‘AILA’AU's Volcano: The Forest Eater

On April 30th, 2018, Hawaii’s Puʻu ʻŌʻō crater collapsed after erupting for 35 years.

How Solar Energy Is Bringing Power Back to Puerto Rico

After watching Hurricane Maria devastate his native Puerto Rico, New York City-based architect Jonathan Marvel knew he needed to do anything he could to give back. He banded together a group of friends to launch Resilient Power Puerto Rico, hoping to use the strength of renewable, solar energy to provide a steady source of electricity back to the island.

Just two weeks after the ambitious initiative was born, Marvel was back in Puerto Rico installing solar panels and batteries on the rooftops of community centers. The storm had wiped out power lines and had left people without electricity. Solar-powered energy would allow them to live and operate off the grid, without reliance on fossil fuel-burning power plants. Suddenly, these solar-powered community centers were able to provide spaces where people could refrigerate medication, filter water and gather together to rely on one another in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.

At last count, Marvel and Resilient Power Puerto Rico were able to bring solar power to 20 community centers across the island—helping over 100,000 people in the process.

Still, Marvel’s work is far from over. It took nearly a year before the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority restored power to most of the island’s residents, and, according to reports, the electricity system is in not in a much better state than it was before Maria wiped out the island.

Longer term, Marvel dreams of a day when Puerto Rico is able to shift to 100-percent renewable energy sources. He believes it is an achievable goal, and Resilient Power Puerto Rico is working to make it a reality.

“We can no longer rely on large fossil fuel burning power plants distributing energy and wires that are going to get blown down every year,” Marvel says. “We have all this power from the sun that needs to be harnessed.”

The Threat to America that’s been Growing Inside America

While the Middle East and the border crisis get all the attention, Charlottesville and El Paso remind us that America’s worst threat is right here at home.

White supremacists gathered for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. By Anthony Crider. CC by 2.0.

August 12th 2017, fresh out of my first year at the University of Virginia, I sat in front of my TV horrified, watching white supremacists marching through a place I had recently starting calling home. Headlines on every major paper ran with Trump’s quote regarding “fine people on both sides.”

When classes started in the fall, my peers and I returned to Charlottesville deeply unsettled by what had happened on our grounds. Our community was rocked to its core. However, the rest of the world quickly moved on without us.

 The past two years, this weekend has marked a time for remembrance, but also caution and fear in Charlottesville. The dates, August 11th and 12th, have become something of the towns very on 9/11, and the police presence during these two days isn’t easy to ignore. The events that took place to years ago are on our minds, however, not on the mind of the nation.  

The march on Charlottesville was the last time I saw white supremacy dominate all the major headlines, that is, until this weekend’s mass shooting in El Paso. We, as a nation, let ourselves become distracted and forgetful of a real problem that’s been growing in the heart of our country. We can point to how the nation has so eagerly embraced the narrative of the “dangerous outsider” to explain why.  

 A decade ago, the Department of Homeland Security released a report on the growing threat of right wing extremism, correctly predicting “the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.” However, this warning was not given serious merit by the Trump administration. President Trump’s transition team made it clear to the DHS that it wanted to focus on Islamic terrorism and reorient programs meant to counter violent extremism to exclusively target international threats like al-Qaeda and ISIL. These Islamic terrorist groups have stayed in the headlines, despite the fact they no longer pose a serious domestic threat. It should come as no surprise that this June the FBI reported a significant rise in white supremacist domestic terrorism in recent months.

 President Trump’s rhetoric has also turned American’s attention away from the alt-right matter at hand, and turned our attention to what he would call an “infestation.” Searching through theTrump Twitter Archive, I failed to find one mention of domestic terrorism, white nationalists or the growing menace they pose to our country. After all, why shouldn’t Trump protect his loyal voter base? It’s no secret that white nationalists are Trump supporters; alt right leaders have even been spotted at his rallies.

President Trump says immigrants “infest” our country. Via Twitter. June 19, 2018.

The president has protected these terrorists by turning the national discussion elsewhere -the southern border. As a result, liberals have kept themselves busy investigating the disgusting conditions of border control centers and “children in cages,” while conservatives call for further border restrictions. These leaves no one time for anyone to wage war against the real domestic threat --white supremacy. 

Trump denounced “racist hate” Monday after the shooting this weekend. He blamed violent video games, mental health and, ironically, internet bigotry from prompting the Dayton and El Paso attacks. He failed to make mention of any real action that might be taken against white supremacist terrorism, let alone endorse gun law reform. 

 Had the attackers been Black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern, the White House would surely be taking extreme action. However, just like during the aftermath of Charlottesville, nothing serious is being done to combat alt-right violence. 

 Now,in light of the two year anniversary, I can’t help but wonder if our country truly took notice of the event that shook our little community two years ago. I still pass by the street where Heather Heyer was killed by a domestic terrorist who drove his car into a crowd of people two years ago. The street, now named Heather Heyer Way, remains adorned with chalk writing, flowers and crosses dedicated to her memory. How many more memorials must we lay in El Paso, and the rest of the world, before we address the white supremacist threat?  

EMILY DHUE is a third year student at the University of Virginia majoring in media. She is currently studying abroad in Valencia, Spain. She's passionate about writing that makes an impact, and storytelling through digital platforms.

Mexico

The videographer is Face du Monde and these are his comments on the video:

“Since I was a kid, it always has been a dream of mine to see "El dia de los Muertos" in Mexico. So last October my friend Max and I decided to travel there. It was my second time in this country I really fell in love with. We spent 3 weeks travelling around Quintana Roo, Yucatán and Campeche states. I made this video to show how this country has his own culture, his own history that you will find nowhere else in the world. "El dia de los Muertos" is an event everybody should see once in his life, it really represents the Mexican soul. I would like to thank all amazing people I met there who made this journey unforgettable.”

Explore the Melting Ice Caves of Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier

Mendenhall Glacier is a spectacular 12-mile-long glacier near Juneau, Alaska. Ice caves make up its surreal interior. Only the truly adventurous can access its icy walls, as the trip to see them requires a kayak trip, an ice climb and—once you're inside—the faith that the glacier’s melting walls won't give way. But this natural wonder is under threat. The glacier has been retreating incredibly quickly in recent years due to warmer temperatures and rising sea levels. Since 1958, it has receded by almost two miles. What remains, however, is an utterly breathtaking fantasyland.

Protecting Our Oceans from Ghost Traps

At any given time, there are thought to be over 360,000 tons of loose fishing gear floating through our oceans. These disregarded pieces of debris are a danger to our aquatic ecosystems, trapping fish, turtles, birds and even whales. Kurt Lieber assembled the Ocean Defender Alliance, a group of volunteer divers cleaning California’s coasts of ghost nets and traps.

Turning Plastic Trash Into Cash in Haiti

What would our world look like without plastic? From life-saving medical devices to computers to Tupperware, it’s changed the way we live, work and understand the world around us. But the same wonder material that has revolutionized so much is choking our oceans. It’s estimated that, every minute, an entire garbage truck worth of plastic hits our oceans. Otherwise put, 8 million tons of once-useful items find their way to global waters each year. There, over time, they break into tiny pieces called “microplastics,” which end up consumed by marine life. 

For David Katz, fighting plastic pollution should start long before a soda bottle hits the tide. What’s more, he believes the very plastic waste that litters our shores and seas is anything but waste. In 2014, David launched the Plastic Bank, “a global network of micro-recycling markets that empower the poor to transcend poverty by cleaning the environment,” according to its website. The organization currently operates in Haiti, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil, and works like this: community members collect plastic waste (much of it post-consumer products like milk containers, detergent bottles and plastic bags) and bring it to Plastic Bank centers where it’s weighed and exchanged for cash. In Haiti, for example, more than 2,000 collectors have recovered around 7-million pounds of plastic since the organization arrived in 2015. 

What was once considered waste can now be sold to major brands like Marks and Spencer and Henkle, who will use it to package and distribute their products in a more sustainable manner. As David Katz puts it, this “social plastic” is “empowering and precious”—something that bonds collectors in places like the Philippines and Haiti to brands and consumers around the world.

America’s Public Schools Seldom Bring Rich and Poor Together – and MLK Would Disapprove

Five decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many carry on his legacy through the struggle for racially integrated schools. Yet as King put it in a 1968 speech, the deeper struggle was “for genuine equality, which means economic equality.” Justice in education would demand not just racially integrated schools, but also economically integrated schools.

The fight for racial integration meant overturning state laws and a century of history – it was an uphill battle from the start. But economic integration should have been easier. In the mid-18th century, when education reformers first made the case for inclusive and taxpayer-supported education, they argued that “common schools” would ease the class differences between children from different backgrounds.

As Horace Mann, the most prominent of these reformers, argued in 1848, such schools would serve to counter the “domination of capital and the servility of labor.” Learning together on common ground, rich and poor would see themselves in common cause – a necessity for the survival of the republic.

More than 150 years later, the nation has yet to realize this vision. In fact, it has been largely forgotten. Modern Americans regularly scrutinize the aims and intentions of the Founding Fathers; but the early designs for public education – outlined by Mann, the first secretary of education in Massachusetts, as well as by leaders like Henry Barnard, Thaddeus Stevens, and Caleb Mills – are mostly overlooked. Today, the average low-income student in the U.S. attends a school where two-thirds of students are poor. Nearly half of low-income students attend schools with poverty rates of 75 percent or higher.

Education historians, like myself, have generally focused their research and attention on racial segregation, rather than on economic segregation. But as income inequality continues to deepen, the aim of economically integrated schools has never been more relevant. If we are concerned with justice, we must revitalize this original vision of public education.

Shared community

Early advocates of taxpayer-supported common schools argued that public education would promote integration across social classes. They thought it would instill a spirit of shared community and open what Horace Mann called “a wider area over which the social feelings will expand.”

Horace Mann (1796-1859) was an early advocate of public education in the U.S. Fotolia/AP

And, generally speaking, it worked. The ultra-rich mostly continued to send their children to private academies. But many middle- and upper-income households began to send their children to public schools. As historians have shown, economically segregated schools did not systematically emerge until the mid-20th century, as a product of exclusionary zoning and discriminatory housing policies. Schools weren’t perfectly integrated by any means, particularly with regard to race. They were, however, vital sites of cross-class interaction.

Many prominent Americans – including U.S. presidents – were products of the public schools. Commonly, they sat side by side in classrooms with people from different walks of life.

But over the past half-century, students have been increasingly likely to go to school with students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Since 1970, residential segregation has increased sharply, with twice as many families now living in either rich or poor neighborhoods – a trend that has been particularly acute in urban areas. And segregation by income is most extreme among families with school-age children. Poor children are increasingly likely to go to school with poor children. Similar economic isolation is true of the middle and affluent classes.

Contemporary Americans commonly accept that their schools will be segregated by social class. Yet the architects of American public education would have viewed such an outcome as a catastrophe. In fact, they might attribute growing economic inequality to the systematic separation of rich and poor. As Horace Mann argued, it was the core mission of public schools to bring different young people together – to consider not just “what one individual or family needs,” but rather “what the whole community needs.”

Many parents do continue seek out diverse schools. A number of school districts have worked to devise student assignment plans that advance the aim of integration. And some charter schools are reaching this market by pursuing what has been called a “diverse-by-design” strategy. As demonstrated by research, diverse schools can and often do improve achievement across a range of social and cognitive outcomes, such as critical thinking, empathy and open-mindedness.

Largely overlooked, however, has been the political benefit of integrated schools. One rarely encounters the once-common argument that the health of American democracy depends on rich and poor attending school together. This is particularly surprising in an age of tremendous disparities in wealth and power. Members of Congress, on average, are 12 times wealthier than the typical American. Moreover, lawmakers are increasingly responsive to the privileged, even at the expense of middle-class voters.

If elites are isolated from their lower- and middle-income peers, they may be less likely to see a relationship of mutual commitment and responsibility to those of lesser means. As scholars Kendra Bischoff and Sean F. Reardon have argued, “If socioeconomic segregation means that more advantaged families do not share social environments and public institutions such as schools, public services, and parks with low-income families, advantaged families may hold back their support for investments in shared resources.”

What can be done?

Today more than 100 school districts or charter school chains work to integrate schools economically. Cambridge, Massachusetts, for instance, has four decades of experience balancing enrollments by social class, seeking to match the diversity of the city as a whole in each school.

This, of course, is only possible in a diverse place. Median family income in Cambridge is roughly US$100,000, while 15 percent of city residents live below the poverty line. It is also made possible through heavy investments in public education in the city. After all, it is far easier to convince middle-class and affluent parents to send their children to the public schools when per-pupil expenditures rival the highest-spending suburbs, as they do in Cambridge.

But not every district has Cambridge’s advantages. Nor does every district have similar political will.

The latter of those two constraints, however, may soon begin to change. Faced with a growing divide between rich and poor, Americans may begin to demand schools that not only serve young people equally from a funding standpoint, but also educate them together in the same classrooms.

Common schools by themselves are not enough to solve the problem of economic inequality. Yet if Americans seek to create a society in which the rich and the poor see themselves in common cause, common schools may be a necessary – and long overdue – step. We must come to see, in the words of Martin Luther King, that, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

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Jack Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

Fighting Food Waste in Los Angeles

When Rick Nahmias realized that fresh produce in his community was routinely being tossed out for minor bruising or browning, he knew something needed to be done to end the unnecessary waste. He founded Food Forward, a non-profit dedicated to ending hunger by sharing abundance. The organization recovers fresh produce that may otherwise go to waste, collecting from farmers markets, wholesale food suppliers, and even residential backyards. Within the past year, they’ve already fed 1.5 million people across Los Angeles.

Renaissance on the Bayou: The Revival of a Lost Language

In the summer of 1930, at the dawn of the Great Depression, a 21-year-old linguist named Morris Swadesh set out for Louisiana to record the area’s Native American languages, which were disappearing rapidly.

Morris and his peers were in a race against time to document them, and in the small town of Charenton on the Bayou Teche, he encountered Benjamin Paul and Delphine Ducloux, members of a small tribe called Chitimacha – and the last two speakers of their language.

But today, if you visited the Chitimacha reservation, you’d never know that their language went unspoken for half a century.

Over the past several decades, many Native American tribes have participated in what has become a robust language revitalization movement. As their populations of fluent speakers dwindle and age, tribes want to ensure that their heritage languages are passed on to the next generation – before it’s too late.

But because the Chitimacha tribe had no living speakers for a number of decades, it made the challenge that much greater. In the end, the story of the language’s decline, loss and rebirth is a remarkable example of cultural survival.

Why document a language?

Unlike some other cultural legacies, languages leave no trace in the archaeological record. There’s often no trace in the written record, either.

Only a small portion of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages are well-documented in places like dictionaries and grammar books. Those that are least well-documented are the most endangered.

Many dead or dying languages contain exotic features of verbal and written communication. Chitimacha, for example, doesn’t use a word “be” in phrases like “she is reading.” Instead, speakers must use a verb of position, such as “she sits reading” or “she stands reading.” These are things that challenge linguists’ understanding of how language works.

By working with Ben and Delphine, Morris was trying to capture a small piece of that linguistic diversity before it vanished.

One day, with Morris sitting on Ben’s porch dutifully scribbling down his every word in a composition notebook, Ben finished a story (a riveting tale of how the Chitimacha first acquired fire by stealing it from a mythical old blind man in the west). He then went on to tell Morris:

There were very many stories about the west. I believe I am doing well. I have not forgotten everything yet. When I die, you will not hear that sort of thing again. I am the only one here who knows the stories.

Ben passed away three years later, and Delphine not long thereafter. After their deaths, it seemed the Chitimacha language was doomed to silence.

Why do languages die?

How does a language come to have only two speakers? Why have so many Native American languages become endangered? The causes are manifold, but there are two main ones: sharp reductions in the population of the community that speaks the language, and interruptions in the traditional means of transferring the language from one generation to the next.

In the past, the former caused the most damage. Native American peoples were decimated by European diseases and subject to outright warfare.

A portrait of two Chitimacha by French-born painter François Bernard (1870). Wikimedia Commons

Prior to European contact, the Chitimacha were lords of the bayou, with a territory stretching from Vermillion Bay in the west to present-day New Orleans in the east. They were expert canoe-makers and wielded extensive knowledge of the region’s labyrinthian network of waterways.

But by the time the French arrived in present-day Louisiana in 1699, the tribe’s numbers had dwindled to around 4,000, their communities gutted by European diseases that spread faster than the Europeans themselves.

After a protracted war with the French, they retreated deep into the bayou, where the their reservation at Charenton sits today. The 1910 census recorded just 69 people living there.

Only later did the second cause of language decline occur, when children on the reservation were sent to the infamous Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, which interrupted the transmission of the language to the next generation.

Ben and Delphine, born in the latter half of the 1800s, were part of the last generation to learn the language at home. Eventually their parents and many of their peers passed away, leaving them as the last two speakers of the language.

Renaissance on the bayou

Ben probably never imagined that the efforts of him and Delphine would spark the tribe’s linguistic renaissance, awakening their language from 60 years of silence.

Delphine Ducloux was one of the two last speakers of the Chitimacha language, prior to its revival. State Library of Louisiana

In the early 1990s, cultural director for the tribe Kim Walden received a call from the American Philosophical Society Library informing her that they had all of Morris’ notebooks, and even his drafts for a grammar manual and dictionary, which totaled hundreds of pages in all. Thus began the herculean effort to revive the language.

The tribe put together a small-but-dedicated team of language experts, who set out to learn their language as quickly as possible. They began to produce storybooks based on Ben and Delphine’s stories, and word lists from the dictionary manuscript.

In 2008, the tribe partnered with the software company Rosetta Stone on a two-year project to create computer software for learning the language, which today every registered tribal member has a copy of. This is where I came in, serving as editor and linguist consultant for the project, a monumental collaborative effort involving thousands of hours of translating, editing, recording and photographing. We’re now hard at work finishing a complete dictionary and learner’s reference grammar for the language.

Today, if you stroll through the reservation’s school, you’ll hear kids speaking Chitimacha in language classes, or using it with their friends in the hall. At home they practice with the Chitimacha version of Rosetta Stone, and this past year the tribe even launched a preschool immersion program.

The kids even make up slang that baffles adult ears, a sure sign that the language is doing well – and hopefully will continue to thrive, into the next generation and beyond.

Author Danny Hieber presents the story of the Chitimacha language at the University of California’s Grad Slam competition.

DANIEL W. HIEBER is a PhD Candidate in Linguistics at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

Literacy… for Whom?

The significance of the Gary B. v. Snyder lawsuit dismissal.

Detroit students opened up the conversation on who has the right to education (Source: Steve Neavling).

On June 29, 2018 US District Judge Stephen J. Murphy III dismissed a federal class-action lawsuit, Gary B. v. Snyder. The lawsuit, filed in 2016 by Public Counsel and Sidley Austin LLP on behalf of a class of students, claimed the plaintiffs were deprived of the right to literacy. The decision will be appealed at the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Although Judge Murphy agreed a degree of literacy is important for such matters as voting and job searching, he did not say it was fundamental: constitutional.  The central reasoning for the dismissal of the case was the suit failed to show overt racial discrimination by the defendants in charge of the Detroit Public Schools: the state of Michigan. The other reasoning Judge Murphy provided was that the 14th amendment’s due process clause does not require Michigan provide “minimally adequate education.”

Meanwhile the case brings up an important question its initial filing gave rise to: is literacy a constitutional right? One could argue the importance of literacy goes back to Reconstruction. According to Professor Derek Black, Southern states had to rewrite their constitutions with an education guarantee in addition to passing the 14th amendment before they could be readmitted into the US. Black states “the explicit right of citizenship in the 14th  Amendment included an implicit right to education.”

The theme of education and citizenship is a central component to the complaint’s argument for literacy as a fundamental right. It appeared in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case too, which emphasized that education was “the very foundation of good citizenship.” The complaint drew on this citizenship theme to argue the importance of establishing elementary literacy tools—about the equivalent of a 3rd grade reading level. These can then develop into adolescent literacy skills, which allow an individual to comprehend and engage with words. Such engagement is what democratic citizens need when they are making decisions on who to vote; even more importantly, literacy is essential to understanding the often complex ballots voting requires. Further, literacy allows one to take part in political conversations.

The schools in question also “serve more than 97% children of color,” according to the complaint. Many of these students also come from low income families. On the 2017 Nation’s Report Card the average score out of 500 for reading was 182 for Detroit 4th graders, compared to the national average of 213 in other large city school districts. If the 1982 Pyler v. Doe case argued children could not be denied free public education that is offered to other children within the same state—in line with the 14th amendment—then why the disparity in scores?

The plaintiffs believe the disparity lies in deeply rooted issues in the Detroit Public Schools. They argue literacy tools that are first taught in elementary school are not only unavailable to them but that their schools are also not adequate environments for fostering education.The complaint mentions unsanitary conditions, extreme classroom temperatures, and overcrowded classrooms as environmental stressors. They also mention inadequate classroom materials as well as outdated and overused textbooks.

Worn history textbook from 1998 (source: Public Counsel).

Not only is the school environment not conducive to learning for these students but their teachers are often not the proper facilitators for learning. The complaint mention such issues as high teacher turnover, frequent teacher absences, lack of short term substitute teachers, inadequate teacher training, and allowance of non-certified individuals.  The complaint also states students at these schools may also have unaddressed issues related to trauma teachers are not trained for.

And the solution to these discrepancies could very well be what the plaintiffs are arguing for: make literacy, education, a fundamental right. In a 2012 Pearson study on global education systems, the US was number 17. All the countries ahead of the US had either a constitutional guarantee of education or a statue acknowledging the role of education. According to Stephen Lurie, this creates a baseline ruling of what education entails: a culture of education around which laws can form.

Such a baseline ensures education is not a question of privilege. Indeed such conditions as the complaint mentions, as lawyer Mark Rosenbaum stated, would be “unthinkable in schools serving predominantly white, affluent student populations.”  What Gary B. v. Sanders is asking for is a safe school environment, trained teachers, and basic instructional materials. It is asking that Detroit students are guaranteed a minimum of education that will at least give them the chance other students in Michigan have at becoming informed citizens and adults.

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Teresa Nolwalk

Teresa Nolwalk is a student at the University of Virginia studying anthropology and history. In her free time she loves traveling, volunteering in the Charlottesville community, and listening to other people’s stories. She does not know where her studies will take her, but is certain writing will be a part of whatever the future has in store.

Inside an Apache Rite of Passage Into Womanhood

For the Mescalero Apache Tribe, girls are not recognized as women until they have undergone the Sunrise Ceremony- an ancient, coming-of-age ceremony that lasts for four days. Last May, VICE got rare access to the ceremony for Julene Geronimo - the great, great grand-daughter of the renowned Apache leader, Geronimo. We followed Julene through each day of her arduous rite-of-passage to better understand what womanhood means for the Apache tribe, and how these ceremonies play a significant role in preserving a way of life that almost became extinct.

My First Zero-Bag Trip and Why It Was Important

I’m grateful to be fortunate in a few ways, but the one lucky bit currently on my mind is that I like to write. Generally, and especially when it comes to this blog, I try and write about things that seem important. I can certainly pound out mindless marketing drivel at ~90wpm as I did for a grueling six months in one particular job, but I never thought that was important (though I lied at the interview and said I did). In the years since calling that my profession I’ve learned some things. One of those things is not to lie at job interviews because even if you do get a job you don’t like, you will not be able to sustain it day-in and day-out. Another thing I’ve learned is that writing words that do not seem important is like eating at Taco Bell. It might seem like a good idea before you start, there’s no actual discernable benefit other than a temporary dopamine hit, and even as you’re doing it you find yourself wondering why.

I try and write blog posts that, at their most unsuccessful, will at least entertain. If they are a little more successful they might point you towards an object or idea that can be of use to you. My most successful posts will do both, and if I’m really on a roll, without any spelling mistakes. If I have an idea for some writing that will do none of those things, I don’t write it.

Sometime before the new year I had the opportunity to visit a beautiful landmark someplace close to my old hometown, the beautiful capital city of Toronto, ON. (There’s a joke in there for my Ottawa friends.) I went to Niagara Falls for a two-day, one-night trip. Being in a particularly minimalist mood as I decided what to pack up in my bag for the trip, I had a thought that sauntered into my mind, sat down, and refused to leave. It was: “All right Miss Fancy-Pants one-bagger, how about a real challenge? Don’t bring a bag.”

Since in my general experience the thoughts that refuse to leave are the ones that turn out to be important (even if at the time I don’t know why), I decided to listen to it. So aside from the items I take with me daily (wallet, phone, headphones, power bank), here’s what I brought for the two-day, one-night trip.

All I see when I look at this is how huge my fingers look.

I’m holding a little zip pouch with some lip balm, tweezers and cuticle trimmers (because all those things are annoying to not have on hand), and a just-in-case tampon. In my other hand is a pair of balled-up socks with some underwear tucked into the middle. These items went into the pockets of my Uniqlo down jacket, the jacket went onto me, and I went to Niagara Falls.

It was cold. I was unperturbed.

I know, you’re thinking, “But what about X?! How did you Y?! What did you do for Z?!” Well, I made some assumptions. The plan was to stay in a hotel. Since Niagara Falls is a city that inexplicably exists almost solely for tourists (and once long ago was a terribly bloody battlefield that soon after became a tourist attraction - but I digress) I figured the hotel room would be well appointed. I bet that there would be a toothbrush available, and soap to wash with, and probably skin lotion. The latter two of these assumptions resolved in my favor. There was mouthwash, at least.

I intended to wear most the same clothes on both days, aside from the change of socks and underwear, and this went fine. In fact, aside from the discovery that I never again want to go longer than twenty-four hours without brushing my teeth, I wasn’t really put out by not having more stuff with me. Actually, it was quite the opposite. Not having any bag at all made me feel quite like a kid at recess, freshly unshackled from the norm and wanting to run around just for the heck of it.

This was all some months ago and it’s taken me until now to write about it, mainly because I couldn’t decide why it was important. I figured it out earlier today during an altogether unrelated moment, listening to an audiobook at the gym. It was The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman (my favourite author and a constant inspiration). If you happen to be at all interested in writing or observing life or breathing I highly recommend it. He speaks at one point about writing things to find out what it is he thinks of them. I had minimalism in the back of my mind and something fell into place. Like with the trip to Niagara Falls, and more importantly, in general, I experiment with doing without so I can discover what it is I really need - and to go a step further, to find out whether or not I have the fortitude and resourcefulness to do without anyway. It’s how I came to nomadism and traveling with one bag in the first place - by experimenting.

It’s all too easy to be on autopilot, doing things a certain way because that’s the way you’ve always done them. It’s a refreshing and informative experience to, just for the heck of it, try something that for you is completely unusual. It doesn’t matter if it’s about doing without, though it’s almost certainly guaranteed to make you feel uncomfortable, temporarily. It doesn’t have to stick, but it might. At the very least, you’ll learn something about yourself that you wouldn’t have found out otherwise. And that’s why it was important for me to take a short trip with nothing more than what fit in my pockets.

Next time, though, I’ll bring a toothbrush.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON HER ONE BAG.

VICKY LAI

Vicky is a software developer originally hailing from Toronto, ON Canada. She's been travelling the world while living out of one bag since 2016. She loves telling stories through writing and photography, and combines these passions at heronebag.com.

Lessons from My Time in Standing Rock

The chaos of that day was vivid. In the morning, I remember strolling around Oceti Sakowin, the main camp of Standing Rock, and asked if anyone had been arrested at the new frontline camp. My friends had camped there the night before in an effort to help protect the space from the police, whom many rumored were prepared with riot gear and paddy wagons. 

The newly established camp had been set up to block the next part of the construction for the Dakota Access Pipeline and the people residing there were building the infrastructure to survive the incoming winter months. By the evening, elders were shouting over the microphones at Oceti Sakowin, “We need you on the frontlines! The police have arrived!”

Vans and trucks speed out of the main entrance of the camp, all packed with people in masks and scarves. Highway 1806 was lined with cars, cameras, and people. Grey smoke billowed in the distance as a car burned. The chaos could be felt. I rushed into the frontline camp and began helping wherever I could. A indigenous woman and I carried things out of her tent as police closed in with their batons. Dark tanks stood in the distance and snipers on hilltop.

The more that I saw, the more that my heart began to race. Bulldozers began to plow through sacred burial grounds before my very eyes. Men were dragged out of teepees in their underwear. People pulled their bruised and bleeding friends array from the barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets. I grabbed my own friend as we slipped through the crowd after police shot at a horse.

With distance from my month spent in Standing Rock, I still find myself waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of the thousands of people that devoted so much time and pain to establish one of the most powerful modern cases of resistance against corporate greed. I think of the main fire at Oceti Sakowin, where people would gather every night with soup or cornbread or rice cooked by volunteers in the kitchen. I think of the children running around during recess and of the sun setting in the background as I walked back to my tent. I think of the moments experienced there, devoured by terror at the hands of the state.

Standing Rock, like many things in life, was a lesson in pain and endurance. It was also a lesson in how to love and demand a new world in one scarred by violence. There were many times that I wished to turn away and turn away from the horror, but as an activist, writer, and lover of freedom, I could not. As a black person in America, I have faced my own ordeals because this country has refused to wash away the oppression of present social institutions.The indigenous tribes that gathered deserved more and still do after centuries of surviving colonialism.

But the question still remains - what do we do next to help the environment? The answer arrives when we build spaces, like Standing Rock, that aim to show another way, a better way to relate to each other and treat the Earth. The answer arrives when we begin to understand that all of our lives are on the line if we do not act now. The answer arrives when we choose to not turn away.

RYANT TAYLOR

Ryant Taylor is a writer and activist from Cleveland, Ohio. He has participated in protests in France, Ferguson, and Standing Rock. He is the creator of Decolonize The Mind, a travel blog, and is currently freelance writing in the Philippines. 
 

Protesting the Travel Ban at LAX: Attorney Julia Trankiem Shares Her Volunteer Experience

On January 29, 2017, in response to Executive Order 13769—nicknamed the “travel ban”— which suspended refugee arrivals and banned entry into the U.S. for 7 predominantly Muslim countries, and likely spurred by the previous day’s demonstrations at JFK airport, hundreds of protesters descended on LAX condemning the Order. 

That Sunday morning, chants like, “No Hate, No Fear. Immigrants Are Welcome Here,” rang out throughout the airport. There was marching, there were signs, there was singing, there were cries. Religious adherents, military veterans, descendants of immigrants, translators, lawyers, and politicians were present, demonstrating and lending support and services. 

One of the attorneys lending her services was Julia Trankiem. The daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, and an alumna of University of Michigan Law School, Julia practices litigation and employment law in Los Angeles. Friday evening, word of the travel ban reached her. Saturday, she spent time learning more about the ban and reaching out to her contact at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). By Sunday morning, she was driving towards LAX while listening to the news in tears. “I felt compelled,” she said, “I didn’t have a choice to just sit back.”

She headed to the short term parking lot, where she boarded a bus filled with protestors. After she arrived at the outside terminals, Trankiem saw a sign that read, “Hi, I’m an attorney.” The man behind the sign directed her towards The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf inside. Once she made it, she found too many attorneys and not enough work. Undeterred, she eventually made her way to the baggage claim area, where she was able to begin volunteering.

Trankiem spent much of her day as an intake coordinator. Since there were no direct flights from the banned countries, she looked up flights to guess where else travelers might be flying in from—layover cities like London, Dubai, and Frankfurt. Afterwards, she helped send other attorneys to the corresponding terminal to meet with travelers to see if they or their family members or loved ones were subject to the Executive Order. 

Detention times varied for flagged travellers, but some were detained longer than 6 hours, Julia says. There were rumors of immigration officials asking people to sign over their visas and conflicting stories of provisions, like food and water, having to be requested for detainees. There was confusion, and chaos, and disorganization, Julia says. There were also counter protesters with a different message. Julia heard accounts from attorneys that some people were told to, “Go back to where you came from.” The Los Angeles Times reported that there were about a dozen protesters in support of the travel ban. 

The overwhelming majority of protesters at LAX, however, were against the ban, and in support of immigrants and refugees. Julia describes a sea of demonstrators on the parking bridge, in the lot, and in baggage claim-- some of whom applauded when international travellers de-planed and picked up their luggage. Many also held signs with compassionate messages like, “Welcome To This Country.” She says there was a “vibrant energy” that was “unifying” on that Sunday at LAX. She and others shared the “common goal of trying to make a difference and  stand up for America’s core values.” Julia shares that she was thanked for her efforts, but left feeling thankful she was able to be of some assistance. She says that America blessed her family by allowing them into the U.S. after they fled the Vietnam War, and her volunteering was a small way to help repay the debt she feels she owes America. 

Between January 27, 2017and January 31, 2017, an estimated 60,000 visas were revoked. By January 31st, nearly 50 lawsuits had been filed contesting the constitutionality of Executive Order 13769. On February 3, 2017, just 5 days after the LAX protest, a temporary restraining order (State of Washington v. Trump) was placed on the Executive Order.  That restraining order was challenged and later upheld by United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on February 9, 2017. The litigation is ongoing.
 

ALEXANDREA THORNTON

Alexandrea Thornton is a journalist and producer living in NY. A graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University, she splits her time between California and New York. She's an avid reader and is penning her first non-fiction book. 

Update from Waves for Water's Efforts Post-Hurricane Matthew in Haiti

Jon Rose, founder of the non-profit Waves for Water, sent CATALYST an update on recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

It’s been just about two weeks since Hurricane Matthew made landfall on the South Western tip of Haiti. Two long, hard weeks for millions of people affected by this catastrophic event. In retrospect, I went into this one a little cocky, I think, mostly because I feel so comfortable in Haiti. It felt like no matter how bad it was going to be, it was happening in a place that feels like a second home. I thought the relief plan/action would also be easier because we have such a solid, extensive local network and team there. And I thought my own psychological capacity would be more balanced on this one because I had gone through it before, in the same country. I assumed a bunch of things… 

Well, the universe sure has a way of humbling us. In other words, I was mistaken on just about everything.

By day two on the ground, our W4W country director, Fritz Pierre Louis, and I, sat shaking our heads in disbelief. We basically had to throw everything that we thought we knew or expected out the window – to start fresh, as if this was an entirely new country. It is a different beast entirely than the 2010 earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince.

Why? Many reasons, but I’ll list a few:

Photo credit: Waves for W

1. Scope of Destruction - 

Earthquakes have an epicenter – a narrower, more pinpointed area of impact. With hurricanes of this size the swath of destruction can cover hundreds of miles in all directions, leaving town after town after town leveled. The mountain villages see tornado-force winds (140 mph) with flash flooding that turns each valley into a violent river, destroying anything in its path. The coastal towns get the worst of it with those same tornado-force winds mixed with a 15-20 ft+ storm surge (aka tsunami). Basically a storm like Hurricane Matthew is like if a tsunami and a tornado got in a fight. The sheer scale of devastation, the widespread scope, has left many very experienced relief agencies (including us) with the very hard decision of where to start first.  

2. Remote Area - 

The majority of the Southwestern tip of Haiti is quite rural. Which means that most of the towns that got hit hardest are small and hard to get to on a normal day – windy coastal roads or mountainous dirt roads the only way in or out. This was before the storm. Now, most of those roads have been compromised, leaving relief capabilities at a bare minimum. For many of these places, supplies can really only be dropped by sea or air, which both tend to have limited payload capacity. This limits not only the speed with which supplies can come in, but the quantity. And with the massive amount of need, quantity is everything at the moment. Normally, relief initiatives will set up a solid distribution outpost in or around all the ground zero areas and then create a regular flow of supplies to feed those outposts (almost always by convoys of large trucks). This just isn’t possible for many of these places, and it won’t be for some time – bridges and roads are washed out, making them only passable via 4x4 vehicles that can traverse the riverbeds.  

3. Base of Operations -

In any good, large-scale/long-term disaster relief initiative, a solid BOO (base of operations) is imperative. This is the place from which teams can do all their planning/staging. It is basically home, office, and everything in between for the duration of the initiative. It needs to be close to ground zero, but with enough breathing room to create a habitable environment. It can often be a scenario as simple/rugged as a camp with tents, or commandeering an old building, or in the best case there are hotels or private rentals available. But in all these cases, we find a way to ensure the teams are safe and have what they need to do their job – power, cell and internet service, food, water, etc. In this case, the only real option was in the city of Les Cayes, which got hit really damn hard itself. But there is an airstrip, it has some hotels still operating on generators, cell service is in and out, and there is water and food accessible. The problem is some of the hardest hit areas are 4-5 hrs drive on 4x4 roads, so the amount one team can do per day, staging from so far away, is incredibly limiting. Until some of the major infrastructural issues in that part of the country are restored (roads, power, etc), which will be months, it’s nearly impossible for relief teams to set up proper long-term operations in those hardest hit areas. The only exceptions are small, targeted teams that can travel lightly in 4x4’s because they don’t have bulky supplies, such as ours (we can carry 200 water filtration systems and 100 solar powered LED lanterns, in two 4x4 vehicles), or medical triage teams. We have seen some of the medical teams already posted up throughout the region, in whatever buildings are still standing. But those aren’t long term operations, as medical is mostly needed in this initial stage.           

These are all things I’ve encountered (individually) before, over the many disasters we've worked. But it’s the combination of them all at once that is making this thing such a beast. The only other one I’ve seen with a magnitude like this was Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, which is still known as the largest storm ever recorded. If Haiyan is the largest, then Matthew was its equally evil twin brother, whose only difference is being a few seconds younger.

So, what does all this mean for W4W? After two weeks of traversing the whole Southwest, we now have a very accurate assessment of the hardest hit zones and a good plan to serve them. I shall note, unlike the majority of our other disaster relief initiatives, this one will include a few new categories of relief beyond our normal focus of access to clean water. 

Despite all challenges, W4W has hit the ground running with an action plan that focuses on access to the following essentials:     

1. Water - 

Access to clean water will still be our main focus, with a targeted implementation strategy aimed almost entirely on cholera hotspots. There have been over 20 new (Matthew related) cases of cholera that have popped up and these numbers are expected to rise dramatically in the coming weeks. Clean water is kryptonite for waterborne diseases such as cholera, so the more we target the areas where it is starting to spread, the better chance we have of curbing the amount of cases popping up, and prevent new ones. We did a very similar program in 2011, when the first outbreak happened in the Artibonite department of Haiti. In partnership with UN’s CVR division, we implemented 4,000 water filtration kits, with a full WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) education protocol/training, directly in two of the epicenters of the outbreak (Mirebalais and Saint Marc). Shortly thereafter, reported cases leveled out. The implementation strategy for our program this time will be very similar – we’ve identified five areas where confirmed cases have popped-up, or ones we feel are most susceptible to developing them. We will focus the majority of our water filter supply on these areas. We realize that so many places need access to clean water (even before the storm), but since we have limited resources and can’t help everyone, we feel that the best way for us to make the biggest impact is to target our efforts, by tackling the cholera issue head on.

2. Light - 

One of the main things that we feel is being overlooked is lighting. The power is out in all of these areas and will be for months. This means that once the sun goes down it is pitch black. There are obvious reasons why this is a challenge, but one of the major issues is safety. Light = community, people gather around any light source when it’s dark. To put it bluntly, a good light source dramatically cuts down the scenario of young women being alone/vulnerable in whatever dark shelter they’re staying. Right now, some families are burning small fires, inside or near their makeshift shelters. Which brings up other safety concerns in terms of breathing in smoke in a confined space, not to mention the incredible discomfort from the added heat alone. It’s already extremely hot, even at night. All of these points, we’ve witnessed personally, and has now brought this topic to the forefront for us. We feel that it is imperative to add this facet to our Matthew Relief Initiative. The lights we are implementing are solar powered LED lanterns that also have a USB port to charge a cellphone, as well as a built in radio (one of the primary ways that rural communities get their news/information). As a last little added bonus, we’ve sourced the lights in-country – so by adding them into our program, we are also contributing to the local economy.

 3. Cash for Work - 

We are establishing small scale CFW (cash-for-work) programs, focused primarily on rubble/debris removal from, starting with roads and community centers. These types of programs are widely used in development and disaster initiatives around the world. In a disaster situation, it’s a good way to help spark the local economy and fill some of the gaps left from the vacuum that follows a catastrophe such as this. The bottom line – everything has been stripped from these folks (including their jobs) and they need money, so rather than just give straight hand-outs, it's best to employ them, as there is so much to be done and they want/need the work. It's an honest job for services rendered, just like many of them had before. Local residents are already rallying and working for free to help their communities as best they can, but that doesn't put food on the table at the end of the day. The whole thing is overwhelming for them, so something like this helps to restore at least a little normalcy. 

Given the conclusions I’ve come to from the last two weeks on the ground and our vast experience in this field, I feel like we are well equipped to not only handle this, but to create a large-scale, long lasting, impact.

I will also note that even though these first two weeks were primarily focused around assessing the situation on the ground, we also started implementing of all three facets of the program. At this point, we've already distributed 500 water filtration systems and 300 solar lanterns in eight communities — Port Salut, Chardonnieres, Port-a-Piment, Coteaux, Les Cayes, Aquin, Jeremie, and Leogane. We've done this through some of our existing local networks and in collaboration with NGO partners such as (Les Cayes based) Hope for Haiti and local Rotary Club chapters. Lastly, in terms of our CFW (cash-for-work) initiative, we kicked things off with the clearing of rubble/debris on the main road in Chardonnieres. 

As our programs gain more traction in the coming weeks/months, more updates from us will follow. Thanks to all of you who have supported and believed in this initiative so far… this stuff simply doesn’t happen without you.

Look out for updates from W4W on their website: www.wavesforwater.org

---

Jon Rose

@wavesforwater

Jon Rose is the founder and CEO of Waves for Water, a non-profit organization that helps bring clean water to areas that lack consistent access to it. W4W does this through its Clean Water Courier program, which is based on a Do-It-Yourself humanitarian model. 

In Search of Beauty in Antarctica

Traveling on a sailing ship built in 1911, the same era the last great expeditions braved the unknown and departed for the infinite and barren landscapes of the white continent, René Koster leaves on his own voyage in search of beauty, the beauty of emptiness and cold.

Thoughts of frozen ships trapped in ice-covered seas cross my mind.

Embarking on a voyage to the South Pole, I travel in a sailing ship built in 1911, the same era the last great expeditions departed for the unknown continent. I recall images of the photographers who joined these expeditions to report of the unexplored. Fascinated by their stories I head for the same circumstances as those of the early twentieth century.

I am on a journey of longing, to a time that once was. A heroic saga, filled with hardship and adventure, in an infinite, barren land.

This series of photographs, taken with modern equipment, references the past. Personally, I feel no need for the photographs to look as if they have been created with techniques of the early 1900s. This is why I have deliberately chosen to work in color; allowing the greyscale of the landscape to emphasize the blue captured in ice. In my search for the right images, I have tried to avoid as many elements of the present time as possible; things that would remind me of everyday life.

The calm misty weather gives me a sense of desolation and makes the whole world feel smaller.

The slow rate of traveling by sailing ship influences my way of taking photographs; I seek stillness, harmony and tragedy in these otherworldly landscapes. In search of beauty, the beauty of emptiness and cold.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA 

RENE KOSTER

@koster_rene 

René Koster's work concentrates mostly on travel photography and portraits for magazines around the globe. Work from his Antarctica project was awarded The Travel Photographer of the Year. Check out his website here.

American Thoughts On Foreign Aid: A Documentary By ONE

ONE explores what American perceptions of US Foreign Aid are... and then shines some light on the reality.

Join ONE by taking action to support the world's most vulnerable here

NICARAGUA: Surfing for Change Travel Guide

The mission of Surfing for Change is to spread awareness that tourism, and surf travel, can bring dollars and along with it a lot of destruction to surf destinations in the developing world. Their vision is that there is a better way. Here, watch Nicaragua's Wave of Optimism (WOO) implementing a new model for surf tourism, and Courney Hull, social entrepreneur, building the world's first plastic-free hotel.

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