Woolman Blog

During The Great Turning Trip, the organization, HowMany?org showed us a film about overpopulation leading up to over-consumption of natural resources, food, and space. The video explained that in many cultures it would be against their laws or way of life to get contraceptives. Also, many women just dont know about contraceptions and in many countries in Africa and the Middle East, women need their husband's approval to get it. The film also showed that with the rates in over population increasing the more the rates for comsumption increasing. Some countries have tried to limit the number of children couples could have.    Here are some quotes that stood out to me:   "In 1950, the global poplution was 2.6 billion people and we had 53 billion cars....today the population is over 6 billion people and 5oo billion cars..."    In 1950 americans consumed 144 pounds of meat and in 2007 that shot up to 222 pounds."   The facts go on and on. Watching this video informed me about the situations all over the world.  This flim gave me a reason to go back home and inform as many people as I can about this. This situation is one that is serious and important for women to know. If im given an option for birth control, so should other women, and because of the different situations we are born into that's not always a given. To find out more information about this organization their website is Www.howmany.org.    Fact sources: www.greenlivingtips.com www.timelinetothefuture.com

On Tuesday, the 2nd day of our Great Turning trip we visited the Canticle Farm in Oakland, CA. First we met with Annie a resident of the community. She gave us a tour and introduction to the community. We learned that the mission of The Canticle Farm is to break down the barriers in Oakland and create a neighborhood and community that was open and giving. Canticle Farm is definitely setting the example with its open doors and community connections. Later we met Pancho, an immigrant from Mexico who is undocumented by choice. Pancho lives in the Casa de Paz, another house in the community. We spent much of the afternoon in the attic of the Casa de Paz doing meditation and some exercises from the Great Turning workshops. The exercises included questioning where an inner and outer circle was established and we would take turns rotating and asking and answering the questions. We also did an activity in which we asked, “Who are you?” to our partner and listened to them speak for 5 minutes solid. During the answering time we would not comment but just listen fully to their answer. Then we would switch and answer the question ourselves.  After lunch we met sister Kimberly who spoke about the interconnectedness of our world. She spoke about the idea that all humans are connected and that we must not think of each of us as separate beings.   Brother Adelaja also spoke to us. He told his story about what brought him to The Canticle Farm and his previous struggles.

I really appreciated Canticle Farm’s message about community and oneness.  I think that they send a strong and important message by always having their door open. I never realized how important community really was. Having that space to be together can really bring people together and that coming together can have many great effects on the community and the world. When people in a community come together they have the power to make big changes.  Many of the activities we did made me think about interconnectedness and that, we as humans are connected on more ways than we may think. The power we have when we come together can be unstoppable. 

The week that we spent in the bay was really amazing, and it was my favorite things that we've done here at Woolman so far. I took away a lot from it. On one of the days, we went to the mission district and spent half the day wandering around the city and looking at all the allies with beautiful art work and murals. The walls were covered form top to bottom in beautiful color and incredibly detailed. All the murals had different meanings to them, some you could tell right away what they meant, while others you had to take time to really look at it and figure out what it meant to you.

There were murals of people running from things, taking things for granted, peace, war, people that have died. Each mural had its own meaning, there were so many stories behind each thing you just had to look hard enough to see it. The mural trip was my favorite part of the week, cause it wasn't just people talking about things going on around the world and in our country. But it was people showing us what they thought through art work, and their own opions. They told us what they thought of  the paintings, but then we were also able to wander around and get our own feel for everything.

A special thanks to the Global Education organization, World Savvy, for taking us on this tour! To learn more about World Savvy, please visit: www.worldsavvy.org

Have you ever been awake, but the experience you were having at the time felt as though you were dreaming? And because the people around you were acting much less ridgedly, would it cause you to think and possibly realize your imaginitive genius still exists while awake?

Interplay was an event on our global issues trip that was based on learning how dance and movement would allow us to interact in new ways. Our hosts explained that the building we were using explained that it used to be a bar and the origin of the Black Panthers. Interplay had a profound effect on me. I learned that leading and following were only steps to learning how to just move in uniform with one another. It makes sense that, as the observer, you would need to have distinctions between character roles such as which one of us was leading or following but to participate would allow for a new perspective.

These cultural standards don't apply if the art form is so free that there is no leading or following. Learning to let go of preconcieved notions and limitations based on our "seperateness" as people has been a part of my recent history and Interplay was a big step towards understanding that there are many creative ways for solving the world's problems.  Sometimes all that is stopping our progression in society is a mindset. Our mindsets can be very strong barriers and to overcome them, we as a society must see viability in other, more creative solutions. I don't expect that everyone in my group was having the same experience as me but I feel as though we were all closer as a group after we finished the activity. 

Allow me to start this blog by saying thank you Emily; the Global Issues trip was absolutely amazing. All the activities from Global Exchange to Trash Mash-Up really informed me about the world and changed my life in ways both little and big. One of the later organizations we visited was called Bay Localize. Emily was able to get us a workshop with Bay Localize because her good friend Eva worked there. Thus, after almost getting lost multiple times and taking an incredibly long time to find a place to park and getting lost within the building with its many locked doors, we finally came upon a fancy room where Eva and Kirsten were waiting for us. As we all sat down we noticed the nametags which no teenager can resist. Finally after we all had collected ourselves and wrote fake, silly names on our nametags the two presenters began what was to be another amazing workshop.

In the first, presentation part of the workshop we learned about the goal of Bay Localize. Like a lot of the other organizations we visited, their broad goal was to help communities prepare and weather through environmental and social crises caused by climate change and peak oil. 

I find that the easiest way to try to summarize all that they said is to use an example. Imagine a business that wants to be more sustainable or get started sustainably. Bay Localize would help them do this by giving them advice and creating policies and tools to help that business along in their goal to become more sustainable. The presentation perfectly led into the next activity which had us creating our own sustainable business. We all got into four groups who were focusing on different specific issues in the world and brainstormed our own sustainable business that would combat such issues.

After that we got to come up with our very own climate/environment saving superhero. The creativeness of everyone’s superhero was hilarious. Sadly, after that activity, the workshop ended as all good things must. Leaving I remember thinking about how much fun I had and how glad I was that we visited this organization later on in the week. It was a very optimistic break from all the depressing and scary facts the other organizations showed us (not that the other organizations weren’t awesome). I truly did enjoy the entire week and everything new– such as Bay Localize –which we got to experience.

If you would like to learn more about Bay Localize, please see:

         The myth of redemptive violence is increasingly prevalent in our society as we begin to see violence legitimized more and more by politicians, the media, and through numerous aspects of our personal lives.  The belief that evil can be overcome through violence and that in every situation as a nation we are the good and the conquered must be the evil only serves to promote the idea that violence saves us.

            A classic case of the myth of redemptive violence being promoted through the media were the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.  These almost mythical figures, embedded in the American psyche as being a danger to the collective “everything” that we “stand for,” were successfully and violently eradicated.  Their deaths were not mourned, but rather grossly celebrated as being something that we had been hoping for.  We were the good and they were the evil, the fact that they were human beings and that they had been murdered didn’t seem to enter into the equation.

            Politically, redemptive violence often goes unseen or unrecognized.  The recent fervor over Kony 2012 was a mass movement against a universally hated and brutal criminal in a far-off land.  However, how often do we oppose the brutality and criminality supported by our own government?  When the American government imposes sanctions that kill 500,000 Iraqi children or tortures suspects that remain unconvicted of any crime, when our government approves indefinite detention and spends billions of dollars on wars that the nation does not collectively support, committing unmentioned acts of violence in places where we are not welcome, who opposes this?  Both situations deserve our attention.  The myth of redemptive violence paints us as the good, when really in a situation outlined by the over-simplified terms of good and evil we are no better than those who we decry with such passion.

            The myth of redemptive violence and its presence in my daily life went unnoticed until I spent a week away from Woolman.  Through my experience at the Woolman Semester so far I’ve begun to have a dramatic change of worldview, and the fact that coming home for the break seemed to at first entirely reverse this worldview came as quite a shock to me.  I left Woolman with the belief that things were indeed not right with the world, but that they could be fixed and that I had the power to create positive change.  Day three into the break and I found myself thinking aloud, “Well, things aren’t that bad.  There’s nothing I can really do about any of it anyway.”  I was mortified at this to the point where I stopped what I was doing and eagerly sat down to read the articles that were assigned for homework.

            It came down to this: while at Woolman, I felt legitimate.  Everyone around me seemed to be in full support of all of the same peace, social justice, and sustainability movements that seek to make our world a fair place for all.  At home it seemed as if the problem was everywhere:  I began to see the myth of redemptive violence appear in the television shows that I watched, the newspapers I read, the conversations I had, and the everyday activities that I carried out.  Even the clothes I wear are made with little conscience:  other people make them for a pittance and I buy them for a relative fortune.  The key element of redemptive violence is separation: the belief that all human beings aren’t connected and that our world cannot possibly be webbed with boundless interconnectedness only serves to strengthen the power of redemptive violence to the point that it begins to infiltrate our very consciousness. 

            The struggle against the myth of redemptive violence is in itself a form of redemptive violence:  it is a fight, a struggle, a battle, there seems to be a good and a bad, an evil and a righteous side.  As Walter Wink writes, “In short, the myth of redemptive violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence (pg. 3).”  In our society and in our culture as it exists today, coexistence and unity are not considered to be valid means of creating said order.  Peace and nonviolence are equated with chaos, everything around us screams out for winners and losers.  However, our systems of war and of violence— both physical and structural—that seek to glorify few and degrade many are exactly that: systems.  They are not so deeply ingrained in us as to be irreversible— we are entirely capable of changing the way that our society functions at its very roots so that our systems truly serve us in the pursuit of equality and dignity— if only we remain aware of the world around us and move with intent towards a future that is bright for all of us.

On the last day of our Great Turning trip we visited Bridget and Jessica McCracken at the Institute on Aging in San Francisco to learn about their project Trash Mash-Up. We spent part of the time talking about how much waste there is in the United States. Items like Tetra-pack cannot be reused or recycled in the traditional sense and just end up in the land fill. There is great possibility for all the trash a city produces. That’s where the McCracken sisters come in. On their own and with the help of supporters, they’ve collected large amounts of so called “waste” to be repurposed as costumes and art. They have worked with schools and kid groups to create ornate and cultural masks and costumes for theatrical productions and parades.

After discussing their work and organization, it was time to start getting creative. We were going to be making dream catchers—a cultural art form done by many Native American tribes to help catch good thoughts and dreams. Tetra-pack, markers, scissors and paper were whisked out of bags. The room exploded into the busy sounds of cutting paper and coloring. We followed the McCracken’s lead and, step by step, the assortment of trash became funky, silly and sweetly designed dream catchers. Everyone worked as a big group—our first grade teachers would have been proud—as we shared the glue sticks and politely asked for the scissors. We all helped each other to get the project done.

This activity showed me that one man’s trash is everyone’s treasure. I was reminded that we can do more than just the traditional sense of recycling in the blue bins. Repurposing old materials into interesting artwork is just one way we can make lemonade out of what lemons we’re given. We have available to us a whole world of usable, free resources that can be used in school programs and workshops for the youth. Attending this Trash Mash-Up activity reminded me of our trip to Inter-Play earlier in the week. Both activities focused on the great potential for social change that can be found in having fun. Being an activist does not have to be big, depressing work. Sometimes what change calls for are laughter and growing connections between people. There is a great value in remembering that we are all having this great human experience together.

We pulled up to the increasingly familiar Berkeley Friends Meeting House. Its high gates and green gardens a welcoming sight to our eager minds. Already this visit seems different from most of the others. We started with a game of soccer. Four to twelve. Soccer for Suckers it was deemed only after we lost miserably. Seeing how though we outnumbered Team Awsome, as they were named, by eight people. The four of them had the ability to make up any rule they wanted. We struggled away, our eyes closed, one foot maimed, our goal taken away from us. Though we held faith until the end even with a losing score. It didn’t even occur to us to simply rebel. Though Team Awsome may seem to hold the power, it is only because we make it that way. The game was a metaphor of the ever present government. Looming over our every move, taking the win for themselves. It paved the way, opening our minds to the realization that we can make a difference that all we have to do is take the initiative.

Our next exercise involved looking at the many different issues that stir passion within us. Issues that we strive to fix, support, or change. Taking a vote, we narrowed the topic down to food injustice. Step by step we broke it down. Recognizing what the problem was and what was supporting it at it's very roots. From there we began to dismantled its structure. Taking each support or pillar and creating solutions to counteract them. Slowly we tackled food deserts, subsidies, fast food industries, and agro-businesses. Seeing what we could do just by taking the initiative we set out to educate others of the rising risks involved with food injustice and that there are other options available. In only a few hours we had a working PSA ( public service announcement ) complete with music, dance, poetry, and  a skit. The visit gave us hope that we can make a difference in our society and that the key is standing up for what you believe.

This was part of a Theater of the Oppressed type exercise where we acted out: The Story of Fast Food

Eating Fast Food Makes Everyone Happy!!! (or does it?!)