Allan Appel Photo
Charles Grady and Randall Redd
Charles Grady proved his coolness to middle-schoolers like Randall Redd by demonstrating he knew the “Dougie,” an old-school hip-hop move. Next came the real lesson: His personal tale of how he saw a young teen bullied, with tragic consequences.
A senior investigator with Connecticut’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, Grady told a story that gripped kids at the MicroSociety Magnet School on Valley Street in West Hills Thursday afternoon. It emerged as part of a presentation by Connecticut U.S. Attorney David Fein and his staff on the history of the civil rights movement.
It was part of the school district’s marking of Black History Month, and the U.S. Attorney Office’s efforts to publicize its new initiative to pursue more civil rights cases. Those cases include what speakers referred to as a spike in cyber-bullying and predatory behavior incidents online.
Noting a bullying-prevention sign in the school’s hallway, Fein (pictured with MicroSociety Principal Suzanne Duran-Crelin) said, “‘Speak up for the other kid’ is what we do in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
After colleagues defined and explored bullying — the exercise of power over another through repeated harassment for racial, sexual, physical or other pretexts — Grady brought it closer to home.
He recalled the “cuttin’” or ranking jokes of previous generations, including “Your Momma” jokes, which he himself engaged in as a kid growing up in West Haven. He said that as a 13-year-old, he knew a particular boy who was not good at returning the jibes.
“One kid who was not good at cutting, [and was hurt by it] but he held it inside, committed suicide” when he was 17, Grady said.
Grady said he had not realized the impact of the jokes until many years later. He said he learned that cutting was a tactic kids use to bring other kids down a notch when they feel inferior.
A retired Hamden cop with a new career in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Grady told the silent kids, “Pay attention to what you say to people. Your words cut more sharply than any knife you’ll ever use.”
Grady urged kids to only participate in cuttin’ among friends. MicroSociety’s Principal Suzanne Duran-Crelin interrupted: No, no. In her school, the practice is not permitted even among friends. Period.
She has instituted programs with her 230 Pre‑K through eighth grade students, like D’Andre Ford (pictured). The aim is to prevent bullying before it happens, she said.
Once it gets started, it’s hard to stop, Randall Redd suggested. If someone made fun of his sneakers, he was going to return it in kind, he said, even though he knew it wasn’t right.
“We talk more about the golden rule that’s taught in all cultures, kindness, compassion and how to be a good friend. How to be in the world, instead of the regulations,” Duran-Crelin said.
Beginning next month she said she will have all her classes read “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids” by Carol McCloud, she said.
Buckets in the classrooms will be filled with golf balls or other objects, each symbolizing a compliment or positive remark or gesture.
Just in case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is doing its job too.
Fein said he recently appointed two new coordinators in his office, one for criminal civil rights cases, one civil. On March 16, his office will hold a conference on civil rights at Quinnipiac University.
U.S. Attorney spokesperson Thomas Carson said the new focus or priority on civil rights is percolating down from Washington. “We can only prosecute what agencies [such as the FBI, for example] pursue.”
The new initiative this year just happens to coincide with Black History Month, Carson said. But the U.S. Attorney’s office, which has heretofore brought kids from the schools downtown to a one-time Black History Month event, will now be going out more into the schools.
Fein and his team will give two more presentations: on Monday, Feb. 28 at Hill Central Music Academy and on Tuesday, March 15 at Metropolitan Business Academy.
“Bullying does bring it down to a level kids understand,” Carson said.