Roy Juarez Jr.
Appearances
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I think that when you grow up with a tough life you learn lessons that can never be taught in a book. But if you can take your education and define those lessons then there's no stopping you.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And for a second, I thought I had made the biggest mistake because baby Ray had a roof over his head. And now he would be living with me on this tree.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Well, she said, you will live with us under one condition. And I was scared because Everyone had a condition. Sometimes they were good. Sometimes it wasn't good. And so with all this anger, I was like, what do you want? And she says, Roy, calm down, calm down. She says, all we want is that you go back to school. You can live in our home, but you will go back to school.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And that's how I went back to high school. And then from high school, I graduated and took off to college. They kept me for four years. The only reason why I moved out of their house is was because I decided to leave. So they are my parents. They didn't legally adopt me, but they're my parents. So I have more than one set of parents. And that's okay.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Because family is just not the love in your veins. Family is the love that's in your heart. That's family. We can choose family as well.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Right. Absolutely. I'm a, I'm in community college. I'm struggling. I know I'm not doing very well. I didn't have a good high school foundation. Right. So if I'm going to be honest, one counselor said, I know what she was, she was trying to help me, but she said, Roy, did you take algebra? I was like, nah, miss. Like I've never had it. She said, Roy, did you take algebra? Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I was like, no, miss, I didn't. And she was OK, good. And so I get to college. I don't know anything. I don't. So I end up taking college algebra five times before I pass it. Right. So I'm having to relearn everything. So I'm in community college and I'm working for the activities department on campus as a work study. And so the Dean knows who I am.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So she comes and she finds me and she goes, Roy, she was Roy, are you coming to our event tonight? I was like, nah, miss, I'm not going to come. Right. I'm walking away. And she's like, Roy, we have food. I'm like, ah, miss, I'm just joking. I'm going to be there. Right. Like offer me food. I'm there. right? And so I come, she goes, good. She goes, Roy, I want you to introduce our guest speaker.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I'm like, yeah, who is it? And she said, her name is retired Lieutenant Colonel Consuelo Castillo Kickbush, which was the same woman who had seven years earlier speaking in that hotel. Nobody knew my story because I was taught to be silent. You know, a lot of times we teach our kids to be silent without even realizing that's what we're doing. And it looks like
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
What are your grandparents going to think? What's the family going to think? That's a way to silence our kids. Or what happens at home stays at home. That is a lesson that teaches our kids to be silent and not communicate. And so I was taught, you know, don't talk about what happens. So nobody knew in my campus. And so that day I broke tradition. And as I stood there, Ms.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Kickbush to my left, my dean was in there, my colleagues, my professors, other students. And I looked at her and I said, Miss, you don't know me, Miss, but I know you. And then I told the story. And so she was crying. I was crying. Two weeks later, I got invited to speak at her book signing. And then two weeks after, I got hired in her company.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I really think my because is my siblings. That's it. Like they, they're the reasons why I fight as hard as I do. I do. But when I, when I started to fight for them and I started working with kids across the nation, I started to see all the other kids that reminded me of my siblings and my little brother and my little sister, especially. And I was like, you know what, who's fighting for them.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
It was supposed to be a two-month internship, and it lasted for two years. And that's when my life continued to change. Because she mentored me. I started traveling with her and she was just peeling layers like an onion to try to get to some of the core issues because I had a lot of street inside of me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Absolutely.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Absolutely.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And if we don't invest in our kids, what I had is going to come out regardless, right? The difference is, is it going to come out in something that's going to be productive, that's going to add to our communities? Is it going to add to our nation? Or is it going to be something that's become destructive? Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And so we want to help our kids see their value, understand, process, and heal from what they've gone through so they can be contributing members of society.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Absolutely. Um, thank you. I, my intention was I am going to get my degree. I'm going to go work in corporate America. I'm going to make a lot of money and I'm never going to be homeless again. I never wanted to have this life again. Um, But I started taking a lot of psychology classes.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And my psychology classes were mainly for me, not to learn it, but trying to figure out what the heck happened to me, what the heck happened to my family. And it really taught me to separate the illness from the person. I love the person. I can help her with the illness. And that was my mom for me. And so I'm one day driving to the middle of the night before classes.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
It was like three o'clock in the morning. And I'm driving back to San Antonio from Abilene, Texas. And I want to get to her house before she leaves for work. And I leave her a rose on her car with a note. I turn around and I'm driving back to campus. When my phone rings and I look at it and it's my mom. And I answer it and she can barely speak because she's crying.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And she's crying and she's crying and she says, how? She says, how can you love me? She said, after everything I have done to you, how do you love me? And I said, mom, you're my mom. You will always be my mom. See, life gets better if we choose to be the change. So when I'm graduating college, this is my thought process now of I want to be better and not bitter.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
You know, I want I want to show my siblings that there's a better way that we can undo some of the lessons we learned in our childhood and not pass them on to the next generation. But so as I start to cross the stage, I start thinking, why me? Why do I get to make it? Why do I get to cross the stage when there's 1.6 million kids just like me at that time? Now there's 2.1 million kids like me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I got to fight for them too. And they're the reasons why I kept fighting.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
We went in the wrong direction. I can't even tell you how, and that is horrible. But at that time, I was like, why do I get this opportunity? So I said, you know what? Before I use my business degree and go work in corporate America and be rich in my mind, I need to give back. I need to give back in honor of every person who would ever fed me, who would ever house me, who would ever clothe me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I'll do it for six months. And I'm going to live out of my car. And I'm going to drive from LA to Jacksonville, Florida. And I'm going to speak for free at any shelter organization, any place who would open up their doors. I'm going to find the kids. I'm going to tell them, don't give up. Life gets better. But you have to be here to see it. And so I started this journey.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I dubbed it the Homeless by Choice Tour because I was homeless again. But this time it was my choice, not my situation, not my parents. It was my choice. So I started this Homeless by Choice Tour. And three months into it, I saw America through a lens that not very many people get to see. I saw how broken we are. And I said, I have to do more. I have to do more. I have to do more.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So I decided that instead of crossing the country for six months, I would live out of my car and I would circle the entire nation. And I was going to give myself a goal to reach at least 100,000 kids. I ended up living out of my car for two and a half years. No grants, no funders, a tour that ran me over $200,000, a money that I had to raise along the way. But I was able to reach over 108,000 kids.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And then my phone has never stopped ringing.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So two things pop in my head. One, mentors. If you're going to be a mentor, whoever's listening, it's about them, not about you. And you're not there to be their friend. You're there to help guide them and direct them. Sometimes you'll say it in love and sometimes you've got to be a little tougher.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I know that my mentor one time, just to bring a little humor, she said, Roy, out of all my mentees, I have invested more time, more energy, and more money and have got the littlest results, right? So, oh my gosh. But she never gave up on me. So this is going to be something that's long-term.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
This is going to be something that's going to be, you're going to struggle with your mentee, especially if you find a kid like me. I'm going to push and push and push. Why? Because every person I have trusted has failed me. Every person. So I need to make sure that you're real.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I need to make sure that when you tell me you love me, you're not just saying it because you say it to all the kids you work with. You're not telling me that you're going to be there for me. I need to make sure that you're really going to be there for me. And the moment that I believe you, I never want to let you go. Why? Why?
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I was so scared to, when I got myself fired, so I'm going to state it that way. When I got myself fired from my mentor's company, I was so devastated that I did everything I needed to try to get back into her company. So she raised the bar even higher. And I met it because as the broken kid, I thought, will anyone ever love me again? Because I honestly felt that she did love me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And so it caused me to work harder. Now as a mentee, I think that it's our responsibility to honor our mentors' time, their energy, their wisdom, and what it took them to learn it as well. And so it's a growing process. And not everyone you meet is meant to be your mentor. You have to connect and click with that person.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So mentorship will shave years off of hard work that you would have to do in your life to get you to the next level. But then you cannot forget once you get there to turn around and help the next generation up.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Absolutely. Well, my thought is what would have happened to me if my parents had mentors, if my dad had a mentor and to show him how to deal with what he went through as a kid, to process it, to how to healthily release things, what would my mom have gone through? What would that situation have been like? You know, they're both great people. They were just broken.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So the, the best stage moment you've had as a speaker being at the few, few conference and speaking on this stage that I snuck into and heard, and by chance or higher power, whatever you believe mine is a higher power. My mentor by chance was speaking at a conference in the same city the day before. So this time she sat in the audience as I spoke.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I would look into their local community, find kids who need someone in their life. There are a lot of kids who may have houses, but we don't have homes. So how many homeless kids do we have in our cities?
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Kids don't care if you're perfect. They just want you there and they want you to love them, let them know you love them. And at the same time, get plugged into a school where they may be having a parent program or something so that you can learn from other parents to be better.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Oh, my God. If you are anywhere near Texas or now they know there's one on the strip of Las Vegas, Whataburger is my favorite burger place. Fast food burger place.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
It's not like a drive through fat. I love five guys, but if I'm going to drive through, especially as I'm on the road a lot, if there's a Whataburger and it's 30 minutes away, I'm going to drive out of my way to go through Whataburger, get the number five, add some jalapenos, and it's a done deal. But I will say this one last thing, Mick, before we disconnect.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
My dad is back in my life, my biological dad. It took 20 years to get him back in my life. I think that we're all chasers in life. We're all chasing something, a nicer title, a bigger house, partner, whatever. We're chasing. My chase had always been to bring my family back together. Not my parents married, separate. They're better. But I wanted to be able to be in a room with my family.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And so when I wrote my book, Homeless by Choice, I put a dedication page to each person, including my biological father. And I said to my biological dad, actually, forgive me, I put to my dad, I hope we can build a healthy relationship before it's too late. I read the entire page, do it on social media. His girlfriend saw it, showed him, he calls me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
At the time you call my business line, it would go to my cell phone, right? Not anymore, but at that time. And I answered it and it was him. And I said, you dad? And he goes, yeah, that's me. I said, what do you want? He goes, I heard you wrote a book. I said, I did. He goes, I heard you put me in it. I said, I did, but like I changed your name so you can't sue me, right?
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Right. Well, it's interesting, Ro, because if I may, I actually had that moment. I was invited to be a keynote speaker at a conference that I had snuck into when I was a homeless teenager. And I snuck into that conference to steal a meal. And I remember when I was the keynote, they invited me on stage. I'm standing at the podium.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Just in case, because like we don't have a relationship. He goes, that's not why I'm calling. I said, why are you calling? He goes, if you're serious about what you said. He goes, I'm ready. He goes, I'm so sorry. I will take the blame for everything. And I said, dad, I don't want you to take the blame, dad. I just wanted you to acknowledge what happened.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I said, if you're serious, come to my book launch. It's next week in San Antonio. He showed up. So for the first time in over 20 something years, I'm on stage and I invited my siblings up first and then my mom and my stepdad. And I said, if he's willing, my biological dad join us and he comes on stage. And for the first time, I have this picture of my entire family.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
It would not have been possible if it wasn't for my mentors, if it wasn't for education, if it wasn't for my faith, if it wasn't for forgiveness. You know, here's the final thought and something that I adopted and I own. If people can hate for no reason in this world, I can love for no reason. And I love the kids that I serve. I love my family. I love what I do.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I don't have to even know these kids for us to love them. So as a community, we need to love more than hate. And I think that's desperately needed right now in this world. You can love for no reason.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I'm telling you. We need it. People hate for no reason. And it's stupid. We got to love for no reason. Let's switch it. Let's love for no reason.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
You can go two places. My name, RoyWattisJr.com. or impacttruth.com, which is the name of my company. It's both our core values, impact and truth together, impacttruth.com.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Thank you. I do my best. I'm human, but I do my best.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I remember glancing back to the very back of the room where I had sat as a homeless kid. And I'm not supposed to be there. And I said, man, if I could have just run to him, meaning my younger self, and tell him, don't give up, life will get better, but you have to be here to see it.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
You're not going to believe that you're eventually going to be close to your mom again, that you're going to have nieces and nephews that you absolutely love, that you're going to see the things that you have seen, right? And I share that with kids because I also want them to know that what they're going through at that moment, there is a future.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
They have a future that belongs to them, not to their situation, that belongs to them, not to their family environment, not to their socioeconomic environment. It belongs to them, but they have to put in the work to get there. But they don't have to do it alone because there are people who believe in them and people want to help them get there.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I, uh, I became homeless officially at the age of 14. And I say officially because it all started when I was about 12. My parents were going through a very violent divorce, but one week my mom would take him back, the next week he would have to be gone.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And so it got to the point that I started to defend my mother physically whenever she, I was always with her, always protecting her, always trying to be there to support her. So when my dad came home, I remember one time he said to her, you need to make a choice. Do you want your son or do you want me? Right. And I mean, that hurt because I'm Roy Waters, Jr. I carry his name.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I said, you know what, mom? I said, you don't have to make a choice. I'll leave. And I remember in that one instant calling this woman from the church and I said, well, please come get me. Please come get me. Please come get me. It was Easter. And she's like, OK, I'll come get you. So she comes and gets me and I spend Easter with them. But what breaks my heart is when I think about my mom.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I'm sure he left too. So she literally spent Easter alone. I left, he left. And so it was a constant going back and forth until one day my mom finally just said, you know what, enough's enough. I want you out, get out, get out. But at that point, my dad was like, if I can't have you, no one's going to have you. So we had to go into hiding. And we started moving from home to home to home.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And every time he would find us, we would have to take the sheets off our bed, put them on the floor, put our clothes in the middle, and we were gone every single time he found us. And around 14 years old is when I finally became homeless on my own. My mom had met a man who was helping her, and he said, I'll help you come live with me. But the only catch was that he didn't want kids.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And for the longest time, Mick, I thought that she just left us because she didn't want us. Well, fast forward many years later after I'm an activist crossing the country, working all over the nation, I invite my mom to come with me to upstate New York. And she's with me. We're in the juvenile hall in upstate New York. And I speak, I tell our story.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And afterwards, we're all talking, me, the students, the probation officers. And one woman is talking to my mom behind me. And I can hear her talking. And I'm talking to a young girl, but I want to hear what's happening to my mom, make sure she's safe. And the lady said, how could you leave them? Why would you do that? And I listened in.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And she said something that kind of shifted everything in my perspective. She told that lady, you don't get it. You don't get it. He wanted me dead. If he would have found us, he might have killed all of us. If he would just find me, he's only going to kill me. So in her brokenness, her thought was, Getting rid of us was technically saving us.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And that has changed everything. You know, parents are human. They make mistakes. They're growing up just as they have the same pains and fears and anxiety that even I have to this day. I personally don't have children. I can't even imagine what my mom was going through knowing that her high school sweetheart wanted her dead, and now she's having to care for five kids and can't do it.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And then he gets her fired from her job. She now can't do it financially. Like, my mom is a strong woman. She was just broken, and she made mistakes.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Absolutely.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
14-year-old Roy was lost.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Yeah. He thought he was the common denominator because his grandparents didn't take him. They took his little sister. but they didn't take him. His aunts and uncles wouldn't take him. All the families that he lived in, he can only stay for a short while, whether it be a month in some lucky cases, whether it be a night in others. So I got to the point that I was like, you know what?
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
The only common denominator is me. I must be bad. Something must be wrong with me because nobody wants me. And the sad thing is that this happens in a lot of our youth across the nation. And I have seen it firsthand over a million kids since. And I have seen that and I've learned that kids never stop loving their parents. It was never my parents fault as a kid. It was me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Kids only stop loving themselves. And that's what's really sad because then they grow up with this idea that I'm not good enough. I don't deserve. Why should I even try hard? That future, that college isn't for kids like me because they don't believe in themselves, nor do they love themselves.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
For me, I think it was the opposite. I was so hungry for someone to love me that I attached to everyone and I became what everyone wanted me or needed me to be at that moment. So if I went to a new home, I now say that I like looked in an imaginary bag and asked, well, who do they want me to be?
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Because if I could become whoever or whatever, in some cases, which is not good, what they want me to be, then that meant that I had a place to sleep one more night. I had food to eat one more day. If my baby brother or my baby sister wanted to see me and this family would let them, I at least got to see my brother and sister for like one more night.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And so I lost myself in this homelessness, in this process, in this bag full of different roys to survive.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very honored.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I think that you touched on a really good point. Kids want to share, but they're scared to share. And the reason I say that is I love my mom and I didn't want my mom to get in trouble. And I knew that if I would have spoken up, she probably would go to court and my brain was like, she's going to go to jail. And so my loyalty was still to my mother. I wasn't going to say anything. Yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
It's not until you find a trusted adult that youth like myself will let you win to even help.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Absolutely. Yeah. And thank you for those words, actually, survival. I think that when you grow up with a tough life, you learn lessons that can never be taught in a book. But if you can take your education and define those lessons, then there's no stopping you. Because education will not only change your life, but it will change the entire fabric of your family.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And that's why education is so powerful. And at this point, I was very street smart. And so I saw this huge hotel in downtown Dallas, Texas. It's the Omni Hotel. And I thought, man, they got to have food in there, right? It's a beautiful, big, big hotel. So I walk in and I'm looking around. And sure enough, I saw this line of women about to go into this room.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I figured they're going to probably have some type of meeting. There's got to be food in there. So I hid my bag because I learned as a homeless kid, if I was invisible, I got to stay longer. I couldn't make any waves. If I was living in a home, I'm going to wash my dish. I'm going to clean your dishes.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
I'm going to cut your yard because the happier you are with me there, the longer you'll let me stay. Kids become invisible, but no child, no kid should ever have to be invisible, right? They have a voice and their voice matters and they have to learn how to use that voice. And it's up to us as the adults to help them learn how to use it effectively. And so I go in, I hide my bag.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And sure enough, they open up these doors and all these women start to walk in and I walk right in there with them. And I go sit in the very far back corner so that no one would notice me. And as I sit there, some lady comes and she serves me and I thank her and I start to eat. Well, this woman comes out on stage and I don't really care what she has to say.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
Like, I'm going to eat my meal and I'm going to leave. But when she's talking, her words, like... I'm really listening to what she's saying. And she's talking about the way she grew up on the last street in Laredo, Texas, to the border. And she grew up as an immigrant. Her parents were immigrants. And how she was told that girls like her don't make it.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
It's very close to Roy Jones Jr. That's what it is, yeah.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
But this woman grew to be the highest ranking Latina woman in the combat support field of the United States Army. She broke all kinds of records because her father taught her to ask, why not you? He said, why not you? You go ask that counselor who said you can't make it. Go ask her, why can't you make it? And as I sat there, I had my plate in front of me.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And even though I was hungry, I wasn't even eating because I had a bigger hunger. And in my mind, I was like, well, why not me? Because I used to dream. Like, why can't I have my dreams? And so after that woman spoke, I walked up to her, to her table. I grabbed her card. went back out, grabbed my bag, my bag, made my way back to San Antonio because this was in Dallas.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
And I went back to San Antonio where I'm from and went straight to my best friend's aunt's house, a woman who had my baby brother. And I said, I need my baby brother back because I thought I had a plan.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So my plan was I would By the time I made it back to Ms. Carmen's house to get baby Ray, the idea of me being able to have my future was gone. It was a little bit of hope from what I heard, and then it was gone. But I thought he will have his. My baby brother will have his entire future. I'm going to give up my entire life. I will work one, two, three jobs. I'm going to put him on a bus.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
He's going to go to school, and all his dreams will come true. And so... I mean, I'm a teenager, so we have nowhere to live. But my plan was if I take him to this church I knew about when I was a kid that I attended with my mom, that maybe they'll help us and maybe they'll let us live in there. So we literally went, took the bus as far as it could. We walked the rest of the way.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
We sat on the front porch of that church and just waited for someone to show up. Because I knew it was Wednesday and they were going to have service. And sure enough, the lead pastor shows up. And she gets out and she recognizes me. She goes, Roy? I was like, hi, Pastor Doris. I said, can I talk to you? And she goes like, yeah, let me open the church.
Mick Unplugged
Roy Juarez Jr.: If You Can Hate For No Reason, You Can Love For No Reason
So we go inside the church and I plead my case. We have nowhere to live. I just need a place to live with my baby brother. I promise you I will take care of everything. I will do the yard. I will clean it. It will be ready for all your services. I just need a place to live. And she says, Roy, you can't live here. You can't live in this church.