Thinking outside the bubble

My name's Kendra. I am student at the University of California, Berkeley. This is my blog that I've started as part of my Social Movements and Social Media Course and have continued to use as a blog to write about current events. Take a look around!

[kendrasinghs]

11/28

It has taken me a while to be able to talk about the election, mostly because I have been cycling sporadically through the five stages of grief for a while. But this week, as we were assigned this article about the Bernie Sanders grassroots movement, I had a reason to think back to a year ago, when the primaries were on everyone’s mind. 

First, I remembered the first hints of Bernie Sanders running. I saw a lone post on my tumblr dashboard, thinking that the possibility of Sanders getting large traction was a pipe dream. And then he did.

I was really energized for Bernie Sanders, like a lot of people in Berkeley, but I was complacent. I bought a shirt and voted, and that was that. But his campaign was specifically working against that. The article mentioned above reads, “... we’ve also added this other element, which is actually turning all of these people who are enthusiastic about Bernie and not just give them the chance to give donations but the chance to do some of the election work.” 

So when Hillary won the primary election, it was no surprise that I was not excited about contributing to her campaign. If I was not going to actively participate for Bernie, a candidate I was excited for, and more importantly, a campaign that was actively encouraging participation, then there was no reason I would work hard for someone I was voting for out of lack of viable choice. My greatest acts for Hillary were donating 1 dollar, voting for her, and reading emails from her campaign. But this was perhaps what I regret most, looking back on this time. 

It is easy to circle around in “what ifs”. I wonder what if I had done more, what if each of her supporters had done more, what if every Hillary supporter in Berkeley had participated in a phone bank? Would that have been the tipping point for her? Could she have won?

Soon, I realized these question were not useful. They would never have clear answers, and the answers themselves were simply tools for passing along the blame. Instead, I have hoped to dedicate myself even moreso to public service, and I have realized that simply studying public policy related issues was no longer enough. I need to do as much as I can, not only for the success of what I believe in, but to address this innate fear of complacency I have now. 

Because of the way that Saturday Night Live can often be unexpectedly profound, I feel that the best way to express my feelings on this election are from Kate McKinnon’s cold open following the election.

“I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”     

Photo courtesy of Salon

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11/20

This week, I read two articles; one talked about how human rights organizations have began using online media to set the agenda for the public sphere, and the other talked about the end of the non-profit the Invisible Children. Both of these articles spent a great deal talking about nonprofits that were practically household names, namely Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Invisible Children. HRW and AI’s methods in agenda-setting were proven to be extremely effective, as they used online forums to mobilize support for their respective issues. Invisible Children followed the philosophy detailed by Dan Pallotta, which stated that non-profits should be run like businesses, with risky investments that would lead to larger growth. However, the three of these organizations have something largely in common: they are well-funded in the first place, have notoriety, and are at times not the most effective in helping others.

The concept of effective altruism was coined by Peter Singer and describes a process that “applies evidence and reason to determining the most effective ways to improve the world.” It often involves designating  which non-profit organizations are the most cost-effective at saving and improving the quality of human lives, and also which organizations need more money. For example, NothingButNets provides life-saving mosquito nets for only 10$. One net could literally save a person’s life, and is a very tangible use of a very small amount of money. However, these nonprofits typically do not have the most effective online mobilization techniques, by virtue of their efficient use of money. The reason your 10$ is so efficiently used is because organizations like NothingButNets cut down on overhead costs by focusing most of that money to someone’s life. 

This, in my eyes, brings the responsibility on the “consumer” in the situation. Are they more attracted to online mobilization and marketing efforts as seen in the previous examples, or are they more concerned with the efficiency of their money? And is there a moral problem with choosing one over the other?  

Photo courtesy of Harvard Effective altruism

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[kendrasinghs]

11/15

Upon reading this article by Alicia Garza, founder of #BlackLivesMatter, the main problem I identified with people who subsequently adopted #BlackLivesMatter is their tendency to pigeon-hole movements. They would often reduce the founders’ roles in helping shape the way #BlackLivesMatter was being adopted and in doing so, reduce the impact queer women had on the founding of #BlackLivesMatter. And through taking this class, and writing blog posts every week on various movements, I realized my own tendency to pigeon hole as well. It is easy, of course, to think of #BlackLivesMatter as a singularly African American movement, and similarly to think of the Immigration Rights Movement as a primarily Hispanic problem. However, Alicia Garza fiercely calls this out, saying that “being Black queer women in this society (and apparently within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy.”

The fact that a movement that has reached international recognition was founded by queer women of color speaks volumes; it speaks to their empowerment as women, as members of the LGBTQ community, and their passion for protecting black lives.  The immigration rights movement has similar connections with the LGBTQ community, and the intersectionality is fundamental to understanding both movements. This does not end here either; feminism, tenants’ rights, the Arab spring, domestic work, and probably many, many more movements need to be viewed as an intersection of the needs of several groups in order to be properly understood. By pigeon-holing these movements, designating specific groups of people they impact, we minimize their true effect on our society, and the contributions of the array of people who are a part of the movement.

Photo Courtesy of The Reference Frame 

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11/14

This Friday, my friends (Sherry ‘n Jerry) and I went to the Oakland Museum of California and saw the exhibit celebrating the Black Panthers’ 50th anniversary. The most distinctive part of the exhibit was the movement’s 10 point plane, painted in white on a black wall. The one thing that stood out to me especially was point 6: “We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.” Other than the fact that I had never heard of such a demand, I realized that this point was special in that it called for reparations instead of equality amongst races. In a sense, the most equal way to approach the matter of the military would be if all were drafted equally.

The priority of reparations over equality was something that struck me especially because I have been involved with the feminist movement for so many years now. Women have been suffering for nearly all of human history, in obvious and covert ways. However, feminists today are very careful to call for equality and nothing more. The definition of a feminist (someone who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes) has been all over popular media. Iconically, it was the backdrop of Beyonce’s VMA performance. All that aside, I wonder why it is so controversial for a woman to want more than equality in a sense, or to want to be compensated that all woman have endured in their lives. I feel that as a feminist, asking anything beyond pure equality is immediately disregarded. Yet, even today, in a seemingly equal society, a woman is beaten every 9 seconds. 

I am not sure if there is any constructive way reparations can be made for women, but I believe there is a lot to be learned by looking at the matter of reparations through the lens of African American history. African Americans were subject to a long, overt, and violent history that was pivotal in America’s development, history, and structure. It is much easier to point out to massive amounts of oppression that African Americans have been through than to articulate all that a woman goes through in her life. Violent things happen to women as well, but they are not in massive, state-sponsored movements in America; they often happen behind closed doors or in a subtle way. In a sense this increases the woman’s vulnerability to oppression, as the oppression is not as tangible, not as recognized, and leaves many still vulnerable.

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11/7

In this blog post by Trebor Scholz, the feasibility, need, and plan for turning current sharing economy based innovations like Uber over for worker-owned cooperatives. And while, yes, the technology for Uber, Lyft, and other apps is relatively reproducible if workers wanted to own the service, I struggle to see how this type of business model would work for apps like Uber Eats. Uber Eats, unlike other food delivery services, does not charge for delivery, and thus makes up a significant share of the digital delivery market in the cities it is offered in. The profit for these apps comes from deals with restaurants to get the food they provide at a lower price than the typical listed price. If the restaurants were to collaborate into some type of cooperative ownership of such a business model, it would be difficult to decide which restaurants would bear the brunt of the price. If, for instance, there is a sushi place and a fast food place it would be difficult to decide on an equitable pricing model for both companies.

If, for instance, the contribution to the “worker-owned cooperative” were to be a percentage of the total received by the restaurant, this would be unfair as businesses with low prices and high volume will be profiting a lot while providing little proportionally to others. The delivery from a fast food place vs. from a sushi place theoretically has the same expense if they are an equal distance apart from the customer, but the amount contributed to the cooperative will be different based on the items purchased. Thus, the fast food place could potentially generate the most profit while contributing less to the delivery service by virtue of their price.

A flat rate for the delivery poses even more problems for restaurants to be fairly affected by the cooperative contributions. With overhead organizations like Uber Eats handling the pricing structure, there is little communication between restaurants and potentially inequitable decisions can be made without little attention, so it would thus be extremely difficult to bring this business model into a worker-owned cooperative model.

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Photo courtesy of Eater

[kendrasinghs]

10/31   

          Where is empathy lost in education? In pre-k and elementary school, students are taught lessons surrounding valuable life skills: kindness, listening, and sharing. But as we grow older these lessons dwindle and get replaced by more impressive-sounding classes like Algebra Two, or AP World History.

             Perhaps my biggest regret during high school was not feeling free to take the classes I so badly wanted to take. I, like many of my college- focused peers had a sort of tunnel vision when it came to picking classes. I would feel satisfied senior year knowing I had taken just 1 more AP class than my older brother; I loved seeing my transcript littered with honors and AP courses. However, quite honestly, I truly never cared for any of them. I did not care about calculus-based physics, or US history. I was just checking off boxes so that colleges would think I was a driven student who loves taking hard classes, participating in extra-curricular activities, and playing a sport. And it worked, too. I am writing this right now as a student at UC Berkeley, which was one of the schools I so desperately wanted to go to so I could feel like all of the box-checking had paid off.

             I was relatively unhappy doing all of this, but I felt a responsibility to do so. I did not enjoy being stuck in 6 AP classes a day with people who had Type A personalities and were half-friend, half-competitive with me. I wanted to take art classes and focus on orchestra, but I knew that I would never be excellent in those areas to the point it would look impressive on a college application. After all, art was considered easy. But in hindsight, I wish I just let colleges think what they would think without numerous AP classes; after taking classes like art in college, I realized they were perhaps the most rewarding classes I have taken. Things like art and music are perhaps the key lens to understand the human experience with. Taking art history in college was the first time I actually enjoyed something historical, because I was finally engaged in learning about the human experience.

             Though I know art and music are not directly related to empathy, kindness, or listening to others, I feel as though participating in those courses would have brought me the type of soul-feeding education that I lacked in high school. And I wish that the very real pressure that high school students feel to be impressive rather than themselves is reduced over time, so kids today can feel good about picking art over AP Physics.

This blog post was inspired in part by this article from the Huffington Post, which focuses on the Global Lives Project, and how it brings lessons of empathy to classrooms.

Photo Courtesy of The Art Junction

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[kendrasinghs]

10/22

In reading the research by Elsa Thomas and Rashid Shukul, their conclusion reminded me of a similar phenomenon that was very apparent last year. The passage in question, taken from the conclusion of the research is as follows:

“ Malala’s popularity, despite being a Muslim, in the West may be attributable to her presenting a human face of her religion as moderate and progressive minus the dogmatic aggressive stance associated with it.” 

Malala’s popularity, in other words, was due to her being relatable to the American public. They too, believed in education as a human right, and so they can rally for her. This similar sentiment has characterized many, if not all reactions to major world affairs in the past years. 

In the time of the Paris Attacks last year, almost everyone on my Facebook feed had changed their profile to include an overlay of the French flag to stand in solidarity with the people of Paris, France. However, this filter gained a lot of criticism for its focus on Paris, but not on the attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, which had happened in a very short time frame of the Paris Attacks. 

This, in my perspective, boils down to the very same reason why Malala was so popular in the United States: relatability. For many people in the United States, the people of Paris are not very different than them. They are secular, democratic, and primarily Caucasian. It is closer to the Eurocentric view of the world many people in the United States and Europe have. And so, when devastating events happen in places like Paris, they crowd out the importance of devastating events happening all around the world, with people whose lives are less relatable to the American news consumer. It becomes frustrating almost, that not only are the plights of developing nations reduced to a simple narrative, but sometimes they are left out of the frame altogether. 

Photo Courtesy of Business Insider.com

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10/15

In an internship that I started in the April of 2016, I worked under my intern supervisor to give lessons on Green Infrastructure in San Mateo county high schools in an effort to eventually reign support for a prop to increase funding towards green infrastructure with a rise in income taxes. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, a county where people tended to settle down and stay for their entire lives, I had never been exposed to the issue of gentrification before.

At one specific high school, there were three educational routes for high school students to take with their education; there was a regular route, a business route, and an environmental route. Each of these routes included special electives to be offered, and we were presenting in one of the electives for the environmental route. The class was noticeably small; but my internship supervisor and I were grateful for the smaller number of 7 students as it was our first presentation. 

While the students were busy with an activity, we were talking to the teacher about the unusual route system the school had, and the special attention these students must get from such small class sizes. The teacher said, however, that the class was originally filled with 20+ students, and many had to move out of the county over the course of the year because of rising rent prices. She added that the environmental route was characterized by low-performing students who would not be able to take AP classes; many of them came from low-income backgrounds and would never be able to afford any college other than their local community college. 

At that moment, I felt that I had been completely oblivious to the effect the policy I was helping promote would have on the people I thought I was doing good for. I felt selfish, almost, asking these people who could barely afford their rising rent prices, to approve a property tax that would increase their rent even further, for a few green roofs and rain gardens. And though I had been extremely focused on the need for environmental policy my entire high school and college career until that point, I finally realized nothing is realistically possible unless our communities have the human rights they deserve. Food deserts, gentrification, and countless other poverty-related problems affect the human experience and hinder environmental policy progress. We must fight for justice for these tenants, better economic policy that reduces the massive inequality of the bay area, and more comprehensive environmental policy that addresses human costs first.

This blog post was inspired by this article in the Guardian by Sam Levin, which documents the gentrification occurring in Silicon Valley (as well as San Mateo), as the result of housing incentives placed by companies to build tech-hubs.

Photo Courtesy of sfbayview.com

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[kendrasinghs]

10/9

In the article Global Justice and OWS: Movement Connections, Ron Hayduk points out that the two movements he draws connections between primarily consist of the “largely white and middle class”. He then goes on to describe the participatory decision-making process through which groups that converge together go through to coordinate strategic moves together. Each group sends a representative on the group’s behalf to voice concerns, opinions, and plans etc. However, as Hayduk points out, this decision process disproportionately favors those who have the time, energy, and resources to persistently push for their own agenda. This brings me to my chosen topic for speculation: the privilege that allows protest.

In my article last week, I talked extensively on how the free market ideal that workers can bargain for higher wages fails because at some point the workers do not have much power, and need to work for some amount to survive. The same thread follows. Those who lack the privilege of being able to take time off work and not earn money while they protest capitalism is something some people will never have the ability to do, and the same thing extends to the group decision making process from earlier as well. If people do not have the financial cushion to continue fighting for their desired agenda, then their voices will not be heard. So the question I pose for all those involved in movements is: how does one ensure that they are not forgetting those who can’t speak your language, or someone who can’t make it to your meetings, or someone who can’t afford a computer to engage on social media?  

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[kendrasinghs]

10/3

In the Harvard business Review article “Understanding New Power” by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, the authors describe the rise of new power as a result of “people’s growing capacity—and desire—to participate in ways that go beyond consumption.” However, I must speculate whether this participation stems from genuine interest in the movement or the will to be recognized as someone incredibly involved. And furthermore, I wonder if this new power is healthy for our political system.

“Slacktivism” is a term that describes, according to Wikipedia, as “ feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little physical or practical effect, other than to make the person doing it feel satisfied that they have contributed.” It is seen on the facebook feeds of college students everyday. Your friends may share an article about the political candidate that they like (or don’t like) but their participation stops there. Maybe they get some likes, maybe their friends comment, but is there any real help from fostering that type of discussion on social media? 

While I will always say that caring about the issue at hand is important, and the desire to voice your opinion is important as well, it is also important to address the potential detrimental effect of slacktivism. For one, in the example above, the candidate (or any cause, movement etc.) that you are talking about on Facebook typically does not benefit greatly from a single shared article, but would benefit more with donations and volunteerism. However, donations and volunteerism are not as easy to show to your peers on social media, so I can not fully agree with the claim made by the authors of “Understanding New Power” that this solely stems from a growing need to participate. It also may inadvertently harm the very cause you support, by creating the appearance of lots of support with little tangible movements, i.e. “if all my friends are sharing articles for this movement, it must have a lot of support and does not necessarily need my donation.

Finally, the key detrimental affect that worries me when I share an article on Facebook or tumblr myself, is the growing rate of polarization in the country. The conservative and liberal sides have never been this opposite, and this has resulted in terrible things: a government shut down, an ineffective congress, and an election that grays the hairs of many. And it has been noted that on social media spaces, we as constituents are hardly ever in “bipartisan” spaces, but usually are only having such discourse with our fellow liberals and conservatives, thereby increasing polarization of opinions. And so when we share that article on Facebook, we must consider if we are helping our country as a whole, or selfishly satisfying our own need to participate.

The picture is taken courtesy of KALW.org.

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9/24

Last semester, I took a class called Global Growth and Inequality, which focused on the various reasons for the rising inequality in America and its relation to economic growth. One of the largely cited reasons for inequality is the deunionization that has taken place, reducing workers’ bargaining power.

Generally, it is easy to justify the lack of or low standard for a minimum wage with a free market ideal. The general idea is that wages will always be efficient because if they are too low, laborers simply won’t work. And while there is significant material on the other side of idea, this is what is generally taught in the widely used Keynesian economic thought. However, this has been shown to not work, specifically in the case when the strength of unions is low; laborers won’t be able to fight for a higher wage, but because they still need to eat and survive, they still work. Thus, as unions have decreased in power, wages have steadily become lower, and remained low, increasing inequality ad those with investments in capital and stock grow richer over time. The relationship between unionization and inequality over the last 9 decades is shown above.  

In an article by Ben Schiller , an online platform called Coworker.com that allows workers to organize nationally was described, along with a few of its notable movements. Though most of them had to do with workplace practices, such as having tattoos visible at Starbucks, or having a beard at Publix, it will be interesting to see whether these modern workers’ rights movements begin to include wage standards as well. This new mode of unionizing and organizing workers not only has the potential to provide a forum for workers to protest rules and regulations their employers pass, but to fight for their wages, which could potentially help to bring the devastating degree of inequality to a lower point.

Picture is courtesy of the CTU Monthly Economic Bulletin No.131

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Saying goodbye at an ICE deportation facility | Al Jazeera 

The family of Rosendo Juarez-Hernandez, scheduled to be deported that day, wait to see him before he is sent back to Mexico. 

(Photo Credit: Saverio Truglia for Al Jazeera America)

[kendrasinghs]

9/17

While watching the documentary White People, led by Jose Antonio Vargas and reading his article titled My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant , I noticed a similar notion in both pieces about assimilation of cultures.

First, some background: White People explored the experiences of white people in starkly different racial circumstances; the setting for discourse ranged from a Virginia town with 1 black household to a Native American Reserve with only 14 white citizens. When discussing the racial future of America, one of the participants brought up the concept of assimilation, saying “You... lose the unique qualities of each culture when you start blending.” I present this moment in the documentary with a line from Vargas’ article “I grew more aware of anti-immigrant sentiments and stereotypes: they don’t want to assimilate, they are a drain on society.”

As a second generation citizen, I grew up in constant battle between my parents’ fear that my brother and I would become “Americanized”, losing our ties to our Indian culture and roots, and my own desire to be unmarked when I go to school; I wanted to blend in like everyone else, and not constantly feel like the “Indian friend.” After growing up and realizing the benefits of being bilingual and understanding the dynamics of a culture starkly different than American culture, I found a happy middle ground.

But after reading Vargas’ article, I feel the need to project my own experience as the daughter of immigrants on his cited anti-immigration stereotype. If anything, I, along with several of my peers, strove to assimilate simply because of the stigmas we were aware of. And through this, we risk losing something unique about ourselves when we try to distance ourselves from our culture in order to obtain a neutral identity. It’s also worth questioning whether obtaining a neutral identity can ever be achieved, how many generations have to pass till I am not always perceived as Indian first and American second? And finally, I wonder whether those who perpetuate this stigma by expecting immigrants and the generations that follow them to assimilate realize the loss America has incurred because of them. Do they know what we are losing?

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9/12

This week, we were assigned to read “Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue” by Benkler, Yochai, and Helen Nissenbaum , a philosophy journal article that examined various forms of peer-production and asserted that not only does virtue of character cause participation, but participation in such practices builds one’s virtue. 

However, the article focuses on the rather non-controversial forms of commons-based peer production, such as Wikipedia, SETI@Home, and Linux, rather than the otherwise, the most prevalent example being torrenting. The practice of torrenting is much like SETI@home in away, where users do not necessarily donate their time or skills, but rather a small portion of their computer’s power. In the SETI@home example, participants run a program on their computer that analyzes telescope data when the computer is not in use. Similarly, with the case of torrenting, participants can seed files while their computer is running so download speeds for other downloaders (who are supposed to seed in the future) increase. The main ethical dilemma for torrenting is quite obvious, that being violations of copyright.

The question is, though the participation for both SETI@home and torrenting have similar commitments and modes, the virtue (and lack thereof) created by both have contrasting qualities. Both have the cluster examples (taken from the reading) of generosity, autonomy, and camaraderie, and lack significant presence of the virtue of creativity. Yet still many would argue the virtues of participating are not simply aligned with the practice of contribution, but with the project’s intention itself.

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9/7

In class yesterday, we had Victoria Robinson, Director of the American Cultures Center here at Berkeley come in and talk about the history of the American Cultures Requirement, the purpose of Engaged Scholarship, and more. Something that really stuck out to me was definitely the fact the purpose of the American Cultures Requirement : “[to be a]  a new approach that responds directly to the problem encountered in numerous disciplines of how better to present the diversity of American experience to the diversity of American students whom we [Berkeley] now educate.” 

The reason this purpose was especially important to me was that diversity, and further, understanding diversity was so important to these students and faculty members that they actively campaigned for an added requirement. They believed it was meant to be a part of education, and this caused me to consider the true value behind a college education. In practical terms, yes, college serves to prepare students for the working world where they will be able to be innovators, world-changers, and more. But the inclusion of diversity education extends this future role college students will inhabit one day to one of one where we are not only responsible for ourselves, but for the world around us. After understanding diversity in american cultures, it is nearly impossible to sit and not really do anything about it. 

Which, with a loser connection, brings me to my admiration of people who actively participate in social movements. They have developed an understanding of diversity needs outside of a structured classroom environment, and dedicated a huge part of their life to doing something about it.

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