Wow, really?

Happy 2011!  Already the year is looking up, but given the end of 2010, it wasn't that hard to feel like things were getting better.

Have had some rough spots regardless, but am trying to make the best of my job, of my volunteer situation with All of Us or None and New Way of Life's Reentry Clinic, and of taiko.  Each part of my life is slowly, but surely, getting better.

On the work front, I'm just getting a little more comfortable with the job, and coming to terms with the fact that while I'm here, with this organization, I'm not going to have much clout or responsibility or say in what goes on from a mission and vision standpoint.  It's definitely a change from everything else I've done - anything in the community, even my jobs in Honolulu gave me a freedom to take the work in any direction I pleased - but maybe a good change, or at least I'm trying to live it out that way.  I think there's a value in getting to know the kinds of folks in this org - who they are, what they do, and maybe most importantly (and most interestingly), what drives them.  What are their motivations?  Why do they do what they do, and how did they get there?  I have to say, working in a place that caters to privileged JAs and Japanese folks can bring a lot of insight about a lot of things.  I once blogged that I would be dedicated to my own community...let's just say it didn't play out exactly how I'd planned, but I think I will come away with it having some valuable experience, and, yes, valuable contacts.

I've even picked up the book Imperial Cruise by James Bradley - a book I bought to give me more insight into the US-Japan relationship and foreign policy today.  I thought maybe the history lesson would help me with the work and perhaps become more personally invested.  I don't think it's quite doing that, but at the very least, it's a very enlightening read.  Speaking of motivations and power, I get to read about Theodore Roosevelt and his Aryan-oriented reasons for carrying out conquests of first our lands, and after today's lunch reading session, the brutal capture of the Philippines.  Seriously, our country is super fucked up, and the worst part is that a lot of the things they were doing back then aren't much different from what's happening now.  We think times have gotten better - we would love to believe that, as some unfounded indication that we are an evolving, progressing people - but when I read the section on how waterboarding, other forms of torture, plus rape and massacres of the Filipino people were justified in much the same way some of these activities are today, it made me feel so frustrated with so many things.  As the author quoted one "Medal of Honor recipient,"

I am afraid some people at home will lie awake nights worrying about the ethics of this war, thinking that our enemy is fighting for the right of self-government....They are, as a rule, an illiterate, semi-savage people, who are waging war, not against tyranny, but against Anglo-Saxon order and decency.

Tell me that doesn't sound like what some people actually believe today.  Although it may be put in slightly different terms today, it really just sounds like something Fox News will broadcast to their believing viewers.

So sure, one plus about this job is that I found a great book.  Other than that, I've accepted that the work here will be forever frustrating, in a lot of ways, and I just have to learn to suck it up and continue to be proactive about it all.

On the volunteer front, I love doing the monthly Reentry clinics (as a volunteer I help clients expunge their criminal records so that they can finally get jobs and stay out of the prison system for good) and All of Us or None meetings.  The All of Us or None group is currently running its Ban the Box Campaign, which would get the targeted city or county to take off the "Have you been convicted of a felony?" check box and question off of job applications.  There is so much stigma attached to folks with criminal backgrounds that they are often cast out of society and prevented from getting jobs, which, yes, means that they end up doing something to get them back into prison.  To be real, it's the system's fault that recidivism is so high.  The checkbox is an unnecessary barrier to getting folks fully integrated back into society, and with the success of the campaign, will come the success of so many people who are currently unable to start over with their lives because of the way the entire system is set up to begin with.  Without a job and means to start over, what are they supposed to do?

Much to my dismay, I found out that the CDC (California Department of Corrections) has now become CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation), which is total bullshit, because you know that the state is not going to do all it can to rehabilitate its prisoners.  Nothing has actually changed, except maybe another reason to get cities and counties to deny the Ban the Box Campaign because "things are already being done."  And anyway, if that were true - if the state was really going to truly work for prisoner reentry back into society, a bunch of corrections officers would be out of jobs.  As one of THE most powerful labor unions in California, you know that ain't gonna happen.

There is so much to the prisons issue, and the hardest part is that even Progressives are split on anything "criminal" related.  Even in cities like Compton and Inglewood, which are our starting target cities, we've learned how difficult it is going to be to pass something like this.  Logically, of COURSE it makes so much sense to

1) hold employers accountable for their hiring practices (often background checks are not correct or incomplete, and so work against the applicant, but unknowing applicants do not challenge the flawed process because of lack of resources; employers also will toss an application if that box is checked, regardless of whether the conviction is related to or affects job performance)  and

2) reduce recidivism by helping folks stay out of the system and become healthy contributors of society.

But of course, because of the stigma attached to this community, people are quick to turn them away and dismiss them as "vicious" or "criminal."  It's probably one of the most messed up things I've heard of.

Even in Inglewood, an incumbent mayor was voted out this past election because of campaign smearing of a staffer who was helping him get re-elected - and yes, she had a past criminal record.  But she had put that behind her and had become a contributing citizen.  I mean, really??  To make it better, the camp that did the smearing was supported by someone who had been convicted of shady political dealings himself.  Go figure.

But the biggest question for me, personally, is WHY am I in this work?  There aren't many Asian Americans involved (the head attorney is Korean American and super awesome), but other than that, I don't really have experiential or personal connections to the work.  I mean, sure, I worked with incarcerated youth in Honolulu and that's how my interest started, but I think it's hard to be taken seriously in the space when I'm simply a volunteer in a circle of organizers, formerly incarcerated community people, attorneys, and community members from Inglewood and Compton that are directly affected by the work.  I don't have any of that.  Yesterday the meeting was incredibly intense and I learned a lot, but I began to wonder if I'm in the wrong space.

Feeling like you're a triangle block trying to fit into a square hole is unsettling.  Especially when that feeling applies at work AND volunteering.

To try and be positive though, I do get that progressive outlet I need.  Perhaps with some more time I'll understand why I'm REALLY there.

I guess there was just a lot on my chest about all of that.

Taiko has been getting better, though I know it'll never be KETE and there isn't much more to say about that.  It's just a matter of getting to know everyone on a more personal level, I guess.

So that's life!  And I should really do this more often...because now I feel like I can breathe a little easier.  Articulating what's been bottled up for a while is incredibly cathartic.  Thus the emergence of blogging to begin with, I suppose.

I leave with this quote from Mark Twain (in the James Bradley book):

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.


Edit:
Plus, on the prison piece, when shit like this goes down regularly, how can we all be okay with it!?

Coming up (possible future topics):

- White people and the Malcolm X Process
- How community and non-community people communicate (or don't)

**From now on, to provide things with a little more direction, I'm going to list out topics that have been swirling around in my head and that I've been meaning to post about, but haven't quite thought out enough yet.