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Of the surge in female leadership, the leader of the main opposition party said: “I’m sorry guys…make way. We are coming strong and we are moving forward.”

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Congrats @marclamonthill! Can’t wait to visit!

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IT’S THE UGLY TRUTH 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

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Keep this going!!!!

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Blog 5, Night and Resistance

Night, the by Elie Wiesel, was an amazing read, from the titular metaphor of a name, until the end, it was interesting.  The quote that we were asked to think about was also interesting. Elie says that he owes his roots and memories to those who did not survive to tell their story of the holocaust. He says “I am duty bound to serve as their emissary, transmitting the history of their disappearance, even if it disturbs, even if it brings pain.” Dawes asks the question “Do I have the right to talk about this subject” when referring to a moral problem or human rights violation and seeking to employ storytelling, he further goes on to elaborate by asking “What gives me the moral authority to tell this story? And How can I prove my authenticity to my readers?” Elie is feels as though because he has been a part of this traumatic experience and he has witnessed the accounts and plight of his people first hand, he has a duty and obligation to carry out their legacy and share their story because it is a part of him. It is is his story and by not showing it and telling it, it is as if he is struggling with his identity. One example of resistance in Night that I found interesting was Elie’s refusal to let the dentist remove is gold crown in his teeth and then in turn his decision to give up the crown to protect his father which made another act of resistance because Elie had to resist his second thoughts. Another example of resistance I noted in the story was the French girl’s, that Elie mentioned, decision to speak in German to Elie, she was revisiting the Nazi’s. When I was reading night, I noticed the several instances of resistance in the the narrative and it made me wonder about the Jewish people in regards to his account and why were they complacent and accepting of the role of passive victims in the Holocaust. As I read, it made me think more and more on the question of why didn’t the Jewish people resist more. They chose to survive rather than rebel. From reading what Wiesel said I could finally understand however that even those that dared to rebel and runaway, it affected those that stayed behind.  The Nazi’s would perform random reprisals where they would murder 50 for one that would escape. Wiesel eloquently explains why the Jewish people did nothing analytically. At first the people did not believe. But when they are taken to the camps, the realize exactly what that situation is and it was too late.

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This Semester in  a nutshell,

Reflecting on one of the most influential classes I’ve taken in my college career. I originally took this class because I needed to fufill the requirement for an upper level Political science course

and Dr. Slater entered my Literature class last semester which was coincidentally taught by a favored colleague of hers and a favorite professor of mine. As the semester progressed, this class became one of my favorite classes taken at this University. I’ve always considered myself and activist and environmentalist but because of this class, I can honestly back up my activism due to my own knowledge and formulate arguments of my own accord.   One plus of this class that I didn't expect to receive was a weekly TED talk given by so many qualified and interesting speakers. Many students go their whole entire college career and never venture to visit a student lecture series or a professor/ guest lecture and here I am learning and witnessing these speakers from the comfort of my desk and engaging in discussion with said speaker on face to face basis. I’ve learned so much from just discussing the class with my classmates. A little colloquialism I say all the time is that I love to witness the contribution of robust discussion to the common marketplace of ideas, and in Dr. Slater’s class and the environment and habitat she provides fosters productive and engaging discussion.  I appreciate Dr. Slater’s approach to pedagogy. She is one of the few professors I’ve had that I’ve actually felt as if they wanted their class to learn and succeed. Her lectures were engaging and her stories were enthralling and allowed me a better understanding of the world by offering the chance of living vicariously through her words.

Thanks to this class, I feel I’m better equipped than I was before to tackle social injustices and promote and advocate for change and equal human rights among all. I’ve always had a passion for humanity now...with the understanding I have of the tools I can utilize and the understanding of the retelling stories and understanding the narrative of the tragedies that shock the collective conscious of the international community,  I can finally be the change I want to see in the world.

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For my final project in this class, I have chosen to present a public service announcement on the Libyan Slave Trade.

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My Final Paper on the Libyan Slave Trade and it’s depiction in cultural forms.

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This guy.

Trump keeps getting tossed these softballs, missing them entirely, and hitting himself in the face with the bat.

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Blog 3: “The Internet is not a privilege...but a necessity.”

Former President Barak Obama has repeated this sentiment several times during his tenure as commander and chief of the United States. 

In this year, 2017, the internet is extremely important and crucial. In the United States, the internet has become so accessible and commonplace that I believe, we honestly take advantage of it. The internet has become a massive facilitator of nearly every aspect of modern life and is needed for many fields and disciplines. Ever since the development of the internet, access to information is easier and the ease of communication access has prospered, (it’s 2017, because of the internet we can unlock our phones with our face and communicate with someone in another hemisphere within the click of a button). Internet is essential to human rights because everyone should have the accessibility to all the wonders and privileges that it offers. The internet also has created a marketplace of ideas and a robust community that fosters the right to share and express opinions (Albeit some bad) and to plainly put it, allow all people to be able to access the internet in order to exercise and enjoy their rights to freedom of expression, opinion, and other fundamental human rights. In 2003, the United Nations came together and agreed at the World Summit on Information Society, that the right to the internet is a human right and is no longer a privilege but a necessity and I firmly believe that. It’s mind boggling to me that countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China censor their people and the opinions of their people as a means to exhibit and force control over their people. It makes one realize the conflict that comes from international relations amongst countries. The United Nations has no legal power to enforce its summits or treaties but is around to compel states to change and implement norms, but states refuse to conform to Western Thinking, which they shouldn’t have to, but it truly makes me realize the true nature of the world we live in. It saddens me that freedom of expression and speech is a western privilege that other humans like myself in other countries are not privy to.

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Blog 6, Rigoberta Menchu and the three Guatemalan Women.

The life story of the young Guatemalan Indian woman, Rigoberta Menchu, truly represents the reality of her people as a whole people. To see how difficult, the life of Guatemalan Indian people under an abusive military dictatorship, through the eyes of a twenty-four-year-old living in exile in Mexico City was shocking and eye opening to me especially because I could relate it to myself and place myself in her shoes, also because I am twenty-four, I felt a close connection with her. It was amazing to see several of her siblings choose to fight the cause by joining a guerilla group, but Rigoberta uses her words…her stories to fight. Rigoberta even at a young age presented in the testimonial, wants to be the change she wants to see in the world. She learned the Spanish language and then also learned how to read. She views being an activist as her life’s niche, her calling and renounces marriage and embraces her work as a revolutionary in Guatemala and internationally.

“We have hidden our identity because we needed to resist, we wanted to protect what governments have taken away from us. They have tried to take our things away impose others on us, be it through religion, through dividing up the land, through schools, through books, through radio, through all things modern.” (p. 200)

Her quote that was given to us for discussion highlights what it means to be an indigenous person who is forced into assimilation of a culture that is taking over and driving out that of the indigenous. After reading Menchu’s words and then finally seeing it in action in the film “Gold Fever” was really shocking and eye opening. Guatemal’s indigenous population has had to deal with its share of misfortune for centuries, for example colonialism, the United Fruit Company, and now decades of military dictatorships and outright genocide. I had to rewatch the film to truly understand the affect that the gold mining had on the country of Guatemala. The ancestral lands and waters of the Mayans and indigenous are depleting and being pillaged by Canadian based Gold corp. One thing I noticed from both the film “Gold Fever” and I, Rigoberta Menchu  is that the women are the driving force for defiance and rebellion. In “Gold Fever” we were showed the story of the Guatemalan struggle through the eyes of three strong women who defied the mine’s operation by refusing to sell their land, or by being active in resistance efforts. It saddened me to see one had her home attacked, and another was shot through her skull. A consistent them that I’ve seen through the women of “Gold Fever” and Rigoberta Menchu is that they are all heroes. The women of the film resist even to this day are strong propellants for change. Rigoberta, to this day is still attempting to change the world. She has even ran for presidency of Guatemala twice. Menchu dichotomizes the people of Guatemla into good and bad, and we see this dichotomy through her speech and testimony. He main issue is the stake of the indigenous people of Guatemala and their right to live their lives in a way that is oppression free and away from exploitation. She fears that European culture will desecrate and diminish he culture but throughout the testimonial, the reader can see the change in her and how she chooses to use the culture that was attempting to hurt her people, instead to flip it and use it to help. What I liked about both the women in these artworks, is that they were simple women of simple means and they used what they had and what they knew to lead revolutions in their own right towards the greater good of their people and their heritage.

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The intersectionality of Human Rights and the Enviroment

I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation given on the intersection of human rights and the environment because it connected a lot of factors for me that I probably would not have connected or seen the correlation. I think the most important thing I received from the presentation is the reasoning for why people are refusing to acknowledge the problem of climate change and the denial of it. For instance, there is another intersection with human rights, the environment, and psychology. People cannot deal with the encroaching anxiety and complex negative feelings that a potential impending geocentric doomsday entails. The denial for climate change is prevalent and can be seen also by how people are motivated to accept the status quo and adhere to traditional ways of living. We as humans distance ourselves from the problem because we believe it can’t or won’t happen to us or we psychologically and geographically distance the problem from us. Our environment is constantly changing and it affects all of us. Right next to us in Virginia, in the Tangier Islands climate change will potentially cause displacement for the people who live there. From the presentation I learned that they will eventually be under water. Sea Level rise is a threat to many places in the United States, in Virginia we see it minuscule in Norfolk and parts of Virginia Beach but the Tangier Island situation is interesting because, when the island finally goes under water, where will all those displaced people go? Potentially they will move West and trickle down into Richmond, and the Hampton Roads, but what is to happen from this? People will lose their homes, jobs, and livelihoods. This is why Human Rights and the Environment is important and its intersection is necessary to be discussed.

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Blog 4: Savages, Victims, and Saviours...

This article by Makau Mutua is complex critique of the human rights project. It basically damns the project and compares it to a three dimensional metaphor of complexities: Savages, Victims, and Saviors. The main points and proponents the article attempts to elicit are the need of self-aware and self-critical activist and the troubling history of the human rights movement. The article grapples with the contradictions in the basic nobility and majesty that drives human rights. The discussion of the three dimensions of the “Savages, Victims, and Saviors” metaphor shows the construct that human rights is governed by a higher morality. The metaphor also exposes the flaws theoretically with human rights mass. The article seeks to question the universality and cultural neutrality of the human’s right movement and it calls for the creation of a truly universal human rights entity. One that is actually multicultural, inclusive, and politically rooted. I completely agree with Mutua’s opinion of the human rights project. I believe that it is at this point in time, a waste and deeply flawed. I look at this and compare it to the modern refugee crisis that is happening in our own country today. On last Tuesday, the US supreme court dismissed the claim that challenged President Trump’s travel ban in so far as it banned travel to the US for nationals from six majority Muslim countries. Where is the justice? How can we decide justice when there are no established legal rights? This is where a complete human rights project would come in to play.

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The Refugee Crisis, i.e. the call of Humanity.

The presentation given by Dr. Frydenlund really opened my eyes to the refugee crisis that is going on globally. I say this because the media does not fully portray or discuss the true disadvantages and difficulties these people…these humans face. We hear about the Syrian refugee crisis, but we never really hear about it from the aspect that these are people. These are people…Humans who just want a chance at humanity. The only opinion I really have on this crisis other than the notion of humanity is that Refugees and mass migration is what happens when Americans do their own thwarted version of imperialism and with the help of the British and the Danes, they have totally destabillsed the middle east and southern Africa. The mistake that the west has made over the last decade is that they do not put in place the proper planning strategies. Also the whole issue with displaced people, these camps in hotspots are reminiscent of human corrals. It hurts my heart to see people not able to live their lives in any meaningful way. What if the west started organizing and investing in the proper functional refugee zones? They could establish communities, provide for economic growth, work, schools, and public services and naturally have the military protect these zones.

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YIKES

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Shit 160 or even 80 is enough to get my nails done, buy me a bottle of wine, put some gas in the tank, eat a decent meal, shittttt give me $25 and I'll feel appreciated