Written by Samantha Bredeson
Nine miles down Division Street, a war is raging. Past the 7 Eleven, the ritzy houses of Oak Park, the playgrounds, churches and the school we call home, young men suit up to defend the only thing they know. For us, Division is just a street, for them: a battlefield, a true division between rival gang territory.
Born into the Division rivalry, Raymond Richard knows the game, slinging dope to get the cars, money, jewelry and girls; defending his side of the block when the rival gang threatens to take it all away. A native of the Cabrini Green housing project, Richard was a member of Chicago’s notorious Gangster Disciples by age 11, a “generational curse,” he says, that was unavoidable.
“I was attracted to the streets,” Richard said. “I would watch the gangs and how they represented what they did and things of that nature until finally, I got up the nerve and said I wanted to be in it.”
Once on the streets, “all hell broke loose.” Dropping out of school, Richard took on selling dope full time, dealing weed, cocaine, crack and eventually heroin, day and night. Three years later, Richard found himself in juvenile detention, serving a six-month stint for an attempted murder charge. But getting locked up, he says, was “a badge of honor,” and snitching was a death sentence.
At age 17, Richard returned to the Department of Corrections, serving time in the Cook County jail. By 21, he was in and out of prison for various charges. In between sentences, selling soon became using, as Richard spiraled into substance abuse and addiction.
“I got strung out at an early age on cocaine,” Richard said. “Everybody said it was cool to do cocaine and smoke your cigarettes and drink your Martell. They didn’t tell you about the effects it would cause. They didn’t tell me what would happen later on.”
Richard was soon introduced to heroin, and later moved on to crack cocaine.
“Along the way I started to notice that my progression for the drugs started to take its toll on me,” Richard said. “It felt like it was every minute that I had to have this drug.”
Richard eventually was kicked out of the gang because of his addiction. Abandoned by the only life he had ever known, Richard’s struggle with addiction led him to make Lower Wacker Drive his new home. Living on the street with nowhere to go, Richard spent his days panhandling for cash to buy his next fix.
In and out of prison, Richard’s reached his lowest in 2006 and turned to God to bring change to his life. God answered. After serving four more years in prison for robbery, Richard got clean and began to turn his life around- drawing from his past struggles to write a book, The Book of Raymond: A Journey from Prison to Praise and Poetry.
In 2009, Richard began working towards a dream that had formed while he was still on Lower Wacker: to create an organization to save youth from falling into his same fate.
His plan was to organize a group of reformed ex-gang members who would go out to troubled neighborhoods and mentor youth. It took four more years for the organization to become a reality.
“It didn’t come into fruition until last year because I had to find the people that would believe and get behind me,” Richard said. “I am very passionate about what I do and I need people as passionate as I am about it.”
But finding passionate men, ready to go out and mentor Chicago’s youth, proved to be a challenge. At first no one believed in his cause, Richard says, they blew it off as just “another one.” But after persistence and many persuasive barbeques hosted by Richard, he eventually got together a staff of 12. Known as Brothers Standing Together, the men teamed up with the Near North community to develop the Near North Unity Program, a strategy designed to reduce gang violence on Division Street. The program called for the men to return to their former hoods, this time as mentors to the troubled youth.
Richard returned to Cabrini. Now deconstructed by the city of Chicago, the only buildings left from the Cabrini Green projects are the Cabrini Rowhouses. The Rowhouses, just south of Division Street, are still home to Richard’s old gang. Richard was called to return home to help the young men resolve their issues without the use of violence.
“By us growing up in our own neighborhoods, we are able to go back to our neighborhood and see what the problem was and try to diffuse it,” Richard said.
For the kids of Cabrini, help could not come sooner, as the gang is currently engaged in turf warfare with their rivals just north of Division at Marshall Field Garden subsidized housing.
“They fight against each other,” said Richard. “The North Side has never been on the South Side, and the South Side has never been on the North Side. So we are trying to break that vicious cycle and try to bring them together to show them some unity.”
Splitting the group in half, Richard takes five guys to Cabrini, while another member of the group, Brother Philip, takes five men to Marshall Field Garden. With the Near North Unity Program, Brothers Standing Together sets up meetings and organizes out door activities to bring the young men together. They also do walk-throughs of the neighborhoods, checking up on the boys and doing one-on-one visits.
Though making small progress, this is just one step in the fight to stop the violence on Division Street and save the lives of Chicago’s most at-risk youth. But for Raymond Richard, it is a step that has forever changed his life.
