Our America: Part III

LeAlan: True. I mean with them cutting off welfare, a lot of these shorties are going to be even more messed up.
Lloyd: That’s the worst thing you could do—cut off aid around the projects!

LeAlan: Shorties are going to be out here starving, and they’re going to want to eat. It’s going to be hell out here!
Lloyd: It’s going to be war.
LeAlan: An apocalypse!

Why are we dependent on other folks to take care of us?

You know, sometimes I get so angry when I’m talking, because I look at all these kids and I wonder, “How many are going to grow up into men and women?” Lives are snatched just like that around here. I fear for these children every day.

And everybody made such a big commotion—you saw so many TV cameras here that week, running all around the Darrow Homes taking pictures, interviewing everybody.

See, Eric became a martyr. He became a symbol. But even then, nothing’s been done for him.

I’m on the verge of giving up and moving out—it’s gotten that bad with me.

This school year we have had the police coming into the building on several occasions to take children out, and it’s been a matter of talking to them and saying, “This is how you act when the police pick you up. No, you will not give them lip and you will not give them resistance.”

Is there anyone who you can look at now who you felt was very bleak back then but has changed around?

Our children here have some of the same symptoms that you see if you look at children who live in war zones in Africa.

They may go through trials and they may go through tribulations, but they survive.

This past year, only eleven out of the forty kids in the eighth-grade class at Donoghue had high enough scores to graduate. Now the school has been put on probation.

Since ’93 my mom hasn’t had a mental relapse and my sister, Janell, has calmed down.

The most significant change that I have seen is the gang-wars.

There’s more drug activity, more drive-by shootings, and more innocent people being killed.

Thinking about my life. I mean, it’s ironic. Here I am, seventeen years old, and I take business trips for the weekend, speak on the same stage as Hillary Clinton, fly back home, and go to school the next day.

That’s a testament to giving a person an opportunity and letting them make something of it. And the sad thing about it is that there’s a lot more people out here just like me.

I just sit back and contemplate: Why did things turn out this way?

Why have I been given these opportunities?

Why will I probably make it out of here while others won't? Why? I don’t know. This world is a funny, perplexing place.

And a year ago Janell was seriously assaulted by another ex-boyfriend who had just gotten out of prison.

Well, by my drinking so much, I have seizures. I used to drink two and three pints of wine every day, and the alcohol ate my brain cells.

LeAlan: I guess we found an oasis. Our little oasis in the ghetto.
Lloyd: Now I just can’t wait to get out of here.

I’ve never felt American, I’ve only felt African-American. An American is supposed to have life, liberty, prosperity, and happiness.

But an African-American is due pain, poverty, stress, and anxiety.

As children, they know that there may not be a tomorrow. Why are African-American children faced with this dilemma at such an early age? Why must they look down the road to a future that they might never see?

I live in a community that waves a white flag because we have almost given up. I live in a community where on the walls are the names of fallen comrades of war.

I live in a second America. I live here not because I chose to, but because I have to. I hate to sound militant, but this is the way I feel.

These are the thoughts that go on in my mind and really mesmerize me.

We’ve got to make a change, because if we don’t we’ll go into the millennium in total disarray.