The Way It is

In East St. Louis, life is simple. Just get through it. No matter how me and my family can make it through is the way it is around here, not just for my family, but for all that live in East St. Louis. People on the outside seem to look down on us as if we aren’t humans just like them. There is many problems in my area in the Bottoms, but I wish someone from the outside could help. We are not bad people, we just have to do bad things sometimes to make it. When I grew up, I went to school for maybe 2 days out of the week. The only reason I went is so I could hustle drugs and guns to my classmates. This started in about sixth grade. I felt like school was a meeting place for all the gangsters and hoodlums rather than a place to learn and get an education. We as a whole never took school seriously, but how could we when the school is in the condition that it is in? There is absolutely no cleanliness. There is rats and cockroaches roaming freely amongst us as we are trying to learn. None of us have lunch money to eat but if we do, the food is not prepared very well. Some of us as kids in grade school would just leave and go to the local park and play basketball and football all day intead of getting an education. We all always just looked out for ourselves and it seemed like that was the only way out. If we could always be at the park playing ball we figured that we would have a better chance of getting out of the hood and making it to the real world through sports. The sad thing is is that we do not even have the proper equipment to compete with other schools in sports. Our football pads are outdated and do not protect us from injury and our high school basketball court is no better. We have two balls and one of our baskets is torn down. It is not like we could have a home game anyways, because no other teams will put us on their schedule because they are afraid to even drive through this area, let alone stopping. I wish there was a way we could play other teams as well. We only have one school bus so it is hard to go to another place without leaving half of the team behind. When we do not have sports to entertain us, we have gangs to all back on. I am not sure why but we kill off each other with shootings and gang activities and it is one big chain of hate. When one of us homeboys get shot, we have to get payback and shoot two of their people. It is one of the best ways to make money and provide for our families so that is what we do. Then when we can finally afford to support our families with money from hustling drugs in the streets, we get robed by other people who need money. That is the big problem. Because of lack of job opportunities and lack of money flow into the city, there is only so much money to be had. The money just circulates from one gang to the next and it just depends on which gang has more guns. At night We have to lock our doors and board up or windows because we are afraid that we will get shot by a stray bullet or get hit with a drive by shooting. It is just hard because we have no option except this because if I don’t do these things, my family will not be able to live and function. It is one vicious circle and I am just patiently waiting for somebody from the outside to help us. We are people too and all we need is somebody to break one link in this violent chain. However, I know this will never happen. That’s just the way it is.