Blog Topic: Peace & Justice
Of all the conclusions to all the lectures delivered by the illustrious and mischievous Jacob Holzberg-Pill in his Environmental Science class at the Woolman Semester, the most memorable was this: “We must map this land to understand it, steward it, and make Woolman truly sustainable.” The subject at hand? Agroforestry and the ways in which indigenous peoples managed the land to make it most productive for humans. Agroforestry is highly complex; the wrong technique can have disastrous effects, the right technique can save an entire species.
At the beginning of the project, I had lofty goals: map ALL of the trails, mark the property boundaries, find the student build “Ithaca,” and make trail markers. However my greatest personal goal was to become more familiar with the seemingly massive woods that lend Woolman much of its beauty and mystique. With these goals, my friend and companion Brylie and I set off on our great adventure. We spent countless hours walking the trails, often mapping them multiple times due to unreliable technology or personal error. Many trials marked our heroic journey. We bushwacked through fields of poison oak, debated the importance of trails outside the Woolman parcel, avoided taciturn neighbors, and tangled with somewhat cumbersome technology. In one extreme instance we bushwacked out to the southeast corner of a large Woolman parcel to mark the boundary and began our return hike in the cover of darkness. Brylie slipped and dropped our tracking device, leaving us with only a compass and our intuition to navigate back to campus. Thankfully our forestry skills were proficient enough for the task, and we managed to return (mostly) unharmed.
To what extent did we accomplish our goals? We managed to map many of the major trails, marked several important corners of the Woolman parcel, and found Ithaca, but we decided that creating trail markers was not the most important part of the project. I believe that the raw data we collected was the greatest accomplishment of the project because it will be so useful to future projects involving the Woolman forest. The rough map produced with the data is only a pre-cursor to future student maps that will be more accurate and detailed thanks to the experience we garnered. Brylie will be able to more efficiently train students interested in the GIS (Geographic Information System) Project, and those students will have fewer initial hurdles to leap. Eventually they will not need to worry about things such as marking the property boundaries, they will be able to focus on things like species succession. The GIS project will become more than just a pipe dream of a few curious Woolmanites, it will become the backbone of agroforestry and sustainability here at the Woolman Semester.
Where should borders exist and how should they be enforced? Half a journal assignment, half a question surfacing after arriving in Agua Prieta, Mexico, I’m wondering what the answers are for the American southwest. There are many parties benefiting from the geographical relationship between Mexico and the U.S. To know and understand who they are and what their relationships are built on could help us deliver an answer for the questions I have posed.
In Agua Prieta, there live people from all places and backgrounds. Visiting the Border Patrol station and listening to Agent Mike describe how there were migrants going north who immigrated from Eastern Europe helped reinforce this idea. There are no common migrants or average Mexicans crossing the border. On the first day in Mexico, we met The Wall as introduced by Anne, our guide from Frontera de Cristo. That strip of land ranging between the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego, measured in width by feet, stood tall as it was made up of 30 foot iron posts. Anne took us there to present 500 years of border history. While we were participating in one of her activities, a family walked by carrying a ladder.
If we were to measure the gain that someone would make from crossing the border into America, how would we do that with a family? In America, you can work for a career. In America, you can work for insurance, a big home, and a new car. You can educate your children. Those are satisfactory gains coming from a place, not necessarily Mexico the country, but poverty in Mexico. And there is a lot of risk taken to cross, not for getting caught, but for surviving the trek. This includes hiring a coyote, paying the cartel to cross, battling freezing winds at night and broiling days in the sun. Suffering sabotage from ranchers, betrayal by your guide through robbery, abandonment or both, so does the gain outweigh what you can lose?
The family is part of a larger group of migrants who I choose to refer to as economic refugees. The Border Patrol will try and apprehend any suspected crosser, no matter their apparel or accessories. I do not doubt that, but when they are looking through their telescopes and spot a group of people, two carrying arms and packs, they will be targeted differently.
Those entering the United States through undesignated port of entries will always be viewed by law enforcement with equal discrimination. For those two people who are carrying weapons and drugs, there are ten who are not. And we must question for whose benefit are those smuggling breaking the law? Easy answers do not exist for often confusing questions.
Responses:
(Image is Retired Philadelphia Police Captain, Ray Lewis, being arrested in his protest against police brutality on November 17th, 2011 at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City.)
Occupy
A slice of pie
A warm glass of milk
Given to a policeman on a cold night in Lon-don
And our revolution's getting un-done
And built up again
And the policeman is our friend
Our ally
As we've cried, they've also cried
They are workers as well
So please don't give them hell
These men and women in riot gear are so near
Because they are one of us
So there's no need to fuss
Over details because
These men and women in riot gear are on our side
As we stand outside
On the streets of New York, Cairo, Lon-don,
And other recent revolutions getting un-done,
They are helping us out
There's no need to shout
For you know that as soon as these men and women
Take off their badges and take off their shields
That they are workers like us and they will yield
To the protestors on the streets because
A couple feet away from us
Right Here
Right Now
Stand our brothers and sisters, hand in hand
We must work together or know the reason why.
We
(AS A WHOLE)
Must Occupy.
We went on the trip with biases from reading articles and talking to people directly related to the border. Of course I feel a sense of urgency to change the border situation, but when I talk to my family or friends the side of the border that we left behind on the trip, the Middle America mindset comes back into play. The opinion that “they’re stealing jobs” and “not paying taxes” seems to pop up in every conversation I have concerning the border. Rhetoric Americans hear from mainstream media creates fear in immigration and only focuses on the negative aspects of the topic, thus creating a culture of hate towards immigration altogether. I think one thing that the mainstream media coverage doesn’t explain is that the border is just a place, just like any other other, and that the issues that are present are not set in stone; the are changeable just like the laws that keep people from crossing legally. I think the bias that most people believe in the US is due to a need for the fear, to keep people feeling unsafe and needing someone to protect them.
Responses:
Humans are thought to be violent by nature and not by the society that they are raised in. In my opinion, I do not think that we are violent by nature; I think that humans act violently due to the different environments that they grow up in, the people they are raised by, and the media that our society broadcasts to not only the youth, but the entire world. In my personal experiences I have been raised in a very welcoming home, surrounded by a loving family, but the media has definitely affected some of the ways I have thought about violence, especially when I was younger.
Where a person is raised really affects who they are going to become, and their views on violence based on the experiences that they have in that particular environment. In the article it states, "Many hunter-gatherer societies in particular are entirely peaceful. And the cultures that are "closer to nature" would be expected to be the most war-like if the proclivity for war were really part of that nature. Just the reverse seems to be true."(Human Nature Isn't Inherently Violent; page 16). I found this quote to bring up an interesting point because often when you think of people living out with nature, our minds often associate that with warriors because they are always out hunting for food, when they are actually more peacful than anything else. If a person is raised in the city, or a place where there is gang violence, gun shots, fighting, or even in a family where there is abuse either physical or vebal can really affect the mentality of an individual being raised in this type of environment. If you are raised in a place where all of this violence is present, you may be raised to think that it is just in the genes of humans to be naturally aggressive, or maybe you don't appreciate the violence and want to stop it. I think that more often than not, if you are raised in a culture of violence then your brain is "trained" to think that it is only human for us to act in such an aggressive manner.
Family and friends play a crucial role in our lives, whether they are acting as role models or parents. The people you are raised around really affects the outlook you have on human violence. In the Seville Statement it states, "How we act is shaped by how we have been conditioned and socialized. There is nothing in our neurophysiology that compels us to react violently."(page 2). In this quote it is saying that humans are shaped by the ways they are conditioned when they are raised, and that there is nothing in our head that gives us the urge to act violently. I feel that if you are raised in a very abusive family you may just learn from what you observe from a young age. I think that if you are raised in a loving and open family, that you are given more opportunity to form your own opinions on human violence. In my own experiences I feel that growing up in a very loving home gave me the chance to realize the violence and conflict does happen, but even then I never realized the base of the actions.
Media seems to play the biggest factor in our culture that influences our understanding of human violence. When we are constanty surrounded by thoughts of war, movies about fighting, games and toy that relate to guns, and it ALL a NORM in our society. I think that growing up in this culture where this is all accepted, that us as humans think that violence is OKAY because its what all the other kids are doing.
Humans being thought of as "violent by nature", is in my opinion caused by three factors; the environments that we are raised in, the people we are surrounded by, and the media that our society broadcasts to us starting at such young ages. I feel that all of these points play a huge role in why we thihk that we are violent by nature, when in fact we are not.
(This is one of my journal entries from the Mexico trip. We were asked to write a poem reflecting on the borders in our own lives.)
Border of My Own
I live on the border
Between lib and con
Right and wrong
Black and white
Here and there
I live on the border
Of my county
That sits on the border
Of my state
Looking south on “them”
I live on the border
Of seeping death
Slow poison filling
At one small, hot mistake
And screeching alarm
I live on the Border
Feeling alone
Neutral
Stuck in grey
Nowhere
I live in the border
Watching the river
Make us grow and shrink
Watching the south
Ignore and depend on us
I live on the border
Filled with fear
Sitting on
The wrong side
No help arriving
I am the border
Of my views
Comfortable with
My in between
Un-swayed
The land is the border
Not Too Much Information
But too little
Flows through secretive
Closed gates
The power is fluid
Belonging to no-one
As the borders
Cross over another
And join
Responses:
Home
the land where I grew up
my roots are in the
soil
family and friends take root
some here
others live in the home
I've never known
some day
all of us will live together in
one home
no need to plant roots in solid cages of
the earth
rather
to fly free as birds in the
sky
Dear Mexico
I live in fear each day
I fear for my head
Literally
I fear for my family
The Cartels and their dope
Why oh why must it be I
The one who must bring this shit
To THEM
The ones on the other side
Of the fence,
I HATE YOU!
You make it hard to have
Hope as you sit back and watch
From your towers of corruption
I am targeted
Hated, feard, resented
Because I am seen as you!
We are all seen as you instead
Of the truth
We are part of you.
All because of where we were born.
My sweet mother weeps because of
You!
If only you could be the shining knight
We need.
I have faith you could be that
Light in darkness
But first
Step up
Realize who you can be
Deserve my trust
My alligence
Myself
Dear Mexico
I hate you now
But love you enough to see you change
Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
I say the darker the flesh and the deeper the roots.....
But right now were going to change it up a little
these 3 roots are going to represent 3 different things
ok THIS IS THE FIRST ROOT
we now have international trade policies that in many ways undermine the developing countries
first you come into our lands--nuestras tierras-- and push us out and destroy it!
then you take my people--mi gente-- and you create, re-educate, destroy their minds and make them into slaves
now you have made them think they are powerless but thats going to change because
I AM THE THIRD ROOT
I AM Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez
I AM the Brown BERETS and the Black Panthers
WE ARE the Zapatistas and we have a DREAM and that is to change things and make peace
I also want YOU to Know that caring for the environment is a JOURNEY not a DESTINATION
EAST OAKLAND!