Israel Cason
Founder of successful addiction treatment program stressing hard work ‘was a tireless advocate to reach the young people’
Israel Cason, the founder of a successful addiction treatment program that stressed tough love and hard work, died of cancer Feb. 22 at his Howard Park home. He was 70.
Mr. Cason, who survived years of heroin addiction and street violence, created the program, I Can’t We Can, for other recovering addicts. His efforts assisted thousands of people.
“He was gregarious and so funny,” said his nephew, Saafir Raab. “He was simultaneously spiritual and focused on saving peoples’ lives. He was no-nonsense.”
Mr. Raab also said: “He was magnanimous and magnetic. He had the ability to attract people and direct them to the means and purpose of their lives.”
Rev. M. Dion Thompson, a priest at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Annapolis, said: “He employed a lot of street psychology. He spoke the language. There was no addict who could B-S him.”
He added: “His story was remarkable in terms of what he had been through as a heroin addict and his subsequent turnaround. He was a deeply prayerful man who believed you can come out of the abyss.”
Born in Baltimore and raised on Lafayette Avenue in Station North, he was the son of religious parents. His father, Presley Cason, worked in a brickyard while his wife Pearline was a seamstress.
He attended Clifton Park Junior High School and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and later took courses at Baltimore City Community College. He worked briefly at Bethlehem Steel Corp.
He later told a Sun reporter he did marijuana as a teen, got arrested and was sent to a reformatory near Hagerstown. He also said he liked the glamor of life in the streets.
He also joined the Fruit of Islam in the Nation of Islam and worked in its local bakery. But after the death of Elijah Muhammad, he resumed drug use.
That lifestyle extracted a price.
He once found himself “lying face up on a northwest Baltimore sidewalk, five .32-caliber bullets in his gut . ... [A] cop bent down to draw a chalk line around his bleeding body,”a 1999 Sun story said. “The officer wouldn’t mind seeing him go. He’d been nothing but trouble, a throwaway junkie.”
Mr. Cason spent five months recovering from the wounds.
After his mother, Pearline, died in 1992 — a time when he was living in an abandoned car — he had enough of the way he was existing and sought treatment at the Stop and Surrender Program in North Philadelphia. He vowed to recover and to help others.
“And because he did not die, Baltimore has eight more halfway houses, all set up by Cason without a dime from the government, all set up in the last year and a half, all performing daily the near-miracle of salvaging throwaway lives,” the Sun’s story said.
Mr. Cason’s program was successful. In 1998, City Hall honored him on Aug. 29 which was declared “I Can’t We Can Day.”
He established his I Can’t We Can program at the Park Heights Community Health Alliance. A memorial street sign at Park Heights and Wylie avenues now carries his name:
Israel Cason Way.
“He was a real groundbreaker and a tireless advocate to reach the young people,” said Kevin Cleary, a former deputy director in the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods. “He strongly believed in helping people add discipline to their lives and in helping them reach sobriety.”
The 1999 story said he had 87 men and women in the program. They followed a rule, “Change you must, or die you will.”
To keep recovering addicts occupied, he founded a bakery, barbershop, moving and hauling business, and a thrift shop, among other enterprises.
“I got to know him through the Maryland Community Health Initiatives clinic in the Penn North neighborhood, which used acupuncture as part of the recovery therapy,” said J. Stanley Heuisler, former Columbus Center director.
“I saw him walk into a meeting with folks once and introduce himself as their new higher education counselor from “What’s A. Matter U.?” He had credibility because most everyone knew what he’d done to survive and he testified with such faith and humor they had to listen,” said Mr. Heuisler, who was a former Baltimore Magazine’s editor.
Mr. Cason spoke openly about his spirituality.
“I know what it took to save my soul,” he said. “It wasn’t people. It was divine intervention. See, I’m supposed to have been dead. I been shot up, cut up, stabbed up. OD’d over 20-something times — way over. I can’t even count the times. I mean, I stayed in a ambulance.”
“I just deal with total abstinence. Giving out needles, putting people on methadone. That’s not going to get it,” he said. “The people that’s doing that, they’re playing the devil’s advocate.”
He also believed it was up to residents to try to control conduct and stop senseless killings. “We can’t police our way out of this,” Mr. Cason said in a 2007 Sun story. “We need to stop looking at symptoms and start looking at us. No one is coming here to change us. It’s up to us to change our own conduct. We got to educate our children. We need to teach them how to get jobs.”
He was nominated for a Ford Foundation’s Leadership in a Changing World Award. He also applied for a vacant City Council seat, but did not get the office.
In a 2014 Sun story, Mr. Cason said he felt the use of the life-saving drug, naloxone, is controversial. He also said that programs that distribute clean needles encourage heroin addicts to continue using by reducing the consequences.
“It exacerbates the problem because people think they can overdose [and] ‘someone can bring me around,’ “he said. “They’re only treating the symptoms. They’re not dealing with the problem.”
Mr. Cason is survived by his wife of 11 years, Kathleen Greene; a daughter, Tyrica Cason of Baltimore; sons, Israel Wyatt of Moreno Valley, California; Karim Cason of Riegelwood, North Carolina and Ishmael Cason of Baltimore; seven grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
A memorial service was held Mar. 4 at the Gala Center in Windsor Mill.