(The Gate/Sonya Eldridge)
Students from the Peace and Education Coalition Second Chance High School and 9th District Chicago Police officers came together for a friendly game of basketball on Thursday, April 7.
The game was organized and planned by Peace and Education Coalition Second Chance students to build stronger relationships among neighborhood youth and 9th District Chicago Police officers, said student organizers Nereida Biscarra, 17, and Julissa Elliot, 19.
Biscarra and Elliot applied for a small grant through the youth civic engagement organization Mikva Challenge to fund the event, “Shoot Hoops, Not Guns.” “The youth and police don’t have a relationship, and it’s always like they’re against each other,” Biscarra said. “With this, they’re just playing ball, relieving stress.”
Karla Castilla, director of the Democracy in Action Program for the Mikva Challenge, said young people planned every aspect of the game, from contacting the 9th District to finding space for the event, to contacting the media.
Mikva recently awarded grants to youth-involved alternative schools as a part of their programming.
“It’s really important that young people are taking charge of the deficits in their schools and their communities and they’re seeing them and they’re doing something about it,” Castilla said.
The idea originally emanated from a small group of young men whose main focus is to work together to create projects with a dual purpose to strengthen the school culture and the community itself.
DaJuanda Fairley-Hall is a school ounselor at Peace and Education Coalition Second Chance campus.
For the last couple years, Fairley-Hall has been working with four young men at the school to create what they call the “Males Encouraging New Standards” (MENS) service-learning group.
Their first idea was to launch a basketball tournament to bring together a diverse group of young people from throughout the neighborhood. After collaborating with another teacher at Second Chance who works on justice issues, the group decided to organize a game- students versus CPD.
“[The game was organized] to kind of help mend that relationship- a lot of our students are not really trusting of the police,” Fairley-Hall said. “We want to let them know that the police are here to serve and protect. One bad apple doesn’t spoil a bunch. And just like the [youth] don’t want to be labeled, they shouldn’t label the police, so this is a step toward mending that relationship with the police.”
Back of the Yards youth Shawn Reed, 20, is one of the members of the MENS group who helped organize the game.
“When youth from the neighborhood get stopped by the police, they don’t know how to interact with them, cause sometimes police come off so aggressive, so I think this [event] is a big deal,” Reed said. “It gives us time to ask questions.”
Reed, who wants to be a chef after high school, said he’d like to see more games and events like this one where youth from across the city have an opportunity to interact with Chicago Police officers.
Reed said the ‘us versus them’ mentality needs to be broken down in order to strengthen the relationship between community youth and police.
“I think it’s all about coming together. If we keep separating ourselves, then nothing’s going to happen, but if we come together, then we definitely can make a change,” he said.
9th District Cmdr. Daniel Godsel was on the courts that day. He said events like these are essential to strengthening community-police relations, especially with young people.
“We have to reach out to the young adults because we want to get to know them, and we want them to get to know us,” Godsel said. “It’s just a great way to get to know each other and for everyone to see that we’re all human at the end of the day. It builds trust, and it builds good will.”