Olmsted's pruned trees ready for new storm

By Chris Dierken and Leif Reigstad
Bengal News West Reporters

            In 2006, the October surprise storm  wreaked havoc on Buffalo’s landscape.

            Fierce winds toppled trees, and heavy snowfall burdened branches that had yet to shed their leaves, littering front lawns with the snapped limbs of large oaks and maples that line the city’s iconic canopy-covered streets.

            Now, seven years later, Buffalo’s trees and parks have made a full recovery, and should another surprise storm hit the city, the trees will be better prepared thanks to the  Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy's pruning crew.

             “The October storm really brought to light how the trees really were badly pruned,” said Olmsted superintendent of parks Bob Stokes. “It was a catastrophic storm, but I think it brought to light, when you saw how the parks were just devastated, that we really had to step up the care of the trees.”

            After the storm, the conservancy put more of an emphasis on making trees wind resistant, dedicating a crew to prune the trees. Pruning in this case means clipping the branches in a way that makes the tree built better for facing high winds.

            “It’s like preventative maintenance, if you will,” Stokes said. “We’re going out and trying to take care of the problem before it becomes a bigger problem.”

            Stokes and arborist Mark Brand are both experts in the complex process of pruning.

            “You go through the whole crown, and you remove branches in strategic locations to reduce the wind load on any given branch or a tree as a whole,” Brand - said, wearing tan gardening gloves and holding a pair of clippers. “If there is a weak branch, you can reduce the load that it will take in a storm by pruning some of the ends off, and it’s less likely to fail. If you thin the whole tree, it’s less likely to uproot.”

            Brand said pruning does not make trees wind resistant overnight. Instead, it is a long process.

            “A good pruning, you can’t do it all at one time,” Brand said. “It takes multiple prunings over a period of time to really achieve the desired results in a tree.”


Mark Brand, on pruning techniques:

            In the middle of November, Stokes and Brand’s process was put to the test when strong winds battered the city of Buffalo over the weekend. After the storm settled, there was minimal damage done to trees in city parks.

            Even trees in Front Park and LaSalle Park, were largely unaffected by the high winds coming off of Lake Erie.

            Brand said that this is partly because of the pruning, but it also has to do with the way trees grow when they’re planted in areas that typically experience high winds.

            “Trees, if they’re planted when they’re young in an area that’s windy, they’re going to grow stronger,” Brand said. “They grow thicker stems, and they’ll have more anchorage roots on the windward side.”

            Stokes and Brand said the best time to prune is the fall and spring.

            But “there is always more work to be done,” Stokes said, adding that volunteers are welcome to help prune trees year-round.

Buffalo CarShare revs engine for expansion

Student Ashley Perez checks out the CareShare vehicle at Buffalo State

By Caitlin Kupiec
 and James McDonald
Bengal News West Reporters

Buffalo CarShare has its foot on the gas and is driving to expand its services to the city of Buffalo, including the West Side.

Buffalo CarShare is a non-profit that offers the community a lower priced and environmentally friendly transportation system. Over the summer, the organization received a $300,000 grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation to double its number of vehicles to 30 by December 2015.

It currently has five cars located on the West Side. One is on Niagara Street at the Niagara Café, another at the Quaker Bonnet Eatery at Rhode Island Street and Chenango Street, a third on Grant Street near West Delavan Avenue  behind PUSH Buffalo, and a fourth and fifth car in the M-2 and C lots at SUNY Buffalo State. It also has vehicles stationed in Allentown and the Elmwood village. 

The organization added a 17th vehicle in October, at Joe’s Service Center at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Amherst Street, allowing wider access in the Grant/Amherst neighborhood for the 650 Buffalo CarShare members.

According to Jennifer White, the public relations and marketing associate for Buffalo CarShare,  most of the organization’s customers walk, bike, or take public transit, and use Buffalo CarShare occasionally for short trips. She says 48 percent of its members live in households with a total income of $25,000 or less and two-thirds of its members live in households with no vehicle access at all.

Jennifer White, on CarShare's impact on the West Side:

White said the organization also partners with non-profits who use its service for free. According to her, PUSH Buffalo uses Buffalo CarShare and said the service has helped the organization  save money, time and stress on transportation needs.

Tamar Rothaus, finance, administration and operations director at PUSH told White that the small non-profit is  always looking for ways to add creative and useful employee benefits to its   staff, many of whom live in the neighborhood and bike or walk to work. And the opportunity to use a car for work-related trips and avoid the expense of owning their own car is a huge benefit. 

Also, by offering shared work and personal accounts, Rothaus told White that PUSH can take on the enrollment fees and offer staff the reduced hourly rate for any personal use of CarShare. 

Other West Side non-profit members include the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper and the Massachusetts Avenue Project.

“Our service provides members freedom and access to health care, healthy food, and a chance to visit friends and family that they weren’t able to do before Buffalo CarShare existed,” White said.

  Lisa Krieger,  associate vice president of Buffalo State,  said that college students and faculty alike have their own reasons for investing in an organization like CarShare. The on-campus parking ban for freshman and sophomores that live within 30 miles of campus makes it difficult to use one's own transportation, and faculty members who occasionally leave campus to go to events often find difficulty in finding a parking spot when they come back.

“When you factor those two things together, bringing a car sharing program to Buffalo State made sense and I think it’s doing well,” Krieger said.

According to Krieger, the CarShare program has been very successful on campus and benefits the students in so many ways.

“Say they need to go to the Galleria to buy a birthday present or want to go for a job interview downtown,” Krieger said. “The CarShare is really the perfect solution to those odd times where they don’t have to use it five times a week, but just maybe five times a semester.”

With the popularity of CarShare rising at all its locations, White is excited to keep the organization expanding to help more and more people continue to use its  services for convenient transportation. She said as far as the future of its presence on the West Side goes, Buffalo CarShare’s main goal is to continue to grow its service to individuals and non-profits in the area. More information and updates can be found on www.buffalocareshare.org and Facebook.

“As we branch out we would like to eventually develop a marketing plan for the neighborhood to include partnering with more businesses, non-profits, block-clubs, and neighborhood associations,” White said.

Hero of West Side keeps the gang life away

By Patrick Lawler and Joe Sarro
Bengal News West Reporters

            Walking in with a flat brim cap, sunglasses and a heavy gold chain hanging from his neck, Darrell Barber doesn’t seem like your normal youth director.  

            Gangs, guns, fights and robberies were an everyday occurrence when Barber was growing up. Now being a youth director at The West Side Community Services, Barber doesn’t want today’s kids living the same life. 

            Barber has had a great amount of experience that involves criminal life crowds. It was different sections of the town that had the conflicts growing up. It was a known fact that groups of other projects could not come together with one another. Barber compared gang life to the survival of the fittest.

            “I grew up in the projects,” Barber said.

            West Side children tend to get a smile from ear to ear when they know they get to see Barber every day after school. Even though he is strict on them, Barber plays a significant role between youth director and a fatherly figure.

            Barber is the youth director at West Side Community Services. He has worked there for over 15 years now. Starting out as a youth aid, he’s always been able to have that passion to work with kids. Having two kids of his own, Barber said he has been known as a great inspiration to the young ones he works with.

            “Some of these kids don’t really have enough people in their life to motivate them to do the right things and not the wrong things,” Barber said.

            Buffalo has been known as one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. According to Forbes, Buffalo was ranked as the 10^th most dangerous city in the nation.  According to city-data.com, Buffalo has had over 4,000 burglaries and over 1,000 auto thefts in 2011. Buffalo had over 3,200 thefts per a 100,000 population while the U.S. average was 2,000 thefts per a 100,000 population.

            Barber understands the life some of the kids are threatened by. Barber’s main goal is to show them other alternatives to not lead them in the direction that he experienced. Showing the kids that he cares and being there for them is what he feels he was brought there for. A lot of the children are being raised in single parent homes, broken homes or being raised by their grandparents.

            “These kids who don’t get the attention they deserve tend to go into that gang life to find that family atmosphere they are looking for,” said Barber. “They aren’t looking at the consequences of what they are doing till after the fact.”

            Barber has had an affect on these kids' lives even further past the community center. He’s been to grammar school graduations, high school graduations and even college graduations. He’s realized that some of these kids need that male figure in their life to always be there for them.

            Margaret Sanabria is a case manager at the West Side Community Services. She has known Barber for 16 years. Sanabria said Darrell is the glue that keeps the community center together. She said that Barber is always on top. Their grades need to be good other wise they will get a talk from “Mr.D.”

            “They see him, they see what he is doing and a lot of them do consider him as being their father,” Sanabria said.

            “He gives off that tough exterior, but inside he is really a teddy bear,” said Amelia Hernandez, who is now the youth aid at the center. “He is very caring, not a quitter and definitely competitive and wise.”

            According to Hernandez, Barber makes the center a fun and safe atmosphere. He shows the disciplinary but not to the point where the kids ever feel like they cant come and talk to him.  

            “A lot of them call me ‘dad’ and I accept it,” Barber said.

Anarchy in Action begins in the garden

By Aaron Garland and Brandon Schlager
BengalNews Reporters

Nestled into the corner of the intersection at Normal Avenue and Vermont Street sits a plot of land that formerly existed as an empty lot sparsely filled with grass and not much else.

Avorm Siegel prepares his plot for strawberries

Today it’s flush with budding optimism in the form of sweet strawberries, plump tomatoes and dozens of other fruits and vegetables planted to bloom for a West Side community in need thanks to the efforts of one new organization on the block.

Neighborhood residents gathered at the junction on May 4 with members of Anarchy in Action to christen the Normal Avenue Community Garden, the newest public garden on the West Side.

Drawn to celebrate a rare positive development in their community, it was a fun-filled afternoon of dirt-digging and seed-planting for community members, who learned from gardening experts the tips and tricks to growing and maintaining a successful garden as they planted their own.

For Anarchy in Action, an upstart local anarchist group focused on changing the way Buffalo thinks through education and voluntary action, it was a landmark day.

The opening of the garden marked the official beginning of the community garden initiative. It was also the first “major” outreach program carried out by the growing organization, which was established in November.

Dustin Snyder, a West Side resident and one of the founders of Anarchy in Action, said it was a simple choice to settle on a site for the group’s first project. The site was donated by Carrie Nadar, a resident on the adjacent Plymouth Avenue.

“The people who live on the West Side you’ll find have a really incredible sense of community and projects like this have a way of taking off,” Snyder said. “… That’s exactly what we wanted to do. We saw that this was a part of anarchism that was not present in the Buffalo community and we wanted to fill that niche.”

Dustin Snyder, on Anarchy in Action:






The foundation of the group is built upon the ideals of interdependence and relying on a sense of community for growth. They had been active with smaller events like neighborhood “street cleanups” until now.

But a community garden, Snyder said, best demonstrates the mission statement Anarchy in Action is hoping to get across: to put responsibility and accountability back into the hands of local communities.

“There are two things that man knows naturally,” said John Roszman, a volunteer with Anarchy in Action whose experience in gardening aids in leading the project, “That’s war and gardening.

“One of the things that I believe is it (a community garden) is probably one of the ways that we can have peace on this earth. It also shows somebody that he has a piece of land. A king has land that he can garden. It turns people from pawns into kings.” 

John Roszman, left, demonstrates seeding techniques

As part of their community garden initiative, Anarchy in Action will organize weekly gardening times to assist residents with their personal plots throughout the summer, mixing in monthly workshops for growers to hear from area gardening professionals. 

Each of the garden’s 14 plots will function as a resident’s personal garden, hosting seasonal crops that will become a self-sustaining food source for the community. Residents can grow fresh fruits and vegetables for themselves or donate them to local charities.

Michael Pacheco, who can see the gardens from the balcony of his Normal Avenue residence, was in attendance May 4 to prep his plot.

He said the values the garden adds to the community are endless, especially for his nieces. They will work together this summer to maintain their sunflowers and peas and decorate the garden.

“It will teach them responsibility and also to look out for everyone else, too,” Pacheco said. “Now when they come home from school they can always keep an eye on the lot when they’re playing and riding their bikes up and down." 
         "This is such a benefit to the community that it's a shame that there's not more," he added. "You go to any store, I would say, within 10 blocks of where we're at, you're not going to find fresh produce anywhere. Everything is a corner store, so something like this gets people thinking differently.”

New beginnings towards an Open Buffalo

By Malniquia Evans and Janiel Thomas
BengalNews Reporters -->

PUSH Buffalo and three other non-profit organizations in Buffalo have teamed up to create Open Buffalo, a collaborative program working towards a more democratic innovative and united Bufflao.

PUSH Buffalo, Partnership for the Public Good, Coalition for economic Justice, and VOICE Buffalo were selected to receive a grant from the Open Society Foundations.  Open Society Foundations awarded a $100,000 grant to the four organizations to design a plan to increase low-income and minority communities’ influence in Buffalo.

According to Megan Connelly, director of programs and development at Partnership for the Public Good, Buffalo was one of 16 cities that were invited to apply for the foundation’s new Open Places Initiative program. The program aims to bring about systematic change relating to equity, justice, and democratic practice. The four non-profit organizations in Buffalo were chosen to form collaborations and come up with a proposal. 

Megan Connelly, on Open Buffalo:

Buffalo became one of the eight cities to win the planning grant.

 “The program has been in a few other cities, but Buffalo’s version brings together PUSH Buffalo, Partnership for the Public Good, Coalition for Economic Justice and VOICE Buffalo,” Lonnie Barlow, communications coordinator at PUSH Buffalo said. “These organizations will work together to help bring about change in different areas throughout the city of Buffalo.”

PUSH Buffalo is geared towards improving housing in Buffalo, while Coalition for Economic Justice and VOICE Buffalo works to create economic justice in the city. Partnership for the Public Good caters to Buffalo by creating a more cultural and vibrant community.

Each of the participating organizations were sent email invitations to apply for the grant, which allows the organizations to focus their efforts on different areas they would like to work on.

 “What I think that says is that there is some very interesting non-profit activity going on here in Buffalo that is maybe not so well-known here,” Lou Jean Fleron, co-director of Partnership for the Public Good said. “It’s getting attention outside our own area because we didn’t seek out the grant.”

The next step in the planning process will take place from April to September 2013 and will propose a plan for building the region’s capacity and bring about long-term change. Open Buffalo will work with other organizations that cater to the West Side like the Belle Center, Jericho Road Ministries, Boys and Girls Club and the Peace Keepers’ Coalition. The program will also have a community rollout in June to include West Side residents in the planning process.

“Access to communications is really important so we want to make sure that people know about what we’re doing so we can present it in a way they feel is going to affect them,” Connelly said.  “We have an incredibly vibrant refugee and immigrant community on the West Side so we want to make sure that there’s a cultural competency to everything we do.”

Connelly says she is confident that the organizations will win the implementation grant, and that Open Buffalo will continue even if they do not win.

“Open Buffalo started the day that we received the planning grant,” Connelly said  “We want this process to continue regardless of whether we get the implementation grant or not.”

Tour highlights W.S. environmental concerns

By Jasmine Peterson and Maria Yankova
BengalNews Reporters

On a sunny, windy day in late April, groups of people equipped with fishing poles gather down by the Niagara River at Squaw Island.
 The river’s current is strong and rapid, and the water is seafoam green.
          But the river is contaminated by sewage, where some fish for food, making it the first stop on the Environmental Justice Walking Tour.
          Hosted by students at the University at Buffalo Law School, the tour took visitors through various troubled locations throughout the West Side. It’s based on a 36-page report produced by the students about environmental hazards in the neighborhood. The report focuses on Squaw Island, Buffalo Sewer Authority Treatment Plant and Rich Products.
  
Vanessa Glushefski, on West Side environmental  issues:

Squaw Island, just off of Niagara Street on Robert Rich Way, used to be a place for swimming and other activities, said student Irene Rekhviashvili. In the nineteenth century, it was a stop on the Underground Railroad; a place for slaves to rest on their way to Canada.
          Today, it is frequented by many people looking for fresh, affordable fish to eat.
          “The many refugee groups and immigrants, they used to fish back in their hometowns, so they continue this tradition here,” Rekhviashvili said.
           But pollution gets concentrated in parts of the river that are nonmoving, she said. There are also signs warning people not to swim. The United States Army Corps of Engineers recently took steps to close off the island due to drownings and health hazards.
          Congressman Brian Higgins put a stop to that because of how necessary the island is to the community. Higgins addressed a letter to the Buffalo Commander, in which he wrote that “wealthier people fish on boats, and less wealthy people fish on land,” making it unfair to the community to close off the island.
          “The benefits of having access are just tremendous,” Rekhviashvili said. “Maybe food for some, activities, having green space. It’s all very important.”
          At the coast of the river sits the Buffalo Sewer Authority Treatment Plant. A century ago, the river, Scajaquada Creek, Black Rock Canal and the Buffalo River were major depositories for sewage, said student Brendan McGrath.
          But as Buffalo’s population expanded, pollution in the water became a big problem. In 1938, the treatment plant was built to address this issue. However, the city still uses the sewer infrastructure from 1908, and there is now a combined sewer overflow problem.
          There’s a total of 1.75 billion gallons of sewer output into Buffalo’s waterways per year, McGrath said. One of the city’s 52 registered combined sewer overflow release valves is at the Niagara River, contaminating the same water people fish in. It takes only an inch of rain for valves to activate, releasing both sanitary and storm water waste into the river. But the Sewage Authority has submitted a proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency to control this issue, McGrath said.
          The plan proposes the use of green infrastructure, or natural resources, as an alternative to using sewers. One idea is to use the city’s vacant land as storm water holding environments to allow water to slowly absorb back into the ground instead of ending up in the sewer system, McGrath said.  
          Rich Products is just a few steps away from the river. The corporation's two massive buildings, each settled on either side of Robert Rich Way, are connected by an internal walkway that stretches over the street. Rich’s is in the process of expanding – it will soon replace a Niagara Street butcher shop with a parking lot. This may cause problems, said student Vanessa Glushefski said.

                     “When you are a corporation like Rich Products, you need to be mindful of what you’re doing,” Glushefski said. “Because, yes, they can buy this building, they can pave it into a parking lot -- that may be a viable business solution for them – however, they have to think of what that does to the neighborhood surrounding them.”
                     A parking lot is not only detrimental to the attractiveness of the neighborhood, but it may also give the impression that the area is lifeless and dilapidated, she said.
                    “This is why Rich’s buying this old butcher shop and turning it into a parking lot may not seem like a big deal initially, but it can become a big deal,” she said.
                     Despite the environmental issues in the area, there are signs of growth and change. On West Avenue, in the neighborhood across the street from Rich Products, some vacant lots are being used to grow fresh vegetables for the community. It’s part of an effort by 5 Loaves Farm, an outreach of Vineyard City Church on Potomac Avenue.
                    The project aims at “creating sustainable market gardens on Buffalo’s Upper West Side that produce healthy foods along with educational and economic opportunities,” according to its website.
                    Since last year, neighbors, volunteers and teenage interns from the area have grown onions, spinach, potatoes and other foods for the community, said Matt Kauffman, initiator of the community gardens. 
                    “We’re trying to engage neighbors,” Kauffman said. “Even the young teens in some of these things that are going on in the neighborhood and trying to be a positive voice for redeeming some of abandoned and vacant places here in Buffalo.”

New mural to be painted on West Side

By Anika Rawlins and A.J. Speier

BengalNews Reporters

    At first glance, the corner of Grant Street and Auburn Avenue may not be very appealing with the view of a large blank wall that does not have much attraction.

           With just a 7-Eleven and a large vacant lot across the street, this area may be overlooked with very little to offer a neighborhood with a great deal of culture and diversity.

The view of this West Side corner is about to change.

            By September, this corner will be ornamented with a beautiful mural reflecting the large immigrant population and variety of cultures that are present on the West Side.

Grant Street Global Voice Public Arts Project: Celebrating Immigrants and Refugee Experience is the project to commemorate the immigrant community through different visual arts projects. 

            The mural design project is one of the Buffalo State Community Academic Center’s projects in efforts to showcase the diverse cultures while integrating student input from West Side schools Lafayette High School and International School 45.

The mural project is a collaboration between Buffalo State College, Young Audiences of Western New York, Buffalo Public Schools and the City of Buffalo.

Funding for the mural is a 75 thousand dollar Our Town Grant from National Endowment for the Arts who provide grants for art projects that will add to the culture of different communities.

 The proposal for the grant consisted of a Mural, speaking to the theme of cultural diversity and a series of community and school based art workshops that would be incorporated into the mural.

“We’re budgeted for the year with the grant but we see this as starting the possibilities for Grant Street being an arts corridor and really celebrating its history in a visual way,” Maureen McCarthy, director of the Buffalo State Community Academic Center said.

Ellen Melmed a teaching artist and leader of school based workshops held at International School 45 and Lafayette, and Augustina Droze, the muralist that will paint the mural on Grant Street, held workshops for students to come up with their own art designs that may be incorporated into the mural and in window shops down Grant Street.

The workshops that are conducted for the mural will allow students and members of the community to incorporate their ideas and refugee stories pertaining to the theme of diversity to be included in the mural.

With plans to start the mural painting in May, Droze is currently focusing on incorporating artwork from students and locals of the West Side.

“It will be a celebration of diversity and unity incorporating some of the student artwork created in workshops over the past months as well as numerous photos recently taken of local people” Droze said.

The mural is expected to be complete by September of this year with earlier unveilings throughout July and August.

PUSH to expand water-runoff initiative

By Aaron Garland and Brandon Schlager

BengalNews Reporters

     Spring can’t come soon enough for PUSH Buffalo.

     Once the weather becomes warmer, PUSH will plant and install various increments, which will absorb runoff storm water, to ensure that sewers do not overflow throughout the West Side. Rain gardens, green roofs, bio swales and rainwater catchment systems will be installed to act as sponges to combat runoff pollution and guarantee cleaner water in Buffalo. This new initiative will be called the Green Infrastructure project.

     The city is becoming increasingly flooded with environmental hitches, and the recent profusion of rain has further exposed the faulty sewer systems of Buffalo. Storm water and sanitary water from houses in the city combine to run in one system, which drains into Lake Erie and area rivers through a wastewater treatment facility. During times of extended rain or sewer runoff, a system overflow is created, causing untreated water to flow into the lake and rivers.

     “It’s a pretty significant issue for the city when any amount of sewage going into the lake and the rivers is an issue,” Jenifer Kaminsky, director of housing for PUSH Buffalo, said. “I think it impacts all facets of the economy and just the health and safety of neighborhoods.” Kaminsky claims that there are millions of gallons going into the system every year.

     The project will be concentrated in PUSH’s “green development zone,” which consists of a 25-block area and 25 PUSH-owned sites on the West Side. The sites are all in the same sewer shed, which runs at the foot of Albany Street. Kaminsky sees this as advantageous because they all share the pipe system.

PUSH will add more gardens throughout the West Side.

     “We purchase them either because they have been identified as being a burden to the neighborhood, being used for dumping or illegal activities,” Kaminsky said. “So we purchased it to clean it up and address what was going on, making it a garden or a simple ‘clean-and-green,’ where we clean, mow, seed and clear any debris.”

     The project will address the increasing sewer overflow problem over the next two years. According to Kaminsky, PUSH’s goal is to fill 10 sites with green infrastructure, this growing season, and finish the rest next year.

      PUSH is not alone in putting the project into fruition. Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Buffalo Sewer Authority will aid in working to improve the city’s storm water system. The NYS Environmental Facilities Corporation will assist funding with a grant. 

     Judith Enck, EPA’s Region 2 regional administrator, expressed the significance of funding a committed project that applies cutting-edge ideas to a strong vision for the future of the city.

     “These things don’t happen overnight, but it’s really the community support that makes a difference,” Enck said. “Clearly, these are organizations who are involved in the community, who listen to the community, and have found the intersection between affordable housing, green jobs and sustainability. I think Buffalo has the potential to be a model for the nation.”

Some PUSH gardens are design to capture runoff from rain.

     Not only will the project reduce the amount of water going into an already stressed storm water system, but it will also create green jobs. PUSH will hire a landscape crew to help with the installation of the green infrastructure, which will also augment aesthetics and living quality of people in the area.

     “You’re not just building a rain garden or a community park,” Suzanna Randall, green infrastructure coordinator at the NYS EFC, said. “You’re enhancing community nutrition, you’re providing green-job training, you’re providing green jobs, you’re providing a more walkable neighborhood. In short, you’re revitalizing this community.”

     Kaminsky noted that residents could also address the overflow problem to improve standards of living across the city.

      “This is a city-wide problem — it’s not just a West Side problem,” Kaminsky said. “We’re all impacted by the environment of our waterways, so I think this is something that will happen city-wide. Whether it’s projects by the city or local homeowners, anyone can install a garden on their property to help out.”

Coalition sets sights on West Side youth

By Michael Mazzuto and Mike Provenzano

BengalNews Reporters

Just saying no isn’t enough.

Telling kids not to do something can make them want to do it anyway. Unfortunately, many adults don’t realize this until it is too late. But there’s a group of people trying to change that by a proactive approach at a critical stage in adolescents. 

The West Side Youth Development Coalition (WSYDC) was formed in 2009, at the request of the community, to develop approaches to limit the high levels of violence and gang activity on the West Side. The coalition’s other objectives include trying to change negative “social norms” and positive impacts on the environment.

In conjunction with the Buffalo Police Department, the WSYDC hosted the 18^th annual youth police academy on March 23 at Buffalo Police Headquarters on Franklin Street.  The event is part of what the WSYDC calls “enhancing enforcement” in the hope that it will create an open dialogue between police and the West Side youth community.

Kids from schools across Buffalo including six on the West Side, participated in workshops and activities on personal safety, anti-bullying, and physical fitness.  

This marks the third consecutive year in which the WSYDC co-hosted the academy.   The WSYDC was formed in 2009, at the request of the community, to develop approaches to limit the high levels of violence and gang activity on the West Side. The coalition’s other objectives include trying to change negative “social norms,” positive impacts on the environment and improving the perception of law enforcement within the community.

Robert Fink, president of the Citizens Advisory Group says the youth police academy’s main focus is to educate 7^th and 8^th graders so that they can make good life choices.

“For the kids here, the academy is also a really good introduction to the police,” Fink says.  “Many of the kids who attend the academy go on to join the Buffalo Police Explorer Scouts.”

The Explorer Scouts are a group dedicated to giving teens hands-on experience in mock law-enforcement situations.

Jonathan Lindner, coordinator for the coalition:

According to Jonathan Lindner, coordinator for the WSYDC, most negative behaviors in kids, start around 7^th or 8^th grade.  Lindner, who is also a health and wellness professor at Buffalo State College, was on-hand along with some of his students, for a presentation on healthy choices.  Lindner says that it is his unique approach that resonates with the kids.

“A lot of people talk at them, I’ve learned to talk to them,” says Lindner.  “I have a conversation with them.  I show them there is other stuff to choose.  If you show them other things, they realize you don’t have to choose things that are potentially harmful.”

Lindner included a survey when kids signed up for the academy that included what he calls “perception of harm questions” to gauge how they feel about drugs, alcohol, and their mental health.  Lindner says the survey helps him to tailor his presentation to the audience.

Lindner knows that kids on the West Side may not have the best perception of law enforcement.  He experienced his own learning curve when it came to gaining credibility with the community.

“When I first started working on the West Side, it wasn’t easy,” said Lindner.  “I had to gain trust and respect.”

Lindner says the police can’t expect to change their relationship with the youths when their approach doesn’t change.

“The kids will engage, it just depends how on you actually engage them,” says Lindner.  “The tough love stuff- that doesn’t fly.”

Lindner is also helping build the foundation for the future leaders of the West Side community.  Many of his students also made presentations at the academy and hope to continue their involvement with the West Side after graduation.

“You see more of a positive attitude from West Side students and the kids we are interacting with,” said Louis DeAngelo, a senior in Buffalo State’s health and wellness program.  “The idea that there is actually something they can do besides being stuck on the West Side and not being able to go anywhere or do anything.”