New America Media - Richmond Pulse

The ‘New Normal’ -- Calif. Youth Giving Up the Gun

2013-03-04T09:00:00Z

Ed. Note: In the debate around gun violence, no one group is impacted and implicated more than youth and young adults. Over the past several weeks NAM youth reporters from across the state have been speaking with their peers about how they experience gun violence in their neighborhoods. Those conversations convey clear gender and regional differences in the way young people experience and think about guns, yet point to an emerging consensus that youth want to see their peers give up the gun; that far from making them feel safer, guns are a root cause of the growing climate of fear and insecurity they feel in the classroom and on the streets.

The following video consists of interviews with students at Jordan High School in Long Beach, who were asked to weigh in on the debate over armed security on school campuses. The two accompanying commentaries offer perspectives from two Bay Area young women, on why young men are the most likely to perpetrate and be victims of gun violence. The sidebar is a collection of youth voices from Merced, Calif.

Young Men With Guns Don't Value My Life
Alicia Marie, San Francisco

I wasn't raised around guns, period. My experience with guns is limited to the fact that they took the lives of my favorite entertainers -- first the singer Selena, who I absolutely adored and wanted to be just like when I got older; later on it was my first crush, Tupac Shakur. So the viewpoint I’ve held consistently ever since I was a child is that guns are evil.

When the boys I was with had guns, they would tell me, "Don't worry, I got my backup in case things go bad." My own brother once told me, "415… 4 every 1 of mine, we taking 5 of theirs." That type of talk didn't appeal to me or make me feel safe -- it actually made me feel that the person saying those words was ignorant and didn't value their own life.

In Merced, Gun Culture 'Heavy'

Alyssa, 19: Growing up, I usually had a relative that was on probation or parole living with us, so that allowed law enforcement to search and seize our house without a warrant. Living in a home where house raids were common, my first experiences with guns began at a young age. My two older brothers are also gang affiliated, so having guns in the house or talk of where to get them wasn’t uncommon.

Kalvin, 17: When I was little, the cops shot at my grandma’s house because of my dad and my uncle. It was like a shoot out. Another time, when I was a baby, a rival gang member shot at my house and a bullet [hit my dad] in the eye -- thank God he’s still living! I don’t care how, but we need to stop gun violence.

Austin, 18: I live in a neighborhood that was [recently designated] Section 8. Last year, a student from Merced High School was murdered in my neighborhood in a shooting. Now with dangers like this, it is necessary for people to get protection legally. This is one of the reasons I plan to own a gun legally when I come of age.

Ana, 16: Nowadays, the only guns I’m aware of are my uncle's. He gets them pretty easy. He also takes my 11-year-old cousin to the gun range with him. I don’t think she should be allowed there. Besides all that, I believe that here in Merced guns are heavy with all the gang violence.

Lisa, 16: I constantly hear gunshots and at school classmates brag about them! One day I was lying down at home when all of a sudden I heard what sounded like wooden planks falling onto each other. My mom and I investigated the house for a bit, then we heard sirens outside. Apparently, someone was shooting at a person standing in front of our house and they missed. What if that bullet went through or shot my cat!

So what would make me think they are going to value mine?

Boys carry guns because they feel they cannot defend themselves on their own strength alone. They believe that since "everyone else has them, I need one too." But why even put yourself in a situation of needing to constantly be on the defensive, feeling like at any moment someone might attack you? If that’s the case, you need to watch who you’re associating with.

When I get off of work, which is usually around 11pm at night, I have to walk through the violent streets of the Bayview neighborhood in San Francisco. Every time a car goes by, I’m thinking, “That car could mistake me for someone else and shoot me." By the time I run home it’s midnight, and I'm exhausted from my thoughts. But I don't feel the solution is to go get a gun or be with a boy who has a gun, to get home safe. It’s not that I think girls are incapable of learning how to use guns. I would just hope that we wouldn't want to use them -- guns have a purpose, and the main one is to take lives or hurt someone. I’d rather take my chances at being safe by not carrying a weapon, but knowing that I won’t unnecessarily or accidentally take away somebody else’s precious life.

As young women, we can play a role in getting men in our community to give up their guns. We have a way of talking and reasoning to make a point, and if we were to explain to our brothers, boyfriends, cousins, uncles, and fathers the benefits of giving up their guns, and help them to do it, we could help curb these senseless murders.

And the point we need to make is this: We have to realize that people in our community have grown accustomed to using guns to settle matters. For example, if you have a headache, the first thing you’re going to want to do is take an aspirin -- it just comes natural. Likewise, guns have become the natural way to defend and settle matters in the streets; the understood way of responding to anger. So, we can make these crimes less frequent by giving the community alternative ways to deal with anger. And in doing so, we can make people who carry guns around seem ignorant and old-fashioned. We can make the alternative the new normal.

Young Men Need Guns to Feel Safer, But They're Not
Keyannie Norford, 17, Richmond

Click, clack, boom! There are a lot of things going on in today’s society, where it seems that guns are a necessity for living day to day, especially in the ‘hoods of Richmond, California, where turf wars, robberies -- even a case of mistaken identity -- can bring you face to face with a gun. But do guns really provide safety? As a girl, I can say I do not believe they make women feel safer. I believe guns are accidents waiting to happen, and they pose a threat like no other.

There are not many women I know of, other than those in law enforcement, that are actually trained to use a gun. Women are capable of learning, but it's all about the will of the individual. She has to want to know how to use it. Whether for protection, survival or any other reason, when it comes down to it, it's an individual choice. Women who own a gun may say, “Well, it’s for protection and if a situation erupts where I need protection, then it will be done.”

In the situations that I’ve seen, though, they didn’t actually use it. They just took it out or held it up to scare the other person. I have seen situations in which young women were nervous to handle a gun. They will be sweating; their hands will be trembling, their fingers twitchy.

Now when it comes to men and boys, guns get justified in many ways. Guns play a part in a man’s status, even though they may have never really handled one. Having a gun seems to be the “cool” and “modern” thing, especially here in Richmond. In reality, most males, young and old, possess guns for protection. I do know someone who protected himself and someone else because he carried. Males are fighting each other everyday over turfs, colors and gang signs, which means they have to protect the ones they care about, as well as themselves. It's almost as if carrying a gun has become a necessity in these boy’s eyes -- some type of unrevealed phobia.

For example, if they didn’t carry a gun, then they’d be afraid and paranoid about everything happening around them, thinking, “If today was the day someone decided to come after me, I'd be defenseless, and that could possibly cost me my life.” For young men, having a gun is the only way to protect themselves in this horrid generation, and it adds to their manhood. They simply need guns to stay on their “Boss Status,” for protection or just to prove a point. Living in the communities we're subject to now-a-days, it's survival of the fittest. There's violence everyday and only the protected live, which is sad, but it happens to be young man’s reality.

I do believe that women can try to influence young men to give up guns and with that, possibly save them from a life of uncertainty. But in today’s society it's just not going to work. The rate of violence is too high among men living the “thug-life “ for them to feel safe without their form of protection. But in the end, boys and men have to want to walk away from the violence as much as a young woman wants to play a role in stopping it before it possibly starts -- which goes to the choice of carrying a gun. I'm not sure exactly how we can get to a community with fewer guns, but I feel that as soon as young people and men see and feel that there is no reason to be afraid and carry weapons, then there will be fewer guns because there will be no need.

This story was compiled by reporters from NAM youth media projects, including Richmond Pulse, We'Ced in Merced, and VoiceWaves in Long Beach. Artwork courtesy of The Beat Within.

WORDS FROM THE WISE: America’s Oldest Park Ranger Brings Black History to Life

2013-02-05T08:20:00Z

Photo: Betty Reid-Soskin

RICHMOND, Calif.--Betty Reid-Soskin is America’s oldest National Park Ranger and one of the most beautiful people I have met in Richmond, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco.

I had the pleasure of meeting her recently as she led a bus tour of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, honoring the women who did factory worked for the war effort.

According to Reid-Soskin, the park is home to the largest concentration of intact World War II historic sites in the country. The tour made several stops at key park sites, while reflecting on the African American home-front experience. Reid-Soskin’s charm, knowledge, passion and personal history made for a very special tour.

Born in Detroit and raised in New Orleans, Reid-Soskin’s family relocated to Oakland in 1927. During World War II she worked as a clerk for Boilermakers A-36, a Jim Crow era, all-black union auxiliary. A black woman who has seen both the end of segregation and the election of the first black United States president, Reid-Soskin is a Bay Area treasure with a keen understanding of local and national history—much of it observed over her 91 years.

Teach History, Warts and All

As the tour bus traveled from place to place — such sites as the Rosie the Riveter Memorial at Marina Bay, the Maritime Child Development Center, the S.S. Red Oak Victory Ship -- the historic buildings, ships and restored sites, along with Reid-Soskin’s narrative, brought the tour to life with stories of blacks and whites, Asians and Native Americans, all living together, not always harmoniously.

Our tour guide didn’t shy away from that imperfect history, filled with racism and inequality, while encouraging her listeners to embrace history warts and all, so the future can learn from the past.

“A black man on the sidewalk in Jackson, Miss.,” she said, recalling the Jim Crow days,” would be expected, by Southern tradition, to step off the curb if a white person approached. That same man would find himself in Richmond, riding in the front of the bus, 10 years before Rosa Parks.”

“Can you imagine what was set in motion here? Under that seriously flawed social system was a situation in which you had white Southerners, mostly sharecroppers, coming here [to Richmond] expecting the continuation of white privilege, and black people coming in with raised expectations. [Think of] the interplay of those people--how to negotiate, getting through each day and completing those 747 ships, and to do it without killing each other.”

Where some might look and see only a history of racial tensions and conflict, Reid-Soskin recognizes seeds of change that are still bearing fruit today.

“They literally set the pace of social change, accelerated it to the point that social change still radiates out of the Bay Area into the rest of the country, because of what happened here. So not only is this the story of Rosie the Riveter, which is the impetus for creating this park, but also of what was set in motion here over that 20-year period between the war and the 60s that changed the course of history. It’s that social history that interests me because it is just an amazing story of social change.”

Her Long View of a Young City

In Reid-Soskin’s long view, Richmond is still a very young city, one made up of strangers. The history of black people in Richmond, particularly, is not yet old enough to have worked its way into school textbooks, she explained, “So the kids have no way to learn what the migration that brought their families to Richmond meant.”

She continued, “The people who were brought here were all required to do a very small part of a very large job [during the war]. So until you can provide context in which people can understand their role in the bigger picture, I don’t think African American people in Richmond understand their importance.”

Reid Soskin sees black history as still being relegated to a subcategory of American history, one that’s confined to 28 calendar days a year: “At some point, we need to move that into the national narrative because we are a part of national history.”

She said her years have brought the wisdom of insights into the very identity of the city she calls home. “Community comes out of shared history, and we [in Richmond] haven’t lived long enough nor shared history long enough with each other to be able to learn from that or have community develop from that.”

She went on, “We are too young as a city, and that’s true of the whole Bay Area. So we borrow things from other cultures at this point or we dogmatically try to cling to that which is black and it keeps us from becoming part of the larger narrative, because we are still searching for identity — both as a people and as a city.”

Reid-Soskin’s great-grandmother, Leontyne Breaux Allen, was born into slavery in 1846 and died in 1948. “When she died it was three years after World War II ended, after my experience in the Jim Crow union hall,” she recalled.

She reflected, “I was 27 when she died, a full grown woman and a mother of two. My own mother was born in 1894 and died in 1995. My mother was 101 when she died. My great-grandmother was 102, and I’m 91. That means that all of this history since slavery happened within the lifetime of three women who knew each other. That’s how fast it goes.”

Shaping History from Experience

Understanding her place in history, Reid-Soskin now feels empowered to bend it to shape, just by her being alive. She feels compelled to share the lessons she has learned along the way with as many as are willing to listen.

“Last December I was invited to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. I was a panelist for three days [at a] conference for 500 people, all white. The hotel where the conference was held at, the Astor Crown Plaza Hotel, just outside the French Quarter.” She added, “My parents could have only entered through the back door, if they had a service or delivery to make. That’s how much change has occurred in my lifetime.”

Reid-Soskin emphasized, “I want us to be able to go back and recognize that process, because in that lies hope for the change that we still need to go through. I know how far we’ve come because I’ve lived long enough to know that. My experience tells me that the arc is bent towards fairness and justice, just as Dr. King said it was.”

'Django Unchained': The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2013-01-05T09:30:00Z

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following two film reviews offer competing perspectives on Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," a movie about a former slave who sets out to free his wife from bondage and exact revenge on a sadistic Mississippi slave owner. The reviewers, Jazmyne Young and Asani Shakur, are both African American youth from Richmond, California, and writers for The Richmond Pulse newspaper.

'Django' Criticisms Are Predictable, Misguided
By Jazmyne Z. Young

In a way, I’d been looking forward to seeing Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, "Django Unchained," before I’d ever even heard of it, since the moment I drove away from the theater so thoroughly entertained by his previous film, the revenge-full "Inglourious Basterds." (If you aren’t familiar with that film, but did see "Django Unchained," you’ve done yourself a great injustice.)

"Inglourious Basterds" -- now there’s a movie where the director took liberties with historical accuracy and was still able to tell a damn good story, all while keeping the spirit of the era (World War II) intact. At the time I’d thought to myself, “Wow, I’m not even Jewish and I still felt a sense of satisfaction when the Nazi’s head got bashed in with a baseball bat… I wish there was a movie like that for Black people!”

I don’t imagine the public reactions to the violence in "Django" will be much different from that of "Kill Bill" – certain women’s groups attacked the film for its scenes of brutality against the lead character, a woman -- or any other number of Tarantino movies. And certainly there were Jewish people who felt that the director’s disregard for historical accuracy in "Basterds" amounted to nothing less than blasphemy.

Speaking of historical accuracy, I can’t help but compare "Django Unchained" to another movie circulating theaters right now, Seteven Spielberg’s "Lincoln." If the historical inaccuracy of Django upsets you, the perceived truths in Spielberg’s latest film concern me just the same. At least Quentin Tarantino didn’t run from the uncomfortable, brutal, savage nature of American slavery, whereas Steven Spielberg turned it into a matter of rhetoric and policy. All things considered, with awards season approaching in Hollywood, I’d rather spend my money to boost the ticket sales of a film like "Django" than "Lincoln."

Still, it’s only natural that all Black people will not receive "Django Unchained" with open arms. It doesn’t help that our most highly respected filmmaker has publicly boycotted the movie, saying it is disrespectful to his ancestors.

Ironic, because Spike Lee is actually the reason why I became a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work in the first place. (Remember Tarantino’s cameo appearance in the Lee film, "Girl 6?") My read of Lee’s disdain for "Django" is that it has less to do with the film itself – after all, he refuses to see it -- and more about his own current position in Hollywood, considering that (1) people aren’t seeing his movies like they used to (Who do you know that saw "Red Hook Summer" or "Miracle at St. Ana?") and (2) if Spike Lee were to try to make a film like "Django," it would never get the same financial backing and support from Hollywood that Tarantino enjoyed, let alone a nationwide release on Christmas Day. Not even with Barack Obama in office do I think that would ever happen.

As for the film’s generous use of the n-word, it was a Spike Lee character (played by comedian Paul Mooney) in the film "Bamboozled" that admitted, “I say nigga 50 times a day; it keeps my teeth white.” We are so subjected to gratuitous use of the n-word that it’s laughable this film would be regarded as anything more than a spec in an n-word-filled sea. If I’m not mistaken, Kanye West & Jay-Z’s summer anthem was called what? Who was in Paris? That’s the same musician (Jay-Z) seen rubbing shoulders with our beloved Black president on the campaign trail. So please, spare me the need to reiterate a count of how many n-bomb’s get dropped in "Django Unchained."

In critiquing "Django," it’s important to also keep in mind that no man is an island, including Tarantino. His new film was produced by Reginald Hudlin, also the producer of the Black animation series, "The Boondocks." Remember the George Lucas film, "Red Tails?" (I know, I tried to forget it, too.) It was produced by Aaron McGruder, creator of "The Boondocks" franchise. Yet we saw how "Red Tails" turned out -- it had none of the edge of "Boondocks." Now look at "Django Unchained." Samuel L. Jackson’s character might as well have been named Uncle Ruckus (a "Boondocks" character). It is clear to me that Hudlin (also the producer of “Boomerang” and “House Party”) brought the same sensibilities that helped make "The Boondocks" so edgy and satisfying, to the decisions that ultimately made "Django Unchained" such a cinematic success.

So at this point it’s safe to say that if you don’t appreciate the sarcastic humor of "The Boondocks"; or if you thought "Kill Bill" was too bloody and sexist; or if you just couldn’t accept the fact that Tarantino’s imagined group of "Inglourious Basterds" snuffed out Adolf Hitler in a movie theatre, then you will probably never appreciate "Django Unchained" for what it is, and may quite possibly even write it off as something that it is not.

But for my part, I'll just say thank you, Mr. Tarantino. Thank you, Mr. Foxx. Thank you, Ms. Washington -- you're so beautiful, I cried every time I saw you on that screen, from your sheer beauty to the intense plight that was all too familiar to our ancestors. Thank you Mr. Jackson, for reminding us what a real Uncle Tom is. "Django Unchained." See this movie.

Entertaining, But Film Misses Opportunity to Inspire
By Asani Shakur

The movie "Django Unchained" was an exceptionally entertaining and courageous love story – that totally lacked inspiration. Judging by the previews, I’d developed a notion that it was a story inspired by the life of Nat Turner, or some other rebellious slave. I was wrong. In the end, "Django" just didn’t turn out to be the hero I had in mind.

Yes, he showed bravery and determination to get his wife back, but not without the help of Dr. Schultz, the German dentist character who, in my opinion, stood out much more than Django did as the film’s hero -- which I found ironic, being the movie was promoted as a slave hero film. After all, he freed Django, paid him favorable wages, and crafted the plan that helped lead Django to his wife. Not to mention, he taught Django how to fight, paid $12,000 to get Django’s wife out of slavery, and expressed compassion for the victim of what was the most heart wrenching scene in the movie, where a slave is depicted being torn apart at the limbs by dogs. In those times, for a white man to do such things for a black man showed a rebel spirit and tenacity that makes him my favorite character in the movie.

The use of the "n-word" did not bother me. Yes, it was used excessively. However, knowing a thing or two about history, it was no surprise. Not to mention the fact that the word "nigga" is commonly used in our communities and music, sometimes as a term of endearment (although I personally don't agree with this). More curious to me is why the word "nigger" -- more commonly used back then by whites as a slur – seemed to have been replaced with "nigga” in the film, which may or may not have been intentional.

I didn't leave the theater feeling any sense of anger toward whites, as I’d heard some mention. Maybe because the entertainment outweighed the outrage, and also because I went into the movie theater already with a solid knowledge of our history, so I was prepared for the degrading scenes, the use of the n-word, and other diabolical practices that were a common way of life back then. Plus, we can't get more offended by a fictional movie than by what's actually going on in our communities, with the way we view and treat each other.

Yet despite it all, I left disappointed. Again, not because the movie wasn’t good -- all of the actors did an amazing job -- but rather because there was no message of substance to be found in the entertainment; nothing motivating to leave you inspired, nothing that would help uplift our communities or humanity in general.

Bay Area Dreamers Organize With Unexpected Impact

2012-12-08T08:55:00Z

RICHMOND, Calif.—Immigration issues, such as President Obama’s program to defer deportation for undocumented youth pending wider reforms, usually aren’t associated with Richmond, Calif. Across the Bay from San Francisco, Richmond has long been seen as a largely African American city in an otherwise conservative county doted with bedroom suburbs serving Oakland and other urban communities. But a new reality has dawned in town.

Recent activity helped sharpening the area’s focus on it growing Hispanic community. For one thing, energized Latino community groups working with black churches and other African American organizations got out enough voters in the county to reverse the typical anti-tax atmosphere by delivering enough voters Nov. 6, to give Gov. Jerry Brown one of his biggest county victories in passing Proposition 30, the new tax measure for state education.

Richmond’s CLOUD

The rising Latino presence in Richmond was evident on a recent Monday evening in November at the office of Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization (CCISCO). Meeting there were members of Community Leaders Organizing Undocumented Dreamers (CLOUD), who gathered to assist those interested in submitting an application for the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The landmark DACA program, announced by President Obama last summer, allows undocumented young people who, among other requirements, arrived in the United States before they turned 16 and were still under age 31 as of June 15, 2012, to apply for a temporary work permit.

Carlos Martinez, 23, who describes himself as “undocumented and unafraid,” is one of the founders of CLOUD. At the Monday evening gathering, he sat at a table, ready and waiting for people to arrive. CCISCO helped to form CLOUD to educate the city’s immigrant community about the details of the new federal program, and to assist them in their applications.

Martinez fell in love with the community after moving to the Bay Area three years ago for college and moved to Richmond last year.

“I used to live in San Francisco and Daly City, but I didn’t feel connected to the community,” Martinez said. But a friend of his lived in Richmond and recommended it as a place he could call home. Following his friend’s advice, Martinez soon went to check it out.

“On 23rd Street, I saw the taco trucks and the Mexican stores and I was like, I wanna live here. [These are] my people.”

Seeing Richmond’s Potential

He ended up relocating, and soon began to feel like part of the community. Early on, Martinez began noticing the city’s potential.

Already active in the Bay Area’s undocumented rights movement, Martinez was impressed by the many “really humble people” he came across in Richmond. One such person was Jose Juan, another undocumented youth.

“We’re both undocumented and we both founded CLOUD,” Martinez said.

Both, too, had experience with community organizing. Martinez previously had a hand in the creation of a resource center at City College of San Francisco for students affected by AB109 – California’s prison realignment measure.

Meanwhile, Jose Juan had been active in the Richmond community with such groups as Building Blocks for Kids, where he developed an understanding of the needs of the community. Martinez calls it a perfect formula that led the two to co-found CLOUD.

“We both are going to benefit from deferred action,” Martinez said. “We knew Richmond needed this. We want to let people know that we are here to answer any questions that the community has.”

CLOUD’s main goal is to provide information about Deferred Action, such as who’s eligible and who qualifies, as well as to help community members apply for it. They also want to organize the undocumented community in Richmond, beyond deferred action.

“We see the bigger picture. We see that a lot of the population that lives here in this county is undocumented. Unfortunately, they don’t qualify [for deferred action], so we also want to pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes all of us, not just a few,” Martinez stressed.

To date, CLOUD has hosted two events and volunteered for another sponsored by Catholic Charities. The group gave out information and screened people to see if they qualify for DACA, services they provide to the community for free.

Jackelin Valencia, 20, has lived in Richmond for 14 years, and graduated from Kennedy High School. She got involved with CLOUD at their first event, quickly recognizing the importance of the work they were doing.

“When I was in high school, I was organizing at my school. When I came on to CLOUD,” Valencia said, “ I wanted to get involved and help the undocumented community because I knew there wasn’t another group like this here in Richmond.”

“We’re definitely starting something,” Valencia said. “People are excited, just being part of a group -- they say it feels like a family. As undocumented Dreamers, most of us, we value education--we value family because of the struggle” they’ve all been through.

Deferred Action will allow young undocumented immigrants who meet the age requirements, to apply for work permits, a driver’s license, and avoid deportation for a renewable period of two years. To qualify they must not have a felony or significant misdemeanor on their record, and are either enrolled in school or have the equivalent of a high school diploma,

Understanding that DACA benefits are only temporary, CLOUD plans to stay in touch with the Dreamers they help to apply. “You have a work permit for two years,” Valencia
said. “What about after that? We need immigration reform for everyone. What about our parents? They struggled so much. What can we do for them?”

The Interfaith Impact

Being connected to CCISCO’s deep community network of various interfaith groups across Contra Costa County has enabled CLOUD to make a big impact.

“[CLOUD] was formed by youth leaders from our different congregations and high schools, working with Carlos who was our Dream summer intern and our organizer Claudia Jimenez,” explained CCISCO director Adam Kruggel. He credited The California Endowment with funding Martinez’s position.

Kruggel described CCISCO as a multiracial, multi-generational, interfaith federation of 25 congregations and youth organizations in Contra Costa County. She said they established it to building civic engagement and increasing public participation by those most affected by injustice and inequity in the county.

“Welcoming the stranger and the immigrant is part of our faith traditions,” Kruggel emphasized. “We see the critical importance of standing with immigrant youth, so they can have a seat at the table of opportunity in this country.”

Kruggel quotes the Scriptures: “The stone that the builders refused will be become the cornerstone.”

CLOUD’s civic-engagement work with CCISCO recently made a huge impact in Richmond. On Election Day, their members knocked on 1,000 doors, targeting voters under 30, people of color and other voters with low turnout rates – all of whom contributed to Contra Costa County having the fourth highest voter turnout in the state and the third highest “Yes” vote for Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax measure.

“That’s a real shift in a county which has been more conservative, especially on fiscal issues; as well as in Richmond, where voter turnout is [traditionally] low,” Kruggel observed. “CLOUD helped lead the largest volunteer civic-engagement effort in this election cycle. They played a critical role in the region in reshaping what it means to be a multicultural society.”

Martinez said one of the reasons why CLOUD has enjoyed the success it has in Richmond, is the strong role of the church in community life.

“Most of our undocumented community is either Catholic or Christian. So if you want to outreach for an event, you can ask the priest to make a quick announcement,” he said.

That’s how CLOUD was able to get over 300 people to attend their first program at St. Marks Church -- the announcements at the church made all the difference.

Through CCISCO, Martinez added, “We have also built a collaboration with Catholic Charities of the East Bay, located here in Richmond. They provide legal services for our events. It’s really important. We can provide information but some folks may have a difficult case and we can refer them to Catholic Charities.”

Martinez also noted that the beauty of CCISCO is they don’t just focus on the Latino community -- they also focus on the African American community.

“We need allies [and] CCISCO has been doing a tremendous job. Just connecting those two communities that live here,” Martinez said. He went on, “It’s something that’s new to me and I think [both communities] can do amazing work [together] -- like the campaigns to end mass incarceration and mass deportation. It’s something very powerful.”

Bay Area Dance Instructor Brings Fitness to Local Latinos

2012-12-05T08:20:00Z

Photo: Enrique Duarte leads his Weigh of Life dance exercise class in Richmond, Calif. (NAM/Edgardo Cervano-Soto)

RICHMOND, Calif.--Like a grand marshal leading a parade, Mauricio "Enrique" Duarte leads his Weigh of Life class in exercises – squats, followed by quick bursts of running in place -- choreographed to hard-banging reggaeton music and club beats.

Duarte, 25, claps in rhythm to motivate the women in the class, all of them Latina and diverse in age. On a raised platform overlooking the class, Enrique projects an energy and a smile that encourages his students.

"He's inspiring to us", said Maria, a co-instructor and former student of Duarte's. "He knows how to relate to people, be a leader and ask people so they can collaborate."

Unrushed Despite Frantic Schedule

After class, Duarte cools down. He is of average height and build, with brown amber eyes. A piercing on his bottom lip gives an edge to his friendly attitude. After making his way to his car, Duarte stashes his gym bag in the back seat with a couple of towels. He has another fitness class in less than an hour and may be using all the towels.

Duarte has a frantic schedule, but he never seems rushed. Instead, he enjoys it -- the dancing, the fitness, the people.

"Dancing is my life. I am happy I am able to dance and motivate others through dancing,” he explained.

For Duarte dancing has always been a constant. His home, he recalls, was his first dance studio. Born in San Francisco to Salvadoran parents, Duarte grew up in Richmond and San Pablo in a large family and with a lot of music.

"We're very family oriented -- always having parties every weekend. That's where the dancing comes from," Duarte noted. The mixture of music at home, from his parent’s to his own, ranged in style from such cumbia bands as Sonora Dinamita and Sonora Margarita, to ‘90s hip-hop, like Lil Kim and Missy Elliot, to the classic reggaeton of El General.

According to Duarte, his love for dance was a result of a sheltered childhood. His parents forbade him and his two younger brothers from going outside—except to play soccer. Unlike his brothers, though, Duarte had no interest in the sport, so he stayed indoors.

While Duarte wished he could have spent more time outside, he recognizes the reason for his parent’s strict style. “Back in our parent’s country, children were free or didn’t have structure so they got into a lot of trouble. I think our parents didn’t want us to grow up too fast or make any mistakes.”

Yet, this limitation didn’t mean Duarte had no fun. His father built a playground complete with swings and slides in the back yard for the children.

“Every kid from the block, kids I didn't even know came over to the playground,” Duarte said. Plus, there were always the family parties to look forward too.

Fulfilling His Dream

Enrique also found inspiration in his cousin, eight years his senior, who would dance and exercise indoors. He remembers she was the one who introduced him to dance and inspired him to dream of being a choreographer for Missy Elliot.

In school, Enrique was a good student but in high school, he said, he got sidetracked. He transferred from Richmond High to Pinole Valley High, and later to Martinez Adult School. He describes it as a rough period, one in which he discovered his true friends and realized that he had his family’s support. During this time, Duarte said, everything in his life was up in the air, but “dancing was the one thing I never got sidetracked from."

At 18, he would enter dance battles – it was the peak of the Bay Area Hyphy Movement -- and would drive to Manteca and Los Angeles for dance auditions. The experiences, he said, made him wiser. He re-organized his goals and began working on fulfilling them.

Duarte’s work in the community started in 2009, when Richmond’s RYSE Center permitted him to set up his dance space there. Soon after he positioned glass mirrors in the studio, his dancing drew attention and he started to teach youth and organize functions for the center. He also started teaching dance exercise at Weigh of Life, where his class quickly became very popular.

In addition to his work schedule, Duarte is also a student at Contra Costa College, earning an AA degree in dance. This month he plans to coordinate a toy drive, something he has been doing for several years. If that weren’t enough, he has plans to open his own dance studio in San Pablo in 2013, and is creating original choreography with his own dance troupe.

Making a Difference

Although Duarte’s fitness work in the community goes largely unnoticed, there is no question it is making a difference in the lives of the people he mentors. Helping his students lose weight and live healthier lifestyles, he said, motivates him to continue his work.

Among his success stories is one student of his lost 40 pounds over the course of a year. She was happy because she was able to attend a reunion feeling confident, Duarte said.

Duarte knows the positive benefits of fitness first hand. "I used to be overweight myself," he admitted. "Growing up, you begin to feel self-conscious, for example, not being able to take your shirt off. But the more I started dancing and fitness became part of my life, I became comfortable and it wasn't about appearance anymore."

With a laugh Duarte remembered his first class as an instructor for Weigh of Life three years ago and 50 pounds heavier. "They must have asked themselves, who is this gordito [or “little fat guy”] coming to teach us about fitness?”

Duarte’s success with Weigh of Life is evidence of a growing fitness culture in Richmond. A city of 103,700 people, Richmond’s obesity rates are alarmingly high, especially among people of color.

According to Contra Costa County’s Health Department, 58 percent of Richmond adults are overweight or obese. Among children, the number is only slightly lower, at 50 percent. Duarte believes the city needs to push the culture of health and active living to the forefront of the discussion, especially with children who are experiencing high rates of obesity-related illness, such as diabetes.

"The city can bring in dance fitness to schools, or have more fitness activities available. A good start is supporting programs like Weigh of Life and local health businesses like the karate studios on 23rd street," Duarte said.

Even though he recognizes that fitness can be intimidating to some, Duarte insists everyone can be fit, he emphasized the too often people mistakenly think being healthy equates to being thin.

“One thing I tell everybody when they ask me what they can do for a diet is, “Eat a pupusa, have some horchata, but exercise! Like everyone else, I love to eat, but no matter if you do weight lifting, running or dancing. Stay fit!"

Enrique Duarte teaches dance fitness three times a week at Weigh of Life. For more information on Enrique's classes and about Weigh of Life, call 510-323-3052.

Edgardo Cervano-Soto writes for the Richmond Pulse, a program of New America Media.

In Richmond, English Learners Get Assist From Volunteers

2012-10-28T08:00:00Z

"Every good story has a conflict,” says the teacher as she draws a story plot map for her students. Arleth and Saul, both 14 and freshmen at Richmond High, follow along, drawing the jagged map onto their notebooks, labeling the exposition, rising action and climax. The lesson has Arleth, Saul and 25 of their English Language Development (ELD) Level 4 classmates learning, and in some cases, re-learning the basics of writing.

ELD students, also known as English Language Learners, are the fastest growing group of students in American public schools. A 2008 study from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank, estimated 5.3 million K-12 students in the United States are English Learners, with 1.6 million in California alone.

ELD students consistently rank among the lowest in state test scores, high school graduation and college attendance rates. What’s more, the demographics of this population are changing dramatically.

One commonly held perception is that all ELD students are immigrants and non-native English speakers. However, that is far from reality. The Urban Institute in a 2005 study found that more than half of ELD students in high school are native-born Americans, with Spanish speaking students comprising the majority.

At Richmond High School, Saul and Arleth are among the 45 percent of students classified as English Language Learners.

Saul, whose parents are both from Mexico, was born in Washington but relocated to Richmond with his family. Of average height, his shin high socks suggest an interest in sports, specifically soccer. He doesn’t read much outside of school, he admits, other than news of his favorite video game and skateboard magazines. It's not that he hates reading, says Saul, it just “depends if I'm in the mood."

Arleth was born in Berkeley and her parents are also from Mexico – her mother moved to the United States at the age of 14 and graduated from Richmond High. A petite teenager and the oldest of five siblings, Arleth has an interest in pencil drawing and photography. Outside of class, she writes often, usually letters to family. It’s one way she’s maintained contact with a cousin soon to be released from juvenile detention in Reno. Arleth has confidence in her writing abilities, and says she feels some resentment about being in ELD classes for multiple years. "I didn't learn much in middle school or have anyone look over my writing," she says.

In addition to ELD 4, the students – 27 in all – are enrolled in English 1, a kind of writing and reading boot camp. The heavy emphasis on language classes means ELD students can’t take elective courses.

Principal Julio Franco is determined to improve the rate of learning for ELD students at Richmond High. Recently, Franco and Dr. Bruce Harter, superintendent of West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD), contracted with Writer Coach Connection (WCC), a one-on-one, in-classroom mentoring program that matches students with trained volunteers.

In October, WCC celebrated its expansion to Richmond High with a ribbon cutting ceremony, and 93 resident volunteers were recruited to mentor five ELD 4 classes -- approximately 150 students over a one-year period. "We wanted to begin with ELD 4 because we have a lot of students who stay in ELD for a long time," says Franco. " And I know that they want to get out and be in regular classes."

Writer Coach Connection got its start at Berkeley High School in 2001 and has quickly expanded -- today the organization operates in a dozen schools throughout the Bay Area. Led by Robert Menzimer, WCC has received accolades for its success in improving student language comprehension, but their work in Richmond marks the first time the organization has mentored a sizable English Learner population.

Given the scope of work – WCC employs only 24 part time staff to operate a program serving three counties and a dozen schools in the Bay Area -- it is a modest organization. According to Menzimer, the operating budget of WCC is close to $390,00 with the cost of one school being $23,000. The district pays what it can, while WCC pays the remaining cost with grants and individual donations. The organization relies heavily on volunteers.

The volunteer turnout in Richmond, says Menzimer, was a pleasant surprise. "When you scratch the surface of this community, what you find underneath is an amazing group of people who care deeply about the schools and the city. And if you can tap into that fierce dedication of making the lives of students and people in the community better, you are really on to something," he says.

After attending a training workshop, volunteers are paired with students, with whom they conduct one-hour feedback sessions on assignment during class time. According to WCC, having the in-class visit deters the stigma of students seeking writing help -- the service is brought to them. Shelli Fried, volunteer coordinator for WCC, said WCC does not create a new curriculum but acts as support for teachers and students. "Our role is to help the student be more successful in understanding and completing the assignment they are given," she says. "We want to help build their confidence as they learn to write, creatively and critically."

According to Fried, Richmond volunteers were quick to sign up as mentors. The majority of volunteers are retired, with a few college age students. Fried expects the generation gaps will dissolve and bonds will be formed once the work begins, despite any cultural or generational differences.

WCC volunteers have visited Richmond High now at least three times. The first encounter was awkward, says Saul. "(My coach) was a stranger, and I had forgotten my essay. We didn't talk much," he says. Despite this initial awkwardness, Saul says the coach has been very helpful in clarifying his summaries. It is a first for Saul to have anyone read and comment on his paper.

Never having personal feedback is a common occurrence, says Franco. "Sometimes students don't get praise that they can write, that they can express themselves. Now, when people from the community tell you that your writing is as good as anybody’s, that gives you more confidence, says Franco. According to Saul, the sessions have made him feel better about writing.

For Arleth, the Writer Coaches provide a chance to vindicate herself and prove her writing abilities. Enrolled in ELD since elementary, she is itching to pass ELD 4, and she plans to take advantage of the one-on-one connection. Arleth had to repeat ELD 3 in 7th grade, and she often thinks of what could have been if she had only passed the course.

“I couldn't pass my class, and I wanted to so bad,” she says. Asked what elective would she have chosen if not for ELD 4, Arleth responds quickly: “Art.” She has every intention on taking the elective, next year.

The Writers Coach Connection is looking for additional volunteers. For more information visit, www.writercoachconnection.org.

Will Youth Bubble Up for Richmond, CA “Soda Tax” Vote Despite Industry Millions to Fizzle It?

2012-10-07T08:00:00Z

RICHMOND, Calif. – Nai Saechao, a first time voter, says she hasn’t made up her mind about Richmond’s so-called soda tax, set to appear on the Nov. 6 ballot. While she admits obesity is a problem, like other residents here she’s not convinced taxing soda is the solution.

“There’s a lot of things that contribute to the obesity problem,” Saechao said. “If people learn to moderate their intake, it will help.”

A Penny Per Ounce

Measure N calls for a penny-per-ounce tax on all sugar-sweetened drinks sold in the city.
First proposed in May, the idea has split the community, with small business owners and community health advocates among those squaring off over the measure’s potential health and financial impacts.

Campaign-spending figures released Frdiay show that the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes, a group backed by the Washingto, D.C.-based American Beverage Association (ABA), has put a whopping $2.2 million so far behind the No on N efforts. The industry hopes to convince voters like Saechao to oppose the proposal.

“If people really want all that soda,” said the 18-year-old, “they’re going to buy it regardless. I don’t want the local businesses to be hurt from it.”

According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Big Soda” companies hope to sour residents on the idea of the tax. ABA has described it as “unfair to the community” and “misguided.”

If it passes, Measure N would be the first such tax in the United States and an unprecedented step toward greater government involvement in the ongoing effort to combat obesity. In September, New York City passed a controversial ban on sugary drinks over the16-ounce size, while the Southern California city of El Monte has a similar initiative on its ballot.

Over Half of Children Obese

Over half of Richmond children (51 percent) are overweight or obese. And the community finds itself front and center of the national debate about how far government should go in discouraging the consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks. Proponents of the tax have gone so far as to equate soda to cigarettes, in terms of the danger it poses to public health.

“No on Measure N” billboards and advertisements, meanwhile, have popped up all over town, most noticeably along the main commercial strip of 23rd Avenue.

Manuel Floriana, 19, isn’t registered to vote. But he’s all for the tax “because it will not only help kids in the community, but help adults [choose] healthy alternatives. [Plus] I heard [the revenue] is going toward parks.”

Estimates put the potential funds generated by Measure N at roughly $3 million annually. A separate ballot measure, Measure O, would lead to the creation of a nonbinding advisory committee tasked with steering the funds generated by Measure N toward health education and other efforts to prevent obesity and diabetes, including the construction of athletic fields across the city.

Karina Carmona of Taqueria La Estrella on 23rd Avenue doesn’t agree with the tax, but said if its something business has to comply with, then they will do it. "The reasons they give, for children and more parks, we think it’s more about creating the money. If it goes to what they say, then I will feel better about it,” Carmona said.

"Everything for the consumer is going up, but wages are not going up. [The cost of] produce is going up, and people are still losing their jobs and homes," she added.

City Council member Jeff Ritterman, who first introduced Measure N, said the hope is that just as cigarette sales have become less and less profitable in Richmond’s corner stores, healthier beverage options will replace sugar-sweetened beverages over time.

“We would like to transform our economy,” Ritterman said. “We want to maximize the healthy things our economy produces and have more profits go the to healthier option.”

Largest Source of Excess Calories

In a report prepared for the Richmond City Council by the Contra Costa County Public Health Department, data from 2010 show that more than half of children in Richmond are overweight or obese.
The report also defines a sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) as a nonalcoholic beverage, carbonated or noncarbonated, that contains added caloric sweeteners. Included in this definition are traditional sodas (such as Coca-Cola, Sprite), sports drinks (like Gatorade) and “energy drinks.”

The report also identified SSBs as the “largest single source of excess, non-nutritional calories in the American diet,” and concluded that there exists “a strong correlation between obesity and consumption of SSBs.”

Yet even the sobering realty behind these numbers may not be enough to convince some voters that a tax on sugar sweetened beverages is the way to go.

Local business owners say they worry that consumers will choose to go to surrounding cities to shop, causing much needed money to leave Richmond. If Measure N passes, a 16-ounce bottle of soda that now costs $0.99 would rise to $1.15.

Zee Handush owns a smoke shop inside Pacific East Mall, in the Richmond Annex neighborhood, and has been in the tobacco business for over 20 years. For him the soda tax isn’t just a business issue.

“I [began] selling cigarettes for 70 cents a pack, and now I’m selling them for $7 a pack. I’m still in business,” explained Handush. “I’m going to probably spend an extra $5,000 a year, so as a business owner I will be affected. [But] as responsible business owners we should encourage business to sell healthier options.”

Motivating Younger Voters

Tania Pulido, 23, won a Brower Youth Award winner (named for ecological pioneer David Brower) for her local food activism, is a junior at the University of California, Berkeley. She will also vote for the first time this November.

“I boycotted the last election (in 2010),” Pulido said, “[Because] I was upset that Obama was planning to bail out the banks.” But this year is different. “I realize that I have to find a middle ground, plus I really don’t want Romney to win,” she said. “Also, I’m voting because if I want to motivate my peers and friends to vote, then I have to do it too.”

As for Measure N, Pulido is planning to vote yes. She says that if by voting yes on Measure N she can support more soccer fields and education around obesity in the community, she's all for it.

"Parents aren’t taking the steps necessary to keep their children from being obese. The [soccer] fields and education can help break the cycle of obesity in our families,” she explained. "Clearly there is a lack of education around the issue. People know [soda] is unhealthy but they continue to drink it.”

Additional reporting by William Haynes

Soda Tax an ‘Opportunity to Change Richmond’s Destiny'

2012-09-16T08:00:00Z

Ed. Note: Come November residents of Richmond, California will have a chance to weigh in on the national debate over sugary drinks. A ballot initiative would, if passed, impose a tax of one cent per ounce on all soda sold in the city, with the funds intended – though not legally required – for the construction of playgrounds and other health-related facilities. Doria Robinson, a third-generation resident of Richmond, says the tax would help address rates of obesity and other health-related issues in the community that are skyrocket. Taking on soda, she says, would help make Richmond “a better place to live.”

Richmond Pulse: What was your initial response to the possibility of a sugar sweetened beverage tax in Richmond?

Doria Robinson: Actually [City Councilman] Jeff [Ritterman] came to me a couple years ago saying that he was interested in this idea of a soda tax and he was wondering what I thought of it. I started thinking about it and I really started to actually look into the way that we spend our money. The kids that are comin' to my programs buy this $2.00 soda thing every day. They're already spendin' a ton of money on a beverage when they have free water. What's 16 cents on the $1.99 that you already spent for your sugar water? I started to think this could be something really good. It was an opportunity for us to change our own destiny by all throwing in just a little bit.

RP: But is soda really the problem?

DR: If you're going to focus on one thing in particular to make the biggest impact and change on your health, soda is a great thing to focus on. It's the single biggest way that people are taking in empty calories. It offers you nothing. Maybe a little bit of thirst quenching. But sometimes it even makes ya' more thirsty because of all the stuff that's in it.

I am pre diabetic. … Diabetes runs on both sides of my family. When I found out that I had really high sugar levels in high school the first thing I did was stop drinking soda. I just stopped and my glucose levels just immediately balanced out. If you can choose one thing that makes a really big impact, soda is a really great thing to choose.

RP: If it’s so bad, why are so many people drinking soda?

DR: Marketing, marketing and marketing. When I was growin' up, people did not drink soda the way they do now. We had it on special occasions -- picnics and birthday parties, and, ya' know, it was the special thing. People drink it instead of water (now). In fact, they don't drink water. They think drinking water is weird …

RP: Why is this issue of sugar in our diet important to the community right now?

DR: Every year it seems like the kids are getting bigger and bigger. Last year we had to order 4 and 5X t shirts for our summer youth apprentice program. It feels like if we don't change now, all these youths are gonna' just have such intense health problems. And then compound that with all the preexisting poverty and lack of education and whatnot. That's not a world that anyone wants to live in and if we don't say the time is now, it's just gonna get worse and worse and worse.

I feel like there's an empowerment piece that we need to get at … it's like each person has the power to take back their life. If you're struggling and you're uncomfortable and you're havin' real troubles; you don't feel good about your body, you don't have to be the victim of your body. Think about what's the best choice you can make for your health and actually exercise that choice …

RP: What advice would you give to people who want to improve their eating habits and reduce their sugar intake?

DR: I would say start small. Choose one thing that's, ya' know, easy to focus on, easy to release. If you're somebody who usually loves drinkin' your Coke, figure out somethin' else that you really like to drink. Maybe you like smoothies or maybe you try some things. Figure out the thing that you like, that's less harmful. And switch it. And then really enjoy it. Bring it more and more into your life. That’s the way that I've been able to kinda' take back my health … I swing towards being overweight and I have the same struggles as everybody else does, right?

Figure out what those things are in your life, the things that don't leave you feelin' like your gut is gonna' bust, or that you're just so satiated ya' have ta’ take a nap. The things that actually give you energy when you take 'em in. Move towards them, bring them into your life more and push the other stuff out. When we drink sodas we're feeding [them] our lives. We're feeding the soda company our lives. It's not giving us anything. We can't even use the sugar. The energy that comes in, it's too much. Our body can't use it. And it's not giving us anything but a burden. It's giving us a debt of bad health. It actually is putting us in health debt.

Doria Robinson is a third-generation Richmond resident and member of the Richmond Food Policy Council.

Troubled Bay Area Neighborhood Finds Comfort in Growing Own Food

2012-08-31T08:40:00Z

RICHMOND, Calif. -- In the neighborhood known as the Iron Triangle, comfort and serenity can be found at the corner of 6th and MacDonald, where a once-barren lot is now host to chickens, rabbits, beehives, and dozens of blossoming garden beds. In and amongst this thriving hub of life, a burgeoning community has taken root and found peace.

“I definitely feel like it’s a privilege to grow your own food,” shares Lena Henderson, founder and director of The Garden of Comfort and Serenity and daughter of lifelong Richmond activist Lillie Mae Jones. “It keeps you grounded,” says Henderson. “It’s a nurturing environment.”

But it hasn’t always been this way. Two years ago, the roughly 2-acre plot of land was nothing but an abandoned parking lot, where the only things growing were useless weeds and Richmond’s crime rate. But in the heart of the Iron Triangle, long reputed as one of Richmond’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, Henderson’s vision has proven itself resilient, transforming the vacant land into a powerful resource for community growth.

Like most things in life, The Garden of Comfort and Serenity started as a seed.

“First she had the mulch, and then she had the beds built,” explains Annette Howard, who lives adjacent to the garden with three of her daughters and serves as the garden’s co-director.

With input from Richmond’s Youth Build and Self-Sustaining Communities, a non-profit organization, the hard work and commitment of Henderson and Howard has resulted in not only fresh produce, but changed lives.

“People just show up,” Annette explains. “We get all kinds of people that come through and sit down and talk their problems out.”

Neighbors come to plant in the boxes; strangers also come, some to sit silently in peace, some to find an open ear and heart; homeless men and women come and receive fresh food; cars pass with a honk; people pass with a smile.

For longtime residents of the Iron Triangle, the change brought by the garden is palpable.

“I was depressed a lot,” explains Howard, struggling to hold back tears, “and Lena used to tell me to come out, because I had lost everything. She used to come and get me, put me in the garden and work me to death, make my problems go away, because once you’re in the garden, your problems go away.”

Her narrative hovers over the soulful tunes of R&B station 102.9fm, resounding through the solar-powered radio that is virtually always on, a signal to passersby that, according to Henderson, says, “welcome to our garden.”

“It’s really nice and soothing to put your hands in the soil and give all your problems to the dirt,” Howard says. There’s something profound about turning pain and sadness into beauty and life, a magic reaction that here only the garden seems to accomplish -- a positive alternative to other routes so often taken by Richmonders, those of drugs and violence.

Yet the healing powers of the garden are much more than mental and emotional. By offering nutrition, exercise and relaxation, it has worked miracles for the physical health of those involved in the project. Leonard Tally, a long time friend of Annette, was recovering from heart surgery due to two clogged arteries, when Annette got him to start coming to the garden as a place to relax.

“Instead of just sitting at home, it’s more relaxing at the garden,” he explains. “[Annette] would give a lot of vegetables and different stuff for me to take home, and made sure I eat healthy.” The next time Tally went to the doctor, he was told he had made a marvelous recovery.

“It feels good to know that you grew something,” says Lynette, one of Annette’s daughters. “That the stuff you planted… changed something.”

Richmond Co-op Does More Than Just Fix Bikes

2012-08-22T23:23:17Z

RICHMOND, Calif. -- James Johnson, 20, is a bike mechanic. Born and raised in Richmond, Johnson has for years fixed bikes out of his own garage, all the while dreaming of opening up a bike shop where he could work with the proper tools, “without having to use hammers and stuff."

Johnson’s dream became reality less than a year ago when -- along with a group of other young people from Richmond, and under the direction of Brian Drayton, executive director of a non-profit called Richmond Spokes – he launched Spokeshop Bike Lounge, the only bike shop in the city.

“Spokeshop isn’t the regular bike shop,” Johnson said. “There’s not many bike shops where you can come in and instead of buying stuff just hang out, chat with the staff, come use the free wifi, and read bike magazines and stuff in peace, without people bothering you.”

Besides their welcoming atmosphere, Spokeshop has another element that sets it apart from most other businesses in Richmond: It is a cooperative, where all the members are both owners and employees -- although, so far, none of the co-op’s eight members are receiving a salary for their work.

“We are still working out systems and stuff,” Johnson said. “I definitely wanna... get paid, but I’m pretty much satisfied that I actually have my shop, because that is where all my money would have been going anyways.”

With the shop's first anniversary on September 1, members of the cooperative keep on showing up to volunteer their time in order to help it become a successful business.

“It is more like a split of profits,” said David Meza, 20, a co-op member. “We all equally decide what should be reinvested into the shop, and what should be [for] our personal gain. But [we put] the shop first.”

Helping Community, in More Ways Than One

“I like working on bikes because I think it’s a job that really serves the community in many ways,” said Roxana Alejandre, 21, a bike mechanic at the shop.

Alejandre echoes other members, who view the shop and their work as a community service; a way to help Richmond become a better city. Biking, they say, is not only a good way to improve community health by making exercise fun, but also a cheaper way to get around town, find better job opportunities and access better food sources.

“Most [businesses] give opportunities for jobs, but one thing they don’t give you is a way to get to that job,” said Johnson. “But with bicycles, not only are you giving (a person) a job but you are also giving (them) transportation, so you don’t have the excuse of, 'I don’t have a way to get to work’.”

Filling a Need

Spokeshop Bike Lounge is one of a number of projects run by the non-profit Richmond Spokes, the mission of which is to promote social and economic development through cycling.

Drayton, executive director of the non-profit, said he was approached by young people who told him they'd heard that he was "the person to call" if you wanted to grow a bicycle culture in Richmond.

“I came to Richmond and realized that there was no visible bike community, (yet) there is a large underground community of people that just bike until their bike falls apart and then they get another bike." In addition to creating healthy opportunities for youth, he said, "The idea was to get some affordable bike repair here in Richmond and train people to build bikes and maintain bikes.”

In addition to Spokeshop Bike Lounge, Richmond Spokes operates a valet bicycle parking for public and private events, which Drayton hopes will help build more awareness of the burgeoning bike culture in Richmond.

Youth Opportunity

Gerardo Lopez, 12, is the youngest staff member at Spokeshop. He goes to school, but every spare moment he has he spends at Spokeshop helping clients, keeping the store clean and organized, and sometimes assisting the bike mechanics.

“My mom says it’s cool because I can have a lesson in life [about] how to build my own shop and how to do my own business,” Lopez said.

Like every other worker in the shop, Lopez doesn’t receive a salary for his work.

“I don’t really care about the money,” Lopez said. “I just want to help the community. I don’t come here for the money.”

Nonetheless, during the winter break he worked so hard that the other members of the cooperative decided to give him a thank you present, a little black BMX bike he had been eyeing. Now Lopez said he has new friends, three bikes and the experience of participating in the brainstorming that happens at the cooperative.

Members of the cooperative describe the bike shop as an incubator for what could be future youth-led businesses in Richmond.

“I had an idea for a design studio," said Jari Smith, a volunteer at the shop. "I came here and eventually it grew.” Smith now has plans to launch her studio, which will be the first entrepreneurial business to spin off from the Spokeshop co-op.

“If we had a cafe within the bike shop, eventually that cafe is going to outgrow the bike shop and it will be time for them to launch their business,” Smith explained. “Who knows what kind of businesses could grow from that, from people congregating in the cafe, dreaming, creating goals, putting deadlines on those goals and branching out.”

Growing the Ranks

One of the big challenges facing the cooperative, said Drayton, is attracting new members and keeping them active. If a person wants to join, he or she must commit to doing 6 months of volunteer work at the shop, while getting trained by current members.

“In disadvantaged communities, it's hard to incubate people,” Drayton explained. “If it takes 6 months to train someone and they don’t have another source of income, we lose people.”

“As people realize what it is that we are doing, they get passionate about it,” he added. “But we all have personal lives, we all have rent and food and bills and things that rack up, so it is a challenge to stay on top of (everything).”

In the near future, Drayton hopes to find bigger funders that could support a salary structure for co-op members, even while they are in training, to sustain Spokeshop’s model and "keep it going.”

Young Richmond Residents React to Chevron Refinery Disaster

2012-08-10T17:15:01Z

Above: photo by Adam Kruggel

On the night of Monday, August 6, residents of Richmond, California were advised to seek shelter indoors due to a series of explosions resulting in a large fire at the Chevron oil refinery, the largest refinery in Northern California. The fire sent billows of black smoke skyward, which rose high enough to be seen for miles throughout the Bay Area.

Opened in 1902, the oil refinery has long made Chevron the City of Richmond’s largest employer. The refinery has also been blamed for the city’s historically high rates of asthma and other health matters associated with pollution, toxins and industrial waste that is a byproduct of the industry.

Richmond Pulse, a project of New America Media, collected the following blogs and reactions from Richmond residents in the hours immediately following the refinery disaster, which, according to the California Emergency Management Agency, released sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrogen oxide, sulfuric acid and nitrogen dioxide into the air.

Edgardo Cervano-Soto, 22:

When the sirens boomed, I rose from my seat and casually closed the windows. My mom, mentally and physically exhausted from taking care of children all day, asked why I closed the window. Because it isn’t Wednesday, I said (the Chevron refinery sounds a test alarm each Wednesday)… and this is real. She looked at me, confused by time and sound, and finally listened to the sirens.

I led my mom and dad outside our home and we saw the funnel of dark fumes growing. Having lived through this before, we knew the drill. We shut the doors and windows, and placed rags underneath the gaps that we’d failed to fully secure during our house repairs.

Of course, the TV was on. And the phone was ringing off the hook during the peak of the burning. Relatives in San Francisco called and asked if dad (he works near the refinery) had made it home. Dad assured the relatives that he was safe, and joked with friends from work on the phone. The burning was banal like a natural occurrence, yet we left the television on, to witness the act that had caused such a whirlwind of media attention.

The house rapidly became hot and stuffy. I wiped sweat from my forehead, and felt moisture collect on the brim of my tank top. Before the sirens, my mom had been frying fish and it smelled delicious. Now, the heat collected in the kitchen and took over the house with the sound of oil cracking over open fire as its own warning sound.

This house was built in the 1960's and has always had poor ventilation. It traps heat and cold according to the season. Partly out of resignation and dark humor, my sisters and I joked about whether the explosion was a final sign to move out of our home. Over the last year, we’ve been considering a move out of our home, since its worth has dramatically decreased while the mortgage remains high. And the foreclosed homes on our street have only added to the neighborhood's further devaluation. I leaned against the window because it felt cool, and imagined for a moment what it would be like to live somewhere in nature, removed from the flatlands and up high in hills. But even those places catch fire sometimes.

The magic hour, in film production, is when the sun dies down at dusk and there is a glow from the sky. Outside was like a movie, and inside was too hot and sticky. I opened the main door and walked outside to see the fumes. The street was calm; the inside of houses lit; the air above me painted with hues of purple, blue, orange and black.

My parents came out of the house and stood at the porch. I walked to the center of the street and with my 35mm camera took a picture of my parents and the smoke looming above them. They smiled, and it struck me. We live comfortably in smoke… and that, is the most unnatural thing.

Adrienne Cheney, 17:

I’ve lived in Richmond my entire life, and I’m very used to hearing the Chevron siren tests every first Wednesday. Like many others, I suspect, I no longer go through the motions of taking shelter as practice for an emergency when I hear those sirens. However, this is something that is very troublesome, especially in situations such as the Chevron refinery fire.

Like a lot of other Richmond residents, I sat contemplating for a few seconds thinking, “Is that the Chevron siren?” and thinking, “It’s not 11am on the first Wednesday. Is this an actual [emergency]?” After about a minute of pure confusion, logic set in and I went about investigating. I had heard two loud bangs just a few minutes earlier, and when I looked outside I could see the huge pillar of black smoke rising up into the sky. Only then did I go about closing all of the windows.

The next step for me was calling certain people. A neighbor of mine has only lived in the Bay Area for a little while, and I felt it was very important for me to call and make sure that they knew what the siren meant, and that they headed inside and closed their windows. After a few more calls, I sat back and started to watch the news. Live coverage was being shown of the fire, and I learned that it was indeed the refinery that was burning. And then it was just sit and wait, as every half hour the sirens repeated themselves, and the sky darkened, and slowly I began to wonder how long this fire would last, and how long the danger of the toxic smoke would loom over my home.

Molly Raynor, 25:

Damn. Today was crazy. In the middle of our Romeo & Juliet workshop (I’m a youth arts educator), we heard the Chevron sirens and looked out the window to see a huge black cloud of smoke rising from the refinery and moving towards us.

We had to go into shelter at Making Waves with my students and my cousin, who’s in town filming a documentary about RAW Talent and our upcoming show: a modern day rendition of Romeo & Juliet set in Richmond. “Verona” was definitely on fire today. We escaped the Chevron toxins light-headed and tight-chested, but ultimately we’ll be fine.

I’m more concerned about my students who went back to their homes under that hazy black cloud, who breathe in Chevron every day. 50 percent of Richmond residents have asthma, and that’s just one of so many environmental injustices. As Donte, one of my students, said yesterday, “Either weed smoke, gun powder or Chevron.” I am waiting for the clouds to part; waiting for the sun. Stay strong Rich City!

William Hayes, 20:

Asthma, smog, toxins – these are just a few of the things that plague my city, Richmond, California. It is a “port city,” home to a diverse community of people who have come here from various lands, with different convictions and pursuits. But most of the people in my community know little of the danger they place themselves in, simply by breathing the air here.

For that reason, I’ve had a personal vendetta against Chevron my entire life, before I even knew what an oil refinery was.

Thanks to Chevron, I grew up in a community where asthma was viewed as normal and smog was thought to be a part of the weather. When I was young, my sister and I saw the white smoke coming from the Chevron stacks and nicknamed them “cloud makers.” Little did we know, these snowy, seemingly harmless puffs of smoke actually were the cause of much of the environmental health risks that we were being unknowingly exposed to. For a few weeks during my childhood I even had to use an asthma inhaler, which at the time I thought was pretty cool, but in hindsight it is a sad image. I would never want my child to be in a circumstance to have to use a device to breathe.

As a native of Richmond, Chevron’s recent fire does not in the least bit surprise me. My question to Chevron’s officials is, where will they go from here? I’m sure they can’t reassure Richmond residents that something like this won’t happen again, as I’m sure they have such accidents accounted for as the cost of doing business.

I’m not too concerned about who’s to blame. I’m more concerned about what the next steps are to prevent things like this from ever happening again. Will Richmond residents be accommodated in any way? Can any amount of money or donations to scholarships be enough for Chevron to pay its due? I guess only time will tell.

In Richmond, A Love of Soccer But Nowhere to Play

2012-07-11T15:55:10Z

RICHMOND, Calif. -- Angel Leon has learned how to express his feelings through soccer. If he's angry, for example, he’ll use that emotion in the game, "not to hurt, but to be more aggressive towards the ball, more energetic.”

But Angel, 13, a player for the Richmond Sol Cobras, doesn’t get angry often. In fact, he said anger is exactly the opposite of what he usually feels when he’s out on the soccer field, running around with his friends.

"It is a fast playing game," said his teammate, Kanai Salvador-Anderson, also 13. “You forget about your troubles and let out all of your emotions."

But there is one thing that both Angel and Kanai don't like about soccer: They don't get to practice it enough, and it’s not for a lack of desire. Limited by a finite number of available soccer fields in the city, the Cobras only meet for practice twice per week.

Richmond Sol was founded in 2003 and is one of only two officially organized soccer clubs that exist in the city. The second is called Richmond United Soccer Club, founded in 1995. Between the two clubs, around 800 Richmond children participate year-round in soccer clinics and competitions, outings and mentoring activities.

The people who make up the staffs of the two soccer clubs are all unpaid volunteers – they do what they do for the love of the game, and out of a sense of community service. And despite the number of youth currently being served, soccer club volunteers agree that it’s only the tip of the iceberg. They could do much more, they say, if it weren’t for one big problem: There are simply not enough places in Richmond to practice soccer.

According to the 2010 Richmond Parks Master Plan, 16 different locations in the city are regularly used to play soccer, but only two of them are “purpose-built soccer fields” – places intended to be used for the sport. Those are located at Country Club Vista Park and at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. The other 14 places where soccer players practice are either multi use fields or green areas in different parks around the city.

“Currently, overuse of the existing fields is resulting in their deterioration, in some cases to the point where they are virtually un-playable,” reads the plan.

The study, published last December, also says that the city has a deficit of 19 soccer fields, based on a desired standard ratio of one field per 3000 inhabitants. In a city where the Latino population, with a strong soccer tradition, is now 40 percent and growing, the lack of fields is more perceptible.

“Back in the 80’s, softball and baseball were the popular sports here,” said Diego Garcia, vice-chair of the Recreation & Parks Commission and president of Richmond Sol. “The late 90’s was when soccer started to become popular, when the World Cup came to the U.S. Now, it is not the most popular sport, but it is a fast growing sport.”

Garcia estimates that there are between 4,000 and 5,000 children and adults in Richmond that are playing soccer. In addition to the two major soccer clubs, which are affiliated with national and regional soccer leagues, there is an informal club called Richmond Eclipse, and various after school programs that boast soccer teams.

The two organized soccer clubs, along with every other sport club in the city, face another difficulty. The cost of renting one of the city-run fields or one of the fields that belong to the school district, like the ones at Richmond or Kennedy high schools, may cost as much as $500 a day.

“When you are a smaller group and you are starting out without ties to the city, it makes it hard,” said Gelberg Rodriguez, president of the Richmond United Soccer Club. “Sometimes, teams have to pay $50 to $75 to play for a couple of hours.”

The fee that each participant pays to be part of the club covers that cost, and also the cost of uniforms, trophies and other accessories. But the fee could soon go up to $150 a year.

Save the Clubs

Juan Reardon has a 10 year-old daughter that plays with the Richmond United Soccer Club. He said he got tired of watching his daughter “avoiding the holes in the ground” as she plays, so he decided to act.

“There are close to 3,000 children who do one type of organized sport in Richmond, but that is the minority of the children in Richmond,” said Reardon. “The others do not participate because there is not enough capacity to welcome them and to facilitate their participation. They need help with tuition, transportation, and the basic issue is there is no field capacity.”

Reardon, Garcia and Rodriguez joined forces with six representatives from other baseball, football and track clubs in Richmond, and are now the Richmond Safe Athletic Fields for Education (SAFE) Coalition. Together, with Richmond Progressive Alliance as a facilitator, they are asking the city for more, and stronger, support.

“We are fulfilling a shared obligation that we have as parents and community members,” Reardon remembered saying during a meeting with the City Council and school district representatives back in February 2011. “(But) we need free or lower cost access to the fields, for all the sports.”

Negotiations between the clubs and the City Manager have been ongoing since then, and even though it looked like they were close to an agreement, it has been hard to find a way to satisfy both parties.

“We say we want to use the fields for free,” Reardon said. “They say, ‘I understand that you need support, but we believe that if people don’t pay they don’t appreciate (the fields).’”

But Richmond City Manager Bill Lindsay said appreciation is not the main reason for imposing a fee on the clubs, which are using the facilities exclusively -- that means that during their practices and games, the rest of the public cannot use the field. Hence the fee.

The latest round of negotiations between the SAFE coalition and the City Manager’s office established that the clubs would pay 8 dollars per year, per player if the player is a Richmond resident, and 14 dollars per year per player if the player comes from outside Richmond.

Members of SAFE agreed to pay the fee, but asked that the money be saved by the city and then redirected to each club, to be used to finance their various club-related costs.

Lindsay, on the other hand, said the fees should be used to “lease field space from the School District, make improvements to city-owned facilities, and fund special projects and events for the collective benefit of participating SAFE members.”

No final resolution has yet been agreed to, but both parties are working to reach an understanding.

The debate may also be influenced by the outcome of city elections in November, when residents will decide whether or not sugary beverages like sodas should taxed by the city. If the proposal is approved, Richmond will have some extra money that could be earmarked to fight obesity. And it’s not a stretch to think that part of that money could be used to build sports fields.

Even if that money materializes, however, the task of building new city-funded sports fields in Richmond looks daunting.

“It is gonna take us maybe 10 years to close the gap on the lack of fields,” said Reardon. “But [the soda tax] will be a good steady income for the city to address this problem.”

More Than Soccer

For Angel and Kanai, being club members brings a lot more than just learning soccer. They also learn discipline, how to communicate with their teammates and how to be leaders, by making decisions as a team and putting the team's interest before their own.

"I try to be an example for my brother," said Angel, "so he doesn't end up in places where he should not be."

“Sports for me are a metaphor for life,” said Rodriguez. “If you work hard in soccer, you can be successful. If you wanna do well in life you have to work hard. I think a lot of coaches use that metaphor.”

Rodriguez is an engineer who graduated from UC Berkeley, and he said that soccer and the Richmond United Soccer Club are tools that he and the other volunteers use to motivate Richmond kids to go to college.

“Getting our kids to go to college is a big challenge, because our kids have a low high school graduation rate,” said Rodriguez. “How do we make our kids understand that they have to go to college to have a better life? In the Latino community, in general, that is a problem.”

Richmond Residents Weigh In on Soda Tax

2012-06-28T08:00:00Z

Editor's note: Richmond is now ground zero for the debate over how to reduce soda consumption, with a one-cent per-ounce tax increase to appear on the ballot in November. Residents are divided. Some contend the tax will contribute to lower rates of obesity, others that it is simply a means to raising revenue while hurting small business. National stakeholders, meanwhile, including the American Beverage Association and the American Medical Association, are channeling efforts toward winning over voters in this largely low-income city. The Pulse is going to track changing views over the next four months with regular updates on the issue. The following is a sampling of public opinion taken outside the Richmond library.

Vanessa Dilworth, 20: I think it’s a good idea because its going to put money back in the community. I would vote for it. I worked in a health food store and I stopped drinking soda because I know it’s bad for you. Water is best and juice. Organic stuff is good.

Bruce Lawerence, 50: “I hadn’t heard of it. It all depends on the funding and where the taxes are actually gonna go. If they’re gonna line the pockets of the city council and such, I’m not for that. But if it’s for what they say it’s for then it’s a good thing probably. I do drink soda and a couple pennies here and there ain’t gonna matter.

Unnamed, 72: “I’ve heard about the soda tax. It's just like they were going to do the cigarette tax. I’m a pipe smoker. It's just a way to get more revenue, it isn’t going to help anybody. I can go to El Cerrito and buy my sodas. I think it will hurt merchants here in Richmond.”

Beatrice Walker, Richmond Resident Since 1963: “Soda is not too good for people and it's making some people obese. It's not a pure kind of drink that people should be drinking. They should drink more healthy drinks. The addiction has a hook on you. It's hard to break the habit.The tax may stop some people but it won’t stop everyone. There should be more educational programs in order to encourage people not to drink the wrong thing.”

Philip Marin, 25: “It's not going to stop obesity, it’s just going to make people spend more money on sodas. People are not gonna switch to water. They would have to tax it more than a penny per ounce.”

Yolanda Vega, 30: “I’m actually against it. They are trying to do it to use the profits for obesity and stuff but it’s one of those taxes that’s really trying to mandate what we consume. It’s not something I would go for.”

Violence Prevention Effort Wins Praise & Sparks Controversy in Richmond

2012-06-18T08:10:00Z

RICHMOND, Calif. -- Last month, D'vondre Woodwards, a 23-year-old man from North Richmond, decided to go eat a hot dog at Casper's in Central Richmond. As he sat outside the restaurant eating his chili dog, another young man approached him and asked what he was doing “just sitting right there.”

“This is our city,” Woodwards remembered saying. “I'm not gonna hurry up.”

Woodwards knew he was taking a risk by breaking one of Richmond’s unwritten laws: Being a young black man from North Richmond, Woodwards is not supposed to hang out in Central Richmond. It’s an informal code of the street that is sometimes enforced with bullets.

During the past six years in Richmond, nearly 1,000 shootings have resulted in the deaths of 208 young men -- an average of 35 per year. By comparison, the average number of homicides by firearm in cities comparable in size to Richmond (about 100,000 people) nationwide is just four, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Richmond residents old enough to remember say the city has been drowning in street violence for decades. The 80’s and 90’s, they say, were some of the worst years, due to the emergence of crack cocaine and the hierarchical crime organizations that sprung up in Richmond neighborhoods as a result of the growing street economy. But some here claim that the turf wars between North and Central Richmond were heightened due to a an incident in 2000 – a car accident involving people from the two different neighborhoods, in which the party responsible for the damages refused to pay. That lone incident supposedly triggered a series of shootings that led to a cycle of retaliatory violence against people based on nothing other than where they were born, a cycle of violence that continues to this day.

Whether truth or urban legend, the fact remains that payback via gun violence in certain parts of Richmond has long been the norm, not the exception.

“Where [the violence began] got lost in all the deaths,” said Jonathan Bell, a 24-year-old from Central Richmond. “Where it comes from don't matter no more.”

Both Bell and Woodwards grew up in this violent reality, learning that they are supposed to hate each other just because of the neighborhoods they come from.

“You’re from the ‘hood, so you’re guilty by association,” explained Woodwards.

Trying a Different Way

“We know that almost all [the violence] involves guns and youth and young adults, and it is concentrated in (certain) neighborhoods, so you know exactly where the problem is,” said Frank Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley and author of the book American Youth Violence.

But, said Zimring, understanding and fixing the gun violence problem are two separate matters. Law enforcement was the central strategy of the city to combat drug-related violence in the 80s and 90s – many leaders of the neighborhood gangs and “sets” were behind bars by the late 90s – but that didn’t stop crime rates and homicides in the city from spiking in the mid 2000s. It was at that time that the City of Richmond decided to look outside of traditional law enforcement for solutions. As a result, in October 2007, the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) was born.

“ONS is an organization that is the product of bold leadership – that's our city manager, that's our counsel, our mayor – that were responsible for the creation of an entity that says there's got to be another approach to having an impact on reducing gun violence in our city,” said DeVone Boggan, director of ONS.

The core purpose of ONS is to “eliminate the gun violence” in Richmond, and the program sets itself apart from a strict law enforcement approach by emphasizing prevention and exclusively targeting a small group of young men from Richmond identified as being the most likely to either kill someone or be killed themselves.

“[These young men] use gun violence to resolve conflict, but also to obtain something that they can't get from mainstream society,” Boggan said. “The idea that I'm somebody; the idea that I'm significant and I'm a contributor to society; the idea that I'm important.”

From the beginning, ONS concentrated its efforts on street outreach focused on the neighborhoods where most of the killings where happening, principally the central parts of the city. Then, in 2009, Boggan attended a meeting with higher-ups from the police department that would result in him narrowing the focus of ONS even further. At the meeting, Boggan was told that just fifteen young men were responsible for a staggering 70 percent of all the shootings and killings in the city that year.

“Fifteen people are creating this narrative for our city?” Boggan remembered asking. From that point forward, Boggan decided that ONS would work directly with only those young men identified as being the most at risk for violence – as either victims or perpetrators.

By June 2010, 21 young men from different neighborhoods in Richmond had joined the new ONS program called Operation Peacemaker Fellows (OPF), each one committing to change their lives and undo the dynamics they’d helped to foster in their neighborhood. In exchange, ONS promised them support and exposure to job and educational opportunities.

“We are going to take you by the hand, and we are going to walk you through it as if you were our child,” Boggan remembered telling them. “These are your uncles and aunties, and I'm papa.”

Today, OPF is in its second year and the group of fellows has grown to 33. Of the 43 young African-American men from Richmond who ONS has worked with since its inception, “42 are alive today, 39 have no gun-related hospitalizations or injuries, 36 have no new gun charges, and 33 have no new gun-violence related arrests,” according to a 2011 ONS annual report.

Controversy

Despite what looks like a success story, ONS is not without its critics in Richmond. One often heard complaint is the amount of city money spent on the project, and specifically the fact that some of it is given directly to the fellows themselves, or used to pay for their trips around California and even to locations outside of the U.S. Boggan answers the critics by pointing out that the program gives a modest stipend of up to $6,000 for each fellow per year, and if the fellow fails to do his part, they don't get the stipend. And if they get in trouble with the police, Boggan said, there is little that ONS can do.
Furthermore, he said, the stipends are only given during the second phase of the program, after fellows have completed what ONS calls a “life map.”

The life map is a list of basic needs that the fellow wants to resolve in their near future, like getting a driver's license, gaining trust of a parole officer, or opening a bank account. The life map must also describe plans for a different future, and outline steps the fellow needs to take to get there, like finishing high school, getting a GED or learning a trade that will lead to a job. But for the immediate short term, ONS subsidizes jobs for the fellows, connecting them with participating organizations and covering the cost of their salary for several months.

“This program mixes incentives and threats,” said Zimring, who said that it could look to outsiders like ONS is rewarding people for bad behavior. People, he said, might think that ONS is “giving the bad kids the cookies.”

“My own position is, try things,” Zimring added. “But let’s be rigorous in taking the data.”

A second criticism that has been leveled against ONS is that they lack a way to adequately document or measure the success of people participating in their program. Councilman Courtland "Corky" Boozé has been outspoken about not having access to data or documents that show exactly how and with whom ONS has worked.

“How many people are 2.8 million dollars taking care of?” Boozé asked. “That is a lot of money. They could never tell me, and to this day I still don’t know. How many people are they serving and where are they today.”

Bill Lindsay, city manager, said that except for information required by law to be kept confidential, all documentation related to ONS is public record and accessible to anyone.

“If there is information that hasn’t been provided [to Councilman Boozé] he should get it because he has the right to access [it],” Lindsay said.

Lindsay also added that ONS is in the process of bringing in an independent consultant to evaluate the work that has been done so far and to help set better measurement criteria and documentation procedures for all of their programs.

“I don’t think [the documentation] is entirely missing, but it could be better,” Lindsay said. “ONS is relatively new and it is a good time to evaluate what is going on and to set new measurement criteria.”

Uncles and Aunties: Neighborhood Change Agents (NCA)

Sam Vaughn knows very well the negative dynamics that exist in Richmond. Vaughn was himself arrested for attempted murder, for which he was convicted and spent 10 years behind bars.

“One of the hardest things to admit is that you lived your whole life based on a lie,” Vaughn said. “[They tell you] that you are really not going to accomplish much… [that] if you are black growing up in this community the only way you are going to get out is if you are a rapper or you are an athlete, that's the only way you can succeed.”

When Vaughn got out of prison, he started looking for a different kind of life, and his search eventually led him to a job at ONS as a Neighborhood Change Agent (NCA).

Vaughn is one of seven full time employees at ONS that work as either NCA’s or street outreach workers. Six out of the seven are originally from Richmond, and five have had problems with law enforcement.

“To be honest, we all were helpers in the [violence happening in Richmond] now; we helped that happen,” Vaughn said. “But we all have a desire for Richmond [to be better] because our families still live here. This is our home and if we care about it, we can do something.”

The responsibility of an NCA is to find the people in Richmond that are perpetrators of gun violence or those that have been affected by it. Once they’re identified, the NCAs work to develop a relationship of trust with them that could result in an ONS fellowship.

“We are trying to create a space where ONS is a safety stop,” said Kevin Muccular, a senior NCA staff person. “There are plenty of young people out there that understand that enough is enough.”

Muccular is one of the NCA's that grew up in Richmond but never got involved in gun violence or got in trouble with law enforcement. His mother sent him to a high school outside of Richmond, and he would spend the entire week away from the city. “Back then you had issues with people, and not with areas,” he said.

Muccular and Vaughn believe that the hardest part of their jobs is not the rejection, but losing one of their clients or one of the fellows to the streets. Muccular recently lost a client in North Richmond in an April 17 shooting. “I felt helpless in that situation,” he said.

When the NCA’s are doing outreach on the streets of Richmond, they often encounter young men who say they “aren’t ready” to make a drastic change in their life.

“Just because you are ready to change doesn't mean that the people around you are ready to change,” Muccular said.

“I'm still stuck in this mud puddle, I'm still getting splashed with everybody else's stuff,” said Vaughn, explaining what a young man on the street might be thinking. “I'm working hard but it doesn't mean that the person on the other side cares ... I can still lose my life. So why not be ready for that, instead of thinking that I can maneuver myself out of here?”

“So much has to change for them to feel that this is safe,” Vaughn added.

Kim MacDonald is the only NCA that didn't grow up in Richmond. She works mostly with the Prison Reentry Planning Initiative at San Quentin State Prison. MacDonald works with prisoners from Richmond soon to be released, helping to prepare them for their reentry into the community by teaching them violence prevention and life skills.

“If we don't educate and help them while they’re incarcerated, who will?” MacDonald said. “These are amazing people that have made mistakes.”

According to Boggan, all of the programs that he oversees are making a difference in Richmond -- but they are not enough.

“If you gave me the resources to do what we do for 150 [fellows], violent crime in this city would never be what it is today. I stake my career on it,” Boggan said. “I'm not going to say we can eliminate gun violence, but the nature of violent crime in this city would go through significant change.”

Both Muccular and Vaughn agree with Boggan.

“We got our fishing pole and we are picking one [young man] at the time,” Vaughn said. “We need a net.”

Once a Fellow, Always a Fellow

“[Muccular] put me in a lot of positions where I could use my potential,” Bell said. “They don't give it to you but they put you in a place where you can earn it or you gotta use what's inside you to be successful.”

Bell has been part of the fellowship program for only six months, but he’s accomplished a lot.

“Jonathan hit he ground running,” said Muccular, who is Bell’s mentor.

“I was on probation, I had no license, I ain't worked in like three or four years, I was in a bad spot,” Bell remembered. “I had given up on doing stuff the right way. You get better at doing the wrong stuff the right way.”

Bell, who credits the program for getting his life back, is finally off probation. He worked for the city on account of an ONS-subsidized job, and now is looking for another job and waiting for the fall semester to start attending College of Alameda.

“The program showed me that there is still a way, that I can be a regular person,” said Bell, who now wants only to be a better father to his 6-year-old boy. ONS encourages successful fellows like Bell to become role models for their peers and for the community, even people that have rejected the program in the past.

Woodwards is a senior fellow in the program. He started with the first group and has been part of the program for 18 months. Since then, he’s referred a number of people from North Richmond to the program.

“I tell them, if you are serious about doing this, here's [Kevin Muccular's] number,” Woodwards said.

Unlike Bell, Woodwards grow up almost by himself, with an absent father and a mother that have problems with substance abuse. “I was selling drugs to feed myself,” he said.

Now he is attending Contra Costa College to get his prerequisites for a degree in radiology. “They don't let you slack off or anything,” Woodwards said about the fellowship program. “That's a good thing because we don't have that. Must of us, we don't have family members that we respect to let them do that, but we respect [Muccular].”

Woodwards has a 1-year-old son and he says he hopes to be as good a father as Bell, a “cat” he knew from school several years ago, and who he once saw as an enemy.

Today, Woodwards is seeing his life differently.

“I never had the motivation to go to school, but now [I’m] the first one there,” Woodward said with a big smile. “It feels good when you get an A on a test. I never had that.”

Pioneer of Chicano Art Still Going Strong in Bay Area

2012-04-29T09:00:00Z

Xavier Viramontes is a nationally renowned printmaker whose prints impacted many political movements and social justice campaigns during the 1970’s. His prints are also part of the revolutionary canon of Chicano art produced at Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco. His most famous print, “Boycott Grapes, Support the United Farm Workers Union” from 1973, which depicts an Aztec warrior smashing grapes with his fists as the grape juice and blood drip over the title, is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Yet, despite his body of work, few people in the Bay Area know that Xavier Viramontes was born, raised and still lives in the San Pablo/Richmond area.

Richmond Childhood Memories

“The Richmond I refer to is this one, the old Richmond,” says Viramontes as he places the Richmond Museum’s photographic history book “Images of America: Richmond” on the café table. The book contains photographs of Richmond during the first half of the 20th Century, from the Californio period up to World War II and the city’s de-industrialization in the 1950’s. The photographs, especially those of MacDonald Avenue, remind Viramontes of his childhood and family.

“They used to have a number of theaters like the UA or the Fox (on MacDonald Avenue). There was the Rio Theater where they used to show Mexican movies. My grandmother and aunts used to love going there because my grandmother only spoke Spanish and would be able to see her movies,” remembers Viramontes.

Born on September 16,1943 in Richmond Hospital, Viramontes describes his household as a typical Mexican-American and Catholic family, where social gatherings revolved around baptisms, first communions, and religious festivities out at Saint Paul’s Church on Church Drive. His was a large family living near 1st street and MacDonald Avenue. In addition to his six siblings, Viramontes also had seven cousins living next door. They were a multigenerational family. Made up of immigrants, first and second generation Americans, all were workers at Richmond’s cannery and factories. In 1949, his family moved from MacDonald Avenue to Merritt Avenue and Broadway in San Pablo, across from the now non-existent Broadway Elementary in a neighborhood comprised mostly of Mexican American and White Southern families.

According to Viramontes, there was mostly interracial harmony, even during the heyday of the Pachuco and Zoot Suit youth subcultures during the war era. The Pachuco culture involved Chicano youth dressed in draped and perfectly creased pants, cuffed long sleeve shirts and pompadour style hairdo’s. It was seen as a clear exaggeration of excess at a time when the United States government had placed rations on commercial items. The Zoot Suit culture in the Richmond and San Pablo suburbs, says Viramontes, was never as intense as it was in Los Angeles, yet it was still discouraged by the older generation of Mexican parents. “My friends and cousins were taking on that style, although ‘zoot-suitors’ were considered hooligans and parents discouraged it,” says Viramontes. “I have some photographs of my cousins wearing zoot suits,” he chuckles.

Art and Politics

Xavier Viramontes’ nourishment in the visual arts began early in his childhood by way of drawing his surroundings, and only it continued as he took art classes at Helms Middle School and later at Richmond Union High School. Viramontes graduated from RUHS in 1961, and was enrolled in Contra Costa Community College until he was drafted into the military and stationed in Germany. Being in Europe, Viramontes says he visited high-profile museums such as El Prado in Madrid and the Louvre in Paris. At seeing the contemporary and classical artworks, Viramontes felt encouraged to be the artist he always was.

Upon his return in 1969 and supported by the American GI Bill to attend college, Viramontes immediately enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and left San Pablo for the Mission District in San Francisco. Viramontes completed his studies at SFAI in 1973, and continued at San Francisco State, where he earned an MFA in Printmaking in 1977. Viramontes was also taking printmaking courses at San Francisco City College, and following his graduation from SF State, he began to teach printmaking and etching at City College. As his focus on printmaking sharpened, Viramontes found himself inspired by the Romanesque movie posters for Hollywood films like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments, that were so prominent on the MacDonald Avenue theaters of his childhood.

“The thing about the posters were that they were very colorful movie posters, exciting and exaggerated. I like this exaggerated imagery,” says Viramontes. “I started with painting but I went into printmaking because of the fact that you could duplicate the images and share them with people. I could never sell my paintings because I wanted to keep them,” explains Viramontes.

The accessible distribution of printmaking intertwined with the political when Viramontes became involved in San Francisco’s legendary Galeria de la Raza on 24th and Bryant in the Mission District, during his time as a student at SFAI and SF State. It was powerful and reassuring to work with Latino artists interested in establishing their presence through a gallery and political involvement in the Mission community. At Galeria, Viramontes became one of the pioneers in Chicano art. His political artwork addressed a wide range of local issues -- from resisting the closure of the International Hotel in Chinatown with his prints, commemorating the unjust murder of Danny Trevino by cops on an interactive and public billboard, to his prints for the United Farm Workers union. Every weekend, he recalls, Galeria artists would have art parties and produce works for political campaigns.

Viramontes would regularly visit his family in San Pablo, but he noticed the city remained quiet, seemingly untouched by the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and people of color movements such as the Chicano, Black Panther Party, and Asian American movements that were occurring in Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco.

Full Circle

It wasn’t until the mid-1990s, after living in San Francisco’s Mission District for 25 years, that Viramontes returned home to San Pablo, where he still lives and remains politically engaged through his art and community work. Still teaching at City College, Viramontes is now designing works for Occupy Oakland that focus on Medicare and social security. He is also a member of the San Pablo Community Alliance and a steering committee member for the Helms Community Center in San Pablo.

Viramontes’ formal involvement in San Pablo political activism began in 2010 when he and other residents rallied against a proposed return to eminent domain by the San Pablo City Council. First known as San Pablo Against Eminent Domain, the resident group mobilized the city’s neighborhoods, and as a result the proposal was struck down by San Pablo’s city council. The group then became the San Pablo Community Alliance, a resident group that discusses city council ideas. Viramontes felt compelled to organize against eminent domain out of personal experience. In 1957, he and his family were uprooted from their San Pablo home on Merritt Avenue by way of eminent domain. “I know about eminent domain. I know it can uproot people and destroy families,” he says. Viramontes explains that in order to expand Broadway Elementary, the city had seized 10 houses. However, the expansion never occurred, and Broadway Elementary closed in 1986. Viramontes has commemorated those childhood memories in his prints.

As a steering committee member of the proposed Helms Community Center, Viramontes is adamant on the inclusion of the arts in Helms and San Pablo. He hopes to develop an art program for students once the center is built and create a gallery of multicultural artwork that reflects the diverse student body, which is expected to grow to 1,200. “If you have that many kids, you want to have something to calm down the situation. I think art has a very calming nature and I especially see no images of brown people. You don’t really see family situations that 70 percent of kids can relate to,” he says. It’s important, says Virmontes, that students of color see positive images of themselves and family; images that were lacking when he was a child. “That’s why I want to get some of my work and other artists work into Helms.”