Dear Poljo: I'm sitting here trying to do my taxes, late (!), following our last class Thursday and my family's remembrance of my dad on Saturday, followed by a lovely Mother's Day. I've been reading messages from some of you, and now came to the blog, almost like a fix. Thank you all for posting your work. I've been sharing so many of your stories and discoveries with friends and family. Your work has changed me. The chalk footprints are integrated into who I am becoming. I thank you, each, and all, for engaging thoughtfully, generously, with discerning and intelligent openness, into an educational process.
I hope we keep the blog going. June Jordan said, and Obama's campaign has used: We are the ones we've been waiting for.
Well, you are definitely.
Take care. And as Garrison Keiler says, stay in touch!
Kathy
Monday, May 12, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
from Aileen
Cliffs Provide Shelter for the Homeless
The small town of Hoboken in New Jersey has been notorious for its history. The town which lies on the west bank of the Hudson River is claimed to be the birthplace of many celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Whitney Houston. Throughout the past couple of years, Hoboken has gained a reputation for being one of the most up and coming towns in all of New Jersey. Its proximity to New York, a five-minute ride by Path train, has also influenced its status by attracting many young professionals to live in its neighborhoods. However wealthy the town has become, a number of its residents still live in public housing developments that seem to have survived the recent reconstruction of the area. This alone may be surprising to the individuals living in pricey condominiums on Hoboken’s waterfront avenues. However, the wealth disparity stretches beyond these public housing developments over to the cliff that separates the town of Hoboken from Jersey City. This cliff has become a sprawling neighborhood on its own, with more than a dozen people living among the trees and rocks in makeshift houses. No matter how notorious Hoboken has become these last couple of years, these shanty houses have long been kept a secret.
The cliff, which stretches about two miles from just beyond the North Wing Viaduct in Jersey City to Second Street in Hoboken, has become a home to many homeless individuals. In recent years, this area has undergone a number of renovations. The last of the renovations has been the creation of the North-Hudson Light rail which connects the cities of Hoboken, Jersey City, North Bergen, Union City and Bayonne. Every day thousands of individuals hop aboard the light-rail which takes them to the Hoboken/Jersey City Path Stations for their commute into New York City. Others even go on to Exchange Place in Jersey City, another area which is going under numerous renovations. These individuals ride the trains everyday, along the cliff with these sprawling “shanty condos.”
Those who work closest to the cliff are the ones with the most knowledge of their existence. Many of these individuals claim that these houses have been in the cliffs for a long time but the difficulty in accessing them has impeded many from doing so. It is very difficult to reach the bottom of the cliff and climb your way up to the houses. In doing so you would need to cross train tracks, climb fences and do your best at ignoring “No Trespassing” signs. Once you have managed to pass these obstacles you are in the clear but may be astonished at how elaborate many of these makeshift homes are. Some include glass windows and wooden floors. Others have even created “deck-style” structures with wooden planks.
In recent years there has been little attention drawn to these shanty houses. Last summer there was a fire that was started in the woods along the cliff that brought the situation to the eyes and ears of many. About a decade ago there was an article written in the New York Times addressing the “razing of a shantytown” in the same area. Besides these two stories, only neighborhood bloggers have written a couple of pieces on them.
Though the shanty houses I was able to visit were empty, I still felt as though I was entering a house whose owner had just stepped out. Mattresses and lawn chairs were carefully placed. Colorful posters and cardboard boxes became decorative walls. Blue and black dirty tarps became permanent leaky roofs.
The small town of Hoboken in New Jersey has been notorious for its history. The town which lies on the west bank of the Hudson River is claimed to be the birthplace of many celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Whitney Houston. Throughout the past couple of years, Hoboken has gained a reputation for being one of the most up and coming towns in all of New Jersey. Its proximity to New York, a five-minute ride by Path train, has also influenced its status by attracting many young professionals to live in its neighborhoods. However wealthy the town has become, a number of its residents still live in public housing developments that seem to have survived the recent reconstruction of the area. This alone may be surprising to the individuals living in pricey condominiums on Hoboken’s waterfront avenues. However, the wealth disparity stretches beyond these public housing developments over to the cliff that separates the town of Hoboken from Jersey City. This cliff has become a sprawling neighborhood on its own, with more than a dozen people living among the trees and rocks in makeshift houses. No matter how notorious Hoboken has become these last couple of years, these shanty houses have long been kept a secret.
The cliff, which stretches about two miles from just beyond the North Wing Viaduct in Jersey City to Second Street in Hoboken, has become a home to many homeless individuals. In recent years, this area has undergone a number of renovations. The last of the renovations has been the creation of the North-Hudson Light rail which connects the cities of Hoboken, Jersey City, North Bergen, Union City and Bayonne. Every day thousands of individuals hop aboard the light-rail which takes them to the Hoboken/Jersey City Path Stations for their commute into New York City. Others even go on to Exchange Place in Jersey City, another area which is going under numerous renovations. These individuals ride the trains everyday, along the cliff with these sprawling “shanty condos.”
Those who work closest to the cliff are the ones with the most knowledge of their existence. Many of these individuals claim that these houses have been in the cliffs for a long time but the difficulty in accessing them has impeded many from doing so. It is very difficult to reach the bottom of the cliff and climb your way up to the houses. In doing so you would need to cross train tracks, climb fences and do your best at ignoring “No Trespassing” signs. Once you have managed to pass these obstacles you are in the clear but may be astonished at how elaborate many of these makeshift homes are. Some include glass windows and wooden floors. Others have even created “deck-style” structures with wooden planks.
In recent years there has been little attention drawn to these shanty houses. Last summer there was a fire that was started in the woods along the cliff that brought the situation to the eyes and ears of many. About a decade ago there was an article written in the New York Times addressing the “razing of a shantytown” in the same area. Besides these two stories, only neighborhood bloggers have written a couple of pieces on them.
Though the shanty houses I was able to visit were empty, I still felt as though I was entering a house whose owner had just stepped out. Mattresses and lawn chairs were carefully placed. Colorful posters and cardboard boxes became decorative walls. Blue and black dirty tarps became permanent leaky roofs.
Just a thought...
Yesterday, Kathy said:
"My family had football games at every family party- my brother would put me on his shoulders and I would tackle everybody."
Picturing that, I was thinking... could there be a more perfect metaphor for the woman Kathy has become?
"My family had football games at every family party- my brother would put me on his shoulders and I would tackle everybody."
Picturing that, I was thinking... could there be a more perfect metaphor for the woman Kathy has become?
A Force to be Reckoned With: The Unheard Voices of Today’s Youth (Op-Ed)
Where have all the young people gone? What do they think of the world today, and what do they care about? When I ask these questions to members of the older generations, I often hear answers such as “they’re holed up in a room somewhere chatting online,” “they think the world revolves around them” and “they’re apathetic as long as they get what they want.” I am personally disheartened by these responses; has our society forgotten that it is these same young people who are expected to grow up and become the future bearers of this world, in all its glory and its shame?
Unfortunately, it’s easy to see where some of these pessimists get these preconceived notions. Just flip on MTV for a couple hours and you will see shows such as “My Super Sweet Sixteen” and “The Hills”, which portray young people as needy, greedy and cruel. Turn on the news and there is bound to be a report on some teenager vandalizing property or getting caught with drugs. You will read about teenagers stealing their parents’ pain medication, crashing their cars and participating in risky sexual behavior. To tell you the truth, it’s pretty scary. But last time I checked, every single one of the qualities I’ve just listed applies to a great number of adults as well. Why don’t they get any media wrath?
When I was younger, I read “Dear Abby” every day until she passed away. The following column resonated with me personally:
DEAR ABBY: I'm a 14-year-old girl who often hears negative comments directed at teenagers as a whole. The other day I was sitting in a bookstore, quietly reading, when an employee commented to a customer that "some teenagers were just in here -- that's probably why the display is a mess!"
I have heard other strangers make remarks about teens being lazy, slovenly, apathetic and rude. If these comments were directed at specific ethnic or religious groups, they would be regarded as discrimination, so I want to know if my saying something to these people would be appropriate -- and also why ageism, clearly a hurtful form of stereotyping, is acceptable when it's directed at young people.
I am tired of being followed by store owners and watching other passengers on the bus grab their belongings and scoot away when I come near them. What should I do? - - SICK OF AGEISM IN
I had similar experiences in my teenage years and agree that it seems far easier to “blame the teenagers” than to believe that they can be as well-read and thoughtful as this fourteen year-old girl is. Because of this, teenagers are essentially “shut up” before they can even open their mouths. In my opinion, this goes far deeper than simple discrimination or ageism; I think the leaders of this country are very aware of the potential power of young people and are trying to suppress it. So they have done two things:
A) Leaders have realized that young people are ignorant of their rights as citizens. This is their biggest weapon against them. They have been lead to believe they are powerless, and therefore justify their non-action with the thought that anything they tried to do would essentially be irrelevant.
B) Leaders have instilled a fear of young people. They have been portrayed as a destructive force that, if not controlled, will bring a certain downfall to society. Because of this framing, it is easy to convince people that, if not subdued, young peoples’ ignorance and carelessness will create a mass crisis. Therefore laws are passed to restrain young people (such as curfew laws, or laws that ironically allow young people to be tried as adults) without much debate.
Young people are treated as though they are second class citizens instead of the budding future. Adolescence should be a time when young minds are cultivated in preparation of becoming productive members of the public. When a society alienates its own people, it loses fruitful minds and cuts short potential greatness. If adolescents were respected instead of feared, taught instead of preached, our nation would have far more intellect on which to fuel a deliberative democracy.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
from crissy
How About We Say We are African?
After my interview with Gale Jackson, I met up with some of my friends at a party. Incidentially most of the people at the party were Asian. As I was sitting down a guy in a chair next to me tried to start a conversation we.
“Oh hey you’re white too, that makes like four of us.” He joked.
“I’m not white, I’m mestizo.” I replied.
“What” he said, I wasn’t sure if he just didn’t hear me or didn’t understand what mestizo meant.
“I’m not white.” I said. He looked confused, and then suddenly Gale Jackson’s words from our interview earlier that day entered my thoughts. She had told me that it is important to create your own language about who you. I found this was the perfect opportunity to do so. I remembered Gale also pointing out that we are all traced back to Africa, the first humans were from there.
“I’m African. We’re all African.” I told him.
He looked taken aback as if I was some weirdo. But he’s right I was being a weirdo. I was trying to experiment with the language that we identity ourselves with. I was playing around and trying to say something different.
What Gale had said struck a cord in me. I was not going to use the language given to me to describe others and myself. I was not going to compartmentalize myself against people if I was supposed to be enjoying their company. Saying that I was African seemed a little extreme for the circumstance, but necessary. Where else was I going to start?
All night I kept hearing comments about most people at the party being Asian and few people being white. I found myself saying over and over again,
“I’m African, We’re all African.”
At first I was saying it jokingly, but as the night went on I began to see the power that a shift in language can have in yourself and others.
Some people smiled at the prospect, some people laughed thinking it ridiculous, and I began to see it as a wonderful mode of equalization. Without changing my words they began to say other things:
“We are all human.”
“We are all brothers and sisters”
“We are all from the same place.”
“We are all equals.”
“We are all one.”
I was surprised by the ease and felicity saying these words had. It felt like inventing something that could sit warmly in others and kill that which was cold before. I was turning an us/ them dynamic into a We.
I’m not sure if I will continue telling people that I’m African, because I’m not sure that’s what I want to say, but I think that inventing words and new ways to describe who we are is important because it gives us connection to ourselves and each other.
Just think what could happen if we all just went around saying we were African?
What harm could we run into?
Not much I think.
Perhaps, some people would find me- a non-black girl- using the word African offensive to describe herself, but doesn’t this offense spark the right kind of internal discourse that needs to occur. I imagine people asking themselves, “What is this white doing calling herself African?”
“What does she really mean?”
I think that if we can spark discourse through simple subversion of oppressive language we can begin subvert the oppression. I saw this even at the party where some people began to respond with “I guess you’re right.” Or “That’s funny but true.”
As a biracial person. I’m living proof that there is no real separation between racial groups, because I can no more split myself into one group than I can split myself into two physical pieces and hope to live. What’s wrong with knowing that whether my friend or a stranger has had the same or different cultural experience as me but that we share the same human experience.
The words we use now, black, white, Mestizo, Mulatto, Native American, Indian, etc. are all words given to us by our historical oppressors. My hope is that we can invent words that will allow us to transcend the innate oppression found in these words by abandoning them all together or using them in an ironical fashion.
Though this will not allow us to fix the problems we face today with racism and racial inequalities I feel that it can help us understand the absurdity and horror of these problems and a shift in language will help us facilitate the mentality the country needs to create real change.
If nothing else, it would start a thought process and isn’t that where everything starts. A thought or a feeling can turn into a change.
After my interview with Gale Jackson, I met up with some of my friends at a party. Incidentially most of the people at the party were Asian. As I was sitting down a guy in a chair next to me tried to start a conversation we.
“Oh hey you’re white too, that makes like four of us.” He joked.
“I’m not white, I’m mestizo.” I replied.
“What” he said, I wasn’t sure if he just didn’t hear me or didn’t understand what mestizo meant.
“I’m not white.” I said. He looked confused, and then suddenly Gale Jackson’s words from our interview earlier that day entered my thoughts. She had told me that it is important to create your own language about who you. I found this was the perfect opportunity to do so. I remembered Gale also pointing out that we are all traced back to Africa, the first humans were from there.
“I’m African. We’re all African.” I told him.
He looked taken aback as if I was some weirdo. But he’s right I was being a weirdo. I was trying to experiment with the language that we identity ourselves with. I was playing around and trying to say something different.
What Gale had said struck a cord in me. I was not going to use the language given to me to describe others and myself. I was not going to compartmentalize myself against people if I was supposed to be enjoying their company. Saying that I was African seemed a little extreme for the circumstance, but necessary. Where else was I going to start?
All night I kept hearing comments about most people at the party being Asian and few people being white. I found myself saying over and over again,
“I’m African, We’re all African.”
At first I was saying it jokingly, but as the night went on I began to see the power that a shift in language can have in yourself and others.
Some people smiled at the prospect, some people laughed thinking it ridiculous, and I began to see it as a wonderful mode of equalization. Without changing my words they began to say other things:
“We are all human.”
“We are all brothers and sisters”
“We are all from the same place.”
“We are all equals.”
“We are all one.”
I was surprised by the ease and felicity saying these words had. It felt like inventing something that could sit warmly in others and kill that which was cold before. I was turning an us/ them dynamic into a We.
I’m not sure if I will continue telling people that I’m African, because I’m not sure that’s what I want to say, but I think that inventing words and new ways to describe who we are is important because it gives us connection to ourselves and each other.
Just think what could happen if we all just went around saying we were African?
What harm could we run into?
Not much I think.
Perhaps, some people would find me- a non-black girl- using the word African offensive to describe herself, but doesn’t this offense spark the right kind of internal discourse that needs to occur. I imagine people asking themselves, “What is this white doing calling herself African?”
“What does she really mean?”
I think that if we can spark discourse through simple subversion of oppressive language we can begin subvert the oppression. I saw this even at the party where some people began to respond with “I guess you’re right.” Or “That’s funny but true.”
As a biracial person. I’m living proof that there is no real separation between racial groups, because I can no more split myself into one group than I can split myself into two physical pieces and hope to live. What’s wrong with knowing that whether my friend or a stranger has had the same or different cultural experience as me but that we share the same human experience.
The words we use now, black, white, Mestizo, Mulatto, Native American, Indian, etc. are all words given to us by our historical oppressors. My hope is that we can invent words that will allow us to transcend the innate oppression found in these words by abandoning them all together or using them in an ironical fashion.
Though this will not allow us to fix the problems we face today with racism and racial inequalities I feel that it can help us understand the absurdity and horror of these problems and a shift in language will help us facilitate the mentality the country needs to create real change.
If nothing else, it would start a thought process and isn’t that where everything starts. A thought or a feeling can turn into a change.
Rich's final piece: Election Warfare
This entry is an opinion piece about the perceptions of young people (mainly high school students) in the current election. I'd rather not give a description of the piece and let my writing do the talking. Enjoy!
Election Warfare: A Game the Young Never Win
Political strategists often analyze which presidential candidate is going to get the 18-24 age demographic for their votes, or which candidate is going to get the white vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, and so on. In this manner, every possible race, class, gender, identity, and age group is covered.
Or so they think.
In election time, all of the people who can vote are accounted for by each political base. Every candidate needs to get every vote they can get, and try to adhere to every voice in order to persuade those voters to their campaign.
When vying for votes, politics is a game, and sometimes the players are genuine, trying to help everyone they can.
However, the voices often forgotten are the people who are simply too young to vote.
I visited my old high school in Brooklyn, Edward R. Murrow, and I was stunned when I discovered that there were numerous students who were so aware about the political issues plaguing our country today. Enlightened discussions about how future candidates could affect their lives took place in the halls where the majority of people in that building could not even vote.
The election is so vibrant, that people who are not supposed to be concerned with these “adult matters,” are becoming more involved. In a political warfare game where candidates slander each other left and right, it is so satisfying to see something positive emerge from this election season.
I do not know what caused this awareness among a younger generation. The extended media coverage, the internet, the heated primary battle, Obama’s young age, and just the sheer importance of this election may have all played a part in this political change.
In this case however, the reasons for why this change might have happened do not matter. If these sediments among younger people are sustained over a long period of time, the next 18-24 age demographic will be more informed and better political citizens.
Of course, not every 16-year-old has become politically empowered (nor is every registered voter knowledgeable about political issues). But when I was walked through my high school, I noticed that there was a vibe. More students cared.
Yet, these voices are often ignored because they do not matter in determining who gets elected as the next president. College rallies matter because college students can vote.
High school students have voice as well, and though they cannot vote, and the majority of them are dependent on their parent’s income, this is their country as much as ours. Their concerns are real as everyone else’s.
Most public high school students need better teachers, new books and less crowded classrooms, just to name a few issues they face on a daily basis. Parents complain about these issues to their politicians but the voices would be more powerful if the students had a say as well.
I’m not calling for a drop in the voting age but I think it is important to remember that not every voice is heard. Thinking of the children is not going to cut it anymore. Politicians and the media need to start listening to the concerns of children from there mouths, not only through the filter of parents.
Yes, this may not get presidential candidates anymore votes in their political games, but if the United States government is “for the people,” then everyone has a right to get their voices out in the open regardless of how young they are.
Election Warfare: A Game the Young Never Win
Political strategists often analyze which presidential candidate is going to get the 18-24 age demographic for their votes, or which candidate is going to get the white vote, the black vote, the Hispanic vote, and so on. In this manner, every possible race, class, gender, identity, and age group is covered.
Or so they think.
In election time, all of the people who can vote are accounted for by each political base. Every candidate needs to get every vote they can get, and try to adhere to every voice in order to persuade those voters to their campaign.
When vying for votes, politics is a game, and sometimes the players are genuine, trying to help everyone they can.
However, the voices often forgotten are the people who are simply too young to vote.
I visited my old high school in Brooklyn, Edward R. Murrow, and I was stunned when I discovered that there were numerous students who were so aware about the political issues plaguing our country today. Enlightened discussions about how future candidates could affect their lives took place in the halls where the majority of people in that building could not even vote.
The election is so vibrant, that people who are not supposed to be concerned with these “adult matters,” are becoming more involved. In a political warfare game where candidates slander each other left and right, it is so satisfying to see something positive emerge from this election season.
I do not know what caused this awareness among a younger generation. The extended media coverage, the internet, the heated primary battle, Obama’s young age, and just the sheer importance of this election may have all played a part in this political change.
In this case however, the reasons for why this change might have happened do not matter. If these sediments among younger people are sustained over a long period of time, the next 18-24 age demographic will be more informed and better political citizens.
Of course, not every 16-year-old has become politically empowered (nor is every registered voter knowledgeable about political issues). But when I was walked through my high school, I noticed that there was a vibe. More students cared.
Yet, these voices are often ignored because they do not matter in determining who gets elected as the next president. College rallies matter because college students can vote.
High school students have voice as well, and though they cannot vote, and the majority of them are dependent on their parent’s income, this is their country as much as ours. Their concerns are real as everyone else’s.
Most public high school students need better teachers, new books and less crowded classrooms, just to name a few issues they face on a daily basis. Parents complain about these issues to their politicians but the voices would be more powerful if the students had a say as well.
I’m not calling for a drop in the voting age but I think it is important to remember that not every voice is heard. Thinking of the children is not going to cut it anymore. Politicians and the media need to start listening to the concerns of children from there mouths, not only through the filter of parents.
Yes, this may not get presidential candidates anymore votes in their political games, but if the United States government is “for the people,” then everyone has a right to get their voices out in the open regardless of how young they are.
Lets try that again...
J.D. Gluckstern
Prof. Engel
Political Journalism and Activism
Identity, The Media, and the Campaign
With every passing experience, memory, and moment of our lives, we shape the way we understand ourselves. The same can be said of he we shape our understanding of the identity of another. Every encounter, experience, and interaction shared with another person helps us crystallize a sense of who that person is. But what happens when there is a medium that serves to provide us these interactions? What happens when the moments we have with this other individual are selectively chosen? This is what is happening with the presidential campaign. We, as individuals, are encouraged to use mass media to help us identify with these potential candidates and understand who they are as people. The real question is what is lost and what is gained by this system?
When we experience new and different experiences, we gauge the way we react and the ways in which our consciences are pulled one way or another. Experiences that induce drastic change are often some of the most clarifying because it is in the face of uncertainty that we draw from our inner-most places. This type of introspection often leads to a better understanding of our own identity. This challenge to our internal system is always an effective way of helping us figure out who we really are. The way in which we understand those around us is similar. We use our experiences and interactions with the other to gauge their reactions to situations and to ourselves. Challenging situations we share with others really illuminate the character of that individual. The interesting thing about getting to know an other is that we may never need to meet that individual face to face, or even be within 3,000 miles, or even live in the same century to feel as though we understand who they were. We use sources of information to provide us with a comprehensive look at who they truly were. These are helpful but hardly do justice to individuals. Whereas we define ourselves through thousands of moments and experiences, these sources often boil individuals down to a singular concept that we can use to stand in for their individuality.
A perfect example might be Rosa Parks, whose media-given identity is that of a tired lady who was just too tired to give her seat to a white man. This is simply untrue. Parks was a multi-faceted and ambitious activist. These are things we don’t hear because the media has decided what is important for us to understand about Parks. Her identity has been stripped of nuance and simplified. The individual has disappeared behind the concept of the individual.
Today, this disappearance of the individual is of utmost importance. We are in the midst of one of the most heated democratic candidate campaigns in recent history where the identity of the individuals is of glaring significance. For the first time in history we will have either a black man or a woman as a presidential candidate. To say that this is an important moment in our country’s history is hardly an overstatement. The problem we are having is that these identifying features, Obama’s darker skin and Hillary’s femininity are being used as stand-ins to their individuality. It is almost as if racial equality is running against gender equality. The real problem as I see it is that we, the voters, are attempting to choose someone that we see fit to represent us in their policies. I am supposed to vote for someone who most closely matches my convictions and beliefs about our country. Unfortunately, we are given very few pieces of them as an individual to work from. The picture I see of myself is a circle: thousands of tiny experiences making up the whole. We are offered the candidates as squares. A few defining features that are supposed to make them a whole. How am I supposed to fit my circle into a square? There are so many pieces missing that I am wary to identify with anyone.
The media has to understand that its actions, even ones as small as (yet potentially as significant as) video editing, have profound impacts on the way we understand these individuals. The video of Hillary crying, or the picture of Obama in what has been said to be Muslim dress: these are pieces that mass media is giving us among very few others that are supposed to help crystallize who these people are. This does not work. They have to be careful in what they choose and yet, be less censored in what they offer us. We need to get past the surface identification of a woman versus a black man. This is a person versus another person, and right now, it is increasingly difficult to see that as true.
From Shaina with Love
Hi all,
I was a little slow to post, but I wasn't sure what to put up here. I'm going with the first piece I wrote for this class; it's so different from everything else I've written and it's something I'm really passionate about. Everything we've done in class has made me take things to the next level- in my writing, thinking, doing- so in this way I'm kind of bringing it back to where I started. Hope you enjoy .
-Shaina
On one of my last days in Ghana my roomates and I decided to take one last trip to our favorite beach. It was there that we happened to meet a lovely woman named Mariam, surprised to find that she had just arrived from Sudan for a brief holiday.
Her demeanor was tense on that sunny, like a person who could not find relaxtion.
However with all of the horrors of the Darfur conflict she had seen working as a nurse with African Union (AU) military forces, a sunny beach must have come as a shock.
People like her who risk their lives to helping at the frontlines are rare. They are the only hope the Darfur conflict has now. It is a situation shrouded in layers upon layers of conflict, with blurred ethnic lines of loyalty and government interference destabilizing the region. What was initially over generalized as a conflict between the Muslims of Sudan and the “Africans” of Darfur has evolved into a war of all against all, each party clinging to whatever gains it has made in battle.
In the peripherary are the raped, tortured, and displaced victims of the fighting.
In Sudan dictators were put in power by dictators, ignorant and indifferent to the indigenous populations. Government rule was handed down by former British and Egyptian imperialist rulers, it is no wonder the Government of Sudan has followed the lead of their role models. The Darfur crisis is, after all, a war of economic, but also, political interests. Until the GOS needed the land and resources in Darfur, the region was intentionally neglected. An internal imperialism has emerged, with a region of people being murdered and displaced while their government grows richer.
It is now 2008, almost five years after the Darfur conflict started. To say that the conflict was neglected by our governments and international community would be false. However, involvement in the conflict has not always meant aiding or ending it. Many of the parties involved can be attributed with grossly mismanaging the conflict, mainly through ignorance, or reaping the benefits of its continuation.
The GOS was not alone in making a business out of the killing; it had partners. Russia and China were both involved in arms trading with Sudan according to the International Crisis Group, benefitting further from maintaining oil trade while many nations of the UN Security Council called for sanctions. Its neighbors are not exempt as Libya, Chad, and Ethiopia have all interfered in the crisis as well.
Because of these economic incentives the world body, mainly through the UN, could never agree on a course of action. In the grand chambers of the UN Security Council, the great leaders of the world could not and have not put their interests aside to end human suffering.
When I think of Darfur I am completely frustrated. How could a war against a population of people be allowed to continue as it does? The conflict has engulfed the nation of the Sudan and is weakening the continent. Everyday thousands are forced from their homes, are raped, and die.
Since 2003 the groups that have been fighting to create awareness and draw support for Darfur have been telling us these facts. The media once in a while will flash images of war torn refugees on the evening news, adding to the stereotypical images of Africa that pop up in the minds of many when the continent is mentioned. What little explanation is given is usually misleading or out of context, giving the viewer the impression of “tribal” issues that have nothing to do with the rest of the world. With these cries for help desperately trying to reach us five years later, we, the people of the first world have had enough, most blind or turning numb to the despair.
When I looked into how much attention the issue was getting back in the states I noticed it was usually missing from news highlights and the media overall. “Africa Fatigue” was actually a term some friends and colleagues used when I was searching for an explanation. I learned that in all, it is a term used to describe the way people of the world neglect the issues and conflicts on the African continent because they are “too tired” to deal with them any more.
Its causes are insufficient knowledge, gross generalizations, and contact with biased news sources. This is not a new epidemic. It took hold after the crises in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The media’s focus on visions of these tragedies along with poverty and starvation, add to the likelihood of one feeling Africa Fatigue.
And what has been done so far? Aside from half- hearted attempts at effectively sanctioning the GOS and its associates, leaving Africans- through grossly underfunded and understaffed AU forces- to control the situation, and sending insufficient amounts of food and aid that usually never reaches refugees, our world powers have failed to end the conflict. The causes are evident, the impediments are evident. However, the crises seems to only grow by the minute. Meanwhile, the world body cannot agree on a course of action, leaving small fixes like food aid and extra AU troops to be the only hope of ending the conflict.
It is a shameful phrase, Africa Fatigue, and in light of the Darfur crisis it shows that mankind can be cruel enough to turn its back on its own brothers and sisters. Imagine the plight of women and children who must walk miles for water, risking rape and death. Imagine fleeing through desert from armed rebels intent to kill you. Who then has the right to feel fatigue?
We cannot allow ourselves, because of time or distance or any other excuse, to justify keeping silent. We cannot allow our leaders forget about the struggle of Darfurians. It is shameful that people of the world dare say that they can do no more, when a finger lifted can mean a world of help.
If anyone deserves to be fatigued it is people like Mariam, who even despite being in the depths of the conflict still returned two days later to do what she could on the side lines of war.
I was a little slow to post, but I wasn't sure what to put up here. I'm going with the first piece I wrote for this class; it's so different from everything else I've written and it's something I'm really passionate about. Everything we've done in class has made me take things to the next level- in my writing, thinking, doing- so in this way I'm kind of bringing it back to where I started. Hope you enjoy .
-Shaina
On one of my last days in Ghana my roomates and I decided to take one last trip to our favorite beach. It was there that we happened to meet a lovely woman named Mariam, surprised to find that she had just arrived from Sudan for a brief holiday.
Her demeanor was tense on that sunny, like a person who could not find relaxtion.
However with all of the horrors of the Darfur conflict she had seen working as a nurse with African Union (AU) military forces, a sunny beach must have come as a shock.
People like her who risk their lives to helping at the frontlines are rare. They are the only hope the Darfur conflict has now. It is a situation shrouded in layers upon layers of conflict, with blurred ethnic lines of loyalty and government interference destabilizing the region. What was initially over generalized as a conflict between the Muslims of Sudan and the “Africans” of Darfur has evolved into a war of all against all, each party clinging to whatever gains it has made in battle.
In the peripherary are the raped, tortured, and displaced victims of the fighting.
In Sudan dictators were put in power by dictators, ignorant and indifferent to the indigenous populations. Government rule was handed down by former British and Egyptian imperialist rulers, it is no wonder the Government of Sudan has followed the lead of their role models. The Darfur crisis is, after all, a war of economic, but also, political interests. Until the GOS needed the land and resources in Darfur, the region was intentionally neglected. An internal imperialism has emerged, with a region of people being murdered and displaced while their government grows richer.
It is now 2008, almost five years after the Darfur conflict started. To say that the conflict was neglected by our governments and international community would be false. However, involvement in the conflict has not always meant aiding or ending it. Many of the parties involved can be attributed with grossly mismanaging the conflict, mainly through ignorance, or reaping the benefits of its continuation.
The GOS was not alone in making a business out of the killing; it had partners. Russia and China were both involved in arms trading with Sudan according to the International Crisis Group, benefitting further from maintaining oil trade while many nations of the UN Security Council called for sanctions. Its neighbors are not exempt as Libya, Chad, and Ethiopia have all interfered in the crisis as well.
Because of these economic incentives the world body, mainly through the UN, could never agree on a course of action. In the grand chambers of the UN Security Council, the great leaders of the world could not and have not put their interests aside to end human suffering.
When I think of Darfur I am completely frustrated. How could a war against a population of people be allowed to continue as it does? The conflict has engulfed the nation of the Sudan and is weakening the continent. Everyday thousands are forced from their homes, are raped, and die.
Since 2003 the groups that have been fighting to create awareness and draw support for Darfur have been telling us these facts. The media once in a while will flash images of war torn refugees on the evening news, adding to the stereotypical images of Africa that pop up in the minds of many when the continent is mentioned. What little explanation is given is usually misleading or out of context, giving the viewer the impression of “tribal” issues that have nothing to do with the rest of the world. With these cries for help desperately trying to reach us five years later, we, the people of the first world have had enough, most blind or turning numb to the despair.
When I looked into how much attention the issue was getting back in the states I noticed it was usually missing from news highlights and the media overall. “Africa Fatigue” was actually a term some friends and colleagues used when I was searching for an explanation. I learned that in all, it is a term used to describe the way people of the world neglect the issues and conflicts on the African continent because they are “too tired” to deal with them any more.
Its causes are insufficient knowledge, gross generalizations, and contact with biased news sources. This is not a new epidemic. It took hold after the crises in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The media’s focus on visions of these tragedies along with poverty and starvation, add to the likelihood of one feeling Africa Fatigue.
And what has been done so far? Aside from half- hearted attempts at effectively sanctioning the GOS and its associates, leaving Africans- through grossly underfunded and understaffed AU forces- to control the situation, and sending insufficient amounts of food and aid that usually never reaches refugees, our world powers have failed to end the conflict. The causes are evident, the impediments are evident. However, the crises seems to only grow by the minute. Meanwhile, the world body cannot agree on a course of action, leaving small fixes like food aid and extra AU troops to be the only hope of ending the conflict.
It is a shameful phrase, Africa Fatigue, and in light of the Darfur crisis it shows that mankind can be cruel enough to turn its back on its own brothers and sisters. Imagine the plight of women and children who must walk miles for water, risking rape and death. Imagine fleeing through desert from armed rebels intent to kill you. Who then has the right to feel fatigue?
We cannot allow ourselves, because of time or distance or any other excuse, to justify keeping silent. We cannot allow our leaders forget about the struggle of Darfurians. It is shameful that people of the world dare say that they can do no more, when a finger lifted can mean a world of help.
If anyone deserves to be fatigued it is people like Mariam, who even despite being in the depths of the conflict still returned two days later to do what she could on the side lines of war.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
phil:
hi. this is my final piece. i wrote it about the food crisis. i'm glad i finally got to take some time to do some research on a really important issue. it's a little ramble-y in some spots, isn't exactly perfectly organized, and frankly has some totally sweeping generalizations and a point that i lifted from a line that Batman says in a comic book, but those are just a few of the things that i do best, i suppose. after posting this i will be done with this semester. goodnight.
My generation was born into a world of incredibly touchy subjects, subjects that only become more and more treacherous the further you tread. That’s not to say every inhabitant of the crucial 18-to-29-year-old demographic are a bunch of oversensitive “flip-floppers”, utterly incapable of ever really making up their minds; this is just the world we were born in to. Most people will brag about status symbols, like where they shop or what they listen to. Many, though, are rather hesitant to discuss truly important issues; strangely, our religious values and civil rights are, quite frankly, just not appropriate for dinner party discussion. Barack Obama is right: we do, collectively, need to be talking about race more often, like intelligent adults. It’s a manufactured construct that has plagued this whole country since its conception. But just because something is necessary does not make it easy. In fact, history has shown us that all of the most necessary actions – social and cultural revolutions; widely accepted technological advances – were very difficult, and took great amounts of time to truly set in.
We don’t like to discuss the ideas that make us uncomfortable. This is an innate reaction to the negative aspects of our very existence, and for the most part, a completely understandable one. When it’s springtime, and beautiful, colorful flowers are blooming all around you, you don’t want to be reminded as you sniff a tulip that women still only make 75 cents for every dollar that a man is paid to do the same job. As the first snow of the season falls and you rush outside with your friends to have a snowball fight, you don’t want your friends to shout, “Last one to the top of the hill is the corn farmer who is forced to burn excess crops to keep prices high so that growing corn will still make him or her enough money to live on!” When you’re wrapped in the arms of your lover, quietly watching a raging thunderstorm on a warm summer night, you don’t want that lover to whisper into your ear, “The American government just spent another $300 million dollars in Iraq today, and there’s still no evidence of a just motive behind the war.” That’s just not sexy. Most people wouldn’t want to be bombarded with these facts, and, again, that’s reasonable. But what I’m really afraid of is that many of them wouldn’t care at all if someone tried to explain them. I don’t understand that. In the long run, we, the members of the Human race, are all in this together. If American citizens and its government still want to claim such incredible dominance over the rest of the world’s policies, we need to start working as a team to promote worldwide sustainability, while also reinstating a sense of civility that, if we ever really had, we’ve almost completely depleted since 2001.
So what are the magic words that will make Americans want to live differently? What do they need to hear, or see, or smell? As has been the case in many instances over time, change often starts with one group of people, or sometimes even one single person. Those people know something, and believe something, and they want to tell you about it. And you’ll either listen and absorb and maybe even do research and form your own opinion, or you’ll just brush it off. Why would you ignore someone else’s “good information”? Well it’s probably on an uncomfortable subject.
Food is a peculiarly touchy issue. When people find something that they like, they become very attached very quickly. Sometimes there’s a rich cultural history behind that; more often, though, and especially in America, it’s just an issue of not understanding what we’re given as opposed to what’s available. It’s easy to overlook the 5-calorie cookies when the 50-calorie cookies cost a dollar less and have their own display at the very front of the aisle. There are a lot of foods out there are very good for you, but – and please excuse my conspiracy theorizing – a lot of people don’t want you to find them. To some, food isn’t a necessity, to be classified next to “water” and “shelter”; it’s a business. “You are what you eat” is one of the truest aphorisms in our national phrasebook, and I think if we all knew what was in a McDonald’s “hamburger”, we wouldn’t feel too great about ourselves anymore afterwards. (Although to be honest, I never felt that good after a McDonald’s burger when I was younger…) Business and necessity have coincided side-by-side for a long, long time, but the general consensus as expressed by economists and struggling eaters alike is that they have overlapped – and now we have a serious, worldwide problem.
A week ago, I was telling a friend of mine, “I think I’m going to write a piece about the food shortage.” And because I genuinely felt as if I didn’t know enough about it, I added, simply, “I’d really like to know more about it.” I was ignorant of the hard facts behind the food crisis that, apparently, is affecting our ability to purchase life-sustaining foodstuffs at sensible prices. In 2008, that kind of ignorance isn’t so hard to resolve; I’ve got an information superhighway at my fingertips for several hours out of every day, so I might as well use it to stay informed, right? So if I felt unlearned, imagine my surprise as my friend replied hesitantly, “…What food shortage?”
The little I knew about it I had gathered from both perusing headlines and listening to a brilliant professor/lover of global catastrophe doomsday-theories, so I explained what I could. I told him that the price of rice has risen drastically in the last year, nearly 150%, and – as explained by that professor – that if there was an extreme blackout situation across the country, the food we have in New York City would only last about three days. “But how?” he asked. I didn’t know.
Paul Krugman, of the NY Times, sheds some light on the “how” in a recent op-ed:
Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed. This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.[1]
It sounds like we just…messed up? Truthfully, though, that’s just how I would expect a food shortage to come about nowadays; we’re not dealing with Irish Potato Famine-type circumstances that we could never see coming. In the 21st century, this kind of crisis is simply the result of poor planning. The price of oil and the fast-growing economies of nations like China and India, where some, as Krugman puts it, are becoming “rich enough to start eating like Westerners,” are two aspects that widely affect the price of food. As developing nations move away from Third World status, they stop growing their own food in favor of purchasing it. So not only does demand rise, the need to ship it does, too. Much of what we hear about oil prices and growing economies is that this sudden boom was unforeseen, but that doesn’t mean that our government couldn’t have accounted for them at some point, if only through hastily sketched-out “What If?” contingency plans. But it seems like there was no sketch with a possible solution to the question “What if all circumstances regarding oil start working against us, and we need to consider other fuel sources from other places?” exists, and we – Humans – are left holding the bag. TIME Magazine reported in late February that riots are breaking out in Mexico, Pakistan, and numerous African nations, among others, due to high food prices. Governments are trying to get involved, but even if they can hold down protesters, “bringing down food prices could take at least a decade, food analysts say.”[2]
The greatest causes of this situation are clear. What is unclear, in America at least, is why the government almost seems to support the problem by looking towards corn-based ethanol fuel as a substitute for fossil fuels. This is an unrealistic and unsustainable option. “Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol,” explains economist Walter E. Williams.[3] Nothing about that works in favor of Americans, yet the government offers generous subsidies to corn farmers to contribute their crop to ethanol development, rather than food production. And many farmers across the country are taking them. Why settle for being paid peanuts when you grow one of the most widely used edible plants on the planet? As with many policies adopted by the US government over the last eight years – give or take –, the timing of this is comically bad. Quite literally, food is being taken from people’s mouths so that we can drive to the mall. Imagine you and a friend or loved one are driving home from a leisurely day out, and that friend tells you, over the roar of the air conditioning, “While we were running errands around town in your Flex Fuel® pick-up truck, with a full tank of E85 – that’s 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline – a protest over food prices in Cameroon left twenty people dead.” That’s not so sexy, either, is it?
But still, the biggest question, in my mind at least, was actually my friend’s second inquiry: “Who could possibly benefit? I mean, even as oil prices shoot up, Exxon and Mobil make more money than ever. Who gets paid off overpriced rice? Farmers?” Apparently – and not so unsurprisingly – no, not the farmers. With biofuels such as ethanol, it’s slightly more transparent – although not necessarily pleasant: the US government gives money (that it doesn’t have) to farmers so they can grow corn (that won’t be eaten). The world of rice, though, is more complicated. In Asia, the rice farmers, the people who create the food that is to be sold, have no pull. They are in the weakest positions, especially if they don’t intend to sell; farmers who take the majority of their rice crops home to feed their families are only being hurt by the demand as gasoline and fertilizer prices rise. “Their fields are empty,” a Laotian farmer said of his neighbors’ rice paddies to the International Herald Tribune.[4] Those who sell their crop, as many do in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of rice, are doing better, but just barely. Because they lack storage facilities, they are forced to sell immediately after the November harvest, “when supply is ample and prices are usually lowest.” Rice prices have been increasing gradually since 2000, and a rise after winter is not uncommon, but they spiked abnormally in February and have not fallen since. “The price of Thai white rice is 122 percent higher now than it was in November.”
So: who benefits? The 25% of Thai farmers who have access to irrigation, and can harvest up to four times a year are seeing some extra income, and any company that has the ability to hold on to the rice will be in control. That doesn’t seem like it includes too many people. Perhaps there will more beneficiaries in the future? Kwanchai Gomez, executive director of the Thai Rice Foundation, hopes so. She explained to The IHT that she thinks that the rice crisis will ultimately promote positive change: “She hopes the spike in price will lead rice farmers to modernize, become more financially savvy and increase their productivity.” I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but that’s asking a lot of these people, especially if they don’t soon receive governmental or UN aid for the current situation, or without some form of relief while they attempt to apply modern business practices to an activity that might seem more natural than business-like.
If the Thai economy sees a huge boom, and adopts more Western policies regarding the modernization and business of farming, will we see the advanced society that Kwanchai Gomez wants, or will we see another struggling nation require more resources than it ever did before as it comes into its own? I’m not saying that we need to hold Thailand back – or China or India – as they develop. Quite the opposite. They should be nurtured, and we, Humans in a global community, should all have a vested interest. Instead of keeping one nation down, countries’ wealth and resources need to reach a global balance, so that when a smaller or poorer nation becomes a developed one, urban societies don’t react with outrage when prices go up or a harvests have poor yields. Smaller nations just want what we already have; they’ve been living without the things that we would never be willing to live without for years now.
I do not have a host of solutions for the food crisis, nor is it the only crisis the world is currently facing. I think that, in the end, what we do individually will matter just as much as what governments decide to do. I do my best to stay informed, and to keep others informed – letting people know that the majority of bottled water is already-paid-for municipal water, or that you get more energy by eating lower on the food chain, or that McDonald’s hamburgers can contain the meat of over 1000 different cows produced in many different factory farms can be tedious, but someone has to do it. Sometimes having information is just the best you can do, but this is not one of those times. Us lowly plebs may not be able to control the world food market, or the Dow Jones, or the housing crisis, or the rocketing unemployment rates, or the dark dark thoughts that occupy Dick Cheney’s mind, but we can talk to each other, and learn as much as we can, and refuse to stay ignorant, and fight back against bullshit propaganda, and realize that it is okay to get uncomfortable, because everything that’s important probably isn’t much fun to talk about.
[1] Paul Krugman. "Grains Gone Wild". New York Times. 7 April 2008.
[2] Vivienne Walt. "The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis. TIME Magazine. 27 February 2008.
[3] Walter E Williams. "Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax". Townhall.com. 12 March 2008.
[4] Thomas Fuller. "High rice prices no windfall for many Asian farmers." The International Herlad Tribune. 7 April 2008.
My generation was born into a world of incredibly touchy subjects, subjects that only become more and more treacherous the further you tread. That’s not to say every inhabitant of the crucial 18-to-29-year-old demographic are a bunch of oversensitive “flip-floppers”, utterly incapable of ever really making up their minds; this is just the world we were born in to. Most people will brag about status symbols, like where they shop or what they listen to. Many, though, are rather hesitant to discuss truly important issues; strangely, our religious values and civil rights are, quite frankly, just not appropriate for dinner party discussion. Barack Obama is right: we do, collectively, need to be talking about race more often, like intelligent adults. It’s a manufactured construct that has plagued this whole country since its conception. But just because something is necessary does not make it easy. In fact, history has shown us that all of the most necessary actions – social and cultural revolutions; widely accepted technological advances – were very difficult, and took great amounts of time to truly set in.
We don’t like to discuss the ideas that make us uncomfortable. This is an innate reaction to the negative aspects of our very existence, and for the most part, a completely understandable one. When it’s springtime, and beautiful, colorful flowers are blooming all around you, you don’t want to be reminded as you sniff a tulip that women still only make 75 cents for every dollar that a man is paid to do the same job. As the first snow of the season falls and you rush outside with your friends to have a snowball fight, you don’t want your friends to shout, “Last one to the top of the hill is the corn farmer who is forced to burn excess crops to keep prices high so that growing corn will still make him or her enough money to live on!” When you’re wrapped in the arms of your lover, quietly watching a raging thunderstorm on a warm summer night, you don’t want that lover to whisper into your ear, “The American government just spent another $300 million dollars in Iraq today, and there’s still no evidence of a just motive behind the war.” That’s just not sexy. Most people wouldn’t want to be bombarded with these facts, and, again, that’s reasonable. But what I’m really afraid of is that many of them wouldn’t care at all if someone tried to explain them. I don’t understand that. In the long run, we, the members of the Human race, are all in this together. If American citizens and its government still want to claim such incredible dominance over the rest of the world’s policies, we need to start working as a team to promote worldwide sustainability, while also reinstating a sense of civility that, if we ever really had, we’ve almost completely depleted since 2001.
So what are the magic words that will make Americans want to live differently? What do they need to hear, or see, or smell? As has been the case in many instances over time, change often starts with one group of people, or sometimes even one single person. Those people know something, and believe something, and they want to tell you about it. And you’ll either listen and absorb and maybe even do research and form your own opinion, or you’ll just brush it off. Why would you ignore someone else’s “good information”? Well it’s probably on an uncomfortable subject.
Food is a peculiarly touchy issue. When people find something that they like, they become very attached very quickly. Sometimes there’s a rich cultural history behind that; more often, though, and especially in America, it’s just an issue of not understanding what we’re given as opposed to what’s available. It’s easy to overlook the 5-calorie cookies when the 50-calorie cookies cost a dollar less and have their own display at the very front of the aisle. There are a lot of foods out there are very good for you, but – and please excuse my conspiracy theorizing – a lot of people don’t want you to find them. To some, food isn’t a necessity, to be classified next to “water” and “shelter”; it’s a business. “You are what you eat” is one of the truest aphorisms in our national phrasebook, and I think if we all knew what was in a McDonald’s “hamburger”, we wouldn’t feel too great about ourselves anymore afterwards. (Although to be honest, I never felt that good after a McDonald’s burger when I was younger…) Business and necessity have coincided side-by-side for a long, long time, but the general consensus as expressed by economists and struggling eaters alike is that they have overlapped – and now we have a serious, worldwide problem.
A week ago, I was telling a friend of mine, “I think I’m going to write a piece about the food shortage.” And because I genuinely felt as if I didn’t know enough about it, I added, simply, “I’d really like to know more about it.” I was ignorant of the hard facts behind the food crisis that, apparently, is affecting our ability to purchase life-sustaining foodstuffs at sensible prices. In 2008, that kind of ignorance isn’t so hard to resolve; I’ve got an information superhighway at my fingertips for several hours out of every day, so I might as well use it to stay informed, right? So if I felt unlearned, imagine my surprise as my friend replied hesitantly, “…What food shortage?”
The little I knew about it I had gathered from both perusing headlines and listening to a brilliant professor/lover of global catastrophe doomsday-theories, so I explained what I could. I told him that the price of rice has risen drastically in the last year, nearly 150%, and – as explained by that professor – that if there was an extreme blackout situation across the country, the food we have in New York City would only last about three days. “But how?” he asked. I didn’t know.
Paul Krugman, of the NY Times, sheds some light on the “how” in a recent op-ed:
Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed. This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.[1]
It sounds like we just…messed up? Truthfully, though, that’s just how I would expect a food shortage to come about nowadays; we’re not dealing with Irish Potato Famine-type circumstances that we could never see coming. In the 21st century, this kind of crisis is simply the result of poor planning. The price of oil and the fast-growing economies of nations like China and India, where some, as Krugman puts it, are becoming “rich enough to start eating like Westerners,” are two aspects that widely affect the price of food. As developing nations move away from Third World status, they stop growing their own food in favor of purchasing it. So not only does demand rise, the need to ship it does, too. Much of what we hear about oil prices and growing economies is that this sudden boom was unforeseen, but that doesn’t mean that our government couldn’t have accounted for them at some point, if only through hastily sketched-out “What If?” contingency plans. But it seems like there was no sketch with a possible solution to the question “What if all circumstances regarding oil start working against us, and we need to consider other fuel sources from other places?” exists, and we – Humans – are left holding the bag. TIME Magazine reported in late February that riots are breaking out in Mexico, Pakistan, and numerous African nations, among others, due to high food prices. Governments are trying to get involved, but even if they can hold down protesters, “bringing down food prices could take at least a decade, food analysts say.”[2]
The greatest causes of this situation are clear. What is unclear, in America at least, is why the government almost seems to support the problem by looking towards corn-based ethanol fuel as a substitute for fossil fuels. This is an unrealistic and unsustainable option. “Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol,” explains economist Walter E. Williams.[3] Nothing about that works in favor of Americans, yet the government offers generous subsidies to corn farmers to contribute their crop to ethanol development, rather than food production. And many farmers across the country are taking them. Why settle for being paid peanuts when you grow one of the most widely used edible plants on the planet? As with many policies adopted by the US government over the last eight years – give or take –, the timing of this is comically bad. Quite literally, food is being taken from people’s mouths so that we can drive to the mall. Imagine you and a friend or loved one are driving home from a leisurely day out, and that friend tells you, over the roar of the air conditioning, “While we were running errands around town in your Flex Fuel® pick-up truck, with a full tank of E85 – that’s 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline – a protest over food prices in Cameroon left twenty people dead.” That’s not so sexy, either, is it?
But still, the biggest question, in my mind at least, was actually my friend’s second inquiry: “Who could possibly benefit? I mean, even as oil prices shoot up, Exxon and Mobil make more money than ever. Who gets paid off overpriced rice? Farmers?” Apparently – and not so unsurprisingly – no, not the farmers. With biofuels such as ethanol, it’s slightly more transparent – although not necessarily pleasant: the US government gives money (that it doesn’t have) to farmers so they can grow corn (that won’t be eaten). The world of rice, though, is more complicated. In Asia, the rice farmers, the people who create the food that is to be sold, have no pull. They are in the weakest positions, especially if they don’t intend to sell; farmers who take the majority of their rice crops home to feed their families are only being hurt by the demand as gasoline and fertilizer prices rise. “Their fields are empty,” a Laotian farmer said of his neighbors’ rice paddies to the International Herald Tribune.[4] Those who sell their crop, as many do in Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of rice, are doing better, but just barely. Because they lack storage facilities, they are forced to sell immediately after the November harvest, “when supply is ample and prices are usually lowest.” Rice prices have been increasing gradually since 2000, and a rise after winter is not uncommon, but they spiked abnormally in February and have not fallen since. “The price of Thai white rice is 122 percent higher now than it was in November.”
So: who benefits? The 25% of Thai farmers who have access to irrigation, and can harvest up to four times a year are seeing some extra income, and any company that has the ability to hold on to the rice will be in control. That doesn’t seem like it includes too many people. Perhaps there will more beneficiaries in the future? Kwanchai Gomez, executive director of the Thai Rice Foundation, hopes so. She explained to The IHT that she thinks that the rice crisis will ultimately promote positive change: “She hopes the spike in price will lead rice farmers to modernize, become more financially savvy and increase their productivity.” I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but that’s asking a lot of these people, especially if they don’t soon receive governmental or UN aid for the current situation, or without some form of relief while they attempt to apply modern business practices to an activity that might seem more natural than business-like.
If the Thai economy sees a huge boom, and adopts more Western policies regarding the modernization and business of farming, will we see the advanced society that Kwanchai Gomez wants, or will we see another struggling nation require more resources than it ever did before as it comes into its own? I’m not saying that we need to hold Thailand back – or China or India – as they develop. Quite the opposite. They should be nurtured, and we, Humans in a global community, should all have a vested interest. Instead of keeping one nation down, countries’ wealth and resources need to reach a global balance, so that when a smaller or poorer nation becomes a developed one, urban societies don’t react with outrage when prices go up or a harvests have poor yields. Smaller nations just want what we already have; they’ve been living without the things that we would never be willing to live without for years now.
I do not have a host of solutions for the food crisis, nor is it the only crisis the world is currently facing. I think that, in the end, what we do individually will matter just as much as what governments decide to do. I do my best to stay informed, and to keep others informed – letting people know that the majority of bottled water is already-paid-for municipal water, or that you get more energy by eating lower on the food chain, or that McDonald’s hamburgers can contain the meat of over 1000 different cows produced in many different factory farms can be tedious, but someone has to do it. Sometimes having information is just the best you can do, but this is not one of those times. Us lowly plebs may not be able to control the world food market, or the Dow Jones, or the housing crisis, or the rocketing unemployment rates, or the dark dark thoughts that occupy Dick Cheney’s mind, but we can talk to each other, and learn as much as we can, and refuse to stay ignorant, and fight back against bullshit propaganda, and realize that it is okay to get uncomfortable, because everything that’s important probably isn’t much fun to talk about.
[1] Paul Krugman. "Grains Gone Wild". New York Times. 7 April 2008.
[2] Vivienne Walt. "The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis. TIME Magazine. 27 February 2008.
[3] Walter E Williams. "Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax". Townhall.com. 12 March 2008.
[4] Thomas Fuller. "High rice prices no windfall for many Asian farmers." The International Herlad Tribune. 7 April 2008.
this is Ellen.
Annelle, I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say don't worry about it--this time of year is all kinds of crazy for everyone. That said, you missed a great show--Bill Moyers was the guest, and he talked eloquently, insightfully and at length about a lot of the stuff we've been discussing in this class--the media's coverage of the election, the future of alternative broadcasting, the intersection of press and politics and his experiences on both sides, as Lyndon Johnson's press secretary and a longtime (legendary) journalist. Going there also gave us some insight into the nuts and bolts of how these shows work--all the people behind the scenes, the running around that goes on in the moments before the show goes on air, the way clips and headlines are chosen and put together. There is way more to talk about than makes sense to try to get to on the blog, so I'm sure Joel, Erin, Shaina, Aileen and I will tell you all more tomorrow. In the meantime, I'd encourage all of you to listen to today's podcast if you have the time.
Dictionary.com word of the Day: contrite
Hi,
This is Annelle. I thought it was fitting about the word of the day.
Because I am writing to apologize for a thoughtless act on my part.
I was supposed to go to the recording of Democracy NOW! this morning. I had received Kathy's helpful emails, I knew where and when. I was irresponsible and went out late, then stayed up later working on finals. This morning when my alarm went off I didn't hear it. I slept straight through.
I sincerely apologize to the class, particularly because I know that there were only a few spaces available to go, and I prevented someone else from going. For that I am truly sorry.
I also apologize to Kathy who organized this for us; thank you so much not only for helping to make this happen for us, but also coordinating the play at the Culture Project, our amazing guests, and the climate of our classroom.
Please forgive my carelessness.
Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!
Good luck with finals everyone!
Thanks,
Annelle
This is Annelle. I thought it was fitting about the word of the day.
Because I am writing to apologize for a thoughtless act on my part.
I was supposed to go to the recording of Democracy NOW! this morning. I had received Kathy's helpful emails, I knew where and when. I was irresponsible and went out late, then stayed up later working on finals. This morning when my alarm went off I didn't hear it. I slept straight through.
I sincerely apologize to the class, particularly because I know that there were only a few spaces available to go, and I prevented someone else from going. For that I am truly sorry.
I also apologize to Kathy who organized this for us; thank you so much not only for helping to make this happen for us, but also coordinating the play at the Culture Project, our amazing guests, and the climate of our classroom.
Please forgive my carelessness.
Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!
Good luck with finals everyone!
Thanks,
Annelle
Monday, May 5, 2008
from Ellen
Hi everyone!
Below is my final piece, which Kathy asked me to post. I want to work on it a little more, so I may repost a second draft, but in the meantime:
Sitting here in a nearly empty newsroom, on the last night of daily production of a newspaper for which I have written over the past two years and for which I may never write again, I cannot pretend to be able to untangle my objective relationship with journalism from my subjective relationship with it. My future is wholly uncertain right now--I do not know which school i will be attending or even which continent I will be inhabiting come September, and I am also in the process of re-evaluating my professional goals. After six years, four newspapers, seven jobs and hundreds of articles, I am trying to discern whether or not journalism is the best, smartest and most responsible match for me personally and professionally. I am not ready to abandon it just yet--far from it--but it's a question that has come up as I am forced, more and more, to deal with my impending entry into the Real World and all of its pragmatic concerns.
Horace Greeley once said that "journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it." Over the past six years, journalism has killed me in innumerable ways. It has meant late nights and early mornings, countless sacrifices big and small. I have felt the impotence of knowingly committing myself to a field that is shrinking before my eyes, the shame and anger of seeing my stories torn apart by anonymous commentators on the internet, the exasperation of being edited. I have had to ask extremely difficult questions and have likely ruined more than a few people's days. I have been forced to confront and report on many of the world's injustices, as well as come to terms with my own limitations and flaws as a writer, thinker, reporter, perso. I have been, at various times, exhausted, tested, frustrated as hell.
But journalism has, as Greeley observes, kept me alive. It has inspired me, challenged me, changed me immensely. It has forced me to interact with and understand all kinds of people, often people whose life experiences, values and opinions differ greatly from mine and who I likely would never have come in contact with otherwise. Last fall, for example, I wrote an article about Juan, a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side who was being exploited by his boss. I found myself talking to and becoming incredibly attached to someone that I probably would never have even met if he weren't a source for my story.
But beyond all that it has given me, journalism keeps all of us alive--often metaphorically and sometimes literally. Journalism is putting your finger to the pulse of humanity; it is listening to and retelling countless people's stories. It is an incredibly optimistic and humanistic undertaking in that it is based on the notion that people matter, and that telling their stories is important.
In politics, progressivism is defined as the belief that problems can be fixed and governments can fix them. Journalism is, in this way, a truly progressive concept: at its core, journalism exists based on the belief that things can be changed, and that people can change them.
On the very first day of this class, Gabriela asked a question: What are journalists for? I readily admit that I am nowhere near anything resembling a succinct or complete answer to this question, but I think I'm getting closer. We are here to order reality, taking all of the information about a given event, person or subject, parsing it down to what's most important and packaging it in a way that is accessible to the public. We are here to use our power and our words and our voices to speak for those who have none of these things. It is our job to to organize and interpret and chronicle the world so others can change it. This is an immense responsibility.
It is not, I have come to believe recently, a journalist's responsibility to always be objective and detached. The journalists who truly inspire and affect me--Mike Davis, Anderson Cooper, June Jordan--violate every rule that journalists are meant to follow. They are anything but dispassionate, actively engaging with their subjects and their audiences. When Anderson Cooper broke down crying on live television during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, his tears revealed more about the crisis than any sound bite could have. When June Jordan interprets proposition 209 through the lens of her experiences as a black woman, the issue becomes all the more real for the reader.
This is not to say that journalism is perfect--in fact, it's the opposite: Journalism is an imperfect concept existing in an imperfect universe, and in some ways, it amplifies the world's inequality. The people who are voiceless and powerless are also the people who have less control of and access to the media. But the best journalists believe in at least attempting to mend these problems, and journalism rests on the idea that exposure and agency and things that should belong to everyone.
I am sitting here in this empty newsroom at the end of a rough night and an even rougher semester, looking out the eighth-floor window at a sky that is just beginning to show the magenta and orange of sunrise. I am sleep-deprived and hungry and, to be honest, slightly delirious, but can't help but find a metaphor here. Journalism is like the sun: essential, illuminating, life-giving, vital.
also, if any of you have any advice or comments, i'd really appreciate them. As I said, I'm not entirely happy with what I ended up coming up with and am looking to rework it, so if any of you have any ideas, let me know!
Below is my final piece, which Kathy asked me to post. I want to work on it a little more, so I may repost a second draft, but in the meantime:
Sitting here in a nearly empty newsroom, on the last night of daily production of a newspaper for which I have written over the past two years and for which I may never write again, I cannot pretend to be able to untangle my objective relationship with journalism from my subjective relationship with it. My future is wholly uncertain right now--I do not know which school i will be attending or even which continent I will be inhabiting come September, and I am also in the process of re-evaluating my professional goals. After six years, four newspapers, seven jobs and hundreds of articles, I am trying to discern whether or not journalism is the best, smartest and most responsible match for me personally and professionally. I am not ready to abandon it just yet--far from it--but it's a question that has come up as I am forced, more and more, to deal with my impending entry into the Real World and all of its pragmatic concerns.
Horace Greeley once said that "journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it." Over the past six years, journalism has killed me in innumerable ways. It has meant late nights and early mornings, countless sacrifices big and small. I have felt the impotence of knowingly committing myself to a field that is shrinking before my eyes, the shame and anger of seeing my stories torn apart by anonymous commentators on the internet, the exasperation of being edited. I have had to ask extremely difficult questions and have likely ruined more than a few people's days. I have been forced to confront and report on many of the world's injustices, as well as come to terms with my own limitations and flaws as a writer, thinker, reporter, perso. I have been, at various times, exhausted, tested, frustrated as hell.
But journalism has, as Greeley observes, kept me alive. It has inspired me, challenged me, changed me immensely. It has forced me to interact with and understand all kinds of people, often people whose life experiences, values and opinions differ greatly from mine and who I likely would never have come in contact with otherwise. Last fall, for example, I wrote an article about Juan, a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side who was being exploited by his boss. I found myself talking to and becoming incredibly attached to someone that I probably would never have even met if he weren't a source for my story.
But beyond all that it has given me, journalism keeps all of us alive--often metaphorically and sometimes literally. Journalism is putting your finger to the pulse of humanity; it is listening to and retelling countless people's stories. It is an incredibly optimistic and humanistic undertaking in that it is based on the notion that people matter, and that telling their stories is important.
In politics, progressivism is defined as the belief that problems can be fixed and governments can fix them. Journalism is, in this way, a truly progressive concept: at its core, journalism exists based on the belief that things can be changed, and that people can change them.
On the very first day of this class, Gabriela asked a question: What are journalists for? I readily admit that I am nowhere near anything resembling a succinct or complete answer to this question, but I think I'm getting closer. We are here to order reality, taking all of the information about a given event, person or subject, parsing it down to what's most important and packaging it in a way that is accessible to the public. We are here to use our power and our words and our voices to speak for those who have none of these things. It is our job to to organize and interpret and chronicle the world so others can change it. This is an immense responsibility.
It is not, I have come to believe recently, a journalist's responsibility to always be objective and detached. The journalists who truly inspire and affect me--Mike Davis, Anderson Cooper, June Jordan--violate every rule that journalists are meant to follow. They are anything but dispassionate, actively engaging with their subjects and their audiences. When Anderson Cooper broke down crying on live television during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, his tears revealed more about the crisis than any sound bite could have. When June Jordan interprets proposition 209 through the lens of her experiences as a black woman, the issue becomes all the more real for the reader.
This is not to say that journalism is perfect--in fact, it's the opposite: Journalism is an imperfect concept existing in an imperfect universe, and in some ways, it amplifies the world's inequality. The people who are voiceless and powerless are also the people who have less control of and access to the media. But the best journalists believe in at least attempting to mend these problems, and journalism rests on the idea that exposure and agency and things that should belong to everyone.
I am sitting here in this empty newsroom at the end of a rough night and an even rougher semester, looking out the eighth-floor window at a sky that is just beginning to show the magenta and orange of sunrise. I am sleep-deprived and hungry and, to be honest, slightly delirious, but can't help but find a metaphor here. Journalism is like the sun: essential, illuminating, life-giving, vital.
also, if any of you have any advice or comments, i'd really appreciate them. As I said, I'm not entirely happy with what I ended up coming up with and am looking to rework it, so if any of you have any ideas, let me know!
Sunday, May 4, 2008
I am Sean Bell
Hi everyone,
Hope your finishing up finals with a minimal amount of stress. Below is my final for this class which Kathy asked that I post. I'm meeting more and more people who aren't familiar with Sean Bell and I encourage you if you are not familiar with the case to read about it and draw your own questions about the type of country and world we are living in.
I am Sean Bell
How many shots does it take to kill a person? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty? It took one bullet to the chest to kill 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond. It took one bullet to the chest to kill 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury. It took four bullets to the back to kill Ousmane Zongo. It took 41 bullets to kill 23-year-old Amadou Diallo. It took 50 bullets to kill 23-year-old Sean Bell. How many shots does it take to kill a person? How many shots does it take for a police officer to kill a black man in New York City? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty?
I saw a man shot and killed. I was in Alexandria, or “Alex,” a black township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. I was walking with a friend through a market after lunch when we heard yelling from behind us. As we turned, a crowd of maybe 30 people rushed towards us. My friend grabbed my hand, yelled something in Zulu and pushed me around the corner of a building. We crouched. The crowd cleared. A black man ran past followed by two white cops with guns. With no warning there was a blast, then another, and another. The man stopped running. It took thirteen bullets to kill.
On an overcast Sunday in Harlem, two days after three detectives from the New York City Police Department were found not guilty of manslaughter and reckless endangerment after firing 50 shots into unarmed Sean Bell, a group of approximately 150 black people and one white person peacefully protested along Malcolm X Boulevard. As I stood with my black neighbors and listened to demands of justice, cries of anger, and moans of disbelief, I clung to the gentleman’s hand I was holding and cried. I cried for everything I do not understand. I cried for the anger inside me. I cried for a country that I want to believe in but cannot. I cried for a police system that cannot be trusted and a judicial system that delivers injustice. I cried for the body of a dead man I did not know. And with tears streaming down my face and my breathe coming in short uneven gasps, the man, whose hand I was grasping so tightly, offered me a handkerchief and told me, “You can cry, but Sean will not be the last, you may not want to waste those tears.”
As I gathered myself and the crowd moved forward down the street named after a man who was shot seven times and killed, a man with a young boy on his shoulders passed. The child held in his hand a sign with the words, “I am Sean Bell.”*
I am Sean Bell. I am white living in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. I am Sean Bell. I am middle class and college educated; I am Sean Bell. I am a woman; I am Sean Bell. I am a human being that believes in nonviolence. I am a human being deeply concerned. I am concerned about police brutality. I’m concerned about domestic violence. I am concerned about war and torture. I am concerned that we live in a world so inundated with violence that it no longer fazes us. I am concerned that another dead black man is just another dead black man. I am a human being that questions why two black cops and one white fired 50 bullets into an unarmed 23 year old who is only a year older than me. I am a human being but I am concerned because I am questioning what that means.
According to a 2006 United States Department of Justice Special Report, approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was used during 1999. The same report also highlights that in 2002 26,556 "citizen complaints" were filed at state and local law-enforcement agencies throughout the country. However, in only 8 percent of these cases was punitive action against the accused officer suggested and/or executed. These are the numbers of people who filed a complaint. In a report compiled by Human Rights Watch entitled, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, only 30% of people who have experienced police brutality in some capacity have filed a formal complaint.
I live in a city and a country where law enforcement is not just mistrusted by the black population, it is feared. To have black skin you are guilty until proven innocent. In 1999 when Amadou Diallo was gunned down by 41 bullets fired from four white cops, the murder was seen as a case of racial profiling. The racist undercurrent that fuels the NYPD was dragged through the media, city streets, and neighborhoods throughout the city. Waves of protest crippled city streets and the name Diallo is forever synonymous with racism and police brutality. As Diallo reached for his wallet, the police, assuming that a young black man in New York City carries a gun, opened fire and killed him. Nine years later Sean Bell still falls victim of racial profiling and racism in the police force however; two of the three cops responsible for his death are black. Unlike the shooting of Diallo, the media is presenting the Sean Bell case through the prism of police misconduct not through the lens of race. But regardless of the color of the shooting officers, Sean Bell died because he was a black man. It is a case of police brutality. It is case of extreme violence. It is a case of racism. Detective Michael Oliver, a white man, fired 31 bullets - he reloaded his gun. Look how far we have come since 1999 people say. This isn’t a case of racism, that’s behind us, black cops fired at Bell too. If Bell had been a white man would the police have been so quick to assume he had a gun? Would they fire 50 times? This is a case about the perceptions of black men. This is a case about shooting first and asking questions later. How many shots does it take to kill?
I teach high school students documentary film production in an after school program. One of my students says she is so used to the sounds of gunfire in her neighborhood that she hardly notices it anymore. Her family lives on the fourth floor of a building in the South Bronx. My student’s best friend lives on the first floor of a building in the same neighborhood and has had seven bullets shatter her home. My student is 16 and is tough. She says guns do not scare her and she is not afraid to die. We talked about Sean Bell. “The police will fuck anybody up if they feel like it, but that’s how it is. If I see one, I simply walk the other way, that’s just how it is.” She is 16 and she says she is not afraid to die. She is 16 and she is not afraid to die. She is 16.
I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old goes to sleep to the sound of gunfire. I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old has to act tough or be embarrassed to say she spends nights on the phone with her best friend telling each other stories of the trips they will take to Japan together as they fall asleep to the sound of each others voices and the gunshots in the background. My student’s brother and two uncles are in jail. How can it be that black men comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison? Where is the justice? What is justice? Sean Bell died because he was a black man. In this country black men are disposable. Black women loose their husbands, brothers, and sons. Black children loose their fathers. And the white population sleeps better at night. And we don’t want to talk about it but I do and I am infuriated. Some of my fellow white Americans would say that I’m being too harsh, that this is not always the case, things are not that “black and white.” These are bold statements I’m making but someone has to say them. It’s not everyone my fellow white American’s would claim. And I do truly want to believe that but I’m questioning.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to see someone without the lens of race? We cannot. Black skin means fear, means doubt, means you walk on the other side of the street, it means you lock your car doors in certain neighborhoods, it means you shoot first, it means you shoot 50 times. I do not think every white person in this country hates black people. I don’t even think a small percentage of white people in this country hate black people. What I do think is we are all to blame in the death of Sean Bell. By allowing these shootings to go unquestioned we all shot Sean Bell. By teaching our black children to be rappers and basketball stars in order to get out of the ghetto, we shot Sean Bell. By being impressed when a 15-year-old girl from Harlem is “actually articulate,” we shot Sean Bell. By not demanding that the resources in black and Latino inner-city schools be the same as white suburban schools, we shot Sean Bell. By not knowing the history of this country, the slave trade, or colonialism, we shot Sean Bell. By being quiet and comfortable, we shot Sean Bell.
The media wanted an outrage when the Sean Bell Verdict was read. 1000 police officers were present outside the courtroom, as Justice Arthur J. Cooperman of the State Supreme Court read, not guilt, not guilty, not guilty. Fingers hovered over camera record buttons, microphones quivered, as the media waited for the response, the black response. But nothing came. There were no unruly mobs, there was no violence, and thousands did not pour into the streets. But the black population took another bullet on Friday. The white population took another bullet. The country took another bullet. One in the heart, one in the mind, and one in the soul.
As the media questions where the public outcry is, reports like the one from National Public Radio entitled, “New York Largely Unmoved by Sean Bell Verdict,” suggests New Yorkers have finally rolled over and given up. “Acting White” blogger James Collier, a black man, suggested on NPR that 50 shots is poor marksmanship and says that shooting Bell was somewhat justifiable because he was drunk behind the wheel of a car. I just took another bullet. This country just took another bullet. If I were drunk driving would I be shot? Black writer Trey Ellis, in the same NPR discussion, talks about cynicism. He is not surprised by the seemingly quiet verdict because this type of behavior is expected from the NYPD whom we hold to a lower standard according to Ellis, black men are shot in New York City regularly. I want to scream. How is this possible! How can we hold police officers to a lower standard and accept that black men are just going to be shot in New York and no one is going to care. How can we hold the men and women who are sworn to serve and protect us to a lower standard than we hold ourselves? Don’t we all deserve the same level of respect and dignity? Aren’t we all human? I scream, what does that mean? NPR, I care. I AM MOVED.
People are questioning where the black leadership is? Reverend Al Sharpton is berating Barack Obama for calling for nonviolence and not being a strong enough voice of the black population. But if there is any hope for this country to move forward in our discussion of race we need not just black leaders standing up, we need everyone. Where is any type of leadership? What has Hillary Clinton said? We need somebody, anybody, to stand up and say that 50 bullets was 50 bullets too many! People expected Obama to stand up for the black community and I’ll agree he fell short as a candidate promoting change and conversation among the multi-races of America. But is should not just be Obama standing up. It should be Clinton, and McCain, and Bush. It should be every parent who has a child, every politician who represents his or her constituency, every teacher who has a student, every child who has a sibling, cousin, Aunt, or Uncle, every person who has a friend, loved one, or family, every person who wants to live in a country where people have the right to not be shot! How much longer are we going to let men, women, and children be killed because of the color of their skin? People are looking for leaders and we are in desperate need of someone, black, white, Latino, Asian, male, female, transgendered, whomever. Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough? Right now though we need to stop waiting around for a leader and begin to lead ourselves.
This is not just about Sean Bell. This isn’t just about police brutality. This is about the increasing amount of torture and violence in our world and how it is infiltrating how we live, how we see one another, how we think, how we move, how we breathe. This is about how we view one another with fear and assumptions. This is about how we communicate with each other and how we fail to do so. This is about my student in the Bronx. This is about my female students in South Africa who have to go to the community bathrooms as a group for fear of being raped in their own shantytown neighborhood. This is about my cousin in Iraq who is trained to kill brown skinned people. This is about not questioning injustices in the world because we are scared of failing. This is about being scared of the police, of arrest, of blacklists, of reputations. This is about being scared of our voices falling on deaf ears and the sound of silence when no voice is heard. This is about fear making hope seem impossible. This is about three bullets – one to the heart, one to the mind, and one to the soul. Three bullets to kill.
If we loose our ability to feel love, compassion, and happiness we take a bullet to the heart. If we loose our ability to think, to question, to speak, we take a bullet to the mind. If we loose our ability to hope, to dream, to clasp our hands together and pray for a better future, brown hand in white hand, black hand in red hand, then we take a bullet to our souls. We all took a bullet on Friday, April 25th, 2008 when the judicial system said 50 bullets in an unarmed black man goes unpunished. We can say the system is corrupt, that police training is inadequate; that there was a possibility Sean Bell was armed. We can also say no. I refuse to loose my voice. I refuse to be told that I don’t care that a black man needlessly lost his life. I refuse to sleep comfortably at night knowing that my neighbors, men and women I share walls with, laugh with, cook with, could just become another statistic, another disposable black American. If this was just a case of police brutality, that could have been me riddled with bullets on the Jamaica pavement. They would have shot me too. I could have been Sean Bell. I am Sean Bell. I am white. I am an American. I am a woman. I am Sean Bell and I refuse to take another bullet.
Hope your finishing up finals with a minimal amount of stress. Below is my final for this class which Kathy asked that I post. I'm meeting more and more people who aren't familiar with Sean Bell and I encourage you if you are not familiar with the case to read about it and draw your own questions about the type of country and world we are living in.
I am Sean Bell
How many shots does it take to kill a person? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty? It took one bullet to the chest to kill 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond. It took one bullet to the chest to kill 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury. It took four bullets to the back to kill Ousmane Zongo. It took 41 bullets to kill 23-year-old Amadou Diallo. It took 50 bullets to kill 23-year-old Sean Bell. How many shots does it take to kill a person? How many shots does it take for a police officer to kill a black man in New York City? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty?
I saw a man shot and killed. I was in Alexandria, or “Alex,” a black township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. I was walking with a friend through a market after lunch when we heard yelling from behind us. As we turned, a crowd of maybe 30 people rushed towards us. My friend grabbed my hand, yelled something in Zulu and pushed me around the corner of a building. We crouched. The crowd cleared. A black man ran past followed by two white cops with guns. With no warning there was a blast, then another, and another. The man stopped running. It took thirteen bullets to kill.
On an overcast Sunday in Harlem, two days after three detectives from the New York City Police Department were found not guilty of manslaughter and reckless endangerment after firing 50 shots into unarmed Sean Bell, a group of approximately 150 black people and one white person peacefully protested along Malcolm X Boulevard. As I stood with my black neighbors and listened to demands of justice, cries of anger, and moans of disbelief, I clung to the gentleman’s hand I was holding and cried. I cried for everything I do not understand. I cried for the anger inside me. I cried for a country that I want to believe in but cannot. I cried for a police system that cannot be trusted and a judicial system that delivers injustice. I cried for the body of a dead man I did not know. And with tears streaming down my face and my breathe coming in short uneven gasps, the man, whose hand I was grasping so tightly, offered me a handkerchief and told me, “You can cry, but Sean will not be the last, you may not want to waste those tears.”
As I gathered myself and the crowd moved forward down the street named after a man who was shot seven times and killed, a man with a young boy on his shoulders passed. The child held in his hand a sign with the words, “I am Sean Bell.”*
I am Sean Bell. I am white living in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. I am Sean Bell. I am middle class and college educated; I am Sean Bell. I am a woman; I am Sean Bell. I am a human being that believes in nonviolence. I am a human being deeply concerned. I am concerned about police brutality. I’m concerned about domestic violence. I am concerned about war and torture. I am concerned that we live in a world so inundated with violence that it no longer fazes us. I am concerned that another dead black man is just another dead black man. I am a human being that questions why two black cops and one white fired 50 bullets into an unarmed 23 year old who is only a year older than me. I am a human being but I am concerned because I am questioning what that means.
According to a 2006 United States Department of Justice Special Report, approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was used during 1999. The same report also highlights that in 2002 26,556 "citizen complaints" were filed at state and local law-enforcement agencies throughout the country. However, in only 8 percent of these cases was punitive action against the accused officer suggested and/or executed. These are the numbers of people who filed a complaint. In a report compiled by Human Rights Watch entitled, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, only 30% of people who have experienced police brutality in some capacity have filed a formal complaint.
I live in a city and a country where law enforcement is not just mistrusted by the black population, it is feared. To have black skin you are guilty until proven innocent. In 1999 when Amadou Diallo was gunned down by 41 bullets fired from four white cops, the murder was seen as a case of racial profiling. The racist undercurrent that fuels the NYPD was dragged through the media, city streets, and neighborhoods throughout the city. Waves of protest crippled city streets and the name Diallo is forever synonymous with racism and police brutality. As Diallo reached for his wallet, the police, assuming that a young black man in New York City carries a gun, opened fire and killed him. Nine years later Sean Bell still falls victim of racial profiling and racism in the police force however; two of the three cops responsible for his death are black. Unlike the shooting of Diallo, the media is presenting the Sean Bell case through the prism of police misconduct not through the lens of race. But regardless of the color of the shooting officers, Sean Bell died because he was a black man. It is a case of police brutality. It is case of extreme violence. It is a case of racism. Detective Michael Oliver, a white man, fired 31 bullets - he reloaded his gun. Look how far we have come since 1999 people say. This isn’t a case of racism, that’s behind us, black cops fired at Bell too. If Bell had been a white man would the police have been so quick to assume he had a gun? Would they fire 50 times? This is a case about the perceptions of black men. This is a case about shooting first and asking questions later. How many shots does it take to kill?
I teach high school students documentary film production in an after school program. One of my students says she is so used to the sounds of gunfire in her neighborhood that she hardly notices it anymore. Her family lives on the fourth floor of a building in the South Bronx. My student’s best friend lives on the first floor of a building in the same neighborhood and has had seven bullets shatter her home. My student is 16 and is tough. She says guns do not scare her and she is not afraid to die. We talked about Sean Bell. “The police will fuck anybody up if they feel like it, but that’s how it is. If I see one, I simply walk the other way, that’s just how it is.” She is 16 and she says she is not afraid to die. She is 16 and she is not afraid to die. She is 16.
I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old goes to sleep to the sound of gunfire. I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old has to act tough or be embarrassed to say she spends nights on the phone with her best friend telling each other stories of the trips they will take to Japan together as they fall asleep to the sound of each others voices and the gunshots in the background. My student’s brother and two uncles are in jail. How can it be that black men comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison? Where is the justice? What is justice? Sean Bell died because he was a black man. In this country black men are disposable. Black women loose their husbands, brothers, and sons. Black children loose their fathers. And the white population sleeps better at night. And we don’t want to talk about it but I do and I am infuriated. Some of my fellow white Americans would say that I’m being too harsh, that this is not always the case, things are not that “black and white.” These are bold statements I’m making but someone has to say them. It’s not everyone my fellow white American’s would claim. And I do truly want to believe that but I’m questioning.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to see someone without the lens of race? We cannot. Black skin means fear, means doubt, means you walk on the other side of the street, it means you lock your car doors in certain neighborhoods, it means you shoot first, it means you shoot 50 times. I do not think every white person in this country hates black people. I don’t even think a small percentage of white people in this country hate black people. What I do think is we are all to blame in the death of Sean Bell. By allowing these shootings to go unquestioned we all shot Sean Bell. By teaching our black children to be rappers and basketball stars in order to get out of the ghetto, we shot Sean Bell. By being impressed when a 15-year-old girl from Harlem is “actually articulate,” we shot Sean Bell. By not demanding that the resources in black and Latino inner-city schools be the same as white suburban schools, we shot Sean Bell. By not knowing the history of this country, the slave trade, or colonialism, we shot Sean Bell. By being quiet and comfortable, we shot Sean Bell.
The media wanted an outrage when the Sean Bell Verdict was read. 1000 police officers were present outside the courtroom, as Justice Arthur J. Cooperman of the State Supreme Court read, not guilt, not guilty, not guilty. Fingers hovered over camera record buttons, microphones quivered, as the media waited for the response, the black response. But nothing came. There were no unruly mobs, there was no violence, and thousands did not pour into the streets. But the black population took another bullet on Friday. The white population took another bullet. The country took another bullet. One in the heart, one in the mind, and one in the soul.
As the media questions where the public outcry is, reports like the one from National Public Radio entitled, “New York Largely Unmoved by Sean Bell Verdict,” suggests New Yorkers have finally rolled over and given up. “Acting White” blogger James Collier, a black man, suggested on NPR that 50 shots is poor marksmanship and says that shooting Bell was somewhat justifiable because he was drunk behind the wheel of a car. I just took another bullet. This country just took another bullet. If I were drunk driving would I be shot? Black writer Trey Ellis, in the same NPR discussion, talks about cynicism. He is not surprised by the seemingly quiet verdict because this type of behavior is expected from the NYPD whom we hold to a lower standard according to Ellis, black men are shot in New York City regularly. I want to scream. How is this possible! How can we hold police officers to a lower standard and accept that black men are just going to be shot in New York and no one is going to care. How can we hold the men and women who are sworn to serve and protect us to a lower standard than we hold ourselves? Don’t we all deserve the same level of respect and dignity? Aren’t we all human? I scream, what does that mean? NPR, I care. I AM MOVED.
People are questioning where the black leadership is? Reverend Al Sharpton is berating Barack Obama for calling for nonviolence and not being a strong enough voice of the black population. But if there is any hope for this country to move forward in our discussion of race we need not just black leaders standing up, we need everyone. Where is any type of leadership? What has Hillary Clinton said? We need somebody, anybody, to stand up and say that 50 bullets was 50 bullets too many! People expected Obama to stand up for the black community and I’ll agree he fell short as a candidate promoting change and conversation among the multi-races of America. But is should not just be Obama standing up. It should be Clinton, and McCain, and Bush. It should be every parent who has a child, every politician who represents his or her constituency, every teacher who has a student, every child who has a sibling, cousin, Aunt, or Uncle, every person who has a friend, loved one, or family, every person who wants to live in a country where people have the right to not be shot! How much longer are we going to let men, women, and children be killed because of the color of their skin? People are looking for leaders and we are in desperate need of someone, black, white, Latino, Asian, male, female, transgendered, whomever. Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough? Right now though we need to stop waiting around for a leader and begin to lead ourselves.
This is not just about Sean Bell. This isn’t just about police brutality. This is about the increasing amount of torture and violence in our world and how it is infiltrating how we live, how we see one another, how we think, how we move, how we breathe. This is about how we view one another with fear and assumptions. This is about how we communicate with each other and how we fail to do so. This is about my student in the Bronx. This is about my female students in South Africa who have to go to the community bathrooms as a group for fear of being raped in their own shantytown neighborhood. This is about my cousin in Iraq who is trained to kill brown skinned people. This is about not questioning injustices in the world because we are scared of failing. This is about being scared of the police, of arrest, of blacklists, of reputations. This is about being scared of our voices falling on deaf ears and the sound of silence when no voice is heard. This is about fear making hope seem impossible. This is about three bullets – one to the heart, one to the mind, and one to the soul. Three bullets to kill.
If we loose our ability to feel love, compassion, and happiness we take a bullet to the heart. If we loose our ability to think, to question, to speak, we take a bullet to the mind. If we loose our ability to hope, to dream, to clasp our hands together and pray for a better future, brown hand in white hand, black hand in red hand, then we take a bullet to our souls. We all took a bullet on Friday, April 25th, 2008 when the judicial system said 50 bullets in an unarmed black man goes unpunished. We can say the system is corrupt, that police training is inadequate; that there was a possibility Sean Bell was armed. We can also say no. I refuse to loose my voice. I refuse to be told that I don’t care that a black man needlessly lost his life. I refuse to sleep comfortably at night knowing that my neighbors, men and women I share walls with, laugh with, cook with, could just become another statistic, another disposable black American. If this was just a case of police brutality, that could have been me riddled with bullets on the Jamaica pavement. They would have shot me too. I could have been Sean Bell. I am Sean Bell. I am white. I am an American. I am a woman. I am Sean Bell and I refuse to take another bullet.
letter to village voice- i don't believe it was published
4/24/2008
Dear Editor,
In the past few years many institutions have felt the need to “go green” merely to appease the public, as waste is not an attribute that should be connected to an educated environment. However, students of NYU and I have found it necessary to act and demonstrate support as opposed to simply using the rhetoric of good practice. Although it is difficult to mobilize any small activity at a University as large as NYU, we created a campaign for Earth Day, titled Blackout NYU, intended to spark activism on campus and show the New York community that although we are young, we are not necessarily apathetic or complacent to issues confronting our world.
Political Journalism and Activism is a course offered by Gallatin School of Individualized Study that promotes the intersection of theory based and practice oriented work. As a class of fourteen, led by the Professor Kathy Engel, we tried to create a publicized campaign that would make the community focus on their energy consumption. Our ‘Blackout Squad’ ran classroom to classroom starting Tuesday morning, asking professors and students to turn off their classroom lights as a way of reinforcing NYU’s message of conservation. Surprisingly, a few professors gave us a hard time; one simply stated, “Go back to Gallatin,” in reference to the school’s liberal mantra. Generally speaking, the students themselves supported recognizing Earth Day and the symbol of their involvement.
In conjunction to that effort, we also engaged passers-by, in Washington Square Park, to reduce their carbon footprint. Participants were literally asked to draw a footprint in chalk and pledge a yearlong contribution/reduction. Most NYU students were open to this experience of creatively and consciously thinking about their individual greening efforts.
Overall, our group found that the students themselves are not as apathetic as the reputation that precedes us. Although we are a far cry from our parent’s anti-Vietnam War generation, we can politically organize just as efficiently. Our efforts were coordinated, almost exclusively, via the virtual arenas of email, blogging, telephone and radio interviews. My hope is that the Village, and the nation for that matter, becomes less accustomed to seeing college students as indifferent or unconcerned about political issues. Part of our challenge is to actually organize and implement the strategies or ideas that we think of and discuss on a daily basis. Another key to this is having faculty and our bureaucracy supporting the student’s voice.
Regards,
Judy Joslow
Dear Editor,
In the past few years many institutions have felt the need to “go green” merely to appease the public, as waste is not an attribute that should be connected to an educated environment. However, students of NYU and I have found it necessary to act and demonstrate support as opposed to simply using the rhetoric of good practice. Although it is difficult to mobilize any small activity at a University as large as NYU, we created a campaign for Earth Day, titled Blackout NYU, intended to spark activism on campus and show the New York community that although we are young, we are not necessarily apathetic or complacent to issues confronting our world.
Political Journalism and Activism is a course offered by Gallatin School of Individualized Study that promotes the intersection of theory based and practice oriented work. As a class of fourteen, led by the Professor Kathy Engel, we tried to create a publicized campaign that would make the community focus on their energy consumption. Our ‘Blackout Squad’ ran classroom to classroom starting Tuesday morning, asking professors and students to turn off their classroom lights as a way of reinforcing NYU’s message of conservation. Surprisingly, a few professors gave us a hard time; one simply stated, “Go back to Gallatin,” in reference to the school’s liberal mantra. Generally speaking, the students themselves supported recognizing Earth Day and the symbol of their involvement.
In conjunction to that effort, we also engaged passers-by, in Washington Square Park, to reduce their carbon footprint. Participants were literally asked to draw a footprint in chalk and pledge a yearlong contribution/reduction. Most NYU students were open to this experience of creatively and consciously thinking about their individual greening efforts.
Overall, our group found that the students themselves are not as apathetic as the reputation that precedes us. Although we are a far cry from our parent’s anti-Vietnam War generation, we can politically organize just as efficiently. Our efforts were coordinated, almost exclusively, via the virtual arenas of email, blogging, telephone and radio interviews. My hope is that the Village, and the nation for that matter, becomes less accustomed to seeing college students as indifferent or unconcerned about political issues. Part of our challenge is to actually organize and implement the strategies or ideas that we think of and discuss on a daily basis. Another key to this is having faculty and our bureaucracy supporting the student’s voice.
Regards,
Judy Joslow
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Leave the Talking Points at the Door
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
~First two stanzas of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
~First two stanzas of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”
I am an extremely political person. I love watching election returns, and hoping against hope that my candidate will come out the victor. I am physically unable, as many are, to be impartial when it comes to such matters.
Recently, I went to Philadelphia to campaign for my candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the recent Democratic primaries. I knocked on doors in two lower-middle class neighborhoods in Northeast Philly. Though I was inspired by the voters I talked to, there was an incident on the trip that, for the first time, really turned me off to the politics of politics. I was having a conversation with a 29 year-old Broadway producer, or so he said. (To be honest, I am unsure whether he was 29 or a Broadway producer.) He was an avid Hillary Clinton supporter. It was clear that he had donated the top amount to her campaign and had volunteered for her a number of times since the race began.
We got to talking and I asked whether he would vote for Barack Obama if Hillary didn’t end up getting the nomination. His answer: unequivocally NO. What’s more, he planned on using his “large gay income” to get at least 1 million voters in New York City alone to write Hillary’s name in on the ballot on election day in November. He told me that, although he wouldn’t vote for McCain, he would rather see him win so that Hillary would be in a prime position to run again, and win, in 2012.
After this conversation, we didn’t speak again for the rest of the trip.
It has taken me awhile to grapple with the fact that there are people out there who are prepared to see more harm done to the country in order to elect their favorite candidate. In a Gallup poll that was released at the end of March, 28% of Clinton voters said they would vote for McCain over Obama and 19% of Obama supporters said they would vote for McCain over Clinton. And this does not even take into account the Broadway producer-types who will write in their preferred candidate regardless. What is happening?
As of May 1, 2008, we have been in Iraq for 1,867 days. My two year-old cousin has never known a time when the United States of America has not been at war. John McCain has said that we could be in Iraq for another “hundred years.” To be sure, that would be another 36,500 days. As of the end of April 2008, 4063 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and it is estimated that anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 more soldiers have been wounded. These are men and women who are coming back from the region without limbs, paralyzed, both physically and emotionally. How many people do these deaths and these injuries affect? There is no way of knowing, but I would venture to guess tens of millions. And this is not even taking into account the million or more Iraqis, many who saw our invasion as a chance at true freedom, who have died since 2003.
Aside from the war, the problems facing us here at home have been monumental. We are in a subprime mortgage mess that the government relies on us to never quite understand. The dollar has dropped in value so much that it is now equal in value to 1.56 euros. The average price of a gallon of gasoline is $3.60 up from $1.46 when the Bush administration began. Over the past years, we have seen natural disasters unlike any in recent history. Hurricane Katrina ended the lives of at least 2,500 people. Although it has been forgotten by all but a few, the effects of that hurricane are still being felt in New Orleans and the surrounding areas.
Many of these facts come as a shock to most. Why is that? Why are we not ‘tying yellow ribbons ‘round our old oak trees’ and demanding that this war come to an end? Why are we not insisting that the government help bail out the American people, in the same way they bailed out Bear Stearns just a few shorts months ago?
Information starts and ends with corporations, who rely on ratings and readership to turn a profit. When Amy Goodman, host of the independent, corporate-free, newscast, Democracy Now!, spoke to my Journalism class last month, she stressed the importance of the ‘sound-bite’ to the mainstream media. She said that it is easy to pull out the now infamous Rev. Wright ‘God Damn America’ sound-bite and condemn him for saying it. To do so is missing the point. What we have to say cannot be summed up in 7 seconds. Maybe it takes 7 minutes, or 7 hours, or 7 days. More than this, though, it takes discussion. That is what is so often missing from the political arena: the ability to have a productive discussion.
I admit that many times I sit in my classes at New York University and wait for my opportunity to speak. I hear sound-bites from those around me and I react without listening to their full comments. I raise my hand, or I shout out, and nothing is accomplished because, more than likely, the person I am rebutting is busy conjuring up their next defense. Listening is boring, especially for highly opinionated people. I want to say what I mean and mean what I say and get others to mean what I say too. This is not the most productive way to go about a discussion, or to solve problems. Perhaps allowing someone to work out their thoughts, in a free-flowing way, and then allowing the next person to do the same thing, is a more effective strategy.
My own unwillingness to listen, though, is a microcosm of the type of ‘news’ coverage we see every day in the mainstream media, particularly on the three major cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC, and of course, Fox News. The formats of programs such as Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), Hardball with Chris Matthews (MSNBC), and Hannity and Colmes (Fox) are all the same. And the rancor has only gotten louder and more unbearable over the past months. The host introduces some inane issue, such as the recent Rev. Jeremiah Wright debacle, and then brings in a panel of ‘experts’ who supposedly all have different views on that issue. The problem is that very rarely is a productive discussion ever had. The panelists all come in with talking points and make sure never to defer from them. Each segment becomes a set of sound-bites strung together with the help of a semi-charismatic, mostly arrogant, host.
Perhaps the most troubling part is that some in the media seem to think that this is the best way to go about delivering the news. On April 30, Ed Schultz, a syndicated liberal radio host, appeared on David Gregory’s MSNBC slugfest Race for the White House. He was saying that now that Senator Obama had been so clearly damaged by the Rev. Wright controversy, it might befit him to go negative on Hillary Clinton, in order to change the subject. He went on to say that it would be nice if this would all go away but the “culture of the media” will not let that happen. Perhaps that is exactly what needs to change: the culture of the media.
June Jordan, the activist, poet, and hero, said that we must “tell the truth in order to change the truth.” The truth in so much of the media is that it is owned by powerful corporations. CNN is owned by Time Warner. MSNBC is owned by General Electric in conjunction with Microsoft. And Fox News is owned by News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch.) These three channels are staples in at least 50% of U.S. homes according to Los Angeles Independent Media. This means that five major corporations, along with Viacom/Westinghouse (CBS) and Disney (ABC,) control all the mainstream television news. What’s more, collectively, these corporations donated more than 8.4 million dollars to President George W. Bush’s campaigns. The breakdown is below:
Time Warner: 1.6 million
GE/Microsoft: 3.3 million
News Corp.: 2.9 million
Disney: 640,000 thousand
Although Viacom/Westinghouse doesn’t appear to have donated to the GOP, the Westinghouse Electric Company is part of the Nuclear Utilities Business Group of British Nuclear Fuels, of which Frank Carlucci is number one on the board of directors. Frank Carlucci is also a member of The Carlyle Group, which is one of the largest investment firms in the country and has made millions of dollars on government contracts having to do with the Iraq War and the supposed war on terrorism. According to Covenant News, the group, which has been active in setting up PAC groups to help elect George W. Bush, has made its money by, among other services, “providing logistics support to the U.S. military and making metal-bond structures in fighter jets and missiles.”GE/Microsoft: 3.3 million
News Corp.: 2.9 million
Disney: 640,000 thousand
The question then is, are we really willing to hand our freedom of speech over to just five points of view, especially five points of view that are all, at least ideologically, so seemingly similar?
Not all the news about the news is bad though. There are journalists and activists out there who are willing to take a stand against those who are hell-bent on manipulating information to make a profit.
Whether it be Emily and Sarah Kunstler, daughters of the legendary radical lawyer WIlliam Kunstler, and founders of “Off-Center Media,” who are practicing “propaganda journalism” by making advocacy videos on behalf of those who would not have a voice otherwise, such as a group of African American citizens in Tulia, Texas who were wrongfully accused of dealing cocaine based on their race. Whether it be Phil Donahue, the talk show legend, fired from MSNBC largely based on his anti-war views in 2003, who just made a film about a soldier who was paralyzed in the Iraq War, Body of War. Or whether it is a student in a journalism class who writes an article about how Earth Day came and went this year with very little fanfare from those in powerful governmental roles.
These people, along with many others, form a community that is insisting on change, a community that is ready, willing, and able to speak the truth in order to change the truth. They have “blue grit,” as author and radio host Laura Flanders might say. Traditional journalists they are not, but tradition is not what is important here. What is important is point of view. The news will never be objective. It is ever-changing, and if large corporations are able to dictate what voices they want heard, why can’t we raise the voices that we want heard even louder? Contrary to our culture of politeness, which is akin to the aforementioned culture of the media, there is no shame in opening your window and shouting like Howard Beale in Network, “I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!,” as long as we know why we’re mad, and what we can do to make change.
Being progressive is about appealing to the human condition, insisting on compassion and emotion. Amy Goodman is convinced that if people saw the atrocities of this war, things would be very different. If we were permitted to see the photographs of children lying dead on the street, of the coffins bringing our dead soldiers home, perhaps this war would not have escalated to its current level.
In order to appeal to others in this way, though, in order to expect others to be open to these images, we must not become so stuck in the minutia of our own ideologies. Having a favorite “horse in the race” for President is expected, and even encouraged, but in a time when so much is at stake, there comes a point when we must call for unity. We must look through the details and uncover the bigger picture. Imagine what the reaction from those who count on us not doing this would be if we actually did it. Let’s blind-side them. We have the tools we need; we just need to act. Let’s listen to each other, and together; we will rise.
Friday, May 2, 2008
from Kathy
To All: Wonderful writing about the Blackout. See WSN with Erin's piece. ANd someone please save me a copy of last week's with Annelle's piece. You made quite an impact!
See you soon!
See you soon!
Hey Guys
Hi all! I hope everyone is holding up well during these last couple of hectic weeks at school. Anyways, here's a piece Kathy asked that I post, its on our group project on Earth Day.
Student-Led Event Makes Heads Turn
If you happen to walk through Washington Square Park you might still witness the remnants of an Earth Day event that left the square decorated with a collage of colorful footprints of all shapes and sizes. The footprints were a result of the efforts of a group of 15 undergraduate students currently taking a class concentrated on political journalism and activism at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. The “NYU Blackout” campaign created and managed completely by the students was an attempt to get NYU faculty and students to turn off the lights of their classrooms for the day. The result was greater awareness of environmental issues and energy preservation throughout the NYU community. The students formed a two-pronged strategy where they both asked individuals to make a pledge on how they would reduce their carbon footprints as well as a “Blackout Squad” that would go around each of the buildings trying to urge students and teachers to “shut their lights off!”
The course titled “Political Journalism and Activism” meets twice a week and throughout the semester students have continuously discussed topics including what constitutes good journalism and how to use media in order to move people to act. The group project was a component of the course requirements but it was completely up to the students to determine what, where, and how they were going to proceed. Collectively, the class decided that Earth Day would be a great opportunity to create an event that would enable them to get their hands dirty.
On Tuesday morning, students met together to tape posters they had created out of recycled newspapers and cardboard boxes throughout many of the university buildings. The main event took place in Washing Square Park during the afternoon. Some of the students stood in the park, armed with chalk, asking passersby to trace their carbon footprints and make pledges to help reduce them. Another group of students ran throughout the NYU buildings shutting classroom lights off, sometimes without the permission of professors.
In hindsight, the students have been motivated by the results of their efforts. “It is unbelievable what we were able to accomplish in such a short period of time,” Joel, one of the students, emphasized. With one week of planning, two in-person meetings and the rest coordinated through a classroom blog, the students were able to gain the support of not only friends but a number of students, faculty members, and other members of the community. Some of the anecdotes include John Sexton’s, the president of the university, coming in to a meeting a shutting off the lights, saying, “I’m sorry but this is what we have been asked to do” to having about fifty “chalk-prints” on the Washington Square Park’s pavement, including one in French. The student press team was also able to get an interview for one of the students on WCBS Newsradio 880, the flagship radio station of the CBS Radio Network and CBS News.
The event was not only an accomplishment on the level of environmental awareness but also on the level of activism. With little money or time the students were able to work together and bring their thoughts to action. These students were able to make an example of other students and young adults who day in and day out are changing the way this country works and have taken one step closer to disavow the commonly held perception of apathetic youth.
Student-Led Event Makes Heads Turn
If you happen to walk through Washington Square Park you might still witness the remnants of an Earth Day event that left the square decorated with a collage of colorful footprints of all shapes and sizes. The footprints were a result of the efforts of a group of 15 undergraduate students currently taking a class concentrated on political journalism and activism at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. The “NYU Blackout” campaign created and managed completely by the students was an attempt to get NYU faculty and students to turn off the lights of their classrooms for the day. The result was greater awareness of environmental issues and energy preservation throughout the NYU community. The students formed a two-pronged strategy where they both asked individuals to make a pledge on how they would reduce their carbon footprints as well as a “Blackout Squad” that would go around each of the buildings trying to urge students and teachers to “shut their lights off!”
The course titled “Political Journalism and Activism” meets twice a week and throughout the semester students have continuously discussed topics including what constitutes good journalism and how to use media in order to move people to act. The group project was a component of the course requirements but it was completely up to the students to determine what, where, and how they were going to proceed. Collectively, the class decided that Earth Day would be a great opportunity to create an event that would enable them to get their hands dirty.
On Tuesday morning, students met together to tape posters they had created out of recycled newspapers and cardboard boxes throughout many of the university buildings. The main event took place in Washing Square Park during the afternoon. Some of the students stood in the park, armed with chalk, asking passersby to trace their carbon footprints and make pledges to help reduce them. Another group of students ran throughout the NYU buildings shutting classroom lights off, sometimes without the permission of professors.
In hindsight, the students have been motivated by the results of their efforts. “It is unbelievable what we were able to accomplish in such a short period of time,” Joel, one of the students, emphasized. With one week of planning, two in-person meetings and the rest coordinated through a classroom blog, the students were able to gain the support of not only friends but a number of students, faculty members, and other members of the community. Some of the anecdotes include John Sexton’s, the president of the university, coming in to a meeting a shutting off the lights, saying, “I’m sorry but this is what we have been asked to do” to having about fifty “chalk-prints” on the Washington Square Park’s pavement, including one in French. The student press team was also able to get an interview for one of the students on WCBS Newsradio 880, the flagship radio station of the CBS Radio Network and CBS News.
The event was not only an accomplishment on the level of environmental awareness but also on the level of activism. With little money or time the students were able to work together and bring their thoughts to action. These students were able to make an example of other students and young adults who day in and day out are changing the way this country works and have taken one step closer to disavow the commonly held perception of apathetic youth.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Democracy Now
I will find out about Wednesday. Haven't heard back yet in general so will call tomorrow re next Wednesday. Kathy
Monday, April 28, 2008
Next Wednesday, MAy 7th, for Democracy NOW!
Wednesday sounds good.
Does that work for others?
~Annelle
Does that work for others?
~Annelle
Democracy Now
Are we aiming for next week? I could go pretty much any morning (because its early right?) Maybe next Wednesday??
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Democracy Now!
This is Annelle. (The real slim shady.)
When would people be able to go to Democracy Now?
As of now, it's just me and Erin...any morning of the week works for me. Erin, what about you?
Kathy said that if we do it this Friday she won't be able to come, so I thought we should try for another day.
kathy, do we know how long the taping will take, or when we'd be available to get to classes, etc?
Kathy, please feel free to give out the address of the blog...they don't have to have the password in order to see it.
If they have trouble locating it, they should go to blogspot.com and type in the name of the blog (poljo-anda).
See everyone on Tuesday!
When would people be able to go to Democracy Now?
As of now, it's just me and Erin...any morning of the week works for me. Erin, what about you?
Kathy said that if we do it this Friday she won't be able to come, so I thought we should try for another day.
kathy, do we know how long the taping will take, or when we'd be available to get to classes, etc?
Kathy, please feel free to give out the address of the blog...they don't have to have the password in order to see it.
If they have trouble locating it, they should go to blogspot.com and type in the name of the blog (poljo-anda).
See everyone on Tuesday!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Earth Day, Everyday
Stopping to listen to the flowers: NYU Students Make Earth Day Matter
Walking down the streets of New York its hard to miss the colorful fanning displays of tulips growing from ever inch of dirt and grass this city has to offer. Popping up on sidewalks, between buildings and roads, dominating the "no-mans-land" islands in between multi lane Avenues, I cant help but wonder that the friendly flower heads spilling out over the sidewalks are maybe, just maybe, trying to tell us something: "Hello New York."
Now maybe it's because I was getting sick of wallowing in the never-ending winter doldrums or because I just finished Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire in which the history of the noble tulip is brought further into the sunlight. For whatever reason, I find myself in awe of New York City's tulip garden and evidently, I'm hearing them speak to me.
And its not just the tulips, I took a picture on my cell phone of the first tree I noticed sprouting the little white petals that drift lazily to the concrete ground and for a split second transport me to the poppy field in Wizard of Oz. Not because I've been drugged but because Dorothy and her gang's jaunt through the poppies was serenely beautiful and my happy place looks something like that field. I'm finding myself allowing 30 minutes to get to a classroom 10 minutes away so I can leisurely walk and enjoy the warmth of the sun.
As I'm embracing the fruits of nature all around the concrete jungle, I'm reminded of a shirt a friend of mine had when we were growing up that read, "Everyday is Earth Day." I remember how much I coveted that shirt because as a 15 year old I didn't feel it was enough to be a vegetarian and to recycle unless everyone else knew I was doing it. I have always questioned the absurdity of Earth Day, one day dedicated to the celebration of the planet? A celebratory reminder that yup, we inhabit a living breathing mass floating through space? And, gulp, it's our responsibility to keep it clean, pretty and dare I say livable for the next generation? Maybe it's crazy of me to say so but I am thankful everyday for the Earth and its beauty.
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008, the day set aside on our calendars for Earth Day, came and went like a drifting ice cap lost in the arctic. No international music concerts sponsored by politicians and celebrities; leaders of the world did not come together to discuss global warming. No international day of solidarity where everyone agreed to forgo driving to work. However, localized activities reminded people that while they might not be able to sit down to freshly squeezed locally grown organic lemonade with George Bush or Al Gore to talk climate change, they can sit down with their neighbor, family and friends, and remind themselves and each other that this planet is worth saving.
At New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study’s Community Learning Initiative, students in Kathy Engel's Political Journalism and Activism class decided they were not going to let Earth Day come and go without at least a nod in Mother Nature’s direction. In the spirit of NYU's "Going Green Initiative" the class decided to "Blackout NYU." By sending out mass email campaigns and going from door to classroom door, leaving flyers on recycled materials – no paper waste! Students in Engel's class asked colleagues and peers to turn their lights off for Earth Day. At times interrupting classes to politely ask teachers and students to do their small part in honor of our planet, the students, for the most part, were met with willing participants who simply had never thought to turn the lights off.
The students also set up a table in Washington Square Park and encouraged park visitors to draw footprints in chalk with a pledge to make a small step towards reducing their own individual carbon footprints. By 4 pm the surface of the park was covered in footprints chalked by students, children, parents, grandparents, professors, west village residents, and tourists, leaving messages like: eat local, turn off the lights, and walk more!
One might say, so some students at NYU turned off some lights and got people to play with chalk, what did that really do to save the planet? It's true, the students don't know how many professors actually participated or how many people actually went home and turned the water off when they were brushing their teeth. However, there was a vibe, something happened on Tuesday April 22nd in lower Manhattan.
On a beautiful April day New Yorkers stopped to remember that Earth is our home, New York, our neighborhood, and New Yorkers, our neighbors. We were reminded that while we might not be solving global warming with the flick of a light switch, we can still physically do something. We have the power to make individual choices that collectively can make a difference no matter how big or small. With a budget of nothing and the energy of a good idea, the NYU students reminded their peers that while we may live in a concrete monolith, this planet is our home and its time to show it some love and not just on Earth Day but everyday.
A community emerged at NYU last Tuesday. A community of people who wanted to enjoy the sunshine, who were willing to sit in a dark classroom, and above all, a community of people who wanted to talk and feel empowered. The strongest tool for large-scale change, be it for global warming or anything else, is the feeling of community, a gathering of like-minded individuals who believe that a better, cleaner, and brighter future is possible.
As I walked through Washington Square Park today and the remnants of the chalk footprints still faintly remain and the tulips flop lazily over the guardrails, I wonder what if we stopped to smell the flowers more often? If we bent over and placed an ear alongside the opened bud would they talk to us and what would they say? "Hello New York," I imagine they would begin, "what a lovely day to stop and celebrate the planet."
Erin Gordon
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
e.gordon13@gmail.com
So gang this is the piece I wrote in response to our Earth Day celebrations. Let me know what you think. Richard, Kathy suggested getting it to Danielle so it could be circulated through the schools. Let me know if that's possible :)
Walking down the streets of New York its hard to miss the colorful fanning displays of tulips growing from ever inch of dirt and grass this city has to offer. Popping up on sidewalks, between buildings and roads, dominating the "no-mans-land" islands in between multi lane Avenues, I cant help but wonder that the friendly flower heads spilling out over the sidewalks are maybe, just maybe, trying to tell us something: "Hello New York."
Now maybe it's because I was getting sick of wallowing in the never-ending winter doldrums or because I just finished Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire in which the history of the noble tulip is brought further into the sunlight. For whatever reason, I find myself in awe of New York City's tulip garden and evidently, I'm hearing them speak to me.
And its not just the tulips, I took a picture on my cell phone of the first tree I noticed sprouting the little white petals that drift lazily to the concrete ground and for a split second transport me to the poppy field in Wizard of Oz. Not because I've been drugged but because Dorothy and her gang's jaunt through the poppies was serenely beautiful and my happy place looks something like that field. I'm finding myself allowing 30 minutes to get to a classroom 10 minutes away so I can leisurely walk and enjoy the warmth of the sun.
As I'm embracing the fruits of nature all around the concrete jungle, I'm reminded of a shirt a friend of mine had when we were growing up that read, "Everyday is Earth Day." I remember how much I coveted that shirt because as a 15 year old I didn't feel it was enough to be a vegetarian and to recycle unless everyone else knew I was doing it. I have always questioned the absurdity of Earth Day, one day dedicated to the celebration of the planet? A celebratory reminder that yup, we inhabit a living breathing mass floating through space? And, gulp, it's our responsibility to keep it clean, pretty and dare I say livable for the next generation? Maybe it's crazy of me to say so but I am thankful everyday for the Earth and its beauty.
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008, the day set aside on our calendars for Earth Day, came and went like a drifting ice cap lost in the arctic. No international music concerts sponsored by politicians and celebrities; leaders of the world did not come together to discuss global warming. No international day of solidarity where everyone agreed to forgo driving to work. However, localized activities reminded people that while they might not be able to sit down to freshly squeezed locally grown organic lemonade with George Bush or Al Gore to talk climate change, they can sit down with their neighbor, family and friends, and remind themselves and each other that this planet is worth saving.
At New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study’s Community Learning Initiative, students in Kathy Engel's Political Journalism and Activism class decided they were not going to let Earth Day come and go without at least a nod in Mother Nature’s direction. In the spirit of NYU's "Going Green Initiative" the class decided to "Blackout NYU." By sending out mass email campaigns and going from door to classroom door, leaving flyers on recycled materials – no paper waste! Students in Engel's class asked colleagues and peers to turn their lights off for Earth Day. At times interrupting classes to politely ask teachers and students to do their small part in honor of our planet, the students, for the most part, were met with willing participants who simply had never thought to turn the lights off.
The students also set up a table in Washington Square Park and encouraged park visitors to draw footprints in chalk with a pledge to make a small step towards reducing their own individual carbon footprints. By 4 pm the surface of the park was covered in footprints chalked by students, children, parents, grandparents, professors, west village residents, and tourists, leaving messages like: eat local, turn off the lights, and walk more!
One might say, so some students at NYU turned off some lights and got people to play with chalk, what did that really do to save the planet? It's true, the students don't know how many professors actually participated or how many people actually went home and turned the water off when they were brushing their teeth. However, there was a vibe, something happened on Tuesday April 22nd in lower Manhattan.
On a beautiful April day New Yorkers stopped to remember that Earth is our home, New York, our neighborhood, and New Yorkers, our neighbors. We were reminded that while we might not be solving global warming with the flick of a light switch, we can still physically do something. We have the power to make individual choices that collectively can make a difference no matter how big or small. With a budget of nothing and the energy of a good idea, the NYU students reminded their peers that while we may live in a concrete monolith, this planet is our home and its time to show it some love and not just on Earth Day but everyday.
A community emerged at NYU last Tuesday. A community of people who wanted to enjoy the sunshine, who were willing to sit in a dark classroom, and above all, a community of people who wanted to talk and feel empowered. The strongest tool for large-scale change, be it for global warming or anything else, is the feeling of community, a gathering of like-minded individuals who believe that a better, cleaner, and brighter future is possible.
As I walked through Washington Square Park today and the remnants of the chalk footprints still faintly remain and the tulips flop lazily over the guardrails, I wonder what if we stopped to smell the flowers more often? If we bent over and placed an ear alongside the opened bud would they talk to us and what would they say? "Hello New York," I imagine they would begin, "what a lovely day to stop and celebrate the planet."
Erin Gordon
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
e.gordon13@gmail.com
So gang this is the piece I wrote in response to our Earth Day celebrations. Let me know what you think. Richard, Kathy suggested getting it to Danielle so it could be circulated through the schools. Let me know if that's possible :)
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