From Gang Life To Voluntaryism

I’m Jake McCauley, and I used to be that which I now dedicate my life to defeating; The Aggressor.

I spent nearly a decade in Baltimore's world of professional crime, starting when I was about eleven. The largest criminal organization, widely known as “government”, had coercively cornered me into a circumstance of desperation, and then, with their child labor laws; greatly limited my options.

In hindsight, I could’ve panhandled. Kids probably get heavy handouts. I could’ve taken a bus to a yuppie neighborhood and raked lawns, shoveled snow, or whatever else they’re too lazy to do, while too pretentious to leave undone. I could’ve sucked dick on Craigslist. That’s not what I did though, I saw a more enticing option. I’d often watched the thug kids, not much older than myself, running around with pocket bikes, gaudy shoes, female attention, radiant confidence, and the collective vibe of strength associated with a militant style camaraderie. I wanted it all for myself.

It was 2007. The opportunity struck when I found an opening to jump into a conversation with a few of the homeboys as I was walking my dog. I cracked a few jokes, exchanged a little wisdom, and by the next week, I was a regular face in the crowd. I became a bit of a cliché; that white kid in the black neighborhood, sagging his pants, puffing on a blunt, and trying like hell to be black. Being the clown that I was, I’d often make fun of the other guys, including some of the older dudes that everybody else seemed intimidated by. Apparently I was the only person who hadn’t received the memo that the guys I was dissing were killers. Everybody assumed I was just brave to a fault, including the killers. I guess me being 11 and white gave them an exemption from having to get all thug about it, they’d just laugh. This got me the entrance I needed. I’d pretty quickly been affirmed in my assumption that a lot of my new friends were drug dealing gang members.

It took me a while to figure out how to say “I want to join in selling drugs with you gentlemen”. At one point, whilst sitting around at the playground with a couple of the cuzzes, I pointed at my dude’s chain and said something along the lines of “That shit is slick, I want shit like that, you should put me on”. Just as I was hoping for, he does exactly that. He’d been on his phone, texting, and after a few minutes, some kid starts walking towards us. It was just like Biggie’s start-up in Notorious. My dude gives me a little bag of weed and tells me to walk over & give it to that boy, then bring the money back. I do exactly that. I was trading around a gram of marijuana for like $20, but I felt like Scarface doing a big coke deal in Bolivia. I bring the money back to my dude, he puts the bill in his pocket, and hands me a couple $1s. Him and the others then had a chuckle about me, this lil white boy, trying to be a hustla. Over the next few weeks, I got him to front me a few bags at a time, and I’d get to keep a slice of the cash after he was paid back. I knew they sold other drugs too, but all they trusted me with was weed. To sell the grass, I’d simply walk around offering it to people, or stand in front of an unclaimed 7/11 boasting “Dimes on the loud”, sometimes swapping phone numbers with customers and meeting up at later points. I started slinging on one of the hottest streets in the city; West Belvedere Avenue. The more I did this, the more money I made, and more importantly; the more money I brought back to my boys.

Eventually my role in the clique was no longer as a novelty. I was actually fitting in and bringing in money. I stopped taking my prescription ADD meds and started flipping those too, which I kept all the profits from. Not many amphetamine users in Baltimore though, so sales were dim on that end. When we weren't doing drug stuff, we’d throw a ball around, joke around smoking weed & sipping a bottle, and occasionally have freestyle rap cyphers. I was better than I expected at rapping. The longer I was part of the clique, the more comfortable they’d get with talking about heavy shit around me. Eventually they started inviting me to tag along on some pretty sinister endeavors. Forgive my vagueness, but I have to watch how specific I get about any of this if I’m to avoid incriminating myself with anything that would hold up in a courtroom. I got further and further entrenched in the hood rat mentality, to the point of abandoning my moral compass almost entirely, becoming complicit and participant in absolute evil. I let my ego and greed override my conscience. After a few months, things got too intense. I cannot expand about this, for reasons you can guess, but when put into a situation where some of the others depended on me, I did a dark thing that inadvertently gained me some serious trust with the crew.

A few days later, a couple of my buddies showed up at my door, asking me to come out. I went with them to find almost every member of the crew gathered together. After I walk up, they all circle in closer to me, and all at once; they proceeded to beat the living shit out of me. I’d been in a few fights, at school and such, and never once found myself on the losing side of one, until now. Like a rapid barrage of sledgehammers, fist after fist after fist, they smashed my face and body until I was leaking blood all over myself, completely unable to fight back, too disoriented to do anything at all other than accept the ass whooping of a lifetime. I don’t know how long it went on for, but by the time they stopped, I could barely move. I picked myself up and started moving towards home, trying to conceal the fact that I was crying in front of everybody. It took me a minute to realize it, but I had just been jumped in. This was them making my status official. When I got home, my dad found me all bloody and, for some reason, called my mother. She came over and spent about 30 minutes on the phone with 911. I couldn’t talk her out of calling the police, even though I definitely did not want them showing up. I gave her a fake description of an attacker to give to 911. After a while, a police officer pulls up. He seemed terrified just to be there, and stayed for about a total of 50 seconds. I gave him a bullshit story with a fake suspect, and kept it brief. I damn sure didn’t want to be seen talking to a pig right after being jumped in.

After this I felt really fucking vulnerable. Call me a bitch, but having the shit kicked out of you by your friends all at once can be traumatic. Separately, some stranger had recently tried to rob me in broad daylight, and I’d thwarted him with a pocket knife. No, I didn’t kill him, I just threatened him. I couldn’t shake the thought though, that if he’d been armed, I could be a corpse. I acquired a firearm and started carrying it everywhere. By the time I was twelve, it had saved my life.

This is where it gets tricky to write. I want to go into all the cinematic, horrific details, but to do so could land me a spot in a cell, so you’re going to have to use your imagination a little. Somebody in the hierarchy of my crew had encountered a petty conflict with somebody from another local crew. I do not remember what it was over. This led to an all-out beef. My life turned into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Random attacks both from, and also against, my crew, started sporadically popping off. Shootings. I was repeatedly staring death in the face before my balls had dropped. I suspect the beef had been picked partly as a preemptive gauge of my crew’s strength, and that the other guys were out for our business. Just a theory. One tidbit I can brag about with impunity is when 2 of the enemy tried to kill me, and I stood my ground like a gangsta. They drove up quickly, screeched to a halt next to me, and started drawing. The driver reaches down next to his seat and starts pulling up what looked like the back of a goddamn Mac-11. In a flash, before he could get it out or pointed, the barrel of my pistol is staring him in the eye. Immediately, he stomps on his pedal and they scurry off. Little did they know my gun wasn’t even cocked. They actually had the tactical advantage, it always took me a few seconds to pull the slide back on that thing and I didn’t carry it already cocked because I didn’t want to blow my dick off before I’d even had the chance to use it.

The war lasted a few months. It was nearly the death of me quite a few times. It was the death of a few others, many of which not much older than I was, including the one who had put me on in the beginning, the first person I ever got high with. I’ve always been paranoid from the time I was very young, as I’d had a lot of grotesque insanity and violence in my family since long before any of this gang shit had started, but now the paranoia was getting unmanageable. I was very consciously aware of the fact that this violence all around me was the direct result of the war on drugs, and that this shit wouldn’t be happening if not for the inherent criminality present in an illegal industry. I slept with my gun and panicked at every creak in the night. I expected to be killed in an enemy mission, or arrested in a raid. As the conflict was going on, my inhibition and virtue were null. I wasn’t just selling drugs anymore, I was robbing and stealing. Sure, I wanted the money, but I really wanted the respect. Part of proving myself was displaying that I’m capable of aggression, and I did exactly that. I justified it every time with “It’s for my brother”. I have a little brother with autism, diabetes, and epilepsy, that heavily depended on me. I used this to rationalize the unconscionable actions I took regularly. There is no excuse, and part of me knew it. I had become the bad guy in my own story. My desire to get high became a constant need.

Eventually, the conflict burned out. I’m not sure exactly why, I can only guess that neither side could bear to fan the fire anymore. The fire died out, but not before claiming a lot of young souls, and scorching the lingering remainder of my childhood. I went completely insane for a very long time, with violence now engraved into the center of my mind. About when I turned 13, my dad moved away from there, and, in a brief moment of clarity, I took the opportunity to be done banging with that crew, as I knew I wouldn’t make it to 14 if I didn’t.

Over the next 3 years, I was bounced around a lot. I refused to accept anybody, including my parents, as having any right to authority over me. That looks like me at 13 saying “Fuck off” when told to be home by a certain time, or showing up at school only when I felt like it. This position of open defiance caused me to get kicked out of countless family members' homes, wind up in countless jails, and spend some time at a military school. I had the money to rent my own place, but I couldn’t find anybody that would rent illegally to a minor. I wound up homeless a few times, crashing in abandoned houses and under a bridge.

At 14, having been a self-described Republican, like my parents, for most of my childhood, I came up with an idea for a new political party. It would be called the Essentialist Party. The idea would be that the state would only do the most basic of things. I outlined the idea to my father, who told me that this already exists, that it’s called the Libertarian Party. I looked up the Libertarian Party platform and fell in love. I was very aware that most of the suffering in my recent years had been the result of the police state. I fucking hated government. I hated the idea that I was not the boss of me. I hated anybody that tried to tell me what to do.

Bouncing from place to place, I sought out drug connections wherever I went, both for relief and for business. Military school was like jail meets boot camp, with a gang culture of its own. I was made to fuck up a few gentlemen (non-fatally), in self defense, during my stay there. I suppose something about me is just a magnet for assholes with something to prove. Thankfully, nobody died while I was there, although I nearly killed a few guys, and a friend of mine had a scissors jammed into his chest, just missing his heart. None of us wanted to be there, but we were forced to. The police would hunt down anybody who escaped. I detested the use of force, as hypocritical as it made me. While I was there, I found success selling my ADD pills, which helped me keep my mind in the rebellious mentality. I wasn’t gonna let them break me.

Back home in Baltimore, by the time I was 16, I’d dropped out of school and I had a new crew. Started as just a few friends running around raising hell, and we decided to make it a brand. I was a drug dealer, personally, but as a crew we specialized in mostly robbery. After our first heist, which I’d done most of the coordinating of myself, I’d suggested that the crew needs leadership. I was unanimously elected leader, with the original others as my lieutenants. At this point, I carried myself like Al Capone, under the impression I was Baltimore’s baddest motherfucker. I loved the romanticized notion of being a shot caller. Running a crew, turns out, is something I’m not bad at. I emulated the leadership mindset I’d seen demonstrated by the OG’s from the old crew. Having learned from my experience, I kept it very diplomatic, forming up alliances with other crews at every opportunity and doing my best to abstain from war. One time, this helped me, after I had evaded police on foot when they busted a party in a hood that isn’t mine, and some of the boys from a Mexican set escorted me to a bus stop, knowing who I was and trying to get a good reputation. There was another time when I was supposed to be executed, with a .40 to my forehead, and a combination of claiming my set and leveling with the hitter, kept my skull in tact. No begging necessary.

Eventually the morale within my crew wore thin as I became a tyrannical megalomaniac, ruthless on my endless chase for more money and more power. These guys had been my friends, now I treated them like inferiors. I saw myself as being a politician one day. That’s the kind of monster I am. During my time with this crew of my own, I did things that will haunt me for life. At the same time, I also gave orders that saved people’s lives, including complete strangers. I found that saving lives is a lot more emotionally rewarding to me than destroying them.

By the time I was 18, I’d had 9 juvenile criminal charges, most of which for victimless “crimes”. Drug distribution, a few gun charges, resisting arrest; the standard. Never got caught for anything serious. I’d spend my time locked up trying to convince everybody else that most of us didn’t belong in there, that incarceration was a for-profit industry, and breaking the government’s law does not mean you deserve to be punished. When I got out, I became prolific with my exploration of the world of psychedelic drugs. LSD, in particular, was always a windshield wiper for my mind. I also got deeply into drug wholesaling, and staying high every minute of it. There’s a certain rush with wholesaling; knowing that the person you’re about to meet with might prefer to paint the pavement with your brainy bits than to pay you. I discovered there’s a lot more money to be made in voluntary trade than in robberies. On the gang front, I wound up in a pickle that almost turned into a war with a national gang that saw us as an unwanted blip on their radar. I was told, at one point, that there was a $50,000 bounty on my head, and hitters looking to collect on it. I was making all i needed through my own drug business anyway, I had absolutely no reason to fight this out. I started associating with my crew less and less, until eventually I contacted my right-hand man and told him I’m out completely. I recently found out that the bounty was eventually reduced to $10,000 and then withdrawn altogether.

As a larger volume trafficker, I found myself in relationships with people that I sometimes suspected of plotting to kill me, simply because I knew too much and was a loose end to be tied up. With wholesaling, people are a lot more unsure of one another because the stakes are higher. Nobody is scared to flip a nickelbag, but moving high volume of any drug can be deadly. I grew so tired of this inherent danger within an industry that could easily be a peaceful one if not for the state. I grew so incapable of turning a blind eye to the senseless shootouts and arrests and lives shattered everywhere I looked. There had to be some solution. It was starting to occur to me that it was society's justification and legitimization of violence, whether it's gang warfare or government laws, that was the fundamental structural problem with the mindset of society; the reason for this struggling. It was me. I wasn't just a terrible person, I was the problem with society; the aggressor.

Eventually I started getting interested in economics, and recognizing that the poverty that surrounded me in this city of pennies was entirely the result of government manipulation of the economy. It was at 18 I was introduced to voluntaryism. For years I had been a firm minarchist, and I found myself arguing with anarchists, such as Nick Indie and Benjamin Broderick, on Facebook. Up until then, I was undefeated in political debate. It was when I started arguing with anarchists that I started finding my own thoughts to be illogical. I was introduced to some of Larken Rose’s and Stefan Molyneux’s old videos, and this altered my entire sense of reality. Either that or the LSD, maybe some combination. At some point during this period, I saw the word “Voluntaryism” somewhere, and asked an anarchist, Benjamin Broderick, what it meant. He explained that it is the belief that all interactions should be voluntary. I fell in love with the idea, and yet I didn’t immediately make the connection that this would mean no government. I was then told that it would probably equate to anarcho-capitalism. Just upon first seeing the word “anarcho-capitalism”, I had the epiphany that anything good that government provides, would be provided more efficiently and more affordably if provided by the competitive private sector. How had this most obvious fact never occurred to me? All the suffering, the shooting, the despair, this had all been the result of a monopolized industry of protection, and the legitimization of coercion.

It was at this point, I realized it is my moral responsibility to do everything in my power to end government. I’d always hated it, but now I knew it’s not even a necessary evil; it’s simply an evil. Like all aggression. Ever since then, I have been an evangelical spreader of the gospel of voluntaryism. I spread it online, I spread it in person, and I’ve deprogrammed enough people that I can finally start to feel that my life has had more of a positive effect on the world than a negative one. The suffering I've endured and watched needs to end, and I won't relent until it has. Ever seen My Name Is Earl, the show about the former criminal who finds karma and goes around trying to right his wrongs? Well, that’s me now, except righting my wrongs hasn’t only been in the literal sense (although it has been, in many cases), but righting my wrongs, to me, often takes the form of doing everything I can to bring our world closer to peace, prosperity, and liberty. Now, at 20, it is my life's mission to do everything in my power to put an end to the initiation of force.