September 2004
Oakland Leaf Builds a Garden of Peace
A group of activist teachers is changing lives in East Oakland Schools
by Jennifer Liss
In December 2002, Ashley Buffin’s world exploded when a bullet ended the life of her 13-year-old friend, Keith. Ashley had grown to be fearless Oakland teen who was quick to step into a fight and claim her space, but Keith’s sudden, senseless death devastated her. Looking for answers, she enrolled in the Oakland Peace Camp (OPC) and the experience transformed her. Now a sensitive and confident 16-year-old Oakland High student, Ashley recalls the moment that defined her new life — it was the day she found herself walking away from a schoolyard fight for the first time.
“I just realized I didn’t want to fight her. It wasn’t worth me being put out of school. At school we only talk about peace in history — not in Oakland. If there were more opportunities in Oakland, there would be more peace, less people hanging out on the street, less people in jail.” Ashley credits her new attitude to the death of her friend and her experience attending the Oakland Peace Camp.
While not all its graduates experience such dramatic transformations, the OPC has opened doors for many Oakland kids by illuminating new pathways for positive social action and conflict resolution.
This summer, 75 kids attended the two-week Peace Camp, a unique program that advocates peace and social justice through a mix of guerrilla theater, hip-hop, salsa dancing, Capoeira, digital film-making, and urban agriculture. The day I visited the campus (on the grounds of the Urban Promise Academy on International Boulevard in East Oakland), it was alive with the sounds of salsa. Clapping and singing echoed from a Capoeira class. In one classroom, Peace Campers were designing cover art for a hip-hop CD while, a nearby team of youngsters edited a film shot in digital video. Another pack of young artists was designing a community billboard (donated by Clear Channel) that displayed a message of unity. In yet another workshop, students designed stickers promoting nonviolence. Their teacher asked them to consider the consequences of putting stickers on other people’s property. But he also had them consider: “If you oppose the war in Iraq, or the violence here in East Oakland, shouldn’t everyone know about it?” The solution? Messages were placed on removable stickers.
The OPC’s theater workshops allowed students to discover nonviolent solutions to real-life problems. For example, one group of students improvised a skit about a carload of friends getting pulled over by the police. They found ways to keep their cool and get out of the situation without trouble.
Nutrition was not overlooked. Students feasted on a healthy lunch of salad, Spanish rice, and chicken enchiladas from Pass the Peas, an Oakland business that specializes in ethnic catering.
Capoeira challenges the students’ bodies as much as their minds, pushing their limits in order to master the intense physical challenges of this Brazilian blend of dance and martial arts. “Capoeria was born out of slavery,” explains Aniefre Essien, a self-described “adopted Oakland son” from Harbor City, California. It comes from the ideas of peace, justice, and freedom. If people aren’t free, there will be no peace.” Essien hooked up with the OPC team when they started attending his Capoeria class. “Some of us are teaching from the standpoint of the oppressed — learning how to overcome,” he adds. “Others are teaching from a place of sympathy. These kids were me 14 years ago.”
The Roots of Leaves
In May 2001, an expectant crowd squeezed into the sun-warmed lobby of the La Pena Cultural Center for the first annual All-Oakland Talent Show, a grassroots event organized by a group of twenty-something educators to showcase the talents of more than 100 kids from 12 Oakland schools. For several straight hours, the audience stood, stamped, and cheered with chest-busting pride as each young poet, break-dancer, and singer performed like seasoned veterans, energizing the audience with their creativity. When the house lights finally flooded the room, paper bags were passed and $5,000 was collected in the name of Oakland’s youth.
Fast-forward three years, and the All-Oakland Talent Show (now held at Oakland’s Blackbox Theater) is still as raw and vibrant as ever. But today, in addition to promoting Oakland’s teen artists, it also serves as a fundraiser for the Oakland Peace Camp. Both the talent show and OPC (along with a soon-to-be launched after-school program) are the brainchild of the Oakland Leaf Foundation.
In small but meaningful ways, the Oakland Leaf Foundation (OLF) is paving the way for delegates of peace. The OLF was founded by a group of young Oakland educators frustrated with the city’s dysfunctional public education system and alarmed by the frightening surge of violence in East Oakland. Most of OLF’s core group are alumni of Teach for America, the national organization that places college grads in under-resourced school systems. Most of these activist-educators have kept at least one foot in the door of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), while recruiting students and other educators to join them in supporting an alternative way of learning using the contemporary urban arts to explore issues of peace and social justice.
Preserving Nate’s Dream
Born and raised in Oakland to a politically-minded family, Michael Siegel, Oakland Leaf’s 26-year-old executive director, is as confident in his lean frame and steady voice, as he is calm — the signs of a real leader who seems to always be at the center of a flurry of organizing. In the rustic backyard of his parents’ Oakland home, Seigel explains the philosophical roots of Oakland Leaf: “Simply, we shared the common idea that education is a vehicle for social change.” That vision was hashed out in various homes and schools during a troubling period when the Oakland community was rocked by a record-breaking string of murders. The escalating violence served as a catalyst for the formation of Oakland Leaf, Siegel explains. There were more than 100 murders in Oakland in 2002 — 26 murders per 100,000 people (compared to a national average of 5.6 per 100,000).
Donald Lacy, the 44-year-old head of the Love Life Foundation (founded in the memory of his daughter who was a murder victim of random violence), breaks down that troubling history. “When I was growing up,” Lacy recalls, “the climate was much different. Oakland changed in the late seventies with the introduction of crack. Its influence was like the tentacles of an octopus — far-reaching. Now we see lots of fights every day on school campuses. There is a lack of love for these kids; a lack of parental guidance. Some young people are supporting their whole families. They are frustrated. They are pissed off. It is amazing that, considering their circumstances, some of these kids can even function.
“OUSD is in chaos,” he adds referring to a threatened state take-over to deal with the school district’s dire financial and academic problems. “There are a lot of good teachers. But there are also a lot of teachers who don’t respect the kids, who are scared of the kids. Kids can pick up on when someone cares about them or not.”
Another key factor in the formation of Oakland Leaf was the unexpected death of 25-year-old Oakland teacher Nate Walrod, one of the group’s co-founders and Siegal’s close childhood friend. Walrod’s revolutionary rhetoric and intense enthusiasm for an education experience full of love and action had a deep impact on his students, colleagues and friends. Many children discovered they were poets thanks to Nate’s influence and they were among the many celebrants who took the mike at Nate’s memorial — a testament to his success as a teacher. Oakland Leaf has become Walrod’s living memorial.
“He was a person I’d done a lot of dreaming with,” Siegel says.
The Path to Peace
Arzu Mistry, an Oakland Leaf educator and artist originally from Banglore, India, further explains the motivation for the Oakland Leaf projects. “We wanted to start a conversation around the idea of peace and create advocates for peace in these kids. We wanted to do it in a way that they could relate to.”
OPC can be as challenging for educators as it is for students. It is obvious that the success of the program is directly connected to the youth of its founders. “This takes so much creativity, career risks,” Siegel explains. “I couldn’t afford to do this if I had a mortgage and kids.”
Sixty-four-year-old Ernest “Ernie” Bagner, a core member of Oakland Leaf, taught in Oakland high schools for 28 years, often in “bleak situations.” He strolls through the OPC grounds in a loose Hawaiian-style shirt, calling each student by name. “As educators, we must internalize the process of peace so that we can produce an environment where peace can flourish,” he explains. “We usually don’t demonstrate peace in the school system, where we often use threats as we teach the state standards and not peace and social justice and what really matters in the lives of these kids. I’ve had to change my teaching strategies. In many ways I feel like a rookie educator.”
It was risk-taking individuals like Bagner that made OPC possible. Its success was also abetted by several benevolent administrators who side-stepped OUSD boundaries as Michael and other Oakland Leafers scrambled to raise money and enroll the OPC’s first group of kids.
David Montes de Oca, principal of the Urban Promise Academy, a small autonomous school that has helped to host OPC, speaks with great enthusiasm about the Oakland Leaf founders. “There is an urgency in their work,” he says, “a stamina and an endurance. The kids know they are in dialog with educators who share their language, who are culturally articulate. Within this community, there is an increased respect for young leaders and, of course, there is a wealth of elders providing support and counsel.”
Stephen Walrod, Nate’s father and an Oakland Leaf board member, agrees. “They have an understanding for the importance of mentorship. They don’t indulge in pessimism. And they are willing to accept less than perfection” in order to make progress.
Alternative education programs, such as Oakland Leaf, are a welcome supplement to the public school system. They keep creative educators involved while offering students an opportunity to learn in a different way. Several teachers I spoke with admitted that they might have left the OUSD system if it hadn’t been for Oakland Leaf. “The district prevents the level of collaboration we want to work at,” Siegel says. “We couldn’t deal with the district bureaucracy, lack of creative freedom, the state take-over.”
Parents are also grateful for alternative programs. Chevita Taylor has lived in Oakland for 10 years and is very cautious about the programs she lets her kids join. Three of her four children attend OPC. “It has opened up their minds to more than just what they can see around them,” she says. “It has broadened their horizons, and they have become more conscious of their surroundings.” And, laughs heartily, “my daughter loves learning salsa.”
But her 12-year-old son Michael best captured the success of the Oakland Leaf mission. Asked to define “peace,” he speaks without hesitation: “Peace is unity, equality, and love,” he says. “It is about setting an example of trying to do right and being a leader. I’m not yet, but I’m working on it.”
For more information on Oakland Leaf contact Michael Siegel at MichaelJWSiegel@aol.com.
San Francisco writer Jennifer Liss is a frequent contributor to Common Ground.
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