AWKWARD DAYS, JUNIOR HIGH; one misstep and it's social annihilation. But they don't have a girls' basketball team at Crozier Middle School so Charisse Bremond Weaver '87, the petite dribbling dynamo, is starting on the boys' squad instead. She's maybe 4–foot–11 and all of 80 pounds, but don't say “can't” to Charisse, don't so much as even think it. Seriously. Don't ever say can't to Charisse.

Fast forward a couple of decades and now its HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, financial literacy in a place where poverty can out–pervade the weather, life–skills training where the concept of future can be as mysterious as Mars. In South Central Los Angeles, it's a good thing the now 5–foot–1 president and CEO of Brotherhood Crusade won't tolerate “can't,” a good thing indeed for the more than 20,000 area residents who benefit directly every year from her ‘here–I–am–world, game–on’ attitude.

“When you see a problem, when you see a gap, you should want to help,” Bremond Weaver says. “In the heart of this city, we all have to do our part.”

And so she wakes up every day spinning plates. There are always politicians and school district leaders to rally, philanthropists and foundations to inspire, major corporations to tutor and individual lives to bless.

“I'm a bridge,” Bremond Weaver says. “I'm always looking at leveraging great resources, leveraging great people I know. We serve a community that has profound needs. For African Americans and Latinos, we are at the bottom when it comes to health, when it comes to academics, when it comes to economics. We've made strides, but we have so much more to do.”

Called Off the Bench

Growing up, Bremond Weaver assumed every kid hung out with celebrities and elected officials. That her path might eventually be shaped by historic mentorship was an idea never considered. “I didn't feel any different, we were a middle–class family, public schools, all that.”

But at 18, barley graduated from high school and on leave from the basketball courts at The University of San Diego, Bremond Weaver finds herself back home on the front pew of Holman United Methodist Church on Adams Boulevard. She remembers being one in a sea of thousands that day, family, friends, community and national leaders, icons of the American Civil Rights Movement. Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr., a contemporary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was there paying final respects to her father. Walter Bremond, who founded Brotherhood Crusade in 1968—the same year in which King was assassinated—had died of a heart attack, “because he cancelled his bypass surgery three times—he just had to save the community,” she says.

On every side of her that day strong men are weeping; thousands of people, standing in the church, pouring out into the street.

“At that time it's kind of all about me. I had no clue. I was playing basketball,” Bremond Weaver says. “I had to stop and say, ‘Wow! I didn't know who my father was.’ He meant so much to so many people and I didn't realize it.

“While I was sitting in that church I thought, if I have the chance to touch even a third of the people he touched, I'll be OK.”

Game Time

It's August and the three–story windows collect the sunshine of another deceptively perfect day, dumping it into the Expo Center sports complex adjacent to the L.A. Coliseum. NBA veteran and Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach Jim Cleamons has just noticed a timid hand rising among the 125 youthful participants in his namesake Books and Basketball Camp, co–sponsored by Brotherhood Crusade. With serious eyes, a boy—perhaps not wanting to endanger the gift that is his camp tuition—quietly asks, “Sir, may I go to the restroom?” The boy's meekness is jarring. It's weird, but Cleamons seems to sense the eye–contact approval he makes somehow becomes a deeper validation, a vote of confidence not lost on a kid who probably hears his share of noes.

It's George Weaver, Charisse's husband, who months earlier briefs Cleamons on the failing exit–exam scores in South Central area high schools. “Half of what they need to be,” Cleamons laments. Equally appalling, he believes, is the deflating message attached to one of the hottest growth sectors in the economy: the privatization of prisons.

Those and other wake–up statistics are why Cleamons can't himself say “can't” to Charisse. “We're here today to make a difference—a difference in young people's outlook on life. We're trying to keep hope alive.”

Ironically, part of the “war” Cleamons has signed on to fight is against the glitz and glamour of the very venue in which he makes his living. When polled, most of the Books and Basketball campers say that when they grow up, they want to play in the NBA. “I tell them that's fine, keep that dream, but what happens if you don't? I tell them they have a better chance of being an astronaut, a better chance at being a surgeon—any number of things other than a professional athlete. So have that dream, but also have Plan B, Plan C, and maybe a Plan D.”

To that end, Cleamons has insisted on the “Books” in Books and Basketball, and he knows Charisse Bremond Weaver is the one person in South Central who can help pull off the mix. “Charisse brings all the qualities that you could ever want from a leader,” says Cleamons. “Working in the neighborhood, with her connections, she's able to reach out and engage people and corporations and to instill in them a willingness, not only to make a contribution, but to make a commitment.”

Even as Cleamons speaks, there is a group of campers downstairs pairing off and slipping into plastic gloves, some losing valiant attempts to self–master curling nostrils and watering eyes. Still, the ever–present scent of formaldehyde and the sight of their friends dissecting cow eyes serve as a reminder that this camp, this week, is an opportunity to leave behind the daily restraints of the world they know.

Self–esteem, self–value, self–worth, whatever you want to call it, it's where transformation begins, Cleamons says. “We realize that the battle is just beginning. We only have these kids for a week, and in that week you're trying to do a year's worth of work. Then you kiss them goodbye, shake their hands and wish them good luck and they're off again to an environment that's not necessarily positive, nor tries to reinforce what we've tried so hard to instill at camp.”

But maybe, Cleamons confides, maybe this act of reaching out, of making a touch, will somewhere down the line create a little inspiration, a little dedication. Maybe this week will open up the possibilities to new dreams. Maybe, there will be a win or two.

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