Healing Through Community
Healing Through Community
An Interview with Yusef Shakur
Adele Nieves
The whole fucking community is in the prison system; everybody knows somebody who’s been locked up. if we think that’s the solution, we’re twisted.
You wrote your book based on your nine-year prison sentence. Tell us how you wound up in the “belly of the beast,” as you put it, and why you decided to write the book. I was convicted of assault with intent to rob. It was my second offense as an adult, and was ignited from the gang culture I was involved in (Zone 8). Some of my homeboys went to a local school and jumped some guys. The police didn’t know the perpetrators, but they knew it was a gang.
The local gang squad investigated the case, and when they looked at the list of gang members, my name was on top of the list. I had a long history with one of the detectives, and one of the people assaulted was his nephew, so all the cards were against me.
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