While sorting through the list of labels that are casted upon gang members, an “artist” isn’t typical. Johnny Torres, a crisis and gang intervention program coordinator for Soledad Enrichment Action (SEA), uses each day to break these stereotypes and finds that art is an effective tool that redirects the troubled youth onto a path of new opportunities, as it did him.
The gang culture came as a right of passage for Torres as he was born into a family of gang involved members. From a young age, he had been exposed to gang culture through his peers within the community and gained an interest in graffiti in elementary school as his friend introduced him to tagging. With growing up in Huntington Park and East LA, where gang culture was prominent at the time, he followed the herd.
As a young teenager, Torres began attending a local shop by the name of Radio Tron in West LA, a safe space where rival gangs would socialize and set aside their differences to coexist in an atmosphere where hip-hop filled the room and customers were able to express their creativity with graffiti and breakdance– with adult supervision.
“When we were in the center, where we grew up and our environment had no relevance,” said Torres. “We were just so into the vibe of the center, nobody was banging.”
Torres felt he had found a community within the shop that was like-minded, shared the same struggles, and encouraged one another’s artistic abilities, but the shop was forced to shut down on account of the city passing an ordinance to eliminate underage clubs.
With Radio Tron going out of business, Torres began to lose hope as he was no longer provided a safe space to express himself artistically. Due to limited resources of taking on a lifestyle away from gangs, he eventually gave into the pressure of joining one. At the age of 16, Torres became fully involved in the culture.
Torres carried his passion for art during his course of riding with the gang through graffiti. The unique form of art had become what grounded him and shielded him from getting too wrapped up in gang banging. With this undeniable passion, Torres began to gravitate more towards LA’s graffiti culture rather than gang culture.
“It gave you the motivation to leave your block,” said Torres. “Most kids felt confined to their block, confined to the hood, but when you want to be a graffiti artist you had to leave your block and be willing to be adventurous.”
The graffiti community offered Torres an alternative to the gang lifestyle. It was his escape that was clear of crime, violence or rivalry but instead supported each other’s passion for art that embodied the LA culture.
“It was like a high, you really didn’t care about somebody’s rough areas,” said Torres. “We created this urban culture that held art galleries in empty factories or train yards that most people are usually scared to drive through but you could see some of this beautiful, artistic expression that was being made by young men and women.”
But in the 90s, the city announced Prop. 21 which criminalized graffiti due to its correlation to gang culture. The proposition further silenced an outlet that high-risk individuals used as a form of resistance against joining a gang.
“By criminalizing tagging, it didn’t reduce the vandalism but made a greater profit for those who invested in incarceration and created more violent situations for a lot of young people in the community who wanted a voice,” said Torres. “It was a culture that gave the people who were overseen and unheard a voice through expression.”
Nearing the end of Torres’ affiliation with the gang, he became a present figure in community youth groups that advocated for peace and change for their people. After his desistance from the gang and struggling to find redirection, he ran into a group of Muslims that were advocating for an alliance with the Hispanic community. They had offered Torres to meet with the minister of the group, and to his surprise, it was the sign he was looking for his internal transformation.
“His speech touched me so much,” said Torres. “I remember from that point forward I started to change my life.”
In 2008, Torres was raising four children on his own and struggling to make ends meet. At the time, he was working at a paint shop but walked out as he felt close to giving up. On his way out, a woman who recognized him from the volunteering he’s done within his community stopped him to offer him the position of a security guard for the company she worked for, SEA. When Torres landed the job, he found that he was working as a teacher’s aide at a school for students as part of a rehabilitation and intervention program.
“I got really involved, I was excited, I was able to utilize all these skills that I obtained throughout the years to share with the young people,” said Torres. “I was able to form relationships between the Black and Brown groups and help with the violence decrease.”
Leaders of SEA took note of Torres’ successful impact on the school campus and offered him a position for street gang intervention. From that point on, Torres has worked in the crisis gang intervention program that oversees various cities throughout LA County. His history with gang affiliation and knowledge of the culture breaks down hostility and allows for trust to be built between him and those in need of redirection. His past created a path that is now used as a tool to help transform communities.
“It was a beautiful blessing to find SEA,” said Torres. “It’s a blessing to be able to help people and help the Raza come together, that’s one of my main motivations.”
In redirecting the lives of those under SEA’s program, the organization has launched various art-oriented programs, from an art-focused camp site to a workshop where members can create their own merchandise. Each workshop offers the youth members a safe space to express themselves creatively, and without judgment. Others, like Torres, have found that art speaks of the internalized struggles that one faces. It helps members of the SEA program discover a healthy hobby, or passion, that substitutes harmful habits.
“We bring kids from the community to paint murals instead of some outside artist that paints a vision that no one will understand or respect. But if we put something that included people of the community, where their voice was included, their expression was included, then that mural never gets touched,” said Torres. “In the long-term effects, we were able to empower the community and reduce crime.”
Torres’ full circle moment is shown through SEA’s success in introducing art to the lost youth within the community as an alternative to gang culture and street violence, as art is what saved him. Individuals who had been assisted under SEA’s programs have continued to prosper in the arts, proving that change can happen if the right assets are provided. Torres and his team at SEA continue to break the cycle of unhealthy habits within a community and stereotypes that dictate one’s journey through artistic expression.
