In the Barriers of Sunnydale Housing Projects Anonymous

Imagine coming from a neighborhood in which the only thing that is promised is death. I lost one of my closest friends a few months ago to gun violence. Witnessing this horror changed my perspective: I want to have a successful life. Killings and robberies were normalized in the area I was raised in; my peers harm each other every day as if they are playing a video game. I dislike having to see an African American gunned down by another. Black males in my community live their lives worrying whether they’ll make it to see tomorrow not only because they think they’ll get sick or die in their sleep, but because they cogitate murder in such a dangerous community.

A common perspective in my neighborhood is that if you do not attend college after high school, you are most likely to be gunned down, strung out on drugs, or incarcerated. I refuse to live that type of lifestyle. I would not say that I hate the place that I was raised, but as a substitute I would make it a better place by adding more resources, removing more teens from the streets, passing laws to outlaw the sale of guns, and infuse the schools with more funding and resources to raise the graduation rates. It would also be an improvement if we were to have more grocery...