. >> the question has come up, choices have to be made. >> mrs. torrez >> i'm sorry, i have to go. >> mrs. torrez, how are you holding up? >> i'm fine, thank you. >> how's mr. torrez >> he's doing his best, still trying to raise bail. >> first they murder and then on the very same day. >> that was no accident. my husband shot that poor boy down in cold blood when he bought that gun he carried it with him everywhere hoping something would happen. he had so much rage. now he just sits there and barely speaks. he knew that boy. the one they call ill, he knew him since he was a small boy. but it was dark and all he could see was someone

coming through the window. why must there be so many guns? >> i don't know. i don't know. >> and then those boys, paul, the one they call pratt, falling to his death from a freeway overpass. what was he doing out there so late at night. >> the kid was climbing up the freeway sign to tag it and lost his footing. they said he was hit by two cars. >> does life mean nothing any more? what can be done?

(music). >> all right, listen up. this ain't kid stuff any more. this is war. everybody attack, all the gangs beating on us, now it's time we take back the hood. we're going to tag it up big and reclaim the store. my cousin coming strapped for back-up so if anything happens. >> hey, what's up, man? >> what y'all planning. >> we hit them back and we hit

them hard. >> listen to me, all of you. go home. go home before you get yourselves killed. >> what are you talking about? >> can't you see what's going on in your own hood? you think we're going to let that happen? no, i'm not. >> come on, tibo, you're a leader. >> yeah, but i also want to (inaudible). >> i want to lead as many of these kids out of here as i can. >> we ain't playing no more, this is real. three of our kids are dead now. >> a coward would stay home and let you get shot over something stupid. >> go home and lead. the rest of us got work to do. >> you don't have to do this. you don't have to buy this kind of trouble. you can good a little further and do the right thing. >> what's that? >> i don't know, but it ain't

this. this is negative. kids die young over this kind of stuff. >> we're in a war. >> no you're not. >> it's a stupid war, then. go home, all of y'all. go home now!. >> hey, come back here right now. come back here right now. that's it, heat, you ain't my folk. >> i am your folk. >> you ain't my folk. >> i am your best friend. i can take that but i'm not going to your funeral, man. i ain't going to no more funerals. >> come back.

>> let's look at what happens to (inaudible) and tibo >> yo >> what's up, man? >> not much, man. what you been up to since last we talked? >> i just been thinking a lot about what you said. >> i didn't mean to come off so hard. >> that's just it, you were right. do the right thing. i'm heading to college, art class. >> go ahead, i'm proud of you, man. >> bad boys, bad boys. >> believe it or not, for a tragedy, it does have a happy ending but it raises some questions to talk about like what is the value of your human

life. what can you do as an individual who live a positive life? where does that begin? how will you choose? before we come to talk to you about it, i think you need to hear this.

(music). >> now is question and answer time. well done. make some noise for wild and done. (applause). >> anybody have questions? any questions? >> what we did was i scoured basically the internet and found stories throughout the country and a lot of these

stories that we weave together did come from sacramento. for example, jacob over here who was playing bill went in to a store to try to steal some paint and that actually did happen in sacramento, where they broke in, the guy was upstairs, he was the owner, he was being, you know, vandalized or stolen from and the kid got shot just for some containers of liquor. when we say these things happened, we did weave them together. is there a question back there? >> i was wondering on your personal opinion on the beating. >> our personal on gravanis, the whole thing is it's

permission based. now, i know a lot of artists go out there and do gravanis art with permission, murals, commissioned art. for us that's not a big deal. there are a lot of murals in sacramento and san francisco that is all permission based. for us, we're kind of a sdae zero tolerance city in sacramento. you go out and you vandalize something, that's a crime. that's how we view that in our city. >> i tell them it's art, you got to express yourself but you cannot damage other people's property. i usually say how many of you have a little brother or sister, you don't want to teach them to steal. how do you feel when they mess up your stuff? that's how i approach it. >> also we try to leave that at the end where tibo, played

by anthony over here, that's basically how the character evolves throughout the play, being this leader of this crew and, you know, he kind of teaches everybody but says, yeah, you have a leader but i ain't going to do what you are going to do. robert over here who plays damage, he's the antagonist. he's kind of damaged but at the end, you know, these guys, oh, hey, you know what, you gt a talent, let's turn that into some artistic talent, he's going to go to college to try to improve his artistic skills. that's the kind of direction we want it to go. >> question over here? >> what schools will you be visiting this year? >> we do a tour. we do two semesters so we do anywhere from 16 to 18 bookings in our

school district and we do, like, elementary schools. so we go in and during assemblies on friday and we take, you know, it's kind of a -- it's good theater but it's guerilla theater. we do this condensed message in 30 minutes. >> it's about a 22 minute play, generally speaking, then we usually hang around for another 15 or 20 minutes so we usually get about 50 minutes and that's all we can get. again, a lot of these things are just based, we might not see a whole lot of schools but he has a whole other job. we used to go out and do two performances a week so we were doing 16 or 18 but it's just -- with the manpower shortage, since 2007 our theater department has lost like 40

percent of what we usually do. i know that noel's department, he's lost people and programs and hopefully things are going to get better. >> it says a lot for the program when in rough budget times, we're still around. so we meet a lot of students. >> success stories of kids who were going the wrong way? >> as a matter of fact, the first couple semesters, where we did a break out session, where we break out with the teachers and their students and one of the actual kids said, you know, something is going on in my house, my brother's a gang banger, the house is abusive, and that breakout session, that child actually reached out to us. we were able to get dps to actually pull her out of her house so

it's a good venue for those kids to express that. >> i had a fourth grader who told me, he said if they think i can do better in the world. he was a fourth grader, they can feel sad or they can feel it's not good, but i had a fourth grader look at me and say, we are doing a lot of good. >> my question was also already been answered. has your presentation had any impact on the level of gravanis? >> that's something we have to measure. and that's something, that's when we actually go into the elementary schools because, you know, the kids, i don't

know about san francisco but in sacramento, a lot of the kids that we catch are adults. they are from 18 to 27. so if they are going to do it, i consider that a lost cause. they are going to make up their mind whether to go through with it or run. i'm trying to reach the kids who are small that we can plant that seed, you know, later on when they get seduced in junior high or high school, hey, let's go smoke some bud and tag the freeway i want to plant that seed early. there's going to be a couple years down the road where hopefully we'll see it go down. >> i just want to say, first of all, you guys did a really good job.

(applause). >> how do you get grants to spend money on something like this that is very soft and hard to measure. >> how we presented it or i presented it was we can sit there and hook and book, arrest them, we can do the suppression all the time, but there is no community outreach and that's what the whole hook is, getting out and doing the outreach to the kids. so, i mean, yes, prevention, that's the tack we took and it was a good deal because these guys, bill, this is not their main thing. the main thing is being a leader and presenting this message but at the end of our presentation to the fte, at the end of the semester when we complete something, they get a scholarship at the end. so that money goes back into the community. the kids spend it

in school or out in the community so it just revolves. so it's a win-win for us. the money gets paid to these guys and they put it back in the community and when they walk around and some of the kids, all the kids are local, they will see the kids at burger king, hey, i saw you guys. so these guys are real in the community. >> it's also for us that a lot of these people here have done this many times. i know it's not for the money because it's not that much. they get about $350, something like that, we measure it by the hours they show up, if they did a rehearsal or a performance, obviously they're not going to get that much if they don't show up every time, but it's way below minimum wage. >> that's right. >> we usually go to -- i have children and we usually go to my kid's school. i see it

every time i good to school because they remember me, what's going on with them. i see it change myself. >> did a guy actually fall from the freeway? >> yeah, you may not be surprised but that kind of thing does happen fairly regularly. >> crazy. >> i have a question about the (inaudible) funding issues, do you have any intention to fund more so you can expand, things like this. >> all i can tell you is that those decisions are made by, you know, in our department, in our division, in our campus, in the community college community

-- i'm sure there's a much better word -- the recommendations come down from the lao, have you ever heard of the lao, the legislative analysis office? they are a nonprofit. anybody here from the lao? they make recommendations how to streamline spending and one of the things they kind of turn a blind eye to things like this because these are classes that are what we call repeatable. kind of like if you go to a college and you want to play football, you are probably going it take the same class -- when you are on the football team you have to enroll in something so they end up enrolling in these classes over and over. a lot of these guys maxed out doing theater at city college so they sign a waiver form to be volunteers. i don't know, does that answer your

question? >> one question, now that i know about the legislative, i was wondering about this program when they start thinking about where the money should go. >> unfortunately, i think so yes. on my college campus it's highly revered. i'm a rock star with my students for this. >> as far as the city is concerned, too, because we take that money and we dump it into the city college and it gets to these guys and then it gets to the community. what i tend to do is when we go to the schools, it's a perfect -- it's a lot of good pr, the principals and whoever is there to write letters to say, hey, this is a great program, please continue and at the end of the session we always have a survey

tool that i ask the teachers and administration to fill out. and then at the end of the year when we do the end of our run, i'll submit that packet to our city council and say, look, we have visited these many schools, this is the response that we got from teachers and parents, you know. this is how many students that we did on this outreach and hit them with the numbers it would be, like, oh, thumbs up, the school wrote us a letter, our da, our district attorney to come see us, she wrote us a letter, so that's how you fund it. >> what he's mentioning is the former chancellor of the los rios college district, the former chancellor is now the statewide chancellor of community colleges, brad ferris

who recently retired and now is the state chancellor of community colleges. he came out and saw us, surprised us one day. i felt like one of those dogs that won't stop rubbing against your leg. he really liked it. >> i don't see why not, we want to definitely express a word. a question over there? >> when i first read the description of the play tonight i was thinking in my mind, well, maybe i can skip it .s i didn't see what i would get out of it but you guys are 100

percent right on (applause) i been tracking gravanis for about 3 or 4 years. i'm not a tagger, a kid got shot, he is handicapped right now, another one shoplifting, one got stuck, they had to come get him, he was 12 years old. this young kid, it happened -- that's just in the last year and a half i've experienced that. 12 years old to 60 are people right from the streets of oakland and for us in the summer we were thinking about an outreach program for kids and we brought this to the oakland task force and one of the issues was an outreach for kids. and first a group of people, council members and

code enforcement thought it was kind of a silly idea but it is very important. if we can catch somebody to have another option, because gravanis does lead, it is a great -- a gateway to crime. i know taggers who are stealing and doing other crimes. i know people that have $450,000 worth of crime. >> hubris, we call it. >> i do talk to the taggers and stuff. you guys are right on and i am going to try to get oakland to do this kind of stuff. there's plenty of talented people, plenty of

rappers in oakland. you guys could go back and brain wash my people to go to the schools and do this program. have you come back. >> reed cameron has been taping this whole thing. >> you guys are 100 percent, 200 percent right on. >> thank you. >> a general question on the budget, the budget item eye. >> we probably spend about $30,000 a year, so one fte what is that, a utility worker? so, you know, that's probably what we spend. >> have you (inaudible). >> are you talking about any

of the kids here have experience with gravanis? i've been taking it off for 26 years. >> you know what? as a matter of fact one of our players about a year ago, he actually was a soldier in iraq, 18, 19, he went to iraq. the deal is he gt busted on a misdemeanor felony for gravanis so the military would not let him go to the military. and so he made a deal with the district attorney and he actually was in our play for a semester, did that community service, paid his 10 grand in restitution and went into the military. so, yes, we did have one experience within the cast at that time.

>> any questions? >> i don't know if i need a mic. i want to encourage other cities that want this program to consider the program, it was fantastic. it was fantastic. i'm wondering if you thought about taking it into high school. >> junior high. >> the thing is we were thinking about that, but my whole thing is planting the seed at elementary school because, you know, when you get 12, 13, you get this attitude and they say, like, when you are 5 years old you develop

penalty. for us, we wanted to have that opportunity to catch them young, it plant that seed. so when they do progress from middle school to high school, hopefully it will sprout. i'm not going to mess with no gang, i'm not going to get messed up with that, gang stuff, you get beat up, get killed. >> i personally think the older kids, junior high, late junior high, high school, like my daughter is in 10th grade. and she'll be in somebody's face. those kids, they kind of already made up their minds. that's one of the things i got out of that. plus we go to middle school and we'll do a show, we started off by going to what was it kit carson middle school and we did the 7th graders one day and the 8th

graders the other day and it was, like, 500 students. we were outnumbered when they are watching you, it's easier to make fun and that's kind of how it went. we love the 5th and 6th graders because they eat it up and they want to talk to us. there's a lot of kids that are not going to do it and there's a bunch of kids that they are going to do it no matter what, but it's those kids in the middle, if we can get it while they're on the fence, i think that's where it's more effective with the 5th and 6th graders. >> this form of outreach for anything else? >> we kind of do in parks and rec. back when i was 19 was parks and rec. as a matter of fact, i wrote that play 15 years ago and it's been sitting in my desk for 15 years until somebody said we got a little bit of money. so somebody

wrote the play, sent it to me, it was the 60's version. >> guy who grew up in redding, california. >> i kind of rewrote it, i was 90's version. and so i ran an anti-gravanis, i hire 14, 15, 16-year-olds and we go out in the weekends to abate gravanis and i floated this idea to my kids, they are interns now, they're 20, i'm old. they wrote the 2000 verse, that lingo. >> we keep asking them, if that doesn't sound right, give me a g-rated version that we can take to the schools. >> the new answers are so great.