Faced with an epidemic of violent, drug fueled crime, Little Rock is budgeting an extra $10,000 a day for overtime to keep a shorthanded police force up to speed.
The latest surge of lawlessness in Little Rock has been gaining momentum in recent months. Since the first of the year there have been close to 100 cases of violent crime-homicide, robbery, rape and aggravated assault, a 24 percent increase over last year. And there have also been 30 murders so far.
The most spectacular act of lawlessness was the July 1 shooting at Little Rock’s Power Ultra Lounge nightclub which injured twenty-eight patrons.
After the nightclub shooting, both Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola stepped up efforts to address the city’s growing gang/drug problem proactively.
They will be aided by Little Rock’s history of dealing with substance abuse going back to 1940 when the state had its first AA meeting.
Gangs
Little Rock confronted a gang problem, similar to today’s resurgence, 25 years ago as part of a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and succeeded over time in stemming and reversing the trend, mainly by getting the police more involved with life in local neighborhoods.
The 16 communities participating in the program fought back against the gangs with varying degrees of success. And Dr. Anderson Spickard, Jr. at Vanderbilt College, who headed the multi million-dollar program, was cautiously optimistic at the time about the results.
“In almost every case,” he wrote in one of his final reports, “we have witnessed firsthand the power of good leadership and the ability of citizens to move from paralysis to effective action. In the process, we have come to believe that, despite an air of national discouragement, almost all our communities have the talent and resources to tackle the numerous problems of substance abuse.
“Although the specific form of an effective program is not necessarily transferable from our community to another, our Fighting Back sites have benefited enormously from exchanging ideas and programs with one another.
“It is our hope that this experience will enable cross fertilization to take place at a country-wide level and contribute to the national dialogue on drugs and alcohol abuse.”
Our Resources
In Little Rock, we are fortunate to have all the medical, addiction treatment and spiritual resources we need to begin to organize a citizen’s response to our growing drug problem, and a population that is probably a little more savvy than most when it comes to addiction and recovery.
With all of this in mind, we, at ODAT, propose to organize and carry out a response to Little Rock’s drug problem through a network of largely faith-based, non-profit companies.
We will be business-like in our approach with clearly stated objectives and budgets. We Americans tend to be entrepreneurs, impatient with those who tell us we can’t do something and eager to try out our own ideas. So when drugs intrude, let’s take advantage of our genes.
The Harvard Business School’s book, “Entrepreneur’s Tool kit,” defines an entrepreneur as someone who perceives an opportunity and creates an organization to pursue it.”
Further enlightenment is provided by Author Peter Drucker who once wrote, “The non profit institution neither supplies goods nor services [like a business] nor controls [like government]. Its product is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being.
Our mission at our non-profit company, One Day at a Time, is to help change the lives of those who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs by selling them on sobriety. Our main focus today is on Little Rock, Arkansas.
The “government,” whether federal, state or local, had nothing to do with my sobriety (except for one night I spent in the Fordyce County jail 40 years ago). It was Alcoholics Anonymous and my newly acquired Christian faith that launched my journey to recovery.
People
The list of people who helped me the most in my journey to recovery, some black and some white, included Wythe Walker, my sponsor, Joe Mcquany, John Neaves and Bea Williams who are deceased. Also on the list are psychiatrist, Harley Harbor, and Columbus Abrams who remain active in recovery circles.
All of them, like me, were or are recovering alcoholics. They understood, deeply, the concept of living life one day at a time, keeping their lives simple and avoiding resentments.
To these names, I add Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson and Bill Wellons, founders of Little Rock’s Fellowship Bible Church (FBC) 40 years ago where I was baptized and have been a member for 37 years.
Overcoming addictions is not something you do by yourself. You actually seek out the company of others so let me tell you briefly about my friends.
Wythe was my sponsor until his death more than 20 years ago. He came from a wealthy family, was friends with the Rockefellers and the Bushes and made sobriety look appealing and fun-but also serious and not to be taken lightly.
Joe, as many know, was an international speaker on alcoholism and the 12 Steps, author of two books and founder of Serenity Park alcohol treatment facility. Joe, who was black, was also a strong force in integrating AA meetings in Arkansas.
John Neaves founded Born Free, a recovery ministry in FBC’s early days and Bea Williams founded ERATA which aimed at finding jobs for out-of-work alcoholics.
I also want to give a special shout out to my friend Columbus Abrams, an association that began almost 40 years ago at Baptist Hospital when both of us were newly sober. He calls me every year on my AA birthday, but it’s not just me.
If I was the only one he called, it would still be a big deal to me, but the important thing is that Columbus calls about 5,000 recovering people on their “birthdays” every year in four states and a foreign country or two. That’s an average of a dozen or more calls a day (higher on New Year’s day when all those resolutions are in play).
And it’s not just a hello and goodbye. He personally buys about 36,000 minutes time annually on his telephone service.
Harley is a psychiatrist well known to AA members. He is charming, empathetic and helpful (he knows how it works. He’s been there). He got me off tranquilizers shortly after I got off of alcohol.
Robert was also the founder of what is now the international Men’s Fraternity, which teaches men how behave responsibly. I was in the first group to take the course.
The One Day at a Time (ODAT) mission in Little Rock for more than a decade has been to reduce levels of substance abuse by providing information on addiction recovery. Our plans now are to go beyond this into the area of providing treatment.
As we attract visitors seeking information we will begin to work with local organizations on forming a community “roundtable” with members who will provide not only information but also assist those seeking recovery with the actual resources needed to help them recover.
The Roundtable
Members of the “Little Rock Roundtable” will represent churches, hospitals, schools, businesses, prison systems, veterans groups, lawyers, legislators and others. Some will be in recovery themselves.
The principal treatment components of the Roundtable include:
- Mental health evaluation and treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD and other conditions.
- Addiction treatment for those struggling with alcohol, opioids, heroin and other drugs through 12 Step programs as well as psychiatric care provided on both an outpatient and inpatient basis.
- Faith based programs offered primarily by Christian evangelical churches and other organizations such as the Salvation Army and Union Rescue Mission, both founded more than a century ago.
- Physical fitness regimens provided by local gymnasiums and through the development of programs for home use.
- Employment programs developed by local businesses for the jobless.
Let us close with the Serenity Prayer: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Photo at top: The faces of recovery.
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