Your Message is Powerful, Grandchildren of Cesar Chavez Tell San Leandro High Students

Through the rest of the month, about 60 students at will each forgo food for a day to show their support for unity and non-violence on campus.

The Fast for Nonviolence, currently in its fourth year, is hosted by the San Leandro Academy for Multimedia (SLAM) at the high school.

The themes for this year's fast are unity, embracing diversity and accepting each other’s differences. Each day those students who are fasting will show their multimedia work — reflections on these themes — to their peers.

It is taking place during the school's ongoing “Season of Service, Period of Peace” service-learning project, which for runs 10 weeks, from Martin Luther King Jr. Day to Cesar Chavez Day.

Service learning is a teaching method which integrates service to the community with classroom instruction and reflection to enhance the learning experience and foster civic responsibility.

During Season of Service, each week different student groups create activities that promote nonviolence on campus and in the community.

It was SLAM students’ overwhelming interest in participating in the fast that helped inspire staff to create Season of Service three years ago to involve students campus-wide in promoting nonviolence, according to Evan Goldberg of the Alameda County Office of Education.

Goldberg helps staff at schools across Alameda County and the Bay Area develop violence reduction plans, character education and service-learning curriculum. He manages a grant-funded nonviolence program at the high school that makes the project possible.

On Monday, Feb. 28, the kick-off for the fast, SLAM students gathered for the first time in the new Arts Education Center to watch a video featuring each other’s work, view a presentation from Goldberg and hear from Cesar Chavez’s grandchildren Anthony Chavez and Julie Rodriguez.

Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American farm worker, civil rights activist and labor leader who fasted numerous times to raise awareness for social issues and nonviolence and did most of his organizing work in California.

Rodriguez and Chavez, who have visited SLHS before during the Season of Service, encouraged the students to continue their message of peace and unity, and to take advantage of the technological and social tools at their disposal to organize.

“To see the message you were able to convey through your artistic abilities was really powerful,” Rodriguez said. It’s about using one’s skills to “really carry a message and have an impact,” she said.

Chavez agreed, encouraging SLAM students to be a model for their peers.

“I use you guys as a star example when I visit other campuses,” Chavez told the students. “I would love to see you go out and share this message [...] I really do feel this is something that other communities want.”

Chavez and Rodriguez said afterward that they have visited about a dozen schools in the county so far and see their role as planting seeds of change among students.

Service learning can help students to begin to think about their own identities and what they want to accomplish in their lives, Chavez said.

“These are such big questions,” he said. “It’s been a lot of fun raising their understanding.”

Chavez said SLHS, and SLAM in particular, has been so successful with service learning because talented students and teachers have been willing to engage with one another in a close-knit community.

Instructors are fasting along with the students during the month. On Monday, Phil Hargrave, who teaches animation, photography and video production at the academy, fasted with students.

Tony Farley, who teaches physics and various media classes for SLAM, and is a Patch contributor, told students to welcome questions from peers about the fasting as an opportunity to connect with others and raise awareness.

“That’s what this is all about,” he said.

In his presentation, Goldberg urged the students to have the  courage to work to change their communities every day and not just during the Season of Service. 

“It sounds corny for an old guy to stand in front of you saying you can change the world. Except it’s true,” he said. “With every ounce of love in me, you guys have some greatness in you.”

Goldberg is developing a smaller version of Season of Service at John Muir Middle School.