Renee

My name is Renee and I'm a mother of four. I have four kids. I'm originally, as I said, from Gainesville, Florida. Been here all my life. Born and raised. My mother, my dad, everyone. We're from Gainesville, from this side of town.

Oh, when I was a child I lived in Gardenia Gardens, actually. And Lake Road. Those were the only two places. And, yeah. I never lived down any other streets until I got a little bit older, but it's always been this side of town.

I am proud to be from the East side because we are a strong community. We stick together and we love each other. Love overpowers all. And we love each other over here. No matter what our community do, we love each other. When we don't get resources from the outside, we pool our resources in the inside together. And it's hard, because we're already struggling over here, but we know we gotta get a certain place in life because we don't have no other help coming from the outside. So, I love my community character. We stand together. Irregardless of how everybody else feel on the outside.

Who has been the most important person in your life?

Mr. Clarence R. Kelly! He's passed away, but that was my—he put such impact on my life. Mr. Kelly was like my dad and like everything in one. He used to call me Muhammed Ali. Cause I used to stay fighting. But he always took time up with me to let me know where I was wrong at. What I did wrong, you know what I'm saying? He took time up with all the kids. All the kids loved him. And that's my most important figure in my life, was Mr. Clarence R. Kelly.

It is important for me, and it's important for a lot of kids over here. Because a lot of kids' parents are not up for the job. And so that's when kids go wayward. So they need someone in their life to keep them grounded. When they're out of line, drag them back and let them know, "Hey." Not saying that they gonna fall off that line, because once they get of age there's nothing you can do about it. But when they are younger, you have a strong impact in your life, you're more likely to be a better, productive citizen.

Well one day, me and these boys—they kept taunting me. They kept messing with me, I messed. So, me, I decided to put it on myself to line my bottles up on 8th Avenue, and I started throwing the bottles at the boys across the street! [Laughter] He usually hears, and sometimes he suspended me from the Blue Center, but this time he grabbed me. He brought me into his office and we talked. Oh, Lord, we talked like thirty minutes. So you know as a child that's a long time just sitting still for thirty minutes. But he talked to me or whatever. I tell you, like he said, I could've hurt a couple people with the bottles. Even the person that I wasn't trying to hurt, I could have hurt someone else. And so that what made me know that, okay, you have to think your situations through. You have to  think things out. And sometimes it's best just to go to someone else, somebody older, you know what I'm saying? And tell on them even though they might call you a tattletale or whatever. But it keeps you out of a lot of trouble... at the end of the day.

Well, actually for my kids, my kids' mentor was my sisters. And it's been a good role in their life because my kids are more well-behaved, because they were in Gardenia, and they were getting in trouble in school and stuff like that. My kids are well more behaved now. They're more happier. Mentorship in a child's life can make a big difference. Because you could be their mother, their father, their brother, sister, that they don't have. And they probably need in their life at the moment. So mentorship plays a big role in kids' lives... like we don't even see that much of Big Brothers and Big Sisters around here, but they got all kinda Big Brothers and Big Sisters over there. Where they at over here? Like, we don't have none of that over here. And they need it.

The most important part of my day would be... honestly, coming to see my community. I come through every day just to count heads to make sure everyone is good. You know, I go through the whole thing and I make sure I speak to everyone, I talk to everyone. Make sure everyone's okay. Ask them how their day went. Seeing my people are good is the most important part of my day. That's the most important part.

I check up on Coach, he's my dad's friend. And he also was a teacher. He helped my son at school because my son was in the IEP program. So he used to take my child to the side or whatever, and do one-on-one time with him. But he also—I been on him since I was a little girl, and that's my dad's friend. A good friend of my dad's. So I come check up on him, make sure he's okay. I mostly just check up on everyone I knew from my childhood. But if I glanced and I noticed someone's not—their spirit, their aura is not right with me and they're maybe going through something, I'll walk up to them and I'll talk to them. Cause you never know what a person is going through until you talk to them. And you don't ever know what those kind words can help them out with. So I'll walk up to anybody and talk to them.

I do. I do. I love people. I tell everybody. There's people I don't even know—I love you. Because love is the strongest thing. It conquers all. And people may not have had love in their life. And so just to tell a person, "I love you," just to reach out a little piece of your day and just talk to someone and say hey. You can say, "Hey, hello, how are you doing?" That makes a difference because some people wake up thinking that no one cares about them, that no one cares how they're doing in life. Don't care if they're here, there, nowhere. So just take your time out your day and speak to someone, can save someone's life.

One of the greater challenges in my life is basically trying to transition from being a—because I have been incarcerated before. So, me trying to get the resources to get my own place, me get the resources to get me a job and stuff like that, to get on my feet. Because it seems like every time I take two steps forward, I get thrown four steps back. It's always a brick wall that I hit. And then they tell me, "Oh, call this person." Or "Do this." But when I get that person, it's another brick wall and it's like I can't get through nowhere. So that's very challenging. You want someone to do better, but you're not giving them no—I don't need a hand out, I need a helping hand. And that's the difference.

I think it'd be more helpful in helping me achieve what I need to achieve is like, maybe they have different job fairs over here. Because sometimes they have job fairs but a lot of people don't have transportation to get to those job fairs, you know what I'm saying? Okay, maybe having someone that you can go—that can help you get through the stumbling blocks that you're going through to help you get to where you need to be. I see people on the other side of town that they can go speak to a certain person, and the next thing you know, they got appointment here and they got appointment there. But over here, you can't get that. It's like you're gonna hit a stumbling block on every corner but you wanna do better, but it's like, how?

My kids keeps me going. Cause I know that I have to do better in life for them to have a better life or whatever. So my kids keep me going. And me just wanting to be better for myself keeps me going, cause this is not the life that I envisioned for me. So me wanting to be better for myself keeps me going, too.

Honestly, when I was younger I wanted to be a pediatrician. But then I went into high school and I was in ROTC, so I wanted to go into the Navy. But then, I wanted to be a teacher. I had three different professions I wanted to go in, but now that I'm grown older and stuff, now I see that I would be better off having a job in the community. Or some type of legal services. Cause you have a lot of people that get into trouble. It's a way out for them. But they don't have that road, they don't have that avenue to take. Because it's closed, it's blocked to them. So I wouldn't mind being a legal aid, helping with that type of thing, too. Because we need better over here. We do. This is not us, over here. This just really recently got like this or whatever. But it's like they're pushing everyone this way. They're pushing it this way. So this is where it's ending up at.

Well, not really, but I think the only thing that would have really helped was the mentorship if it was there as I was growing up. Or even when my kids was in this area. The mentorship. Because the couple of people that we have round here that are mentors, there's not enough of them to spread round for everybody. So maybe once they get Lil Afrika up and they get more resources in, and they get more people interested, then we'll have a lot more people to around and help everybody. Like, we should get a food pantry up there, too. It's people that don't get a little bit or none—food assistance and stuff like that, that need help going through the month. And yes, we have Catholic charities and Gainesville Community Ministry, but that's only so often that you go get that. We need something that they can be, "Okay. I know for sure that when I get here, I'm gonna be helped. Hey, it's gonna be done." And that's what we need over here.

First, well, it means a lot that J. Long is doing it because of him being African American and establishing something in our community. And not letting outside—other people come open. I feel like, honestly, that we as African Americans should start building up our own community anyways. That we should start coming up more, building our own place, like opening our own businesses and things like that. So by him doing that—hey, he could do that? What I can't do? You hear me? If he could open that up, and get it up and running. Oh, I can do anything now! And that's how we're gonna feel about that, and he actually did it for the community. He's been talking to us about it since day one. And to actually see it up and running, it's gonna be a good thing. Because a lot of people have said, "Okay, this is what we're gonna do." We ain't seeing it yet. So for him to get that up and running, we'll know that, okay, we're going in the right direction. So far, so maybe more people wanna help now. Maybe more people wanna go that way now. And we can get this thing cleared up and this place cleaned up. And go back to the Out East that I know.

The Out East that I know was not all this traffic, not all this crime. It was not all this standing on the corner and stuff. But it was more calm, laid back. It was more community-oriented. It was like, you'll see the older with the younger. We all converge. Now it's everybody clashing, they're against each other. So, by going back to the Out East that I know, it won't be like that.

The generations clash because the older ones want better for the middle-aged ones. It's like the older ones are trying to teach the middle-aged ones to teach the younger ones. But, the older ones haven't learned enough to teach the middle-aged to teach the young ones. So, really you have to start with them, cause some of the older ones haven't even completed school and stuff like that. So, yeah, you're telling us about life in general, about how you lived out here as you were older. But at the end of the day, it's more to it now because it's 2019 now. It's no longer back there in the [19]60s. So a lot of things have changed, even though a lot of things are still the same. But they can't teach each other because a lot of them don't even know nothing.

Yes. Cause the older ones, they just wanna relax. The older crowd, they just wanna relax, chill. The younger crowd is out because they have so much influence in their life by watching TV and things like that. And they feel like the only thing that's out here to do is, oh, sell drugs, get money, things like that. When it's so much more. And see, the older crowd are not teaching them that because, basically, y'all are doing the same thing. The older crowd is trying to be so much like the younger crowd that they can't teach them. See, you understand what I'm saying. See, the younger generation knows nothing. If you were to ask someone a documentary right now, he wouldn't even know what a documentary is. But his mother is so busy out here doing her own—and that's why I say mentorship goes a long way. Because when your people are not even worried about you, don't care what you do, that's the kinda attitude you adapt to the streets. See, you have the younger crowd. It's just ridiculous. And I ain't trying to talk to the younger girls out here, the way they carry themselves and stuff like that. But if they didn't have no mama at first, there's so much I could talk to them about, so much you could do.

No, not really though. I just appreciate y'all taking the time to get my little couple of words in. That's it. But it was nice meeting you guys.