There’s not a lot of merchandise on the shelves at Oak’s Jr. Market these days. The refrigerators along the wall keep some beers and sodas cool. A shelf stores canned chili and Aunt Jemima syrup. But the shelves below the sign that reads “Fresh Produce” sit vacant, waiting to be filled with fruits and vegetables.

Gus Harris Jr., the store’s owner, has been slimming down his merchandise in preparation for big changes. Within the next few months, this modest shop on the corner of Jefferson and Fifth Avenue in Jefferson Park will begin a transformation into a healthier version of its current self. Harris keeps a copy of the plans for the store’s redesign right behind the counter.

“They’ll open this up all the way to the back wall,” he says, pointing to the sketched shelving units on the well-worn pages.

Harris gestures to the row of soda vending machines in front of the store saying, “There’ll be tables and chairs outside where people can drink coffee.”

Harris’ will be one of the first stores to be converted by the Community Redevelopment Agency and the Los Angeles Food Policy Council as part of the organizations’ Community Market Conversion program. The program is attempting to promote healthy eating around the city, especially in South L.A., an area often classified as a “food desert” for its lack of full-service grocery stores and its high density of fast food restaurants.

Unhealthy food has health consequences

“This community needs better food, more nutritional food,” said Reverend Eugene Marzette of the Trinity Baptist Church, just five blocks away from Oak’s Jr. Market. “There are a lot of people who won’t go to the big grocery stores because they just don’t have transportation.”  Marzette added that he has witnessed nutrition-related health issues “running rampant” among his parishioners.

Rates of obesity and related illnesses, such as coronary heart disease and diabetes, are consistently higher in South L.A. than in most of L.A. County, according to the county Department of Public Health. Research by Community Health Councils Inc. found that life expectancy in South L.A. is eight years shorter than in West L.A. and cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of premature death in the area. The Food Policy Council hopes that freshening up stores like Oak’s Jr. Market will improve those issues.

At Oak’s Jr. Market, the remodel will be the first major overhaul the store has had since Harris became the store’s owner about 30 years ago. An L.A. native, Harris came across the store for sale when he worked as a delivery truck driver for a bread company. Since he took over, he has strived to make his store a fixture in the Jefferson Park community.

“I have parents that tell their children, ‘Go to Oak’s and I’ll get you when I get there,’” Harris said. “I’ve been here long enough that the children have grown up and they bring their children. And so you become part of the family.”

When not busy with the store, Harris has sought out other ways to connect with his community as well. He serves as a member of his Neighborhood Council and on the Jefferson Park Improvement Project.

Project slowed by CRA demise

It was this neighborhood involvement that caught the attention of the Community Redevelopment Agency. The agency, which created the Community Market Conversion program, drew up plans to revitalize Oak’s Jr. Market along with three other South L.A. stores: Mama’s Chicken on Slauson Avenue, Las Palmas Carniceria on Central Avenue, and Money Saver Meats on Florence Avenue.

Clare Fox, strategic initiatives coordinator for the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, said that the Community Redevelopment Agency promised to invest about $75,000 in each of the four stores. But when the agency was dissolved in a State Supreme Court decision in 2011, the plans for the stores started seeing long delays while the Community Redevelopment Agency began to finish its open projects and the Food Policy Council prepared to take over the next phase of the program. Harris has been waiting about two years to finally see his store transform.

“We’re all just trying to keep our spirits up,” Harris said of the storeowners, adding that he is excited to be moving forward. “It better happen soon. I’m running out of money,” he joked.

Harris downsized his merchandise and his staff in preparation for his store’s overhaul. He had two employees, but now he runs the store by himself. When the store gets its facelift and its first loads of healthier foods, Harris is confident business will pick up.The four stores undergoing renovation will serve as a test run for future store conversions. Fox said that at this point, the evidence that transforming a neighborhood liquor store into a healthy purveyor of produce actually translates to better business and healthier communities is, for the most part, anecdotal. She said she hopes the future success of Oak’s Jr. Market and the other three stores undergoing conversions will provide the Council with the hard numbers they need to attract other market owners to the program.

When the Food Policy Council took on the Community Market Conversion program from the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Council changed its strategy for encouraging market transformations. The Food Policy Council is working on developing a future program that will offer small grants to market owners. But in its current incarnation, the Council is offering loans of about $20,000 to $40,000 to small business owners looking to get healthy on their own.

Harris will still receive grant-funded money from the Community Redevelopment Agency for his store’s makeover, but he supports the Food Policy Council’s new loan program.

“Mom and pop stores never would have been able to get a loan before,” he said.

Financial risks in healthy grocery business

Starting a healthy grocery business can be financially risky. A storeowner can buy bags of potato chips cheaply in bulk and keep them on the shelf for a long time. A bag of salad greens, on the other hand, requires refrigeration and if it doesn’t sell, it will go bad at the expense of the vendor.

Fox said that’s the reason the Community Market Conversion program includes not just financial assistance but business advice.

“We don’t want anyone to lose money,” Fox said. “We want them to think, ‘Ah! This is a new and thriving part of my business.’”

Her organization has started holding small conferences for mom and pop market owners with workshops covering how to obtain food permits, design a floor plan that appeals to customers, and store produce in a way that keeps it fresh longer.

Though South L.A. has about half the number of full-service grocery stores per capita than West L.A., according to Community Health Councils Inc., Fox said the idea is not just to bring big retailers to the neighborhood.

“It’s basically investing in the [area’s] existing food retail landscape,” she said.

Harris knows his small store might never compete with the big names, but hopes converting his store will make him a convenient, healthy resource to his neighbors.

“[Customers] will come in and they will buy a candy bar or they will buy a bag of chips,” Harris said, “We would like to replace those candy bars and bags of chips with a fresh apple or a fresh orange.”

Read this story on Intersections South LA

Ben “Taco” Owens lifts up the sleeve of his gray, button-up shirt to reveal the full length of the deep scar along his right arm. He was shot twice in 1989 after a gang member asked him what he calls “the most dangerous question in the world,” and a common prelude to gang shootings: “Where are you from?”

Owens is from Los Angeles. And as his scar reminds everyone in the room, he is intimately familiar with gun violence in the city.

“How many people here have been shot?” he asks the attendees of the Southern California Cease Fire Committee’s meeting on gun violence. He and one other man raise their hands.

He rephrases the question, “How many people here have been shot at?” Almost all of the 21 people present raise a hand.

The Southern California Cease Fire Committee, a group that works to reduce gang violence through conflict mediation and community activism, gathered Wednesday evening, just hours after U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings began on gun violence in America. But unlike national politicians, the people assembled in the basement room of a community center on Vermont Avenue and 80th Street are not policy makers. Nor is their meeting anything out of the ordinary. They met on Wednesday—as they have every week for the past eight years—for an open discussion about gun violence.

The people at the meeting, like Owens, have personal, often tragic, histories with guns. Vicky Lindsey, an executive board member of the committee, for example, lost her 19-year-old son to gunfire in 1995.

“He was shot inside the car. They rode around and let him die. He choked on his own blood,” Lindsey said.

Stories like Lindsey’s and Owens’ are what make the communities of South L.A. the most violent in the city. In fact, within about a mile radius of the building where the group meets, the LAPD reported nine homicides in the past year.

Los Angeles—South L.A. included—has witnessed a dramatic decrease in crime in recent years. Last year’s tally of 298 homicides citywide was less than half the number in 2002. 2012 also saw a 10 percent decrease in gang-related crimes from the previous year.

But South L.A. continues to shoulder an unequal share of the violence. With just over 600,000 residents, The LAPD’s South Bureau, which covers South L.A. is the smallest of the department’s four bureaus and accounts for less than 20 percent of the city’s total population. But in 2011, nearly half of homicides in Los Angeles took place in South L.A. The LAPD spends more per capita policing South L.A. than any other part of the city.

“Unless it’s over with, it makes no difference. Unless we’re down to zero homicides it doesn’t matter,” Lindsey said.

The people seated in a circle around folding tables in the meeting go around the room, taking turns to share personal stories and vent frustrations about their community. The meetings, Owens admits, are sometimes just “preaching to the choir.”

Not everyone in attendance agrees on the cause of violence or the best solution for it though. Some gun owners in the room admit to feeling safer with a gun at home to defend their families. One man describes not wanting anyone to find out that his home was the only one in the neighborhood without a gun inside. Another man says the reason he chooses not to keep a gun is because he knows he would be tempted to use it. “I’m a shooter,” he says.

The group touches on religion, race, mental illness, parenting, violent video games, and generational differences—many of the same themes that come up in national discussions of gun control.

Even so, members of the Southern California Cease Fire Committee don’t all feel confident in politicians’ abilities to solve gun violence.

“Whatever decision is made on Capitol Hill isn’t going to impact people in the urban communities,” said Owens. A ban on assault rifles or high capacity magazines, he said, would make little difference in gang crimes committed with handguns.

Lindsey echoed his sentiments.

“Gun violence is what it is. It has nothing to do with the laws they make because criminals aren’t going to follow the laws they make anyways,” she said.

The group brainstorms a few simple tactics for promoting the idea of ceasing fire. One woman suggests lawn signs to blanket the neighborhood with the message. The general consensus in this meeting is that the key to improving the problem is not to change laws but to invigorate the community.

“Newtown cares about Newtown. We don’t care about us,” Lindsey said, speaking before the group, noting the attention paid to the Connecticut community after the Dec. 14 slayings of 20 children and six adults, compared to what she perceives to be a lack of local interest in the scores of homicides that happen annually in South L.A. “This meeting should be packed,” she said.

The unfortunate fact of the matter, Owens said, is that in some communities of L.A., gun violence is just “business as usual.”

Read this story on Intersections South LA