City Limits

[transcript]

I'm Jay DeDapper for City Limits. Recently we looked into the issue of black political leadership in New York City….

It's a lot of scandal, is what it is, and they're not doing their job.

Do you think they take the public trust seriously?

Not really, not really.

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This is the box I carried around with me when I was on the streets.

K. Smith was an honor student and a Girl Scout…and later a heroin addict.

We had everything, we really did, and I've thrown it all away.

She grew up in Suffolk County, began stealing painkillers from her relatives in high school and moved on to injecting heroin not long after.

If you think about it most people moved out to Long Island to avoid the quote-unquote evils of New York City, whether it be crime, poverty, homelessness, HIV, you name it. And that sense of suburban denial typically gives social problems, including the current heroin epidemic, a running head start on our kids.

Denial not only that heroin exists in the suburbs but that it's not limited to the urban streets like here in the East Village, and denial that the problem isn't even a new one.

+++ [Harlem Children's Zone]

What Jeffrey Canada has managed to do though, is light a fire, a fire that burns bright in community leaders like Gloria Wright.

Everybody gotta be involved you can't do it by yourself. When they say meeting today, meeting next week, you gotta try to get out there. And

believe me, me and my cane be out there, they know me.

Here she comes!

That's right.

In Harlem, I'm Jay DeDapper for City Limits.