From the Culture of Aloha, a Path Out of Gun Violence by Poka Laenui. Beneath mainstream culture runs a current of domination, individualism, and exclusion that is harming our children. We assume this is normal—but is it really? Posted Feb 07, 2013 U.S. society tends to deal with violence by treating it as an individual occurrence—focusing on the “perpetrator” and how he is different from us.
The more people killed or maimed, the more horrendous the event, the more we separate the actor and event from ourselves—the good people—and individualize responsibility to the “gun-toter.” All that matters is believing that we’re different—whether because of race, religion, political beliefs, economic status, mental illness, or some other characteristic. It’s the stigmatizing game. We exclude the “other” from ourselves, rather than admitting to common characteristics.
There is no better mental health treatment for a child than the loving embrace of the child’s community. But not so. Why Punish Pain? None of us can change the deep culture alone. Interested? A Dream Deferred: How access to STEM is denied to many students before they get in the door good | The Urban Scientist. A Dream Deferredby Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.Or does it explode? My interest in teaching and science outreach crystallized with NSF GK-12 Fellowship experiences in St. Louis. Some of the students came up with some really amazing ideas. However, like most of the other projects proposed by my students, these projects never happened. Lack of resourcesBenign discouragement by well-meaning adultsActive exclusion by powerful gatekeepers I witnessed all three during my time at Normandy Senior High School and the University of Missouri-St. 1.
A majority of the projects proposed by students died because they did not have the resources to actually carry out the experiments. But perhaps more importantly, they needed guidance. 2. So, what happened? 3. Hip Hop Education- I’m here for them! A plague of David Attenborough. Last week, British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough devoted over a third of a widely reported interview to his claim that human beings are “a plague on the earth.” “It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.” Attenborough cited Ethiopia as his only example of the natural world fighting back against the human plague. “We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. In Attenborough’s view, Ethiopians are starving simply because there are too many of them.
But let’s suppose that 50% of Ethiopians disappear today. In reality, more than 400,000 Ethiopians died of starvation between 1983 and 1985, in one of the worst famines of modern times. Clearly, reducing population would not make Ethiopia any less vulnerable to mass hunger. ———- Ian. Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks | Neighborhood income maps of U.S. cities. Anger | Latika Roy Foundation. I am angry at every man I see these days. In a fancy home-goods shop this afternoon, I watched as an older guy got too close to a young salesgirl. One month ago, I might have rolled my eyes and moved on. Today, I stood right where I was, arms folded, glaring. He got the message. Walking with my daughter down the platform at the train station, I saw a man note her presence.
He watched her with obvious and lascivious pleasure, then turned to his friend to make sure he had seen her too. I stopped, turned around and glared at both of them. I am fierce these days. Like everyone else in the country, I was shaken to the core by the brutal rape of the young woman we all feel we knew. I am a writer and I write about the things that move me, the things that astonish me, the things I wish I could change, the things I will not tolerate, the things that define me. But for days, stretching into weeks, I could not write about this.
Oh, just think about it! And yet the grief was there. The Feminist eZine.