The city’s youths are in crisis
One year ago, Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood erupted in grief, protests and violence after the fatal police shooting of a 23-year-old African-American man named Sylville Smith. Like most native Milwaukeeans, we wish we could turn the clock back to prevent the Aug. 13, 2016, shooting and the two heartbreaking days of unrest that followed. Sadly, we can’t change the past, but we can influence the future.
As leaders of Boys & Girls Clubs, both locally and nationally, we know we must do more to prevent tragedies such as the Smith shooting and the subsequent outpouring of anger and grief that followed. Unfortunately, we have both seen children and teens head down the wrong paths in life. But far more often, we’ve seen that, with the right opportunities and the right people in their corners, youths make positive choices and go on to lead successful, productive lives as adults.
Where we as a community can make the biggest impact is by ensuring these tools and opportunities are accessible to all children. We must provide inner-city youths with a safe place and the mentoring, structure and skills they need to not only survive but thrive in our hypercompetitive 21stcentury economy. We must improve communication, cooperation and trust between local law enforcement and our communities, especially in predominantly African-American neighborhoods such as the one in which Sylville grew up and lost his life.
This much we know: Without mentoring and after-school programs that provide the hope, discipline and real-world skills needed to find a way out of poverty, our inner city, suburban and rural youths — regardless of race, creed or color — are more likely to drop out of school; use alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs; engage in criminal activity, and have run-ins with the law.
Across the country, we see that America’s kids are struggling. Every day, 11 million youths in our country are forced to navigate the world around them with no afterschool adult support or supervision. During the summer months, that number nearly quadruples, representing about 75% of our country’s youths. Nearly half of American youths live in a low-income household and one in five lives in poverty. At the same time, one out of six won’t graduate high school on time.
The persistent problems of intergenerational poverty and crime won’t be solved until we join together and commit to providing more opportunities for quality out-of-school programs that help America’s inner city and rural youths achieve three crucial goals: academic success, good character and citizenship and healthy lifestyles.
That’s our mission at the 4,300 Boys & Girls Clubs across America. In urban centers and across rural America, in public housing and public schools, on military installations and Native lands, Clubs teach 4 million kids and teens every year what positive interactions and relationships look like and demonstrate what it means to be a good citizen of this great country. It’s part of our focus to inspire and empower the young people who attend a Club to achieve success while championing opportunities for all young people in America.
In short, America’s youths are in crisis. To turn things
around, we need parents, educators, employers, community representatives, law enforcement agencies and every political and social leader in the country — from the state house to the White House — to think about what kind of world we want to live in, and participate in a national dialogue about how to get there.
Recently, Sylville Smith’s sister pleaded with those in her community: “Do something different in the community, try as hard as you can to be peaceful and form unity with each other — black or white. Because we all bleed the same; we all hurt the same.”
Truer words were never spoken.