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De Fremery Park and Recreation Center West Oakland

2015-08-17T21:47:52Z

Burns:

''' Historical Essay '''

''by Chance Grable, 2015''

[[Image:Chance-Grable INSERT-1.jpg]]

'''The De Fremery Mansion in the 1860s.'''

''Photo: Oakland Public Library, Oakland History Room''

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |In the 1860’s, a giant Victorian mansion was built in the oak groves of western Oakland by James de Fremery. De Fremery, a successful San Francisco banker, sought an escape for his family from the gritty urban center that San Francisco had become. Nearly 150 years later, this mansion, still largely intact, is the de Fremery Recreation Center, the centerpiece of West Oakland’s de Fremery Park.(1) A social history of the building's evolution, from private estate to public recreation center, affords us an illustration of the changing dynamics of the surrounding area of West Oakland. From wealthy merchants to Black Panthers, there has been a broad range of forces that influenced the use of this space. As new populations, ideas and identities flowed into West Oakland, they molded the de Fremery estate to accommodate their needs and aspirations. Therefore the history of de Fremery reveals the external and internal forces that have shaped how space has been used in West Oakland.
|}

As San Francisco became more urban, industrial and crowded during the second half of the 19th century, some San Francisco elites migrated to Oakland to escape. The de Fremery family was one of several wealthy families who built giant Victorian mansions on large estates in the heavily wooded area of western Oakland, which was easily accessible to San Francisco by ferry. The de Fremery estate, known as the Grove because “it was covered with a dense growth of primeval Oaks,”(2) was designed to meet the desires of the de Fremery family. This place would serve as a refuge from the big city where they could relax, socialize with each other and other friends and engage in outdoor recreational activities such as hunting.(3) However this sanctuary could not be protected from the encroaching forces of industrialization and the urbanization forever.

The Progressive Playground

[[Image:Chance-Grable Insert-2.jpg]]

''Photo: Oakland Public Library, Oakland History Room''

In 1869 it was determined that the transcontinental railroad would end in western Oakland, ensuring a rapid industrial growth in the following decades. As new jobs were required to operate the railroads and associated industries, working class people, mainly immigrant whites, flowed into western Oakland. To meet the needs of this new flux of people, the area urbanized. This trend was not unique to Oakland. Across the nation industrialization had led to rapid urbanization and the creation of often crowded and under-serviced neighborhoods that were seen as breeding grounds for vice, disease and immorality by many middle and upper class Americans.

The de Fremery family had responded to these negative connotations of urbanization decades earlier by fleeing San Francisco, but by the late part of the 19th century, the de Fremerys were part of a growing progressive movement that sought to confront the ills of urbanization more directly. James de Fremery used his resources to alleviate impacts on senior women and children. Writing in 1966, reporter Nancy Turpin stated that he was “involved in philanthropy. One early charitable venture was a home for elderly women,” opened in 1882 followed by the 1889 opening of de Fremery Cottage, a child care nursery.(4) These establishments became part of a broader “charitable landscape” of settlement homes, kindergartens, and orphanages that “played a key role in addressing the social ills brought about by industrialization and urbanization” in Oakland.(5) By the early 20th century, the de Fremery mansion itself would be dedicated to this cause.

The functionality of the de Fremery mansion as a getaway for the de Fremery family was fading as urbanization encroached on the estate. James de Fremery junior conceded in 1904 that the estate “was all that was left of Old Oakland.”(6) The new Oakland was urban, industrial and filled with residents who were not getting their needs met in the over-crowded urban space. Among these residents were children that, according the City of Oakland's Parks and Playground Commission at the time, had their “divine right to play… restricted until the only playgrounds were the streets.”(7) One manifestation of the progressive era in Oakland was the Playground Movement, which was “designed to meet the physical and social needs of the upgrowing generation” by establishing playgrounds in urban areas.(8) The de Fremery estate would be converted into Oakland’s first municipal playground in 1907 when the city bought it from James de Fremery Jr.(9) The local government's decision to purchase the de Fremery land and convert it into a space to serve working class people illustrates how the progressive movement migrated into government from privately run and funded charitable efforts. This migration is apparent throughout the history of de Fremery.

[[Image:Chance-Grable insert-3.jpg]]

'''The WPA-era Clubhouse.'''

''Photo: Oakland Public Library, Oakland History Room''

The de Fremery Clubhouse and the Works Progress Administration

Twenty years after the de Fremery mansion was converted into a recreational area, industrial capitalism was again failing to meet the needs of working class residents. The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Oakland and many of the industrial jobs held by working class people disappeared. The de Fremery house would be transformed again to meet the needs of residents. The federal government, which was very much alive with the progressive spirit, was the driving force enabling this change. The federally funded Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Oakland Recreational Department jointly established an Oakland Recreational Leadership Project in the “Defremery Park Clubhouse”. Defremery was used for trainings for recreational leaders that would be hired as part of the federal government's efforts to expand employment. Marie McDonald, who was in charge of training recreational leaders at Defremery, informed one local reporter that WPA funds had paid for “80 WPA assistants at various playgrounds…for two months.”(10) Improvements to recreational facilities and programs appear to be secondary goals of these hires. Like many other federally funded New Deal programs, the primary motivation appeared to be providing employment.

The Black United Servicemen's Organization

[[Image:Chance-Grable Insert-4.jpg]]

'''Black USO dance party.'''

''Photo: Oakland Tribune, July 25, 1942''

The beginning of WWII in 1939 would have a drastic impact on West Oakland. Due to its proximity to the Port of Oakland and Oakland Railway, West Oakland would once again experience rapid industrial growth, this time for war industry production. War industry jobs were abundant and, as a result, the “Great Migration” of African Americans from the South flowed into West Oakland for these jobs, just as white immigrants had decades earlier to work on the railroads. Additionally, many military recruits and draftees from around the nation arrived in West Oakland, many of whom would be stationed at the Oakland Army Base. These demographic shifts as well as the widespread emphasis on contributing to the war cause would reshape the way de Fremery was used in that era.

Community leader Frances Mary Albrier describes the how the war created a particular need in West Oakland:

<blockquote>When the war first began…there was no place for them [servicemen] to have recreation, and we found that a great many of them were wandering up and down Seventh Street, going into bars; some of them getting lonesome and getting drunk, and getting into trouble. (11)</blockquote>

Albrier goes on to explain how she and other community members organized to establish a United Servicemen Organization (USO). Throughout the war, de Fremery would serve as the local home of the Black USO, where African American servicemen could enjoy recreational activities such as games and dances, within the context of the racial segregation at the time. The transformation of de Fremery into the Black USO illustrates how the war cause placed new demands on the use of public spaces, and also how the community mobilized to address a need that the war created in their community.

The Golden Years of Youth Development

The end of the war brought several challenges to West Oakland. Housing discrimination in other parts of the city caused overcrowding in West Oakland because it was one of the few places that the great numbers of African American migrants from the South could settle. Furthermore, as war industry jobs dwindled, the color line was stiffened to ensure white men had jobs after the war. As historian Robert O. Self asserts, “Calls for wartime unity...had neither reconciled competing class interest nor bridged racial divides, in Oakland.”(12) To disadvantage them further, many West Oakland residents were rural migrants who arrived with little and had to rapidly adjust to the urban culture.

These challenges affected many West Oakland residents, but West Oakland youth appeared to be particularly struggling. When a mini riot erupted between servicemen and neighborhood teenagers, it became apparent that the youth needed more support. Soon after, the Oakland Recreational Department hired Dorothy Pitts, who moved into the Defremery Rec Center and transformed it into a youth development-focused recreation center. The recreation center provided social activities such as dances and concerts as well as leadership development, democratic decision-making lessons and charm schooling. In some cases,activities helped rural youth coming to Oakland as part of the Great Migration adjust to city life. Former Defremery youth participant Charles Aikens recalls this experience.“We were country kids and knew nothing about the City. Defremery had staff that who was aware of this going on with kids. They gave us a chance to mingle and meet people to become socialized and city civilized.”(13) During this time, de Fremery also provided a space for youth to express their political will and challenge the color line that discriminated against them and their community. Most notably the youth organized a successful boycott of Coca-Cola, which resulted in the hiring of the first African American.(14) During these golden years of youth development (1947-1964) de Fremery was transformed into a space which nurtured West Oakland youth both socially and politically, enabling them to better serve the broader community.

This era would come to an end when, after years of dedication to making de Fremery a space that served the youth, Dorothy Pitts resigned. Her decision was based on systemic racism within the Oakland Recreational Department, that denied her the privileges it did other white employees as well as constant conflict with her boss whose vision for de Fremery emphasized sports over leadership development.(15) This was not an isolated dynamic; West Oakland consistently had to resist the control of racist domineering forces outside the community.

Li'l Bobby Hutton Memorial Park

By the 1960's several factors had transformed West Oakland into a ghetto. Housing discrimination caused intense over crowding in West Oakland. As Chris Rhomberg points out, “In 1940, 60 percent of the black population had lived in census tracts located in West Oakland; in 1950 despite more than a fivefold increase in size, 80 percent lived in the same areas.”(16) This combined with consistent lack of access to credit and employment had left West Oakland in an impoverished state. Downtown business owners empowered by federal money sought to solve this problem through massive redevelopment projects that would destroy “blighted” privately owned homes and replace them with housing projects, a freeway, and a post office.(17) From within the community it was apparent that these changes would not serve the community and that outside forces did not have their best interest in mind. After years of superficial liberal allegiance and consistent rejection from white institutions, an increasing number of people from the African American community began to emphasize community control and building power within the community. This effort would take the form of the Black Power Movement.

[[Image:Chance-Grable Insert-5.jpg]]

The [[Black Panthers|Black Panther Party]], which emerged out of West Oakland in 1966, represented the early Black Power Movement in Oakland. The Panthers became famous for their armed resistance and rejection of outside domination, most apparently “the occupying army, embodied in the police department.”(18) However, West Oakland resident Olleita Thomas points out this this was not the only aspect of the Panthers: “People see them as this radical group that was violent, but they did things like raise money for black kids who didn't get enough to eat. They did a lot of good in the community.”(19) The Panthers’ presence at de Fremery, which they renamed Li'l Bobby Hutton Memorial Park after the martyred Panther, reveled this side of the Panthers. The Panthers held rallies often and in 1972 held a large Black Community Survival Conference. Additionally, de Fremery would be one of many spaces where the Panthers would conduct their “survival pending revolution programs” including sickle cell anemia testing and free grocery distribution.(20) As throughout the history of de Fremery, during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s de Fremery was used as space that served the specific community needs at the time. While the Panthers as an organization are long gone, Li'l Bobby Hutton Memorial Day is still celebrated in the park every year.

[[Image:Chance-Grable insert-6.jpg]]

The Influenced and Influential de Fremery

From a luxury mansion for a wealthy merchant’s family, to a space for revolutionary politics, the changing functions of de Fremery reveal how political, economic and social forces influenced the use of space in West Oakland. These forces continue to determine how space is used. Since the mid 2000’s, gentrification has been a driving force behind the transformation of space in West Oakland and it will surely impact de Fremery. While de Fremery primarily functions as a youth program for a relatively small number of children, in 2013 the local artist epli used this space to hold an event titled “Here. Before. Art From A Contested Space,” in which old and new residents discussed the implications of gentrification.(21) This event is part of the longer legacy of de Fremery, a space that is not only influenced by broader historical forces, but also a space that has been used to respond to them. Whether de Fremery has been used to discuss gentrification, provide residents with much needed employment or provide a space to challenge racial discrimination, the use of space at de Fremery has influenced the political, social and economic dynamics of West Oakland and beyond.

Notes

1. Sometimes spelled Defremery. 
2. M. J. van Loben Sels, manuscript, Major; Memoirs of Pieter Justus van Loben Sels, 1916, James de Fremery file, Oakland History Room (Oakland CA). 
3. Ibid. 
4. Nancy Turpin, “Founders Look On,” ''Oakland Tribune'', 22 Sep. 1966. 
5. Marta Gutman, ''A City for Children: Women, Architecture and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 3. 
6. “The de Fremery Property: A Park Already Made,” ''Oakland Inquirer'', 15 Sep. 1904. 
7. The Park System of Oakland California: I. Report of Park Commission; II. Report of Playground Commission, 1910, 113. 
8. Ibid, 117.
9. Jonathan Khorfhage, [http://www.cprs.org/index.php?option=com_content&id=622:oakland-parks-and-recreation-celebrates-100-years&Itemid=56 “Oakland Parks And Recreation Celebrates 100 Years,”] ''California Parks and Recreation Magazine'', Winter 2010, Volume 66, No. 1, 50, (accessed 14 May, 2015). 
10. “WPA hires 20 Recreational Leaders,” ''Oakland Tribune'', 17 Jan. 1936. 
11. Frances Mary Albrier interview by MalcaChall, The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library, Radcliff College, 1977-1978. 
12. Robert O. Self, ''American Babylon: Race and Struggle for Post War Oakland'', (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 24. 
13. Charles Aikens quoted in Dorothy Pitts, ''A special Place for Special People: The Defremery Story'', (Memphis: Better Communication, 1993), 21. 
14. Dorothy Pitts, ''A Special Place for Special People: The Defremery Story,'' (Memphis: Better Communication, 1993), 86. 
15. Ibid, 148. 
16. Chris Rhomberg, ''No There There Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland''. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 121. 
17. Robert O. Self, “Redistribution,” ''American Babylon: Race and Struggle for Post War Oakland'', (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 24 
18. Huey P. Newton quoted in Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, ''Black Against Empire--The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party'', (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012.) 67. 
19. Interview with Olleita Marie Thomas by author, May 6, 2015. 
20. Alondra Nelson, ''Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination''. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 1. 
21. James Reddick, [https://oaklandnorth.net/2013/10/30/local-photographers-gentrification-project-promotes-discussion/ “Gentrification Photo Project Sparks Debate on West Oakland’s Future,”] ''Oakland North'', 23 Oct. 2013, (accessed 5 May 2015).

[[category:East Bay]] [[category:1850s]] [[category:1860s]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:African-American]] [[category:1880s]] [[category:1900s]] [[category:1930s]] [[category:Parks]] [[category:racism]] [[category:Redevelopment]]

Women's Economic Agenda Project

2015-08-04T22:59:53Z

Burns: Created page with '''' Historical Essay ''' ''by Sarah Macklis, 2015'' left {| ...'

''' Historical Essay '''

''by Sarah Macklis, 2015''

[[Image:Addressing-injustice.png|left]]

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |Founded in Oakland in 1982, the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) is a vital organizing hub for low-income women, people of color, and workers working together to define an alternative economic vision centered on human rights. Combining advocacy, popular education, and protest, WEAP advances human rights and political rights for the most marginalized through partnerships with unions, churches, community centers, universities, and neighborhood groups. This article explores WEAP’s origins, evolution, and political philosophy.
|}
 
 
 
 
''“WEAP’s demand for economic justice is to break isolation and fatality, and to show that
poverty is the result of structural oppression and domination.”''
– WEAP Social Justice Handbook

''“To focus on the experiences of women is not to exclude others, but to shine a light on the
most glaring manifestations of poverty. The first step of healing is to bring out these stories, not separately from one another, but connected in our common cause.”'' 
– WEAP Social Justice Handbook
 
 
Catalyzed by the first onslaught of official “austerity”(1) legislation enacted under President Ronald Reagan in 1982, three hundred and fifty women from across California convened to analyze and give name to what they considered critical economic, social, and political dynamics conditioning exclusion and deprivation among their communities. These women’s efforts produced the [http://www.weap.org/ Women’s Economic Agenda Project’s] initial agenda, focused on challenging dominant discourses often used to shame marginalized groups, as well as educating and training people to struggle for a different reality.(2) Founded in Oakland, CA in 1982, WEAP has continued to organize primarily low-income women, people of color, and workers towards defining an alternative economic vision.

That WEAP was developed in Oakland, a geographic site across which post-WWII segregationist housing policies, lack of fair employment provisions, and profoundly biased forms of social insurance influenced the concentration of communities of color within particular spaces, raises questions surrounding from what sorts of deeper historical legacies and circumstances did the organization draw insight, contention, and impetus.(3) WEAP must be situated in light of a broader trend among working class women in the paid workforce during the early eighties who had begun demanding increasing political rights.(4) To understand WEAP’s formation also means to engage with a longer Bay Area history including activists, workers, and community members such as Milo Smith (the founder of the Older Women’s League), Dezie Woods Jones (the past Director and President of Black Women Organized for Political Action), and Elaine Zimmerman who directly informed the organization’s mission, development, and organizing strategies.(5)

[[Image: WEAP Photo 1.jpg]]
 
'''WEAP Teach-In, Oakland, Spring 2015'''
 
''Photo: Sarah Macklis''

Early efforts by WEAP included aiding actions by mothers on welfare in the face of planned cuts, unions pushing for improved working conditions, and healthcare professionals opposing closures of clinics and advocating a universal health care system.(6) From its inception, the organization recognized the importance of connecting people across different struggles to foster common dialogue and strategic collaboration.(7) Some of whom have included leaders in churches, unions, community centers, recovery houses, university campuses, and neighborhoods brought together through gatherings and actions held on the streets and under bridges, in living rooms, classrooms, meeting halls, and shelters in rural, suburban, and urban areas across California.(8)

Over the past thirty-three years, WEAP’s vision, projects, and organizing methodologies have undergone transformation. As proponents of market fundamentalism in dominant U.S. institutions have continued to pursue policies which generate increasing
inequality, poverty, privatization, commodification, and austerity, WEAP’s work has shifted to primarily focus on building a “transformative social movement to place human rights above profit.”(9) Engaging expressly with a “human rights strategy”(10) for more than a decade (since 1995, the organization has promoted the human right to healthcare), WEAP has aimed to make visible human rights violations, demand a new social contract founded on essential human rights, and bolster social mobilization around issues such as healthcare, housing, living wages, education, the environment, poverty, jobs, and immigration.(11)

In March 2006, WEAP and its Allies hosted the first ever Western Region’s World Courts of Women on Poverty in the United States in Oakland.12 The “Citizen’s Hearing and Truth Commission on the Healthcare Crisis” created a unique space for sharing stories “not only of pain, but also of courage and survival.”(13) The personal testimonies and hearings are part of a broader human rights project to produce forms of knowledge that can “help to question, transform, and initiate alternative thinking, institutions, and instruments which seek to address the violation of women’s human rights at regional, national, and international levels.”(14) The World Courts of Women culminated in 5 Resolutions of Action, designating and elaborating five core issue areas around which crucial anti-poverty organizing efforts are to be focused – Jobs, poverty and immigration; Foreclosures, homelessness, and property rights; Health care for the 99%; Organizing for a quality public education; Environment and the justice system.(15)

[[Image: WEAP Photo 2.jpg]]
 
'''WEAP Teach-In, Spring 2015'''
 
''Photo: Sarah Macklis''

WEAP envisions its current work as closely related to the measures and ideals embodied by the ''Five Resolutions of Action''.(16) Its three-pronged organizational strategy encompasses a campaign for the establishment of a human right to healthcare, an education program, and skills and leadership training for “building leadership among primarily low-income women-of-color and their families.”(17) In seeking to cultivate a movement to end poverty, WEAP has remained committed throughout its history to acknowledging and highlighting the crucial experience, insight, and dynamism that working and poor women can contribute towards combatting economic insecurity and struggling for economic justice.

'''Notes''' 
1. Interview with Ethel Long-Scott by author, April 19, 2015. 
2. Social Justice Annual Strategic Plan and Handbook for Women’s Economic Agenda Project, January 2013 to December 2015. 
3. Robert O. Self, ''American Babylon: Race and Struggle for Postwar Oakland''. (New Jersey: Princeton, 2003), 18. 
4. Interview with Ethel Long-Scott 
5. Interview with Ethel Long-Scott 
6. Interview with Ethel Long-Scott 
7. Social Justice Annual Strategic Plan and Handbook for Women’s Economic AgendaProject, January 2013 to December 2015. 
8. Interview with Ethel Long-Scott 
9. Interview with Ethel Long-Scott 
10. Social Justice Annual Strategic Plan and Handbook for Women’s Economic AgendaProject, January 2013 to December 2015. 
11. Ibid. 
12. Video footage and stories shared during the [https://vimeo.com/46465051 U.S. Courts of Women on Poverty, Western Region] 
13. Pamphlet produced by World Courts of The Women on Poverty in the U.S. Conference, 2012. 
14. Ibid. 
15. Social Justice Annual Strategic Plan and Handbook for Women’s Economic AgendaProject, January 2013 to December 2015. 
16. For more information on the ''Five Resolutions of Action'', please see [http://www.weap.org/wcw-2/resolutions-of-action-summary/ WEAP’s website] 
17. Social Justice Annual Strategic Plan and Handbook for Women’s Economic AgendaProject, January 2013 to December 2015. 

[[category:Bay Area Social Movements]][[category:African-American]][[category:Women]][[category:Labor]][[category:East Bay]][[category:Housing]][[category:Homeless]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:2010s]]

File:WEAP Photo 2.jpg

2015-08-04T22:43:52Z

Burns: WEAP Sponsored Teach-In, Spring 2015

WEAP Sponsored Teach-In, Spring 2015

File:WEAP Photo 1.jpg

2015-08-04T22:42:47Z

Burns: WEAP Sponsored Teach-In, Spring 2015

WEAP Sponsored Teach-In, Spring 2015

Centro Legal De La Raza

2015-08-04T20:36:54Z

Burns:

''' Historical Essay '''

''by Ariel Gomez, 2015''

[[Image:Addressing-injustice.png|left]]

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |Inspired by the 1960s Chicano movement, Centro Legal de la Raza – a comprehensive legal services agency located in Oakland’s Fruitvale District - has educated, organized, and served marginalized Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost fifty years.
|}
 

Early History
 
 
Emerging out of the wave of radical social justice movements and Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, [http://centrolegal.org/ Centro Legal de La Raza] was founded in the spring of 1969 by eight Chicano law students at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School. The organization’s history, however, predates its initial founding. Before the creation of Centro Legal, the burgeoning Chicano Movement was one of the many social justice movements that tried to foment change in the United States. Oakland, CA, famous as the birthplace of the Black Panther Party, was a regional hotspot for such political activity. In particular, the East Oakland Fruitvale community, known for its marginalized Latino and African American populations and lacking many basic social services, became a geographical center for communities raising challenges to the social and political infrastructure.(1)

One of the cornerstone’s of the Chicano Movement was an outrage for the inaccessibility of higher learning institutions to Latino people. Many colleges and universities did not include Chicano students either because of outright discrimination or broader structural barriers to accessibility. Albert Moreno, a fist year law student at Boalt in 1967, sought to create a Chicano law student organization to address such issues as they pertained to UC Berkeley. There was one major problem: at the time, there were only three Chicano students at the law school. Moreno was determined to open the law school to more students of color, so he met several times with the administration to change the admission process and diversify the student body. His efforts paid off; the following year, nineteen Chicano students were admitted, allowing for the creation of the La Raza Students Association and the Boalt Hall Community Assistance Program (BHCA). The BHCA, according to Moreno, “was a clearinghouse for student organizations that sponsored community projects,” and both organizations provided crucial funding to such programs.(2)

As law students, the members of the La Raza Student’s Association and the BHCA saw a need for a legal aid center in their community. At the time, only the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County provided free and low-cost legal services in the area, but none of the staff spoke Spanish nor did they have sufficient cultural understanding of the issues facing the Latino community. Moreno, who headed the BHCA, and three other Chicano law students submitted a budget proposal for what would become Centro Legal de La Raza to the BHCA. Given Moreno’s good reputation, the proposal had little difficulty being accepted. The founders decided to establish the organization in Oakland’s Fruitvale district to be more accessible to the communities Latino community, and in the spring of 1969, Centro Legal opened its doors.(3)

Though Centro was founded primarily as a legal services organization, its staff recognized that, given the charged political climate of the time and the vast social problems facing the Chicano community at the time, the organization had the responsibility to push for social change in Oakland. It could not just be client service oriented. The organization began to mandate “political training” to generate a greater social awareness and consciousness, as well as a greater understanding of the community’s primary concerns. Centro began to organizecommunity members through a series of initiatives, including helping Chicano draftees file for
“Conscientious Objector” status. With funds from the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, the organization was also able to hire staff from the local community and prepared them for jobs as paralegals and clerks.

In 1976, Centro began to organize against police brutality when 27 year-old Jose Barlow Benavides was shot at close range by a rookie officer with a shotgun. The initial investigation by the police department did not satisfy the community, and many were angry that there was no disciplinary action for the officer. The Benavides Defense Committee was formed by local organizers who sought justice for Jose. Centro appointed Edward Roybal Jr. to represent them within the committee, and, with the support of local leaders like Ronald Dellums, Bill Lockyer, and Mayor Lionel Wilson, they were successful in pushing the District Attorney to convene a grand jury. Nevertheless, the officer who shot Jose was not indicted.

 
Struggles for Survival

By this time, community support for Centro and the Oakland movement against police brutality had waned. After a campaign conducted through word of mouth and posters by local artist Malaquias Montoya, Centro once again mobilized the community, this time to push for a federal indictment through the U.S. Department of Justice. Once again progressive local politicians appealed to the federal government for legal action. After a year and a half long investigation, however, the Department of Justice did not press charges, declaring the incident an accident. After investing so much into the campaign to seek justice for Jose Benavides, the organization was dealt a major blow. This challenge foreshadowed bigger challenges for the organization in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

In 1978, Proposition 13, a complete overhaul of the state’s property tax system, was
passed with the support of right-wing groups and conservative homeowners. Property tax cuts led to significant budget cuts and Centro Legal, with a reputation for radical politics, was targeted, losing nearly half of its budget as a result. Centro’s funding problems worsened with the election of President Ronald Reagan. First, in his effort to gut federally funded social programs and services, Reagan eliminated the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the main source of Centro’s funding. Additionally, though the President was not able to gut federal funds to legal service organizations, he was able to pass a measure that would prevent government money from going to organizations working with undocumented immigrants.(4) Centro refused to stop serving immigrants and this combined with the elimination of CETA resulted in a 100% cut to the organization’s budget.

Centro Legal’s staff was reduced to four people: staff attorney Victor Ochoa, Guillermo Suarez, who had yet to pass the bar exam, paralegal Carmen Acosta, and Executive Director Martha Lueta, who decided to go off salary. After being charged with tax evasion by the IRS, Centro was in additional trouble. Ochoa, who was able to secure a position in the Alameda County court, also went off salary and helped the organization to pay off its debt to the IRS in two years. Despite a successful fundraising event held by Edward Roybal Sr., Ronald Dellums, and Barbara Lee, Centro Legal barely held onto survival. It was proving difficult to organize the community politically so it focused on legal services, becoming one of the few organizations at the time that worked with an influx of Central and South American immigrants to apply for citizenship. After the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, most of these immigrants were given amnesty and Centro was able to focus on other activities, including the operation of a senior center that otherwise would have closed.

By 1986, Centro had amassed a large debt and once again struggled to stay open. Edward Roybal Jr., who was appointed the Executive Director until 1992, was able to get funding from the city government and began pushing for private funding from foundations. Erlinda Castro, a former staff member, became the new Executive Director, and with a new, stable source of funding, was able to develop programs to defend Latino students who were unjustly disciplined. Centro tenants who lived in deplorable conditions. However, in 1994, funding did not come through and Centro was once again in dire straits. Victor Ochoa then assumed the position of Executive Director. In the next couple of years, there was a resurgence of student volunteers and Ochoa saw this as an opportunity to transition leadership to Juan Lopez and Evelyn Cruz, recent law graduates. Despite their efforts, they did not have sufficient experience and Ochoa once again resumed the position of Executive Director in 1996.(5)

Under Ochoa’s second time at the head of Centro, the Tenant’s Rights Project continued and a recent law school graduate, Josephina Alvarez, began the Latino Student Rights Project. At the time, many Latino and Chicano students had been unfairly treated and disciplined by public school administrations. These schools had an internal procedure to redress these issues, but they
often required legal representation. Thus, Centro Legal, with Alvarez’s leadership, was able to advocate for students, keep them in school, and seek alternatives to suspension and expulsion. Ochoa recalled one instance in which a student had been placed in the same math course for two years in spite of having passed it. He could not find help within the administration and began acting out, leading to disciplinary measures. Centro Legal stepped in and was able to place the student into the proper math course.(6)

Despite Alvarez’s strong leadership and potential in the organization, her tenure at Centro was cut short. She was attacked and robbed one day in front of the organization’s office, an event that nearly cost her life and badly rocked the organization. It took time for her and the organization to recover from the attack, and though Alvarez came back for a while, she eventually moved on.(7) In 2000, Ochoa also decided it was time for him to move on, and Rocio Fierro, an attorney from the District Attorney’s office, became the interim director for about six months. In October of that year, Fierro contacted Patricia Loya, who had worked with her sister Anamaria Loya in La Raza Centro Legal, an independent legal service organization in San Francisco. She was offered the position of Executive Director and accepted the job.(8)

Upon assuming the organization’s leadership, she found it was in severe financial trouble. The staff was composed of little more than a receptionist, and the organization’s bank account had less than $10,000. There was not enough money for her own salary. The only grant that Centro had was for housing work so she sought contracts with the city and donors. But she found the organization had no contracts with anyone, beyond a community project with the East Bay Law Center, which was still in the works. Loya said that “I knew we needed money NOW.” She decided to hold a fundraising event and reached out to the community that had supported the organization so much in the past. There was no donor database, so Loya and what little staff she had went through boxes, looking for past checks and information on previous donors. In this fundraising drive, she was able to raise $37,000, a significant sum for an organization with practically no staff.(9)

Patricia Loya then began to reach out to private donor foundations, encountering a good amount of hostility at first. Nobody wanted to donate money to what appeared to be a sinking ship. Loya says, “We were a skinny chicken that needed to puff up its feathers to look like a fat chicken.” Essentially, Centro Legal had to think like a bog organization and have faith in itself, or else no one would have faith in them. Loya began looking into smaller grants aimed at legal services organizations. She then began holding annual and biannual events, where people could donate, mingle, and create a greater presence for Centro Legal. In one instance, about thirty judges attended a fundraising dinner, which inadvertently attracted a large number of lawyers (and potential donor) seeking to gain good favor with these judges. Loya also began looking into corporate funding and other sources of money. Her aim was to diversify the organization’s funding to reduce Centro’s dependency on government funding, and thus its vulnerability.(10)

It was then that Loya realized that if the organization did not have enough programs, what were the donors going to fund? She began to envision a program aimed at educating youth on the law and their rights, hopefully guiding them to a career in the legal field. This was both an attempt to help underprivileged Latino youth in Oakland, and it was also a strategic move: youth services were popular and could serve as an attraction for funding.(11) What would eventually become the Youth Law Academy (YLA) was Loya’s brainchild, but it was staff member Mara Chavez who ultimately put together the program. Chavez reached out to prominent members of the legal and educational community to create an advisory board, which would advise Centro on what the organization should look like, potential challenges, and how to secure funding. The YLA finally came into existence in 2005, and continues to be one of Centro Legal’s signature programs.(12)

However, until 2004, when Centro was able to secure a $400,000 annual budget, funding was insecure, making it difficult to offer even basic legal services. Thus, Patricia Loya reached out to La Raza Centro Legal, where she had previously worked with her sister. Although Centro (in Fruitvale) could not afford to have a staff attorney at the time, attorneys from the San Francisco organization volunteered their time at Centro, holding legal clinics and providing community members with legal advice. In particular, Paul Chavez, an attorney, held clinics on housing law, continuing Centro’s tradition of protecting tenants from insidious slum lords.(13) In 2005, Centro was finally able to hire its first staff attorney in many years, Timothy Griffiths. Griffiths began taking on housing cases and was soon also working on wage claim matters for employment. This was a turning point for the organization, as it finally had enough money to begin offering full legal services.(14) Around this time another attorney, Alan Weiss, began holding clinics for consumer protection and soon after, Alison Davenport was hired as an immigration staff attorney.(15) Though Centro could only offer low salaries, Loya said they nonetheless hired the best attorneys, people who were “very soulful, smart, and good.”(16)

 
Rise of the Day Laborers Movement & Centro's Reemergence

Of course, the world did not stand still as Centro fought to secure funding and expand its services. In the early 2000s, the question of illegal immigration once again took center stage in national politics.(17) Moreover, ''jornaleros'', or day laborers, began to receive negative attention. Many business owners argued that they were driving away customers by standing in front of their businesses. Others said they were dirty, lewd, and considered them as (illegal) urban blight. None of this hype recognized that most of these people were simply looking for work and often suffered abuses from their employers, who sometimes did not pay them. There was also a great amount of persecution by police and a general sense of racial prejudice directed at ''jornaleros''. Many cities, including Oakland, sought to create “day labor centers,” where ''jornaleros'' could go to look for work without blocking streets or businesses. These centers would also ideally provide workshops on English, rights, etc., and sometimes food.(18)

The Oakland Day Labor Center was strongly supported by Ignacio de la Fuente, a prominent and powerful city councilmember, but there were many questions over its efficacy and the quality of its services and the building it was held in.(19) This day labor center also came with a compromise: the police could surveil other locations and remove ''jornaleros'' not seeking work at the center. Carlos Mares, a ''jornalero'' himself, began organizing day workers in Oakland and eventually reached out to Centro Legal.(20) In addition to persecution by police and lost wages, ''jornaleros'' would also be taken to jail, where federal agencies like ICE would check if they were undocumented. If so, they would be sent to “immigration jail,” where they would be held before being deported. Mares knew that they needed to know their rights and though Centro could help them out.(21)

In 2001, as Patricia Loya sought funds for the organization, she was approached by a group of ''jornaleros'' seeking help. Loya set up a future meeting with them and reached out to Renee Saucedo of La Raza Centro Legal, a champion of the day labor cause. On the day of the meeting, both women waited at Centro, but no one came. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a large group of people came around the corner, filling Centro Legal beyond capacity, with many more waiting outside. Loya knew at this point that this was a cause that the organization needed to pursue. She approached the issue from the point of view that people have the right to seek work in public spaces like sidewalks. She said day labor centers were fine, but that people have the right to search for work elsewhere. The Oakland Day Labor Center would not work if people were not using it, and people would not use it unless it truly served the ''jornaleros''.(22)

It was this meeting that helped spark the Day Labor Movement in Oakland, as Centro helped ''jornaleros'' organize and the organization ''Lucha Unida de los Jornaleros'' was formed, headed by Carlos Mares, who would eventually marry Patricia Loya. This organization not only created a community where ''jornaleros'' could find support, but also allowed police to communicate with them and demonstrate that they could be called for help when they get robbed or denied wages. Moreover, through Centro, Lucha connected with the National Day Labor Network, which allowed them to attend several conferences throughout California and the nation.(23) They were able to go to day labor conferences in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Marin, and even Oregon. In 2002, they went to Maryland and Washington D.C., where they spoke in front of congress.(24)

Centro Legal and Lucha’s most important moment in the Day Worker Movement was a cross-country race in 2006. In 2005, the House of Representatives passed what would become known as the Sensenbrenner Bill, which would have led to a harsh immigration reform that would have criminalized undocumented status and the people helping illegal immigrants.(25) During this time, the federal government was cracking down on immigrants through ''redadas'', or raids to find and deport undocumented workers. Centro Legal, with Alison Davenport as their only immigration attorney, was overwhelmed with immigration cases and could only help out a fraction of those that needed it.(26) To generate public opposition to the bill, Centro and Lucha organized a cross-country run from Santa Monica, through the mid-West, to D.C., and finally to the United Nations Headquarters in New York. With an indigenous group from Arizona, Carlos Mares and others embarked on a two-month run to defeat the Sensenbrenner Bill.(27) As they advanced, they would call Centro, where they had set up a map with pins to show their progress.(28)

Along the way, they had many notable experiences. While in Texas, they stayed in a church, where an officer entered yelling and demanding that one of the runners tell him where he was from. The runner refused to answer and was arrested. Centro had a lawyer on call and with the aid of the ACLU, they were able to release him and continue the run.(29) They also stopped in New Orleans, where ''jornaleros'' and African Americans fought over work on the streets. Though many ''jornaleros'' had been brought in to help rebuild the city after its destruction by Hurricane Katrina. But there was a great amount of anti-jornalero sentiment, with a denial of services and explicit signs that said they were not welcome. Working with a local chapter of the Black Panthers, however, Lucha was able to create some kind of bridge between the ''jornaleros'' and the African Americans in the few days they were there. Finally, on May 5th, the runners arrived in New York, where they were flown back home. Mares says that this publicity stunt helped in the eventual defeat of the Sensenbrenner Bill in the Senate.(30)

Soon after the run, Centro, with a number of other community organizations, joined together to (literally) build their own Oakland Worker Center. Once it was completed, Centro moved from the second floor of the Gualadajara restaurant to the center, along with the organizations involved. In 2007, Lucha made itself independent from Centro, but continued working in the Worker Center. In 2008, Patricia Loya, after reviving the organization from the ashes and reestablishing its presence in the community, finally stepped down as Executive Director.(31) Centro then moved to a new location with a new director, attorney Bianca Sierra.(32)

Under Sierra’s tenure, Centro Legal has continued to grow. Funding has continued to diversify, the staff has expanded significantly, and the YLA has evolved and serves even more students. As of now, Centro has a total of eight staff attorneys, covering a wide range of issues, including immigration, housing, and employment. Immigration has continued to be a primary focus for Centro Legal. With President Obama’s deferred action program, DACA, many undocumented immigrants have sought help filling out applications for them and their children to avoid deportation.(33) The recent surge of accompanied minors crossing the border, undocumented and without guardians, have also been a top priority for Centro.(34)

Moreover, Juan Vera, who joined Centro in 2010, he has been the Project Director of the Youth Law Academy. Now in its tenth year, the diversity pipeline program has expanded some of its activities which focus on giving youth of color the support and guidance to enter college and law school. YLA now provides SAT preparation for high school juniors, and college application support for seniors. This includes help with financial aid applications as well as help connecting student with other programs, summer internships, and legal internships. Vera has also introduced an ethnic studies and law and justice curriculum, in the same vein of the Chicano
Movement that inspired the foundation of Centro. To date, none of YLA’s alumni have applied for law school, but all students in the YLA have graduated high school and there is a 80% college and retention rate. In all, the Centro’s program currently serves a total of 73 students, 36 undergraduates and 37 high school students. In the next five years, YLA will focus on a Diversity Legal Pipeline Program, which will teach YLA alumni in college what it takes to be a first year college student.(35)

Although Centro Legal de la Raza has gone through many phases and difficulties, its three-fold goals continue to guide the organization: the provision of legal services for Oakland’s marginalized Spanish-speaking community; community organizing and empowerment; and the education of the community, especially the youth.(36) Moreover, the leaders and members of the organization, who have sacrificed significant parts of their lives to keeping Centro alive, have stuck to their values and as Victor Ochoa said, they have stubbornly refused to ever sell out.(37)

'''Notes''' 
1. Solona, Anthony. ''Centro Legal de la Raza:Defending a Community from 1969-1999''. 1999. 
2. Ibid. 
3. Ibid. 
4. Ochoa, Victor. Interview with the author. 14 May 2015. 
5. Solana, ''Centro Legal''. 
6. Ochoa. 
7. Ibid. 
8. Loya, Patrcia. Interviewed by the author. 11 May 2015. 
9. Ibid. 
10. Ibid. 
11. Ibid. 
12. Griffiths, Timothy. Interviewed by author. 31 March 2015. 
13. Loya. 
14. Griffiths. 
15. Izarra, Esmeralda. Interviewed by author. 19 May 2015. 
16. Loya. 
17. Romero, Francisco. “Raza Media within the Belly of the Beast: Counter-Insurgency in the Barrio.” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 9, no. 1/2 (March 2010): 205–10. 
18. Skerry, Peter. “Day Laborers and Dock Workers: Casual Labor Markets and Immigration Policy.” Society 45, no. 1 (February 1, 2008): 46–52. 
19. O'Brien, Matt. "Ten years later, Oakland day labor center still debated." Contra Costa Times (California). August 27, 2009 Thursday. Date Accessed: 2015/04/11. 
20. Griffiths. 
21. Mares, Carlos. Interviewed by author. 11 May 2015. 
22. Loya. 
23. Ibid. 
24. Mares. 
25. O’Rourke, Allen Thomas. “Good Samaritans, Beware: The Sensenbrenner-King Bill and Assistance to Undocumented Migrants.” Harvard Latino Law Review 9 (Spring 2006): 195–208. 
26. Izarra. 
27. Mares. 
28. Loya. 
29. Ibid. 
30. Mares. 
31. Loya. 
32. Izarra. 
33. Ibid. See also: “The President’s Immigration Actions.” ''Congressional Digest'' 94, no. 3 (March 2015): 5–6. 
34. Izarra. See also: “Unaccompanied Child Immigrants Fare Better with Attorneys.” ''Los Angeles Times''. 
35. Vera, Juan. Interviewed by the author. 13 March 2015. 
36. Loya. 
37. Ochoa. 

[[category:Bay Area Social Movements]][[category:Immigration]][[category:Mexican]][[category:East Bay]][[category:Crime]][[category:East Bay]][[category:Housing]][[category:1960s]][[category:1970s]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:2010s]]

Centro Legal De La Raza

2015-08-04T20:15:08Z

Burns: Created page with '''' Historical Essay ''' ''by Ariel Gomez, 2015'' left {| st...'

''' Historical Essay '''

''by Ariel Gomez, 2015''

[[Image:Addressing-injustice.png|left]]

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |Inspired by the 1960s Chicano movement, Centro Legal de la Raza – a comprehensive legal services agency located in Oakland’s Fruitvale District - has educated, organized, and served marginalized Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost fifty years.
|}
 

Early History
 
 
Emerging out of the wave of radical social justice movements and Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, [http://centrolegal.org/ Centro Legal de La Raza] was founded in the spring of 1969 by eight Chicano law students at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School. The organization’s history, however, predates its initial founding. Before the creation of Centro Legal, the burgeoning Chicano Movement was one of the many social justice movements that tried to foment change in the United States. Oakland, CA, famous as the birthplace of the Black Panther Party, was a regional hotspot for such political activity. In particular, the East Oakland Fruitvale community, known for its marginalized Latino and African American populations and lacking many basic social services, became a geographical center for communities raising challenges to the social and political infrastructure.(1)

One of the cornerstone’s of the Chicano Movement was an outrage for the inaccessibility of higher learning institutions to Latino people. Many colleges and universities did not include Chicano students either because of outright discrimination or broader structural barriers to accessibility. Albert Moreno, a fist year law student at Boalt in 1967, sought to create a Chicano law student organization to address such issues as they pertained to UC Berkeley. There was one major problem: at the time, there were only three Chicano students at the law school. Moreno was determined to open the law school to more students of color, so he met several times with the administration to change the admission process and diversify the student body. His efforts paid off; the following year, nineteen Chicano students were admitted, allowing for the creation of the La Raza Students Association and the Boalt Hall Community Assistance Program (BHCA). The BHCA, according to Moreno, “was a clearinghouse for student organizations that sponsored community projects,” and both organizations provided crucial funding to such programs.(2)

As law students, the members of the La Raza Student’s Association and the BHCA saw a need for a legal aid center in their community. At the time, only the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County provided free and low-cost legal services in the area, but none of the staff spoke Spanish nor did they have sufficient cultural understanding of the issues facing the Latino community. Moreno, who headed the BHCA, and three other Chicano law students submitted a budget proposal for what would become Centro Legal de La Raza to the BHCA. Given Moreno’s good reputation, the proposal had little difficulty being accepted. The founders decided to establish the organization in Oakland’s Fruitvale district to be more accessible to the communities Latino community, and in the spring of 1969, Centro Legal opened its doors.(3)

Though Centro was founded primarily as a legal services organization, its staff recognized that, given the charged political climate of the time and the vast social problems facing the Chicano community at the time, the organization had the responsibility to push for social change in Oakland. It could not just be client service oriented. The organization began to mandate “political training” to generate a greater social awareness and consciousness, as well as a greater understanding of the community’s primary concerns. Centro began to organizecommunity members through a series of initiatives, including helping Chicano draftees file for
“Conscientious Objector” status. With funds from the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, the organization was also able to hire staff from the local community and prepared them for jobs as paralegals and clerks.

In 1976, Centro began to organize against police brutality when 27 year-old Jose Barlow Benavides was shot at close range by a rookie officer with a shotgun. The initial investigation by the police department did not satisfy the community, and many were angry that there was no disciplinary action for the officer. The Benavides Defense Committee was formed by local organizers who sought justice for Jose. Centro appointed Edward Roybal Jr. to represent them within the committee, and, with the support of local leaders like Ronald Dellums, Bill Lockyer, and Mayor Lionel Wilson, they were successful in pushing the District Attorney to convene a grand jury. Nevertheless, the officer who shot Jose was not indicted.

 
Struggles for Survival

By this time, community support for Centro and the Oakland movement against police brutality had waned. After a campaign conducted through word of mouth and posters by local artist Malaquias Montoya, Centro once again mobilized the community, this time to push for a federal indictment through the U.S. Department of Justice. Once again progressive local politicians appealed to the federal government for legal action. After a year and a half long investigation, however, the Department of Justice did not press charges, declaring the incident an accident. After investing so much into the campaign to seek justice for Jose Benavides, the organization was dealt a major blow. This challenge foreshadowed bigger challenges for the organization in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

In 1978, Proposition 13, a complete overhaul of the state’s property tax system, was
passed with the support of right-wing groups and conservative homeowners. Property tax cuts led to significant budget cuts and Centro Legal, with a reputation for radical politics, was targeted, losing nearly half of its budget as a result. Centro’s funding problems worsened with the election of President Ronald Reagan. First, in his effort to gut federally funded social programs and services, Reagan eliminated the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the main source of Centro’s funding. Additionally, though the President was not able to gut federal funds to legal service organizations, he was able to pass a measure that would prevent government money from going to organizations working with undocumented immigrants.(4) Centro refused to stop serving immigrants and this combined with the elimination of CETA resulted in a 100% cut to the organization’s budget.

Centro Legal’s staff was reduced to four people: staff attorney Victor Ochoa, Guillermo Suarez, who had yet to pass the bar exam, paralegal Carmen Acosta, and Executive Director Martha Lueta, who decided to go off salary. After being charged with tax evasion by the IRS, Centro was in additional trouble. Ochoa, who was able to secure a position in the Alameda County court, also went off salary and helped the organization to pay off its debt to the IRS in two years. Despite a successful fundraising event held by Edward Roybal Sr., Ronald Dellums, and Barbara Lee, Centro Legal barely held onto survival. It was proving difficult to organize the community politically so it focused on legal services, becoming one of the few organizations at the time that worked with an influx of Central and South American immigrants to apply for citizenship. After the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, most of these immigrants were given amnesty and Centro was able to focus on other activities, including the operation of a senior center that otherwise would have closed.

By 1986, Centro had amassed a large debt and once again struggled to stay open. Edward Roybal Jr., who was appointed the Executive Director until 1992, was able to get funding from the city government and began pushing for private funding from foundations. Erlinda Castro, a former staff member, became the new Executive Director, and with a new, stable source of funding, was able to develop programs to defend Latino students who were unjustly disciplined. Centro tenants who lived in deplorable conditions. However, in 1994, funding did not come through and Centro was once again in dire straits. Victor Ochoa then assumed the position of Executive Director. In the next couple of years, there was a resurgence of student volunteers and Ochoa saw this as an opportunity to transition leadership to Juan Lopez and Evelyn Cruz, recent law graduates. Despite their efforts, they did not have sufficient experience and Ochoa once again resumed the position of Executive Director in 1996.(5)

Under Ochoa’s second time at the head of Centro, the Tenant’s Rights Project continued and a recent law school graduate, Josephina Alvarez, began the Latino Student Rights Project. At the time, many Latino and Chicano students had been unfairly treated and disciplined by public school administrations. These schools had an internal procedure to redress these issues, but they
often required legal representation. Thus, Centro Legal, with Alvarez’s leadership, was able to advocate for students, keep them in school, and seek alternatives to suspension and expulsion. Ochoa recalled one instance in which a student had been placed in the same math course for two years in spite of having passed it. He could not find help within the administration and began acting out, leading to disciplinary measures. Centro Legal stepped in and was able to place the student into the proper math course.(6)

Despite Alvarez’s strong leadership and potential in the organization, her tenure at Centro was cut short. She was attacked and robbed one day in front of the organization’s office, an event that nearly cost her life and badly rocked the organization. It took time for her and the organization to recover from the attack, and though Alvarez came back for a while, she eventually moved on.(7) In 2000, Ochoa also decided it was time for him to move on, and Rocio Fierro, an attorney from the District Attorney’s office, became the interim director for about six months. In October of that year, Fierro contacted Patricia Loya, who had worked with her sister Anamaria Loya in La Raza Centro Legal, an independent legal service organization in San Francisco. She was offered the position of Executive Director and accepted the job.(8)

Upon assuming the organization’s leadership, she found it was in severe financial trouble. The staff was composed of little more than a receptionist, and the organization’s bank account had less than $10,000. There was not enough money for her own salary. The only grant that Centro had was for housing work so she sought contracts with the city and donors. But she found the organization had no contracts with anyone, beyond a community project with the East Bay Law Center, which was still in the works. Loya said that “I knew we needed money NOW.” She decided to hold a fundraising event and reached out to the community that had supported the organization so much in the past. There was no donor database, so Loya and what little staff she had went through boxes, looking for past checks and information on previous donors. In this fundraising drive, she was able to raise $37,000, a significant sum for an organization with practically no staff.(9)

Patricia Loya then began to reach out to private donor foundations, encountering a good amount of hostility at first. Nobody wanted to donate money to what appeared to be a sinking ship. Loya says, “We were a skinny chicken that needed to puff up its feathers to look like a fat chicken.” Essentially, Centro Legal had to think like a bog organization and have faith in itself, or else no one would have faith in them. Loya began looking into smaller grants aimed at legal services organizations. She then began holding annual and biannual events, where people could donate, mingle, and create a greater presence for Centro Legal. In one instance, about thirty judges attended a fundraising dinner, which inadvertently attracted a large number of lawyers (and potential donor) seeking to gain good favor with these judges. Loya also began looking into corporate funding and other sources of money. Her aim was to diversify the organization’s funding to reduce Centro’s dependency on government funding, and thus its vulnerability.(10)

It was then that Loya realized that if the organization did not have enough programs, what were the donors going to fund? She began to envision a program aimed at educating youth on the law and their rights, hopefully guiding them to a career in the legal field. This was both an attempt to help underprivileged Latino youth in Oakland, and it was also a strategic move: youth services were popular and could serve as an attraction for funding.(11) What would eventually become the Youth Law Academy (YLA) was Loya’s brainchild, but it was staff member Mara Chavez who ultimately put together the program. Chavez reached out to prominent members of the legal and educational community to create an advisory board, which would advise Centro on what the organization should look like, potential challenges, and how to secure funding. The YLA finally came into existence in 2005, and continues to be one of Centro Legal’s signature programs.(12)

However, until 2004, when Centro was able to secure a $400,000 annual budget, funding was insecure, making it difficult to offer even basic legal services. Thus, Patricia Loya reached out to La Raza Centro Legal, where she had previously worked with her sister. Although Centro (in Fruitvale) could not afford to have a staff attorney at the time, attorneys from the San Francisco organization volunteered their time at Centro, holding legal clinics and providing community members with legal advice. In particular, Paul Chavez, an attorney, held clinics on housing law, continuing Centro’s tradition of protecting tenants from insidious slum lords.(13) In 2005, Centro was finally able to hire its first staff attorney in many years, Timothy Griffiths. Griffiths began taking on housing cases and was soon also working on wage claim matters for employment. This was a turning point for the organization, as it finally had enough money to begin offering full legal services.(14) Around this time another attorney, Alan Weiss, began holding clinics for consumer protection and soon after, Alison Davenport was hired as an immigration staff attorney.(15) Though Centro could only offer low salaries, Loya said they nonetheless hired the best attorneys, people who were “very soulful, smart, and good.”(16)

 
Rise of the Day Laborers Movement & Centro's Reemergence

Of course, the world did not stand still as Centro fought to secure funding and expand its services. In the early 2000s, the question of illegal immigration once again took center stage in national politics.(17) Moreover, ''jornaleros'', or day laborers, began to receive negative attention. Many business owners argued that they were driving away customers by standing in front of their businesses. Others said they were dirty, lewd, and considered them as (illegal) urban blight. None of this hype recognized that most of these people were simply looking for work and often suffered abuses from their employers, who sometimes did not pay them. There was also a great amount of persecution by police and a general sense of racial prejudice directed at ''jornaleros''. Many cities, including Oakland, sought to create “day labor centers,” where ''jornaleros'' could go to look for work without blocking streets or businesses. These centers would also ideally provide workshops on English, rights, etc., and sometimes food.(18)

The Oakland Day Labor Center was strongly supported by Ignacio de la Fuente, a prominent and powerful city councilmember, but there were many questions over its efficacy and the quality of its services and the building it was held in.(19) This day labor center also came with a compromise: the police could surveil other locations and remove ''jornaleros'' not seeking work at the center. Carlos Mares, a ''jornalero'' himself, began organizing day workers in Oakland and eventually reached out to Centro Legal.(20) In addition to persecution by police and lost wages, ''jornaleros'' would also be taken to jail, where federal agencies like ICE would check if they were undocumented. If so, they would be sent to “immigration jail,” where they would be held before being deported. Mares knew that they needed to know their rights and though Centro could help them out.(21)

In 2001, as Patricia Loya sought funds for the organization, she was approached by a group of ''jornaleros'' seeking help. Loya set up a future meeting with them and reached out to Renee Saucedo of La Raza Centro Legal, a champion of the day labor cause. On the day of the meeting, both women waited at Centro, but no one came. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a large group of people came around the corner, filling Centro Legal beyond capacity, with many more waiting outside. Loya knew at this point that this was a cause that the organization needed to pursue. She approached the issue from the point of view that people have the right to seek work in public spaces like sidewalks. She said day labor centers were fine, but that people have the right to search for work elsewhere. The Oakland Day Labor Center would not work if people were not using it, and people would not use it unless it truly served the ''jornaleros''.(22)

It was this meeting that helped spark the Day Labor Movement in Oakland, as Centro helped ''jornaleros'' organize and the organization ''Lucha Unida de los Jornaleros'' was formed, headed by Carlos Mares, who would eventually marry Patricia Loya. This organization not only created a community where ''jornaleros'' could find support, but also allowed police to communicate with them and demonstrate that they could be called for help when they get robbed or denied wages. Moreover, through Centro, Lucha connected with the National Day Labor Network, which allowed them to attend several conferences throughout California and the nation.(23) They were able to go to day labor conferences in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Marin, and even Oregon. In 2002, they went to Maryland and Washington D.C., where they spoke in front of congress.(24)

Centro Legal and Lucha’s most important moment in the Day Worker Movement was a cross-country race in 2006. In 2005, the House of Representatives passed what would become known as the Sensenbrenner Bill, which would have led to a harsh immigration reform that would have criminalized undocumented status and the people helping illegal immigrants.(25) During this time, the federal government was cracking down on immigrants through ''redadas'', or raids to find and deport undocumented workers. Centro Legal, with Alison Davenport as their only immigration attorney, was overwhelmed with immigration cases and could only help out a fraction of those that needed it.(26) To generate public opposition to the bill, Centro and Lucha organized a cross-country run from Santa Monica, through the mid-West, to D.C., and finally to the United Nations Headquarters in New York. With an indigenous group from Arizona, Carlos Mares and others embarked on a two-month run to defeat the Sensenbrenner Bill.(27) As they advanced, they would call Centro, where they had set up a map with pins to show their progress.(28)

Along the way, they had many notable experiences. While in Texas, they stayed in a church, where an officer entered yelling and demanding that one of the runners tell him where he was from. The runner refused to answer and was arrested. Centro had a lawyer on call and with the aid of the ACLU, they were able to release him and continue the run.(29) They also stopped in New Orleans, where ''jornaleros'' and African Americans fought over work on the streets. Though many ''jornaleros'' had been brought in to help rebuild the city after its destruction by Hurricane Katrina. But there was a great amount of anti-jornalero sentiment, with a denial of services and explicit signs that said they were not welcome. Working with a local chapter of the Black Panthers, however, Lucha was able to create some kind of bridge between the ''jornaleros'' and the African Americans in the few days they were there. Finally, on May 5th, the runners arrived in New York, where they were flown back home. Mares says that this publicity stunt helped in the eventual defeat of the Sensenbrenner Bill in the Senate.(30)

Soon after the run, Centro, with a number of other community organizations, joined together to (literally) build their own Oakland Worker Center. Once it was completed, Centro moved from the second floor of the Gualadajara restaurant to the center, along with the organizations involved. In 2007, Lucha made itself independent from Centro, but continued working in the Worker Center. In 2008, Patricia Loya, after reviving the organization from the ashes and reestablishing its presence in the community, finally stepped down as Executive Director.(31) Centro then moved to a new location with a new director, attorney Bianca Sierra.(32)

Under Sierra’s tenure, Centro Legal has continued to grow. Funding has continued to diversify, the staff has expanded significantly, and the YLA has evolved and serves even more students. As of now, Centro has a total of eight staff attorneys, covering a wide range of issues, including immigration, housing, and employment. Immigration has continued to be a primary focus for Centro Legal. With President Obama’s deferred action program, DACA, many undocumented immigrants have sought help filling out applications for them and their children to avoid deportation.(33) The recent surge of accompanied minors crossing the border, undocumented and without guardians, have also been a top priority for Centro.(34)

Moreover, Juan Vera, who joined Centro in 2010, he has been the Project Director of the Youth Law Academy. Now in its tenth year, the diversity pipeline program has expanded some of its activities which focus on giving youth of color the support and guidance to enter college and law school. YLA now provides SAT preparation for high school juniors, and college application support for seniors. This includes help with financial aid applications as well as help connecting student with other programs, summer internships, and legal internships. Vera has also introduced an ethnic studies and law and justice curriculum, in the same vein of the Chicano
Movement that inspired the foundation of Centro. To date, none of YLA’s alumni have applied for law school, but all students in the YLA have graduated high school and there is a 80% college and retention rate. In all, the Centro’s program currently serves a total of 73 students, 36 undergraduates and 37 high school students. In the next five years, YLA will focus on a Diversity Legal Pipeline Program, which will teach YLA alumni in college what it takes to be a first year college student.(35)

Although Centro Legal de la Raza has gone through many phases and difficulties, its three-fold goals continue to guide the organization: the provision of legal services for Oakland’s marginalized Spanish-speaking community; community organizing and empowerment; and the education of the community, especially the youth.(36) Moreover, the leaders and members of the organization, who have sacrificed significant parts of their lives to keeping Centro alive, have stuck to their values and as Victor Ochoa said, they have stubbornly refused to ever sell out.(37)

'''Notes''' 
1. Solona, Anthony. ''Centro Legal de la Raza:Defending a Community from 1969-1999''. 1999. 
2. Ibid. 
3. Ibid. 
4. Ochoa, Victor. Interview with the author. 14 May 2015. 
5. Solana, ''Centro Legal''. 
6. Ochoa. 
7. Ibid. 
8. Loya, Patrcia. Interviewed by the author. 11 May 2015. 
9. Ibid. 
10. Ibid. 
11. Ibid. 
12. Griffiths, Timothy. Interviewed by author. 31 March 2015. 
13. Loya. 
14. Griffiths. 
15. Izarra, Esmeralda. Interviewed by author. 19 May 2015. 
16. Loya. 
17. Romero, Francisco. “Raza Media within the Belly of the Beast: Counter-Insurgency in the Barrio.” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 9, no. 1/2 (March 2010): 205–10. 
18. Skerry, Peter. “Day Laborers and Dock Workers: Casual Labor Markets and Immigration Policy.” Society 45, no. 1 (February 1, 2008): 46–52. 
19. O'Brien, Matt. "Ten years later, Oakland day labor center still debated." Contra Costa Times (California). August 27, 2009 Thursday. Date Accessed: 2015/04/11. 
20. Griffiths. 
21. Mares, Carlos. Interviewed by author. 11 May 2015. 
22. Loya. 
23. Ibid. 
24. Mares. 
25. O’Rourke, Allen Thomas. “Good Samaritans, Beware: The Sensenbrenner-King Bill and Assistance to Undocumented Migrants.” Harvard Latino Law Review 9 (Spring 2006): 195–208. 
26. Izarra. 
27. Mares. 
28. Loya. 
29. Ibid. 
30. Mares. 
31. Loya. 
32. Izarra. 
33. Ibid. See also: “The President’s Immigration Actions.” ''Congressional Digest'' 94, no. 3 (March 2015): 5–6. 
34. Izarra. See also: “Unaccompanied Child Immigrants Fare Better with Attorneys.” ''Los Angeles Times''. 
35. Vera, Juan. Interviewed by the author. 13 March 2015. 
36. Loya. 
37. Ochoa. 

[[category:Bay Area Social Movements]][[category:Immigration]][[category:Mexican]][[category:Crime]][[category:East Bay]][[category:Housing]][[category:1960s]][[category:1970s]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:2010s]]

Yoni Ki Baat: South Asian Queer and Feminist Organizing

2015-08-04T17:07:13Z

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''' Historical Essay '''

''by Omsri Bharat, 2015''

[[Image:Addressing-injustice.png|left]]

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |To explore the intersection of South Asian feminism, sexuality, and queer history within the Bay Area, one has to examine the complexity of traditional South Asian culture, legacies of colonialism, and the effects of mass migration. This essay takes up such issues through an analysis of Yoni Ki Baat, a South Asian version of “The Vagina Monologues” founded in the San Francisco Bay Area that has created a space for South Asian women to discuss their experiences with culture, Westernization, and sexuality. Many other spaces of queer and feminist organizing within the Bay Area are mentioned, but only briefly. These other organizations deserve their own FoundSF pages and much more research.
|}

 
 
Colonialism and Sexuality within South Asia

South Asians have, in the last few centuries, been in constant struggles to define what role
westernization and globalization have had on their cultures and traditions, both in Asia and in the West. Since the 1600’s, colonial powers have sought trade and territories throughout South Asia, especially India. From the mid-19th century till 1947, the British Raj was in control of India. Among other consequences from British rule (some of these include establishment of the still-existent bureaucratic system, disestablishment of princely states, famine, etc.) the British greatly affected the concepts of sexuality, family, and gender normativity up through modern day. As Indrani Chatterjee, Professor of History at UT Austin, stated in ''When “Sexuality” Floated Free of Histories in South Asia'', “In South Asia, British colonialism secured the legal permanence of conjugality and monogamous heteronormativity, and criminalized all other forms of attachment, embodiment, and livelihood. Above all, it was significant in objectifying gender and sexuality in dimorphic terms.” The British indeed even introduced the word “sexuality” and the bureaucratic categorization of sexuality into India. Prior to this, sexuality (it’s a pity that I can’t use a different word because in attempting to deconstruct this concept, I am using the same words that colonial powers gave to us) was much more ambiguous in South Asia, and the concept of “it-ness,” an undefined desire or gender or form was prevalent in religious texts and cults. With British rule, sexuality became much more connected to gender and body and there was an “increasing patholigization of sexual identity by genital characteristics and increasing attachment of the physical body to assessments of worth such as masculinity” (p. 950) The Western concepts of heteronormativity and sexuality reinforced patriarchal structures and traditional gender roles already present in the society. (1) Such roles and concepts of normativity already contributed to a confusion and adjustment within South Asian society, and this confusion was only magnified when the diaspora from East to West occurred more rapidly in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Diaspora To The West

As migration to the West occurred, the already jumbled concepts of sexuality and decorum got even more convoluted. This occurred as early as the 1800s, when mainly Sikh, Punjabi men moved to the Americas to become migrant farmers and workers. Even in this time period, Americans and South Asians tried to make sense of the role that South Asians would have in society, and inevitably, this included decisions about sexuality. Nayan Shah, in his work, ''Stranger Intimacy'', discusses how the relationships (often queer) that would inevitably form among communities of migrant men would disturb heteronormative notions of sexuality and relationships. The state and legislature would condemn such relationships and often ascribe it to the “immoral” background of non-American, brown men. As Shah states, “the general process of defining marriage through racial boundaries and sexualizing and delegitimizing male-to male intimacy outside of marriage produced a subsidy for heterosexuality….policing what sex, marital ties, and progeny had the legitimacy of state recognition and the authority of market rights produced a simultaneous subsidy of whiteness with heterosexuality” (p. 125). In the West, intimacy became tied to economic success, and white heteronormative families were subsidized above all other relationships. (2)

The San Francisco Bay Area, in particular, holds a unique place within this economic diaspora. Silicon Valley has long attracted a huge number of Indians to California, creating a large population of educated Desis (a broad word meant to encompasses people of South Asia and products of the diaspora from South Asia- also equated with “brown”) who have become very Americanized in some ways and retain their South Asian identity in other ways. This population holds a certain regard because they are most often educated and bring skills of entrepreneurism and technical ingenuity to our tech-worshipping hub in the Bay Area. At the same time, while they are valued as workers, there is a persistent feeling of alienness, a clear divide between those who are brown/immigrant and the other “tech bros.” The feeling of “otherness” once again places Desis in a position of being economically beneficial to America but perhaps not quite welcomed into mainstream society.

While the clear divide between brown and white exists, we also live in an era that is obsessed with the “colors” of India, Bollywood movies, scantily-clad dance numbers. It’s a strange contradiction that Western imperialism is still a governing force, even while the West seemingly embraces certain parts of South Asian culture. In fact, it is perhaps a policing mechanism by Western imperial powers to accept the “safe” part of South Asian culture (exemplified by Bollywood) while condemning those parts that are considered unfit or insidious. Gayatri Gopinath, associate professor at NYU, discusses how “the fetishization of Bollywood as sexualized and gendered spectacle must be understood as yet another discursive mechanism that regulates and disciplines South Asian populations in the United States. The Bollywood boom, in this context, incorporates South Asians in the U.S. national imaginary as pure spectacle to be safely consumed while keeping intact their essential alienness and difference.” (3)

In addition to the “alienness and difference” that Desis encounter, the brown tech population (and the tech population in general) within the Bay Area is majority male, creating issues of sexism and divides among genders. Desi males are in a strange place – they are not at the top of the social ladder in the Bay Area, but they also bring their traditional cultural gender norms to America, which gives them a sense of entitlement and mastery. They also internalize the misogyny of the tech world. Being devalued in society makes them more likely to try to exert control in other parts of their lives, often over their partners or in their misogynistic assumptions of gender roles and identities. Therefore, brown women or Desis who don’t identify with normative gender roles are sidelined and marginalized even more.

The traditions brought from South Asia, the unique and pervasive influence of the Bay Area tech world, the exotification of Eastern culture, and the suspicion directed towards brown people after 9/11 – continue to influence concepts of South Asian sexuality in Northern California. With such an atmosphere, it is understandable that a counter culture would have formed in the Bay Area. This is especially true given the longer regional history of radical organizing. A few movements notably influential on any discussion of contemporary South Asian feminist organizing include: queer culture and activism, the feminist movement, and the rich history of brown activism in the Bay Area going as far back as the the 19th century Ghadar movement that was so prominent in Berkeley. (To learn more about these topics and much more, please go on the [http://www.berkeleysouthasian.org/ Berkeley South Asian Radical Walking Tour!] (4)

Gopinath discusses the importance of creating a queer diasporic lens for South Asian issues that “becomes a way to challenge nationalist ideologies by insisting on the impure, inauthentic, nonreproductive potential of the notion of diaspora. Queer diasporic cultural forms suggest alternative forms of collectivity and communal belonging that redefine “home” as national, communal, or domestic space outside a logic of blood, purity, authenticity, and patrilineal decent.”(5)

Bollywood) while condemning those parts that are considered unfit or insidious. Gayatri Gopinath, associate professor at NYU, discusses how “the fetishization of Bollywood as sexualized and gendered spectacle must be understood as yet another discursive mechanism that regulates and disciplines South Asian populations in the United States. The Bollywood boom, in this context, incorporates South Asians in the U.S. national imaginary as pure spectacle to be safely consumed while keeping intact their essential alienness and difference.” (5)
In addition to the “alienness and difference” that Desis encounter, the brown tech population (and the tech population in general) within the Bay Area is majority male, creating issues of sexism and divides among genders. Desi males are in a strange place – they are not at the top of the social ladder in the Bay Area, but they also bring their traditional cultural gender norms to America, which gives them a sense of entitlement and mastery. They also internalize the misogyny of the tech world. Being devalued in society makes them more likely to try to exert control in other parts of their lives, often over their partners or in their misogynistic assumptions of gender roles and identities. Therefore, brown women or Desis who don’t identify with normative gender roles are sidelined and marginalized even more.
The traditions brought from South Asia, the unique and pervasive influence of the Bay Area tech world, the exotification of Eastern culture, and the suspicion directed towards brown people after 9/11 – continue to influence concepts of South Asian sexuality in Northern California. With such an atmosphere, it is understandable that a counter culture would have formed in the Bay Area. This is especially true given the longer regional history of radical organizing. A few movements notably influential on any discussion of contemporary South Asian feminist organizing include: queer culture and activism, the feminist movement, and the rich history of brown activism in the Bay Area going as far back as the the 19th century Ghadar movement that was so prominent in Berkeley. (To learn more about these topics and much more, please go on the Berkeley South Asian Radical Walking Tour!) (6)
Gopinath discusses the importance of creating a queer diasporic lens for South Asian issues that “becomes a way to challenge nationalist ideologies by insisting on the impure, inauthentic, nonreproductive potential of the notion of diaspora. Queer diasporic cultural forms suggest alternative forms of collectivity and communal belonging that redefine “home” as national, communal, or domestic space outside a logic of blood, purity, authenticity, and patrilineal decent.” (7)

[[image:Omsri-Bharat Picture-1.jpg|240px|left|thumb|'''Yoni Ki Baat Program Cover, 2015''']]Yoni Ki Baat

[http://www.southasiansisters.org/events/ykb/ykb.html Yoni Ki Baat] (YKB) is exemplary of a radical, creative space that integrates a queer, diasporic lens to allow South Asians (primarily women) to gather and talk without reserve and without being afraid of judgment or retribution. The gathering/performance is distinctly a product of the San Francisco Bay Area, influenced by the large Desi immigrant population, the issues of gender and misogyny within Silicon Valley and the tech bubble, and the many legacies of counter culture. Topics explored during the event range from hair removal, to domestic violence, to the appropriation of yoga. Both the patriarchal traditions of South Asia and the colonial influence of the West are explored and challenged.

YKB was started in 2003 by three Desi women; the idea emerged over a lunch at Udupi Palace, in Berkeley. These women came together through an organization called The South Asian Sisters, which aimed to bring together South Asian women and allied with similar groups. Sapna Shahani, Vandana Makker, and Maulie Dass were inspired in 2003 by the huge surge of South Asian organizational activity in the Bay Area, such as [http://www.trikone.org/ Trikone], the oldest South Asian LGBTQ magazine in the world that was started in the Bay Area, and [http://www.narika.org/about/ Narika], a non-profit founded in 1992 by South Asian immigrant women in the Bay Area that addresses issues of domestic violence and provide services. As South Asian Sisters, they wanted to, according to Makker, “carve out a space specifically for women in the progressive Desi community”. Their initial vision was to create a show based on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues/ The Vagina Monologues], the hugely popular theatre program created by Eve Ensler, and use the unique experiences of South Asian women as specific episodes. Ensler promptly gave her permission and advice, and the was quickly organized through all volunteer effort. Today YKB is strictly volunteer run and is not a non-profit. (8)

<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/VandanaClip1" width="500" height="140" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>

'''Conversation with Vandana Makker'''

''Interview by Omsri Bharat''

Spotlights and Snapshots: The 2015 YKB (9)

'''Hair Removal:''' Always a hot-button topic in any South Asian circle, there were multiple pieces in YKB about hair removal and the connection of hairlessness to desirability. The pain, cost, tediousness, and embarrassment of something as seemingly innocuous as hair removal is deeply connected to being considered sexual and desirable. How is the notion that hair is considered ugly and uncivilized rooted in Western history and values?

'''Abortion and motherhood:''' Many pieces in YKB confront pain and confusion around choices of motherhood, including abortion. They discuss the expectations of maternalism and the judgment of a woman’s choice that comes from all communities, from South Asian families to Western doctors. Ultimately, patriarchal stances in both cultures oppress many women who cannot or do not want to have a family or those women who are raising families but have many doubts and “non-maternal” feelings.

<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/VandanaClip2" width="500" height="30" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>

'''Conversation with Vandana Makker'''

''Interview by Omsri Bharat''

'''Yoga and Appropriation:''' In the Bay Area, yoga is hugely popular. The ubiquity of this appropriated tradition creates confusion for people of South Asian descent who have to deal with a variety of factors including: first, the pervasive assumption of full knowledge of yoga and its origins by mostly white, upper or middle class people; second, the assumption that, because you are South Asian, you know all about yoga and all about an ancient culture that has many facets and many dimensions; third, that you, as a South Asian, are also jumping onto the yoga bandwagon…that in some ways, you too are appropriating an art that you know nothing about.

These are just a few examples of themes that YKB explores. YKB is a fascinating example of how Western culture and South Asian culture can influence each other. In some ways, it is ironic that a show meant to talk about the diasporic experiences of women and the influence of the West was created because of an idea from a Western piece of performance. It makes clear that the South Asian community can use certain Western influences to their advantage. Gopinath puts it beautifully when she says ““The concept of diaspora…is double-edged in that it can undercut and reify various forms of ethnic, religious, and state nationalisms while simultaneously…it can work to foreground notions of impurity and inauthenticity that resoundingly reject the ethnic and religious absolutism at the center of nationalist ideologies. But the danger of diaspora as a concept, ironically, is its adherence to precisely those same myths of purity and origin that seamlessly lend themselves to nationalist projects.” Diaspora can perhaps be beneficial to South Asian feminists because it gives us a lens to explore the patriarchal and dangerous messages of both our home culture and the Western culture we’re born into, thus giving us more power to address such issues. Specifically within the San Francisco Bay Area, we can use this lens to analyze the unique positions of Desis and Desi women in Silicon Valley and to call out the misogyny and racism prevalent in these communities. YKB provides a starting point by creating a radical and relatable discussion ground. It started in the Bay Area, but it has gained so much traction that the show has gone national to campuses and communities all over the United States, creating a diaspora of its own.

'''Notes''' 
1. Indrani Chatterjee (2012). “When”Sexuality” Floated Free of Histories in South Asia”. The Journal of Asian Studies, 71, pp945-962 
2. Shah, Nayan. ''Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West''. Berkeley: U of California, 2011. 
3. Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). “Queer Diasporic Critique in the Aftermath of 9/11”. Social Text, 23, pp84-85 
4. Berkeley South Asian Radical Walking Tour, 2/21/2015 
5. Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). “Queer Diasporic Critique in the Aftermath of 9/11”. Social Text, 23, pp84-85 
6. Berkeley South Asian Radical Walking Tour, 2/21/2015 
7. Gopinath, Gayatri (2005). “Queer Diasporic Critique in the Aftermath of 9/11”. Social Text, 23, pp84-85 
8. Interview with Vandana Makker, 3/24/2015. 
9. Yoni Ki Baat show, author attended 4/18/2015 

[[category:Performing Arts]] [[category:Gay and Lesbian]] [[category:Bay Area Social Movements]] [[category:2000s]]

File:Omsri-Bharat Picture-1.jpg

2015-08-04T00:24:04Z

Burns:

The Bay Area’s Street Spirit Newspaper

2015-08-03T23:17:15Z

Burns:

''' Historical Essay '''

''by Lily Kley, 2015''

[[Image:Addressing-injustice.png|left]]

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |A grassroots, street-distributed, publication called the Street Spirit Newspaper focuses on issues of homelessness in the Bay Area and nation-wide. The Quaker American Friends Service Committee in Oakland founded it in 1995. Street Spirit has played a critical role in the ability to provide homeless and low-income community members with a voice in the Bay Area. Here some background on homelessness in the Bay Area, the history of the newspaper, and personal accounts of vendors are presented.
|}
 
 
 
 
 

The Birth of Street Spirit

Since the late 1960s, the rise of radical alternative presses and media outlets have played a large role in giving poor people a voice in a political climate where they are almost entirely shut out of major media. (to read more on this anti poor political climate, see the final section of my essay “Historical Context”). The ''Street News'' in New York and the ''Street Sheet'' in San Francisco – both founded in 1989 - launched the North American street newspaper movement, which quickly spread to many other cities across the nation in the 90’s. Today, 40 publications exist in the United States, and about another 100 in Europe and other parts of the world. (1) These community publications enable contributors and readers to feel a greater sense of collective agency, value and authority; and give the homeless population a democratic public voice.

One of the most powerful alternative publications in the Bay Area is the ''Street Spirit'', a monthly newspaper published by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which has been giving the homeless population a voice in Berkeley for 20 years. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker non-profit based in Oakland, decided to provide the public with an alternative story to that told in traditional media outlets AFSC fought to campaign for justice, as it had become clear to them that the corporate-controlled media was heavily biased against homeless people. “The mainstream media often ignored the life-and-death issues faced
by homeless people, and when they weren’t ignoring them, the corporate press stereotyped and
scapegoated homeless people”. (2)

[[Image:Terry-Messman.jpg|left|200px|thumb|'''Messman as a 1985 graduate in journalism from the University of Montana''';
''Photo: Pacific School of Religion'']]In early 1995, Sally Hindman, an Oakland-based homeless activist and Quaker, approached the AFSC with the idea of creating a homeless newspaper to serve the cities of Berkeley and Oakland. She approached Terry Messman, a journalism major and long time civil disobedience activist who stood up for those less advantaged, whether he would want to take the lead and become the editor of the publication. He agreed and twenty years later Terry Messman remains as editor and publisher of the newspaper. The publication is as active as ever today, with a new edition published monthly.

The first publication was issued in March 1995, with much fanfare. The ''Street Spirit'' is published once a month. The aim was to uncover injustices against the homeless population in Alameda Country and around the nation, as well as introduce and discuss other issues of concern. Reporting from the “shelters, back alleys, soup kitchen lines and slum hotels where
mainstream reporters rarely or never visit”, the newspaper passionately covers stories on economic justice, poverty, and the human rights of the poorest of the poor. (3) Articles cover city measures, which aim to criminalize homelessness, local protests, and aim to raise exposure of the everyday struggles of the homeless. All writers, artists, and photographers are unpaid volunteers, who generously contribute their passion and eloquence to the newspaper and enable the newspaper’s existence.

As a recent example, the May 2015 issue reported on protestors who rallied to condemn the anti-homeless laws in Berkeley. (4) Articles advocate for the end of homeless criminalization, by enlightening readers with analyses of studies which for example show that law enforcement and jail time are about two to three times as expensive as the cost of supportive housing, and by including interviews of the homeless who have suffered dehumanization at the hands of the police.

Yet the ''Street Spirit'' does not only cover grim stories of poverty. It publishes poems and haikus, and inspiring stories by those that are helping the homeless, for example with the column“Stories from the Suitcase Clinic” and the “Justice” column. The paper galvanizes the social movements around human rights, challenging inequality and raises the hope that accomplishing change is possible. Month after month, the Street Spirit exposes the reality of structural violence and the consequences of poverty, the campaigns, which are challenging this, and fighting for change. In this process it has been instrumental in numerous victories of progressive change.

[[Image:Street-Spirit-Collection.jpg|330px]]

'''''Street Spirit'' Collection'''

''Photo: Lily Kley''

''Street Spirit's'' Impact

The ''Street Spirit’s'' reporting has been responsible for altering the public’s opinion on important homelessness issues. One such victory, which the ''Street Spirit'' contributed to, was shutting down the East Bay Hospital in Richmond in 1997, which was known for its psychiatric and human rights abuses. The psychiatric hospital had crammed disabled clients into overcrowded wards in pursuit of higher profit margins. This facility was known for “a record of medical neglect, patients’ rights violations, and the cruel over-use of restraints on its poor, disabled and homeless clients.” (5) For years, the mainstream press failed to report on these conditions. In response to this, the ''Street Spirit'' began a 16- part series investigating the mistreatment of these homeless clients, including several suspicious deaths, which occurred at the hospital. In response to this, Bay Area groups launched their own investigations and finally the mainstream press also began to cover this story as well. The ''Street Spirit’s'' investigations, which spoke on behalf of those voiceless and silenced victims, helped spark this public outcry, which ultimately led to the closure of this abusive hospital.

Another success story for the homeless population in which the ''Street Spirit'' played a large role was the defeat of Measure “S” which aimed to criminalize homelessness in Berkeley in 2012. Measure S, “A Berkeley Sit-Lie Ordinance” was on the ballot in 2012 which would have made it a crime to sit on sidewalks in Berkeley’s commercial districts from 7am to 10pm in all of Alameda County. After a first warning, an initial violation would have carried a $75 fine, with subsequent increasing amounts. The ''Street Spirit'' played a large role in the defeat of the measure. (6) The topic was on the front page of the newspaper for seven months straight. Even though the opposition was outspent 20 to one, the voters rejected measure “S”. It was the only electoral ballot measure in recent US history, in about the last 20 years, where voters rejected an anti-homeless measure. This was one of the most prominent victories for the homeless population of Alameda County, and the ''Street Spirit'' surely played a role in its success to galvanize support to defeat the measure. (7)

How ''Street Spirit'' is Created and Distributed

Today, close to 20,000 people monthly purchase a ''Street Spirit'' newspaper, and it is estimated that another 5000 newspapers are passed on and read. (8) More than 150 homeless vendors sell the ''Street Spirit'' in Berkeley, Oakland and Santa Cruz. The local vendor program is led by JC Orton, a volunteer, who distributes the papers early in the morning starting at 7:00am, on a daily basis, on Shattuck Ave. downtown Berkeley. The program enables the vendors to interact with others and tell them about the human rights which the homeless also deserve and should have. The program provides jobs and extra earnings to homeless people, and acts as a positive alternative to panhandling. All vendors keep every dollar they earn. For many, this is the only lifeline, which keeps them alive. This equals out to nearly $50,000 per month of direct redistribution exchanging hands every month in the Bay Area.

[[Image:Street Spirit Vendor Truck.jpg]]

'''This is the truck from which JC Orton, a volunteer, distributes the newspapers daily.'''

''Photo: Lily Kley''

The Street Spirit provides vendors with a means to get their voice heard and support their cause. I met Paul downtown Shattuck Ave in Berkeley. Paul, a 62 year old retired homeless man, has been selling the paper for about one and a half years. In his younger days he was a music major, and spent years travelling and touring with his band. Two years ago he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which has now reached its second stage, and since then he has been on disability insurance. Paul has been living off of his disability checks, and the extra money earned by the ''Street Spirit'' is what keeps him afloat. It is what keeps him fed and enable him to survive, until he gets off the waiting list for public housing. Paul sells the ''Street Spirit'' daily, and as he is able to keep all the profits, and he mentioned that this bit of money has saved his life. For him, it’s all about getting out the truth and making people aware of the human rights which all human beings enjoy. He wants all people who read the paper to become more knowledgeable about their rights in this country, and as homeless, especially in light of many injustices which homeless face on the streets. “When I can open one person’s eyes to what’s going on in this country I’ve done my job”. (9) As a postscript, I asked Paul if he would mind if I took his picture but he did not want to have his photograph taken. Later in the day I saw him again, and he had thought twice about this apparently, and said that I could take his picture for a fee of $20.00 yet I did not have my camera on me. I never saw him again.

Lindell Waters has been selling the ''Street Spirit'' for about two and a half years. Originally from Oakland, he was in jail some time, before starting to work in the construction industry. Now he is 60 and it is difficult for him to find a job. Lindell was one of the lucky ones who was able to receive government subsidized housing quickly, which is what he lives on now. For Lindell, having the opportunity to sell the paper, gives him something to do and is what “keeps him out of trouble and off the streets”. (10) Lindell enjoys being outside and interacting with other people while he is selling the paper, “people know me and look out for me”. (11) He sells the paper five days a week, and makes about $50-$60 a day. As he does not have to pay for his rent, for Lindell this extra income enables him to pay for things like food, his cell phone bill, and other necessities.

[[Image:Lindell-Waters.jpg|330px]]

'''Lindell Waters selling issues of the ''Street Spirit'''''

''Photo:Lily Kley''

The Political Creation of Rising Homelessness in the SF Bay Area

Homelessness has become a major social and political problem in the USA since the late 1970s. The extent of the problem is especially visible when we consider the situation in Alameda County – a county that by many measurements is progressive. Today, approximately 4,262 people are homeless in Alameda County alone, according to EveryOne Home. The County’s
total population is 1.57 million people.

Government policies exacerbated poverty and homelessness in the 1970’s and 1980’s through a decrease in funding for social programs and public housing. It is around this time that San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, witnessed a dramatic increase in homelessness. Starting in the 70’s, under president Nixon, a drastic shift towards neoliberal market oriented
policy took place, which created an increase of poverty and homelessness. Around the late 1960’s, 14% of the children lived in poverty in the United States. Since then, this number has steadily increased, with about 22% of children in the U.S. living under conditions of poverty today. 12 This stark increase of poverty and homelessness in the past decades can be witnessed today. “When I first came to Berkeley in the late ‘40s…there were no homeless people on the streets at all”, said Shirley Dean, a former City Council member for the city of Berkeley. (13) Berkeley, as other cities across the nation, witnessed their homeless population increase dramatically in recent decades.

Nixon changed the way grants for social programs were issued, turning them from categorical grants to block grants, which are more broadly defined and give local governments more discretion as to how best allocate this money. By doing this, Nixon established the political context for a far more aggressive implementation of federal funding cuts, which were later instituted by Reagan. (14)

In the 80’s, during the “Reagan Revolution”, major reductions in federal funding for a wide range of social programs took place. “Republican political strategists used this attack on urban programs to exploit mounting white racial resentment over Kennedy-Johnson era social programs that were perceived by many white Americans as being unduly biased toward central city, predominately black (“underserving” constituents)”. (15) Due to a decrease in funds, local governments were no longer able to allocate resources for urban employment and job training and housing.

Cuts in social programs since the 1970’s had a harsh impact on those with mental health problems, and drug and alcohol addictions, who are commonly ‘at risk’ populations for becoming homeless. Mental health spending decreased by 30%, and many mental health services were closed, as localities did not create community support systems. (16) This left thousands of mentally ill on the streets.

Decreases in Housing: In addition to a decrease in public spending, public housing disappeared, as local governments focused on urban renewal, taking advantage of disinvested areas, which were seen as being suitable for private redevelopment. Emphasis was placed on private-public partnerships in an effort to expand the local tax base. Local government wanted to create a favorable climate to attract corporate business interests, and offered investors “…(a) mix of land write-downs at below-market prices…favorable rezoning amendments, selective tax exemptions, and public absorption of the costs of site assemblage, land clearance…”. (17) There was an overreliance on the private sector to drive urban development and public housing. The needs of the residents did not match up with the profit-motivated interests of those driving urban development.

Housing rents have risen and turned the Bay Area into one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation. Today, market rent in Oakland is $977 above the national average and has been rising sharply in the past year. (18) Someone earning minimum wage would have to work 163 hours a week in Oakland in order to afford the median monthly rent of $2412. (19) Such drastic rent increases make it unaffordable for people to afford a living working full-time at a minimum wage job.

Punitive Measures and Media Portryal: Simultaneous to the policies outlined above, there was a concurrent rise in “law and order” politics, as championed by Nixon and Reagan. Governments at the local, state and national level have spent the past 40 years imposing ever stricter criminal sentences on U.S. citizens, contributing to the fact that the United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world. (20) Instead of people receiving the homeless with a caring and open heart, the homeless were handled with punitive measures. Cities started enacting anti-homeless laws and cities across the Bay area began following suit. Homelessness was seen as an individual problem, as “bad behavior”. The “Matrix Program” in San Francisco started distributing thousands of tickets to homeless, ranging up to $180, for acts such as sitting on sidewalks. (21)

The media portrayed homelessness in a critical light. “The institutions who were telling the story of homelessness in the press were conservative organs like the Oakland Tribune…and San Francisco Chronicle…most anti-homeless organizations…were against homeless and against evictions, and they to this day have crusaded for laws which criminalize homeless people”. (22) The corporate press routinely ignored protests and suppressed activist news. The corporate-minded press pushed the narrative that the homeless should be removed out of sight and off the streets.

Its within this context and against this historical backdrop that Street Spirit contributes to the struggle against systemic poverty.

'''Notes''' 
1. Messman, Terry. [http://www.thestreetspirit.org/about-2/ "About Street Spirit."] The ''Street Spirit'', 24 June 2011. Web.
13 May 2015. 
2. Ibid. 
3. Butigan, Ken: [http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/getting-the-story-out-terry-messman-and-the-power-of-activist-journalism/ “Getting the Story Out- Terry Messman and the power of activist journalism"]
''Waging Non Violence: People-Powered News and Analysis''. January 24, 2013. 
4.Denmey, Carol: “DBA Paints a Happy Face Over a Brutal Beatdown” ''The Street Spirit'', May
2015; Volume 21, No. 5 
5. Messman, Terry. [http://www.thestreetspirit.org/east-bay-hospital-is-closed-for-good/ "East Bay Hospital Is Closed for Good."] ''The Street Spirit''. N.p., 01 Aug.
1997. Web. 13 May 2015. 
6. "Berkeley Sit-Lie Ordinance, Measure S (November 2012)." Ballotpedia.com, 2011. Web. 13 May 2015. 
7. Interview with Terry Messman by author, April 17, 2015. 
8. Ibid 
9. Interview with Paul by author, May 8, 2015. 
10. Interview with Lindell Waters by author, May 14, 3015 
11. Ibid 
12. Desilver, Drew. [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-a-data-portrait/ "Who’s Poor in America? 50 Years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a Data Portrait."] Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 13 Jan. 2014. Web. 13 May 2015. 
13. Chen, Daphne. [http://homelessness.dailycal.org/causes/ "Federal Policy Changes Contribute to Rise in Local Homeless Population Homelessness in Berkeley - The Daily Californian."] The Daily Californian. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. 
14. Beitel, Karl: “Local Protests, Global Movements: Capital, Community, and State in San
Francisco” Temple University Press; 2013 pg. 11 
15. Ibid, p. 13 
16. Chen, Daphne. [http://homelessness.dailycal.org/causes/ "Federal Policy Changes Contribute to Rise in Local Homeless Population Homelessness in Berkeley - The Daily Californian."] The Daily Californian. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. 
17. "San Francisco." American Bar Association Journal 58.7 (1972): 715-23. Temple University Press. Web. 15 May 2015. 
18. Key Findings and Policy Implications." TALIS Teaching Practices and Pedagogical
Innovations (2013): 111-24. Everyone Home. From the 2013 Alameda Countywide Homeless Count and Survey Report. 
19. Dawn Philips: “Planning For People, Not for Profiteers,” The Street Spirit, May 2015 
20. Newell, Walker. "The Legacy of Nixon, Reagan, and Horton: How the Tough on Crime Movement Enabled a New Regime of Race – Influenced Employment Discrimination.” 2013. Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy 
21.Gowan, Teresa: “Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homelessness in San Francisco”; University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pg. 243 
22. Interview with Terry Messman by author, April 17, 2015. 

[[category:Media]][[category:Newspapers]][[category:Underground press]][[category:Homeless]][[category:East Bay]][[category:Bay Area Social Movements]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:2010s]]

The Bay Area’s Street Spirit Newspaper

2015-08-03T23:14:45Z

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''' Historical Essay '''

''by Lily Kley, 2015''

[[Image:Addressing-injustice.png|left]]

{| style="color: black; background-color: #F5DA81;"
| colspan="2" |A grassroots, street-distributed, publication called the Street Spirit Newspaper focuses on issues of homelessness in the Bay Area and nation-wide. The Quaker American Friends Service Committee in Oakland founded it in 1995. Street Spirit has played a critical role in the ability to provide homeless and low-income community members with a voice in the Bay Area. Here some background on homelessness in the Bay Area, the history of the newspaper, and personal accounts of vendors are presented.
|}
 
 
 
 
 

The Birth of Street Spirit

Since the late 1960s, the rise of radical alternative presses and media outlets have played a large role in giving poor people a voice in a political climate where they are almost entirely shut out of major media. (to read more on this anti poor political climate, see the final section of my essay “Historical Context”). The ''Street News'' in New York and the ''Street Sheet'' in San Francisco – both founded in 1989 - launched the North American street newspaper movement, which quickly spread to many other cities across the nation in the 90’s. Today, 40 publications exist in the United States, and about another 100 in Europe and other parts of the world. (1) These community publications enable contributors and readers to feel a greater sense of collective agency, value and authority; and give the homeless population a democratic public voice.

One of the most powerful alternative publications in the Bay Area is the ''Street Spirit'', a monthly newspaper published by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which has been giving the homeless population a voice in Berkeley for 20 years. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker non-profit based in Oakland, decided to provide the public with an alternative story to that told in traditional media outlets AFSC fought to campaign for justice, as it had become clear to them that the corporate-controlled media was heavily biased against homeless people. “The mainstream media often ignored the life-and-death issues faced
by homeless people, and when they weren’t ignoring them, the corporate press stereotyped and
scapegoated homeless people”. (2)

In early 1995, Sally Hindman, an Oakland-based homeless activist and Quaker, approached the AFSC with the idea of creating a homeless newspaper to serve the cities of Berkeley and Oakland. She approached Terry Messman, a journalism major and long time civil disobedience activist who stood up for those less advantaged, whether he would want to take the lead and become the editor of the publication. He agreed and twenty years later Terry Messman remains as editor and publisher of the newspaper. The publication is as active as ever today, with a new edition published monthly.

[[Image:Terry-Messman.jpg]]

'''Messman as a 1985 graduate in journalism from the University of Montana'''

''Photo: Pacific School of Religion''

The first publication was issued in March 1995, with much fanfare. The ''Street Spirit'' is published once a month. The aim was to uncover injustices against the homeless population in Alameda Country and around the nation, as well as introduce and discuss other issues of concern. Reporting from the “shelters, back alleys, soup kitchen lines and slum hotels where
mainstream reporters rarely or never visit”, the newspaper passionately covers stories on economic justice, poverty, and the human rights of the poorest of the poor. (3) Articles cover city measures, which aim to criminalize homelessness, local protests, and aim to raise exposure of the everyday struggles of the homeless. All writers, artists, and photographers are unpaid volunteers, who generously contribute their passion and eloquence to the newspaper and enable the newspaper’s existence.

As a recent example, the May 2015 issue reported on protestors who rallied to condemn the anti-homeless laws in Berkeley. (4) Articles advocate for the end of homeless criminalization, by enlightening readers with analyses of studies which for example show that law enforcement and jail time are about two to three times as expensive as the cost of supportive housing, and by including interviews of the homeless who have suffered dehumanization at the hands of the police.

Yet the ''Street Spirit'' does not only cover grim stories of poverty. It publishes poems and haikus, and inspiring stories by those that are helping the homeless, for example with the column“Stories from the Suitcase Clinic” and the “Justice” column. The paper galvanizes the social movements around human rights, challenging inequality and raises the hope that accomplishing change is possible. Month after month, the Street Spirit exposes the reality of structural violence and the consequences of poverty, the campaigns, which are challenging this, and fighting for change. In this process it has been instrumental in numerous victories of progressive change.

[[Image:Street-Spirit-Collection.jpg|330px]]

'''''Street Spirit'' Collection'''

''Photo: Lily Kley''

''Street Spirit's'' Impact

The ''Street Spirit’s'' reporting has been responsible for altering the public’s opinion on important homelessness issues. One such victory, which the ''Street Spirit'' contributed to, was shutting down the East Bay Hospital in Richmond in 1997, which was known for its psychiatric and human rights abuses. The psychiatric hospital had crammed disabled clients into overcrowded wards in pursuit of higher profit margins. This facility was known for “a record of medical neglect, patients’ rights violations, and the cruel over-use of restraints on its poor, disabled and homeless clients.” (5) For years, the mainstream press failed to report on these conditions. In response to this, the ''Street Spirit'' began a 16- part series investigating the mistreatment of these homeless clients, including several suspicious deaths, which occurred at the hospital. In response to this, Bay Area groups launched their own investigations and finally the mainstream press also began to cover this story as well. The ''Street Spirit’s'' investigations, which spoke on behalf of those voiceless and silenced victims, helped spark this public outcry, which ultimately led to the closure of this abusive hospital.

Another success story for the homeless population in which the ''Street Spirit'' played a large role was the defeat of Measure “S” which aimed to criminalize homelessness in Berkeley in 2012. Measure S, “A Berkeley Sit-Lie Ordinance” was on the ballot in 2012 which would have made it a crime to sit on sidewalks in Berkeley’s commercial districts from 7am to 10pm in all of Alameda County. After a first warning, an initial violation would have carried a $75 fine, with subsequent increasing amounts. The ''Street Spirit'' played a large role in the defeat of the measure. (6) The topic was on the front page of the newspaper for seven months straight. Even though the opposition was outspent 20 to one, the voters rejected measure “S”. It was the only electoral ballot measure in recent US history, in about the last 20 years, where voters rejected an anti-homeless measure. This was one of the most prominent victories for the homeless population of Alameda County, and the ''Street Spirit'' surely played a role in its success to galvanize support to defeat the measure. (7)

How ''Street Spirit'' is Created and Distributed

Today, close to 20,000 people monthly purchase a ''Street Spirit'' newspaper, and it is estimated that another 5000 newspapers are passed on and read. (8) More than 150 homeless vendors sell the ''Street Spirit'' in Berkeley, Oakland and Santa Cruz. The local vendor program is led by JC Orton, a volunteer, who distributes the papers early in the morning starting at 7:00am, on a daily basis, on Shattuck Ave. downtown Berkeley. The program enables the vendors to interact with others and tell them about the human rights which the homeless also deserve and should have. The program provides jobs and extra earnings to homeless people, and acts as a positive alternative to panhandling. All vendors keep every dollar they earn. For many, this is the only lifeline, which keeps them alive. This equals out to nearly $50,000 per month of direct redistribution exchanging hands every month in the Bay Area.

[[Image:Street Spirit Vendor Truck.jpg]]

'''This is the truck from which JC Orton, a volunteer, distributes the newspapers daily.'''

''Photo: Lily Kley''

The Street Spirit provides vendors with a means to get their voice heard and support their cause. I met Paul downtown Shattuck Ave in Berkeley. Paul, a 62 year old retired homeless man, has been selling the paper for about one and a half years. In his younger days he was a music major, and spent years travelling and touring with his band. Two years ago he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which has now reached its second stage, and since then he has been on disability insurance. Paul has been living off of his disability checks, and the extra money earned by the ''Street Spirit'' is what keeps him afloat. It is what keeps him fed and enable him to survive, until he gets off the waiting list for public housing. Paul sells the ''Street Spirit'' daily, and as he is able to keep all the profits, and he mentioned that this bit of money has saved his life. For him, it’s all about getting out the truth and making people aware of the human rights which all human beings enjoy. He wants all people who read the paper to become more knowledgeable about their rights in this country, and as homeless, especially in light of many injustices which homeless face on the streets. “When I can open one person’s eyes to what’s going on in this country I’ve done my job”. (9) As a postscript, I asked Paul if he would mind if I took his picture but he did not want to have his photograph taken. Later in the day I saw him again, and he had thought twice about this apparently, and said that I could take his picture for a fee of $20.00 yet I did not have my camera on me. I never saw him again.

Lindell Waters has been selling the ''Street Spirit'' for about two and a half years. Originally from Oakland, he was in jail some time, before starting to work in the construction industry. Now he is 60 and it is difficult for him to find a job. Lindell was one of the lucky ones who was able to receive government subsidized housing quickly, which is what he lives on now. For Lindell, having the opportunity to sell the paper, gives him something to do and is what “keeps him out of trouble and off the streets”. (10) Lindell enjoys being outside and interacting with other people while he is selling the paper, “people know me and look out for me”. (11) He sells the paper five days a week, and makes about $50-$60 a day. As he does not have to pay for his rent, for Lindell this extra income enables him to pay for things like food, his cell phone bill, and other necessities.

[[Image:Lindell-Waters.jpg|330px]]

'''Lindell Waters selling issues of the ''Street Spirit'''''

''Photo:Lily Kley''

The Political Creation of Rising Homelessness in the SF Bay Area

Homelessness has become a major social and political problem in the USA since the late 1970s. The extent of the problem is especially visible when we consider the situation in Alameda County – a county that by many measurements is progressive. Today, approximately 4,262 people are homeless in Alameda County alone, according to EveryOne Home. The County’s
total population is 1.57 million people.

Government policies exacerbated poverty and homelessness in the 1970’s and 1980’s through a decrease in funding for social programs and public housing. It is around this time that San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, witnessed a dramatic increase in homelessness. Starting in the 70’s, under president Nixon, a drastic shift towards neoliberal market oriented
policy took place, which created an increase of poverty and homelessness. Around the late 1960’s, 14% of the children lived in poverty in the United States. Since then, this number has steadily increased, with about 22% of children in the U.S. living under conditions of poverty today. 12 This stark increase of poverty and homelessness in the past decades can be witnessed today. “When I first came to Berkeley in the late ‘40s…there were no homeless people on the streets at all”, said Shirley Dean, a former City Council member for the city of Berkeley. (13) Berkeley, as other cities across the nation, witnessed their homeless population increase dramatically in recent decades.

Nixon changed the way grants for social programs were issued, turning them from categorical grants to block grants, which are more broadly defined and give local governments more discretion as to how best allocate this money. By doing this, Nixon established the political context for a far more aggressive implementation of federal funding cuts, which were later instituted by Reagan. (14)

In the 80’s, during the “Reagan Revolution”, major reductions in federal funding for a wide range of social programs took place. “Republican political strategists used this attack on urban programs to exploit mounting white racial resentment over Kennedy-Johnson era social programs that were perceived by many white Americans as being unduly biased toward central city, predominately black (“underserving” constituents)”. (15) Due to a decrease in funds, local governments were no longer able to allocate resources for urban employment and job training and housing.

Cuts in social programs since the 1970’s had a harsh impact on those with mental health problems, and drug and alcohol addictions, who are commonly ‘at risk’ populations for becoming homeless. Mental health spending decreased by 30%, and many mental health services were closed, as localities did not create community support systems. (16) This left thousands of mentally ill on the streets.

Decreases in Housing: In addition to a decrease in public spending, public housing disappeared, as local governments focused on urban renewal, taking advantage of disinvested areas, which were seen as being suitable for private redevelopment. Emphasis was placed on private-public partnerships in an effort to expand the local tax base. Local government wanted to create a favorable climate to attract corporate business interests, and offered investors “…(a) mix of land write-downs at below-market prices…favorable rezoning amendments, selective tax exemptions, and public absorption of the costs of site assemblage, land clearance…”. (17) There was an overreliance on the private sector to drive urban development and public housing. The needs of the residents did not match up with the profit-motivated interests of those driving urban development.

Housing rents have risen and turned the Bay Area into one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation. Today, market rent in Oakland is $977 above the national average and has been rising sharply in the past year. (18) Someone earning minimum wage would have to work 163 hours a week in Oakland in order to afford the median monthly rent of $2412. (19) Such drastic rent increases make it unaffordable for people to afford a living working full-time at a minimum wage job.

Punitive Measures and Media Portryal: Simultaneous to the policies outlined above, there was a concurrent rise in “law and order” politics, as championed by Nixon and Reagan. Governments at the local, state and national level have spent the past 40 years imposing ever stricter criminal sentences on U.S. citizens, contributing to the fact that the United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world. (20) Instead of people receiving the homeless with a caring and open heart, the homeless were handled with punitive measures. Cities started enacting anti-homeless laws and cities across the Bay area began following suit. Homelessness was seen as an individual problem, as “bad behavior”. The “Matrix Program” in San Francisco started distributing thousands of tickets to homeless, ranging up to $180, for acts such as sitting on sidewalks. (21)

The media portrayed homelessness in a critical light. “The institutions who were telling the story of homelessness in the press were conservative organs like the Oakland Tribune…and San Francisco Chronicle…most anti-homeless organizations…were against homeless and against evictions, and they to this day have crusaded for laws which criminalize homeless people”. (22) The corporate press routinely ignored protests and suppressed activist news. The corporate-minded press pushed the narrative that the homeless should be removed out of sight and off the streets.

Its within this context and against this historical backdrop that Street Spirit contributes to the struggle against systemic poverty.

'''Notes''' 
1. Messman, Terry. [http://www.thestreetspirit.org/about-2/ "About Street Spirit."] The ''Street Spirit'', 24 June 2011. Web.
13 May 2015. 
2. Ibid. 
3. Butigan, Ken: [http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/getting-the-story-out-terry-messman-and-the-power-of-activist-journalism/ “Getting the Story Out- Terry Messman and the power of activist journalism"]
''Waging Non Violence: People-Powered News and Analysis''. January 24, 2013. 
4.Denmey, Carol: “DBA Paints a Happy Face Over a Brutal Beatdown” ''The Street Spirit'', May
2015; Volume 21, No. 5 
5. Messman, Terry. [http://www.thestreetspirit.org/east-bay-hospital-is-closed-for-good/ "East Bay Hospital Is Closed for Good."] ''The Street Spirit''. N.p., 01 Aug.
1997. Web. 13 May 2015. 
6. "Berkeley Sit-Lie Ordinance, Measure S (November 2012)." Ballotpedia.com, 2011. Web. 13 May 2015. 
7. Interview with Terry Messman by author, April 17, 2015. 
8. Ibid 
9. Interview with Paul by author, May 8, 2015. 
10. Interview with Lindell Waters by author, May 14, 3015 
11. Ibid 
12. Desilver, Drew. [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-a-data-portrait/ "Who’s Poor in America? 50 Years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a Data Portrait."] Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 13 Jan. 2014. Web. 13 May 2015. 
13. Chen, Daphne. [http://homelessness.dailycal.org/causes/ "Federal Policy Changes Contribute to Rise in Local Homeless Population Homelessness in Berkeley - The Daily Californian."] The Daily Californian. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. 
14. Beitel, Karl: “Local Protests, Global Movements: Capital, Community, and State in San
Francisco” Temple University Press; 2013 pg. 11 
15. Ibid, p. 13 
16. Chen, Daphne. [http://homelessness.dailycal.org/causes/ "Federal Policy Changes Contribute to Rise in Local Homeless Population Homelessness in Berkeley - The Daily Californian."] The Daily Californian. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. 
17. "San Francisco." American Bar Association Journal 58.7 (1972): 715-23. Temple University Press. Web. 15 May 2015. 
18. Key Findings and Policy Implications." TALIS Teaching Practices and Pedagogical
Innovations (2013): 111-24. Everyone Home. From the 2013 Alameda Countywide Homeless Count and Survey Report. 
19. Dawn Philips: “Planning For People, Not for Profiteers,” The Street Spirit, May 2015 
20. Newell, Walker. "The Legacy of Nixon, Reagan, and Horton: How the Tough on Crime Movement Enabled a New Regime of Race – Influenced Employment Discrimination.” 2013. Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy 
21.Gowan, Teresa: “Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homelessness in San Francisco”; University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pg. 243 
22. Interview with Terry Messman by author, April 17, 2015. 

[[category:Media]][[category:Newspapers]][[category:Underground press]][[category:Homeless]][[category:East Bay]][[category:Bay Area Social Movements]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:2010s]]

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