San Jose Inside

The night she was arrested, Maria Castillo fit the description. A petite, 49-year-old grandmother and home healthcare worker, Castillo is Latina in San Jose – and that ethnicity, in that city, makes her the most likely person statistically to be charged with resisting arrest.

The generation of young people I work with, 18 to 25-year-olds, have only known historic moments through the experience of disaster. To be in a defining political American moment meant that there were elections being stolen, suicide planes diving into American buildings, wars beginning, cities drowning, or economies collapsing. Historic American moments were to be avoided.

This presidential election changed all that, and as celestial as Obama appears, he is a star that feels not so far away from the communities here on the ground. That is why these same young people, for the first time, are embracing this moment of history as theirs to claim.

In Memory of Henry Schiro

Last Friday afternoon I heard “Moon River” played for San Jose arts patron and supporter Henry Shiro at his funeral mass. As most in the community know, Henry spent the better part of thirty years raising money for, participating in, and cheerleading on behalf of San Jose’s arts and culture community, and more specifically, music organizations such as San Jose Jazz, the Children’s Musical Theatre, the Steinway Society, and more recently, the Mexican Heritage Corporation (MHC) and Plaza. They played a sampling of his favorite tunes at the service. Based on the SRO crowd at Friday’s mass, I’d say he succeeded in his mission of community service.  Also, he had great taste in music.

Consumers Inconvenienced, Restaurants in Pain

As the illness toll from salmonella tainted tomatoes grows, and the popular red fruit becomes scarcer, unheralded and ripe California tomatoes are finally getting the recognition that’s been long overdue. They are showing up in illegal underground produce markets and on popular auction sites such as EBay and Craig’s List at exponentially inflated prices.

As I sat enjoying the rest and relaxation that comes with the Memorial Day holiday, I wondered why we can’t find a way to make three-day weekends a part of our city’s culture. I know it doesn’t seem possible, but think about it hypothetically for a moment. What if we only worked 4 days each week? Would our city benefit?  Yes!

In the course of the next two weeks, San Jose’s civil and criminal courts will be discussing the use of Tasers by law enforcement. This week in federal court, the Salinas Police Department and Taser International faces a jury in the case of a Salinas man who died after he was stunned 30 times by Taser-wielding police officers.  The trial will be closely watched by San Jose attorneys and future plaintiffs who are aiming for their day in court against Taser International and the San Jose Police Department.

The gym at Alum Rock Youth Center on the Eastside was filled near capacity last Thursday evening when Mayor Chuck Reed held the first of four open forums on gang violence in San Jose and how to spend an additional $1 million towards the issue. While a cynic might say that the event was mere political theater—an attempt by the city leaders to quell growing frustrations about violence on the streets—it is undeniable that the forum did tap into the community’s authentic call to be included in the conversation of allocation of resources. The gathering was probably the first time I saw the city council, SJPD, parents, youth advocates, former gang members, and religious groups, all brainstorming from a position of collective problem-solving, rather than fighting over limited funding.