So there's a panel coming up on Wednesday, March 18th about the affordability of higher education hosted by the Lecture Series Zocalo located at the Los Angeles Center Theatre in downtown LA at 7:30 PM. Lasts for an hour, usually some kind of reception afterward. It's FREE, and if you're interested you need to make reservations giving your name, email, and number --- they've never called me. To do that click here.
Who's speaking?
-Los Angeles Community College District Board President Kelly Candaele
-Inside Higher Ed Editor Scott Jaschik
-UCLA professor Patricia M. McDonough, author of Choosing Colleges: How Social Class and Schools Structure Opportunity
-Bruce Poch, Dean of Admissions at Pomona College
Lecture series by Zocalo is usually pretty good and interesting, and this time highly relevant to PTSP and all students in general. The people who usually attend those lectures tend to be older, white, and/or are professionals, but I usually went for free food. They used to have a whole lot of food from tamales to quesadillas to only the finest cheeses even smug individuals would not smug.
Monday
Unemployment, an Alien's View and Bigger Beefs
It's been a nasty ass brutish, Leviathan-like few weeks for me. Very recently, I was kicked off the ladder and have just taken a backflop into the pool of unemployment.
But to me that's just a petty, unimportant reality that I have to deal with for the time being.
If an alien with humanoid features were to visit planet earth and anthropologize me, he/she'd/it would ultimately see is that I merely lost my form of income generation.
At the individual level, income is only important so far as I acquire the means to eat, drink, shelter ourselves to deal with the elements and store personal conveniences, and perhaps, if I really have the time, reproduce!
If an alien were to visit planet earth and old-school anthropologize us as a society with curiosities and peculiarities, he/she'd write about income-generation as just one activity we simply engaged in to sustain ourselves:
So basically, the alien would say that I just don't have an income-producing activity and that I don't have that much a chance of participating in the exchange network, and that I'd probably be ostracized in my society for that.
Link found at www.thisisultimatelypettybullshit.com
In seriousity, even though I can dismiss this dismissal and its ultimately just one ditch in the proverbial road, I will say that I loved what I did, I feel like I was completely mislead, and ultimately got my eye put out like that kid, Arshavin from Slumdog Millionaire. It was truly the biggest what-the-fuck moment of my life.
But, I don't really need sympathy 'cause there's a whole other world waiting out there and things could always be worse. I'm actually afforded a lot of luxuries mainly because I was born here so I'm greatful and I'm going to use whatever advantages I do have to leverage whatever I want to leverage.
However, turning your proverbial attention to the bigger picture, not everyone has the privilege of saying that.
There was a very long, but highly informative article a few weeks ago in the LA Weekly about trafficked indentured servants from the Philippines working in a Sherman Oaks health care facility.
I wonder what the alien would say about trafficking.
Link at www.whatsbeefthatsbeefitsalwaysyourownpeoplessometimesitsyourownpeoples.edu
But to me that's just a petty, unimportant reality that I have to deal with for the time being.
If an alien with humanoid features were to visit planet earth and anthropologize me, he/she'd/it would ultimately see is that I merely lost my form of income generation.
At the individual level, income is only important so far as I acquire the means to eat, drink, shelter ourselves to deal with the elements and store personal conveniences, and perhaps, if I really have the time, reproduce!
If an alien were to visit planet earth and old-school anthropologize us as a society with curiosities and peculiarities, he/she'd write about income-generation as just one activity we simply engaged in to sustain ourselves:
A lot of what humans in what would be labeled "Western" popular and public society do appears to be tied not to making things, but acquiring and consuming things.
Things --- whether they be objects like food or an automobile, services like those provided by a house-maid or an engineer, or experiences like vacations at places, some of which carry greater semantic importance for others, and amusement parks.
The main way to acquire things is done via transaction.
However before a transaction can take a place, an individual needs to go through a process called income generation and accumulation. Income generation and accumulation is a process where humans offer their services in return for the means to participate in trades. After having generated enough income and accumulated enough, humans become free to consummate transactions
This society is highly built on those transactions. There is a high amount of interpersonal dependence because none of the things acquired by humans in this society can be made en masse for the masses by any single individual. However, this interpersonal dependence is rarely acknowledged because many individuals can consummate an almost innumerable amount of trades in the time of one Earthly rotation. Individuals who have low participation levels in this institutionalized acquision of things, either voluntarily or involuntarily, this individual is often labeled and stigmatized by members who can acquire things, and his/her characteristics are scrutinized and/or shunned by many members in society.
So basically, the alien would say that I just don't have an income-producing activity and that I don't have that much a chance of participating in the exchange network, and that I'd probably be ostracized in my society for that.
Link found at www.thisisultimatelypettybullshit.com
In seriousity, even though I can dismiss this dismissal and its ultimately just one ditch in the proverbial road, I will say that I loved what I did, I feel like I was completely mislead, and ultimately got my eye put out like that kid, Arshavin from Slumdog Millionaire. It was truly the biggest what-the-fuck moment of my life.
But, I don't really need sympathy 'cause there's a whole other world waiting out there and things could always be worse. I'm actually afforded a lot of luxuries mainly because I was born here so I'm greatful and I'm going to use whatever advantages I do have to leverage whatever I want to leverage.
However, turning your proverbial attention to the bigger picture, not everyone has the privilege of saying that.
America is the land of opportunity — if you have papers.
There was a very long, but highly informative article a few weeks ago in the LA Weekly about trafficked indentured servants from the Philippines working in a Sherman Oaks health care facility.
Modern-day slavery does exist, but in degrees.
She has shoulder-length black hair, dark skin, a wide, flat nose and eyes that seem perpetually tired. As a teacher in the Philippines, she made less than $100 a month. Now she makes $120 a day taking care of a retired podiatrist named Fred, who is 102 years old.
For three years, beginning in October of 2005, Agnes labors inside the confines of the house on Vernon Street with five other illegal Filipino workers.
Mary and her daughter work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. Between them they make $1,500 a month, a massive amount compared with the family’s combined wages back home.
Why does this stuff happen? Poverty is the root cause. It is the fuel that drives the engine of supply and demand. Supply: abundant cheap labor. Demand: first-world clamor for someone, anyone, to do disagreeable, menial tasks.
A tenth of the population of the Philippines live overseas, a diaspora second only to that of Mexico. The country is a major exporter of labor, the highest relative to population size20of any Southeast Asian country.
Last year, Filipino overseas foreign workers, or OFWs, sent back $14 billion in remittances. This money accounts for one-fifth of the country’s GDP. Remittances have become a pillar of the Philippine economy, and are expected to rise 10 percent next year.
One of every three Filipinos fails to meet the official, arbitrary poverty line set by the World Bank — the infamous $1 purchasing power per person per day.
There are 12 million undocumented workers in the United States according to the PEW Hispanic Center, recognized as having the most accurate figures on this subject. The largest number of these workers — 2.8 million — are in California. Of that 2.8 million, roughly one-fifth are Filipino. At any given time, there are half a million TNTs in California. Elsewhere, they are maids in Hong Kong and Dubai and Kuwait, cooks and crew on cruise ships, hotel workers, nurses and caregivers all over the U.S.
I wonder what the alien would say about trafficking.
Humans from a region called Southeast Asia appear not to be able to acquire as many things as humans from the West. Though the population can offer the same services in the same income-generating and accumulation activities, those activities are not as valued as their counterparts in the West, mainly because their exchange network does not have connections to commodities.
They do not have value because they can only offer their services only to people that they are geographically near. The geographically near individuals consequently do not have as much income or things with which to make exchanges, which means the exchange becomes tautological and ultimately self-defeating.
The only way out is to often times to offer the physical human body.
Link at www.whatsbeefthatsbeefitsalwaysyourownpeoplessometimesitsyourownpeoples.edu
Tuesday
The Unwritten Rules of Ph.D Research
Today, the wonderful world of Scribd ran me right across the book The Unwritten Rules of Ph.D Research.
Interesting, considering that going back to school is almost always on my mind. I'm usually not a fan of self-helppy-ish how-to books, but in this case, I think it's alright.
I've read before that going to grad school is like joining a cult.
Lot of professors, TAs I've been around have also remarked, "I wouldn't wish grad school on anyone." Graduate school has been described not as a learning process in terms of "bettering yourself" or "getting more knowledge", but more a "socialization" process where you learn conventions, ways of doings, pecking orders.
The book below speaks to a lot of that socialization process of grad school. Little stuff that you might overlook. They talk about "fitting in" within the culture of academia. They talk about a lot about how getting a Ph.D is like a rite of passage, an elaborate, drawn out hazing ritual you have to get through so you can become a 'peer.' In the end, what these authors seem to be saying is this: those hazing rituals imposed by the universities/institutions are in place to show that you could create, organize, and manage research in your area of discipline by yourself.
The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research (MJ Version)
Interesting, considering that going back to school is almost always on my mind. I'm usually not a fan of self-helppy-ish how-to books, but in this case, I think it's alright.
I've read before that going to grad school is like joining a cult.
For anyone who has been in graduate school, numerous portions of Hassan's outline of the mind-control practices of cults will seem weirdly familiar.
- Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."
- Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."
- Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."
- Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"
Lot of professors, TAs I've been around have also remarked, "I wouldn't wish grad school on anyone." Graduate school has been described not as a learning process in terms of "bettering yourself" or "getting more knowledge", but more a "socialization" process where you learn conventions, ways of doings, pecking orders.
The book below speaks to a lot of that socialization process of grad school. Little stuff that you might overlook. They talk about "fitting in" within the culture of academia. They talk about a lot about how getting a Ph.D is like a rite of passage, an elaborate, drawn out hazing ritual you have to get through so you can become a 'peer.' In the end, what these authors seem to be saying is this: those hazing rituals imposed by the universities/institutions are in place to show that you could create, organize, and manage research in your area of discipline by yourself.
The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research (MJ Version)
The Hip-Hop Work-Shop
Once upon a time, not too long ago, PTSP had a hip-hop flow to it. We now refer to that year as 2006.
Ha, I kidz, I kidz, ya'll in 2007, 2008, 2009 are hip-hop too.
But I'm just saying, we did hold a hip-hop workshop this one time, and I'm glad it was something we did because it was fun. In our workshop that one fateful February or March day, we represented the 5 elements of hip-hop: breakdancing, MCing, beatboxing, DJing, and graffit-ing.
Why? Well, why the helfck not? We've got our Filipino dance crews up and down, left and right, we've got upcoming MCs on the underground, the l-o-r-d knows we got our DJs. Most of us grow up because it was just there for us and I imagine we relate a lot to its cultural norms and it's stars as opposed to the unspoken hegemonic dominance of white guy culture. I remember being at Disneyland celebrating my lil sister's birthday at around the time Gangsta's Paradise was ripping it, talking with this white teenager named Doug, the first thing I said to this guy was, "Rock music sucks."
I said in my intro post that PTSP had sort of an interrelation with the development of my hip-hop-headiness, let me explain.
One of the first classes I took was a class in ethnomusicology called the Cultural History of Rap. The Roots performed for free at Bruin Plaza and I got to see them live. Ugly Duckling was supposed to show up one time, but ended up flaking. The Blue Scholars represented when no one knew who they were. One of the best classes I ever took was a Hip-hop Linguistics class which was taught by a dude who went to school with John Legend.
PTSP was just a space that encouraged more of that. Freestyling/MCing was always at the PTSP parties thanks to the master MC, EZ, who'd strike up a SY-PHA/cipha/cipher where X-Tian would drop ridiculosity and Dom would flow. B.Saturday was a master beatboxer whose mic failed at the end of SEND 2006. Ivan was/is a poet inspired by Saul Williams and he knows it.
Anyhow, EZ is still busting lines
I knew this dude who went to Slugvilles with me and always thought he was on the verge of killing somebody. I was right. Dude named Tantrum.
Via Bambu Rants
I always wondered how I had such trouble coming up with anything during the ciphas but these guys make it look easy.
Ha, I kidz, I kidz, ya'll in 2007, 2008, 2009 are hip-hop too.
But I'm just saying, we did hold a hip-hop workshop this one time, and I'm glad it was something we did because it was fun. In our workshop that one fateful February or March day, we represented the 5 elements of hip-hop: breakdancing, MCing, beatboxing, DJing, and graffit-ing.
Why? Well, why the helfck not? We've got our Filipino dance crews up and down, left and right, we've got upcoming MCs on the underground, the l-o-r-d knows we got our DJs. Most of us grow up because it was just there for us and I imagine we relate a lot to its cultural norms and it's stars as opposed to the unspoken hegemonic dominance of white guy culture. I remember being at Disneyland celebrating my lil sister's birthday at around the time Gangsta's Paradise was ripping it, talking with this white teenager named Doug, the first thing I said to this guy was, "Rock music sucks."
I said in my intro post that PTSP had sort of an interrelation with the development of my hip-hop-headiness, let me explain.
One of the first classes I took was a class in ethnomusicology called the Cultural History of Rap. The Roots performed for free at Bruin Plaza and I got to see them live. Ugly Duckling was supposed to show up one time, but ended up flaking. The Blue Scholars represented when no one knew who they were. One of the best classes I ever took was a Hip-hop Linguistics class which was taught by a dude who went to school with John Legend.
PTSP was just a space that encouraged more of that. Freestyling/MCing was always at the PTSP parties thanks to the master MC, EZ, who'd strike up a SY-PHA/cipha/cipher where X-Tian would drop ridiculosity and Dom would flow. B.Saturday was a master beatboxer whose mic failed at the end of SEND 2006. Ivan was/is a poet inspired by Saul Williams and he knows it.
Anyhow, EZ is still busting lines
I knew this dude who went to Slugvilles with me and always thought he was on the verge of killing somebody. I was right. Dude named Tantrum.
Via Bambu Rants
I always wondered how I had such trouble coming up with anything during the ciphas but these guys make it look easy.
Monday
On Community Colleges Recent Troubles and Transferring
As the economy is tanking and the job market is collapsing, community colleges are now getting swamped. In two different ways!
Swamped with newer students trying to make better on the job market, and two, swamped from actually acquiring resources to accomodate the new deluge of students.
The LA Times had an article about how the community college system is stretching their capacity in response to a garbage-load of problems: California's state budget cuts in K-16 education, dealing with an uptick in enrollment, and increasingly having trouble at getting students ready for transferring to 4-year universities.
Community colleges are being asked to do a lot. And they always have been asked to do a lot. But when things get to the point of 'overwhelming' and people are asked to do a lot, they go on a mission to cut the 'over' part to ease the passage to 'whelming.' That means, cut the 'inefficiencies!' Which means cut classes! Cut arts programs! Cut the humanities! And cut the crappy students from your classroom!
This guy, a college dean talks more about it.
Essentially, the people losing out from all this effiency-making and cutting extravaganza are the students who are probably the ones who would benefit most from a college education.
The Public Policy Institute of California touched a bit on what demographic actually stands to benefit the most from a college education in a previous study.
The demographics are usually people of color, usually people from low-income families, usually people with few weak or strong social connections to a collegiate institution or people who've graduated from a collegiate institution.
One of the reasons we did PTSP Bayanihan in the first place was to reach those students.
While picking up a desirable education is getting rough in of itself, transferring is a whole other beast. The same students struggling to get the education struggle to transfer.
Is it me or does it seem like its getting harder and harder each and every year to transfer? Don't these (culturally-hegemonically-created, which don't seem to prove anything) standards seem like they are getting getting shot to the roof? And were learning and proving exactly, what?
The LA Times article made a quick note about how the community college environment facilitates transferring, something that we all tried to note in Bayanihan's first Academic Year Proposal:
Compare that with the 5 or 6 counselors at El Camino or the 2 at Glendale and LACC. It seems like there's just a culture hardwired towards transferring. On the outside, Santa Monica is perceived as the preeminent place of transfer. I'd hypothesize that there's just more opportunity for people at those colleges to be connected to resources and networks that would facilitate transferring. But perhaps people who actually went to Santa Monica and/or El Camino, Glendale would know better than me.
Swamped with newer students trying to make better on the job market, and two, swamped from actually acquiring resources to accomodate the new deluge of students.
The LA Times had an article about how the community college system is stretching their capacity in response to a garbage-load of problems: California's state budget cuts in K-16 education, dealing with an uptick in enrollment, and increasingly having trouble at getting students ready for transferring to 4-year universities.
Community colleges are being asked to do a lot. And they always have been asked to do a lot. But when things get to the point of 'overwhelming' and people are asked to do a lot, they go on a mission to cut the 'over' part to ease the passage to 'whelming.' That means, cut the 'inefficiencies!' Which means cut classes! Cut arts programs! Cut the humanities! And cut the crappy students from your classroom!
This guy, a college dean talks more about it.
By definition, though, the needy are inefficient. A student who shows up prepared for college-level work, passes everything the first time without tutoring, and has his personal life together is remarkably cheap to educate, especially in the liberal arts. A student who has academic skills deficits, who needs counseling, and who attends part-time for several years is much higher-maintenance, and therefore more expensive.
When times are relatively flush, we can do some justice to both efficiency and mission. Now, we're being forced to choose efficiency.
Essentially, the people losing out from all this effiency-making and cutting extravaganza are the students who are probably the ones who would benefit most from a college education.
The Public Policy Institute of California touched a bit on what demographic actually stands to benefit the most from a college education in a previous study.
The demographics are usually people of color, usually people from low-income families, usually people with few weak or strong social connections to a collegiate institution or people who've graduated from a collegiate institution.
One of the reasons we did PTSP Bayanihan in the first place was to reach those students.
While picking up a desirable education is getting rough in of itself, transferring is a whole other beast. The same students struggling to get the education struggle to transfer.
"Students who come to two-year colleges generally don't think they can make it," Trice said. "I dispel certain myths about transferring: 'UCLA is made for white people.' 'I'll never make it there.' 'I can't possibly pay for it.' It's a social ceiling."
Community college officials say that 40% of students who are serious about transferring manage to do it. But the Public Policy Institute of California, in a 2006 study, found that only about 25% of the students who are focused on transferring actually make it.
Is it me or does it seem like its getting harder and harder each and every year to transfer? Don't these (culturally-hegemonically-created, which don't seem to prove anything) standards seem like they are getting getting shot to the roof? And were learning and proving exactly, what?
The LA Times article made a quick note about how the community college environment facilitates transferring, something that we all tried to note in Bayanihan's first Academic Year Proposal:
It's no coincidence that Santa Monica College, which has the highest UC transfer rates of any community college, also has one of the biggest counseling staffs, with 60 full-time and 40 part-time advisors, said Dan Nannini, coordinator of the college's transfer center.
Compare that with the 5 or 6 counselors at El Camino or the 2 at Glendale and LACC. It seems like there's just a culture hardwired towards transferring. On the outside, Santa Monica is perceived as the preeminent place of transfer. I'd hypothesize that there's just more opportunity for people at those colleges to be connected to resources and networks that would facilitate transferring. But perhaps people who actually went to Santa Monica and/or El Camino, Glendale would know better than me.
Friday
Cognitive Abilities, Environment, PTSP Environment
PTSP was one place for me to think about my academic interest: our cognitive abilities and our environments.
Ever since Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, my Education 130 class about Race, Class, and Ethnicity with Tyrone Howard and spending time at the UCLA Bookstore peering through Mike Rose's book The Mind at Work, combined with my disposition towards anthropology, I've been interested in intelligences and cognitive abilities across different cultures.
Intelligences and cognitive abilities across different cultures is just a more compact, technical way of saying that I'm interested in how environment/context/social network influences many different individuals to become "smart", what they may choose to become "smart" in, or how they can become perceived as "smart" in doing it.
In much of popular discourse, people of color usually are considered "intellectually inferior." A meme passed down from the times of Charles Darwin --- brown people are the more primitive and less evolved. Their ways are backward! They are the sub-level between the chimpanzee and the ideal, fully-evolved, fully-capable white person. You could look thru the history of Western science and medicine, you'd be hardpressed to find people of color making "discoveries" and developments in technology, let alone being celebrated for doing so. Nobody really gives a flarping tuba player about Kitasato Shibasaburo or Percy Julian. If you buy into Western science and medicine is about individuals, virtually white folk from Europe are the only ones with all the rockstar, bro wisdom and genius in the world because they've come up with all the rational, objective, progressive solutions.
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond was one of the first books I read to overturn that type of thinking. He asked the question "how did it come to be that white people were the ones making all the technological innovation, the guns, and the steel, while brown peoples were not?
Did it have to do with white people's innate intelligence? Or was it merely, the work of their environment?
The work of environment. Here's a bit of a parable from H.A. Simon in his book The Sciences of the Artificial via the book Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins about how our intelligence is mostly environmentally-influenced:
Were humans, were usually known to make our environments. At least, most of us have the freedom to make our environments.
That said, what kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we make ourselves as Filipinos in the Phillippines? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks did our parents, relatives, friends make for us in America? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we re-create as Filipinos in America? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we re-create as Pilipino Transfer students at UCLA? What kind of intelligences are we making? What are we becoming experts in?
Ever since Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, my Education 130 class about Race, Class, and Ethnicity with Tyrone Howard and spending time at the UCLA Bookstore peering through Mike Rose's book The Mind at Work, combined with my disposition towards anthropology, I've been interested in intelligences and cognitive abilities across different cultures.
Intelligences and cognitive abilities across different cultures is just a more compact, technical way of saying that I'm interested in how environment/context/social network influences many different individuals to become "smart", what they may choose to become "smart" in, or how they can become perceived as "smart" in doing it.
In much of popular discourse, people of color usually are considered "intellectually inferior." A meme passed down from the times of Charles Darwin --- brown people are the more primitive and less evolved. Their ways are backward! They are the sub-level between the chimpanzee and the ideal, fully-evolved, fully-capable white person. You could look thru the history of Western science and medicine, you'd be hardpressed to find people of color making "discoveries" and developments in technology, let alone being celebrated for doing so. Nobody really gives a flarping tuba player about Kitasato Shibasaburo or Percy Julian. If you buy into Western science and medicine is about individuals, virtually white folk from Europe are the only ones with all the rockstar, bro wisdom and genius in the world because they've come up with all the rational, objective, progressive solutions.
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond was one of the first books I read to overturn that type of thinking. He asked the question "how did it come to be that white people were the ones making all the technological innovation, the guns, and the steel, while brown peoples were not?
Did it have to do with white people's innate intelligence? Or was it merely, the work of their environment?
The work of environment. Here's a bit of a parable from H.A. Simon in his book The Sciences of the Artificial via the book Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins about how our intelligence is mostly environmentally-influenced:
As we watch the complicated movements of an ant on a beach, we may be tempted to attribute to the ant, some complicated program for constructing the path taken. In fact...that trajectory tells us more about the beach than about the ant...Rather than watch a single ant for a few minutes, as psychologists are wont to do, let us be anthropologists and move in and watch a community of ants over weeks and months. Let us assume that we arrive just after a storm, when the beach is a tabula rasa for the ants. Generations of ants comb the beach. They leave behind them short-lived chemcial trails, and whereever they go they inadvertently move grains of sand as they pass. Over months, paths to likely food sources develop as they are visited again and again by ants following first the short-lived chemical trails of their fellows and later the longer-lived roads produced by a history of heavy ant traffic. After months watching, we decide to follow a particular ant on an outing. We may be impressed by how cleverly it visits every high-likelihoood food location. This ant seems to work so much more efficiently than did its ancestors of weeks ago. Is this a smart ant? It Is it perhaps smarter than its ancestors? No, it is just the same dumb sort of ant, reacting to its environment in the same ways its ancestors did.
Were humans, were usually known to make our environments. At least, most of us have the freedom to make our environments.
That said, what kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we make ourselves as Filipinos in the Phillippines? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks did our parents, relatives, friends make for us in America? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we re-create as Filipinos in America? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we re-create as Pilipino Transfer students at UCLA? What kind of intelligences are we making? What are we becoming experts in?
Tuesday
Justice for Filipino American Veterans: Did We Settle and Is This Enough?
Apparently, the Filipino American Veterans of World War Mothereffin' II are just on the verge of receiving compensation they were originally promised by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and nullified by the Missouri Mule. Might I remind you that World War Mothereffin' II was over almost 64 mothereffin' years ago and that those were presidents of the United States in the 1940s and are long dead.
From the Mercury News
In case you don't know what the Filipino vets' struggle is about, here's a little legislative background:
Basically, the US government entered into a contract with people who sacrificed body, mind, and spirit. But because they weren't viewed as a colony anymore, nor were they regular white people, nor did they have any other leverage otherwise, the US pretty much just ignored the Philippines soldiers. Like...ahhh...you don't exist! Gollymee jeepers, isn't social exclusion fun?!
Ivan had been talking to me about his organizing work on behalf of those veterans, and the main thing that I got from him was that whatever they got was probably not enough. The Japanese who had been interned in the US had received more in terms of benefits and recognition. Don't know the exact numbers, they've been long since recognized, apologized to, and received their benefits. With Fil-Am vets, it's like a pittiance they've thrown at us just to shut us the fork up.
We have nice recognition parades in San Fran and Los Angeles on Veterans Day, and a nice monument in Historic Filipinotown. These are good, but it seems like there's a lot more missing.
Lots of people die in 64 mothereffin' years. What's happened to those veterans' families since then? Will their kids be able to reap any benefits?
My grandpa (RIP) back in the Philippines with my namesake was a veteran of World War II, but he wasn't able to come to the US, so he went out and made my dad and 8 other aunties and uncles. My dad wasn't able to come to the US till the mothereffin' 1980s and he wasn't able to finish architecture school because of the lack of money that perhaps my grandpa could've been compensated for.
Read full articles at Mercury News via the Angry Asian Man
From the Mercury News
The stimulus bill approved by the U.S. Senate on Monday night authorized the release of $198 million to rectify Uncle Sam's postwar snub. About 18,000 Filipino vets who fought in the war under the American flag would now receive up to $15,000 for their service.
In case you don't know what the Filipino vets' struggle is about, here's a little legislative background:
The vets' quest for compensation stems from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision in July 1941 to draft 140,000 soldiers from the Philippines, then an American colony. A year later, Congress passed a law allowing Filipino soldiers to become U.S. citizens with full military benefits. But in 1946, after Filipino soldiers fought and died side by side with U.S. troops, President Harry S. Truman signed two bills denying them citizenship as well as most veterans' benefits. The bills were postwar cost-saving measures that Truman said he regretted.
Basically, the US government entered into a contract with people who sacrificed body, mind, and spirit. But because they weren't viewed as a colony anymore, nor were they regular white people, nor did they have any other leverage otherwise, the US pretty much just ignored the Philippines soldiers. Like...ahhh...you don't exist! Gollymee jeepers, isn't social exclusion fun?!
Because they have been disappointed before, Valdez and other Filipino vets say they won't celebrate until the allocation survives the committee now trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the $838.2 billion stimulus bill.
Ivan had been talking to me about his organizing work on behalf of those veterans, and the main thing that I got from him was that whatever they got was probably not enough. The Japanese who had been interned in the US had received more in terms of benefits and recognition. Don't know the exact numbers, they've been long since recognized, apologized to, and received their benefits. With Fil-Am vets, it's like a pittiance they've thrown at us just to shut us the fork up.
We have nice recognition parades in San Fran and Los Angeles on Veterans Day, and a nice monument in Historic Filipinotown. These are good, but it seems like there's a lot more missing.
Lots of people die in 64 mothereffin' years. What's happened to those veterans' families since then? Will their kids be able to reap any benefits?
My grandpa (RIP) back in the Philippines with my namesake was a veteran of World War II, but he wasn't able to come to the US, so he went out and made my dad and 8 other aunties and uncles. My dad wasn't able to come to the US till the mothereffin' 1980s and he wasn't able to finish architecture school because of the lack of money that perhaps my grandpa could've been compensated for.
Read full articles at Mercury News via the Angry Asian Man
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