Category: Uncategorized

Tool for the job

Twitterfeed tweeting a del.icio.us bookmark
Twitterfeed tweeting a del.icio.us bookmark

After becoming a more avid Twitter user, I’ve noticed that many people tweet things they’ve bookmarked or links to their blog entries.  I love to be able to follow this kind of thing, but to do it personally seems like a lot of work.  I like to share bookmarks and my friends are twitter (but not del.icio.us) users, but it seems like del.icio.us is so much better at saving and sharing bookmarks.  I want to tweet my blog posts and bookmarks, but don’t want to have to do it specifically.  I realized this when I started using Goodreads’ twitter update functionality to tweet automatically when I tag a book as reading or to-read.

Twitterfeed + tagging – a solution

I found the Twitterfeed service that converts an RSS feed to tweets and set it to read the RSS feed for my del.icio.us bookmarks.

But, I don’t want to bombard my twitter followers with tweets every time I bookmark something or write a blog entry.  Luckily, del.icio.us generates tag specific feeds and I’m sure I could get WordPress to do this without too many problems.  So, I’ll just point twitterfeed at a tag-specific feed and tag everything i want to be tweeted with that tag (e.g. tweetit)

Update: The tag specific feed for a wordpress blog is /wp-rss2.php?tag=your_tag or /feed?tag=your_tag

Pages vision

A college student who is working with Pages as part of one of their classes asked me what I thought the organization’s long term vision was.  It was a good question, and this is what I responded with, though I feel like it’s just a starting point

> What is Pages long term vision?
> What type of social impact would you like to see Pages make(prisoner
> rights/awareness/literacy)?
Really, these are two parts to the same question, so I'll answer it as
such.  I think Pages' long term vision is a world where everyone has the
knowledge, perspective, and skills to live an interesting, dignified
life.  Pages' focus is on making sure that incarcerated and formerly
incarcerated people are included as part of everyone.

Like any social movement, community project, or nonprofit, I think that
our vision includes envisioning a day when our project doesn't need to
exist.  I will be the first to admit that the model of the prison book
project is not a particularly efficient way to get books to incarcerated
people.  Sadly, for many, it is the only way that they can get access to
the knowledge and perspective that they want, which is why our project
continues to do the work of sending free books to incarcerated people.
The aspect of the project that moves us toward a world where we are no
longer necessary is the volunteer experience of service and of reading
the letters from incarcerated people and, hopefully, complicating the
volunteer's perception of incarcerated people and incarceration.  

I want people who volunteer with us to be able to think and make decisions
more rationally when it comes to community safety, crime, incarceration and
incarcerated people.  I also do work with a local group called Decarcerate
Monroe County which is resisting jail expansion in this county.  In some
ways it addresses some of the same issues as Pages, but more fundamentally,
because it aims to make one government entity spend money on empowering
people instead of incarcerating them and finding solutions to keep people
out of jail.  However, in doing this organizing, attending county meetings,
and talking with people who have conflicting ideas, it makes me appreciate
Pages because I feel like people who volunteer here get a perspective that
helps them think beyond the cultural stereotypes about crime,
incarceration, and the people affected by incarceration.  At Pages, we're
not trying to portray every incarcerated person as an innocent victim of
the system. Instead, through their letters, we're letting incarcerated
people speak for themselves in the hopes that those reading the letters
will at least appreciate them as an individual.  Ultimately, I hope the
experience of volunteering with Pages will make people realize that
incarceration in this country, as it stands now, is not working very well
for anyone - whether it's the incarcerated or the community at large. 
Hopefully people will keep this perspective in mind when they are voting,
working, and involved in their community.



	


	


					



	


	
Asian Americans Reluctant to Stand Up for Immigration Issues


	

		
From Asian Americans Reluctant to Stand Up for Immigration Issues:


NEW YORK – The Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston recently released a study showing that many Asian Americans pay close attention to immigration issues but few of them are willing to stand up and do advocacy work. According to The World Journal, a survey of 412 Asian Americans by Paul Watanabe, director of the Institute and associate professor of political science at the university, and his colleagues found that about 80 percent of them were “very concerned” or “concerned” about immigration. The study shows that 58 percent of Asians are sympathetic to undocumented immigrants and 52 percent of them are supportive of the idea of legalizing undocumented immigrants. About 33 percent of the Asian Americans surveyed said they would become involved in collecting signatures on petitions for immigration issues, but only nine percent said they were willing to do anything further, such as participating in public protests.


Even the most informed of us, I think, gets a certin picture in their head when they hear the phrase “immigrant” and “illegal immigrant”.  I remember being surprised when I learned that the first law to limit a specific group’s immigration to the U.S. was directed to Chinese Americans.  I wonder if there’s any data about Asian American political engagement in general and whether the behavior in this study is any different from the general case.


I can only think of my dad yelling at the radio, but being pretty resigned to the way things were in the world, even if he acknowledged that they were unjust.  I was excited that my mom told me that my dad had volunteered during the Obama campaign, making calls to potential voters.  Things are always more complicated when it comes down to it.

	


	


					



	


	
Harry Potter, Social Networking and Things Not Changing


	

		
I just read the end of the final Harry Potter book for the second time.  Well, listened to really, as it was read as a bedtime story floating through the house as the evening wound down.  I still think the epilogue is pretty feeble with the principle characters marrying their high school sweethearts and having babies, but hearing it for a second time made me think of a few things.  First, I think it’s fitting and real that Harry would become the thing that he never had and always desired – a loving parent.  Second, the epilogue speaks to something that I think has made the books incredibly popular, particularly among children – the comforting fantasy that the people you care about will surround you always.


The Wizarding World is a small one, it seems, where everyone seems to be on a first name basis.  With the magic of technology through social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, we create our own special worlds, ones that seem large and connected but that are still manageable and familiar.  I’ve always had a tough time digesting these online social networks.  Too often, they tend towards the worst kind of collective consciousness – not where individual consciousness is collected to reverberate, ignite, and react, but where we laze towards a single consciousness where the same language, ideas, and inside jokes abound.  It gets tiring hearing the same in-town drama over-and-over at a party, let alone regurgitated the next morning in a flurry of digital messages.


The thing that I like the most about the social networks is less hearing from people who are close and constant, and more from those who are distant.  I like the message from the person I’ve known since high school and still manage to see every few years.  I like reading someone’s words, and feeling the gentle fingerprint that underlies them.  I like the rush of excitement and energy that I get from reading someone’s new ideas, what they’re working on, what they’ve just made.  And, I like to see someone’s profile, to see the latest version of themselves, and all the things that haven’t changed.

	


	


					

					



	


	
Questions about teaching


	

		
I’m thinking about being a public school math teacher through a teaching fellows program such as New York City Teaching Fellows.  I’m hoping that teaching could be a convergence of my technical knowledge, desire for social change, and belief in transformation and experience with teachers being important to me.  Still, I’m not 100% sure this is the best way for me to do these things, so I’ve compiled a survey of questions that are important to me.  If you’re a teacher, can you comment on this post with your answers?  If you want to give me feedback by e-mail or phone, just e-mail me and I’ll get back to you.  If you know someone who is a teacher (or who was a teacher and decided to do something else), can you please forward this to them?


Why did you decide to teach in a public school?


What are some elements  of your identity and personal history that have caused tension with your students, what are some that have created unity?


In what ways were you able to develop your own curriculum?


How has standardized testing and other aspects of NCLB affected your classroom experience?


What are things that affect your classroom that you feel are beyond your ability to change? 


How have you been able to incorporate personal interests or passions (playing music, cycling, etc.) into your teaching? 


What were some things that were different from your expectations about teaching?


How does your teaching affect social change?  How does you teaching fit in with other community organizing/activism you do? 


What things have been most frustrating, disappointing about teaching?


Do you feel like your values and ideas are shared by fellow teachers?  By the administration?


How have you tried to make what you teach relevant to the community where you teach?


How have you collaborated with community groups or national movements? 


How much time does teaching take up in your life?  How are these hours spent?




How do you set boundaries to make time for your personal life? 


In what ways are you involved in your school outside of your classroom? 


Anything else you want to add?

	


	


					



	


	
Feedback for sexual assault prevention in indiana


	

		
Reposted from Chiara:


i know i am kind of a broken record because i talk about the same things all the time, but here is the deal:

indiana is finally trying to implement a broad sexual asssault prevention plan, and insted of having random “professionals” decide what is best, they are asking hoosiers to fill out this survey to get an idea of what really affects people in their life and how to push for positive change.


it’s all online at : http://www. in. gov/isdh/23820. htm


even if you fill out a couple of questions it’s still helpful///


ok, hope to see ya all soon!

chiara


                             

	


	


					



	


	
cash rules everything around me


	

		
I’m soliciting funds again.  This time, to support a project that I work closely with called the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project (http://pagestoprisoners.org)  We send free reading material to people incarcerated in juvenile facilities, prisons, and jails throughout the Midwest, Florida, and Arizona.  Our primary means of support is  through the donation of books and money to cover buying books and the ever-rising cost of postage.  To put things in perspective, it costs between $3-7 to send one package of free books to an incarcerated person.  With each biweekly mailing, we send 100-200 packages, so the expenses grow quickly.  Though this might seem like a costly and not-so-efficient way to get reading material to people, it is often the only access to information, ideas, and mental stimulation that many incarcerated people have.  This Saturday, I will be bowling in a Bowl-A-Thon fundraiser and I would appreciate your sponsorship.  You can read more about the event at http://pagestoprisoners.org/bowl-a-thon and donate via PayPal by visiting https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=1545159


Thanks for your support,

Geoff

	


	


					



	


	
CR10 decompression


	

		
This has been sitting in my drafts for way too long.  Just going to post it and maybe add to it later.  Besides, I wanted to post the conversation map which I think is pretty interesting …


I got back from the CR10 conference in Oakland yesterday and still fill sleep deprived and like my head is exploding, not only with the head cold I picked up, but with thoughts, ideas, critiques, and questions.  I’m going to try really hard to give myself a rundown of everything that was on my mind throughout the conference as clearly, and with as much sane organization as I can.


Local Jail Resistance


Brick By Brick


Brick By Brick (PDF)


The primary reason that I went to CR10 was to be part of the Decarcerate Monroe County posse that was participating along, with two other groups, in a workshop titled “Taking it Down, Brick by Brick: Local Anti-Jail Campaigns”.  We shared the workshop with Community in Unity from NYC who successfully defeated a proposal to build a jail in the Bronx and is now struggling against the construction of that jail in a new location, and Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, a group that is trying to shut down an infamous juvenile jail in NOLA.  The format was a “fishbowl” conversation, with a facilitator asking the groups different questions and representatives from the 3 groups providing answers.  One cool addition to the workshop was videographer Ashley Hunt doing a real time visual map of some of the ideas that were brought up during the discussion.


Different communities, same story when it comes to jails


One would never think of the Bronx, New Orleans and Bloomington as having very much in common, but when it comes to the rhetoric of jail expansion, these places have a lot in common.  Both proposed sites in the Bronx for the jail (Oak Point and Hunts Point) were in poor areas of the city and both were very environmentally toxic and in close proximity to things like waste management facilities and power plants.  Environmentally-related health problems like asthma were more frequent in the community where they wanted to build the jail.  One of the proposed sites for Bloomington’s new jail is on the south side of town, near a primarily working-class residential neighborhood.  It would also be on the site of a closed industrial manufacturing facility, though I’m not sure if the environmental implications of the industrial site have been studied yet.


A similar parallel can be seen in the euphemisms used for jails.  In Bloomington, the proposal was for a “Justice Campus”.  In NOLA, the youth jail, where spoiled milk at meals and rat infestations were reported as common, is called the “Youth Study Center.”


Finally, improved conditions and easier access to visitation, both of which are used to rationalize jail and juvenile detention center construction in Bloomington, were also used as rationalizations for jail expansion in the Bronx.  Proponents of the jail argued that people housed in the new jail would be closer to their communities, though the change in proximity would be marginal according to CIU folks.  Also, jail advocates claimed that it would allow some incarcerated people to be moved from the notoriously bad Riker’s Island facility.  What seemed different from Bloomington is the fact that such arguments seemed to have much less traction in NYC than in Bloomington.  I don’t know why this is, though I think that many in Bloomington have fewer connections with incarceration so may be more trustful of the possibility of a kinder, gentler jail.  For people directly affected by incarceration in Monroe County, their marginilization from political and cultural power in the community and the lack of a history of political organizing with the leadership of poor people or people of color may make people feel like they have to cut their losses and hope that a new jail would provide some improvement in the conditions for their loved ones.


Still, the workshop definitely made me look beyond my mapping of power in the community.  I think it’s easy to see forces like the University as privileged, marginalizing, and moreover, homogeneous.  The moderator pointed out that, within the University, their may be many people from backgrounds of poverty or first-generation scholars for whom the politics of jail resistance may resonate strongly.  I had always been wary of having organizing against jail expansion involve the university too much because of tensions between university students and other community members and because of the different experiences of people affected by the jail and many student activists, but there are probably groups of people at the university who have experiences with incarceration for whom resistance to the jail would resonate.


Strategies


JJPL had strategic considerations that followed from part of their efforts involving a lawsuit about the conditions at the youth facility.  While the results of this lawsuit essentially only result from building a better jail rather than movement toward alternatives to jails, the lawsuit facilitated direct access to youth in the facility.  JJPL workers were allowed to interview youth as part of the lawsuit which allowed the gathering of information for both investigation and advocacy.  When talking to youth in the facility, JJPL noted that it was important to involve a large number of youth to prevent a baclash against youth who spoke out.  JJPL warned that while working with lawyers, it was important to have an equal flow of information and leverage in decision making in both the areas of media/organizing and litigation.


JJPL also used a lot of strategies to connect with youth who had been incarcerated or who were from neighborhoods where a lot of youth were incarcerated.  These included cookout events with DJs that doubled as planning events for the campaign.  One of the people with JJPL ran a record label and used hip hop music as part of his organizing.  JJPL also made efforts to keep in touch with youth they  had met doing interviews while the youth were incarcerated so that they could be involved in organizing once they were released.  One issue with working with incarcerated youth was that some were described as being “institutionalized”, or having difficulty examining the youth facility critically.  However, JJPL said that one youth’s comment that he didn’t think the facility should be closed sparked a long and constructive conversation about their organizing.  I wish I would have heard the content of that conversation.


CIU involved affected people by working with a therepeutic community called La Casita to organize speak outs about incarceration.  They also used a variety of media strategies to try to encourage opposition to the jail.  These included making maps that showed the human geography (economic background, race, environmental factors) of the sites for the proposed jail, a list of 50 other ways to spend the money on the jail, and a lot of emphasis on questioning why new jails were only planned to be constructed in poor communities.  They also tried to create media events that put decision makers face to face with formerly incarcerated people.

	


	


					



	


	
wal-mart deaths and critical analysis


	

		
By now this is old news:


A stampede of shoppers in a Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Friday morning left one worker dead and at least three patrons injured after an impatient crowd broke down the store doors and trampled the seasonal employee, Nassau police said.  Jdimytai Damour of Jamaica, Queens, was pushed to the ground by the 2,000-plus crowd just before 5 a.m. as management was preparing to open the store, which is located across from the main Green Acres Mall building. Hundreds stepped over, around and on the 34-year-old worker as they rushed into the store.


You can see this as so symbolic in terms of the effect that caplitalism has on workers and people of color, but sometimes it’s exhausting and almost feels disrespectful to disect everything that way.  Are there better ways to die than others?  It seems like such a waste of life in any case.  In the part of The Accidental American that I read before I had to return it to ILL, the authors talked about the importance of people and immigrants in particular being able to have work and a life that was interesting and dignified.   This just seems like an example of how far we have to go – this makes me think of the horrific, but seems devoid of any interesst or dignity.