by Joey Brantle

Joey Brantle is CONNECT’s LEAD Project Manager. Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) is a systems change initiative that sits at the intersection of public safety, public health, and racial justice.

A few weeks ago, I strolled over to our charming local cafe, Espresso A Mano, to meet with CONNECT Board Member and Dormont Borough Manager, Ben Estell. The official reason for our meeting was to exchange ideas about municipal zoning and discuss The Color of Law, a history of American housing policy we’ve both read. However, as we sat and sipped our cappuccino (mine in an adorable miniature cup, his in a hilariously oversized mug), we discovered a shared background of struggle, grit, self-authoring, and mutual interests. 

While our drinks cooled and the cafe became busier as noon approached, we began to uncover unexpected parallels in our lives. As Ben shared his hopes to enlist in the Army, we learned that we had identical plans for our respective military careers: he intended to become a Human Intelligence Collector, which was the role in which I completed my military career. We realized that we were both slated to spend a year taking an advanced foreign language course at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. We even discovered that we both had perfect scores on the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery – a military exam that tests an array of aptitudes to predict potential in a variety of roles), which meant that we each experienced the silly astonishment that such scores typically elicit at testing centers.

By the same token, we discovered intrinsic similarities beyond our career and aspirational overlaps. By discussing our childhoods and the experiences that shaped us, we shared the obstacles we faced and the creative solutions we found to overcome them. Whether the barrier was financial insecurity, injury, classist gatekeeping, inexperience, or some other unforeseen event, we found a way. We unearthed a shared determination to excel and be our own teachers in the process, and we commiserated on the stresses and joys of that journey.

We discovered that we understood each other better than we ever would have anticipated. At first glance, one would not assume that the twenty-something, biracial, queer LEAD Project Manager at CONNECT would have much in common with the established, white, middle-class Borough Manager of Dormont and CONNECT Board Member. Nonetheless, having these conversations and unearthing these analogous experiences is one of the foundational principles of CONNECT.

Now, Ben and I can build on this mutual understanding as a bedrock of trust to get even more impactful work done through CONNECT for this region. That is the power of CONNECT-ing.