Fall 2009 OneWorld WashU by OneWorld Magazine

»healthcare reform BREAKING IT DOWN »GRAFFITI a message to anyone who will listen

»food around the world »10 HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES you should know about

Washington University ● Issue 5 ● Fall 2009

ONEWORLD

dear readers, Every day, we walk beneath the trees that line Oak Walk on our way to class, and one day never looks different from the last. Yet somewhere along the way, summer became fall. Then today, we realize that all the trees had dropped their leaves. The chill of winter feels just a moment away. As college students, our lives are highly routine, marked by a cycle of predictably long nights and early classes. The repetition of class, schoolwork, student group meetings, and commitments to our friends seems like an endless pattern, but before we know it, winter will turn into spring and spring into summer. The seniors will graduate as fresh faces emerge, but amidst these changes, life can feel static. It is easy to lose perspective on the world around us when we are caught up in the practices of everyday life. Each issue of OneWorld is our way of bringing a glimpse of the outside world into the Wash. U. community. Whether you enjoy reading our articles on human rights, social entrepreneurship, or student experiences abroadâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or you just like looking at our photosâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; we hope to provide food for thought and to bring something new into your daily lives.

sincerely, Zoe Madigan Christine Wei

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Staff

Co-Presidents and Editor s-in-Chief ZOE MADIGAN CHRISTINE WEI

Senior Editor ALINA KUTSENKO

Secretary JOHN DROLLINGER

Ten

Graffiti

human rights issues a basic background for ten global issues highlighted on the Amnesty International website

as an expression of social commentary, gibberish, celebration, and pure existence

West African da n c e

vibrant, sensous movements that capture the vigor of life

Wacky

P ow e r S h i f t

food a r o u n d t h e wo r l d

delicacies that will surprise the most adventurous connoisseurs

what it is, what happens there, what the experience can be like

Greetings India

f ro m

an email from a Wash. U. alum working for a non-profit in India

Treasurer RACHEL FOLKERTS

Progamming and Outreach Chair s JOHN DELUREY OLGA LOZOVSKAYA RACHEL SACKS

Wr iter s, Editor s, and Designer s MICHELLE HO SOPHIA KOROVAICHUK DEBBIE LEWIS BILLY ROH DANIEL STAROSTA PHILIP VORON JORDAN WAGNER JORDAN WEINER ADAM WEISS

Lessons learned in Ghana

the Nima-Maamobi community faces waste and sanitation risks

Goldmine on H a n g a R oa d

experiences from Sierra Leone, where ice cream is treasure

contents Issue 5 29

A g r i c u lt u r a l

s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

newer isn’t always better: finding a place for smallholder methods

H e a lt h c a r e reform

a breakdown of the House proposal, a summary of related debates, and an alternative in San Francisco to the current system

Just

t h e fa c t s : opium

n e w way o f c a l c u l at i n g va l u e

social entrepreneurship: business that emphasizes social return

Fifteen

“ T h e E a s y W ay ”

o f fa m e

minutes

newer isn’t always better: finding a place for smallholder methods

a poem about life

a new column that provides the backstory for an issue, offers some statistics, then lets you decide what to think for yourself

g raffiti and social consciousness, page 5

ten

human rights issues

YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT by John Dro llinger, in collaboration wit h Wa s h . U. A m n e s t y I n t e r n at i o n a l

Israel/Palestine: lack of access to adequate water supply Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians access to adequate water supply. Israel currently maintains total control over the shared water resources and pursues discriminatory policies against the Palestinians residing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). This unreasonably restricts the availability of water. Also, Israel has imposed stringent restrictions in recent years on the entry into the area of material and equipment necessary for the development and repair of water infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Israeli settlements in the OPT, which violate inernational law, receive four times more water supplies than the Palestinan settlements in the OPT.

Russia & North Caucasus: abductions, torture, assassinations Human rights activists in Russia and the North Caucasus face increasing violence and intimidation three years after the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. In January 2009, Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had been working closely with Politkovskaya, was shot dead in Moscow. Anastasia Baburova, a journalist, was gunned down at his side. Attacks against dissenters working to protect human rights are common in the North Caucasus as well. On July 15, Natalia Estemirova of the Memorial Human Rights Centre was abducted in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic. Her body was found later that day in Chechnya’s neighboring republic. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechnya has waged two wars for autonomy resulting in widespread human rights issues. Although the region has grown more stable in recent years, abductions, torture, and assassinations persist. Russian President Medvedev must ensure that these crimes are fully investigated and perpetrators are brought to justice in trials that meet international standards.

United States: sexual assault on Native Americans One in three Native American women will be raped in her lifetime. Native American and Alaskan Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than the average woman in the United States. A complex maze of tribal, state, and federal jurisdictions have resulted in de facto impunity for the perpetrators of rape against Native American women. Most of the problems are caused by the lack of governmental attention to tribal communities, so tribal law enforcement agencies are chronically under-funded. Meanwhile, federal and state governments provide significantly fewer resources for law enforcement on tribal land than are provided for comparable non-Native communities. The lack of appropriate training in federal, state, and tribal police forces also undermines survivors’ rights to justice because many officers don’t have the skills to ensure a full and accurate crime report. Survivors of sexual violence are not guaranteed access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examination, a result of the federal government’s severe under-funding of the “Indian Health Service.” Women who come forward to report sexual violence are caught in a jurisdictional maze. Any action is often significantly delayed, and more often than not, no one intervenes on behalf of the victims. Survivors of sexual violence are left without proper restitution.

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Sri Lanka: detainees held by military after civil war

Sierra Leone: prenatal and childbirth risks One in eight Sierra Leonian women die during childbirth and pregnancy. This is the highest rate of maternal mortality anywhere in the world. Women fortunate enough to gain access to a health facility must not only provide their own food and water, but also must negotiate and pay for equipment and medications. Transportation to a health facility poses a further obstacle; most women reside in remote villages and cannot afford costly transportation to a medical facility. All of these troubles come at a time of great medical vulnerability. Women in Sierra Leone are deprived of the most basic maternal healthcare.

Since 1983, Sri Lanka had been plagued by a civil war between the security forces and the armed Tamil opposition group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE were seeking an independent state for the Tamil minority in the north and east of the island. In May 2009, the Sri Lankan military defeated the LTTE by forcing their army into a progressively smaller area, causing thousands of innocent civilians to be caught in a dangerous war zone alongside the LTTE. Government forces repeatedly bombed and shelled the area despite the dense concentration of civilians. Over 7,000 innocent people have been killed and 13,000 injured during 2009. People who were able to flee the conflict area have been forcefully detained by the government in overcrowded internment camps so that the government could screen the civilians from the LLTE fighters. Heavy rains have flooded the military-run internment camps that house a quarter of a million displaced Sri Lankans, worsening their already dismal living situation. Though the war is over, the detainees are still held captive by the military, against their will and in violation of national and international law. At least 50,000 of the displaced are children. To further worsen the situation, the government has not publicly formulated a policy for protecting and resettling the displaced and desperate civilians of Sri Lanka.

Chad: illegal demolitions and refugee camps While the world’s attention has been focused on the violence in Darfur, the neighboring government in Chad has been quietly carrying out its own human rights violations. Over a 12-month period, satellite imagery has revealed that around 3,700 homes and businesses have been demolished in the capital city of N’Djamena. Follow-up research on the ground confirms that many of these demolitions were in fact illegal and in violation of Chadian law. Families are given little or no time to relocate, and no opportunity to even dispute the evictions, leaving many with no other choice than to stay in refugee camps. Amnesty International is concerned that these continuing evictions are directly related to the current military crisis of Chad’s ongoing civil war and the resulting political pressure on the government of President Idriss Déby Itno.

p h o t o f r o m s h ay m u s 0 2 2 ’s f l i ck r

Haiti: children as domestic slaves

AND DARE TO

care

ABOUT

Many Haitian families struggle to support their children and are forced to send them to work as domestic help. The children, most of them girls, sacrifice educational oppurtunities to work long hours cleaning, cooking, fetching water, and looking after the children of another family. Tens of thousands of children work as domestic servants in conditions that amount to slavery. They are trapped in a situation of total dependence and forced to endure violence and sexual abuse. Some flee their employer or host family and live on the street where they may have no option but to sell their bodies for sex in order to survive.

Kenya: over half of capital in settlements or slums

Paraguay: indigenous people homeless, without right to land Amnesty International has criticized the Paraguayan Congress for rejecting a draft bill that would have returned ancestral land to the Yakye Axa indigenous community. The decision leaves at least 90 families homeless. For 10 years, the Yakye Axa indigenous community has lived alongside a major highway. The people lack access to water, regular food supplies, adequate medical care, and farmable land. According to international human rights standards, the right to traditional lands is crucial to Indigenous Peoples as it is a vital element of identity, livelihood, and way of life.

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More than half of Nairobi’s population of two million people live in informal settlements or slums. Without the security of a formal residence, these tenants are at risk of eviction and homelessness. Residents lack adequate access to basic public services such as clean water, sanitation, security, healthcare and education. The Kenyan government has failed to officially recognize the growth of informal settlements and to include them in the city’s development plans. These settlements will continue to swell until the Kenyan government addresses the underlying issues and includes this population in future development plans.

Belarus: prisoner execution Belarus is the only country in Europe and former Soviet Union still executing prisoners. Amnesty calls for the Belarusian authorities to immediately declare moratorium on all executions and death sentences. The flawed criminal justice system in the country administers capital punishment in a manner that violates international laws and standards pertaining to the death penalty. There is credible evidence that torture and ill-treatment are used to extract “confessions.” Condemned prisoners are given no warning that they are about to be executed and they are usually executed within minutes of being told that their appeal for a less severe punishment has been rejected. First, they are taken to a room where they are told that their appeal for clemency had been denied. They are then taken to another room where they are forced to their knees and shot in the back of the head. The prisoners’ families are informed of the execution days or sometimes even weeks later. Access to the prisoner’s body or location of the burial site is denied, even to family members.

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GRAFFITI

by D a n i e l S t a r o s t a

“ A r t i s l o n g, l i f e i s s h o r t .” — H I PPO CRATES

andalism is relative; art even more so. Each is an expression of thought and culture; life and loss; and the nature of society. They are the ideas that trickle down into the paint cans of those willing to put their thoughts not to words, but to color. And when the color hits the walls, it can be as poetic as the silence of a hurricane blackout, or, just as easily, as uncalled for as some punk kid blacking out a 7-11 window. To different people graffiti means different things and has different histories and different policies. Sometimes it is a deep and simple wisdom for all to see—a societal truism; yet other times it is visual gibberish, intelligible only to those whose eyes can follow the distorted letters. But not all graffiti is distorted art, and not all distorted art is graffiti. Graffiti is a product of its environment, and for that reason you don’t see Berlin anticapitalist graffiti in Mumbai or Miami’s vibrant murals in Casablanca. Nothing is comparable because everything is relative to its context, and that is why it’s perfect. Graffiti is the heaves and throes of the urban heartbeat—the ultimate expression of the back alleys of every city, suburb, and village crying out to be heard.

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The art of the urban landscape exists in two main categories: 1) traditional tags and pieces and 2) social commentary. Despite these designations, the divisions are blurred, and a single instance is often both or neither; it can be something altogether different. A tag is no more than a signature that brags to passerbys, and yet the concept of tagging is simultaneously simple and complex. “Getting up,” as it is traditionally called, is simply the idea of having as many tags in as many places as possible—getting up all over the wall, the building, the city. However, tagging can also be understood as a proof of our existence, the here and the now, for fear that it may not last. And it often does not, as walls are repainted because we hooligan youths deface them. In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, however, pilgrim graffiti has lasted and accumulated for more than 1,000 years. Visitors have scratched crosses of all kinds into every conceivable space along the inside walls.

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Here, graffiti is prayer; it is the hope that the divine will recognize one’s visit. The history of modern tagging follows a skewed version of the same idea. TAKI 183, a New York tagger from the 70s, was infamous for tagging all over the city. Yet his tag was no elaborate signature, no colorful mural--it was anything but complicated. His tag, “TAKI 183,” was a corruption of his actual name combined with the street on which he grew up: 183rd. TAKI 183’s tagging was not about art, it was simply about being everywhere so that all would know TAKI 183 had been there. It was “getting up” in its purest form. Tagging has both evolved and devolved from there. Sometimes tagging is much less serious, like writing over a stop sign so that it reads, “Don’t stop the music” or “Stop Voldemort.” The volatility of the Israeli sociopolitical landscape produces equally poignant street art, from tags to stencils to murals. Living in Israel last year, I found that in the five blocks around my old apartment there

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was more graffiti than in the whole of my suburban hometown, yet I would equate almost none of it with vandalism. There, graffiti communicaites sobering truths like “missiles don’t return hostages.” Here and there you can find the traditional exclamation “The People of Israel Live.” There is a spray stencil all around the city that reads “DIE LUCKY BUSH.” While this message seems overly vicious at first glance, its attack on the Bush administration is a secondary motive. When read in Hebrew, it becomes an English transliteration for “enough with the conflict.” Behind the soccer court where I regularly played pick-up games, thick black letters blare the announcement, “Tierra de Nadie”: “Nobody’s Land.” Easier still to find is the stuttering Kabbalistic mantra of “Nah, Nach, Nachman,” one of the most common tags in the country. In some places the phrase is written with simple letters, while in others it is expressed through elaborate works of art. In Israel more than anywhere

Cordoba, Spain

else, graffiti is purely a reflection of culture, capturing ancient through modern. Because the population is a diverse amalgamation of races, religions, and ethnicities, graffiti in the City of Gold reflects a wild variation of backgrounds, languages, and political perspectives. Because I am too curious for my own good, I visited the West Bank with a friend and found that the concrete divider is fast becoming the largest graffiti mural anywhere. One of the world’s most famous street artists, Britain’s Banksy, has taken a liking to the wall, peppering it with painted windows filled with scenes of blue skies and rolling green hills. There is a silhouette of a young boy trying to hop over the wall and another of a girl watching hopelessly as her single red balloon drifts away through the concrete sky. Some value his work as commentary on the Palestinian plight, yet Palestinians themselves have expressed disdain at the work, saying his beautification of the wall

backfires. Locals claim they don’t want the wall to look pretty—they want it to remain ugly and foreboding. After all, painting the wall does not knock it down. During my time in Israel I befriended Yoram Amir, a local art gallery owner who moonlights as a graffiti stencil artist. A photographer by trade, he has chronicled what he considers to be the decline of his beautiful city of Jerusalem from ancient sandstone civilization to modern high-rise ugliness, tearing away at its sacred history. His personal stencil is a juggling monkey with the phrase “120 monkeys” underneath. The stencil communicates his dissatisfaction with the 120 members of the Israeli Parliament. The most compelling aspect of Yoram Amir’s ideology isn’t his practice of taking gap-year students tagging in the wee hours of the morning (okay, so maybe it is), but rather it is his adamant refusal to spray paint on Jerusalem stone: the traditional façade of buildings in the city. He frames his

photographs in old wooden windowpanes he finds discarded in the street, considering them far more beautiful and culturally relevant than the steel panes that replaced them. He paints the city in the hope that the areas he designates will be torn down so that the native beauty can shine through. Not everyone in the Middle East has the opportunity to edit the landscape as Amir does though. For a long time, the only spray paint on the walls of buildings in Arab countries was for business announcements and mottos of political parties. However, in the last few years, more and more art has shown up in Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran. Here, under a higher political scrutiny, graffiti exists as art for art’s sake—just for the sake of being there. The street art scene in Berlin, Germany is difficult to describe because it is so heavily layered with history, political shifts, and massive artistic variation. The traditional onion metaphor falls short here, however,

as each layer peeled away reveals wholly different styles, purposes, and perspectives. Being the current modern art capital of the world, Berlin has created a breeding ground for all kinds of new creativity, but its graffiticentric history stretches decades back. Luckily, the city has had the good sense to keep its history intact rather than whitewash it. The entrance to the Reichstag, a building as iconic as it is infamous, is clean and shiny and utilitarian, yet there are smoky walls on either side of the doors on the interior that are riddled with Soviet vandalism: products of the Battle of Berlin left as a reminder. On the other side of the spectrum is Kunsthaus Tacheles, another building that was bombed out, though not exactly rebuilt. Sitting on what is now one of Berlin’s trendiest streets, Tacheles is the exoskeleton remains of a century-old department store, essentially abandoned after its WWI destruction. Over the last twenty five years, however, it has been turned into a maze of studios, exhibition halls, and bars. Behind its battered, graffiti-smeared façade resides a vibrant community of artists from around the world, stubbornly fighting the area’s gentrification and serving as a last bastion of the underground artistic movement. For all the walls covered in countless layers of paint, there is a laughably symbolic price of rent of 50 Euro cents—per year. The entire idea of Tacheles, as explained to me by a 28-year veteran artist (balding with a ponytail, jeans torn off at the knees, ribbons tied through overstretched earlobes), is about being a medium for undiluted expression—far more than a physical manifestation of what street art stands for. As a bizarre utopia of art and activist coexistence, it at once defines and is engulfed by the graffiti culture, both literally and figuratively. The Berlin Wall stands alone in every respect, having been an icon even when it was still a simple clean, gray concrete divider. With what remains of it covered in a combination of tags and murals (now part of the East Side Art Gallery), it vividly represents the conflict and the visceral reaction it evoked in Berliners. One commissioned mural reads “Curriculum Vitae: the short story of the wall” at the top of the wall. It lists the years from 1961 on, when it was built, in black paint; the text slowly gets bigger until reaching the wall’s demolition year of 1989, written in thick red letters. Elsewhere on the wall, no taller than six inches high, a crudely drawn wall topped with barbed-wire displays the message “no wall is too high to climb.” Graffiti and otherwise, the paint on the wall

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is a monument to the population’s reaction to drastic changes in its environment: defacement is often the simplest and most straightforward way. Miles away in Dresden, under a much older and elaborate mural depicting the local dynastic royalty are some of the wisest words I’ve read anywhere: “Feudalism? Fuck You!” Fuck it indeed. To dissent in public is to nail one of your 95 million theses on the doors of society. The juxtaposition of the two generations, the static royal past versus the progressive liberal present, provides the deepest glimpse into the societal changes that bloomed through radically different eras. Often a wall that has been frequented by likeminded artists, vandals, and delinquents develops a theme and becomes a cultural landmark, though not always obtaining the visibility and popularity of the Berlin Wall. In the heart of Prague, for instance, is a colorful stretch of wall splattered not with signatures and tags, but with Beatles quotes. Dubbed the “Lennon Wall,” its history began in the 70s with a handful of drawings and quotes but has become an ever-evolving landscape of peace, love, and the idealistic outlook. The one time the wall was painted over, a substantial amount of new paint had already appeared by the next morning. Covered with everything from portraits of John Lennon to visitors’ favorite quotes, the wall represents Lennon at his peak and the world’s hope. Now that the wall is privately owned, the worry of it being painted over is no longer an issue—and that the city gave up a public wall to artistic defacement further testifies to the power of preservation and perseverance. Cultural influences are perhaps more visible in street art and graffiti than in any other art form (and definitely any other form of vandalism). That said, there is often a deliberate sense refusing an idea of “world consciousness”; the pieces exist only in the context of and as a product of their environment. A common tag around Athens, Greece, is none other than “Hermes,” the mythological messenger of the gods. The irony almost hurts. It’s an amusing reference to being able to sign the wall and sneak away too quickly to be pursued by flashing lights— after all, Hermes runs on winged shoes, does he not? Athens is home to abundant graffiti, but barely across the Aegean Sea, the scene changes dramatically. Istanbul, Turkey, perhaps as a product of its strict and strange secularism, has little graffiti of any kind. Even so, two instances of it tell the nation’s long history in short: Hagia Sophia, once the greatest church of the Eastern Orthodox

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I c e c re a m t r u ck , Ta c h e l e s, B e rl i n

tradition, has Viking graffiti scratched into marble panels from a 9th century visit, and a whimsical mural by Kemal Attaturk located down the street presents an image of the modern republic, including a cartoon Hagia Sophia. Everything comes full circle—some things 11 centuries slower than others. A few countries to the west, the change in historical context is evident. Surrounding a part of the Cathedral of Cordoba in Spain is a corrugated steel fence that boasts three large abstractly painted heads under the scribbled title “the three wise men.” Elsewhere in Spain, the graffiti ranges from common, colorful artistic gibberish to messages like “free Palestine” and swastikas to declarations of Basque independence. They directly reflect national cultural trends: growing European anti-Semitism, the ever-strong Catholic tradition (even as a pun) and the Basque situation, a culture entirely apart. One place far too difficult to explain in mere words is India. Its sparse, almost goodnatured graffiti has no comparison. There is a stencil tag outside some Delhi shops—a placid elephant in a yoga pose—yet there is no single tagger. Seen almost as a good luck charm, shopkeepers paint the stencil above their own door. Hours away in the country’s northeastern city of Dharmasala, a thriving Tibetan community proudly and openly displays the culture repressed in Tibet proper. Around parts of the middle of town, small pieces of paper taped to walls—not graffiti, exactly—sway in the wind. They each read the same message: “Tibet is not part of China. Tibet is Tibetan.” The fact that it is written in English and clearly caters to tourists only begs the question of to what extent do the signs in Hindi and Tibetan read the same or much more explicit messages. Dharmasala’s lack of what most consider traditional graffiti parallels a progressive movement toward new mediums with which to practice graffiti. All over the world, this movement has produced spectacular displays. The icing on the cake, however, is that not a drop of paint is used; innovators have bobbed and weaved their way around every law, some even gaining the sponsorship of local governments. Light graffiti grew from photographic shenanigans; it is the use of fluorescent lights to draw or write something during a long exposure photograph. The result is a strangely three-dimensional image that opens new doors for many types of art. The term “reverse graffiti” might seem to be a community service project to clean up the streets, yet that’s not quite it. Britain’s Paul “Moose” Curtis, a leader of the reverse

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graffiti movement, takes the idea of drawing in a dusty window to a whole new scale: he uses pressure-washers and stencils to peel off layers of dirt and leave his imprint. Authorities aren’t quite sure what to make of it: Curtis has been arrested in Britain for his reverse graffiti, but hired in California to “un-paint” a mural on a dirty highway wall. Just as baffling is Graffiti Research Lab’s laser project, which essentially consists of no more than a laser-pointer and a highpowered projector. Quickly being picked up internationally, the entire system consists of simply drawing out a tag, using a computer to convert it into a projection and then projecting the tag on the face of a building. The results are surreal: a 50 story building covered in a giant tag projected from blocks away. It can go away instantly, so it’s not exactly vandalism, and for the same reason, it’s not exactly art. But it is astounding in every sense of the word, and that’s more than enough for many. Graffiti in its simplest, most personal context is not about printing books or having an exhibition. It is an announcement; proof, if you will, that it can be done, that it can be shown, regardless of what “it” is. It is a public thesis for nobody and everybody all at once. From why to how, pilgrim crosses to laser tagging, graffiti is continually growing and evolving as society changes, and it’s a process not even the noblest of characters can stop. There’s a certain special something about a newly painted, blank wall. Maybe it’s a sense of purity, proverbial new beginnings and all that. But there’s something a little more special about coming back a few days later and finding another new beginning: a colorful tag jotted up on the urban canvas, grinning mischievously. Traditionally, graffiti has been anything but traditional. It is petty vandalism, high art, and deep social commentary—sometimes all at once—but it is no more than it claims to be: a message to anyone who will notice. Yoram Amir wants wrecking balls to slam through his stencils, TAKI 183 wanted even more buildings to go up so he’d have more canvas space. All over the world, there is a unifying theme of posting your own agenda on a big blank wall so that pedestrians like me can walk by and enjoy the unwarranted sociopolitical rambling of every perspective. It is that normal albeit sneaky and artistic posting of the the feelings of entire generations that makes street art so appealing. It’s as real a comment as you can get without yelling it on a microphone. Until it gets painted over, of

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course. A few years ago I was wandering around New York City, trying to kill a few hours, and a few lucky wrong turns led me to an empty fenced-in basketball court with a beautiful graffiti mural stretching the entire width and height of the building behind it. I sat on a set of bleachers by the wall, letting the ambient noise mix with the lively colors of the city, and found a pearl of graffiti wisdom hastily scribbled in permanent marker beneath the mural: “art saved the city’s soul.” I smiled at the raw genuineness, knowing somebody held that truth to be self-evident. There was nothing to read into, yet it provided a fleeting sense of serenity and simplicity. It’s a message that both avoids claims of solving problems and empowers those whose pockets weigh heavy with letters yearning to be freed onto a canvas. It’s the human condition etched into chipping paint. And so I will wait until the next wall goes up, clean and pristine. It still holds that purity and sanctity, just waiting for the visceral, sex-hair makeover of the urban scrawl.

t h e B e rl i n Wa l l

West African Dance by S o p h i a K o r ova i c h u k p h o t o s by Jo h n D e l u re y

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“African dance mirrors the very natural and tangible aspects of life—be it imitating the graceful stalking of a sub-Saharan animal or relating to the community the dawn of new life stage.”

rowing up in a homogeneous, white community, I had no real concept of African culture—only distant images of bloodshed and bloated victims of malnutrition tempered by a classmate’s romantic stories of traversing the sandy plains of Mali. Curious and eager to dance, I enrolled in the University College class “Introduction to Dance of West Africa.” The class was co-led by Karol, our instructor, and Adam, our drum player, and his students. Karol modelled a colorfully patterned lapa tied about her waist, typically worn by African women. Her dancing was equally impressive: every movement was a perfectly coordinated ensemble of limbs, fingers, head, and torso, all moving mellifluously to the pounding rhythm of the Djemebe drum. I immediately noticed the organic quality in her dancing.

It was fluid, vibrant, deliberate, sensuous. I watched her carefully, in my head assembling a neat schematic of the movement—the degree of her turn, the leg opposite the left arm. But my dancing was all right angles and slight dips. The natural ease that was so beautiful in Karol’s dance was missing. In a group of about twenty students, only a handful could immediately follow Karol’s lead. The rest of us, some veterans of classical ballet, never quite captured the feeling of the dance. We just couldn’t bend low enough, or throw our heads far back enough to, for example, convincingly mimic a giraffe in the dance Djelidong. Watching our efforts, Karol often explained a crucial distinction between Western and African dance: Western dance, with ballet as its paradigm, is self-contained, structured, and compact. African

dance, in contrast, is remarkably loose and demands a freedom of movement many of us shied away from. Furthermore, African dance mirrors the very natural and tangible aspects of life—be it imitating the graceful stalking of a sub-Saharan animal or relating to the community the dawn of new life stages. The dance Mandjani, for example, is a coming of age dance we routinely performed as part of our calisthenic warm-up. Mandjani is a ritual for young girls on the verge of womanhood. The whole dance is a celebration of impending adult life—marriage, childbirth, and most importantly a confidence in the female form. The center of gravity is low to show the body’s physical closeness to the fertile ground and, naturally, to demonstrate the dancer’s readiness for childbirth. Frequent use of loose and rolling

Karol Richard-Ababa lead s students in “Introduction to Dance of West Afr ica.”

“ I f yo u c a n wa l k , yo u c a n d a n c e. I f yo u c a n t a l k , yo u c a n s i n g.” — Z I MB A B W E A N PROVERB

hips draws attention to the childbearing potential of the dancer’s midsection. A flirtatious sequence involves circling the face with the hands and gracefully outlining the arms and chest to point out the dancer’s beauty for the very practical objective of attracting a spouse. African dance also integrates emotions of daily life. The Lamba dance, for example, features a move in which the arms are thrust forcefully upwards. Karol has said that if done correctly, the move must produce an intensity equal to that of a woman mourning the death of her child who forcefully throws her hands outwards as if to expel the anguish in her heart. The music in West African dance directly feeds the vigor of the dancer; energy cycles from the drummer to the dancer and back to the drummer. Typically, a whole crowd of drummers gathers to play in a West African village. The drummers, carefully watching the dancers, provide the crucial beat that starts the dance, ends the dance, and initiates a new move. In turn the dancers listen to the drum cues dictating the tempo and conclude each sequence with a respectful bow to the drummers. This interchange signifies a mutual respect between art forms and between women and men within a community. Within our classroom, Karol continually emphasized the importance of listening to the music for guidance. Not heeding her suggestion, I instead dissected each element of the dance. This intellectual approach often resulted in a mechanical sequence of movements that sharply contrasted with Karol’s visceral dance. The passion Karol encourages cannot be achieved formulaically, nor can it be feigned. It draws on uninhibited emotional expression absent in Western dance, an absence I surmise reflects the staid proprieties of American culture. This class has been a broad cultural study via artistic engagement. Dancing has provided me with accessible notions of West African culture—the importance of rituals, closeness to nature, liberation of the body to express emotions. The dances of West Africa, in all their rhythmic glory, are genuine expressions of real life. They have a spiritual strength palpable to dancer, drummer, and viewer alike.

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Lessons learned

from the

Nima-Maamobi community

Ghana

photos by N a o m i B l a u s h i l d

by J i n g Je n g

“AWKWAABA!” Even though I heard this word everywhere in Ghana, I never grew tired of it. It is a Twi greeting that means “Welcome!” This expression sums up my summer experience in Ghana. Through a generous stipend from Washington University Law School, I was able to spend the past summer working at the Legal Resources Centre, a human rights non-governmental organization in Accra. My fellow interns and I learned a lot about Ghana—a small country in West Africa full of beautiful colors and friendly faces. We were able to engage in many cultural exchanges with the locals and learn about their community efforts to help their neighbors. I spent a portion of my summer in Ghana volunteering at a school in NimaMaamobi—an urban slum community in the greater Accra region. Nima-Maamobi is called a “human rights city” because joint efforts of several community-based organizations (CBOs) improve living conditions and increase awareness of human rights in this area. With supportive grassroot efforts, residents become empowered enough to perceive themselves as legitimate claimants deserving of basic human rights.

“ C h a r i t y b e g i n s at h o m e a n d j u s t i c e b e g i n s n e x t d o o r.” — C H A R L ES DICKENS

Many members of the Nima-Maamobi community are brought together by a single, malodorous cause: a gaping gutter full of sewage and waste. The Maamobi gutter is difficult to miss. The putrid sight and the smell have become a part of this community. While many residential areas in Accra have an open sewage system, here was a mile-long canal of waste that was continuously eroding and expanding. This gutter is both a serious health hazard and an environmental concern for the tens of thousands of people living in the shanties. This cluttered gutter is the result of a number of community-based factors. Low-income, high-density communities such as Nima-Maamobi are created when an influx of migrants move from rural to urban areas in pursuit of better job opportunities. The rapid expansion of the population leads to problems such as inadequate sanitation, waste accumulation, and congestion. Many households in these slums lack facilities such as running water and even outhouses. Often, it is a matter of convenience to dump refuse into the already littered gutter. One contributing factor to the expansion of the gutter is that members of the community may lack awareness of the health risks involved with poor sanitation, such as malaria and diarrhea. This gutter might also be the result of a diffusion of responsibility. Some have adopted the attitude that it is the duty of the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) to properly dispose of waste in the community. On the other hand, AMA finds the gutter problem to be overwhelming and unmanageable in light of its limited financial resources. The fact of the matter is that both the community and the government would benefit from working together to address the gutter issue. Concerned women in the community joined together to form The Mother’s Club, a Red-Cross sponsored program. At 8 a.m. every morning, these women grab their gloves, rakes, and rubber boots to clean the gutter. They spend two hours a day ankle-deep in fetid, black water raking excrement to cart to the nearest dump. This effort, which has continued for years, is a labor of love grown out of a serious concern for their families and community. The Mother’s Club also goes door-to-door educating the community about envrionmental protection and the sanitation and health concerns related to the gutter. The Mother’s Club is committed to reducing health risks

“ Members of the Nima

Maaombi community are brought together by a single malodorous cause : a

gaping gutter full of sewage and waste .”

p hoto by Tiffany Ellis

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caused by the Maamobi Gutter. Public health awareness is increasing, but there are financial constraints restricting a complete change-over of sewage systems. To eliminate the problem, the government would need to be a part of the change and be willing to commit more resources. The impact of the Motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Club would be significantly increased if the government made cementing the gutters a priority. While teaching at a school in the heart of Nima-Maamobi, I realized education is the first step to combating any apathy or lack of awareness within the community. First, it must be understood that basic sanitation is a basic right. At a grassroots level, CBOs have already taken this first step in campaigning by targeting beliefs and behaviors in the community. On a holistic level, the government will need to help build the basic infrastructure to confront this urban sanitation issue. This could be as simple as providing proper mechanisms for garbage collection. The gutter problem is serious and could potentially cause an epidemic if left unaddressed. The canal of waste threatens to consume the community. Often, I witnessed children crossing over the gutter on unsteady, wooden bridges. I heard of one story of a girl who was swept away during a rainstorm when the gutter flooded. These problems could be eliminated with government cooperation and financial support. The task of fixing the gutter problem cannot be left to local women or school-aged children. Sections of the gutter outside of Nima-Maamobi have already been cemented by the government, and it is hard to understand why this community has been neglected. The people of Nima-Maamobi deserve the same basic gestures from the government given to other communities and should not be forgotten. It is clear that sufficient progress will require the commitment from and cooperation of all stakeholders, from policy makers to individual households. Hurdles such as destitute poverty, limited access to information, financial constraints, and lack of basic infrastructure continue to impede sanitation improvements. However, every little step can help improve waste management and health in Nima-Maamobi.

Believed to be an aphrodisiac, Casu Marzu, a sheep milk cheese found in Sardinia, Italy, is riddled with cheese fly larvae. The Pecorino cheese ferments to an advanced level until larvae digestive enzymes break down the cheese’s fats. While this makes the texture of the cheese very soft, the cheese will contain thousands of maggots by the time it is ready for consumption. When the cheese is ready, it is cut into thin strips, spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread, and served with a strong red wine. Some people clear off the larvae before eating it, while others do not. Either way, eye protection is essential as the maggots can jump as high as six inches.

Escamole, often referred to as “insect caviar,” are the larvae of ants of the genus Lionetopum. They are harvested from the agave plant in Mexico and are thought by natives to give men power with women. This delicacy must be gathered by larvae collectors wearing protective gear, to shield themselves from stings, just before the larvae turn into ants. The worms are fried golden brown and eaten on tacos with guacamole. They have a cottage cheese consistency and taste buttery, yet slightly nutty.

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Hakari, or fermented shark, is a traditional Icelandic dish. It has been prepared for centuries for the midwinter Icelandic festival “Thorrablot.” This dish is made by gutting a basking shark, placing it in a hole, covering it with gravel and stones, and then leaving it to ferment for up to three months. The shark is then cut into chunks and hung for several more months.

Fugu is a Japanese specialty made from Puffer fish. The dish costs anywhere from $20 to $200 as pufferfish liver, intestines, skin, and reproductive organs contain a deadly poison called tetrodotoxin. Tetrodoxin is 250 times more poisonous than cyanide and the amount of toxin found in one fugu fish can kill up to thirty adults. Chefs capable of serving fugu undergo five to seven years of intensive training. While only 17 restaurants in the United States can legally serve fugu, it has been consumed in Japan for many centuries. This dish was only forbidden in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji era. Currently, the only person unable to eat the delicacy in Japan is the emperor of Japan. This is due to safety issues accompanying the dish.

Balut, featured in the shows “Survivor” and “Fear Factor,” is a fertilized duck or chicken egg with a nearlydeveloped embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in its shell. This Southeast Asian delicacy is found mostly in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Believed to be both an aphrodisiac and a good source of protein, it is eaten with a pinch of salt and often sold with beer by street vendors. Usually, one first drinks the broth surrounding the embryo and then peels the shell to eat the young chick inside.

wacky food around the world by A l i n a Ku t s e n k o

“ K n ow l e d g e i s t h e f o o d o f t h e s o u l .” — P LATO

Power Shift 2009

by Rachel Sacks in collaboration with John Delurey and A d a m H a s z

What it is Power Shift is an environmental campaign sponsored by the Energy Action Coalition that holds regional and national summits for young activists. Leaders from a variety of organizations come together in order to strengthen the youth climate and clean energy movement in North America. Some specific goals of the campaign include urging federal representatives to sign a just clean energy bill and advocating for America’s participation in an international climate treaty in Copenhagen. Summits like the Missouri Power Shift 2009 function as a message to our political leaders, demonstrating the determination, vibrancy, and centralization of the movement. Summits also serve to ignite passion to inspire change within the movement: fostering the skills for action, building connections between groups involved, inspiring new ideas, and creating opportunities for the future.

What happens there Friday: Opening Ceremonies at SLU •Opening speech from Lindsey Berger of Missouri state and keynote address by Ethan Burke of Biotour on Marquette Field •Musical performances by Zo Tobi, AshEL, and a local reggae band Saturday: Climate Change Workshops and Inter-Campus Meeting •Wash. U. students attend workshops on Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and Direct Action •SLU, WashU, Mizzou, UMStl, and local high school students brainstorm environmental solutions •Bond with other campuses in MO and prepare for Sunday’s rally Sunday Morning: Climate Change March to the Arch •Missouri students and members of Energy Action Coalition show support for Senator Clare McCaskill’s potential endorsement of clean energy legislation •Speakers, including Green Action’s Adam Hasz, inspire and discuss topics like green job opportunities and greater goals of Power Shift

p h o t o by K at h e r i n e Paw l o s k i

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What the experience is like “McCaskill, McCaskill, we know you care. Vote clean energy, vote clean air!” This was one of the many chants we shouted as we marched from Marquette Field to City Hall in an effort to call for Senator McCaskill’s support on a clean energy bill. The nature of the rally signified something very meaningful and very real: the existence of a growing movement of young people protesting the current energy situation in America. Donning green Power Shift shirts, pins and green hard hats, we voiced our concerns about the environment. We wore our green-colored idealism with pride. On the way, we encountered supporters of the environment as well as apathetics. I could see myself in some of these people’s eyes: a bright-eyed hippie drunk on college and rhetoric - or maybe just a fool. One man passed us, shaking his head firmly and looking us in the eyes, as if to say, “Who do you think you are?” Yet these activist-public interactions also proved inspiring, more so even than the speeches and cheers of the activists themselves. As we walked along the highway, a motorcyclist pumped his fist in the air: “You got my vote. I’m with you.” Perhaps our voices are being heard. Thinking back, as an environmentalist, I struggle with the overly idealistic “hippie” image of many of the Power Shift events. While whipping out a guitar in the crowd, or writing catchy cheers can be creative and fun, it can also distract people from the essential message of the movement. At the rally, I sometimes found it difficult to take the

activism seriously. I stifled laughter at cheers like “Don’t give in to the dirty coal attack,” which seemed perhaps a little melodramatic. How can we effectively challenge current environmental conditions and convey our message to our senators when we market ourselves as green neo-hippies? The extreme idealism seems at odds with the real, grounded political aims of the campaign. While creativity and innovation are necessary for effective activism, we have to find a way to rally support without distracting people from the purpose, and sacrificing the respect and seriousness of our cause.

photo by D a n C o h n

“ T h a n k G o d m e n c a n n o t f ly, a n d l ay wa s t e t h e s k y a s we l l a s t h e e a r t h .” — H EN R Y DAV I D THOREAU

“

You can only protect your LIBERTIES in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. YOU can only be free if I am free .

”

- Clarence Darrow

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Washington University in St. Louis Bindu Reddy Greetings from India Hello all to all of you! The biggest change in day-to-day life since I’ve come to India is the concept of simple living, which Indicorps, the organization I’m with, pushes very hard as a means of relating to our communities. This essentially boils down to living with only basic necessities and eliminating most of the stuff we’re accustomed to back at home. I’ve gotten used to cold water bucket baths, washing my own clothes (without a washing machine, it’s much harder than it seems, and an excellent arm workout), cleaning the dorms and bathrooms, washing our own dishes, etc. The week we spent in a village taught me that washing clothes can mean trekking uphill to fetch the water, and washing dishes can mean using only a dripping faucet to conserve water and ash to scrub rather than soap. *** * * I spent a week with a family in a remote village in Rajasthan. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no running water, so every morning I got water from the pump and carried it back on my head. Electricity was out most of the day, and came on only for a few hours at night, though I hardly noticed. The food was very simple, just roti (bread) and dal (lentils) everyday. There were no bathrooms, so all bathroom activities were conducted outside. This was REALLY uncomfortable, but what can you do? Some days I went to the field with my host mother to cut grass to feed the animals. Seems simple enough, but in the blazing heat, I nearly passed out every time, so my host mother made me sit while she finished the work. It was a bit of a blow to my ego that I couldn’t even do a fraction of what she did. One thing I found particularly unique about this village was the abundance of social activities. Both women and men spent pretty much every evening singing and dancing. Some of the songs were hilarious, such as the one about Rama calling Sita (figures from ancient Hindu texts) on the phone to say “I love you.” A group from the village also regularly put on dramas about social and political issues, but I was told that the electricity is often cut off deliberately on those nights by the local government. I don’t know the full story with that, but if it is true, then it’s a pretty shocking example of the many forms corruption and oppression can take. Another day was spent working alongside a person who lives in the slums. This was probably the most eye-opening experience I’ve had since coming to India. My day started at 2:30 a.m.; I arrived at my host’s home at 3 a.m. The slum was essentially a neighborhood crammed with small, one-room homes. The narrow alleys were filled to the brim with sleeping people. With no light, the uneven, crowded pathway was all but impossible to navigate; still, this was only a taste of what the rest of the day would bring. At Lataben’s home, I waited outside since the entry into the house was blocked by cots on which her husband and children were sleeping…In the meantime, her friend Chandrika, who was several months pregnant, arrived, and we were ready to go. The two women grabbed two huge plastic bags and handed me a smaller one, and we were off to begin our day of rag-picking. We headed out to a main road. There, the three of us picked up discarded plastic and paper. In the dark, this was a daunting task. There were apparently different types of plastic bags, some of which are more valuable than others, but without the light, I had no idea what I was collecting. We walked through many roads like this until we reached a dump which contained dumpsters and heaps of reeking garbage all around. Immediately, I became quite apprehensive; I knew what was coming next, as I’d seen people doing this before. Our next task was to sift through the garbage piles. Sifting is probably the wrong word—it was more like plunging into it. All trash bags were torn open and the contents dumped. We kept the bags, and any other paper or plastic products found among the refuse were collected as well. In the dumpsters, I was to plunge my bare hands into the piles of rotting food, bathroom waste, and God knows what else to pull out the materials that were useful to us. Minutes into the process, my arms were covered in sticky trash juices which continually attracted flies throughout the rest of the day, and my clothes had turned a uniform brown. Several nearby pharmacies dumped their trash here, and

“ I t i s t h e s p i r i t a n d n o t t h e f o r m o f l aw t h at ke e p s j u s t i c e a l i ve.” — EA RL WARREN

Washington University in St. Louis Bindu Reddy Greetings from India I discovered that the piles I was raking through also contained medical waste and used needles. What I was doing was so utterly disgusting and filthy, I literally had to completely disengage my mind in order to do this work. *** * * In the nine hours I spent with Lataben that morning, we’d walked continually through the streets of Ahmedabad carrying our heavy bags of trash. I swear, we must have walked through the entire city. Still, the physical strain of it was no comparison to the psychological distress I experienced that day. Around 6 a.m., the walkers came out. These were generally middle and upper class people, out for their daily exercise. With each person that I passed, I noticed that they seemed to see through me, as if I didn’t exist. When I deliberately tried to make eye contact, they quickly averted their eyes. In a residential area, a woman was walking out of the second floor of her home to take her trash out, but upon seeing us below, she simply threw her bag down at us. I was furious, but Lataben simply picked the bag up, despite the fact that it held nothing that was of value for us. This work is degrading—there’s no way around accepting this fact. The rag-pickers themselves recognize this. But Lataben explained to me that this was the only option for her. Her children needed to be fed and their school fees paid. With her husband struggling to find work after having his arm severed in an accident, her family relied on her to support them. It’s easy to romanticize slum life—the sense of community is strong, and children are happy. I’ll admit, the chai I drank at Lataben’s house was the best I’ve ever had. But this doesn’t change the fact that these people’s lives are unimaginably difficult, and the women who work rag-picking are continually exposed to health risks. The problem is so complex that even thinking about a possible solution is exhausting. The problem is one that has resulted from generations of social, political, and economic oppression, and a solution would require peeling back layers of inequality that have been heaped on the poor of India. The experience left me feeling quite unsettled, but I know that as a result of my day spent with Lataben, I’ll never be able to look at India in the same way. *** * * My NGO is based in Rajgugunagar, a town about an hour from Pune. I’m working with an organization called Chaitanya, which has built its reputation on promoting the self-help group (SHG) movement in Maharashtra. Essentially, it offers financial security and tanglible self-empowerment as it helps village women form self-sustaining microcredit groups. The women are outspoken and proud to have taken control of their own financial literacy. To date, Chaitanya has helped in the formation of over 10,000 SHGs. My project is to add a health insurance component to this existing model. The idea is to use the structure of the existing SHGs rather than a third-party health insurance company to create coverage for the village that’s tailored to the local needs and is adaptable in the future. We’ll be negotiating directly with physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, and maybe even drug companies to build a network for enrollees to access as lowered cost. The goal is to create a plan that will be affordable and comprehensive so as to create full saturation of coverage in the local villages. Two other Indicorps fellows and I are heading up the project, so we have full control over the direction it takes, which is pretty exciting. *** * * Outside of work, I’m really enjoying the town I’m currently living in. My NGO is well known here, so the locals immediately recognize foreigners as friends of Chaitanya and are incredibly welcoming. Everyone, from the children to the shopkeepers, has been unbelievably friendly and helpful. I’ve already gotten several invitations for dinner and even a birthday party. It’s currently Navrathri, a Hindu festival, so my nights have been full of dancing. Till next time, Bindu

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Goldmine on

Hangha Road by M e re d i t h R e t t n e r Walking down the dusty street, I stumble upon a goldmine. Seriously, I start salivating through my eye sockets. After weeks of worm-infested rice and spicy, oily sauces, I find heaven in the form of a western supermarket. Not truly western, but the closest thing to American I have seen since my arrival to Sierra Leone. It sells extremely overpriced edible commodities that don’t cause food poisoning for those with sensitive stomachs. The store has everything I have been craving: a variety of cheese, ice cream, Pringles, raisins, and Ritz crackers—all foods I would never eat at home, but have been dreaming about every night since I first came to this land of starvation. After strolling up and down the market’s two aisles for nearly thirty minutes, I settle on a mini-can of apple juice and a bowl of ice cream with strawberry sauce. Ridiculous, I know, especially considering how I hate apple juice and am allergic to artificial strawberry. For some unknown reason, it just seems so appealing. This place isn’t like Ghana, where I had my previous visit to Africa. Ghana seemes like paradise in comparison. In Ghana, they sell ice cream on every street

“ I c e c re a m i s h a p p i n e s s c o n d e n s e d .” — JESSI LANE ADAMS

corner. Not only are the freezers to store ice cream nonexistent here in Sierra Leone, but they don’t even have street corners. What I really crave is a Diet Coke...how I long for a Diet Coke. I had a dream last night that I was sipping Diet Coke through a swirly straw while riding a motorcycle through the streets of Kenema. But a Diet Coke cost 30,000 leones (about 10 US dollars, for a can of Coke!). That amount of money can feed a family of four for a week here. Fortunately, the ice cream and apple juice combined are just 9,000 leones, which seem somewhat more reasonable. After paying, I put the juice in my fanny pack, and leave the market with a spoon in one hand and my ice cream in the other. But there is nowhere to eat this treat. There is nowhere to sit on Hangha Road, the commercial strip in this third-largest city in Sierra Leone. Masses of homeless people wander the road with no purpose nor place to go, a sight that mirrors a city of refugees. There is no privacy anywhere. I decide to sit on the front step of the western market and eat my ice cream there. I never have the chance to taste the strawberry flavors, as I am immediately bombarded by beggars. The dozens of older men and women want money. I know that if I give in to one person, hundreds more will approach me. As much as I want to help people, I know that it is impossible to donate to everyone. So I try to ignore them all. So here I am, an obnoxious, white, American with the fanny pack full of apple juice, comfortably sitting and enjoying an ice cream treat in a mecca of poverty. I want to hide and eat my treat, but I can’t concentrate on anything but the hisses. “White girl, give me money... White girl, I wanna make sexy with you.” More people start huddling around to ask for money. One man

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says to another, “She will not give us money. She is evil, she has no heart.” She had left her comfortable home in New York to stay in the country with the third worst quality of life. (According to the United Nations, Sierra Leone in considered slightly more comfortable than Afghanistan.) Despite traveling alone across the world, simply for the purpose of independently advocating on behalf of disabled people, I suddenly became the jerk with no heart. I couldn’t bear it. A young girl walks past, leading a blind elderly man—one of the children of blind people in Sierra Leone who usually miss out on school to become “seeingeye-dogs” for their parents. The girl is in rags and looks utterly miserable. The barefoot man she is leading holds onto her hair as they walk, tugging at it when he wants her to halt, similar to how one treats a horse. I stand up, walk over to the girl, and give her my delicious and expensive ice cream snack. I could not have enjoyed the ice cream, as there was nowhere to go where I would not have been hassled. I thought, however, that the little girl would love it. I place the ice cream in her hand. She looks up at me in disbelief of her new-found fortune from a strange white lady and smiles wide enouogh to show her missing teeth. Her eyes glisten as she quietly says “bi se,” which means “thank you” in Mende, the local language. As I walk away, I look over my shoulder to see the girl raise a spoonful of savory, frozen goodness to her lips. The mob of barefoot, malnourished men in dirty t-shirts and ripped bottoms roar. They shout things like: “I was here first, I should have gotten the treat!” The grown men do not think the little girl would enjoy the ice cream the most. They are simply angry at me for not giving the dessert to them. Before the little girl had a chance to taste the ice cream, the spoon is ripped from her hand and the ice cream falls to the dirt street, upside down.

Prospects for agricultural sustainability

Rice paddies in Southern Thailand p h o t o by Va l e r i e Fe r m a n

by Rachel Sacks

We sometimes forget the basic relationship between humans and the environment—agriculture. Our most basic interaction with the environment lies in food: how we produce it and what we eat. If the diminishing resources of the world are to support increasing numbers of people, agriculture must become more sustainable. We must put our efforts into increasing land fertility rather than diminishing it, and using energy carefully and efficiently. Hunger is not a matter of whether enough food is being produced—enough food is produced—but instead a matter of distribution. In fact, development has exacerbated the inequity of distribution. We generally view modernization of agriculture as an increasingly technological and scientifically advanced process. But the Western model, while initially increasing food production, hurts the land by decreasing soil fertility and biodiversity while increasing environmental degradation, soil erosion, pollution and energy use. New models are necessary to simultaneously address problems of population increase and sustainability. Francesca Bray in “Agriculture for Developing Nations” captures the crux of this dilemma in agricultural development: “Are there other types of agricultural

systems that might support sustainable but intensive development on a scale large enough to address the dire problems of rural poverty faced by many developing nations?” (Bray 31) The answer is yes, but it is neither easy nor simple. Such a “sustainable” system must produce employment as well as food; it must

produce subsistence and marketable surpluses, and be diverse economically and agriculturally. Potential lies in intensive polyculture systems such as wet rice farming or chinampas. Both of these agricultural systems represent traditional forms of agriculture with which people have adapted to a specific climate—in

Rice paddies in Laos p h o t o by K r i s t i n E l l i n g t o n “ I t i s b e t t e r t o d i e o n yo u r f e e t t h a n l i ve o n yo u r k n e e s.” — D O L O R ES IBARRURI

both of these cases, that of wetlands— and are more intensive, productive, and sustainable than modern methods. Chinampas are a system of raised fields often called ‘floating gardens’ that represent “a self-contained and selfsustaining system that has operated for centuries as one of the most productive and intensive ever produced by man” (Fry). Chinampas in Aztec Mexico addressed both short-term and long-term needs, helping feed densely populated

civilizations and sustain an empire. The raised fields retained heat and prevented environmental degradation. Wet rice cultivation, a system of growing rice on flooded paddy fields, also replaces scale with skill. As the most productive form of agriculture on earth, wet rice manages to both adapt to the needs of the land and to serve the needs of the people. Traditional methods creatively use extensive knowledge of the soil and the climate to increase fertility of

C hinampa in Xochimilco, Mexico, photo by R e x H ay s

Wet r ice planting in Chiang Rai, Thailand, p h o t o by F ra n k L o n g

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farmland, rather than exhaust it. Opponents argue wet rice is not modern, but this objection embodies an inaccurate but common perception that equates “modern” and “technologically advanced” with “better.” We need to adjust our perceptions along with our agricultural systems, as traditional, smallholder methods indeed have greater long-term benefits. While Western methods may suit Western societies, they may not be wellsuited for other cultures and climates. In fact, in certain regions, traditional landform techniques and systems are better for the culture as well as the environment. For example, Japan showed a drastic shortterm increase in productivity after the Western model introduced mechanization and chemical fertilizers in the twentieth century. However, over time problems like decreased soil fertility, degradation, pollution, and insect resistance to chemical fertilizers emerged. While these side effects of modern industrial agriculture are potentially harmful, traditional agricultural methods have proven successful in their native regions, in both ecological and productive terms. The level of success in efforts made throughout the world to reactivate traditional methods clearly emphasizes skill over scale. In the Valley of Mexico, chinamperos, lacking knowledge of the volume and variety of insects they encountered, were forced to resort to large quantities of chemical insecticides. In conjunction with a body of natives who had no authority, the implementation failed. People from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, however, successfully implemented chinampa agriculture under different circumstances—one that included allcommunity labor and a more suitable climate. Clearly, it is essential that local people are involved, as a knowledge of the land is fundamental to the process. Dr. Fry, a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University who teaches “Culture and Environment,” hopes that forms of smallholder agriculture systems like these will be implemented to increase sustainability in agriculture, but acknowledges it to be an “uphill battle.” To revert to less profitable and mechanistic methods requires vast foresight, personal sacrifice, intensive labor and heightened consideration of the environment. We have to really want a sustainable future.

B R E A K I N G

D O W N

healthcare reform The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the healthcare reform will cost about $615 billion over the next 10 years. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the proposal will reduce the federal deficit by $16 billion in 2019. What will happen with our tax dollars? by Debbie Lewis, with guidance f r o m B e n K e l l i s o n

It is important that we know what Congressional health reform will entail. As a senior, I was concerned with how little I knew about how it might affect me. I asked friends to educate me about the proposals, but no one could explain it. We excused ourselves with claims like “the health reform is a mess,” or as Michigan Representative John Conyers asks, “What good is it reading the bill…if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means?” Sound familiar? Kudos if you have followed health reform. If you have not, here is a manageable overview of our current situation, the basic proposals, and the debates surrounding them. Our current healthcare system is one of the most costly and wasteful in the world. The House of Representatives reports that we spend about 50 percent more per person than any other country. Premiums are increasing three times faster than wages, and yet the Census Bureau reports that 46.3 million Americans are uninsured. Expensive health insurance forces business owners to either fire workers or withdraw health benefits. A House committee, Ways and Means, predicts an additional 3.5 million Americans will be uninsured for this reason. With these expenses, we lost as much as $200 billion in 2006 due to poor health and shorter lifespan of uninsured citizens. The House admits that “only four cents of every healthcare dollar is spent on prevention.” The current system hurts tax payers and businesses, while failing to provide cost-effective coverage. The House and Senate are drafting two main health plan proposals which they will combine to form the actual bill. House committees involved are (1) Ways and Means, (2) Energy and Commerce, and (3) Education and Labor. The Senate committees are (1) Finance and (2) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The House began forming HR 3200 on Oct. 1 as a combined bill. This proposal, which passed on Nov. 7, is outlined in six sections on the next page.

“ T h e f i r s t we a l t h i s h e a l t h .” — R A L P H WA L D O EMERSON

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1. shared responsibility •

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Individual responsibility will require citizens to obtain and maintain health insurance coverage. This will be punishable with a penalty of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income above a specified level. Employer responsibility will offer the option of providing coverage to workers or contributing 8 percent of their payroll on behalf of workers. Assistance for small employers exempts smaller businesses (payroll not exceeding $250,000) from paying for employee health benefits. The plan will provide tax credits as incentives to encourage businesses to offer coverage. Government responsibility ensures that every American can afford quality health insurance.

3. affordability • • • •

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The sliding scale of affordability credits begins just above the new Medicaid limits and phases out at 400 percent of the poverty limit ($43,000 for an individual and $88,000 for a family of four). The annual out-of-pocket spending is capped to prevent bankruptcies from medical expenses. Competition increases with the health insurance exchange and new public option. Market transparency and competition will drive down insurance prices. Medicaid expansion improvements provide for families at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. This fully-federally-funded expansion will increase the reimbursement rate for primary care. Medicare improvements result from fixed physician payments, eliminated cost-sharing for preventative services, and extended solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund.

5. controlling costs All of the following proposals are anticipated to make programs more cost-effective: • Medicare reforms will more efficiently allocate resources • Health reforms and a public option will adjust the market to lower insurance prices • Medicare changes will increase payment accuracy and eliminate overpayments for Medicare Advantage plans • New authorities will regulate high-risk areas to prevent waste, fraud and abuse of funds • Administration simplification to decrease waste

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2. prevention and wellness • • • • •

Expand community health centers Prohibit cost-sharing for preventive services Community-based programs will provide prevention and wellness services Data collection efforts will work towards better identifying racial, ethnic, regional and other health disparities Offer funds to strengthen public health departments and programs

4. coverage and choice • • •

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The health insurance exchange will create a functional, transparent marketplace for consumers to compare and chose public and private insurers to increase competition. The public health insurance option will operate under identical regulations. A self-sustaining insurer creates options for areas with only one or two current insurers. Guaranteed coverage and insurance market reform will ban discriminatory practices due to consumer’s health, gender, etc. Age, family size, and geography would be the only differentiating variables. The basic standard for sufficient coverage will be determined by an advisory committee chaired by a Surgeon General. The basic standard will become the minimum benefit coverage package for employers. It will include preventative services with no co-pay, mental health, oral health and vision for children.

6. workforce investments • • • •

Increase funds for National Health Service Corp Support workforce diversity by expanding scholarships in shortage professions Increase physician training outside of the hospital and redistributes residencies to train more primary care physicians; increase training for individuals entering healthcare professions. Increase accountability for graduate medical education to ensure that they are properly trained with the necessary skills for practicing

The Finance committee is proposing an alternative health insurance cooperative—a co-op or “an organization that is governed by its members, is not for profit, and is focused on solving healthcare issues for its members,” as defined by CEO Mary Brainerd. This is different from the public option because it is not run by the government. The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee is pushing a public healthcare option as well as proposing Community Health Insurance options. Overall, the summarized House proposals, at the very least, outline the major topics of discussion for the Senate committees.

Health reform is complex, and major debates surround whether the plan should include:

(1) a public option and (2) compulsory health insurance.

In terms of a public option, there is a growing concern on one side that the public option will be ineffectively implemented and potentially detrimental. Many Republicans argue that a public plan would increase job losses, increase taxes, and neither reduce costs nor provide fair competition. Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, also claims that the public option is “a major step toward universal healthcare coverage.” Not only could a public option potentially monopolize the healthcare industry, but it could also allow the government to unconstitutionally control the healthcare market in the present. Senator Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, dismisses these claims by asserting that “two-thirds of Americans support [the public option].” These issues are currently being debated in the House and Senate. There is also a debate as to whether requiring healthcare coverage is the most effective method to decrease the number of uninsured Americans. Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, argues that “Congress should put the American people back in charge of healthcare by expanding healthcare tax credits and deductions, as well as increasing access to Health Savings Account,” instead of requiring healthcare. Incentives to purchase healthcare would empower the people and encourage them to purchase healthcare coverage without infringing the costs to police citizens who remain uninsured. President Obama argues, “We’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you any more than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance.” Obama affirms that there is only resistance to this requirement because it is not currently in practice. Within the next year we will probably see major changes in healthcare—changes that may affect our taxes, healthcare requirements, and even our future careers (depending on whether or not you are a typical WashU pre-med). We need to stay updated so that we can have a voice and relay it to our representatives. Please refer to the websites listed in the back of this edition to follow the current status. You can find contact information for your representatives and senators at www.house.gov or www.senate.gov.

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Employer Coverage

To control rising costs, Congress has suggested requiring employers to provide coverage for their employees. The House plan requires most employers to provide insurance to workers or pay a tax equal to 8 percent of payroll. Employers with an annual payroll of less than $750,00 would either pay a lower rate or be exempt. The Senate has been weighing two options. One would oblige most employers to offer coverage to employees, while the other requires employers to pay partial or complete costs of federal subsidies provided to low and middle income workers who buy insurance on their own.

Abortion Coverage

The debate has focused on whether abortion should be included in federal insurance plans. Pro-life groups have lobbied to prevent this; however, abortion rights advocates are concerned that women would be deprived of all abortion coverage, as insurers could drop the procedure from their plans. Currently, both the House and Senate plans state that federal money cannot be used to pay for an abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the pregnant woman. In the Senate version, individuals receiving federal subsidies can enroll in health plans that cover abortion, but only through premium money and co-payments from insurers.

Related Controversy Everyone agrees that America needs healthcare reform that will provide health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans and drive down rising costs. However, there is not a general consensus on how to approach such a massive reform project. Questions center around three main issues: employer coverage, abortion, and access for immigrants.

Immigrant Access

Immigrants can be subdivided into two groups: legal and illegal. Both the House and the Senate plans will not allow illegal immigrants to obtain federal subsidies to help pay for healthcare costs. The House plan allows illegal immigrants to buy coverage in the national insurance exchange that would be established within a new federal agency. In opposition, the Senate plans prohibit illegal immigrants from buying insurance on the state exchanges, even if they are able to pay the full costs without federal subsidies. Some Republicans favor excluding immigrants who have been legal permanent

residents for less than five years as well as illegal immigrants. While Democrats agree that illegal immigrants should be excluded, many want all legal permanent residents to be able to participate in the proposed health insurance exchanges and receive federal subsidies. According to Steven Wallace at the Center for Health Policy Research at UCLA, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can either keep those immigrants healthy now, or exclude them and wait until they get really sick, then pay for it down the line.â&#x20AC;? Any proposal under discussion would leave California with as many as 1.4 million uninsured legal and illegal immigrants.

by Alina Kutsenko

Universal healthcare in action:

success and setbacks for “Healthy San Francisco”

by Jordan Wagner In the midst of many heated debates over healthcare reform, the city of San Francisco boasts an alternative program to today’s current system. Healthy San Francisco, in effect since 2006, has proven to be both effective and affordable throughout the city. Proposed by the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, Healthy San Francisco has helped over 45,000 of the 60,000 uninsured residents of the city gain access to medical assistance. The developers of Healthy San Francisco are hesitant to attach the label of health insurance to the program due to the fact that people who are part of the program are only covered within the city limits. If a participant were to have a health emergency outside of San Francisco, they would not be able to enjoy the benefits of the plan. Needless to say, government officials of San Francisco are urging people who are part of Healthy San Francisco and also have private health insurance to keep their private insurance for such instances. Currently, Healthy San Francisco covers anyone in San Francisco between the ages of 18 and 64 who is not also covered by Medicare, regardless of citizenship, immigration status, employment, or health status. Despite the age restrictions, the city can still be seen to have “universal” healthcare since children are covered under a different citywide program, and adults over 64 are covered by Medicare. Through Healthy San Francisco, premiums and co-pays—small patient fees for each doctor’s appointment or prescription—vary between the different income levels. A person below the poverty line pays no premium whereas a person between the poverty line and two times above the poverty line pays $240 a year. Overall, the program does not require a family to spend more than 5 percent of its annual income on this insurance. A co-pay of $10 is required for general care, $20 for specialty care, and

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either $5 or $25 for prescription drugs depending on whether the person is on the formulary or not. Running Healthy San Francisco is possible due to a mandate passed in the city requiring all businesses with more than 20 employees to provide some form of compensation for health insurance. This can be done in a variety of ways: companies with 20 to 99 employees must pay each employee $1.23 an hour towards health insurance (a yearly total near $4,000) while businesses with 100 or more employees must pay $1.85 an hour towards health insurance per person; Healthy San Francisco is an alternative to paying the hourly health insurance rate. Instead, employers just have to pay the minimum amount to cover the employee’s Healthy San Francisco plan. Some setbacks to Healthy San Francisco include the aforementioned geographic restrictions and lack of dental and vision coverage. This past year, Healthy San Francisco cost the city about $125 million. Furthermore, instead of laying off workers, businesses have been increasing the price of their products and services by 4%, and using that additional income to offset for healthcare expenditures for their employees.. Other businesses are decreasing their employers’ hourly wage in return for health care benefits. In order to be part of the program a person must sign up, usually at a participating doctor’s office, to receive the benefits. This has deterred some people because many were initially unaware that this program even existed. Overall, Healthy San Francisco has helped over 75 percent of San Francisco’s uninsured gain access to medical assistance.The city is also trying to expand the program to eventually cover vision and dental needs. As the United States Congress vigorously debates a Universal Healthcare Program, San Francisco has been, and continues to be, a model in demonstrating a successful way to provide health care to all citizens.

JUST THE FACTS: opium by Jo hn Delurey As the title suggests, this page is dedicated to the facts. The goal is to introduce the reader to a specific pressing social justice topic in an informed, concise manner. In this issue, that topic is the opium trade and its effects on international efforts in Afghanistan. Heroin—the mysterious, intravenous concoction that sends its users into a euphoric state. Everyone is familiar with its addictive properties and its dire consequences. Very few people, however, are aware of its origins and the destructive path it takes to get to your neighborhood dealer. It starts with the innocent poppy, the very same flower that lends its seeds to your bagel. The unripe poppy seed is cut and “milked” to extract pasty yellow opium. This opium is then dealt to a refinery where it is boiled with lime to produce morphine.

Then, the morphine is moved to a laboratory where it is boiled with different chemicals and eventually released as a fine white powder, ready to wreak its addictive havoc upon the world. Before the 1990s, opium was grown throughout the world, primarily in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Since then, the opium market has moved to be almost entirely based in Afghanistan, where the amount of opium production depends largely on the region. For example, in the southern region, 40% of households depend on this illicit industry. In order to manage the opium situation, many strategies have been proposed. One of the strategies is non-discriminate crop eradication, or spraying the poppy fields with a chemical pesticide. Another proposes legalization of the drug so that the Afghan government can supply the world’s demand for legal painkillers. While the proper course of action remains highly disputed, it is certain that economic incentives will be required to convince farmers to switch to a potentially less profitable crop. The $4,622-per-hectare profit from growing opium poppy nullifies any legal or moral inhibitions. Until the Afghan people are given an economically viable alternative, the crop will continue to flourish. To further complicate the situation, farmers are not the only ones who benefit from the opium business. The southern regions, which supply most of the world’s opium, are Taliban strongholds. In exchange for protection from eradication, the Taliban extends credit to opium farmers and taxes their crops, which funds the Taliban insurgency against the U.S. in Afghanistan. The following statistics are not meant to persuade the reader to one side of the occupancy debate or the other. Rather, they are provided to give the reader the necessary facts to help form a stance on the issue. They are taken from a neutral source, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

statistics

• In the world, over 15 million people use illicit opiates annually. The value of the global opiate market is esti mated at US $65 billion. • Ever y year the equivalent of 3,500 tons of opium flow from Afghanistan to the rest of the world, via its immediate neighbor s: 40% through the Islamic Republic of Iran, 30% through Pakistan, and the rest through Central Asia. • In the 2005-2008 per iod, the cumulative revenue from opiate far ming and trade accr uing to Taliban insurgents is estimated at US $350-650 million, or an annual average of US $90-160 million. • In NATO countr ies, the number of people who die of heroin overdoses ever y year (more than 10,000) is five times higher than the total number of NATO troops that have been killed in Afghanistan in the past eight year s.

“ T h e re n eve r wa s a g o o d wa r o r a b a d p e a c e.” — B EN JA MI N FRANKLIN

A new way of calculating value:

Profit meets social action

by Zoe Madigan with photos by Claire Wolff, a s s i s t a n t d i re c t o r o f t h e U r b a n S t u d i o C a f é For generations, the philanthropy archetype of check-writing and repetitive donations lent itself to the development of bulky, bureaucratic organizations that lack business savvy. When a compassionate individual felt deeply about an injustice and wanted to precipitate social change, he or she could either form a non-profit and collect donations or choose a non-profit and send donations. This model is highly dependent upon a steady donor stream, which can result in funding inconsistencies and budgetary crises. Simply put, this system is not self-sustaining, but an alternative is emerging. In 1976, a compassionate Bangladeshi economist lent $27 dollars to 42 craftsmen in a little rural village. The craftsmen were asked to repay the loans when they could afford to, and the debts were quickly repaid. As the charitable lender pondered the exchange, he recognized potential in the little loans. He realized that little loans could be institutionalized in an effort to fight the poverty rampant throughout rural Bangladesh. Inspired by the success of his loans, Muhammad Yunus founded Grameen Bank, a “bank for the poor,” and pioneered the hybridization of business principles with social action. Each year, Grameen Bank issues 7 million small loans, now called microloans, with a combined worth of $800 million. With just $27 dollars and a good idea, Yunus ignited a global revolution in the fight against poverty. Today, we call it microfinance.

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Microfinance is the movement to provide financial services to individuals who have traditionally lacked access to banks, with the intent to relieve poverty through small business development. The default rate on microloans is low. As a result, each donation has a long lasting impact because it becomes a part of the loan and repayment cycle. Over the last decade, microfinance has flourished, and in 2006, Bangladeshi “banker to the poor” Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his successes in the field. The economic sustainability of microfinance has coincided with and likely encouraged the rise of social entrepreneurship. A social entrepreneur takes a “more-than-profit” approach that utilizes traditional business principles to construct, implement, and manage social change. Social ventures take different forms across a wide range of fields. Some, like Urban Studio Café in Old North St. Louis, open traditional businesses, like coffee shops, and use the profits to fund social programs, such as art enrichment classes for underprivileged youth. Other ventures, including The Blessing Basket Project, help citizens of lesser-developed countries by paying them high “prosperity” wages for their handicrafts, which are then imported and sold in the U.S. In a conventional business, success is quantified by cash flows and profit projections. However, within the realm of social entrepreneurship, this is not the best measure of success because the allocation of resources is not solely aimed at generating profit. Rather, it is also important to advance the social cause behind the venture. This quandary lent itself to the development of a new measurement technique termed “Social Return on Investment.” This concept was developed by the New Economics Foundation to analyze and improve the resource allocation of social ventures.

Understanding the Social Return on Investment (SRI) of a given venture is highly dependent upon understanding the objectives of the social entrepreneur. The SRI calculation is rooted in the principles of cost-benefit-analysis, and business methodology is harnessed to assess value in terms of both profit and positive impact. The New Economics Foundation outlines the six stages to analyzing the Social Return on Investment. Calculate (I) the enterprise value, (II) the social purpose value, (III) the blended value, (IV) the enterprise index of return, (V) the social purpose index of return, and (VI) the blended index of return. The output of this calculation is a dollar ratio that provides perspective on the relationship between profit in dollars and social impact and functions as a performance metric. The result is considered “blended” because the ratio is a hybrid or “blend” of the social and financial return. The SRI ratio is used in two main ways. First, the SRI of an individual social venture can be graphed to chart changes in a ventures performance and success over time. Secondly, the SRI ratio can be used to compare and rank the performance of different social ventures, which effectively contextualizes performance within the venture’s peer group. Because SRI takes into account both social return and profitability, making sound business decisions is key to increasing SRI. Many donor-driven non-profits are known for their high overhead and inefficient budgeting procedures. Social ventures, however, tend to avoid these issues because they are not only socially motivated but also profit-driven. It is important to note that profits often fund social programs instead of being distributed as dividends to the shareholders. Investors also use the SRI metric to assess the performance of a social venture relative to its peers. This process is analogous to

how a portfolio manager uses metrics like the price-to-earnings ratio or the price-to-book ratio to compare the valuations of comparable stocks within a given sector. Thus, a quantitative tool like SRI helps investment flow efficiently into the best social ventures—the ones that are both productive businesses and leaders of social change. Though the quantification of the SRI is a helpful tool, it has some limitations. A study in the United Kingdom found that the SRI is not equally accurate across all fields. What’s more, the SRI provides broad results, which requires the calculated ratio to be put into context and analyzed with care. However, the potential of this tool is great because it is an effective measure of performance that functions as both a benchmark for management and a comparison tool for investors. Having a metric to quantify social return encourages investment decisions with the highest possible impact.

OneWorld has voted to dedicate its resources to spreading awareness about the Urban Studio Café, a social venture located in Old North St. Louis, which won the Skandalaris Center’s Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition at Wash. U. last April. The Urban Studio, which opened this fall, also fucntions as an art studio and community center. The profits generated by café fund youth enrichment programs and classes.

The Urban Studio Café Monday-Saturday from 8:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. | 2815 N. 14th Street, St. Louis, MO “ A j o u r n ey o f 1 0 0 0 m i l e s b e g i n s w i t h a s i n g l e s t e p.” — CONFUCIUS

Fifteen minutes of fame by P h i l i p Vo r o n w i t h p h o t o s by Ja m e s Wa n g , Jo s h C a l d e r, a n d E r d a l K a h ra m a n

I’ve noticed an unfortunate trend in the way we treat social justice issues. It seems as if we care deeply about some particular issue for a short period of time, but then we become tired of it and move onto something else. Sacha Baron Cohen satirizes this aspect of our culture in his new movie “Bruno,” as outlandish gay man from Austria who travels to America to become a famous celebrity. He decides to imitate other celebrities and become a spokesperson for an important world issue, noting that, “Bono has AIDS…Clooney has Darfur…” Reflecting our culture’s reduction of social issues into fads, two public relations agents tell him that Darfur is “a hot charity right now.” Figuring he should pursue the next most important issue, Bruno asks, “What’s Darfive?” As Bruno has figured out, the media and spokesperson celebrities strongly influence what social issues people care about. An article in “New Scientist” claims that one third of all Americans may have “celebrity worship syndrome”—we are obsessed with our celebrities. Darfur, for example, was an important, cool social justice issue for a while with celebrity promoters, wide media coverage, huge rallies, and numerous T-shirts and wristbands to flaunt. When the United Nations declared it the “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis” in 2004, everyone jumped on to the bandwagon, including superstars such as Angelina Jolie

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and George Clooney. Yet Darfur’s importance to the public diminished over time as it became a past fad. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore that the civil war has reignited, people are still unable to return to their homes, and no clear peace treaty exists. It had its 15 minutes of fame and we have already moved on to the next Darfive. What people care about depends primarily on how much they think other people care about those same issues. Keeping up with our group’s predominant social issues has been very important to maintaining our reputations, an impulse that is grounded in our biology. An individual with a good reputation would be able to participate in the group’s sharing of food, water, and shelter, and would have a better chance of survival and passing on his or her genes. In the Native American Kwakiutl tribe, for example, the chief who can give away the most of his belongings is the most respected. Even today, we are altruistic as a way of gaining status—think Bill Gates’ and Ted Turner’s donations. A new study called “Going Green to be Seen” found improving status as a motive for people shopping in public to buy products labeled as green over equally priced non-green products. (In private they purchased regular goods.) People also were more likely to buy more expensive green products to very visibly demonstrate how much they can afford and sacrifice for a cause. This explains the popularity of distinctlooking hybrid cars like the Prius, despite the fact that riding the bus, which is less stylish, would help the environment more. In the end, evolution has biologically wired us to pay close attention to the most popular, current social issues for survival. We then attempt to show others in the grandest way possible how much we care about those issues. This is not necessarily a problem, but we should be aware of the evolutionary and psychological basis for our behavior—and continue to care about important issues beyond those 15 minutes.

THE EASY WAY

by a n o ny m o u s Wa s h . U. s t u d e n t , w i t h p h o t o by Z o e M a d i ga n

As I observe lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transience, Nothing seems as evanescent as the bubble. It depends upon disturbance to take form. It does not know independent existence. Rather, it relies upon others for life To embody pearlescent, bright light And resemble the early autumn frost. It shines fresh as it glistens, Like the thick dew drop Ready for the journey From the swollen stomata of the whispering willow To the patient soil of the damp forest floor. Nature can calculate mathematic perfection. In this truth, it draws its splendor. Its death nearly instant. Its life is just a short stay. Fleeting impermanence knows no complication.

This life seems to end the easy way.

what now? RESOURCES FOR THE INSPIRED

To learn more about the human rights violations mentioned in this issue, visit www.amnestyusa.org or get involved with the Wash. U. chapter of Amnesty International by contacting washuamnesty@gmail.com.

power shift healthcare reform

Demand bold action for energy and climate change from your representatives. You can start by visiting www.powershift09.org.

• www.nytimes.com: Times Topics—”Healthcare Reform” • www.senate.gov: search “Health Reform” on committee sites (1) Finance and (2) Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions • www.house.gov: search H.R 3200 or “Health reform on committee sites (1) Ways and Means, (2) Energy and Commerce, and (3) Education and Labor • www.cbo.gov: “Analysis of the Effects of Proposals to Limit Costs Related to Medical Malpractice”

Visit http://www.neweconomics.org/socialreturn-investment to analyze your own social entrepreneurship ideas.

social return on investment

St. Louis’s newest (and tastiest) social venture OneWorld is fundraising for Urban Studio Café, a new non-profit that works to improve the Old North community while providing a delicious cup of joe! | Where: 2815 N 14th St | When: 8 a.m. - 2p.m., Mon-Sat.

human rights