It’s a hot Thursday afternoon, and I am walking the streets in the South First Street section of San Jose. I should be afraid. There’s been a spike in gang-related murder — six in the past week — and the streets I am walking are among the meanest. Yet I am not afraid. I am walking with Pastor Danny Sanchez, a 2011 White House Champion of Change. But it’s not his White House cred that’s lending me comfort. I am thinking about the 200-300 fist fights he endured before he became a minister in a world I like to call “the other side of Silicon Valley.”
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