On the Ground in Fresno: Faith in Community

In the heart of California’s Central Valley, a growing number of equity partnerships are working to organize Fresno’s marginalized communities to advocate for equitable change. One such coalition — Faith in Community — is finding success by engaging faith-based congregations on issues ranging from economic justice to ending the mass incarceration epidemic.

“All faith traditions have something to say about living equitably,” explained Bryson White, a community organizer with Faith In Community. “Our goal is to put human dignity at the center of public life.”

A member of the influential and extensive PICO National Network, Faith in Community works with 20 congregations across Fresno’s faith communities on various social justice campaigns. Although most of its members belong to more traditionally liberal Protestant churches, Faith in Community also includes more conservative churches as member congregations.

“Most faith language has been dominated by the political and Christian right, but this needs to be a collective conversation,” warned White. “We can’t afford to leave the sphere of civic involvement to any one religious group.”

Faith in Community also partners with Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries (FIRM) and Fresno State University’s Humanics program, which develops courses that align with Faith in Community’s ongoing campaigns.

One of Faith in Community’s main focus areas is achieved through its participation in PICO’s “Live Free” campaign (also called “Lifelines to Healing”), which aims to dismantle the system of mass incarceration and reduce gun violence. An urgent priority is bail reform — according to White, many individuals in Fresno County jail are impoverished blacks and Latinos awaiting trial.

“In Fresno County, 70 percent of the inmate population is there pretrial, so they haven’t been convicted, but they can’t afford bail,” said White. “It’s class warfare. We need more efficient pretrial expansion programs, so people don’t have to sit in jail for something they haven’t been convicted of doing.”

Faith in Community partners with clergy and churches for its successful Night Walks program, also part of the “Live Free” campaign. As part of the program, participants walk through struggling neighborhoods to converse and pray with residents and hone in on community members identified as perpetrators or victims of gun violence. They engage in a dialogue with these residents, asking questions intended to stoke a sense of pride in and responsibility to the neighborhood, such as “what do you like about your community?” and “what would you like to see changed?” In one neighborhood, reports of violent crime went down by nearly 50 percent after a year and a half of Night Walks.

The Night Walks neighborhood dialogues also help to identify critical community issues, such as blight caused by abandoned properties. After the Great Recession, 22 Fresno neighborhoods were identified as areas of concentrated poverty, where 40 percent or more of the residents lived below the federal poverty line. The many foreclosures in these neighborhoods, largely caused by predatory lending and other schemes, prompted slumlords to further exploit these communities by buying up foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar. The vast majority of these properties were boarded up and left vacant — a proven factor in causing neighborhood blight, violence, and toxic stress experienced by children.

To address this problem, Faith in Community partnered with Fresno State University to canvass and catalog these properties, and is currently working with the city to ensure that codes already in place are enforced, and that new property owners pay appropriate fines for blighted properties. They are also pressuring the city to force the handover of abandoned properties to community organizations that would match them with families in need.

“We are trying to build a power base led by residents and people of faith to disrupt politics as usual in Fresno,” said White.

The abandoned property campaign falls under what Faith in Community calls a focus on “concentrated usury,” or the exploitation of impoverished communities. Another campaign under this umbrella is one to limit the number of new payday lenders in Fresno. Currently, there are 66 payday lender stores, densely concentrated in the same 22 distressed neighborhoods. Faith in Community recently had a victory in this campaign when the Fresno City Council passed an ordinance to limit the opening of any new payday stores within one-quarter mile of another, effectively a hard limit on any new stores in working poor neighborhoods.

As for what’s next, Faith in Community is planning a civic engagement campaign focused on Proposition 47, a statewide ballot initiative that would reclassify nonviolent felony convictions as misdemeanors and use the savings to improve jails and fund drug and mental health treatment programs. Faith in Community plans to target low propensity voters — registered voters who typically do not vote in midterm elections — by canvassing and phone banking, with a goal of turning out 5,000 new voters to the polls.

“We can’t continue this rabid pace of incarcerating — it’s destroying our communities,” urged White. “Prop 47 would rectify the failure of the War on Drugs and get people the help they need.”

>>>Read the rest of the California Equity Quarterly Summer 2014 issue.

CALIFORNIA: Youth Leaders Thrive at the Capitol

In early August, close to 300 young leaders of color and allies from communities across California traveled to Sacramento and met privately with nearly 100 legislators, representatives from Governor Jerry Brown’s office, and high-level administrators, such as State Superintendent of Public Schools Tom Torlakson, to advocate for policy change. These meetings were part of the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color’s third annual Education and Advocacy Days at the Capitol, an inspiring week of trainings, activism, and celebration.

The week’s events included a rally on the Capitol steps, where youth leaders called for an end to willful defiance and advocated for access to health care for undocumented Californians. During the rally, several lawmakers signed a petition to implement restorative justice models and Positive Behavior Intervention programs by the year 2016, end the use of willful defiance by the year 2018, and reduce all suspensions by 80 percent by the year 2020.

Youth leaders also presented Governor Brown’s staff with a thank you letter, expressing appreciation to the governor for engaging in a conversation to limit willful defiance, a school disciplinary standard that can be applied arbitrarily, does not address root causes of misbehavior, and results in disproportionate suspensions and expulsions for students of color.

The week culminated in the Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color’s progress hearing, held annually to evaluate efforts by state agencies to implement recommendations in its 2012-2018 action plan to improve outcomes for California’s boys and young men of color in the areas of health, education, employment, juvenile justice, and youth development.

“We have a youth leader movement in this state that no other state has,” said Dr. Robert Ross, president and CEO of The California Endowment, during the hearing’s opening remarks. “They have been walking the hallways of the Capitol, speaking with their passionate and profound voices.”

Also during the hearing, Assemblymember Steven Bradford (D-62), chair of the Select Committee, announced AB 914 — a bill that would create a statewide, interagency taskforce to improve outcomes for California’s boys and young men of color, modeled after the federal taskforce created within the White House initiative, My Brother’s Keeper.

Over the next month, the Alliance will push the governor to sign its other identified priority bills. It will also work to increase support for Proposition 47, a ballot initiative that would change the status of several nonviolent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors and could change the lives of millions of Californians.

Watch youth-produced videos about a young leader’s experience in Sacramento and an overview of Education and Advocacy Days at the Capitol.

Read more about the Alliance’s week in Sacramento.

Take action to support the Alliance’s statewide policy priorities.

>>>Read the rest of the California Equity Quarterly Summer 2014 issue.

Take Action to Advance Equity in California

Last year, California advanced a significant number of policies that advance equity-the idea that investing in low-income communities and communities of color is essential to achieving a healthy and prosperous state.

Those bills successfully passed due to the determined advocacy of our state's equity leaders and the actions of Californians - individuals like you - who understood that investing in excluded communities helps the entire state.

This year, we need your help again to advance equity even further. Below, we have identified a number of important bills that would improve the lives of California's most vulnerable communities. Please click on the bill titles and follow the simple steps to send a personalized letter of support. For more impact, please copy and paste the letter language onto your organizational letterhead (if applicable) and fax it to the numbers provided:

AB 1629 (Bonta): Victim Compensation Fund. Supports physical and emotional recovery for Californians injured by gun or other violence by extending peer counseling services and reimbursement through the Victim Compensation Fund.

SB 1391 (Hancock): Community Colleges/CTE Courses/Inmate Education Programs. Increases job skills and employability of people who were formerly incarcerated by providing educational opportunities and career technical education in prison.

AB 1451 (Holden): Concurrent Enrollment. Facilitates access to college through partnerships between California Community Colleges and local school districts regarding the concurrent enrollment of high school pupils in college classes.

AB 2102 (Ting): Health Workforce. Captures more complete and consistent data on California's health-care workforce by requiring various boards, such as Board of Nursing, to report demographic information.

SB 1111 (Lara): Involuntary Transfers. Protects due-process rights of students involuntarily transferred to county community or community day schools.

SB 1151 (Canella): Vehicles - School Zone Fines. Funds school zone safety projects within the Active Transportation Fund by imposing an additional fee for violations occurring in school zones.

SB 1396 (Hancock): School Climate. Creates positive cultures in schools and improves school discipline practices by establishing Positive Behavior Intervention and Support Program (PBIS).

Thank you for taking the time to support equitable policies that will improve the lives of all Californians. Stay tuned for an update on the status of these and other priority legislation.

As California Heals, So Should the Nation

Our future prosperity depends on all of our young people having a fair chance to succeed. But too many of our boys and young men of color (primarily African American, Latino, Native American, and Southeast Asian) disproportionately experience failing schools, disconnected neighborhoods, and limited job opportunities.

Indeed, when the President announced My Brother’s Keeper—a potentially transformative initiative for our nation—he recognized that, “by almost every measure, the group that is facing some of the most severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young men of color.”

This is particularly troubling because the population of boys and men of color is growing exponentially:  already, the majority of children born in this country are of color, and America is expected to be majority people of color by 2042. We need our emergent population of boys and men of color to have opportunities to work hard and innovate to keep America competitive in the global economy.  We must support their success, not just as a matter of fairness and equality, but for the economic strength of our country.

As the White House continues to shape its initiative, it should pay attention to California, where young activists and community leaders have been working for years as part of the statewide Alliance for Boys and Men of Color to address challenges and improve outcomes for boys and men of color – efforts that can help lay the groundwork and provide strategic guidance for My Brother’s Keeper.

A major focus in California has been to establish the imperative of healing—understanding and overcoming the unique trauma disproportionately faced by boys and men of color—as foundational to achieving success. Some of this trauma may stem from violence, poverty, and social marginalization experienced from an early age.

This was on full display through the community’s leadership last month during “Healing Generations,” San Joaquin County’s three-day Fourth Annual Boys and Men of Color Summit, where “healing circles” (a group technique rooted in indigenous, cultural practices), spoken-word performances, and a Heart and Spirit Run (where runners stopped at local shooting sites to honor victims of gun violence) intersected with a hearing of the California Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color, and a day-long training to develop the critical thinking and direct action skills of boys and young men of color.

One of many highlights at the San Joaquin summit was the depth of youth engagement. Jesse Esparza, a youth leader at Fathers and Families of San Joaquin (FFSJ), the community-based organization that leads the local boys and men of color campaign, gave stirring testimony on how healing helps him confront barriers he faces because of past mistakes. Stockton City Councilmember Michael Tubbs, a young man who participated in FFSJ programs and is now the youngest elected official in Stockton’s history, reflected on how it will take “progressive, New Deal-type thinking” on the part of policymakers to match boys and young men of color with the high-tech jobs of the future, including training and skill-building for detainees in juvenile hall.

A focus on healing has also played a central role in Monterey County, where the East Salinas Boys and Men of Color campaign had an important victory in April. The community-led coalition, supported by MILPA and East Salinas Building Healthy Communities, successfully campaigned the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to unanimously modify the design of a new juvenile hall to accommodate more space for programs based in restorative justice—a healing-centered technique which focuses on repairing harm and has been proven to reduce recidivism. California state and local boys and men of color campaigns have also promoted restorative justice programs in lieu of outdated and unfair school discipline policies, such as zero tolerance and willful defiance.

To explore the intersection of trauma and healing, the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color will host a legislative briefing entitled Trauma-Informed Community Health and Healing Practices on Thursday, May 29. Please join us at the hearing and on Twitter for a “Tweet Chat” on trauma-informed care on Wednesday, May 28, from 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Pacific (follow @allianceforbmoc and use the hashtag #BmocHealing).

It will be essential for the White House to incorporate healing as a major facet of My Brother’s Keeper. We need our boys and young men of color to have the tools to face and overcome trauma in their lives. More and more, we will be relying on this growing population, and as FFSJ youth leader Angel Diaz reflected during his testimony, “if adults look at young people as assets to be developed instead of problems to solve, we can change the future.”

Rubén Lizardo is a PolicyLink Senior Director and Leader of Boys and Men of Color & Workforce Initiatives
 

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