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A little over four years ago, I went to a city that a lot of people usually laugh at and look down on. I think I scared the crap out of my parents when I told them seven college girls are taking a trip to Detroit in a van and we’ll probably get there at midnight and we’re gonna hang out with refugees for a few days, not a big deal. The only thing I was worried about is how cold it’d be and whether I’d get sick of these girls. (I didn’t get sick of them; they’re all fantastic people still doing amazing things. I definitely keep track of their instagrams.)

So I met people who left everything behind to come to America where they thought they’d be safe. Moms and dads and children and young singles and retirees who took a chance at coming to an airport and saying, please, let me find refuge, this country promises a place for the poor and tired, for the persecuted. There were language barriers for some but not all of us. A journalist from Afghanistan played chess with my friend and told her his story of how he escaped the government’s pursuit. I gravitated towards hanging with the kids (typical).

These people live in a former convent and if they are in the middle of the often two-year long process of obtaining asylum status -- some convoluted thing that requires somehow proving your persecution, because I’m sure when you are fleeing home for safety you are thinking first about what to bring to prove it -- they pretty much can’t leave the house. If police pick them up outside and they don’t have a green card or proof of immigration status, they will be taken to jail and the bailout costs are more than this tiny nonprofit can afford. So some 40-odd people live together, cook together, clean together, hope together. Two pro bono lawyers help them make their immigration cases. Everyone waits.

We all watched Finding Nemo and it was a joy-filled evening. Everyone gets it; everyone wants to get back home. These people probably never will go back to the homes they know. They just have to hope that we’ll take them in instead. The US hasn’t been a great place for immigrants for, really, ever -- at least if you’re not the right kind of immigrant -- so it’s hard for me to say as an American-born citizen (and someone with only a few years of social consciousness) that things are so much worse now. Maybe more people are just waking up and making noise. We shouldn’t all have to go spend four days with refugees to be convinced of their human value. We shouldn’t all have to go hang out with refugee kids to have our fears erased. We shouldn’t have to share photos of devastated but beautiful Syrian children on facebook to feel like we care.

Detroit is a cool city. It can be a good place for immigrants and refugees due to its proximity to Canada (immigrating to Canada if you have a relative there is much easier than immigrating to the US). I ate Mexican pastries, explored nearly-empty Neo-gothic buildings, walked through the art of the Heidelberg Project, passed a huge abandoned train station each day, and soaked in everything at the Detroit Historical Museum. I definitely don’t know everything about Detroit, but it’s amazing how a few days changed my entire frame of reference for what that city is. There is poverty, there is wealth, there are the vulnerable being taken advantage of by the privileged. And there are still people persevering and making it home and bringing light to it; this seems so obvious as I type it out, but I don’t think it’s a perspective outsiders see if they aren’t looking for it. Many of us have the privilege of dismissing Detroit and looking the other way because we aren’t affected by the same problems they have. (Copy-paste this statement to the cornucopia of societal ills in our world.) And it’s tempting sometimes to do that, especially for those of us with tender hearts. It’s imperative to stay leaning in to what’s happening.

I wasn’t in tune with God when I took that trip four years ago -- really I wasn’t for most of my college years. I wasn’t yet making the connections between the social justice education I was getting at KU, and the way my heart had been prepared for it by an upbringing in a Christ-loving home. Now I can look back and so easily see how even when I wasn’t listening to God, I was being guided through certain experiences and trials to prepare me for the future. Justice and faith are intertwined; empathy and truth go hand in hand. To know Christ is to be acutely aware of the hurts of our world -- physical, spiritual, political, personal, global. And for me, to know Christ is to be striving to understand these hurts, pray for them, and act and speak on them. I want to boldly walk out my faith the way the Israelites boldly walked out of Egypt; the oppressed have no time for timidity, and neither do I.

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Canals instead of roads in Venice

Source: guIIy (reddit)

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Riots of Color

Singapore | by Zaw Wai

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Siena - Tuscany - Italy (von Antonio Cinotti )

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Normandy, France (by pierre m)  

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On women, leadership, and waiting around to be asked

Recently I realized that in every elected position I've ran for, someone asked me to run. I was sitting in class - taught by one of the most successful women I know - when Emma suggested I run for a Student Senate seat. I was sitting on a bus when Marcus called to ask if I'd consider running for chair of the Student Rights committee. I was sitting in bed when Alex called to ask me why the hell I wasn't trying for a VP candidate spot in spring elections.

I am a sensitive person. I've often said I cry enough have enough feelings for ten people. So I have been especially susceptible to internalizing the message that I shouldn't be assertive, because that would make me bossy or pushy and then people would not like me. I am an over-apologizer. I think too much about my words before speaking (I've read over this post at least twenty times) because I'm never sure what I'm saying is valuable. This is my attempt to start rejecting all of that nonsense.

I only have my own experience to speak from, but it seems that a lot of other women understand what I have gone through. And it's concerning, because I don't want my sister and her friends and the next generation of talented, smart, strong young women to doubt themselves the way I have for years.

Studies show that women sometimes have to be asked at least seven times to run for political office. It never took that much insistence for me but still, I am stumped as to why I had to be asked.

The historical and institutional barriers to women's success are being shattered ever so gradually. Women are getting more college degrees, many are delaying marriage longer to focus on a career, and many are generally taking more ownership in doing whatever they want in life. Every day I am surrounded by women who don't apologize for their dreams and their goals. There are six women on our eleven-person executive staff and for the first time ever in Student Senate's history, we have women as president and vice president. But every day, Morgan and I can feel the casual and not-so-casual sexism that persists in many conference rooms and board meetings.

Despite my initial hesitancy to run at all, Morgan and I never hesitated to run together as women. After the presidential/vice presidential caucus, we realized the historical potential of our ticket. I mean, how the heck did we make it from 1969 to 2014 without this happening? I have seen a woman in the president or VP spot every year I've been at KU, but a quick glance down the list of names outside the Senate office shows that while there have been plenty of dual-male teams in office, never had there been a dual-female team.

Student Senate was founded in 1969, a hectic time to say the least. The first vice president was a badass who had to be replaced when she was suspended for participating in protests. Way back in student government's earliest form, with separate men's and women's councils, women always had substantially higher voter turnout than the men and frankly, the women's council accomplished much more than the men's. (Really, check the KU History link up there.) Women have been formative in KU's history and it's humbling to be part of that.

But still, what if no one had asked me? What if Morgan and I (or our supporters) had decided a dual-female team just wouldn't be a good idea? What if I gave in to the doubts others had about me at the beginning?

A couple months ago, this piece about 'the confidence gap' ran in the Atlantic. The writers addressed the shadow of doubt seen even in ridiculously successful women they interviewed:

"To our surprise, as we talked with women, dozens of them, all accomplished and credentialed, we kept bumping up against a dark spot that we couldn’t quite identify, a force clearly holding them back. Why did the successful investment banker mention to us that she didn’t really deserve the big promotion she’d just got? What did it mean when the engineer who’d been a pioneer in her industry for decades told us offhandedly that she wasn’t sure she was really the best choice to run her firm’s new big project?"

This isn't to say that we don't all have our doubts regardless of gender, but this conversation resonates so greatly with me and, I suspect, too many of my female peers.

So we listen to the resounding refrain of Sheryl Sandberg -- lean in, lean in, lean in. And it's a great book and a great lesson, so we need to start internalizing it better. Just a couple days ago, the New York Times examined the incredible success of women at the top of the corporate world, but the incredible shortfall of representation we still have yet to address. Rwanda, Cuba, and Nicaragua all have higher rates of representation of women in government than the United States (an astonishing 77 countries currently top the US).

I'm thankful for how far we've come in accepting female leadership. I'm thankful I'm on a campus where it is greatly encouraged by men and women alike. I'm thankful that Beyoncé thinks I'm the boss. I'm thankful that my mom has a full-time management position, but also follows her dream of being a travel agent and Disney expert, and has also led Girl Scout troops for years. (Do you see where I get the over-working gene from?)

Let's create a world in which everyone can realize their own potential and not be discouraged by the social construction of what leadership means for a particular gender. Though I have had loving, supportive parents, friends, and teachers in my life, societal pressures still got me down and that needs to change.

My sister Laken ran for sophomore class vice president in May. She said her reason for running was me. That means more to me than any other recognition I could get this year. If she sees in me a reason to believe in herself, then I am doing something right. And what a boss she is.

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Brittany, France (by Dubus Laurent)