Youth Initiatives rewrite New Year's Eve tradition
By Eddie B. Allen Jr.
If you ask members of the Detroit Youth Initiatives Project, some traditions were never meant to last.
In fact, it’s the view of about 30 local student activists who announced a New Year’s Eve campaign that, at least, one custom has long overstayed its welcome in the city. A program of the Neighborhood Services Organization (NSO), Youth Initiatives is promoting “Hugs, Not Bullets” as a cease-fire alternative to the practice of shooting guns into the air at midnight to welcome New Year’s Day – and throughout the year.
With funding from a Skillman Foundation grant, Youth Initiatives will kick off a series of events in support of the campaign, including workshops examining community violence.
“Detroit can never be the world class city we endeavor it to be, until we first engage our collective community to eradicate this senseless and ongoing epidemic of youth violence. We must be committed enough and wise enough to embrace and to scale successful efforts such as NSO’s Hugs, Not Bullets campaign that is producing positive results,” said Robert Thornton, a program officer with The Skillman Foundation.
“I’m honored to have the mayor and our partners here with us,” said Youth Initiatives student Dequan O’Neal, 16, during a December news conference at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building’s Henderson Auditorium – just days before 2012. Dequan stood with Mayor Dave Bing and about 20 young men involved with Youth Initiatives’ Male Leadership component, while several other Youth Initiatives participants, dressed in their red program sweatshirts, watched from the gallery.
The campaign, which is designed to discourage the senseless tradition of shooting guns, stresses the simple act of spreading love through a hug or a positive gesture, which can be carried throughout the year, and would likely decrease the numbers of young people losing their lives.
“Many of our people have celebrated the New Year with gunfire, and this must stop,” Dequan said, reading a declaration. “For too long, we have dealt with loud gunfire.”
Along with members of Bing’s staff and NSO’s adult coordinators, several Detroit Police officers stood in support of the youth as Dequan delivered the group’s message. In its eighth year, “Hugs, Not Bullets” is a collaboration among the students, community leaders and city officials. Reducing violence and danger in neighborhoods is a regular goal of Youth Initiatives, which hosts male leadership and female leadership summits annually.
“The Skillman Foundation is committed to doing all it can, through its Boys of Color initiative, to help young men recognize their potential, dream great dreams and live healthy and productive lives,” Thornton said.
While avid gun users may find amusing the suggestion that they hug a friend or family member at midnight Jan. 1, instead of loading their pistols, Dequan stressed the seriousness of gunplay and its implications toward young men of color.
“When someone dies, the finger is pointed right at us,” he said. “I am here to tell you that we are not murderers. We refuse to bring shame to our community.”
Bing commended the students for their resolve against accepting what’s known as “celebratory” gunfire in their neighborhoods.
“As I stand here surrounded by these young people, I’m proud,” Bing said. “As Dequan said, too often they are seen as the problem and not the solution. So I want us to stand up and support them.”
“Let me tell you that public safety has been a priority, ever since I’ve been in office, for the Bing administration,” the mayor said. “I’m happy that our youth are taking an active role. Detroit, I’m asking you to keep your neighbors, our friends, our youth, safe.”
Youth Initiatives members presented Bing with one of their signature red hoodies as a way of thanking him for supporting their efforts. The mayor pledged his administration’s assistance in doing “everything we can” to help make “Hugs, Not Bullets” successful.
“They’re asked every day, ‘Why do you do this?’” Bing said of the students. “They do it because they’re committed to making a difference.”
While celebratory gunfire is common in many urban American communities, the practice is also considered tradition in parts of the Balkans, India, Pakistan and Puerto Rico. It’s believed that the custom began as a way for shooters to imitate the sound of fireworks.
What’s often overlooked – perhaps due to the lack of criminal intent – is that celebratory gunfire and shooting without a target in residential areas is still illegal. Dequan reminded the attending media at Youth Initiatives’ announcement that celebratory shooting can also be dangerous: “When the bullet goes up into the air, it has to come down somewhere.”
Deaths from falling bullets have been reported for many years, including recent tragedies on New Year’s Eve in 1994, when a New Orleans woman was struck while walking in the city’s French Quarter, and 2004, when a 75-year-old man was hit in the heart by a bullet shot from a mile away. On New Year’s Day in 2005, a young girl was hit by a stray bullet in Macedonia, causing her death two days later.
Detroit police say they’re less concerned with the origins of the tradition than with seeing it discontinued.
“I firmly believe that you cannot continue to have gunplay on New Year’s Eve,” said assistant chief Chester Logan. “I don’t know where that tradition came from. We, as a community and people of color, have to put a stop to it. We’ve got to put our heads together to come up with a solution to our problem.”
Dequan posed a challenge to the audience listening to, and viewing, the news announcement, asking if adults were prepared to join the initiative and help usher in 2012 safely. The true celebration will begin when Detroiters put down their weapons, he and other Youth Initiatives students insist.
“Let’s end celebratory gunfire on New Year’s,” Dequan said.