Veins of Coal

I've lived in New Mexico, Portland, Havana, and New York, and traveled quite a bit more, but my blood runs through the veins of Pennsylvanian coal where I was born.

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Why I don't feel like giving thanks today

This post is largely directed toward people who don't understand what I mean when I say "no thanks no giving" today. Many times I've received the advice to tone down my criticisms. My "aggressive" and "angry" way of expressing my opinions isn't as palatable as people want. People tell me that if I am more agreeable, if I could just be "nicer" and more accommodating, that I would get my message across more effectively. Generally, my message revolves around the assumption that systems of oppression such as capitalist exploitation, hetero-patriarchy, and white supremacy, exist and effect every one of us in different ways, and that we are complicit in the perpetuation of systematic oppression usually without being conscious of our involvement. This makes people with a lot of privilege feel uncomfortable. Maybe they'll say "Ok, ok, I can see your point, but you should express these ideas in a way that doesn't make people feel so defensive." Breaking news: my point is not to make liberal people feel "comfortable." From the little history I know, especially the histories of resistance to oppressive institutions, it does not seem common that people with privilege willingly and easily give up that privilege in order to create equitable conditions for marginalized folks. Call me pessimistic, but what I DON'T see around me are people passionately standing up for what they believe is just. I see people skating by with the status quo because it's easy and it's comfortable. Today, on "thanksgiving", you shouldn't feel comfortable with your country's history of masked genocide. I'm feeling really disturbed by the fact that people are so willing to erase the history of genocide, slavery, and ecocide that is so fundamental to the creation of our current lifestyle. "Ok, but what is honestly wrong with having one day of the year where we get together as family and friends and talk about what we're grateful for?" Why? Because out of ALL OF THE DAYS OF THE YEAR, we accept THIS day to do what we should probably be doing on a regular basis (eating homemade food with community members) and what we should do everyday (giving thanks, and I'm especially talking to the members of my Reed community, most of whom have massive amounts of privilege). How many days of the year do we spend thinking about our nation's sinister history, the incredible and ongoing struggles of indigenous people in our bioregions, the migrant labor that produces our food, or the pockets of abject poverty around us? For most people, the answer is never. What better day to think and talk about these difficult issues than a holiday built around the myth of indigenous/settler brotherhood and peaceful expansion? To celebrate thanksgiving and simply say "ok I recognize that the history behind it is fucked up, but it's not really about that anymore"-- How is that not a huge slap in the face to indigenous people in North America? I'm not speaking for anyone or claiming that I know how all indigenous people feel about this issue. But in my experience, genocide in North America is barely recognized and that is a huge problem. Treaties have been broken and continue to be broken.  Many indigenous people in this country live in abject poverty. These struggles are not "over", they do not reside only in the past. So if it offends you that on "thanksgiving" I want to talk about the violence and oppression underpinning our lifestyles- that's fine by me. If you think I'm putting a wrench in your plans to have a pleasant meal where everyone is a-political and acts like a functional family for a day, good. I made you feel uncomfortable, if even for a second, and actually, that was my goal.

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What does Environmental Justice in the Pacific Northwest look like?

Since the youth climate conference Power Shift, the Pacific Northwest has been busy organizing a stronger regional network that will help to create a just fossil free future. We have a lot of work ahead of us to get there, and we recognize that these struggles can only be won through fighting for collective liberation. That means that climate activism is really about tearing down capitalism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and the patriarchy. The recognition of our shared struggles and the need for solidarity is implied under the term Environmental justice (EJ). It’s the way that dedicated climate activists are conceptualizing their work, and it entails an understanding that all forms of oppression are interconnected and that the detrimental effects of climate change disproportionately affect the most marginalized peoples, including those living in frontline communities and many indigenous groups. 

In the Pacific Northwest, we have been organizing with EJ on the forefront of our minds. One of the campaigns that we are involved in is preventing fossil fuels from being exported from our coastlines. Our beautiful bioregion will not become a fossil fuel corridor and our peoples will not be sickened by spilled oil tankers and coal dust. Settlers and neo-settlers hungry for resources and power have already done enough violence in this region, destroying indigenous communities, old growth forests, and salmon runs. Now is a time for healing, not more violence.

On November 4th, a group of Reed student activists, along with Rising Tide, shut down the Port of Vancouver, a demonstration that was in solidarity with members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) who have been locked out of a grain terminal by the corporation United Grain. Not only that, but the Port of Vancouver has approved a risky new oil terminal that would accommodate 380,000 barrels of oil from the Bakken shale around North Dakota and Montana. Furthermore, the Port of Vancouver was violating treaties with indigenous groups along the Columbia River by approving this oil terminal. In shutting down the Port of Vancouver, we sent a clear message that we are willing to put our bodies on the line to stop extraction, transportation, and shipment of fossil fuels, especially if those activities involve unfair labor practices or serve to perpetuate other injustices.

Students in the Pacific Northwest are also actively resisting the three open coal export terminal proposals in Boardman, Oregon; Longview, Washington; and Bellingham, Washington. Over the past few years, we have submitted comments online and at public hearings, held info sessions at Reed College, and traveled to Longview for a listening project to learn more about the ugly reality of coal exports. Again, we will not allow companies like Ambre Energy and Arch Coal to destroy the health of our region and ultimately the world by exporting 100 million metric tons of coal a year from our coast. From the moment it is extracted to the moment it is burned, coal is a dirty form of energy that must stay in the ground.

This weekend, Reed will be hosting the Cascade Climate Network’s regional activist retreat called Fall Flurry. We expect a turnout of about 40 people, most from Washington and Oregon, all of whom are committed to building a socially and ecologically just region. We will be having anti-oppression trainings, and be continuing to formulate action plans around divestment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fossil fuel exports, and more.  I can’t speak for all of CCN, but one of my Reed group’s goals is to formulate stronger, long-term relationships with other EJ groups and to look to the leadership of indigenous groups and other historically marginalized voices. Being liberal arts students, it is far too easy for us to leave our privilege unchecked, and see ourselves as the “leaders” of the youth climate movement, when really the leaders are those who are waging the war against climate injustice in the streets every day, often not because they chose to do so because it was the “cool” thing to do, but because industry settled down in their backyard and thought that no one would care or take notice. It’s incredibly important that those we look to as leaders, including Barak Obama, truly do “act on climate” in a way that promotes social justice. And if they don’t, it’s up to us to hold them accountable.

Since PowerShift, we have stood in solidarity with the Longshoreman, and the indigenous groups whose treaties would be violated by the Port of Vancouver oil terminal. I look forward to our regional event Fall Flurry so that we can form action plans that will strengthen our relationships and allyships and ultimately show that our region can be an example of what Environmental Justice looks like.

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SOIL and Sanitation in Haiti

I couldn’t be more pleased to have worked with such an effective, socially responsible organization this past summer. In my time with Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) I’ve come to more fully appreciate the gravity of the global sanitation crisis, being that over 2.5 billion people across the globe lack improved sanitation facilities. In Haiti, over 70% lack access to a toilet leading to a high rate of child mortality from waterborne diseases.  While SOIL’s contribution to mitigating this problem sometimes feel like a drop in the ocean in the context of these staggering data, the fact still remains that close to 7,000 Haitians are currently benefiting from SOIL’s products and services. In addition, SOIL focuses on designs and services with the potential to be scaled up through social business development so it’s exciting to see how this small project might help address the international challenge of increasing global access to sanitation.

SOIL implemented the first urban waste treatment site in all of Haiti in 2009. Considering how densely packed Port-au-Prince is, this is truly astounding to imagine. SOIL now operates two out of four waste treatment sites in Haiti. The capacity of these sites is clearly inadequate to suit the needs of the country, but Haiti is moving in the right direction with their new Water and Sanitation Authority and the public and private sector are working together more closely than ever to quell the cholera epidemic and implement long-term sanitation solutions.

SOIL’s ecological sanitation (EcoSan) composting toilet has several huge advantages. First, it is a low-cost, simple model constructed within Haiti and that can be easily replicated. Second, it transforms the endless supply of potentially dangerous feces into compost, a much-needed soil amendment in Haiti where over 98% of the hills have been deforested and topsoil depletion is severe.

This is how SOIL gets waste to their treatment site: first, customers buy an EcoSan toilet and pay a very small fee to have their waste collected weekly. SOIL staff pick up the buckets of waste on the “Poopmobile” and dump it at the compost site. Then the waste is covered with carbon matter and watered a few times of week until it transforms into nutrient-rich compost!

This sanitation supply chain is demand driven, which demonstrates a strong willingness and ability to pay. In other words, the most vulnerable of people are not being priced out of the market and they themselves are choosing to adopt the technology. SOIL’s successful projects are showing that with the cost recovery of small monthly fees, the potential for successful sustainable private sector sanitation enterprises is well within grasp, even in Haiti, where people are not accustomed to paying for sanitation services.

Using simple technology of EcoSan, SOIL has found a solution to the sanitation crisis that also happens to create the solution to the agricultural crisis. And although this post has largely been about the “cold hard facts” of sanitation in Haiti and the simple technology of EcoSan, it’s obvious from working here that SOIL is so successful because of the social awareness and sensitivity that all staff show, both Haitian and foreign. It’s this cultural fluency and commitment to Haiti that allows the technology to flourish. 

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Getting ready for Haiti

For eight weeks this summer I will be working as the social media and outreach intern for the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), started by the inspiring Reed alumna Sasha Kramer. SOIL uses methods of ecological sanitation (EcoSan) to mitigate the ongoing sanitation crisis in Haiti that was only worsened by the 2010 earthquake. One of their most promising projects is the implementation of EcoSan toilets that turn human waste into much needed compost for sustainable agriculture.

Haiti came into the international limelight after the earthquake, and it seemed that every journalist and pundit felt entitled to present the public with their half-baked theories about why poverty persists in Haiti. International commentators have gazed at the Haitian poor with a mixture of disgust, pity, and fascination for centuries. In a 2010 New York Times article, David Brooks suggests that “Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences.” And although he does recognize that Haiti has “a history of oppression, slavery, and colonialism,” he points out that “so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well.” His analysis, like too many others, blames the victim and clearly ignores the particular history of colonization, slavery that has brutalized so many Haitians, starting with the indigenous population that was decimated by the Spanish in the mid-sixteenth century. Brooks cites the “progress” of Barbados without explaining who is benefiting from that “progress.” Barbados has been hospitable to tourism and transnational capital, but their economy still favors accumulation of capital with the elite classes and the benefits of tourism are not necessarily distributed equitably. It is not justified for arrogant observers like Brooks to patronizingly define universal “progress” and dictate what that should mean to Haitians. 

Á la Arturo Escobar, I have serious reservations about mainstream development practices and the role and efficacy of NGOs and non-profits working in marginalized communities like in Haiti. Through working in Tanzania, Venezuela, and Saint Kitts, I have learned many lessons about community organizing and the importance of critically assessing the many representations and discourses of “progress” and the “other” that we have inherited as a part of our cultural milieux.

How can NGOs and non-profits work together with Haitians while avoiding the superiority complex that Brooks’ comments so exemplify? So many organizations flooded into the country after the earthquake with good intentions and often little historical awareness and certainly not a nuanced analysis of the politics of representation. Although many of these NGOs have been largely ineffective, it is not fair to dismiss the work of all organizations as examples of “NGO-ization,” the buzzword that refers to the trend of NGO proliferation amidst a hubristic Western view of development and a misunderstanding of power relations. 

Disappointment with many failed NGOs in Haiti can lead to cynical inaction. But we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to supporting NGOs like SOIL. My education at Reed and my experiences abroad have taught me to be endlessly critical, but this is different from being cynical. SOIL is an established organization with a relatively large impact in a high-stakes community. They have a large Haitian staff and they are demonstrating the ability to use ecological sanitation practices to provide sustainable livelihoods for thousands of people. Progress in such a place is slow because of the many historical obstacles imposed on the island, but persistent organizations like SOIL deserve recognition and support despite a popular tendency to have only short term memory when it comes to analyzing poverty. Each international project that I have been involved with has changed my perspective on development work and added layers of complexity to my praxis, and I have no doubt that I will learn so much from my experience with SOIL. As a social media and outreach intern, I can’t wait to add nuance to their public image that will reflect the complexities of international alliances while promoting the great successes that SOIL has already seen with EcoSan methods. 

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A white college student from a private college goes into a poor neighborhood and volunteers four hours a week and that’s considered exemplary. [Whereas] a poor kid who lives in that community and takes care of all the kids in that neighborhood four hours every day is not seen as a volunteer.

Patricia Hill Collins  (via sadbrownprincess)

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I’d like you to remember the last time you found it difficult to give an explicit “no” to somebody in a non-sexual context. Maybe they asked you to do them a favour, or to join them for a drink. Did you speak up and say, outright, “No?” Did you apologise for your “no?” Did you qualify it and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t make it today?” If you gave an outright “no,” what privileged positions do you occupy in society, and how does your answer differ from the answers of people occupying more marginalised positions? This form of refusal was analysed in 1999 by Kitzinger and Frith (K&F) in Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis in Developing a Feminist Perspective on Sexual Refusal. Despite the seeming ambiguity in question/refusal acts like, “We were wondering if you wanted to come over Saturday for dinner,” “Well, uhh, it’d be great but we promised Carol already,” they are widely understood by the participants as straightforward refusals. K&F conclude by saying that, “For men to claim [in a sexual context] that they do not ‘understand’ such refusals to be refusals (because, for example, they do not include the word ‘no’) is to lay claim to an astounding and implausible ignorance of normative conversational patterns.”

Under Duress: Agency, Power, and Consent

Like I’ve said before. There’s no excuse.

(via home-of-amazons)

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Hi everyone! It’s good to be back on Young Global Citizen after a year. For those of you who have recently started following the blog, I’m Shannon Smith and I am the vice president of Trail of Seeds. Check out some of my posts from last summer in Mang’ula, Tanzania. This will be my first of many...

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Sustainify Reed College

During my freshman year of college at Reed, I became very involved in sustainability on campus and in the larger area of Portland and the northwest United States. I had begun studying environmental systems and societies in high school, and I felt the drive to carry on my commitment to acting locally to begin the healing process of specific environmental problems whose impacts have been proven to be global in scale. I joined the student-led sustainability club, Green Board, and I was also accepted as a member of the Sustainability Committee. 

  I was continuously inspired by the enthusiasm of the students I was working with, but dissatisfied with the sluggishness of administration in responding adequately to sustainability issues on campus. I was pushing for the hiring of a sustainability coordinator on campus, since many other colleges and universities in the U.S. have showed significant improvements in the carbon output because of such informed staff members. Despite many students and several faculty members’ desire for a sustainability coordinator and our attempts to convince the president to hire one, we were not successful. When I get back to Reed after my exchange year, I will return to the issue and continue working to demonstrate why a sustainability coordinator would help our college financially and make us more environmentally friendly.

  I was busy with other projects related to the environment as well that turned out to be more successful. I started a Twitter account on behalf of Green Board as a tool to reach out to other environmental activist groups in Portland. In this way we were able to advertise our meetings and events to the community and receive information about environmental actions in Portland. I also began working closely with Nick Engelfried from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign because I was concerned about big banks funding dirty energy projects. I helped to organize two bank protests in downtown Portland targeting banks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo to inform customers or potential customers of the fact that they fund huge coal projects that are detrimental to the air, environment, and community. We put signs up next to ATMs and on bank doors explaining their irresponsible funding practices and ties to the coal industry. We also wrote letters to Portland General Electric to pressure the shut-down of the Boardman Plant, a coal-fired generating station. 

  I was encouraged by the participation of students in actions surrounding the issue of coal in the Northwest, but I felt uninformed. I had been reading news articles and talking with Portland activists, but I wanted to investigate further so that I could understand the harm that coal would cause and meet individuals whose lives are directly affected. I organized a student trip to Longview, Washington to speak with some activists and educators who had been resisting big coal in their community for decades. We met up with them and walked around Longview, learning about Millennium Bulk Logistics and their plan to export over 60 million tons of coal a year from the town. We learned about the history of the area and the various health concerns, safety concerns, and environmental concerns that community members had about this huge coal project. We saw the train tracks where the coal cars would cut through the community and the port from where it would all be shipped to China. After some very serious moments of reflection and concern, we all lightened up and enjoyed a potluck lunch in a park nearby. We all wrote letters to our banks asking that they divest from dirty energy and many of us wrote articles to be published online or in school newspapers. We also learned from the activists other ways to get involved. The thirteen students from Reed came home much more informed and empowered to stop the insane amount of coal from destroying this impoverished Washington town. I was proud of myself for organizing the trip, when at some points I doubted that anyone would be interested in coming or organizing around the issue. If you’d like to read an article about the day by Nick, you can go to http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2011/04/24/tracing-coal-exports-deadly-impacts/. 

  With a strong student reaction to the issue of coal in the NW and with so much more knowledge after our trip to Longview, I felt the need to keep the momentum going by organizing another, bigger protest in downtown Portland. We made a “coal train” out of cardboard and paint and prepared a statement to read inside several Bank of Americas. We chanted in the streets, handing out fliers and making people laugh with our coal train. We also marched into the banks and I delivered a statement. As a form of protest, I felt that it was well-informed, light-hearted, and yet very serious and demanding. I am sure that I will continue organizing and attending protests, especially ones that You can read more about the day at http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2011/05/15/coal-train-visits-bank-of-america-and-wells-fargo/. 

  Our projects on campus included a “power struggle” week in which we offered incentives for dorms to compete to see who could lower their energy usage the most. We made sure that each dorm knew how to turn down their heat and understood why consuming less energy is a positive step towards reducing our carbon footprint. We organized two events on campus in order to inform and excite the student body.  The first was an eco-justice organizing workshop led by Ryan Clover of Shaleshock Action Alliance.  The second was a teach-in on coal exports by the grassroots activist group Rising Tide. I myself organized a film viewing marathon of the nature series “Planet Earth” to which many students came and were given information about Green Board as they enjoyed food and film. 

  After a year of so much work to increase the participation of Reed students in regards to environmental issues on campus, in Portland and the NW, I felt that I could see a real difference in the student body. There were more Green Board members by the end of the year and we all worked together enthusiastically and creatively and pushed each other to commit to environmental justice even with such heavy workloads. Working together with other Reed students and Portland activists has inspired me and given me a space to demonstrate leadership in the field of environment. 

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Popular Education in Cuba

I’m taking a class in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Havana called Teorías y Política de Desarrollo with a brilliant and stern-faced professor who expects her students to pay close attention to the information so that we can take appropriate and informed action afterwards. From what I’ve observed, transformative action is almost always the objective of education here in Cuba, which I find extremely refreshing after so many years in U.S. schools wondering “when am I ever going to use this?” I was rightly yearning for a practical aspect of education-- something that I could apply to the real world rather than to a standardized test.

Popular Education, a concept developed by the great Brazilian Christian educator Paulo Freire, is a pedagogy commonly used here. It is a method of education first used in Brazil as a tool used by the oppressed to overcome their oppression and liberate themselves through dialogue and cooperation. I was first introduced to the concept in a neighborhood “proyecto comunitario” outside of Havana. There neighborhood organizers provide an adult education program, an program that works with mentally disabled elderly people, children’s activities, and cultural appreciation activities. They also strive to be a base that can serve to support local development initiatives. They explained to me that they use the method Popular Education as a way of educating adults. I was intrigued by the concept and researched more. Since then I’ve read “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” talked with community organizers about Popular Education in Cuba, and now I’m reading a book on the subject by Cuban authors that work at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center where I’m doing research for my CEDEM project. I now recognize Paulo Freire’s immense contribution to the field of education and I find it indicative of the backwardness of U.S. formal education that I hadn’t heard of him before now.

Frei Betto, the man who gained approval from Comandante Fidel Castro to formally introduce Popular Education in Cuba, said

El socialismo es el nombre político del amor. Vivir en el socialismo es saber compartir, ser generoso, pensar primero en lo comunitario antes de lo individual, donar la vida como han hecho Luther King, el Che, Jesús y tantos otros, para que otros tengan vida. Esto es socialismo, esto es amor, pero eso significa un proceso educativo. Cada generación tiene que hacer trabajos de educación, para crear amor o, si quie- ren, educación para el socialismo, educación para la Revolu- ción. Ese es el sentido de la Educación Popular.

I’ll do my best translating: “Socialism is the political name for love. To live in socialism is to know how to share, how to be generous, to think first in the community before the individual, to dedicate one’s life as Luther King, Che, Jesus, and so many others have done, so that others might be able to live. This is socialism, this is love, but it implies a educative process. Each generation has to work at educating to create love, or, if they wish, education for socialism, education for the Revolution. That is the sense of Popular Education.”

I found this quote to be inspiring because it carries Freire’s and Che’s spirit of loving the people fearlessly and recognizing that love necessitates difficult social transformation. I have been glad to see Freire’s pedagogy put into practice in real life here in Cuba, but its vitality is lacking in formalized education. I say this because all of my university classes are lecture based with a few seminar sessions that involve discussion. I still find the academics at the university to be very progressive in many ways-- they teach with critical and transformative action as an objective for example, and they are anti-imperial and anti-neoliberal without using political propaganda. I would like to hear more input from my Cuban peers in the classroom, because what I have heard so far has impressed me beyond words.

I was about to say that my education in Cuba has inspired me to be a more independent thinker, but this isn’t true at all. In reality it has inspired me to be more critical thinker who recognizes the importance of cooperation and dialogue in the process of learning and taking action.

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Oh yeah, and...

I should add a very important point to the previous post about the difficulties of making connections with Cubans. Still to this day, it is illegal for a Cuban to host a foreigner in his house without having a registered and approved “casa particular,” which is sort of like a bed and breakfast. More importantly, our Cuban friends worry about being stopped by the police to be questioned or maybe arrested while they’re with us. It’s happened. Having a few points on your records for god knows what plus being caught hanging around foreigners is enough to get you in trouble with the police here. This policy acts as a disincentive for good-intentioned Cubans to have contact with foreigners and makes us think that any Cubans who approach us are jiniteros. I know they are particularly strict in this regard in order to curb the rampant prostitution problem that has left a notorious mark on the tourism industry here, but overall the causes are more complicated than I understand.

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Nuestro Shannon en La Habana

I was about to say that Havana is a strange place to live, but that’s not completely accurate, and anyway, I feel unqualified to make that sort of statement. What I do know is that a residence full of “North Americans” (US citizens..) in a foreign country is a strange place to live. I came to Cuba expecting that I would ditch the program group, immerse myself fully in Cuban culture, and speak only in spanish. After all, I had never met thirteen out of the fourteen students and had no attachments to any of them. We live together on the upstairs floor of a residence, eight of us from Sarah Lawrence, six from Amherst, Pomona, Middlebury, and Reed. On the first floor live nine students from Harvard.

My anticipated escapades were hampered by several factors. The first is that being a study-abroad program, we have a good deal of obligatory group activities. Not to sound ungrateful-- for the most part I’ve enjoyed myself immensely and we’ve met with so many interesting Cubans who are doing important work. We went to a drag show where we met Mariela Castro, to a restaurant in Chinatown that serves the best food I’ve had in Cuba, and to Las Terrazas to hike and swim and eat at a gourmet vegetarian restaurant for my birthday. We’ve also gone on two separate week-long trips across the country during which broken down micro buses, trips to the hospital, and open bars provided humorous bonding experiences and made us feel less like strangers and more like a somewhat dysfunctional family. In this time spent together, I’ve been able to travel throughout Cuba enjoying the beautiful landscapes and I’ve also been so lucky as to have formed some very intimate friendships.

Spending all this time with such enjoyable and inspiring people, I had little time to go solo and figure it out for myself. Plus, the debilitating heat of the first few months here made it hard to be out all day without at least once coming back to the residence for a break. I may have mentioned before, Cuban’s aren’t exactly what I would describe as friendly towards foreigners. I’ve been in countries where people are friendly, open genuinely interested in talking with me. My experience here has been that most people who show interest are either a) men aggressively hitting on me, or b) jineteros (which basically refers to people who try to profit from tourists whether by scams, prostitution, or by asking for tips after they lead you to a concert or a bar). The distrust or indifference of most Cubans makes sense when considering that historically, they have been very deliberately separated from tourists. For instance, only recently it became legal for Cubans to enter major tourist hotels, and in many schools and universities, the Cuban housing is still separate from the foreign housing. Cubans love to be with other Cubans and there are all kinds of reasons that they don’t want to be with us.

What’s more, the machismo here makes me dread leaving the house by myself and once, five men tried to rob me while waving a huge knife in my face. They were going for the laptop case, but luckily I wasn’t walking alone and we were able to get away. I didn’t realize before coming that I wouldn’t feel safe by myself here. I knew that Havana was the safest capital of the Caribbean by far, and so I assumed that I would be fine. I’m learning big lessons.

The aggregate outcome of these conditions is isolation from Cubans far greater than I could have expected. Finally now in the past few weeks I have been going out with Cubans who I would really consider friends, but it took patience and sometimes frustration to find them. For the most part I still feel like I’m reminded of my alienness constantly and like we’re living in an artificial and privileged North American bubble. Perhaps I’m coming off as overwhelmingly negative, but that’s not how I feel. I’m happy to now have both a strong base of friends that I live with and Cuban friends, and I enjoy the challenges presented to me by playing the role of the outsider for a while (however I will never get used to machismo and of course feeling unsafe in the streets obviously isn’t enjoyable.) Moving past my assumptions and naivete to a more realistic understanding continues to be an enjoyable challenge that will inevitably be left incomplete in these short four months.

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Cuba: Congelada en tiempo?

Aunque indicadores de crecimiento económico puede ser estáticos por un largo período de tiempo, la cultura siempre se sigue desarrollando. Cuba ha sido llamado un país “congelado en tiempo” por sus dificultades económicas, maquinas antiguas, y edificios en un estilo colonial, pero el título olvida los cambios enormes en la cultura de Cuba que finalmente define el espíritu verdadero del país. Calificar a Cuba cómo una sociedad “congelada” es una enorme simplificación que está basada en conceptos de desarrollo obsoletos y que no toma en cuenta muchos indicadores de desarrollo humano.

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Global Citizen in a Western Coat

I think that was the title of the first post I made on youngglobalcitizen.com! I'm really missing Sal and our time together in Mang'ula. This was a "Exemplary UWC Scholar Story," that I wrote at the request of Reed. It feels a little puff piece-y to me, but I really do mean what I say!

Now in my study abroad semester at the University of Havana, I find it hard to believe that a few short months ago I was in Mang’ula, Tanzania learning traditional African drum and dance and killing chickens for dinner. Granted, the two days I had in a Miami hotel in between the two trips may not have been much time to comprehend the craziness that was my five weeks of working in Africa, but I always seem to shine the most when doing what I love: learning from the amazing diversity of people and places that this world has to offer and working to build sustainable communities that will keep that diversity flourishing amidst an ever-globalizing world.

I started to appreciate the true value of diversity while living with students from over 80 countries at UWC-USA. The remote high desert campus is a limitlessly magical place for the carefully chosen students who live there and form a unique global community of scholars. To say that I received my IB diploma from that school doesn’t even begin to attest to the education I received from living with such passionate, talented, and intelligent people. One of those people was Sal Lavallo, who I became friends with because of our mutual interest in development and cultural sustainability. He is now my partner in our NGO Trail of Seeds and continues to be a huge source of inspiration in my work and studies. The shared experience of UWC and a genuine belief in the mission of the school (we’ve recited it thousands of times, but for those of you who don’t know, “United World College makes education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future”) have inspired Sal and I to compound our areas of study and work together to create positive change in the world.

Trail of Seeds works to discover and amplify the sense of cultural pride contained in agricultural communities around the world. By leading site-specific “introspection workshops” that combine auto-documentation and interviews with a broad spectrum of community members, we distinguish cultural values as they have been described to us and disperse micro-grants to fund related community projects. As outsiders, and especially as Westerners with our own inevitable cultural biases, we try to have as little influence as possible in the process of allocating the micro-grants, but it is stipulated that the money go to local culturally sustainable initiatives that have already shown signs of success. With so many outside pressures to “westernize” and follow models of development imposed by the capitalist first world, we want to encourage a sense of control over development and provide the basic capital necessary to further promote the amazing energy and pride that exists even in the most impoverished and unfortunate of places.

In Mang’ula, we taught a small group of school children and peers how to use digital cameras and asked them to take pictures of their daily lives and the aspects of the village that they found important. We also asked groups of school children to draw pictures in response to questions such as, What do you want to do when you grow up? or Who are your role models? or What is the most beautiful place in Mang’ula? Whenever we thought that we were getting enough of an idea of the culture that we could guess their responses, we would be surprised in some way. For instance, a majority of the children had Obama paraphernalia everywhere and said that they wanted to be pilots so that they could fly to the U.S., so we thought that they would draw Obama as their role model. Not a single child drew him. Instead, most of them drew either their headmistress or their parents.

Sal and I continued these workshops and also began to shadow workers at the farm, in the rice mill, in the classroom, and at home. We went to religious services, ate family dinner at dozens of people’s houses, and interviewed a broad range of community members. Despite all of these efforts to access the cultural of Mang’ula, I don’t think that we could have come to such a level of understanding without forming the intimate friendships and bonds that we did. I’m more convinced than ever that cultural differences only strengthen connections when seen in the context of our profoundly shared humanity. After weeks of learning, encouraging cultural introspection, and making friends, we began allocating the micro-grants. In the end, one of the accomplishments of the project was to further the initiatives of a cooperative group called Kilombero Youth Movement Against Poverty (KYMAP) by at least two years. The cooperative is comprised of an arts group, a preschool for disadvantaged children (many of whom are orphans and/or infected with HIV), a farm, a brick-making operation, and a cultural museum in progress. Members of this arts group meet every day for three hours to practice traditional African drum, dance, and comedy. They must make at least 1,000 bricks to join, which are being used to build a bigger preschool and also to construct new houses for the young adults in the group. They feed the preschoolers with the crops from the farm and sell the leftovers to buy school supplies. We allocated a majority of our funds to KYMAP, and they chose to buy costumes and props for the arts group so that they could start performing shows that serve to both educate the community and provide some revenue. They also bought a water pump that would enable them to make bricks more efficiently and an extra plot of land to cultivate.

Sal and I were thrilled to be able to support such an effective and culturally aware group of people, and we learned more than I could have expected about small-scale local development. When I return to Reed College in the spring, Sal and I will begin planning for our next Trail of Seeds project in Latin America. With a successful pilot project completed and another semester to study the theories that will ultimately guide Trail of Seeds’ dynamic operation, I am more than optimistic for our future. For more information, please visit www.trailofseeds.org

[veinsofcoal-blog-blog]

US-Cuba Relations

The billboards in Havana serve exclusively to remind citizens of the ever pressing revolutionary tenets of Cuban socialism. I wonder, as an extranjera fresh from this “absurd first world,” which tactics are necessary to marshal the support of an educated population, 70% of which was born during the blockade that left the economy severely stunted. The most obvious and tangible is the political propaganda campaign that not only emphasizes unity (“Se puede mucho juntos!”) and uniquely Cuban values (“Que tiemblen los enemigos de un pueblo donde cada mujer es un soldado de la Patria!”), but also establishes the dangerous “other”-- where we come in. As students from the United States, we are that “enemigo”, that “other”, trying to orient ourselves amidst an ideology that directly opposes ours, and understandably. I’ve been trying to gauge the status of US-Cuba relations based on the interaction I’ve had with Cubans. My conclusion so far in the short time that we’ve been here is that the historical frigidity hardly shows in an interpersonal sense. That is to say, the set of difficulties and benefits that come with being an extranjero don’t seem to be amplified because of my country of origin. There are tourist tricks in Habana Vieja, cat calls, and expectations that we might pay in CUC rather than in Moneda Nacional, but never hostility or political prejudice. I was a little surprised by this. Why, if on every empty wall there is a slogan vehemently defying the United States, would I not feel more ostracism, or at least skepticism? Do Cubans have an impressive ability to dissociate structure from agent? Is the confidence in the Revolution chipping away along with the paint of the political slogans? I have so much to learn and work through in this confusing country, but with each conversation I manage to have in my broken spanish, the more I realize that almost everyone I’ve encountered either a) has family in the United States or b) wants to move there. There are a few ways that a Cuban might be paid in CUC, the currency that follows the fluctuations of the dollar, rather than in the national currency. One is by working in the tourism industry and another is by having money sent to them from the outside, primarily from relatives in the US. If a person has neither of these, they probably have very little cash. The average Cuban income translates to about $15 per month. I can imagine that a Cuban in this position wouldn’t think of United States as a representation of historical enmity. For so many, it’s where their family lives, and it’s where their bread and butter comes from. Every day my understanding of US-Cuba relations gets more complex and confusing. The island’s hegemonic neighbor will continue its historical snubbing, perpetuating policies inimical to Cuban socialism, but with Raúl in power it seems that the country is quickly changing, and Obama is certainly more open to the idea of relations with Cuba than was his predecessor. It seems that as US citizens living in Cuba, the most valuable thing that we can do at this point is to distinguish our biases and educate ourselves.

[veinsofcoal-blog-blog]

Conner Gorry, Cuban Healthcare

Post number one on my new blog! Conner Gorry exists as an anomaly in what can surely be considered one of the most highly politicized countries in the world. She is a freelance journalist whose visa allows her to work in Cuba. This status alone is enough to make her a bad ass in my mind, but after hearing her sharp and eloquent presentation on issues surrounding the healthcare system in Cuba, I definitely have a new role model. She currently writes for the US-based publication MEDICC Review, is the author of the iPhone app Havana Good Times, and has also written for the travel guide Lonely Planet. I consider the information that Conner presented to us as highly informed and fairly unbiased. She has her own ideas about Cuban politics, a stance that was clearly reflected in her talk, but she is in no means an extremist on either side. I guess I feel it necessary to begin by saying this because of how touchy politics, and especially US-Cuban relations, are here. I have also had the (mis)fortune to make over ten visits to two Cuban clinics in my short time here, and from that and some independent research that I have done, I can personally verify some of the information that was offered by Conner. There are a few basic tenets of the healthcare system in Cuba that were established after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. Firstly, medical care is considered a right, not a privilege, meaning that it is universal, nationalized and free. Medicines are highly subsidized and there are neighborhood family doctors within easy access of any residence in the country. Secondly, there is a strong emphasis on preventative medicine. After the Revolution, a massive brain drain took around 75% of Cuban doctors along with many other professionals.  At the same time, resources stopped coming in from the United States. These conditions made for a very difficult overhaul of the entire system in which careful priorities had to be made, and so the Cuban government first dedicated its resources to eradicating preventable diseases. Thirdly, revolutionary Cuba has given priority to serving the most vulnerable populations- primarily pregnant women, infants, and the elderly- through national programs. There are an increasing number of these programs that serve any group of people that is considered vulnerable, no matter what percentage of the population. As an example, any child who qualifies for cochlear implants, approximated value of $30,000, will receive them free of charge along with the frequent adjustments that will have to be made for the rest of his or her life. Deaf or near-deaf children with the potential to be helped by cochlear implants are a very small but vulnerable portion of society, and so they receive the best medical care that Cuba has to offer. This is an interesting example as well because of the debate surrounding cochlear implants in the US. Some members of the deaf community feel that it’s unethical to displace a child from the legitimate deaf culture to which she belongs without her consent. As far as I can tell, this debate would be laughable in Cuba, almost like the politico-religious war on abortion.  (Abortion here is as common, safe, and of course, free. A stigma does not accompany the procedure as it does in the US.) They also have a Program for Integrated Transsexual Health, spearheaded by the inspirational Mariela Castro, head of CENESEX. Throughout a two-year process, individuals are first required to complete a “real life experience,” of acting out their gender, during which they are given consultation that might include emotional and life-changing family counseling sessions, and finally, the operation is- guess- free! I could ramble on about this for a while because it’s so amazing. They have workshops on how to walk in high heels and workshops that emphasize the importance of being yourself instead of feeling pressured to act out gender stereotypes. Oh, and the doctors are trained by Belgian gender-reassignment surgeons who are the best in the world in their field. Cuba is currently experiencing another huge overhaul of the medical system due largely to the dire economic straits that have continued to dampen the country’s progress since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still withstanding however, is a biotechnology industry that cannot be overstated. Currently, every Cuban child is given 13 vaccinations, 10 of which are Cuban made. They have the only meningitis B vaccination in the world (and it is not available in the United States because of the embargo- a good example of how the stubborn policy affects the US negatively as well as Cuba). The island is on par with industrialized countries in terms of WHO certified statistics- 4.8% infant mortality rate and a life expectancy that is as high or higher than that of the United States, for example.  The one indicator that was uncharacteristically high in the past was maternal mortality, an inconsistency in the quality of healthcare that generated a national campaign for mothers’ health. They want all Cuban women to give births in hospitals, and if a pregnant woman is a teenager, over 35, overweight, lives far from a hospital, or is vulnerable in general because of unreasonable expectations from her family, it is recommended that she live in a maternity home. Under this national program, women are given healthy and calorie-rich diets, and offered plenty of other services such as exercise courses and parenting workshops. In the current systemic overhaul (they refer to it as “compactación,” which Conner translated to mean “downsizing”), there are less maternity homes, but they ones that they have are larger. I personally haven’t visited one, but it sounds like a pretty cushy living situation! There are a few other characteristics of the healthcare system that I’ll mention. There are huge population surveys that take place in order to paint a clear picture of the nation’s health statistics. Not only is this extensive information used to implement efficient changes at the national level, but it has been extremely effective at the individual level as well since each neighborhood doctor has a precise history of each resident’s medical history and general health. Cuba has also offered their medical expertise and labor force to aid foreign countries in times of need. Their disaster relief team, formed after hurricane Katrina, is tailored to be site specific and educational. After the Pakistani earthquake, Cuban doctors sent a team of 50% women doctors due to the particularities of Islam, stayed for six months, and subsequently offered Pakistani medical students a free education in Cuba. Basically if you’re hungry, they’ll feed you and teach you how to fish. This description has been abridged to an almost unacceptable extent based on how much credit the Cuban medical system deserves, but it’s probably enough to make my U.S. friends read and weep. When I went to the hospitals here, they opened up packets of brown paper cardboard that contained sterilized-on-site instruments and gauze. I saw the glass bottle IV’s. And once when I asked for a band aide, they had none. It’s amazing to me what this country has accomplished with so few resources and zero help from it’s northern neighbor. Every Cuban I’ve spoken with is proud of the medical system here (not without a few complains and suggestions, mind you), and for good reason. It works, and it works extremely well. Thanks to the amazing Conner Gorry for the information she provided for this post!