Katrina

Katrina was truly an event with few equal and among those with similar levels of destruction, I cannot think of any that suffered so badly from basic human justice issues. Usually events like this bring out the best in people, but I'm getting ahead of myself. While the event itself was of major importance, I feel like not enough attention is given to certain less subtle issues. Why did it take a catastrophe to get much needed attention for a city that has truly struggled? But even then, was the help effective?

Americans, and people the world over, have been far more giving than years past when it comes to money, food, and time for events that need it; however, is that money truly put to good use? We have many large organizations, like the Red Cross, that are the face of humanitarian aid, but when we give them our money, it generally isn't received to help only that particular crisis. Logistics, staffing, other theaters of operations, these are among the many parts that make up the overhead of these overly large aid organizations. While they do a decent job of getting food and water out, and an influx of aid workers, I feel as if they, in some ways, create as many problems as they address. Don't get me wrong, food, water, and medical attention are beyond important and events like this, but when we bring in these large influx of workers that have no invested interest in helping the locals, other than the tingly good feelings of helping another human, we create a dependence and a rift of power.

The people in need become dependent on the organizations power to provide, not forever, but enough that that power is shifted. Whether you eat, whether you bathe, or how much water you get is up to the larger body of a worldwide organization. But the root of the problem really occurs later, when it is time to rebuild, all the money is gone, set away for future events or other areas of immediate need and people are left to wonder how they can ever make their home, well, home again and gone too is the spotlight for creating that flow of donations. What I am challenging here is the notion that we should be donating to large groups with varied interests, and why we don't donate to community organizers directly. People who can do good, create lasting change, and have a personal stake in the well being of everyone around them. It seems silly to imagine a day where we see advertisements on our TV's and computer screens asking to donate to people like that, but imagine what they could do? Imagine how great it would be when businesses can get back up on their feet again with real community wide momentum. Imagine the great rebirth that would take place with such an opportunity to make change. What I feel like the inhabitants of Katrina were left with after the storm, was nothing like that. Despair. Nothing less than total despair. And the storm was certainly the worst part of those events, but the slow return to how things were before the storm was far from great. In the media spotlight one day, for better or worse, then out with the news cycle the moment the city was safe, from mother nature.

It may be a tad naive to think that such a slight change and how we handle things could create a much better world of possibilities, but I really feel like a change like this addresses many of the issues deep in our past. Such as when we talk about the freeing of the slaves, we talk about it in terms of how the North freed them from the tyranny of the south and not how they often saved themselves. We directly alter the narrative of history and change to hide how it starts with one person, not a nation or a government and how it spreads through their familes, their friends, their communities, and on up. Lasting change comes from the bottom, but today we let it come from the top. And, to my greatest regret, I think it is because we don't know any better.

My time learning about social justice has been brief and it is sadly an opportunity I rarely get as a computer science major, but it has certainly been sweet.

Via Campensia and the Coalition of Immoakalee Workers

From birth to current day, I have observed the development of many amazing technologies, medical practices, and general scholastic achievements, yet one things has strangely stayed the same, farm worker conditions, benefits, and payment. In the time that the cellphone has gone from an obscure rich only idea to a practically necessity for everyday life, from the birth and rise of mega corporations, and their ongoing record profits despite recession, it is truly mind boggling  that we have nearly third world working conditions for those who labor so hard and allow us to have food on our table.

The Coalition for Immoakalee workers, based out of Florida, certainly represent those issues and push for progress. Representing tomato workers, the group has fought hard for more reasonable working conditions, more fair compensation, visibility, and in some form, justice. I use the word more there to communicate my feeling on the matter, that while they've made progress, they still have a ways to go before we can say that the job is fair when compared to others in the nation. It was hard to look at it and not call it slavery in the status it was before the movement.

Crucial to their success was the support and subsequent tactics employed by the group. Like many civil rights movements years past, the CIW made use of student support, community support, but also employed religious support in the form of pray ins. Even more central was their pursuit of the companies that buy and resell the tomatoes, not the farmers employers. They were able to apply pressure from multiple angles thanks to their support base and saw their first success with Taco bell

But that isn't to say they don't still have a great deal of work ahead of themselves, nor is it to say that they haven't had to struggle to get where they are today. There is no denying that they have seen success by disrupting the narrative between consumer and producer in the sale of their products. Many of us couldn't be paid enough to muck through dirt, snatching and grabbing produce until our fingers bruise and bleed, yet these individuals do and at a price many of us wouldn't work for anyone at. Injecting that imagery, and sending a clear message to the producers that they can help fix the story by agreeing to their terms to put pressure on the suppliers proved to be a successful formula.

La Via Campensia is a movement with many parallels to the CIW. The movement is worldwide and represents the effects of corporate subjugation in developing nations. Where companies and more often subsidiaries, have colossal ownership in the area, but in such a way that the workers are not their employee's and the happenings of the workers are not worth their concern. It is sad when human life is reduced to dollar signs and the movement does a great job of getting that visibility out there so their plight can be understood. That alone won't win, they also do a great job of pointing out the flaws in the belief of free trade or namely that it doesn't exist. Power dynamics between trans national corporations and farmers are so heavily in favor of corporations and it is good to know that someone is getting that story out there. When companies mettle too much we get left with situations like Thailand where 50% of the population is forced to work rice patties because education doesn't happen. It isn't in the best interest of the parties that stand to profit to allow for education, good wages, or any degree of quality of life. They want us to believe the hype that they are the saviors of these people, yet here they stand the poison. 

Still, both groups have a long way to go and their biggest hurdle is likely western culture. It is hard for many individuals to really empathize with the ongoing struggles when it is so very different from what we know. Oppression and poverty wears such a different mask in western society. I think it is the responsibility of consumers to be educated, much like I discussed in my first blog about the irresponsibility of tech companies, and to do their best to buy fair and encourage progress. 

All rights owned by their respective owners.

I have been challenged by my professor to go to the grocery store and make a list of items directly marketed towards me, to note their placement, promotion, displays, and other relavant information pertaining to the sale of said items; the problem I find is such: I am one of those social miscrients normally refered to as a nerd and unless a thing is shiny, beeps, or has a screen, there is a fair chance I don't care about it. That isn't to say that I am completely apathetic to the attemps, made by marketers to rob me of my money, but that my choices concering food are exceptionally whimsical. In that sense, I suppose,  I fall pray to the less direct form of marketing, that fact that I am even shopping to begin with and prices. As a student I obviously do not go around buying the top cuts of meats so pricing is rather relavant to my survival.




What if I was someone different? Would the effects impact me differently? There really is no denying that, racial identity, age, gender, any many other aspects of human life, play a central role in any decision one makes here on earth, but to me the illusion of choice plays the biggest role of all. As I age, I feel as if the deli, bakery, and produce section of grocery stores are getting smaller and smaller, while boxed, frozen, and bagged goods get larger. We are bombared with imagery to comfort and entice and I can think of no greater example than pancakes. Flour, baking soda, sugar, egg, milk, and a pinch of salt and, like most breakfast foods, pancakes are simple and easy, yet there they are, boxed, with an image begging to be bought. This is one of many products that shouldn't exist, but why.

Imagine you are a child, you've had a rough go at this thing called life, but you're getting there. Your parents weren't around, or maybe they were both working, like many Americans, and subsequently you've grown up on pre-made food, frozen or otherwise, without ever being taught how to cook. You've grown up now (that was fast right?) and you must take care of yourself, what do you do? The smart answer would be to probably buy a cook book, but today my generation is bombarded with tempting offers of nearly instant food and thus we become reliant on what they decide to provide. The illusion of choice. We then subsequently buy these products, that are often filled with corn or soy based fillers, alternating "flavor enhancers" (such as MSG), and other artificial flavors that are constantly swapped around to create "new" flavor based products for us to consume.

Now imagine you live in a predominated poor neighborhood of color, where statistically, you have access to far fewer market choices for purchase of your food to begin with. Let alone the opportunity to buy organic, or a wide range of produce, because of price. Maybe, you don't even have a car, so even it if were worth the drive to gain access (in terms of opportunity costs, gas, etc) you would still have to rely on the one store your neighborhood has to offer. In many cases that is the harsh reality facing much of our poor community. USDA - Food Deserts(as part of the First Lady's program mentioned in the video above) is a government run map based app that shows food deserts based on market availability of fresh, nutritious food, and census data for poverty. I looked up my old home town of Colorado Springs, CO just to see how their data portrays the area in comparison to my own knowledge, and I was quite surprised. Colorado Springs is an interesting place, at the northern side of the city is it truly hard to drive half a mile without hitting some form of food market. Kroger, one of the major grocery store companies in town, has 16 locations alone, Walmart has three super center locations, whole foods ( a really limited market in terms of cost) has sustained two locations in town. I could go on about the numbers of other companies (there are plenty), but the point here is, this place has food, and lots of it, yet according to the data on the website there are numerous deserts on the southern side of town. Which is understandable as that is the poor side of town. It is really awful to me that wages would dictate such a harsh truth. Especially when we consider the topic of the Los Angeles community garden and popular opinion that the people had no business growing food in a city. Yet they did, and many others do need that kind of access. Land is such a funny thing, we have so much of it in the US, yet we can't even use it responsibly to allow basic things like food access. This really ties into my other themes about ownership of the future and money.

I really don't understand why we allow such a small group of people to dictate the flow of culture and society. Let alone why we allow corporations to play us by bottle necking many neighborhoods and maximizing profit without competing. The whole ordeal begs to be probed for backdoor talks and market manipulation, much like the US internet issue why so many, even dense towns like Colorado Springs, only have one or two providers that really don't even have to compete with each other. I don't want to sound like a Marxist, but it really makes you wonder what would happen if we moved to a model where the worker owned their product, like farmer's markets.

Consumer Freedom

Consumer Freedom really is a misnomer today. The freedom to what? Choose between a small selection of companies, that may or may not be housed under the same parent company; to choose to save money and eat a product that is quite possibly a majority corn or soy, or do I blow all my cash on "natural" "organic" ingredients.  Their video is full of fallacious argument and really is hard to take seriously on any level. They put words into the mouths of their adversaries by letting me know they are pretty sure group a thinks I'm stupid. They try to dismantle the notion that any of these groups may be doing good by calling them "do-gooders" while making air quotation gestures. The Center For Consumer Freedom makes the point that you can't trust special interest groups, because they have interests while failing to mention their own or the fact that they have been sponsored by Phillip Morris (Tobacco), Wendy's (Fast Food), Tyson (Chicken products), and a slew of other chains and restaurants.

Even without going into that obvious slight of hand and the biases it brings with it, I want to talk more about choice and the idea that they could somehow defend it. Pick up any given product in a super market, and unless it is produce, there is an incredibly high chance it has corn, soy, or is fed by either of the two. In the case of corn it is practically guaranteed to be domestic. Why is this? As a nation we subsidize corn, and many other farm created products, so much, that other nations cannot compete. Thanks to things like NAFTA, we also trade our corn in Mexico, where it is also sold so cheaply (at a loss) that the locals cannot compete. So when looking at options to maximize profitability of a food product it is a "no brainer" to buy corn and use it as a caloric filler. And why is it that low to begin with, well because the farmers pay lobbyists to apply pressure and campaign contributions to take the votes they need to maintain this practice. A true protector for consumer freedom would be attacking this practice, attacking our overly high tariffs on foreign milk and produce that keep it, in many cases, from being sold here at all.

But what we are left with is cheap tricks that create an alternative narrative to the one being told by other biased interest groups in the interest of their sponsors or chief donors. At least if some of these groups won their campaigns to restrict what I could eat, such as corn based filler, I would likely be given more choices on what I could consume, but perhaps that idea is too far from common sense for anyone to portray and defend. At least if they want donors.

Rice

Rice, whether it is served with curry, bundled with fish, or alone, it is one of the biggest staples in the world wide diet. When I picture rice the laborers, who work hard so that we can each have it at our dinner tables, I often imagine third world countries, poor working conditions, and back pain. And, while much of that is true, some of the data is rather surprising. By many estimates the USA is third or fourth highest exporter of rice overall, and the only major exporter of rough rice. Thailand leads the way at the top, followed by one of the largest consumers, India and thirdly, Vietnam. China and India are at the top of the least for consumption, and make up for roughly 50% of the worlds supply.

What probably strikes me the most about this list is that the USA isn't what you would expect when seeing the names of some of the other countries. I was rather startled when I went to the local grocery store to buy my favorite sushi rice (short grain, milled) to see that, despite its Japanese styled marketing, it was grown and processed in California. According to CalRice.org, most of the American rice production is automated, preparing the soil is done carefully by machine that makes sure the patties are perfectly level via laser, seeding is done by plane, harvesting is also done by machine, and finally milling is done in facilities only needing a few workers. That isn't to say that the hours aren't long and the work hard, https://www.ffa.org/ suggests that while pay is relatively good at an average of 45k, the hours are indeed long at 60 a week.

While investigating conditions worldwide, I found the language barrier to be my largest foe. Thailand largely handles rice production the old way, by hand, and with a large number of farmers. As the video says, the Rice  Industry is leading to many issues for the country, as with much of the world, fresh water is becoming scarce; a reality we will not likely realize for many years. But also, the lack of large scale oversight is causing contamination of the waterways. There was very little data about how much of the profit the farmers get to keep. Many of the farmers work as peasants on government land, and are allowed to continue so long as they can pay the government taxes, however as the overhead to stay in production has increased over the years (namely do to new practices like using mulch to conserve water) many of the peasants are losing their plots and are forced into renting from landowners, likely at a lower profit point. What bothers me about Thailand's practice is the leadership from the country is pushing for more land to be converted into patties which means less opportunity for work that isn't rice labor. It is currently estimated that over half the population works rice fields today. There is a large variance in labor practices, and social conditions for rice. There have been successful social movements in the past to get better conditions, and compensation, but it still bothers me that so little information seems accessible, especially given the nature of the internet.

Occupy Wall Street

his·tor·ic/hiˈstôrik/

Adjective:

Famous or important in history, or potentially so.

When thinking of historic movements I feel as if I am confined to thinking to imagery limited by black and white, yet here we are with a movement that has a potential to impact the national in a truly deep and meaningful way. Historic. A movement that really relates to my last post on the roles of ownership and the issues between whether the public should be allowed a clear means to take ownership of a culturally or historically important property. In that sense, OWS is about taking power back from those who own our futures.

When thinking of historic movements bigotry, discrimination, and violence are the general themes that come to mind for me. It is all too rare for us to focus on that other form of discrimination, wealth, and I'm not just talking about the opportunity to work for a fair wage. In 2008, as part of one of many interviews, John McCain boldly declared that he does not use computers. Later, in another interview, he would admit to not understand the internet let alone the idea of net neutrality and it would not be long after that he would state, as part of his campaign for President, that he backed the idea that corporations should be allowed to have full control over what information does, or doesn't, flow across their pipelines. He would also later be found to have a sizable campaign contribution from Verizon and At&t. This sums up the power of money, the ability to influence those who we look to for leadership, those whose vision may become reality. We have so many laws concerning what a person can or cannot do in our country, and yet so few regarding what a person can or cannot do with their money to influence or change the course of history. OWS has a different meaning for everyone, and is perhaps their greatest weakness, for me it is about taking our futures back. A movement to send a clear message that money is not a game and that those who try to game the system should be held accountable.

It is about owning our futures, I really cannot emphasize it enough. The power balance between those with money and those without is often immensely one-sided. But how to achieve it? OWS has fell short of its lofty goals in that sense, but has done remarkably well in others. It hasn't achieved an ounce of disruption to the very thing it sought to disrupt, however it has ascertained a great deal of visibility and momentum. While ridiculed for small local movements, such as the two students that rallied here in Pullman, OWS has a global reach like few movements before it. They have also truly challenged the notions of ownership and law enforcement, the first by setting up small villages in parks, the later by raising eyebrows as those who have sworn to protect the populace harm and batter the supposed protected.

Moving forward, I hope to see more diverse tactics, and hopefully ones that truly disrupt and not just annoy local businesses  from the movement. It has the potential to be historic.

I-Hotel

In the book "Roots of Justice" by Larry R Salomon, the battle for I-Hotel is discussed and I found the story to be particularly interesting, especially as an event I had never heard of. I-Hotel's story really represents an issue that is not uncommon in recent history, the issue is that of private versus public ownership.

We have very clear laws regarding copyright and ideas, but at some point the content becomes owned by the public. This not only encourages new ideas and growth, but helps protect the public from infringment as the idea becomes woven into culture. But at what point does a building, property, or other ownable body become so great that it should be owned by the public, well their opinions differ wildly.

The I-Hotel is one such case, with many parrallels to later Los Angeles Community Garden, where it has become culturally important to a group of people. And, not just a few people, but enough that when its tenets were told to vacate thousands showed up to show their support and attempt to prevent the demise of the hotel. Ultimatly, their tactics proved unsucessful in the sense that the hotel was subsequently demolished, however they won greater visibility to many issues when the event was televised and gained momentum that would carry on through the birth of other social projects in the area.

Like many movements, I-Hotel made use of nearby College students, when the hotel was first called to close down on the basis of it not being up to code, the students put their funds and man power into the Hotel in an attempt to renovate. But, that was not the only way the tenets would have attempts made on them to vacate. An order to vacate was passed through the courts on the basis of ownership and there was little that could be done. Despite the age of the tenets and expressed cultural importance the battle for I-Hotel was lost.
In retrospect, I cannot say for certain that anything could be done, just as there was little that could be done to save the Los Angeles Community Garden. My only wish was that the momentum from both of these movements, and I imagine many others, would swell into a larger scale movement, one that would hopefully result in reformation of ownership laws and give birth to more fair ways that equitible exchanges could be made for places deemed of cultural importance. But, in the least, the momentum from the movement gave way to a united Asian populace that would combat the racism of the times and lend way to acceptance.