By Alba Mora/Special to Oakland North

Would you ever let two strangers crash on your couch? Recently reporter Alba Mora welcomed two couchsurfers into her Berkeley home.

By Lauren Rudser and Brittney Johnson/ Oakland North

Last week, the Obama administration reversed bans, put in pace under President Bush, on Stem Cell research using federal funds. See how this is affecting one local couple.

I was driving down Shattuck Ave this afternoon – the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war – and out of the corner of my eye I noticed quite a commotion out front of the Marine Recruiting Center. I circled around to get a better look, and saw the huge windows at the front of the Center being replaced. There were baseball-sized holes in the windows, and dripping red paint.

Read an article about the vandalism from the Oakland Tribune.

About a month ago, the North Oakland branch of the San Leandro-based chain Pet Food Express was hit by an armed robber. Two weeks later, it happened again, this time at the Pet Food Express Rockridge store, located in the Safeway shopping center at 51st and Broadway. According to employees, it was the same guy.

It was then that the vice president of Pet Food Express, Mark Witirol, started hearing of other armed robberies at the Rockridge shopping center. Frustrated by what he thought was a predictable pattern of crime, he wrote a letter to Mayor Ron Dellums, posting a copy on a Montclair community Yahoo group.

“For the last few months, just about every Friday night, between 5-9 p.m., one of the stores in the Safeway Center at 51st and Broadway has been robbed at gunpoint by the same person,” Witriol wrote.  The letter continued: “Since the robber’s moves can be predicted, catching him should be as easy as fishing in a barrel.”

That message was then forwarded to the Rockridge Neighborhood Watch Network, magnifying its reach, as Witriol intended.

“I have raised the alarms all over the place,” he later said in a telephone interview.

The heightened attention got results. Witriol, as well as employees at various stores in the center, said they have noticed an increased police presence at the shopping center. And Witriol said that his letter prompted an outpouring of support from other Oakland residents, who wanted to know how they could help keep watch over his store and other local businesses. Perhaps most significantly, Oakland police arrested a suspect on the charges of one North Oakland robbery and are currently investigating connections into several more.

But Witriol’s original letter didn’t get it quite right. According to Oakland CrimeView, an online website affiliated with OPD that tracks recent crime trends, there have been six robberies at the Rockridge shopping center since December — a lot, but not nearly as regular a pattern as Witriol’s letter suggested. And the Oakland police said emphatically that the robberies were the work of a several robbers, not one.

Witriol’s letter may not be the most accurate portrayal of crime in North Oakland. But it spoke worlds about the city’s perception of crime, of its mood and frustrations, suspicions and cynicism. For a community beleaguered by crime, Witriol’s letter struck a chord.

“The people of Oakland are very, very upset, and they want to do something about it,” Witriol said.

The anxiety extends to those working at the shopping center, particularly at stores that have been robbed. At Jamba Juice, the site of an armed robbery this winter, most of the employees who were working at the time have since transferred to other locations. Even employees of neighboring businesses which have not been directly affected say they are nervous.

“My co-workers are very scared,” said Jocelyn Sprinkle, a Starbucks employee. Even though her store has not been robbed, she said that there was new focus on safety procedures to guard against robberies, such as bringing in outside furniture during daylight hours.

At the Dress Barn, there is now a full-time security guard sitting at the store’s entrance. An employee at GameStop, who asked not to be named because corporate headquarters has asked its employees not to speak with the media, said he was working one evening in February when a robber, armed with an automatic pistol, came into the store, demanding money from both the cash register and the store’s customers. The employee said that now he has started violating company policy of keeping doors unlocked during business hours, choosing instead to lock the doors once the sun goes down and let customers in himself.

“If it looks like one of the people that robbed me, they’re not getting in,” he said. “If they have a covering over their face, I’m not going near the door.”

But while merchants and their employees may be on the watch for a common thread, the OPD contests Witriol’s assertion that one suspect is to blame for all of the incidents.

“There is no pattern [of crime] at 51st and Broadway,” said Officer John Cunnie, a public safety officer for the nearby 12X police beat. “There is a pattern of stores getting hit, but there is no pattern in regard to one suspect.”

What is it about that particular location? Cunnie said he believes that the shopping center presents multiple opportunities for a would-be robber because there are so many stores clustered in one area.

The GameStop employee has a different theory.

“This is actually a good part of Oakland,” he said. “They [the robbers] know the security will be lax.”

The police arrested Quentin Carter earlier this month and charged him with armed robbery further down on Broadway and a parole violation. OPD Public Information Officer Jeffrey Thomason would not say whether Carter, 27, is also suspected of armed robberies at the Safeway shopping center, but he did say that police investigators are looking into possible ties to other robberies.

Witriol and other workers at the shopping center said that they believe Carter is responsible for at least some of the robbery attempts. Witriol said he believes that his employees will likely participate in a line-up to see if they can identify the suspect as the man who robbed their store.

News of the arrest has cheered many who work at the shopping center. But not all of them.

“That’s not the only guy,” the GameStop employee said.  “It’s not the guy that robbed me back in February. It was the one guy that robbed us in November.”

For now, Mark Witriol is pleased with the new attention being focused on the armed robberies. When asked about the recent arrest, Witriol praised the Oakland police efforts.

“We were all amazingly impressed,” Witriol said, further adding that cooperation from Oakland residents and other business owners was crucial. “It’s not about whose job it is. When something is at this level, it’s everyone’s job.”

But although they say they hope that this arrest will result in charges for the robberies, some of the center employees remained pessimistic.

“I think it’s going to continue,” the GameStop employee said. “Not that these guys have jobs anyway, but people use the recession as an excuse to commit a crime. We’re going to continue to get robbed.”

Last month, a youth curfew ordinance was voted down by the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. And while the ordinance failed to become law, it did succeed in rousing the voice of Oakland’s youth.

The tropical crops of Maria Inés Catalán’s youth don’t grow in Hollister. Instead of winding through the papaya and mango trees of her native Guerrero, Mexico, here, wearing black loafers caked in mud from the past week’s rain, she tramples weeds, carefully stepping over the kale, broccoli and artichoke plants that thrive in the Northern California winter.

Catalán stops mid-field, spotting something hidden in one of the plants.

“Mira!” she says excitedly. “Look!” When she smiles her round sun-chapped cheeks seem to grow, and her already slanted eyes become thin lines on her face. Her brown hair is streaked with a mix of grey and orange-yellow strands.

Brushing the plant leaves aside, she cups an artichoke gently in her hand and holds it proudly for all to see. It is huge, almost the size of her palm, and the green is stained with a light, washed-out purple.

“Qué chulada,” she says, almost to herself. What a beauty.

Catalán Family Farms, which María Inés Catalán owns, lies in a flat stretch of land surrounded by emerald green hills between the Silicon and Central Valleys. Once a farm worker, Catalán became one of the first Latina immigrant organic farmers in the country when she started fifteen years ago.

Today she sells her produce at farmers’ markets throughout the Bay Area, including three in Berkeley and one in the Temascal neighborhood in North Oakland. While the term “organic” often carries with it a highbrow, not to say high price, connotation, Catalán also sells at wholesale price to Farm Fresh Choice, a Berkeley-based food justice project that works to make organic produce accessible to low-income communities of color. Just as her desire to make healthy eating an option for the surrounding Latino community comes from her own experience as an immigrant, so her decision to go organic had more to do with her personal history with the land, than with pure business sense.

***

Standing in her Berkeley Farmer’s Market stall, wearing a black apron decorated with small embroidered vegetables, Catalán rapidly weighs heads of lettuce and bunches of celery, tells the customer the price in a rough but matter-of-fact English, and gives them their change with a gentle “Thank You.”

And she really is grateful. People are buying less than they used to before the economy went sour. “They used to buy two bunches of chard,” she says, “and now they buy only one, because they’re afraid of being left with no money.”

Small mounds of vegetables are spread out in front of her, and behind her hang two papers, both declaring her produce to be certified Organic. She points to them with a shake of the head, recalling how difficult it was to get the certification when she first started. There were so many forms, most in English, and it was dizzying to maneuver through the various agencies and departments in charge of the process.

But what angers her the most, as she tells it, is that once she did get certified and started selling at the markets, other vendors gave her a hard time. These fellow farmers, always white Americans, would come up to her stand and inspect her produce. “They would ask me if I grew it,” she says, “or if it was really organic, like they didn’t believe me.”

A funny question, since Catalán’s background is firmly rooted in the concept of organic farming. “It’s called organic certification here in the US,” she says,  “but for us in Mexico, it’s traditional agriculture. My grandparents grew organic. Simply because of our culture we are organic farmers.” The only difference, she says, is that in the US, “there’s regulations and politics to certify a ranch, to work in what you want to do, like to do, and are used to doing.”

But when Catalán migrated to California, this traditional agriculture was lost to her, and for years she labored in the pesticide-laden broccoli and strawberries fields of Monterrey County. She remembers it as painstaking, dehumanizing work. “They use you like a machine,” she says. “They tell you to fill…one box a minute, or 60 boxes of broccoli per hour. And by paying you a wage, they know how much they are going to produce per day or per hour.”

Catalán partly attributes her current farming to a need for healthier work.  “And as I learned that being an organic farmer was about about taking care of our environment, our air, soil, our water,” she says, “I made the decision to farm organic.”

Recalling childhood moments of running with goats and playing in piles of harvested peanuts on her father’s farm, Catalán says that even as a farm worker she dreamt of someday owning a farm where her grandchildren could grow up as she did.

“A lot of people told me I was crazy. They said, ‘We are in the United States, and being able to own your own farm and be your own boss and do what you like to do because of tradition is impossible.’”

Now, Catalan’s six grandchildren are growing up on a farm as she once dreamt, even if, in the end, they decide they don’t want to be farmers, themselves. “As they grow they are learning to love the land and to produce their own food, which is the most important thing,” she says proudly.

***

“It’s a man’s world, agriculture,” says Catalán, nibbling on a bright yellow mustard flower as she trudges through the muddy rows. “Usually the man is in front, and the woman is behind,” she says, “But here, I’m in front and my husband is behind!” she lets out a hearty laugh and looks back. “What do you think, viejo?” she calls out to her husband Javier, whom she always refers to as her “old man.”  He is following close behind with one of Catalán’s grandsons; he smiles and shrugs, unbothered.

Fifteen years ago, Catalán took part in three-year long Small Farmer Education training offered by the Agricultural and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), which trains low-income farmers-many of them Spanish-speaking former farm workers-to grow and market organic produce. She was the only woman in the course, and her fellow farmers refused to take her seriously, especially when it came to learning how to operate heavy farm machinery. They would laugh and tell her that she should be at home taking care of her husband.

“They respect her now,” says her son Juan, “because they know that she is helping everyone.” Juan, whom Catalán brought from Mexico with his three siblings when he was seven years old, used to work el fil-the field-with his mother as a young boy. Now, he helps her run the farm. At one point when she is not around, he proudly shows off a leather-bound “Certificate of Appreciation” awarded to his mother by the Department of Agriculture in recognition of her work for Latino farmers. He points to the gold seal with his finger, as though to highlight the official nature of her work.

Catalán is, after all, founder and current president of Pequeños Agricultores de California (Small Farmers of California), an organization of Latino organic farmers mainly concentrated in San Benito County. She is also the organization’s only female member.

On this day, Catalán is in a hurry to get to an 11 o’clock meeting with another organization to discuss the lack of access to financial resources that Latino organic farmers have. The organization works almost as a cooperative, although she doesn’t use those terms. Farmers grow their crops and mutually help each other commercialize their product. Oftentimes, Catalán has given other farmers small interest-free loans, and helps new farmers maneuver through the complicated organic certification process she herself struggled with years ago.

And farming continues to be a struggle. Although the Catalán’s business is staying afloat, this year-during what has been referred to as California’s most severe drought in history-seems particularly daunting.  The farm might not get any irrigation water from the municipal reservoir, because the state’s priority is supplying the cities first. There is even talk that the county may start to charge for using local well water. Many farmers in the north, says Catalán, have decided not to even plant this season.

“But if nothing gets planted and there is no alternative, there won´t be any food,” she says, her voice mixture of anger and despair. “That’s what they don’t see.”

Last week’s rain has helped the crops, but not so much Catalán’s market sales. Fewer people come to farmers’ markets when it rains. And there’s another economic issue: the high cost of labor. Catalán reaches into the middle of the lettuce crop and pulls out a handful of weeds-if this was a “conventional” farm, she says, there wouldn’t be any weeds because of the chemicals used on the plants. But in organic farming, the only way to get rid of the weeds is to pull them out by hand; because of that, she estimates that out of the $30,000 it takes for her to maintain the farm each month, about $20,000 of that goes to the contractor who hires the laborers.

Though happier as a farmer than as a farm worker, Catalán has yet to own the land on which she farms. She leases it, paying $5,100 a month in rent, with the option to buy. Without any outside financing, buying land is a difficult goal to attain, but for Catalán, it’s something she is working towards.

“Imagine if it was like Zapata said,” she says, referring to the Mexican revolutionary who fought for land reform in the early 20th Century, “and the land belonged to those who worked it.”

***

Amidst the early morning garble of chickens and cows and the neighing of horses, Catalán lets out a squeal.

“Está naciendo!” (“It’s being born!”) She gasps and points to a goat standing perfectly still inside a pen, with what looks like a lump of slime drooping from between its legs. “Viejo!”  she calls out to her  husband. “Está naciendo!”

“I always get nervous,” she says, wringing her hands.  “Sometimes the babies get trampled on by the mother and die.” In one quick second the slimy pouch drops onto the hay, red liquid gushing out after it, and the baby goat squirms for a few minutes before attempting to wobble on its still-weak legs.

Catalán sighs in relief. It’s as though she’s never seen a goat being born before, but in the same pen there are eleven other kids, along with eighteen adults.

She hopes to certify them as organically raised, so she can sell the meat to restaurants. She already sells produce to a handful of restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay, in addition to selling through Community Supported Agriculture programs in Monterrey. These new endeavors, she says, are the only way to keep the farm running in hard times.

Later that day, she returns to the barn area to check in on the newborn goat. It’s standing now, stumbling to find its mother´s teat. The anxiety that the kid will get trampled comes back for a minute; Catalán presses her husband to take the two goats out of the pen, so the baby isn’t in danger. He disappears and comes back with an old towel.

“I´ll do it,” says Catalan, grabbing the towel and briskly walking into the pen. She gently scoops the kid up in the blanket and lays it outside. They tie the mother to a post next to it. She calms down again.

Dame un cigarro, she says bluntly, putting out her palm. “Give me a cigarette.” No “please,” no “Thank you.”  Her husband pulls out a pack of Marlboro reds and hands her one along with a lighter.

Catalán props herself onto a plastic barrel, the blue of her fleece sweater almost blending into the pale blue of the sky, the fields rolling back behind her. She hides the hand holding the cigarette behind the barrel so the smoke doesn’t blow in anyone else’s face. Her legs dangle, crossed at the ankles, and in between deep drags of her cigarette she begins to talk dreams: Of starting a commercial kitchen, as she calls it, where members of the Small Farmers of California would be able to jar or pickle their produce in order to preserve and sell it. Of letting the chickens lay eggs wherever they want so there will be 800 chickens and she can start selling organic eggs. Of inseminating a cow with world-renowned Japanese bull semen so she can sell organic beef. Of expanding her crops to include more Mexican produce – nopal cactus and different varieties of chiles that she can dry. Of homemade salsas she can sell at the farmers’ markets.

The problem, she says, pushing her finger into the air and moving her entire body forward to make the point, is that there are no resources to help already established organic farmers expand in this way. Although there are organizations that help them get started, such as the one that helped her fifteen years ago, there is nothing to help them “take it farther.”  This, she explains, is what her meeting will be about later today.

Which reminds her that she has to get moving.

“I think I was a queen in a past life,” she says with a grin in between smokey breaths, “Just that this time I was born poor.”  She belts out a laugh and turns to her husband.

“Right, viejo?”

Farm Fresh Choice, a food justice and youth empowerment project of the Berkeley-based Ecology Center, works with youth of color in West Berkeley to educate the community around nutrition and access to healthy eating. On Tuesday afternoons, they run an organic produce stand outside Bahia, a bilingual after-school program. Listen to some of the youth as they discuss their work in the community.

Scenes from an Auction: As the number of Bay Area foreclosures skyrockets, so does the amount of auctions selling foreclosed homes at a fraction of their original price. Watch potential buyers vie for bargains at a recent auction.

[See post to watch Flash video] ]]> http://510report.org/2009/03/04/scenes-from-an-auction/feed/ 0 http://510report.org/2009/03/03/filmmaker-to-screen-redemption-story-of-oakland-recyclers/ http://510report.org/2009/03/03/filmmaker-to-screen-redemption-story-of-oakland-recyclers/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:50:46 +0000 kara http://510report.org/?p=3292

By Samson Reiny/510 Report

Jason Witt is an Olympian of recycling—he can recycle up to 800 pounds of bottles and cans a day.  “He’s the captain of his ship,” said Amir Soltani, a writer and activist who has been following Witt for the past year as part of his upcoming documentary on West Oakland recyclers.  Soltani said there is a lot of physical effort and finesse involved in manning a cart the size of Witt’s, which, at the end of each day, is stacked with overstuffed bags protruding several feet into the air.  “He has to read the road, know every pothole and how to maneuver around them,” Soltani said.  “He has to be able to turn his cart without tipping it.  It’s not pretty if it tips.”

Witt is one of the characters in Soltani’s upcoming film debut, “Redemption: Stories of the West Oakland Recycling Community,” which focuses not only on the lives of recyclers—running the gamut from those who sell cans for residual income to others whose livelihoods are dependent on collecting the trash of others—but on the community’s varied reactions to them and to Alliance Metals, the recycling facility that keeps them in business. The Graduate Theological Union’s Justice Collaborative will be hosting a director’s cut preview of the film next Thursday at the First Christian Church in Oakland.  Recyclers featured in the movie will be on hand to offer further testimony about their experiences, and staffers from Poor Magazine and the Homeless Action Center, along with various representatives from the community, will also hold discussions to promote public dialogue about poverty. 

The first-time filmmaker became especially interested in exploring this issue after meeting a recycler. He vividly remembers meeting Miles Jefferson, a regular who makes his rounds near Soltani’s West Oakland home. Jefferson is partially paralyzed on one half of his body as the result of a stroke, but still manages to gather his bottles and cans.  “I was stunned and mesmerized by him,” Soltani said.  “He had this tremendous dignity.”

Indeed, that is one of his film’s main messages—for those to whom recycling is a way of life, there is tremendous discipline involved.  Jason Witt, the Olympian recycler, not only has to balance his cart with finesse; there is other strategy involved because of the intense competition out there for recyclables. Recyclers must be good at cultivating relationships with businesses and residents, and at establishing a route.  Witt knows when and where to be at a certain place, usually to collect before someone else does. Sometimes he is deft and camouflaged because he doesn’t want to draw public attention.  Soltani said people often don’t think of recyclers as productive.  “There’s this tendency to want to criminalize them,” he said, “but many of these people don’t want handouts, and they’re not waiting for them.”

The presence of recyclers, and of Alliance Metals, is a contentious one in West Oakland.  For many, including immigrants that speak little English and those without the skills to be competitive in an already beleaguered job market, cashing in on the recyclable goods is their only means of survival.

But some residents and business owners want Alliance Metals shut down. They say some recyclers urinate in their yards and bring drugs to the area—others say the lack of public restrooms leave them no choice.  Another faction argues that closing the company will only increase crime in West Oakland because recyclers who suffer from drug addictions, left with few alternatives, will find more nefarious ways to support their habits.  Some from both sides of the spectrum blame Oakland city councilwoman Nancy Nadel for not reducing blight in the area.  Fingers are sometimes pointed at developers and tenants of new condos like Magnolia Row—maybe the reason why poor people have no where to go is because affordable housing is disappearing.  “Besieged is the best word that describes the community,” said Soltani.  “Everyone is a little bit stuck.”

In addition to portraying the daily lives of recyclers, Soltani interviewed Nadel, Metal Alliance owner Jay Anast, and several nearby residents, all with varying points of view.  “There are all kinds of barriers that prevent us from seeing each other,” Soltani said.  “This film is not an art form but a life form where a community can reconnect and solve a problem none of us can solve alone.”              

The recycling controversy is just a segment of the greater plight that has ravaged the historic district.  Soltani said that many of West Oakland’s problems today—poverty, poor health, and high crime, to name a few—represent the residual effects of a long, tumultuous, and yet proud struggle for justice.  “There’s a long history of fighting poverty and inequality,” Soltani said. 

West Oakland is a well-known incubator for social change movements.  The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters established their West Coast office at Fifth and Wood Streets and became the first African American-led group to sign a contract with a national company.  After World War II, the 16th Street railroad station became synonymous with the African American escape from segregation in the south.  In the 1960’s, the Black Panthers used West Oakland as their base of operations.             

But these notable efforts are, in large part, the work of a community that has been prompted into bravery and resourcefulness in order to survive.  “Racism, poor public planning, a weak political base, capital flight…there are so many aspects to this that I can’t do it justice,” Soltani said.  Yet through all of the challenges, Soltani is amazed that people, like the recyclers, are still managing to survive.  “Without trying to sound crass, there’s a magic to West Oakland that’s not lost,” he said.  “It’s beautiful that people are finding a way to make a living out of nothing.”

Thursday’s screening of the preview of “Redemption” will be open to the public, but Solatani says he’s still not sure when the final version of the film will be ready.  He’s shot most of the footage, but there are issues he wants to delve into more deeply.  “I’m looking into more funding.  There’s so much more that could be explored.  If I could go on forever, I would,” he said, smiling.  But what is certain is that he wants the movie to evoke a change in awareness.  “Redemption doesn’t just mean redeeming cans and bottles,” Soltani said.  “It’s about redeeming people’s lives.”                

The GTU Justice Collaborative Presents: Redemption: Stories of the West Oakland Recycling Community. Thursday, March 5th, 4:30-8:00pm. 111 Fairmount Ave. Oakland, CA.Suggested donation for admission $10.  Groups of 10 or more $5 per admission.  No one will be turned away.  Child friendly. For more information, call Tyson at 510.525.7587 or email justice.collaborative@yahoo.com