In the group’s year-and-a-half of existence, members of of Men Making a Change (MMAC) have instituted an organic-food program to provide healthier alternatives at a local middle school. They are in the midst of launching a supper club for homeless children. And they have even been to Washington and successfully lobbied against a funding cut to the Long Beach Community Action Partnership (LBCAP).
When Kirsten Hale heard about all this, she was impressed enough to want to help raise MMAC’s public profile, which she’ll facilitate at Friday’s “Kick Back with MMAC,” a quasi-fundraising event—”quasi-” because it’s a suggested but by no means required $5 donation to attend—designed to introduce the community to what these young men are doing to better their immediate world.
MMAC was founded through a grant from the California Endowment to LBCAP “to increase the capacity of young men of color within the Long Beach Building Healthy Communities target area to engage in health promoting policy advocacy efforts that are most relevant to minority community members in Long Beach,” says Maeve Milstead, director of Youth Programs at LBCAP.
“Our goal was to better ourselves as men before we started trying to better our community,” says Rico Blevins, 18, one of MMAC’s charter members. Such self-betterment included tutelage at Toastmasters International, which helped members improve their speaking abilities and social etiquette.
“You get a feeling of accomplishment when you speak to people,” he says, “and after you’re done feel you’ve made a difference.”
They’ve definitely made a difference. There were the meetings on Capitol Hill with Representatives Laura Richardson and Grace Napolitano that helped salvage LBCAP funding. There is the farm-to-table program at Lindbergh Middle School, some of whose food comes straight from LBCAP’s own garden. And then there’s the fledging Supper Club.
“The reality for many of the youth that we serve is that their last meal of the day is provided by noon, and they often go to bed hungry without a substantial dinner,” says Milstead. “Sadly, the dinners served to our youth living in homeless shelters consist of ‘food’ items such as instant potatoes paired with a mystery meat. [… O]ur Supper Club will provide farm-to-table dinners to the youth living in The Villages at Cabrillo homeless shelters and subsidized housing, and will eventually expand thought various sites in Long Beach and Compton.”
And even what MMAC has done, they are looking to do better. MMAC member Wynton Johnson, 24, points out that even though all excess food at Lindbergh is collected and used to feed the chickens at the LBCAP garden and all packaging is biodegradable, MMAC isn’t satisfied.
“We’re still working on the [utensils],” he says. “I think we’re going to be using potato starch.”
He also notes that MMAC sees Lindbergh as only a beginning and hopes to implement the program throughout the Long Beach Unified School District. They also have more plans for The Villages at Cabrillo, as they aim to keep the Southern California International Gateway railyard project from being developed so close by and negatively impacting the air quality near so many children.
It’s that kind of ambition and engagement that led Hale, a holistic living coach, to want to help promote MMAC, even though she has no experience with event organizing.
“I got talking to Wynton and Diwaine [Smith], and they were telling me about their passion for eliminating the food desert up in West Long Beach, [about] school kids not having access to anything other than liquor stores—you know, chips, soda, all that good stuff,” she says. “They were really tying in the food stuff with the politics and low-income issues in general. […] I asked them: ‘Where’s your Facebook page? Where’s your Website? How can I get in touch with you?’ And they said, ‘Most of us don’t even have computer access’ when they’re not at LBCAP. They said they need some social-media support and that kind of stuff. That’s what put the seed in my mind to do something. Because these guys are going somewhere, and I don’t want to see it dissolve from a lack of funds.”
Another issue MMAC strives to impact is gang activity, which has hit many MMAC members where they live. Milstead vividly recalls visiting Smith after he was victimized by gang members.
“He was lying in the hospital bed after having been shot and having his throat slit ear-to-ear,” she says. “He could barely speak. But he looked up and said, ‘This means we have to do more.'”
Julian Cohee, 19, felt called to quash gang violence after his cousin died in his arms.
“He didn’t have any gang affiliation. And they took his life, shot him and killed him,” Cohee says. “He looked up at me, and I remember his last words: ‘It sucks to die hungry.’ […]I believe seeing that made me grow up faster. […] It’s my task to prevent gang violence and make sure kids are healthy. […] I believe that if I passed up this chance to give back to my community, then I would be living for nothing.”
{loadposition latestnews}Blevins’s losses have been less dramatic but every bit as indicative of the problem that so disproportionately plagues young men of color.
“I noticed growing up is that I used to have a lot of friends I would play tag and hide-and-seek and have a lot of fun with, and as I grew up I started losing these friends to gangs and gang violence,” he says. “I would stop seeing them at school and wonder where they were. I’d ask them and they’d say, ‘I just didn’t feel like going to school today.’ Some of them would go to juvenile hall or jail; some of them joined gangs. It hurt me, watching my friends go away like that.”
True to form, MMAC is looking to attack the gang problem from whatever angles they can. They’ve already been to Sacramento as part of an effort to obtain uniform school discipline guidelines in order to help keep borderline kids from stepping on the road to ruin.
“Once kids start getting suspended from school, they start looking for other options, such as gangs, selling drugs, and stuff like that, [which] all leads down to prison,” Blevins says. “It’s the school-to-prison pipeline. We’re trying to create a healthier next generation.”
Taking an active hand in positive change is the MMAC way.
“I’m not the type of guy to just complain about a whole lot of stuff; [I believe that] if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, ” Johnson says. “So I was actively seeking [to find out] who’s working on what problem, and how can I fit into what they’re doing. So when I heard there was a group of young men that were advocating for community needs, I really just gravitated to it.”
“It’s like a fraternity,” says Cohee of MMAC. “When it’s time to [address] a need, the members show up.”
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Show up to Californians for Justice (115 W. 4th St., LB 90802) from 7PM to 10 PM Friday to meet these young men and find out more about the change they are making. Poetry, music, and samples of food from MMAC’s farm-to-table program. Suggested donation (tax-deductible): $5. All donations go toward the purchase of temperature-control food bags MMAC needs for temperature-controledl bags for Supper Club food. (Change sometmes costs money, you know.) For more information, contact Kirsten Hale 510.828.3286 or [email protected].