Street Voices: : The Next Generation

James Pounds and Walter McGuire are trying to shake some sense into Anthony Owens, a fresh, young Rolling 60s Crip who sometimes seems more playful than troublesome, notwithstanding the 9-millimeter pistol he carries from time to time.

Owens (not his real name) is one of about 15 teen-agers sitting in the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation on Crenshaw Boulevard, an alternative high school for youths who have washed out of regular high school because of their crimes or bad conduct.

Some others here are gang members, too, but the majority are “claimers,” pretenders who dress, talk and act like gang members but haven’t been initiated and accepted by a gang.

Pounds and McGuire, counselors at the foundation, are challenging Owens to justify his membership in the Rolling 60s, to justify his almost obsessive habit of “throwing” the 60s’ hand sign on the street, to justify his world view. According to his counselors, Owens has been emotionally pampered by his mother, but in his own mind he is an outlaw, someone society will always prejudge.

Pounds, a stocky man in his 30s with a short haircut, takes the first shot.

“Owens,” he asks, “would you front up (confront and attack) three Bloods?”

“I’d shoot ‘em,” Owens says flippantly. He likes to torment Pounds, to fire back outrageous answers.

“All by yourself?”

“If I had a gun.”

“Then why don’t you walk down to that liquor store?” At the store, down the street, Crip territory becomes a Blood neighborhood.

“It won’t be no competition,” Owens says.

“Why not commit suicide, Owens?”

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s for the set . Crip, fool!” Pounds exhorts sarcastically.

“Ain’t nobody that nuts.”

“So that means you want to live!”

“Just gimme a damn car, James,” Owens growls. “You think I’m gonna go on foot ?”

“If you were in class earlier today,” James says to the group, “you heard (Chilton) Alphonse (the foundation’s founder) say pretty soon police gonna start killing y’all.”

“What’s to stop us from killing them ?” Owens says. “James, I’ll tell you right now, I end up getting smoked you gonna have so many . . . 60s killing cops. . . . “

“Don’t fool yourself, Owens,” interjects counselor McGuire, a weathered Vietnam veteran in his 40s. “All you guys here sitting talking about that hard stuff, the most you know how to do is throw signs. . . . You ain’t no hard-core criminals.”

The talk turns to drugs.

“Money is king,” Owens professes.

“Tell me about the money you made,” McGuire sneers, “and the Cadillac doors you done slammed. And the connections you made from here to St. Louis. Please don’t tell me about how to make money in the drug business, ‘cause you don’t know. You keep confessing that . . . you gonna get yourself in trouble. If you guys don’t wanna face the fact that you just nice young men trying to make it in a system that’s set up against you, you fooling yourself. I know you going down the wrong track if you trying to convince people how slick you are. I’ve held my hand over a bullet hole, trying to hold the blood and a guy is crying, ‘Ow, don’t lemme die,’ but five minutes ago he was a rough ol’ alligator.”

“It ain’t about being tough,” Owens protests. “If I come up with some snaps (money) . . . . “

“They don’t come to you, Owens,” McGuire interrupts.

“If you ain’t got some money, man, you ain’t (nothing) in this world,” Owens says.

“Maybe to somebody else you ain’t,” Pounds says. “You got to believe in yourself.”

“How old do you guys think you gonna get to?” McGuire asks the group.

Fifty, one boy volunteers.

“I dunno,” Owens says. “I got to see first.” His overstated ambivalence draws laughter. “Owens,” McGuire says, “you only 16, 17 years old. If you think your life is gonna end at 30, you fooling yourself. Your health isn’t gonna start to get bad till your early 50s. That’s 30-something years from now. What you going to do in the meantime? You have to plan for that.”

The talk turns to wardrobe. Why do you dress like a gang member, the counselors demand of the boys, virtually all of whom are dressed in white T-shirts, khakis or blue slacks and white tennis shoes, standard gang dress.

One of the young men loses his temper. He’s frustrated. First, they don’t want you to wear colors. Then, they don’t want you to dress like this . And it’s not just gang members dressing this way. Little kids copy it.

“You don’t know what to do!” he yells. “It’s crazy! That’s why innocent bystanders getting killed ‘cause innocent bystanders look just like Crips!”

A third counselor says he knows of young men who dress in shirts and ties and don’t get confronted by gang members.

The room explodes in rage at his suggestion.

“Where do these young men live?” one student demands. “They don’t live out here , do they?”

“Maybe I want to be wearing a T-shirt,” another yells.

“All I can afford is a T-shirt,” a third yells.

“Some of these guys, their mothers don’t give ‘em nothing; khakis only cost $12,” a fourth shouts.

McGuire is not impressed.

He points out that everyone in the room is wearing sneakers that cost more than his shoes.

Will these young men still be as devoted to their gangs two or three years from now, a reporter asks.

One finds the question patronizing.

“Now, when you was growing up,” he says, “y’all had that flower childrens and all that protest. Did you think you was going to be into it for the rest of your life?”

No, the reporter says.

“That’s how we feel. We might get involved with gangs, but . . . damn . . . we ain’t that stupid to spend our whole life,” he says.