We Are From One Vine

Dr. Reid is President and CEO of the South West Nu-Stop Recovery and Educational Center (SWNSREC) , a substance abuse and treatment facility. SWNSREC serves the Philadelphia area via two robust multifaceted, treatment facilities located in Southwest and North Central Philadelphia. Both community focused and people-centered endeavors exemplify Dr. Reid’s passion for liberating people struggling with poverty and urban infused behavioral health and cooccurring disorders, as he and many inner-city youth have experienced.

Defining moments: I would say that in my family growing up, my mom and dad and I have had the great pleasure of being mentored by some the greatest Philadelphians that we have: Cecil B. Moore and Hardy Williams who came to me as a young man and saw potential in me.

I was grounded in our housing project, the Johnson Homes, at 27th and Ridge. The great community that we had in that development has helped set my values. I learned early how to help a neighbor, and how to reach out and help someone who is less fortunate. These are things that were embedded in me.

Significant accomplishment or project: As the National Coordinator for African American Affairs for President Jimmy Carter, I had the opportunity to work out of the White House and to rub elbows with some of the finest African Americans in the country. Other great moments included being able to organize projects in Philadelphia that had to do with youth, being a part of our crisis intervention network, being a co-writer of the endeavor which ended gang violence in the city, and put us on another level as we traveled across the country to assist other cities with their youth violence plights.

Advice for young people: To understand how significant they are, to understand their real purpose, to isolate themselves from all the negativity, to understand that having fun is only for a moment and if you compromise who you are in that moment of having fun you are really ruined for the rest of your life.

How to build relationships within the African Diaspora: The first thing is that we have to understand how we ended up here and they ended up in the Caribbean. Slave ships stopped first in the Caribbean for the sugar cane, and then continued to North America. What we need to understand is that our family members were ripped from each other to be placed in the Caribbean and here. We are really brothers and sisters. We need to sit down and stop trying to find differences in ourselves and, instead, find our similarities. We are from one vine.