Early voting is coming up! Please join #CapBlack in voting YES to keep New Orleans Office of Independent Police Monitor permanantly off the political plantation of the Inspector Generals office ( IG ). Frankly, the IG is a clear and present danger to our community! If you want real civilian oversight and constitutional policing, YES is the ONLY vote on this Home Rule Charter Amendment! -Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, RLSH: Real Life Superhero for Folks Feeling Like Zeroes! SWS: Security Within Self Urban Fellowship. Founder. @nadraenzi on twitter.
Yesterday, at New Orleans Youth Studies Center ( a euphemism for juvenile detention center ), SWS Chaplin and Mentor Bro Al Mims was told by a female participant that he-and by extension, I-" keep saying the same thing " weekly to them. His heartfelt message unfailingly hammers respect for adults and being law abiding- period. My message, less compassionate but just as relavant, is that they can't afford the cost of crime and are flirting with becoming statistics. Her complaint recieved a chorus of affirmative head nods, confirmation of collective entitlement mentality. They feel they should be entertained with varied subject matter. The fact that they are in a diversion program operated by the district attorney failed to disabuse them of this notion. I address participants as a stakeholder indifferent to opinion and mobilized against wrong doing. Relished visible discomfort during presentation happens while addressing their disproportinate murder rate. When young people on the cusp of becoming career criminals allege we're saying the same thing, it means a nerve worth striking has been struck. We will continue striking it! -Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, Your UrbanSafetyist and SWS: Security Within Self Urban Fellowship. @nadraenzi on twitter.
I'm not the mentor type. I'm not warm and approachable, just ask teens I talk to at New Orleans Youth Study Center. The title is a nice way of saying it's our juvenile detention center and business is booming. I've avoided these pow-wows with Millennials the criminal justice system because, as I told them on Day One, " You don't give a *blank* and I don't give a *blank* either. " Trademark indifference to adult sympathy had me draft this talk entitled, " You Can't Afford Trouble " many moons ago. It was filed away in my mind, never to be used. Bro Al Mims, New Orleans #1 Crime fighter and Mentor, is also chaplin of my organization, SWS: Security Within Self Urban Fellowship. He asked me to accompany him to the Youth Study Center. Since uniting prevention advocacy with protection ( my preferred posture ) is SWS goal, intellectual honesty demanded I go. I see a circle of smart, some very smart, teens who may succumb to their generation's love of confrontation, annihiliation and incarceration. I remind them to discuss burial insurance with their mothers- a weekly hint about the untimely end bad attitudes lead to. From bail, lawyer and supervision fees to frantic fundraisers for funerals of unruly youth, my blunt message is, they can't afford trouble. I told you I'm not the mentor type but today is a time for tough love- minus the love! We can't afford to baby urban youth already turned against us. When they realize they can't afford their attitudes is when real reform, from within, begins. -Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, Your UrbanSafetyist and SWS: Security Within SELF Urban Fellowship founder. @nadraenzi on twitter. *Donate*
This morning I called in on WBOK's AM1230 the Conscious Hour, hosted by Chuck Perkins and responded to his audience question, " What's Your Purpose? " Mine promotes self-management by uniting protection and prevention advocates; conservative and conscious members of the community as a two-part, united front. We've been managed by others long enough to realize that's a dead end. Urban death and poverty, moral and material, cry out for internal counseling and securing. Otherwise, our misery continues being a cash cow for outsiders. i closed my comments by stating Black people arguing politics and ideology is a profound waste of time. It's the premise of SWS: SECURITY WITHIN SELF URBAN FELLOWSHIP. -Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, Your UrbanSafetyist & SWS founder. @nadraenzi on twitter.
( New Orleans ): Headlines about brothers protesting police fill the airwaves. Outsiders could easily conclude most urban men mistrust or hate law enforcement and love crime. Behind the protests and away from cameras are reborn brothers, who aren't anti-law enforcement but aren't featured nearly as much as agitators. Discipline and devotion to godly conduct is their message. They have escaped past criminal lives to such an extent that the only similarity with past selves is in name only. Bringing attention to such men is key since they represent realistic resurrection, instead of sensationalism. Recently, I talked again with former Tulane football stand out Toney Converse, someone whose rise, fall due to a drug trafficking conviction and return personify what reborn brothers strive to accomplish. Street-level, face-to-face intervention, done as a personal calling instead of job description, are what reborn brothers like Converse provide peers treading the same valley of decision. The most effective reentry and rehabilitation must be produced and led by urban men, reborn and resolute ( never incarcerated ) because we have 24/7 access to the most discussed, least empowered factor in modern public safety and corrections. We have access to boys and men whose misdeeds are best addressed internally.Where internal engagement fails, external arrest and prosecution prevails. It is on behalf of reborn brothers like Toney Converse that I share their soulful effort to renew minds away from crime and moral decline. -Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, Your UrbanSafetyist and SWS: SECURITY WITHIN SELF URBAN FELLOWSHIP FOUNDER.
Civilian use of force is one of the yardsticks by which groups can assess how government views them. New Orleans view of Black self-defense claims is troubling to say the least. A 73 year old crime hostage named Abraham Venson was recently charged with aggravated battery by shooting, for shooting a now deceased burglar who reached for his waistband, which in the inner city is a life threatening gesture indicating a hidden gun. Despite the low bond set, $10,000, it's troubling that a nearly 80 year old law abiding inner citizen, alerted by his alarm company to a break-in, stands charged with defending himself against burglars. One of my favorite local crime reporters called the burglars " trespassers " in a September 29th, 2016 New Orleans Advocate front page story. If these burglars were walking across the victim's readily accessible front yard or drive way ( seen in the story photo ), then the term trespasser would be appropriate. Since they tripped a silent alarm after breaking into the victims shed, they were burglars. Had the victim not been armed, these burglars could have added aggravated burglary, aggravated assault, manslaughter, or one of two degrees of murder to their charges. These are the high stakes facing local inner city hostages of crime, a fact not lost upon city council, NOPD and the Orleans Parish District Attorneys Office. Urban safety advocates and concerned citizens in all zip codes must create safety with local government where hostages like Abraham Venson aren't victimized for stopping a threat holding communities captive that can't afford security patrols and can't gamble on slow police response. Lest we forget- directly across from his home 17 hostages were wounded in Bunny Friend Park, none by law abiding citizens like Abraham Venson. He is a hostage who fought back, within what the law ( though not what local politics ) permits. -Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, Your UrbanSafetyist and SWS: Security Within Self Urban Fellowship founder. @nadraenzi on twitter. #IUniteWithBlue Tour Creator.
