Cafe on A

The paradox of holy places: they exist—spatially, materially,—but they’re also all in your mind. And heart.

This is a reflection on our sacred space in the heart of Oxnard—Café on A.

On March 14, 1979, twenty-five years before I met Café on A co-creators Armando Vázquez and Debbie De Vries, a pre-dawn earthquake off the coast of Guerrero rumbled through Mexico City and destroyed much of the Iberoamericana Univeristy where I worked. Had it struck a couple of hours later, the campus would have been teeming with students, teachers and staff. Because of the fortuitous timing hundreds of people lived who would otherwise have died.

When I got off the subway and arrived on campus that afternoon, I was shocked by the devastation. My classroom had been reduced to rubble. But more than the material catastrophe, what I remember most vividly are the signs posted and painted on the walls that remained standing. Anonymous muralistas had gone to work immediately to bring forth image and poetry from the ruins.

One graffiti was seared into my brain forever: La universidad no es un edificio. The univeristy is not a building.

It was the perfect aphorism for the campus existential crisis. We read it and went about the work of sustaining what the university really was—a community. I like to think that no one who experienced the jolt of earthquake and poetry that day ever again confused a building with its meaning, existence with essence.

The Jesuit founders of the Universidad Iberoamericana knew something about sustaining institutions. The best among them knew the secret of sacred space: build it with your heart, your soul and your integrity, and it will last. Earthquake proof. Even if it all falls down.

Paradoxically, the institutions that are built in full consciousness that they are not (merely) buildings tend to be the most beautiful, the most soulfully imperishable. Build them of brick, steel, silver and gold; or build them of wind, sand, mud and straw. The materials don’t matter. The heart of the matter matters.

Debbie and Armando have designed our beloved Café on A as a sacred space that’s in a building, but not of a building. And thus Café on A becomes the molten core, the epicenter of a different kind of earthquake. The kind that shakes asunder the foundations of injustice, that inspires artists to rock our world, that releases underground tectonic energy to radiate in mystery and transform lives.

Café on A is exactly where it’s supposed to be: on Oxnard’s spiritual faultline, on the frontera, in the circle whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.

Que dure mil años. May it last a thousand years.

The Last Gospel, a historical novel published in 2000 by Discus Books

Combination thriller, wisdom quest, and futuristic love story, David Howard’s The Last Gospel is a richly textured and meticulously researched novel that infuses ancient religion with new meaning for a new millennium.

The Last Gospel takes the reader on a riveting journey that shifts on parallel plot lines from the 1st to the 21st century, juxtaposing the heroes, sages and villains of ancient Palestine with those of tomorrow’s hi-tech California.

In the year 2020 Pope Juan Diego, under the Vatican’s glasnost policy, releases a set of ancient scrolls the Catholic Church has held in secret for a thousand years. The documents contain first person accounts of the life of Jesus, told by those who knew him best.

Providing new and credible testimony, the "Isaac Scrolls" challenge core Judeo-Christian beliefs: Jesus had an Indian lover, a vengeful brother, a mother who was both sensuous and wise. Judas was framed by Peter. Mary Magdalene had an affair with Thomas, and Jesus leaves a final message for humanity in the hands of a teenager.

Just as Christians prepare to re-examine their most cherished beliefs, one of the key researchers on the project, Rafaela Baruch da Costa, a Sephardic-American Jew, pregnant by her expatriated African-American lover, begins to uncover prophecies encoded in the Scrolls. As her love life, career and family life careen out of control, and as she is menaced by Fundamentalist terrorists, Rafaela is inexorably led to the conviction that she must act resolutely to avert Middle Eastern catastrophe.

AVAILABLE IN HARDBOUND AND UNABRIDGED AUDIO:

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Project Emancipation, Published in VC Star, 3/30/05

Gang injunctions must not be perpetual
The Oxnard gang injunction trial has come to an end, and the verdict is in the hands of the judge. Public Defender Neil Quinn and civil rights attorney Gabriella Navarro-Busch have presented a compelling case to challenge the wisdom, constitutionality and effectiveness of the Oxnard injunction. It is my view that their arguments should prevail and the injunction should be rescinded. The injunction was a bad idea to begin with—the brainchild of an overzealous police chief who has since resigned. Instead, we should devote our energies to providing the full range of educational, health, employment and rehabilitative services that we know can not only dramatically reduce crime rates but also improve the quality of life for all of us. I was among a group of community activists who attended the injunction trial in Ventura County Superior Court. One interesting thing we observed is that every single person involved in this case was appalled by the extent of violent crime in Oxnard. That includes police officers, district attorney, civil rights activists, relatives of victims and alleged gang members, attorneys for the enjoined individuals, and expert witnesses for both sides. Everyone who set foot in Judge Byssche’s courtroom is strongly committed to reducing the murder and violent crime rate in Oxnard. Our profound disagreement is not over the goal, but the means of achieving it. The proponents of the injunction have emphasized punitive measures, while the opponents have stressed social services and rehabilitation. We activists have argued that law enforcement must do its job without violating anyone’s civil rights. The district attorney insists, however, that some rights—like freedom of association— are worth circumscribing in pursuit of winning the “war on gangs.” Despite these diverse approaches and philosophies, and despite the inherent adversarial nature of a trial, I hope we can find some common ground. One area in which we may get consensus between community groups and law enforcement is Project Emancipation. Activists for several peace and justice organizations have presented a proposal to the Court that provides a rehabilitative exit from the injunction. The need for such a strategy can be gleaned from District Attorney Karen Wold’s statement in the Star on 3/25/04: "People who are not even born yet can be served with this order 20 years from now.” The Oxnard Police Department’s Q&A on their website has a one-word answer to the question of how long the injunction will last: forever. If you’re not alarmed, you ought to be. Consider this: Nothing prevents the Oxnard Police Department under current leadership or under whatever leadership it may have ten, twenty or fifty years from now, from jailing citizens for driving home from the movies after 10:00 pm or for crossing the street to visit a neighbor. There is no requirement that such a citizen have a criminal record. Indeed, Californians have already been enjoined by similarly crafted injunctions without ever having been arrested or even having been a suspect in a crime. All the police have to do is document that someone has accused you of being a gang member. A witch hunt? Potentially. Project Emancipation would establish a rehabilitative alternative to incarceration and eternal surveillance. Enjoined individuals would be offered the opportunity to participate in a community-based program like Oxnard College’s KEYS Leadership Academy. The award-winning KEYS program has been enormously successful with Ventura County’s most challenging youth. KEYS gets at-risk young men and women enrolled in school, gainfully employed and involved in productive community-improvement projects. The injunction would be temporarily lifted while alleged gang members are enrolled in an approved rehab program like KEYS and permanently lifted upon successful graduation. Respected community organizations like CAUSE and El Concilio, along with representatives from the police and probation departments, would provide oversight for Project Emancipation. Currently, gang injunctions provide no incentive for enjoined individuals to get a job, go to school or contribute to the community. Project Emancipation does. Even if the injunction is rescinded in Oxnard, Project Emancipation can provide a rehabilitative model for past and future injunctions throughout the state and country. Can anyone argue that jobs and college credit are not a more desirable outcome than jail?

Oxnard Gang Injunction, A Distraction, Published in VC Star, 12/14/04

Oxnard Police Chief Lopez dismisses civil rights activists' objections to the gang injunction by claiming, "Our highest court does not contend the injunction is a violation of the rights of gang members." This misleading presumption of constitutionality deserves some scrutiny.

The Oxnard injunction, in citing more than 1,000 unnamed "Joe Does" and covering a vast expanse of the city, goes much further than the very narrow injunction against 33 named defendants that was upheld by the State Supreme Court in Gallo vs. Acuña. But even in the Acuña case, several justices were troubled by the limits on freedom of association. Justice Stanley Mosk, in fact, was outraged. He concluded his impassioned dissent by quoting U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren: "Unfortunately, there are some who think the way to save freedom in this country is to adopt the techniques of tyranny."

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the use of such techniques of tyranny, even against gang members, ruling 6-3 that Chicago's anti-loitering laws were unconstitutional. The court determined -- with only Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and William Rehnquist dissenting -- that in a free society, police cannot be given unbridled authority to arrest citizens.

Police officers, the court said, need some evidence of wrongdoing before they intervene. There is, however, no wrongdoing in the behavior that has been arbitrarily criminalized under Chief Lopez's injunction. In his world, you can go to jail for wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. If the police chief wants to push the envelope on our civil liberties, he should be mindful of the consequences. The 1992 loitering law in Chicago resulted in 42,000 wrongful arrests of alleged gang members. Most of those arrested were black or Latino.

Is that the way to prevent violence in Ventura County? The experts in education and healthcare say no.

The gang injunction is a costly and counterproductive distraction from the violence prevention programs that nurture our children to grow up peaceful, loving, productive members of society.

Gang Injunction is Bad News for Oxnard, Published in VC Star, 11/21/2004

NO GANG INJUNCTIONS
No más mano dura

There's good news and bad news about the sweeping civil gang injunction imposed on 6.6 square miles of Oxnard.

If you view the glass as half empty, the situation may look pretty grim. Litigation is likely to cost the county a fortune; citizens misidentified and harassed as gang members are outraged, insulted and intimidated; constitutional guarantees like freedom of association and freedom of expression are eroding; and, worst of all, our persistent epidemic of violence is being treated with a placebo of hot air about "urban terrorists" and a counterproductive bludgeon of "tough-on-crime" ideology hellbent on celebrating our national disgrace of shattering the world's record in per-capita incarceration.

Rather than face the shame and failure of our disastrous policies of warehousing mostly minorities for mostly nonviolent crimes, our district attorney, who finds nothing objectionable in a law that provides life prison sentences for stealing a box of diapers, has cut and pasted a crude Los Angeles gang injunction on Oxnard.

The injunction hopes to achieve sweep-the-barrio incarceration of some 1,000-plus "John Does."

Today, young Oxnard Latinos can go to jail even for nonexistent "crimes" such as wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt.

So what's the good news? Simply put, a grass-roots movement of violence prevention and rights protection has mobilized in powerful opposition to the injunction.

On the legal cutting edge of Oxnard's violence prevention movement, the Ventura County public defender is collaborating with pro bono attorneys to protect those served with the injunction and to address the troubling constitutional issues.

The judge, rather than compliantly issuing the blanket injunction that the district attorney pitched, has scheduled the case for January trial, denied a motion to expand it, and ordered mediation between community leaders and law enforcement.

At the same time, community activists who understand the root cause of street gang violence -- the failure to address marginalization at every critical juncture of a child and adolescent's life -- are educating public officials through demonstrations, neighborhood meetings and weekly appearances in City Council chambers.

New organizations such as Colonia Civil Rights Coalition and Chiques Community Coalition Organizing for Rights Education, Employment and Equity (CORE) have formed to help, rather than punish, at-risk youth before, during and after they get involved with la vida loca (the crazy life).

As a result of these organizing efforts, city and county officials have begun to take a second look at underfunded programs that are proved to reduce violence, like Oxnard College's KEYS Program for at-risk youth.

What the community activists understand is neither rocket science nor an assiduously guarded state secret. It is public knowledge, common sense and the hard science promoted and promulgated by the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

All those sources agree that youth violence must be addressed comprehensively by the entire "village" of healthcare professionals, educators, community activists, parents and survivors.

While popular media often delight in portraying gang youth as murderous scum beyond redemption, the profile of the gang banger is more typically a child hurt by racism and poverty, economically disadvantaged, learning-disabled, from a single-parent, immigrant home, or a succession of foster homes, where he or she may have been physically or sexually abused.

On the law-enforcement front, some Oxnard police officers are showing signs of understanding what Boston police chief Mickey Roache understood more than a decade ago when he participated in a community-based effort to reduce that city's juvenile murder rate to zero for the year 1996.

Chief Roache was honest and smart enough to publicly acknowledge, "You can give me all the police you want and build all the prison cells you can afford, but until you stop the flow of kids into violence, I cannot fix the problem."

Boston was successful because the experts viewed violence as a public health crisis, like tobacco addiction or automobile safety. The treatment included education, recreation, healthcare, substance-abuse rehabilitation, living-wage jobs, parenting workshops and psychological services.

To implement such a program, you don't need to build more prisons, criminalize freedom of association or enact draconian laws; you just need the compassion, creativity and commitment of concerned citizens like you and me.

Cecilia y yo

Mis Hijas / My Daughters

Hannah Angeles

and Eva Shoshana