How can we change violent behavior?

Last year we said goodbye to more than a dozen leaders whose legacies are the changes and innovations we take advantage of today. Whether civil rights activists, media pioneers, social activists or prolific writers, they left behind history, they left behind dreams fulfilled.

But Philadelphia lost 40 dreams last year when 40 children under the age of 18 died at the hands of violence.

They could have been doctors, ball players, rappers, teachers, lawyers, or mayors, but senseless violence took them away.

Local elected officials and community leaders are responding to the rise in youth homicide and youth violence, and they said they believe it will not end without everyone taking a stand.

State Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, introduced Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia in 2004 in response to the shooting death of 10-year-old Faheem Thomas Childs. Blueprint aims to collectively attack youth violence from a public health standpoint with a goal to eliminate youth violence by 2016.

Thus far the campaign has received about $16 million in state funding. Funds are divvied among initiatives, such as the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership, gun courts, and community education and involvement.

Most of the city’s organizations – community, health, city council, legislators, attorneys and youth agencies – have partnered with Evans’ Blueprint office to supplement the criminal justice arm of intervention and prevention.

Evans said our tolerance of youth violence has been too high, and said violence’s danger to public health should be treated as seriously as the threat of cigarettes.

“(We are) using media outlet as a way to demonstrate that violence is dangerous to people’s health. The same way we do with cigarettes, we have a warning that this could be dangerous to your health, we should be clear about what violence does to our health,” he said.

In the coming months, Blueprint will launch a campaign encouraging involvement with young people. The program’s slogan on a sample card is “Getting involved with young people … that’s the Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia.”

Dr. Theodore Corbin Jr., who is working on a two-year fellowship through Physicians for Social Responsibility, is one of the partners with Blueprint. The data needs to be gathered about social, economic, and environmental factors affecting youth engaged in violence, he said.

“I think the blueprint is something that’s going to help. I’m happy to partner with him in getting the message out about how to get youth violence.

“He’s got services to get the attention of these kids to help them recognize that there are other ways of life than violence. We are looking at an effort to establish some type of data collection. There needs to be some type of sustained research going on to look at risk factors and ways to change these risk factors,” Corbin said in a recent interview.

Chad Lassiter, a researcher and behavioral interventionist at University of Pennsylvania Medical Hospital, worked on the Preventing Long-Term Anger and Aggression in Youth Project to prevent aggression in young Black males.

He believes youth “need wiser owls to guide them along,” and thinks Black people in Philadelphia need to supplement the city’s Operation Safe Streets with Operation Safe Hearts.

“Where there’s no vision, people perish – our children die,” Lassiter said. “I’m not afraid to die for them to live. If it takes losing my life for young people to live, I’m willing to lose my life.”

A believer in the village adage, he thinks that local churches should adopt schools in their respective neighborhoods. Youth are the key to ending violence, but they must first learn who they are and their value, he said.

“Youth are the leaders. They have the power to create the paradigm shift,” Lassiter said.

Philadelphia School District CEO Paul Vallas also thinks that it takes an effort from everyone – including young people – to end violence.

“We’re incorporating into our instruction, the types of lessons children need to be taught in order to teach themselves. In order to help children exercise greater self control, in order to help their self esteem.

“A lot of times the lack of self-esteem is kind of the source of disruptive behavior. To try to teach children to have respect for each other, to have respect for each other’s property, to have respect for each other’s person, to teach our children how to resolve problems in a nonviolent way. So we have a whole series of programs in our schools designed to do that,” Vallas said.

The Blueprint campaign will involve four stages to target and engage young people, from introduction through radio and magazine ads, then transition from social programs to community forums.