The Thursday meeting of the Gang Rescue and Support Project is held on the ninth floor of a drab municipal building within sight of the still-under- construction jailhouse, an accident of geography I imagine escapes no one here.
On a busy night, 50 or 60 gang members show up. Their degree of gang involvement varies. Some are court-ordered to attend these intervention meetings. Others come by choice. The age range is 14 to 19, but a couple boys look younger. A girl comes in late carrying her infant. She’s 14. She has admitted she’s ready to leave the gang life. The desire to leave and the ability to do so rarely coincide.
They sit around a conference table with a bank of windows that frame the state Capitol. Only a few blocks separate the two buildings and the people within each of them, and it strikes me that all organized groups form their own cultures, their own rules and rituals. Perhaps that is one definition of a city, a collection of subcultures existing side by side, sometimes alien, sometimes invisible, to one another.
“Let us all bow our heads,” one of the young men at the table says. “For the homeboys that are locked up and the homeboys that are in the grave.”
They keep their heads bowed. No one says anything for a minute, and then Cisco Gallardo speaks. Gallardo is a former gang member who joined GRASP in the early ’90s and now runs the program. A few years ago, he says, he was counseling three or four gang members at weekly meetings. Now, the group is so large, he’s trying to figure out how to manage.
“The reason we pray is because when GRASP got started, enemies sat here together just like there are enemies sitting here today,” he says. “What we had in common was that we had friends who were locked up; we had someone, a cousin, a homeboy who died by gang violence. We had mothers and sisters and families who were affected by the violence.”
As he speaks, Eddie Armijo, another outreach worker, whispers to me: “All of them live in two worlds,” he says. “This one and the street. Both demand accountability.”
I go to GRASP because of Manuel Ornelas. I go because of his older brother, Johnny Jr. I wrote of Manuel a couple weeks ago. He was shot down almost three months ago. Police are still looking for his killer. His family remains sad and stunned and angry. Manuel was someone who lived in the two worlds Eddie mentioned. So is Johnny Jr. He’s not a gang member but he has friends and relatives who are and he feels the pressure of the streets.
When I sat in the Ornelas’ living room and looked at Johnny Jr., it seemed to me I was watching someone being torn in half. It’s as if some of our neighborhoods have folded in on themselves. They cannot be penetrated from the outside. From within, nothing but the neighborhood exists and it is both cage and sanctuary.
I go to the GRASP meeting because I want to understand better what is happening in some pockets of the city. I go because GRASP is one place where the two worlds come together. I sit against a wall and listen. About 10 gangs are represented in the room. Most of the kids are boys. Most are Latino.
A burly kid with bruises on his face takes a seat. Cisco tells me that he wanted out of the gang so his friends released him by beating him up. Blood in; blood out.
“What did you do this weekend?” one of the outreach workers asks the group. “I was locked up.” “I was locked up, too.” “I slept all weekend.” All weekend? “Yeah, they turned off the power at my parents’ place. My dad didn’t pay the bill. So, I slept.” “I did something special,” one of the girls says. What? “On Monday, I went to enroll for college.” You did? Where? “Community College of Denver.” That’s tight. “I’m nervous.” Don’t be scared.
They talk some more and then Eddie asks them whether they believe they could ever peacefully coexist.
“Aren’t we doing that right here?” says a young woman with the words “Brown Love” tattooed on the side of her neck. She’s having the tattoo removed through GRASP. But she wants another one, she says. Maybe a rose. “Something beautiful and thorny.”
“Would you be here if you didn’t have to be?” Eddie asks.
“No.” “Absolutely no.” “Yes.”
“Some of you would be here,” Eddie says. “I know some of you want out.”
They talk about how they’re going to get out. Fade out, the outreach workers counsel them.
I called Johnny Jr. after I wrote the last column. He cried. He cried for his brother and for his grandmother, whom Manuel loved and who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He said he only hoped the cops would find Manuel’s shooter. He said a friend had been counseling him and told him he needed to let go and let God handle it. When I talked to him again Friday, he sounded a little stronger.
He told me he has a job, a career. He spoke of his child. He said he had no intention of throwing it all away.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
