This city is very, very poorly mismanaged.
Unemployment is very high.
Gangs and violence are still here.
Even though it's not as violent as it used to be,
you know, people still get shot, stabbed, whatever.
It's the inner city life.
That environment can breathe the worst type of mentality,
or it can breathe the best.
There's no one between.
You either make it out, or make something of yourself while you're here,
or you just fall victim to the negativity.
If your town is corrupt,
or anything you're working is corrupt,
use that corrupt nature to find your way in.
So you go there, and you slowly make a change.
You talk to people.
Why are you doing what you're doing?
Well, I'm doing what I'm doing,
because I want to see a change in my community.
I'm tired of looking at the eyesores.
I'm panicking, and you'll be surprised
of how many people will come in just off that energy.
Like, okay, wait a minute.
Yeah, these guys are doing what they're doing,
but this guy, if something about what he's doing,
or what they're doing that is bringing people here,
and you will slowly make a change.
It's not going to be a quick transition.
It's just going to take years.
It's going to take a lot of time,
a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of headaches.
You have to make that year everything.
You just have to stay dedicated.
It's rocky sometimes, but I love it, you know,
and I want to keep doing it until I can't pick up
a spray can or a pencil anymore.
I grew up right in North Trent on Mark the King Boulevard,
which is one of the quote, unquote,
worst neighborhoods to live at in this city.
I've seen this firsthand of what the inner city can do to you.
A lot of my friends that I came away with are either dead
or in jail, or just kind of lost it.
You start to look around.
It's like, you know, I don't have to be like this.
So that's when I had the idea.
I was like, you know what?
I want to paint abandoned buildings
with positive representations
of people from the inner city, minorities, whatever.
You know, like, give us something positive to look at,
because you're perceived as the most negative
when you come out of these neighborhoods,
but the good people there.
Like, we have to exemplify that.
And plus, I'm taking what's perceived as a negative way
of producing something and painting something that's positive.
So the first wall that I did was on an abandoned building
was a portrait of Gandhi.
It was in the alleyway right off of East Hanover Street,
and I painted this wall, and nothing happened.
It was like, okay, it went up, and I was like, okay,
I got away with it, but I didn't get the reaction I wanted,
you know?
So that's when I realized, like, I got to take it more public.
It can't be in the alleyway.
It has to be something that's prominent.
So the next wall I did, I produced it with a friend of mine.
I get a call two days later from the city.
We loved your mural that you did on Olden Avenue,
but we don't know who sanctioned it.
I did it as community service.
It was a wall, a retainer wall of a factory
that's been torn down for the better part of 50, 60 years.
It was just an eyesore, you know?
And we painted portraits of children in Dr. Seuss imagery.
Someone in the neighborhood complained about the mural.
This guy wanted to get it taken down.
So she was like, going to the neighborhood,
get a petition started.
We built a nice little friendship over that time
because we were communicating frequently.
And she was like, look, I love what you're doing.
She was like, I like that you're taking initiative
to do something in this town.
She was like, let me just tell you this.
What you can do is get the community behind you
because as long as no one complains,
you're not going to have a problem.
The artwork brought a lot of people out.
You have people coming on this block
and that would never come over here before that.
You know, you even have families that lived on this block
that wouldn't drift on the other side of the block.
We really got to know kind of everybody here.
And I think the people see it that it's like,
it's something that is not exclusive.
Everybody appreciates it and they take care of it.
Even with the garden, you know,
we got people coming from all over helping.
People in the neighborhood, from outside neighborhood.
We're always like, yo, come on in.
It's more than just us now.
People in the neighborhood are getting more involved.
Then staying involved.
We formed a nonprofit, Sage Coalition Incorporated.
We all do different things.
We're all still in the arts.
You have musicians.
You have candle makers.
You have bike fabricators, metal fabricators.
And we have gotten so much further
because it's just not relied on one person.
We're going to start doing after school art classes,
Saturday art classes,
which will lead up into a mural program.
You go to the suburbs.
You go to some of these schools out there.
Oh man, it's like a wonderland
when you walk into some of these classrooms,
especially the arts department.
When you come to the inner city,
you have nothing, nothing,
especially like they're taking it all out of the school systems
and everything,
but they don't realize how much of a benefit it is to kids.
If art wasn't in my life as a kid,
I don't know what I'd be doing.
It could do the same thing for another kid.
It's just that they just have to have the opportunity.
Everybody doesn't play basketball or sports.
You've got creative people who don't have an outlet.
And most of the time, if it's not catered to,
you're going to want to do something destructive.
You have to put something there in place
for people to latch on to
and bring back arts within the community.
You can take that energy and at least plant the seed.
It's like, okay, this is what has to be done.
People see you working.
You never know who you may inspire
to pick up right where you left off.
I talked to most people in the city.
They're like, I got to leave. I got to leave.
I want to get out.
So if you have the opportunity to leave,
you have the responsibility to come back
and provide something and to show people how.
Not just give money out and teach them.
Like, look, this is how you do it.
So much negativity, especially in inner city going around.
Like, we can all point our finger at it.
It's always something that we could say that is not right.
But if you're not doing anything to change it,
then you're just complaining.
People are being affected by this in a positive way.
What I would like to see is the people here
get economically empowered.
Like, we've already helped people
in this neighborhood get jobs through what we're doing.
And we just got to keep going, you know?
Because that's our mission.
It's like, look, let's keep this pumping this into the hood.
Ha, ha, ha.
