The tragic murder of four young people on July 4th continues to haunt the hearts and minds of Milwaukee residents. Three blocks from the site The New Hope Project works with people trying to pull their lives together. WUWM News learns how the program works and meets the man who calls himself a poster boy of change.
Tom Back is program director at The New Hope Project. The lanky, “look you straight in the eye” man reflects on the tragedy of four young lives unraveling just a few minute’s walk from his office at 27th and North.
“It just strengthens our resolve to provide opportunities, alternatives, pathways to employment. Give people some hope literally,” Back says.
Back and his colleagues help people pull themselves out of poverty by moving them into the workforce. That can include helping them get a GED or untangling lapsed driver’s licenses. What compounds the challenge is that many of the clients are felons. For them the obstacles can be overwhelming. Back calls it a tyrannical stress of such force, most of us can’t imagine.
“It’s when you have a job change, a housing change, and significant changes in your relationships. Well guys coming out of prison, all of that is going on at the same time. And so even those who want to do better, they’ve got to deal with all of that pressure and how take it constructively one step at a time. And if they lose hope, then maybe something happens that they’re back in prison,” Back says.
Nobody has to take on the challenge. This is a voluntary program. So Back says, people are reentering the community grasping for resources, because they want a better future.
That’s how it is for Charles Dupar. The tall, deep-voiced 35 year old grew up in Milwaukee.
“I kept bumping my head against the wall, against the wall, against the wall trying to, what we say, “do me”,” Dupar says.
That meant doing whatever it took to get what he wanted, money, possession, whatever.
Dupar says, he wasn’t part of a gang, it was more of a clique. Five, 10 maybe 15 guys in the neighborhood just hanging out.
“So yeah, me being involved in cliques kind of called a lot of different downfalls, different spirals,” Dupar says.
He was playing around with guns when he was 15. Within a couple of years Dupar says he catapulted into life-threatening situations.
“Stuff you hear on the news you know, shootings. I can’t say I was involved with a homicide. I’d rather not say,” Dupar says.
Dupar says he was young and stupid.
“It was like an adrenaline rush . It was like acting something out that I saw on TV or seen in the movies. You’re a terminator, you’re a cowboy. It used to fascinate me, the good guy and the bad guy situation. The one that had the biggest pistol would always be the tough guy,” Dupar says.
I asked if he thought of himself as a good guy or a bad guy.
“Kind of both at times. If I was on some devious stuff, I was the bad guy. But if I was protecting my stuff or protecting family or friends, it was like a good guy situation, like a hero,” Dupar says.
Dupar was sent to prison for the first time when he was 22 for possession of a firearm and marijuana. That’s where he lived on and off for the next decade. Dupar says he was living in a foggy world. He calls it an incarcerated brain. He imagined two possibilities for himself.
“Either prison was the life for me or the grave was the life for me. That’s horrible. That’s horrible to think like that,” Dupar says.
Dupar says it took his final incarceration, this time for selling cocaine, to wake him up. He says he left prison for the last time, January 30, 2007. Dupar learned about The New Hope Project through his parole officer and he’s been working ever since. He’s working at a bakery, third shift, but wants to go back to school, buy a house and be able to spend time with his three children, whom he’s seen very little of. Dupar says The New Hope Project staff is like family. They help him stay focused and positive.
“I love being able to do what I do right now. I have no complaints. I enjoy it. That’s why I get up and look forward to going to work. Get up and look forward to accomplishing something out of the day,” Dupar says.
I ask if he ever misses his old life.
“No, never. I would never ever miss that life. It’s another chapter in the book that’s been closed. It’s time to move ahead,” Dupar says.
The New Hope Project is able to work with about 200 people like Dupar. That’s less than 10 percent of people being released from Wisconsin’s prisons back into Milwaukee.
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