PeacePlayers US Storybook 2021 - Flipbook - Page 9
2021 UNITED STATES STORYBOOK
2021 UNITED STATES STORYBOOK
RULES OF THE GAME
Ulijah, Javonn, Raishan and Chris have a lot in common. They’re
all young men in their late teens from Brownsville, Brooklyn.
They’re all basketball players. They’re all avid gamers (NBA 2K is a
shared favorite). Despite having all the reasons in the world to be
friends, their friendship is nothing short of revolutionary, a union
of young men from rival housing developments steeped in violent
gang-driven conflicts that ordinarily would have kept them from
daring to even speak to one another.
When many PeacePlayers from Brownsville describe their
neighborhood, they share a combination of pride and raw
honesty about the challenges facing their community. Or, in
Chris’ words: “A lot of pros and cons of living in Brownsville. It’s
a good neighborhood and good environment to be at, and then
there’s times where in certain areas you can’t be there at a certain
time because you might run into something you don’t want to run
in to run into someone you don’t want to run into.” Throughout
their lives, these five friends have had to deal with the fallout of
a century of systemic disrimination against Black people in their
neighborhood, and to abide by the gang lines that divide their
community. Where they can go, who they can hang out with,
what colors they can and can’t wear - they have learned to live by
a strict unwritten code, in the hope that it will keep them safe. The
fact that Ulijah, Javonn, Raishan and Chris are not gang affiliated
does not matter: they still have to live by gang rules.
Javonn, who moved to Brownsville when he was 12, was really
affected by the violence that he witnessed around him. But for
Javonn, and for other PeacePlayers from Brooklyn, basketball has
acted as a sort of protective force field.
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“There was one time when I was going to practice there
was people looking at me and they’re like who’s that. Oh,
he’s basketball let him ride. So, I guess basketball gives you
this shield in a way of being a basketball player gives you a
shield of all that violence.”
Like Javonn said, when these young men joined PeacePlayers, they
found that safe space, to be themselves, and to explore friendships
across the divides. But the courage to do either of those things is
completely their own. “We’re not here to impress each other, we’re
here to get better together. It’s not like they got to act like this
person, act like that person and to impress us or to act like this to
be down with them. Once you join PeacePlayers it’s like a family.
You don’t got to try. You just be yourself,” says Ulijah. In line with
these impressions, the entire team chose a set of three team values
that would define their interactions with each other, as players
and as friends: Respect. Family. Loyalty. “It’s like a checklist where
we respect each other and hold each other accountable. It’s like
the three key things that we expect from each other,”
says Raishan.
In Brownsville, the relationships between Ulijah, Javonn, Raishan
and Chris are a symbol for what is possible. And when they walk
around the neighborhood with their PeacePlayers’ gear, people
notice. Chris says, “At first when they saw me join PeacePlayers my
mom would see me walking around with all this gear and she’d ask
where you getting all these clothes from? She was like you must
be really engaged if you just repping everything. I have cousins
that see me outside. They would ask what age is PeacePlayers [for]
and how to join.”
Perhaps similar to the brotherhood many youth seek from the
gangs that occupy their neighborhoods, the boys discovered
something bigger than themselves. Despite once feeling as though
the only person there for them was themselves, PeacePlayers now
represents a union that defies the rules of the game.
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