The Healing Center is a brightly colored rabbit warren of staircases and half floors. Floors leased by the purveyors of eastern medicine, vegan cuisine, art, talismans, and organic goods. The type of place you could visit weekly for 100 weeks and on the 101st realize you’d missed a third of the building.
The hallways hum with the purring of an exposed HVAC system and quiet conversations. Sandalwood fills the air. It’s always somehow reminded me of a space station, commanded by modern-day gypsies, with double sliding glass doors that seem to want to serve as airlocks preventing the entrance of evildoers.
Down a handicap-accessible, sloped hallway sits a large man. He rests on the edge of a tiled planter in a black ball cap, jeans, an open hoodie, and a t-shirt that reads “Safety Creation.” He stares past the space in front of him on the linoleum flooring as if reflecting on someone or something centuries away. I call his name, and he stands to greet me. His stature is intimidating; his manner is warm and mild.
Cap Black is the sort of figure you’d want on your side of a dark alley. He walks erect in a manner familiar and comforting to anyone who grew up or around a military installation. Cap, however, is not in the armed services; his professional title is Head of Security at the Healing Center. He sometimes wears a cape.
Perhaps this is why I’d like to think of him as Sheriff around these strange and wonderful parts. In a graphic novel, he might be.
Cap is called many things. An urban crime fighter, a vigilante, a meddler, a hard ass. I’ve never heard him called a pacifist. The city recently called him a Hometown Hero, and he has the plaque to prove it. His actions in and around the neighborhood abutting the block in which the Healing Center has landed have his actions to thank for the capture and arrest of almost two dozen violent individuals. I prefer to call him Sir.
Cap calls himself a Safety Creator. A brand he takes a lot of care and pride in. I met with Cap over ginger beer and coconut hamburger patties to learn the story of his genesis.
The makings of a modern-day superhero
Cap was born Nadra Enzi in Flint, Michigan and raised in inner-city Savannah. His immediate family included his grandmother, a woman he cares for and respects deeply. I know this because as Cap grew into a man, and the safety of his grandmother’s surroundings deteriorated, he’d escort her regularly to complete routine errands.
Her neighborhood was one where multi-generational families once enjoyed walking the streets. Those same families now found themselves jailed in their own homes behind barred windows to avoid the onset of crime that inflicted their streets. Their stoops now inhabited by drug dealing juveniles thirsty to exchange violence for eye contact.
Perhaps it was witnessing the devolution of a place he once called home that spurred Cap’s need for justice. Or perhaps it was his infatuation with comic books. Books whose core principal rest on the notion that there are forces of evil, but also forces of good. Forces beyond those in uniform or on a city’s payroll. Forces that shed light on the dark world around them and fight to wrestle it back into the sun.
It’s likely that the grandson turned vigilante was a product of both his real world and the fictitious one he escaped to. The term vigilante, however, is out of place for Cap Black. It suggests a figure who has taken the law into their own hands. Cap Black’s work has resulted in multiple peaceful committees and coalitions.
“I chose that term deliberately, ‘coalition.’ It’s more suitable for the Marigny, St Roch. We’re a neighborhood of inclusionists, myself included. You don’t think a label like ‘patrol’ would work down here. Do you?” He grins.
It was clear Cap was as thoughtful about his naming devices as he was his strategy for change, which led me to ask where his name, rather, his chosen moniker, “Cap Black” heralded.
“It’s a nickname I got. I like it. Reminds me of my heroes in the comics.”
I wondered what comic book superheroes Cap Black might dream about including in his coalition. What hero would best suit our current situation?
“Doc Savage, Luke Cage, Batman.”
Quick answer. No student of comics myself I asked Cap to expand. What could each extraordinary human add to our newly founded fictitious coalition?
“Doc’s got it all. Luke Cage is a community man. Batman… well, he’s got the tools to solve just about anything, and when he doesn’t, he has the money to. Anyone of them would be enough. None of us are superhuman. We have to work together.”
Thus, the coalition of us ordinary humans? It would seem thus the coalition.
Caps coalition
This April, Cap Black hosted a Peace Walk. In a world at least temporarily obsessed with the Avengers, Cap had the New Orleans equivalent: artists, yogis, pastors, teachers, concerned citizens [including this writer], business owners, youth groups, spiritual leaders, police officers, even a police commander. Our meeting place? Under the oaks early one Saturday morning on the neutral ground behind St Roch market.
We formed a circle, and each of us shared a bit of our perspective on the solution for our current crime dilemma. Suggestions of cause and effect included: poverty, education, the judicial system, bad parenting, lack of faith, lack of religion, poor housing, the media, the police. The common denominator seemed to be a shortfall in one capacity or another. Someone else’s shortfall to be clear. All fingers pointed outward. Cap’s answer was far simpler.
“What we need is an engaged community. A community that doesn’t sit back and debate the finer points of reformation, but instead plays a role in helping reform the community around themselves.”
Cap was suggesting, kindly, that everyone turn those fingers around, and look inward for the answer.
Where do villains come from?
If superheroes are born from friction, where do villains come from?
On the day of this interview, we sat at a high boy table at the [now closed to the public] Seed restaurant at The Healing Center. Cap was exhausted from corralling a group of seven teenagers on the northern end of their teen years who had been harassing local citizens. Harassing may be too soft of a word. This group of seven teenagers jumped a single woman, causing her head trauma. The next day, they showed up inside the Healing Center, harassing customers by looting their belongings while they practiced yoga. It would seem those airlock doors would benefit from better gris-gris.
It would seem the gris-gris du jour from our Peace Walk surrounded the topic of reform. I was curious what Cap felt reform; truly effective reform would require.
“Unfortunately, reform in the state of our current situation requires an end to violence.”
Cap went on to explain how violence is reinforced. A cyclical power that once present in an individual’s environment makes reform next to impossible. Cap indulged me with a hypothetical scenario. I’m paraphrasing but imagine a place where the following story is possible...
A pre-teen is caught and arrested for auto-theft. The city responds by taking the kid home to mom and dad. Sounds sensible, generous even.
If it sounds implausible, it’s not. It happens every day. There are kids on the books in New Orleans who have been released to Mom and Dad for more than half a dozen counts of this behavior.
The scenario gets uglier. It’s not just poor parenting. What if mom and dad aren’t just turning a blind eye to the theft? What if they beat the hell out of the kid for stealing? Worse. What if they are the catalyst for the theft and beat the hell out of the kid for being caught? What if they’ve given up on them altogether?
If it sounds like the making of a supervillain, Welcome to New Orleans.
“We certainly can't say that we have a single issue as loud as the drug use in the '80s and '90s in inner cities. Being in an environment of violence where it's not just comfortable, but it is your normal, means that you have a choice to hit or be hit.”
I ask the question I don’t want to. Did Cap mean that if violence is these teens’ normal that it’s possible to interpret the actions of the seven juvenile delinquents as normal to them? They’re just in an environment that doesn’t except their normal? If so, then it would take changing their normal to change the behavior?
Cap Black seems to examine this with a heavy heart. While he's highly motivated, he also appreciates the deep sadness that comes with this situation. Perhaps this is the exact kind of question he was asking himself when I approached him in the hallway. It would also seem I’d answered my question.
“In the meantime, we have the obligation to keep each other safe.”
Gotham City
I move onto a softer ask. If Cap Black was grown in Georgia, how’d he land here? Why Faubourg Marigny? Why St. Roch?
As it turns out, Cap was engaged with similar work in another city. A friend called him up and said I think we need you here Cap. As he shares this, I can almost see a beacon materializing in the sky, Cap’s cape fluttering in the wind as he took the call.
“There's an energy that doesn't exist elsewhere — a tension. But also, an atmosphere of inclusion. One that allows for people to take charge, one that does so while still enabling creativity. Some might call it Gotham City."
Good Works
Cap lives on the lakeside end of St Roch just past Claiborne. He pitched himself as a service to the Healing Center on a volunteer basis. It wasn’t long before his good works became a full-time paid position.
In addition to creating venues for open dialogue in person and online, Cap spends his time chatting with folks one on one. To spend time with Cap is to be asked, “what do you think? What do you see? How do you feel?” And to Cap, it doesn’t matter if you’re a homeowner, a resident or passing through.
"We don't judge the victim," Cap Black says. "We judge the crime, and we're there to help the victims recover."
Thus, he is establishing a new coalition of people who have been the victims of crimes, or who care for those who do. “People need to know it’s not their fault. Things don’t happen ‘to them.’ They happen. No one deserves to be hurt or to be afraid. It goes back to healing.”
Which of course makes sense at a Healing Center. Yet, Cap’s works go beyond that. Cap is an equitable aid to those around him and that sometimes involves assisting those that the community might deem as undesirable.
He opens the doors to the Healing Center on cold nights to those sleeping on the streets. He exposes and engages potential problem juveniles to alternate, brighter paths. He acts as a pathway to justice, encouraging those who feel intimidated (or just unmotivated) to engage with the police to do so through him when needed.
Perhaps Cap Black's superpower is bringing people together. Perhaps it’s perspective. He doesn’t leap tall buildings or fly at 30,000 feet, but he seems to benefit from the viewpoint of someone who has.
Kryptonite
Every hero has a weak point. A chink in their armor. An Achilles heel. I wonder what Cap’s might be. What shakes him? What keeps him going?
"Very little if anything shakes me at this point. What keeps me motivated? Knowing that evil men flourish when good men do nothing."
Perhaps Cap’s kryptonite is that he’s a mortal, a human, and shares the frustrations of one. I ask instead what keeps Cap up at night.
"Unfortunately, there are competing ideologies. There are people that would seem to want to debate these ideologies in place of taking action and filing a report."
Cap Black believes one of the steps necessary to help eradicate crime that escalates to violent crime is filing reports. He receives a lot of push back on this from certain segments of the community. This includes individuals who feel that creating a report doesn't impact real change. It also includes people who believe that filing a report will result in the seizure and capture of a young individual whose life will be forever changed for the worse.
“Yet the outcome is that (with a young misled, violent individual) poor choices and violent behaviors are actually reinforced when someone doesn't take a step, they escalate.… we can’t reform someone who isn’t on record somewhere.”
It makes sense. If a person isn’t recorded, they don’t exist. If they don’t exist, they can’t qualify for the program available that provides an opportunity for reform.
The citizens of Gotham City
It would seem the recurring theme here is to ask not what Gotham City can do for us, but what we can do for Gotham City, safely.
I ask Cap what I can do to ensure others in my world that we don’t live in a police state where kids are thrown into a system that creates criminals. Cap ensures me that our new leaders in New Orleans believe in reformation, and that reformation can't happen when the individuals who need to be reformed aren't identified and aren't apart of the conversation.
I think back to the police commander taking time out of his Saturday morning to spend time at the Peace Walk. A commander who, earlier that same morning, had been called to a gruesome crime scene in a far-flung part of his district that resulted in the shooting and death of a toddler.
“The key is existing within people’s comfort zones. There is no one size fits all approach. You have to start where you’re comfortable.”
To Cap, that means asking and not telling. Asking whether someone is comfortable calling the police themselves, offering to do so for them. Asking whether cameras are something they’re interested in and helping them find an accessible solution for them.
Cap acknowledges he doesn’t get everything right. From where I’m sitting, however, Cap embodies the force of good that isn’t on the city payroll and doesn’t wear a uniform (unless you count the cape).
Paging Cap Black
If anybody would like to stay informed of or get involved in Cap Black's activities, coalitions, or committees, it's very simple to contact or follow him.
You can find and follow him here. No beacon required.
Komentáře