The Anytown Antidote

Like millions of other teens across the country last summer, Kimberly Schmidtke, 15, a sophomore at Santee’s West Hills High School, packed her suitcase, got on a yellow bus and headed off to the mountains for camp. Except at this camp, Schmidtke didn’t shoot arrows or weave baskets or learn the butterfly stroke or master her Windows 2000 skills. She did something she thinks is far more meaningful.

“I gained a better understanding of other people my own age, of other kids who are different than me,” she says. “The camp inspired me, and it changed me in a lot of ways. It made me see things a little more clearly, and I came back so positive and wanting to talk to everyone I could about my experience.”

The camp, called Anytown, is an experiential educational program that explores the impacts of bias, bigotry and racism. Each summer, San Diego high schoolers of all races and religions attend these week-long programs, run by the National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews) at various mountain sites owned and operated by the San Diego Unified School District. Anytown, founded in Phoenix in 1953, encourages communication and individual responsibility for promoting understanding and respect among disparate races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, genders and sexual orientations.

“We think the camps are vitally important, now more than ever,” says Ron Lanoue, who heads the local NCCJ office. Fighting bigotry most of his adult life, Lanoue was head of the Little Rock, Arkansas, NCCJ office until coming here last year. He knows he faces a big challenge in San Diego, where people of color make up about 40 percent of the population.

“This is a truly diverse city,” says Lanoue, “and that’s where this kind of program is needed most and where it works best.”

Anytown gives campers myriad opportunities to get to know each other away from the stresses of modern urban life, offering everything from lectures and discussion groups to role playing and, on the final night, a wacky talent show that helps the kids let off steam. After the campers, ages 14 to 18, arrive on a Sunday evening, they’re immediately asked to participate in a casual get-acquainted session. Perhaps the most intense and meaningful session—called, simply, “Prejudice Night”—comes the following evening.

At these sessions, camp directors identify a particular racial or minority group—African-Americans, Jews, gays—then pass a flip-board around the room. The Anytown campers, each armed with a different-color marking pen, are asked to write down any and all stereotypes they believe are identified with the specific group chosen.

“What we end up with on these pieces of paper are some of the most grotesque societal stereotypes you’ve ever seen,” Lanoue says. “I’m 56, and even I haven’t seen some of the things they come up with.”

The sometimes-shocking, disturbing and hateful words and pictures are then posted on the wall, and the kids and counselors proceed to openly discuss what they’re looking at. There’s lots of crying and raw emotions at these sessions, Lanoue says, but typically the campers—even the more prejudiced ones—walk away feeling a little different about themselves and others. “It’s a powerful exercise,” he says, “a way to open these kids up and to look at the history and evolution of prejudice.”

To prove Anytown works, Lanoue doesn’t have to go outside his own family. Fourteen years ago, his daughter, Ellie, now 30, participated in the Anytown program back in Arkansas. One night at that camp, after the lights in the cabin were turned out, Lanoue says his daughter, who is Jewish, had a long, frank discussion with a Muslim camper named Zakkariah. They talked about their respective religions—and about the problems the two groups were having in the Middle East.

“They talked about why people with similar values and similar beliefs in God are so hostile and hateful,” says Lanoue. “By morning, the two of them were friends and had a bond they still enjoy. They’ve remained friends and kept in touch over the years. This kind of thing happens at Anytown all the time.”

At Anytown, Lanoue adds, “we definitely encourage the kids to keep talking after lights go out.”

NOTE: This summer, Anytown, which has been bringing young San Diegans together since 1993, pitches its tent June 17-23 at Camp Fox at the Outdoor Education School in Santa Ysabel. For more information, call camp director Ruben Vargas at 619-491-3115.

—Jamie Reno -

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