 Green Windows has retired, after twelve years!
Green Windows held a Retirement Celebration on June 28, 2020. The evening honored the community that we’ve built over the past twelve years and acknowledged Peggy’s creative guidance and nurturing of our space together. Below are Peggy’s goodbye remarks, partly from her introduction to Book.Ends, and below that, reflections and goodbyes from members of Green Windows’ community.  Firstly, there are so many people to thank for the last twelve years!
My own last words are here are an excerpt from my introduction to Book.Ends: After writing in workshops that use the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method since 2004, I realized, in 2006, that the AWA method was a perfect partner for my passion of bringing very different people together, safely and as equals, purposefully with care and intention. In 2007 I was certified as an AWA facilitator. In 2008, I started Green Windows and joined Intersection for the Arts as one of their incubator programs. And in the last twelve years, I’ve facilitated workshops in community colleges, youth centers, schools, community centers, affordable housing complexes, museums, libraries, juvenile halls, nonprofit retreats and for the general public. In these workshops I’ve had teens and seniors, students and teachers, homeless and housed, people with and without degrees and from different corners of Oakland. In 2009, I started a monthly drop-in workshop, sliding scale, finding a perfect host and partner in The Rock Paper Scissors Collective. And with this workshop, I drew my vast network together and people who would not otherwise cross paths wrote together, safely, as equals, each encouraged to be true to their own voice. I’ve only skimmed the surface of what Green Windows has done. I haven’t mentioned the dozens of people who have supported the work in various ways (thank you), or the mentors and mentees who make the work not a paper but a circle. The books, blogs and articles. Twelve years of words given and received. On March 24, 2020, we had the 127th and last monthly workshop. I am ready to shift my energies while deeply grateful for all this time with your words and seeing you listen to and affect each other. And deeply grateful that we made it, together, to this moment, sheltering in place from a pandemic and writing online. Twelve years brought us here, so profoundly needing each other and needing to write with each other that it feels fated. We wrote ourselves to this moment to have community while isolated and surrounded by tragedy and insecurity. Fate bewilders me; I would have never even known to ask for this blessing. And I am grateful. Listen. When I write that I am grateful for this community, I am talking about you. You. Twelve years came to this moment with you all in a Zoom room. And I will leave the room, the moment, the dozen years, with an understanding of people and of words that I did not have before, that I need to navigate the gloomy foggy future. I thank you. And I invite you. I invite you to continue the work. Each morning with your candle, over coffee six feet apart, while walking along the beach, in your dreams, in a secret notebook, I invite you to continue the work of being true to yourselves and of letting the choosing of words, the choosing of images, the choosing of characters, the choosing of plot, the respect of your own rhythms, your own voices, your own language, your own stepping stones into phrases, letting them help you to see what the truths are in yourselves, and by listening for what you like, on the beach, over coffee, in the zoom meeting, to see what the truths are that others’ offer you. I invite you to continue the work. You do not need me, or Green Windows to do it. I believe in you. I believe in your words and, when you let them, the truths they carry for you. - Peggy Simmons Founding Director Green Windows: Art of Interchange  Below are participants’ answers to the following questions: “How will Green Windows live on? How do you bring what you have learned, experienced and created with GW into your life and the world? Consider your artistic practice, sense of community, how we relate to each other, and how you see the world around you.”  My view of the world has expanded from what I consider a creative collaboration with other people, their writing styles, backgrounds, points of view. Careful, close listening skills, appreciation for words and phrasing, intended communication and subtle messages - all these attributes have been enhanced in myself and I dare say everyone else who has been part of Green Windows. I've never talked to anyone who has been to a Green Windows workshop who didn't get some kind of deepened connection - to writing and or community and or poets... the world. I've been to many a writing workshop - Green Windows had an accessibility and a spaciousness I didn't get other places. Green Windows is the only AWA based writing facilitation I've participated in that never left poor folks behind. Green windows has helped me be more authentically me and just show up as myself. It has also encouraged my writing voice. I'll be forever grateful to Peggy and Green Windows. I will always keep writing and utilizing my listening skills to appreciate other people's writing and to develop my own. I really appreciate the openness of Green Windows and the ability to share anything and everything. It's like a makerspace, and this is the mindset I will carry with me. I will continue to write with and be in community with the people I’ve met in Green windows. I will continue to use the AWA method when I write with others and incorporate everything I’ve learned into my writing practice. It’s hard to say how GW has influenced how I see and relate to people as it has been so fundamental in my growth but I’m sure it has opened my mind to different perspectives, seeing more of our shared humanity. Compassionately listening. Seeing what we like about people's lawns instead of what we don't like. A sense of imagination. A web more vulnerable & real than most. Duh. Green Windows has created bonds for me that I feel will never be broken! Immensely grateful that boundaries of space aren't keeping me from connecting and creating with others. I am much, much more daring in my creative practice. In a real and lasting way, Green Windows has shifted how I approach writing and creativity. More and more, I'm learning that the act of making something has value in and of itself. Even if there's seemingly nothing salvageable (rare!), sometimes making the thing clears the way, primes the pump, and/or offers a foundation for something else. I feel such gratitude for the opportunity to write with many of the same people month after month, listening to their words and getting to know each person's unique voice and style has deepened my appreciation of "voice" in storytelling, including my own. I find myself more observant of everyday expressions of creativity: a hand-painted shop window, my neighbor's little garden, an auntie's colorful outfit, a friend's cooking, zines galore. Participating in Green Windows has amplified the gratitude I feel for other community spaces in my life, and it reaffirms my commitment to cultivating mutual trust and sharing my life with other people. After writing with GW for so many years and being exposed to great writing, writing very different from my own, I have been able to try on new voices, explore the page, break all the rules I've learned. I've thoughtfully and carelessly put words and sentences and verses together always trusting that support would follow. It's precisely the support of the community that made me feel free to play in all those ways, and Peggy's voice always repeating, "trust your voice, trust your images, trust your words." GOODBYE, Green Windows! You made a difference!!!. Green Windows has been an opportunity to give my writing. For me the worst part and what turns me away from writing is the initial blank page. The prompts give me direction. They help me fill that white page. Through them I have been able to express emotion in a way I have never done before. I'll be honest though, I don't know if I have the motivation to keep writing like this on my own. But now I guess no choice but to try to fill that blank page on my own. Good thing I have great examples to take inspiration from. I took a chance and went to write there with you, one evening, and it was a good experience. Though it felt odd, not knowing anyone, and I know I look mean when I am nervous, it was good for my mind and my writing to sit with people I did not know and didn't connect with to write. Made my brain work differently. Peggy what you have done with Green Windows is so remarkable....You are very special...most of us don't find a way to 'make a difference.' You did!!!! The method of teaching and facilitating really stuck with me, and as I move on to become a teacher I know I will carry those principles with me! Very grateful for the couple of times I was able to take part in Green Windows! The artistic spirit and positive environment inspired me and those vibes will live on in my life. Thank you for all you’ve done as shared and thank you for always creating spaces that felt safe. GW definitely helped me come out of my shell. I know GW will live on in my sister, all of the GW writers, and in the works they all made together! I'd like to challenge myself more to generate prompts & really think outside of just written lines; how to make them multidimensional & invite the other senses. I loved the variety of prompts & have kept a few over the years. Perhaps I shall put them in a jar. Goodbye, Peggy! What a wonderful thing Green Windows was!! You always are so creative. Hurray! Further spontaneous writing exercises, community writing opportunities, and MORE NANOWRIMO! Peace and Love I will definitely be bringing the confidence I've gained in my writing and ways of giving good feedback in Green Window's writing workshops with me. I will also try ways to connect with people creatively through Zoom just as Green Windows has done. I have met people at the workshops who have become friends and mentors. I have heard points of view I would not otherwise have heard. I have written some of my favorite pieces there, pieces that would not have been written anywhere else--a couple of which are still getting published. GW has changed my life forever. Not only does it live on in my artistic practice, but it has given me a place to belong in the greater community, and a greater sense of how I can contribute to community.
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 Yes, Green Windows is still scheduled to shut its shutters at the end of June.
This has nothing to do with the COVID-19 crises. You can read here about why Green Windows is retiring. The timing, from my point of view, now seems perfect. I have been so deeply grateful these past several weeks for the community we've built over the last twelve years. I've needed you. I've needed to write with you. I needed you in order to find my own words to use as oars to paddle through these hard times day by day. I've seen you need each other, too. And sharing words helps us all understand everything better, not feel alone, and have a sort of collective empowerment. We've also been able to write together a lot more. Not because I have more time (I don't) but because there is no travel time. Being with you online is not the same, and not as wonderful, but it is wonderful and the technology is a blessing, allowing us to be together and to be together even more often. And writing together more often has given folks an opportunity to explore ways the community might continue post-Green Windows. So I'm grateful that all the other times I considered ending Green Windows, I pushed on, so we could get to this moment together. The timing of this retirement is also good for me because letting go of Green Windows will allow me the time, headspace and energy to find responses to the tragedies, deepening inequities, and opportunities of this crisis with organizations such as The Beat Within and the ATD Fourth World Movement. Here's the retirement plan: * Instead of a monthly Uniquely Yours workshop in June, we will have an online Celebration! June 28th, 7pm. Everyone is invited! We will do a little writing, because that's what we do, and I promise it will be painless even if that's not your thing. Please contribute your ideas for this celebration, your last words even if you can't attend, and RSVP here. * Our 127th and last monthly Uniquely Yours workshop is Sunday, May 24th, 7pm, online. Please sign up for our newsletter and indicate your interest in online workshops if you would like to join us. * Jenna Frisch and I will facilitate as many other online workshops as we can through the end of June. The schedule will change week to week to adjust to our other changing commitments. Please sign up for our newsletter and indicate your interest in online workshops if you would like to join us. * We have been posting writing from the workshops, here on the blog. Check it out! Much of this blog is being put together into a book that will be available for online purchase at the end of June. You can still submit writing for the blog through June 30th, but submissions for the book are closed. Thank you for all your support and all the words you've given Green Windows and each other over the years. I can't wait to see what you do next. All my best, Peggy  Writing anything creative right now is not easy for me. Writing in community helps. Always. But especially now. I'm finding the community Green Windows built over the last 12 years to be vital - alive and necessary. Green Windows' retirement is still looming, but I'm grateful that it hasn't happened yet. That we still have each other and these relationships forged through believing in each other's creativity. We need us right now: to be in touch with each other and to help each other be in touch with the part of ourselves where our best, most powerful writing comes from. We've done a couple experimental online writing workshops and are ready to do more, according to interest and capacity. Please sign up for our newsletter and indicate your interest in online workshops (or change your preferences), if you would like to join us. Here are two poems I wrote recently. I haven't used my pen name "Meg Claudel" in years. Partly because I haven't been submitting work for publication. Partly because my writer identity is mixed with my identity as Peggy Simmons, Founding Director of Green Windows: Art of Interchange. But these two pieces have nothing to do with that role. I hope you are writing and well. This is hard. And will end. But the world will not go back to how it was exactly. Meanwhile, I'm grateful for you and for your words. - Peggy  This Is Not About… By Meg Claudel This is not about me. It’s only me, here. A cat or two, spiders, oranges. But this is not about me. This is not about you. Or you. Wherever you are. I will imagine you with cats and oranges. Hopefully heat. Maybe someone to curl up on the couch with. Hey babe, if you're sick, I’m sick. This is not about your kids. I miss your kids. Adults are boring and there is only one here. You wish we could trade. For an hour or two. Me too. We can’t. This isn’t about us. This isn’t about the planet either. Because, frankly, the planet would be better off if several million of us were to leave. So maybe this is about us Even if this isn’t about you or about me or about your kids. Maybe it’s about the kids, including yours. It might well be about the oranges. In the dream my cats pulled me out of the creek before they left. This isn’t about the cats, they will be fine. This is about my mother. And maybe your mother too. The white cat Mom inherited when my sister went to college already left. This is about my dad who has survived everything Though comparatively has survived nothing. This is maybe about your dad, too, or your grandad. And, yes, maybe your kids. This is about your kids because this is a short chapter of humanity. And our next chapter, in which your kids are the protagonists Where it is about them Has a completely different setting than our last. Remember parties? This is about money. It is, don’t lie. This is about privilege. It is, don’t lie. The blinds on the window of who really has what are being lifted. This is about us: The ones who need groceries. Oranges and cat food. And the ones who bring groceries. Fresh cut yellow roses. This is about going hugless for weeks. Months. And this is about kids clinging to you when you are at work. This is about technology becoming a basic, as basic as oranges (While reminding us this is about who has what). This is about hoarding toilet paper And this is about recognizing cashiers as essential And grocery stores becoming supply depots in our battle with an invisible enemy. This is about information and lies. This is about power and vulnerability. This is about us But it’s not about us. This is about today. Tomorrow it will be about tomorrow. There are oranges and there are cats And there is a creek which does not stop flowing And there are your cute faces on my screen And there are words, there are always words. This is not about words. For once. Don’t lie. Thursday March 26th, 2020, NYWC online writIng workshop  “Visiting Your Lover” is not on the List of Essential Activities
When the State Orders Us to Stay at Home by Meg Claudel I could argue that you are coming over to “care for” me 18 months of sex and companionship do not, though, count as “family” Yet you visit and for us the afternoon is stolen Lunch is ready. The bed is sunlit. Wine has been delivered Our skin is disinfected and we are touching Two weeks of six feet apart and we are touching All of me touching all of you If you are sick, I am sick. (Isn’t this family?) We don’t need much, my fingers on the side of you neck Your thumbs under my shoulder blades To go wholey into the moment, stolen and sunlit A pandemic left on the doorstep The news silenced by bird calls and “Dream a Little Dream of Me” Covered in your list, then covered in mine, solidifying our dream We create this bubble and walk into it together, alive and joyful Grateful and surprised No before or after, the after so unseen Harmony written on your skin, there is where we stay March 31, 2020  I have some news. You don't need any more news today, especially non-joyous news. This is a moment that will be a reference point in our lives: before COVID-19 and after COVID-19. I hope you and yours are well, home, and safe. This is a moment when we are reaching out to each other. I was given roses at the grocery store today. It is also a moment to reach in. I hope you have moments of quiet and moments of creativity. I hope you are writing (drawing, dancing, singing...) so that this moment in time is as much as possible a time of growth and centering.
Two months ago, I made the decision to retire Green Windows later this year, after twelve years of incredible work. I've taken some time to have conversations and make some decisions, and can now make it public. (I didn’t call everyone I wanted to. I’m sorry if I didn’t get to you!) My timing is bad. I apologize. I like the word “retire.” After years of good work, Green Windows is not going away: it will stop working professionally, but its spirit and work can continue. Partly because they exist with you. Thank you. Thank you for all your words: all the words you braved onto the page and all the words you found to tell other writers what you loved about their writing. Thank you for the community you created, with your openness, your belief in each other, your trust in your authentic self and your fidelity to creativity. Watching our community grow was a privilege. I have been deeply pleased to give you the space to create it. We have done 125 monthly workshops! Many, many 4th Sundays, especially in the moments my life was hard, I spent the afternoon wondering how I would have the needed energy for the workshop that night. I wondered why I was doing this. Without fail, the very first lines of the very first piece of writing that was shared impressed, settled, warmed and inspired me so that I recalled, again, Oh, oh yeah, of course, this is why I’m doing this. Thank you. Two years ago when my finances became more challenging, I had to ask Green Windows to pay more of its share of my livelihood. I had a clear choice: either Green Windows grew into something sustainable that could help me live in the Bay Area, or I’d have to close its doors (its shutters?). I gave it a last go, with a lot of help, especially from Yesenia Sanchez and Catherine Mencher, but also from everyone who donated money and/or showed up to a fundraiser. Thank you. We did this cool impact survey that enabled us to show others what we already knew: that Green Windows grows artists and develops cross-cultural community. And we met our financial goal for 2019! But that goal was just a step toward sustainability and I can’t imagine doing it again, much less ramping it up to be able to meet the next step’s goal. I love the workshops. I love being in that space. I love the writing and the constant reminder of the brilliance of individuals when they are encouraged to be themselves. But I do not love all the work that has to happen to get folks in that space and to pay for it. Furthermore, I do not believe in the current (just pre-COVID-19) climate that it is possible to do the work - the work in the space plus the work to get in that space - part-time. I’m tired of the hustle. For these reasons, I need to retire Green Windows. But also, frankly, it’s time. Twelve years is a long time to do anything. I'm very, very proud of what we’ve done together for a dozen years. Proud of you. Grateful. And I’m ready for the next thing, though I don’t know what that is. (First order of business: get a full-time job). And you all don’t need me. Or Green Windows. Your brilliant selves are still your brilliant selves. You can carry the spirit of community and creativity that we built with you, into everything you do. And I want to know how you will do that. Please let me know (in a comment on this post, ideally) what Green Windows and its community have given you that you will always have. Please let me know how you will carry it forward and share it. Here is my plan, very much subject to fluctuations as we shelter-in-place and have to go through extreme measures to keep each other safe. [Read May 20th update on the plan here.]
THANK YOU! All your words have always been welcome in Green Windows workshops. Your words remain welcome, and important, even just on the page, or just shared with one person. Please remember that I believe in you and your words. Trust yourselves: The page knows that with that trust, you can’t write wrong. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for sharing. Peggy  Peggy and two of the brilliant teen writers at BAMPFA, Spring 2019 I love working with teenagers because I learn from them. And it's fun! I started working with teens in 1995, with the ATD Fourth World Movement in a vacation house for poor families outside of London. Teens said, "No one is working with us. Will you work with us?" I said, "Sure!" having no idea that I was making a career choice. One of those teens, Bea, and I continued to work together for several years within the youth branch of ATD Fourth World and she continued to work with teenagers well after she no longer was a teen herself. Bea and her mother, Moraene, both work as anti-poverty activists, as experts with first-hand experience of poverty. When I recently saw Moraene, at a conference in France, she introduced me to one of her colleagues: "Bea might have gone down a dangerous path if she hadn't met Peggy when she did." Youth workers often don't know the effect we really have, so that was wonderful to hear. But what was remarkable for me is that it's thanks to Bea that I've been working with teenagers, and loving it, for 24 years. Bea and I changed each other's lives, and those are my favorite stories.  Bea and Meraz 1995 Teenaged Bea showed me around her Hackney neighborhood, told me stories about her life, introduced me to her friends, answered my questions and helped me figure out how to work with teens. She began my understanding of the struggles many teens face that I never had to face, but also of the strength, creativity and profound sense of justice that teens can bring to that struggle. After London, I spent four years working at the international center of the ATD Fourth World Youth Movement, outside of Paris. The Youth Movement brings young people from very different backgrounds together, as equals, in social justice, anti-poverty projects. I was working with young people from different countries, with different first languages, with widely varying formal education and literacy levels and facing very different kinds of challenges. There was Richard who lived with his Roma ("gypsy" or "traveller") community in a camp with no running water outside of Paris; Luke, who was going to University in Berlin who had had family on both sides of the wall; Marie who was learning circus arts to entertain children in hospitals in Brussels; and so many more. We brought them together very carefully and intentionally with a methodology that has been developed over decades and is now called Merging Knowledge. But even with this methodology and other techniques such as Theater of the Oppressed, and our purposeful facilitation, much of which I recognized later in "Restorative Justice" practices, I was consistently impressed with the capacity of these very, very different young people to overcome the barriers between them to fight for justice for all youth. That capacity gets dimmed as we grow older and I knew I had a lot to learn from it. This knowledge, of how much there is to learn from bringing very different youth together, was solidified after a group of Slovakian, French and Belgian youth I was leading on study trip in Bratislava was attacked by skinheads on a public bus. This is a story for another time, and one I have written over and over without ever being satisfied [we all have those stories]. But the most important part of the story, for me, was the incredible way the young people, who had not had an easy week, came together and supported each other in the days after the attack. In 2002, I moved back to the States, very much motivated by the desire to learn from young people in my own country like I had been learning from youth in Europe. While waiting in France for visas to come through for my French husband whom I had met in the Youth Movement, I put together a data base of youth-serving organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. When we finally settled in San Francisco, we both found very interesting jobs in youth organizations and we were both shocked by how youth from "disadvantaged" backgrounds were being treated. The bar was consistently being lowered for them. Staff were condescending and preachy. And no one seemed interested in learning from the youth themselves. We had been trained to keep the bar high for all youth, knowing every youth would need different kinds of support to get there. We'd learned to be patient and persistent, creative and team-focused. Most importantly, we'd learned to listen to the youth themselves, as the experts on their own lives. My (now-ex) husband (and still best friend) eventually gave up on American non-profits which are overly guided by grant cycles and which put so much financial investment into executives who, especially at that time, seemed so far away from the lives of the youth they were meant to be serving.  Teens made a zine at the end of the workshops at Berkeley Public Library, Summer 2019 Eventually I found two organizations and one new methodology that would allow me to work with youth in a way I believed in outside ATD Fourth World: The Beat Within, The Oakland Public Library, and the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) writing workshop method. I've been volunteering with The Beat for eleven years in the local juvenile hall, and for the last year in San Quentin State Prison. The purpose of The Beat is to get the experience, thoughts and creativity of youth, especially incarcerated youth, out into the world through writing workshops and a magazine. The public library, for which I've worked, mostly part-time, for over ten years, is all about seeing the full complete person in front of you, finding answers to their questions, and being a gateway to knowledge sources and community they might not find elsewhere. The AWA method sees every person as a creative person and sees brilliance as being rooted in one being true to oneself. I've been using AWA in Green Windows workshops since 2008.
Through all these jobs, bits and pieces of work cobbled together to almost make a living in the Bay Area, I have learned a lot from young people in my community. The boys killed on the street in the "bad" parts of my town (parts I live and work in, happily) aren't just boys, they are our boys. I know the shooters and the shot and know choices they face and choices they do not have. Thanks to The Beat, I know a lot of their hopes and loves and dreams and I've seen those turn to despair when their future is no longer imaginable. I bring these hopes and these despairs into everything I do and they make up one basis of my understanding of my community. I am not the same person when, for example, on the same day, I hear news that a 24 year old I've known since he was 15 got his sentenced reduced from 84-years-to-life to 2 more years in the state juvenile facility and news that another, age 19, a youth worker himself, was shot and killed sitting in his car with his girlfriend. I don't want to not know this. I want to know these young people and I want all my decisions to be affected by these events, these youth, these victories and these losses. Thanks to working with the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program for the library, I get to listen to youth speak out on race, gender and justice in ways that my generation cannot manage with such articulation and honesty and respect. And being able to witness teen writers support each other in Green Windows workshops has taught me about listening, about imagination, and about what being true to oneself means today in ways that deepen my trust in the future of our society, if these youth can continue to be themselves and be safe. Today's youth give me hope. Not because they are simply the future, nor because of their own hope. Youth give me hope because they are brilliant, because I can see social progress made within them, because I have so much to learn from them, which means my own life is still evolving. We need to support them, trust them, believe in them, but not step back, not give over. As an adult, I want to continue to listen, to learn and to then see how I, with the wisdom and skills I've gained over fifty years, can help. Let me know if you, too, want to help. And I truly do simply enjoy the company of teenagers. And I am deeply grateful to be doing work I love. - Peggy Simmons PS -if the skills and experience I've gained working with teens over the years could be of use to your group - of adult or youth - please let me know!  "Creative Dialogues" is a new name for work I've been doing for many years. With Creative Dialogues, I bring together my skills and experience facilitating groups using creative writing, theater, participatory research, and restorative justice methodologies. Creative Dialogues help people very different from each other get to know each other better and make progress together with their goals and challenges.
Facilitation is about more than timekeeping and agenda-building. In any meeting or group gathering a good facilitator will strive to be aware of the whole space and everyone in it. Who’s dominating the conversation? Who’s not participating in any way? Who’s participating in subtle ways? Are we staying on topic? Are we understanding each other? Are we coming to a consensus if we need to? Can we hear each other? Do we need a break? Should a window be opened? A door closed? A facilitator is there for the group, not for themselves and the best facilitators are able to take themselves completely out of the conversation and help the group come to conclusions everyone will accept and in which they’ll see their own contributions. These outcomes aren’t always achievable by direct talking around a table. This is especially true when individuals are very different from each other, with divergent points of view, with varying language skills and/or educational backgrounds, some with more power than others, with differences that come with prejudice and bias, etc.. There are many techniques that can help with these challenging dynamics. Art and creativity can enable a group to level the playing field and grow understanding in indirect ways. Through facilitation techniques that ask us to create together and respond to each other creatively, understanding grows naturally, not through debate or winning arguments, and we are more able to see viewpoints different from our own. Let me know if a Creative Dialogue might be helpful for your group. Please contact me to arrange a free 20-minute phone consultation. More information here. I look forward to hearing from you. - Peggy Simmons On March 17 we commemorated our 10th Birthday and our 100th monthly Green Windows Uniquely Yours workshop by launching a collection of writing from the workshops. Writers, friends, and loved ones filled The Octopus Literary Salon to listen to 14 voices delivering a range of styles from poetry, to science fiction, to lyrical prose.
  I thought it was time again to share some of the work I’m doing in the local juvenile hall (Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center). For the last nine years, I’ve volunteered with the magazine The Beat Within doing weekly writing workshops in the hall and editing the writing for publication. I also facilitate a 5-week poetry workshop once a year in an English class in the hall for the Oakland Public Library, leading up to the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate application deadline (February 5th this year!). With Green Windows, I’m now regularly facilitating a weekly writing workshop with youth in the hall who have graduated from high school. Traditionally, these youth do nothing while their peers are in class. Probation staff in the hall took it upon themselves to organize classes for them: Anger Management, Financial Literacy, Gardening, Sex Ed, Chorus, whatever a staff can offer. You can read more about this program in this blog post from last June. These writing workshops, all of them, have gotten harder over time. I’m not sure why but I have two thoughts: 1) There seems to be more kids who have a really hard time maintaining focus. And the amount of time they can focus is less and less with more and more kids who seem to not ever focus at all. 2) The discipline in the hall has gotten more lenient, which in a big way is a good thing. But it means the kids can go through a whole program and/or a whole class talking to each other loudly, not working, without any consequence or reaction. I have no authority, so I try to convince, cajole, reward, adapt the work to the individual and sometimes guilt-trip by telling them why I am there. I am there to get their own thoughts and imagination on paper. And I am disappointed when I don’t, because it's a loss for me and for the world that might read them. But just being there matters. Even the most recalcitrant writers ask me when I’m coming back. They thank me in the end for “helping me express myself.” They’ll chat with each other about their cases and gossip about their girlfriends through the whole workshop and then tell me that the workshop will help them be creative and control themselves in their future. All of this can happen and be true. I am always drawn back to the idea that just being there, regularly, even relentlessly, and determinedly demanding of them to be their true selves on paper counts. Who do they count on to show up? Who is asking them to be true to themselves? I’d like to tell you about the young people I get to meet. Here, now, I’ll tell you about two very different people. Kalani has focus and tries almost every time, almost every prompt I give him. He can write short, powerful pieces that make the reader understand a little better what it feels like to be an incarcerated young man facing an uncertain future. He also has a remarkable imagination, able to create both characters and settings that go well beyond his personal experiences. The themes in his fiction, though, are always about family bonds and trying to care for family amidst scarcity, violence and addiction. He has written about the challenges facing a boy simply coming home after school and about a man hunting in the wilderness to get food for his family. Strong bonds between brothers reoccur in his fiction. In all the years I’ve been doing writing workshops in the Alameda hall, I have met few young people with this versatility of talent or this willingness to do real, challenging work. A judge (not a prosecutor, thanks to California Proposition 57), recently decided to put Kalani back in juvenile court, to not try him as an adult and send him to adult prison. This is a victory. I do not know why Kalani is locked-up, though I know it’s serious. I never ask. These young people are not their crimes. Kalani is intelligent, creative, thoughtful, and kind. He prioritizes his family and he tries new things to better himself and broaden his world. Why would I need to know more? Nia is 18 and has been told for months that she’ll be sent to a group home soon. She wants to go home. Why any of that needs to happen when she’s a legal adult, I don’t know. Group homes lie about interviewing her when they haven’t. She is angry. I would be angry too. She is in a class full of young men who miss their girlfriends. She’s a young woman who is easily charming and easily charmed but clearly she draws bold lines around herself. Nia is quick and clever and wants books and poetry with language that doesn’t bore her. She is a clear and precise writer and writes quickly. Every day she’s not in the mood to write, and almost every day she does anyway. One day she said that she was too angry to write. I said, “Write out your anger, don’t hold back, don’t worry about being appropriate, you don’t have to show it to me or anyone.” She did and said she felt better afterwards. In her evaluation she wrote, “I learned that writing down my feelings really does help me cope with my time.” Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions about this work, or if you'd like to volunteer with The Beat Within. Below, you ‘ll find two pieces of writing from Kalani, one from Nia and a piece I wrote in one of these workshops last Fall. - Peggy Simmons  Scared
I’m scared because I don’t know what to do I’m scared because I only have 1 life not 2 I’m scared because they offered me more time than I lived I’m scared because I have no control in life I’m scared because I can’t trust no one I’m scared because the ones you love will hurt you I’m scared because no one looking out for lil’ bro I’m scared because I’m not living at home -Kalani The Room The room I was in was small fit about 5 people at most But the room had AC so it was never hot inside. I remember this room because most of my teachers wanted me in detention instead of being in their class. The room walls were all beige with desks all facing the wall. -Kalani 18th B-Day So 2 days ago I spent my 18th b-day in a jail cell. Ever since I turned 13 I always dreamed about my 18th B-Day and how I would have the sexiest dress on with the baddest heels. The longest red hair and makeup to die for. My 18th b-day was supposed to be the happiest day for me. Instead, once I woke up I had to stand in a door and wait for somebody to pop my door. I had to sweep, wipe, and mop down my cell. I was being talked at rather than talked to. I never imagined I would spend the best day of my life in a jail cell. - NiMoney I Want Your Expressions I want your words to come from your bellies I want your words to come out colorful and complex I want your words to shatter your shells So we can really see you We need to really see you I want your words to hit us in the gut I want your words to show us new lights I want your words to shatter our blinders So we can really see you We want to really see you We are stuck, each of us, between walls Walls built between people, between neighborhoods We can’t see each other We pretend the world is the world within our walls We live small. We live blind. We live selfish. Tend our gardens and ignore the smoke on the other side. I want your words, I want our words to explode the walls So we can see each other. - Peggy Simmons, (Written in the last Fall 2017 workshop in the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center SEEP workshop.)  Mural by Kristi Holohan on Opal St at 40th in Oakland. (Originally posted on peggysimmons.net, May 11, 2009. I still volunteer weekly with The Beat Within. I've learned a lot and keep on learning.) I volunteer with The Beat Within once a week, helping to facilitate their writing workshops in Alameda County's juvenile hall. I love it. I am inspired by the youth, the facilitators and many of the hall's staff. Experiences like this are an important reality check for me - reminding me of how much I don't know and don't understand and giving me opportunities to learn. Two things have especially struck me in recent weeks from workshops in the hall. Firstly, in a discussion about what life on the streets costs (for issue 14.21) one young man said something like, "Everyone tells us to get off the streets. Get off the streets and go where?" The next week another young man wrote a great rap about being stuck in the "hood life" in which he mentions boys who have no socks to wear. (Marky Bo, page 26 of issue 14.22) I haven't been able to follow up with the young man who said, "Get off the streets and go where?" So I don't know exactly what he meant. He might have meant, "with five kids in a 1 bedroom apartment, where else could we hang out but on the street?" And/or he could have meant that he and his peers see no other future for themselves, no other way of life but hustling on the streets. Because they have no example of other choices? Because they've been brought to believe it's all they are good for? Because the harsh circumstances of their childhood - home, health, education, violence, family - meant that nothing was built upon what was already a weak foundation? Like the shame and discomfort of going to school without socks. All or none or parts of these things might be true. But it doesn't matter what is true or what is not true, what is right or not right. If he believes there is no other life for him, how do we show him otherwise? How to we make it otherwise? And how can I better understand what choices these youth think they have and actually have? How can I see better from their point of view? And how can I share what I learn with others who think of those kids as just criminals who stupidly make bad choices and should be punished accordingly, period? Hearing and reading the writing of these youth, while reading and listening to lots of mainstream journalism too, reminds me of how most of us go through our days looking at the world from inside our own little bubbles. And judging from within them. We interpret what we see completely differently than other people from their own bubbles. And most of us, if not all, just can't see widely enough to judge others fairly. My work and my life are all about trying to find ways to pop, or at least widen, these bubbles. At least my own. I thank The Beat Within and the youth in the hall for helping me try. Free Sunset
by Meg Claudel Lift my chin to the clouds, the heavens, the clouds And wish or pray to wish for rain To wash out the silence, the silence He left me, behind the noise of highways And trains at the intersection of 40th and Telegraph. Dirty foot walks the broken streets Dirty street breaks the feet of boys without socks Boys without socks or gone to jail: Boys without sunsets. Boys with sunsets on the other side of the wall. Broken sidewalks. Broken hearts. Broken hearts. Sunsets are free, he says Once again outside my paid-for window Sunsets are free Behind the lines, a steeple, the lines Once again paid for, this view This view all the better on the hill Outside the walls where children know death More death than I Ever will. Walls between free sunsets and children not free Children already gone Past my share of grieving And yours. Your sunset's free, he says. ("Meg Claudel" is the pen name used by Peggy Simmons.) (This poem is in the mural on 40th St and Opal St, Oakland CA and was first drafted on June 22, 2009.) (These pieces are excerpts from the manuscript What I Want My Words to Do to You, a collection from seven years of Peggy's writing about facilitating workshops in juvenile hall plus writing from incarcerated youth from the same period.)  Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center The Alameda County juvenile hall has an amazing pilot program for incarcerated youth who have graduated from high school, called SEEP (Student Extended Education Program). Traditionally, and apparently in most juvenile halls, there isn’t much for the graduates to do while their peers are in class. In the Alameda County hall, a small program was started in partnership with Merritt College to give some students college courses. This program runs on love and volunteers thanks to dedicated people like Amy Cheney (who Green Windows is honored to have on our Advisory Board and who used to be the Librarian in the hall) and Louise Anderson (Alameda County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commissioner [JJDPC]). Besides this small college program involving a few youth and a few volunteers, there was nothing for the graduates until some JIOs (Juvenile Institution Officers, the Alameda County Probation staff who work with the youth in the hall) decided to create a program. Officer Nicole Perales and Officer Brian Bingham (who also honors Green Windows on our Advisory Board) started SEEP, with no funding, engaging other JIOs to teach classes on life skills, debate, cooking, gardening, whatever skills they could share. They needed to rely on people who had clearance to enter the hall, a proven track record to work with the young people and who wouldn’t require funding. This fabulous, desperately needed program, was also born out of love and runs on dedication. Perales and Bingham have seen and supported my work in the juvenile hall over the years, running different kinds of writing workshops with Green Windows, for The Beat Within and with the Oakland Public Library for the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program. They knew my love, dedication and clearance and asked me to run a series of creative writing workshops with the SEEP students. Thanks to generous individual donations to Green Windows, I was able to run this workshop for five weeks this past Spring. The creativity of these brilliant and charming young people impressed me, as did their desire to engage themselves while locked up, despite facing uncertain futures or futures certain to contain a lot of time inside and while dealing with all levels of sorrows. Their writing shows they do not easily lose hopes and dreams and loves. I hope to continue to offer creative writing workshops with these young people, in addition to volunteering weekly to run workshops with The Beat Within. Green Windows needs funding to offer them, though, please consider donating. This whole post was written to introduce this one piece of writing, written in the last SEEP workshop. Writing like this implores us to offer these young people as many opportunities as possible to authentically express themselves. Our society has much to learn and gain if they do. - Peggy Simmons Untitled
We were all born with the power of changing the world, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and maybe of course verbally. I stand tall on this lovely morning with my hands bruised from protecting myself from the haters, eyes red & puffy from praying and crying, my body slim but using the bit of strength within my female body. Nobody should be Judged from a record or a misunderstanding mistake. We are human beings, please look at us as one. If nobody wasn't born in different countries then what is a world? Different skin tones matter or what would be the real definition of a human being including their tone that comes out of their mouth? What’s coming out of mine are the last words I am ever going to preach for. They say, “what you do & say will be used against you”. In the system some can control themselves & get away, start over until never again. It is another day that can be brighter but Hey! What about the others “maybe”? Can you at least feed us real food here & there, take us to field trips in the “real life”? Or cook what I enjoy, for I think I still remember how to use my hands. Stress really eats up our cells and DNA including techniques, that nobody made him or me learn. Again they say “get it together this is real life”. Can I be loved one more time? Because that’s the “real life” not the system. 17 years young now. 5 years pass - I am free I could have spent the rest of my life in there, but I did not go down like no SUKKA, fight! Let your voice be heard & the victim get on the stand! I am loved, I started my own restaurant, I travel now. One day when I am 50, miniature me’s will be changing the world Amen. - Xochtil |
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