Harvard of the Underclass: Saving Souls for Free

Would you eat dinner in a restaurant that considered itself the “Harvard of the Underclass”? Imagine this… you are seated in a San Francisco Bay restaurant along the Embarcadero with a great view of the Bay Bridge and have just decided on the meal you will order. I ordered buttermilk chicken at the very enthusiastic recommendation of my waiter. As you close the menu, the back cover catches your attention. It is the story of the restaurant, a story that captivates you. After the incredibly knowledgeable and polite waiter stops at your table, he asks if there will be anything else. Your facial expression catches his attention, so he waits for your question. You point to the back of the menu and ask if it is real.
He laughs and says, “Yes!”
You continue the question: “But not everyone who works here?”
“Everyone.”
You are baffled. “No… really?”
“Yes, really.”
“You, too?” You lean away from the table and shake your head in disbelief.
“Oh yes, me too. Definitely me.”
You exchange smiles and he walks away to take care of your meal order. A fellow restaurant patron is perplexed and asks, “What was that all about?”
You point to the back of the menu and read a few highlights aloud. Every single one of the restaurant’s staff is recovering from a life of crime and addiction: drugs, alcohol, gangs, prostitution, violence, theft, murder. A few moments after you read the words, you realize that you’ve temporarily forgotten to continue breathing.

“Delancey Street is an incredible mix of hard practicality and idealism. It is the most successful program I’ve studied in the world.”
~ Dr. Karl Menninger

This experience has been repeated thousands of times and is but a small example of the ripple effect started by a dream that Mimi Silbert was wise enough – or crazy enough – to pursue. About twenty minutes into my dining experience, Mimi, one of the most energetic people I have ever met, approached my table. She told me how happy she was to meet me and we hugged. Then she laughed and said something that shocked me. “How are all my nightmares treating you?” She wore an infectious smile and, as she said it, she spun around with her arms gesturing to all the restaurant staff. Then she apologized for messing up and promised to fix it. She continued, “That’s what we do here. We mess up. But we fix it. We fix it. But then we mess up again. But that’s okay, because we can fix it again. We get really good at fixing our mistakes.”
I could only laugh because they hadn’t messed anything up. I had called Delancey Street to try to arrange a tour just a few days earlier, but they were unable to accommodate my request. They did call me back several times and were about as polite in every interaction as I’ve ever experienced. Mimi smiled again and said, “Whenever you’re ready for that tour, Vinnie will take you around. Then, if you have time, please come back so you and I can talk.” Then she was gone. Did I hear Mimi correctly? Was I going to get to spend time with the incredibly creative woman who had started this whole operation?
Sometimes the answers are right in front of us. And they’re not incredibly complicated. It’s just that they are very hard to do. They require the payment of a deeply personal price. Mimi Silbert understood this… more than understood – lived – this. Margaret Meade said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Mimi Silbert’s life has been a picture of commitment, thoughtful creativity, and willingness to pay a deeply personal price that has changed the world for tens of thousands of people.
What does Mimi do?
What is this Delancey Street, this “Harvard of the Underclass,” that proudly serves “the bottom 1%” of society?
The average resident is a third-generation gang member, has spent over a decade in prison and a dozen years addicted to drugs. Over 20,000 graduates demonstrate a track record unheard of in the rehabilitation field.
Mimi Silbert is the 95-pound dynamo behind Delancey Street’s success and has been honored by organizations around the world. When she was honored as U.C. Berkeley Alumni of the Year, fellow recipients included many Nobel Prize winners, Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel and author of Moore’s law), Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Don Fisher (co-founder of the Gap clothing company), and Eric Schmidt (CEO of Alphabet, parent company of Google). If you ranked the UC Berkeley Alumni of the Year by net worth or annual income, Mimi might be at the bottom. But if you ranked by net impact, her position on that list would change dramatically. Dressed in formal attire, many of Delancey’s residents accompanied her to the award dinner. After her brief speech, Silbert said “This beautiful thing [award] you’ve given me belongs to the residents of Delancey Street, and there is one person at each of your tables. [Until this moment, these diners identities were secret] Yes, they are former gang members, armed robbers, prostitutes, etc. These people have carried on intelligent conversations with you. Would our people please stand?” When the Delancey People stood, the rest of the diners not just applauded, but gave them a standing ovation. As Mimi describes it, “It’s extraordinary how much people are moved by someone’s ability to change, because if people with that level of anger and hatred can change, then the world can change.”

“She’s just amazing. She’s the one that I can respect and call my mom.”
~ A very common sentiment from many Residents

For Delancey Street’s 30th anniversary, they decided to have a prom. Most of their tens of thousands of alumni have never finished high school and had never attended a prom. As the calls and letters went out to invite the alumni, they also found that most of the alumni weren’t just regular citizens, they were also involved in significant community service, like church pancake breakfasts, helping at-risk youth, volunteering at soup kitchens, and much more. The habit of paying if forward stuck. How would you measure that ripple effect? It sounds like a miracle and I believe it is. Career criminals transforming into stand-out citizens.
I had the honor of spending several hours with Mimi. At one point, I asked, “Mimi, what happens with Delancey in 100 years, or 50 years… when there’s no Mimi?”
She didn’t seem worried about it at all. She explained that there are many, many people in each Delancey location that will keep it going. She laughed out loud when explaining that no one person would be crazy enough to get involved in all the things she does, but that would be okay. They wouldn’t have to.
I told her how amazing it was to see all the little pieces that worked together to consistently perform miracles in the lives of people who were on society’s rag pile. If you’ve ever read Og Mandino’s wonderful stories about rag-pickers, you understand.
Mimi got quite serious for a moment and explained that she is not a planner, never has been. She let me know that she has always tried things. Most of the “things” didn’t work out the way she thought they would, but she would keep trying and wasn’t afraid to get rid of ideas that weren’t working. That prom event… it was just an idea. Let’s try it. So they did. Another infectious smile took over her face as she recounted something they had been trying for the last three years. She animatedly described some type of mini-tribal meeting experiment, waving her arms above her head before abruptly dropping them to her side with finality and modestly commenting, “We’ll stop that experiment. It really didn’t work.” At the age of 75 and with the best re-hab program in the world, she was still trying things, still “messing up” and fixing it!
Mimi: “I don’t know what else to call it but the Harvard of the underclass. This is a place where you come to live as a last chance when you’re poor, you’ve been in prison, you’ve been using, everything – you’ve left school in the fifth grade. Many can’t read or drive a car. It’s a place where people come when nothing has gone right – often for several generations. Many have grandmothers who were in gangs.”
Business meetings in the $20 million, 400,000 square foot complex in San Francisco Bay’s Embarcadero may look rather ordinary, but at times Mimi will point out with her secretary did 12 years in prison for forgery and narcotics possession, or that the head of the moving company spent almost 2 decades in San Quentin State Prison! Yes, you read that right. Imagine the Delancey Street moving company showing up to help you load all your possessions!

Mimi’s Journey… How is this Possible?
Let’s make the program free. Not just free to participate, but free room and board, as well. Let’s do all this with no staff and no government funding. No therapists. No professional staff. No donations, no grants, no guards—just a remarkable influence strategy that has profoundly changed the lives of tens of thousands of people over almost fifty years. Recidivism – relapse – rates for U.S. programs outside Delancey: 77% fall off the wagon. Inside Delancey, over 90% never go back to drugs or crime. Instead, they earn degrees, become professionals, and change their lives. Forever.

“If our residents don’t become talented very quickly, then we don’t eat…. If we do well, we all eat steak. If not, we all eat rice and beans.” Mimi Silbert

Mimi says, “We started out with the idea that we would not be funded ... we wanted to teach our residents to earn money so that everything the organization achieved, the residents would know it was they who achieved it.” Since day one, Mimi has lived among the residents, eaten meals with them, worked side by side with them. She takes no salary.
If you’re anything like me, you have to be wondering several things. Is this real? Does it actually work? It must fall apart on a regular basis. If it actually works, what are their secrets. Well, it is real, it does work, not without hiccups, and they have many secrets to share with the world. Mimi has been relentlessly pursuing the question: “How do we build a place that actually works and is self-funded?” Throughout the journey, she has been willing to experiment, to try things, to fail, to humbly ask what lessons each experiment or failure carries, to believe in people even though they don’t always appreciate it or reciprocate that hope.
How is this possible? Mimi Silbert was a therapist early in her career. One day, she walked out of a counseling session and the patient said, “Thank you for helping me.” Mimi’s first thought was, “Wow! Mimi, you’re a good girl! You’re doing good things!” And then it hit her like a ton of bricks. Everyone needs that feeling. Every person on the planet needs to feel like they are serving, like they are adding value to another person, like they are needed. She realized that maybe the best way for her to help other people would be to help them help other people. That was part of the seed that became Delancey Street.

It started very small, in a San Francisco apartment in the early 1970’s, but the pursuit of different questions and willingness to learn from many mistakes led to something incredible. Silbert’s typical “new hires” have had four felony convictions. They’ve been homeless for years, and most are lifetime drug addicts. Within hours of joining Delancey, they are working in one of Delancey’s many businesses, which include a restaurant, moving company (just imagine having all your belongings packed up by ex-felons who know the grounds of San Quentin… By the way, the San Francisco branch of the moving company is the largest independent moving firm in Northern California), automotive repair, Christmas tree lots, wood furniture making, limo service (with clients including Gap, William Sonoma, and Pottery Barn), digital printing, and ironworks. Currently, Delancey Street operates in five locations with over twenty businesses and generates over $20 Million in annual revenue.

“If somebody gave you 35 prisoners, and they moved into your house, you’d say, ‘You’ll all have to help out because I’m certainly not doing your laundry. Who wants to be head of laundry?’ You wouldn’t sit there yourself trying to run them all.” Mimi Silbert

Their first business enterprise came about accidentally. A young resident wanted to go back to finish high school and they looked for a private school that would take a barter. In exchange, one school said you have to paint the school and build a small playground set for the younger children. No one at Delancey knew how to paint so they read a few books about painting. They disassembled and reassembled the playground set six times! At first, the children came off the slide and launched into the air because something was attached incorrectly. Disassemble. Rebuild!
As this “extended family” at Delancey grew, they moved out of the small apartment into an abandoned 40 room mansion in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights. They bought the building for just $50,000, but it needed a lot of work, so they applied the lessons learned from painting the school and building the children’s playground towards renovating the entire building. When completed, it was one of the nicest buildings in the neighborhood, but their neighbors were not thrilled to have 100 violent felons moving next door. To make sure that crime went down instead of up, Delancey Street residents became the crime patrol for the neighborhood. They also visited every single neighbor, volunteered their services, and told them that they wanted an opportunity to prove that they would be the best neighbors.

“When you don’t take any government money, you can do what you believe in deep in your belly.” Mimi Silbert

But could they succeed? Aren’t habitual behaviors tough to change? Delancey Street has learned that they need to focus on just two behaviors, not dozens, to open the floodgates for substantial and lasting change. Silbert explains that, “The hardest thing we do here is try to get rid of the code of the street. It says: ‘Care only about yourself, and don’t rat on anyone.’ If you reverse those two behaviors, you can change everything else.” To reverse these ingrained habits, Delancey requires 1) each person to take responsibility for someone else’s success and 2) that everyone confront everyone else about every single violation. It sounds simple, but residents include Crips, Bloods, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, prostitutes, Mexican Mafia members, and lifetime drug addicts. And they’re all bunking together! As you might imagine, tensions can run high.

“I thought everyone had former pimps and prostitutes picking them up at school.” David Silbert (Mimi’s son)

The Journey of a New Resident
Applicants must submit a written request for acceptance into Delancey Street, go through an interview panel with current residents, and promise to stay in the program at least two years completely drug and alcohol free and nonviolent. Whenever someone new arrives, three Delancey residents interview the person. The new applicant tells their story and in Mimi’s words, “we interrupt. We try to get you to stop blaming everyone. If you are hung up on your mother, we say, ‘If your mother controls your life and you want your life to be different, why don’t you send your mother here so we can work with her because obviously you have nothing to do with your own life!’ We try to get the person to admit that they did not make me pull the trigger, they did not make me rip the purse from the old lady. Yes, I did it.” Vinnie, one of my amazing tour guides told me that he had checked in to rehab 28 times before going to Delancey. He did NOT want to go there. Why? He knew their reputation of helping you straighten your life out. Vinnie had no intention of straightening his life out. When he sat there for his interview, he just froze because he realized that there’s no “them” here. There are no case-workers or counselors. Vinnie said, “I was looking at 3 versions of me. I knew I couldn’t BS them with the same story I told all the other places. They saw right through me.”
New residents are assigned a dorm room and a dorm head. Someone who’s been there for a month or so who will explain all the rules (they joke about having 999 rules!): get up in the morning, make your bed, do your dorm duties, take a shower. New residents immediately begin working a full 8 to 5 day with school work afterwards.

“New residents long for prison, where virtually nothing is expected of them.” Mimi Silbert

Each new resident is also assigned to a Minyan, named after the Jewish prayer quorum. The roughly ten members of each Minyan can be extremely diverse, including skinheads, gang members, and prostitutes of every race, creed, and nationality.
The 10 are told, “one little tiny piece of you wants to change or you wouldn’t have come here, so it’s up to the 10 of you to help each other turn that little thing of hope into a real hope.”
Anytime one of them in the group of 10 does anything wrong, all 10 will be called together and asked why it was done and why no one reported it. The only form of punishment is washing dishes.
Within the first week, each resident is placed in charge of someone else. From that time forward, they’re not asked how they are doing. Instead, they are asked how their crew is doing. While the regular work days 8 to 5, Mimi likes to say they live life with the tape recorder. Every half hour or so they’ll press the pause button to give feedback, encouragement, or learning. During a morning pause, a resident might conduct a seminar with a single vocabulary word or a concept. The lesson could be a quote from Emerson that they all discuss. Everybody checks everybody else all day with the vocabulary word or quote. At noon that talk about current events or review books. They may press pause to practice setting a table, choosing work outfits, or tying a tie. Every day, residents dress for and attend dinner where they all sit and chat. Most residents have never sat down at a family table for dinner. Twice a week they get together in groups to release stuffed emotions and they try to laugh at themselves constantly.

A Few Life Guidelines:
A few of Delancey Street’s mantras would transform any organization – if that organization would truly live them. These core behaviors correlate with reversing the street code “Care only about yourself, and don’t rat on anyone.” As mentioned earlier, violators are subject to extra work, such as washing dishes.
• Each one teach one.
• Care for each other – be both a giver and a receiver.
• Take responsibility for your actions; recognize that everything you do impacts others. Own up to your mistakes and simply fix them.
• Act “as if” you can become a decent, talented person of integrity (with the expectation that in doing so, you will eventually become one).

“We teach people who are used to being self-centered and full of hate to become full of love and to take care of each other. We give no therapy because the only therapy that works is to forget about yourself for a while and worry about somebody else.” Mimi Silbert

Lessons in the Small Things
Mimi says, “New people are comfortable in the world of drugs, hate, failure, and they bring that with them even though they know it’s self-destructive. You’ll have a new person say, I got the crappy broom, that’s why I did a bad job. ‘But c’mon,’ I’ll say to the person, ‘You’ve been doing this your whole life. You’ve got to learn to work with what you’ve got, to work with one another.’ They’ve lived a life of looking for other people to blame.”

Act As If
My tour guide, Vinnie, repeated the phrase over and over. It was part of his vernacular. “I as if’d it.” “I remember my first time waiting tables and dealing with restaurant customers – I just as if’d it!” When I asked what this expression meant, he leaned forward, with a look of excitement to be able to teach me something. He had already taught this to dozens and dozens of his peers at Delancey. He explained that we all “as if” things. When we’re little, we might not really know how to hit a baseball, so we act as if we do. We stand like our father, our big sister, or a professional baseball player, and we hold the bat as if we did know how to hit. We put on our uniforms as if we were serious ball-players. He said that when he was getting involved in drugs, he didn’t really know how to be in that environment, so he “as if’d” it He didn’t know how to be homeless, so he “as if’d” it. He said “now – here – we as if good things instead of bad things. We “as if” we have a great attitude. We “as if” we like interacting with the restaurant customers. We “as if” we are professional. We “as if” good stuff until it becomes real.” He explained that it’s like layers. You act as if on the outside long enough until that “as if” sinks into who you really are.
Residents are continuously taught, “Act as if… Act as if you really care. You might not feel it, but act as if you care about helping another person. The first step for a newcomer is to get out of yourself, to stop thinking about yourself and worry about another.”
Newcomers want to leave, but even though they’re not really feeling it, they encourage other newcomers not to leave because they’re taught by fellow residents to talk that way. But all of a sudden one day they feel, “No, no, don’t give up. If you give up, we all give up.” And suddenly they feel it.
What if you and I did this a bit more often? “As if” you’re an incredible husband or wife. “As if” you want to have a great relationship with that person. “As if” your standards were higher. “As if” you were a successful entrepreneur. “As if” you had courage. “As if” you cared more than is safe. “As if” you were more creative. “As if” it is your time to lead.

Each One Teach One
Each one teach can be applied to most valuable life lessons. Those who can read at the 8th grade level teach others who are at the 6th grade level, who teach others at the 4th or 5th grade level. Someone who is learning that it’s better not to lie, even about little things would then teach this lesson forward to someone who might not yet have learned it. The residents joke about the 999 basic rules because they say that it starts with everything, even down to the details of how to make your bed, fold your clothes, and set and clear the table for meals. Most of the residents need to learn just about everything related to living a normal life.
Mimi says, “…we rely on the people who have the problems to become their own solution. We do that by something we call, ‘Each one teach one, and each one help one.’ Our average resident is now a third-generation gang member. They’ve gone in and out of prison, basically, their whole lives. They even have grandmothers in gangs. Society is always worried about what we can do for them to get them to stand up, to be stronger and healthier, but at Delancey Street we need them. When you have no staff and you have no funding, you need the people in your extended family. We’ve run it like an extended family, you need them to rise up to be the best of themselves and give to each other.”

“No one should be in the position of only receiving, because it would make you powerless, useless, and give you a victim’s view of life… Every resident is both a teacher and a learner, a giver and a receiver. And it’s really in the giving and in the teaching that most people change.” Mimi Silbert

You Are Needed
Mimi: “The word [rehabilitation] is funny to me because most were never ‘habilitated’ to begin with. They come here, and for some weird reason, we love them and we believe in them and they run the place.”
Each resident must also develop three marketable skills, one in each of these categories: physical (hands on), retail (customer interaction), and computer (often finance). These roles are learned within the dozens of businesses operated under the Delancey umbrella.
Abe Irizarry “graduated” from every California prison, was once a member of the Mexican Mafia, and vividly recalls part of his own personal transition: “I kept saying I’d leave, but after a while, it struck a chord in me. I wanted to be somebody.” Today, Abe serves as Vice President of the Delancey Street Foundation and supervises intake interviews of new residents.
Even visitors are given a tour by residents. Mimi described one of the tour guides who used to be an active skinhead: “His entire body is covered with tattoos of swastikas and other symbols of hate and violence. My goal isn’t to shock tourists but to help them understand why crimes of hatred and vengeance take place.”
The Delancey Street population have spent most of their lives as takers. The game changes as they learn to become givers, learn how to serve before they think they deserve. Mimi believes that imprisoning criminals “at someone else’s expense, providing all their food and lodging and letting them sit there with no responsibility, is absurd. If you care about people, you hold them accountable.” I asked Mimi, what’s the biggest change in your approach over the decades of doing this incredible work? “Today, I love them more than ever. And I’m tougher on them.” Mimi’s bold love pumps through the veins of Delancey Street and brings the words of Saint Augustine of Hippo to life: “The greatest kindness one can render to any man is leading him to truth.”

Annual Christmas Party
At 4’11”, Mimi Silbert dresses as Santa for the family Christmas party with about 500 family members at the San Francisco location. She knows the back story on every single resident as well as their shoe size! Why? Each new Delancey resident gets a Christmas present that includes the most professional clothing most have ever owned. It’s often their first experience of a family Holiday, and some shy away. But Mimi requires that they try on their new outfits and model them for everyone to see.
Individual personalities are kept in mind when assembling wardrobes. Flashier ties with swirling colors will go to those willing to wear them, but not to those who would want to show off in them. Outfits are selected just on the edge of someone’s attitude – to push them to be a bit bolder, or to teach them a bit more humility.
“Mimi teaches the principles of Christmas – that it’s about giving,” said former resident Mike DeLane, now a San Francisco fire captain. “She’s like the mother nobody around here ever had.” Another resident said that it isn’t about the stuff in the box. “It’s about being in that room on Christmas, to finally actually feel loved by people who are going to go through the hard time with you and truly love you no matter what.” The way Mimi sees it, everyone at Delancey is an immigrant to mainstream society, just like her parents who fled Eastern Europe to escape the Nazis during World War II. They settled on Delancey Street in New York, pooled their money and eventually built a better life. Along the way, Mimi learned the value of sharing resources with her extended family.

“No matter who we used to be, it doesn’t matter. She sees us for who we can become.” my barista @ Delancey Street

Resident Robert McCormick experienced his first Christmas at Delancey in 2008. “It’s an amazing feeling. I finally felt what it must be like to have a family.” Going from rags to Brooks Bros. was such an uplifting experience for 34-year-old Sean Cronk that he couldn’t contain his tears remembering it. “All of a sudden people perceived me differently.” Once, while at a hospital, the staff mistook him for a doctor. Sean said this moment of respect left a “lasting mark on my soul!”

A few Graduate Success Stories
“I had no morals, no values, no trust, no education, only took care of myself and didn’t do that very well. I’m responsible now. I have goals. I want to help people. I’m going to become a nurse.... I learned how to be honest and dependable…. Thing I love about Delancey is helping the new people that come off the street. They were just like me. I get to watch them grow, watch them become responsible.” Rena Williams (resident working at the restaurant)

Kim Barish learned design in Delancey’s Christmas decorating department. She became a production designer at Foote, Cone & Belding.
Mike Delane had hit bottom as a crack addict. He became a captain in the San Francisco fire department; he also works to help kids stay off drugs.
Shirley LaMarr was involved with drugs and prostitution for 20 years, and had been in and out of jail. She went on to run social service programs including one in a prison.
Robert Rocha had committed 24 robberies and landed in San Quentin prison by the time he was 18 years old. After Delancey, he became a district sales manager for Pepsi, a husband and a father.
Bill Toliver went to school to study mortuary science while at Delancey. He became a medical examiner for the city of San Francisco.
Jimmy Tyrell had hit bottom with heroin. He got his general contractor’s license while building Delancey’s facility on the Embarcadero. He went on to run his own contracting business.
Pete Hopkins owns a trucking business and volunteers at Delancey Street’s charter high school for at-risk students.
Jesse Senore came all the way from Maine to attend a Delancey reunion, has been running a successful business for over 20 years, and is putting his five daughters through college.
Charlie Haden is a world-renowned jazz bass player who is still playing around the world and has performed with Ringo Starr.
Mary Carouba is an investigative social worker in the Human Services Department in Sonoma County and does comedy routines in clubs and cruise ships around the world and has written a wonderful book, Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion about the women impacted during the 9/11 attacks.

A Committed Lunatic!
There’s not a single person in Mimi Silbert’s life who didn’t tell her that she was crazy to start such an organization. But, in her own words, “You need a strong, visionary, committed lunatic to dedicate a life to initiate something. To continue, Delancey Street must be bigger than I am…. We’ve done things we didn’t know we could do because we didn’t know we couldn’t do them.” As a child, Mimi scored in the 6th percentile in a mathematics aptitude test, meaning 94% of American children her age scored with a higher aptitude for mathematics than Mimi. Perhaps this was her greatest asset. As Mimi says, she didn’t know what might not be possible!
I’ve now visited Delancey Street several times. During my daughters’ first experience eating there, our waiter told us that he met his daughter when she turned 18 and visited him in prison. They now have a great relationship. My barista at the coffee shop on the other end of the complex saw me holding a book and said, “I love reading! What are you reading?” We chatted about books for a few minutes and I later wondered if she always loved books or if she was in the middle of an “as if” I love reading journey. Mimi once told me that the restaurant serves several functions, but she especially wants 1) to show the world who “we” can be and 2) help us see who the world can be.
Thank you, Mimi, and thank you to the wonderful thousands of Delancey Street graduates who are changing things!
Will you commit to something you don’t know you can’t do? What will it be? When will you start? What are you waiting for?