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Reclaiming the Young : Harambee Center Carves Niche of Inspiration in a Tough Neighborhood

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

In impoverished, gang-plagued Northwest Pasadena, the corner of Howard Street and Navarro Avenue is--perhaps--the most troubled spot of all.

For years, the intersection has been notorious as a mecca for drug dealers and gangbangers who hang around a tiny corner market--dubbed “the drug store.” The area has been a flash point for confrontations between angry youths and police, who say it is a constant struggle to stay on top.

It is at this same location that John Perkins, 62, and his wife, Vera Mae, 59, chose to make their last stand after more than two decades of working in black communities in their native Mississippi.

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In 1982, the civil rights activists founded the Harambee Christian Family Center at Howard and Navarro to provide free educational and recreational programs for children who might otherwise be hanging around on the streets.

Now a thriving local institution, the center was carved into the worn-down neighborhood with sheer determination. Along the way, John Perkins faced threats and intimidation from drug dealers who did not want him encroaching on their fertile turf.

“Early on, it was a life or death struggle as to whether the Harambee Center would be driven out, or whether it was going to establish a toehold,” Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole said, adding that Perkins “has shown tremendous tenacity.”

Named for a Swahili word that means “let’s get together and push,” the center offers day care and a summer camp, with supervised study and tutoring, music and computer classes, sports, arts and crafts, field trips, and camp-outs.

Harambee also includes a solid dose of Christian instruction, which, Perkins stresses, focuses on instilling “moral values, not a complete religious structure.” The goal: to help young people succeed and become productive citizens with options other than lives of drugs and crime.

The well-tended center complex, which includes four neat white bungalows, stands in stark contrast to the dilapidated buildings nearby. There is no indication that the bungalows were slum housing before John and Vera Mae Perkins bought and rehabilitated them.

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“We are trying to create an environment where young folks can be inspired to do more than survive,” John Perkins said.

Perkins stands as an inspiring example. He was abandoned by his sharecropper father after his mother died when he was 7 months old. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, who had 17 children of her own. Perkins quit school in third grade to help farm his grandmother’s land, but he taught himself to read as an adult.

After his ordination as a Baptist minister in 1959, Perkins spent 20 years in his home state helping develop day-care centers, business enterprises and education programs. Intending to retire, the couple moved to Pasadena in 1982. But when Perkins saw the problems in the neighborhood, he knew his work wasn’t done.

Harambee’s formula of social services and spirituality has won numerous accolades.

“So many efforts in our society make an artificial division between the spirit and material things, like a roof over the head,” Cole said. Perkins has “taken a long view,” the mayor continued. “He is committed to reaching people when rthey are young and working with them over a long period of time.”

Steve Klein, community outreach director at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, which provides volunteer tutors and financial support for Harambee, said most of the center’s children “would just be bored and would have nothing to do. If they (the Perkinses) pulled out or stopped, I don’t know who would replace what they are doing.”

By making the neighborhood their own, the Perkinses--who live just a few doors from the center in a home bought from an alleged drug dealer--hope to encourage other adults, who they say “are afraid and fearful” to reclaim the streets.

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Harambee works closely with police, fire and other city officials. And John Perkins has lobbied them for more resources. He encouraged the city to send building code enforcers to check notorious drug houses. And he organized a Neighborhood Watch group whose members have testified against drug dealers.

Frustrated by black leaders long on words but unwilling to fight in the trenches, Perkins said he is trying to “stand up for responsibility and discipline” daily and to provide “on-site leadership.”

It hasn’t been easy. In its early days, the center was firebombed twice. Police once warned Perkins there was a contract out on his life. However, the minister “was courageous enough not to be intimidated,” Cole said. “He gained a lot of respect from those on the wrong side of the law, showing them that he answered to a higher law.”

The center still has windows broken frequently, but Harambee is now a respected driving force. Some gang members even call the Perkinses “grandpa” and “grandma.”

“I want to provide what I missed out on, “ John Perkins explained. “I want to do parenting--parenting other people’s kids.”

Perkins noted that a recent survey found that 84% of the neighborhood’s families have no father living in the home. “If you didn’t have a mother that you thought loved you or a father that you thought loved you, your life wouldn’t feel meaningful,” he said. “We want to give them a reference of love and concern.”

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Two of the Perkinses’ eight children--Derek and Priscilla--are the center’s co-directors. They hope to open an elementary school in 1995 for the center’s children, many labeled discipline problems in the public schools. “Harvard minds with ghetto opportunities,” Derek said of the youths. “We want to make the scholarship of a private school available to them.”

John Perkins is by no means retired.

“I’m doing what it is I want to do,” he said. “I feel a sense of satisfaction. I can do this for the rest of my life.”

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