Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 19)

Upon the conclusion of the radical cartography panel, one thing resonated with me: how can we use this “mapping” technique to push society to a better, more green world? Well, I think we may have found our answer. I recently stumbled upon an article that discussed America’s very first, completely sustainable and renewable energy run town. This town, located on the west coast of southern Florida goes by the name of Babcock Ranch, and is completely powered by solar panels and electrically-charged vehicles. Before this, many people (including myself) have looked at the idea of complete sustainability as a infeasible, utopian goal. Now, in 2018, we are actually achieving such.

I believe radical cartography could be used in this instance to map out which American cities have the capability to follow in the footsteps of Babcock Ranch. This would be the first big step in moving towards a sustainable America. That being said, the difficulty in achieving this cannot be understated. The mapping process would require thousands of people responding to surveys about whether or not they would be able to put solar panels on their roofs, use electric cars, and adopt a sustainable diet, amongst other things.

I guess the take-home message here is that there is hope. Hope that people are beginning to do the right things and take initiative. Hope that our world is actually starting to realize that if we do not change the track that we’re on, we don’t have much longer on this world. The beauty of this mapping of social movements is that it puts movements, goals, and ideas in a presentable way that actually gets people motivated. It’s aesthetically pleasing and that in itself can take you and long way.  By applying this technique in order to enact good, even the average Joe will get out of his chair and begin working towards greater good.

Citations:

One of the core themes of this class that I keep finding myself coming back to is the varying power of fact vs. fiction. There is power in reporting the truth, as objectively as possible. There is power in being able to definitively, quantifiably measure the impacts that we are imparting to our planet. But there is also power in telling a story. In telling a story no less true for its lack of “facts,” but a story that tells the truth of the emotions. A story of what a relationship with our land means, and what it means with that relationship is taken away or jeopardized by forces entirely out of your control. Those aren’t stories that we can tell with facts. Both of these stories are powerful.

I was struck in our conversation with mapping at how clearly mapping falls within this frame. Maps tell a story. They tell a story by using facts, but facts that are shaped entirely by people with stories. Yes, objectively the objects represented on a map are indeed there. But what meaning are those objects given? What objects are not given meaning?

The additional power of maps is in the story that of the user. The person reading a map uses that map to shape their relationship with their surroundings. They look at a map and they say yes, those are the things that are important and that I must know in order to understand how I should move within this space. They see a road on a map and they understand what it means to cross that road. They see a river and they understand the things that they need to get over that river. But what about the things that aren’t on a map? What about the things that may truly be impossible to put on a map? How can a map possibly explain to a freshman woman exactly how to cross through a room full of drunk men?

Maps occupy an interesting position on the spectrum of fact vs. fiction, and I haven’t fully been able to process exactly where I would put them. They are composed of fact, but shaped by the fictions of the author. Although I suppose that is true of all ‘factual’ writing, the map imbues that fiction with a special sort of power. We use maps to function, to understand how to move and how to act in our world. When those maps only show one world, what does that mean about how we can move?

As we move forward in our activist pursuits pushing for divestment and increased sustainability in Duke dining facilities, it has been extremely helpful to learn the ropes from some of the pros. We were able to gain insight from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as well as Robin Kirk’s awesome lecture to our class. From these two sources, we learned from activists of the past and present, and activists. I’m not sure how old Robin is, but I think it’s likely that she could have read Rules for Radicals at its peak; she could have been part of the group that Alinsky continuously refers to as “the present generation” or “our youth” in his book, the passionate young activists of his time who were the target audience for Rules for Radicals.

I think two of the most practical takeaways from Rules for Radicals were 1) change takes time and we cannot be impatient in our activist endeavors, and 2) we must recognize the world for what it is and not what we wish it to be. I think that these two concepts are pretty applicable to the work our divestment team has been doing. I think our goal would be for Duke to see our efforts and immediately acquiesce to our request, but this will likely not happen. We need to recognize that change happens over time and we can improve things in baby steps as we reach our end goal. We also need to recognize that Duke has certain reasons for investing in coal/gas/oil industries, as then-President Broadhead stated in his letter to the last group of divestment activists.

I loved that Robin emphasized local activism and its importance within the realm of activism. This is obviously applicable to our class’s activism projects as both of our teams are working on local issues. I also really loved her emphasis on history. I think it is so important for activists to have a thorough understanding of the history of the issue that they are advocating for. Our group has made researching the history of Duke’s investments and the past divestment activism efforts a critical aspect of our plan. By doing this, we can both build on the great ideas of our elder activist friends and learn from their mistakes.

The last three classes have been my favorite of the semester thus far. The inspiring tales and lives of Robin Kirk and Crystal Dreisbach combined with the reading from Rules for Radicals has equipped us with an arsenal of tools for creating successful movements. Among the three sources, there was a common theme of working with all groups of people within the system for gradual changes. In Kirk’s example of the slave trade, people did not devote their efforts to ending slavery all together. Rather, they used witnesses, victims, and informational reports to target multiple angles of the issue and connect with people on a human level.

Rules for Radicals similarly emphasized the importance of understanding and respecting others’ values when addressing one’s own concerns because people typically do not respond well to radical and sudden change in principles. Therefore empathizing with the masses first will increase support for one’s initiatives. Secondly, Saul Alinsky claims that we must “start from where the world is”, meaning we must accept the current situation of the world before we can attempt to change it. In all of this, patience becomes the ultimate virtue.

Lastly, Crystal Dreisbach quoted, “it takes 10 years to build an overnight sensation”, referring to the years of hard work and toiling she put in for the explosive success of her many initiatives. I was also struck, however, by her willingness to invite everybody to the table. Doing so had three major benefits: she was able to knock down any barriers or misconceptions, it created a meeting space for different groups to share their ideas, and the masses contributed by helping fill in gaps of knowledge.

In our own projects, we have already adopted this gradual, collaborative mindset by speaking to multiple groups on campus, dining leaders, and eventually reaching the more general public. For the divestment group, they edited the goal from full divestment to less than 10%. Together, small actions will hopefully build a snowball effect to change campus for the better.

When I’ve looked at environmental issues in the past, it’s always seemed like the scientific research was pretty much finished — we know climate change is happening, what it’s doing, and why — and at this point, all that’s left to do is figure out how to convince policymakers and individuals to take action.

But looking at everything we’ve been talking about in class for the past few weeks, it’s clear that I’m wrong on both fronts. Science has a long way to go even if the evidence for climate change is indisputable, and the task of creating social and political change is hardly unfamiliar or new — we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The climate action movement doesn’t have to build strategies and actions from the ground up; there are hundreds of examples from other movements, periods in history, regions, and groups that can provide inspiration or a model for new causes. The idea of treating activism like a science that can be studied, analyzed, and refined took me entirely by surprise, which I feel a little silly about now. It makes sense that along the way, people would take note of what works and what doesn’t and take those deconstructed parts and turn them into guides and manuals like Rules for Radicals.

But at the same time, it’s still important to see how those ideas have worked in context so we can understand how they should be adapted in different combinations and for different situations. For me, a lot of things clicked when we talked to Robin Kirk and she explained how she’s seen and used various approaches along the way to encourage local action as well as policy change. I still think that one of the biggest challenges facing climate change activists is overcoming the inertia of apathy and detachment — how do you get people to care about something enough to do something about it?

For something like the environment, which many people feel very distant from, activists have to first create the conditions that enable engagement from communities. This means creating a sense of agency and inclusion in communities across all kinds of demographic divisions and building your movement in a way that is accessible — people who don’t know how they’ll pay rent next month don’t have the free time and energy to work on recycling or energy use. This also means that you have to make it personal and show how it directly affects their lives while empowering them to feel like they have the ability and freedom to make a difference. If people are just scared, they won’t do anything. But if they are scared but know what they can do about it, they’ll start solving the problem.

But perhaps one of the biggest activist challenges comes not from the work itself, but finding the motivation to get started and keep going. Climate change can feel overwhelming and impossible, and the current political climate can make a lot of solutions seem hopelessly out of reach. But staying plugged in to both activist circles as well as your local community can help overcome those problems by serving as a reminder that there are lots of enthusiastic and hardworking people out there who share your goals and desires, and it is always possible to make an impact locally. Even a small change is valuable, and as Robin Kirk said, “things are impossible until they’re not” — so keep trying.

When defining the term leader, it ecompasses a massive amount of varying aspects. One of the most fundamental definitions would be to live and behave in a manner that other people could follow. Many of this week’s conversations hinted at what it meant to be a leader of a protest or what to do to get others to follow. The talk by Dr. Robin Kirk did an outstanding job exemplifying the rise of the United States to becoming a world leader, but I thought she did an even greater job explaining the reluctance to maintain that label and to be satisfied living below the moral standard that once governed the nation.

One of the points that Dr. Kirk highlighted that was the United States has always been on the forefront in the battle for human rights. This fight has always been championed by the United States and something that the country had fought diligently for years. However, after the 9/11 attacks, the United States changed their view on protecting rights and dignity by deciding to do whatever they deemed necessary to get the desired results. They embarked on one of the most horrific displays of torture and improper treatment ever seen in the modern era. The reintroduction of waterboarding, holding people in dark rooms on days on end with no food or water, and forcing individuals to stand for hours in excruciating positions to extract as much pain as possible was all fair game to the United States government. Another portion of the talk that made me realize the fundamental change was when Dr. Kirk stated a famous quote issued by Stalin: “the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic.”  Instantly it got me thinking about an article in Time Magazine. With the recent shooting in Florida, the magazine ran an article about whether or not we had become numb to school shootings. The article reports that there have been more than 50 school shootings. Read that number again, over 50 school shootings in the academic year. Many of these though are here today and gone tomorrow. The tragedy is forever for the families but it is no longer news within a day. This point is indicative of just how far America has fallen from the leadership role that we are no longer able to protect ourselves in our own country, especially is a place that is supposed to be a safe haven in schools.  

I think this can also be extrapolated to the way that the United States has viewed environmental policy decisions. The United States is the largest producer of CO2 per capita of any country in the world by a large margin. In 2015, the United States produced 15.53 metric tons per capita of CO2. The United States has continuously used and abused the environment without any concern for the future. The idea of change is a daunting one and will take an extreme amount of work to accomplish. In his book Rules for Radicals, Saul D. Alinksy declares that people must have their minds changed and think in a different way for there to be a revolution in the way that we behave. His point has been demonstrated multiple occasions and to fix issues will take time, but when we band together it is possible. I took this quote from the book as hope for the future; Alinsky writes, “I salute the present generation. Hang on to one of your most precious parts of youth, laughter—don’t lose it as many of you seem to have done, you need it. Together we may find some of what we’re looking for—laughter, beauty, love, and the chance to create.” Banding together and working together will be the only way out of this world that we have become accustomed. The message is timeless; the efforts of us all will pave the future so why not choose to act now and create something beautiful and amazing?

There is one specific tie between Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Robin Kirk’s talk with us last week that I have been thinking about over the weekend. Alinksy notes that human life is a constant climb upwards: one issue will lead to another, happiness resides within the pursuit itself, etc. Many of the points Kirk touched on during her fluid discussion with us relied on this concept of life being ongoing and always presenting something new. In her own life she acknowledged that although her job began as writing, which she loved, she was not satisfied with just writing about issues; she was frustrated, and she wanted more. So then she worked to find what the “more” consisted of for herself. She also mentioned that seeing damage isn’t enough, and the way to make people understand and how to motivate people is to show them the damage.

For me, this paints a very large scale picture of how to confront human rights and life issues, and it makes me feel as though the issues are too big to solve, as you will never truly solve issues because there will always be something more to address. Yet, I found it interesting that Kirk said the key to change was based in local action and by making the issues personal. This presents as a type of cognitive dissonance; for example, while many times I personally feel that the issue of climate change is too large to even tackle, I also need to remember that I can make some change locally through activism and conversations. I would have liked to ask Kirk if she feels that local change can be enough to really make a difference, or how much local activism is needed to truly influence an issue.

Alinsky, Saul D., Rules for Radicals: a Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. Vintage Books, 1989.

One of the most intriguing parts for me of Oil on Water by Helon Habila was the point that although the novel was fiction, it was rooted in fact and relatable occurrences. While dystopian novels I have read in the past have depicted a world destroyed by powerful industrial forces and ruined lands from climate change, I have never read a novel that felt as close to our threatening future reality as this novel did. The way Habila describes the effects of the oil companies through words of birds draped over branches and oil staining their wings and fish floating on the surface reminds me of times I was rowing on the Chicago River and seeing dead goats float past, mysterious furry something’s on the bank, and golf carts scraping my oars. The language in the novel balanced between frighteningly relatable and compellingly pessimistic. Habila also wrote of the livestock depletions, which has been something I have been talking a lot about recently in my daily life. I am working on my Program II proposal, and my intention is to analyze the future of agriculture given the pressing nature of our decreasing farming culture and a continuous population increase, and how to re-localize our food sources to avoid something that I imagine to look quite like the world that Habila describes.

In class, we discussed the intention behind making both Zag and Rufus journalists. We spoke about accessibility, neutrality of their characters, and how they are both removed and the most innocent of observers in many ways. I was pondering the fact that while journalists are all these things, they are also out to seek and report the truth of situations. This can always be skewed, and often is, in our daily lives with competing intentions of politics. I believe Habila’s intention by making the two main characters journalists was to reveal a rawness behind discovering the truth that many people are blind when they read the news or media reports. Journalists seek information and to uncover the truth, which is one of the most vulnerable and genuine jobs that exists. Yet, many see this job as deceitful and complicated. I think Habila wanted to challenge this perception of journalists through the characters.

Habila, H. (2010). Oil on Water New York, USA: W.W. Norton & Company.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to walk through the Smithsonian’s whale warehouse on a field trip with my marine megafauna class. The warehouse was dark and gray and smelled of krill (a sort of pungent, fishy aroma). Fascinating as it was, the place was strangely eerie for me. I leaned over to my friend and told her I felt like I was walking through a whale graveyard. Bones, baleens, and other whale pieces splayed out on white table tops and sat labeled in cabinets. I may be superstitious, but I felt like the spirits of whales lost to the whaling industry were still here. I had to crane my neck to see the top of the blue whale skull.  A certain gravity is commanded of a room holding the skeleton of the largest animal known to have existed. Many of the whale pieces were taken from the remains of the whaling. It was hard to believe that whaling was a multi-million dollar industry a century ago, that whaling was only banned about 50 years ago.

I didn’t think about the connection between whaling and the fossil fuel industry until reading Divest Duke’s report, which explained how our sources of energy have been transitioning to easier and more efficient sources since “Colonial Americans relied on whale blubber and bones in a similar manner as Americans now rely on petroleum products… After whale blubber, wood incineration and processing was the basis for power and raw materials in

America. After wood, coal. After coal, refined petroleum… In each

of these periods, people living daily with the resources they had available may

have been unable to envision what would be next. Yet it is not hypocritical….

encourage and bring about the transition to a more appropriate

fuel source while still using fossil fuels, which divesting does”       (Divest Duke P.24).

Divest Duke’s use of history as evidence demonstrates how we can learn and grow from analyzing the past. Dr. Kirk taught us the importance of looking to history for direction in activism, as did Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals. Historically, considerable resistance stands against any change in our energy sources; whalers didn’t want to lose their jobs, and many were afraid of the economic impacts of ending a multi-million dollar industry. Energy is power and power is money. Whaling did not end on the basis of moral arguments about the treatment of whales (compelling as we find them). Whaling pressure was reduced only once fossil fuels proved more lucrative. As students who care deeply about the environment, we easily see the moral wrongs of investment of fossil fuels. But to push Duke’s Divestment, I think we need a compelling financial argument against fossil fuels and for alternative investments. As Saul Alinsky reminds us, we must start where the world is right now, which is on the edge of a transition, waiting for a push. Renewables are a rising, more ethical, sustainable, and “appropriate” fuel source to power our world. Hopefully someday oil rigs and pipelines will become museum artifacts, not the species they put at risk.

Society, N. “Big Fish: A Brief History of Whaling.” National Geographic Society, 15 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/news/big-fish-history-whaling/.

Divest Duke. Report Proposing Fossil Fuel Divestment for the President’s Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility. 2015.

Alinsky, Saul D. Rules for Radicals: a Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. Vintage Books, 1989.

As humans we are not perfect and as a country of humans we are even less so, but despite these imperfections, we still constantly criticize and complain about other countries and seek to change them while being blind to our own problems. This was shown in Doctor Robin Kirk’s talk regarding the United States’ foreign policy and involvement in foreign affairs. The United States government is a big advocate for human rights and has advocated against the use of torture as a means of gaining information, yet despite this open stance, the US has been accused of participating in and administering such forms of torture especially in the years following the 9/11 attacks.

This similar hypocrisy can be seen in the way we have been dealing with environmental issues. Despite being one of the biggest polluters of the environment in the world, the United States has shifted the burden of environmental stewardship to other countries and has taken a back seat in the issue of global warming. The US is still one of the largest consumers of oil in the world and this consumption has drastically affected indigenous populations in both the US and abroad in Nigeria as shown through the Keystone pipeline debacle and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water.

Therefore, in order to better promote global change, the United States must first look inward and reflect on its own actions in order to fix its own problems before promoting global change for climate change and environmental stewardship is not a YOU issue but a WE issue and affects everybody equally regardless of race, ethnicity, or even country.