Gangs don't do a damn thing besides destroy hope for our future......

I have been the type of person who allows things to go right over my head and do not allow things to aggravate me very easily. I have been told that I can hold a grudge for a long time and that I can easily forgive people when dealing with friends. When I was fourteen, I was able to go places by myself and I was very naïve when it came to trusting people. I grew up in a neighborhood where most people were friendly and everyone knew each other. There were hardly any problems with others and no one had any weapons.

My cousin was lucky and was allowed to go outside often, where I on the other hand was forced to stay home all day. His parents were not very strict at all and he did not do well in school either. He hanged out with the wrong crowd as a young child and the group of friends he was with was a bad influence on him. They were stealing things from the gas station across the street and he was getting into fights more times than hockey players during a normal game. His group wanted to start a gang by the end of seventh grade and they did; it was called the Gang Gr33n Gang. (I know it is a horribly name and it was hardly spelled right.) Unluckily for him and his merry members of only eight bangers (or people) there was a real gang up the block from where we lived. Even unluckier for the gang and our community, they both went to the same school.

There was a girl in the school which both gangs wanted to try to go out, but both gangs were not about to back down. That is when the random beat downs (jumping) started. The young kids from both blocks were no longer safe while going home and people were afraid to let their children go home alone. My home has a lot of races mixed together, but only the black kids were being beat up considering Gang Gr33n only had black boys in the gang. People said that the other gang would always scream at the top of their lungs, “Kill them Kokolos!!!!” “Kokolos” means a black person in Spanish is what I would later find out. My cousin and I were soon targeted and we ran for our lives. I never thought I would be targeted for a jumping because of my skin color and now I am more wary about my surroundings.