By Lonzo Caffey
When we talk about my sense of community, we had the grandma and granddad in the house. We had three or four generations in the same house. When you can sleep in a bed with five other people, and there were no issues. We fought each other, we loved on each other. We had block parties, we were always cooking out, and we were always listening to the stories from the elders.
Like back in the day, in the slave days, you always had the elders in the community who had everybody’s respect. They would sit them down around the fire, and you listen to them talk. That’s how the history got passed down.
I was also involved in a lot of things that could have led me astray in the wrong direction with incarceration, death, or anything else. But to be side by side with homies that were doing certain things and they would tell me, “Bro, you’re different. You need to get away from this. We got this.” And they would protect me.
It started in school for me. Defining the difference between education, and being indoctrinated. So when I dug deeper than the surface on what they were putting out in front of me through the educational system, I started to dig deeper into the system and figured out that I could be a boss, I could be an owner, I could control my own destiny.
It’s all business. Whether it’s legal or illegal, it’s still a hustle. It’s all about profit and trying to do better. I just applied the same street hustling mentality to legitimately provide for my family.
Lonzo Caffey is a philanthropist, serial entrepreneur, community organizer, and Store Manager at Lowe’s in Austell, Georgia.
