Richard and Myrah Green: The Fellowship & Peace Academy
The Crown Heights Youth Collective in Brooklyn is a place of spirit making a difference in the lives of inner-city youth.
On my way to The Collective I got lost. This is an African-American neighborhood with an economy in which drugs would appear to play a significant role. I asked a young black man selling T-shirts out of a cart for directions. He lit up, just beamed as he told me the way. I found the Collective at the corner of a street lined with small businesses.
After a short wait, I was ushered in to see Richard Green, a tall, thin black man with dreadlocks and a genuine, welcoming smile. The walls of his office are covered in pictures, quotes of Malcomn X, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. In one corner stands a Sergeant's Marine Corp ceremonial uniform, with maybe twenty years of dust on it, and a battered Certificate of Honorable Discharge. A TV screen above his desk monitors a stairway. Two or three phones sit beside his chair, frequently ringing. People walk in his office every few minutes needing things, checks signed, advice.
Richard started by talking about the tension that swept through the community when a black child was hit and killed by a car participating in a Hasidic funeral. "We got some notoriety four years ago during the Crown Heights crisis. We were able to go out and work the youths on the streets. Keep them from going into a total frenzy. Not damaging too much property, not taking any lives, with the exception of the one life that was tragically taken after the accident. We were able to hold the situation from exploding. No one knows how close we came to bedlam and chaos in 1991....This isn't like South Central LA. South Central LA is wide open. This city is tight, everyone lives on top of each other. If anything jumps off in this city, gets out of control, everything is gone....These streets are the first line and the last line. We can hold it right here or we can lose it right here."
During the interview, an EMS technician came in the room. The conversation went something like this:
EMS Technician: "Mr. Green, do you remember me?"
Richard smiles a great big smile and stands up: "Yeah, man. How you doin'?"
EMS Technician: "Doin' great. Really great."
The two embrace. Richard asks him what he is doing these days. "Not much, just saving lives, stuff like that."
Richard: "You know we have that ambulance in the back lot. I want to get it back on the road. Will you take a look at it?"
EMS Technician: "Sure."
Richard: "You should come down, talk to the students. We should start a class in EMS. Maybe get some of our young people interested."
EMS Technician: "Yeah. Sure." He leaves.
It struck me that Richard was planting a seed. I wondered to myself how many times a week he had similar conversations, and how many bore fruit. Richard told me the story of the young man: "He used to come here when he was 13 or 14. He wasn't accepted. He was on the fringe, because one, he was overweight and two, he is Hispanic so he spoke a different language than the majority of people around here. He always tried harder. He was always close to me. Whatever I needed him to do, he would do. He would stay until seven, eight, nine o'clock at night if necessary. He had that kind of spirit. And you see how it manifests itself....If he saves one life in his job -- and he has probably saved hundreds of lives -- I feel I play a role. Even though I am not there to touch that person, I am helping heal them."
Richard broke the Collective's work into three categories. "The first is education--The Fellowship & Peace Academy. The flagship of the whole Collective. We train young people to become peacemakers in the world. Not just stopping conflicts -- that is a tiny part of what has to happen. The greater issue is community empowerment and development. We work on helping the community manage itself, feel responsible for itself, so that it will carry on the kind of projects necessary to make sure that young people do not do things that are counterproductive, anti-social or violent.
"We learn how to resolve conflicts. If there is a fight, fine. That is human nature. But once it is over, you see your wrong ways and you can be friends again -- and have a stronger friendship than before that quick two second skirmish over what one person called another or was bumped by an elbow. You go beyond that. We don't force any kind of confrontation. In fact we always attempt first to move away from it. But after it is over, right away, we use it as an example, as a lesson, so that these young people can become better. Those same young people who are most involved in conflict become our best peacemakers. They are the ones that go out and say, `No, that's not right.'`No, we shouldn't be doing this.'
"The second is training, which is done in the basement. We run a total development program including carpentry, plumbing, electrical, silk-screen, masonry. Retrain our young people to use their hands so that they have a skill. They get a certificate that tells supervisors of construction sites that the holder has trained, been tested. We use the same test that any apprentice has to take.
"The third area of our work is community outreach. We work on the street and in school gyms around the neighborhood. We have set up peace zones all around the community. They are basket ball rims, picnic tables, community gardens -- places where the young people are in charge. These areas are theirs. The young people take care of them, control them, make sure no one misuses or abuses them.
"Our young people are no different than any other generation except that they have a 1995 world to work with. I had a 1965 world when I was seventeen. Now the world is far more complex. They do the same things we did at seventeen or eighteen, only they do it six trillion bytes faster. They pick up things that much faster. We can't feed them the Okeydoke that was fed to us. We didn't have any way of deciphering when the Okeydoke was coming our way. They can. When they say `Keep it real' they mean just that. Don't feed them the fantasy, the Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. It don't go no more.
"Look around this area and see what these young people have. They don't have anything. These young people are doing GREAT with what they have to work with. Nothing in their lives is guaranteed except a cell. Youth programs are being cut because the city is broke, but they keep building more prison cells and hiring more police. Even the cops will tell you that more cops are not the answer. Cops will tell you that the real deal lies in prevention. Investing on this level is far more cost effective than waiting until you get them to Riker's Island.
"The guys who go out there and do unproductive things, maybe rob somebody -- they are still important. You still have to keep them very close. They still have to realize how important they are in the scheme of things. So we work with them also. We watch over the young people who are forgotten, the downtrodden. Those who society has written off, that society is waiting to lock up or bury. Those are the most precious, because they know what we need to do to turn humanity around. You can't just put them off and let them do what they are doing....
"People are inherently good. All we have to do is continually reinforce the good, and ultimately that inherent good will triumph over whatever comes their way. Radical behavior -- how does it start? That young man who blew up the building in Oklahoma. That behavior didn't start two days ago, two weeks ago. That behavior began a long time ago. Had there been some sort of interdiction when he was still young, had someone one time said to him -- "You know, those ideas are not real.' You can't wait until these things are sealed in someone's mind. That man went through the typical things -- his parents separated. He grew up in the inner city of Buffalo. He needed someone to come along and say, `Hey, there is something better in this world than what seems to be fazing you right now.' That might have been enough to lead him just a little off path. He might never have done something like that. I just want to believe that he is not inherently bad."
Richard teaches two college-level courses in political science/peacekeeping/human relations, one at Medgar Evars and one a unique course at Brooklyn College called "Crown Heights Peacekeeping." Richard described it to me: "Students do six hours a week of community service. Their work has a lasting impact on early lives. Jewish students who have never been in this part of Crown Heights work here, as does a young lady who also was never in the area before. An Irish student from south Brooklyn comes to do a project. They work here in the Ark, they meet all kinds of people. They hear not only the good things. People have told them, `White folks don't come here. You all are not supposed to come to Crown Heights.' They learn to deal with that. Once a week we go to class and have a de-briefing. We raise issues. We have studied the 104th Congress, cuts in school budgets, the increase in police. We have worked on special projects to get cops and young people together for a serious dialogue. I am very, very excited about it.
"Everybody has to take a piece of this and run with it. Everybody is responsible. These youths -- not just black youths in the inner city -- but youth period, even those living in suburb communities feel a certain sense of neglect and disillusionment. They feel they have been sold less than a clean bill. That society has deprived them of something."
I asked Richard how he had gotten into this work. "I had been in the service, been in school, been through changes myself. I felt that there was nobody out there listening to me or caring. I felt like that as a young man coming back from Vietnam. Felt totally neglected. Felt that the American dream was not there for me. I was out on these same streets, Franklin Avenue, Wilson -- running around. Delving into anti-social behavior. But I had good, strong people around me who gave me a little push. A basketball coach. Counsellors, teachers. My mother played a key role. At about that time, I reflected on what I had seen during thirteen months in Vietnam. Humanity at its lowest level. Life and death become interchangeable -- one and the same. Human beings lying in a dump. Bodies left out on the field to scare people. Someone going up in a helicopter and knowing he is probably not going to come back down. You look in his eyes. I told myself I was going work to bring people in tune with people. Humanity more in tune with humanity.
"I decided that it was one thing to complain about what was happening, and another to get up and work for change. I decided change had to start with me. I can make a difference in my own life. My circle becomes concentric. It might go all the way over to the other side of the world.....I remember the story about the guy on the beach throwing the starfishes back in. Someone came along and asked him why he was doing it -- there were trillions of starfish on the beach. What difference would one make? The old man bent down, picked up another one, threw it in, kept walking and said, `It will make a difference for that one.' So that is how it is with our life. If I can make a difference for one young person, if I can help one person become a productive citizen, maybe that person can touch many other lives. Like the young man who just came in here. That EMS guy....
"In the beginning we just played basketball with the youth. Helped them with their homework. Nothing very great. We didn't have a space so we used my living room. There is no easy secret. Hard work is hard work. That is the only way something like this happens. You have got to have the ability to get out there and do what has got to be done. You can't wait for anybody else to do it for you. You got to see your goals, set your eyes on it and work. It took about three years before we got any direct funding. Before that we were running on someone else's electricity. We were plugging into someone else's stuff here and there. Three years went by and we got our own first funding. We got a $14,000 grant. Out of that $14,000 we started doing what we had to do. We kept working at it. We didn't take any thing or any time for granted.
"Eventually we saw that we had to build an Ark For Development. Now, on any given day, 150 to 300 young people pass through these doors. We have worked to give this place a certain feeling when you walk in here. The young person feels safe here. In control. Above all else, they feel a level of dignity. It has to be nice and clean and attractive. Reflective of them. They must feel welcome. Hear good words. Feel people love them. They must feel people are committed to them. Once that happens, subconsciously they will take on all of these roles themselves. Even if they don't act on them right away, it might have its effect ten years down the road. We have to plant the seeds now. We tell them, `All we want to do is keep you close in the race. We are the middle-relief pitchers. The no-name pitcher. Not the starter, not the finisher. We aren't looking to shut out the batters, but we keep you two runs up or two runs down. We keep you close in the game.' Maybe we just have to work one inning or one out. Then we are out of there because the young person can take control themselves. Other youths we have to work two or three innings, because they need a few more breaks, a few more chances. That is pretty much what we do."
The Collective, with all its programs, requires about $500,000 a year. The city has been withholding money as it reassesses its budget. I asked Richard how this was affecting the Collective. "We are one step ahead of everybody right now. One step ahead of the posse. Whether it is the IRS, Conn Edison, the landlord....The landlord is a good guy. He called today. He tells me that we are falling further and further behind with the rent, but he was still understanding. I told him that as I get it, I am sending it out. I am not sitting on it. He understands that. I think God is working in his heart. He is a good person. God is working to soften his heart, to make him take this attitude. Many other landlords would have already evicted us, or made life miserable for us. I am convinced that God, if nothing else, has the interests of children. He is going to do everything to help you look out for them.
I asked Richard if the cutbacks in city funding made him bitter at all. "I don't want the administration to change. That's their position. To them its a legitimate position. You want everybody to be your allies. If you really, truly in your heart want change, you have to make everybody your allies. Everybody becomes your working ally. The poor, the rich, the haves, the have nots. Teach people how to be a little more kind, help them see how they are unkind.
"Budget or no budget, I will figure out a way to run this program. I have been through this before. I am concerned about it, but we're going to make this thing run one way or another. I came to this mission in such a way that I feel there is a Divine hand that does most of our work. I do a little bit of it, I take care of the minutes, and there is a Divine hand taking care of the hours. June 29th, at the eleventh hour, something will happen. That faith has developed over years and years of always having something come together when it is most needed.
"The whole idea of a strong faith is crucial for us and the young people we deal with. I want to see prayers back in schools. We have put the death penalty back, but they have yet to put prayers back. Part of America's greatness lie in Her strong spiritual -- not necessarily Christian -- but spiritual ethics. At one point I was on my way to law school, and I was turned around. Did a 360. It was made clear to me that I was not going to be a law student, that this is what I was going to do."
Richard had to take care of something, so I wandered around the Collective. The main floor is divided into a number of different areas: a main hall for everything from dance instruction to chess; a computer room with a number of old desktops; a library; a kitchen from which a teacher and students prepare meals for everyone in the Collective; plants; animals in cages (rabbits, hamsters, etc.) and fish tanks. In the back lot, I found the ambulance -- it looked in good shape but obviously had not been driven in a while. On it was prominently displayed both "Crown Heights Youth Collective" and something like "Made Possible by the 71st Precinct, NYPD."
I came across Mirah, Richard's wife, a serious woman of deep spiritual energy and beauty. Before she met Richard, she was an assistant buyer for Lord & Taylor. Mirah runs the Crown Heights Collective school for grades K through 12. This is some of what she said to me: "We have been in existence since 1978 and now have one hundred children in the school....Children come here because their parents like what we are doing. And sometimes this is just where they end up because there is no place else for them to move forward. They may be on their way to special education. Sometimes they just seems to come to us by Divine order.
"All our teaching is based on the philosophy of peace. Here a child can be who they are. They can grow the way they need to grow. They can develop the way they need to develop. We don't stand at the desk all day. I am a hands-on person. I love to learn, but if I don't see it, I am probably not going to get it. Many children are like that. I try to give them the information plain and simple so that if they can see it, they can do it. Other children are so academically intelligent that they can do anything, but they can't balance that with the physical part, so we work on that. Each child develops differently....
"We don't give a child in grade three the average grade three work. Mr. Green teaches basically the same class here that he teaches at Medgar Evars College. The children comprehend the information. I teach a course in textiles. They get a serious science program. We believe that once you learn life, you can teach. Everything is from a holistic point of view. When the weather gets nice, every Tuesday, Prospect Park becomes our classroom. We spend the day out there on everything from physical education to studying the plants and animals and cycles of nature....Richard was recently asked if he would be a Trustee for School District 17, so we must be doing something right....
"The children are taught how to play chess. We teach them how to be entrepreneurs. I teach everyone tap, stick dancing, music -- even the boys. They learn motor functions, co-ordination....The Friday before Easter, we had our tap dance recital. To see the children perform things that I had choreographed, such a simple thing, was really rewarding. They learn rhythm....We teach math, but the children also get math through dance. And they learn teamwork through this type of course. Animals, agriculture...we have a greenhouse. We do gardening all over the neighborhood. We build benches along the sidewalks. We have youths who have been sentenced to community service, we teach them carpentry. They build plant boxes. They built the library. They repair the building. And unlike the public school we pray here. They say affirmations, grace. We have Muslims, Christians, Israelites.
"Anything the children eat here, they can cook. We get them involved. They prepare a snack in the morning, a hot vegetarian lunch, and a snack after school. We also put food out in bags on the sidewalk....
"Parents are expected to contribute something financially, no matter what their circumstances. We have to pay our teachers, which is often a struggle. We are hoping that Pataki's voucher program will go into affect. Parents would be able to claim school tuition on their income taxes."
In the basement is a facility for teaching carpentry/plumbing/electrical/drafting to youngsters as well as work/release prisoners. Down there, I found a black student, probably about eight years old, working on his own drafting plans for an apartment building. With a big smile, he told me he had skipped grade three.
In the basement I also found Ali, a finish carpenter by trade, and the Collective's carpentry instructor. These are some excerpts from our conversation: "I was making much, much more money on construction. But teaching, giving someone something is another spirit. A very spiritual thing. What you get from teaching, giving to someone else, is worth more to me than money. Inside yourself. Feeling that you are doing something to deal with this society. What I am doing here, is giving young people an alternative to the streets, criminal activities, robbing people. Give them a trade, something they can go out and make money with....It is an amazing thing when you give someone who has never built something before a project, say a cabinet to build -- you see a new spark in them....The thing that hurts me the most, is when you teach these young people, and someone might swipe a drill or something. OK. That setbacks your spirit....I have wanted to give up, and Richard will talk to me. He'll say, `You can't give up. You have to keep going. It is a war we are fighting. It is really a battlefield. You just have to dig in and go right back at it.'"
Afterwards, I asked Richard about discouragement -- particularly how he deals with the shooting of a student. "It is very painful when I lose one of my young people, but it makes me more vigilant. I use that energy to build on. It makes me move faster, stronger."
There were so many interruptions during the time I was interviewing him -- phones ringing, people coming in the office needing things -- that I asked Richard if we could continue the interview in his van on the way to a legal conference he was to speak at in mid-town Manhattan. He agreed. As we drove through Crown Heights, many, many people on the street waved to him and shouted greetings. Richard talked about the graffiti on many of the buildings: "The graffiti art is all over around here because we don't give them anything else to write on. We don't give them anything else to express themselves with. That same energy that puts graffiti up can be used to express themselves as an artist, as an actor."
I saw a group of young men lounging around a staircase. I looked from one to another. My eyes came to rest on a young man who was staring at me with a look of contempt, bordering on hatred. I looked at Richard. He looked at the young man and smiled and waved. The young man's face changed to a look of guilt and sorrow. The address of the Crown Heights Youth Collective is 915-25 Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. 11225. (718) 756-7600.
From Issue 23.
Richard & Myra Green: The Crown Heights Youth Collective
Richard and Myra Green founded and run the Crown Heights Youth Collective, a school and after-school program in Brooklyn, New York. It is a place of challenge for inner-city youth. Richard is a tall black man with long dreadlocks. Myra, in addition to running the school, has a background in textile design and makes incredibly intricate, beautiful quilts.
When Heron Dance was in its infancy, I wrote about Richard and Myra. We had only about fifty subscribers and I put the Institute of Noetic Sciences on the mailing list for free because I had heard that IONS gives out the annual Temple Award for Creative Altruism. A few months later, Richard and Myra received that $12,000 award. When I decided to take Heron Dance on this exploration of the subject of beauty, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was going back and re-interviewing Richard and Myra. They radiate beauty.
We met at the Youth Collective. There is something wonderful about the way Richard carries himself and talks. He communicates integrity, caution, compassion and does it in an uplifting way. Being someone who is by nature opposed to authority, the strict discipline that is imposed on the students of the school surprises me a little, but Richard does it with such heart that the students seem to completely accept it.
Richard talked about recently meeting Attorney-General Janet Reno at a meeting in Washington on urban crime, attended by a number of police chiefs. He spoke about recent developments in New York City. Afterwards Attorney General Reno came over to talk to him. Richard described to me being immediately taken by her warmth and kindness. A few days later he received a letter from Reno saying that said she was looking forward to hearing from him further on crime and policing issues.
"Now I'm a guy who grew up on the streets of Brooklyn. I probably did a lot of things that are, you know, not that admirable. And I've been able to redeem myself, and it amazes me a little that I was able to sit with the Attorney General and have her remember our meeting enough to comment.”
Then Richard said something that both inspired and challenged me. It has crossed my mind at least once a day ever since. I think he was talking about Reno’s energy, and then mine and then his. He said, "I think that there are some universal waves that are in the atmosphere. Some of us have been able to tune in and become receptors.”
I asked him what he meant by universal waves.
“Goodness, spirituality. Reflections of the Godness of the universe. That Mother principal, truth, the divine faith in each other, and the all the goodness that we as human beings are capable of -- those little particles of goodness that are in all of us.
"There is a massive awakening among human beings. Some have tuned in quicker than others and those that have are magnetizing others. And they're anxious for it. The high and the lowly, the famous and the infamous. We all have one thing in common. We all want some of that energy. Whatever it is. And it isn't just holy people, or spiritualists. Police Commissioners and people who are removed from this are becoming part of the wave. People from all levels of life are tuning in. Not yet a whole lot of people, but small groups, individuals. They are becoming receptors and retainers and reservoirs. And then others are tapping into it.
"Strangers you run into, and different places that you go and people you meet. Sometimes you don't get a chance to say words, just being in their presence, just a smile. You know, just holding a door. Like a magnet picks up small metallic scraps that you don't even see. You may catch a big nail. But mostly just little tiny particles of nothing.
"I am becoming more aware of the relationship of my being to the Creator. The beauty I close my eyes to see. And close my ears. There's beauty I see in just that quiet relationship. And strong relationship."
Richard & Myra Green can be reached at (718)756-7600. Their address: Crown Heights Youth Collective, 915 25 Franklin Ave., Brooklyn, NY, 11225
