Life after the Rose

Hi my name is Wyllene Turner and I attend school at Street Academy. This year I am a senior. I have been waiting for this year for so long, and I did not know it was going to come so fast. But with all the excitement comes a lot of work, and that is what I have been doing. I have to do a senior project on a topic of my choice. Luckily during the summer I worked with the Rose Foundation's New Voices are Rising project so I have all or this information about my topic that I am able to breeze through my senior project. The required length of my senior project is 20 pages long, so when I heard how long my paper was going to be, I quickly came back to the Rose Foundation to get some new info on people of color being disproportionally placed in areas that are heavily polluted (environmental racism). Other than doing all this preparation for my senior project I am also trying to get ready for college. I am going to community college for my first two years, which I highly recommend, and the community college that I am going to go to is college of Alameda. By going there, my plan is to transfer to a four year college. And that is what my life has been like after the Rose.

Looking Back by DePaul Nguon

Myesha Williams, Program Associate of New Voices Are Rising, has full attention of all the attendants of the farewell event as she hands out individual certificates to the interns one by one while everyone watches on. The end of the program unfortunately has arrived and on this day last goodbyes are said to many as some become emotional. Hugged and thanked by Jill, the interns receive their certificates of completion and give their last speech for the attentive party- goers for their last time of the summer program.

New Voices Are Rising gave self- motivated high school students a chance to take advantage of its summer internship program to learn about climate change and global warming so to have a more heightened sense of their surroundings; advocacy skills was also taught to the students.

“It was really relaxing… it was like family, like home where we could discuss things and even our own ideas,” Panha Sethy, Oakland High.

The New Voices Are Rising program is directed by Myesha Williams and Jill Ratner (co- founder of the Rose Foundation) who have a history of fieldwork in environmental justice. New Voices Are Rising focuses on educating the interns about consequences of climate change and environmental injustices like natural disasters and polluting facilities that causes health issues being concentrated in a heavily residential area.

One of the interns happens to be a young male. Salvador Mateo who attends Mandela High and decided to join New Voices Are Rising as a result of encouragement from his law teacher Mrs. Arabia. Mrs. Arabia specified that the summer internship would educate him about global warming and help him with his advocacy skills which interested him into joining. “In joining the program I would be able to show that my community is affected by global warming and that together we can help prevent it from getting worse.”

Salvador was assigned to be placed and work at least once a week at Center for Environmental Health in downtown Oakland as were all the other interns but at diverse organizations throughout the Bay Area. His worksite worked on educating and preventing mainly teenagers and kids from buying merchandise that contained lead which can cause cancer.

“Well, New Voices Are Rising was not only fun… the program was amazing. The best part was just coming everyday and seeing everyone on a daily basis,” said Salvador.

Panha Sethy became interested in being apart of New Voices Are Rising for the summer after he had a little conversation with Jill Ratner. “First Jill came to talk to me about how I can help prevent global warming and health issues so I wanted to join.”

Panha attends the Environmental Science Academy and there was educated about the environment. He was placed to work at Oakland City Slicker Farms; there he planted produce and went around to people’s houses to help them with backyard gardening. The organization aims to provide fresh local foods and cut down on emissions from transporting food long distances.

Throughout the program the interns experienced many different educational events from field trips to Bayview Hunters Point, the Port of Oakland, and the Toxic Tour of Richmond to having conversations with guest speakers like Michael Kent and Rachael Morello-Frosch. Overall the program gave the interns a chance to learn about community health and climate issues so that they in turn would be more aware and might even decide to do something about it to make a better difference in the world. New Voices Are Rising brilliantly educated the interns about these problems in the world and had many group discussions on several occasions on what can be done to better the problems itself not just focusing on what is disturbing Earth.

“Before I felt that Global Warming was not really important and when I came to the program I was taught it was a huge issue. I live in the nation that pollutes and contributes the most to climate change,” said Salvador. "Before the program I did not feel that strong, I did not have much knowledge about air quality and the now after joining the program I understand the impact of it and that everyone is not affected by these problems in the same way."

After all the time the interns spent together, their last project was to give a presentation to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco, California.

“The best part of the program was talking to the BAAQMD to show that us youths have a voice. We talked to them mainly on their draft and reflected on it giving them ideas and recommendations on how to improve air quality.” Panha

The BAAQMD dealt with being in charge of regulating laws. The time that the interns spent with the program, at the end of the day these intellectual high school students started on their path to making a difference already just by speaking to the district.

New Voices in Oakland Local

Check out the Oakland Local piece on New Voices Summer Institute.

"Rethinking Possible"

I wonder, if we could actually build a giant filter, or multiple big filters that can absorb "what we call bad air" and blow out "what we call good air." Is that a possible innovation somewhere in the near future? An invention that can vastly improve air quality? Just the thought of it makes it seem like the ultimate resolution to the global warming problem. These inventions would be
placed near heavily polluted areas: places such as seaports, airports, refineries, industrial sites, and business districts. And as pollutants are put into the air, the air is sucked into this filter. There it gets cleaned and pushed out back into the world.

I once asked this question before, and the answer I got was "where would these absorbed pollutants filters go?" Well if a football team can build a 1.3 billion dollar stadium and a corporation can build a collection of buildings at 700 million dollars a piece, why can't anyone one build a large facility that host vast numbers of trees and gardens? A place where these absorbed pollutants can be placed and taken care if. Is this just an idea from my wild imagination or are people really just not trying as hard? If this idea doesn't seem possible, it's time to rethink possible.

Stephen Vance

Student Reflections

At the beginning of the program, my perception of improving the environment was merely persuading and giving information to others and hope for their participation. But through the internship thus far, I realized that it is not necessarily needed for the entire community to bring a change. From my fellowship tour, I now see how a small group can inspire others to take action and the cycle will continue. Instead of viewing this intertwining network of job, economy and health as a system too large to handle, we can view this as a large pool of opportunities which we can bring about change: as an educator, professor, organizer, or as wind, or solar panel installer.

Jian Li


During these past few days, I have enhanced my awareness on the whole concept of environmental justice. I didn’t know many things about the whole problem we face because global warming is only the outside shell. I have now become aware that we face Environmental Injustice and Racism. Furthermore, there are many ways people can contribute to the fight for greener and better environment. Also the whole amount of pollution being emitted to the air comes from oil refineries; which I really didn't know as much. I used to think most of the pollution came from car emissions, but now i am exposed and have been introduced to the whole concept of change. Change must be made by the people in the communities to ensure that the their health and the place they live in are healthy.

Sarai Conejo


This week I feel as though I’ve improved my oral presentation skills. As I’ve begun bonding with my fellow interns, I’ve learned to work and collaborate with them more easily and effectively. Yesterday, our group debate demonstrated this. We discussed and argued the positive and negative effects of urban infill development. I was impressed at everyone’s skills and contributions, and felt everyone did a good job.

Julio Madrigal




The last 3 weeks I absorbed so much about environmental justice. It was almost an enlightening experience. From the cool people I met, to the wonderful field trips and almost not boring lectures I heard made up this enlightening experience. One field trip I will always remember is the one we went to the eco center. It just shows you what we can do to make our environment sustainable.

Aquetea Goodman

A day with Literacy for Environmental Justice

July 12th 2010

Today was easily the best day of the NEW VOICES ARE RISING Summer program so far. We traveled to Bay View Hunters Point in San Francisco (20 minutes away from Oakland) and hung out with two really cool people Anthony Khalil and Tracy Zhu from Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ for short).

So to start off the tour we walked down this sandy, rocky, and dusty trail into the middle of nowhere… Actually Heron’s Head park and to our left and right were all these exotic and wild mostly native plants and wetlands and marshes and birds making sounds. Directly across the marsh was the site where Hunters point’s community had a victory. The PG&E Power Plant was finally shut down and the remains of it were just a distant memory. To our right was the Eco Center or the living building… more on the Eco-center later.

So we got to our destination at the end of the peninsula and sat on these logs held together by nails. We walked down a semi-slope and began hearing cracking under our feet. I looked down and asked what it was I was stepping on. One of the youth decided to be funny and say it was rattle snake eggs knowing my fear of anything creepy, crawly, and slimy. But with this question came the first bio-break of the day and I was told that they were the bodies of crabs that had just molted and when I picked one up sure enough it looked like a white mini crab.

We went on to do some energizers forcing us to talk about various quotes from knowing ones past or roots to environmental racism and everything in between. After that we did some mapping exercises to get us familiar with our past and compare it to our future. Its crazy to see the startling difference between 1750’s and present day with all our industrial and technological advancements it amazed me how little of the natural landscapes were preserved.

We proceeded to the next part of the tour, which was the Hands-On- The- Land portion of the trip where we literally put our hands on the land and pull invasive plants (Weeds) by its roots out of the ground. The reason for this is because at LEJ they don’t believe in using harmful pesticides… YEAH LEJ!!! So in order to ensure that the native plants there survive we have to get on our hands and knees and pull those weeds… The sucky part is that I’m such a city boy and prickly things and dirt in my shoes are just not the spirit. But I’m glad to be contributing to such a great cause.

The Eco Center was easily the high light of the tour… I mean this house was designed to flow with nature not against it, and any building that’s pro nature is fine by me. The Rose Foundation actually gave a grant to LEJ to help out with the cost of the water treatment equipment.


It’s also off the grid meaning they don’t pay PG&E or Water. Why? Because of their Solar panels that absorb sunlight converting it into energy and a roof that catches rainwater. They also have a water treatment center inside the house. How cool is that? So not only are they saving a bunch of money but also they’re not harming the environment. What if everyone in America had this system of self-sustaining water and energy just imagine all the heavy polluting energy companies shutting down plants one by one. Sounds good to me at least.

Such a wonderful and empowering day for team Environmental justice, little confirmation that this battle is not such an up hill battle.

A Day of Media and Data Gathering!

July 9th 2010

Started off the day by watching some environmental videos. The first one was Environmental Justice in San Francisco’s Bay View Hunters point: Welcome to the Neighborhood presented by LEJ (Literacy for Environmental Justice). This video was a glance at some of the environmental justice work that is being done by youth our age, and how they are using art and media to get their message across. This was eye opening to me and it allowed me to learn about different ways you can fight environmental injustices. I think that the youth got a lot out of the video I know some of the questions going into the movie is can young people really do something about the injustices in our communities and I really feel like their question was answered.

The second video was “The Story of Stuff” This video just tickled my fancy. It talked about over-consumption and the vicious cycle that occurs behind the scenes and who is affected because of it. Anne Leonard portrayed America as selfish, greedy and naïve which I have to say I don’t necessarily disagree with.

The video was very informative and made me think about how I contribute to the vicious cycle. The cycle consists of:

1. Extraction/depleting of natural resources.
2. Unnecessary amounts of manufacturing.
3. Mass Advertisement/ making you feel like you need the newest model when the old one is just fine
4. Consumption/ over consumption.
5. TRASH- we throw everything away…(Within 6 months 99% of the things we buy are no longer in use)… Coincidence, I think not… Are you a major contributor to this vicious cycle?

The last video was another youth-made film by the Conscious Youth Media Crew called What is Green? This helped us break down this term "green" that we hear all the time now, but weren't quite sure exactly was it mean.

After that we rode public transportation to the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project which in a nut shell is an organization that’s acts as an environmental protection advocate for West Oakland in issues concerning:

1. Port of Oakland diesel particulates
2. Diesel Truck Pollution/ routes
3. Polluting factories etc…

They also monitor the air quality using equipment that can track the size and quantity of particulate pollution. We actually had the privilege to do use these monitors and we had our tallest student and our shortest student put on this back pack with the air monitoring device and a GPS system that tracks our coordinates every second, and walked all over the “Lower Bottoms” which is the community closest to the Port of Oakland and the rail yard stations.

After we did that we had to complete a questionnaire asking if we walked past any smokers, diesel trucks, or any other sources of pollution in the air to accurately track what is was that was going on in the neighborhood where the monitor took its reading.

It was very important that we had a disparity in height because WOEIP has a theory that air quality is different for people with different heights. They could actually be on to something… If they’re able to prove this then we can began seeing patterns in why children and elderly are always affected the most by Air Pollution.

Port of Oakland and BNSF Railyard tour

July 8^th 2010

The day started off really gloomy and the clouds looked like they were ready to pour its overflow on us… Maybe because it knew that we were going to the Port of Oakland. When we arrived to the Port the wind began picking up and it was extremely chilly, but we as a group were determined to find out everything we could on the Port of Oakland.

We boarded our bus and headed to West Oakland! We stopped to pick up our tour guide Phil Granger who is a wharfinger for the Port of Oakland. He spoke a little about his job as we headed to Harbor Park. He gave us a tour from a tower and used a lot of fancy words to describe these tools that are helping the Port to function. Now call me crazy but it seemed to me that every time we asked an environmental question he either avoided it, or said he didn’t know.

We were able to see a live ship being unloaded and witness how much equipment and human energy it takes to unload those thousands of pounds of containers in a timely manner. He explained that the ship had probably just come from somewhere in Asia and would be heading down to Southern California once the unloading was complete, which could take days! He gave us startling facts as to how many containers go through the Port at any given time it was something like 244,000 TEU’s (Twenty-foot equivalent unit) in 2009. Now that may not sound like a lot for a year but just imagine all the diesel trucks and trains that have to transport them and the fact that these same trucks and trains have to go through the West Oakland community and polluting there air.

Two outgoing guys gave us a tour of the BNSF Railyard and we got behind the scenes access to railyard operations and knowledge!

Devilla Ervin

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! We've created this blog to be a place where the youth who are participating in our New Voices are Rising Summer Advocacy Training Institute can share their thoughts and reflections on the program. It will serve as a sort of running journal throughout the program. Different folks from our youth group will be updating the blog periodically to give folks a sense of what kind of learning is taking place, as well as how youth are responding to the program. Enjoy!

Myesha Williams - New Voices are Rising Program Associate
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