I didn’t realize how little I knew about criminal justice and gang violence in the United States from a structural or institutional lens. During class with Julie Reynolds-Martinez and her session on gang violence and the prison system in the US, I found myself unable to speak to the many statistics and trends in data and reporting that has evolved over the last forty years, and to me that was embarrassing and disappointing. I had definitely known about gangs from personal experiences growing up, and I’ve had personal experience with the recruitment and operations performed by gangs both inside and outside of the system. I’ve also had the general background knowledge of US prison pipeline system and the statistics that predominately target people of  color, but to hear the in-depth stories of both inside and around the prison system to me was appalling in discovering a large gap of information especially around areas that I am currently residing in or have lived in for a while.

A lot of our session brought me into a reflective space regarding my childhood. I grew up in poor area of Sacramento, and enrolled in primary school that was predominately children of color, predominately poor, and sitting in areas where criminal and gang activity was heavily concentrated. Seeing the space and the social environment of these children who were recruited into gang life and the ways they were conditioned really brought me back to a time I hadn’t really thought to much of in the last three years. As we went into the mock exercise about Operation CEASEFIRE, I tried to channel the space and mindset a lot of my family would be in when confronting or speaking to some of my family who would be involved in gang activity in our area.

The entire sessions with Julie were really enlightening for me. I learned so much more about the prison gang and gang social structure than I had ever known. I am fascinated with the culture system within a gang, and keeping the narrative of the single stories in mind, became very impressed with how these organizations fostered and cultivated successful and innovative practices and skills into kids and adults who there entire life had been told by one system or another that they had nothing to offer. Our conversation on finding a way to tap into that system or that energy and cultivate it for a cause we see as more productive than gangs was the question left unanswered, and understanding the challenges that confronting the gang system presents make it extremely difficult for anyone to be truly a “dropout”. A couple days later, the Salinas Chief of Police made a very good point – there is no real such thing as a dropout. Not in the current realities of the system. So finding avenues to approach that issue and find a way where gang members that no longer want to associate with that system, especially kids and young people, that assures sustainable safety and community engagement to me is one of the harder but more exciting and hopeful challenges of this whole case.