Oregon Public Broadcasting

Hip hop is the soundtrack of urban street life.  Nightclubs that play the music can be a magnet for trouble. 

But a Christian social service group is convinced it can co-opt hip hop and keep at-risk kids on the right path.  Correspondent Tom Banse reports from Tacoma.

Club Friday in Tacoma, WA

Life is about making compromises, isn’t it?  It’s why good Christians can end up operating a nightclub where teens dressed in saggy pants and short skirts bump-and-grind to deafening music.

Yes, they’re out past midnight too.    But if they’re here, the club’s outgoing director Deanna Neidlinger says the teens are safe.  The alternative could be running with street gangs – in Tacoma in this case.

Deanna Neidlinger: “The average kid on the corner would say... You know, they would get a flyer and it would say come to this church for a social.  They would laugh, rip it up and throw it on the ground.  It just wouldn’t happen.”

So a youth outreach worker had the idea to start a downtown nightclub.  In 2004, the Christian aid group World Vision added Club Friday to its domestic poverty relief portfolio.

The club plays hip hop, a musical genre that adults frequently dislike because of the cursing and sometimes violent lyrics.

Deanna Neidlinger: “It wouldn’t make sense to reach out to the toughest kids who have been the least reached, the hardest served, with music that doesn’t relate to their experience.”

The nightclub plays the radio versions of hip hop hits.  The cuss words have been edited out.

18-year-old Dominique Lewis says the no-smoking, no drinking nightclub crowd has his back instead of a gang family.

Dominique Lewis: “It is very safe here.  You know, if you need if you somebody to vent to, we have mentors.  It is very comforting here. It is a home away from home.  People say school is a home away from home. But it is not.  School is a prison away from home.”

Earlier this year, Lewis and friend Sondra Mays helped some churches in rural Yelm, Washington start a copycat Friday night club.

Dominique Lewis: “Let’s be truthful, when we were out there I didn’t see any African-American people out there.  But the place was packed with Caucasians listening to the same music we listen to, dancing the same way we dance.”

Sondra Mays: “We was shocked ourselves.  Like, for real? So we thought, we can go global with this. Yeah, we can go national with this.”

World Vision did help these two -- and fifteen other Puget Sound teens -- fly to Washington, D.C. to talk to their senators and Congressmen.  The youth lobbied to direct anti-gang spending to intervention and prevention instead of more jail time.

Sondra Mays: “If kids are on the streets gangbanging as they so proclaim, then get them off the streets. Give those people money so they can make flyers so they can get out there and get kids into their buildings.  Help them, mentor them, tutor them.”

The underage club is open after school on weekdays to provide some of those very services.  It can’t reach every wayward teen, as reflected by the dismissive sneer of Mario Jones who was hanging with friends around the corner.

Mario Jones: “This club is whacked.  Ain’t nothing but cops around here and only 16 to 21 let in.  It’s whacked.”

Police, sheriffs, and politicians all report a resurgence of gang activity in communities across the Northwest.

Online:

World Vision

Club Friday