{"id":338,"date":"2022-09-08T21:50:30","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T21:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/avadawebsites.wpengine.com\/influencer\/?post_type=avada_portfolio&p=338"},"modified":"2025-09-11T18:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:32:07","slug":"roots-to-reach","status":"publish","type":"avada_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/livesircuit.com\/streetpoets\/videos\/roots-to-reach\/","title":{"rendered":"Roots to Reach"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Street Poets is finally putting down permanent roots in the community we\u2019ve served for the past 25+ years. Thanks to capital grants from the Annenberg Foundation and another prominent Los Angeles-based foundation, we\u2019ve secured the site for the future Street Poets Center for Community, Culture & Wellness across the street from John Adams Middle School. The Center will include a recording studio, media lab and community space for youth poetry performances and writing circles, as well as dance and drumming workshops.<\/p>\n

Street Poets is finally putting down permanent roots here in the South Los Angeles community we\u2019ve served for the past 25+ years. Thanks to generous capital grants from the Annenberg Foundation (Explore.org) and another prominent Los Angeles-based foundation, our poetry and music-infused arts intervention organization has purchased a 4,860-square-foot building as the future Street Poets Center for Community, Culture & Wellness. Ideally situated across the street from John Adams Middle School just south of downtown Los Angeles, the center will include a recording studio, media lab and community space for youth poetry performances and writing circles, as well as African and Mexica\/Aztec dance and drumming workshops.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Street Poets had been here in this community when I was growing up, I\u2019m pretty sure I wouldn\u2019t have joined a gang and taken such a hard road to get to where I am today,\u201d says veteran Street Poet David Sanchez, who now runs his own organic gardening business. \u201c15 years ago, I had to get locked up to find Street Poets. With this new community center, we\u2019ll be catching lost kids like I was before they get caught up in the System. I\u2019m just grateful I\u2019ve survived long enough to be a part of the solution, and in the same neighborhood where I used to be a part of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former gang member Jason Quezada, who also met Street Poets as a youth while serving time in a Los Angeles County Probation camp for boys, knows John Adams Middle School well. \u201cI got kicked out of there for fighting when I was like 13 years old,\u201d he remembers. Now a successful construction contractor, Jason cut the deadbolt on Street Poets\u2019 future home when our Founder Chris Henrikson and architect Eli Garsilazo managed to lock themselves out the day after Escrow closed. \u201cThere is definitely poetry in the fact that our organization, first born behind bars and barbed wire, had to call on one of our formerly incarcerated alumni to break into the building we\u2019d just purchased,\u201d Henrikson mused.<\/p>\n

P.S. Camp Miller, the L.A. County probation facility that once detained Street Poets David Sanchez, Jason Quezada and countless other wayward youth including current Street Poets board member Taylor Code Maxie Jr., is now closed for good. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d outlive that place,\u201d Taylor said, shaking his head in awe, \u201clet alone be around to help create an inspiring alternative to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Roots to Reach<\/h2><\/div>

September 8, 2022<\/p>\n<\/div>

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