Score one for ignorance: The City Council in my hometown of
Salinas ended the year by voting six to one (not even close) to
shut down all city libraries. Our neighbor 25 miles to the south
will now become the largest city in the entire U.S. without a
library.
Score one for ignorance: The City Council in my hometown of Salinas ended the year by voting six to one (not even close) to shut down all city libraries. Our neighbor 25 miles to the south will now become the largest city in the entire U.S. without a library. The library in the Prunedale area (pop. 17,000) north of Salinas will be the only other remaining library serving the population from Salinas to Gilroy. It scares me to see this happening so close to my current home; I hope that Gilroy would never allow this to happen.
“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness,” (Confucius).
Score two for the bonfire lit by my friend Sandra Gomez. She first came to the area when her husband Frank Gomez was assigned to be pastor to the Hispanic community in the heart of east Salinas. Sandra Gomez felt trepidation about living in a community plagued by racial tensions, gang activity, and the struggles of uneducated immigrants. She couldn’t make tamales. She couldn’t even speak Spanish. When she first began volunteering at the church, Sandra asked the children, “Who plans to go to college?” Their answer stunned her: “What’s college?”
Thus began her campaign to educate them about the world around them and what their future opportunities could be. Over the course of the past five years, she has created a daily after-school program and a family recreational time at East Salinas Family Center.
Making herself a one-woman whirlwind facilitating connections between the wealthier parts of Salinas and the lower socio-economic neighborhoods, she has inspired high school students from Palma High to begin volunteering as mentors in the after-school program. “Now for the first time our kids know other kids who are going off to college,” she says. Many of the children are starting to see a world open before them that might include higher education. Some have begun to say, “I am going to college.”
Kids who used to play in the streets come instead to the church now. She has made the church a problem-solving haven for the youth of the neighborhood. When you ask children what this church means to them, they answer, “My second home.”
“The key is that they know they are loved here,” Sandra tells me. Everywhere I look, she points out the generosity of contributors from the Salinas community and from Monterey and Santa Clara Counties: games, puzzles, roller blades, dolls, books, school supplies, basketball hoops, furniture, a new paint job, and 12 PCs-all donated.
She and her husband are always working to expand the center’s focus to include such programs as AA meetings, education in budgeting, parenting, preventative medicine, and arts projects as alternatives to gang activity.
What Sandra thought of as the weaknesses of not being able to cook and not being bilingual were transformed. “With God, my flaws become blessings,” she says. Now when the women of the church are busy, she watches the children, and in her company the children further develop their English skills. The mothers have been so pleased by her work with their children that they have presented her with an award. She is a bridge between worlds, and she inspires us to ask ourselves for the new year, “What weaknesses do I have that might instead become strengths?”
