Brotherhood of hope
Refugee teens, marginalized on tough streets, bond to survive
While mamba drug dealers, pimps and hookers circle outside by a U.S. flag on a fence, young refugees placed in one of Denver’s toughest neighborhoods have taken over a basement hangout for violent men and are building a unique brotherhood for escape and success.
Up to 50 refugees a day ages 14 to 25 flock to this basement Street Fraternity along East Colfax Avenue. They box and work out in a gym. They reflect in a meditation room on brotherhood principles of self-respect, respect for others and treating their place right. They study in a library. They horse around and play pingpong. They prepare their own food and eat together five nights a week, carrying leftovers home to their families.
“I want to do computer programming — God willing,” said Eugene Karekezi, 23, whose mother carried him as a child out of war-ravaged eastern Congo. He languished for 12 years at United Nations camps in Rwanda. He uses crutches or a wheelchair to navigate Community College of Aurora. “I’m getting A’s,” he said.
This nonprofit hangout has emerged as an innovation in an increasingly migratory world, where 25 million refugees, who cannot go home
due to violence, face rising barriers. It began in 2013 on a mission to get teenagers out of gangs, lost foundation funding, yet now thrives on less than $200,000 a year in donations. Most of the participants are refugees — 40 percent of refugees sent to Colorado are under age 18 — at a time when President Donald Trump has targeted refugees as potential terrorists, which has kindled community fears.
The ailing U.S. government system for resettling a now rapidly shrinking flow of refugees plunks them into deadly urban pockets where perils often rival those they fled overseas, making it harder to assimilate as immigrants traditionally have done. Here in a vice zone straddling Denver and Aurora, gunshots crackle at night.
The Street Frat brotherhood meets, foremost, refugee newcomers’ need to belong somewhere. But these young men also are seizing the safe space to do what they say they can’t do at public high schools — deal with the trauma of what happened to their families back in Myanmar, Liberia, Syria, Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan.
College-bound achievers sorting out the difference between a weighted and unweighted grade-point average gather as equals with kids battling depression in a cannabis fog. And gratitude infuses their activities.
“We were in camp for a few months. I was lucky,” said John Oo, 17, whose family village in Myanmar was burned down by troops before they came to Denver a decade ago. A burning bamboo log fell on him, which has left burn scars on his feet, back and wrist. His father got him out of the fire and later was shot in the head — luckily, Oo said, with the bullet passing through.
His mother, who had fled previous violence to Thailand, already had endured horrific trauma when a drunk man attacked her, snatched Oo’s infant sister, Shin, and stabbed the baby to death.
Oo’s mother has struggled to get back to health while his father commutes to work in Greeley at the JBS meat slaughterhouse. “She’s getting well now. She’s trying to get a job. She’s happier now. She loves cooking. She always makes us taste it, which is something I love about her. She is uneducated, but with her skills she could be doing a lot more than worrying about how all the bills will get paid.”
Meantime, Oo has mastered English and is applying to several universities including Harvard, suddenly voracious in his desire to learn. He’s grown more confident since his family first was resettled in an apartment on Xenia Street and he headed daily to Denver’s Whiteman Elementary School.
“I felt like an outcast. I couldn’t speak English. When the teacher called on me, I couldn’t speak a word. It was embarrassing.” One teacher handed him “tiny little alphabet books” and drove him home after school. At South High School, not knowing other students who could help him navigate, he consistently went to teachers for clarifications after class. “I love learning. I am not going to take education for granted,” Oo said, remembering a skinny boyhood friend from Myanmar who’s been stuck for 10 years in a refugee camp.
After giving a detailed political geography lesson over a map in the hangout, he sits with a laptop to study for finals, comfortable in the noisy multinational mix of refugees.
At South High, Oo hangs out with privileged highachievers, and says he wants to learn from all perspectives. “But me, I’m an immigrant. I can hang out with them at school. … I want to be able to major in medicine. Then go back to the Karen in Burma and build medical clinics in villages.”
When the hangout opened four years ago to help gang members caught up in violence, refugees who played soccer and basketball on courts nearby became the most active participants. They regularly went to the basement and transformed it into their place.
“These are some of the most driven kids you will find because their families’ future depends on these young men. They want to get up out of here,” said cofounder and program coordinator Levon Lyles, one of two paid staffers at Street Frat. “They’re consumed with doing good in school. A lot is riding on them doing good. These guys are concerned with helping their families.”
Some are close to being able to do that. And many are starting to dream of becoming prosecutors of war criminals, business entrepreneurs, music performers and athletes.
“Where I was born, music is not paid. I would like to be famous, for my country,” said Ram Finisha, 21, whose grandmother brought him from ethnic conflict in Burundi to a camp in Tanzania. His mother stayed in Burundi. His hotel work and shared accommodations in Denver have allowed him to send her $300 a month, hoping it will help her heart trouble, while working here toward making a demo video of his music and dance performances.
Others are struggling to assimilate: Framed photos in the meditation room memorialize two who were shot by police. A few members who were part of a burglary ring and got busted moved to prisons. A couple of years ago, six boys got hooked on synthetic cannabis, known on the street as “mamba” or “spice,” leading to information sessions on substance abuse.
The Trump administration’s tilt against immigration has made U.S. resettlement uncertain just as global demands for safe haven are rising with a record 65 million people worldwide forcibly uprooted. Only about 250,000 of the 25 million who are classified as refugees have been resettled, mostly in poor nextdoor nations. Trump officials cut the maximum number of refugees allowed into the U.S. to 45,000 a year, down from 110,000 last year. The latest government data show that the flow of refugees has slowed to a trickle — 1,640 since Oct. 1 — even though federal courts have invalidated parts of Trump’s refugee bans.
Colorado agencies anticipated 2,000 refugees would arrive over the next year, starting Oct. 1, but have recorded only 33 new arrivals, state refugee coordinator Kit Taintor said.
The dwindling flows mean less funding for agencies, forcing cuts in caseworkers who traditionally helped refugees assimilate around Colorado. “It creates sadness, that a program you know works so well cannot operate to its full ability,” she said.
Less help from government-backed resettlement agencies translates to greater demand for the Street Frat, where co-founder Dave Stalls and his colleagues are struggling to keep teens safe. It’s gotten to the point they’re considering getting concealed-carry permits to carry guns as protection, if necessary, following a recent gun-threat incident outside their door.
“The refugees come from horrific violence and land in refugee camps for years. Then they are plucked up, put here — bam — in the most violent neighborhood
REFUGEES