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.")

I'm in Texas!

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

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

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!

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

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."

Tag Cloud

I did a tag cloud (thanks to TagCrowd.com) based on the text of all my blog entries from 2008 (excepting super-common English words and words built into the Blogger interface), and this is what I got:

archive article available books brewster class community companies content cool copyright davies digital display excellent farm flickr forum francisco free global google immigration important information interesting internet issues kahle library life literacy lot love media national number online open page people photos pretty probably public pupusas reading really rights san service social someone something space stop story street students studies sure talk technology things think used user usf war website week work world year youtube

created at TagCrowd.com

I love my tag cloud. Library and people stand as the most common words, which I think is a fantastic reflection on my values. Books, digital, photos, and USF are runners-up. Some common words reflect my mediocre vocabulary (lot, really, something, things). I love the sequence in descending size, "library literacy lot love" (with a tiny "life" sticking itself in there).

Clearly, most of my posts have been related to my Digital Literacy class, but my blog entries have rarely felt like assignments (at least not in the burdensome sense). I've had a wonderful time doing this blog and this class. I'm happy that I've created something that I like and find interesting.

This class was never about telling us what to do - it was about encouraging us to do something, to use these technologies in ways that work for us. For me, that was a lot of announcements about things happening at USF, random interesting resources or information, work I was doing in other classes, and personal reflections.

As the semester comes to a close, the question remains, what will become of this blog? I'm definitely going to continue blogging here, but I expect the common themes will shift as my activities shift. Over the summer you can expect a lot about service-learning, and starting in August you'll hear about JVC and worker's rights issues. I'm sure I'll still talk about digital literacy sorts of things, since that's such a big interest of mine, and of course I'll continue to post about any other random stuff I want to share with the world.

I'm excited.

Photos of the World

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

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

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.)