United Playaz

We have heard the story before. Gangs of violent teenagers causing trouble on the streets and, on occasion, in their schools. It happens in every major city in California. Bloods, Crips, the West Side Mobb. More names than anyone can keep track of and yet they all sound the same. Here is one more: United Playaz.

Rudy Corpuz, Jr., is a 30 year-old ex felon and founder of United Playaz—a gang to end all gangs. When Corpuz got out of prison he realized he wanted to stop violence instead of start it. In 1994, he became a counselor at Balboa high school in San Francisco, Back then Balboa had earned a dismal reputation as a troubled school.

At a post football game dance in 1994, the police were called to stop a brawl between Filipino and black students. In the aftermath of that violent confrontation, Corpuz brought the combatants together. Through his deft intervention, some of them decided to band together to stop gang violence. They would call themselves United Playaz.

Eighteen year-old Jessica Ragudo is now a member of the United Playaz. When Ragudo started high school she used to skip class, smoke marijuana and rob people in street.

After joining United Playaz, Ragudo has been involved in community cleanups and AIDS awareness marches. After Corpuz took her to a poetry reading, she began to transform the streets that would have been her downfall into the inspiration for her own poems.

In one of Ragudo’s poems she writes about how her life was changed by joining UP. “Things didn’t go my way / but actually went the better way,/the United Playa way / You smellin’ me?/ Headin’ to room 14 at Balboa,/ Hollerin ‘Rudy!’”

High school has also been a difficult time for sixteen year-old Melvin Sims, Jr. The student admits that he used to carry a gun and sell drugs in the housing project where he lives. According to Sims, Corpuz could reach him in a way no other authority figure could previously because, “he’s been through this stuff that I been through.”

With that connection, Corpuz has challenged Melvin to be a leader and not a follower. Melvin recently led the weekly United Playaz weekly meeting and coached the UP team against the Balboa faculty.

Patricia Gray, the principal at Balboa High School, remembers a time a few years ago when students were scared to attend the school. Now she believes the school is safer and more graduates are attending college—thanks, in part, to UP. Says Gray, “I think the United Playaz is one reason the school is successful,” adding that “not a whole lot of students continue to have problems once they get involved with United Playaz.”

This life-affirming philosophy is readily apparent in the words of UP’s founder. At a recent college tour of San Francisco State University for UP members, Corpuz told his cadres, “I don’t think it’s where you from, it’s where you at and where you going in life.”

For Sims, where he “is at” today is school rather than trouble. “If it wasn’t for United Playaz,” admits the high school junior, “I’d be chopping up dope, not chopping up game.” Someday he hopes to be a lawyer. As for Ragudo, she hopes to someday work with troubled young people.

That Corpuz has turned his own life around gives him one of the most elusive and effective advantages in working with teens: credibility, “If I was gang-banging, and I banged real hard,” recalls the youthful Corpuz, “I’m banging back, ten times harder now to save lives.”

For more information about UP, please contact Rudy Corpuz, Jr. at (415) 206-2140, ext. 139 care of the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center at 515 Cortland Ave., San Francisco, Ca 94110.