Organizing for America | Prosy Delacruz's Blog: Jumpstart Miracles in the City of Angels!

Jumpstart Miracles in the City of Angels!

By Prosy - Dec 13th, 2008 at 3:32 pm EST

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Jumpstart Miracles in the City of Angels!
by Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D.

Never mind the drizzle. Never mind the gray, overcast skies. Never mind the cold. Never mind the traffic noise. Never mind that the firefighters were within a few feet cleaning up after they put out a fire at a nearby preschool. Folks came, two families in fact with mom, dad and children; and in all, we were the die-hard ten folks. After all, Jesus Christ started with twelve apostles. But, we are not flamboyant, we are a down to earth, grounded group, grounded and excited from our past involvement in the Obama campaign.

What were our successes:

a. One family was involved in ' The Oaks School ' in Los Angeles and raised $8,000 from bake sales done by the children, their artwork and created handicrafts and subsequently donated to the Obama campaign.

b. Another family was moved to volunteer and door knock in Las Vegas, headed by a mom who convinced the dad, and with her two young children, one barely a toddler traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and their success in door knocking inspired them to get more involved in their city's civic life and look for more Obama's followup activities, like this one being held today, Dec. 13, 2008.

c. Many more were involved in the campaign, some more die-hard than others, since January 2008, blogging, phone banking, door-knocking, organizing events and simply inspired by this ground level, fired-up initiatives.

What are our plans for 2009?

a. We want to engage the LA City's Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and our neighbors in the neighborhoods to turn ALLEYS INTO BIKEPATHS AND WALKING TRAILS WITH BENCHES, TREES AND SOLAR-POWERED LAMP POSTS, mirroring what Old Pasadena did to connect neighborhoods, encourage families to walk with their children at night, encourage neighborhoods to come out for gelato like in Italy even late at night, and to encourage folks to meditate and sit by the park benches. Our alleys in Los Angeles have become blighted by POTHOLES, LITTER and JUST INHOSPITABLE TO COMMUNITY LIFE. We want to create new public spaces for more engagement with one another.

b. We want to call ourselves, JUMPSTART MIRACLES GROUP in MIRACLE MILE for now..though Abbie wants us to expand to other places. We have designated two co-chairs, the youngest members of our group, Abbie and Celeste, both under ten years old. They showed great clarity in what they want Los Angeles to be, a green city and a city that will save the polar bears.

On January 3, 2009, at 9am, we will meet at Good Hands Preschool at 5538-5540 West Pico Blvd. LA CA, 90019 and we will make a banner signs for our Jumpstart Miracles Group on two frames, one A-Frame that we can put out on the sidewalks as we meet, and another as a hanging vest to wear while we clean up the streets, and pick up litter. We want to inspire others to care for the public alleys and sidewalks and not throw litter.

c. We will meet again on January 10, 2009 to share our ideas about what to do with schools, working families, bettering the environment. We will meet every second Saturday of the month for breakfast at La Maison du Pain, 5373 West Pico Blvd., the birth of community-minded miracles in the neighborhood.

Some of our future dreams are:

1. Save the polar bears. Their homes are decreasing. We want to reduce our carbon footprint in many ways.
2. We want to start a program on STOP DISPOSABLES, GO WITH REUSABLES, and Abbie will do a story for us at the next meeting on why this is important to change our neighborhoods.
3. Once a week, donate our time starting in 2009, for a few hours to pick up trash in the neighborhood. We can make new friends and keep this ongoing for the year.
4. We want to have regular, rotating community dinners and community breakfasts at select businesses that we want to encourage their quality neighborhood practices: La Maison du Pain, and other restaurants in the area.
5. The War in Iraq be ended SOON!

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