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Two of the projects that we've
developed involved indirectly or directly youth.
One is the legalization of
cannabis and its economic impacts.
Measure Y, which legalized cannabis in Merced,
30 percent of the sales revenues will be
directed to parks and rec youth services,
which are desperately needed here in Merced.
Our grad student project that only
traces the history of that legalization,
but also collaborate with
local community organization as
they advocate for the city to
honor that measure and ensure that
the amounts due are going to be allocated.
Our project is legalization of
marijuana and its economic impact in the City of Merced.
Measure Y was approved in City of Merced in 2018,
that basically gave them authorization to qualify
and approve marijuana-related businesses
that were involved in those endeavors.
The first outfit that open their doors was Blue Fire.
They have 40 full-time employees,
20 the part-time employees,
and they are planning to have
20 more employees in the future.
You can see that the growth of
this endeavor is fairly
significant in a small community like Merced.
The business tax revenue
started flowing into City of Merced.
However, there was no public accountability
or report of expenditure.
Community engagement activists got
concerned and they gathered at the City Hall,
the city council meeting in
June of 2020 and demanded accountability.
After a heated debate, Mayor Murphy conceded,
and he said the 40 percent balance
of revenue will go to park and
recreation department with a directive
of money being used for youth program only.
In July of 2020,
supervisor in the park and
recreation department announced that they have basically
finalized 20 project and they've received
$337,000 from the City of Merced for those projects.
Example, the McNamara park,
the South of Merced,
it's probably one of the oldest
neighborhoods in the city.
They've been complaining for almost 10 years,
that the swings and
other things in that park are from 1960s.
You have put money for dog park in North Merced,
dog park, but not for
the playing ground for the kids in South Merced.
There is a positive impact that
this project has seen in the City of Merced.
In the project; How did we get here?
Our graduate student team work to train youth
in archival research and gathering
information that the youth can use to create a comic book
about ongoing inequity in our town as well.
Our team from UC Merced was integrated by Amalia Perez,
Joshua Semerjian and myself and we set
a local non-profit organization that trains
local youth in journalism and leader activism.
There we work with Alyssa Castro and Jen Ramos,
the coordinators of the project
and a group of local youth.
We initially designed a plan to
train the youth on research methods.
We had an initial workshop in
the Merced County Courthouse Museum
and a second workshop, introductory to research.
By then, we have the outbreak of
COVID-19 and we had to change our initial plan.
We divided efforts and started working on
the argument of the script and
working with several lead archives.
What emerged from our research connects
Merced with a broader dynamics,
not only throughout California,
but also national processes and global events.
The presence of groups like
the Hmong communities or
the Japanese concentration camp,
are testimonies of resistance and survival.
But they are also traces of forward dynamics,
militarization and expansionism at a global scale.
We'Ced was invited to be at front of
a rally that was organized by
a number of organizations similar set.
The youth spoke at the rally and then
we basically walk through downtown and
we basically raised the banner in
one of the walls of the building where We'Ced is located.
That was an amazing moment,
which I think make the comic book even more relevant.
Like the way have been frame, I
think makes it even more relevant.
Jazz Diaz, it's a local artists that had joined
the project and she has been
a really important addition to this project,
which is basically putting into
illustration many of the findings that we have so far.
This comic book, which connects the Korean Black
Lives Matter movement with
histories of racial discrimination,
is at all canoeing John reader's imagination,
for a better future for Merced.