Power of WORDS
RISE has grown into something much more than an open mic night for youth
“I want to ask why you came here today,” Randell Adjei says to the youth gathered in the community hall on a cold Monday night after sundown.
Adjei is standing in front of a single black microphone stand at the front of the large space in the heart of Scarborough. He asks the group to start rubbing their palms together to stir up a kind of unseen energy. It seems to percolate as people shout out their purpose. Everyone counts down from 10. When they reach zero, many — who appear to have been through this routine before — release their hands straight up into the air, fingers spread, as if letting something out into this space Adjei has created for them.
“Words are powerful, y’all agree?” he asks. Then he tells them to repeat some words after him:
“You are excellent because you are capable.”
“You got greatness inside of you.”
So begins, as it has nearly every Monday since 2012, the regular gathering of RISE, a popular open mic night that has continued to be a positive and safe space for youth to express their talent and truth.
As the city continues to experience ongoing violence — with a recent rise in gun violence in particular — the weekly event held inside Burrows Hall Community Centre on Progress Ave. has also become a safe space.
It’s one of the ways the community itself has stepped up to help in the absence of stable government funding to tackle the long-term issues at the roots of the violence.
Adjei, 27, grew up in Flemingdon Park. Moving to Scarborough, the son of a single mom, things were difficult for the preteen.
He was often in trouble. It’s something he talks about openly now. From a very young age, he faced criminal charges and was frequently suspended.
But two teachers, he says now, saw the potential in him.
One constantly asked him: “Randell, you going to be a leader or you going to be a follower?”
The other told him to write his story down. Words are powerful. Adjei, realizing he had his own talents, is now a spoken word artist and entrepreneur. He started RISE to bring others who are struggling together and be a platform for anyone to express themselves.
RISE stands for Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere.
“It was really about just doing something in the community because nothing was really happening here,” he said.
Now in its seventh year, the initiative has survived without any sustainable funding beyond the $5 they ask for at the door on Monday night.
The city and others have provided one-time grants for projects RISE was doing in the past as well as providing the space at Burrows Hall on Monday night, but there is no other operation- al funding. When RISE was just three months old, they were meeting one summer night, July 16, 2012, at a former location taking turns at the mic.
Nearby, on Danzig St., two youth were shot dead and dozens more were injured. It would be one of the worst shootings in the city’s history.
Adjei knew people who were at the barbecue. So did the other youth who were at RISE that night.
“There were a couple girls that came out and they said that they came to RISE that night because they knew it was going to be a safe and positive space,” he said.
He knew then that what they were building was something bigger than just an open mic night.
The Roots of Youth Violence, a key 2008 report written for the province by former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry and former provincial cabinet minister and Speaker of the Ontario legislature Alvin Curling, talks specifically about the lack of safe spaces for youth.
“This is a shocking shortcoming given the plain and obvious impact of youth having no positive outlet for their energy and time, no place or facilities for creative self-expression and no place that fosters contact with coaches and other positive mentors,” reads the report, which the city’s own Toronto Youth Equity Strategy is founded on.
“Overall, the shortage of space puts youth on the streets, exposing them to negative peers and negative interactions with residents and the police. At the same time, it deprives them of the positive development that comes from engagement in sports or arts or involvement with positive peers, youth workers and community leaders in activities that would build their skills, confidence, optimism and belief in their futures.”
Today, the city’s youth equity strategy is not yet fully implemented and remains underfunded.
On a recent Monday night, some 20-something young people are inside the warm hall talking about their favourite RISE memories.
For several, it’s getting up to perform for the first time and finding the confidence that comes from freely given support in the room. Akeem Raphael remembers rapping for the first time and by the second chorus people in the crowd chiming.
Whenever he’s stuck or down, he says now, “I go back to that moment. I relive that moment and I get going again.”
Adjei remembers the first December RISE was running, when they were filling a previous 60-person space beyond capacity and were essentially evicted.
He posted online, spreading the word the next meetup would be in a warehouse space. It overwhelmed him when more than 200 people showed up.
“People want to be part of something positive,” he says.
Adjei sees RISE as the community taking pre-emptive action.
“I’d really like to see the city do more of that,” he says.
In Adjei’s new book, his first, the words of the title poem begin like this: “I am not my struggles / I am not my pain.”
It comes to a simple conclusion.
“They are just roadblocks / That prove how far I came.”