Now!SBGN Newsletter Date/2014 Edition #2

Information Voice of the People

City Art

pg.6-8 pg.9pg.4-5pg.3

Faces ofSB

By Anthony Victoria

San Bernardino Gen-eration Now member Matthew Greenleaf was overwhelmed with emo-tion as he saw residents arrive at Perris Hill Park for CommUnity Fest on Saturday May 31.

“I’ve been off and on nervous about the turn-out the entire time,” he explained. “To come out here and see how many people came out is great. There was a moment where I stood back and observed everything. I became emotional see-ing the community come together as one.”

Greenleaf ’s reaction is un-derstandable considering the state the city of San Bernardino is currently in. As young children climbed the rock wall, as young adults gathered around the stage to listen to reggae and blues, and

graffiti artists painted the bathroom walls of the park, the city leaders and congressional candidates of San Bernardino City and the Inland Empire respectively gazed upon a new generation with both admiration and wonder.

The city of San Ber-nardino, as former city mayor Pat Morris told the San Bernardino Sun, was brought into a renais-sance time by San Ber-nardino Generation Now. The mostly young adult members of the group aim to revive the city and bring in more positivity through community en-gagement, as opposed to the high crime rates and bankruptcy updates that

CommUnity Fest gathers hundreds of people at Perris Hill Park

usually occupy the minds of both residents and city officials.

After months of planning, the group for the past two weeks vigorously promot-ed the event by passing out flyers around the city’s college campuses, putting up posters in local busi-nesses, knocking door to door in different neigh-borhoods, and embarking in a social media cam-paign to attract younger residents.

The day prior to the festi-val, Greenleaf, the ven-dor coordinator for the festival, along with several other members of SBGN installed new doors on the park’s bathrooms and cleaned up trash laying around. The group makes it a priority to clean up the city’s parks, organiz-ing bi-weekly clean up events every month.And as residents stepped on to the western side of Perris Hill Park, they

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noticed not only a clean

Jennica Billins, Jorge Heredia, and Matthew Greenleaf Preparing the plan for Community Fest.

Front Page News

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San Bernardino has a chance to do better. Each and every individual here has the ability to rise up and do anything they desire.

For a long time we have been known as the laugh-ing stock of the Inland Empire. Our home is con-sidered so lame it is the butt of every joke around the rest of San Bernardino and Riverside County.

Must we always be on the negative end of the spec-trum? I personally don’t think so.I believe we are not quite as bad as our neighbors think, though we do have some serious issues. But all of that can change with our involvement.

Bad things happen all over the state, all over the country, and around the world. However, good news is just as abundant, though it may not be as spectacular to people or as highlighted by popular media.

Are we so ignorant that we buy into the reputa-tion built around our city?

I personally don’t think so! There are people here who love this city. Wheth-er their love is for San Bernardino as it currently is, as it used to be in the past, or for what it has the potential to be in the future, we all have a say in what direction we want the city to move towards.

We all have what it takes if only we use our voices. Not for complaining about our problems, but for proposing our solu-tions.

Voting is the simplest way to voice an opinion on our issues. However, by voting one is essentially passing the responsibility on to someone else. No individual person has all the answers to our ques-tions, or solutions to our problems.

Elected officials voice the opinions of those who vote for them. What does that say about us? Only 8% of us voted, so the majority of our residents are speechless.

Are we failing to com-municate or failing to understand one another? Are we failing to make ourselves heard? Why? It appears many young people and adults have grown apathetic and don’t

believe in the electoral system. They believe that their vote makes no difference. They use that as an excuse to absolve responsibility.

That’s unacceptable and it’s essentially giving up before giving it a chance. If 80% of us voted and we still managed to go bankrupt then maybe we’d have reason to lose hope in the system. But until that happens I will personally strive to make a difference.

Now is the time to do something in addition to participating in the elec-toral process. Now is the time to speak up. Now is the time to move forward.

In order to do so we don’t need to share the same interests, but if we could all just persistently com-municate our experiences and opinions we’d be in much better shape. We’d have all our sides repre-sented. Therefore, a true majority would be ac-counted for not an 8-14% minority vote. Unless we’re all a part of these discussions regarding our programs, projects, and available resources and learning from each other, life won’t change.

These days we are so into technological advances in social media. We focus so much energy into build-ing an entity , a character

of ourselves in a digital world that we fail to see, hear, and talk to those who are physically beside us. We supposedly strive so hard to be popular, to be known, to stand out in society. If we truly believe in society then let’s be social, let’s all start talking now.

*Learn more about Christian and how hes making a differencewww.communityfests.com/introducing_some_more_of_usww

Voice of the PeopleChristian Flores

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park, but an IN-N-Out food truck, two per-forming stages, several booths, and a dunk tank. Councilmember Benito Barrios was brave enough to volunteer to sit on the suspended seat in the tank, as colleagues took shots trying to knock him into the water.Greenleaf said the motive behind organizing the festival was to bring the community together and demonstrate that there are no differences among the residents of San Ber-nardino.“Our differences are not that drastic,” he said. “We can all get together and have a good time.” Jennica Billins, the lead organizer of the festival, said what she enjoyed the most was meeting the families of some of the SBGN members.

“They brought out their families and it was awe-some,” she said. “It goes to show that when we work together we can do amaz-ing things and create the future and here it is.”Isaac Conde, 25, said the event was a good indica-tor of what SBGN can do as an organization and what San Bernardino can change into.“There’s a lot to do you can’t be bored here,” he said. “There’s yoga, aero-bics, political debates, live music, art, food. It’s great. The city is not in a good situation and these people are trying to bring change and do things like this. That way people don’t have to be scared and instead could hang out and have a good time as a community.”What’s next for San Ber-nardino Generation Now? For Billins it is figuring

how the group could be the best they could be. “It’s figuring out how to use all our resources and talent and boy do we have a lot of resources and tal-ent in the city,” she said. “We need to learn how to use it to the best of our abilities.”

*Article published in Inland Empire Commu-nity Newspapers on June 4th, 2014.

Different Shades of Females and SBGN weeks before the Festival.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

Quote For Thought

Jim Mulvihill and Ernie Garcia at the Civic Lounge enjoying the company of our elected officials.

4 5Faces of SB

Tom Dolan

Leaders in train-ing:ICUC continues to encourage youth to take on leadership roles

By Anthony Victoria

The Inland Congregations United for Change (ICUC) have invested in the lives of youth in the Inland Empire for several years.

From encouraging high school students to voice their concerns about graduation rates and

university preparation at local school district board meetings to orga-nizing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Affordable Care Act, and Local Control Fundability Formula workshops. As well as, encouraging parents of lower class communities to take an interest in their children’s education, the faith-based organization aims to revitalize dying neighborhoods.

Their current staff and former youth organizer(s) continue to take on that challenge. Cal State San Bernardino

Graphic Design student and San Bernardino Generation Now member Michael Segura, 22, was recently appointed to the San Bernardino City Fine Arts Commission. Sergio Luna, 30, of Highland has been training parents around the San Ber-nardino Unified School District about the A-G requirements that are needed for their children to attend the University of California or Califor-nia State University.

ICUC Executive Direc-tor Tom Dolan—mentor to both men—said he is excited to see the work they are doing in San Bernardino.

“It’s good to see everyone has a passion,” said ICUC Executive Director Tom Dolan. “It helps them to sustain and exercise their leadership.”

Luna and Dolan met about a decade before they began their organiz-ing work in ICUC. The former was caught with a weapon at Pacific High School and was expelled. Like many of the at-risk youth in San Bernardino

at that time, he was sent over to Dolan who was a youth organizer based out of the Central City Lutheran mission.

“When he came over to the mission, he had only been living here for a short time,” said Dolan. “I got to know him, his sister, and his mother. We brought him in here and he began to learn how to take computers apart and put them together. He comes from the right place and has his heart in the right place. He’s a great guy, but there’s more guys and girls like him. That’s what makes ICUC so great.”

Dolan, who has worked in community organizing efforts in the United States and Latin America for over 30 years, and currently teaches courses on com-munity organizing at Pitzer College’s Ontario program, said the biggest assumption community leaders in the Inland Empire are making is attributing violence to youth. He attributes what he calls structural violence,to the lack of quality housing, daycare, preschool, health care, that expose children to risky environments.

Tom Dolan Director of ICUC

“I dislike the term ‘Youth Violence’. I like to switch it around and say its ‘Violence against Youth’,” said Dolan. “The first term makes it sound like it’s youth commit-ting the violence and even if it is youth in the gangs or hurting someone, studies done by experts demon-strates that youth pull the trigger because there’s been so many acts of violence committed against them when they were children that they had no option than to do that.”

Dolan went on to further express that the problem isn’t the dishonesty of youth, which was attributed to the growing issue of homicides

in San Bernardino at a recent commission meeting, but a systematic problem.

“The problem isn’t dishon-esty,” he said. “That’s put-ting the problem into the character of young people. It’s a system that is robbing people of opportunities of what they could become in life. So they end up exer-cising risky behaviors. We structure that.”

*Article published in Inland Empire Community News-papers on May 22, 2014.

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Across from the Regal Cinema on 4th street.

City Art

6733 Del Rosa Drive

4124 North E Street

New murals were completed on April 12th during the 2nd annual Coyote Care Day event. Cal State San Bernardino made it possible by sponsoring local artists with paint and volunteers to take on this massive project. For more info on how you can join Coyote Cares Cay check out: engage.csusb.eduor Bryant Fairleybfairley@csusb.edu

Two New Murals Completed

MURALS

For two months, college students, commu-nity leaders, and teachers worked with students from various elementary schools in San Bernardino on art projects that range from photography, to drawing, to poetry and prose. The impact of the “Be part of the Art” program was significant enough to garner the at-tention of their parents and soon enough they too began to grab brushes and engage in the fun activity. One particular parent, Arturo Olivera, was influenced by his daughter 10-year-old Justine to participate. “I don’t know how to draw that well, but I draw what I see and what I

imagine,” he said. “My daughter kept on ask-ing me to come because she said this could be an important step for her, so I decided to come out and support.” On Saturday April 26, the San Bernardino County Museum held the Art Jam to highlight the work of the young students and celebrate the importance of the Arts and Humanities. Vol-unteers who organized classes and workshops—formally referred to as “pods”—were mainly stu-dents from Cal State San Bernardino’s Students and Coyotes: Instruction in Poetry and Prose (SCIPP) program and student/community organizers from the San Bernardino Generation Now group.

For many of the elementary students and parents, it was a relatively new experience, accord-ing to CSUSB English Professor Juan Delgado. By working with the un-dergraduate and graduate students involved in the SCIPP program and Eng-lish and MFA (Music and Fine Art) departments, they were able to receive newfound information relating to college. “Many of these families live on the west side of San Bernardino and they are literally five minutes from the campus and they had never been there,” Delgado said. “When they came to visit the campus, they were blown away. It’s a win-win for us. That’s

why we’re all happy about this.”The different pods that were organized were: a pod organized by the San Bernardino Generation Now group that included painting, drawing, pho-tography, planting, and calligraphy, a poetry and prose pod organized by CSUSB English and MFA students, and a video and film pod organized by community organizer Alex Avila of 4e (Equity, Empowerment, Educa-tion, and Excellence). Several of the students had the opportunity to share

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Art Jam highlights mentorship provided by CSUSB students and San Bernardino communityBy Anthony Victoriavictoriaanthony91@gmail.com

Parent sharing her positive experience as Christian Flores holds up the mic to allow her to present her personal journal.

their work during the Art Jam. 11-year-old Gerardo Mondragon wrote a short story titled “Past is the Present”, which was about a dream that included superheroes and dragons. He was helped by San Bernardino Generation Now members Christian Flores and Jorge Heredia, who are both students at CSUSB. “Our pedagogy of it all,” explained Heredia, “is that we gave the kids free range and experimented with a lot of areas. Your children are all really great writers.”Isaac Escalera, 26, a fourth year MFA and Poetry student at CSUSB who helped lead the poetry and prose pod said he believes the biggest lesson the students took away from the “Be part of the Art” program was the notion of encouraging to take chances.“It’s taught us that the biggest lesson for these

kids is to take risks and chances to explore dif-ferent avenues of art,” he said. “Many of these kids have these preconceived notions that they can’t do this or that so they stop taking chances or don’t want to share art. This is kind of that safe environ-ment where they can take those chances and en-courage each other.”Leilani Hernandez, whose daughter Madison and James took part in the program said the pro-gram helps bring families together and is a great experience for everybody.“This program teaches them to express them-selves whether it’s through writing, through poetry or painting,” she said. “I’m a working mother now so I don’t get to see them as much so being with them at these times is really wonderful.”

*Article published in Inland Empire Com-munity Newspapers on May 1, 2014.

Christian listens intently to one of the youth as she gets over her stage fright about to present to the entire group.

While walking in down-town San Bernardino you will encounter a multitude of portraits of individuals displayed on buildings and on bridges. Who are these people, you might ask? Why are their pictures up there? What did they do? The answers to these questions are very simple. These individu-als are San Bernardino community members, city advocates and organizers. This project has the vision of making our home a place that we pride ourselves in.These portraits are part

of an international en-deavor called the Inside out Project. It was started by an artist named Jr. He believes that the people in a community could be ignited in a positive way through art. His passion to create change worldwide motivated him to begin a worldwide project. The mission is to print out enlarged portraits of images sent to him by community members from around the globe. Participants believe this project will benefit their city and their cause. After a long time of apa-thy, hopelessness, corrup-tion, and administrative complacency this project was brought to San Ber-nardino. There are many individuals out there that see San Bernardino and

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San Bernardino Group Action Project

8 9do not see it as the hopeless city, instead they see it as a city of progress. San Bernardino is a city where arts are thriving, knowledge is plentiful, and where the community is united and is becoming stronger than ever. Our city is a place full of potential, where all of the vacant lots and buildings are spaces where change can be made. How will these portraits or any oth-er art projects displayed in San Bernardino make a difference? If you live in San Bernardino and recall experiencing overwhelm-ing negativity, this art renaissance indicates that the city is changing for the better. It is a step for-

ward to creating a culture and community that has never existed in the city. A new future that focuses on the positive versus the negative; where art flour-ishes, so does economy. For we are in the age of the creative class, and it is up to us the community members to make those changes happen.

If you would like more information the San Bernardino Group Ac-tion Project, please go to our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/san.berdoaction?fref=ts

If you would like to see other Inside Out Projects around the world, please visit the inside out project

website: www.insideoutproject.net/en You can also see the TED-TALKS that JR. Presented on the Inside Out Project here in California in 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn2W3X_pGh4

Upcoming EventsJOIN THE MOVEMENT

Want us to highlight your event or favorite community member? Contact the editor Anthony Victoria at victoriaantho-ny91@gmail.com

June 20th @ 8 pmBlack Flame Collective386 W Orange Show Rd, San Bernardino, CA 92408

Next General Meeting

June 13th6-7pm Food Flood #4The Mug1588 W Highland Ave, San Bernardino, CA 92411

June 18th, 28th5-7 pmPark Clean Up and Softball GameSeccombe Lake Park(*softball game after clean up)

June 27thTime TBDMedia TrainingCal State San Ber-nardino

June 27th4-6pmFood Flood #5Latern Tea3970 N Sierra WaySan Bernardino, CA 92405

June 9th,16th,23rd6-9pmMarket Night Perris Hill Park (near tennis courts)

June 28th 4:30-6:30pmBike Ride w/MayorSan Bernardino Public Golf Course1494 S Waterman AveSan Bernardino, CA

July 8th3:30pmCity hall 6th floorArt Commission Meeting

Corner of 4th and E Street. Next to Carousel Mall Parking Structure. Across from our Historic California Theatre.

Photography

Community Festival at Perris Hill Park 2014

Photo Credit:www.uproarmassmedia.com

Fabian TorresLouver CaraAnd others