“The next generation needs our involvement in this model of Revolutionary change..."

Prisoner in CA, 4/29/19

I came from oppression and its by product. Before I came of age and joined a gang, my family was deeply involved in drug distribution. Ever since I could remember I understood that drugs payed our rent, put food in our stomachs and paid for the clothes on our backs. I knew my family and friends were poor and the environment we were coming up in was hazardous. My families homes were raided and a lot of them hauled to prison. They always shared these experiences about crooked and corrupt cops, who'd planted weapons and drugs on them or/and beat on them. I despised cops, not because of their “service” to the community but because of their hypocrisy and hatred of that community - my community.

I observed my world and that affected my decisions. I wanted to be a gangster who made money and conquered his environment. I had this social-psychosis imprinted on my mind. Alot of the friends I grew up with, playing in parks, stealing from supermarkets and attending school, stopped observing and became participators in the lifestyle of the streets. Not long after I experienced the first trauma involved in my decision to join a gang.

A friend of mine was murdered and at thirteen I was propelled into a life of retaliation, murders and gang warfare. Jail followed. As a juvenile incarcerated, I sought out to leave a legacy as a rider, someone who puts it down for his neighborhood and homies. By fifthteen I think I was in more fights in one year than most people fought their entire life. From my earliest experiences, I could recall cops deliberately putting us together and stirring the pot to race and gang wars, and then, they'd use those same wars to push forward the interest of their unions. Also, because of the small quarters of jail, I'd become familiar with rival gang members, or the crips and bloods who as a Chicano from Southern California I was mislead to believe were my foes, and I'd recognize that same pain and anger in them I seen in myself. The kids I was holding responsible for the murders close to my heart were too morning and experiencing the same rage and misguided hatred. And in the scheme of all the bullsh** the cops, whom you'd think would have no dog in the fights, would be the ones orchestrating the whole clash, not to mention the countless batteries they themselves inflicted on us.

And our attitude and ideology was “it is what it is”. We normalized the most heinous of crimes committed by law enforcement, the oppression and repression of our loves ones and yes even our own atrocities. I, through out my life, absorbed all this sh**. I seen some sh** in my life that would make the most week and humble cringe at the thought of a cop. I lost my life shortly after my best friend's murder. Though I'd spent years taking all this sh** I just spoke about, I was still stuck in that cycle of life for a life gang violence. It was when I was fighting this gang murder charge I was committed to prison.

For how did I encounter a situation that made me fed up. While I was in LA County, the Sheriffs had a gang they'd call the three thousand boys, because of the three thousand floor of the LA County jail where they house what they call high power inmates. It was hell and a whole lot of denial and cover up. They'd take hand cuffed inmates and assault them. And in one case murder one, to try out their jujitzu moves. They assaulted an inmate so we all came together in solidarity to finally end the torture we were all living through. The anger and hatred the cops displayed in our unity to protest their atrocities sparked a flame in my heart that made me ready to seek answers as to why the fu** this sh** is the way it is and what is my part in changing it. Lying on that gurney with my tailbone smashed, my ankles swollen and my tooth in my mouth. Kicked out for standing against the sh** I managed to live through all my life. Caused me to really not want this life for the next generation coming of age to live a life of poverty, murder and violence.

My willful ignorance was no longer sufficient. Because we were all transferred to the hospital for running a cell extraction, and the reason to the cell extraction was finally brought to light, a lot of those guards were indited and that prison/jail did a complete 360. I still suffer from the injuries that were inflicted that day but I'd do it all over again to ensure the malicious and sadistic mistreatment of the next man would never repeat itself.

Living through that sh** caused me to take a self-inventory. A comrad shortly after introduced me to BA [Bob Avakian – PRLF], which I admit, I went in to his work with a mind already rejecting the concept of communism I was wrongfully educated to believe. But, I grappled with it first, then myself, and then back with it, and myself again until I realized that theres only one scientific approach to end all the bullsh** this system has dished out and caused the masses to normalize.

It's not an abracadabra solution like all the other sh** I read into. It's sophisticated, yet its broken down to understand. And it isn't about indoctrination and a complete turn over of reasoning faculties to a dictator we'd all be coerced into having portraits of on our living rooms someday. To the contrary, it requires your reasoning and involves the masses, individuals, to take it on and participate in its fruition. The next generation needs our involvement in this model of Revolutionary change, because the life I led is not a life for any human being, for that's what this system has for these kids in the ghetto.