Prison. ....Albuquerque. See I can do it too.

As we know from Sal's page, the United States has a big issue with the increasing number of people in the federal penitentary. I was able to hear one man's story in the hip-hop service i went to again on saturday night. It was amazing to see this man in a wheelchair tell about his life of gang banging and how his uncle and father were in a gang while he was growing up. He grew up with them as his role models and wanted to get into it as well. He said his worst mistake was dropping out of high school two weeks after he started. In his one district there are seven gangs; so obviously there are fights alot and people get hurt. He was basically getting picked on so he stopped going to school. He found himself with alot of time on his hands so he got involved in a gang. Alot of his friends and relatives were killed while in gangs and instead of making him want to stop it pushed him further because he thought "If they can die for it so can I" he went to prison numerous times and his uncle is serving 18 years right now for a crime he didn't commit. It's crazy that it took him getting paralyzed from the waist down to realize that he wanted to live. but it's just the fact that these people go to prison so many times and get so used to this kind of life that there seems to be no way out. Anyways, once he got out of prison and wanted to be independent he went out job hunting but he had criminal charges on his record and not even a year of high school. no one would hire him. This is how he came to decide that the only way to go would be to start dealing drugs. soon after he went back to jail. The revolving door of "criminals" going in and out of jail.

The real life stories of these people in lawndale really amaze me. we are so lucky to live here and to have the high incomes that we do. (like sal said in class) it's hard to remember in our everyday lives that there are others out there besides us.