By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – Former running back Jim Brown is reaching out to Buffalo's gang members to help them score better lives with his Amer-I-Can program.
There were no bright stadium or movie lights for Brown's performance in Buffalo yesterday. These days the football hero and movie star makes his play under the hardened glare of violent criminals.
Brown spent the day Wednesday with inmates at the Erie County Holding Center and later the Alden Correctional Center. He talked with them about love, caring and leaving a life of crime.
Brown said he's seen the transition happen about three thousand times. But he especially recalls Rock Johnson.
"He was a knuckle head that spent ten years in Folsom, eight years in the hole - he was basically a killer in jail - and he turned his life around," said Brown. "And his daughter got killed and he was going to go and kill the person who killed her, but he called me. And he called me crying, and he never cries. And he did not want to do that. So, I talked with him and he did not take revenge. He left it up to law enforcement."
Brown said Johnson went on to become a respected high school coach and mentor. Brown said experience makes the best teachers. That's why Brown has ex-gang members serve as the facilitators of his program in thirteen states.
They work with gang members, who want to turn their lives around, helping them learn the life management skills necessary to make it.
But Brown said it also takes a willing community.
"They're absolutely necessary. Without the neighborhoods you'll never change what's going on in this country. It'll never be changed from outside in, it has to be from inside out," said Brown. "You can get a million policemen, they'll never be able to stop it - because people with no hope don't mind dying."
Brown said giving gang members hope in something through love, caring and consistency is key to the program's success.
The St. Augustine Community Services Center will implement Brown's Amer-I-Can program in Buffalo. The program will be offered at local correctional facilities.