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Editor’s Note: The following story is the first in a three-part series about Community Passageways, a community-based organization in Seattle that is spearheading efforts to curb violence and help troubled youth transition into positive and productive lifestyles.
By Kiara Doyal, The Seattle Medium
Many community members in Seattle may be unaware of the violence intervention organizations in the area, what they do, and how they are not only creating a safe place for youth but they are actively reducing the level of violence, especially among youth, and making the community a safe place for everyone.
Community Passageways (CP), a Seattle-based nonprofit with a vision for zero youth incarceration that serves young people between the ages of 12 to 30 years old founded in 2017, is one of the organizations that is spearheading local efforts to curb youth violence and provide troubled teens with pathways to a productive lifestyle away from the streets.
According to Dominique Davis, CEO and founder, a prime example of the impact the organization has is at the annual Torchlight Parade, the largest community event in Seattle, which over the years had become a common place for violence and an increasing threat to public safety. By establishing a presence at the parade and leveraging their street credibility as expert community-based practitioners, Community Passageways has successfully implemented prevention and intervention strategies that enhanced the overall safety of the event for all attendees of the event, and significantly reduced the level of violence at the event. So much so, that there has not been a reportable incident at the parade in the last four years.
“We know a lot of the people that are coming to participate in Seafair activities, we know a lot of the little homies that come down here. We know who might be ready to cause trouble, or who’s looking for something to get into, and who’s not right, and we’re able to go address that right up front by letting them know we see them,” said Davis, during an interview with The Seattle Medium.
“One of the biggest things is we have relationships with the young people all over the city, and that makes us a very valuable asset because we have the ability to stop something before it happens,” says Mark Rivers, Director of Community Engagement and Outreach for Community Passageways. “[In preparation for the Torchlight Parade] we go through a couple of days of meetings together so we can come up with our protocol before. I think this year, we had three or four different teams down there to be able to cover the area, and we established the area that we’re going to cover, and then placed ourselves down there as a deterrent. We are really there to use our relationships so that we can stop anything that may happen down there, and this year was super successful at Torchlight because of our presence.”
While most do not know the full extent of their efforts to curb youth violence and the number of times that they commonly place themselves in harm’s way, the work that the members of Community Passageways do on a daily basis enables many of us to live in neighborhoods that are safer than they were just a few years ago.
While they may have set working hours throughout the day, many members of Community Passageways are basically on-call 24 hours a day. From intervening in school altercations, picking up a young person from a dangerous area to ensure their safety, or just being available to respond to calls from the youth they mentor, each day brings its own set of unique challenges.
For dedicated individuals like Davis and his colleagues at Community Passageways the amount of time they invest in the community is not about making headlines or personal recognition, it is about their love and passion for their community and supporting young people in ways that benefit everyone in the community.
“I have been a part of this community for my whole life,” says Davis. “I grew up in the streets of Seattle. A lot of people know who I am and what I stand for. I like to think back to my history in the streets and the harm that I caused in my community, and then how I have now shifted my mindset to say I want to make up for the harm that I caused in my community and do as much good as possible because this is my blood, sweat, and tears that I poured into these streets in bad ways, and now I’m pouring my blood, sweat and tears into these streets in good ways.”
Davis’s personal narrative is not in isolation as it relates to Community Passageways. One requirement for joining the organization is having a background related to violence, and being able to understand and connect with youth on a deeper level than community members, counselors, mentors or even, in many cases, more than family members can. In addition, these Community Intervention Professionals are trained and certified in various safety and support disciplines, allowing them to effectively protect and uplift our communities.
Rivers says that a core component of their success is that the relationships they build with youth in the community is centered around love, compassion, and consistency, and says that the organization serves as a critical layer of protection for the community.
“We have a thing called relentless engagement,” says Rivers. “Oftentimes, when you’re first trying to go out and help a young person who’s being a young person and trying to tell them that they need to do something different, they’re not going to listen the first time,” says Rivers. “But showing them that you care, taking them out to eat, getting to know their friends and other people they may look up to, and getting to know who their family members allows them to open up, and once they feel like, okay, well, he’s around, he keeps coming around, he knows my people like he’s cool, that’s my mentor, and then we can then peel everything else back from there.”
“We’re a resource and a protective factor,” added Rivers. “People know that if they’re in need they can come to community passageways. They know if they need a resource or if they need somebody to come up with a plan for what are we going to do about gun violence, they can come to community passageways. “So, I believe we are a protective factor for our young people.”
Since 2017, CP has worked with over 100 young people facing felony charges, successfully diverting their cases and keeping them within the community. While the organization has seen great success, building connections with youth hasn’t always been easy, as many have a mindset that is challenging to work with. However, Community Passageways understands the plight of many of the community members that it serves and the dynamics that have an impact on their lives and the decisions that they make on the streets.
“A lot of times it comes back to the family dynamics, unfortunately, and what’s going on in their household, the support, the love and the care that they feel from there, like they say, a child that doesn’t feel its warmth from the community or home will burn it down, and that’s kind of what goes on,” says Rivers. “They’re traumatized. Some of them are neglected. Some are truly hungry and they’re trying to navigate this world alone. As an adult, it’s hard enough. As a young person, you’re going to do what you have to do to stay safe and keep yourself protected, and oftentimes the places where they find themselves are extremely dangerous.”
Dressed in bright neon yellow-colored shirts, members of Community Passageways’ street teams are hard to miss, especially when they are providing engagement strategies around schools, community centers, and community events like youth and high school football games.
One of the highly visible engagement strategies of the street teams is their safe passage initiative. Which is where CP staff members are present at various middle and high schools during the school day, providing safe passage for students during lunch breaks and after school to home, to offer support and serve as a deterrent during possible times of violence.
Rivers says that the initiative is an important part of the work that they do and is a large part of their day-to-day schedule.
“Safe passage is providing a safety presence for the kids, we are there as a deterrent, but also a relationship-building presence so that if there is any stress or small fire, we can put a stop to it,” says Rivers. “We are making sure that the kids from Garfield can go to lunch, eat, go back to class, and leave after school to get on the bus to go home safely without any incidents of violence.”
“Kids need the support throughout the year, but during the school year, schools are the hot spots for violence, so we make sure we show up for the kids and be there for safe passage every day to make sure they are safe,” added Rivers.
Ericka McCraney, a Resource Navigator at Community Passageways, says that while she is not required to be part of the street team, she chooses to do so, so that she can remain actively involved in the organization’s core strategy to create safe places for youth.
“I like to be boots on the ground, when the street teams are out doing safe passage,” says McCraney. “I will come out a lot of the time because I love the fact that they are getting to know those kids and building those relationships. I piggyback off of them, so now I am out there talking to the kids just trying to keep our community safe.”
Like many organizations, Community Passageways the disturbing challenge of knowing what is needed to make a major difference in the community, and the limited resources that they have at their disposal to meet those needs. Davis believes in the notion that it takes a village to raise a child, but also knows that it takes a collective community effort to care for, protect, and help guide our youth in the right direction, and he is hopeful that more members of the community step up to provide our youth with opportunities to be successful.
“We need the community to step up and help provide opportunities for housing, therapeutic services, internships, apprenticeships, jobs, leadership, we need it all,” says Davis. “[We need] more finances, more unrestricted funds, that doesn’t tie our hands to contracts, government contracts, and scopes of work.”
For Davis, who understands that while he is the face of the organization through the eyes of the civic establishment of the Greater Seattle area, his vision represents and reflects the collective mindset and values of everyone associated with the organization, especially those who go out of their way to lend someone reaching out in distress a helping hand.
“I would like the community to see me as somebody that is an asset to the community, and that is an asset to our Black and Brown people living in this community,” says Davis. “Hopefully, I’m providing economic structures for people to have employment, gainful employment, to go through trainings, and get certified to do work in the community that they have harmed, or that they once were a deficit to, and now are an asset to, or just have the heart to just want to help people? And I hopefully I provided an opportunity for people to do that.”
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