Background: How IEG and Montview Came Together

[Adult Ed: Black Gang History and Culture in Denver]

The October adult education class, Black Gang History and Culture in Denver, was facilitated by Craig Maginness, Montview member and international business consultant, entrepreneur coach and adjunct professor at Johnson & Wales College of Business. He started volunteering his time with the Impact Empowerment Group (IEG) six years ago, when he was invited to work with them to help generate economic opportunity in North Park Hill.

We asked Craig how this came about. “I’m a business person, and I work with people who are starting their own businesses, business coaching and business planning,” he explained. “After Haroun Cowans, a founder at Impact Empowerment Group, spoke at an adult education class at Montview, I asked if I could work with him on what I thought were very powerful ideas of his; ideas around people starting businesses and how that cascades into additional opportunity throughout a community. After that, we worked together to develop a six-week, street-level entrepreneur training class.”  

“As we worked together, I was invited to be on the advisory board at IEG supporting their efforts to establish employer relationships and job placement possibilities, making some wonderful friendships along the way” he said. “I was very impressed by what the people at IEG were doing. It really is a ground-up, community-fueled non-profit. Key IEG people including Haroun Cowans, Pernell Hines and Sade Cooper all grew up here, and they came together to try to change the narrative in their own neighborhood. Garrett Crawford, the current Executive Director of IEG, has ties to Montview that go back to when he was a kid—his mom Janet has been a member at Montview for many years.

“After a while we were making headway, and Ellen Reath, my wife, and I held a fundraiser at our house, which helped spread the word and get the larger Montview community excited about what’s going on at IEG. Then, three years ago, IEG applied for a Mission Life Grant from the Montview Mission Life Committee, and is very grateful to have received a Mission Partner Grant for the past three years.”

Those years have been busy with mentoring and working with gang members, middle and high schoolers and adults coming out of incarceration. IEG has developed alternatives for former gang members to be positive and productive members of the community, to find jobs or start small businesses.  

“Here’s the thing,” Craig concluded. “Montview is a predominantly white church trying to wrestle with issues of racial justice and appreciation for the black community. And we have a mission partner doing this important ground-up work right here in Park Hill. The people at IEG have offered to serve as a resource to help us understand realities of black life.  Here is an African-American neighborhood organization willing to work with us to deepen our understanding of what racial justice looks like. Through our relationship with IEG, we have a rare opportunity to come together with our black Park Hill neighbors, to better appreciate their struggles and to celebrate their successes.”

Black Gang History and Culture in Denver

Montview Adult Education Class, Thursday night, 10/15/2020

By Juli Davidson

This class was rooted in a powerful, personal story. Our speaker was Pernell Hines, lifelong Park Hill resident, former Bloods gang leader and now a leading gang interventionist in Denver. If you want to immerse yourself in the full 90-minute class, find the Zoom video link below.

Pernell was introduced by adult ed facilitator Craig Maginness as “a person of profound faith and grace, who has the uncanny ability to strip away the confusion and point to exactly what’s happening in situations from the boardroom to his one-on-one gang counseling.”

Pernell is the Associate Director of Impact Empowerment Group (IEG), whose mission is to strengthen the community by equipping youth and their families with the skills they need to succeed through economic development. IEG is located at 33^rd and Hudson in Park Hill.

Early days in Park Hill

Born in 1973, Pernell had a pretty normal childhood for a kid who grew up in his grandmother’s house with lots of aunts, his mom and fifteen to twenty kids at any given time. He went to Park Hill Elementary. He was in 6^th grade at Smiley when he and three friends stole some bikes from Target and sold them to some older kids, gang members, in Park Hill. “My primary interest in joining the gang was money. This was more money than I had ever seen in my life.”

The Bloods territory was from Colfax north to the freeway (Rt. 70) and Colorado Boulevard to Quebec, which includes Park Hill. “It was almost natural for me to become part of this gang,” Pernell explained. “Next, drugs came into play, as far as selling them. I got addicted to the money, never to the drugs. But I was a drug dealer at twelve years old.”

At this very young age, he rose through the ranks, and by 15 Pernell was a senior player in gang activity and decisions, pledging his loyalty and actions along the way. It was the gang culture he immersed himself in—joking that if he’d encountered a group of lawyers that day they stole the bikes, “I probably would have become a lawyer.”

Next step: violence

Now he was making thousands of dollars a day, and was able to support his mother and help out his grandmother. “We started to fight over territory with the Crips (the much bigger East Denver Gang) and shooting and murders started to occur. I was a big part of that,” he told us. “It was sheer violence. It was nothing for me to run around with my gun. It was nothing for me to shoot my gun. This was just what I became.”

At 15, he was arrested for two violent crimes and sent to Lookout Mountain Juvenile Prison, sentenced to two years. The Crips outnumbered the Bloods ten to one, both on the street and in the prison. Pernell realized his survival in juvie would depend on harming his enemies.  It was a time filled with negativity; “I couldn’t wait to get back out and cause more harm to my rivals,” he told the class.

Two of his close friends had died while he was incarcerated.  He decided revenge was called for once he got out at 17.  “The day I was released, I knew I was going to ‘put in work against’ (gang–speak for hurt or kill) the people who had killed my friend, Peanut.”  Pernell knew this was a never ending cycle, once it starts. He was out for less than a week when he was arrested again.

From juvie to men’s prison

Still 17, he was sent to adult prison, Buena Vista Correctional Facility, with a five year sentence. “At this point in time” he said, “there was a real opportunity for me to make money while in jail in the drug trade.  I became known as that person in prison; very violent and selling drugs.” He explained he never once believed he wanted to do anything except be an active, violent member of the Bloods. The money was too good.

Pernell wanted us to understand that his only influences through these years were hustlers, criminals, pimps, gang-bangers, con-men, robbers; he was never introduced to a doctor or professional who might show him another way. No recruiters had come to his school from the police or the firemen, even the Army, to give these students the idea of a different life. 

He became a celebrity, garnering “hood fame” even while he was incarcerated.  “I brainstormed myself into believing this was all I knew,” he told us, “so I could continue to get away with the criminal lifestyle.”  When he was released at the age of 23, again he hit the ground running.

He was known from L.A. to Denver to New York as a gang leader, a drug lord. He took his people and his reputation and tore the city up. Other than rape, burglary or auto theft, Pernell and the Bloods were on it.  “From shootings to murder, to bank and armored car robbery, to selling any drug you could think of, we did it.”

Eleven months later, Pernell found himself swept up in an FBI Rico-act called COCCA, the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. Facing 412 years for everything from bank robbery to homicide, Pernell and the others could afford to hire excellent council; they were each sentenced to twelve years in prison. “So from 15 to 30, I spent my life in prison,” he admitted.

A change of heart

“Most of that time I wanted to accumulate this much money, hurt this many people, have my share of fame. But during this twelve year stint, I began to realize a few things,” he continued. “One, that I had never met a successful criminal. Never. Their success rate was zero. I started to think about the older guys who had the Bentleys, the Maseratis, and they had all died. Or had life sentences. I started rolling this around in my mind. ‘Is this where I want to be? Is this how I want to end up?’

“I started to think about how can I rewire myself? To think in another way? And I had to come to terms with me just being black. Did I have another option?” Pernell wondered. “This was one of the biggest struggles I had in my life up to then. Who am I? How can I get back to that person who loved Christmas? Has there been too much killing and violence?”

Pernell enrolled in an anger management class, learning about the cognitive thought process.  After some time he began to put his reactions into perspective. He started reading books, histories and more, written by black people. Pernell read the Bible while he was in solitary, where he was allowed one book. This led him to an epiphany, a revelation, that God had a plan. “I began to understand that my calling was to help people in gangs find a different, more constructive path for their lives, away from violence, guns and drugs,” he said.

A changed life, and a message

“I went through a transformation that I had to change; not for the betterment of me, but for the community, for humans period. How can I empathize with people who I victimized?” he began to ask. “I started to try to put myself in their shoes. And I said to myself when I get out of prison this time, I’m going to try my best to make a difference.”

When he got out of prison, Pernell got a job. He had to take a pay cut big time from the lifestyle he used to live. He drove a forklift. He also pulled himself away from his former homies, friends, gang members and the larger community. This was going to be his path to surviving.

But in the meantime, a lot of people started to get killed. “Kids in Park Hill were getting killed, and nobody had a voice to stop the cycle of violence,” he shared. “Quadruple homicides of eight-ten-fourteen year olds. I said to myself, ‘you can’t just sit by and let this go on. You changed your life, and you have a message.’

“I was, in part, responsible for this community violence; I had torn this place up when I was active. My conscience would not let me live with that.” Pernell tracked down Denver gang-activist Rev. Leon Kelly, who suggested he get some folks from both sides to come to the table and work on some kind of solution. Because of his leadership reputation—and Pernell had been out of gang life for five years at this point—he was able to bring leadership of the Crips and the Bloods to the meeting. He asked the group, “Since we tore down so much, how would it look if we started rebuilding?” This was the beginning of the work he is doing now with IEG.

Working across the aisle

Pernell doesn’t know if those gang leaders were tired of killing like he was, or they just needed a platform to express themselves. But the group came up with a program called POTS (Part of the Solution). “It was a lot of brothers from the Bloods and the Crips who agreed to work on this,” he said. “But the economic realities of straddling the fence were too severe, and people started to drift back into that same gang lifestyle.  But I did not. I just stayed down, and diligent.

“Our biggest challenge right now is cultural differences,” said Pernell, looking to the near future. “Gentrification is coming up to the neighborhood. And we’re being viewed as being black, as the ‘other.’ There are kids up there who couldn’t trust white people, because the white people they’re used to, have incarcerated their fathers, or took them from their mothers. They have their guard up when a white teacher shows up in the classroom. It’s not the teacher’s fault. It’s cultural differences. These differences are the stuff we go through every day at IEG.

“We’re here, part of Park Hill. Black people are staying in Park Hill. White people, too. We’ve got to learn to co-exist. To live where white families and black families can be neighbors with no disrespect,” said Pernell. “We’ve got to ask, ‘How can we shape the future?  How can we bring social awareness now?’”

The best question

One of the teenagers in the class asked the best question of the night. He told how in his neighborhood there was gang involvement among some kids that he knew, and he wanted to know how to show them another way. Pernell suggested he share his own stories, about the kid who joined a gang at twelve and spent half his life in prison.

He explained he would start by telling the kids, “Let me show you something different. That’s what I mean about social responsibility. You guys skateboard? Take those guys skateboarding to another park than the one they hang out in. Show them there’s another way to live a life.  We all want to belong to something. You do have resources, and one of them is me. If you want, I can tell this kid my story, and explain ‘this is not the path.’”

You have turned your life around

Pernell thanked Craig Maginness for coming up to listen, and continuing to come back time after time. “With no agenda, Craig started coming around the office, and he learned,” Pernell said. “He told me, ‘I see you have not had the opportunities that I had. In spite of this, you have turned your life around. I want to support that.’ That means the world to me and our work at IEG.

“I’m grateful for the gift that God has given me,” Pernell went on. “He allowed me to come out of that darkness and allowed me to become a person who is working toward understanding and co-existence for all people and an end to gang life. Our future is going to depend on us having people who can stand up and run our society the way it’s meant to be run.”

Pernell Hines stayed with the class until all the questions were answered. And many of us in the class have more thoughts, now that we’ve had a few days to digest his story. Can we tear down the idea of seeing everything from the eyes of our parents and ask, hey, what is really going on here? Why don’t our neighbors have these resources? Mental health, health care, dentists, youth opportunities?

One insight was offered by Garrett Crawford, Executive Director of IEG. “Culturally, we don’t like to ask for help,” explained Garrett, “or seem like we’re imposing. But there are thousands of ways Montview members could help. Just being present with us; we need to pick your brain, or connect to a resource. There’s a world of ways we could benefit from the support of Montview.”

Please watch the whole class

Please immerse yourself in this eye-opening adult ed offering from Pernell Hines, Craig Maginness and Garrett Crawford of IEG. Something good is happening in the neighborhood. Click here to watch Black Gang History and Culture in Denver. And ask ‘where am I needed?’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJaFX3_DLG0&feature=youtu.be