GNP? Who needs that economic model when we can look to Bhutan and think about Gross National Happiness. Why not?

Exercise: What is the State to us and how has it affected us?
Everyone wrote what the state is to them and we placed it on the Board. We then categorized what we had. This is what we came up with.

Environment
Working for the EPA
Psychology
Regretfully America
Lied to about the nation of “embracing diversity”
State influences consumerisms
Media
War
War
Military Presence
Criminal (in)justice
Pulled over had to take a driving test, passed
Surveillance
Every time I see a cop car, particularly when it is behind me
Be arrested, pulled over, having my name taken by a cop
Incarceration of Youth
Police brutality
Criminalization of undocumented students
Arrested for disrupting a speech
Jail
Police
Friends in “law enforcement”
Interrogation, disrespected
Infrastructures
No safe transportation
Roads
Akaka Bill
Highway Construction
Don’t want to participate
Economics
Fed Govt. paid my paycheck for the last three years
No secure safe exchange
Working and never having enough money
No time for community
Planning
Participation in the work study program
Borders
The borders (Mexico& US)
Enforcing Borders- never seeing family
Airport security
Massive media cover-up of government lies
Imperialism
Oppressive/repressive registration
Prevent me From being with the one I love
Immigration Legislation
Immigration, Borders Separate family
Denied my people citizenship, but gave my people the right to naturalize
Laws/Courts
Family Law – restraining orders, gender, class and race oppression. Linguistic barriers
Civil marriage and divorce
External rules governing what I can and cannot do (e.g. vote as a woman, go to school)
Participating in jury duty
County Jail visitation
Prison industrial complex
Denies and protects my civil rights
Courts
Gives me freedom, but not enough
Sense of protection
Lack of social movement
Jury duty
Access to nation territories
Fear to speak against the state whether at rallies or in presentations
Education
Money, grants, finds and resources
Education
Federal loans/grants for college
Child support
Shitty education
Education system & socialization
Funding my education system – financial aid and loans
Free education
Higher education
My education has been through the public school system
Poor quality education within the educational system
Financial Aid
Oppressed- felt like I had more because I was granted access to higher education
When good teachers who stand for and truly teach and educate are fired and moved to another school
Social Service
Work City Hall jobs – precinct walking
Going to the DMV
Applying for free lunch in elementary school
Pentagon March
Utilities (i.e. electricity, water, gas, phones)
Summer youth employment (Job training partnership act)
Civil unrest in Newark, NJ
Social Service aka Food stamps
Advocating subsidized healthcare
Taxes
Taxes
Having to pay taxes that support a war that I do not support
Rich get richer
Paying taxes
Giving money to the state
Parking tickets & traffic accident
Waiting for my tax refund
Health
Lack of medical insurance
Having to go to TJ for dental work- No health insurance access that was affordable
Not having access to healthcare
Hospital
Being dependent on my job for insurance and medical care
Voting
Civic participation
Voting
Voting for president or presidential candidate
Allowing me as well as suppressing
Election 2000/2004
Voting feels so disoriented and unsatisfying
Religion
Protects & suppressed my freedom of religion

Yo...I just figured something out. I had an epiphany...

I was in my shower and I thought about our final presentation to other people outside our class. And I thought "Man how are we going to explain what revolution is?...we still haven't defined that..."
Then I thought...
"Well maybe that's the point. There is no one definition fo revolution because everyone has a different definition..."
I thought back to Irwin's presentation witht he visuals that made people upset, and the emotion that caused. And I thought back to when I had said "Who's revolution? To other people, this class, us in this room, we are the enemy." Kind of that old saying "One man's poison is another man's medicine."
Then I figured it out!
Revolution and the act of revolution is a collective conciousness that there is a threat of inequality coming, or an actual inequality happening. The "Revolution" is the change of the systemt to get rid of that "threat" and "opression" that holds down the people that are effected.
For example: The Nazi's called what they were doin a revolution because it was getting rid of the Jewish people, who were a threat to "purity" and such.
Slaves calles for rebellion and revolutuon to free from their conditions.
Depening on which side of the fence you are on, you are on totally different sides. A racist sides with the Nazi's, while a person of color sides with the slaves.
In n both circumstances, it was a call to action by a group of people of the same interests to change and rid themselevs of an oppressive circumstance.
In our case, most of the people in our class believe that the state, capitalism, and other systems that run this country and the world are unfair and oppressive to average citizen and are withholding power from those who should be holding more of it...I can't speak for the whole class, but in all we all seem to agree that there is something lacking that people aren't being given, hence rebellion in the forms of squatting, graffiti, etc etc...
SO..how about we define Revolution as a collective concious effort in order to change systems of power and to eliminate a threat to oppression, which maybe percieved or factual.
The role of the revolutionary planner is to use resources and institute the change and legitimize the efforts.
I think the problem we have been having the most is defining revolution because of the way WE see it...we see it as a positive change toward equality for the average joe...but a rich person sees it as making sure they stay rich...To some extent I think we may have to suspend our preferences for an unbiased definition...if that's what we're going for. Otherwise, we can define it however we like it!

Here is the definition I found in Merriam Webster...
2 a : a sudden, radical, or complete change b : a fundamental change in political organization; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed c : activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation d : a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm revolution>

Think about it and holla at me...

Yo, I'm so stoked about this new CD- mainly because it's a group of songs that inspire revolution for my classmates. And there's something so deep, and inspiring and ART ful about that. I'm literally hyper right now, knowing that there is a group of 20 folks out there that is likely thinking about revolutionary art at this very moment. :-)

Just thought I'd share- I'll compile my list of favorite art shortly!

Taz

Hi all here's some art links I found. My favorite was of the handmade saree by Sharmila Samant. It's found at this link: http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?419
Scroll through you'll see a few of her pieces.

I also found another page of an art exchange between Indian and Pakistani artists: http://www.members.tripod.com/aarpaar2/02.htm

Enjoy...

Please read on and share your thoughts... N

How L.A. kept out a Million Migrants

By Ivan Light, IVAN LIGHT, a sociology professor at UCLA

April 16, 2006

CONVENTIONAL wisdom holds that cities and metropolitan areas are powerless to deter immigrants from moving in. Evidence suggests otherwise. Between 1980 and 2000, the Los Angeles metropolitan area deflected nearly 1 million Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, to other U.S. cities.

During that 20-year interval, the immigrant population in the United States increased from 14 million to 31 million, but the percentage of those immigrants living in the city of Los Angeles declined from 6.8% to 4.9%, according to U.S. census data. That translates into 600,000 fewer immigrants in 2000 than would have resided here without the decrease. The same relative decline was evident in the five-county L.A. metropolitan area. The region's share of the U.S. Mexican immigrant population in 1980 was 32%; 20 years later, it was only 17% — about 961,000 fewer Mexican immigrants living in L.A., Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties than otherwise would have.

Why did a million Mexican immigrants bypass the L.A. region and settle elsewhere? Three factors were important: migration networks, market economics and tougher local regulation of slums and sweatshops.

New immigrants like to settle with friends and family members who came earlier, so they tend to cluster in a few localities. Potential migrants back home remain in contact with those who have migrated, and when they decide to leave, follow them. That is why the L.A. region was home to 31% of the nation's Mexican immigrants in 1980 but to only 5% of the U.S. population.

But this kind of network-driven migration eventually caused economic hardship among Latino immigrants in L.A. As migration networks routed ever more immigrant workers here, competition for low-wage jobs and affordable housing intensified. Wages fell, available jobs became scarce and rents rose, forcing some workers to leave the city. More important, many potential immigrants still living in Mexico or Central America decided not to come when the bad economic news reached them. These market dynamics cut the percentage of Latino immigrants living in the L.A. region by about half between 1980 and 2000.

Public policy heightened the effects of these market forces. With wages falling, immigrant poverty increased, and officials sought to alleviate the situation. The unintended consequence of the resulting policy shifts made the L.A. region a less desirable destination for newly arrived immigrant workers.

From 1980 to 2000, for instance, California's minimum wage steadily rose and was 122% higher than its federal counterpart in 2000. The higher wage drove some employers out of California — and many took their largely immigrant workforces with them.

During the 1990s, L.A. began to enforce existing industrial laws more strictly than other major cities. The political catalyst for the crackdown was the 1995 discovery in El Monte of a garment factory in which dozens of Thai immigrant workers were exploited as virtual slaves. Working conditions in the local garment industry, a major employer of immigrants, came under scrutiny, and many garment firms either shut down or relocated to escape penalties. When these scofflaw firms shut down or left L.A., the jobs vanished, and many of their low-wage employees went elsewhere — and potential ones, once news of the crackdown reached Mexico or Central America, probably avoided L.A. altogether.

In addition, the combination of rising numbers of Latino immigrants and low wages created more and more slums across L.A. in the late 1980s. Mayors Tom Bradley and Richard Riordan each appointed a commission to investigate the problem. Authorities stepped up enforcement of existing anti-slum laws. Some tenements were shut down; others were forced to upgrade. The resulting decrease in supply of the cheapest housing stripped many low-wage immigrants of affordable shelter.

Finally, "NIMBY movements" successfully blocked the construction of affordable housing in many of L.A.'s suburbs, which, in turn, drove up immigrants' rents in the central city.

These public policies were neither consciously anti-immigrant nor coordinated by officials, but taken together, they deflected about 1 million Mexican immigrants away from the L.A. region.

This story is more than just a curious episode in local history. It also offers some lessons for cities seeking to control levels of immigration. What L.A. accomplished unintentionally, other metropolitan areas can do by design.

If more cities and states raised their minimum wages above the federal level and strictly enforced industrial safety laws and housing standards, this not only would improve conditions for resident workers but would also deflect new immigrants elsewhere. The overall number of immigrants entering the U.S. would not decline. But new immigrants would head for destinations where employers don't fear labor-law enforcement, where slums are tolerated and where the minimum wage is lower.

This dispersion would tend to equalize the burden of absorbing immigrants across the U.S., creating political interest in controlling immigration where there previously was none.

L.A.'s experience may even have implications for U.S. immigration policy. Surely, an approach to immigration control that simply tolerated fewer sweatshops and slums and hiked the federal minimum wage would be cheaper — and more neighborly — than building a 2,000-mile security fence, militarizing the border or issuing a national identity card.

Short of federal intervention, the L.A. example shows that states and cities have the policy tools to deflect low-wage immigrants heading their way.

First Post. We All Here for a Revolution?