Anti-gang Measure Promises Afterschool Art Programs

If you live in Los Angeles County, you received a glossy flyer in support of Prop A - a minimally priced anti-gang tax. The proponents for the measure include our top law enforcement officers Sheriff Lee Baca and Police Chief Bill Bratton, as well as Mothers Against Gang Violence. Aren't we all against it?

I have some small experience in this arena, so I'm interested in what Prop A will provide. One is my involvement in dealing with gang activity in Washington state, and the other is in being an early provider of afterschool art programs for seven years.

First off, I must digress for a moment to make a comment about the glossy color image on the Prop A flyer. It shows an elementary-aged child showing off her art creation in order to persuade you to vote for the measure. I had to shake my head though, for the girl is holding a glued-together popsicle stick box. Oh, dear. As if this is a fine example of what children will receive in an art program funded by the $3.00 per month tax every home owner will pay. It's an okay craft project for the Brownie troop, but certainly not what a skilled art educator would be teaching. I suppose the ad agency folks that staged this didn't have a better examples at their disposal.

Unfortunately, to me the popsicle stick box exactly typifies what people think of when it comes to elementary art programs. No wonder school personnel think art programs are less than educational if that's the only kind of craft project they ever experienced when they were school-aged. It stands to reason then why administrators don't think kids should spend precious school time pulled away from test prep -- even for 50 minutes per week. I'm not really knocking this fun project, because kids love it, but it doesn't begin to encompass the scope of a comprehensive art program.

Okay, enough soapbox. I don't know that anyone can knock having children and young people productively engaged in those critical hours of 3-6 p.m. Maybe that's where we should focus our right-brain, creative education programs. It's truly something to think about, LA. I'm just curious who will be guiding this new bureaucracy. I haven't been able to find that out.

But back to the gang issue and why we need to act big. After we left LA and moved to Washington, I was appointed by the mayor of our community as the chair of the Mayor's Youth Commission. I enjoyed this position for five years. The commission was charged with overseeing anything concerning youth that city government was involved with in our city of 80,000. Coming from LA, I had a heightened awareness of gang issues. (Indeed, having attended Otis at the old MacArthur Park campus, I was cautious about safety. I had the dubious distinction of being robbed down in the basement dark room, which led to the school finally getting a security guard. I filed a report with the Rampart Station, and my credit card was eventually found on the person of a gang member who'd been enjoying it. I went to court in Watts to press charges.)

So, up in seemingly remote Washington, I was a bit surprised when bits of gang graffiti began to appear. The police and supposed gang experts said it was just wanna-be's and copycats -- not the real thing. (In fact, the belief of the LA cops in my day had been that gangs didn't move outside of their own neighborhoods -- I'd been concerned that since they had my driver's license they'd know where I lived. Now we know that they are very mobile.) But back to Washington: we got a new member on the commission who came from LA and had worked with the Hispanic gangs starting in the 1950s, and then with the black gangs in the 1970s. He knew his stuff. He said he saw evidence all round town of the Crips and Bloods. They traveled unhindered up and down I-5.

We organized neighborhood meetings in order to alert the community. This gentleman stood up and told parents that he would be happy to come to their home and tell them if their child was involved in a gang. He told school principals they had gang members walking right under their noses in the hallways. It was that obvious to him. But nobody believed him. And within two years we had our first drive-by shooting at a local high school, gang-related beatings, etc. It gets rooted quickly when left uncheck.

So now we're back here in LA. And gangs certainly haven't stayed confined to South Central or east LA. Instead of being a problem "over there," it's become an incidious spiderweb across the entire region. The folly of that kind of thinking 25 years ago resulted in not ever addressing the underlying causes. As we all know, the ignored problems festered, than exploded. It seems that communities and neighborhoods once remote and supposedly untouchable are defaced.

Let's support the effort to address this region-wide problem with a region-wide, coordinated response.

During my tenure on the Youth Commission in the mid 90s, there was mounting evidence that afterschool programs were a very promising solution to the problem of latch kids and working parents. But there wasn't much out there, and certainly no outside funding for them. Youth sports programs were dependent upon parents getting the kids to practice and games. They couldn't absorb unattended kids or those in need of transportation. The "Y" hadn't yet begun offering its school programs.

I hired some artists and we took an art program to several schools. This came right on the heels of our district axing the art teacher position at my daughter's school when the first rounds of state testing were dropped on the district. Later when we moved to northern CA I provided a similar program. The biggest problem was that we basically only reached those who could afford to pay our reasonable fees, except for when PTA's provided scholarships for specific kids. So the idea of making art programs widely available to LA kids wins big with me!


This is information is taken directly from the VOTE YES ON PROP A in Los Angeles county:

ANALYSIS
A recent citywide poll indicated that gang and juvenile violence ranked as a top concern for area residents. In fact, a staggering 80% of voters said that gang and juvenile violence was a very serious problem that needed to be addressed. If passed, this initiative will have a dramatic impact benefiting children and neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles by taking kids off the streets and keeping them away from gangs, guns and drugs.

Consider the facts:
There are currently more than 700 gangs and over 40 thousand gang members in Los Angeles.
In 2007, the LAPD reported a 14% increase in gang crime. In the Valley, gang crime is up 4% in the West Valley area and up 11% in the Mission area.
We spend $1.67 million on each gang murder. It costs $218,000 per year to incarcerate a juvenile.
Prevention and intervention programs are needed to complement the addition of more police officers. Chief Bratton has said: “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”
Students who take advantage of after school programs like LA’s BEST are 20% more likely to stay in school.
80% of prison inmates are high school dropouts.
If we can keep 120 kids out of jail, we will save the $30 million cost of the measure. If we can prevent 1,000 kids from being jailed, the measure will save $250 million.

THE INITIATIVE
Mothers Against Gang Violence is the principal proponent of an initiative on the November 2008 ballot that will provide $30 million each year to ensure that every student in Los Angeles has an opportunity to participate in safe after school, job training, mentoring, and apprenticeship programs.
Only funds programs that have a proven track record of successfully boosting academic achievement, reducing high school dropout rates and preventing youth from joining gangs or using drugs.
Guarantees a dedicated funding stream for critical programs that focus on gang prevention, job training and after school programs—without the possibility of being redirected to the general fund or other administrative expenses.
Funds apprenticeship and mentoring programs so that at-risk youth obtain job training and learn important life skills and lessons about respect, discipline, and personal responsibility.
Provides additional funding for after-school and community-based programs such as LA’s BEST, to increase opportunities for safe and supervised activities during the critical hours of 3-6pm, which will keep kids out of the streets and out of trouble.
Provides in-school programs such as GAP (Gang Alternative Program) that expands dropout prevention programs and establishes a citywide 4th grade curriculum that has been phenomenally successful in keeping kids away from gangs. Additionally, it funds a program to escort students to and from school that will keep young people safe from gang recruitment.

ACCOUNTABILITY
Will only fund programs that provide kids with real alternatives to gang involvement, programs with actual success.
A Citizen’s Oversight Committee will oversee and make recommendations to the Mayor and City Council about which organizations receives funding.
The measure requires annual City Controller audits to ensure that all taxpayers’ funds are used effectively, efficiently and as promised to fight gang violence in Los Angeles.
Programs that receive funding are required to demonstrate effectiveness, which will be measured by long-term success of kids participating in the programs or an actual reduction in gang violence. Programs that cannot demonstrate effectiveness and not shown to reduce gang violence will not be eligible to receive funds raised by this measure.
Funding comes from a $36 annual parcel tax on each property, with exemptions for low-income property owners, and senior citizens, which comes to $3 a month.

Click on the VOTE YES link to get more information:

http://www.voteyespropa.com/