Yesterday in Fontana (are we all organizers)

I started to write a text to my mentor and original community organizing trainer but it was getting too long, so I cut it short and am now putting all the thoughts that were running through my mind here. Because words.

Hey there, brother. Hope you are doing as well as can be. 

❤️✌️Happy New Year! So shit is fucked here in Fontana. You know this. Lol. But we're working on it. Joz Sida who is running for Mayor raised 52k for December filing. Today [Saturday] she hosted the Peace and Freedom candidate, [Ramsey for Governor who brought all the socialism to the discussion. Rent freeze, housing for all, paid for by a tax for billionaires, healthcare for all, and a dignified, union job, and living wage beginning at $30. We know the reality of the state of California ever hearing this message broadly, so there's that. But it was nice to hear, to talk about Fontana and how these policy things can begin at the local level. We did all this with the backdrop of Jurupa Hills behind us, and with a peek over the fence, the bulldozers could be seen, at rest for the day but posed to continue their destruction of the Southridge Wildlands we were trying to save for the community. 

Which brings me to...

I think we are on our way to making magic happen because Joz is putting it all out there. She is inspiring people to take a bold stance and policy agenda (and scaring the bejeezus out of o our pragmatic and incremental establishment folks). There's a candidate running against 159 year old John Roberts. And another running against the man I lovingly refer to as Skeletor Jr. who has to recuse himself more often than I can count when it comes to conflict of interest on the city council votes.

So the kids are gonna be alright, as they say.

... except for near zero immigration rapid response directly in Fontana. Immigration, 287(g), if you remember, was what I spoke on at the very first council meeting I attended.

After the campaign meeting at Joz's, a few of us went to what I've always thought of as the meeting after the meeting. (And then held the parking lot meeting after the meeting after the meeting. 😂)

For a moment as we were talking and afterwards, I was feeling desperate and overwhelmed as two women shared their stories of patrolling for ICE/CPB and being the only ones here, driving from north to south (which can take 30 plus minutes). And how the hotline received calls from San Bernardino, Ontario, Rialto. And there just wasn't enough people.

Four people were taken yesterday. Two, a father/son, the women missed because they lost the CBP vehicle they had stumbled upon at Hemlock and Valley. By the time they got to the scene (exact location I can't remember), reports were the two men had been taken. 

I was so desperate I went to church, my in-laws' church in their neighborhood... to talk to someone to see if they could help. Meeting space. Outreach to church members. Whatever. 

Turns out I showed up at the Filipino mass which was the celebration of Santo Niño so there was food after. 

During the mass, during prayer, during hymns in Tagalog, I texted my new peace partner to see about a texting program to voters in Fontana.  What it would cost, what the target audience would be. Still ruminating on what the messaging would be. And I counted the flags, twenty-one plus U.S. displayed in the sanctuary of the new church, forty years in the making.

But the food. I hadn't had dinner but a small container of nachos at the meeting after the meeting location and my stomach was rumbling. 

I was reminded of my stepmother (her father was a chef) and her extended Filipino family that always had great food. Last night the food was warm, delicious, and plentiful. And, of course, followed by Karaoke. 

I connected with a few people, Joe from the Knights of Columbus (KOC) and his wife, a retired teacher. Joe told me how he watches the news and we talked and talked and talked. And he joked about his neighbors call him the mayor of their block. And, we're meeting today to see how he can help. And, at one point, after asking me what I did for a living, for work, he said, "I never met a community organizer before." Maybe he didn't realize the organizational work with the KOC, and in his knowing his own neighborhood to the degree they called him the Mayor, that he had done for years, was exactly that.

And, then Miss Yolanda, who sat at our table, also retired, who shared a story of her advocating for her street at city hall, where there was a proposal about something or another that led her to believe their community was being targeted for some kind of redevelopment, if I heard and remember correctly. 

She talked about how back then public comments were 5 minutes and how she wrote her speech ensuring she had an introduction and a conclusion, like her boss, a general at Norton Air Force base always said a speech needed to have. How she rehearsed it over and over and timed it to the second to take full advantage of her time. And how she almost slept through the council meeting at 6:30 pm because she had been up all night before thinking over and over about the speech, about being scared to go, and then of what the results would be and how she'd be received. She was awakened by a call from a nephew that the newest baby in their family had just been born, a great-nephew named Jude. She was tired, she said, and thought about not going to City Hall, but news about baby Jude woke her up. Time to wake up and get to downtown (or as she more geographically accurately called it, uptown). 

Yoland smiled as she recalled how the Mayor tucked her tongue to one side visibly noticeable, reflecting some kind of deep breath and maybe a hint (or more than a hint) of frustration, before she referred Yolanda to the planning department after she spoke. 

So she met with planning and had to return back to the next city council meeting with a slightly revised script based on the staffer sharing they were not necessarily supportive of the council's plan (and also a list of everyone on their street and how long they had lived there gathered by a neighbor). The changes they were planning were halted. Her street was saved! And I said so, out loud. Quickly she said that she shared this not to self-aggrandize, but to offer hope. That we can win. She had organized herself. And she had secured a victory.

She and I closed down the parking lot at this impromptu meeting after the meeting after the other parking lot meeting, etc. 

She talked about hearing of recall effort for the Mayor, not sure which effort she was talking about, but it sounded like 2017 because she said they were looking everywhere for a petition to sign. But maybe it was when Joz posted a survey gathering a contact list of those who agreed and might be willing to help.

There's more about my journey this past 10 days, how I am a community organizer, and how I have inspiration about how to organize that breaks through the years of what has felt like lonely futility. For what it's worth, magic is happening here. What it is, is exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there (and here) telling me (and all of us) we've got to beware. Y'all know the song. Everybody look what's going on and let's revise and add new lyrics to what we sing, in some way, by the work we do. 

Finished off with a lovely little poetry writing session with World Peace Now organizer and believer, Gustavo. He wrote a hip-ku (his word for indigenous haiku):

Big organizer

Bobbi Jo Chavarria 

....I forgot the last line. 

But maybe it is

We all can do it.

I'll share last night's version later because I will get it today, because, of course, there is a World Peace Now meeting scheduled for today.