What GPP 105 Meant to a South Korean Girl

Since my GPP 105 course is coming to an end, I find it is necessary to conclude some thoughts on my experiences with this course. I was born in Incheon, South Korea, but began attending a boarding school alone since 10 in the states. And, I have been working with Women's Economic Agenda Project  (WEAP) in Oakland, California. WEAP is a non-profit organization that works with females from low-income background. 

Taking Prof. Robert Reich's Wealth and Poverty class during my first year at Cal had introduced me to the severity of inequality throughout the globe. Every time I set in his lecture, my mind was busy working with the concepts he introduced. However, working with social and economic justice advocates, and males in the feminist realm of urban development had taught me physically of how gender is imbedded into the structure of urban poverty. I began my practice with an initial understanding of the relation between gender and urban poverty, but the insights I gained from working with WEAP had taught me something new, and different from the countless scholarly readings I had done in my Feminist Theory class or in GPP 105. 

I couldn't understand what had been the difference between physically observing or listening to the cases involving gender, and scholarly reading about them, until I heard the news. The one about South Korean ship sinking. Yes, the one that still remains in the sea with corpses of innocent teenagers. 

It was my gender, race, educational background, and ethnicity that had made the difference. When I was at WEAP's meetings or trainings, I experienced how my appearance as an Asian girl from a renown university affected my work in this field. I was the only Asian present in trainings and meetings, and I felt as the minority within a crowd of colored and white advocates. And, it was not the first time. I had experienced something similar when I worked weekly as a economic advisor in homeless shelters including the one that only had females. To make things worse, I lived alone for the most of my life in cities with high crime rates. With all these experiences and courses I have taken on gender issues, I could not help but to become conscious of the remarks or comments I get from the individuals based on my gender or race. And, what the literature could not provide me was this communication. 

The South Korean ship tragedy demonstrated the epic fail of communication. It was actually a nightmare to watch the news. I often slept with my South Korean news channel played live 24/7 with a hope to hear something better than what I had heard in the previous days. And, I realized I was a South Korean working with issues that seemed to be mainly focused in foreign countries. I could not figure out what I had gained that reflected by nationality. And, I, as a South Korean student completed elementary, middle, and high school curriculums in the U.S., was not happy and confident about my progress in the foreign field. 

I was wrong. Taking GPP 105, interning at WEAP, and exploring my interests in a foreign country was a great way to navigate where I seem to standing in different societal structures. Without this course, I would not have accomplished certain types of self-evaluations within different society. And, GPP 105 was an opportune for me to not only gather qualitative or quantitative data of global poverty and inequality, but also to interact with these issues. I was constantly opening up dialogues about the issues within myself. And, it was GPP 105 that allowed me to do so.

Anonymous Approach to Homelessness, Justified?

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We will not forgive governments forcing people to become homelessness.

We will not forget that we can be next.

To the corrupt government holding our future from us.

You will expect us soon enough!

     -“Anonymous – The Homelessness Update 2014” by “OfficialAnonymousTV1”

            Anonymous is “a loosely international network of activist and hacktivist entities,” started in 2003. And, “the group became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites.”

Thanks Wiki.

Anonymous is good in what they do: hacking, educating the public of the injustice, and giving a big headache to the FBI. In their YouTube channel, the Anonymous has released the Homelessness 2014 update. Here, they also succeeded in implementing fear to their enemies, or the “corrupted government.”

But, here is the thing. As writing this article, I am, to be honest, a little afraid to mention anything that might provoke the Anonymous, or FBI in a space that is so “public.” How is this fear I am feeling different from the one I feel due to the government censorship? My lack of knowledge in the interests of Anonymous might be the cause. Still, this fear of mine has its reasons.

As a college student who is interning at an anti-homelessness organization in Oakland called WEAP, Women’s Economic Agenda Project, I cannot help but to compare the approaches taken by my organization to the one of Anonymous. The “Anonymous approach” to homelessness in the U.S. is much more sensational and informative that the work the WEAP has done. However, it seems that WEAP has provided a more intimate cure to the homelessness, by launching anti-eviction campaigns, and discussing homelessness in a non-virtual space or by face-to-face. Fascinatingly, WEAP and Anonymous have been around for about the same years. But, they have vastly different history when in working with homelessness. Is there a better approach? Does the better approach necessarily cancel out the unique benefits that another provides?

Anyways, Anonymous is fabulous in their hacking skills. I wish I had them.

            Lucky you. And, thanks to them for their videos. They do help in spreading the facts of poverty and inequality to the larger audience. And, they do help in raising questions that should be answered by all activists who are involved in reducing inequality, poverty, and injustice. What does justice mean to you? What is equality, in a world that we live in now?  I am assuming I did have my ideas unrefined as I began my work. However, it would’ve have been more helpful to have these terms defined explicitly as my first step. I then could’ve tracked my progress in my work and possible modifications to my ideas of poverty, inequality, and justice.

           My most agreeable form of understanding justice comes from John Rawls, an American philosopher of politics. By Rawlsian terms, Justice as fairness is achieved by minimizing inequality, and having the better-off contribute for the worst-off. When studying inequality and poverty, I find justice, as a concept that must go noticed.

Does justice matter? I think so.

Missing Opportunities

My first attendance to Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) Training left me feeling nauseous, for one reason. Andy Lopez. He is a 13 year old boy, who got shot in Santa Rosa by a Sonoma County police officer for carrying a toy gun.

When this story came up, a woman at the training site raised her hand to speak. And, this story made me feel uneasy for the rest of the training session.

According to her story, a police officer approached a Latino person to take off his shirt and intimidated him because he was wearing a campaign shirt for Andy Lopez at a shopping mall. Someone in the surrounding crowd called a lawyer for help, so the lawyer appeared in the same shirt. Even before the lawyer approached the police officer to argue for the constitutional rights that questions the behaviors of the officer, the officer did not attempt to approach the lawyer. It was not because he was a lawyer; the officer did not know of the status. But, it was for another reason. The lawyer was a white male.

Racial inequality and poverty were issues that had ubiquitously appeared in the media and academic articles. Among the articles, the "Equity" section of "Deeping Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance," by Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, states that to make
public action more effective, there must be an inclusion of disadvantaged individuals. However, the society seems to prefer keeping the disadvantaged individuals muted. With such silence, any public actions would not succeed in its deliberative process.

So many campaigns are being carried out for the tragedy of Andy Lopez. However, I am not entirely sure of the direction of these campaigns. These protestants are deprived of opportunities to make their voices heard, like how Andy Lopez was not given a chance to speak for himself.