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This year marks the 100th anniversary of the public debut of a man called Ishi. Ishi was Native American, a Yana from the Deer Creek area, about 150 miles northeast of Berkeley. And for the past century he’s been known as “the last wild Indian in North America.”
In some ways, he’s famous: The anthropology department building at UC Berkeley is named for Alfred Kroeber, the scholar who worked closely with Ishi, and Dwinelle Hall’s outdoor enclosure is named Ishi Court. UC Berkeley’s anthropology community held a conference in September dedicated to Ishi’s memory, and the California Museum in Sacramento has a yearlong exhibit featuring some of his possessions.
So, who was Ishi? And how could Ishi have been the so-called “last Indian” when close to a million Native Americans live in California today? Reporter Terria Smith – who is also California Native American – tells us Ishi’s story.
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TERRIA SMITH: Imagine spending three years alone in the woods of California. You’ve lost your entire family, and all of your close friends, to war, disease, and starvation. Every day you fish and hunt to feed yourself, and try to avoid being spotted by other people. Then, one day, you wander into a place that’s slightly foreign. A town. And everything changes.
This is the story of Ishi, perhaps one of the world’s most famous Native Americans of California Indians. He was first found 100 years ago on August 28, 1911, near an Oroville slaughterhouse. The sheriff took Ishi to the jail, saying it was “for his own safety.” Ishi was barefoot and wearing hide and canvas clothes. It wasn’t long before curious Looky Lou’s started coming to see the “wild man.” Many years later, this episode was dramatized in a TV movie called “Ishi: The Last of His Civilization.”
There was no TV at the time, but the newspaper created a sensation. One headline, from the San Francisco Call, read, “Ishi, The Last Aboriginal Savage in America.”
CHRISTIAAN KLIEGER: Which he wasn’t of course. The story was really largely fabricated.
Christiaan Klieger is an anthropologist and the curator of an exhibit at the “California Indians Making a Difference” exhibit at the California Museum in Sacramento.
KLIEGER: Ishi was alone by the fact that he and his family had been hiding for 40 years because of the massacres of Indian people. A lot of Indian people went up into the hills and they hid, rather than stay, in town and suffer the prejudice and the difficulty of living with white society.
This was during a time when native people of North America were referred to in animal-like terms. Newspapers and military correspondence, for example, generally called men “bucks,” while women were referred to simply as “squaws.” Countless tribal people, including Ishi’s, were killed during confrontations over land and resources. But when Ishi became a public figure, white society’s desire was to marvel at him rather than destroy him. Local newspaper The Oroville Register summed up the feeling this way.
ARTICLE EXCERPT: “Not a single word of English does he know, nor a single syllable of the language of the Digger Indians, the tribe which lived around here. Where he came from is a mystery. The most plausible explanation seems to be that he is probably the surviving member of the little group of uncivilized Deer Creek Indians that were driven from their hiding place two years ago.”
Word of Ishi spread quickly. And as soon as the news hit San Francisco, it was academia to the rescue… sort of. Again Christaan Klieger.
KLIEGER: Alfred Kroeber down at Berkeley, asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs if he could take possession of Ishi and bring him to the new museum of anthropology in San Francisco.
At that time, native people weren’t considered citizens in their own homeland. Instead they were wards of the federal government and were overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal office that still exists today. The bureau granted Kroeber’s request to keep Ishi with him, rather than allow him to live on a reservation. For the next five years Ishi was measured, weighed, questioned, and recorded in an ongoing exploration of his life and culture. Beginning in September, 1911, the San Francisco Call published an article every week about what was going on with Ishi, like this one published on November 11 of that year. T.T. Waterman was a colleague and fellow scholar of Kroeber.
SAN FRANCISCO CALL ARTICLE EXCERPT: “Ishi, the last of the Yana tribe, who was brought here by Professor T. T. Waterman, curator of the museum of the affiliated colleges, San Francisco, had his first ride in an elevator today. The aborigine was the second member of the party to enter. He seemed to enjoy the ride skyward and a broad grin was on his face. In the afternoon Ishi sang an Indian song at a meeting of the Indian Association of Northern California. Professor Waterman apologetically, remarked that some Indian songs are pleasing, but that Ishi’s voice needed considerable cultivation.”
That’s how Ishi would spend the rest of his life: teaching his culture to scholars and the public – kind of like a living museum exhibit. Ishi shared traditional songs, stories, and demonstrated tool-making. He lived at the university and worked as a janitor until he died of tuberculosis in 1916 – just five years after being “discovered.” A number of newspapers, including the San Mateo Labor Index, wrote about his funeral.
SAN MATEO LABOR INDEX ARTICLE: “The body was accompanied to the cemetery by several of U. of C. scientists: Professor T. T. Waterman, E.W. Gifford, assistant curator of the anthropological museum, A.W. Warburton, L. L. Loud, and Dr. Saxton Pope of the University of California medical college.”
One of those who officiated as pallbearer made a few remarks at the cemetery, commenting upon the value Ishi had been to anthropologists in helping to complete the history of the tribe, incomplete until he was found.
Not everyone agreed on Ishi’s importance to anthropology – or on the nobility of UC Berkeley’s study of him. What follows is part of a commentary in the Chico Record written after Ishi’s death.
CHICO RECORD ARTICLE: “He furnished amusement and study to the savants at the University of California for a number of years, and doubtless much of ancient Indian lore was learned from him, but we do not believe he was the marvel that the professors would have the public believe. He was just a starved-out Indian from the wilds of Deer Creek who, by hiding in its fastness, was able to long escape the white man’s pursuit. And the white man with his food and clothing and shelter finally killed the Indian just as effectually as he would have killed him with a riffle.”
During his years at the university, there were some things Ishi kept control over – like his personal identity. Ishi is actually the Yana word for “grown man.” He never told anyone his real name. So that died with him.
But there were other things he did not have control over. Before his death, Ishi requested that his body not undergo an autopsy. He had significant spiritual fear of the practice. But after he died, the autopsy happened anyway. And that wasn’t all: Ishi’s brain was kept in formaldehyde for 83 years after his death, and passed from the university to the Smithsonian Institute before it was finally given back to his descendants to bury. In April 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle gave an account of when Ishi’s brain was returned.
SAN FRANCSICO CHRONICLE ARTICLE: “Leaders of the Redding Rancheria and Pit River tribes, which trace their bloodlines to Ishi’s extinct Yahi Nation through the Yana tribe, promise to never reveal where they buried him. They’re not saying when they will do it, either – just that they’re landing in California today and that they want to be left alone to shepherd their departed elder’s spirit away in peace.”
So what is Ishi’s legacy? For some, the study of Ishi was part of the beginning of a change in the practice of anthropology, into something more inclusive of native people. Mari Lyn Salvador is director of the Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley.
MARI LYN SALVADOR: Members of these communities are becoming anthropologists and becoming museum professors. And it mitigates against objectifying others.
Salvador oversaw a conference at UC Berkeley this past September that brought close to 300 students, anthropologists and history enthusiasts to discuss “A Century of Ishi.”
SALVADOR: We’ve changed. We’re including people as colleagues and professors and teachers, not only as museum directors who are coming from Native American communities all over the country.
But for many people, Ishi’s story represents the common tragedy of Native Americans. Jessica Valdez – whose ancestors were from the Caddo, Comanche, and Apache tribes – is a young anthropologist who recently graduated from college.
JESSICA VALDEZ: If we don’t stand together as a community and make ourselves visible, we’re going to fall victim to the people who conquered us. That’s how I feel when I think about Ishi who was exploited, he wasn’t taken seriously. His native culture was just undermined.
Today Ishi lives in the many books, films, and articles made about him. His ashes, along with his brain, have finally been buried. But it’s not simply the memory of Ishi that lives on his culture and the descendants do too. Again, Christaan Klieger.
KLIEGER: That he was the last, that there were no more. Therefore, California Native people, also must be extinct. That’s absolutely not true. People are still here.
And these days, young native anthropologists like Jessica Valdez are around to make sure those people’s cultures remain alive.
VALDEZ: Initially, I became interested in my upbringing as a native person. I just wanted that to be a part of future generations to come and I thought that would be in my best interest to perpetuate my culture.
And after 100 years, Ishi himself remains alive, in a sense. His voice, which was recorded with his permission, has been digitized from the old wax cylinders it was originally recorded on, and preserved in the Library of Congress.
In Berkeley, I’m Terria Smith for Crosscurrents.
Tonight, a show called “Weed Wars” is premiering on the Discovery Channel, and it’s entirely based on the Bay Area medical marijuana trade. The premiere has interesting timing: Yesterday, a U.S. District judge in Oakland rejected a request from dispensaries to keep federal prosecutors from filing charges against them. It’s the latest in a series of events that have been challenging California marijuana advocates, kicked off by Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for California’s Northern District, when she announced in early October that the Justice Department is targeting certain cannabis dispensaries for closure.
MELINDA HAAG: Last week we sent letters to landowners and lien holders of these stores, putting them on notice that marijuana is being sold and used on their property in close proximity to children and that the operations must cease.
KALW’s Ben Trefny asked reporter Steven Short to catch us up on the state of medical marijuana in California.
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BEN TREFNY: Steven, we just heard Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for Northern California, saying they’re only targeting cannabis dispensaries near schools. So why do advocates see this as an attack on medical marijuana as a whole?
STEVEN SHORT: All of these dispensaries have been licensed by cities or counties, so they see this as unfairly changing the rules. They also see it as eroding the respectability medical marijuana has earned in the past few years.
For the Justice Department to label what dispensaries consider “medicine” as something that shouldn’t be near schools implies that it’s dangerous. But Haag did say at her press conference back in October that, medical value or not, the whole idea has gotten out of hand:
MELINDA HAAG: The California Compassionate Use Act was intended to help seriously ill people. But the law has been hijacked by profiteers who are motivated, not by compassion, but by money.
TREFNY: Steven, what do dispensary owners say about these accusations?
SHORT: Dispensary owners, and their supporters who I spoke with, stressed that they are non-profit co-ops, not money-grubbing drug dealers. They get their licenses and pay their taxes, just like any other business.
TREFNY: Well, taking that thought at face value, any idea what those taxes and fees amount to?
SHORT: Well, as with everything else associated with this issue, exact numbers are hard to find. But the California Board of Equalization has estimated that medical marijuana generates between $53 million and $104 million in annual sales taxes. That’s a big range, but either number is impressive.
TREFNY: Wasn’t the Justice Department supposed to make marijuana enforcement a lower priority under President Obama?
SHORT: When he was running for president, a lot of people did interpret his remarks that way. Here’s candidate Obama in April of ‘08 in an interview with the Mail-Tribune newspaper in Medford, Oregon:
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with.
TREFNY: Steven, what we just heard Barack Obama say seems in conflict with what the Justice Department has announced.
SHORT: Yes, in fact, in the early days of his administration, President Obama specifically said that licensed dispensaries in states with medical marijuana laws would be left alone.
I spoke with Robert MacCoun about this. He’s a UC Berkeley professor, at the Goldman School of Public Policy. Here’s what he said about this seeming contradictions.
ROBERT MacCOUN: While they don’t think medical marijuana patients should be a high priority for prosecution, trafficking in marijuana, or profiteering from medical marijuana, is still on the table as a legitimate use of their resources. And they make quite clear that they’re going to reserve the right to be tough.
TREFNY: How are medical marijuana advocates responding to these letters from the Justice Department that are telling them to shut their doors?
SHORT: The letters actually went to the property owners. They alerted them of possible illegal activity on their property and gave them 45 days to evict the tenants or face seizure of their property, along with possible felony charges themselves. That 45-day period ended last week. Some co-ops have closed, others have moved.
TREFNY: And I imagine that others are taking other action. What else is happening from their end?
SHORT: You won’t be surprised to hear that two lawsuits have been filed. The one prepared by Americans for Safe Access charges that the federal government’s actions are unconstitutional, since the state should be able to set its own health policy. The other one, filed by a group of patients, landlords, and co-ops, charged that the Justice Department is breaking their previous pledge to leave them alone. But earlier this week a U.S. District Judge in Oakland rejected that request.
TREFNY: Why do you think the Justice Department has decided to take these actions at this particular time?
SHORT: I asked Professor MacCoun that same thing and here’s what he had to say:
MacCOUN: You know, I think every four years we enter a presidential “silly season,” where candidates make pronouncements about law and order that are ill-considered. And they’re gambling that it will play well with the electorate. But it’s usually not a good time to discuss rational drug policy. And I think President Obama does not want to be accused of being soft on drugs.
TREFNY: Wasn’t this all supposed to be settled when medical marijuana was first approved by voters?
SHORT: Well, yes and no. Prop 215 has been law since 1996, and it allows licensed patients to possess marijuana. But it says nothing about how they’re supposed to acquire it. That’s part of the problem – along with the fact that “all things marijuana” carry federal felony charges.
I think this is why Justice is saying they’re not going after sick people: They’re going after illegal activities associated with medical marijuana. Their gripe is that not all of the product is getting to patients – a lot of it is getting to the recreational market.
TREFNY: So, looking forward to 2012, what’s on the horizon for medical marijuana?
SHORT: Just a couple of weeks ago, a new voter initiative to reduce penalties concerning marijuana was certified to begin collecting signatures, to put it on the ballot. A couple of similar, but different, initiatives are also in the works, so we may have another one of those multiple choice ballots to deal with about a year from now.
TREFNY: But wouldn’t any new state law, voter or legislature approved, conflict with federal law also?
SHORT: Well, again, it depends. Marijuana is classified as a Schedule One drug, like heroin, making it totally illegal on the federal level. But 16 states and the District of Columbia have some type of legality applying to marijuana. So if the states do it right, they may not get in trouble – or so they hope.
Where do you stand on the medical marijuana debate? Let us know on our Facebook page.
Technology has done great things for medicine: Machines can help keep hearts beating and lungs breathing. Electronic medical records help doctors keep track of their patients’ treatment and prevent mistakes. But all that technology needs a lot of monitoring – and that can be frustrating for nurses who want to be tending people, not machines.
To combat this problem, healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente is implementing a new program to help nurses relax a bit, and shift their focus back to what’s really important. KALW’S Christopher Connelly has more on what they’re doing.
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CHRIS CONNELLY: Okay, everyone: Close your eyes. Now, take a deep breath.
BANU PERIASAMY: As you breathe in, breathe in loving kindness, equanimity…
It feels good, right?
PERIASAMY: As you breathe out, you breathe out frustration and anger.
Now, picture doing this every day, right when you get to work.
PERIASAMY: Breathe in gratitude and trust.
Do you think you’d do a better job?
PERIASAMY: Breathe out despair or pain. The pain you have been holding on, just let it go.
Okay, you can open your eyes now. The woman you’re listening to is Banu Periasamy. She’s the afternoon managing nurse at Kaiser’s Richmond Medical Center. She works on the medical surgical floor. And she leads her staff in this centering exercise every day at the beginning of their shift. The whole thing lasts about three minutes.
On the other side of the Richmond Hills, at Kaiser’s Antioch hospital, the sound of wind chimes plays throughout the hospital three times a day.
Nurses, aides, managers, and even some doctors stop for 30 seconds as the bells twinkle through the halls. Some close their eyes, take a deep breath, and use those few moments to clear their minds.
Erica Drongowski, a nurse manager at Kaiser Antioch, describes what it’s like.
ERICA DRONGOWSKI: Breathe, center pause, reflect, release. Those little chimes are very powerful.
Over In Vacaville, they work on techniques they call “heart math” to reduce stress in the moment.
In San Jose, nurses spend about an hour a week in a journaling club.
And in Santa Rosa, they channel alternative healing energies using Reiki and Gin Shin Jyutsu.
The programs are all part of Kaiser’s Caring Sciences program, a new initiative in 21 Northern California facilities. It’s based on what’s called the theory of human caring, a nursing theory that’s actually been around since the ’70s.
Anne Foss-Durant, who oversees Kaiser’s program, says it basically comes down to relationships.
ANNE FOSS-DURANT: Relationships with the patient and family. Relationships with our healthcare team and our healthcare members. Relationships with the community. And most importantly relationships with ourselves. Because we have to be in a good place in order to provide care to others.
It’s not always easy for nurses to stay in that “good place.” Nursing is, by its nature, a pretty stressful job.
Six years ago, Foss-Durant started thinking about ways to relieve that stress. She was the clinical adult services director at Kaiser’s Vallejo hospital, and every day, she could see how stressed her nurses were.
FOSS-DURANT: They were anxious before they got their assignment. And then they’d go out to take this assignment and they would be just so overwhelmed that there was this sense that they just couldn’t do it.
She worried that this anxiety was affecting patients. After all, talking with those stressed out nurses was often their main interaction with the hospital.
FOSS-DURANT: The age-old, I guess, saying, is that anxiety begets anxiety. And anxiety’s contagious. It’s not anything verbal, it’s not anything we can touch or feel, but we can sense that. And as healthcare providers as we walk in the room with that state, our patients sense it as well.
So she started looking for something to make a change. She thought back to a theory class she took in nursing school, and remembered something called the theory of human caring. She thought it could help her nurses put their work into perspective.
FOSS-DURANT: This is really an invitation to go back to the way we were taught to practice. And it’s a way to refocus what you do and begin to make sense of all the tasks that we’ve been given.
Foss-Durant said the changes at Vallejo had an almost immediate effect – to the point that when Kaiser built a new medical center in Antioch, the human caring theory guided everything from staff policies to the design of the actual building. It’s a decision Erica Drongowski, the hospital’s chief nursing officer, says has improved the hospital experience for staff and patients.
DRONGOWSKI: Although this is our day-to-day work environment, this is a strange and scary space for them.
Kaiser designed the hospital to minimize the fear factor. The building’s hallways form intersecting triangles that cut down on noise and avoid having centralized crowded nursing stations. Patients get individual rooms. There aren’t set visiting hours, so family members can visit whenever they want, and the rooms have full couches if a patient’s loved one wants to stay the night. They’ll even provide toothpaste and a toothbrush, if you ask them for it.
DRONGOWSKI: This is our patients’ environment and they invite us in. The patient’s care isn’t just dictated to them anymore. They’re part of it.
This is also the hospital where they play the chimes. Drongowski says she loves hearing them.
DRONGOWSKI: The busy-ness and stress contribute to medical errors. It contributes to us not being authentically present to the patient that we’re caring for, so the chimes gets us to relax, pause, center.
Kaiser is measuring the program’s success in a few ways: patient satisfaction, staff satisfaction, and workplace injuries. Down the road, they’re also looking to see if people heal more quickly, and if there are fewer medical errors. So far, the Antioch hospital has consistently out-performed other Kaiser hospitals in the region. Again, Anne Foss-Durant.
FOSS-DURANT: Patient satisfaction was the highest in the region and maintained the high levels over two-and-a-half years. So, over time it became obvious that it wasn’t just the new building.
Convinced that using the caring theory made a difference, last year Kaiser expanded the program to include nurses across the entire Northern California hospital system. More than 2,000 Kaiser nurses have taken part in some kind of Caring Science training. Many of them went back to start projects at their own hospitals. One of those nurses was Banu Periasamy – you remember her, from our breathing exercise.
PERIASAMY: The nurses are frustrated and the nurses are yelling at each other. We have patients, we forget that there are patients that are very sick. They need to heal, they need to rest. They’re all task-oriented – they forget the patient in the chaotic environment. So I thought I need to bring the change with my staff. Then my patients’ experience is going to be excellent.
Kaiser is not the first to use the theory of human caring in their hospitals: Medical centers in Texas, North Carolina, and Massachusetts all incorporate similar ideas. But Kaiser may be the first to do so on such a large scale.
And before you make up your mind about these ideas, you might consider taking a moment to breathe.
For Crosscurrents, I’m Christopher Connelly.
Christopher Connelly is a reporter with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
The Tenderloin is not exactly known as a tender place to live. It’s the densest neighborhood in San Francisco – home to roughly 30,000 people. That’s about 750 people per square block, and many are low-income immigrants and families living in tall apartment buildings, homeless shelters, or single room occupancy hotels. Some – with nowhere else to go – live right on the street.
You’re more likely to hear police sirens than birds or other wildlife in the Tenderloin. That’s partly because this is an area of high crime, but also, because there’s very little green space here. But that hasn’t stopped some Tenderloin residents who’ve invited nature into their lives in the most unexpected of places. KALW’s Ali Budner takes us to a place known to residents at the Tenderloin National Forest.
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DARRYL SMITH: Right now we’re standing in front of a more arid desert feature.
ALI BUDNER: The street sounds don’t let you forget that you’re in the heart of the Tenderloin, but as soon as you set foot in this park, you know you’ve walked into a unique space.
SMITH: There’s the hummingbird.
That’s Darryl Smith, my tour guide.
SMITH: I’m co-founder/director of the Luggage Store Gallery with my partner, Laurie Lazer.
Together they founded this place, the Tenderloin National Forest. It’s off of Ellis Street between Hyde and Leavenworth. And let’s be real – it’s still a concrete alley sandwiched between tall brick buildings. But, if you let yourself zoom in on what’s in here, it really can feel like a verdant oasis. Trees and plants of all colors and sizes surround us.
A water fountain filled with bright orange fish bubbles in one corner. A neon sign hangs over a shed with a living grass roof. It reads in cursive script: “Tell your stories here.” An earthen oven. Giant colorful murals on every wall. My favorite touch is the arrowhead-shaped greeting sign that looks a lot like the traditional National Forest logo.
FRANKIE MADISON: It’s comforting. It’s very, very comforting and very serene.
That’s Frankie Madison. He comes here to relax.
MADISON: And in this chaotic city now it’s nice to have a little quiet place to be. Especially here in the Tenderloin, everything is so upside down and backwards that to step through that gate and to come in here is you just transcend to a different place. You’re not in the Tenderloin anymore.
But if you had peered into this alley 15 years ago or so, you would have seen a very different picture. Again Darryl Smith.
SMITH: Back then, yeah, it was all asphalt. It was a classic inner city alleyway. There was a lot of garbage, lot of excrement, drug paraphernalia. Kind of, you know, it had its own story.
Which is in part, the story of the Tenderloin itself.
BEN GRANT: It was a very dense and very mixed part of the city from a very early on, without a lot of provision for open space.
That’s Ben Grant. He works with SPUR – an urban planning nonprofit in San Francisco. He can think of only one substantial public park in the Tenderloin – Boeddecker Park – built in the mid-‘80s. But it has tall metal fences and iron benches. It’s not that welcoming.
GRANT: I think the contrast between Boeddecker Park and the Tenderloin National Forest really reveals the importance of local stewardship and community advocates especially in a district that has significant problems with homelessness, with substance abuse, and with social issues.
So how did they do it? How do you create green space where there’s practically none?
In the 1980s, artists Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer were living and working in the Tenderloin, right near this alley. Then it was called Cohen Place. And at that time, Smith say the alley received an average of a thousand police calls a year. So in the early ‘90s they began a public art series there. They called it “Performance in the Gutter.”
SMITH: We’d clean up and then we’d do installations and have performances go on here. Just to kind of give a sense of what could be, of what the possibilities could be if we could kind of turn it around.
But they couldn’t do it right away. First, they reached out to their neighbors for ideas and support. Then they went to local nonprofits that helped them with research, planning, and connections so they could approach city government. A decade later, the city agreed to lease them the space for a dollar a year. Then they knew they could really build something. But they started small.
SMITH: So this redwood that we call “Mama Tender” was the first tree that we brought here to live…
And that’s how it started: with one tree, which is now four stories tall, by the way. And as it grew, so did their vision. One day they laid out a blanket of grass for an event. When they were about to pack it up…
SMITH: Somebody in The Senator Hotel just kind of whispered out the window like, “Keep it.” You know like, I was like, “Wow.” That planted the seed really.
And that’s when the alleyway really started to change.
SMITH: Garbage collector trucks didn’t come in here anymore.
And when there was an emergency…
SMITH: The fire department said you know, “We’ll just bring in hoses and ladders. We don’t need to pull a truck in.”
These changes allowed the alley to flourish. Today, there’s all kinds of trees: pine, maple, lemon, olive, gingko, and not one, but two redwoods. From cacti and succulents to bamboo and ferns – sage, rosemary, lavender, and mint – the diversity of plant life in this small space is astounding.
Anne Thomas was caught by surprise when she first saw the forest.
ANNE THOMAS: I was walking really fast and I was really upset because I had to search for a bed. I seen this place and I stopped and I moonwalked back and I said, “Oh my gosh!” And the gate was open – I walked in and I was like, “Oh how beautiful!” Everything is so cute. I wish I could bake something in that oven! You can bake food here. It’s just gorgeous and I thank god that this place is here.
Founder Darryl Smith says the neighbors have really embraced the forest.
SMITH: The neighborhood’s over the years gotten much more involved in it, like taking care of it, watching over it.
But the park’s most frequent visitors are the hummingbirds.
SMITH: The hummingbird is kind of a magical bird…
It’s the only bird that can fly backwards and it has the largest heart in the animal kingdom, relative to its size. But also…
SMITH: It’s the link from green pocket to green pocket. Like, how does it get here? There’s a series, a whole system of green pockets that it ties together in its flight pattern. So they started coming here after we began greening the alley.
During my visit, a few ruby-throated hummingbirds flickered in. They’d hover for a sweet moment, then flicker away. Kind of like the neighbors who wander in and out of this space. For now, it’s forest enough.
From the Tenderloin National Forest, I’m Ali Budner for Crosscurrents.
California is home to more than 55,000 foster kids – the largest population in the country. And, the one place in the state where most of those kids come together is in public school. Jetaine Hart, a former foster youth and current educational mentor in Alameda County, argues that’s where we should be putting resources to help foster kids – kids who often shuffle from school to school and have unstable home lives.
JETAINE HART: When you look at the outcomes for youth in foster care in terms of education, incarceration rates, and mental health issues, and dependency on public assistance all of those things, when it really comes down to it, we’re gonna pay more for that in the long run than if we invest in them now.
Hart helps foster kids navigate school successfully. And Daniel Heimpel, director of Fostering Media Connections, works to bring political attention to what really helps those children.
DANIEL HEIMPEL: We do not focus enough attention on tapping the latent potential in foster care. And I think a critical feature of that is our inability to really seriously focus all our attention on ensuring they get through school.
Heimpel and Hart spoke with KALW’s Holly Kernan about foster and educational reform in California.
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DANIEL HEIMPEL: I think that you need to find answers to the overarching problem that children in foster care are moving from home to home quite often, and moving from school to school quite often. On top of that, they’re aggregating in schools that are worse off.
HOLLY KERNAN: So they are in the lower performing schools, generally?
HEIMPEL: Yes. This is out of Chicago. You really see a clear percent. It’s clear that these children are aggregating in schools that are doing poorly.
KERNAN: And that’s true here in California, as well. In Alameda County that’s definitely the case.
HEIMPEL: I would imagine. I haven’t seen those statistics myself. But these are the issues.
JETAINE HART: I work with older youth, 15-19 in Alameda County, and I have several young women who have changed schools maybe five times since I started working with them in May. This is because of placement change – they are moving from Oakland to Richmond, to Hayward – and in doing that they’re changing schools.
Alameda County is pretty good about keeping kids in their school of origin when it’s in their best interest. But their problem is public transportation, getting them to school. Yes, we have BART and we have buses, but the reality is that a young person of 17 is not going to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning to get to school in Hayward when they live in Richmond.
KERNAN: And you have a lot of people say, “I did it but I had to advocate for myself in such a strong way. I had to show why I could stay at my school.” I think Commissioner Sokhom Mao told us about that. Daniel.
HEIMPEL: Right, of course. Sokhom’s story becomes more and more famous. The situation for him was he wanted to go to school in Oakland – my school. But he was living in a good placement in Hayward. He liked his placement but wanted to stay at his school.
So this is very interesting in terms of laws and those things that get a little seemingly esoteric, are important. You know, in California, with the passage of AB 490, which focused on this issue of school of origin and school of best interest, those kind of questions. That actually was pretty far ahead of the game for a lot of things. And California was ahead of the game. That influenced federal policy to start looking at this issue of, if there’s one place where you can find stability, we better do our best to make sure they have that opportunity to stay in that school. Now, of course, there are other issues. The transportation is going to have to be dealt with.
KERNAN: So what would you change if you could change the system?
HEIMPEL: Well, I think that major thing is to have schools really understand that it is their duty to ensure that if it’s in the best interest of the kid to stay in their school district, then they should stay there. I think it’s also important to see that we have funding, and I know no one wants to talk about funding! But I would love to see funding for transportation. I don’t want to see that a kid is somewhere, and there’s no money to take him by bus to the school so it’s not in his best interest anymore. Those are some of the things that I think are very critical.
KERNAN: What’s your recipe for change?
HART: When I look out at schools, I see young people who are embarrassed. They are so far behind that they are embarrassed. Just even being in a classroom with their peers when they should be in eleventh grade and they’re maybe doing 9th grade work they still don’t understand.
How do we make classroom settings that make these young people feel comfortable? Comfortable enough to ask for help, comfortable enough to know they aren’t the only person who doesn’t get math because they haven’t done it in years. Like a ninth grader who hasn’t done math since fifth grade and doesn’t know the basics of multiplication and division.
The biggest concern I see is that you can’t expect these people to go to school every day if they aren’t comfortable and if they aren’t understanding the work.
KERNAN: So let’s talk policy. What’s happening that’s exciting and how does the fact that we are cutting back on public services right now – we are at a time where we are cutting the caring services, on our teachers, on our public schools, on our public institutions – how does that factor into policy change?
HEIMPEL: Well the easy case is the financial case, right? So that’s the one that everybody likes to make because that’s the way people speak in this day and age. I don’t think it’s necessarily the best case but, okay. You have the Perry Preschool model that looks at children in early education in Michigan and you extrapolate that 40 years down and you see that every dollar you spent, you spent when they are little preschool kids that are from a socio-economic-hurting areas – you get a $17 return for every dollar you spent on them initially. It’s not even a question that our economic investment in children pays off down the road.
KERNAN: So if you don’t care as a moral imperative, you should just care as a bottom line.
HEIMPEL: Well, yeah. You should care as a bottom line. It is the only bottom line that makes sense. I think that focusing on children is clearly a good investment but beyond that, I mean, what are we going to have? I don’t understand. I don’t see it anymore. What are we going to have if we’re going to keep on investing in things that aren’t our own people? Wars and those kinds of things.
KERNAN: What are kids telling you they want? What are they saying they need to be successful?
HART: All of my kids, actually, say they want to go to school. They all say they want to go to school and that they want to do something. They want to go to college, or they want to do this.
I think it’s really hard to get them motivated when no one is at home. Last week, I actually picked up a young woman from her foster home and drove her to school, dropped her off in her classroom to make sure she got there. And part of it was because her foster mom was already at work. No one was being held accountable for if she was going to school. These are little things, but we want them to be held accountable and no one is doing it.
I am so inspired by the young people I see that I work along with my colleagues that grew up in foster care and they are brilliant. They are resilient; they have so much passion to change the world. Somebody planted a small seed for them and they have taken it and grown so much. Myself included – I feel like somebody took the time to say, “We believe in you and you’re going to do something, and I’m here now.” And I am so proud to say that I grew up in foster care and had that opportunity for other people to support me. I wish other young people had that support as well.
Many Middle Eastern refugees are Iraqis who have fled war-related violence. But in the past decade, the largest number of refugees have actually come from Iran.
More than 15,000 Iranians have moved to California just since 2006. Though their country isn’t currently at war, many Iranians suffer religious and political persecution. And they face many of the same social and cultural taboos about seeking mental healthcare as Iraqi refugees.
Reporter Shuka Kalantari tells us how one woman has overcome those barriers – and how others might do the same.
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SHUKA KALANTARI: Azin Izadifar is a 45-year-old Iranian refugee living alone in a small studio apartment in San Jose. Izadifar has shoulder-length black hair with a few grey streaks, that she keeps tied in bun. When she opens the door, she’s smiling. Izadifar came to the U.S. in 2009, seeking asylum. She says that’s the first time she ever saw a psychologist, though there were signs she might have needed to earlier.
AZIN IZADIFAR: When I was in Iran and even up to probably a year ago, at a certain time during the night I would wake up. I would wake up shouting, like having nightmares. I always, always had this problem.
Izadifar spent the ages of 16 to 19 in Iran’s infamous Evin Prison. She knew she carried the memories of that time with her, but it wasn’t until she came to the U.S. that she realized she had been living with PTSD for nearly three decades.
IZADIFAR: It had become so normal for me that I couldn’t even understand that there was a problem there – I had a sleep disorder. And it could be related to the trauma I had in prison. Then I realize, “Okay, that’s a sign of PTSD.”
Izadifar wouldn’t have always used the term PTSD – it’s not as common in Iranian culture. Doctor Loren Krane is a psychologist working with refugees. He says refugees like Izadifar often don’t seek therapy because of deep cultural taboos.
LOREN KRANE: In most other countries, people associate psychologists and psychiatrists with really severe mental illness.
Krane says some cultures don’t see conditions like depression as a chronic disease – it’s more like a temporary problem.
KRANE: And for problems in living, they might go to a respected family member. They might go to, in some cases an imam or religious leader. In other cases they might go to a medical doctor.
It’s hard for many to accept the idea that mental health problems may require specialized treatment. Refugee Azin Izadifar says many who do get therapy often keep it a secret from their community.
IZADIFAR: We are not very much open-minded when it comes to mental health issues, but there’s a tendency in our culture to underestimate that, and say “Okay, that was passed. Now we are in a free society. We have to live our lives. We have to get a job and buy a car and just be normal.”
It’s taken a long time to realize, but her past experiences remain very much in the present. She was a young teenager after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Like many of her peers, she participated in secret meetings and demonstrations against the country’s new Islamic government, but before long, she was arrested. She still remembers her first few weeks in the prison, while she waited to be interrogated.
IZADIFAR: I was sitting there behind that door and waiting for my turn and just hearing people screaming, shouting, crying, begging not to be tortured and stuff like that.
Izadifar was eventually placed in a small cell, along with dozens of other female prisoners. She says sometimes the room was so crowded they would have to take turns sleeping at night, because there wasn’t enough space for all of them to lie down at the same time.
IZADIFAR: I witnessed at least seven of my cellmates completely go crazy. Losing their minds.
She says even though she never had a moment alone, prison life kept her completely isolated. She says the more people knew about each other, the more likely they’d be tortured for that information. She still remembers one time when someone did speak.
IZADIFAR: It was a rainy day and another cellmate of mine, she was 17, I was almost the same age. It was just us walking, and we were all wet, and I don’t know why, she started telling her whole life, her whole life story. How she was brought up, how many sister and brothers she had, how she was involved in this political group. And then our time was up and we had to come back, so we came back to the room and they called her. And they took her, and they executed her. So the next morning I woke up with gunshots, hearing these voices. And I clearly remember that I opened my eyes, I told myself, “No. She is not executed. She is living somewhere. It’s not happening.” And I just go back to sleep.
After that day, Izadifar stopped talking to her cellmates. She was released two years later, and more or less went on with her life. She married and moved to Austria, where she began working on Iranian human rights campaigns for Amnesty International. But when her marriage ended, she realized she couldn’t survive alone in Austria, and she couldn’t go back to Iran. She decided to seek asylum in California. It wasn’t an easy decision.
IZADIFAR: Although I didn’t have any other choices, but you know, if you get asylum you cannot go back to your own country. You cannot see your family. You cannot see your friends. It’s not an easy decision.
As part of the refugee process, once she arrived in the U.S., Izadifar had to visit an immigration lawyer and prove why she couldn’t return to Iran. But every time she tried to talk to her lawyer about her time in prison, she would start crying.
IZADIFAR: I wanted to start and tell her my case, and I couldn’t. I had an appointment for 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and all that time I was crying. I couldn’t finish a sentence. And she said, “You know you have to go for therapy. This is urgent for you. This is what you need.”
On the advice of her lawyer, Izadifar began to get counseling at the Center for Survivors of Torture in San Jose, also known as CST. Izadifar says she sees many of her same symptoms in other Iranian refugees.
IZADIFAR: I can clearly see that how the traumas that this refugees, this asylees, have gone through is still affecting them.
Not everyone in Izadifar’s position seeks therapy. Doctor Loren Krane says many people fear being judged.
KRANE: As having something wrong with them. Even though I think all members of their community would be sympathetic because they’re struggling with the same issues and having many of the same symptoms.
Krane has been working with refugees for over two decades. He started out taking a traditional Western approach to treating them.
KRANE: What are you here for? What are your presenting symptoms? When did these symptoms start? Have you had prior psychiatric history?
But he says he quickly realized that this wouldn’t work. So instead, he frames the questions to focus on quality of life issues, like how they’re doing finding housing, or work.
KRANE: In the course of our conversations naturally they will tell me about the difficulties that they’re having which are often related to their symptoms of depression and PTSD. But I’m not framing it as a psychological evaluation. So they’re much more willing to talk with me about what their experience is here.
Another big barrier to mental health care is access. Refugees with minors in their families get five years of free services, including health care, but refugees without kids only qualify for eight months of services. So, in less than a year, they need to find a job, a home, and learn English – all while possibly dealing with symptoms of PTSD.
SALLY SHARROCK: Practical and psychological support often works best when working with the refugee populations.
Sally Sharrock is a therapist at CST. She says only after addressing their basic needs can refugees even begin to think about mental health. But it’s not always easy to get them into the office. So sometimes, Sharrock goes to them. Inside a small waiting room at the Lenzen Health Clinic, a handful of refugees are waiting to see a therapist. Sharrock and others provide free sessions here.
SHARROCK: So this is where the patients come after they met with the medical doctors and had a physical exam.
Down the hall from the waiting room, Sharrock is standing in a small exam room sparsely decorated with a world map.
SHARROCK: They’re familiar with this setting, which is what makes it a lot easier for them to meet with a therapist here. It breaks down a lot of the stigma, obstacles and barriers.
Sharrock says she spends a long time gaining the trust of her refugee clients.
SHARROCK: Building rapport is kind of like the first step towards engaging them in any conversations about mental health.
CST uses other unique methods to reach out to Middle Eastern refugees, like hosting potlucks and educational seminars. To make that approach work, they rely on refugees like Azin Izadifar. She’s now doing outreach to other Iranian refugees in the San Jose area. She goes to Iranian cultural events and hands out Farsi-language pamphlets about the free therapy at CST. She also hosts events on nutrition in the U.S., education, and other topics of practical value. Izadifar says reaching out to other refugees helps her deal with her own past trauma.
IZADIFAR: The wound will always be there, but there’s a difference between a wound that has not healed, that has not been exposed to the sun, to a wound that’s been healed and now you see a scar, you know? It’s different. The wound will be there, but you’re not as sensitive, it’s not as painful.
She’s also using writing as an outlet – right now, she’s working on her memoir. She says those stories aren’t hard to remember.
IZADIFAR: A part of especially people who have been in prison, a part of us is still in the prison. Even if you are living in a beautiful land like California, a big part of your being can still be in that prison.
After being released from Iran’s prison, it took Izadifar almost 30 years to make it to California. But in some ways, she’s only now leaving.
For Crosscurrents, I’m Shuka Kalantari.
Police in riot gear dismantled the Occupy Cal tents on the UC Berkeley campus early this morning. Two protesters were arrested, but it was otherwise calm and orderly….
When Occupy Oakland campers were evicted, again, on Sunday night, mayor Jean Quan was torn over her decision to clear the encampment. Her deputy mayor, Sharon Cornu, and legal adviser, Dan Siegel, both resigned following the action, but pressure from other officials and the murder near Occupy Oakland on November 10 urged her to press on with the eviction…
Meanwhile, San Francisco mayor Ed Lee says he seeks dramatic changes at the Occupy San Francisco encampment, but hasn’t yet ordered police to shut it down. So far, the city has issued 11 demands, including a limit of 100 tents (there are currently about 200) and no alcoholic beverages. San Francisco Fire chief Joanne Hayes-White says the camp presents a huge health and safety concern….
Some are concerned that the pressure to evict Occupy Oakland came largely from the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and other local business associations dominated by representatives from large corporations, including telecommunications companies, big banks, and investment firms…
But the coverage of Occupy Oakland through social media and the blogosphere was hardly dominated by big companies. The Oakland Tribune will host a panel discussion this Saturday on the splash caused by non-journalists reporting on the movement, featuring citizen celebrity Spencer Mills, known on Twitter as OakFoSho…
In other protest news, faculty from Cal State University East Bay and CSU Dominguez Hills are going on strike today to demand the pay raises that were promised and go undelivered. They expect support from other CSU campuses…
But there aren’t any stalls in the plan for a new hospital in San Francisco, which garnered support from voters in the recent election, although debate around this $2 billion investment has been going on for years. When completed, it will be the largest nonprofit medical center in San Francisco’s history…
Another large construction project has come into question, however, as a panel of Bay Area transportation commissioners criticizes Caltrans for failing to alert anyone that the technician who fabricated test data for other structures also tested the new Bay Bridge. The biggest problem? This information comes after completing assembly of the bridge’s tower foundation, making retesting impossible…
And what seems impossible, but one hundred years from now could be a reality, is the disappearance of Bay Area marshes. If climate scientists’ predictions of a 5.4 foot? sea level rise are correct, 93% of the bay’s tidal wetlands will vanish, and along with them tens of thousands of species of birds and other wildlife that call those wetlands home…
Thousands of foreclosed homes that pose a safety or health concern are now being handled more frequently by receiverships, a legal process in which control of the property is temporarily transferred to a court-appointed officer. This is a way for city officials to take hold of empty homes that could lead to blight, which is a step beyond the fines that homeowners usually incur for leaving their homes in disrepair…
Homes in San Francisco are still considered a hot commodity, so much so that a mere 25 percent of San Francisco police officers and 33 percent of firefighters actually live in the city. A 2007 pilot program called Police in the Community Loan offers $20,000 to police officers who buy a home in San Francisco — forgiving that loan after five years of good conduct — but it’s still underutilized.
Early this morning at UC Berkeley, police clearned an Occupy Cal encampment which had been set up for a second time Tuesday night on Sproul Plaza. Almost all campers left voluntarily, except for two who were arrested.
This the latest in a lot of action that has taken place at the campus this week: a university-wide strike, arrests, and police raids. All in the same plaza where more than forty years ago, the Free Speech Movement was born:
MARIO SAVIO [December 2, 1964]: I’ll tell you something: the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we’re the raw material! But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to have any process upon us, don’t mean to be made into any product, don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We’re human beings! (APPLAUSE)
That’s one of the leaders of the movement, Mario Savio, speaking on Sproul Plaza on December 2, 1964.
So what are students fighting for today? Unlike other Occupy camps, UC Berkeley’s has a definite goal – To keep public education public. Student activists have many ideas for ensuring that, and one is blocking an 81% fee hike over the next four years being considered by the board of regents.
KALW’s Joaquin Palomino has been on the ground reporting from UC Berkeley all week and has this report.
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JOAQUIN PALOMINO: On Tuesday, thousands of students gathered in Sproul Plaza for a general strike. Many classes were canceled, others were held outdoors. The purpose of the strike was to draw attention to what many call the privatization of public education. Public funding for the UC system is nearly half of what it was in 1978. And since 2003, tuition has increased more than 300%.
Many also came out to protest a police action that took place November 9.
On November 9, police and protesters clashed for much of the day, and well into the night. Protesters were advised that camping on Sproul Plaza was illegal. Late that evening, police removed tents from the Occupy Cal encampment.
As officers in riot gear used their batons to push peaceful protesters off the plaza, students yelled out to them by name.
The night ended with 39 arrested and many injured students.
Alex Barnard, a second year sociology student, was one of the 39 arrested and GOT a fractured rib from being hit with a police baton. He told his story Monday night at a press conference.
ALEX BARNARD: What happened on Wednesday left me deeply traumatized, I feel both powerless and voiceless. I spent the last few days unable to speak, unable to work, unable to think of anything other then that night. I feel afraid to set foot on campus and return to this place. The image of an officer punching me as I pleaded to be treated peacefully is stuck on repeat in my head.
AXEL BUYERS: Myself, I’m not like a big proponent for setting up encampments just because it’s so confrontational.
Axel Buyers recently transferred to Cal. Although he’s critical of how the police acted that night, he doesn’t support the encampment.
BUYERS: I feel like the police and the army, they are part of the 99% It’s their job to enforce the law, and if it is our choice to break the law and make them our enemy, it’s a very conscious choice and I don’t think we need to necessarily make them our enemies.
The protest and police action November 9 calls to mind a similar scene that took place on this very plaza more than 40 years ago.
It was October 1, 1964. Police broke up a peaceful gathering, kicking off a series of protests and sit-ins that became the Free Speech Movement. Leaders including Mario Savio emerged. Here’s a clip from Savio’s most famous speech on the steps of Sproul Plaza, December 2, 1964:
MARIO SAVIO: There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! (APPLAUSE)
It so happens that on the night of Tuesday’s student strike, professor of Public Policy and former US secretary of labor Robert Reich gave the Mario Savio Memorial lecture. Reich addressed a crowd of 10,000, commemorating Savio on the same steps where he made his famous speech in 1964.
ROBERT REICH: Some of you may feel a little bit, what are we doing here? What exactly is our goal? I urge you, I urge you to be patient with yourselves. Because with regard to every major social movement of the last half century or more, it started with a sense of moral outrage. Things were wrong. And the actual coalescence of that moral outrage into specific demands for specific changes came later. The moral outrage was the beginning…(CLAPPING) The days of apathy are over folks! (APPLAUSE)
That’s UC Berkeley professor and former US secretary of Labor Robert Reich, giving the Mario Savio memorial lecture Tuesday night. That day, following a general assembly vote to re-establish an Occupy Cal camp, the tents went back up.
Yesterday, students convened in Sacramento in an effort to pressure lawmakers to reinvest in public higher education, and they received a statement of support from the president of UC Berkeley. A group also gathered in San Francisco’s financial district at the Regents Corporate office. 50 people from several schools within the UC system protested within a downtown branch of the Bank of America. They’ve made it clear that if officials don’t take action alongside them, they can expect to see more demonstrations at the University of California.
In Berkeley, I’m Joaquin Palomino, for Crosscurrents.
KALW’s Nina Morente also contributed to this report.