among our youths aren’t out of reach
By GUEST COMMENTARY BY ELIAS SERNA
Along with my 11-year-old son, Pico Youth and Family Center members, community members and more than 700 Samohi students, I marched to call for peace on the streets on Friday, March 11. We consoled the family and remembered Eddie Lopez who was fatally shot on Feb. 28. Marches also consolidate community around ideas, so I am writing at a crossroads to clarify that very different agendas were present, and mark divergent directions.
I propose that we do not need to look too far away to see critical solutions, and that “getting tough” on crime is not one of them and in fact contributes to violent outcomes. As in Iraq, I do not believe we need to police and attack suspects. City leaders do. The Pico neighborhood has the only Santa Monica park with a police sub-station, and has no library. The City Council last week proposed to change the color of police cars to “black and white” to resemble the more notorious LAPD.
At the same time, city leaders have actively worked to exclude the Pico Youth and Family Center from Virginia Park, explaining that the park needs to be inclusive to outsiders and will not grant the PYFC “permanent presence.” No one is given exclusive use of the park — except police.
Gentrification comes with a police escort.
In January a packed meeting of the Virginia Park Advisory Committee overwhelmingly advocated for the presence of the PYFC at the park. They wanted transfer of PYFC programs from its present location on a busy Ninth Street and Pico Boulevard corner to the neighborhood park. City officials, namely cultural affairs director Barbara Stinchfield and elements of the SMPD have made it a point to exclude the PYFC mainly through miscommunica-tion, delay and criminalization — creating a climate of fear they accuse the center of associating with “gang members.”
By the end of the meeting, the advisory board decided to meet in committee to reword a recommendation to the parks and recreation department as to the “urgency in the need for program-ming for older youth at the park.” This signaled the division among the board, but also a hesitancy to make a judgment on the place of the PYFC.
It’s important to review key points brought up by speakers that day to clarify the function of the PYFC in Santa Monica. Santa Monica College student Alex Aldana, a recent Samohi graduate, emphasized the role of the center in providing him counsel and role models that have shaped his role as a community leader. Alex has organized poetry slams, Malcolm X Day and was a teaching assistant at UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA). Numerous youth from the center spoke, including two who produced a socially conscious rap CD in the PYFC’s music studio. They were attending SMC and pointed out that no songs had cuss words. Several college-bound seniors recognized the center’s influence on their lives and explained that its presence at the park will allow various older youth with younger siblings to also have a place at the park.
Two sole Anglo men spoke against the center, implying it as a haven of crime. I thought this was racist but a Chicano educator who grew up on Pico emphasized that the park needs to be inclusive of all of Santa Monica, and cordially suggested the men visit the center before making judgments. The final speaker, Mike Jackson, a black case manager at the center and Samohi graduate reiterated two key themes that are worth evaluating here.
Firstly, he recognized one of the children of a parent who at 10 years old is an adorable child. To think of how in perhaps six short years he will be looked at as a threat to society and fit the appropriate profile, color and age to be suspect of gang membership demonstrates how pervasive and deceptive the criminalization of black and brown youth is in our society.
Secondly, he acknowledged how the work, achievements and goals of the PYFC are ideal for the community, and the leadership consists of people who grew up in the neighborhood, yet are for some reason feared and not trusted. I had earlier pointed out that our city is plagued by a similar fear of organic leadership.
From my own experience as an English teacher at Samohi four years ago, black and Latino educators were hampered by administrative neglect of their unique and important skills. Instead of valuing indigenous connections to the community, these teachers and staff were expected to be “good Mexicans” or “good blacks,” employees who follow the leadership of authority. Community connections and insights continue, in fact, to be perceived by these authorities as “political” and a threat to their control.
While PYFC staff busy themselves running programs, the center’s director Oscar dela Torre stated recently, “people are playing politics with the lives of youth.”
In the larger picture — not only Santa Monica, but the nation and world — established leaders need to be more inclusive and, if the word has not completely lost its meaning, democratic. We need to abandon old patterns and behaviors of exclusion, and understand that marginalized voices and ideas from the street level contain insights and genuine answers to urgent problems.
By supporting unique and effective organizations such as the PYFC — as opposed to outside or state agencies and their often rigid, imposed and token solutions — we not only give a voice to local residents, we also empower one of our own home-grown institutions that is involved in building necessary “ways of life” for a world that crucially needs new social visions. (Elias Serna is a professor at Cal State University Northridge who resides in Santa Monica.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 18, 2006. Read the original PDF.