The SoCal Hood

I’ve lived in Los Angeles most of my life, but it hasn’t really been consistent until recently. My parents bounced me and my brother to multiple suburbs in California, finally settling in Irvine for my High School career. Ah Irvine, where the houses are big, the yards are green and all the kids get a car for their sixteenth birthday. I didn’t mind Irvine, I liked it actually. There was always a sense of safety no matter where you went. Along with that sense of safety, you always knew that you were being closely watched just because you were a teenager. I experienced some unwarranted pull-overs by Irvine P.D. because we were a group of teenagers. At the time it pissed me off, but looking back on it, I get it. They were trying to keep gangs and delinquents out of their perfect community.
When I was nineteen I left the Orange Curtain for Los Angeles and have lived here since. In the beginning there were struggles with anxiety of not having that same safe feeling, but I soon nestled into West Los Angeles with the help of my one-generation ahead sister. I found it funny how rap songs always talked about “the life of the Westside”, and found myself living it. I knew it was hard on the Eastside and touched on it every once in awhile. I can’t say I’ve been under exposed, I know what’s out my front door. I know the privilege I continue to live in, and struggle for. I’ve researched, met and talked with people from the Eastside, and I fooled myself into thinking that I get it.
Yeah, there are gangs, I get it. Yeah, you’re a single mom with three kids, I get it. Yeah, you’ve got bills to pay, I get it, so do I. But recently I started working on the Eastside. My first assignment was at a High School in East L.A., and I loved every minute of it. The kids told me about the gangs on campus, but I never found even one member in my office. They were just another kid passing me in the hall. In some of them, I found the poverty I knew so much about and there were times I had to take a moment to myself to fully take in the magnitude of what they were telling me. All I could do was lend a sympathetic ear and attempt to make High School just a little easier for them while giving them the hope and a pathway to something better.
However, the assignment I’m on now has brought me even deeper into “the hood”. Instead of the Hispanic Barrio of East LA, I find myself smack in the middle of the hood of South Central, trying to pull these young children out of the quicksand they find themselves surrounded by. I’ve broken up so many fights in the last three days and seen kids hit and kick at faculty and staff, that I’ve found a whole new side of myself that I knew was in there somewhere. I learned how to stand my ground with these kids and tell them how things are going to be. When they try to challenge me, I have learned how to make them back down and put them back in their place. Just this afternoon I was helping a Dean watch approximately 60 students in an auditorium when I caught one student hitting another one while they were sitting. Sure, seemed like play. I called the student out and told him to knock it off and stared directly at him, as if to dare him to do it again. When he backed down, I backed down too. When I looked back at him, I saw him threatening the student next to him again, who at this point was flinching. That’s it, I’ve had it, it’s your ass at this point. YOU! YEAH, YOU! GET UP, SIT IN THE BACK BY YOURSELF! WHY? BECAUSE I’M TIRED OF YOU HITTING HIM, THAT’S WHY! MOVE, NOW! Sure he tried to stare me down while he got up, but you know what? He complied. I stood my ground, I showed him I wasn’t messing around with him and it worked. The days I’ve worked there, I’ve had multiple incidents, but nothing has really made me think like Jason.
Jason is this small little seventh grader, who is actually cute as a button. When you see him, you just want to call him sunshine and spend some time with him. Jason came into my life when it was reported he was jumped by seven other students. With the exception of a bruise by his eye, he was surprisingly uninjured. Guess these kids don’t know how to throw a decent punch yet. It wasn’t until later that we recovered he was in fact part of a gang and was jumped by a rival gang on campus. Lucky for Jason, we aren't talking about major gangs like Bloods and Crypts. We’re talking about small campus crews that still have the potential of being broken up. Unluckily for Jason, belonging to these crews is the first step in belonging to a major gang later in life.
When his mother came onto campus with his older brother, I was in the meeting where we broke it to her that her son is a member in a gang. I didn’t know what to expect from her. Tears, anger, denial? It was clear his older brother is not a gang member, so what is going on with Jason? Why did he join? Why now? Why?? The funny thing, I didn’t get the reaction from her that I was expecting. She was very quiet. At first she didn’t believe us because her son always comes home on time. That means he’s not in a gang, right? We really had to explain to her that while Jason was heavily denying membership, we had too many eye witnesses that are putting him in the gang. Jason just sat there, head down, not making eye contact, feet dangling from the chair. His mother searched all of us, not knowing what to do next. She searched his brother, who at this point appeared very worried. The case is still continuing.
I finally felt the true grit of the hood. I felt it reach its ugly hand into that meeting room past me, past the dean and wrap itself around that small, cute as a button boy. I could feel myself wanting to pry its fingers from his body, try to not let it totally envelope him, but I knew what I could do was limited. I saw the potential Jason could be, bad and good, and it was all flashing by so quickly. I wanted to cry for his mother who was clearly struggling for a light in the dark of unexplored and unknown ground.
Now when I walk across the street to my favorite taco stand and see the boys hanging out on the corner, they all look like Jason. At one point they were all cute as a button with their legs dangling off of a chair in school. Now they are on the corner watching the neighborhood under the blanket of the Los Angeles heat. They are the very clear addict that is searching through the trash for gawd knows what. But they are also the guy in the car ahead of me, with the two kids in the back, fighting to make his way through this life. They are also the guy behind the counter ringing up my order and serving me my tacos. The difference between the two? The grip the hood has on them, and to what level it has over taken them.
I drove home today thinking about Jason with his head down. And I thought about the smile of satisfaction Arnold Schwarzenegger had on his face when it was announced that they had reached a budget for California. A budget that included nine billion dollars worth of cuts to education. Then I wondered if he had ever felt the true grit of the hood.