West Side Story: Reggie

The last year has been a very special journey for me. One of my biggest inspirations was MLK, and this quote in particular reminded me how important it is to say and do difficult things. I stared at it many times sitting in a room with people who deserve so much more but haven't received it simply because of the color of their skin, the complex layers of racism combined with a system that sets too many up to fail. Staring at this poster, while taking wisdom from Viktor Frankl, the stoics, and my friend Reggie, I made a promise to myself that I would always be willing create the constructive tension when it came finding solutions to systemic oppression.

Here is my friend Reggie's story. He gave me permission to publish this and I have promised him that he can count on me to make a difference in some way.

There is a lot?of pain and hopelessness about the violence in Chicago and our inability to stop it. I talked recently with my friend Reggie about his story.?He has the lived as the gangbanger pulling the trigger and now as a father trying to keep his 15 year old son safe from harm. Like many parents of young black men, he carries the daily stress of wondering if his son will make it home each night.?

“Chicago wasn’t as bad as it was now.” He says. “I[n the late 90’s] it was survival, and now people are doing it for a ‘want’ or to have a name or a $1000 jacket.?They only thing we can do is to put reality in front of them.”

?“The real math is that a job is better in the long run.?Regarding the current situation in Chicago, “People sell now for the lifestyle they think they can achieve. The drugs are out of control and nobody [in the neighborhoods] makes the money they used to. Add Fentanyl, and people die before they can come back for more. The economics aren’t there.?It’s Ecstasy + Fentanyl = OD.”

“What these kids don’t understand is that there are people in this world who really care.”

Reggie is a slim and fit handsome young black man in his mid-30’s and speaks softly. He is a courageous and faithful man with impeccable manners and unafraid to actively offer support and empathy to someone he sees struggling. He inspires me to be better and has overcome a lot of barriers and tragedy in his 35 years; many out of his control and placed in his path as a result of generations of systemic racism.?

Now he?lives a good life, is a role model for his son and other young men. His story makes him stronger on his journey and he has learned to not give up on himself. He has overcome the odds and done the “work” on himself. He has self-control and knows that there are good people along the way that want to help with momentum and provide hope. Like anyone, he has challenges, but is prepared to meet them.

One afternoon last summer, Reggie asked me about my family. We talked about my kids and family. When I asked him the same questions, I didn’t expect the response that I got. His father murdered his mother when he was two years old. She was beaten and set on fire. His dad got 25years and he has not spoken to his father since. I thought back to my kids being that age and all the wonder, imagination and innocence they had. Reggie, I am sure was no different.?

Foster homes kept him with his older brother on the West Side where he had a front row seat to hard drug abuse. Luckily, seeing the addiction kept him from going down the same path.Years of foster dollars meant for him and his brother were often misused, so he was without basic necessities and lived in poverty throughout much of his childhood. Once he was in school, he talked with school counselors, but was too young to understand the impact that the trauma he had been through. He eventually stopped going and didn’t circle back to counseling and rational emotive behavior education again until his 20’s.?

After being arrested on a gun charge, he was sent to juvenile detention in Illinois for the first time when he was 14. I asked him about that and he said, at the time, he considered himself?the product of his environment, but that he would like young men today to know that “being a product of your environment” is just an excuse for taking the easy way out.

He talks of when he started to get into trouble, “my problems started with me hanging out on the streets. They would feed me, and I would?have money in my pocket, so I could survive. I was being sent to do all their dirty work and before I knew it, I was blessed”. ?

When I asked Reggie about whether he could leave the gang, he described his gang as his family,?where he slept on their mom’s couches and he felt guilty leaving them. He had been “blessed in” (as opposed to enduring violence or committing a crime to prove his worth). I suppose like most of us, we don’t leave our families either, even when they aren’t the healthiest situations, because it’s familiar. “The comfort zone, kids have to get out of their comfort zone”

He spent three years in Juvenile detention and got out when he was 17. In total, between 14 and 22 he spent 5 years in a cell. Four (4) of them were maximum security, where he was only let out of the cell for 2 hours daily. In between, he told me he was selling drugs, gang banging and repeating the cycle. He did try to leave and go stay with his brother in California for a couple years, but he got lonely and returned to what he knew.?

During his time inside, he spent a lot of his time learning and contemplating what he wanted and maybe more importantly, what he did not want. “It gets bad sitting in a cell, for 5 years. It is lonely and there is no-one in there with you and for the people on the outside, your girlfriend, you are out of sight, out of mind.”?

At 22, Reggie got his first job at a Forest Park grocery store. As a kid, he didn’t?think about what he wanted to be when he grew up. He just wanted to survive.?

What turned him around for good was his first son. Just thinking about being in prison, he didn’t want to put his kids through the struggle he went through when he was young. He told me that 90% of his influence came from the people closest to him. He wanted to be the right influence.?

When I asked him what he tells his son and what he would tell another kid in the same position, here is what he very thoughtfully told me,?

“I try to tell my son part of my story whenever I can. The stories don’t change until it hits home and their best friend is on the T- shirt because he was senselessly killed. I would tell them, stop being caught up with the things around you and think long term. Everything I did growing up?impacts me now. The time in front of you should be cherished.?

The guys on the streets the guy I grew up with are dead or in prison. My best friend, he got 38 years in the federal pen. They don’t show you that in movies. They show you guys driving all the cars and throwing money around, not the guys who will never see daylight again. Two little boys beat up an old man for his car last summer in Chicago, they’ll never see light again. Their life is over with.

He continues "They don’t see the end of the tunnel until they’re in the cell.?There is no more pulling in the drive thru, or buying a bag of potato chips at the corner story and no seeing family.When I talk to my son, I tell him about being shot six times. I shot people up. I try to scare him.”

I never ask Reggie or?if he regretted his offenses, or if he was remorseful. For what he has endured, how can I ask him if he regrets trying to survive?