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By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer
June 15 -- It's close to 10 o'clock on a weekday
night at the Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center. The sloppy
joes cooked for more than a dozen youths have been eaten and
the table cleaned up. Long gone are the skateboarders who
at dusk turned nearby steps into their personal obstacle course.
All that's left are teens quietly engrossed in homework,
working out, doing artwork or watching the center's new indoor
mural begin to take shape.
"I like it because we're the ones making it," said
a local teenager, as he carefully burned an outline of the
Santa Monica Pier onto a piece of poster paper with a device
called a pouncer machine. "It's a good skill to learn."
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| Mural unfods at Night
Bridges. (Photos by Olin Ericksen) |
Aztec figures and Latino and black faces are clearly outlined
but awaiting color. A thorny rose bursts through concrete,
illustrating a lyric by hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur.
Some of the images are familiar faces from the Pico Neighborhood.
Some are reminders of tragic events, such as the killing of
Miguel Martin, a young man fatally shot on the outskirts of
the park late last year.
As the mural goes up this summer, the hope is to bring walls
down for several local youths and their families, but especially
those considered most at-risk of becoming involved with gangs
or, possibly, a run-in with police.
The effort is part of a $750,000 federally funded program
dubbed "Night Bridges," which includes weeks’
worth of after-hour tutoring, counseling, life coaching and
other activities. Launched three months ago, the program is
part of a larger, three-year effort to reduce gang and youth
violence in Santa Monica.
Based in the heart of the Pico neighborhood, Santa Monica’s
poorest and most culturally diverse area, the program offers
a safe haven from the streets and a place kids can learn,
work out, eat and have fun in a stable, supportive environment.
"It starts with their hearts to see what they want to
have in the mural," said Juan-Carlos Munoz Hernandez,
37, who with Alex Kizu, 36, was hired three months ago as
art and mural teachers. Many may say they are mentors too.
"This was a technique used by Michaelangelo," said
Hernandez, who flipped off the lights and flashed a projected
image of a family's photograph he'll trace and add to the
mural. "It's kind of neat to know I'm passing this technique
on to them."
The duo responsible for a famous East Los Angeles "Home-Boy"
mural are two in a handful of City staff that oversee the
program and work closely with the non-profit Pico Youth and
Family Center.
If successful, Night Bridges may also serve as a model for
other local youth programs, according to City officials.
"We absolutely want to replicate the model with the
rest of our youth programs," said Julie Rusk, the City’s
human services manager. "Now we have to go through and
figure out what works."
Still at the start of a three-year funding cycle, the program
is admittedly undergoing some severe growing pains.
While a City-hired evaluator said the level of support and
collaboration for the program is unmatched and that other
programs he has worked with in the past 20 years have all
taken patience -- including in Los Angeles, Arkansas and Texas
-- nearly 15 of the 25 teens who first enrolled in the program
were forced to leave because they didn’t participate.
Hoping to change up the social dynamic and to use it as an
incentive to reenlist, officials have since opened the program
to teens who may still be considered at-risk.
"It's really difficult to get this type of program off
the ground," acknowledged Melvin Musick.
'There's one man that said to me 'I just spent the last two
years in jail. Nobody asked about what I wanted or anything.
And now everybody around here is in your face asking you what
do you need, what do you want, do you like this."
I think for where he was -- if he's an example of the group
-- it is too early to dive right in," said Musick.
"He needed to gradually approach it and step back and
pinch himself and say, 'Yeah, this is real,’" he
said
With a more diverse group of youths involved, Musick hopes
to lure the target group back.
"By bringing in these other young people, not in their
places, but in addition to, they may start saying, 'I am really
missing out on something, I want to come back in,’"
he said. "But there's a process for that."
To be readmitted, the youths -- some of whom were first admitted
as a condition of their probation -- must get the signed approval
from stakeholders in a youth resource team, a newly assembled
group from police, City officials, non-profits, mental health
workers and others that coordinate "Night Bridges"
and other programs.
"You generally don't get sharing to the level and to
the degree that the folks in Santa Monica have," said
Musick of the team. "It's almost a gradual education
in how to do collaborative work."
Yet no matter how much support there is from the City or
other groups, it is up to the kids themselves to make their
own choices.
"When they are outside of our reach, that's the test,"
said Musick.
Other mandatory requirements include making sure parents
and family members who hold down jobs during program hours
or have long commutes remain involved.
"We are still looking at those issues," said Musick.
In the meantime, the program is attracting and keeping its
doors open for other youth.
"That graffiti thing right there, that's not my thing,"
said a 15-year-old freshman, shortly after eating dinner with
other youths. "But my teacher said I can write a rap
because it's like poetry."
Reaching inside a book-bag, the lanky teen, who spent his
whole life in the neighborhood, pulled out a black notebook
and began to read.
"Survival, freedom and life. All the things we see and
do to get by in everyday life. Fighting for freedom of speech,
struggle and power, not just everyday, but every second and
hour. Fighting over colors, racism, people dying, while all
around your heads, bullets and helicopters flying…or
something like that," he said quietly.
While he said he is undecided whether he wants to be an artist,
musician or athlete when he gets older, he said the Night
Bridges program gives him a place to express himself and explore
an artistic side, something encouraged heavily in the program.
City officials say keeping such kids enrolled will be a crucial,
though difficult challenge.
"It's an uphill battle, with learning disabilities,
academic issues, law enforcement issues and mental health
concerns," said Rusk.
But officials believe this is only the start.
"Right now is just the beginning," said Hernandez,
as he carefully adjusted a slide for tracing, "The program
is very tender, but there is a lot of support here for these
teens."
As the mural grows over the summer, Hernandez hopes teens
in the program will continue to color to the work of art,
and perhaps, a group identity will emerge and, hopefully,
grow.
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