wfn.org | Task Force on "Building Community" Observes Ministries

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13-November-1996 
 
 
96454      Task Force on "Building Community" Observes 
             Ministries of Reconciliation in New York 
 
                         by Julian Shipp 
 
NEW YORK--As part of its Oct. 31-Nov. 3 meeting here, the Advisory 
Committee on Social Witness Policy (ASCWP)'s Task Force on "Building 
Community Among Strangers" toured four separate locations in three boroughs 
of the city where significant ministries of reconciliation are taking 
place. 
 
     Sites visited were West Park Presbyterian Church and B'nai Jerusalem 
Synagogue; the Crown Heights Youth Collective in Brooklyn; Fellowship 
Covenant Church in the Bronx; and East Harlem Church of the Resurrection in 
Manhattan. 
 
     This reporter visited the latter site, accompanyed by the Rev. Don 
Shriver, an ACSWP committee member, member of the "Building Community" task 
force and retired former president of Union Theological Seminary in New 
York; the Rev. Trey Hammond of Louisville, Ky., urban ministry coordinator 
for the National Ministries Division; and Martha Goble, a "Building 
Community" task force member and Presbyterian elder of Cleveland Heights, 
Ohio. 
 
            The Booker T. Washington Learning Center 
 
     Many East Harlem residents live in the midst of  a very poor and 
frequently violent community.  For instance, many of the children come from 
families that have been devastated by drug abuse and AIDS. These young 
people need early and aggressive intervention in order to stop and reverse 
the downward spiral that often results from such circumstances. 
 
     Located at 325 East 101st Street, the Booker T. Washington Learning 
Center (BTWLC) is a ministry of East Harlem Church of the Resurrection. The 
Center is directed by the Rev. Leroy Ricksy, M.S.W., a certified 
psychiatric social worker.  An African American, Ricksy is assisted by a 
dedicated group of teachers and staff, as well as volunteers, who make it 
their business to aid these children at risk and their families. 
 
     Bearing a striking resemblance to actor Samuel L. Jackson, Ricksy 
greets us wearing a dark-colored suit and tie and an Afrocentric hat. 
Children play and giggle in the cozy confines of the Center, a sharp 
contrast to the harsh environment Ricksy describes to us -- a world of 
shattered dreams, despair and death. How, then, does he go about the task 
of community building in the midst of urban pluralism? 
 
     "I think [community building] is something that frankly happens 
without the interfering of the political system and without the 
interference of the church or any other organization," explains Ricksy, who 
says he's worked in East Harlem since 1966. "I think this is something that 
comes from people and from their desire to want to know each other and 
extend beyond their proximity. Yet I think that each of us views the world 
based on our background and geographical location." 
 
     Ricksy says BTWLC's programs work because they empower people to help 
themselves.  According to Ricksy, knowledge promotes positive self-esteem 
and a desire for continued betterment.  Good education, he says, leads to 
greater economic independence in adulthood. Healthy children become 
productive workers in the future. 
 
     Center programs include a certified full-day program for preschoolers 
with lunch/snacks; after-school tutoring for students in kindergarten 
through the 8th grade, including hot meals; a teen program for young women 
and men; computer literacy training for persons of all ages; counseling and 
referral for families dealing with HIV/AIDS, and parenting education and 
caregiver support. 
 
     "I see children in this community who are not given a fair shake in 
the educational system, and I see adults in this community who have not 
been given a fair shake in this society," Ricksy says. "Our success 
emanates from the classroom to the family, to the community, to the entire 
city as well. The results are tremendous and I see my ministry simply as 
meeting the needs of the people around me." 
 
     Ricksy admits that although BTWLC programs cost money to run, the cost 
is "small compared to the human cost of not running these services." He 
says many government agencies in New York have been subjected to large 
cuts, but BTWLC is completely privately funded, relying on individual 
donations of time, skills and money. 
 
     "Not one red cent do we receive from the government, nor do we solicit 
money from the government," Ricksy says of his seven-days-a-week ministry. 
"Am I eccentric? Maybe. But we do this because we love it so much we don't 
need to get paid for it. We only get paid because it's a necessity." 
 
                    "Fireflies of the Spirit" 
 
     Following a tour of the Center, we next brave the chilly East River 
wind for a meeting with the Rev. Norman Eddy, a soft-spoken Caucasian man 
who is a former member of the Narcotics Committee of the East Harlem 
Protestant Parish. Eddy, our guide during another hands-on lesson in 
community building, says he came to New York in 1949. 
 
     Strolling along East 105th Street, Eddy appears legendary in his upper 
Manhattan neighborhood.  He is stopped several times by old friends and 
acquaintances, happily conversing with everyone we meet. As much as is 
humanly possible in a city of more than seven million people, he commands a 
wide audience of respect and gratitude, which he acknowledges simply by 
smiling. For Eddy, every block contains a story, every crack in the 
sidewalk sparks a tale of East Harlem during the 1950s, and he generously 
shares as we walk toward his modest 19th-century residence. 
 
     According to Eddy, the Narcotics Committee grew out of the concern of 
a 17-year-old Puerto Rican youth for his drug-addicted friends. Discouraged 
after a summer of solitary efforts to help them in 1956, he turned to his 
minister and to his fellow church members for assistance. 
 
     They reached out to others, almost all church members and relatives of 
addicts in the neighborhood, and brought together an unlikely group of 
young and middle-aged African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Italians, 
Catholics, Protestants and a volunteer Jewish lawyer. 
 
     Ultimately, Eddy says, the committee's grassroots efforts resulted in 
the founding of the New York Council on Narcotics Addiction, whose staff 
was composed of volunteers from the religious and secular organizations 
that made up its membership. In 1962, the Council was instrumental in 
getting the Metcalf-Volker Bill passed by the New York State legislature, 
revolutionizing the entire approach to addiction, making it possible for 
doctors to treat addicts outside of hospitals and to open hospitals solely 
for the treatment of addicts for the first time. 
 
     Eddy says the bill also made it easier for nonprofit organizations to 
provide services for addicts.  There were seven agencies offering services 
to substance abusers in all of New York City in 1958. Today East Harlem 
alone has 39 or more. 
 
     Eddy says he is proud to have helped organize a faith-based, volunteer 
compassionate action group, adding, "This particular lantern [of fireflies] 
had fulfilled its purpose and was no longer needed." 
 
     Pressed to explain his metaphor and the philosophy of his 40-year 
ministry in East Harlem, Eddy, an American Field Service volunteer during 
World War II, says he experienced a "mystical" revelation while driving an 
ambulance on the road to Damascus in Syria. 
 
     In essence, he says, there are thousands of little groups of 
compassionate activists mostly from religious organizations in America 
today. Each group (the fireflies), on its own, is helping to alleviate one 
or another form of human misery 
 
     Once in a while, someone brings these fireflies together and forms a 
flexible organization made up of people with the same concerns. "They 
become the lanterns," Eddy explains, "bright enough to illuminate the path 
to freedom from unnecessary pain. 
 
     "Not everyone knows how to or even thinks of capturing individual 
fireflies," Eddy said. "Even fewer have the inclination to build the little 
cages to put them in. But in modern democratic America, when this does 
happen, the collective light of compassionate action groups does more than 
provide illumination. 
 
     "United, they generate power, both spiritual and political -- the 
necessary mixture of ingredients to help more individuals and to bring 
about profound and lasting change in our society, beginning in local 
communities," Eddy says. 

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