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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 6, 2016)
Street Roots • May 6-12, 2016 YOUTHS, from page 4 we lived in (Northeast 27th Avenue and Dekum Street), ;t was like Crips and Bloods. When we were walking to school, we would see people stab each other or shooting. “I have three sisters and three brothers. One of them was adopted; she was my friend, and my mom took her in. The oldest two had a rare bone disease and needed special medical care, so my mom had to give them to this family that specialized in medical stuff. “I didn’t have a dad. I’m the baby of the family, but I was the only one who had a different dad. “My oldest brother that lived with us, he’s like really crazy, and he was getting into trouble. “My brother being involved in gangs kind of made me be involved. But the stuff I went through with my brothers when I was little, I didn’t really look up to them. “I didn’t really look up to anybody, because I didn’t have any strong figures in my family. I didn’t even look up to my mom; she was my hero, but I didn’t look up to her. “My fourth-grade teacher; something about me, she wanted to help me, I got involved in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and she was like my mentor type person. Ever since fourth grade, she was my big sister. Me and her still maintain contact.” MARSEL Marsel is at Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility in Salem. He is a “Hoover, ” a member of Portland’s Hoover Criminals, a violent street gang with origins in South Central Los Angeles. Marsel grew up “in Northeast Portland, around Peninsula and the new Columbia Villa, and Irving Park as well. ” His mother worked as a Special Report ---------- -----------TROUBLE BREWING ---------------------- Riggan is superintendent at IVI Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility. "Kids need adults. They need to he loved, they need to be cared for and have loving, supportive relationships with people teach« ing them how to learn self control "It takes a village to raise a child brat now that village is disin Page 5 LUIS I Luis said up until eighth grade, his life revolved around soccer. “That was the only thing my grandma did put me in when I was young. I played for a lot of traveling teams. “I got steered into a different route, eighth grade, freshman year, hanging out with my cousins. There were different things that attracted me. Now, when I think about it, I should have stuck with soccer because I could have been playing in college and all that. I was traveling places, California, Vegas, for tournaments. I played for the Nike team. I got chosen to play for the youth USA team.” “Ofie year I just missed (the sign-up deadline), and a lot can happen in a year. I was lost at that age.” ■ centered culture, and our kids are suffering.” | housekeeper and his father owned a janitorial business. “My mom and dad were split, so it was kinda hectic dealing with that. Not really a gang upbringing at all. “If I couldn’t get it from one parent, I could get it from the other parent. They supported me with everything I needed. “My parents raised me to be basically like a NBA superstar. That’s what they embedded in my life, was sports and school, sports and school, sports and school. But I wasn’t really good at school, so that’s how I kinda eventually ended up in this situation. “I was just gaming - my parents would get involved, and I would just find a way to manipulate it, and just find a way to do the bare minimum just so I could get them off my back. I wasn’t really learning anything. “I just thought I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how to read, so that was tough. “Around eighth, ninth grade, I started reading about basketball and stuff like that. I started sharpening my skills, / reading magazines, the newspaper, and getting on ESPN. Then I came to jail, and I started reading books out of nowhere. I read my first book coming into jail. My first full book. Now, I’m capable, but back then I wasn’t interested or trying to learn. Didn’t really care. “I was good (at basketball), but I lacked discipline. I wasn’t really coachable. I had skill, but coaches | weren’t able to develop those skills I because I had an attitude problem. “I loved basketball. I still do to this day. It’s my favorite thing in the entire world is basketball.” j I TREI Trei said he got his introduction into gang life in Texas at age 13. ( “One of my best friends, his dad, he was like that dude, that dude that showed me the lifestyle. We was driving down the street one day and he just passed me one of them 5 thangs (a revolver). It was like, ‘You see that j dude oyer there?’ And I looked at him and I | said, ‘Which one?’ He was like, ‘All of them.’ I He was like, ‘Shoot,’ and ever since then, it’s J just been off the hip. ' “I had to. It was them or me. We ail called j him pops. He was an older homie.” | | | ' JOSEFINA “I started getting into trouble around fifth | grade. I started baking troubles in school. Up i until sixth grade I got As and Bs. I ' “Maybe the fact that I didn’t have a father | figure, my dad died before I was born, and I my brothers, they were the only male figures | that were there, and having them abuse me, I physically, mentally, emotionally, like I think | that was my biggest thing when I was [ younger. “When I was 12, my cousin - she was the | leader of this gang - and I hung out with | them, but I wasn’t really in one. But a couple | months before I got locked up, I actually got J jumped into my cousin’s rival gang, which | was kind of like a dis on her because I didn’t | really like her. “The motivation was, my co-defendant (her I boyfriend), he told me, ‘We need a ride j somewhere,’ and the leader of that gang was ! like, ‘I’m not going to give you a ride unless Tiny (her nickname) gets jumped in.’ Because they had heard about me, my reputation and stuff, and they wanted me in their clique, and they knew my cousin was the leader of their rival gang. I didn’t want to, but we needed a ride, so I did what I did, which I guess is kind of a stupid reason for getting jumped into a gang.” MARSEL Marsel’s infatuation with gangsters began when he was 5 years old. “I grew up watching cartoons and stuff, just like a normal kid, but there’s this movie called ‘Menace II Society,’ and my mom never let me watch it, but she always had it in her- room, and one day I took it, and put it in my PlayStation 2, and I watched it One of the first scenes, dude got his head blown off, and after that I was scared. But then they were starting to hang out and chill, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty tight,’ and the whole movie, they had guns out, and stuff like that. “I wanted to be a gangster. I want to be hanging out and having guns. “I never gave my mom the movie back. I kept it until the time I came here. “I felt Eke I was brainwashed. My whole life, those characters were kinda real to me, until my last two years of being in the community, and I was like, hold on: These dudes are playing in other movies, and they’re like comedians and other stuff like that. 1 was like; they’re not really thugs'. “I knew that they were actors, because it was a movie, but I thought that was more of their personality, their culture than just an entertainer. “I’ve been getting into trouble since I was a little kid, second grade. That’s when things started getting documented and stuff, at school, “In fifth grade I had a fantasy that I wanted to get shot at one point in my life, like in my arm, to have that wound, to have that as a badge of honor, and then I wanted to go to prison. Then as I hit freshman year I was like, what the fuck? That was dumb. “My mom would discipline me, take stuff away, spankings and shit like that, but (I’d always) have the essentials.” “The second half of my freshman year, I started skipping, and then I didn’t gain any credits after the second semester of my freshman year. “I was fascinated with guns. So like just knowing shit was going on in the streets, it just like intrigued me a little bit. When I left (an after-school program where he would hang out and sometimes study), I was like, ‘OK son, now it’s starting to get dark.’ That’s when shit like basically gets fun.” See YOUTHS, page 7 Oregon Youth Authority has cultural hristina Puentes,, the gang conflict programming to help youths discover resolution coordinator for youth more positive facets of their cultural correctional facilities statewide, said many gang members see gangs as a big heritage. ■ part of their cultural identity. Trei, a Gangster Disciple, is serving a Month sculHtceJm slabbing a man in th, chest during a robbery. PHOTO BY JOt «UJUt "For a lot of these youth, what they see on the media, what they see on social media, that's who they iden tify with - that's who African-Amer icans are, or that's who latinos are, and we teach them that it goes way beyond that, and have them see that bigger picture." "Yo® can even watch March Mad« ness or college football, and yon see Oind signs thrown left and right. You see celebrities doing it. It's al most like it's the 'in' thing, like it's become OK.... And then yon have 'Gangland,' and all those shows, which jnst adds a whole other layer because 'Gangland' gives oar guys so many ideas."
