The first time I went to Lincoln High School I saw six people of color in an audience of about 200. Also in attendance were 10 cops, 15 city administrators and at least a dozen people who looked like they belonged in a late-era Old Navy commercial. You know, dancing in the sun on a grassy hill somewhere, all smiles and spinning.



The gathering was called to provide an update on efforts to clean up the neighborhood surrounding Lincoln High School, among others. One after another, caring citizens wandered up to the front of the Drost Auditorium, a triumph of English Gothic architecture and an ironically appropriate aesthetic for this particular audience. One after another, these caring citizens told stories of how they were cleaning up crime, getting rid of trash, expelling ne’er-do-wells, and generally making the neighborhoods surrounding Lincoln habitable. These particular inhabitants were full of frontier bluster — well-pressed pioneers taking on the ghetto, blazing a trail, making things right. Soon enough, they promised, the streets would be safe. The parks would be safe. The schools would be safe. One made a reference to “getting rid of the people we don’t want.” To whom she was referring is hard to imagine. They probably wouldn’t make it in an Old Navy commercial though. Everything would be safe one day, they ensured the audience, just like the suburbs. Just a few more community clean-ups, a few more block watch programs, a few more picketing rallies against panhandlers, gangs and drug dealers.



One group — cleverly named the Lincoln LAWGS — was represented by a recent transplant from a suburban community I don’t remember. I was too busy admiring his sweater and khakis to scratch that detail on my pad. He had all of the vitality of an old piece of organic broccoli, and he spoke with the authority of a bank teller. I don’t really remember much of what he said. But I remember the feeling I was left with and the feelings I wasn’t.



Disappointment? Check. Confusion about the absence of people of color? Check. Safe? Not really. Hope? Nope.



Maybe someone should invite Noemi Lopez to the next meeting. Lopez is a student at Lincoln High School, a senior. On a recent daytime visit to Lincoln, spending five minutes talking to Lopez in Mrs. Zamira’s English class gave me more hope for the future than any parade of community activists ever has. Not just for Lincoln, but for the human race in general.



I met Lopez during my second official visit to Lincoln, invited by Co-Principal Pat Erwin, who greeted me in a hoodie and seems uncharacteristically relaxed for someone in charge of corralling hundreds of teen-agers. Erwin’s invitation was simple: come see what Lincoln is really about. Reading between the lines, it was clear I was invited to see what Lincoln isn’t as well — a harbor for gangs, an academic wormhole, a font of crime and delinquency, a place people go to fail. Those are among prejudices encountered by Irwin, teachers, former students, and, worst of all, the students themselves.



Yes, Tacoma, prejudice is alive and well. Did you think we had turned the corner? Really? And yes, I’m probably talking to you. It’s OK. I’m guilty of prejudice, too. But mine got slapped in the face by Noemi Lopez.



Lopez is a pretty girl with a strange strength and curiosity in her eyes. At first glance, an outside observer might peg her as one of those rap guys’ girlfriends. She has shiny, tightly curled hair, and her clothes are a little baggy.



She doesn’t flinch, however, when confronted by a reporter, pen and camera in hand. She’s a lot braver than a lot of bank managers I’ve interviewed and far more insightful.

As part of a senior project, Lopez spent last Christmas and a couple of weeks on either side in El Salvador. The subject of her senior project was the crippling effects on the lives and life direction of children raised amidst the terror of civil war. Lopez didn’t just read a few books, surf Web sites or scan a few articles. She went to El Salvador and fought with her parents for weeks to convince them to let her venture out into the city. She was finally allowed to go with her cousin into the poor neighborhoods where children are recruited — sometimes forcefully inducted — into the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a Socialist political and military faction that recently came to power when its candidate, Mauricio Funes, was elected to power.



Lopez was allowed to visit the recruiting grounds, which are surrounded by poverty, starvation, homes made of cardboard, plastic, and other, ahem, recycled materials. She describes children scavenging for food in garbage cans, many of them abandoned by their parents. Like the gang members she sometimes shares classrooms with, they were ripe for recruitment. She witnessed this firsthand, and despite the omnipresent danger, she immersed herself fully in hopes of truly understanding something that most of us look at and judge from a distance.



Lopez is a brave, motivated, insightful girl. Her senior project essay, which I received a sneak-preview copy of, is better than anything I ever wrote in 10 years of college. She’s certainly not destined for failure — as many people would assume based on her attendance at Lincoln. Neither is Antonia Orozco, who penned his essay about innovative ways to prevent kids from dropping out of school. Neither is Desiree Carroll, who wrote about the impacts of socioeconomic status on graduation rates. Neither is Roman Borishkevich, who wrote about modern dependence on technology. Neither is Brooklyn Garrett, who wrote about all of the factors contributing to our current foreclosure epidemic. Neither is Roberto Trejo, who wrote about the continuing improvement of the public school system.



Chalk it up to living in more interesting times, but I think these above-and-beyond topics have more to do with more interesting — and interested — kids. These same kids, in one way or another, are told that the context of their education dooms them to failure, says Rob Jones, a college prep advisor and administrator of the school’s College Success Foundation scholarship program. Jones knows all too well how Lincoln is perceived. A longtime Tacoma resident, Jones wasn’t allowed by his parents to go to Lincoln. As a faculty member, he sometimes receives looks of pity when he mentions where he works.

“I get an almost sympathetic response when I tell people where I work,” he says. “They’ll say things like ‘They really need someone like you.’”



Jones hears it from former students as well. In speaking with a former student and current employee at Russell Investments, Jones was told people are shocked to hear where the finance professional went to school. He frequently encounters college counselors who are skeptical of students emerging from Lincoln. 



Readers might be surprised to learn, then, that two students from Lincoln recently received a highly competitive Gates Millennium Scholarship, which provides a full ride through graduate school for two high school students every year. That’s two out of 20,000 applicants. Jones also mentions proudly that there has never been a case of two students from the same school receiving the Gates Millennium Scholarship.



“It’s never happened,” says Jones with a grin.



Principal Erwin says he finds the most hope in these small victories, which most people never hear about. The East Side of Tacoma is a segregated part of town in many ways, he says. People living downtown don’t go to the East Side often. There are no museums, no mall. But this segregation doesn’t just affect people living in more ritzy parts of town. It affects kids living on the East Side in a number of ways. When he was principal at McIlvaigh Middle School, during a field trip to a downtown office building, Erwin was struck hard when a 12-year-old girl told him that she’d never been in a building with more than two stories. That day, Erwin realized how distant Tacoma’s renaissance is for so many kids. All that activity and celebrated growth is invisible for many kids living on the East Side. Put simply, many kids don’t get to see images of success all that often.

“They’re not used to winning,” says Erwin. “Some kids are more driven, but so many of them are used to the world being chaotic. They’re convinced that things are going to go wrong.”



It’s hard to pin down where that perception originates. Take your pick: economic circumstances; bad parenting; isolation and segregation; a school system that is underfunded and overburdened with responsibility; gangs; or a community that seems unwilling to acknowledge success and overly willing to write these kids off.



Erwin knows where it originates because he’s there every day. It’s an all-of-the-above situation. Because he recognizes that there is no magic pill, no community action group, development, economic plan, or citizen’s group with a cute acronym that will save us all, Erwin is content to find success in small doses.



“This is about resilience, patience, and perseverance,” he says, emphasizing that successes are emerging far more frequently than most are willing to recognize.

As we walk the halls, he collars a half dozen students for being outside of class; takes several breaks to go back to his office to deal with other students; and is summoned by one teacher who says a student is hollering obscenities.



After Erwin goes back to his office, I wander around and snap shots of students, listen in on some senior project presentations, and I am greeted warmly by everyone I approach. Even the kids in baggy pants. Every one of the presentations reinforces how smart, hopeful, motivated, and keenly aware these kids are of themselves, their circumstances, and the world around them. The more I talk with people such as Lopez, the more I realize how foolish we all are. I swear I’ll never watch another one of those disgusting movies where the upper-middle-class white teacher comes in and single-handedly saves all of the poor kids. Seriously, Tacoma. These kids are going to save us.