about their behavior,” Sekou said. “Were there guns? Yes. Did we take guns? We didn’t physically grab the gun and take it, but they turned in guns to us.”
Sekou also attended community board meetings in hopes of securing more funding, but her frustration at government inaction meant she was often seen as disruptive and hostile by those whom she was asking for help.
“She’d come in like a volcano, exploding with lava!” recalled Inez Dickens, a City Councilmember at the time who became Sekou’s ally. “Sometimes it was hard to get a hold of that volcano because she would be so angry because people weren’t listening. And I wanted her to understand: You’re trying to get funding… It doesn’t mean [being] meek. It doesn’t mean being humble. But it means you come in stating your facts, stating your case, and why your program is necessary.”
Dickens helped Sekou secure funding from the City Council starting around 2013, some of which was used to establish a media center at Harlem Renaissance High School in 2014.
Around the same time, the city began offering grant money for anti-violence initiatives like Cure Violence, a public health-based approach to violence prevention that employs credible messengers—people from the neighborhood with experience of gun and gang violence—to work as violence interrupters. In 2014, the city established the Crisis Management System to systematize this public health approach. Along with other community organizations, SCR joined the program.
“For us, the Crisis Management System was a way to give this a name—the work that we do,” Sekou said.
In recent years, the city has invested more money into the Crisis Management System, which consists of more than 50 community-based organizations and has a budget of $86 million.
Experts say that measuring the effects of the program is difficult, because it can be hard to isolate the causes of fluctuations in gun violence at a neighborhood level, and each Cure Violence program differs slightly. But researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studied the program found that it is a “promising model” for addressing community gun violence. Their study showed that neighborhoods with CMS sites had a steeper decline in gun violence and greater reductions in social norms supporting violence compared to areas without sites.
“I think it’s been proven enough to know that it’s a good investment for local governments as a complement to law enforcement,” said the study’s co-author, Jeffrey Butts. “[These programs] don’t have to be magic solutions. They just have to help contribute to public safety, and they pay for themselves. And they met that standard.”
Speaking peace forward
When Josh Marte first came to Street Corner Resources five years ago, he had just completed a short stint in jail and was seeking a way out of the drug dealing and gang activities he had engaged in for much of his life.
Marte grew up in Harlem, and said that many of his family members dealt drugs and carried guns as a means of survival. But Marte said he never participated until he had a traumatic encounter with the police when he was around 14 years old. One snowy day, he and his cousin were on their way to school when two police officers stopped and searched them.
“[They] dumped my bookbag out, [roughed] me up. Made me and my cousin step out of our sneakers to search the bottom of our socks, saying we had drugs on us…Then the officer goes and searches the private areas of us. And I…felt very violated,” he recalled.
Marte said the experience was so traumatizing that he turned to street life as a way to prevent himself from being victimized again. The incident elevated his status among older members in the community who had faced similar treatment from police.
“When the police came and harassed me, now I wind up being accepted by them, and now I’m back doing it to others. I’m not going to be the victim, I don’t want to be the victim, so I’m victimizing,” he explained.
Marte first came to SCR looking for a maintenance job, but after he spent a few weeks around the organization, Sekou decided to hire him as a violence interrupter.
Now a senior member of the Speak Peace Forward violence interruption team, Marte regards Sekou as a mentor, and SCR as a place that helped him see beyond a cycle of violence and retaliation.
On a warm and sunny afternoon in early October, Marte and four SCR staff members gathered outside of SCR’s offices, preparing to head out on a neighborhood canvas. Three times per day, five days a week, the staff walks through an area that stretches from 145th Street to 137th Street, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Malcolm X Boulevards. Along with program manager Mike Saylor, Marte often leads these canvases.
After setting off, they first stopped about 30 feet away as they passed by the gas station across the street. A man pumping gas recognized them and started talking to the group, saying “Y’all do great work.” A few more feet down the road, the group paused again. This time, a young man stopped them to explain that he was looking for a job. Javon Griffin, another team member, handed him one of the cards that all the staff carry on canvases. Known as “public education,” or “pub-ed,” these pamphlets contain information about the services SCR offers as well as advice on how to de-escalate tense situations.
As we continued along, Marte explained that in addition to engaging people they encounter by chance, the team also uses the canvases to monitor neighborhood hotspots, like certain parks or corners, as well as buildings that are hangout spots for gang members. Building connections with these community members is key to de-escalating potential conflicts, Marte said.
If he hears about a conflict between individuals, for example, he speaks to both people involved, to convince both that the other side doesn’t want trouble. He then arranges for the two to meet.
“I don’t care if [they] have a fistfight. I’ll take that loss of a fistfight. But to stop that shooting and that stabbing, we have to find a way to get them to come together, to get them to understand that we’re all on the same boat,” he said.
For conflicts between larger groups, SCR employs other strategies, like “occupying” the corner where a group gathers, offering resources to those involved, and even motivating them to come to their offices with gift cards.
After about 15 minutes, the team arrived at Mott Hall High School. The staff were there to provide “safe passage,” which they practice at a handful of Harlem schools on a rotating basis during dismissal time. As the exiting students streamed out of the building, the staff fanned out to greet them. Two set up between the exit gates and the nearby subway station entrance. The other three continued down the block, stopping at the corner where students often gather after NYPD school safety agents have ushered them away from the school’s entrance.
On that day, the latter group’s positioning was fortuitous, because a fight between two girls broke out on the corner. Marte successfully intervened before sending those involved home. All five staff then gathered on the corner to monitor the area. As tensions calmed, the staff resumed handing out pub-ed to students as they passed by, alerting them to SCR’s after-school program.
About 20 minutes later, though, Marte received a call. A stabbing victim had just been brought to the nearby Harlem Hospital. SCR partners with the hospital in what is known as hospital-based violence intervention. Through the program, which operates in multiple hospitals throughout the city, the staff respond to all incidents involving victims of shooting, stabbing, or violent assaults brought to Harlem Hospital.
The hospital is a familiar place for Marte. Since his childhood, his mother has worked there as a nurse, treating trauma patients, including those who’ve been shot or stabbed. Marte’s role involves providing a different treatment to these victims and their families: making sure they feel safe, offering them resources, and encouraging them not to retaliate.
In this case, the victim was a 16-year-old boy. After speaking with the boy and his family, and getting his number, Marte and the group continued on the canvas. Suspicious that the incident was gang-related, Marte planned to follow up the next day.
For the canvas’s final stretch, Marte made a point of stopping by local shops, whose workers can provide key information about community dynamics. One restaurant owner was particularly enthusiastic about meeting the staff, stopping the team for a 5-minute chat and taking a handful of pub-ed.
The canvas wrapped up at General Charles Young Playground, about 2 minutes away from SCR’s offices. The playground is a frequent stop for the staff, and they relaxed a bit as they greeted familiar faces and introduced themselves to those they didn’t yet know. “We need more of this,” one woman said when handed a pub-ed card.
Challenges faced by violence interrupters
“Here in Harlem, we say Superman doesn’t have a cape, he has an ‘I Am Peace’ shirt on,” Marte said, previewing a poem he hopes to perform at the Peace Café.
The violence interrupters have signed themselves up for work that is physically and mentally draining, and dangerous. The interrupters receive extensive training in conflict de-escalation, mediation, and self-defense. They also receive mental health care through one-on-one and group therapy sessions—but the work is by nature traumatic.
Both Saylor and Marte recalled separate incidents when the team had been called in to break up a fight between two large groups. While they initially succeeded in de-escalating the situation, a couple of people from the fight broke off and began letting off shots a few blocks away.
In this situation, the interrupters must stand back and wait for law enforcement and emergency services to arrive.
“We don’t have a gun, we don’t have a vest, we don’t have even some handcuffs,” Marte said. “At that point, the violence is happening…You had to let it be.”
The work can take its toll. Marte decided to take a break when, after a day when he had to speak with seven victims at the hospital, he realized he couldn’t give the community the attention they deserved.
“I was addressing the victims: victim number one, victim number two, victim number three. And to me, it was almost like, so insensitive,” he said. “I wasn’t no longer giving my all or my best to who I was dealing with. And I would never rob the community like that.”
After a six-month break, Marte returned to the job this summer reenergized. But these challenges demonstrate the need for more resources to make the violence interruption work more sustainable. Sekou said she’d like to have more hospital responders “so that the workers who respond don’t have to deal with trauma three times in one day.”
And although SCR is not the only Cure Violence site in Harlem (SAVE Harlem also operates in a section of East Harlem), the strategy as a whole is not established in every neighborhood, and its $86 million budget is miniscule compared to the NYPD’s $10.8 billion budget.
“The things that make communities safe have nothing to do with patrol cars and badges. [It’s] about the strength of the neighborhood, economic opportunities, housing, schools, medical care—all the stuff that rich people take for granted. That’s how you build a strong community and make safety. But the challenge is to get public officials to actually care about that,” said Jeffrey Butts of John Jay College.
Sekou also believes that police play a more reactive than preventive role in addressing violence. SCR maintains what they describe as a one-way relationship with the police: to preserve their credibility, they never supply police with information on the individuals they work with. But they are receptive to acting on information the police give them.
For example, sometimes the police will reach out to the office if they receive complaints about youth in the neighborhood. Rather than creating further disruption by making arrests, they will ask SCR staff to address the situation.
Sekou has also built relationships with police leaders, like NYPD’s current Chief of Training, Olufunmilola Obé, who was the former Manhattan North Borough commander. Obé said that although the NYPD and SCR did not have a “perfect relationship,” she valued working with the organization to address youth gun violence.
“I would go to [Sekou] always and say, this is what we see. Can you help me?… So that we don’t have another kid dead, we don’t have retaliation,” she explained. “And she was always very successful in helping us quell whatever problems we had.”
Lasting impact: SCR’s youth programming
When Sekou is asked about the impact of her work on young people, she begins to tear up.
“It overwhelms me,” she said of running into past participants. “Sometimes I walk away with a little tear when I see a young person [who] was struggling, and I helped them or we helped them, and they’re doing something I didn’t expect them to do.”
Saylor said the youth program currently serves around 30 kids, ages 14 to 21, from a range of backgrounds, including those who have a history of violence or are deemed at-risk, who often “have some things going on in their lives, where they don’t know how to talk about it, get help for it, [or] plan their life ahead.”
By giving youth structured activities where they could otherwise be unsupervised, and providing financial support in the form of stipends, SCR hopes they can steer kids away from violent behavior. Indeed, research has shown that afterschool programs can reduce violence.
But SCR’s limited size means they can’t reach everyone—a fact that becomes clear with every shooting.
“[I’m] always thinking about how could we have stopped this shooting, or this kid from dying? I’m always thinking about what could be done, what more [we] could do,” Sekou said.
Her next goal as part of this vision is to secure a building that can serve and house vulnerable youth. She says it would be like a larger scale version of her brownstone home, where SCR got its start.
“That’s where I developed my vision for this,” she said. “We need a place where young people can come and stay…and to be able to have a door that we can open past midnight, when [they] feel uncomfortable and they need to talk and they feel like they want to be involved in an act of violence.”
Shannon Chaffers is a Report for America corps member who writes about gun violence for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
No Justice, No peace!