07/18/2025
Over nine years ago, before it became trendy, “Credible Messenger” work was already being spoken about across forums in California—when most folks didn’t even know what that meant on this side of the map. Ryan “Flaco” Rising was developing a distinctly California-rooted model that was nothing like the East Coast blueprint. This model was birthed out of resistance, struggle, and survival through the belly of a uniquely brutal California prison system.
Let’s not forget: California’s policies—gang enhancements, gang injunctions, and the gang dissociation project—were never about healing communities. They were strategic attacks. These policies targeted poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous neighborhoods, funneling generations into cages while labeling them “gang members” to justify repression.
What came next was even more insidious: many of the same people who were criminalized by the state ended up aligning with the state—turning themselves into tools of suppression through protective custody, “program yards,” and gang dissociation. They didn’t just dissociate from gangs—they dissociated from their communities, their people, their struggle, and their accountability.
And yet, some of these same individuals now parade around calling themselves “Credible Messengers.” Let’s be real: when you leave the general population yards to do the state's bidding, when you walk away from the resistance and become an informant in the name of “rehabilitation,” you lose your credibility. You are not a messenger of the people—you are a state employee in disguise.
The creation of “Deuce Fives,” the protective custody groups that now function as state-sanctioned prison gangs connected to law enforcement, is proof of how the Gang Dissociation Project failed miserably. It didn’t dismantle gangs; it helped the state manufacture new ones—this time, to do their dirty work from the inside.
Meanwhile, West Coast Credible Messengers are made of something different. These are individuals who never broke under state pressure. They paroled from general population yards, stood ten toes down in their communities, and never sold out for a program, a paycheck, or probation funding. They’re respected by the power groups in their neighborhoods because they never abandoned them. Their credibility comes from the streets, not from contracts.
So to the nonprofits and organizations who are now using the Credible Messenger name for clout and funding—ask yourself: who certified you? Who trained you? What yard did your “mentors” parole from? Who do they answer to now? Because if your funding is coming straight from probation, and your messengers can't walk the blocks they once claimed, then you’re not a Credible Messenger program. You’re a branch office of the carceral state.
Let’s be clear: you cannot steal this movement. You cannot copy/paste your way into the soul of West Coast Credible Messengers. This is more than a program—this is a politic, a principle, a frontline commitment. It’s built in community, by community, for community. If you’re not doing the deep grassroots work in the neighborhoods that birthed this movement, then you’re not transforming anything—you’re just profiteering off pain.
We don’t cannibalize culture. We cultivate solidarity. We call for unity, respect, and self-determination. And we will continue to gang bang on this system that’s spent billions trying to divide and conquer us.
So again—whose side are you really on?
