Seventeen Street

I have a soft spot for gang members. I’ve gotten into some pretty heated dialog over this. I take it personal because there is so much judgment without really knowing.

I belonged to gang. I wasn’t born mean, angry, hateful nor destructive. What did happen to me was that I had to trade all that innocence and happiness for sadness, mistrust, anger and abandonment. It’s a typical story. My parents divorced, my father was m.i.a. from my life, my mom remarried, didn’t get along with my stepdad and mom, etc.

Typical, right? Well, let me tell you, all that “typical” shit emotionally ripped me apart. I had to grow up fast. I was emotionally on my own from the age of seven. Seven. By the time I became a teenager I was on fire. My mom and I entered my teenage years with a double whammy. Hormones raging and the cherry on top was that I decided to belong to a gang.

We lived in an area of Santa Monica where my entire neighborhood had exactly what a kid like me needed at the time.I needed a family. I needed to feel supported. I needed to feel loved. I needed to feel wanted. I needed to feel safe. I needed to feel backed up. I got ALL of that from my neighborhood. Everyone knew each other, were hard workers and had lived at their house/apartment for years and looked out for one another. My neighbors were Mexican and Black and there were the occasional base head’s smoking crack in the alley then converging on the street corner all night. This is where I spent my formative years and this is what made me.

I’m going to share a little-itty bit from my memoir:

I was ready to rebel and I wasn’t alone. The kids in my neighborhood that I had known since Elementary School and Junior High School were ready as well. It was as if a giant web was over us and weaved in and out of our personal struggle and held us together. They seemed to be the only people I could trust and count on to be there for me. We ditched school and drank beer. We learned about each other. They knew I had a stepdad who appeared not to like me very much and who didn’t talk to me. My friend Y.B. and I had known each other since Elementary School and I knew of her struggle with her Mom’s rigid attitude towards her. She felt unloved by her Mom. Whatever little attention she did receive from her Mom, she felt was negative and whenever there was any sort of affection, she didn’t easily welcome it because she had grown not to be used to it. She struggled with wanting to please her Mom and spent a lot of years yearning for her love. By the time she became a teenager she had grown angry and resentful.

I don’t remember how we all agreed to join the gang. It was the next step for us I suppose. We all grew up together and some had older siblings already belonging, so for some it was tradition and for others like myself, I wanted to join my friends. We were the next generation taking over. One weekday after school we got jumped into the neighborhood. The initiation took place at Memorial Park on 14th and Olympic Blvd. The guys that consisted of our circle had already gotten jumped in a few days prior and now it was our turn. We were going to be the new chapter of girl’s representing the neighborhood so the girls from the previous generation had to jump us in. There were a big group of us that day gathered in the middle of the dirt baseball field. One by one we had to step into the middle of the circle. I saw Y.B. as she stepped in and swung back as she got hit and punched for seventeen seconds. The seventeen seconds represented the gang we were becoming a part of. One by one, I watched as my friends got hit. Finally it was my turn. I got in the middle of a circle, closed my eyes and turned everything inside me off. I had never been hit by so many people and did not want to think about what it was going to feel like. I lowered my head down and swung my arms super-fast as soon as I felt the first punch. I don’t think I even hit anyone. The only thing I heard was someone counting down the seconds while I took punches to my head, back and the kicks to my legs. My hair got pulled and my head yanked back and forth. I heard their fists make contact with my face and then it was over. I opened my eyes and looked around as my chest expanded and contracted rapidly from the adrenalin running through me. I slowly walked away from the circle and towards my friends taking deep breaths trying to slow my heart back down to a normal pace as the next girl walked by me making her way to the middle of the circle. I could feel my face was red and my head and back were beginning to throb, but it was vague and nothing compared to the pain I had to learn to deal with at home. I emerged with a nickname and became part of the new chapter of the Locas. My generation was the Seventeen Street Lokitas. I looked around at some of the same faces I had known when I still had some innocence in me. Some of us had the same thing in common which is why we were here, allowing ourselves to get beaten up in order for us to be part of a family that would fill a void. We needed that in order to survive. The desire was that deep. The gang member appearance was a front. We were just kids, wanting and needing the same as every kid. The difference was that we were a little lost with little guidance. ~

I do not regret this part of my life. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. I miss those days and friends A LOT. They were mischievous and fearless days. It was a part of my life that was jammed packed with loyalty, community and friendship. It was the first time I was able to feel free. I never had that as a child. I didn’t know what it felt like to be supported and protected. I felt invincible. Nothing was going to happen to me because if it did, there was a gang of people to answer to and that was intimidating. I learned two important life lessons along the way: your word and what it meant to be loyal. Oh my god, your word was everything and if you fucked up, you fucked it all up. Loyalty was golden. Without those two things, you had nothing. Straight up, no bullshit, have each other’s back, no question about it, were basically the rules and I’m still that person today.

That was our path at that time. Some of us stayed, some of us got caught up in the wicked prison system (another story for another time) and some of us moved on. A gang member isn’t a different breed. I didn’t come from a different breed. I was a kid that lacked important fundamental guidance and attention. All the things I did were out of anger not because I was a bad person. I acted out because I didn’t know any other way to express myself. I didn’t have the tools to communicate what I needed and for most of us, our parents didn’t have those tools either. It was a vicious cycle.

Inside most gang members is a small child that lacked something and is deeply hurt by that. This I am sure of.

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