Our place in the neighborhood is a delicate one. Recently one of our coworkers was asked by a resident on the street, "What makes you white people think its ok to walk around in our neighborhood?" By my assessment this is a fair question. Estimates say that in less than 15 years this will not be the bad part of town anymore. Dot-com-ers and other wealthy types will seize this well-positioned area, slowly pushing out those who struggle and cram multiple families into each house. This area, once a neighborhood populated largely by employees of the harbor involved in packing and loading barges, fell into terrible physical and social disrepair after the harbors began using automated systems. While the systems were much cheaper and often more efficient, this decision left hundreds of families displaced, unemployed and ultimately defeated. West Oakland is also, incidentally, the birthplace of the Black Panther movement. While the Panthers were widely known and criticized for their militant approach, very little press was given to the tremendous social and community organizing work that came out of it. A large part of the Panthers mission was to organize the displaced African American community in an effort to end the oppression of African Americans as a people in the US.

Now, nearly half a century later we still have the poor black community pushed to the dilapidated neighborhoods where their relatives were estranged, waiting for the wealthy to come in with renovators and credit-cards to gentrify and further estrange them. At first it may seem intimidating to ask a question like the one asked at the start of this journal, but with a little background things gain significant clarity. In my opinion, the real work to be done is in repairing the horribly botched relationship between racial groups - and i do not think that this is beyond our ken. For my part, in such situations i feel that it is my duty to be explicit about my intentions in the neighborhood. While i don't have any immediate plans to march the sidewalks draped in posterboards adorned with Sophia Project's mission statement, i would Love to have the opportunity to explain our work to those in the neighborhood, to show them that there are white people who are indeed working not to brush aside underpriveleged populations but to provide opportunities to those who have next to none. For all white people i believe it is our duty to make an effort to connect to and understand the other dominant cultures in our midst. I have also experienced that little things can make a difference: smile at all people, including people of color. (Though that may sound like a condescending proviso, i mean it honestly). Smile or say hello to the homeless and if they ask you for money for heaven's sake don't say, 'I'm sorry' if you want to say no. As a male i know that some of these things are easier for me to do, though as females i believe the support is even more necessary - especially to other women. The struggles of the females in the neighborhood and the families that we work with are often nearly unthinkable. For populations of men who feel largely powerless in their worlds, women often absorb the brunt of their frustrations and end up becoming their control objects. Even a simple acknowledgement, a smile to the woman working at McDonalds or a letter to an imprisoned woman - every little bit counts.
As people of privelege its easy to fall into the delusion that all people had the same chances in life as us and thus they should be held responsible for their broken lives. I am here to say that this is very seldom the case. Let us remember what we have been given and remember to give some back.

The other day i went to pick up Oscar and noticed an unusual amount of energy in the air, which is quite a statement when considering how much energy there is to begin with at the end of a day in an elementary school in West Oakland. I walked through the hall and found Oscar, who was scheduled to be in an after school gardening program though i had gone to make sure he remembered to go. He told me it was cancelled, "because of what happened."
Well, what happened, Oscar?
"They found a body in the garden."
...
At this point i recall what we were told in orientation, "Under no circumstances are you to react with noticeable shock or discomfort at the things our families may tell you. They are very sensitive to our reactions and we need to take every thing with a grain of salt."
...
"Oh."
"Yeah there was no head on it, it was just a body.."
"oh really?"
"Yeah, can i ask Marshon's grandma if he can come over after i finish my homework?"
"yeah sure Oscar."

Suddenly everything just becomes very surreal. We walk out the back door of the school and past the garden where the body was found. The moment we hit the sidewalk a nicely dressed young woman with a steno pad approaches, "Hi i'm Gina from the San Francisco Chronicle, i was wondering if you wouldn't mind a short comment on what happened..."
i sort of mumbled something about how i was just Oscar's tutor but i think that it is the responsibility of the upper classes to ensure that the lower class has adequate access to help resources and quality education. I checked with her on the decapitation aspect of the story, which thankfully was the product of a pack of 3rd graders with rampant imaginations. We walked a few paces up and a latin guy in a white button-up with the top two buttons undone starts speaking
Spanish to me. he is followed closely by a camera man. The first latin guy is holding a microphone. i explain the whole i don't speak spanish and i'm just his tutor thing and he asked if i would be willing to comment as well. In my strange, dreamlike state i agreed to comment, though i pray whatever i managed to say didn't make it to air. I felt it was an important issue and i wanted to make my thoughs known, unfortunately my thoughts had been given a maximum of 2 minutes to coagulate. Another tragic instance stupidity in the media.

It turns out the woman was in or near her 40s. The moment the children discovered her, they were all called inside and the police were notified. She had a history of abuse, (both inflicted and substance,) as well as struggles with mental health though was thought to have been doing better recently according to her friends. The article referred to her body as having been 'battered', though as yet no cause of death has been announced. Programs were cancelled for the day, but would resume the following week. In the garden would appear a single white candle and handwritten card that said, "Garden Angel: May her soul rest".

And the next morning i'm sitting on the 'bus' (stairs) with a bunch of little kids and singing, "the wheels..."

After break i head downstairs and out the front door into the Oakland sunshine where i walk down the street, past the ghetto blasters pumping heavy bass and around the corner to the elementary school where i pick up 9-year-old Oscar, the student to whom the second half of my day is dedicated. Oscar's family comes from central america and his mother's story is much like that of hundreds of thousands of other women. She came across the border for work, experienced many hardships including abusive relationships and considerable poverty while trying to establish herself in this country and finally made it to a place in life where she is able to hold a house with four children. This due to an incredible stroke of luck in having her name picked out of hundreds to receive a home in a Habitat for Humanity project area. While Oscar would normally have moved on from the project by this age (he has been with Sophia since its inception) though his situation is particular. With a mother whose work schedule is not always predictable, Oscar would spend much of his time at home alone while not in school. This would be fine if not for a recent outbreak of attacks on their home by neighborhood children in the weeks before school started. Such attacks usually involved throwing rocks and in one case involved an assault on one of his siblings. In an area where gang-affiliation can start as early as grade-school, this would be considered a serious problem.

My place in all this is to give Oscar what he has never exactly had but always longed for: one-on-one attention from a male. His own father had already left by the time he was born. Throughout his short life he would see others come and go, some of whom were abusive. So going back to the elementary school, i go and wait at the bottom of the stairs until Oscar comes bounding down after the last bell. While waiting for him to arrive i have already found a small fan club of children who enjoy such activities as jumping and hanging around my neck or showing me this and that toy or item de curios that they may have. By the time Oscar arrives i am at times a big, scruffy white-skinned pillar in a small pool of dark heads. Oscar then joins me and we walk down the road, past the corner store with the same guy out drinking on the curb and into Myrtle House, the other house owned by Sophia Project. Myrtle is also HQ for the children under 2, of which there are roughly 6. We come in past the play yard inside the tall fence, enter the side door and walk toward the front of the house into the sunlit playroom with stained glass in the front window and sleepy children just waking up from nap and fussing about with stuffed animals and bottles of milk. My glorious coworkers are usually there providing an appropriately soft and happy atmosphere, (inasmuch as one can be expected to amidst throaty screams and happy energetic little freakouts). We say hello to the littluns and head into the kitchen where i fix Oscar's snack. We're not exactly sure how much he eats at school, and we're fairly certain he doesn't always eat at home so we always have leftover lunch waiting for him. Oscar is a curious young man with bright eyes and long lashes that look out into the world with the unspoiled innocence of youth on the verge of extinction. He's just showing the first signs of understanding the concept of having an attitude, though he is obviously very confused about how to do it and frankly hardly ever does. He enjoys almost anything i do with him that isn't homework, housework or reading, which is unfortunately what we spend 80% of our time doing. However it is absolutely striking how much youth this child has. We can easily be entertained for hours with the simple objects in the yard meant for baby use, such as balls and bats and rackets and tarps. We go for bike rides on fridays through the city and he gets the biggest thrill out of coasting down steep hills and taking the bikes a bit off path. He loves to sing and draw and paint. He asks profoundly simple questions and laughs heartily at slapstick humor. Its refreshing to have Oscar.

After snack we do homework and his daily reading log if we have time we play with babies in the yard. At 4:30 we go out to collect trash from the sidewalk. His mom arrives around 5 and he leaves without saying goodbye. Tomorrow we will do it again.

To be perfectly honest its been quite a long, strange trip this summer. Two months ago I climbed into a car with a gaggle of my closest friends, somehow managed to fit everything into the car with the aid of geometry and keen logicians delegated to do the packing and zipped across the wide chest of our great nation in a whirlwind worthy of any tasmanian devil.
In two weeks i had come from the rolling and very rural hills of conservative Pennsylvania to the liberal hub of the west coast. Where once the common feeling was 'farm, pay taxes and vote red' the feeling is now 'Turn on, tune in and drop out'. I was in Berkeley today and stumbled into the middle of a frenetic street fair. Lining the streets were various tents ranging from those dealing with energy healing to craft tables where you could make and decorate masks. On a fair off stage a band dressed like robots pumped out a quirky sort of rock music to a crowd dressed like psychedelic clown children. On the lawn a woman sat with her pet chicken and a huddle of adolescents smoked a reefer to my left. A street over were a parking lot full of cars all adorned in some special way. The first was a truck covered in every manner of metal decoration one might imagine, all attached somehow by magnets and all a rusty orange color. A VW bug was completely mosaic-ed in bits of colored glass and marble, another painted to look like the ocean with half-rubber fish portruding from its waves. Meanwhile a 50 something with scraggly blond hair in yellow suspenders strolled by with two guys who looked like Chong and a girl painted with purple stripes and multi-colored hair jumped languidly in front of a stage playing average hippie fare. The sun beat down hot and the grungy kids with their dogs begged for beer money on the curb. While its all well and good to feel free, i have been thinking that if what these people truly want is revolution then maybe they should make a somewhat more serious attempt to acquaint themselves with reality.

During my days i am faced with the awful effects of poverty and shortcomings of an underdeveloped social system and spend my weekends often paddling through the endless halls of liberal commercialism. Sometimes i go to Berkeley to watch the neo-hippies and winos mingle and witness the interesting manifestations of art and conversation that emerge. Other times i skip out to the Haight Ashbury and share lunch with a homeless guy just to hear the stories he has to tell. I sit in the most progressive city in America and look out over the bridge wondering why, if there is so much Love and human concern is there so much desperation and abuse going on even here? Why, in the city of Love are there still very distinct 'white' and 'black' areas and what can i as an individual do to bring us together? This as i suck my mangoberry smoothie with soymilk and an energy boost through a multi-colored straw. Peace, man.

Let me tell you a bit about where i live. The return address on the mail i might send you one day will say,

820 19th St.
Oakland, CA

and what would that inform? "Oakland," you might say, "well that doesn't have a very good reputation." While i have indeed seen more directly threatening places, allow me to explain some of the details of life in West Oaktown, as it is locally known.

A) I do not, under any circumstances go out after dark. For a long time this rule was only marginally enforced, and while some may have had only vaguely sketchy encounters along the 1 1/2 block walk between here and the other house it was not until last year while two of ours were taking an evening stroll home whereupon they were approached by a group of teenagers and subsequently cursed and kicked in the back. This would be known as a lucky encounter. Any neighborhood travel after sundown is done strictly via car. At night i do not count gunshots to fall asleep as i thought i might, although we have heard at one point what we later suspected was an automatic weapon in the distance. This might have originated from East Oakland, known for its gangs. West Oakland, (my side) on the other hand, is known for its thriving drug trade. Around the corner from me is a crack house outside of which i have been spat on by a fiend. Caddy-corner from me is a house that i'm quite sure is peddling something/things, although i can't be too sure which and daren't ask. Outside of the house usually sit three to four gentlement blasting hardcore rap, often accompanied by small children and middle-aged women who at times appear gaunt and unhappy. I don't get much attention from this group, though the perky little blonde who lives with me apparently is no stranger to such comments as, "Damn i'd love some o' that cream in my coffee."

B) The hood is a network more intricate than the world-wide-web, more thorough than the CIA, more volatile than the KGB. When we speak of any of the families within the house, as during program meetings to inform the interns, we must close the windows. Any perceived shade of disrespect, (which would have to be perceived as there is a strict code of unyielding respect for both the individuals with whom we work and those whose neighborhood in which we live,) could mean serious consequences for us. The social network is so efficient that information spreads like blackberry jam in the sahara. Word of mouth is rife as people are almost always outside of their sweltering houses and *always* talking. While this can be venomous at times, it has also proven helpful to our cause. Over the years the Sophia Project has garnered recognition as a benificent organization in place strictly to help out children in the neighborhood. As Carol, our founder, used to be the director of a homeless shelter in San Francisco and many of the residents in this neighborhood are quite familiar with the shelter or most probably have siblings or exes or cousins or family/friends who have lived/are living there, we have something of a social safeguard around us during the daylight hours when people can be held accountable for their actions. This is the time when drugs are sold and you can simply avoid it if you choose not to look. Meanwhile, after the sun sets the effects of the drugs are more visible and accountability is nil. The police won't respond to calls in neighborhoods where tax evasion and unemployment are common. While the neighbors were pained to hear of the attack on our interns last year, their general response was, "Well, you did go out after midnight...I really live here and I don't even do that."

So, you may be wondering just what we do around here once it starts to get dusky. After all, we're not usually done with our day til 7:15 PM at its earliest, after the 6 O'clock workday and 6:30 community supper has commenced. And yes, attendance at the supper five nights a week is pretty much mandatory. We're trying to foster a sense of community here.

To answer the question we sit around on soft couches and play guitar, read, write, watch digital cable, check our mail or myspace or netflix movies. We try to process our experiences with eachother, which is a professional way of saying we sit around and share poop stories and believe you me, everybody has one after three weeks on the job. We bake cookies at 10 PM. We fall asleep to the sound of people yelling in the street, to car engines and the smell of joints burning in the night. We say prayers and give thankgs.

And for what, you may ask? For that effulgent warmth you get when a toddler squeezes your legs and happily screams your name. For the pure magic of witnessing a child do what you ask of them. To help them recover the innocence that has been scared out of them by unspeakable horrors. To remember clearly that we are all just children here. Children in the eyes of God.

So here it is after some requesting (thank you for your persistence, Susan,) despite my own reluctance to give in the the blog trend, it seems that my beloved typewriter has run out of ribbon and i will not be able to go with the previous plan of mailing out photocopied, typewritten journals to all interested parties - at least not yet.

It is 1:28 PM. I am taking my daily break. The typical day goes like this:
8 AM - wake up, do a morning routine consisting of exercise, yoga and meditation.

9 AM - eat a healthy breakfast and do something of value. I prefer oatmeal with brown sugar and butter (something i picked up from the Scots) as the mornings are shockingly cold here in Oakland and i like to consider checking email or writing letters my activity of value. Before finishing up with the morning routine i check the dishwasher and trash/recycling to see if they need changing/emptying. More often than not they do.

10 AM - descend the stairway into the luminsescent playroom where the children have just picked up for the morning and headed into an adjacent room for snack time. Here i will cover the toy shelves with pastel fabrics and begin to lay out ten little blue cots. I will also arrange seven tiny chairs for story time and make up each little cot complete with spread, sheet, hand-woven quilt and pillow. At the foot of each i will place each child's tiny footie slippers. When this is complete, the former playroom (decked with toys made of natural materials: wood blocks, wool blankets, hand-built playsets) will have been effectively transformed into the nap room with toys concealed behind said pastel sheets. All the while i can hear the sound of children chewing/throwing graham crackers and cheese sticks, complete with fits of screaming, silly outbursts, admonitions from the teacher and occasional split seconds of peace. By the time i have finished this it is...

10:30 AM (playtime)- I grab a cheese stick from the left-over snack tray and go out the side door to the play yard where the munchkins are buzzing about in the sunshine, making mudpies in the sandbox, playing house in the hand-built playhouse, or riding little bikes and trikes about the small enclave that is half-grounded by rubber mats and half green grass with apple trees and a small wooden-box garden with carrots and mums along the back fence. More often then not they will rush me, shriek my name, wrap their arms around my knees and begin pulling my limbs in seperate directions in an attempt to divide me into enough parts to go around. While i am outside the ratio of caretakers to children will be roughly 2 to 10 or 11. I will bounce baby girls on my knees and referee the often unruly disagreements of territorial toddlers. This will continue until about 11:50 when the children go in for story circle.


Story time - the children, after having ritualistically come in to remove their mucky shoes and replaced them with footie slippers all gather around the teacher in the circle of mini chairs that i have previously arranged and go through a uniform series of songs and hand-dances ranging from a three-verse verson of 'twinkle twinkle little star' to 'the itsy-bitsy spider'. I sit in the crowd in a slightly larger mini-chair, showing off my own hand-dancing skills and trying not to get too excited when it comes to the 'WASHED the spider OUT!" part. After singing and having a story read with hands folded and in our laps we move on to...

12:10 (lunch!) - this, again, is amongst my greatest challenges throughout the day. During this period i am seated with three two four young ones, eating simple foods that usually include a meat, a cooked vegetable, raw vegetables, a starch and water. The primary condiments are ketchup and ranch dressing and there is no salt or hot sauce available. While eating my chicken and rice with ranch and ketchup my primary task it to make sure that the children sit up straight, keep their elbows off the table, don't use fingers (although many come from cultures where fingers are the utensil of choice) and only speak when speaking is permitted. This allows me all of about one child's plate of simple foods in between disciplinary moves and serving firsts and seconds to the children. As lunch slowly disintegrates the children take their plates and cups to a designated table and wash up before heading into my beautiful nap room. Once there they pick a book, a stuffed animal and do anything they can to avoid settling in until one of the three of us arrives to go through the nap ritual. This includes (for each and every child) reading the story and then sitting with some kind of physical contact (always dependent on the temperament of the child) ranging from a simple hand on the shoulder to a gentle stroking of the hair while we sing or hum a quiet lullaby until the child finally gives up the fight with consciousness and slips into a fitful slumber with shafts of soft sunlight breathing in through the sheer white curtains and spilling over the pastel fabrics onto the naproom floor. It is from this beautiful silence that i slip away, out the side door around the house to the front as not to disturb the children, re-entering for my mid-day break.