I think for me, the reading and resources that will be most helpful will be the news outlets as well as the immigration policy website and articles found through UW libraries about political rhetoric. In order to get a good grasp on the stories of migrants being told by Germany I need to come from all angles meaning political speeches, news articles, scholarly journals, etc.
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1. Self-reflection on the lens you view the world through is crucial
The article "Identity and Social Action: The Role of Self-Examination in Systemic Change" the author speaks about the experience of her students in service learning, and how she teaches them t acknowledge the lens they look through due to their upbringing and lifestyle. One must be aware of the way their experience and beliefs colors their perception of the world if they ever want to be able to objectively approach and issue to find the systematic issue. Once we stop blaming individuals we find the system that is the true problem 2. There are three different types of citizens: personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented. The type of citizen you try to foster may effect the the of volunteers and change makers they become. Personally responsible citizens try to be good citizen by having good values and character, and by abiding by the laws. Participatory citizens actively participate and take leadership positions within established systems in order to better society. Justice oriented citizens question and change established systems especially when they feel they perpetuate injustice. All these citizens have their pros and cons. For example, fostering participatory citizens may not help increase voter participation in young children. While raising a justice oriented citizen =does not guarantee their success in participation and changing systems. There are varying views within these different views of citizenship that effect its outcomes. 3. By not discussing the many different, and somewhat uncomfortable factors of service we run this risk of perpetuating bad service. There can be an inherent equality in service. Those who are served can be made to feel inferior while those who serve are made to feel good and saintly. People may participate in service to feel as though they are good people while ignoring the potentially harmful effects their service may have or their attitudes about service may have. This goes back to the article we read last week about being conscious of your motives and the situation you find yourself in. You must educate yourself not only on the service you are about to do but on your on motives and the potential outcomes on your actions the motives can have. I do want to address the topic of this blog post, but first I have to link to the speech we read by Ivan Illich entitled "To Hell With Good Intentions." This article has had a pretty significant impact on me. Having just finished reading it, I don't think i have fully absorbed Illich's words, but they have struck a chord. I think it's exposed not only the mindset of summer do-gooders, but of the US in general. We believe we can change other countries, make them better, when we have so may problems of our own. It's almost comical how we ignore our own problems in favor of trying to fix the problems of a country we don't understand. He speaks a lot of the havoc that these summer do-gooders do, that they cause problem within a community that they cannot understand because they cannot communicate with the ones who truly suffers; that Americans come and "sacrifice" their time and their comfort, and go home with these grand stories of the change they have made. I don't want to be that person, and yet at the same time I can't help but feel that I am. I do not know the language, and have no real way of truly communicating with the residents there. I am offering my services to a cause I cannot completely understand and although I am trying to learn, I cannot possibly know all the intricacies as the residents do. Illicc's speech should make us all uncomfortable. It should make us look at how we plan to engage during our trip. We cannot fix the situation. We cannot help. We can offer our time, but we should expect only to learn, not to change.
This connects to gentrification as it speaks to foreign forces that come in to "help" the neighborhood. Expansion and improvement of housing sounds like a good thing on the surface. This should be what neighborhoods strive for, to become better, but for many who live in these areas this progress comes as an ill omen of disaster to come: rents rising, neighborhood vibes changing, safe spaces disappearing, and the eclectic culture being pushed out. Gentrification seems to be most horrendous in artistic neighborhoods, as not only are rent prices rising, but the people who make the neighborhood the way it is are being pushed out, and that neighborhood beings to lose what makes it great. This stand for both Capital Hill in Seattle and Heinrichplatz in Berlin. This idea of trying to help, to make things better, has been toxic for these artistic neighbors in a similar way as the summer volunteerism has been harmful to Mexican villages. Both are fueled by narratives of development, of moving forward into the future. Volunteers in Mexico are propelled by the idea that they are helping villages catch up to the rest of the world, neighborhood gentrification is propelled by the idea of development as an inevitable push towards betterment that all neighborhoods must accept. I noticed quite a few times in the Seattle article, this language of defeatism, that this is going to happen whether we like it or not, whereas the German article seemed more hopeful that the grassroots movements would accomplish something, and I can't help to wonder why that is. Regardless, this begs the question of how we can engage Ethically in Germany. As I mentioned before and as Illich said, we must come to learn but not to help, yet we are engaging in partnerships with nonprofits. While we will learn a lot our intention seems to be to provide some service, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The question is how to we engage in this service from a more humble, less colonial and patronizing perspective. Although I'm not really sure where to start when it comes to asking how we can engage in ethical community engagement with displaced people, I do have a few questions about our engagement relating to the article.
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An eye-opening tripI believe this trip truly gave me an opportunity to see how the stories that are told in political areans have (or don't have) an affect on ouublic perception and actions... this was something I was eager to expand on going forward Archives
August 2017
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