Local leaders take charge in San Jose

Jacqueline Franco weaves through her East San Jose neighborhood each week, rolling a PPEpacked cart, knocking on doors and delivering free face coverings, hand sanitizer and flyers. On some Mondays, she gives out food at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, and on Thursdays she hands out diapers at a local elementary school.

She’s one of many local leaders who partnered with San Jose and Santa Clara County officials and aligned their community work to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted the largely Latino and Vietnamese neighborhood in East San Jose.

City and county officials told The Chronicle that local leaders are crucial to the government’s emergency response. They help distribute food, administer tests and provide the community with facts about COVID-19.

“A lot of us felt like there was such a big need in our community, and if we don’t do it, who is?” Franco said of local community leaders.

Franco is a member of the Sí Se Puede Collective, a group of five community nonprofits in East San Jose that city and county officials said have been central in community outreach efforts. She is a promotora — a community health worker — through the county’s Community Health & Business Engagement Team.

Promotoras have hosted popup sites at various areas in the east side. Central locations such as the bustling La Placita Tropicana — a shopping center on Story and King roads where families push carts of groceries from Cardenas Market and juggle products from other local shops — have been successful spaces to share personal protective equipment, county resources and information on free testing locations, including the county fairgrounds, Franco said.

“The majority of us promotoras, we all live in this neighborhood, so in one way or another we have all been impacted by COVID,” Franco said. “I see our neighbors, and I see me. We rent a small duplex. A lot of us live with a whole bunch of family, right? If I were to get COVID right now, I wouldn’t have my own room to self isolate.”

Local community leaders converted the 6-acre Mexican Heritage Plaza into a food distribution and testing site in partnership with city and county officials, and Gardner Health Services, a community clinic that has historically served immigrant, uninsured residents in the Bay Area.

“When the pandemic hit, we knew that in order for us to survive this, in order for us to meet the needs of the community, we needed to pivot,” said Jessica Paz-Cedillos, the executive director of the School of Arts and Culture at the plaza. “In moments of crisis, it’s imperative that systems and heads of departments involve local leaders and community — those impacted by the crisis — to formulate solutions that are effective.”

Paz-Cedillos and other local leaders said they knew early on that the pandemic would amplify existing inequities that have plagued the working-class community for generations. Access to health care, multigenerational households sharing living spaces because of lack of affordable housing, and working in essential-service-industry jobs are all factors that officials said have exacerbated already stark economic and health divides.

Community leaders said they needed to be a part of the response efforts in the east side, where five ZIP codes in East San Jose — representing only 28% of San Jose’s population — account for roughly 31% of Santa Clara County’s coronavirus cases and roughly 46% of cases in San Jose, according to data from the week of Nov. 15, said Andrea Flores-Shelton, director of the city’s Community and Economic Recovery branch of the Emergency Operations Center.

“It’s hard to look around and see our communities and our neighbors that are struggling, but it also helps us be closer to hearing the solutions and understanding the solutions,” Flores-Shelton said. “It’s the partnerships that are gonna get us through this.”

In August, Gardner Health Services partnered with Santa Clara County and plaza officials to provide free testing services at the cultural hub from 1 to 7 p.m. every Wednesday. Hundreds of people are tested weekly at the site.

The county funds the COVID-19 tests and lab costs to process the tests, and Gardner staff register residents, administer tests, and contact anyone who tests positive. Plaza officials manage the site and distribute face coverings, hand sanitizer, and information on local resources. City officials are also supporting the plaza’s food distribution efforts in partnership with Second Harvest of Silicon Valley on every first and third Monday of the month.

“I think that there is something to be said when community feels comfortable because the people who are attending to them welcome them, (and) look like them,” Paz-Cedillos said. “There is no judgment.”

Within a week of the first stay-at-home order, Franco, 26, said local leaders converged to address some of the issues they knew would disproportionately impact their neighborhood, such as food insecurity, access to testing, and looming financial losses.

During the summer, county public health officials contacted Franco and her “compañeras to make sure that the messaging was easy, (and) understandable” for local residents, especially those who may be more trusting of local leaders than government officials, Franco said.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren. hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez