What The Outside Needs to Know About the Inside World
Living in Bay Jungles
By Josh Garrard (The kNOw writer)
Broken bottles everyone, dirt all over the ground, no grass anywhere. It's the Bay Area and Marin City jungles, my inside world.

We run from the outside world -- those people who live outside the hood, outside this life -- because it does not accept many of us who are from the hood.

Because the outside world doesn't always accept us, many of us stay stuck in the hood, with no direction. Our direction is in the hood.

Some people do not understand why we do what we do. But for me, I believe it is because we are hurt—hurt by our broken families, growing up watching people die getting shot, or watching people sell drugs and learning how to do it.

So what options do we have? It feels like the outside world offers none.

Some people don't want help, some people do. Where I'm from, you “gotta git it” how you live, which means doing whatever you   need to do to git yo' money or to git yo' respect. The streets will sometimes do that to you, have you growin up on what you see, and most of the time, that is negativity.

It's hard for people to understand the street life because they don't live in the hood like we do, so many of them think we all need to be in prison, especially the police. They harass us all the time, and there is nothing we can do.

For a person you see everyday on da block, you can have a conversation all day because street life is what you both know. You feel comfortable with that person.

I feel I have to tell people about the way we live because if we don't, then we will be ignored and stereotyped.

I'm not saying we need to get attention by getting arrested or doing other bad things. But we need to speak out in a positive way and be heard. I would rather be heard then seen. Being seen does nothing for us but make us feel watched. That means sneaking away from the outside world, doing things that profile us as criminals, things that get us in trouble.

Being heard means to speak out in a positive manner, and letting the outside world know who we are. We are the same people as those on the outside. Being heard means to speak out to the outside and for them to take into consideration our words and accept us.

I'm still stuck in the inside world, and looking for a way out. The Bay Area and Marin city are all part of my inside world. Where is my way out?

Originally from Marin City, Josh currently lives in Fresno.

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