Students! Ena is an inspiring example of someone making a difference in her own community. We talk a lot about systemic change. What about being the change we talk about? The Black Panther movement started as a local movement in Oakland in response to distrust in the police. The idea was- If the police don't keep us safe we need to keep ourselves safe. A reincarnation of the Black Panther movement today may be a viable response to Eric Garner.
How do community gardens and other grassroots efforts promote social justice? What is one thing that you could do in YOUR community to promote social justice?
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OMG!!!! When I left the class on Thursday, I was ready to go and make every place in New York green. Ena's speech was really really inspirational.
However, gardening is not my style. In my view, It is ungrateful. Sometimes, it is not productive and it requires too much care. You really have to love it a lot in order to do that. I used to do gardening for twenty years in Russia. It is not fun. However, I was impressed in how much she actually loves her job.
Even though many of us are trying to think globally (including me), I believe that each of us must be concentrated in solving one particular issue in order to solve the general problem. Our commitment to social justice and antioppressive work makes us address the issues of gender, race, and ethnic equality, etc. However, each problem requires more than than one life to solve that problem.
I wish each of us can share their really narrow approaches how to achieve social justice.
As for me, I would educate children and adults about about faith and different religions. Even though the issue of race is a really hot topic, I believe other problems are not less important. Many Muslim people are being stopped on the street because of the way they look. I do not even mention about how many articles in the media explore the issues of airport security. Does this labeling increase the threat to society? Yes!!! When these population looses trust in society, people may become deviant. It has been proved by many many scholars (Braithwaite, Hirschi, etc.). How can we make society to accept these people just like we accept any other person? Educate them about their culture, their religion!!!! Even if some of them might be bad for the nation, the rest of them are just as good as we all are:)))! Maybe in John Jay that issues is not that critical. However, if you leave New York and go upstate, you see how differently people treat Arabs there.
Personally, I would engage all religious groups in my community to work together on educating the youth about tolerance. I would also engage faith-based organizations to engage the members of each in work together in the same garden in Bed-Stuy, to to do neighborhood watch, to organize events together.
It is obvious that we should not care about Blacks, Arabs, Latino, we should care about everyone!!!!
I want to end this by citing James Williams: "I did not know I was black until I got to America". We should never differentiate people by their religion or ethnicity. Shaming, stigmatizing, calling out may have a very bad effect on society in terms of crime.
After meeting Ena, I was ready to start a grassroots community garden in my own backyard! However, thinking in a more pragmatic frame of mind, I believe programs created "by the people" to help defendants with job placement, training, and placement for mental health services is a great way to help the community and further social justice.
During the summer, I worked at the Mental Health Court Advocacy Program in Brooklyn, NY doing just this. The program was started by Dr. Buzz Von Ornsteiner (who has the best name ever) and was built up from the ground. The program allows defendants to either volunteer or be mandated to the program as an alternative to incarceration. If I were to start a community program, I believe a program much like this would be a benefit to the community.
I also believe that nothing is successful without the support and input of one's community. Therefore, I would make the program volunteer based so that many people in the community could help defendants in numerous ways (Examples: building resumes, searching for jobs, job training workshops) and full-time employees could help search for mental health placements.
Hearing from Ena kind of brought me down to earth (quite literally too!) from my lofty ambitions about the large-scale social justice reforms we often discuss in class. She made the idea of community-level/grassroots efforts so appealing and promising, from enjoying the fruits of your labor (that's 2 gardening metaphors now), to the revitalization of bonds between community members, and the surpassing of language barriers! I like that microlevel efforts like Ena's gardens can fortify communities with a sense of hope and connectedness, and more importantly, gives individuals direct ownership over the fruits of their social justice efforts. I also like how much autonomy grassroots efforts have; a freedom to march to the beat of their own drums in a sense.
The one thing that I do to promote social justice is not within my community; I volunteer at a prison upstate where I participate in learning exchanges with the prisoners there. While it's a different experience from community gardens, it allows me to be a part of the individuals' reentry journey to society. Knowing that the odds are already stacked against them, I feel these one-to-one exchanges encourage them continue with their education once they come out of prison instead of feeling discouraged by the alienation they perceive. Instead of merely advocating from behind a desk for the rights of prisoners to be educated, I have gained many valuable insights from direct engagement with them.
Education. That's the simple answer. I believe that much of the problems in this society that we live in come form lack of awareness and lack of education that exists and i don mean formal education. I don't mean only college and graduate school I really mean just basic knowledge and awareness. You don't need to take a psychology class to know the danger and violence in micro-agression. You don't need gender studies class to see how limiting gender roles are. You don't need a LLS or africana studies class to understand the toxicity of prejudice and racism. You just need an eye-opening experience. I constantly recommend books, talks, seminars, blogs to people and I think that's my own way of promoting social justice. I try to live and be the change I want to see.
OMG! Marina I love that you quoted James! He is one of my all time favorite people!
I actually have only done community based work. Every thing I had done is for small groups and individuals. I very focused on person centered work. I think Monica is right. Education is key! I think awareness is important and any kind of public community involvement brings awareness.
Ena literally inspired me to buy some plants. I hope they do not die anytime soon. She has also inspired me; the little things count.
Monica, you basically wrote my point. I believe it is unfortunate how ignorant and intolerant individuals behave and view "America". Many times it starts from primary schools to the selected readings, and into college and the society around the individual. To be honest, I was one of those individuals. Although I came from California (Monterey/San Jose) there isn't that much diversity. Even where I live now, Harlem. I think it is great that Harlem has its own culture Spanish Harlem and Central Harlem because I definitely value the history. There is still a sense of segregation. When my boyfriend and I moved in to our apartment one of the tenants from the building said "Look at this, look at this" while nodding her head in disappointment. My boyfriend is Taiwanese and I am Mexican. I get the idea of gentrification and why many are upset about it. It has also affected me from living in Fulton Street, to Crown Heights, the rent is absurd.
What I would do is get involved with multiple community organizations and find a focal point which we could collaborate on a singular issue. I'm not sure what but emphasize the power of knowledge and acceptance.
Well I e-mailed Ena after class and she has yet to get back to me but once she does I am excited to begin a new type of direct community engagement. It is amazing to see people so passionate about community involvement because it reinforces my belief that substantial systematic change begins at the community level. Social Justice begins when people get together with their neighbors and gather against oppressive structures.
I'm so excited to start working with the community garden!
I think Ena’s project is a good approach in implementing social justice. The idea of community gardening made me think of how community members strengthen their bonds in African community. For those who are familiar with African movies or literature, I am sure you have heard about the “L’Arbre a Palabre” or the central place. It is usually the biggest tree in the corner of the village, where elders gathers to discuss different matters facing their community.
This tradition has been practiced for a long period of time. Many years ago, African villages before the establishment of classroom based schooling, this was the means by which education was diffused from one generation to the other. It is still practiced in many African communities until today. In universities, this is usually where student gather to discuss their performance or socialize with other students.
One problem in our modern time is that of communication. We ignore some of the basic elements that help a community grow. I remember Ena mentioning that people barely knew each other in her neighborhood. This is very common in most community in New York.
Since we fail to communicate as members of the same community, we have adopted violence as our means of expression. As I mentioned earlier in the beginning of the semester, people don’t even know how to appreciate one another anymore. To realize this, one needs just to go on any public website and read the comments that people write about each other. For example, Human of New York (HONY), Youtube and others.
“Charity begins at home”
If I were to lead my community towards social justice, I would encourage parents to teach their children the value of charity when in a community. For, most folks from this generation tend to think that the world is just their parents and siblings. Try to eliminate the idea of “Us vs. Them” social justice will begin once we end all those differences and move towards a unify community. Community gardening may be one way to do that.
Thank you Marina for quoting James ! I love his humor and professionalism. One of my favorite people at John Jay !
Ena was so passionate about the work that she does that everything she said was incredibly inspiring. Brings me back to the whole "Be the change you want to see in the world" motto.
One big problem in my community, The Bronx, is youth incarceration and lack of involvement. Young men and women that I have seen grow up and grew up with end up following the same cycle once they go into a high school. Many turn to drugs, selling and consuming, gangs, stealing, assault, but I have also seen those who have been able to break the cycle and the main key to doing so was sports. Basketball and Football have had the power to keep the youth out of the streets. If I could do something locally, it would be to start a community team of Football and Basketball in which the youth were able to get involved as early as Junior High. Instead of hanging out in the corner with the older boys,they'd be able to have a foundation of distraction from all the bad things going around them. while there is a church that provides these kind of activities, it is also very exclusive. If one isn't part of the church, one cannot participate.
I think sports and youth involvement can really redirect the lives of these young boys and girls. It may not be dismantling bad systems, but it may change lives.
Ena is really an inspiration and I am looking forward to having a field trip to her garden. As most of my fellows verons mentioned, her presentation made me think of social justice in a new perspective. I agree with Marina when she wrote that we “must concentrate in solving one particular issue in order to solve the general problem”. Sometimes we see the big picture but we don’t realize that even a small step toward social justice is a victory.
Grassroots efforts are a great way to start targeting issues on our community. I will look into the community gardens near my neighborhood to start getting involved as well. I believe that communities can benefit from gardens. Young kids could use that space to learn, which would also keep them out of the street. I would also say that the police department could use the space to interact, perhaps to connect, with the communities they serve. I understand that not everyone may agree with having the police department in gardens. I have also had feeling of mistrust towards the police department. However, I believe there have to be a way in which we can this barriers between communities and the people that are supposed to protect us.
It was a treat having Ena come -- thanks to Professor Rose for setting this up! I really loved Kevin's comment above about how the biggest tree in the village provided a space for people to come together and learn over many generations. That is very profound. It resonates with the things we discussed during the Foucault week about space and how that has implications in terms of social control and also of how we see our own selves. Think about the different in learning environments between sitting under a tree in the open space and being in an enclosed school room (there would be both advantages and disadvantages, but so different). There have been recent articles about what the open workspace was hoping to achieve (versus enclosed cubicles) and how it has fallen short of it. We've discussed in the seminar how sitting in a circle is a very different learning environment from sitting in rows.
As Ena suggested, just being out in your community space is an act of social activism. We are combatting forces that make us want to get right to our front doors, head down, getting to the next thing on the To Do list. When I lived in Saint Louis, there was a real "stoop" culture -- everyone had very little front yard and prominent front stoops. Every Friday there would be a neighborhood "stoop" part and folks would hang out, bring leftovers from the week and just exhale. The best neighborhood I ever lived in. In some ways we were very visible -- some folks did not love the lack of privacy and longed for those long driveways and intimidating front yards. But I loved the feeling of connection, missing from the NY suburbs where I drive in and out of my garage and rush out to get the mail hoping not to spend too much time chatting with folks walking by...
I also am in love with “L’Arbre a Palabre” that Kevin mentioned. And how meeting in front of the oldest tree in the neighborhood contrasts our traditional classroom setting, or office building conference rooms, as Professor Reitz said. If we have a field trip to Ena's gardens in the spring we should visit the Magnolia Center and meet under the Magnolia tree!
I appreciate everyone's comments and encourage you to think even smaller. How do you relate to your immediate community? What can we do as part of our daily lives to connect? I do pro-bono consulting with Father Jim who runs Reconnect the cafe on the corner that hires youth coming out of the system to prevent recidivism. I know 80% of my neighbors on my block. What is happening right in your community? What are its assets? What are the resources there that promote social justice? You may be surprised how rich the soil is and how extensive the roots are right in your backyard.
It's so encouraging to hear that Bekah and Arturo want to go green. Danyeli do you know Reuben Austria from Bronx Connect? He does fabulous work with youth coming out of the system and to prevent arrest and incarceration. Be the Change:)).
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