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Life & Times Transcript

05/05/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Serving time is bad enough, but what if racial tensions are running high and you're outnumbered?

Michael Fisher>> You see a lot of Hispanics running the building and only these few little straggly, like ten Blacks in the building. It's like forty Hispanics and like ten on each inmate just assaulting them, you know.

Val Zavala>> And then, there are all kinds of ways to give a child in need a little boost in life. Meet one man who's doing it with violins.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> Blacks know what it's like to be a minority in American society, but to be a minority in prison is an entirely different proposition, a more dangerous one. Latino inmates in California far outnumber Blacks and we met one young African American man who spent more than ten years in prison and gave us some very personal insights about what it's like to be Black behind bars. Michael Fisher grew up on the rough streets of Rubidoux. His uncles were from gangs and his grandmother was called the godmother of the hood.

Michael Fisher>> I remember the time when we was little, we used to make jokes about the gangbangers, homies and stuff when we was like nine and ten, like they're stupid. Lo and behold, seventeen or eighteen, I'm young and I lived right next to them, you know, knee deep in the same activity which led me to prison for a murder.

Val Zavala>> It was a drug deal gone bad. The charge was manslaughter. He got twelve years in prison on a plea bargain.

Michael Fisher>> That attorney just give it to me blunt. He's like the only reason they doing this is because you just killed another Black dude that would be a dope dealer. If it would have been a white dude, we'd be going to trial.

Val Zavala>> Whites, Blacks, Hispanics. Michael would soon learn that, in California prisons, Blacks are at a distinct disadvantage. In Los Angeles County jails and state prisons, Latino inmates outnumber Blacks by about two to one and inevitably the tensions erupt in violence.

[Film Clip]

Gregory Johnson>> This is the result of the things that are going on in the streets. When you have gang warfare going on in the street, they get arrested, they come to jail and the gang warfare carries over into the jail system.

Lee Baca>> The Latino inmates have been asked and directed by the Mexican Mafia to attack a Black randomly, to show superiority not only in the streets, but in the jails.

Mark Valente>> You have the southern Hispanics which are mainly from Fresno to the south. You have the northern Hispanics from Fresno up. You have the Blacks. You have the Crips. You have the Bloods. You have white Arian Brotherhood type gangs. And the inmates fight for control of what they have in here.

Val Zavala>> Michael says the Hispanics have the upper hand and not just because of their numbers.

Michael Fisher>> We're way more unorganized than they are, clearly. The Mafia, they got one head, one unit, whereas the Blacks as a whole, we're all over the place, Los Angeles, IE, this kind of Crips, that kind of Crips, that kind of Blood, you know. We got that attitude where nobody can tell us what to do, so we're not really --

Val Zavala>> -- you guys aren't unified.

Michael Fisher>> Not at all. It's amazing the structure that they have. Blacks believe that Hispanics like love that world, like their whole prison world, because, you know, they're just like way more of a force in there.

Najee Ali>> "People in our jail come from your community."

Val Zavala>> After racial violence broke out in Los Angeles County jails, a group of clergy and community leaders visited the facility in Castaic, north of Los Angeles.

Najee Ali>> "Good morning. We are back, and I brought some guests, some good friends, to see you."

Val Zavala>. Najee Ali, the Director of Project Islamic Hope, urged Blacks to help each other by uniting.

Najee Ali>> "You all have to stick together and be united, no matter what."

>> "Excuse me, brother."

Najee Ali>> "Yes, sir."

>> "We try to stay united as well as possible and set a self-discipline for all the brothers that's around here."

Najee Ali>> "Yes, sir."

>> "But we're always outnumbered. I know the population of the Hispanics are higher, but, I mean, come on, man, not five to one."

Najee Ali>> I get upset when I hear the media say they're fighting in the county jails. It's not a fight. It's an assault on these inmates.

Val Zavala>> Michael recalls from his time in prison how quickly things can get out of control.

Michael Fisher>> I remember this one young guy before I left, he got into a fight with an Hispanic.

Val Zavala>> Black and Hispanic?

Michael Fisher>> Yeah, a black dude out there trying to impress his big homies and assaulted an Hispanic coming back from chow. Now I guess he didn't know no idea about the numbers or whatever and, as soon as he did that, it was a mess. A lot of the Blacks were watching the Lakers game and we heard the alarm go off and we go look at the door and see what's up. You could see a lot of Hispanics just run in the building and only a few little straggly like ten Blacks in the building. It's like forty Hispanics and ten on each inmate just assaulting them, you know. But that one person do that silliness outside, they would like get them.

Gregory Johnson>> It's my belief that maybe as much as ninety-five percent of the inmates in this county jail system just want to do their time and go on to wherever they're going, whether that's back on the streets or one of the state prisons. But you have groups or you have people that rise up and become ring leaders or, as we call them, shot-callers, in charge. You have orchestrated and organized gangs within the system who become very organized and they devise plans to assault a member of the other race and that's really precisely what happened here.

Lee Baca>> If the offender is a Latino, you're required to back up that Latino if you're a Latino. And until the Latinos decide to stop attacking the Blacks, we're almost powerless to stop this from happening.

Michael Fisher>> It's really just one-sided. The Blacks really don't want no problem with that stuff.

Val Zavala>> And what about the smallest racial group, whites? Officials say that whites tend to ally with Latinos only because Latino numbers are greater. Add to this explosive mix, prison guards. Michael says, although many just do their jobs, there are some correctional officers, or COs, with biases of their own.

Michael Fisher>> Blacks got CO problems with some Crips or whatever, the Hispanics and the whites. The whites got some race society and be kicking like all racist inmates. They can create, you know, a lot of chaos too, you know. So the COs can play a big part, a major part, in that, you know.

Val Zavala>> Michael managed to survive twelve years behind bars and it was in his last year in the lockup that his life changed. That's when he met this man, Renford Reese, a professor of political science at Cal Poly Pomona. Reese had written several books, including one about young African American men.

Renford Reese>> And this book looked at how young Black men had embraced one monolithic model of Black masculinity and that's the gangster thug model.

Val Zavala>> Someone gave Michael a copy of one of Renford's books. It made a huge impact on him.

Michael Fisher>> I wrote him a letter telling him that I felt where he was coming from even though we came from different walks of life. He grew up with his mother and father and went to all these colleges and was well-educated. I had no beef with that. I feel we're all in this together for the bigger picture.

Renford Reese>> I was struck, one, by how eloquent the letter was and, two, by how candid he was, so I decided to go visit him. "Were you actually in the cell or you were out?"

Michael Fisher>> "When I wrote that? I mean, I wrote some of them pieces when I was a clerk."

Renford Reese>> And he has so much talent and he has so much potential, so I told him when he paroled in March of 2005, I said I will mentor you. I will guide you. I will make sure you don't go back and get caught up in the system.

Val Zavala>> In fact, one of Michael's letters describing different kinds of prison guards is now part of Renford's latest book. The book is called "Prison Race".

Renford Reese>> What are we talking about when we say prison race? You know, young Black men are six times more likely to go to prison for some crime than someone who is white for the same crime.

Val Zavala>> Renford is not surprised by the racial violence in our prisons. He says the system is bursting at the seams, that politics and special interests like prison guard unions have blocked reform, and that education and rehabilitation programs have been taken away.

Renford Reese>> And in some cases, you even take away recreational opportunities from inmates. What do they have to embrace? They have nothing to embrace but bravado and you see the consequences of this hyper machismo manifested in the prison riots.

Val Zavala>> So how do we curb racial violence in our prisons and jails? Sheriff Lee Baca says the answer is not more prison guards.

Lee Baca>> The whole dorm on the Black side is going to line up behind the Black guy, and the entire dorm of Latinos is going to line up on the Latino side. Twice as many deputies are not going to stop that fight.

Val Zavala>> But separating the races might and, for the time being, he has put African American and Latino prisoners in separate areas. But complete segregation isn't practical.

Gregory Johnson>> You can't run a jail like that. It's far too difficult to keep the different races segregated because, as you can see, this place is like a big city. There's a lot of inmate movement in here. We transport hundreds of inmates to court every day back and forth. We have a clinic where they get medical services. They go to different programs. It's not only a pain in the neck, but I think ultimately different races are going to have to learn to coexist.

Val Zavala>> As for Michael Fisher, he completed his sentence a year ago. He now works for a moving company, talks to students about his experiences and writes rap music.

Michael Fisher>> "Like I said before, going back to prison just isn't crackin'. A brother that's lazy and slackin' and lackin' ambition and drive. I see it as a easy mission making this transition from the pen to outside."

Val Zavala>> With Renford's help, Michael hopes never to see the inside of a prison cell again.

Michael Fisher>> I've been out a year. Been working ever since then. You got to want to help yourself and, when that happens, doors open up.

[Film Clip]

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> It was an idealistic experiment in housing the homeless. Take them and put them into a tent-like village until more permanent housing could be found. Well, that experiment came to be and the Dome Village has been helping the homeless for the past ten years. So why is it closing down? Sam Louie has the story.

Sam Louie>> It looks like a cluster of igloos nestled near downtown Los Angeles under a busy branch of the 110 Freeway. It's called Dome Village, an experiment in housing, simple, ecological living for the homeless. But after thirteen years, this experiment is coming to an end. Ted Hayes is the founder.

Ted Hayes>> Dome Village was birthed out of a plan to end homelessness called the National Homeless Plan, which we've been promoting for years.

Sam Louie>> The goal was to use the village as a temporary home and transition people from the village into permanent housing. Was it successful? In a word, no.

Ted Hayes>> I would say maybe one percent, if not less than that, has actually been able to get on their feet, as it were, get a job, get a house, without government assistance. Very, very few. That's just not true of Dome Village. It's true of all the programs in Los Angeles.

Sam Louie>> Since its inception, Hayes estimates that more than four hundred people have transitioned out of the village, but very few became independent. Hayes believes that it's not for lack of will power by the homeless, but a lack of affordable housing.

Ted Hayes>> Once you get them in and you so-call rehabilitate them and prepare them, where are they going to live? You cannot put all these people in permanent houses in Los Angeles County. It creates more density. They can't afford it. These people have got to go somewhere other than to jail.

Sam Louie>> The community itself has worked fairly well for more than a decade. The twenty fiberglass domes are fuel-efficient and set clear boundaries between neighbors.

Ted Hayes>> We like the structure. It forces us to use space. Too often, homeless are stacked on top of each other, beside each other, underneath each other. That is not psychologically good. Too much density. We have a mixture of men and women here. Most shelters don�t do that. They separate men and women, especially single people. We have married people mixed with single people. We have children. We have senior citizens. We have pets.

Sam Louie>> So if Dome Village residents fail to move into permanent housing, is there another solution? Hayes believes there is. It's a bold idea that would need cooperation from the federal government.

Ted Hayes>> But that's calling for ultimately the transitioning of people from the urban center to former military bases that we transform into chartered townships, and you mix that homeless population with non-homeless people and professionals. Basically, you break off a piece of Los Angeles and you transplant it at this former military base turned into a township.

Sam Louie>> Hayes would like to see the residents of Dome Village be the first to live on a former military base, but setting up a township would be complicated. He admits that it doesn't seem likely. In the meantime, this long-time temporary housing is slated to shut down by July. The landowner is asking for a significant rent increase beyond what the village can afford. Hayes says that they had advanced warning and the residents here will manage to find shelter elsewhere. But for Hayes, something larger is lost.

Ted Hayes>> What I'm concerned about is the idea that will lead to a plan to end homelessness. The billboards, as it were, will be removed. As wonderful as Dome Village is, it's the most unique, innovative approach to homelessness in the modern western world, yet we cannot mainstream these people. There's no place I can send them to. I can get them in and work on them, but no place for them to go.

Sam Louie>> Dome Village has succeeded in one respect. It has put a roof over the heads of hundreds of homeless people for thirteen years. Still, it's clear that finding permanent housing for Los Angeles County's eighty-eight thousand homeless will take more than a village. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> You're about to meet a man who has a firm belief that, if you want to give children in poor neighborhoods a leg up on life, give them a musical instrument. His name is Peter Quesado and I met him more than fifteen years ago. What was he doing then? And what's he doing now? Take a look.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Peter Quesado has come to Bushnell Way Elementary School in East Los Angeles with something very unusual: violins.

Peter Quesado>> "We have to check these out because they're brand new, totally untried and they will be just grand for the kids, you know."

Val Zavala>> Few children in this neighborhood have ever held a violin, much less learned to play one.

[Film Clip]

Peter Quesado>> "This is "Turkey in the Straw" in Yiddish."

>> "It's what now?"

Peter Quesado>> "Turkey in the Straw."

>> "In Yiddish (laughter)."

Peter Quesado>> "Yeah, this is in Yiddish."

[Film Clip]

Peter Quesado>> "Thank you very much."

Val Zavala>> Peter has been introducing classical music to kids in less advantaged neighborhoods for more than three decades. I met him in the late 1980's when we did this story on the Barrio Symphony. This was Peter back then.

[Film Clip]

Peter Quesado>> The reason I decided to call this the Barrio Symphony as opposed to the Hispanic or Chicano Symphony was to include everyone in the Barrio. In thirty-seven years that I've been attending the Los Angeles Philharmonic, there have only been six Hispanic names. Every time I tell that story, I feel outraged because, as I say, this is the Los Angeles Philharmonic and not the New England Philharmonic.

Val Zavala>> Today, he's a little grayer, still charming, humble and completely committed to his single purpose.

Peter Quesado>> "When you develop the brain with music, you open it to literature, to the mathematics, to all sorts of things, poetry and what have you, and it makes a more wholesome, meaning complete, person."

>> "We have a very special guest today and a big surprise for you boys and girls. I'd like to introduce Mr. Peter Quesado from the Barrio Symphony who is here to present something to us, so let's give him a hand, please."

Peter Quesado>> "Thank you very much. Today on behalf of the Barrio Symphony, we would like to give you from our heart to Donalind Dominguez, can you come up here, please?"

Peter Quesado>> Today you saw our focus on violins because the spring programs in the schools have suffered terribly. Band instruments are easier to learn. They're more durable and it takes less to learn. A string instrument takes forever to learn, to get professional at it, so we need to start at a younger age, so the Barrio Symphony will be doing a concert.

Val Zavala>> Peter's mother encouraged him to take up the violin when he was a boy. He worked hard, went to a local music conservatory, but then got married and had kids and his first love had to be set aside. But then his daughter's high school was producing a musical. He volunteered as music director and his first love was reborn.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> In 1974, with support from musicians in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he managed to start the Barrio Symphony. At that time, there was a young violinist, Celina Gomez. How did she get her violin?

Celina Gomez>> Well, we didn't have enough money. I mean, I'm not saying that we were poor, but we did not have enough money to buy any kind of good instrument. So we went to this dealer, this kind of like recycling thing, and we bought an instrument for seventy-five dollars. But the thing is, it didn't have a case. I would always bring my instrument in a bag.

Peter Quesado>> "Your own violin to have and to hold."

Val Zavala>> It's stories like hers that inspired Peter to expand his mission. Now he gets supporters to buy violins or donate old instruments, cellos, clarinets, and give them to children who could never afford one of their own.

Peter Quesado>> "Miss Amanda Morales, here is your very own violin to have and to hold. You're getting married to a violin. Congratulations."

Peter Quesado>> You saw me marry them to their instruments today and that's how most of us feel. This instrument becomes your life partner. No matter what happens, you're married, divorced, whatever, that instrument is always there faithful and true to you. As I told them earlier, this instrument can take you all over the world, you know, and you get paid for going all over the world. It's a lot of fun.

Peter Quesado>> "I don't think I'd be able to see the Pyramids if it hadn't been for my violin. It's wonderful. Another thing I want to say to you, boys and girls, you continue with your instruments and they become your magic carpet. What do I mean by this? Well, as a boy, I started about the same age you all did. I have been to Egypt. I have been to Jerusalem. I have been to Europe, France, London. I have been to China, Japan, the Philippines, South America, Latin America, Mexico. I just got back from Dearborn, Michigan where we were all snowed in -- as far away as Dearborn, yeah.

But the thing is, what took me there? My violin. My violin took me there. I got to see the Pyramids because of my violin. I got to see Jerusalem because of my violin. I even got to see the Hawaiian Islands because of my violin. Stay with your violin and God will continue to bless you with many, many blessings, but number one, it will make you happy. Those who hear you will be very happy.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> The first notes are a little squeaky and the violins need tuning. They're also a little bigger than the girls are used to. But to Peter, this sound is as sweet as a newborn's first cry.

Peter Quesado>> "The level of playing that you heard today may not have been the kind of level that you might hear in a more sophisticated neighborhood, but the heart, the warmth, the excitement was there. It was thrilling to me. Thanks to the fathers and mothers." It's my hope that the parents will show up with the children, further causing them greater bond.

Val Zavala>> And what might these young musicians sound like in a few years?

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> If you'd like to learn more about the Barrio Symphony or donate an instrument, you can call Peter at (323) 466-4425. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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