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Rude Awakenings

by Bill Dusty

If the leadership of AWAKE are not feeling the heat, they should be.

Last week’s Springfield Republican story by Mike Plaisance on the simmering controversy surrounding a member of local community group AWAKE (Alive with Awareness, Knowledge and Empowerment) has stirred up emotions on both sides of this contentious issue. The Plaisance story went into detail about member Desi O. Jackson’s past run-ins with the Law, including convictions on child rape and assault & battery in the 1990s and – just one month prior to AWAKE’s January 2005 creation – another assault & battery charge that resulted in a 18-month probation sentence. Jackson was also convicted in 2000 on cocaine possession [with intent to distribute] charges, and is currently listed as a Level 3 Sex Offender by the State of Massachusetts.

Jackson clearly has had second, third, and fourth chances to redeem himself. But has he done so?

The controversy flared up after Jackson attended an assembly at Putnam Vocational-Technical High School. The Principal of that school, Kevin McCaskill, is listed as the Treasurer of AWAKE and, according to the Republican article, knew of Jackson’s Level 3 Offender status. According to Springfield Schools Superintendent Joseph Burke, Level 3 sex offenders are prohibited from all school property. McCaskill said in the article that Jackson was in a controlled environment with many adults present. McCaskill then asserted, “It’s beyond me to pass judgment,” and said that he would allow Jackson to attend future events at the school.

The Masslive Springfield Forum is peppered with angry posts from anonymous users demanding AWAKE open up with details about such things as leadership positions, activities, and funding sources. According to the Republican story, the organization receives grant money through the Spanish-American Union, with the amount totaling over $350,000. (The story also mentions that AWAKE pays out a 10% administrative fee to the Union for each infusion of grant funding it receives.)

As far as providing answers about Jackson, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Robert McCollum, was quoted in the article as saying “I don’t really trust you guys, the paper.”

It was a strange comment for McCollum to make, since it hardly appears AWAKE should be expecting trust from anyone else in light of their own recent struggle with the virtue.

The core members of AWAKE have repeatedly defended their organization and its members – including Desi Jackson. But it truly does remain to be seen if Jackson himself has changed at all. His convictions have spanned over ten years. He has been clean, apparently, for only just over three. And his attendance at a high school event was, to say the least, highly inappropriate – regardless of what sex offender sympathizers/excusers may think.

In any event, as some have mentioned, AWAKE is a publicly funded organization. There is an accountability factor there, whether the group chooses to accept it or not. Unfortunately, AWAKE appears to be guiding itself under a in-your-face policy: If you don’t like what we do, then shove it. They are going to do as they please, regardless of rules, standards, or perceptions. One Masslive Forums poster admonished AWAKE co-founder Chelan Brown – who once was the youngest candidate ever to run for the office of Mayor of Springfield (as an 18-year-old, in 1995) and who is now listed as president and director of the AWAKE – to cut Jackson from the group’s ranks if she has any intention to run for public office in the future. But more than any one person, the organization’s reputation as a whole has taken a huge hit from this controversy. And it is an issue that is unlikely to go away. The group will continue to be watched – and not necessarily by admiring eyes.

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OTHER TIDBITS:
- Springfield Mayoral aide Darryl Moss was a founding member of AWAKE.

- The Republican article mentions Chelan Brown’s residence, as documented with the secretary of state’s office, to be 28 Beaumont Terrace. A brief Web search found that she sold that property in 2005 to a Chandler Daniels. (A Whitepages.com search shows a “Chelan D. Brown” listed at 89 Catharine Street, Springfield, MA.)

- The AWAKE website apparently didn’t work out -> http://springfieldawake.org/

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Apr 23rd, 2008 and filed under Cities & Towns, Feature Stories, Politics, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.