anti-environmentalism

just reading up on what capitalist magazine has to say about environmentalism... ("if environmentalism succeeds, it will make human life impossible")

i just wanted to share this cartoon with you. it's from an article on the falsities in al gore's movie (http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4806).

but the cartoon. seriously, is it bad to love the earth? i mean, yeah, we've (people) created religions in the past to worship it, but historically Capitalists and Christians have abolished them (i.e. "civilized the heathens"). see paganism or, well, most indigenous religions. i guess we (civilized americans) wouldn't know what worshipping the earth looks like, because that's only for heathens, and you can't be a heathen with a hummer...can you?

i just think it's sad that it's come down to this...making fun of people for praising the beauty of nature.



more:
"The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man--the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do." (from: http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4643)

i'd beg to differ and say that environmentalism is fundamentally ecological. we, men, need to realize that we are part of a system, and if we disrupt that system, we'll end up disrupting our human nature in some way or another (acid rain, drought, the dust bowl of the 30s, soil nutrient depletion, etc, etc. we know the drill). i think that's pretty fundamental.

eco-terrorist or "moderate environmentalist"?

"We must live what we know."

we just got back from driving my sister to woodfield for her bus back to champaign. woodfield is a giant mall in northeast illinois. pretty much the whole time we were driving i was almost throwing up. i really hate the suburbs. i think that's maybe why i've been kinda manic depressive lately (sometimes really really hyper for no reason, other times depressed, quiet, withdrawn)...the city fucks me up. suburbs are worse. i was being really obnoxious in the car. i really don't know how to express that feeling in any other way than that. i was like that in florida a lot too, just acting like a 4 year old, and not in a good way. i think that's what happens when i feel oppressed, trapped - it comes out that way when people won't let me say my words.

the day before my birthday we (the family and i) went out for dinner in a neighboring town (crystal lake) (really surburban, lots of strip malls...like miles of them.) at a pretty good restaurant, well, it's been good in the past. and as we were leaving to go pick out my bday present (i wanted to go to a sporting good store and buy some good stuff, like a stuff sack for my sleeping bag or some other applicable stuff (like warm socks)) i was saying something about how i wanted to just deface hummers or fuck them up or something. i think my dad said something about being an eco-terrorist. i said "i'd rather be an eco-terrorist than a moderate environmentalist." that's what i'm coming to realize. if we want to have a real effect on this shit called global warming, we need to stop driving. stop living in this global warming trap that's been set up for us (and if that means being an eco-terrorist, then i'm gonna start doing that...well, maybe not destruction of property, but ...well, something.). anyway, we get to the sporting store and all four of us walk in and i'm standing at the entrance thinking, fuck i don't want to be part of this. the store is gigantic, packed with overpriced things you need to go outside, heaven forbid you don't have a supersilk thermalite(TM) north face piece of shit to make sure you don't freeze to death outside. i didn't let them buy me anything, even though my dad was pretty adamant about doing so. i told him i was sorry.

driving around the suburbs in 60degree weather of november i had my window down and i felt like an alien. being rejected from this society, and rejecting it. i was physically affected, antsy, rollercoaster emotions. i'm not really sure how i should feel. i do know that it's sad that kids born into this don't know anything else. i want to get a machine and dig up a part of the parking lots and scream THERE'S SOIL UNDER THESE THINGS. let's not keep ourselves from the earth! people walk from their houses on their driveways to their cars, drive to work, walk through the parking lot to their skyrise and never step on grass. grass is ornamental; it's not real. we drove past a park on the way to woodfield, nature is fenced in there. there's a really strong dichotomy between city/humanity and wild/nature. it's sick.

many times i think this is one of the most radicalizing experiences i've had. i do not want to be an on the fence environmenalist. i don't want to be environmentalist because it's smart, or because being opposite is dumb. i want to do it because it's right, and i want this to encompass my life. it's not just that i run a campaign on stopping global warming, it's that i live my life to stop global warming. it's not a mask i can put on and take off. it scares me that (i interpret) most of the people i'm working with can do that. for me environmentalism is a lifestyle, not a tactic.

Global Warning

First, if you are unsure about the science of global warming, please do yourself a favor and learn about it. Don't just learn about some abstract 'issue,' learn how you are part of it, learn how you fit into the bigger picture - learn how we are interconnected. Please, if you have any questions and would rather ask a human than attempt to surf this vast ocean of information, do not hesitate to ask me (arisahagun at gmail dot com)! If I can't answer your questions, I might be able to provide you with the resources to help you. Then, read on.

An article by BCC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6126242.stm suggests that global warming is more than a future threat to some African countries. Furthermore, since most of the efforts of industrialized nations have focused on lessening greenhouse gas emissions, there has been little worked on internationally as far as researching "adaptations," let alone how to apply those.

Greenpeace V: part 2 - the International Day of Action

yesterday i had a moment to feel that all the shit of the past two weeks has been worth it. so i guess i haven't mentioned it up to this point but a lot of what we've been working toward culminated yesterday, the international day of action on climate change. 20,000 people marched in london, a greenpeacer got arrested for climing a power plant tower, we had 400 people on the beach create an "aerial art image." with the help of an artist, a helicoper, hundereds of volunteer hours, about 40 organizers, and many many community members, we spread across the beach to create an outline of Flordia and text that said "save our state." next, we morphed into a drowning person holding an umbrella with the text "stop global warming" it's an awesome picture. sitting next to connie and michelle (two fellow got'ers), a girl playing an african drum, and two volunteers from broward community college, i realized that it's all been worth it. i'm sitting in a giant 'E'. the helicopter's coming across the horizon, the tide was rising. i'd volunteered to get wet. they told us (we were telling volunteers) ankle-deep water -- then we realized that we'd be laying in it. but it didn't matter, i'm part of the E. daryl, the BCC volunteer turns to me after a wave and asks how he can keep things up after we leave florida. that's awesome. we've inspired another to join our cause. awe-inspring. the pictures are worth well over 1,000 words.

the day itself was really crazy too. i got to the beach around 8:30am and it was cloudy with winds around 30mph and tall waves. "no way will we get more than 250 people out here." we're thinking. just standing on the beach we were getting sandblasted. most of us got windburn. the sun came out twice before we were done with the day - once during the first picture and again for the second shot. sometimes you just know things are right.

Greenpeace V: part 1

so i feel like i owe something in reflection of these past two weeks. and what better time for it than a 16 hr. van ride back to DC. cleaning out the hotel room this morning, being on the beach these past two full days, and just generally - people are so wasteful. it's on such a gigantic magnitude - and it's nearly inescapable as an American. at a hotel, everything is single-serivng; everything is temporary, transitory, with little regard for the future. i called the hotel's corporate office and left a message with my phone number asking about their recycling program (they don't have one). no one's called me back yet. it seems that we try so hard not to waste specific resources (i..e.time and money) but we end up wasting profusely in other areas. even we "environmentalists" are often too focused on other goals and we end up running the conversion van for 5 minutes not moving, run the air conditioning all day in an empty hotel room, taking 30 minute showers, spending $200 on clothes. we literally just passed what i suspect was a garbage dump. a swarm of seagulls larger than i've ever seen with hundreds of turkey vultures circled overhead.

i'm starting to realize that it's hard for people to respect the criticisms of someone also stuck in the same system ( i.e. not living any solutions). i'm beginning to feel disconnects within myself - hypocracies that i notice and need to fix within myself. i'm tired of being lax and letting the situation dictate the things which are important to me. it's like saying i might as well shave my legs because it's easier. i want to create situations (or find them) where it's easy to be me, where i'm not constantly swimming against the flow. we just drove by a giant plot of land with bare, exposed soil - a future subdivision.

i hate seeing animals and birds by the road. i hate to think they have to live next to us. i hate to think that i am to blame. i use these roads, i use the subdivisions, i use the garbage dumps. this is what i'm beginning to realize - that it's hard to respect a dissenter if he/she is part of and this encouraging the continuation of that system. this is the concretion of the thought that i've been having here a lot at greenpeace.

it's kind of summed up in one of the lunches i shared with one of the guys from the research team. he helped make a website which is basically a map of different oil companies, think tanks, individuals and their relations to the us gov't. we started admiring their efficiency and effectiveness (i.e. telling people that global warming / climate change isn't real) and at once strategizing. we wondered if theses institutions had training programs like ours. he said they probably did. we joked about one of us signing up for that program.

this is my point. for every one there is an equal and opposite. (newton) yin and yang. greenpeace exists as a response. it works in a system to negate its opposite. like chasing a shadow. but don't get me wrong - greenpeace serves and noble purpose and a lot of times does it in ways we haven't seen. with yin comes yang. i think greenpeace started off well, radically, showing people what they haven't seen - making waves. i think, now, in a lot of ways gp needs to step it up. i think the framework and intent are definitely there. still part of the system where [we] should be creating new systems. i think we need to continuously be improving, training people ot think outside the box. i probably think this way because iv'e heard the message so many times that i'm ready for the next step. repetition works insofar as it creates a space of monotony to be filled with creative solutions. i'm beginning to think this is one way to look at change - create the space and then give people the tools to fill it. (which is what someone at gp said about what gp does.)

hopefully this all isn't too abstract, detached, and philosophical to understand. creating these spaces seems really cool - providing opportunities. it's the fundamental underlyng principle in culture jamming and somewhere in the resolution of cognitive dissonance. this program's made a lot of spaces for me. a lot of spaces to get pissed off, to question, to propose creative, new solutions.

Greenpeace IV: part 3 - the Law of Halves

when we're petitioning we try to estimate the number of petitions in order to get a certain number of people ...say... to come to a meeting. you get 192 petitions signed - about half of those (96) will have phone numbers - about half of these numbers you'll be able to make contact with aperson (48) - of these, 24 will actionally talk to you. 12 people will say they'll come (to the meeitng). 6 will actually show up.

(ok, pause it. remember the scene in fight club where "jack" (ed norton) is on the plane telling an older woman the calculation that his insurance company uses to determine the safety rating of a car? (as we view a car that's been burnt to a crisp and listen to the workers joke about how the fat burned to the seat would be a good modern art exhibit...) "if a x b x c = x, and x is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." (are there a lot of these kinds of accidents? // you wouldn't believe) and she's like 'what car company do you work for?' and he says "a major one." i feel kinda like that about this law of halves calculation. just to set the scene.)

that makes sense, right? i can get (at low estimates) about 15 petitions signed in an hour - so it would take 10 of us just over an hour to get 192. this system of numbers is one of the main things we base our days around. the law of halves is something we almost live by as organizers. //this// is why i don't want to be an organizer. 10 people just spent about an hour and a half talking to more than 200 people and we end up forging 6 relationships where people are interested in coming to a fun event with free food. we 'accost' people in the street, see if we can grab their interest with one line ( i.e. "got a second for the environment?" (which i've never used, because i don't think "the environment" exists like that. that's perhaps a longer story) or "have you / are you interested / heard of global warming?" "would you like to sign a petition?" (said as you offer them a clipboard), etc.), get them to sign a piece of paper while encouraging them to write their phone number and check the box that says "i'm interested in volunteering" while saying "don't worry, we won't contact you in any way unless you check that box" and bating them with credit from the volutneer office at their school (yeah, we actually hooked that up). there. that's what i do most of the day. then...after we get back to the hotel, we count up all the checked boxes (notice: checked boxes...these are our volunteer's phone numbers.), divide them up and everyone starts calling people to see if they'll volunteer (we call this phonebanking).

i realize i'm being cynical and overly negative about this stuff. perhaps a bit overdramatic about it with the fight club scene. i guess i should admit that i don't //completely// loathe it. we do reach a lot of people and at least share the idea of global warming with some people who have never heard about it. we are making progress with the candidates, too. ron klein (the democrat) finally said he'd agree to the waxman safe climate act, the "global warming legislation" currently up for disscusison. jon (our leader/teacher/etc) and jack also got interviewed by the media. (oh, and i'd also like to semi-reationalize my cynicism by saying that maybe it's just a misguided questioning of the status quo/system/the man)

Greenpeace IV: part 2

since when do we need anything plastic? since the marketing campaign? who runs these campaigns? what do they want from us? why do we listen to them? there was a guest speaker - we invited a professor - at our meeting last night - and she was really radical about endiong global warming. she said we never should buy another car, stop using plastic, become vegetarian, and only have 1 baby per person. i don't disagree with any of these - plus, she's bulidng an eco-community in belize - but she made me think about our completely unnecessary dependence on plastic, electricity, fossil fuels. yeah, we have those technologies, but they don't /need/ to be part of our everyday lives! also, during that meeting i talked to a guy who seemed to be buddhist or daoist, teaches qi gong and is raki certified. and he reminded me of some things i know but have been organizationally trained to forget or look past.

greenpeace

i'm in washington dc, florida, and amsterdam from sept. 18 to dec. 15 working with the greenpeace organizing term. here's the blog: http://arilikeairygot.blogspot.com/
enjoy at your will.

Greenpeace IV: part 1

i feel like a lot of times the things we're doing aren't by choice. we aren't self-led. i think this is what's getting to me? having to fill this out or get people to do somthing or try and figure out how what i want works for people rather than starting from them and what they want. this gets to me. i don't feel like i've made any personal relationships outside of this group. it's hard working with people on that level. if people aren't the force i'm scared. petitioning is effective i guess; it gets people superficially aware and asks them to take an action.

i'm tired of people just trying to get what they want from me. i don't want to have that kind of relationship with others.

we should never sacrifice humanity, emotion, personality, character, for effectiveness. this is not for me. screw the details about how many petitions to get, i love people, people are the power, the movement. screw any movement that doesn't utilize this. this is why i prefer consensus over majority. i will and need to be more creative about entertaining minority views. majority is clearly more effective, but if that was the case with movements, why would the minority ever stand up? it seems like, in a lot of cases, the numerical minority is the ethical/moral majority. ...or that, perhaps most interestingly, the minority actually is the majority but we just can't see it because of how a particular issue is framed. (this, i hope to explore after we finish the book we're currently reading: don't think of an elephant by george lakoff)

if no one likes phonebanking, why aren't we more creative about them?

Greenpeace III

Hey.

I know - it's been a while since I last sent out a mass email about the state of my being here in DC. I guess it's been busy - I mean, like we all are, of course, a.k.a. I just haven't made time to sit down, think about what's going on in the context of my other lives, and then tell everyone about it. It's a little weird, feeling like I'm addressing some large audience, at the podium.

But nonetheless:
We've been doing a lot of "phonebanking" lately - calling numbers in Florida to ask people to put a (free) sign in their yard that says "Stop Global Warming" and asking them to call their Congressional candidates. It's kind of hard to have someone hang up the phone or say "no" when I ask if global warming is something they're concerned about. ...repeatedly. Phonebanking kind of helps me connect in my head how an individual can make a difference. It feels really good to get one person to call and tell their congressman that they care about global warming. It's something so small but when done on a mass scale it does make a difference. I called one of the candidate's offices and the secretary said that a lot of people had been calling for the same reason and if I thought there was some kind of campaign...it was pretty sweet that we were having an effect at that office.

A lot of us, though, are like, "What the crap? Global warming is a giant problem, what good is it to make a few calls?" It's easy to get defeated because of the scope of the problem and most people's inability to care about the it. That's what I think it is -- an inability -- because people simply can't relate to the phrase 'global warming.' We just finished a memoir from the civil rights by John Lewis and a few hours ago had a book discussion. It's really interesting to compare the two movements. In the civil rights movement, the "enemy" (or the target) was obvious - all the time people were exposed to overt racism, violence, sheer brutality, in the face of nonviolence. Seeing a white cop beat the crap out of a black citizen is powerful, you can feel that. You are actually /affected/ by the problem.

But something like 'global warming.' Does that, honestly, conjure up any tingly feeling at the back of your neck, goosebumps, or stir your stomach? Maybe, if you're really in touch with a global view of the problem - maybe if you've seen a polar bear drown, coral reefs bleached, indigenous peoples starving, similar powerful images, maybe then you can feel it. But probably not. Probably you're not viscerally affected by the idea of renewable energy, photovoltaic cells. You're probably not smiling, excited - finally, our people will be liberated from the oppressive regime of...coal power. Nah.

After our first phonebank, I was not in a good mood. "How could people /not/ care about global warming?!?" As I calmed down and was waiting in the subway station I began to see a different question -- "How do you even talk to people about global warming?" I started talking to the woman next to me about it -- "Do you believe in global warming?" is what I started with I think. She told me a lot - she says that she thinks why people don't act is because they don't know how, or don't have the capability. Well I've been thinking about how to approach people about global warming for about a week now...and I have no answers, because I think the question's unclear and doesn't promote a solution. This morning I realized that the question is more like "How /can/ people care about global warming?" My job as an [organizer] is to show people how they care, because I believe they do. And I must. I feel that for every second I don't believe people care, that the American public (or humans across the world) are lazy, apathetic, and simply do not care -- for every second of this thinking -- that second is wasted. That second is frittered away fighting something that's not real. But when I think that people do have some capacity to care, to act, they have potential, a speck of truth - somewhere - and this is what I need to start speaking to. This is what inspires people.

And inspire people is what I'll do.
But I knew this already.

one of the lectures today was from a guy called kieren mulvaney who primarily works with the antarctica campaign. he said that greenpeace is unique because it is "prepared to make people uncomfortable, and to say what people don't want to hear"
...so i asked him...if the IPCC (intergovernmental panel on climate change, a division of the UN) basically said that Americans need to make lifestyle changes to stop global warming, why is greenpeace not stepping up and saying this, rather than taking a fairly roundabout way of pressuring candidates to pass renewable legislation...?

his answer:
global warming "seems like science fiction"...in light of this, if greenpeace says, climate change is occuring, ice is melting in the arctic, so, pump up your tires and change your lightbulbs, there's a bit of a disconnect. lifestyle change and global warming are on different scales...so greenpeace is also good at beating up on the big guys; we're out to level the playing field to pave the way for the changes that need to be happening on the large scale.

Greenpeace II

wow. this might get long.
so let me start with last week.
before thursday last week we spent a lot of time learning a ton about designing campaigns, why they're designed, how they're designed, blah blah. we learned a lot about why and how greenpeace functions and the ins and outs of the breakdown of the organization ( i.e. the departments: actions, campaigns, legal, development, research, etc and how they relate). we had a project we worked on for two days to simulate the creation of a campaign against bottom trawling (if you haven't heard: bottom trawling is a relatively new fishing technique being used virtually 'round the world, but is not extremely embedded/popular yet. it basically consists of a giant ship dragging a weighted net along the ocean floor to catch fish. problem is that it catches more than fish. including species we've never even heard of. we're destroying entire ecosystems before we've even come to see them. the solution lies somewhere in the UN framework because of the international scope of the issue ( i.e. trawling occurs mostly in the 'high seas,' international waters). spain is the biggest culprit, 40% followed by portugal and russia, 7% each. here's how it can relate to you: almost of the ORANGE ROUGHY we consume is bottom trawled. other than that there isn't much consumer/citizen involvement with this issue becaues of the international "forum" of the problem.) lots of this.
thursday all 20 of us students and our two organizers/trainers went to pennsylvania. the place rocked except the water reaked of sulfur (rotten eggs). (when they first told us, i was like 'ain't no thing', i can take it, but it seriously was really difficult to drink. and the whole house smelled of it. blegh.) but other than that, it was awesome. we did tons of group building activities and received feedback about our personal group dynamics, discussed how we work in teams, how to work in teams, worked on active listening, shared (really personal) motivations for being here, etc etc. generally we got a ton closer to each other and i realize that i have A TON of differences from a lot of these people. here are some: most people don't know much about science. i know about coal plants, plants, birds, and how stuff works that other people aren't familiar with. i'm not braggin or anything, i'm just surprised that i am almost the expert of the group on this (in my opinion) elementary stuff. but i guess that's part of greenpeace, because it's more than just a bunch of tree hugging pot smoking dirty smelly hairy environmental science-minded people. "we" work hard to avoid that stereotype. and i learned that most people have seen clueless. i, however, have not and will not. they will try to get me to. and i'm the only one beside our female organizer (amy) who doesn't regularly shave. people were seriously grossed out, using the word "vomit" repeatedly. and surprised that i've ever had a boyfriend. dang they need to get out more.
[sigh]
and then today.
we have assigned readings and the one for today was a 30+ page article from the new yorker (magazine) explaining global warming. reading it was really defeating. the scope of many of the problems brought up, which are already happening and being unaddressed, makes it seem so overwhelming and almost not worth "fighting" against. (here's what i mean: we're really close to the hottest the earth has ever been, in any accessible history (mostly ice cores which go back like millions of years), let alone the existence of humans. "shit is fucked up" in greenland, and basically the entire arctic. furthermore, "average global temperature rise" will disproportionately affect the arctic. feedback mechanisms up the wazoo. for more details, see al gore's campaign tactic: an inconvienient truth. bring some tissues, recycled ones. if you have questions, try me.) and then, the fact that this administration BLOWS and we're basically holding up WORLDWIDE PROGRESS through the kyoto protocol. australia hasn't signed either. there's a cool website, exxonsecrets.org, which maps out all the players in the disinformation campaign against the scientific certainty of global warming. basically, exxon (+etc.) pays key people to distribute mad-style info that makes people question the existence of the issue. at this point all i can think and feel (literally, physically feel) is: we're screwed. sca-rewed.
psh. and then some lady came and lectured to us about greenpeace's campaign called cape wind to help try and get an offshore wind turbine system off the coast near mannhattan or something. (130 turbines, 420 feet tall, 5.2 miles offshore, 1/2 inch of viewable horizon space from the shore.) i grilled her like crazy and she didn't answer my questions. here are some examples: well first, she didn't seem to know much about the science of global warming and i think she said a few incorrect things. not cool. (a quote "i'm not a scientist, i just read papers and go on their recommendations" that's cool and all, but i wasn't cool with her not knowing about the stuff she was trying to present to us). i asked her if she thought wind power was a feasible alternative for electricity generation in america, given these stats now: 50% = coal, 20% nuke, less than 1% wind. (ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL WARMING). she said yes. it is "highly feasible" (quote.). so i said... if a) the gov't madstyle subsidizes nuclear energy for electricity, b) we already have a lot of plants in place, c) electricity generation doesn't produce co2, d) and noting the (supposed) urgency of global warming, does she feel that nuclear is a good stepping point for electricity generation? no. absolutely not. greenpeace is (to my surprise) surprisingly against nuclear energy. as far as i've been taught, which was, granted, by a nuclear physicist, one of the leaders in the world, not a big threat and environmentalists are just uninformed about realities. i haven't gotten an answer to this question. i will.

i seriously could go on a lot more but i feel that it's probably long enough to where you're not reading or not interested. i'll post more on a blog and then send you the address later this week.

logistics:
if you would prefer to keep receiving emails, email me to let me know. else, i'll just post it to a blog. also, i think i might be buying a cell phone tonight so when i miss your call, i'll know and not just seem like an irresponsible cellphone user for not calling you back.

i think that's it.

do your part in this thing:
- stay informed, and if that means asking me, please do, learning teaches.
- if you read something that blows you out of the water, tell others.
- if you want to act or something, let me know and i'm sure i can distribute something or other to you somehow. i mean, i am sitting in the national greenpeace hq and all.

so yeah. i am also interested about your life. let me know or something. sometime.
peace, love, and the end to global warming before all the polar bears die,
ari

Greenpeace I

so i was just walking down the hall and i thought to myself, 'damn, i'm in the greenpeace national headquarters in d.c'....today was the first day of the program (called the GOT / greenpeace organizing term)...we went through all of what we'll be doing this semester, including mostly training, campaigning, driving boats...etc. we're going on this 'surprise' (they won't tell us where we're going yet) 2.5 week trip to bird-dog and campaign ...the campaign we're working on is called project hotseat, focused on "saving the world" from global warming. they're going to brief us on it tomorrow.

some of the verbage they use (today) like "saving the planet" and a lot of people here talk about the "ignorance" of the general public (moreso the GOT participants than GP employees)...or fighting / victories / stuff like that that kind of confuse me coming from a more "ecological" view. in ecology there aren't really wins and losses, per se, and i'm not sure how i feel with a lot of what greenpeace is putting out there. especially their reluctance to explore (at least openly) the possibility of nuclear energy as a source for electricity, which they briefly mentioned today and said that it was, i guess, an antithesis to peace...so that skepticism is (in my opinion) useful, necessary, and humbling and hopefully i can maintain that in light of the weight of this program and city rather than being sucked into it.

this city definitely feels powerful. walking down the streets, viewing the capitol building at night, and just being in this city makes one stand taller. not necessarily prouder, but i definitely feel a sense of power and "getting shit done" oozing out of the walls around here. giant corinthian columns dwarf you, and all the museums are free (botanical gardens, smithsonian, etc)..so exploration is really easy.

at GP we can have visitors, so if any of you want to come and visit you can spend a day (or more) in my shoes and see a training or two.

i'll keep you posted as things progress, and i'm trying to get a cell phone around here, so you can call me if you want to remember what my voice sounds like.

keep it up and keep in touch
ari

happiness

why is doing what makes you happy crazy? why do we wait until we die to realize that living in the present moment is what we want to be doing, and until then live only in false hopes of one day becoming self-actualized? i can't possibly be the only one to realize these things, to face unhappiness, and to struggle with it. do other people do this? i suppose, yes, other people are unhappy, and do fix it - either through prozac, other drugs (i.e. alcohol), or other means of consumption - all different ways of some way or other losing oneself. why are we afraid to recognize our unhappiness? are we scared we won't be able to address it? i guess patch was right when he said that most people are depressed because they feel alone. maybe one day, together we can figure out why.

why is doing what makes you happy crazy? why do we wait until we die to realize that living in the present moment is what we want to be doing, and until then live only in false hopes of one day becoming self-actualized? i can't possibly be the only one to realize these things, to face unhappiness, and to struggle with it. do other people do this? i suppose, yes, other people are unhappy, and do fix it - either through prozac, other drugs (i.e. alcohol), or other means of consumption - all different ways of some way or other losing oneself. why are we afraid to recognize our unhappiness? are we scared we won't be able to address it? i guess patch was right when he said that most people are depressed because they feel alone. maybe one day, together we can figure out why.

french movies

...i like french movies. i just watched one today called venus beauty institute with audrey tautou (amelie). basically it's a love story. the french are really good at those - the acting in this movie gave me butterflies and reminded me that "...yes, love does exist, and i know what it is..." which is sometimes (for whatever reason) hard to keep in mind. anyway, you should check it out.

oxygen

a song:

i wanna be better than oxygen
so you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
i wanna speak louder than Ritalin
for all the children who think that they've got a disease
i wanna be cooler than t.v.
for all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
we can be stronger than bombs
if you're singing along and you know that you really believe
we can be richer than industry
as long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
we can speak louder than ignorance
cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.

on and on, and on, and on it goes
the world it just keeps spinning
until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
so close my eyes and start again anew.

i wanna see through all the lies of society
to the reality, happiness is at stake
i wanna hold up my head with dignity
proud of a life where to give means more than to take
i wan't to live beyond the modern mentality
where paper is all that you're really taught to create
do you remember the forgotten America?
justice, equality, freedom to every race?
just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy
make up and hair to the truth behind every face
that look around to all the people you see,
how many of them are happy and free?
i know it sounds like a dream
but it's the only thing that can get me to sleep at night
i know it's hard to believe
but it's easy to see that something here isn't right
i know the future looks dark
but it's there that the kids of today must carry the light.

Willy Mason (Oxygen)

the cost of freedom

i've seen a few bumper stickers or whatnot declaring that "freedom is not free." i don't really understand this. at the korean war veteran's memorial in washington d.c. there is an engraving that says this, too.

i'm not sure if this is the truth (as something that would exist outside our (human created) society) or if it's a social creation. if it is the latter, is it created to make us feel more ok about war, about dying, using literally billions of dollars to promote this militant idea of freedom? if the former is true, what is the cost of freedom? lives lost? dollars spent? time? effort? is freedom part of what is natural and, perhaps to extrapolate that: innate? well, if it's not free, who sells it? is this something i can buy or barter for?

i personally believe that freedom (or lack thereof) is a creation, a state of mind or state of being. i believe that society can tell you that you are not free, and even physically restrain you (i.e. in jail), but then we get into different definitions of freedom. here's a poem, by ho chi minh:

Although they have tightly bound my arms and legs,
All over the mountain I hear the song of birds,
And the forest is filled
with the perfume of spring-flowers.
Who can prevent me from freely enoying these,
which take from the long journery
a little of its lonliness?

this is the freedom that i relate to. i do not yet understand the freedom which is not free.

organization

thoughts from the movie blow

it's odd how the drug trade works very well against the current of mainstream society. not only is the underground market highly organized and maintains to be efficiently covert, it also tends to benefit people in less developed communities. further, these people in third world countries are benefitting off of our (first world) need to drown away our problems (i.e. through drugs) which are created and maintained by taking advantage of other third world countries.

peace

i'm reading a book by thich nhat hanh called creating true peace (isbn: 0743245199). i started as a response to a jewish friend who supported both peace and israel bombing lebanon. i want to understand that contradiction, so i can live through it and create peace. i also want to share some memorable quotes from the book, and they follow.

• "we have allowed violence to accumulate in us for too long because he have had no strategy to deal with it." pg. 14
  
• "we create true peace when we are inclusive of others...exclusion, getting caught by our views, is a deep-seated habit that arises from fear and misunderstanding of others." pg. 15
  
• "when we hold back our feelings and ignore our pain, we are committing violence against ourselves. the practice of nonviolence is to be here, to be present, and to recognize our own pain or despair." pg. 16
  
• "...striving to increase our compassion does not mean that instantly there are only positive elements in us. if this were the case, there would be no need to practice." pg. 35
  
• "there is no walk for peace; peace must be the walk." pg. 65

peace

i'm reading a book by thich nhat hanh called creating true peace (isbn: 0743245199). i started as a response to a jewish friend who supported both peace and israel bombing lebanon. i want to understand that contradiction, so i can live through it and create peace. i also want to share some memorable quotes from the book, and they follow.

• "we have allowed violence to accumulate in us for too long because he have had no strategy to deal with it." pg. 14
  
• "we create true peace when we are inclusive of others...exclusion, getting caught by our views, is a deep-seated habit that arises from fear and misunderstanding of others." pg. 15
  
• "when we hold back our feelings and ignore our pain, we are committing violence against ourselves. the practice of nonviolence is to be here, to be present, and to recognize our own pain or despair." pg. 16
  
• "...striving to increase our compassion does not mean that instantly there are only positive elements in us. if this were the case, there would be no need to practice." pg. 35
  
• "there is no walk for peace; peace must be the walk." pg. 65

first post

so i've been toying with the idea of getting a blog, and i'm finally doing it. i'm not sure how long this will last, as it is kind of weird writing to someone who will also end up viewing this through a computer screen. i guess i should participate so i can better come to understand why so many people are interested in this.

nola 9

I sit, waiting for the minutes to bleed into hours, waiting for the time to pass quietly and heavily away. I’m waiting for something. Waiting to go home, waiting for summer to end, waiting for school to start, for class to end, for school to end, for summer to end. Waiting. For what I do not know.

I do not know for what I am waiting to actualize – but now the waiting feeling is visceral. It has been in the past, but I’ve just associated that with being home. Now that I’ve got this tangible feeling in a place where I thought all I could do was good – all I thought I could do was help – I no longer feel that home is the only place to wait away this time. To wait away my time.

As the time of change approaches, I am excited, as I always am, and promise to make the changes necessary to feel good, to feel happy, to feel as if I am myself. More often than not these promises are not fulfilled. This time I will try. Makes me wonder why I have to wait until I get home to try...

nola 8

So I’m leaving in a week. I’m really excited. I’m excited to spend a few days on the beach in Tampa with my family as well as be a part of burying Grandpa’s ashes where he wants them to be, next to his wife.

This summer I’ve definitely learned a lot. I’ve learned what I like about being home, how I can actualize potential there, what it means and why people make money. I’ve learned to value my safety, security, and basic needs, because I’ve had to struggle to find them down here. I’ve learned what I want to do – to help people get what they want to better their own community. I want to be able to help people empower themselves.

I need to be more humble. I need to not interrupt people. I need to remember that I value highly what others are saying and that I don’t want to interject my own thoughts into theirs.

I need to learn how to create and engage dialogue. Or remember how to do so. I need to know and learn what it takes to create an atmosphere for such to occur – within myself and within the other person, as well as within the situation.

I need to be aware of cultural differences and become sensitive to what affects others.

I failed to do these things this summer, largely because I was unable to feel safe and secure in my surroundings, but I want to learn how to do them in the future.

I want to learn from Common Ground’s mistakes. Here are some of them:
- not being open and honest about the workings of the organization – if it’s grassroots, people should be able to understand it
- not a clear enough organizational framework – this should be easily understood and easily expandable
- not working directly with the community
- not sharing resources
- not building accountability / responsibility
- lack of clear communication – with volunteers, with community
- volunteers doubt a lot, we don’t know whether or not our efforts are put to good use
- not enough reflection upon efforts

I kind of feel stuck here a lot of the time.

Here are some of the unanswered questions Noah and I came up with on June 23, 2006:

- what groups are involved in gutting NOLA schools and how do they interact? (Common Ground, A & M, RSD, NO School District, BCG, Federal government)
- how is common ground funded?
- Why are we gutting houses now? Why don’t we focus on preparing communities for hurricantes?
- Why do we work with people / groups that lead us away from achieving our goals?
- What are our goals? How do individuals fit into this?
- Why do individuals fall short of this – i.e. lack of community involvement, environmental sustainability?
- Do we live in a safe neighborhood? Is mingling daily with cocaine dealers safe?
- Why are people so reluctant to answer these questions? Why do they seem / are they threatening?
- What other volunteer groups are there in the city and how are we working with them? If we aren’t, why not?
- Is our progress slow? Do we have a lack of organization and efficiency? Is this related to the fact that we’re (unpaid) volunteers?
- What other efforts is CG working on? What is St. Mary’s focusing on?
- Experience / knowledge of disaster preparedness
- Pre-hurricane state corruption
- What’s FEMA’s real response? Their timeline?
- Hurricane and global warming
- Why not more publicity?
- How could we work with colleges here?
- What’s been done / what hasn’t / what are plans?
- What does FEMA do?
- Why Iberville not St. Mary’s?

I used to think that volunteers would be more motivated than people who get paid. Now I’m not so sure

How many wars for peace have we had? And how many will it take to show us that war is not the way to peace?

nola 7

It’s funny – I feel that everyone has this enormous potential that’s just waiting to be asked to come out. Like a match waiting to be struck, to create a fire out of nothing. I wonder why people wait to unleash that magic. I wonder why I do – why I hold myself back. Like a soundtrack, a book, bumbling around before the climax, just building up and waiting to come out.

What is this random shit? I am here in New Orleans – but why? Self-sufficient for the most part, working for food, living from one day to the next, from one job to the next, not really with any meaning. I sleep, read, and think a lot. I don’t drink enough water, I’m not very physically active. The things I’m usually interested in do not bring excitement to me. This is a lull.

You need to remember that what you see in people moves you. This excites you. This indefinite resource enchants your creative energies. People are the power. Find out how to unleash this potential.

I miss human contact. I miss being able to feel and be felt. I need change, excitement, movement. Don’t we all?

How do people around here live? Are they happy? Do happy people shoot other people, deal cocaine, ignore that the schools their children need for education are still not getting the attention they deserve? Are happy people more active in the community? Is there a correlation between activism and happiness? What are the correlations with activism?

nola 6

This place is messed up. I want to see hope and I can’t find it. I want to know that what I’m doing will make a difference in the long run, that someone will recognize the work it took to get New Orleans back together. I feel underappreciated.

I want to see the green pastures of the Midwest, enjoy the summertime corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes but I can’t. I want to see a forest. There is little which resembles nature here. Green medians sparingly sprinkled with trees does not satisfy my daily need for greenery.

Greenery and nature remind me of my place here. It reminds me of the size of things and how I fit in. The world is much larger than me and without something to remind me it’s easy to forget.

Everything is so dirty here. There is litter everywhere; businesses, schools, houses are filled with garbage, the streets are lined with rubble, the people who work are dirty. Going into a mall on Canal and seeing all the pretty people in the air-conditioned bubble is dreamy. Eating an ice cream cone for the first time this summer on Friday was a sensation I didn’t know I could miss that much.

After talking to a close friend

I’ve put myself in this situation that eats away at my self. This is a form of suicide in which I’ve set a trap for myself and not allowed an escape. I think I’ll feel bad and see this as failure if I leave, if I see all the problems these people face on a daily basis and leave anyway. I put myself as a cause of the continuance of this. For a while now I’ve been asking myself, “why don’t you go home?” and I can’t think of an answer. Sometimes it feels like I want someone to rescue me, and that I’m looking outside myself for that.

I am not whole right now and I can’t take care of myself. I need to fix this situation rather than rely on someone else.

Though when I do have what it takes for self-reflection and the ability to get an understanding of the situation I just wonder what is wrong with these people? Why can’t they take the situation into their own hands and fix it? Now, I’m not necessarily talking about the people of this city, those who simply “don’t have the ability to do so,” I’m also talking about my fellow volunteers who can’t clean their own dishes or wash their own clothes. It’s hard to continue working and working for these people (perhaps with them) in the midst of their apathy toward what I’m doing.

You have to empower yourself before you can empower others.

You know what makes you happy.

6:30 pm, later that day

Woke up to Jewel asking “who will save your soul if you won’t save your own?”

Bess being here makes me realize a lot of the fucked up shit that I’ve learned to ignore, that I forget to question, that I’m tired of throwing myself against, failing.

Bess thinks that a lot of people have other reasons for coming here or staying here for the whole summer – that they want to find meaning in life.

I want to write a lot but not it’s not coming out. I need to write about why I’m still here, why I find myself caught up here, about how I feel Common Ground has gone astray.

nola 5

Excerpts from an email to a friend:
I’ve been here for about a month now and it's really wearing on me. I’m kind of losing my head, and maybe you'll be able to tell throughout my following email that I’m not quite all there. It’s extremely difficult to feel effective.

Today I 'gutted' an elementary school. What that all means is pretty complex. as far as organizational structure goes...: the Louisiana dept of education contracted out the 'recovery school district' who
further contracted 2 other groups: the Boston Consulting Group, and Alvarez and Marsal. Both of these latter groups work internationally to organize businesses so they can run as effectively and efficiently as possible. One part of that efficiency is efficiency of cost. So the Boston Consulting Group has been working largely with volunteer efforts to gut schools.

Let me stop and explain the word "gut." in most cases, gutting entails debris removal from a building as well as mold abatement. Debris removal entails removing rotting material that has been sitting in a building since (as the dates on the chalkboards go:) August 29, 2005. Hurricane Katrina hit that day, created a 20 foot storm surge which broke levees all across the city and flooded houses up to 15 feet for as long as 3 weeks. The school we gutted today was flooded only about 6 inches and is one of the more pleasant schools to gut. So debris removal...imagine walking into a fully stocked elementary school and dragging out everything from the first floor, irregardless of the condition. (Some things are in new condition, i.e. many unused textbooks, unopened office supplies, iBooks, etc. -- all of which are thrown away because of the mold spores that have had time to settle. Other things are not so new - cockroaches and a bigger version called Palmetto Bugs are abundant and yet they still creep me out.) Now, on to mold abatement. The water that flooded this place wasn't very clean - New Orleans is an industrialized port city and also has a fair share of oil refineries, garbage dumps and is generally a pretty dirty city. The mold that formed after the water sat in building is practically toxic to respiratory systems. After debris removal, we sledgehammer out the drywall and then mold abatement either means bleach or "E.M." (Efficient Microbes) to kill the mold.

This is a pretty typical day.

Today was not typical for me. I’ll be honest: I’ve been pretty shitty lately. This is very hard to be here. And my grandpa died on Monday and the funeral is today and my mom is being really weird about it (it's her dad). And my dad just had surgery and my sister is in Europe for a month. Yeah. This is all pretty crazy. So I had a bit of a crazy breakdown today, where I was just kind of delirious and unable to work. I would walk into a classroom and just not know where to begin. Although is not an unusual feeling, I just didn't know how to do it today, and work was really hard. We also had the smallest crew yet at this school: 5 and one guy left like halfway through...so there were 4 of us. On an entire school. In 95+ degree weather. With inadequate gear and insufficient clean drinking water. Today was hard.

A friend from U of I came down to work for a while a few days ago and she bought me Chinese food tonight. It was really good to eat a fairly normal meal. I recently moved out of the volunteer housing because I didn't want to get raped, shot, or have my stuff stolen (all real concerns), so I have no reliable source of food at this point, and no income until about an hour ago. Eating dinner was nice.

I'm sure by this point you have to think I’m insane. Rightly so. I see this as sort of an experiment and also a gigantic learning experience. if you're interested to hear more of my rationalization/justification I can let you in on that to help you understand why I’m still here...I’m sure you have a fairly large amount of unanswerable questions you might want to ask, too (such as why is the gutting done by volunteers when the gov't pledges 'no child left behind', or why do I fear getting raped or shot, or why haven't I left, or, well, I’m sure you have some of those), and I’m willing to entertain some of those as this dialogue progresses.

Rereading my email I realize I’ve said a lot. You must understand though that when I came down here it wasn't the same situation but since then has morphed into this monster that I’ve been entangled into. Granted, home is only a train ticket away, I’m not sure I want to come back yet. This place is like a rollercoaster and I’m trying to enjoy the ride even though I’m scared for my life.

nola 4

There was a drive-by shooting on this block last night. A car pulled up to the middle of the intersection and fired two shots into a bar on the corner 100 feet down the road. No one was hurt.

I do not know how to comprehend this – but it’s why I’m leaving.

My peers comprehend it by making a joke out of it, by using humor to come to terms with something that they cannot otherwise think about. Much of pop culture America does this nowadays, too. We have TV shows that draw on sexism for humor, racism for fun, and economic disparity for laughs. Our ideals are taken silently away from us and then we struggle to buy them back for the rest of our lives. We struggle against the current to live a moral life, in attempt to live a peaceful life. This, it seems, is impossible. Suffering is all around us but we can’t seem to find the tools to come to terms with it – we can’t seem to win against the powers of immorality.

I’m sure many a great theorist has said this before.

We will stand up for morality and show others the Way.

nola 3

I have become largely ineffective as part of this group. I am easily frustrated and have little concern for the opinions of others. I feel that they are unintelligent and that working with them will bring me more harm than good. Furthermore, it is shitty to constantly have to feel guarded against outside forces because of my sex and race. This is one of the most sexist environments that I’ve ever lived in, and being the one to normally speak up, I’ve repeatedly been called a bitch or the like.

I’m impatient for these people to spit out something worth my time. It feels like I have to wait 90% of the time for maybe 10% of something that I’m actually interested in hearing.

I’m too egotistical in thinking that what I know is right. Though I tell myself that I’m usually right in the end anyway. You’re trying to be the expert and forcing it upon people. Whether or not you’re right in the end; this feeling blinds you from what you could be learning from people.

Fix these things or perish here.

nola 2

It seems that the more I learn, the more questions I have, and the harder these questions are to be answered. Simple questions like ‘what do I want,’ or ‘what should I do today,’ or ‘why should I even get out of bed,’ are now the larger unanswerable, paralyzing questions. I seem paralyzed by trying to figure out the best way to approach solving these problems. The problems here seem endless – or are arranged in such a cycle that self-perpetuates.

In attempt to solve these problems in a lasting way, we have brought to life a concept we call “sustainability.” This verbalizes an idea: we need to consider the future of our actions while we are acting – it promotes a worldview that incorporates the well-being of future generations as well as those of the current society. To use the term sustainability is to reach for something perfect, unattainable, and this can be done in such a way as to promote inaction rather than positive action toward smaller goals. We need a bigger plan, we need to understand the bigger picture and do so in such a way that this picture is able to provide us the answers we need to the nagging yet unavoidable questions.

Every small task now is hard to complete. Rather difficult to do in an acceptable way because I’m too paranoid about things getting done perfectly, sustainably, etc. It seems now that holding these criteria that entertain ideals of perfection as means to act is much more detrimental than motivating. How does the idea of sustainability evade me for encouraging practical change? Why has this become a barrier rather than a motivator? What has changed to make that such? Is it because I’m somehow depressed? I am definitely feeling symptoms of depression – the inability to find reason to get out of bed in the morning, lack of concern for food, for my body and well-being, decreased motivation, decreased spontaneity and creativity.

I lack passion and I don’t know why. I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of problems. Digging deeper into the roots and learning the extent of problems in this city, in this country, in our world, easily leads me to feel brought down, weighted, burdened, and unable to move because of it. I know that I can get past that, and that I need to for my self and my ability to be compassionate. It seems now that I’ve somehow forgotten how to see those problems as apart from my self, and begin to take baby steps in the right direction. It seems that I’ve lost direction; I’ve lost that illumination of the path ahead.

I’ll write a little on what I’ve been doing the past few days:
Friday night Noah and I went downtown to get away from Iberville and get some work done. We were in the midst of human spectacle: tourism. Tourists, mostly well-dressed white people, were covering the streets and restaurants that we normally find rather inviting. These people were the swarm of flies around a rotting piece of food, only they don’t move when you wave your hand. Noah and I wondered how we could avoid being part of this crowd. He suggested unbuttoning his shirt, though I found no way to alleviate my “white guilt” through superficial appearance. I paid four dollars for a frozen coffee at Café du Monde, and realized I don’t even know what “worth it” means any more. The coffee was good tasting and cold, but I didn’t find it to actualize its monetary potential.

We sat down in front of the cat park, Jackson Square, which lies in front of St. Louis Cathedral. We call it the cat park because at night the square is locked up and a slew of stray cats serve as its nocturnal guardians. Many nights tourists stop to feed the cats; on Friday night we saw a family bring bags from Whole Foods and feed the cats. At this point, we were disgusted that people could waste so much money to feed cats but at the same time turn a blind eye to the hungry and homeless people with whom we were talking. Noah said this to Chicago who responded that we need to treat all creatures with compassion, because ‘we’re all one.’ To this I agree.

We sat down on a bench looking toward the cats and started writing. Noah was working on the press release for July 8th, and I was thinking about some of the questions regarding Common Ground that we can’t find answers to. Then a homeless woman came up and sat with her back to us on the same double-sided bench. She hadn’t said anything and looked like she was trying to sleep. After a number of minutes she started talking to us, asking us where we were from and we told her we were from the Midwest, working with Common Ground and trying to gut schools. We told her about the press release. Eventually she told us that she has a Masters in Media Communications. Her name is Danielle.

It’s hard, though, to access truth. I wish people didn’t feel motivated to lie. I wish people wouldn’t have to feel pushed to tell anyone anything except truth. But for these reasons and so many forces that push us to conceal what we know as real, there exists so many different levels of reality throughout society. There’s the level of the federal government, whose true motives are so wrapped up in lie that many people believe we are actually in a war against terror. This government pledges to ‘leave no child behind,’ but I see only disconnect when it comes to that actually happening. There is this city government, the structure of which is extremely convoluted and unintelligible. To work with NORD (the New Orleans Recreation Department), Eric and Jeremiah worked for months (3-4) to receive word from someone who actually had a meaningful and weighty opinion. At the ground level there are so many different opinions that it’s hard to even understand one, my own, completely. There are so many different interactions between opinion that occur daily, these are so dynamic and subject to radical, and sometimes, violent change, that many times I feel lost in confusion. Many times I wish that I could understand the truth, that I could answer my questions, or even that I knew who to ask.

Later

I feel that insatiable hunger. I want to talk to someone I love. I wish I could just go eat for a while. And drink water. I’m always sweating, even when I’m just laying in bed. I’m tired of being beat down by this heat. I’m tired of feeling unutilized. I should be doing something. I could be doing something. I want to do something. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I could do that is constructive. Sometimes I feel like I need to be lead, but that would just provide another – external - thing to doubt. I can do that with my self already. It just seems like that’s not leading me anywhere, it’s not showing me any clear path of action any more. I can’t figure out why in a constructive way. I don’t know what I want with my self down here. I don’t know what I want with my life right now. It feels pointless, aimless, directionless, motionless in a way. I feel like I’m treading water. I’m moving but not going anywhere because I don’t know which way to go. Treading water for long periods of time is not healthy.

I miss comfort. I miss feeling comforted, by food, by a person, in my surroundings.

I want to be sought out. I want someone to need me, to want me, to desire my work my attention, my actualization. I want someone to want to see me dance, to dance with me. I want to build something together. I want to live together and do so happily, and in a way that makes others happy.

nola 1

So imagine walking into an elementary school. The classrooms are full of desks, chairs, posters, colorful shapes and words. Hallways are lined with motivational statements: “leave no child behind,” “creativity needs no direction,” and the school’s mission statement. The cafeteria is filled with tables and benches to accommodate at least 200 kids. There’s a stage, piano, and chairs for a sizable audience.

Now imagine that sitting in toxic floodwater – water from industrial New Orleans, a prominent port city, water soaking in garbage dumps, sewage water – for up to two weeks. Imagine after the city was drained, the school doors chained up, all contents inside left to rot. For nine months.

One volunteer site of Common Ground consisting of about twenty volunteers is the only group of people in the entire city of New Orleans that’s responsible for cleaning up these schools. We “gut” the schools (remove all the rubble and place it outside so FEMA trucks can drive it away) and then the remaining labor is contracted out. The things we discard are usually usable – undamaged by the floodwater: hundreds of unopened textbooks in storage rooms, thousands of clean, unwrinkled pieces of paper, sharp-tipped crayons, markers, colored pencils. The garbage piles we create look like an exploded Office Max TM.

By the end of the work day, most of us are so frustrated from being the only people who seem to care about the future of the children of New Orleans, and that we’re throwing out so much usable material, and that we aren’t being assisted by residents who do care about this, and that neither FEMA, nor the city, nor the school district seem to know we exist. The only insurance we have (the forms we sign to cover medical care in case of emergency) is provided by the Recovery School District (a 7 month old organization) and a firm out of Boston.

It seems in a lot of ways that the corruption is so bad here that the government is actually harming the people rather than helping them. To see a sign stating “no child left behind” as I walk into a trashed school was humorous – upper-middle class Caucasian college student volunteers from out of state are the ones who are responsible for these children not being left behind.

A few words about the state of the upper-middle class college students that seemed to appall the teacher I talked to at a school yesterday: we have no air conditioning, we have running water only sporadically, we sleep in the same neighborhood as drug dealers, and talk to them daily, we don’t have fresh food and have been eating rice and canned beans for longer than any of our tastes allow satisfaction, we sleep with cockroaches.

Where, we want to know, is FEMA? Where is the administration of the city of New Orleans? Where is the school district? Why do these disconnects exist: that between the federal government and it’s policies (“no child left behind”), that between the city of New Orleans and the school district? Where is the $95 billion (yes, billion) that the federal government included in its yearly budget for 2006? Why is the disconnect between the citizens whose children are forced to deal drugs on the street for lack of school, for lack of attention, for lack of resources, and their lack of ability to take the educations of their own children into their own hands? Where does this disconnect originate? How are citizens rendered so powerless?

These questions assault us daily, and still remain unanswered.