Category: activism

throwing blame

As I headed out from an appointment on Wednesday, I walked passed a recently delivered newspaper on the ground outside the office building. It was folded up inside a clear plastic bag. The following headline jumped out at me:

ICE¹ sweep nets 5 local immigrants
Officials say those who commit crimes deserve ticket out of town

I bent over to get a better look, and to read the portion of the article² that was visible through the plastic. I was disturbed. The headline and the article seemed to suggest that immigrants are criminals.

A closer reading of the article revealed that in fact the individuals who had been arrested were charged with various crimes, some of them more serious than others, and in addition were immigrants. (Well, actually, they were tracked down because they were immigrants who had committed these crimes.)

At the same time, the article did contain various subtle and not-so-subtle suggestions that illegal immigrants are somehow menacing. Take this section about the reactions of a local police chief:

“I don’t have a problem with them going around and trying to round up these illegal immigrants,” said [town] Police Chief […]. “Illegal immigration just can’t be tolerated.”

With two convicted criminals from his town arrested, the chief said it’s high time the government start getting illegal aliens off the streets. The group has largely been overlooked in the past, “creating a problem on a couple of angles that people don’t want to look at,” he said.

[Town] Police are seeing some crimes increase with illegal immigration, particularly unlicensed automobile operation charges.

One overarching problem I have with the article is the way the discourse is framed. A careful reading of the article shows that the particular individuals arrested had been convicted of crimes. But let’s face it. Not everyone takes the time to read articles closely. It would be all too easy for a reader to be left with the impression that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes, and that illegal immigrants are particularly threatening. Consider this phrase, taken out of its context:

crimes increase with illegal immigration.

No discussion of the complexity of the issues and no contrary viewpoints were offered. The tone of the article is congratulatory towards the ICE. A casual reader would have the impression that the general public attitude towards this ICE sweep is of approval. That the issues are clearcut. Even that the arrest of these individuals is just the surface of the festering problem of “criminal aliens”.

The article, as well as many ostensibly neutral reportings of issues relating to immigration in the media, reflects a subtle undercurrent of anti-immigrant sentiment. (And don’t even get me started on the venomous hardcore anti-immigration set.)

This increased xenophobia quite honestly reminds me of other dark times in our world’s history. When things look dark, whether it’s because of plague or economic depression or threats of war, people look for someone to blame. When the issues are complex, it is hard to pinpoint the source of the problem. What it is easy to do is pick some group to shoulder the blame. Communists. Gypsies. Jews. Witches.

Our country is at war. Gas prices and living expense are rising. Homelessness and unemployment rates are high. Many people are finding it hard to make ends meet. People want answers. People want solutions. But because these are not quick or easy to achieve, people want to blame. It’s so much easier to blame the other, because blaming those that are too close to us seems not to accomplish anything. Lately, immigrants, especially those that have violated current immigration laws, have been offered up and targeted for blame.

The issue of immigration is one that I think about often, though I have not yet ventured to write on the topic. It’s been hard to work myself up it, even though I have many thoughts I’d like to write down. For the most part, though, I write about fairly lightweight topics on this blog. This is because I write primarily for my own amusement and for the potential entertainment of others. I like to write with humor, even when the topics touch on seriousness. But I just can’t find anything funny about the growing hate and intolerance evidenced in the discussion of immigration issues.

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¹ US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

² Note: The online headline reads: Immigrants face deportation³

³ Note (added later): I forgot to mention that I stopped to buy my own copy of the paper on my way home, so that I could read the article more closely. Which is how I noticed the two different headlines.

putting my money where my mouse is

About a month ago, I wrote a bit about mouse-based activism, suggesting that even clicking on links can be a way to make a small difference: authors who write about issues or causes that concern them feel heartened by getting traffic, and motivated to write, and do, more.

Of course, there are more direct ways to make a difference. Volunteering. Getting involved in local politics. Or going to Africa to help children orphaned and villages devasted by the AIDS crisis. Not all of these options are equal, nor do they seem equally possible for all of us. However, one more way we can make a difference is to give. If not our time and energy, then the other stuff. You know the stuff I mean.

Here’s the story. Jen of one plus two and Mad of Under the Mad Hat are about to celebrate the 6 month mark of their online marriage. For their wedding, they asked attendees to give a gift of a post about an issue of social justice. And so the Just Posts were born. (Hey, does that mean it was a shotgun wedding?) On the 10th of each month since then, they have rounded up a collection of posts relating to social justice and all kinds of activism.

This time, they are requesting not just words as gifts, but something a little more substantial. They’ve set up a gift registry of sorts. Jen has identified a small non-profit that is doing amazing work in a village in Africa. Mad has written up information about another organization that also is dedicated to supporting grassroots projects in response to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Both women have written eloquently about the crisis, and the need for action. (Did you know that 13 million children have been orphaned due to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and that this number is steadily rising?)

This endeavor is also a kind of experiment. Marketers have already figured out that blogs are good real estate for ads. Spammers have figured out that they can try to hawk their cheap crap and porn through unwitting bloggers. But what about the power of bloggers themselves to make a difference about things that matter to them?

I’m planning to make a donation. If you’d like to also, you can follow the links from jen or Mad, or go right to the sources. (Open Arms or the Stephen Lewis Foundation. To help track, put “Just Post” in the “company” line of the donation form.)

Finally, at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to be a comment whore, ah, what the hell. I’m a comment whore. But I’m going to up the ante and increase my donation by $5.00 for each comment I get on this post (before Sunday, June 10th) that contains the word…pants.

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putting my money where my mouth is

Yick. That sounds gross. I will not actually be eating money, or putting any in my mouth. But I will be eating lots and lots of other green stuff.

I’ve taken the produce plunge and signed up for a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) share. This means that I’ve paid a subscription¹ price to get regular assortments of freshly harvested vegetables from a local farm. In doing so, we’re not only going to be getting lots of really good, seriously fresh vegetables, we’re supporting a local organic farmer in her efforts to farm sustainably.

I’d been planning to try to buy more local produce this year, and was thinking of making trips to some local farmstands rather than forking over my usual baskets of money to Whole Foods. However, when I came across a post at Can we kick the bar here? about CSAs a few weeks ago, I realized that this could be something for me. I followed the link to look for CSA opportunities near me.²

I’d heard of CSAs before (though hadn’t retained the name of them) from my sister, who knows a thing or two about vegetables (especially about cooking them). A friend of hers had signed on to a CSA a few years ago, and started a blog to chronicle her vegetable adventures: Vegetablog. But somehow, it didn’t sink in as something I wanted do until I read that other post.

So, tomorrow, we start. We’ll head out to the farm and collect our veggies. Then will come the trickier part.

I realize that I’m in for a big challenge. For me, for the past few years, cooking has usually involved throwing some brown rice in the rice cooker. That’s when I’m getting more complicated than a bowl of cereal. I’ve gotten a bit better with making food for Phoebe, and have regularly steamed up vegetables for her. But this endeavor will be big. Big. I do have a plan, though. I’m hoping to have friends over for dinner at least every couple of weeks to help us eat our vegetables. And what we can’t finish off, I’ll hopefully be able to pawn off on my guests. Every dinner guest can take home a head of lettuce or a parsnip as a parting gift.³

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¹ Oops, almost typed prescription. “I’m sorry, those vegetable are not sold over the counter.”

² I’d also like to share that I came across that post by way of reading the last round up of Just Posts. So I’d like to offer this up as evidence that writing about issues that matter to you can make a difference.

³ So, if you are a local friend, you’ll be hearing from me soon about getting over here to get your veggies on. If you are a long-distance friend, and planning on travelling to New England in the next few months, you also get an invitation.

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a tale of two buildings

I’m a grad student at a large urban university in the American Northeast. This school has many buildings. Some big, some small. Some old, some new. This is the story of two buildings.

Building A and Building B are neighbors. They live on the same major street that runs through the center of the university. Between them runs a small street.

Both buildings are academic buildings, filled with classrooms and offices for faculty and staff.

Building A is an older building. It’s of a moderate size. It’s got character, mind you, but it’s a bit run down. Well, in some ways it’s quite run down. The heating and air conditioning are quirky, so it’s usually too hot or too cold. The stairways are narrow, and the elevators often on the fritz.

Building B is a newer building. Taller. Concrete. Modern. When you walk in, you are greeted by a cavernous entryway, tiled in marble. In the center is a large metallic abstract sculpture, somewhat evocative of a globe. Everything is expansive and expensive. Shiny.

When you walk into Building A, the space that you enter is a bit dimly lit. There’s a somewhat dingy carpeted sort of lounge area with some cushioned seats in front of you, and to your right, there’s a an area with a linoleum floor and a few cafeteria-style tables and chairs. Building A has a few vending machines: a soda machine, a candy and snack machine, and one of those hot beverage machines that can give you a watery cup of hot chocolate or a cup of coffee that you might turn to in a fit of caffeine desperation, but would never choose to drink.

In Building B, though, you can stroll up the sweeping double stair case with its wide marble steps to the second floor, where you can buy a scone and a caramel macchiato at a Starbucks. Or you can opt to get a more substantial lunch, or perhaps a light salad, at the gourmet soup and sandwich shop next to the Starbucks.

Building B is a showcase building for the university. Higher ups in the administration have installed their offices in part of the building. Building B often provides venues for important guest lecturers and other high-profile university events.

Building A is a respectable building, but next to Building B, it looks downright shabby.

These two buildings have in common that they house academic departments and graduate programs that focus on investing in the future. One of these two buildings is called the School of Management, and houses the business programs. The other building is called the School of Education, and houses teaching programs. Do I even need to tell you which building is which?

I’m really not making this up. The two buildings really do face each other, often seeming to me as some sort of concrete and brick manifestations of the very attitudes and trends of our society. Education programs are underfunded, schools are underfunded. Meanwhile, the focus of society is on the business of making money.

So many of our schools are struggling to make do. Many classrooms are overcrowded, many schools are short of up-to-date textbooks and resources. But a good school is not just about the size of the classroom and the quality and quantity of materials: a good school needs good teachers. It’s saddened me over the years to learn of so many bright and idealistic people who enter teaching, only to suffer burnout. The public schools, and especially the city schools, lead to the fastest burnout. Among many factors that contribute to this problem is that teachers get the short end of the stick in our society in terms of pay and prestige. In spite of the difficulty of the task, the need for commitment, the knowledge, patience and strength required to do this incredibly important work, public school teachers are typically not paid well. Certainly, they are not getting the sort of income that those who choose to follow career paths laid out in business professions.¹

Those who enter education programs, who choose to become educators, are often considered impractical dreamers. Sometimes it’s assumed that they aren’t motivated enough, or even bright enough, for other career options. It is taken for granted that teachers will not get paid particularly well.

Let’s face it. Our society values money. And pay is often a reflection of prestige. And teachers are just not getting as much of either of those as they deserve for their contribution to society.

This is just to say that I hope for a day when the pride that universities show in their education programs equals that of business programs. But in order to see that shift, our society will need to re-evaluate attitudes towards education professions.

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¹ From the U.S. Bureau of the Census.²
Earnings for “Management, professional, and related occupations”

  • Median: $45,620 Mean: $59,139

    • Earnings for “Education, training, and library occupations”

  • Median: $31,555 Mean: $34,553

    • ² I seem to be developing an addiction to using footnotes in my posts.

    good for the heart

    With all the cheese I’ve been serving up this week, I can imagine that some of you might be getting concerned about the cholesterol levels. Well, this should help. Might I suggest that you get yourself a helping of this month’s round of Just Posts? One again, they’ve been served up tastefully by the fabulous folks of One Plus Two and Under the Mad Hat. Just click on the button with the purple bird, and you’ll be presented with plenty of links to whole lot of posts that speak to the same thing: making the world a better place. The Just Posts are good reading, good for what ails us, and certified to be 100% cholesterol-free.

    justpostapril

    And just in case that’s not enough enticement, please consider the following:

    Clicking on those links says you care. (Sorry if that sounds cheesy.)

    There’s so much going on in the world that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and overburdened. There are so many wrongs that need to be addressed. It’s all too much for any one person, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you can’t do enough to help. You may not be able afford to give money, especially to every cause you think deserves it. You may not have time to volunteer, and there are so many groups anyhow. You may not have the energy or know-how to fight the system over the issues. But let me share a secret.

    Clicking on those links actually helps.

    Think about giving an impassioned speech to a nearly empty auditorium. Now think about how encouraging it is to be surrounded by people who care about what you have to say. Clicking on the links is like a virtual round of applause for the authors. Thouse clicks count.

    Encouraging others to write about what they believe in, act on what they believe in, fight for what they believe in. That matters, my friend.

    Read some of those words. Even if you don’t have time to read everything, you can still see what people have to say.

    So click on some links.

    Think of it as mouse-based activism.

    I am not an “I am not a plastic bag”

    Mind you, this is not to say that I am a plastic bag.

    But I have to share some silliness that’s come to my attention regarding the whole shopping bag debate. Since posting a few times about my own battles against plastic shopping bags, my blog has gotten a surprising number of search engine hits for the phrase “I am not a plastic bag.” Seeing as I live under a rock, I’d missed all the public hooha on the topic, and so the phrase seemed more than a little bizarre to me. Were there individuals out there suffering from identity crises whereby they needed to affirm their own non-plastic-bag status? bag_100×110.jpg

    As it turns out, a whole bunch of people, though they are not themselves plastic bags, think that they need to buy a high-fashion accessory in order to avoid using wasteful plastic bags.

    Designer Anya Hindmarch has designed a bag, the “I am not a plastic bag” bag. This is a bag, which is not a plastic bag, that advertises its non-plastic bagness through the words “I am not a plastic bag,” which are emblazened across the bag, which, as it turns out, is not plastic. They are not only not plastic, but apparently they are all the rage. Check out this bit from the FAQ page:

    How can I buy I’m Not A Plastic Bag?
    We have been overwhelmed by the success of this project. The UK limited edition brown bags have now completely sold out in the UK.

    Apparently, folks are even selling these bags on ebay for oodles of money. There have been scandalous exposés decrying that the bags, though not plastic, are not produced especially ethically, nor are they produced in a particularly environmentally friendly way.

    What I find more disturbing is that this buying frenzy not only smacks of unneccessary consumerism, but also smacks of a fad.

    I’m not alone in these worries. As supporting evidence that the frenzy is about a fashion fad rather than reflecting conservationist intentions, one commenter on this blog post wrote:

    my daughter has one and she loves it she takes it everywhere with her but surprise surprise not one person has commented on it which has really upset her

    Ugh. I mean, why avoid using plastic bags if no one is even going to compliment you on your high-fashion anti-plastic-bag accessories?

    While I applaud celebrities and other influential figures (who are likely not plastic bags) attempting to spread conscience and consciousness about environmental and social issues, does it really have to boil down to just another product?

    paper or plastic?

    When I lived in France for a couple of years when I was growing up, people generally never got bags with purchases. Sometimes you even had to pay extra to get a bag at the grocery store. People would instead bring their own baskets or bags. Oftentimes, string bags. These really cool, very expandable bags made of a string mesh. They could fit tons of groceries. Well, if not tons, a lot more weight than you’d expect. And certainly a lot more weight than the flimsy plastic grocery bags.

    When I saw string bags available for sale at a large health-food oriented grocery store in a nearby town, I was very excited. I bought some.

    I was quite pleased with myself, and my new motivation to conserve and reduce waste. Whenever we’d go shopping at that granola store, when we’d get to the checkout counter and they’d ask the big question, “paper or plastic?”, I’d cheerfully answer, “string!” They always took it in stride. Lots of customers were starting to bring their own bags. Not the majority, but I’d look around and see a goodly number of others. After all, this was a store that really marketed environmentalism. They even gave a discount for bringing bags.

    But for some reason, going to the closer-to-home (and cheaper) white-bread supermarket felt like going to a different world. Believe it or not, I had to work myself up to bringing out my bags.

    I’m a funny bundle of insecurities. One thing about me is that I don’t like to stand out. I like to blend into the crowd. It feels safer. I was never popular through highschool, and was decidedly unpopular in junior high school. I was quiet, shy. Different. I moved around a lot growing up. That was part of what made me different. I was an outsider. And I was also a smart kid. Worse, a smart girl. Social death.

    I learned to fade into the background whenever I could. Because in my experience, attention from my peers was usually negative attention. I got picked on. Teased. Ostracized. Occasionally even threatened.

    So when I’d go to the white-bread supermarket in this nearby rural Massachusetts town, I’d often feel like I was back in high school. Showing up from out of town in a new school. Seeing what all the other kids were doing. Trying to stay out of their way. Trying not to get noticed. And nobody, I mean nobody, was bringing bags. People were into their disposable bags. “Pack them light,” they’d say. “I don’t want them breaking.” This was the norm.

    My first step was to start letting the bagger know I didn’t need many bags. They could leave the big items out of the bags.

    “Don’t you want the big bottles in bags? I could double bag them.”

    “No thanks,” I’d say. And I’d cringe when they’d still give me a bag for a single loaf of bread or a bottle of shampoo (“to keep it separate”), a dozen bags for a fairly moderate purchase. I’d feel disappointed with myself, unpacking the groceries, and adding the latest wads of bags to the ever-growing stash of plastic bags to reuse.

    So I made the leap. One day, I brought out the bags at my white-bread supermarket. And when the bagger asked “paper or plastic,” I explained that I didn’t need either. I had my own bags. I mean, I really had to explain. A pioneer.

    It’s been a few years now that I’ve been bringing out the string at my local supermarket. And it’s gotten easier. Some of the cashiers and baggers occasionally don’t even seem surprised when I bring them out. I’d like to think that someone else out there also brings their own bags. Maybe. I’ve actually never seen anyone else.

    The funny thing is, I feel like using the string bags does a lot more good than the plastic or paper it saves. It’s been part of finding my voice. I’m making a choice to reduce waste that people can see, that others can notice. And they do notice. The cashiers, the baggers, and the sometimes even the other customers.

    And what’s really made me think lately is that this step I’ve made has made it easier for me to take other steps in reducing waste. I notice more when I make wasteful consumer choices. I notice more when I buy products with excess packaging. And I start changing my buying habits.

    Then I’ve noticed other ways that I have been allowing wastefulness to happen in my life, in our house. The piles of junk mail. Those catalogs I never look at that usually go right into the recyclables bag. I made the step to call some of the catalog companies, and have them take me off their mailing list. It was liberating. I use fewer household disposables. I’m not perfect, by any means. But I’ve reduced. And each reduction has been a little bit easier.

    Taking this one tiny little step has made me think.

    And this thinking has me thinking. That in the fight for making change in the world, we can focus on the small things as well as the big. The small battles are worth fighting, too. Those small actions can create ripples of change.