Fathers March Down Dixwell

Clentis Sead marched for fatherhood -- as a means to help the community stop kids from shooting each other, and to build his own "heart relationship" with his two children after a three-year jail stint.

Sead (pictured) joined some 75 particiants Monday evening -- almost all male -- in the Brotherhood Leadership Summit's Fatherhood "We Care" march along Dixwell Avenue from the old Q House to the Lincoln Bassett School. The Summit is a project of the Christian Community Commission.

The point of the march: men promising to take a more active role in their children's lives.

Sead's children -- son Jalin, 16, and daughter Diamond, 14 -- live with their mother in Norwalk. Sead said he sees them on weekends and in the summer." I talk to them every day on the phone," he added.

What does he talk to them about? "Violence is all around, but I tell them to stay outside the box. You don't have to follow the crowd -- focus on God." Sead said his kids, though they witness violence in their neighborhood, have managed not to get involved in it.

"They see all the trouble I've been through, and then they see the turnaround," he noted. Sead said he served a three-year prison term for a nonviolent drug offense.

The march was called for the day after Father's Day as yet another protest against gun violence in which, all too often, teens and even pre-teens are both the victims and the perpetrators. Dixwell Alderman Greg Morehead and Newhallville Alderman Charles Blango both marched with their sons.

Along the march route, down Dixwell Avenue to Bassett Street, some bystanders and motorists clapped and honked their horns. Those exhibiting such enthusiasm seemed to be disproportionately female.

Few if any men joined in along the route, although Timothy Brown, a case manager and staffer of the Male Involvement Network at New Haven Family Alliance, did his best to pass out brochures all along the way. He invited fathers to participate in a 12-week parenting course.

Brown said he grew up without a dad, but was lucky to have male teachers mentor him in both second and sixth grade at Katherine Brennan School.

"I think the biggest obstacle facing African-American men in our community is that a lot of them grow up without fathers," said CCC leader Minister Donald Morris. "A lot of them, their fathers are incarcerated. It's like a generational inheritance."

Some groups that call for men to take leadership in their families (e.g., Promise Keepers) subordinate their wives. But Minister Morris Sumpter (pictured) offered a different vision. "Christ links the husband and wife," he said. "They should be partners, to challenge and support each other according to the will of God."

He said he found God while serving a five-year prison sentence for receiving stolen property. He's been with his fiancée for over two years, and considers himself the stepfather to her two children, including Charles Phillips, 6, who accompanied him on the march.

A few teenaged boys walked in the march, not necessarily happily. One marcher who "encouraged" his 13-year-old son to come said, "He'd walk to another state for a rap concert, so I told him he could do this."

Attorney Michael Jefferson spoke at the rally at Lincoln Bassett School. He told a story (true, he said) about the transfer of a community of elephants from one part of Africa to another. First the females and young elephants were moved, but it was harder to corral the big bull elephants. When the family groups were separated, the story went, the male juveniles started acting out. It was only when the bulls were finally reunited with the herd that they were able to bring the rambunctious youths into line.

"Do you hear what I'm saying?" he shouted to the crowd.

He said the community and the media too often blame young people for the problems of violence. "None of us will be a perfect father," he told the men assembled, "but we can be caring dads and we can help each other. We have to reach out and re-engage."

A number of speakers called for economic development in their community to provide jobs so men could support their families.

Brother Kevin Muhammed electrified the crowd in a speech that included references not only to black-on-black shootings, but to increasing suicides among black males, and the increase in violence among ever-younger boys.

Muhammed, who is principal of Wexler Grant school, said he was there to give black students a fighting chance of survival, as Jefferson provides the same chance to the African American clients he represents in a white-dominated court system.

"Real knowledge starts off with the knowledge of who you are," he said.