Teen Council Eases Tensions
Sitdowns Cool Gang Hostility
by Raphael Sugarman
Carlton Henry's idea of conflict resolution used to be wearing red and black gang colors and wielding a razor blade.
Now he solves his problems by sitting in a circle talking with other high school students or bowling a game or two with them.
"Kids wear gang colors for the same reason schools give out IDs to students." Said Carlton, a 17-year-old Taft High School student. "So that they know they belong to something. That they matter."
Helping students resolve conflicts and giving them a sense of belonging were English teacher Bob DeSena's goals when he started the Council for Unity at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn 25 years ago.
"I saw tremendous hostility at that time between the African-American and the Italian students and nobody was doing anything about it," said DeSena.
He forged a sitdown between gang members from both groups, who discovered that they had more things in common than differences.
"They often came from homes with no love and no sense of support and they feel alone in the world, " said DeSena.
"The minute we started to empower students, they began to take ownership of their lives and their problems in their schools."
Today, there are 19 Council for Unity chapters in Brooklyn, four in the Bronx, eight in Manhattan, three in Staten Island, and nine in Queens. The group also has five programs in Boys-and -girls clubs around the country and hopes to branch out to other community sites.
The Council for Unity sponsors social programs, charity drives, after-school and weekend programs - all with the main of bringing together students of diverse cultures and backgrounds.
"Nobody here is going to beat you up, nobody here is going to threaten you, nobody is going to order you to do anything you don't want to do," DeSena told a group if high school students earlier this month. The students had gathered at a Bronx bowling alley across from Yankee Stadium to have some fun, as well as talk about solving the problems in their schools.
In a wide-ranging discussion, kids talked about the pressure to join gangs, and about racial tension and violence at their schools.
"I have to watch my back when I walk on the streets, I have to watch my brother's back when he walks on the street," said Melissa Martinez, a senior at Martin Luther King HS in Manhattan.
The students also discussed the issue of homophobia, after some girls from John Jay HS in Brooklyn related stories of recent tensions between gay and straight students there.
City Councilman Ruben Diaz Hr. (D-South Bronx) as well as former gang members from the Zulu Nation and the Latin Kings also spoke to the students, encouraging them to avoid violence and stay in school.
Several Council for Unity chapters also held Christmas coat and food drives last month as well as a citywide party and presentation at John Dewey HS.
Carla Gonzalez, a junior at Newtown HS in Queens, said the group has largely changed her view of the world.
"This program has given me and other students something bigger to work for," she said. "Sometimes there is racism in the schools, bit we try and teach people that we are all the same. We are all one family."
