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Jamie-James Medina

From the Annual Vice Photo Issue

By Jamie-James Medina

I recently spent a couple of weeks with a young gang from South London as they went about their day-to-day business of collecting, weighing, bagging, and selling drugs; listening to pirate radio and early Mobb Deep; and talking about how many people want to kill them. For a bunch of kids with no education and no job prospects, it seemed like being on the run or under surveillance gave their lives some type of meaning and structure. I casually asked one of them, “What are you doing tomorrow?” and he said, “Boy, trying to stay alive. Y’know what I mean?” Ouch.