Heroin addiction sweeping through Orange County

Jackee was 16 when she smoked it for the first time. It was the summer of her sophomore year and her boyfriend asked her if she wanted to get loaded with some other kids. She had already been smoking methamphetamine on-and-off for three years, so trying heroin didn’t seem like a big deal to her.

“I thought about it for like five seconds,” the 18-year-old Yorba Linda resident says. “And then I thought, ‘Eff it. Why not?’”

As she sat in her boyfriend’s car, Jackee watched one of the teens press the “sugar” to the foil. He lit a match beneath the foil and held it as Jackee sucked the smoke through a hollowed out pen.

She took five hits, drawing the smoke in deep each time, taking care not to waste any. When she was done, she lay back on the grass next to her boyfriend and stared at the sky. She felt invincible.

Those skies darkened quickly. Jackee began smoking heroin daily, using greater quantities as her tolerance increased. Within weeks she had developed a $200-a-day habit that she would go to any lengths to feed.

Jackee is not alone. Her story is becoming all too familiar in the tidy tracts and upscale enclaves of Orange County, where a wave of teen heroin use has left authorities and parents grappling for answers.

At Touchstones, an adolescent residential treatment facility in Orange, program director Patti Ochoa says three out of 16 clients are primary heroin users, a figure she calls “unusually high.”

At Twin Town Treatment Center, an adolescent outpatient treatment center in Los Alamitos, the figure is higher: two out of five of their 13 to 17-year-old clients now cite heroin addiction upon admission.

Primary counselor Chris Logan says heroin, “seems to be the thing to do right now.” These are not street kids, he stresses, but kids from middle-income families.

At Alternative Options, an intensive outpatient treatment facility in Placentia, administrators say they rarely had heroin addicts at their facility a year ago. Today, six out of ten clients are being admitted with heroin addiction. The majority are females between 15 and 18 years old.

Sean Hogan, assistant professor of social work at Cal State Fullerton, says figures like those are considerably high for any population, not just teens. According to government statistics, approximately 5 percent of adolescents are admitted to treatment with heroin dependence, with most admitted with a marijuana-use disorder.

“Even if you back out those reporting marijuana as their primary drug of choice at admission, you still only get about 10 percent of adolescents reporting heroin as their primary drug of choice,” Hogan says.

Experts say that low cost, availability and the high that smoking heroin produces are fueling this new wave of young users.

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials, the heroin being trafficked from Mexico to Orange County is primarily black tar heroin and, to a lesser extent, Mexican brown. The low cost and increased availability of high purity heroin that can be snorted or smoked rather than injected with a needle makes it attractive to teens.

At Alternative Options, most of their teen clients begin using drugs “right out of grandma’s medicine cabinet,” program coordinator Linda Bates says. They progress to heroin when their Vicodin or Percocet habit becomes too expensive. She notes that prescription drugs often run $20 a pill or more, whereas a bag of heroin is fairly cheap.

“Many of these kids save up their lunch money and money mom gives them to buy heroin,” Bates says. “Ten dollars at a time – that’s enough to buy a small amount. You can get more for your money with the heroin.”

She says what teens don’t realize is that with heroin, addiction can be almost instant – usually right after their first use.

When teen addict Jackee smoked heroin for the first time, she wanted to use again right away.

“I thought, ‘This can’t be what everyone’s addicted to. It wasn’t even that great – I got sick!’ But I stopped getting sick after a while and I liked the numb feeling it gave me,” she said.

It wasn’t long before Jackee was using heroin daily – about eight or nine balloons a day, she said, adding that a balloon costs about $25 in Yorba Linda. She started dating a dope dealer who brought her free heroin. She also had a part time job so she was able to buy balloons on her own.

Jackie began doing anything to get her dope.

“I was ditching school to get heroin. I would have heroin dealers bring me my dope at the campus because I would be kicking (having withdrawals) at school, lying in the bathroom stalls puking and shaking,” she said.

She stole money from her family and her employer. She volunteered for the snack shack at little league baseball games, stuffing twenties into her pockets when nobody was looking. She stole money and iPods from backpacks in the girls’ locker room at school.

“This one guy I knew had over $100,000 from his parents’ deaths,” Jackee recalled. “He was a heroin addict so I immediately became his friend and flirted with him and slept with him because he fed me heroin.”

When Jackee’s parents took her to a hospital detoxification unit six months after her first use, she weighed 98 pounds, her hair was falling out in clumps and she couldn’t last a day without heroin. Stories like hers are not unusual, according to Tammie Skonseng, a counselor at Alternative Options, who explained that heroin addicts will beg, borrow and steal to get their drugs.

“Even if they have to sell their body, they will do it. We don’t find that with someone who is drinking or someone who is doing meth, but (heroin addicts) have to have it because they will be so sick without it.”

The Orange County city of Placentia has been hit exceptionally hard by heroin use. There, police department officials say heroin arrests have shot up 150 percent in the past 12 months, primarily among 16 to 23-year-olds.

Police Sgt. Kelly Kenehan, who supervises the Special Enforcement Detail for gangs, vice and narcotics, has been involved in nearly two dozen heroin-related arrests involving teens and young adults in the past six months. In response to the growing problem, his unit has stepped up street enforcement, especially in the hard-hit north end of the city.

In September, law enforcement seized 100 pounds of Mexican brown heroin in adjacent Anaheim, believed to be one of the largest heroin seizures in California. But that has failed to stem the flow of the narcotic into Placentia.

“Some of the search warrants that we’ve done and arrests we’ve made show that people are driving up to LA anywhere from two to five days (a week) to pick up and distribute it within our city,” Kenehan said, noting that heroin is readily available outside the high schools and the streets that surround them.

In November, a 17-year-old Placentia boy nearly died from a heroin overdose. Since then, Kenehan’s department has fielded calls from anxious parents asking about symptoms and paraphernalia associated with heroin use.

“Parents are freaking out,” Alternative Options’ Bates agrees, adding that most find it hard to believe the drug their child is using is heroin.

“But addiction is addiction. It’s bad with any drug, but we just don’t think of heroin as something that’s available here in Orange County in the high schools,” she says.

She cautions parents to pay attention to what their teen is doing.

“I think awareness is a big thing right now,” Bates says. “I think the community needs to get together and be aware. And watch. Because there’s a big thing going on.”

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This article originally appeared on The Daily Titan.

Despite State Subsidies, Class Sizes Begin to Rise Again in California Schools

Most of California’s largest school districts are increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, eroding the most expensive education reform in the state’s history.

California Watch surveyed the 30 largest K-12 school districts in the state and found that many schools are pushing class sizes to 24 in some or all of the early grades. Other districts have raised class sizes to 30 students – reverting to levels not seen in more than a decade.

The changes at more than two-thirds of the districts surveyed have parents and teachers concerned that the academic performance of millions of children will suffer. California already ranks 48th in the nation in terms of student to teacher ratios.

And new measures are in place that will allow districts statewide to raise class sizes even higher and still receive more than $1 billion in state aid — money that was originally intended to reward schools that kept class sizes low.

The class-size reduction program was adopted 13 years ago with much fanfare. Its goal was to bring the state’s overcrowded K-3 classrooms down to a maximum of 20 students for every teacher in the lower grades. As an incentive to participate, Sacramento gave school districts a generous annual subsidy for every child – now $1,071 per child.

Carol Kocivar, California PTA’s president-elect, said that adding just four students more than the base level of 20 represents a significant increase.

“When you start inching up above 20, kids don’t get the individual attention they need,” she said.

The state has invested about $22 billion in direct subsidies into reducing class size, including $1.8 billion this school year. This is on top of billions more that individual school districts have had to pay to cover the full costs.

The program was rooted in research from other states that showed students in smaller classrooms were more successful academically.

Even though the state never implemented measurements to track the academic impact of class-size reduction, the program has been enormously popular among parents and teachers. Yet because of the state’s budget crisis, school officials are finding it harder than ever to sustain.

That’s the case in both the Mount Diablo Unified School District, in Contra Costa County, and the San Jose Unified School District. In Orange County’s Capistrano Unified School District, second and third grade classes have grown to an average of 30.5 students. In Los Angeles, which enrolls 10 percent of California’s students, K-3 class sizes are creeping up to 24 in many schools.

“In better times it is something that should be protected, but in the times we are in, it is not something we can afford to continue,” said Don Iglesias, San Jose’s superintendent, noting that raising class sizes to 30 will save his district $4 million this year alone.

At Oliveira Elementary School, in a quiet residential neighborhood of Fremont, kindergarten teacher Cheryl Accurso is adjusting to a 30-student classroom for the first time in her 11-year career.

“My worry is that with 30 kids in the class, I won’t be able to reach out and touch, and get to every child in my classroom,” she said. “When they come in the morning, I make sure I tap them on the shoulder or pat them on the head, and say their names, so that there is at least one time when I know I can get to all the children.”

California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, who authored the class-size-reduction legislation when he was a state senator, said that it is no accident that elementary school students in recent years have achieved significant academic gains.

“That is now in jeopardy because we have so many school districts walking away from class-size reduction,” he said.

For most of the program’s existence, schools lost the entire subsidy if the average class size hit 21. That has proved to be a powerful incentive for schools to participate. All but about a dozen of the state’s 883 eligible districts have done so.

The state Legislature has designated lower class sizes as a top priority for education spending. The program was one of a handful that escaped the budget axe this year.

At the same time, however, lawmakers acted earlier this year to make it easier for schools to abandon the program. The move allows school districts to raise K-3 classes to as high as 31 students on average — at least for the next three years. Schools that raise the class size above 25 can still receive 70 percent of the subsidies they have received in the past. In past years, K-3 classes of 22 or more students would have been denied state funding through the program.

In theory, school districts could spend more than $1.2 billion of the $1.8 billion set aside for the program on classes with 25 or more students.

Rick Simpson, deputy chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, and her chief adviser on education policy, said lawmakers are hoping the popularity of the program will force school districts to keep class sizes small, despite reducing the penalties for exceeding the 20-student cap. He said the goal was to give school districts more flexibility in how they spend class-size reduction funds, something they have sought for years.

But former Gov. Pete Wilson, who initiated class-size reduction when the state enjoyed a budget surplus in 1996, said the recent changes “totally defeat the purpose of the program. If you get 70 percent of the funds for doing nothing, where is that money going? It is not accomplishing the purpose for which the program was devised.”

One purpose was to bring California’s class sizes down — to get them in line with those of other states. That did happen in the elementary grades. But by 2007, California had larger student-teacher ratios than every state except Utah and Arizona across all 12 grades.

Larger K-3 class sizes now threaten to push California even further behind.

“Having the largest class size in America is a crime and a shame,” said Delaine Eastin, the former superintendent of public instruction who oversaw the implementation of the class-size-reduction initiative until 2002.

It is not only poor districts that are affected. In fact, in some cases, districts serving large numbers of low-income and minority students have benefited from the additional $1.25 billion in Title 1 stimulus funds California receives from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

And nearly 500 of the state’s lowest-performing schools are still receiving funds from the Quality Education Investment Act, passed by the Legislature in 2007. These funds have allowed school districts like Los Angeles to maintain some of their K-3 class sizes at previous levels. The Fremont Unified School District has so far been able to keep class sizes to 20 in the first, second and third grades. But in kindergarten, enrollments have risen to 30.

This year, at Oliveira Elementary, Accurso has her students sitting in groups of six, at five tables, instead of groups of four, at five tables, as in previous years. Across the yard, one of the bungalows brought to the school when the class-size reduction program began in 1996, now stands empty.

But Accurso isn’t nostalgic about the smaller class sizes.

“My focus is on the 30 kids I have in front of me and what I can do for each of them,” she said. “I can’t be thinking about what might have been. I can’t go there.”

She says she is managing with the extra kids – in part because she gets help from another teacher for about two hours, as well as parent volunteers. “We’re just worried that we won’t be able to get them where they need to be at the end of the year,” she said.

In Los Angeles, each of the district’s 524 elementary schools could choose between retaining all their teachers and keeping class sizes low – or laying off teachers and keeping support staff such as school nurses, math coaches and “intervention coordinators.” At Plummer Elementary in the San Fernando Valley, principal Angel Barrett, made the painful choice to let go seven of the school’s first and second year teachers, out of a teaching staff of 45. As in many schools across Los Angeles, her classrooms are more crowded this year.

“You guys are doing a great job at listening,” Norma Plascencia, a teacher with 22 years of classroom experience, told her 24 second-graders on a recent morning, before launching into a lesson about family trees.

“It doesn’t make it impossible to teach, it just makes it harder,” she said. Plascencia said she and other teachers are doing much more advance planning to take into account the extra students. “We are not mass-producing items; we’re not making shoes or pizza. We are dealing with human beings — so four extra bodies are not just four extra bodies — it is everything that comes with them, or doesn’t come with them.”

Will it affect how her students will do this year?

“It better not,” she said. “You have to assume they can reach for the stars. Are some going to fall by the wayside? We’ll find out this year. Is there a possibility? Yes, I think there is.’’

Her comment points to the controversy that has so far been waged mostly in academic circles – whether class-size reduction makes a difference in boosting student performance. Dominic Brewer, a USC professor, said there is no compelling research showing that class-size reduction results in improved academic performance in California. What research does exist has typically been done in other states and in classrooms with even smaller enrollments than in California.

“A class of 20 may be terrible for an ineffective teacher,” he said. “And a great teacher can do great things with 30.”

Some education leaders who have been lukewarm about the program are now making the case that the funds could be better used.

“I don’t think 20-to-1 is sacred,” said L.A. schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines. More important, he said, “is the kind of quality time you spend with your students, and how you divide your time in the classroom.” To tackle high drop-out rates, he believes the real need is for smaller classes in middle and high schools, where class sizes in his district have soared to 40 and higher in some schools.

San Jose’s Iglesias said that even if the state’s economy rebounds, he’s not sure he’d put money back into the class-size-reduction program. “I’d put it into longer school days or Saturday classes rather than this,” he said.

But California superintendent O’Connell doesn’t share any of these concerns. He said his experience as a teacher in Ventura County convinced him of the merits of smaller classes.

The same goes for Doug Wheeler, a veteran kindergarten teacher in San Pablo, just north of Richmond, who said that the larger the class, the more difficult it is for teachers to “deliver the goods.” This year he volunteered to take more students into his bilingual class rather than having some of them be cut from the program. He now has 27 students.

“Teaching is not just standing in front of the class and delivering a lesson,” he said. “It’s about working with kids who are in danger of falling far behind. To get really good results, it has to be one on two, or even one on one.”

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This story was edited by Editorial Director Mark Katches and copy edited by William Cooley.

This article is part of a new collaboration between New America Media and California Watch, a new nonprofit journalism project at the Center for Investigative Reporting. California Watch has multimedia material to accompany this article on its website.

College students and grads face tough challenges with health care

Amber Singam, 30, and her husband, Shankar, 34, are ready to start a family. They have waited for years, so when Singam graduated from Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) with her master’s degree in May, everything seemed ready for a new addition to their family. All she needed was insurance coverage.

Back in August, Singam applied for private health insurance. She filed the paperwork, gave her medical history and any medical procedures she had undergone, but two months later she still hadn’t received an answer. Singam called the insurance company and discovered that she had been denied coverage.

A letter from the insurance company arrived the next day, stating she was denied based on her “high risk for HPV,” or human papillomavirus. For years, Singam had abnormal PAP smear tests, a routine gynecological exam of cells scraped from the cervix to detect cancerous or pre-cancerous conditions. She underwent a procedure four years ago to remove the abnormal cervical cells.

Since the procedure, Singam has received normal results from her PAP tests and has maintained a healthy lifestyle, so when she was denied insurance, it came as a surprise.

Singam is one of the 21 percent of Americans who apply for insurance and are denied health care coverage based on what the insurance industry considers as “pre-existing conditions,” an issue that has come under fire in the recent health care reform introduced by President Obama.

As talks of improving health care focus on seniors and children, much of the debate has neglected the burgeoning population of college-aged students and recent graduates who may not be able to afford private insurance or seek jobs that offer health benefits in this recession.

The number of Americans insured through employers is 164 million, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). However, with the economic recession and the new batches of graduates joining the work force every semester, looking for employers that offer health benefits are harder to find.

Though Singam was hired as a part-time instructor at a community college in September, her health benefits will not begin until next fall. She faces eleven months without health insurance coverage, but said she is willing to pay for private insurance, especially with their plans to have a baby.

“I can afford to pay for private insurance, but I can’t afford to give birth without insurance,” Singam said. “I am also not able to afford pre-natal care prior.”

Resources and services narrow when students graduate and lose the student status many insurance companies require. But currently enrolled students traverse an equally overwhelming path. They often rely on student clinics or government and public health programs.

College students who have medical conditions that require treatment, like Patrick Cruz, a 23-year-old living in Alameda, may not have the money for private health care.

Diagnosed with psoriasis - a non-contagious autoimmune disease that appears on the skin as raised patches or lesions - Cruz has been fighting for insurance to get treatment.

He was a working student, employed at a local Starbucks, and attending Alameda Community College when he was diagnosed last October. At that time, Cruz was insured by his employer and was able to get some treatment. But he lost coverage when he wasn’t able to meet the quarterly 240-work hour requirement to continue receiving health benefits.

“I was missing a lot of hours because there would be days…when I didn’t feel well,” Cruz said. “I had to quit because [the lesions] were all over my face, too.”

In December, he applied for Medi-Cal, but would not be seen by a specialist until February. By that time, his condition worsened and his plans of applying to the Respiratory Therapy program in a nearby college were put on hold.

Unemployed and short on money, Cruz and his family decided to go to the Philippines where his medicine and treatment would be cheaper. He returned to Alameda three months later with his skin partially cleared.

But flying back and forth to the Philippines isn’t much of an option.

“I can’t keep getting a quick fix. I need something that’ll last longer,” he said. “My condition gets so dependent on medications.”
Though he has received treatment on and off in the past year, his condition hasn’t improved. Regardless, he remains positive and hopeful that Medi-Cal will help him get the treatment he needs when he finally sees a dermatologist at the end of this month.

Until he gets private insurance, he relies on Medi-Cal and other low-cost options.

Knowing what’s out there

Many alumni associations offer discounted health insurance for association members and some grads may qualify for public programs for low-income individuals and families.

Most colleges and universities also include health fees in registration and tuition fees for enrolled students. This gives students access to the on-campus health clinics which usually offer basic medical tests and procedures for free or for a small fee.

Roughly 55,000 student appointments are scheduled per year at CSUF, said Mary Becerra, the director of health education and promotion at the Student Health and Counseling Center on campus. The health clinic is a full-functioning medical clinic, able to perform many basic lab tests and examinations, provide affordable medications through its own pharmacy, offer reproductive health services, and family planning services.

CSUF has an enrollment of 37,000 students and the school’s clinic is the most highly utilized student clinic in the entire CSU system, according to Becerra. Most students come during the high-stress times in their semesters - midterms and final examinations. With the flu season, the student clinic has also seen many upper respiratory issues.

About 70 percent of the students the clinic surveyed said they have some type of insurance, while the remaining 30 percent are the ones that are seen regularly - students who have limited or no access to any type of health care, Becerra said.

Though the student clinic offers a wide range of services, it is still limited. It is not equipped to handle medical emergencies and other serious conditions.

It is the emergencies - a broken arm or a chronic condition - that put students in financial troubles. This is where insurance becomes indispensable - for the “what-ifs.”

Becerra also noted that the University of California requires all students to have insurance coverage - either from a private provider or through the university. But based on tightening budgets of the CSU system and the recent tuition fee increase, it may be tougher to require insurance coverage for all students.

“Mandatory insurance may be out of the question,” she said.

Health care reform in the works

On February 4, President Obama spoke at the joint session of Congress and emphasized the need for a comprehensive health care reform. This speech marked the beginning of the heated debate about the condition of the nation’s health care system. Touted to be the biggest health care reform in decades, the reform aims to extend coverage to more Americans and control the sky-rocketing costs of health care.

About 46 million non-elderly Americans are uninsured, the KFF reports. This could be because of many reasons including unemployment, not meeting employer’s qualifications for insurance coverage or denied health insurance. Some college-aged students fall under these categories who, either willingly or not, forgo insurance coverage.

Recently, the House of Representatives passed an expansive health care bill that would guarantee medical coverage to 96 percent of Americans. The bill would place a tax surcharge on wealthier Americans as well as new taxes on individual and family plans whose values exceed the set amount, according to CNN. The plan would cost under $1 trillion in ten years.

Last week, the Senate Finance Committee introduced a health care reform bill that will cover 30 million Americans and would cost $849 billion over the next ten years. It is aimed to cut costs to individuals, companies and the government and increase efficiency.

Both bills include a public option plan, but with varying provisions and conditions. The House bill requires individuals to buy insurance, with steep penalties for not complying, which could reach up to 2.5 percent of the individual’s income. The Senate bill is a bit more forgiving with fines that could reach up to $750 for not having coverage.

Though both houses have different bills in the works, both agree on broad changes including cutting down costs and preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on past medical histories.

The Senate bill moves to the floor after Thanksgiving recess for a full debate by lawmakers, giving them an opportunity to introduce amendments to the bill. A long process awaits and a final version of the two bills would have to be approved before the president can sign it into law.

Working with what they have

Currently, CSUF offers insurance coverage for purchase through Anthem Blue Cross. The student insurance offers low-cost group insurance coverage to uninsured students and their dependents on either an annual or semester basis.

Nathan Fletcher, 32 and his daughter have been insured through CSUF’s student insurance for two semesters now. Previously employed by a furniture store in Lake Forest, Fletcher was let go in February because of the recession and was concurrently attending college to fill pre-requisites for the credential program.

When he lost his job, he immediately signed up for health insurance through the university. It cost him $2,000 for health coverage. The fees include $1,100 to cover his daughter and another $1,000 for himself under the Domestic Student insurance plan.

Though he receives financial aid and works part-time as an Instructional Aide, Fletcher admitted that paying the fees at the beginning of every semester is stressful.

“I have no choice. If I have to be prepared [for next semester's payment], I will be,” he said. “It’s expensive to purchase, but the alternative is unfeasible.”

Despite the price, it is still cheaper than private insurance premiums and the school’s insurance gives him sufficient coverage for the price he’s paying, Fletcher said.

Fletcher is one of the lucky ones able to navigate the options available to him and could afford coverage. Also, since the insurance on campus is a group insurance, whoever enrolls will get covered regardless of past medical history.

But depending on the students’ age, status and dependents, premiums range from $500 to over $2,000. All the fees are payable on the day the student signs up for insurance.

Students who don’t have the money risk having no coverage and sometimes utilize the student clinic. Others see the fees and say no altogether, despite the ample coverage and low deductibles of student insurance. Some students just don’t know where to begin.

Most students who have no access to insurance would have to figure it out for themselves, said Joe Vargas, whose Populations in Multicultural Health class at CSUF studies the disparities in access to health care for different groups.

Many undergraduate students are covered through their parents and guardians’ health insurance but some, who are no longer eligible because of insurance requirements, are left with a difficult decision.

“Students today would have to learn how to maneuver the system,” Vargas said.

He noted that students with families, such as expecting mothers, face an even harder challenge.

“It must be challenging to balance pre-natal care, school, jobs and many other things,” he said.

The battle of costs and available resources forces many college students to gamble with their health. Many of them would have to rely on faith. Faith that their immune systems don’t fail and faith that nothing happens to them until they get a job with health benefits, or until the promise of a comprehensive health care reform becomes a reality.

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Francesca Gacho holds a B.A. in English from Cal State Fullerton. She is an intern at Minority Dreams Magazine, where she hopes to spread her journalistic wings, explore and hone her writing ability, and gain insight into the myriad of issues in today’s soundbite-focused world. Her writing interests include human interest pieces that delve into culture, arts, current events, and community service.

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This article was republished at New America Media on Nov. 26.

Living and Growing in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - In the district of Praça Onze, around the corner from Rua Marquês de Sapucaí where the world-famous Rio Carnaval makes its annual procession, the presence of Crescer e Viver, or “Living and Growing,” is unmistakable with its prominent blue-and-white striped circus tent. It is fenced off in an almost sanctifying gesture from its surroundings of a weed-ridden, empty tarmac lot dotted with a few cars and backed by a panorama-spanning view of Rio de Janeiro’s equally famous favelas (slums).

Across from the lot, the newly built Praça Onze metro station stands in stark contrast to the old, crackling buildings - a sign of progress in this decaying part of Rio de Janeiro. The facing walls of the cozy and quaint staff offices at Crescer e Viver are one continuous mural, colorful and bright, depicting cartoon characters, clowns, and smiling children. Painted in bold, block letters are the words “ART & CULTURE! Promoting citizenship.”

Under the tent, children are gathered in various groups, each led by an instructor. Some of these instructors were once students themselves. A group of about a dozen bright-eyed youths are being taught tissu, a form of aerial ballet using silk ribbons. Some appear nervous, others eager, as they watch a peer climb and descend in daring twists and turns. The younger ones, about 6 or 7-years-old, are gathered in a circle doing stretches and push-ups. The more advanced and experienced teens learn the staples of circus acrobatics: back flips, front flips, somersaults, and tumbling. The reverberating laughter and chatter of children at play mixed with the rhythmic stamping of feet upon the cushioned mats is constant under the 40-meter high tent.

The children mostly come from the surrounding favelas of Coroa, São Carlos, Estácio, Querosene, and Zinco, places where laughter is sometimes drowned out by the ominous sound of gun battles. It is the all-too-familiar sound of turf wars fought between rival drug lords or shootouts with the police or special military units. This drug war has been a fact of life for favela dwellers ever since the Colombian cocaine trade expanded into Brazil in the early 1970s.

Ironically, many of the soldiers who fight this brutal war are the children of these communities. These “lost children,” according to Joseph Page, scholar of Brazilian studies, have been, for the last two decades, “part of an ever-expanding pool of people without hope, a dehumanized subspecies that poses a threat to social stability.” He says they are the byproduct of the savage capitalism that fed the Brazilian economy in the late 1960s and early 1970s and took an especially harsh toll on the children of the families forgotten in the countries rush to development.

That generation of children was raised only knowing poverty, crime, and violence. With the military dictatorship at the time turning a blind eye to the problem, it became a vicious cycle that has continued on to the current generation of children. Many have ended up as part of the growing population of “street children,” estimated by UNICEF to be at around 12 million in the entire country.

If these children aren’t making their living on the streets selling their bodies, candy, or stealing, they are caught up in the drug trade or are at risk of becoming involved in gangs actively trying to recruit them. Jens Glüsing, a Brazil-based correspondent for Spiegel International, says gangs target children 16 and under specifically because they can not, under current law, be given an adult prison sentence. This means if they are arrested, they would only be in prison for a few months, and in most cases, would return to the gang shortly after release.

It is these at-risk youths and adolescents that Vinicius Daumas and Junior Perim founded Crescer e Viver for. The organization was born out of the Porto da Pedra (Port of the Rock) Samba School in the neighborhood in São Gonçalo. In 2001, their chosen theme ‘crescer e viver agora é lei’ or ‘growing up and living is law now’ paid homage to the Statute of The Child and Adolescent. Passed in 1990 by the Brazilian National Congress, the landmark legislation guaranteed children and adolescents the right to protection of life and health through the implementation of public social policies. After carnival, several members proposed transforming the theme into a social program and 3 years in, it had become an institution with about 200 members, a number that has grown beyond expectations.

“Nowadays we are independent and recognize our history and birth in the samba school, but we are not attached to that anymore. The samba school plays carnival, which is its real purpose. The social program, Crescer e Viver, became an organization and has its own life. The son was born, grew up and walks with its own legs” says Daumas.

He and Perim both recognized early on that, despite the passing of the statute, underprivileged children and adolescents were still falling through the cracks of society and into all the wrong places. No samba school, including Porto da Pedra, is equipped to tackle the problem as their limited resources are put into the competitions.

Since the 1990 statute was passed, there has been a slow, but steady shift in societal attitude from exclusion and blame of the street child to incorporation and acceptance of collective responsibility for the welfare of the child, a move that Daniel Hoffman of the North American Congress on Latin America wrote in a 1994 report was “a greater challenge than writing new laws.” Crescer e Viver and the thousands of non-government organizations like it that have sprang up since the last decade to meet this challenge, are a testament to that change.

However, on the part of the government, little has changed. Hoffman, in the same report notes, “The obstacles to implementation of the Child Statute are considerable, including lack of basic resources and infrastructure, resistance from local and state-level politicians, and non-compliance within the judiciary (which loses much of its power under the new laws). Application of the Statute is blocked, above all, by popular attitudes that continue to regard street children as present or future criminals that need to be repressed.”

To Daumas and Perim, tangible and permanent social change comes in the form of grass roots movements dedicated to the empowerment of young people. “It’s what we call socio-productive inclusion of these young people” says Daniela Ramiris, former Assessor of Institutional Development at Crescer e Viver. She says using the circus program as a vehicle, the organization instills in these young people the will to transform society and the conditions they live in and educates them on their rights as citizens. Their ultimate goal is to give them the practical skills, knowledge, and confidence to pave their own path in life.

In the United States, this is the expected role of teachers and mentors, but in Rio, the public education system is in a constant crisis. Teachers are underpaid and lack basic teaching supplies, many facilities are in disrepair, and misplaced priorities at the local and state level leave things like after school programs and computer labs something to wish for. Since the early ’80s, the nonprofit sector, which includes social, art, and education programs like Crescer e Viver, have been making up for the shortcomings of Rio’s public sector, especially in those areas. Not many complain though. Self-reliance is as Brazilian as samba.

Local Event Promotes Art for Peace, Educates Communities

The intensity of truth emanating from spoken word combined with artistic expressions and real stories illuminated a warehouse sitting in a corner of Inglewood into a sight of inspiration last week.

Held at Chuco’s Justice Center with a universal goal of raising awareness about the crisis in Gaza, speakers from various humanitarian organizations arrived at “Compassion and Expression: Art for Peace” on March 7 to educate and encourage positive action.

“We all have the power to make effective change. Peace begins with me,” said Laura Ava Tesimale, a speaker from the One Global Family Project, a pilot project under Manav Sadhna.

The group provides aid to struggling local organizations around the world that provide services to  needy and marginalized communities.

Tesimale traveled extensively to African and South Asian countries with her daughter, who witnessed and questioned the attacks on the World Trade Center at the age of 11. The trips have allowed both mom and daughter, now 18, to understand and appreciate different cultures.

“There’s so much negativity about Pakistan, I wanted her to see for her own self how great these people are,” the elder Tesimale said. “I wanted to not only touch the hearts of the children there but start it with my own daughter’s heart.”

Islamic Relief, an international relief organization, was also present hoping to raise awareness of crises around the world.

“My goal tonight was to share more information about the humanitarian crisis [in Gaza] and how great the need is, what kind of suffering the people are still going through and to not forget them even though the issue might no be in the news right now,” said Communications Manager Mostafa Mahboob.

He emphasized that people in the midst of deeply controversial issues are still humans in desperate need and the rest of society should help.

Speeches were followed by art activities, spoken word and music played by DJ nPrevail.

Activist Vivien Sansour recited poems of war and personal struggles as attendants made cards to send to Israel or Gaza. Several voiced their thoughts through video messages, that would be sent overseas, to show solidarity with those in war prone nations.

Tasneem Noor, 25, of Culver City created a small card with the words, Love with Faith.

“For me, faith is where my hope comes from,” she said. “If whoever receives [this card] smiles [and] if it strengthens their faith even a tiny bit, it’ll be worth it.”

Local artists Mark Gonzales, Omar Offendum and Skim stirred emotions with songs of humanity –  questioning war, consumerism and personal identity. Their words danced to the beats of hip hop and R&B.

Gonzales attends several community-building events but also aims to create understanding by approaching hostile communities.

“It would be hypocritical of me as a grandchild of immigrants to not support other people, [from] those in Gaza [to] the women in Watts, [LA],” he said before his anticipated performance.

This evening of self expression and education was hosted by Be the Cause, a not-for-profit service organization based on the dedicated work of volunteers.

“[We encourage] being the change you wish to see in the world,” said one of the organizers Kristeen Singh, 30. “We were able to create an event raising awareness about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and let people know what organizations are doing and how we can help.”

The event’s art activities, from writing poems to painting, all had a common goal of creating a message that lived on long after that evening. A message the organizers hoped would lead to understanding and dialogue.

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Credit: Urmi Rahman, a freelance journalist residing in California. She received her B.A. in political science with minors in English and journalism from Cal State Fullerton. Urmi, 25, is also the editor and co-founder of Minority Dreams Magazine.

Squeezing School In As a Top Priority

(This article originally appeared on the Daily Titan)

Jegatha Raju loves to learn. So much that the 60-year-old grandmother travels two bus lines to get from her Garden Grove home to her classes at California State University, Fullerton. She started with a few business and accounting classes, but now Raju is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in human services and plans to earn her master’s degree.

“I wanted to give myself higher education,” Raju said. “I wanted to see how it goes, and I just couldn’t quit.”

Raju, who learned English as a second language, is one of the growing number of students returning to college in their 30’s, 40’s and beyond. The latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Education show that 40 percent of college students are 25 years or older, a 10 percent increase over a 10 year span.

According to the CSUF Adult Reentry Center, 15 percent of students enrolled at CSUF are over 30. Some, like Raju, return to college for personal fulfillment, while others seek to change careers or update their skills for the job market. Most find the rewards far outweigh the challenges.

Kristen Herrin, 29, returned to CSUF this semester for economic reasons. Her husband lost his job last year, and although he is currently working, their income was cut in half. A mother of two young sons, she hopes to earn her degree in child and adolescent development and become a substitute teacher by the time her 4-year-old is in kindergarten.

“If I had it my way, I’d stay home with my kids, but it’s just not going to happen,” Herrin said. “With the kids in preschool, now, we have so much more on our plate than we had two years ago.”

Herrin often does homework past midnight. Exhausted much of the time, she said focusing on her goal and the financial benefits it will bring her family keeps her motivated.

“In a year from now I’ll be done and I’ll be thinking, ‘look at all the options I have now,’” she said.

Motivation is one of the hallmarks of the adult student, Catherine VanRiette, Adult Reentry Coordinator at CSUF, said.

“These students are driven. They want to be here,” VanRiette said. “The motivation is different when you are older. This time it’s for them.”

VanRiette facilitates a weekly “Student Success Workshop” at the Adult Reentry Center on campus. Her goal is to help adult students have a rewarding and less frustrating experience, she said.

At a recent workshop, topics included math anxiety, writing term papers and test-taking skills. The mood was positive, the discussion lively.

“Know your learning style! Get your mind engaged! Confidence plays a big part in your success!” VanRiette counseled the participants throughout the session. “And don’t over think the test questions, or you’ll talk yourself out of the right answer.”

The participants nodded in agreement.

Some of the issues discussed were handling stress, managing their time and developing self-confidence.

“Adult students have a tendency to be hard on themselves,” VanRiette said. “They expect they should be able to handle everything, but often there is not enough time. They tend to be nervous about what they forgot since the last time they were in school. We give them tips to organize their time, organize their thoughts.”

Learning to manage her time has been crucial for Rosa Heckenberg, 55. The full-time sociology major juggles family, volunteering on the CSUF diversity program and serving on the parent advisory board at San Diego State, where her two children attend school.

Heckenberg explained how she balances her roles and responsibilities.

“I set realistic priorities, and I know how many hours I need to study so I cut out my social time,” she explained.

And she tries not let the stress get to her either.

“The times when I feel overwhelmed with homework, I try to relax,” Heckenberg said. “I’m very careful about resting enough. I exercise every morning. If I don’t take time for myself, I can’t work.”
The women said that raising their families and economics are reasons they put off getting a degree.

“I was a single mom until I was 30,” Anna Lonetti, a human services major, said. “So there was no way, financially, I could go back to school.”

Lonetti, 40, worked full-time at the same job for 15 years. An industry strike four years ago made her re-evaluate her priorities and, with the blessings of her husband and three children, she decided to make the change.

She chose CSUF because she heard good things about it and it was close to home – a big plus when you have a family, she added.

And she said she’s excited to be back.

“This is my last shot at getting my education,” she said. “If I don’t finish now, I’ll never do it.”

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Credit: Jennifer Karmarkar, a student and freelance writer who covers diversity and

women’s issues.  She lives in Orange County, California.