A big brother lost to violence

December 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment


By Theresa Olsteen, Crenshaw High School

I used to think that the one thing I could never speak about was the death of my brother. When it first happened, I couldn’t talk about it with anyone and didn’t want to think about it. Out of all of my family members I think that it hit my mom, his twin, and myself the hardest.

I didn’t believe it until the funeral. Although I cried when they told me he was gone, his death became real at his funeral.

His death wasn’t his fault. He went to the store with one of his friends earlier in the evening before the incident. His friend got in an altercation with a Hispanic man and that turned into a fight. From what I heard, my brother’s friend Red won the fight and the man left with cuts and bruises. After the fight my brother Kevin and Red returned to our house where they hung out.

After a couple of hours Kevin decided that he needed to go back to the store and his twin Keith told him that he shouldn’t. Knowing Kevin he didn’t listen. When he got back to the store the Hispanic man and one of his friends had been waiting there for him. Before he walked in the store the men shot him three times in the chest with a shoot gun. Kevin died right there on the spot.

The reason why I think that it hit me so hard is because we were really close. I talked to him about everything and he always listened. He was there for me when I thought that I was all by myself. He was my oldest brother and although he was mean at times, he was really nice. As days went by after his death I thought that I couldn’t live without him. He was the person that I would turn to when things got hard and rocky for me but I had to deal with it alone because he was gone.

Most of the time I isolated myself from everyone and everything. My mom thought that I was never going to talk again.

The way that I got through it alone was by picking up a book and sitting on our roof, where I was by myself, to read. It kind of got my mind off of it but I still couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The first person that I started talking to after the whole incident was his twin, my other brother Keith. I knew that we had to be going through the same thing because they where each other’s shadow. They went everywhere together.

After he and I started talking I started feeling better and now I feel like I can talk about it freely. Thank you for listening.

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Students experiment with photography at Foshay Learning Center

November 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment


As part of an Intersections photography workshop, students at Foshay Learning Center experimented with cameras on campus.

Interested in hosting a workshop at your school? Contact our mentoring team at [email protected] for more information.

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Snapshots of the Foshay Learning Center

November 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment


As part of an Intersections photography workshop, students at Foshay Learning Center experimented with cameras on campus.

Interested in hosting a workshop at your school? Contact our mentoring team at [email protected] for more information.

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Behind the Lens: Photography at Foshay Learning Center

November 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment


As part of an Intersections photography workshop, students at Foshay Learning Center experimented with cameras on campus.

Interested in hosting a workshop at your school? Contact our mentoring team at [email protected] for more information.

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Manual Arts High School students explore abuse and violence

November 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment


This is the last write-up from freshman students at Manual Arts High School. Some participated in weeks-long projects about animal abuse, drugs, gangs, prostitution and racism. Part of their projects included surveys they created for their communities. After they gathered information, all of the groups presented their findings at a school presentation. Two days later, each group wrote about their experiences during an Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report mentoring and writing workshop.

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Child Abuse and Violence

By: Nicolas Arevalo and Juan Luis

We chose violence because it is something that exists inside every single human being. It is an important issue because people suffer through violence, including child abuse and domestic violence. We learned that there are many forms of abuse, and there are also ways that we can help people who have experienced abuse in their lives.

Human beings are not the only ones who suffer through violence because animals get treated badly, too. They get hurt and are pushed around, and that is also known as animal abuse.

Our group also learned that people who usually have been treated badly and have been suppressed are the ones who might do the same thing to others that happened to them.

We discovered all of this information after we conducted about 370 surveys on how to stop violence in communities, and if there is violence around and inside us. People who have gone through violence have had a hard time recovering from it.

For example, have you ever seen someone get shot right in front of you? Some people in our group have, and they have seen one friend get shot right around the block. It was a terrible experience because that is the first time the group member has seen someone on the floor, full of blood. You could see the rounds on the ground, cartridges on the floor and the helpless body.

That is one of the reasons why violence is not such a good idea. It is also another reason why people should not get involved in it.

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Exploring drugs and drug dealing

November 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment


This is the seventh of eight write-ups from freshman students at Manual Arts High School. Some participated in weeks-long projects about animal abuse, drugs, gangs, prostitution and racism. Part of their projects included surveys they created for their communities. After they gathered information, all of the groups presented their findings at a school presentation. Two days later, each group wrote about their experiences during an Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report mentoring and writing workshop.

Drugs and Drug Dealing

By: Khyla Brown, Victor Coronado, Jocelyn Garcia, Crystal Leon, Cesilia Orellana and Sarai Teodocio

We chose drugs and drug dealing because it is something that really affects our communities, and we have experienced it in our lives with friends and family. It is also one of the biggest things going around in our communities. Our group was asked to research and interview people to see the different perspectives about this topic.

Our interviews included our teachers and people from community organizations. We also did plenty of research about the topic. We handed out surveys at the senior quad on campus and around the lunch area. When people walked by, we gave them the surveys and had a conversation.

What we have learned is that you can stop the use of drugs, but you cannot stop them from existing. And even though you can tell people not to do drugs, some of them will not listen to what you are trying to tell them. We also learned that drugs will always exist in life, and that we can help you, but it is your choice to see if you want to stop selling or using drugs.

We observed that most of the students at Manual Arts High School do drugs, and they felt that if they told us they smoked weed, we would tell the counselors. We told them not to put their names on the surveys because we wanted their answers to be completely confidential. We told them to be real about their answers and not to lie because their names would not go on it anyway.

One other thing our group learned is that a lot of people have not used any type of drugs, but they would like to try it some day.

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Local high school students research ethnicity and racism

October 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment


This is the sixth of eight write-ups from freshman students at Manual Arts High School. Some participated in weeks-long projects about animal abuse, drugs, gangs, prostitution and racism. Part of their projects included surveys they created for their communities. After they gathered information, all of the groups presented their findings at a school presentation. Two days later, each group wrote about their experiences during an Intersections writing workshop.

Racism

By: Jorge Arana, Sergio Corona, Rayshawn Holifield and Mayra Romero

When we learned we were going to have a Community Action Research project and present a PowerPoint presentation to the school about a deficit in our community, we were not confident about the project. Two major deficits that influence us are animal abuse and racism. We chose racism because we believe that people need to know that we are all the same, and we wanted to prove that no race is superior and no ethnicity is inferior to any other.

Just because we look different or have different believes does not mean we should be treated differently.

During our research, we found that some people did not take racism seriously, but we also found that a majority of people actually cared. We interviewed two parents to get their opinions. Most of our questions revolved around how racism affects our communities and what we can do to change it.

We learned that we cannot stop racism, but there are ways people can reduce harm. Many people affected by racism are people of color, including African Americans, Latinos and Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans.

African Americans were the most affected in South Central Los Angeles. They are treated as if they have no value, and they are victims of police brutality. Some African Americans decided to have an uprising in Watts in 1965 and a rebellion of what happened with Rodney King in 1992. During those two situations, police were permitted to beat and kill African Americans. This is where some gangs originated from.

The tactic we want to use to reduce the impact of racism is organize community. We want to gather people who have been affected by racism and figure out a way to stand up together to protest and fight for our rights to be treated equally. Another tactic that we plan to use is propaganda. We could paint a mural on our school walls of people from different races socializing and working together through conflicts.

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Manual Arts High School students learn about gangs in their communities

October 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment


This is the fifth of eight write-ups from freshman students at Manual Arts High School. Some participated in weeks-long projects about animal abuse, drugs, gangs, prostitution and racism. Part of their projects included surveys they created for their communities. After they gathered information, all of the groups presented their findings at a school presentation. Two days later, each group wrote about their experiences during an Intersections writing workshop.

Gangs

By: Byron Chaperno, Luis Mateo, Carolina Mercado and Cynthia Molina

We chose to research gangs because it is one of the biggest things that influences our communities. While doing this project, we discovered a lot of information. Our group surveyed about 121 students and one teacher. We visited six classrooms.

Many people agreed that one of the most dangerous gangs is one called Mara Salvatrucha. And a lot of people believe that people join gangs because they want to be “cool,” but nobody really knows specifically why people join gangs.

Ms. Sarah Glasband, our wonderful teacher who helped us discover information, also helped us come up with the main question for our survey. Some of our questions were easy, and some were hard. We asked questions that had “yes” or “no” bubbles, and some that people really needed to think about.

During our presentation, we were very nervous. After we finished the presentation, though, we were all happy. We had a great semester, and we hope we can do this again but better.

If we had more time to do this project, we would have liked to interview more people in the community and try to survey some elementary and middle schools. We also would have interviewed more students and teachers at Manual Arts High School.

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Exploring the meaning of violence

October 27, 2010 By 2 Comments


This is the fourth of eight write-ups from freshman students at Manual Arts High School. Some participated in weeks-long projects about animal abuse, drugs, gangs, prostitution and racism. Part of their projects included surveys they created for their communities. After they gathered information, all of the groups presented their findings at a school presentation. Two days later, each group wrote about their experiences during an Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report mentoring and writing workshop.

Violence

By: Hugo Castaneda and Christian Garcia

We chose violence because we had overall topics that we wanted to talk about. We thought about animal abuse, domestic abuse and gang violence, and they all fell into the category of violence. This led us to our inquiry question, which was, “How can we stop violence in our community when we see violence within us and all around us?”

Our team conducted research by distributing surveys and giving interviews to multiple people. Facts that we got from the surveys are: many students think violence comes from school, and most students would like to stop violence, but they are too scared to try. Also, students do not see other ways to solve problems because most students see violence in themselves. Victims of violence include everyone from children to elders and from pets to farm animals. Men and women also experience verbal to sexual abuse, and the entire world is full of violence. Everyone is a victim. Violence is found in our homes, the media, video games, television shows, schools and movies.

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Manual Arts High School students research impact of prostitution

October 26, 2010 By 1 Comment


This is the third of eight write-ups from freshman students at Manual Arts High School. Some participated in weeks-long projects about animal abuse, drugs, gangs, prostitution and racism. Part of their projects included surveys they created for their communities. After they gathered information, all of the groups presented their findings at a school presentation. Two days later, each group wrote about their experiences during an Intersections: The South Los Angeles Report mentoring and writing workshop.

Prostitution

By: David Delgado, Jocelyne Recinos, Jesse Rodas and Sophia Salazar

Prostitution is a concern in our community, and we would like to change or help in any way we can. Our main question was, “How does prostitution affect women in our community, and would it help if we made it legal?”

While doing this project, we learned that prostitution has been seen by a lot of students at Manual Arts High School. We handed out 136 surveys to students, and our team visited about 10 classrooms. We discovered that prostitution is in a lot of our communities.

We also learned that making prostitution legal, or giving it its own area, will not make our streets safer. Our group thinks this because we believe a lot of people will still prostitute themselves for drugs or other illegal substances.

Our group interviewed Mr. Irving, our principal, and he was concerned. He asked us why we had chosen this topic, and we answered that we were concerned about our younger family members. We told him we wanted to know how to explain to them why these women do what they do. We discovered that most prostitutes do what they do because they are poor, and they have no other ways to get money. Instead of helping them, the government is investing money in prisons and the war.

Some women do not have any jobs, and they need to pay rent, bills, and food and water to support their children. But prostitution is basically slavery for women.

Wherever there have been bad economic situations, there has been prostitution.

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