Reflecting on the inaugural four-day meeting of the Conference on Ethics and Public Argumentation at Butler, I am struck by all the ways that the presenters communicate their ethical stance on various community-building projects. Blog entries will feature exemplars from the first conference sessions.
The first speaker at the Conference was the Reverend Charles Harrison, President of the Indy Ten-Point Coalition. One of the first ethical virtues included by Aristotle in his original text on virtue ethics is Courage. Without a doubt, courageous speech is one of the most important characteristics of the ethical communicators CEPA intends to hold up for emulation. As usual, the Greeks had a word for it: they called it “Parrhesia,” which referred to speaking truth even when the truth put the speaker in danger. The concept refers to the act often called “speaking truth to power.” In the case of the Reverend Charles Harrison, it means standing up and speaking the truth to the criminals or other dangerous inhabitants of the neighborhood around his Barnes United Methodist Church on the near northwest side of Indianapolis. Certainly, from one perspective, the young men, who are often former convicts, are the power, at least after dark, on those streets. Harrison and his volunteers venture out on those streets to confront and speak truth to those young men, which can be a very risky activity. See a column by Matthew Tully of the Indianapolis Star entitled, “Charles Harrison Shines Truth on Violence in Indy,”
Charles Harrison has personal experience of street violence. When he was only thirteen growing up in Jeffersonville, Indiana, his 21-year old stepbrother was murdered on the streets of Louisville, across the Ohio from Jeffersonville. He and some friends decided to get revenge by trying to kill the people they believed responsible. Before this act of revenge could be carried out, however, some adult men in his local church intervened and convinced Charles not to act on his impulse. In his speech at CEPA before an audience of mostly college students, Revered Harrison described the consequences of this experience, leading him to a vocation in the ministry and his later calling as a leader in the struggle to prevent street crime in local city neighborhoods.
Harrison described the first experience of his group of men gathered to march against crime in the streets. He said that about 100 men walked out in a group on the streets in the area near his church after a meeting which initiated what became the Indy Ten Point Coalition. There were so many men together, that they failed to make any contact with potential trouble-makers, who hid in the face of such a show of force. He then realized that they would have to go out on the streets in small groups of only three or four. Their purpose for what Harrison calls “Faith Walks” is to engage the young men and try to convince them of a way to deal with their problems without resorting to drug dealing, theft, and other crimes. Eventually, he added “OGs” to these teams—Old Gang members, who provide needed “street cred” for the unarmed patrols. Harrison indicates there are now 26 OGs operating with other volunteers on the street Faith Walks.
A central element in these efforts to deal with street crime involves finding alternatives for the young men they engage, many of whom are former convicts returning to their neighborhoods (approximately 5,000 inmates return to the streets of Indianapolis in a year). Harrison began to make contact with potential employers in the Indianapolis area who could provide jobs for the young men, allowing them to develop skills and get employment as an alternative to life on the streets. The report on the Ten Point Coalition website for April 19, for example, points out that two of Harrison’s volunteers for street patrols have just been offered employment by Penske Logistics. Since the economic downturn after 2009, however, the number of opportunities of this sort has declined.
The idea for the Ten Point Coalition goes back to the city of Boston. The Reverend Eugene Rivers, a Pentacostal minister, founded the first Ten Point coalition in the Dorchester area to try to prevent crime on the streets of that area. In 1998, the Mayor of Indianapolis, at the time Stephen Goldsmith, invited Rivers to speak to a group of local clergy about how the coalition operated on the streets of Boston. Harrison was inspired by that speech by Rivers and determined to build the Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition along similar lines.
Harrison cautioned his audience that the Indy Ten Point Coalition is not a panacea for the problems of street crimes in the Indianapolis areas. Because of cutbacks necessitated by some decline in funding since 2009, the coalition operates in just two zip code areas on the near northeast side and the near northwest side of Indianapolis; most of the city is outside these zones. But, he adds, that street crime, especially the uptick in murders related to drug trafficking in the city, pervades the entire metropolitan area. Perpetrators can easily locate in other areas of the city outside the restricted zone patrolled by the Faith Walks. In the question and answer period following the talk, several students wanted to know how they could help and get involved. Harrison answered that they could do internships with the administrative side of the organization, probably not being involved on street Faith Walks themselves, because of the necessary extensive training and life experiences of those who perform those more dangerous activities.
The Indy Ten Point Coalition received the 2014 Community Advocate Award from the Mayor’s Celebration of Diversity.
William W. Neher
Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.
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