New America Media - Growing Up Poor in the Bay Area tag:newamericamedia.org,2009-04-06://19 2013-01-31T21:07:17Z New America Media is a nationwide association of over 3000 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism. Founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service, New America Media promotes ethnic media by strengthening the editorial and economic viability of this increasingly influential segment of America's communications industry. Revive Oakland! Economic Opportunity Should be Accessible to Everyone tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.10924 2013-01-30T08:15:00Z 2013-01-31T21:07:17Z Jessica Lopez is an impressively focused 17-year-old. For two years, she went to campaign meetings after school and on weekends, attended city council hearings late into the night, and did her homework after that, sometimes until two in the morning.... Tram Nguyen ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Jessica Lopez is an impressively focused 17-year-old. For two years, she went to campaign meetings after school and on weekends, attended city council hearings late into the night, and did her homework after that, sometimes until two in the morning.

As a youth leader in the Oakland organization Urban Peace Movement, Jessica was among the community members who helped push for a landmark good jobs agreement in Oakland’s Army Base redevelopment plan—the largest development project Oakland has seen in decades.

Jessica, who was born in Mexico and brought to East Oakland as a child with her parents, got involved in local activism through a program at her high school that connected her to Urban Peace Movement. She was troubled to see classmates drift in and out of juvenile hall for theft. “It made me think why, what made them do the things that they did, and it all came down to poverty,” she said. “They would steal a lot of our after school snacks, they would steal computers from our school.”

Jessica knew nothing about the Oakland Army Base, which had been closed since 1999 and in years of redevelopment planning since the city took it over in 2002. The 366-acre former military base, which once served as a major deployment station for U.S. soldiers shipped to Vietnam, is now being turned into a shipping, packaging and distribution center for the adjacent Port of Oakland. With this makeover come potentially thousands of new jobs that have been the target of a bold and nationally precedent-setting campaign.

The landmark jobs agreement, won by a broad coalition called Revive Oakland!, is the first in the nation to set labor and community standards around the rapidly growing and notoriously low-road warehouse and distribution industry. Oakland, organizers say, is being watched in other parts of the country as a model for setting standards that could begin to shift this sector, which supplies big retailers across the country and employs an estimated 200,000 workers in California, into one capable of providing middle-class jobs.

Good Jobs for Good Health

In a city wracked with deep inequities, the expected 5,000 jobs from both the City and Port’s portions of the project are enormously important. In some neighborhoods of East Oakland and West Oakland, which is adjacent to the base, the unemployment rates have climbed up to between 31-45 percent in 2010, according to a report by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE).

One common thread among many of the organizations that have worked on the campaign is a belief that economic opportunity should be accessible to everyone and that development should lead to better health, a central goal of the East Oakland Building Healthy Communities initiative. Revive Oakland!’s 30 coalition members included groups such as EBASE, Urban Peace Movement, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Oakland Community Organizations, Youth Uprising, and others that view this opportunity for good jobs as part of a long-term solution to improving their communities' health.

Both individual poverty and neighborhood poverty are linked to poorer health outcomes, according to a significant body of research studies. Oakland shows one of the starkest gradients in health based on neighborhood poverty levels, according to the Alameda County Public Health Department. This means that for each step up in neighborhood poverty, life expectancy goes down. People living in the highest poverty neighborhoods such as West Oakland (where 30 percent or more residents live in poverty) are expected to die almost 15 years before people living in wealthier neighborhoods like the Oakland Hills (where fewer than 10 percent of residents live in poverty).

‘We’re Supposed to Take Care of Each Other’

Shirley Burnell, a leader with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, has lived in West Oakland for more than 50 years. A grandmother who retired from her telecommunications job in 1993, Burnell closely follows the goings-on in her neighborhood and hometown, especially concerned about the crisis facing African American youth. She notices young people on street corners, not going to school, and hears about families where these youths’ drug dealing provides their families’ only income. Often, Burnell has wished she could take a pen and notebook and walk the streets of her neighborhood, asking these young people questions and hearing their stories.

“A lot of them are entrepreneurs, we just don’t recognize them as such. If we could get them to turn that energy, if they had somewhere good to put that energy, I think that would be awesome,” she said. “I would like to be able to get them all out of that and into a real life, where they don’t have to be on the streets. Right now they don’t have any options. I know we’re putting a lot on this army base…But hopefully it will bring a lot to the community too.”

Burnell remembers when the army base was open, and what the jobs and the small businesses around the base meant to the local communities. In 1973, Burnell went to work as a “keypuncher” at the base, doing data entry by punching holes into the cards that the military computers would read.

“At that time, everybody who wanted a job could get one. A lot of civilians worked there, the base employed thousands of people, and there were a lot of small businesses around the base,” Burnell remembered. “It was a thriving area.”

In 1999, the army base shut down. Burnell had moved on to doing keypunching for the Department of Energy in downtown Oakland, later becoming a telecommunications specialist. She stayed in her longtime home in West Oakland, but noticed more and more problems in the neighborhood. One that bothered her the most was the proliferation of liquor stores.

“We don’t have grocery stores, we don’t have banks, none of that, but they were bringing in liquor stores—on every other corner,” she said. “People are already in bad enough shape, and we’re going to give them such a ready access to that addiction.”

One day, an organizer from the community organization ACORN knocked on her door. When he asked her what she wanted changed in her neighborhood, Burnell knew the answer right away. Burnell and her neighbors began holding rallies in front of the stores, campaigning to shut them down or get them to clean up the premises and offer fresher food. In one store, Burnell showed the owner a can of food that had been expired for two years; he ran her out of the store. “I said, I live in this community and this is outrageous,” she recalled. “Here people are eating this out of the corner store, a few blocks from the Kaiser Hospital, and they have no healthcare. We’re supposed to take care of each other, and we’re not.”

A Transformative Campaign

Jessica Lopez began her involvement with the Revive Oakland! campaign in its early days, when she was among just a handful of youth being trained to become advocates through Urban Peace Movement’s Good Jobs Academy. At times, when the long meetings and sometimes mind-numbingly complicated negotiations got too overwhelming, she would pull out “this paper they gave us of the things we were calling for.”

“I would read it and think, okay this is going to help my kids’ future, or my future, ‘cause I’m 17 right now, and by the time I finish my studies, I’m sure there will be plenty of jobs that could benefit me as well,” she said. “I could still have a job, and it could be here in Oakland. My community could be a community where people want to live.”

When she was in the sixth grade, Jessica’s family briefly left Oakland and moved to the nearby city of Alameda. Her father got a job that paid well, $20 an hour, at a factory making office cubicle dividers. But in 2008, he was laid off and the home they had bought was foreclosed upon. The family moved back to East Oakland, where they lived in an apartment upstairs from a pimp. One night, they heard a fight break out and gunshots went off.

“My little brother, he’s 12, he couldn’t stop shaking, he was really scared. Me, I’m old enough, and I can kind of take it, but him, it really sucks that he had to experience that,” Jessica said. “Since I take the bus, I have to walk to my house, and every time I walk on the street, when I see somebody I immediately think that they might do something to me. I guess that’s the way it’s affected me, I don’t really feel safe.”

For EBASE, which convened the Revive Oakland! coalition, the creation of quality jobs and targeted workforce development has been a major strategy to reduce crime and violence in Oakland. On a winter night late in 2012, community members and faith leaders gathered at the West Oakland library – the site of the future jobs center for the army base – to hold a candlelight vigil marking both the toll of violence in their communities and their determination to move the army base jobs agreement from paper to reality.

“Last week, I buried an 18-year-old kid,” said Rev. Ken Chambers of the Oakland Community Organizations. “Every week, I hear the same questions in my church—where are the jobs?”

Added Rev. Justice Samuels, “Homelessness is here, shootings are here, violence is here. But guess what, we are here. We as a people can come together and make a change. Oakland is a city of change.”

One of the crucial demands of the coalition was for the city to establish a jobs resource center that can train and connect local workers with the army base jobs. The city council approved a permanent funding stream for the center at their last meeting of 2012. This and other key victories—including a 50 percent local hiring requirement, living wages for every worker on site, and the first restriction on temp agencies in the warehouse industry—are key to ensuring not only that Oakland residents have access to jobs, but that working conditions are improved in the sector.

Warehouse work, at the heart of the “logistics” industry of retailing giants like Walmart, consists of heavy and dangerous labor. Because of the widespread dominance of a domestic outsourcing model in the industry, workers face grueling conditions while making low wages with no benefits or job protections. Health, safety, and labor violations are rampant, including warehouse temperatures of 100-degree heat in the summer and a piece-rate pay scheme that pushes workers to unload and load containers faster and faster. More than half of warehouse workers in Southern California have been found to suffer on-the-job injuries, according to the National Employment Law Project.

By limiting the use of temporary staffing agencies, Oakland will be the first city to disrupt this outsourcing structure—giving workers a better shot at being able to work directly with the warehouse operators as employers to provide health care, safe equipment and a safe environment.

“These are jobs that can't be shipped overseas. As long as we as consumers buy things that have to get shipped, there are going to be warehouse jobs. There's a lot of growth in that sector. So the key is how to shift what can be a low-road model to turn it into what could be really middle-class jobs,” said Kate O’Hara, EBASE campaign director.

As far as they have come, and as huge as their achievement, the coalition members will not rest until the first Oakland residents are hired on the redevelopment project and take home their first paychecks.

When she’s asked how hopeful she is that the army base will deliver on its promise for Oakland, Shirley
Burnell sucks in her breath and nods wordlessly at first.  Then she says, “When they start working, when they start coming out of there and getting a job, then I can be like, ‘Okay we did that, we did that!’”

Tram Quang Nguyen is a freelance writer based in Oakland.
Photo credit:  Manjula Martin & EBASE





]]> Tragedy and Hope: One Pacific Islander Reflects on API Month tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.9464 2012-06-01T00:30:00Z 2012-06-01T00:55:49Z Jean Melesaine ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Yesterday, my younger cousin Sana, who I consider like my baby sister, told me while intoxicated and leaving for a funeral, "Jean, you have to put your necklace in my coffin when I die because it always reminds me of you." The necklace she spoke of was a gift from my Aunt Norma in New Zealand. It’s called a "Manaia” and is made out of bone that was blessed by the Maori chiefs to guide and protect me, because my Aunt Norma said I would travel a lot in this life. She also said I am never allowed to take it off, once it’s put on -- something I reconsidered after hearing what Sana said.

There's a saying, “experience is the ultimate authority,” which is similar to saying, “you can't get wet, talking about water.” I always wondered, though: If experience is the ultimate authority and you've been getting wet all your life, how do you talk about water when you're close to drowning? I’ve been lucky. I have time and space to think about things. I have a camera, and I can write sometimes. Sana doesn't have those things. She tries, but I figure it hurts to be real about life.

May was Asian Pacific Islander month, and I'm not sure what that means for me. I guess it doesn't seem to mean much, when I look around at what is happening in my community.




On the First of May, a funeral service was held for a kid who was stabbed in Newark, and a couple days later Junior Seau committed suicide. Both were Pacific Islander. I found out about Seau while standing in an airport terminal in Texas -- the first time I'd ever seen a Samoan on the front page of USA Today. The media focused on Seau’s football injuries as the cause of his tragic decision. But I can’t help but think that depression in the Pacific Islander community needs to be considered as well.

After returning to the Bay Area from Texas, I went to visit my baby brother’s new child for the first time. On my way to congratulate them, I couldn’t shake the thoughts of the stabbed kid from Newark, of Junior Seau, of depression. My head felt heavy with worry for my new niece and her young parents – teenagers who had struggled to raise themselves, now responsible for raising another.

One of my best friend's is Native American, and a social worker. She is always trying to explain to me why data and research are so important. She gives me links to programs for my younger brother. She sends me all the new data out there on Pacific Islander communities, and we compare the issues – trauma, depression -- present in our respective communities. Most of the data shows our communities in peril. The newest data she shared with me was for Alameda County, where Pacific Islanders have surpassed the Native American community for the highest rates of poverty.

Back to May: Joyce, my cousin’s sister-in-law, a hard working single mother, dies of a heart attack. The funeral is held on Mother’s Day weekend. Her son, Ola, is 16 years old. At the funeral, my cousin describes them as the "closest brother and sister you can meet." After the service, I sit in a conversation with some of Joyce’s friends, who keep talking about how excited she was for Ola, who has plans to go to prom.

A couple days later, another funeral. A younger cousin is shot and killed in the Sunnydale projects in San Francisco. I hang out with Sana and other younger cousins, because I usually don't have the time. It’s sad that it takes a death to hang out with family.

Shortly thereafter, it’s time to leave again, this time to Alabama. One of the youth I’m working with, Tearra, lives in the Forest Hill Projects. The place feels deep in the country, but it’s actually only 11 minutes away from downtown Birmingham, the birthplace of the civil rights movement. We’re driving Tearra through her neighborhood, to drop her off at home and meet her mom. On our way there she tells me, "I don't like when it gets violent.” It's sad, but her words make me feel at home slightly. I think of my younger cousins.

When I get home from Birmingham, I go to a Pacific Islander town hall meeting. Congresswoman Jackie Spiers stopps by at one point, to listen to Pacific Islander concerns. Health issues, violence, lack of resources, education, and disconnecting the PI (Pacific Islander) from API (Asian-Pacific Islander) top the list of concerns.

But there are good things happening in our community, too -- slowly. There are people doing things to change all of this.

It’s the end of May. My newphew, Muzik, has graduated from kindergarten. And over the weekend, I celebrate my sister Chamorro’s birthday. She teaches fiercely in East Palo Alto, to a lot of Polynesian kids. At her party, I meet a lot of students from City College of San Francisco, and it makes me smile that alot of them are Pacific Islander, too.

I can't speak or hold responsibility for all Pacific Islanders. I can only tell you and show youwhat this month has been like for me, in words and pictures – work that is done with love, to honor folks like Joyce, Ola, Muzik, Sana, Brandon, their families and other folks that can talk about water, because they're still deep in it.


]]> Filipino Amerasians’ Lifelong Fight Against Stigma tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.9305 2012-05-13T07:00:00Z 2012-05-14T17:33:48Z Matt Maxion ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
BRENTWOOD, Calif - Even after 21 years of living in the United States, Rose Cruz still has trouble sleeping at night. She flinches when her husband tries to hold her.

“It’s so hard to sleep. Every little noise, I’m awake,” says Cruz, now 38 and living in Brentwood. “I just became defensive, totally defensive.”

Cruz still remembers her horrible experiences staying with a family that sexually abused her while her mother was away during the week. Her mother had to work as a stay-in housemaid for three American families at the former Clark Air Base in Angeles City, Philippines.

Cruz was only 11 years old when six of the eight sons in that family raped her. Even now, Cruz still cringes at the words they said to her about her mother.

“I asked them ‘why?’ and they told me because your mom was a prostitute...at least you’ll enjoy it,” Cruz says, her fingers nervously writhing. “It hurts… every time I think about it. Why do they treat us that way?”

Then she pauses. “Because we’re Amerasian,” Cruz answers her own question.

Cruz asserts that her story isn’t the typical Filipino Amerasian story. The Amerasian phenomenon is concentrated in localities where U.S. naval and Air Force bases were prominent before they closed down in 1991.

Though Cruz is one of the estimated 52,000 Amerasians fathered by U.S. servicemen when U.S. Navy and Air Force bases were prominent in the Philippines, she states that her mother was not a bar girl or a prostitute, which is a common stereotype for Filipino mothers of Amerasian children, particularly in the cities of Angeles and Olongapo.

“If a mother is raising a child in the Philippines who is Amerasian, the child is not only stigmatized, but the mother also has to deal with discrimination, with the fact that she’s classified as probably a bar girl or a prostitute,” says Ron Muriera, who runs the Santa Clara Valley chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society.

Clint Applegate, a Filipino Amerasian who was born and raised in Cavite City, says his mother worked as a babysitter for an American family at the former U.S. Sangley Point Naval Base. “The stereotypes about mothers being prostitutes became even stronger [in Angeles and Olongapo] when the base closed down in Cavite City.”

Dealing with discrimination from peers

Cruz used sing in the choir at her local church in Olongapo City, and she often heard disdainful comments whispered from the pews.

“People would talk behind my back and talk to the music director, asking ‘Why is she in there? She doesn’t belong there,’” Cruz remembers. “Others would say, ‘She’s a prostitute’s daughter. She’s a sinner just like her mom.’’”

Discrimination followed her at school.

Even in kindergarten, endless name-calling by peers and adults, from “putok sa buho” (illegitimate child) to “anak ng puta,” (child of a prostitute) became commonplace for Filipino Amerasians like Cruz.

A relentlessly scrappy child, Cruz fought classmates at Olongapo Wesley School in Olongapo City to protect her fellow Amerasians. She felt it was her duty to stand up for the ostracized group in school.

“I’ve always been in fights. I actually stabbed someone with a pencil just because I needed to protect my fellow Amerasians,” Cruz recalls. “We felt like we were trash, like we don’t belong.”

According to a three-year study in Angeles City conducted by Dr. Pete Kutschera of the New York-based National Amerasian Research Institute, bullying was one of the factors contributing to mental illness among Filipino Amerasians.

“Many Amerasians repeatedly witnessed schoolyard bullying, street gang attacks, intrafamily abuse, or general violence directed at their friends or acquaintances based on stigma-laden and discriminatory behavior,” Kutschera stated in the study.

Amerasians of African-American descent, the study found, experienced considerably more discrimination and were more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and stress.

Tracy Young, who is a half-black Filipino Amerasian, says tthat people abided by a racial hierarchy when she was growing up in Angeles City. Her half-brother experienced less discrimination since he was light-skinned, Young notes.

“If you’re half white and you’re a baby, everybody thinks you’re cute. But if you’re half black, nobody wants you,” says Young.

At school, Young also dealt with constant bullying, fighting and name-calling, especially with other girls in her class.

“Filipino Amerasians are being stigmatized in the Philippines for being of mixed blood,” says Muriera. “The stigma stems from colonial mentality and of course, you know, the Philippines being a very class-oriented society.”

Searching for his father and moving to the U.S.

Applegate and his twin brother were only two years old when their father, who was in U.S. Navy, left them and their mother behind. It wasn’t until he gained sponsorship from the Pearl S. Buck Foundation that he was able to locate his father 17 years later in the United States.

“From that organization, I learned more about Amerasians and what it would take to find my father. We started looking for our father. At that time, I went to the Thomas Jefferson library in Manila, and that’s where I found my father’s information,” says Applegate.

The Pearl S. Buck Foundation is a nonprofit that is committed to improving the quality of life and opportunities for children. It also promotes a better understanding of other cultures.

“Our sponsored Amerasian children in the Philippines is much smaller in number than it was when Pearl Buck first began her program there,” says Teri Mandic, a spokesperson of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in Perkasie, Penn. “Our target populations now comprise of children from very poor families who have been moved into Resettlement Camps and smaller groups of second and third generation Amerasians who may reside alongside these marginalized populations.”

With help from the branch stationed in Angeles City and the documents his mother kept, Applegate was able to prove that he was a legitimate child.

“The foundation processed all my paperwork and the next thing I knew, I got a letter from the U.S. Embassy saying that I was a citizen. I came over here July, 1988,” Applegate recalls.

Although Applegate’s father hasn’t been around for most of his life, Applegate insists that maintaining an emotional connection with his him is enough. He is able to maintain contact him by phone on a regular basis. There’s no need to see him physically, he says.

“I chose not to see him because for me, the communication is good enough. We’re both adults, and I don’t want to cause any trouble or disrespect for the other family,” Applegate says. “Emotionally, there is a communication. But physically, there’s not.”

Applegate now lives with his mother and his twin brother in San Jose.

Unlike Applegate, the majority of Filipino Amerasians are not able to get in touch with their estranged fathers. Many Amerasians like Cruz feel that disconnecting themselves from their fathers is for the best.

Many Filipino Amerasians Experienced some form of abuse

“My father was mean, an alcoholic, a womanizer and physically abusive to my mother,” Cruz says. “He left me when I was only six months old.”

The physical and sexual abuse Cruz dealt with while growing up eventually influenced her decision to run away from home at 14.

According to a study made by the University of the Philippines’ Center for Women Studies, the majority of Filipino Amerasians have experienced some form of abuse, including domestic abuse. The study noted that half-white, female Amerasians are highly vulnerable to sexual harassment.

At 16, Cruz and her friend were offered jobs in Japan to work as entertainers in various bars. Before she embarked on her trip, Cruz needed to make a stop home to gather all her paperwork and passport.

While rummaging through the documents, Cruz realized that her passport and birth certificate looked different from her mother’s. Cruz discovered she had a social security number and was a U.S. citizen. Her father had signed her birth certificate when she was born, which gave her U.S. citizenship.

“My mom never told me I was a U.S. citizen because she wanted me to just focus on school. If people know that you have citizenship, they’ll use you,” Cruz says.

She moved to the U.S. in 1990, when she was 17, and felt like she was much more at home.

“When I arrived here from the Philippines, I felt like I belonged. I felt that my heart is here. I’m not embarrassed being an Amerasian. I’m not. I’m actually proud to talk about it,” says Cruz.

Cruz’s father died six years ago, and they never met.

Acknowledging Filipino Amerasians as American citizens

Facing rejection from the larger society, many Amerasians long to be recognized by the U.S. government. But the current law makes it difficult for Filipino Amerasians to become U.S. citizens.

According to the Amerasian Act of 1982, children fathered by GIs during the Vietnam War would be eligible for U.S. citizenship. This gave preferential immigration to children from Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea and Thailand. The act tries to mitigate the negative effects of years of U.S. troop deployment in the region.

These troops left “tens of thousands” of Amerasian children to face prejudice and negligence in their homeland countries, says Joseph Ahern, author of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: United Stated Immigration Law and Policy as Applied to Filipino-Amerasians.”

The 1982 act, however, excludes Amerasian children from the Philippines and Japan. “The reason was probably because the U.S. didn’t see that they were involved in a war at that time in the Philippines,” notes Muriera.

“But there’s information that contradicts that. A lot of the Filipino Amerasians are facing severe racial discrimination. They’re being stigmatized in the Philippines for being of mixed blood,” he adds.

The only way for Filipino Amerasian children to gain U.S. citizenship is if their fathers claim them when they turn 18. However, this isn’t likely, according to Muriera.

“Many military men aren’t going to claim that they had illegitimate children in a country they were stationed at. It takes individual responsibility on the father to claim that they fathered a child in the Philippines,” says Muriera.

Despite a tumultuous past, Applegate looks at his experiences as a source of growth and says that growing up as an Amerasian molded him to the person he is today.

“I’d say growing up as an Amerasian is a blessing and not a curse. I’m a very optimistic individual. When someone treats me bad, I look at it as a source helping me to be stronger,” says Applegate.

As for Cruz, now a mother of two, she hopes to raise awareness of the Filipino Amerasian experience by telling others about her turbulent beginnings. She still wants to protect and help other Amerasians back in the Philippines, just like she once did when she was in school.

“I don’t ask people to pity me. I use my experience to tell others here in the U.S. that we exist. There are a lot of us back home who should be here,” says Cruz.


Matt Maxion is a journalism student at San Francisco State University. His reporting is part of a special ‘Stories From the Diaspora’ series profiling the lives of immigrants across California and beyond.
]]> Temporary Protected Status Keeps Family Living in Limbo tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.9041 2012-04-12T08:00:00Z 2012-04-12T17:01:39Z San Francisco--The one thing Godofredo Vasquez, a student at San Francisco State University, realized soon after arriving in the United States at the age of eleven was that his new home is sadly temporary. A native of El Salvador, he... Scott Graf ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
“It’s confusing, unclear, and disappointing,” says Vasquez, 22, of his current status. “If TPS ends, the only way I would go back is if they physically come get me. My life is here.”

Temporary Protected Status is granted to individuals from countries determined by the Department of Homeland Security as unprepared for the return of nationals due to temporary conditions resulting from war, epidemics or a natural disaster. They must already be in the United States, however, at the time of designation.

How they entered isn’t taken into consideration.

In the case of Vasquez and his family, it was the 2001 earthquake that decimated El Salvador that offered them the chance at this semi-legality. Having arrived illegally through Arizona, they eventually found their way to Antioch, east of San Francisco. They applied for TPS immediately after the earthquake.

“Does TPS itself lead to a green card? No,” says David Leopold with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “When [their] TPS is terminated, [they don’t] have a status.”

That uncertainty hovers over the 217,000 Salvadorans that, like Vasquez, live in the United States under TPS. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano recently extended the country’s designation for an additional 18 months, with an expiration date of Sept.9, 2013. Many wonder whether that date could mark the end of their sojourn here.

“We love our country, and I want to go visit,” says Vasquez. “But the only way we would go back, to live, is if we got kicked out.”

Remaining here, meanwhile, doesn’t come without its challenges.

“People don’t know that [TPS] is out there,” he explains. “The first time I tried to go to community college, they told me no. Getting loans was extremely difficult.”

Vasquez came to the United States with his younger sister and his mother when he was 11 years old. His older sister, Alma, arrived a year earlier with their father. The transition has been especially tough for his mother and older sister.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” says Alma, who arrived at 17. “It was hard because I never went to school or took English classes in the U.S.”

Adding to the difficulty was the family’s temporary protected status, which Alma says seemed to render them second-class citizens. “You can’t have stability.”

In order to maintain TPS, the Vasquez’ must pay roughly $500 in application fees, and file paperwork every 16 months. Whenever they renew their status, there is a four-month waiting period for a new card, even if the current card is expired. This almost always causes problems at work.

“I had problems three or four times,” recalls Alma. “When I was working at Wells Fargo, I had to leave for four months.”

Family members all say they’ve had similar experiences.

Vasquez’ mother, also named Alma, says coming to the U.S. made her feel “as if I had lost my memory.” Not speaking the language, and with no relatives to speak of, the only work available was picking up garbage after sporting events, a far cry from the office job she held in El Salvador.

“There is some fine print that says that an employer cannot suspend you while you’re waiting for your card,” says Godofredo. “We tell them go to the site, it’s on the site, and they would say they don’t have time to read it.”

The family eventually spoke to a lawyer, who told them to “print it out, underline it and show it” to employers.” Most, says Vasquez, still refuse to acknowledge their right to work.

With one year left in college, Vasquez says he is unsure of what lies ahead. While many of his peers are beginning to make plans for their future, he continues to hold out hope for passage of the federal DREAM Act, which would create a path toward citizenship for millions of undocumented students.

“I hope for it, but in reality, I highly doubt it,” he says. “My goal is to get a job and eventually get sponsored.” Whether or not his future employer will recognize his “less-than-protected” status is another question.

Graf is a student at San Francisco State University. His reporting is part of a special ‘Stories From the Diaspora’ series profiling the lives of immigrants across California and beyond.


Image provided by Shutterstock.com. ]]> In the Great Recession, Even Death Is Too Expensive for the Poor tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.8926 2012-04-02T07:30:00Z 2012-04-17T23:01:51Z Sanjay Basu ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Traducción al español

中文翻譯

한국어

Artwork by www.TommieKelly.com

Editor's Note: This story was written for New America Media as the first in a series of columns by Dr. Sanjay Basu called A Doctor's Word, exploring the impact of the recession on health care for poor people. It appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle's Insight and on SFGate.com. Sanjay Basu, MD PhD is a resident physician in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

Rita is only in her 30s, but she knows all about death. What she didn't know until recently is how expensive it is, especially now in the Great Recession, for the poor to die.

Rita's parents, her only relatives in the U.S., died in a car crash during her sophomore year in community college. Rita dropped out of school to earn a living as a shipping coordinator at a Bay Area package company. A few years later, she found herself coughing and coughing. She was always short of breath. Tests revealed that Rita had a rare and fatal disease of unknown origin--one that leads to the slow closure of the blood vessels feeding the lungs. She will suffocate to death before the age of 40.

“I know the end is coming,” she tells her doctor and nurses; after many meetings with her chaplain, she is, she says, "at peace." At the medical clinic in San Francisco’s General Hospital, Rita tells anyone who will listen that she has two goals. She wants to continue living with her cat in her one bedroom apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco. And she hopes to continue receiving the few medications that mitigate her symptoms.

There are currently more than 1.2 million Americans like Rita who are facing a terminal illness. The health care providers who treat them routinely have to ask: How do you wish to die? Some of the dying--wanting to keep death at bay--repeatedly ask to participate in the latest pharmaceutical trials. Others have drawn up a "bucket list" of adventures for their final days. But more people have two simpler requests: to die at home instead of in a hospital, and to eat a decent last meal.

In this recession, even these simplest last wishes have become nearly impossible for many to fulfill.

Two years ago, Rita fainted on the job. Her boss had noticed her diminishing level of performance; he said that Rita was just too winded to work. Unemployed, she initially received disability coverage. But like the other eight million Americans unable to work because of illness, she was required to apply for a continuation of benefits after one year.

Rita's problem--the clinic’s social worker explained--is that like most young people who are ill, Rita is dying too young to have paid significantly into Social Security. This meant Rita would receive “Supplemental Security Income” (SSI): $830 a month and California's Medi-Cal insurance.

Initially, Rita thought she could stretch these funds. She would have to give away her cat and move into a studio apartment--something smaller and cheaper than the average studio in San Francisco. She would also buy food in bulk, saving at least $200 a month for her prescription co-payments.

But the politics of budget cuts stifled her plans. Over 65 percent of SSI claims have been denied during the recession, a record high number. A series of the governments reviewers of her case interrogated Rita, and one without any medical training misinterpreted her medical chart. Despite the fact that Rita had “pulmonary arterial hypertension”--severely increased pressure in her lungs--he wrote that Rita suffered from run-of-the-mill high blood pressure. Rita was denied.

The clinic’s social workers tried to intervene. They were told that Rita would now have to wait for an "appeals hearing" after 90 days--possibly longer that she had left to live. She would be without income for her last months of life.

Due to new state budget cuts, Rita's Medi-Cal coverage was also limited to six medications. Her doctors had to decide which pills they could take away without suffocating her immediately--a deadly guessing game since there is not enough research to guide doctors in forecasting a regimen.

When clinic workers discussed the dilemma, Rita joked: “I should have been a banker instead of an ordinary taxpayer. Then I could have been bailed out.”

Rita lost her apartment. She slept for a few weeks on an ex-boyfriend's couch, until he threw her out, suspecting her cough was from an infectious disease. She had signed up for welfare, at the usual rate of $422 per month plus food stamps. But without an address, the only way to get a roof over her head was the City’s “care not cash” program for the homeless--$59 a month, and a shelter bed.

Rita's inhalers were stolen on her first night in the shelter. Her shoes were stolen on the second night. So she began to sleep in the parks, her symptoms worsening. Finally her doctors convinced her to check in to the hospital.

In the hospital, Rita was stoic. Her face had assumed the tough sheen of ceramic.

When a social worker asker her whether she would be willing to modify her plans, let the clinic find her a hospice bed, Rita said she had written it all down. She couldn't discuss her thoughts with any more clarity. And besides, going over her problems would only make her cry. And crying made it difficult to breathe.

Update: Thank you to the many people who have expressed a desire to help Rita. Following this story, Rita was able to gain access to low-cost and free pharmaceuticals to help her symptoms, and was able to gain access  to low-cost housing. She is still having challenges with the Medi-Cal system, and will soon be engaging in her appeal hearing to gain full medical coverage, now with the assistance of a lawyer. For those people interested in helping patients like Rita, the San Francisco Hospital Foundation has opened up a special "Rita fund"; further information about this can be found online at: http://www.sfghf.net/
]]> Mourning a Hustler Who Was Also a Saint tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.8870 2012-03-24T08:00:00Z 2012-03-25T23:18:23Z Charles Jones ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Ed. Note: It is dangerous to be young and black, male, and perhaps so brave the world will see you as cocky. When Rory Jones, a young black man was murdered in San Francisco, he was "just another" young black man killed by another. Throughout America, there is no more common story. But this man who broke the law was also a man of integrity; this man who had enemies also cared for his mother and was loved by his brother.

On January nineteenth, I lost my younger brother and closest friend, Rory Jones, 31, to a senseless act of violence in the Bayview/Hunters Point -- the San Francisco neighborhood that was also our community, where we were born and raised. My brother loved Bayview/Hunter's Point almost too much.

My siblings and I were the children of a drug-addicted, mentally ill mother, and an irresponsible, selfish, and abusive, drug-addicted father. Drugs, sex and guns were rampant in our childhood and adolescence -- the late eighties and early nineties. Oh, and the abject poverty! The one constant, the one assurance that has been in my life, no matter who I lived with, or where, was my little brother Rory. His one constant, the one assurance that was there for him, that he knew would always be there when he needed it, was Hunters Point.

Iʼve written before about becoming homeless at seventeen, thrown out of our "home" by my father and being uncared for by my mother--a homeless schizophrenic. That was the day I became a drug dealer.

Roryʼs day came less than a year later, just after his fourteenth birthday. He arrived home and was informed by our father that the rent hadnʼt been paid in over six months and that the family would be evicted in a matter of days. Rory should “find someplace to live.” What our father meant though, was, “Youʼre a man now son, goodbye and good luck!”

Rory knew that anyone who cared about us and/or had room enough had already taken in one or more of our younger siblings. Rory, being the man he was (even at fourteen) took abandonment in stride. Within two weeks he had a car, and a room that he shared with our mother. Because he was so serious about taking care of himself and our mother, he was serious about his money. Quickly, he gained quite a reputation around the hood as a young hustler.

Dice, drugs, stolen goods -- my brother dabbled in it all. He had met a girl and fallen in love by the time he was sixteen and had fathered his first son, Rory Jr. at seventeen years of age. His motivation to provide for his family increased like a fever. In no time at all, his reputation grew, and so did the jealousy and hatred of rivals.

My brother was never as violent as the men and boys who hated him. He always played the game straight. And though his life was in the criminal/drug world he never really even considered himself in any real danger until eventually someone shot him while he was playing a dice game. He had done nothing to the kid who shot him to deserve it, and though he knew his assailant's name, refused to snitch on him. After wrestling the gun from him, he let the kid go.

My point is, yes, my brother was a drug dealer. But he was also one of the smartest, funniest, kindest, and responsible people I have ever met. He had ethics. He also had a sense of upward mobility. By the time 2005 arrived he was making regular car payments on a Chrysler 300, and a Dodge Charger, annoyed and amused at the attention his cars garnered. He also moved out of the hood (a cardinal sin to most haters) to a suburb of San Francisco.

In December of that year, on his eldest sonʼs birthday, his new home was raided. He was living in Brisbane in an apartment that only close family and friends knew about. During the court case, it was revealed that someone he knew had snitched on him.

He did nearly three years for that case and never once cracked the seal on his paperwork to see who told on him. When he told me this I asked him why, and he said it was because he didnʼt wanʼt to know, because if he knew heʼd want to hurt the person responsible.

He hoped theyʼd gotten all of the hatred out of their system, he said, but he wasnʼt a fool. Violence cut the number of people he ran with by over half.

Upon returning home from jail he became my motherʼs in home care provider, which was perfect because it meant he got paid for taking care of our mother, something heʼd been doing since he was fourteen years old. He was also just as likely to be seen at a casino, or cardhouse playing blackjack as standing on the street corner. Which is what hurts me most about his murder.

He knew that there were "niggas" who wanted him out of the way, so he was slowly making his exit. He only hustled at night, part-time to supplement his wifeʼs income. During the day he was an at-home dad, caring for his then eight month old daughter.

Being an at-home father for years myself, he would regularly call me to get parental advice when the baby was sick, or wouldnʼt sleep. I would also frequently bring my son over to his house and spend the day with him and my niece. Weʼd play video games, watch music videos, movies, listen to music, or just talk about our dreams and goals -- like our family finally making it out of the game, seeing our kidsʼ college graduations, and putting ourselves in positions to help our younger siblings and nieces and nephews accomplish whatever goal they set their hearts to.

Those dreams, goals, and his children have now all been left to me. And I will see them come to fruition, unless someone kills me first.
]]> Looking After Grandma, Learning Responsibility tag:newamericamedia.org,2012://19.8358 2012-01-11T09:55:00Z 2012-03-10T00:25:46Z Megael “Junior” Jonson ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Editor’s Note: Providing eldercare is hard enough for family adults, but is even tougher for a teenager. One California youth reveals both his challenges and life lessons.


RICHMOND, Calif.--I have been taking care of my Grandmother at our home in Richmond since I was about nine or 10 years old, and I have had to make many difficult decisions since that time.

All my life, my parents haven’t been there for me. One thing led to another, and I ended up staying with my Grandmother and eventually taking caring of her.

Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

Throughout my childhood years, my Grandmother developed many different physical and mental disabilities. Just recently she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which has caused a lot of wear and tear on her body. On occasion, my uncle and aunt would come by to visit my Grandma and take her the doctor's office and to the store. Other than that, I have had no assistance.

Having to watch over my Grandma has made it difficult for me to take part in some activities I’d have liked to be involved in. For example, I started to play soccer when I was about seven. I’d always look toward the bleachers on the sideline, but she wouldn’t be there because she wasn’t physically able to make it. This had happened many times and eventually I lost interest in soccer, because no one was there to support me when I played. So I started to slack off with sports and I began staying home and taking care of my Grandma.

Even though I was disappointed, dropping out of sports activities turned out to be the greatest decision I have made. It has made me a better person. I see a bigger picture. I’ve grown up more. As a 16-year-old and a senior at Richmond High School, there will be many activities I’m willing to skip in order to look after my Grandmother.

Many people ask me, “What is daily life like for you, taking care of your Grandmother?”

I can start by saying I honestly enjoy it, even though at times I get really frustrated and want to give up.

One time, I really wanted to go to the movies with my friends, but my Grandma was really sick. She had just come home from a chemotherapy treatment and she was feeling very fatigued, so I had to stay home and watch her while my friends went to a movie and ate out. That day I wanted to just give up and go out with my friends, but instead I decided to stay home and watch over her.

Although it may seem like a lot of work for an active teenager, I can say from personal experience it is not as bad as it seems. I clean the house on a daily basis and do stuff like washing dishes, vacuuming, mopping and dusting — the same things any normal teenager my age would be doing for chores.

However, I also have to make sure my Grandmother eats and takes her medicine in the morning and afternoon (depending on when she wakes up). It’s nothing compared to taking care of a baby, though, because my grandmother is still on her feet and able to do things for herself in certain situations.

Returning the Favor

Every two weeks or so, I go grocery shopping without my Grandmother. She is not capable of walking around the store for a long time, so that leaves me with the aid of my uncle to go and buy stuff for the house. Going to the store has given me experience in purchasing groceries and seeing the value of a dollar.

Many teenagers do not know the real value of a dollar and are constantly spending money on things they do not need. If I hadn’t experienced going to the store and buying groceries, I would have been one of those teenagers. Instead, I’ve learned how to save a lot more. Rather than going out to eat and wasting money, I’d rather stay home and make something to eat.

Since I was two, my Grandma changed my diapers, fed me and has taken care of me. Now it is time to repay the favor and help her as much as I can to make sure she recovers fully and comes out of her treatments healthy and back to normal.

My Grandmother is teaching me things and she doesn’t even know it — and I thank her dearly, from the bottom of my heart.

Read more stories at Richmond Pulse. 
]]> Teachers Struggle to Feed Hungry Students in Order to Teach tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.8225 2011-12-23T11:35:00Z 2011-12-23T13:01:38Z Aisha Fukushima ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 “Miss, can we have a snack break?” asked one of the students in my after-school 'Hip Hop Stylez' class at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco. As a teacher, I have heard this question countless numbers of times at the beginning, middle and end of my classes. In my first few months at James Lick, I often struggled with keeping my students' energy up and their attention focused on the task at hand. I would often go home worried about how I could improve my lesson plans to get the students more engaged.

But after about a month and a half of teaching, I began to realize one of the reasons for my students acting out: they were not getting enough to eat to sustain themselves throughout the day. Even with the small cartons of juice and grab-size snack bags that the after-school enrichment program supplies, they were not feeling satisfied.

From then on I started to let my students take an additional snack break in the middle of our two-hour class when they could get another snack bag to tide themselves over until the 6:30 p.m. dismissal. While a handful of my students took up this opportunity, I also noticed a few shied away from the snacks. Some mentioned in passing that they did not like the juice drinks (from concentrate) and starchy treats that the after-school program supplied.

Even though the program makes a clear effort to serve students healthier alternatives to chips and soda, the grab-size bags of animal crackers, pretzels and an occasional hot snack simply does not cut it for most students. Entering my third month of teaching, I started buying supplemental food for my class to eat during snack breaks and as rewards for their hard work.

Twice a week, I visit the Whole Foods market a few blocks from James Lick to purchase tasty organic snacks for my small after-school class. Each month, this adds up to about four hours of shopping for sales and anywhere from $32 to $60 in groceries. Some days, I give them sweets, and other days—when I can afford more substantive snacks—I bring in fruit and cereal.

Earlier in the day, I work at Herbert Hoover Middle School in the Sunset district where a handful of my colleagues in the special education program also make concerted efforts to help ensure that students have enough to eat. While I mainly help out with autistic students, I also work with a number of young people who struggle with other emotional and behavioral issues. These issues can range from depression to dealing with trauma related to divorce, living in foster homes, drugs and gang violence. In addition to having these struggles play out in the classroom on a daily basis, the fact that students often come to school without an adequate breakfast or lunch makes teaching an even more difficult job.

Much of the cafeteria food—like the after-school snacks—rely on starchy, high-carb foods like pizza, potatoes and bread to keep kids full. At lunch, I have even seen some of my colleagues give away nutrition bars and pieces of fruit to students who chronically walk the halls hungry during the lunch hour. Even with free and reduced lunch programs there are students who do not eat anything throughout the school day. For some, it seems that there is a fear of being stigmatized, while others genuinely cannot stomach what the cafeteria serves.

In the morning, when I ask my students what they had for breakfast, a number of them show me backpack pockets full of candy wrappers. “Nothing,” another one of my students replied. “Does your family eat breakfast?” I asked him privately. He replied with a silent shrug.

In the state of California, one in four children lives in poverty and just over 24 percent of children are enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs at school. About 14 percent receive food stamps while, according to a 2011 study by California Food Policy Advocates, participation in summer lunch programs has decreased by roughly 50 percent between 2002 and 2010 due to federal budget cuts. African-American, Latino and Native American children are among the hardest hit by hunger and poverty-related disparities.

When students are hungry, they come to class agitated and unable to focus. Often it is hard to complete even the most basic academic exercise or follow classroom directions. Other students get extremely sleepy or might refuse to do the work entirely. Although hunger is one of many factors that plays into this behavior, it has become obvious to many of my colleagues that students without proper nutrition can pose very real challenges to our ability to create a functional learning environment. Nearing the holidays, many staff members at Hoover even chipped in their gas money and funds they would typically use to feed their own family to put on small parties for the kids.

I am one of many educators doing what I can to make small contributions each day to keep our students in school and properly fed, but it is a difficult feat. With many of us working on shoestring budgets, even small purchases here and there add up. For my colleagues with families of their own, I know that in addition to trying to make up for a lack of school supplies, buying snacks for their students can directly affect how much food they put on their own table at home.

We continue to do what we can because we realize that even with the economic uncertainty of the times we cannot afford to see our students fail. Yet this model of educator as teacher/provider is not sustainable and it certainly does not let us reach our greatest potential in the classroom. We too have limits to how much we can give while we ourselves are just trying to get by.

It is alarming that classrooms are becoming places where students have increasingly come to expect their basic needs to be met. With California's bleak economy and budget crisis, it is with a great sense of hope and anxiety that I look to the future of my students. Hope, inspired by my fellow staff members who demonstrate so much selflessness on a daily basis, and anxiety about how forthcoming financial hurdles may topple this precarious balancing act.


]]> City of Richmond Voices Support for Occupy Movement tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7951 2011-11-15T10:10:00Z 2011-11-15T19:18:58Z Edgardo Cervano-Soto ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 RICHMOND, Calif. - One by one supporters of Occupy Richmond stood at the microphone and spoke their minds in front of Civic Center Auditorium on Veterans Day. More than 90 people attended the Occupy Richmond rally and shouted together, “We are the 99 percent!”

Organized by a coalition of allies including the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), the issues at hand in the rally were wide ranging. Speakers shared stories of unemployment, foreclosed homes, homeless families, a broken education system and the need to incorporate youth and immigrant communities into Occupy Richmond.

Twenty-four year-old Luis Chacon, a Richmond High alumnus and Richmond resident since 2002, drove from San Jose to Civic Center in order to represent his family in the movement against economic inequality. Chacon is currently enrolled at San Jose State’s graduate school, studying Mexican American Studies.

In his speech to the crowd, Chacon addressed the need to outreach and mobilize high school youth into Occupy Richmond spoke about how inequalities in education are tied to Occupy Richmond. “I have more friends in the military than I do in my master’s program. Schools are in crisis.” said Chacon.

Chacon encouraged youth to speak out, saying the local movement must do a better job of letting students know that they will be safe and respected when they share their own concerns and opinions. “Share your struggles," he said.  "If people discount your opinion and your struggle, let them know that’s why youth are not coming (to Occupy Richmond.)”

In a later interview, Chacon said the Occupy Richmond movement, in addition to its larger agenda of wealth inequality and divestment from the banks, has to address local issues affecting Richmond’s large immigrant and undocumented communities of color. “(We need to) have them share, have them tell us what they need from us; what we can do with them, how we can build and mobilize with them,” said Chacon.

Addressing the home foreclosure crisis that plagues Richmond, Silvia Ledezma told the crowd about losing her home of seven years in the neighboring community of El Sobrante. In 2009, Ledezma became disabled due to a work related injury. According to Ledezma, the financial group managing her home loan, AFG/Springfield Financial, intimidated her and pressured her to get a job despite being injured. She was counseled by an AGF officer to short-sale her home.

In her documents from AGF, Ledezma discovered that she received no tax forgiveness on her 10-99C form. Ledezma quickly called the company to make a correction, but the delay caused Ledezma to miss the tax-filing deadline. Ledezma now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Point Richmond. It is a drastic difference compared to her El Sobrante home which had a yard with 11 fruit trees. “There has to be a change in how the banks do business with us,” said Ledezma. The experience has left Ledezma scarred. “I don’t feel like buying a house. I don’t trust the system anymore. I don’t trust the banks anymore. Even if I have the means to buy a house…it doesn’t appeal to me anymore.”

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin also spoke to the crowd, referencing Richmond’s most famous “1 percent” corporation, Chevron.   Despite a number of community grants and contributions the company has made to the city, McLaughlin said Chevron’s generosity is false and not at all on par with the contributions she believes they should be making to the city.

McLaughlin cited Chevron’s recent tax property appeal, which would refund $150 million to the company, as an example of corporate greed. McLaughlin said Chevron and Richmond do co-exist, but Chevron must do right. Mayor McLaughlin is proposing a resolution that Chevron withdraws its appeal.

In addition, the mayor reminded the crowd that Richmond residents have for years raised the same issues now being brought to the foreground by the Occupy Movement. Richmond is a city that knows pain and is no stranger to challenging corporations, she said. Richmond Progressive Alliance member Andres Soto agreed, saying that Occupy Oakland and San Francisco movements are playing catch-up to Richmond. While not done under the media’s eye, Soto noted, Richmond deals with impacting inequalities systematically, through council meetings, resolutions and local elections.

Mayor McLaughlin was criticized for supporting an Occupy Movement demonstration, and especially for attending Occupy Richmond on Veterans Day. The West Contra Costa Times released an editorial Saturday condemning MacLaughlin for not setting aside her “hard-core politics for just one day” to honor veterans.  A handful of veterans attended the demonstration, speaking in support of Occupy Richmond.

MacLaughlin stands firm on her position. “I embrace the Occupy Movement and of course, Occupy Richmond,” the mayor said. McLaughlin counted the Santa Rosa City Council’s action of issuing protest permits as an approach that is similar to hers. “That’s the kind of relationship elected officials should have and certainly the kind of relationship I have with Richmond. It’s different from how it was approached in Oakland, and I am clear and consistent on where I stand.”

]]> San Francisco's Homeless Black Youth Invisible tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7949 2011-11-14T09:00:00Z 2011-11-14T23:54:51Z Peter Schurmann ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=64 SAN FRANCISCO – At 18, Valerie Klinker was kicked out of her grandmother’s house in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. Despite being without a roof, alternating from parks to cars to SROs, Klinker says she never identified as homeless, a fact that, in the eyes of the city, made her all but invisible.

Indeed, advocates for homeless people here say there is a growing number of young African Americans who, like Klinker, are becoming homeless as the ongoing recession and nationwide trend of urban black flight erodes access to traditional safety nets. It’s a trend, they add, that’s happening largely under the city’s radar.

“Today, 55 percent of [our clients] are black, compared to 1998, when that number stood at about 15-20 percent,” said Rob Gitin, director of At the Crossroads (ATC). The outreach program, based in San Francisco’s Mission District, primarily serves transitional age youth (TAY) between the ages of 18-24, too old for foster care but too young for many of the city’s homeless programs.

Falling Through the Cracks

Coming from historically poorer neighborhoods in the city or from communities across the bay, such as Oakland and Richmond, many young people shy away from identifying as homeless, Gitin explained.

“But if you ask them where they’re spending the night,” he noted, “most couldn’t say.” In large part that’s because the people they once relied on, such as family or friends, are no longer in a position to help, or just aren’t there anymore.

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, the recession has inordinately affected blacks and Latinos. African Americans have seen a widening of the income gap compared to whites from 11 percent in 2004 to 20 percent in 2009. U.S. Census figures for 2010, meanwhile, show that San Francisco’s black population has plummeted from 12 percent to just over three percent, mirroring trends nationwide.

“That stable aunt is no longer capable of providing for these people,” said Ivan Alomar, who grew up in the Mission District and has worked as a counselor with ATC for six years. As a result, he said, a growing number end up without a roof over their head, homeless in all but name and invisible to city residents and service providers.

“It’s possible the count missed them,” acknowledges Noelle Simmons, referring to the city’s biennial tally of those who are homeless, required of all jurisdictions that receive federal funding for homeless services.

Simmons, deputy director of policy and planning with San Francisco’s Human Services Agency (HSA), which is responsible for tracking the city’s homeless population, said volunteers simply identify those who are visibly homeless on the street, or are staying in shelters.

And that is a problem, said Alomar, who observed that most young blacks struggling to keep a roof over their heads “don’t look homeless” and “don’t use the word homeless” to describe their situation.

The latest count from January 2011, put San Francisco’s homeless population at around 6,400, a slight decline from two years ago. Four in 10 were black, compared with one-third, who were white, and only one in eight, who were Latino. Simmons noted, however, that the large proportion of homeless African Americans here consisted of males between ages of 35 and 51, well beyond the TAY range.

Fewer Resources

“White kids have known stability, while Hispanics can rely on the support of family,” explained Alomar. But he added that in the black community, becoming homeless is simply moving “from one form of instability to another.”

Klinker, now a video editor and reporter with New America Media, said her grandmother kicked her out of the house on the suspicion that she’d gotten involved with drugs. Her mother wasn’t around to care for her.

“I remember walking by people’s doors in the SROs and seeing the occupants masturbating or shooting up,” she recalled, referring to the single-room occupancy hotels common in low-income areas.

Despite her situation, Klinker, who now lives with her two kids and partner in the city's Hunters Point area, said she hid her homelessness from those she knew. “I didn’t want pity,” she stated, adding that she tried to keep up her appearance.

“There’s a hell of ‘em out there, and they look like me,” Klinker emphasized, gesturing to her crisp hoodie top, jeans and sneakers, standard fare for most youth here.

Simmons said that while HSA is the city’s main social service agency, it deals mainly with adults and families, leaving it to private organizations to care for youth in situations such as the one Klinker experienced.

But according to Amy Lemley, these organizations are “MIA in the advocacy arena.”

Lemley is policy director with the John Burton Foundation, which, through its Homeless Youth Capacity Building Project, is looking to bolster the organizational and fundraising capabilities of the state’s homeless youth service providers.

“In California, 5,000 kids age out of foster care every year,” she said, adding that out of this number, 30 percent are African American. “They are being discharged from a system that does not have the resources to plan well for their transition,” she noted, adding that the 20 percent unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds is the “highest since the state began keeping track.”

Nevertheless, she said, there are fewer resources now for homeless TAY youth than there ever were before, and many in the homeless-advocacy field see the programs that are out there as “second rate.”

The result, said Lemley, is that “almost no public funding” goes to these providers.

Youth “Growing More Desperate”

“It’s a trend we’ve seen over the last couple of years,” said Toby Eastman of Larkin Street Youth Services, speaking of the rise in homeless African American youth. Like Gitin and Lemley, Eastman said that the most pressing need for many of these individuals is stable housing.

But Eastman stressed that San Francisco has a “huge bottleneck” of those applying for transitional housing with a waiting list of 70 young people at Larkin. The latest transitional units recently opened in the city’s downtown Tenderloin District. They are targeted to providing housing for youth with severe mental health issues.

In San Francisco’s Bayview district, Aliya Sheriff is a therapist at 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic, which provides local youth with medical and behavioral health services. Although not focused on homeless youth, she said that in recent years she’s seen a “higher need for places to live” among her patients. Some have tried to pool resources in order to rent a place together, she said.

Sheriff also noted that as the recession economy increasingly taxes family resources, many youth are “becoming more desperate.” Stress, sleeplessness and anxiety are on the rise, she said, as Bayview youth wrestle with questions about whether to “go to school, or go look for a job.”

Crime is another option -- whether drugs or prostitution -- for making ends meet in a city where being homeless can often cost as much as staying housed. A night in an SRO usually runs around $60, Gitin points out, while constantly having to eat out for lack of a kitchen inflates what is an already high cost of living. For nights without a roof, he says, there’s the local Carl’s Jr. -- or a long bus ride with no particular stop.

New America Media’s Donny Lumpkins contributed to this article.
]]> "Ad Messages Lie," Says Soda Sucks Winner tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7732 2011-10-18T23:00:00Z 2011-10-19T17:27:57Z Video: Eming Piansay // Profile by: Suzanne Manneh ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Ed. Note: Organized in summer 2011, the Soda Sucks anti-advertising campaign invited youth to “outsmart the soda advertisers.” Soda Sucks awards were contested in four categories: poster, rap/spoken word, video/animation, and street art. Winners range in age from 15 to 21. Five grand prize winners received $1,000 cash prizes. Five young people received honorable mentions prizes of $100 and prizes were also awarded for People’s Choice and a Runners Up in the rap category. Winning projects can be seen here.

RICHMOND, Calif.—William Haynes, 17, confesses he’s been a soda drinker his whole life. Although he doesn’t plan on giving up soda for good, he says he has been substituting more water and juice for soda to prevent health risks he’s learned are linked to high soda consumption.

Earlier this month, Haynes won $1,000 for a video he produced for a statewide public-awareness contest, sponsored by New America Media entitled “Why Soda Sucks.”

“I had an uncanny tenderness, a warmth, a passion for soda--that was, until I did a little bit of research,” he said. His video entitled, “Soda Sucks, Water is Good,” outlines the health hazards associated with soda consumption.

“I heard soda weakens the bloody heck out of your tooth enamel and increases risk for obesity by 1.6 times [for each additional soda above the daily average]",” he said. Many teenagers like him, says Haynes, are large soda consumers and prefer it to most other beverages.

Haynes, who was born and raised in Richmond, Calif., says soda addiction is largely the result of aggressive marketing techniques aimed at teenagers.

“Young people are targets of ads,” Haynes said, “because even though we don’t have that much money, we don’t have to worry about making payments,” such as rent or utilities.

Some of Haynes’ friends recently told him about a commercial for SunDrop, a citrus flavored soda. In the ad, a young woman takes a sip and begins dancing joyfully to a popular rap song. For the duration of the commercial, the girl dances through the streets, on to the beach, disrupting a yoga class and eventually initiating a beach dance party--where everyone is drinking SunDrop sodas with her.

“My friends wanted to see where they could buy it,” he said, “and I think they showed that interest because of the way it was marketed to them.”

Another reason for soda’s high consumption rates among his peers and in his city, Haynes says, is that it is “just so much more available.” “Richmond is a food desert,” he states. “You can go down the street and easily get a two-liter bottle of soda at the gas station. Water and juices--they’re available, but not as much and in smaller quantities.”

Haynes noted that his family purchases a lot of food from the dollar store, because of the lack of other markets in Richmond. “I made an oath to myself not to eat any of that,” he said, adding that both his parents have high blood pressure.

Haynes has his own YouTube video channel, WilliamHaynesTV, where since 2009, he has produced and uploaded 67 videos that address issues ranging from climate change to peer pressure and youth culture.

Using comedy is key, he said. “Jokes seem to be more memorable--I call it activist comedy.”

Haynes says his parents think that his YouTube channel is a phase, that “some teenagers join gangs, others make YouTube videos.” “But it’s not a phase. This is something I’ll do the rest of my life, maybe not on YouTube, but somewhere,” he said.

Haynes started college this fall in Southern California, where he is studying film. He will use his prize money to buy books and equipment.

More from Soda Sucks:

http://www.youtube.com/user/whysodasucks

http://whysodasucks.tumblr.com/

http://www.whysodasucks.com/winners/

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]]> Youth Homelessness on the Rise in Richmond, CA tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7721 2011-10-18T08:00:00Z 2011-10-17T23:42:10Z Continuously over the last four years, Jessica Comstock, 22, has been homeless, relying on a network of local emergency shelters for her survival. She is just one of a growing number of young people between the ages of 18-24 who... Kia Croom ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Continuously over the last four years, Jessica Comstock, 22, has been homeless, relying on a network of local emergency shelters for her survival. She is just one of a growing number of young people between the ages of 18-24 who are slipping into homelessness in the city of Richmond and throughout Contra Costa County.

According to a report issued by West Contra Costa County’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), there were 617 homeless youth between the ages of (14-24) served by shelters in West Contra Costa County in 2010. Of that number, 59 percent (361) were from Richmond. The 2010 countywide figures represent a 37 percent increase from the previous year.

“I’m scared every day of my life,” said Comstock, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’ve experienced a lot of things that are not okay for a young person to experience.”

These transient youth and young adults often describe their experience with homelessness as a revolving door that takes them from the streets, to hospital emergency rooms, to jails and back again – a vicious cycle that can sometimes seem like it has no end in sight.

Looking back, Comstock can identify the factors that led to her becoming homeless. In high school she came out as a lesbian, struggling to come to terms with her sexual orientation while seeking comfort and acceptance from family, friends and peers who were not always accepting. Soon afterward in early 2008, said Comstock, her emotional whirlwind hit an unexpected peak, when her mother suddenly died in her sleep. The death sent Comstock careening into a state of depression. To numb the pain, she turned to drug use: Comstock’s drug of choice? Crystal Meth. The substance abuse would quickly gain momentum, and life as she had come to know it quickly unraveled.

“My dad kicked me out due to my [drug] use,” she said. “He couldn’t watch me kill myself.”

“If it wasn’t for Calli House (a youth shelter) answering the phone at one in the morning… I would have ended my life,” Comstock said sobbing.

Today, Comstock can celebrate being drug-free for 60 days. However, the taste of victory is bittersweet. She is still homeless and estranged from her family. And although she’s proud to be sober, Comstock longs to repair the relationship with her father. In the meantime, she’ll continue to participate in the program at TLP and is holding out hope to find a job and stable housing. One day, Comstock says, she hopes to harness her experiences to help others, as a counselor for homeless youth.

From Foster Care to the Streets

Joanna was 18 years-old and recently emancipated from the foster care system when she first became homeless.

“I was living with my mom (after foster care), but our relationship wasn’t good, so I ended up moving out. I became homeless and eventually had to go to the Callie House shelter,” she said.

For the two years since then, Joanna has been in and out of emergency shelters, motels and abandoned homes.

“I was basically in survival mode—getting what I needed by any means,” Joanna said. “I didn’t have any income coming in, so I would prostitute to get food and money for motels. It was either that, or live in the streets.”

There was no such thing as a typical day for Joanna, who was focused just on getting by, one day at a time.

“We would get up and leave the motel, me and my ex-boyfriend,” she said. “We would just walk and walk. We had nothing to do in the morning. I wasn’t looking for employment and I knew I wasn’t ready for a job. I was just in survival mode. One night, me, my ex-boyfriend and some friends slept in a ‘bando’ -- an abandoned house. It was scary.”

Eventually, Joanna became a client of the Contra Costa County Transition Age Youth (CCTAY) Program. As a CCTAY member, Joanna was able to receive support at the Fred Finch Youth Center in West Contra Costa County. Joanna recalls falling out of communication with the CCTAY program staff on numerous occasions while she was living on the streets, and she credits the persistence and support of her case manager, Jessica Martin, as the thing that helped her turn her life around.

“At times when I was missing, she (Jessica) drove the streets looking for me,” said Joanna. “She didn’t quit. A lot of people would have given up on me, but she didn’t and I’d never had that before.”

Homebound

Life as Joanna knew it was able to change in the blink of any eye, largely because of non-profit community partnerships between the Fred Finch Youth Center and Shelter Inc (both members of the Contra Costa Youth Continuum of Services). The county programs gave Joanna a pathway to move into a partially subsidized apartment, where she is required to contribute 30 percent of her income to rent.
Today, Joanna is the mother of a 10-month-old son, balancing new obligations of motherhood with school. She earned her high school diploma and is currently a student at Contra Costa College. She hopes to one day become a pediatric nurse or physician.

“I’m glad I’m not on the streets anymore,” Joanna said, with a smile that conveyed relief.

Services Can’t Meet Growing Demand

The economy is the primary contributing factor for the countywide increase in homelessness among youth, according to those familiar with the problem in Contra Costa County.

“We hear story after story about how a family lost their housing, or got evicted,” said Jenny Robbins, Director of Contra Costa Youth Continuum of Services.

“The family goes to a friend’s or relative’s house and soon there is not enough space (for the whole family),” Robbins said. “So sooner than later, the oldest youth is the first to go, especially when that youth is not working, when there are behavioral issues involved or when there are untreated mental health problems.”

“There is [only a] small group of beds for this large group of kids who need a home,” he continued.
Contra Costa County, like any other county, has a limited supply of shelter beds and housing vacancies for youth like Joanna and Jessica. Furthermore, the youth served by those programs have complex and diverse needs that exceed the basic services offered such as food and shelter, according to Rosalind Silva, a case manager at Callie House.

“These youth need relationships that offer support and healing,” she said.
]]> Through a Toddler's Eyes -- Growing Up Poor in the Bay Area tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7491 2011-09-29T18:10:00Z 2011-09-29T17:42:19Z Editor's Note: Seventeen-month-old Terreace lives in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco in low-income housing. This is one day in his life with his family in their isolated community. Valerie Klinker, 20, is a content producer at New America... Valerie Klinker ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=621
Editor's Note: Seventeen-month-old Terreace lives in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco in low-income housing. This is one day in his life with his family in their isolated community.


Valerie Klinker, 20, is a content producer at New America Media. This video was produced for Growing Up Poor in the Bay Area, a community forum held by New America Media, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health and Kidsdata.org.

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]]> Growing Up Poor - Bay Area Kids Tell the Stories Behind the Numbers tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7524 2011-09-22T23:05:00Z 2011-09-23T00:11:29Z Text: Viji Sundaram / Video: Min Lee ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 SAN FRANCISCO – The day after the U.S. Census released new data showing that one in four California children lived in poverty, a group of young reporters screened a series of videos examining what it’s like to grow up poor in the Bay Area.

A college dropout with no one to turn to candidly discusses what it means to live out of the storage container she rents.

A young mother looks through the eyes of her 17-month-old son to show what it’s like to live in a housing project in Bayview-Hunters Point.

A teen girl describes her life after her father and brother were deported.

The son of Chinese immigrants considers what it means to grow up in the Tenderloin.

A young Filipina woman talks about the disarray in her family after her partner goes to jail.

A Latina mom living in East Palo Alto describes her struggle to make sure her children eat healthy and don’t go to bed hungry.

Residents of Richmond narrate a slideshow of the liquor stores, trash and toxic sites in their city.

A young white homeless man in the Mission describes the benefits of living “off the park.”

These voices, featured in eight videos and slideshows produced by youth reporters at New America Media and its publications, Silicon Valley De-Bug and Richmond Pulse, document some of the real-life stories behind the epidemic of poverty in the state. They were screened Sept. 14 at the World Affairs Council before a packed room of reporters and health care advocates at a forum for ethnic media, sponsored by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health.

“When people are invisible and don’t have a platform, their stories need to be told,” observed New America Media executive director Sandy Close, noting that “this is the way we get people to care.”

U.S. Census data indicates that more than 6 million people in California, 2 million of them children, lived in poverty last year.

Nearly one-third of the state’s African-American children live in poverty, compared to one-tenth of the state’s Caucasian children, according to Kidsdata, a comprehensive website that tracks hundreds of indicators on the health and wellbeing of children in California, said Andy Krackov, assistant vice president of program and partnerships with the foundation. The website, which currently has about 10 million data points, was launched nearly seven years ago to raise awareness of children’s issues.

The grim statistics reflect a state still suffering from the worst recession since the Great Depression: Nearly half of all kids in California qualify for free or reduced school lunches, according to Kidsdata, and the figure jumps to as much as two-thirds in Southern California counties San Bernardino and Los Angeles.

“Poverty can affect children in so many ways, impacting on their weight, academic performance and health,” said Krackov.

The young videographers – Sean Shavers, Valerie Klinker, Josue Rojas, Jean Melesaine, Justin Li, Ann Bassette, Nancy Ybarra, Karina Guadalupe and Donny Lumpkins – then took the podium and fielded questions from the audience. At least three of them acknowledged that they had drawn material for their videos from their own families.

“I put myself out there ’cause I am not ashamed of being poor,” said Klinker.

“The woman (who lives in a storage container) is my sister,” said Shavers, adding: “A lot of people don’t know what young people (out there) are going through.”


The mulimedia project "Growing Up Poor in the Bay Area" is presented by New America Media and the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health.

]]> 29294610 Fighting Obesity with No Money -- Growing Up Poor in the Bay Area tag:newamericamedia.org,2011://19.7500 2011-09-20T21:44:47Z 2011-09-21T22:43:46Z Editor's Note: Altagracia Hernandez is raising two children with her husband on less than $2,000 a month. Access to affordable, healthy food is a challenge in East Palo Alto, Calif. and both kids are struggling with obesity. Ann Bassette is... Ann Bassette ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=65 Editor's Note: Altagracia Hernandez is raising two children with her husband on less than $2,000 a month. Access to affordable, healthy food is a challenge in East Palo Alto, Calif. and both kids are struggling with obesity.

Ann Bassette is a content producer at New America Media. This video was produced for Growing Up Poor in the Bay Area, a community forum held by New America Media, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health and Kidsdata.org.

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