7/12/12
7/3/12
7/2/12
6/25/12
6/24/12
6/23/12
3/24/12
3/10/12
I've been in DC for around two months now. Walking home from work late tonight towards the red-line. Took the escalator down. Slid my metro ticket into the machine. Walked down the stairs towards the tracks.
I was standing waiting for the train and a man was sitting on the marble bench behind me. Hunched-over, sleeping. Or blacked out. Or both.
The most honest thing I've heard so far?
He woke up, coughed and cleared his throat. He stared at me and said: "the world's a scary fucking place".
It's an honor to be here. I don't know what else to say.
I was standing waiting for the train and a man was sitting on the marble bench behind me. Hunched-over, sleeping. Or blacked out. Or both.
The most honest thing I've heard so far?
He woke up, coughed and cleared his throat. He stared at me and said: "the world's a scary fucking place".
It's an honor to be here. I don't know what else to say.
2/28/12
2/5/12
2/3/12
1/30/12
This morning I went to an informal discussion to listen to Agnes Kirabo, the National Coordinator for Food Rights Alliance in Uganda. The title of the talk was "Lasting Solutions to End Hunger: a Ugandan Perspective", but again, there wasn't any real structure to the talk. It was just a relaxed "questioning and answering". The round-table listeners dug into their catered cardboard box lunches with falafel-wraps and individually packaged cookies and baked pita-chips.
Each one of the sincerely concerned audience members sat listening--strategizing and synergizing for solutions to world hunger--with their own, hermetically sealed, mass produced, fair-trade certified, plastic entombed, organic, Mediterranean-Mexican infused sandwich wraps. An authoritative Ugandan activist was sitting across the table describing injustices that lead to inequalities that lead to poverty and hunger.
The good looking woman sitting next to me, with dark hair and an "ethnically" designed shoal wrapped over her shoulders was nodding her head rythmically as she listened to Ms. Kirabo--expressing heart-felt empathy and compassion as she slowly wrinkled through her pita-chips bag. Crinkling and crunching and eating loudly.
The other woman in front and to the left of me was doing the same. Rummaging though her waxed-carboard box with hygenic, food-grade tissue paper wrappings to see if any chip or sandwich trailings had escaped her vigilant eye-balls. The more she tried to be quiet, the louder and more awkward and more drawn-out it became. She turned her head, scrunched her shoulders, and pursed her lips saying "sorry" with embarrassment. But she didn't stop.
It was more amusing then annoying. And besides the context is this: today was an absolutely amazing opportunity to sit with representatives from some of the largest humanitarian organizations on earth. Each one of them more knowledgable and experienced than me--by orders of magnitude and light-years and whatnot. Each one of them has sincerely and absolutely dedicated their careers, if not their lives, to help people in dire-straits.
But the irony or contradiction was there nonetheless. And for me, it couldn't be ignored.
My schedule for the next four months largely consists of going to awesomely interesting panel discussions and lectures on the topic of global hunger and food security. Yet it's strange to be in such a wealthy area, speaking with very influential people and receiving free promotional material and lunches, all in the name of hunger. And it's not guilt or misplaced pity or confused teen-aged angst. The other day I spoke with an older woman who worked for a company promoting technological literacy amongst the elderly. She told me her company needed a blog and so they hired a college-intern...The same itch of irony or contradiction or what-have-you... If I can cross-pollinate: these two instances are similar in that they exemplify or embody a central disconnect that's symptomatic of a larger more noxious problem.
We sat today in the conference room with a passion to make a profound difference in the world. But does any of it matter considering the fundamental rift between myself and--say--a poor, hungry person living in Uganda? How much of my theorizing about land rights and private property laws and climate change mitigation policies and eco-colonialism and community resilience really translates to a more equitable good; to more understanding? And how much of it is just a verbosely veiled acknowledgment that there's an inseparable divide between cultures and human experience--and we can never mind the gap... A profound chasm that can't be crossed, and so on...
We sat today talking about hunger while we were gorging ourselves with food that has been machine-constructed to taste so unnaturally incredible and jam-packed with nutrients that it's actually offensive. My felafel and my coke on ice is a sign of egregious excess. How can we even have a simple conversation with other cultures when our most cursory behaviors are dowsed with obliviousness and arrogance? How can we talk about equality when even my sandwich is contributing to disparity?
Late at night, I typically massage my muscles that are sore from sitting in an ergonomic chair for too long. I wipe my brow of internet-sweat and caress my ego with thoughts of suffering and how it's totally relative. And how we all experience happiness and hardship and how that's the tie that binds humanity. But it's not.
When we talk of world hunger, with droopy eyes, and shaking heads while unabashedly inhaling chips and Cokes, it's clear that even the best of us are the problem. My life, no matter how much I devote it to saving children in Zimbabwe, or helping old blind ladies in Sri Lanka, will always be an impediment for others. And my good deeds won't be marked as altruism but instead as propaganda and aggrandizement. I have this sinister feeling that modern manifestations of hunger and poverty aren't problems on the margins. That is to say, they can't be fixed with minor tweaks to the current system. And so any attempt to address hunger and poverty without acknowledging the systemic and structural inequalities our own lives create is wholly insincere. Without sounding too melodramatic: the central issue is my waking breath and how success and wealth seems to demand subjugation and sorrow.
1/28/12
I walked into the demonstration about an hour after it began to photograph and put my make-believe journalist hat on. It was surprising to see how few people (~50-60 people) were protesting, especially given the number of police officers responding via cars, trucks, horses, bikes, motorcycles. Secondly what was immediately startling was the handful of topless ladies and the few dudes walking with pants around their ankles. The entire block was barricaded and I counted at least 30 police cars, but I'd speculate there was at least 60 in order to adequately close all of the streets and alley-ways, but I can't confirm this. The crowd periodically taunted the human fence of police officers and at one point they tried to break past the officers towards the Hilton where the banquet was held. The situation became extremely tense as the mounted police used their horses to move and deter the crowd. It seemed inevitable that somebody would be tased and/or arrested. And then a woman I hadn't previously seen carted--via a dolly-- a full-blown stereo system and amplifier and proceeded to blast KRS-ONE. The mix of naked people and stereo-speakers blaring hip-hop, pointed at the cops-- along with many other observers--I was astonished. "I can't believe they haven't been arrested yet".
I moved next to the light pole across the street and took down some notes. An older woman was standing behind me holding a cardboard sign encouraging the Occupy movement and I couldn't help but wonder how this crowd spoke for her. Why was this woman supporting the protest yet standing so far away? This mosh-pit of young adults-- supposedly fighting for equality and justice--how could a 60-something year old Black woman fit in?
And it leads to a central question the Occupy movement faces in general: as an amorphous, autonomous "collective", how can Occupy be truly inclusive and integrative? After all, this is the crux of Occupy: to give a voice to the voiceless (which happens to be the majority or 99% if you will). Watching the woman on the shoulders of a man, with her boobs jostling as they awkwardly danced to a now Tupac track and another young dude doing a solo and lonesome rave dance over in the corner--I couldn't help but feel like I was at a music festival infused with adolescent angst.
And I wondered how many people, driving by in their cars, had their media-induced suspicions confirmed tonight: that the Occupy movement is just a bunch of pretentious and confused kids.
The Occupy phenomenon is faceless and nameless and that could be its greatest strength or curse. The more Occupy is exclusively co-opted like it was tonight, the easier it will be for the "99%" to dismiss it. If a movement that represents the disenfranchised "majority" can't demonstrate consensus and solidarity then why take it seriously?
The woman standing alone with her cardboard sign was confident that "these people" were from out of town and that they were just being provocative for provocation's sake--in other words they were "just kids being kids", and were likely to catch a cold if they didn't put on something warm to wear.
I asked her if nights like tonight--where downtown DC resembles a Phish concert not a protest--will dissuade people from joining and becoming socially proactive. I couldn't here her answer so I smiled and said "well, that's encouraging". I hope that was an appropriate response.
6/14/11
6/7/11
6/6/11
6/4/11
5/31/11
5/30/11
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