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.