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Post by Betterout on Oct 7, 2005 14:33:58 GMT -5
This morning I was listening to a story about a really self-actualized young person, who upon graduating from college in the late 80s/early 90s, founded a non-profit called Teach for America. Here's the story: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4949047It got me to wondering. We're a bunch of would-be activists (or at least politics-savvy folks) with lots of useful skills and no end to our interesting ideas about improving the human experience. What would the Indigenous not-for-profit be like? What would be our mission statement, goals, objectives? How would/could we raise money, and what would we do with it once it was raised? Better yet, what's stopping us?
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Post by Thanin on Oct 7, 2005 15:19:17 GMT -5
Better yet, what's stopping us? Time constraints (family/school/jobs), laziness (would rather watch TV/TiVo, play video games), Selfishness (would rather create art/music/write), apathy (a firm belief that no one would listen to us and we wouldn't ever succeed).
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Post by Jeff on Oct 7, 2005 18:45:55 GMT -5
Eventually we will leave this board behind like a shell that we shed, like we did with Disjunction. Is this all so much wasted effort? Or is there something more? 6 months and 27. What are so few against the world? How do we judge our efforts? We have not changed Adam's mind. He has not changed ours. Is that our purpose?
Our coming together is an end. We are a model of how to unite. Everyone is both native and stranger. Everyone suffers, and loves, and looks from her own eyes. Isn’t this what we say every day?
Jeff
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Post by rickus on Oct 7, 2005 22:52:34 GMT -5
I'm often moved to tears by our words and our actions.
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Post by Tyler on Oct 8, 2005 13:35:34 GMT -5
It's the journey, not the destination. Our discourse alters how we react to and consider the world around us.
The non-profit. Look around and find a place where society/government has been found lacking, and that's where we could step in. Rick's idea of picking up trash is a fine one. To make that manifest, what we do is find funding and hire people who need work to pick up trash in refuges and preserves. A private sector WPA.
My dream was always to isolate the funds we each invariably generate in the world from those we find deplorable by removing ourselves from the society at large. Form an arcology, hire the people we want to support to do the things we want done in the world and try to be as self sufficient as possible. We could even make part of it a school and thus be eligible for school vouchers when the Nazisonsabitches finally push that through. What product could we, as a group or individually, provide to others in exchange for funds?
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Post by tenzingcory on Oct 8, 2005 14:18:25 GMT -5
Who was it that said something to the effect of the greatest wrong is when good men/women do nothing?
I think a NFP would be motivation to find funding.. find a social/economic/ecological problem and make a difference.. the problem being do we resolve ourselves to a specific task or a more diverse collective???
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Post by Tyler on Oct 8, 2005 15:49:09 GMT -5
I know a man that works at the hospital that's from Ghana. He assists other's from his home country to come to the US, obtain jobs and homes. Just an example.
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Post by Betterout on Oct 9, 2005 14:59:47 GMT -5
I think a NFP would be motivation to find funding.. find a social/economic/ecological problem and make a difference.. the problem being do we resolve ourselves to a specific task or a more diverse collective??? My thoughts exactly, Cory. What's weird is that there doesn't really seem to be one problem we all feel so super strongly about that we'd invest our time to it at the expense of other equally worthy causes. At the same time--if I can borrow a concept that owes as much to Dead Ringers as to Seinfeld--one has to specialize in order to keep things simple enough to integrate and accomplish. There are probably no models outside of certain political parties or liberal arts colleges, for example, that consider it their mission to encourage healthy self-discovery, -development, and -expression, environmental responsibility, commitment to critical thinking, sexual and racial equality and independence, religious tolerance, and free thought. And that may be a little too much to bite down on. What would we do? Provide grants for treehugging religious female minority martial artists? Our desire for wider ranging diversity could make our efforts increasingly more narrow in scope.
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Post by Tyler on Oct 10, 2005 13:33:27 GMT -5
I've priced some and it looks like it costs around $1,000 to do the paperwork and everything to form a non-profit.
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Post by Tyler on Oct 15, 2005 10:00:47 GMT -5
I've noticed that the discrimination against people comes most often in the details. For school, it's often the small fees and weird paperwork that people have to come up with and fill out that bar them from schooling. It's not learning the material, it's paying for the books and parking decals.
I've been thinking about this for a while as something a non-profit needs to do. Daycare centers run at cost. Like a day-care co-op. It provides food and supervision for the children and charges only the cost of running the facility. You could set it up so that there are cameras everywhere so people can check on their kids at work.
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Post by katie on Oct 17, 2005 8:08:04 GMT -5
If you guys are serious about this, about trying to organize to get something done on a group level, maybe everyone should take some time to list their top priorities as far as issues/causes/concerns go. Then we could see what most people are concerned about, and build a consensus from there. No action will happen if we can't agree about what to act on. And Tyler's the only person putting any ideas out there.
Please disregard my lack of ideas. I need to figure out what they are exactly before posting.
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Post by Betterout on Oct 18, 2005 10:53:48 GMT -5
Katie,
This is a great suggestion. I think we're going to end up discovering just how disparate our group's priorities really are. But if everybody contributes something, I think we can get a better idea of how the lists can be narrowed down. I haven't really thought about this matter enough to rank them, but here are some of my top social priorities (in no particular order).
Global reduction of both poverty and wealth Indigenous cultural restoration and language preservation Dissolution of political boundaries Dissolution of intellectual property Increased general environmental interaction and concern Increased general social awareness and concern Increased cultural (religious, linguistic, artistic, etc.) awareness and tolerance Increased identity development--very vague, but I'd be happy to share my thoughts Increased access to education Increased access to healthcare
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Post by Jeff on Oct 18, 2005 11:08:24 GMT -5
I am old school on this stuff. Here are my top five from Justin's list, which looks pretty good to me:
1. Global reduction of both poverty and wealth 2. Increased access to healthcare 3. Increased access to education 4. Increased general social awareness and concern 5. Increased general environmental interaction and concern
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Post by rickus on Oct 18, 2005 12:01:40 GMT -5
1. Global Population Reduction. If this is addressed a lot of other problems will disappear.
2. Global Warming. I know a lot of people are unsure of it's cause, and whether or not it's a serious problem. My stance is that it's better to err on the side of caution.
3. More general environmental concerns. Deforestation of the worlds rain forests, water quality, endangered animal habitats etc.
4. Equal access to health care. Establish a solid baseline standard for health care that is available to everyone. Everyone!
5. Religious and cultural tolerance. This would be an attempt to address humanity's apparent need to kill everyone who doesn't believe the "we" do.
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Post by rickus on Oct 18, 2005 12:41:29 GMT -5
Just a little story.
In 2000 I was moved to inform people about ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide they were emitting into the atmosphere. I created a small brochure at my own expense entitled "10 things you can do to prevent Global Warming," there was an image of the earth on the cover. I printed 100 of them, and Katie folded them. Thank you Katie!
In it, I listed such things as replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact florescent bulbs. Nothing drastic or "BIG," like "walk everywhere you go." I tried to keep it realistic, and simple.
I took my printed and folded brochures and went to the Boise Farmers Market in downtown Boise; this was on a Saturday morning. I was met with indifference. If you ever want to be invisible, hand paper out to people in a public place. I expected this to some extent. But it was the guy who, when he saw the cover of my little brochure, wadded it up and threw it in my face that shocked me. He told me to "get the hell" out of his face.
He beat me that morning. All of my good intentions and hopes were crushed in a moment of shame and embarrassment. When did doing the right thing become so wrong?
Anyway. So now, I keep all of my do good intentions to myself for the most part. I pick up trash in public lands alone (or used to thanks to Tammy, Ty, and Justin.) I recycle at home, and help out with Yukon's recycling program. The thing is, I still feel the need to get out there and say "HEY! Don't you see that we're going to kill our selves? It's easy to fix. All you have to do is..."
I don't know where I was going with this exactly. I just want to get back up after being knocked down. I think I'm more embarrassed about not acting now than I was for acting back in 2000.
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Post by Tyler on Oct 18, 2005 12:47:36 GMT -5
Things like that haunt a person for years. Violent confrontation does something to a persons brain to make it stand out in the memory. You find yourself questioning your decisions and your actions.
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Post by Betterout on Oct 18, 2005 13:06:12 GMT -5
Rickus,
Just a little story in response to yours. In the Fall of 1993, I was walking to class at OSU. There was a guy passing out flyers, standing in my direct path in the quad on the glassier side of the library. I thought, 'oh, man, I don't want to have to deal with this today.' As I drew nearer, he looked a lot like how I can imagine you did that day in Idaho--beaten, tired, hopeless--and it was still just 9 am. He handed me the flyer, and I took it quite indifferently, reading it as I walked. It was about the hard life of Palestinians in Israel. I had actually never stopped to consider how things really were for this group of people. I thought about it all day, and I couldn't help but think of Native folks here in this country. That evening, I remember talking to Tyler about it. And the next day, I even went to the travel agency to price a trip to Israel so I could see things for myself. Well, I definitely couldn't afford that, but it started me to thinking, and thinking, and thinking. To make a long story short, I think that one guy in the quad really helped to form my opinions, some of which I've mentioned here on this thread. No question about it: For me, so much goes back to that one lone international student handing out flyers (and, yes, I'm sure 99% of them did end up in the trash). So, while there's just no way of knowing, your efforts may very well have reached someone that day who might otherwise not have been reached.
Kudos to the work you and Katie do in this world to make it better.
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Post by Tyler on Oct 18, 2005 13:14:18 GMT -5
I have a compulsory habit. Every time I hear the word "Pakistan" I have to sing to myself a song that Justin and I heard in the quad at OSU during an international festival that year. It was a bunch of guys singing and dancing: "Paki-paki-paki-paki-pakistan! Paki-paki-paki-paki-pakistan!" This has no correlation to the previous story except insofar as our actions effect others in ways we cannot imagine or hope to predict. All that we can hope for is to be good people and do what we think are good things and hope that our will is strong enough to thart the fates.
I'll get back to the things to do list later, school calls.
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Post by rickus on Oct 18, 2005 13:22:10 GMT -5
OK I think I remember the moral of the story now. It was a hard day for me 5 years ago in great part I believe do to the fact that I was standing out there alone. I came home and told Katie how humiliating it was and how I know I would have had much more of a back bone if there were others around who thought as I did. In so many of our discussions about policy and policy makers we look to others to change it for us so we can sit back and judge their efforts and results. If every we are able to overcome our self doubt, and impotence, I'm cretain that the body of us could and would achieve a great deal to make the world a better place to live in. One of the proudest days I can think of in the life of this board was when Justin and Amanda threw down the gauntlet and and said "put your money where your liberal mouth is!" I loved it. I'd like to see us do it a lot more!
It's that we don't, that often moves me to tears, and reminds me to that day back in Boise.
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Post by Jeff on Oct 18, 2005 14:27:01 GMT -5
Let me tell you a story. As a teacher I try to think of clever things to say so that I can get the attention of students. Mostly I am not up to the challenge, so I rely on the clever things others have said. (Actually, that’s not even true. I am only smart enough to misquote other people.) In 1989 one of my favorite professors, Dr. Walter Scott, told me something I will never forget: “A good essay is like a good skirt, long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep things interesting.” I was teaching existentialism in 2001 when it occurred to me to say this as a teacher. It was received with a mild chuckle. After class, however, one of my favorite students approached me in righteous indignation. She said that I had deeply offended her. The next class period I apologized to the class for my remark. It’s the only time I’ve ever done that.
A few weeks later I saw this student on the street corner handing out pamphlets on feminism. Lots of people were throwing them down as soon as they received them. So, the sidewalk was littered with female intellectual heroes, like Rosalind Franklin, who still haven’t received their due. But there was my student with the same righteous indignation doing what she felt had to be done.
I admired her a great deal. And after I apologized to the class, I think she respected me too. The idea is that we grow together, and anger does have its proper uses.
Don’t give up Rick!
Jeff
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