Violence Prevention with Jasmine and Angelina

Angelina Rivas, Class of 2022

Violence makes headlines.  Violence prevention doesn't usually reach the front page or the television screen.  

Let's take a moment to turn away from the horror of an 18-year-old murdering ten innocent people in a supermarket because he was a hate-filled racist.

Instead, let's remember the 3.7 million students who are graduating from high school this year in the USA.  They are hard-working and ambitious.  Most of them sat in classrooms and played sports with students of many races and nationalities.

Many of them marched in bands or participated in clubs made up of Black, Asian, Latinx, White, and Indigenous students.  They worked together to do community service.  About 60% of these graduates have earned college admittance and plan to start another 4-5 years of academic work this coming fall.

Today I want to honor two hard-working students who are not only graduating from high school but working to prevent violence.

Jasmine Lopez and Angelina Rivas were among the 200 or more seniors honored last night in a Scholarship and Honors Program for outstanding students graduating from Santa Monica High School.  

They were also chosen for this year's Kathy McTaggart Scholarship for Violence Prevention. 

Jasmine commuted into Santa Monica from a neighborhood that used to be plagued with drugs, gangs, and violence.  

"The only thing that made me feel safer were the bars on all our windows," she wrote in her application essay.

But then her family started a local Neighborhood Watch, got the Next Door app, and began hosting a monthly meeting in their house.  They targeted a corner shop that appeared to be selling drugs.

Anne Linstatter with Jasmine Lopez

"We called the police so much and put that corner shop on their radar," Jasmine recalls.  "Sure enough, it was a human trafficking shop that laundered money as well as a warehouse for illegal drugs." 

After a SWAT raid, the owner was arrested, the shop was sold, and the neighborhood became calm and safe.

At Santa Monica High School, Jasmine became active in student government, cheerleading, and the Latinx Leaders Club (president during her senior year).

When she was presented with an award for leadership in student government, another student leader described her as "not afraid to speak her opinion."  

She plans to attend Mount St. Mary's University in west Los Angeles, majoring in business. 

Angelina Rivas is the other winner of this year's scholarship for violence prevention.  She lives in the Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica.  Both she and Jasmine held part-time jobs during three of their four years of high school.  

Angelina received the McTaggart scholarship because of her work to combat domestic abuse and teen dating violence.  She has been a peer leader for Margaret's Place, an intervention program to provide mental health services for students who have been impacted by violence in their home, school, or community. 

She helped coordinate campus organizations on teen violence, sexual assault awareness, and mental health awareness, making flyers, announcements, and wristbands.

Angelina will be attending Stanford University, and she wants to work for the Human Rights Council of the UN. 

Have you found ways to counteract the violence we hear about so often in the news?

Perhaps you are focusing on gun control or better understanding among people of various races, but don't forget the graduates bravely moving on to build the future.

One small way to help them is to contribute to the Katherine McTaggart Scholarship for Violence Prevention at Santa Monica High School. 

Kathy

Dr. Antonio Shelton, Principal of SMHS,
with college counselor Julie Honda
and Samohi Alumni donor
Evelyn Lauchenauer

 was a licensed therapist who worked with at-risk teens and their families for 16 years as a school-community partnership coordinator in the Santa Monica-Malibu School District.  She died in 2012. 

Send your check to:

Santa Monica Education Foundation 

c/o Samohi Scholarships

1645 - 16th Street 

Santa Monica CA 90404.  

Make it payable to Samohi Scholarship Fund, specifying McTaggart Violence Prevention for 2023 seniors.

Thank you for joining with Jasmine and Angelina to promote awareness of mental health and nonviolent solutions to problems.

For more photos, see https://photos.app.goo.gl/w4aGMjQNg7dSvshJ6

Students preventing violence

Juan Castillo with his father in 2016
Photo courtesy of Santa Monica Daily Press

Deaths from gun violence continue even though it's only the Covid-19 deaths that reach the headlines.

A 31-year-old woman died a week ago in Whittier CA after being shot:

Danielle Susan Rojas, a 31-year-old white female, died Friday, March 27, after being shot near 7647 Pickering Ave. in Whittier, according to Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner's records.

Danielle was one of 524 people killed in Los Angeles County in the last twelve months.   https://homicide.latimes.com/  

This total is much larger than the 78 deaths from Covid-19 reported so far in Los Angeles County (as of Thursday, April 2). 

We all need to keep up our efforts to prevent gun violence, suicide, and other forms of violence. 

Here in Santa Monica, four friends of Kathy McTaggart banded together in 2013 to set up a scholarship in her memory for violence prevention.  Kathy was a child and family therapist who worked with at-risk kids in the SM-MUSD; she died of lung cancer at age 69 although she had never smoked.

California schools are probably closed for the rest of the school year ending in June, but students are completing courses online and some will be graduating and receiving scholarships and awards. 

This year's Katherine McTaggart Memorial Scholarship for Violence Prevention will be awarded to Samantha Nicole Castillo.  She showed interest in violence prevention by volunteering at the Virginia Avenue Park Teen Center for three summers and during the school years.  She also volunteered with Apex for Kids.  

An AYSO and club soccer player, she participated in the cheer team and pep squad during all four years at Santa Monica High School. Now as a senior coach, she helps new girls learn cheers and also teaches them how to be confident in themselves.  A graduate of the Edison Language Academy, Samantha plans to attend college and major in business administration.

Her cousin, Juan Castillo, graduated from Santa Monica High School in 2016 but was killed on  Feb. 26, 2017, in a random act of gun violence only 12 blocks from the high school.  He played on the varsity football team at Samohi.

"I have always felt unsafe," Samantha says about her neighborhood with its stabbings, shootings, graffiti, and vandalism.  She lives near Cloverfield and Pico, just a mile from where I live, close to Santa Monica College.  

Other worthy candidates also applied for the violence prevention award.  One works on a Teen Line for suicide prevention, and another does after-school tutoring.  One young man took a conflict de-escalation course at his church.  There are many types of physical violence such as shootings, suicides, bullying, and domestic abuse.

You can join in and support student efforts toward peacemaking, conflict de-escalation, and violence prevention.  

Send your donation made out to "Samohi Scholarship Fund" with the tagline "Katherine McTaggart" to P.O. Box 5592, Santa Monica CA 90409-5592.

See also:

The Homicide Report, Los Angeles Times

Shooting in 2017 in Santa Monica

Convicted felon shot Juan Castillo

the

Rest in Peace, Juan

I walked to the site where Juan Sebastian Castillo's body was found at 5 am on Sunday.

Flowers and candles mark the ground where he lay on 16th Street, one hundred feet south of Arizona Avenue.  Two blue star-shaped helium balloons wave in the breeze, anchored by a framed photo of Juan.

At the corner of Arizona and 16th, occupying a full square block, sits UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital. 

Probably Juan was dropped here instead of taken to the ER because those who brought him did not want to be questioned by the police.  

I felt such sadness for Juan and his family. 

A tall, husky football player, he lost all his future years. 

May he rest in peace.  

May violence be stopped in Santa Monica.

May his family be comforted.

May his older brother, a student at San Francisco State University, be a man of peace and a support to his parents.

A few years ago some friends and I set up a scholarship as one step toward preventing violence in Santa Monica.  

The Katherine McTaggart Scholarship for Violence Prevention is awarded each year to a graduate of Santa Monica High School who demonstrates an interest in violence prevention, shows resilience, and plans to attend college.  He or she must have financial need as well as academic proficiency. 

Kathy was a counselor at Santa Monica HS who worked with high-risk and gang-involved students.  She was also a therapist, and community activist in fighting violence.  

She died in 2012 as a result of non small-cell lung cancer, never having smoked.  The scholarship continues in her memory.

If you would like to contribute to violence prevention in memory of Juan Castillo, please send a check to Samohi Scholarship Fund c/o Julie Honda, Santa Monica High School, 601 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica CA 90405.  Your check is tax-deductible.  

Or contribute to Juan's GoFundMe page:  https://www.gofundme.com/justice-for-juan-castillo

Thank you!

Two sides of Santa Monica

Poverty, crime, and gang shootings are the side of Santa Monica tourists don't usually see.

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_23476562/shootings-show-troubled-side-santa-monica

We moved here for the ocean breeze and the schools, but we soon learned that our kids' school (Edison Learning Academy) is in the heart of the tough part of the city.

The shootings on June 7 began half a block from that school.  Then four days later a gang-related shooting occurred with one person killed.

For a few years I took part in a violence prevention coalition, but that group disbanded, and the Pico National Network in LA County now does some of the same work we did.  http://www.piconetwork.org/about/history

We live on the second street south of Pico Boulevard, very close to the two-year college and to the working-class neighborhood where kids without jobs get into gangs and occasional shoot-ups flare up.

How to reach young kids and teens before violence begins?

The Pico Youth & Family Center, located next to the high school, sponsored a vigil and memorial walk from site to site of the recent shootings, and the group also works with at-risk kids.  
http://picoyouth.org/

All we can do is start in small ways.

Another small way is to donate to the Katherine K. McTaggart Scholarship for Violence Prevention:
Santa Monica High School Alumni Association
P.O. Box 5592
Santa Monica CA 90409-5592