Summer Reading

I've had a lot of time to read here, so I wanted to document the books I've read/am reading.

Currently Reading:

1)
Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus

2)
Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton

3) Feminist Perspectives On Sustainable Development by Wendy Harcourt



Finished:

1) So You Want to Join the Peace Corps: What to Know Before You Go by Dillon Banerjee

2) Peace Corps : The Great Adventure

3) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Guest Welfare

Along with weekly rotations, permanent rotations, and several 8-hour shifts, each volunteer is paired up with a guest to make sure he or she doesn't get stuck in a rut and is following a concrete plan. This ensures that there is a constant cycle of guests in the house and that there is enough space for new arrivals. Right now, I have three guests, a low number due to the lack of people in the house. For some people, being a Contact Volunteer is more hands off. However, I sometimes feel like a case worker, often doing things that I'm definitely not trained to do.

Although we have a lot of Social Security women, who I've mentioned before, I thought I would tell the stories of other guests at Annunciation House, so you guys could get an idea of who stays here.


Laura

In the past month, I've gotten to know Laura, a young mother of two, fairly well. I was briefly her Contact Volunteer while our House Coordinator was on vacation and was able to talk to her about her situation. She and her husband come from Ciudad Juarez, just over the border. Her husband was unable to find stable work there, so the two of them crossed over. Her children (I believe) are US citizens, and so are able to access social services like Medicaid.

While they've been at A-House, they've been able to save up enough money to rent an apartment. In talking to Laura recently, she seemed excited at the chance to finally be independent and able to provide a home for her kids, Andrea and Kenia.

However, this past week, her husband Jaime lost his construction job. On top of that, his employers only paid him half of what he was owed (about $150 for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week). When asking Laura about this, she just said, "Somos ilegales. Es la realidad de la vida." [We're illegal. That's just the reality of life.]

Laura's resilient attitude toward her situation amazes me. As we were looking through the banco de ropa [clothing bank] in the basement of A-House, I expressed how frustrated I was with this "reality," with how unjust it was for employers to take advantage of people like that. In response, she just sighed. She told me that Kenia, her youngest daughter, tested positive for TB and had to go to the doctor in order to get an X-ray. However, the doctor tried to charge her $150, an outrageous amount for a public health concern. She said she was unable to pay it and, although it took her an entire day to take the bus over to the clinic, she had to come back home empty-handed. When she came to A-House and told the House Coordinator, Cindy, she learned that the clinic was unable to charge her for something like a TB X-ray. So, the next day, she had to take the bus all the way to the clinic and try again.

"¿Pero es la vida, verdad?" she said again, and continued to look through the baby clothes. Then, she moved to the newly-added maternity rack and began to hold some shirts up to herself. Not knowing what to say about Kenia, I awkwardly pointed out that the clothes she was looking at were for pregnant women.

"Ay, no sabes? Creo que estoy embarazada otra vez." [Oh, you don't know? I believe I'm pregnant again.]

I was absolutely floored. Laura, an 18-year old girl with two kids and with all the problems she's experienced, is now pregnant with a third child. I asked her if she had gone to the clinic for herself.

"Mañana. Pero soy una mujer. Yo sé." [Tomorrow. But I'm a woman. I know.]

-----------------------

I realize that people have made the argument that immigrants "leech off the system" and create their own problems, but when I talk to guests like Laura, those arguments all seem distant and empty. Laura and her husband came to the US because they wanted a better life than the one they were living in Mexico. While that means that Mexico needs to take responsibility for its citizens' standard of living, in the meantime, we need to treat immigrants like humans and not like threats.

I've come to really respect the Catholic attitude towards immigration. There are a huge amount of Catholic Worker houses who do similar things as A-House. (Learn about the Catholic Worker Movement here). I've also met a lot of nuns who work towards social justice, especially concerning immigration. Yesterday, I was able to go to Juarez for a priest's 85th birthday party, where I met about 20 nuns who all are active in pursuing immigration reform.

So, I'm seeing a lot of hope here. While there are things that I'm angry about (like the government's inability to address this issue and some employers' disrespect for human life), I've found hope in the resilience of the community I live in and the people that I work with.

Grapes of Wrath

A-House's House Coordinator puts a little inspirational quote on every week's work schedule. This week, because she's on vacation, she asked me to pick out a quote appropriate for the schedule. I went into the toy room/library and immediately picked out Grapes of Wrath. I had read it last summer, but when reading it again, I couldn't believe how relevant it is to the people in A-House. Although it was written 70 years ago, the story of discrimination and hatred towards a group of people is still the same today. Also, the resilience of people who are desperate and hungry is the same - I see that every day here. I just wanted to include a few excerpts that I found online:

"The western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunderstorm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simply -- the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man -- muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need -- this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man -- when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live -- for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live -- for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know -- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

"The Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family move from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company-that's the bank when it has land-wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good-not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things-it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.

"One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate-"We lost *our* land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket-take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning-from "I" to "we."

"If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results; if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."

"The Western States are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million more restive, ready to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness.

"And the tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land."

-----------------------


"The moving, questing people were migrants now. Those families which had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people. Behind them more were coming. The great highways streamed with moving people. There in the Middle- and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not changed with industry, who had not formed with machines or known the power and danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life.

"And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people. In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights.

"And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they're filthy. We can't have them in the schools. They're strangers. How'd you like to have your sister go out with one of 'em?

"The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of hand. And the men who were armed did not own the land, but they thought they did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something, even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week. S'pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little store-keeper thought, How could I compete, with a debtless man?

"And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it fought with a low wage. If that fella'll work for thirty cents, I'll work for twenty-five.

"If he'll take twenty-five, I'll do it for twenty.

"No, me, I'm hungry. I'll work for fifteen. I'll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin' out, an' they can't run aroun'. Give 'em some wind-fall fruit, an' they bloated up. Me. I'll work for a little piece of meat.

"And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we'll have serfs again.

"And now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work.

"And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment."

I have no patience when folding fitted sheets...

Hey y'all -


* I wanted to post this here on my first entry, but I forgot. This is a song I listened to on the plane ride here, and I wanted to share it. It's perfect traveling music, I think.

Right now I'm resting at Casa Teresa while the laundry is going. Because all of us volunteers have weekly rotations, I was assigned to do the house's laundry this week, which just consists of washing rags and sheets every day. Since Casa Teresa has a swamp cooler (not as gross as it sounds - just the south's version of air conditioning), I like to do the laundry at the hottest part of the day, which is really between 12:00 and 7:00 at night. I'm determined to set up a clothesline at home, because I've realized how worthless dryers really are. It's especially nice when hanging up wet sheets when they're cool to the touch. I like walking through the sheets when they blow in the breeze...

Every weekday morning the volunteers have reflection, where one of us prepares a 45-minute discussion. This past week, I talked about an idea that I've been wrestling with for a while now - sustainability. Really, ever since we talked about sustainable development in my Economic Anthropology class, I've been thinking about how useful the word actually is. I realize that sustainable development has a specific meaning, depending on economic growth, environmental responsibility, social consciousness, cultural diversity, whatever... but generally, I like the broader meaning of living today in a way that doesn't compromise the standard of living of future generations. So, for reflection, I made a list of how I thought the concept of sustainability could be applied to non-profits and charities - things that are really important to me when thinking about the reasons why I would want to be involved with an organization. They were:

1. promoting environmentally sustainable practices
2. promoting social justice, including
a. gender equality
b. cultural diversity
c. human rights (including education as a human right)
3. promoting the idea of community as a self-sufficient unit
4. providing aid that depends on an intended population, NOT on the agenda of the organization itself

Those were the main ones anyway. When reading these out loud, I asked the other volunteers whether or not they thought Annunciation House was sustainable, in regards to these points or others. They agreed (and I agree too) that A-House does all these things, which makes sense as to why I'm investing my time and energy into this place. Someone also mentioned the idea of self-sustainability, which I've talked about in a previous post. She said that while the house promotes the sustainability of a community, it also really emphasizes the need for everyone on an individual level to take care of their own needs.

So yeah, sustainability is something I think about in relation to what I want to be involved with for a possible career or whatever...

So anyway, onto other things...

For those of you who are El Paso Times fans (and who isn't?), they've had an absolutely ridiculous feature for however long on the violence in Juarez called "Bordering on Fear." (Here's a sample.) Bad pun aside, it has been on my nerves because of other journalistic faux pas like bad sourcing and one-sidedness. Even though I have little experience writing newspaper articles (look here and here for embarrassing contributions), it seems logical that a reporter should be thorough and unbiased.

Anyway, here's the situation from my (definitely biased, but this is ok) perspective. Everyone's heard that if you get pulled over in Mexico, you can pay the officer off. A good reason why this happens is because Mexican police officers don't actually get paid enough for the work they do (and get mediocre benefits). So, instead of going through a long process of paperwork and such that only benefits them slightly, officers often take the direct compensation of bribes. This is (in a way, but not totally) understandable, right?

Well, let's say we're talking about a drug cartel and not an average citizen. Someone says, "Hey, just look the other way when we pass over the border with drugs, and we'll pay you." More often than not, the local police will take the money rather than arrest the drug dealer. With that, it's not just a question of low salary, it's also an issue of corruption. So, what's been happening in Juarez is that the police force doesn't just look the other way when cartels cross the border with drugs, they actually participate in selling it within Mexico.

This has become a huge issue not only because it's corrupt and wrong (the federal army has had to intervene recently), but also because warring drug cartels who have been battling for top-dog are like, "Why did you help them and not us?" So, the animosity that was just between drug cartels now includes the police, who has involved itself in one side or the other. This has completely exploded within the past few weeks, so this "drug war" has meant that a lot of police officers who have been involved have been killed, as well as gang members who are part of the different cartels.

So, the "violence in Juarez" isn't like New York City, where it's inevitable that you'll get mugged if you walk around at night. Really, there's no threat to visitors or tourists, unless you're part of the police, a cartel, or you're buying drugs.

But the media (even NPR - listen to this story) has played up fear majorly. Why? Because fear sells newspapers.

Not that I'm saying that you should walk around Juarez with money busting out of your pockets, but... Here's my point:

What the media (especially the El Paso Times) has been doing is that they've been using the already-heightened fear of the border and manipulating it in order to focus it on undocumented workers. The El Paso Times came out with a story yesterday that perfectly illustrates this, but it's unfortunately not on their website yet. They use this issue of gang warfare and say, "See? We don't want people to come over to our country! They'll bring drugs and crime!"

But that's not it at all. El Paso and the federal government have spent billions of taxpayers' dollars to put up fences, security cameras, motion sensors, skyboxes, and other high-tech equipment along the border in order to keep people out. That hasn't stopped immigration. No, what this has meant for undocumented Mexicans is that they have had to travel to the outskirts of town to cross the border - all desert and mountains. Hundreds of people have died this way from dehydration and exhaustion, and bodies are always being found out there.

My point is, while billions of dollars are spent to push undocumented workers to the outskirts of the city to cross illegally, drugs are simply crossing at the checkpoint because of corrupt police officers and the lack of equipment. More drugs cross at the checkpoint than at any other point along the border, because officers just don't have the time to check every car or backpack. Shouldn't we invest our efforts in figuring out how to stop drugs from coming over, rather than people who are simply searching for a better life?


I realize my train of thought is not that comprehensible. Post questions in the comments section and I'll try to address them more lucidly...