Monday, December 12, 2005, 02:42 PM - Politics, Friends
I got this request for help from a friend in New Orleans - he's appealing for funds to rebuild a school there - and of course it's the simple local institutions that help create true community, and that must be revivied to ensure that New Orleans residents a home to return to.
;)
Here's their appeal:
The International School of Louisiana (ISL) opened six years ago and with a mission of providing children of all backgrounds a challenging language-immersion (Spanish and French) curriculum with a
focus on global citizenship. Many believed ISL was the best elementary school in New Orleans before Katrina, and its survival is, in a small way, crucial to the city's success.
As the first and only one of three Orleans Parish-based public schools to resume operation after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, ISL has demonstrated the resilience to reinstate the quality learning environment our children enjoyed before the storms. The job will not be easy, but we have the tools to make it happen: talented, dedicated administrators and faculty, and families devoted to restoring ISL to its former vitality and promise.
Currently, ISL is operating in a small church building west of New Orleans, in Kenner, LA; but we plan to return to Orleans Parish. We are
working with the School Board to obtain a building, but we will need to pay for renovations ourselves.
What ISL needs is money: resources to ensure that the school can afford to make the changes that will be required to move into a larger school
building in the City of New Orleans. The families of ISL have set a goal of $100,000 by December 31st.
If you can help us put those resources together with a contribution of your own, it will go to very good use and will be greatly appreciated.
We're trying to get as many $100 donations as we can, and anything you could give would be a great help.
ISL is a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization, and you may contribute securely online by visiting the ISL web page (where can also read more about the school): [/url] http://www.isl-edu.org .
For ongoing updates on Katrina-related issues:
Katrina Action
Thursday, December 8, 2005, 02:08 PM - Politics
Have you read Harold Pinter's Nobel Speech? Good carpet-calling for American militarism. And it's great that he incorporates the historical perspective - reminding us how even when all of the terrible things this country did in Central America were happening, nobody cared -
"Even while it was happening it
wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
But I really don't believe it's only that people are unaware; everyone on some level understands what we're doing in Iraq. We exist in a world with a serious lack of empathy. Once some people get all the facts, they change their views - but it's not like our quest for world domination is really under wraps, as much as it's dressed up in 'spreading democracy' - nor has it been many times in our national history. As one learns in public health practice, it takes more than knowledge to change behavior. We all benefit from the spoils, so there's little incentive to raise hell. To return to the beginning of Pinter's speech, things ARE simultaneously true and false - it's part of an internally conflicted reality that we may be both creating democratic change in Iraq while fundamentally destabilizing and damaging Iraqi society.
I think he's wrong here:
"The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line..."
Because it DOES apply to the poor in the U.S.- we've gotten rid of many of the horrible things that happen to people in most of the world (infant mortality, infectious disease) (which is real positive change) so even people who lack don't have SO much less that they're ready to take on the system. Look at the extreme poor in New Orleans - everyone somehow still had a TV, even if they didn't have a car in which to drive away.
I'm of course glad Pinter made his speech but I think it's the underlying ambiguity of our national project, not just the language used to describe it, that's the issue.
Then again, I'm not a writer...
Wednesday, December 7, 2005, 06:11 PM - Sex, Politics
I don't know many republicans. I've had a couple of contrarian science-guy libertarians in my black book, maybe. But I met this man the other week, and of course because I was in SF I had no reason to suspect. Now I've made out with him (more than once, post-disclosure) and I'm having to ponder the previously unimaginable question of what one would do if one actually LIKED making out with a Republican. Is it morally indefensible? Just plan foolish? Apparently I am determined to truly test the limits of my romantic idealism. I know Leslie comes from a happpy, mixed (sane/insane) marriage, though it's always seemed like an untenable arrangement to me. Let's not forget that the last person I dated had the most impeccable political credentials and yet was a selfish nightmare...so perhaps a paradoxical response is just what's called for? Wednesday, November 30, 2005, 07:14 PM - Politics
CLEMENCY DENIED: Well, not a surprise after the tone of debate this weekend, but still a disappointment and a lost opportunity. Idealistic me thought clemency could still be about mercy or redemption not 'the facts of the case' and political calculus. The courts decided the facts; this should have been a moral decision, not a pragmatic one - not that I should expect much morality from our governor...read his denial of clemency here.
And, um, where were the Jesse and Joan and all those other protestors two weeks ago, when it might have made a difference?
Update: Mark Leno has introduced a bill (AB 1121) The California Moratorium on Executions Act that would halt Tookie's execution while the new bipartisan Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice consdiers problems in CA's death penalty system. Please do all you can to support the bill. More info at: ACLU Northern California Death Penalty Project
Saturday I went to San Quentin for a protest of the upcoming (mid-December) execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of the Crips and now transformed into a peacemaking children's book author. Snoop showed up and spoke briefly about how meeting with Tookie had made him change the way he thought about his influence on young people - sadly I don't think they talked about feminism and his impact on young women, but even a little modulation of the gangster ethos from one of its most prolific hiphop practitioners could make some positive change...
Either way, we shouldn't be killing anyone in San Quentin. Check out the Save Tookie website and write to Arnold requesting clemency.
Friday, November 18, 2005, 06:41 PM - Politics, Technology
So yesterday I wrote a conference proposal for dotOrganize - a social change technology initiative that I've been helping to get off the ground (find out more about that here), and I was proud of myself for crafting something with actual measurable objectives - x # of new collaborative projects, x# of people connected for ongoing peer support. It made me wonder how I've gotten this far in life without attending more conferences that had a point. Can we justify the environmental costs of travel to these kinds of events, when they tend to be so limited in their usefulness? In all the roles I've played in conferences and events (organizer, presenter, attendee), the worthwhile outcomes are the connections between people, not the content of the workshops. I tried to write something that would require actual work to be done, with real results - no doubt just one more example of my rampant idealism. I mean, I know it's important to meet new hotties that one can both make out and talk shop with, but I'd rather find them closer to home. Hopefully if we get this event funded, we'll find out if we can raise the bar...on all fronts.
OK, I lied, maybe it is sexy if Danah Boyd (who is clearly some sort of blog sage compared to my toddler status) is also writing about the challenges of making a good conference- especially in terms of limiting/ expanding social networks. Nice ideas about diversity of audience, and some support for my ideas about having attendees from multiple sectors at our planned event. I knew having all those great parties full of random people was preparing me for something...
Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 02:19 PM - Sex, Politics
So the NYT put the Plan B ridiculousness on the front page yesterday, but this is just the latest example of the blatant disregard for public health within this administration. It's pathetically ironic that they could actually REDUCE the number of abortions that happen by actively promoting the morning-after pill, yet they're so thoroughly anti-sex that they're unwilling to do so. The CDC's domestic and USAID's international HIV prevention efforts are less egregiously but still seriously stifled - where is the public support for needle exchange? Where is the honest acknowledgement of the complexity of sexual health? I'm terrified of what this means for our bioterrorism preparations - will we start giving purity tests before we hand out bird flu vaccine? Apparently there is a "Plan B for Plan B Act for 2005" being introduced in congress by CT's Chris Shays among others, but I can't find much in print on it - maybe just a clever pun? The article on it seems to have disappeared from Broadsheet...Monday, November 14, 2005, 07:51 PM - Politics
Still no results, of course, but we do seem to have been able to knock on enough doors with white non-local volunteers in Trenton to get some decent statistical power. We may have mucked up the validity by flukily recruiting a bunch of high school kids of color through their teacher - which meant the non-local same-race volunteer slots were also filled, just not by the groups that were in charge of them. This experiment could show the relative value of local vs. nonlocal volunteers of different race than the intervention community...although it also once again exposes the dreadful lack of coordination on the ground and the mess that volunteers usually walk into. Another argument for more training and coordinated efforts (and I think for giving volunteers themselves more authority in planning activities)I am verging on the militaristic in my organizational/logistical perspective on these things...or at least losing my patience with disorganization.Monday, November 14, 2005, 06:24 PM - Politics, Technology
The World Summit on the Information Society is happening this week in Tunis. Tunisia apparently has 10% of its population online, undoubtedly on the high end of the range for Africa (I would imagine South Africa must be higher?). I am fascinated by the MIT proposal for very low-cost hand-cranked laptops for distribution to students in developing countries - and clearly wireless solutions (whether through phones or laptops) are the right answer...the last thing we need is more cable strewn across the earth. Tensions over the control of the internet infrastructure by the U.S. are bubbling up again, unsurprisingly. At what point do technological underpinnings become an international public asset, and not a national prerogative? Kind of snarky piece in Foreign Affairs on the issue here.
Update: apparently there is a compromise document that leaves most of the structural control of things to the U.S., but creates some international advisory stuff...Here's the dreamy summit doc if you get off on bureaucracy porn.
Saturday, November 12, 2005, 08:03 PM - Politics
Saw Stephen Hawking speak today. It's been a long time since I wondered about the not-taken life path as an astrophysicist. I was Adam's faux date for Cambridge in America Day 2005 - interesting presentations on history of philosophy but I admit I was more engaged in a psych presentation on the science of well-being. Some discussion on indices being developed to measure community well-being, movements to include those indices along with economic indicators as measure of overall progress of societies. As one would expect, democracies result in more happiness for their constituents, but I doubt that the Swiss experiment Prof. Huppert mentioned holds here - they found that more referenda resulted in greater happiness...IO can't imagine that's the case in California politics. Brings me back to my ongoing low-level interest in how mental health indicators and particularly psychiatric medication impacts political engagement; I'd love to study how our polity is being changed by all those antidepressants....Thursday, November 10, 2005, 05:46 PM - Politics, Technology
So I attended three things over the last two days that I think fit together somehow...
The first was the first Net Tuesday hosted by Net2 - a project of techsoup that's trying to involve the nonprofit community in web2.0 - obviously a worthwhile concept, interesting plans, all very preliminary at the moment, potentially a very nice fit with dotOrganize. Crowd was very technoriffic, as expected, but which also brought home the yawning divide that still exists between people. And cute as flock was, I'm not sure it's the mechanism by which to bridge the gap.
Yesterday morning I got up terribly early to go see Malcolm Gladwell give UCSF grand rounds. The most interesting components of his message centered on how less information often leads to better decisions - somewhat anaethema to an enlightenment/technocratic sensibility, I think, but borne out in my experience of creating decision models on the campaign last year. More variables do not, I believe, always lead to better decisions, especially in a time-pressured context. There is a limit to regression as a tool, and it's too easy for the academic side of life to take over and value results that are significant but not important.
My last event was my first blogger call - with Chuck Schumer on the DSCC reaction to the election. (Why, pray tell, was I the only woman?) Although there were some interesting questions at the end, I'm not sure that people took full advantage of the situation - I certainly didn't. But the different levels of access that are available in the world, if you know who to ask always amaze me. And really, I wouldn't mind taking back the Senate. I do have to say my reaction to the call confirms my suspicion that my strenghts are all in structure, not content.
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