Luis J. Rodríguez - Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.

This work is dedicated to:

Antonio Gutierrez

Carlos Mancillas

Eddie Lozano

Linda Trevio

John Spook Fabela

Marlene Negra Domnguez

Don Sonny Lpez

Miguel Robles

Elas Avila

Richard Porky Sierra

Lenard Gallo Ocaa

Fernando Caballo Arredondo

Martin Alvarado

Fidel Puppet Hernandez

Marcelino Daddio Cabrera

David Puppet Alcon

Freddie Mendoza

David Loco Domnguez

Ricky Herrera

Ren Molinar

Al Pache Alvarez

Leonard Lalo Villaseor

Ruben Sharkie Martnez

Daniel Indio Cabrera

and

Rodolfo Sonny Gmez

My life is a poem to their memory.

Luis J. Rodrguez

My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.
Joseph Conrad

WHATS HAPPENED IN THE more than ten years since Always Running first hit the bookstands? My son Ramiro, for whom I wrote the book, is serving a 28-year prison sentence for three counts of attempted murder. More of my homies from 30 years ago have died, including Rene Muoz-Ledo, who wrote a family-produced book, Forgiven, about overcoming his gang and drug experiences before succumbing to cancer in 2004. The Chicago youth I started to work with right after the books publication through Youth Struggling for Survival (YSS) continue to organize and thrive, although a few have been killed or imprisoned.

Good and bad things have occurred. But the goodyoung people changing their lives, the growth of organized urban peace efforts, the expansion of spiritual-based practices and the intensifying debate on how to address violence in this countryhave far outweighed the bad.

I have gone to hundreds of public and private schools to speak. In Bostons Hyde Park, the mostly African American students there created a ballet and a rap song based on the book. In East Lansings Eastern High where black and Mexican youth had been warring, Always Running became the one thing they could unite on (a student there painted a mural in the school library with scenes from the book). In East L.A.s Garfield High, Chicano students established an after-school study circle to become intellectually engaged and politically active based on what they learned from the book.

Ive visited numerous prisons, juvenile detention centers, sober-living homes and rehabilitation centers. Ive read my poems in the Maximum Security Yard at San Quentin Prison as prisoners talked, worked out with weights, played chess and jogged (oh, and quite a few stopped to listen). In one California prison, I saw a homeboy I had not seen in 30 yearsall that time hed been in prison. He told me, Whatever you do, help the kids. Ive met court judges who made reading my book part of offenders sentences.

Ive addressed thousands of teachers, law enforcement personnel, social workers, community organizers, journalists, government officials, graduate students, writers and others in countless conferences, workshops, peace summits and forums.

Ive appeared on major media programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, CNNs Talk Live, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and other shows on BBC-London, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, Discoverys Health Network, Pacifica Radio, PBS-TV, Spanish-language TV and radio networks and more.

My work has taken me to Toronto, Montreal, Paris, London, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, Cologne, Munich, Heidelberg, southern Germany, Amsterdam, Groningen, Salzburg, Mexico City, Chihuahua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico.

For more than a decade, Ive taken part in purification ceremonies in Native American and Native Mexican sweat lodges (called inipis or temescallis) with gang and other troubled youth as well as recovering adults; with longtime spiritual friends Luis Ruan, Frank Blzquez, and my wife, Trini; and with elder medicine men like Anthony Lee of the Navajo Reservation.

This work is about the long run, not just for today, for any possible accolades or to meet funding deadlinesbut for the adequate and full protection, health and balance, as Native elders say, of our young people seven generations from now.

In spite of this, Always Running has become a lightning rod for certain right-wing groups who are trying to stop its use in schools because of the books politics and graphic nature. According to the American Library Association, it is one of the 100 most censored books in the United States.

In Rockford, Illinois, I debated a prominent school board member lobbying to ban the book to an overflow audience of mostly book supporters. In San Jose, California, I wrote an opinion piece to counter the efforts there to remove the book from approved reading lists. In Chicago, I addressed leaders of a group of 200 students who had walked out of their school to protest the removal of the book from the school library.

One strange incident occurred in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I was speaking at various schools and community events in the area. At one point, I tried to enter a school with Always Running in hand. School officials stopped me at the entrance saying I could come in, but my book could notit had been banned in that school.

As I see it, the battle lines are between the idealized, superficial and insular-minded way of looking at the world (which many schools and mainstream culture impose on our children and the rest of us), and the actual conditions of our lives with all its multiplicity, struggle, shading and nuance. Most children recognize the hypocrisy of emphasizing a linear, clean and desexed past while they confront daily the muddy, uncertain and hybrid truths.

Sexuality, for example, is a natural part of human development. Books dont cause teenagers to become sexualhormones do. Instead of providing understanding and badly needed guidance to teenagers when the hormones kick in, too often they are told sex is wrong, that it shouldnt be addressed until they mature (instead of preparing them so they do mature), and that theres only one way of looking at sex and other disturbing topics like race, class and power (mostly by denying their existence). The truth is much more complex.

There is too much censorship of reality in the classroom. Whatever involves social discomfort, emotional depth or hard thinking is cut out. Language, behavior, ideas, ways of expression and authentic imaginationsas well as bookshave been censored. Everything is directed toward normalcy, the folding into the fast-paced, material- and status-oriented capitalist value system. As a result, much of the expanse and variety of the human condition is belittled or invalidated. Our humanity is sacrificed, little by little.

Despite this, Always Running continues to be requested and used. Ive been told countless times that this is one of the few books nonreaders love to read. And that it is often the most stolen book in libraries and classrooms. I dont condone this, although it usually happens in places where there are no bookstores or decent library facilities.

Yes, Always Running is hard-core. Yes, its graphic. Its meant to be this way. You cant tell this true story about real gang life without the graphic details. Many kids who love the book have also lived through similar experiences. Too many adults are naive or close-minded about what their children are going through.