Life and Death in East San Jose

Life and Death in East San Jose

By Marco J. Reyes

I heard someone say. “ You do not do the good you wish, but the evil that you do not wish.”

Yesterday I walked out to see the accident, the sirens and the orange tape across from Story and Capitol, a kid had gotten shot down from his bike in plain daylight. I heard the shots two minutes before the police came rolling down the street. When you live in a place like this, sometimes you know you live in a bad area when you have two liquor stores on the same block, hidden by a Pepboys that sits on the main street. But on the back of the PepBoys the street is still here. Its a place where poor people sell bootleg jerseys, atole and hot dogs, the bums have their hideout in the back of the gas station. It's where wilderness still exists, no one has seen this place go through it like the residents of Kollmar.

Not to long ago, a kid got stabbed in the apartments behind the Chevron on Story road. A young 15 year old, a kid like the one that got shot at the intersection. I was surprised by it because usually how these things go, when someone dies there's a lapse of mourning. But right after the Hopkins killing where another kid died, the bullets keep flying. I always thought there was a code that men lived by, even men as ruthless as gangsters. But I've seen the results of a misguided hatred, in a nation were we are forced to live in poverty and discrimination. Its hurtful that these things have to keep happening.

The kid was riding his bike when another kid came and pulled out his gun and shot him once. The boy got up and threw his bike and as he did this the assaulter kept pulling the trigger. One after another, the sound of pops in the distance were almost like a tire machine screwing bolts. The helicopters moving fast above the fading sky while the cops parking themselves on the street, I walked towards the scene as crowds of people moved closer.

A person that was there said, no one did anything. People ran towards the kid as the kid strolled away on his bike with his gun like nothing ever happened. It is really tragic when something like this happens in plain daylight, when the shame of murder has to be plastered during the daytime. Today as I drove by, the family of the boy walked toward the scene of the crime with a white cross. The boy’s mother had a baby wrapped in her arms. As an "East Sider", I've seen it all, innocent people die, gangsters get knocked off, but the thing about hatred is it feeds your mind; vengeance, and remorse, buries themselves deep into your soul.

Growing up in the early 90s, you saw mostly everything. Back then, anyone on the streets of the East Side was poor, a poor mans brotherhood was a tat, a color or a pair of Dickies or Ben Davis pants. What Gangs have always offered the young was a sense of brotherhood, a secret order for clansmen. But in the past Mexicans fought discrimination from whites, from the Chicanos that despised the farmers, from Mexicans that lived in the north, but not many people know that the Northerners started as hick farmers. Our parents were all poor. As brown men, we are all from the same land. Our country was created on revolt and our leaders were descendants that fought the wealthy of Mexico. Gangs are inevitable, they are the social construct of society. If you ever were chased down for living on the wrong block, or got your bike stolen by older kids then you know what I am talking about. Your cousins yelling at us for not fighting back when we lost our new shoes to the group of older kids, or not socking someone that was being a hard ass with all the little kids. Kids were the first gangs, without color. No one ever remembers how it was, how other frustrated kids wanted something you had.

Now as Story Road trails off the past violence, I remember all of my friends that lost their sense of virtue, lost what we once told each other to defend, our defenseless to a cruel and unyielding world. The boy that passed away on Story and Capitol was someone’s son, someone loved him like someone loved us, dirty poor kids with a pair of faded jeans and Cortez shoes. Back then no one told us what to do, who to hate or what colors to wear, back then. We were just hood kids that wanted to have everything our parents couldn’t give us.

If you can’t remember something good about someone, you should remember that that person was a poor kid that was stolen from, that was beaten, and that needed brothers to look after him. That the kid was raised by a cold and heartless street, a kid that knew not history, that knew not his name, or where to run to when he wanted solace.