Helping Refugees

     While reading this book (and all the other materials in the class), I was astonished by all the struggles refugees must face in their journey to find a new home. It’s not an easy journey by any means, and I bet a lot of people have nightmares about being in that same situation. Homeless, nearly penniless, in a foreign country hundreds of miles away from home with nowhere to really to go, and a country seemingly filled with people who despise you. Relief came for Saeed and Nadia towards the end, when they went through a door that took them to the United States. There, they met with a religious group dedicated to helping the new refugees settle down. This had me wondering what groups exist in real life that helps refugees. So, I decided to do some research on the matter.

     First, there’s an organization called Sunrise-USA. Founded in 2011 by a group of Syrian-America professionals, they have contributed more than $15 million in aid to suffering Syrians both in Syria and in neighboring countries. Besides sending 31 containers of supplies to Syria, they have set up multiple healthcare facilities, temporary schools, and refugee camps. On their website, in a board message that they have written to the public, they have a quote that reminds me of Exit West. “Let us join hands and be the ray of hope that will help pull our brothers and sisters out of the darkness and into a bright and prosperous future.” Another great organization that helps refugees is called the Karam Foundation.  Karam is the Arabic word for generosity. This organization started in Chicago in 2007. Their first course of action was a food drive in Chicago. Now, a decade later, they develop Innovative Education systems for the Syrian youth and distribute Smart Aid to Syrian families. They also help fund sustainable development in Syria. Their impact expands across Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. These are just two examples of non-profit organizations that exist in the world to help with the refugee crisis. Luckily, there are a lot more of them, like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Here is a link to their website. They are one of the oldest organizations in the United States as they were founded in 1881.  Today they continue their help and play a large role in resettling refugees. This organization is one that is very similar to the organization that helped Saeed and Nadia when they arrived in the United States. Knowing that there are so many organizations out there has made me feel better about the current state of the world. On the news today, we are bombarded with negative fact after negative fact. 

Community Involvement: Oil in Galesburg

Galesburg, Michigan. A small town roughly twenty minutes from Kalamazoo. There’s not much to do in this town nestled right on the Kalamazoo River, a few restaurants, antique stores, and several parks in the area. One of these parks, Galesburg Community Park, is the topic of controversy. On Thursday, November 8, I met up with Andrew Cannon, a personal friend of mine. He is the owner of the Koffee Klutch, a coffee shop in Galesburg. Andrew is also a member of the Galesburg Area Business and Community Association and a city-appointed board member of the Downtown Development Authority. He really cares about his town. As we headed toward city hall, he told me about a controversy that occurred a couple years ago. The same company wanted to drill on a park called Scotts Mill Park, which is a few miles away from Galesburg. The people protested so the city rejected the offer. Unfortunately, the people who owned the land right next to Scotts Mill Park sold the rights to their land, and drilling occurred anyway. As we pulled up to city hall, Andrew told me he had never seen such an abundance of cars in the parking lot. It seemed that this meeting was going to be very big. And big it was. When we walked in, the room was full. The background is this: Savoy Energy wishes to obtain a lease to conduct 3D Seismic testing on 22 acres of land at Galesburg Community Park.

Park property outlined in pink

Galesburg Community Park

This lease would also give them rights to any oil and gas beneath roads, lakes, and rivers adjacent to the park. Needless to say, the citizens at this Public Comment meeting were very vehemently against the proposition. There was a representative from the Savoy Energy present, to answer any questions, but he did not have answers to the questions that a lot of the citizens had, such as specific terminology of details in the lease. More than 50 people were at this meeting, and in total, 22 citizens stood and shared their concerns. At one point, a discussion on what would happen if the city was damaged or polluted. Would Savoy pay for the damages? The representative assured the room that, yes, they would, but several citizens stood up and said that they are aware of other cities where the oil company didn’t pay for the damage without a long, arduous legal battle. “Oil companies never leave the town as good as they found it,” said one citizen as he was voicing his concerns about the ordeal. Overall, the meeting started to get very heated. Most of the citizens in attendance were the type of people who probably haven’t done any sort of research or studying since they graduated high school, but nearly everyone had notebooks and folders filled with information about this specific type of oil drilling process. Back in 2010, the biggest inland oil spill occurred on the Kalamazoo River. Many of the people who live in this area own land along the river and are still dealing with the effects of the oil spill nearly a decade later. The people of Galesburg are very passionate about their land. They love the land, the river, the woods, the animals. They are well aware of the dangers that oil drilling can bring, and some are even dealing with the effects of the drilling being done at Scott’s Mill Park.  If drilling occurs anyway, it will not end well for the city’s government.

Trying to Understand Honduras

Honduras. A country we’ve been hearing a lot about in the news recently. Sure, I’ve known that it’s tough to be a migrant or a refugee. To go from one miserable country to one that hates you and locks you up in cages is horrible. But reading Refugee really helped me put it into perspective. Hearing about exactly what these people had to go through, and especially reading it all through the eyes of a young boy (something that I once was), furthered my empathy. Then, I thought about Honduras. I’m sure you’ve heard about Honduras on the news recently. Thousands of people walking from Honduras to the United States. That’s a 1,125 mile walk, in case you were wondering. More than I’m sure any of us have had to walk at once. They’re not traveling in luxury, either. Most of them are carrying with them only what they can fit in a backpack or a bag. As with most of the topics we have been studying in this class, I did not know very much about Honduras before hearing about this “caravan” in the news. I knew it was a country in Central America, but that was about it. I was surprised to hear about all these poor migrants and wanted to learn more about it. For starters, Honduras is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world because it has one of the highest rates of murder in the world. As I looked around online I learned why. A journalist from the Associated Press explained that while he was living in Honduras, he was constantly in survival mode. Everyone he had met knew someone who had been killed by a gang or a corrupt police officer. The United States had a hand in making Honduras this way. We helped convert Honduras into the first “banana republic,” or a country whose economy runs off their export of bananas. In the 80’s, we even backed multiple military coups to protect our economic interests. But then, we stopped buying the fruit from them, devastating their economy. Imagine being a child growing up in a world where if you said the wrong thing, you could be killed. My heart breaks for these people attempting to escape this crime-ridden country. This is perhaps the worst time to try to come to the United States. President Trump uses the hatred of immigrants to empower his campaign, and the United States (as you know) is separating children from their parents at the border and keeping them in caged communities. A lot of people in the United States believe these people are somehow a threat to our country. I find that hard to wrap my head around, but I guess it is a symptom of the general lack of empathy felt by a lot of my fellow Americans. It's important to note that just because Honduras is a dangerous place, it doesn't mean that the people coming here are. The people coming here are people who wish to escape their country

The Government is corrupt and has been for a while. Police receive training and funding from the United States in an attempt to stop cocaine trafficking, but a lot of the police officers are corrupt. Gangs are rampant, and it most Hondurans have seen people get murdered. A lot of Honduran citizens live in shacks and don’t even have running water in their house.
and get away from extreme violence and poverty. The ones who contribute to the crime remain there. I wonder what will happen to this caravan when they reach the border. Will we help them? Imprison them? Turn them away? Only time will tell.

I also want to take this opportunity to encourage you to vote. It is very, very, VERY important that we go out and vote for the election coming up next week. If we keep our Government the way it is, we might just be on the path to a Fascist government. Here’s a website that explains the proposal on the ballots.

Another Reason to Dislike the Federal Government

It seems that the more I learn about the federal government, the angrier I become. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of the Tohono O'odham tribe before reading this excerpt from Storm the Wall. It makes me think about President Andrew Jackson. More specifically, Andrew Jackson’s monstrous attack on native peoples. The trail of tears. I think we as a nation are past such things, that we’ve grown. But then I read about how awful the government treats Native Americans, and I am discouraged. Perhaps I am being pessimistic, but that’s the core of the United States of America. We are here today at the result of a successful genocide. Then we continue to celebrate the monster, Christopher Columbus, hundreds of years later. After I finished reading this excerpt, I Googled Tohono O'odham. I found an article that was disturbing. The Government is currently working on building what they call a high-tech surveillance tower on the Tohono’s reservation. Equipped with infrared cameras, heat sensors, video cameras, they plan on building numerous towers. Imagine that your family has been forced to live on this small amount of land after white men came and claimed your family’s land for their own. Then as time goes on, this government continues to terrorize your people under the guise of “border control.” It is important to note that these people live very low-tech lives, at least that’s what I’ve read on the internet. How would you feel about the federal government putting high-tech surveillance towers on your land? I personally would be furious if they put just one of those towers in Kalamazoo. In total, fifteen of these towers will be built on the Tohono O’Odham’s land. I think one of the main things that the author of Storm the Wall was trying to emphasize is that the government has continuously used border security as an excuse to infringe on the rights of American citizens. As someone who grew up in Michigan, I didn’t really know much about the Mexican border. My hope is that people become more aware of the struggles of Native Americans.

Andrew Jackson, a real-life villain.

Collin Attempts to Explain Arcology

As I read through Paolo Bacigalupi’s book, The Water Knife, I kept seeing a term that was unfamiliar to me. “Arcology.” Out of curiosity, I booted up the ‘ole Google machine and looked that term up. Turns out it is a topic that is very interesting and could potentially save humanity if we don’t stop our use of fossil fuels in time. The term “arcology” itself is a fusion of the words “architecture” and “ecology.” The concept and term were created by an Italian architect named Paolo Soleri.

Essentially “arcology” is the concept of a building in which every need of humanity is contained and self-sustained. An arcology building is also meant to be densely populated and have little-to-no impact on the environment and ecosystem.

Climate control, air conservation, water conversation, power, food production, living spaces. All these components are inside one, large structure. Solar and wind power are an essential aspect of arcology because all energy sources must be renewable. As seen in The Water Knife, citizens who live in an arcology would be able to leave it if need be, but an effective arcology must be designed so that inhabitants never have to leave it. If you were to tour an arcology, you might go in an elevator. As you traveled up an elevator, you would see it structured like this: one floor would support the next five or so floors above it. The supporting floor is referred to as a “deck.” Simple biological functions can be used to benefit each other. For example, fish could be grown in a large tank with plants resting on top. These plants could be plants used for food, plants used for oxygen purification, or perhaps plants used to filter the water itself. As the fish eat and poop, the poop would fertilize the plants, helping them grow. A building could be lined entirely with solar panels and designed with a curve so that it is resistant to the wind. Alternatively, a structure could be covered with wind turbines that catch the wind and create power. There are many, many concepts, but they key here is self-sustainability, low-impact, and aesthetically pleasing.

There aren’t really any functioning arcologies today. Paolo Soleri designed a city called Acrosanti, which isn’t an arcology, but more of a city that encompasses certain aspects of arcology. The buildings are built from the dirt that lays beneath them, and every building is physically connected to one another. Solar panels absorb sunlight and are built at angles that make them super-efficient at gathering sunlight, and large domes are built to help keep residents cool in the summer.

Another example of something similar to an arcology is the Shanghai Tower. It is built with a type of insulating skin to help it retain heat. The top of the building is covered with wind panels, and it generates 350,000 Kilo Watt hours a year. Architecturally, the building has a twist to it, which prevents it from swaying in the wind without the use of extra building materials.

Crystal Island

Russia has had blueprints for a structure that they call “Crystal Island,” but due to lack of funding, it has not even begun being built yet.

As of right now, humanity is pretty far from a 100% functioning arcology. This is disheartening, especially when you consider the fact that we are not nearly doing enough to combat climate change. However, I like to think about the past. At one point in time, humans gazed up at the moon and wondered. “Will we ever walk on this brilliant, white sphere in the sky?” Through hard work, determination, and an agreement of sorts, we put man on the moon, and that was forty-nine whole years ago. We might seem divided as ever right now, but if we could achieve walking on the moon, we can achieve a self-sustainable society.

Grapes of Fossil Fueled Destruction

It is 12:13 in the morning, and I can’t sleep. I’m up thinking about Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I’ll admit it. I’ve heard about this book for a long time but never had any interest in reading it. It seemed boring. The dust bowl was a topic of very little interest to me, and that part of the 20^th century was my least favorite to learn about. I’d much rather learn about the chaos of World War I, or the psychedelic 60’s. However, as soon as I started reading this book, I changed my opinion. See, Grapes of Wrath is about the Joad family, forced to leave their family home and travel across the country in hopes of finding jobs, all the while dealing with struggles of poverty and traveling as a poor, mid-western family at the time. They face sickness, hunger, intense weariness, hatred from the people around them, and death. This book, suffice to say, is depressing. But I love depressing literature. It’s some of the best. I found myself wondering “how is this relevant today?”

  The environmental destruction brought on by poor agricultural practices led to a man-made natural disaster, the dust bowl. After World War I, many people obtained land on the Great Plains. They were encouraged by the Government to plow the land grow crops like wheat and corn. However, the overproduction of wheat and the Great Depression caused the price of wheat to drop, so these farmers plowed even more land to make more wheat in hopes of profit. By doing this, they uprooted natural drought-resistant plants and left acres of unused land bare. Next came a drought. Pair that with heavy winds and you’ve got large, intense dust storms, that kill plants and make the already-struggling-farmers even poorer.

That’s essentially what happened to the Joads that made them have to travel across the country to California. Luckily, we learned to plant trees around fields to act as wind barriers, and to rotate our crops. 

  

  Don’t let the fact that we are in the 21^st century fool you into thinking that the Dust Bowl was the end of American migration due to climate change. Rolling Stone’s journalist compares a modern family he meets on Route 66 to the Joad family. How can he not? They lost their home as a result of Hurricane Harvey and had nowhere to go, so they loaded up their van with only the things they could carry and (at the time the article was written) are planning on going to San Diego. But that’s it. Once they get there, they have nowhere to go. One member of the family suggests that he will play the guitar to earn a little bit of cash.

Of course, this hasn’t happened on the same scale as the Dust Bowl Migration, but evidence suggests that we’re going to start facing bigger disasters brought on by climate change. This past summer California saw its biggest wildfire in history, the Mendocino Wildfire, which displaced tens of thousands of citizens from their homes. I recently read an article about Hurricane Florence, which is currently starting its slow descent on North and South Carolina. People have been evacuating for the past few days. If we don’t stop using fossil fuels, these disasters will only become more frequent and possibly worse.