Our Troubled Youth Need to be Heard

The young men at Green Hill’s maximum security juvenile detention center waited patiently for the other units to come in and sit down to hear me speak. Earlier I had addressed another group of incarcerated youth at the Maple Lane maximum security youth center. I usually try to visit a prison or a youth facility during the many talks and readings I do around the country.

This time, professors and students, including from Mecha, at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA had invited me to speak to a class and at a public event; they also arranged for me to address the incarcerated youth through an important intervention program called Gateways.

These facilities were two of the three groups of juvenile detainees (the other was from the Rancho San Antonio juvenile facility in the San Fernando Valley) that I addressed in November.

As usual, the young men were attentive, respectful and full of questions. Many had already read my true-life account of gang life, Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA. Others knew about my poetry. The racial mix of the groups were almost evenly divided between Mexicans/Latinos, African Americans and whites. Regardless of this, they were all interested to hear my story—and to add their stories to the continuing one of this country’s poor youth: broken families, little or no economic life, bad schools, little or no recreation, and wholesale social neglect. All faced deep crisis in spirit and vision. Most did not know what they were going to do with their lives. Yet, as always, they were smart, incisive, and capable of great imagination.

One of the young men I met was the nephew of former Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, who was falsely incarcerated for 27 years in the California Penal System before he was exonerated and then released. Compare that to the Ku Klux Klan and other racists who killed civil rights workers and leaders in the South, mostly getting away with it (even after confessing, as the killers of Emmett Till did 40 years ago) or not facing their comeuppance until they were ripe old men.

These and other realities are not lost on these young men. They know because of race or their social class position they were going to be handed a raw deal. Opportunities were going to be few and highly competitive. They were not going to be adequately prepared for jobs or better schooling. If they couldn’t hold a decent job (in communities where unemployment can reach 50 to 70 percent), they would probably end up in prison.

After telling my story, I also conveyed to them the idea that they, too, have valuable lives. They, too, deserve chances to heal, to overcome their traumas and issues, and to contribute in a positive and meaningful manner to the world around them.

I told them how we don’t need anymore “raggedy” men in our communities—where there are too many men not fathering, not working, not learning, not going anywhere. We didn’t need anymore of their faces in our prisons. We needed them to stay strong, get skills, learn to be healthy and loving to their partners and children, and to give back from their own gifts and passions to enhance the streets they came from.

It’s a hard message to get, let alone agree to. But most of these visits usually end in some insightful communication and shared recognition of what needs to be done.

As a teenager stuck in the same kinds of facilities—I was in several East LA and West San Gabriel jails, Central Juvenile Hall, a continuation high school, and two adult jail facilities before I turned my life around in my late teens, I wish I had people talk to me. The few who did reach out meant so much. I was one of those who needed a lot of help, who had few people willing to help, but who finally made a decision to listen to them and make the most of their assistance.

We all need help. Particularly if you’re caught in the webs of gangs, drug addictions, violence, and the streets. But too many of us end up turning away from this help—we end up letting the few doors that open for us close shut (doors that usually take a long time to open again, if ever).

My talks have to be straight forward, clear-cut, and to the point. There can’t be any BS. Luckily most youth, particularly those behind bars, have a built-in BS meter. Being honest and open, knowledgeable and poetic, truly helps in reaching youngsters often designated as “unreachable.”

In November, I also got to speak in Chicago, including at an elementary school a junior college, and an international conference on “Gangs and Globalization” at downtown’s Northwestern University School of Law. Here we had researchers, former gang members, current gang members, youth organizers, and community advocates speak on how best to deal with the growth in gangs across the country. My friends, the long-time activists Tom Hayden and Bernardine Dorhn, invited me to be a keynote speaker.

Again, the issue is to be clear on the facts. To realize that more police, more prisons and more punishment only makes the situation on our streets more dangerous. We need real and comprehensive rehabilitation, real resources for work and schools, and real creative outlets for all our young people.

We need the social resources designated for the so-called gang problem to heal, help, and turn our youth around—not enshrine them in their pathologies and pains. Not warehouse them. And not forget they are human and capable of vital changes in their lives and the lives of their communities.

They'll be a price to pay no matter what we do. But the price we pay if we don’t change from punishment to redemption, from having youth face a vacant future to one filled with immense possibilities, will be worse than if we do.

Don't Let Stanley "Tookie" Williams Die

To California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

In the state of California, there are many wonderful people and accomplishments to commemorate and honor. But we are also a state rife with conflict, pain, and trauma. We need to be about healing and reconciliation. We need leadership that can help this state get through some of the terrible violence and sorrow we've had to deal with over the past thirty years.

There is too much death, too much hate, too much fear, too much trivializing "justice" by using it for revenge. Stanley "Tookie" Williams has done more to save lives these past few years then most people who are not in jail. He made many mistakes (although he contends he's innocent of the murders he was convicted of--something I don't think should be taken lightly). But what he has done to redeem his life, to make some value of his mistakes, is noteworthy as an example for anyone who may also be faced with such choices: we need more people to stand up and do the right thing.

And former gang members can reach present gang youth better than anyone--if we have examples of any who do, we should not diminish the power of such examples.

I am a former gang member, author of the best-selling memoir, Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA (Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster). I know the importance of reflecting on and assessing one's life--and helping others do the same. I know the importance of rehabilitation and then allowing people to help others when they can.

Official revenge (which much of the death penalty is about) should not be sanctioned any longer. You cannot make right the murder of others by murdering the so-called culprits by so-called legal means. It only continues the cycle, the pain, the hate.

I ask of you to be as human as we want the most inhumane person to be. Our callousness as a community, a society, a state, contributes to the callousness in our streets. We need to feel. We need to care. We need to differentiate ourselves from the very real murders that destroys whole families and often communities. We need to be the more conflicted, complicated, and caring of all.

Please don't let Stanley "Tookie" Williams be killed on December 13, 2005. Please stand above the politics and pressures to not care, to not feel, to "be tough." We don't need no more tough guys (they're in our streets, in our culture, in our homes). We need the complicated but difficult humane response.

Tough enough to care, not to kill. Thank you for reading this.

Respectfully,

Luis J. Rodriguez

Time for New & Decent Border Policy

I recently read how workers from Mexico and Central America were brought into the Gulf States region to help clean up the mess and rebuild much of the damage from Hurricane Katrina. They were going to get very little pay, but they came. I also read how many of these workers were being shafted—employers leaving town just before payday, that kind of thing.

This has happened for decades to Mexican and other workers from poor and war-torn countries—there is real despicable and thieving exploitation going on in this country. It’s about time it was seen for what it was and rooted out.

Mexicans and Central Americans face what I call a “maddening ambivalence.” Jobs on this side of the border, truly what no American worker would do (or any worker should do), have been enticing millions to risk their homes, their families, and their lives. Thousands have already lost their lives on the border over the past twenty years just trying to get here (one of the most dangerous border regions in the world).

The vast majority don’t want to leave their beautiful lands and pueblos. But there are no jobs or agriculture left. They have to. Here are a few facts to ponder: Los Angeles has a GNP greater than all of Mexico. And the ten million Mexican Nationals working in the United States (undocumented as well as those with papers) make more money than the close to 100 million people still in Mexico.

Here’s another fact: Besides keeping many US communities strong (by their labor, but also their high levels of participation in local economies), they send billions of dollars to Mexico to build roads, schools, hospitals, farms, and housing to improve things for the families left behind.

Yet, these people are constantly under attack—by racists, the migra/police, as well as street thugs. They are often put down, humiliated, and yelled at. They are often beaten, robbed, and killed.

A few years ago in the Northeast San Fernando Valley (where I now live), an American woman ran over a Mexican national several times, cursing him for being in the street, and then taking off (she was later arrested, declared mentally ill, and let go). I sat in on one court case where a US-born gang member shot two undocumented teenagers, killing a 15-year-old girl and crippling a 16-year-old boy. I befriended the boy who was paralyzed from the neck down. Officials tried to deport him even as he lay in a hospital bed, unable to move, drink, or eat on his own. If they’d taken him to the border he would have died (considering that Mexico does not have the level of care he needed). I wrote about this case and soon a Catholic relief group and others took it upon themselves to help the kid—including convincing authorities to keep him in this country, and to provide the extraordinary care he needed (he was going to have a terribly diminished life as it was).

I remember another case in Illinois, where an American man kicked the life out of a Mexican national teenager who had just crashed into his car. The man was uninjured, but the boy was on the ground bleeding. The boy died.

These are some dramatic examples of stories I’ve heard all over the country—Mexicans and Central Americans (and Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and other Latinos) are now everywhere; over the past 20 years, they have spread out across most states. They are not just relegated to the US Southwest or Northeast regions. I’ve been to places like Georgia, Idaho, and Nebraska with growing Latino populations. I spent ten weeks in North Carolina in early 2000 following a 600 percent rise in the Latino population there (working in highly toxic and difficult conditions in poultry farms, tobacco fields, sweat shops, and domestic labor).

I once talked to some 300 mostly Mayan Guatemalan migrants at a church in Delaware (I remember washing clothes at a nearby Laundromat and hearing the beautiful lilt of a Mayan tongue).

These people are at the bottom of the labor rungs. They are entering our schools and filling our jails. They are now under scrutiny by Minutemen-like groups on the border and by right-wing newscasters like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly.

A maddening ambivalence—an economy that needs such workers for jobs that don’t pay enough to survive on, then treating them as if they were dirt once they get here.

It would be one thing if this was just a matter of white people. I was once on a TV talk show in LA. In the green room was a Chinese immigrant woman with a strong accent who had come to talk about why we need to get rid of the “Mexican illegals.” Another time, for a story I was researching, I interviewed a number of Chicano heavily tattooed and unemployed gang members in one of East LA’s large housing projects. Most of their families were on welfare and they were living among some of the poorest residents in LA County. However, when asked what the number one problem they faced, one of them said forcibly, “it’s the damn Mexicans—we need to get rid of them!”

A maddening ambivalence—we know that recently arrived Mexicans have the lowest crime rates (in places where the majority is recent arrivals), pay taxes (sales and even work taxes), and work long hours without complaint. In cities like LA, where there are too many sterile and uninviting neighborhoods, they still walk the streets, sell their food and fruit bars in carts, fix up homes, and clean up streets. An Anglo man who recently contacted me said he loved living in his East LA apartment (probably the only white person on the block) because of the life, laughter, and joy the Mexicans exude (again, unlike the self-contained suburban housing developments, gated communities, and gentrified homes that growing numbers of Americans are occupying).

Yet, Mexicans and other Latinos are now the target of some of the most hateful racist speech and actions I’ve ever seen. Officially, the government has terrorized immigrant communities in raids, including against so-called immigrant street gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha, Sur Trese, Latin Kings, and others (these, by the way, were created in the United States—they did not originate in Mexico or Central America).

A new electronically-enhanced fence is being proposed along the US-Mexico border. And more US vigilantes (even California Governor Swarzenegger has invited them) are making plans to continue their anti-immigrant vigils on the border.

This is wrong. It’s divisive. And it’s against the best of this country’s ideals and values.

Because of the border—a contrived and man-made construct with a history in conquest, slavery, and exploitation—people are losing the sense God gave them.

Since I moved back to LA five years ago, I’ve been told four times to “go back to where I came from” (I was born in the United States of Mexican parents). This was mostly from whites who as a people have only been on this continent 500 years. My brown skin and those of many Mexicans and Central Americans indicate our indigenous roots—we’ve been on these lands for tens of thousands of years. But look how the border has turned things on its head—the brown-red people are now the “foreigners, aliens, and illegals.”

I’ve even been to Native American conferences (my native roots are Mexika and Raramuri) where I looked more native than most of the people in attendance. Although Native Americans are generally inviting to me, I’ve also been told (mostly by blue-eyed Indians) that I didn’t belong there. The border comes along and now Mexicans are not native? We have the largest traditional and full-blooded native populations in all of the Americas (there are 240 native languages still in existence there). And most Mexicans who don’t know their tribal roots because of conquest and colonialism have more indigenous blood than most US natives (not to discount the large numbers of Africans or Asians that have also been brought to Mexico).

In the LA area, there are now an estimated two million Mayans (who don’t even speak good Spanish, let alone English) from Mexico and Guatemala. This is slightly less than the two-and-a-half million Native Americans that exist in the United States (most of them mixed blood). And this does not count the millions of Mixtecos, Zapotecas, Yaquis, Purepechas, Huicholes, Raramuris, Coras, Pipils, and other tribes who have made the long trek from their ancient traditional lands.

Don’t tell me they are “immigrants.” They don’t even fit in any census box (they’re not Hispanics—neither are most of us with roots in Mexico and Central America).

We need to imagine a better immigration and border policy, one that is humane, decent, and not detrimental to Americans or Mexicans. Somehow, politicians don’t seem able to reach such imaginative levels. It’s about the vast resources and abundance inherent in the land, the people, and in a highly technolized economy.

But too often all we see is scarcity, competition, and our own narrow interests. This is only inherent in capitalism. It’s time we imagined another way to go.

The present alternative—hate, cheap pay, corporations pitting one set of workers against another, lives hurt and lost—is totally unacceptable. It’s also costlier in lives, money, and our own human integrity. I know we can do better.

More Annoyed Than Frightened

“I did not really know what would happen. I didn’t feel especially frightened. I felt more annoyed than frightened.”—Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was given an honorable ceremony (including a viewing of her casket in Washington D.C., usually reserved for statesmen and military personnel) following her death on October 24, 2005. This is much deserved for her courageous stand against segregation and Jim Crow. The South and most of this country changed for the better following the valiant efforts of Rosa and the many other countless, and often unnamed, boycott leaders and participants during the 1950s and 1960s. We remember Rosa Park—and we should. But many fought this battle and won. It’s their blood, sweat, and tears we should also remember.

When I first heard news of Rosa’s death, I was waiting in the WOR-AM radio station late that Monday night in Manhattan for in-studio interview with Joey Reynolds. Later on the air, Joey, a long-time friend of justice and equality, mentioned Rosa’s name and his voice cracked. I, too, felt the emotion of knowing such a significant person of our time had passed on.

For many of us—African American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Native American, and poor white, progressive and revolutionary—for anyone who loved the dignity and vitality of this struggle, Rosa Parks will forever stand for the righteous acts of defiance that we must continue against class power, official racism, and economic & cultural depravity in our country.

Yes, much has changed; yes, we have a long way to go.

This past weekend, I took my 17-year-old son Ruben and his girlfriend Katrina to ride the subway from North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley to LA’s Union Station downtown. I wanted them to see a part of Los Angeles that most people don’t see—or even know exists.

From the Union Station, we went through Chinatown with its many shops, restaurants, and people. From there we walked down to Broadway, past First Street and further south where we hanged out in the crowded sidewalks and side streets where Mexicans and Central Americans shop, talk, eat, hang out, and just enjoy their day.

We walked through part of the Garment District, reminder of any major city in Latin America where people sold their wares. Then we walked further east to the edges of Skid Row—the country’s largest enclave of homeless people (the LA area now has more homeless people than any other U.S. city).

I was homeless in downtown LA one summer in my teens—living on the street, using heroin, sleeping in alleys, alcoves, all-night movie theaters, and churches (in the days when they used to leave their doors opened). During the day the public library was my main sanctuary. Over the years, long after I had stabilized myself with jobs, writing, political work, and family, I revisited these streets in my work among the homeless here and in Chicago, doing poetry workshops and readings, in the 1980s and 1990s.

That Sunday when we walked through Skid Row there were still vestiges of tents and carton boxes on the sidewalks (many more pop up as you go deeper into the Row). From where we walked, Los Angeles and 5th streets, the world became darker and foreboding. I saw a lot more Mexicans and Central Americans on the sidewalks than I had seen before (although the majority of the homeless on Skid Row are still African Americans).

One row of tents and boxes was along a parking lot fence, shadowed by the skyscrapers with banks, offices, condominiums, and oil companies. Ruben and Katrina quickly grasped the dramatic contrast—which makes this US-bred poverty sometimes feel worse than in places like Calcutta.

I admired how these smart and beautiful young people also had the heart to understand that this reality should not exist in our city, our state, our country (or in the world, for that matter).

This image of extreme wealth and extreme poverty helped bring home the sobering lesson—a lesson Ruben and Katrina would probably not get in most schools—that we have to do more today to bring true justice, peace, and sanity to the world. This doesn’t mean that Rosa Parks lived and died in vain. Hardly. She was one of the shining beacons that carried many revolutionaries and activists through decades of struggle.

I told Ruben and Katrina not to be frightened of Skid Row. But, as Rosa said, they weren’t frightened as much as annoyed. It’s time more of us got annoyed enough to strategize, organize, create (sing, do poems, dance, make music, and more) to help remove the façade of freedom and equality that covers the face of this country.

Beneath the root is our real humanity, our real heart, our real consciousness to truly make right what Rosa Parks began to do when she refused to sit on the back of that bus fifty years ago.

Let’s keep the fight going—although we may as well be smarter, wiser, more imaginative, passion-filled, with vision and deeper language. That’s the best way to truly honor Rosa Parks.