All over the nation people strive to answer Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous invocation: “What are you doing for others?” Many engage in projects to make their community a better place to live. My students at Life Academy in California have answered the call to service in several ways. First, they showed up on campus during a school holiday to beautify the school grounds, paint a mural, clean out an old storage room, build benches and tend to a garden. Second, they launched a 74-day fast “Season of Peace Building.” Students signed up to fast on certain days, in a kind of relay, to highlight the time from MLK day to Cesar Chavez day.
Still reeling from the death of a former student in early November, our community suffered another blow over winter break when the 5-year-old brother of a current student was shot and killed outside his father’s taco truck. This incident was shocking not only because the victim was 5 years old, but also because he was the third child under the age of 6 to be killed by random gun violence in Oakland, Calif. since last August.
Making altars and attending funerals can only do so much to ease the pain of our students’ sadness. Two groups on campus spear-headed what they hope will become a city-wide prolonged effort to make change. Both the young men’s group called “Be A Man” (BAM) and the young women’s group called “Real Ambitious Women” (RAW) brainstormed ways they could confront this outrageous violence. Working together, the 30 or so students created a peace movement.
While eleventh-grader Adriana is not a member of a RAW, she chose to participate in the day of service by cleaning up litter along the perimeter of campus and painting a mural in the gym. She says that she wanted “to make a change in our community… some students actually took their time to help clean and do something proactive and not just stay home and play video games, which a lot of them are doing.” She also plans to join the fast next month.
Similarly, Adam Roberts, former Life Academy teacher turned Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, participated because “having worked here, I know how tough it is to find the time to do these sorts of projects for the school, so in a day like this when a lot of people show up, you can get a lot done.” Roberts heard about the student initiative for peace through Facebook and said he was happy to see students taking a “proactive approach to change things by infusing positivity into the community.”
After a long morning of hard labor, the community gathered in a circle lead by Julio Magana, the adult advisor of BAM, to initiate what would become a daily ceremony until the fast ends symbolically on the birthday of Cesar Chavez at the end of March. At least 50 people, including students, younger siblings, parents, teachers, staff and community members agreed to the following pledge during a call and response:
“In the name of baby Carlos and in the name of baby Hiram, in the name of Gabriel Martinez and the unnamed victims of violence, we reject all forms of hatred and ignorance, we reject violence and the injustices that profit off of them. In the name of BAM and in the name of RAW, in the name of Life Academy and all students, we commit to building community; we commit to building peace.”
Magana was the first to begin the fast. A few delegated students wrapped a symbolic armband around his arm as he urged them to carry on the fast each day. He said that their “hard work and dedication is what is going to feed me.” Without a doubt, this community answered what Martin Luther King Jr. called “life’s most persistent and urgent question” by committing to each other in the name of peace.
Thomas is an English teacher in California.
