Debra: How does someone so dumb get so much power?
Dexter: She know’s how to play the game; you can take a lesson.
Debra: Of what, ass-kissing?
Dexter: Politics…
From Season 1, Episode 1
$31,692 is the debt attached to my name for attending the university.
These student loans covered textbooks after textbooks and other school materials, but they also helped my family pay bills. I recall several months of mortgage payments, of car insurance payments, of getting food on the table…these all come to mind as I review my “student” loans.
I recognize the privilege it is to accumulate debt (vs. who cannot accumulate financial debt), but I also see how a college degree for students from working class and/or underrepresented backgrounds become/continue being part of the vicious cycle of debt. “Yes, I have a ‘college education,’ but how do I begin to repay it?”
It is not a matter of feeling entitled with a college degree, “I have a degree, all will be easy for me,” it is a matter of acknowledging that institutions perpetuate violence. In this case, the burden of debt.
“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy” (Noam Chomsky).
Regardless of how difficult it is with debt, there is a better tomorrow. I am not chained down by debt…
But the student keeps studying, keeps planning to study, keeps running to study, keeps studying a plan, keeps building a debt. The student does not intend to pay.
But if you listen to them, they will tell you: we will not handle credit, and we cannot handle debt, debt flows through us, and there’s no time to tell you everything, so much bad debt, so much to forget and remember again. But if we listen to them, they will say, “Come, let’s plan something together.” And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re telling all of you, but we’re not telling anyone else.
OCCUPY TOGETHER!
“Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough’. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable — this is Marcos.”
—Subcomandante Marco
This Bridge Called My Back - Writings by Radical Women of Color
I don’t care what gender studies or queer theory class you’ve taken, you need to read this book, but be warned, it is a rare find and might expensive. It contains several essays by womanists discussing their experience, racism, poverty, how racism pervaded the feminist movement in the early 1980s and most importantly the individual experiences of asian pacific, black, american indian and latina/chicana women. This words you find in this book and the truths that will make your soul sick are imperrative for understanding the history of racism, feminism, systematic oppression and white privilege. These are stories that have, even today, been swept under the rug and out of sight.
You need to read this fucking book.
I’m reading this for my women’s studies class, and I love it so far :)
:)
Inspired to wear aretes de conciencia, I was moved by the beautiful people at Dignidad Rebelde and their artwork to put these earrings together.
The original artwork is a piece celebrating the struggle of the Zapatistas.
i took a class titled “decolonizing education” this past quarter, taught by the amazing Prof. K. Wayne Yang.
for one of his assignments, we had to write a short creative non-fiction piece reflecting why we would like to go back into education as teachers, counselors, or whatever form.
this is how it begins…
I can hear the 8AM bell calling the school day into session.
I’m right on time, I think.
I woke up maybe just twenty minutes before, appreciating the fact that I lived across the street from work. This occurred most of the time I worked mornings. In fact, I can remember how students, like Jennifer, a ninth-grader, often called me out: “You just woke up, huh?”, giggling away before confessing that she, too, would have loved to have slept in a bit more. As “unprofessional” as it might have been, the nineteen-year old me had difficulty adapting to being employed where I had previously been a student.
As I jaywalked across the street and made my way to my assigned classroom, I couldn’t help but fidget with my name tag. This behavior, usually reserved for “first-days,” became the norm for me. It was out of anticipation for the unexpected, for my mind racing over unanswerable moments.
This fidgeting was doing no good: my identification card was breaking off the lanyard and I was told I could get a new one…for a five dollar fee. I would have to rely on tape yet again today.
This time, my mind raced over what happened last week: I was abruptly moved from tutoring in Mrs. Mitchell’s class from one day to another, because of a bizarre reason. Jessica, the tutoring coordinator, told me it was because the teacher did not appreciate that I spoke in Spanish to her “Latin@” students.
“Speaking to them in Spanish does no good,” she was told.
I was aggravated.
I remembered translating basic instructions. And, yes, there were prolonged discussions in Spanish, but all involved the class material. I even attempted what little Arabic I knew with those students who had been in the U.S. for a little over six months. Irrespective of the absurd “no language-other-than-English” rule never being explained to me, did I really do wrong by speaking to them in Spanish? Was I holding them back? …
As if English is all that is needed.
Another part of what was so aggravating was that it made me exhume memories that I had successfully avoided to process.
I began remembering how my third grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, had made my eight-year-young self feel as if she were on top of the world. After going through the field trip rules, she had proclaimed to the “Latin@” class that if anyone needed help with their English, “Ana could help, because she was the most advanced.”
I felt euphoric in that very moment as I heard Mrs. Johnson’s words and received the class’ attention. That feeling was heightened as I flashbacked to kindergarten, just a few years before, when I endured the excruciating moment of being tested for the alphabet, always mixing “g” and “h” and completely forgetting the second half. I was tested more than once and they all ended with tears, ashamed for not ‘getting it right.’
Simultaneously playing with this recollection was also the memory of finding my Spanish workbooks from first through fourth grades during my senior year in high school. They were filled with pencil marks, a golden star or the likes of “Nice job!” stickers on most pages. I was shocked at how I had lost consciousness over knowledge I once held, knowledge that had earned me those stickers that may have been sought after. I had forgotten where to place the accents, differentiate between a ver and haber and countless other words. Most shocking was (re)learning that my own last name had an accent over the í.
I also recalled telling my dad, a man of few words, about this new finding, about the accent over the í, and his half-joking response: ¡¿No sabías eso?! ¿Entonces pa’ que vas a la escuela?[1]
I didn’t know how to answer him. I simply laughed it off and felt ashamed.
As first period came and went, I thought of this. I tied it back to Mrs. Mitchell, trying to find the words that reflected what I felt, that would provide the answers to what had happened. But when the 9:26AM bell went off, I hadn’t found them.
My new second period class, instead of Mrs. Mitchell’s class, was Mrs. Hoffman’s class. I knew most of the students there, since I volunteered for a program that worked with “refugee” middle school students the previous year. Within a year and a half, I was able to see them grow. I had also seen Pedro become Peter, Nejat become Nancy and Abdullah repeatedly experience a butchering of his name.
I reflected on my loss of knowledge and I feared it already happening in the simple name change for students like Pedro and Nejat.
When they are complimented for learning English quickly, do they feel the same as when I did? Like they finally got it? When they mispronounce an English word, do they laugh it off, hoping no one would uncover that it is their second language?
Regardless of my feelings, of my lack of silence, I still corrected students as they failed to enunciate English words correctly. I was expected to as a tutor. But how did I make them feel?
I never found the words to address Mrs. Mitchell that day, and whenever we would be in the same classroom, I would make sure to avert her eyes, as if evading the ugly truth: that I too, in some way, was a Mrs. Mitchell.
Not by choice, not by choice…
As I crossed the street back home, which always took some time due to jaywalking during traffic time, I realized that I had forgotten to tape my badge.
Though I would be going home with a badge on the verge of breaking off completely, I thought, I would make sure it wouldn’t break. Soon enough it would be mended with tape.
[1] You didn’t know that?! Then what do you go to school for?
But the student keeps studying, keeps planning to study, keeps running to study, keeps studying a plan, keeps building a debt. The student does not intend to pay.
But if you listen to them, they will tell you: we will not handle credit, and we cannot handle debt, debt flows through us, and there’s no time to tell you everything, so much bad debt, so much to forget and remember again. But if we listen to them, they will say, “Come, let’s plan something together.” And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re telling all of you, but we’re not telling anyone else.
Thank you Professor K. Wayne Yang for sharing this ^
