As political consciousness arose in the Mission, many San Francisco organizations mobilized and took on city leaders demanding not just recognition, but active participation of programs and services designed by and for their communities. As progress was slowly bubbling, some of these youth were experiencing harassment by police and neglect from the city and its services. A group of frustrated youth on 24th Street formed E.M.U.N.Y.O. (East Mission United Youth Organization) with the help of Jim Queen.

The combination of their efforts to address "Youth For Self-determination" with organized San Francisco State University Third World striking college students returning to their community would ultimately result in profound changes in their neighborhoods and lives.

In this episode, we talk with Jim Queen about how and why he helped the youth of EMUNYO. Socorro Gamboa sits with some of the founding members of EMUNYO who tell their stories of empowerment. We also speak with former RAP staff member, Sadie Vialpando.

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Released date 7/21/22

Socorro: [00:00:00] You are listening to the RAMA Blueprints podcast, episode four, the roots of RAP part 1: EMUNYO.

In 1969, San Francisco's Haight Ashbury became the sanctuary for outcast and disillusioned youth of America seeking an escape through their summer of love. Three years earlier in 1966, the war on poverty had landed in San Francisco. Mission [00:01:00] Community Organization was instrumental in creating the economic opportunity councils in low income neighborhoods like San Francisco's. La Misíon.

The Mission district became the nucleus of grassroots organizing and activism for the BIPOC communities with organizations like Mission Rebels Mission Community Organization, Horizons Unlimited, Model Cities, Centro de Cambio, Mission Media Arts, Mission Area Youth Council, United Samoan Organization and many more.

Their efforts spawned a movement towards the ideals of self-determination and youth empowerment. For San Francisco's youth, the mayor Joe Alioto was heavy handedly, running a city with an oppressive SWAT style police squad who intimidated and harassed both the Third World Strike protesters at San Francisco State University and local youth gathered in their neighborhoods.

As a political consciousness arose in the Mission, many organizations mobilized and took on city leaders, demanding, not just recognition, but active participation of programs and services designed by and for their communities.

As progress was slowly surfacing, some of these youth who were still experiencing police harassment and neglect from the city services formed EMUNYO East Mission United Neighborhood Youth Organization with the help of Jim Queen. The combination of their efforts to address youth for self-determination with organized San Francisco State University, Third World Striking college students returning to their communities would ultimately result in profound changes in their neighborhood's lives.

Welcome to the RAMA Blueprints podcast. I am your host Socorro Gamboa. In this episode, we explore the San Francisco roots and origins of the founding of the Real Alternatives Program or RAP.

Jim Queen: One day, I get this phone call from the Model Cities program, the director said, there's some young people that would like to meet with someone to help them try and find a place, to [00:04:00] meet and so forth.

And I said, okay, I'll meet with them. So it was on 24th street, there was a Model Cities office. So these young people that had hungout on 24th and Lucky Alley. That's, where their spot was. And they came and they walked into the building. And I meet them. And here's about 20 kids. And what was so interesting was male and female Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, White. A whole eclectic group of multiethnic group of young kids. You know, so many people set trip, right. So it's gonna be Latin. It's gonna be Samoan. It's gonna be black. But they all had this real, smart, just really smart kids. And so we talked and I said, okay. We'll deal with it. I'll help you. They wanted to see if they could find a place to have a club, a meeting place they could have for their own.

And so we get to paint and paint the inside, paint the outside, right? as we were doing that, I was saying, okay, what's you guys said you would run the thing. How are we gonna do this? You have to organize it. You have to develop your rules and regulation. What's how you're gonna run this place. But you are in charge. I'm mean I'll be an advisor. I'll be mentor, whatever you wanna call me. But you are in charge. Is that clear? Yep. they formed a little group. They selected officers, right. To who was gonna be in charge, you know, right, of the officers, male and female. They decided on the rules and they were the most strictest rules. Like , you couldn't curse into place. You could not have any drinks, no [00:07:00] drugs, no nothing on the outside or inside. And the hours, they defined the hours, they defined everything. So that's how it got started. That is self-empowerment, youth self-empowerment.

And what I feel good about was that I believe in youth self-empowerment. I believe in that everybody has to empower themselves, I believe in that, you know? Right. And so what I did, I think why the young people were attracted to to me was I wasn't a typical person that was trying to tell them what to do, but I respected their intelligence and some of them them were a lot more smarter than I was too.

My main role in that process was to try to develop their critical thinking skills. And start making them make analysis of stuff like, well, when you're go into YGC some people are thinking it's cool. Why do you think that's cool?

So if you realize that when you get sent to YGC, it's not a cool thing because what happens? That means they played you, you acted up in school cause they were disrespecting you. They sent you to the principal's office. You got mad at the principal, they call YGC. Then when you go to YGC, then your mom and dad have to come up and kiss these people's ass to Try and get you out of that. So you're being played, but you're also having your parents being dishonored and disabused and they got it. So what that center became was a sanctuary for young people to be off the street, less contact with everybody, have fun. You know, do things, but have dialogue and talk, discuss things, right?

Darren: We recently hosted a San Francisco reunion and conversation with some of the original EMUNYO founding members. Our talk was moderated by our host, Socorro Gamboa.

Jorge: How you doing? Okay.

Socorro: Jose Abrego.

Jose Abrego: Good afternoon.

Socorro: Edwin Betencourt

Edwin: Hello.

Socorro: And Patsy Hernandez Pacheco.

Patricia: Hello.

Socorro: And Sam "Sugar" Hernandez.

Sugar: Good afternoon.

Socorro: Well, welcome, all of you. We are so humbled and honored to have you with us today.

Jorge: Thank you. Thank you.

Edwin: So I'm Edwin Bettoncourt it's interesting because I hear Jim and he, from my perspective he was a huge part of what we were able to accomplish. And I remember somehow him just showing up on the corner on 24th street one day and we're having conversation and he's asking about, what do you guys do? And what would you like to do? What if there was another way to do things and it's this is what we do all day.

Socorro: What year was that?

Edwin: Ooh, let me see. What was that? 13, 14 67

Socorro: 67. Okay.

Socorro: Well , señor.

I didn't really realize that at the moment, at the time, but it just made me curious. And then the ideas started developing into being an individual that had a voice in the community, or at least had some determination of having an objective, something to work towards. And what we had was was a sense of brotherhood in the community. And from there it grew .

George?

We enjoyed each other. We laughed. We joked. We were just a bunch of kids just hanging out and stuff. We were smart. We were street smarts and we were smart cuz we watched over each other and Jim Queen came in into our lives in this little sports car and came up and started talking to us and asking us questions. I stood a little bit more on the side and was watching him. And I said, this young guy he's smart. Yeah. I wonder what he can do for us. And he started talking about the things that he could do for us .

Socorro: Sam?

Patricia: Just wanna mention that. Sugar's my brother.

Socorro: Oh, alright.

Patricia: So he was pretty spoiled when we had him in EMUNYO. Everybody just loved him. I came to San Francisco when I was 11, my mother passed away. We lived in Tucson, Arizona. We came to San Francisco and I was going to junior high school at the time. And there was nothing to do besides making tortilla and beans after school, doing homework.

Socorro: What year are we talking?

Patricia: Same year.

Socorro: Okay, 67.

Patricia: I don't know if you people remembered that, but that was part of it. And there was a little office that opened up. I wasn't sure who was running it, but I seen a gentleman in a sports car and I believe there was another female with him or another gentleman. I'm not sure, but we started migrating towards that office because it was open at night.

Jorge: no I gotta remember that. Yeah.

Patricia: He asked us to put try to get five bucks and everybody put it in. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, five bucks? My dad's got, how many kids? Is he gonna give me five bucks to join a club? But lo and behold, we did, and we came up with the money.

And after we decided that place wasn't working because of the police it was very well known. So we decided. This isn't a good place for us to be. We need to be concentrated more where it's a little bit more quiet, but not so loud that we're gonna disturb the neighbors. So that's when he came up and we found EMUNYO the site.

Socorro: How did that come about that skill? How did you learn it?

By talking to each other, talking to the older people, all these other people that were involved as they communicated with us, I learned how to communicate back without cursing.

Patricia: Part of the skills I learned was to communicate better with my peers and to not be so passive, nor aggressive at the same time. But there were some things that I was learning about what was really going on around me. Number one, there was nothing other than what we had there at EMUNYO that was happening for kids our age. We, a lot of us, were struggling. A lot of us had struggling parents and somehow somewhere an idea came about fighting for jobs in the Mission. So we went to Sears and we boycotted Sears and a couple of other companies like that in the area . And somehow out of that came the mayor's office of employment and training.

That was part of my education in terms of learning of what was going on around me and the anger that I started to feel. And then when I lived by CALA foods, which was a grocery store. And all of a sudden we started learning about Cesar Chavez and boycotting the grapes and how we all got together in front of CALA. There must have been 70, 80 of us marching in front of CALA. And we'd stopped them from selling the damn grapes. So things like that I learned by my peers and educating myself, as well as learning about what was really going around in a Mission. [00:22:00]

Edwin: When you talk about communications, you have to remember when you're in the streets, you have your own communications that's going on. And a lot of us thought we were very smart and almost to a level of being little cons, where we can go and we can talk people into doing things that they didn't wanna do, or they didn't know they shouldn't be doing. But we had those communication skills. They just weren't targeted in the right direction. And so what happens is when you get someone that says, Hey, let's look at the world a little different. And let's take what you do know already, and see how we can channel that into another direction, which is what Patricia is talking about. That's what we did. So a lot of us had that because we learned those skills early on because we had to get through the streets From one point to the other so that we can every day move through our lives.

So what my brother did was he always told people, don't let someone pick on you. Because no one wants to fight you every time they see you. But if you let them bully you and you don't do anything, they'll bully you every time. But when they know something's gonna happen back to them, they're gonna stop. So from there. It went from, there were three of us, then five of us, then 10 of us, then 15 of us. And then on Friday nights, there'd be 40 kids out on [00:24:00] 24th and Folsom just hanging out. That was the gist of where that came from.

Patricia: The 26th street gang started hanging out with us on 24th. The 20th street gang from Folsom Park started hanging out with us. So we would just go let's all go to Folsom street, but we were communicating and getting along. There was no longer that vicious wanting to fight like a gang kind of thing.

Socorro: Was there a recruitment process to try to give people to EMUNYO?

Patricia: No, that just happened in itself.

Jorge: EMUNYO was, it was strictly 24th street.

Socorro: Okay.

Edwin: One of the things with 24th street that I always felt was unique was we had an openness in the group, as Sugar mentioned earlier, that people would come and they would meet us and they always came first hearing 24th street. So when you hear 24th street, you think gang related. But then they would come and they'd meet us and they would be like, wow, these are some really nice people. And I'd like to be a part of them if I could.

Socorro: And I heard earlier, as Esperanza mentioned, about the Third World perspective of folks that were part of EMUNYO. That it wasn't just Latino centric.

Jose Abrego: The sense of humor of on 24th street with all of us was a big melting pot together, cuz we would all laugh, enjoy each other laugh. And Sugar said it was like a community, but it was more like family. Everybody's more like family. That's why everybody gravitated 24th street because we treated everybody like there was family. There were no racial boundaries, nobody really saw any color. Because in a family, you don't see color. You just see family. You just see the love and the humor and the get together. And the commitment to each other.

Socorro: If you could recall, when was it that you went, this is what I need to be involved in right now. This is what I need to be doing.

Edwin: And this is a lifelong skill that I, I learned from Jim. And that was when you would go to Jim and you had a problem and you said, Jim, I have this problem and what should I do? And then Jim would look at you and say, Great question. What should you do? right. And he would make you answer your own question. He would make you think. And I'll tell you, I'm not kidding you. I have developed managers with that simple skillset. They come in. Oh, the world is falling apart. Okay. So what are you gonna do? And I would make them come in and I'd say, bring in four solutions. And then I'll work with you because I'm not going to determine for you what the answer should be, because then I don't need you. I'm gonna do it myself, why am I paying you? The other thing is, and this was, I don't know if Jim [00:29:00] realized it at the time, but it was life changing for me.

Socorro: Well, I, I wanna thank all of you for being with us today. It has been an honor to hear your wisdom. The tagline we use in this podcast is to listen is to heal. There's a healing going on here. Grateful for your energy. Thank you again for being here.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

You are listening to the Raza blueprints podcast. We will be back in a flash.

Jim Queen: When you wanna know what RAP was, what it became, the basis of that was self-awareness, empowerment, self-determination That's what it was. So that's what, that's how EMUNYO got started.

When I started getting more into other parts of their lives, going to YGC, getting really ticked off at how they were being treated in school and so forth, all that. And they were so smart, And just seeing 'em getting ground up and it's all this crap. And they picked up, in their own awareness and began to realize, yeah, you know, we are smart and yeah, we are this, And so that's really turned me on.

Socorro: Many local people from the Mission District participated in the Third World Student Strike at San Francisco State, including Jim Queen who would later teach a class in community organizing after having been arrested for an incident during the strike.

one of the Munos leaders, Fili Salah emerges as a youth leader through RAP's programs.

So we go over to the Mission Coalition organization under having their annual meeting, and there's a fight, an argument between these two factions. Fili jumps up on the stage and goes, "STOP IT!" That's how much powerful this personality was, but he was an intimidating person. You follow me? He just had his power, had his power. in the hood. you can tell when somebody's not selling Wolf tickets. Is somebody that comes up and, you know, okay. I don't wanna mess with this cat. This cat will deal.

What I discovered right away was the probation officer who mostly European had no clue about any, about the Black kids or the Latin kids or the Samon had no clue. They didn't, they didn't know what to do it. Plus most of 'em had caseloads of 25, 30 kids. So , they couldn't do a goddamn thing. they're supposed to see 'em all the time. They couldn't, they'd call 'em on the phone. So there was nothing there at all, whatsoever. So then I became to be an intermediary saying, we can, uh, provide this. I was making up shit. Right. I say, we can provide tutoring, we can provide some other things for you, whatever it was that would try and get off. I learned that by offering an alternative, and sometimes the alternative was EMUNYO which was real. But we would say things And they were going, okay. [00:36:00] You know, not because they couldn't, they were just, so they were so desperate,

Sadie: You know, the kids started to come by Sugar and all Fili and all the kids and became a place to hang out.

Socorro: You are listening to the voice of Sadie Vialpando Williams, community Activist and former rap staff.

You know, now we know what it means to have social connection, but back then it was community building. And because of Horizons I already had become aware politically a little, they had educated us about injustice, what the farm workers represented to us. And so I was bringing what little I knew about organizing to these young people and how important it was to speak up and to fight for what you wanted.

Socorro: In 1970. Now that RAP was up and running. The EMUNYO youth began to look at what institutional structures were keeping [00:40:00] them down. They immediately demanded the closure of San Francisco Youth Guidance Center, Jim Queen explains.

We kept agitating to have more resources, more relative sorts, but they know we'd listen, of course. the chief probation on time was a guy named Bodka. So we got a caravan of young people from EMUNYO in other places to go down to his house in Woodside, California. And we went and did flyers all through his neighborhood saying that Chief Probation Officer Bodka was a racist, you know, oppressive to young people. We should shut down YGC. All up and down the street that he lived on. So [00:41:00] we had young people getting activists and seeing what it takes. You put pressure on people.

Socorro: After these actions, EMUNYO youth began to emerge as leaders through RAP. These accounts that we have presented reflect a small portion of the leadership within the Mission community. Many of those leaders have transitioned and however, the heart and soul of some of these OGs are still with us. It is critical that we honor the ancestors, the teachings and share the wisdom, join us as we listen to the voices of this radical historical legacy that would become the Real Alternatives Program, RAP.

Thank you for listening to the RAMA Blueprints podcast. The 5 Sisters Audio Garden would like to acknowledge the following CARECEN SF, Instituto Familiar de [00:43:00] La Raza, Change Elemental, the Pacific Islander Resource Hut, Our Brother (Rest In Power) Mitchell Salazar, Ray Balberan and Mission Media Arts, the OG's of EMUNYO,, and the many individual supporters who have graciously donated to our production.

You can donate and become part of our family by visiting CARECENSF.org. This episode was written, produced and edited by Darren J. de Leon and Socorro Gamboa.. If you like our show subscribe, give it a rating on apple podcast and share it with two people. Please spread the word and remember "To Listen is to Heal. " All Power To The People.