With Santa Ana’s soaring gang violence, the non-profit group Santa Ana Unidos work is more important than ever.
“How can you critique a rose with damaged petals when it had to grow from concrete?” asks Johnathan Hernandez. He’s referring to roses in the concrete, the motto behind his non-profit Santa Ana Unidos, an intervention and prevention program that utilizes alternative forms of rehabilitation to combat incarceration. Having almost been incarcerated himself, Hernandez understands the odds against children growing up under negative circumstances.
Since 1980, California has built 22 prisons, but just one UC campus. Spending on prisons and jails has increased three times faster than spending on K-12 schools in California, according to a new U.S. Department of Education report. Hernandez’s passion for helping Santa Ana’s youth stems from his upbringing, “I was born into the Artesia Pilar neighborhood and my dad was the president of the gang where I grew up,” he says. “I was surrounded by gangs, drugs and violence – Santa Ana Unidos is about breaking the narratives that were forced upon me.”
Hernandez explains that roses in the concrete was inspired by the poetry of Tupac Shakur, the teachings of Dr. Tarcio Vinicio Lara and Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade and his book The Art of Critical Pedagogy. Dr. Andrade has been teaching for over 25 years, is an associate professor at San Francisco State University and founder of a community school in Oakland called Roses In Concrete. “Andrade showed me this alternative approach to education and self actualization.”
“Roses in the concrete has become this platform for students to share stories about themselves and to share stories about different struggles that they’ve endured,” he says. “Now it’s a movement, I have kids in juvenile hall sending letters about their stories.”
At just 25 years old, Hernandez is responsible for improving the lives of over 500 students through narrative therapy, implementing programs that range from boxing, gardening, and poetry, to music. He’s held events representing undocumented students by hosting a voter registration booth led by DACA students and kids from Unidos. “They ended up registering over 1300 people,” he says. “Instead of being upset about the election outcome, our retaliation to Donald Trump was having these undocumented students register people to vote.”
In 2017 Unidos was joined by organizations like Faces of Santa Ana, Inspyr Arts Studio, Resilience OC to support the fight for Schools Not Prisons, calling for an end to overspending on prisons and calling for a new vision of community safety centered on education, health and investing in youth. “It’s about the kids growing up in the barrios that think they’re awaiting a concrete cell,” Hernandez says. “Those are the kids I want to get to.”
The OC Weekly is happy to announce that the inaugural Viva Los Tacos will benefit Santa Ana Unidos. And at the festival, Santa Ana Unidos plans to share a message of love, peace and positivity in honor of suicide awareness month. “Approximately one in 10 juvenile detainees have thought about suicide in their first six months of incarceration, and eleven percent attempt suicide,” says Hernandez. “Our response to this crisis is a music performance of rapper Logic’s 1-800-273-8255 and shed light on how we need to start healing each other.”
Cynthia Rebolledo covers anything and everything food, culture and spirits.