Planting hope to root out violence

 

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Father Tom Walsh had already been at Presentation Parish in North Lawndale for 10 years on the morning when Christopher Green got shot.

He had heard the drug dealers calling out to customers, advertising their wares. He had seen the young men, some former students of the parish school, carrying guns. He knew the neighborhood had one of the highest murder rates in Chicago. His first year there, two former students were murdered.

But Christopher Green was different. Walsh knew him, because he was an active parishioner and volunteer. “He was just a nice young man,” Walsh said.

Gunned down in his car in March 2002, a scant two blocks from the church, Green’s murder was classified as unsolvable.

But Walsh learned something a few months later when he and other community leaders were invited to a violence forum hosted by then-Police Superintendent Terry Hillard. Hillard put up a display showing the involvement of ex-offenders—people who had been sentenced to jail, prison or probation—in violent crimes, both as perpetrators and victims. There, in the list of ex-offender victims, was Christopher Green’s name.

“I had known him since he was kid, and I never knew that about him,” Walsh said.

But Green’s status as an ex-offender did not make him unusual in North Lawndale, where 58 percent of the adult population, and 70 percent of the men, have a criminal conviction in their backgrounds.

“I’ve been here 12 years, and I know guys who have been in and out of the correctional system three or four times,” Walsh said. “And they’re in their mid-20s. The question is, what can we do to stop the cycle?”

It is a vicious cycle. Many of the offenders have not completed high school and have few job skills. Any education or vocational training once offered in prisons is going by the wayside as budgets are tightened, and former offenders come out with no skills and fewer prospects. Many return to crime because they see few other options, Walsh said.

And while many area ministers and other leaders wanted to help, few wanted to open their doors to people with criminal records.

Walsh saw it differently.

“Here at Presentation, we are going to meet the needs of the community,” he said. “That goes all the way back to when (Msgr.) Jack Egan was here.”

Besides, ex-offenders already frequent the parish as worshippers, volunteers and users of other parish services, Walsh said. Thus, the Green Light Project was born.

Now headed up by Ahmad Sanders, an ex-offender himself, the project offers everyone in the community, ex-offender or not, the opportunity to get eight weeks of computer training, from the basics of Microsoft Office applications to e-mail and Internet use. It also offers participants training in how to write a cover letter and resume and how to prepare for a job interview. It is open to anyone from the community, unless they have been convicted of a violent crime or a sex crime.

It doesn’t offer actual job placement, Sanders said, because finding employment is a job in itself.

“It’s a major effort, and it takes time,” Sanders said. “We want them to understand that. It’s hard enough to get a job if you’re not an ex-offender. If you have an X on your back, it’s even harder.”

Sanders also opens the computer lab in the afternoon hours to school children from the neighborhood, giving them access to the Web and its resources.

The 15 computers and their set-up were all donated by Computers for Schools, an organization which refurbishes used computers for use by students, and installed by Willie Cade, the organization’s executive director. The project also has funding from the Department of Justice through the Chicago Police CAPS program, the state “Eliminate the Digital Divide” project and from several local non-profits, including the Montgomery Foundation.

Walsh is looking for more support to make sure the project will survive as parishes on the West Side plan their reconfiguration. After more than two years of planning, Bishop John Manz announced in September than 10 area parishes would become four worshipping communities, but that some of the social ministries provided by parishes not selected as worship centers could survive—as long as the parishes worked together to present a viable three-year financial plan.

The Presentation parish center is home to a transitional housing program operated by the Department of Children and Family Services for up to five young men at a time, ages 17-21, to prepare them to move from group homes to independent living, and several other initiatives, and Walsh wants to make sure they survive as he prepares to move on.

So far, 28 people have completed Project Green Light, and all are guaranteed at least a job interview with Computers for Schools to give them experience. One person has been hired.

“There’s no doubt this program is needed, and there’s no doubt this is the place for it,” he said, noting that everything from the patchwork of gang territories to lack of transportation makes it difficult for residents to leave the neighborhood for training. “There is absolutely no better place for this.”

And, Walsh said, there’s no one better to run it than Sanders.

Sanders was convicted of a drug offense—possessing a large quantity of a controlled substance—and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, He only served 2? years, with tine off for good behavior and work release, and he used that time to get an associate’s degree. After his release, he got a certificate in computer repair from Malcolm X College and then a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications system management from DeVry University, all with funding from the Montgomery Foundation.

“Now that I’ve been blessed with this, I don’t mind talking about it,” Sanders said. “I understand what it is to go through that. Seeing me gives them confidence.”

Seeing participants in the Green Light project succeed will also breed confidence, Walsh said.

“I don’t think we can help everyone,” he said. “But if 10 people come through the door, and one of them ends up changing their lives, that’s success. Because it’s like drugs: it’s contagious. People will see that, and say, ‘If he can do it, I can too.’”