S-Files: Making a difference

The following S-Files submission is a personal testimony by an anonymous  volunteer from Project Literacy at UCLA. 

Why do I wake up at seven-thirty every Saturday? Saturdays are for sleeping. Saturdays are for watching college football and cartoons. Saturday mornings should be for everything but working. Grumbling about how early it is, I get up and head to Kerckhoff to get ready for our Watts tutoring site with my co-Saturday Watts director.

And then at ten I get to Watts. A precocious 6 year old, runs out of their families car excited to see the tutors and runs over to give me a hug (a youth safety no-no, but try denying a 6 year old a hug). Her 16 year old brother, casually strolls over to give me props. Their 12 year old brother also gives me props, all-the-while keeping a too cool for school look on his face. You shouldn’t let this look hide the fact that he is extremely intelligent.

All these children are kind and innocent. In the right neighborhoods, with the right schools and the right situations, most of them would be able to attend four year colleges.

Seeing these kids every Saturday I am reminded of the hope I have that they can succeed and go to college. I see them and hope that if we can impact just one child in a positive way, we are successful. If we can help improve their reading level to where it should be, if we can give them guidance, and if we can impact them in a positive way, we are successful.

Looking only at demographics and statistics, you can’t help but feel that your efforts are moot. These neighborhoods have, and maybe will remain, places underprivileged neighborhoods with high poverty

But seeing the children that we work with, I can’t help but think that we are making a difference. The smiles on the kids’ faces when they come to learn to read must mean that we are making a difference. They are smiling about coming to tutoring! Every Saturday, week in and week out, they come to tutoring and form a bond with their tutor. They gain a role model from their tutor as much as they gain improved reading and writing techniques.

And as much as we make an impact on the children, the children make an impact upon us.

So why do I wake up at seven-thirty? Project Literacy is why I wake up.

American Cultural Literacy: “Procrastination is the thief of time”

Procrastination is the thief of time

Proverbs

Putting things off robs us of the opportunity to accomplish something.

American Cultural Literacy: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”

When the going gets tough, the tough get going

Proverbs

The way to overcome adversity is to try harder.

Thursday Take-Off: Potential

If humans only use 10% of their brains, how much potential is left undiscovered within ourselves and in our worlds?

Wednesday Word: Growing Pains

Working at a University with thousands of college students, everyone walking this campus is on the pursuit of something great. Everyone is exploring their options.  Everyone is getting lost.  Everyone is discovering what it means to live—to learn, sacrifice, give and grow. And at any moment, life can change.

This is an interesting article for many of us to consider. It’s titled,

“5 Questions You Need to Ask (To Avoid Ruining Your Life)”

It walks you through assessing and questioning (unhealthy) relationships, career choices, family life, substance abuse and the ever pending “adulthood”. Enjoy!

Tuesday Title: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

The Shock Doctrine:

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Amazon.com Review

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrineadvances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn’t just some relic from the bad old days. It’s alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.

“At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq” civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves… Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the ‘War on Terror’ to Halliburton and Blackwater… After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts… New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened.” Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes “produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.” Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld.

There’s little doubt Klein’s book–which arrived to enormous attention and fanfare thanks to her previous missive, the best-selling No Logo, will stir the ire of the right and corporate America. It’s also true that Klein’s assertions are coherent, comprehensively researched and footnoted, and she makes a very credible case. Even if the world isn’t going to hell in a hand-basket just yet, it’s nice to know a sharp customer like Klein is bearing witness to the backroom machinations of government and industry in times of turmoil.

 

 

American Cultural Literacy: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Proverbs

If you want something badly enough, you can find the means to get it.

Free Speech Friday: Alice Walker reads Sojourner Truth

Poet Alice Walker reads the 1851 speech of abolitionist, Sojourner Truth. This is part of a reading from Voices of a People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,) Novemeber 11, 2006 in Berkeley, California.

Daily Word: Pedagogy

Pedagogy

-noun, plural -gies.

1. the function or work of a teacher; teaching.

2. the art or science of teaching; education; instructional methods.

Thursday Take-Off: Self-Doubt

“When you fear others will judge you, are you already judging yourself?”

Daily Word: Novice

Novice

-noun

1. a person who is new to the circumstances, work, etc., in which he or she is placed; beginner; tyro: a novice in politics.

2. a person who has been received into a religious order or congregation for a period of probation before taking vows.

Daily Word: Melodious

Melodious

-adjective

1. of the nature of or characterized by melody;  tuneful.

2. producing melody;  sweet-sounding; musical.

Tuesday Title: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Book Description:

Southern India 1969. Here, armed only with the invincible innocence of children, Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family: their lonely, lovely mother, who loves by night the same man her children adore by day…their blind grandmother, who plays Handel on her violin…their beloved uncle, A Rhodes Scholar pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher…their enemy, an ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt…and the ghost of an imperial entomologist’s moth. But when their English cousin and her mother arrive for a Christmas visit, the twins learn that things can change in an instant, thatlives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

Amazon.com Review:

In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that’s completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language.

S-Files: Who Am I?

By Tevita Folau

I am not just me.

I am not my own, because my life isn’t just mine.

Given to me as a gift from God, I traveled long distances over the sea, to bless and be blessed by this New World of Modernity.

I am not just me and my life is not my own.

I am more than the flesh that clothes my bones, more than the breath that carries my tones.

I am more than the culturally, commodified image of a shirtless, saran-wearing, bone necklace sporting, bare-footed, male Polynesian with unique hair and a broken accent.

I am more than myself.

I am my father’s son, my mother’s child, and my brother’s keeper.

Using internalized ancestral skills to navigate through life, I’m paving the road with yellow bricks.

And future generations will walk the path I’ve helped to lay, unafraid of the unknown that lies ahead.

That will be my legacy.

Simply put, I’m a piece of the puzzle.

While unique and necessary, I’m one of many.

And when the day comes where my people feel the light of justice caress their very souls, my mission will be fulfilled because my purpose is greater than my existence.

And when that day comes, I will rejoice and if I’m dead, then my blood will sing through the veins of my children and my children’s children.

When that day comes, my people will shed the shackles of colonialism from their ankles and wrists, throw off the crown of subjugation from their minds and brow, and dance with the ebbing flow of waves our Mother Ocean provides.

I am not just me and my life is not my own.

My body is made from the Earth my ancestors walked upon.

My heart is the taro that feeds my brothers and sisters.

My limbs are the mighty palms that shelter my people in times of heat and frustration.

My lips, the gentle caress of the wind, leading and guiding the ones to come.

My nose, the powerful kava root, rooted in tradition but adjusting to the times.

My eyes, the stars with whom we have an historical and personal relationship with.

My ears, the sea shells, always hearing the call of the kind yet stern waters of the deep.

I am not just me and my life is not my own.

Why?

Because the pain and struggles of my people are my own.

Because the pleasure and triumphs of my people are my own.

Because I am my people, and they are me.

We are one as much as we are separate.

Our pasts, forever entwined.

Our presents, parallel in paths.

Who am I?

I am our future.

And I will help carry the mantle of my people towards salvation.

American Cultural Literacy: “While there’s life, there’s hope”

While there’s is life, there’s hope

Proverbs

Never give up.

Daily Word: Impunity

Impunity

–noun

1. exemption from punishment.

2. immunity from detrimental effects, as of an action.

Daily Word: Accede

Accede

–verb (used without object), -ced·ed, -ced·ing.

1. to give consent, approval, or adherence; agree; assent; to accede to a request; to accede to the terms of a contract.

2. to attain or assume an office, title, or dignity; succeed (usually followed by to ): to accede to the throne.

3. International Law . to become a party to an agreement, treaty, or the like, by way of accession.

Daily Word: Ineligible

Ineligible

–adjective

1. not eligible;  not permitted or suitable: Employees are ineligible in this contest.

2. legally disqualified to hold an office.

3. legally disqualified to function as a juror, voter, witness, etc., or to become the recipient of a privilege.

Free Speech Friday: Akon Responds to Lupe

Last week, we posted a video where Lupe Fiasco calls Obama a terrorist. Akon responds to Lupe in this video and says Obama is not a terrorist, but perhaps the GOP is.  What do you think?

 

Thursday Take-Off: Chasing Money vs. Chasing Dreams

With an economic recession that left so many qualified individuals unemployed, is there such a thing as financial or professional security?