Peacemaker Mother

  

Peacemaker Mother

Independent like a bird who learned how to fly

Talkative, outgoing, and confident is how she’s described

Within forty-two years of her life she overcame many obstacles

Sitting down

I look at her and see nothing but a smile

Courageous like a tiger is what she’s become

Sweet like a candy bar

Reminds me to disregard the ones who judge
but challenge them

To show them who I really am

So generous she’d give the little that she has to help the ones in need

Nothing compared to a world full of diamonds

‘Cause she’s determined in every challenge

To me she’s irreplaceable and priceless

Always strikes for the best and nothing less

Her advice to me is one of a kind

Every time I want to give up, it pops up on my mind

All the things I do are dedicated to her

Yet I know that for me she does way more

Her motto is never let your weaknesses take over you

‘Cause you’re strong enough to face them

She’s my one and only loveable mom!

By: Karen Carrillo, 11th grade, Washington Prep.

Fun in the Sun

By Olivia Christon,Literary Analysis, Grade 12 Washington Prep HS

An important place to me is the beach where I go every year in July. I associate the beach with my family and friends. The significant events that happen at the beach are on July 4 where everyone comes out to eat, talk, relax in the sun, swim at the beach and build sand castles. The place is located at the lagoon at Playa Del Rey across the street from the beach. The smells at the beach are barbeque that is cooking on the grill, fish from the ocean, and rice and beans with chicken. The sound at the beach is the water crashing on the rocks, the children laughing in the background, and the seagulls cawing while they fly overhead looking for food. The color at the beach is the blue ocean, light brown sand, the green seaweed in the ocean smells fishy and different color clothes that people are wearing.  The beach relates to my sense of identity because it reminds me of my bedroom a place where I can relax and listen to my music, school where I talk with my friends, and a movie theatre.  This is a place where you can see people being happy and having fun. My friend and I are like family.  We go across the street to the beach with her little sister to play in the water and make sand castles.

Peace of Mind

Peace of Mind- “I AM”

By Dazia Ratliff, 11th grade Washington Prep HS

When asked to discuss a place that relates to my identity, at first I felt a little perplexed. My whole life I never connected places to identity; however, for this assignment, I was asked to identify that unique place.

After searching for ideas of locations, I finally came up with the perfect spot: Venice Beach!

Venice Beach-the place that was once called “Muscle Beach” is where I am free.

It’s a place where I go by myself and relax, listen to music, and let all my emotions out while gazing at the waves.

Here, I can chill with my friends, family, boyfriend, brothers, and sisters. The events that can happen at Venice Beach are picnics, family reunions, parties and more.

The sounds I love to listen to are the sounds of the waves crashing, the laughter of my friends and family, and when we start to sing a song. The smell that I love is Bar-B-Que’ and the smell of chocolates melting on the graham crackers. The colors that I love to associate with are the blue water, the light brown sand, the light blue sky, the multi-color shacks, and the multi-color blankets, and more. The last time that I went to Venice Beach was two weeks ago with my best friend and I had to let go of all my emotions.

I identify with this beach because it allows me to forget about the pain and suffering that is inescapable at my home and school. There is no yelling there, no fighting, and no belittling there…it’s just one happy island….a place to get peace of mind.

Do the traditions of our parents affect us nowadays?

 

By, Karen Carrillo, 11th grade- Washington Prep. High School

Many people nowadays are still facing most of the traditions that their parents taught them when they were young. Some of these traditions include: men controlling women, children obeying their parents-no questions asked, and women remaining docile and subservient. Even though we have progressed a long way as a country, we still have a lot more to do.

To begin with, in Hispanic culture men have control over the women regardless of whether they want to or not. According to the Yasmin Davidds Garridos' article, "Facing the Truth about Our Traditions," “men want to be able to control the income, independence, and outspokenness of their women.” I conclude that there isn’t any justification for men to have control over what a woman should or should not be able to do. In the movie, Real Women have Curves, Ana, the protagonist’s, dad has complete control over her mother. He tells Carmen when she can or cannot talk. Just because you are married to a person doesn’t give them the authority to control women.

Just as the men have control over the women, they both also expect their kids to follow their rules. In the article, Norberto’s mother tells him that what he is doing is wrong... that he’s the man of the family and it should stay that way. Just because "he’s the man of the family" doesn’t mean that he should follow their traditions. In the movie, even though Ana wants to go to college, Carmen, her mother wants her to work in the factory. In my opinion, Ana's mother should let her go to college and have a brighter future than the one she lived.

Several factors contribute to children not talking back to their parents. In the movie, when Ana contradicts her mother about not being pregnant, Carmen slapped her. Why does the mom get so angry when Ana tells her that she's hallucinating about being pregnant? She gets angry because the children that she has are grown up which probably makes her feel lonely. She might also have the desire of having another child to keep herself busy and distracted from realizing that she’s aging.

In the article “Facing the Truth about Our Traditions,” Yasmin talks back to Norberto’s mother about him taking her last name. The dad tells her to not disrespect their family like that. Only because the fiancé was telling the lady that she wanted to keep her maiden name, they took that as disrespecting their family, or talking back.

I partially don’t relate to Ana because my mom is open minded about things. For example, I can sit down with her and talk about something I see wrong in my house and figure out a way in which we can fix it. In contrast, Ana’s mom is demanding about things that she wants done and constantly argues with Ana.

In other words, Carmen tells Ana not to go to college but instead worry about becoming La Buena Mujer.  My mom is the opposite of Carmen, she tells me to go to college and get a better life than the one she had. Lastly, my mom thinks like Yasmin: of keeping my maiden name if I get married one day. In my perspective women should not tolerate the “machismo” that men have towards women.

Silence Still Equals Death: Sexual Violence and Young Women of Color

By Sikivu Hutchinson

April is sexual assault awareness month.  It also marks the global observance of Denim Day for sexual assault survivors.  Black and mixed race women have some of the highest sexual assault rates in the nation. Yet, recently, when young women of color in my class spoke on the disproportionate number of women of color victimized by sexual violence, they initially trotted out stereotypes like “mixed race women are more likely to be raped because they are the ‘prettiest’ and “black women get assaulted more because they have ‘big butts.’ This intersection of internalized racism and sexism is most potent when youth grapple with how representations of young women of color in the media normalize sexual violence.

The normalization of sexual violence breeds silence in the classroom.  In the clockwatching ten minutes-before-the-bell-rings clamor of my peer health workshop of 11^th and 12^th graders there is silence, deafening and thick as quicksand. I have asked them a question about the widespread use of the words “bitch” and “ho” to describe young women of color on campus.  Several boys are holding forth in response. They are the same four opinionated boys who have been the most vocal throughout these sessions, always ready with a quip, a deflection or, sometimes, serious commentary that reveals deep wisdom. They are bursting with perspective on this topic, but the girls in the room are silent. Some twist in their seats, some study the tops of their desks in calculated boredom, transporting themselves outside of the room, slain by the language of dehumanization. Finally a few girls chime in and say they use the terms casually with friends, as in “my bitch or my ho,” supposedly neutralizing their negative connotations akin to the way they use the word “nigga.” Some claim the words are justifiably used to describe “bad girls” who are promiscuous and unruly, not realizing that black women have always been deemed “bad” in the eyes of the dominant culture, as less than feminine, as bodies for violent pornographic exploitation. When I wondered aloud whether white women call themselves bitch and ho as terms of endearment I got uncertain responses. My guess is that they don’t, not because white women are necessarily more enlightened and self-aware than women of color on gender, but because white femininity is the beauty ideal and hence the human ideal. Despite the misogyny that pervades American culture there is inherent value placed on the lives of white women. Every aspect of the image industry affirms their existence, and the spectrum of culturally recognized white femininity extends from proper and pure to “sexually liberated.”

This is exemplified by the tabloid media’s obsession with missing white women and white girls. Plastered on websites like AOL, relentlessly rammed down our collective throats in titillating morsels with whiffs of sexuality and scandal, poster child Caylee Anderson and company are a metaphor for Middle America’s Little Red Riding Hood fetishization of white femininity. Tabloid narratives of imperiled white females highlight the suburban virtues of white Middle America and not so subtlely evoke the social pathologies of the so-called inner city. Indeed, the spectacles of grief, mourning, and community outrage trotted out on CNN and FOX not only program viewers to identify with the injustice that has been done to the victim and her family, but to her community. In the world of 24-7 media these victims become our girls, our daughters, while the “bitches” and “hos” of the inner city symbolize the disorder and ungovernableness of an urban America whose values must be kept at bay.

In many regards this is part of the same “post-feminist” trend that tells women to sit down and shut up, to internalize the values of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and stay in their place. A generation of Bush militarism and corporate reign over media has turned sexualized violence against women into a billion dollar industry, as illustrated by global romance with gangsta rap, violent video games and Internet pornography. Yet the desensitization of young black women to these trends is perhaps the most painful. When I talk to my students about the staggering rates of sexual assault and intimate partner abuse in black communities they are quick to judge themselves and their peers for inciting male violence. Unable to see themselves and their lives as valuable they slam other girls for being “hoochies” and sloganeer violent misogynist lyrics without a second thought. Awareness about the relationship between pervasive violence against black women in the media and male behavior is lacking.  This year Women’s Leadership Project students will conduct training in classroom on gender equity and sexual violence; challenging their peers to critically examine the media, school, and community images that promote sexualized violence against women of color. But unless we change the self-hating mindset of many young black women, silence—as the gay HIV activist saying goes—does equal death, and we are poised to lose another generation to a media-colonized sense of self-worth.

College, Media Lies, and Gender Politics

Commentary By Sikivu Hutchinson

Recently former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called President Obama a snob for having the audacity to suggest that going to college should be a priority.  As a privileged white male college graduate on big government’s payroll Santorum’s message to youth of color is: why go to college when there are unskilled sub living wage jobs selling oranges, cleaning houses, washing cars and shoveling French fry grease awaiting you in the ghetto?  Santorum’s anti-college diatribe comes in an era when the need for a college degree has increasingly been questioned by both right wing policy makers and mainstream media.  Yet, college-going continues to be one of the bedrock civil rights issues for youth of color in the U.S.  Over the past several years the wealth gap between black and Latino households and white households has widened.  Over the course of their lifetimes college graduates earn nearly one to several million more than do high school graduates.  However, in California, Latino youth have the lowest college going rates among youth of all ethnicities despite the fact that they comprise over 50% of students in California schools.  While college-going for African American students has increased college completion for youth of color overall remains abysmally low at major colleges and universities.  Historically, colleges and universities that have few African American students and few culturally responsive on-campus resources have lower black graduation rates.  According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, “Curriculum differences also play an important role in graduation rates. Carnegie Mellon University and Cal Tech are heavily oriented toward the sciences, fields in which blacks have always had a small presence. It continues to be true that at many high-powered schools black students in the sciences often have been made to feel uncomfortable by white faculty and administrators who persist in beliefs that blacks do not have the intellectual capacity to succeed in these disciplines.”

For youth of color who are the first in their families to go to college these challenges are compounded by the disproportionate number of black and Latino students who are in foster care, undocumented, homeless, and/or formerly incarcerated.  Only 44% of LAUSD graduates go on to four year colleges.  And the percentage of South Los Angeles high school graduates who do so is significantly lower.  Due to budget cuts, inept professional development and institutional racism, culturally responsive college counselors, A-G college preparation courses, and highly qualified teachers are in short supply in high poverty schools.  During a recent college forum at Gardena High School four activists from the Women’s Leadership Project and FUEL, CSU Long Beach’s undocumented youth advocacy group, discussed the importance of knowing how to prepare for and navigate college.  All of the young women on the panel were the first in their families to go to college.  The panelists discussed study groups, mentors, taking the time to meet with professors during office hours and tuning out the distraction of social media and peer pressure.  Although the college-going rates of women of color outpace their male counterparts, college-educated black and Latina women continue to face steep obstacles in the job market vis-à-vis sexual harassment, employment discrimination (particularly within the private sphere), and pernicious wage gaps. Indeed, although black men have higher overall unemployment rates than black women, rates for black men improved at the end of 2011 and worsened for black women due to deep cuts in public sector jobs.  The panelists addressed confronting sexist low expectations in school-community climates that normalize misogyny, teen pregnancy, and the model of black and Latina women as self-sacrificing caregivers.  

WLP Presents: Women of Color College Forum

On March 16th Gardena High School's WLP held their first annual Women of Color College Forum. Current college students discussed their experiences negotiating the college landscape. They addressed the specific challenges young women of color face getting to and staying in college, and provided details on their success experiences as emerging young leaders for social justice. Check out clips from our forum featuring panelist Marlene Montanez, Imari Moses, Mayra Borunda, and Clay Wesley.