Gangsta! Gangsta! A look into what the 5-0 knows, or maybe does NOT know.

Spending the first six months in my student efficiency apartment/suite here at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in Cervantes Village, one of the facilities here in what they call South Campus Housing, I had a younger suitemate named Milli . A Mexican-American woman who was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, later moved to Las Cruces with her mother who transferred here when her employer, Comcast, opened their new office in Las Cruces, despite how hard her mom tried to get her away from these "gangsta" friends she knew from when she attended Mayfield High School, all of her Mexican-American "homies" (as she called them), almost every fucking night and always on Wednesday and Thursday, they'd be here, partying well into the early morning hours, often to 430 and 5:30 AM. Believe me, were it not for Flent's Quiet Time earplugs-the disposable kind, I don't know how I would've ever got to sleep? On the good side, however, I am more than night owl the in the morning type.

At first, due to the cigarette smoking and the secondhand smoke drifting into my room, something that caused my asthma in my damaged right lung to go haywire. Often to the point that I was screaming out loud the same words that Eric Garner of Staten Island, New York screamed as that stupid fucking pig  (I cannot bring myself to call the fucker a police officer, because he is such an asshole), Officer Pantaleo (a disgrace to all us " ginzos", including myself!). Those being "I CAN'T BREATHE!" That said, I must've left at least three or four notes in the bathroom explaining that the smoke was killing me; the pot smoke wasn't any problem; it was the fucking cigarette smoke from all her friends smoking like fucking chimneys! Need I say what the note I received back said? Something to the effect that she didn't let anybody walk all over her; she literally said she would " Thrash me". Imagine my surprise when, after about two weeks after I moved in (I got here a week after school started, as I was returning from the the Northeast after getting the disappointing news that I would be able to afford out-of-state tuition and living expenses were I to attend State University of New York at Potsdam), someone opened the door and, for the first time, I met Milli.

Here she was, a short little nineteen-year-old Mexican-American Chica of maybe five foot two inches in stature. Her first words? "I don't know what you talking about, yo? I don't smoke cigarettes! I smoke bud yo!" My reply? "So do I, but it's been a while. Seeing her friends from high school all chilling out at her place, all of them with gang tattoos and shaved heads-a few of them wearing black bandannas around their heads and/or necks, next thing you know one of her friends came up to me and said "Want to buy some? I got some good shit, yo." Anyway, she and I became friends; Milli was really pretty cool. Her friends were another story, however. Many of them were either real gangstas, or more likely than not, gangster wannabes. Most of them affiliated with the Vatos Locos-a Spanish gang that's rather common throughout the Southwest; they can be found everywhere from Los Angeles and San Diego California, to Texas and even Louisiana and Florida in the South. In fact they are now even in the province of Ontario, Canada, hard as that is to believe.

I soon learned to have respect for both Milli and her friends. Their smoking of cigarettes, at times, was annoying. However, I enjoyed smoking pot with them. Gangstas, from what I can gather, are to the new millennium what stoners were in my high school generation; I having gone to Newtown High School in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Sandy hook being part of the town of Newtown, were gangstas the cool scene, the pot smokers when I attended Newtown high school, from September 1977 through June 1980, I probably would've been wearing colors too! June 1980 thing when I decided to quit school and be placed on "Homebound instruction". This after getting expelled for the last ten days of my junior year; statistically, I may have been a junior; however, based on the amount of credits I had I was just entering sophomore year and still in freshman physical education class! Much like Milli and her friends, I, too, was a problem student when I went to high school. Like her, I had, and still do have learning disabilities. That and I had been labeled "emotionally disturbed" since the time I entered kindergarten at Steele Elementary School, in Baldwin, Long Island, New York. My hometown on the South Shore of Long Island in Nassau County; one which is, and always was since the early 1950s, a densely populated suburban community.

Yeah, in a lot of ways I felt for Milli. As I could understand what it was like to be a fuck-up in life. However, there was one major difference between her and I; that being that she had social skills and lots of friends. Something which, from the time I was four years old and living on Tulip Avenue in Baldwin, I cannot say I ever had. Moving to Newtown, Connecticut a month before my 12th birthday (chronological age only-as I was much more immature than that; something which, I will admit, Milli's hard-working, Mexican-American Hispanic mother told me was true about her also), my father thought I would find a new life in a new town-pardon the pun. That, all of a sudden I was going to become what he called "Normal"; wrong, Dad! The old saying about putting a jackass on a plane at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut and flying it to California, at which time what else gets off that plane but a jackass, that seem to be true of me throughout my life! In fact it is still true; I'm not one to become a physical part of any fucking community in any fucking state-at least here in the United States of America. Or, correctly here, please, is that now the Divided states of America? Looking at all the candidates for the 2016, Grand Old Party's presidential primary, I must say that that is true.

Two weeks after I settled in Las Cruces, having spent 2 1/2 years homeless and traveling around the United States, twice, from coast to coast, back to Connecticut, and later, Western New York State (Wellsville and Bath), going back west of Denver, Colorado; back to Connecticut, and then to a shelter in Brooklyn, New York (Institute for Community Living's women's shelter, which, at the time, was located at 200 Tillary Street in Downtown Brooklyn-the shelter being a MICA shelter; MICA being short for "Mental health and chemical addictions"). Spending eight months there, place where I learned a lot about what life was like in the hood, I got sick of waiting for my so-called "Housing package" and left. Taking a couple days to pack everything I brought with me and placed in the locker by my bed, believe me, that was not easy; I had to prove that I had a physical address to go to! What a fucking crock a bullshit! As if the bullshit as having to see this goddamn asshole of a fucking psychiatrist-they had two working for them while I was there, the last one being this black guy who told me I had ADHD. No fucking shit Sherlock! You win the genius of the year award, you fucking dumb piece of fucking shit!

However, my biggest reasons for leaving, besides the bullshit they put me through (and everybody else, for that matter) and the fears of being placed into one of those so-called "Group apartments", places that weren't really apartments but actually miniature GROUP HOMES, were the following. 1. Every month, as part of our so-called "Housing package", everybody who was already getting Social Security disability and/or SSI had to bring their assigned social worker what they called an "Award letter". In other words, a letter proving our monthly income. Little had I known this, but Diane, a woman I became friends with at that shelter who was from the Canarsie Section of Brooklyn, New York, told me what they were doing; deducting so-called "Costs of shelter" from everybody's Supplemental Security Income allowance. Disgusting! I won't get into too many details here; however, what was even more sickening is that New York City's politicians, including then Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo were all in on this together. Funneling thousands, if not millions of taxpayer dollars to so-called "nonprofit" corporation such as the Institute for Community Living-all in hopes of supposedly helping the homeless! Talk about governmental waste. The government could do a better job as is done in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, other European countries. That and some of the Canadian provinces such as Ontario, and British Columbia.

Anyway, the demographics of that shelter being something like ninety-three percent African-American and/or black, I was one of few white or Hispanic people staying there. Must I say that I learned a lot about what life in the hood, what life in the inner city was like? Believe me, the place was fucking rough! That being an understatement. And so I left. Making up some kind of lie and telling the case manager I had, Bronique Braithwaite (an African-American woman who wore bougie rings on every one of her fingers to show how much "better" she was in the rest of the Blacks there), that I was moving in with my sister in Great Neck, in Nassau County, New York on Long Island's North Shore. The same thing I had told, over the phone, to the Social Security Administration in order to get back my SSI income every month.

Packing all the shit in my car, on the last weekend of August 2011, Hurricane Irene had blown into Southern New York, into the New York City area, Long Island, the New Jersey coast, and yes, into Connecticut were caused many power outages due to down large trees falling across roads and onto power lines. Nevertheless, that Saturday, despite the weather, I got in my car and set out to find a laundromat that was open; almost everything in Brooklyn being closed! Hard to imagine for a city as big as New York, one with 8 1/2 million people in it, plus another 4 1/2 million living on Long Island and Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. Finally, somewhere along Conduit Boulevard-a road that eventually becomes Long Island's Sunrise Highway in Valley Stream, New York, lo and behold, there was an open laundromat. A really nice place at that, complete with attendant like the one I go to here in Las Cruces on N. Main St.

Getting my laundry done and packing it all into the suitcases I had in the car, I gathered the rest of my stuff out of that shelter. Walking to and from my car in between periods of pouring rain. Oh well, but the time late Sunday afternoon came hurricane blew through and was well up into New England; headed toward Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Everything was packed and I was ready to get the hell out. My right brain set on the New Mexico, Albuquerque in particular. New Mexico being one of the few states, which, at the time, had a transgender anti discrimination law. And so, taking the entire day on Monday to say goodbye to the few friends I had that shelter, actually a lot more than just a few friends (we had a lot of lesbians there as well as a few transgender women like myself), Diana and I went off to get something to eat as usual. Going to the place that everybody called "The new Johnson Street store"and buying some food; the new store being right across Johnson Street from what everybody staying at that shelter called "The old Johnson store". That being Johnson Deli and Grocery; a place owned by two Islamic men named Ali and Mohammed. One of them was Pakistani, the other, as I remember was from Yemen; both of them in business for over twenty years that same location at the corner of Prince, and Johnson Streets. Directly next-door to one of New York City's many police precincts.

And so, finally leaving in my former car, a fully packed 1996 Honda Accord LX, I pulled out of the underpass where I parked my car under during those eight months; eight months during which, I'll have to admit, I hardly ever used the car. Parking being such a hassle almost everywhere in the city of New York, except for maybe out on Staten Island; also known as Richmond County/Borough, suburban place-for the most part, anyway. There was that same old black crackhead woman in her wheelchair. Rolling up to every car at the traffic light at the corner of Tillary and Navy Streets and begging for crack money. Taking into account that I'm on a disability income and the not much better off than she is, plus the fact that everybody at that shelter-all the women staying there knew that she was a crackhead (often, we even see her smoking rock as the police passed by! The cops, I think, felt sorry for her), slowly, I pulled out of that cobblestone parking lot. This being about 10 o'clock at night. Seeing the light changed I made a left turn onto Park Avenue and headed toward the Brooklyn-Queens Freeway. A road better known as the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, it's a freeway with the exception of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge taking one into Staten Island, and New Jersey. Naturally, I headed the other way. North toward the Long Island Expressway/Interstate 495 Freeway; first getting caught in traffic, I drove all the way out to Riverhead in eastern Suffolk County. Getting there in less than an hour and a half, as I was moving a good 70 to 75 miles an hour in what was both a 55 mile an hour zone, and later, as one gets into Suffolk County-the speed limit increases to 65. Passing most of the other drivers; and here I thought Long Island New York at the craziest drivers? I guess that's not the case anymore.

I wanted to take one more look at Eastern Long Island before I headed out west to a place I had been before, twice, in fact. Stopping in Riverhead to get some gas, Riverhead being Long Island's easternmost ghetto with the exception of some neighborhoods in the village of Greenport, I followed State Route 24 east to State Route 27, into Shinnecock, Southampton, and into Hampton Bays. The place where I found a tiny little rest area on the side of the road and decided to "camp" in the car for the night. I wanted to see East Hampton, the town where I used to go to sleep away camp at Camp Saint Regis when I was a child living in Baldwin, New York; my parents sending me out to camp for two months over the summer just to get me the hell out of the neighborhood and out of their hair-as mom used to say when she was still alive. Worthy of note here: Mom had died on June 30, 2011; many days I felt like I had nothing left to live for and was seriously ready to commit suicide. However, that I said anything to those asshole fucking staff at that shelter they were to railroad me back in that goddamn hospital like they did the day in April when I bang my head into the fucking wall and broke the wall. Aggravated with life after being threatened by a big African-American crackhead who is ready to, in her own words I shall quote here, " To slash me with a blade". (Every night I would see her hiding behind her locker and hitting on that crack pipe, but that's besides the point-nearly everybody did that there.)





  York Yankees Gangster Disciples Colors: Black/Blue/White; Chicago Bulls Black Peace Stones
Nation
"Bulls" Stands For "Boy U Look Like Stone"
Chicago Bulls Blood Gangs "Bulls" Stands For "Bloods Usually Live Life
Strong"
Chicago Bulls Blood Gangs "Bulls" Stands For "Bloods Usually Live Life
Smart"
Chicago Bulls Folk Nation Gangs The "Horns" Are The Folk Symbol For
"Determination"
Chicago Bulls Folk Nation Gangs For False Flagging/Bloods Usually Live Life
Stupid
Chicago Bulls Vice Lords Colors: Red And Black
Chicago Bulls People Nation Gangs Bulls Horns Are A Broken Pitchfork
Chicago Cubs Spanish Cobras Initial "C"

My comments: Folk Nation is a " Black" gang; they DOMINATE Hempstead, Long Island, NY and were beginning to come into Orlando, FL when I lived there-so dominant today. However, many Caucasians, those in the suburbs and/or " rural" suburbs (Southbury/ Newtown, Connecticut or very much redneck Middleburg, FL-a " Bible-belt" town!) are also members and/or wannabees. 

Dallas Cowboys People Nation Gangs Five Point Star Of The People Nation
Dallas Cowboys Crip Gangs Cowboys Stands For: Crips On Wheels
Blasting On Young Slobs
Dallas Cowboys Crip Gangs Blue And Grey And White ColorsOakland “A’s” Ambrose Initial: “A” For Ambrose
Oakland “A’s” Orchestra Albany Initials: “O” & “A”
Oakland “A’s” Spanish Cobras Color. Green
Oakland Raiders Folk Nation Gangs “Magic”- Maniacs And Gangsters In Chicago
Oakland Raiders Folk Nation Gangs “Raiders” - Remember After I Die Everyone
Run Scared

Orlando Magic People Nation Gangs 5 Pt Stars All Over Hat
Orlando Magic Folk Nation Gangs Maniacs And Disciples In Chicago
Orlando Magic Folk Nation Gangs Colors: Black And Blue
Orlando Magic People Nation Gangs Murder All Gangsters In Chicago

Boston STRONG!!!! LOL Boston Celtics Spanish Cobras Colors: Green And Black

U.N.L.V. Vice Lords Colors: Red/Black
U.N.L.V. Vice Lords UNLV - Backward Is Vice Lord Nation United
U.N.L.V. People Nation Gangs " Us Niggas Love Violence"

Chicago Bulls Black Peace Stones
Nation
"Bulls" Stands For "Boy U Look Like Stone"
Chicago Bulls Blood Gangs "Bulls" Stands For "Bloods Usually Live Life
Strong"
Chicago Bulls Blood Gangs "Bulls" Stands For "Bloods Usually Live Life
Smart"
Chicago Bulls Folk Nation Gangs The "Horns" Are The Folk Symbol For
"Determination"
Chicago Bulls Folk Nation Gangs For False Flagging/Bloods Usually Live Life
Stupid
Chicago Bulls Vice Lords Colors: Red And Black
Chicago Bulls People Nation Gangs Bulls Horns Are A Broken Pitchfork
Chicago Cubs Spanish Cobras Initial "C"

(www.ncgangcops.org/archives/Team%20Logos.pdf)