My future

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.

brief update

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

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.

Read more here.

My day

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!

A day's work

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!

Two Weeks in Texas

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.")

JVC Job Description

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.

St. Anthony Foundation visit to USF

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.