Editor’s note: There are many, many programs impacted by the decision of the City College chancellor to cut a wide range of classes in an effort to move the school away from its historic mission of serving the entire community. There are so many stories to tell; this is just one of them.
Here’s a letter from Danielle Jackson, and a video that makes her point. The video is by CCSF student David Horowitz.
Dear Chancellor Rocha and The Board:
I am a San Francisco born and raised, mixed-race indigenous, Black, Latinx, working-class woman who is one of many, deeply devastated by the loss of the entire Metal Arts Program at CCSF. The Metal Arts Program at CCSF is the only one offered in all of the Bay area public education institutions and without it, we will lose a very essential art program that leads to lucrative skill sets that engineers, architects, designers, production workers, fabricators, set builders and countless others also benefit from.
As a working-class woman of color who has been on her own since the age of 15, I didn’t get the chance to attend college. Now as a woman in my late 30s, I feel hopeful for a future and a stable career for the first time in my life because of the Metal Arts Program at CCSF and instructor Jack Da Silva.
If the Metal Arts Program is cut, I will be one of countless other folks who will be pushed out of a higher education experience and access to a program that would be completely inaccessible any other way. Jack Da Silva has put in so much effort to make his students learn an unmeasurable amount of metalsmith skills. He has gone out of his way to make sure we have opportunities like what the California College of Art has now put on offer (because of Jack Da Silva) for the Metal Arts department to take part in upcoming shows at CCA and potentially more.
We the Metal Arts students will not get those opportunities without The Metal Arts Department existing. Please bring the Metal Arts Program back.
