DaShaun Morris On Why Gang Members Get Depressed

David Gerlach: Today you’re about to hear from a convicted gang member on dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. Now you’ve probably heard of PTSD though it’s usually linked to veterans scarred by the horrors of war, returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. But blogger Dana Roc brings us her interview with Dashaun “Jiwe” Morris. He’s a longtime member of the infamous Bloods gang and he says that crimes, killings, and shakedowns have left him scarred, as well. This is Blank on Blank.
Song: Geto Boys “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”

DaShaun Morris: I get these nightmares like three or four nights of the week. I write them all down. Just about all of them in some way and form or fashion of me getting killed. That really bothers me, because now I do want to live. I do want to raise my daughter.

David Gerlach: Now Dana and DaShaun were speaking there in a New York restaurant, but it wasn’t until they spoke by phone later that DaShaun really went inside the mind and said that fears, anxiety, and depression run deep amongst even the hardest of gang members.

DaShaun Morris: When I was 16, Dana, death did not bother me like it should a normal human being. When I was 11, I watched one of my best friends get murdered. Eleven years old. One day, individuals came through my neighborhood in Phoenix, got to shooting and hit my homie, Trey. He was eleven years old. When I was thirteen I watched one of my homie’s get burned. I mean more than at least 75% of his body. I have watched individuals getting shot. I have watched people die myself. So the point that I am saying is that right there in itself altered my view on death. When I feel that death from a human side of things, you should feel emotion. You should feel empathy or sympathy. You should feel some side of vulnerability when you lose people in your life. Loved ones. But like I said, by the time I was sixteen or seventeen, Dana, when we lost a homie, it was just a typical routine: You go get a couple of shirts, you throw his face on it, you write his name on a wall, you get a couple of forties, you pour it on his grave and you move on!

Song: Eminem & Tupac “When I’m Gone”

DaShaun Morris: A lot of us gang members deal with on a day-to-day basis is extensive depression. In most cases we never even know that we are depressed. We are filled with extensive case of resentment, rage, anger. All of those things that if pinpointed at a specific time we could spend time focusing on, working it out. Iron out the wrinkles. But a lot of time in the street life you are dealing with a lot of murder, a lot of prison, a lot of death, homelessness, crisis. We just pile a lot of that on top of each other. On the street there is no time to be emotional. No time to be sensitive. We don’t really discuss personal issues. It’s all about gang banging. It’s all about revenge. It’s all about reputation. It’s all about the toughest hood, the hardest hood. It’s about keeping everybody safe. A lot of time we suppress those emotions that we need to be working out.

Song: Pharcyde “Runnin’”

DaShaun Morris: A lot of us, as I mentioned earlier, are dealing with year in and year out of piled up frustration. Misery. Depression. We don’t have outlets. When I was growing up, when I was eighteen, nobody had no damn money to go and see no therapist! And pay for, you know, like what a great massage would do for you. No one had money to do that. We spent our money on more guns and drugs and to take care of our neighborhood. Until we can tap into those resources of getting help at the beginning stages, than this is a cycle that will continue to repeat itself. It will continue to evolve and come full circle, because I feel a lot of times we are left behind. We are left out here to die. We are left out here to kill each other. You got to remember, Dana, this lifestyle we are living is really, I guess you would say to a degree, a secret society. A lot of the things that we go through, we see, we experience, don’t get talked about. I feel in order to fix this problem, to help in this problem, it has to be spoken about. I want to be remembered as, because I am a Blood, I want to be remembered as a Blood, as an individual, a man, as a father who took the situations and circumstances that I was faced with and all of the things that he had seen in his life, and I did not allow that to justify why I just laid down and died.

Song: Geto Boys “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”

David Gerlach: That was DaShaun Morris on Depressed Gang members and this is Blank on Blank. I do want to thank blogger Dana Roc for adding her interview to the archive. Check out her multimedia destination at Dana Roc dot com. Now for more of our interviews that you can hear nowhere else, head over to Blank on Blank dot org. I’m David Gerlach. Keep listening.