FUNDING FODDER

 

Advocating to Defund the Police in the pursuit of “justice”, creates more injustice. 

A second group of victims is created. 

By advocating the abandonment of a basic responsibility of government – maintaining Law and Order; unprotected, law abiding citizens and businesses at the highest risk usually suffer first.  Crime increases when law enforcement decreases.  Grocery stores and pharmacies close.  A new group of victims is created.

These Advocates prioritize the two competing victim-hood categories and rank the law breakers above the law abiding citizens.

Who can justify a policy that leads to more crime. more victims, more chaos?  If justice is the goal of these Advocates, why create more victims of injustice?

There is a solution.  It has been in practice for decades and it has been proven successful.  

THE WOODSON CENTER HAS A  PROVEN SOLUTION

Robert L. Woodson founded the non-profit Woodson Center in 1981.  He was a leading activist in the Civil Rights Movement during the early 1960s.    The Woodson Center, located in Washington DC, focuses on neighborhood empowerment to seek solutions to the problems in disadvantaged communities through what he calls the social entrepreneurs that are indigenous to these communities.  

Robert Woodson founded the Woodson Center forty years ago.  He grew up in a segregated black neighborhood in Philadelphia. The Woodson Center has developed and implemented a number of successful programs in many disadvantaged neighborhoods.  The following quotes are from an interview of Mr. Woodson by Jason Willick.  It was published in the Wall Street Journal on October 16, 2021. 

“The Woodson Center’s objective, he says, is to rejuvenate ‘indigenous’ civil society in impoverished neighborhoods.   The group’s signature approach is to look for people in a community whom others ‘turn to in times of crisis’ and ‘try to resource them so they can scale up’, thereby strengthening ‘informal networks’ responding to problems of crime, addiction and family breakdown.”

“Another point of pride is Mr. Woodson’s work with the Alliance of Concerned Men, also in Washington, which brokered a lasting truce between warring gangs in meetings at Mr. Woodson’s offices following the 1997 murder of a 12 year-old boy (four gang members were convicted).  Mr. Woodson says the 16 combatants, some of whom wore bulletproof vests to his office, ‘needed an excuse to be peaceful’.  Local gang violence sharply declined after the intervention, and other cities have adopted similar strategies to defuse gang escalation.”

 

 

 

Visit WOODSONCENTER.ORG to learn more about the programs and the active support that is offered by the Woodson Center.

 

Rather than a top down directed poverty program from a government  agency, the Woodson Center program seeks out families in troubled neighborhoods that have prospered and persevered to learn from their success.

 

For example, one program is the Woodson Center’s Community Affiliated Network (CAN).  It is a nationwide association of over 500 organizations and individuals, and it is growing.  This pro-active group of community based leaders network, find potential collaborators and share best practices.  They work from the ground up to help solve some of America’s most challenging social problems.   The Woodson Center offers mini-grants to local leaders to help facilitate new community efforts.   Information on the application process is on their web site.

Visit woodsoncenter.org to learn more.