2003-12-12 - 11:32 p.m.

He's okay. He got shot in the butt. Soft tissue wound. No lasting damage.

I met Jose about a month ago in the computer lab. He came in to do homework one afternoon and I invited him to my writing class. He said he'd come, but never did. He also told me a goodly portion of his life story over the next hour.

The short story is that he used to be a gang-banger, but he's cleaned up. He went to Dugan Alternative School and graduated, and now he's in college. He wants to be a lawyer and a politician. He wants to stay in Back of the Yards and help make things better in the neighborhood. He wants to be a better father to his daughter.

When I was growing up, I'd hear all these scary stories about gang members. They were these awful sub-human, blood-thirsty, violent with no reason, dark alley types who had no names or faces and never really made sense to me. They had no story. They were born, and then grew up, and then joined a gang and killed people and committed other crimes.

Then, as I grew, I learned about how our crappy social system which marginalizes large chunks of poor people, mostly black and latino, pretty much causes the existence of gangs. I thought I was so enlightened because I understood these things. But really, the gang members themselves were still nameless, faceless people with no story.

But they're not anymore. They have names and faces and stories. Histories. And hopefully, futures. When I meet people in Back of the Yards, I can't tell who is in a gang and who is not. Sometimes I can tell who might be and who is probably not, but that's about as close as it comes unless someone tells me for certain. These are good kids living hard lives and doing the best they can with what they have. Well, I guess not all of them are good kids still, but that's where they all started, and where many of them are trying to get back to.

They say that the violence around here is mainly amongst the gangs. They don't really go after other people. And no one is going to confuse me with a 16 year old latino guy. But then there's guys like Jose who got out of gang life, and then went to visit a friend who lives in a building where gang-bangers live, and when he left, he apparently was taken to be one.

And he was lucky. The guy was a bad shot.

It hit me when I got home that Jose could have died yesterday. Today he was telling me about how he wants to run for Alderman two elections from now. He told me about how he gave up weed last week, after finally realizing that he was letting it control his life. He got shot and went to the hospital and went home and took a nap and went to school. Today he hobbled into the computer lab and told me more about his life.

When he told me he got shot, it didn't really phase me that much. I haven't seen violence here. But I hear about it all the time. it's a fact of life here. So I took it in stride. Of course, it helped that I saw him in the computer lab and not in the hospital, or at his funeral.

But now I'm back in Pilsen at home, and it's almost midnight, and I'm worried about my boys in Back of the Yards. And I'm really glad Jose's okay.

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