They hope Patrick sees youth as priority
The talk since Deval L. Patrick's election as the state's first black governor has been filled with hope that his rise will be a chapter-closing bookend to the reputation for racial hostility that Massachusetts has worn since the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s.
But as Patrick claimed victory on election night, the celebration served as another kind of bookend as well. In this case, it marked one side of a night in Boston of history-making hope and all-but-ignored heartache.
As Patrick prepared to take the stage at the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, just three miles away on a Dorchester street, 17-year-old Hakeen Horton became the city's 65th homicide victim of 2006. It was another young black life snuffed out by gunfire in a year that has already seen 337 people shot in Boston.
The poignancy of senseless violence exacting a toll on young blacks as Patrick redefined the upper end of possibilities for black Bay Staters is not lost on those working to stem youth violence. They are hoping it is not lost on the new governor, who has broadly embraced a problem-solving role for state government.
Advocates say that budget cuts since the recession in 2002 have axed some $100 million from efforts that keep young people on positive paths and away from gangs, including reduction of MCAS remedial programs from $43 million to $14 million and elimination of $15 million for after-school programs in the
state's most violence-prone neighborhoods. "There's no such thing as an unorganized teen," says Emmett Folgert, longtime director of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, a Fields Corner outreach program.
"It's their nature to group," he says. "And either we do it, or they do it.
"We once had a thoughtful statewide system of prevention programs," Folgert says. "It's totally gone."
Patrick has offered strong words of support for prevention efforts, calling them "the best and cheapest form of public protection" in his campaign issue paper on public safety.
Though they are mindful of the long line of funding seekers that will be forming at the new governor's door, youth advocates are looking for him to match resources to rhetoric when it comes to violence prevention.
Their short-term goal for the incoming administration's first budget is, at a minimum, maintaining $11 million in funding for anti-gang efforts that was authorized last year as part of the Legislature's passage of stiffer penalties for witness intimidation.
"Will he include it? Will he increase it?" asks Lew Finfer, director of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network, an umbrella group of faith-based organizations and community groups.
In late October, Patrick met at Roxbury Presbyterian Church with Finfer and about 100 other leaders from across the state who are involved in violence-prevention efforts. Patrick made no firm funding commitments, but did agree to meet with the group again in coming weeks.
Patrick has pledged $85 million in additional spending to hire 1,000 new police officers statewide. The strong support he has attached to violence prevention should mean a parallel expansion of funding for outreach to at-risk youth, says Finfer.
The Rev. Jeffrey Brown, a leader of the Ten Point Coalition who was instrumental in efforts over the summer to quietly broker a truce between two Boston gangs, says he is weary of the cycles of renewed violence that invariably follow when prevention efforts take a hit.
"What happens is we sort of mortgage our safety and mortgage our peace when things get better," he says. "We starve out the programs that have gotten us to this point in the first place.
"I know he has to govern the entire state," Brown says of the new governor. "But I hope he does pay particular attention to the plight of young black urban life, recognizing that we are in a crisis. I hope he would look at this as a kind of priority."
Michael Jonas can be reached at jonas@globe.com.
