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.

What to make of the Jena Six


The Jena Six represent a truly unfortunate aspect of our nation and it's legal system. After reading their story as portrayed in the book Floodlines by Jordan Flaherty, I searched around for other relavent documents to try to paint a comprehesive picture of the events. But no matter how many times I read this or that the picture wasn't an clearer. Only one thing is certain, this is the classic issue of he said she said on a different scale, they said we said.
What probably hit me hardest about this case are two quotes from the parents of the beating victim. In the book a quote from the mother and on www.thetowntalk.com 's article by Abbey Brown, quoting from the father, we get to see statements saying the trial isn't about race. It's about justice, right? This really highlights the biggest issue about cases like these, bigot's no longer wear their allegiences on their sleeves. No one is going to own up to their own racism when the spotlight is on.

So that brings us back to the they said, we said issue. The book gives us a quote from the prosecuting attorney addressing the student body and it is along the lines of, with one movement of my pen I can end your life, but states it was directed only at the black students in the context of them starting trouble. Other sources say the comment was more along the lines of with one swift momentment of my pen I can make your life miserable with the student body at large being addressed. This was in reference to the noose incident that greatly contributed to the racial tension that really unraveled this small city. Biggotry is hard thing to pin down, it is such a slimey thing today. And really, with the evidence we have the only conclusion I can come to is none, as far as racial discrimination is involved.  That was, until I compared to of the attorney's comments. In reference to the nooses he states that everyone was making a bigger deal of the issue and that it was a prank in bad taste, but only a light hearted prank. Then when a fight breaks out in a school, such an uncommon occurence for sure, he sues the boys for premeditated murder. However, when one of the boys was assaulted by several white males, only one of the attackers was put on trial and it was only for battery.
It is really hard for me to accept that issues like this still exist in our country. We are, for many aspects of life, the exemplar for the world. We are the melting pot, and yet, issues like this still  plague us. The boys who hung the nooses at the school's tree were never tried because as non-adults, they didn't qualify for laws regarding racial crime. The community asked for their act to be forgiven, a prank gone arwy proformed by children. Yet when those children get into a confrontation that leads to violence, it is attempted murder by adults, where is the equality.

Reflections on America's Youth

Bruce Levine offers a interesting, but occasionally harsh, cutting view of America's Youth in his article http://www.alternet.org/vision/151850/8_reasons_young_americans_don%27t_fight_back_--_how_the_us_crushed_youth_resistance?page=entire. The article is written as a silent contrast to the previous generation and its very politically active youth, which may or may not be a good baseline for a society. Instead, I will focus on the points made.

Levine starts off discussing student loan debt, a topic close to my heart. He starts off with what is now a sad truth, student loan debt is common and growing. In many ways it is the new mortgage crisis, relatively easy, and large, amounts of money with little credit needed. It is a temptation most foul and a trap by all means; by accepting into the cycle you are locked into to repayment which means the obvious, work which requires more societal lock-downs: a house/apartment/car payment.  The topic of student loan debt could span pages and pages, let alone discussing why education costs anything (see Germany),  for now the important thing is its role a an ingredient of pacification.

The second part of the article goes on to talk about psychological labeling and subsequent medication. It focuses on ODD or oppositional defiant disorder, but offers little context in terms of numbers and instead relies on the gross sales of drugs said to treat the condition as a means of communicating the impact of the classification.  The medications listed are used to treat schizophrenia, mania, autism, bipolar, and a list of other disorders that antipsychotics can help reduce the negative symptoms of.  There were many better ways to go about the arguement of ODD's impact, let alone other potentially invalid disorders, but the intregrity of this article is severally damaged by the way Levine persues the arguement. The drugs listed have a myrid of uses and involve a large body of patients that will likely require the meds for life so there is no dramatic leap of faith needed to understand these drugs are going to be high grossing. Also I take issue with the idea that just because something is listed as a symptom that it is a negative trait. Take for instance ADHD, risk taking and anti authorative behavior are common, but it is well understand that ADHD has played a key role in the success of many well known people. ODD lifestyle changes has a long list of ways to improve ODD by focusing on building a relationship. By no means does it say the child will lose their disruptive side, but instead will have improved quality of life by being able to bond with others.

Thirdly, Levine discusses the issue of the k-12 education system and breeding good, old fashioned, worker bees and I agree. But really what alternative is there? I would love to see discourse on how other places do it better. What the world has shown me is that other places get children to memorize more information better. If there is a problem, to me, it is the requirement of a teaching certification for teachers. If a degree is good enough to teach in the university, it is good enough to teach k-12 without lesssons in "teaching theory".
In part four the article dicusses the No child Left Behind program and Race to the Top. I don't know what school Levine attended, but the general consensus in the 9 school systems I attended was that of appathy towards the testing. Perhaps not on the part of teachers, but for students the test represent no risk. Doing bad, likely, won't warrant a repraisal. Benchmarks like that are important so that we know where we are and where we need to be when looking at a world view. While the tests do control what subjects teachers teach, I still insist that the teaching certificate and teaching theory at large are the reasons we seem to forget teaching critical thinking until after high school.

Shame and illegitimacy of dropping out is the subject of the fifth part of the article and I fail to see the relevancy when looking at the last generation and their well known and effective poltical achievments. I don't see enough evidence on how our views have changed from then. Regardless, there is a major reason why reducing our drop-out rates is important, our average worker income (when adjusted for inflation) hasn't changed in quite some time, but our cost of living has. It is harder than ever to just drop out and know that you will find a way to scrape by. But again, I see a major lack of evidence as to how staying in school makes you more accepting of the conditions of the current age. The listed examples, Vidal and Carlin, likely dropped out for personal reasons that had nothing to do with a fear of becoming docile or groomed for society. The only connection I see to shame and drop outs is the connection between society looking down on people who don't make money, in the same way that liberal arts majors who can't find jobs are called yuppies and hippies. American's mock a lack of success (financially) and that is true across all levels of education.

The sixth point of the articule talks about surveillance both governmental and parental. This point I agree with and more deeply than it gets the chance to strike. The root of the problem here is that in our current age it is harder than ever to be allowed to make a mistake. Mistakes do more than just teach, they expand our views of people and the world. If anything contributes to the general apathy of my generation is the lack of an opportunity to make mistakes and just try at whatever it is one thinks of or is inspired by.

Television, the great American tradition. In the 7th part television rates and the new metric, "3 screens" (laptops/mobile phones/television), are discussed in reference to "zombifying" a generation. I disagree whole heartily. While the ratings may say otherwise, I see a lack of evidence in the growing rates of viewership in my generation compared to the last. Tv ownership is just common place and there is no way to differentiate between a TV that is on, and a TV that is watched. If anything, youtube, blog sites, and other forms of social media tell us that the current generation is connecting more than ever, and is more far reaching than ever. It is thanks to sites like that, that I have made contact with, and kept in touch with, people in the philipines, canada, china, taiwan, and else where, an opportunity I cannot say my parents had. Once again, I feel like the heart of the problem is missed in this point. These activities (games, tv, movies, music, etc) don't create pacification, but instead are signs of pascification and that the culprit would be the feeling of an inability to make a substanial or real change to the world around us, possibly due to corporatization.

And lastly, we have point eight of the article. Consumerism. This topic is really hot and hard to outline. The psychological benefits leveraged against all of us are clearly apparent yet hidden. This is a current hotbed for research and hard to discuss. But, just the idea that we can, at any time of day, give money for prepared food is bizaree and disruptive. It incentivizes a trade that disconnects people from the world and takes power from them. I've, in many ways, been subjugated by that, for whatever reason my parents never taught me to cook and I am paying the price by struggling in a way where companies have the financial and psychologal advantage. Aspects like this increase and drive our reliance on large corporate bodies.
With all of this in mind, it would seem like there is no hope. The war is nearly won. But then there is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which in many ways is so representative of the times in how globally interconnected it is, a sign that there are those who are willing to take a stand. There are those willing to push progress. And yet, they have done little besides stand in place and sleep in parks. I'm sure the world will keep their eyes open as we wait to see the movement put its money where its mouth is and take disruptive action for change.