Connecting Californians
Finding the Art of Community Change
An Inquiry into the role of story in strengthening communities

The California Landscape

The inquiry uncovered Californians in every corner of the state who are using narrative art to strengthen their communities. In an attempt to map the extent of state activity, the researchers conducted a county-by-county survey, asking for an example of a recent public performance that had drawn its narrative from local history or current community issues. In 57 of the state’s 58 counties, examples were readily available. They ranged from oral histories to classical texts adapted to local circumstance, from "The Story of the Modoc Indian War" to "The Watts Bridge Show," and are displayed on the accompanying maps.

Descriptions of each of these performances appear in Appendix B. It is important to note that a survey of density of practice was beyond the scope of the inquiry; such a map of Los Angeles County alone would have produced hundreds of data points.

Depth of practice, however, was a central concern of the research. The following three case studies, which appear in expanded form in Appendix A, illustrate the creativity, versatility and commitment of Californians who are connecting their communities through the arts and humanities.

Story for an Inclusive Public Narrative:
Telling the Truth in a Small Town, Ukiah

Ukiah (population 14,600) is located in a mountain valley in Mendocino County, approximately one hundred miles north of San Francisco and fifty miles inland from the ocean. It is home to the Pomo band of Indians, Italian grape growers, timber industry and agricultural workers, and a mix of intellectuals and artists. Ukiah Players Theater (UPT) was founded in 1977 by a handful of young theater artists who had moved to the region in the early 1970s to ‘live simply in a rural community.’ UPT’s annual production, Telling the Truth in a Small Town, helps residents share personal stories with their neighbors.

In the 130-seat UPT playhouse, community members take turns on the stage telling their own truths. Their performances, crafted and rehearsed with the assistance of professional UPT staff, are followed by audience discussions. This year, one storyteller told of "Bloody Island," a local massacre of Pomo people by American soldiers in 1850. The teller had learned the story from his great-grandmother, who had survived the killing by hiding under water, breathing through a reed. According to UPT co-founder Kate Magruder, "There was a combination of shock, grief and defensiveness that rumbled through the audience each night. The audience discussions that followed were astonishing in their candor, emotion and optimism."

The 2000 Telling the Truth in a Small Town series included a special program examining the impact of World War II on the lives of Ukiah residents. With funding from the California Council for the Humanities, UPT’s partners in The Good War Project included the Mendocino College Community Exchange Program, Ukiah Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Native American History Project, Ukiah Daily Journal, Mendocino County Museum, Ukiah Senior Center, and the Mendocino County Library. A range of activities was designed to help bring the stories to the surface, including a book club, radio programming, a video and speaker series, writing classes, photo exhibits, a weekly newspaper column featuring a local veteran, and a multimedia theater production based on Studs Terkel’s book of World War II oral histories.

According to Ralph Lewin, Assistant Director of the California Council for the Humanities, the evaluation of The Good War Project has demonstrated community building in several ways. Civic dialogue has increased, relationships among individuals and institutions have been strengthened, and a more inclusive public narrative about Ukiah has been developed.

Part of the public discussion in Ukiah has been about the process of Telling the Truth, itself. Not all residents feel safe enough to tell their stories publicly. For example, gay and lesbian youth at Ukiah High School recently declined to participate because they feared retaliation and abuse. And while those who are involved have come to believe in the power of public story, they also recognize the challenging work of addressing the community issues that are revealed. As one participant put it, "I’m a white woman married to a native man and know that the community needs to hear these stories because we need to understand why we don’t get along. How can we deal with it if we refuse to know? First we need to listen, but the hard part is figuring out how to solve the problems."

Story for Systemic Change:
Faces of Fruitvale, Oakland

The multi-ethnic Fruitvale district (population 55,000), located at the geographic center of the city of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area, is home to Latinos (36%), African Americans (32%), Asians (20%), European Americans (9%), and Native Americans (2%). Faces of Fruitvale is a community heritage project organized by the Friends of the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park in Oakland to illuminate the historical and contemporary ethnic differences and commonalties among Fruitvale residents.

Many Fruitvale residents agree with project coordinator Holly Alonso that in Fruitvale "identity is no longer supported by a web of connections between residents, and that, given such conditions, the possibility of a commons–a space held in common and a sense of joint responsibility for the common good–is ruled out. Violence, apathy, destruction of public places, inter-ethnic rivalry, and resentments form a ragged counterpoint to the efforts of the artistic, cultural, social, and service agencies in the neighborhood."

Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, once inhabited by Ohlone Indians and subsequently a Spanish-Mexican rancho, has been used by the Faces of Fruitvale project as a touchstone for residents to explore their own histories and lives. Neighborhood and Volunteers In Service To America volunteers, coached by participating scholars, initiated oral-history collecting throughout the district, inviting residents to share their stories and photographs. Project activities enhancing the collection process included an on-line digital repository for the stories, three twenty-minute radio programs featuring the collected stories, a photo exhibit of Fruitvale today, four public history events that celebrate cultural identity and unity, and two community-wide cultural festivals. Organizations helping to carry out program activities include the Spanish-Speaking Citizens Foundation, the Unity Council, the Oakland Museum of California, and Calvin Simmons Middle School. The project has been supported by grants from the California Council for the Humanities and the Oakland Arts Commission.

Alonso says the project has already prompted positive interactions among different ethnic groups and deepened residents’ understanding of their local history. She believes this success to be the result of the project's commitment to including the full array of the district’s cultures in a respectful way. For example, all public events are simultaneously translated in Spanish, English, and Mien. (The Iu Mien are an ethnic Chinese people, who, like the Hmong, are Vietnam War refugees from the mountains of Laos.) Alonso recalls "how a frisson went through all the Mien speakers when their language first came over a public event loudspeaker," and she remembers a black Fruitvale resident remarking "that Spanish sounded like music, that she had never heard Spanish before." Alonso noted that, in fact, the resident had probably heard Spanish most of her life, but not in a setting where people were exchanging ideas openly in a friendly manner.

The power of the project to move people and institutions toward action together is illustrated in the story of Peralta Creek. Elderly resident Alma en Paz told of what the creek had meant to her as a youth, wading and exploring from age five to fifteen in the decade of the forties. The creek in our time has become a concrete culvert, and the recent stories are of young people using the spot to abuse drugs, sex, and one another. As a result of the public airing of these dramatic ironies, teacher David Montes de Oca from Calvin Simmons Middle School started the Urban Arts Academy, an after-school activity using the arts, history, myth, and archeology to engage students. Alex Zaragosa, a historian and project participant from the University of California, Berkeley, who had recently been named the Vice President for Outreach of the University of California system, decided to make the project a model program for the ways in which UC can work with middle schools to put underrepresented youth on the road to higher education.

Civic engagement and systemic change of this sort continues to be generated by the project. But perhaps the best measure so far of Faces of Fruitvale’s success, Alonso concludes, is the growing commitment in the community to continue the work after outside funding is expended.

Story for Community Education and Action:
The Bus Riders Union Teatro, Los Angeles

Transportation issues have always defined public life in sprawling Los Angeles, with a population of 3.5 million people. When the city made plans to build a major railway line to wealthy suburban areas, proposing at the same time to cut bus lines in the poorest neighborhoods, the case became a major civil rights lawsuit.

Founded in 1992, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros (BRU) advocates and organizes for the mass transit and environmental interests of its working-class, ethnically and racially diverse membership. In the past eight years, the BRU has grown to more than 3,000 dues-paying members, with an additional 50,000 self-identified members on the buses. In 1996, BRU won a consent decree against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority on behalf of the city’s 500,000 bus riders, and has since focused on enforcing the decree’s provisions. In 1999, in collaboration with LA’s Cornerstone Theater and with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, BRU organizers started the BRU Teatro as an instrument to organize bus riders.

The Teatro’s performances have rotating casts drawn from the BRU’s membership base. Skits are performed on buses or at bus stops on the Crenshaw bus line, which runs through the mixed African American and Latino neighborhood of South Central, on the East LA lines that travel through Latino neighborhoods, and on the ethnically diverse Pico line. Using improvisational techniques, the actors incorporate responses and ideas from their bus-riding audiences into their performances.

Shepard Petit, who gets around by public transport in a wheel chair, recently wrote and performed a play called The Invisible Passenger, dealing with the common contempt he has experienced from drivers and other passengers for handicapped bus riders. Dolores’s Dilemma is straight melodramatic comedy. Dolores, dressed in a wedding gown, is waiting at the bus stop for her groom to join her on the way to their wedding. The groom’s bus never arrives, and her frustration with MTA service brings her to tears. Fretting and vulnerable, she is approached by the character of a "conniving MTA rail contractor who tries to steal her heart." But she is not tempted and concludes, with vocal support from her audience, that her heart belongs to the Bus Riders Union.

Martin Hernandez, lead organizer for the BRU, distinguishes between formal theater and the BRU’s performances. "When you do a play in a big theater to a traditional audience, you measure success by the applause and the reviews that follow. You feel like you need a huge response. When you do skits for bus riders, it’s the little things you notice: the passengers who engage with the actors, the questions people ask, maybe even just one person who for the first time realizes his or her rights as a bus rider." Hernandez emphasizes that the conversations with passengers after performances are the most important part of the organizing. "This is where we really start to hear about people’s issues and experiences, and it is also an opportunity to popularize the facts concerning transit policy and rights."

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