But in the summer of 1966, after reading the exploits of Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey, the thought of returning to college seemed a waste of my youth. Three weeks into my junior year, I dropped my classes, “borrowed” my parents’ car while they were on a six-week trip, and headed to San Francisco. On the day they were set to return, I drove back home to San Diego.

My parents went berserk when I told them I would not be following the preordained game plan for my life. They figured a college degree would make me more likely to marry a Naval officer. They wanted me to stay in school and live at home in Coronado so they could keep an eye on me. But that was the last thing I wanted for myself. Like Thomas Wolfe, I couldn’t “go home again.”

I decided to sign up for the war on poverty. In December, I was accepted into the Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) program along with 45 other predominately middle-class, white recruits between the ages of 18 and 26.

During the six-week training in San Diego, an offhand comment by a community organizer proved to be the most accurate and memorable lesson I learned. He told us returning to our middle-class neighborhoods with a different perspective on poverty would be the most important contribution we could make. Soon after his remarks, I expressed concern regarding my ability to help resolve housing issues for a Spanish-speaking single mother I had been assigned to assist. My training supervisor said the phone calls I made for her, with my Anglo-sounding name and voice, would open doors the woman could never budge on her own. The phrase “white privilege” hadn’t been coined yet, but at 20 years old, I got my first inkling of what it meant.

My assignment in the greater Los Angeles area was to Venice’s predominately African-American Oakwood neighborhood. As a VISTA volunteer, my primary task was to survey people in the community about home ownership and income. We hoped our effort would culminate in a report that demonstrated the need to maintain affordable housing for working-class families. Home ownership was low in the area, but apartments and small houses provided affordable smog-free living, close to the beach.

The year I moved there, local community leaders called Venice “the last oceanfront ghetto in America.” Directly to the south, Marina del Rey had opened two years earlier as the world’s largest man-made small craft harbor for luxury boats. The proximity of privilege struck fear in the hearts of nearby working-class and under-employed Venice residents. The drab, seedy Venice neighborhoods might become fodder for further redevelopment of the coastline.

My first night in Venice in late March 1967 was jarring. After attending a party for a departing volunteer, three of us walked back to the rented house I shared with two female volunteers. My companions included a street-wise New Yorker and an 18-year-old Princeton dropout from Texas. Within minutes, a group of eight or so adolescent boys stopped us to ask for a match. The New Yorker whispered to keep walking, but the Texan chose to stop and talk. Within a few seconds, he was on the ground, being kicked. As we rushed back to help, I felt disbelief and anger. In my world, friendly people were not hurt by 12-year-olds on bikes.

The boys backed off, and we were able to get our bleeding friend to his feet. The New Yorker yelled, “Run!” and we started down the street, pursued by the boys. Just like in the movies, we banged on a few doors and were rebuffed, then ran up a flight of stairs. The thud of footsteps was close behind when a woman opened the door to her apartment, and we were safe.

A couple of days later the Texan flew back home, with an eye injury that required specialized care. Soon after, there was national (and even international) coverage of the assault. It turned out the Texan was President Lyndon B. Johnson’s nephew. He eventually returned to California and holed up in the attic bedroom of his girlfriend, who was my roommate. He rarely ventured into the community again.

Along with the housing survey, I volunteered at the public school down the street. One of my tasks was to read stories to the younger students. A book the children especially enjoyed was about John Henry, the African-American folk hero. A few of the children on our block would chant X-rated ditties to themselves while they played; I hoped the ballad about the steel-driving man would stick in their heads and replace those words. Similar to John Henry, their parents had to hammer away to build something constructive in the face of the poverty and disillusionment they faced every day.

Like most of our neighbors, my roommates and I lived in a clapboard house. It had three bedrooms, was four blocks from the ocean, and rented for $100 per month. It was built in the early 1900s and aside from the attic, had an expansive kitchen, separate dining room, wood-paneled windows, and hardwood floors.

We furnished the house with cast-offs from the street or Goodwill, but local neighborhood children thought everything we had was beautiful. A small house in the back was supposedly occupied by Venice’s most successful drug dealer/pimp, according to undercover drug agents. They wanted us to conduct surveillance of him. We said no, but finally understood why expectant-looking men frequently knocked at our front door in the evening.

The small house where we lived is gone now, and the property alone is worth well over a million dollars. Apartment buildings have been transformed into luxury condominiums. The Oakwood area of Venice is no longer the last oceanfront ghetto in America; it looks like a wealthy and quaint beach town.

But the experience I had living in Venice, talking to people who struggled to make ends meet while maintaining hope for the future, never left me. I spent my career as a community college counselor, in awe of underprivileged students who chose college as the path to a better life. We did not win the war on poverty, but many of us returned home with an appreciation and knowledge of the daily battles fought by so many Americans.

The post When Venice, California, Was Drab, Rough, and Wonderful appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I had gone to the beach with my college roommate Amanda, who flew in from Arizona on Thursday for the weekend. On Sunday, a few hours before her flight home, we finally found time to try the beach, as a brief stop on our way to drop her off at LAX. On the way, we picked up another friend, Sam, who lives on a houseboat in the Marina. Finding parking at the Venice Pier took 20 minutes; after a stop at Starbucks, we had 45 minutes to dip our toes in the sand before heading to the airport.

From the coffee shop, we made our way past packed cafés serving brunch to locals and tourists alike. Before approaching the sand, we slipped off our shoes and walked alongside the Venice Pier until the chilly water was up to our calves. The sky was overcast, and the ocean water was refreshing. I was relaxed and happy as I soaked in the idyllic combination of crisp air, toes in the sand and the company of my closest girlfriends, one from middle school and one from college. I missed this. I grew up taking weekend trips to Perry’s Beach Café with my dad on Sunday mornings, driving up PCH to The Reel Inn in Malibu to eat fish on paper plates, and celebrating birthdays with picnics in Zuma.

Walking in and out of the surf, we shared a beautiful 30 minutes, and stories of ex-boyfriends, college classes, and our mutual struggles to be vegetarian. We were standing in a triangular formation; I was up to my knees in water facing Sam and Amanda. I had been digging a hole in the sand with my feet, burying my ankles in it as water rhythmically filled and emptied it.

Without warning and without a second to look around, an explosion erupted above my head. My heart skipped about 10 beats. An enormous, white light broke the sky above me. A huge roar echoed across the beach, and my body refused to turn around, for fear of seeing that a bomb had gone off around me. I still had my Starbucks coffee and flip-flops in my hands, but those hands had gone numb.

Seconds later, the bright light disappeared, and the thunder was replaced with sounds of chaos on the beach. We ran, out of instinct, to shelter, which was out of the water and under the pier. As Sam and Amanda caught their breath, my attention was focused on my left kneecap, which was tingling. As I reached down to touch it, I became very aware of my hands. The joints in my fingers felt tender, and my hands were suddenly tingling as well.

As I glanced around the beach, trying to make sense of the last 10 seconds, I heard Amanda telling Sam that it was lightning. Amanda told me that the bolt had hit the water directly behind me, just 30 or so feet away. I would later learn, via the Weather Channel, that the lightning strike electrified the water for about 50 yards around it. I had been standing knee-deep in what they called the “hot zone.” My left leg was closest to the deep water, so the shock may have entered through that extremity and exited through my hands.

From under the pier, I watched as dozens and dozens of people poured out of the ocean, sprinting, while others ran into the water to attend to surfers and swimmers who had been struck. The line separating the water from the dry sand was swarming with frazzled men and women. Sunbathers sat up straight. Families with picnics and umbrellas farther up the beach were quickly packing up to head home.

I began to regain sensation in my hands and ignored my tingling knee as we joined the mass exodus from the beach. We walked past the surf shops and restaurants again, this time overhearing conversations between strangers about the lightning. As we climbed into my car, I brushed the sand from my feet, which sent a small but sharp sensation through my ankle. The sand felt more grainy than usual on my fingertips. Perplexed, I gave up cleaning my feet and started the car.

I felt more scattered and anxious than usual, but I had to drive. I dropped Sam off at her boat and took Amanda to LAX. Then, while driving away from the airport, I made the uncharacteristic decision to try to get back to South Pasadena without using any smart navigation apps. I could hardly focus on where I was going and desperately didn’t want a voice coming out of my phone micromanaging my driving, so I got on the freeway and drove straight until I felt like changing lanes.

I read “Norwalk” on a freeway sign, and not knowing where that was, took the exit. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, replaying the surreal scene of families, couples, and small children running out of the ocean. In that moment of aimless driving, I wanted to go to a bookstore and skim the shelves. No, I wanted to go shopping for workout pants. Shaking my head, I decided I wanted food. I was starving, my arms were suddenly sore, and I wanted to stop driving as soon as possible.

I gave in and turned on Waze for directions to Fresco Community Market, my favorite grocery store. I spent about 45 minutes walking around, forgetting why I was in that aisle, staring at the Greek yogurt choices, walking away and then coming back. I was dazed, but didn’t recognize it. Finally, I bought a loaf of bread, fig jam, and several types of cheeses and drove home. After making myself a grilled sandwich with my new ingredients, the chaotic day melted away as I watched Chopped, the Food Network show, and drank orange juice.

A few minutes after I finished my meal, my parents walked in the door, and I told them about my wild afternoon. I insisted I was fine, and I really thought I was. Once I finished my sandwich, I stood up.

This is when things took a turn. My mother watched me with a close eye as my legs grew weak, and my fingers began to tingle again. Within seconds of standing, I had hardly enough energy to bring my plate into the kitchen and left to lie down in my bedroom.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I have a long-standing sensitivity to fluorescent lights in the kitchen. But usually the dizzy feeling brought on by visits to the kitchen goes away within seconds. Not now. My eyes wanted to close, and suddenly my body felt cold. I reached up to itch my neck and froze. I looked down as I ran my finger across my neck. The tingly feeling I had felt in my knee and my fingers earlier that day was spreading. It felt as though there were eight layers of skin between my fingertips and the rest of my body.

The inside of my elbow became achy, and my muscles became sore with every second that my arm was elevated to reach my neck. The nerves throughout my body felt both electrified and numb. I lay very still as I called for my parents to come upstairs. When they arrived, my eyes were glassy, and my shallow breaths came and went quickly. It felt like an electric wave was moving up and down my left leg, across my torso. I squirmed on my bed to try and shift the sensation but it had no effect.

My parents started asking me specific questions, such as where my shoes are, if I remember the names of my medication, and what I ate today. I stared blankly at them and didn’t speak. A few minutes later, I watched as six or seven paramedics walked through my bedroom. A paramedic asked for my name and age; I answered quickly to focus on following the electric current through my body. They took my blood pressure and asked me other questions, to which I murmured answers.

The paramedics said that I seemed fine, medically speaking. But the fatigue was overwhelming, and a loud beep from a paramedic’s walkie-talkie gave me a sudden and raging headache. I tried to explain how I was feeling, but the paramedic interrupted to say that they couldn’t answer specific questions because of liability concerns. The paramedic offered me a ride to a hospital, but I shook my head quickly. If I was in any real danger, I figured I wouldn’t have been able to operate the car as I did after leaving the beach. Within minutes, the paramedics were gone.

The electric wave moving across my body had slowed down since I began dealing with the paramedics. When I awoke and joined my family later that evening, I felt tired, but the tingly sensation had stopped. I contacted Sam and Amanda, who reported no ill effects.

I feel fine today as I recount this. The rare lightning bolt was a surprise to Angelenos, as were the heavy rainstorms earlier in the day. We’re not used to such things. I hadn’t known, on Sunday morning before my trip to the beach, that thunder follows lightning, or that untimely rainstorms are something to worry about. I know now.

The post I Was Struck by Venice Lightning appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“There’s so much beauty around us that we take for granted,” Valadez says.

Valadez’s life takes him all over Los Angeles—allowing him to take pictures of a drum circle in Venice Beach, an evangelical storefront church serving mostly Central American immigrants in East Hollywood, a late-night deli on Fairfax, and a crowd browsing art galleries on Main Street downtown.

The hardest part is developing a quick relationship with people so you can get close enough to take their picture, Valadez says. It helps that he’s had a chance to get to know an entire menagerie of Angelenos. “In Van Nuys, I grew up around knuckleheads who went to jail,” he says. “And now I’m in this world through KCRW where I live in Venice Beach and drink green juice.”

These photos, taken over the last three years, are a testament to quiet epiphanies and rollicking good times in our sprawling city. They are odes to the joy that can be hummed in the gritty heart of downtown and in front of the cold Pacific surf.

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I met Will after he had served nearly seven years at a medium-security penitentiary in Ontario, Canada. At the time, I was a newspaper columnist working on a story about prison, and Will was chairman of the inmate committee. It’s a long and complicated story—but we fell in love and eventually married.

The girls and I visited their father as often as we could, though visiting a prisoner can be gruesome—all those metal detectors, ion scanners, strip searches, endless waits in rain or cold. Visiting rooms feature lousy food, scratched tables, and filthy floors and windows (if there are any). A daunting aura of suspicion haloes you on a prison visit. In visiting rooms, crying babies and tired, anguished friends, parents, grandparents, spouses, and kids vie for space and air. Beyond the opportunity to see and hear (and sometimes touch) the one you love despite his crime, there is little inside a prison that is soothing, sane, or nourishing. But you endure all this because you want to stay connected, and you want your loved one to stay connected to the world outside.

Seven years after we were married, Will was released on parole for life. Our marriage soon dissolved under the weight of his readjustment after 14 years in prison. We parted ways, but the girls remained my beloveds.

There is so much shame and stigma attached to kids with incarcerated loved ones. From the day of their father’s arrest, people began to whisper about my stepdaughters—about what they must be like. They craved community but expended oceans of energy hiding a salient fact of their lives. Because they lived a secretive life wrapped in so much shame, the girls often were lonely, isolated, and depressed.

When I remarried in 2002, my husband, Dennis Danziger, and I often talked about how we wanted to help young people who were reeling from the effects of prison. Dennis, an English teacher in the L.A. Unified School District for more than 20 years, has known many students from all sorts of backgrounds who faced struggles like those of my girls.

One in every 28 American kids has a parent in prison, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2010. When you count kids with siblings, friends, cousins, godparents, uncles, or aunts in prison, and those whose parents have done time in the past, the numbers soar.

Dennis and I searched for groups that worked with this population and discovered that, while there are many fine organizations designed to help prisoners’ families, there’s not a single school-based club in the U.S. for children with loved ones in prison or jail. We decided to start such a club at Venice High School, where Dennis teaches.

The idea was to create a community for these kids, a place for them to learn from each other (and from guest speakers), a space where they felt safe to ask questions and voice their fear, anger, sorrow, and confusion.

We held the first meeting of the club in February 2013. We had to meet at lunch “hour” (which lasts just 35 minutes) since that was the only time everyone could be there. Besides, we knew if we ate together, everyone would relax enough to begin to trust one another.

I’ll never forget the first meeting. We felt it was important that students joined the club only by choice, and so Dennis announced (almost nonchalantly) in each of his classes, “If any of you have prison in your lives, you might want to come to this new club. We’ll meet here in my room at lunch.” We had no idea how many students, if any, would show up.

That first Wednesday, when the bell rang at 1:28 p.m., 10th grader Nelvia arrived in a hand-drawn T-shirt and black eyeliner. A minute later Adrianna poked her head into the room and asked, “Is this the club for …” She stopped when she saw Nelvia. “You?” Nelvia’s brown eyes opened wider. They were speechless. Then they hugged. The girls had been friends since kindergarten, but Nelvia never knew that Adrianna’s father had been in prison since Adrianna was 3, and Adrianna didn’t know that Nelvia’s godfather went to prison when Nelvia was 5. Like my stepdaughters, the girls had learned to hide this part of their story lest they be judged. And so, over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they bonded in a whole new way.

As the girls compared notes, others drifted in. Steven, the freckled, red-headed jokester, said his father, mother, and sister had all done time—and he was damned if he was going to follow in their footsteps. Handsome Tony, the poet, said his brother had been inside for a long time but was coming home soon. After I told everyone that I had been married to a prisoner and about my stepdaughters, E’majin whispered that she had a boyfriend inside and needed someone to talk to. John, with the tattooed sleeves and the dazzling smile, said, very quietly, that his dad told him he was bound to wind up in prison like his brothers. “I won’t,” he said, and went on to write heart-stopping rap poems. Alondra wept and told us that her dad had recently been arrested, and she couldn’t believe this club existed.

For 35 minutes, we talked and hung out and ate. And somehow—despite the noise pouring in from the wild outdoor lunchroom nearby—we all knew we had landed in a place of serenity and quiet comfort.

The second week, we asked the kids to figure out what we should call ourselves. They tossed out possibilities—Fighting Prison, Being Ourselves—but when someone called out POPS (for Pain of the Prison System), we knew that was our name.

One student, Eric, was so quiet that we wondered after a couple of weeks if he was just coming for lunch. Then he told us that his dad had been in and out of prison his entire life—stock fraud, he thought, though he wasn’t sure. Eric presented a drawing he thought might be a good logo. Everyone loved it.

Dennis and I spent every Tuesday evening in March making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Every Wednesday at lunch, a few more kids drifted into the room. We bought them notebooks to write in. We started a website to publish their stories and artwork. We invited guest speakers. And the club grew. We are more than 65 strong now.

We never imagined the way the club would expand. We still meet once a week at Venice High, and this fall we’re expanding to a few more schools in California and Ohio. I’d love to see a POPS club in every high school, to read every one of these kids’ stories, and see their artwork and hear their songs. We’re publishing the first POPS anthology, Runaway Thoughts, in May. We’re performing our stories at Beyond Baroque, a small theater in Venice, on May 24. A few of our kids are involved with the Def Poet and mentor Daniel Beaty and will be in a documentary film about his work.

Our goal is to banish the stigma and shame. Here at Venice High, our kids wear their POPS T-shirts proudly. Alyssa’s diary entry—the one she asked us to include in the anthology—says it best:

I’m here because I know what it feels like to have friends and family in prison.
I know what it feels like to have no one understand, to feel alone in a crowded
place. It sucks. But now I don’t have to be alone like that.

The post Your Dad’s in Prison, Too? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The canals aren’t merely waterways. Venice itself is a community that reflects a new age of urban diversity, where upscale boutiques and million-dollar homes are just a short walk away from housing projects, homeless encampments, and the world-famous boardwalk, L.A.’s most dynamic public mixing ground of different races and classes. Yet the canals feel exclusive amidst this backdrop; you are free to walk through and take in the sights–indeed you could stare at the portrait they create for hours–but it is unlikely you can afford to live there.

It wasn’t always this way. The canals were once Venice’s most unconventional section, which is telling, since Venice has long been considered L.A’s center of nonconformity, a Mecca for alternative and countercultural lifestyles, where just about anybody could fit in.

In 1942, the city closed off the canal sidewalks to the public because they had collapsed into the waterways. The sidewalks remained that way for the next five decades. People who knew the neighborhood referred to it as a “swamp.” The water was at times so stagnant, shallow, and filled with algae that it appeared less like a series of man-made waterways and more like a slimy, mud-filled marsh. On a breezy day, the corroded and fishy smells wafted up the coast.

Canal sidewalks prior to redevelopment.

During the 1950s and ’60s, the development of Los Angeles was in flux. New suburban growth came to Culver City, and major plans were put in place to transform barren marshes spotted with abandoned oil derricks just south of the canals into an upper-middle-class leisure district called Marina del Rey. Planning studies found that Venice’s canals and housing infrastructure were in a state of disrepair and its beaches were polluted. They labeled the coastal community a “slum.” Many people who could afford to move out of Venice did.

But some people disliked the growing middle-class suburbanization of L.A. and discovered in Venice great treasures: affordable housing, a live-and-let-live atmosphere, and proximity to the Pacific Ocean. The bohemians settling into the canals adopted a self-imposed poverty. Most grew up in working-and middle-class families, but they were looking to escape to something more meaningful. First, the poets of the beat movement arrived, along with Korean War veterans. Hippies more concerned with the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement followed, as did many artists and musicians. The canals came to represent everything that the new suburbs were not: no one worked 9 to 5 jobs; people shared their homes, avoiding the trend of single-family dwellings; women exploded traditional gender constraints by becoming political activists, artists, craftswomen, and musicians; and residents welcomed temporary travelers who slept on numerous empty lots.

Those empty lots are unimaginable today. Not a single vacant lot remains on the canals, except for the few protected by residents with enough money to purchase additional properties and keep them empty for a vibrant garden or splendid side yard. In the 1960s, however, one-third of the canal lots were abandoned and much of the space was overgrown. The “hippie canals,” as the neighborhood was called, had an air of transience, and a distinctly pungent marijuana smell. People drove in and camped out in the lots as if they were visiting a state park. Hippies, dogs, and ducks paraded through, coexisting with bikers, musicians, draft resisters, and the unemployed. People sold just about anything to get by: vegetables from their gardens, antiques and crafts out of their garages, and hallucinogens of all sorts.

While the ’60s counterculture started as an unfocused opposition to middle-class norms, protest organizations soon formed, mostly in response to the local property speculation–putting the canals at the heart of new political conflicts. Developers initiated new attempts to reinvent the canals by linking them to the planned Marina del Rey. They wanted to deepen and widen the waterways so new residents could dock their larger boats and easily navigate them into the marina and out to the Pacific Ocean. The Peace and Freedom Party had been organizing a “Free Venice” movement to give the neighborhood local control–and to fight against enforcement programs that affected the housing of poorer residents, to stop police assaults on hippies and minorities, and to oppose developments to attract wealthier residents into Venice.

Canal residents–mostly renters–succeeded in stopping attempts to link the canals to Marina del Rey, but they did not completely halt neighborhood change. As the marina project was finalized in 1965, speculators continued to push for revitalization of the canals. They wanted to redesign the entire canal infrastructure and make it pedestrian friendly, construct new housing, fix the footbridges, and boost property values. But it was not until a new middle class crept into town in the mid-1970s that the canals really started to change.

The earliest middle-class homeowners were attracted to the abundant and cheap housing near the beach. All of Venice was affordable in those days, but the canals were the most economical. Some fixed up crumbling bungalows, and others found the newer duplex designs appealing for the possibility of extra income from a second unit. When individuals with noticeably different habits, material possessions, aesthetic sensibilities, and political interests moved in, the everyday culture of the place took on familiar hints of suburbia. People mowed their lawns and painted their houses; they put up fences and drove more expensive cars; and they worked longer hours at their more conventional professions. The middle-class culture became visible, and the media, and more prospective home-buyers, noticed.

The new middle class admired the unconventional culture, but they did not participate in it. While they did not organize to push out the countercultural and economically diverse renters, they took part in local politics in response to developers’ aggressive strategies.

The countercultural renters tried to hold onto their free-spirited ways, throwing massive parties and festivals and opposing all development whatsoever. But for the first time, homeowners made up the majority of the neighborhood’s residents. They advocated for sensible development that fit the environment: nothing too big, too bulky, or out of character, and especially no connections to Marina del Rey, for they feared the sight of yachts docked out front. The compromise between homeowners and developers meant that almost all property owners would support some sort of rehabilitation. After decades of struggles, the neighborhood was finally refurbished, and fitted with new sidewalks, new canal walls, restored footbridges, and technologies to flush out stagnant water.

The revitalization made the place more enticing to an even wealthier class. Neighborhood changes always involve unintended consequences. Middle-class homeowners are now considered the “old-timers” of the canals, and they wax nostalgic about their early years when the houses were smaller, wild and overgrown plants covered the jagged sidewalks, and property values were a small fraction of current rates. When I walk around today, multiple eras of the past are invisible. The canals are far from being a middle-class neighborhood and even further from being a bohemia. Cities are always changing. No one can pause history or direct the future to some exact end.

Buy the Book: Skylight Books, Amazon, Powell’s.

Andrew Deener is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and author of Venice: A Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

*Top photo by Andrew Deener. Interior photo by Darryl DuFay.

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Christie Brooke is an intern at Zócalo Public Square.

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