Summer jobs
City Hall Summers and the 90s
Every summer, I worked. While other kids were figuring out the mall or the pool, I was clocking in with the Neighborhood Youth Corps in Pittsburg and Concord. The city gave us jobs, and those jobs gave me purpose. We picked up trash, painted over graffiti, filed papers, answered phones. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was mine. It was the first time an adult handed me responsibility and said, “We trust you.”
The summer of 1994 I worked for the City of Concord in the Mayor’s office. I was just a teenager, but I walked into City Hall like I belonged there. And I did. I loved working for the Mayor’s office. I loved the hum of government doing real things. I made copies, sorted mail, sat in on meetings where I was the youngest person in the room by 30 years. I took it seriously. I wore my best clothes and learned how to shake hands like I meant it.
I loved getting certificates. Every program, every summer, they’d hand us a piece of paper with our name on it, and I kept every one. To some people it was just paper. To me it was proof. Proof that I showed up. Proof that I was building something. I did a lot of work in my community, and people noticed. I was always being interviewed by the newspapers to media outlets. They wanted to talk to the kid from the Youth Corps who had opinions about parks, about teens, about the future of Concord. I’d get nervous, then I’d talk anyway. My name in print felt like a different kind of certificate.
The 90s and Global Teen Club was a wonderful experience. We were kids from different schools, different sides of town, different races, all thrown together with a budget and a mission. We planned events. We debated issues. We learned how to run a meeting and how to listen when someone didn’t agree with you. It was the first time I understood that my voice could carry past my own block.
Those summers taught me work ethic before I had bills. They taught me civic pride before I could vote. They taught me that City Hall wasn’t some far-off building. It was ours. And when you’re biracial, when you’re a kid trying to figure out where you fit, having a city say “you belong here, you can help run this” means everything.
I think about those certificates now. I think about the 1994 summer in the Mayor’s office, the smell of copier ink and the sound of a gavel. I think about the reporters with their notebooks and how I stood up straighter when they asked me questions. The 90s gave me that. Pittsburg and Concord gave me that.
I was just a teen with a summer job. But those jobs were the first bricks in the life I’m still building. They were the first time I saw myself as someone who contributes, someone who leads, someone who rises. From Youth Corps to City Hall to now — it all started with a summer, a certificate, and a city that let me in the door.
