After growing up in Jersey City, Rhonda Moore, 38, worked on Wall Street and as an entertainment planner, but still couldn’t shake her roots. While she was achieving success in her professional life, she dated men with criminal backgrounds and was nearly killed by an ex, she said.
Now she is looking to start a program at the center to mentor young women to help them with issues.
“There are girls who have a lot going on too,” Moore said. “These programs are here to help each other.”
“It’s time for the fathers to become daddies and take hold of their families.” – Charles Mainor
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Such was the case at a public meeting on Feb. 16 in the Mary McLeod Bethune Community Center on Martin Luther King Drive in the city’s Greenville section, where about 100 people gathered to hear speakers like Moore talk about their personal experiences and avoid their mistakes and/or learn from their examples.
The meeting was the offshoot of a forum organized by City Councilwoman Viola Richardson in January to address the violence in her community.
Solidarity walk
At the time the forum was occurring, a group of about 50 men walked from the HUB Plaza on Martin Luther King Drive to the Mary McLeod Bethune Center. It was led by state Assemblyman Charles Mainor (D-Jersey City), who did the walk in solidarity with the women who were leading the meeting.
Once the men were at the center, Mainor, a Jersey City police detective, spoke about supporting the women and how their message of self-respect is important in changing of the perception of the larger community in Jersey City toward African-Americans. He brought up the issue of Bank of America in January closing their branch inside the Extra Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive, a bank which served thousands of African-Americans.
“When I was rallying with the bank I was saying to them, ‘They need to respect our community,’ Mainor said. “Well, we need to respect ourselves before anyone respects us.”
After Mainor and the men accompanying him left the meeting, Mainor spoke about how his walk was also connected to the outcry in the aftermath of the shootings of Ronald Jordan and Ezekiel Sims in January and Malique Richardson and Lester Thompson in February. Those homicides were believed to be gang-related “revenge” killings.
“It wasn’t just one specific incident, but all of them. It’s time for the fathers to become daddies and take hold of their families,” Mainor said.
Continuing the conversation
After the meeting, attendees networked and signed their names on forms to become mentors in various programs.
Jersey City resident Denise Davis, one of the meeting’s organizers, spoke about how vital it was for adults like herself to reach young people before they are reached by the gangs.
“If we would have caught some of these young people before, they would not be in the gangs now,” Davis said. “The community has to realize these problems start at home and we have to open our months and say that the gangs are unacceptable.”
Sitting in on the meeting was Jersey City Police Det. Ben Wilson, whose specialty is knowledge of street gangs locally and nationally. Wilson gave a presentation early in the meeting about the gangs that exist in Jersey City. He has plans in the future to open a “youth boot camp” with local martial arts expert “Sup” Burgess.
“There are things we can do help slow down all the violence such as education,” Wilson said. “There are a lot of young kids who are followers that we can reach.”
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.