When 18-year-old Jose Mercado sat down to write a verse for the song his after-school club composed and recorded during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the words came tumbling out.
Every day after school I found my mother crying
Some days she look like she looking forward to dying
She feels like death will take out her misery
That my dad became to be
It all comes back to me
She didn't say much; growing up I can tell
That she don't believe in heaven 'cause she living in hell
I pray every day I won't end up like this
Because it don't feel good growing up in the mix.
Mercado's dad is long gone. His mom is OK. His feelings of helplessness have abated, but as an aspiring musician, Mercado has learned to coax sorrowful memories into powerful lyrics.
A senior at East High, Mercado found creative release, genuine role models and a way to fill empty after-school time at the Pride Club, a group formed a year ago in response to gang violence that has since grown into something of an artists' colony.
Rap songs, ethnic dances, poetry and journal writings are the order of business at club meetings, held after school every day at either the Fairview rec center or East High.
Meetings are loosely structured. There's a lot of talking, a lot of music, a lot of people doing their own thing.
At a recent meeting at East High, a kid spun into a series of break-dancing moves while five or six others sat at a cafeteria-style table singing a rap song they had collaborated on. Out in the hall, boys went through the moves of a traditional Polynesian dance. One or two girls sat quietly, writing in journals.
No one called the meeting to order. No one took roll, at least not formally.
"Where's Antron?"
"He's at work detail."
"Oh. So he got into some trouble."
These aren't perfect kids. Pedro Otero, 16, missed a couple of meetings while serving a school suspension.
"I dressed like a Mexican for Halloween," is how he explained his dress code violation. It was his third strike; previous offenses included insulting a teacher and trying to start a fight.
Once he was back in school, he was back at the Pride Club making music.
If there wasn't a club, Otero figures he might find trouble more easily.
"This keeps me off the streets," he said. "If I wasn't here, I'd be starting fights. Doing crazy stuff."
YOU GONNA DANCE WITH US?
If not for kids doing crazy stuff, there wouldn't be a Pride Club.
The club was formed in the fall of 2006 after months filled with headlines about gang murders, gang shootings, gang retaliations.
Much of the violence involved members of the Polynesian community. That bothered Mao Tosi, a native of American Samoa who came to Anchorage as a teenager in 1989 and became a star athlete. He went to college on an athletic scholarship and played briefly in the NFL.
He came back to Alaska with his wife and growing family. So his wife could stay at home with the kids, he took a second job as a security guard at West High.
That put Tosi, 30, near ground zero for wannabe gangstas. He saw kids with too much time and nothing to fill it, so he started the Pride Club.
"So many kids have died. It breaks my heart," he said back in those early days. "I have to find something more interesting to them than being on the streets or in a gang."
Tosi initially reached out to Polynesians, but the club attracted kids of all cultures.
"We're diverse," 17-year-old Jennifer Spence said as she looked around at a recent meeting and ticked off what she saw: "Polynesian, Asian, black, Hispanic." There are whites and Natives, too.
When word of Tosi's club spread beyond the West High hallways, things took off. The city was looking for solutions to a gang problem, and Tosi knew how to reach at-risk youths.
Communities in Schools provided $60,000, enough for Tosi to quit his security job. The Anchorage School District ($60,000), Cook Inlet Regional Inc. ($10,000) and Taco Bell ($10,000) kicked in too.
Today he splits his time between East High and the Fairview rec center, drawing anywhere from 20 to 50 kids each afternoon. But he wants more -- more kids, and more things for kids.
"We need video games. We need furniture," he said. "I've got kids sitting on old broken pool tables."
Mostly he wants transportation to get kids to Fairview on the days the club meets there. The Howard Johnson hotel sends a van to pick up students at East, but those at West are on their own.
The tiny storage closet that serves as his office at East High barely contains him.
Tosi still looks like a football player -- 6-foot-6, 315 pounds -- and when he walks through the halls at East, kids notice him.
He works the crowd that he towers above, high-fiving, hugging, trading soft punches, cajoling.
"Hey, what's up with you, man?" he greets a boy whose head doesn't even come up to Tosi's shoulder. "You gonna dance with us?"
HEARING THEIR OWN VOICES
As the Pride Club became more viable and more visible, Tosi's role changed.
"I'm meeting with people all day long," he said. "I'm fundraising, networking, building up programs."
He was named to the mayor's gang task force. He started a summer program at Goose Lake that provided activities and meals for about 100 kids a week. He received a Chamber of Commerce gold pan award. He was named one of the city's "Top 40 under 40." He gives speeches everywhere and is trying to start a program at McLaughlin Youth Center.
That spreads him thin. But the kids are all right. Tosi used club funds to hire three instructors for the first half of the school year.
Two are East High grads -- poetry teacher Trey Josey played basketball with Tosi on East's 1994 state championship team, and dance instructor Jevon Miller starred on the East football team a few years later.
Tyrese Gilbert -- better known as TwoFace, his performing name -- came to Anchorage with the military and stayed to raise a family and play music. He's a member of AK49rs, a rap group that performs and records in Anchorage, and he's worked magic with the kids.
He provides a beat and either throws out an idea or someone picks a topic from a hat -- say, domestic violence. The kids go from there.
The song that draws from Mercado's stormy past is called "Be Strong." Eight people each wrote a verse, none more powerful than Mercado's.
"When I heard his verse, I almost cried," Gilbert said.
The creative process works like therapy, Mercado said: "It takes the negative I've been through and makes it a positive."
Hearing their words and voices on a CD or radio station gives the kids confidence and pride -- something few have known before. And it gives them a reason to go to class. They sign a contract with Gilbert and the other teachers agreeing to grade-checks and classroom progress reports, and if they don't measure up there are consequences.
"If you don't do it, you don't get to record, you don't get to do nothing," Mercado said. "If your grades are slipping, no studio time."
That's motivation enough for Mercado, who said working with Gilbert and the Pride Club helps keep him on the right track.
"I don't even know what I'd be doing otherwise," he said. "Probably nothing good."
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.
