My name is Pierre Johnson, Jr. I'm 28 years old now. I was raised a Jehovah's Witness since the age of 10. I have 3 brothers and 1 sister. Our grandparents raised us. But in 2006 I was outed for being gay by one of the church members and I was disfellowshipped, or thrown out.
Since I lived at home I had to move out, because as long as I am disfellowshipped, none of Jehovah's Witnesses, including my family, are to have dealings with me. I became homeless at that very moment.
There were times I thought about just doing what I had to do to become a Jehovah's Witness again but I had to remind myself I had to live for me.
I lived on the streets for almost 3 years on and off. During that time I turned to drugs and sex to try to fill the big void that I now had in my life.
I started going in and out of jail. To be honest I even started prostituting in downtown Houston to support my crack cocaine habit. I later found out I suffered from major depression and bi-polar disorder. I started staying at the Bread of Life homeless shelter at St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston, TX where I became a client, and a volunteer. I still attend this church to this very day.
A guy named Calvin was telling me about Great Plains Restoration Council's Restoration Not Incarceration™ one day.
At first to me it was just a way to make money but it turned into one of my biggest passions.
It has helped me to learn other coping skills beyond drugs and sex. Jarid challenges me to always think before I act because as some of my past actions showed I always made quick decisions and when I look back now I could have handled them totally different.
On a recent work trip (well I don't consider it work) we worked near the coast in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy's Texas City Prairie Preserve. KB and 2 guys Lindsey and LT we hired from The Bread Of Life homeless shelter's Eco-Life Employment Services spent 6 days in the wonderful Texas heat cutting down by hand over 15,000 Chinese Tallows (which are an invasive tree species) and brushing the stump with an herbicide.
This is very important because there is less then 1% of the coastal prairie left.
When Esteban the explorer who was originally a Moroccan slave from Africa came here in 1528, the coastal prairie was like the Garden of Eden. It was beautiful, peaceful and serene. They knew the importance of the land and animals. The people lived with the land as one. They weren't like us nowadays.
I've been with GPRC for a few years now. While on this latest RNI™ work project, I had the chance to reflect on where I was when I first started with Jarid and where I'm at now and I can see a change.
But now climate change has threatened to change the whole landscape of the Texas Coast.
It's at a point where the land we were working on could be covered by the sea.
Life throws us curve balls all the time like it did me a month and a half ago. I found out I was HIV positive.
I didn't give up. I'm fighting hard. Just like we are for the coastal prairie.
We are gonna do what we can with the time we have left.
Pierre Johnson, Jr.
Crewmember
Restoration Not Incarceration™
Great Plains Restoration Council
Editor's Note: Stay tuned for photos, and a link to the Al Jazeera America feature that ran worldwide.
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