I had it in my hand: a video of the gun control debate between myself and Dr. Arthur Romano [not shown] at Penn State. And then Dr. Romano was all like “I get to see it first and decide if it’s suitable for release.” Chump that I am, I gave the memory card back to the organizer who promised he’d send it to the booking agency. That was the end of that. It was also the end of our rematch at the Richard G. Lugar Academy; the international peace educator and certified nonviolence trainer decided he had better ways to spend his time than answering questions like “Would you want a gun if someone walked through the door and started shooting people?” So Conscious Campus has put me up against this guy . . .
My name is Juan Pacheco. I am a passionate advocate of nonviolence currently helping youth across the nation to find alternatives to the violence that affects their lives and their communities. Years back I was one of these youth, caught in the devastation that violence brings anyone or anything touched by its clutches. I was involved in youth violence that took away many things from me, including a scholarship, my freedom, and my best friend’s life. I joined because my community failed me in many ways and made me feel like a worthless outcast. As an immigrant to the USA, I faced the struggles of shaming poverty, community violence, racism, discrimination, bullying, inability to fit into the culture and community; the list goes on and on. I felt unwanted. I joined a gang because my community and environment did not allow me to “belong”.
That’s a profile from thepeacealliance.org. And here’s Juan’s description of his Conscious Campus lecture From Gang Member to Pediatrician … What Does it Take??
Mr. Pacheco’s motivation comes from his own life experience. As a youth he was involved in a gang which took many things away from him. His best friend’s life was taken away by gang violence. He had a full time scholarship from the Early Identification Program in George Mason University that was also taken away. He spent some time in jail in which his human right of freedom was stripped away due to his actions. But this is where his motivation comes from! Mr. Pacheco changed his life around. Now he is at George Mason University attaining his Pre-Med degree. He wants to become a pediatrician in the future. Mr. Pacheco believes that dreams are worth fighting for and he has. His strategies for successful community and youth work come out of his own experiences as a gang member, and now as someone who is working to help other young people turn their lives around.
So, big change then. Dr. Romano was an egghead; his misleading, stat-heavy Powerpoint presentation will be putting college kids to sleep for decades to come. Common sense questions about self-defense—put to both him personally and the audience—showed the folly of his desire to turn the world into a gun-free zone. To paraphrase Meredith Wilson, there were fish, in the barrel, and I almost heard them screaming . . .
Pacheco is about as far away from an academic as you can get. And yet he craves the unquestioned authority that a Ph.D would provide. Combine that with the fact that Pacheco blames his criminal past on community rejection and I reckon the guy has a chip on his shoulder the size of Arkansas. Given that our warm-up encounter will take place in New Jersey (Princeton on November 4th), I wouldn’t want to risk knocking it off in public, if you know what I mean.
Then again, your comments below have forced a rethink. Let’s got with this:
Which gang did you belong to? What did you do for them? Did you carry a gun? Why? Was there a gang initiation? Did it involve hurting innocent people? How should they have defended themselves from you? And now you’re telling us that we don’t need a gun for protection against people like the gang members you ran with? Like that.
I can’t find any info on Mr. Pecheco’s stand on guns but his only out from that line of attack is that legal guns flow to criminals so . . . ban or restrict legal guns. Meanwhile, I’m wondering about style. I was hipper than Romano by a long chalk. Pacheco’s street. So, am I the good cop or the bad cop? Suggestions on a postcard, below. And this time I will have a video to show for it.