Shiny Things

G

2011-10-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

This calls for more glitter!

And time passes...

2011-03-26T00:52:00.000-05:00

So... apparently this blog thing still exists. Funny how the internet is sometimes. A year seems like a long enough pause, so I thought I'd write again. Hello world.

Brief life update: I now have a paying job, an apartment, a TV, and a car. Yuck. What happened?

Do people even read blogs anymore? This should probably be useful or informative or inspirational so as not to clog the internet tubes with unnecessary waste.

Inspirational quote: "Whatever the program, for whatever purpose or cause, if love is not there, then beware. Without love there can be temporary successes, but with time they crumble." - Pope John XXIII

Article: "How we killed Archbishop Romero"

2010-03-30T22:28:00.001-05:00

I just read a very interesting article based on an interview with one of the people responsible for organizing the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero. You can read it in English here or Spanish here.

Que mi sangre sea semilla de libertad y la señal de que la esperanza será pronto una realidad. (Homilia del 16 marzo 1980)

May my blood be the seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be a reality. (Homily, March 16, 1980)

Casa Pedro Blog

2010-03-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

My JVC community now has a blog! The working title is "The Greatest Blog Ever," but I think we're open to other suggestions. It's a pretty cool blog so far, if I do say so myself.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-05T00:20:00.000-06:00

One of my new year's resolutions is to start blogging more, so here I am! After a lovely and relaxing Christmas and New Year, I am back in the swing of things at work, and nearly all my roommates have returned home.

I was in charge of planning spirituality night this evening. I love Christmas for many reasons, but one is this: when you think about it, this is a holiday celebrating a newborn baby who was conceived outside of marriage, born to a teen mom. This savior, God incarnate, was born into a poor family, rejected by those around him even before he was born. For my community's spirituality night, I read this quote by Thomas Merton:

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.

On another Christmas-y social justice theme, this week is National Migration Week. As my friend Stephanie said, "Be nice to immigrants." Don't forget, young Jesus was a migrant too.

Dramatic Action and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas

2009-11-18T22:01:00.000-06:00

The School of the Americas protest and vigil is this coming weekend. I won't be going (it's hard to get to Georgia on a JV stipend), but I will be doing a presentation about the SOA and SOA Watch to a church youth group in the area on Sunday. I was preparing for that presentation and went back to an essay I wrote for Digital Democracy (taught by David Silver). It's a decent paper, so I thought I'd post it up here. If I were less lazy/had more time, I would linkify the references, etc., but I added a video and a couple photos to spice it up. The photos are from when I went in 2006 (shortly after I wrote this paper).

Amber McChesney-Young
Digital Democracy
November 7, 2006

Dramatic Action and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas

In November 1990, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Charlie Liteky, and Patrick Liteky, accompanied by local media, entered the U.S. Army School of the Americas at the Ft. Benning military base in Georgia. There they placed images of six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and daughter, who had been killed in El Salvador the previous November, along with a letter calling for the closure of the school. They splashed human blood on the pictures and the floor and the walls, and went outside, where they placed a white cross at the base of the sign marking the School of the Americas. They splashed blood on the sign, then on themselves, and they lay down and waited to be arrested. This was one of the first actions of a movement to shut down the School of the Americas, a U.S. Army-run combat-training school for Latin American soldiers. The movement has grown over the years, but throughout its development the use of dramatic direct action has played a key role in building the movement and advancing its goals.

The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), which was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC or WHISC) in 2001, was started in 1946 in the Panama Canal Zone and moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1984. It was created as a Cold War tool to keep Communism out of Latin America, but it still remains open after the fall of Communism, and it continues to train Latin American soldiers. Over 60,000 soldiers have graduated from the school.

Graduates of the School of the Americas have been responsible for major human rights abuses in Latin America. SOA Watch says, "These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, 'disappeared,' massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins" ("What is the SOA?").

Some of the more famous abuses took place in El Salvador. Two of the three people found responsible for assassinating Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 were SOA graduates.1 Three of the five responsible for the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen (three nuns and a laywoman) were SOA graduates, and ten of the twelve responsible for the massacre at El Mozote in 1981, where over 900 people were killed, and nearly the entire village, along with the surrounding area, was wiped out, were SOA graduates. In 1989, in an action that actually helped bring about the end to El Salvador's civil war because of the outrage it caused, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were brutally murdered at the University of Central America in El Salvador. Nineteen of the 26 found responsible were SOA graduates, according to a 1993 United Nations Truth Commission Report. In 1996, in what led to a great uproar, the Pentagon was pressured into releasing manuals that had been used at the school from 1982 to 1991 which taught torture, blackmail, and execution. This was significant in helping build the movement to close the school (Gill 212-213).

To understand the purpose of the SOA, one must look at U.S. foreign political and economic relations. The United States has provided financial and military support to Latin American countries to keep the people it likes in power, and when the people it doesn't like have been in power, the U.S. has backed the insurgency and supported coups. In the 1980's, El Salvador went through a civil war between the right-wing government and the left-wing insurgency, which involved massacres, kidnappings, disappearances, and torture. The U.S. gave significant support to the Salvadoran government throughout the war.

Today many of the conflicts in Latin America have calmed down, but the U.S. continues to train Latin American soldiers, and there continues to be criticism of the school. In the book School of Assassins: Guns, Greed, and Globalization, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Professor of Peace and Justice Studies at St. Thomas University, looks at the school in the larger framework of globalization and economics. He argues that the SOA is training soldiers in order to maintain rule which favors free trade and structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank. Nelson-Pallmeyer says, "U.S. foreign policy generally and the SOA specifically support policies and systems that enrich a powerful minority while leading to widespread poverty, gross inequalities, a strained environment, and constricted or nonexistent democracy" (14). In other words, the issue is not limited to high-profile assassinations. The SOA is a symbol of U.S. foreign relations and imperialism.

It was a background in a different kind of U.S. involvement in Latin America that led a small group of people to found School of the Americas Watch in 1990. Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, had spent five years in Bolivia as a missionary after his ordination in 1972. His experience there taught him about the lives of the poor in Latin America. He saw extreme poverty, and he witnessed people being arrested, tortured, and murdered. His experience in Bolivia was the foundation for his later activism. He traveled to El Salvador after the killings of the four churchwomen, two of whom were friends of his, and upon returning to the U.S. he traveled to churches around the country talking about the horrors in El Salvador which our government was supporting.

In 1983, before the SOA had moved to Ft. Benning, Fr. Bourgeois read a small story in the New York Times saying that about 500 Salvadoran soldiers had arrived at Ft. Benning for combat training (Father Roy). He decided to take action, so he went to Columbus, Georgia, where Ft. Benning is located. After doing community education and organizing, he and two others snuck into the fort dressed as high-ranking military officials, found the barracks where the Salvadorans were staying, climbed a tree, and waited for dark (Father Roy). They had brought with them a boom box with loud speakers, and when the lights in the barracks went out, they blasted the last sermon of Archbishop Oscar Romero (Father Roy). Fr. Bourgeois wanted to "call as much attention as he could to the training and to 'raise enough hell' to stop it" (Hodge and Cooper 92). This was a precursor of the dramatic direct actions used in the movement to shut down the SOA.

Other early SOA Watch members had also worked in Latin America in the '70's and '80's and the movement was heavily based on what remained of the U.S. Central America solidarity movement that arose as a result of issues like El Salvador's civil war and U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contras (Gill 201-202). In The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, Lesley Gill, a Professor of Anthropology at American University, describes the growth and development of the movement to close the SOA. She writes about how the influence of liberation theology; the experience of many priests and nuns working as missionaries in Latin America; and the murders of Romero, the churchwomen, and the Jesuits in El Salvador all created a basis for a movement primarily made up of middle-aged white religious people expressing their outrage at the existence of this institution (Gill 202-203). Because of the work that many had done concerning Latin America, they already had a knowledge base of what the experience was for the people who suffered the most from an institution like the SOA (Gill 202).

The notion of solidarity is important in the movement because unlike most social movements, the members are not the ones being oppressed. Movements like civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights have all been primarily made up of the people who were most affected by the changes they were working for. These movements have involved other people (such as whites in the civil rights movement), but they have been primarily made up of the people experiencing the oppression. The movement to shut down the School of the Americas was started by white people from the United States, and that is where solidarity becomes important. The religious base for the movement helps explain this to an extent. Solidarity is an important value in Catholic social teaching. It is also important to note that the movement is conscious of the fact that its members are the privileged ones. On the SOA Watch web site they say, "We have a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters in Latin America and the Caribbean who have been fighting oppression for the past 510 years. To do so, we must come to grips with our own privilege and recognize how it shapes our assumptions about struggle, organizing and the future" ("Building the Movement").

The church provided ready-made networks, which the movement used to spread the message about the SOA through churches and schools, but it was more the dramatic actions of the movement that grabbed the attention of the public and created the traditions that hold the movement together today. The first actions after the creation of School of the Americas Watch were a 35 day hunger strike at the entrance to Ft. Benning, then the action I described at the beginning of this paper, commemorating the first anniversary of the killings of the Jesuits. That protest started an annual tradition, and every November since there has been a protest at the SOA. Still, these protests did not attract much attention, and the protests remained small until 1995, when a group of thirteen protesters decided to cross the line that marked the boundaries of Fort Benning, risking arrest (Gill 208-9). Their arrest and subsequent jail time of three to six months "stoked the moral outrage of movement veterans and advanced the cause of the movement in a way that neither the judge nor the army anticipated" (Gill 210). After that, as well as the 1996 release of the "torture manuals," the movement grew significantly and crossing the line became a part of the tradition. In 1999, twelve thousand people attended the protest, and five thousand crossed the line (Gill 209).

Crossing the line is one of the forms of dramatic action I will examine here. The movement uses many cultural forms to build itself and to advance its goals, from music to drama to giant puppets, but I have chosen to focus on three particular dramatic actions that take place at the annual November protest and vigil: the funeral march, die-ins, and crossing the line. SOA Watch has combined the dramatic flair of the Black Panthers with the nonviolence and religious component of the civil rights movement. In The Art of Protest, T.V. Reed, Director of American Studies and Professor of English at Washington State University, describes the black power movement saying that much of the movement, "particularly the Black Panther Party, can be understood as a kind of theatrical performance" (42). "All politics involves a theatrical element," he says (42). The dramatic actions at the SOA protest grab the attention of the media and the public, and they attract people to join the movement.

The Sunday morning of the November protest starts with a solemn funeral procession in remembrance of those who have died at the hands of graduates of the SOA. The procession is led by people wearing black cloaks and white faces carrying black coffins. Behind them thousands of people march, many carrying white crosses or other symbols bearing names of the dead. A group of people sing out the names of people who have been killed one by one. After each name, everyone raises their crosses and sings the response: "Presente."

In The Art of Protest, Reed outlines the functions of culture in movements, and the first one applies to this in particular: "Encourage. Individuals should feel the strength of the group. Singing in mass rallies can move a person out of the individual self to feel the strength of the group" (299). As Reed discusses in his chapter on music in the civil rights movement, singing unites people and maintains an atmosphere of calm and nonviolence (29). While the litany of the funeral march is not the same as the songs of the civil rights movement, there are clear similarities in the goals of collective singing. However, this action is not just a mass of people singing together. It is a very dramatic memorial for hundreds of dead people, and the slow solemn march along with the raising of the crosses adds a dimension to it beyond music. The action serves to remind the protesters of their purpose and to convey their purpose to the rest of the world. It is a very visible and striking form of protest, different from most protest marches one encounters. It has become a trademark and tradition of the movement.

As the procession arrives at the gates of Ft. Benning, affinity groups and individuals are invited to participate in direct action ("Call for Direct Action"). For many that means "crossing the line," which, post-9/11, is now a barbed wire-topped fence, and for others it can mean any number of other forms of action. One common form of protest on both sides of the fence is the die-in, where people lay down and pretend to be dead, often with fake (or real) blood, acting out the deaths that result from the military training at the SOA, and helping people understand what it's like to live in a place where you do see people on the ground, shot to death. The die-in is a form of protest that has been used in many other movements, so, unlike the funeral march, which is relatively unique, the die-in links the protest to other movements protesting unjust killings and unnecessary deaths by using the same action. Reed describes how ACT UP, an organization fighting against AIDS, used die-ins for their cause as a way to emphasize that people were being killed, not bringing their deaths upon themselves (195). The anti-SOA die-ins can be looked at similarly. They are directly blaming the SOA for these deaths. One of the first SOA protests was a die-in, as I described in the introduction. Die-ins are very dramatic and theatrical. They can convey very strong emotions and therefore hold a great amount of power for those watching and those participating.

The act of "crossing the line" is very dramatic, and of these dramatic actions, it has probably drawn the most people to the movement. When a group crossed the line the first time in 1995 and were arrested and jailed, the attention raised a lot of awareness which drew more people to the movement (Gill 209). Those first few years, a small number of people came to protest, but it has grown dramatically over the years, and the 2005 estimate by SOA Watch was 19,000 people ("Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced"). As Gill says, in 1999 five thousand people, a large proportion of those present, crossed the line (209). However, since 9/11 the number of line-crossers has dropped significantly because of a newly erected fence. It used to be that if you crossed the line there was a relatively slim chance of jail time (because of the sheer magnitude of people), but now it is almost certain. People can spend up to six months in prison.

With a fence topped with barbed-wire, it takes a lot more effort to cross the line than it did when it was a line on the ground, but as people throw cardboard over the top to go over or lift the bottom of the fence to go under, the drama remains. The fact that there are a significant number of priests and nuns and older people crossing adds even more to the act in what Reed refers to as a "transgression of cultural codes" (297). Of the 31 people arrested and sentenced to prison for the 2005 protest, eight were 70 years or older (two of them aged 81), and fifteen were 60 years or older ("Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced"). Our culture's regular view of priests and nuns is not that of people who would climb on their knees under a fence, trespassing and therefore breaking the law, cover themselves in fake blood, lay down, and wait to be handcuffed and taken to jail. That is a transgression of cultural codes, which, as Reed argues, has a great impact on the influence of a movement on society by altering people's concepts of cultural codes (297).

The movement to close the School of the Americas has had some success over the years, but the school still remains open. Technically, the SOA did close in December 2000 because of pressure from the public and the bad reputation the SOA had acquired. However, a new school called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation opened in the same place with the same people in charge and nearly the same curriculum in place in January 2001. It was clear to many that the name change was essentially skin-deep (Nelson-Pallmeyer 120-121), and while it has increased the amount of human rights training, the school remains basically the same. Still, it shows that the movement was exerting enough pressure that something had to be done, though it was not a satisfactory solution for those trying to shut down the school for good. Another sign of success is the growing numbers of people involved in the movement, and the fact that every year legislation in the House to close the school gets closer and closer to passing.

One key aspect of the movement has been that its actions are not just limited to the November protest, but that every spring Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) regularly introduces legislation to close the school, and SOA Watch organizes lobbying in Washington DC to try to get the legislation to pass. Without the well-known protest which shows that tens of thousands of people support the movement enough to travel to Georgia from around the country, the lobbying would hold much less weight, but without the lobbying and actions in Congress, the protest would have very little actual impact in its goal to shut down the school. These two actions complement each other well in the movement to shut down the school.

One challenge the movement faced was how to frame its goals. Did it just want to shut down the school, or was the real issue U.S. foreign policy, exploitation, and military interventionism? (Gill 227). Closing the school is a feasible goal, but "Doing away with U.S. imperialism was another matter" (Gill 228). However, especially prompted by the growing anti-globalization movement and the 1999 Battle of Seattle, SOA Watch has been framing itself within the larger picture of globalization (Gill 229). If one looks at the SOA Watch web site, there is a page specifically devoted to the SOA in terms of labor and globalization ("SOA, Labor & Globalization"). Still, it is an issue of finding balance, and there are other disputes about methods and attitudes especially as more young, non-religious people join the movement (Gill 230).

Despite some internal disputes, the anti-SOA movement has succeeded in tarnishing the name of the School of the Americas and keeping alive the memories of those who have been killed. It has used dramatic action as an important way to attract attention and members to its cause as well as to build the movement from within, strengthening its resolve and commitment. It has been sure to get the media to cover its actions, and it has produced a number of documentaries about the issue, which highlights the dramatic actions even more. The movement still has a lot of work to do, especially if it is concerned not just with closing the school but changing the structures that create a need for the school. However, the movements used so far have had a significant impact, and the movement is young and still has time to grow and develop.

Works Cited:
"Building the Movement From the Bottom Up." School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=724>.
"Call for Direct Action: November 2006." School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1091>.
Father Roy: Inside the School of the Assassins. Dir. Robert Richter. Narr. Susan Sarandon. Videocassette. Richter Productions, 1997.
Gill, Lesley. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2004.
Hodge, James and Linda Cooper. Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004.
Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. School of Assassins: Guns, Greed, and Globalization. Rev. and exp ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.
Reed, T.V. The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005.
"SOA, Labor & Globalization." School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/sub.php?id=38>.
"Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced to Prison in Columbus, Georgia." 1 Feb 2006. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/pressrelease.php?id=104>.
"What is the SOA?" School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8>.

Over the river and through the woods...

2009-11-08T23:40:00.002-06:00

... to grandmother's house we go! Well, more like over the ocean and through the mountains, I guess. This weekend my mom and I went to visit my grandma and aunt and uncle near San Diego. I left them with the promise to write more in my blog, so here I am, dispelling the myth that I disappeared after my first day of work.

I've had a great last few months. I love my job, and my community is a lot of fun. It's always daunting to write a blog entry after a long dry spell, so I'm not going to attempt to summarize everything, but I'll try to fill in the gaps in future entries.

This weekend was nice - it's been a while since I've been able to spend a lot of time with my mom, and it's been quite a while since I've seen my relatives. We hung out, went to a crafts fair, saw Amelia, played Scrabble, and went to my aunt and uncle's church.

Here's a picture of me and my grandma (blurry because it's from a cell phone):

Now I'm back in Santa Clara, and I have a very busy week ahead of me, so it's time to go to bed.

Please pray for the people in El Salvador right now. There's terrible rain, with flooding and landslides, and at least 124 people have died. I have friends down there right now.

First Day of Work!

2009-08-17T23:16:00.007-05:00

I had my first day of my new job at Catholic Charities in San José today. Things were a little disorganized because JVC had sent them the wrong start date in an email, and most of the people thought I was coming tomorrow rather than today. I spent some time talking to people and reading information about cultural orientation for refugees.

My seven housemates and I moved into our new house on Thursday. It is a former convent, and before that it was a mortuary (fun fact). It is huge, and we all get our own bedrooms! Here are a few photos.

Here's the front of our house:

Here's the inside of my messy room:

Our kitchen:

Our dining room:

I think it will be a great year.

immigration

2009-08-07T03:48:00.003-05:00

It's always easier to feel passionate about something when it directly affects you or someone you care about.

On Wednesday I got an email from my friend saying that her boyfriend, who is from England and has been in the U.S. this last year on a volunteer visa, had his application for another volunteer visa denied. His ties in the U.K. aren't strong enough to convince the U.S. government that he'll want to go back. Their plans for this coming year were torn apart. Now he'll try to get a work permit, and if that doesn't work, they might just get married (the fiance visa can take many months and lots of money, though). If he tries to come as a tourist during this time and they decide not to let him in, he could be banned from the country for 10 years.

This morning I got a text from my now former coworker saying that one of the people whose case I had worked on (someone I had spent quite a bit of time with) just got deported. He had been living here for years, spoke very good English, and held a steady job. He got picked up by county police for outstanding traffic tickets, handed over to ICE, and shipped back to Mexico. All of his belongings are in the U.S. He's staying in a shelter and all he has is the money that was in his pocket. He called to see if we could talk to a lawyer and see if there's a way he can come to the U.S. legally. I know the answer already - no way. He'll probably cross illegally again, which will most likely cost thousands of dollars and/or put him in great danger.

The harshness of the immigration system is much clearer when you know the people whose lives are being disrupted and destroyed by it. When you hear abstract talk of immigration reform, remember that these are real people whose fates are being discussed, and we need to do something so that the human rights and dignity of every person are respected.

The year is ending

2009-07-30T13:16:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my last day of work! Today we're going off to our end of the year retreat (called Dis-Orientation). I'm in Houston until Tuesday, when I fly home. I'll be in Berkeley till Saturday the 8th, when I drive down to Aptos (near Santa Cruz) for my orientation. After that I'll be moving into my new home in Santa Clara and starting my work at Catholic Charities in San Jose.

I'm going to work on a more comprehensive end-of-the-year reflection, but in the meantime, I wrote a reflection to share at the liturgy at our retreat. One person from each community is supposed to share a brief reflection in the spirit of a homily (sermon) based on one of the daily readings. This is what I wrote:

A reading from Paul's letter to the Ephesians:
Brothers and sisters: I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.

Paul calls us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, to be transformed so that we reject a lifestyle of deceitful desires and turn toward God's righteousness and truth – God's justice. JVC calls us to be "ruined for life" along similar lines. We leave behind the futile way of thinking of ignorance and blindness with an amazing chance this year to learn Christ in a new way.

Spending 40-plus hours a week working with or for the poor is very different than the occasional service days many of us did before this year. This type of work opens your eyes in a way that you can never fully close them again. We've learned too much to turn our backs on injustice now.

We have learned Christ this year by seeing Christ in front of us every day, not on a crucifix on the wall, but in the eyes of friends and strangers. My community saw Christ in death row inmates, gay men dying of AIDS, Rwandan refugees, Salvadoran survivors of human trafficking, low-wage workers crying because of the bad treatment they have suffered, Mexican immigrants waiting for 10 or more years for a family member to be able to come to this country, and children and parents with HIV and AIDS.

Our ears were opened listening to people's stories and struggles. Abstract concepts of poverty, illness, war, and violence became realities, and we began to see the "other" as "us" instead of "them."

One thing I enjoyed a lot this year was the opportunity to go to rallies and protests as part of my job. On May 1st, my organization helped put on a vigil and rally for immigration reform. We were a mixed group of immigrants with and without papers and non-immigrant allies, standing together calling for justice and human rights. At the end, we gathered around in a circle and sang We Shall Overcome, first in Spanish, then in English. As we sang this beautiful song of hope from the civil rights movement, I felt a profound sense of solidarity with the people around me and privilege that I could be with these immigrants in their struggle. It is small moments of grace like this that teach us truth in Jesus – that we are one human family.

We've been called to conversion by God, by JVC, and most importantly, by every person we have served and accompanied this year. We've been called to an alternative way of living that recognizes Christ in the poor, even when that means we need to forego the cushy lifestyle that many of us grew up with and deal with relatives and friends who don't understand why you won't just get a real job and start earning money.

We were all given a beautiful gift this year. We were given an opportunity to fulfill God's call to all of us to love and to serve one another. Let us go on from this year with our eyes and ears opened by what we have learned of Christ. As Paul says a little after the reading we just heard, "Therefore, be beloved children of God and live in love as Christ loved us."

IWJ Leadership Summit

2009-06-16T19:21:00.005-05:00

I had a great time at the Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) Leadership Summit in New Orleans this weekend. It was my first time in New Orleans, and I love it there! It reminds me of San Francisco in some ways. Definitely a much cooler city than Houston.

The conference was great. It was people from other worker centers, other groups (mainly of faith leaders) involved with IWJ, and members of the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON). It was really inspiring to hear the successes and actions of groups in other places. One resounding conclusion is the best tactic to resolve worker abuses is direct action - organizing protests, employer visits, media events, etc. One group in San Francisco that focuses on restaurant workers often has the worker go to the restaurant (with a group of supporters), pull the manager out in front of the customers, and read a letter denouncing the injustices in front of everyone. We got to hear moving stories from workers, and some hopeful messages of change in the Department of Labor (which currently does a really lousy job).

Everybody needs to familiarize themselves with wage theft. There is a systematic problem in this country of workers not being paid for their work. These are primarily low-wage workers and a huge number are immigrant workers, but the issue affects everyone. Sometimes it is nonpayment of overtime, sometimes it is not receiving a final paycheck, sometimes it's nonpayment of minimum wage, or sometimes, in the case of many day laborers in particular, it's working for weeks, being told you'll get paid the following day, and your employer never showing up. This keeps people from being able to pay their rent and feed their families, but government agencies that are supposed to enforce our wage and hour laws are not doing what they're supposed to. If we send a complaint to the Texas Workforce Commission, the state agency that deals with wage theft, they don't respond for six months. The Government Accountability Office recently did an investigation and report ripping apart the Wage and Hour Division of the DOL.

Also, support the DREAM Act!

Domestic Worker Rights Actions in NY

2009-06-08T10:03:00.002-05:00

Just in case anyone in New York is reading this, I wanted to pass along the info for these events, pushing for the passage of the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in New York:

*Friday-Saturday, June 12 - 13 - 24-HOUR VIGIL FOR THE DOMESTIC WORKERS BILL OF RIGHTS*

Many domestic workers, particularly live-in workers, work around the clock without rest. We're asking all New Yorkers who support domestic workers rights, to stand together for 24 hours straight in a symbolic show of support for the passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - so that domestic workers can receive overtime, job security, basic respect and recognition.

8:00 am - 8:00 am

Press Conference Friday 12:00 noon
City Hall - across from 250 Broadway
Take the N/R to City Hall, or the 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge
RSVP, and sign up for a shift, aijendwu@gmail.com, or (212) 481-5747

*Sunday, June 14 - NY CHILDREN AND FAMILIES MARCH for DOMESTIC WORKERS RIGHTS*
Bring your entire family, community and congregations to this Sunday afternoon, after-church, "march for peace and justice in the home" to show how many people of faith support and are connected to domestic workers. With children leading the march, many generations will march together with one
common message and theme. Let's send a strong message to the NY State Legislature and the Governor that we won't stop until they honor, respect and protect the work that makes all other work possible in New York.

1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
City Hall - across from 250 Broadway
Take the N/R to City Hall, or the 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge
RSVP to joycedwu@gmail.com or (212) 481-5747

*Monday, June 15 - National Domestic Workers Alliance Regional Congress Public Forum - WOMEN AND WORK*
Join domestic worker organizers, feminist scholars, activists, legislators, and other allies to raise awareness on how to extend protections to all working women. Featuring a video presentation of women leaders from across the country who are raising their voices to support the work being done on behalf of domestic workers in this country.

7:00 - 9:00 pm
Julius Held Auditorium
304 Barnard Hall, Barnard College - Barnard Center for Research on Women
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

Still alive

2009-05-29T11:06:00.003-05:00

I meant to blog last weekend but never made it to the internet. Lots of fun and exciting things happening - it's really strange how little time I have left here in Houston. I don't have the time to write much since I'm at work right now (heh), but I just thought I'd check in and let the internet know that I'm still alive.

Here's a photo from the vigil/rally for immigration reform we had here on May 1st:

Vigil and rally for immigration reform

2009-05-02T16:20:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I attended the May Day vigil and rally for immigration reform in front of the Mickey Leland Federal Building in downtown Houston.

We started with a vigil. My amazing coworker Pancho led it, and we melted ice (ICE, get it?). Then there was a rally with music and spoken word, and we ended it with a prayer and by singing We Shall Overcome/Vamos a Vencer. In the last prayer, my coworker Hamilton prayed passionately for the families separated by deportation. Singing We Shall Overcome was especially moving - when I was in El Salvador, my praxis partner Patrick and I taught our young students that song.

It was a small turn-out (some people told us they weren't coming because they were afraid of the swine flu!), but it went very well. I'll try to post my pictures soon! (I forgot to bring my camera to the internet with me...)

Speaking of immigration, here's a good video to watch.

DREAM Act

2009-04-20T10:43:00.004-05:00

You can kind of see me in the background here...

Hamilton is a coworker of mine, and Sara is an awesome intern at HIWJ.

Please contact your members of Congress and ask them to support the DREAM Act! It gives undocumented students who have been in the U.S. for at least a few years and graduated from a U.S. high school a legal status and path to citizenship if they go to at least 2 years of college or serve in the military. This could make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives.

My future

2009-04-17T14:49:00.002-05:00

I know, I know, I'm terrible at blogging. As I believe I've mentioned here, I don't have internet access at home, so fortunately my lack of posting means that I'm not completely neglecting work while I'm in my office, and I'm spending my time at home with people rather than my computer. That's a pretty good reason, I think.

Anyway, I wanted to let the world know that I have decided to do a second year of JVC, and this week my placement was confirmed. I'll be living in Santa Clara and working at Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County in San Jose. My job title will be Refugee Resettlement Case Manager/Volunteer Liaison:

"As a member of the Refugee Resettlement Team, provides case management 'core services' for newly arriving refugees and will work as part of a team to help refugees in finding, retaining, and upgrading their employment. This position will also work as liaison to our network of faith based volunteers and resettlement staff. This is an outstanding opportunity for someone who values other cultures and beliefs and is interested in working with a diverse, dedicated and wonderful team."

Some of my current roommates work with refugees and love it. I'm very excited to be in such a global environment. I currently work mainly with Latin American immigrants, which has been wonderful, but I will be working with people from Iraq, Burma, Bhutan, Burundi, and many other countries. I'm really looking forward to learning about different parts of the world. I'm also excited about the volunteer liaison part of it, because I will be able to build off my work experience as an Advocate for Community Engagement at USF.

One thing I'm a little hesitant about is moving from an organization that does a lot of advocacy and has a goal of social change, not just social services, to an organization and job that really is just about social services. There's a lot of value in social services, as long as they're done in a way that's empowering to the recipient of the services, and not just creating a dependency that perpetuates inequalities in the system. I'll make it work though. :-)

It will also be very weird going from a two-year-old organization with only five people on staff, only three of whom are full time (including me), to a huge, well-established organization with lots of resources. When I was first contacted by someone there to set up an interview, she asked me to email her administrative assistant to set up the time. My first reaction was - they have administrative assistants?!

I'm really happy to be moving back to the Bay Area. I've hardly spent any time in San Jose, so it will be a new city to me, but at the same time I will be close to my family and friends in the East Bay and San Francisco. You all will have to come down and visit me because public transportation will be very pricey on a JVC stipend. I talked to a girl who's a JV there now, and she told me they live about a block away from Santa Clara University in an old convent. I'm excited. :-)

On a side note, I gave in and joined Twitter. If you want to follow me, I'm here.

El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido

2009-03-31T12:46:00.001-05:00

I wrote this to be published in the Ragweed (the JVC South newsletter), and I've incorporated a few photos:

Katie, Stephanie, and I had the great privilege of traveling to El Salvador last month as International Election Observers for the presidential election on March 15th. The three of us studied abroad there during college and we were excited to have the opportunity to return. Our experiences in El Salvador had a significant impact on each of us and our understanding of and commitment to social justice.

The right-wing ARENA party in El Salvador has been in power for the last 20 years. ARENA was founded by Roberto D'Aubuisson, who also founded the death squads in El Salvador and was responsible for the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. El Salvador's civil war ended with the Peace Accords in 1992, and during ARENA's time in power since the end of the war, the country has seen little improvement. There is still a huge disparity between rich and poor, the economy is extremely dependent on Salvadorans in the United States sending back remittances, and the country is wracked with violence (now from gangs rather than the military).

During the civil war, the FMLN was the organization of guerrillas fighting against the repressive government. At the end of the war, the group became a formal political party. This year the FMLN candidate, Mauricio Funes, was hugely popular in the polls leading up to the election, and we knew there was a good chance he would win, for the first time in the party's history.

We went to a few different polling places (centros de votación) on election day, and when the polls closed we were at a big polling place in the city of Santa Tecla. The voting process involved quite a few safeguards, including having representatives from both parties seated at each table that was checking IDs against lists of names, handing out the ballots, and tinting voters' fingers with ink. If one party tried to do something wrong, the other party was literally sitting next to them. We heard some reports of fraud – mainly people from outside El Salvador coming and voting with false IDs (most likely hired by ARENA) – but everything we saw went smoothly and according to the rules.

At the end of the day, the doors closed, and the vote count began. Each table had 450 ballots and a list of 450 voters. After counting the remaining ballots and comparing that number to the number of signatures of voters (thumbprints for those who could not sign their names), they sorted and counted the ballots at each table. This election was just for president and vice president, so each ballot had the flags of the two parties (only FMLN and ARENA were running), and the voter needed to draw an X on their party of choice.

As tables began finishing their counts, we heard cheer after cheer from the FMLN. It became clear that Funes had won at our polling place. We went out into the parking lot where some staunch FMLN friends were listening to results on the radio. Reports from other locations made it clear that Funes was winning in other places as well.

For the first time in Salvadoran history, the country would have a leftist president. We took off our election observer badges (which required that we be neutral), put on FMLN t-shirts that were handed to us, and went out into the streets where people were celebrating. It was a beautiful sea of red shirts and hats and flags and so much joy. It was moving to hear the chant "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido" – the people united will never be defeated. We were with people who were forced to leave El Salvador during the war because otherwise they would have been killed, people who had fought with the guerrillas for the entire war, and people who had simply suffered greatly under the Salvadoran government. It was clear that it was a bittersweet moment for many people – great joy at an FMLN victory after all those years, but sorrow in remembering all the people who fought to achieve it but never lived to see it.

It was an honor to witness this historic event in solidarity with the people of El Salvador. While it felt like we didn't do much, multiple people expressed their appreciation of us being there and said that our solidarity was very important. After reflecting on all the pain that the United States has caused El Salvador, sending millions of dollars daily to the Salvadoran military that raped, tortured, and massacred people for organizing, speaking out, or simply being poor, the importance of solidarity from the U.S. became clearer to me. The U.S. still has a lot of power over El Salvador, and, just like during the war, our actions and decisions can have a great impact on the country, for good or for bad, which is why it is so important that we stand in solidarity with the people of El Salvador.

It is hard to tell what changes President-elect Funes will bring, and we don't really know if he will be a good president, but we do know that for once the left has been given the opportunity to make changes in the interest of the poor people of El Salvador that ARENA never did. In his acceptance speech, Funes specifically mentioned the preferential option for the poor and his desire to be a president for social justice. When I asked Salvadorans what they thought of Funes, if they thought he would do a good job, they usually just said that they hoped so. They hoped that he would bring about change that they so badly want and need.

After the election, we spent the week meeting with people; visiting places like the University of Central America (UCA), where six Jesuit priests and two women were brutally murdered in 1989 (also where we ran into liberation theologian Jon Sobrino, which almost made Katie faint in excitement), and the Cathedral where Monseñor Romero is buried; and spending time with old and new friends from our study abroad program. It was a great joy to spend this week in El Salvador, and we are very grateful to all those who gave donations and prayers to our cause.

We Are Many Parts, We Are All One Body

2009-03-04T12:23:00.005-06:00

When I studied abroad in El Salvador, I took a class on liberation theology, and it was up to us to create our own final projects. One of the suggestions was to write (and give) a homily (sermon), and I chose this. I was revisiting my files from El Salvador a couple nights ago and re-read what I had written. I like it a lot, so I wanted to share it. Not everything will make sense since I wrote it for a group that had a shared experience in El Salvador, but I'm hoping it will have some relevance for other people as well.

A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans (Chapter 12)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peacably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

We Are Many Parts, We Are All One Body
by Amber McChesney-Young
Liberation Theology
May 4, 2007

A recurring theme for me, and I think for many of us, throughout this semester has been dealing with our privilege. Why do I have so much and they don't? Why do they have to work so hard and I don't? What do I do with the money, education, opportunities, and so many other advantages that I have and they don't? My privilege made me feel distant from the people here. I felt guilty and confused and angry. I kept asking myself what is my role? How can I help the poor when I, with my U.S. middle-class white upbringing, am so limited in my ability to understand their reality? But, as Paul says, we are many different parts of one body. We each play different roles with our different gifts, but we must work to support each other because we are one in the body of Christ. It's important to recognize the limitations of our contexts, but we cannot change where we were born or who are our families. What we can do is choose what we do with the situations and gifts we are given. We can recognize that our inequalities are unjust, and that our privilege over others is not right, but unfortunately change does not happen with a snap of the fingers or a click of the heels. We have to recognize where we are in our lives, what are our contexts, what are our gifts, and then what we can do from there. Maybe we don't have to completely understand each other to support one another anyway. The lung can never truly understand what the heart does, and vice versa, but that doesn't mean that they aren't each essential to the other. The fact is that we are all connected, and when one part of the body hurts, it affects the rest of the body. To me, this is what solidarity means. We recognize our oneness and live our lives according to this.

The key to solidarity, I believe, is humanizing everyone. We recognize the inherent value of every member. We understand that everyone is a child of God with equal dignity. This is easier said than done. Our U.S. society and culture are not based in soldarity. They are based on individualism and self-advancement, including, and usually, at the expense of others. We dehumanize people who are distant from us—geographically, socially, or economically. An Iraqi citizen is far less human to us than a college student in Virginia. An old homeless man dying on the street is far less human to us than a child from a wealthy family suffering from cancer. Paul says "Do not be conformed to this world." Our experience in El Salvador has helped unconform us by turning the Salvadoran poor into our friends. It has humanized them. They're not just poor people, they are Joselin, Angelica, and Teresita. They are very real people. Paul says, "be transformed by the renewing of your minds." Now that we are preparing to return to the U.S., this message is especially important. When we return, we must remember the humanity of the Salvadoran people and all the peoples of the world. We have to remember that an undocumented immigrant is not just an immigrant but could be Lupita's sister, Amilcar's father, or someone we stayed with in the campo.

It's easy to get caught up in thinking about what divides us, but in reality we are incredibly connected. Remember how a couple weeks ago Sr. Peggy told us that we inhale approximately 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of argon every time we breath, and that's the same argon that Ghandi breathed, that Romero breathed, and that Jesus breathed. We are constantly breathing each other in. We depend on each other for sustenance and life. We laugh and cry and sing, just like people all around the world. We are one body in Christ.

Finally, I want to touch on the last sentence of the reading: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." We've seen a lot of evil in El Salvador, and when we return to the U.S., we will see a lot more. It's really frustrating, and I've found myself feeling hopeless a lot of the time. But we can't give up, because if we don't do anything there's no chance of making any progress towards justice. We need to respond to evil with love. You can't overcome evil with more evil. We must remember that we are all sisters and brothers, and if we live our lives in consideration of every person's dignity, we can make a tremendous impact. We have to use our gifts to serve the body as a whole, always remembering every person's humanity.

The Ultimate Distraction When You're Hungry

2009-03-01T15:20:00.002-06:00

My sister recently introduced me to foodgawker, a delightful website that highlights beautiful photos of food from many different blogs and websites (my roommate Katie calls it food porn). When you click the photo it leads you to the recipe. So far I've only made one recipe from the site, Baked Tofu Indian Style (which I highly recommend!), but I've saved many more recipes that I hope to make in the future.

Here's my photo of the tofu dish I made:

El Salvador Trip

2009-02-22T15:11:00.002-06:00

Two of my roommates and I will be traveling to El Salvador next month! There's a Salvadoran man who regularly takes down delegations of JVs, and he's organizing the trip. We're fundraising now, so if you feel able to donate, we would greatly appreciate it. This is a letter we mailed out to people that explains why we're going:

We are three Jesuit Volunteers currently serving in Houston, Texas. This March, we will have the privilege of traveling to El Salvador to act as international election observers, meet with community leaders, and learn about the social, political, and economic reality of this small Central American country. In the context of our experiences as JVs working with immigrant and refugee populations, this trip is an opportunity to walk in solidarity with the people we serve.
From 1980 to 1992 the country of El Salvador was embroiled in a brutal civil war. More than 80,000 people were killed and more than two million people were forced to flee their homeland. A negotiated peace was declared on February 1, 1992 in a lengthy peace process mediated by the United Nations. Since that time, the reconstruction of El Salvador and the implementation of the peace accords have moved forward, though often with great difficulty. In spite of the successes in the peace process, there is still a long road ahead for El Salvador. As postwar crime, violence, and poverty plague the country, the 2009 Presidential Election offers the possibility of change and hope for the future.

By serving as election observers we will be assigned to polling places to monitor the voting process and ensure that free and fair elections take place. It is our hope that our presence will deter voter fraud and intimidation at the polls so that the voices of the people can be heard. In addition to this, we will visit local communities and organizations that are working for social justice and the human rights of the people of El Salvador. By learning more about the reality of the people living in El Salvador, we hope to better understand the struggle of the immigrants in the United States with whom we work.

The three of us were lucky enough to have each spent a semester studying abroad in El Salvador, and the experience was a spiritual wake-up call and played a huge role in shaping our understanding of social justice and of living out the Gospels. Returning to that environment as Jesuit Volunteers, with a clearer understanding of how we can turn this experience and knowledge into action, will continue to broaden our global perspectives and guide us in our individual ministries.

In order to make this trip happen, we are fundraising money for the cost of travel expenses and to contribute to programs that assist the Salvadoran people. Each of us is responsible for raising $1000. We understand that times are hard, but we are asking that you consider making a donation to our group. This trip means a lot to us, and any contributions are greatly appreciated. If you do not feel able to give money, we ask for your prayers and encouraging words. Thank you very much for your support and generosity.

Please contact me (Amber) if you are interested in donating, and I will give you our address. Our trip is from March 13-22, and we will be posting photos and reflections on the trip on our blog. Thank you once again for your generosity.

Does anyone know of a free way to accept online donations?

Casa de la Solidaridad - Study Abroad in El Salvador

2009-02-10T17:42:00.004-06:00

As many of you know, I spent my spring semester of my junior year in El Salvador, doing a program called Casa de la Solidaridad. The application deadline for fall 2009 is coming up on March 31st, and I wanted to put the word out for anyone who might be considering studying abroad or who knows people who are thinking of studying abroad: Go to El Salvador!

It is not your traditional study abroad experience. You will not go out drinking every night and play the tourist traveling around Europe. You will have a life-changing experience and learn about the lives of people living in poverty in the beautiful country of El Salvador. You spend two days a week in a placement in or near San Salvador, accompanying the community, spending time with people, and sometimes teaching English or participating in other activities. You take amazing classes at the University of Central America, the Jesuit University in San Salvador. You live in community with other American students and Salvadoran scholarship students. It is a time to learn and explore the themes of social justice, simple living, spirituality, and community. (The Casa program was based on the Jesuit Volunteers International program, so there are a lot of similarities between it and what I am doing now with JVC.)

The Casa program had a huge influence on my understanding of the world, of social justice, of people, and of my calling in life. I've never met anyone who did it and was not transformed in some way. You can read my blog for more about my experiences, and check out the program's website for a lot of details and descriptions.

And it breaks my heart...

2009-02-06T16:56:00.002-06:00

This brought tears to my eyes:

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Challenging heteronormativity

2009-02-02T17:01:00.002-06:00

This is how you know I'm from the Bay Area:

Our house (landline) phone rang, and my roommate Stephanie answered. The person was doing a survey or something and asked for my roommate Emily. Stephanie responded that she no longer lives here (a graceful lie). They then asked to speak to the man or woman of the house (apparently Stephanie sounds young over the phone), and Stephanie said they weren't home, which ended the phone call. I suggested that next time she say that she doesn't identify as either a man or a woman and would appreciate some sensitivity.

It's always good to take opportunities to challenge heteronormativity.

brief update

2009-01-30T18:29:00.003-06:00

For some reason when it's an inappropriate time to blog (such as in the middle of the work day), I feel inspired and motivated to write in here, but when it's an acceptable time (such as after work or over the weekend), I lose my motivation. There are so many things to write about - work has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. Encouragement and disappointment, a lot of challenges and frustration. The domestic worker project that I've been in charge of is going to switch over to one of my coworkers and I'll be focusing more on casework (mostly wage recovery). It makes the most sense in terms of our skill sets (approaching strangers on the streets does not come naturally to me) and continuity (my coworker will be here long after I leave in August). I think this change is going to relieve some of my stress and allow me to keep a slightly better schedule (yesterday I worked 12 and a half hours!). Tomorrow is our workers' assembly, and we're having our first domestic worker meeting right after. I'm crossing my fingers that people will come.

Last weekend we had an incredible JVC retreat that focused on social justice. I took pages and pages of notes, and I'd like to turn them into a blog entry sometime soon. The retreat was led primarily by Fr. Fred Kammer, former president of Catholic Charities USA, who is absolutely amazing.

If anybody has job leads or ideas for what I should do with my life after August, please let me know. I'm thinking of a second year of JVC, but in the Bay Area. I'm still not sure if that's what I want though...

Article: Workers on Edge Need the Most Stimulus Aid

2009-01-20T13:41:00.003-06:00

This is a good article focusing on women in low-wage work and how they're suffering in the current economic situation:

(WOMENSENEWS)--While Washington lawmakers are debating President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus proposal, Blanca is cleaning houses.

We, however, are listening closely, ready to respond to any package that does not include several easy steps, outlined below, to ensure that low-wage working women are also assisted by an economic stimulus plan that could swell to $850 billion. Otherwise we will continue to put forward old solutions to new problems.

Blanca is the parent of four children ranging in age from 5 to 13. She has no health insurance, and if she misses a day of work she also misses a day's pay. She juggles child care to keep her cleaning jobs. Her sister helps with the children during the day before going to her restaurant job at night. Blanca makes about $1,000 per month.

Blanca is a low-wage worker. She is one of 30 million U.S. residents who are heading families that include 20 million children.

Sixty-eight percent of low-wage workers are women. Nearly one-third of women in the work force have low-wage employment compared with one-fifth of male workers. Women bring home at least one-third of all family income, a significant contribution to the stability of the U.S. economy. Any plans for stabilizing the economy will need to consider the larger effects that job loss and women's declining wages have on communities.

The day it snowed

2009-01-10T18:09:00.003-06:00

Here's a photo of my roommates and me when it snowed in Houston last month. :-)

Please pray for my cousin's daughter, Maya, as she struggles with cancer.

My day

2009-01-09T15:19:00.003-06:00

It has been a terribly long time since I've written, so it seems like this post should be a really good one, but since I'm supposed to be working right now (ssshhh), it will have to be brief/quickly written. A quick overview of my day:

Went out into West University Place, a little enclave of Houston that has its own mini-city government and is full of rich people and beautiful houses. I walked around parks in the neighborhood looking for domestic workers (blatant racial profiling, looking for non-white women with white children). I saw a whole lot of domestic workers inside the parks, but there were also a lot of moms there, and I'm always concerned about 1) possibly getting a worker in trouble for talking to me and 2) looking like a creep when I go into a park with no child (these parks are fenced off - you can't really casually wander through). I did talk to a few workers around the parks though, giving them our flyer, asking them what their work is like, letting them know about us as a resource for any worker who has issues, and inviting them to our next meeting. I do this pretty much every morning.

Went to meet with a woman from Christian Community Service Center in Houston. They have a training course in housekeeping for recent immigrants, so I'm hoping to talk to their class about workers' rights. We left a bunch of Workers' Rights Manuals with them to give to anyone who passes through their center and mentions workplace issues.

Came to the office and began avoiding work (checking emails, blogging, etc.). For the rest of the day I'll be working on wage theft cases and pulling together the documentation for what I've done so far on the domestic worker project. There's a new intern coming in on Monday who's interested in helping with this project, so I need to get myself organized.

This evening after work I'm going to do some grocery shopping for the house (I've acquired a car since the last time I wrote in here), be at home briefly, then head out to some bar near Rice University (supposedly with 85 cent beers, which I won't be drinking), where a couple roommates and I will meet with a man named Francisco who may be taking us to El Salvador in March.

A good day today. And hooray for the weekend!

Reflection on Prop 8

2008-11-29T21:07:00.003-06:00

I wrote this for the Ragweed, the JVC South newsletter:

Election night was a night of mixed emotions for me. I was excited that Obama had won, but every time my phone vibrated with a call or text message, I was anxious that it might be my sister calling with bad news. She had told me that she would let me know how the California election results were going as soon as she knew. She called me a little while after the polls closed, and I excitedly started talking about Barack Obama. When she said "Yes, but…" I felt my heart sinking. She told me the results so far for Proposition 8, the state proposition that would end gay marriage, adding a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. It was winning. I tried to come up with reasons why the reporting precincts might be skewed conservative, but it wasn't looking good. I just couldn't believe it could possibly pass. I felt shocked and betrayed by the people of the state where I was born and raised, in whom I had faith to do the right thing, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

As a straight woman, the government will recognize my marriage, no matter when I choose to get married or what man I choose to marry. Imagine being in love with someone, wanting to spend the rest of your life with them and get all the legal and social benefits of a marriage, and the government telling you you're not allowed to. This is what millions of couples are being told in California and in most of the rest of the country.

Earlier this year, California judges overturned a state proposition from a few years ago that defined marriage as between a man and a woman and declared same-sex marriage legal. The marriages officially began after 5 p.m. on June 16, 2008, and a number of cities kept their offices open late that day. I was working in San Francisco this summer, and on my bus ride home after work that day, I passed by City Hall. I saw people with signs protesting the marriages, including one that said gay sex is a threat to national security. I was horrified. Imagine having protesters at your wedding. It's a time of celebration, happiness, and love, and as you walk out of the city hall, you see people with signs saying you're going to hell - going to hell for being in love and committing yourself to your partner for the rest of your life.

I have a very hard time understanding any justifications for banning gay marriage at the government level. No matter what your religious beliefs may be, if the state is issuing marriage licenses, it has no right to discriminate against a group of people and deny them their civil rights. Allowing more people to get married is not going to destroy the fabric of our society – it will strengthen it. As many people have mentioned in these debates, it wasn't very long ago that people of different races couldn't get married in parts of this country. Those laws weren't just, and neither is Prop 8 or any other law against same-sex marriage. This is a matter of equality, and by denying gay people the opportunity to be legally married, we are making them second-class citizens. The government is telling a group of people that their committed relationships are in some way less valid than those of straight people. This is why civil unions are not enough. Not only do they not bestow all the legal rights as a marriage, but by putting the relationships in a different category, the state is saying that they are not worthy of the title of marriage.

On November 15, I had the great pleasure of going to a Prop 8 protest here in Houston. Rallies were held all around the country to call for marriage equality and an end to legalized discrimination. The passage of Prop 8 did not end the movement to legalize gay marriage, and I firmly believe that we will change these laws.

"Our Town" Story

2008-11-16T14:56:00.004-06:00

For a recent JVC retreat, each community put together an "Our Town" presentation, to share with the other communities a bit about the places we live. Each of us in my community wrote a brief story from the perspective of someone with whom we would interact through our work. This is what I wrote (this is not a real person's story, but it includes the typical problems we hear):

My name is José Valenzuela, and I came from Mexico to Houston three years ago. I had to leave because I couldn't earn enough money to support my family. The job that I had in Mexico didn't even pay enough for us to buy tortillas. I tried to find work that paid more, but it was impossible. Coming to this country was my only option. I came to the U.S. without papers, and I am always afraid that I will be caught and deported. My wife and three children still live in Mexico, and I send money back as often as I can – they depend on me. I miss them very much. Because I don't have a social security number, it's difficult to find a steady job, so I work as a day laborer. I go to the Woodridge Home Depot every morning at 5:30 a.m. Some days I get paid well, and other days I don't get picked up and don't get any money at all. Three weeks ago, a man hired a group of us to work on an apartment building that was damaged in the hurricane. It had flooded, and the carpet was soaking wet and smelled like mold. When he hired us, he said he would pay us $15 an hour. There were five of us, and we worked very hard. We worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for three whole weeks. He told us he would pay us when the job was finished and he saw that we had done well. After a few days, I started coughing a lot, and I got a rash on my arms. I asked for gloves and a mask, but he said no, and that if I wanted to leave I could because he would just find someone else to do the job. We all kept working, and we did everything he asked us to do. One week into the job, I was ripping up floorboards and got a really bad cut on my hand. The boss took me to the hospital, and he said their insurance would pay for it. At the end of the three weeks, we had finished the job, and he handed us checks for $500 each. I said that he owed us a lot more money, but he told me I had worked too slowly, and that's all I deserved. I told him he was breaking the law, but he said that since I was undocumented he didn't have to pay minimum wage, and if I did anything he would call the migra, and they would deport me. He also refused to pay my medical bills from my hand injury. I didn't know what to do, and I was afraid. What am I going to tell my family?

Note that if someone does a job, all labor laws (including minimum wage) apply, regardless of immigration status.

Prop 8 Protest

2008-11-16T14:38:00.002-06:00

A couple of my roommates and I went to the Prop 8 protest here in Houston on Saturday. You can see my photos here.

Here are a few of them:

Election Day

2008-11-02T15:25:00.004-06:00

Tuesday will be an exciting day in our house, especially for those of us more politically inclined. I kept my voter registration in California and voted absentee, mainly because of my strong feelings about Proposition 8. Otherwise I would have re-registered here in Texas to try to make it just a little more liberal. A poll last week found that 23% of Texans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. This is a scary country.

I'll take this opportunity to share how I voted. (Deciding how to vote was a long involved process involving many hours on the phone asking my sister to look things up online and tell me what to do.)

President: Barack Obama
Barack Obama is not my ideal presidential candidate, but he's far better than John McCain for sure. He's too moderate for me, but any presidential candidate with a chance of winning would have to be (for now, at least). And as Democrats go, he's really pretty good. He's a great speaker and has inspired a whole lot of people to take interest in politics and recognize their own power to make change. If he doesn't win, a certain roommate is likely to start breaking things and lighting them on fire, so we're all crossing our fingers here.

Vice President: Joe Biden
I honestly don't know a lot about him, but I do know he voted against giving money to the Salvadoran government in the '80's (which is a very good thing), and he would make an incredible president in comparison to Sarah Palin. Also, the ballot didn't give me a choice whether or not I was going to vote for him if I was going to vote for Obama.

U.S. Representative, 9th District: Barbara Lee
Barbara Lee speaks for me! She's not perfect, but she was the lone voice in Congress voting against funding the war in Afghanistan after 9/11, and I give her major props for that. Also, the other choices are a Republican and a Libertarian, and you know that's not going to happen.

State Senator, 9th District: Loni Hancock
I almost voted for Marsha Feinland, the Peace and Freedom candidate, but after I made my sister read what Hancock has accomplished, I decided to stick with her. She may be part of the establishment in Berkeley ("the establishment" always being a negative thing, of course), but when you're the establishment in Berkeley, you're very progressive by everyone else's standards.

Member of the State Assembly, 14th District: Nancy Skinner

Superior Court Judge, Office 9: Dennis Hayashi
I actually could have gone either way on this, but Hayashi's bio was more impressive to me. I really like his emphasis on civil rights.

City of Berkeley Mayor: Zachary Running Wolf
I chose the write-in candidate because I don't particularly like Tom Bates or Shirley Dean. Running Wolf might not actually make a good mayor, but this is a symbolic protest vote. I met him this summer, and he's a cool guy, though a bit extreme.

Berkeley City Council, District 2: Darryl Moore
I don't know a lot about Moore, but he seems good and better than the guy running against him.

Rent Stabilization Board Commissioners: Clydis Ruth Rogers, Judy E. Shelton, Nicole Drake, Igor Tregub, and Jesse Townley

School Directors: John T. Selawsky and Toya L. Groves

AC Transit District Director, At Large: H.E. Christian (Chris) Peeples
I almost didn't vote for him because I really don't like the weird Belgian-designed buses they have now.

Bart Director, District 7: Lynette Sweet

East Bay Regional Park District Director, Ward 1: Whitney Dotson

State Propositions

Proposition 1A: Yes
I hesitated about this one because it's a whole lot of money, but it would be so cool to have a high speed train to LA.

Proposition 2: Yes
Let the chickens turn around in a circle! This will not give us bird flu.

Proposition 3: Yes
I really like health care for children, and the arguments in favor convinced me.

Proposition 4: No
I actually thought a long time about this. I believe in reducing abortions as much as possible, but I'm afraid this proposition would do more harm than good.

Proposition 5: Yes
I was a little unsure about this because the arguments against it make it seem pretty scary, but our prison system is really bad, and a focus on rehabilitation is very important.

Proposition 6: No
Not good.

Proposition 7: No
Also not good.

Proposition 8: NO!!!
I am very passionately in opposition to this proposition. As I mentioned above, it's the reason I kept my voter registration in California. I'm usually really good at understanding people's points of view, even if I disagree with them. In general, I see complexity and get that issues aren't black and white. However, I have yet to hear any real, legitimate argument against gay marriage. The only arguments I give any recognition to are the religiously based ones - I strongly disagree with these, but I respect the right to believe them (as long as you don't turn them into hateful actions, which I do not respect). But religious arguments have no place in a state proposition. Under the law, we are all equal. By denying same-sex couples the right to marry, we are turning them into second-class citizens. You may say that they can get the same legal protections through state-recognized civil unions, but even if that were the case, refusing to use the word "marriage" says that the nature of the relationship and partnership is in some way different and lesser than that of a straight couple. You may personally believe that is the case, but the government has no right to say that. Gay marriage does not destroy "traditional" marriage. Gay marriage *strengthens* the institution of marriage because it means there will be more loving couples formally and legally committing themselves to each other. Gay marriage creates more stability and is good for children because they can be raised in the committed environment of a marriage. If anything is destroying marriage in this country, it is divorce. If you pay attention to one thing in this blog post, let it be this: VOTE NO ON PROP 8!

Proposition 9: No
This seems like a bad idea.

Proposition 10: No
This is also a bad idea.

Proposition 11: No
I went back and forth about this, but eventually the arguments against it convinced me. I do think that the redistricting process should be changed, I'm just not sure this is the right way to do it.

Proposition 12: Yes
I'm all about helping veterans have homes and farms.

City of Berkeley Measures

Measure FF: Yes
I love libraries.

Measure GG: Yes
I also like fire stations.

Measure HH: Yes

Measure II: Yes

Measure JJ: Yes
I'm impressed that there's no argument against this.

Measure KK: No
I had mixed feelings about this because I would like a say in whether a street becomes bus-only, but it seems like this measure could hold up some positive progress, and the impartial description says that it's "not clear whether the voter approval requirement of the ordinance is lawful because it conflicts with California Vehicle Code," so I decided to vote no.

Measure LL: ???
I didn't vote on this measure because I couldn't even figure out what it would do, let alone whether it was a good idea. If anyone wants to explain it to me, please do.

District Measures

Yes on VV and WW.

If you are a San Francisco voter, please vote no on K, which would keep SF law enforcement from investigating sex trafficking, among other things.

Best Friday Night Ever

2008-10-15T13:32:00.003-05:00

Friday night at about 9:30 p.m., my roommates and I were relaxing in the living room watching Indiana Jones, and my phone rang. It was Pancho, my awesome Marxist popular education expert coworker, calling to say that he and Laura (another awesome coworker) were with a big group of workers that hadn't been paid, and a lot of them didn't have a place to sleep. He was calling to see if a roommate with a car and I would drive to Casa Juan Diego, the Houston Catholic Worker house, to pick up a bunch of food, and then take it to the Salvation Army shelter where they were going to take the workers.

My very cool roommate Vicky, who has her car here, said she would drive, and another awesome roommate Katie asked if she could come along too. We drove to the house with the food, which was Casa Juan Diego's men's residence, where the door was answered by a young man who no doubt wondered why on earth there were three gringa girls asking for food in broken Spanish. We waited a bit for him to get someone else, and an older man came to the door who knew what was going on. We loaded up 75 small boxes of food in the car, and I called Pancho to confirm where to deliver the food. He said there was a change of plans, and the shelter said it would be best if the workers ate before they arrived, so we took the food to our office. We could have gone home at that point, but I think we all wanted to stick around for the workers to arrive. We started chatting, and pretty soon a guy named Bryan from TEJAS, an environmental justice organization, and his girlfriend showed up. They do some cool media work, and they had been out there with the workers taking some photos and video. A few minutes later, Pancho and Laura showed up with about 15 workers. We gave them food, and as Pancho was describing our organization, the topic of religion came up (since we're an interfaith organization, at least in theory). Pancho started talking about Jesus. Who did Jesus spend his time with while he was on earth? The poor, the exploited. Who would Jesus be spending his time with if he were on earth right now? "Nosotros" (us), they answered. Yes, Pancho said. Jesus is walking with you. He's walking with us. As we organize and and work for justice, we know that Jesus is walking with us. As we try to get stolen wages back, we know that Jesus is walking with us. Even if we can't get the money, Jesus will still be walking with us. (If Pancho had a church, I would definitely go.) As we were talking about how interfaith our organization is, a debate arose about what is the largest religion/denomination in the U.S. One man said the Catholic church was the biggest, and another said the evangelical church. Pancho then noted that capitalism is actually the largest religion in the country. Just look at the size of their temples, he said. A little later, he began to talk about the labor movement and how the rights that we have now are the result of the struggles of many people who came before us. We got these rights because people organized and fought very hard for them. He pointed out to the workers that their efforts to get their money isn't just about them - it's about trying to bring about a more just society for the people who come after them. One man started talking about how terrible his working conditions used to be in El Salvador, and the conversation among the workers turned to structural economic injustices, and how there are so many forces working against them. One man started a rant on neoliberalism.

It was a perfect Friday night.

On Saturday we had an action outside the company office where the workers gathered waiting for their checks. A lot of media came, which was great. I took some photos, which you can see here, and you can see a TV news report here.

Stories from a backward country, from a shameful time

2008-10-10T11:04:00.003-05:00

Domestic Workers Organize to End an ‘Atmosphere of Violence’ on the Job

By Cara Buckley and Annie Correal

Published: June 9, 2008

The women’s stories seemed to come from a backward country, or from a shameful time in the United States that many would sooner forget.

Sharing stories from the workplace: Violet Anthony, top, was slammed against a wall and subjected to beatings after she arrived from India; Georgia Danan, middle, was paid just $70 for working a 24-hour shift; and Araceli Herrera, bottom, says employers searched her bags before they would allow her to leave for the day.

One woman, too scared to give her name, told of being struck by her employer in Bethesda, Md., as she scrubbed her hands raw polishing the floor. Another woman, Violet Anthony, who is 29 and from Mumbai, said her face became marbled with bruises after her employer in Queens slammed her into a wall and slapped her. Araceli Herrera said some of her employers inspected her bags before she left their homes and refused to drive her to or from the bus stop, a half-hour’s walk away. One employer, she said, fired her after she had a gallbladder operation and needed a month’s rest.

“With each job, I was exploited more. The thing is, the more you suffer, the harder it is to defend yourself,” said Ms. Herrera, 48, who trained to be an optometrist in her native Mexico and now works as a housekeeper in San Antonio. “We come from an atmosphere of violence, of blows, and we think we have to tolerate that.”

All three women were in Manhattan over the weekend for the first National Domestic Workers Congress, four days of workshops, meetings and a rally to demand rights for a work force that organizers describe as splintered, almost invisible, and staggeringly difficult to organize.

read more

Domestic Worker Organizing

2008-10-06T16:25:00.005-05:00

This morning I had a conversation with a very cool domestic worker organizer from CASA de Maryland.

You can hear her talking about her work and the formation of a National Domestic Worker Alliance here:

(Thanks to the Internet Archive!)

A day's work

2008-09-26T10:53:00.003-05:00

I'm alone in my office for most of the day today. The two other full-time staff are in Chicago for a wage theft convening, and the other two staff are part-time and not working right now. You would think not having people around would make it easier to focus, which it does in a way, but it also means I feel a lot less guilty if I'm checking news websites or blogs every few minutes. I need to concentrate!

Tasks for the day:

1. Stop procrastinating.
2. Get over my aversion to using the telephone.
3. Do follow-up calls to congregations that participated in Labor in the Pulpit. Thank them and ask them if they're offering any post-hurricane resources that we could connect workers to.
4. Research food pantries, rent assistance, and other post-hurricane services that are available to people regardless of immigration status.
5. Go through outreach materials on the server and organize them!
6. Psych myself up for making terrifying phone calls in Spanish to check on the status of cases.
7. Make those terrifying phone calls (at least some of them).

In other news, our house finally got electricity yesterday morning, after nearly twelve and a half days. That means no light but candles and flashlights, no refrigerator, no oven, no stove except a one-burner butane stove loaned to us partway through this blackout, and no air conditioning. We are all much happier now. :-)

And finally, McCain has announced that he is going to participate in the debate tonight, so I have something to look forward to this evening. Hooray!

Article about day laborers post-hurricane

2008-09-23T09:35:00.001-05:00

We've been doing a lot of outreach to day laborers since the hurricane because there's going to be a lot of work for them, but also a lot of opportunity for exploitation. A journalist from the AP got in contact with us and wrote an article:

Legal and illegal, Latinos labor to rebuild Texas

I'm still alive!

2008-09-22T17:04:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been so bad about posting! I'm doing fine, but our house is still without power. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be on when I get home from work this evening. I'm at work right now, and I didn't write an entry ahead of time, so I'm going to write this throughout the day. It may be random and disjointed.

My office is also without electricity, so a friendly anti-human trafficking organization has taken us in, and we're sharing space with them.

This last weekend was lovely because the supervisor of one of my roommates was away and offered us her house for the weekend. Not only does she have electricity, but wireless internet and cable TV. It was pretty magical.

So, I stumbled upon the Texas constitution, as I was researching state labor laws, and I thought
it was worthwhile to skim parts of it. I discovered in article 1, section 4, that atheists can be excluded from public office here:

Article 1 - BILL OF RIGHTS
Section 4 - RELIGIOUS TESTS
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.

This is Texas, my friends.

I'll write with more substance later. :-) In the meantime, here's a picture of me with some of my roommates when we went to an Astros game.

Post-Hurricane Ike

2008-09-16T17:36:00.000-05:00

I'm alive! We're still without power and drinkable water, but we're managing. I only have a few minutes to write - we're at JVC's office using their electricity - but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm okay.

I'll write more later. Thanks for your prayers and support!

Hurricane Update

2008-09-11T14:16:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry I haven't posted more recently - I've written a couple entries that I never got a chance to post. I just wanted to write a quick update about Hurricane Ike. As of now, it looks like we won't be evacuating. There are set zones from the coast to Houston, and Zones A and B are evacuating, and I live in Zone C. There's still a possibility, but for now I think we'll be "hunkering down," as the Harris County Judge recommended this morning. If we do evacuate, we'll drive to San Antonio and stay with the JVs there. In the meantime, we're going to buy some extra food and water this evening. It sounds likely that the power will go out, but that's what books, board games, and conversation are for. :-)

Please pray for people in this area, especially closest the coast.

Two Weeks in Texas

2008-08-25T17:19:00.000-05:00

Things are going well as I end my second week in Texas! Last Sunday we moved into Casa Rutilio Grande. It's a three bedroom house in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood just a bit southeast of downtown Houston. Since there are seven of us, we're all sharing rooms (one room has three people), but our living room, dining room, and kitchen are all big, so I think there'll be enough space. On Monday and Tuesday of last week we all visited the organizations we're working with. On Monday we visited Catholic Charities Houston and YMCA International. On Tuesday we visited Bering Omega, which has an AIDS hospice, a dental clinic for people with HIV and AIDS, and an adult "daycare" center for people with AIDS. We visited a transitional housing project run by AIDS Foundation Houston, and we visited the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE), which basically (as far as I can tell) tries to get criminals sentences of life in prison without parole rather than the death penalty. This county executes more people than any state (except Texas, obviously). We also visited my organization, the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center.

My first day of work on Wednesday was nice and easy - I went to a workshop on Globalization, Free Trade, Migration, and Local Organizing. A lot of the information was pretty familiar (thanks Prof. Zunes!). The effects of globalization and free trade push people into such poverty that many migrate for survival and to care for their families. The workshop was structured using a popular education model, which I recognized almost immediately (thanks to Mike Duffy and Dave Batstone for assigning Pedagogy of the Oppressed). The whole organization uses popular education as its model for worker organizing.

On Thursday and Friday I spent time in the office, mainly preparing for a brief presentation I was asked to do on Sunday (and at the same time learning about what I'm doing for my job). We were subcontracted by an organization called Houston Rescue and Restore, which does human trafficking victim identification, to do outreach to domestic workers (this will be a good chunk of my job). Many trafficking victims are held in domestic servitude, but they're very hard to identify. I'll be doing direct outreach to domestic workers, and we'll be holding workers' rights workshops specifically for them, with a component on how to identify a trafficking situation and what to do if you do. The idea is that domestic workers will know the domestic worker community best and be the best people to spread the word. We'll train them to train others, and the hope is that this will raise the number of victims identified and rescued.

On Sunday I traveled to Austin for the first statewide Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition meeting. I learned a lot about human trafficking, and a lot went over my head (they love to use acronyms!). Houston Rescue and Restore organized the meeting, and since my project is one of their projects, I spoke briefly about what we're doing. Here are a few things I learned at the meeting: When the government decides they wouldn't be able to win a trafficking case, usually because there's not enough evidence backing up the victim's testimony, they don't prosecute and the victim doesn't get classified as a trafficking victim, can't receive services or funding, and may be deported. Everybody seems to want the state to step in because there's a state statute against trafficking, but state law enforcement is really ignorant about human trafficking, so they don't take cases either. Overall, the system is messed up in a lot of ways.

Here's your quote of the day: "Hay que cambiar de raíz todo el sistema." - Monseñor Oscar Romero. (My translation: "One must change the whole system from its roots.")

I'm in Texas!

2008-08-18T17:29:00.000-05:00

Hi friends,

I'm happily settling into a lovely house in Houston right now. We don't have internet access at our house, so I'm sitting in a nearby cafe using wireless. I should have regular access at work, but be aware that my internet time will be much more limited than it used to be, and I may be slow to respond.

Here's an entry I wrote a few days ago:

Saturday, August 16, 2008

As I write this, I'm at a retreat center in Pinehurst, TX, a.k.a. in the middle of the woods about an hour away from Houston. There's no internet here, so I'm typing this on my computer and posting it when I get the chance.

I arrived successfully at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on Tuesday. When I was flying in, looking out the window, I was amazed at how green it was and how many trees there were. When we landed, I quickly found the other JVC people. As soon as I stepped out of the air conditioned airport, I knew I was facing my first challenge of the year: heat and humidity. We rode together in a school bus (not air conditioned) to the Circle Lake Retreat Center, which is far more beautiful and amazing than I ever would have expected. With the humidity, it feels like we're in the rainforest. We were warned not to swim in the lake because there are water moccasins (for ignorant people like me, those are snakes), and I discovered some large and colorful varieties of bugs. We've had sporadic rain and thunder (fun!).

During our orientation we focused on the four pillars of JVC: social justice, simple living, spirituality, and community. Each day we focused on one. Someone gave a presentation in the morning, we had a chance for reflection, and in the afternoons we had meetings with our community members to discuss how we'll carry out these principles in our communities.

I'll be living with six lovely young women this year: Stephanie (from Knoxville, Tennessee), Katie (from Cleveland, Ohio), Robin (from New Orleans), Emily (from Santa Cruz, CA), Mary (from St. Louis, Missouri), and Vicky (from near Dallas, TX). We're getting along very well, and I'm excited about spending the year with them. We have a mix of personalities, but a lot of similarities as well (including Catholicism, a dislike of cockroaches, and a desire for clean common areas), and we're all committed to making the community work.

The JVC program is based on the four pillars I mentioned above. When we signed up to do JVC, we signed the JVC South Covenant, which we've revisited throughout the orientation. To give you a better sense of the program, here are sections from the covenant:

Social Justice: In order to work for justice we must become aware of our role in society. We are called to change the attitudes and structures, both personal and societal, which create poverty and oppression.

Simplicity of Lifestyle: Honoring simplicity allows us to value relationships over objects. Living simply brings us closer to awareness of God and Creation, our humanity, and our lifestyle's effects on others.

Community: Communal life allows for mutual support and encouragement in the difficult work we choose to do as volunteers. It challenges us to be open, compassionate and willing to grow. We learn that our lives are interconnected and we have responsibility towards all members, as they do to us.

Spirituality: Spirituality is both the awareness of and our reaction to God's presence in the world. It is in realizing God's love for us that we can then turn to others with love. As Christians, we recognize the responsibility we have to each other and follow the Ignatian tradition of reflection and action.

JVC Job Description

2008-07-16T00:06:00.000-05:00

I leave for Houston, TX, in a little less than a month to embark on my JVC adventure. I'll be working with the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center. This is my job description:

Education: Provide Workers Rights Trainings to low-wage workers throughout the Houston Area at the Workers’ Center, churches, community centers and events. Create & distribute educational materials for workers.
Casework/Wage Recovery: Intake of new Cases, Create a plan with workers, connect with allies in the religious community, government agencies, attorneys and social service provides and Execute plan with support of staff. Work with employers to recuperate unpaid wages.
Organizing/Campaigns to Improve Working Conditions: Meet with workers & create spaces for collaboration between workers and aforementioned allies and execute Plans of Action.
Leadership Development: Identify leaders among workers and create plan to develop a leadership at HIWJC. In collaboration with the staff, identify, train and mobilize the religious community on low-wage workers struggles for justice on the job.

I'm excited.

Let's Waive Some Laws 'Cause we Feel Like it

2008-06-23T11:39:00.000-05:00

I have this problem when I haven't blogged for a really long time that then when I want to blog I feel like I have to write about everything I've wanted to write about since the last time I blogged. But every time I see something that makes me mad, I get a little closer to finally blogging. Here's what pushed me over the edge today:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by environmental groups to rein in the Bush administration's power to waive laws and regulations to speed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.

"I am extremely disappointed in the court's decision," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan."

Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats — including six other committee chairs — filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal.

Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers — which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws — will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_border_fence

*sigh*

I had read about this before, but I forgot about it. How did this government happen?

Graduation!

2008-05-17T01:31:00.001-05:00

I am now officially a college graduate!

I had a fantastic day, and tomorrow morning I am off to Peru. Hopefully I'll blog while I'm there! I'll be back on Tuesday the 27th.

Brewster Kahle 1, FBI 0

2008-05-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

Rock on, Brewster Kahle:

Online librarian from S.F. wins his fight with the FBI

"Brewster Kahle, who runs an online library in San Francisco, was appalled when his volunteer lawyers told him in November that the FBI was demanding records of all communications with one of his patrons as part of an investigation of 'international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.' ...

"He was allowed to speak publicly Wednesday under a rare settlement in which the FBI agreed to withdraw its letter and lift the gag order."

Photos of the World

2008-05-04T05:36:00.000-05:00

One of our final assignments for Digital Literacy is to come up with a concept, and ideally an implementation, of some sort of ongoing blogging project. The idea is that we start something knowing that we will continue to add to it over time. An example is David Silver's "gone" posts. Every time an evil leader (my words, not his) is fired or arrested or quits, he posts a photo with the word "gone." He also has a Flickr gallery of these entries.

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is how global it is. It can do a lot to break down artificial barriers we've built between groups of people. With the help of Flickr, I'm going to start posting photos from around the world.

Since I'm traveling to Tacna, Peru in a few weeks, here is the first photo, from Tacna:

"la dueña del pan"
by arcketipo

How to Post Photos on Your Blog

2008-05-04T01:26:00.000-05:00

Something that's come up in our class is how to best get Flickr photos onto a blog. We went over it a bit in class, but I'm going to put instructions on here.

The easiest way is if you have a Flickr Pro account and you're working with your own photos or the photos of someone who has given others permission to use their photos through a Creative Commons license.

At the top of every photo, if you have a Flickr Pro account, there is a menu that includes "all sizes."
Click on "all sizes" and choose the size you want to include on your blog (probably small or medium, depending on your blog and the photo).

If the photo belongs to you or has been licensed for sharing, scroll down and you'll see something like this:

Assuming you want to link back to Flickr, copy the HTML from the top window into your blog post window. Note that if you're in "Compose" mode in Blogger, you don't have to go into "Edit HTML." I copied and pasted it in, and voila:

But! What if your situation is not so straightforward? What if you wanted to, er, borrow photos without permission? (Because clearly that person didn't know how to put a Creative Commons license on their photos, right?) Or, what if they are sharing their work, but you don't have a Pro account? Or what if you're using a photo that's not on Flickr?

What you do is find your photo of choice in your size of choice (if applicable), then control-click (Mac) or right-click (PC) and choose "Copy Image Location" (or the equivalent). Then use this HTML code:

<img src="http://imageurl.jpg">

But, what if you want that photo to link back to the page you got it from (or some other web page)? Go copy the URL for your desired page and use this code:

<a href="http://webpage.com"><img src="http://imageurl.jpg"></a>

But but, what if you want it centered? Do this:

<center><a href="http://webpage.com"><img src="http://imageurl.jpg"></a></center>

You can put those <center> </center> tags around your code copied and pasted from Flickr as well.

What if you want to insert your photo via the Blogger add image tool (if you have the image on your hard drive), and you want to add a link (to Flickr or wherever)? Click on this icon:

Browse to find the photo on your computer, choose your preferred size and alignment, and click to upload. It will put the image at the top of your blog post. Super annoying. You can click on the image to select it, then cut (Mac: command-X; PC: ctrl-X) and paste it in your desired location.

To make that photo into a link, find your desired URL, select the photo (still within your Compose window), and click the Link icon:

Paste your URL in there, and it will link-ify your image (you can check in Preview to make sure it worked). You can also go into Edit HTML and work from there, but if you're not familiar with HTML it's a little scary looking.

If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to ask in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer.

Update: I realized that even if another Flickr user is allowing their photos to be used by others, the HTML code to copy and paste isn't there unless they're your own photos. So if you want to use someone else's photos, use the code I provided with the photo URL and page URL.

Gospel Choir Concert

2008-04-29T23:33:00.000-05:00

I wanted to let everyone know that I will be singing in the USF Gospel Choir concert this Sunday, May 4th at 6 p.m. in Xavier Chapel in Fromm Hall. You should come! It'll be fun, and we sound pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Here's a video from last spring's concert. The visual isn't great, but the sound is pretty good. You can find more videos if you poke around YouTube. (I'm not in this because I was abroad at the time.)

Jasmine Park

2008-04-29T19:12:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday, Jasmine Park of Pike/Pine, a Seattle-based street fashion blog, came to speak to our Digital Literacy class. During the week, Jasmine does program management at Microsoft, but every weekend she walks around Seattle looking for fashionable people to photograph. She told us about how she started out and how her blog has developed since September, 2006, when she started it. She created four rules for herself:

1. Take good photos.
2. Make people look good.
3. Be nice.
4. Only post what she's proud of.

And she outlined three lessons she's learned:

1. Everyone's a critic.
2. Diversity is good (and hard to find).
3. People are nice.

It was in interesting talk, especially because fashion is never something I've paid attention to. It was cool to hear from a part-time blogger. It's still just a hobby for her, as it is for most people. I also liked to hear her thoughts on comments and her decision to delete mean comments in order to create a positive environment.

Moral of the story: If someone stops you on the street and wants to take your picture for a fashion blog, be nice and say yes.

Immigration Facts

2008-04-29T03:37:00.001-05:00

This afternoon, our Amnesty International group is doing an immigration thing in Harney during dead hour, in conjunction with SOA Watch's series of events (Not For Sale will have something too, so it will be a big ol' social justice party). I volunteered to make handouts, so I thought I'd share them here. They could be better, but they're all right (the info is mainly copied and pasted from a paper I wrote last semester).

Immigration Facts:

There are over 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, over half of whom are from Mexico.(1)
In 1993, at least 205 immigrants died crossing the border into the U.S., and in 2005 the number was over 460.(2) As more border fences go up and security increases (such as with the 1994 Operation Gatekeeper), immigrants must go through very dangerous places, like the desert, to reach the U.S.(3) People die from suffocation, dehydration, hypothermia, and hyperthermia, among other things.
94% of adult male undocumented immigrants work, in contrast with 86% of legal immigrants and 83% of natives. Undocumented immigrants made up about 4.9% of the workforce in 2005.(4)
In the last five years, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. have sent over $90 billion to Mexico. Mexico receives more money from remittances than tourism, and remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income, after oil.(5) These remesas help sustain families suffering from poverty.
Immigrants are HUMAN BEINGS.

Hoefer, Michael, Nancy Rytina, and Christopher Campbell. “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2006.” Immigration Statistics. Department of Homeland Security. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ill_pe_2006.pdf.
Hill, Jacob. “Free Trade and Immigration: Cause and Effect.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs. 18 July 2007. http://www.coha.org/2007/07/18/free-trade-and-immigration-cause-and-effect/.
Romellón, Jorge Santibáñez. “Migration and Borders: The Space for Contradiction, page 2.” Border Battles. 31 Aug. 2006. Social Science Research Council. http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Santibanez/index1.html.
Passel, Jeffrey S. “The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” Pew Hispanic Center. 7 Mar. 2006. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf.
"Finance And Economics: Counting the Cash; Remittances to Latin America." The Economist 6 Oct. 2007: 102.

stop spam. read books.

2008-04-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

I just discovered something so cool I had to put off homework a little while longer and blog about it. I was reading the excellent blog learning.now ("At the crossroads of Internet culture & education with host Andy Carvin"), and I noticed at the bottom of the entry in the space for comments, it required the commenter to type two obscured words, to make sure only real people could comment.

The first thing that struck me was that it asked for two words, instead of the standard one. The second thing I noticed was that there is an audio alternative for people who are visually impaired. This is fantastic. Then I noticed "stop spam. read books," and I was very intrigued. I went to the reCAPTCHA website and learned more.

It turns out they work with book digitization projects like the Internet Archive, and when you type in the distorted word, you are reading a word that a computer could not recognize with OCR (I guess the computer knows when it's not reading a word right). They put one word they already know and one they don't, so if you get one right they know you probably got the other one right. They give the same word image to multiple people to get a higher accuracy rate.

So, for example, in the image above, they might already know that the first word is "Germantown," but their OCR software couldn't read the second word, "were." When I type in "Germantown were," I am helping the Internet Archive turn scanned images of a book page into digital text. Awesome. It looks like you can add it to your WordPress blog, among others, but I didn't see a way to attach it to Blogger.

A Series of [un]Fortunate Events at USF

2008-04-24T03:38:00.000-05:00

This semester's School of the Americas Watch group at USF clearly has their act together, and they, in collaboration with some other organizations, have organized a week of outstanding-looking events which I highly recommend you attend. Here's the information:

April 28
SOLID(arity)
8:30 PM
McLaren Complex
All student teach-in. Awesome presentations, free bread-n-spread snacks, and the opportunity to discuss issues of immigration, fair trade, torture, and the upcoming election with your peers.
We'll be heading over to Ocean Beach afterward for a bonfire.

April 29
Harney Plaza
11:30 AM
Free airbrushed t-shirts! We have some shirts, but first come, first serve. If you'll be late, you can bring your own shirt to be graffitied, too.
There will also be hands on mural painting and an immigration display from USF's chapter of Amnesty International.

April 30
Xavier Chapel
7:00PM
Former Prisoner of Conscience and activist, Father Louie Vitale will give a speech entitled "A Nonviolent Response to Terrorism."
He was recently released from jail for civil disobedience in protest of Fort Huachuca.
Shortly after, he was again arrested at the March 19 anti-war rally in San Francisco.
Carlos Mauricio, founder of Stop Impunity, will speak about his experience as a victim and survivor of torture in El Salvador.
They are both probably 2 of the coolest people ever-- not to be biased or anything.

May 1
Harney Plaza
10:00 AM
Meet to go as a group to the Immigration Rally downtown. Wear your white t-shirt from Tuesday!

Crossroads
6:00 PM
CELEBRATION! Wooo.
*Free Food
*Music
*A short talk from Vietnam War Veteran and SOA Watch activist Charles Liteky.
*A panel on student activism featuring Mike Aguilar, Drea Hightower, Politics Professor James Taylor, and Mel Hackett. Moderated by former USF student Spencer Rangitsch.
*Voter Registration Drive by MEChA
*Information from city organizations like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, Grassroots Campaigns, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Reflections on StoneLake Farm

2008-04-22T19:55:00.000-05:00

This last weekend our Digital Literacy class went to StoneLake Farm in Humboldt County. StoneLake Farm is owned by USF Media Studies professor/filmmaker Melinda Stone and artist/adventurer/mountain man Francis Lake.

I was struck by the beauty and simplicity I encountered at the farm. It is pretty isolated (we traveled six miles off the highway on a bumpy dirt road that becomes impassable in the winter), and off the electrical grid. They get their power from the sun and their water from the creek that runs through the property. They have goats, chickens, dogs, and some new ducklings.

It was clear that Francis' philosophies about life are deeply ingrained in the way the farm is run. Instead of working against nature, as our industrial world tends to do, it works with nature, in harmony as part of nature.

That line we usually place between people and nature is blurred. The intentions of the farm are pure -- it's not about making money, it's about sustainability.

Life on the farm was certainly different from everyday life in San Francisco. It involved a lot of cooking, eating, and chopping wood for the stove that kept us warm in the snowy weather.

There was no feeling of rushing from one task to the next, another reflection of Francis. When he spoke to us there would often be long pauses, which would normally feel awkward, but didn't. I managed, for the most part, to ignore the homework I brought with me, and I enjoyed some wonderful conversations with my classmates.

Simple living was a core value of the program I did in El Salvador, and it is a core value of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which I will be a part of next year. What does it mean to live simply in a world of consumerism and satisfaction based on material wealth and goods? Some people, like Francis, withdraw from that society and culture and live their own way. For some, that life might be perfect, but I wouldn't want the isolation that accompanies it.

I see two facets of simple living: rejecting materialism and simplifying one's daily life. How do you find a balance between doing all the things you want to do (education, service, activism, spending time with friends and family) and taking a step back, allowing yourself time? I wouldn't consider most of my activities a waste of time, so what could I cut out to allow myself the time to watch the sun set for two hours, as Francis mentioned doing? It's not an easy task, nor is living in harmony with nature when you're in a city and part of American culture, but if we're conscious of our actions, we can do better. I read a book last semester called Affluenza, which describes the all-too-common cycle of working hard, being unhappy at your job, buying material goods to make you happy, working even harder to pay for those things, buying more things to be happy, and so on. That is the lifestyle to avoid, and there's no reason we can't avoid it. Maybe all it takes is a trip to a farm.

"Live simply, so that all may simply live." - St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

My dad started a blog!

2008-04-21T20:07:00.000-05:00

After much prodding (from me), my father has finally started a blog: Digital Humanist. I'm not sure many of my readers are interested in "classical philology, Biblical studies, patristics, and medieval history," but he will be talking about some technology stuff, which may be of interest. Check it out if you want. At the least, you can see where my nerdiness comes from.

Gayla Trail at USF

2008-04-15T19:35:00.000-05:00

Last week our Davies Forum speaker was Gayla Trail, creator of You Grow Girl, a website about gardens and gardening. Gayla used to be a designer, and she started the website in 2000 as just something fun to do. She wanted to meet other gardeners like her, who were young and urban, which was not the audience most garden writing focuses on. She said garden writing is dominated by books and magazines, and it is written in a very authoritarian way (this is right, this is wrong, this is how you do it). There's also usually an expectation of space, like a yard, and lots of money. She wanted something different, so she created it herself, and it has become very popular. After a while, she ended up quitting her design work to focus on the website. She talked about the importance of play, and how good it is to be able to have fun and try new things without the pressure of doing well and making money. That's how her site developed the way it did.

To me, Gayla's example shows the power of the internet as a means for creativity and alternative information/messages. I also love the concept of using the internet, which is so "virtual," to share information and experiences about something so earthy and "real life" as gardening.

Service with POH and April Action

2008-04-14T23:13:00.000-05:00

In the last couple weeks I've done a bit of enlightening volunteering. Along with other members of Amnesty International at USF, I delivered meals to homebound people with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses through Project Open Hand (one of my favorite organizations in SF). I've volunteered a couple times in their Grocery Center, but I had never delivered meals before. We got a couple insulated containers of hot and frozen meals, a map, and a list of clients to deliver to. All the people we delivered to lived in SROs within a few blocks of each other in the Tenderloin. I had never actually been inside an SRO before, and it was intense, horrifying, amazing... I don't know how to express it. The elevators were terrifying. The living conditions were horrible. Still, in one hotel I was waiting in the lobby while some of the other students went upstairs to deliver meals, and I was struck with the community people seemed to have within the building. My roommate, who spends a lot of time with Project Open Hand and is also an intern at St. Anthony Foundation (one of my other favorite organizations in SF), told me that SROs often cost $900-$1000 a month. That's for a single room. Bathrooms are shared with the rest of the floor. That's far more than I currently pay for my own room in an apartment in a pretty nice area of San Francisco.

The other volunteering I did recently was April Action, a service day organized by University Ministry at USF. April Action always has an environmental theme, and last Saturday a bunch of us went to an area of Golden Gate Park where we cleared out blackberry plants that were hurting the magnolias (or something - I wish they had spent a bit more time talking about the purpose of our work). It was going fine, and it was kind of fun except for my arms getting scratched up from all the thorns, until I heard one of the gardeners telling people to stop, saying something like "uh oh, we have a problem." It turned out someone had set up an encampment inside the blackberries. There were some bags of stuff sitting there; it was somebody's home. The gardener called over the woman who was in charge, and I saw her making a phone call, but we kept clearing away the plants. I think those of us who knew what was happening were pretty apprehensive, however. I was glad to hear other students saying they weren't comfortable destroying someone's home. I certainly wasn't. We had a little reflection afterwards, and I brought up the risks of unintended consequences of service. We can be completely well-meaning, thinking we're doing a good thing, but actually do more damage than good.

For anyone interested in social justice and social change, I highly recommend reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. If you're more interested in an 18-page article than a book, check out "Pedagogy for the Children of the Oppressors" by Andrew Christian van Gorder in the Journal of Transformative Education. I don't feel like breaking copyright laws and posting it, but if you're at USF, search for the journal in the library's Journal Finder, then search the article title, and you should find it. It was published in January 2007.

National Library Week

2008-04-10T18:40:00.000-05:00

National Library Week is fast approaching! In our Digital Literacy class, we are doing a display in Gleeson Library to celebrate. Hooray!

We've each been charged with taking as much responsibility as we are willing, so here is what I will do.

Books!

I will collect the list of everyone's favorite books, and collect them from the stacks. I will make a list of them (with call numbers) to post on the back wall of the alcove, so patrons can see them even if they've been checked out.

Options: I can make something for patrons to write down their favorite books to recommend. We can talk to Gleeson Gleanings about posting our list and encouraging people to respond with their recommendations.

What will I need from the library? If they want to change the status of the books to "display" in the catalog, we'll need cooperation. If someone (e.g. Vicki Rosen) lets them know what I'm doing ahead of time, I can go to the circ. desk and ask them to do it.

If we want to do the book recommendations on Gleeson Gleanings, we'll need someone to do that post.

Fun!

Kevin Epps

2008-04-08T19:46:00.000-05:00

Kevin Epps, a filmmaker best known for Straight Outta Hunter's Point, spoke to our Digital Literacy class (along with quite a few other people, many of whom were from the Performing Arts and Social Justice "Company" class, which is doing a production based in part on service-learning they did in Hunter's Point) last Thursday. He was fascinating, and it was wonderful to hear his story. What struck me most is his efforts to give a voice to people who are ignored. Not only does he make media about these people and these communities, but he empowers others to do it as well.

My camera battery is dead at the moment, so I hope Lis will forgive me for using one of hers:

Blogger, Flickr, and Copyright

2008-04-04T03:10:00.001-05:00

I decided while I was at it, I would check out the copyright policies for Blogger and Flickr, since those are the two websites where I post my creative (in the loose sense of the term, heh heh) work.

Flickr, via Yahoo!, says in its Terms of Service:

Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.

(Section 9, incl. Paragraph B)

That "solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available" part is significantly different from YouTube. It seems like basically they're saying, if you upload your work, it's okay for us to display on the website... which is what happens when you upload your work. I might be wrong though.

The Blogger TOS says:

Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.

(From Section 6, emphasis in the original)

So they can use my work, but again not to the same extent as YouTube. Interesting.

YouTube and Copyright

2008-04-04T02:44:00.000-05:00

The issue of YouTube and who controls copyrights came up in two of my classes today, so I decided to investigate.

I took it upon myself to read the Terms of Use, and I think it's within fair use to copy this paragraph:

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in User Videos terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your User Videos from the YouTube Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of User Submissions that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in User Comments are perpetual and irrevocable.
(Section 6, Paragraph C)

So there you have it. They can do whatever they want with your work, but it's non-exclusive, so you can still do whatever you want. If you remove your video, they can still keep a copy, but they can't use it anymore. Interestingly, they have a Copyright page within their Help Center, but it doesn't mention this.

On a side note, the issue of jurisdiction for Internet companies has come up in my Communication Law and Policy class, and I noticed the last paragraph of the Terms of Use begins with:

You agree that: (i) the YouTube Website shall be deemed solely based in California; and (ii) the YouTube Website shall be deemed a passive website that does not give rise to personal jurisdiction over YouTube, either specific or general, in jurisdictions other than California. These Terms of Service shall be governed by the internal substantive laws of the State of California, without respect to its conflict of laws principles. Any claim or dispute between you and YouTube that arises in whole or in part from the YouTube Website shall be decided exclusively by a court of competent jurisdiction located in San Mateo County, California.
(Section 14)

The Terms of Use are actually pretty short and simple, so if you're unsure about anything, you can read it yourself.

Corners

2008-04-01T19:28:00.000-05:00

Kelly Quinn, an assistant professor of American Studies at Miami University, came and spoke to our Digital Literacy class on Thursday. She spoke about cities, sidewalks, grids, social intercourse, and public spaces. She was amazing.

This week's assignment is to talk about a place we like, using the concepts of Kelly Quinn and Jane Jacobs to describe why. This was an interesting exercise for me, because while our Jacobs reading made a lot of sense to me, I tend to enjoy parks and relatively isolated places (unsafe as they may be). However, in Kelly Quinn's lecture on Thursday, one thing that stuck out to me in particular was her description of the value of corners, which there are many of when your city is set on a grid. This brought to mind the most famous corner around: Haight and Ashbury.

Quinn said that the grid is the most democratic form of urban planning, and that at corners you connect with people who are unlike yourself. One of the things I like about Haight Street is the variety of people you encounter. You find tourists, locals, yuppies, hippies, poor people, wealthy people, young people, and old people, of all sorts of colors and orientations. Jacobs writes about good urban planning being a way to fight segregation and racism (she offers the example of someone in Los Angeles who had never actually seen a Mexican person). If we don't isolate communities from each other, they will interact and come to realize that their differences are superficial.

Jacobs wrote about the importance of eyes on the street in order to maintain safety. Haight Street is always bustling with activity, even until late at night. I would feel safer walking down Haight at night than I would walking back home through the quiet residential streets.

Another very important thing to Jacobs is the anonymity that cities offer. Residents don't want to be best friends with each other, but for a safe and stable environment, there needs to be a level of trust. To me Haight Street feels like it has more of a culture of trust than other busy city streets I know, perhaps because of the quantity of pedestrians and the fact that many of them are there for the sake of being there, rather than just passing through on their way somewhere else. They have a certain level of investment in the neighborhood.

Photos

2008-03-31T18:06:00.000-05:00

My brother, Daniel, has recently taken up photography, and I must say he's quite good. You can see some of his photos here.

This is his most recent (Tribune Tower in Oakland):

Gleeson Library Display

2008-03-30T18:05:00.000-05:00

Our Digital Literacy class has taken the responsibility to fill this space:

for National Library Week in April. Our display will be in response to the questions:

What do I love about the library?
What do I wish the library offered?

I spent five semesters working at the Gleeson Library, so it's interesting to think about these questions. What I love most about the library is the books. I like Prof. Silver's idea about each of us choosing a few of our favorite books to display. Some books I would like to include are: Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (though it's checked out right now), Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer (also checked out), Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.

Other things I love about the library: the 24-hour atrium, the Thacher Gallery, the old card catalog on the lower level, all the places you can hide in the stacks (especially in the lower level), the carrels (those individual study cubby things - I'm not sure how I know the name for them), and all the online resources (databases, e-books, online journals, etc.). In order to represent these things, I like the idea of taking photos. I see two main options for presenting the photos (and we could do both): 1) We can get photos printed and put them on the wall, 2) We can have a slideshow running on a laptop. My vote is for option 1, first because it will save us table/counter space for other things (like books), and second because most people are just going to glance at this exhibit as they walk by. They'll take in a lot more of the photos if they can see them all at once instead of waiting for them to cycle through on a computer screen.

What would I like the library to offer? Online study room reservation, clearly designated "quiet" and "okay to talk" areas, clocks throughout the library, a better access system than the terrible gates at the front, and more music and movies (also presented more accessibly than they currently are), and book discussion groups. Smarter and nicer patrons would be cool too, but I think that's beyond the library's control. I know I'm not dreaming big here (though I did like the in-class idea of hugs and head massages), but those are practical, doable things I would like to see.

These are harder to represent than what the library has already. I like the idea of a space where patrons can say what they would like the library to offer. That makes more sense to me than just the opinions of seven students and a professor. We could encourage people to draw as well as write. We could provide colored pencils, markers, and crayons. As a digital alternative (or addition), we could set up a computer with a blog (or something) where people could write their suggestions. That way, if people were writing inappropriate things, we could easily delete them.

A fun field trip for our class would be to go into the library storage space on Lone Mountain. You go through the Del Santo Reading Room, and there's a door in the back leading to the storage space. There are a few floors of books that used to be where they had closed stacks at the Lone Mountain College library. Now it's space for books that don't circulate very often. It's dark and hot and stuffy in there. Kind of scary when you're alone. If I were a ghost on Lone Mountain, I would definitely hang out in there.

High-speed internet in SF public housing

2008-03-29T02:20:00.000-05:00

Brewster Kahle is so cool. He's putting high-speed internet in public housing in San Francisco. You can read about it in the New York Times here.

I really really want us to spend some time on the digital divide in our digital literacy class. I've been meaning to write more about it here, but I haven't gotten around to it. I actually did a brief presentation (plus reflection activity) for my coworkers about the digital divide, particularly in San Francisco, last month. I should post the basic information and reflection stuff on here.

Five Years in Iraq

2008-03-19T16:44:00.000-05:00

Today is the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Last year I helped organize a vigil in our community when I was in El Salvador, and I wrote a prayer for peace, which I posted on my Amber en El Salvador blog. I'm re-posting it here with some minor edits.

God of Life, we pray for peace.
Let us be makers of peace
in ourselves,
in our communities,
in our country,
and in the world.
We pray for all people suffering from war,
especially the people of Iraq,
today, on the five-year anniversary of the war in that country.
We pray for all those who have died: the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, the soldiers of Iraq, the United States, and all other countries.
We pray for those who have died trying to make peace,
and we pray for those who are still alive, trying to make peace.
We pray for the politicians of the U.S. and Iraq,
that they see the injustice of war,
put an end to the violence,
and prioritize peace and true justice,
leaving behind selfish motivations,
and giving preference to the poor.
We pray that everyone understand that "collateral damage" and "casualties" means real people, killed unnecessarily:
Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, best friends.
We pray for an end to religious conflict and civil war,
that the world may hear your call to nonviolent resolutions,
to beat our swords into plowshares,
and to love our enemies.
We pray that we learn from history,
that we do not repeat war, violence, and injustice,
that we always remember the tragedy of war.
We pray for hope and strength in the struggle for peace.

Amen.

The Iraq war costs $720 million a day. How else could it be spent? Watch this video:

Jesus loves me, this I know...

2008-03-11T00:09:00.000-05:00

... for the Bible tells me so.

This evening I watched an excellent documentary (part of the Human Rights Film Night at USF) about homosexuality, Christianity, and the Bible, called For the Bible Tells Me So.

A few points taken:

-The Bible needs to be interpreted with an understanding of its context, not completely literally. If you take it literally, you'd better be sure you don't eat shrimp or pork and that you've given away all your material possessions to the poor (actually, those sound like pretty good ideas to me...).

-The Biblical arguments against homosexuality are pretty weak and can easily be interpreted differently or attributed to the historical context (i.e. not a message from God).

-~~Homosexuality~~ Homophobia is deeply linked to misogyny. People can't handle men putting themselves in the position of women, "lowering" themselves to that level. (Update note: I wrote homosexuality the first time because I was not paying attention. My apologies.)

-The Christian call is to love.

This also gives me an excellent excuse to attempt to embed a YouTube video. Here's the trailer:

Text Generation Gap article

2008-03-09T16:47:00.000-05:00

There's an article in today's New York Times called "Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK)." It's interesting and somewhat disturbing, talking about the way technology like cell phones (especially texting) has changed how children and parents communicate with each other.

This stuck out as especially disturbing:

Early on, Savannah’s parents agreed that they had to set rules. First, they banned cellphone use at the dinner table and, later, when the family watched television together, because Mr. Pence worried about the distraction. “They become unaware of your presence,” he said.

How has watching TV become family-togetherness time? Mr. Pence, if your children are watching TV and not texting, they're probably not thinking about your presence anyway. Heaven forbid that children be distracted from television with social interactions!

Pence now allows his daughter to text while they watch TV because otherwise she would just leave and text somewhere else.

This was also kind of depressing:

“Texting is in between calling and sending and e-mail,” he explained while taking a break from study hall. Now he won’t even consider writing a letter to his mother, Jan. “It’s too time consuming,” he said. “You have to go to the post office. Instead, I can sit and watch television and send a text, which is the same thing.”

I don't really care about the preservation of the written snail mail letter. They're nice, but not really important to me. My problems:

A text message is not anywhere near a letter (or most emails, for that matter). It rarely consists of more than a couple sentences.
Again with the television thing. "Oh no, I can't make time to communicate with my mother because I have to watch TV!"

Technology can provide great tools for communication, but we need to be careful when they start pushing people apart instead of bringing them together. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this isn't necessarily clear or black and white. Chances are a lot of young people are building closer and closer relationships with their friends while their relationships with parents suffer. All of these issues aren't unique to technology, especially not new technologies. It's just people trying to figure out how to interact with people.

A delicious meal: pupusas

2008-03-06T02:53:00.000-06:00

One of our assignments this week was to make a delicious meal. Unlike many of my classmates, I am not much of a cook, and I knew I wouldn't get away with pulling something out of the freezer and sticking it in the microwave. I thought long and hard about what I could make that wasn't boring, and I decided to make pupusas. Pupusas are a Salvadoran food, and they are basically filled tortillas, usually with cheese, sometimes with beans, meat, or other fillings. They are delicious, and I had them at least once a week while I was in El Salvador. I had only made pupusas once before, under heavy supervision and help from a Salvadoran woman, so the process was a bit of a challenge, but I managed. Taking photos throughout the process was also a challenge, because my hands were usually covered in masa dough.

There are only three ingredients in these pupusas: masa, beans, and cheese. Masa is just ground up corn (what corn tortillas are made out of). In El Salvador they have a special soft cheese for pupusas, but I'm not even sure what it's called, so I used mozzarella.

My ingredients:

I already had this Maseca (dry masa), which I got at a store called Mi Tierra in Berkeley.

There is no exciting story behind this can of beans. I bought it at Haight Street Market (only because I happened to be on Haight Street). Note that it is vegetarian because most refried beans have lard (yuck).

The cheese has the same story as the beans.

And this is how I made the pupusas:

First step: prepare the masa. I mixed some Maseca with water to make the dough. I had to add a little more water than the packaging said to make it the right consistency.

Second step: make the pupusa. First you roll a hunk of masa into a ball.

Then you flatten it into something like a bowl-shape, using a circular motion with your hands to keep it even and round (this is pretty hard, and I definitely don't do it the "right" way). This photo is not a great example of how it should be, but you get the idea:

Put a little bit of beans and cheese in the middle and fold up the sides of the masa to make a closed ball again.

Then you want to flatten that ball, patting it back and forth between your hands.

You have to be careful not to put too much beans, or the masa will break open very easily (which happened to me a lot). When you're handling the masa, you have to wet your hands frequently to keep the dough from sticking to your skin (much).

Third step: cook it. I wasn't sure what temperature to have the pan or how long to cook it, so I improvised. It takes a long time for the masa to cook all the way through, which definitely tested my patience.

Cooked pupusas:

I cut up some cherry tomatoes and made a bit of simple guacamole (avocado, lemon juice, salt) to go with the pupusas, and it was all very delicious.

They weren't the same as authentic pupusas, but for gringa pupusas they were pretty yummy!

Andrea liked them:

And so did Melanie:

Overall, it was a delicious success.

Global Good Neighbor Principles

2008-03-06T02:07:00.000-06:00

I'm writing a paper about the representation of immigration in news media for my Globalization and International Media class, and I ran across this in an article I'm reading. It seems like very sound advice for the U.S. government:

Global Good Neighbor Principles

Principle One: The first step toward being a good neighbor is to stop being a bad neighbor.

Principle Two: Our nation's foreign policy agenda must be tied to broad U.S. interests. To be effective and win public support, a new foreign policy agenda must work in tandem with new domestic policies to improve security, quality of life, and basic rights in our own country.

Principle Three: Given that our national interests, security, and social well-being are interconnected to those of other peoples, U.S. foreign policy must be based on reciprocity rather than domination, mutual well-being rather than cutthroat competition, and cooperation rather than confrontation.

Principle Four: As the world's foremost power, the United States will be best served by exercising responsible global leadership and partnership rather than seeking global dominance.

Principle Five: An effective security policy must be two-pronged. Genuine national safety requires both a well-prepared military capable of repelling attacks on our country and a proactive commitment to improving national and personal security through non-military measures and international cooperation.

Principle Six: The U.S. government should support sustainable development, first at home and then abroad, through its macroeconomic trade, investment, and aid policies.

Principle Seven: A peaceful and prosperous global neighborhood depends on effective governance at national, regional, and international levels. Effective governance is accountable, transparent, and representative.

(Source: "U.S. Hegemony or Global Good Neighbor Policy?" by Laura Carlsen and Tom Barry, IRC Americas Program)

Global Women's Rights Forum: Stop Firestone Campaign

2008-03-05T18:13:00.000-06:00

Tuesday evening, as part of the Global Women's Rights Forum at USF, Emira Woods from the Institute for Policy Studies, spoke about Firestone's exploitation of workers and the environment in Liberia, and the movement stop it.

Firestone (the company that makes tires), is the largest foreign investor in Liberia. They have a quota system, and if their workers do not collect the required amount of rubber, they don't get paid. The amount is unachievable (and the pay tiny), so women and children come to help their husbands/fathers. This means that Firestone is getting free labor from women and children. They are also dumping lots of toxins and wreaking environmental havoc on the community. You can find a lot more information at StopFirestone.org.

The really cool thing is that there is that the workers and community members are organizing for change. The movement is a global collaborative effort, but fundamentally, it is coming from the people of Liberia who are most effected by Firestone's abuses. This is essential (read Pedagogy of the Oppressed), and I was happy to hear both the speaker and members of the audience emphasize the importance of this point.

I also loved her hopefulness. I've spent a lot of time studying all the things that are wrong in the world, and it can be really discouraging. I sometimes forget that by knowing everything I do, I am empowered to make the change I know needs to happen.

Best and easiest blogging and photo tools

2008-03-05T14:12:00.001-06:00

I have a question for all my digitally literate friends. In May, I will be going to Tacna, Peru with a group from USF (mainly computer science, and some dance people). We'll be serving a few schools down there, and one activity we want to do with the kids will be digital photography and blogging. Last year they did something similar to what we want to do this year, and they used Flickr for photos and Vox for blogging. When I tried Vox a year or two ago I didn't like it because you had to be a member to comment. I don't know if they've changed that, but my inclination is to use Blogger because that's what I've always used. My inclination is also to use Flickr, because it's what I'm most familiar with. However, there are other tools out there that may be better or easier. I looked at Picasa (Google's photo site), and it seems simpler to use than Flickr, though maybe less powerful. It would also probably make the kids' photos less visible because it isn't nearly as well-known as Flickr. For me, that's significant. I also tried poking around WordPress, and it seems more or less equivalent to Blogger (with an emphasis on open source, which is awesome). Does anyone have thoughts on Flickr vs. Picasa and Blogger vs. WordPress?

Here's an photo one of the kids took last year:

Bryan Alexander at USF

2008-03-04T19:22:00.000-06:00

As usual, everything took longer than it was supposed to today, and I'm afraid I can hardly do justice to Bryan Alexander's talk last Thursday, but I'll write what I can now (before class starts) and write some more later.

Bryan Alexander works for NITLE, focusing on use of technology in education. This is completely interesting and awesome. He talked about some of the great collaborative tools in Web 2.0, including collaborative writing and collective research. He said that there is a shift in the model of learning from individual experts to learning through networks (connectivism). This reminded me of this article on categorization and tagging, which describes the limitations of structured, institutionalized categorization (as we have in libraries), and some of the ways that tagging can change this. I have more thoughts on this article, which I will talk about later, but it's the same concept of collective creation.

I think the use of these tools is really exciting, and the formats of collaboration could really transform our culture. If people begin to feel empowered in their education, it's a different dynamic than the "sit down and do as you're told" model.

Does Religion Cause War? Panel event

2008-03-03T20:38:00.000-06:00

Another cool-looking event at USF:

"Does Religion Cause War?"

A panel discussion
March 6, 2008
Xavier Room, Fromm Hall, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

featuring

Stephen Zunes, Politics
Vincent Pizzuto, Theology and Religious Studies
Anne Bartlett, Sociology

moderated by John Nelson, Theology and Religious Studies

It is a sobering fact that a majority of students at USF and universities elsewhere have lived half their lives in the climate of war. This panel discussion will investigate whether it is credible to claim, as have bestselling authors like Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006), that religion is a direct cause of war and violence. Ways in which religious motivations can be steered into conflict, whether “fundamentalist” forms of religion are prone to violence, and whether teachings of peace within a religion can constrain the belligerent tendencies of its adherents will all be considered.

Sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Zunes is awesome, and I've heard great things about Pizzuto, including that he's attractive (extra bonus!). I don't know anything about Anne Bartlett.

Gcast: easy podcasting

2008-03-03T17:58:00.000-06:00

I'm holding off on my entry about Bryan Alexander's excellent talk until I've uploaded my photos, but in the meantime I thought I would write about Gcast. Gcast is a tool which allows you to easily create and upload podcasts. I am taking Spanish Conversation this semester, so instead of weekly written assignments, our professor has us do "audio blogs" either about our weekly cultural/linguistic activity, or in response to a prompt she has given us. You can find my broken Spanish aquí. En la ultima entrada, hablé sobre Tacna, Peru, y lo que aprendí de Wikipedia en español.

The thing I really like about Gcast is that it's very accessible. Podcasting sounds intimidating, but Gcast allows you to call a toll-free phone number to record your podcast. You don't need to download special audio software or anything. This is especially useful when the recording needs to be done by 5:00, and it's 4:50 and I'm nowhere near my computer. Of course, if you want, you can also upload an audio file from your computer. One drawback with using the phone is the sound quality is pretty poor (making my Spanish especially hard to understand), but depending in how you're using it, it's good enough.

Human Rights Film Night

2008-03-03T17:51:00.000-06:00

These films look great:

2008 Human Rights Film Night

March 10
Presentation Theatre
2350 Turk Blvd. at Masonic Ave.

5:00pm
Father G and the Homeboys

Father G and the Homeboys chronicles the lives of 4 Latino gangbangers as they redirect their lives in a wartorn area of Los Angeles known as Boyle Heights, at one time, the street gang capital of the world. For over 20 years, Father Gregory Boyle (Father G) and his non-profit organization, Homeboy Industries, have helped kids plan for their futures instead of their funerals.

7:00pm
For the Bible Tells Me So

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? Dan Karslake’s provocative, entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible.

This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Center for Latino/a Studies in the Americas, the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought, the Latin American Studies Program, the LGBTQ Caucus, and University Ministry.

Brewster Kahle at USF

2008-02-25T01:11:00.000-06:00

Brewster Kahle gave an excellent talk at USF last Thursday as part of the Davies Forum. His mission is universal access to all knowledge: he wants to create a library like the (former) library of Alexandria, but digitized and online. He showed us, medium by medium, that this it is doable and not crazy to think we can digitize all texts (in the broad sense). The Internet Archive is that library, which stores hundreds of thousands of digitized books (and other written texts), audio files, moving images, web pages, and software. He successfully convinced me that it is possible, but I still don't know if open content (which the Internet Archive promotes) can beat Google (which uses proprietary formats).

I am excited about all the Old Time Radio files they have. I love OTR. It's engaging on an entertainment level and fascinating on a historical level. Lots of cigarettes and war and blatant sexism. The mysteries are the best.

But back to the talk, he answered the question I posed in an earlier blog post (about how easily digital media can be erased) without me even having to ask it. They back up all their stuff on servers far far away (in Alexandria!), so when a giant earthquake puts San Francisco underwater, the Internet Archive will still exist. Excellent.

St. Anthony Foundation visit to USF

2008-02-24T17:03:00.001-06:00

On Friday I had the privilege of spending a bit of time with a group of staff and clients from the Employment Program/Learning Center at St. Anthony Foundation. The Office of Service-Learning and Community Action, where I work, invited them to come. So many USF students serve at St. Anthony's that my office wanted to give the people at St. Anthony's a chance to see where the students come from and hear why they do service. I gave them a tour of the USF campus and was part of a panel with two other ACEs, talking about what we've learned from our service experiences. One of our main focuses was the community as educator. They teach students just like professors do.

On the panel we were talking about how much we enjoy doing service, and one of the men from St. Anthony's said he eats in the dining room there regularly, and he's noticed that USF students always look like they're enjoying themselves. He said it's really nice just to see happy people, and that it's a blessing to have them there.

Remember to smile at people, no matter who they are or whether you're having a bad day, because you might be the only smiling person they see that day.

Preliminary thoughts on Brewster Kahle

2008-02-21T05:35:00.000-06:00

Okay, this is going to have to be a short post because it is getting very late, but after reading this interview with Brewster Kahle, I am completely stoked on libraries. I love this question and answer:

As a “digital librarian” and an Internet pioneer, how do you view the library system?

I see the library system in this country as a $12 billion industry dedicated to preservation and access of materials that are not mediated through a corporate experience. You don't have to sign a nondisclosure form to come up with a new idea in a library. In libraries, materials are preserved in original form, uncensored. The alternative is that the materials people learn from are forever mediated by a relatively small number of commercial companies in terms of selection and presentation. This is one of the biggest issues facing libraries in the future: what services will they perform, and what services will be performed by companies or by nonprofits acting like companies. If all content is moderated by a few companies in the digital world, we'll have a giant bookstore rather than a library system.

He knows how to go straight to my heart: Pro-free, uncensored, unmediated information and anti-commercial.

I have mixed feelings about Google. One the one hand, it is a wonderful search engine, and they have lots of really awesome stuff, like Gmail. On the other hand, they have so much power, and while they haven't been too irresponsible so far (I don't think), I am very wary about one company having so much control. I'm sure many of Google's employees have excellent intentions, but as a for-profit and publicly traded company, the primary goal is to make money, which can lead to lots of problems. I haven't spent of a lot of time on the Googlization of Everything, but I'll be interested to read more about this specific issue of Google's power.

Back to Brewster Kahle, the Open Content Alliance sounds wonderful. Books should be digitized, and we need to make it open, free of digital rights management, and accessible to all.

Random information I have learned about Brewster Kahle recently: He is a major donor to Streetside Stories. Also, he (or his people) are able to make an exabyte of space fit in a shipping container. (A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, a petabyte is a thousand terabytes, and an exabyte is a thousand petabytes. That's a lot, folks.) I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but judging by the reactions of the computer science people I was with, this is impressive.

Another quote (also from "Scan This Book!"):

We have to recognize that it's not only possible but it is our responsibility to bring digital services to the world. If we can build this next generation in the open, the same way the open network and the open software infrastructure of the Internet developed, it will be the librarians' day. Media companies, the Googles and Microsofts, they will play their roles. They'll bring things to hundreds of millions. But they will never bring things to our patrons the way we can as librarians.

I'm really excited to hear him talk. One question I have is what do they do to protect all this data they're archiving? What do they do to make sure it won't be lost? Do they back it up all the time? Do they have servers spread out geographically? I can just imagine a giant magnet falling on their roof and erasing everything (okay, that probably wouldn't happen, but something along those lines). It's a lot easier to erase digital information, especially accidentally, than it is to destroy a paper book (which this article brings up). This is something I've thought about when people talk about blogs as future historical archives. How do we know it will stay online, especially if someone else is hosting it? Google is doing pretty well for itself now, but things change so fast that it could disappear, along with every blog hosted by Blogger, in just a few years. People who are careful will save it and post it somewhere new, but think of all that could be lost. Web pages can require active maintenance - I know I've had web pages which no longer exist, and many of the web sites I frequented in my early teens aren't there any more. This is why something like the Internet Archive is so wonderful, but they'll have to guard their data carefully. This is another reason it's so good that their work is DRM-free, so if something happens to Internet Archive, their work can still be used by other people.

Sarah Houghton-Jan on the Future of Libraries

2008-02-21T03:49:00.000-06:00

For my Digital Literacy class this Tuesday we attended a lecture at the San Francisco Public Library by Sarah Houghton-Jan, a.k.a. the Librarian in Black. She is the Digital Futures Manager at the San José Public Library, and the focus of her talk was on the future of libraries. She identified some of the issues that libraries are facing and talked about some things she sees for the future of libraries.

She talked about a lot, so this is a selection of some of her main points. I'll look forward to reading other people's accounts of/thoughts on the lecture.

She said that libraries aren't used to change, and when technology began to develop so rapidly, libraries were slow to catch on. In the meantime, many companies and the population in general moved way ahead. As a result, libraries lost their role as primary sources of information, being replaced with online resources. At the same time, however, the number of digital library users is growing exponentially. Those are users which only use the library's online resources and never come into the physical library building. She said that libraries are not doing a very good job of counting those people because they never see them. These users are becoming unhappy because their needs are not being addressed. Her advice to libraries: listen to the digital users.

She went through quite a few reasons people don't like or don't use libraries. One problem is that if you want a popular item, a new item, or something the library doesn't have, it's a long and potentially expensive process to get a hold of it. If the library has it but it's checked out, you can put a hold on it, but then you have to wait till that person returns it, and one or more people could have put holds on it ahead of you, meaning you'll have to wait that much longer. Another option is interlibrary loan (ILL), which is slow, complicated, and often costs money (when I worked at Gleeson Library, I would process ILL requests occasionally, and it was simpler than she described, but it is a slow process). She said that she and her husband, who both work in libraries and could literally have materials delivered to their desks, often resort to buying things online so they don't have to wait for them from the library. Something that some libraries have experimented with is when a patron wants something the library doesn't have, the library orders it from Amazon and has it shipped directly to the patron. Apparently Amazon will do some preliminary processing (e.g. barcode, labeling) for the library before sending it. It's turned out to be cheaper and faster than ILL. She has a blog entry dealing with this here. Be sure to read the comments. Even if this became common, I still see an important place for ILL. This is probably more applicable in academic libraries than public libraries, but a lot of things aren't available on Amazon (*gasp*). Many of the ILL requests I processed were for journal articles, for example. I would go up in the stacks, find the bound volume of periodicals, make a photocopy, scan it (most of the time), and send it to the library that requested it. We had this nifty software that is standard enough that most libraries had it, and we could send the document electronically straight from the scanning software; otherwise we would fax or snail mail. I asked her her thoughts on alternatives like Link+ (similar to ILL but among a smaller number of libraries geographically close to each other, way faster, very easy, and free), and she seemed to think it can be good, but if users don't find what they're looking for there, they tend to give up and think that's their last/only option, which is not good.

I wonder how common it is for people to buy stuff when they can't get it immediately from the library. Besides books for my classes, which I usually need for a long period of time, and may need to mark up, I have a really hard time buying books when I know I can get them for free. It has been rare for me to want a book that was not available through any of the libraries I can access (including the Link+ network). Usually that's only been when I'm researching obscure topics for a class. When I do buy books (usually for school), I rarely buy books new if it's possible to get them used for cheaper. If I thought to myself, "Hey, I'd like to read ____" and my library didn't have it on hand, I would not just go ahead and buy it, especially not if I could order it through Link+ and get it within a week. Even if that weren't available, books are expensive, and I wouldn't spend $20 on a whim, especially one I would only want to read once. Maybe I'm just cheap/poor. (As my dad says, "You already have a book." Next time I'm home, I want to take pictures of the huge numbers of books in my house to share with the internet. We have a building in our backyard that used to be a garage, but we converted into a "library room." It is filled with books. I'll save that for a later blog entry.) However, if the only option to get a book a library doesn't have on hand is to buy it, that brings up serious issues of access across economic levels. That's what's so great about libraries: they're free. They bridge economic divides, making information available to everyone. Libraries should do whatever they can to maintain and promote that.

Moving on from that, something interesting she said was that digital rights management is a huge problem for libraries in terms of home access to digital materials. I never would have thought about this, but it makes a lot of sense. She thinks libraries can play a big role in changing this. Along similar lines, she told us that libraries have a very few choices for where to buy their catalog software, and they have to keep paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue using it - not because they're getting new features or upgrades, but just because the companies say they have to. Because of this, libraries are starting to develop open source catalog software. This is something else she sees for libraries' futures. Nice.

Another thing she says libraries need to do is embrace the democratization of information and expertise. Librarians need to let go of telling people the "right way" to do things. Libraries need to allow the user to have more control and incorporate things like tagging, social labeling, decentralized data creation (such as user-created reading lists), and social organization of data. This is interesting and potentially cool, but the little librarian inside me keeps saying "no, no, people will mess stuff up." Fortunately, the little librarian inside of me is probably wrong because people have shown that they're good at this sort of thing and they'll improve what's already there. It's also a really good way to engage people with their libraries.

This is really just a smattering of what she covered in her excellent talk, but I'm sure the things she spoke about will come up again, and I will blog some more.

Digital Literacy Taskforce

2008-02-21T02:02:00.000-06:00

I have an exciting opportunity for USF students, especially if you are not graduating in May (though even if you are I don't think it's out of the question):

We invite you to serve on the University of San Francisco's Digital Literacy
Taskforce

Membership:
The Digital Literacy Taskforce (DLT) is made up of faculty, staff and students and meets monthly. The DLT is chaired by the Assistant Dean of Students.

Charge:
Knowing that any kind of media can be used well or can be misused the University of San Francisco will take a mission driven proactive approach to teach faculty, staff and students to make the best use of technological resources while limiting the negative consequences that can be attributed to misuse.

Mission:
Create sustainable goals in the area of digital literacy that will be integrated into the larger University community.

Please contact Julie Orio, orioj@usfca.edu, if you are interested.

I have been on this taskforce for a while, and I really enjoy it. It's interesting, you get the opportunity to give a really important student perspective, and it's not a big commitment in terms of time. I'm the only student on it right now, and it would be great to get more students on board, especially since I'm graduating this semester. Feel free to ask me any questions if you have them.

But I Love You

2008-02-18T22:35:00.001-06:00

Sandpapered off graffiti: "BUT I LOVE YOU"
Originally uploaded by rosaamarilla

I took this photo a couple weeks(?) ago. Someone spray-painted "BUT I LOVE YOU" on the fence along the driveway onto the USF campus that goes by Malloy Hall. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, and the facilities guy sandpapered it off, but you could still see it faintly. I would love to know the story behind it. I have a proposal for my readers (all, uh, eight of you, if you're paying attention): Write a story that leads up to someone spray-painting "BUT I LOVE YOU" in big letters on this fence. Bonus points if you include the thoughts of the facilities guy as he sanded off the paint.

Another reason for this post is I am experimenting with blogging photos directly from Flickr. Does anyone know if it's possible to do it with more than one photo in a single post?

Ivan Chew, the liblogarian, comes to USF

2008-02-18T20:36:00.000-06:00

Last Thursday, the Davies Forum was lucky enough to have Ivan Chew, a librarian from Singapore, as a guest lecturer. Ivan is a prolific blogger (with nine blogs!) and works for the Singapore National Library Board. He was a very interesting and engaging speaker. He focused on three topics in his presentation: his personal reasons for blogging, the Singapore Public Library's digital experiments, and senior citizens and blogging (follow the links for abbreviated sets of his presentation slides).

Instead of a general summary, I'm going to touch on a few points that stuck out for me.

First, I was mortified to discover that I did not know specifically where Singapore is. General area, yes, but specifically, no. I stand educated and appropriately embarrassed. In general I like to think of myself as more geographically aware than the average American (with the possible exception of U.S. geography, probably because I homeschooled). Anyway, thanks Ivan!

He talked about some of the history of blogging in Singapore, from early on when people were wary about the possibilities of inappropriate content and misinformation, to now, when the Prime Minister has encouraged people to use new media, and all National Library Board employees are required to take new media classes. They even did a call for citizen journalists to cover the closure of one of their libraries. This was interesting and very cool. They (Ivan especially) are recognizing the importance and potential of new media.

I especially like how the libraries are using the blogs to "publicize" and "engage." I love libraries and I love the internet, so I was glad to see the successes that they are having in meshing the two together. I asked him what he thought about the future of the (paper) book, and he asked whether it matters. Very interesting point, and one that's come up in a slightly different context in our class discussion - how important is the medium of the information? Aren't the content and the way we read it the most important? Of course, the medium is related to those, but maybe we shouldn't get caught up on whether a word is made of pigment and fiber or 1's and 0's.

Since Ivan works with young people, someone asked what age he thought kids should be introduced to the internet. He said "As soon as they have something to say." So cool! It's a shift from when I first began to use the internet, when I was 10. Back then, everything was about cybersafety, not getting "lost" on the information superhighway (that never made sense to me), and always asking a parent's permission. Cybersafety for kids is still really important, but his response is a shift from "old enough to know better than to give an ax-murderer her address" to "old enough to participate and create." I love it!

He talked about a conversation he had in which someone asked him if he thought there would ever be a point when there were no more wars. His response was no, but they could be a lot fewer and far-between if the memory of the horrors of war stayed in people's consciousness for longer. This, to me, is an excellent reason for people, especially senior citizens, to blog, and is an excellent reason for us to blog about the war in Iraq. And then when we're old (or probably before then), and the U.S. is trying to get into another ridiculous war, let's look back through our blog archives, remind ourselves what a bad idea war is, and do something to stop it.

And finally he closed his presentation with a cool music video that he made, Dolphins Galaxia.

Here's a nice picture of Ivan, Professor Silver, and a librarian from the USF Gleeson Library.

A quiet weekend

2008-02-18T17:30:00.000-06:00

So, instead of doing homework, my JVC application, or my job, this weekend (Friday afternoon through this afternoon, Monday), I went on the Ignatian Silent Retreat offered through University Ministry. While I am not always impressed with the practices of UM, I've done this retreat before and loved it, and I was not disappointed. The retreat was at the lovely El Retiro Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos, CA. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera, but you can take my word for it that it was beautiful (well, the parts where I couldn't see freeways, rich people's ugly houses, or the Palo Alto skyline). I saw deer and a little lizard, which was exciting.

Here are four things I got out of it (in order of importance):

1. A deepened faith and relationship with God.
2. The liberation of silence.
3. Lots and lots of sleep.
4. Dessert with every meal. Seriously. The food was delicious.

Number 2 might need some explanation. For me, silence is/can be liberation for the mind. I spend too much time thinking about what other people are thinking, especially how they think of me, whether what I just said was stupid or annoying, or maybe it was witty or insightful. I'm not saying that thinking about other people is bad, and I'm not saying listening to what other people have to say is bad. I wouldn't want to be silent forever, but it's freeing to be released from the pressure of conversation and social interaction.

This is a random note, but I managed to start out a retreat that is all about Jesuit-ness with a little rant about the Jesuits (this was before we went into silence). We were saying that the Jesuits know how to take care of you, and take pretty good care of themselves too. One woman said she had been to the Jesuit residence at Santa Clara University, and they have a freezer filled with those little individual-size Ben and Jerry's ice creams. I couldn't restrain myself and said I had some issues with how the Jesuits choose to use their resources. Maybe I said it a little harsher than that, but I implied/stated that it was not in alignment with their values of social justice. I think my table-mates got a little scared. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) this was not in front of any of the present Jesuits. There are many good things about the Jesuits, but "vow of poverty" is not one of their strengths. They're good people, but they have some things they could work on.

At the end of the retreat I got some St. Ignatius bling. Woo! Here are pictures with and without flash. They don't show the size, but you can take my word for it that it is one and a half inches across (I promise I do have better things to do than measure medallions, but, you know, the world wants to know).

Fun fact: Before he was St. Ignatius, he was Íñigo Oñaz López de Loyola

On an unrelated note, don't read The Secret History of the English Language, says the Language Log, which knows what it's talking about.

The Story of the Sad Snowman

2008-02-13T03:03:00.000-06:00

Sometime last year I was sitting in my living room at home with my sister, and she told me to tell her a story. Here it is, with illustrations:

Once upon a time there was a snowman. This snowman was very unhappy with himself.

He had a serious problem: he didn't like to be cold. He began to engage in very self-destructive behaviors like smoking and standing next to fires.

Eventually his friends intervened and made him go see a counselor. Through these sessions he determined that he did not identify as a snowman, so he had reconstructive surgery and became a scarecrow. From then on he spent his days happily in the sun with his arms outstretched.

The end.

Names and Gender Issues

2008-02-13T02:56:00.000-06:00

I have a request for all people discussing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (that's a lot of people). Please do not refer to them as Hillary and Obama. You may say Hillary and Barack or Clinton and Obama. I get that there may be a need to distinguish between Hillary and Bill, but no matter who you want to win, it's really messed up to refer to the woman by her first name and the man by his last.

Mary Madden and my online presence

2008-02-10T16:10:00.000-06:00

On Thursday evening, Mary Madden, a researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project came and spoke to my Digital Literacy class (and the many other people who showed up!). She give a very interesting talk, with a good question and answer session at the end. On Friday she was nice enough to make herself available and a few of us met in Crossroads Cafe to have a more informal conversation.

One thing she talked about which is really interesting to me is online identity management. Increasingly, we have more and more information about ourselves available online. That can be good or bad, depending on the level of visibility we want (some people want it to promote themselves), and depending on the quality and type of the information. I might be happy to put my name, my major, my interests, my activities, and a list of my friends online, but I don't want my phone number or address to be so readily available.

Professor Silver has mentioned a couple of times that by the end of this class, the number of Google hits with our name will go up dramatically. To see if this is true, I searched for "amber mcchesney-young" in quotation marks in Google, and got 10 hits.

All of them are about me - as far as I know there are only four other McChesney-Youngs in the world, and they are my immediate family. If you search for my dad's name you get 4,460 hits because he is a very active member on lots of archived email lists. My mom gets 46 hits, my older brother has 19, and my younger sister has 6 - I will always be the middle child. ;-) Anyway, there's kind of an interesting variety there. Most hits are relatively recent, since I've been at USF. One of the more obscure ones is results from a Bay Area Orienteering Coalition activity I did, I think with my Girl Scout troop, on the UC Berkeley campus. We had to navigate around the campus, and answer things like "Which direction is the bear statue facing?" (East, by the way.) Two others, which are fun and just a little embarrassing, are guestbook entries I wrote when I was ten years old (that's almost twelve years ago!). Remember back in the day when people had their Geocities and Angelfire pages with random information, animated GIFs, and guestbooks? They always said "Please sign my guestbook!" and sometimes I did. It's similar to the comments we now leave on blog entries. In these guestbook entries, I told the person that I was 10 years old and liked synchronized swimming. It's from 1996, the year my family first got the internet. Very magical and exciting. Check out Kate's Twenty Second Guest Book. It's fascinating - totally a blast from the past.

In addition to my Google hits, I have a MySpace page (which only includes my first name on the page, but does have pictures and says that I go to USF), and my Facebook page (which is only visible to people in the USFCA network and my friends in other networks). My MySpace page has very little on it, but Facebook has a fair amount of information (no address or phone number). I don't think there's anything I wouldn't be okay with an employer seeing, though. So to sum up, at this point, I'm pretty cool with my online presence. If someone wanted to find me in person, I'm sure they could, but it would take a bit of effort. They can find out a lot about me, but it's stuff I'm comfortable with. Yay.

Just a note for accuracy, the 10 hits that show up are with "very similar" results omitted. When those are included I get 19. Some are the same page over and over, but there are some distinct hits there. Let's see if Professor Silver's prediction is correct and my number of hits goes up.

... and more procrastination

2008-01-31T00:47:00.000-06:00

I still have this problem where I have an urge to blog whenever I have an essay to write. Of course, when there's something I should be blogging about, I can't seem to make the time. But when I definitely don't have the time, I blog anyway. So aquí estoy, procrastinating like crazy. Here's something worthwhile to share with the world:

"A market system of control limits free expression by market processes that are highly effective. Dissident ideas are not legally banned, they are simply unable to reach mass audiences, which are monopolised by large profit-seeking corporations that offer programmes supported by advertising, from which dissent is quietly and unobtrusively filtered out." (Herman, quoted in Thussu - my citation sucks, but I really don't feel like pulling out my book right now.)

My friends are talking about resumes and jobs and things, and I'm getting freaked out. I don't feel competent enough to be a full-blown grown-up. I can't even write a 3-4 page paper summarizing reading!

Here is Fred Astaire dancing to SexyBack. And here is a clip from the British Office.

Things to write about soon:
-My Digital Literacy class (and my other classes)
-The net neutrality symposium I attended last Saturday

Christmas

2007-12-26T01:20:00.000-06:00

The semester's done, but I still have to deal with work stuff. It doesn't help when people don't respond with important information, which means you can't do your job, which makes you look bad. I'll send some emails tomorrow morning. I can justify not responding to emails because of the weekend and Christmas, but tomorrow I'll work for a half hour or so.

I had a great Christmas. Last night we went to the "midnight" Mass (9 p.m. for carols, then 10 p.m. for the Mass). This was the first year in a long time that my mom hasn't been involved with the music for this Mass. She's been stressed and trying to find a new job, and she decided to take a year off. When we got there I didn't feel like being there, and I didn't feel like singing (unusual for me). During the pre-Mass music, I loved the songs that were just the choir - fancy motets, things with lots of harmony, often in foreign languages. They were singing something beautiful, and I started thinking about Teresita, one of my housemates in El Salvador, and her mom, who is dying (maybe even dead; I'm not sure if anyone would tell me). I pray for her mom, Blanca, every week at Mass, and as I was listening to this beautiful music, I had one of those wonderful prayer moments where it actually feels like you're getting through to God. But more than talking to God, I was thinking, "This is for you, Blanca. This is for you Teresita. This is for you, sister of Teresita whose husband went to the U.S., abandoned you, and started a new family." This beautiful music is for you, a humble campesino family from El Salvador. You are important - very important to me.

There was a lot of music devoted to Mary (this being a Catholic church and Christmas), which reminded me of praying the rosary at Lupita's house. (Lupita was my other Salvadoran housemate.) Her brother was shot on a bus three and a half years ago, and they prayed a novena in her community for the nine days following the anniversary of his death. I had the honor of visiting her home during this time, and participating in the prayers. I kneeled on the hard, dirt/cement floor of a beautiful but humble home, praying the Hail Mary as fast as I could in Spanish, trying to keep up with the women from the community. Dios te salve Maria. Llena eres de gracia. El Señor es contigo, Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa Maria, madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. (Say that 50 times fast.) It was one of the most amazing experiences I had in El Salvador. Despite having so much privilege and the power that comes with it, sometimes I feel like all I can do is pray to make things better. I'm usually a positive person, but I have a hard time finding hope for the world, hope for justice and peace.

While I'm talking about El Salvador, I'll tell a story that involves Teresita's mom, which Fr. Privett told at the USF graduation Mass a couple weeks ago. The coordinators of the study abroad program I did, Kevin and Trena, went to visit Blanca and the rest of Teresita's family, and they brought their young daughters. One of them, Sophia, went straight to Blanca's side, and stayed with her for most of their visit. When Kevin and Trena and the girls got back home in the evening, as Sophia was going to bed, she asked Trena whether what Teresita's mom has is contagious. It's not contagious, but how amazing it is that a young child, thinking she may catch this illness, sat at the sick woman's side, holding her hand. It was such a beautiful, selfless, and powerful act - one we should all learn from.

But back to Christmas. This morning we went to Mass again, and this time I sang in the choir. We didn't rehearse much because it was mostly very familiar Christmas music, but that meant that right before Mass, the choir director asked me to solo on a couple songs. Then she added a couple more solos during the Mass by whispering to me and the choir as she played introductions to songs. It was fun, and I sang pretty well. Every year we sing a verse from Handel's Messiah for the Alleluia. "And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.'" It was a good Mass.

We came home, had a simple lunch, and my brother came over. We opened presents, and I got some really good ones, including an Edward Gorey calendar, AIDS and Accusation by Paul Farmer, a couple social justice-y prayer books, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and slippers for my cold cold feet. La hermana got Little Miss Sunshine, so we watched that in the afternoon, then had red and green enchiladas for dinner. It was a nice Christmas.

Off to read and sleep. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it - because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it - his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.

-From "The Time of No Room" by Thomas Merton

Postmodernism and MySpace

2007-12-17T21:43:00.000-06:00

Thousands of people flock to MySpace.com every day, often as a part of their daily routine. It is a social networking website where people can create and update personal profiles, see if their friends have left comments or messages, listen to music, upload photos, or write blog entries. MySpace.com is one of the most-visited websites in the world (“Alexa”). A lot has changed since 1990, when Mark Poster wrote The Mode of Information, especially in the realm of electronic communication and the Internet (which was just starting to see usage beyond the military ARPAnet), but at the same time, much of what he wrote is still accurate to this day. MySpace serves to illustrate some of the concepts of postmodernism in relation to electronic communication, in particular the Superpanopticon, as described by Poster.

In the spirit of postmodernism, it seems appropriate to begin this essay with a disclaimer from an essay I wrote last semester with a classmate:

We have quite a few limitations and boundaries in our research and analysis. Fundamentally, there is no such thing as universal truth, so we cannot proclaim the truth of anything we read nor anything we write. How we interpret what we read and how we present our analysis are products of the situations in which we have been raised, the educations we have received, and our own individual understandings of life and reality. (McChesney-Young and Ericksen)

This concept of the nonexistence of universal truth is one element of the elusive concept of postmodernism. In The Mode of Information, Poster repeatedly criticizes philosophers for falling prey to “totalization”; that is, presenting their concepts as metanarratives, encompassing and explaining reality with the truth, such that it applies to everything and every situation (23). Thus I will take care not to “make claims that are beyond the situated finitude” of myself (Poster 64).

To begin, Poster distinguishes electronic communication from previous forms of communication, saying that it transcends the boundaries of time and space by which we have been limited so far. He says, “The body is no longer an effective limit of the subject’s position” (15). I can be looking at the MySpace profile of someone across the country, while my profile (a representation of myself, a subject) is being viewed on the other side of the world. As Poster says, I am “dispersed across social space” (16). Last year there were well over 100 million user profiles on MySpace, from all around the country and all around the world, from many different walks of life (Cashmere). Unlike books or other physical media, electronic media are not material. A MySpace profile does not sit on a shelf, nor does it need to be put in a mailbox to be sent to another person to see. This is a fundamental difference, according to Poster: “Speech is framed by space/time coordinates of dramatic action. Writing is framed by space/time coordinates of books and sheets of paper…. Electronic language, on the contrary, does not lend itself to being framed. It is everywhere and nowhere, always and never” (Poster 85). In its nature as electronic communication, MySpace (and all of the Internet) is postmodern.

With hundreds of thousands of user profiles, MySpace is a huge collection of information about people. It is a database of people’s interests, favorite things, and demographic information. Poster describes the computer database in relation to the “Superpanopticon” as another facet of postmodern society. The Panopticon was conceived as a tool for efficient surveillance in prisons. One guard would be in a central tower that could see into all the prison cells, but the prisoners would not be able to see which way the guard was looking, so at any given moment, they may be watched. The idea, then, is that they will behave as if they are always being watched without the need to hire a guard for every prisoner. Foucault borrowed this concept from Bentham and expanded it to describe society. “In capitalist society, regulation takes the form of discourses/practices that produce and reproduce the norm. The school, the asylum, the factory, the barracks to greater or lesser degrees and with considerable variation all imitate the Panopticon” (Poster 91).

In contrast with the prison, today’s structure could be called a “Superpanopticon, a system of surveillance without walls, windows, towers, or guards” (Poster 93). Both technical and cultural change have allowed this. People readily participate in this system of surveillance without the overt coercion one would experience in a prison. We freely give away our information to get library cards, credit cards, driver’s licenses, magazine subscriptions, and so on. Our information is stored in many databases, and our records could be examined at any time. Since the Patriot Act, the government is able to demand access to library records, which may make people think twice about checking out books on Islamic fundamentalism and suicide bombing, even if it’s just for a research paper. “The discourse of databases, the Superpanopticon, is a means of controlling masses in the postmodern, postindustrial mode of information” (Poster 97).

The databases that Poster describes are basically one-sided. Someone inputs information, and it stays there, as opposed to a message being sent to a person, who then may respond. MySpace, however, is different. While the user does submit his or her information, which is stored on a server somewhere (which could be anywhere in the world), that information is then available to anyone with an internet connection, unless the user sets their privacy settings otherwise (most don’t). Poster refers to databases in which one’s information is probably not regularly viewed, but still serve as sufficient surveillance for social control. MySpace, however, is designed so users’ information is viewed regularly, by many people. One can search, browse, or navigate from one profile to the next. From personal experience, I’ve searched for and found old friends on MySpace, and I’ve also received messages including, “wassup girl what's poppin enjoying your precious face is a trip to heaven , just wanna get to know , please you and make love to your mind.… I live near downtown oakland by my self so ain't go none to worry” (d-jay). Not only do News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch have access to my information, but Christina, my friend from ten years ago, and d-jay, the lonely man in Oakland, may be looking at my profile at any moment. This is an extra component of surveillance to be added to the Superpanopticon.

I did a study of gender performance on MySpace and found that user profiles are very gendered in their appearances and content (for example, women’s profiles have a lot of pink and hearts and men’s profiles have a lot of violent images and black). This is an example of the normative function of MySpace. We act according to conventions so when someone looks us up, we are presenting our public identities. Foucault says, “It is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies” (qtd. in Poster 93). Online identities, like profiles on MySpace, can construct us as much as we construct them.

Postmodernism is a broad theory that encompasses others rather than replacing or going side by side with them. For example, we can look at MySpace and the Superpanopticon from a Marxist perspective. MySpace is owned by a huge media corporation, News Corporation. To begin with, the database compiled by the site has a wealth of marketing information. What are people’s favorite TV shows? What are their interests? The services are free, but there are advertisements on every page. The text ads appear to be done through Google, which comes up with ads that relate to your searches. If I go onto a forum and search for “textbooks,” before there are any results, there are links to Amazon, Alibris, and other online booksellers. Interestingly, when browsing through some forums I saw the sponsored links on the side included “Edward Gorey T-Shirts” and “Find Singer Jobs – Free.” It seems an unlikely coincidence that I say in my profile that I like to sing and I like Edward Gorey, and these rather obscure ads just happen to show up. It appears that they look at the user profile content to target ads. Poster writes that, “The principle of private property is threatened in the domain of information” (73). Since information is not material, it is not subject to the same market rules of supply and demand as conventional products, which makes it more of a challenge to commodify. Through advertising, however, MySpace maintains the capitalist order.

We can use other theories within postmodernism as well. As we speak of surveillance, we can look at MySpace and the Superpanopticon in terms of psychoanalysis as well. As in viewing films, there may be elements of scopophilia and ego-identification when we look at profiles. Semiotics is a significant field in postmodernism, though it does not play much of a role in the Superpanopticon (in that it is not discussed as such by Poster, though anything that can be conceived of as a sign falls under the realm of semiotics). However, semiotics can be used to show polysemy, which undermines metanarratives, which I discuss in the beginning of this essay. Content analysis is potentially problematic under postmodernism, because it claims to be objective, at least relatively speaking. The problem occurs if the analysis does not recognize that there is no true objectivity and proposes a universal truth, which is not acceptable in postmodernism.

Postmodernism is complex, difficult to understand, and some people say it doesn’t even exist. Some say that it’s great and others that it’s terrible. I say that there are valid points within postmodernism, but I am yet to be convinced that the distinction between modernism and postmodernism is so great that it calls for a newly-named era. Postmodernism can be used well to describe aspects of our culture and social structures, but it should not be seen as the all-encompassing reality—certainly not a universal truth, as that would involve the totalization which it decries. We can see that phenomena like MySpace, which postmodernism can explain, do exist, so there are useful ideas. There are other concepts from postmodernism, like intertextuality, which could explain MySpace well, though they did not fall within the focus of this essay. Ideas from postmodernism can be useful and need not be a cause for pessimism, but the theory is not a complete description of the world as it is today.

Works Cited:

“Alexa Top 500 Sites.” Alexa: The Web Information Company. 10 Dec. 2007 http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none.

Cashmore, Pete. “MySpace Hits 100 Million Accounts.” Mashable: Social Networking News. 9 Aug. 2006. 15 Dec. 2007 http://mashable.com/?p=826.

d-jay. “wassup.” MySpace message to the author. 11 Apr. 2006.

McChesney-Young, Amber, and Ryan Ericksen. “CAFTA, ALBA and Public Discourse.” 26 Apr. 2007. Not published (needless to say), but available from amccyoung at gmail dot com upon request.

Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990.

Finals

2007-12-11T18:20:00.000-06:00

Two classes down, two to go. My final today went pretty well, especially considering how little I studied. We'll see if my professor can read my horrifying handwriting. I think I at least got all the multiple choice and true/false right. My first essay was pretty good, I think, second was okay, third was very poorly organized, but I think I conveyed the important points.

I'm working on my MySpace paper, but MySpace slows down Firefox so much, it's annoying. It doesn't help that I have ten profiles open right now. Heh.

My goal for next semester: Not have to pull a single all-nighter.

My goal for today: finish this paper by 3 a.m.

What I think is more likely: finish most of this paper by 9 a.m.

Then I have to finish my other paper. How does this happen? It's not entirely poor time management, but I should have spent way less time in front of the TV. Media has such a grasp on our lives! Good thing it's my major.

Also, I'm going to Peru next May and I'm excited. :-) I'm just sad that I'll probably be missing graduation parties, but whatever. It's Peru.

Sully

2007-12-08T02:11:00.000-06:00

I'm in an anti-people mood right now. I opened up MySpace to work on my paper, and it's so depressing to me. And then I feel bad for being so judgmental, but these people disturb me. Way too many 30-year-old moms who didn't go to college and have lots of sparkles on their profiles.

I try to be nice and open-minded and loving, but I'm a pretty judgmental person, and sometimes people get too ridiculous or depressing.

Also, I'm in love with Sully from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman:

My three roommates and I all love Sully, and normally we have different taste in men. He's kind of the ultimate representation of masculinity. Except for the girly hair, which we love.

Extensions

2007-12-05T04:39:00.000-06:00

I suck at school. Turns out I'm not too great at researching and writing a 10-page paper in one afternoon and night. I have about 1 page written, and it's 2:40 a.m. I have lots of resources, but I haven't read through all of them and I didn't do a good job (or any job) of keeping track of what information is in what article, so it's very disorganized. My class starts in 7 hours. Ain't gonna happen. Fortunately, the professor mentioned the possibility of extensions till Friday. It wasn't clear whether we had to clear it with him individually, but I don't think so. Also, I think he's not going to be in class tomorrow because Monday night he left to fly to Australia to talk at some conference or meeting or something. Flying to and from Australia takes a really really long time, and it seems unlikely and maybe impossible that he be back Wednesday morning.

I wanted to do this paper on time so I could be done with it and focus on the other two papers I have to finish in the next week, but I'll do as much as I can tonight, sleep for a few hours, and finish it tomorrow night and Thursday.

The future

2007-12-05T01:52:00.001-06:00

I thought of something I would like to do as a job: helping undocumented women who have been/are victims of violence or abuse and are afraid to report it because of the fear of deportation.

I don't have any of the knowledge I'd need to do that, but it's nice to think of concrete things I could do.

Songs for the People

2007-12-02T16:51:00.000-06:00

I love this poem.

Songs for the People
by Frances Watkins Harper

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so warn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

Cold Fingers

2007-12-02T16:27:00.000-06:00

I have a paper due Wednesday on NAFTA, immigration, and women. Fascinating, I know, because I chose the topic. I also chose the topic thinking there would be tons written about it, and research would be easy. For whatever reason, it's not being easy. I don't know if it's because the information is not readily available, if I'm looking in the wrong places, or if I just gave up way too soon (quite likely). All I want to do is curl up with a blanket and watch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Also, my fingers are cold which makes it hard to type.

Roommate drama is happening. It seems to me that drinking in excess always leads to bad things happening. Why do people keep doing it?

There's an open house going on right now. Our landlords are selling the house, so there are have 1-2 open houses almost every week for a couple months now. It's kind of weird and awkward, but at least it pushes us to clean our house more often. They think it'll take a while to sell (hasn't sold yet!), but when it does, if the new owners don't want to keep us as tenants, they could kick us out. Fortunately, they'll have to give us 90 days, and I think they can't kick us out until we've found "comparable housing." If we did have to leave, though, it would be very hard to find a place that wouldn't make us sign a year-long lease, and we would never find a place this cheap and convenient. Hopefully they'll let us stay through May. Or the house won't sell. The open houses are kind of annoying though.

I have this NAFTA/immigration/women paper due Wednesday (approx. 10 pages, have just started to research). I have a final exam for Global Economic Justice on the 11th (I'm very behind in the reading, but I did skim it all). I have a postmodernist critique of some new media thing (I'll probably do blogging of Facebook or something -- I'm not sure, though, since I haven't done that reading either) due by the 13th. And finally, my MySpace and gender project is due the 13th. That's about 30 pages, plus a test, in the next week and a half. Which is why I should be researching my paper right now.

My dad sent me an article on procrastination. My response: "I'll read it later."

Initial MySpace Thoughts

2007-11-26T22:30:00.000-06:00

Initial thoughts on my MySpace research:

1. I don't like MySpace.
2. This is going really slowly.
3. It is disturbing how gendered the profiles are. It seems like all women care about is family and sparkles.

Other thoughts: I'm tired, and I need to plan out my week so I can get everything accomplished.

Tonight:
record contents of 5 more women's profiles, 5-10 men's profiles
finish Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl
finish finding resources for African American Literature paper
look at some reading for Global Economic Justice

Tuesday:
finish recording contents of MySpace profiles
skim the huge amounts of reading I have not done for GEJ
brainstorm/outline literature paper

Wednesday:
write literature paper

Thursday:
put together presentation for Gender and the Media class
finish editing and proofread literature paper

Friday:
sleep

Gender on MySpace Project Proposal

2007-11-26T18:04:00.000-06:00

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and in my classic procrastination fashion, proceeded to ignore it until now, when I have to report my progress on Thursday. I reread it and decided it's not half bad, so I'm posting it. Why not? No one reads this anyway. :)

Project Proposal: Gender on MySpace

Research Question and Rationale:

How is gender performed and portrayed on MySpace? I will look at MySpace profiles of men and women and analyze the way people present themselves and others in terms of gender.
MySpace is one of the most popular websites on the internet. A huge number and wide variety of people are members of this social networking site. So far in this class we’ve mainly examined conventional mainstream media. The internet has been heralded as a change in the media landscape, an increasing democratization of society, and an opportunity for every person to make media. MySpace has given millions of people a place on the web to show their friends, acquaintances, and strangers a representation of who they are. This sort of participatory internet is called Web 2.0, and it seems to be the direction in which the internet is going. With the impact of the internet on how people spend their time and where they get their information from, it is especially important that MySpace be studied in terms of something so important as gender.

Gender performance is mostly, if not entirely, a social construct, and it is maintained through our everyday lives, not just because the voice of the mainstream media is telling us to do so. We perpetuate these social constructions in how we personally perform our genders. MySpace profiles are a way for people to express their own identities, and they are a space where many people see others’ expressions of identity. Because of the relative anonymity and freedom of the internet, it can be an opportunity for people to represent themselves differently than in their day-to-day lives. MySpace profiles are also a place for standard gender identities to be maintained or subverted. Many people spend hours upon hours on MySpace, and so are viewing large numbers of these profiles. I will be comparing the profiles of women and men, but I am not looking to find essential differences between the two, just to see how people perform their genders in the context of a medium like MySpace.

There has not been very much research in this general area, and as far as I can tell, no one has done an analysis like the one I am proposing. There has been research done about gender and internet usage, as well as digital divide issues in relation to gender. There are some studies on social dynamics like friending, and more general studies of identity and self-representation on the internet, but I was only able to find a couple articles that specifically dealt with gender and MySpace, and none of them are on the same topic I’m researching.

Methodology:

I will do a text analysis of approximately 60 MySpace profiles: 30 by women and 30 by men. (This number is relatively arbitrary, and if I seem to have not enough or too much information, I may modify it.) I will gather the pool of profiles with MySpace’s Browse feature. I’ll browse for men and women between ages 18 and 35 within the United States who have photos in their profiles, with results organized by most recently updated. While this is not an entirely random sample, it is relatively random, and the fact that the profiles are recently updated suggests that there will be substantial content and fewer profiles that are completely empty with no information. The sample is between 18 and 35 because that is the age range of the majority of MySpace users, and that is the default age range when one goes to Browse. If other people are browsing profiles, they are likely to be looking within that range. For the sake focusing the study and because of potential language limitations, I am only examining profiles of people in the United States. I will look at the main page for the profile, and if there is a blog on the profile, I will include the entries that show on the main page in my analysis. I will also view the photos the user has uploaded.

My research will be mainly quantitative, but I will also incorporate qualitative analysis. I will “ask” each profile a set of questions (see list attached). I will record the answers and categorize and count them for a quantitative analysis (for example, the number of men with shirtless profile pictures). Because of the complexity of gender representation, and because not everything can necessarily be categorized and counted, I will also analyze a selection of the profiles qualitatively for a more in-depth and holistic understanding.
I will present this analysis in the form of a 12-15 page research paper.

Timeline and Resources:

November 8-15: Do more background research into field of internet and gender. Incorporate feedback from 11/8 class into proposal. Create document to track content of each profile. Begin to gather information from MySpace profiles.
November 16-22: Finish gathering information from MySpace profiles. Begin analysis.
November 23-29: Complete analysis. Finish first draft. Submit to professor for feedback.
November 30-December 6: Revise draft, incorporate feedback.
December 7-13: Complete, edit, and proofread paper. Turn in to professor.

I will need a computer with internet access, which I have at home and at school. For the background information I’ll be seeking, I will use the internet and the resources of the library, looking at journals and books. I may contact Professor Silver to see if he has any resources related to my topic.

Questions for analysis:

What components are included in profile? (e.g. blog, about me, favorites, videos, music, etc.)
What sort of profile picture is shown? (e.g. sexually suggestive, face, object, etc.)
What colors are used?
Are they associated with femininity or masculinity?
What images are included? (e.g. cars, celebrities, friends)
Are they associated with femininity or masculinity?
What written text is included?
What is said in “About me”?
What is said in “Who I’d like to meet”?
What are their interests, favorites, etc.?
What is stated for Status, Orientation, Body Type, and Children?
What sort of gender identity, if any, does the overall profile suggest? How/in what way?
How are women and men portrayed within the profile? (e.g. in pictures, in text)
Is there an apparent purpose for the profile? (e.g. looking for a relationship)
What are the significances of the elements included in the profile?
How does the content of the women’s pages compare with the content of the men’s pages?
What are the implications of my findings?

Lacanalysis

2007-11-20T23:30:00.000-06:00

Word du jour: lacanalysis

The Lacanian-inflected psychoanalysis that has dominated film theory in the academy for several years now is usually presented as the alternative to a classically Freudian film criticism. Too often in the lacanalysis of films, however, will-of-the-wisp theoretical positions are read back into films with such iron rigidity that some of the most salient aspects of a film are entirely overlooked.

One of my favorite Spanish words from my Sociology of Public Communication class was neohegelianismo.

Psychoanalysis is so not my thing. Argh. Well, if I get a C on this paper and full credit on the next one, I'll still have a solid A in the class.

Craziness

2007-11-20T02:23:00.000-06:00

I am exhausted and unmotivated. I want to go back to El Salvador. I do not want to write about psychoanalysis because I don't get it and it's weird. I also don't want to have to do all the other things I have to do in the next few weeks. And even when I'm done I'll be freaked out by the fact that I'll only have one semester left.

Tomorrow is a Digital Literacy Taskforce meeting. I always enjoy those, enough to sacrifice that bit of sleep. I'll have to leave a bit early to go to work, but it's all right.

So, I had dinner with Fr. Privett, the other ACEs, and the Public Service Honors minors. That was fun. I was expecting the non-ACEs to have questions prepared for Fr. Privett, but they definitely appeared to have nothing, and it seemed like the conversation was carried most by the ACEs. Yay for us. I wish people had challenged Privett more, but I kept expecting the Public Service people to do it, and they didn't. I liked almost all of what he said. I usually do. His words are wonderful, but sometimes his actions aren't so great.

Now I'm falling asleep, and I have so much to do!