Arts to End Violence Gallery Opening TOMORROW

The Arts to End Violence Gallery Opening has arrived! Come to the Ron Taylor Gallery at 1160 St. Johns Place (between Kingston and Albany avenues) tomorrow from 6:30 to 9pm to view beautiful anti-violence artwork submitted by adult and youth artists. Refreshments will be served, photo portraits  will be taken, and live music will be played.This free event will run rain or shine, and ALL ARE WELCOME! If you are not able to attend, the gallery will be open at select times until June 7th.

For a preview of the some of art in the gallery, click here to see our tumblr.

Neighbors Brave Rain to Celebrate and Play

Photo by Molly Cichy

Photo by Molly Cichy

Music. Barbeque. Dance. Dog shows. Puppet-making. Stilt-walking. Life-sized chess. Glitter and paint and bubbles galore. Over 500 community members were greeted by these exciting activities, and many more, at the Kingston Avenue Festival last Saturday. The day celebrated and brought together a neighborhood has now gone 83 days without a shooting. Despite the gray-skies, the festival-goers, including neighborhood residents, service-oriented organizations, youth groups, all engaged with the many activities and resources at the block party.

Activities and resources at the fair included over 15 arts & crafts interactive tables, over 40 resource agencies, several workshops, a free manicure station, and 25 performances. Jason Das, a Crown Heights artist, painted a live mural of the space, which had people on the street lining up for portraits. Lines also formed by the barbeque, where the S.O.S. team and volunteers grilled and distributed over 300 burgers and hotdogs to hungry festival-goers.

Photo by Andrew Hinderaker

Photo by Andrew Hinderaker

The soundtrack to the festival included steel pan from the Pan Sonatas, a drum circle led by Sam Bathrick, R&B performances from young, local talent like Tayahna Walcott who rapped, “Stop Bullying,” and DJing from BBox Radio. S.O.S. Outreach Worker Derick Scott emceed the event, saying into the loudspeaker, “Let’s put the neighbor back into the hood.”

Hosted in partnership with The Kingston Avenue Merchants Association (KAMA), the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and the NYC Department of Transportation, this initiative illustrated the multiple, continued efforts to create and nurture safe spaces within Crown Heights. Joyce Robinson, owner of Better Choice Funding, and head of KAMA, stated, “We want people to see how merchants care for the community and its safety.”

As smiling and slightly soggy festival goers prepared to return home that evening, the BBox Radio DJ played closing songs like, “Cha Cha slide” and “Cupid Shuffle,” and a dance party broke out in the street. Marlon Peterson, associate director of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center surveyed the scene and said, “This event highlighted the goodness of this neighborhood. It brought everyone together, the merchants, young people, and showed how positive people here can be. It really brought a great vibe to these streets.”

This wonderful event would not have been possible without the cooperation of so many organizations, merchants, and volunteers. We owe many thanks to our partners in this event, and want to express our sincere gratitude to the volunteers who helped set up and clean up the event, take photos, hand out food, make arts and crafts, and everyone who contributed such a positive atmosphere.

To view more pictures from the festival, click here!

The Kingston Avenue Festival is on SATURDAY!

The Kingston Ave Festival is this Saturday, May 18th, from 12-5pm. The Festival will be on Kingston Ave between Pacific and Bergen.

The Festival promises to be a day of excitement, featuring live music, dance, and arts activities, a life sized chess set, skateboarding, resource tables, a pie-eating contest, the Brower Park dog parade, an anti-violence art display, facepainting, and MUCH MORE! It will be a great event for children, teens and adults. There will be something for everyone! The Festival is a partnership of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, the Kingston Avenue Merchants Association, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and the Department of Transportation. We hope to see you there!

If you are interested in volunteering to help with set-up, clean-up, or anything in between, please contact Ariana Siegel ar siegelar@crownheights.org or 718-773-6886.

"We Can't Let Fear Rule Our Lives"

Second Community Conversation Examines Neighborhood Interactions Around Violence

More than 30 Community members came out to participate in a second S.O.S. “Community Conversation” on Wednesday, May 8th at Bethany Methodist Church. The event was second of three gatherings to discuss causes, effects and antidotes to urban violence. Wednesday night's conversation focused on analyzing common reactions to instances of high-level and low-level violence.

To examine these reactions, participants engaged in a role plays portraying two scenarios. The first was set in a grocery-store scene in which one shopper was profanely insulted by another shopper. The second scenario, set in an apartment building, involved one resident attempting to engage another in conversation about a shooting in front of the building the night before, and the second neighbor dismissively refuses to engage. Lively discussion followed, in which the entire group examined the interactions depicted in the role plays and shared insights.

Participants noted the many, complex barriers to community building in Crown Heights; yet several still emphasized the importance of simple, positive interaction. “We have to relate to each other as humans,” Tiffany Murray, an S.O.S. volunteer and faith-based leader, said. “We must be courageous, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We can’t let fear rule our lives.”

The conversation concluded with an examination of the benefits of direct short term action, as well as action that can transform the neighborhood's social culture to reduce the tendency toward violence.  Rabbi Bob Kaplan, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, commented, “It reminds me of the lessons of Smoky the Bear; it’s easier to prevent fires than to put them out.”

The third Community Conversation of this series will be held in June, with details to be determined. Click here to learn more about upcoming CHCMC/S.O.S. events in May, including our Arts to End Violence block party on May 18th and gallery opening on May 23rd.

"Community Conversations" Continue Wednesday

Artists Encourage Youth to Follow their Passions

The CHCMC hosted eight artists on Wednesday, April 24th, to speak on a panel about what it means to turn artistic ambitions into a lifelong career. The “Life of an Artist” panel included professionals in various fields: painting, photography, poetry, prose, music and filmmaking. Among the accomplished artists were filmmaker Randy Wilkins, who has worked with director Spike Lee, music photographer Jacob Blickenstaff, who works for the New York Times, published author June Eding, and singer/songwriter Markeisha Ensley, whose music has won many awards and fans worldwide. The panel also included prominent local voices such as visual artists LaRonz Murray, Leon Tillman, Sahara Borja and poet Morgan Park.

The accomplished artists spoke to an audience of community members and young people from our Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets program, in which high-school students learn to organize against gun violence. The youth, several of whom have artistic ambitions themselves, asked probing questions such as “what are your greatest challenges as an artist?”, “how do you deal with the business side of the art world?” and “how do you respond to criticism that making art is not a worthy life-goal?”

Encouraged by the energy and enthusiasm of the youth and community members, the artists shared experiences from their personal and professional artistic lives. They advised the youth organizers to always self-promote and talk to people, to be disciplined and practice their skills daily, to take themselves seriously and most importantly, to always do what they love. “Keep discouragement out of your head,” Leon Tillman, a visual artist currently seeking a teaching job, said.

The panel event was part of our Arts to End Violence festival, a series of events that promote the arts as a way of starting anti-violence dialogue. Upcoming events include a street photography workshop on May 6th, the Kingston Avenue Festival on May 18th, and the Gallery Opening on May 23rd. Click for more information about Upcoming Events or Arts to End Violence. Click here to see images submitted to this year’s Arts to End Violence contest on our tumblr account.

Crown Heights has Got Talent!

Photos by Andrew Hinderaker

Over 80 performers in 28 acts played to a packed house on Saturday at the S.O.S. annual “Stop Shooting, Start Living” Talent show held at PS 289. Singers, rappers, poets, and dancers of all genres flaunted their talents for a cheering audience of over 400 people. Photos of the performers can be seen here on Facebook, or here for those people not on Facebook.


Coordinated by Anthony Newerls and co-sponsored by the Brooklyn Blizzards, the S.O.S. Talent show event was free and open to the whole community. Throughout the event performers supported the S.O.S. message, with many sporting t-shirts that read “stop shooting start living” as their costumes for their step, praise, African, tap, and break dance performances. Several rap lyrics promoted anti-violence, including a little girl who called for other kids to “stop bullying,” and a neighborhood mother who rapped, “I’m tired of seeing shirts saying ‘rest in peace’… Peace, we need it in the hood. We got to fight for peace ‘cause it ain’t looking good.” Lyrics such as these received raucous applause from mothers, fathers, grandparents and children alike.

The audience remained in high spirits through the afternoon with the help of Sharon “Ife” Charles who MC’ed the three-hour event with flair. Sporting earrings that read “Stop Shooting, Start Living,” Charles, who worked for 12 years at the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, said to the audience, “I am working on anti-violence for the whole city now, but Crown Heights is my community! This is my home!” Between performances Charles quizzed the crowd about the S.O.S. program, introducing the team on stage and coaching the crowd to call out, “S. O. S., Save Our Streets!” in unison.



When the performances wound to a close the S.O.S. team conducted a raffle to hand out prizes donated generously by Tech-serve, Denzil’s auto-driving school, Dr. Margaret DeCruz, The Brooklyn Children’s museum, and others. Among the fabulous prizes were a free massage, a bag of arts supplies, and most coveted, an iPad mini. The community left PS 289 on Saturday evening with S.O.S. giveaways in their hands, smiles on their faces, and messages of peace in their heads.