Part 2

I know a 25 year old girl that was a Vice Lord. She told me that when she was 16 both she and her cousin were shot in a drive by shooting. She was pregnant at the time. Her cousin died. And so did her unborn baby. Now she will never have kids. No one from her gang was able to take her pain and suffering away. Not one of them could give her, her baby back. None of them can make it where she can have a baby now. Their promises of love and sisterhood were useless and as dead as her child. That's the reality of it. I think sometimes people don't tell you guys what reality is. But here it is! I have had to face life and death situations all of my gang life, nearly coming close to losing my life at a very young age. The reality is that no one lives a long life in a gang, and if you survive the life and the streets, there is no retirement plan, no insurance to cover you if you were shot or stabbed, like me. Today, I still suffer from major headaches, and pain in my legs from being shot at 15 – now I am 48 years old, and still because of my choices I suffer.

There is no safe way to stay in the gang and stay alive. The very nature of gang life is not about love or family it is about war. War within yourself and with others on the streets that live in different parts of town and wear different colors or represents a different set or clique. Is the neighborhood you live in worth losing a child over? Is the neighborhood you live in worth being in a wheelchair the rest of your life or being in a bed with all kinds of tubes running into you, someone wiping your butt for you, waiting for you to eventually die? Is it worth dying for?

For more than 17 years I lived according Islam – the deen, believing in ALLAH, the Prophet Mohammad was the seal of the Prophet. I did not have much compassion for others, in the sense that I do now that I have given my life to Jesus Christ. Over a period of five year, a Christian woman God used brought me to a crossroad in my life: do I continue to live as I am or do I walk away and do something different – something better. And so I prayed and my Father told me it was time to accept a better life, and so I gave my life to Christ. In this new life, it was frightening at first. Sometimes change is a frightening move for some people, as it was for me. You guys must remember that I lived that gangster lifestyle for more than 26 years, and that was all I knew. When I decided to give my life to Christ, the Spirit birthed in me a desire to want better, so I decided to return to school. I had enrolled in a college degree program at Lincoln Land Community College, and I earned an associate of liberal arts. The desire for better only increased from that point, so I went on to another college where I earned an Associate in Applied Science (Business Data Processing) (Carl Sandburg College), and I also earned a certificate in Microcomputer Applications. Dude that felt good!

In the early 1990’s, I was accepted into a 4-year degree program (Roosevelt University in Chicago) where I earned a bachelor in general education. To my great surprise, I was eventually accepted into a graduate degree program at Western Illinois University, where I completed course work towards a Master’s Degree in Social Work, and I was eventually certified to do general counseling. I have been counseling young gang members since 1995.

Today, I am considered a street pastor and I am also the founder of Saving Our Sons Ministries, that is a street outreach ministry. We seek to help young people [like many of you] find a way out of the gang life, and we seek to provide a paradigm of what a “better” is.

In closing, let me say to you that this journey has not been an easy one, but it has been one that I would not trade in for all the money, women, power, influence and material things in the world.

-David Square
Saving Our Sons Ministries