On Friday, in the early morning hours, a former youth center in San Jose burned down. It was on the property of the Alum Rock school district, and on Saturday, board trustees met in emergency session to deal with the destroyed site, but not before hearing from the public about what they would like to see rise from the ashes.
The fire lit up the night at the youth center known simply as MACSA, short for Mexican American Community Services Agency. But for a lot of East San Jose Latino youth, it felt like home.
“I was actually one of the ones who helped bring boxes over to go into the new building,” said Mauricio Perez.
The year was 1995 and Perez was one of the East San Jose students whose life was turned around there. Watching the building burn was devastating.
“When you say ‘MACSA,’ there’s somebody in your family that went there, you know?” he said. “It’s kind of heartbreaking. Kind of like, wow, I can’t believe that happened. It’s like watching a memorial, a San Jose memorial, burn down.”
The MACSA program began as a nonprofit job training center, but quickly became a full-service safe refuge for Latino youth. It operated until 2014, when the program closed up and the property reverted back to the school district.
It sat vacant and deteriorating for 10 years, so the fire only hastened the demise of the structure. And on Saturday, the board met to pass an urgency measure that would allow demolition and cleanup to go forward.
“…to allow the staff to let the contracts on an emergency basis so that this work can be done, so the site is rendered safe,” said the board’s legal counsel.
The emergency vote was necessary to bypass the months-long process of putting the cleanup process out to bid. Next up will be approval from the County Office of Education before any work can begin.
But a local activist group called Somos Mayfair appeared at the meeting as well, urging board members to not just bulldoze the building’s remains but to save what may be possible and commit to rebuilding the MACSA center for a new generation.
“A lot of people, here in the eastside community, we don’t have a center like that where we can get our resources. We don’t have a center where we can go be kids,” said a young Latina high school student.
“We need you to make a public commitment to reconstruction,” said another young woman named Isabella. “To ensure the center to be rebuilt and to be safe for kids.”
“The kids still need a gym. They still need a library. They still need a place to go hang out and feel safe. A place for them to go when there’s problems at home, problems on the streets,” said Somos Mayfair co-executive director Victor Vasquez. “It cannot be over yet. And we have to do everything in our power–whether it’s today, tomorrow–to get together as a community and say here’s what we’ve got to do next.”
As a program, MACSA no longer exists and now the building is gone as well. But if any small part of it can be saved, advocates like Mauricio Perez see it as a way to keep the mission of the center still alive.
“I would like to see this as, hey, don’t look at this as a setback. Look at this as, guess what, now we can build from the ground up,” he said. “There’s so much more that can be done than just, hey, let’s tear it down and do something else.”
School districts don’t have a lot of extra money these days, so it’s hard to see what could be done. But saving any part of it would be a symbol that the program itself was worth revisiting.
