Mexico!

I made it to Mexico! But it was a rough night last night. I stayed in Nogales, MX because it was cheaper than staying in Arizona and the bus was so late that if I stayed on I would have arrived in Hermosillo at almost midnight (not safe). The room I stayed in was not clean and the manager was offended that I asked for new sheets, but his daughters (9 and 2) kept me company by telling me the horror stories of awful things that have happened to people on that street. Needless to say, I stayed in the whole night and got up early to catch a bus this morning. Right now I´m sitting at the station that lots of people use to cross the border and there are tons of workers milling around and trying to coordinate jobs. I will arrive this evening in Los Mochis where I will get a train ticket to La Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon). Hopefully I will get internet up there, but no promises. I´ll most likely be out of there by the end of next week.

For the record, Santa Fe is one of my new favorite places. The art was great, food was amazing, and I couldn´t get enough time with Auntie Deb. We did a 17 mile hike with a 4000 ft elevation gain, Soleiana and I rode horses (and I fell off!!! again!), and I got to check out Taos too. Sweeeeet... hasta pronto!

Homeboy Industries

I am currently in Santa Fe, NM visiting my best friend from Wyoming and my Auntie Deb. I'm enjoying the outdoors too much to sit inside and write, so I will write about this amazing place later. In the meantime, a reflection on a great time in LA!

I visited the most inspiring place on my journey so far when I met Angela's mom, Patricia, at Homeboy Industries in south-central, Los Angeles. I first learned about Homeboy Industries when a documentary about it was shown at Seattle University, but it has come a long way since the documentary was made and being there confirmed that it is doing amazing things to change the lives of former gang members. "Father G" (Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J.), a Jesuit priest filled with social consciousness and compassion, heads up the organization that helps gang members get jobs, mental health counseling, tattoo removal, and a plethora of services that keeps them off the streets and helps integrate them into society. While Homeboy itself employs (what seemed like) tons of people through community clean-up crews, a bakery that delivers to local businesses, a screen printing and retail business, those enrolled in the program are actually paid minimum wage to look for a job. Those who do work for Homeboy are paid a livable wage, not just minimum wage for their forty hour work week.

The building Homeboy inhabits is bright, cheery, clean, and very welcoming. Almost everyone I passed during my thorough tour greeted me or introduced themselves, even though it was obvious that I wasn't the first curious college student to pass through. A table full of high school students sat next to me while I ate lunch, they had just finished their tour too.

Patricia started working with Homeboy Industries four years ago when her own cafe outgrew its small space. After having worked with Jesuits for years, Patricia was approached by Father G to create the Homegirl Cafe which would give female gang members jobs and the needed skills to provide for their families and change their lives. The women work four days a week and on the fifth day, they are paid to attend classes at Homeboy or take advantage of the many services available. The best part of Patricia's job is seeing women realize that they have the ability to master kitchen and serving skills and excel at them, while mastering and excelling in life. As Patricia and I chatted after my hearty tofu chorizo torta (YUM! all organic Mexican food!), she also kept up with everyone who passed by. Young people stopped to give her hugs while she gave them direct but warm advice. "Ya no la estás usando?" she asked one young woman, "Your not using anymore?" When she replied that she hadn't used heroine for months, Patricia gave a priceless smile of encouragement. The community that has formed over twenty years of organizing is evident in moments like that between two individuals who work together and support each other.

I couldn't help beaming as I walked out and headed toward Olvera Street (historic downtown). Knowing that such a powerful and meaningful organization can make progress against violence and toward community gives me hope for the future. Slogans like "Nothing stops a bullet like a job" and "Jobs not jails" make so much sense and should be everywhere in our society, but knowing that Homeboy Industries uses them makes their popularity seem conceivable. Do check out their website to learn more about all the great programs they have to offer and their roller coaster history that has ultimately brought them so much success. Follow this link to the Homeboy industries homepage: http://www.homeboy-industries.org/ Plus, you can see pictures there because I didn't take any.

The rest of my time in LA was spent hanging out with Lauren and Connor (my two good friends from Portland), chilling on the beach, and working on democracybythepeople.blogspot.com. Tomorrow I'm flying to Santa Fe with a brand new backpack in tow, thanks to the REI gift certificate from Spruce Street School.

Watts Riot

I'm chilling right now in Santa Monica, where the grass is like carpet, the sand like gold, and the palm trees are eight stories tall. I'm staying on the ninth floor in one of only two high rises in the region with a view of the beach, the Santa Monica Pier (complete with a ferris wheel that puts on a light show at night), and the surrounding mountains (at least on the more clear days). I hadn't thought about how grungy my style was until I walked down Main Street and realized that all the clothes in my backpack probably cost less than one dress in the storefront windows. I had to chuckle to myself about the looks the Nader sticker on my laptop draws, but unlike Seattle no one here approaches me for a political debate.

The opulence blows my mind, especially after my visit to Watts yesterday. My friends Connor and Lauren from Seattle are living in LA while Lauren attends a premed program at USC, so Connor came and picked me up for an adventure. We drove to Watts to see what the 42nd annual Watts Summer Festival had to offer. Pulling up on Compton Ave we were surprised to see so many police cars surrounding the area, but we saw tents up ahead so we parked the car and walked up to the stage where a talented but obviously nervous African American girl was belting out love songs over pre-recorded samples. Connor and I noticed quietly that we were the only white people in a crowd besides the police, but no one seemed to pay any attention to us.

The festival was small and quiet, mostly comprised of young families, but the police presence was huge. As we wandered away from the stage, it felt like there were more uniforms than kids. I was tempted to ask why so many cops had been hired to cover the event, but they didn't look like the approachable type. So after a few pop/soul songs by 17 year old artists we decided to bounce.

Our next stop, the Watts Towers, shed some light on the situation. The Watts Towers have come to be a community symbol for the struggle toward social justice in the diverse but economically impoverished area of the city (see photos). Built by an Italian cement worker who spent something like 50 years constructing them, the Watts towers are a collage of ceramic and glass pieces intricately laid into delicate cement pillars. A timeline depicting the history of the area encircles the fenced off area that guards the towers. I learned that African Americans fled to the area during the great depression, that Japanese were herded out of the area during WWII, and there has always been a steady trickle of Mexicans pouring into Watts. The most surprising block was one that read "1965 Watts Riots".

I looked up the Watts Riots and found this article published on Democracy Now! that I recommend reading: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/8/12/the_fire_this_time_the_watts

I did not spend enough time in Watts to determine how the neighborhood has changed over the last 43 years, but the fact that there were at least 30 white cops monitoring a predominately African American community festival of no more than 150 people seems to say that some of the problems remain the same. Injustice remains and I return to the 9th floor with a balcony...

Qué es lo que queremos? Justicia! Cuando la queremos? Ahora!

What is legal?

My mother left a message on my phone today wondering how she is supposed to keep track of me if I hadn't updated my blog, but I reminded her of our adventurous family's old saying, "No news means good news."
After a somewhat uneventful time in South Lake Tahoe where I stayed in "Little TJ", I took a lovely commuter train from Sacramento to Richmond, CA. I immediately became familiar with the BART, the Bay Area's metro train, as I headed to meet up with Rob, a friend of a good friend in Seattle, whose name I have changed here to protect his privacy.
The information I had about Rob was certainly intriguing and I was excited to meet him. My friend told me that Rob is part of a legal marijuana growing collective that extends throughout the Bay Area and depends upon individual growers and mini-collectives alike to sell them weed. While I was uncertain at first as to whether or not I really wanted to stay in a house containing mass amounts of drugs that are illegal in other parts of the state, and in terms of quantity, even other parts of the city, but my trustworthy friend back in Seattle assured me that his friend was "legit" and I would have the opportunity to learn about a part of society that I would otherwise never know.
Rob and his friend picked me up at the BART station and informed me that I was being trusted for only one reason: I came highly recommended by my friend in Seattle. Almost nobody else would be taken to the sites, and very few learn the extent to which the collective works.
Our first stop was the house that Rob occupies, the place where I would spend the next 4 nights. The history of the house spans back at least 5 years, when a different member of the collective started growing in the back room. The front room is living space and another room serves as storage for the approximately 15 members of this mini-collective who come and go as they please. They have a set formula that works for any room of about the same size that provides a guideline as to how to build the platforms (including a sound-proof floor to prevent bothering the neighbors), ventilation, and the tubs of water that make quality hydroponics. While their energy bill is huge, the entire collective manages to make money on the endeavor. Most of the members have a financial goal they shoot for, and when they reach it, they claim they will drop out of the loop. The work done in several locations all over the Bay Area is shared between all members and the financial division is done through verbal agreements.
Only two female members run in the group, and according to Rob, that is because girls have big mouths (ugh, I hate stereotypes). Even though what the collective does is legal in the city, if federal agents felt like investigating and cracking down on them, they certainly could. They keep things straight by selling to the Cannabis Club, the bigger collective that redistributes marijuana from many sources to people with medical marijuana cards, but Rob doesn't even talk to his friends outside of the collective about his work. What luck I had to see into this otherwise hidden world.
But we didn't just do work. Rob showed me around different parts of the city and I crossed all the major bridges. We spent some time in Berkeley with his friends and I appreciated the history of struggle that has happened, and continues to happen, on those streets. There is certainly tension where so many different kinds of people come together in one spot, but Berkeley is off the hook. From graffiti, to drugs, to street sports like skateboarding and cycling, everything was bursting with delinquency and no one seemed to care until some bums started fighting over a spilled can of "Jooze" and the N-word got thrown by a white guy. The cops slapped on their purple gloves and insisted they had chased after the black guy instead of the white guy because they had seen his knife. Woah, Berkeley.
The youth on the streets all know each other and congregate without cellphones. Within moments of posting up at a couple of designated spots around the Cal campus, anywhere between 5 and 30 young people just show up and kick it. At one point Rob and I went to get some food, but his friends didn't have any money. Instead of ditching them, we bought big sandwiches to pass all around the group that had flocked around us like ducks around old people. Later, when we went to see a show, Rob's other friend "with money" paid for his friend and I paid for Rob. It was like a street pact that when your friends don't have money and you do, you gotta cover your friends. It is kind of like karma in the sense that when you put out, you will eventually receive.
The group we kicked it with that day had a fascinating game called teams, much like the one I play in Seattle with my friends, but this one is based on "races" instead of individual captains. The crew hangs out and designates different people from the group to be on the black, white, or Mexican teams. They barter, trade and change their minds based on various actions by the players, not their actual race. Even as a white guy Rob plays on the black team as the hip hop DJ and many of the black dudes get put on the white team for skateboarding. It seems stereotypical, but it is a comical way of unifying the races that are running together regardless. They laugh about how they share certain interests and talents regardless of race or skin tone. I got put on the Mexican team because I was wearing my "Corazón de Fuego" hoodie that Angela gave me... qué sorpresa.
After a whirlwind of parks, bridges, cityscapes, music and guys on skateboards, I bid farewell to the Bay and headed for Santa Monica, CA. I am currently staying at Trisha Roth's house (the grandmother of the kids I nannied in Seattle) right next to Venice Beach! I chilled on the beach today, but I will certainly be checking out some other parts of the city soon. Until there is more to report... asd

Ashland and South Lake Tahoe

After an 11 hour Greyhound ride, I arrived sleepily in Ashland, OR to find home-cooked dinner at my brother's house. That set the tone of my visit there which consisted mostly of lounging in the shade swapping stories and music with Morgan and his girlfriend, Elise. I let my artistic side flourish for a couple of days with lots of drawing and hemping.
Yesterday Morgan and I hit the road for what was probably my last real road trip ever. Considering gas prices and my green ethics, I doubt I will ever indulge in such lavish transportation ever again. We cranked up the tunes, popped on the stunnas (sunglasses), and blasted through the mountains.
We arrived in South Lake Tahoe 6 hours later to find great hospitality with some homies that Morgan knows from the time he spent working in Brekenridge, CO. They are all hard workers and all artistic in one way or another, plus they live in a paradise. The lake is so blue and the town has the small feel of Jackson Hole despite all the gapers (tourists) that force us to wait half an hour to get into any restaurant.
Tomorrow I will rock the bus toward the Bay Area and be sure to report any excitement.