SAN FRANCISCO – A group of young people are hard at work changing the script in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood often criticized for being a bad part of San Francisco.
They are part of the 826 Valencia organization at 180 Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, where young people from all over the Bay Area come to learn how to podcast, write and speak in hopes of becoming published authors. . Quran Samad is part of the program’s Black Students Initiative, led by teacher Precediha Dangerfield. Dangerfield told our news team that her students are “worthy of all the resources.”
Samad travels in the afternoon and evening to develop her writing talents under Dangerfield’s guidance.
“I think I have it in me,” he said as he wrote his essay, titled “It’s Expensive to Be Poor.” Samad, like the other students, was assigned to write about social justice and prepared his essay on how he feels when he sees her mother receive bills in the mail.
He read his entire essay aloud at the Museum of the African Diaspora, saying, in part, “When the bills come in, I see my mother struggling and I feel her pain. Our leaders must make the rate of pay equal to the rate of life with comfort and confidence”. Halfway through reading her, the Quran began to cry, and audience members called out, “we love you” and “you have this.”
After it was finished, he said, “For me, telling this story is going to be an amazing thing. Something great is going to come out of this.”
It’s stories like these that bring Quran teachers back to the sometimes cruel streets of the Tenderloin, saying there is hope where there are children willing to learn and tell their stories. Precediha Dangerfield says people should remember that the Tenderloin is home to 3,500 students, something she says our city should be proud of.
Reed Cowan
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