YOUTH OUTLOOK

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How a Hood Becomes a Home

By Jose Luis Padilla

Date: 11-07-96

Growing up in one of the poorest sections of Oakland, Calif., it seemed to Jose Padilla that even God didn't want to enter the neighborhood. Now that the city has rediscovered East Oakland and the neighborhood has discovered itself, things feel much safer. Padilla is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about Bay Area youth produced by Pacific News Service.

In East Oakland, where I grew up, violence and crime used to run rampant in the streets. But in the last year or so, things seem to be changing for the better.

When I first moved to my neighborhood, it was a very different place. The buildings on E. 14th Street (now International) were boarded up and sprayed with graffiti. Messages like "Rest in Peace" warned me of just how dangerous my new neighborhood was going to be.

Today, the tags have been replaced by murals of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez. Rundown buildings have become a new gym, a new community center, and five new basketball hoops with great blacktop courts. At the risk of sounding like my father, I wish I would have had these opportunities when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, the most dangerous people of all seemed to be the drug addicts on every corner 24 hours a day. They were the ones who would do anything for a fix, to take in that wonder drug that took them away from all the violence and filth of the streets and put them in a safe place. To me, safety was keeping a clear head and not becoming another junkie, so I could try to get OUT of this place -- not just forget about it for a few seconds.

I saw a few people get shot, a few more overdose and go into convulsions in the middle of the street, but what I saw most were beatings -- people getting beat up for money, for clothes, for drugs, or just because they were looking in the wrong direction. It was the closest I could imagine to hell on earth.

After a while I became numb to the violence and just tried to blend in. I carried no money and wore nothing of value so I would look like I wasn't worth beating up. I even stopped going to church because I couldn't dress up and walk down a dozen blocks full of dealers and gangsters who would surely take an interest in my Sunday best. It seemed like even God didn't want to come to my neighborhood.

Today, when I walk around my neighborhood, I pass a new fire station and a new police station, and down where Eastmont Mall was on the verge of closing there is a new hall where people from all over the Bay come to take advantage of the growing night life. The Eastmont Pavilion hosts rap concerts, speakers, and Latin Banda dances, all of which help the community. Down the street by 66th and Foothill there is also a happening little night club that seems to attract a lot of positive people. I would much rather drive home and see people heading towards a dance or concert than fleeing a shooting or robbery.

With the city embracing my neighborhood, and my neighborhood investing in itself, the Oakland Coliseum area is becoming more than just another stop for the regional transit system. It's turning into a great community where the people are working together to make a home. I've found the better place I was looking for, and I didn't even have to move.