The city of San Ramon is very near and dear to me because it is where I lived the longest, met a lot of my childhood friends, and is an area I want to hopefully move back towards in the future.

Growing up, in the classrooms at school I often found myself surrounded by many different types of cultures. A lot of the people I called my friends were not from my culture and were instead from very different backgrounds. Some of my friend’s families came from Indian from a young age and decided they wanted to start a new life with their family in California and so that is why they were there. In fact, a lot of my neighbors and classmates were in the same position and so growing up I was often surrounded by the Indian culture.

Due to being friends with these people or either living right next door to them, I found myself learning more and more about their ways of life. For instance, Diwali is one of their super important holidays each year. It is considered to be the “Festival of Lights” and it is kind of like their own version of our Christmas here in America. It falls during Halloween time; this year: October 18th through the 23rd, 2025. It is a week long celebration filled with lights on people’s homes, gatherings with family and friends, as well as delicious foods.

We can relate this to the idea of an “Equity Lens.” This term means that we are understanding that someone’s ethnicity, race, and sexuality have something to do with social inequity. In other words, because of their ethnicity, race, or sexuality, they live in an unfair world. In this scenario, I am happy to say that living in San Ramon, that it was a fair city that welcomed social change.

Being surrounded by this culture growing up, has caused me become more aware of how vastly different a community can be from one another. If we never ask questions and immerse ourselves in someone else’s way of life, then as a community we will not be able to come together as one. I think that understating someone’s culture can really tell you a lot about them, therefore, allowing the city of San Ramon to experience social change.

For me this is crazy to learn because this was my zip code for so many years of my life. Reading this online, it was exciting to be able to recognize the area as what was once my home as well. It was intriguing to learn that it was also home to these people hundreds of years ago.

The land was also home to a group of Indians called the Seunen Indians. The land of San Ramon was home to a lot of different Indian tribes which further promotes the city’s diverse history. Missions such as San Jose were also part of the background of the beginijgn of San Ramon.

The name San Ramon comes from an Indian man named Ramon who was apart of one of the missions to stop through this city many years ago.

Fun Fact: the “San” part of San Ramon comes from the idea of the people of the land wanting to add a Spanish piece to the city’s name.

The term “Worldview” is a good example of this since the historical background of San Ramon was full of communities and pioneers who all viewed life in a similar manner. Their views were good and they are what led us the chance to get to be residents on such amazing land.

Overall, pioneers of all kinds came through this land and it is important that we recognize how they have created social change for this community even years later.

In the past couple years or so, the city made a few new changes to their city “General Plan” involving some environmental changes.

A few of the chnages that can be found on that plan are reducing auto transportation by creating more rentable bikes, new projects on land, etc.

Throughout my time of living there, I sometimes struggled with the fact that a lot of the gorgeous land was covered up by the suburban areas. Homes on every square inch of land made it hard to appreciate the vast hillside scenery that the city had to offer for its residents. Living about 8 feet away from another house for years of my life made it difficult for me to know that there were areas to live with way more land and vastness.

Moving to Oregon caused me to realize pretty quick that there indeed are areas out there in the U.S. that are rooting for open land to be their top priority. Living in Oregon has made me aware of the idea that the land we live on is sacred and is not something that we should be putting construction sites on top of.

The history and future of San Ramon’s environment is a good example of “social change.” San Ramon slowly changes their city’s interactions with one another by changing up their general plan every couple of years, as well as their relationships with their community by planning new projects on their land. All of this changes their cultural and social institution in hopefully a positive way.

San Ramon, California is rich in numbers of people with a population of 85.7k people back in 2023 according to datausa. The population’s household income also holds strong at about $197,358 (Data USA, 2023). This goes to show that a lot of the households in the city of San Ramon are on the more on the upper income side of things.

In 2025, San Ramon was ranked “highest quaility of life respectively in the U.S.” (Staff 2025).

3 main factors for having this respective title:

1. Basic human needs

2. Opportunity

3. Foundations of wellbeing

This goes to show that the city of San Ramon is a perfect representation of what the term health truly means.

An important term to remember is social justice. As stated in the class textbook, social justice refers to “a state where everyone has fair access to the resources and opportunities to develop their full capacities, and everyone is welcome to participate democratically with others to mutually shape social policies and institutions that govern civic life” (Barrios 8.4).

Specially in San Ramon, as of February 18th, 2025 the city’s school district teachers decided to participate in a protest during lunch. The school district was trying to create budget cuts for the school district wide that would but $26 million from the usual cost.

Important Vocab Words:

• Religon: “A communally organized and persistent set of beliefs, practices, and relationships that meet social needs and organizes life” (Barrios 9.3).

• Spirituality: “The aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred” (Puchalski, Barrios 9.3).

• Social Control: “A way to regulate, enforce, and encourage conformity to norms both normally and informally” (Barrios 9.6).

Another important thing to note… “How religon is acknowledged depends on the people in positions of power” (Barrios 9.3).

• So if the people in power are against a certain religon, they beliefs and attitudes toward it will most likely be negative ones

Social Control in San Ramon, CA:

• Law Enforcement/Police Officers doing what they can to enforce laws related to safet for the residents of the area

• Norms that neighborhoods create have an affect on people since it makes residents feel they have to follow them in order to be a solid contributor to the community

Intersectionality: “The idea that inequalities produced by multiple and interconnected social characteristics can influence the life of an induvidual or group” (Barrios 9.5).

• Demographics have a large effect on the people of San Ramon because most of the city is filled with people who are Asian. If you are anything other than that, it can sometimes be harder to fit in

• Home owning can sadly describe a lot about the wealth that you/your family has in the city of San Ramon. Due to this, some people may feel uncomfortable talking about the areas in which they live

• Reform: “Chnaging something specific about thr socal structure” (Barrios 10.3).

• Revolutionary: “Changing completely every aspect of society” (Barrios 10.3).

• Redemptive: “Meaning-seeking and their goal is to provoke inner change or spiritual growth in individuals” (Barrios 10.3).

• Alternative: “Focused on self-improvement and limited, specific changes to individuals beliefs and behavior” (Barrios 10.3).

• Resistance: “Seek to prevent or undo change to the social structure” (Barrios 10.3)

Reform Movement:

Hands Off! Protests in Livermore, CA and San Ramon, CA

Rallies were to promote their negative feelings towards how President Trump has been running the country.

Joe Wiley stated in the protests that “Trump [is] ruining the country he fought for in Vietnam from 1966-1968” (Bay City News Service 2025).

Resistance Movement:

Black Lives Matter Protest in San Ramon, CA

Numerous amounts of people from all types of backgrounds joined together “in solidarity to express their feelings with police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd” (Coburn 2020).

The community is called I-SRV and their motto is the following: “we are a community of diverse spiritual traditions and congregations from across the San Ramon Valley who are committed to learning, sharing, listening, and acting tougher” (I-SRV 2025).

This Thanksgiving they are hosting a Friendsgiving gathering at the Beth Chaim Congregation which is their church/holding space for their events. The Thanksgiving gathering is going to be a night of worship and coming together to celebrate their common beliefs and morals.

This community is a great example of the term spiritual belief system. This terms is “a series of related beliefs and practices of a society that help members seek and express meaning and purpose” (Barrios 9.3).

• Black Lives Matter Protests

• Hands Off! Rallies

2. Education

• School District Budget Cuts

3. Religon

• I-SRV community

All of these social changes are what truly make San Ramon the city that it is. For the good and the bad, these changes are what have shaped the community to become the place that it is today.