BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer
There were no complaints of stomachaches, sore throats or high fevers at last week’s meeting of the Long Branch Concordance (LBC), but the “Street Doctor” still gave the community a prescription.
“My purpose is to save lives,” said Earl Best, also known as the Street Doctor, at the Nov. 16 monthly meeting of the LBC.
“This is no 9-to-5 job. I work for God by making house calls in the toughest neighborhoods.”
Best, who has no M.D. but a degree in street smarts, is the founder of Street Warriors Inc., an organization established to provide educational programs regarding juvenile gang involvement and tools for parents and children to deal with the growing issue of juvenile gangs.
And what better time to focus on gangs in Long Branch than around Thanksgiving, LBC Executive Director Terri Blair said at the meeting.
“A lot of us have a lot, but a lot of us need help,” Blair said. “We will do one person at a time.”
The LBC is a grassroots collaborative formed in March 2004 to address the needs of Long Branch residents and the neighborhoods in which they live.
The LBC serves the following three functions, according to Blair:
• to provide Long Branch residents with a central place where they can go for help;
• to get citizens together to discuss their needs and their community’s needs; and
• to identify gaps and overlaps in services.
Blair and the LBC host a community forum on a monthly basis, focusing on the different problems that affect local communities. This month’s topic is “Stopping Street Violence: How Communities Can Help Kids Avoid Street Gangs.”
One Long Branch resident and mother of four boys said, “Gangs are here in Long Branch.”
“How do I know this?” Tonya Badillo asked. “Because I talk to them every day. They are in my yard playing hoops.”
Badillo, like the members of Street Warriors Inc., decided to take action in the fight against street gangs.
“My son was hanging with a tough group of boys in school and coming home talking in a language I could barely understand,” she told members of the LBC.
“I did not have the answers, but I did know one thing: if I did not think of one soon, my son would end up in a gang, dealing drugs, or dead.”
Badillo decided to fight back.
She created Team Jump Off, an organization that offers literacy skills, life skills, field trips and mentoring.
She described how she began.
“I asked my son to invite his friends, this tough group of boys, to my house,” she said. “When I got about six or seven of them, I asked them, ‘What is it that would make you come to my home after school rather than hang out?’ Their answer created Team Jump Off. It started with a basketball hoop and free refreshments in my backyard.”
Best said communities need more mom’s like Badillo.
Best, like 90 percent of the advocates connected with Street Warriors Inc., was incarcerated for 17 years for robbing banks.
“In prison, I had a chance to educate myself,” Best said. “I promised myself that when I came out, I would make a difference. So I am here with Street Warriors to stop this.”
The chief executive officer for Street Warriors said the organization works because in the staff’s younger years, they were the kids on the streets and in gangs.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be in a gang to be accepted,” El-Amin Scarborough said. “I had to do what they were doing. A lot of gang involvement comes from children who are looking for love and attention and not getting it.”
Street Warriors Inc. has contracts and partnerships with the State of New Jersey, the City of Newark, the Newark Board of Education and faith-based communities in Union and Essex counties to become a force for peace and change in New Jersey’s toughest neighborhoods.
But Street Warriors Program Administrator and Chairman of the New Jersey Anti-Violence Coalition Abdul Muhammad said gangs are not just forming in Newark.
“This is coming to a city near you,” Muhammad said.
Muhammad served a 10-year sentence in prison after he accidentally shot his 19-year-old brother in the temple and killed him.
“There is a problem in our society,” he said. “Many young people today are raising themselves. There is a lack of parental involvement.”
“If it takes a village to raise a child, then we got to create that village right here,” he said.
And that is just what Badillo has started to do in Long Branch.
“All the youths in my yard are angry,” Badillo said. “Angry at what? That is our job.”
Badillo’s Team Jump Off, which began three years ago, is expanding every day, she said.
“The boys are simply amazing people. They have taken pride and ownership in Team Jump Off and it has quickly outgrown the space that I provided.”
“Our goal now is simple. We need a recreation center that will let the teens have ownership in their programs. The teens of Long Branch need a safe haven — free from the drugs, gangs and violence that they see on an average walk home from school every day.”
For more information about Team Jump Off, call (732) 829-7618 or e-mail [email protected].

