Today we’d like to introduce you to Antong Lucky.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Antong. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Born and raised in Frazier Courts Housing Projects, my father was sentenced to 50 years in prison when I was nine months old. My mother shouldered the burden of raising me as a single parent. My mother became a hard worker in order to provide for my wellbeing. Growing up in Frazier Courts, one of the toughest neighborhoods in Dallas at the time, meant you had to adopt a mindset of survival. Early on in school, I was a straight-A student and eventually became a TAG (Talented and Gifted) recipient. Experiencing the joy of bringing home straight A’s to my grandparents was cut short due to the constant struggle of making it to and from school each day. Each day my friends and I had to fight other kids from other neighborhoods who attempted to bully us. At this particular time, there were no positive role models are mentors to help navigate this situation.
Suddenly, I began to indulge in all the shenanigans it appears every other youth was involved in. No longer was school a priority to me and the streets and learning to navigate them was top of the list. We had OG’s at the time but they were so busy with their business they only had time to give us $20 bills and short speeches on why we should stay in school. They obviously couldn’t see the granular stuff of fighting other neighborhoods etc. We were dealing with to intervene or give advice of how to handle it. This led to me getting involved in criminal activities etc. One morning as I made it to school unknown to me, there had a hit been placed on my life. A group of gang members waiting on me and as I walked on to school campus a guy emerged from the crowd and raised a gun to shoot me and just as he did a young woman from my neighborhood jumped in front of me just as he pulled the trigger and he shot her in the abdomen.
The very next day, a group of friends and I declared we would start the first-ever Blood gang to the state of Texas. Our rationale was every neighborhood we had to fight had already identified with the Crip gang and we knew from the movie Colors the rivals to the Crips were the Bloods. That decision led myself and others down a path we fully weren’t prepared for. We became direct targets of not only other gang members trying to kill us but Police Officers who were trying to arrest us. I had many confrontations with police and filed internal affairs complaints on the overzealous officers who would break the law trying to arrest me. During this period, I lost many friends due to gang violence and lost many more to prison for repping the gang I was apart of starting. Soon thereafter, I was standing in front of a judge who stated I was a menace to society and sent me to prison. It was in prison I met an older inmate named Willie Fleming, who saw something in me. His exact word was, “Little brother, all these guys in here will do anything for you and if you can lead these dudes to do wrong, You can also lead them to do right. Little brother, you are a Leader.” Those words pierced my soul because I had never heard those words before. Willie began to mentor me and before long and 500 books later, I was teaching other brothers in prison. I became a highly sought after mentor in prison. I denounced my gang affiliation and began teaching other brothers to do so.
God found me in prison and did a number on me. I was able to feel again and have empathy for others. In prison, inmates had a problem with the guards who worked in prison. I began to mend that relationship by getting the inmates to adjust their focus to deal with the reason on how they ended up in prison. I was teaching self-accountability. I was able to unite rivaling gangs in prison. It birthed in me a desire to get out and go undo some of the harm I had personally caused in my community. I wanted to introduce another idea to gangs. I wanted the young people like myself to not have to choose the street/gang life vs. education. Soon thereafter, I was released from prison in 2000 and upon my release, I met my brother and mentor Omar Jahwar. Together he and I organized the first-ever Peace treaty between blood and crips in Dallas. Our organization then Vision Regeneration now Urban Specialists/OGU for the last twenty years has been working inside communities to rid our communities of senseless violence that have plagued it for so long.
In 2016 after 07-07 in Dallas, we expanded to work with law enforcement to bridge the gap between law enforcement and neighborhoods. I conduct training with police officers on how to properly engage with the community. Also, I continue the work of educating young people of making better choices and how to engage properly with law enforcement. Our OGU product is a national training curriculum where we train OG’s around the nation on How to effectively go inside their own communities and mentor the young people away from violence and towards opportunities. I spend a great deal of my time educating, speaking and developing a national cohort of individuals doing the work inside their communities across the world. My motto is PTI, which means Play Through It. If we learn to play through any situation, we can then celebrate the results we all want. Sign up for our next training and get active in your community at www.ogumovement.org.
Has it been a smooth road?
The challenge of working to help others is often time the very people you are trying to help will not totally understand your help. So in this work, you must wake up every morning and remind yourself of why you love the people and why you do it. You must have thick skin to do this work. It’s never an easy task. But continue to love in the wake of distress and misunderstandings.
Understanding that you are on a God assignment is very important. I work inside neighborhoods. I am on a God assignment. There have been instances where the institution of Police I am trying to help improve has been my most vocal critic. Or the neighborhood I am trying to improve has been my most vocal critic. So understanding your God assignment is vital to finishing the job. Keep pushing!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the OGU story. Tell us more about your organization.
Our organization Urban Specialists/OGU, specializes in moving the community forward, instituting ideas that challenge the toxicity in culture. Our mission is to stop the senseless violence in urban communities. Our OGU product seeks out people to effectively go inside their own neighborhoods and work to end senseless violence by mentoring the hard to reach youth.
Tackling violence by going after the youth most people are either scared of or have given up on is what sets us apart from others in this arena.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
In the next five years, I see 10,000 and 10 years 50,000 OGU alumni working inside communities around the nation being the surrogate, fathers, mothers and mentors for young people. I see violence particularly black on black violence being so obsolete that it’s considered strange when it occurs. I see Urban Specialists/OGU leading the charge connecting individuals all across the country with robust training and cohort. I see young urban males loving and respecting one another.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1401 S. Lamar st Dallas, Texas 75215
- Website: www.ogumovement.org
- Phone: 469-458-3006
- Email: info@urbanspecialists.org
- Instagram: @ogumovement
- Facebook: OGU Movement
- Twitter: @ogumovement
Image Credit:
Tony Boyattia
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