Serving Purpose
Young woman finds purpose and direction in environmentalism and motherhood.

By Milan Gagnon

By many comparisons, Sasha Galloway-Gonce would be like a lot of 19-year-old women. She attends community college full time, plans to transfer to university, and enjoys a day in the park when she has a chance.

But very few women her age could say they've been politically active since they were 14 years old and at 17, through the first months of a pregnancy, especially while living in one of San Francisco's most neglected neighborhoods. Galloway-Gonce, who sometimes goes by "Galloway-G" - her full last name is so long - identifies herself first as a young mother and second, as a community activist-slash-organizer. The teenager has dedicated more than a quarter of her life to issues such as sustainable nutrition and environmental racism.

Sasha Galloway-Gonce, 19 and the proud mother of 15-month-old Divyne, has spent two-thirds of her life in Bayview Hunters Point. She originally comes from Austin, Texas, but attended elementary school and all but the last two years of high school in the Bayview. Other than her mom, younger sister, and Divyne, Galloway-Gonce's blood relatives are scattered across the Southwest. Her father lives in New Mexico now, and she has siblings here, there and in Texas. She wishes they could be closer, both geographically and emotionally. "I always wished I had a big brother," she says, "but he was always in Texas, and my older brother and my older sister, they have like a great relationship 'cause they have the same mom and same dad. So it's always been hard being the single kid all the way from San Francisco, especially going out there - kind of feel outcasted." Instead, she has adopted siblings in San Francisco, including a younger brother. Despite her seniority by a few months, he looks out for her as if she were his kid sister. "But he's, you know, still young," she says. "We get along really good we fight and wrestle and all the shit like real sisters and brothers do." The biggest support and inspiration for her, though is her little boy. "Just to keep me striving," she says. Because of Divyne, she had to quit high school with less than two years to go. It has been hard on her, being a single mother and a student and an activist. She got her GED in 2001 and now attends City College. She collects welfare, and the state provides day care for her while she's in school - 12 units for now, but she's going to have to move up to 15 if she wants to get out of community college in two years, and she does.
	Photos by Irina Bourova
	An activist since she was 14, Sasha Galloway-Gonce said her son, Divyne, gave her an even greater sense of respons-ibility to her community.

With a degree possible a health salon

Her plan is to transfer from City College to San Francisco State University, where she hopes to get a business degree. With that degree, she wants to open a salon and spa where only the finest organic products would be used. She also wants to open an organic food store in the Bayview, in partnership with Literacy for Environmental Justice, the organization partly responsible for her activism.

"We've worked a lot on food security issues," she says, "and basically the food out here isn't secure for the health of our children and, you know, fellow neighbors, and so we've done surveys and all types of things to someday maybe open up a store that would provide organic food for everybody because we don't have a supermarket. We do actually have one supermarket, but it's pretty nasty."

She's referring to Super Save, the community's only one-stop shopping, where many say, although the savings are good, the quality and selection of foods isn't exactly "super" - the market is known to only carry wilted produce and pre-packaged processed foods.

Literacy for Environmental Justice was formed in 1998 to teach Bay Area youth, particularly those in Southeast San Francisco, the skills to research and organize projects in their neighborhoods. LEJ has put a heavy focus on the Pacific Gas and Electric plant in Bayview Hunters Point, healthier food for communities that lack it and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

Galloway-Gonce started her activist career with the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, planting and distributing produce in the Alemany area. Her attraction was initially more to the money SLUG offered and the fact that her friends were doing it. "And then, a year after doing that, I got pretty sick of doing that - just weeding a lot."

Activism opens her eyes

She applied to LEJ when it was still a part of the now-defunct Southeast Alliance for Environmental Justice. She went to the organization highly recommended by a supervisor at SLUG, and she joined the program as a paid employee.

She spent two years working with youth and activists while attending high school, but she was forced to cut back her hours when she became pregnant, and now that she's a full-time college student and mom, she hasn't been able to work at all. "One day I hope to be back, though," she says. Until then, she's happy to be back on the educational track. After two years, "it feels good to be back in school," she says, "actually know that I'm accomplishing something and know that my life is not a waste - it does have a purpose."

When she's not studying or at school, she and Divyne's father, Chris Carpenter, like to take the baby to the park, and she can't wait to take the child to the zoo. She doesn't do what she used to do, "negative things," like skipping school and hanging out. She gave up most of that when she started LEJ.

"I didn't become a good girl," she says, "but I wasn't as rambunctious. "I was getting so out there to the point that if I didn't have (Divyne), then I could've not realized how important my life is," she says. "So I'm very happy that I had him because he made me realize that there is a purpose to life."

Galloway-Gonce has seen much in her years in Bayview Hunters Point. She's amazed by the rewarding experience of working with LEJ, and she's encouraged about the future of the community.

When asked for a single example of what she and LEJ have accomplished, she pauses. "There's so many," she says. "One that really, really paid off everything?"

It comes to her. She and all the youth from her group went to the Independent Systems Operator to get the Pacific Gas and Electric power plant shut down because the Board of Supervisors had told them that it was up to the ISO. It wasn't up to the ISO, the group was told, but the LEJ delegation made such a case through their ability to protest and debate that "the ISO heard us and said they were going to help."

LEJ is an organization that starts at the bottom, by youth for everyone. "We're educating the young people and the young people are educating the old people, and the old people are educating each other," she says. "It's going to get around, and sooner or later, I think we will be able to crackdown on most of the issues affecting the Bayview."

Making connections

That said, all the educating wouldn't be necessary had Bayview Hunters Point not been dealt a serious blow from the very start. "I think the biggest tragedy is learning how - I don't know how to say it - how these corporate people can put power plants in our backyards and not think it's going to affect us and our children," she says. She brings up the oft-repeated statistic that one in three children in Bayview Hunters Point has asthma, which many attribute to the power plant - "I mean, that's terrible." She continues and notes the higher-than-average rates of breast and prostate cancers in the neighborhood, saying people are getting those cancers "left and right.

"Who are these corporate people to make decisions for us?" she wonders. She suggests that the corporate people put power plants in their own backyards to get an idea of "why we're so screwed up over here."

Without declaring class warfare, she singles out her culprits - the corporations, the government, the wealthy and white.

Sasha Galloway-Gonce's ties to her community run deep, but her concern for her baby is more pressing. She wants him to be aware of injustice, but not a victim of it. She hopes they can leave the community someday.

"Hopefully he will be able to appreciate what he has a little more," she says, "and hopefully he will be a activist, too."