Reimagining the Inner City

For the last three years, I have been working in Winnipeg's inner city as a youth programmer or building monitor. My role has included keeping an eye on the door and providing resources to community members, dealing with medical and violence-related emergencies, and providing a program for youth aged 6 to 18, depending on the shift I work and the location. In my time, I have also gotten to know the community and the other workers in the building. I am now familiar with the different supports and organizations in the community. 

Whenever people learn about where I work, they always make a comment about how dangerous it is or they do not like that I work there. While there is more violence in inner-city communities, I know that some of the reasons are systemic. Indigenous and newcomer populations are more dominantly populating Winnipeg's inner-city. This is because of the cheaper rates of housing and the proximity of social support. These supports have come up as a result of social and economic needs in these communities, they are guided by the populations they serve and are the ones to step up where government services end. That being said, they are funded by the government in part, as well as donations and foundations. It is the youth who come to participate in these organizations that are also feeling the effects of living within the community. Although a lot of community violence is attributed to street gangs, it is the gangs that are providing youth with a sense of belonging that they may not be getting at school or at home. 

In these communities, there is a higher chance of youth experiencing community violence, which is deliberate acts intended to cause harm, to persons in the community (Post et al., 2014). For a lot of inner-city and urban youth, this comes in the form of street gang violence. I have been the victim of violence in the inner city. I was bear-maced while trying to stop a fight. My first reaction to this experience was anger, when police asked me if I would be pressing charges I immediately agreed. After a day of washing the mace out of my hair, I decided that I wanted to see if I could use the route of restorative justice instead. After being sent a link to the news article about the incident, I learned that I was only one of 11 people who had the violence committed against them, and I knew that there was no chance of being able to move forward in a different direction. I was also well aware of the opinions held by those around me, and I knew that if I had made the choice to pursue restorative justice instead of look for sentencing I would be judged harshly. It has been over a year now since that experience. Part of me wishes I had pursued that different direction.

The residential school system is a part of what causes this disconnect in socioemotional belonging. Most Indigenous youth have a parent or grandparent who is a survivor of residential schools. The disconnect that these individuals have, being removed from their families and culture, have caused a loss of parenting skills and a learned behaviour of hating Indigeneity. These learned behaviours in turn are passed down to their own children and are a part of the generational trauma caused by the residential school system and other forms of systemic racism. Culture contributes a lot to the feeling of belonging and construction of self. In my experiences at work and at my practicums, I have seen students find new communities and places where they belong, they make connections, build trust and learn the rules and norms of the social groups they are joining. In some of my practicum schools, this has shown through friend groups and extra-curriculars. In my experiences in inner-city Winnipeg, it has been sports or street gangs. As someone working in schools, I see and know the value of extracurriculars and am committed to spending time to organize and supervise extracurricular activities for my students. May it be for them to learn skills or knowledge, spend time doing something they enjoy, or just to be somewhere they feel safe with people who make them feel like they are valued and cared for. 

The youth who I have met involved in street gangs have been as young as 12 years old. They are caring, sweet, funny, they're good kids. They are also posing in pictures with weapons, consuming substances, and perpetrating violence against people in and out of their social groups. On top of that, some of them are proud of it, or at least presenting as if they are proud of it and bragging about what they have done to staff. I have seen a handful of weapons being shown where I work, but more often than not it's just an accidental slip and I know that I am not meant to see it. More often than not I am just hearing about things, either in passing or someone will come to tell me about it. I know that there is supposed to be no weapons in the building, participants are aware of that too. I also know that as soon as they step out of the building, there's a chance that they made need to use it to keep themselves physically safe from any perceived threats that may come. Inside the building, I have put myself in the way to make sure that the youth inside are safe, although that has resulted in my being bear maced, I would much rather it be me than them. The majority of the youth involved in these situations have been Indigenous. Some of them have left their housing situations to come and spend time with other youth in their social group a ways away from their addresses. Some of their parents come looking for them. Some social workers come asking about them. That does not change the fact that some of them are choosing to be there. It is that choice and the community that they are building on their own which I find to be the most intriguing. Although they are creating close connections with each other, they have also turned on each other. In a discussion with one of the overnight staff about a young girl who was jumped, I was told "she'll go back to them, she's got nowhere else to go."

For me, this is just my job. I go to work and then go back to my home in the suburbs. I go back to my home and go do my practicum in another suburb, tutor kids who are enrolled in private school. The kids who I tutor are near the same age as the youngest of the kids who I have met who are involved in the situations previously mentioned downtown. There are very stark differences between them. While my tutoring students have been enrolled in private education for their entire educational history, some of the youth I have met downtown either never have homework or haven't gone to school in months. And why? Why do they not go to school? Well why would they? When I shared a story about inner-city violence in one of my university classes, one of my peers asked what should teachers do if they are scared, knowing that some students may be perpetrators of violence? I don't have an answer for that, but I know that if I approached any of the youth that I work with feeling fear of them they would know it. Most violence that occurs are events that I hear about, not events that I witness. The capacity that I know most of them in is a conversation about them or giving them food or helping them if they are injured for any reason. Even the youth involved in macing me, they were doing what they had to and felt unsafe because someone else was trying to fight them. If I avoided working near or with them then they would know it. At that point, why would they want to work with me, or approach me or any other adult?

At the root of it, both groups of youth are great kids who want to feel successful and proud of themselves, they want to feel like someone cares for them, that they belong.

Regardless of where I am working as a teacher, it is my job (but not mine alone) to make sure they are feeling that sense of belonging and support to be able to reach new levels of success.

One of my students told me that she felt disconnected with her culture and really wants to know more. Integrating that knowledge at a younger age can help to provide the sense of understanding of self that youth need and possibly rejuvenate cultural knowledge and community. If youth aren't given a strong community, they go and build one themselves, and there is absolutely no guarantee that those communities are safe for them. I don't know if I believe that there ever is a full guarantee of safety. I can include knowledge and teach history as an English and history teacher. I can demonstrate respect and create a culturally safe learning environment for and with my students. It is important to me that I include the teaching strategies as listed in the Mamatawisin educational document in my practices. 

Reading work by Christopher Emdin has helped in how I reimagine the community that I work in. I can see and know that there is injustice in the communities that I know, all of these fears of the inner-city that he writes about I can see in the way people react to knowing where I work on the weekends. How the community is seen as dangerous and "ghetto" and somehow not worth the same kind of effort or financial support as other more affluent communities. Emdin writes that classism plays a part in how students are seen by every other group of people who are in charge of their educational opportunities (2021). They are seen as having potential only if they change everything about who they are and abandon where they come from. The goal is to gentrify the students to raise them out of poverty, classism lives at the base of how students and their communities are perceived and treated. In a study done including inner-city Winnipeg youth, they were asked about their community, what they would change and what they see. 

They reported that they would change the violence in the community, as it makes them feel unsafe. 

They reported that the community needs to be respected and kept clean.

They reported that the government needs to step up, fix houses, and find better places for trash to be disposed of.

They reported that supports are needed.

The youth included in this study knew exactly where the community needed some help but were aware that they were not in the position to provide that help and service. They were aware of what needed to be done and how they wanted other people to view their homes. This relates to Emdin's reimagining of teaching using a reality pedagogy. Within Emdin's framework, students are the ones who are creating plans of action for effective education alongside the teacher (2021). He advocates that the students know what they need and who they are, that they just need a hand in seeing themselves being academic when they have been told by social narratives their whole lives that they are not academic. That they are the antithesis of academia and that education will not help them on the streets. Part of what the reality pedagogy does is build positive relationships while giving students the opportunity to truly have a voice in their education and articulate who they are, showing how it is they want to be taught (Emdni, 2021).

Emdin's work is based on urban centers and communities that are socioeconomically disadvantaged that have historically been underserved by education (2021).  Emdin uses the term urban, in Winnipeg, our inner-city matches his description of a community that is socioeconomically disadvantaged and youth are trained to be obedient in schools, rather than praised for their creativity or individuality. Winnipeg's inner city has beauty, it has community, it has social services employed with people who truly care. Opportunities need to be created in and outside of schools that allow youth to advocate for themselves, feel a sense of belonging, and know that they are cared for. They need opportunities to be successful, and the classist ideas that haunt the inner-city from all angles -including historical attitudes- are a part of what hinders those opportunities from being created. All youth need to be seen as capable and recognized for their strength. Community violence takes a toll. A lack of community takes a toll. A lack in understanding onself takes a toll. Schooling may not be able to solve all of these issues, but the worst thing that can be done is nothing.

References

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives--Manitoba. (2014). State of the inner city : a youth lens on poverty in winnipeg. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba. Retrieved February 26, 2024, from https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Manitoba%20Office/2013/12/State_of_inner_city_report_2013.pdf

Emdin, C. (2021). Ratchetdemic: Reimagining academic success. Beacon Press.

Government of Manitoba. (2023). PDF. Winnipeg; Manitoba Education and Early Childhood Learning.

hooks, b. (1994). Embracing Change: Teaching in a Multicultural World. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (p33-44). Routledge.

Post, M., Hanten, G., Li, X., Schmidt, A. T., Avci, G., Wilde, E. A., McCauley, S. R. (2014). Dimensions of trauma and specific symptoms of complex posttraumatic stress disorder in inner-city youth: a preliminary study. Violence and Victims, 29(2), 262–79.