The SWC Sun, Fall 2022, Issue 1

AN ACP HALL OF FAME NEWSPAPER

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

A NATIONAL PACEMAKER AWARD NEWSPAPER

ASTRONOMY STUDENTS LOSE A STAR ATTRACTION n Faculty criticizes plan to demolish planetarium without a replacement

“The new gym was built before the old gym was torn down.

The new theater was built before the old one was torn down. Why is the planetarium the exception?”

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

Southwestern College’s iconic domed planetarium may soon disappear into a black hole with no replacement on the event horizon.

Professor of Astronomy Dr. Grant Miller said he and faculty colleagues were stunned to learn that the college plans to tear down the existing planetarium this summer

SOUTH COUNTY HOMELESS

DR. GRANT MILLER SC ASTRONOMY PROFESSOR

before a replacement is built. Miller said the destruction of the planetarium will make it impossible to teach college-level astronomy and denies visiting K-12 students in the community a vital asset.

“The new gym was built before the old gym was torn down,” he said. “The new theater was built before the old one was torn down. Other new buildings were built before old ones were built. Why is the planetarium the exception?”

Miller, who has taught astronomy for 30 years, said instruction would suffer substantially during the 2-3 years it is scheduled to take to

From the Mexican border in San Ysidro to the northern edge of National City and east to the slopes of SR 125, the region’s homeless population has exploded.

South Bay’s homeless citizens share their travails and ask for help. Special Section

Photo Courtesy of HolLynn D’Lil/Netflix

Haitians flood Tijuana, seek asylum in U.S. and Canada

FROM ‘FIRE HAZARD’ TO ‘BADASS’

HAITIANS PG 3

PLANETARIUM PG 4

An offer of peace to region’s indigenous College lifts all facilities fees for the county’s Kumeyaay People

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

ZONA RIO, TIJUANA — When Christopher Columbus set foot on the island of Hispaniola in 1492 he kicked opened the Gates of Hell.

For 529 years on the tropical land that is now Haiti, humanity has demonstrated inhumanity at its sadistic worst. Genocide, extermination, slavery, rape, disease, torture, brutality, assassination, kidnapping, mayhem and murder have defined the rule of Spaniards, French, Americans, dictators, generals and despots.

That is why Jean Martinez is in Tijuana.

It’s a long story, he said, but he has time. He has no job, no family with him and no prospects, so he has plenty of time.

People have been fleeing Haiti since 1493 when the indigenous Taino people ran from Columbus, though Martinez said he was lured away by Brazilians.

Barely a decade ago Brazil seemed on top of the world. It was frantically building scores of glimmering new stadiums and athletic facilities for the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics – the planet’s two largest sports events. Fueling the feverish construction boom was cheap labor from destitute Haiti.

Eager laborers were shipped and flown in by the tens of thousands to construction sites in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Manaus, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and others in the jungles and coastal cities of the world’s fifth largest nation. They were promised great jobs and a path out of permanent poverty.

There was work, but the jobs were far from great and the path out of poverty was illusory, said Michelet Remy, a Haitian refugee who was

build a new planetarium. Entire cohorts of SC students will receive inferior instruction, he said, because faculty will lack proper facilities and technology.

“There is nothing quite like sitting in the planetarium dome and seeing the things I have been talking about during the lecture,” he said.

“It is a disservice to the students and community (that) the college and the community will not have access to a planetarium.”

Like many SC construction projects, plans

BY NICOLETTE MONIQUE LUNA News Editor

“I want to see feisty disabled people change the world. If you’re not loud in the disabled community, you’re dead.”

Judy Heumann

Disability Rights activist

J

udy Heumann, known as the Martin Luther King of the Disability Rights Movement, gave a fiery presentation at Southwestern College students and employees urging them to reevaluate the treatment of disabled people in our community. She said American higher education has not adequately opened itself to students with disabilities.

She urged SC to be “bold and visionary.” Story Page 2

WOMEN'S MARCH TIJUANA, MEXICO

For a second year Mexican women and their supporters protest the frightening rates of sexual violence and murder of women and girls. Special Section

In 1960, Sweetwater Union High School District Superintendent Joe Rindone rented a helicopter to soar over the largely empty South County to look for a spot to build Southwestern College. He chose a spot near the conjunction of two-lane Otay Lakes Road and desolate Telegraph Canyon Road because it was flat, accessible and would, he predicted, someday be the geographical center of Chula Vista.

About 12,000 years earlier native Kumeyaay People chose the same land for a village.

They chose well. There was a nearby water source, arable land, mild climate and a nice view. As any 21st century real estate agent might say, “Location, location, location.”

During the settlement of California and Mexico

by Europeans, the Kumeyaay People were, as anthropologist Florence Connelly Shipek famously described it, “Pushed into the Rocks.” Oncemigratory people who LETICIA spent summers in the CAZARES mountains and wintered at the beach, the Kumeyaay were forced ever eastward as their land was farmed and developed by invaders.

Southwestern College trustees have officially acknowledged that the college is built on Kumeyaay land and is making efforts to connect with its original occupants. Trustee Leticia Cazares led an effort to establish a verbal “land acknowledgement” to be read at the start of certain college events. Her next proposal created a new policy that allows the approximately 20,000 Kumeyaay tribal members to use campus facilities and fields without charging rental fees.

Cazares said the move was long overdue.

“We want to ensure that the campus community not only knows, but acknowledges and appreciates that we are on Kumeyaay lands and that this is a way for us to at least partially give back and do some repair of the damage that has been done throughout history,” she said.

Erica Pinto, chairwoman of the Jamul Indian Village, said the respectful gestures are appreciated.

KUMEYAAY PG 4

NEWS Photos courtesy of AP Images

NO ORDINARY

HEUMANN Disability rights leader pledges to fight on

BY ANETTE PEDROTTI Staff Writer

Judy Heumann may be America’s greatest civil rights leader that hardly anyone has ever heard of.

Few Americans have so profoundly changed the national landscape for so many.

Heumann is a disability warrior who served two presidents, has six honorary doctorates and was described by the Washington Post as “a badass.” Her recent appearance a t S o u t h w e s te r n College attracted few but inspired virtually everyone in attendance. President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Education and Rehabilitative Services JUDITH and subject of the Sundance HEUMANN award-winning 2020 documentary “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” Heumann said disabled Americans still have much to fight for.

“I want to see feisty disabled people change the world,” she said. “If you’re not loud in the disabled community, you’re dead.”

Like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, Heumann used peaceful but assertive civil disobedience to demand change. In 1977 she led the 28day occupation of the federal Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco to advocate for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which gave every disabled person in the U.S. the right to attend public school. Previous to this landmark legislation, most disabled students were institutionalized rather than educated.

Some Southern members of Congress attempted to derail the legislation by drafting “separate but equal” laws for disabled students. That helped to draw able-bodied African-Americans into the cause, including the Bay Area’s formidable Black Panther Party. Black leaders said at the time that African-Americans Photo “had been on the wrong end of courtesy the separate but equal bullshit for of Judith far too long” and were inspired to Heumann support the disability cause.

2

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

Black Panthers brought food and water to the protesters, helped bathe those who needed assistance and took on other care roles. When the FBI cut the phone lines, hearing impaired protesters used American Sign Language to communicate with allies on the outside. The sit-in lasted 28 days and Heumann’s army of the disabled was victorious.

Psychology instructor Shannon Cappa, whose graduate work focused on the mental health and rights of disabled Americans, said Heumann changed history.

“She was the Malcolm X of the Disability Rights Movement,” Cappa said. “She was and remains a fierce proponent for the rights of disabled Americans.”

Heumann’s next major protest again fueled national change. In 1990 she led the Capitol Crawl, an audacious rally in Washington D.C. At the end of the rally, 60 activists left behind their wheelchairs and crutches and crawled up the steps of the capitol building demanding the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA is considered the most important legislation in American history for the rights of the disabled.

“It was our Civil Rights bill,” said Cappa.

Heumann said the ADA was only a first step. Too much of America is still inaccessible to its disabled citizens, she said, including its transportation and public education systems.

“If I am supposed to feel grateful for accessible bathrooms, when am I ever going to feel like an equal in the community?” she asked the SC audience.

To o m a n y A m e r i c a n institutions just follow the letter of the ADA laws but not the spirit, Heumann said. Cappa agreed.

“We are guilty of that here at Southwestern College,” she said. “It’s not about minimal compliance and checking off those boxes. ADA is about true inclusion. It is about Universal Design architecture that makes our facilities usable for disabled Americans. It is about disabled people having a seat at the table.

Able bodied people, even wellintentioned people, cannot make decisions for the disabled.”

Restrooms remain “ground

ONE PAINFUL STEP AT A TIME — Heumann led the Capitol Crawl, an emotional protest where disabled Americans left their wheelchairs and crutches to crawl up the steps of the U.S. Capitol demanding passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Judy Heumann: Civil Rights Icon

zero” for legions of disabled people, Heumann said, because people who are worried about whether or not they will be able to urinate are often too afraid to venture out. Too many disabled people intentionally dehydrate themselves before boarding an airplane or going to school because they know they may not find a restroom they can use.

Cappa said restrooms remain a problem at SC because many of the doors are too heavy for people with disabilities to pull open or have handles that are too high to reach from a wheelchair.

“Then there’s the issue of washing your hands,” she said.

“Oftentimes the soap is too high or there is no sink for people who are using a wheelchair.”

“Crip Camp” is a revolutionary film, Cappa said, because it captures so much of the past half century of disability history in the United States. It is told primarily

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

through the point of view of Heumann and other disabled Americans.

The documentary begins with footage from the seminal Camp Jened in 1969 and moves on to the 1977 San Francisco sitin. Originally scheduled for a theatrical release, “Crip Camp” was scuttled by the pandemic and is now available online.

Cappa said it was an honor to having a great American like Heumann speak to SC students and staff.

“Having Judy Heumann at Southwestern College is as significant as any of the many civil rights leaders we have hosted,” she said. “Most people — even most well-educated people — do not know about the Disability Rights Movement. It was our Civil Rights Movement.

Judy Heumann changed the world for disabled people. We have ADA because of Judy.”

• Contracted polio at 18 months and lost her ability to walk.

• Refused admittance to public schools by administrators who declared her a “fire hazard.”

• Heumann’s mother sued and Judy was admitted to the fourth grade where she studied with other disabled children in a basement.

• Degree in speech therapy from Long Island University in 1969.

• Founded Disabled in Action (DIA) in 1970.

• Denied her NY teaching license in 1970, again as a “fire hazard.” She won a seminal lawsuit to become New York State’s first teacher to use a wheelchair. She taught elementary school for three years.

• Helped develop 1974 Individuals with Disabilities Act as a Senate legislative assistant.

• In 1977 led a 28-day sit-in to demand passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

NEWS CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

HAITIANS: Refugees flee corruption, desperation able to cross into the United States but who lives in a streambed near a Home Depot store. At least, he said, he is no longer marooned in Tijuana.

“Once we were done with our project, Brazil was done will us,” he said one morning as he waited for work on a Mission Valley sidewalk.

“We were turned loose and they said go back home. We (asked how) we would get there and they said ‘swim for all I care, but leave.’”

Remy said most of the workers from Haiti were paid just enough to subsist while they were in Brazil and had no savings to take back home. So legions did not go back. They headed north. Some hitched rides on trucks and trains, Remy said, and a few lucky ones were about to find work on northbound boats.

The rest walked.

They walked through Brazil, the Guianas, Venezuela and Colombia, Remy said, snagging rides when possible. Then they walked up Central America and into Mexico.

Like Central American refugees, the Haitians bought train tickets if they could earn a little money. Otherwise, they surreptitiously hopped the trains, including southern Mexico’s notorious La Bestia (The Beast), which has sheered the hands, arms and legs off countless refugees — the refugees it did not kill.

Martinez said he was lucky because he arrived in Mexico by plane. He made it to Tijuana, but there his luck ran out. He hit The Wall and an overwhelmed American immigration system gutted by Donald Trump and his administration. Haitians are at the back of a line that does not really exist.

Hardship has accompanied Martinez his entire life, he said.

“My reason for coming to Mexico is because of the situation in my country,” he said. “My life was threatened in Haiti and I had to leave.

(Poor) living conditions, political corruption and violence has strangled my country. When you are younger you expect the situation to improve, but it never improves. I have no future in Haiti.”

Haiti’s dark history of colonization, slavery, cruelty, superstition, corruption and stupefying levels of violence have gutted a oncepromising nation. Educated Haitians and its fragile middle class fled generations ago. Kleptomaniacal dictators and military officers have spirited away most of the nation’s wealth.

Even before the coup d’états, assassinations and kleptocracy of the 20th century, Haiti was marinated in brutality and tragedy. Whipsawed by the Spanish and the French, the colony of former slaves and their descendants revolted against French rule in 1791 and fought a bloody war until 1804. France engaged in a scorched earth campaign that demolished plantations and infrastructure.

Haiti won a pyrrhic victory. In exchange for diplomatic recognition the new nation was forced to pay ruinous reparations to France, which it did from 1825 to 1947. This caused Haiti to seek loans with high interest rates from American, German and French bank that sank the nation in crushing debt.

Haiti has never been close to digging out. Historians and political scientists generally seem to agree that Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s most dysfunctional and snake bit society.

Martinez said he has lost all hope for his homeland.

“The crisis in my country is enduring,” he said. “It is never ending.”

Mexico, he said, is not much better.

Camped by the wretch-inducing smell of the sunbaked sewage choking the Tijuana River canal, Haitians are at the bottom of Mexico’s racist caste

Civil Rights icon has stark warning n UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta urges a fight against growing American fascism

C

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

ivil rights icon Dolores Huerta packed the Southwestern College theater, then packed a punch in a powerful address about looming threats to American democracy.

“Fascism is on the rise in our nation and we are the only ones who can stop it,” she said. “Right now we should not be fighting for ourselves, but fighting for democracy in the United States.”

Huerta, the 92-year-old co-founder of the United Farm Workers labor union, said she was “stunned and horrified” by the rightwing attack on the U.S. Capitol January 6, 2021. It was, she said, an attempt by white supremacists and other political extremists to overthrown a duly elected president and end the American form of democratic government.

“Fascism is here and it is alive,” she said.

“We have to do the democracy work and that democracy work is voting. In this critical moment, we need you to engage right now in this war against us.”

Huerta also spoke directly to Latinos and Catholics, urging them not to be played by right-wing Republicans and others attempting use the issue of abortion rights to drive a political wedge through their ranks.

“No one has the authority to tell someone how to live their life,” she said. “If you can’t control your body, how can you control your life?”

Republicans historically never cared about the abortion issue until they realized it could be weaponized politically, Huerta said.

“Republicans have used the abortion issue to divide us,” she said. “We need to stick

Photo by Ernesto Rivera

Photo by Ernesto Rivera ‘SI SE PUEDE!’ — (from top) Huerta with famed Chicano artist Salvador Barajas and civil rights leader Enrique Morones. SC Sun editors Camila Gonzalez and Nicolette Luna. Huerta with former ASO President Sonia Camargo, who arranged the visit.

HUERTA PG 11

HAITIANS PG 5

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

3

NEWS Photo Courtesy of Mission Trails Park Facebook

“We want to ensure that the campus community not only knows, but acknowledges and appreciates that we are on Kumeyaay lands and that this is a way for us to at least partially give back and do some repair of the damage that has been done throughout history.”

LETICIA CAZARES

Southwestern College Governing Board Member

Photo courtesy of Southwestern College

CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

Photo courtesy of Erica Pinto

KUMEYAAY: Tribal members may use college facilities for free “It started with the (SC) board publicly acknowledging at every board meeting that the district operates on what are historically Kumeyaay land,” she said. “Recognition goes a long way for the tribal community, but going beyond acknowledging and taking action that provides a tangible benefit, like free use of facilities for the tribes, is a big step in the right direction.”

SC’s new policies have inspired other South County school district to consider similar gestures. South Bay Union School District leaders also adopted a land acknowledgement for the K-6 district that serves Imperial Beach and the southern pockets of San Diego adjacent to the I-5. SBUSD Board President Marco Amaral said his district also wanted to publicly support the region’s Native Americans, particularly the Kumeyaay.

“We saw what Southwestern College did and we thought it is a great idea,” he said. “Is it enough?

No, but it is a good first step.”

Amaral said he is glad that many Americans are looking back at the

FIRST THERE WAS A VILLAGE — Before Southwestern College and the Lansley lima bean farm, the mesa that is now home to SC and the Bonita Vista secondary schools was a Kumeyaay village site. The Kumeyaay People traveled with the seasons, spending summers in the mountains harvesting acorns and wintering near the ocean. They planted crops along the way, harvesting them on their journey back.

”Our people are story tellers at heart, it’s in our DNA and small measures like this help provide for these opportunities. We think it’s the right thing to do and look forward to the ability to use the facilities to share our stories!”

ERICA PINTO

Chairwoman, Jamul Indian Village

nation’s history with an eye on the treatment and mistreatment of Indigenous People, African slaves and immigrants.

“It speaks to a larger conversation of reparations,” he said. “The United States has always had a difficult time coming to the fact that we have treated various groups with a lack of dignity and respect as well as a genocidal complex.”

Cazares said the Kumeyaay People’s catastrophic mistreatment at the hands of Europeans began shortly after explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailing for Spain came ashore in what is now San Diego Bay in 1542. Though Cabrillo and his crew did not stay more than a few days in this area and did not encounter the Kumeyaay, they were engaged in violent fighting with the native people of the Catalina Islands.

Subsequent Spanish incursions from the south were deeply antagonistic to the Kumeyaay, despite the Natives’ friendly welcome of the newcomers. Kumeyaay were forced to farm crops for the Spaniards and were compelled to build the San Diego Mission and other early buildings.

Kumeyaay were reported whipped, beaten, starved, sexually assaulted and forced to convert to Christianity.

Many thousand died of diseases the Spanish introduced.

Kumeyaay People were later mistreated by Mexican and American settlers who were in a struggle with the Russians for California. Mexico

CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

PLANETARIUM: Faculty decries teardown of facility before a replacement is completed for a new planetarium have been created, altered, cancelled, resurrected, rescheduled and redesigned in the past 13 years. Problems started shortly after the passage of Proposition R in November 2008 with the 2010-14 South Bay Corruption Scandal and the felony bribery convictions of former SC administrators Raj K. Chopra and Nicholas Alioto in 2014. SC’s extraordinary administrative instability since 2002 has also caused multiple redesigns and start overs.

Despite all that, Miller said he and his astronomy colleagues worked hard to stay on top of the ever-evolving situation.

“The planetarium was supposed to be built in an earlier phase of (the

4

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

$389 million 2008 Proposition R bond measure) project, but for reasons I don’t know the planetarium kept being moved further and further down (the schedule).”

Miller said the plan in 2019 was to build the new planetarium in the space between the library and the new science building. At least that was the most recent in a long series of plans. “(SC’s) planetarium project has been disorganized, lacking in preparation and not a priority for the college,” he said.

Military service has made it difficult for Miller to stay on top of the careening construction landscape at SC, but he said he has made the planetarium a priority even while overseas. A former

Naval Intelligence Officer who remains on reserve during times of national emergencies, Miller was called back for active duty after 9/11 and again during the war in Afghanistan.

While in Afghanistan Miller received an email from the college asking how to properly disassemble and “pack up” a planetarium. Miller said he is the only SC professional with the qualifications and expertise to relocate a planetarium.

Some of the astronomy equipment belongs to him, he said, augmenting the taxpayer-purchased equipment that belongs to the college.

Miller’s military obligations may have prevented an even earlier tear down of the planetarium, he said,

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

when he informed his former dean that it would have to wait until he was released from service. He learned during a December 2021 Zoom meeting with some administrators regarding funding for a new star projector that the planetarium would be torn down this summer.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I thought we were going to keep using (the planetarium) until the new one was built and ready.”

Miller said he checked in often with bond construction manager Balfour Beatty about evolving building schedules.

“I asked them many times in many different meetings (the same question)

‘The new planetarium will be built before the old one is torn down, right?’” he said. “They said yes every time.”

Balfour Beatty lacks the competence to manage this aspect of the bond construction, Miller said.

“I don’t think Balfour Beatty has any experience with planetaria,” he said.

“Nobody there is an astronomer and not even all astronomers understand planetaria.”

Miller said he trained at the worldrenown Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

He is also a regular guest astronomy lecturer and visiting scholar at the Ruben H. Fleet Space Center in Balboa Park and other American astronomical centers.

SC’s classic planetarium was an

NEWS Photo courtesy of Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune

CONTINUED FROM PG. 3

HAITIANS: Tijuana refugees aim to settle in U.S. or Canada

awarded Kumeyaay land to powerful dons in the later 1700s and early 19th century. After gold was discovered in 1849, California was fast tracked for statehood in 1850. Newly installed American politicians and elites confiscated vast tracks of Kumeyaay land and prevented the Indigenous People from practicing their sustainable lifestyle of migrating between the mountains and the coast with the seasons.

During the climax of Indian Wars from 1880-1900, Kumeyaay survivors were forced to live in the arid hills of what is now San Diego’s East County.

Their population dwindled to about 1,000. Annihilation loomed.

Nearly a century later California voters passed the Tribal Government Gaming and Economic SelfSufficiency Act of 1998 which allowed County tribes to engage in gaming and build casinos. The effort helped to lift thousands of Kumeyaay out of poverty, but centuries of institutional racism and financial isolation of the region’s Indigenous People did deep damage that lingers today, said Pinto. “ O u r Pe o p l e ’ s l a n d s h av e been stolen,” she said. “Many of our People have been placed on reservations, usually in rural areas, on undevelopable land, away from economic opportunities. As a result, many of our tribes and their members do not have the resources to pay for the use of facilities (on college campuses), let alone education.”

attraction when it was built in the 1960s, but began to show its age at the dawn of the 21st century.

Southwestern’s first bond measure, the $89 million Proposition AA passed in 2000, included a commitment to renovate the planetarium. Felony charges of campaign fraud and illegal expenditures of public funding against former President Dr. Serafin Zasueta and a period of economic instability that followed derailed many of the stated goals in the Proposition AA ballot statement and redevelopment plan. Zasueta’s firing in 2002 started a 20-year period of administrative churn and turnover that continues at Southwestern College today.

Not a penny of Proposition AA ever went to the planetarium, Miller said.

“It’s one broken promise after

GLIMPSES INTO THE PAST — Kumeyaay elder Dr. Stan Rodriguez (top), a professor at Cuyamaca College, works with students to build a replica Kumeyaay hut. (above) A pond in Mission Trails Park formed by a dam originally build by the Kumeyaay. The dam was later expanded by the Spaniards as a water source for Mission San Diego de Alcala.

Pinto said the Kumeyaay need access to urban facilities “to tell our own stories.”

“Our people are storytellers at heart,” she said. “It’s in our DNA. Small measures like this help provide for these opportunities. We think it’s the right thing to do and we look forward to the ability to use the facilities to share our stories!”

Cazares said she would like to see SC add classes on Kumeyaay history and the Ipai language. She also said the college should consider waiving registration fees, though she said that would require action at the state level.

Pinto welcomed those and other ideas to improve educational opportunities for Kumeyaay People.

“Given many tribal members do not have the resources to advance themselves, education would be important,” she said. “Finding ways to provide education and outreach to encourage advancement would be important. We also believe curriculum, staffing and programming could be improved to help tell the story of the tribal community, specifically in the San Diego (County) region.”

Cazares and Pinto both said the relationship between the Kumeyaay and Southwestern College would continue, and both parties would work toward mutually-beneficial innovations.

“It is a new era,” said Cazares. “I am optimistic that we can accomplish many, many good things.”

system based on skin color. Light skinned Mexicans like the blonde, green-eyed rubia models shimmering on billboards make up the ruling class. Mestizos occupy the working class middle, while dark-skinned indios are shunned and mired in poverty.

Black Haitians are the new punching bags of la frontera, and Martinez has his bruises.

“No one here likes Haitians,” he said.

Jason, a Haitian refugee who uses just one name, agreed.

“There is a lot of violence and pain in Tijuana,” he said. “(Mexicans) do not do anything to help Haitians.

People in Mexico are afraid of Black people. (They) avoid walking on the same sidewalk.”

His job as an Uber driver is barely keeping him alive, Jason said, because the pay is so low. He always asks to be paid in U.S. dollars because that is what the landlord demands.

Like so many Haitians, Jason said his dream destination is not the United States, but Canada. The bilingual province of Quebec has booming cities like Montreal, Quebec City, Laval and Longueuil that tend to be accepting of French-speaking Haitians.

“Things would likely be better (in Canada),” he said.

Remy also said he would like to find a way to Canada, though so far he has not gotten much more than 20 miles from the border with Mexico.

His French has a Haitian lilt, part Cajun Creole but all Caribbean.

“Quebec has French-(speaking) brothers and the Canadians are nicer to Haitians than Mexicans and Americans,” he said. “Some Haitians (speak enough) Spanish to fake it, but Tijuana and San Diego suck if you only speak French.”

Working as a day laborer is rough, he said, and sometimes workers toil all day or all week only to be stiffed.

Still, he added, he would rather sleep in a San Diego canyon than anywhere along the border in Tijuana.

Emmanuel Philippe Auguste said he arrived in Tijuana at the end of October after a hemisphere-spanning trek from Chile where he and his wife lived for four years following the Rio Olympics.

“When you are living on the streets you realize the world is not so kind and does not have your best interests,” he said. “There is no help for Haitians in Tijuana.”

Auguste and his wife left their children behind in Haiti, he said, and they have not seen them for years. Guarded and quiet, he looked genuinely stumped when asked what he hoped for in the years ahead.

After an uncomfortable and melancholic pause, he sighed and cast his eyes skyward.

“I would like to live somewhere where I am (considered) legal,” he said. “I just want to take care of my family.”

another,” Miller said. “At this point, I do not have a lot of confidence in the district or the administration.”

College leadership has failed to grasp the implications of its decisions, said Miller.

“The planetarium is a unique resource for the entire South Bay community,” he said. “There is no other planetarium in the South Bay. Students who go to the local elementary schools and middle schools deserve to come to SC to visit the planetarium. Our own students deserve to have a planetarium available for their education, their growth and experience. More broadly, the South Bay communities deserve to have a planetarium that is supported.”

SC President Dr. Mark Sanchez said the facilities master plan was updated in 2018, about three years prior to his

decisions regarding science facilities.

She said she agreed with Sanchez that it is a difficult situation faculty will have to work through.

“I have confidence that our astronomy faculty will find ways of providing alternative learning experiences,” she said. “Are they going to be exactly the same? No. But hopefully, there are ways (faculty) can compensate for that.”

Miller said the new planetarium will not be state-of-the-art because current plans call for installation of a substandard projection system. Along with a proper dome shaped facility, a stellar projection system is essential to astronomical studies, Miller said.

A planetarium’s projector is a very sophisticated collection of technology that can show in nearly perfect detail

where all heavenly bodies – including known comets and asteroids – were or will be located, depending on the terrestrial location, time and date programmed in by the astronomer.

Nadalet and physical science faculty submitted a formal request for $461,113 to update the new planetarium’s projection system, but the request was denied. Miller said faculty was not included in the discussion with Seiler Planetarium Division regarding the projection system. Outdated projection technology even in a brand new planetarium renders the facility as less than optimal, Miller said.

“We ought to be providing our students and our community with the best possible instruction on modern technology,” he said. “We seem to be getting away from that.”

arrival last year. It went through “the governance process,” he said, during which “faculty, students, and staff all had a say in that process.”

“I understand the outrage,” Sanchez said. “I think I would channel the outrage to say they are going to get a brand new world-class facility.”

Sanchez said astronomy faculty will have to adjust to a few years without a planetarium.

“We are going to have to be creative in finding solutions and there are (planetaria) in the county we will probably have to utilize,” he said. “It is not the best case scenario. I will acknowledge that.”

Dean of Math, Science and Engineering Dr. Silvia Nadalet was not yet an administrator during the previous round of negotiations and

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

5

VIEWPOINTS

EDITORIALS / OPINIONS / LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The mission of the Southwestern College Sun is to serve its campuses and their communities by providing information, insights and stimulating discussions of news, activities and topics relevant to our readers. The staff strives to produce a newspaper that is timely, accurate, fair, interesting, visual and accessible to readers. Though The Sun is a student publication, staff members ascribe to the ethical and moral guidelines of professional journalists.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief Camila Alejandra Gonzalez News Editor Nicolette Monique Luna Viewpoints Editor Alicia Rivero Campus Editor Han Pslama Arts Editor Liliana Anguiano Sports Editor Iyarie Murguia

Alicia Rivero / Staff

Editor-in-Chief theswcsun.com Julia Woock

SDSU rape allegations remind us that women’s safety is fleeting

Staff Writers Ramon Armenta Diego Higuera Jet Jackson Mustafa Rabi Edgar Ortega Amber Plasencia Janine Rivera Matthew Rubio Colton Tull

S

Assistant Adviser Kenneth Pagano Adviser Dr. Max Branscomb

Awards/Honors National College Newspaper Hall of Fame Inducted 2018 Student Press Law Center National College Press Freedom Award 2011, 2018 National Newspaper Association National College Newspaper of the Year 2004-2022 Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker Awards 2003-06, 2008, 2009, 2011, 20122017, 2019, 2020, 2021 General Excellence 2001-20 Best of Show 2003-22 Columbia University Scholastic Press Association Gold Medal for Journalism Excellence 2001-22 College Media Association National College Newspaper of the Year, 2020 California College Media Association Outstanding Community College Newspaper

6

San Diego County Multicultural Heritage Award California Newspaper Publishers Association California College Newspaper of the Year 2013, 2016, 2020, 2021 Student Newspaper General Excellence 2002-21 Society of Professional Journalists National Mark of Excellence 2001-22 First Amendment Award 2002, 2005 San Diego Press Club Excellence in Journalism 1999-2022 Directors Award for Defense of Free Speech 2012 Journalism Association of Community Colleges Pacesetter Award 2001-18 Newspaper General Excellence 2000-2022 American Scholastic Press Association Community College Newspaper of the Year

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

an Diego State University has a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism, but seems willing to look the other way for sexual assault.

Shakespeare and Faulkner may be safe, but SDSU and its environs can be very dangerous for young women.

Shocking allegations of a gang rape by as many as four SDSU football players of a passed out 17-year-old high school girl is national news, but SDSU’s cultural of sexual assault has long been an open secret in our region. Women are targets at frat parties and drinking fests at housing adjacent to the university.

SDSU’s handling of the affair has been sickening for it callousness, incompetence and focus on P.R. The victim and her family took all the proper steps in a timely manner. She reported the assault and had the San Diego Police Department process a rape kit. Her father reported it to SDSU officials. Nevertheless, the football players continue to play in high stakes season-ending and postseason games. One was drafted by the NFL. Nearly 10 months passed with no action by the university, which punted everything to the SDPD. Only a lawsuit by the young woman alerted to community.

This brings back many unpleasant memories for current and former Southwestern College women who suffered sexual assault under a prior administration and a former campus police chief. A scan of past issues of The Sun reveal that the actions of senior leadership at SC during a period of escalating sexual assaults from 2015 to 2018 was no less sickening than those by SDSU’s president, athletic director and police chief. An SC dean and the former

The issue: Allegations of a brutal gang rape of a 17-year-old girl by SDSU football players has again illustrated that colleges and universities have work to do to make campuses and their surroundings safe for young women.

Our position: Southwestern College has its own troubling history of campus sexual assault.

Our college owes it to its students and community to work diligently and with transparency to keep students safe.

police chief openly mocked assault victims and the student journalists working to cover the story. There were no crime reports as required by federal law under the Jeannie Cleary Act. Campus police escorts requested by victims failed to show and it would be charitable to say the dean was less than helpful.

Only when The Sun published a 16-page special edition that printed the names (and some photos) of 17 brave students who had suffered sexual assault did change start.

A televised interview with an SC assault victim moved things along. SC began to take Title IX seriously. Blue emergency poles were installed and campus police received sensitivity training. The do-nothing police chief and his enabling president were both eventually shown the door.

So where is SC now with sexual assault? We are not sure. Yet again we have a new president. We have the lingering specter of ghosty COVID culture. Our campus has

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

been laid to waste by demolition crews. We have a new police chief.

So much is in flux.

In 2016-17 the former police chief would not (or could not) produce crime reports which students and the public have the right to see. His successor said he worked hard to fix the reporting system. Then he left.

Then COVID. This we do know. First-year college women are America’s most frequently raped people. They have a 1-in-4 chance of being victims of sexual assault and three times more likely to be assaulted while in college than later in life.

SC does not have student housing or a lawless “frat row” like so many American universities. We do not have alcohol-fueled parties and ravestyle all-nighters rocking nearby houses.

But only a fool thinks it cannot happen here because it has. SC women, in fact, have suffered some savage assaults in parking lots, outside the stadium and remote parts of campus.

Madeline Quero spoke for several women we have interviewed who said they avoid taking classes at night.

“I only have morning classes because I knew I would not feel safe walking to my car,” she said. “I do not think there is anything you can do to make women more safe, but more security would help.”

The SDSU fiasco is a tragic reminder that students must be careful, law enforcement must be helpful and administrators must be honest. Sexual violence is on the rise across the nation as COVID precautions wane. This is a dangerous time to be a college woman.

Sadly, it always has been.

VIEWPOINTS

n Tijuana photojournalist, television reporter killed six days apart

Murder of journalists outrages borderlands

BY ANETTE PEDROTTI A Perspective

TIJUANA— Chato the brown pit bull came home and sat quietly on the front stoop, waiting loyally for his friend, Lourdes Maldonado Lopez, a prominent Mexican journalist.

Maldonado will never return to her Tijuana home. She was murdered the previous day, joining a frightening list of Mexican journalists assassinated in the line of work.

Already this year three Mexican news professionals have been executed, including two in Tijuana. Photographer Margarito Martinez Esquivel was murdered just six days prior to Maldonado.

El Economista journalist Yolanda Morales photographed Chato, an image that went viral around the world and became the symbol for all Mexican journalists who will never return home. (Chato was adopted by an American family.)

“Mexico treats its journalists barbarically,” Morales said. “We live in a unified region along the border. California and Baja California are adjacent, but during this terrible time we feel as if we are very far apart.”

Emmy-winning ABC10 TV News Assignment Editor Vanessa Nevarez agreed. Her experience with violence directed at Mexican journalists began about 14 years ago when she was Editor-in-Chief of the Southwestern College Sun and an intern at Univision.

“Those were bloody years,” she said. “We heard and saw some horrible things. Threats on scanners, emails to peers of explicit images of decapitated heads.”

At least 50 Mexican journalists are known to have been murdered in the past three years. Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries on the planet for members of the news media.

Esquivel was a freelance photographer known in equal parts for his courage and generosity. He was a popular “fixer,” a slang term for someone who assists foreign journalists in Mexico. He had just stepped out his front door on January 17 when he was gunned down.

Maldonado, a veteran broadcast journalist, was brutally murdered in her car just outside her home on January 23. On February 8 three people were arrested for her murder. Baja California Attorney General Ricardo Ivan Carpio said the murders do not seem to be related, despite the similar nature of the killings and the fact that they happened less than a week apart.

In 2019 Maldonado expressed publicly that she felt her life was in danger during a legal skirmish with Jamie Bonilla, the former governor of Baja California. Maldonado publicly asked Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for protection from Bonilla, who lost a court ruling to Maldonado for nonpayment of her salary when she worked for his television station.

She wrote a prescient message on social media that said: “I fear that one day I’ll leave my house and won’t return. That scares me.”

¡No

! e r d a m n e n tie

SALVADOR BARAJAS ILLUSTRATION “No Tienen Madre!” is an illustration by legendary Chicano artist Salvador Barajas created for The Sun to honor Lourdes Maldonado and Mararito Martinez Esquivel, and all of Mexico’s murdered journalists.

Stop penalizing low-income students enrolled in exercise classes

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ A Perspective

Everyone needs to blow off steam sometime. Life can be stressful, never more so than during a global pandemic.

Southwestern College students – like others across America — have reported serious stress at higher levels than any time in our institution’s 61-year history. College students are drowning in cortisol, the hormone that lights the stress fire. Cortisol also causes rapid weight gain and can inflame mental health issues.

Low income students are among the most stressed people in our nation. They have had to shift learning modalities overnight, bouncing from faceto-face to online and zoom, blowing their schedules to bits. They had to adjust child care, jobs and family life while attending classes in bedrooms, kitchens, closets and even bathrooms.

Most health care professionals agree — exercise is the best tonic for stress.

A good workout is a stress buster that washes away cortisol, strengthens the heart and lungs, oxygenates organs, and supplies the brain with dopamine, the feel-good hormone. It elevates mood, lowers blood pressure and fights depression.

Research shows that during a workout, proteins are released into the brain which can help improve memory and increase cognitive performance. The hippocampus is responsive to these proteins. This area of the brain is involved with retaining information. Students who are more active and engage in rigorous exercise retain more information when they study and are able focus significantly more during lectures.

Ironically, low-income students from Southwestern College are too often blocked out of the college’s exercise

classes and facilities. Due to archaic federal financial aid rules, legions of low-income students are discouraged by college counselors from taking exercise classes.

Our counselors’ motives are entirely honorable. Federal financial aid allotments are limited, so counselors often advise low-income students to stay focused on their transfer classes and avoid electives that burn through financial aid without directly aiding transfer goals.

That may be sound counseling strategy, but it is poor mental health advice. It is also an equity issue that further separates the college’s poorest students from the rest. Low-income Jaguars are excluded from the gym, pool, yoga, aerobics and other exercise classes.

A study by the U.S. Surgeon General concluded that income and exercise are inextricably linked. Low income Americans suffer a physical inactivity rate THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

of 41 percent compared to 17 percent for middle income citizens.

Low-income students have fallen through the cracks. Our leaders need to take notice.

There is another principle at stake here and it is citizenship.

Southwestern College literally belongs to all of us. It belongs to the taxpayers and their children. It exists because of the unfailing support of our community through state taxes and bond measures. Our low-income community has generously voted billions to this college over the years.

Members of the community should be able to use facilities at their community college — especially its students.

Exercise and mental health are fundamental to student success. We need our smart, caring college leaders to get creative and figure out a way to make exercise accessible to all student without forcing them to sacrifice

financial aid or buy expensive memberships. They seem to be working on it, but are not yet on the same page. Some administrators have told us students can work out or swim for free by showing their SC IDs. Others said a $17 a month membership comparable to for-profit gyms may be coming.

Even $17 a month is $340 in two years and $510 in three — about the same as a commercial gym. We would like to suggest tying free facilities use to financial aid eligibility, CalFresh, Cal WORKS, Free and Reduced Lunch, SSP and SNAP. Squeezing low-income students out of parts of this wonderful public institution is counter to the mission of Southwestern College.

Our leadership should not allow exclusion, inequity and institutional forms of discrimination. Every student matters, even the poorest of us.

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

7

CAMPUS Eating disorders can ruin young lives

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

When I get hungry I will try to get something to eat.

It wasn’t always like that.

Like at least 8 million other Americans, I battle with an eating disorder.

Mine nearly killed me.

My demon was bulimia, a mystifying condition that makes self-starvation, abuse of laxatives and purging feel perversely empowering. I didn’t like being hungry, but I did enjoy the idea that I was completely in control of at least one aspect of my life.

Eating followed by self-induced vomiting was weirdly relaxing. Purging expelled all my worries and guilt – or so I thought. It was my coping mechanism, but also my ticket to permanent physical damage or death.

I was diagnosed by a medical doctor when I was 16. He urged me to get immediate treatment, but I brushed it off. Soon, however, I began experiencing unbearable stomach pain.

Nothing would ease my pain. When I learned these symptoms were the beginning stages of my health declining I was horrified. Things could only get worse.

I was lucky, because the pain shook me up and led me to change my eating habits. I learned that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. A study conducted by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5-10 percent of anorexia victims die within 10 years of contracting the disease. Between 18-20 percent will be dead after 20 years. Less than a third fully recover.

Eating disorders can consume anyone, said Dr. Kim Claudat, a clinical psychologist and codirector of the Adult Treatment Program at UCSD Health Eating Disorders Center for Treatment and Research.

“It affects people of all races, ethnicities, all around the world,” she said. “All types of genders, all ages, all shapes and sizes. We have this notion that you can tell when someone has an eating disorder by looking at them and that is certainly a myth.”

Counselors at UCSD’s treatment center encourage patients to eat a variety of foods from the major food groups. This also includes eating three meals throughout the day with snacks in between.

“This helps to reduce binge eating urges and helps restore nutrition,” said Claudat. “This is the number one way we treat an eating disorder.”

Claudat said people need to speak up if they suspect an eating disorder in their family or among their friends.

“I give you guys permission to intervene if a situation is out of control,” she said.

That, however, is not always a popular opinion among eating disorder victims, who are often in denial. Alondra Guadiana Murrieta, 17, said she does not believe she has an eating disorder, but rather an unhealthy relationship with food.

“I feel that my unhealthy relationship with food comes from my image insecurities,” she said. “I would feel guilty after eating, I would skip meals and then eat a lot. I cannot eat without feeling guilt.”

She said some of her friends are in the same situation as her and do not react to her unhealthy relationship with food, she said.

“They do not worry about me or themselves because we are all in the situation,” she said.

Alisha Marie Civil, 17, agreed.

“Most of the time when I try to talk to my friends about stuff like that they get very uncomfortable,” she said. “They do not like to talk about it, but I obviously know they have an eating disorder. I have seen them starve themselves, and I try to tell them there is nothing wrong with eating. (I tell them) you are fine, you are beautiful, but I have never gone out of my way to tell their mothers.”

SC student Yesenia Tirado Ortiz, 18, pushes back when friends suggest she has an eating disorder.

CAMPUS NEWS / STUDENT NEWS / PROFILES

“Feminine hygiene products should be available to women in a well-stocked restroom just like other products.”

SONIA CAMARGO, FORMER SC ASO PRESIDENT

n Student leaders call for immediate stocking of menstrual products

‘NO MORE LOST LEARNING TIME’

R SIGNED INTO LAW — Gov. Newsom supports Assembly Member Christina Garcia’s legislation to provide free feminine hygiene products in the restrooms of all public secondary schools, colleges and universities.

Photo courtesy of Twitter

‘LONG OVERDUE’ — Democratic Assembly Member Cristina Garcia and Jerry Brown when the former governor signed Garcia’s 2017 legislation to provide feminine hygiene products in low-income public schools. Her 2022 bill expands the earlier legislation to include all public schools where menstruation products may be needed.

Photo courtesy of Cristina Garcia

estrooms on campus stocked with toilet paper, soap and paper towels may soon have permanent company.

ASO VP Karen Sanchez and ASO President Sonia Camargo are leading an effort to push Southwestern College to get ahead of the state legislation requiring that menstrual products are available in public schools and colleges

by July 1.

Sanchez and Camargo said they see no point in waiting.

“This is long overdue,” said Camargo. “Feminine hygiene products should be available to women in a well-stocked restroom just like other products.”

Dean of Student Services Rachel Fischer said she is onboard and supports the initiative to get a head start on stocking SC restrooms with no-cost feminine hygiene products including tampons, pads, wipes and personal hygiene sprays.

ASO leaders and the college are still discussing how to best make the products available. One idea is to put no-charge dispensers in women’s and non-gender restrooms.

Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia launched efforts to make menstruation products available in public schools with her 2017 law requiring low-income schools in disadvantaged communities to provide free menstruation products.

“Often periods arrive at inconvenient times,” Garcia said.

“They can surprise us during an important midterm, while playing with our children at a park, sitting in a lobby waiting to interview for a job, shopping at the grocery store, or even standing on the Assembly floor presenting an important piece of legislation. Convenient access would alleviate the anxiety of trying to find a product when out in public.”

Garcia also led an effort to exempt menstrual products from sales taxes. Women pay about $20 million in taxes on these products while many men’s products, including erectile dysfunction mediation, are exempt.

In October 2021 Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Garcia’s latest initiative, which expands the 2017 law grades 6-12, community colleges, and the UC and CSU systems. It encourages private schools and colleges to join the effort.

“Our biology doesn’t always send an advanced warning when we’re about to start menstruating, which often means we need to stop whatever we’re doing and deal with a period,” Garcia said.

“Just as toilet paper and paper towels are provided in virtually every public bathrooms, so should menstrual products.”

Women’s advocacy organizations, including PERIOD, praised the legislation and encouraged all schools and colleges to carefully stock menstruation products for their students.

“California joins a growing number of states who lead the way in demonstrating that menstrual equity is a matter of human rights,” the group said in statement. “No student should ever lose learning time due to their periods, period.”

Taxing Women 30 out of 50 states still have a tax on tampons and other essential feminine hygiene products: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Source: Marie Claire

Adobe Stock / Emphasis by SWC Sun Staff

DISORDERS PG 13

8

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

BY LESLEY GARATE | Staff Writer

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

CAMPUS Photos Courtesy shesahairslayer.com

Letting their hair down

Hair Slayers Studio is the go-to salon for the region’s LGBTQ community and has drawn customers as far away as wine country Temecula and desert El Centro

BY DIEGO HIGUERA Staff Writer

“It’s amazing to know that my customers feel comfortable enough with me to show me a picture of themselves and to tell me their stories.”

TANYA ALFARO OWNER HAIR SLAYERS STUDIO

A pride flag painted on the door was like a glimmering rainbow welcome mat for the young man with a chipper step but tired eyes.

There were other cues that Hair Slayers Studio is a little bit different.

Jack Skellington is clearly in command of a freaky mural that is a 2D hall of fame for animated horror heroes like Oogie Boogie, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and the Corpse Bride. A deranged doll that could throw down with Annabelle loomed up front next to a bowl brimming with Halloween candy. Harley Quinn’s bat hung within arm’s reach.

Make that a lot different.

Hair Slayers is the place the LGBTQ community gets its hair done.

Like a skilled stylist who shapes purple hair in the manner of a clipper-wielding Michelangelo, Tanya Alfaro and her sassy salon have carved out a name for themselves throughout the county. And in just six months.

Customers stream in from wine country Temecula to the north and the broiling Imperial County city of El Centro to the east. Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas is a fan and issued Hair Slayers Studio a City Proclamation honoring its contributions to underserved people in the community. October was entirely booked with wall-to-wall appointments.

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

SAFE WELCOMING AFFIRMING SPACE A safe, welcoming, affirming space signals that facilities and resources are available to everyone of any sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression • It is a space that celebrates LGBTQ people and respects the culture of the community.

• It is a judgment-free zone of inclusivity, compassion and love.

Hair Slayers’ stylists are relentlessly talented, but to many customers the welcoming, non-judgmental vibe of the salon is even more important. Members of the LGBTQIA community stop in to visit even when they are doing the Werewolf of London and their hair is perfect.

UCSD Sophomore Lucas Lima said he was slayed.

“My brother was the first to spot the pride flag in the window, and he said ‘we should go there because I’m tired of going to barber shops’,” he said. “Even though he’s a big dude, he doesn’t feel particularly comfortable in predominately cisgender male spaces, like barber shops tend to be.”

Lima said his brother had a great Hair Slayers HAIR PG 11

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

9

ARTS

CAMPUS ARTS / REVIEWS / COMMUNITY CULTURE

n ‘Mr. National City’ Memo Cavada captured a generation’s history

HONORARY DEGREE FOR ACTIVIST ARTIST

BY NICOLETTE MONIQUE LUNA News Editor

MEMO CAVADA

Beloved photographer Manuel “Memo” Cavada has his own mural in National City and a place in the hearts of generations of South Bay Chicanos.

Now he has a Southwestern College Honorary Degree.

Cavada is the college’s first-ever posthumous recipient of its highest honor, thanks to a suggestion by SC President Dr. Mark Sanchez last semester. He was nominated by a faculty member and selected by the Academic Senate. Cavada died in October 2020.

“Cavada dedicated his adult life to capturing people at their perfect moment,” read his nomination. “For more than 50

years he was ubiquitous in the San DiegoTijuana region. The region’s Chicanos smiled (when they saw him at an event) because they knew they were in the right place at the right time if Cavada was on scene loading 35mm film into his Kodak.”

“Like a Chicano Forrest Gump, Cavada journeyed through history. He photographed nearly every Chicano Federation event since its formation in the early 1970s. Richard Nixon was president when he began photographing homecomings, proms, special assemblies and graduations at his alma mater Sweetwater High. When Chicano Park was born of protest in 1974, Cavada was there documenting it. As Salvador Barajas, David Avalos and Michael Schnorr began painting the park’s murals, Cavada captured the

“Cavada dedicated his adult life to capturing people at their perfect moment.” memo cavada’s nomination progress. Since 1989 when Teatro Mascara Magica came to life, Cavada documented its revolutionary plays.”

And he never charged a penny.

“Cavada and his cameras collected Chicano history and Mexican culture like Woody Guthrie chronicled the Great Depression, granting them immortality,” read his nomination.

Friends of Cavada say he was always humble, but knew he was documenting his community’s heritage.

“Someone needs to create a record of

our history,” he once said. “Besides, it’s fun and I meet a lot of nice people doing things they are passionate about.”

Cavada considered himself an OTNC homeboy and graduated from Sweetwater High in 1962. His childhood friend Aranda said their high school counselors almost never encouraged Latinos to pursue higher education. Cavada enlisted in the Air Force and became a Vietnam War hero, surviving a savage bombing attack that left him injured.

He returned home to recuperate, a Purple Heart recipient. Following his 1969 discharge, he used his GI Bill to attend Sacramento City College where he discovered his passion for photography and met his mentor, world-renowned CAVADA PG 13

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALAN HESS FOR JESSIE LARK

A Rare

Songbird Jessie Lark’s precocious talents continue to make beautiful music

BY LESLEY GARATE Staff Writer

J

ames Henry knew singers.

During his remarkable career, Southwestern College’s former professor of commercial music worked on 90 gold and platinum hits, recorded with Stevie Wonder and Prince, and was nominated for a Grammy with African music legend Miriam Makeba.

He said Bonita Vista High School grad Jessie Lark was one of the best singers he had ever worked with.

“That lady is Taylor Swift on steroids,” he growled as Lark, the artist formerly known as Jessica Lerner, filled in a harmony on a rousing dance track she had written.

Lark blushed at the comparison and changed the subject.

She has her own future to write.

Her newest EP, “After (H)ours,” includes five new songs by the versatile singer-songwriter-guitarist-pianist who starting performing when she was 5 and commenced playing solo gigs when she was a teenager.

Like many young singer-songwriters, Lark said she started out as a singer and later earned the hyphenate.

“At first I didn’t have the idea of writing songs, I just wanted to sing,” she said. “As I got older I realized that you want to make a name for yourself, you have to write your own songs.”

Lark’s voice is clear as glacial ice and expressive as a flock LARK PG 13

DISCOGRAPHY

A RED GUITAR, THREE CHORDS AND THE TRUTH — Jessie Lark urges young songwriters to be thoughtful about lyrics because songs have power.

10

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

ARTS

‘The Addams Family’ is frightfully good theater TWO SNAPS UP — A rollicking staging of “The Addams Family” was the first musical produced at the new $66 million Performing Arts Center. (l-r) Samuel Ibarra as Gomez, Kevin Stevens as Lurch and Raelene Herrera as Morticia.

Photo by Daren Scott

REVIEW

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

Few Broadway musicals have thinner, more vacuous plots than the 2010 comedy “The Addams Family,” but few have ever been as much fun.

Southwestern College theater artists gifted the community with some springtime light and warmth at the end of a long cold lonely COVID winter.

Their frightfully good production of a romp based on the campy 1960s TV comedy was rich with nuanced acting, spirited singing and one marvelously sexy tango.

Director Ruff Yeager, a master of Shakespearean tragedies, took a monstrous risk staging a whimsical show with such recognizable characters that invite comparison to the original actors. His faith in his cast was well placed. There were bumpy moments, but his family of Addamses were so convincing that just minutes after the opening curtain we forgot we were watching college students.

Rather than mimic the “creepy and kooky” archetypes, they inhabited the characters with delightful commitment.

Samuel Ibarra set the standard with his sunny yet pliant Gomez Addams, a charming Spanish count marinated in eccentricity, but a loving husband

and doting dad. Ibarra was nimble as his alter ego, who veered smoothly from swashbuckler to court jester to suave romantic. A legit triple-threat, Ibarra sang and danced like a haunted Antonio Banderas, slicing up bite-sized pieces of ham along the way.

Fiery Raelene Herrera was his sexy, high-strung l ’amour de sa vie, Morticia, the original Queen of Darkness.

Her Morticia was the leggy alpha of the Addams household who used her considerable feminine wiles to wrap weak-kneed Gomez around her spidery finger. Herrera was a tour de force — large and in charge, stubborn and fierce in a performance that ADDAMS PG 12

REVIEW CONTINUED FROM PG. 3

Jazz Café serves up Disney Magic

HUERTA: To save democracy Latinos, young Americans need to always vote together or we lose. I challenge Latinos and Catholics to consider some political realities. Even if you are not a supporter of abortion rights does not mean you throw the entire Democratic Party and all of its other positions out the window.

We need to look at the issues collectively and determine how our votes affect our overall quality of life. Don’t fall for it! Don’t let our

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

“Fascism is on the rise in our nation and we are the only ones who can stop it. Right now we should not be fighting for ourselves, but fighting for democracy in the United States.”

DOLORES HUERTA CIVIL RIGHTS ICON people be split apart.”

Voters in the South Bay should give priority to free healthcare, more funding for education and better infrastructure for underserved communities, she said.

“Education is our way forward,” she said.

Huerta said one of her favorite all-time inspirational quotes was from former Mexican President Benito Juárez who said, “Entre los individuos como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.” (“Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.”)

“Peace should always be our end game,” she said.

Huerta came to SC at the invitation of the college’s MEChA Club and ASO President Sonia Camargo. She was greeted by MEChA leaders and SC President Dr. Mark Sanchez, who said he was greatly influenced by the work of UFW leaders Huerta, Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong. Sanchez said UFW was powerful because Latinos and Filipinos worked together with White and Black allies, a point Huerta emphasized later in her address.

Following Huerta’s 80-minute talk and Q&A session she was met onstage by Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones and legendary Chicano artist Salvador Barajas for the presentation of a 5’ x 4’ canvas mural which Huerta signed. Morones said the mural will be varnished and framed, then presented to SC as a mobile artwork. Huerta, Morones and Barajas are all SC Honorary Degree recipients for their dedication to human rights in the United States.

Huerta said she always enjoys visiting Southwestern College and hopes to return.

FREAK FLAG FLIES – Hair Slayer Salon’s mission statement describes itself “a safe place where every freak, weirdo, goth, punk, artist and visitor is welcomed and celebrated.” It draws people from Baja California as well as Orange, Riverside and Imperial Counties. It was wall-to-wall booked in October. Photos Courtesy shesahairslayer.com CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

HAIR: LGBTQ-friendly salon is a cut above for a marginalized, underserved community experience, so he went, too.

“It’s nice to finally have that safe space!” he said. “As a trans person, it’s nice to be able to have a gender-affirming haircut because it really comes down to how your stylist perceives you as either more feminine or more masculine. They have control over your expression.

We really needed to go somewhere more LGBT friendly and Hair Slayers was exactly that.”

UCSD student Rhiannen Callahan said she also had a great experience at Hair Slayers Studio.

“I wanted my hair to be more reflective of who I am and how I wanted to express myself,” she said.

“Coming from a very conservative town was always very scary to me.

(I was told) ‘You were born female so you must look super girly and frilly and like all the stereotypes’.”

Callahan said she did not feel comfortable with traditional feminine hair styles.

“Finding a place that understood me and my desire for an androgynous look was something I was always scared (to ask for),” she said. “When I asked for (that style) at home (stylists) always said ‘no, that’s not going to look good on you’ or ‘I don’t know how to do that’. It was really important for me to find a place that would and Hair Slayers was the place.”

Hair Slayers stylists are also convention slayers. Even the studio’s mission statement is a red carpet for people who often feel

uncomfortable or unwelcomed in the broader community.

“Hair Slayers is a year-round celebration of Halloween with an artistic and thematic atmosphere inspired by horror culture, magic and the artistic works of Tim Burton and Bram Stoker. We are a safe place where every freak, weirdo, goth, punk, artist and visitor is welcomed and celebrated.

You get the quality of an upscale salon in a wonderful environment that celebrates your uniqueness.”

Owner Tanya Alfaro is eccentric, but also grounded in the art form and trained by masters like Robert Cromeans. Her freak flag flies with the confidence and experience of a seasoned stylist marinated in the culture by some of the best in the business.

“I hear stories from my clients and I’m just so surprised by the anxiety related to their hair,” she said. “One of my adult clients wanted a more gender-neutral haircut, but was scared to get it done because of what her parents might think.”

Alfaro said the LGBTQ culture is slowly asserting itself in parts of the United States and she considers herself a student.

“I’m still learning about being all-inclusive and the different pronouns,” she said. “There are still so many different things I’m learning and I’m teaching my daughters. (For so long) people held back because they were afraid THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

of what others might say or think.”

Trust is an essential element of a healthy relationship and a good hair styling, Alfaro said.

“It’s amazing to know that my customers feel comfortable enough with me to show me a picture of themselves and to tell me their stories,” she said. “It makes opening a salon here worthwhile, it makes it special to me.”

Alfaro and her crew are practiced in discretion, she said, and respect everyone’s boundaries. Chula Vista’s proximity to the Mexican border and its blended culture can make things complicated for members of the LGBTQ community, she said.

Mexico is evolving, but still behind the United States in accepting members of the LGBTQ. “Not everyone is comfortable enough to say ‘this is who I am’,” she said. “Because we are so close to the border (many) people here won’t say anything like that. But I am seeing people that live around here or close to the border come in just because they see the pride flag.”

Hair Slayers Studios at 730 Broadway is nestled in a generic strip mall, but all connections to the routine and typical are clipped at the door. Expression is encouraged, but secrets are safe. In fact, Alfaro insists, everyone is safe.

Hair styling, she said, helped her “to find my tribe.”

“Inner beauty is your job,” she likes to say. “We do the rest!”

Last year Jesselle Lopez sat in the audience at the Jazz Café concert.

This year she was one of its stars.

Lopez nailed her debut on the main stage of the PAC during the Disney-themed polylingual concert, a delightful collection of familiar tunes that got the jazz treatment. Her pair of solos were twin highlights, bookending a suave performance by Jose Pelayo, feisty turns by Joselyn Castillo and Claudia Alarid, and a groovy cherry on top by director Tracy Burklund.

Lopez was a scatting fairy godmother in “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo,” the scene stealer from “Cinderella.”

Her sassy French rendition harkened back to Louis Armstrong and Elle Fitzgerald, scat masters from the 20th century who would use gibberish syllables during fanciful improvisations on a melody. Lopez peppered the chestnut with joie de vivre, launching an evening of musical exploration with flair and moxey.

Pelayo channeled Vegas headliners and crooners mexicanos, sprinkled with a touch of Elvis during his Spanish take of “Cruella de Vil.” He was smooth like Nat King Cole and Jose Jose, which had the ladies in the audience hooting their approval.

His sexy-menacing interpretation was a departure from the rumpled comedy of the film version. He was a debonair playboy with the timbre of Rob Thomas in the Carlos Santana hit “Smooth.” Pelayo’s Latin twist on a 63-year-old standard helped it to resonate in the borderlands.

Castillo provided the sultry from the women’s side with her slow burn torch number “Why Don’t You Do It Right?” from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” the frantic Disney comedy with surprisingly good music. Less campy and more vampy than the original, Castillo bent the song to her will, letting it settle over the audience like a warm summer mist.

Alarid was less experienced than some of her fellow performers, but compensated with outsized personality in the Elton John-Tim Rice romp “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” from “The Lion King.” She and some friends held up popsicle stick puppets of the animated animal characters who sang the number in the film, providing some welcomed levity.

Lopez almost stole the show with her bold rendition of “Alice and Wonderland,” a gentle Disney song that Jazz masters have transformed into a nightclub standard. Jazz arrangements of “Alice” are JAZZ PG 12

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

11

CAMPUS & ARTS Photos courtesy of Erica Alfaro

CONTINUED FROM PG. 11

JAZZ: Disney songs get a sophisticated makeover by vocal music students complicated, technical and not always for the musically feign of heart.

Dissonant chords stab the brushy tempo and singers must navigate tricky phrasing, twitchy melodies and vocal pyrotechnics. Lopez showed guts and artistry in her stirring performance. Her voice was at times soft and soothing like crashing waves in the night, and at times taunt as a clothesline in the wind. It was Jazz Café’s jazziest performance.

Burklund worked her own magic by guiding her experience-diverse group through some challenging numbers.

She did what a talented director can do, making beginner, intermediate and advanced singers feel comfortable and look good. Some performers betrayed nerves, but they pushed through and won over the audience with their moments of courage in the spotlight.

Snaps and claps to the marvelous backing trio of pianist David Castel de Oro, bassist Alex Vargas and drummer Niccolas Nordfelt. Castel de Oro is a Southwestern College institution who has helped to make generations of singers shine with his spot on accompaniment. Vargas and Nordfelt are Jaguars-for-Life who came to the college as young musicians who are now supporting the next generation.

“Lilo and Stitch” did not get a number in Jazz Café, but the evening felt like ohana, family in every way.

The esprit de corps was palpable among the performers and that covered the audience like a soft Hawaiian quilt.

Jazz Café is Southwestern College performing arts at its multicultural best – inclusive, explorative and comfortable in each other’s company.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 11

ADDAMS: Campy musical is quirky, smirky fun from a talented cast drove the show. Her years of dance experience showed in a steamy and elegant tango that would have exposed a less talented actress.

Rio Moreno as Uncle Fester was an audience favorite thanks to an enthralling turn that was altogether ooky, but sentimental and lovable. He was the jolly pale giant and the crazy uncle in the attic who toggled from macabre to infatuated. Moreno had true insight into a character that seems so random. He understood that Fester was an overgrown child, capable of stubborn fixations and the willy nilly sillies.

Rachel Herrera as conflicted Wednesday and Kevin Stevens as the groaning butler Lurch earned double snaps for breathing life into underwritten characters and making them their own.

Yeager’s staging was energetic and crisp, though there were moments that felt like the cast was too big for the space. He coaxed distinctive performances out of his young actors.

Their confidence and grounding was a product of sound fundamentals and a solid rehearsal process.

Music directors Tracy Burklund and Ernest Quarles whipped the vocalists into shape, particularly the leads. Dana Maue provided surefooted choreography and a dash of class to the movement. Designer Michael Buckley contributed his usual sublime set and lighting designs. SC performing arts students are fortunate to learn from such a talented team.

“The Addams Family” was a worthy musical debut in SC’s new $66 million performing arts complex. Coronavirus be damned, theater is back and a new generation is having its time in the spotlight.

12

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

ENTERING A NEW FIELD n Former farmworker Erica Alfaro transcended abject poverty,

domestic violence to earn a Master's degree and became an author

BY NICOLETTE MONIQUE LUNA | News Editor

E

rica Alfaro’s life would be a great screenplay except for one problem. l No one would believe it. l She was a 15-year-old mother born to immigrant farmer

workers in a violent relationship who was rescued by her brother, dropped out of school twice before earning a Master’s degree, breaking the Internet and

becoming a successful author. l And that’s just Act I. ACCIDENTAL INTERNET STAR domestic abuse can be very Alfaro had a brush with fame in complicated and Erica needed time 2019 shortly after earning a Master’s to sort out what had happened to her. in education from SDSU. Grateful for “The hardest part (of Erica) going her noble and hard-working parents through domestic violence was my who always supported her, she posed nephew being a witness,” she said. in her Master’s graduation regalia “He was very young and he was trying flanked by her beaming mother to defend his mom.” and father in the same North Alfaro was free from her violent County strawberry field her abuser and supported by her family toiled in when she family, but had little else was younger. The photo going for her. She was a high was an Internet sensation school dropout with a young that has been emulated child and no way to earn by graduating children of a living other than picking migrants ever since. crops.

ERICA Earning a Master’s hood was Her moment of ALFARO never on the mind of 15-yearenlightenment came in a dusty old Erica as she gave birth to San Ysidro tomato field one her son, Luis. The child’s father was afternoon thanks to her wise, weary violent and abusive to the young mother. Alfaro said the words are mother and baby. Abuse rained forever etched in her memory. down incessantly until Alfaro’s “This is our life,” she recalled her brother intervened. He convinced his mother telling her. “We did not have beleaguered sister that she did not any other options than to pick crops. deserve the malicious treatment and If you want a better life, you need to urged her to exit the relationship. He get a good education.” also said he would personally protect Alfaro dusted herself off and her, no matter what. applied for a GED program. It was a Her brother’s devotion gave Alfaro struggle, she said, but she eventually the courage to escape a dangerous earned a high school diploma. situation. Even though she was Success in education was fleeing for her life, she could not intoxicating and Alfaro came to outrun the guilt she felt. Like many realize that she was as bright and victims of domestic abuse, she felt capable as any of the other students guilty that her son would grow up surrounding her. She enrolled at without a father. She said she also Mira Costa College and earned an felt guilty for not leaving sooner and Associate’s degree in psychology. allowing her son to see her being More important, she transferred abused. to CSU San Marcos to pursue a Susy Alfaro, her sister, said Bachelor’s degree in psychology.

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

After a strong start, a setback.

Luis developed a medical condition that required more and more of her time. Alfaro said she started feeling exhausted and overwhelmed caring for her young son and taking upper division classes. Her grades plunged and she was ruled academically disqualified.

When Luis began to stabilize she returned to Mira Costa College, discouraged but not defeated. Her husband Jose Esquivel said Alfaro was relentless.

“I learned from her not to give up and not to take no for an answer,” he said.

San Marcos re-admitted Alfaro after she clawed her way through classes she had retaken at Mira Costa.

She earned her BA in psychology and decided to keep climbing. She was accepted into the Master’s program by the Education Department at SDSU and completed her MA in May 2019.

STRAWBERRY FIELDS NOT FOREVER Shortly after earning her Master’s hood, Alfaro hired a photographer and drove with her parents to a strawberry field where they had once labored. Strawberries are among the most difficult foods to harvest because they require farmworkers to crawl on their hands and knees through the dirt rows for hours on end. There are often unpleasant ALFARO PG 13

CAMPUS & ARTS CONTINUED FROM PG. 12

ALFARO: Strawberry fields produce multi-talented scholar

surprises beneath the leafy vines, including venomous spiders and rattlesnakes.

Her radiant parents had realized one of their dreams when they stood in the late spring sunshine, feet planted in the soil where they had scratched out a living.

“Los sueños se hacen realidad,” she said. (“Dreams become reality.”)

This was more than metaphysical greeting card sentiment for Alfaro, she explained. Dreams and goals need to be clearly defined before there is any hope of achieving them.

When a person can visualize what awaits at the end of the journey, the

bumps and setbacks become just part of the trail.

“You can use your adversities as an excuse to stop or you can use them as motivation to keep moving forward,” she said.

Esquivel, her proud husband, she Alfaro’s decision to write her book, “Harvesting Dreams (Cosechando Sueños)” was driven by a desire to inspire others. The process was very emotional, he said.

“When she would write the book she poured her soul (into it), she poured her heart out,” he said. “I got to see those tears and that happy face when she completed a chapter.”

Inspiration and encouragement are gifts Alfaro likes to share, Esquivel said.

“Young Erica didn’t know if someone else in her position could be successful,” he said. “The mission of older Erica is to share with others what is possible. No matter the obstacles, no matter the background, no matter what happened, there is always a way to succeed.”

As her book tour winds down, her speaking engagements have heated up. Alfaro is a popular keynote speaker at high schools and colleges.

And, in a sweet irony, she is now a

human resources manager at the same tomato field where her parents once worked.

“Somehow, I completed a full circle,” she said.

Act I is complete and the curtain has risen on Act II of the Life of Erica Alfaro, farmer worker turned scholar turned professional. She sees strawberries and tomatoes from a different point of view, but swears never to forget where she came from or the sacrifice of her parents. Like the hero in any story, she knows it is now her obligation to share her new powers with others back home.

Her journey continues.

FELICIDADES MAMÁ! — Alfaro and her son, Luis, celebrate her graduation from CSU San Marcos.

Alfaro and Luis escaped a violent relationship and persevered through illness and poverty. She is now a human resources professional with a Master’s degree and an author.

Photo courtesy of Erica Alfaro

CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

CAVADA: Beloved photographer used his artistic gifts to capture and celebrate South Bay culture nature photographer Ansel Adams.

Cavada said he was amazed by Adams’ vision and determination to create great art. The pair camped on frigid plateaus to capture predawn moonrises, sat quietly for hours waiting for wildlife to drink from mountain streams and hiked through triple digits to be in perfect position for a desert sunset Adams imagined might await them.

Adams chuckled when Cavada once told him how amazed he was by the work Adams put in to capture landscapes at the perfect moment.

“Ain’t half as hard as capturing people at the perfect moment,” Adams told him.

Whenever he had time and money, Cavada would head to a remote or seldom documented part of Mexico to capture its rich, but eroding culture. His stunning catalogue of photographs includes rarelyphotographed Tarahumara Indians, religious rituals, performing artists, laborers, food vendors and wildlife — all in vivid, life-affirming color. He had not completed his “The Spirit of Mexico” book before he died.

“Spirit of Mexico” was presented as an exhibit in the brand new Southwestern College Library and was one of the most popular, best attended exhibitions in college history, according to his nomination.

“Asked which was his favorite photograph, he pointed to a panoramic shot of a score of glorious monarch butterflies lined up on a taunt rope almost like soldiers anticipating inspection. He said he loved the monarchs because they represent hope and are messengers that travel between Heaven and Earth.”

His friends say Cavada loved teenagers and young adults like a good teacher or coach. He was both.

For decades he was a regular guest speaker at Southwestern College in photography, art and Spanish classes. He never forgot his start at a California community college and the profe’ who brought him to his mentor Ansel Adams.

A pair of prominent muralists made sure “Mr. National City” is remembered. In December Guillermo Aranda and Salvador Barajas unveiled a 10’ x 22’ mural of Cavada on the wall of the Chamber of Commerce building, steps away from his former home on fabled Brick Row, where for 30 years he photographed Sweetwater High School prom goers, thespians,

Photo courtesy of National City Chamber Foundation

STORYTELLER, PHILOSOPHER — Jessie Lark enjoys writing on both the guitar and piano, and also enjoys collaborating with other to gain new perspectives.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

LARK: Gifted South County singersongwriter releases bright new EP

PICTURE OF GRACE — For more than 50 years Memo Cavada chronicled Chicano activism, Latino theater, South Bay history and seminal moments for Sweetwater High School students. He was honored with a mural painted by legendary artists Guillermo Aranda and Salvador Barajas on the wall of the National City Chamber of Commerce.

“Someone needs to create a record of our history. Besides, it’s fun and I meet a lot of nice people doing things they are passionate about.”

MEMO CAVADA

2022 SC HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENT athletes and graduates.

Actor Macedonio Artega said Cavada seemed to be everywhere he was needed.

“When you are involved in the community you see him at all the events,” said Artega. “You would get to know who he is and he starts getting to know who you are because he takes pictures of you performing or speaking. It is a relationship where he has this really unique opportunity to photograph people, but he also starts to form friendships through photography.”

Aranda said Cavada was tough and resilient, but always cheerful and optimistic.

“He was like a lot of us who had it rough when he was young,” Aranda said. “He managed to make something good out of his life.”

Cavada’s mural was commissioned by the National City Chamber Foundation, and the National City Arts and Culture Collaborative.

Artists Barajas and Aranda — two of the nation’s greatest muralists — counted Cavada as a dear friend.

Jacqueline Luna Reynoso, former CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, said it was a confluence of good fortune. “(We wanted) an artist that would do justice bringing Memo to life and be able to share this gift with the community,” she said. “We are so blessed to have found Guillermo Aranda and Sal Barajas.”

Former MAAC Project Director Roger Cazares said the mural has much in common with Cavada’s enriching photos.

“I think it is going to be a lasting message to our gente,” he said. “You work hard, you persevere, you fight against all the odds and all the barriers that have been put up against us, but you knock them down. That’s what mi hermano Memo always did.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

DISORDERS: Eating issues most common in younger women “I do not think I have an eating disorder,” she said. “I only eat one meal a day. I do not consider it a bad thing. I feel comfortable.”

Ortiz said she frequently feels she does not have time to eat, but tries to remember to squeeze in meals.

She said she thinks she has healthier eating habits than some of her peers.

“I have friends who eat once a day or nothing at all,” she said.

“My friend has a really bad eating disorder and I ask her if she wants to go out or have breakfast, but I can’t really force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

Although treatment is the best course of action, it is out of most people’s reach. Treatment programs can range from $500 to $2,000 a day. Monthly in-patient treatment often costs $30,000 and individuals

need an average of six months of care. Most health insurance does not cover eating disorders.

My eating disorder always hovers nearby, but for now I feel like I am making much healthier choices. I eat regular, healthy meals and carry a couple healthy snacks with me when I come to campus. I want to be healthy and happy. I have goals fueled by dreams and food.

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

of songbirds. She was nominated for a San Diego Music Award in the category of Best Singer-Songwriter and has performed throughout the region.

Inspiration for her lyrical songs comes from love, heartbreak and betrayal, but also everyday experiences that make humans human. Her music is emotionally transparent.

“If it’s a song you really poured your heart into, it’s all there,” she said. “You’ve told the story so fully there is nothing else to say and no need for additional context.”

Songwriters are storytellers, philosophers and even sources of wisdom, Lark said, so the lyrics deserve attention. Good songs are those that resonate with large swaths of listeners.

“You want to be specific, but you don’t want to be so specific that people who listen to the song can’t hear themselves in it,” she said.

Artists crave inspiration, Lark said, but discipline is important, too. Like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Lark likes to schedule writing time.

Sometimes inspiration follows.

“You need to be able to write even when there isn’t a perfect inspirational moment,” she said.

It helps to be a fan of a wide array of musical forms, she said, and to constantly listen to good music by other artists. Songwriters never want to copy others and be derivative, but they do need to learn constantly and develop a broad musical vocabulary.

She also said it is good to be a critic.

“If you feel kind of ho hum and you can’t hold a conversation about music, you really need to dive into the work of other people,” she said.

“Enjoy it. Dissect it. Argue with your friends. (Be a) creator and a consumer.”

Quiet and thoughtful by nature, Lark said the idea of standing on a stage with a microphone and a guitar strapped over your shoulder can be exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

“It’s hard to perform and put yourself out there,” she said. “(What helps me) is remembering that it’s not about you up there. It’s about the song and it’s about the message you’re about to share. It’s the same when you’re just talking to

somebody. If we got nervous before going to talk to somebody like I’m talking to you right now (you cannot worry about) ‘I hope she likes me, I hope I say the right thing, I hope I come off okay.’ That would cause me to be in my head instead of focusing on messages.”

A transparent singer is vulnerable, she said. A great performance can happen when an artist is in “the flow,” a place of comfort and concentration where nerves subside and creativity pours forth.

“Your brain and your body are just vehicles to perform that message for other people,” she said. “When you (are communicating) it makes your art more sincere, it makes you perform better and more vulnerable. That’s what people are there for. People pay to go see a show because they want to have an emotional connection with the music and songs.”

COVID-19 and the ensuing chaos slowed Lark’s momentum as a live performer, but may have been a blessing in disguise. Like many great artists throughout history, she turned away from a locked door and opened another. Lark adapted and learned new skills. She began sharing music and performing live on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube from home. Twitch enabled her to perform globally and interact with her audience in a more intimate way.

Her Twitchcasts, “JessieLarkMusic,” run every Tuesday from noon – 3 p.m. and Thursdays at 9 a.m.

“After (H)ours” is a COVID labor of love, she said, a ‘Rona rose growing from the rubble. Tracks include, “Love Don’t Change,” “Come on,” “Go Slow,” “Under These Sheets” and “Fly Away.”

Like Sir Elton John and Dave Grohl, Lark enjoys collaborating with other musicians. She writes with the band The Rogue Pilots and performs in their upcoming video. She is featured on the new Joe Dreamz music video “Phase.” She also enjoys doing charity gigs, including her favorite, the San Diego Blood Bank.

Cancelled gigs could not cancel Lark’s enthusiasm for music or the bright future awaiting her.

“Music never goes away,” she said.

“It is always around because we need it.”

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

13

SPORTS SC’s first female AD comfortable as a leader

CAMPUS SPORTS / FEATURES / ALTERNATIVE SPORTS

I am proud of the program and what I have accomplished, but I am really proud of the athletes and the assistant coaches who have helped me support the program.

— YASMIN MOSSADEGHI FORMER SC SOFTBALL COACH Photo courtesy of SC Jaguars Softball

BY CARSON TIMMONS Staff Writer

Jennifer Harper is comfortable being in charge.

Leaders are made, not born, but Harper made herself into a leader at a very young age. She was captain of almost every team she played on, including the time she played on the boys water polo team in high school.

Her history of working well with males ought to be useful. Harper made history this semester when she was named SC’s first female athletic director. She is also the interim dean of the School of Wellness, Exercise Science and Athletics, the first woman to sit in the dean’s chair.

“At first I really didn’t think too much about that because I had to get straight to work,” she said. “But, in hindsight, I feel honored to be chosen as Southwestern’s JEFI first female HARPER athletic director.

I feel the pull to make Southwestern College a place where all athletes can be represented equally no matter their gender or race.”

“Coach Jefi” was raised in an athletic family. Her father was a sports polymath who coached track, cross country, football and baseball. Harper was a water polo star in high school and college. She was captain of the women’s water polo team at UC San Diego and an elite goalie who garnered interest from the U.S. national team.

In 2001 Harper joined the faculty at SC as Professor of Exercise Science and women’s water polo coach. Her peers and players considered her a wise and principled leader who put academics first.

“I love sports,” she said, “but at the end of the day there are more important things. Our coaches’ most important job is to help develop our student-athletes to become the men and women they want to become. That is what I valued the most about being a coach.”

Harper has a high-powered assistant athletic director, threetime Olympian Tonie Campbell, SC’s track and field coach.

Campbell shares Harper’s “person first” philosophy, she said, and values their partnership.

“Tonie and I agree that the best part of our jobs is helping our athletes earn a degree and transfer,” she said. “That is our #1 goal.”

Campbell said Harper is up to the challenge of re-booting the college’s athletic programs after an 18-month COVID-19 shutdown.

Empty stadiums are once again teaming with players and the darkened gym is lit and alive with students.

“Restarting everything from a complete stop was difficult, then factoring in all the COVID protocols and testing made it more so,” Campbell said. “It was work to get everyone up to speed and on the same page.”

Harper said the pandemic is a moving target that requires current information and flexibility. She said she was proud that college athletes showed leadership by getting

A COAST TO COAST HIT — Coach Yasmin Mossadeghi was a home run champion and All-American at CSU Fullerton, author of a classic book on hitting, a winner at Southwestern College and now the assistant coach at Harvard University. (above) Congratulating Natalia Ojeda after a clutch hit.

SC’S SOFTBALL SAGE n Harvard University lures away Southwestern’s brainy hitting guru who leaves a legacy of success

college women what Isaac Newton did for physics.

Her magnum opus came less from inspiration than necessity, Mossadeghi said. While she was working on her Master’s degree in Kinesiology at Fullerton she had to complete a project, thesis

BY XIOMARA VILLARREAL-GERARDO or test-out. She decided to do a thesis and “Between the Lines” Associated Editor-in-Chief was born. It found fertile ground because it was the first book about hitting a softball. oftball coach Yasmin Mossadeghi wrote the book on how “At that time, my specialty was being a very good hitter to hit a softball. and being able to use my mental game to This fall she booked a ticket to be successful,” she said. “I took those tips Harvard, trading palm trees for Ivy. Photo courtesy of Yasmin Mossadeghi and tools from my sports psychologists, my “Between the Lines: The Mental Skill teachers, and my coaches and created an easy of Hitting for Softball” is still a best how-to (book about) at hitting at the higher seller among softball players and coaches level.” across America, and an Amazon perennial.

Like Williams’ masterwork, Mossadeghi’s Chances are it is being read right now by book is accessible and user friendly. It has persistent players in Pennsylvania, canny pictures and diagrams that put thought into coaches in Connecticut and managing the muscle. moms in Missouri.

It took Mossadeghi one semester to gather Harvard hired away Mossadeghi over her interviews for the book, she said, and the summer to be its assistant coach. another year to finish it. It was published a She said she loved coaching at SC, but little over a year later, in 2007. the offer from Harvard was a once-in-aMossadeghi said writing the book was lifetime opportunity. She decided to take transformative. a swing.

“The greatest takeaway was all of the Mossadeghi hits it out of the park information I gathered from the studentwherever she goes. She was a high school athletes,” she said. “I think that information star in Huntington Beach and a recordis invaluable and because I was able to take setting hitter at CSU Fullerton, where the time and they were willing to reveal what she was an All-American. She played it took for them to be successful, it has made professionally in Germany and Russia. me a better coach.”

A fearsome power hitter, Mossadeghi Growing up in Huntington Beach, hit .362 during her career at Fullerton and Mossadeghi played soccer and volleyball, is still the program’s all-time homerun but softball was her first love. She was a leader with 47. She is second in homers prodigious homerun hitter at Fullerton, but all-time in Big West Conference history. also had the brains to match the brawn. She TOP DAWG — Softball coach Yasmin She has been SC’s head softball coach earned a Bachelor’s in kinesiology and a Mossadeghi was an All-American for 12 years, transforming a moribund Master’s in kinesiology with an emphasis on softball player at CSU Fullerton and program into a consistent playoff sports psychology. remains the university's all-time team. More than two dozen of her Although Mossadeghi has no plans for homerun champion. She is SC's allstudent-athletes have earned university another book in the foreseeable future, she time most successful softball coach. scholarships for softball. They take The said, she is cogitating on a video project.

Book with them.

“I am hoping to someday be able to (create) Just as MLB Hall of Famer Ted Williams a video series to motivate athletes about the mental game and transformed baseball with his revolutionary book “The Science teach coaches how to coach the mental game,” she said. of Hitting,” Mossadeghi is the Swengali of Softball. Her Just as Williams was the master of out-thinking the pitchers scientific examination of fast pitch has done for high school and of the mid century, Mossadeghi preaches that bat speed is worthless without quick thinking. “Between the Lines” is as SOFTBALL SCIENCE much about what’s between the ears, she said, and she relishes “Between The Lines” was written her position as a coach who is also a college professor. Softball with high school and college teaches young women valuable lessons in a hardball world. players and their coaches in mind. It “I am proud of the program and what I have accomplished,” introduces the mental aspects of the she said, “but I am really proud of the athletes and the assistant game and confidence-building for coaches who have helped me support the program.” success on the softball diamond.

S

HARPER PG 15

14

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

SPORTS

JAG S E N T E R NEW E R A

Southwestern’s greatest football coach turns it over to his protégé

FOOTBALL COACHING G.O.A.T. EXITS THE FIELD n Carberry departs as Southwestern’s winningest football coach

BY SEBASTIAN SANCHEZ Staff Writer

E

d Carberry beat the odds.

More than once.

Southwestern College’s all-time winningest football coach spent much of his career sneaking up on other teams and leaving with the game ball. He has won 100 games as both a high school and college head coach, and took the Jaguars to more bowl games than the previous 50 years of coaches combined.

Like the G.O.A.T. he is, Carberry has a raft of stories and the talent to tell them. A fave goes way back to 2001 when his Monte Vista High School Monarchs were about to face off against the invincible top-ranked Helix Highlanders and their pair of future NFL stars Reggie Bush and Alex Smith.

Football fans know that Bush was the 2005 Heisman Trophy recipient and Smith was the NFL’s first overall pick of the 2005 draft.

Helix was on a 20-game winning streak and averaging 53 points per game when Carberry’s Spring Valley’s crew took the field as massive underdogs.

“No one thought we could do it,” he said. “Who would’ve thought we could go there and beat them? The players did.”

Bush and Smith played well, but Monte Vista won.

Usually humble, Carberry admitted his delight in visiting Helix High to recruit. He would ask the prospective SC athletes to look up at the giant CIF championship banner from 2001 emblazoned with the record of 13-1.

“That one loss up there is because of me.”

After 45 years of coaching football, Carberry has decided to step away, leaving a legacy of winning wherever he went.

His lifetime record of 211-159-1 spans four programs: St. Anthony HS (Long Beach), Monte Vista HS, San Jacinto College and SC. Like most great achievers, Carberry had a great mentor.

His football coach at St. Paul High School in Santa Fe Springs was the legendary Marijon Ancich, the secondwinningest high school football coach in California history with 360 victories.

Carberry enjoyed learning the psychology of the game during his senior year and was “bit by the bug” and decided coaching was his path.

Now he is at the end of the coaching road.

What led him to hang up his whistle?

“Well, you know it’s a tough question, because it was a tough answer,” he said. “I asked my wife on numerous occasions: Are you sure I should be doing this? One of the things we talk about here (at SC) is faith, family and football. So the opportunity was there to take a step back and stay healthy.”

SC Athletic Director Jennifer Harper said Carberry can be followed, but never replaced.

“Coach Carberry had an amazing impact on this program because he understands the value of what athletics can teach young men,” she said. “He made it his mission to not only coach football, but to help all of these individuals grow, mature and learn. He brought out the best in each and every one of them. He’s simply the best at what he does.”

Carberry said developing student-athletes is way more important that winning football games.

“It’s one of the blessings of community college,” he said.

“The people who played for us know we are here for them.

We’re frozen in time.”

Tough as Lombardi, but philosophical like Aristotle, Carberry said he always endeavored to keep his life and his career in perspective. He said there is great value in the adversity of the gridiron because learning to overcome adversity is the key to success.

Just as Ancich mentored him, Carberry was a 13-year mentor to his successor, former Nebraska star and SC defensive coordinator Dionicio Monarrez.

Carberry is a tough act to follow, Monarrez said, but he feels ready.

“Coach taught me to lead by example, he said. “He created a positive environment and implemented a team culture. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from Carberry is to keep the players accountable.”

Carberry said preparation is the key to success in football or any career.

“Coaching football is a seven-day-a-week job,” said. “If you’re not willing to put in the time it’s buyer beware. The hardest worker comes out on top.”

In the fourth quarter of his life Carberry is content to spend more time with his wife Dianna and daughter Maegan.

“My wife always says “I don’t have to worry about a mistress, because football is his mistress!’” Carberry said.

Some Career Highlights: Hall of Fame: Saint Paul HS (2015) and Monte Vista HS (2017).

TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW — Ed Carberry’s teams won more bowl games during his tenure than the previous 50 years of Southwestern College coaches combined.

Monte Vista HS (14 seasons): Record 102-73. 2-time CIF Champion (1995, 2003), 7-time Grossmont League Champions.

Southwestern College (14 seasons): Record 89-58. Six league championships, six bowl victories.

San Jacinto College: Record 19-2, Beach Bowl Champions.

Photo courtesy SC Jaguars Football

n Dionicio Monarrez is the next man up along the sidelines

FORMER NEBRASKA STAND OUT TAKES OVER

BY SEBASTIAN SANCHEZ Sports Editor

Retiring football coach Ed Carberry leaves big shoes to fill.

His successor Dionicio Monarrez has big shoes, too.

Monarrez, the beefy coach-in-waiting and defensive coordinator, is a military veteran, a community college All-American and won a major bowl championship at the University of Nebraska. He has 30 years of coaching experience, including 13 with Carberry.

“I am very excited to take this new challenge in my life,” he said. “I’m a grinder. I’m going to make sure that we dot the i’s and cross the t’s when it comes to practice and game planning.”

Monarrez lined up at defensive tackle at Cerritos Community College and was a dominating player. After earning All-American honors he transferred to perpetual powerhouse Nebraska. He earned a championship ring which he still wears to work at Southwestern College.

After playing two seasons at Nebraska, Monarrez decided to start coaching. Early coaching experience at Nebraska launched his career, he said.

“I worked with position groups on both sides of the ball,” he said.

Carberry was his most DIONICIO important mentor, he said.

“Coach Carberry taught me MONARREZ a lot about the organizational aspects of running a really good program,” Monarrez said.

“The coaching culture should be positive, encouraging and approachable. We need to be there for our players and each other. We need to be prepared to help our players get better, because in the end we’re coaching young men to be better people.”

Monarrez said he enjoyed playing several sports while growing up, but football was always his true passion.

“I love the comradery, the challenges, the working out, the whole thing,” he said. “The team concept always appealed to me. Football is a brotherhood.”

Monarrez said he hopes there will not be major changes on the coaching staff.

“We have a strong staff,” he said. “I hold them in high regard. We are on the same page when it comes to interactions with the players.”

An internal mission statement drives his decisions, Monarrez said. He has high expectations of his coaching staff.

“Are you doing it for the right reasons?” he said. “Do you have a passion to do this? Do you want to really help and support young men to move on? Are you approachable?”

He said he expects his players to be “disciplined, coachable and tough.”

“We’re here for them,” he said. “We’re that stepping stone to help them develop and transfer to the next level.”

Athletic Director Jennifer Harper said Monarrez shares her most important values.

“I want someone who is going to create a team,” she said. “Not a bunch of all-stars, but a team dynamic where everyone is valued.”

Playing time will be based on merit, Monarrez said.

“We’ll encourage a competitive environment where players will have the opportunity to earn playing time,” he said. “You’re the best player? Then you’re going to play.”

Sophomore defensive end Gabriel Acosta said he is excited to play for Monarrez.

“He brings a different type of energy out of the players and knows how to put the team in a position to win games.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

HARPER: Former water polo star excelled as an athlete, student and coach vaccinated and following protocols that keep their teammates safe.

Coaches, Harper said, have worked hard and demonstrated great dedication to their studentathletes.

“I think all of the coaches have done a phenomenal job,” she said.

“Our coaches know we have their backs, and Tonie and I feel they have our backs.”

Trainers and equipment technicians have always been very important to the athletic programs, but more so than ever in the postshutdown era, Harper said. SC hired an additional trainer to focus on COVID-19 protocols, she said, which has helped keep venues open and athletes healthy.

Lost in the chaos is the fact that SC was breaking in its new

$52 million facilities when March 2020 rolled in like a dark bank of fog. A revamped $73-million football stadium is aglow on Friday nights with high school games and Saturdays with the Jaguars.

Squeaking sneakers from volleyball matches and basketball practice echo through a new gym.

An Olympic-sized pool and surrounding aquatic center have THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

also made a splash. SC’s aquatic facility is now the third largest in California, and the biggest south of UC Irvine. In October the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team had athletes training there, and the Olympic Water Polo Team is scheduled to use the facility in December.

Harper, who pushed for the expanded pool facilities, said she

is not surprised SC is attracting national attention.

“If you build it, they will come,” she said with a grin.

SC’s fields (and pools) of dreams have nary a corn stalk nearby, but portend a heavenly future. Harper said she is thrilled to be in the middle of it.

“The future is bright!” she said.

“And, finally, the future has arrived.”

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

15

BACK PAGE

VOICES IN OUR COMMUNITIES

MESSENGERS OF HEAVEN — Gente Unida activists release monarch butterflies in honor of the unnamed dead in Holtville’s Terrace Park Cemetery. Volunteers from the human rights organization met on Dia de los Muertos to pray for the nearly 1,000 migrants buried in unmarked graves in a dirt lot behind the main cemetery. It is the largest non-military graveyard of unidentified dead in the United States. Photos by Camila Gonzalez / Staff

REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN

BY CAMILA GONZALEZ Editor-in-Chief

C

hicano Park on Dia de los Muertos is a festival of color, food, drink, art and la raza magica. Honored dead are serenaded, toasted and served wondrous plates with chilled tequila.

About 125 miles to the east nearly 1,000 forgotten bodies with no names bake under the rust tinted dirt of the Terrace Park Cemetery in lonely Holtville. A gathering at festive Chicano Park prays for them, too.

Then they visit.

A caravan of cars makes a two-hour trek over the mountains, across the desert and almost to Arizona. Caretaker Chuck Jernigan cranks apart the dusty lock and swings open the gate with the No Trespassing sign. Activists from Gente Unida solemnly file in.

Windswept Terrace Park is where dreams come to die. Most died badly. America’s largest non-military graveyard of the unidentified spreads flat as a quiet lake of pulverized brick with no headstones and not one blade of grass.

A tilted smattering of pale handmade crosses twist out of the desiccated earth, the only acknowledgment that this is sacred ground.

“You are not forgotten,” murmured Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones. “No olvidados.”

Morones has led the annual visitation for nearly two decades and he expressed sadness that so little has changed.

“Not one of the persons here thought they were going to die,” he said. “They came here

to work or to reunite with family. No one ever thinks they will end up dead and buried without a name in a pauper’s grave.”

America’s antiquated immigration system is to blame, Morones said, along with predatory American and Canadian business and agricultural practices that have impoverished millions of Mexicans and Central Americans.

“Conservatives like to say migrants need to get in line so they can enter through the border crossings, but that’s not possible,” he said. “There is no line. Do you really think so many desperate people would drown in rivers, die in deserts and freeze to death in mountains if there was a line?”

Iranian refugee Ari Honarvar, vice president of Gente Unida, recited a verse of poetry in memory of the immigrants.

“We are from the great beyond and to the great beyond we shall return,” she read. “We are from the ocean and to the ocean we make our way. We are not from here or there. We are from a placeless place, and to that we journey.”

Chaplin Frank Modic had special messengers to carry the prayers to Heaven. Radiant monarch butterflies lent lightness and hope.

“We use butterflies to celebrate somebody who has passed away,” Modic said to the hushed gathering. “The butterfly is a metaphor, a theological metaphor for transformation, renewed life and being set free.”

Terrace Park’s silent graves are relentlessly permanent, Modic said as the butterflies pranced in the warm morning sky, but the spirits of the dead buried there are free and one with the eternal. Morones said the deceased can only rest when the living help those who come after to avoid their fate.

“Not one of the persons buried here thought they were going to die. They came here to work or to reunite with family. No one ever thinks they will end up dead and buried without a name in a pauper’s grave.”

ENRIQUE MORONES

Gente Unida

16

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

About 125 miles to the east nearly 1,000 forgotten bodies with no names bake under the rust tinted dirt of the Terrace Park Cemetery in lonely Holtville. A gathering at festive Chicano Park prays for them, too.

HOMELESS AMONG US OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

A complex blend of economic and mental health maladies fuel an explosion in the South Bay’s homeless population.

NO HOME

IN THIS

WORLD

Chula Vista

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

B1

SOUTH COUNTY HOMELESS

Imperial Beach

National City

Chula Vista

National City

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE — Homelessness is often the end result of a series of factors, but it can also happen suddenly. (clockwise from top l) Daytime on the streets of Imperial Beach. Near the Sweetwater River in National City. On Broadway in Chula Vista. In Memorial Park on Third Avenue, Chula Vista. Deep in the brush along the Sweetwater River east of Plaza Bonita mall.

B2

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

Chula Vista

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

SOUTH COUNTY HOMELESS

HOMELESS AMONG US

Imperial Beach

Homelessness swells across the South Bay

BY ESTEBAN PRECIADO | Staff Writer

F

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ESTEBAN PRECIADO

rank gazed at the ground as he spoke.

He was used to people not listening.

“There’s a lot of homeless people that are desolate and lost,” he said. “There are a lot of people like me that have stood on the edge of cliffs and thought about taking the big plunge and letting it all go.”

Yet most push on.

Dusted across bustling roads, trolley stations, alleys and crevices of the South Bay, the homeless persist.

There are more every day, some visible, some not.

From la frontera in San Ysidro to Division Street, from the bay to the 125 tollway, the homeless population of the South Bay is swelling. Lands within the Southwestern Community College District have had homeless since Frank Kimball and Col. W. G. Dickerson established National City and Chula Vista 140 years ago, but never like this.

Not even close. Double digit homeless counts of the 1970s are now in the thousands, though no accurate tabulation exists.

It changes too quickly.

Chula Vista

Chula Vista

VIOLENCE LOOMS IN THE DARKNESS — People living on the streets of Chula Vista say they are frequently victims of violent attacks by “young hoodlums” that cause anxiety and serious injuries. (from the top) Keke eats Chinese food he purchased panhandling in Imperial Beach. Frank in the streets near the Chula Vista mall. A sidewalk on Broadway. Trying to wind down for sleep on a Chula Vista sidewalk.

Unlucky, Addicted, Loners Homeless people in the South Bay seem to sort into three categories: hard luck, loners and addicts. They have noticed this themselves.

“Hard luck” homeless like Keke Gonzalez, a 50-year-old who camps near the Palm Avenue trolley station in Imperial Beach, said he was laid off from his job and has a bad hip. Gonzales recounted a litany of “bad luck” as he sprawled on the grass eating his first meal in days. His belongings consisted of a black backpack and an old speaker.

Gonzales said the meager Chinese food represented a full day of panhandling. He had nothing else to discuss. He was hungry.

Self-described “loners” say they choose to exist on the fringes of society because they chafe under rules and do not like to be told what to do. They are harder to find, but there is a growing population along the banks of the Sweetwater River near the Highway 54 in National City steps from the riding/hiking trails. A Hooverville-style encampment is sizable, but U.S. Census teams and social workers consider it dangerous and have had trouble surveying it.

Folks living there made it clear they want to be left alone, including the man weilding a makeshift hammer to set up his tent.

Addicts are arguably the most visible type of homeless people. They can be erratic, like the woman camped in the Sweetwater River channel west of the Plaza Bonita mall in National City. She and two companions had a makeshift camp. She obliged to a conversation and some photos.

She willingly led a visitor deeper inside the camp until she had a Chula Vista sudden shift in mood and screamed at him to leave. Now! Across town, Gilbert Alan was considerably more pleasant. He camped near the Chula Vista Tacos El Gordo adjacent to the H Street trolley station.

“I’m broke because of the drugs and alcohol in my system,” he said matter-of-factly.

As he spoke, laughter and chatter echoed from people enjoying their authentic Mexican cuisine. Gilbert Alan could smell the fragrant food, but had none of his own.

Third Avenue Freeze Out In Chula Vista’s manicured Memorial Park, a trio of homeless men held court just a short stroll from the trendy row of revitalized restaurants and bars dotting Third Avenue.

Marco, Ted and Dougie spoke from the sidewalk where they had set up for the night. A tattered beach umbrella shielded their food, blankets, knick-knacks and a small TV. Ted said his life “fell apart” after a bad divorce. “(Homelessness) can happen to anyone in a blink of an eye,” he said.

Marco and Dougie nodded in agreement.

“Half of Chula Vista is homeless,” Dougie said, “just living with someone else.”

Ted butted in by describing how when he was first on the street, he was given a homeless evaluation called the VI-SPDAT by the Chula Vista Homeless Outreach Team (HOT).

“If you ain’t on a lease, you’re homeless,” he said. “Here the HOT team ain’t so hot.

They pretend they want to help people, but (for us) it’s obstacles and deterrents.”

Dougie agreed.

“The first thing they do is take your name and then they run your name (to see) if you have any warrants,” he said. “Then they categorize you as a resident vagrant. Which is a transient. Once you’re on that list…”

Ted interrupted.

CONT ON NEXT PAGE

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

B3

SOUTH COUNTY HOMELESS

Imperial Beach

“They take your stuff, your belongings,” he said. “They took (Marcos’) stuff and called it trash. If that’s help, they need to stop helping.”

Dougie concurred.

“Homeless help is a fraud,” he said. “It is just their way to have a job.”

Ted said permanent housing was a myth.

“This (sidewalk) is what I think permanent housing is,” he said. “It’s gonna kill you getting there or you’re gonna drive yourself crazy. It’s never permanent housing, it’s always rapid re-housing. Basically you go somewhere for six months and then you got to move again.”

COVID was savage to the homeless population, said Ted. Coronavirus was often a death sentence for people on the streets or in encampments. Shelter-in-place policies hammered the homeless by cutting off access to their already-tenuous urban lifelines.

“Homeless people can’t charge their phones,” he said. “(We) can’t even go to the bathroom during this whole (COVID) thing.”

Chula Vista

National City

‘SHOW US THE WAY OUT OF THIS’ — (from the top) Living on a sidewalk in front of a $14 billion Fortune 500 company in Chula Vista.

Evening near the Chula Vista mall. Passing time near the Sweetwater River in National City.

B4

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

Young Faces of Violence Night had fallen and Linda was on the sidewalk near the Lil Caesar’s on Broadway close to Pep Boys. She is an elderly woman who said she has been on the streets of Chula Vista for nearly seven years. She is also no fan of HOT. “They will roll up and take all your stuff, every last thread of it,” she said. “You won’t have any clothes left to wear. You’ll have no food.”

Random violence by young hoodlums was an even scarier problem, she said. Raising her hands revealed cuts, bruises, bandages and scars. Her leathery face was weather beaten and creased by the sun. Her bare feet look like those of a pilgrim who had walked to hell and back.

“Look at me!” she said. Her voice cracked. “Unfortunately it’s a lot of young kids.

(We) are just frustrated and don’t wanna get caught (by the hoodlums).”

Linda was interrupted by a homeless man inexplicably hanging like a chimpanzee in a tree beside her.

“I’ve been attacked by the police,” he said. “So yeah, the police arrested and tased me and it was caused by the locals (who started the scuffle).”

Linda nodded in agreement.

“I have had that trouble also,” she said. “A lot of the older people (who are) drunks.

They wanna start trouble with ya, get ya attacked.”

Heaven Help Us Frank said he is a 56-year-old Signal Corps veteran who served in Korea. He said he is “on a never-ending merry-go-round” to retrieve his birth certificate, which he needs to get a state ID. With proper identification, he said, he can receive his military pension.

Challenges come daily, he said.

“Probably number one would be waking up in the morning and needing a restroom in the vicinity of where you’re at,” he said.

Most are locked in the evening, he said, because people worry about homeless people sleeping in them. Frank acknowledged that the homeless can make other people feel uncomfortable.

“It’s up to the homeless to regulate ourselves,” he said.

Random violence is an ongoing threat, he said.

“There’s a lot of (violence), a lot of judgement on homeless,” he said. “There is a group of young people who think it’s funny to go around and pick on homeless people.”

For the most part homeless people do not bother others, Frank said, and just want to be left alone.

Frank gazed at the sky as he spoke.

“We’re in despair, man. We look at the sky (for help). We don’t really see God. We’re asking the stars, we’re asking the moon and the sun or anything that’s out there that has the power to show us the light. Show us the way out of this.”

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

SPECIAL SECTION: WOMEN'S MARCH OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

Thousands of women protest sexual violence in the streets of Tijuana. (“Grandmother: I Came to Shout What They Made You Keep Quiet”)

MEXICO'S WOMEN DEMAND CHANGE Photo By Ailyn Dumas

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

C1

SPECIAL SECTION: WOMEN'S MARCH IN MEXICO

Women Call For End of Mexican Violence

BY AILYN DUMAS AND NICOLETTE MONIQUE LUNA PHOTOS BY AILYN DUMAS

TIJUANA —

M

exico’s beleaguered women have had enough.

“Ya basta!”

Thousands of women from Baja California Norte and their American allies filed through the bloody streets of Tijuana for the March for Women to protest Mexico’s unchecked epidemic of femicide — murder and violence to women and girls. Hundreds of handheld signs demanded change.

“Cansus de Oirlo? Nosotras de vivirlo!” (“You are tired of hearing it? We are tired of living it!”)

More than 5,000 Mexican women and girls were sexually assaulted and murdered in 2021, according to government counts. Activists insist the number is higher. Much higher. Perhaps 10 times higher.

“Que ser mujer no nos cueste la vida!” (“Being women should not cost us our lives!”)

Murder is the leading cause of death for young Mexican females. Older women are also femicide victims at alarming rates. Remains of murder victims fill vast unmarked graves in shallow pits throughout Mexico — if the remains are found at all. Mass graves in Tijuana, Irapuato, Acapulco, Juarez and other femicide dumping sites often have uncountable numbers of dismembered bodies ­— all female.

“Que llegar sanas y salvas a casa sea normal y no suerte!” (“Arriving home safe and sound should be normal, not luck!”)

Tijuana is one of the most dangerous cities in the world for femicides, according to United Nations data, and Mexico is one of the world’s five worst countries for the sexist “Killing women murder of women and girls. for sport is too Mexico’s toxic culture of hyper-machismo has rendered easy in Mexico. women as weak and “less than,” according to protesters.

Even little girls and Most attacks on women are never prosecuted and some grandmothers are human rights activists insist that nearly 9 of 10 femicides go not safe.” unpunished. Women who report rape and domestic violence are typically dismissed as hysterical liars by the maleMaria dominated Mexican judicial system. Justicia is fleeting.

Women’s March “El machismo se aprende en casa.” (“Sexism is learned at Protester, Southwestern home.”)

College student “Killing women for sport is too easy in Mexico,” according to Maria (a pseudonym), a Mexican-American fronteriza and Southwestern College student who participated in the march. “Many thousands of men in Mexico treat women like disposable sex toys. Even little girls and grandmothers are not safe. It’s horrible and it must change. We must change the toxic masculine culture.”

Tijuana’s March for Women was mostly peaceful, but at times frustration boiled over.

At least one bus stop was destroyed and some women spray painted messages of protest on walls and monuments. Police hovered nearby, but did not interfere. Television and print journalists were there to document the protest and monitor las policias.

Unlike American women’s marches populated with male supporters, the Tijuana event was almost exclusively female. That is what organizers wanted.

“Women need to fight for their agency,” said Maria. “We must demand our rights and take them from the asesinos, the killers of women and girls.”

“Wey no! Ni una mas.” (“Dude, no! Not one more.”)

Protesters acknowledged that men need to be part of the solution. Maria said Mexican men need to rethink the way they treat Mexican women.

“Everyone has a mother,” she said. “Everyone has an abuelita. Most men have sisters or female cousins. Would they rape and murder them? Hell no! Why then would any man think it is okay to rape and murder someone else’s mother, grandmother, sister or cousin?”

Purple, the color of bruises and contusions, is the color of the Mexican Women’s Movement. Protesters waved modified Mexican flags with a bar of morado replacing the red.

“Mexico’s president (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) has done nothing to help his nation’s women,” said Maria. “He has not stood up to machismo culture. Unless he does, he is part of the problem.”

Hope, esparanza, gives Mexico’s women new strength, she said.

“We are finally uniting, we are finally starting to speak up. We have been silent for way too long, like hundreds of years too long. No mas! Change is coming.”

C2

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

SPECIAL SECTION: WOMEN'S MARCH IN MEXICO

‘CHANGE IS COMING’ – Thousands of women from Baja California Norte and Southern California swarmed the streets of Tijuana to protest Mexico’s epidemic rates of violence and murder against women. (previous page, from the top) A protester’s sign reads “I am the aunt of the girls you will never touch.”

Demonstrators spray paint the messages “Dude, no!

Not one more.” Protesters congregate at the statue of Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc to express their anger at Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for not doing more to curtail machismo-driven femicide. (this page, from top) Painting pro-female messages on a wall. Women wave protest versions of the Mexican flag with a purple bar replacing the red and hold aloft photos of a murder victim. Tearing down a bus stop where women were assaulted. Protestors march toward the Cuauhtémoc statue.

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

C3

SPECIAL SECTION: WOMEN'S MARCH IN MEXICO

DAY OF RAGE AND SORROW –Tijuana’s Women’s March was mostly peaceful, though protesters (top photo) damaged transit centers where women were raped or murdered. (above, l) A sign reads “You get tired of hearing it? We get tired of living it” and a sign honors murder victim Mayra Velazquez Lopez. (above) “Arm Yourself.” (far l) “Arriving home safe and sound should be normal, not luck.” (l) Upper poster reads “May privilege not cloud empathy. We want each other alive and free.” Foreground poster says “Sexism is learned at home.”

C4

OCTOBER 11, 2022 / ISSUE 1

THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE SUN