actually, wind it down! unh unh. as of two hours ago, thanksgiving break officially bestowed me, so it’s reflection time on another semester of school.
first a word on budget cuts: california’s in some major budget deficit. monies keep getting cut left and right, and of course, schools (and apparently now transportation) are some of the first to go. last month, the whole student body received emails saying that next semester’s class schedule was being taken off-line because many of the offerings were going to be taken away. bummer. it’s unfortunate that this is going on. Fourty years ago, ‘third world’ students at SF State fought to turn our school into an academic instititution — creating an entire ethnic studies department — and integrating a scholastic curriculum into its once only-vocational standard. Now nearly the entire asian studies department has dissipated. It’s sad and it seems like there is not much we can do. We mismanaged money, and now we’re mismanaging eager minds.
BUT there is some glimmer of happiness because of the already existing opportunities to learn…like i did these past months. My most striking experience came through a community organizing course I took through the school of social work. It brought me back to ideas of needing more diversity in the environmental field, and I’m hoping to work on some projects to make that happen. First, I took a walk next door (that’s right, NEXT DOOR) to the Students of Color just to holla and let em know we’d like to collaborate, or even just invite them to a few ECO parties. Their director was genuinely excited about it, as am I. The social work heads really showed me that ECOs have the right ideas in environmental justice. As I heard in my senior seminar class, “we [upper-middle class educated folk] are doing it for the underprivileged.” I hear what that means, but I feel that ultimately that just ends up being suppressive. If WE keep doing the learning, then we’ll just keep doing the helping. However, collaborating and integrating those heads in our own learning experiences will empower ‘them’ to also “do it for the underprivileged.” As students, we can facilitate what we learn (cuz let’s face it, environmental studies isn’t that complicated and it applies to ALL of us) in ways that relate to our ‘underprivileged’ homies. A good friend has exposed to me an Oakland preacher named Van Jones whose got ideas on social justice and green jobs. I’m planning on reading more about him and hopefully refining more of these ideas of mine.
Social work has also got me doing work on my newly own hood, San Francisco’s Mission District. I started looking up some stats on the area, and was a bit disappointed at what the U.S. Census Bureau considers the Mission. Turns out that Bernal Heights and Cesar Chavez to 15th are in the same zip code. This skews all of the statistics and reflects higher income brackets and job fields. WHAT?! You mean that a 5-person family living in a box on 18th and Mission is reflective of a 2-car garage AND a quarter acre of land? And all those day-laborers (roughly about 40 per day) on Cesar Chavez between Alabama and Florida are in the $150k income bracket? Not to mention that there are many grocery stores in the hood, but equally as many bars and liquor stores. Maybe that’s what the beauty of the Mission is, but there AREN’T any bars south of Cesar Chavez — let’s get real here Census Bureau.
I’ve done a lot of bitching rather than reflecting, but perhaps that’s what this was going to end up being anyway. This past semester has shown that a shovel into the dirt will reveal much more than what the grass ???? (haha). There’s more to be learned, but at least the doors were reopened. okay i’ve got to stop this
