Audio File
Transcript
My name is Shyheim Banks. I’m 15 years old.
My name is Rashaud Foster. I’m 16 years old.
I interviewed…
I interviewed Duane Rentas.
Duane Rentas on June 28th, 2012.
I’m originally from the Bronx, NY. I’ve been working with adult and juveniles for about 27 years all over the northeast coast, from Massachusetts to DC. Growing up in New York was actually very good, I look at it as, because I grew up in a melting pot where it exposed me to multiple cultures, so it broadens your perspective, you know. We all want to have a-a good home. We all want to provide for our children. We all want to have justice. We all want to grow up in a nice neighborhood, and no matter what language you speak and to whom you call God, those are the basic fundamentals. Growing up in the Bronx also gave me an advantage to being first generation hip hop. So I actually grew up in the neighborhood where it all started. Original DJ Kool Herc, which led me into a music career myself, being first generation hip hop. I mean before, when we were plugging up to light poles, before there were record deals, before you’re doing what you’re doing now, we kind of like laid the pavement, and you get to see the evolvement and all of the stars going in and out. Kool Herc grew up two blocks from me, so the original hip hop dances, the original graffiti artist, so that was a great thing also about growing up in the Bronx. During high school and college, I was a DJ. So I booked parties, was negotiating deals in terms of bringing in artists, promotion as to what I do now, I was doing during that time. I ended up speeding full with juvenile facilities, but that was volunteering. Anti-gang type of things going on inside of the community where I was living at. I ended up going to school, coming back, working for the Department of Corrections, which was a different route. I never saw myself as a corrections officer. But I ended up working there for 10 years at a maximum security prison. During that time, I ended up co-founding a project that was called C.R.A.C. It’s called Convicts Rallying Against Crime. It was kind of an offshoot of the Scared Straight. So while I was working at the maximum security prison in Connecticut, we were also going into the neighborhoods and developing a Scared Straight program to let the young brothers know that what real life was inside of the penitentiary. After that, I ended up leaving the Department of Corrections just simply being burnt out from working with adults and follow that with working with kids. I’ve done the whole northeast from Massachusetts all the way down to Washington, DC, and because of my family being here, I ended up coming to visit, ended up staying.
Wherever I’m going to go, I’m going to be dealing with the youth inside of the urban communities. It’s all about each one, teach one, and it is all about being able to guide and give some leadership to young brothers and sisters from mistakes that we’ve seen that we’ve gone through in life. There’s-there’s certain things that come with age. I would be able to tell you certain things that my mother said. You guys are the next Obamas. You guys are the next world leaders. You guys are the next astronauts, doctors, philosophers. So then I invest in that which is going to be our future, you know, but I’m a big kid, man. I’ll have a water balloon fight with you in a heartbeat and I’ll spit a couple of rounds with you. It might not mean yeah, yeah, not that much. I don’t hold it down like that no more, but no, that’s basically what it’s all about. And anything that I can do to be an asset to us as a people is what I got from my mom and my dad is to constantly give back. You know the murder rate and black on black on inner city youths is high across the nation. The interview was based upon Hazelwood. It’s across the board. I can speak on situations that exist here, and I can get on the phone and call New York up and it be the same thing, or Chicago or Massachusetts. So it’s an epidemic. Now, how do we get that back is the question and there’s so many avenues of doing that, and people have different ways of doing that. You know, one of the things that you do here, I love it. is to see young brothers spending time in here and promoting exactly what I’m speaking about. We also have to be able to become entrepreneurs. How many times you hear people saying there ain’t no jobs, well, create one. What, you gonna starve? Jump off a bridge? Because he won’t hire you? You’re a genius. Manifest that so that you can provide jobs for others. Now, is everybody going to be an entrepreneur? No. There’s gotta be employees. I want to promote more entrepreneurship. I want to be able to spark that in young brothers and sisters that you don’t have to cry for others to do for you what you can actually do for yourself. “Ain’t no jobs in town.” OK? Well, what’s your gift? You got one. Find it and sell it. Be it T-shirts, be it your gift of words, be it your gift of lyric you can articulate. There’s so many levels, but we don’t have to lose our mind and stay in a depressed state because nobody will employ us. Whatever it is that you want to do, brother, you can do it. Brothers, y’all can do it. You want to go explore another planet? It’s not out of your reach, because everything that you see is the manifestation of somebody’s dream. I ain’t going to say Amen and nothing. But you know. But it’s important that you know that nothing is not obtainable. Nothing. Everything that you see, somebody thought of, from the doorknob to the shoestring, to the car you drive, the light switch, it ain’t fall out the sky. Ain’t nobody wave a magic wand and came out with a new car. Somebody had to design it, but they had to study mathematics. It’s a process, but you can achieve anything that you all want to achieve, man. The world is yours.