Gangs have always existed - they are primarily a community a young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies. We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture.

In order to stay out of trouble I worked in industry. You can't even do that nowadays; there were all those factories.

When you win, we win; but when you go down, you go down alone.

If young people had love, hope, true education, the arts, full and meaningful lives they won’t join gangs. My life since living the gang and drugs has been directed to making positive what it means to be Chicano, human, man, woman, and on how to draw out the imagination and creativity that all people have.

I was kind of a weird homie; I was a weird kid. Nobody in my family loved books. I'm the only one.

I worked in a steel mill, I worked in a foundry, I worked in a paper mill, I worked in a chemical refinery, construction, I did all that. It was great work, it was good. I learned welding, mechanic, carpentry, but it saved me from going back to prison because that's helpful. It's really sad because those jobs are gone.

Eventually I went back to high school. I went to a coaching center in my neighborhood. I had to leave the homeless situation because it was so bad and I knew that I was falling deeper and deeper.