by Miles Harvey
I caught myself holding guns again on the block with these guys. But I did not feel happy. It was hard because I had experienced that change. And so it was like me taking 10 steps back. I wasn’t happy doing it. I didn’t have peace. I couldn’t sleep. But I never stopped going to church.
And then one night, something happened that made me say, “You know what? Somebody’s trying to get my attention here.” Four guys got shot right in front of my mother’s house. Good friends of mine.
It was just part of the retaliation back and forth between the Two-Sixes and the Latin Kings that had been happening for decades. We’re talking about a war that’s been going on from the late ’70s, the ’80s, ’90s, until the present. It’s a war that’s gone on for like four or five decades. And it’s been retaliation after retaliation.
I was in my mom’s house. I had just gotten in. It was about two or three in the morning, and these guys were all standing two houses away. It was real loud. A drive-by, a real crazy drive-by. Two cars. They unloaded like three or four guns on my friends. And then one of my friends ran, and just fell in front of my mom’s house. And the other guy was in a gangway, shot up. They got hit with deer slugs. Like, the 30-30 bullets.
Everybody came out, my mom, everybody. She’s like, “Don’t go out, don’t go out.” But I came out because I seen my friend lying there. We were grabbing the guys who got shot and putting the bodies in cars and taking them to the hospital. You wait for the ambulance, and some of these guys are going to die.
One of them was very critical and it looked like he was going to lose his life. He’s alive. He pulled through. But that was the night where I said, “Lookit, man—God, are you trying to get my attention?” And ever since then, I’ve come a long way.
Staying in Little Village after I left the gang was the hard part. Imagine, coming from church and my friends making fun of me with my Bible in my hand. “Ha ha ha! Look at you, church boy.” Imagine the pressure. I used to make guys do things when I was in the gang, and now they’re making fun of me! My old friends from the neighborhood, man. But guess what? I went through it. I went through the pressure and the temptations.
I get emotional after all these years because a lot of my friends are coming back around and now they’re helping me, they’re supporting me. The guys with influence are making my job a little easier. In 2010, we were able to detach 10 youths from the gang. And so it’s like, yeah we work with 60-something youth, but people may say, 10 youth? Even if I have one youth leave the gang, that’s something.
A lot of people get stuck in gang life. A lot of my friends are locked up and shot up. But I knew I was created for something better—to help people, not hurt people.
—Interviewed by Miles Harvey
Endnotes
31 Roque left the YMCA shortly before this book went to press. He now works for CeaseFire and for New Life Community Church in Little Village, where he mentors young people who are on probation.
A MESSAGE FOR STUPID PEOPLE
REGGIE
Reggie—not his real name—is a 19-year-old who grew up in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, which takes its name from its location east and west of the old Union Stockyards. Once the center of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, this Southwest Side community is now filled with abandoned buildings and vacant lots. Reggie and his twin brother were raised by their maternal grandmother in a household that included several cousins and uncles. More recently, it includes the boys’ 2-year-old sister. They also have three siblings they do not know who grew up in foster care, as well as some half-sisters through their father.
Reggie’s interviews took place at the Precious Blood Community Center at South 51st and Elizabeth Streets, near Sherman Park. Housed in a former school building, only yards from the border separating one gang’s territory from another, Precious Blood serves as a kind of peace zone—providing young people with a safe place to hang out, while offering them creative outlets in music, art, video and writing. The center also regularly conducts peacemaking circles—a practice of restorative justice that seeks to address and repair the harm that has been done to the victim and to the community, without giving up on the offender.
Although he still frequents the center, Reggie no longer lives in the neighborhood. After he survived a gang-related shooting in 2010, his grandmother moved the family about 20 blocks south to keep the boys away from their former associates in the Black P Stone Rangers, an organization that controls Sherman Park and the surrounding blocks.
When speaking, Reggie rarely opens his eyes all the way; most of the time, they are mere slits in his face. But when he laughs, they open wide and he suddenly appears much younger.
All I got to say—you don’t got nobody else but yourself. Even me. I’m a twin, but no matter what, you still by yourself.
I was born and raised in the neighborhood. It was tough, rough. I been shot, gangbanged, but I’m not in a gang no more. I ain’t been in a gang—all right, you could say I’m affiliated, yeah, but I don’t sit on the corner no more. I don’t hang with the wrong crowd anymore.
I live with my grandma. She my guardian. Me and my brother had drugs in our system when we was born. That’s why my grandma got custody of us. My parents, they on drugs, both of them. But my mama, she straightened out a little bit. She live a block away. She got a little job at a little
junkyard. Today, she’s going to give me some money. But I don’t really see her
that much.
When I was growing up, there was a lot of us in my grandma’s house. Like, 10 or 11 peoples. And the sad thing is—three bedrooms. Me and my brother used to sleep on the let-out couch. Grandma used to sleep on another couch in the dining room. And my uncle and his friends, they used to smoke weed in the house. He would leave 10 of them in one room, playing games and shooting dice for money, so we’d just go outside and play basketball.
Me and my brother, we were just raw with basketball. We used to play ball in the cold. We used to bring shovels and just shovel the snow so we could play. We couldn’t really bounce the ball, it was so wet and cold. And then, in summer, we used to play tag, throw water balloons, then we’d go back playing ball. Ball, ball, ball, basketball, basketball. We was just outside having fun. Then, that’s when all the drugs, all the guns, came to the area. And that’s when everybody just became bad. Became negative. It’s just the hope, like, went away.
“Rough twins,” they used to call us. Bad twins. Like, if anything would go wrong, they’d say, “They did it.” But we ain’t never used to do it! We would just steal bikes, but we were never going in people’s houses. But the more we grew up, the more stuff we seen, and the more we wanted it. It’s like, you see people with new shoes, so you want new shoes. You want this, that, that. We seen drug dealers; they had females and cars. So we just wanted to make a name for ourselves. That’s how the bad stuff started.
There wasn’t no joining no gang. It was just, you born in it. If you were around this neighborhood, that’s what you going to be. Mexicans, we different from them. For a Mexican, you gotta beat up somebody to join a gang; you gotta kill somebody to join a gang. You gotta sell drugs, do all types of stuff to join a gang. It’s about loyalty. Loyalty to your fellow gang members. For blacks, everybody now is just about the money. Black people don’t care who you are. It’s about the bread down here. About getting money, that’s all it’s about. Or family.
The guy that shot me, we used to be friends. I probably know him all my life. We used to be cool. One of my close friends be his cousin. Then, when my close friend moved out of town, that’s when he stopped hanging with us. He went back across the park. You know how it is. The gang split. Divided. And it was just them against us.
They hated us. I don’t even know why. Me and my brother and my friends had summer jobs, and we had bought two cars. We used to just drive around there, everything looking good. We had new clothes, but we wasn’t really stunting. We weren’t showing out. We were just—us. We wasn’t thinkin
g about them. Them—they be thinking about us.
So it’s like that. They can’t go over here; we can’t go over there. It’s like a bridge. You got this side of the bridge; we got this side of the bridge. But instead of a bridge, it’s the park: You got this side of the park; we got this side of the park. That’s how it is. If they catch you, you finna get shot at—boom, boom, boom, boom.
June 16, 2010. It was daytime. Sherman Park, kids was out—it was hot. It was a sunny, sunny day. Everybody was out. So he approached us like, “Hey!” And he said something, so we got to chasing him. He just shot, like bam. I think he wanted to shoot one of us, but, like, he didn’t care if it was me. He just finna to shoot. He shot like at least nine times. Doon, doon, doon, doon. Doon, doon, doon, doon.
I didn’t know I was hit. I thought it was a paintball gun. I was laughing: “Take a look, they shooting paintball guns!” But then, I felt it. And I get to the alley, and I felt a burn, and it was hurting. And I just seen the blood: “Dang, I been shot. I been shot.”
I remember everything. I thought I was going to die. I was like, “Yeah, this could really kill me right now.” But I wasn’t really panicking; I was just calm. I was walking slow. I walked two blocks. I sat down when I made it back on Bishop Street. And the ambulance people, the paramedics—they wasn’t trying to help me. They was just, “Who did it?” That’s all they wanted to know, the police and all of them.
I was in the hospital for a day and a half. They wanted to keep me for a week, but I didn’t want to stay in. I knew I was in pain, but I just wanted to go back home. I was just bored at the hospital, you know? So I went home. And after that, when I tried to walk to the store, I’d just have to pause and stop for a minute or two, ‘cause it would get to burning and stuff. So that feeling, it would sting my heart. Just that bullet. It hit my stomach, but it entered through my hand, right here. But I’ve still got the bullet in me. I’m going to get it out, probably.
After the shooting, that’s when I started getting mature. I had a friend named Martez who got killed. A lot of people in the neighborhood were getting killed. Before that, we ain’t killing anyone. We just thought it was fun, you know. Then, it went to killing people, so that’s a big change. That’s a big difference. People right now are still getting their friends killed, and still just wanting to do dumb things. Don’t wanna make a change.
Sometimes I’ll say, “Forget the community, man. Forget everybody. I just want to go away, be rich and never come back.” I ain’t racist and all, but I don’t want my children growing up in a black community. And I don’t want them to go to no CPS. No Chicago Public Schools. If I have kids, they will be successful if I raise them in a good neighborhood, like the suburbs or up north. ‘Cause they wouldn’t be around all this negativity, all the homicides. I want them to grow up in a good area, like, with white people. ‘Cause growing up around a lot of black people is going to be tough. It’s going to be rough. It’s going to be really rough.
But then I got my other good side when I feel like I ain’t going to give up on the community. I’m just going to go do good, and come back and help the community. I think about the time I get grown—like 25, 26—the violence will probably have died down. I don’t think the violence is going to be here forever. It’s going to be violence, but not like how it is now. There’s a lot of violence, because it’s the money, people broke, the poverty. It’s like hot water. Steam. You know, when steam needs to just open up the cap and you just let it go, and you see the hot air and stuff. That’s like people, and they just shoot you—boom, boom, boom!
From now on, I got my eye on the future. You shoot at me, I’m not finna come back and shoot at you. I’m telling you, you shoot me, I’m running; you ain’t going to see me no more. You trying to make me get a felony. You trying to make me throw away my future. You just want me to fall for you. And I’m not going to fall for you. Stupid people, I’m wise.
I’m just going to focus on school, get my grades back up. I been trying to get in college. I think I’ll study marketing. I could find myself doing business, record labels and stuff. I’m hoping to go to St. Joseph College in Indiana. I want to go to a private college. I been there three, four times. I love that it’s laid-back; it’s not a university. They’ll help you out. They’re going to really help you out and be like, “Man, come on. Take it step by step. You’re going to have your diploma. You’ll have a degree, bachelor’s degree, everything—probably a master’s.”
So it’s up to me to be successful. I ain’t depending on nobody but myself. I gotta make that change. You want the jewelry, you want the girls—but I want the future.
—Interviewed by Rachel Hauben Combs
DEFENDING THE GONERS
KULMEET GALHOTRA
Kulmeet Galhotra is an attorney supervisor for the Homicide Task Force for the Cook County Public Defender. He was born 7,741 miles from Chicago in Allahabad, India, in 1966. When he was 6 years old, his parents moved to the United States, inspired by the progressive images of the civil rights movement. During his childhood, the family moved into a two-flat house in the Austin neighborhood before settling in Bucktown on the Near West Side. Originally on the path to become an engineer, Galhotra graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology as an English major and went on to attend Chicago Kent College of Law. At age 24, he began his career at the Public Defender’s office representing juveniles, before moving to the adult division after 5 ½ years.
At the Homicide Task Force, Galhotra and his fellow attorneys face an incredibly challenging workload, as 8 out of 10 people arrested for murder in Chicago are represented by public defenders.32 Candid and quick with a wry observation or joke, Galhotra speaks with a nasally Chicago accent that would make any native of the city proud. Nonetheless, he believes his background as a member of a minority helps him identify with his clients.
To me, there is nothing more important than a person’s liberty. So it was pretty easy to decide to become a public defender. I wanted to walk into court and do things that didn’t have a price tag on them. It didn’t seem meaningful enough to just do it for the money. I think I’d have a real conflict with representing people, especially in criminal law, if I had to wonder, where does a client’s money come from? You know, if Grandma just had to put up her house, I kind of feel bad about that. I don’t know if I want Grandma’s money. If the client just sold four kilos of cocaine to come up with the retainer, I’m not so sure I feel good about that, either. So it’s nice not to deal with that whole business end of being a criminal defense lawyer, and to just deal with the law.
It seemed like, okay, if I went through all this trouble to get a law degree, I want to do something really important. And I thought the job was interesting. There’s sort of the cops-and-robbers aspect of it, which is pretty cool. I have this fascination with thinking about why people do things, what makes them tick. Then there’s just the absolute love of walking into a courtroom and arguing in front of a jury or in front of a judge, and cross-examining police officers and witnesses. So that’s why I became a public defender. I get a kick out of doing it. I still get a kick out of doing it.
My first case—I don’t remember the name but I remember what happened. It was this little kid. At juvenile court you either get sentenced to the Temporary Detention Center for up to 30 days, you get put on probation in addition to that, or you go to the Department of Corrections. So the kid had pled in a juvenile court, and I think he got something like 10 days—and I was devastated. I wanted him to get nothing. Now, of course, it seems like kind of a joke—10 days. Now, my clients, most of them are looking at 45 years to life on shooting murders and 20 to 60 years for murders without a firearm.
The youngest person I ever defended was 9 years old. This was, of course, 15 to 20 years ago. This was from a south-suburban area. This 9-year-old was in the kitchen and his grandmother was, I don’t know, I think she was cooking bacon or something like that, and somehow an apron string caught on fire. And the kid threw the apron
string behind a couch and ran out of the house. And the house caught on fire, and Grandma succumbed to smoke inhalation, and she was in the ICU for months, and the whole place was destroyed, so they charged this young man with arson. Not really the brightest thing to do. And this kid had post-traumatic stress disorder. He couldn’t even talk to me about what happened. So he was found unfit to stand trial. Eventually, I think he was found guilty of criminal damage or something like that. But it was just a very sad story all around.
The really young clients are fairly easy to deal with—when they’re 12, 13, 14, they are kind of bewildered by what’s going on. They’re not very talkative; they’re just trying to get out. But as they get older, as they’ve been through the system, they start becoming a little more skeptical. They start questioning you. If you’re working with somebody who has got at least a reasonable amount of intelligence—can read and write—there’s a lot of time that they’re spending in the jail with nothing to do. So they start trying to bone up on legal matters. It’s absurd to me how they don’t go to school, but when it comes to their own case, they’ll be happy to look up laws and try to understand them. And usually, they have no concept of what the hell they’re talking about.
Typically, I would say that when I first meet them, my clients are at a very self-destructive phase—at a very defiant phase in their life. I work with individuals who have basically spent a whole life making poor decisions. When they meet me, they don’t suddenly start making good ones. I mean, there was one client—I had to put Band-Aids on his face every day at trial because he had teardrop tattoos; and he got them while he was in the jail. It’s like: “Oh God, why did you do that?” But a lot of these young people just have a track record of being unrealistic and making bad decisions. It’s very frustrating as a lawyer to give advice to somebody and then watch them not follow it. That’s their prerogative—you can’t live their life; it’s their decision.
