Liberals take note: The real way to help the poor

[lostinblue 1,989]

http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/c...;nclick_check=1

Once a month, Rosa Lopez lined up with her youngest child in tow for free food at a San Jose charity. Cheerful volunteers gave them grocery bags with bread, soup cans, rice, peanut butter and a few vegetables. Gracias, goodbye, see you next time.

But this dreary hunger routine changed for the better when she met a stocky, middle-age Latino professional who lived nearby. He had come to the charity with novel idea: In a city blessed with sunshine, he wanted to teach poor families like hers how to grow food in their backyards.

"We had to try something because money and food was running out, faster than before," Lopez said in Spanish.

And the man with the idea needed something new in his life, too.

Raul Lozano had just left a prestigious job as the executive director of Teatro Vision, one of the oldest and most successful Latino theater companies in the country.

"I was burned out and had my fill," Lozano said about the fundraising side of show business. At 55, he wasn't set for retirement, either. "I had no idea what I was going to do next. Some people thought I was crazy."

But in less than a year, Lozano's idea, La Mesa Verde (The Green Table), has sprouted faster than a happy cabbage, winning over funders and volunteer gardeners eager to work directly with families who can't afford healthy, organically grown food.

On a recent warm day, Lozano visited the Lopezes, who live just south of San Jose State University. Sugar peas, butter lettuce, red and white Spanish onions, cauliflower and other veggies filled the 4-by-8-foot planter boxes, which Lozano gave them. With four children of their own, the Lopezes live in a small house with two other families, 14 people in all.

The modest harvest won't eliminate Lopez's trips to the food pantry, but it does save the family the cost of fresh vegetables it would otherwise have to buy at the market.

"This is saving us quite a bit of money," said Arturo Lopez, a wall-framer who hasn't worked since injuring his back last year. "Our children are eating better. They come back here and eat a leaf of lettuce like candy."

What Lozano really wanted to know was if the Lopezes were picking and eating the vegetables on time. He noticed that the broccoli and Swiss chard were ripe but uncut.

"I don't know anything about broccoli," Arturo told Lozano. "I was going to cut it and then pull it out."

Lozano laughed in a kindhearted way. Each broccoli plant, he explained, will yield several heads before it gives out. But what about Swiss chard, a tall, leafy green?

"I thought it was a beet!" Arturo said. "I was waiting for the root to appear and dig it up."

This time Lozano laughed hard, but not at Lopez.

"Hey, I don't eat chard, either," he said in Spanish and again in English. "We Latinos don't eat chard. I was looking for culturally relevant seeds, but when they give you chard seeds at a discount, you take them."

Lozano never planned a career on stage or soil. Born into a farmworker family in the Central Valley, he moved to the Bay Area after high school and found employment with social service agencies. After he helped some Teatro friends build a stage, they invited him to join the board when the company incorporated as a nonprofit. He became executive director in 1999 — just in time for the dot-com crash and harder fundraising times for nonprofits.

Still, he grew the company's budget from $180,000 to $900,000. Teatro Vision became the resident company at the city's Mexican Heritage Plaza, specializing in plays about Latino life in the United States and showcasing new talents like playwright Octavio Solis.

"We certainly didn't want him to go," said Brendan Rawson, a Teatro board member and close friend of Lozano. "But he worked so darn hard at Teatro, he wore himself down."

Without knowing it, Lozano was seeding a new career as he worked in his garden, wondering what he could do next. His farmworker and social worker past seemed to call out to him. He weighed the poverty in his Latino and immigrant neighborhood, which is nicknamed Barrio Horseshoe. Bingo.

"Why can't somebody teach the people in my neighborhood to grow food?" Lozano asked himself. "Why can't that person be me?"

He took the idea to Fred Ferrer, director of the Health Trust, which funds dozens of anti-poverty nutrition projects in Silicon Valley.

"Everybody does school or community gardens, but nobody was talking about growing food in backyards,'' Ferrer said. "When Raul asked for $30,000, I told him to ask me for $50,000."

He did, and Ferrer wrote the check on the spot.

Then Lozano asked Sacred Heart Community Service to be his nonprofit sponsor. The charity loved his idea so much, it took on La Mesa Verde and hired him as project manager.

"I was sold immediately on the idea," said Poncho Guevara, Sacred Heart director. "But I knew this would be a whole new initiative, not just one guy with a truck and wheelbarrow."

Actually, Lozano didn't have a truck, but he sure could use one or two now.

For more help, he approached the master gardening program at the University of California Extension school. He had taken its basic gardening class years before.

"This fits in with what we want to do," said Karen Schaeffer, the master gardener who designed the program's first planting. "It's an obviously great idea, the classic teaching somebody to do it themselves as opposed to just giving it to them."

When the master gardener program signed on, La Mesa Verde brought two different communities together — educated, English-speaking and mostly white volunteer gardeners at the front of the green movement with low-income, Spanish-speaking Latinos just struggling to survive.

La Mesa Verde is more than planting and eating. Master gardeners will serve as mentors, visiting each family twice a month. The 30 families so far must attend classes on organic gardening and nutrition, all at no cost.

Rosa Lopez can't wait for summer and tomatoes, and she's more than happy to learn what to do with chard.

"We're already cooking with less grease," she said. "The chard, I'm sure we'll make something really good with it."

Lozano's goal is to have 5,000 families — and 10,000 planter boxes — enrolled in La Mesa Verde before he retires, whenever that is. One day, he hopes, the families will be able to grow more organic vegetables than they can eat, and donate the healthy surplus to a local food bank.

"I'm a lucky man," Lozano said. "I've had one great career by accident and I'm starting a new one by accident."

Contact Joe Rodriguez at 408-920-5767.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Everybody knows poor people are just being lazy.

[Ban Hammer 12,901]

Everybody knows poor people are just being lazy.

it should be against the law, teaching people they can take care of themselves without a government program!

[Dan J 277]

Everybody knows poor people are just being lazy.

Yes of course, they don't work, they just sit at home and wait for a handout.

But seriously, this isn't new, its been around for awhile. Its not always practical for all environments/living situations.

[Ali G. 37]

Yes of course, they don't work, they just sit at home and wait for a handout.

But seriously, this isn't new, its been around for awhile. Its not always practical for all environments/living situations.

No, they are all out there doing everything they can trying to get jobs. The proof is in various ghettos throughout America. Chilling on street corners must be a new avenue for seeking employment I have never heard of. Personally, I'm old fashion and prefer to up my skills, start a business or go to school. Followed by dressing and acting in a manner that is suitable for employment.

I'll be the first to say that the poor do not receive enough adequate assistance to get on their feet in America. Yet I will also be the first to say that in certain communities in every single city in America, there is a huge problem with honestly zero interest in progressing. Unless gangs, drugs and crime are considered progression here..

As I said in another thread, it says something that millions of other migrants, like many from India, come here with nothing and are able to start businesses and so on. However, people in ghettos have not advanced an inch in forty years. Things will improve once people stop making excuses for these communities and start asking serious questions. "Well they are socioeconomically disadvantage" Wrong!

Edited February 8, 2010 by Booyah

[_Simpson_ 250]

Everybody knows poor people are just being lazy.

no silly their all people who haven't been able to catch a break since the day they were born.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Conservatives groups don't think poor people have a brain?

[FortLaudy 10]

No, they are all out there doing everything they can trying to get jobs. The proof is in various ghettos throughout America. Chilling on street corners must be a new avenue for seeking employment I have never heard of. Personally, I'm old fashion and prefer to up my skills, start a business or go to school. Followed by dressing and acting in a manner that is suitable for employment.

I'll be the first to say that the poor do not receive enough adequate assistance to get on their feet in America. Yet I will also be the first to say that in certain communities in every single city in America, there is a huge problem with honestly zero interest in progressing. Unless gangs, drugs and crime are considered progression here..

As I said in another thread, it says something that millions of other migrants, like many from India, come here with nothing and are able to start businesses and so on. However, people in ghettos have not advanced an inch in forty years. Things will improve once people stop making excuses for these communities and start asking serious questions. "Well they are socioeconomically disadvantage" Wrong!

And again I agree with the Auzzie man !

Grow yer own damn food or earn it mofo's!

[_Simpson_ 250]

Conservatives groups don't think poor people have a brain?

Liberals dont think Conservatives have a brain.

And again I agree with the Auzzie man !

Grow yer own damn food or earn it mofo's!

Wow we have found someone that has agreed with BY more than once.

Edited February 8, 2010 by _Simpson_

[alienlovechild 75]

Lozano never planned a career on stage or soil. Born into a farmworker family in the Central Valley, he moved to the Bay Area after high school and found employment with social service agencies. After he helped some Teatro friends build a stage, they invited him to join the board when the company incorporated as a nonprofit. He became executive director in 1999 — just in time for the dot-com crash and harder fundraising times for nonprofits.

When the master gardener program signed on, La Mesa Verde brought two different communities together — educated, English-speaking and mostly white volunteer gardeners at the front of the green movement with low-income, Spanish-speaking Latinos just struggling to survive.

That's a twist. Many Latinos have worked in migrant agriculture or in landscaping/lawncare yet they had to taught by white volunteer gardeners.

[Dan J 277]

No, they are all out there doing everything they can trying to get jobs. The proof is in various ghettos throughout America. Chilling on street corners must be a new avenue for seeking employment I have never heard of. Personally, I'm old fashion and prefer to up my skills, start a business or go to school. Followed by dressing and acting in a manner that is suitable for employment.

I'll be the first to say that the poor do not receive enough adequate assistance to get on their feet in America. Yet I will also be the first to say that in certain communities in every single city in America, there is a huge problem with honestly zero interest in progressing. Unless gangs, drugs and crime are considered progression here..

As I said in another thread, it says something that millions of other migrants, like many from India, come here with nothing and are able to start businesses and so on. However, people in ghettos have not advanced an inch in forty years. Things will improve once people stop making excuses for these communities and start asking serious questions. "Well they are socioeconomically disadvantage" Wrong!

Next up, Booyah is going to show us how to make a business out of absolutely nothing. Many immigrants especially from India come here to a job. Its a little hard to immigrate here from India illegally.

Gangs, drugs and crime, are what people turn to when there is no where else to turn. Unemployment among African american males is in the 30% range, and many of those who are employed, are probably finding it hard to get a job that will pay a livable wage. If you want to do a cost benefit analysis of it, doing things the "good" way is not all that attractive.

You can keep preaching that poor are lazy and don't fit into your idea of an ideal conformist citizen. But that doesn't change the reality, it's all about economics.

[FortLaudy 10]

Next up, Booyah is going to show us how to make a business out of absolutely nothing. Many immigrants especially from India come here to a job. Its a little hard to immigrate here from India illegally.

Gangs, drugs and crime, are what people turn to when there is no where else to turn. Unemployment among African american males is in the 30% range, and many of those who are employed, are probably finding it hard to get a job that will pay a livable wage. If you want to do a cost benefit analysis of it, doing things the "good" way is not all that attractive.

You can keep preaching that poor are lazy and don't fit into your idea of an ideal conformist citizen. But that doesn't change the reality, it's all about economics.

I agree with Booyah on this because I have seen this in South Africa. Indian slaves were brought over from India and made to work in sugar plantations on the east coast of South Africa. Anyone who know any history of South Africa knows what people "of color" went through. So these people were slaves and then later after gaining their freedom still had to endure the Apartheid regime. The east coast of South Africa today is pretty prosperous, these Indian people, despite everything they had against them, built businesses and their lives up from scratch (no handouts, no education from back home or jobs lined up already.. they were slaves). Most of the Indians who live in South Africa are pretty affluent and self-sufficient. Go figure.

[alienlovechild 75]

Gangs, drugs and crime, are what people turn to when there is no where else to turn. Unemployment among African american males is in the 30% range, and many of those who are employed, are probably finding it hard to get a job that will pay a livable wage. If you want to do a cost benefit analysis of it, doing things the "good" way is not all that attractive.

Crime doesn't pay in the long run as serious jail time cuts into one's income and it's lt harder to get a legit job with a criminal record. A lot of the young guys don't think about the consequences and they certainly don't get much guidance from sperm donor fathers or rap videos flashing money that comes from nowhere.

[Dan J 277]

Crime doesn't pay in the long run as serious jail time cuts into one's income and it's lt harder to get a legit job with a criminal record. A lot of the young guys don't think about the consequences and they certainly don't get much guidance from sperm donor fathers or rap videos flashing money that comes from nowhere.

Consequences mean something when you actually have something to loose. Its very unlikely they would have a legitimate job opportunity anyway.