It has been a very long while since I have written anything and to be honest it's because I seem to have gotten lost along the way a bit.  I've learned a lot during this time in limbo and have experienced some amazing things and some new pains and hurt at depths that I was unaware of before.  Healing is what leads me back here and I hope to find that and help heal someone else that may need it or at least perspective on the inner workings of my mind.  I've said "I'm complicated but I'm not cruel" somehow that wasn't heard and well here we are...



Back in the 1990's I had opportunities placing themselves before me every other day and I'd always pass on them because I thought they'd always be there.  School paid 100%, Pass  Working for a congressman, Pass move to another state paid for and school paid for, Pass and I spent much of the 90's like that and the one thing I didn't want to pass on was having a family.  I wanted to have kids as soon as I could because I wanted to build an army and I wanted to be young enough to be able to do adventurous things with them in their 20's etc... So I ran out and got married at 20 years old and I felt like I was running late because I was already 20!  Within a year my wife tells me she wanted a divorce and didn't want to have children with me, unbeknownst to me that would be a crushing blow to my self esteem for decades to come.



A lot has changed since 2015 since I last wrote here and I'd like to get into it in detail (some parts) because it's important to me that there's some sort of record from a man that even though we create a lot of problems and wars and conflicts that there's men out here that have suffered at the hands of a society that chose to hate them based on the color of their skin, where they grew up, where their parents are born, and so many other reasons that don't justify the abuse.  Then those men have to grow up and PICK how they will release these emotions and careful not to burden anyone for the fear that the rejection, just like from society, will happen again and they won't know how to react. 



Looking for peace I think has been a challenge because we always forget that before peace there's a first step, healing.  This blog I started back in 2012 because I had the great idea of walking across the US to ask people what they thought is needed for peace in our society.  I unfortunately shared the idea with a Pastor that was looking for a hook to gain popularity and he made his moved before I could and ruined the opportunity there.  With the funds raised we settled on bringing Brothers from across the country to talk about this process of Peace and I brought up the fact that no one was talking about healing and how that needs to be the first step before you get to peace.  We explored the idea and came up with many more thoughts around it and we spent a good three days speaking on it.  We haven't gathered since but the message is out there about healing.  One has to be in the process of healing or at least understand that healing needs to be present first before you find peace.  People have said that peace is healing but I believe it to be the outcome of a process of healing and not to say that I am right but you have to face what you've done and what's been done to you before you can be at peace with it.



I invite you to read some of the past post to get an idea of who I am and what I was trying to do and later I will share what I will do as a second part, at a national level, for walking to peace and hope that you'll be there to participate.

Peace / AMOR

Gerardo

...as a ten year old

I have written a bit about this but want to go into further detail...


Once there was a child and his name was Gerardo, he was mostly happy and loved to play but one day he decided to join his cousin on a short trip to the corner store.  This trip was all of 1056 feet round trip and what can happen in such a short distance??  On our way back a Chicago Police car rolls around the corner and stops suddenly.  The officer was a tall fat white hair man that was red in the face as if his blood pressure was trying to pop his head off.  The officer struggled to put his car in park and almost side swipes a parked car.  My cousin froze and was holding on to me, I suspect in a form of guarding me, and the officer pushes my cousin to the side and grabs me.


"You little fucking wet back go back to where you came from...get out of my neighborhood..." I was shocked because I had never heard these words ever in my short life so I didn't know whether to be insulted or direct him to someone that fit the description of what he was calling me.  He had a pretty good hold of me and finally my cousin grabbed the officer to pull him away from me and got him to let go and as soon as he did my cousin took his hands off the officer.  I cried all the rest of the 197 feet left to my house.


I had to ask what these names meant and why it was directed to me and here is where I found out that I was different than other people.  I quickly became ashamed to be called Mexican I refused to speak Spanish anywhere I let bullies pick on the Spanish kids that had just migrated to the US and spoke with a heavy accent.  I didn't want to be this "wetback" the officer was calling me because I didn't want to get in trouble.  Then one day my teacher stands me and my best friend Chucky up front to teach the class the meaning of greater than and less than.  My teacher was the darkest Black woman I had ever seen and found her to be so powerful and I admired that about her but I had never seen her as a Black woman before until then.  I was taller than Chucky so my teacher says "class, Gerardo is Greater than Chucky in height and Chucky is Less than Gerardo in height"  "Ooooohhhhhhh" the kids were getting it so why take it further.  "Class, Chucky is Greater than Gerardo because Gerardo is part of the minority group and Chucky is part of the majority group" Uuuummmm What the fuck she just say?!?!?!?  At least that's what I imagine my facial expression to be because others in the class had the same look.  So we all look to her and someone asked "What does that mean?"  She had a short fuse so she blew up and started saying that we just needed to accept what she just told us! "Greater THAN and Less THAN get that through your heads!"  We both sat down but after having my first violent racist event in my life I knew what this woman was talking about and I didn't like it.


This all took place 30 years ago and that summer I had my first defiant act against the police, I was selling "illegal" fireworks.  I had a nice little operation going on and had the best stuff because my supplier lived next door and was one of the nicest hillbilly's I have ever meet.  I was sitting on the front porch and was just about to sell some M-80's when I notice a squad car rolling my way and I tell the kid I'm selling to not to give me the money just yet but this other 10 year old panics and runs! Rookie! So I already had my left hand over the side and tossed everything into the bushes.  The squad slowed down and we made eye contact, the days cops didn't wear sunglasses because they wanted to make eye contact, it was a sunny day and the sun was behind me so he didn't get a good look so he rolled on.  The kid comes back later and I charge him more for running!


I liked the feeling of looking down at a cop at the age of 10 and knowing that I was doing something that could possibly get me in trouble but knew I could out run him if I wanted to so I was going to keep doing what I was doing.


I meet a guy by the nickname "white boy" and this kid was the poster child of your typical "gang member" circa 1985.  The way I meet him was by a scared classmate of mine that was warning me that, lets call him daniel, was going to come over and take my fireworks from me because I was taking away his customers.  I laughed and said "tell him that if he got a problem then he can come to ME!"  See where this went wrong was that I thought this kid was talking about his older Brother daniel not the thug from the corner that I was soon to meet.  So just like any other little kid he goes running to White Boy and tells him what I said and here he comes and if I could put a theme song to this walk this dude was doing as he approached my house it would be "You talk too much" by RUN-DMC.  It was obvious that he had never really been down to my side of the block but everyone that was out knew who he was and he could tell people knew him because people started to scatter a bit.


"Yo! you Gerardo?" he said, "Yea why?" in my toughest and deepest 10 year voice "I hear you selling fireworks can I see what you got?"  I knew that if I showed him there was the potential of him taking off with it.  Now, this whole time he's on the side walk and I'm up on the front porch so I asked him if he had money and he did so I tell him that if he wants to buy then he needs to come up to me and the look on his face changed.  Back in those days even thugs understood that if you were caught on someone else's front porch without permission its been one for you!  But he smirked and came up slowly and once he's up there I ask him what he wants to buy and he wanted M-80's I sold him a few and he left.  A few minutes later I could hear them go off and back he came.  How I knew how to deal with him and the nerve I had to treat a "thug" like him like that escapes me because I did not have that environment at home and my older sisters didn't act that way nor did they have people around them that acted that way.



Soon RADAR would emerge and change my life forever... 

Why did you wait until now?

In the last couple of years there has been a new push in "liberal" activism to talk about gun control and police brutality due to mainstream media broadcasting the killings of primarily Black men outside of "gang" violence as if this was something new or unheard of.  Is it really new to them or is it just trendy to talk about it?


Back in 1993 I was invited to a community meeting where a family friend said to me "if you want to see real power come to St. Johns Berchmans on Logan blvd on Saturday."  This was a local church that opened it's doors to many youth programs when I was growing up and held the first ever Logan Square Olympics...So I go to the church on Saturday and watch how the community held the local police accountable in front of the mayor and other public officials.  I thought to myself 'Yep I'm doing this for life!' Four years later I realize that even though the community has the power to move things it's the organizers, activist, and ministers that fuck things up.


Black people have a history in the history of this country of being murdered and ignored as if their lives did not matter and every once in a while someone will stand up make a push then they get shot down and things fall back in place.  We can name each famous one that we all know but we do not know all the real names.  Did you know Chief Malik is one of these Black men that stood up and tried his best to get things moving forward?  Many people supported him until the media and government reminded them that he was Black and dangerous, once in prison all that support left.  He is one of literally thousands of Black men that have sacrificed their lives just in Chicago alone to defend the Black community.  All the other names you may not know because you don't pay attention to the murders of young Black youth when they have ties to "gangs" and you may at some point feel like they might had it coming to them and because of that you are to blame for all the recent killings of Black people in our country.


Does that upset you?  It should but don't be upset with me I'm just telling you the truth and this is why it's true.  Recently The Chicago reporter aired a dashcam video ( CPD Dash cam shooting )  of a Chicago police officer shooting into a vehicle of Black youth injuring a few of them and somehow The Chicago Reporter and it's members seemed outraged by it.   Has The Chicago Reporter never heard of these things??  They have but didn't believe the source just as The Community Renewal Society (CRS) and the United Church of Christ (UCC) have before.  I mention these groups because I've worked with them at some level or another over the years.  I'll admit I've rubbed some people wrong and cussed some people out and that's all normal when you're dealing with people's lives out on the street.


Back in the 1990's CRS had a great team working on how to connect the Churches with their communities and there I met my adopted Grand Pa Rev. Art Waidmann.  He came to my church (First Spanish UCC) to basically tell us how we should involve ourselves with the community and I told him "who the hell are you to tell us what to do?"  He smiled and said "I've been waiting for someone to tell me that!"  Art invited me to his office to talk some more about what I was working on in the community.  At the time I had already started working on a gang intervention program (based at the church) and all I was really doing was building a relationship with the Brothers behind the church.  We did the usual things that everyone did in the 90's, clean the parking lot, the play lot, the street corner, and took a bunch of pictures to prove we did something.  At the same time I started working with Luis J. Rodriguez (Author of many books including Always Running) and Youth Struggling for Survival by creating a table called Increase The Peace Network.  Within 3 years of working together, many of us were just volunteering our time, we had a strong table of 30 individuals that represented NFP's from across the city to mothers that wanted to keep their children alive.


Only with this network were we able to get some people's attention to the police shootings, cops dropping kids off in rival areas, the planting of guns and drugs when the cops killed an unarmed Brother, etc... basically everything you've been hearing for the last couple of years on the news. 
I remember Art telling me that no one will believe anything unless people step up or they see it themselves so I would invite people to come into the hood if they didn't believe what I was telling them.  All I got was "yes one day I'll have to come down there..." Come down there?  I wasn't asking anyone to come down anywhere but instead to come across the city to see what it was they didn't believe.


Think about that, why wouldn't anyone believe, especially someone like a minister or exec. dir of a NFP, that a police officer would murder someone in cold blood?  I had people tell me that the time's of Al Capone were done and that those stories were only believable in relation to the Outfit (Mafia) because the police wouldn't bother so much with youth and gangs.  Did they ever come out to the hood? Nope.  Will they now? Nope. Unless someone like Jim Wallace from Sojourners magazine tells them to.  I'm not dumping on Jim because he at least put his neck on the line in the 90's by supporting gang treaties and our Urban summits as well, I'm dumping on the ministers that say they from the hood or their church is in the hood that sit and wait for someone, like Jim, to tell them to go into their own communities.


So the question is why am I blaming YOU for the violence including the recent shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church?  It is because all this time you've felt complacent to watch the abuse taking place in Black communities because you believed everything the media said about the community being "gang involved" or "drugs were found" or "on welfare."  You have allowed racism to flourish in our society because you didn't believe what someone was telling you 20 years ago about the abuse taking place in the community simply because they didn't have a degree or some sort of title of "importance" that you found impressive.  Do you know the damage that ignorance has created?  Ask the people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church or the single mother on the south side of Chicago that has buried most if not all of her male children what are the consequences of that ignorance.


As I said I might have rubbed some people wrong and what I am saying here isn't helping the cause either but it's the truth and I don't mean to sound malicious but those of you that know me know that I speak from the experience of first hand and not story telling.


CRS, UCC, Reporter you ALL have done many great things in the past but as of recent you haven't taken the challenge seriously, PEOPLE are dying and it's happening on your watch.  The violence in Chicago is very complex and deep and it has ZERO to do with a livable age or the school closings or any thing like that and some have exposed the truth but it seems like you're waiting for Jesus or Jim Wallace to say "go into your communities."  I respect you all but come on strap up and go forward!  What's the worse that can happen? Get shot? mugged? stabbed? arrested?  That happens to preteens everyday in the hood why can't you take the same risk?




Peace/AMOR

Gerardo Serna

.....in my void

27 years ago, in 1987, I learned how to ride a bicycle during a late summer night that was oddly silence of music, gunfire, and people yelling.  That night was my best night as a child because I had taught myself something that I thought was impossible to do but I had mixed emotions about it.  My Father, whom I adore dearly, refused to allow me to learn how to ride a bicycle but never gave me a solid reason as to why. 

My oldest Sister, Monica, boyfriend at the time lent me his bike, surely to keep me away from them as they looked into each others eyes for the evening,  gave me simple instructions on how to teach myself to ride.  He said “put your foot on one pedal push with the other and once you get enough speed put the other foot up on the other pedal and PEDAL!” Easy enough I thought to myself but a disappointment grew in me as to why my dad couldn’t just give me those same simple instructions.

Here I am pushing myself on a bicycle down Keystone Ave. trying to get enough speed and courage to put my other foot on the pedal…faster---faster---faster---faster----faster I kept telling myself then a car would appear and I’d have to stop.  After giving a dirty look at the driver of the car I’d push on faster-----faster----faster---faster---faster---faster and the first try I almost wiped out but was able to pedal a full rotation and picked up some speed and there I went….

Once I had “mastered” this bicycle riding I just wanted to zip up and down the street but had to watch the front windows of my house to make sure my dad did not see me riding a bicycle.  Faster I went down the street to the point I thought I was going to hit Warp speed! but never did to my disappointment.  After what seemed all night my sister’s boyfriend took his bike back and said he’d let me use it when I needed to so I could keep up on how to ride it.  I could barely sleep that night because I was so excited about where I would go on my own and that’s what my dad was afraid of.

The summer of 1987 was a good summer altogether but crack cocaine started to come in Chicago and homicides were around the 600 mark for the whole year but it was the summer I got to discover Chicago on my own.  My aunt and uncle, have since past away, lived about a mile and a half from us and once my uncle knew I could ride a bicycle he told me to visit him and he’d ride with me to the lake.  How cool I thought to myself that I’d be going to the lake during the summer without parental supervision!  So every day I’d make my way to my aunt and uncle’s house and my aunt would have some lunch ready for me then my uncle and I would head out East on Fullerton Ave.

The first time I rode to the lake I thought I was the coolest kid on the block because everyone else was stuck at home, going to summer school, summer camp, or something annoying like that and I was at the lake enjoying the freedom of riding my bicycle.  My uncle would be obviously very hot by the time we reached the beach and he would just walk right into the lake slacks and button down shirt and all.  He’d come out and tell me to go and take a dive into the lake so I would and we’d keep on riding.  Surely once we got back to his house we were both nice and dry and we’d have a small snack that my aunt would have ready for us.

One day things changed for me entirely on my way to my Aunt and Uncle’s house, I had bought a bicycle from some kid down the street and it was a BMX bike that the frame was spray painted black and the rims were a dark yellow with yellow handles.  What you may not know is that the neighborhood I lived in was all FOLKS (street gangs) which had issues with that color combination but I didn’t care.  To add insult to injury the rims where five point rims so that really screamed ‘RIVAL’ to the people in my community.  One day I took off from my house excited that today we would ride further south into downtown but I had discovered an antique shop next door to a fast food burger joint so I would stop there to have some fries and look around the antique shop before I got to my aunt and uncle’s house. 

One day I stop at the burger joint but they were closed, as was the antique shop, because it was earlier than my usual arrival time there so I had left my bike up on the side of the building and as I got onto my bike a silver Porsche with tinted windows rolls up and someone pulls out a double barrel shot gun and I froze.  I had spent many hours watching war movies and the such with my dad so I was able to identify the weapon and I knew its ability so I quickly realized that I was screwed if he pulled that trigger.  What seemed like an hour I stood there and had a million thoughts run through my head and the main one was of my dad worried about me going too far from the house and not knowing I knew how to ride a bike and owned one at that…what do I do?

I thought about what would happen if I was killed and how it would affect my family and the guilt my aunt and uncle would feel among a ton of other things, then my mind went from slow motion to real time I told myself don’t react! Don’t cry! Don’t blink! Don’t look down! Keep your eyes on them! Then I hear the sound that many would have not lived through, *click* he had pulled the trigger and the hammer had come down but nothing came out of the barrels.  I then hear the people in the car laughing and the Porsche peels off taking with it my ability to cry, to feel fear, to be a 12 year old, and many other feelings and emotions I’m still unaware of not having.

I stood there and watched them drive off down the street and as I start to pedal away the owner of the burger joint flips the closed sign to open and unlocks the door and asked if I was coming in today and I looked right at him and said no in such a way that the look on his face changed from friendly to concern.  I pedaled away slowly trying to decide if I was going to cry or not but then what if they came back?  I thought about telling my aunt and uncle but then they would tell my parents and that would be the end of my “freedom” and my bicycle so I kept the secret to myself for all these years.

Today the effects of that day still trigger a dying need for me to cry and hold that child because he didn’t deserve to have his childhood crushed that way I just want to take him away from all of that and give him a book or a football and let him live his life a while longer in innocence in hopes that it would allow him to make better choices as an adult.

Now, as an adult I have issues around expressing my grief I have a hard time comforting anyone that is facing hard times.  If someone tells me that their mother is dying I have a blank stare and go into a practical conversation around being prepared and doing what is needed for that transition.  If someone tells me that a 5 year old was gunned down I think about that Porsche and wanting to see it explode a million times over just to begin the idea of maybe feeling better.  I cannot feel what I want to feel sometimes and at the wrong moment I feel like I’m going to fall apart and keep myself from falling apart by think about that 12 year old boy that needed to keep it together while facing a double barrel shotgun...

I wish I could finish this thought but I’m still dealing with this void and I’m going on 39 years of being here so one day I might be able to finish this….

Looking for Peace.....but not in this salvation.

What is salvation?  Many offer Jesus the Christ as a solution but that becomes a problem when the person they are trying to “save” doesn’t believe in Jesus or has been burned by Christians that twisted the salvation part to their benefit.  So when we see all the violence in our society we immediately talk about “saving” our youth/children or “saving” our community but I often wonder, save it from what or whom?

There’s a popular Bishop that often talks about this topic and he says “are we being saved from a mean and hateful god? Or are we saving ourselves from ourselves?”  It’s a great question; if we are saving our youth are we saving them from us the adults?  I believe so and add to it our horrible need to continue out dated and plain stupid ideologies that didn’t work in the past and don’t work now.

To “save” our youth from the violence that plagues our communities would mean that the adults would have to shake off any egos they have and allow open and honest conversations about what is wrong and how adults have orchestrated this behavior of violence, get mine, and fuck’em to get “ahead” in life. 

Back to being a savior because that’s what some people are trying to do…how do you become a savior if what comes out of your mouth is filled with biased opinions, hateful language, and plain stupidity when it comes to knowing what is really going on?  Many people that are clergy have the same issue as some of the powerful leaders I’ve met in my life.  Many gang leaders are powerful people due to their gripping control on, at times, thousands of people and to see them being dismissed by someone else a bit more powerful is an interesting event.  What shocked me at some point in my life was to see the very same reaction from clergy at conferences and gatherings.  Now, don’t take this as a sign that organized religion or any religion is bad because of this comment what I am doing is pointing out egos that we all have.

College students at every level have the same issues and sometimes even worse when they find out that the person next to them is smarter than them and doesn’t have one college credit to their name.  So what usually happens here is that the student then claims to have the answer to every issue regardless of their limited knowledge.  Then to add insult to stupid they challenge the person with no college background, mind you that this person may be well versed on the issue the student is challenging, by claiming that they (non-college student) is wrong and that they (the student) is right.  That is the very same ego issue that gang leaders and clergy have so then that makes it an “us” problem as adults rather than a “gang” leader or clergy problem.

It is healthy to have discussions but there are something’s that are just fact and just because you are unaware of the fact doesn’t make it less of a fact, follow me?  I am not Gay or Transgender but I don’t stand back and do research for a week and battle it out with someone who is Gay or Transgender and basically tell them “sorry but I really don’t think you know what you’re talking about!”  I accept what they tell me about themselves as fact because it is coming from them and their experience.

OK, so I hope you understood that and if you didn’t here’s the short version, learn to be humble.

 Still a bit confused?  OK how about a shorter version, shut your mouth and listen!

I hate to be so blunt but it has to be said because it is imperative for YOU to realize that someone’s LIFE is at stake if you don’t humble yourself! Don’t think so?  That one kid that was walking down the street and doesn’t know better or wasn’t taught better or has been placed into a group because no other group will accept them is walking down the street thinking “I want to die…” and here you are crossing the street or giving them a look that they have grown up seeing as you get closer may be that last push they need to do something wrong.  I was one of those kids…many times I placed my life at risk and as I would walk and someone would be approaching I would say to myself “if this person smiles I’ll be good today but if they don’t I may do something stupid” many times I got a dirty look and many times I’d go out of my way to test the waters of death.  I know some may think me stupid but it is a reality that youth go through just like when we “love” someone for the first time and we say to ourselves “if they smile at me I’ll write them a note…” we’ve all done something similar to that.

Our salvation is NOT within the hands of ONE person instead we have the power and strength to do it ourselves for ourselves as well as for others but MANY choose to let the other guy worry about it (Yes I mean Jesus when I say other guy) because after we are already “saved” so why go back and risk not being “saved?”  The way we can help others to be saved from a life of despair and violence is by NOT contributing to the causes of the despair and violence.  Simple example; “I believe in God but you’re Catholic and you worship idols so you’re going to hell” sounds stupid? Well it’s because it is stupid!

We cannot pray our way out of the violence in our society and we sure cannot vote our way out of it either, we have to have the WILL to change it and honestly YOU lack that will! 

Wait what?  YOU really think I’m not talking about YOU!?  Well if YOU think that then I am DEFINTALY talking about YOU!

I don’t need Jesus to save me from what I have helped create because that would insult His teachings because it was never about Him it was all about US doing what is needed and somehow someone screwed it all up and made many believe that Jesus is just sitting around waiting for US to give Him something to do since He is so bored where He’s at!

Don’t chant “Save our children” because you are the abuser…

Don’t chant “save our streets” because you are the offender…

Don’t chant “stop killing our children” because you are the murder…

Don’t chant “stop the guns” because you built those guns…

Don’t chant “stop the drugs” because you are the user…

Don’t chant anything…be silent then go do something positive without bias, condition, or judgment and you will have Peace…we will have Peace…we are Peace.

PEACE/AMOR

Gerardo

Looking for Peace.....on Palm Sunday.

On this Palm Sunday I think about my entrance back into street life 12 years ago and how I could have been crucified 3 years ago.  I don’t talk much about my reentry into this life but I’ll open that door just a bit today.

July 2001 was a hot summer with lots of opportunities on the rise I was hosting two people from the BBC here in Chicago for a documentary that the BBC wanted to do on street gangs in Chicago.  Brothers on top wanted something different they were tired of the age old gang fights.  My voice within the Nation was growing stronger and several of the real old timers were convinced that Peace was going to be headed by us, the Almighty Latin King Nation.

Early June the head of another gang was released on parole after doing over 15 years and the very day he is released he holds a meeting out in the open and announces that he declares war on the Latin Kings (LK.)  This information was passed on to our neighborhood because one of the older guys blood brother is a member of that rival gang, not uncommon.  So everyone was out on the strip kind of enjoying the heat but watching the street.  Two vehicles come up the strip and the first one a door opens and someone yells out that rivals street gangs slogan and everyone turns to look at that vehicle.  The second vehicle used the opportunity to open fire and in a split second someone emerged from that vehicle and let loose only one gun shot and that bullet found its way directly to the back of the head of one of our Brothers. Both vehicles sped off and we were left with a pool of blood.

Let me back track a bit…there was a young LK Brother that had become a client of mine and my partner (at the time I worked for a youth social service agency and hired one of the old Brothers) the young Brother was wild and would do anything that no one else wanted to do.  He was 16 dropped out of school his mother would cry everyday worried that something would happen to her son but he ran the streets running from his childhood pain.  It was tough to get him to settle down and for a time we felt as if we couldn’t do much for him because it seemed like he was determined to end his life on his terms.  As the weeks went by he would get arrested and beat up by the police, beat up by rivals, jailed a couple of times for disorderly conduct, and other things.  Then one day we couldn’t find him and we went to his house the mother was crying saying that she had not seen him in a few days and unfortunately in the hood that sometimes means you’ve been disposed of.  So we started looking around my partner had sit downs with some other Brothers to make sure they weren’t the ones that got rid of him and at the end of a couple of days we couldn’t find him.  Then the phone rings and it’s him he said that he got away for a bit and needed to think about things and had decided that he wanted to go back to school and wanted to step away from the street for a while so he could get his life back on track.  We were happy and my partner secured his safety from the Nation to step away and gave him the steps he had to take and one of them was to speak with one of the oldest Brothers around.  That was key in all of this because that Brother would guarantee that no one would touch this young Brother.  

Back to the story line…minutes before the rivals came up the street the young Brother was talking with his mother at home about how he was going to step away from the LK’s and go back to school and she was very happy.  He told her that he needed to go speak to someone about it and that he would be right back.  He walked out of his house and walked half a block to speak with this older Brother and as they were standing there the shot rang out and that young Brother was shot once in the back of the head by this rival gang.  The older Brother was standing face to face with this young Brother and saw life escape from those young eyes as they left us behind to deal with the rage that would follow.  The young Brothers mother heard the shot and immediately knew it was her son.  She began to cry hysterically and people in the house were asking her what was wrong and she kept saying that they killed her son and no one had come to the house to say anything so everyone was confused.  A minute later one of the Brothers was at the door step letting them know that the young Brother was just killed.

My partner and I were 20 minutes away when we heard the call over the police scanner and when we heard it was right in the middle of our hood we jumped on our Nextel phones and started to call the hood.  We quickly learned of what had happened and we drove quickly and silently into the hood.  Once there we take a quick look at what had happened and asked questions.  My partner asked me if I wanted to take a ride into the rival hood and see what’s going on over there.  I knew that he wanted to exact revenge and at that moment so did I so I said YES lets go!

We did not have a weapon on us other than our anger and pain which sometimes can be more damaging than a bullet.  I let him drive because he wanted to be the one caught if something went down.  As we approach the rival hood he tells me about how one of our own is blood brother to one of the main guys in the rival gang.  We start to zig zag in their hood and not a single person is out which was weird because it was 330pm on a hot summer day…as we turn a corner we see what we didn’t expect to see.  The brother that is blood brother to the rival is coming out of the house of the rival gang leader and as we pass our brother noticed us and you could see the worry in his face.  The rivals start to grab something and my partner drives off and says ‘we got this bastard now!’

Our brother was snatched off the street and questioned as to what he was doing over there so soon after the shooting and he claimed that he heard what happened and he was on their block so he figured he could resolve the issue.  I never found out anymore because I refused to accept that answer and viewed him as an enemy ever since. 

A few weeks later the older Brother that was talking to this young Brother was killed while trying to rob a house that was owned by a drug cartel all the while the FEDS were across the street watching it happened and NEVER called the police or ambulance for assistance…that’s a whole other story.

The older Brother had all of his family in NYC and was going to be buried there so several of us hopped in a car and drove all night to NYC to attend the wake the following night.  On this trip it was revealed that I was a lot more intimately involved in the day to day communications for the Nation.  Once in NYC I called the head of the city for the LK’s and quickly we were flooded with about 100 LK’/LQ’s from all over NY.  My relationship with NYC was like older Brother to younger Brother they loved me as much as I loved them making NYC my second home.  So what happens when a younger Brother loves his older Brother?  They show a lot of respect and when the Brothers from Chicago saw that they became very angry.  Why you ask?  Because they were not being shown the same overwhelming respect that was being given to me so they began to talk among themselves.  Once we got back to Chicago I was given a choice to make either turn around and never come back and stay out the way or come back into the fold out on the street.  I had already made up my mind way before they came to that point and I picked the street.  Why did I?  At the time all of the people that worked with me on the anti-violence stuff here in Chicago had left and I had no other resources other than my physical self.  I had made a promise to the LK’s that I would be there for them as long as they wanted to turn over a new leaf and at that time they did…I freely gave myself back to the streets after eight years of not being out on the streets I went back.

I was told by my sponsor, yes there is actually sponsors within gang life, that at the level I was coming in that there was no turning back and that this would be for life and I looked at him and said “I will change everything just give me time and support and I will end the shootings and put people in school and we will be the strongest Nation in the country we will bury our dead because of old age and nothing else!” 

He was excited and so was I…September 11^th 2001 two planes slam into the World Trade Center and a new world came upon us and yes it even affected the gangs.  Many street gangs thought that the FEDS would be too busy looking the other way that they wouldn’t notice them organizing a drug trade.  What they didn’t know was that 9/11 gave the FEDS more power to do what they do and an endless pit of money to throw at people to create events that normally wouldn’t happen. 

By 2009 my ability to control and influence positive behaviors had diminished regardless of all the evidence of indictments and snitches that I provided certain people were hell bent to keep going for the negative.  I’m not saying I hate the Nation nor am I saying that the Nation as a whole is involved in the drug trade what I am saying is that certain people with certain control within the Nation are involved in the drug trade and are being paid to make sure it keeps going that way.

How does this translate to Palm Sunday?  It is easy to come in victory but if the people are unwilling very few of us will sacrifice our lives for the change you refuse to have in your life. 

Will you sacrifice your own life for yourself?

Will you sacrifice your own life for others?

Who sacrificed their life for yours?

These are questions that require answers.

Peace/AMOR

Gerardo