fear of working class folks living healthy lives

the title of this post might be a misnomer for what i'm thinking about, but it comes pretty darn close to it . . . this morning, as i was doing my daily ritual of scouring the new york times, i came across a few articles that made the wheels in my head turning (more than usual, i should add.)

it's kind of weird that there's such a distinct, under-the-carpet, subversive way that people talk about non-mainstream folks. and that might be ambiguous and misleading, but i'll explain what i mean when i say 'non-mainstream.' i'm referring to what the media portrays as what the mainstream should aspire towards - being raised by nurturing, well-educated parents, going to good schools, getting 1600s on the SATs (or whatever the highest score is these days, i'm prolly dating myself here : ), shooting for the ivy league, and so on.

getting back to the point, i find that there's this whole discourse around success, and the fear of too many people succeeding. and i do not actually understand this because wouldn't it be a good thing for us to raise children in a world where people are all thinking somewhat critically and aspire to achieve great things?

these are some examples of what i've heard and am inferring based on what i've come across:

• 'well, what if all the public schools had enough resources, and were actually able to reach out to every single kid in their schools. what would that mean for the competition to get into selective high schools, colleges, and grad programs?'
• 'what about the jobs that they would take away from the middle class?'
• 'who's going to do the blue collar work, if all the working class folks get proper educations?'
• 'what'll happen to the big corporations that thrive on (or prey on, rather) cheap labor supplied to factories, franchises, and so on?'

i just find this line of questioning to be so defeatist and fatalistic. i can't really even dignify them with actual responses because they defy dignity.

ah...well for more background on this, check out this article that i posted on this blog (i'm making an effort to not flood this blog with a gazillion snippets from NYT articles : ) i find this article to be a fairly blatant example of how we try to fill up prisons so as not to disrupt job security for others. the vicious cycle continues . . . so even if crime does go down, we'll hunt people down to fill up the prisons. is it just me, or isn't that really messed up?

in addition to this article, there's also the readings i've been doing on early childhood education. clearly, if children have enough structure and support in the early years onwards, then they'd be inclined to pursue the educational pathway to where ever it is that we all think we're trying to head (i'm still trying to figure out where that is : )

but of course there are never adequate resources to do this, and there's always one study after another to prove the obvious. i can name a few of them off the top of my head:

• 'teachers need to have the political will to be in public schools.'
• 'we need to believe that all children can learn.'
• 'the study has shown that a high level of collaboration is required to . . ."

political will, belief, and cooperation. . . do we really need studies to tell us that?!?!

oh well, i guess at some point in folks' lifetimes they just might see a small, but distinguishable light, and figure out what the difference is between equality and equity. and perhaps even put an iota of thought into what we have to let go of in order to get where ever it is we're going while ensuring human dignity isn't compromised.

the absurdity of this confounds me

From today's New York Times:

"Mr. Bush is also expected to propose changes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program to sharpen its focus on low-income families. The changes could reduce federal payments to states that cover children with family incomes exceeding twice the poverty level. Under federal guidelines, a family of four is considered poor if its annual income is less than $20,650."

let's see 2 x $20,650 = $41,300 = state of shock

i'd like to see a family of four in the Dubya family tree try to live off that in a place like NYC

good night and good luck

a stellar movie, i must say. when it started off in black and white, i wasn't so sure that i would take to it. but as the plot unraveled, i realized how fly it was...sadly enough the ed murrows of the world are hard to come by these days with the media industrial complex at an all-time low.

ain't so peppy, actually...

in my intro, i mentioned that i'm likely to go off on a rant about the educational system at some point in this blog's cyberlife. so here goes:

PEP = Panel for Education Policy

Blurb on PEP:*
"The thirteen member body designated as the Board of Education in section 2590-g of the Education Law shall be known as the Panel for Educational Policy. The Panel for Educational Policy is a part of the governance structure responsible for the City School District of the City of New York, subject to the laws of the State of New York and the regulations of the State Department of Education. Other parts of the structure include the Chancellor, superintendents, community school boards, principals, and school leadership teams. Together this structure shall be designated as the Department of Education of the City of New York.

The members of the Panel for Educational Policy are appointed according to law as follows: one member is appointed by each Borough President, eight members, including the Chancellor who serves as chairperson, are appointed by the Mayor. All members serve at the pleasure of the official who appointed them.

New York City Panel for Educational Policy
Mayoral appointees have an * next to their names:

*Mr. Joel I. Klein, Chancellor, email: JKlein@nycboe.net, phone: 212-374-5110.
Ms. Evita Belmonte, Queens representative
Ms. Natalie Gomez-Velez, Bronx representative
Ms. Martine Guerrier, Brooklyn representative
Ms. Jacquelyn Kamin, Manhattan representative
Ms. Joan Correale, Staten Island representative.
* Mr. Alan D. Aviles.
*Mr. Philip A. Berry, VP, Colgate Palmolive
*Dr. David C. Chang, President, Brooklyn Polytechnic Univ.
*Mr. Tino Hernandez.
*Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner, President of Bank St. College
*Mr. Richard L. Menschel, Senior Director of Goldman Sachs
*Ms. Marita Regan, former D22 administrator
(Last updated: March 18, 2004)"

* bold added by yours truly

what i can tell from the blurb: there's a whole lot of 'appointing' taking place here, and clearly not many of them are elected

what i know from my time as a nyc teaching fellow: a whole lot of bullying happens on the PEP (refer to blurb and link below)

"Last week’s abrupt firing of members of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was greeted with widespread anger. The mayor dismissed two of his own appointees and the Staten Island borough president fired another member of the panel in order to win passage of the mayor’s plan for new promotion requirements for third graders in the city’s public schools." (more here or here if you desire a more 'objective' source)

p.s. i wonder if Klein'll actually answer if we call him at the number listed :)

things that irk

so many incidents in nyc happen in transit. as unbelievable as it my seem, i have another anecdote to share with y'all. today post-work, i decided not to go into lower manhattan for dinner and drinks with a friend cuz i was feelin a bit grungy today. instead, i headed into jackson hts to return a bollywood film that i've been holding on to for ages. after doing that and running an errand, i got on the R train towards manhattan, got off at steinway, and proceeded up the stairs. and you're probably wondering - why is she _still_ blabbering about her day-to-day?

it gets more interesting....believe you me.

as soon i ascend the stairs there's an ad board that's white (with no bills posted) and someone's scribbled: 'deport all illegals' '1. not immunized' '2. closing down hospitals' and '3. (too annoyed by the first three lines i read to remember this one)'

almost instinctively, i went up to this racist, classist, ignorant message and began to rub the writing to see if i could at least make it known that someone disagreed with the message enough to mess it up.

i guess i'm a bit of an odd person because the things that typically irk people don't irk me. but ideological warfare really gets under my skin. particularly when the ideology is founded on privilege, elitism, and entitlement. plenty of 'legals' are not immunized. plenty of working class 'legals' require hospital care that they can't afford and doesn't exist for them. and aside from all this, the so-called intellectually and materialistically wealth that the 'haves' have is something that was passed on to them because they come from generations of peoples that have had access to that language, that way of being, of thinking, of acting.

and what of the families that produce first generation college students, you may ask. well, what of them? - i would ask in return. because honestly, how many of them are there? they'll always, always, always be the exception, never the norm. when the norms change, that's when i'll give another look at this issue, and revise my stance.

oh yeah, when i left it the scribble read 'port all legals.'

is this really happening?!!?

bizarre-o, folks. tried to put stuff in purple that seems more psycho than the rest (although, the whole situation is quite freakish)

Speculation About Foot Fetishist in Killings
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI
Published: December 14, 2006

When four prostitutes were found slain in a marshy ditch on the outskirts of Atlantic City three weeks ago, each was barefoot, a detail as intriguing as it was mystifying.

So on Monday, after managers and several guests at an Atlantic City hotel where two of the victims had sometimes stayed read an account of a man described as being obsessed with women’s feet — which appeared on a private group’s Web site — they said they recalled a peculiar man who took a room there for three weeks this fall.

What led people at the hotel to wonder about a connection between that man — who registered using an address in Phoenix — and the obsessed man described on the Web site as a serial killer, was one chilling theory in the site’s unofficial account: “He has an extreme foot fetish and has a collection of women’s shoes and the shoes of his victims,” the document said.

It went on to speculate that “he may even be known for offering women foot massages.”

Officials declined to comment about the theory on the Web site or about whether they were seeking anyone who fit such a description.

The speculation about such a man could be a lead in a case that has baffled investigators since the bodies of the four women were found on Nov. 20 in a ditch behind several seedy motels on the Black Horse Pike in Egg Harbor Township, just outside Atlantic City.

On Tuesday afternoon, investigators showed up at the hotel, the Fox Manor, on Pacific Avenue, after learning that there might be a lead there on a suspect, the general manager, Manny Trivedi, said.

Yesterday Mr. Trivedi said in a telephone interview that the hotel guest he was thinking of kept six to eight pairs of women’s shoes in his room. Mr. Trivedi described that man as being of medium height and weight, with blue eyes, thinning brown hair and a mustache.

Mr. Trivedi and another manager at the hotel, who said he saw the shoe collection, and who spoke on the condition that his name not be used because of his concern about the continuing investigation, said that during the man’s three-week visit, a woman staying at the hotel told him that the man had mentioned to her that he was interested in caressing her feet.

Mr. Trivedi said that after the woman, whom he would only identify as Michelle, read the Internet description of the theorized killer — which was produced by an independent group in New Jersey that profiles serial killers on a Web site called Stalk Inc. and has no links to the police in this case — she became alarmed and told him about her odd encounters with the hotel guest. He added that on Tuesday the police spent about two hours interviewing the woman, who has been staying at the hotel for about five months.

“He also told this woman, Michelle, that he was an ex-marine and knew tae kwon do or something like that and could kill someone in a minute,” Mr. Trivedi recalled her telling him.

The hotel managers said that the man they described had spent time with a man from the area who is believed to drive a white van, the type of vehicle some prostitutes on Pacific Avenue say might have been involved in the killings.

Mr. Trivedi said that on Monday, a uniformed officer from the Atlantic City Police Department gave him a copy of the partial profile on the Stalk Inc. Web site and that the next day an investigator from the Atlantic County prosecutor’s office came to get a copy of it, as well as a copy of the former hotel guest’s driver’s license, which the hotel had on file.

The Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, said yesterday that no one from the task force looking into the case had been distributing the Web-based profile. Asked yesterday about the man with the women’s shoes, Mr. Blitz declined to comment.

The task force includes representatives from the prosecutor’s office, the Egg Harbor Township and Atlantic City Police Departments, the state police and the F.B.I.

The victims, who the medical examiner said were left in the ditch over a period of several weeks, were found barefoot, their heads all facing east toward Atlantic City. One victim was strangled, another died of asphyxiation and the bodies of the two others were too badly decomposed to determine the causes of death.

The description on the Web site asserted that the “lethal predator” responsible for the four deaths was from the area and was familiar with the site where the bodies were left.

“He has not killed every prostitute he has come in contact with,” the document theorized. “There are prostitutes who know him for the sexual gratification he gets from their feet.”

The description theorized that the killer probably had a record of sexually or physically abusing women. It was released by John Kelly, the president of Stalk Inc., who described himself as a social worker and addiction specialist. He said he had compiled criminal profiles in several well-publicized murders, including the Green River Killer case in Washington state and another in which the bodies of four women — all former heroin-addicted prostitutes in Worcester, Mass. — were found over the last several years.

Mr. Kelly described his theory about the Atlantic City killer this way: “He can relive his fantasy through the shoes, which serve as somewhat of a trophy.”

He said that he told the police in Egg Harbor Township three weeks ago that he had come up with a partial profile of the person who could be responsible for killing the four women. They referred all questions about the investigation to the county prosecutor.

“We told them to watch the Web site for updates,” he said. “A profile always continues to evolve. But it’s only a tool. It’s up to the police as to what they want to do with it.”

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

to be disconnected is to be in danger...

posits a report summary entitled '170,000 Young People Out of School, Out of Work - - Out of Luck?'

disconnected from what, though, is my question. and from whose perspective. because youth that are so-called disconnected are sure as hell connected to each other, and they've got their own little network going that doesn't have room for 'the system.'

speaking of which, i'm not sure that the system gives them enough reason to buy in to it...especially, if it's designed to fail them. and the designs to fix to failures of the system also fail them.

so, i guess common's question still stands, 'how come the industry build careers that don't last?'

i guess i have a few lingering questions of my own, but i'll spare you and leave you with just one - how come the people who create industries don't care about how they pre-determine the way people live their lives?

for whom the bell doesn’t toll – sean, unarmed black man

i'm not sure what that descriptor even means any more – ‘unarmed black man’ it seems like because you’re black, you are armed by default. clearly, not in the literal sense but armed with melanin that isn’t the right kind.

i know…it’s easy for me to sit at my computer and write about this in my privileged, sterile setting and i do have a hard time verbalizing the actual hurt i feel when i hear about racially motivated hate crimes like this (note crimes committed by those entrusted to ‘protect’ us.)

i could go on into an academic rant about the subjugation of people of color, and the kinds of baggage that are forced upon us because of a lengthy, ongoing imperialistic colonial presence that is inherently lethal in its consequences.

or i could just describe the visceral response that this kind of stuff elicits in me…and how it just makes me really friggin sad.

background:
Democracy Now's account of the incident
A very(!) contrary perspective

for that immediate gratification

having stated that disclaimer, let the games begin....

last night i went to BAM (brooklyn academy of music) to check out this alternative-ish event that was a little over my head (the link will take you to a description of the event), and i'm thinking at least half the audience felt the same way b/c when the discussion with the creators rolled around, poof! a significant chunk of the audience bounced.

the 'performance,' if you can call it that, was a series of pieces that used a range of media to contextualize ideas.....and, now i'm starting to sound like the creators of the piece. in any case, it was a very unique and, yes, interesting in that it tried to expand our notion of who journalists are in this day and age (bloggers), what it means to be a spectator/audience (generally passive consumers), and the over-stimulation/desensitization of the media industry and its consumers.

some parts of it were definitely engaging, but sadly enough those parts were the ones that alluded to pop culture references. i guess that's something that i got out of it - an opportunity to self-reflect on how i respond to post-modern pieces : )

another piece of it that i found refreshing was the distance that was created and taken away between the performers and the audience. it made us (the audience) do the work, try and latch on to something, process as we experienced the performance.

a few things that i wondered about are the (1) accessibility of the piece in terms of the language/references made throughout the piece, the audience that it's trying to reach and the audience that it ends up reaching, and if it's a relevant form of expression; and (2) the 'what next' of it - i'm finding that the arts seems to be such a self-indulgent area of pursuit some times and it's so easy to put things out there, but the harder part is to sift through it all and build connections to it - and this isn't something that can be expedited with the technology wave. i think that building connections to art is a very individual process - making the 'objective' display/experience into a subjective one.

given all this, i'm not sure i would attend another event like this, maybe just for kicks. but i don't find them to be that fulfilling (and they're likely to be designed that way, but still it's frustrating) and i'd much rather watch sex in the city or read calvin and hobbes for that immediate gratification. call me shallow, but when the disillusionment sets in, post-modernism is not the answer.