By Gene Walker
When you think about taking your family or friends or staff out to eat, my guess is you aren’t thinking about how to solve one of our communities’ biggest social issues. By the end of this year, that will change, when Café Momentum Pittsburgh opens on Forbes Avenue downtown.
It’s not news that our juvenile justice system isn’t working very well for many of our youth, especially for minority young people. For many youths in Pittsburgh, their first interaction with the police occurs at a school-related event. Black-male students are four times more likely to have a police encounter at school as compared to their white counterparts; black females are seven times more likely. In these cases, the solution is to suspend, expel, or detain these students; they begin a relationship with the juvenile-justice system that can quickly spiral out of control.