Aboard a black, 40-foot sleeper-bus with a growling tiger painted on the rear windshield, Adam Brooks took the road less traveled.
During the month of June, he and his 11-person Brandeis University sociology class embarked on a 30-day trip through a wide range of American communities, searching for hands-on adventures in tikkun olam.
Equipped with only himself — no pen, paper, tape recorder or camera — Brookes engaged in conversations with several homeless men and women in order to learn stories about their life on the street.
As students in Sociology 156a, the 11 undergraduates were guinea pigs in a first-time (but not last-time) sociology experiment by David Cunningham, an assistant professor in sociology at Brandeis in Massachusetts.
The ongoing yearlong course, named “Possibilities for Change in American Communities,” is based on the Jewish concept of healing the world and combines in-class study to continue this fall with the travel component.
“We drove from the East Coast to the Deep South and as far west as Louisiana,” said Brooks, 19, of Walnut Creek. “In the meantime, we worked with different groups that are active in different movements like civil and women’s rights.”
All the while, the students, professor and two doctoral assistants lived and slept in the bus, which was formerly used by the bands the Who, Journey, Three Dog Night — and once, even the FBI.
Brooks, a member at Conservative Temple B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, aptly signed up for the course for two reasons: He’s interested in social work and wanted to travel around for free.
“The idea is to give us the tools and inspiration to be educated activists who can make changes in a community,” said Brooks. “If you think you can’t change the world, then you’re wrong. You can — we saw people who are.”
Beginning this past spring, Brooks and his fellow students were educated about activism efforts in various urban, suburban and small rural communities, selected to represent the diversity of America.
The course continued in June with the road trip, providing students with direct exposure to these communities, all of which were directly altered by the efforts of social activists — primarily civil rights advocates..
They traveled to places like Princeville, N.C., settled by newly freed slaves shortly after the Civil War; Celebration, Fla., which has piped music playing in a pastel-painted downtown, according to Brooks; and Homes County, Mo., the poorest county in the United States.
In the various destinations, almost all of them new to Brooks, they participated in community projects, stuffing envelopes and carrying signs, and they visited with representatives of various activist groups.
In Mississippi, the students met civil rights activists David Dennis and Bob Moses of The Algebra Project. Former disciples of Martin Luther King Jr., the two seek to fight poverty and bigotry through effective, early mathematics education.
“Algebra is a gateway class, a requirement for other classes,” explained Brooks, who considers math one of his favorite subjects. “If a student is on that track in eighth grade, they can get into calculus by their senior year.”
The group also met the mother of Andrew Goodman, a Jewish, civil rights supporter who was slain in 1964 at the age of 20 while volunteering for the Mississippi Summer Project. Because Andrew Goodman was “a young, Jewish, middle-class boy going to the South to do some good, I definitely felt a connection there,” said Brooks.
In Atlanta they contributed to a discussion on gun control as audience members of CNN’s “Talkback Live.”
In the Bronx the group met Dr. Alan Shapiro, who runs a health clinic and several mobile medical units that provide free community check-ups for the economically disadvantaged.
The list of destinations for the classroom on wheels goes on and on.
Overall, it was eye-opening and inspiring to see “how much people can do to make a difference with so little,” said Brooks, who meanwhile learned how to finagle free showers at universities and community centers.
“I was consistently surprised how incredibly nice people were to us. Even my professor would constantly say, ‘This restores my faith in humanity.'”
Another part of the course involves individual projects, which the students researched on the road trip and will present in the fall. Brooks, a sophomore who has not yet declared his major, is focusing on homelessness.
“I’m never comfortable with the way people treat the homeless,” said Brooks, criticizing “deeply engrained ideas of social class.”
When he decided to conduct interviews with homeless people on the road, he did so without any recording devices to make it “less condescending” and “more human.”
One of the most memorable interviews was his first, in New York City, with a white, blonde woman, age 35, about 5-foot-7 and “very raggedy in appearance.” Originally from Florida, the woman was pregnant and suffering from AIDS. She spoke to Brooks about her experiences in New York.
“She didn’t want to go to a shelter because she was raped there,” said Brooks. “I got the impression she could have gone home to Florida, but she was embarrassed and didn’t want her family to know [what she’s gone through].”
Brooks’ in-class presentation will be accompanied by music, which he will compose to go along with the individuals’ stories.
“The idea is to humanize a sector of our population that doesn’t get the same type of respect we give to other human beings,” he said.
He will work on his presentation for the rest of summer — not aboard a sleeper-bus, but in the comfort of his family’s Walnut Creek home. And though his subjects are less fortunate, he does not feel any guilt.
“Being guilty for where you come from, rather than using where you came from to help, is not productive,” Brooks explained. “I can only feel guilty for things that are my fault. I have the choice now to make a positive impact.”