[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/01/INQN1MHEHL.DTL]
See Change Makers 2012: Watch Chronicle photographer Lacy Atkins' video. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2011/12/30/INQN1MHEHL.DTL&o=0]
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The other night, Eva Paterson, president of the Equal Justice Society, had a dream.
"I was sitting on a hill with two men," she recalled. "We were talking about the unemployment crisis and how the official numbers don't capture the people who have stopped looking. The men said, 'It's hopeless. We can't do anything about it.'
"I said, 'No, we have to keep struggling.' I got up and started walking down Piedmont Avenue (in Oakland), where the ACLU was giving a rally in support of Mexican immigrants, and I thought, 'How am I going to get home? I don't have my car, and I'm thirsty.' Then I woke up."
"Trying to get home" dreams may be familiar to a lot of us. The "we've got to keep struggling" aspect is probably more recognizable to the activists profiled here. In this second installment, The Chronicle talks to people in the Bay Area dedicated to change. (The first installment ran July 3. You can read it online at [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/03/IN3Q1K2K1S.DTL].)
Paterson, 62, has been working for social justice for more than four decades. Currently, she is organizing for the state initiative that would replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole.
She said that over the years, the "people fighting so brilliantly to preserve the status quo" have learned to frame issues to get people to act against their own self-interests. "So the people who destroyed the economy are called the job creators."
On the positive side, Paterson sees a vibrant, national and international community working on a range of issues to realize a progressive vision. And for a moment, it looked as though two African Americans might be running for president.
"Herman Cain was backed by conservative white people. That's enormous progress. It's perverse," she said, laughing heartily, "but it's progress."
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, EBASE, led by Executive Director Nikki Fortunato Bas, 43, has a track record of working on issues popularized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. "Our niche is creating good jobs. We focus on economic inequity," Bas said.
To that end, Ebase has initiated several campaigns for living-wage policies. At the Port of Oakland, the living-wage policy added $3,500 a year to the average worker's salary. Affecting 1,500 workers, it put more than $5 million in the workers' pockets. Currently, Ebase is advocating the Revive Oakland plan, which would guarantee jobs for disadvantaged communities at the redeveloped Oakland Army Base.
Malkia Cyril, 37, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, and Tim Silard, 49, president of the Rosenberg Foundation, had a similar epiphany. Systemic reform is necessary to accomplish needed change.
Recognizing that the media usually portray young people of color negatively, Cyril set out to ensure that the coverage was more balanced. She quickly realized the problem wasn't individual reporters, but the changing world of journalism, as chains gobbled up papers, and communication giants took over local radio stations.
"I realized we had to deal with regulations." She learned about media conglomerates and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. She is proud of the role the center played in educating civil rights groups about the drawbacks of the now-abandoned AT&T and T-Mobile merger, and in the establishment of the FCC's first net-neutrality rules.
"I don't say 'net neutrality,' that bores me, too. But when I tell people their ability to communicate and connect is threatened, they care about that," Cyril said.
As an attorney with a background in civil rights and poverty law, Silard went to the San Francisco district attorney's office to work "in the belly of the beast." While the office developed some promising innovations, he realized broader reforms were needed. He became increasingly alarmed by the "enormous racial disparities in the criminal justice system."
"What excited me about the Rosenberg Foundation was the ability to support the work of reform advocates in California." He thinks the state's inability to financially support the current criminal justice system is an opportunity.
"If done well, realignment can be transformative," Silard said of the state's new initiative to move nonviolent inmates out of prisons and into county jails. "I'm hopeful that in five to 10 years, the California criminal justice system will have a different shape."
James Bell Jr., 57, has always worked to help juvenile offenders, first as an attorney and now as founder and executive director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute. The institute investigates the overrepresentation of young people of color in detention centers.
In one case, researchers found that intake officers treated young people rated as low risks differently - the white kids were sent home, the kids of color were detained. "They were conflating the risk for public safety with the social needs of the kids. So if there was no father at home, or the kid hadn't been to school for four days, the officer would hold him," Bell said.
And by instituting a notification system that reminded juveniles about an upcoming court date, the "failure to appear" rate for African American juveniles dropped from 47 to 19 percent in Baltimore County, Md.
"That's a huge savings to the county and keeps the kid from spending two to four days in detention on a bench warrant," Bell said. "Every day a kid of color spends in detention, he's getting further behind."
Back to her "we've got to keep struggling" dream: Paterson could have been speaking for her activist colleagues: "Really, do I have the choice to say, 'I give up?' I just don't."
Nikki Fortunato Bas (second from right), of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, prays with clergy before talking with truckers at the Port of Oakland.
Photo: Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle
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