Teacher For A Day

Hey guys! I feel like I should start by stating the obvious, I’m not very good at this whole blogging thing. But I hope that by now you all know me well enough that I can be candid. I’d like to leave behind the analytical, academic tone of this semester’s archive and ask you all a question that is purely selfish: How do you like to learn?

As we are all tweaking and finalizing our lesson plans, it was proposed to me by Prof. Reitz that it might be a good idea to ask you guys to think about a learning experience that you particularly enjoyed. Why did you enjoy it? Why do you remember it? Was the professor more engaging than most others? Was there a guest speaker? Was the class discussion especially riveting? Was there a debate or even an argument that broke out? Did an activity teach you something new about yourself, about someone else? Were there cupcakes?

One of my ‘top 10 classes’ took place about a month ago. My International Human Rights professor decided to take a step back and let one of his students teach a class. His aim was to show the class that students could, and should, get involved in the field as soon as possible. He wanted us to understand that you don’t necessarily need a degree to make a difference. The presenter for the evening was an undergraduate student who had spent her summer researching human rights violations in the Dominican Republic, before moving on to work with a non-profit community organization (promoting the right to education) in India. The presentation itself was a combination of a personal narrative about her experience, and an informational session on types of NPOs and NGOs. She had pictures and slides and all that jazz. But what I felt was most important about the presentation, was that she was demonstrating how what we were discussing in class was relevant and applicable to the real world. She took the ideas and theories she had studied at John Jay and brought them to communities that needed those fresh perspectives. It was amazing how much the organization in India appreciated her knowledge and how she was able to share the information with the staff and the community that they serve.

It is with this aim, of presenting ideas that students can begin to apply immediately to their lives and their careers, that I chose ‘Philanthrocapitalism’ and venture philanthropy for my lesson. On a personal level, I am also interested in the discussion that might come out of my lesson. As a supporter of these ideas, it will certainly help me to begin to understand why some people agree that they’re not so great. What is it that you hope to get from your ‘teacher for a day’ experience?

I hope this blog entry will help us to create lesson plans that will be interesting and engaging for each other.

So please, tell me, how do you like to learn?

-Lenny

Family Justice

Carol Shapiro said “when I worked with the incarcerated population, I gave everyone respect and in return, earned respect”. When I heard this in class, I was in shock and yet, proud. I was in shock because Carol has earned so much experience in her field at a young age and has received various opportunities/ positions throughout the years. Yet, she is one of the rare ones that did not abuse her powers nor back away from helping people in the community. I am not saying that every person who has an honorable position in society abuses their powers and forgets their mission to help people; I am simply stating that Carol has demonstrated to be quite a role model on how a leader should be. Not to say that anyone different from her isn’t a role model, but for today’s sake, she’ll be our example. On the other hand, I was proud of Carol. Proud because she was passionate to help, eager to make a change in the lives of others, and ready to take a risk. All of these traits made her who she is today, but we must not forget that for each risk and time taken to help the community, in the end she achieved massive results. One of the greatest accomplishments any one can undergo is helping someone and knowing you bettered their lives.

Additionally, I want to state that respect is an important feature we must all have when working in our internships. In many ways, respect gets people really far, not because it shows others that you are caring but, it demonstrates a humanistic quality in a person. I think a lot of problems that people face in areas of poverty is, finding someone who will treat them as a human being, not sub-human. The fact that we as fellows go into our agencies ready to help clients, says a lot about our desire, passion, and humanistic qualities in wanting to better lives . Similar to what Prof. Stein said to us in class, when people need help, a great skill to posses is observation of vocal tone, body language, and facial expression. We may not be as skilled as Carol when it comes to helping and creating programs to better families and communities, but what we do have is the time invested in our internships to learn the skills of what a person in need of help looks like (or would look like) and how to give them the help needed.

Moreover, I feel that when we help someone in our agencies, no matter our ethnicity or color, we should remember that no one is better than the other. Just because we are helping someone to get their lives on track does not mean that we are now the best, it just means that we are willing/ wanting to assist in helping others get their life on track.

It was interesting when Carol stated that an inmate told her “you’re white, what do you possibly know about helping me?” When she said this in class, it came to me as no shock. Majority of inmates in prison are minorities and when they see a white person, they don’t see someone with feeling. What they see is someone who stereo-typically is there to “oppress” them and make them feel like they don’t belong in society. This is something we as interns and people of various social programs need to tackle. The question is how? How do we get people in poverty, minorities, and overall people without a family/ support system to see that a white person and or an educated person, has the ability to help and better that persons life? The answer is, time and actions. Time because no one can gain trust in a matter of minutes and actions, because without actions, no one will see how valuable of a resource you are to them.

Furthermore, I want to mention a little about labeling. Labeling for the most part is the worst thing we can do to someone. When we label someone a criminal, drug addict, disgrace, or whatever people state, no one seems to notice the damages we cause with words. It is with this sort of language that we must put an end to labels and encourages participants to see their full potential (they are more than what others think of them). By encouraging these individuals and showing them their talent, we can change lives. However, we as interns and staff members at agencies aren’t always the solution to the problem. This is where family comes into play. With family as a support system, we can make troubled individuals better and best of all; we can set a family free from social constraints.

While labeling is a problem that needs fixing, we need to start understanding that programs don’t help the problem, they only alleviate the symptoms. Similar to our discussions early in the semester about the function and purpose of agencies, we came to the conclusion that while they do a great job in trying to tackle the issue, they only help the symptoms while dragging the problem at hand. My question then becomes what could we do to make agencies effective in assisting and solving the problem at hand? If family is the answer, then how to we get families to be apart of the troubled individuals life? The answer was Ms. Shapiro’s test/ experiment in the lower East side with La Bodega de la Familia. By creating pilot programs that last for a certain amount of time, we as helpers in the field of social justice can experiment with various ideas on what the answer could be to the problem. While many of us Verons aren’t so thrilled with the idea of testing the waters with programs that involve people in need of help, we need to understand that these pilot programs are in part, helping society understand what future programs and or the current program can do, and the results they can achieve by following a serious of methods, all complied through qualitative research.

I end this blog by quoting Carol Shapiro “be true to yourself”. The best thing anyone could be is true to themselves.If you believe in yourself and desire to make a change, it is in you to make wonders happen. While many out in the world aren’t as fortunate as many of us to have a support system compiled of family, friends, and loved ones, it is important that we show others that self confidence and optimism can take you far. In that note, I ask you, what have you done in your internships and/ or in your life to encourage someone to fulfill their potential and or better their life?

Start asking this question

Thanks so much for having me last Thursday. I felt like the oldest sibling who moved out and was asked to come back home for Sunday dinner. :)

Opportunity cost is the “the value of a choice that someone gives up when making a decision.”

We’ve all been there before: you’re in a class; the professor is discussing a topic you know very little about. You feel apprehensive about asking a question that’s burning inside of you, because you’re also thinking, “I’m I about to ask a really ignorant question?” or worse: “could I cross a line?” When you’re in your career, this internal struggle of to-ask or not-to-ask is a thousand times stronger as you fear being an example of the old saying: “it’s better to be quiet and look stupid than to speak and prove them right.”

If you do NOT ask the question, there’s an opportunity cost: what WON’T you know? When I noticed the high turnover of Job Developers at my CEO (the job which bridges upper management’s mission for the organization and those who actually develop employment opportunities for our population) I thought I could cross a line by asking why it was so high. But I felt there were serious implications on how this was affecting our mission. If we didn’t ask how turnover was affecting CEO, we risked not knowing how this devalued our services to the ex-incarcerated. Why should vulnerable populations receive sub-par services because the social organizations who work with them aren’t in the habit of looking inward? Professor Waterston is 100% right when she says that this inquisition - my final paper – opened the door to a position as a business analyst at CEO.

From day one, my boss told me that individuals should focus on making a career out of the way you think. What were some of the things that you wish we discussed further last seminar? What is the one question you wish you’re apprehensive to ask your mentor about your organization?

Focusing on the Positive

First, I want to thank all of the mentors for attending the Vera Mentor Coffee. Everyone had great things to say about their interns and the work being done at their respective agencies. Now I would like to express my thoughts after our discussion today.

In this day and age many things are not left to certainty. We live in a time when the economy is still fragile, jobs are still few and help is not always around the corner. Yet it gives me hope to see an institution like Vera and her spin off agencies doing their part to aid those who are less fortunate, people that share more similarities than differences from you and me. People like the veterans, musicians and college graduates who never got their break, and ended up on the streets; but after the creation of such an agency as H.S.I. (Housing Services Incorporated) these people are now living in their own apartment. Often we acknowledge and give publicity to the negatives in life and forget to show or talk about the positives in society.

I think back to where I was just a year ago. Rarely, if ever did I come in contact with someone who was poverty stricken, or living on the streets. I was not aware of a society which there was such a visible gap between poor and rich. I could not understand why some could get a helping hand while others were left to beg. Now the answers are coming clearer to why this happens, but the answer I long for is how to change this pattern.

This is my first internship and first class structured in such an unusual way. I am use to learning in an environment where there is one teacher and thirty students, where there is a test every other week and a final paper at the end of the year. The classes I usually attend are a mixture of A to D students with most falling in between. It was a little unsettling to be in a class in which you are surrounded by A or A+ students, and instead of a test each week for two hours there is a discussion. You intern at an agency which deals with a major social problem. You have a blue collar background and migrated from the “boondocks” in upstate New York. You were living in a community that was predominately composed of your same ethnic, cultural, and social background and now live a community that mainly speaks Spanish, and is composed of people from different ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. I was shell-shocked to say the least. In the class and at the internship, I had to deal with preconceived notions I had, identifying with a population that seemed to have different background than mine, and recognize factors and possible solutions to social problems.

I was wondering if any of the fellow Verons relate to my experiences, and if you too have had a dilemma while facing these questions. I also want to know if you would share any other questions or experiences you have faced while interning or attending the seminar. I wanted to also express my support for Christina’s idea about interconnecting the agencies to work together and provide services to clients who will benefit from multiple agencies. Did any of the other Verons wish to express any ideas to better aid their agency’s clients?

Empathy...how many of us have it?

Dr. Straker’s paper reveals some particularly important questions for the reader. What do we do if our own morality comes into question? How can we be empathetic to those who we might not agree with? These questions get right to the heart of the article. In the paper Dr. Straker deals with the fact that one of her patients, Stanley,—one who she supports politically and emotionally—relishes a murder that took place at the hands of a frenzied mob. Dr. Straker tires to justify supporting Stanley despite her repulsion to his actions. She manages to do so—to an extent—by saying that Stanley represented “goodness, hope” and all that is good in the world.

I have a similar problem as Dr.Straker and it involves my feelings of empathy towards those who are less fortunate than I—not that I am fortunate anyway. Television adds that tell me “just a dollar a day could save little Becky’s life” along with the media’s constant need to show images of carnage and horror amount to what Jean Baudrillard calls disaster pornography. My aversion to these media images has allowed me to pass by the homeless without being able to acknowledge them in their downtrodden state. I have, to some extent, become closed off to my fellow man.

While Dr. Straker’s scenario is not completely synonymous with my own, they still both deal with understanding our empathetic relationship to the Other. Her own moral values are in conflict with Stanley’s actions. My moral values are in question because I can have more sympathy for a suffering animal than I do for a suffering person.

Having said that, let me back track a little and do some more explaining. Bauldrillard also talks about “compassion fatigue” where an individual is so oversaturated with images of horror it becomes difficult for him/her to be empathetic. When someone hears about “little Becky” how many people actually care, and of those who care how many of them believe that their money actually gets to Becky?

I think that there is no hard and fast answer, but what I think helps to make it easy is for individuals to leave room for change in their concepts of morality, ethics, empathy and any other important concepts that relate to how we understand the world and interact with each other. Vera, I am hoping, will assist in this process of learning and being open to change. And so I leave my fellow class mates with a few questions.

1) Is someone internally bankrupt if he can turn a blind eye to suffering?

2) Am I morally bankrupt for being able to be more sympathetic towards a suffering animal than a suffering person?

3) How and why should we be empathetic in world that continues to make it difficult?

4) What are the implications of a media filled with images of horror and its effect on how we empathize with others and understand ourselves?

Chad Out!

Help

Since it is midterms and everyone is stressed, I thought I would post this week and try to keep the lively conversation going that started in seminar this morning. What I am posting here is an essay I wrote for a contest last year (it didn't win). The prompt was "When was the moment you became a grown-up?" The essay that follows reflects on the experience I shared with you this morning about my summer in Mexico. So in some ways it is about structural violence and how an individual interfaces with social forces. In some ways it is about how a 19-year-old compulsive "helper" reacts to situations very much like those described by Professor Stein this morning during our role-playing exercise. It is also about trying to decide what to do with your life when you only semi-know who you are. Please feel free to respond to it on any of those levels or to keep talking about what we were talking about this morning: how your own style/sense of self works with or against the culture of your agency.

AMIGOS

I was leaning against a gnarled tree trunk, inches away from a half-constructed latrine and what seemed like a million miles away from my Ohio home. As I drifted in and out of an amoeba-induced stupor, sun-encircled silhouettes of Mexican villagers wandered by to check on la chica who had come from so far away to build latrines, educate them about the disease cycle, and pass out toothbrushes.

Full of bright-eyed idealism and very little Spanish, I arrived in Mexico three weeks earlier with my shiny copy of Donde No Hay Doctor and a vague notion that I needed to befriend someone with a donkey (concrete being very heavy). While I must have looked ridiculous to my hosts – my look in those days, not to mention my worldview, was heavily influenced by “Out of Africa” and first-wave Banana Republic -- it seemed only natural for me to be there. I had always been very idealistic, from canvassing my conservative Cincinnati playground for Carter to spending my spring breaks building playgrounds for kids in the hollers of Appalachia.

When my younger partners first entered the two-room house where we would spend the next six weeks, they chuckled at the Pepto-pink wall paint and the picture of the Last Supper duct-taped above the table. As the veteran work-camper, and relative old lady at age 19, I sanctimoniously reminded them of the generosity of our hosts in moving their ten-person family into one room so we could have the other. We did not have to share their decorating tastes, we just had to build them some latrines. My partners looked both chastened and irritated; I dropped iodine into my canteen, unrolled my sleeping bag and went to find a man with a donkey.

While doing volunteer work in a Mexican village was consistent with childhood dreams, it was also a key step in my adult plan to do diplomatic work overseas. I was planning on majoring in Soviet Studies, to help those folks turn their swords into ploughshares. My complete inability to learn Russian or Economics during my freshman year of college disappeared in the bright light of my desire to save the world and my fantastic British-empire-meets-army-surplus wardrobe. And now, even as I faced resistance from the villagers – latrines would get half built and everyone would continue to use the same places not the “requisite distance from the water source” (Donde No Hay Doctor) – I was undaunted.

Until I was undone by a popsicle at a soccer game. While I religiously treated my drinking water, at 19 I could still have my head turned by the ice cream truck and never thought for a moment what popsicles are made of. After about a week of racing from that pink room to the half-latrine, I decided abjectly to camp out under the nearby tree.

As I shifted my rapidly-decreasing weight off the trunk, a villager stepped out of the sun and into view. It was my man with the donkey, who had been delivering bags of concrete to latrine sites for us. He sat down next to me and asked “mala es stomacha?” I nodded. He nodded back and said sympathetically, “Same thing happened to me in Detroit.”

While it could have been the amoebas, or the sound of a latrine caving in (let’s face it, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing), I felt as if I was suddenly aware of a shell, forged by countless volunteer hours, church pot-lucks and illusions of how the world worked, cracking open. In a kind of reverse birth, my adult self emerged from it, sticky, disoriented and asking questions. Was this generous donkey man just like me: someone who, in the course of his life journey, found himself far away from home, drinking from a hostile water supply and falling ill? Or was the point that he was nothing like me – he was a failed migrant worker with no safety nets while I would soon go home to excellent healthcare, a supportive family and a college education? And which one would have made me more comfortable? Why was I here? Are single acts of community service dwarfed by structural inequities of wealth, health, and national boundaries? And, now that I had gotten started, what was the point of help, really, when you were welcome to hand out toothbrushes to folks with pretty good teeth (beans and tortillas 3x a day were clearly better for the teeth than my childhood diet of cherry Icees and Pop Rocks) but were barred from even mentioning birth control to people whose living conditions were limited by the enormous families and near-continuous pregnancy of the women? I started to feel mentally incontinent, as well.

My last few weeks in the village were spent drinking Coke at la tienda (a big Donde No Hay no no) and watching “Dallas” on its sad little black and white tv, taking my host family out to dinner in a stupidly extravagant restaurant in town (what did it matter that they could have better used the money? I was a full time citizen of the grey area now, man!), and wryly observing just what aspects of American culture seemed to make it down here (“Dallas”) and what didn’t (bathrooms).

The last 22 years have been about both learning the deep implications of that lesson underneath the tree -- and unlearning them. One of the last pieces of mail I received in Mexico was my freshman year report card. Reading of my miserable grades in Russian and Economics and my A in classical literature, all while under that tree, seemed like an omen and put me on the fast track to English graduate school and away from diplomatic service. I didn’t leave the Ivory tower for 13 years, becoming an expert in turning B+ students into A- ones at colleges favored by the upper-middle classes. I have returned to Mexico only once since then – to Club Med in Cancun, the spring break trip I had never had as a do-gooder teen.

I am a teacher, not a Wall Street executive, so I must have retained some idealism. A few pieces of shell never did get shaken off. But I decidedly stepped off my childhood path of working concretely for social justice. In many ways, life conspired to conceal this as a choice. I stayed in school, got married, had kids, moved for my husband’s jobs and he for mine. The balancing act of teaching and family felt plenty like volunteer work and I didn’t think too hard about the road not taken (or the latrines not built). Until we moved for my husband’s job once again and I went from a cushy private school teaching the cream of the parochial school crop (still couldn’t talk about birth control there, either) to teaching at an urban public school, full of underserved, first-generation college students, many of whom speak English about as well as I spoke Spanish (not to mention Russian).

The first year was about as unsettling as those weeks beneath the tree. All my years of teaching had not remotely prepared me to teach these particular students. My courses in Victorian literature were probably about as useful as those half-built latrines. But over the past couple years, hunched over stacks of papers written in Spanglish or in meetings with students who were trying to imagine a life far from the villages of their parents, I have heard the familiar cracking sound. While it could have been my aging back or the sound of my sons breaking something in the next room, I think it was a shell. This shell, forged from years of arcane academic discourse, self-sufficient students, and exquisitely landscaped campuses, was, too, falling away. Emerging, sticky but newly oriented, is another adult self. This one bears somewhat of a resemblance (alas, not physically) to that idealistic teenager, who knows what she did not – that we live in a tangled world – but remembers what she did -- that we can make that world a better place one act at a time.

Where is Fairness?

“The American criminal justice system is racist, classist, sexist and oppressive. Please, correct me if I am wrong,” Thomas Giovanni, my mentor, said to me on the first day of my internship in Neighborhood Defenders Service of Harlem (NDS). At that time I did not correct him. He gave me the whole year to find some evidence that could prove his statement wrong. And I sincerely wished to prove him wrong. Every experience that I am getting from my internship, however, proves that he is a one hundred percent right. One may object: “How come? We are the most just nation in the whole world, with our rights of freedom of speech, religion, and so on….” Now, I want to give you the same task as my mentor gave to me. Would you be able to prove to me that the U. S. criminal justice system is not classist, racist, sexist and oppressive?
While entering the Court Downtown Manhattan, we saw the quotes that are put on the top of its building. The first one is by Epicurus: “Only the just man enjoys peace of mind,” which, to put into simple words, translates: “Please, come over and if you are not guilty, you have nothing to be afraid of.” Can a person who was taken by police (whether they were guilty or not), all terrified and scared, after having spent twenty-four hours in arraignment, have a peace of mind while entering the building of the Court? The whole look of the Court with its massive columns, all lawyers dressed up professionally, and policemen everywhere, is scary, if not terrifying. Can this person enjoy a peace of mind at that stage of his or her lives?
The second quote reads: “Every place is safe to him who lives in justice, be just and fear not.” My interpretation of this quote is: “If you have not committed a crime, you do not have to be afraid of anything because our criminal justice system treats everybody equally.” I wonder whether there is any truth to that statement. Two examples from life prove the opposite. The first one involved a eighteen-year-old girl who was eight months pregnant. She was put into prison for shoplifting (I still cannot forget that horror) because she did not have enough financial resources to survive. The second one involved a wealthy Asian gentleman who, armed with two lawyers, was able to get a less severe punishment than the poor pregnant girl. Can anybody please point out any fairness in that example? Our system can make mistakes. Innocent people are put into prison. After twenty years in prison for something that they did not do, how can individuals return to a normal life? Twenty years passed, everything has changed. What is normal now? They have no families (rarely, a family is waiting for somebody to get out of prison). They cannot find a job because of the criminal record hanging over their heads like swords. Their personalities too have taken a toll, changing inevitably under the harsh conditions of imprisonment, sometimes for the better, but most of the time for the worse. Where is equal treatment over here?
The next stop we made was in the courtroom. “In God We trust” – a striking phase a person sees when they enter the court. The emotions are ambiguous. Some may hope that God will help them and start praying at the moment they see this phrase. For others who do not believe in God, the sign seems to say: Abandon all hope yee who enter here. What is the purpose of this sign? Does it have the same purpose as the one on the banknote? If so, what is it? On one side in school we read that we live in a system where there is a separation of church and state and on the other hand we see this sign in our courtrooms all over the country. One cannot feel but a little suspect of truths told to us.
How does a picture look in the court? The three-fourth of those being charged during a day is low-income African Americans/Latino males. Is there any coincidence in it? The fact is that there are “more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began” (Alexander, 2010, para.3). Another fact states that “as of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race” (Alexander, 2010, para.4).Will anyone be able to prove that this criminal justice system is not racist? If not, then why such terrible discrepancy in figures?
Another episode that struck me in the court room is how little time is given to a person when they want to plea. Any guesses on how much time?... The right answer is that a person’s destiny is being decided in approximately thirty seconds. If you had an option - to fight the charges with a possibility of a loss and a severe punishment or to plead guilty for something that you have not done in return for less severe punishment– what would you choose? To make the picture more vivid - all of this is happening in a courtroom full of people the majority of whom you have never met in your life. That picture reminded of me a reality show. Sadly, it was real life.
All these situations described are happening on an everyday basis in the NDS. Not all of the NDS clients are criminals, though. They might have been at the wrong place in the wrong circumstances, or with no one who could support them at that time. One of the hilarious cases that the NDS deals with is a person charged with trespassing in their own building. The police officer’s comment on that was: “They looked suspicious to me.” And that is it. Is it enough to look suspicious to be arrested? And what is the definition of “suspicious?”
All of our clients are from low-income families. Two proverbs below explain the reason for many of the crimes committed:
“Hunger makes a thief of any man.”
Pearl S. Buck, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
“Poverty is the mother of crime.”
Marcus Aurelius
How can we prevent crimes committed because of the lack of food or poverty? Are the existing social programs of any help?
There is a huge debate over legalizing marijuana. If it happens, 80 per cent of convicts will have to go free. What are the consequences? First of all, the unemployment rate will increase. How can the government support those who work in the correctional facilities? What could be done? If we have fewer criminals, what would police officers do?
We speak about some changes. However, no one wants to admit that those changes need time and effort. They will not happen in a year. Results could be seen in at least ten years. But no one wants to wait so long. We want a better life right here and right now.
I want to finish with a never-ending debate on who defines law. Who defines what a crime is? Who defines who a criminal is? Looking back in history, by law, slavery existed. By law, women could not vote. By law, legalized structural violence caused by billion dollar corporations was allowed. Things have changed. Now, all those laws are considered unjust. What has happened? Has society changed? In a few decades, those things that many criminals sit in prisons for now might become lawful. Is there any fairness?

A P.S. from Margaret diZerega

Margaret diZerega, who so kindly met with us at Vera a couple weeks ago, wrote the following in response to our conversation about family:

I appreciate the ways you are all thinking about your own families, ways families are incorporated into the work of the Vera spinoffs, and ways families are complex—they have strengths and challenges. There are no short answers and they key is to have a balanced approach where you can consider the strengths and challenges of families.

I thought you might be interested in learning more about ways to help people uncover their strengths. A colleague of mine named Michael Clark brings this approach to probation and parole departments all around the U.S. and even internationally. He has written about the benefits to a strength-based approach and we build on this work when training or providing technical assistance in criminal justice settings. For more on his work, you can visit: www.buildmotivation.com. If you look under the Resources Section and select “Youth and Families” there are some short articles about applying a strengths perspective to work with justice involved youth. I found it really shifted my thinking and ‘d be interested in what you think.

What Is Normal Anyway?

I feel like I live in a world where everything is backwards. The things that are truly damaging our existence are made to seem as though they are natural, and those that are effected by the larger forces of oppression are labeled deviants and their actions are necessarily punishable.

What is abnormal? Who decides what is normal and what is not? These are questions that my professor posed to us on the first day of my Anthropology and the abnormal class (she mad it clear that she is not a fan of the name of the course). We came to the conclusion that these labels are created by individuals from different cultures, through time, and that they are completely subjective. In American society there has been a system built that allows a small group of people to remain happy, wealthy, and healthy, while the rest of "us" remain under their supervision struggling to fight for the scraps that they so generously allow us to have.

Let me start by making some comparisons:

We have been conditioned to think that half naked women on billboards, pornography, and sexy music videos are acceptable, but a woman breast feeding her child is asked to leave a restaurant. We are made to believe that alcohol, prescription drugs, and tobacco are acceptable to use around children, but if I decided that cannabis was a healthier choice, I am considered a drug user and a criminal. We are tolorant of capital punishment and war, however a woman that kills her abusive spouse in self defense is deemed a violent murderer and sentenced to 25 years in prison. I walk by my block and admire a beautiful mural, but if a youngster happens to spray paint on the walls of a building he is arrested and detained and they call his artwork graffiti. We began building a wall between the US and Mexico specifically designed to keep immigrants out, but if their names happen to Melky Cabrera or Mariano Rivera, they can stay. We pollute our environment with garbage, toxic fumes, and oil spills, but if you spit on the ground you may likely get a summons. I could go on forever examining the hyppocracy of our government and how they have designed a system in which white collar crime is acceptable and normalized, and street crime is punishable to the fullest extent, but I am sure that you get the point. Do you think that my comparisons are too extreme, or are they bold and true?

The elites in our society have devised a very complex system in which they are able to remain in power, and by power I am referring to money, education, and respect. Although these elites are the minority, they have instilled humiliation, self hatred, and a lack of support in the majority, that have caused them to feel hopeless in their situation. To compensate for these bad feelings they self medicate by using drugs, acquiring "things", and reproducing hate. The image of limited good is being forced into our minds to make us believe that there are no resources for social programs, when in fact there are plenty of resources, but they remain in the bank accounts of the one's that are intentionally destroying our existence.

Professor Stein's phrase "nothing else to lose" is something that really resonated with me because I see this as an explanation as to why people that I know personally are unable to break their cycle of self destructive behavior. A young man that I have known my whole life told me that he has a flat screen television in his cell in prison. I was shocked! While there, he smokes cigarettes, listens to music, and hangs out with friends. When he comes home from prison, he is confined to a small bedroom in his mother's home listening to rap music, smoking cigarettes, watching movies, and hanging out with friends. He does the same thing as a free man as he does when he is incarcerated. I see that he is mentally imprisoned and I realize that he has nothing to lose, nothing to look forward to, no expectations from his family, because they in fact do many of the same things.

Professor Stein was on a roll because her question, "What is your problem in living today?" is another term that I will be using more often. Life is hard! It is hard for the homeless woman outside of John Jay College, and it may be hard for the Wall Street investment banker as well. When we start judging each other without understanding one another is when we make a huge mistake. I am learning in my social psych class that when WE fail at something we blame situational factors, this is called situational attribution. However when SOMEONE ELSE fails, we blame that person's individual characteristics, referred to as personal attributions, and this concept is known as Fundamental Attribution Error. These are things that we unconsciously believe and I am starting to wonder if there is really any hope of changing, or is there? Do you believe that these judgements are within our control, or are we controlled by human instinct?

As we discussed in class, when we try to explain these problems within our lives we would like to simplify them, however when we begin to deconstruct the issues, the causes and solutions only get more complicated. But this is how it SHOULD be. When we try to use merely psychological, sociological, or an anthropological perspective to explain the causes of a persons situation is when we are delaying the process of coming to a clear solution. Instead we must apply all of these perspectives and more, in order to fully understand the complexity of the issues because it is all of these factors that will determine a specific, effective solution.

I understand that when working with marginalized populations we are supposed to be careful not to entangle our personal lives with our professional identities, however I feel that this fine line is a tightrope walk for me. I understand that by revealing too much of myself may become an ethical issue, or that it may even set a different tone in my relationship with clients, however I feel that this is necessary. I want them to feel like I am just like them. I want them to know that I have been in challenging situations. I don't want them to feel as though there is this line that divides us because I do not feel that I can reach them that way. By leveling the playing field we can help each other. I want my experience of working with socially disenfranchised individuals to be a reciprocal relationship. The way that Professor Waterston deconstructed the word empowerment is amazing (my apologies Professor Stein). It shows how words can seem like they are being used in a positive way, but actually have covert implications. To think that I have the ability to empower someone would imply that I have this kind of supreme power that I am able to bestow on someone else, when in fact I feel that I have advice that I have gained through life experience that I would like to share with my participants to provide them with support, understanding, and motivation. How do you feel about this imaginary line that is placed between clients and staff? Do you feel that it should never be crossed, or is there a way to do so that will benefit both parties?

My goal is to educate people, not only how to better their own actions, but also to become aware of the forces that are causing their unhappiness. By gaining knowledge, people can no longer take advantage of us. We must remember that this label "minority" is false, because in actuality we are the majority and if we put our differences aside we can defeat the maltreatment that we have endured for so long. Take into account that when I say, "we" and "they" I am not referring to any specific race, or gender, but I am referring to those that do not control this oppressive structure, and that when I talk about fighting this oppression I still take into account that those one's who are the ultimate authority are people too, and I empathize with their struggle.