Santa Ana Shows Unity in Divided Times : Society: In a session full of hope, 1,500 residents come out to prove to the superintendent and the mayor that yes, they care.

On May 11, I was privileged to be among 1,500 Santa Ana residents as they brought before the mayor of Santa Ana, Dan Young, and the superintendent of Santa Ana Unified School District, Rudy Castruita, a well-considered list of recommendations aimed at improving the opportunities for an important part of California’s restless future: the city’s young people.

It was not a session of taunts or bitter accusations. Those who boldly gave voice to the inquietude of the many pensive parents assembled offered an earnest partnership to city officials. The residents looked for a chance to work with the city, the police and the schools in ways that could nurture a brighter future out of the all too uneasy turmoil that often disheartens Santa Ana.

The meeting was organized by OCCCO, the Orange County Congregation Community Organization, a grass-roots association representing 50,000 families. It took place at St. Anne Catholic Church on Main Street. The building was brimming with people of all ages and resonated with the constant rustle of children.

Parents strained their attention as the meeting rolled back and forth from English to Spanish. Did anyone not belong there? Would the meeting have meant anything if there were such distinctions? This was not the mayor’s meeting. Nor did the superintendent organize it. They were honored guests at a meeting convened by the residents. The questions: “Do they vote? Are they legal? Where do they come from?” were overridden by the more relevant question and its conspicuous answer: “Do they care?” Sitting in the midst of the congested congregation I can confidently say, “Yes, they do.”

As I read about the meeting in the following day’s papers I also noticed the stories on the recent commercials for Gov. Wilson’s reelection running film clips of border-crossing scenarios with immigrants darting through the traffic desperately trying to get into the country. There was another story about the efforts to accumulate signatures for a possible anti-immigrant proposition for the November ballot.

In trying to comprehend this disparity it would be cliche and most inaccurate to speak about a polarized community divided between the haves and the have-nots, legals and undocumented, some modern rendition of “A Tale of Two Cities.”

I have gradually become convinced that we live in a city with two tales. There are two ways to tell the story about what is happening to California and our own local communities here in Orange County.

One could say that things are coming apart or that things are coming together. Either option gives reason for fear and concern and yet neither is necessarily mutually exclusive of the other.

Like the shifting subterranean plates that undergird the Southland, our communities above ground are rearranging themselves, pulling together and pushing apart with stresses and strains that reverberate throughout the economy, our neighborhoods, schools and churches.

But unlike the massive fissures that swell and surge to the laws of geophysics, society creates its own laws and tries to match the rhythm of millions of different heads and hearts each filled with its own set of fears and aspirations. Will those laws pull us apart? Will they bring us together? Unlike the perpetually grinding plates we can choose and that choice each one must make in one’s own mind.

Do we pull it apart or do we bring it together? Which option will prevail?

The meeting last month was made possible because thousands of people in congregations throughout Santa Ana have consistently made a preferential option to pull it together. By pulling together they hope to move aside mountains of fear and despair for the sake of clearing a path for the future. It is a sadly uncommon gesture in a society that would rather cast out people than its own fear.

The rising tremors of a November proposition against immigrants would further deepen the social fissures and erode the strength of this state. Local politicians seem to have lost their bearings in this shifting political terrain and would rather treat the mounting resentments as an inevitability as impossible to evade as “the Big One.”

Propositions have become a clumsy excuse for the failure of our political leaders to deal with the challenges this state faces. Many of these mega-measures grasp at wild solutions while our communities and our children slip further out of our reach. They have become a political system without a face and without any accountability where shortsighted, ill-conceived remedies promoted by bumper stickers and sound bites substitute for sound public discourse and judgment.

That meeting of the congregations of OCCCO with the mayor and the school superintendent of Santa Ana offered a refreshing alternative. Rather than a group of people without hope reaching for apocalyptic outcomes, the Santa Ana churches, inspired by an apocalyptic hope, sought out practical outcomes that have been refined and tested through the heart-to-heart dialogues that make up the binding fiber of the organization.

Like much of what the churches believe, this is a tale that is heard best through our hymns: “There is no Jew or Greek. There is no slave or free. There is no woman or man; only heirs of the promise of God.”