This is the Season of Non-Violence and Agape has decided to award Ed with the Local Hero Award in the spirit of the season for the work he’s doing in Inglewood with the classes. He’s going to be honored during the service and we will have a booth set up outside afterwards with more detailed information.

We invite everyone to come out, support us, and enjoy a beautiful ceremony with great music. The Center itself is in Culver City on Slauson. Please be mindful that many hundreds of people attend service every week and seating is difficult, so get there early if you don’t want to be turned away.

More updates about why we’re attending will follow directly after service on Sunday! Stay tuned!

By the way, “agape” is Greek for “unconditional love.”

A lot of these guys have problems getting a job that pays more than 10 or 11 dollars an hour due to past offenses and stretches in prison. Here’s what you should know about our prisons.

Approximately 1.3 out of every 100 American males are behind bars.

Seriously. Fact check it.

Not only that, but as you probably know, you are put to work in prison. What you might not realize is exactly how much. Take a look at this:

“According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.”
-Global Research.com

So despite having all of these skills which they are required to learn behind bars, they still can’t apply these skills to make a living and many feel like they have no way out.

That’s what we’re doing. We’re giving these young men a way out by giving them a chance. They are hungry for it. The only problem is that if only a few people do this, then the whole project fails.

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

Call your local congress representative, state senators, and governor. Donate to our cause at the Changing Lives Foundation. Or even take matters into your own hands.

We can rebuild our country if we do it together.

Enjoy the video!

The documentary is moving forward according to plan and the features are still being developed. We’ve reached over 500 fans on facebook and we couldn’t be more proud of you guys. However, we’re not gonna stop, so keep inviting your friends and telling your family about us. Hell, tell a stranger! I bet you they’ll be really interested.

We are blowing up as predicted and the sky is the limit…actually, with Eddie, I’m pretty sure limits don’t apply.

-Patriot Hustler

Well, of course they did because this is the best true story ever told. Maybe you didn’t believe us at first but here is the cold hard proof that this guy is going to be huge.

For some background, I’m a young, white female from the suburbs of Philly (the nice ones), did private school, the whole shebang, so when Eddie took me to Inglewood this past Friday and Saturday you might say that I was “new” to the ghetto. Everybody jokes about the “ghetto” part of their town or city, but this was real Blood and Crip territory and the only other white person there besides me was Eddie. With him around, I felt pretty safe, but I still locked the car every few seconds.

Honestly, though? In the daylight, it didn’t seem that bad. Sure, there was graffiti and Ed would point out certain notorious places, like the liquor store that became a landmark of the LA riots in the early 90s, but everybody seemed pretty relaxed albeit interested in what we were doing with a camera there. So I got comfortable pretty quick.

There we are on Crenshaw by a fascinatingly unique barber shop when a woman sees one of the signs Eddie’s putting up and calls him across the street. She’s standing in front of her store next to car with a couple young girls in the front who are laughing and waving at us. He tells me to swing over and park on the other side to meet him. Easy enough, I hop in my car and pull up and instinctively grab the camera to get everything on tape (the more the better, right?).

“NO! NO! NO!”

Suddenly the girls in the car are screaming and yelling and Eddie looks up.

“Jacqui, don’t film this, put the camera away. Now.”

Confused, I quickly put the camera in the car and raise my hands to the screaming girls. Only then do I notice a large black guy who had started coming out the back door of the car. When he saw my skinny white ass he sort of shrugged and got back in. Then they drove away. It wasn’t until we were back on the road that Eddie told me, “You have to be careful with the camera. Those guys pulled their guns out!”

“Over the camera?”

“All they see something shiny and black. Out here you shoot first before your ass gets shot.”

That scared me. And sort of stroked my ego a bit that these tough gangsters thought someone like me would be packing. But, really, fear was the dominating emotion.

“Don’t worry,” Eddie said, “nobody’s gonna shoot you when I’m with you.”

And you know what? Those words made me feel a whole lot better. Because I knew damn well it was true. Life is a rollercoaster when you work for Eddie Roche, the Patriot Hustler.

I remember being on my way to Las Vegas, feeling like a hunter carrying a thompson gun somewhere on the edge of Barstow. I had a batting average close to one thousand, and that says a lot considering I couldn’t afford an attorney; I couldn’t afford one because nobody knew what was in my trunk! I hadn’t made any deals yet!

My phone rang! Riiiiiiiiiing…riiiiiiiiiing… I picked it up and thought to myself “what’s is that stupid noise?” “It sounds like my good friend and business partner Kevin!” Clearly I was thinking out loud as my phone yelled back at me “It is Kevin you Jackass!” “Turn around, you can’t go to vegas anymore”, “Go fuck yourself” I said as I stomped on the gas! That lasted about ten minutes as I was distracted talking to Kevin and suddenly ran out of gas. The conversation ended with me writing down his AAA information so I could get some emergency gas at six bucks a gallon. I had a dollar, damn it. Luckily I had just passed a gas station one mile back. I filled up the tank with my debit card, taking the old bank account into the red, don’t buy any stock in wells fargo today!

Needless to say, I got lost on my way back to Los Angeles. It wasn’t the drugs because I hadn’t taken any… yet. When I did show up, feeling the effects of sober sleeplessness, Kevin asked “are you drunk?” I told him I was fine and to slap me in the face. He punched me in the nose. I felt like a cross breed between Pegasus and the last unicorn, flying high with a horn protruding out my forehead.

It was late afternoon as I found myself in Whittier, California for the first time…

“How did I get here?”, I thought to myself. The blood stains on my shirt had me convinced that Kevin drove me here after knocking me out. What the hell was happening? We pulled up to a house with fifty people holding a human cock fight in the driveway! On the receiving end of a severe beat down was Eddie Roche’s opponent, a man that would never be recognized again by anyone that knew him. He should have thought about that before trying to steal a toy from Ed’s champion offspring, Aidan.

After an hour of debt collecting, the crowd left, and we got down to business…

We (me and Kevin) heard unbelievable stories of childhood drama, teenage angst, and extreme dramatics from a young adult caught in the crossfire of the results. The storyteller was Eddie Roche, a man seemingly at the end of his rope, yet clearly hanging on. Was it the size of the knot at the end of that rope that kept him hanging on? Or was it the experience of everything that made him into a force that the most advance weaponry would be hard pressed to break down? It wasn’t easy, but the answer would come. The answer was not in a myth or mystery, nor in a soldier, a patriot or hustler… The answer was in a man, a man by the name of Eddie Roche…

Brent Johnson
———————–
Producer, Principal
Journeyman Films