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Thank you,

Christine

Call For Submissions
Oscar Grant Memorial Arts Project
Creative Expressions, a Catalyst for Social Change

People are angry. Thousands have been appalled by the Oscar Grant shooting and have taken a new stand to fight injustice. Many have chosen to creatively express their stance through art. Songs have been written and dedicated to Oscar Grant. Poems, paintings and posters have been created. Graffiti artists have painted murals.

Race, Poverty, & the Environment journal and Media Alliance are gathering creative works dedicated to Oscar Grant from artists, musicians, writers, photographers and others. Any form of creative expression will be accepted. It could be a video of a dance work, audio, song, poster, photo, art project, links to web pieces, etc.

Selected portfolio work will be featured in several Bay Area publications (print and online). If you have any questions or would like to contribute to this project please contact christinejoy@urbanhabitat.org. All submissions should be sent to artwork@urbanhabitat.org by March 21, 2009.

To view the project's beginnings please visit: http://urbanhabitat.org/rpe/oscar

We also plan to publish a 1,000-word article including interviews with participating artists exploring how creative expression can be a catalyst for social change. The artwork will be distributed for non-profit only use via Creative Commons licensing.

This project is co-sponsored by Media Alliance and Race, Poverty and the Environment. We invite the participation of other publications in collecting and publishing the work. Please post or publish this call and we will be in touch to offer the collected works.
Current partner publications include: Urban Habitat's Race, Poverty & the Environment Journal, Media Alliance, http://media-alliance.org, InColor magazine http://In-Color.net, and Street Spirit Newspaper. This work is supported by a grant from the Akonadi Foundation.

For those outside the Bay Area news sphere: Early morning on New Year's Day, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III was shot and killed in Oakland, California by a Bay Area Rapid Transit agency police officer. Grant was unarmed. The young black man's arms shackled behind his back. His face—pressed down against the cement. Onlookers video-phoned the horrific spectacle as his life was taken from him.

Do I look like I sell Drugs?

Drug Busting Hip-hop
Blog-- Published January 7, 2009, InColor Magazine

“Do I look like I sell drugs?” I never thought to ask someone that question. I’ve never smoked or injected a narcotic. I don’t know how many different drugs exist. I can list maybe four. It took me a while to figure out what the hell NUMP, E-40 and The Federation meant when they were rappin’ “Who got purple? I got grapes.”...wait, what? I’ve never witnessed a drug deal or lived in a neighborhood infested with addicts. I doubt someone would assume that of me either. Maybe it’s because I don’t fit the “characteristics” of a dealer…that dark skinned, somewhat thuggish individual from the hood, sporting a fitted style with an abundant excess of gold, who wears baggy pants that sag from the buttock.

And even if someone were to experience all of the above, why should that make he or she any more suspect? You really never know who’s hustlin’ and who’s not. It’s time to get that imagery out your head. Anyone can be a dope boy.

For all the plenty of young colored folks that get dirty looks and don’t deserve it, DJ Al Azif does a smashing job of knocking a social construct while remixing Adam Tensta’s latest single “Dopeboy,” a Sweden-born Hip hop artist influenced by electro/house styles.

Al Alzif broke out his digitalcam and filmed a bunch of ordinary citizens rocking out to “Dopeboy” each holding a piece of paper that reads the song’s hook, "Do I look like I sell drugs?" The home video features various individuals—from artists, the homeless, to Paris Hilton blondes, nurses and small business owners—poking fun at that very question. And while the straight lyrics, beat, and rhyme intoxicate, it’s just damn entertaining. You’ll laugh at the sight of the bald, ripped white farmer on the tractor and smile at the little kid flinging the crinkled inquiry over his head.

Ridiculous isn’t it? And yet, it ironically caused me to think critically about the world around me—about the bias we have, the assumptions we make and the institutions that continue to perpetuate racial stereotypes and profiling.

All over the world, those that are the most disproportionately impacted by drug control are not the major drug traffickers or ‘kingpins.’ Instead, the victims are the peasant farmers, small time dealers, low-level drug offenders, and its users. According to the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme, the majority are poor, ethnic minorities who come from marginalized communities.

The stereotype of drug dealers is that they are people of color. In the United States research by Human Rights Watch has shown that African-American men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13.4 times the rate of white men. Furthermore, 63 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons were African-American and only 35 percent of whites are locked up, according to the Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy. African American’s make-up 13 percent of our U.S. population compared to the 80 percent that is white (Whites are the majority of drug users/dealers).

Major props to Al Azif for shooting a creative home video that doesn’t discriminate. Whether you intended to or not, you moved me. So once again I must reiterate, this is for all people, especially colored people, who get dirty looks and don't deserve it. Bob and groove to this.

To find more info and music by Adam Tensta and the funky DJ skills of Al Azif hit up:

http://www.alazif.se/

http://www.myspace.com/adamtensta

Contributing Writer for inColor

I am now a contributing writer for InColor. To see more of my work, visit:
http://www.in-color.net

About InColor
Mission
To present topics in art, design, fashion, music, and entertainment in color, meaning from the perspective of people of color worldwide. Serving as a network between artists, designers, musicians, entertainers and the rest of the world.

What Is in COLOR
IN COLOR will be more than just another website. It will feature a daily updates on what's new in the world of art, design, fashion, music, and entertainment, alongside editorials written by those who give a fresh and intelligent view from the prospective/retrospective of people of color. It will also feature photography in forms of mini photo editorials and tutorials, as well as street life. Alongside the photography will be interviews and features on people of color making moves in the art, design, fashion, music, and entertainment worlds. As well as presenting the view from the frontline of the latest events as they happen. Last but not least create a community for discussion, sharing of knowledge and entertainment. All in all IN COLOR will be a lifestyle magazine in website form.

What is in COLOR not
It isn't anti- any race. Rather it is giving an opportunity for color to shine everyday, in every and any way.

Who Is in COLOR
IN COLOR is a group of like minded or non-like minded professional individuals who share a love of what they love. IN COLOR is an arena that gives the opportunity for young creators, writers and photographers to share their talent with world. If you are interested in contributing or being featured on IN COLOR, or just want to know more about what exactly IN COLOR is, email info@in-color.net

Life is Still Beautiful: One Woman Prevails Over Modern Plagues

Photo by Dulce Baron
Life is Still Beautiful: One Woman Prevails Over Modern Plagues
FEATURE-- Published April 24, 2008, [X]press Magazine

Above the bustling sounds in the restaurant’s kitchen is the contagious laughter of a tall, slender, waitress named Kristi Kissell. She quickly replaces her smile with a serious visage but can’t help but grin again when a familiar face walks through the door. After removing her clear rimmed, black glasses, she slips them into her pocket. The pretty bleached blond is self-conscious about her appearance. She covers the scars of weariness on her face with foundation. As she carries two plates on one arm, she holds a drink with her free hand. Her toned physique reveals her strength, but the inner burden she bears has muscled more strength out of her than the number of plates she could carry in a lifetime.

Life changed for Kissell at age twenty-five when she contracted HIV. At thirty she developed cervical cancer as a result of the virus. Depression and anxiety now drown her mind.

“I’ve missed out on a lot because of the AIDS. It’s like I’m an empty glass, and now I have to fill it up again,” says Kissell, now forty-five. “But when the doctor told me I had cancer and only six months to live, I was in total fear—I was more hopeful about being HIV positive.”

The unknown can hold nothing but fear for many in her shoes. And yet, she is woman who refuses to allow her agony to kill her spirit. With every blow, she fights back harder ten times more.

At around seven a.m., her painkillers have worn off from the night before. Lying in bed, still too groggy and weak to function, she takes her first round of ten pills. By the end of the day, she will have taken twenty more—AIDS medications, doses for those medications’ side effects and past side effects, pain pills, and eight different anti-depressants.

Kissell’s immune system began deteriorating after she contracted HIV. Medications caused nerve damage. The bone in her left foot is disintegrating, making it difficult for her to walk for long periods of time. She’s constantly anemic and fatigued, having undergone six different surgeries for cervical cancer and three blood transfusions.

“I wanted to have kids, a family, a partner, but I won’t have that. I have hardly any cervix left,” she says. “I wouldn’t even have any muscle to hold the fetus.”

Like a prisoner bound to her bed, anxiety restrains her. By 11 a.m., she forces herself to find the strength to stand.

"She knows when she's depressed and tends to withdraw herself," says Franzie Latko, who's been a customer and friend since she started working at the restaurant five years ago. "But she also knows when it's time to get herself up and out and be with people, and she does it."

She perseveres by going to every monthly doctor visit and therapy session, regularly taking her medicine and nutrition supplements, and engaging in what others could otherwise neglect. With no health insurance, she lives off of public assistance, her meager wages as a waitress, and help from her parents. Her pills cost over two-thousand dollars a month.

"You can either give into it, or you can fight it," says James Lyon, her roommate and best friend. "[Kissell] chooses to fight."

The day she was tested for HIV, she walked in the clinic alone. Her husband waited for her in the car. He never told her he was HIV positive and refused treatment for it. She cared for him for two years when his health failed, but when Kissell became ill, he didn’t give a damn. His usual consolation was “I love you so much. I want to bring you down with me.” He'd threaten, "If you leave, I'll kill myself...when you go home you'll find my brains scattered all over the walls."

She’d sit in her bedroom in utter darkness with the blinds shut for days. For nine to ten months, she suffered from migraines, vomiting, diarrhea—banged her head on walls. The sight of her ingesting medicine angered him. "You can't pretend it doesn't exist!" she yelled at him one day, near tears. He choked her in their kitchen until she collapsed.

After twelve difficult years together, she had enough courage to leave him and moved to San Francisco. She never learned how her ex-husband contracted HIV. Before he passed away three years ago, her animosity towards him died quietly, with her forgiveness in its purest surrender. “There was no way he could be true in this lifetime, so all I could do was be true to myself,” she explains. “I let go of his responsibility to me.”

Three years ago her T-cells were below one-hundred. The lower T-cell count, the greater an opportunity there is for an infection. With her new medications, the count has moved up to five-hundred. A normal T-cell count is between six-hundred and sixteeen-hundred. Her cancer has now stabilized and her immune system is slowly regenerating.

These days, the littlest things matter: the thrill of hunting for a good deal with her best friend, visiting with her nephews, watching old films, walking her dogs, getting hugs and kisses from her customers, and eating peanut-butter chocolate ice cream.

The day she was leaving for San Francisco, Rocky, her nine-year-old, Chihuahua/corgi canine companion, sneaked into her green Mazda, hid in the backseat, and wedged himself between suitcases. He's been her faithful little baby for eight years. She added a new addition to her family six months ago, another mixed breed dog, named Charlie. They've brought joy and healing to her existence.

“HIV has become so prevalent in my life that it’s changed who I am, but maybe for the better,” says Kissell. “I’ve never felt like giving up. I’m not sure how confident I am, but I know HIV is not gonna kill me. It’s not in my heart to be negative anymore.”

In her living room, she sits on a floral sheet-covered couch adorned with ten pillows. Her two dogs snuggle up to her, licking her lips, whimpering. Her laughter brightens the room once again. She’s still alive.

My Mother, a Paranoid Schizophrenic: the Stigma of Mental Illness and America's Inadequate Mental Health Care System

Photo by Melissa Funk
My Mother, a Paranoid Schizophrenic: the Stigma of Mental Illness and America's Inadequate Mental Health Care System
FEATURE-- Published December 14, 2007, [X]press Magazine

A middle-aged Filipino woman stood in her bedroom, naked for the third time that day, her body curved slightly to the right from stress. Her face was ashen as she wailed that bugs were crawling up her legs. They had somehow managed to inhabit her room and embed themselves in her clothes. She swatted the vermin away with her hands and stomped the floor trying to kill them. But no matter what she did, she could never be rid of these pests that haunted her. The bugs she saw were all in her mind.

That woman was my mama, who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic when I was in high school. Unlike my two-decade-older siblings, remembering my mother for her charm, intelligence and beauty, I've known her only as a woman haunted by hallucinations, insistent about locking every door in the house and paranoid that others were trying to steal the money she didn't have.

And yet, unlike my brother and sister, I'm not afraid or ashamed to face it. I'm not afraid to talk about it. We've sought treatment for my mama, and we take care of her at home. But in their eyes, her illness is not open for discussion among friends or family.

Other families in similar situations also have this sentiment. But I can't get over the power of the cultural and social stigmas surrounding mental illness in America. We openly speak of AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses and fight for their cures, but why not mental illness? America has the resources and the power to improve mental health care and soften the tainted notions that loom over mental disorders but has yet to do so.

By failing to address these attitudes, those who are mentally ill are prevented from seeking the treatment they require, and their families are inhibited from finding the support they need.

Our country controls how we view mental illness—the diagnostic manuals, the clinician training, the journals, and the established psychiatric institutions. We set the bar for how those with mental illness are treated and talked about, and we are teaching the rest of the world to do the same.

If you were to grade the national mental health system, its grade would be no better than a D, found a study conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness in 2006. Mental illness causes more disability than any other class of medical illness in America. The mental and physical health of immigrants and their children deteriorates with increasing assimilation to a U.S. lifestyle, a U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention survey revealed.

Jails and prisons have become psychiatric treatment facilities for the mentally ill by default. In November, a high-security inmate who stabbed and nearly killed a teenage girl in San Francisco had a documented history of bipolar disorder but was never treated or medicated in prison, reported the SF Chronicle.

Maria's Madness, Her Family's Shame
The living room reeks of body odor and two-week old garbage. Piles of dirty laundry mixed with old newspapers and coupons cover the chairs and sofa. Dead strands of hair are scattered on the floor, and dead skin cells pervade the air. Violet's* mother showers only once every other month. She washes her hands for more than ten minutes and switches the lights on and off just to make sure they're off.

"Like the movie 'Gattaca,' her body particles are everywhere—from her hair and skin," says Violet, 25. Her mother, Maria*, battles depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. Her family believes Maria is also bipolar. Her one pleasure: ridiculing her daughter. "I'm so much more educated than you," she's hissed. She's also called Violet a demon and a whore, "spreading [her] legs to many dicks."

"I'm not in denial [about my mom's illness], but other people are," says Violet. "They know it's wrong to ignore but they're not doing anything because she's family or they feel sorry [for her] or they're embarrassed."

Historically, the role of families in the treatment and recovery of mentally ill relatives has been overlooked, even taken for granted. But they are more than just the people who can answer psychiatrists' questions. Families function as the primary caregivers, directly affected by those for whom they care. But it can be very difficult for family members and others to see past the stigma of treatment.

Ana's Addiction, Her Culture's Discrimination
Elena* spent hours sitting in the same spot by her living room window waiting for her mother, Ana*, to come home.

When she finally arrived after several days, Ana was drugged up on heroin again. She had an evil stare in her eyes, frustrated by the presence of her two daughters. She slipped off her pair of stilettos and without hesitation began beating her girls with its heel. They screamed, horrified. Fighting for their lives, Elena's older sister flung a punch at her mother's face while 7-year-old Elena bolted to the phone.

Nearly twenty years later, Ana is no longer addicted to heroin but has been diagnosed with depression, tested positive for Hepatitis C and HIV, and has Crohn's Disease. But Ana's addiction to heroin started when Elena was just four years old.

The first time Ana started envisioning apparitions and hearing voices, she checked herself into a mental health clinic. However, the rest of her family remained in denial for years, convinced she had been faking her mental illness.

"Mexican families don't want to believe anything's wrong but [want to believe] that everything's all right," says Elena. "They think we've had to struggle and don't want people to know we're weak or that there's any weakness in our family."

Our nation lacks cultural sensitivity in the way we approach mental illness, says Dr. Jei Africa, a Filipino clinical psychotherapist. "Stigma is the number one deterrent that prevents many cultures from seeking treatment."

In the U.S., diverging racial attitudes about mental health care run deep. African Americans are 2.5 times more likely than whites to fear mental health treatment. Overall, 26 percent of whites mention their mental health problems to a friend or relative while only 12 percent of Asian Americans do the same. Mexican Americans born outside the U.S. are less likely to seek treatment than Mexican Americans born here, found a Los Angeles Epidemiologic Catchment Area study. Because of their hesitation to pursue a remedy, Latinos are less likely than whites to receive appropriate care and treatment.

One size cannot fit all. "We must be open to more culturally appropriate ways to deal with illness," explains Africa. "[We can use] herbal remedies, community and family-based care, group and psychological therapy, traditional healing methods and not just medication."

Many American psychiatrists believe that mental illness is viewed the same way in all cultures, but they may be wrong. Ethan Watters is a journalist who is currently working on a book about mental illness and cultural differences. "Mental illness is different to different cultures, in how they express their symptoms and their outcomes," he says. "In another culture paranoid schizophrenia maybe defined by catatonic behavior, going blank, but here in America, it is paranoia—seeing and talking to things and people that aren't there."

Samantha's Denial, Her Son's Sadness
Imagine being a senior in high school, you're your parents favorite child, the star at everything you do, top student in your class, and an amazing athlete—with 14 varsity letters: more than one varsity team per season. You're accepted to Dartmouth College. But then your life is suddenly disturbed, when your mother, who was misdiagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, dies from mistreatment.

You never graduate from Dartmouth.

This happened to Edgar's* mother, Samantha*, who now suffers from severe depression. Edgar's grandmother passed away during a time when shock therapy was administered and mental institutions existed before President Regan closed them down.
All his mother's siblings saw psychiatrists after their mother's death, except for Samantha, who still refuses treatment.

"It's not what she did but what she didn't do that showed me that my house was different than most kids," Edgar says. Samantha couldn't hold down a steady job, killed time watching movies, and regularly picked her son up and hour or two late from school. She would rarely cook or eat the food she'd buy. Instead it was left to rot on the kitchen counter or spoil in the fridge.

"I spent a lot of time at my friend's house—come home as late as I could," he adds.
With the poor understanding of mental health as a "mental issue," and the tendency to categorize those suffering as "crazy," patients and their families become reluctant to seek help. When they do, only about one in three receive treatment in any given year that meets minimum standards of care. Paralyzed by fear and shame, many remain in denial, are unaware, or fail to acknowledge their mental illness.

And yet, those who are severely, clinically depressed can still live healthy, happy lives and work stable jobs with proper care and treatment. Over 80 percent of people with schizophrenia can be free of relapses at the end of one year of treatment with antipsychotic drugs combined with family intervention, reported the World Health Organization.

Danielle's Death, Her Daughter's Relief
Sometime in the late afternoon, while driving on a New York City freeway, Monica's* mother, Danielle* flipped out, shouting that she was going to kill herself. Monica, 28, was 8 years old then. As Danielle sped towards a retaining wall, Monica's younger brother shrieked in terror from the back seat of the car. "If you kill yourself I'm gonna kill myself," he screamed. "Don't say that. She might actually kill herself and then you're gonna have to live up to your word," said Monica, turning to her brother. She then leaned forward and calmly whispered in her mother's ear, "Mom, you can kill yourself another time, but you can't do it now because if you kill yourself now, you're gonna kill all of us." Within seconds, her mother steered clear of the barrier and began crying. "I'm sorry," she said.

Danielle was one of six siblings diagnosed with a mental disorder. She was diagnosed bipolar.

"My mom was really beautiful, good at reading and talking to people. Her personality was magnetic. She was passionate, and knew so much about so many different things," says Monica. "You'd have to really know her to know exactly who she was. People who really knew her knew she was a disaster."

Although Monica and her two younger siblings are half-Italian and half-Jewish, they were raised in a Muslim commune for most of their childhood where rules were strict. Her mother didn't have any control over her life. However, Danielle was able to paint and draw without destroying herself. Once they left the commune, her mind began to unravel more and more.

"Before she got really bad, she spent a lot of time painting, sketching, and sculpting or crying. In her own world, she was unavailable, and it just got more and more frequent to the point where you couldn't catch her," says Monica. "She was in and out of mental institutions, [would spend] two weeks sobbing and then the next week she'd be on top of the world."

The stigma against treatment may be even greater than the stigma against the disorders themselves, with most Americans taking years, even decades, to seek treatment, if they seek treatment at all, according to a survey by the National Comorbidity Survey Replication.

"We think it's just an illness, that you can get over it," says the journalist, Watters. "We believe we're de-stigmatizing it, but it's its own stigma by medicalizing the problem." If someone mentally ill goes untreated, it can prove to be dangerous and detrimental to that person and to his or her loved ones.

***

Dawn was fast approaching, as the street lights continued to illuminate the sidewalk. Danielle awoke her youngest daughter, who was 3 years old, to tell her goodbye. Even though she was so young, she knew her mother was about to execute what she had threatened to do for such a long time. She went back to sleep. Later that morning, a family friend found Danielle's body in the garage. She had hung herself.
"Life doesn't get any easier, but we do get better tools," says Monica of her mother's death. "But we only get better if we learn to face ourselves—face our experiences."

My Closure, My Acceptance
So here I am facing my experience. My mama can't cook for herself or wash her sheets. Every morning after I wake up and before I sleep each night, I give my mama her medication. I change her diapers daily and shower her every Sunday. If ever she relapses and sees the bugs on her blankets or worries that the world has gone into disarray, I pray with her, and she calms down. I don't consider her a burden. Since she began receiving treatment, she's more mellow compared to before and less argumentative. I love her for her toothless grin, and she often reassures me I'm "the best in the west."

Phobia, like a suffocating fog, chokes the families of the mentally ill in America and silences their voices, experiences and questions. Sadly, I feel that I'm the only one willing to share my story, here and now—with my face uncovered, my name unchanged, and my words unblemished.


**Name changed for privacy reasons.

The Poor Man's Stuggle: America’s Social Hierarchy Depicted through Dance

Photo by Ross Chassy
The Poor Man's Struggle: American's Social Hierarchy Depicted through Dance
FEATURE-- Published: December 14, 2007, [X]press Magazine

I am that poor man often stared at oddly/You spy me slovenly as poverty draws me camouflage…I am that poor man you don't understand/or ignore this but sometimes you pour porridge that meets these orphaned lips/and others see me as a torn page from a script of laziness to teach their children not to be like me/but as society denies me livelihood and sobriety and longevity so my children don't have to live pathetically/before your eyes do the judging and condemning/know that you too can be that poor man.
– Vejea Speaks on Poverty, by Souljahz

A light from offstage casts a shadow on a young black woman's face, Dachelle Johnson-Burke. Its glow burns bright enough to illuminate her dark complexion. Hypnotized, she dances to the rhythm of a spoken word on poverty. Her intensity and passion remain steadfast in each movement. Her thoughts revert to that of a poor single mother, working three jobs to feed her three children. She embodies the character's mentality. You see her strength. She slows down and takes a deep breath. In that moment, you sense her weariness, before she begins again.

Two other dancers, once motionless in the dark, now move. One of the pair, Vanessa Sanchez, stares at Dachelle with disgust and arrogance. She represents society's wealth, decked in gaudy jewelry. From an upright stature, she looks down at Dachelle, beating the ground with her fists. The other dancer, Tiffany Burnoski, mirrors her counterpart from a distance.


Photo by Ross Chassy

These three dancers represent the social hierarchy of America: the working class poor, the middle class, and the wealthy. An obvious inequality exists between them, and the lower class is affected the most by the power of the elite.

For the New Moves Dance December Showcase at SF State, I choreographed a piece that unmasks America's classism. I called it "The Poor Man's Struggle."

Class struggle becomes easy to overlook when its smothered by America's so-called prosperity. Fighting poverty does not seem to be a major campaign issue. The working class poor population is expanding, the middle class is shrinking, and the upper class remains disproportionately small. It is the poor who suffer the most under this hierarchy. In my piece, two dancers represent the middle class, three are poor, two are rich. In the end, a middle class becomes poor.

"It's a little scary just thinking of the shrinking middle class," says Vanessa Sanchez. "Where am I gonna end up with that shrinking?"
America's poor do not get enough resources to alleviate their problems. The top one percent earn more money than the bottom 40 percent, and the gap wider than it has been in 70 years, found globalissues.org. The U.S. also has the largest gap in wages and inequality between the rich and the poor when compared to all other industrialized nations, reported Corporate Planet Magazine. Today, 37 million Americans are impoverished. Poorer communities are denied access to adequate education. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 73 percent of Americans do not have government health insurance. Instead of health care being a privilege, shouldn't it be a basic human right?

I started choreographing in the summer, and chose seven passionate dancers in the fall to represent each class: Tiffany Burnoski, Stephanie Castillo, Stephanie Hyland, Alexis Johnson, Dachelle Johnson-Burke, Jenna Lahm and Vanessa Sanchez.
To get them to really connect to their respective characters, I gave them movements—jumps, kicks, falls; and words—struggle, wealth, limitation; allowing them to create their own dance phrase. I asked them to consider the residents of Visitacion Valley, a section of San Francisco where many minorities live and violence is common.

"I imagined being frustrated, I thought of how frustrated it can be when I'm trying to get somewhere and just can't get there," said Alexis Johnson. "And I thought of my personal frustration of being a college student and trying to pay for school myself."

In selecting the classes the dancers would represent, race played a key factor as it does in reality. Blacks and Hispanics suffer higher rates of poverty than whites and Asians. Around 25 percent of blacks live in poverty, as do 22 percent of Hispanics. The poverty rate decreased for non-Hispanic whites and increased roughly two percent for Asians from 2004 to 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"I think [dancing in this piece] definitely exposed me to the frustration of the system and the struggle of what poorer classes have to go through," explained Johnson. "I learned the structure of the economic system, how shameful it is, and how much people need to be educated about it, so they can learn to make better decisions—it makes sense why there are so many problems with poor families."

In the choreography, the battle is obvious. The classes fight each other, but it's no doubt the rich are still in power. In the end, the rich have total control over the poor, and survive although the lower classes have fallen. "Before, I was able to forget about it," says Stephanie Hyland. "And now, I never realized how messed up [the class system is], how unfair and how it really affects life."



Photo by Ali Thanawalla

"The Poor Man's Struggle" is an amalgamation of many dance styles: hip hop, modern, Capoeira, and Haitian. All are derived from the histories of peoples living in arduous, oppressive conditions. Enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island of Haiti developed Haitian dance as a means of expressing themselves and maintaining their sacred customs and beliefs.

African slaves brought to Brazil in 1630 developed a system of fighting called "jungle war," or Capoeira, to use against their Dutch and Portuguese colonizers. Capoeria, done to the rhythm of music and song, disguised the fact that the slaves were practicing a deadly martial art. It became their weapon of freedom and symbol of emancipation.

In the 1970s, Hip Hop culture was born in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City. As a marginalized group, black and Latino youth didn't have any formal way to express themselves. They developed Hip Hop as a way to have fun, communicate their experiences, and criticize social inequality and poverty. One woman's rebellion against ballet's strict postures and steps gave birth to the modern dance self-expressive form.

I'm sick of our country's relentless pursuit of capital, the idea that anyone can make it America, our individualistic mentality, how we exploit other countries for our own benefit, and how we overlook our own impoverished citizens, considering them lazy.

My firm belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ is what inspired me to create my dance.

Our American mentality is a far cry from what Christ stood for and a far cry from democracy, justice, and freedom. If you want to ask what Jesus would do, ask if he would give tax cuts to the rich. How can we claim as our nation's slogan that it is God in whom we trust? If the U.S. was truly based on the Gospel, it would abolish the modern day capitalistic financial system.

We have forgotten Jesus' heart for humanity and the common good, who fought to bring salvation and hope to a people oppressed by their religious institutionalized system. He reprimanded their leaders, constantly taught his followers to reach out to those in need and condemned those with a love of money.

How can we breed people into different classes, judge others by their skin color, deprive them of the bare necessities of life—food, shelter, clothing—and expect them to thrive?

No matter how hard a poor person may work, he can't always 'pull himself up from his bootstraps' when a dominant power structure within society suppresses him. Someday, I hope this won't be true anymore.

Maybe then, we'd be living in a country where all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain, unalienable rights; the God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.