Summer 2014

This has the potential to be the best summer of my life. I will be done with my freshman year of college which has not been easy. My last final is on Monday, May 5 then I leave on Tuesday the 6th. I am going to spend a majority of my summer with my brother in Los Angeles. He owns his own business and I will be taking two classes at Los Angeles City College probably a math course and an easy corse which will most likely be an art course like a entry level drawing class because I am interested in becoming a better artist. I don’t know what I really want to do with my life like so many students here at Xavier seem to do but I do know that I have always been creative and that no matter what I do I want art to be a big part of my life. While I am in California with my brother I plan on making money and trying to “find” myself so I can somehow figure out what I want to do with my life. I was thinking about leaving after this year but my brother convinced me that I would have more opportunities here at Xavier than I would have back in my home town if I went to the community college or something like that. After the 3 months in California I fly back home to Virginia  for three weeks to see the firends that I have missed all school year and beach trips and all of that until it is time for me to fly back to Louisiana with tears streaming down my face. So really this summer I am just looking for some kind of clarity in my life that can show me what path I want to take with my life, my education, and my career goals.

Service Learning

The group that I was with knocked on a total of 102 doors and got 17 people to save the Louisiana  Bucket Brigade number to their cell phones. It starts to look like a small number when I look at what all the other groups did. My partner and I did not meet any particularly interesting in the morning, except for this one man who out right told us that he would not save the number to his phone and that he does not save any numbers to his phone and I just thought that was funny. The service learning was pretty boring until we got back from lunch break and that is when we started to meet the interesting people of Algiers. It was hot and I was sweating and we had just knocked on about three doors in a row without an answer so we were starting to get discouraged. We walked to the next house and the screen door was closed but the front door was wide open so we knew that someone had to be home. We knocked but no one came to the door but we were not going to leave without speaking to someone and as we waited a bit longer we saw a woman come out of a hall way in a wheel chair with two extremely swollen feet and slightly swollen hands. I felt my heart drop as she rolled towards the door. She did not open the screen door at first so we had to talk through it. After she opened the screen door she seemed to really have an interest in our cause. She said that the plants have not caused her any problems but that she would save the number to her phone and that she would absolutely report any incident that she saw. I guess it wasn’t anything really out of the ordinary but it just amazed me to see someone that has much bigger problems in their life than the pollution coming from some plant take up such an interest in our cause.

Teacher that influenced me

My First semester English 1010 teacher, Mr. Shade was pretty cool. I don’t feel that he really had influence over me but his class was easily my favorite class. Nobody except me and a couple other students would participate but I always got A’s in the class and when I was having trouble find a topic for my research paper he was always available to meet in his office until I found my topic. From time to time I will see him in the cafeteria and we will talk of a little while until we go our separate ways.  I have not found a teacher at Xavier that has really influenced me. I have teachers that I like and I enjoy their classes but I would not exactly say that they have influenced me in one way or another. However there is a maintenance man that is always around the Mikes. His name is Mr. C and when he’s not cleaning he is probably in the St. Mikes lobby playing pool, teaching, and schooling us on the ways of the game. He is always telling stories, laughing, and smiling. He seems to have a story about almost everything as well. No matter what he is doing, you can find him doing it with a smile on his face. I would not say that he has had a negative or positive influence on my time here a Xavier but I do know that if my day is not going well then I can go to the lobby of the Mikes and be entertained by him until I feel better.

Executive order

Well I am sure that Executive Order 13650 will be effective in its main goal of Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security. However we see government plans all the time that say that they want to  change the environment or enforce something but I feel like we never really see much change, like these are just things that they are making so they can stop the activist from complaining. I like they are involving so many government organizations in this plan. It shows that they could possibly be taking the goal of  Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security seriously. When I was reading the order, I did not see any plan for how they would discipline the corporations if they violated the rules of the Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security Executive order  I think that that was one of the bigger flaws of this order. I do not have any kind of experience with this kind of thing but if I were to advise Obama on the Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security Executive order, I would tell him to send some people out in the field and visit this corporations and chemical plants to learn about their practices and how they manage and dispose of the hazardous chemicals. I would also tell him to send another group of people to visit the homes of the people that live around these areas to get their perspective on how the plants are doing and to see if they are suffering from any health problems that could be linked with the chemical plant so he could know how strict he needs to be when he is developing the policy for this executive order.

Yeah

I think the BP oil spill is a great example of environmental justice. I agree with everything that Perry E. Wallace said in his article. The fact that almost four years after the oil spill that we are still finding oil in the gulf says that this matter was not handled properly. I thought that the racial discrimination aspect of the article was the most interesting. The study that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) did on the study that people of color did not have the same opportunities to acquire contracting jobs because I think that is is amazing that even during a time of an environmental crisis that people can still find the time to be petty and discriminate against people that are trying to achieve the same goal as them. It’s hard for me to find things to say on these topics.

Chemical Spill in West Virginia

On January 9, 2014 a pipe at the Freedom Industries plant in Charleston West Virginia containing crude 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol broke and spilled into a local water way, contaminating the water that about 300,000 depend on for cooking, bathing, and drinking. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, ordered the ban on drinking, bathing and cooking with tap water in Charleston, and the surrounding counties. He also declared a state of emergency and dispatched the West Virginia National Guard. The spill turned the water black and residents said it smelt sweet like licorice. Doctors said that “the water can cause headaches, eye and skin irritation, and difficulty breathing from prolonged exposures at high concentrations.” There have not been any reported deaths from the chemical spill but, six people had been admitted to hospitals for observation with symptoms of nausea.  I found a news article that says the Freedom Industries planted failed a government safety inspection. I think that the fact that they failed a Federal safety inspection but were still allowed to operate is a bigger problem. President Obama declared the chemical spill a Federal state of emergency and FEMA then provided financial and physical assistance to West Virginia. The government passed out bottled water to the citizens. The DEP refused to reevaluate there policy on chemical spills.

On February 11, just one month after the first incident, more chemicals spilled into the same river the spill was contaminated before it could worsen the quality if the water. Schools closed during the first spill but reopened shortly after but two schools closed again after black water started running from the faucets again. After the second spill, the West Virgina government ask for FEMA to donate more money but they declined. The Government needs to crack down on these big plants that use loopholes to get away with illegal activities so things like this do not happen again.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3277541/west-virginia-coal-slurry-spill/

http://www.care2.com/causes/more-bad-news-for-west-virginia-coal-gunk-spills-into-creek-turns-it-black.html

http://rt.com/usa/wvirginia-chemical-spill-again-water-617/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/02/13/west-virginia-wants-more-disaster-funding-fema-says-no/

 

EJ and the Government

I honestly do not have many thoughts on Environmental Justice.  Environmental Justice was a hot topic a couple years ago but it seems that it has fallen to the wayside in recent years. I do not think that the government truly cares about environmental justice or about which communities are located by these waste sites until the people speak up about it. The White House website states, “The Department of Education awarded $35 million in Promise Neighborhoods grants to create safe and healthy spaces for children and improve the educational and developmental outcomes of youth in distressed neighborhoods.” but we have heard of many government programs or non government programs giving money to low income areas and these seem to just be empty promises because the dumping sites are still next to these neighborhoods and no visible positive change ever seems to come from these government plans. The White House website also says that “The Department of the Interior, building on the America’s Great Outdoors Presidential Initiative, is studying the Federal Government’s urban assets and developing ways to promote work opportunities on public lands in urban areas.”  If this actually happens then it could be a good opportunity to put money in the pockets of the people that live in these communities. If the hazardous waste sites are going to be in their communities then at least give them the opportunities to profit off of them. I do like that the Obama administration seems to actually be trying to push the environmental justice efforts in a greater capacity then the last two presidents but with his presidential term being almost over, I can not seem to see what major change could possibly come from this.

Bucket Brigade

Louisiana is probably one of the most artistic states in the United States, if not one of the most artistic in the world and as I was looking around the Louisiana Bucket Brigade website and I stumbled across their art to action program. Their act to action program “embraces integrated approaches with diverse community partners to combine creative action, social media, storytelling, theater, video, journalism, visual art, dance, puppetry, music, street performance and interdisciplinary media for social change.” As an artist, I love when companies or programs incorporate artistry into what they are trying to accomplish. This Louisiana Bucket Brigade website talks about a lot of things that I have no idea about. Xavier university worked with them in the spring of 2013 as a part of their “down by the river” approach. They explored the relationships between race, culture and tourism along River Road and did research on the oral histories of River Road. They partner with different universities to spread the word about what these oil companies are doing and how they are destroying our environments and polluting our oceans. Xavier also explored the effects of industrial pollution on the people of Louisiana and The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts students create an environmental documentary on the effects of oil refineries on people.

2nd Semester Goals

Last Semester i had a 2.00 GPA and I failed a class for the first time in my life. So my first semester was not the greatest way to start off my college career. I obviously dissapointed my parents who are funding my education and I dissapointed myself because I know what my grades can look like when I actually try.  This semester I am trying to become more focused on my work, become involved in extra-curricular activities, and prioritize my goals this semester. I have 17 credit hours which is way more than my 13 credit hours of last semester. I am not sure if I will be overwhelmed my all the course work that I am sure that I will have from all of my classes. During my senior year of high school I had no problem balancing my school work, my athletics, and extra curriculars. I think the problem is that now I have more freedom and I have to learn to balance that. I know that I can achieve more than I did last semester. Some of my teachers blessed me and looked out for me by rounding my grades up to a “C” so I would not fail any of my classes but honestly I am sad that they even had to do that, that they had to raise my grade for me when I should not of even put myself in a situation for me to have to rely on my professors. So for this semester I want to do all the things that I know I can do because I know that mediocre is not in my nature. I want to prove to myself and to everyone around me that I belong here at Xavier University and that I can hang with the best of them.

Assessment

The Immortall Life of Henrietta Lacks was a good choice for summer reading for this freshman class because most of the incoming freshmen are biology, pre-medical or chemistry, pre-pharmacy majors. I also think the book was a good view into the world modern medicine in America in the mid 20th century and it was well written in the sense that you did not have to be a graduate school medical school student to understand the terms in the book she mad easy for any common person to understand. It also made me appreciate the fact that I can go anywhere in America and get medical treatment if in need it and I can not be denied treatment because of my skin color whereas Henrietta Lacks and to go all the way to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland just to get a simple examination because no other hospital would see her just because she was a black woman. Also, Rebecka Skloot made Henrietta Lacks appear to me as an actual human being instead of just a scientific and medical phenomenon as she had appeared to me before. Rebecka Skloot also showed us how badly the doctors treated Henrietta Lacks and her family by not telling them that Henrietta’s cells created a scientific breakthrough and that her cells have been helping thousands of people around the world and I think that that can relate to the Xavier Mission Statement of wanting to work towards a more just and humane society.