NEW YORK: DaJuan Hawkins spent four months in jail for assault and thought he was a “nothing” destined for a life of street crime.
Today, the 17-year-old high school senior is heading for college and writing poetry.
Bobby Marchesi hung out with a tough group of Italian boys who clashed violently with black kids at his Brooklyn high school. Now, he is a lawyer in private practice.
What transformed Hawkins and Marchesi into confident, productive and compassionate human beings, they say, is Council For Unity.
Founded as a small anti-gang group in 1975, the council now claims to reach 100,000 people of all cultures in New York, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Vermont — and as far away as Nigeria and Moldova.
And its mission has expanded: The group recently published a book of student writings. It works with families and in correctional facilities. It is developing a public safety curriculum in partnership with police in Riverhead, Long Island.
The group's story begins with its founder, Bob De Sena, a one-time gang member and former English teacher at the once-troubled John Dewey High School, the same Brooklyn school Marchesi attended.
De Sena said he turned his life around because someone gave him a second chance. He wants the Council For Unity to do the same for new generations of kids from broken homes and crime-ridden neighborhoods.
The group has a 33-year history of getting gang members together to talk, based on a message that when you bring everybody together, there is nobody left to fight.
At Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, gang activity ceased altogether after the group's classes were introduced into the curriculum, principal Lisa Maffei Fuentes said. She said her school was on the city's most dangerous list three years ago.
“They've come to respect their home site, their school,” she said.

iht.com