whites_are_seeking_conversations_about_undoing_racism--with_each_other by Carla Murphy Tuesday, December 9 2014, 2:58 PM EST. With the national uproar surrounding the unpunished police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, some white Americans say they are rethinking the lack of diversity in their lives—and the work they need to do to help create social change that lasts. Take Philadelphia artist Katherine Fritz. “Whites can live, love, study, work, play and die in segregation,” says “Whiteness Studies” scholar Robin DiAngelo, “and still profess that race has no meaning in their lives.” But something appears to be shifting in that in the weeks since news broke that there’d be no indictment in Officer Darren Wilson’s case. Intentional conversations about racism—by whites, for whites and not of the KKK variety—are happening across the country. ‘Deal With the Upset’ For white people who’re trying to understand why their reactions to race conversations are so fraught, DiAngelo’s concept of “white fragility,” is one way to get there.
We Can End Poverty, Millennium Development Goals, 2015: UN Summit, 20-22 September 2010, New York Notice: The President of the UN General Assembly will hold a Special Event towards achieving the MDGs at UN Headquarters in New York on 25 September 2013, during the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. For information, visit the MDG Special Event page What's Going On? The outcome document for the MDG Summit was adopted by the General Assembly by consensus on 22 September. It includes an action agenda for achieving the Goals by 2015. Watch the video messages by members of the MDG Advocacy Group and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Antonio Banderas! The MDGs at Work Child mortality (MDG 4) has been reduced, but not quickly enough to reach the target. 2010 UN Summit The 2010 United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date and the announcement of major new commitments for women’s and children’s health and other initiatives against poverty, hunger and disease.
Trautner-Borland--Academic_Integrity.pdf United We Fall (2010) One has to look at the effects of the free trade agreements between US and Canada. They've been good for some powerful sectors and not at all good for poor, working people, for those that are not benefiting from corporate profits. So in Canada, for example, since they've signed the bilateral free trade agreement with the United States, two thirds of the Canadian families have experienced a decline in their real incomes. Also the North American free trade agreement has displaced 2 million Mexican peasant farmers from their land. One of the major concerns that Canada and Mexico had about NAFTA was that it might open their capital to being taken over by US multinational corporations. United We Fall is a documentary about the North American Union and for years this topic has been debated in the news and in political circles as being a possible future for North America. Watch the full documentary now
What's it like to be a migrant farmworker? One anthropologist lived and worked alongside them. He met a number of people during his research, from farm owners and doctors to crop inspectors. But he largely focuses on the daily life of the farmworkers — their journeys across the US-Mexico border, away from tough economic conditions back home, and what life is like in the fields along the West Coast of the United States. Holmes, who lives in San Francisco, spoke with The World’s Monica Campbell about his work. Q: What led you to this research? I’d been interested in our food system for a long time and in learning what’s behind the food that we eat. This group of indigenous, native Mexicans was especially compelling to me because they hadn’t been migrating to the US for very long and the process of doing that from their village was taking place at that moment. Q: Where did your work lead you? I worked two summers on the Tanaka Farm up in Washington state, and then I pruned vineyards whenever we could get work in California’s Central Valley in the winter.
How the produce aisle looks to a migrant farmworker In the produce aisle of a supermarket in Madera, in California’s rural Central Valley, Francisco surveys the fruits and vegetables on display in the produce aisle. He’s 40 years old and stocky. He's also undocumented, and he asks to use his first name only. For years, he’s picked produce in Mexico and along the West Coast of the United States. He’s good at it, but there’s one thing on display here that he wouldn’t mind never harvesting again: the tomato. It's the crop that “leaves you the most tired," he says. Plus, they’re messy. Then there’s the avocado — also tough. “You have to make sure you pick them at just the right time, when they’re not too mature or too ripe,” he says. He remembers how much the avocados weigh once they fill up the picker’s bag that's harnessed around the shoulders — a full bag is about 50 pounds. Next, Francisco spots the onions, white and smooth. “The onion is complicated because you have to hunch down, digging them up from the ground,” he says.
You Need Sociology to Understand Ferguson | SociologyInFocus Students often wonder why sociology 101 is a required course. In this piece, Nathan Palmer argues that without sociology we cannot fully understand events like the tragic killing of Mike Brown by officer Darren Wilson. Over the next few weeks thousands of students across the country will start a sociology 101 class. Most will not be sociology majors and many will walk into class wondering, “why on earth am I required to take this class?” All of us make sense of the world around us, but that doesn’t mean that we understand why people behave the way they do or why things happen day-to-day. One year ago yesterday Mike Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson Missouri. Expanding U.S. After WWII the United States economy boomed because most of the rest of the world was rebuilding their war torn countries. The boom ended and starting around 1978 economic inequality began to rise. The War on Drugs But let’s be clear.
Does Being Vegan Really Help Animals? : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture More people are moving toward a plant-based diet, owing in part to evidence about human health and environmental sustainability, and in part to the emerging scientific consensus on the breadth and depth of animal consciousness and sentience. Full disclosure: I am a pesco-vegetarian — I eat an occasional fish. But how might choosing to eat fewer animals than ever before — or no animals at all (vegetarian), or no animals or animal products (vegan) — make a difference for animals or for the world? This question is on my mind this week, as I read a book titled Ninety-Five: Meeting America's Farmed Animals in Stories and Photographs. It suggests that 95 "is the average number of animals spared each year by one person's vegan diet." There are a variety of sources estimating average individual intakes of meat. What does "spared" in this context actually mean? Thanks to Alka, Bruce and Paul for helping illuminate the relationship between our food choices and the well-being of other animals.
How the iPhone Helps Perpetuate Modern-Day Slavery | Carl Gibson "How do we have this amazing microtechnology? Because the factory where they're making these, they jump off the fucking roof because it's a nightmare in there. You really have a choice -- you can have candles and horses and be a little kinder to each other, or let someone suffer immeasurably far away just so you can leave a mean comment on YouTube while you're taking a shit." The iPhone 6 is coming out soon. Since 1998, seven million people have died in a civil war that continues to plague the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As this mini-documentary from the Pulitzer Center shows, children as young as 13 are forced to work in the mines for as little as 2 dollars a day. The raw materials mined in Congo are then sent to factories in China -- most notably, the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen. However, it isn't just low-paid Apple store workers who are getting shafted. The decision will ultimately be up to us, the buyers.
Rethinking Cinco de Mayo | The Zinn Education Project By Sudie Hofmann I recently came across a flier in an old backpack of my daughter's: Wanted: Committee Chairs for this Spring's Cinco de Mayo All School Celebration. The flier was replete with cultural props including a sombrero, cactus tree, donkey, taco, maracas, and chili peppers. Seeing this again brought back the moment when, years earlier, my daughter had handed the flier to me, and I'd thought, "Oh, no." The local K-6 elementary school's Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) was sponsoring a stereotypical Mexican American event. There were no Chicana/o students, parents, or staff members who I was aware of in the school community and I was concerned about the event's authenticity. After making some inquiries, I was told the school wanted to celebrate Cinco de Mayo because it was Mexico's Independence Day. Cinco de Mayo Cinco de Mayo has been celebrated in the United States more than in Mexico. The week before the event, I received a phone call from the PTSA coordinator.