Trying to Survive Without a Phone

My friend, former teacher Ken Lawrence, cannot afford an iPhone, Blackberry or any other mobile device. He’s disabled, survives on a frugal budget, and his lifeline to doctors and 911 has been out of order for more than three weeks. When a life-threatening asthma attack occurred in the middle of the night, he reached for his land phone -- no dial tone.

Ken’s neighbors alerted me the next day. I called AT&T hoping to speak to a real live person. No such luck, there’s only a recording with a long menu for services. “Our first available appointment for service is February 1.” I hollered back at the recorded voice, “that’s over a week, he’s disabled in a wheelchair.”

“Thank you for calling AT&T,” was the final message.

The repairman finally arrived Feb. 1. He moved cables, climbed the telephone pole and tested the phone with various devices. “The phone’s working,” he reported and left.

An hour later it was out of order and still doesn’t work.

Superbowl Surprise!

Eating healthy is a challenge this weekend for Superbowl fans. If you’re the party host Sunday, thrill your guests with Kimchi Chicken Stew, Quinoa with Grapes, Sesame Chicken Salad and Broccoli Puree. Food guru Michael Pollan would approve, you’d be following his “Food Rules.”

I know, you’re thinking, “Yuck!” But you’ll love these dishes created by L.A. Youth’s teen writers as part of our healthy eating package for the March issue. Those nasty nachos loaded with orange, slimy cheese will sit on your hips for days. And the stark, white sour cream dip is definitely a no-no with those “double-dipper” carrot sticks. Remember, the guy on the couch will dip in, take a bite, return for another dip. Did he sanitize his hands?

About those ribs and slaw…..you’ll consume 7,000 calories with sweet b-b-que sauce and tons of mayonnaise burying the cabbage. How about ice tea instead of 4-5 beers?

Let me know if you’re inspired to follow my advice. And, happy game day.

Youth Media Gets Deserved Attention

Dear Friends,

I haven’t forgotten you, been soooo busy with new projects for L.A. Youth; watching endless hours of TV coverage of Haiti earthquake and aftermath; business trip to New York; and, raking leaves and other debris in my backyard after the deluge of rain 10 days ago.

Good news……L.A. Youth was awarded a $100,000 matching grant from the Challenge Fund for Journalism VI, a collaborative of The Ford Foundation, McCormick Foundation and Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation. Gotta hustle to identify new donors and diversify our funding base.

Speaking of partnerships, the Youth Media L.A. Collaborative met Jan. 29 in our office to officially launch a partnership among local youth media organizations. Those of us working with young people in print, video, radio and the Web will share resources and collaborate on community reporting projects. Thanks to The McCormick Foundation for bringing us together and supporting the pilot project with a $50,000 grant.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates in a few days.

Surviving and Thriving in Hard Times

As a couple of friends and I cruised down an alley to find a spot to kick back and smoke a joint, we saw a head with long blond hair pop up from a dumpster. In front of the dumpster was an old 10-speed that had been put together piece by piece. Every piece on the bike was a different color. Someone said, “Oh! It’s only one of those dumpster divers.” Then I realized that it was my mother. I told my friends, “Hey! That’s my mom. Turn around!”

My friends knew my mom was homeless, so they said, “Cool. Maybe she’ll smoke a joint with us!” So we turned around. Now, it had been about two and a half months since I last saw or heard from her. I went through the whole, “Hey! Long time, no see” bit. After the small talk, I realized there was not much else to say. We sparked up a joint and offered it to her. She said, “Geez! That’s a big joint!” Then she told me how she didn’t feel like it because she was too amped.

My mom is a speed addict. Whenever she has money it almost always goes for drugs. Once in a while, she gets a motel room but that never lasts long because the drugs run out and so does the money. My mother is also a dumpster diver. She digs in dumpsters for food, clothes, things to recycle and anything else she can find. On Christmas I got a bag filled with a fluorescent pink Frisbee, silver rings, a plastic watch and other fun things. All of this stuff came from dumpsters. But I don’t care because I love her and it’s the thought that counts. To prove it, I wear all the rings and sometimes even the watch.

The writer was 16-year-old Julie Smit, whose moving story of her mother’s 15-year addiction to drugs and homelessness appeared in L.A. Youth in 1994.

This wasn’t the kind of story found in a traditional high school newspaper.

High school journalism has been losing ground since the 1970s due to education budget cuts. The student press was dealt another blow in 1988 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that administrators had the right to censor articles intended for publication in school newspapers.

On January 11, 1988 I decided to start a teen newspaper. With no money, no office space or even a computer, I gathered a dozen high school youngsters and told them we are going to put out a newspaper they could call their own. I appointed myself publisher, editor, head fundraiser and chief delivery person.

In our first year, we published two issues, circulation 2,500. Twenty-two years later we are publishing six issues annually and circulating 70,000 copies. We distribute the paper, free, to 1,300 teachers in middle and senior high schools throughout greater Los Angeles.

L.A. Youth’s mission is to fill at least some of the gap created by the demise of the student press. We offer teens a haven, a place where they’re encouraged to express their opinions. But I also want the paper to continually remind policy makers of the plight of kids who are marginalized in foster care and elsewhere. And I want to make mainstream media aware of kids who live with trauma and violence on a daily basis.

In their private lives teens write lively, expressive thoughts every day. They scribble in diaries or share their innermost secrets with friends and strangers by posting them on blogs, MySpace and Facebook. Some of the pieces we publish, like Jessica Bernstein’s account of her nose job, require an amazing degree of self-confidence. Jessica interviewed her plastic surgeon and posed for before-and-after photographs. Sherry Lee, in a piece entitled “My So-Called Boobs,” wrote good-naturedly about the advantages of small breasts: she could hug people close to her, run around without a bra and sleep face down! They’re definitely L.A. Youth originals.

Marvin Novelo decided that he wanted to write about being gay:

When seventh grade began and I was 12 years old, I was very much aware that I was gay. It was the little things, such as how I felt when I saw guys in the locker room. I resented being gay and I wanted to think it was a phase I would grow out of. In church, my pastor would explain how homosexuality is an “abomination of nature, the sin that is the worst next to murder.”

At Byrd Middle School the motto should have been, “No fags allowed.” People were yelling, “Look! That guy’s a queer!”

Toward the end of ninth grade, I was jumped on the way home by a group of boys who kicked me in the stomach and head. No one helped me.

The role of adult editors is to coach and nurture the young talents at L.A. Youth, to recognize the value of their ideas and guide each through weeks or months of writing and re-writing until a compelling story emerges. It can be a slow, arduous journey, the teen writer sitting side-by-side with an editor, carefully scrolling through paragraphs on a computer screen and then trying to make them better. A few stories have taken up to a year before they’re ready for publication. But I tell myself it is worth the wait; after all, it takes courage to write something that you know thousands of readers will be judging.

L.A. Youth tilts strongly toward personal journalism. But we don’t avoid controversy and we are proud of the investigative articles that our young writers have produced over the years.

Some of our investigations result from a concern that when awful things happen to teens, almost no one seems to pay attention. Teen staffers Jennifer Clark and Katrina Gibson began one such project by prowling through records at the Los Angeles County Coroner's office. Their assignment was to reconstruct the lives of young people killed by violence during a one-month period in the county.

We knew that most would be homicide victims, their lives ended early by guns and knives in gang initiations, scuffles with police, drive-by shootings and so on. L.A. Youth would try to put faces on some of the victims, whose deaths generally went unnoticed by the outside community.

Morgue records yielded home addresses and next of kin information for the victims. Jennifer and Katrina sent off letters to parents or other survivors, asking for photos of the teens and anecdotes about their lives. We would publish their obituaries.

As our readership expanded and our journalism got better, we made a concerted effort to reach the neediest teens. We had to build relationships with three overlooked groups:

--Young people living on the streets. They lived with trauma and violence on a daily basis, often selling themselves into prostitution and becoming addicted to drugs. They were so marginalized that no one gave them a second thought.

--The hundreds of foster care children moving in and out of group homes or other shelters. Most were refugees from abusive or broken families. Some were so emotionally scarred that they retreated into silence.

--Teens afflicted with various mental disorders. The lucky ones had parents able to afford therapy, medications and special schooling. Others, including those who found themselves on the streets or funneled into foster care, might or might not receive appropriate treatment.

We set out to find writers in the three groups whose first-person stories would convey the reality of their lives. Our intent was to influence policy makers with the power to improve services for these teens, and to remind the mainstream media that they existed.

Our teen writers walk in the door questioning adult assumptions and stay long enough to challenge our values with their honest and sometimes brutal writing. Here is what resulted when they decided to create “The Teen Commandments: 10 Things We Hate About Mom and Dad (and how to change them)”:

--Have meals with us at least once a week. Talk instead of watching TV or reading during the meal.
--Don’t compare us with other people. Don’t say, “Why can’t you get A’s like your sister?”
--Don’t pretend to be a teenager. It’s weird when parents use teen slang or try to dress like us. You don’t have to act like us to communicate with us.
--Tell us the reasons for the rules you set.
--Don’t tell us how our lives will turn out. We have to figure some things out by ourselves.
--Respect us as we are. ‘Don’t insult our likes and dislikes. Show some interest in the things we like.
--Listen to us instead of lecturing.
--Suggest activities we can do together, but don’t force anyone.
--Encourage us in our activities, but don’t put too much pressure on us if we don’t win.
--Look at us and tell us that you love us.

These kids don’t pull punches no matter what the Supreme Court decided.

End

Multi-cultural food feast

We’re eating potato latkes, brisket, turkey and gumbo with a side of mac ‘n cheese Xmas day at my daughter-in-law’s parents’ house. It’s our multi-racial family celebration –Jewish, black, Asian relatives gather ‘round the table for blessings and songs, spinning dreidels. With full bellies we stagger into the living room for board games and dancing to rappers, 60s rockers and a bit of jazz.

We’re not a Norman Rockwell portrait of post-war Los Angeles. We’re at the intersection of the new American family blended with my family from Eastern Europe, the Creole, Louisiana-born great grandmother to my grandsons, the auntie from Korea and whatever else fits in the “melting pot” of a large extended family.

Food is a friendly way of sharing cultures. I’ve hosted Passover meals and my grandson’s baptism luncheon. Religious beliefs are just as important as race and ethnicity when it comes to establishing one’s identity. My black daughter-in-law and I go all over the map when we chat about our different holidays and raising children in a country where there’s still a racial divide. When she and my son were expecting their first child I wanted to bond with her so she’d know I’d be a perfect grandmother. I invited her to brunch on a Sunday afternoon. I took her to Leimert Park, an old black neighborhood in South Los Angeles with African shops, men playing drums on the sidewalk and soul food in the local restaurant. We strolled for about 20 minutes then she turned to me and said, “I never come to this neighborhood. Can we go to Canter’s, that Jewish restaurant on Fairfax and eat bagels?”

Like I said, my understanding about race and ethnicity are best served at the dinner table.

Re-connecting with old friends

I get nostalgic this time of year for the teens I grew close to when they wrote for L.A. Youth. In L.A. Youth’s 22 years of publishing I’ve known hundreds (make that thousands) of teens – writers, illustrators, photographers – who joined the staff to share their personal story, or fueled by tenets of social justice, or just looking for a friendly place to hang out. These days I hear from many more young people than I used to (we’re on Facebook), “Are you still there?”

“Yes, we’re here.” I assure them. “We’re thriving and surviving. How old are you?”

“I’m 30 and wrote for the paper in the mid 90s.”

“Eekk! That means I’m getting older, too.”

When I hear the time frame it jogs my memory. I flashback to the face though not always the stories he or she wrote. “So what have you been doing since we last spoke?”

The answers range from, “I’m in grad school,” to “working at a boring job to pay off student loans.” A few are roaming the world with a backpack and a Europass.

“How many are working as journalists?” I’m often asked.

“One or two is my standard answer.” Few teens look to a future career in a newsroom. More often they lean toward education or social service. Legal careers mean representing immigrant rights, not partnerships at prestigious law firms.

There’s a sadness that comes over me when I hear from a few who are struggling with hardships – moving from shelter to shelter with an infant in tow; a Starbuck’s barrista earning low wages and sleeping on a friend’s couch; an emancipated foster youth kicked out of transitional living quarters for a series of transgressions. They share other tales of dysfunctional adulthood and all I can do is listen.

Our annual holiday party is Dec. 19. I hug the alums that drop in and spend a few minutes admiring their mature faces and laughing about the good times when they were teenagers spending hours in my office. My memory rush is full in the holiday season.

Don't Feed the Homeless!

“Meet me at Third and Fairfax,” is the landmark sign in front of the Farmer’s Market. It’s a must-see on tourist maps, a great place for sampling ethnic food with a comfortable ambience to spend an afternoon. My office is three blocks east so I frequently meet colleagues for leisurely lunch and good conversation.

Charlotte Gusay and I sat under the elm tree between The Gumbo Pot and the Pizzeria food stalls. My seafood gumbo was spicy and welcome on the cool fall day. The garden salad was sprinkled with roasted pecans, accompanied with a corn muffin. Quite a hardy lunch. Charlotte nibbled on her toasted chicken salad.

We pushed aside our lunch trays and continued the conversation. A young man, mid-30s, clean shaven, casually dressed with a backpack slung over his shoulder approached us and inquired if he could have the remains of our lunch. “Absolutely, I responded.”

He picked up our trays and walked to a nearby table. “You can’t eat that food,” the security guard sternly told the man.

“I gave it to him,” retorted Charlotte, “we’re finished and he’s hungry.”

“It’s against the Farmer’s Market rules, this is private property. He’s “panhandling” and we don’t allow that.

“People are hungry,” I shouted at the guard as I jumped up from my seat. “He can eat at our table.”

“No,” as he called for another guard.

“Give me back my food and I’ll wrap it up for him,” I challenged.

Again, “No, it’s against the rules.”

By this time we were attracting attention from other customers. “Please give him my bottle of water,” said the elderly lady at the next table.

The young man was insulted, clearly he was not used to a public display of his situation. He attempted to defend his rights and ward off the humiliation. To no avail. The guards escorted him out of the Farmer’s Market. A gentleman at the next table followed them to the street hoping to provide assistance to the homeless fellow. He, too, was not allowed to buy lunch at the Farmer’s Market for the young stranger. He gave him five dollars to buy lunch somewhere else.

We were helpless as we watched the waitress remove food trays from the tables, all laden with enough leftovers to feed more than a dozen hungry people. I thought this is the season of giving.