As gun violence remains a pressing city-wide problem, local activist and youth counselor, Foundation One works every day to bring an end to violence and peace to the community.
When he’s not on official case work, he is looking for new and meaningful ways to interact directly with troubled youth and their parents from his unique platform as a neighborhood barber on the city’s Southeast side.
Most recently he took part in Fort Wayne Mayor Sharon Tucker’s public meeting to address the topic, sitting on the panel alongside Fort Wayne Police Chief Scott Caudill and Roderick Parker of Big Hearts Community Projects.
Here WBOI’s Julia Meek and Foundation One discuss what he sees as the issues behind the troubling situation and how coming together to close the gap offers hope for the future.
You can connect with Foundation One and learn more about the work he's doing on his Facebook page.
This is a transcription of our conversation:
Julia Meek: Foundation One, welcome.
Foundation One: Peace.
Julia Meek: So, okay, peace is what we are praying for. Yet interrupting gun violence in our community is an uphill battle, it seems. Why absolutely must we find a solution?
Foundation One: Too many young people dying and too many mothers crying.
Julia Meek: That's a sad one. It is a sad one. With your background and street cred in social work and gang violence and everything related, then what can you tell us about the nature of the problem that we're up against?
Foundation One: It's a growing problem right now, and it's going to take people who enjoy seeing other people survive and fully develop.
Julia Meek: The fact that we have a great majority of people in the city wanting to do just that, Foundation. What more is it going to take, though to make it a reality?
Foundation One: For other ones to fill in the gap. If you have a 360-degree circle, it takes 360 points to make a 360-degree circle. So, once we all come together, we can close the gap.
Julia Meek: Amen on that one, and you came together with your friend and fellow activist, Roderick Parker at your own Unity Barber Shop in the very early month, in January, in fact, of 2018 to address the crisis.
At that point, there were 41 homicides the year before, 33 of them were gunshot, 24 of that group were black or biracial. You did make progress as a city, as a group. Now it's a nightmare that you couldn't even dream, right? How can we make this right? How can we correct it?
Foundation One: Only thing we can do is sit down with the youth and talk to them and ask them how they feeling, and what can we do to solve the problems that they're having, mentally, physically, financially, or find homes or jobs.
Julia Meek: Whatever it takes.
Foundation One: Yes.
Julia Meek: if that worked before, and it made a difference, what has changed?
Foundation One: What has changed? To me, [exhales] that's a good question. I think a lot of people who have become afraid to help them.
Fear has entered a lot of people's heart, and they scared of these young brothers walking around here with guns, which, if that's what they choose, they have a right to be.
Julia Meek: So, turning things around, turning things almost upside down, then, would be part of the problem. If the fear is gone, the violence would be gone. There wouldn't be a problem.
Foundation One: Correct.
Julia Meek: How can we make that connection? Make it all work and flow.
Foundation One: Well, we first, like I said earlier, we have to get rid of our fear before we can help somebody else.
Julia Meek: With fear.
Foundation One: With fear, because a lot of these young brothers, they out here scared of another gang and here you trying to help them, but you, they can pick up on your fear, they're not going to let you in, and they not going to talk to you.
Julia Meek: Very, very interesting. It's a miscommunication, or it's one important part of the puzzle, the most important part of the puzzle, some would say that's not in place yet.
Foundation One: Correct.
Julia Meek: Okay, post covid, a sort of complacency, if you will, took over in general. Life--everybody wanted life to go on, things were seemingly better. Did we miss the opportunity to keep it going, do you think, I mean the whole general movement to have a united community and get rid of some of the violence?
Foundation One: No, I think that everybody was just doing the best they can to help. And, you know, just because we didn't come together collectively, we were still out there--on the north end of town, the south end of town, the west end of town, everybody was trying to close in that gap.
Julia Meek: And do their thing and catch up.
Foundation One: Yes. In the meantime, you do live there and work there, and you're kind of there right in the thick and heart of the whole East Central Community. How did it feel?
Foundation One: Man, it feel powerful, because I love my community. I know we have negativity, but we in America, America have negativity, and people still striving, being successful, opening up business. We have people who are overcomers. So, we keep moving forward, keep pushing the needle.
Julia Meek: You're also in the barber shop. You're still in a barber shop on that southeast side of town doing your private thing.
Foundation One: Yes.
Julia Meek: What's more than just a symbol? What is it about the barbershop that is that community spot and spirit and hope?
Foundation One: Well, the barber shop, from our culture, have always been a training center or temple for higher learning and people from all over, from all nationalities, from all religion come in and want to be heard. So, it's just always been that spot.
Julia Meek: [chuckles] I think that it has been all about the guy thing, prior to, everybody being a barber and getting barbered and all that just expands the experience. That's great too.
What does it feel like, you would then the leader of that center, that hub, as the barber. What kind of power do you feel? And I'm using power in a real good way there.
Foundation One: [exhales and chuckles] I never thought about it like that, but it does give you power.
Anytime you hear two young individuals contemplating shooting and killing each other, and you can intervene by redirecting them and teaching them critical thinking skills and coping skills, that's power, because you've just saved a life, and you just saved somebody life from going to prison for the rest of their life.
Julia Meek: And it's no secret in your own frank and wonderful narration of what makes you you, Foundation. You used to be one of those kids, not to the point of getting in trouble, maybe in trouble you couldn't get out of.
But does that help you be able to know what's going through their heads because there's nothing new under the sun that can go through a head?
Foundation One: Good question again. Yes, it does. I remember going out to visit a young man at ACJC. [Allen County Juvenile Court] He was 16, and when I saw him, I had a flashback.
He looked just like I did when I was 16, and I'm like this brother, he don't know anything because I didn't know anything. So, it gives me experience to try to relate to an individual without them even telling me what's going on with him, I can figure it out for them.
Julia Meek: That's a wonderful shortcut to have. Then how do you get through to them and let them know that you are cool like they are, and not "the authority"?
Foundation One: Well, I just, I share my truth with them. I just be truthful. You gotta, you have to be truthful. If a brother is having suicidal thoughts or drug addiction thoughts you have to be truthful with that brother, because he need truth to try to stop him from hurting himself or destroying his family.
Julia Meek: And you know how to get that delivered?
Foundation One: Yes.
Julia Meek: And good for you. Key, absolutely key. So by now, Foundation you and yours that are caring and really on this cause right now in our city, you name several factors that are making it worse, including a lack of strategy and coalition building.
If leaders are divided and you like to take your own way and just get out there and address the problem and get to it anyway, how can everyone unite?
Foundation One: Well, if you don't have no compassion, we don't need you on front line anyway, so we ain't gonna deal with you unless you say you sick and you need help.
I'm not trying to, if the leader, if they don't want to do the work, I gotta still do the work. It's upon me to do the work, and I understand that, because I've been in this community 61 years. Everybody don't have that ability. God, give everybody his spiritual gifts.
Julia Meek: And you've got yours and everyone else does.
Foundation One: Yeah, everybody got theirs. So just operate in your gifts. That's it.
Julia Meek: Meanwhile, looking at potential solutions and those that might help you work them out, what might those solutions include?
Foundation One: Ooh, good one. I would like to take all the little young, angry brothers on a two hour bike ride through the river green trail, sit down with them in the woods, eat lunch, you know, and just get, get them out of this stressful environment and produce an environment where they can just calm down and feel safe and communicate effectively how they feeling.
Julia Meek: Interestingly, that is how you kind of do your own private, your counseling, and you are working with the youth right here, right now. So, you're saying, expand that to include everyone, every time, all the time.
Foundation One: Yeah, in 2011 November the 11th, we went on a bike ride, 24 mile bike ride, and it was over 75 young brothers who had been going through, you know, different issues, and we just took a bike ride in the middle of winter that symbolizes, you know, the issues we was dealing with.
And we all came together, and we all completed it, and we sit down, and we got stronger in our belief of ourselves by being able to overcome the cold weather.
Julia Meek: [chuckles] And a lot of things going on there. That's true, and really in its infancy, and that was a test case, you're kind of saying you could absolutely amplify that with similar results if everybody got involved.
Foundation One: Yes.
Julia Meek: So, rethinking, reworking all sides of the post-covid strategies, which I mention because there were intentions, and that was followed with the Floyd protests and everything. It was a horrible, horrible time, turned positive. What is out there that might work and how could we possibly begin implementation of it?
Foundation One: Well, there's a lot of different programs that's working, like work they doing over at the Boys and Girls Club, the work that's being done at Jim Kelly Career Center, the work is being done with Fort Wayne Community Schools, they light program and construction program.
The work that's been done with Leroy Johnson through the union trade, him and Jabbar Jefferson. It's a lot of different work that's being done, and it's going to take more people, you know.
Julia Meek: Meanwhile, we do have Angelo Mante's whole...
Foundation One: Peace Movement they doing. They just got a grant. They're in five different schools. So that's another incentive, because a lot of kids, they want to work, they want nice things.
This is one way they can learn how to be a productive member of society and get paid and stay alive--huh! [both chuckle]
Julia Meek: Which is all the best for everyone in our world and in our own community, and especially those at risk right here, right now.
Foundation One: Yes.
Julia Meek: So, by now, speaking of, there is a strong sense of hopelessness from just about every sector of the community. Specifically, how could that be turned around? Or can it?
Foundation One: Hmm. It can be. We just gotta get rid of our fear and start believing ourselves and just do the work.
You know, if this was going on in the Amish community, they elders would sit down with all the little young brothers, and they will make them build a house or a barn or do something positive together to show that they need each other.
We just got to come up with different ideals and strategies to have these young brothers sit down face to face to work out their issues.
Julia Meek: And in that case, could that be done? And it certainly sounds doable, also resulting in a lot of positive things for the community that you're in, the houses and the structures and everything else. Would it be able to direct things?
Foundation One: Oh, yes. I can't remember exactly what year, I think 2010 we had a community march from the barber shop to the Martin Luther King bridge.
Over 500 people showed up, and then we broke off into the gangs, and we let the older gang members who now are no longer gang members and don't want to lose they sons in the gangs, they talk to the young gang members, and it helped.
And was no violence, no hurt. Nothing happened that day or the next day. So just not being afraid to do the work. Stop being afraid to do the work.
Julia Meek: Could something literally like you just described, happen again, you think?
Foundation One: [exhales] Yes, yes, it can, and it will.
Julia Meek: That's wonderful, and especially because this year has been crushing for all nonprofits, all organizations, especially DEI-related. What's it doing to the very programs, the very ideas like you have, everybody that can come up with, that could help turn around the gun violence problem?
Foundation One: What it's going to do is going to set things into motion that it's going to cause a lot of chaos.
When you take funding from an organization that does non-profit work behind the scene or for-profit, and you take away they funding that helps save lives, you create more chaos. So, we have to work together with the little resources we got to continue to do the work.
We don't stop the work. We just got to continue to work. I've been working with it, I know I've never been paid for doing no work. [chuckles] I just do the work. But I ain't no organization. I'm one individual, but if we become one individual, we can just do the work.
Julia Meek: That sounds wonderful, Foundation. It does sound easier said than done.
Foundation One: I've been doing it for 40 years, so [chuckles] and you can take it how you like it, but I've just been doing the work.
Julia Meek: So, what can all parts of the community do directly to help you do that work and make a difference?
Foundation One: Just keep me in your prayers and be as compassionate as you can with people.
Julia Meek: Great request. I hope that it comes true for you, and I am always curious, Foundation, you and your fellow activists like Roderick Parker are still on this hard, some say impossible mission. Some would have quit a long time ago. You keep going strong. What makes you keep it up and refuse to quit.
Foundation One: When you see the trauma and the tragedy of having to go to the different funeral homes in this community over 220 times, to cut a young brother's hair that's been, you know, snuffed out of life, then you go meet their mother.
And you know, they mother a lot of times, and you see the pain and the hurt. And I don't want no mother to ever feel that, so I just continue to do the work.
Because at 16, I got shot, and I understand, you know, the, what we as kids and juveniles take our family members through and not understanding the stress that we put on them because of our lifestyle.
Julia Meek: Thank you for that, and as we continue on this direct mission to turn things around as individuals, as neighbors, as concerned citizens, as an entire community, what should we all be doing about it now and tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next.
Foundation One: How about keeping that compassion in our heart and just praying for people who are out here, doing the work? And praying for the little brothers and sisters, man, because, uh, I just had a call Saturday.
I knew the little brother who, who killed his girlfriend out in New Haven. You know, somebody I had been working with. He had some mental illness going on.
Mental illness is serious. We just need to take it as and treat it as serious. It's serious. More serious than you think. you know, until somebody do something.
Julia Meek: What you're saying your message, your point, of course, is making a difference, but it's also figuring out what's going on in other people's lives, having the compassion and seeking a cure.
If we could bottle it and sell it or somehow get it in the water system, and everybody have that, Foundation, we'd have that part of the solution solved. Short of that, what's our hope?
Foundation One: Well, there's always hope. I ain't gonna never say there's no hope; else I wouldn't be doing it. Just, if you feel weak, check in with your elders, get your strength back and get back out here and do the work. Just do the work, as long as God allow you breath, just do it. The work.
Julia Meek: And taking sense of place and hard work, and all of our inspirations into consideration at the end of the day, what makes you stay motivated to work as hard as you do and care as much as you do about this community that we do all love?
Foundation One: I make myself feel that every day. I do, because it's my duty as a man to get up every day and do something positive. As a man. That's your obligation, as a man.
Julia Meek: Foundation One is a person of great passion and peace activist currently working every day to bring an end to gun violence and peace to our community. Thank you for your hard work, Foundation and for sharing this word with us today. Many blessings, do carry the gift.
Foundation One: Peace.
Julia Meek: Thank you.
Foundation One: Thank you.
