People’s Kitchen Detroit held a fabulous skill share on Wednesday night showing how to cultivate milk! We learned how to make yogurt and cream cheese from cow’s milk and yogurt from nut milk!
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The Declaration of Independence
We the people, the students of Mumford High would like a longer summer vacation. The EAA has taken over all of our accessibility. We want our rights back! Plenty of students in our school have the advantage of getting jobs over the summer. Without a longer vacation that is impossible. We cannot get jobs so that we can have college experience, which will result to no college acceptance. Other students that have the advantage of getting out of school have more advantages than us students who get out in August. Colleges want students who have experience, knowledge, background, exposure and participation.
The EAA does not treat the students fairly. We have been suspended for dress code, truancy, and even no identification. Our rights say that the maximum of truancy is an in school suspension. Being suspended for dress code and not having identification is not written in our student rights handbook. Being a student of the EAA has few pros and many cons. We lack on teachers, education, and responsibility. Why is it that our school cost 54 million dollars but yet we don’t have money for a field trip? Why is it that the seniors of 2013 haven’t had senior trips or activities? What can students of 2014, 2015, 2016 and so on expect? We need answers!
The EAA needs to be stopped; it is a process of confusion. How are seniors going to go to any college without the right amount of credits? We need Detroit Public Schools back. We were cared for when they taught us. Our education was valuable to most DPS teachers. The teachers of the EAA lack showing us that they are interested in our education. The EAA does not provide us with extra curricular activities. We are not treated equally to other public schools.
There should only be one school district and that is DPS. The millions of dollars that were spent on unnecessary things in our school should have been spent on more teachers. We have way too many classes, not many teachers, but most importantly we don’t have enough time in our classes. We have seven classes in a day not including seminar and lunch. We are worn out and tired. Mumford is a public school not a jail. EAA should be put away!
Our List of Demands!
• Longer summer vacations
• More teachers
• Fewer and longer class periods
• Field trips
• School funds
• DPS
• Consideration
• Look for ways to improve our education
• Stop Buzz
• Get more books
• Create a success for us students
• Help us find ways to improve academically
• Innovation
• Help us advance in all subjects
• Develop new ways for us to understand new things
• Stop the EAA
For more information and to join us in our fight subscribe to our YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/SJLStudentVoices!
"— Detroit students organizing against the EAA!
More images from the “Windows of Opportunity” fundraiser! These images capture the live reenactment of East Michigan Environmental Action Council’s history. In case you can’t tell, in one image, EMEAC is “giving birth” to a movement, and in the other one, EMEAC is out marching for environmental justice! :D
By the way, EMEAC is still accepting donations for their fundraiser! You can donate here! And be sure to spread the word! Thank you!
"Most U.S. and world history textbooks teach students to ignore the role of nature in history. But students need to know the environmental history of our current climate crises, including how nature was turned into a commodity to be bought and sold, and used for private profit. If we don’t, they’ll have a hard time recognizing what—and who—is responsible for today’s environmental crisis."
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The Real History of the Commons and Today’ s Environmental Crisis - Environment - Utne Reader
In the middle of reading this article—super important breakdown of how various school texts describe and explain the commodification of “the commons” and the environment. Haven’t finished reading yet, but I appreciate the particular focus on media and how it is used to erase vitally important information.
"f they think it’s just about Manning and Assange, then they have no conception of what it is that’s happening. And, you know, everyone knows, within the administration, within the National Security Council, the effects of climate change, the instability that that will cause, the economic deterioration, which is irreversible, and they want the mechanisms by which they can criminalize any form of dissent. And that’s finally what this is about."
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Wow.
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press. The phones targeted included the general AP office numbers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. The action likely came as part of a probe into the leaks behind an AP story on the U.S. intelligence operation that stopped a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and former New York Times reporter, calls the monitoring “one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press.” Highlighting the Obama administration’s targeting of government whistleblowers, Hedges adds: “Talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government, and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they’re terrified of going to jail."
East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC) officially kicked off their “Windows of Opportunity” fundraiser on Friday, May 10th, 2013 with a community wine and cheese tasting.
During the night’s celebrations, newly appointed EMEAC co-director, Dr. Ife Kilimanjaro, discussed why shared leadership and leadership of traditionally marginalized people is so essential.
Excerpts from Dr. Kilimanjaro’s presentation:
“I couldn’t ask for a better place to learn, grow and advance important justice work here in Detroit and beyond. EMEAC is the first place I’ve worked where it feels as though i am valued as a human being, as a whole person, and not just for what i can give endlessly.”
My co-workers are an exemplary group of workers who are leaders and leaders who are workers. I gain so much from working alongside Diana Copeland, Lottie Spady, William Copeland, Sanaa NiaJoy, Priscilla Dziubek,Siwatu Salama-Ra, Charity Mahouna Hicks, Dee, and Kim. And i value what has been learned, shared and struggled out with allies Sarah Lynn (Fender Bender Detroit) and Anjela Kosmala Newsom (People’s Kitchen Detroit).
“Tonight we honor and celebrate leadership of women and people of color in the progressive march of history. Populations often valued in words, but in practice continue to face barriers to a variety of institutions, fields of study and careers; populations that are disproportionately and increasingly unable to meet basic needs and subject to the harmful impacts of ecological injustices and climate change; populations that are systematically kept out of positions of power where decisive decisions are made; and populations that often carry out added responsibility of caring emotionally, psychologically and physically for others. We celebrate women and people of color as leaders.”
“Tonight we celebrate the principle and practice of shared leadership by honoring the many ways that every person in a formal or informal group contributes to the advancement of its work. I applaud the courage of EMEAC staff to be open to and participate in this change.”
Dr. Kilimanjaro also contextualized why EMEAC was engaging in the Windows of Opportunity fundraising campaign:
“And tonight we also celebrate the launch of our windows campaign. Our aim is to raise $10,000 toward renovation costs of the windows in two of the buildings in this complex. Buildings that house organizations who might have been priced out of this rapidly changing community under other circumstances. Help us to install energy efficient windows that will save resources and make it possible to carry out our work year round, particularly during the hottest and coldest times of the year.”
You can donate here!
Oh, goodie! More racist fashion editorials!
This time, it’s Diva magazine’s photospread entitled “Be My Slave.” Pakistani designer Aamna Aqeel decided, for whatever reason, that the best way to showcase her fashions was via these seriously offensive images, which feature a white model clad in chic duds, accompanied by a little boy playing her “slave.”
When confronted about the photos, Aqeel insisted that the spread’s concept was to bring awareness to child labor, and that the fact that the boy is dark-skinned and dressed in ~*tribal*~ gear was purely coincidental.
However International Herald Tribune writer Salima Feerasta has quite rightly called bullshit on Aqeel’s flimsly excuse, saying: It’s facetious of the designer to claim that she was trying to stimulate a debate on child labour. The model wearing her clothes is clearly comfortable with her dominant position. She is not made up in a way that shows her to be the villain of the piece. The use of a dark skinned child in a shoot entitled “Be My Slave” certainly reeks of racism, however much the designer may deny it. And if anything, the shoot seems to condone child labour.”
What do you guys think? Will the fashion world ever get a clue?
(via avioletmind)
The Guardian has a multi-part, video heavy media set on climate refugees in America. I’d argue that the title “first” is a misnomer and would point to the coastal communities in Texas, New Orleans, and the Carolinas who’ve been retreating from the coasts for several years. But, the point is made - that sea-level rise and coastal erosion is much more aggressive than at anytime in history. Thus, tens of thousands of people are at immediate risk, especially the poor.
The above is one minute.
The people of Newtok, on the west coast of Alaska and about 400 miles south of the Bering Strait that separates the state from Russia, are living a slow-motion disaster that will end, very possibly within the next five years, with the entire village being washed away.
The Ninglick River coils around Newtok on three sides before emptying into the Bering Sea. It has steadily been eating away at the land, carrying off 100ft or more some years, in a process moving at unusual speed because of climate change. Eventually all of the villagers will have to leave, becoming America’s first climate change refugees.
Some great work here!
