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Member Number: 28028
Steven was born in Seoul, South Korea after the Korean War. His biological Father was a Black American soldier and biological mother was Korean. His adoptive parents contacted an orphanage in Korea and he was transported to Santa Monica, California where he grew up. Since only 2 years of age at the time of the adoption, he has no early memories of living in Seoul. His father earned his living by gardening and landscaping magnificent homes in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, including the beautiful mansion of Ferde Grofé, composer of The Grand Canyon Suite. During the summer months I helped my father with his gardening jobs and saw many of the amazing properties that he nurtured.
I received an education in the Santa Monica school system and graduated from Santa Monica High. I received excellent grades in high school and was accepted by UCLA, USC and Stanford for admission. I chose UCLA and entered undergraduate life as a
pre-med student. My parents insisted I was going to be a doctor, but I quickly found that I hated pre-med studies. I dropped out of school in my undergraduate years and started working at a restaurant just to earn a living.
After a short time, a relative helped me get a job as a bank teller and I quickly became a lead supervising teller. After a few years at the Santa Monica Bank, I continued working but was transferred to a position that I truly enjoyed; a graveyard shift operator in the computer operations department. This job indirectly led to my birth as a political activist. Over the long, lonely nighttime hours I listened to political radio shows on KPFK and
other stations. I awoke to social injustice in the world and was inspired to muster my efforts to change things. At 29, I quit my job, gave up my apartment, forfeited a plot of land in escrow and agreed to live in a commune to work against nuclear weapons for $5 a week plus room and board.
I lived in a series of communal homes for 2 years doing work on behalf of the Alliance for Survival, an anti-nuclear proliferation organization. I eventually ended up receiving an invaluable ‘hands on’ education in community and activist organizing – all on a $25 a week stipend. Those were the years I began risking arrests in civil disobedience protests at nuclear power and weapons plants. My most memorable arrest came about by accident.
Back in the 1980’s, I protested at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant along with 28,000 other people, which resulted in a trespassing violation. I was released from jail; yet I neglected to return to the local courthouse weeks later for my trial. Unbeknownst to me, a warrant was issued for my failure to return to court. Years later, a routine traffic stop led to a most frightening adventure and to my incarceration for 9 days on a prison bus touring the California penal system. On the way to San Luis Obispo, I rode up Highway 99 to Sacramento and San Quentin and then down Highway 101, spending most of the time handcuffed to murderers serving multiple lifetime convictions. I was practically laughed off the bus by my fellow inmates when asked to explain the reason for my arrest. At that point I decided to avoid offering any further explanation for my presence on that bus.
While working for the Alliance for Survival I was trained in house meeting organizing by Fred Ross, Sr., who helped César Chávez develop the United Farm Workers (UFW). Over the following 24 years I worked for a number of non-profit organizations including one involved in the sanctuary movement for Central American refugees, an ecology center in the San Francisco Bay Area and several peace and social justice organizations.
In 1988 I volunteered to work as second in command for motorcade operations when Jesse Jackson was in Northern California during his Presidential primary campaign. Although I traveled all over the state interacting with Secret Service, police
agencies, hotels and bus lines, I did not see a penny of payment until the Jesse Jackson campaign was absorbed by the Dukakis campaign in June of 1988. I guess you could say that my memories were recompense, enough.
Shortly after the Jesse Jackson candidacy came to an end, I was able to help out in a small, behind the scenes way, when Nelson Mandela traveled to the United States shortly after being released from prison. Many years later working at AARP, I had small roles in public events featuring Tipper Gore and President Clinton.
In 1992, during the social unrest spurred by the Rodney King trial, I was arrested in San Francisco. I was minding my own business with no intention of being arrested. Driven by curiosity I ventured to a peaceful protest in the Mission District, but as I stepped off the bus I was hauled away by the police along with shoppers, neighbors, and tourists. We were all swept up in a panic-driven police action. I spent the next three days in the Santa Rita County prison sharing a cell with a befuddled tourist from Germany. Also incarcerated were local business owners arrested in front of their stores, people who had been walking their dogs, and a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner.
Richard Hongisto, Sheriff of San Francisco (Chief of Police), lost his job because of me. To be more precise, the handling of those controversial police actions resulted in his dismissal. Weeks later the big ‘free’ newspaper in San Francisco produced a cover story on the debacle; highlighting how police surrounded a block of the City and arrested every man, woman and dog on that block. In response to the article, San Francisco police
were seen taking large quantities of those papers from their stands and trashing them. The ensuing scandal left Sheriff Hongisto without a job.
When not working on political events I am a ‘computer nerd’ and have some
international recognition for my programming efforts, mainly with the open source operating system Linux, which is popular worldwide. Over the years I designed and set up computer databases for financial record keeping and donor tracking at several non-profits. More recently, I converted a bricks and mortar bookstore into an online store for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). For my contribution to the Linux computer community I received Initial Public Offering (IPO) shares which helped my wife and I buy our first home. I have traveled around the country giving presentations on computer programming subjects. I have also developed an interest, in the last few years, in mathematical theory presenting posters at two conferences: the Wolfram Science Conference (2006), and the Annual Bayesian Analysis Conference (2008) in Australia
My wife and I live in Altadena and love to travel, especially with our Chihuahua-Dachshund mix dog. We logged close to 10,000 miles with our dog, Cantinflas, as we traveled around the United States last year. I recently quit my job last month as Los Angeles Program Director for American Friends Service Committee.
HobbiesComputer programming, reading books, listening to music
GoalsWrite a book about human communication
Linkshttp://superant.com
Steven Gibson Archive References
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