This interview is part of an occasional series showcasing different inspirational community organizers who are part of the NorCal Resilience Network. Meet Keneda Gibson!
Tell us about yourself. How has your background influenced the path you are on today?
I am a 3rd generation Oakland resident. Most of my family has been pushed out from this area. I really see the shift here, the shift away from community. I just didn’t want to be pushed out. I want to be able to manifest the visions I have for this community. I want to find ways to inspire people.
Tell us about your resilience hub, and about your neighborhood projects. What is your vision? What are you excited about?
I’m excited about having turned my yard into a community garden, to help people during the Pandemic, to start with! I worked with Sankofa Garden, and am still working on it. It’s in a bit of a pause right now. We are tearing down structures to provide a space so that people can teach workshops. One friend one wants to teach movement meditation, and others want to teach youth to build their own bikes. We also want to work with students from Castlemont High, have them get service learning credits while they are working in our garden. We’d also love to host story slams, getting people to tell their stories about living in Oakland.
I’m also super interested in integrating art. I want to teach workshops, how to do artivism. I want to be taking over spaces, to be put up murals, and teaching people how to create using wheat paste.
Neighbors aren’t not as interested until things starting to move. But the neighbors with small kids are excited. People walk up to inquire, about the space, and a neighbor up the street is fleshing out ideas about this movement to stop the violence by working with you. If people see that more productive things are happening, there is less time for violence. We want to give kids ideas of things to get into instead of getting into trouble.
What kinds of other projects are you working on to make a difference in your community?
I just got a Fellowship working with East Oakland Collective. We are working on a transportation project, getting people information they need to switch to electric vehicles, and to find financing options for vehicles. We are also bringing free shuttles from the bus stop at 73rd, to the (MLK) Shoreline, to activate the shoreline – to inspire more families from Oakland to use shoreline, and make it more accessible. We are looking at beautifying the shoreline, and creating a park there.
I’m also talking with someone named Red, who will help turn the cellar in the back into an underground growhouse, to grow things underground. This whole process could turn into a series of videos.
Who are some of your biggest inspirations, both historical figures and other changemakers in our community?
My biggest inspiration is simply remaining rooted, if I could show people in community that that can happen. I’m inspired by inspiring people.
I’m also inspired by a group in East Palo Alto called the HoodSquad (run by my friend JT). He created Hood News, which is creating news in the community. He got together with a group of friends, who are donating home cooked meals, and then distributing them. They also create videos about the projects.
What do you do to stay present and refreshed? What kind of self-care do you use so that you are not burned out?
I’m trying to figure out this part! I am periodically taking breaks.
What kinds of advice would you give to other changemakers, who are just getting started?
This work can be daunting sometimes. Fatigue is real, but rewards are great.
I can’t state enough the importance of drinking the right water. We are working on a water filter machine, filtering water for the community.
Always look at different problems – look at it with solutions mindset. How can we fix this problem?
And also get plenty of sunshine!
What are the barriers to change — systemic and interpersonal?
Funding is the biggest barrier. We did started a collective with some friends. It’s based on Mutual aid – if you buy products, you are funding our Mutual Aid work. It’s called Imdiggininus and also connected with Castlemont, Sankofa Garden, and Black Earth Farms.
What do you need? What would you ask from people who want to support you?
I’m always on lookout for supplies, and volunteers to help with different projects and funding. I would like to connect with a nonprofit, for as a fiscal sponsor.
Don’t let anybody tell you that they know how this is going to end: The Maxwell Park Frick Seminary
Climate change is a global problem, but Laura Nicodemus is stepping up to be a part of a local solution. In this interview, Nicodemus talks about starting resilience hubs in her own neighborhood, and how one person can make a difference.
Tell us about your resilience hub team.
Our team actually is just me and my husband. We’re going to be pulling in other people in. We live in Maxwell Park in Oakland. We’re really starting from scratch, I have a lot of neighborhood organizing skills and we’ve lived in our neighborhood for seventeen years. In terms of getting a resilience hub going, we’re at the beginning. It’s a little daunting, so part of the challenge is… getting used to dealing with the challenge.
So, why did you want to start a resilience hub?
Because it made sense to us to be a part of something that had more aspects to it than just disaster preparation. Personally, I think a lot of people lead really isolated lives. We need to be connecting more and depending on each other and helping each other out. This is a really good way of doing that. Also, it just makes sense to put different aspects of resilience altogether. In terms of disaster preparation, it’s a good excuse for us to get our acts together. Something that just occurred to me this morning was like, setting up a disaster prep buddy system. I’m sure people are already doing this, but it’d be a program where there’s someone you’re checking in to stay accountable. That seems like a good, tangible way to get started. For us, one of the challenges is that there isn’t a clear space we can have.
You talked about disaster preparation. What kind of disasters do you see affecting your neighborhood specifically?
Well, certainly an earthquake. But also just living through fires and the smoke. For people who can’t go out, I’m thinking that the fire season and this level of smoke threat is going to become unfortunately pretty regular. We need to be ready to help each other out. And there’s the pandemic. That’s another disaster. My fantasy would be if we could set up a general neighborhood helping system, so that if there’s an elderly person who needs help, then that could be a part of it. I live on the border of two neighborhoods, one is Maxwell Park, and it’s more affluent and more, as far as I’m aware, more organized. And then the other neighborhood has people who are struggling with a lot of day-to-day stuff. As I’m talking to you, I’m realizing that before I make any conclusions, I need to find out more about that other neighborhood. I want to avoid coming in as a white person with the solutions. I’m going to try to avoid that.
You’ve talked a lot about you and your husband taking the initiative to combat really global threats, like the pandemic or climate change. Do you think a lot of other people are waking up to create local solutions to global problems?
That’s a good question, I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I actually have a theory about that. It’s a dialectic, a yin-yang thing, and it’s pretty simple. Basically, there’s these huge problems like global warming and climate change and pandemics and they’re really overwhelming, right? People spend a lot of time thinking about ‘Can we save the world? Can we stop this? Oh my god, what if we can’t?’ I think we need a more constructive way to deal with problems. I see it as a dialectic where there are threats where people just need help. People need aid. So, if you want to build people’s sense of agency, then sure, try and do work to reduce the threat, but acknowledge it’s just as important to help the people, the animals, and the environments after they’ve been damaged. So, there’s always something you can do that makes a difference. Nobody is going to say to you: I didn’t appreciate your help because you weren’t working on the source problem. A good example are the fires in Sonoma. It’s a terrible problem, and most people just needed help. That’s just to say that if you think of the humanitarian support as part of the equation, then there’s always something you can be doing. The cool thing is that the organizing that is necessary is a lot of the same organizing that is necessary for preventing the problems.
Have you heard of a woman named Joanna Macy before?
No I haven’t.
You should check her out. She is somebody who has been working on helping people get strong enough to deal with this stuff for decades, since the, I think the, 70s. She’s about to stop teaching, but she’s generated this whole movement of people who are trained to help others to deal with their feelings and to hook in. I did a training with her at a place called Spirit Rock, which is a center up in Marin, which organizes a lot of politically active stuff. This amazing 6-hour training with her goes from this place of ‘What’s to celebrate about the Earth? What can you be grateful for?’ and then going deep into the ‘It’s really bad right now though,’ and then coming to this place where you can bring the two things together, a place of gratitude and love and acceptance where you can work to make things better. At the end, she says, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you that they know how this is all going to end.’ I was really inspired about that, and I thought, We don’t know how this is all going to play out, and we can’t buy into the notion that we’re going to hell in a hand basket. That’s just too simplistic. Even if things go downhill, there’s still all this helping each other, and organizing that’s really profound and that we can all be doing. I don’t mean to sound resigned, I think the resilience hub is a place where all these ideas can meet. Also, I like the idea of blending physical resilience with cultural resilience. I’m a singer and a musician, so it’s a cool place to see this blending. But all this being said, I still feel overwhelmed. I’ve got a full life, a teenager, and a host of my problems to deal with.
Regardless, it sounds like you’ve got a great framework to be building off of.
I would say so. It’s helpful to understand the other kind of challenges and responsibilities that regular folks have. If you want to pull them in, you need to know where they’re coming from.
The Canal Community Resilience Council (CCRC) is a part of the Multicultural Center of Marin’s Community resilience program, and is working to mitigate the local impacts of climate change in the Canal area of Marin County. Marco Berger, head of the Canal Community Resilience Council, notes that “The canal is particularly prone to sea level rise. It’s probably going to be one of the first to be affected in the area.” Located at a low elevation, issues of sea level rise are particularly pertinent to the neighborhood. Water levels in the San Francisco Bay can rise eight inches by 2035 and sixteen inches by 2050. Parts of the Canal could face up to two feet of flooding in the future.
The CCRC, comprised of members of the Canal neighborhood, convenes every month to discuss issues that could affect their community. And there are a lot of issues, including (but not limited to): housing, sea level rise, water quality, water access, flooding, waste management, transportation, and emergency preparedness. At CCRC meetings, stakeholders and community partners from local government agencies join to clarify policies and listen to citizen input.
Berger is keenly aware of this, observing that “People sit at home and they go, ‘Wow climate change. Stuff is going to go down. Things are gonna happen. But it’s over there somewhere, and I gotta put food on the table, I gotta pay rent.” However, he adds that communities are beginning to become more attuned to these issues. “I think as there are more things coming out about extreme weather and snowstorms in Texas, and people are starting to wake up.”
This work is a part of a larger impetus to provide local solutions to what is ultimately a global crisis: climate change.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to build community networks, so people know where to go for resources. That’s why Berger signed up to join the Resilience Hubs Leadership Training Program, “We’re really in an exploratory stage, we’re looking to see how we get involved and become a hub. It’d be good for people to know there’s a place for them to go for resources in a place of disaster.
Despite the added obstacles of the COVID-19 pandemic, Berger is persistent. “As long as I can keep doing work, that’s what I’m going to be doing.”
