Anti-violence Awareness Campaign

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Oakland violence prompts mural artists to show balance of good, bad

Percy Robinson said he would rather produce a mural about Oakland homicide than participate in a killing.

So the 18-year-old joined a group of young people who finished a mural in East Oakland Thursday that responds to the violence by trying balance it with positive aspects of life.

"You could give in to the anger and the street life, or you can move yourself forward," said Robinson, who graduated from high school in June. "This mural helped me stay on a positive track."

The mural at 1200 50th Ave. was created by 15 young Oakland residents, ages 14 to 20, who worked several days a week for the past month. Many of the artists have lost friends or relatives to violence.

Robinson's younger brother Mikal, 15, died when he was struck by a sport utility vehicle a year ago. Robinson said he managed to let go of his frustration at his brother's death by getting involved in volunteer activities, which in turn led to his work on the mural.

The mural, along with a series of public service announcements for radio and TV, are part of an anti-violence awareness campaign sponsored by the group Youth Uprising and supported by the California Endowment. Youth Uprising is an East Oakland nonprofit that runs a community center next door to Castlemont High School, which tries to divert Oakland's young people from crime by offering tutoring, job training and classes in dance, video and music production.

The young people at Youth Uprising originally conceived the idea of a mural that responds to Oakland's violence and commemorates its young victims a year ago during a 50 percent spike in killing in the city.

But the project was delayed, and the artists decided that instead of commemorating the victims, they wanted a positive component in the project.

The mural they designed and painted acknowledges the bad on one side while emphasizing the good on the other. The left side of the mural is themed "Weapons of Mass Distraction," and it shows an image of TV with guns, pills, dice, wads of cash and a home broken in two. The right side is titled "Seeds of Resistance, and it includes images of school books, a turntable and microphone (to represent music), paintbrushes and people working.

"The artists really wanted to show the problems and show the solutions," said Julio Magana-Saludado, a professional muralist and art teacher who coached the young people throughout the process.

"We wanted to make it real and show that there are a lot of negative distractions that make young people act crazy," said Magana-Saludado, who is known professionally as Somos One. "But we wanted to show that you don't have to give in to that. You can find strength in the positive."

For Nakeya McFarland, 16, the themes in the mural "got real" when a friend of hers, Anthony Custard, was killed July 24 on 69th Avenue, just as the painting was about to begin.

"I put a lot of my grief and my heart into this mural," said Nakeya, who starts 11th grade at Oakland's Fremont High School later this month. "I'm glad we show the negative, but we balance it by showing there is a positive way. ... You don't have to give in to this craziness."

Andre Bender said planning and painting the mural improved his own outlook on life.

"The positive should outweigh the negative, even though it doesn't sometimes," said Andre, 16, an 11th-grader at Oakland High School who helped paint.

Andre has not lost any close friends or family members to violence. But he was a classmate of Andrew Porter, a popular Oakland High football star killed last year.

"I'm lucky no one really close to me has been killed," Andre said. "I'm hearing about people dying every day. I've lost neighbors, classmates - just a lot of people from the neighborhood. It's real sad. I'm getting numb to it.

"If I showed emotion, I would be paralyzed with sadness," Andre added.