Francisca Swisher-Gomez

I first met Franci when she was 4-5 years old and then again, yesterday, when she came on a video call I was having with her father, Michael Swisher. I had reconnected with Michael a couple years ago and worked on a project with him. Franci was returning to college on Monday, Jan 24, 2022, and agreed to come over to the Studio for an interview. I kept a copy of the CPDP book Transitions ready for her to learn more about the Project. But she already knew. - Sushmita Mazumdar

Experience of Diversity

“Paula [Endo] used to be our downstairs neighbor. We used to water her plants. I grew up with her grandchild Aidan and I still get the occasional five-minute voicemail from her,” Franci said with a smile, as she thumbed the pages of the book.

  

“I’m graduating in Spring 2022 and thinking of plans for after that - where I want to live, what I want to do for work. I would like to move to a new city, I have a few in mind already. I have yet to visit most of them, but I’ve heard great things about them. These cities sound like they would be a great fit for me except for the fact that they are very white. Diversity is a big thing for me, and I don’t want to live somewhere that lacks it. 

I don’t think I appreciated the area I grew up around and the diversity I experienced here until I left for college. I spent my first year of college at Macalester College in the Twin Cities. It was a very white area, but there were still a few pockets nearby me where there was greater diversity. My friends and I could take the bus a few stops down the road and have access to diverse grocery stores. Although I am afraid I didn’t explore too much—it was far too cold to explore! I wanted to go to college far away from home and whatnot. Then I transferred to William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This was when I experienced a real lack of diversity. I think it really hit me when I first tried to cook an Asian dish I had made before. I went to the grocery store to pick up sesame oil and I couldn’t find any! I went to probably three grocery stores in the area and still had no luck. I eventually looked up where the nearest Asian grocery store was, and it was a 30-40 minute drive away. I was shocked that I couldn’t find what I thought was a fairly common ingredient. Here the furthest I would have to drive to find more ‘diverse’ ingredients is probably 10 minutes at most. Usually, I can just walk down the street and find what I’m looking for. This was just one of the instances where I further came to appreciate the diversity I grew up around.

I like walking down the street here and hearing so many languages. Diversity teaches you about different perspectives, cultures, and keeps you open-minded. I think it’s easy to get into one rhythm and get into one way of thinking. I was born here in the U.S. but my mom, Sandra Gomez, is from Chile and my dad is white American. So I would call myself multi-cultural. I’m pretty proud of my heritage even though I am not super knowledgeable about it. Both of my parents are fluent in Spanish and when I was a toddler that was the primary language in our home. But over the years we started to speak less and less. This started when was in pre-school at Arlington Mill on the Pike and realized everyone there spoke English. Which, looking back on it, was a little odd because a lot of parents of my classmates didn’t speak English— my mom would often help as translator. But going home after learning everyone else primarily speaks English, I stopped wanting to speak Spanish. My parents would ask me things like, “How do you say this word in Spanish?” and I remember that I always knew the right answer in my head but would pretend that I had no idea what they were talking about. With my consistent refusal to speak Spanish, my parents found it harder and harder to speak back to me in a different language than I was speaking to them, so we ended up speaking mainly in English, and still do to this day.

Stories of Language

I went to Claremont Elementary School, which has a Spanish-immersion program, so we spoke Spanish for half of the school day. I enjoyed going to school there and I was able to keep up my Spanish pretty well. Despite it being an immersion school, my friends were mostly white and spoke English at home. So, I guess speaking English was the ‘cool’ thing and speaking Spanish felt more like a chore. When we would visit family in Chile, I often didn’t want to speak in Spanish. I knew some of the slang there, but not having native fluency produced a lot of anxiety and often kept me from speaking.

 

For middle school and high school, I attended HB Woodlawn. After leaving Claremont, I really wanted to learn French, but my mom insisted I take Spanish. She didn’t really give me a reason why. I remember being so frustrated and mad that I wasn’t allowed to take a French class. I didn’t realize why she did this until much later— probably during my senior year of high school or maybe even in college. Now I am extremely grateful my mom forced me to keep up with Spanish because I would have lost it otherwise. And I did finally take a French class my first semester at college and realized I did not enjoy it. So in the end, I guess it was best I didn’t take it back in sixth grade.

 

I’ve always found it comforting to hear different languages. I love walking down the street or shopping at MegaMart on The Pike and hearing people speak in Spanish. I guess it makes me feel like I’m in Chile. But in general, being around a variety of languages feels like home. 

 

On the Pike, I know there will be more gentrification with all these high-rises being built and the mom-and-pop shops closing. I regret not exploring all that before college. The regrets came after I moved away. I have driven up and down the Pike a million times. Even though I have not been inside many of the buildings, it’s the landscape where I grew up. But that landscape is changing every day and I worry that the uniqueness of the Pike will start to fade away. I am glad to see that the area of The Pike where I grew up has stayed mostly the same, but it has definitely become very gentrified down closer to Glebe Road. But with the real estate market in Arlington, I’m afraid that trend will trickle down the Pike.

 

If things continue the way they are going now, it will definitely be disappointing. We might lose diversity along The Pike as change will likely push out lower-income families, who are often the people who bring the diversity to our area. And it’s nice to see the local businesses, the mom-and-pops shops. If those close, I feel like we’ll lose some of the familial aspects of the Pike. And as for the people who will replace them, young white professionals come to mind. It would feel less homey. 

 

Craving Green Spaces 

I have been thinking about possibly moving to Portland or Seattle—I’ve never been but they seem like cities I would enjoy, kind of hipster-y and close to nature. I definitely want to be in a city environment because that’s how I grew up. But I also want to be close to nature. My one concern is I’ve heard those cities are very white. There is diversity there too but not like here, at least that’s what I have heard from friends who have travelled there and from what I’ve seen in the media. But I want to eventually travel there and see it for myself. My dad and I visited Madison, Wisconsin for a day last summer. I really enjoyed the city and how it was interconnected with nature, but it was extremely white. As my dad and I walked around we saw maybe two families of color the entire day, which didn’t feel right. I think I would have considered moving there too if the diversity was better.

 

I took a public health class this semester and we talked about green spaces and health - a lot of low-income neighborhoods have little to no green spaces and higher-income neighborhoods tend to have lots of green spaces. Learning that spending just five minutes in green spaces can improve physical and mental health made me think about the health inequities people face even just from the area in which they live. I would say Arlington in general is pretty green. But you can still see major differences in available green space in neighborhoods along the Pike. The wealthier areas tend to have more green and the lower income parts tend to have less. Even in my own neighborhood you can see it. The wealthier single-family homes and the middle-class condos back up onto the forest, and the affordable housing sits on the other side of the street.

 

Typically, when we visited Chile, we would spend a few days in the capital, Santiago, and then a few weeks with my grandmother and family in a rural area in the south. I love the landscapes there. The south is very green and lush. In Santiago, despite being a city, you can still see the Andes mountains no matter which neighborhood you’re in. Seeing the mountains on the horizon has always been very comforting for me. I remember every time we came back from Chile, I would look out the window driving back from the airport and miss the mountains. Maybe that’s why I want to move to the Pacific Northwest - to be closer to the mountains. I know we have them here in Virginia. I love the Shenandoah Mountains dearly and have lots of good memories there, but I think the mountains in the Pacific Northwest remind me more of the Andes.

 

Returning to my Neighborhood

When I was very young, I interacted quite a bit with people who lived on the Pike. For example, my first best friend lived in our condo. His family is from Ethiopia and his grandma made the best Ethiopian food I’ll probably ever eat. Unfortunately, they moved away when I was five years old. At that age, I played at Tyrol Hill most days of the week. I live literally a one-minute walk away from the park and I loved it there. Around that time, my dad worked with teens in our neighborhood. When he would take me to play at Tyrol Hill we often would run into them. Even though I was a toddler and at least ten years younger than them, they would still say hi and play with me. My dad also ran programs at Tyrol Hill during summer evenings - things like drum circles and crafts and whatnot. So I made quite a few friends at the park when I was a small kid. When I was four or five they decided they were going to rebuild Tyrol Hill with lots of fun new equipment. I remember handing out flyers with a family friend of ours and asking people what kinds of slides they wanted. I was super excited for the redesign, but they didn’t complete it until I had outgrown the playground. The next redesign happened after I left for college. My younger self would have had so much fun at the current version of Tyrol Hill.

 

By the time I was in elementary school I started to drift away from the Pike a bit. During middle to high school all my friends lived in North Arlington. In middle school, I was a bit ashamed of living in South Arlington and living in a condo. I didn’t talk about where in Arlington I was from and rarely invited people over to our home. Looking back on it I’m not sure why I was ashamed, but I think I have much more appreciation for where I grew up now. In elementary to high school, I became somewhat of a stranger to The Pike, I no longer knew anyone in my neighborhood. I regret that.

 

When COVID first started, I was home from college and my dad was pressuring me into getting a job. He had heard that Aspire! Afterschool Learning, a program for kids at the Arlington Mill Community Center, needed people for their summer program and suggested I apply. He knew some of the staff there because he’s worked with them on and off for the past 20 years. I decided to apply because I enjoy working with kids and ended up getting the position. So I worked there the summer of 2020, and then ended up staying on helping out with their online program so I could still work with them while I was away at college. I finished my contract in summer 2021. I really enjoyed working there. While working at Aspire, I got to reconnect with kids from my neighborhood. I felt a special connection with them because we could share some childhood experiences. I went to preschool at the old Arlington Mill building. I told some of my students this (as we were sitting in a classroom in the new Arlington Mill building) and they went “Whaaaat??” So I then told them that I used to play at Tyrol Hill. “Whaaaat??” I said, “I live there! I play there too!” That was pretty fun. It has now happened a few times where I run into kids I worked with while walking to my car parked on our street. Another student happens to live right across from me. It’s neat that I get to share this community with them.

 

I found out months after I started working at Aspire that my mom had worked there when she was pregnant with me! I then realized that when I was in 7^th grade, I did a book drive for Aspire and donated the books to Aspire. And when I was in elementary school Aspire students would come to our condo pool every Wednesday in the summers, so I guess I played with Aspire kids then. As I connected the dots, I realized the program has been in my life throughout.

The Road Ahead

In college, I am studying psychology and public health. I grew up in a middle-class condo in a neighborhood where both high, middle, and low-income families live within a three-minute walk of each other. Even from a young age I found it extremely surprising that people could be neighbors yet have very different life experiences. I think it has influenced the fields of work I am thinking about going into. Public health. Maybe social work. Not sure. But after working at Aspire I’ve realized I want to work directly with individuals in diverse communities. More specifically, I think I want to work towards bringing access to healthcare and education to marginalized communities."

Interview by Sushmita Mazumdar. Photography by Lloyd Wolf.