Aqueela Sherrills, Activist, Campaigner Against Gang Violence

[00:00:00] Aqeela: As I am Aqeela Sherrils. I’m the executive director of the Community Self-determination Institute a former member of the Grape Street Crips out of Jordan down housing projects here in Watts.

[00:00:34] Miae:So tell me what were you doing when the La Riots broke out?

[00:00:40] Aqeela: What I was doing during the breakout of The L.A. riots was actually working with an organization that we co-founded with Hall of Fame where Jim Brown called Amer-I-Can. And at the time we were actually organizing in the neighborhood the peace treaty the peace treaty happened a few days before the actual Rodney King verdict. So we had actually took about 250 275 gang members ex-gang members from seven different neighborhoods throughout the city of Los Angeles down to City Hall to make a presentation to let them know that we had formed a peace treaty that we were coming together to atone for the violence that was perpetrated on ourselves and against each other and that we were making a commitment to stop. And a lot of the killing in the city and I think the following day was the Rodney King verdict. And you know basically what we were doing in the neighborhood was trying to stop individuals from looting and robbing and burning down the stores and different things like that because we were trying to let them understand that this is our community. This is where we live. And so whatever we destroy here you know we lose. Read more...

Sharmala Drapa, Associate Professor in Sociology and the Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Texas, Austin

I’m Sharmala Drapa and I’m an assistant professor in sociology here at the university of Texas at Austin in sociology and Asian American studies.
This is I just finished four years of being in Austin. I graduated from Madison, Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin at Madison where I spent a LARGE amount of time being at graduate school. It was a bit difficult to leave the town.

Um I came to the united states in 1989 as a graduate student in Environmental studies and got my master’s in that and switched to sociology for a Ph.D. Completed my degree in 2000 and got this job and moved here to Austin Texas. Um Presently I am on an HIB. Most of my student life I was on FI visa, which is my student status and the minute I got this job here at UT uh Univ. Texas, they changed it to an HIB visa, which is a temporary worker visa. Meaning this visa is valid for three years and then earlier this year I applied for an extension for

Ginger-Abuses? Read more...