Presentation Reflection

So there's been a lot going on, and we've been working to summarize some of our experiences for our presentation, which was last night. I think it went well. And afterward, we had a reception with our families and faculty and graduates of the program to discuss re-entry.

There's really one thing I want to say from the presentation, but first I'll summarize a little bit of it. We talked about a lot of different things. Our individual topics are the most important. Erin talked about the structures of health care and jobs and how we cannot blame the victim when one in six Americans does not have health care (and that's before the economic crisis) and how minimum wage jobs prevent people from getting health care through the government without providing it through the job. One her points that I feel is really important is that, even with the economic incentive to not work, people want to work because there's a sense of pride. She quoted one woman on the bus who said, "As long as I have my job, I know who I am."

Tara continued with the theme of the structure causing problems through her experiences at the Contact Center working to implement policy changes. She argued that the system (defined broadly as governmental policies) as it is tries to fit people into it rather than working to benefit people.

My'eka discussed the problem of education in OTR, how there used to be three elementary schools, but now they're all combined into one. Meanwhile, they are building a $26 million state of the art arts school for K-12, audition required. It's right across from Washington Park, but I'm sure the majority of students won't be from OTR. She asked if it was worth it to attend these schools. Specifically, if it was worth it to attend school for eight years and not even know how to read. Probably not.

After My'eka, I discussed how education is related to housing, and how suburbs were created through economic segregation because of FHA policies. I also mentioned how economic segregation makes it harder for people stuck in the inner cities to get jobs because of the lack of transportation or difficulty and expense of transportation to get to the suburbs where the jobs are. I then explored the idea of creating economically desegregated neighborhoods and the advantages and disadvantages of attempting that. Advantages: we help our neighbors with an attitude of neighborliness rather than charity, and we have a more even tax base for the schools, and we work to improve the schools because they're our schools just like suburban parents are able to volunteer and so forth. Disadvantages: people with money can think they're better than those without money and make others feel inferior, and those who have the money to choose where to live have to make the choice in a socially conscious way while still doing their jobs as parents to watch out for the best interests of their children. Nonetheless, I argued that this option was something at least worth exploring more.

Austin argued the value of personal relationships in making this semester worthwhile. He talked about his friend Sommy whom he met on the Greyhound bus. Sommy was the ex-con on a bus to Texas searching for a job. But Austin discovered that Sommy is so much more than that, and they became friends. Austin argued that we have to look beyond what we would see to see that people are so much more than their bank accounts. They are so much more than their addictions or lacks of education or any of the many more things we use to judge them, to separate ourselves from them.

Chris also spoke about finding the similarities rather than the differences. He worked at the Drop Inn Center (a homeless shelter) with the men's recovery program. He discovered the similarities that matter more than the differences. He said that we are around 97% the same, but we focus on the differences in order to create another world in which that person's life doesn't affect me. He argued that it does affect us and that we do need to care.

Graham also spoke of her experience with people. She spoke of one woman she worked with at the Learning Center who she admired greatly. This woman had overcome a lot and was determined to get her GED. But during the semester their time was cut short because this woman was struggling with addiction and had fallen away. Graham said that she was convinced that her friend would succeed against addiction and succeed in getting her GED. Graham's main point was how much it helped her getting to know this woman before learning about her addiction. She saw the rest of her first. What most struck me about what Graham said was, "It doesn't matter that I wouldn't have judged her for her addiction. It only matters that I wouldn't have wondered 'What more?'"

After the presentation, we had a question. This particular question is what I really want to discuss. Someone asked for a prescription to solve the problems we'd defined. We all didn't really answer. I said we need to spend time asking deeper questions. Tara said we need to redefine it so that the people aren't the problem but the system is. Others said similar things and that we need to get to know the people. So he clarified, asking for a specific prescription. He used My'eka's school system as an example, so she answered it. I can't remember exactly what she said, and I don't know if he was actually satisfied. But the thing that struck me is that he was asking for a simple fix. (Chris Hale brought this up with me after the presentation, and we discussed it briefly.) But throughout the presentation, it was more like we were asking for a systematic overhaul and a complete societal change. Everything is so interrelated that it's not a simple fix. We've created a society of apathy and greed and complacency. (This isn't everyone, but it's so easy to fall into, too. I'm often right in there with it.) We've created a "sound-bite" culture rather than a culture of investigative journalism and investigative reading. We would rather watch TV than learn about how our world works and our place in it. (I'm not saying that TV is bad because it's useful to unwind. But it's bad when we conform our lives to it and spend all of our time watching it rather than wondering what more.) Chris argued that everything in someone else's world affects us. But that also means that everything I do affects a million other people, probably more. Every choice I make affects the entire world. And it doesn't matter how small that choice may seem: walking around the corner to the bank instead of driving, buying locally grown produce and eating in season, buying clothing made in a sweatshop, volunteering to rehab a house or donating food. Everything has it's effects. It's hard and it takes too much time to find it. And we have a media business that goes for the quick news (sound-bites) and easy to sell "news" (celebrity gossip) rather than looking into real issues. We have a culture that demands that. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said at Xavier this year, "We have the world's best entertained and least informed society." It's quite frankly hard to find good news anywhere. One of the breaking stories on the Indianapolis newspaper's website earlier this week was "Aniston nude on magazine cover." That's not news. That's not real. That's not important. We need to demand a return to true journalism (even as the media is changing so quickly due to the internet and blogs - like this one). We need a society that stops being okay with not searching for more truth. Someone argued just before this election that there needs to be a test of the Constitution for voting eligibility. Sorry, but knowing the Constitution is not enough. Knowing society and how things affect each other and people and everything that goes along with that is just as important. But how do you test that? You can't do it in an unbiased manner. So we can't do it. Arguably, you can't test the Constitution in an unbiased way either.

The Cincinnati Enquirer had an awesome editorial a few weeks ago, just after the execution of Gregory Bryant-Bey. That is the execution that we held vigil outside of. It argued that we need to be aware of executions and we need to be more involved. The state is killing in our names, and we too often approach it with apathy. Let's extend this. We are too apathetic of a society. In that sense, my prescription is a complete overhaul of what we expect of ourselves and what we expect of others. We need a complete overhaul of this desire to serve rather than to form relationships. Relationships are what it's all about.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary." That's what we've been doing this semester. That's what our society needs to do a lot more. That's why this semester is so important to the university and so beneficial to its students.

Black Friday

Yesterday was Black Friday. Yesterday a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a herd of customers (and, yes, I'm using "herd" intentionally). There were other incidents related to shopping (two people were shot to death at a Toys R Us in California), but the Wal-Mart incident is by far the most outrageous. Shootings are bad, but those are much more intentioned deaths than a trampling. I'm not discounting the tragedy of those, but I just want to examine the trampling.

A job at Wal-Mart is a pretty crappy job. So this person came in to work early the day after Thanksgiving to work a long day at a crappy place of employment. Only instead of going home that day, this person ended up dead. I don't think that any of those who trampled this person had any sort of malicious intent, it's just a sad commentary on our society that we are so engrossed in getting the big sales on Black Friday that we end up killing someone for them. How appalling! No material good is worth anyone's death. Anyone. I just hope that this might wake some people up.

**UPDATE** New information: The Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death was a temporary worker, hired through a temp agency. Which means that he (now I know that it was a man) was earning less than Wal-Mart's already meager salary. And they're saying they can't press charges because it was not just one person but rather a crowd and it's really hard to identify anyone by the security camera. So essentially nothing will happen with this legally. (Which is yet another way the criminal justice system is unjust - shoppers who kill someone, a low-wage worker, won't get charged with any crime.)

"Thankful"

"Somedays we forget
To look around us
Somedays we can't see
The joy that surrounds us
So caught up inside ourselves
We take when we should give.

So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for."

This song is a Thanksgiving song from Josh Groban's Christmas CD (so basically I decided it was a Thanksgiving song). But it's basically true throughout the entire holiday season and all year. So I had to listen to it for Thanksgiving, and it started to resonate with me.

The beauty of today's holiday is that we take the time to be thankful. We stop forgetting to look around us, and we see the joy that surrounds us. We take the time to count our blessings. Part of counting our blessings is in remembering those who aren't as fortunate. It's easiest to remember our blessings by acknowledging what other people don't have. (On the contrary, we can think about what we don't have by looking at what others do have - which is what our society teaches us to do most of the time.) Counting my blessings in seeing what others don't have is something I've been learning to deal with quite a bit this semester. It leads sometimes to feelings of guilt, especially when I think about the injustices that led to the inequalities. But it's not about that. The fact is that I have been given great opportunities that others haven't. It does no good to anyone for me to feel guilty. I think Josh Groban said it well in this song when he sang, "It's up to us to be the change / and even though we all can still do more / there's so much to be thankful for." It's a double-sided challenge: (1) I have to act. I have to hope and work for the change. But (2) I have to just be thankful for what I have. And for some of the people I'm living with this semester, the biggest thing we have to be grateful for is that we have been given the opportunities to make the change, to do something to improve the world.

The world is not perfect, but it's beautiful. And today we take time to give thanks for it's imperfect beauty: our imperfect families, our imperfect friends, our imperfect opportunities. Notice how none of that is material. I don't believe materialism makes us happy. I don't know how many people really believe that things or money make us happy beyond the basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, and maybe a few frills. But we get so caught up in the money and the materialism. So today we step back. Today we remember the people and the opportunities and the basic necessities that we have, and we give thanks. Maybe we should do it more than once a year, but I'm grateful that we do it once a year. I believe it makes us more happy to count our blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful for YOU!

Love,
Emily

Beautification and Property Values

Gentrification. It's a key happening right now. Is gentrification good? Is it bad? What is it? Dictionary.com defines gentrification as, "the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses." That's as good of a definition as any. It shows both major viewpoints. Gentrification is happening in Over-the-Rhine right now. Actually, it's strange that it hasn't happened yet with its close proximity to downtown and its beautiful old architecture. Gentrification isn't about mixed income; it's about changing the entire feel and everything of a neighborhood. But that just moves the poverty elsewhere.

This weekend in Chicago we got an interesting view of gentrification. We met with three students of the Masters of Social Justice program at Loyola University. As a part of the program, each student has to do a two-semester internship. Nathan, one of the students who spoke with us, works with a group in the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, which is where we stayed, but we didn't have an opportunity to explore too much. In this neighborhood, there's a law or ordinance that says residents of the area can take vacant lots and begin gardening on them. This makes the area nicer, which improves the property values, which raises property taxes, which raises rents, which pushes lower-income people out. And so this sort of work is stuck in a dilemma: you want people to work toward beautifying their neighborhoods so that they can live in nicer areas. But that beautification can essentially push them out of the neighborhood and cause the neighborhood to gentrify. That really sucks. It's yet another example of how our society is set up to benefit those who own things, those who already have money.

Chicago and so forth

Wow, the semester's really flying by. Now it gets to be busy time. Next weekend we're going to Chicago to learn about urban social justice issues from a different city's perspective. Actually, last we were supposed to go last weekend, but we had a miscommunication and didn't have anything planned. So we had to postpone the trip. The Nicaragua students had already planned to stay at our apartment that weekend for their pre-semester retreat, so we had to leave. We stayed at this former convent nearby, and then we did service Saturday morning with OTRCH, the low-income housing cooperative that we rent our apartment from. Then we went to an environmental film festival at the Museum Center. It was really good! Then we had dinner back at the former convent and came back to go to a musical at a theatre in OTR. It was Reefer Madness, and it was based on the really old documentary. It was really funny and really good. Sunday we went to a farm. It's actually surrounded by neighborhoods, and it's a working farm. They do educational stuff and also raise crops and livestock. We got to clean out sheep pens. We did two, and it took us a lot less time than Farmer Tom (who's working on his Ph.D. in something related to farmwork) said it would have taken his staff. Then we came back and chilled and did homework.

We're still working on the itinerary for Chicago, but we're making progress. It helps to know that we're supposed to be planning it. We're probably going to talk to a guy with Chicago Public Housing and some students/a professor from Loyola Chicago. We might be able to meet up for dinner or something with Rebecca, depending on how things work out. (She doesn't want to ride the El into the city all by herself, but we might meet her and a friend at Greektown.)

As for school, it's getting really busy. We have a presentation for class tomorrow and I have, I think, seven papers due before the end of the semester. Some people have more or less because two of them are for my class that's not a part of the program. Then, after we turn in our service learning paper, we have to start preparing for our presentation. Luckily we'll have Thanksgiving break to work on it all since at least most of us are staying here. I'm trying to stay productive but not stressed. I worked most of the day yesterday but didn't feel like I accomplished that much. Of course, most of it was reading, so that might have to do with it. So I'm going to keep trying to be productive.

Yesterday they (kind of) surprised me, and we celebrated my unbirthday. I had figured out that Erin was planning unbirthday celebrations for those whose birthdays aren't during the semester, and I figured out some parts of it. But they surprised me that they got me two books. It was a surprise because we didn't get Graham a present on her actual birthday (but they said they had fun in the bookstore picking them out). Graham wrapped them in newspaper, which she got from me (although she told me I wouldn't get it back). One's on theology relating to poverty (which is my unit in my Jesuit theology class right now) and one's on organic foods. So I'll add them to my incredibly long reading list. Then Graham, Austin, and I went to part of a concert that was a fundraiser for a local non-profit cafe. They were high school bands, and we saw parts of two of them. But they were pretty good. I had fun.

That's about it. Those are our plans.

Presentation

I think it's only fair to those of you who have been reading my blog this year to invite you to our end-of-the-semester presentation. It's just about a month away right now (which is crazy and sad and scary), so I figure I should give you ample warning. I know that a number of you are not from Cincinnati, so I don't expect you to show up, but if you're interested, I would love to have you there. My group would love to have you there. Those who are my Xavier friends, you better be there! (But I'll love you anyway, even if you can't make it.)

Anyway... the presentation is on December 12 at 4 p.m. in Kelley Auditorium in Alter Hall at Xavier University.

Presidential Election

I want to offer just a few reflections on yesterday and last night.

Everyone's talking about this as such a historic event (I can't bring myself to say "an historic"), but I'm most struck by a few certain things.

First, the amount of voter turnout. From early voting all the way through yesterday, people were insistent on being a part of this election. The Obama Campaign, I think, did an excellent job of motivating voters not to become complacent and just assume that their votes wouldn't matter. I got an email with a fake news report video blaming me as the one voter who didn't vote in a state that McCain won by one vote for an Obama loss. Obama didn't get too confident. It's not just Obama, though. Both sides turned out record numbers of voters. I'm not sure that everyone realized how important voting is or everyone just wanted a say in the historic event (although I lean toward the latter), but either way a high voter turnout is good.

Last night we watched returns, and then the speeches. I really liked both of them. McCain was gracious in his defeat and called upon all of his supporters to support Obama as the president of one nation. I honestly didn't expect less from him. I think his campaign had gotten away from him when it turned negative. I do admire McCain. Although I voted for Obama, I think McCain would have made a good president as well.

I also liked most of Obama's speech. He pointed to history in his call to hope, and he spoke words of unity. He said he's going to be the president of all Americans, not just those who voted for him. Assuming he holds true to that promise (which I expect he will, but I'm also a little realistic in that not all people will believe he did when it's all said and done), he will be a great president. Not a perfect president, but a great president.

I've also been amused by facebook statuses. People have been every emotion from upset to angry to joyful in their statuses. The status that struck me most was a friend who said she was "so impressed with John McCain, the only candidate in the last three elections to lose gracefully." As I said, I liked McCain's concession speech. I respect him. In fact, I've said recently that I really wish he had been elected eight years ago. But to claim McCain as the only president to lose gracefully is to forget the circumstances of the previous elections. I'm assuming this friend was referring to this election as one of the last three. So let's begin with the 2000 election. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the presidency. In fact, whether Bush actually won the Electoral vote is up for debate, as the Supreme Court ultimately decided the winner. The system was badly broken in 2000, and wasn't fixed by 2004. Thus, it's understandable that in such a close election, the runners-up would feel cheated by a system, especially by a system that tends to disenfranchise the poor and minorities. If you want more information about that, I'll send you the research paper I just finished writing on the issue. Those circumstances are very important to remember when claiming that those presidential candidates didn't lose gracefully. Arguably, they were just fighting for the votes of everyone who voted to be counted, which would be fighting for the constitutional rights of all American citizens.

Overall, though, what most struck me of everything on facebook was a note from a friend who was in Grant Park last night. She wrote with her frustration at the ungraciousness of some of the Obama supporters in Grant Park. I'll not lie, it's been an emotional fight. For supporters of Obama from the beginning, Sarah Palin was an upsetting nomination. Thus the comment about Sarah Palin just faking it as "a drama queen" when she was shown on the tv crying was an emotional comment. It was made in what was considered a safe place for those comments. I don't believe that the person who made that comment intended for a McCain/Palin supporter to overhear; she made the comment in Grant Park where Obama was to make his speech that night, so I'm sure she assumed that she was surrounded by Obama supporters. On the other hand, it was an insensitive comment to make. A bid for the second-highest office in the United States is an emotional venture. I don't believe Sarah Palin was faking her disappointment. My friend's conclusion was that she simply wanted to see more gracious winners. I agree.

I don't know what is expected as a gracious winner, but I want to attempt to be one. My interpretation is this: I will not gloat. I can celebrate, such as putting up a happy status on my facebook, but I will not rub it in peoples' faces. I will respect differing opinions. I will not start discussions or debates with anyone. I hope that, while slightly biased simply because I'm human, this blog post doesn't come off as offensive to anyone. That's not my intent.

But in return, I expect a few things from the McCain supporters: You are still Americans, and Barack Obama is the American president. He is your president. The least you can do is give him a chance. He hasn't proven himself for good or for bad as president yet. So give him the opportunity to do so before you judge him. And please stop it with the "socialism" talk. I don't believe many of the people who use this catch term really know what it means. Barack Obama, I can promise you, is not a socialist.

I truly hope that we as a nation, as a people can come together as America, an undivided nation in pursuit of making our country and the world a better place. It won't be easy, but I feel hopeful that we will dedicate ourselves to the cause. After all, this world still in need of a lot of improvement.

Newsletter

Link to our newsletter!

http://www.xavier.edu/portal_announcements/pdf/Newsletter_2.pdf

Two Women

This is a poem we read in our Ethics class. It was written in 1973, shortly after the Chilean Revolution. The link is to a video on YouTube (more of an audio recording, with a title on the screen), recorded by Graham and me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzAbkO64jn0



Here's the text:

I am a woman.
I am a woman.

I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory.

I am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched his weight.
I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger.

I am a woman who watched two babies grow into beautiful children.
I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no milk.

I am a woman who watched twins grow into popular college students with
summers abroad.
I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies stretched from no food.

But then there was a man;
But then there was a man;

And he talked about the peasants getting richer by my family getting poorer.
And he told me of days that would be better and he made the days better.

We had to eat rice.
We had rice.

We had to eat beans!
We had beans.

My children were no longer given summer visas to Europe.
My children no longer cried themselves to sleep.

And I felt like a peasant.
And I felt like a woman.

A peasant with a dull, hard, unexciting life.
Like a woman with a life that sometimes allowed a song.

And I saw a man.
And I saw a man.

And together we began to plot with the hope of the return to freedom.
I saw his heart begin to beat with hope of freedom, at last.

Someday, the return to freedom.
Someday freedom.

And then,
But then,

One day,
One day,

There were plans overhead and guns firing close by.
There were planes overhead and guns firing in the distance.

I gathered my children and went home.
I gathered my children and ran.

And the guns moved farther and farther away.
But the guns moved closer and closer.

And then, they announced that freedom had been restored!
And then they came, young boys really.

They came into my home along with my man.
They came and found my man.

Those men whose money was almost gone.
They found all of the men whose lives were almost their own.

And we all had drinks to celebrate.
And they shot them all.

The most wonderful martinis.
They shot my man.

And then they asked us to dance.
And they came for me.

Me.
For me, the woman.

And my sisters.
For my sisters.

And then they took us.
Then they took us.

They took us to dinner at a small private club.
They stripped from us the dignity we had gained.

And they treated us to beef.
And then they raped us.

It was one course after another.
One after another they came after us.

We nearly burst we were so full.
Lunging, plunging—sisters bleeding, sisters dying.

It was magnificent to be free again!
It was hardly a relief to have survived.

The beans have almost disappeared now.
The beans have disappeared.

The rice—I've replaced it with chicken or steak.
The rice, I cannot find it.

And the parties continue night after night to make up for all the time wasted.
And my silent tears are joined once more by the midnight cries of my children.

What has happened to our country?

What has happened to our country? What has happened to our ability to discuss? It has given way to partisanship and divisiveness, to debates and winning (or losing). When the Right condemns the Republicans who endorse Barack Obama for president (most notably, though not only, Colin Powell) rather than listening to their arguments; when the Left makes jokes of Sarah Palin for her misstatements; when honest voters have to abandon their positions on one issue or a few issues for what may be the better overall ticket; when people are so bent on being right that they refuse to listen but instead think about what someone else says only in terms of their response to it, we have a problem. We as a nation have an addiction to being right.

With the election so close, this is going to take on a clearly political overtone. I do want to stress, however, that I am implicating myself as well. I will do my best to implicate "my side" equally. I know that both sides are at fault.

Today at dinner, My'eka passed along an email that someone at the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, her service site, was passing out. More importantly, she passed along a statement of one of the women whom she works with. She said that she has spent her life working on abortion, so she cannot bring herself to vote for a pro-choice candidate. She will not be voting for Barack Obama. The email, however, implied that God wants John McCain to win. I cannot believe that. I'm not saying that God wants Barack Obama to win either. I just don't believe that God is in full support of either candidate. For me, the issue that God has placed on my heart recently is the issue of poverty. Because this is the primary issue that I am working with and surrounded by at this point in my life, I cannot bring myself to support someone who wants to give the rich (who don't need it) more money, widening the income gap, and who supports corporate welfare. I believe that for some people certain issues are more important for them than they are for others. I don't believe either party has a monopoly on being right.

In our dinner/post-dinner discussion, we began to talk about the St. Mary's Pregnancy Center, Planned Parenthood, and abortion. Specifically in our brief research of Planned Parenthood, I was reminded of how despicable they are. Planned Parenthood is a for-profit organization that wants women to have abortions because they make a profit off of the abortions. It is an organization founded on the basis of racism and eugenics and, to a degree, still operates under these principles today, primarily in classism based on the locations of their clinics. While I don't believe that abortion will be a priority issue on either ticket, I'm a little disturbed by it.

This is my condemnation of politics: I believe the Democratic Party has adopted its position on abortion to pander to a certain group of people. I remember when I was probably a freshman or sophomore in high school, although maybe I was still in junior high, there was a bill in the Indiana legislature to require high school health classes to teach the negative aspects of abortion. There was a Democrat who opposed it. I don't understand why. If you're pro-choice (and if that's a feminist position), wouldn't you (or shouldn't you) be pro-educated-choice? Because isn't that the only way to be pro-choice? Our conclusion was that he was probably financially backed by Planned Parenthood or someone of the like. So he was pandering to his financial backers. (We don't know this for sure, but it seemed a logical conclusion.)

But lest you think I'm once sided, Republicans do it as well. Most notably is President Bush's appointees to head national environmental agencies - former lobbyists for coal or gas industries and former executives within those industries, industries that supported his bid for the presidency. Bush's laws haven't helped much either, largely deregulating environmental protections to benefit the industries and hurt the environment (and in turn, our quality of life through air quality, water quality, and other toxic chemicals - such as mercury - that make their ways into our food sources and our bodies).

We as citizens don't do so well either. We have debates rather than discussions. We defend rather than listen. It's about being right or wrong rather than finding the truth. We accept what fits with our positions and deny what doesn't rather than analyze on merit. We don't look into who wrote what article and, more importantly, who funded what study. I've even come across someone who defended his position on one issue through an article that put forth at least three different positions in an attempt to contradict the other side. And he didn't have a problem with that whatsoever.

But the bigger problem I see is the polarization. I felt like I was told to leave the Catholic Church recently in a response I got from a leader in a high school group that I was a member of. He may not have said those words, but he strongly implied it. And all because I posted a link to a document by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a guide to voting, in response to another one not sanctioned by the bishops that simply told people how to vote by picking the issues the author saw as important. The USCCB document mentions many more issues as important, issues that cross the spectrum of political parties, and says that each voter must make up her or his own mind about which issues are of the greatest importance and which issues are most likely to be effected by each candidate's election. To be honest, I'm guilty of it too. I had gotten to the point where I disregarded abortion as an issue because it's not the most important issue in my perspective. I felt that I had to disregard it, even though I had a fully thought-out reason for doing so, to defend myself. I'm coming to realize that I can vote based on other issues while still see abortion as an important issue to consider. And I can respect people more who see abortion as the overriding issue as long as they've considered the other issues. So I'm learning.

I recognize that it has become very obvious in this post where I stand politically. I don't intend for this to be a political post, and I don't want it to be polarizing. I just wonder if we can ever reach a point of discussion and honest respect for other points of view. Can we ever discuss things and begin to come to agreements?

As much of a proponent of journalism as I am, I have to wonder if the media is, to a large degree, to blame. To blame for not doing their jobs, or not doing them well. I overheard a discussion about how there are people who just blatantly lie to us about certain issues. We just accept those statements as facts because of a M.D. or Ph.D after the name. And sometimes the media gives those pieces of "research" the attention they need for people to believe them but doesn't give proper attention to the true research. They don't say who funded each study or what that organization stands for. Those are very important questions to ask because organizations seek to gain something through funding research. Sometimes that leads to false research. The media would rather report on Bristol Palin's pregnancy than on what global warming studies were funded by oil companies and what weren't. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently said at a talk he gave at Xavier that "America has the worlds best-entertained and worst-informed public." It's because the media is so controlled by corporate conglomerations. These corporations seek to make money. A journalist's job should be solely to expose the truth. But it hasn't become that. We don't check facts anymore, even with easy access in the form of websites like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com.

That, I believe, is why our democracy is failing. By the way, democracy is not only about voting on election day, it's also about doing our part in terms of lifestyle, consumer choices, business practices, volunteer activities, etc. Those are just as important, if not more important, than a vote on election day.

One closing comment (which I stole from a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer): We have become such a majority-controlled government that the party that has control by around 1% has 100% control of everything, while the slight minority has to all but sit back and watch. Why don't we work together better? Why should Republicans be completely forgotten just because Democrats have control of Congress? There are still a lot of them too. Why don't our representatives vote issues based on the validity of each issue rather than party lines? (I know this isn't all the time, but it's enough of the time to be a problem.)

Just some thoughts on American politics....

Questions

One of the most interesting things about this semester is making the connections of cause and effect between so many things. So here are a few:

Who thinks of the importance of where we create roads? Yet, as one article I just read for my Community Building class says, roads form the skeleton of our societies. We build up communities based on the roads.

Who thinks of how people are affected by roads? As in, who gets displaced by the creation of roads, particularly interstates? Because most interstates were built after cities were established. To go through the city, the highway has to go through neighborhoods. How do they decide what neighborhoods get to stay and what neighborhoods have to go?

Although there are problems with it, suburbanization isn't inherently bad. It was how it happened that created problems, that isolated people in inner-city communities and caused those communities to deteriorate. Who decided how suburbanization would play out? Who decided that they didn't want to be near people of different income levels than they themselves are? Who in the government decided that it was more beneficial to back loans for new construction in suburban areas for whites than to back loans for the improvements and maintenance of already existing homes? Who decided that it needed to be racialized determining which neighborhoods people could get loans to purchase homes in and who could get those loans?

Why do we claim that racism doesn't exist anymore? Sure, we had the Civil Rights Movement, and things have been a lot better since then. But why don't we recognize that there are still lingering effects passed down to today's generations of the injustices we promoted before the Civil Rights Movement? Racism today often hides behind the language of classism (although sometimes it is more overt).

Most of all, once I acknowledge the injustices, how do I work to fix them? Can we create systemic change? Should we focus on individual levels and simply become do-good people owning do-good businesses and volunteering? What would systemic change look like? How important is passing this knowledge on to others, recruiting their help? Or should I just do what I can to help?

Why is it so much easier to just deny that problems exist than it is to try to help? I mean, I know why, to a degree. But it shouldn't be that way. I should learn to be thankful that my work got me where I am and recognize that someone else didn't have as great of a chance at success with the same amount of work. The fact that I am where I am isn't all my doing. I know that I can't just forsake my education and my ability to further it. That doesn't do any good. So what do I do with it to help, to make a difference?

New Orleans

I got a complaint today that I haven't posted in a while. I know. I was in New Orleans, and then I was trying to catch up. I still am trying to catch up. But it's all but the weekend for me, and I don't have to do a lot for my theology class. So I'll update.

We went to New Orleans the week of fall break. Christine (our trip leader and history professor) was supposed to come with us, but she had a family emergency and had to stay in Cincinnati. Due to that, Jennifer (our service learning professor) and Megan (the assistant to the head of all the academic service learning semesters) came. Chris (our trip assistant, who lives with us) couldn't drive a 15-passenger van to New Orleans by himself, so we all took the Greyhound. Due to family and work events, Jennifer and Megan couldn't be there the entire time we were, so they both got to fly. So Friday night (at around 10 p.m.) we left on the Greyhound bus. We arrived in New Orleans around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. Once we got our vehicle for while we were there, we got lost. (We got lost a lot.) It was nice for a while though to drive through different areas of the city and see them, mostly areas we didn't see on the tour we took later in the week. I specifically remember Mid-City and seeing the mix of houses that were recovered and had people living in them with the houses that still had the mark of the national guard unit that searched that particular house. The dates listed were almost three years to the day of when we drove through. (But those were some of the later houses searched, and many of the dates on other houses were a week or two before.)

We stayed at a Catholic Charities volunteer house in Marrero, just south of the Mississippi River. On the property, which spanned both sides of the street, there were many buildings. It took us a good half an hour and the help of an employee to find the cottage that had a key under the door mat. The house itself was pretty nice. There were four bedrooms, two with two beds and two with four.

Sunday some of us attempted to go to mass. We picked a church from the list of churches in the reference book in the house, and Erin called to make sure we had the right mass schedule. The voicemail said mass was at 11:30, so we got there right at 11:30. As we walked in, they were playing quiet music without words, so we thought it was the beginning of mass. We weren't particularly quiet, and we sat down in the middle of the church. All the sudden, someone realized that the priest and the altar boy were up at the altar preparing it for communion. So we went to half of mass. And we can legitimately blame it on the church.

Sunday we went to the French Quarter and did the tourist thing. We wandered around, bought some things, went to Cafe du Monde for beignets, etc. Megan arrived at the airport and met us at Cafe du Monde, and she and Chris took her stuff to the vehicle. We wandered around some more, and then met up as a group to walk around and possibly find someplace to eat. We walked down to the riverfront, and were walking along the river when Erin misstepped on a crooked brick in the sidewalk and sprained her ankle. So Austin and Chris P. played human crutches while Chris G. and Graham went to get the car. My'eka walked ahead and found a security guard who drove Erin to where the car could meet us. So we ended up just eating at Subway because it was a random place still open by the time we got there.

On Monday we started working with Catholic Charities. We were in a town called Jean Lafitte, which is south of New Orleans. We started out at two different homes. Chris G., Graham, a woman who was helping for a few days named Kelly, and I went to the house of Charles and Theresa. They were the funniest people. Theresa told a lot of jokes. It was really fun to work with them. In their house, we took out the furniture and insulation, salvaging as much as was reasonably possible. Their house was a very small house with just a few rooms. In the middle of the trash piles we were creating, though, Charles cooked us a barbecue. They said they wanted to do something to thank us and that they didn't have a lot of money. It was really sweet. The really frustrating thing for Charles and Theresa is that they had been getting ready to stilt their house. They had the stilts sitting there and were just waiting to have enough money to get the jacks to do it (something like a $3000 expense). And then Hurricane Ike hit and destroyed it.

The other group was gutting another house, what had been a much nicer house. They did a lot of pulling out sheetrock and so forth. We joined them for a little bit when we had finished with Charles and Theresa's house. We worked there for the rest of the day, and then left everything to come back in the morning.

Monday night we took Erin to the hospital to take care of her ankle. We tried to take her to an urgent care center, but the one that we looked up wasn't where it was supposed to be, and the one we found wasn't open. So we finally gave up and just went to the hospital. We found out that it was just a sprain and got real crutches to replace Austin and Chris as the human crutches.

Tuesday morning we returned to the second house in Jean Lafitte, and some people finished it off while others moved on to the next house. Essentially over the course of four days (Wednesdays are in-service days for Catholic Charities employees, so we didn't work), we gutted five houses. Some already had the furniture out, others didn't. One house we worked on Thursday was filled with mold. We had to wear masks (we were provided with them at other sites, but not nearly as strongly encouraged to wear them). We moved out furniture and other belongings, and then begin to rip up floors and rip out walls. Everything had to go. We had to be the ones to throw away the family Bible. This house we worked all the way through - from fully furnished to frame-only.

On Wednesday, we met Jennifer for lunch when she flew in. We went to a restaurant called Mulatte's, a supposedly really good one for traditional New Orleans food. It's just near the waterfront. It was some good food. We had alligator. I think my favorite was Chris's corn shrimp bisque. Then we went back to our cottage and had the tour guide come pick us up. We did a post-Katrina tour with Tours by Isabelle (although Joseph was our tour guide). We drove through downtown and then saw the Ninth Ward, Lakeview, and other areas around the city. Lakeview is starting to rebuild, but the Ninth Ward is all but empty. There are still FEMA trailers sitting around in some areas, but the Ninth Ward doesn't even have that.

Amongst our group (and within myself) there were mixed feelings about the tour. I think it was important and that we learned a lot, but we were also intruding on the fact that so many people lost so much. It was like we were intruding on something sacred. We were staring at people trying to rebuild their lives or at the lives that were destroyed beyond rebuilding.

We also met with a Tulane social work professor (on Tuesday night) and (on Wednesday night) two Tulane students who had grown up locally (at least in the summer). They provided some interesting perspectives and some good conversation.

Thursday night we went back to the French Quarter just to explore a little more and hang out, as well as to get more beignets.

Saturday morning, we arrived at the bus station around 4 a.m. so that Chris could take Jennifer to the airport and drop off the van (Megan had left Friday to get to a family wedding) and take a cab back to the bus station. The bus left around 7:30, and we returned to Cincinnati at 6:15 in the morning on Sunday. When we were in Nashville, we had about an hour layover, so Graham's beautiful family (they are the cutest family EVER) came to meet us at the bus station and bring us food. It was good food too. Sandwiches (really good ones), chips, apples, brownies, and drinks. And then they sent it back with us.

The trip was fun, and we learned a lot. It was also hard work. By Friday, I was taking frequent breaks (and long ones) at the house we were working on. I even almost fell asleep sitting on the stoop out back. Oops.

One thing I loved about the trip was getting to know Jennifer more personally. We heard stories of her son and her family and so forth. And we found out that she makes stereotypical comments too, even though she is an anthropologist and tries to fight stereotypes. We jumped on her hard for one comment that she made. We got her for being ageist and sexist for a comment about "Daddy still bought him a BMW." Ageist because she assumes that he didn't buy it himself, and sexist because dad bought it and not mom. I even realized that it could be racist because she probably wouldn't have said that if he were a black young man. But it was good to have conversations with here, even academic ones, outside of a classroom setting.

Then we're still discussing race/class relations and how they played into who the disaster hit and who received the aid afterward and how the city is rebuilding. Last night in history we had a discussion about it with the other members of our history class. It was definitely valuable to hear their views based on what they knew and how they compared it. We don't claim to be experts on New Orleans; we barely got a glimpse of it. But it's definitely a city (and Katrina a disaster) to use to explore race and class and poverty in the United States. Because it's not concentrated in New Orleans.

The other thing that we learned about was the evacuation itself. So many people blamed those who were stranded on the tops of their roofs for not evacuating, but we forgot to consider the reasons they didn't evacuate. Evacuation is expensive. It was the end of the month, so many people didn't have a lot of money to use to evacuate. If you don't have a car, how are you supposed to get out? There wasn't a lot of public transportation out. One person even got arrested for stealing a bus to try to bus people out of the city. So there are all these factors involved that so many of us don't have to deal with in our daily lives, so we don't think about them. Should they have evacuated? Yes, of course. But are there extenuating circumstances that we need to take into consideration before we pass judgment. I certainly believe so.

Church, Religiosity, and Injustice

During this morning's homily at mass (at St. Francis Seraph), the priest was talking about religiosity versus true faith. This weekend's gospel reading was the parable of the two sons where one says to his father he will do what he's asked and then doesn't while the other says he won't and then does. The point the priest was trying to make is that our rituals don't mean anything if they're just empty rituals.

This made me think of my home church. I am currently very disenchanted by the parish where I grew up. Before this summer, we went to St. Joseph's Church in the West End twice - once on the Urban Plunge retreat and once on our preparation retreat for this semester. This church is incredibly welcoming and informal enough to make anyone comfortable. It's a primarily African American church, but we were very welcomed. This summer, I went to mass at home, to the 5:30 youth mass that I went to all through high school. The mass I went to was the first mass for the newly instated Knights of the Holy Temple. I was familiar with the Knights from OLMC, another church at home that I participated in events with, but I never expected them to come to Seton. Basically, the Knights wear cassocks (the priest-dresses, as some call them) and use incense and carry candles everywhere. And there are a lot of them - like seven - for a mass that normally only has three servers. That mass was particularly funny because of all of the ridiculous rituals performed during the mass by the Knights. I stopped going to that mass because of the Knights. This morning when the priest was talking about empty rituals, that's what I thought of. My church is great when you're a member, when you're involved, when people know you. But when you're new, I can't see anyone introducing themselves and welcoming you.

I like to attribute a certain comment by my pastor to the religiosity of my parish. I've come to the idea that, to an extent, suburban churches miss a large part of the gospel. Suburban churches see the dignity of life only in the issue of abortion. They don't want to see it in the issues of an unjust criminal "justice" system, from the horrible conditions that public defenders work in - not allowing them to properly defend a client - to the injustice of the ways laws are written - they are incredibly classist, from the difference between cocaine and crack cocaine to the war on drugs in general to white collar versus blue collar crimes - to the injustice of the death penalty system - you can't challenge your sentence based on your innocence after, I think, something like six weeks after the initial trial. They don't want to see it in the injustices that lead to poverty. Yes, I'm being accusatory. But I'm also accusing myself. I was blind to these issues for so long. These issues are easy to overlook when you're surrounded by people who don't face these issues because they have money (or benefit from these injustices). I also recognize that this doesn't include everyone in suburban churches.

Christ calls us to more than ritual. Christ calls us to service. Pope Benedict XVI says, "Love for widows and orphans, prisoners and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential to [the Church] as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel" (Deus Caritas Est, quoted in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship by the USCCB). This is a huge calling. It's not an easy calling. It's one that gets left behind amid the ritual and spirituality. This calling is one that's central to the Gospel. We CANNOT forget it.

That's the reason I wanted to participate in this semester. I came to Xavier with the intent to become more involved in service. I can't think of a better way for that to happen than for me to be here. I'm blessed because of this opportunity. I'm most blessed in that this opportunity gives me the chance to seek out injustice. Actually, I don't even have to seek out injustice; it comes knocking on my door through the readings for my classes. What a gift to learn about this. At the same time, it's a challenge. It places me in a place where I know there are incredible injustices but have no clue what I can do about them. I'm also in a place where I am frustrated that others refuse to see these injustices (although I understand why). I feel a little like Frederick Douglass in a document we read for history. He essentially said that he's tired of trying to convince people that slavery is wrong. They're not going to see it because they don't want to see it. He wants to be angry. And he has a right to be angry at the injustice. It's like the gospel story in which Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple. It's a righteous anger.

I know I wasn't intending to make this blog a faith-related one, but today's homily drove me to a reflection. So if you're not a religious/spiritual person, ignore that part of the blog. There's still injustice, and that's wrong. I promise I will eventually get to explaining many of these issues from a non-faith-based stance. But that'll take more work, and for now, I have to get to doing some readings and shopping for brunch today with our leader/teacher.

Newsletter

We put out our first newsletter today. Here is a link to it as published on Xavier's website: http://www.xavier.edu/portal_announcements/pdf/Newsletter.pdf.

I apologize for the typo at the end of Erin's article. It's my fault because I typed it and forgot to spell check the document before I finished.

Weekend Plus

Friday after class I participated (with the rest of the group) in my first non-violent march. We joined with CeaseFire Cincinnati to march around the community chanting "Stop the shooting," "Stop the killing," "They wanna live," etc. It was a really cool experience. The group marching was a pretty decent size, and we got lots of affirmation from passing cars honking at us. I felt like we were heard.

Saturday for our service, we went to an elementary school that was hosting the Guatamalan Consul to help immigrants make sure their papers are all correct. We played with the children. Most of them spoke English really well, but not all of them did. One girl (about seven years old) came over looking scared to death. Erin started talking to her in Spanish, and she immediately warmed up to Erin. She was scared because she didn't speak English. That experience really made me want to learn Spanish. And when I took some of the kids inside to get drinks, I couldn't ask some of the other kids I saw if they wanted to play because I didn't speak Spanish. Imagine how scared these kids must be around strangers who don't speak the same language.

After we finished we went to the bus stop, but were sitting on the wrong side of the street. We sat there for about an hour. Due to some miscommunication among our group, we missed two #32 busses before we realized that was the bus we were supposed to be on. We realized it as one of them was driving away. After that, we decided to walk. We started walking along the bus route and were going to catch the next bus as it drove by, but we ended up walking home all the way from Price Hill to Over-the-Rhine. It was a long walk.

Class-wise, we're still learning a lot, but it's hard to put it all together. I've definitely learned a lot more about the systematic aspects of poverty. There's a lot that goes into it that we don't even realize. The executive director of PIP told me she's been planning to read one of the books we're reading for class, When Work Disappears. She told me that she's going to move it to the top of her reading list and we can discuss how it applies to what we do at PIP/Venice. There are a lot of really interesting readings that Jennifer has compiled for our service learning class. Some of them are more frustrating and challenging to get through, but some of them are really interesting. One article you might be interested in reading is "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." Just google it. Then leave me a comment about what you think of it.

We're preparing to go to New Orleans. Over fall break, we're taking off the beginning of the week and traveling to New Orleans to do some service work and learn some new things. We know Christine will be taking us to a few museums since she's the history person. I'm not exactly sure what work we'll be doing yet, though. I'll let you know.

Service Sites, Classes, etc.

I just want to start by attempting to explain my service sites. I begin my days Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by walking over to Venice on Vine (about 2 blocks) to pick up a vehicle. I drive to the West End Emergency Center (which is primarily a food pantry, but also gives out clothes and other various items) to pick up Sharon, who works with AmeriCorps at the Emergency Center. Together we go to the Freestore Foodbank, the distributor of USDA and Ohio food products along with donations from other sources to local pantries, and pick up the daily limit of items. We go back to the Emergency Center to drop off the stuff. On Wednesdays starting tomorrow, I go back to Venice to drop off the vehicle and walk to Emanuel (which is at the other end of my block) where I will be doing primarily administrative work. Mondays and Fridays I can either stay with Sharon to help out around the food pantry or head back to Venice where Rina, the executive director of Power Inspires Progress, will assign me something to do. I've done some data entry for past employees and for donations. Venice on Vine is a restaurant run by Power Inspires Progress that offers paid job training and GED classes. Employees are limited to a year of work at Venice on Vine. Also run by Power Inspires Progress and closely associated with Venice on Vine is Venice Catering. Sometimes I will help doing stuff for them, including a day where I spent some time dicing tomatoes. That's a very brief overview of the work I do.

One thing I was excited about for this semester is the overlap between my classes. It seems that some overlap inevitably happens, or at least it did last year, but this year's courses are designed to be similar. We've come across many readings that say the same things in different classes. We've even had some articles that have contradicted each other. It's much more frustrating than I anticipated. With all of this, we're supposed to be connecting our readings and classes to each other and to our service sites. I was under the impression that was a large part of the Service Learning class, but it's not. We have a huge book of readings that our teacher put together, and so far we've hardly talked about them, let alone readings we've had to do for other classes. A little bit of that is what our journals are for, but that can't be the primary way to work through everything that's going on in our minds. I think discussion and different viewpoints are definitely helpful in working through putting together our new knowledge from different sources. So we're still working on that.

On a very exciting note, our Community Building and Urban Change class last night had a guest lecturer named John McKnight. He's from Northwestern, which is exciting since Rebecca goes there. But even more exciting is the story he told us about his first class of people that he and a friend trained through Northwestern to be community organizers. One of the members of the class was Barack Obama! The man who trained Barack Obama to be a community organizer (aka community empowerer) spoke to my class last night! He actually wrote the recommendation for Obama for Harvard Law. I thought that was pretty cool.

As to Cincinnati's experience with Hurricane Ike, it did hit pretty hard. Cincinnati is in a state of emergency. But we're safe. We never lost power or anything. Many people around the city did lose power, and some are still without power. (Aunt Cathy and Uncle Paul were without power for about a day.) Some of the water treatment plants also lost power and put the city in a water emergency. Basically, we're supposed to reduce our water usage and, if our water pressure is low, boil the water before use. There are many trees down. Washington Park, which is right across the street from our apartment, has many trees that had branches blown off. One church down the street from our apartment had a piece blown off the top. The local schools have been out for the past two days. Many service agencies (although not mine) were closed because they had no power. So, basically, it was a pretty bad storm here, but we're all doing just fine. I don't know how bad it was in Indianapolis, but I know parts of Indiana got hit pretty hard too. I can't imagine what it was like in Texas. So definitely consider sending money or water with aid agencies to those areas. Water, especially, is really important. Thanks.

I received a Facebook message today from a friend from when I was in junior high responding to my recent statuses on Facebook. So I started to look at her blog, and found it incredibly captivating. This friend, I believe, has some awesome perspectives on faith, religiosity, politics, Jesus, and America. While a lot of my stuff has and will continue to come at certain issues from a secular perspective (other than things that relate to my theology class), it is definitely very interesting to see things played out from the perspective of a dedicated Christian living on the near-East side of Indianapolis. Her blogs question the status quo, particularly the status quo of American Christianity. She asks the hard questions and points out the failings of a Christianity founded in theology rather than service and spirituality. The posts on her blog that I read tonight will give me even more to think about, to connect with my class readings and service experiences. These connections are the hardest part of this semester, particularly when it seems I don't have enough time or patience to do that. I just hope that I get enough experience this semester to want to continue to increase my experience and to leave this semester with a sense of how much I need to keep attacking these issues in a way to figure out more about them. The fact that my friend currently lives in the area of Indianapolis that she does really intrigues me. She lives there full-time. She spends her life confronting the issues that I'm confronting this semester, and it's in a city she knows from growing up in a nearby suburb. In my Community Building class, we're reading a book called When Work Disappears. It has definitely given me a new view of the suburbs and how they have harmed the inner-city so much. Suburbs can realistically, at least to a certain extent, be blamed for drug activity and its accompanying violence in inner-city neighborhoods. That's not to say that we can blame the people who live there. But it does no good to cast blame anyway. The question is what we can do. Maybe not even what we can do, though. It's such a complicated issue, this idea of poverty and inner-city communities. I just want to point out that this is how Barack Obama's community organizing experience can really benefit his presidency if he's elected. Sarah Palin may have chosen to dismiss that experience, but I feel it makes Obama more in touch with a group of people he's supposed to be serving. A piece of flair on Facebook that I saw today pointed out that Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor. While this is a tricky comparison that I don't want to promote, it's definitely an interesting perspective. With that, I apologize that politics have found their way into this blog, but poverty is an issue that, as "Poverty in America: A Threat to the Common Good," a publication from Catholic Charities put out, only the government has the resources to handle. It is, obviously, not the only issue, but for me recently, it has become a very important issue.

Neighborhood Kids

There are many kids around here who like to come over to visit us. The most prominent is Keiven. He's really sweet, and we really like him; sometimes, though, he's hard to get to go home when it's time for us to do some work or eat dinner. He's getting better at that, though. Sometimes he brings with him Kumari or Naya, who are both sweet. The neighborhood kid who is trouble is 10-year-old Terrence. To a degree, Terrence is just rude. He has his sweet streaks, but he also has his bad streaks. Saturday night he came over, and we went outside to hang out with him. He likes to climb all over everyone. We repeatedly told him that he has to ask before he can just jump on someone, but he continued to do it. He started yelling across the street at older men trying to pick a fight. At one point he became scared and came to hid just inside our door as some guy whom he had antagonized walked by on the other side of the street. We told him that we needed to go do homework, and so we locked him out. He knocked at the door for about two minutes, and then began knocking at the window. I walked toward the window and heard him ask someone to help him break into his house because he locked himself out, and then I saw him breaking off pieces of our window. It was the plastic outside storm window, and there was already a crack in it, but he was pulling out pieces of the window. Tara and I tried to take him home, but we didn't know where he lived. We got to one door, and he demanded we give him his bike back. So I did, and he took off back for the apartment. By the time Tara and I got back, Graham was out on the stoop with him, and there was another piece missing from the window. Graham had him under control, but as we walked in, Terrence was flaunting the piece of window at me, trying to get me to react. Fortunately, Graham was taking care of him, which was the best thing for the situation. She got him to calm down and eventually took him home with Chris Hale when he showed up to visit. Some of the neighbors were really mad and want us to not allow Terrence to hang around anymore. We disagree, although we're not exactly sure how to handle the situation. It's very obvious that Terrence just wants attention, even if it's just negative attention. We can't have him treating us this way, but we can't just leave him to continue getting in trouble. I feel really bad for him. I'm frustrated with him, but I also feel really bad for him. He clearly doesn't get a lot of attention, and so he misbehaves in an attempt to get attention. We just have to figure out how to curb his behavior so that he can get positive attention from us.

Kroger

Have you ever been to a grocery store that consistently didn't have gallons of skim or 1% milk? Have you ever been to a grocery store that consistently carried things very close to expiration? If you haven't, you're in the majority. The Kroger here in Over-the-Rhine doesn't carry gallons of skim or 1% milk, so if you want those types of milk, you have to buy them in half-gallons, which are more expensive (and worse for the environment). The store is also known for carrying things close to the expiration dates. Kroger treats this community as second-class citizens for no reason except that the people here don't have another convenient grocery store and would have to ride the bus to get to one. It's a classic case of taking advantage of those without the resources to avoid it. Why does it make sense to charge more to someone who makes less? But that's what they do here.

The Learning Part of Service - An Entire Semester

The program I am participating is not a semester of service. I am participating in a service learning program. As such, I am expected to learn through experience and class work. The program itself consists of 12 hours of class, with each of us taking one or two other classes on campus. The classes that we are required to take are our Service Learning class, Community Building and Urban Change, The African-American Struggle for Equality, and Contemporary Ethics.

The Service Learning class is Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:30 a.m. in the Women's Center on campus. Dr. Jennifer Wies, the director of the women's center and an anthropologist, is teaching that class. The packet of reading materials that we have for the class has been called a tome. To give you an idea, it's a book of readings that Jennifer compiled and cost $67 each at Kinkos. In addition, this is the class in which we look at our service more closely.

Community Building and Urban Change counts for credit for Sociology, Social Work, or Political Science. The class consists of the 7 of us and at least 30 other students from many different majors. It is a Monday night class in the Emmanuel Center, which is on the other end of our block.

The African-American Struggle for Equality is a history class taught by our trip leader Dr. Christine Anderson. We meet at Choices Cafe, a local coffee shop that closes in the mid afternoon and has generously agreed to let us use the space. The class includes about 5 others who are not in the program. We will look primarily at primary sources from the beginning of slavery to the present day. This class meets Wednesday nights.

Contemporary Ethics is taught by Sr. Alice Gerdeman, the director of the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC). We meet in the Peaslee Center, a former school that the community saved and turned into a community center. The IJPC office is also located in Peaslee. This class looks primarily at social justice, which approaches the issues often from a structural perspective. We are primarily using the Gospel of Matthew and the USCCB's booklet for faithful citizenship as well as supplemental materials that she will provide for us.

A part of this learning is that it takes 4 classes, 15 hours of service a week, and an entire semester to get through a lot of this stuff. So my plan is to attempt to write either basic things simply stating what I've done recently or write one column-type entry with a specific focus. Maybe that'll include posting some of my papers when I write them for classes.

The one article that we had to read for Service Learning that I want to discuss is called "Discipleship in the Eighties, Nineties & Beyond: Charity vs. Justuce." The article was written from a Christian perspective in 1980. The author describes charity vs. justice as "voluntary acts vs. institutional change." He explores the Bible's view of the issue, and he starts by exploring the Hebrew word used in the Bible to mean justice. The word "sedek" means "to fulfill the demands of a relationship," "to care for your brother, sister, spouse, neighbor, stranger just as God has cared for you." The biblical sedek has a bias for the weak. In the Old Testament, widows, orphans, and the poor were allowed to take grain from someone's field because of the concept of justice.

Yet we like the idea of charity better. It's easier, that's for sure. When we are charitable, it makes us feel good because we are giving of our surplus, something we aren't required to do. Justice, however, is harder to swallow. To accept that we need to practice justice, to a large degree, means that we have to realize that the system is a system of oppression. Those with power take advantage of those without power (or those who don't know that they have power or how to use that power). Justice talks about oppression. One example story that the author gives is "Marcos in the Philippines has consistently pushed his own people off their ancestral lands to make room for multinational corporations." He concludes, "They are not 'less fortunate,' they are oppressed."

The question is in the system. How does the system work for some and against others? Just a note, in my discussion with Jennifer to help me find my service site, Jennifer helped me to realize that I'm interested a lot in "the system." I find it fascinating to look at things on a macro level. To a large degree, that flavors the discussion I bring forth here. It is something that our group will learn a lot about between our classes and our experiences this semester. So don't be surprised if it comes up again.

While both charity and justice are essential in today's society, the author of the article states, "Charity is to American religion what ritual sacrifice was to Israel." In fact, that shows that charity is important as well as justice. For the analogy states that charity is the going-through-the-motions, while justice is having the right heart. We have to follow the motions, but our hearts must be behind what we do. We have to provide immediate help for those who need it, but we also have to work to help them improve and see a better future.

Classes Have Started

After our week-long orientation, our classes have started. We headed to campus last night for "Community Building and Social Change," which our instructor says should be called "Community Building and Urban Change." The rest of the semester it will be at a local service agency on the other end of our block, but they did it on campus this first week primarily to help the members of the class who are not a part of this program arrange rides and figure out how to get here. The class sounds like it will be very interesting. On the day before the election, we even get to have the entire class discuss the election. I'm excited about that.

Today we were back on campus for an 8:30 class, our service learning class. We left the apartment at 7:30 to catch the bus and get to the Women's Center. Dr. Jennifer Wies, the director of the Women's Center, is our teacher. We have an enormous packet (over $60 at Kinko's) with readings for that class. That's also the class that our service sites are tied directly to. After the class we stayed on campus for whatever classes we are taking individually. I'm taking Jesuit Theology and Spirituality, which I think will complement this semester well, at least during certain sections of the class.

Also, before my afternoon class, I met with Jennifer to work through a process to determine my service site. She asked me questions and let me talk, guiding me with further questions along the way. She said that there were some clear themes running through what I talked about, such as the theoretical aspects and economic political ideas (how the establishment affects poverty). So I have some homework to do in searching out possible service sites and theorizing the work they do and imagining myself there. Then I might meet with Jennifer again Thursday to discuss what I've found out. She told me that there was something that was very clearly popping out to her but she wouldn't tell me what it was. She wants this to be something we discover for ourselves.

One idea I had was the idea of community planning. In an earlier blog I mentioned how Liz Blume came and gave us a tour from a different perspective. I though that looking into trying to work in a very realistic setting along the lines of community planning would be an interesting idea. I know I've been called the crazy liberal, and I don't want to be labeled like that, not because I don't like what people are saying but because I want to be moderate in that I don't want to get too caught up in one side that I agree with everything that side has to say. I want to be a person with well-informed opinions based on nonpartisan ideas. I want to be my own person. Thus, I think it's fair that I work while I'm down here to have a balanced view. Now if I don't follow up with the community planning, I will still try to open my eyes to see both sides of the issue.

I've also been rethinking the purpose of this blog. This came out a little in the discussion I had with Jennifer and a discussion that I had with my friend Chris. I have a confession: I like to think that I'm right. In fact, I have a huge issue with that. As much as I try to be open-minded, I often remain convinced that I'm right. But I know that I'm not always right because discussions (respectful discussions, primarily with questions rather than attacking) have shown me flaws in my logic. So, thinking about that, I was thinking about my purpose for this blog. What do I want people to get from this? Well, I wanted people to see things the way I see them by seeing a new perspective through my experiences. I should probably be up front about that. But thinking about that, what I really want more than that is discussion. I want to look at the world and see what I see. And I want to share that. And then I want people to challenge that. I would love to have a discussion. I want to get something from this blog too. What I want is a challenging of my ideas. I think Jennifer really saw that desire to discuss issues in our meeting today. So I'd love this to be a discussion board, although it has to remain a polite and intelligent discussion board or I will take it down. (I see too many discussion boards that resort to name-calling and ignorant comments. No referring to Obama as Barry Hussein or McCain as McInsane, which are a few I have seen on other sites.) So this is my invitation (or begging) for you to take a part in a discussion that I hope will emerge here. I hope that some things I write about will be able to stir discussion, but also please let me know if I fail at that.

***Addition: I forgot this earlier, but was getting stuff out of my backpack and found this note of something I wanted to share. Yesterday we went to Crossroad Health Center, a health center in OTR that is faith-based and private. They accept patients with private insurance and without. It's a primary-care facility, and they have a sliding scale for payment based on income (because they are legally not allowed not to charge). Anyway, when Brook (a nurse practitioner) was talking to us, she mentioned that they've had high levels of lead because of the reconstruction in the area that has ground the old lead-based paint into the dirt. High lead levels can lead to mental retardation. Another issue they've come across fairly often is low iron anemia in children. This often comes from the lack of high-iron foods in the diets of low-income families. Often they'll buy the cheapest things they can at Kroger, such as Ramen Noodles. A regular diet of Ramen Noodles doesn't provide the necessary nutrients. Low-iron anemia can lower the IQ. These two things, I think, have a profound impact on the ability of students in these neighborhoods to complete school. It definitely put a new perspective on the issue of education in low-income urban areas.

This-and-That Update

We had the most fun at the grocery store today. Graham, Erin, Tara, and I went to the store for the week. We got so much stuff that we had to call the boys to come and bring bags with them so that we could carry the stuff back to the apartment. And we did it on a budget - an entire cart full of stuff for a couple dollars over $100. And we planned out meals. We're still way under budget, and a lot of what we got for the week will last more than the week. We each (excpet for My'eka because she's on a doctor-ordered strict diet) put in $40 out of our stipend check for the first two weeks. We still have plenty left for our run to Findlay Market for fruits and such tomorrow.

We've been getting so much information and doing so much that it's gotten a little tiring. I fell asleep during a movie about Buddy Gray, who is generally known as the father of Over-the-Rhine Community housing (a combination of two groups that help to provide affordable housing). I watched the entirety of the second video, and Graham said they were both really good. There's just so much stuff that I can't simply summarize it. Hopefully the important stuff will come out in conjunction with other stuff further on in the semester.

We have to start working toward finding our service sites. There are so many good options that would be awesome opportunities. I just really need to define my interests. Jennifer Weis (who is the director of the Xavier Women's Center and our teacher for the Service Learning class) is going to do one-on-one sessions with whomever needs them to help us define our interests.

The Miami students moved in yesterday, I think. I guess I haven't mentioned this before - Miami University has an urban design program in which the students live in OTR and do service while learning about urban design. I don't know the specifics of the program. Their program has students in the rest of our apartment building and another building nearby. So we'll probably get to know them a little bit this semester.

One of the things we did today was visit the Drop-In Center, a homeless shelter that acts as the safety net for those who have no other place to go. They don't ask questions, they just provide shelter and meals. It's not a great place to live, but it's something. Most of the people there are fairly transitory. The longer someone is there, the more likely he is to be paired up with a case manager. This case manager helps the person to have certain needs met, get a job, and get into transitional housing. The Drop also has a drug treatment program for the homeless (they live in the center and work to help with some of the services the center provides) that has a pretty high success rate of over 75%. The Drop provides a lot of services to people who have nowhere else to go. 1/3 of their funding is from private individual donations and 2/3 comes from grants. Buddy Gray was also very instrumental in beginning the Drop-In Center.

That's a brief run-through of some stuff we've been doing. It's been a little overwhelming without time to process and getting tired enough to just need a break. But throughout the semester we'll work through some of this stuff. Stay tuned for that.

Orientation, Full day 2

I want to start by saying something. I do not intend to make this blog political. Inevitably, though, there will be some things that will be handled politically or are typically politically polarizing issues. Also, it is an election year. That will also make politics especially hard to avoid. I've heard that this is a pretty politically active neighborhood and that everyone has an opinion. I've already seen a little bit of that. That being said, I don't intend to write this blog to tell you outright who you should vote for. I don't even necessarily intend to influence your vote, although I do hope to provide new perspectives that you may not have considered before. So I do hope you take the things I will experience seriously, for they are serious issues to many people in our country.

So, on to today:

Today we had two pretty separate but equally intriguing experiences. (We had a third that wasn't quite as interesting - maybe because we were all a little tired and full of knowledge so it's harder to impress us now.) We started today talking to Liz Blume, who used to work as a city planner for Dayton and then Cincinnati. She was very instrumental in the plan for the revitalization of Over-the-Rhine. In regards to the revitalization efforts, she said the greatest accomplishment of that plan was getting the people who advocated for the poor to cooperate with those who wanted to revitalize the neighborhood. The main point I took away from this is that, although keeping in mind the need for affordable housing is very important, the need for a good community that provides a good tax base for the city and social services is also very important. It's about finding a balance between the two. Liz said that basically both sides could stop the other side from doing anything though the city council; meanwhile, the drug dealers just did what they wanted. That's the thought that eventually motivated the cooperation. It was never that people didn't want a mixed-income community with mixed-income housing; it was just that they were afraid that mixed-income would too soon become upper-income and displace the people already living in the community. There are many empty housing units that they can use to revitalize the area without displacing anyone. Vacant housing units do nobody any good. It's an interesting project that has to be pursued with caution, taking both sides into consideration. Last year, we talked a little bit about this with the assistant to the deputy mayor of Cincinnati on one of our ConneXions social justice excursions, but it was interesting to do it in the context of a walking tour and actually seeing the areas that have been gentrified and the areas that have been made into affordable housing.

Just a little background information: Price Hill is yet another neighborhood of Cincinnati. Lower Price Hill is historically a neighborhood of Appalachian people, although recently more Hispanics and African-Americans have moved into the area. It is, like OTR, generally known as a poorer area of the city.

The third person we met with today, Jenn Walters, is quite probably the most important of the three. She is the executive director of the Lower Price Hill Community School. It's right across the street from the Oyler school, which is K-12. LPHCS offers GED classes and transitional college classes taught by professors from local colleges. They work with the students to move to the main college campuses and continue through graduation to help their students to succeed. They have a day care center to take care of the children when the parents are in classes. Unfortunately, though, they can only operate during the day, which limits the ability to work around the work schedules of their students. Many students work third shift and take the bus directly to the school, that's how bad they want their GEDs or to learn English. Jenn works really hard to make herself a part of the community and to help fill all the needs in the community. She went to law school after working for LPHCS with AmeriCorps and became an attorney, but felt much more fulfilled working with LPHCS. So she returned. Part of that is that she and some of the attorneys she worked with can now offer a free legal clinic once a week. This is also a great service to the community. Jenn says that she loves coming to work; that she doesn't think of it as a job that she has to do but something she is privileged to be a part of. Furthermore, she is helping to really fill a need in a community. Traditional schooling doesn't work for everyone (although they do everything they can at LPHCS to work with Oyler to get school-age students back into regular high school), and many people work really hard to complete educational degrees. I think it's amazing how much work these students put into a GED or learning English. Yet it's so much easier for society to dismiss those without high school diplomas or college degrees as people who just dropped out. We don't recognize their circumstances or the work they are putting into their education now. LPHCS has an average of a three-month term in which the people are able to complete their GED work. That's supposedly better than the average GED program. Part of that may be that LPHCS knows that people have circumstances to work around. The bus may be running late or they may have to work or take their kids to school or day-care. Rather than turn away a student for the day if he or she arrives late, LPHCS lets him or her come in to continue work. While all GED programs are good things, I think LPHCS has a great approach with flexibility. These people work hard and have extenuating circumstances. I think they deserve a little bit of flexibility.

I know there are at least three people in our group (including me) who thought of LPHCS as a great place to do our service work. We're still considering, but this is definitely a place that has a great appeal.

That's a lot of stuff, and I'm sure I didn't summarize it very well. I hope, though, that you understand a part of what I was trying to say. Thanks for keeping up with this. I promise I won't have as much information in future blogs; orientation is simply stuffing our head with more knowledge. Later on, it will be more experience-based.

OTR Orientation

Yesterday we moved in to the apartment in Over-the-Rhine. We live near Washington Park and across from City Music Hall. This morning we spent some time getting to know the neighborhood, cashing our stipend checks, and then a group of us went to Kroger and a group went to a produce stand to buy fruits and vegetables for the week. We also stopped by the public library to get information about library cards.

After lunch, we went with Dr. Hedeen, a former ecology professor at Xavier, to Mill Creek Valley for a tour. (I'm going to try to recall a little bit of what we learned.) Mill Creek is the river that made Cincinnati the area along the Ohio that people decided to settle. When the Ohio River floods, it backs up into Mill Creek Valley, which made a lot of the land uninhabitable until they built a levee to contain the floods into only a part of the Mill Creek Valley. It's a design similar to that of the levees in New Orleans, although the levee is not operational full-time, only when the Ohio River floods. Then we went a little way up the Mill Creek and learned about the sewer system. The first sewer systems were created before Dr. Crapper (yes, that's true) invented the flush toilet, so they were solely storm drains. (This is true for all major cities, by the way.) When the flush toilet came around, people still didn't know what to do with the water and waste from their toilets, so they just hooked them into the city sewer systems. Then not only rainwater, but sanitary waste, went into the local rivers, in the case of Cincinnati, Mill Creek. Once people realized this was creating a problem, they put pipes in that intercepted all of the stuff that goes through the combined sewer system and take it to the water treatment plant. But when it storms, the pipe that transfers this waste to the treatment plant fills up and can't handle any more water, so it overflows into the river anyway. Which makes the river basically a cesspool, although not as bad as before they learned to take the water to the treatment plant. So after around 1920, cities realized that this was a problem and began to make different sewer systems for sanitary waste and storm water.

While these separate sewer systems help, there are still many problems. Runoff from streets includes gas and oil from leaks as well as other things. Since regular asphalt doesn't let the water penetrate, these things just run off the top into the storm sewers and into the rivers. It would be better for the water to percolate through the soil and stuff. There are many organisms that love to feed of the carbon-based products, specifically algae and bacteria, that harm other ecosystems. So it's much better for water to run into the grass than into a storm sewer (or to use bricks or penetrable asphalt rather than regular asphalt). It's amazing how much our habits affect nature in ways other than simply the whole global warming issue. Even air quality is an issue outside of global warming. I don't care if you believe in global warming or not, we are still destroying some pretty amazing things in nature. If we all made a little change to our every-day activities, we could make a huge difference.

I've gotten some great encouragement from people at home, and it means a lot. I also have had several people tell me they are praying for me. That's another great source of comfort. So thanks to those awesome people who are offering up prayers. I would love for anyone who's interested to continue reading my blogs. And please respond with any criticisms or ideas as well. I think discussion of these issues can really motivate us to help improve these issues.

Politics and Truth

I've recently had some interesting discussions and arguments with family members about politics. I hate that it's about politics. There's a reason I always used to say that I hate politics. I think it should be about the issues. So when I present an opinion that's different from someone else's, I really hate it when the response is that it's just because I'm liberal. I recognize that I'm not perfect in this respect, but I want to continue to improve myself in my opinions being well-founded. I don't want to be liberal or conservative. And I've found that I've recently been falling into the trap of labeling myself and others. The problem is in propaganda emails, I find. As I continue to get similar emails, primarily from family members, that paint one story as an attempt to stereotype an entire group or claim that something is simply a hoax, I get more and more frustrated and begin to see things from the opposite side more. The reality is that I shouldn't form my opinions based on my frustrations with people sending me opposite viewpoints. I should rise above that and begin to do research. So I'm trying to do that. But it's not easy. I started by watching a few recent documentaries. I've watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine in the last few days. When I started with An Inconvenient Truth, the first thing I wrote down was that this film was propaganda. That is, this film was created to present one side of the issue. I have been provided with a stack of papers about an inch thick by someone I work with that supposedly prove that global warming is a myth. I will shortly begin to read through those articles, attempting to find the truth between these two forms of propaganda. With Bowling for Columbine, however, I found that I didn't need to view this as propaganda, a work presenting only one side, because Moore's goal was to explore the problem of gun violence in America. I was surprised to find that there were parts of the movie that were not contradictory to conservative standpoints, despite the fact that conservatives tend to despise Michael Moore. I wonder how many Michael Moore haters have actually seen any of his movies, but that's a different topic. Moore's exploration of other countries' gun violence rates in comparison to the American problem showed that it wasn't a problem of people owning guns. He explored gun control laws, but ultimately showed that Canada has similar gun ownership percentages, but much lower gun violence rate problems. My curiosity as to how many Moore-haters had seen any of his movies also led to a curiosity as to how many people who believe global warming is a hoax and despise Gore for An Inconvenient Truth have actually seen the movie or seriously looked into global warming from the opposite perspective. I'm going to read the stuff the guy at work gave me and then ask him if he's seen the movie. Because he's not at liberty to claim that global warming is a hoax if he hasn't heard both sides and considered the science.

So I would challenge anyone who is reading this to watch either of the movies I mentioned or Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. I hope that I get to that soon. I think documentaries are the easiest and most entertaining way to research this, so if you know of a documentary that presents another view, please recommend it to me. There's one that I believe is mentioned in one of the articles refuting global warming that I will try to find. So I guess this is the start of a journey in attempting to discover truth. I hope I always remember to search for truth. And I'll ask anyone who wants to accept the challenge to help hold me to that.