Updates updates:

Friday, Jan. 31
Restarted OCAPICA Youth Coffeehouse for the year, I had been looking for a new location since the Garden Grove Boys & Girls Club Family site was going to be unavailable to us for awhile. Tried to hook something up at the Grand Central Art Center, but I decided not to since we would have to pay for someone to close, even though insiders in CSUF, tell me CSUF has the budget to pay for something like that. But I’m going to keep the location for future special events because I love Santa Ana’s Artists Village. So we had Coffeehouse at the OC Youth Drop-In Center. (Mucho grassy asses to Rick)

Didn’t know what the turnout was going to be since I was a dork and planned Coffeehouse on Lunar New Year’s Eve (Doh! Come on not all API youth celebrate Lunar New Year). Then, being that we hadn’t had a Coffeehouse since August and we were having it at a new location probably didn’t help and on top of that one of youth organizers had a family emergency so couldn’t attend.

So I was a lil stressing especially since I was pretty much the only staff running the show. With the help of our youth volunteers quickly and may I say creatively, made signs from leftover fliers to create an arrow pointing where the Youth Drop-In Center was since you need to buzz in to enter. If you’ve been, you know what I mean. Anyways, only a handful of youth came out, mostly college students were in attendance. I was impressed that Paul and his friend came out. It’s nice to know people that keep their word when they say, they’re going to come and do. Sorry, I’ve meet waaaaaay too many flakes this past year. But then again Paul seems like a man of character. He really got kicked out of our Got Ballz men’s health flier.

Rhianne and her group performed a spoken word piece and song, as did Shawn’s friends; he meet at the F.O.B. exhibit, one of them was a classmate of mines at UCLA. (Yes, small world) C also performed a powerful and personal spoken word piece about her experience about rape, which I had no idea about.

We had a lively discussion about rape to politics to homelessness; I know I learned something that night. Was glad I wasn’t really facilitator since it’s easier for me to have a more objective perspective. It’s really hard for me to mc sometimes since some issues are so personal to me; I get too often on my soapbox. ;p So in some sense I was in a way a facilitator since I could step out of the picture and I could see how I can be like when I get on soapbox. ;p

One thing that irked me a bit was when one guy said he wasn’t political and (yes, I’m getting on my soapbox and I can cuz it’s my DAMM BLOG ;p) I get really annoyed when I hear people say this, especially I noticed so many API say this, don’t you people understand it’s your civic duty and it’s privileged to be whatever it means be “political”. (I swear the next person that says this I’m going to call them out on it and ask them what do you mean by being “political.”) People have fought so hard and died not to realize they were doing it for such an apathetic group. It’s people like this that let our society go to hell, this is why f* idiots run our county, as well as our country. You doing nothing is doing something. ARRRGH. Gotta say my piece.