Bayview youth and educators have what it takes

Pictured are Quesada Gardens resident organizers in front of Carver Elementary in 2006 when a school-based garden project was in development.

Today’s SF Chronicle devotes space on its front page to the subject of Bayview Hunters Point children, youth, and their education in the context of challenges most students never have to face. It is an important set of reportage, not just because the subject is critical, but because the journalists approach it from the perspective of those who achieve rather than those who do not.

The Chronicle probes a kindergarten class of students from George Washington Carver School from 1996, taught by Kanikah LeMon, to see what the now eighteen-year-old youth who were in that class are doing. Turn the page on a listing of facts that make graduation from high school seem unlikely, to individual profiles of success that turn the tables on statistics and stereotypes to show the power of individual spirit, family, faith, community, and educators who go the extra mile every day in an event without end.

The heroes are young people who have turned challenge into success: Terrell Gunn, Kanikah LeMon, Cris Seals, Jeremy Beasley, Latasha Allston, George Washington, Ja’Bar Gibson, Sylvia Johnson, and Gerrine Washington. Yet the heroes, themselves, each acknowledge others who were essential to their success in life thus far.

Featuring problems in the community, as those who care about Bayview Hunters Point often say, is all too easy. Profiles of individuals who achieved success or contributed to it, despite those problems, are rare. Today’s profiles contribute to a strength-based approach to social change that spreads responsibility for education and youth development broadly while, at the same time, maintaining a focus on individual responsibility.

The press about these former Carver Elementary students and those who helped them is a highpoint in an ongoing story. The community of people connected to the Quesada Gardens Initiative and Bayview Footprints Network has interacted with this story in the past, and no doubt will in the future as part of a social fabric that can support or breakdown on the strength or weakness of a few threads.

Louise Jones, respected educator and former Carver Elementary principal, engaged us in bringing a health fair to the Southeast Sector Community Facility, and still uses her chair on the Facility’s Commission to advocate for youth, families and education. Emily Wade-Thompson, current principal at Carver, made it clear how she makes a mission of her job when community gardeners worked with her in an attempt to bring a school-based garden to Carver. Cris Seals volunteered at the Bayview YMCA and went on to win a Jefferson Award. Latasha Allston participated in Pathlight’s community theater productions and was part of the community-based response to the tragic death of Antwanisha Morgan.

Today’s kindergarten students face barriers to graduation that are every bit as daunting as those faced by the young people who were profiled in today’s paper. The dual message that emerges in the collective voice of young people and educators like those in the set of articles today is as critical now as ever.

Young people should hear that achieving an education and success in life happens when students find and nurture the best in themselves. Community members should hear that our untiring support of education and youth girds the bridge between challenges facing children and a feature story in the media of 2012 about Bayview Hunters Point’s high graduation rates.

Member note: art and bayview youth

Stacy Thomas joined Heidi Hardin, an artist with deep roots at the Shipyard and with arts education in the heart of the neighborhood, in speaking with local leaders as part of Leadership SF's recent visit to Bayview Hunters Point.

Heidi shared her picture of Stacy, and this lovely note:

It was great fun to spend time with Stacy Thomas. He really enjoyed meeting everyone and getting to speak about art and its influence in his life.

I've attached a photo I took of him after we left the Boys and Girls Club as I let him off at Burnett School where he was to gather up his little brother and take him home on the bus.

I hardly recognized Stacy when I picked him up at school earlier in the afternoon. He's a young man now, no longer the child I used to teach.

Unique theater production unites elder leaders and youth

The curtain opened on a theatrical production and art exhibition in Bayview June 4th, as students from Willie Brown, Jr. Academy took over the Opera House for "fun, food & follies" and a celebration of civic leaders.

"Celebrating Civic Leaders" was produced by Footprints Network member groups Think Round, Inc. and Pathlight Productions. Student artwork associated with the production was on view for three months.

In related news: the retrospective of art work by Malik Seneferu, which had been at the Opera House, moved to the Bayview branch library and the Southeast Community Facility.

McClure's and Bridgview Garden in the news

Joel and Mary McClure must have brought a commitment to community-involvement with them when they moved into their home on Bridgeview Drive. In short order, they adopted the hillside lot next door to them, participated in all sorts of Quesada Gardens group activities just down the street, and are now on the Board of Directors of the Quesada Gardens Initiative.

Along the way, they've been the leaders and heart of the Bridgeview Garden project that has brought a teaching and learning garden to life where trash and weeds thrived not long ago.

Today's Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle puts Mary on the front page of the Home and Garden section, along with an article by Patricia Yollin about the importance of community gardens in tough economic times.

The McClure's and the Bridgeview Garden deserve every bit of the attention! (See the full article online.)

Two years ago, Mary McClure started a community garden on a forlorn lot next to her home in San Francisco's Bayview district, the city's historic food shed.

"My husband and I got tired of looking at weeds," said McClure, 56, as she unlocked the gate to Bridgeview Garden, where bumblebees were buzzing and fava beans were poking through the fence.

Now the hillside garden is terraced and an orange-and-yellow mural, studded with white phoenixes, covers the concrete wall below. A crop of vegetables had just been harvested, and nine fruit trees were coming alive.

The food helps feed Bridgeview Drive's elderly residents, said McClure, retail manager of a furniture company. She added that the produce garden first lady Michelle Obama is starting at the White House has been a big hit in the Bayview.

"It's gratifying," McClure said. "And it's a validation of what we've been doing here."
photo of Mary McClure by Eric Luse, SF Chronicle

Leadership SF visits Quesada Garden

Sixty local leaders, who are part of an organization dedicated to "developing community trustees," visiting the Quesada Gardens Initiative this morning. They represent the 2008-2009 class of Leadership San Francisco, an affiliate of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

Pictured, James Ross (red shirt), co-founder and co-organizer of QGI, tells the group a bit about the history of the 1700 block of Quesada Avenue in Bayview, and about the social transformation that has happened there.

This is the second year in a row that Leadership SF participants have visited the Quesada Gardens Initiative's cluster of community-building projects in the heart of the neighborhood. Once again, they heard about, and saw the impact that low-cost strengthening of social cohesion and highly-localized systems can have.

Car fires cause concern in Bayview

A car fire, on a quaint residential Bayview block, near the Latona Garden, roused Latona Avenue neighbors at 1:30am on Monday of last week. Another car fire, at 5:30am that same day, erupted not far away, on the 1900 block of Newcomb Avenue. Two other fires of a similar nature flared in other neighborhoods that same morning, leading investigators to suspect arson.

Latona Avenue resident, Jim Ansbro, took on the task of cleaning up the mess that the fire near his home had left, a characteristic undertaking for this community-involved neighbor. Ansbro had seen the fire when it reached its crest that morning. He reported concern that the car would explode and do more damage than, ultimately, it did.

It was, he said, an "inferno with four foot flames that scorched a tree, melted an innocent neighbor's bumper, and put a hole into the street.

Another Latona resident, Mike Rindner, reported seeing firemen at the scene. He observed that there were no broken windows in the car, and that the origination of the fire seemed to be near the front passenger side, under the front hood.

"My first thought," Rindner said, "is that this incident was some kind of electrical short."

Neighbors remain vigilant.

Sunday Streets in Bayview

photo by Rhonda Winter

Sunday Streets, the Columbian import that closes city streets so residents can get exercise and recreation, visited Bayview again for the program's second season.

Bayview residents who attended the last two Sundays' events were hard to come by. Two such residents reported positive experiences. One resident, who is also a bicycle advocate, said, "Both days were most splendid and festive."

Kristine Enea, a Bayview Hunters Point and India Basin community leader, said that these events are remarkable for the diversity of participants in the neighborhood, regardless of the turnout.

"Sunday Streets in Bayview last fall," Enea said, "turned out a great mix of Bayview locals, friends from other neighborhoods, and visitors from as far away as Florida. The Bayview Opera House was the key attraction with something for everyone - tai chi demonstrations, the Bike Kitchen, non-profit outreach tables and an inflatable jumpy house. This year's event adds a sidetrip to Heron's Head Park and a roller disco at Third & Galvez."

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, working to create inroads into the Bayview Hunters Point Community, were out in full force, and could be credited with much of the turnout. The organization gave Sunday Streets its Golden Wheel award, and created a video that offers an upbeat review of the event.

Community organizers in the neighborhood forced smiles onto their faces as they were "plugged in" to help market the City's program rather than being involved in shaping the Bayview component of Sunday Streets. The routes and other aspects of the program once again were set by an intragovernmental body, leaving the search for community investment to marketing and outreach strategies.

Government organizers, hamstrung by dwindling resources, seem to believe that the program will be buoyed on the strength of the program concept itself. They may be right. San Franciscans, historically, have gravitated toward outdoor recreation. And the trend toward all things "sustainable and green" could pedal, roll, walk and run Sunday Streets to greater success.

Healthier food in Bayview

Photo and text by Rhonda Winter, Bayview Resident

While I was buying an avocado this afternoon I asked Upper Crust Deli co-owner Mike Gheith about the store’s decision to start carrying more healthy food, and he explained:

“We decided to start selling produce because there just are not many places in the neighborhood to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. We always try to buy our produce locally, and go to the farmer’s markets whenever possible.”

Small corner stores are increasingly becoming an effective tool to help fight urban food deserts, particularly in largely minority and low-income neighborhoods like Bayview. Often in such marginalized neighborhoods we have a glut of unhealthy corporate fast food restaurants and little access to fresh seasonal produce; so the decision of local and independently owned Upper Crust to start offering fresh fruits and vegetables in the neighborhood is a most welcome one.

Please show your support for Upper Crust’s decision to make more healthy food options available to Bayview residents and patronize their store. They make excellent sandwiches too.

Upper Crust Deli is located at 5100 Third Street, on the corner of Revere. They are open seven days a week, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday thru Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday; their phone number is: 415-822-3100.

Rhonda Winter is an active Bayview resident who helps lead the Latona Community Garden, and works to connect the SF Bicycle Coalition to the neighborhood.

Bayview cable show may end

Last night's "Life on the Block with James Ross," a public access cable show that Quesada Gardens Initiative co-organizer, James, hosts every other Friday, may be the last.

ACCESSF, San Francisco's public access cable station, is threatened with closure as a contract with Comcast that supports the public benefit programming comes to an end.

This Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will consider Ross Mirkarimi's State Video Franchise Holder Ordinance which is designed to set the level of public, educational and governmental cable access capital and, perhaps, operational funding after January, 2010. According to Zane Blaney, ACCESSF Executive Director, the ordinance does not have enough votes to pass, at least not without serious compromise.

The issue affects communities like Bayview Hunters Point more than those with resources to pay for media attention, and could curtail efforts to correct negative perceptions about life here.

One day last week, Comcast Cable had six lobbyists working Supervisors' offices in, what Blaney calls, "the largest cable operator lobbying effort ever seen at City Hall." Comcast said it will pass along the price of supporting public access cable to its subscribers, a threat that gained traction given the tough economic times.

Comcast, while absorbing the cost of its contractual obligation to ACCESSF, receives about $2 million from San Francisco subscribers each year, and reported $8.8 billion in earnings, and a revenue increase of 5%, during the first quarter of this year.

The ordinance is the first item on the regular agenda of the Board of Supervisors' Tuesday meeting, and should come up shortly after the meeting starts at 2pm in the Legislative Chamber, 2nd Floor, City Hall.