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In the next episode of our series about The Coalition to Advance Public Safety (CAPS) and its partner organizations spearheading community violence intervention efforts throughout the U.S., we hear from changemakers in Newark, New Jersey. Travon chats with co-founder of the Community-Based Public Safety Collective, Aqeela Sherrills, and CEO of New Direction, Shadee Dukes. We learn how they are leveraging relationships to curb crime inside their neighborhoods and serving as prime examples of why those who are most impacted by violence are best equipped to bring solutions to their own problems.

Thank you to the Coalition to Advance Public Safety, and in particular the Community-Based Public Safety Collective and New Direction for making today’s conversation possible. To learn more about CVI, and the individual organizations at work in this coalition, visit https://www.capsinitiative.org.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Trayvon Free, Aqeela Sherrills, Shadee Dukes

Trayvon Free  00:01

Hello and welcome to Good Things, I’m Trayvon Free and thank you for joining us for part two of our four part series with the Coalition to Advance Public Safety or CAPS. Now, CAPS is a collective working to expand and strengthen the community violence intervention ecosystem by providing resources, technical support and sustainable infrastructure to intervention programs in the cities and communities most impacted by gun violence. Today, we’ll be focusing on violence prevention in Newark, New Jersey. I’ll be talking with Aqeela Sherrills, the co founder and leader of Community Based Public Safety collective, or CBPS. CBPS is a relationship based violence prevention and intervention model in which residents are employed and trained as credible, trusted public safety professionals who create safety in their own neighborhoods. Also joining me today is  Shadee Dukes from New Direction. New direction is a city based violence prevention program which specializes in outreach, high risk intervention and sharing resources within newark new jersey. Aqeela, Shadee, welcome to Good Things. I want to jump right in. And I want to start by saying, you know, I’ve been looking forward this conversation for a long time, and in particular, because you guys are both examples of people who are closest to the problem know best what’s needed to keep their communities free from violence, right? You guys have an understanding that a lot of people don’t have. And so I want to start by asking you guys, or having you guys tell me, you know, why you got into this line of work and how you got into this line of work. Whoever wants to jump in first, feel free.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  02:53

I’ll go first, you know, and just lay a little bit of groundwork, you know, Aqeela Sherrills, the executive director of the community based public safety collective. I’ve been doing this work for for a little over 30 years now. Grew up in the Jordan housing projects in Watts, you know, participated in with many social justice activists called the longest running war in the history of this country, such urban street gang wars. Lost many friends and family, including my son, to violence in the streets, and have been committed to developing complementary strategies to law enforcement or community based solutions to address violence in neighborhoods as well. So much of what we do today was spearheaded by individuals like Hall of Fame football great Jim Brown, and you know, the Nation of Islam Minister Farrakhan, with the stop the killing tour back in the in the 90s. And many of us you know, who started this work because, you know, we today, we call it community violence intervention, right? But then we called it gang intervention because of the limited frame that folks had around it, and then also how we saw the problem of violence in communities, making it kind of specific to the youth gang culture, which wasn’t absolutely true, right? But you know, it’s, it’s been a phenomenal journey, yeah.

 

Shadee Dukes  04:18

No, guys, thank you for sharing that, right and and for myself, you know, my beginning is very similar to, you know, Aqueela’s and particularly, like losing my brother back in 2014 and we started, we actually started out, you know, doing, like, community work on a Small scale just inside our neighborhood, just because of just because of our conditions and our circumstances. I was in the streets, going through things. I was a victim of gun violence, and then targeted by the system, and, you know, ended up going to jail for possession of a gun, and my brother went to jail with me, and then we came home and just try to change our circumstances in our community. And then shortly after that, my brother was killed. He was gunned down. And maybe, about a year or so after that, like I continue to do the work that me and my brother started. And that’s when I met Aqeela Sherrills with no community street team. When they came to move on Hawthorne Avenue and moved in my neighborhood. And, you know, they embraced me and brought me in with open arms, and Aqeela started to teach me about the work high risk intervention and all these other things. So just coming in through that way, um, that was really like my, my real big introduction. So that’s how I got my start inside this group and just trying to continue it on.

 

Trayvon Free  05:43

You both have very deeply personal connections to this work and to the experience of gun violence. And I would like to just kind of talk about, you know, is there something you guys wish that every young person or adult currently stuck in the cycle of violence knew about getting help?

 

Shadee Dukes  06:02

Yeah, sure, well, I would say that I wish that everybody knew that it was a different alternative, right, like retaliation isn’t the only standard, you know? I mean that that we have when something negative happened to us, right? I wish that we all knew that we can turn a positive out of a negative situation, and because so often, you know, we haven’t really seen firsthand, or really, you know, come to grips with understanding that, that even possible, right? So we always think, I for our two, four tooth and our realness, so to speak um, it don’t always have to be that way, because, you know, we leave, we leave people you know to get hurt by our actions, right? Because I know, if I retaliate to every situation you know that leaves my kids without a father, that leaves my nieces and nephews without no guidance to be raised by. So sometimes, you know, we just always think, you know, we gotta match people energy. And I just wish that we all knew that we can introduce other people’s demons to heaven, right? We don’t have to go with them. That’s my biggest thing.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  07:11

Wow, yep, man, I just echo what you said, Brother, it’s always darkest before dawn, you know, and that where the wounds are is where the gift lie.

 

Shadee Dukes  07:20

That’s right.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  07:20

And sometimes we have to sit hard and long in the anguish and the pain, and we have to look for the gift, you know, for it to manifest, right? And so the thing that I would say to a lot of folks out there is that that we can shift and change our circumstances, right? I know that when we look at, you know, public safety, you know, in our neighborhood. You know, we live in a country where, if you say public safety, people say police, right? And so much of our power around the idea of Public Safety has been, you know, has been taken. We’ve advocated it in a sense. And so public safety becomes a very abstract thing. If you want to stop over policing in your neighborhoods, you want to stop the excessive force issues. You want to stop, you know, the next you know, Sonia Macy from happening. You got to make your neighborhood safe. And only you know one of the one of the models that came out of the peace treaty that we organized in watts in 1992 was nobody can stop this war, but us, right? And it speaks to what you started off with. You know, Trayvon, that that we work through this idea that violence is a public health issue and those who are closest in proximity have to be equipped with the skills, the tools and the resources to do the intervention and prevention and the treatment, and you feel like you don’t have a tremendous amount of education or skills in order to make it in corporate America, in order to, you know, to be able to provide for your family. You know, CVI community violence intervention is a new career path, you know, for folks in neighborhoods who might not have a lot of skills but have deep relationships, because one of the things that we discovered in this work is that that change moves at the speed of trust. And so, you know, when you have deep relationships in neighborhoods with people, you have the ability to actually transcend and transform relationships. And the last thing I’ll say on that is that in 2017 we did a study in Newark and discovered that 62% of the homicides in the city started out as interpersonal conflicts. 1520, years ago, if we had folks who were highly trained in conflict resolution, mediation and de escalation strategies, who could step in, in the gap, mediate these conflicts with peaceful resolves, we wouldn’t see a lot of homicides that we have happened in the city and and so we’re making up for lost time, because it’s essentially an epidemic, you know, at this point, whereas the number one cause of death, you know, for Black males, ages 14 to 25 is gun violence, right? And so this is, our, this is our fight, you know, family. So this is what I would say to our folks in the field.

 

Trayvon Free  09:52

No, I mean, that’s, that’s a really, really insightful answer. And you know, I’m thinking about the fact that, like your organization, cbps, you go into communities to strengthen. The neighborhood leadership and you guys are investing in people and organizations who have roots in these communities to help them, you know, learn how to get more deeply involved and attune with this work. And for people who may not be, you know, familiar with the term, can you just explain community based public safety for people.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  10:21

Yes sir, community based public safety or community violence intervention is a resident you know, led strategy in which resident, credible messengers, ex gang members, ex convicts, ex drug dealers, those who are closest in proximity to the circumference of violence that are happening in the neighborhood, leveraged their relationship capital to intervene and mediate conflicts to peaceful resolve, right? So essentially, the function of law enforcement in our respective communities is to enforce laws, right, not necessarily create safety. Safety is a very subjective thing, and crime stats says nothing about whether or not a person feels safe or not right. And because of the relationship, the historical relationship between community and law enforcement. This idea as police as this ubiquitous institution that’s responsible for all safety and community is just a false narrative. It’s impossible to have public safety without the public right, and so CVI, or community based public safety hires and trains and compensates. You know, because this work is not volunteer. It’s very dangerous, in which people you know leverage their relationship capital to mediate and prevent retaliatory violence. It’s evidence based. It’s you know, supported by community, anecdotally, and it is present in you know, hundreds of communities across the country.

 

Trayvon Free  11:43

We’re going to take a quick break, but we’ll be back with more Good Things.

 

Trayvon Free  12:42

Where do you guys? You guys can both answer this. Where do you where do you guys think the police do fit into that equation, given that there’s a separation between law enforcement and safety, and people’s understanding of law enforcement and safety, because a lot of people, if you ask them, they attribute safety to law enforcement. They think the police are there to keep you safe. That’s right, and that’s technically not what they’re there for, and Supreme Court has said so themselves, they are not there for your safety.

 

Shadee Dukes  14:37

How I feel is just that it’s community based, right? It’s community led law enforcement, like we said, they did to uphold the law, right? They not there. They’re not social workers. You could check all the crime stats, but safety is a feeling, and they can’t create the feeling of safety. And I think that their role is, you know, I want to start. With our role more so, but I believe our our role is more so, to create the safety, to create the feeling, to create, you know, the community, and we do alleviate a lot of things and let law enforcement focus on the more serious crime, right, the homicides, and you know, other things of those natures where you know, law enforcement, it is the need, but there, they can’t control the community. They don’t lead the community, right? And that’s why the community has to have creditable messengers, leaders that’s within the community have to be trained. It’s dozens of trainers out here to get our community organized and trained so that we can police ourselves, and so that the police won’t have to make the police on the more service. So that’s where I’m at.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  15:49

And Trayvon, I wanted to just share that that so for community violence intervention, you know, like the collective, as you said, you know, we help to stand up community violence intervention agencies right in neighborhoods to function as a complimentary strategy to their policing efforts in the city. And so when you think about community violence intervention, you have to think about the business of it, right? Because there’s, you know, a staff that’s hired, there’s payroll, there’s systems, there’s all of those things that have to function workforce development and everything, right? Data Management, you know, reporting on grants, all these types of things, then you have the direct service provision, which shows up as a high risk intervention team that responds, that’s on the police dispatch, that’s responding to shooting and shooting hits, that’s documenting interventions and mediations, right? And follow ups. This is what’s happening in neighborhoods with these type of agencies and individuals, right? There’s victims advocates who are part of the CVI ecosystem. There’s victims advocates who are paraprofessionals, neighborhood residents who are trained as as as victims advocates. There’s a there’s this whole thing around victims and survivors, right? Most black and brown folks don’t identify as victims. Victims has a negative connotation in community, and so we turn that thing on its head, and we call people survivors, because it’s a point of entry for black and brown folks to be able to really demand some of their rights, right? I mean, we’re probably the smallest population believed in every single categories of victims of crime in the country. But you know, so victims advocates, community health workers who are embedded in hospitals that do hospital based violence intervention, you know, so there’s, there’s trauma recovery centers. We have therapists, you know, who are embedded in neighborhood, social workers who provide, you know, CBT, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy or teach other pubic modalities. All of these systems kind of like, work together in neighborhoods, and so like the newer community street team or new direction are like kind of, I like to say, traditional kind of community violence intervention agencies that have charismatic leaders who are credible messengers from the neighborhood, deep relationships that know all of the key players, and they leverage their relationship capital to mediate conflicts, to peaceful resolve. But not only that, they rally all of the youth together. I mean, Shadee can talk about, like, kind of the great work, you know, the podcast that they host, man with the G’s that come and give the great messages out to, you know, to young folks to deter from violence. I mean, killing the game right now. You know, Newark, Newark right now. And you know, we consistently pray that these numbers remain this way. But right now we’re at a 30% low, you know, in the city from last year. You know what I’m saying, in terms of violence and so, and we’ve had seven consecutive years in a row of decreases of homicide and overall violence. So we’re New Direction is the future, you know, of CVI, like, kind of work in Newark.

 

Trayvon Free  18:38

Right? And the way, I mean, I understand that you guys are very much in the trenches, intervening in high risk situations and preventing this violence. And so I want to actually pivot to ask you guys, and Shadee, you can start with this, you know, help me understand what it is you’re dealing with on a day to day basis when you’re doing this. And just in terms of things I’m thinking about is, so you know, like, you know what is? What is preventing things from escalating look like for you and things of that nature?

 

Shadee Dukes  19:08

Right, so honestly, on a day to day basis, we dealing with the city as a whole from multiple different levels, but primarily from from the youth standpoint, being engaged in our youth, because we know that a high percentage of the crimes that happens inside the city of Newark is centered between the 14 to 30 year old beast. So new direction we specialize in targeting that 14 to 24 year old base, the high risk population in particular, whether it’s youth that’s already in contact with law enforcement or they having trouble in school with behavior problems they fight in the school, getting kicked out of school. So you know, on a day to day basis, when school is in react at least three to four high schools again. Eight, and we identify the high risk population through they staff and through the principal, because if they there every day, they know the high risk kids that need the most attention. So we start from there, right? Instead of sitting here trying to talk to 300 kids a day, only thing we really need to do is talk to these 10 problematic or influential kids, right? And we use that approach, right? Because it’s about the it’s about the quality, not the quantity, right? So we dealing with that on a day to day basis, building relationships. We go with our youth support whenever they have court cases. We go with them to schools when they have to sit down with their principals. And then, you know, in a real like the centerpiece of it really is the follow ups, right? Not just being involved with them when they’re quote, unquote, in trouble, right, just following up with them even once we touch bases when the first time and we know who they are, we pull up any neighborhood, in a prospective neighborhoods, not just inside their schools. We go to the neighborhoods where they hang out at with their guys, because we have the relationships within the communities. Because we come we are a part of not that we come from it, but we still a part of it. I still live inside the city. We still inside the city every day. So we have a real high touch point with with the Duke, and then also, and also, we build relationship with every neighborhood. And then we, you know, incentivize through and I, and I guess we, I could touch on that point, because that’s the importance of us having a relationship and a funding from CAPS, because caps pour into us, and they build our infrastructure and help and help us build our infrastructure so that we can help stabilize these communities, right? Because now, if we get in, you know, our 501, c3, and we getting our feet on the ground, and we learning how to build our infrastructure, and we learn it on, you know, how to get our funding. So now we can put more time into the communities and get them more resources, because we have the relationships, right? So now, you know, it’s the each one teach one type of thing, but it’s simple, but it’s impactful. You know, just keeping our touch points up, and, you know, we run a lot of a lot of community programs, and then we run a lot of partnerships, right? That’s what that’s really another one of our main speakers is just partnerships, because we can’t do this work alone.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  22:34

We’re so fortunate for the strategic partnership that we have with caps, with the coalition to advance public safety. You know, the collective the Health Alliance for violence intervention, National Institute of criminal justice reform and cities united with strategic funding for both bomber and Ballmer group and Schusterman foundation. You know, we’re doing this 12 city initiative with the goal of reducing violence in those cities. But even bigger than that. It’s to build the infrastructure of those Community Based Violence Intervention agencies who are the core partners, you know, with city in terms of, you know, reducing, you know, violence, you know, amongst the people, right? And so, right? We’ve been able to move in each one of the cities that we’re working in so 12 cities total. Our first cohort of cities was Newark, Baton Rouge, Baltimore and Indianapolis, and now we’re just launching in Cohort Two, LA, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Oakland, but we were able to move about a half a million dollars to four community partners in each one of the cities that we’re working in new direction, being one of the grant recipients. And those dollars, you know, help them to, you know, to get their 501, c3 set up, set up a lot of their back office infrastructure. Get insurances, become a vendor with the city, get workers comp, like all of these things that you need to do in order to function as a business. And then partner with the Newark community street team, and was awarded a $200,000 grant, you know, essentially through the city, right? And so building infrastructure, learning how to manage these grants and do all of the reporting, it’s a lot of work, but you know what this is? This is the future, you know, of public safety, because peace has to be incentivized. And there are folks in the neighborhood who have the relationships, they have the know how, and they just need the support and the in the investment. And man, some of these neighborhoods who they for, in some cases, for three and four decades. You know, like violence has spiked in certain cities across the country, literally, for three and four decades. We can bring it into that because it’s solvable, you know, the data says that that less than one to 2% of the population are are committing 80 to 90% of the harm. There’s data, we can identify, we can track, and we can provide, you know, wrap around the support services to that population. We can intervene, we can mediate, and we can reduce violence, like we’ve done in Newark, like we’re doing in multiple cities across the country.

 

Trayvon Free  25:13

We need to take a quick break, but we’ll be back with more good things in just a minute.

 

Trayvon Free  27:17

You mentioned the street team, and I know you started the Newark community street team. And you know Newark’s been recognized for its public safety, and it’s become a big beacon in the country for for the violence reduction work that’s taking place there. Can you talk more about the street team and just how it became an essential partner in reducing violence in the city?

 

Aqeela Sherrills  27:44

Sure, yes so, you know, I’ve known, you know, Mayor baraka for for a little over 25 years. You know, as activists, advocates and organizers in the field, in 2004 I was instrumental in helping him to organize a peace treaty between the Crips and the Bloods in the city. Interestingly, the biggest crip gang in the city of Newark and in the state of New Jersey is Grape Street, which is the neighborhood that I’m from, where we organized the peace treaty at in watts in 92 and so baraka and I and a group of the brothers we’ve we’ve maintained a relationship for you know, for over a decade after that peace treaty was organized in 2004 and so when in 2014 when Baraka became mayor, he tapped me to come and build out his community based public safety strategy, the Newark community street team. So the mayor launched the Newark community street team, and then he charged me with building infrastructure, put systems in place, and turning it over to the local folks. And so, you know, I thought this task would take about three years, but eight years later, you know, I’ve been living in Newark for the past seven and I tell you, the work has been phenomenal with NCST. We started with a modest, $350,000 grant. I want to give a big shout out to our partners at Victoria Foundation, Prudential Healthcare Foundation from New Jersey, at the mayor’s request, they invested these dollars, we were able to hire 16 independent contractors, train them in conflict resolution, mediation, de escalation strategies through PCITI with Dr Kiel Bashir and we deployed folks in the neighborhoods, in key hot spots. The South Ward was our targeted area, with the goal of intervening in meeting conflicts of peaceful resolve. And it essentially was an experiment, but at the same time, we had skills. We had deep relationships. Are what I like to call the three P’s lined up, you know, the power the paper you know, and the people, you know what I’m saying. So we had the three P’s lined up, and so we were able to get some traction. I designed the three prong strategy, you know, high risk intervention, assertive outreach, victims advocacy. This became our approach, and we developed a whole theory of change. You know, around victimization. We believe that if you. Put survivors at the center of the strategy and provide wraparound support services, then you put yourself in a position to be able to reduce violence and crime very hard won relationships. You know, the mayor provided a lot of the political interference and tackling because that was absolutely necessary, because if you can imagine standing up a complimentary strategy to policing in a city that was actually going into a consent decree. But we were fortunate man. We got one of the one of the best public safety directors that you can get, you know, Newark’s own, Anthony Ambrose, you know, double A, you know, I call him the great reformer. And then following up with Brian O’Hara, who is now the chief in Minneapolis, we had great law enforcement partners who wholeheartedly embraced the work and gave us an opportunity to, you know, to meet with the brass, and also to have, you know, trainings with their shooting team so that we could understand each other’s standard operating procedures and protocols in the field, we now run one at both University Hospital and at Beth, Israel. We launched the city’s first non law enforcement response to OD so we have a team that responds to that is embedded with the EMS that responds to overdose as well as they respond on their own. And I mean, it’s been phenomenal work. And, you know, you got to account for the trauma that people have ingested, you know, as a part of living in these in these urban war zones, you know. And so, yeah, it’s important absolutely. And I don’t see, I don’t see the trauma as a liability, honestly, as I said, where the wounds are is where the gift lie. You know, WEB Du Bois said, he said it’s our, that this, this is our collective wounding. He said it’s our, it’s our birthright. And so, yeah, I believe in wounded healers.

 

Trayvon Free  31:50

No, I mean that. I mean that what you just described is remarkable, and it’s what it takes, you know, to to save these communities, to save our communities. And so in in thinking about that, Shadee, I want to talk about credible messengers and violence interrupters. And, you know, I think about giving ex gang members and offenders, you know, a new direction, so to speak, and giving them the opportunity to to step in and save their communities. And so I would like to ask you, what do you think it means to be a credible messenger and and how do they, you know, in doing this work, feel equipped to intervene, and how do they put aside their own feelings and biases when it comes to doing the work, given the nature of where they might come to it from?

 

Shadee Dukes  32:39

Right, it’s two things I want to say. The first thing is, just, it’s been a credible message, is understanding that, you know, the mission is before you as an individual, right? It’s about the common goal that we all stand here for, and we all going to be tested, right? My biggest test came, you know, when I was doing the work I had, you know, my cousin passed away. Well, he ain’t passed away. He got, he got murdered, right? And the same, you know the day of his funeral, right? I sat down on the podcast that Aqeela, you know, talked about. I started doing a podcast, and I sat down with his son on the podcast. And I probably, you know, I may ask for the streets not to retaliate for my cousin death, and had the conversation with his son on, why are we not asking for retaliation for his father’s death, and that was a hard thing to do, you know, you know, to sit there and tell my 14 year old, you know, little cousin, that we can’t go out here and go, you know, murder the guys who murdered his father, when, you know, that’s the only thing that’s on his mind, he want to hurt the guys who hurt his father. And had to, you know, because that conversation wasn’t for me as an individual. It was about what we all stand here for. It was about what I represent. It’s about what we represent as a whole. Because I don’t just discredit myself. If, you know, I go out and I endorse this act, I impact all the work that new direction is doing, all the work that Aqeela is doing, all the work that the mayor is doing. Because what they’re going to do is they’re going to look to me and say, Look, this is what they’re producing, and just understanding that. And then, you know, three months after that, you know, with my cousin’s brother, you know, my other cousin, right, getting murdered the same exact way his brother did, right? So then, you know, just having to double down on that and go in front of my people again, right? And then, you know, understanding that, everybody in our community and our culture don’t understand what we what we pushing right. They don’t understand that language of peace. But if ain’t, nobody gonna be the sacrificial lamb and show them what it look like, then we never gonna get there. All we gonna do is, you know, continue to complain about our circumstances, but it comes down to what are you willing to do about it? And for me, I’m willing to do everything about it, because it’s not about me, it’s about the example that I’m showing my daughters, the example that I’m showing my son, the example that I’m showing these kids when I’m asking them to stop killing each other. Now, something happened to one of my family members. I’m ready to go kill the whole city too. So you know, you have to become that light, if not, everything that we’re doing is fluff, and I believe that, you know, we have to redefine what a credible messenger is, because to me, Aqeela is my credible messenger. He’s somebody that I’ve seen from a credible neighborhood, you know, I mean, with a credible background, doing the work that he’s doing now, and that introduced me into the work. I believe my mayor is the credible messenger, because he’s from where I’m from, and he made it to become a mayor. So he’s credible, right? I believe you’re a credible messenger because you look like me. You from where we from, you speak the language that we speak. You know, I’m saying so you giving your platform credibility. I believe we have to. We can’t just put credible messenger in a box of somebody who went to jail or got shot and came back home, he is a credible messenger. But that is not what a credible messenger is, right? A credible messenger is somebody that we can identify with, go to a height that we never seen before, and now we know that it’s possible, right? Like, you know, Michael Jordan was a credible messenger. LeBron James is a credible messenger because we seeing them climb heights, you know, coming from places that we come from. Oprah’s incredible messenger. So I believe, you know, it was, it was introduced that way, but it’s way bigger than what we reduce it to.

 

Trayvon Free  36:28

Can you guys talk about your relationship together? Because you mentioned how, you know, Aqeela is a credible messenger for you and the work that you’re doing. So talk a little bit about, you know, I know cbps funds new direction and the work you guys are doing, and talk to me about, you know, what makes this partnership work so well, and maybe Aqeela you can touch on, you know, the conversations you guys might be having around data managing and public funding, where, where you are helping new direction, you know, soar to even greater heights.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  36:58

I had the fortune of meeting Shadee because we launched our organization like right in the heart of his neighborhood. And so, you know, the gang culture is a check in culture. You know what I’m saying, man, you can’t just go nowhere and just show up nowhere. You know what I’m saying. You gotta check in. And Shadee and the brothers in the neighborhood was gracious enough to allow us to continue to be there, especially once they heard the message. And then, you know, him being intelligent and having the gift he connected to the message after, you know, working with NCST and seeing like, hey, just, I’m a natural at this. You know what I’m saying, he’s always been a natural leader, you know, in politics and moving things in the neighborhood, already doing stuff, you know, in order to support the community. So, so one of the things that we were able to do was just kind of wrap some some infrastructure around it. And so I think that a lot of our relationship today is it’s like, kind of like mentor, like kind of mentee, you know, I learned just just as much from him that I’m sure that he that he learns from me, you know, and we lend each other’s credibility to each other, right? So we can, we’ll go to LA and, you know, because I’m well respected, and, you know, in Jordan downs, and I’m from great street, and you know, all that good stuff, I can have my folks, like, shawty, them come to the neighborhood and meet all of the key players and connect, and then make the relationship on their own. And now they’re there. You know what I’m saying, when issues and everything come up, they can go in and leverage their own relationships. You know what I’m saying. So it’s like transferring relationships like on the streets, right? And so, and then we also do it in the boardroom as well. So you know when, the opportunity, you know, came, Shadee launched and launched new direction. And they’re like, Hey, we moving these pieces forward. I pulled them into the White House initiative. I had the fortune of one running the White House, community violence intervention collaborative. I pulled them in as an agency. They didn’t have enough infrastructure at the time to be one of the, one of the partners at the table, but, you know, they hung in there. And then as a result, you know, caps came about. We were able to move some dollars. They were able to pull together some more infrastructure partner with NCST on the grant. And so, you know, the rest is history.

 

Shadee Dukes  39:03

And I say it’s the same, it’s the same on my end right now, man, because it’s been that way since day one, right? Like coming in with no new direction, and we came in at the NCSC leadership. And, you know, as I started off as, you know, outreach, working for NCST and doing high risk intervention, um, you know, he was my credible messenger, because I was able to buy that, you know, I was able to get buy in, just because of who it was, right? And it’s just an awesome thing, man, because we able to bounce off each other. And that’s my mentor, that’s my big brother, right? And I lend on them? Because I’m new to this space, and I’m not new to doing the work, but I’m new to the end of the world. So it’s great for me.

 

Trayvon Free  39:50

No, that’s, that’s amazing. I mean, you guys have definitely done great work together, and I’m, hoping that keeps up for a very long time. You know, I want to ask you. Shadee, I mean, another non traditional thing about your organization, you know that stood out to me is the opportunities you provide for people, like going to concerts and things of that nature. And you know, in the past, you’ve chosen people based on their growth and improvement since joining new direction. And you know what’s what’s been your favorite moment so far in in doing things like this for the people who’ve entered into your organization?

 

Shadee Dukes  40:23

Honestly, all of it is my favorite, because I just can’t, I can’t believe that. You know, I am who I am today. So I just take it all in. I appreciate my good deeds and my bad days the same, because just having an opportunity and just building, building the right trust with with my people, because, you know, Aqeela touched on it before, like  I’ve been a leader in my community, I’ve been a leader in my family, but the direction that I was leading them in wasn’t the right direction. And, you know, just, just having a another opportunity, and just having my people trust me, that’s the biggest thing. When I’m out in the community and people approaching me, and they they know me from miles away and it’s all for sound positive, right or, you know, even when you know, it’s even to the place where people is traveling around, you know, nationally now, and running into other people who know me and having conversations about me, and it’s and it’s all the same conversation. And I think, like, the biggest thing for me, like it’s not the moment, but I think the biggest thing is just proving my brothers right, proving Aqeela right, proving the mayor, Rajee Baraka right. Because I know, if any, you know, we always, we always peak the 1000s and just hoping that we could save just one. And I just always want them, you know, to be able to look back at their younger brother and be like, that’s how I want, right? Like, you know, they might have seen, you know, regardless of what we know that we know that somebody got it. Because I was that young kid when the kid would talk about in 2004 you know, when the mayor brought him over and to the city of Newark and all the guys, I was a young kid inside that classroom that they was talking to, and I didn’t get it back then. But you fast forward the you fast forward the clock. Now, now I get it, and now I get to sit down with them. So for me, it helps me, you know, it helps me stay focused, because it’s bigger than me, right, we got enough people that don’t believe in us. We have enough people who don’t believe in our podcast, our visions, our high risk intervention, you know, I’m saying so when, you have people that do believe in you and you got the opportunity to prove them right, that’s everything to me.

 

Trayvon Free  42:48

Man, that’s amazing answer. And you know, Aqeela, I’ll pivot to you and ask you, you know, what are you most proud of as it pertains to cbps, and what is your vision for the organization, the people that you’re helping?

 

Aqeela Sherrills  43:01

The thing that I’m most proud of is, you know, the support that we actually can provide for practitioners in the field to make a good living and to be responsible for making their families and their communities safe. I’m like, that’s huge. You know what I’m saying? Like, as an agency, we write grants for for cities, also for community based organizations. So, you know, 10, $15 million you know, we’ve been instrumental in helping to move to organizations and unlocking, like kind of millions more right through, through advocacy. So much of what I do is, is about ensuring that my son’s death, and the 1000s of individuals who lost their lives unjustly, to ensure that their lives were not lost in vain. You know what I’m saying? So you know, geeking out on on the work to to save lives and to give the individuals like Shandee credit for their work so that in the near future, as we’re paying like in the city of Newark, you know, we, we invest, I think, about 2 to $8 million annually, and in policing. In the future, I’d love to see five to 10 million going to new direction to sustain, you know, you know, violence reduction in peaceful efforts in the West Ward like those are the type of things that I’m hoping to see, and our police playing a much more strategic role, you know, because I’m not down on cops. I mean, I’m huge advocate and fan of good policing. But our law enforcement, you know, system is broken, and it needs a lot of help. It needs community violence intervention in order to balance it.

 

Trayvon Free  44:46

Yeah, and, I mean, I think, you know, just touching on and connecting to this, you know, personally, like I grew up in Compton, and so I have a lot of family members and friends who have fallen victim to gun violence, and community violence, and both survived it and didn’t, and so I think the work you guys are doing is is more important than almost anything I can imagine. And so in thinking about that, just as a final question to you guys, you know, how do you think we can find more organizations like new direction to fund and to support. And then, how do we get people excited and involved in this work when it’s it can be so taxing, it can be so difficult, and other people feel like they don’t even know where to begin.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  45:36

Yeah, I would say just quickly learning more about community violence intervention agencies, please reach out to us, the community based public safety collective you know at our social media handles, we’d love to connect you with hundreds of community violence intervention agencies across the country that need your support, whether it be you know, time, talent or treasure, you know what I’m saying, whichever would suffice. And I think that, you know, the more shows that we could do, like this, Trayvon, you know, media, hopefully one day we’re going to have like, kind of a CVI show, like the wire, you know, right? Absolutely, that’s going to get us to kind of the type of, you know, visibility that that the movement needs in order to get this next level of traction. But, man, it’s you bruh, you know, it’s Lemonada. So you know, thank you all so much for giving us a platform to tell our story.

 

Trayvon Free  46:32

That’s right, yeah, of course, absolutely. I mean, thank you guys so much, you know, Aqeela Sherrills and Shadee Dukes for taking the time to spend with us and talk about this stuff, and we will continue to spread the word and spread the message. And I’m grateful that you guys are doing this work, and I wish you guys all the many, many millions of dollars in investment and all the best and love and support to keep, uh, keep our community safe.

 

Shadee Dukes  46:59

Sure, thank you.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  47:00

Appreciate you, brother, thank you.

 

CREDITS  47:07

A special thank you to the coalition to advance public safety for making today’s conversation possible to learn more about how they foster transformative CVI ecosystems and the individual organizations that work in this coalition, visit www.capsinitiative.org, that’s www.capsinitiative.org. This series is produced by associate producer Dani Matias. Our supervising producer is Jamela Zarha Williams, mixing and Sound Design by Noah Smith. Steve Nelson is our SVP of weekly content. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and Jessica Cordova Kramer and please help others find our show by leaving us a rating and leaving us a review. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next week.