Demand Up 97 Percent in FY 2010 Round of CDFI Program
CDFI Fund Receives 408 Applications Requesting More Than $467 Million

Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) announced today that it received a total of 408 applications for the fiscal year (FY) 2010 round of the CDFI Program, representing a significant increase in demand.  Applicants requested more than $467.4 million in assistance, a 97 percent increase from the $237.7 million requested through the original, pre-Recovery Act application solicitation of the FY 2009 round.

“CDFIs are continuing to deal with the harsh realities of the financial crisis on a day to day basis.  The extraordinary demand we’ve seen in the latest application round of the CDFI Program shows the great need in distressed communities for capital to provide affordable financial products and services,” said CDFI Fund Director Donna Gambrell. “Today’s economy is creating a need for CDFIs to expand their impact as low-income people and communities across the nation continue to bear a disproportionate burden and rely on CDFIs to provide critically needed support.”

The CDFI Fund received 322 applications requesting almost $459 million under the Financial Assistance component and 86 applications requesting over $8.4 million under the Technical Assistance component of the CDFI Program.

The CDFI Fund published a Notice of Funds Availability in the Federal Register on September 23, 2009 announcing that it was making approximately $113 million available for the FY 2010 round, pending Congressional appropriation.  Approximately $20 million of these funds are being targeted to CDFIs that applied under Category I of the application, which is known as Small and Emerging CDFI Assistance – or SECA Applicants.  Approximately $90 million are targeted to CDFIs that applied under Category II of the application, known as Core Applicants.  The remaining $3 million in funds will be awarded to CDFIs that applied for Technical Assistance only.  The deadline for applications was November 18, 2009 and awards will be announced in the summer of 2010.

Applications are currently being evaluated through a merit-based qualitative review to identify those applicants most likely to have the greatest impact in our nation’s most distressed low-income rural and urban communities.  The characteristics of the applicant pool include:

Financial Assistance Component

Overview

322 applicants applied under the Financial Assistance Component – requesting an aggregate total of $458,995,504 with:

• $435,726,392 in Financial Assistance
• $23,269,112 in Technical Assistance

Institution Type

• 245 (76.1 percent) are loan funds
• 45 (14.0 percent) are credit unions
• 23 (7.1 percent) are banks, thrifts or holding companies
• 9 (2.8 percent) are venture capital funds

Primary Geographic Market Served

• Major Urban:  170 (52.8 percent)
• Rural:  87 (27.0 percent)
• Minor Urban:  65 (20.2 percent)

Geographic Distribution

Applications were received from 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Technical Assistance Component

Overview

86 applicants applied for only Technical Assistance requesting an aggregate total of $8,466,949.

Institution Type

• 76 (88.4 percent) are loan funds
• 6 (7.0 percent) are credit unions
• 2 (2.3 percent) are banks, thrifts or holding companies
• 2 (2.3 percent) are venture capital funds

For more information on the CDFI Fund and its programs, please visit www.cdfifund.gov.

We’re close to winning the new rules of the road for the big banks and Wall Street that will stop them from driving our economy off another cliff. But first we have to beat back the attempts to kill the hard-fought commonsense reforms we’ve brought this far.

We’re going to war with the big banks and their lobbyists next week. The financial reform package passed by Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-Mass.) committee during the past several months of consideration, debate and votes will finally be voted on by the entire House of Representatives. This bill contains much of what we’ve advocated to rein in greed and risk-taking on Wall Street and put the safety and security of Main Street first.

But you can be sure that the big banks and Wall Street are pulling every trick in the book to try to prevent the passage of these significant reforms.

One of the most important reforms created by this bill, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173), is the creation a consumer watchdog with teeth. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency will make sure the banks don’t peddle unsafe financial products to the public, gouging consumers and putting our entire economy at risk.

More than anything, the big banks want to kill this new agency. Ask your representative: Which side are you on? Next week, will you stand with Main Street or Wall Street?

We are at a critical juncture. To win real reform, we need you and everyone you know who is fed up with the mess the big banks made to stand up with us today and next week when the House votes.

After you contact your representative today, please spread the word. This is the fight of our lives for more fairness and accountability in the financial industry. This is the change we need to once again grow a prosperous, strong and secure economy.

I hate (I shouldn’t say hate…um…strongly dislike) most modern Christmas songs.  I remember telling someone a year ago we should stop writing new Christmas songs.  Well I wrote one.

It’s a very simple song for Advent this year.  If I had a Mac I’d record it for you but…I guess you’ll have to come to The Garden on Sunday to hear it.

I believe we can love
Christmas changed the world
Let Christmas change the world

Cruelty falls
The humble are raised
The rich are emptied
Fill the hungry, give all praise

(Chorus)

The Proud are scattered
The world lays down its sword
Cruelty falls
Praise be to our Lord

Here’s a link to photos of my recent trip to SW China:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=133840&id=564995302&l=7071843623

The Qatar Foundation recently launched the first World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in the capital city of Doha on November 16-18, 2009.

Three years in the making, its overall objective is to take on the task improving/providing global access to education for citizens as a basic human right through promoting/scaling/replicating concrete initiatives that are sustainable, innovative, and inclusive. 

Over 1000 educational professionals,practitioners, and media from 90 countries participated in this invitation-only Summit, that was competently assisted by a small army of over 200 logistical/support personnel and many volunteers from the Qatar Youth Foundation. 

The Summit attempted to find common ground among the many competing and often contradicting issues between what constitutes best and available practices in both the emerging and developed world’s educational systems. It will now become an annual event, whose agenda and true global impact will grow as concrete partnerships, collaborations, and opportunities to create systemic educational change are brought to the Qatar Foundation and the Royal family’s attention.

There was a decided focus on higher education (voices speaking out about poverty, gender bias, and disability were heard too) as being the key pathway to economic opportunity, global citizenship, and peaceful resolutions to social problems that have plagued humanity since the dawn of civilization. 

It was a great honor and responsibility to be invited to share my experiences about what works, push the traditional boundaries/notions about the rightful/reasonable inclusion of learners with disabilities in education, and hear about how people with disabilities would be part of an international movement towards educational equality and equity.

The Summit concluded with an intentionally generalized, but bold statement of 10 core education priorities, an announcement of two initiatives and a renewed commitment to the three main areas of focus for WISE in the future. There is much to hope for and work towards that will be part of crafting the realization of these priorities, and plenty of room for learners of all ages across the world experiencing a lack of educational opportunities due to institutional ignorance (best case scenario) and/or bias because they have learning, sensory or neurological that pose barriers  in traditional academic settings.

Here is a first-effort Flipshare clip  (poor production values which I promise to improve upon!)  of Dr. Abdullah bin Ali Al-Thani’s call for action and promsied support of future WISE priorities.

With so many pressing issues, it was a relief to hear the moderator, Nima Abu-Wardeh single out learning disabilities as a global educational issue within the context of the right to social inclusion. With an estimated 15% of the world’s population affected by this family of conditions, people with these learning barriers make up one of the largest underprepared and unrecognized educational minorities.

Predictably, a number of attendees who are commentators in the educational blogosphere (present company included) have already posted their thoughts & questions- both what can be done within our circles of influence to clarify/push the agenda as well as wondering how this signature event would not end up becoming a one-and-done affair.

A glimpse of what should be more to come for students and adults with disabilities was announced at the end of the Summit. It is a collaborative project between the Shafallah Center and USC targeting people with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

For many of us, going to conferences that discusses any kind of educational reform usually means hearing a rehash of the same problems, generalized statements of  changing the status quo, and a feeling of resignation rather than resolve. It becomes several days of blah blah blah and then we go home. We do look forward to seeing other colleagues finding that workable solutions to “education reform” oftentimes reveal themselves in the hotel bar somewhere between the second and third cocktail!

As more of those who attended the Summit find, connect with each other, and share with their peers, I am convinced there will be ample opportunities to develop local and large-scale interventions as there was no lack of talent, best practices, and committed people. There is simply no acceptable way to return to status quo, now that we have been able to connect with other kindred spirits and have a sense of what is just beyond our reach to do.

There were many top world educational professionals I met in Doha who openly disclosed growing up and still dealing with dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger’s/social blindness and mood-related disorders. The fact they felt comfortable with themselves and where they are in life provided for me an additional layer of a sense of community.

Then, I remembered that we represented a small sliver of a successful minority. That current students from around the globe with these conditions were not invited. That we must expand the educational focus beyond college and students under the age of 25 because those who are older have been and remain completely excluded from any nation’s public agenda. That there remains a global unemployment rate of almost 90% of the world’s 850 million people estimated by the World Health Organization to have a disability. 

I expect we will continue to be busy for a while addressing issues that will take a generation to carry out. But- as I am not willing to give up on any generation of persons with barriers to learning success- remain a pragmatic idealist who to bringing public attention, political constituency, and quality services to youth/adults with hidden disabilities.

Welcome! 

This blog is a place and space to discuss, reflect, share personal stories, research, best practices and “oh no you didn’t”s for adults with hidden disabilities.  We are making the move from a newsletter format in ConstantContact because it did not allow for two-way conversation and active participation from our readership. WordPress opens up possibilities that we did not have before.

The term hidden disabilities in the context of this site will tend to focus on higher incidence conditions such as learning disabilities (US definition), ADHD, high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome, Executive functioning issues, mood disorders, and other related learning or neurological conditions. Collectively, when you use just about any data set or governmental source for special education, young men and women with these diagnosed conditions make up over 2/3’s of placements in public school settings.

It will stress adult issues because one can only find them participating in higher education settings comprising less than 10% of the student body (L. Brinckerhoff, ETS, 2009),  have an unemployment rate of 78% of working age adults (US Census Bureau/Dept of Labor statistics), until recently, were unable t0 prove they were being discriminated against in workplace setting because they did not met the conditions of disability ”under the law” (ADAA, 2009)  and only just this year were considered eligible for Small Business Loan consideration as a Minority-owned business (Harkin, 2009).

For as many living in the US that have Medicaid/medicare health insurance benefits through the Social Security Program, there are many more who have no health care insurance because they are not eligible due to “not being disabled enough” to qualify due to conflicting eligibility requirements. With pre-existing conditions (sorry born or developed it), many of us in this category of life experience pay mortgage level rates to have minimal insurance with high deductibles.

Yet, there is a strength, resilience, and good sense of “the far side”  humor in looking at life- you must have some of this because the world from our view of it can be so ridiculous sometimes that the best option is to laugh and engage in sarcasm/dry wit/humor (oh I hope you will contribute in this vein!) when you get tired of explaining, that no, you don’t overcome these conditions, you become skilled at managing it.

Our site will review local, national & global news,  invite articles, reader comments, post YouTube videos, and any other media that will increase attention and action about the lifelong issues these conditions pose, and present  proven concepts, programs, and services that are helping. Just click on the highlighted links in the body of the article or hit “play” for the Youtube. I see the site having a twitter feed shortly, and we can communicate in this manner as well.

 I hope to see this as a safe place to come to feel welcomed.  We are working on building community in common cause with current and emerging issues. My first question to readers: What matters most to adults with hidden disabilities (or disabled adults for my European friends)?

Please sign up, read, comment, share with friends, and let’s make this the last generation that does not enjoy full civil rights inclusions and protections.

Warm regards,

Rob  Crawford

Honoré Jaxon,
ocean.flynn.

The life story of Honoré Joseph Jaxon born William Henry Jackson (1861-1952) is inextricably linked to the history of Canada, to the story of missing archives, to the history of the early North American Baha’is, the history of early social justice movements. Frgaments of the “missing” archives have been partially restored through the work of countless historians, artists, social scientists, cultural workers and journalists. Jaxon adopted the cause of the Metis and worked tirelessly to build an archives that literally weighed three tons when he was evicted from his New York apartment in 1951 at the age of 90. His archives was almost completely destroyed and he died with a broken spirit three weeks later.

A selected timeline of the contextualized life of Honoré Joseph Jaxon born William Henry Jackson (1861-1952)

10,000 years ago or more The hunter-gatherer ancestors of Manitoba’s First Nations were already in the area at least 10,000 years ago. Even then the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers (where Winnipeg now stands) provided a was a natural important meeting place of different peoples. All of Manitoba’s rivers eventually drain into Hudson Bay. The Nelson, Churchill and Hayes rivers flow directly into Hudson Bay. The Saskatchewan River flows into Lake Winnipeg from the west, the Winnipeg River from the east, and the Red River from the south. Another major river, the Assiniboine, joins the Red River at the Forks in Winnipeg.

1612 The first European reached present-day Manitoba.

1690 Henry Kelsey, traveled the northern part of the Manitoba. He was the first non-aboriginal to do so.

In 1738, Fort Rouge was built at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. The Forks, as the junction was called, became the centre of a the fur trade.

In 1811, Lord Selkirk, from Scotland established the Red River Settlement with plans to increase agricultural production at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

1817 Quebec Catholic missionaries arrived on the east side of the Red River.

1837 The Upper Canada Rebellion was led by William Lyon Mackenzie against the ruling oligarchy in York (now Toronto), Upper Canada.

1844 Louis Riel was born near modern Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the Red River Settlement, a community in Rupert’s Land nominally administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), and largely inhabited by First Nations tribes and the Métis, an ethnic group of mixed Cree, Ojibwa, Saulteaux, French Canadian, Scottish, and English descent.[7]

1861 William Henry Jackson was born to a devoted Methodist family and raised in the village of Wingham, Ontario (van den Hoonaard 1996:18).

1869 The fur trade began its decline. The Canadian government acquired the territory that would become Western Canada.

1869-10 “But Canada blunders catastrophically in seeking to take over the west without the consent of its inhabitants, especially the Metis of Red River and their leader, the charismatic, troubled Louis Riel. The resistance of 1869-70 lays the groundwork for Manitoba to join Canada, but it also sets the stage for decades of conflict over the rights of French and English, Catholic and Protestant in the new territories (CBC 2000).”

In 1870, Manitoba became Canada’s fifth province. Louis Riel, as leader of the Métis had drafted the Bill of Rights under which the people of the Red River Settlement agreed to become part of the new country.

c.1880 William Henry Jackson studied Classics at the University of Toronto for three years.

1881 William Henry Jackson’s family went bankrupt and his father moved the family to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (then part of the Northwest Territories).

1883 “By the 1880s, it had become clear that westward migration was no panacea for the troubles of the Métis and the plains Indians. The rapid collapse of the buffalo herd was causing near starvation among the Plains Cree and Blackfoot First Nations. This was exacerbated by a reduction in government assistance in 1883, and by a general failure of Ottawa to live up to its treaty obligations. The Métis were likewise obliged to give up the hunt and take up agriculture—but this transition was accompanied by complex issues surrounding land claims similar to those that had previously arisen in Manitoba. Moreover, settlers from Europe and the eastern provinces were also moving into the Saskatchewan territories, and they too had complaints related to the administration of the territories.” (wiki) William Henry Jackson sympathized with the Métis and their struggle against the Canadian government. Jackson became personal secretary to Louis Riel and it was Jackson who wrote Riel’s famous petition by hand.

1884-5 “After the Red River Resistance failed, many of the Métis left that area. Though they were given legal status and their lands, they were not able to preserve their culture. Many more protestant English settlers moved into the area. Then land speculators moved in and bought the Métis lands for far less than they were worth. Many Métis chose to move further west rather than become farmers. Open hunting lands were becoming much harder to find. Saskatchewan, known as the Northwest Territory at that time, was their destination. The Métis were hunters rather than farmers. Their main source of meat was bison  (Bushong, Mary Lynn. 2009).”

Mid-1880’s “The Hudson’s Bay Company-along with other hunters-had decimated the numbers of animals. Instead of vast herds, there remained only a few thousand animals. It was not only the Métis who starved, but also the First Nations. Since Canada owned the land, the people asked the government for help. They got very little response (Bushong, Mary Lynn. 2009).”

1884 William Henry Jackson at twenty-three years old was following Louis Riel’s movement with a great deal of interest [9]. (van den Hoonaard 1996:18).

1884-03-14 The Métis of the Red River area were forced to give up buffalo hunting and take up agriculture. But land claims along the Red River Valley were complex with competing interests including settlers from Europe and the eastern provinces who had moved into the Saskatchewan territories. All parties involved in the land claims had grievances, and by 1884 English settlers, Anglo-Métis and Métis communities were holding meetings and petitioning a largely unresponsive government for redress. In the electoral district of Lorne, a meeting of the south branch Métis was held in the village of Batoche on 24 March, and thirty representatives voted to ask Riel to return and represent their cause. On 6 May a joint “Settler’s Union” meeting was attended by both the Métis and English-speaking representatives from Prince Albert, including William Henry Jackson,[45] an Ontario settler sympathetic to the Métis and known to them as Honoré Jackson, and James Isbister of the Anglo-Métis.[46] It was here resolved to send a delegation to ask Riel’s assistance in presenting their grievances to the Canadian government. Gabriel Dumont, a respected buffalo hunter and leader of the Saint-Laurent Métis who had known Riel in Manitoba, headed a delegation to ask Louis Riel’s assistance in presenting their grievances to the Canadian government. wiki

1885 William Henry Jackson converted to Catholicism to the confusion of his Methodist family (van den Hoonaard 1996:19).

1885-05-09 to 1885-05-15 William Henry Jackson was at the Battle of Batoche whenwas forced to surrender to Canadian forces.

1885 Finch claimed William Henry Jackson (Honoré Jaxon) was captured by the Canadian militia during the 1885 Resistance, and was convicted of treason-felony, acquitted by reason of insanity [see Griffin and Greenland 1977] and sentenced to an asylum in Selkirk, Manitoba near Winnipeg. He escaped and fled to the United States (Flanagan 1976; Smith 1981a cited in van den Hoonaard 1996:19).

1885 Louis Riel was tried for treason and hanged on September 18, 1885.

1886 William Henry Jackson fled to Chicago where helped organize the carpentar’s union.

1889 William Henry Jackson changed his name to Honoré Joseph Jaxon to honour his conversion to the Catholic religion  (van den Hoonaard 1996:19).

Honoré Jaxon lived in Chicago where strangely he was a “politically connected Chicago general contractor, prosperously paving streets and sidewalks.” He retired, drifting east to edit a New Jersey left-wing newspaper. After 1922 he lived in the Bronx, on a granite outcropping overlooking the Bronx River, where he built a “palace” of scrap wood and corrugated tin.

In February 1942, health inspectors alleged that Jaxon’s home was a rat-infested firetrap without running water. The Times reported that Jaxon, supposedly a “soldier of fortune” with service in three wars, told the magistrate his palace was really a fort “to protect the Bronx against enemy submarines that might travel up the Bronx River.” After the city forced him out, he went to East 34th Street. had a lively career as a politically radical public figure. There he befriended, among others, the revolutionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Honoré Jaxon had straight raven-black hair which lent credibility to his claim that as a Métis he could speak on behalf of aboriginals.

mid-1890s Settlers continued to pour into Manitoba and agriculture of the Red River Settlement was the major economic activity. In the years that followed, Manitoba in general and Winnipeg in particular became a hub of agricultural, commercial and manufacturing activity.

1894-06 Honoré Jaxon marched to Washington, DC to demand an eight-hour workday as part of Jacob Coxey’s army of the unemployed (Bryk 2005).

1897-06 Honore Jaxon, former secretary of Louis Riel became a Bahai in Chicago. His wife, Aimee Montfort Jaxon, a francophone teacher became a Baha’i several on October 5, 1897, four months later. Honore Jaxon espoused many social causes in which he was active including the Baha’i Faith (van den Hoonaard 1996:149).

In 1897, when he turned thirty-three, [Honore Jaxon], the ’socialist activist (Flanagan 1976:175-6)’ grew weary of his activities, married for the first time in his life, and discovered the Baha’i Faith. He had followed Kheiralla’s classes in Chicago for several weeks when he enrolled in June (Stockman 1985:92), as the 107th person to do so (BEL). As a “man of keen wit . . . consumed with a love of his people” (the Pittsburgh Post, quoted in D. Smith, 1981b:91), Jaxon began once again to pursue many interests including the design of a tunnelling machine and a device that would decrease the effects of earthquakes on buildings. He also tried to convince the city of Chicago to build a speaker’s corner, and remained active in the Chicago Federation of Labor[12]. It seems quite certain that Jaxon did not discriminate among his various causes, including Baha’i. Jaxon was familiar with the works of Marx and Prince Kropotkin and easily blended their ideas into his own personal synthesis (ibid.: 93)[13]. (van den Hoonaard 1996:19).”

1897-10 Aimée Montfort Jaxon, the “French-Canadian [14] spouse of Honoré Jaxon, a “stylish and well-educated” woman, Montfort was a descendant of Simon de Montfort (Charlesbois 1975:130). An early Baha’i described Aimee Montfort Jaxon as a “very plain lady, but she had charm” (Loeding 1985). She became a devoted Baha’i on October 5, 1897, four months after Honoré Jaxon [15]. Aimee Montfort Jaxon was elected president of the Women’s Assembly of Teaching [16]. She taught the Baha’i Faith in small groups and before large audiences. Both Aimée Montfort Jaxon and Honoré Jaxon offered liberal hospitality to Baha’i functions in the community [18] (van den Hoonaard 1996:20).

1906-1907 King Edward VII pardoned Honoré Jaxon in 1907. He then he toured the Canadian West, documenting the history of Riel’s rebellions. He travelled to his native Saskatchewan accompanied by his wife, Aimée Montfort Jaxon. He addressed the annual convention of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada  (van den Hoonaard 1996:19), he may well have had both socialism and the Baha’i Faith in mind (van den Hoonaard 1996:20).”

1907-9 Aimee Montfort Jaxon and Honoré Jaxon returned briefly to Canada to visit Montfort’s niece, Cicely Plaxton in Saskatchewan (Smith 1992 cited in van den Hoonaard 1996:20). Honoré Jaxon visited Calgary and spent two years in the West helping the downtrodden.

1907 Morton, Arthur Silver. “The historic figure Honore J. Jaxon.” The West. 11 December 1907. MSS C555/2/13.6d. “The article refers to Jaxon as “the only man who is capable of being a historian of repute in connection with the North West rebellion” of 1885.”

1910 Few Canadians understood Jaxon’s “call for greater social and economic justice for the working class, and respect for the history and culture of the Aboriginal Peoples. Disillusioned, Honoré returned to Chicago shortly after his Edmonton visit. Throughout the 1910s he continued to support progressive causes in the United States’ second-largest city (Smith 2008).”

1910 Honore Jaxton’s loyalty to the Baha’i Faith did not likely measure up to his political loyalties. [. . .] Nevertheless he was untrammelled in his energy for the Baha’i cause and was responsible for negotiating the title for the site of the future, first Baha’i House of Worship in the West, situated in a northern Chicago suburb (Star of the West 1910-05 p.19 cited in van den Hoonaard 1996:20).

1912-05-17 Honoré  Jaxon. “Dedication of the Mashrak-el-Azkar site.” Star of the West. 3:4:27-29. In 1912 Honore Jaxton “wrote engaging pieces about the dedication of the site for the Baha’i House of Worship  (Jaxon 1912a cited in van den Hoonaard 1996:20). and ‘Abdul-Baha’s visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago” (Jaxon 1912b cited in van den Hoonaard 1996:20). Van den Hoonaard suggested that the reference in the dedication referred to Jaxon’s presence there, not to any actual First Nations.

1912-05-17 Honoré  Jaxon. “A Stroll with Abdul-Baha Culminating in a Typical Bahai Meeting Under the Trees of Lincoln Park, Chicago.” Star of the West. 3:4:5-7.

1918 Aimee Montfort Jaxon left Honoré Jaxon after WWI, “possibly with his encouragement, for like many anarchists, he saw ‘marriage’ as far as the woman’s interests were concerned, as a ‘man-made scheme for the annexing of female slaves’” (Smith 1992 cited in van den Hoonaard 1996:21).”

1919 Honoré  Jaxon moved to New York City where he remained for the rest of his life. He became a real estate developer. “In 1919, Jaxon moved to New York City. He loved the city with its museums and its libraries. His life mission became the establishment of a library for the Aboriginal People of Saskatchewan. To this end he bought old books and pamphlets and saved old newspapers, and stored them in his basement apartment. If he could take this library to Western Canada, the Aboriginal Peoples could use it to educate themselves, and “they’d get a better deal in this generation than they had in the past (Smith 2008).”

1932-06-25. Morton, Arthur Silver. 1932-06-25. “Notes on interview with Mrs. Amos Plaxton of Prince Albert.” MSS C555/2/13.5. “Plaxton notes that many of Riel’s papers were scattered after his surrender. Most of the interview pertains to Plaxton’s recollection of Louis Riel’s discussions with Big Bear and William Henry Jackson about the grievances of the Cree, the Métis, and the white settlers in the Prince Albert district prior to the outbreak of the 1885 Resistance.” Morton Manuscript Collection, Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan Libraries. Subject: Plaxton, Cicely (Mrs. Amos) – Recollections Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Papers Northwest Rebellion, 1885 Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) Plains Cree Chief Riel, Louis Métis – Grievances.

1940s Honoré  Jaxon attended meetings of the Caravan in New York (Smith 1981b:96). The Caravans were a group of former Baha’is who disputed the authority of Shoghi Effendi, the head of the Baha’i Faith at that time (van den Hoonaard 1996:20).

1951-12 “His dream died on Dec. 12, 1951, when his landlord evicted the 90-year-old on the grounds that his mountain of paper constituted a Grade A fire hazard for the other tenants. His library, three tons of it, went first onto the street, then much of it to the New York City dump (Smith 2008).” [Donald Smith teaches Canadian history at the University of Calgary and is an authority on Honoré Jaxon].

On December 12, 1951 Honoré Jaxon was evicted from his basement apartment at the age of ninety. His entire collection of 60 boxes of archival material was dispersed, most of it to the New York City garbage dump, the remainder sold. “The story of Jaxon’s death is a heart-wrenching one. Some half-dozen American newspapers told the story of a janitor and furnace man who had been evicted from his apartment building on [157 E. Bryk 2005] 34th Street, sitting with a mound of papers and cartons. The furnace man was Jaxon, and the tons of cartons contained a precious collection on native American history. Too sick to perform his janitorial and furnace duties, Jaxon fell behind in his rent and was evicted onto the sidewalk. It took three men six hours to remove all of Jaxon’s belongings, books, papers and manuscripts. Broken-hearted, Jaxon sat on the sidewalk guarding his papers and seeing snow fall on them. Most of the collection was taken to a local garbage dump, and Jaxon died a few weeks later, in January, 1952 (van den Hoonaard 1996:20).” [Donald Smith teaches Canadian history at the University of Calgary and is an authority on Honoré Jaxon).

1952-01-10 “In poor health and broken in spirit, Honoré Jaxon died in New York’s Bellevue Hospital one month later, on Jan. 10, 1952  (Smith 2008).”  1952-01-14. “Honoré Joseph Jaxon’s Obituary.” New York Times.

1992-03-10 The PC Minister Joe Clark, presented a x accepted by y that would recognize the historical role played by Louis Riel as founding father of the Province of Manitoba.

1995 Contemporary Canadian visual artist Landon Mackenzie painted an enormous and powerful acrylic on canvas entitled “Gabriel’s Crossing to Humbolt,” referring to the ferry which Gabriel Dumont operated on the Red River. His everyday life on the Red River was interrupted by the arrival of settlers, the railway and the land claims fiasco that led to the Métis Rebellion led by Louis David Riel (1844 – 1885)

1996 Van den Hoonaard (1996) includes three pages on the lives of Honore Jaxon and Aimee Montfort Jaxon and excellent photos of them (van den Hoonaard 1996:plate 2, plate 4 on page 134). These photos are courtesy of the Glenbow Archives.

2008-02Manitoba marked the first-ever Louis Riel Day, a new provincial holiday to be observed annually on the third Monday in February. Manitoba’s recognition of its founder, who also led the 1885 resistance in Saskatchewan, brings to mind the fascinating life story of his English Canadian secretary in 1885: William Henry Jackson, later known as Honoré Jaxon, who died in New York City at the age of 90, on Jan. 10, 1952, a month after his eviction from his basement apartment” where he hoarded two tons of archival material which he hoped would become a library for the study of the Métis people of Saskatchewan  (Smith 2008)

1952-01-15. “Riel follower dies in New York. left library,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.

1952-01-14. “Honoré Joseph Jaxon’s Obituary.” New York Times.

Bryk, William. 2005-06-01. “The Rebel: Past & Present.” New York Sun.

“Confederation is barely accomplished when the new dominion must face an enormous challenge: extending its reach into the vast prairies and beyond, to the Pacific Ocean. But Canada blunders catastrophically in seeking to take over the west without the consent of its inhabitants, especially the Metis of Red River and their leader, the charismatic, troubled Louis Riel. The resistance of 1869-70 lays the groundwork for Manitoba to join Canada, but it also sets the stage for decades of conflict over the rights of French and English, Catholic and Protestant in the new territories. Thanks to an audacious promise of a transcontinental railway in 10 years, the settlers of British Columbia are more easily convinced of the merits of union; by 1873 Prince Edward Island has joined as well, and Canada can boast a dominion that extends from sea to sea.”

Subject: Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Papers

“The article refers to Jaxon as “the only man who is capable of being a historian of repute in connection with the North West rebellion” of 1885.” Morton Manuscript Collection, Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan Libraries. Northwest Rebellion, 1885; Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Papers; Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Addresses.

“Plaxton notes that many of Riel’s papers were scattered after his surrender. Most of the interview pertains to Plaxton’s recollection of Louis Riel’s discussions with Big Bear and William Henry Jackson about the grievances of the Cree, the Métis, and the white settlers in the Prince Albert district prior to the outbreak of the 1885 Resistance.” Morton Manuscript Collection, Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan Libraries. Subject: Plaxton, Cicely (Mrs. Amos) – Recollections Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Papers Northwest Rebellion, 1885 Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) Plains Cree Chief Riel, Louis Métis – Grievances.”

” This is a typed copy of Jaxon’s obituary which appeared in the “New York Times” on 14 January 1952. Morton Manuscript Collection, Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan Libraries. MSS C555/2/13.6e. Subject: Northwest Rebellion, 1885; Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Papers; Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Obituary.”

“Although there have been many studies of the trial of Louis Riel, following the 1885 rebellion, much less attention has been paid to the fate of his secretary William Henry Jackson, who was charged with “treason-felony” and found not guilty, reason of insanity. In an effort to throw some new light on this neglected aspect of medico-legal history, this paper describes the intense political and religious relationship between Riel and his secretary which culminated in the onset of Jackson’s mental illness. After a trial lasting less than half an hour, Jackson was committed to the “Selkirk Asylum” under a warrant of the then Lieutenant-Governor. Two weeks before Riel was executed, Jackson escaped from hospital and made his way into the U.S.A. No attempt was made to capture him. Jackson, having changed his name to Honoré Jaxon, became a labour organizer. He died in the psychopathic ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York on 10th January, 1952 at the age of ninety.” A paper presented to the Canadian Psychiatric Association annual meeting, Saskatoon, 28-30 September 1977. Its main purpose is to provide a complete account of Jackson’s state of mind before and after his trial for treason-felony in the North-West Resistance of 1885.” Morton Manuscript Collection, Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan Libraries. Subject: Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Papers; Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Trial Northwest Rebellion, 1885 – Leaders – Trials Jackson, William Henry (Honoré Joseph Jaxon) – Mental health;”

McCallum, Pamela; Radtke, Lorraine. 2001/2. “The Impact of Gender Studies Across the Disciplines.” Annual Index: Resources for Feminist Research. 29:1/2. Winter.

Mackenzie, Landon. 1995 ”Gabriel’s Crossing to Humbolt.” Acrylic on canvas. ”The Saskatchewan Paintings.”

Contemporary Canadian visual artist Landon Mackenzie contributed to the conceptualization of knowledge in her series entitled “The Saskatchewan Paintings. Her work crosses disciplinary boundaries: geography, history, knowledge and painting to give voice to the hidden stories that are buried in the wake of dominant narratives and ‘official’ histories” (Laing, p. 18). As a province, Saskatchewan is a particularly apt subject for Mackenzie: its boundaries are not marked by nature (rivers or mountains), but simply by human imposition, by the grid of latitude and longitude; it is the province of vast open spaces, low horizons and huge skies, deceptively empty; it is a place she visits, sitting in small town coffee shops to write, or gazing down at old documents in the provincial archives. “Gabriel’s Crossing to Humbolt” (1995) confronts the viewer with an expansive canvas, more than seven feet high and ten feet long. Working with canvases this size is undoubtedly reminiscent of the vast spaces of Saskatchewan, but it is also Mackenzie’s claim to situate herself within the generally masculine tradition of large oil paintings. Outlines of a rigid grid cover the painting’s surface, foregrounded as intensely bright yellow squares near the centre, faintly visible in some places, painted over into obscurity in others. A column of neat handwriting extends through the centre of the picture plane; the words, however, are difficult to read, layered over each other, so that only fragments are legible: “It seems a chance meeting…” or “beyond real space.” In looking at the painting, therefore, the viewer is challenged just as much to reflect on what is not decipherable, on what is not there. As Mackenzie puts it, “The words hidden over. Secrets kept forever in casing of water and polymer. Retrievable only perhaps by archival X-Ray” (Mackenzie, p. 8). The paradox of a “present absence” is especially striking in two black clover or quatrefoil shapes that seem to open up on each side of the grid lines. The disappearance of the painting’s colour and patternings into such intense blackness figures all that vanishes into landscape, into history, into memory. The title of the painting, “Gabriel’s Crossing to Humbolt,” refers to the ferry which Gabriel Dumont operated; that is, it suggests the daily work and routines of his life that have subsequently been displaced by his association with Louis Riel and the Métis Rebellion, which now positions him in the official knowledges of Canadian history. Similar questions and issues are raised in the fictional territories of Mackenzie’s 1996 acrylic on linen painting, “Interior Lowlands (Still the Restless Whispers Never Leave Me).” Here, netlike lines create a less obvious but no less insistent grid, whose straight lines and angles contrast with the meandering lines of what appears to be the mapping of a river. Unlike the clarity and directional orientation of a map, however, “Interior Lowlands” offers some points of reference—“Saskatoon,” “Battle Plain”—only to dissolve into the obscurity of layered and shadowed, ultimately indecipherable, script. Alongside writing and discourse are traces of the human body: the round womb-like dark shape, the bright red paint which resembles nothing quite so much as dripping blood. The thick, layered palimpsest of the painting’s surface suggests the complexities and difficulties in interpreting the past and retrieving history, in understanding landscape and the markings of space on human bodies, in apprehending and recognizing a self or selves (McCallum and Radtke 2001/2: 14-15).”

Mackenzie, Landon. 1995 ”Blue Night Voices.” Acrylic on canvas, 229 x 320.3 x 3.2 cm, Purchased 1998, National Gallery of Canada (no. 39619). ”The Saskatchewan Paintings.”

“a richly layered painting of land and psyche. Layers of text, maps, diagrams, symbols and coloured space create a cumulative sense of an ornate but open land, specifically the Canadian Prairies. This place bears the traces of past events and current memories. The deep blue space of “Blue Night Voices” hovers between suggesting night-darkened land, a starry sky, and reflections on water.” From the series “The Saskatchewan Paintings.” The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC. See also Mackenzie, Landon. 1997. “Accounting for an imaginary prairie life”, Performance Script (artist’s book) 36 pages, pull-out map. http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_zoom_e.jsp?mkey=48406″

Kheiralla’s classes in Chicago
(BEL)

I still have a post in the pipeline about the crazy opera. I went a whole week ago now, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to formulate my thoughts much beyond, ‘Whaaah? Was the kitchen really representing a giant vagina dentata that eats men?’ and I want to do justice to all the crazy imagery, so you’ll have to wait until the weekend for that, when I shall eventually wrest control of my life back from the translation agency who have Stolen All My Time.

Meanwhile, I have just been to see the ever-inspiring Raj Patel (http://rajpatel.org/). I first came across him when watching the videos from the Slow Food Nation conference in 2008 (which are available here) and subsequently read his book Stuffed and Starved which made a huge impression on me. I even wrote about it on my SOAS application. I was already familiar with a lot of the issues he discussed, but the book really connected the dots between apparently disparate things like famine, obesity, social justice and GM. I mean, I knew these things were Very Important Issues, but it finally laid to rest any of my lingering, ‘Oh, but if I buy local food, what happens to all the green bean farmers in Kenya?’ doubts. He’s also a hugely engaging speaker – I’ll try and dig out the video where he explains how the World Bank works using John Cleese sketches. It’s awesome.

Anyway, the man himself did not disappoint, although I felt the discussion was dominated somewhat by older, opinionated men who asked extremely long-winded questions (rather like those people* who go on and on in seminars because they want you to hear their Very Interesting Thoughts rather than because they actually want to contribute to a coherent discussion) – I swear we only had 3 questions in about 45 minutes! It was primarily a journalism talk, with a focus on food, rather than a food talk per se, but he made some very interesting points about the press coverage of the food ‘crisis’ and riots of 2008. The actual number of food insecure people, both in the US and in developing countries, only increased quite marginally over already scandalously high numbers, but it suddenly became a ‘crisis’ once it started affecting middle class people who actually knew the journalists who were in a position to write about it. Even then, the coverage of the protests was very sensationalist and Malthusian, portraying the poor as a baying mob demanding food, but ignoring the articulate political demands for land reform, access to markets and access to water that many small farmers’ organisations are making.

I refer you, at this point, to Adam Curtis’s segment from Newswipe on ‘Oh Dearism’

‘This wasn’t reported, because it was too complicated and it wouldn’t have made us feel good about ourselves.’

One of my current hobby-horses is the way agribusiness, having failed to convince Western consumers there was any benefit to GM food, is now targeting developing countries as potential markets for GM seeds and crops. The overwhelming focus in reporting on the 2008 food crisis was on the global poor as consumers of food, not as producers – when there’s actually a fair few farmers in developing countries, for whom (subject to actually having access to markets) price rises might not have been entirely a bad thing. There’s now a lot of debate about how we ‘need to consider’ GM as an option (again, I have a huge pile of links, I’ll post them at the weekend) if we want to ‘feed the world’ – whereas one of the first things you learn when you start reading about hunger is that people don’t starve because there isn’t enough food but because they can’t access food, or can’t afford to buy it if they can. I’m not saying that journalists and agribusiness are actually in cahoots, but it worries me that the dominant social narrative is one of a simple equation of available food versus hungry mouths. It makes it easy for corporate interests to exploit our amorphous hand-wringing feeling that Something Must Be Done – because if you aren’t a hard-headed realist who accepts that science and technology** are the answers, you’re just a naive, elitist hippy who wants to sacrifice the lives of billions of poor people for your yoghurt-weaving, hemp knickers principles. (I suppose it’s the same as how any suggestion that supermarkets may be a teensy bit problematic, socially and environmentally, always attracts the, ‘Well, we need cheap food for poor people!’ response. No-one ever suggests we pay people enough so they can buy organic carrots too!)

I hope all the journalists who were in the room tonight go and write kick-arse articles about how it’s really all about power and justice.

Also, ‘I buy fair trade coffee because… what’s the alternative? Blood on your beans coffee with the bones of small children ground in?’

Awesome.

————–

* I say people, but it’s almost always men.

** Raj Patel said an awesome thing about how the Gates Foundation’s approach to aid and development is informed by the fact that Bill Gates became the world’s richest man through proprietary technology – so of course he supports GM! This was Deeply Important, but I couldn’t fit it into my paragraph.

I’ve been thinking more about my theories about alternate reality games as massively scalable praxis. I’ve been considering the secondary implications of using ARG for liberation, because ARG is a medium (or maybe more accurately, a cluster of media and best practices) that has been developed predominantly by commercial interests — look at how most of the biggest/most successful ARG implementations have been for advertising a mainstream game or movie.

Specifically, where is there a history of appropriation of media that are well adapted to organizing, education, or idea exchange, but were developed by commercial interests? I know that for much of the history of the industry of gaming, military and commercial research interests have been at the core of technologies that have brought us artistic and poetic practices in digital media, but in terms of intentional reappropriation, I’d like to find more, better examples.

I’ve been talking about this with solidad decosta, in what I hope is the beginning of a pretty epic collaboration. She brought up Peter Watkins’ 2000 film La Commune, which was formatted as a documentary about the Paris Commune of 1871, but was acted by largely nonprofessionals who did their own research about the history of the Paris Commune. Many of these were immigrants to Paris from France’s current or former colonies. Through their research, the actors were given the opportunity to reflect on and think about this revolutionary history, the plight of the worker in our age, and their own experiences.

How might this film be related to ARG design for social change?

Shawn Lewis, board trustee at the Pan African Community Endowment of The Saint Paul Foundation, sent us a message yesterday about a blogcast discussion that he had recently with blogger Rosetta Thurman, Tamar Cloyd from Education Voters of America, and Stephen Bauer from American Humanics and Nonprofit Workforce Coalition.

The program, which you can listen to on Rosetta Thurman’s blog, was a response in part to the Council on Foundations report titled Career Pathways to Philanthropic Leadership, which found that only 20 percent of successful candidates for leadership positions within the philanthropic sector are from racially diverse backgrounds.

During the show, the panel speakers talked about the importance of having diverse leaders at the top level in the independent sector, not only because a diverse staff affects organizational decision making, but because pitfalls can occur when nonprofits and grantmakers attempt to serve constituents that are not represented within their organization.

As Tamar Cloyd responded during the interview, “Don’t do something about me, without me.” Shawn Lewis also shared insights from his experience working within the sector. He stated that generally much of the progress that he’s seen in creating better recruitment practices has come from board or committee members who advocate strongly for better, more inclusive practices within organizations.

Stephen Bauer suggested that one of the best strategies for increasing the likelihood of hiring someone of color is to be willing to search again for diverse applicants if, after an initial collection of applicants, it’s revealed that the pool of people you’re considering does not have enough diverse candidates.

If you are interested in learning more about how your organization can recruit people of ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds, check out the recording of this interview at Rosetta Thurman’s blog. Then, after you’ve listened to the interview, visit the MCF Diversity Resource page to access the free, downloadable resources that we’ve created and collected to assist MCF member and non-member grantmakers to create better diversity practices within their organizations and fulfill the MCF Diversity Principle.

If you are currently searching for candidates for a position in your organization, you may also find the Minnesota Ethnic and Community Media Directory (pdf) produced by Twin Cities Media Alliance a helpful resource as you look for publications to advertise your job openings.

Join the conversation: Do you think that your organization is doing enough to recruit diverse candidates for leadership positions? Do you have any strategies or practices that you’ve found have been successful in encouraging people of color and other minority groups to apply?

As in many cultures, family is extremely important in South Africa. To celebrate the bond between mother (Mama in Zulu) and baby (umtwana), a Little Traveller mama was created holding a baby.

Celebrate family with this Mama & Baby Traveller pair. This is a great gift for the women in your life – mothers, gogos (grandmothers), wives, aunts, sisters, daughters, nieces and friends.

Purchase it online here: http://www.littletravellers.net/specialty-travellers

The death of Peter Townsend in June sent shock waves through multiple social science communities in which he had made seminal contributions, including fields as diverse as ageing, disability, health, poverty and human rights. In each of these fields he not only provided the key scientific reference points for other researchers and for policy makers but he also campaigned tirelessly, on all fronts, to try to improve conditions for the most excluded and vulnerable, both nationally and globally, and to create a more equal and socially just society. This combination of academic excellence and passionate pursuit of social justice was the essence of Peter Townsend’s career and it is this that should be foremost in attempts to take forward and build on his legacy.

This process is well underway. Before he died Peter had set in motion with Policy Press a volume of extracts from his work. The Peter Townsend reader will be published on 9 December with substantial extracts from across his massive contribution and introductory essays from leading experts in each field. In November two events took place which combined a celebration of his legacy with projections of how it could be maintained. The first was a memorial service celebrating his life and work. (A limited edition booklet of selections from his work across six decades will be available shortly from CPAG). The second was a one day memorial conference in which the speakers reflected on his work and how to take forward his legacy. Already annual memorial lectures are planned by the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and the Hong Kong Baptist University (from which Peter received an honorary degree in 2006) and there are likely to be more. Also Policy Press will publish a festschrift for Peter in early 2011, Fighting Poverty, Inequality and Injustice: A manifesto inspired by Peter Townsend which will spearhead the campaign to continue his mission.

Alan Walker, Professor of Social Policy & Social Gerontology, The University of Sheffield

Visit The Policy Press website at http://www.policypress.co.uk.

Asian Rural Institute [www.ari-edu.org] is an international training center set on a 6 hectare farm in Northern Japan where rural leaders from developing countries in Asia, Africa, and the pacific are invited to study for nine months in sustainable, organic agriculture techniques, community development, and leadership. At the end for of the program in December, participants return home to implement programs that will create healthier, more sustainable, more independent villages and communities. A truly vibrant learning community Asian Rural Institute hosts representatives from over 15 different countries with English used as the common language. Christian in inspiration, but ecumenical in practice, Asian Rural Institute welcomes people of all faiths, races, classes, and professions to learn and work together.

Internship Description for 2010

Interns and volunteers are an integral part of the Asian Rural Institute community. Working alongside our participants an staff, they serve in a support role to the training program. They live simply and work humbly and grow as individuals in the unique multicultural environment that is Asian Rural Institute.

Interns must be ready for challenges and physically demanding work. Each intern will be assigned to a section on the farm, in meal service, in food processing, or in the office. Asian Rural Institute is a completely self-sustaining community that does not revolve around a typical nine to five schedule. All Asian Rural Institute community members start work at 6:30  in the morning and often work on Saturday mornings. Despite the long hours, working at Asian Rural Institute is a lot of fun, with the chance to make lasting friendships and have a meaningful impact on our international community. 

Desired Qualifications

Academic interests should include one or more of the following: sustainable agriculture, environmental studies, international relations, Japanese language and culture, social justice issues, religious studies, women’s studies.

An ideal candidate does not need previous farm experience, but should welcome new challenges, such as living and working simply, living within a vast diversity of cultures, ideas, and mentalities, and maintaining an attitude of sharing and service to others. 

No language requirement.

It’s no secret to anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to the state of Catholic higher education that it has drifted far from orthodoxy, and in some cases, from basic Catholic teachings. The list of examples that might be complied would be sufficiently ghastly to demonstrate that fact. Unfortunately I think a new threshold has been crossed, as nominally-Catholic schools become involved with Planned Parenthood. Thanks to CatholicCulture.org for these updates.

First there is the case of Alverno College in Wisconsin, which placed a student as an intern for Planned Parenthood, as can be seen on page 34 of this PDF. Alverno College states in its mission statement that “[s]ervice to the community, improving society by addressing educational needs, and working for social justice, especially for women, are core components of both the founding order and the college.” On the left, “social justice, especially for women” has traditionally meant the unrestricted right to abortion. It is sad to learn that a nominally-Catholic institution may be adopting that same view.

Next there is the case of Spalding University in Kentucky, where a “prominent administrator” has, in the course of her “community involvement” served on the board of Planned Parenthood. Some people might wonder what the big deal is, if she is only an administrator. Well, this same university co-hosted a conference with a CCHD-funded group called “Women In Transition”, at which a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest gave a speech. The topic? Here was the title of the presentation: “It begins with me: Confronting reproductive health issues.” A fitting title, since abortion is the height of selfishness, whether it is a woman choosing to dispose of her child or a father threatening, coercing, or encouraging the mother to do so. No, pro-aborts, it isn’t all about women.

The really tragic thing here is that there is, I believe, some good in the work these groups too. They wish to address poverty and genuine social injustice. But there can be no social justice as long as the innocent and weak may be murdered on a whim. I hope the Catholic students who understand this truth hold the faculty and staff of their schools to account.

today was a politically charged day. from the aftermath of obama’s announcing a troop surge in afghanistan, to the stupak amendment protests in DC, to the rejection of the gay marriage bill in the NY state sentate, it took everything in my power to not just send a mass email to everyone in my office and ask them to sit in a circle with me so that we could share our politically charged feelings.  seriously.

so it was interesting that today this incredibly awesome site, who lives here?, came across my desk.  the site essentially breaks nyc’s boroughs down by neighborhood, and shows the percent of extremely low income, very low income, low income, moderate income, middle income, and high income families in the area.  it also breaks down the percent of families in the area that can afford a 1 BR, 2 BR, or 3 BR apartment at a certain cost.  the most fascinating part for me, however, was the average income in each area.

go a couple blocks north of what is considered the upper west side, and by the time you hit harlem, the average income plummets from $168,000 to $33,000 a year.  something similar takes place when you move east from greenwich village to the lower each side: the average income falls from $141,000 to $36,000 a year.  it was also fascinating to look at the average income of entire boroughs.  the fact that the average income in the bronx is $36,000 is frankly just disturbing.  what i would love to see is the racial breakdown and education level in those neighborhoods, as well.

overall, a really amazing use of interactive technology to make some stunning, and certainly politically charged points.

Yesterday, December 2, was World AIDS Day.

When I left my apartment at 7:30pm tonight, I thought I was going to a little celebratory activity in belated honor of the day, hosted by a local NGO that works with gay men (or, in development parlance, MSM – “men who have sex with men”). Our condom sales coordinator at the office had tossed a few hundred flavored condoms at me earlier in the day, and my boss told me to go check it out since we may be starting programs with MSM in the future.

I was tired and a little cranky and not especially looking forward to handing out business cards with one hand and banana flavored condoms with the other. I’ll go for 45 minutes max, I told myself.

Four and a half hours later, I am now back in my apartment. I should have known this wasn’t going to be the evening I anticipated when I entered the hotel at the appointed hour only to have a six-foot drag queen in a crystal-encrusted blue ball gown skitter across the lobby towards me and hustle me into an elevator, “So you don’t miss the opening number!”

What followed was three and a half packed hours of full-blown Chinese extravaganza…only hosted by all gay men. There were melodramatic modern dances ironically echoing the militaristic performances of the Cultural Revolution, classic Peking opera numbers, scores of glittering drag queens up and down the aisles of the grand auditorium decked out with banners and posters promoting HIV testing and condom use.

There were skits depicting how to make healthy choices in tough situations, a set by a rock band of gay teenagers, and a somewhat unintentionally tragic interview with a young man who had recently tested HIV positive, but was so scared to show his face – even in a room full of activists and allies – that the whole interview was conducted behind a bamboo screen.

The audience of hundreds cheered, no one judged, and presenters talked sincerely about equality among all people. Plus they gave out some raffle prizes of rice cookers and kitchen knives – because this is China, and nobody’s told them it’s not the 1950s anymore.

I sometimes forget what the work I’m involved with here is really about. My organization mostly does HIV prevention work in Kunming, and we mostly work with injecting drug users (IDUs) because until recently that was the most prevalent transmission mode of HIV in China. And I have to admit: working with IDUs, even when you’re not doing the direct work, can get a little depressing. They have as much right to be free of HIV as anybody, but addicts are sick in body and mind. They relapse often and there is as much despair as there is hope.

Tonight I remembered that what we are doing here is really about social justice, and that I am in a rare environment in what is still a very conservative society. When those men I met tonight went home, almost all of them left their “gay” identity in the auditorium, out of necessity. Almost nobody in China gets to work in a place where staff talk about marginalized people like they are human beings, where people don’t think anything of having condoms and sachets of lubricant stacked on their desks, where gay staff members are out of the closet.

I get to live in a progressive little pocket of this country where, for all of its problems, people are striving to make something good and just. And tonight was thrilling.

Not ready to go home directly after the celebration was over, a wandered for a while in Kunming’s empty back streets in the cold, clear night. I followed a yowling cat in and out of a few dark corners before heading home.

World AIDS Day 2009: "We are together with you"

مستوطن يدهس فلسطينيا بحضرة جنود

بثت القناة الثانية الإسرائيلية صورا تظهر مستوطنا من مستوطنة كريات أربع في الخليل الأسبوع الماضي وهو يدهس شابا فلسطينيا مصابا اتهم بمهاجمة مستوطنتين.

وأظهر الشريط المصور السائق -وهو زوج إحدى المستوطنتين- وهو يدهس بسيارته الفلسطيني وسيم مَسْوَدة من الخليل مرتين على الرغم من أن طواقم الإسعاف كانت تعالجه بعدما أطلق جندي النار عليه وأصابه بست طلقات.

وذكر مراسل الجزيرة أن الفلسطيني أصيب بجروح خطيرة وأن حالته حرجة لكنها مستقرة.

في هذه الأثناء قالت الشرطة الإسرائيلية إنها تحقق في الأمر مع المستوطن ومع الشاب الفلسطيني المصاب, بتهمة جرح مستوطِنتين، وقد أفرجت عن المستوطن على الفور.

وقال متحدث باسم الشرطة الإسرائيلية إنه صدرت أوامر للسائق بعدم مغادرة مستوطنته أثناء التحقيق في الأحداث التي وقعت الخميس قرب مدينة الخليل بالضفة الغربية, حيث أظهرت اللقطات السائق وقد دهس الفلسطيني بسيارته مرتين في حين كان جنود من الجيش يتابعون الموقف.

وقال فلسطينيون في الخليل إن الشاب الفلسطيني وسيم مَسْوَدة لا ينتمي لأي تنظيم أو جماعة فلسطينية.
أقرأ المزيد…

Criminal Israeli Settler Runs Over Palestinian In Presence of Israeli Officers

Israeli Channel Two broadcast pictures showing a settler from Kiryat Arba settlement in Hebron last week, which runs over a Palestinian man accused of attacking two settlements injured.

The footage showed the driver – the husband of one of the two settlements – a car runs over a Palestinian from Hebron twice despite the fact that Israeli soldiers were present. Ambulance crews were dealt with after the soldier opened fire, hitting six shots.

News reports that the Palestinian was seriously wounded and his condition critical but stable.

In the meantime, Israeli police said they were investigating the matter with the settler and Palestinian youth injured, accused of wounding two Jewish settlers, has released its settler on the spot.

A spokesman for the Israeli police claims the Israeli officer told the driver not to leave his settlement during the investigation into the events that took place on Thursday near the city of Hebron in the West Bank…

Kicking Horse – this is my best attempt at translating the report from its original Arabic. If you have a better translation please comment or suggest it to me. Thank you…

Perhaps a bit too grisly for a middle schooler; know your kids. So, let me skip to the second stanza that I actually use.

Ah, the power of art. If it can change how we look at this carnage, think how it can change how we look at the world.

Two Views of the Cadaver Room
Sylvia Plath

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume
Of the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.

In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom.

(2)

In Brueghel’s panorama of smoke and slaughter
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Finger a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death’s-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.

Maybe they wouldn’t straight out call themselves revolutionary, but I think they are – because they are searching for another Way of being Christian. They are the Mosaic Community in Austin.

This is where I went to church for the few months that I moved back to Austin last year.  I love Mosaic because it is full of young people.  Not quite my age – mostly college students and young families… I never quite managed to find the single 22-25-year-olds, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.  But still – young adults!  Young adults that are into Believing.  It was pretty sweet.

And not only do they Believe in the Creator and in Christ – but they actually do something with that.  They are focused on social justice, and on committing themselves to the real communities of Austin – the poor, the underprivileged, the overlooked.  They support environmental friendliness and bike-riding.  They are dedicated to Austin as a city, with their time, energy, and funds, even.

Whilst reading The Irresistable Revolution, I was reminded of this community in Austin.  They know that following Christ = not being considered “cool” by “normal” society.  And they do what they do anyway.  I love them for it.  I miss having a community like this; I am still hoping to find one in the New Orleans area.

Mosaic is revolutionary to me because they are not controlled by their institution, as many established churches and other religious establishments are.  They insist on thinking of themselves as a Community, not as a building where people go one day a week to feel better about themselves.  As far as I can tell, they don’t give a rat’s patooty what people think of them – they only want to love and support each other.  They are humble, they are strong, they are courageous… they continue to inspire me to this day – even though I haven’t attended a service there in quite some time.   They also have  spectatular music, and some pretty sweet small groups.

I once attended a Saturday “conference” (for lack of a better word) at Mosaic about food and hunger.  (Sweet!)  During this conference, I was introduced to Bread for the World, ideas on how to eat cheaply/plentifully/healthfully, and to the idea of dumpster diving.  At first, the idea of dumpster diving rather freaked me out… now it intrigues me to no end.  I haven’t tried it yet, but am hoping to soon.  I am also very excited about Dive! – the film coming out soon.

Anyway, this is getting long.  Yay Mosaic!  I think ya’ll are awesome, and I hope to drop by when I visit Austin in December.  Thanks for all your inspiration and support.

This is a passage from the email newsletter I get from a United Church of God (yes, that is that heretical group that brought us the likes of Herbert W. Armstrong) publication called “Good News Magazine.”  They have some pretty nutty ideas about some stuff, but sometimes they say some things that are so right on that I have to stop and listen.  This isn’t the whole of the newsletter.  I stop before they go into their rant about how all holidays are pagan in nature and ways the devil has deceived us into worshiping him when we should be worshiping God.  Still, though, it is hard to argue with what Clyde Kilough is saying here.

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In the midst of tough times, retailers this year are really hoping and praying—after first trying to seduce us through advertising—that “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” give them an economic shot in the arm. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is the busiest shopping day in the year, marking the official beginning of the Christmas shopping season. It is one of the main indicators of whether businesses will turn a profit, that is, be put “in the black”—hence the term, Black Friday.

This makes great fodder for TV news programs. Reporters often interview people lining up and camping out at midnight. They’re ready for the 5 a.m. openings, and, typically, the film crew will capture footage of the stampeding hordes when the doors unlock. The ratings always shoot up when you have a few tramplings in the herd of the unlucky slow ones who stumble and get run over—for them it’s “Black and Blue Friday.”

I understand how starving people can riot. I’ve seen the desperation of hungry people in third world countries. Maybe that’s why seeing crazed shoppers riot and fight over a half-price DVD is just plain embarrassing, because it tells the world something about what we’ve become. These stores aren’t selling food to the starving; they’re selling greed to the “haves” who want to have more! It’s consumer hunger in the land of plenty!

Astute marketers and advertisers have cleverly tapped into basic human nature, and so effectively that we fall for the idea that we’re actually saving money! Don’t we know that while they have slashed prices on some items in order to lure us into the store, they know that once we’re in there we’ll probably buy more things than we intended? Don’t we see that the hunger to have more is part of a larger, far more destructive picture? Don’t we understand that it is the materialistic mind-set that has led to horrific personal debt, overextending ourselves beyond our means financially, which has played a big part in the current economic crisis we’re facing?

But the saddest part of all is that this kicks off the holiday season in which people are supposedly focused on honoring the One who said, “You shall not covet”! This was not God’s suggestion, but His commandment! If we were really honoring Jesus, would we get caught up in such greed?

Exodus From Darkness
A former radical Muslim from Iran was converted by God’s Holy Spirit to become a christian believer and follower  of Jesus.  He now leads his own Christian Ministry and is very skilled and knowledgeable in sharing the gospel with Muslims.  He is available to speak in Churches to teach other christian believers in how to do this effectively.

See his website http://www.ministryblue.com/exodus.html for more details.