- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been provided by The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

PSEG Foundation.

Newark Board of Education.

Seton Hall University.

Showing the world what great minds can do since 1856.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

The North Ward Center.

University Hospital.

One goal, one passion, every patient, every time.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Working for a more a healthier, more equitable New Jersey.

And by PSE&G.

Committed to providing safe, reliable energy now and in the future.

Promotional support provided by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

And by NJ.Com.

Keeping communities informed and connected.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change presidents in this country is by voting.

- I'’m hopeful that this is the beginning to accountability.

- Life without dance is boring.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I did do the finale, and guess where my trailer was?

A block away from my apartment, it couldn'’t have been better!

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

-_ It'’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it'’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - We're now joined by Jenna Lee, a childcare advocate and parent, and on the Parent Leadership Council of Advocates for Children of New Jersey.

Jenna, good to have you with us.

- Good to be here.

Thanks Steve.

- This is part of our ongoing series on reimagining childcare, your childcare journey representative of countless other New Jersey and American parents, US parents.

Your struggle for affordable accessible childcare is extraordinary.

Please, maybe it's not extraordinary.

That's part of the problem.

Please share with us.

- Sure.

So I would say that, when I first had my daughter, she's four now I had her back in 2018, and I was working at a nonprofit earning a pretty low salary.

So I was qualifying for the state subsidy program called New Jersey Care for Kids.

I'm working, being able to afford childcare at that time because the state was providing that assistance.

Eventually, I find a new job earning more money but earning more money meant losing that subsidy.

So now, instead of being able to finally enjoy earning an extra amount of money each month now I'm needing to use that money to pay for my daughter's childcare.

It's very, very expensive, in here in New Jersey, a lot of people will say it's like a second mortgage.

When we moved to a new county here in New Jersey I had then needed to find her a new center and that's when the test for quality came into place.

I'm paying $1,200 a month to get my daughter quality care.

And the first center that we found when we moved was very far from the quality that I was looking for.

One of the red flags that I experienced there within the first two weeks, one of the nice things about this center was that they did have cameras which in their situation kind of was a downfall because I was able to witness my child being on someone's phone.

She was the teacher in the classroom was using her phone to FaceTime someone and showing my daughter, and I'm trying to understand what's happening in the situation.

So I called the school and I'm saying, "Hey I don't know what's going on, but my daughter is being shown on someone's phone, as if they're on FaceTime."

An entire situation that finally got ironed out.

A week later, another situation comes up I pick up my daughter, put her in her car, seat in the car and I feel that she doesn't have anything on at this point, she's at the age of wearing pullups.

But they didn't have anything on her.

She just had her pants on.

So I marched back into the childcare center.

I'm like, What's going on?

Why is my daughter not having anything to protect her under her pants?

And they were just apologetic.

So immediately I needed to remove my daughter from that center.

And it was unfortunate because it was my first time finding a center that I was paying, the full price for following losing the subsidy, and it was just atrocious.

- If people wanna know what we mean by affordable is affordable it speaks for itself.

Accessible, it's accessible to you where you are, where you live, it's close enough, whatever.

Quality, Jenna just described by any reasonable standard, a lack of quality what is in your view, and also I wanna make sure we put up the Advocates for Children of New Jersey website so that people can find out more.

What is...

There's no one solution, Jenna but one action, one policy one specific thing that needs to be done to improve this terrible situation regarding accessible, affordable quality childcare, please, Jenna.

- I think that quality needs to be addressed through what teachers are being paid.

When you have staff members who are earning minimum wage how do you expect great quality from that?

Those same people who are earning minimum wage could go find a new job somewhere else, get paid more money so you lose the quality there.

I think that that's a big piece that needs to be changed within the policy, because we have found through many many studies that the first three years of a child's life is the most vital to their development.

And so if we know this why are we not providing that quality care?

If a teacher decides to go teach in a kindergarten classroom they're gonna be earning a livable wage but we don't get that same quality when we look at our preschool infant childcare centers.

- Not to mention that there's, listen, there's turnover.

We've lost people in our organization.

Turnover is a part of, of professional life, of the life of any organization, but turnover among childcare workers is way too high.

Talk about the impact of that on, forget about affordable and accessible, but again, quality childcare and the impact that has on your children.

Everyone's child who's in a childcare center.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

- Absolutely no, so when I moved my daughter out of that first center, that was just atrocious quality.

I moved her to a new center hoping that it would be a little bit better, and it was the quality was better.

But in that situation, we were dealing with a lot of turnover within the first month of her being there.

She had four different teachers.

And so how does my daughter get a sense of routines and consistency when every other week she's being placed with a new teacher in the classroom?

And it was really, really hard for her to make that transition when we did have to move out of a new, into the new childcare center.

- Yeah.

So lemme ask you this the issue of stress on parents.

Describe the stress that it has that's had on you which again, is representative of so many other parents in our state and our region, in our country, please, Jenna.

- Yeah, I mean, the stress is very, very high.

When you think about being a parent, and you think about being a working parent, childcare has to be essential because how do you go to work without childcare?

And so when I'm dealing with the high cost, the low quality it just makes the decision to put my child in childcare that much more difficult which then would impact me being able to work.

And so it's a domino effect that really impacts parents to to a level where it impacts their livelihood.

Because without working, how do you live?

How do you support your child?

And so I think that if we don't start to really look and fix some of the issues that we have here, within childcare you're gonna lose a lot of parents in the workforce because they're going to be stuck with this really tough decision on do I keep my child in childcare?

Do I stay home with my child?

And it's just, that's just what it's turning to, I see a lot of parents deciding to leave the workforce because of the simple fact that childcare is unaffordable and the quality and the accessibility is just not there.

- Before I let you go, Jenna, you're not only living this but you're trying to do something about it.

You're actually, as I said before on the Parent Leadership Council of Advocates for Children of New Jersey website will be on.

Real quick before I let you go why did you decide to be a part of this council?

- You know, when I became a parent, I really wasn't aware of just how hard it can be when it comes to taking care of a child, especially in the childcare realm.

So when I had heard about this opportunity, I had to jump on it because I thought even if I don't get to see the immediate response of what we're advocating for, then I know that the generations to come even my daughter if she decides to become a parent one day will have an easier time than I had.

I think the state of New Jersey does make good strides but there's so much more to do.

And so we at the Parent Leadership Council, we work tirelessly to make sure that there's a positive change in childcare for the parents in New Jersey.

- Very well said Jenna, I cannot thank you enough for joining us for sharing your story, for representing so many parents who are struggling with childcare issues and being a part of our miniseries on reimagining childcare.

Thank you.

And wish you and your family and your daughter all the best.

Thanks, Jenna.

- Thank you.

- Stay with us for we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We have him back.

He's Aqeela Sherrills Executive Director of the Community Based Public Safety Collective.

Good to see you Aqeela.

- Good to see you Steve.

How's everything going?

- Everything is all right.

Also I wanna make sure everyone knows last time you saw us, Aqeela was with us.

He is in fact the Board Chair of the Newark Community Street Team.

You'll see two different websites up, so you can find out more about the work that Aqeela and his colleagues are doing.

Aqeela tell us what the Community Based Public Safety Collective is and why it's so important.

- The Community Based Public Safety Collective is a national training and technical assistance provider to community violence intervention organizations nationally.

It's an outgrowth of the Newark Community Street Team.

We launched it in 2020 so that we can preserve the integrity of the work.

Many of the practitioners who do this work on the ground Steve, it's extremely difficult and challenging and they don't always get the recognition that they deserve for leveraging their personal relationships in communities to reduce and prevent retaliatory violence.

And so we wanted to really kinda put the work up and add professional standards and practices to the work, and ensure that residents who do this work are real constituency in the conversation when it comes to public safety.

- Aqeela you've been with us several times but I've never asked you this and I wanna make sure people understand that fighting crime for you, creating safer communities for you is personal.

You grew up in Watts, the Watts section of Los Angeles.

You back in the day if you will, brokered peace between the Bloods and the Crips in a, let's just say a dispute that was very real and you lost your son to gun violence in 2004.

It is very personal obviously, talk about it.

- Yes sir, 16 years of doing this work on the front line we organized the Peace Treaty in 92 changed the quality of life in our community.

I had kids young, growing up in the projects, living seeing things and witnessing things that no child should ever be subject to.

I had kids early.

I raised four of my kids as a single father.

My oldest son Terrell went to college, proudest day of my life my man, Humble State University on scholarship, checking him into all of his classes, meeting his dorm mates.

He came home for winter break and went to a party with some friends on the West Side of LA and an affluent black neighborhood and was shot to death at the party.

I mean I'm no novice to violence, I've witnessed it all my life, but nothing ever prepares you for the loss of your child man.

So it was traumatic to say the least.

And you know it man, it made me ask like kind of really tough questions.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty well respected in the neighborhood and in my community there's a conditioned response to when an OG kind of looses his son for that matter.

- And that is to be violent yourself.

- Right, right, but that wasn't Terrell's legacy and we hadn't been working for 16 years at that point on the front line to end violence.

Like it was a game.

And so I had to explain that like his friends and my friends that this eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth game that we've played had left us all blind and toothless.

And that we was gonna harness the energy of Terrell, and we're gonna do something different with it.

And so I always believed that we're not our worst experiences.

I mean in no way do I condone what the kid did in taking my son's life, but I do recognize that every perpetrator is a victim.

And somehow as a society, as a culture, we failed these young folks in terms of getting them the therapy and counseling and healing modalities that they need when they're growing up in these war zones, to be able to process the type of trauma that they've experienced so that they could show up like fully rooted in their humanity.

- First of all thank you for sharing and giving of yourself because it's part of who you are and what you do.

But a follow up to that is something I've been thinking about a lot anticipation and anticipation of this interview.

So many people whether in New York, or Newark, or other places especially in New York, look at all these folks who are being let out if you will with mental health issues, and they're out on the streets and then the judges are so lenient on that are back out on the street, okay, being lenient not the answer, locking people up, not the answer by itself, are there any successful initiatives that you wanna share with folks about fighting violent crime?

- Absolutely, I mean safety is a shared strategy and I've had the fortune of being a part of several local and national strategies around reducing violence and crime.

One of the things, one of the ones that I'm most proud of is in California we passed a Bill, one of the most progressive pieces of criminal justice reform legislation in the history of the country called Prop 47.

We took six low level felonies, and turned them into misdemeanors, releasing something like 5,000 people from jail.

To date in California over 300,000 people have had their records expunged because in California, one felony has 7,400 restrictions.

And in some of those restrictions were lifetime.

Now many of these individuals who had perpetrated crimes, they were mental health issues, they didn't need to be addressed by the criminal legal system.

We needed another approach to be able to support them in their respective healing journey.

Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Baraka launched the Newark Community Street Team, the Safer Newark Council a body that pulled together law enforcement, health, community based organizations, faith-based groups, to look at violence as a public health issue.

And from that strategy the Newark Community Street Team was born.

We've now had seven consecutive years in a row of decreases of homicide and overall violence.

NCST is one of the most successful Community Based Public Safety Initiatives or Community Violence Invention Initiatives in the country.

- That and that acronym stands for Newark Community Street Team.

Real quick before I let you go, so lock them up, just put them away for a long time, I see you shaking your head go ahead.

Final words.

- Hey, locking folks up for the rest of their life is not the solution.

You know, it'’s, you know... And public safety is just not the absence of violence and crime, it's also the presence of wellbeing in the infrastructure to support victims and survivors in their respective healing journey.

- Complex stuff.

Aqeela Sherrills our long time friend.

We've had him on a whole range of programs talking about police, minority relations, fighting crime.

He's been out there with the Newark Community Street Team and now Executive Director of the Community Based Public Safety Collective.

Aqeela we wish you all the best and thank you for the work you're doing every day.

- Thank you so much Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- Folks, we are honored to introduce Denise Peoples, who's been with us in the past.

She's a double-lung recipient and a hospital and community services specialist at the New Jersey Sharing Network.

And also Reverend Dr. Vanessa Brown joins us for the first time as a senior pastor at Rivers of Living Waters Ministry in Newark, New Jersey.

Brick City, my hometown.

Good to see you, Reverend Dr. Brown, and Miss Peoples, good to have you with us.

- Great to see you too.

- Good to be here.

Good to be here.

- Again, we're putting up the website, and the numbers, we've talked about this before.

We've bene involved in public awareness around organ and tissue donation for a lotta years because even though we've made some progress, we're nowhere where we need to be.

4,000 people are waiting just in the state of New Jersey for a life-saving organ.

68% of those 4,000-plus people are people of color.

We'll talk about that specific issue as well, but Denise, 15 years ago, you had a double lung transplant.

How did that change your life?

- It gave me a great quality of life.

I've always been very optimistic, very upbeat, but it gave me a different type of gratefulness, to be able to know that if it wasn't for my amazing donor and donor family from South Carolina, and my donor was 19, I would not be here.

I would not enjoy life and the quality of life that I had lost because I was sick.

And I got that back, and maybe better than ever, and it's one of the, it is the greatest gift.

The gift of life is the greatest gift.

- It is, in fact, the gift of life, and we've talked about this many times in the past when we've seen each other in person, Denise, and your upbeat personality, your positive attitude is so important for others to pick up on who've faced a lot less than you have.

Reverend Dr. Brown, let me ask you this: the connection between your work and your ministry, which is the same thing, and the problem on the issue/opportunity for those in your congregation to understand about these issues, particularly when a disproportionate number of those waiting for life-saving organs.

You heard Miss Peoples talk about the gift of life.

Disproportionately Black and brown.

What's the challenge there, Reverend Dr. Brown?

- I see it as two challenges, Steve.

The first challenge is education.

We need to consistently educate our congregations, and what I said earlier today, when I was speaking to Denise, is we need to talk in terms of testimony.

In the Black church, we believe in testifying, and so I believe that when we have people like Denise and others who are people of color that come into congregations to say, "Hey, look, this is what has happened to me.

You know, the Scripture says, 'I've come that we might have life and have it more abundantly.'

I'm receiving abundant life because I received the gift of life from someone else, and so today, I want to share with you what has happened," and connect that to a registration drive.

I think that people being able to hear and see is a really big thing.

- And along those lines, Denise, there are many myths that all kinds of people have about organ transplant, organ donation, but those myths are particularly significant in the Black and brown community given the disproportionate problem of way too many based on the population.

Nobody should be waiting, but 68% of 4,000-plus in New Jersey and a high percentage across the nation when the African American community is nowhere near that.

- Right, right.

- So among those myths that we need to dispel, Denise, take one, and just dispel it right now.

- My religion does not believe in organ and tissue donation.

We had an amazing faith-based round table this morning, which Dr. Vanessa was on, and we allowed and wanted faith-based leaders from all different types of religion to talk to us.

We didn't do a lotta talking.

We let them talk, and we wanted to know what their religion felt about organ and tissue, you know, what they say about it, and then we wanted to know what they personally thought about it, and then we wanted to know what can we do to make that connection?

So yes, that is one of the biggest myths and misconceptions, and of course, all of them have a basis.

There's a reason why there are myths and misconceptions, and to address those, the root of the problem or the root of the thought, and change it with the truth is definitely something that religious believers do believe in, and my thing is if you are part of a religion, and you feel like you have a higher power, a deity, a God, how can your deity, your God, your higher power tell you not to help your fellow man?

- Reverend Dr. Brown, I'm gonna not say anything and listen to you now.

Go ahead.

- So I think it's important, again, I bring it back to education, and also, there is something that hits me, even when Denise speaks, it hits me around health equity.

We need to begin to be able to talk about health equity within the Black church as well, and so because we are disproportionately affected, particularly, it's really kidney disease that hits us hard, right, that we need to have these conversations within our local congregations around health equity, and they need to understand and be educated in terms of receiving access, right.

And so a lotta times, people don't have access to the information.

They don't have access to the education of it, right, and so someone coming in, to be able to educate our congregations in terms of giving organs is so very important.

- But let's talk about some of the myths.

I'm gonna be more specific.

My wife happens to be a kidney donor, and people, one of the myths, "Oh, if you donate your kidney," as a, obviously, a living donor, "it adversely affects your quality of life."

Now, there are issues that she's aware of, and you should go on appropriate websites.

The Sharing Network will share this as well.

But she works out every day.

I can't keep up with her for a variety of reasons, mostly because she's in way better shape than I am.

My point is it does not negatively affect your quality of life.

It doesn't mean you can't exercise.

It doesn't mean you can't walk around the block.

Denise, you're shaking your head, and then I'll get Reverend Dr. Brown, and go ahead, Denise.

Go ahead.

- Good.

That definitely is a myth.

They feel like, "Oh, I can't give, you know, my kidney or part of my liver, because then I'm gonna be affected."

No, there has been major research.

On top of the research, there has been visual evidence - That's right.

- that you do not suffer and go through this terrible stage of your life when you give the gift of life.

There's two different surgeons, two different, you know, whole teams making this thing happen, and most times, the donor, the living donor, doesn't have to take any medication.

They're able to work out, do things.

You know, probably some restrictions like kickboxing.

I don't think you wanna be kicked.

- Kickboxing, yes.

There's no kickboxing, and there are certain.

She doesn't take in, I shouldn't start naming brands of anti-inflammatories, but she has to watch what she can and can't, yes, that's true.

- Yes.

- But - And that to me is.

- When you think about giving the gift, and you as a donor can see what you've done.

- That's right.

- Pop a pill.

It's okay.

(laughs) - Ah, I hear you.

Reverend Dr. Brown, you get the last word on this.

Send a message to everyone watching right now.

- Here is the message.

Organ donation and tissue donation is so very important.

It's about quality of life.

You know, those of us that are from religious backgrounds, here is what I wanna say to you: Jesus Christ said, "I've come that they might have life and have it more abundantly."

That abundant life is not just mental.

That abundant life is not just emotional, but that abundant life is also physical, right.

It's not only just having prosperity, but it's having prosperity in terms of health and wellness and wholeness, and you can give that gift if you make that decision and say, "Yes, I will be an organ donor."

Please do that today.

Please have that conversation with your pastors, with your leadership, and with your congregation.

- Reverend Dr. Brown, I'm not sure you were aware you were gonna be preaching today, but we are honored that you chose to preach with us and to our audience.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, Steve.

- And Denise, as always, thank you, and wish you and your family all the best.

Looking good, and sounding as great as ever.

Thanks so much.

- Thank you.

Take care.

- And thanks to our friends at the Sharing Network.

I'm Steve Adubato.

These are two really terrific people making a difference.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

PSEG Foundation.

Newark Board of Education.

Seton Hall University.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

The North Ward Center.

University Hospital.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

And by NJ.Com.

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