From Illinois public media.

This is a special edition of news brews and beats.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Reginald Hark, news and public affairs director at Illinois public media.

Welcome to News brews and beats.

This discussion was taped at wi ll TV studios on april 23 and we have two panels discussing the state of Champaign Urbana through the lens of key black leadership.

In a moment, I'll introduce our panel.

And first, I'd like to say hello to my co moderator, Tracy Parsons, of the city of Champaign.

How you doing?

Tracy, I am doing well.

Reginald, thank you.

It's been a while since we've been here, it's exciting be back, and thanks to everyone who's out here today, I'm really excited about the conversation.

Great.

Well, joining us here in the studio is about 50 of our closest friends and guests, and as well as IPMs David Pierce, who will be taking questions from for the panel from the audience.

And now I want to introduce our first panel.

On my left is Joe Stovall.

Stovall with the Joe Stovall State Farm Insurance Agency.

Grew up in Champaign, graduated from Illinois State with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry.

He is the former president of the Don Moyers Boys and Girls Club and current vice president of First string incorporated youth development in Champaign Urbana.

Welcome, Joe, thanks for having me, and almost doesn't need an introduction.

She's so famous.

Dr Jennifer ivory Tatum, superintendent of Urbana School District 116 she holds a Bachelor of Science degree in early childhood education, Master of Arts in special education and Doctorate in Education and organizational leadership, she has taught or LED schools in Warrenville and Champaign Urbana since the 1990s and welcome to all of our guests.

You can clap and Tracy as our first question.

So Joe, thanks for being here.

You and I talk all the time about our community and how and what we can do to make things better.

Really concerned for our kids and families right now and our leadership is more important now than than ever.

How would you describe the state of things in the black community right now?

Wow, that's a complex question there, because I know that there are some challenges that are going on in the community right now, gun violence, poverty, under education, a lot of those subject matters are highlighted on a daily basis.

I think I talked to you before about the word leadership.

You know leadership in the dictionary definition is to motivate or inspire group or organization.

And I think what when you look at the state of our community, there's not one particular subject matter or topic that a leader could inspire people on.

There's so many different things happening within our community that we need a multi task, multi force leadership group.

I referenced it more as gardeners.

You know, we have a big garden, and each one of us has a responsibility in terms of doing the gardening.

So, you know, my position has always been working with youth youth development, trying to introduce kids to things that maybe they don't see on a daily basis, to inspire hope and passion in them so that maybe they can find a pathway out of some of the things that we talk about.

But in terms of that question, I mean, it is just so broad that we've got a lot of work we've got to do.

Dr ivory Tatum, give us a snapshot of the black families you work with at Urbana public schools, and some of the challenges and serving families while trying to keep all the families in mind.

That is a challenge.

I think Joe mentioned some of the things that we're struggling with in terms of education, unemployment, I think is another area that is really impacting some of our families.

It is a struggle, especially in Urbana, our community has changed significantly the demographic in the last several years, at least in the last 1617, years that I've been there, our community is high, high poverty.

75% of our community right now is considered free or reduced lunch and or low income, which is a challenge.

Another issue that we're dealing with in Joe mentioned it already is some of the violence in the community.

I know that's been an initiative through the coalition.

It's, I think we've for years had the conversations around, how do we i. Um, how do we address that through the family?

How do we address it through schools?

How do we impact it through neighborhoods?

And right now, I don't know that a lot of the things that we've been doing are working.

I think we've seen some of the decreases, but we continue to lose young lives.

And what I would like us to focus on as a community, not just the education arm, because we can't do it all in schools.

I say all the time.

We have our students from eight to three, and we can only do so much during that time period, because they still go back home to their home life.

They go back to the neighborhoods where they are.

So we can impact what we can but right now, it feels like and Tracy said this recently in a group that we were in talking about some of our challenges in Urbana.

What's happening right now is the community is leaving it up to schools to figure out all the issues and we can't.

We need we need our faith.

We need our pastors, we need our city government.

We need just everyone, our politicians, just all of us, to sit down and figure out, what can we do to address some of the issues that are not just violence related.

It's education related.

It is, you know, unemployment, it is health and wellness, mental health.

We see more mental health issues in our young people today than we ever have before.

And I know there's some of those leftover impacts from the pandemic, but we're years out from that now, and we need to be figuring out some solution oriented things we can't continue to kind of blame everything on COVID.

We did that for a year too, and and now we need to come out of that and say, Okay, here's where we are and look forward to where we need to be.

And as as an education, the education arm, we can't do that without our whole community helping us.

Our students need mentors.

They need opportunities.

They need jobs.

They need things to look forward to, and we're doing what we can as a district to provide those pathways.

We've been talking a lot about careers and trades and continuing to encourage students to go to college and making sure that they know you can go to college.

But we know there's some that are not and don't want to, but our goal right now is to make sure every single one of our students graduates, and they graduate with the ability to provide a living wage for their family, whatever that might be.

And unfortunately, the students that we're seeing that are struggling the most are our black students.

They're struggling the most with discipline behavior in the classroom.

They're struggling the most with absenteeism.

We talked about this a lot.

We cannot impact change if our kids are not in school.

And so that's something that we need to address with families, so they understand the importance of your child needs to be there every day.

So that's, I know that's a lot, but there are a lot of challenges.

So yes, yeah, yeah, no, but you hit it's right on point, right?

Yeah, because again, as we talk about the complexity of these issues, right?

And what I said the other day, that I think is so relevant is that we're putting the burden on the schools to solve all of societal issues, right?

And so it comes in, but that is the space also where we have our students, where you have them for a concentrated amount of time with reduction or restriction, and what you really can do again, once they leave, once they're back in the community, once in their neighborhood, you know, talking with group of Students, been a year or so ago, and it just alarmed me as the students were talking about carrying carrying guns, right?

And to think it brought a tear to my eyes, because it was as the students were talking, they get up, they get their backpacks, they're looking for their books.

They got to find their gun before they leave the house, right?

And that's just an alarming way for our kids to be thinking, functioning and operating, that for protection.

They think they need a piece, right?

And so to have that, Joe, you offer kind of a unique lens, right?

As a person who grew up here, person who left the community then came back.

That doesn't happen a lot here in our community.

Folks grow up thinking, Oh, I gotta leave Champaign Urbana to have success in life and do all those things.

But you're a business owner, you're involved in the community in a number of different ways.

How do you operate in the community.

What is the what you're trying to bring to the community?

From the multiple lenses that you operate in, how do you cart your chart your path?

Or how are you trying to influence community activities, learning, talk to us about your approach?

Well, it's twofold.

Number one, I.

To use what was brought to me as a young man in the neighborhood in the 60s and 70s.

If you think about that time period, civil rights movement was strong, black unity was strong.

I live right around the corner from what I consider Black Wall Street and Champaign on First Street.

So I got to see a lot of positive images growing up, I had a lot of positive black men in my life, from my father to the Boys and Girls Club to, you know, just folks in the neighborhood.

So I absorbed all that at the early age.

When I came back, I wanted to bring that back, but also, obviously, with some new ideas.

We've talked before about youth development and you talked about organizations and what their responsibilities are.

I think back when I was a kid, the organizations were an extension of family, so the standards were set at home, and the organizations continue that when you were there.

The issue now is that we have multiple standards in multiple areas, so there's no consistency.

So what I try to do myself, personally, is do more listening than the tell and sell that a lot of people like to do in terms of directing energy towards kids.

Because I think one of the things I found in terms of youth development, kids are way more sophisticated now than they were when we were growing up.

They also are inundated with more information than we were when we were growing up.

There were filters when we were growing up, certain things were not exposed to us.

When you were in elementary school, certain things weren't exposed to in junior high and so on today, because technology, and specifically social media, kids are inundated daily with information that we can't comprehend.

Our job, I think, is a to be listeners, and B, to be guiders, meaning we'll be the rudder for them, we'll be the sail on their ship, because a lot of them are trying to get to the same destination that we were trying to get to as kids from A to B.

The problem is the different barriers that are in front of I think the other thing in terms of navigation, we've got to remember a lot of these issues that are being faced today didn't happen yesterday.

They didn't happen four years ago.

This has been decades in the making, and now the children are now responding to those things, and what we have to do, a like, I said, Listen, but B, say, here are some alternatives to it, and understand that maybe when we were growing up, we didn't have these issues.

So we got to be able to say, I don't know, but I do understand.

I like that.

Do you have an example of what you do in your organization to help steer youth?

Well, I work with first string, and we've been at Douglas park for 33 years.

The purpose of first string, when it was brought together, back in 1993 was to bring life back into Douglas Park and bring activity back into Douglas Park.

More importantly, what we were trying to do is introduce children to adults and to also introduce children to family members.

There are kids out there who have multiple relatives in the community.

That they may not even know.

So by bringing them into the park, we use sports as the vehicle.

But that's not the end.

All be, all all sports is, is to allow them to escape the environment and then surround them with adults and other responsible citizens within the community, so they can just be kids for a day, be kids for a week, for a month.

Because what we're trying to do is get them to adulthood without having to deal with some of these challenges.

We started our basketball program in first stream, 25 years ago.

It started because when we were going up to the park, kids were in outside in February playing basketball in the snow.

But why were they doing that?

Because the economic challenges of going to an open gym, you have to pay to go into the gym.

So we took the same philosophy we have with our baseball program, created the basketball program this year.

We service probably about 200 kids, K through six in Douglas.

We got kids coming as far as Philo to our basketball program.

They're coming because of what they want to play against good competition.

We're setting this up because we want kids in a safe space.

So talk to us both, and this is a question for both of you, but Jennifer, we'll start with you.

What do you think it makes this place so unique, and the ability to be a great place that we all continue to stay here, to be absolutely well, I can tell you this first hand, just from all of the listening sessions that I've been in for the last few months, every single person that has come or filled.

A survey for us who talked in a focus group have talked about the diversity of our community, and that isn't just the black community.

I think that's our community at large that we do.

We we are in a very unique community.

We have, we have people here from all over the world, and which is, which is wonderful for our young people, our young people need to go to school and see that there are people that are different from them, that don't look like them, and don't have the same culture and speak the same language.

So that, I think, is a really unique thing that we have here.

Being so close to the University of Illinois, a lot of people don't realize this, but a lot of our black youth, especially, don't leave their community very often.

So a lot of times when you're in schools and they're rubbing shoulders with kids saying, Oh, I went to Disneyland, or I went to Florida, you know, we did all these things.

Well, a lot of our students on breaks are in their neighborhood.

They don't go any further than Champaign Urbana, maybe Rantoul, maybe Chicago.

And so giving them the opportunity to see other youth, and we're what we're doing right now is trying to get them out of their neighborhoods and into the community as much as we can.

We have a program called cu around town, and we take a lot of our young elementary students.

We take them to the University of Illinois to the I explore program, but we take them to different places, and they you'd be shocked and surprised at some of the places that we like.

Just the young ladies that you took to the restaurant and you had a meal with them.

Shameless plug for Neil Street Blues.

Street Blues.

Well, I didn't know if I can say it, but I let you say it good.

But taking them to, you know, you took a group of high school, high school young ladies, and the surprise to hear some of them say they've never been out into a formal restaurant setting like that, that's shocking, right?

And we have young our youth, who've they go to the university, and they think, you know, we were talking to some young people not long ago who thought the University of Illinois was the football team, where they think it's just sports, because we get to take them to those activities, and university is so wonderful in sharing that opportunity, but they need to be going into the science labs and the Fab Lab and Seeing scientists in action, and seeing our black professors teaching in some of the spaces that we have on campus, and so it is a unique environment, but what we need to do more is expose more of our young people to all the things that our community has to offer, because it does have a lot to offer them.

Still three communities in one, we have University of Illinois, we have the folks who have been transplanted here.

And then the term that I hate, but for the sake of conversation, is townies.

And probably the uniqueness of that is, if you have not had an opportunity to move them out in all three communities, there's a lot of things you're missing, and this division has been there for decades.

I think for Jennifer talked earlier about our youth being exposed to different things, that's one of the areas that I think changes is access and opportunity is always what I try to say is, if you give people access and opportunity, you may not have equal outcomes, but you'll have equal opportunity.

And so we've got a world class university that I grew up six blocks from, and most of us in the community didn't go to school there.

And I think you know, one of the things University has to do is a better job of being engaged in the community as a land grant university, they treat us like lab rats, meaning that they research us, and then they leave.

And there are a lot of unique, intelligent, bright, articulate people in this community who've been overshadowed because of that.

The other thing that happens is that the transplanted community, they come to Champaign Urbana, they're not introduced to the black community.

They may be here anywhere from two to five years, and because they've not been introduced, they leave not understanding the rich culture that's here within the community.

So I think what I would love to see is somehow a diverse group of people be put together as basically as a welcoming committee.

So when folks come to the community, they get introduced to the community, so that they can understand that the community just isn't south of University Avenue or not west of Prospect Avenue or not east of Goodwin.

There is a whole thriving community here, some great people, some great businesses, great churches.

Is great organizations, but they have to be introduced to it, so they'll stay here.

We got about three minutes left in our first panel.

Here goes by quickly.

What gives the two of you hope?

And Joe can start with you.

Oh, what gives me hope is what I just described.

This community is great.

We've got some great people here.

The opportunity that I got to have in this community, growing up on the north end of Champaign, going through Booker T Washington, which, at the time when I went to Booker T the year before, was 98% African American.

The next year, it was turned into a magnet school right in the heart of the black community.

We had first computer system in the United States, and Plato put into that school.

And so it gave me an opportunity, from an educational standpoint, to see and do things that a lot of kids didn't get before.

So for myself, personally, that's where my hope comes from, is that I got to live it, and I get to see it.

There are great people who we've been with for decades who are doing great things, but it's just what they do every day, and it's not publicized.

So because it's not publicized, the old saying about in the news, if it bleeds it leads, if we got an opportunity to flip that to really spotlight all the things that were going on in this community, a lot of this conversation would change.

And I think once we start highlighting and giving opportunities like tonight's show to be able to talk and express what we're doing out in the community, I think we'll see this cruise ship turn and we'll start going out into deeper waters, and much more fun will be had by all.

So what gives me hope is we have some amazing families.

We have amazing students.

There are they?

We have some black kids who have it going on and are doing a lot of really great things, but we need to have more of that, and so I we have, I've been spending a lot of time with the students at our high school as we talk about our new plan and getting their voice.

Our young people have a lot to say and our height like the groups that you work with, our young people have a lot to say about how we're teaching them, what they are learning from us, what kind of sense of belonging that they have, not just around their learning, but their community.

And so just the hope that I see in our high school youth right now that have that are really taking the lead in terms of service, in terms of pride for our community, but we just need that to trickle down our young people, our younger people.

Right now, I am hopeful for all the people that are sitting in this audience.

There are a lot of people here who wear a lot of different hats, and I know as a community, we need to tap into all of us, all of our knowledge, all of our wisdom, all of our experience, to be able to wrap around our young black teen moms, our single moms who are raising, you know, two or three young black boys by themselves, grandmas.

We have a lot of grandmothers who are raising their grand babies, and they need help.

And so I'm hopeful that I know as a community, we can, we can shift the tide.

And you know that phrase, the rising tide lifts all ships.

We need our students to rise, and we need our community to help us do it.

But I have a lot of faith and hope that we can do that with with just, just the people, the knowledge in this room, and the the folks who have stepped up to say, I will make a difference, and I will be present, and I'll do what I can to help rise the tide for everybody, because that's what we need to do right now.

Thank you, and I wish to thank our guest, Dr, Jennifer ivory Tatum, superintendent of Urbana School District, 116 and Joe Stovall of the Joe Stovall Insurance Agency, State Farm.

Thank you, audience, if you want to give them a round of applause for this information, and we'll be back with more news, brews and beats.

After this, welcome back to news brews and beats on this program, we're discussing the state of Champaign Urbana through the lens of key black leadership.

I'm Reginald Hardwick, news and public affairs director at Illinois public media, and this discussion was taped at the wi ll TV studios on april 23 in a moment, I'll introduce our second panel, but first I want to bring in Tracy Parsons with the city of Champaign co moderator.

How do you think the first discussion went?

I thought our panelists were wonderful and brought and dropped a lot of knowledge and recommend.

It's one thing to talk about the challenges, but another thing to offer solutions, what we can do to make a difference.

I'm really excited about this panel.

I think they want to go to another level.

Okay, well, it's a little preview of what's to come, and joining us here in our studio is about 50 of our closest friends, also IPM, David Pierce is standing by to bring us some questions from the audience.

Didn't have any last time, but I think we're going to have some this time.

Let's get into our introductions.

And to my left is Reverend Ricky Harts pastor of Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in Champaign.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Community Recreation and physical education from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a Master of Science degree in secondary education and a doctorate in religious counseling.

Reverend parks is ordained as a minister in 1999 and became the eighth pastor of Pilgrim in BC in January 2008 welcome.

Thank you for having me and Urbana police chief, Larry D Boone.

He rose from patrol officer to Chief of Police during a 33 year career in Norfolk, Virginia.

He joined the force in Urbana in June of 2023 and chief Boone holds a Bachelor of Arts in graphic design from Georgia Southern University, where he also played football, winning two national titles in 1985 and 1986 He also holds a master's degree in public administration, and these two have been going after football all evening.

Please welcome all of our guests.

Tracy, we'll start with you.

Pastor parks.

We've we've often heard this is a unique and different community, and for people coming into our community can be a difficult transition.

Let me just say it that way.

I couldn't believe it when I hear that you've been here 17 years now, 17 years.

Does this feel like home?

What was your transition like coming here when you initially got here.

So first of all, is this being broadcast in Arkansas?

Does this feel like home?

We got to be careful.

It does.

This is home.

This is where I'm supposed to be.

I know this is what God wants me to be, as far as the community, yeah, it was difficult in the beginning.

It took me a little while to understand the dynamics of the community and how it functions, and that there's being where the church I pastor is on the considered the north end of town, and getting to know the people on the North End and understanding the trust issues of those who, as I think Joe said earlier, people come into town and they leave.

Well, I discovered that you have to be here for a while to be in certain spaces and places for people to begin to allow you to be part of the community.

And so now, after 17 years, I feel like I'm a pillar in the community and places that I've been in, things that I've been able to do, or we've been able to do as a church.

But Champagne is a unique place, because there's unique people.

You know, there's people from all walks of life here, but it's just getting to the place where you can get to meet different people, where they are.

We had a pre interview session with all of our guests tonight a couple days ago, and chief Boone, you said something that really stuck with me.

You know, we're here in the home of a world class university, but you said you've never seen poverty like you have in this area.

Can you elaborate on that.

Yeah, so growing up in poverty myself in New Brunswick, New Jersey, I kind of know what that looks like.

I kind of know what it smells like.

I kind of know how to navigate in it.

Also, as a law enforcement officer, that typically law enforcement spend the bulk of their time in communities that have been neglected, not because people are bad, but because people have been neglected.

And the first time I wanted to see an area where there had been a gunshot, I kind of knew what that area would look like.

And I just want to confirm my personal experience as well as my professional experience.

So I was taking the VAUDE and Salter, and I just stood in the middle of the street, and I just looked around and folks had the appearance as they went about their day to day, with the look of absent of hope.

Then I wanted to look at the dumpsters.

And because the dumpsters tells you that these folks are being taken care of on a weekly basis, the dumpsters were over filled with trash and surrounding the trash can with.

Drug paraphernalia.

In addition to that, you had little kids up and down the street and diapers, right?

And then I wanted to go inside the building themselves, because I kind of knew what that would look like as well.

And you had doors that could barely be secure, and you had human feces throughout the hallway.

This particular location has been neglected, as well as the people.

Now.

There are a lot of folks doing great things in Champaign County, but I will say this, there is an element underneath the CUSP that's ignored.

That's a fact.

You don't believe me.

Meet me down there, and we'll go through the community ourselves, and you'll see things, and then you'll say, You got to kind of feel bad.

You got to kind of feel as though you hadn't done your part.

And no one individual, no one individual can do this themselves.

No organization can do this themselves.

But I do know this based on my experience, if we galvanize together and we're surgical in our approach based on data, and the data is always going to say the neglected, the underserved, under educated, homeless, you name the ills.

You always going to start there first.

I was surprised to learn when I got here Urbana didn't have a poverty map.

How in the world can you navigate what you're doing if you don't have a poverty map?

I'm a different kind of Chief now, Imma come real straight at you.

Okay, so And maybe, maybe explain what a poverty map is.

A poverty map is a map where you capture data, and it says in this location, there are high risk of mental illness, under Education, arrest, cancer, you gotta treat these locations like a disease.

And how do you treat a disease collectively?

And once you make that location healthy, you move to the next location.

I'm telling to city council about these concerns and what got me, and this is about black leadership.

I'm the only black room in the face talking.

I'm in the place talking about this, and the folks that are booing me are Caucasian, but they don't live in this squalor.

They're not there.

They come up to council every Monday night and and throw tomatoes at me and things of that nature.

I'm like, where is the black leadership?

If you want to be in leadership positions, you're going to have to say and do hard stuff.

And I don't see that where I'm from.

Black folks stood up and said, No, no, this is our community.

We know what's wrong with our community.

You don't.

We appreciate your support, because we can't do it without you, but we should be in the driver's seat, and it's shocking to me that that doesn't occur here.

So one of the things, and we've talked about tonight the different populations that we have in our community, and the divide amongst that, and what that means to me is black folks don't trust one another Absolutely.

So both of you all talk to us about addressing this trust issue being a transient I was, I was at a meeting my first year here, and went to a meeting concerning where there was supposedly it was being said that gang activity was beginning in our city.

And I begin to speak on the fact that if that's if it is, it's been identified.

Let's meet with those people, the young people who are supposed to be leading these gangs.

And I was told, you just got here, you don't know nothing.

I've been living in this city for 30 years, and you don't know what you're talking about.

Well, my response to that was, I would be ashamed to say I've been in the city 30 years, and you don't know anything about and so the trust has been again, I discovered that the Trust for the north end of Champaign does not trust the south end of Champaign.

Then, once you cross University, is a whole another city, okay?

Because those who have matriculated from the north end to the south side.

Now look back on those on the north end as it though they're better, and those on the north end look at those and say, you sold out.

And so when the time, when it's when it's a time for us to come together, no one trusted each other, because everyone thinks someone is trying to do or trying to get over or or have forgotten where they've come.

From, and the kids are suffering.

The neighborhoods are suffering.

And the thing about it is it doesn't matter where you come from.

It doesn't matter if you just moved here last week, if you're willing to do the work, let the people do the work, because obviously you're not doing the work.

One thing I've seen here, and I hear all the time, everybody's talking about what we need to do, what we need to do, and then they come to what is the church doing, or is the church doing?

Well, a lot of people who are, who are doing, have doing these activities, these crimes.

They don't go to church.

They don't go to church.

Where are the pastors in this area?

Well, I, you know, I make y'all may edit this what I'm fixing to say, but as a pastor, my responsibility.

I have an assignment.

I knew the assignment that God sent me here for.

My assignment was to come here and preach the gospel, live the gospel, be what I'm, what God called me to do, wherever I am, I'm Pastor parts, whether I'm in Douglas Park, where I'm in the parks, in their banner, playing with the kids, or whatever, to show them that you can be the same person everywhere you are.

You don't have to be different when you're in different spaces, be who God calls you to be.

My other thing is, that's my assignment, when, when, when, when there's things that are happening and people wants to say, Well, where are the pastors?

Well, why you didn't go to the assignment?

That was your assignment.

You saw it.

You go there.

But then they get on Facebook, on social media, pastors should have been at all these places.

Well, here's here's to all of them there out they said, this is from my wife to all of you.

She wants me to come home just like everybody else come home.

My sons want to see me in their homes just like everybody else.

I My responsibility is to the pilgrim church in the community, but I have a life too.

I have a wife, I have kids, grandkids.

I won't spend time with them.

So all the people, all the naysayers, and where are the pastors at?

Well, if you take all the churches and put us all together, and let's say there's 50 churches in the city, there's only 50 people.

Well, the rest of the people, all of us, have congregation.

We're the congregation of people.

So if we're going to change this, let's change our mindset and stop blaming everybody for what somebody else is not doing.

Look at yourself.

What have you done?

If the only thing you did was get on the radio, or you got on social media and talked about what we didn't do, then you didn't do anything.

You the problem.

Help solve the problem.

Get in the trenches, go meet the kids.

These kids only want to be loved.

They just want some people to talk to them, listen to them, and then not not judge them.

It's amazing that more kids know me that I don't know, and I'm not even in their schools.

I'm not in wherever they hang out at, but I show up in places and they'll say, yes, that's pastor parks over there, and I'm not like, God bless you.

It's so good to see.

May the Lord bless you.

We're good.

Oh, hey, man, what's going on?

Let's talk.

You know, is there anything I can do for you?

So I just think that as a whole, as a community that's Champaign and Urbana, let's stop talking about things that need to be less focused.

Just as chief said, let's focus on one thing, get it done and move to something else.

So chief, you have the blessing or burden or curse of trying to address our community and provide leadership in our community as a black man and law enforcement.

You want me to respond to that?

I want you to talk about building trust and relationships.

You know, I got you mean, to get you fired up.

All right?

So, you know, when I first arrived in Urbana, one of the things that was explained to me, they wanted a very progressive chief.

And to my fault, Tracy tried to give me advice, you know, don't try to move too fast.

People got to get to know you and I had relied on the work, my body of work that I had done in the African American community, not boasting or bragging.

But there's tons of literature that I have done with nonprofits, with schools, with churches, you name it, because I understand the value in actionable partnerships.

I don't like doing one offs because one offs don't move the needle.

We have to stay engaged.

So these kids, these families, they know us, and it's not just about the kids, it's about the whole family.

That's the process.

Because if, as Dr Tatum said them, kids go home.

They put their head on that pillow.

They forgot whatever it is you're trying to pour into them.

So there needs to be a machinery in place where we wrap around, I mean, surgically wrap around, none of this stuff that make us feel good.

Now, to answer your question, you know, as an African American police.

Chief is hard.

It's hard if you do any research.

One of the first to go is African American police chiefs, particularly if you are of a reform mindset.

You know what I mean by that?

Shortly after George Floyd, you know cities, they wanted police chiefs to do things to be more inclusive with the community, to build trust in those brave chiefs that done that they were asked to leave two or three years later.

You know, one of the reasons I'm in Urbana is because of such.

You know, I inject myself into a process where a group of folks were about to burn down one of my precincts because they had watched Minneapolis Police Department precinct getting burnt down and and I joined the protest because I wanted to show that I was authentic.

And I heard them.

I heard their grievances, and then one of them say, Well, hold this sign.

We want to make sure you're really mean it.

I hold the distinction of being the only African American Chief in the world to be photographed holding a Black Lives Matter sign.

That's a fact.

Now I don't say that for applause, because, trust me, I knew the moment I held that sign, there goes Saint Louis, there goes Cincinnati.

That's a fact, but that's okay.

This is where I am.

This is where God put me, and I plan on walking in my authority while I'm here.

Okay, I am going to inject change with the help of you all, I just need your help in guiding me, because sometimes I don't have patience.

You know, I know what works, and I don't have patience to hear someone tell me, we gotta talk about it, then we gotta talk about it again, then we gotta talk about it again, just to repeat what I said 18 months ago.

So, and then Council's got to prove it too.

I will also say my good friend Anthony Cobb, who was the police chief at the time in Champaign, he didn't hold a sign, but he walked with the marchers, and he didn't last too much longer after that, I can imagine before the internal turned on.

Well, that happens, and folks, that's That's unfortunate.

And you know, the profession, by nature, is conservative in nature, and that's okay.

But if, if you because we got to build trust with the community, and then we also got to build trust with our rank and file, and the moment they lose trust in you, it's just a matter of time, and it's just hard.

It's hard a police chief is always on fire.

I'm on fire right now.

I'm going to bed on fire.

I'm waking up on fire.

That's just how it is.

But you know what?

I like tough.

I like tough and, you know, one of the things that I always pride myself in is doing the hard things.

And I've done the hard things in this profession, I plan on doing the hard things here.

Well, since we're talking about black leadership, I want to ask a tough question for both of you.

You know, we go five to 10 minutes out, you do have a more conservative majority white community, and in Champaign Urbana, you have a lot of outspoken progressive people who think they can speak for black communities.

How do you navigate that as black leadership.

I don't listen to them honestly.

I don't I speak for myself.

I don't even want to speak for me.

I think, as she said, if we choose to come together and speak as one voice, then there's no need for anyone else to speak for us, but because we're not speaking for ourselves, everybody else is speaking for us.

So it just comes down to, when do we decide to speak for ourselves?

You know, we don't need a savior.

We already have one.

It's Jesus Christ.

I'm sorry.

I'm preaching.

We already have a Savior.

So we don't need any other community or anyone else to save us.

We just have to decide for ourselves, each individual.

Let me go back and say this.

I discovered that in this Champaign Urbana area, next Champaign County, with the violence and things that's going on, it is not we cannot program our way through this.

We can't put this program.

We can't keep throwing moneys in these places for these programs.

It is a heart issue.

We have to change the mindset of people that everybody is somebody.

We have to remember that in this community, I've discovered as well, there are people that are suffering with mental health issues trauma.

There are people that suffer.

Grief, and we have not addressed it.

And so while we're thinking we're okay, when we really not, it's like having having a room in your house where you sweep everything under the rug, and when you go in the room, after a while, you can't get in the room because it's so big.

So what we have to do now is, in my opinion, is to begin to take care of ourselves.

How do we do that look within ourselves?

Be willing to be willing to say, I need help.

That's one of the things that that is really hard for black men in our community to say that we need help.

I sit.

I have men in the church, and we have what is called Monday night men.

And we sit in there and we talk.

We have a, yes, we have a Christian lesson, or a lesson of the gospel.

But then we talk about men, things, what's going on with men and the at the beginning of that, when we started this ministry, brother, Damon Robinson, which is with us tonight, beginning to start at ministry, I shared my story to them, to the men, so they would open everything up, you know, to be open that I haven't always been a preacher, okay, I was a football player, really good football player, professional football player.

And I've coached football, but I did some things in my life I'm not proud of, and so I got that out.

And so many, so many young men said, Man, Pastor, you real?

No, I'm just who I am.

I don't live in a fake, phony world where I have never done anything wrong.

I'm always no, no, I'm making I've made mistakes in the 17 years I've been in Champagne, but I'm willing to say that, but in saying all of that, it is just accountability.

Be willing to stand on it, and so be it.

If you fall, just get up.

But if we keep waiting for somebody else to do it, it'll never get done, because it'll never be done the way you need it done, because they're going to do it their way.

You know, I'm from the sound I grew up, oh, my god, y'all don't even want to go there.

I grew up my high school.

I graduated high school 1981 in 1981 at Watson chapel High School, we could not have the prom together with our white students.

They did not start having prom together until 1992 but yet, and still, I went to school with them every day.

The school district paid for their prom.

We didn't raise our own money, but yeah, I had to go to school with them every day.

So we just, I know I don't need anybody you know, to do me, because we've always done that.

We've always been able to do this.

We've always been we've always said that, hey, either we do it or it doesn't get done, I don't depend on anybody else to do that for us.

So that's how I grew up, and I'll stop there.

Chief Boone, so in my experience, when there's issues in the black community, the black community is forward facing, and it's those groups, non profit, the church, you name it, they are forward facing and they are speaking to counsel.

That's what I was used to, until I came here, and I'm pitching processes to address crime for folks that are underserved.

And I didn't expect to get booed, you know?

And these were from white people, and this was culture shock to me.

And I turned around, and I'm looking for folks that look like me, and I said, Well, maybe they're busy.

Maybe they don't know all this just yet.

So 18 months in and anything I implement, let me be very clear, this isn't the entire council.

Okay.

There are most of them support what we're trying to do, but there some of them have a following of these folks that they claim to be pro black and calls for pro black.

I'm bond because I go to these incidents that folks face trauma.

For an example, the seven year old DJ, I go to the funeral, and I'm looking for those folks that are throwing tomatoes at me that supposedly so pro black.

They ain't there, but they had the audacity to chastise me about a letter I wrote regarding the incident.

So I don't understand the dynamics here in urbanica.

That's all I know.

I don't know much about champagne.

I. I would really like for someone to make it simple for me, and then if you understand, because if you tell me you understand, I'm going to challenge you to meet me Monday so we can stop this nonsense.

I'm introducing programs.

And when I talk about a program, and not talking about Shop with a Cop, I'm talking about things that we follow them from kindergarten to their senior year.

I know how to do this, and to be booed by folks that don't look like me or these kids that blew my mind.

So that's my challenge to you all.

I see a lot of head nodding, all right, but follow up with that.

Well, I know we need to go to David.

I think are going to go, but I just want to do a quick Reginald, because one of the things I say to Chief all the time is Urbana police has not done the work.

So what I mean by that they've never been in a position to build community relations in the black community.

It's never been an open space where they've invited the black community in.

And so you come and bring a different need openness to this idea of police being in the space, in the community.

So by you going to the funeral of little DJ, you would first abandon police chief to ever do anything like that.

And for folks who may be watching on YouTube a little bit, there's been some time that has passed, can you just briefly give us some context on who DJ was?

So several weeks ago, we had the unfortunate issue of a seven year old killed and the mix of two adults settling a dispute with gunfire and far too often the innocent are the ones that get caught up in those situations.

Can I just say this is for my officers?

Because I have a lot of officers that are just dying to inject themselves in these communities that we speak of, and they have the heart and the compassion to do it, we just need the support so anyone having questions out there, go ahead, give me your name city as you live in.

I'm Minnie Pearson Champaign, Illinois, and what's your question, Minnie, my question is to pastor parks and the kind of person I am, I'm I kind of make it my, my, my prerogative, to listen to different churches online and listen to your Bible study, and I see your audience.

And my question to you is, I noticed the difference between a lot of churches, black churches.

Here in town, you have a large number of young people.

And that's that's good.

How do you maintain that?

And it seems to me that you the parents are bringing their children to church.

So how do you maintain a relationship with those young people, and how long does it last?

Is it through high school?

Go to college.

How long do you keep in touch with those young people?

That's the pilgrim secret.

No one thing that my wife and I have done since day one we've been here when we find out that one of our students is playing first stream.

We go to the games.

We're at the parks.

We're not just there for our kids.

We're there for all the kids.

When I'm in the schools, I don't care if the student is not on my caseload.

If I see students I talk to, I make myself friendly.

The Bible says, in order to obtain friends, one must show themselves friendly.

Okay, so we show ourselves friendly.

We engage wherever we are.

We're just engaging with people.

And so young people.

I always tell our young people that if you want more young people in our church, tell them about our church, let them be the mouthpiece.

And once we get them into service, into our church, we try our very best to listen to them for the things that they like doing, so that we can put that in our program, in our byl from there any any young person that comes to Pilgrim, that graduates high school, we send them care packages to college.

We send them devotionals.

We send them mid year packages.

Just try to keep up with the person, because it's not about him coming and leaving.

It's about Train up a child when he's young, so when he's old, he won't depart from it.

So that's the principle that we use train seeing a lot.

Ask questions as we I like the question we ended up with the first panel, and in chief, the question is about what gives you hope, but I want to say publicly, because I was involved in the recruiting of you, and I thought we were ready for you as a community, right?

So I acknowledge, I acknowledge that, right?

I thought we were better in Urbana or ready for you in Urbana.

That's fair.

I acknowledge that now, but you've been here a little while.

What gives you hope that we can address and make a difference here in our community?

You know, growing up the way I did to leave a ghetto infested location, having been arrested twice, going to a new environment to live with my grandparents, where I was introduced to church.

Curfew, yes, ma'am, no ma'am, accountability structure to go on to earn a football scholarship to the Georgia Southern University, where we won two national championships.

And I'm truly a blessed man.

And I don't say that to be corny.

I say that every thing about this country, when it's been dark, we've always found a way to win Okay.

And what gives me hope is these conversations, and the more we have these conversations, the more we are sharpening our metal.

But we need to point and direct our energy to those locations that I spoke about earlier.

Folks, they exist.

We don't speak enough about those locations.

We speak more about those on the just above the surface, there's some folks that are living in abject poverty that that will just blow your mind.

So that's my two cents, Pastor, well, I didn't win a national championship.

What gives me hope for one every day that I get to stand on my feet and to breathe gives me hope.

What gives me hope is forms and panels like this, where people are willing to listen.

What gives me hope is that there are people who are coming to the church, who have gone through some horrendous things, but are willing now to go to work in the community.

Community, what gives me hope is there's conversation amongst black men who say, what can we do in our community?

What can we do in our schools?

And so what also gives me hope, that I hope they get this, is that young people, as they say in the street, real, recognize real.

Young folks know when you phony.

Okay, and so if you're, if we're going, what gives me hope again, is that there are men who have said, I'm willing to invest in these young people, not just through elementary school or through high school, but for the rest of their lives.

And if we all invest into children in our neighborhoods and all children like this, that gives me great hope, because we are people who have overcome so much, you know, and we keep coming back well.

Pastor Ricky parks, pilgrim, missionary, Baptist Church in Champaign.

Thank you for joining us.

And Urbana police chief, Larry D Boone, thank you for your words as well, and please give our panel a round of applause, as well as Tracy Parsons, it's nice to be back here, and nice to be back and I told you we were going in on the second panel.

And thank everyone in our studio audience tonight.

And for those of you who wanted to see other newsrooms and beats programs, it's all on the Illinois public media YouTube channel.

For all of us here at Illinois public media, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time you