That’s the state of how I was taught, was the whole thing of Ohana, wishes family…and that’s one thing that we don’t get enough of in the Philippines; [it is] all about family and same in Hawaii and that’s one thing I’ve always enjoyed is to be able to treat my people, of the people I perform with, the people that I perform for as if we were family. I don’t go up there and become this big God and try and make people worship me. I hate that, if there’s anything about mine in my career I hate most is that. But to be able to relate to my audience to have them be the stars and not me during a two three hour concert that for me is the ultimate mission of my every show – so the upbringing of Hawaii, the atmosphere of the laid-backness of Hawaii but more than anything the Ohana factor, the family factor that became very part and parcel of my act even joking around about family how my mom raised me ala Rex [Navarrete a comedian] never end there; that kind of thing you know when he jokes about his grandmother and his mother being so Filipino is unbelievable. I put all of that in my show, okay so we got a Hawaiian Filipino with the spirit of Ohana and rich in everything.
Martin Nievera, with Philipp Harth on Fan TV (2010)
Cover Photo: AJPress photo by Noel Ty
I have watched Martin Nievera at his solo concerts in Los Angeles, and wondered about his accessibility to the audience. I was not a fan yet. It reminded me of ASAP stars on The Filipino Channel with how they literally made the audience a part of their show. It makes for an unruly audience who would at times interrupt the singing with selfies.
But, after watching Nievera with Pops Fernandez, my initial impression of a flamboyant singer who attracts his audience with his exuberance and enthusiasm turned into an expressive Martin who was balanced with Pops and her serenity onstage.
As Pops came out in her ivory, no shoulder gown, with laced cutouts, Martin admired it by holding up the bottom to showcase the designs, to which Pops tenderly remarked to put it down as she had no slip underneath.
When Pops appeared as the first Filipina judge on CBS’ “The World’s Best” hosted by James Corden in early Feb. 2019, I wondered how she became a talent judge. I, of course, did not know that she has built a formidable singing and acting career, as the better half of Martin’s love team on television and film, his former wife and the forever mother of two “wonderful treasures,” whom he referred to, their sons Robin and Ram. It was my classmate, Rose B., who reminded me of their television show, “Penthouse Live,” that she watched every Sunday for years.
But more than that, Martin has garnered 18 platinum, five double platinum, three triple platinum, and one quadruple platinum albums. That amounts to millions of records sold.
As an ex-married couple, the generosity in their friendship is palpable, when Pops said in a GMA interview with Janet Susan Rodriguez Nepales, “I got a call from Martin (Nievera, her ex). I was doing a video shoot. Martin texted me and asked me if I heard about the show. Yes, I told him. He said that they chose him. I said, Really, wow good for you. But then Martin said, I don’t think I can make it. I can’t make the dates. So he asked me if I could do it instead? I thought that was really touching of him to think of me. I said. That is so sweet of you. Little did I know that I would be the first Filipina to be featured in the show as a judge. It was a wonderful experience. It is a fantastic show. I hope they will do more seasons and I can get together again with the other 49 judges.”
The duo performed at both Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles and Samala hall at Chumash Casino on two consecutive weekends.
Samala, by the way, means “recognized by God” with a capacity of 1,500 seats, almost all claimed that evening. At the Palace Theatre, its 1,068 seats were all claimed, leaving the organizers to sacrifice their seats for others.
Palace Theatre in its golden 50 years was located on Broadway, a major thoroughfare and LA’s major commercial district. It was the largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. “This venue was once graced by Charlie Chaplin, Harry Houdini, W.C. Fields, Marx Brothers,” and add to that now, Martin Nievera and Pops Fernandez.
Today’s Palace Theatre has newly installed lighting and sound systems and their songs resonated loudly and a few times, one could feel actual reverberations of the band’s music go from one’s ears to the body, literally.
Nevermind that the sound dynamics have to be tweaked, nor that the fans were into small-talk reunions in their seats, since thousands sat inside the theater, filled with excitement to see their idols, reunited.
One of the opening singers, Cherilyn Diane | AJPress photo by Noel Ty
The opening acts occupied time, a bit raunchy for my taste that we will leave it at that. But, one singer, Cherilyn Diane, who traveled from San Diego, did not resort to any external props or raunchy dance moves, as she simply sang to the audience’s delight, “I Surrender,” by Celine Dion.
As soon as Martin and Pops appeared in the Palace theater, the minor irritations of gossiping fans, of sound dynamics that needed tweaking and stabilized later, all were forgotten as they sang their opening medley, “Together Again”: “Together/forever/To be together/Forever with You/Together again.”
They captivated everyone with this number, and Martin started relating their journey as a duo on stage and real-life. With how it all began, he sung, “No One Can Make Me Feel This Way,” and so expressively, he made us believe, “Tell me where I went wrong,” and recounted how Pops did not like him at first, as he was perceived to be arrogant.
Could it be because he was raised in Hawaii, a son of Bert Nievera, who was a member of Society of Seven? Martin got to watch his dad perform every night, at times, three times a night. He knew what a performing artist does onstage.
Martin Nievera serenades Ms. Priscilla Hunt, as producer Trinity Foliente looks on (rightmost). | AJPress photo by Noel Ty
In 1980 at Concord Pavilion, Martin was one of the back-up singers for Barry Manilow and from that stage view, he watched as Manilow was applauded by fans and that became his dream for himself. “I was 17 years old I’d sang in a singing contest with 4,500 contestants. It’s called California State talent competition, it’s four days long and I think I was one of the only Asians in there singing. There [were] a lot of Asian dancers, Bennett singers, [to make the] long story short on the fourth day I was crowned the overall grand champion of the state of California in1981,” Martin said in a FANTV interview in 2010 with Philipp Hart.
He shared that he and Pops became a stage team, fell in love, had two beautiful children, who were raised by Pops, and admitted he” messed up.” He then asked the men in the crowd, “How many of you here messed up?” Of course, to that question, no one would fess up. He declared, “They will be my life, the rest of my life. This woman and two children.”
He then dedicated the concert to Rosie Chua, one of the organizers of this August 10 concert with this song, “Ikaw lang ang mamahalin”: “Sa bawat pag-ikot ng ating buhay/May oras kailangan na maghiwalay/Puso’y lumaban man, walang magagawa/Saan ka, kailan ka muling mahahagkan? (In this cycle of life, there is time to say goodbye, even if the heart struggles, there is nothing that can be done. Where and when can I embrace you again?)”
The crowd went wild when he sang, “Sana ang tibok ng puso ko, sana yakapin mo kahit sandali, (Perhaps with my heart’s beat, perhaps you can hug me just one moment), one could feel the loving expressions. Even if the song was dedicated to his concert organizer, expressions towards Pops and her persona were what he was singing his words to.
Onstage, the expected rancor between ex-spouses was not there, only respect, candor and humor. For every verse and lyrics they sang, “Ikaw ang bigay ng Maykapal (You are a gift from God), or “Ikaw ang Tanglaw sa Buhay Ko, (You are the light force of my life), the fans could not get enough of their chemistry onstage. Though the couplehood is gone, they are thriving as a family and as they entertain their fans, moving them to tears, as well as laughter.
During the Chumash Casino concert that I attended a week later, courtesy of good friends, Martin described Pops as ”This woman [who] became the most understanding woman in the world. She raised our children by herself, Robin and Ram. He proceeded to belt out, “Baby I love you. This is my last chance for love.”
Perhaps the most endearing numbers for me were the duets of Robin Nievera, the first-born son, with his father and mother. Robin is superb with his acoustic guitar and even his composition, “Home,” that was a fusion of his dad’s rendition of a yesterday song, “Unchained Melody,” sang in tribute to 10 million Filipinos who work overseas and in Los Angeles, over 500,000 now.
When Pops spoke of passing the torch to one of her earlier songs, “The Little Star,” she moved me to tears with her heartfelt love for her firstborn. It reminded me of how I was, giving birth and caring for my own firstborn, a special favorite girl in my heart, Corina, and even more so, my granddaughter by her, Princess.
Pops duets with her first-born, Robin Nievera | AJPress photo by Noel Ty
But as this firstborn sang, “I am not them, I am me,” you know he is asserting his identity, separate in style and skills and talents from his parents, and one who is finding his way around Los Angeles, introducing emerging talents to Hollywood. Of course, he is not them, but he is from them, and perhaps by embracing the musical genes that produced him while in the womb, he can be the next Andrea Morricone, who declares, “I knew music before I was even born. Morricone, born to parents who both were into music, one of whom is Ennio Morricone. Since then, the father and son won an Oscar for their latest film score. I wonder if that is also in the future of the Nievera and Fernandez family, a strong composition, all their own to be sung and to win an Emmy or an Oscar?
Irrespective of that wish, when Pops sang, “I could have said goodbye/if I knew it would be the last time.” It was a very moving concert for me, now that I know their love story and how they manage to still bring out the best in each other, onstage and off, giving each one the generosity and support they need as parents to Robin and Ram.
As the concert ended, Martin went to where the first row fans were seated and sang songs to Mrs. Priscilla Hunt, a respected philanthropist, whom he serenaded. Then, other fans intruded into the song to get their selfies, which Martin encouraged. Indeed, it was Ohana night, all over again, even after 37 years of performing on stage. Martin has made every concert space his own playground, his own home, and his own comfort zone, and became ours as well, even if just for a night.
“Water is a great teacher that shows us how to move through the world with grace, ease, determination, and humility. When a river breaks at a waterfall, it gains energy and moves on, as we encounter our own waterfalls, we may fall hard but we always keep moving on. Water is brave and does not waste time clinging to its past, but flows onward without looking back.” —Anonymous
Dreamers know no bounds and see only possibilities. They are grounded in God’s infinite grace and envision no limitations to their dreams. They keep on no matter what, and step by step, they see that what they committed to do, defines them, and inspires the organizations they lead.
First, there is Tony Meloto, who imagines the poor can be middle class in the Philippines, who keeps on, despite the odds and conflicts he faced. Today, Gawad Kalinga gets worldwide donations and has built homes for 2,000 communities. Second, there is Loida Nicolas Lewis who imagines a school, so Sorsogonian children can be educated in moral values, technology and entrepreneurship, then jobs or businesses as productive citizens in a global economy. The Lewis College now has close to a thousand enrolled students from K to college. Third, there is Dado Banatao who imagines strategic philanthropy as a significant bridge amongst Filipino Americans and Filipinos, funding science and technology researches, while producing high-value goods that anchor a sustainable economy in the Philippines. Today, his partnership with Philippine Development Foundation (formerly Ayala Foundation) and the Philippine government has created a research consortium, involving seven universities, aggregating their scientific capacities. Fourth, there is Vicky Wallace who imagines a bed and breakfast in Panglao, Bohol, using local crops and local labor. She is much ahead of her times when she conceived it a decade ago, when organic cooking and baking was not in vogue yet in Bohol. Now, her visionary thinking for Bohol Bee Farms gives jobs to hundreds of Boholanos, while she raises her own bees, farms her own produce and makes new dips using malunggay, with food technologists as new uses for fruits and vegetables.
Joining this circle of spiritually–grounded visionaries is Regina “Gina” Lopez who imagines the Philippines as the eco-tourism capital of the planet.
“We are not Singapore or Hong Kong, we are 7,000 amazingly beautiful and spectacular islands. Many of us do not even know the beauty that exists in our country because these islands are not comfortably accessible, to discover the magnificence of Sibuyan Island in Romblon and to even [get] more saddened to find that a people living amidst such magnificence could be so poor, “ she said.
“Envision it like Hawaii,” I told her. “Yes, yes,” she replied!
Gina’s transformational cleaning up of the Pasig River, a river long dead, like a landfill in one section, filled with mattresses, plastic bags, diapers, tires, bottles, and a dead carcass stench, has opened up collective imaginations and collective energies that kaya pala natin ito. Used to making a big splash, as part of a media-conglomerate family, she was raised to look at the problem in a strategic way. Watching her dad, Eugenio Lopez, by example, she learned from him the importance of integrity and vision.
Gina was asked to take over the Pasig River cleanup by former First Lady Ming Ramos. But, before taking it on, she sought partnership with the Department of Energy and Natural Resources (DENR). DENR agreed, so she accepted. Later, she was officially appointed by President Benigno S. Aquino to chair the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, under the DENR, along with Metro Manila Development Authority, Office of Executive Secretary of the President of the Philippines, Department of Tourism, Department of Public Works and Highways, Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, Department of Interior Local Governments, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Finance, Department of National Defense, Department of Transportation and Communications, GMA Network, ABS-CBN Foundation/Bantay Kalikasan and Unilever. The commission’s goal was to have a viable river of Class C quality, fit for fishing, boating and manufacturing water supply for food processing. Mind you, this is a 15-year effort of cleanup and revival. Many unsuccessful attempts have been made in the Pasig River, including the relocation of top polluting industries, like chemicals and petroleum, which have since relocated. But, the unprocessed domestic wastes, to which only 7% of the households in Metro Manila are connected to sewage treatment, make the problem quite insurmountable. But not Gina!
Estero de Paco became the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission’s demonstrative project. It was the largest estero, the dirtiest and presented the most challenge. What once was a slum-dwelling estero, it is now bordered by agapanthus and rubber plants, complete with what Gina calls “island reactor, with coco coir to filter the water, and man-made waterfalls.” Next to it is a newly built Paco Market, with stabilized rents. She is currently seeking donors to help former vendors the first rights to go back to the stalls, at $1,500 a stall. It is now a state of the art facility, with better managed and cleaner stalls, and no longer with an added stench from the nearby Pasig River.
I asked her what gives her a unique perspective in seeing the Filipino potential of healing Mother Nature and their capacity for change. While she grew up a child of privilege to the Lopez family (who owns prime real estate, utilities and biggest media network in the Philippines) and received a high school education at Assumption College, then college at Newton College of Sacred Heart in Massachusetts, she dropped out to become a yoga missionary for Ananda Marga, dedicated to the self-realization and service to humanity. Her commitment of 20 years led her to India, Kenya, Zambia, Ghana and Nigeria. She credits this part of her life as opening up her sights that poverty can be removed in the Philippines, “especially in the places which are beautiful, in these places, agriculture and eco-tourism is the way to go.” Her political will to see transformational change amongst the poor came about when she learned survival skills as a missionary in Africa.
She found herself without a safety net of being part of a media conglomerate nor the connections of a well-placed family. She learned that “when there is a will there is a way.”
“That as long as one had faith in one’s convictions, one can build dreams. I ended up with land, a house, a children’s home, a school. To survive, I would go to businesses and tell them what I was doing and invariably I would get support. I learned how the poor live. I lived in the slums of Africa where one had to stand in line for hours for water, taking a bath and washing with a bucket, where there are no toilets. I had to sleep on the floor. It was hard but I developed an affinity with the poor…I know what it is like,” she continued.
Indeed she knows. She applied the first principle in doing projects for the impoverished, malnourished children.
When she came back to the Philippines, she took on these projects that made a splash, not with fame and glamour, but with social impact. Bantay Bata is child welfare program of the ABS-CBN Foundation, with eight regional offices that provide rescue and relief for abused and sick children, while giving them quality home care and therapy, until they are reunited with their families or referred to appropriate childcare agencies. For her work in designing an all-around safety net for the abused Filipino child, she was recognized as one of the AAA awardees of the Asian Institute of Management. She was a UNESCO Kalinga Awardee for popularizing science through her innovative media work on math, sciences, national heroes, seeking help from the Department of Education to show these modules in the classrooms. In classrooms where they were shown, dramatic improvements were achieved in math and reading scores.
Her social-impact environmentalism appears to follow three principles in Van Jones’ Green Collar Economy’s book: first, equal protection for all, where the pain is minimized for the impacted group and their gain maximized; second, equal opportunity for those in pursuit of equity, where all are included; and third, reverence for all creation. She states her principles as: “commitment to integrity, compassion to care for each other, to work together, reverence for the environment and healthy lifestyle.”
She shared her work in Estero de Paco, next to Paco Market, to a group of Filipino Americans gathered in Goldilocks in Cerritos, California one evening in 2011. We were all riveted to her presentation that most folks did not leave until close to midnight. Housing for the informal settlers who lived on the banks of the waterways or esteros was first secured. They were relocated to a development called Bayan ni Juan, where concrete row houses were built, with a school and clinic in Calauan, Laguna. She is the first to say that she cannot do it alone, but together with a team of students, military, community volunteers, “where the cleanups were always a source of joy and kinship,” nothing seems impossible.
Gina is the first to admit that more investors are needed to set up businesses which will employ local folks, much like the visionary Vicky Wallace, who did it in Bohol for her province-mates, and much like Loida Lewis who is educating her fellow province-mates in Sorsogon. Gina had prevented more respiratory diseases and a new imagination has sprung from these new Calauan residents.
Now, the second principle of equal opportunities for all has to be satisfied. At the Paco Market, most of these retail vendors are provided opportunities to inhabit the new market stalls.
“Nothing can stand in the way of a people united for a noble cause,” Gina said: “I have a deep resonance with the environment. My spiritual practice is feeling the divine, entering stillness, then feeling the Higher Worlds. When one does this, one develops a very keen affinity with nature. Divine Energy is in Nature.”
As to the third principle of reverence for all, Gina succeeded in eradicating poverty in Puerto Princesa, where she helped the community residents in building trails, a waterless toilet, a visitor’s center, and other visitor-friendly improvements. With this community-based tourism, the community benefited. She has eliminated poverty in this area in just a period of two years with very minimal investment in five communities living amidst these gorgeous surroundings. “It has even reached the stage where the profit is big enough to roll over to another community,” she added.
Like water, moving with grace, ease, determination and humility, Gina has indeed been a social impact environmentalist, a peace-builder, healer and nurturer of Mother Nature by cleaning dead rivers and installing community-based eco-tourism!
Cover Photo: A hawk flying above LA’s skyline (Photo by Christine Ho)
I’ convinced ‘myself.’ The I that did the convincing was the one who needed desperately to justify the entire experience, to make it sane and right and okay and approved. Myself was convinced as the moral self, the part of me I would want to be a judge in a legal system. This moral part of us, however, in these extreme situations, is vulnerable to the overwhelming force of that part of us that needs to justify our actions. I am ashamed of this lie because it was done for nothing more than self-aggrandizement. There was no greater cause, such as saving lives. Also in the previous examples of lying, I wasn’t of two minds. I didn’t believe what I was saying for a moment. I was in control. With this lie I’d lost myself. Perhaps this too adds to the shame. It is the lie of two minds that is most dangerous.
Karl Marlantes, 2011
I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.
Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo
I was struck by Fr. Raymond Decipeda’s video post on Facebook, touching the hands and face of a weary, old man living in Alameda, an industrial corridor in downtown Los Angeles. He took his right hand first and showed him how to clean using baby wipes, while speaking to him in his native tongue, Spanish. He took another wipe to wash off the grime from this man’s face, gave him the container of wipes and then, a hug. This Catholic priest’s action showed me how we might be that speck of goodness to strangers, even randomly, by our policies and actions.
The unsheltered homeless population in LA City was 39,168 in 2008. Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority now claims that in 2018, the unsheltered population has gone down to 22,887.
Recall Steve Lopez’s friendship with a mentally ill homeless violinist, Nathan Ayers, who lived in the streets? A film was made describing their friendship: “Lopez met Ayers four years ago [2005], when Ayers was a homeless musician on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Lopez learned Ayers had been a promising violinist, and that he had left the prestigious music program at the Juilliard School because of his struggle with mental illness. Lopez chronicled Ayers’ struggle in several columns at the Los Angeles Times. These columns inspired readers to send instruments to Ayers through Lopez. The friendship that Lopez formed with Ayers eventually helped the musician get off the street, settle into an apartment and find treatment for his schizophrenia,” NPR wrote in 2009.
Recently on Jan 17, 2019, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti held the fourth annual homeless job fair wherein 50+ employers were invited. Garcetti recently attended the Washington, DC’s Conference of City Mayors wherein he was expected to make an announcement for his presidential run, crowding out the Democratic primary for 2020 to an estimated 20 candidates. Instead, a few days later, it was announced that he would not run, giving city residents a sense of relief that now, their mayor can focus his attention on solving LA’s social issues.
Sunrise at Echo Park Lake (Photos by Christine Ho)
I was listening to KPCC describe how the homeless folks can get a haircut, a shave, a cosmetic makeover, and new clothes, with employers waiting to hire them. At the same job fair, they asked folks to bring resumes and to dress to impress for these positions: “Direct Service / Entry Level: case managers, outreach workers, housing navigators, employment specialists, administration, finance. Management / Supervisory Level: supervisors, coordinators, program managers and directors, and similar positions; Professional Level and Executive Level: with advanced degrees such as MSW, MPP, MPH, LCSW, certifications; senior management.”
These are the jobs that folks can avail of and yet, we humbly ask – are these jobs that might qualify the homeless on the streets? Or is the LA mayor’s conflating a job fair with the homeless problem, so something can be showcased as addressing this intractable, complex problem, now 50,000 folks on the streets and climbing?
Would the homeless have access to computers to RSVP using Eventbrite? That was such a glaring red flag to anyone looking at this fourth homeless job fair, that it was not meant for the homeless, but meant for the employers looking for employees for their vacant positions. Intentions to solve a problem or a big social issue matter.
To the LA mayor’s credit, one can observe a marked decline in visible encampments, with lesser tents during the day. But, as soon as the sun goes down, and it starts getting dark, tents go up randomly in public sidewalks, giving the city a feel that it is one huge campground, spread out in different neighborhoods, without zero camping fees and of course, its consequence, trash.
By Thursday to Sunday, much of the human trash from camping on the streets, unofficially accumulate underneath freeway underpasses and near on-ramps, and on public sidewalks, where mattresses, garbage bags, strollers, grocery carts, paper bags, styrofoam containers, buckets, milk containers and even dirty diapers are found.
Channel 5 on Feb. 6, 2019 reported on City Hall harboring rodent fleas and the television station showed rotting oranges near this city of concentrated local power, with rodents feasting on trash and rotten produce. They featured an LA City Attorney alleging typhus infection from rodent fleas.
I wonder what happened to the Bureau of Sanitation in charge of collecting city trash – do they have roving trucks to collect trash from these randomly created garbage zones so they do not become permanent trash dumps? Or not cause illness as this LA City Attorney alleged?
What if these city agencies’ decision makers stopped for a moment, and actually lived outdoors inside a tent? Would they discover that folks who live on the streets need the basics of cooking areas, toilet and trashcans? Would they readily find the resources to address their housing needs and train them for entry-level jobs as now their hearts have been cracked open to care for these homeless folks?
From ‘drive by’ to ‘trash city’
LA used to be derogatorily referred to as ‘drive by Los Angeles’ but we no longer have that designation when the local police created partnerships with communities to reduce gang violence. Now, we are known as the ‘trash city.’
What will it be for Summer Olympics 2028? Would we have changed the culture and designation to be regarded as a clean, green city?
If Kyoto, Tokyo and Hiroshima can do it, we can too. In these cities, residents start sweeping the streets in front of their homes and even hose them down. By sunrise, the streets are clean. It is quite inviting to walk to the nearest subway station.
In Dumaguete, residents get up early too, sweeping the front spaces of their homes, collecting the fallen leaves, trash and litter.
Recently, a Facebook post reported that 700 showed up to pick up trash and litter in front of their Dumaguete baywalk, a major pathway for runners, athletes and tourists. They also have been educating the locals to discontinue the use of plastic straws as fishes die and are swept to the shores.
In Sacramento, the city has started hiring folks who inhabit the banks of the American River to keep this river clean and free of trash.
LA City’s Build, Build, Build
In a public event I attended, about three years ago, I heard Garcetti share his policy of making city government more accessible.
He said that if the city staff were approached with projects and proposals, for them to ask the question, “Why not?”
Did those two words amount to permissiveness and no oversight to developers?
In using that phrase to direct his mayoral staff, did he pretty much give the keys to the city government where perhaps his intentions may have been to cut bureaucratic red tape and promote urban development?
What about balancing that with urban planning and city residents’ local needs?
We are now finding out that LA’s urban development is now synonymous to the displacement of the limited income residents and the lower middle class, known as gentrification and skyrocketing rents.
“Real estate economists are now forecasting that CA will be a majority renter state by 2025,” according to Mia McLeod.
Rock bearing a social justice message
Could these be the outcome of decisions by detached and unfeeling investment groups who maximize their profits by flipping real estate properties and selling them at the highest market value?
Check out rents downtown and you will find that they are priced from $3,000 to $12,000 – prices that are out of reach for most working families. Well, unless you are the son or daughter of someone like Eli Broad or Rick Caruso in Los Angeles.
As soon as the mayor’s two words of ‘why not policy’ became known, Los Angeles’ skylines were dotted with cranes and more cranes. I visibly counted at least eight cranes were simultaneously within a 10-mile radius in and out of downtown and almost choked the life out of city residents, signaling for us massive gentrification.
Right smack in the downtown area, close to the federal courthouse, is an unofficial tent encampment. It is next to a construction zone for another skyscraper and near newly built apartments.
Do you suppose the folks who live in these tents are calling attention to their plight since we cannot miss seeing them as one drives the freeway and takes the on-ramp from Broadway?
Is this not a city of unequal contrasts – folks who are on the streets with meager resources and nearby upscale apartments advertised in the thousands per month?
There is hope since the voters just passed, “With the state facing a massive housing shortage that has driven up prices, California voters passed Proposition 1, a $4 billion affordable housing bond. Voters also approved Proposition 2, a separate measure that will allow the state to use a past tax on millionaires to fund housing for the mentally ill,” KQED reported on Nov. 7, 2018.
Does this mean these housing developers would get low-interest city bond monies?
It begs the question – is Garcetti part of the problem or is he part of the solution?
Lensball taken by the clean Echo Park Lake (Photo by Christine Ho)
I know he has the smarts and political will to do it as he endeavored to transform what was once debris-filled, stinky Echo Park Lake to a bustling, clean water space, where millennials want to spend time at the lakeside restaurants or pedal boats, some of which are shaped like giant swans. Clearly, this is one of this city mayor’s crowning achievements, while then a councilman. He took an almost blighted area and renewed it to reach its full potential.
The question now is will he transform blighted, decaying areas of Los Angeles, Silverlake, Temple St., Alvarado, Alameda, Virgil, downtown LA, Koreatown, and other parts of the city, where the homeless folks set up tents?
Perhaps, we have enabled this urban complex problem by not doing our share as informed voters, who by our voting, have installed public officials who are much cozier with hotel and condo developers? Instead, should we vote for those who are zealously addressing the public’s need for low income and affordable housing and have a desire of strategic public service, longer than their terms in office? Will we have the vigilance as caring voters to become community guardians and not depend on savior-like politicians in LA City Hall who still need to grow as diligent and conscientious public servants?
We need to stop the ‘lies of two minds’ and LA City Hall needs to be in alignment with publicly serving the needs of all city residents, such that no one is deprived of their rights to live a quality life and stand up to corruption, the public officials who need to be weeded out from causing any more trouble to others. They need not look to the temporary tenant in the Oval Office, but to the prior one who served with honor, the 44th U.S. president.
Let the sight of blood frozen on the icy streets of Chicago from the death of 18 homeless folks be not the case in Los Angeles. After all, we are called the city of angels and we all need to live like saints to merit that designation. Yes, saints, as we are surrounded by so much local and federal wrongdoings, anomalies and the ‘lies of two minds.’
Strive for peace with everyone,and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God,that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble,through which many may become defiled.
We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.
Grace Lee Boggs
Four decades after Dr. King’s death, we are a very different nation. We are a nation where the White population will become the minority in the nation’s schools in just a few years. We are a nation where nearly a fifth of public school students come from linguistic minority families. Even though there is no significant effort to desegregate our schools now, thousands of American schools, mostly in the suburbs, are going through racial and ethnic change as Black and Latino families move away from central urban areas and many city schools experience displacement of one minority by another. Since teaching is the one profession that must interact effectively and in great depth with nine-tenths of the nation’s young people, lack of training and support means, at best, lost opportunities for deeper and more effective relationships. At worst, it means being helpless in the face of serious divisions coming into our schools from the outside community. American parents, by very large majorities, want their children to grow up understanding how to relate successfully with all groups in a diverse society. For this to happen, and for our society to avoid projecting into ever larger sectors of suburbia the kinds of poor race relations and resegregation that damaged so many urban neighborhoods, teachers must have the tools to understand and relate to students and parents from all backgrounds and to help children understand the very diverse and changing society they will live in.
Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA
Group photo from Saturday, January 26 shows nearly 70 attendees during the first summit for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) educators. (Photo courtesy of Bianca Nepales)
A group of about 20 Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) educators and advocates voluntarily organized a summit for Southern California AANHPI educators during the last weekend in January.
The intent was to build community across schools, districts, and identities, deepen its collective understanding of AANHPI experiences with education, and create space to affirm and respond to the needs and challenges.
Nearly 70 attendees, some traveling from as far as Sacramento and San Diego, convened at Bright Star Rise Kohyang Middle School in Koreatown on Saturday, January 26 to engage in the summit’s theme of “Inward, Outward, Onward” as a way to build community, learn from each other, and set the stage for future action.
A highlight of the summit was a focus on deepening the collective understanding of AANHPI experiences with education, and the ways in which AANHPI experiences might be represented in education equity conversations.
“Now, more than ever, our voices are heard, our leadership is seen and convening other folks who have long not seen themselves in famous leadership is an important part of healing. It is an imperative to fully represent the stories and hope the future holds,” said Ruth Le, one of the summit organizers and current special education high school educator.
Nationally, only 2.5 percent of all public school teachers identify as Asian American Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, while 6 percent of all students in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second-largest school district, identify as AANHPI.
The summit organizers believe that Southern California can and should be prime space for its kids and families to receive an affirming and responsive education, which starts with teachers understanding the unique role they play given their own identity in relationship to their students. By creating a space to affirm and respond to needs and challenges experienced by participants, the summit organizers hope to set the stage for a future of community-building and collective action.
“Growing up, I didn’t have many role models to look up to who looked like me. Spaces like these guided me in finding my leadership voice and political identity — a space of transformation and community,” shared Jacqulyn Whang, a current educator with Compton Unified School District who is also leading a yoga workshop at the summit.
In America, analyses of racial inequities in education typically focus on disparities between the experiences of African-American or Latin@/x kids (colloquially, “black and brown” kids) and their white peers. Framing the fight against educational inequities in this way renders invisible the needs and contributions of AANHPI communities in any of that work, according to research conducted by Benjamin Chang on Asian Americans and education.
For a moment, it took me back to 1980s with organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice (formerly Asian Law Caucus, Asian Pacific American Legal Center) and Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) who were focused on addressing social inequalities through civil rights work and training leaders in higher learning.
I remember attending education conferences of APAHE and leaving inspired. It was empowering to listen to conference speakers: black, brown and white professors who had stellar academic achievements in the field of education, know how to teach from the ground up, and are able to speak from a wealth of experience, from praxis or actual practice, what it takes to teach with equity-centered leadership and fairness and to develop curriculums. They invited community leaders as well to speak on best practices.
They were not just buzzwords, but APAHE’s conference workshops reflected teaching and leadership development content, borne out of actual leadership and educational experiences for decades and more.
Ricco Siasoco and Sarah Ha (Photo by Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz)
It paralleled what I saw in SoCal AANHPI Educators Summit presenters, Sarah Ha and Ricco Siasoco, each having 15 years plus experiences of teaching and advocacies. It was a unique combination of seeing a Ricco, a former professor at Boston College presenting with his former student Sarah. They had a positive mindset, ability to influence others with their presentations, who work with respect and humility for those who attended the summit workshop.
In a short period of time, they got folks to reflect on their past, position themselves in a collective timeline prepared by LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics), an organization we had supported in the past. LEAP timelines for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders first dated back to June 9, 1880 when 148 Japanese were in the continental United States.
However, this session also illuminated how the AANHPI community is missing a complex and comprehensive AANHPI history. I noticed that the timeline glaringly lacked the history of Filipinos Americans in Louisiana since the 1700s, who originated the dried shrimp industry. They were Filipino sailors under the rule of the Spanish who escaped the Spanish galleons to establish the fishing village of Saint Malo in Louisiana, “Filipinos pioneered the dried shrimp industry, the predecessor of the modern shrimp industry,” says Robert Romero, the President of the Filipino Louisiana Historical Society. “There [was] no refrigeration then, and after you have been catching all these shrimp, so you have to just dry them.” Manila Village, Bassa Bassa and other Gulf Coast Filipino settlements would later be credited. (Source: Ricco Siasoco’s slide presentation at the Summit, Jan. 2019).
This caught my attention that one of the tenets of this summit’s session on ‘Sharing our Stories: Solidarity Across AANHPI Lines of Difference’ is – “We cannot understand U.S. history without understanding Asian American history,” Dr. Erica Lee, author of the Making of Asian Americans. My challenge to the summit organizers is to contact LEAP and correct this significant milestone omission.
A multicultural summit of educators
Equally valuable in the exercise is an impression that we are all coming from diverse backgrounds, previously census-profiled at 25 Asian American groups in the 1980s, to now 48 diverse groups, speaking 300+ languages, according to Ha, who is also the Senior Managing Director of National Asian American and Pacific Islander Alliance at Teach for America.
What was heartening was that the SoCal AANHPI Educators Summit gathered 90 teachers from different parts of California, and were from these cultural backgrounds: Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indian, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander.
The use of technology assisted in the profile assessments of these attendees. The diversity of experiences and backgrounds represented reflected the need for AANHPI teachers to have stronger self-awareness of their identities and impact. Workshop leaders Ha and Siasoco emphasized that those represented also must be cognizant of many other groups are not represented and their narratives still need to be included, as their voices.
The erasure of AANHPI folks from education conversations also means that AANHPI educators can often be ill-prepared to think critically about the impact of their identities in the relationship to their students and schools. According to an article from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, AANHPI educators often have a less robust foundation of research from which to interrogate the impact of their identities on students of all races and ethnicities.
The summit provided spaces for these young teachers to articulate their voices, to share their past histories and to have the agency to do so – meaning they are empowered and presumed to have the “critical literacy.” That would mean having the facility to critically process the information they have absorbed, and apply logically to present situations and find solutions and address the problems. Schools can better serve all students if teachers more deeply understood AANHPI needs, and ways to address these challenges using tools such as “critical literacy.”
The erasure of AANHPI communities reinforces the “model minority myth,” a (false) belief that allegations of systematic racism (voiced initially by African-Americans) must be unfounded because Asians have been able to leverage hard work toward their American success.
In this case, when inequities facing AANHPI folks are not given space in education conversations, we perpetuate the incorrect notion that AANHPI communities do not face challenges in education. This assumption of AANHPI earned immunity against inequity both disservices AANHPI youth and fuels excuses that allow the needs of non-AANHPI youth of color to be ignored.
Here’s hoping that the summit organizers and participants continue to fuel their momentum to address these inequities in this generation.
In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students’ parents and community leaders.
Wendy Koff, Founder of Teach For America
Four decades after Dr. King’s death, we are a very different nation. We are a nation where the White population will become the minority in the nation’s schools in just a few years. We are a nation where nearly a fifth of public school students come from linguistic minority families. Even though there is no significant effort to desegregate our schools now, thousands of American schools, mostly in the suburbs, are going through racial and ethnic change as Black and Latino families move away from central urban areas and many city schools experience displacement of one minority by another. Since teaching is the one profession that must interact effectively and in great depth with nine-tenths of the nation’s young people, lack of training and support means, at best, lost opportunities for deeper and more effective relationships. At worst, it means being helpless in the face of serious divisions coming into our schools from the outside community. American parents, by very large majorities, want their children to grow up understanding how to relate successfully with all groups in a diverse society. For this to happen, and for our society to avoid projecting into ever larger sectors of suburbia the kinds of poor race relations and resegregation that damaged so many urban neighborhoods, teachers must have the tools to understand and relate to students and parents from all backgrounds and to help children understand the very diverse and changing society they will live in.
Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA
In America, $22 trillion economy in 2019 is projected by Focus Economics, followed by China, Japan, Germany, UK and India. In this same rich America, 15 million children are born in poverty, with three grade levels behind in learning as others in rich zip code districts. While others have graduated in high school, these low income students remain at 8th grade levels, although endowed with lots of skills and talents, unharnessed by the public schools.
Where you live determines what your future will be. Live in a poor neighborhood, and your chances of graduating in college is 3%, while if you are in a rich zip code district, access to good education is higher and 71% graduate from college, according to a 2014 Teach for America video on Los Angeles.
Picture this – young teachers of multicultural backgrounds, well-spoken, articulate in framing current America’s inequalities and a concept like positionality – “is the social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality and ability status; also describes your identity influences and potentially biases, your understanding of the and outlook of the world.” I wondered how an intense self-consciousness about one’s positionality brings about social change in the classroom, addressing the present learning gaps?
For a moment, it took me back to 1980’s with organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice (formerly Asian Law Caucus, Asian Pacific American Legal Center) and Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) who were focused on addressing social inequalities through civil rights work and training leaders in higher learning.
I remember attending education conferences of APAHE and leaving inspired. It was empowering to listen to conference speakers: black, brown and white professors who had stellar academic achievements in the field of education, know how to teach from the ground up, and are able to speak from a wealth of experience, from praxis or actual practice, what it takes to teach with equity-centered leadership and fairness and to develop curriculums. They invited community leaders as well to speak on best practices.
They were not just buzz words, but APAHE’s conference workshops reflected teaching and leadership development content, borne out of actual leadership and educational experiences for decades and more.
It paralleled what I saw in Teach for America’s summit presentors, Sarah Ha and Ricco Siasoco, each having 15+ experiences of teaching and advocacies. It was a unique combination of seeing a former teacher of Boston College, Rico, presenting with his former student at Boston College, Sarah. They had the Teach for America’s traits of teacher corps – a positive mindset, ability to influence others with their presentations, who work with respect and humility for those who attended the summit workshop.
In a short period of time, they got folks to reflect on their past, position themselves in a collective timeline prepared by LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics), an organization we had supported in the past.
LEAP timelines for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders first dated back to June 9, 1880 when 148 Japanese were in the continental United States.
It glaringly lacked the history of Filipinos Americans in Louisiana since the 1700s, who originated the dried shrimp industry. They were Filipino sailors under the rule of the Spanish who escaped the Spanish galleons to establish the fishing village of Saint Malo in Louisiana, “Filipinos pioneered the dried shrimp industry, the predecessor of the modern shrimp industry,” says Robert Romero, the President of the Filipino Louisiana Historical Society, “there were no refrigeration then, and after you have been catching all these shrimp, so you have to just dry them.” Manila Village, Bassa Bassa and other Gulf Coast Filipino settlements would later be credited. (Source: Rico Siasoco’s slide presentation at Summit, Jan. 2019).
This caught my attention as one of the tenets of this summit’s session on ‘Sharing our Stories: Solidarity Across AANHPI Lines of Difference’ is – “We cannot understand U.S. history without understanding Asian American history.” Dr. Erica Lee, author of the Making of Asian Americans. My challenge to Teach for America in Los Angeles is to contact LEAP and correct this significant milestone omission.
Equally valuable in the exercise is an impression that we are all coming from diverse backgrounds, previously census-profiled at 25 Asian American groups in the 1980s, to now 48 diverse groups, speaking 300+ languages, according to Sarah Ha, Senior Managing Director of National Asian American and Pacific Islander Alliances, Teach for America.
A multicultural summit of educators
What was heartening was Teach for America-Los Angeles’ summit has gathered teachers from different parts of California, some had come from Sacramento, all 136 of them, from these cultural backgrounds: Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indian, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander.
The summit provided spaces for these young teachers to articulate their voices, to share their past histories and to have the agency to do so – meaning they are empowered and presumed to have the “critical literacy.”
That would mean having the facility to critically process the information they have absorbed, and apply logically to present situations and find solutions and address the problems. They go to summer-long training institute, 13 weeks and are then assigned at high – need schools by the districts that employ them, with a minimum commitment of two years.
In Manual Arts High School, a school described by a teacher as plagued by gangs, drugs and teenage pregnancy – all indicators of poverty, a Teach for America teacher said that teaching there coming from a similarly poor background like hers, enables the students to see from her life example, that they can have a different future by getting their education.
Learning Matters.TV tracked seven teachers from Teach for America for two years. One featured Lindsay Ordower – who was dedicated to her students at Douglas High School in Louisiana and came back for another year to teach. She cared that her students passed their tests, though only 40% show up daily. By dropping her expectations, she learned to connect and found out that one student was uncaring and slept in her classroom because she did not have a home. “Whatever I did to motivate that student, it still did not fill the gap, as she still was homeless.”
Dr. Robert Winmann, 2014 principal at Manual Arts High School, attested to test scores going up by 10% when he hired 12 Teach for America’ s trained teachers. He said they were pedagogically trained and had content knowledge.
Fast forward to 2018, where census officials report 250,000 undocumented children coming from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, South Korea, China, India, Philippines – how would Teach for America teach these students?
What is critical literacy?
For example, positionality is to recognize our biases, but perhaps even apply them as they teach the students in high – need communities, a term now used so as not to diminish perceiving the high potentials of students coming from low income communities, the recipients of deficient public funding, as opposed to higher income zip codes, receiving their higher share of public funding.
One teacher I know of reached her students with special educational needs by having them write their personal story and reading those stories aloud. By reading these narratives aloud, they realized their commonalities and developed higher levels of respect and empathy for one another. She also recognized there were different ways of learning, and she had to creatively find ways of connecting and reaching them so they can learn.
At high school graduation, she had a small book printed with all their stories, published through community support, and all had graduated with a sense of renewed pride for their future and their potentials. Who is that – Bianca Nicole Nepales, once at Teach for America teacher, now has been promoted to coach/supervisor to various incoming teachers, and who invited me to attend and write about this summit. Other sessions that summit were on Immigration Rights, Representation in Ethnic Studies in K-12 Curriculum, Restorative Practices and Empathy Building, De-Centering Whiteness in Upper Schools Curriculum, Recognizing and Addressing Anti-Blackness and Colorism.
Teach for America is a brainchild of Wendy Kopp, a Caucasian, native born to Texas who went to Princeton University and actualized her senior thesis. It took a seed grant of $500,000 from Ross Perot to support the initial years of Teach for America, from an initial funding of $2.5 million. It claims to have trained now 33,000 teachers, and reached 3 million kids in 34 states. These are impressive statistics and in 21 years and we humbly asked – have they made a difference? Have they produced future leaders who are culturally competent, equity-centered and fair or have they developed more self-centered, narcissist, ‘what is in it for me’ leaders who replicate problems with stubborn attitudes and sense of entitlement? Wendy Kopp claims they take on big challenges and still have at that young age the vigor to make a difference.
In 2010, Teach for America claims to have trained 46,000 recent college graduates. Its statistics vary from 40% still teaching in Teach for America to where only 20% remain in education. Its roster of alumni reveal many have used Teach for America as stepping stones for policy careers, set up their own non-profits and even their own businesses.
Wendy Kopp has since branched out from Teach for America to Teach for all, establishing the program in different countries.
In an interview with Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith on October 28, 2016, Wendy Kopp cited their rigorous acceptance rates from 2008-2013 of 11 to 15% from 6,000 applicants. She enumerated Teach for India with 13,000 applicants vying for 500 slots; Teach for Pakistan had 1000 applicants vying for 40 spots and Teach for Colombia had 2,400 folks vying for 50 to 60 spots.
The Guardian on Nov. 27, 2018 reported that “The Australian Capital Territory government has cut its ties with the controversial multimillion dollar Teach for Australia program, citing concerns about the program’s value for money. Guardian Australia can reveal the territory formally split with Teach for Australia in July this year, unhappy with the cost of the program and unconvinced it was “delivering classroom ready graduates that remain in the teaching workforce.” It was funded at $77 million, according to The Guardian.
Teach for America has gone to frontiers where the highest need of learning in poor communities is partially addressed by teachers recruited in the prime of their idealism to take on the problem to hopefully, harness their passion and leadership skills to make a difference.
Some critics assert that the teachers are not equipped nor trained to go to teaching, as they pursued non-teaching degrees, and are not the most capable. Yet, their leadership skills are what Teach for America claim are needed to transform classrooms, for teachers to become social justice leaders, once the entire classroom is educated then, all are empowered to make a change in our life.
Teach for America’s teachers became transformative leaders, given their clustered traits of perseverance, ability to influence and motivate others, and approaching others with respect and humility. They are trained to use extraordinary patterns and that to do under an aura of status and awe that teaching this way is cool, teaching the students in these high-need schools, though poor are with high potentials and reaching them gives these teachers higher levels of satisfaction to know that from an environment of high weeds, choking wild plants, a beautiful flower can be clustered with others, to give out its fragrance and vibrant flowers.
