Inquirer Editorial: From grief to good works

Dorothy Johnson-Speight, Executive Director of the antiviolence group Mothers In Charge, is the Inquirer's Citizen of the Year. In the background, left, is a portrait of her son Khaaliq Johnson. ( CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer )

Travel Deals

$999 & up -- 10-Nt. Summer Bahamas & Bermuda Cruise, 45% Off

See all travel deals »

Weekly Circulars

40-50% OFF Pro-Form Treadmills, Ellipticals and Exercise bikes(Sports Authority)

Get Your Party Platters And Save(Food Lion)

See More Circulars »

LAST UPDATED: Sunday, December 29, 2013, 2:02 AM
POSTED: Friday, December 27, 2013, 4:23 PM

Not many people could do what Dorothy Johnson-Speight does. Every day, she puts aside the often suffocating grief that grips her own soul so she can help other women come to terms with seemingly unbearable sorrow after the loss of a child to violence.
Johnson-Speight, of Mount Airy, is executive director of Mothers in Charge, an organization dedicated to reducing the number of murders in Philadelphia. This year, it marked its 10th anniversary. For reaching that milestone, and for the good work that preceded it, Johnson-Speight is The Inquirer's 2013 Citizen of the Year.
Johnson-Speight lost her 24-year-old son, Khaaliq Jabbar Johnson, in 2001. He was shot multiple times on an Olney street near his home by a man who had argued with him over a parking spot. Johnson-Speight wants people to know that Khaaliq didn't fit any stereotype of a black male shooting victim; he was no gang member. Khaaliq was a peaceful man, a counselor dedicated to helping children.
Two years after Khaaliq's death, and after five other young men in her neighborhood had been murdered, Johnson-Speight had a vision. "I don't call it a dream, because I wasn't really asleep," she said. She saw herself in a boxing ring, pleading with people to stop the killing. She began to contact other mothers who had lost children to violence, and they began to meet.

Among these women was Ruth Donnelly, whose 19-year-old son, Justin Donnelly, was stabbed to death five months before Khaaliq was killed. Johnson-Speight and Donnelly discovered that the same man had killed their sons. He was eventually convicted of both murders. Meanwhile, Donnelly and Johnson-Speight became close friends and partners in starting Mothers in Charge.
The organization is much more than a support group in which grieving women can share their stories and build each other up, though it certainly functions as that. Mothers in Charge members hit the streets to talk to young men about their behavior in person. They visit schools and churches to talk to teenagers. They participate in marches and rallies for peace. And they lobby state officials for stronger gun laws.
The group has grown from about two dozen participants who met in each other's homes to more than 200 who conduct workshops in a suite of offices in the Leon H. Sullivan Human Services Center, on North Broad Street. Mothers in Charge chapters have formed in Wilmington, Atlantic City, New York, Los Angeles, Kansas City, and San Francisco, helping the group reach thousands.
Under a program it calls Project Hope, Mothers in Charge offers workshops that teach women about handling intimate-partner violence, anger management, peer mentoring and coaching, and life skills. The organization also offers a curriculum called Thinking for a Change to teach prison inmates - men, women, and juveniles - social and problem-solving skills.
It's as if Johnson-Speight was born to do this work. Premature death first touched her family in 1986, when her daughter, Carlena, not yet 3 years old, died of bacterial meningitis. She joined the Compassionate Friends network for families that have lost children and started a chapter at Temple University. She went on to get a master's degree in human services from Lincoln University and to complete a school-psychologist certification program at Immaculata University.
Johnson-Speight and Khaaliq, who had a sociology degree from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, had planned to open a counseling practice together. Now Johnson-Speight has different plans. Asked if she wants to continue doing what she's doing, she had a quick answer: "No, I want to stop doing what I'm doing. I want the time to come when I can stop helping mothers bury their children." That's a worthy goal for the entire city.
Johnson-Speight is receiving The Inquirer's 10th Citizen of the Year award. Previous winners were former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean Sr., for his leadership of the 9/11 commission, in 2004; political reform activists Timothy Potts, Eugene Stilp, and Russell Diamond, in 2005; former Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr., for his work with the children of incarcerated parents, in 2006; public schools advocate Helen Gym in 2007; good-government advocate Harry S. Pozycki in 2008; Juvenile Law Center lawyers Marsha Levick and Lourdes Rosado in 2009; Camden civic leader Helene Pierson in 2010; homeless advocate Sister Mary Scullion in 2011; and antihunger group leader Steveanna Wynn in 2012.

Friday, September 6, 2013

In Art, Mothers Find Way To Deal With Losing A Child

At the Rotunda in Philadelphia, an art installation of 331 wire sculptures to correspond to the 331 murders that occurred in Philadelphia last year. Here, from left to right with the installation behind them are: Brenda Howell; Julie Mann; Kimberly Mehler; Karen Hunter-McLaughlin; and Janice Hayes-Cha. ( APRIL SAUL / Staff )
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20130906_In_art__mothers_find_way_to_deal_with_losing_a_child.html#CtEWGcDJwUoIylTg.99

Melissa Dribben, Inquirer Staff Writer POSTED: Friday, September 6, 2013, 1:08 AM No one believes that they have found the cure for violence. Certainly not the hundreds of women who earned membership in Mothers in Charge by losing their children to bullets and blades. Certainly not Dorothy Johnson-Speight, who founded the group 10 years ago after her 24-year-old son, Kaahliq, was shot to death in Olney by a neighbor during an argument over a parking spot. And certainly not the five mothers in the artists' collective MamaCITA who came up with an idea for an exhibit to raise awareness about the city's homicide rate. Working together, though, these women figured that they might as well try to do something. To find yet another small way to push back against the crushing forces of anger, despair, and callousness that drive people to kill. If not to prevent another violent death, then at least to soothe and comfort those left behind. Beginning Saturday, the results of their collaboration will be presented as part of the 2013 FringeArts Festival. An art installation set beneath the shabby but soaring coffered dome of the Rotunda in West Philadelphia. A collection of 331 hand-twisted wire vessels - one for each of the city's homicide victims in 2012. "I didn't understand it at first," says Johnson-Speight, recalling her reaction when the artists first proposed the project. They would work together for one year, the artists said. They would invite at-risk children and grieving relatives and neighbors and strangers to twist yards of annealed 18- and 14-gauge steel wire into free-form shapes resembling some sort of cup or basket. "A vessel? How does that connect to a lost child?" said Johnson-Speight. "But it does. I can't explain it, but it does." As she gripped the wire and tried to bend it to her will, she said, she found herself thinking about Kaahliq the whole time. And she suggested that the artists offer workshops to at-risk girls and women in MIC programs. The intense concentration required to work the wire has a meditative and therapeutic effect, said Kimberly Mehler, one of the MamaCITA artists. "Art can move you through your emotions in two ways," Mehler said. "It can help you feel them and express them, or it can help you get away from them when you need a break from your grief." MamaCITA - Mothers' Cooperative in the Arts - bought supplies and put the exhibit together with $5,000 from the Leeway Foundation for Art and Change Grants and a good deal from American Wire, a local supplier of wire normally used for wrapping shipping pallets, said Janice Hayes-Cha, who helped organize the project. "Wire is gratifying to work with," she said. "It's flexible, but it has a will of its own. You can try to wrestle it into a shape, but ultimately, you just have to go with it." An apt metaphor for any parent trying to shape a child's future, she noted. The vessels, Hayes-Cha said, "are just skeletons of people who aren't here anymore. Each is unique. There is no way to make two alike." They are suspended against walls of translucent white fabric and cast shadows that grow longer as the daylight fades. "The shadows are an important part of the art," Hayes-Cha said. "They show that the perpetrator and the victim are always connected. Just as mother and child are always connected. And the corporal body and the soul." At the Saturday event, several mothers whose children were killed in Philadelphia will give spoken-word performances. Marvella McDaniel, whose 21-year-old son, Erik, was knifed to death trying to break up a fight, will read her poem "Knowing, Not Knowing." It ends: If the sudden force of anger and rage has stolen the bright future of someone you love, then you know. You know the shock, the absence of goodbyes, the heart torn to pieces, But you do not know if you can go on. Neither the artists nor the members of Mothers in Charge expect the exhibit to lower the murder rate or inspire any epiphanies. But it could happen, said Johnson-Speight. After her son's death, "I thought I'd talk to everyone who would listen about stopping the violence and it would stop," she said. She soon realized she needed to take action. Today, the organization works in prisons and communities and schools, teaches anger management, provides mentoring and job skills courses. It has expanded nationally, with chapters in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. "People see the 6 o'clock news and they don't know what to do," she said, looking up at the wall of twisted wire spirals, cones, cups, and baskets. "Something like this could change someone's life. Maybe it will make them want to write to their congressman and ask them to pass a bill requiring universal background checks. Or maybe it will make them want to mentor a child who has been written off. That's how a culture of violence is changed," she said. "One little step at a time." If You Go The antiviolence groups Mothers in Charge and MamaCITA will present an art exhibit and spoken-word performances as part of this year's FringeArts Festival. The exhibit "One Year" will be shown at the Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., this weekend, and from Thursday to Sept. 15, and Sept. 19 and 20. The performances, also at the Rotunda, will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Saturday and on Sept. 21. Both are free. For more information, call Janice Hayes-Cha, 617-515-7897. Contact Melissa Dribben at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com or @dribbenonphilly.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20130906_In_art__mothers_find_way_to_deal_with_losing_a_child.html#CtEWGcDJwUoIylTg.99