Sunday morning as I walked 1.5 miles from Downtown Berkeley to Telegraph Avenue, my eyes noticed the flags raised high at each of the street corners with messages such as "Peace", "Love", "Equality" and etc.
To give you an idea of what i walked into, here are some of the art work surrounding the streets of Telegraph avenue.
John Coltrane in the late 50's---"MAKE ART NOT WAR" --- Bob Dylan- Love & Theft As i kept walking down on Telegraph Ave., I couldn't help but notice that the numbers of people on the streets was decreasing and I looked back to gain some reasoning to this change. Right then, a homeless woman walked by and asked me "Do you have a change to spare?"... "Or perhaps some food to eat and feed my hungry son." There, exactly at that moment I got a story, a story that I had not expected, a story I had not imagined to run into on my second time of observing Berkeley along with the first day of a blog entry.
Joann Knott, 46 years old is single mother and homeless in the city of Berkeley. Ms. Knott is originally from Detroit, Michigan where she worked as a "Professional Petitions Consultant" (PPC) and to give you an overall idea of what PPC's do i have linked this website (Google Search) here. Apparently, they do exist!
Ms. Knott arrived in California four years ago in pursuit of a job as a PPC. She believed that since Berkeley and the Bay Area in general is highly active in the process of creating petitions for voters in demand of various changes in the law, she could easily land a good job in the local market. However, despite her numerous attempts to secure a job here, she failed and instead ended up spending all her money and becoming homeless.
When I told her I was a Journalism student writing on a profile of Berkeley, she said "Follow the people of Berkeley, and you will find your stories"... "The diverse range of people here is what makes the city of Berkeley attractive."
Though Ms.Knott is homeless, she is still in pursuit of a job in Berkeley and gave me her phone number so that I can contact her for guidance for future stories.
Next, I met a fairly young man, who let his artful message speak for itself (right). He refused to give me his name but said "meet my friend, Dave," pointing to another young boy listening to music on his I-pod and shouted "He doesn't like to talk to strangers but loves to listen to his music all day" right by his face. "Can you spare some change?" he asked again.
I was a bit hungry and decided to grab something to eat and noticed the variety of food stations and restaurants serving all sorts of goodies. From the little food court alone, you can choose dishes of India, America, Asia, Italy, Pakistan and maybe even more. I opted out of sitting and dining, and instead grabbed Pizza on the go. While doing so, I noticed something rather familiar from my neighborhood, or perhaps every urban neighborhood now a days. The news paper stand and its horrendous location; next to the trash can.
Truly, it was true that the people are what makes the city of Berkeley stand out. After all the cooks of these delicious cuisines from around the world are in fact, the people themselves and at the same time, the person who made the decision for locating the trash bin next to the news papers is none other than another human being.
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Thanks for your posting and for talking to Knott, for seeing that diversity is defined many ways -- race, gender, age, class, ability, language. That's what makes the Bay Area so fascinating. Keep up the great work.
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