Audio File
Transcript
My name is Andrew A. Burgher. I am 15 years old.
My name is DaMon Radwanski. I’m 16 years old.
We interviewed Robert Parker on July 30th, 2015.
I grew up in Wilkinsburg, lived there until I was 12, and then I moved to Homestead and moved out of Homestead back in 1993 to Braddock. And I’ve been in Braddock since 1993. Moved out of Wilkinsburg when it was getting pretty bad out there and came over here and met a lot of new people, new friends. Graduated from Woodland Hills back in 1996. I have nine brothers and three sisters. My mother, my grandmother, some of my siblings, they guided me to be the person I am today.
One of my favorite memories growing up: probably being young and seeing the police cars coming down the street and being able to stop as a kid and have a conversation with a police officer and just being able to laugh and joke and then show you a police car or your local fireman showing you your fire trucks and things like that. That’s something that you don’t really see that often too much anymore, especially as young black men. Like I said, I grew up in Wilkinsburg and that’s how my police officers were then. They would always come up to you. They knew you by name. You knew them because they were part of your community.
I have people that I look up to, but I’ve learned to be my own person, so usually when it comes to quotes and things I usually try to avoid them because I want to make up my own mind. I want to make my own decisions. You can learn a lot from making your own decisions, which you can learn a lot from listening to people.
I’ve had struggles. My one brother, one of the reasons why I left Wilkinsburg, he was shot. He’s still with us today, but he’s locked up for 15 years because he ended up being in a gang in Wilkinsburg. I’ve had other brothers in gangs jumped in front of me as a kid. That’s not where I wanna be at. I want to move somewhere else. I want to make money the legal way. I want to retire by the time I’m 45 and I’m just about there.
There’s always obstacles every day, every day in life, negativity, people to say you can’t do it. People say you won’t do it and you have a lot of negativity as far as the color of your skin.
My current job, I work for AutoZone. I started out as they call you a zoner or red shirt, which is just your low man on the totem pole, so to speak. In less than a year, I was a manager for AutoZone because I knew what I was doing. I knew how to treat people, knew my customer service, knew my goals, where I wanted my company to be, where I wanted my store to be.
I listened in school, I paid attention and I wanted to learn. I ran into my gym teacher from when I was in high school a few days ago and she said “So, what are you doing with yourself now?” I said, “Well, obviously you see, I’m a manager here” and she said, “Yeah?” I said “I’m also a Councilman in Braddock,” and she stopped me right there. And she said, “I knew you were going to go somewhere when you were little.” So hearing that made me say “I’m doing something right.”
Back in 1998, I had a heart attack and I was 19 at the time. They told me I had a heart murmur, mitral valve prolapse, and what was causing me to have heart attacks was I was having cardiac arrest because I had fluid built up around my heart. So have I been through my own struggles? Oh yeah. But I try to overlook it. I try and think positive on a daily basis.
Because I kept my head in books, I learned to exceed what most people don’t. Being in corporate America, the color of your skin has a big part of it. People will tell you, “Oh, racism is out, nobody’s racist anymore.” And that’s one of the reasons why I want to run for state Senate is because I want to make an impact. I want to show people, “Hey, look, racism is still here.” We need to do something better than to keep being held down.
Stay in school. Listen to your parents. Listen to mentors that are out there, whoever you can. If you feel that your local police is your mentor, something you want to do, listen to them. Talk to politicians such as myself. Talk to your teachers, your peers. Try and stay on the right track. If you know it’s wrong or you feel it’s wrong, try to avoid it as much as possible. There’s a lot that can be offered to you.