In new book, lessons from a former gang member

I should have been more nervous when I went from being a columnist in Hartford, Conn., a city of 18 square miles, to being a columnist in the sixth-largest city in the nation.

But Hartford and Philadelphia shared a lot of the same challenges, from deep poverty and struggling schools to crime and violence. They still do.

The chaos of Hartford during my time there was probably best embodied by Iran “Smurf” Nazario, the public face of Los Solidos, one of the city’s largest gangs in the ‘90s.

By the time I left Connecticut in 2011, Nazario had gone from being a gang member who’d been in and out of prison, including time served on federal racketeering charges, to a community leader. He would eventually start the Peace Center of Connecticut, a nonprofit organization that promotes peace everywhere from schools to prisons.

So I was intrigued when I learned that Nazario had recently written a memoir. I thought I knew most of the story through the countless accounts by local and national reporters about him and the gang wars that claimed dozens of lives, including 7-year-old Marcelina Delgado who was killed in cross fire in 1994. But it turns out I didn’t.

Reading his book, Rage to Peace: From Wounded Child to Gang Member to Peace Advocate, was like taking a step back to a time that formed my identity as a columnist focused on gun violence, both in Hartford and Philly.

The narrative about a 53-year-old former gang member also offers a unique view into the life of a struggling young man from Hartford who has some insight and lessons to share with the struggling young men in Philadelphia. And — perhaps more importantly — lessons for those of us who want to help these young men before it’s too late.

One of the first things that became clear as I read the book was that as much as Nazario’s identity was defined by his gang affiliation, his involvement boiled down to a desperate search for acceptance and attachment — even if it came with the deadly strings of a violent gang.

That is why, Nazario told me when we spoke this week, he chose to focus on the traumas that made him susceptible to choosing that life.

“Even if I never joined a gang, I was fighting a lot of other battles,” he said.

Among them was abuse and abandonment by a mother addicted to drugs and an absent and violent father, a tumultuous life in foster care and then on the streets, and the near-constant betrayal from adults and systems that were supposed to help him.

Here was a boy who became a man in a constant state of survival.

“I remember not being able to see in the future,” Nazario writes. “How could someone who was abused, neglected, discarded, illiterate, unskilled and angry … see a future?”

Sound familiar?

It’s the same state of uncertainty that many young people in Philadelphia live in while we wring our hands wondering why their resentment and rage spill into every part of the city.

I asked Nazario if he had any advice for us. With so many young people falling through the cracks, we clearly need it.

While some of his best advice already mirrors some of the approaches we are taking here — including effective grassroots organizations that are of the communities in need as much as in the communities in need — he also offered an important, if sobering, reminder.

In his own life, and in the community work he’s now dedicated to, the thing he knows for sure is that there are no shortcuts, no one-size-fits-all path to redemption. And it is a path. A journey, and sometimes a long one.

For every step forward, there are often several steps back before the road beneath begins to stabilize, hopefully before it’s too late.

It reminded me of the times a young person loses their way, or their life, and people roll their eyes at the friends and family who insist that “they were turning their lives around.”

How unfair, Nazario pointed out, when we dismiss how challenging it is to chart a new path, especially when we haven’t done a good enough job of showing them that there is “another way of responding to being broken.” When we don’t believe in redemption.

Nazario’s own redemption was tested after his brother was shot and killed in 2008, and he felt the familiar pull of violence and vengeance.

He thought of the role luck had played in his life up until then. He had been lucky, he writes, when he was not killed after being beaten by strangers and family members, when he survived living on the streets of Hartford, when he was in the crosshairs of rival gang members, when he was behind bars — and when he was able to decide he wanted out.

But he was done relying on luck.

Instead, he chose to rely on the lessons he’d learned talking families of gun violence victims off the ledge he now found himself on, remembering how he would sometimes physically hold them back from doing something they hoped would stop the pain.

Something that he knew from experience would not.

And in the end, he said, “I chose peace.”

We can hope that young people who are struggling in Philadelphia will choose peace as well. Or we can — as Nazario did and as he continues to do — engage in the work necessary to get them there.