Judy Sunde Hanawalt

Things I'm Thinking About

Category: Berkeley (Page 1 of 3)

Seeing Homeless People

October 5, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I see homeless people everyday. They are sometimes on the streets asking for money, or near the grocery store asking for food, or sometimes just hanging out, sitting in the sun, maybe selling newspapers or trying to make a little money peddling embroidered patches or aluminum-can flowers they have made.

I see them ducking around the shelves in the aisles of the drug store, or pushing impossibly-loaded strollers full of what looks like junk across the street, stopping traffic. They are camped under overpasses and in parks. They are a very visible part of our community.

Many homeless people are pleasant individuals in need of a friendly smile, but some suffer from mental or emotional issues and are not pleasant at all. Usually, I have a few friendly words to say to them, and if I have cash, I buy a paper or give them a few dollars. I have gotten to know some homeless people over the years, and I talk to them when I see them, if they remember me (stories about some of them here and here).

Today I had a nice chat about water aerobics with the man selling the Street Sheet for two dollars in front of the Y. He recommended the water class, but warned me to eat something first so my blood sugar wouldn’t get too low.

Near there on another day, I was crossing the street and the person crossing from the other direction started screaming that I was attacking her. I was not; I was merely in the cross walk with her. A policeman rode by on his bike, and the homeless woman tried to call him over, but he just said, “Keep moving please,” and rode on. I was already on the other side of the street, wondering what had set her off.

Recently, I was walking downtown, crossing the street to a bar to meet my husband before a movie. I could hear the homeless group on the corner having a shouting match from half a block away; I didn’t want to walk by and catch their attention, so I skirted around the back of the bus stop and slipped past them. Over a drink, we wondered what the yelling man was upset about.

This sounds crazy, I know.

When we were new in Berkeley, I encountered a small, hunched woman downtown who was visibly angered by me and my son, then about 7. I don’t remember exactly how she said it, but what she said troubled me: You don’t understand what it’s like to have trouble. She pointed at my son disdainfully. He’ll never have trouble.

I sputtered something about just trying to live our lives like everyone else, having pain and hardship like everyone does. She scoffed. Flustered, tears came to my eyes. I was defensive—Hey! I have problems! Even as I said it, I knew that mine seemed insignificant to her.

What she said has rolled around in my mind since.

As I try to understand what happened there, and why it upset me so much, I think her bitterness was not only about a home or resources or a supportive community or even mental health—though those are certainly important and likely missing from her life.

She was angry that I could not see her. I was not able to take all of the circumstances and the contingencies into account, all the effort and the setbacks and the losses. I did not give her the dignity she deserved as a valuable human being because I did not know where she came from. I didn’t care to know.

I could not see past the present; the dirty, mean outside. Looking at herself through my eyes, she saw a failure, a broken-down, wasted life, a person I would never look at the way I looked at my son. Did anyone look at her the way I looked at my son? Protectively, with the full expectation that he would be smart and successful, and with love that would not change when the trouble did come?

Did anyone ever really see her?

The Berkeley High Walkout

September 21, 2016 / / 2 Comments

On November 5, 2015, students at my son’s high school, Berkeley High, walked out in protest of a hate crime. Read the article about it in Berkeleyside, with pictures and videos.

Today, a new article came out in the Daily Cal, Racial Achievement Gap in Berkeley Public Schools Persists. I left my blog post sitting in the draft box for a year, but the problem didn’t go away.

This is my experience that day and in the following week. 

The phone rang about 8 in the morning, but I missed it. I listened to the message a few minutes later; it was the Berkeley High principal calling to inform the school community about a hate-filled, racist threat left on a computer screen in the school library.

The news was already out in the school community, circulated by students who had heard about it somehow last night. Before my son left for school, he knew about a rally that was already being planned. By mid-morning, the Berkeley High students, along with some teachers and staff, were walking out of school, and the peaceful crowd of at least 700 moved in a large, chanting group up to Cal, rallied there joined by students from Cal and Berkeley City College, and then came back to BHS.

My son was texting me with updates.

“There is a walk out.”

“I’m at it.”

“Principal Pasarow is speaking”

“We’re on the move.”

I was out around town, hearing the helicopters, maneuvering around the crowds and police cars near Cal to meet a friend for lunch. After lunch, I watched the crowd of chanting students pass on their way back to the high school. I walked with them for a few blocks, moved and proud of their unity, kids standing up for their friends.

I came to BHS a little later for my volunteer shift at the desk in the front office. It was quiet, except for a few parents calling or coming by to ask what was going on. Some of the parents were upset, challenging the principal for letting the students walk out.

Should he have stood up against the protesters, stopped the rally, squelched the students’ uprising?  I’m glad he didn’t stand anywhere except with the students–anything else would have made him an opponent. Engaging with the world around them and speaking out against injustice is a virtue. Peaceful demonstration is not something to be punished.

A few days later, I was filling a friend in on the details at a coffee shop and an African-American woman sitting nearby overheard me. “Do you work at Berkeley High?” she asked me. I told her I’m a parent and a volunteer there. I expected her to agree with me that the walk out was great.

She didn’t.

She told me that if something should be protested, it’s not a prank on a school computer. Someone should be walking out over the systemic injustices that contribute to the appalling achievement gap between white kids and kids of color. She quoted some statistics that left me feeling both defensive and helpless.

“You have to start somewhere”, I told her. “I’m at the school trying to do something”, I told her.

I left with a heavy, hopeless feeling where there had been a smug sense of rightness before. The friend I was with comforted me, “You can’t change people’s minds sometimes.”

Thinking about it later, I realized that I don’t want to change that woman’s mind. I want to listen to her, even if what she says hurts, even if it feels like too much, especially if it shakes up ideas that I have let settle into a solid, useless mass.

The next day, I searched for reported test scores in my school district, looking at graphs comparing the achievement levels of students at our school broken down by race and income.

She’s right.

How can it be that less than 30 percent of minority students in our high school can do basic algebra? Why does the math program work for 80 percent of white kids? Why aren’t we teaching math to all the students? Statistics for reading and writing are no better.

I’m mystified, I’m upset, I’m uncomfortable. I’m angry. I’m forced to look outside my self and my own interests, beyond the success of my own children. I don’t  have the answers, but I’m finally hearing the problem. Our school does not work for everyone.

It’s not just about an isolated event, it’s not just about appreciating another culture, or about being a decent human being to other human beings. It’s not about working harder, acting better and taking the opportunities that come.

It goes deeper than that, to the very core of how our society works.

Still, I’m proud of the Berkeley High kids for speaking up, for not allowing one more incident go by unnoticed. They stood with their classmates. It is doing something; it is a start.

Yoga at the Y

January 5, 2016 / / 1 Comment

I went to yoga again today, and it is so good to be in that place. I’ve been a little more regular lately. Finally, I found a class that works for me. It starts right after the morning school drop-off, so I don’t have time to think about it and come up with reasons not to go. I’m already out. The only modification I have to make to my routine is putting on yoga pants instead of jeans.

As I make my way upstairs to the class, I can usually guess who is on their way to the same place. Some have yoga mats under their arms, some just seem like yoga people. One morning, a woman hurried up behind me, dodged around me up the stairs, and then cut in front of another woman to rush ahead–she must be late for something, I thought. Surely not yoga. As I trailed behind her, I realized she was going to my class. I guessed she had a favorite spot to set up her mat and  she needed to stake it out.

It’s a slightly funky but perfectly relaxed class, a reflection of the community here that I love. All types are here for Yoga 1–teens, young adults, middle-aged and old,  men and women, big and small, sweet and ornery. I’ve run into some friends there, a few that I’ve volunteered with at school and a woman I took a writing class with several yeas ago. We all settle on our mats, content to be here, now.

I feel comfortable here because I’m not the most anything. I’m not the oldest or the youngest, the biggest or the smallest, the best or the worst at the poses. Nobody is, because the biggest isn’t the oldest, the youngest isn’t the most accomplished at downward-facing dog, and we all move aside for the ornery ones.

It’s a big jumble of people just being themselves, so I can be too. No one is looking, no one is judging. If they are, they keep it to themselves, at least.

This class works for me because it starts a half hour after school starts, so I cannot be late. The Y is across the street from the school. There’s plenty of time to drop off my student, park and get to class.

I have a reputation for being relaxed about time; some might say I’m always running a little late. Not to yoga. I hate arriving late to the silent studio, stepping gingerly over mats and people, wedging my mat into a little space, and apologizing every time I bump hands or feet with my annoyed neighbors.

You may be wondering why I must be on time to yoga when I am casual about lateness in other areas of my life. Honestly, I am too. It’s not that I decide that it’s ok to be late to one thing and not another. I set out to keep a schedule, but I get side-tracked along the way.

Is it that it’s so noticeable in a class like that? Is is that I risk being turned away if there is no more space in the studio? Is it that secret ingredient, the one that has proven so elusive: motivation?

I’m motivated to not be embarrassed, to not arrive and be disappointed, to get a good spot on the floor. It’s not much, but it’s something to work with. If motivation can solidify into habit, I may be on to something.

There was an old woman there one day, and I watched her as she got her mat, blocks and blanket set up and went over to chat with the instructor. She was bent over and moving slowly, but she was in good spirits. I wondered how long she had been coming to yoga, if she had been relatively young and spry like me then. I hoped that I would be like her as I age–still going to yoga, still active, still sweet.

Game Day

October 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“You went to UC Berkeley? But you’re so normal!” Living in Colorado, this was the kind of response we got to our Alma Mater. Berkeley, apparently, has a reputation that doesn’t translate well into midwestern Suburbia.

When we moved back to California in 2003, our Cal school spirit was awakened and we started going as a family to watch Golden Bears football on Saturday. Being back on campus made Steve and I feel like kids again, and all our children loved the excitement. It was one of the few things that everyone in the family–from second grade to high school–loved to do.

Whether is was the new Cal gear from the student store, the intriguing older students, the fun of the traditions, the stadium hot dogs, soda and cotton candy, or the game itself, everyone enjoyed our days packed into the wooden seats of the family section at Memorial Stadium.

Every fall since then–with the exception of the year we couldn’t bear to watch loss after humiliating loss–has been shaped by Cal’s home-game schedule. The number of season tickets has  dwindled, though, as kids graduate and leave home, and the smaller the group gets, the stronger the pull of other activities becomes. We have three tickets this year, with only one kid living at  home, but we often have an extra ticket when that lonely-only decides he has more options than just cheering with Mom and Dad.

There’s a momentum to family events that shifts with the numbers of participants, and is complicated by the ebbing influence parents have on their children’s lives. Our gravitational pull was strong when they were young; we were the center of their world. As friends, studies, jobs, sports, and romance  begin to catch and  hold their attention, we become one of many voices tugging at their time and attention.

There seems to be acceleration, too–the first kids were slow to disengage, siblings providing a little more family stickiness. When the fifth child spun off to pursue his own interests, he seemed to loosen our pull on the  youngest as well. Somehow the idea of family time changed for our baby when it became Mom and Dad focusing on him alone.

It’s game day today, and our youngest is using his ticket–along with an additional one for his girlfriend. We do what we can to keep our place in his world.

Go Bears!

Stories We’re In

March 20, 2015 / / 1 Comment

“Love, no one cares about the stories they’re not in.” Matt Nathanson

Sometimes we enter a story, stumbling into it without realizing it will become a story we care about. There’s a choice at the beginning, but it leads to unexpected places. A door opens, we walk into a new place, and suddenly our story changes.

Our youngest boy was 12 and wanted to play football. We had put him off for a few years, not wanting him to get hurt, but decided to let him try it. There was a Pop Warner team in Berkeley, so we went to the open sign-up event without knowing much about the program. After we talked to one of the coaches and he addressed our fears about safety, we joined the team. It was one of those unmarked doors that leads to a place that undoes and remakes your heart.

Our son was one of two white boys on the team, the rest mostly African-American. We joined their families at practice, parent meetings and games. This is a football community focused on keeping their boys off the street and out of trouble, giving them good role models and providing the skills and exposure that might give them a shot at going to college with a sports scholarship. Our son was there to play for fun. He will have the opportunity to go to college without a sports scholarship. He isn’t in much danger of getting into a gang, or of encountering violence the same way many of his teammates are.

Out on the field, though, he became one of them, and in the stands we became part of the parents’ group. We came to the field from a different place, but once there, we were part of the football family. We loved it. We saw a genuine care for the kids, the community coming around the kids to protect them and lift them up. Joining them, we were invited into this caring: the anxiety of an uncertain future, the fear of losing a child to violence or jail, the pain of being ignored or treated with suspicion with no explanation except for racial bias and the fierce belief that they can make a better life. There is an openness, hope and positivity in the face of hardship in that community that is contagious.

I began to see my own white community from the other side. When our team from a more urban setting went to play the richer and less-diverse suburban teams, the way the players and parents looked at us and treated us seemed so obvious and ignorant. I’ve been on the other side.  I know the feeling– the unease and apprehension when the tough-looking team from the bad part of town shows up, the brave posturing to hide the fear. Seeing it from the other side, though, was hurtful. Now these were my kids.

I know their names and their families. I drive them to games, I cheer for them when they succeed and encourage them to keep going when they fail, just like their parents do for my son. Can’t the people from the other team see that our players are kids like their kids–the same age, the same size, the same goofy sense of humor, the same love of video games and junk food, the same insecurities about hair and acne and crushes, the same dreams for a future? No, because our kids are scary.

One time in particular, the racism was overt–the name-calling, the trash-talking, the accusations. Our kids and coaches were maligned, our parents not trusted to do the usual volunteer jobs, like moving the chains to measure first downs. There were threats of calling the police. Assumptions were made, stereotypes were believed, cultural differences were misconstrued.

My husband and I were shocked and confused and angry. We were scared for our kids. We were saddened that our boys now had one more reason to believe they wouldn’t be treated fairly. How could this possibly be happening? It was not right.

The other parents were angry, but not surprised. One of them said to us, “This is what happens when you let your son play with black kids.”

It was a holy moment. We had the privilege of being included in their community, of suffering what they suffer, of seeing in a new, profound way what we had heard about but could never really understand. Their story became my story, and I haven’t been able to forget it.

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