Get back in that car, lady

By Alice Dawnay, FT.com site
Published: Jan 20, 2006

This is a story about fear. About a place where, if you're white, the bus driver won't let you off "for your own good". I'm visiting Hunter's Point, south-east of downtown San Francisco. In a bar the night before friends react with hushed discomfort when they hear where I am going. No one has ever been, and all say they wouldn't.

In the morning I look up buses on the net. I ask someone about transport links.

"To Hunter's Point! Do you know what it's like there? You crazy?"

I retaliate: "Have you ever been?" I am bored with people trying to scare me out of visiting somewhere they have never been. And they can't tell me why.

Anyway, I still can't find out how to get there, so I go to Market Street to ask at the city transport desk. When I say where I'm heading the woman says: "That's not a very nice place... " "Yes," I say, "I know." She tells me to get the number 19 and after a bit says: "You're the wrong colour to be going to Hunter's Point." "Yes," I say, "I know."

I want to visit a programme called Brothers Against Guns. I go to Hunter's Point: cardboard-cutout-type housing, row upon row on a hill looking out over the industrial estates to the bay and across the water to Oakland. The sky is blue. The roads are clean. There is a heavy metal gate in front of every door (though you could kick a hole in the wall), and no one on the streets. I get off the bus and stride up towards the Brothers Against Guns headquarters, a residential home used by the brothers. Fine, I think. No problem.

The group's founder is Shawn Richards, an ex-gang member, ex-con (three years in the state penitentiary), ex-dealer. He seems cautious at the start of our chat, but when I talk about London and my work, sharing my knowledge of streetlife in Brent, he relaxes.

He tells me his brother was shot dead 10 years ago and he set up Brothers Against Guns. He was 26. Since then, Brothers has worked with about 500 young people, and of the 80 they dealt with last year, only two were rearrested. Many youngsters are sentenced to the programme when up before a judge on firearms charges.

The caseworkers are all from the area and serve as family, of sorts, for the young people. Support is meshed with accountability. No excuses are accepted from kids with addicted mothers or abusive step-dads - the staff have first-hand experience of such setbacks. Community ties are strengthened, potential is harnessed and, most importantly, jobs are organised for the gang leaders. When I leave, Shawn suggests that a colleague give me a lift to the bus.

She has to collect someone from a house just up the hill so we park outside and wait with the engine running and the doors locked. She points out the different blocks to me and I say I want to get out and look through the gap in the houses to see down to the projects in Bayview. She says: "No, don't get out here. I'll drive you round in a minute." I say that I just want a quick look. There is no one outside and no noise. I open the door and get out, walking a couple of steps to get the view I want. Ten men appear in the road. One looks side to side, up and down the road and then marches over. "You better get back in that car, lady." I get back in the car. He leans down to the driver, shouting at her. "Who is she? What is she doing?"

It is established that I am not a cop. The man explains sternly that those hanging around Hunter's Point need protection. The girl we are waiting for comes out and we leave. I am shaken.

In London, street violence is essentially self-contained. Collateral damage is relatively rare. In San Francisco, the "cliques", "turfs" or "sets" run the neighbourhoods. Problems arise when, for instance, Mexican immigrants move into an African-American 'hood and see the financial gain involved in the hustle in that area. Because big money is at stake, the clique controlling the area guards its turf. Trespassers may take a bullet as a result. Suddenly I see what all that fear was about. Why you don't go there.

But maybe if more people walked through each other's "turf" we would all walk in each other's shoes a bit more easily. Then we would all be a bit less scared. Or more aware of what we are scared of, and more inclined to challenge the source of that fear than put it out of mind.

Alice Dawnay, 26, is an outreach worker from west London. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to explore alternatives to incarceration for young people in the US.

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