Domo, Russell

“Man, I’ve been living downtown all my life; I’m originally from the East End. I’ve been living in the West for mostly all my life. For me, growing up, I was raised around drugs, poverty, and violence. That’s all we know, that’s all we see. You know, fortunately, for me, I was able to rise above all of this and get a degree and whatnot. I try to do different stuff than what’s taken place down here in the hood. I got a whole lot of friends who ain’t make it nowhere, and still out here. Really, that’s how it’s been since I was a kid until now. I’m twenty-five, and it’s the same.

Honestly, just having a strong faith within myself has kept me focused. I didn’t really have too much motivation out here in these streets. I didn’t have any big homies or a support system at the crib. For me, it was just seeing everything that was going on and how people ended up on the path that they went and I just wanted something different for myself. That was really it for me. There were some things that I saw that made me want to go another route and I did. That’s what it was.

Life for me today? I’m still trying to grasp that. I’ve definitely risen above poverty. I’m in a way better position than where I was in previous days. Now, I’m trying to do the same thing. I’m trying to spark a change in the community. I work in the school system. I’m still figuring it out.

It’s been a couple of moments that’s changed my life. In high school, my brother got killed right over here on 10th Street. My mama went to prison for a couple of years. Shit, it’s been a whole lot of things out here. It helped mold me.

I was about eight or nine when my mama had to go down. She went to the penitentiary for about two years. She got into her whole little criminal enterprise thing back in the g and she had to go sit down and do that time. After seeing her go down for what she did, I had to stay with different people and was just thrown out here in these streets.

Fast forward to my sophomore year in high school, my brother was getting off work, right here at Wendy’s. He got in the car with a couple of dudes and they set him up. They dropped him off in front of his crib and smoked him right there and kicked him out of the car and kept going. God bless his soul. We don’t know who did it but just to wake up to that call was traumatizing. That’s my big brother, who I looked up to, my role model, he’s gone. I had no guidance left. It was just that.

I still had to stay strong and do what I had to do because I didn’t want to end up in the same place as my mom or my big brother. That’s how that happened. Since then, I’ve been grinding to stay out of any of those situations. I could’ve easily gone the other direction. I mean, shit, we live this close to the damn jail. That’s how easy it is. I came up in a time where all the real thugs and killers are gone. I can’t answer how I really stayed strong. I just give it to God.

My little brother and sister are my biggest motivation. I put them on my shoulders. I have to do everything to show them that we can rise up out of this. We don’t have to become a product of our environment.

My message to the world is that before anything, keep God first. You gotta find something within yourself and keep pushing at it. If you ain’t got a dream, I don’t know what’s in for you. You’ve got to have some type of motivation to push you harder every single day. “ - Domo, Russell