When Edward Spann first heard about the Men on Deck tour, he had no idea it would mean beginning his day at a jail and ending it with an undertaker. These were among the extreme destinations that he and other young men journeyed to discuss the consequences of making good or bad choices in life.
In addition to visiting a funeral home and a jail on a recent Thursday, the men visited the Better Family Life Cultural Center, People’s Health Centers, St. Louis Community College, the New Life Evangelistic Center and the Father’s Support Center.
“I realize from this tour how decisions I make right now can make a difference for me down the road,” says Spann, 22. He says the cautionary tales he heard will make him work harder in his studies in computer technology at Vatterott.
Another participant, Rashad Gladney, 21, says, “Right now I’m in school to be a barber. But from what I’ve learned, I’m determined to use that to think about owning my own shop.”
Better Family Life runs the Men on Deck tour as part of a grant under the federal Workforce Investment Act. One of the program’s placement and retention specialists, Maukiesch Howard, says the tour amounted to “a reality check, pointing out the consequences of choices these young men make.”
Cecilia Ray, a program life coach, says those in the program often face challenges like being foster children, runaways or homeless. Many, she says, are school dropouts.
Norman Miller, another placement and retention specialist, hopes the tour will make young men “think through decisions and make better choices to change their lives in a positive way.” The idea, he says, is to offer them “an empirical understanding of the consequences and rewards of their choices.”
‘Not where you want to be’
At the tour’s first stop, the Pine Lawn jail, officers spoke to the young men about how to behave during a traffic stop, among other things. Police Chief Rickey Collins concedes that some police officers do make mistakes, and he encouraged citizens to use their cell phones to record incidents and file complaints when they believe that they have been mistreated.
The chief then led them to the jail, a drab room containing five gray cells, each about the size of a small closet and all lacking a toilet.
“This is not where you want to be,” he tells the men. “But I’m showing you where you are going to end up if you are with the wrong guys.”
The next stop was the Better Family Life Cultural Center. Better Family Life Inc. started in 1983. It later bought the vacant Emerson Elementary School and received a loan and grants to turn it into a cultural, educational and business center. The nonprofit’s founder and CEO, Malik Ahmed, told the young men they can gain inspiration from the company’s rise.
“You have the power and ability to transform your lives in the way that nobody could imagine,” he told the men.
“We will teach you what it takes to become entrepreneurs, create your own jobs. It’s about moving us forward as a community, protecting this community and watching it grow.”
Deborah Ahmed, the center’s senior vice president of cultural programs, says she hopes the tour inspires the men to embrace their cultural roots. “We firmly believe that when you have knowledge of self, you have the foundation on which to stand and to grow. If you don’t have that, you leave yourself open and vulnerable for others to imprint who they say you are.”
After People’s Health Centers, where the young men were urged to take better care of themselves through routine checkups and screenings, the next stop was the African American Male Initiative at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park. Jason Parker, campus coordinator of the initiative, told them that college is a challenge for some male students. “A lot of time they lack a support system,” he said. The initiative offers intense tutoring, older student mentors and an academic alert system to track the student.
Following stops at New Life Evangelistic Center and the Father’s Support Center, the tour bus headed for the Ronald Jones Funeral Chapels. Jones talked about what causes so many young people to end up under his care.
“They’re victims, really,” he says, citing an example of one young man who got into a vehicle with two strangers because he wanted to go for a ride. What he didn’t know, Jones says, was that an AK-47 was on the floor between the feet of one of the men and that they were on their way to a drive-by shooting. The shooter ended up killing the wrong person, in addition to shooting several other people, Jones says. The young man who got in the car for a joy ride was the only one who was caught.
“He kept insisting he had done nothing wrong, not realizing that he was culpable because he was in the car,” Jones said. “They don’t understand that decisions that they make have a profound effect on their future.”
Jones says he reaches out to young men like those on the tour because “somebody saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I used to think that people were meddling, but they turned out to be people who cared. If I can help just one, it can make a difference.”
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from stlbeacon.org.
