jingejinge’s Neighborhood

I am organizing the community action area of Fiesta Del Sol- it will have a hundred volunteers each day- trained to canvass the festival, the three asks they will ask the fiesta del sol attendees:

Yesterday night, we had "La Colleccion: event in Golden Hills At the Marquee and it was beautiful. The Marquee is a great church-turned event hall in Golden Hill. The event started off as a fundraiser mostly for the art pavilion for Fiesta Del Sol and quickly became a family event with music, food and drinks!!!

LaColeccion

So my personal goal as an organizer this summer, was to build up the Immigration Task Force group here in San Diego. We have had shaky turn out and continuity for about three years now. I wanted to make the task force a group of accountability and continuity. And After the June 27th summit, we had a great first powerful meeting! In partnership with allies ACORN, SEIU, and our member institutions; key staff/leaders from each organization gathered to plot out what our game plan was with the immigration task force. We had our meeting at the SEIU offices, and we had pretty good turn out about 40 people. We strategized on what it was that we were going todo within the "Community Action" pavilion of Fiesta Del Sol. The Festival has different pavilions dedicated to different issues: healthcare, childrens, education, community action, art. Our plan is to have a training August 1 prior to the Fiesta Del Sol (August 8 and 9) to bring 200 people to a training to learn how to "canvass" during Fiesta Del Sol. This week I am going to be on the Padre Andres show (a catholic radio talk show) speaking about this and the national text message campaign- if you text the word Justice or Justicia to the # 69866, you get updates on where we are with immigration reform, when a politician makes a statement or there is new updates, you get a text letting you know who to call and let them know about your support or disgust :) its a great tool! I will be on the show with Christina, this student who is an amazing mujer, We meet for a few hours today to discuss talking points and it was awesome! I realized that she is very interested in Immigration law, which is something I have been thinking about lately. While the community action area is being developed through the immigration task force, the rest of Fiesta Del Sol is moving right along. It is in the exciting phase, my co-chair and I, just feel so energized after the meetings, like what happens every year, amazing people come out of the wood work to head up and join the pavilions. The energy is tangible, the people amazing, the movement vibrant, I wouldn't be anywhere else, doing anything else!!! I love organizing!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less importrant whether I am afraid."

4774_90376227861_713467861_1947429_2302573_n

4774_90378992861_713467861_1947500_1809574_n-1

This has been an amazing summer, and I am trying to capture it in all of its amazing awesomeness! A week after completing my finals for my first year of Grad School, I began to work on an Immigration Leadership Summit that Justice Overcoming Boundaries (JOB) was putting on. I had not been as involved as I wanted because I was finishing up my finals. So, I was thrown into putting the summit together. Norma, my tocaya, left to DC and the summit was only half planned. Within the week, I was in full force organizing mode with the other organizer, Pedro. We had to get the conference together. Over 50 people ended up attending, leaders, students, church members, all backgrounds and ages! We had speakers from the National Reform Immigration for America (RIFA) campaign (this is the national Campaign for immigration reform that orgs that we as JOB are affiliated with (GAMALIEL and CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE) I have worked with organizers from both organization and love the work and partnership that the do! So we had speakers from the National campaign come out of DC, we had organizers from Oakland, Ventura, Los angeles and from orgs such as CHIRLA- come out. 

She said it on her show 30 rock and after a year of grad school, I get it. Grad students and academics kinda suck... the world of academia is designed to create drones within very specific fields which only few people understand. It is made to make people interested in writing and reading rather than DOING. There is a huge amount of narcissim in grad school- grad students and teachers alike are ALL about their own research and little else. Grad students make lousy friends- they are too disconnected from the real world... grad students have continuous lame conversations about theory and other bullshit in front of non academics which is super annoying...academic writing is super dry and uninspiring...

so why do I keep on going?
because unfuckenforutnately I need that damn degree to prove that I know something.  And fortunately there are glimmers of hope, those true academic activists, professors and students that apply what they know to the real world and don't keep it reserved to obscure journals that no one but their colleagues read and argue and refute...

In order for academic to truly succeed it needs to be engaged and shared with the real world!
GAH!

dear vox friends, I feel so horrible and guilty for saying this  - but I must leave vox. I am still a Movable Type User - and I know that because you made MT you udoubtably have the capacity to make vox  just as excellent. Until you do, I'm going to wait out at www.triciawang.tumblr.com.

My hopes are that you invest the same kind of energy in vox as in your other amazing tools - such as typepad and movable type. I hope that your vox support start answering user's messages - I've emailed soooo many messages to the support team but I have never heard back from anyone :( I hope that you will give users the option to export their posts (not just import), fix the buggy servers, fix blog entry section - it's impossible to highlight a few words,editing, give more options to users to customize the side bar and redesign the way advertising is placed. 

I love that I can make posts private, or just for friends or just for neighbors. I love that. I love that this has been my personal blog for the last 3 years. Tumblr will be my  personal blog and Movable Type will continue to remain my professional blog at www.youmeiti.com.  I love MT 4.25 - it's beautiful - can vox be just as well-thought out!!

Bye Vox - and vox friends i will still pull your feeds into my google RSS reader, so I will still comment and read your private posts.

Oh and since you are going to check out my new blog, check out two more blogs that I just launched!:
Cultural Bytes  - where I write about my research on new technology users

::Dichos y Vida - where I write about all my favorite quotes!

::Tricia is Reading This - all the things I find interesting from my RSS reader

And i'm going to start blogging again on my movable type blog:YouMeiTI , where I write about Chinese Youth, Media and Information Technology.

To pull ONE RSS FEED of all my blogs, please cick on this soup.io link,
To pull on RSS feed of all my media - from flickr to youtube to vimeo - please use this soup.io link.

Annie posted a comment made by lofty editors at Draft Mag (reposted by Jeff Hammett ) about the Festival of Beers,

"Occasionally, we consider moving to San Diego. It’s warm. All the time. It’s beautiful. All the time. The people are attractive. All the time. Honestly, what’s not to like? Then you visit, however, and realize it’s essentially a city devoid of culture, unless you consider being a stop on the way to Tijuana an important cultural experience. We don’t."

"We just have to look harder… I know there are some pockets of culture here and there (music! delicious food! lotsa museums!), but definitely not in La Jolla."

After a few minutes of Tricia the Wolf personality where I wanted to bite off Jeff's head and the heads of every tourist who make comments about "culture" and san diego I decided that a more constructive approach was better than nurturing cannibalistic thoughts.

What is culture? I define it as beliefs, practices and values.

Many of time tourists want to have a "cultural experience" when they visit a town - but this usually means they want to eat food that interesting enough but not so authentic that their taste buds would have to be challenged into liking it and go to museums that are artsy enough so that they feel good about learning about "others." 

The problem is that most tourists come to SD and they visit just a few miles - between 30 to 40 miles I would conjecture - they will go south on the 5 to Coronado but no farther, and then up north on the 5 to La Jolla. The brave ones will say I want to go to Mexico so they will bypass everything between downtown SD and Tijuana. Tourists then say they either LOVE SD or they HATE it. LOve it because great weather and people. HAte it because no culture. So Jeff here sits on the latter. Actually this dichotomy is one that is most often reified by those who live within the 30 mile swatch.

so what's my beef with the lofty editors at DRaft Mag?  From here on, I will refer to the Editors of Draft Mag as "Crocodile Face."

• culture is more than a beer festival and a 30 mile swath of predesignated tourist stops. So if you don't leave the 30 mile swatch that I have circled in orange, then you will feel that there is "no culture" in San Diego

• Actually that feeling that  Crocodile Face has of "no culture" points to the the dominance of white, elite, culture. So what's is beef with white culture?  I don't like it when people claim that white people don't have culture - especially it sounds most lame when white people go to places where the white population forms the majority in demographics and they walk away screaming, "there was no culture!" 

• if one defines culture as the experience of lots of public events with people of color all around you smiling and talking, then Crocodile Face is right - there is a lack of public cultural events in SD that brings together a diversity of people.  So yes the beer festival that Crocodile Face attended probably didn't have all the blacks and latinos out of ther neighborhoods. Oh and probably not a lot of asians either huh? That's cuz we like to have private tea festvals with dragons (just kiiidddding)

• so you don't want to live in SD cuz there's no culture here huh? Let me explain to you the position that you are in to EVEN make that statement in the first place.  The author, Crocodile Face,  is in a position of luxury to even say that he could pick up and leave his  city and move to another just because it might be more cool than where he is living now -  - now I am in his position also - I am the person who is in position of priviledge to say that I can pick up and move.  I picked up and left california to move to NYC solely based on the reason because I wanted to - I didn't know anyone - I had never been there - but it sure looked great from the movies and NYC has this feeling of cultural greatness that I wanted to understand.  But I knew that for me to experience culture in NYC, it had to be beyond just eating authentic food and going to museums - I knew that I wanted the experience of being adopted into a community, to work with a community, to share common values and goals and to work towards similar missions.  But tight communities have tight ties.  Neighborhoods that are seem to have a strong sense culture tend to have strong social ties and networks - that means people know each other, they hang out together, and they watch out for each other. But it's hard to get into these networks   So I knew that I had to work extra hard to become involved and to gain the trust of the community that I wanted to work in. I also knew that I wouldn't be able to join the communities that I wanted to work in (mainly lower-income, black and latino) by living in Manhattan. So  I made the choice to live in areas where I wanted to invest my time to getting to know my neighbors. So if the author, Jeff, makes the decision to not move based on his perception of lack of cultures other than dominant, white, middle-upper class san diego culture ---perhaps that decision can be re-evaluated once he stops through Chula Vista and see those cultures.

• Now if an outsider (this includes me), goes to Chula Vista or National City or parts of Escondido - it may still feel that the most culturally diverse place is Walmart! So where are all the people of color on the streets in these areas south and north of the 30 mile SD dominant culture swatch? One of the issues with SD that Crocodile Face picked up on is the lack of visible diversity - and Annie says that we must look harder- Annie is right. We do have to look harder. But i think SD is particularly hard city to "Look in" if one doesn't understand the culture of migration and fear in San Diego  and as  two cultures that are inextricably linked.  Even though SD has one of the highest populations of Latinos - why is it so hard to see see Latinos? Why isn't it like other cities where you can step out in certain neighborhoods and feel culture dripping from the clouds? It's because SD, with help from the federal government's ICT unit and leftover autocratic, facist Bush administration policies, has done a wonderful job at creating one of the most hostile city environments for Latinos in the USA. SD sits at one of busiest border border crossings in the world and the busiest in the USA - it is also the site where undocumented Mexican migrants come to support our economies.  What's been happening lately is that the immigration officials have been rounding up anyone who has dark skin, detaining them, and questioning them.  What they are doing is illegal and the ACLU San Diego Chapter is doing a lot to fight this. With all the immigrant raids on Mexican families  - many who are citizens and unevenly documented Mexican families (e.g. in some families the parents will have citizenship but one of their kids may be undocumented), the ICE officals along with the silent compliance of local and county police officials, have created a widespead fear among neighborhoods with high numbers of Mexicans.  The levels of fear are so high that families are scared to leave their houses. Undocumented people are scared to walk around on the streets. Even those with documentation are getting harrassed. All of this has created a culture of fear among the Latino community in SD - So tourists of SAn Diego -  if you wonder why you don't see more Latinos on the street - it's because they are not comfortable walking around like you or I - like someone who is a citizen.

• In the context of the culture of fear and an understanding of the culture of migration, SD doesn't lack "culture," it just has a lot of "hidden culture." A lot of cultural practices, celebrations and etc are taking place indoors. The kind of public celebrations that could possibly bring lots of different cultures together aren't as frequent - with the exception of JOB's annual fiesta - which is an organization that is doing some of the most exciting coalition building and community organizing work in SD.  It's hard to get people out of their houses when they are afraid to come out! JOB, lead by Norma Chávez- Peterson,  is organized by people of color who work within and with Mexican and black communities - so there is a higher level of trust to attend their annual Fiesta - which you should be attending in August if you want to find evidence of vibrant culture in SD. Last year my girl norma rodriguez organized the festival.
  

this is a must read post on Racialicious by Tami on what the media is doing when it comes to mediating the life of Michelle Obama.

Between “Mammy” and “Miss Ann”: The “problem” with Michelle

"Privilege hates to lose it’s place. Privilege believes that it deserves to be exulted above others. Indeed, it resents when the “other” is elevated to equal status, particularly when the “other” refuses to conform to the rules that privilege has put in place. So, the criticism of Michelle Obama’s physicality and sartorial choices comes as no surprise.

Most mainstream media are on board the FLOTUS love train. They call the First Lady beautiful. They love her unique style. They cherish those awesome, toned arms. They love her modern marriage. They celebrate her role as a mother. All of this talk about appearance and being a wife and mother–stereotypical feminine ideals–is driving some white feminists to distraction. They think this focus diminishes Michelle Obama’s considerable intellect and professional achievements. Most black women I know see things differently. The so-called feminine ideal is a tyranny to all women, but it is white women who stand as its embodiment. In the public consciousness, black women are almost never the most beautiful ones or the good wives or mothers. White women see Michelle Obama getting pushed into a feminized role and lament that this always happens to women. Many black woman recognize that it rarely happens to us and we are happy that people are finally recognizing our femininity.

The criticism that Michelle Obama has received, among the accolades, is instructive about the way black women are often viewed by the American public. Yesterday’s New York Times “Opinionator” column rounds up Web analysis of reactions to Michelle Obama’s style and appearance, particularly on the first couple’s recent European trip.

Reading about Juan Williams’ “Stokely Carmichael in a dress” comment, hearing the constant pondering of the first lady’s large buttocks and strong arms, and witnessing ongoing attempts to portray her as domineering, a narrative emerges that is not unfamiliar: Black woman are big, aggressive–not feminine, but masculine. Perhaps the only stereotype missing is the hypersexual tag that we often get saddled with–hypersexuality that is the opposite of the virginal feminine ideal.

Some folks clearly resent the presence of a black woman in an iconic position of American womanhood–one that is not meant for us.

Take the nitpicking about the First Lady’s clothing. Fashion press, as well as designers Donna Karan and Oscar de la Renta have sniffed at Obama’s choices of niche designers and off-the-rack clothes. Karan reckons Obama is going through a phase: “I hope and believe this is just a moment.” While de la Renta questioned the wisdom of wearing a sweater to Buckingham Palace. And, of course, there is the constant sniping about the First Lady’s shockingly uncovered biceps. "

"And finally, Michelle Obama is NOT Jackie O. I'm tired of folks saying, "Jackie Kennedy wouldn't do this. Jackie Kennedy wouldn't wear that," when Mrs. Obama does something people don't like. Michelle Obama is making her own legacy and Jackie Kennedy is not the current First Lady. Last time I checked my calendar it read 2009, not 1962."

"People have talked about Lady O's looks, called her "angry," "militant" and "unpatriotic." She was even called "trash" and "bitch" by pundits. I was so frustrated when I heard the "trash" and "bitch" reference. It makes me angry because there are racist undertones to some of these comments. Would they call her these things if she weren't black? I've never seen a First Lady so criticized, attacked and disrespected. I didn't agree with the way Pres. G.W. Bush ran the country but I never thought to call Laura Bush vulgar names or Hillary Clinton, Barbara Bush, Nancy Regan, etc. SOME people can't handle seeing an intelligent black woman who is poised and living a luxurious lifestyle."