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@ewhittingtonnsf
I just completed this short video about the environmental effects on Sparrows Point and “environmental blackmail.” The audio is from our interview with Bill Barry, a labor historian and what I would consider to be an expert on the steel industry. Photos have been compiled from the Library of Congress, Flickr’s creative commons, and the National Archives.
A look at Sharp-Leadenhall’s youth cleaning up their neighborhood as a part of their summer jobs. The Clean and Green team is a South Baltimore Partnership p…
It was great to observe and interact with a group of young men that are willing to take an initiative in their community. It’s by no means easy for guys in high school to publicly represent their neighborhood in a positive way, and these fellows are doing just that. Their eagerness to help clean up the community is a testament to the camaraderie which is woven into numerous urban neighborhoods, that more often than not, go unrecognized by mainstream media. Geographical location makes no difference when pressing for positive change, and these guys are definitely making great strides in that direction. Reflecting back on the seemingly “blink of an eye” time spent with the South Baltimore Partnership, I count each moment a blessing, that will not soon be forgotten. Big Up to the Clean & Green crew!
Whoa.
It's done. I never realized that I could learn so much about the city I call home. I know so much about the things I drive past every day
Dr. Gill is working with us today to help make our final videos. He has had some great film and editing advice on making our videos great!
Love him!!!
Sad day. It’s the one year anniversary of myself and many others losing their job at RG Steel after the company filed bankruptcy. Miss my job and coworkers so much. I’m never going to work at a place as awesome as that ever again. Not many people can say that they don’t dread going to work…Well, working at the point, there was never a time where I dreaded going. Not to mention it was nice not living off a strict budget!
Lisa Marie
June 8, 2013
Memories of Sparrows Point (FB)
A short video about the concept of the company town surrounding mills such as Sparrows Point. Photos provided by labor historian Bill Barry and the Library of Congress.
Voices
As this program comes to a close, I'm looking back on the experiences I've had. Throughout the process, I've been told to make connections and I'm terrible at that. I feel like for the past month I've seen pieces of a puzzle but it was like something's missing. This past weekend I went through something really difficult but the silver lining is that I learned the importance of having a voice. For a few days, I lost mine. I lost my confidence, my idea of home, basically, everything was complete chaos, Yesterday we discussed the idea of spaces and places and what makes a home a home. I said my home was my place of employment. Last week I would have said my home was with my family but I don't even know if I have a family anymore...so work it is. I thought about why and I realized its because I have confidence and a sense of security there. It's a safe place where I have a voice. In my time with WAYM, I realized that not only was this program giving the youth producer opportunities, technical skills, and social skills, but also a voice. I mean, the entire reason the program was started was because the founder was realized the youth in her neighborhood had stories to tell but no way to do it. Sheila mentioned in her interview that lots of the youth producers that have been involved In the program don't have the support they need to be successful. By giving them a place to be themselves and flourish, they are essentially giving them a home.
I’ve been meaning to publish this for a while but I’m just getting around to it now, so apologies for the lateness/obsolescence.
The view from my testing station at City Uprising. Rather than just provide privacy, the partitions at Unity UMC served as a history lesson and introduction for those getting tested to Unity UMC. On the outer wall facing the rest of the church were hand-drawn pictures and messages from children with sayings such as “We love you,” “God is love,” and the like. It may not have been the explicit intention of Unity UMC’s congregation, but what once was merely an HIV testing event became a PR event for the parish with the addition of these decorations.
Unity UMC was certainly good at advertising itself, but how effective was it in advertising free HIV testing and linkage to care for people who are positive? How much good, or ill, can a religious institution do when it comes to conversations about HIV? Anyone can imagine the moral and philosophical hang-ups that come with HIV prevention and faith-based communities. Those assumptions about “correct” behavior play a factor in the willingness of people to talk frankly about their sex lives in a church, of all places.
But Dr. Durington raised an interesting point. We were chatting during City Uprising about HIV in general, and he was pushing the idea that most HIV infections come from IV drug use rather than unprotected sex. I never considered that possibility because I’ve let myself be blinded by the data - the data says most people are contracting HIV through sex, and that IV transmission has been in decline for a while. I collected my own qualitative surveys of 50 or so patients at the JACQUES Initiative when I interned there that said the same thing. The majority of patients at JACQUES are either struggling with or recovering from drug addiction, but I had good reason to infer (i.e., they indicated as much on the surveys) that they had been infected through unprotected sex while using. I guess I wanted to believe that because of my own personal bias: I collected that information, so I would know it best, right? Not really. It seems obvious to me now, but before Dr. Durington brought it up I generally dismissed the idea that the epidemiological profiles for HIV in Baltimore are skewed. But of course they are; they rely heavily on self-reporting for their data collection. As did I during my research. As do HIV testers every time we perform prevention counseling. If life, and anthropology, have taught me anything, it’s that people lie all the time, and often for good reasons.
I mentioned a few weeks ago during our City Uprising debrief that HIV testing events in areas of high infection like Baltimore City are meant to weed out the people who are positive. But, anecdotally speaking, we tend to get a lot of people who’ve had multiple tests over the years and generally stay on top of their respective HIV statuses (the biopower is strong with these ones). So where are the positives? We know they’re out there, but they don’t come to testing events. Based on the HIV infection statistics of the area, I’m sure every volunteer at Unity UMC encountered someone who was HIV positive but out of care. And it’s not as if they’re unaware of their statuses - I’d say people either know or have a very strong suspicion that they’re positive because of all the opportunities for mandatory HIV testing, especially in impoverished, “high-risk” communities. So why opt out of testing events, of treatment, of wellness?
I think there are HIV positive people who don’t come forward because of sexualized stigma associated with the disease. But now I’m wondering how many people don’t come forward because they’re entangled in cycles of drug abuse, and choose the drugs over HIV. JACQUES patients have said over and over again to me that they had to choose between HIV treatment and drugs, because it’s impossible to have both. Some of them chose the drugs a number of times before being linked to long-term HIV care. That was a choice they had to decide for themselves, and each person with HIV who struggles with addiction has to do the same. I can’t help but link the possibility of high, unreported rates of HIV infection among IV drug users to the War on Drugs, its attendant punitive responses to drug use, and its negative influence on harm reduction programs in the U.S.
Generally speaking, the War on Drugs has forced Americans to pretend that drug use is a black-and-white issue with easy solutions. It’s forced governmental agencies and NGOs to operate under zero-tolerance policies, which have the potential to undo all the significant work done in harm reduction in the late 20th century. The criminalization of drug use and the illicit economies that surround them force their members into the margins for fear of imprisonment as well as other legal and financial consequences. So it seems like common sense that IV drug use would be a big reason why people don’t show up to HIV testing events - not necessarily because of the churches or the stigma, but because of a deeper and more intractable commitment to addiction. What’s troubling to me, as someone who wants people with HIV to be linked to care and recover from drug abuse, is that, if true, that would mean there are a significant number of people living in Baltimore who are being left out of outreach strategies. And that we let ourselves leave people out because of the controversial politics of drug treatment, harm reduction, and the War on Drugs. To be clear, I did realize during my research that drug addiction was a significant factor in HIV treatment, and that illicit economies like the drug trade play a factor in incidence and prevalence rates. But I hadn’t seriously considered just how much the realities of drug addiction, the unreliability of self-reporting, and the complexities of treating addiction may be skewing the picture we paint of what HIV looks like in Baltimore. This is so cheesy, but this made me think of a scene from The Wire, when Marlo Stanfield and a convenience story security guard engage in a symbolic battle for turf in the form of Dum-Dum lollipops. The security guard gets frustrated with Stanfield for not playing by the rules, and forcing him to risk his safety to enforce petty shoplifting laws against a renowned and dangerous drug kingpin. Stanfield, a true wordsmith, simply says, “You want it to be one way… But it’s the other way,” and drives away. What Marlo meant was that the security guard was clinging to a set of rules and behaviors that were simply untenable in that world of urban Baltimore. The idealized rule of law didn’t and couldn’t apply to a social order where informal, illicit, and violent ways of life were the only means of survival. This space operates according to its own rules, and those who try to enforce the “one way” will find that the “other way” always wins. Those of us academics, professionals, volunteers, and general well-wishers for the future of Baltimore want it to be one way. We swoop in with our health fairs, condoms, and hot dogs, and try to enforce one way that involves churches and universities and hospitals. We march into Baltimore with clipboards to narrate the one way that people get infected with HIV. We ignore the other way for a variety of reasons (some good and some bad) and eventually find ourselves in a quandary in which our efforts aren’t making the difference we thought they would. I don’t mean to accuse anyone of white savior complexes here, but am I the only person who thinks the entire NGO/humanitarian aid culture can at times be a little, uh, patronizing? And that it engage in problematic activities, even with the best of intentions?
Addiction is an illness. Of course I understand the reason drugs are illegal. I understand why we have laws against heroin and crack. But the stigma attached to this illness-and to mental health-is unbearable. I have seen my family members suffer for years because society refuses to regard addiction as an illness and punishes and then half heartedly rehabilitates.
Almost there
I'm amazed at how significant an audio documentary can be. I hope I can do my interviewees' words justice. Big thanks to Chaya for helping being the final piece to the puzzle, and thanks in advance to Matt for being my narrator.
I had a very frightening experience this afternoon in which the footage I took from this morning in Sharp Leadenhall and the only video of the steel and overview groups’ interview with Chris MacLarion disappeared from my laptop (after I had deleted the footage from my camera). I managed to...
During an intense earth science study session, I became overwhelmed and was gripped by a deep hatred of ocean currents. I smacked my old Toshiba Satellite. My trusty tank of a laptop, which had formerly prevailed over falls onto my hardwood floor and my then-5 year old banging away and even a few juice spills, froze and could only greet me with the blue screen of death. Frantic, I spent hundreds of dollars at a local computer repair center retrieving all of my old papers.
Never again. I back up all my work every Friday now.
KNOW YOUR STATUS.
They just want somewhere safe to play
One of the questions Natalie asked our informants was what they want for their neighborhoods. What do these young adults need so they can socialize and be safe and healthy? LeRee', a youth producer at WAYM pointed out the lack of safe places youth in the city have to hang out. If given a safe place to go, they would take care of it. He has WAYM...but what do the other kids have?
Anthropology has often failed to communicate its ideas and human data to a wider public. Much of anthropological publication has been pedantic, arcane, and obtuse; the academic and often pretentiously scientific formula of Problem-Data-Argument-Conclusion does not make for exciting reading.
Bruce Grindal (1940-2012) “The Spirit of Humanistic Anthropology,” Anthropology and Humanism, (18)2,1993: 46-47. (via literary-ethnography)
Not sure how I feel about the last part of the quote buuuut I feel like the first sentence and the first half of the second sums it up pretty well.
Let’s not ignore the irony though. Using “pedantic, arcane, and obtuse” and then talking about being pretentious. I understand the use of jargon as well as more complex language, but only to a degree. If our goal as anthropologists to be accessible we have to use words that everyone can understand.
And I’m not saying we need to dumb things down, we just need to speak in ideas - talking about the substance using accessible and inclusive language. As usual, I think we should try to take a hard look at ourselves and our practices and see how we, individually, can make these changes and then move on to larger things. Maybe that’s talking about it to one more person or maybe that’s changing the entire discipline. Whichever.
(via rlucasnsf)
I've been using the phrase "uninitiated" audience SO much lately. I do agree that writings and even conversation can come off as pretentious in the social sciences. It's simple, if you want people to care, you have to level with them.
1 in 5
I post this on my club's group page at least once a year. It still makes me laugh.
Shooting our formal interviews today. The youth producers are able to confidentially share their experiences with WAYM and their hopes for the future. Even if they don’t plan to make a career out of their skills learned here, they have reaped benefits that will support them in whatever they do
For the first half of the week we found ourselves fully immersed in Wide Angle Youth Media, working with them to create various pitches for CSX's safety campaign. Faced with staggering statistics that showcased the nonchalant attitudes their age group had towards trains, the youth producers were more apt to create pitches that had a heavy dose of dark humor. Today, we went to the B&O railroad museum in Baltimore. Walking around, the youth producers showed a childish delight engaging with some of the interactive exhibits, chuckling at a talking bust that related the B&O's history, relaxing in the train ride and talking about the day. While no one came out and said they were understanding of the danger trains posed and the risk with frequenting track, they acknowledged the pull their age group might feel when confronted with tracks. The railroad offered some inspiration for production of their PSAs but the idea of train safety itself didn't seem to quite resonate with them.
To Rise Above
This is the story if how I came to be who I am because of the troubles I had been through and becoming who I really want to be.
from http://wideanglemedia.org/?p=2022&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=to-rise-above
One of the things I really hope to accomplish with my group with this project is give a voice to the youth working with Wide Angle. This piece showcases the coming of age that so many youth struggle with. It is a unique video that shows obstacles and perseverance of youth. Not only do you watch the story unfold, you experience it and feel it because of the production prowess of the team.
