“Grove City: Man with submachine gun robs gas station - ThisWeek Community News” plus 2 more |
- Grove City: Man with submachine gun robs gas station - ThisWeek Community News
- What happened to New Orleans' Black truck farming culture? - scalawagmagazine.org
- Pelican Bay:UNLOCKED–The voices of incarcerated students behind the prison podcast changing the culture of Pelican Bay State Prison - Redheaded Blackbelt
| Grove City: Man with submachine gun robs gas station - ThisWeek Community News Posted: 27 Apr 2020 03:19 AM PDT Grove City police officers were dispatched at 2:09 a.m. April 20 to Speedway, 3135 Broadway, on a report of an armed robbery. There, an employee told police that, around 1:59 a.m., a man wearing a black-and-purple mask and square-rimmed glasses entered the store with a submachine gun. The employee said the man pointed the gun at him, tossed him a bag and told him to fill it with $100 bills. The employee reportedly told the robber he did not have access to the safe and gave the bag back to the suspect with about $102 in cash from the register. The man then fled on foot, and the employee called 911. While canvassing the area, another officer made contact with a witness who reported she was walking on First Avenue in Urbancrest when a man matching the robber's description passed her. The witness said she did not see a weapon. In other recent Grove City police reports: * An employee of a business on the 6100 block of Seeds Road reported April 16 a hydraulic trailer valued at $10,000 was stolen from the company's lot. The theft occurred between 12:01 a.m. April 13 and 8:22 p.m. April 16, reports said. * A resident of the 2900 block of Sawyer Court reported April 16 that an unauthorized purchase had been made using his wife's electronic checking account. The man said his wife purchased a computer-support product for $600 from a company March 16 via electronic check. He said he later received a notice from the bank that an additional product was purchased for $600 on March 25 that the couple did not authorize. The bank produced an electronic check that looked different than the previous check, and that appears to be fraudulent, according to reports. * The manager of a hotel on the 1800 block of Stringtown Road called police at 12:30 p.m. April 17 to report two guests were refusing to leave after checking out. When officers arrived, the manager reported the couple had left the scene. One of the guests was seen placing her suitcases behind the hotel trash bin before leaving on foot. Officers checked the area for the suspects but did not find them, reports said. The manager later notified police that a television valued at $502 had been taken from the room the guests had occupied April 15 and 16. He said there had been constant traffic to and from the hotel room throughout the their stay. Officers attempted to contact the two people by phone but were unsuccessful, reports said. |
| What happened to New Orleans' Black truck farming culture? - scalawagmagazine.org Posted: 27 Apr 2020 05:01 AM PDT George Lafargue is proud of his tomatoes. They're not like the tomatoes you'd buy in the supermarket, their centers lifeless in taste, color an off-white. His are as red on the inside as on the outside, full of flavor, like fireworks on your taste buds. As tomatoes should be, he says. He grows some of his stock for George's Produce, his storefront in New Orleans' Westbank, on a 23-acre plot of land he owns outside the city. The rest of it comes from other small farmers across south Louisiana and Mississippi, and only from those he trusts: A man in Marrero grows his okra and beans; three guys in Mississippi grow his watermelons; a friend in LaPlace grows the rest. But the tomatoes are his, made in his dirt. To prove their ripeness and his growing prowess, he has tomatoes cut in halves throughout his small store, showing their cardinal color.
"This is just like being married, doing this, like any other business. But a business like this, when you walk into an establishment and you see," he says grandiosely, stopping to uncross his arms draped across his burly chest to point at his surroundings, from the garlic cloves hanging from the ceiling to the oranges in a rolling crate next to him. "It tells a lot about me." The business was handed down from his father, George Sr., who started truck farming––setting up on corners or making rounds through the neighborhoods to sell produce––and running vegetable and fruit stands around the city in 1931. At age 7, a half-century ago, Larfargue joined the tradition. Each day, before dawn till past dusk, they'd hop in his father's pickup truck and drive their routes, their produce loaded in the back. The neighborhood they were in depended on the day. On the job, Lafargue remembers, people would hang their heads out their windows and holler at them to stop as they made their way down the block. "Mr. George," a lady might call to his father, the curlers still in her hair. "Send me up a dozen of bananas, a pound of grapes, some peaches, some plums." Young Lafargue would fetch a pan from the lady, fill it up with her order, and bring it back to her to collect the money. "Look," George, Sr. would tell him. "They owe you $15." If he didn't get the change correct, he risked an ass-whooping from his father. It's how he learned to count. Today, Lafargue says, he still sells to some of the same customers as his father. But the business changed. He opened his storefront in May 2000, but the New Orleans suburb of Terrytown is a far cry from the business' roots in the city's historic French Market. And with it has gone a tradition across New Orleans, it seems––gone like his father, like some of the customers from back then, all memories.
George Lafargue holds one of the many types of tomatoes he grows and sells at George's Produce, the market he owns with his wife Chanel Lafargue. Lafargue and his father were former truck farmers. What happened to New Orleans' truck farming? It's unclear how many truck farmers were once scattered across the city's street corners. But according to those who lived in New Orleans during the mid- to late 20th century, seeing and buying from these mobile farmers was a common occurrence. For generations, they consistently hawked healthy food for parts of the Crescent City, particularly for its poorest residents. Today, the truckers around town are largely nonexistent, despite widespread food affordability and accessibility challenges facing many New Orleanians. Almost 22 percent of Orleans Parish residents and more than 12 percent of Jefferson Parish residents are described as "food insecure," according to a 2017 estimate by Feed America. Last year, researchers at Loyola University in New Orleans also produced a report citing Louisiana with the nation's second-highest rate of food insecurity, with New Orleans ranking similarly high among U.S. cities.
"I'm from the generation when it was really sort of a prolific occurrence in the city," says Pamela Broom, the founder and former deputy director of the New Orleans Food and Farm Network. "Now, I guess the last sort of cultural representation of that and the city was Mr. Okra," or Arthur James Robinson, the truck farmer known for singing out his available produce through a PA system attached to his brightly painted truck. He died in February 2018 at age 74. For at least a short time, his daughter, Sergio Robinson, continued the tradition. Truck farmers like Mr. Okra were a regular sight in the city until the late 1960s, when more supermarkets were built, Broom said. In fact, the generations before them were the last remnants of Louisiana's slaveholding plantation system and those who couldn't immediately buy land took advantage of the opportunity to transport food to more urban areas, according to a 1937 article in the Journal of Southern History. And even before Hurricane Katrina's havoc in 2005, some local farmers and re-salers kept up the truck farming culture and would park in locations around the city. "But for the most part, you don't really see that anymore," Broom says. What changed? It's hard to point to a specific event, though food systems across the nation have morphed dramatically. Even so, the decline of food systems like truck farming is, partly, a result of federal policy changes, incentivized land consolidation brought along large-scale industrialized operations that decreased citizens' reliance on small-scale operators. Indeed, many small and mid-sized farms failed since these policies were enforced in the 1970s. Recent data from the federal judiciary show that from September 2018 to September 2019, Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies increased by 24 percent from the previous year; notably, Chapter 12 bankruptcies are meant to allow "family farmers" to restructure their finances to avoid liquidation or foreclosure. Between 1987 and 2012, as the number of mid-sized farms (200 to 999 acres) fell by 44 percent, farms with more than 2,000 acres almost doubled, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Arthur James Robinson, known as "Mr. Okra," was one of the last active truck farmers in New Orleans. He died in 2018. From a macro perspective, even today's mid-sized farmers are seemingly set up to fail, which does not bode well for smaller farmers. But Lafargue has his own take on additional problems undercutting old foodways: a changing culture in which people prefer buying their groceries from large discount stores like Wal-Mart––"people buying this stuff for what it costs, instead of buying what they should for they health," he says. Younger generations lack technical skills necessary for farming––"they don't have a class in school where they teach these young people about being responsible … what produce is for, what it benefits," he says. The demise of small farming is also a matter of financial access in the modern context, as compared to the old system of truck farming––no permits, no health insurance, a lack of today's commonplace food-selling regulations. Or, as Lafargue says, it's just too damn expensive.
In particular, regulatory red tape at the city and state levels are difficult to financially navigate: A mobile vendor permit from the city of New Orleans to sell produce on the street costs no less than $305, and health and pharmacy certificates for the truck carry additional hefty price tags. In the 1980s, the federal government began to crack down on food packaging and nutrition labeling, sending a ripple effect of regulations across the nation. A truck farmer would need a certain amount of insurance due to liability, and the same goes for an employee operating the truck. Permanent parking places for the farmers' and resalers' trucks are elusive, and if you do find one, another insurance policy is also likely required. "So you go into a business where you got to be buying million dollar policies," Lafargue said. "That's why you don't see them on the street no more." But it's not just new regulations keeping truck farmers off the street. The lack of financial access to pursue small-scale farming is also a factor, says Margee Green, a local urban farmer and former Democratic candidate for Louisiana agricultural commissioner. Truck farming presents a complicated problem that partly revolves around landownership under capitalism, Green said. "I think a lot of the blame for local food systems failing shifts to consumer habits, and we kind of like to look back towards this pastoral model of food and food distribution." But that model was not great either, she said, especially for communities of color. Whereas truck farmers who didn't own land were once capable of eking out a living, despite the marginalization of their work, it's unlikely these days without owning a sizable portion of land.
Local produce sold at George's Produce in Terrytown, LA. To buy a farm, Green continued, a person would be required to either have enough capital or be able to find an equitable lease that's affordable, "which basically doesn't exist." Equipment is required, as is a surplus of personal time. "One of the [examples] I like to use when I explain this to people is that you'll never make a living growing carrots, especially not on an acre," Green said. It's the people who own land and are capable of scaling up over time who can make a living by farming. They're able to sell in more efficient marketplaces, to wholesalers or grocery stores. So, while truck farmers likely have a lot of talent and skill for growing food, they are pushed even further to the margins, forced to figure out other ways to sell the food they've grown.
"None of these people have the ability to buy big pieces of land and cooperative farms so that instead of having to sell out of the back of a truck, they're being able to sell at affordable prices at a grocery store," Green said. It's a ripple effect, as Green explained. "[Today], when you see somebody selling out of the back of a truck––90 percent, 95 percent of the time––that's no longer going to be somebody who grew that and brought it to, let's say, New Orleans." They likely bought the produce from big landowners, making them the food system's middlemen. But truck farming isn't dead––not yet. It's been revamped for this economy. Green is also the executive director of the group SPROUT, which has run a truck farm table for the past two years. As she explained, it's a twice-per-week table that allows multiple small-scale farmers to drop off their produce, where it's sold free of charge for vendors, allowing the farmers to profit. "The idea behind it is to give people an opportunity to decide whether or not retail sales are the right thing for them," Green said. "It's not a profit-making enterprise for us. It's just a market development enterprise." Most of those who partake are new faces, not those of truck farmer lore, Green said. "It's the people who have either the time and energy to work a full-time job and also grow, or the people that have the safety net, whether it's financial or social, to be able to take the risk of farming." Most of these "new faces" are young and white.
Enticing Black communities in particular to get back to the roots of growing food is a challenge Broom has become well-acquainted with. She blames it on generational gaps in knowledge and desire to farm. "It's still sort of has this spin on it of, 'Oh, we don't do that kind of thing,' or 'I don't have time to do it.' But then on the other hand, I'm connected with some Black growers that are constantly looking for ways to find property that's secure to grow on, and to help members of the community get better access and actually participate. But it's a struggle." When Lafargue gets excited, he'll stop talking and glance at you from beneath his thick black-rimmed glasses––his eyes lingering in the bottom edges of the frames––and he'll wait for an answer. But only briefly. If nothing's said, he'll go back to talking about his work, his philosophy. "I'm not saying I got the best produce. I'm not saying my prices [are] the best." Lafargue says of his business methods. "My thing is that I worry about this stuff being good and where it comes from. Who grew it? I got to know that for you to buy it from me. Ain't nobody in this business do that." That more father and sons aren't out truck farming today, in his eyes, is exemplary of New Orleans' changing community makeup. Back then, he said, neighborhoods were safer. Now he says he would rather bring a gun. Back then, without their produce and fruit, people couldn't make home remedies for illnesses. Now, Lafargue says, if you learn there's a problem with your health, the doctor will give you a prescription for pills. But could the idea of community-wide truck farming work, again? "I'm not saying it wouldn't," Lafargue says. "If you do the research on it and take an interest in it, it could work. But the red tape and what you got to have to set it up, it costs a lot of money." In New Orleans, a mobile vending permit from the city costs $305, plus application fees, an insurance policy that covers at least $500,000, along with other farming and vehicle costs. But some people value the heritage that came with the farm trucks––the tradition of the local food system––more than the money it costs to run and maintain it. For one New Orleanian, that means paying the property tax, among other costs, to maintain an abandoned lot he hopes will serve a similar purpose within the community. Among New Orleans locals, Tyrone Henry is known simply as "Brotha T." He studies herbal remedies, a multigenerational tradition passed down from his grandmother. He's also a local businessman with Bissap Breeze, a hibiscus tea company founded by him and his wife Esailama Artry-Diouf, and Veggie NOLA, a catering and food meal planning company they launched in April 2018, which also operates a small fruit stand under Interstate-10 along the Claiborne Avenue corridor, once a popular route for the bygone era of truck farmers. Henry is the person you call when you want a natural home remedy to cure a sniffle or ease a chronic illness.
Henry spends most of his time tending to the small farm and spiritual space in New Orleans' Seventh Ward neighborhood, a fenced yard with a small house on stilts used for storage. He calls the space "Ile Osain," the ancient Yoruba name for "Mother Earth," though the description of the name is more complicated than that, he explained. On paper, he calls the space an "ecological epicenter." It's a place to learn more about sustainability projects, like rainwater catching and solar energy, and to connect with the land through activities such as introducing local kids to growing food. He's leasing the space for now but is actively working to secure funding so that he can officially purchase it. "Connecting with the earth, connecting with the wind, connecting with the air and water, under whatever modern name it's called––permaculture and horticulture––all of those new names that have been put on ancient living techniques," Henry said. Only a few herbs are growing in the garden, and a handful of goats keep most of the weeds and overgrowth to a minimum. But it's a start. Henry grew up working on trucks periodically. He had family members who did so as well. Without them, he says, relationships are lost. "These food truck type situations, it's more personal and you bring these components within satellite spots throughout the neighborhood. Even the energy of those trucks passing through, when the people shouting out what they selling and what they have, that's a certain color and a certain natural, organic kind of prayer that's missing," Henry says. "You can feel the absence of it. It's like the birds singing, the traffic singing its song; you don't hear the fruit man no more." |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2020 10:28 AM PDT  (Top left-right)Kunlyna Tauch, Mike Swanigan, Kyron Aubrey, Tracy Paul, and Semaj A Martin pose with audio journalism teacher Paul Critz in the A-yard abandoned chow hall turned classroom. [Photo courtesy of Paul Critz.] In an abandoned chow hall that now doubles as a storage closet and classroom space on B-yard of Pelican Bay State Prison, Tracy Paul sits quietly in front of a microphone next to Kunlyna Tauch. Paul is wearing black square rimmed glasses with a beard to match and both are fitted in the loose hanging signature California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) issued blue scrubs over a clean white shirt and navy denim pants. Opposite of them sits fellow inmate Semaj A. Martin sporting headphones connected to an Acer laptop with the audio program Audacity filling the screen. Tauch begins interviewing Paul for the prison's newly created audio journalism class that produces the podcast Pelican Bay: UNLOCKED. Both hail from Long Beach, were involved with gangs at an early age and are incarcerated for murders they committed as teenagers. Paul, who is serving a 116 to life sentence, explains into the microphone the context behind his journey towards prison starting with being raised by his mother while his father did stints in prison himself. He describes to Tauch how he got into gang banging and why this podcast will hopefully change the perception of Pelican Bay and the humans inside. "It wasn't a lack of a father figure because at the end of the day my father didn't really know how to be a father," Paul said. "I think if we were going to talk about the lack of fathers it's a generational thing. My father didn't even know his father and he was just trying to provide for his family." Tauch's story is similar, in regards to gang involvement, and was serving time in juvenile detention centers at the age of 12. Tauch is first generation Cambodian American and remembers feeling like a social outcast as a child. When he grew up, he said his neighborhood was rife with races at war with each other and was visibly poverty stricken. Tauch wants the podcast to show outside society that people in prison are redeemable. He said those in Pelican Bay are participating in programming and working towards rehabilitation and a brighter future. Tauch himself is involved with theatre classes, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition's Hope and Redemption classes, Gogi classes, business classes, Buddhist meditation (he's the buddhist chaplain on B-yard), and he is even slated to earn his Associates Degree for Transfer in June. "What people have to try to comprehend is that Pelican Bay was built to punish and that sort of mentality breeds a culture, both for C.O.s [correction officers] and prisoners, especially on B-yard," Tauch said. "Fast forward to now, Sacramento is pushing for more programs and more rehabilitation. Pelican Bay is struggling to keep up with demand. The culture of this prison is not what it used to be."  Paul Critz listens to audio recordings of recent interviews for Pelican Bay:UNLOCKED podcast. [Photo courtesy of Paul Critz.] "In 2014 Pelican Bay was exactly as you thought it would have been: we got yard once every other day and virtually no programs," Tauch said. "The yard went down almost every day and as if the weather matched the chaos it rained all the time. It was horrible." Pelican Bay is notoriously known as California's first and only supermax prison in the state. It is geographically isolated from any dense population and sits in the middle of a clear cut of redwoods next to the southwest Oregon border. It was ranked in the top ten worst prisons in America by Mother Jones Magazine in 2013. It is famous for the utilization of solitary housing units, or SHU, and the media's overzealous and misleading use of "worst of the worst" in describing the prisoners it was built to house. Keramet Reiter has been researching solitary confinement for the last decade and explains in her 2016 book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement that when Pelican Bay opened its gates in 1989, solitary confinement "became standard practice for thousands of inmates" and "extreme punishment became routine." People were spending decades in solitary confinement even though 100 years prior "the US Supreme Court noted that the practice had been abandoned as barbaric." She found that by 1995 "roughly 1,000 prisoners were doubled-bunked in the SHU [Security Housing Unit–solitary]" although they were put there because they were a threat to other inmates in general population. She also discovered that despite the narrative of Pelican Bay housing the "worst of the worst" criminals inside the SHU, hundreds of prisoners were being released directly from the SHU every year. If these inmates were so dangerous as to put inside solitary confinement, why is it then so many were released straight to the streets?  Audio journalism teacher Paul Critz and incarcerated student Barry Woods recording an episode for Pelican Bay State Prison's podcast Pelican Bay: UNLOCKED. [Photo Courtesy of Paul Critz.] The hunger strikes ended with a lawsuit won by the incarcerated individuals and advocates that forced the prison to destroy one of two of their SHUs. When the incarcerated individuals that were housed in the now dismantled SHU were released, they initiated the Agreement to End Hostilities between races. Once they were out on the yard, they started the P.E.A.C.E group, Prisoners Embracing Anti-Hostility Cultural Evolution, substituting violence with conflict resolution and direct communication between different races. This opened the doors for the prison to begin providing a host of programs including the audio journalism class offered through the William James Association. The WJA is contracted by Arts in Corrections, which is a partnership between the CDCR and the California Arts Council to bring art classes inside prisons. Today, they are in all 35 state prisons and the WJA has a heavy presence inside Pelican Bay. They offer theatre, guitar playing, creative writing, visual art, and as of April 2019 a class on how to produce a podcast taught by Paul Critz. Critz operates Crescent City's community radio station KFUG. He has been involved with radio broadcasting since high school and is a local staple around the small beachside town. "It was refreshing to come in and see the abilities of the guys to tell a story with the passion and expertise as well," Critz said of first walking into the classroom. "They are all very thoughtful guys. They are very conscious of where they are, who they are and they live to articulate those thoughts."  Pelican Bay State Prison A-yard students in Paul Critz's audio journalism class work on producing a podcast episode of Pelican Bay: UNLOCKED in winter 2019. [Photo courtesy of Paul Critz.] "We learn a lot on how to edit and format a podcast," student Daniel Noriega said of having Critz as a teacher. "I never even knew what a podcast was and so just learning how to conduct these interviews and having Paul guide us on this path has been very instrumental. We appreciate his time and his effort." Noriega spent seven of his 18 years in prison in the SHU. Recent programming actually gave him a year early kick so he could participate in programs and he was the first one to sign up for Critz's class. His goal for the podcast is to squash the stigmatism Pelican Bay has on the prisoners and the positive benefits the programs are having on the prison.  Incarcerated A-yard students Daniel Noriega and Marco Garcia Jr. brainstorming ideas for a new podcast episode. [Photo courtesy of Paul Critz.] Not everyone agrees these men should be rehabilitating themselves. The only negative comment submitted on the podcast's website states, "Too bad the family of the victims of these murderers don't get to hear from their loved ones however these losers get to speak out. They do NOT deserve anything but what they've earned. Time in prison!" The other 22 comments made were expressions of gratitude and eager anticipation towards the podcast as well as mothers, sisters, wives and daughters publishing sentiments of hearing their loved ones doing something positive with their lives. The single negative comment was quickly responded to by four comments advocating for the students in the podcast and making it a point to reiterate the "R" in CDCR stands for rehabilitation. The class begins with check-ins followed by how to organize story-telling through the passage of time. Critz is conscientious of not putting his own stamp on the podcast. He simply guides the students but in a way only a seasoned storyteller can. Other than the setting of barbed wire fencing, gunner towers and both C.O. and inmate garb, Critz's class mirrors the dynamics of a journalist newsroom on a college campus. "This is almost an oral history and a real contribution to the historical record of our culture," Critz said of the importance of this podcast. "There's a feeling of historical respect and to capture that and to document it and chronicle it in any small way, shape, or form is probably the biggest thing that makes this the most important media project I've been involved with." The focus for the next few podcast episodes will be what the students call The Awakening. This is the transformation of the prison after the Agreement to End Hostilities between races occurred from the hunger strikes. Barry Woods, who has been incarcerated for 30 years, had numerous stints in solitary confinement and experienced the environment of Pelican Bay in the early 90s. He even taught himself to read and write while serving an early sentence in the SHU. "Pelican Bay isn't even the same place," Woods said. "There was so much division. You had every faction separated and there was no line crossing. It was the wild west."  Incarcerated student Barry Woods wants to use his voice in the podcast to stop the transition of youth from coming to prison. [Photo courtesy of Paul Critz.] He remembers when he first got to Pelican Bay there was no interracial interaction. Something as little as playing card games or basketball with another race was unheard of and he said any little thing could set off a riot. Tensions between inmates and guards were just as high. Before the hunger strikes and the formation of the P.E.A.C.E group, Woods said "there was no unity among prisoners and everyone distrusted each other." Today, Woods said the opportunity for programming is having a drastic change in the prison and with inmates actively engaging with one another void of hostilities–it is enabling individual and community healing. "For me [the podcast] is to use my voice in order to stop this transition of youth coming to prison," Woods said. "A lot of the things that were happening in the prison you don't have to worry about as far as all the tension. It also relieves that tension between us and staff. It creates a better living condition for us to better focus on these rehabilitative programs." The majority of the students in A-yard have been incarcerated long enough to experience the changes Woods is talking about. The combined total of time they spent in the SHU equates to decades. They also come from a diverse background of different races and gangs, exemplifying that the Agreement to End Hostilities between races is taking effect. Woods said the podcast gives a format for various factions of prisoners so they can sit down together peacefully and use dialogue in a constructive manner. He gives credit to San Quinton's Ear Hustle for opening up the opportunity for their podcast and exposing the inside of prison life to the world. He believes if people can see the redemption shown by co-host Earlonne Woods and the rest of the Ear Hustle team then hopefully people can view Pelican Bay prisoners the same. "We can get all these different views amongst ourselves and hear our thoughts with each other without ever coming to hostilities and respectfully tell our stories," Woods said. "The old mindset [of the C.O.s] and the old mindset of the prisoners is dying out of separation and punishment." Back on B-yard audio journalism student Marcel Buggs sits down with Antwone Johnson. There is snow covering the surrounding hill tops and a light rain is falling outside the abandoned chow hall. The room is silent because this is a particularly special interview for Buggs. Johnson is the younger brother of the victims of Buggs' crime. Both were members of rival gangs from Richmond but are now friends working towards healing. They want to use their voices to denounce the gang lifestyle and by using their example hopefully change the way at risk youth look to gang culture. "Being in the situation we are in and to be able to put our heads together and help each other grow shows a lot about our character," Johnson said about working together with Buggs. "We broke the cycle. We changed. Although we are in prison for past mistakes, we are trying to make up for them every day." When Buggs, who has served eight of his 40 year to life sentence for a gang involved shooting, learned Johnson was a few cells down from him his heart sank. Buggs confronted Johnson about his crime and received a reaction he was least expecting. Johnson explained he was moving past all that gang mentality and working towards personal growth. "Even though he was a youngster at that moment he was more mature than me, he was wiser than me, he was stronger than me," Buggs said. "I was the weaker being at that moment and he opened my eyes and let me know that I got to do better. From that moment I sought to make his time with me the most comfortable and peaceful that I could." Johnson had never been to prison before, so Buggs took the opportunity to give him some essential items and show him the ropes of Pelican Bay. They would walk the yard together talking about how to heal and Buggs would even help Johnson with his math problems for the G.E.D. Buggs said, "We've built a brotherhood separate of other people's opinions." The two say they are hoping to change the cycle of kids growing up in poverty stricken environments like theirs. After a Yoruba class a few weeks prior to their conversation, Johnson pulled Buggs aside and told him he forgave him for his crime against his brothers. The reason they were now sitting down in front of a microphone. "That was a type of liberation that I had never experienced," Buggs said. "Them letting me out into the free world right now wouldn't be as impactful or as strong as that moment. I love him for that. He did something that our world and our community teaches us not to. We are taught to avenge and to retaliate and keep it going. He said at that moment it stops right here and I didn't know what to do with that other than be grateful this opportunity came to me."     |
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