Saturday, May 30, 2009

Renewal of spirit, renewal of heart

It's eighteen years since my husband and I begin to notice and enjoy each other's company. We found more and more things and people and places that we enjoyed, so we took out the contract and were married in Oakland on Grand Lake under the arches there. We arrived in a vintage purple limosine, some friends played our favorite song at the time -Mo Better Blues. They were joined by a person who happened to be there playing his trumpet with his case open, and rather than disturb his day, they added him into the mix. My almost grown children stood and watched -not unpleased, but not sure what this would bring to their life. We considered our getting together a miracle having survived some loss and trauma around the relationship department.

And really we went along coming together to have a good time whenever we wanted to do that, cause we were certain that was what our life together would be about. Not that we didn't have our share of life's tragedies-the loss of his parents, my parents and most heartbreaking my daughter to cancer. My husband was amazing, and I made my way day to day not knowing if I would return, much less WE would return to a happy life. Within a year or so, we had found our way back to a rhythm of enjoyment in our life and each other that seemed to create new options and joys BECAUSE we were happy with each other. When the last child fairly abruptly left the house, we were in this odd position - looking to see what was the cause of our relationship if not to have people to take care of and a schedule around those events. That journey took us to a renewal of spirit and heart, but I'll save that for another day, another blog.

Bringing the light back-when it's good, it's very good!

Summer in Berkeley - nice and cool, 67 degrees, blue jeans and down vest will get you all around town! Berkeley Bowl, never to be beaten in terms of the array and quality of vegetables and fruit is jammed pack. It's kind of an intelligence course, just to get around -there are no aisles, and everything would be cool except for the people who are talking on cell phones while folks dodge and weave-bags of produce in their hands. Still folks are willing to make contact, meet eyes and exchange pleasantries. After all, it's Sunday!

So different from the Whole Foods crowd who are considerably younger and more well dressed, and well, I'll go ahead and say it, not as concerned with the bill at the line at the end of their shopping. Having lived in the neighborhood for 13 years, I've noticed the snob effect at the Telegraph Whole Foods has given way to the real competition they have for good produce and better prices at Berkeley Bowl. The Deli at the Whole Foods however is hard to beat. One lady standing next to me said, why cook for one, and I think most of the people who show up there are cooking for one or two at most at the prices offered. Still the quality is very consistent and reliable. I've come to Whole Foods this Sunday for the Coconut Sorbet, which if you haven't tried it would be worth the quick trip in and out-Coconut Bliss. It tastes like it sounds.

The students are gone this time of year, most returning in August so this time of year you can get into the theatres and restaurants, no problem and parking is accessible. Sunday in the City, Summer in the City-Berkeley is a treasure.

Berkeley's Ed Roberts Center

In 1970, four students in wheelchairs were the first to leave the rehabilitation centers, or the homes from which they never left, to be admitted to UC Berkeley. The condition required was that they stay in the Cowell University Hospital so they could be cared for, in and out of their wheelchair, bathing, and daily life maintenance. It was a time when people were considering new ways to hold truths, some call it a social revolution period race, sex, age, class and physical disability found light of day in that time frame. Ed Roberts was one of those students, and he and his fellow mates at Cowell soon came up with a system of using Attendants who would allow them to live outside of Cowell independently. This was truly the beginning of the expectations of those with a physical disability that restricted their movement without a wheelchair to leave behind the life in the back room of their homes or the rehab sites, and go to college, get jobs, get married, have families, have their voice counted and heard in the community. For some time, University of California Berkeley was the Mecca of the Physically Disabled as a result. Ed Roberts graduated from Berkeley and in time went to Sacramento and was one of the authors of the Rehabilitation Bill that took the experience of these students from the site of Berkeley, California to all over the United States.

The neighborhood had a lukewarm response to the development of the Ed Roberts Center at the Ashby Bart Station initially. Real estate concerns about blocked views, etc. and the neighborhood felt sold out-"why South Berkeley, they wouldn't put up with this at the North Berkeley Bart Station." Many edgy, irritable, even angry meetings. That was years ago when the first notice was given of the Ed Roberts Center, a place of professional services and offices for the Physically Disabled community. South Berkeley is where La Pena, the former Black Panther office, and Starrey Plough, the first IRA bar are centered. People are active politically and skepticism is parr for the course. But as the construction takes form, the steel rigors and concrete are poured, you can literally feel the Ed Roberts Center pulling up and pulling together this neighborhood: Pushing the neighborhood towards a future worth sharing uniquely Berkeley.

AB999-Books not BARS-no more ADD ONS

The mothers, sister, brothers and people who together from Ella Baker's Book Not Bars got on a bus May 7th bound for Sacramento; they carried the message that youth given a sentence by a judge and or jury should not have time Add Ons made by the staff of the institution in which they were incarcerated. Unlike the judge and the jury, there is no accounting by staff as to the decision to ADD ON weeks or months which on record increase the time for up to 15 months longer on average. As well, AB999 challenges the use of solitary confinement as punishment for weeks and months. The real issue was represented by one young man who had successfully gotten past his term in jail, past his probation; he said he entered the system at 12 and returned to society at age 19, but he was still 12 in terms of education, ability to work and emotional maturity. The Need for youth to get education and job training to have a means to enter society is for the offenders, that's true. But who benefits really is the taxpayer upon whom the cost of $200,000 per offender per year lands. AB999 looks to have job training, education and the hope of a future. In comparison, in states where the prison system does provide education and training, there is a huge difference in what happens after the youth offender leaves prison. The ratio of return is a third of the Youth System in California. Throughout the country, the reality of the failure of the prison system in terms of the cost to everyone is unquestioned. In the case of the youth in prison, we have the possibility of providing the education and the job training with the taxpayer's dollar rather than paying for extended stays that cultivate waste and reduce the possibility of reentry. Van Jones is now in Washington working with the President on Green Jobs for the country, having started Green Jobs in Oakland with Ella Baker Center.

AB999, the bill resulting from Books Not Bars going to Sacramento on May 7th will soon reach the Assembly in California. The choice seems simple: the prisons are overcrowded, the economy is not job training friendly and the cost in dollars and lives is unforgiveable if we don't provide a change in policy now.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Taking it to Sacramento-AB999-Ending the waste of a whole generation.

A group from Books not Bars, of mothers, sisters, brothers and fathers climbed on a bus and went to Sacramento on May 7th to promote AB999. The good news it will be presented to the Assembly in the very near future, having passed from them to public attention and the assembly. This is a bill that would prohibit there being Add ons to the length of time a youth offender can have additional time added on to his sentence by the guards and staff at the places of incareration. Without a judge, or any kind of hearing or even acknowledgement to the courts, the jail staff unlike the judge and court have no accounting to any group outside themselves for the actions taken against a youth in jail. But that's not all the AB999 is about, it's about the guards not putting youth into solitary confinement for weeks and months, it's about providing education and training, so these young people come out not deadened angry young men. With the recidivist cycle a given under the current condition, AB999 would require the monies spent by taxpayers to be directed toward improving the conditions: job training, education for starters, of youth in such a way as they are ready for reentry, rather than left to waste. What we'd be paying for as taxpayers would be on the positive side instead of keeping the jails staffed and recycling the offenders. as people who have been given the opportunity to return to society rather than youth wasted.

President Obama said not that long ago, that it's important to our country that the youth of today get the education and job training they need to have our country keep its place in the world. All the young people. Not just for the individual, but the future we're all going to take part. Books Not Bars has taken that to Sacramento and is working not just for the youth, their families and the future that will be there, but they're working for all of us for a better world.

Keep a look out for AB999 will be in the State Assembly this week.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Youth In Prison: The Waste of a Whole Generation

In shock and grief, Oakland faced the death of 4 police officers with 20,000 mourners at the Oakland Coliseum. The bagpipes mournful call with the view of 1000's of raised white gloved arms saluting the caskets was shocking as the four caskets were brought in with the families following each casket. Clearly these were fine irreplaceable officers, husbands, fathers and sons. Not two hours later, on talk radio 560, the savage voice raged that the fault of this whole incident lay at the hands of the liberals. He raged that shoot now, ask questions later should be the policy after these policeman were gunned down.

Today I sat with a very small group looking at the other victim of this carnage. The young man who with his 10th grade education in special education classes who had not met with his parole officer and was so desperate to avoid going back to the jail where he had spent 2-4 years that he shot the two officers who came to his car for a traffic stop, then blasted through a door with a AK47 two other officers. Waiting all week for this scheduled meeting this morning since it offered a discussion about youth in prison, the Books Not Bars meeting did connect with the most recent events.

In the room, there were young men on probation having found their way, there were mothers who had gone step by step through the process with their 16 year old, or their 12 year old through their prison experience. One woman said her son had spent the last seven months in solitary at the age of 17, then was released and soon had broken the rules of his probation again, and now at 25 was beginning to comprehend the tragedy of his situation. She expressed her strong belief that all youth should be tried as youth until the age of 25, and that being thrown into a cell the early part of their lives has the effect of being a person less able to function in the world once he gets out.  As one young man said-hey, I was in jail at 12 and when I got out at 19, I was still a twelve year old; he reflected the fact that once a youth is in the system, for every infraction:  wrong attitude, didn't pick up the tray quick enough or whatever, time can be added to the term of his sentence.  The guards do not as is the case with adult offenders have to get approval or bring recommendations to any other authority other than their own.  Add Ons-adding months or years on a sentence by a court to a youth offender,  as they are called keep youth in jail, untrained, unskilled and under their probation terms they cannot relate with others who have been in jail.  And guess what we're all paying for this laying to waste of young men, black, spanish or white, both the cost of their extended stays and for their return to society, untrained, unskilled - their young bodies and minds in holding pattern from which they have neither the experience or the expectation to be found or find their way the benefits of personhood.  Books not Bars is going to Sacramento in May to bring about a bill that will stop the unilateral  unstructured and often self perpetuating system that kills the body and the soul of youth in prison.  Many of those present were planning to go.

Here's what it was like for one of the moms present.  For Lynn, a phone call from the police that they had her 14 year old on a assault charge:  her son had taken a gun to school to deal with a bully and the gun went off grazing the boys thigh when he came after the kid.  Lynn's mother was the first black police woman in San Francisco, and she couldn't have been more taken by surprise.  She expressed it as - as a mom, you just do what you can do, everything you can think of doing to get to your child what you can to support them.  She got in there and presented herself to the guards and staff and did what it took to have a regularly pleasant interaction with them every time out so they knew her and they knew her son- that made a big difference.  She was invited to be part of the parents group and they actually together and presented some changes to  benefit the conditions of the prison.  She said as much as she invested in knowing what was happening for her son and other prisoners, they only knew about 20% of the actual experience for them. But out on parole is the most dangerous time, the mothers all agreed.  The meeting had skits to demonstrate how the mothers could assist their sons to stay within the guidelines and how to relate to the probation officers;  the ability to manage probation one mom said is basically by keeping them home and helping them get work. Keeping them out of trouble taking very seriously the parole officers authority and keeping the rules as the first priority is the task at hand.

But back to Lovelle Mixon, a man on parole who was so desperate not to go to jail or deal with his parole officer that he committed a murder suicide.  Really that's what it amounts to.  The tragedy of murder suicide is the muffled cry in the night in the wealthiest of suburbs , Cupertino, Fremont, San Francisco just in this year alone.  How is it that a job loss, a relationship betrayal or loss in the suburbs, and a desparate young man turn to guns and not other human beings? Guns are not the answer, Books not Bars is looking from all sides to see what is.  One young man at the meeting said that when his mother was killed by the police when he was ten, he was sent to a community house that everyone in the room recognized the name of and there were approving, "ohh, that was good" throughout the room.  "Yes," he said, "they just kept being nice to me, every day all day and I was angry every day, but they kept being nice to me and that helped me remember who I was."    


 

Monday, March 2, 2009

Down Home at Freight and Salvage

Our friends picked the entertainment for the evening, and we followed along not knowing what a treat we had coming our way. The Freight and Salvage is representative of the gray haired folks who quietly filed into the performance that evening; I'm pretty sure few were younger than 40 and most were Country Joe McDonald's generation. I bet most folks there had been to a concert with a headband like the one of the singer in a poster, back in the day. Anti war protesting is just a thread of the fabric of life in Berkeley and has been since the days when Country Joe and most of us present milled around People's Park and maybe even faced the "Blue Meanies" as they pushed the people back on Telegraph nudging us along, their helmets secured. But tonight the hall was a lot of quiet murmurs as we got our coffee and hot cider and waited for the show to start.

Joe McDonald walked on stage with a haircut that in no way reflected the long wavy hair of the 60's; his eyes were clear and his message straight. Turns out he has spent a lot of time studying Woody Guthrie. Other than an association with the depression days, grapes of wrath period I knew little about Woody Guthrie. As Country Joe conveyed through Guthrie's writings the life Woody Guthrie led and the people he encountered, shocked oh's and ahs erupted from people involuntairly. To say life was hard during the depression doesn't do it justice and these writings filled in the blanks and cravices having those people and those experiences become a presence to us, just as Woody Guthrie himself did. The depth of this man in his descriptions of the men who took the long hard roads revealed in fact a full on romantic and a gentle person who saw on so many levels everything around him. His songs and his poems were stunning in their impact and the comparison to today and the talk of a depression had to be made as we sat in the darkness as Country Joe strummed his guitar and spoke.

It suddenly seemed ridiculous that our culture, present time, there is a conversation about depression as if it had something to do with the event that happened in the 30's. Cable news personalities rant and rave about the losses and possible losses all day long, throwing around terms that seem to convey that our country is in real trouble because we have all, all lived way too well for too long relying on a bunch of possessions that we couldn't pay for except through credit. Compare Woody Guthrie who spoke about the line around the hardware store where men went in and got JAKE, in the darkest days of the depression. It was supposed to help whatever ailed you and had a content of at least 80% alcohol; poisoning by alcohol was not at all uncommon in the 30's Guthrie reports in his writing. This was where men turned when all was lost and the road was all that lay ahead as they piled up the wagons with everything they could carry in the dust storms of Oklahoma.
And let's see by comparison, what we have to deal is all these entertainers on television telling us how bad it is amped up and hysterical. The truth is right across the board, we're all taking a cut in pay, a reduction in our lifestyle and hopefully having a look see at what is really valuable about our life and where we can contribute what extra we have, be that time or resources to support the community around us.

The highlight of the evening with Country Joe as he gave us Woody Guthrie was an amazingly sensuous poem - describing his profound joy at being a man found who didn't realize he was lost till he found himself in the heart of his woman. A gentle giant who suffered kindness in the face of defeat was who this man seemed to be. We sitting together left the show stunned and appreciative of the impact that man Woody through Country Joe, and Country Joe himself contributed to us. Our cup runneth over.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

A New Economy-Back to the Future and Karl Marx

Having just returned from two weeks in Sayulita, Mexico where the news whenever I saw it was a couple of copies of items in the NY Times on a sheet of paper printed and left at the coffee houses. Iam refreshed and seeing a little differently than before. I've decided to take myself away from the addiction of having the TV on blasting away all day with the same headlines generating and regurgitating the same headlines all day long. And the moderators who give the impression they are in a position to make a judgement we the public should respond to, agree with or the like. Kind of like going to the grocer and having the grocer tell you what you should have for dinner authoritatively. How would the grocer know what you require or what you should consume. Even Rachel Maddow is a bit taxing and she is fresher than most with questions that provoke your thinking, not rehasing and selling specific viewpoints that engrandize her importance. I am being selective with The Nation Magazine, Newsweek and the New York Times, Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. But the best info this week in reference to "Economic Crisis and the Bailout" I found on Public radio; a series on how Cuba formed community during their economic crisis when the US had an embargo that had oil, gas and food become non existent for their people's use. Also on KPFA, there was an Economist, Rick Wolf,in New York who basically gave a view of our situation that Karl Marx spoke of long ago. Karl Marx is coming up in references as the discussions of the economy; in that the infusion of $787 trillion may not do more than emergency repair to our economic problem we're being asked to take a deeper look. Looking deeper into the means by which we got where wee are and a shift in our relationships and our lifestyles may be the necessary true element of change that is required. Comparing our sitation with Cuba may be like Apples and organges given our ethos and identity are embedded in individualism and competition; this does not exclude a shift to seeing our lives through shared goals and common good or community, but it does require a step in that we have not considered but may now need to take on.

Marxism speaks of the fact that when you separate people from their ability to produce their own food, specifically out of the farm land and into the urban area, you have lessened people's power in their own lives. They now need to go to the city, get a job and with the money from the job purchase the food, pay the rent. A breakdown in the job and the money loss leaves the person unable to provide for themselves or their families. Well, Rick Wolf of the New School of New York, gives a full discussion of how our lives have changed specifically since 1970. That is the monies we have available have decreased since then. Money had more value relative to the costs at that time, and the families had women at home to take care of them, and the women had the means to be taken care of throughout their lives. At that time only 7% of the women worked outside the home; in the households and these women were in the position of taking emotional and physical care of their families and had the expectation of being taken care of themselves. Divorce was rare. At that time the cost of living began to increase and even with the increase in salaries, the actual value of the monies was reduced ongoingly. These monies were important to the workers in relation to their ability to consume, Wolf says. Consumption is vital because when people are separate from the power of producing their work, consumption becomes increasingly important. The lack of satisfaction in work that is not creative nor does it include the power of the individual to determine its outcome or use, Wolf points out, is the basis for the need for the shopping malls and the entertainment required by the worker. Since the paychecks by the men don't cover the lifestyle and haven't for sometime, the women have gone to work now at a rate of 74% of women work and those monies only allow the family to keep up. 4% of the women worked in 1970. The caretaking of the family is still on the woman's shoulders primarily as the sociologist have maintained, and the women come home tired and cope with the stress of their situations in many cases by the use of antidepressents-some 43% of the population use one form of antidepressent, Wolf claims.

OK, so what is the opportunity given these facts by Wolf and other economists? Back to the land, back to the future is what it looks like to me. Sharing households-only 22% of the population are in the man/woman/children scenario, the remainder are a mixture of friends and family members or living alone. A shift in our reality to see our lives through a different lense that offers more clumping of resourses, clusters of arrangements in dealing with the costs of our lives, financially and psychologically it would seem. Every word about the US economy says we are not going back, can't go back to the economy we have exploited and maybe it's not all bad is what I'm saying. What are your thoughts on this subject? Let's engage in nothing less than creating the future that lies ahead with intelligent optimism-what do you say?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Stone Cold Winter in 75 degree weather

Living in California, Winter has in the past been several weeks of rain off and on and enough chill in the air to make the hot tub in our back yard a rewarding excursion-warming us to the bone, a warming that stays with you, takes the stuff out of you. Whatever you've been carrying around, in the chilled darkness as you dissolve into the liquid heat of 102 degrees, disappears as your body is enveloped by the heat. No more bones, no more sharp angles or sharp thoughts-it mellows you out. Well, that is not this year. It's hot. And it feels wrong. The winter duldrums, the stone gardens bereft of new life in the 75 degree weather and strange white sun light have me longing for rain to cool the earth, to feed the earth, to replenish the earth. The promise of the mission of the Spring to bring life to everything around us is not now. The winter's gray and wet imposes our sealing ourselves off from the outside. That provides the opportunity to regroup, rethink, reevaluate, take less action and more focus and concentration as a response to the demand of the outside being difficult to deal with at best. Waiting for spring, waiting for the buds to appear that's how it is in Winter, but how it is is that the red maple has not lost it's leaves and some other trees have started to bloom-out of synch, out of time.

Global warming, that's what they say. A perfectly brilliant woman said today-oh how can they talk about global warming when it's freezing cold, extrememely cold in different parts of the country, more freezing than usual. Well, of course, that's global warming also actually. What I think is there is adaptation, there is accommodation and change is underway and we will meet this change. We already are becoming conscious of the our carbon offset, the steps we can take to account for our use of the planet is the green book philosophy and this is huge compared to 5 years ago when only the "freaks" were looking in that direction. Now we're all some degree aware and some degree responsible. More would be good, but everyone has the question: are we going to get to keep the world as we know it and if so what can we personally do to have it be that way. Give up our cars and bike or walk, some amount of that goes on where I live but it's because this is a university town and walking is definitely reasonable and biking, a bit of a gamble out there with cars and an occasional bust up with the bike participant being the loser of any such occurance.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The New Year! The New President!

Today in my dance class, Evelyn, who inspires and drives us to an effort that took abit after my taking a 3 week vacation from class, was talking about going to Washington to see Barrack Obama become President. Just getting on the plane with her husband, putting on a backpack and doing whatever it takes to get close enough to see the new President come down Pennsylvania Avenue is her goal. Sounds good to me!

What are your plans for the 20th of January 2009? My friend, Nancy, just invited me to go to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on Nob Hill where there will be a vigil the night before and a service at Grace Cathedral for the new President. That's the night before. But the day of the actual Inaguration, we plan to be at the Ella Baker Center. Now, especially now, that's where I want us to be.

I was introduced to the Ella Baker Center after hearing Van Jones speak at a Pachimama event; I was so taken by him, what he had to say. He said the Pachimama people had heard of his work in Oakland to stop the Violence on the streets. Young black men killing young black men. Police shooting young black men; young black men shooting police often enough to have the city of Oakland on edge and the people in a state of resignation about what to do. I had experienced the grief of a family that lost their twin sons 21 years old years back. The thing I most remember about that experience was the minister saying: remember the young black men - in prison or dead- are not the end users. They are being exploited, their lives wasted --used and spit out or laid out on the concrete while the people making the money and the people with the money to purchase walk on. Ab and Ob were the twins. I also remember their mother singing with all that she had surrendering her pain to the Lord she said.

But what drew me to Van Jones and the Ella Baker Center was that they are dealing with this loss with the families, with the community and they ARE having an effect. In a meeting I attended not long ago for the families affected by the violence, I realized that both sides of the violence are victims and in the context of this work, both are brought in, both are given the knowledge that they are not alone. When you figure that something like 48% of the young black men bail on high school and have little to look forward to in the future, you can see that the excitement and the glory of having a moment even if it involves a gun but that they don't plan on getting killed or being killed, but think this action might bring them a semblence of a life, you can see where they'e coming from. So what I witnessed in this last meeting was the embrace of the people who come to the Ella Baker Center: to show love to all the parties involved. The Center wants to give hope to young people by giving them training and a dorm instead of a dead end jail that communicates they're nothing to anyone. The Center wants to educate the public on the fact that in the current youth system produces a recidivist rate of 68%, offering no hope and a turn around almost guaranteed. And very simply what I saw was inclusion and compassion in their mission is making a dent.

There are people who have worked with the Ella Baker Center and Van Jones since the beginning, I think it started with 400 seven or eight years ago, and at awards dinner, there were 4000; a growing recognition that a difference is being made. In 2008, there was a reduction in the killings on the street, and in the meeting I attended, a solid number present were the young people speaking about the part they want to make in having this change happen. The lights are on. Someone is home. And there is going to be a new president.

And then you have a man of 22, at the Fruitvale Bart station, two other friends sitting next to him on the concrete platform, he is pushed down on his face by one BART officer who has his knee in his back while another officer is looking in the direction of the car full of New Years Eve celebrants on the train taking the picture shouting out in outrage at the treatment they can see from the BART train. Another officer has his knee on the back of this young man, this young man having at best only his mouth as a means to respond to the officers pressing him to the concrete when the BART policemen reaches for his gun and fires it into this 22 year old's body point blank.

So where I want to be as Obama takes office is with the Ella Baker Center. I heard that Obama asked Van Jones to be on his Transition Team, and I felt like the same lines that reached people so far and so deeply in the population can be a current to actually produce light in the darkest corners of the darkest hours and shed light to heal and bring about the needed change for this segment of the population that is beginning to feel they will be heard and seen. This is the new year and the new possibility.