This former gang member wants to get kids off the street with weed – syracuse.com

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Jeremy Rivera sat at a small table in a Chinatown restaurant, eating bao pork buns and recounting parts of a life spent hustling drugs with New Yorks Crips. He touched the three dots tattooed next to his left eye.

Its the only three places youre going to go when you live this lifestyle, Rivera told NY Cannabis Insider. You end up in prison, you end up in the hospital, or you end up dead. There are no other options.

Now 35 and a lead safety instructor for a construction consulting business in New York City, Rivera spent the majority of the past 18 years in and out of prison on drug trafficking charges, he said.

Those years spent on the street, the friends he buried, the lives he saw wasting away in prison (including his), have all coalesced into a vision for Rivera: He wants to win a first-round conditional retail license to sell marijuana, return to the same streets he knew as a gang member, and give those kids an avenue out through employment.

I would like to hire directly from probation and parole, Rivera said. Drug dealers are some of the best businessmen youve ever met.

In light of the Office of Cannabis Management reserving the first round of dispensary licenses for justice-involved applicants, what follows is a Q&A with Rivera about his plans and hopes for the NY cannabis market.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

NY Cannabis Insider: What was your life like before your first prison sentence?

Rivera: I grew up in a drug-impoverished neighborhood. My familys from Bushwick, before gentrification, and my cousins were drug dealers, my uncle and my grandfather used to house guns for the old gangsters back in the late 70s and early 80s. I come from a background of gangsters.

I joined my first gang when I was in sixth grade, and I really started getting into it around seventh and eighth grade the violence and all that other stuff. I started getting into selling coke, ecstasy, crack, and then its heroin. And then I was getting charges.

So this last one it was enough for me. I was a three-time felon, predicate persistent. My next drug charge, I was looking at life in prison. And I took the opportunities around me and I ran with them. Ive been home for four years.

Do you think your background in any way prepares you to be a dispensary owner?

This pot thing, I feel like its right up my alley. Its something the state can finally give back to us.

Im a general superintendent for a big construction company. I have managerial experience. Right now, I run over 100 men, I run six jobs and in total, were talking the equivalent of about $20 million worth of production. I think I would know what to do.

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Now, Im not a business connoisseur. So theres always assistance to be needed. I feel that I would be successful, though. I genuinely do. My neighborhood really doesnt have much, and maybe a dispensary would help them flourish and blossom a little bit. And honestly, it could help guys who were in my position, who may not have an outlet, get one.

Are you at all concerned about your other charges, that the OCM may disqualify you for having a record that goes beyond drugs?

Oh, absolutely. My first charge is a nonviolent robbery. But why should that be a concern? I dont have a murder, I dont have extortion, I dont have any embezzling crimes. Why should my past affect me if I want to do better for myself? All my crimes are drug related.

Look, Im an authorized OSHA instructor. Im taking a test for a construction health and safety technician through the Board of Certified Safety Professionals. I was denied for both of them because of my criminal background, but I appealed both of them and won. So I always get denied everything I apply for.

How did you successfully appeal those denials?

I have a lawyer. Im not going to let these people determine how successful Im going to be if I choose to be successful. I shouldnt have a ceiling set on me when nobody else has one.

I did the crime. I did the time. I finished parole. Why shouldnt I have the same rights as anybody else?

Youve been out for four years and have turned your life around. How many people are able to do that?

If people had the network, and if they had the accessibility to some of these programs, then there would be a lot more. But you cant expect a person to come home from prison and not give them anything and expect them to be successful.

Thats why Im starting the Urban Safety Institute. Because I know construction, Im good at it, I make a good living with it. But Im one of the blessed ones I was also able to come home, save the money, get the training, go do it and run with it.

But what if you cant get the training, or cant afford it? And even if they are getting into these programs, whos teaching them? A person who doesnt know who they are? A person who doesnt know the struggles theyve been through, and cant relate?

When I came home, if I would have had a good three years, and somebody would have said to me, Jeremy, put in an application, get a city job, get a government job, and have assisted me with that application Id be a shoe up.

Thats the problem. These kids are so abused. And they come from these rough families. They come from these fatherless and motherless homes, and then you expect them just to put down their armor and be vulnerable? Bro, vulnerability gets you killed in the streets.

So that would be your angle, with opening a retail store helping these kids get off the street?

I would like to hire directly from probation and parole. Theres a lot of smart kids out there who dont have a chance. You just have to pick them out.

Right, so you wouldnt be known for the strains you carry, but rather the business model behind the business?

The strains are the strains, pot is pot. What are you doing for the community? Thats what social equity is in New York, right giving an opportunity to people who may not have had one before in order to create a community in which people can create intergenerational wealth.

Look, I sit in board rooms now with billionaires, and they look at me like an equal. They dont know that Im fully tattooed, that Im a 20-year gangbanger, that I was a drug dealer my whole life. They dont know that because I got an opportunity to change. But I fought for it. Now that I opened that door, Im opening it for everybody.

But if you dont know the door is there, youll be lost. Its like Alice in Wonderland youll be lost in the maze.

How confident are you in the people who are setting up this marketplace the regulators, the politicians, etc.?

Im hoping this actually works out the way theyre saying it will, with the social equity program. But its hard to have faith its government.

And thats the problem: Theyre making decisions for people who they want to be the voice for, but never heard their own voice, right? You have to listen to the community to make the decisions.

Dont assume you know what the problem is with these kids, because you dont. Youre not living in their shoes and youre not living in the politics of their neighborhoods. You dont know. But maybe if you ask, theyll tell you. Some wont. You have the stubborn ones, and its sad to say, but some kids are lost. Ive had friends like that, that no matter what you tell them, theyre just stone-cold killers. It is what it is, you cant change them. But thats a very small minority. Very, very small.

Theres a lot of kids who are doing it because they dont have another option. They dont know anything else. So they do what theyre acclimated to do around their neighborhoods. I think this weed thing, if it gets pushed correctly, if the right people get the opportunities to open dispensaries, I think a change can be made. Youd be able to give jobs to people who need them, youll be able to teach trades.

Why not get a program installed where we can take guys on work release and send them out to trim and to prune and to learn botany? Or to go to a dispensary on an externship or internship program and rotate them in? Teach the business behind it.

Because Im telling you, whats happening now is were creating intergenerational corruption and criminality in these neighborhoods. My grandfather was a gangster, my uncles a gangster, I was a gangster. My kids arent going to be gangsters. I made that stop.

But its just going to continue until somebody says, Thats it, Im going to give you an opportunity.

And whats better than pot?

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This former gang member wants to get kids off the street with weed - syracuse.com