Text: "Hoodie or hijab; racism is racism. I'm Iraqi and I want justice for Trayvon."

Via Feministing, via.

I saw this when it was posted on Feministing, and was reminded of it during our 4/3/12 continued discussion on Half the Sky. I feel this goes along with our discussion of what it means to go into another space and attempt to fix problems as an upper-middle class white American (as the intended audience of Half the Sky seemed to be), what it means to go into our own communities to solve problems, and the geographical, class, cultural, and racial divides between spaces and why or why not we transgress them/what it means to transgress them. This young woman is not part of the intended audience of the book, but she is transgressing geographical, racial, cultural, and religious boundaries to speak out against an attack and the systematic oppression that caused it. 

"Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips." Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com> (imdb.com)

This is the music video that Colleen Ryanne and I are planning to use to set the stage for class tomorrow! For future reference (or pre-class viewing if you're proactive like that). 

This is Kate Bornstein's contribution to Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign, which I (and a lot of people, this is a good summarization of a lot of the criticism of the campaign) have some problems with. I think, though, that Bornstein's contribution is my favorite one, and one that I actually agree with//don't think is harmful or as fraught with some issues of power, hegemony, etc. 

I'm bringing this here because in some ways, it relates to the Half the Sky movement in that it is a movement fueled by people in positions of privilege and power, with good intentions, but perhaps without too much of a critical eye to how the message is deployed/represented. 

So as I was reading Slaughterhouse Five I realized I had a lot of trouble really following it.  For starters, I was reading it on my Kindle, so I was unsure where the story actually began.  For most of the first chapter I felt like I was reading some introduction (until I got to chapter two and realized I was reading chapter one).  After finishing, I can totally see where the lines between "fact" and "fiction" are blurred in this tale.  

Honestly though, I'm having a harder time digging through what's "reality" and what's "fiction" because our discussions in class have completely destroyed any solid ground I have had on which is which.  I can barely get though my day without wondering if everything I'm experiencing is true or not.  How can it be if the only  proof I have to offer comes from my memories?  Facts, fiction, I don't know what the difference is anymore.  I don't know if there's a point in distinguishing between the two anymore.  Throw opinion in there and I lose it.

How can we say that this is fact or fiction?  Did the author actually have a friend who he went back to Dresden with?  Did he hear a story about a guy who inspired Billy?  If the character of Billy was based on someone then how can we say whether or not his story was true? 

I don't know.  I'm so confused by all of this.

In discussing "Half the Sky", we have also talked about the role that non-profits pIay in addressing violence against women. Who, then regulates non-profits and ensures that they are doing what they should be doing? I also wonder about the structure of non-profits themselves, and whether they could and would benefit from organizing themselves more like the private sector. For example, Geoffrey Canada is the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, a collection of programs and charter schools that aim to work with students from birth to high school graduation. Canada runs his program on what seems to be a business model, measuring his profit by his students' test scores. Applying a business model to his charter schools has ensured generous and continued funding for his work and allows his investors a way to justify their heavy spending. However, progress in antitrafficking programs, for example, cannot measure progress in the same way. Harlem Children's Zone can perhaps say that  X% of their students reached a certain score on standardized tests, but it seems reductive for the organizations that Kristoff mentions to say that they helped X% of women in a certain region. Once again, how do these nonprofits determine what and how much of it constitutes progress and who oversees what they do?

http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-It-Takes-Geoffrey-Canadas/dp/0618569898

I have a few goals for the end of the semester:

• I've been reading a lot of teachers' blogs lately, and I really want to get to the point where I blog about my experience as a personal reflective tool. I assume that most of the teachers whose blogs I read were not told that they had to blog, and it seems like a great way of processing your experience whenever you have time. I've seen similar things happen on twitter with #edchat, #ntchat, and #1stchat, but blogging can just be a record. For the rest of the year, I'm going to try to do a few shorter blog posts when I have things to say instead of gathering them all up at the end of the week.
• I want to continue working through my narratives in Literacies of music, tech, and linguistics.
• I want to engage more with the class community in Literacies--on twitter, here, and in person. I know that I've been spending a lot of my time looking out to the world through social media for this class, but I think more intra-class communication would help me grow more.

I'm thinking about using Storify to tell my thrice-told tale once. What storytelling method are you excited about?

Half the Sky has really gotten me to think about what the standard protocol and ettiquite for international humanitarianism is.

I remember asking my dean at the beginning of my freshman year, what classes can I take that can help me look more deeply into non-profit activism.  And she had told me that there really aren't any classes that focus just on that; You can essentially major in anything and go into non-profit activism.  When I think back, I thought that was very fair.  Anyone can go into the world and try and help.  However, my thoughts have shifted a bit.  While I still think it's great that the opportunity to help in ways such as the Half the Sky movement, I often wonder how organizations would be percieved if there were classes that were specifically offered about the organization of non-profit groups or international humanitarianism in general.  Perhaps I just haven't done enough research to find classes, but even as I look into classes for next semester, I do not see many classes that are offered that are about how to operate an organization that works in international humanitarianism.  Why can't it be like teacher certification?  You'd have to be certified to start a non-profit organization.  Is that too crazy of an idea?  If there is someone who is well-versed in this area, they could comment on how it works.