Some Things That Go on in the Urban Community by Cortez Monroe

Some Things That Go On in the Urban Community

By Cortez Monroe

The ConTextos Authors Circle was developed in collaboration with young people at-risk of, victims of, or perpetrators of violence in El Salvador. In 2017 this innovative program expanded into Chicago to create tangible, high quality opportunities that nourish the minds, expand the voices and share the personal truths of individuals who have long been underserved and underestimated. Through the process of drafting, revising and publishing memoirs, participants develop self-reflection, critical thinking, camaraderie and positive self-projection to author new life narratives.

Since January 2017 ConTextos has partnered with Cook County Sheriff's Office to implement Authors Circle in Cook County Department of Corrections as part of a vision for reform that recognizes the value of mental health, rehabilitation and reflection. These powerful memoirs complicate the narratives of violence and peace building, and help author a hopeful future for human beings behind walls, their families and our collective communities.

While each author’s text is solely the work of the Author, the image used to create this book’s illustrations have been sourced by various print publications. Authors curate these images and then, using only their hands, manipulate the images through tearing, folding, layering and careful positioning. By applying these collage techniques, Authors transform their written memoirs into illustrated books.

This project is being supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number ALN 21.027 awarded to Cook County by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Some Things that Go on in the Urban Community Cortez Monroe

Body

Growing up in the urban community is a hard way of living. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin. All of us are going through the same shit. Black people, white poor people, red poor people, Puerto Rican poor people, Latin poor people and poor people of all descents.

Some people grow up fatherless, don't know his name, don't know how he looks or shit.

Your mother doesn’t even know who he is. She done fucked so many niggas lol (true). Some people grow up motherless. Both parents might’ve got killed when you was a baby. Parents might’ve been on heroin (drugs). I think in the urban community most of us grew up like this or know someone that has.

We have a lot of families that struggle to keep their lights, gas and even pay their rent. Some people have to wash their clothes on their hand and hang the clothes up on the line so they can dry because they have no money to go to the laundromat.

You see children walking around with holes in their shoes or in the winter with no coats on. The only people who know what’s going on in the urban community is the people who live there or used to live there and the people who visited.

Little children getting killed, kidnapped, and raped. Why? Families are supposed to stick together, but not in the urban community. They trying to take each other out. It’s normal for a child to grow up fighting in an urban community because they have to learn how to protect themselves.

Mothers wake up every day not knowing how she’s going to feed her children or she probably doesn’t give a fuck how they will eat and only cares about how she is going to get her drugs. She might sell her body to provide for her children or get herself high.

They say only the strong survive in the urban community. Do you think you will be able to survive all these savage ways of living every day? Most people adapt to their environment.

I think whoever is at the top of the totem pole (the government), or whoever it is wants the urban community to stay the way it is.

They want people to drink alcohol, do drugs, and commit crimes to each other. I think they get paid to flood our community with guns, drugs, and alcohol. Our community has less jobs, and they keep closing all our schools down. Most people never graduate high school.

Some people never been to high school.

Don’t nobody never know what a person has been through. Just because a person tells you they’re ok doesn’t mean they’re really ok. If you grow up in the urban community, I know it’s been hard times.

Everything we go through breaks us down mentally, physically and spiritually, but you know what, we still have to hold our heads up and show people we can make it out in a positive manner because a lot of people pray for our downfall (meaning we won’t succeed in life).

Do you know how it feels to sleep on the cold floor? Do you know how it feels to sleep on a twin size bed with two other people? Have you ever been around someone you loved one minute then two minutes later that person just been killed? Not by natural causes, I’m talking about another person killing that person. You don’t know our pain. You might think you do, but you don’t. You have to experience what we’ve been through.

In the urban community, most young people fall in the streets at an early age. Most young people feel lonely when there is nobody to care for them. Most young men want to feel loved and have somebody that cares for them.

Have you ever walked down the street and seen two crackheads (crack cocaine users) fight over one bag of crack lol that shit funny as hell. All day in our community all you hear is gunshots, police sirens and ambulance sirens.

The ambulance sirens are not for any sick people, but for injured people. That shit crazy as hell, right? But you know we really don’t pay any attention. Do you know why?

Because we are all so used to it that it doesn’t even bother us.

Police brutality has been going on decade after decade. They try to treat us like we are not human beings. Just because they have a badge, they think they can tell us what the fuck to do or not to do. They try to control us.

In the urban community police officers are the most hated because most of them are racist.

Most of them love to try and kill us and arrest us all because they hate our community, but they are supposed to serve and protect us but hell naw, not no motherfuckers in the urban community.

I remember one day I was driving down the street and the police pulled up on the side of me, looked at me, then pulled up behind me and put his lights on to make me pull over. The police walked up to my car and said, “Get the fuck out the car before we beat your ass,” without even asking for any license or insurance. Pulled me and my homie out of the car, saying, “Where the guns and drugs at, nigger?”

Then they searched the car, then got out of the car and said, “I should’ve planted this gun in your car to make your black ass go to jail.” If I wasn’t in an urban community, I would have never been pulled over unless I violated a traffic rule.

There have been a lot of police killing our people on camera and nothing is happening, but why? I think they just want to kill all of us. The police in the urban community will beat your ass until you're bloody. They will break your arms, legs, fingers, wrists, anything they can do to hurt you. That’s the reason every time we see the police we run, because we don’t and don’t know what’s going to happen.

In the urban community we was taught to say, “fuck the police.” What the fuck we need them for, they not helping us with shit. We want to protect ourselves because they take the Second Amendment away from us because most of us are felons. But the Second Amendment doesn’t say felons can’t bear arms, it says it gives us a right to bear arms.

Growing up as a young man is very hard in the urban community. Most young men get caught up in what we call the lifestyle. Growing up never having no food, no clothes or trying to help take care of your family is also hard with no money or no job, so now you start hustling to provide.

You start hustling to your mothers, fathers, friends of your mothers, fathers, your cousins, anybody who wants it. You don’t care who it is, you trying to make some money.

You get caught up in the lifestyle and from then on, you become addicted.

Addicted to the lifestyle. Now you and your homies trying to see who can get the most girls, who can buy the most expensive clothes and cars, forgetting about your goal. Then you get locked up and realize nobody really cares about you and all of this happens over and over every day until one day, someone kills you or you spend the rest of your life in jail and become a statistic.

People outside the community don’t know what we go through every day in life. They are wondering why we do this and that, and I think they will never know until they come and grow up in our neighborhood. Never judge what we’ve been through.

Some people in the urban community think others are successful because they have clothes, cars and money, but that is not true. We call the urban community the hood, the ghetto and the trenches. We call it the Raq, a.k.a. Chi-Raq, a.k.a. Chicago. And if you live in the urban community all the things that go on, so you should try and make it out and never give up on your goals.

Just because you were born and raised in the urban community doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in life. I inspire everyone to stay in school. People who have never been in the urban community, try to put yourself in our shoes and imagine what we go through every day and what we call hell.

Cortez Monroe I Am From I am from the west side of Chicago, the Austin neighborhood I am from dice games and pigeon quarters I am from where you try to be the first one on the Block I am from where you hear gunshots every second I am from a fatherless home I am from sweet potatoes, macaroni, chicken, and corn I am from a place where the police frame people I am from a place where people tell you in the streets you either going to jail or be dead I'm from a place where people tell you that you're never going to be shit I'm from a place where you have to fight to earn respect I am from a place we call the ghetto, hood, and the trenches I am from where people follow trends I am from where people think it's cool to not go to school I am from a place where you can't really trust people I am from where the kids can't play in the front yards I'm from a place where the color of your skin can get you in trouble I'm from a place where we call the enemy the Ops I'm from a place where a lot of people died from dissing in their music I'm from the Raq

Until the lion learns to write their own story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter - African Proverb Copyright

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