Violence and Faith in East Oakland

http://www.healthycal.org/violence-and-faithin-east-oakland.html

In this neighborhood of East Oakland, more than 40 percent of the residents are foreign-born. This community has African-American, Latino and Tongen churches, Southeast Asia American shopkeepers, and Euro-Americans. Language is lush with conversational Spanish, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mien, Bosnian, and more recently, Burmese.

This community is what Joan Jeung, a Korean-American doctor, and husband Russell Jeung, a 47-year-old Chinese-American college professor, crave....

The Jeungs are joined by other educated and employed parents who helped establish New Hope Covenant Church. A storefront church, it has social justice activist roots in the neighborhood dating back to the 1980s and immortalized in the recent documentary film, “The Oak Park Story.”

“We’re all asking what it means to be a good neighbor,” says Joan Jeung. “If you want to say you care about community, you have to share in the good and the bad.”

Read more at the Healthy Cal Website.

Tags: East Oakland, neighborhoods, New Hope Covenant Church
Topics: Building Community, Civic Life, Community Health, Faith, Family, Immigrants, Receiving Communities