In the News

Boston Uncornered, a Dorchester-based nonprofit organization that works to reduce gang violence and connect at-risk youth with opportunities, has named Francisco “Tito” SantosSilva as its new executive director.He comes to Uncornered after having spent over a decade working with underserved and gang-involved youth at UTEC, the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS), and Elliot Community Services. Also joining Boston Uncornered is Jerrell Engermann, the incoming chairman of the board of directors and a native of Mattapan.

Michelle Caldeira and John Huet told listeners about Boston Uncornered, a new initiative aimed at helping gang members go back to school. They also spoke about the organization’s public art exhibit featuring portraits of former gang members, business leaders, and Boston’s mayoral candidates. Caldeira is the co-founder of Boston Uncornered. Huet is a renowned celebrity photographer best known for his portraits of professional athletes.

A man recounts having to tell his young niece that her father had been shot in a bungled burglary. A woman describes her mother, “the rock of my life,” beginning to hear voices and failing to recognize her. Another recounts the kitchen table conversation where she admitted to her father that she was pregnant at 16. “To this day, I still feel the shame, fear, and uncertainty that pulsed through me,” says that last woman, Kim Janey, the acting mayor of Boston. In an arresting public photo exhibit, she also recounts what the painful moment meant to her and how it turned her life around. “That conversation also connected me to prenatal care, support from my loving aunts, and enabled me to graduate,” she said.

A visual art exhibit being offered as part of a greater outreach for National Gun Violence Awareness Day illustrates the devastating impact gun violence can have on the community. “Most people don’t realize that gun violence is the number 1 cause of death in children and teens in America,” Angela Christina, a volunteer with Mom’s Demand Action for Gun Sense in America says. The group is sponsoring the online art exhibit as well as providing grant money to help fund community outreach programs like Boston Uncornered in Dorchester. “We want to end gun violence and we believe that the solutions exist to do it,” Christina says.

Ruben DaSilva, 25, remembered when he was 7. That’s when his family, in search of opportunity, moved from Cape Verde to Dorchester. He said it was challenging. “Not only trying to fit in but trying to find a purpose or just a friend group,” DaSilva said. “I always found myself on the corner, hanging around with friends. Today looking back, you would never have thought you would see some of your friends die, some of your friends go to jail.” DaSilva was among his group of friends to spend time behind bars. Arrested at 19, he was sent to state prison on drug charges, but things have changed a lot in six years. “I’ve got a career now,” he said. “It’s the decision that I made based on the skills that I had.” DaSilva credits his own choices and Boston Uncornered, an initiative of College Bound Dorchester focused on reaching former and active gang members.

Years before becoming director of operations for Boston Uncornered, Inita Jones was a METCO kid, splitting her time between home life in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury and Dorchester and school days in the wealthy suburb of Wellesley. “I always had one foot in my neighborhood and the other foot in the METCO program,” said Jones. “All of my education was in Wellesley, so I was able to see the two worlds and two sets of expectations around education and college. “College was always the expectation in my house, but not in my neighborhood, so it was definitely easier to get mixed up in the wrong crowd. I had different sets of friends— friends in Wellesley, and friends in the neighborhood that weren’t always into the most positive things, so I had to often make a choice about what path I was going to lead.”

When Francisco Depina of Dorchester was in middle school, a teacher told him he would either be dead or in jail by the time he was 18 years old. “It came to a point I kind of started to believe that,” Depina, now 35, told the Herald. Depina said he was kicked out of Boston Public Schools in ninth grade. “I was out there on that corner at a young age drinking, smoking, selling drugs and doing negative things,” he said. But then an employee with Boston Uncornered, College Bound Dorchester’s program to tackle gang violence, saw potential in Depina. He started to get involved in the program which provides neighborhood-based mentors, college-focused education and financial assistance, and soon went from a student to an employee of Boston Uncornered.

I watched in horror as the riots unfolded in the US Capitol on January 6, but I was not surprised. It was a culmination of actions we have seen over decades. It strained credulity in the moment but not for anyone who has been paying attention since former president Trump’s ride down an escalator or since the birther attacks on former president Obama. Even a passing glance at media headlines or chyrons and a perfunctory scroll through the main social media sites clarified what many have long known — there are wide disparities in the response to peaceful protests by black, Latinx, and indigenous people compared to terrorist insurrection by white Trump supporters.

The Boston Uncornered Photo Project is the newest installation at the Seaport Common. You’ll find thirty eight-foot photographs of athletes, celebrities, political figures, business leaders, and those that were previously involved with gangs or violence. Each photo is accompanied by a story from that individual illustrating a time in their life when they had to be resilient. The portraits are on display in the Seaport Common until Friday, October 30, 2020.