One Day It Will All Make Sense...

Currently, I am far from my comfort zone as far as writing in an environment that will foster any form of inspiration and or creativity to magically sprout from the depths of my being. Due to circumstances outside of my control, I have been involuntarily forced out of my home for the next few hours. Nice. So here I am seeking refuge in Lakewood’s Panera Bread. Amidst the luxury of free wi-fi, patrons eating clam chowder from bread bowls, and the jovial atmosphere that can only be created from a three-day weekend, ya boy is brainstorming up an interesting/witty/candid/ and perhaps life changing blog for my environmental justice class.

What have I come up with? Well not much.

(This next blog must be a group blog where everyone participates in giving their two cents on a topic related to environmental justice. We chose to write about this).

Really the main things that I got from the letter was that:

These Environmental Organizations claim to have the people of color’s best interests at hand, when in fact they may or may not give a gosh darn hoot about them (trying something new bear with me). I mean, what’s good with the National Wildlife Federation becoming “creditors” to Third World countries. Offering to buy up some of a country’s debt in exchange for land? Hmmm, if my memory serves me correct, any type of deals of this nature seem to be more in favor of one party over another-- word to the Treaty of New Echota.

Story Time

“Yes we want to help clean up the environment for everyone. Even for you and your family colored maaaa, I whoops I mean, kind sir. Your interests are our best interests!” Says the environmental douche-bag.

“Well can I or someone that looks like me help come up with the decision making? Being that you have my best interest at hand, I figure it’d make sense, ya know, like my feedback would be pertinent to the situation presented. I mean, I live here. And as you mentioned, my family lives here. I know the people here and more importantly I know their culture and customs.” Replied the brown man.

“See uhhhh that’s the thing. I would love to have you come on the board and share your ideas and concerns, it’s just...”

“You’re kind of racist and revel in exclusionary practices, especially ones involving people of color like myself.”

“Bingo”

“So you don’t really have my best interests in mind.”

“Not really, we just gotta say that.”

“I see” the brown man becomes contemplative for a moment. He rubs his chin for the added affect. “Well what about the environment? Like honestly, do you really care about it?”

“Haha, that’s funny. Of course we care about it. We care about it just as much as the next capitalist. But see (insert derogatory name here) our hands are pretty much tied as to what we can really do, as far as environmental justice goes. I’ll let you in on a little secret...” (begins to whisper) “...a lot of our supporters are corporations that do most of the polluting.”

“Wow, you know I can’t say that I’m not surprised. But dang, so the people promoting a clean environment get paid by the people actually polluting the environment.”

“Exactomundo! Hey kid you got a good head on your shoulders. How about I offer you a job. See it as a token of my appreciation, that way you’re not leaving empty handed.”

“Is it hazardous that can potentially give me cancer?”

“Does a bear use Charmin Ultra when doing his business in the woods?”

“Yes... You know as appealing as that sounds, I’m going to have to pass on this one. But thanks though.”

So yea, that’s pretty much everything I have. What do you think?

Unrelated note, this Wednesday CHID 260 is putting on a show. My group and I will be performing. I’m co-hosting the event as well. If you get the chance you should come out and peep some awesome flows, great stage presence, and a man dangerously close to surpassing the legal limit for coolness. The show starts at 9. Five bucks at the door or 3 doll hairs pre-sale.

Also this Sunday, there is a play my Tagalog class is putting on. It will be at Kane 130 on June 6th. Ya boy is starring in that one. Come check it out. This event is free.

O siege po,

J to tha E

P.S. How about that for being completely distracted with everything going around me?

Follow the Money Trail

Daniel:
We have heard it so much that we don't even care anymore, but the Wu had it right when they said "cash rules everything around me." I don't care whether it is individuals, clubs, governments, or whatever how they get paid impacts how they live and think. That is why there is always such a stink in politics when people are exposed for having taken money from people who are directly benefiting from a politicians decisions (Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush).

In our Environmental Justice class, taught by Professor Devon G. Peña, we have had our eyes opened to the fact that this issue of corruption can even extend into NGO's that are supposed to be "fighting the good fight." According to an article by Rechtschaffen and Gauna these environmental agencies are funded by Arco, British Petroleum Chemical Bank, GTE, General Electric, Dupont, Dow Chemical, Exxon, IBM, Coca Cola, etc. In their words "such accountability leads you to pursue a corporate strategy towards the resolution of the environmental crisis," in my words "getting paid by some of the greatest perpetrators of environmental degredation will lead you to compromise your ethics and push the interests of your "donators" over the interests of the community in need, which too often are also poor communities of color". I am not here to say that these companies are out making orders of what gets done, I am simply trying to highlight the facts that by taking this money the Organizations have already compromised themselves.

And who are the NGO's who have taken this money?
They are: Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, Izaak Walton League, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

This cannot continue and just so you know it's real, here is Exxon at its finest.


Tyrell:
In the Letter Circa Earth Day, 1990 article mentioned earlier the affected people in the southwestern United States are standing up against each of the three legs of environmental racism. The most emphasized of them being the organizational in how the Group of Ten organizations are mostly made up of well to do white people while the ones suffering the consequences of the Group's actions are mostly poor communities of color. They request the Group of Ten to stop influencing policy in communities of color until they are equally represented within all levels of the organizations.

Those people who think of racism as something of the past are probably confused by these statements. They assume the Group of Ten to be a fair minded bunch of organizations who must have the people's best wishes at heart. As Daniel said however there is no such thing as a free lunch and the Group of Ten has been receiving quite a few "free" lunches from companies that have been known to pollute and obviously do not have the best interests of the communities of color at heart when they push their weight around and receive small favors from these environmental rights groups. Maybe it's just me but I think this sounds pretty suspicious. It is possible that the donating companies are actually trying to offset their damage by giving money to the Group, but as anyone who has tried to lose weight before knows, the best way to shed calories is to stop taking them in. Instead of donating money to groups that can affect policy change they should be researching better ways to make their products so they are not polluting these places so much in the first place.

Of course it is much cheaper to just donate some loose change and make yourself look a little better to the people who are unaffected by and unaware of the things happening in these poor communities. Maybe you will even get some favorable legislation as a bonus. So while it may not be a full blown conspiracy, the wool is being pulled over peoples eyes and the companies are still raking in the dough.

Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself...

What’s Good World?

So this is my first time blogging for this site and to be real, initially I was a bit apprehensive to start (coupled with the fact that procrastination tends to get the best of me when my heart is not in it). I mean, yea I blog on my own time but never academically. Never for school. Not for a grade. Ew. I felt like that would compromise the creativity. I would be selling out. Then you might as well put me in the next Black Eye Peas video, holding a Coke, while I’m smiling standing next to Justin Bieber.

However, after sitting around in contemplation staring out at the night sky from the window of my apartment complex, I experienced a few realizations that would help me quell my reluctance:

1. The theme of the blog is right up my alley. Conspiracy theories. Ya boy is heavy into that already (not to the point that I’m some crazy hermit that only drinks distilled water and eats organic strawberries grown from my mom’s backyard; but you know, just enough that I don’t really trust mass media, what politicians say, as well as being weary of spending Andrew Jacksons at Starbucks).

2. Putting things off is not as beneficial as the initial gratification will lead you to believe. Or in other words, the bullshit factor was coming to a head and I couldn’t live with the notion of me just chilling, sitting on my hands any longer.

3. I love writing, so why not share that with the world?

After immersing myself in a couple hour long youtube videos of environmental, political, and global conspiracies I felt as if I was ready to speak on it. So without further adieu, I present to you that dope shit homie...

Well first things first, I had to ask myself why do people just love conspiracies? What is it about knowing some underlying “secret” obscure knowledge about happenings around the world that get people all in a tizzy? Knowing the true story behind the story that gets presented to the masses is something so alluring to humans. We love it. We eat it all up. From my observation it boils down to this, people prefer the truth and when the truth is not presented to us, deep down on a sub-conscious level we feel the need to find out what exactly the truth is. That or we’re just hella bored without anything else to do, so we entertain ourselves with countless hours of research, heated debates with people not seeing the “light”, and growing organic fruit in our mom’s backyard. (Either way is cool with me).

Then the next question that comes to mind is this, what do all of these conspiracy theories have in common? Well they all have the common of theme of money and it’s brother from another mother control. It’s always about someone or some people in control of something or someone and their attempts to cover up that trail they leave behind.

Kind of wack if you ask me. It’s like the system (that unfortunately we are all apart of), keeps us believing that in order for us to survive on this planet we must take part in this unfair and disproportionate process or else we’ll die.So here we are, working 9 to 5’s busting our ass, just so we can produce goods that which later can be sold for profit. We get peanuts for our endeavors and the capitalists at the top, bubble up trillions because they mark up the price and sell it right back to us. What kind of shit is that? Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to modern day sharecropping at it’s finest. And the worse part about it is that, we’re conditioned to believe that if we don’t take part in this system, we are wrong, bad, evil, and a loser that deserves nothing (ouch).

Wait but John how does this relate to environmental justice and conspiracies involving the environment? You know something that professor Pena talks about in class.

Hmm, well good question... Really I don’t know. I’m just ranting on my soapbox to the people of the blogosphere.... Sike, I’m just playing. It has everything to do with EJ and environmental conspiracies. Just take a step back and look at it. It’s always the same paradigm. A group of people with the money, power, respect (shout out to the Lox beat, which is very hard by the way) and their attempts to control or oppress others. Case and point, take Camden, New Jersey in the 90’s with the whole Superfund fiasco or the Shintech issue in Louisiana. It’s glaringly obvious that by dumping all of the pollution into the lower income, melanin heavy communities, they are able to control the people easier since they are all dying of cancer. Because you know, God forbid a bunch of healthy brown people coming together to stand up for what’s right and just, I mean that would just be too much for the power elite to handle. But I digress.

So then the last question is this. What can we do right now, this instant, in this moment to help change our current circumstance? Well, that’s also glaringly obvious. It’s one of those things that are so simple it becomes difficult. And what is that?... Practicing unconditional love for everyone and everything you encounter on a day to day basis. Over time, through due diligence and persistence, a habit will form. Once this habit of practicing unconditional love is formed, maybe just maybe, your reality will reflect that. You know that whole, self fulfilling prophecy type deal. And if enough people do it, it can really catch on and spread like wild fire. Then we’re cooking with some grease then, because it’s like we’re channeling an energy stronger than any man made object/institution/power structure combined. Because you know, as corny as it sounds, you can do anything when you have love. Real Shit.

Just some thoughts for the mind,

J to tha E

Collateral Damage: Atomic Testing in the Marshall Islands

The first video is a documentary made in the 50's about what was taking place in the Marshall islands. In it there is a very good picture of the type of racism that was involved in using the Marshall Islands as a testing ground for early nuclear testing.

The second video shows some of the results of that very testing. This is just the beginning of the story however. The US government purposefully and intentionally allowed these people to be exposed to extremely high levels of nuclear contamination in order to study the results.

With SB 1070 in full effect in Arizona, we can see now the real intent of how we are dealing with immigration, Racial Profiling. I honestly thought that America was moving away from this racial profiling of people but here i am completely sadden by the fact that we have not yet really moved forward. It is true that we have learn to accept most people who are our citizens in American, but towards our foreigners, particularly those of hispanic descent, we show extreme racism to. The only correlation i can think of that would resemble this new up rising of racism would be the pre 1960 where african americans were discriminated heavily. Yes, that might seem a little extreme or even farfetch if that, but it does seem like America is running into another relapse of its earlier dark history. It is sad that history is repetiting itself, but what even sadder is that its happening less than a generation, people who saw extreme racism in the 60's are seeing it again but to a different ethnic group. This law SB 1070 just shows how ignorant America is.
Please feel free to comment on this little excerpt of my thoughts and feelings.