OXNARD, CALIF.
By: Armando Vazquez
September 28, 2016
I am a disciple of the Tip O’Neil adage, to “think globally and act locally!”
How can anyone deny that the world is a violent and turbulent maelstrom of racism, sexism, religious fanaticism bordering on the worship of insanity, hatred and intolerance? All this violence created almost exclusively by men all over the world, including Oxnard.
A high school kid that we will call BC, as in “Born into a Crazy World” recently revealed to me and others that a gun had been pulled on him at a local Oxnard high school. The gun is pointed at BC’s gut and then the chilling demand is utter by the kid with the gun ”Where you from fool?”
The kid on the wrong side of the gun is frozen in terror.
This loud mouth kid has lost his ability to “to talk mess” for the first time in his short troubled life. Luck saves the kid from being shot or worse, a school golf cart is rapidly approaching so all the kids “on the right side of the gun that live forever” as Kendrick Lamar tell us, all scramble like inhumane violent mutants seeking the innocuous cover of the class room.
The adrenaline kicks in and BC bolts to the administration office seeking sanctuary. In the office in front of school officials and Oxnard cops the kid starts talking; rather he is spinning a tale of lies, denial and manipulations.
BC is incapable of speaking the truth he doesn’t know it! BC is now letting his mouth potentially help him dig his own grave, he is ratting out the “enemy”. In potentially suicidal panic BC is violating gangster cardinal rule number one: “Keep you stupid mouth shut and don’t rat”.
How many times does this gun, violence and tribal insanity occur on our high school of Oxnard?
I suggest that if you are really interested in knowing the truth you avoid the cops, the school and local officials and you go directly to the kids.
Ask them they will tell you. BC confess to me that in a two week period he saw a gun in the hands of kids on school ground on two different occasions.
All the kids know what is going on at the local school, the smart one know how to navigate and avoid the danger, the knuckle heads are drawn to the trouble, and kids like BC that are neither smart or a knucklehead are caught in the middle.
BC was born into a troubled and dysfunctional runaway circular roller coaster world that always retuned him to tragic and dysfunctional experiences, accompanied by violence, abandonment and fear.
All BC knows is drama; as in doing whatever twisted action and deed is necessary to survive.
In his world BC learn to lie and manipulate very early in his child “development”; he is now a master in the art of deception and drama at the tender age of 14. The likelihood that the “enlightened” side of BC is going to magically appear today is very remote, but it is not impossible, and I have witnessed this miracle of transformation countless times with the toughest kids in Oxnard. Here is where we must act with love on a local level.
There are too many guns everywhere in this country and that of course includes Oxnard.
The cops and school officials are the first to tell you they cannot solve the problem of the possession of illegal guns by kids in the local schools; if they could they would have done that already.
The best community safety is where kids, young adults and everyone else in Oxnard feels a sense of peace, love and respect. In a very twisted way this is all BC has ever wanted, that what the kid with the guns want.
In Marc Lewis, P.HD., brilliant ground breaking book “The Biology of Desire”, he reveals a compelling thesis that any “addiction is an unintended consequence of the (hard wired) brain doing what it is suppose to do – seek pleasure and relief – in a world that’s not cooperating”.
That is what BC does time and again seek out relief and twisted pleasure (taunting the gangsters) and in return always receiving very bad unintended consequence. So Lewis, and I concur; BC’s brain and the brains of all our dysfunctional and troubled youth must be rewired.
This can no longer be a brutal tough and failed war on crime waged against our youth as much as it is a mercy mission of science and psychology driven by love.
There are sanctuaries in Oxnard that practice this kind of community defined practices of social and restorative justice work that is complimented by culturally competent and ethnically congruent educational and psychological programming supported by an unwavering foundation of love.
The KEYS Leadership Academy at the Café on A is one such program that has for over two decades worked with the most troubled and dysfunctional youth and their families in all of greater Oxnard.
The work is not easy, and never driven by traditional law and order drivers or functionary standard of measurement.
Our motto is “LOVE IS THE KEY” and we never waver from that foundation. We have worked with thousands of kids in Oxnard, and I can tell you that I have never witnessed a kid, not matter how tough or broken that does not respond to respect, social and restorative justice, and love.
The “problem” with the KEYS Leadership Academy program is that it is not geared to give the cops, the probation department, the school and local elected officials neatly packaged “success numbers” every quarter; but rather The KEYS Leadership Academy provides individual and unique award winning effective educational program of scientific and psychological empowerment drive by love.
For one kid it took 17 years to get to “rewire her brain and heart” we are still working with her.
It will take many year for BC working with us to “rewire” his brain and resuscitate his heart and soul but we will be there with him.
This is how we do it at the KEYS Leadership Academy 1at Café on A, on brain, one heart, and one soul at a time. Love is KEY!
Armando Vazquez is the executive director of Acuna Art Gallery/Café on A and the KEYS Leadership Academy. He has a masters degree in education.