November 20th, 2012
Because of the drugs that the U.S. brings in to all of our communities and cities, I was a victim of drug use. Drug use began my financial downfall and loss of housing, self, and health. It brought more problems with the police because I was hurt by the police one day, I didn’t know my rights, and so I let it go. One day I got sick and couldn’t walk and I didn’t know why. So I had to have an operation on my neck. After that, I began to do more and more drugs, and going to jail more and more. When they told me that I would go to jail for 2 years I stopped doing drugs. I began to work with LA CAN to help myself. The VA helped too.
This story was written by Wesley, a poverty skolar from the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), for the Voices of Poverty Resist series. This series was launched out of a fellowship that Lisa received from the Marguerite Casey Foundation for journalism focused on poverty. Because Lisa leads with her indigenous values of inter-dependence she has created this collective journalism process where all of our voices in poverty are speaking for ourselves.