Are we part of the problem? Or the Solution? Or Both?

As part of the Non-profit industry here in the Bay Area, of course I want to believe that I'm part of creating solutions for social inequality.

But with so many young college-educated folks coming to the bay area the roles in non-profit orgs are really competive. So the people who are competitive for positions in organizations that work with/for underserved communities are often people who have had social privledge; white privlege, class privlege, educational privlege: that the people they serve have never had. What does it mean when our systems for creating social equality reflect the same inequality we're working against?

This article specifically addresses racial inequality in the philanthropy sector; what does it mean when the majority of people giving grant money are white? Just click on the title of this post. Check out the comments section, I though a lot of really thoughtful discussion is happening there.

In this discussion, often people can start to think of "privlege" as being a four-letter word. So I also want to offer this link:

http://www.classifiedbook.com/index.html

This is the homepage for a book about how we can own privlege and basically use it for social change. Check it out!

Criminals in Poverty? or Criminialization of Poverty

San Francisco is known for its cable cars and its sourdough bread.

And for its community of homeless people.

I remember walking around the city my first week in my new apartment, and feeling that I would need to adopt a stance, a conscious attitude about the poverty so present in the city in order to emotionally survive the millions of encounters with homelessness each day.

I discuss homelessness with friends, I work with people who are homeless, and still I'm confused, still, 2 years later when asked questions like, why does San Francisco have so many homeless persons?

I recently found a 5 part article that gave me a lot of insight. I hope it can do the same for you. Feel free to critique, question, take in and absorb it!

Just click on the title of this post.

Dateline Normal, Mn.: "Father's Day" or "Quid Pro Quo"---the game----FICTION

(Ed. Note: In some parts of the country, this title is called "The Grant Game." In parts of the country, the Tales from Normal, are the called "The Abynormal Tales"---please adjust to your time zone.)

Click on the post for the latest.

Visions of the Future

Talking about the traffic in the Bay Area is much like talking about the Cold in the Midwest. It bonds people together as only an incomprehensible foe that threatens group survival can.


As many of people around the nation have now heard, tho weeks ago a large chunk of a truck passing over the bay bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland and Berkeley caught on fire and literally melted a huge part of the highway.

The event took place on the weekend. Moments after it happened, people were e-mailing each other the news, and the most frequent reaction that I heard was, "Traffic is going to be awful!!". This stretch of highway is quite a challenge even under the best of circumstances. It evokes fear in even them most hardened drivers. The call went out far and wide for two days, you could hear the concerned hum of a thousand e-mail messages zipping through the airwaves "Don't Drive...whatever you do, please do NOT try to drive on Monday".

And Monday came. My roomate, a fiesty one, decided to drive despite the danger. She's a trail-blazer, fearless. She's the Davey Crocket of the highway.

I decided to take public transportation.

When my roomate came home, I was itching to hear just how bad it had been. I've notices that I now say things like, "it took me two hours, two hours to go 20 miles" in the same tone I used to utter "it was 20 below, 20 below without windchill."

But lo and behold, she reported, there was nobody on the road. It was the easiest commute of her year.

The whole community of the bay area found alternatives to driving. Some took public transportation like myself, some worked from home. Some flexed their hours so they weren't on the road during rush hour and shortened their commute time.

I realized---oh. This could be every day.

With all the increased awareness of the impact of global warming, there's been more effort around these parts to reduce fossil fuel consumption. However, it shocked me to see how just one day of awful traffic could motivate people (myself included) to tap into behaviors they have already.

We have the ability here in the Bay Area to consume so much less fuel than we do currently. Yes, we may need the buy in of our Employers that perhaps we don't have on days where there's no immediate "crisis".

But that's the kicker. There is a crisis. And I truly believe now that it's a crisis we can respond to now, with what we have. 30% of all fossil fuel energy that we use in the US is used on transportation. If we could repeat that Monday morning on a regular basis, just think what an impact the Bay Area could have on the enviornment. Yes we may need to be flexible. But it's possible, and the highway meltdown is a challenge for us to make that reality happen.