Category: Piece of the Week

-Kente, Santa Cruz I cry when my emotions are all over the place, when I am feeling sad or mad or frustrated all at the same time and they just all come out. Sometimes I can’t control it and it just comes out.  The last time I cried was last Tuesday when I was in court listening to my parents talk about how much I’m a good kid and the judge still decided to not let me come home and be with my family all over again. I wasn’t alone. I had my lovely lawyer right next to me making

-Jose, Santa Clara  After more than three years of being incarcerated, I have developed and created a vision that I once never had. For so many years, I was blinded to the fact that there was so much more that being contained in a single environment that is built to keep the people of color down.  The system that those so-called good Samaritans “government”  implemented on our people, was to “teach us a lesson” or to break bad habits, but all it’s done is just make us more mad and more hungry.  Some individuals will never get out of the

–Efrain, Sonoma   The Beat Within — where you can express your thoughts, emotions, and qualities to the world.  I remember my first Beat a couple years back. I thought that writing wasn’t all that, and that it wasn’t my thing until Michael convinced me to write something. At first, it was small because I thought, “Writing is not what gang members do,” but over time the topics and talks started to hit home.  I found myself writing more and more. It was a way I was able to express how I felt. I started writing on my free time. It

-A, Sacramento Recently, I have been good until I came back here. But it’s not that bad because I might leave on the sixteenth. I am nervous because I’m gonna have a little one at the end of this month.  I personally am trying to keep my head up, but I keep getting that feeling that the judge is not gonna let me go home because of my charge. I feel like the juvenile system is not fair all the way because they don’t give us a release date.  But every day that I am in here and my court

-DLR, Sacramento  I identify myself as a good man and a God-fearing man. I hope it isn’t different than how my friends and family see me, but I think they see me the same.  If they see me differently it’s because they see the old me. I would like to change how people see me if they still see the old me because I am changing every day.  A decision that was incredibly challenging for me was to take a plea deal for my case. I had the option to go through trial or take three years, even though I’d

-Heart Broken, Stanislaus To be honest, I feel like the hardest decision I’ve ever made was probably to stop giving my love to my first love. Reason is because at first sight, I was so in love with her I almost felt like we was meant to be.  Every day I felt like I needed to talk to her to see her or something that gave me some type of contact with her. She was selling the dream so good I almost felt like it was real until she kept on cheating, and even then I thought it was somewhat

-Fred, San Francisco  Hard work to me means getting through the day without doing anything that might get me in trouble.  Hard work to me also means taking care of siblings when my parents are out because it’s always something going on between them. I’ll have to decide what I should do to keep them from hurting each other or messing up around the house.  I know that my mom has a hard time waking all of my siblings up for school because my siblings go to different schools and she has to take the little ones to school somewhere

-PJ, Marin  I do believe I am my worst enemy. I believe this because I feel the only person holding you back is yourself.  There are times where people blame others for when things are going wrong in their life. But I’ve always believed that you are in full control of what happens and you can separate yourself from people you don’t agree with. You can drop bad habits by yourself alone, even if it may be hard.  You have no one — and I mean no one — to blame. You decide what you doing what you don’t, which

-Sanguine, Santa Cruz  I like to express my creativity in a lot of different ways. I like to draw, write, take pictures and play instruments, especially the electric guitar. Sometimes I cook. I mix a couple of different desserts together to make a new one or sometimes I make crazy sandwiches, instant ramen and add a couple of extra ingredients or just go simple and cook a steak.  I especially like grilling. When my family has carne asada(grilled meat), it’s usually me or my pops who’s grilling and my mom mixing the salsa, guac, beans and rice. I’m not such

-JP, Sacramento Support systems are important. My family is my biggest support system and they come to all of my court dates.  I think it’s important to have good support systems because if you don’t, people will not have good mental health. If I didn’t have the support I do have right now, my mental health would not be as good. My mental health is not the best, but it would be a lot worse if my family wasn’t able to see me.  People need support even if they think they don’t. I believe they need them a lot more