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Feb 18th

I am taking this course as a requirement for transferring as I am pursuing my BA in Psychology.

I am very excited because I had you, Harry, as my Sociology 1b teacher way back in 2007! You started class with the best opening line ever. "Columbus was a Bast****". I even made the theme of your course in canvas purple, because that was the color of the button down shirt you wore on day 1. I remember that you made a funny comment about being hard to miss, since you were the only male instructor there with a ponytail.

In fact out of all the instructors aside from my art teacher, YOU were my favorite. I know you most likely won't remember me, as it's been 14 years, however I'm very excited to be here and I look forward to your lectures!

Like you did during your introductory lecture I'd like to give a little background about myself, so you know where I'm coming from.

I last attended Delta college back in 2005 to 2007. I began my first semester at Delta during my senior year of high school. Since then I have lived well off, living "glamorously" in Vegas and Portland off of an inheritance.  At the opposite end of the 14 years since, I  have also been a broke, homeless, drug addict living on a levee in a tent under the Pershing bridge.

In 2016 I got pregnant and finally decided that I was tired of my experimentation with homelessness and drug addiction. I got my act together and had a healthy pregnancy, was clean and sober and I  was able to get off the island thanks to a very generous woman who is now our roommate and dear friend.

Although my pregnancy was healthy, and I had been able to quit drugs immediately after becoming pregnant,  my daughter had an issue during birth and I had to have an emergency c-section. The doctors had not acted quickly enough, and the delay resulted in her dying for 3 minutes and although she was resuscitated, the swelling in her brain resulted in her having 7 seizures,  and she had to undergo cooling hypothermic therapy at UCSF in San Francisco.

We were in the NICU for a month, and during that time we found out that the damage to her brain was severe. The doctors told us that we should not expect her to walk, and that she may never be able to do simple tasks like feed herself.

It's been 4 years since and we've held the faith and luckily, God had different plans than what the doctors expected. Aiyana is able to walk with braces on her legs, she feeds herself, dresses herself, runs and plays like any other kiddo. She is a happy and energetic little girl.

She has since been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. I know that it's not quite autism, but her brain damage has resulted in those types of behaviors, and she falls into that spectrum.

For the last four years I've been a stay-at-home mom and I've been learning through all of the services that my daughter receives, more about psychology and how a child's brains develops.   I have learned from her ABA therapists and behavior therapists, speech therapists and developmental teachers etc. Above all I have learned to be her advocate, in helping her become the best she can be.

Part of the reason why I'm pursuing this academic path in psychology is because I want to learn the skills needed to better understand my child. I want to help contribute to her development in all of the positive, constructive ways that I can. To do that I need to have the education behind me to understand how she's developing and how her mind works.

So that's my story, not all of it, but the most important parts of the last 14 years, and I hope it gives you a better understanding of why I am here in your class.

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02/24/21
For the first chapter about Jeans, I noticed at the end there is a link to a site that calculates your ecological footprint. To be honest, I normally buy whatever is cheapest, more often than not that means from the thrift stores. This chapter did make me think more about the TRUE cost of a pair of jeans, or anything we as consumers buy.

When we buy a product in store, how often do we consider  the bigger picture of what buying that item means? I never considered where my cotton was grown, where they were sewn, or if the employees were treated fairly. Until reading this I had never taken into consideration how much waste, pollution and chemicals result from production of those products and the harm it does to the earth.

I had previously thought that since I  recycle plastic and aluminum, I don't throw batteries  or oil away, and have the yellow trash can for recycling paper products, that I was doing alright. My car even gets 46 MPG! However so many other things our society require huge amounts of production and resources to keep up with demand, food production particularly. So I did the calculator

My ecological imprint is terrible, and that's with all the efforts I've been making.  Bottom Line, Consumerism is eating the earths resources faster than she is able to replenish them. I think this is why she has Ice ages, and sudden rapid depopulation, or pandemics.  I think the earth would already be dead if it weren't for major events as such.

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How many planets does it take to sustain your lifestyle?

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What is your Ecological Footprint? How many planets does it take to support your lifestyle? Take this free quiz to find out!

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02/25/21
Since we did reading on food I used food as the topic for this post. Marx and Durkenheim had a very different view on food. Marx's viewpoint on food centered more around its production and labor, and seemed to be very negative to me, he saw it as a problem. He saw the inequality between the workers, and how the food production process has separated us from the natural world. It is one thing to buy a bag of chicken when you go to the store, while it is an entirely different story to have to kill them yourself. We are disconnected from the labor and process of producing the food that we buy ready to cook at the stores.

This is called "Commodity Fetishism", and it masks the true social relationships that are involved with the production and preparation of the products we consume. The Natural relationship we once had with our food source is gone, who kills their own chickens or cows anymore?

Durkheim viewed food in a more positive and social light compared to Marx. As opposed to viewing the food as an industry where societal problems and inequality arise, Durkheim looks at food as a sacred means of gathering individuals together. He looked at how important food is from a cultural perspective, that it helps an individual gain a sense of self. The best example given was how a turkey is symbolic of thanksgiving, the holiday where family and friends and other loved ones come together in celebration.

Both perspectives are true, and yet shockingly different areas would be focused upon should they look at basket of groceries.

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02/28/21
I read this weekend about sympathy in everyday life. Until I read the post by Clark, I had not realised that sympathy and empathy were different.  We have all used Clarks sympathy exchange in our lifetime, without even realising it.

From the reading I couldn't help but notice, that people who constantly seek sympathy, are oftentimes what we nowadays refer to as "toxic" people. They are the friends who are always negative, about others, themselves, or the world in general. Many times they have a "poor me" outlook on life, and these people are usually emotionally draining to be around. The research in the article shows that more often than not, instead of continuing to offer a sympathetic ear, people often began avoiding the sympathy seekers all together.

I personally have experienced this with other people. My own mother could never be happy for anyone. when something bad would happen everyone had to hear about how she wished her life were better, or only bad things happened to her, and poor her yada yada.

Eventually I had to distance myself from her, because there was no sympathy back ever. if something bad happened to me, she would halfheartedly empathize, but it would immediately turn the focus of the conversation to her. So I stopped sharing things with her, to avoid the negativity.

The sympathy my mother constantly sought, resulted in an uneven sympathy flow and violated the prime directive of the established sympathy rules.  Who knew that sympathy was like an unspoken currency, given and taken among humans.

I thought this one was very interesting, and will be looking more into the dynamics between sympathizer and recipient.

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Sympathy is the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. According to David Hume, this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need. David Hume explained that this is the case because "the minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations" and that "the motion of one communicates itself to the rest" so that as affectations readily pass from one to another, they beget corresponding movements.

The word sympathy is made up of the Greek words "sym", which means "together", and , which refers to feeling or emotion.

The related word empathy is often used interchangeably with sympathy, even though the terms now have different meanings.

In order to get an experience of sympathy there are specific conditions that need to occur. These include: attention to a subject, believing that a person/group is in a state of need, and the specific characteristics of a given situation. An individual must first give his or her attention to a person/group. Distractions severely limit the ability to produce strong affective responses. Without distractions, people are able to attend to and respond to a variety of emotional subjects and experiences. Attention facilitates the experience of sympathy, and without giving undivided attention to many situations sympathy cannot be experienced.

The need of an individual/group is also considered to elicit sympathy. Varying states of need (such as perceived vulnerability or pain) require unique human reactions, ranging from attention to sympathy. A person with cancer might draw a stronger feeling of sympathy than a person with a cold. The conditions which sympathy is deemed as an appropriate response are organized into individual differences and situational differences.

The ways in which people think about human deservingness, interdependence, and vulnerability motivate sympathy. A person who seems 'deserving' of aid is more likely to be helped. A belief in human interdependence fuels sympathetic behavior.

Sympathy is also believed to be based on the principle of the powerful helping the vulnerable (young, elderly, sick). This desire to help the vulnerable has been suggested to stem from the paternalistic nature of humans, in which they seek to protect and aid the children and the weak in their survival. People help others based on maternal/ paternal instincts to care for their own children or family when they are in need.

Individual moods, previous experiences, social connections, novelty, salience, and spatial proximity can also influence the experience of sympathy. Individuals experiencing positive mood states and people who have similar life experiences are more likely to produce sympathy.

Spatial proximity, or when a person or group exists close geographically (such as neighbors and citizens of a given country), they will more likely experience sympathy towards each other. Similarly, social proximity follows the same pattern. Members of certain groups (ex. racial groups) favor people who are also members of groups similar to their own. Social proximity is intimately linked with in-group and out-group status. In-group status, or a person falling within a certain social group, is also integral to the experience of sympathy. Both of these processes are based on the notion that people within the same group are interconnected and share successes and failures and therefore experience more sympathy towards each other than to out-group members, or social outsiders.

New and emotionally provoking situations also represent an explanation for empathic emotions, such as sympathy. People seem to habituate to events that are similar in content and type and strength of emotion. The first horrific event that is witnessed will elicit a greater sympathetic response compared to the subsequent experiences of the same horrific event.

The evolution of sympathy is tied directly into the development of social intelligence. Social intelligence references a broad range of behaviors, and their associated cognitive skills, such as pair bonding, the creation of social hierarchies, and alliance formation. Researchers theorize that empathic emotions, or those relating to the emotions of others, arose due to reciprocal altruism, mother-child bonding, and the need to accurately estimate the future actions of conspecifics. In other words, empathic emotions were driven by the desire to create relationships that were mutually beneficial and to better understand the emotions of others that could avert danger or stimulate positive outcomes. By working together, there were better results for everyone. Social order is improved when people are able to provide aid to others when it is a detriment to oneself for the good of the greater society. For example, giving back to the community often leads to personal benefits.

The conditions necessary to develop empathic concerns, and later sympathy, begin with the creation of a small group of socially dependent individuals. Second, the individuals in this community must have a relatively long lifespan in order to encounter several opportunities to react with sympathy. Parental care relationships, alliances during conflicts, and the creation of social hierarchies are also associated with the onset of sympathy in human interactions. Sympathetic behavior originally came about during dangerous situations, such as predator sightings, and moments when aid was needed for the sick and/or wounded. The evolution of sympathy as a social catalyst can be seen in both primate species and in human development.

Verbal communication is the clearest medium by which individuals are able to communicate feelings of sympathy. People can express sympathy by addressing the emotions being felt by themselves and others involved and by acknowledging the current environmental conditions for why sympathy would be the appropriate reaction.

Nonverbal communication presents a fascinating study of speech intonation, facial expression, bodily motions and person-to-person physical contacts. Some other forms of nonverbal communication include how far people position themselves in relation to each other, posture and appearance. These forms of expression can convey messages related to emotion as well as opinions, physical states (fatigue), and understanding. Emotional expression is especially linked to the production of emotion-specific facial expressions. These expressions are often the same from culture to culture and are often reproduced by observers, which facilitates the observers' own understanding of the emotion and/or situation. There are six universal emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust and anger.

Nonverbal communication cues are often subconscious and difficult to control. Deliberate regulation of emotion and nonverbal expression is often imperfect. Nonverbal gestures and facial expressions are also generally better understood by people observing the gestures, expressions, etc., and not by the person experiencing them first hand.

Communicating using physical touch has the unique ability of conveying affective information upon contact. However, this sensation must be paired with the understanding of the specific context of a given situation. The touch of the hand on the shoulder during a funeral might be the fastest method of conveying sympathy. Patting a person on their back, arms, or head for a few seconds can effectively convey feelings of sympathy between people. Nonverbal communication seems to provide a more genuine communication of sympathy, because it is difficult to control nonverbal behavior and expressions. The combination of verbal and nonverbal communication facilitates the acknowledgment and comprehension of sympathy.

Although sympathy is a well-known term, the implications of sympathy found in the study of human behavior are often less clear. Decision-making, an integral part of human behavior, involves the weighing of costs with potential outcomes. Research on decision-making has been divided into two mechanisms, often labeled "System 1" and "System 2." These two systems, representing the gut and the head respectively, influence decisions based on context and the individual characteristics of the people involved. Sympathy is an agent working in System 1, a system that uses affective cues to dictate decisions whereas System 2 is based in logic and reason. For example, deciding on where to live based on how the new home feels would be a System 1 decision, whereas deciding on a home based on the property value and personal savings would be a System 2 decision. Sympathy acts in a way that provides a means of understanding another person's experience or situation, good or bad, with a focus on their individual well-being. It is often easier to make decisions based on emotional information, because all humans have general understanding of emotions. It is this understanding of emotions that allows people to use sympathy to make their decisions.

Sympathy also helps to motivate philanthropic, or aid-giving, behavior (i.e. donations, community service). The choice to donate, and the subsequent decision of how much to give, can be separated into two, different emotion-driven decision making processes. Mood management, or how people act to maintain their moods, influences the initial decision to donate because of selfish concerns (to avoid regret or feel better). However, how a person feels about the deservingness of the recipient determined how much to donate. Human sympathy in donation behavior can influence the amount of aid given to people and regions that are in need. Increasing how emotional a description is, presenting individual cases instead of large groups, and using less information and numerical information can positively influence giving behavior.

In addition to its influence on decision-making, sympathy also plays a role in maintaining social order. Judging people's character helps to maintain social order, making sure that those who are in need receive the appropriate care. The notion of interdependence fuels sympathetic behavior; this action is seen as self-satisfying because helping someone who is connected to you through some way (family, social capital) will often result in a personal reward (social, monetary, etc.). Regardless of selflessness or selfishness, sympathy facilitates the cycle of give and take that is necessary for maintaining a functional society.

Sympathy can also impact the way doctors, nurses, and other members of society think about and treat people with different diseases and conditions. Sympathetic tendencies within the health field fall disproportionately based on patient characteristics and disease type. One factor that is frequently considered when determining sympathy is controllability, or the degree to which an individual could have avoided contracting the disease or medical condition. People devote less sympathy to individuals who had control during the event when they acquired HIV. Even less sympathy is granted to individuals who have control over the means by which they contracted HIV, such as individuals who engage in prostitution.

Sympathy in health-related decision making is heavily based on disease stigma. Disease stigma can lead to discrimination in the work place and in insurance coverage. High levels of stigma are also associated with social hostility. Several factors contribute to the development of negative disease stigmas, including the disease's time course, severity, and the dangers that the disease might pose to others. Sexual orientation of individual patients has also been shown to affect stigma levels in the case of HIV diagnoses. Sympathy is generally associated with low levels of disease stigmatization.

Sympathy is related to increased levels of knowledge regarding HIV and a lower likelihood of avoiding individuals with HIV.

Social and emotional stimuli, particularly those related to the well-being of another person, are being more directly studied with advent of technology that can track brain activity (such as Electroencephalograms and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Amygdala and insula activation occur when a person experiences emotions, such as fear and disgust respectively. Primary motor regions are also activated during sympathy. This could be caused by humans' reaction to emotional faces, reflecting the expressions on their own faces, which seems to help people better understand the other person's emotion. In addition, researchers have also suggested that the neural mechanisms that are activated when personally experiencing emotions are also activated when viewing another person experiencing the same emotions ( mirror neurons). Pain seems to specifically activate a region known as the cingulate cortex,[medical citation needed ] in addition to activation that is mentioned earlier. The temporal parietal junction, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral striatum are also thought to play a role in the production of emotion.[medical citation needed ]

Generally, empathic emotions (including sympathy), require the activation of top-down and bottom-up activity. Top-down activity refers to cognitive processes that originate from the frontal lobe and require conscious thought whereas bottom-up activity begins from sensation of stimuli in the environment. From the sensory level, people must sense and experience the emotional cues of another. At the same time, indicative of the dual-process theory, top-down responses must be enacted to make sense of the emotional inputs streaming in and apply motive and environmental influence analyses to better understand the situation. Top-down processes often include attention to emotion and emotion regulation.

Sympathy is a stepping stone in both social and moral development. It generally arises between 2-3 years old, although some instances of empathic emotion can be seen as early as 18 months. Basic sharing of emotions, a precursor for sympathy, can be seen in infants. For example, babies will often begin to cry when they hear another baby crying nearby. This emphasizes the infant's ability to recognize emotional cues in his or her environment, even if not able to fully comprehend the emotion. Another milestone in child rearing is the development of the ability to mimic facial expressions. Both of these processes act on sensory and perceptual pathways, yet executive functioning for empathic emotions does not begin during these early stages. Decety and Michalska (2010) believe that early affective development and later development of executive functions create a disparity between how children and young adults experience another person's pain. Young children tend to be negatively aroused more often in comparison to the older subjects.

Sympathy can lead to, and be the cause of prosocial and altruistic behaviour. Altruistic behaviour is when people who experience emotional reactions consistent with the state of another person and feel "other-oriented" (inclined to help other people in need or distressed.) People are more inclined to help those in need when they cannot easily escape the situation. If leaving is easy, an individual is likely to reduce one's own distress (of sympathy; feeling bad) by avoiding contact with the other(s) in need. Sympathy is still experienced when it is easy to escape the situation, showing that humans are "other oriented" and altruistic.

It is important to acknowledge that the use or acceptance of sympathy can be both altruistic and self-satisfying in social situations. Parenting styles (specifically level of affection) can influence the development of sympathy. Prosocial and moral development extends into adolescence and early adulthood as humans learn to better assess and interpret the emotions of others. Prosocial behaviours have been observed in children 1-2 years old. Through self-report methods it is difficult to measure emotional responses as they are not as able to report these responses as well as adult. This is representative of an increased efficiency of and ability to engage in internal moral reasoning.

Theory of mind

The development of theory of mind, or the ability to view the world from perspectives of other people, is strongly associated with the development of sympathy and other complex emotions. These emotions are complex because they involve more than just one's own emotional states; complex emotions involve the interplay of multiple people's varying and fluctuating thoughts and emotions within given contexts. The ability to experience vicarious emotion, or imagining how another person feels, is integral for empathic concern. Moral development is similarly tied to the understanding of outside perspectives and emotions. Moral reasoning has been divided into five categories beginning with a hedonistic self-orientation and ending with an internalized sense of needs of others, including empathic emotions.

Innate feature

A study conducted in Switzerland in 2006 sought to find whether or not sympathy demonstrated by children was solely for personal benefit, or if the emotion was an innate part of development. Parents, teachers, and 1,300 children (aged 6 and 7) were interviewed regarding the child's behavior. Over the course of one year, questionnaires were filled out regarding the progress and behavior of each youth. Thereafter, an interview was conducted in the spring of 2007. The study concluded that children do develop sympathy and empathy independently of parental guidance. Furthermore, the study found that girls are more sympathetic, prosocial, and morally motivated than boys. Prosocial behavior has been noted in children as young as 12 months when showing and giving toys to their parents, without promoting or being reinforced by praise. Levels of prosocial behavior increased with sympathy in children with low moral motivation, as it reflects the link between innate abilities and honing them with the guidance of parents and teachers.

Decety, J. and Ickes, W. (Eds.) (2009). The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT Press, Cambridge.

Decety, J. and Batson, C.D. (Eds.) (2007). Interpersonal Sensitivity: Entering Others' Worlds. Hove: Psychology Press.

Eisenberg, N., & Strayer, J. (1987). Empathy and its Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lamm, C.; Batson, C.D.; Decety, J. (2007). "The neural substrate of human empathy: effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 19 (1): 42-58. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.511.3950. doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.1.42. PMID 17214562. S2CID 2828843.

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Sympathy is the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. According to David Hume, this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need.

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Just Hungry (The people Behind the Signs)

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Just Hungry (The people Behind the Signs)

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02/26/21
In lecture today our teacher mentioned how if you want to know what its like to be homeless, go and be homeless for awhile. Well I did just that, all the while interviewing people and taking notes along the way.

During my time i lived on an island along a levee under the Pershing bridge in Stockton ca. i Chose to live outside of society, after all I was homeless with nowhere to go and on drugs, a position i was able to work my way out of after several years. Those two years were important research for me because it made for a fascinating sociological experiment, which looking back at the data I had gathered taught me a ton about capitalism, consumerism, and humanism.

The last chapter, reading about food made me remember how we came to view food, how it was obtained, and what it meant to "fly a sign" that said "Just Hungry".

I had long studied sustainability, and before we lost our home to a fire we had an extensive garden. Once we became homeless I learned of the term, Freegan.

"Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with "dumpster diving" for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting in abandoned buildings, and "guerrilla gardening" in unoccupied city parks.[3]"  (wikipedia)

Do you have any idea how much food is thrown away and placed into locked dumpsters? If your lucky you'll find a nice manager at dollar general like we did, who would leave edible food that was being thrown away on top of the dumpster. Once we obtained 25 boxes of unopened cereal that had been thrown out because the top of the boxes had been cut by accident by an employee upon opening the pallet.

The amount of food we would find to eat (thankfully) when we were hungry and dumpster diving was unbelievable. I wanted to share the link to the wikipage here, in case you hadn't heard of the freegans  AKA us damn dirty hippies. :)

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Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and " vegan". While vegans avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans-at least in theory-avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.

Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with " dumpster diving" for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting in abandoned buildings, and " guerrilla gardening" in unoccupied city parks.

Freegans' goal of reduced participation in capitalism and tactics of recovering wasted goods shares elements with the Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s that organized free housing and clinics and gave away rescued food. The word "freegan" itself was allegedly invented in 1994 by Keith McHenry, the co-founder of Food Not Bombs-an anarchist group that distributes free vegetarian meals as a protest against militarism and as a way of providing "solidarity not charity"-to refer to vegans who eat animal products if they find them in a dumpster. McHenry's account is consistent with other published accounts of freeganism that show the word as beginning to be used in the mid-1990s by participants in the antiglobalization and radical environmental movements.

The pamphlet "Why Freegan?"-written by former Against Me! drummer Warren Oakes in Gainesville, Florida in 1999-defines freeganism as "an anti-consumeristic ethic about eating" and goes on to describe practices including dumpster diving, plate scraping, wild foraging, gardening, theft, employee scams, and barter as alternatives to paying for food. The pamphlet also expanded the activities associated with "freeganism" with a long section on non-alimentary practices, including conserving water, pre-cycling, reusing goods, and using solar energy. More than just a set of behaviors, though, the pamphlet presents freeganism as having an overarching political goal: an "ultimate boycott" of "all the corporations, all the stores, all the pesticides, all the land and resources wasted, the capitalist system, the all-oppressive dollar, the wage slavery, the whole burrito" in favor of "liv[ing] a full satisfying life...while treading lightly on the earth". The first organized group of self-described "freegans" formed in 2003 as an offshoot of the Wetlands Preserve nightclub and associated Activism Center in New York City. According to the group freegan.info, "After years of trying to boycott products from unethical corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn't just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself." From 2005, freegan.info organized regular events including sewing and bicycle workshops, wild food foraging expeditions, and "trash tours"-public dumpster dives open to the public and to media.

Other self-described freegan groups have, at one time or another, existed in United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Austria, France, Canada, Greece, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, South Korea, Japan, and Brazil, as well as a half-dozen U.S. cities. The majority of these groups are now inactive, however, and many people and organizations engaged in freegan activities do not use the label.[citation needed ]

Studies usually find that most people that participate in practices associated with freeganism, such as dumpster diving for food, do so for economic reasons. Freegans are usually distinguished as being a subset of this population which has an ideological or political motivation for recovering waste or avoiding consumption, although some freegans also say that they do so for amusement, to acquire free goods, or out of religious conviction.

Freeganism's initial practitioners and forerunners like Food Not Bombs were explicitly anti-capitalist, arguing that capitalism is responsible for excessive consumption, the abuse of human laborers and non-human animals, and the waste of resources. Freegans' approach to anti-capitalism is broadly anarchist in orientation: rather than seeking to seize state power, freegans claim to be engaged in " prefigurative politics", using wasted resources to build a new society "in the shell of the old" based on values of "community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing". Freegan practices in theory reject the commoditization of basic necessities, the imperative of economic growth, and an economy based on money exchange rather than free gifting or sharing. Freegan organizations also often use consensus-based decision-making, popularized by the anti-globalization movement and later visible in anarchist-inspired mobilizations like Occupy Wall Street.

The word "freegan" originated as a play on the label "veganism" and research on freegan.info in New York found that most participants were vegetarian or vegan prior to becoming freegan. In many cases, though, freegans critique vegans by arguing that vegans ignore the environmental and labor impacts of the products they buy and corporate ownership of many vegan product lines.

Freegans' rejection of veganism is often tied to their discovery of food waste, estimated as up to 40% of the food supply in the United States and other Western countries. For many, statistics about the ecological impacts of food waste-up to 12% of global cropland and 23% of global freshwater goes to produce food which is never consumed-serve as justification for a complete rejection of the capitalist food system. Moreover, the presence of food in supermarket dumpsters shows, according to some freegans, that the vegan theory of social change is flawed, because markets do not efficiently translate consumer preferences into changes in production.

Some freegans associate themselves with " back-to-the-landers" or " anarcho-primitivism," the latter of which asserts that human beings should reject not only capitalism but civilization itself. With some exceptions, though, freeganism is a largely urban or suburban phenomenon. Some research suggests that freegans overcome this apparent contradiction by attempting to re-naturalize the city, treating urban waste as a "natural" resource and approach dumpster diving as a practice analogous to hunting or gathering.

Freegans are best known for recovering discarded food from commercial establishments, a practice known as "dumpster diving" or "urban foraging" in North America, " skipping", " bin raiding", or "skipitarianism" in the UK, "skip dipping" in Australia, "containern" in Germany, or "doing the duck" in New Zealand. Freegan diets are thus made possible by the range of practices that produce commercial food waste that is nonetheless still edible, such as conservative sell-by dates, the deliberate overstocking of certain perishable products (like baked goods), or aesthetic criteria for fruits and vegetables. However, dumpster diving is not limited to rummaging for food; freegans report recovering clothing, books, appliances, bicycles, and furniture from commercial dumpsters as well.

Although some freegans are reluctant to share their sites and strategies for "urban foraging", others-like those in freegan.info-have organized public events to raise awareness of food waste and recruit other practitioners. These events attracted significant media coverage, particularly between 2005 and 2009, from outlets such as The New York Times, Oprah, and MSNBC.

Instead of buying conventionally grown foods, wild foragers find and harvest food and medicinal plants growing in their own communities. Some freegans participate in " guerrilla" or " community" gardens, with the stated aim of rebuilding community and reclaiming the capacity to grow one's own food. In order to fertilize those guerrilla gardens, food obtained from dumpster diving is sometimes also reused, and some use vermiculture instead of ordinary composting techniques in order to keep the required infrastructure small and adapted to urban areas. Some rural freegans are also "homesteaders" who grow their own food and employ alternative energy sources to provide energy for their homesteads, occasionally living " off the grid" entirely.

"Sharing" is also presented as a common freegan practice, associated with the anarchist idea of a " gift economy". For example, Food Not Bombs recovers food that would otherwise go to waste to serve warm meals on the street to anyone who wants them. Really, Really Free Markets are free social events in which freegans can share goods instead of discarding them, share skills, give presents and eat food. A free store is a temporary market where people exchange goods and services outside of a money-based economy. In New York City, freegan.info often distributes recovered food items for free in an ad-hoc manner after trash tours.

Freegans also advocate sharing travel resources. Carpools and hitchhiking reduce, but do not eliminate, use of cars. Community bicycle programs and collectives facilitate community sharing of bicycles, restore found and broken bikes, and teach people how to do their own bicycle repairs. In the process, they aim to build a culture of skill and resource sharing, reuse wasted bikes and bike parts, and create greater access to green transport.

Just as freegans argue food waste should be recovered and redistributed, many argue that unoccupied buildings are a form of "waste" to be reclaimed. Squatting was widespread in Western Europe as well as parts of the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, and activists used squatted buildings not only for housing but also to create community centers, pirate radio stations, or free schools. A widespread crackdown by municipalities closed many squats and legalized the remainder in the 1990s-the moment when freeganism was emerging-and so it is thus difficult to know how many people are involved in this activity. While research with freegans consistently shows that they endorse squatting, in practice, freegan living situations vary, ranging from trading work for rent to traditional home ownership.

Working less is another component of freeganism. Freegans oppose the notion of working for the sole purpose of accumulating material items. They claim that their need to work is reduced by only purchasing the basic necessities and acquiring the remainder for free from the garbage. According to freegans, not working frees up additional time for political action while avoiding tasks they see as sacrificing valuable time to "take orders from someone else, stress, boredom, monotony, and in many cases risks to physical and psychological well-being". As with squatting, however, the degree of concordance between freegan ideology and practices is variable. In surveys, self-described freegans vary from reporting working only irregularly, working consistently in social justice organizations, and being employed in more conventional, "capitalist" occupations.

Contact with waste is seen as a taboo and socially unacceptable in most developed countries, and freegans are often associated with stigmatized and racialized groups like the homeless or even compared to scavenging "pest" animals like raccoons. Some public health officials, like those in New York City, have explicitly discouraged dumpster diving for sanitation reasons and media coverage occasionally focuses on the "ick" factor of dumpster diving while (explicitly or implicitly) ignoring its political content. This discourse has been deployed more broadly to discredit anarchist movements by claiming they are unhygienic and thus dangerous. While some freegans argue that dumpster dived food is safe-noting it is usually thrown out because it cannot be profitably sold, not because it is no longer edible-others embrace the "dirtiness" of recovered food as a symbolic rejection of capitalist norms. The group freegan.info has made the disgust attached to wasted food part of its messaging, arguing that social disapprobation should instead fall on those who throw out food, rather than those who recover it.

Freeganism is also critiqued both by other radical movements and by mainstream commentators for the fact that its signature practice-dumpster diving-depends on the capitalist food system that freegans claim to be rejecting. A typical response is that freegan practices are not limited to dumpster diving, but include also actions like guerilla gardening, wild food foraging, or sewing or bike repair "skill shares" that are more fully autonomous from the conventional economy.

Although activities like dumpster diving or gleaning are traditionally seen as subsistence strategies for the poor, most research on freegans finds that individuals come from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds and have high levels of education (even if their present lifestyles make them low-income). Freeganism has also been described as racially exclusive, because freeganism's voluntary association of waste would seem to confirm a "globally ubiquitous racial construction" that people of color are dirty and polluted. As one freegan of color wrote, "I am extremely embarrassed for people to see me diving, because I can tell that I'm not just me, I'm also a representation of black people in general...I got harassed by security several times while diving on my own campus, until my white friends pop their heads out of the dumpsters." In contrast, the portrait of the gender balance of freeganism is more mixed, with some accounts saying groups are majority men and others majority women.

The legality of freegan practices of reclaiming wasted food, space, or buildings varies depending on local laws around property, trespassing, and waste removal. In some places, like New York City, freegans dumpster dive publicly; in other locations, urban foraging is a secretive activity. In recent years, there have been arrests of people dumpster diving for political reasons in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France, although in most locations charges have eventually been dropped. These actions could be seen as part of a broader criminalization of acts of survival-like sleeping in public places, sharing food without a permit, or recovering aluminum cans to re-sell-that has affected freegans as well as affiliated groups like Food Not Bombs and the homeless. Freegans report that stores have responded to waste recovery as well, including deliberately destroying products prior to disposing of them, locking dumpsters, or pouring bleach on food to make it inedible. In France, a new national law bans the practice of destroying food in this way.

Media coverage of freeganism in the United States peaked around the financial crisis in 2007-2009 and dropped off subsequently. More recently, freeganism has been discussed in the context of increasing public interest in food waste. Tristram Stuart, a prominent food waste campaigner and founder of the organization "Feedback" claims that media attention to freeganism was crucial in attracting attention to the problem. Other analyses of the origins of contemporary public policy initiatives around food waste have also concluded that freeganism contributed to new initiatives, like the French law on food waste or the U.S. food waste reduction challenge.

1. ^ Belasco, Warren James (2006). Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took On the Food Industry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-7329-6.

2. ^ Edwards, Ferne; Mercer, David (2007-11-01). "Gleaning from Gluttony: an Australian youth subculture confronts the ethics of waste". Australian Geographer. 38 (3): 279-296. doi:10.1080/00049180701639174. ISSN 0004-9182. S2CID 143263389.

3. ^ Barnard, Alex V. (2011-12-01). "'Waving the banana' at capitalism: Political theater and social movement strategy among New York's 'freegan' dumpster divers". Ethnography. 12 (4): 419-444. doi:10.1177/1466138110392453. ISSN 1466-1381. S2CID 143456296.

4. ^ Carolsfeld, Anna; Erikson, Susan (2013). "Beyond Desperation: Motivations for Dumpster™ Diving for Food in Vancouver". Food and Foodways. 21 (4): 245-266. doi:10.1080/07409710.2013.849997. S2CID 154045165.

5. ^ Brosius, Nina; Fernandez, Karen V.; Cherrier, Hélène (2013). "Reacquiring Consumer Waste: Treasure in Our Trash?". Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 32 (2): 286-301. doi:10.1509/jppm.11.146. hdl:10072/52572. S2CID 55832675.

6. ^ Fernandez, Karen V.; Brittain, Amanda J.; Bennett, Sandra D. (2011-11-15). "'Doing the duck': negotiating the resistant‐consumer identity". European Journal of Marketing. 45 (11/12): 1779-1788. doi:10.1108/03090561111167414. ISSN 0309-0566. S2CID 145673083.

7. ^ Shantz, Jeff (2005-10-24). "One Person's Garbage...Another Person's Treasure: Dumpster Diving, Freeganism, and Anarchy". VERB. 3 (1). ISSN 1930-2894. Archived from the original on 2007-12-18.

8. ^ Jaffee, Daniel; Howard, Philip H. (2009-07-26). "Corporate cooptation of organic and fair trade standards". Agriculture and Human Values. 27 (4): 387-399. doi:10.1007/s10460-009-9231-8. ISSN 0889-048X. S2CID 27499786.

9. Bloom, Jonathan (2011-08-30). American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Lifelong Books. ISBN 9780738215280.

10. Stuart, Tristram (2009-10-12). Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393068368.

11. ^ Kummu, M.; de Moel, H.; Porkka, M.; Siebert, S.; Varis, O.; Ward, P. J. (2012-11-01). "Lost food, wasted resources: Global food supply chain losses and their impacts on freshwater, cropland, and fertiliser use". Science of the Total Environment. 438: 477-489. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.08.092. PMID 23032564.

12. Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Foragables. ^ Wild Foraging Definition

13. ^ Corr, Anders (1999). No Trespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes, and Land Struggles Worldwide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press.

14. ^ Corman, Lauren (2011). "Getting their hands dirty: raccoons, freegans, and urban "trash"". Journal for Critical Animal Studies. 9 (3).

15. ^ Kirpalani, Reshma (2011-08-08). "'Freeganism': Bucking the Spending Trend". ABC News. 'There are too many uncertainties involved about what the food in the dumpsters have been exposed to,' said spokesman Peter Constantakes. 'We have concerns about the practice mainly because anything that goes into trash has exposure to any sort of food pathogens, including rat droppings, pesticides, or household cleaners that can be a potential health risk.'

16. ^ Bolton, Matthew; Froese, Stephen; Jeffrey, Alex (2016-01-01). ""Go get a job right after you take a bath": Occupy Wall Street as Matter Out of Place". Antipode. 48 (4): 857-876. doi:10.1111/anti.12226. ISSN 1467-8330.

17. ^ Nguyen, Hieu P.; Chen, Steven; Mukherjee, Sayantani (2014-09-01). "Reverse stigma in the Freegan community". Journal of Business Research. 67 (9): 1877-1884. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.12.001.

18. ^ Dwyer, Jim (2010-01-06). "A Clothing Clearance Where More Than Just the Prices Have Been Slashed". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

19. ^ Mourad, Marie (2015-05-05). "Food Waste Inspiration: The French Make a Bold Proposal". National Resources Defense Council. Archived from the original on 2016-03-17.

20. ^ Mourad, Marie (2016-07-10). "Recycling, recovering and preventing "food waste": competing solutions for food systems sustainability in the United States and France". Journal of Cleaner Production. 126: 461-477. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.03.084.

Stuart, Tristram (2009). Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-103634-2.

Sundeen, Mark (2012). The Man Who Quit Money. Riverhead Books. ISBN 1594485690

Barnard, Alex (2016). Freegans: Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-9813-4.

Lou, Loretta (2019). Freedom as ethical practices: on the possibility of freedom through freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong. Asian Anthropology.

Fallingfruit.org/freegan-Falling Fruit's global map of freegan resources

Trashwiki-Freegan wiki-encyclopedia of dumpster-diving spots

Freegan.info-100 pages on freegan theory & practice with events and directories primarily in NYC

Freegan.at-Austrian Freegan page (English version)

Freegan!me-A community and listing of resources for freegans around the world

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Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and " vegan". While vegans avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans-at least in theory-avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.

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For class discussion  today we discussed college and how that impacts income. Ie what is the true value of education. Since I may need this data in my statistics class I am saving it here to my Padlet for future reference. The following information is provided via the above link.

"It’s hard to quantify the full value of an education. But U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data consistently show that, in terms of dollars, education makes sense.

he chart shows, the more you learn, the more you earn. Median weekly earnings in 2017 for those with the highest levels of educational attainment—doctoral and professional degrees—were more than triple those with the lowest level, less than a high school diploma. And workers with at least a bachelor’s degree earned more than the $907 median weekly earnings for all workers"

A two –year program equals approximately 60 credits; a four-year baccalaureate equals approximately 120 credits. 15 credit hours per quarter x 3 quarters per year = 45 credits per year. A two-year program equals approximately 90 credits; a four-year baccalaureate equals approximately 180 credits.

Educational attainment Median usual weekly earnings Unemployment rate
Doctoral degree

$1,743 1.5%
Professional degree

1,836 1.5
Master's degree

1,401 2.2
Bachelor's degree

1,173 2.5
Associate degree

836 3.4
Some college, no degree

774 4.0
High school diploma, no college

712 4.6
Less than a high school diploma

520 6.5
Total

907

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Note: These data have been updated. The most recent chart is available here.
It's hard to quantify the full value of an education. But U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data consistently show that, in terms of dollars, education makes sense.

As the chart shows, the more you learn, the more you earn. Median weekly earnings in 2017 for those with the highest levels of educational attainment-doctoral and professional degrees-were more than triple those with the lowest level, less than a high school diploma. And workers with at least a bachelor's degree earned more than the $907 median weekly earnings for all workers.

Click the chart legend to see a second chart showing unemployment rates by educational attainment. As that chart shows, the higher the level of education, the lower the unemployment rate. Compare unemployment by education level in 2017 with the overall unemployment rate of 3.6 percent.

Data in the chart indicate how weekly earnings and rates of unemployment vary by educational attainment for workers ages 25 and older at a broad level. Individual experiences differ, however, depending on factors such as your field of degree and your occupation.

These data are from the BLS Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of households that collects information about demographic and labor force characteristics.

About the Author

Elka Torpey is an economist in the Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections, BLS. She can be reached at torpey.elka@bls.gov .

Suggested citation:

Elka Torpey, "Measuring the value of education," Career Outlook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2018.

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Note: These data have been updated. The most recent chart is available here. It's hard to quantify the full value of an education. But U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data consistently show that, in terms of dollars, education makes sense. As the chart shows, the more you learn, the more you earn.

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03-01

Coffee Shop Enthonapgraphy

Starbucks on Pacific Ave Near UOP

Time 9:20 Am 3/1/21

Starbucks is busy, its a sunny morning and the world is waking up. I found a place to sit outside of this Starbucks, to watch the people come and go. The neighborhood behind the miracle mile is not a cheap place to live. Already I know I really can't afford to get a coffee so I don't go in.  The houses are all big. I’ve seen a couple of younger people so far, both of them are on their phones. They went in without even looking where they were walking, their attention was so focused on their devices.

A lady in her early 40’s looking frazzled also went in, she was multi tasking. She had at least 4 kids in her SUV (a Tahoe) and was yelling at someone on the phone about gardener. Something about how you cant fix the roses, “the damage is done!" I heard her yell. My best guess? (a gardener seems to have done something to her rose bushes and her poor husband is being told to fire them). She's dressed like any upperclass soccer mom, complete with pink velour track suit and iphone. The kids in the car  are all on devices, even the baby has toy phone.  This lady  barely acknowledged the woman leaving who held the coffee shop door open for her.

Random thought… It seems like the smaller the lady, the bigger their coffee! The biggest cups I've seen are ordered by the younger, crowd this morning. Modestly dressed but trendy looking girls, that laughed as the flipped their hair left as I arrived, didn't watch them for very long.

It’s around 10am and several older retired looking ladies have come to get what i'm assuming are the frapes? Or ice coffee maybe, not sure but they look like they've got whipped cream and ice.  These two were in full blown, neon workout clothes. Their outfits and matching accessories look like maybe they used to go to a gym, and they both had these little reflective neon weights on their wrists. I am assuming they take their walking very seriously, and it seems like they're "regulars" by the way they joked with the barista at the register, laughing and chit chatting.

They sit outside near me for awhile, chatting to one another about which grand kid has done this or that. They both are showing the other pictures on their phones, most likely of said grand babies.

A guy in his early 60’s maybe comes and talks briefly to the ladies before they leave, he takes the table they had been sitting at. He sits alone, with only his dog, a black lab who waited right where he was told to while the guy went in for coffee. He drinks a small cup of coffee, which he had immediately poured into a personal cup from his bag before he started drinking it. Wonder if it's because of covid? After the ladies leave he and his dog read the paper. He looks like a retired professor, or some sort of scholar with his courdoroys and sweater vest. He's reading the wall street journal, has no devices out, and is friendly to others passing by.

Most of the people I’ve seen this morning all seem to have enough money to be able to afford coffee from this place on a regular basis. Many seem to be retired, but that could just be my time frame in coming, and others seem like busy moms out doing the morning errands. I notice the mom types most have driven expensive SUVs. You can tell we live by uop, several of the younger patrobs seem to me like college students with too much time on their hands. I know that I personally can’t afford to buy my coffee a cup at a time, and I wonder to myself what these people who are retired used to do.

A homeless guy walked by a few times, and tried hanging outside for a few mins. Several people scoffed, but a few did give him their change on their way out. Wasn't long before an employee came out and said something to him,  and so now he makes his way up the mile.

Most of the people I've seen today were white or Asian americans. Mostly females. The types of people who I would have expected to be here, like fake tanned valley girls saying "oh my god"  aren't really here, the few younger girls I did see, seemed like they were rushing to get somewhere. Around 11 a few girls who seemed like they were bank tellers on break judging by their outfits came through. There is a bank across the street.

It gets buisier as I'm getting ready to leave, wish I had more time but have a kiddo at home.

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Pager: Would You Hire an ex Convict? 3/2/21

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Pager: Would You Hire an ex Convict? 3/2/21

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This was particularly interesting, and somewhat personal as my husband is an ex con, and we have witnessed first hand that having a criminal record affects you for the rest of your life.

Not only does the research conducted in the reading show that having a record means your less likely to get hired, it also showed a disproportionate amount of the opportunity available to white convicts vs the black convicts.

My husband knows that he has very little chance of working in a corporate or small office setting. He wont even try to apply for mainstream jobs. We were lucky before the pandemic, he had found good work for my daughter's first 3 years of life as a stagehand. But its a very physical job, one where they don't really care if you've been to prison. What they do care about is if you're a hard worker and can push cases until your back aches. After the pandemic started, he found work as an apprentice doing flooring, but again we were lucky, and both of  these jobs have been obtained through friends who know how hard of a worker he is. He knows he would have little to no chance of getting a job at say Amazon, if he applied. He'd be judged on the application before they ever met him.

This is frustrating to me because I've seen first hand that more often then not the reason people turn to things like selling drugs or stealing, is because nobody gives them the opportunity to make a living the honest way. Countless friends of ours, addicts and ex con's who got sober with us fell victim to chronic unemployment, through no lack of effort on their part.  These friends went back into their old habits, because they had no other way of making money.

By refusing to give convicts a chance at legit employment, what are the alternatives? The options are few and many go back to what they know will put money in their pocket and food on the table, even if its illegal. In the link I included, you'll see that studies have shown the unemployment rate for ex convicts is 27%, that's worse than unemployment was during the great depression.

The fact that the racial inequality, and gender inequality too, is as staggering as it is is nothing new. Stereotypes run deep in our culture. Progress is being made in this area, I believe with the black lives matter movement more people are becoming aware of just how much inequality there really is.  That's the first step after all, recognizing that there is a problem.

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Formerly incarcerated people need stable jobs for the same reasons as everyone else: to support themselves and their loved ones, pursue life goals, and strengthen their communities. But how many formerly incarcerated people are able to find work? Answering this fundamental question has historically been difficult, because the necessary national data weren't available - that is, until now.

Using a nationally representative dataset, we provide the first ever estimate of unemployment among the 5 million formerly incarcerated people living in the United States. Our analysis shows that formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27% - higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.

Our estimate of the unemployment rate establishes that formerly incarcerated people want to work, but face structural barriers to securing employment, particularly within the period immediately following release. For those who are Black or Hispanic - especially women - status as "formerly incarcerated" reduces their employment chances even more. This perpetual labor market punishment creates a counterproductive system of release and poverty, hurting everyone involved: employers, the taxpayers, and certainly formerly incarcerated people looking to break the cycle.

Fortunately, as the recommendations presented in this report illustrate, there are policy solutions available that would create safer and more equitable communities by addressing unemployment among formerly incarcerated people.

Unemployment among formerly incarcerated people

Over 600,000 people make the difficult transition from prisons to the community each year and although there are many challenges involved in the transition, the roadblocks to securing a job have particularly severe consequences. Employment helps formerly incarcerated people gain economic stability after release and reduces the likelihood that they return to prison, promoting greater public safety to the benefit of everyone. But despite the overwhelming benefits of employment, people who have been to prison are largely shut out of the labor market.

We find that the unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is nearly five times higher than the unemployment rate for the general United States population, and substantially higher than even the worst years of the Great Depression. Although we have long known that labor market outcomes for people who have been to prison are poor, these results point to extensive economic exclusion that would certainly be the cause of great public concern if they were mirrored in the general population.

These inequalities persist even when controlling for age. Among working-age individuals (25-44 in this dataset), the unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people was 27.3%, compared with just 5.2% unemployment for their general public peers. That such a large percentage of prime working-age formerly incarcerated people are without jobs but wish to work suggests structural factors - like discrimination - play an important role in shaping job attainment.

Prior research suggests that employers discriminate against those with criminal records, even if they claim not to. Although employers express willingness to hire people with criminal records, evidence shows that having a record reduces employer callback rates by 50%. What employers say appears to contradict what they actually do when it comes to hiring decisions.

Our analysis also shows that formerly incarcerated people are more likely to be "active" in the labor market than the general public. Among 25-44 year old formerly incarcerated people, 93.3% are either employed or actively looking for work, compared to 83.8% among their general population peers of similar ages. Though unemployment among formerly incarcerated people is five times higher than among the general public, these results show that formerly incarcerated people want to work.

Unemployment among this population is a matter of public will, policy, and practice, not differences in aspirations.

A closer look: How employment varies by race and gender, time since release, and access to full-time work

Race and gender

In the general public, people of color tend to face higher unemployment rates than whites, while men tend to have lower unemployment rates than women. The overrepresentation of people of color and men among those who have been to prison, then, could have conceivably influenced the inequalities we observed between formerly incarcerated people and the general public.

After disaggregating by race and gender, however, we found that the unemployment rate of every formerly incarcerated group remains higher than that of any comparable group in the general public. High unemployment among formerly incarcerated people is not simply explained by the overrepresentation of people of color in the criminal justice system; it's the status of being formerly incarcerated that sets them apart.

But the story here is intersectional. Formerly incarcerated Black women in particular experience severe levels of unemployment, whereas white men experience the lowest. Overall, we see working-age "prison penalties" that increase unemployment rates anywhere from 14 percentage points (for white men) to 37 percentage points (for Black women) when compared to their general population peers. Our findings mirror prior research establishing that both race and gender shape the economic stability of criminalized people.

Time since release

We also find that unemployment is highest within the first two years of release, suggesting that pre- and post-release employment services are critical in order to reduce recidivism and help incarcerated people quickly integrate back into society. Of those most recently released from prison (that is, within two years of the survey date), over 30% were unemployed. Unemployment rates were lower for those released within 2-3 years of the survey (21%), and people who had been out of prison for at least 4 years reported the lowest rates of unemployment (just under 14%).

The transition from prison back to the community is fraught with challenges; the search for employment is one of many tasks that can derail successful reentry. In the period immediately following release, formerly incarcerated people are likely to struggle to find housing and attain addiction and mental health support. They also face disproportionately high rates of death due to drug overdose, cardiovascular disease, homicide, and suicide within this crucial period. Taken together, these results make it easy to understand how various barriers to reentry operate as an interconnected system to increase inequality.

Access to full-time work

When formerly incarcerated people do land jobs, they are often the most insecure and lowest-paying positions. According to an analysis of IRS data by the Brookings Institution, the majority of employed people recently released from prison receive an income that puts them well below the poverty line.

Our data suggests that, in combination with a criminal record, race and gender play a significant role in shaping who gets access to good jobs and livable incomes. Almost all employed formerly incarcerated white men (the group most likely to be employed) work in full-time positions, whereas Black women (the group least likely to be employed) are overrepresented in part-time and occasional jobs (see figure 3).

Though Black women in the general public tend to have higher rates of full-time work than their Hispanic or white peers, low rates of full-time work among formerly incarcerated Black women illustrates that gender and race operate together in the context of reentry.

Conclusion

One of the primary concerns for people being released from prison is finding a job. But as our analysis illustrates, formerly incarcerated people are almost five times more likely than the general public to be unemployed, and many who are employed remain relegated to the most insecure jobs. Our analysis also shows that formerly incarcerated people of color and women face the worst labor market disadvantages despite being more likely to be looking for jobs (See Table 3).

Exclusionary policies and practices - not individual-level failings of criminalized people - are responsible for these labor market inequalities. Fortunately, research shows that those with prior criminal justice system contact want to work and that hiring them can benefit both employers and the general public:

Research based on 1.3 million United States military enlistees shows that those with criminal records were promoted more quickly and to higher ranks than other enlistees, and had the same attrition rates due to poor performance as their peers without records.

A study of job performance among call center employees found that individuals with criminal records had longer tenure and were less likely to quit than those without records.

One longitudinal study out of Johns Hopkins Hospital found that after "banning the box" on initial applications and making hiring decisions based on merit and the relevance of prior convictions to particular jobs, hired applicants with criminal records exhibited a lower turnover rate than those with no records.

The evidence illustrates that broad stereotypes about people with criminal records have no real-world basis. But convincing employers that people with criminal records are good workers is not enough. Improving the wellbeing of formerly incarcerated people - and increasing equity in all communities - will require concerted policy efforts that address the underlying structural sources of inequality shaping the lives of criminalized people across the United States.

Recommendations

There are promising policy choices available to lawmakers at each level of government that would help formerly incarcerated people gain employment and increase public safety:

1. Issue a temporary basic income upon release: Providing short-term financial stability for formerly incarcerated people would operate as an investment, helping to ease reintegration and provide public safety and recidivism reduction benefits that would result in long-term cost savings.

2. Implement automatic record expungement procedures: A prison sentence should not be a perpetual punishment. Having an automatic mechanism for criminal record expungement that takes into account the offense type and length of time since sentencing would, in the near term, help formerly incarcerated people succeed and would, in the long term, promote public safety.

3. Make bond insurance29 and tax benefits30 for employers widely available: Some governmental bodies offer insurance and tax incentives for employers who hire people with criminal records, protecting against real or perceived risks of loss. Increasing the availability of such programs would provide hesitant employers with added financial security.

4. Ban blanketed employer discrimination: Criminal records are not good proxies for employability. Additionally, because of racially disproportionate incarceration rates, organizations who discriminate against people with criminal records may also be contributing to racial discrimination and are therefore subject to litigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

5. Enact occupational licensing reform: Numerous occupations require prospective workers to obtain job-related state licenses. Unfortunately, acquiring such licenses often involves passing a criminal background check. States should reform their licensing practices so as to eliminate the automatic rejection of people with felony convictions.

Appendix

Employment outcomes for formerly incarcerated people vary widely by race and gender. In the chart and table below, we explore these disparities in richer detail:

The unemployment rate in all demographic groups is different from the joblessness rate. Joblessness includes anyone who does not have a job, whether they are looking for one or not, and was, prior to our analysis, the only measurement of formerly incarcerated people's labor market status. Unemployment, which is typically used to measure the economic well-being of the general U.S. population, includes only those people who want to work but can't find a job. The table below provides both figures.

Methodology

This report calculating an unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is based on our analysis of a little-known and little-used government survey, the National Former Prisoner Survey, conducted in 2008. The survey was a product of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and is therefore primarily about sexual assault and rape behind bars, but it also contains some very useful data on employment.

Because this survey contains such sensitive and personal data, the raw data was not available publicly on the internet. Instead, it is kept in a secure data enclave in the basement of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Access to the data required the approval of an independent Institutional Review Board, the approval of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and required us to access the data under close supervision. The practicalities of having to travel across the country in order to query a computer database limited the amount of time that we could spend with the data, and other rules restricted how much data we could bring with us. For these reasons, there are two tables ( Table 1 and Table 2) where, if we had the benefit of hindsight or the resources for a return trip to the enclave, we would have collected some more nuanced data to make comparisons by race/ethnicity, gender, and age even more complete. Even so, to the best of our knowledge, the analysis in this report is the only one of its kind to date.

Why we examined unemployment

Although the employment status of formerly incarcerated people is not a new subject, this report extends upon previous research by constructing an unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people that is similar to what is typically accepted by economists: those who were not employed at the time of the survey but were available and actively looking for a job, divided by the total number of people in the labor force (Note: the Bureau of Labor Statistics considers jobless people who have looked for work in the past 4 weeks as part of the labor force. The National Former Prisoner Survey does not stipulate 4 weeks and instead asked respondents if they were currently looking for work).

Traditionally, researchers have used joblessness as a measure of post-imprisonment labor market success, a measurement that includes anyone who does not have a job, whether they are looking for one or not. Calculating the unemployment rate allows policymakers, advocates, and the general public to directly compare the labor market exclusion of formerly incarcerated people to that of the rest of the United States.

As we have done in the past, comparisons between the formerly incarcerated and general U.S. populations were disaggregated by factors such as age, race, and gender in order to account for the established relationships between those factors and labor market outcomes. In this way, we provide rough controls that help us examine comparable populations.

Data sources

We used the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Former Prisoner Survey (NFPS) as our primary data source. This survey began in January 2008 and concluded in October 2008, and was derived from the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which mandated that the Bureau of Justice Statistics investigate sexual victimization among formerly incarcerated people.

The NFPS dataset includes 17,738 adult respondents who were formerly incarcerated in state prisons and under parole supervision at the time of the survey. Individual respondents were randomly selected from a random sample of over 250 parole offices across the United States.

It is important to note that because this survey was given to people on parole, it is not a perfect tool to measure the employment experiences of all formerly incarcerated people. Some incarcerated people are released without supervision and their ability to attain employment may be different than those on parole. Previous research suggests, however, that parole officers have a minimal effect on post-release employment, far outweighed by the effect of having a criminal record. In a 2008 Urban Institute study, only 20% of formerly incarcerated men found their parole officers helpful in finding a job when surveyed two months after release; after eight months, only 13% thought their parole officers were helpful. Yet 70% of the men believed that their criminal record had negatively affected their job search. A more recent study finds that for people on parole in Florida, supervision did not have a significant effect on employment outcomes, although it had a positive effect for those under supervision as part of a split sentence. Future research should more closely examine the effect of supervision on employment.

We drew upon specific NFPS survey questions for this report:

A2. Are you of Hispanic or Latino origin?

A3. Which of these categories describes your race?

B3. In what month and year were you released from prison?

C1. Are you male, female, or transgendered?

F18. Do you currently have a job?

F18a. Is it full-time, part-time, or occasional work?

F18b. Are you looking for work?

Comparable general United States population data was gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.

Historical U.S. unemployment data for Figure 1 comes from two sources:

For 1931-32, 1934, 1936-39, 1941-44, and 1946:
Stanley Lebergott. 1957.Annual Estimates of Unemployment in the United States, 1900-1954. The Measurement and Behavior of Unemployment (National Bureau of Economic Research), 211-242. Note that this source includes people age 14 and over.

For 1933, 1935, 1940, 1945, and 1947-2017:
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. 2018. Produced using the Bureau of Labor Statistics data tool "Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject." This source includes people age 14 and over until 1945; starting in 1947 it includes people age 16 and over.

About the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. The organization is known for its visual breakdown of mass incarceration in the U.S., as well as its data-rich analyses of how states vary in their use of punishment. The Prison Policy Initiative's research is designed to reshape debates around mass incarceration by offering the "big picture" view of critical policy issues, such as probation and parole, women's incarceration, and youth confinement.

The Prison Policy Initiative also works to shed light on the economic hardships faced by justice-involved people and their families, often exacerbated by correctional policies and practice. Past reports have shown that people in prison and people held pretrial in jail start out with lower incomes even before arrest, earn very low wages working in prison, yet are charged exorbitant fees for phone calls, electronic messages, and " release cards" when they get out.

About the authors

Lucius Couloute is a Policy Analyst with the Prison Policy Initiative and a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, his dissertation examines both the structural and cultural dynamics of reentry systems. His previous work with the Prison Policy Initiative examines reentry, solitary confinement, and the elimination of in-person jail visits across the country.

Daniel Kopf is an economics reporter for Quartz and and a former data scientist who has been part of our network of volunteers since February 2015. He has previously written about money bail and has co-authored several exciting statistical reports with the Prison Policy Initiative: Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the pre-incarceration incomes of the imprisoned, Separation by Bars and Miles: Visitation in state prisons, and The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration. Dan has a Master's degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. He is @dkopf on Twitter.

Acknowledgements

This report benefitted from the expertise and input of many individuals. The authors are particularly indebted to Alma Castro for IRB assistance, Allen Beck for his insight into the NFPS, the ICPSR staff for their data retrieval support, Elydah Joyce for the illustrations, our Prison Policy Initiative colleagues, and the National Employment Law Project for their helpful comments.

This report was supported by a generous grant from the Public Welfare Foundation and by our individual donors, who give us the resources and the flexibility to quickly turn our insights into new movement resources.

Footnotes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Formerly incarcerated people need stable jobs for the same reasons as everyone else: to support themselves and their loved ones, pursue life goals, and strengthen their communities. But how many formerly incarcerated people are able to find work? Answering this fundamental question has historically been difficult, because the necessary national data weren't available - that is, until now.

# data[].attributes.headline
Research Methods and Advertising (401-424)

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Research Methods and Advertising (401-424)

# data[].attributes.body
3/2/21
This chapter involved various methods a sociologist can use to obtain the data needed to form a hypothesis on a topic. They mention the fine art of surveys, and  I find this method particularly interesting because last year, through an APP called QMEE, I was able to make 168$ taking consumer surveys online.

I am also a "shopper panelist" for stores such as target, Dollar General and s-mart. I find that the hardest part, seems to be getting shoppers to consistently offer their opinions. This usually requires incentives. Ranging from sweepstakes entries by taking the survey on the back of receipts, or paying you 0.30-1.00$ per survey taken. Some people like me, love to share their opinions and often will do them to help out our favorite employees, get coupons, or to see their opinions effect change within the store.

I have noticed that as a consumer, I am more likely to become a panelist to a store that offers these incentives, for instance I get an additional coupon on dollar general for a review. When I was using Qmee, where i'd take around 5 surveys a day, making around 60$ a month. Now if a survey was say 25 mins, which is long, but it pays 2$ I would take it, but anything under two for that kind of time wasn't feasible.

I think that surveys are a great way to gather data, because people love expressing their opinions. However I imagine there may be a good amount of people who just click buttons without reading to try to just get paid. I imagine they can be weeded out by looking at how they took to complete the surveys.

# data[].attributes.body
The More you Learn the more you Earn!
Avatar of Ashley J. Maslen
Ashley J. Maslen
2mo
The More you Learn the more you Earn! 
 
For class discussion  today we discussed college and how that impacts income. Ie what is the true value of education. Since I may need this data in my statistics class I am saving it here to my Padlet for future reference. The following information is provided via the above link. 


"It’s hard to quantify the full value of an education. But U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data consistently show that, in terms of dollars, education makes sense.


he chart shows, the more you learn, the more you earn. Median weekly earnings in 2017 for those with the highest levels of educational attainment—doctoral and professional degrees—were more than triple those with the lowest level, less than a high school diploma. And workers with at least a bachelor’s degree earned more than the $907 median weekly earnings for all workers"

A two –year program equals approximately 60 credits; a four-year baccalaureate equals approximately 120 credits. 15 credit hours per quarter x 3 quarters per year = 45 credits per year. A two-year program equals approximately 90 credits; a four-year baccalaureate equals approximately 180 credits.

Educational attainment Median usual weekly earnings Unemployment rate
Doctoral degree

$1,743 1.5%
Professional degree

1,836 1.5
Master's degree

1,401 2.2
Bachelor's degree

1,173 2.5
Associate degree

836 3.4
Some college, no degree

774 4.0
High school diploma, no college

712 4.6
Less than a high school diploma

520 6.5
Total

907



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Coffee Shop Enthnography
Avatar of Ashley J. Maslen
Ashley J. Maslen
1mo
Coffee Shop Enthnography
03-01

Coffee Shop Enthonapgraphy 

Starbucks on Pacific Ave Near UOP

Time 9:20 Am 3/1/21

Starbucks is busy, its a sunny morning and the world is waking up. I found a place to sit outside of this Starbucks, to watch the people come and go. The neighborhood behind the miracle mile is not a cheap place to live. Already I know I really can't afford to get a coffee so I don't go in.  The houses are all big. I’ve seen a couple of younger people so far, both of them are on their phones. They went in without even looking where they were walking, their attention was so focused on their devices. 

A lady in her early 40’s looking frazzled also went in, she was multi tasking. She had at least 4 kids in her SUV (a Tahoe) and was yelling at someone on the phone about gardener. Something about how you cant fix the roses, “the damage is done!" I heard her yell. My best guess? (a gardener seems to have done something to her rose bushes and her poor husband is being told to fire them). She's dressed like any upperclass soccer mom, complete with pink velour track suit and iphone. The kids in the car  are all on devices, even the baby has toy phone.  This lady  barely acknowledged the woman leaving who held the coffee shop door open for her. 

 Random thought… It seems like the smaller the lady, the bigger their coffee! The biggest cups I've seen are ordered by the younger, crowd this morning. Modestly dressed but trendy looking girls, that laughed as the flipped their hair left as I arrived, didn't watch them for very long. 

It’s around 10am and several older retired looking ladies have come to get what i'm assuming are the frapes? Or ice coffee maybe, not sure but they look like they've got whipped cream and ice.  These two were in full blown, neon workout clothes. Their outfits and matching accessories look like maybe they used to go to a gym, and they both had these little reflective neon weights on their wrists. I am assuming they take their walking very seriously, and it seems like they're "regulars" by the way they joked with the barista at the register, laughing and chit chatting.

 They sit outside near me for awhile, chatting to one another about which grand kid has done this or that. They both are showing the other pictures on their phones, most likely of said grand babies. 

A guy in his early 60’s maybe comes and talks briefly to the ladies before they leave, he takes the table they had been sitting at. He sits alone, with only his dog, a black lab who waited right where he was told to while the guy went in for coffee. He drinks a small cup of coffee, which he had immediately poured into a personal cup from his bag before he started drinking it. Wonder if it's because of covid? After the ladies leave he and his dog read the paper. He looks like a retired professor, or some sort of scholar with his courdoroys and sweater vest. He's reading the wall street journal, has no devices out, and is friendly to others passing by. 

Most of the people I’ve seen this morning all seem to have enough money to be able to afford coffee from this place on a regular basis. Many seem to be retired, but that could just be my time frame in coming, and others seem like busy moms out doing the morning errands. I notice the mom types most have driven expensive SUVs. You can tell we live by uop, several of the younger patrobs seem to me like college students with too much time on their hands. I know that I personally can’t afford to buy my coffee a cup at a time, and I wonder to myself what these people who are retired used to do. 

A homeless guy walked by a few times, and tried hanging outside for a few mins. Several people scoffed, but a few did give him their change on their way out. Wasn't long before an employee came out and said something to him,  and so now he makes his way up the mile. 

Most of the people I've seen today were white or Asian americans. Mostly females. The types of people who I would have expected to be here, like fake tanned valley girls saying "oh my god"  aren't really here, the few younger girls I did see, seemed like they were rushing to get somewhere. Around 11 a few girls who seemed like they were bank tellers on break judging by their outfits came through. There is a bank across the street.

It gets buisier as I'm getting ready to leave, wish I had more time but have a kiddo at home. 



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Pager: Would You Hire an ex Convict? 3/2/21
Avatar of Ashley J. Maslen
Ashley J. Maslen
1mo
Pager: Would You Hire an ex Convict? 3/2/21

This was particularly interesting, and somewhat personal as my husband is an ex con, and we have witnessed first hand that having a criminal record affects you for the rest of your life. 

Not only does the research conducted in the reading show that having a record means your less likely to get hired, it also showed a disproportionate amount of the opportunity available to white convicts vs the black convicts. 

My husband knows that he has very little chance of working in a corporate or small office setting. He wont even try to apply for mainstream jobs. We were lucky before the pandemic, he had found good work for my daughter's first 3 years of life as a stagehand. But its a very physical job, one where they don't really care if you've been to prison. What they do care about is if you're a hard worker and can push cases until your back aches. After the pandemic started, he found work as an apprentice doing flooring, but again we were lucky, and both of  these jobs have been obtained through friends who know how hard of a worker he is. He knows he would have little to no chance of getting a job at say Amazon, if he applied. He'd be judged on the application before they ever met him. 

This is frustrating to me because I've seen first hand that more often then not the reason people turn to things like selling drugs or stealing, is because nobody gives them the opportunity to make a living the honest way. Countless friends of ours, addicts and ex con's who got sober with us fell victim to chronic unemployment, through no lack of effort on their part.  These friends went back into their old habits, because they had no other way of making money. 

By refusing to give convicts a chance at legit employment, what are the alternatives? The options are few and many go back to what they know will put money in their pocket and food on the table, even if its illegal. In the link I included, you'll see that studies have shown the unemployment rate for ex convicts is 27%, that's worse than unemployment was during the great depression. 

The fact that the racial inequality, and gender inequality too, is as staggering as it is is nothing new. Stereotypes run deep in our culture. Progress is being made in this area, I believe with the black lives matter movement more people are becoming aware of just how much inequality there really is.  That's the first step after all, recognizing that there is a problem. 


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Research Methods and Advertising (401-424)
Avatar of Ashley J. Maslen
Ashley J. Maslen
1mo
Research Methods and Advertising (401-424)
3/2/21
This chapter involved various methods a sociologist can use to obtain the data needed to form a hypothesis on a topic. They mention the fine art of surveys, and  I find this method particularly interesting because last year, through an APP called QMEE, I was able to make 168$ taking consumer surveys online. 

I am also a "shopper panelist" for stores such as target, Dollar General and s-mart. I find that the hardest part, seems to be getting shoppers to consistently offer their opinions. This usually requires incentives. Ranging from sweepstakes entries by taking the survey on the back of receipts, or paying you 0.30-1.00$ per survey taken. Some people like me, love to share their opinions and often will do them to help out our favorite employees, get coupons, or to see their opinions effect change within the store. 

I have noticed that as a consumer, I am more likely to become a panelist to a store that offers these incentives, for instance I get an additional coupon on dollar general for a review. When I was using Qmee, where i'd take around 5 surveys a day, making around 60$ a month. Now if a survey was say 25 mins, which is long, but it pays 2$ I would take it, but anything under two for that kind of time wasn't feasible. 

I think that surveys are a great way to gather data, because people love expressing their opinions. However I imagine there may be a good amount of people who just click buttons without reading to try to just get paid. I imagine they can be weeded out by looking at how they took to complete the surveys. 
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The things we Carry 3/9/21

# data[].attributes.body
Chapter 10 branding your unique identity

In this chapter our book suggests looking through the contents of your bag to see how what you carry reflects the different identities or roles we play in everyday life. The contents of my bag are fairly simple. I carry a wallet, which has my cash, my bank cards, medical cards for me and my daughter, you can tell  I’m a mom. Rewards cards for target, auto zone and Walgreens. You can see I am a couponer and a penny pincher by the receipts with my savings listed at the bottom.

I suppose the contents of the purse would reflect that I’m somewhat handy, by the mini tape measure and utility tool I carry, and also that I’m prepared for danger by the knife I carry at all times. I carry no makeup, but I do have three different types of chapstick. There’s obviously a pandemic going on, I keep sanitizer for hands and have 2 masks in my purse at all times, one for me and one for my kiddo. There’s also a 5$ winning scratcher ticket.

The many masks I wear as reflected by my purse are simple. Mom, gambler, and lower middle class shopper. You can tell by the coupons and the purse itself that I don’t have a lot of money, the bag cost maybe 20$ at most, it’s far from designer quality or style.  The scratcher I’m holding onto until I need the 5 bucks. Pretty boring contents I’d say.

This chapter did however remind me of the book, “the things they carried” by Tim O’Brian. I highly recommend this book, it’s a collection Of stories from the Vietnam war. Much like this chapter in our book did, it explores the “Stuff” these soldiers chose to carry around during the their deployment. Each item had a story behind it, whether the items were love letters, lucky charms, bibles or medications, whenever someone died and they gathered the Soldiers belongings, The things they carried reflected the many faces that person had worn throughout his lifetime. The book is really powerful, and this chapter totally reminded me of what a great read it was. It's true you can't take the stuff with you when you die, but the stories the stuff left behind can tell tend to be very powerful.

The following summary  is from https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-things-they-carried/summary-and-analysis/the-things-they-carried

"The narrator lists things that the soldiers carry with them, both tangible and intangible, such as Lt. Cross's picture of and feelings for Martha. Other members of the unit are introduced through descriptions of the things they carry, such as Henry Dobbins who carries extra food, Ted Lavender who carries tranquilizer pills, and Kiowa who carries a hunting hatchet. O'Brien introduces readers to the novel's primary characters by describing the articles that the soldiers carry. The level of detail O'Brien offers about the characters is expanded upon and illuminated in the chapters that follow, though O'Brien distills the essence of each characters' personality through the symbolic items each carries. Henry Dobbins carries a machine gun and his girlfriend's pantyhose. Dave Jensen carries soap, dental floss, foot powder, and vitamins. Mitchell Sanders carries condoms, brass knuckles, and the unit's radio. Norman Bowker carries a diary. Kiowa carries a volume of the New Testament and moccasins. Rat Kiley carries his medical kit, brandy, comic books, and M&M's candy. The narrator offers additional detail about selected items; for example, the poncho Ted Lavender carries will later be used by his fellow soldiers to carry his dead body."

# data[].attributes.headline
3/11/21 Goffman: The Presentation of the self in everyday life 

# data[].attributes.subject
3/11/21 Goffman: The Presentation of the self in everyday life 

# data[].attributes.body
They say a first impression only takes a few moments,and that regardless of further interactions, that first impression will impact how another person views you. Being social animals, humans are constantly seeking approval from one another. We are always seeking confirmation  from other members of the group, or the "society".

Whether we are aware of it or not, we all craft different masks that we present to the world. At work we are more formal in speech, more censored say then when we are out with our friends. Many people will occasionally alter their behavior, their belief systems, likes and dislikes, so as to assimilate themselves to be in line with the desired group.

Social media, Facebook and Instagram especially are an excellent example of how humans carefully construct the identity. We do this so others have an opinion that correlates with our motives, and aligns with the impression or the identity that we want made. We adjust our pictures, we pick and choose the parts of ourselves we want the world to focus on. Highlighting the self perceived best identity, while carefully omitting anything that may damage the mask we wear for others. After all, opinions matter, especially when your trying to advance in life.

The Facebook pages and instagrams of the world are a perfect glimpse of how we build up that impression of our self that WE want others to have. To me this seems inauthentic, and misleading, yet I do it too. We want others to believe in the identity that we've created. Real humans however are not the perfectly put together, happy personalities we've crafted and put on display on our "page"
for the rest of the world to associate us with. Our meals aren't always picture worthy, our hair isnt always glamorous, and we do not really look as well put together as the images WE CHOOSE to share make us seem.

This can be misleading, because major personality defects, or negative prior personal history will not be on display. In fact we hide our failures or omit them entirely. I wonder how many people take a step back from themselves, and look at their own behaviors or reactions and wonder why they do what they do. Are people really superficial, or is introspection and self assessment commonplace? Surely social media has distorted our view of other humans.

We compare our lives to someone else, or wonder why we don't look as perfect as the influencers or celebrities on our feeds and timelines do. but the funny thing is, nobody is 100% authentic online or in person. Show me where a girl posts a photo of herself hungover, and looking like a hot mess vs. the girl she portrayed in the selfies before going out the night before.

This I think has distorted the self images of an entire generation of young people. They've grown up comparing themselves to these celebrities and influencers who are really just Avatars, who arent always the well put together beautiful people they claim to be online.

How do you identify a person's authentic being, when we've all crafted an avatar that we put forward as self?

# data[].attributes.headline
 Thompson- The Stigma of Handling The Dead 3/12/21

# data[].attributes.subject
 Thompson- The Stigma of Handling The Dead 3/12/21

# data[].attributes.body
Have you ever gone to a funeral, or organized one yourself? When a loved one dies we all at some point will have to go to a mortuary. Most of us are creeped out by the thought of the place where the dead are. I mean that is the  stuff horror films are made of right?

I was curious to ask people for my own experiment, what kind of thoughts they associate with the people who handle the final preparations of bodies? I wanted to see if I could confirm the  findings from  the chapter.

To do this I took some key words from the chapter, and asked people on my Facebook to answer a word association activity for me. My normally helpful sample population was eerily silent on this subject. Normally I ask questions for school assignments and people jump to give me data, but not this time. I only got  3  people who replied. It is obvious that death is a sensitive subject.

The study in the book suggested that the people working in positions within a funeral home are  stigmatized with negative feelings,  and morbidity by the general public. The following are the five words I asked about. The fifth one I asked so as to gauge general associations with Death, dying and the inescapable ending to every life ever lived.

1. Mortician
2. Undertaker
3. Funeral Director
4. Embalmer
5. Death

Answers

1. Bodies, Death, Helper
2. Death, Hearse, Grave
3. Planning, Funerals, Organizer
4. Chemical, Blood, Yucky
5. Sadness, Grief, Forever

It immediately became apparent by the word associations that while one viewed these people as helper or organizer, the subject is extremely bleak. Death and alot he words that surround the handling of the final acts of it,  are associated with negativity.

Just for funsies here  are my own personal word association answers.

1. Mortician- Morticia from adams family
2. Undertaker- That wrestler
3. Funeral Director - salesman
4. Embalmer- Mummies
5. Death- Home. (The place we came from)

"I had been dead for thousands of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."  Mark Twain

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Discussions/reflections

I chose for this chapter the shopping for weness reflection.

Honestly, the last time I bought something to fit in with a group was pokemon cards in the 6th grade, and a hacky sack and skateboard in highschool. All the guys were doing those things, and since I have never been one of the pretty girlie girls, with their fashion and makeup, I chose a different strategy. I got really good at pokemon, beat them all and took their cards. Then they sure did notice me. I had never played pokemon or skated before but it was my way of fitting in with the group I wanted to notice me. This strategy proved very effective.

Something I've been struggling with in this course is that a majority of our readings relate to association with groups and the desire to be one of them. I have spent most of my life doing whatever I could to not be labeled. I never had a "clique" in school. I wasn't quite a skater cause I didn't smoke pot, I wasn't a cheerleader, and even though I did 3 years of ROTC I didn't even want to be in the military. (But the field trips were awesome). As an adult I never had issues with peer pressure, because I never cared what others thought. I've always strived to be the individual, the black sheep, the one that is not assimilated. My clothes are not trendy, my music is from the 50's 60's and 70s, even my car is a basic practical one.
As a mother I've never felt I had to be like other moms, or that my kid needed to fit in with others on a playground. Although the mom  judgement is real.

I tend to hate shopping, I shun certain aspects of consumer culture (I've never liked greeting card holidays  and certainly have never attended a black friday event). Relating to the readings has been difficult. Once as an adult I did buy a Guy Fawkes masks to stand in solidarity with those of the occupy movement, and anonymous. I think that qualifies as buying something to fit into a group.

Regardless I've seen enough people in stores, and observed how they chat bout celebrities they like. I've noticed how if one girl in a group likes something others in her group will buy similar products. Influencers exist as examples of how people are swayed to buy things so they fit into a certain group.

I do however find certain types of shopping very enjoyable. I love to thrift store hunt and scour garage sales.  I used to run a profitable comic book store on Amazon and have since become obsessed with collectables of all kinds. Gems you can find at those places.

I also believe the degree I am working to obtain is a pursuit of fitting in with a group. I've always prized intellect as a most worthy trait, and have long admired those in fields like Psychology. Perhaps aside from landing a better paying job, I am, in reality, pursuing entrance into those social circles where the people possesses the abilities I hope to cultivate within  myself. Working and paying to earn a degree is one thing I am doing to fit into a group.

# data[].attributes.headline
Lecture- group conformity required post. 3/22/21 

# data[].attributes.subject
Lecture- group conformity required post. 3/22/21 

# data[].attributes.body
This post topic was a challenge because like I said in previous posts I've never really succumbed to peer pressure or felt the need to be part of a group of my peers. However the first time I ever did drugs was with my mom and her friends in my early 20s, and that was mostly out of curiosity and from wanting to be with my mom. I'd always looked up to these people and I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

Years later I realised that choice had impacted my live in a very severe way. It also made me realize that my mother had first done drugs with her parents back in he early 70s. This was both succumbing to the pressure of fitting in with a group (because before that I was locked out of her room whenever she had company over) and that I wanted to be included in the socializing. In fact the more I think of it the first time I drank was with my mom too. I may not have cared about other kids my age, but I wanted to be with my mom and until I started doing the things she did (when I was older) I was alone while her and her friends went into the garage.

Interesting thought to say the least.

# data[].attributes.body
3/24/210

Before the reading, I had actually heard of this experiment before. I had thought it a little sadistic but I can see what drove him to do this research. It actually made me think of the military, and war crimes.

I was in ROTC for 3 years in school, and we went to bootcamp twice, right alongside the other actual cadets at marine park base in Dublin. While we were there, we were broken down and built back up over the 2 weeks each time we went.

The experience of breaking down  someone's will power only to be built back up into the mindset of the militant, shows me how influential someone in authority can be when giving orders. In the military you learn to function as a group, if one person screws up they mess it up for everyone. You celebrate your reward for achievements as a team and you all get punished if one does. This teaches you not only to care about consequences for you, but the effects on your actions and choices upon your team mates.

You also learn to not question those in positions of authority. as expected you must react to an order and preform the desired action without question. This leads me to wonder. When people with a poor moral compass are in positions of power, and they give a questionable order, and you are supposed to preform a task, would you? Of course you would. If it's war, any hesitation on your part to preform an action, or to stop and question the philosophic implications of that order, could kill not only you but your comrades in arms.

I think having a sense of responsibility to the group is one very keen way of ensuring individuals conformity to authority. this chapter made me really think about that, and what choices everyone would make, if only we were asked to by the right people.

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3/28/2021

The corporate brand I chose to write about is Dollar General. It's a store that has popped up in neighborhoods all over the country,  is an active contributor to several programs that benefit the local community, and its giving  big box stores like WalMart a run for their money. with over 17,00 stores in 46 states, it's one of the most convenient one stop shops in our country.  A quick look over their corporate website reveals their motto as "serving others." They  are franchises, ran with guidance of a corporate entity. But don't let the cheerful mission statement fool you.

Further research points to plenty of bad practices and from the forums I've read, significant employee mistreatment. As a consumer I had no clue, yet as a former cashier I expected it.  I spoke with several employees at my local store about their job satisfaction, and whether or not "Serving Others" applies to the  treatment of employees from corporate.

It does not. So while they present the public face of charity and helping the community, they are giving their employees the bare minimum. There are never enough hours, never a livable wage, and they hire and fire like there's no tomorrow. Job security is shaky ground, especially if a customer survey is negative, you'll get fired without them batting an eyelash. One employee said it like this, "we're expendable, a dime a dozen and there's always someone else to hire."

You'd expect that these stores opening up all over the country would be great, since they provide jobs. Those jobs however pay minimum wage, keeping you well under 30 hours a week so no benefits. The raises are as measly as 15 cents, no bonus. The manager I spoke to is under a huge amount of work strain, he has an  enormous work load with several responsibilities, so many so that he often works unpaid overtime just to keep up.

Their motto "Serving others" only applies in their marketing, it is in fact a sham. helping literacy is all well and good but It isn't making a difference in the local community if your paying the employees from the community so little that they have to have a second, or in one employees case a third job. Rotating random schedules and high employee turnover make for an impossible schedule for those. workers who have little kids at home, which is most of them.

The reviews online alone make me rethink shopping there. During the pandemic your cashier is considered an essential worker, shouldn't a company pay them a more fair wage?  Common sense is apparently not that common. Dollar General may tout that its your friendly family owned store, and that they're different. It''s no Walmart, it's a franchise but the corporate structure and guidelines in place are the same. The little guy, the "essential" workers are still the ones getting the short end of the stick.

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3/29/21

I enjoyed this read immensley, and felt this woman's pain. I very much related to her experiment, having lived the impossible situation the author found herself in. I love that she included stories of all the co workers she met along the way, who were as I once was .. the working poor.

Indeed, I too was one of the working poor, and eventually homeless.I struggled along for so long that 500 a month for a crappy trailer seems like a great deal. I cashiered for years in my youth, eventually working my way to cash office management, but even then i only made 7.25 an hour and that was only 8 years ago.

For years I have struggled to understand why service positions are frowned upon. The world humans have created runs on the work of waitresses, fast food employees, customer service associates and the most essential, the cashiers.

Cashiers make the Capitalist world go round, and yet they are paid the least. They are given the most work, and catch the very worst kind of treatment from both the public and their corporate overlords.

In 2012 I was a huge supporter of the Occupy movement, and was very outspoken about income inequality. I felt as a Cashier, it was unfair how much the CEO of the gas station company I busted my butt to run everyday actually made. My yearly salary was all in a day's work to him. The rage I still feel is great when thinking about the people who pay themselves huge bonuses. All the while the people doing to labor of running the business make a penny to their dollar,

Much like Marx, I know there has to be a better way. I wish the people weren't so afraid of losing their jobs, maybe then someone would speak out, but protesting only gets you in trouble, unless you have a union backing you up. Complaints to Osha or the dept of labor only get your hours cut (if they cant fire you for a complaint they sure can make it far more crappy to work there).

This story of the journalists struggle to survive in low income positions as the working poor, reminded me of that old Tennessee Ford song. While we're not funneling our wages back into the company store anymore, we haven't gotten much better. Corporate America really does need to treat the workers better, starting with offering their employees more than the bare minimum, offer them a livable wage. .

"Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood

Muscle and blood and skin and bones
Amind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load 16 tons and What da ya get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don't you call me cause I cant go

I owe my soul to the company store"

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3/30/2
JCB- pg 79

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article248544970.html

I think that if all industries could have a union behind them the world would be a much better place to work in. While I've never worked in a union job myself,  its my understanding that unions are able to get better pay, benefits and employees are less likely to be mistreated by their employers if they belong to a union.

My husband was a stagehand until the pandemic started. He was not in a union, but more often then not a FEW union guys would be at the jobs, and those  guys always got paid more, for doing less, they always got lunches and breaks and they always got paid, because if not the union goes after you.

Having a union behind you provides workers with a sort of bubble of protection, to ensure you're getting treated right. You'd be surprised at how often people are told to skip a break, or who don't get paid properly for mandatory  overtime by their employer. Fast food workers have just as much right and entitlement to unionize.

While the site from the reading is outdated,  a little research online shows that this is apparently still an ongoing issue in America. As recently as January protests are happening, they're still fighting to be paid properly amid this pandemic mess. It's hard to believe, that of all people, the essential workers aren't even being paid fairly. I included a link above a recent protest.  15$ an hour needs to happen BEFORE 2023. Here's an important piece of information from the aforementioned link:

"The current federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 an hour, while the minimum wage in California is at $14 an hour for large employers and $13 an hour for smaller ones. California is gradually increasing is minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2023 under a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016."

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04/5/21

This chapter made it seem practical to have poverty. I can see why he wrote the postscript at the end. It may have been distateful data he presented, but I never quite realized until now how many systems depend on people who can't afford to do anything else.

Where do you find the working poor? Doing the dirtywork, back breaking labor,and occupying the services jobs that nobody would CHOOSE  TO DO, if they could afford to choose. These are your migrant farm workers, your cashier's and your warehouse workers. I never knew that poverty was what enabled so much of this country to function.

To be honest it's a little depressing. I mean I was raised pentecostal, and Lo! That too is a religion centered around impoverished people. I had never heard that before, and surely never thought about how without the poor the democrats wouldn't have a platform or a leg to stand on.

The entire chapter made it seem as though poor people are just stepping stools for the elite. Makes sense, without the dark we wouldn't know what light is, and if you didn't have the rich there wouldn't be the poor. We lower class folk are all pawns of the elite, imagine their surprise if we all suddenly knew how to play their "game" of chess.

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Just for my own future reference

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The Illusion of MONEY, TIME & EGO - Alan Watts

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Something I read recently. These numbers are insane.

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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - The homelessness crisis across the Southland is becoming more pervasive by the day, and a new report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Thursday underscored that reality.

The federal report estimates that California's homeless population was at 161,548 people as of January 2020, prior to the pandemic, a 7% increase from 2019. In Los Angeles County, the number jumped 13% over the same time period, to 66,436 by January of 2020.

On Thursday night, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority hosted its first State of Homelessness event with leaders confirming what Californians have all seen - homelessness is surging.

"I believe we have 20,000 more on the streets since the last count," Andy Bales, president and CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in Skid Row, said Thursday.

This year, LAHSA was forced to cancel its annual homeless count because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bales has spent his life advocating for those experiencing homelessness.

"I don't think we could have done worse in addressing homelessness," he said. "We were up 32% of deaths on the streets last year over the previous year."

Across the country, the number of people experiencing homelessness grew by 2%.

"I think that when we talk about housing needs, we can't at this point, come up with enough money to take care of all the homeless people in the country," Marcia Fudge, HUD secretary, said.

She said she wants to make temporary pandemic-related funding permanent.

"We want to acknowledge over the past year we're all seeing more tents and more encampments in places we weren't used to seeing them across L.A.," Heidi Marston, of LAHSA, said. "This was largely drive by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance instructing everybody to shelter in place, people practicing social distancing and encampments popping up where maybe before they weren't allowed to."

LAHSA said it did have some success getting people inside during the beginning of the COVID Crisis.

"Our system really pivoted quickly to a rapid life-saving mission at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic," LAHSA Executive Director Marston said Thursday. "We had this infusion of state and federal funds and we got all parts of L.A. - 88 cities, county, providers, philanthropy - all on the same page and working toward the same goal of getting as many people inside as possible."

But that begs the question of what happened after that initial success and why are so many people still ending up on the streets? According to Bales, local and state leaders dropped the ball.

"We needed to ramp up Project Roomkey, we needed to keep community rec centers open, we needed to go ahead with Project Homekey - which was going to purchase hotels," he said. "We need to ramp up more shelters since we can't have as many people at each shelter. We did everything the opposite of what we should have done."

Bales said that the state needs to focus on getting more housing options to get people sheltered.

"We need immediate places for people to go, and we need immediate innovative affordable places like tiny homes and mobile homes that can be quickly constructed," he said. "And we need to move back to recovery."

The HUD report found that there were about 580,000 homeless people nationwide in early 2020. According to HUD, California had the biggest jump in people experiencing homelessness from 2019 to 2020. Oregon and Florida had the biggest decreases during the same time period.

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New Federal Report Shows Scope Of California's Homeless Crisis, Over 160K Homeless Prior To Pandemic

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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - The homelessness crisis across the Southland is becoming more pervasive by the day, and a new report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Thursday underscored that reality. The federal report estimates that California's homeless population was at 161,548 people as of January 2020, prior to the pandemic, a 7% increase from 2019.

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Morris & Grimes
4/7/21

This chapter was about childhood experiences of sociologists, and moving into a higher class than one was raised. This was particularly interesting to me because growing up, I was always the less than average, Just on the line of poor kid. The three types of capital mentioned, were interesting as well.

Economic Capital

My family is made of of 2 different classes, my mother who raised me was always poor. She was on food stamps and welfare briefly, but she was one of the working poor. She managed properties that had been vacant, arranging with owners to live there as we fixed it up while they got it ready to sell or get it up to code. I always had food, butnever desserts, and my clothes were mostly bargain thrift store buys. She had a drug habit, which I'm sure contributed to our lack of wiggle room in our very tight budget, and she couldn't afford to give me most of the things that I as I kid thought I should have.

My late grandfather, however made sure I had everything I needed. He was a Steel Worker and had started his own business over on Funston street. Central Valley Steel Fabrications. He worked very hard for a lot of years to be  middle class. He provided the 8 grandkids with a group trip to Disneyland every year, and gave me anything I could have ever needed. He lived in a teeny tiny blue house, you probably know it, on the corner of Alpine and Sanguunetti. His hard work is visible in many parts of Stockton. He did the steel for the dome of the new theater downtown, he built the arches that you drive under as you enter the weberstown mall, and he built the old uop stadium. When he died we were shocked to find he had over a million in assets, and had been living well below his means.

My aunt who is an RN and my Uncle who is now retired from stockton pd, are upper middle class. Growing up I was always really uncomfortable at their house, which was nothing fancy outside but decadent inside. They owned a yatch, on which they did the lighted boat parade every year on the Delta. I always felt judged with them because my aunt was very  picky about my clothes and seemed personally offended that I didn't wear makeup in my highschool years. But I couldn't afford to.

My relationship with money developed into a strange combination of desire for it and opposition against it. Hard work after all got my grandfather where he was, yet I wasn't good at any particular thing, not enough to capitalize on it anyway. My lack of direction in life and my later jobs as an underpaid and underappreciated cashier gave me a strong distaste for corporate America, something only further exacerbated by my 2 years on the streets, where you are treated by society as sub human.

Cultural Capital

I grew up as a voracious reader. By 12  years old I could explain quantum mechanics to you, and quote whole plays from Shakespeare.II loved Vivaldi and Handel,  and I have a strong appreciation for fine art. But being smart, and well read wasn't going to mean anything in my life if I didn't go to college. The degree mattered, and where the degree is from still matters. For many years I beat myself up for leaving Delta all those years ago, and for many years I blamed money as the reason why I didn't return to the "currupt money driven educational system." It's funny how things change as we age. Still, I notice myself praying for high grades so that just maybe, I can get into berkeley, or even uop. Because after all, the name of the school matters.

Social Capital

This is the area I am most deprived in. I used to say, "I don't like people," ok I still say that but whats more appropriate to say is that I don't understand the majority of humans, and that makes me anxious. I don't seem to care about the trivial and mundane things my peers take avid internet in. I don't watch television, I don't go to parties, I don't follow trends or like go to the mall. I cannot seem to relate to people. You are hard pressed to find anyone who will discuss with you consciousness, or the nature of reality. In my spare time I listen to jordan peterson, and alan watts, and I contemplate the self and why I behave the way I do. The last group I spent time with of my peers were talking about Kardashians, iphones, tanning and some stupid party they were planning and what they were all gonna wear, and blah blah. When they started posting instagram pics, I mentioned about studies I'd read recently and explained how addicting likes can be, and that they become addicted to them because of the dopamine hit your brain gives off just like a drug addict does with a hit of dope, they whatevered me. I immediately lost any semblance of interest in hanging, said goodbye to the friend I came with and left. These humans felt hollow, shallow and fake. Judgmental, yes, but honest. Authenticity doesn't always makes friends I guess.

Social anxiety will severely cripple me in the future if I cannot learn to network with others. I've noticed that the 2 years I spent homeless, being spit on, made fun of, and bullied  by the "haves" made me somewhat jaded toward society as a whole. But this is also changing as my viewpoints have matured.

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4/10/21

Who would have guessed that being rich, or elite would seem so stifling. God, they're so inclusive that they have their own private places to eat, private schools, private parties and clubs, until I read this chapter I never before thought about how those kids must feel growing up in such strict confines.

Kind of like how jasmine must have felt in the movie Alladin. Trapped. This chapter made me aware of how they brainwash their children by carefully chosing every aspect of life that they're exposed to.

What's sad is if you took someone from the upper echelon  of society and dropped them in the middle of stockton, no food, no water, no cellphone, how long would they survive? They wouldn't, if society collapsed they would be helpless, no chance they'd make it homeless and nomadic. I learned a bit about the upper class when I inherited that money from my grandfather. People treat you differently, you get invited to things you'd never even heard of before ... Like debutante balls. I thought that was just in the south... Lol

I'm very much against the wealth inequality we have here in america. I've recently shared information about it on social media. The rest of the assimilated borg, I mean Americans, are too hive minded to notice let alone do anything to change it. Thus the gap gets bigger as the working poor continue to be pawns for the elite. Imagine their surprise if we all suddenly understood how to play chess.

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One of my favorites, aside from the slange I dig the message of this tune.

the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop
Krayzie Bone an' Ice Cube

The best thing in life is life
Get your mind right an' get your grind right
We gotta keep goin', hey, young thugs
We gotta keep goin'

Get your mind right an' get your grind right
Hey, young thugs
Get your mind right an' get your grind right

Look
Look into my eyes if you wanna know me
Before you hypnotized, homey, what do you see?
A figure that's just a little bigger than dealers
A hustler countiTopn' figures, ain't pulled no triggers

you dig us? We be the ultimate lick
We's the hitters that make the ultimate hits
Kinda flossy, kinda bossy
It's gotta be done my way, do what the ****, I say

Top of the pyramid, homey, what I tell you?
If you leave this West Side umbrella, you hit the cellar
Bring me my slippers, black robe an' my globe
An' I could rule the world with my eyes closed

See the mission's to get what we don't got
Until we filthy rich an' on top
You betta go get it, it's yours
Nigga, the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop

zyie Bone an' Ice Cube
See the mission's to get what we don't got
Until we filthy rich an' on top
You betta go get it, it's yours
Nigga, the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop

To
To all the little homies that's watchin' TV
I see you tryin' to be a O.G. like me
Chasin' dreams, pullin' mo' schemes for wealth
But the best thing in life is health, be yourself, playa television, it'll keep yo' ass wishin' forever
You'll never get your life together
Don't talk about death, I got too much life to live
Too many orders to give, what it is? Showbiz

Taught you what a trick an' a hoe is
Showed you what a '64 is
Lord knows, 'In God We Trust'
An' everybody in the world wanna be like us

See the mission's to get what we don't got
Until we filthy rich an' on top
You betta go get it, it's yours
Nigga, the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop

Krazyie Bone an' Ice Cube
See the mission's to get what we don't got
Until we filthy rich an' on top
You betta go get it, it's yours
Nigga, the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop

To
To the kids of the world that's waitin' for wealth
Waitin' for health, you better do for self
Homey, that's yo' last cup
Forget about the fast buck, boy, get yo' ass up, people use yo' brain to gain
Do somethin' that ain't never been done an' we can spend hun's
Wipe our ass with twenties, light our joints with ones
Throw away the guns, have nothin' but fun

An' homey, we could do that
Police have a fit, when yo' paper's legit
We gotta get off the phone, we gotta teach our own
Send yo' baby to school an' she'll come back grown

We got to talk to our grandmas
An' she'll help us through them dark halls an' them pitfalls
Everybody know we got the world to gain
We got to stop the pain, Lord stop the rain

e the mission's to get what we don't got
Until we filthy rich an' on top
You betta go get it, it's yours
Nigga, the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop

Krazyie Bone an' Ice Cube
See the mission's to get what we don't got
Until we filthy rich an' on top
You betta go get it, it's yours
Nigga, the mission's to get what you don't got
The struggle, it don't stop until we drop

Keep goin', little homey, why you slowin'?
Keep rollin', little homey, why you slowin'?
Keep rollin', little homey, why you slowin'?
Keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin'

Hey, young thugs, the world is yours
Hey, young thugs, the world is yours
Hey, young thugs, the world is yours
Yeah, young thug, the world is yours

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Just an extra- Something I read that kinda parallels our transition from wealth inequality to racism. 

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Just an extra- Something I read that kinda parallels our transition from wealth inequality to racism. 

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4/13/21

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People of color are paying more than twice the amount in banking fees than White Americans, a Bankrate survey found.

When asked about fees such as ATM, overdraft and routine service charges, Black adults report shelling out an average of $12 a month for checking accounts at banks or credit unions and Hispanics are paying $14 a month, on average. White checking account holders said they are paying an average $5 per month, according to the survey, which was conducted by YouGov. It polled 2,743 U.S. adults, among whom 2,339 were checking account holders, from Dec. 7 to 10, 2020.

Whites were also more likely to have no-fee accounts, with 79% responding they paid no fees. In comparison, 56% of Blacks and 50% of Hispanics had no monthly fees.

Americans who saw their income negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic also reported paying more in fees than those who weren't financially hit by the crisis. Those who had a setback had a monthly average of $11 in fees, compared to less than $3 a month for those not impacted, the survey found.

"There has been very much an exacerbation of wealth and income inequality during this time," said Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick.

"More than any other downturn that we are aware of in our history, this has really been a reflection of a have and have-not economy."

When it comes to routine services charges, many banks require a minimum balance to avoid the fee. On average, customers need to have about $594 in their account to waive the fee, an October 2020 study from Bankrate found.

Availability of ATMs also matter. If you use one outside of your bank's network, you'll be slapped with a surcharge from the ATM owner, plus a fee from your bank. The surcharges, on average, cost non-customers $3.08, on average, and your bank will charge you an average of $1.56 to use someone else's ATM, Bankrate found.

Those who overdraw their account face an average fee of $33.47.

For minority communities, the disparity in bank fees are indicative of the inequality they have faced for years, suggested John Holdsclaw IV, board chair of the Coalition of Community Development Financial Institutions. CDFIs are credit unions, banks, microloan funds or venture capital providers that provide low-income communities access to financial services.

The wealth gap is glaring, as evidenced by Federal Reserve's 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, released in September 2020. The median wealth for a White family was $188,200, compared to $24,100 for Black families and $36,100 for Hispanic families.

The additional banking fees "just make the problem worse and take a deeper toll on Black and Brown and minority families throughout the country," Holdsclaw said.
More from Invest in You:
How to reset your finances and become smarter about money
This lender wants to close the racial wealth gap
This critical link could help bridge America's racial wealth gap
He believes in many situations the higher bank fees may be geographically focused in areas with higher Black, Brown and moderate income communities.

"It just creates a perfect storm," Holdsclaw said.

"The perfect storm is on the backs of these minorities' communities and minority families who have their accounts at these financial institutions."

How to lower your fees

It pays to shop around to lower your fees, Hamrick said.

Look not only at traditional banks, but credit unions and online institutions. Digital technology opens up options beyond what is physically nearby.

"Shopping around for the best banking services fit might not have the same level of excitement associated with it as, say, buying a new outfit, electronic device or car," he said. "But failing to do it can make the difference between achieving our financial goals, or not."

Some banks offer accounts with no monthly fee and no minimum balance required. CNBC Select named Capital One 360 Checking Account as the best overall no-fee checking account, with Ally Interest Checking Account as the runner up.

The best way to avoid ATM fees is to use one in your bank's network. Credit unions and smaller banks tend to have networks of more ATMs available to customers at no fee, according to Bankrate. Online banks may also have national networks that can boost the number of ATMs available to you without a fee. Some also offer a refund for the out-of-network providers' charges.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in .
If you still can't find a no-fee ATM, consider getting cash back when you use your debit card to make a purchase.

CDFIs are a good option for minority communities, Holdsclaw said. There are more than 1,100 across the country, with a total of $211 billion in assets. Some are banks and others are credit unions.

While fees will vary from institution to institution, they are generally not going to be large, he said.

"It is built into the missions of these financial institutions that they are not going to charge enormous fees to people who are already in a low or moderate income community," Holdsclaw said.

SIGN UP: Money 101 is an 8-week learning course to financial freedom, delivered weekly to your inbox.

CHECK OUT: How a 28-year-old managed to retire early and earn $16,000 a month in passive income via Grow with Acorns+CNBC.

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Black and Hispanic Americans pay twice as much in bank fees as Whites, survey finds

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People of color are paying more than twice the amount in banking fees than White Americans, a Bankrate survey found. When asked about fees such as ATM, overdraft and routine service charges, Black adults report shelling out an average of $12 a month for checking accounts at banks or credit unions and Hispanics are paying $14 a month, on average.

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Wealth Inequality Video

I have been sharing this video since it came out. In fact the last time I shared this video on social media was the second day of school. Reminds me of the occupy wall street protests in 2011 and 2012. Those protests are what first taught me about wealth inequality in America, and just how poor the 99% are.

Love the video, because it is short sweet and to the point. I'm taking statistics right now too and gotta say, the video has great data visualization.
Occupy your mind!
We are the 99%

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04/17/21 JCB chapter 6

On April 25th 1947, Major League baseball had a radical shift in it's culture. During a time period  where "blacks"  were segregated from "whites", the Brooklyn Dodgers broke a long established racial barrier and signed Jackie Robinson. This ended the segregation of baseball, where each "color" (white or black) had a specified league of their own.

This was a super important moment for the history of sports in America. Even though we've come a long way since Jackie Robinson shattered records and cultural paradigms, unbeknownst to this baseball fan, racism still is a huge problem in the world of sports.

I grew up rooting for the Oakland Athletics. Talk about a diverse team. Growing up I went to games where I cheered for Ricky Henderson, Ichiro Suzuki and Jason Giambi. As kids when we played basketball, we all wanted to be like Mike or Shaq.

Until reading this chapter I hadn't ever though of racial bias within the sports world. To me I've always considered the true threat to the players was the corporatism. The money behind the sports was the problem. Ever seen moneyball? I believe the money is more important data to consider than race. Because race is only a small portion  of what's being exploited in sports.

It's all rediculous to me , and hopefully after all the rich white dudes who own everystuff die off, maybe then progress can be made. What's funnier still is that overall interst in most sports is slowly decreasing as the years go on. Maybe we should look at what other types of programs are being offered besides sports in lower income community's, that might tell you why sports as a way into college is prevalent in certain communities.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of 1969. Here to highlight the role of public media in covering the events of this turbulent year, we welcome back Christopher Brown, Archives Engagement Intern at the AAPB who is publishing a series of articles about this fascinating topic. Christopher is currently pursuing a Masters in History with a focus in Archives.
The third installment of our series on public broadcasting in 1969 focuses on coverage of the civil rights movement. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Click here to read the prior article in our series, which explores the student protest movement.
In the 1960s, discrimination, segregation, and the threat of violence continued to be experienced by minority groups. By the 50's and 60's, the civil rights movement took on greater urgency and renewed strength, resulting in significant changes throughout society and the passage of important legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. These Acts ended segregation; integrated schools; and prohibited discrimination in the realms of employment, housing, voting, and others.

The movement was largely non-violent and involved acts of civil disobedience such as boycotts, marches and sit-ins. An example of the latter was the 1960 Woolworth lunch counter protest in Greensboro, North Carolina, where African American students were denied service at a "whites only" establishment but refused to leave. These acts inspired others throughout the country, most notably in the South where segregation and discrimination were the most severe. To some, a more forceful approach was needed, leading to the Black Power movement of the mid-1960s which included prominent groups such as the Black Panthers.

Public broadcasting played an important role in covering these events, as well as exploring African American culture and life. For example, WGBH's Say Brother, produced in Boston from 1968 to present (currently titled Basic Black) is the longest running public affairs program created by and for African Americans, while WNET's Black Journal produced monthly episodes from 1968 to 1977 about the African American experience. In this clip from Black Journal, a panel expresses the ineffectual nature of voting and the need for more radical changes. Among those commenting is Black Panther member Kathleen Cleaver, wife of the group's founder Eldridge Cleaver.

Along with its successes, the movement experienced profound tragedies, such as the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. In this episode of Black Journal which aired shortly after, a woman discusses the anger and grief she experienced upon learning of King's death.

Another prominent civil rights leader to be tragically assassinated was Malcolm X in 1965. Offering the perspective of a family member, WGBH's Say Brother conducted an interview with Ella Collins, sister of Malcolm X, in 1969. In this clip, she discusses her involvement in his upbringing.

African Americans were not the only group fighting for racial equality during this time. In April of 1969, the series Public Broadcast Library aired an episode entitled " Mexican Americans: The Invisible Minority " on National Educational Television, exploring the plight of Hispanic Americans and their struggle for civil rights.

Coverage of the civil rights movement also explored the youth of the 1960s being raised in a time of societal change. For example, an episode of the series NET Journal entitled, Black and White Together? aired on National Educational Television in April 1969. The program explored Project WILL, an attempt at creating interracial understanding between high school students during a time when school desegregation remained a contentious issue. During the project, 80 high students of different races lived and studied together for twelve weeks. As depicted in the program, the experience was often a difficult one. In this clip, the students arrive and later engage in a brutally honest discussion about racial matters, while one of the teachers separately admits that the kids have taken on the values and problems of the adults in their lives.

The civil rights movement of the 1960's was a significant event in American history. Despite the positive social changes that occurred, minorities have continued to experience prejudice and racism. However, the fight for equality and peace continues. To explore additional coverage of this topic in prior and subsequent years and to view the episodes above in full, visit the AAPB at https://americanarchive.org/.
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a national effort to preserve at-risk public media and provide a central web portal for access to the programming that public stations and producers have created over the past 70 years. To date, over 50,000 hours of television and radio programming contributed by more than 100 public media organizations and archives across the United States have been digitized, and the Archive aims to grow by up to 25,000 additional hours per year. The entire collection is available for research on location at WGBH and the Library, and currently more than 30,000 programs are available in the AAPB's Online Reading Room at americanarchive.org to anyone in the United States.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our series about 1969 in public broadcasting.

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1969 in Public Media: The Civil Rights Movement

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of 1969. Here to highlight the role of public media in covering the events of this turbulent year, we welcome back Christopher Brown, Archives Engagement Intern at the AAPB who is publishing a series of articles about this fascinating topic.

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Systematic inequality,  something I recently I read. .

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Systematic inequality,  something I recently I read. .

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https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/

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JCB chpt 12
4/17/21

This chapter was an absorbing read. This entire section has made me think of race more than I ever had before. See the only blood cousins I have are half black. I didn't grow up with stereotypes, or prejudice that I can remember, I'm sure the adults noticed it if there was but we were all just kids who loved each other and loved playing together.

One thing this chapter discussed a lot was racism and music. I didn't start listening to rap until I was in my early 30s. I listen to underground gangster rap, I think this type of music is extremely important. One thing that bothered me is how they talk about whites stealing or mimicking the black culture. This pissed me off, do the writers not realize that there were PLENTY of us white kids in the inner city, our mamas on drugs and on welfare, daddy's gone who got caught up in drugs and violence too!

I don't understand why various struggles that white kids face right along side the black kids are less important,  as though they have some privilege others don't. You take an okie with missing teeth and any dude from the ghetto to a job interview and guess what, neither of them are getting hired.

One things for sure,  Racism is used as a tool for political motive. The rich white men in office have this wonderful system where inequality is purposeful, the music industry is programming, and it's ever more dangerous than people realised. You think it's not? Look up how you can influence and control emotional reactions via frequency programming.

I think Tupac was the GOAT. (Greatest of all time) and I think his life was more important than most realize, his words still ring out and echo through the generations. His poetry changes you, his struggle was relatable. I've watched any and all of his interviews read all the publicly accessible journals, and I think if he was still around, he could help everyone with this racism bullshit were all witnessing. Let's not forget Tupac's words, because they are as true today as they were when he spoke them.

“I see no changes/ All I see is racist faces/ Misplaced hate makes me disgrace for races we under/ I wonder what it takes to make this once better place.”

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Come on, come on
I see no changes, wake up in the morning, and I ask myself
Is life worth living, should I blast myself?
I'm tired of bein' poor, and even worse I'm black
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch

Cops give a damn about a negro
Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares
One less hungry mouth on the welfare

First, ship 'em dope and let 'em deal the brothers
Give 'em guns, step back, watch 'em kill each other
It's time to fight back, that's what Huey said
Two shots in the dark, now Huey's dead

I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere
Unless we share with each other
We gotta start makin' changes
Learn to see me as a brother instead of two distant strangers

And that's how it's supposed to be
How can the devil take a brother, if he's close to me?
I'd love to go back to when we played as kids
But things changed, and that's the way it is

Come on, come on
That's just the way it is
Things will never be the same
That's just the way it is
Ooh, yeah

Come on, come on
That's just the way it is
Things will never be the same
That's just the way it is
Aww, yeah

I see no changes, all I see is racist faces
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races
We under, I wonder what it takes to make this
One better place, let's erase the wasted

Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right
'Cause mo' black and white is smokin' crack tonight
And only time we chill is when we kill each other
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other

And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready, to see a black President
It ain't a secret, don't conceal the fact
The penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks

But some things will never change
Try to show another way but you stayin' in the dope game
Now tell me, what's a mother to do?
Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you

You gotta operate the easy way
(I made a G today) But you made it in a sleazy way
Sellin' crack to the kid (I gotta get paid)
Well, hey, well, that's the way it is

Come on, come on
That's just the way it is
Things will never be the same
That's just the way it is
Aww, yeah

Come on, come on
That's just the way it is
Things will never be the same
That's just the way it is
Aww, yeah

We gotta make a change
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes
Let's change the way we eat
Let's change the way we live
And let's change the way we treat each other
You see, the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
What we gotta do, to survive

And still I see no changes, can't a brother get a little peace?
There's war in the streets and war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs
So the police can bother me

And I ain't never did a crime, I ain't have to do
But now, I'm back with the facts givin' 'em back to you
Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up
Crack you up and pimps smack you up

You gotta learn to hold ya own
They get jealous when they see ya, with ya mobile phone
But tell the cops, they can't touch this
I don't trust this, when they try to rush, I bust this

That's the sound of my tool, you say it ain't cool?
But mama didn't raise no fool
And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped
And I never get to lay back
'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the pay backs
Some buck that I roughed up way back
Comin' back after all these years
Rat-a-tat, tat, tat, tat, that's the way it is

That's just the way it is
Things will never be the same
That's just the way it is (Way it is)
Aww, yeah

That's just the way it is
Things will never be the same
That's just the way it is
Aww, yeah

Some things will never change

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Race Interview #1 Self (I'm the kid in the upper top left corner. This is me & all of my cousins)

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Race Interview #1 Self (I'm the kid in the upper top left corner. This is me & all of my cousins)

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4/17/21

1: According to my 23 & me Dna results I am:
47% British & Irish
37% French
7% Scandinavian
3.4% Nigerian/West African
1% Egyptian

2: I know because of the test at 23 & me. That test also showed me we are not native american like my great grandmother had thought. I mainly Identify with the British and Scandanavian, and was excited to learn i was just a teeeeeny bit Egyptian.  I like the family stories I've found through genealogy work. Especially from my British Ancestors because they were Moonrakers, or what you could call  rum runners dealing in illegal alcohol. They owned the Maslen Farm in the 1500's, which is still there and is in fact a national heritage or historic site in All Cannings, in WIltshire England. (That is where Stonehenge is ) A large portion of my family is buried there at the little church All Saints.

3: The early messages I recieved about race were that we are all members of the HUMAN race. The above picture I chose becuase it showcases the diversity within my family that I grew up with. The blonde hair blue eyed kids are my cousins by marriage, and the others are my BLOOD cousins, my True aunts kids. Race was very much not ever pointed out to us kids. We all were equally cared for, each of us were given similar opportunities, (My mom struggled   so my grandpa met the needs I had in areas my mom came up short in like clothes for school ect) I never noticed my skin color or theirs as anything to treat differently. Seriously it was the best of times because as kids we were oblivious to that stuff, we just knew we were all Best friends.

As I got older I would hear about stereotypes and negative racist remarks generalizing behavior of Black men. I simply didnt understand how those things could be applied to all men of one race, because my uncle Michael is still one of the most outstanding men I know. He was a firefighter in the marines for 30 years, and is now retired from the military and is working for Homeland Security. If he didn't fit the sterotypes i realized most other people prolly don't either. I remember wondering when we got older about some of the looks our large brood attracted when we went out. Regardless, i was raised to believe that its what is on the inside that counts, people are different, nobody is better, and regardless of race, we are all human beings.

3. I decide what race others are by asking them, and telling them i love researching ancestry. In America you could be asian black white or brown,  but if you are here, and born here like i was, you're an american. If you wanted to get technical, I am an "AFRICAN AMERICAN"  5% of my Dna comes from there. ALL OF US DID. Race is such a silly way to divide ourselves into  groups to me.
5. I imagine many people would just assume I am some type of European. but honestly, its none of my business what others think of me.

“Where There is a will
there is a way
to search and discover
a better day

Where a positive heart
is all you need
to rise beyond
and succeed

Where young minds grow
and respect each other
based on their deeds
and not their color

when times are dim
say as I say
"Where there's a will
there's a way!”

― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew from Concrete

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Race Interview #2 Female Teacher retired Age 57

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Race Interview #2 Female Teacher retired Age 57

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4/18/21

1: Caucasian

2. Told She was white for her whole life. Society reaffirmed this with every form she filled out papers for school, or to vote, or the census, you have to check a race box. Society made her decided which box she would check.

3. Lived in Boston growing up, progressive not segregated, schools. There was segregation between kids in the higher learning or AP courses, but not based on race. Her Dad's best friend was a black man, and their families went camping together every summer. Race wasnt something she had to pay attention to until she was older and it was in the media and she had to check the boxes. Looking back she does remember that the neighborhoods were sort of self segregated by culture. little Havana, china town type districts.

4. tries not to assume what race people are, but can guess in part due to their first languages. If she needs to know, she has no problem asking.

5. Guesses people would judge her for being red headed and pale skinned. She think they would assume she is Irish.

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Race Interview #3 Male Retired Stockton Pd Age 51

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Race Interview #3 Male Retired Stockton Pd Age 51

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4/18/21
1. Mostly European, quarter hispanic and a small amount of native american.

2. Found out through 23 & me even though he knew about being Mexican.

3. Says Race wasn't really a thing when he was growing up, he grew up in Stockton and had friends of all races. remembered his first experience with racism was his first romance was crushed because her father thought he looked to Mexican to date his daughter.

4. Through years with the PD he learned how to spot types of cultural clothing, languages or mannerism that people from other countries exhibit. Religious clothing or practices can also tell you a lot about what race someone is.

5. He doesn't care about what people think he is or isn't. Says the best thing about America is its a melting pot, especially Stockton with its amazing diversity. Look how many cultures are represented here, its beautiful. Every type of food you can imagine. New things to learn about others all the time.

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Race Interview #4 Male/ my cousin and activist  Age 24 (he's the baby in the overalls in the family pic)

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Race Interview #4 Male/ my cousin and activist  Age 24 (he's the baby in the overalls in the family pic)

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4/18/21

1. Dominican, creole, french Madagascar and NIgerian with a small native american portion

2. Parents always told him about his biracial roots, took a 23 & me to be sure.

3. positive experiences growing up about race and the beauty of diversity. My aunt and uncle provided good examples of love and respect and growing up in a diverse family taught him alot about loving others who who they are not what they look like.

4. if he has questions, he asks.

5. he feels judged by others because of his skin tone. Apparently he struggles eith being tri racial. It's hard because he has found difficulty fitting in with his peers that are in the black community. He believes race is a socially constructed phenomena.

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1. Doesn't know. Waiting for dna results
2 . White mutt
3  parents think german but unsure last name could indicate british.
Didnt ever acknowledge race as he grew up with friends of every race in central stockton. When he went to prison he learned more about race and how to tell which was which.
4. From the above experience.

5.  Because "I am a whiteboy they know I'm a white boy "

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4/18/21

White supremacists. Oh boy, this one sounded like a bad pun. So a Jew walks into a Klan rally...  Yikes.

When I was in highschool I was obsessed with world war two. What fascinated me most was how one lonley boy, a dark haired brown eyed boy, who failed in art school, could grow up and convince an entire race of people to hate another race, a deep running Rasicm that still lives on today.

In my previous posts I showed you the picture of all the kids in my family, that I grew up with. I mentioned that the white kids were not the ones I was blood related to. My cousins by blood, are actually from North Carolina, a place where KKK "historical" monuments still exist. I spent a year living out there, and let me mention a few things I gleaned from my time in the south.

The poorest areas of north carolina, were full of WHITE tweakers. More often then not, the nurses, the military people, and the mayor's and buisness OWNERS, or the respectable members of the society that I met, were actually black. There are many stereotypes about the south, and I think Cletus on the simpsons sums up the intellect of the average white boy (or lady) that I encountered in North Carolina.

I've always felt racism was based on fear of retaliation from the days of slavery. Especially now that minorities in america are becoming the majority. But from what I've seen, Racism is inherited from the parents, baby's are born full of love and don't judge others, they are taught to be racist. The author in this chapter mentions that the KLAN members seemed like lonely people, looking for a place to belong. Just like I'm sure many germans were who joined with Hitler. Of course if a country is in poverty long enough it's easier to get them to do desperate or deplorable things.

These people, the kkk... Trump... lol seem to lack the intellect needed to comprehend the absurdity of being against African Americans. If we gave them all DNA tests they'd prolly say the smaller portion of their orgin DnA IS WRONG.. THAT PORTION (is most likely going to have it's origin in AFRICA)

Of course I also think people become unaware slaves to the system,  pawns in the game of chess that the elites play with our lives. Imagine how the tables would turn if people thought more deeply about the true nature of things.. maybe questioned the authority and asked why, instead of following blindly their political leaders. Imagine how things would change, if the pawns awakened, and from that slumber at once understood how to play chess.

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Just something extra, chpt 7 mentioned "correlation does not imply causation" and I laughed out loud. Because I've got a bunch of Statistics memes just waiting to be laughed at. 

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Just something extra, chpt 7 mentioned "correlation does not imply causation" and I laughed out loud. Because I've got a bunch of Statistics memes just waiting to be laughed at. 

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4/22/21

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Beauty Ideology chpt. 11 Thinking frame- How empowered do you feel to resist dominant appearance ideals? 

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Beauty Ideology chpt. 11 Thinking frame- How empowered do you feel to resist dominant appearance ideals? 

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4/22/21

Very. However At one time I lived in last vegas, and boy did I keep up with beauty ideal. In Las Vegas everything you do is impacted by your appearance. The hottest girls get the best jobs, the hostess, the secretary, the assistant. Modest girls get to do filing in the back, or answer phones, or buss tables. It was competitive, and they were all tan big boobs with enough makeup to do up a clown.

I was a fake tan, colored hair lotsa make up girl once. But you know what got annoying? If I DIDNT wear makeup one day and people come up to me asking, omg are you sick, you look terrible. It's like no, that's just mah face. So I stopped wearing it entirely.

I got to thinking about how many hours of our life women spend looking at their own face in the mirror applying a product for other people to look at.  Now keep in mind this was awhile back but I did some digging and I found the data because of course the study had been done.
According to  daily Mail, the

" UK women spend 474 days of their lives putting on make-up, with eyes being the most time-consuming."

That's insane. Seriously. It's bad enough we have to spend 2 years of our lives on the toilet, about half of it asleep... Now this? Time is invaluable, and an asset far too precious. Sometimes I wear makeup  but this research made me look at the lifetime of sitting in front a mirror doing face art that I am not even the one looking at it.

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4/22/21

This chapter brought up some strange feelings for me. I was the only gir out of all my cousins until I was in mid childhood, no siblings either. I spent my pre highschool years trying to be a boy, and in my teens impress them or flirt by being as good at,  or better than them at stuff.

When I was always in competition with my cousins, mostly to prove that just cause I was a girl I was still super rough and tumble like they were. My Dad loved that I was a tomboy, because he said he had the best of both worlds. Being that I'm the only child he'll never have a son. He said  He got to have a daughter AND still do all the guys stuff because I was a tomboy. I was proud of that.

Henslin's chapter was hard for.me.to.put into perspective. I spent most of my formative years trying to be one of the guys, trying harder to fit in with them more than anyone prolly knew. I can't even really conceptualize how our childhood gender groups differ. My mom was a tomboy, but she encouraged whatever activities and interests I expressed. She never even pushed girl things on me.  If I didn't wanna wear a dress for an even she'd buy me jeans, very liberal. If I were to have been gay, or bi or a sexual the  she would have loved me the same.

So the next chapter is on becoming female, and I'm pretty sure I will relate better. Or not, correlation does not imply causation.

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4/23/21

I related to this chapter much better than the previous one. Above is a highschool photo of me at 15. Tomboy right? Growing up is hard to do, even harder when your fellow females turn on you. I got made fun of alot by girls. I wasn't like them . I didnt do girl stuff, I was teased not only for my choice to not wear makeup, and I honestly thought for a very long time I was ugly.

My mom always used to say when people are jealous they will be mean. She taught me that when someone makes fun of you, they are pointing out the flaws they actually see in themselves. They're projecting.

This didn't make me feel much better, I spent highschool avoiding chicks entirely, except for a few rough and tumble lesbians who also didn't fit in with the rest of our gender .

My lack of placement within my gender group wasn't a priority. I had tons of guy friends. When the girls calling me ugly stopped bothering me they made fun of me for countless other things. Girls are mean, and it's taken me years to trust that they aren't all just fake and shallow people who want to steal my boyfriend while they're talking smack behind my back.

You mentioned in one lecture about how disney teaches you women want to hurt you because it's always a wicked woman as the bad guy. Growing up It was through experience that I learned most of them can't be trusted. To this day, I still am much less likely to trust a female, because they can be so two faced. Men are much simpler to read, and more often then not they're very direct and you know how they feel. The less complex emotional aspect was easier for me to get along with, and they don't tend to make fun of you for the same things that women would.

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Heading into communication between genders. 

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Heading into communication between genders. 

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Thorne & Luria 4/23/21

This chapter discussed several things I've noticed about playground age children. Hell I still remember what it was like to be in fifth and sixth grade. I remember the cooties, and the games we all would play where girls chased boys.  This was way more in depth than I ever looked into it though.

I liked that the authors mention how the girls and boys communicate differently With the examples given, I never had noticed just how different the social behavior of boys and girls were. I especially wasn't aware of much when I was that age, but looking back I remembered how things were.

All these studies with school age kids  affirms one thing that I've always thought. Girls are mean. Haha!

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4/23/21

So we've all had differences of opinions or mementos where you just couldn't figure out what someone the opposite gender mean when they said this or that. Honestly, my relationship has been a struggle in miscommunications latley, and we both are really learningnot take anything the other says personally.

This is classic Toltec wisdom from Don Miguel Ruiz in the four agreements. Nothing that others do is because of you, don't take anything personally. The Balance of right and wrong may at times feel like something to be maintained , but I've found what's most important when interacting with my mate, is to understand where he is coming from before I jump to an emotional reaction. This is so hard in communication, especially when you've had your feelings hurt. Many people don't truly listen when others speak either. In a majority of conversations (I've done this too) many people are just waiting to talk, not listening to the other.

Learning why people say what they say, and reflecting on why you yourself reacted the way you did can greatly benefit the process of communication, especially withing personal intimate relationships.

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4/25/21

Earlier in the padlet I had mentioned that a first impression only takes a split second. This chapter, and the studies it was about, really drove the point home. If you LOOK good, your life will be just a little bit easier. According to the reading this starts even when you are young. Angelic looking children were not assumed to be as devious as their modest or even homely peers.

When i lived in Las Vegas I was only ever offered jobs when i wore makeup and semi revealing clothing. Of course in Vegas you've got strippers and peep show girls trying to find day jobs, that makes the competition a little stiff.

Growing up my aunt always nagged me about wearing makeup. i always resisted because who wants to spend years of their life applying a product to your own face, something you dont even look at throughout the day.

I found this video, and i liked it alot. so i figured I would share.

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4/27/21

just an extra

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Girl toys vs boy toys: The experiment - BBC Stories

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So I was buying my kid (daughter) some clothes on  amazon today and I decided to make my searches gender neutral to see how their algorithm displayed results.

My daughter is a non conformist, like myself, and likes all different things, cars dolls, trains and animal toys. I've never told her anything was for just for boys or girls (except maybe a bathroom and to give privacy when someone else is in one.) I was searching for dinosaur shirts, and my exact wording was "dinosaur shirts kids 5t" and it brought up the boys department, and gave me links for lots of other things for "Boys" so I clicked one and went off into a world of blue and red and bright primary yellow.

I cleared my search bar and tried again, and typed in dinosaur toys, and while it still suggested I look for boy toys, high five to the toy manufacturers who are now marketing their playsets that says "for girls and boys" , or I noticed many saying kids instead of a specific gender.

A peek inside my daughter's toy box and a look around the living room gave me.some insights as well. Made Me notice that my daughter likes boy things and girl things, she has no stereotypes. She is actually particularly interested in bob the builder, she has tool sets, and her favorite cars are the excavators and dump trucks. She also has 2 favorite books, one  called "With any luck I'll drive a truck" and her other favorite is "the little excavator".  She is rough and tumble, and when we put her in a dress or skirt, we make sure she's got shorts underneath so she isn't restricted trying to  hide her panties.

You mentioned in lecture about tomboys And that you wanted us to talk about how we experienced gender roles growing up. I was the oldest grandkid and the only girl until is as about 8.  Well I was about as tomboy as it gets. Around 8 years old my grandma wanted me to get into dance or swimming. IIdidn'tIwantItoIIsoII joined the t ball team. At 9 my grandma wanted me to do girls scouts to learn practical life skills like sewing and baking and whatever the heck else those ladies do. I was upset when my cousins, all 3 boys, got to go to camp outs, and cut wood, and hike ect. Fun stuff. I went to one day of  girl scouts and the girl scouts were going to do a bake sale. I left and never came back. My next day that was supposed to go I chopped off all my hair, Told everyone my name was now Zack, and declared that I would be joining boy scouts.

I got in big trouble for cutting my hair. What's worseIisIthatII never did get to join the boyscouts lol. Nobody bugged me about the time when I was Zack, they all took me seriously and made me feel like If I wanted to, I could stay being Zack. WWhenhen
When I got older and I laughed about those memories  with my family, they all said they thought I'd be a lesbian. Go figure, I'm still a tomboy, but I'm not gay.
But Zack will always be a part of who I am :)

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Miller pgs 518-534
4/27/21
If you remember from previous posts, I spent two years of high school in Rotc. By the end of the two years I had done 4 weeks of legit bootcamp, spent a week on a submarine, and was a petty officer 3rd class. There were several things  I saw first hand that parallel the authors findings. I'm no feminist, but have always made it a personal goal to be as good as the boys. So it may come as a little unexpected to hear me say this, but i don't think women should be treated as equal in a military setting.

I am not one to conform to typical gender roles, however i do not think women should hold combat positions for several reasons.

1. Men are physically stronger. In a combat setting if you cannot carry the dead weight of your fallen comrade, you prolly shouldnt be at war.

2.Expecting equal pay for females, and equal job titles is fine, but  not if the standards to obtain those things are specially catered to the group because they are female.  My favorite Example is the Physical Fitness Test. The women's test is a cake walk compared to men's requirements. I was voted most physically fit female TWICE in a row  at bootcamp. All of my greatest accomplishments as an Rotc cadet were related to physical fitness. I won those awards not by passing the female requirements, but by surpassing all the males in my unit. They're expected to do more pushups, more situps, run faster in less time, and the expected time to complete the obstacle course for females was 4 mins longer than men. If you've ever done one of these courses, 4 mins is a LONG time. When we are talking life and death blood and gore combat skills, NOBODY in the military should have ANY variance in strength and ability. Equality. If that fat dude has to make the time chances are a female could. We have the same bodies, if anything females should be expected to be faster and more agile, because we weigh less on average then men. Knee Pushups? Really? Gimme a break, i did 100 reg pushups every morning. TIMED.

I think it's bullsh** that men have to have their heads shaved as party of the bootcamp process. I wanted to shave my head but they told me no because they didn't want angry parents calling after we got back.

3.Women have periods, and inescapable shifts in emotional stability, however mild as a result of those periods. This also brings about hygiene. Men can go much longer without basic hygienic luxuries, but a woman with a tampon on and a heavy flow, is going to need to clean herself. That isn't always possible, plus I heard it a lot while i was in bootcamp, the use of anything related to periods, is exploited by girls who want to get out of doing the grunt work.

4. How come the draft does not apply to women? Why can men go to die but women aren't first in line for equality on that.

5. My final reasoning for thinking females in the military is a bad idea, is because of sexual tensions that may arise, and thus create conflict within units. Men attracted to a female will tend to act out, do things to impress himself upon a female. This could create competition instead of the male bonding that basic training is supposed to achieve. You couple that with women who use sexuality as a tool against men, and you're in for trouble. I was the only female in Rotc who was not in the Junior officer program. I was going to be enlisted, you know actually work for a living.   The females all lorded their authority over the others, and never put in manual labor even when a job would have been more efficient otherwise.

If you can run with the men, you can get paid like a man. If you can't meet the standards they must live up to, tough. Your body has all the same muscles a man's does, use them or kick rocks.  I just dont think females are meant to be soldiers. Assasins, ninjas, espionage or intelligence agents yeah sure, but not soldiers, and not in combat on the front line.

# data[].attributes.body
4/27/21
I chose to do my own Mini analysis of Playboy covers, and then some other random internet research... out of the 50 covers I viewed, the BIGGEST thing i noticed was the lack of racial diversity. Some had biracial models on them, but Out of the 50 I saw there was no true dark skin tone on the cover of a magazine. Naomi Campbell was about as dark as it got.

The women who had curves, while still depicted in sexy and suggestive ways, wore more clothing or held props in areas where visible body fat may exist. Now keep in mind Play boy has been around for a very long time, my images ranged from the 70's up.

In any of the photos i looked up, I found only a few where people were specifically speaking out about the false beauty standards that we are rded with. The one above was from a series of photos showing celebrities and influencers before and after their photo shop.

Of course there's not going to be visible fat. We live in a digital world of blemish erasers, contouring and photoshop body sculpting. Now some magazines are showing ads with relatable images of normal sized people. Dove's love the skin you're in campaign is a pretty good example of this.

Overall body fat was edited out of 99% of the images i found, even on men. Racial diversity is still weak at best, and for the love of god playboy, how about a little variance, blonde hair blue eyed pin ups are sooooooo 1960's.

# data[].attributes.body
4/28/21

I was never one of those girls who dreamed about a wedding. To me while the sentiment is nice, the idea of spending (30k or more) seems like a complete and nonsensical way to start a future with someone. Let's blow a years salary, for ONE day.

I don't want a wedding. My fiance Agrees. We tell everyone we're married anyways. After our daughter was born while we were spending  weeks in the nicu, he turned me in the grocery store and stuck out his hand for a handshake. He said, "I'm in this relationship for the long haul. Baby?" I smiled and shook his hand. "Baby." I agreed. That was it, since then neither of us have ever considered each other anything less than a spouse.

Someday for legal and financial reasons we plan on moseying down to the courthouse for a marriage thingie, but otherwise I don't NEED or want to spend money on a formal party.

A wedding is like a greeting card holiday, the wedding industry needs you to have weddings. Thousands upon thousands of dollars are tied up in wedding related consumer goods and services. The lawyers need you to get married so you can get divorced later.

but why not get married for the cost of the paperwork, and go on a really long and nice honeymoon? That's my plan, maybe we'll throw a big ass party when we get back, but love is about the commitment you make everyday, not just about the ceremony you have on the one day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wedding cost of $22,564 for a wedding in Stockton CA with 50 to 100 guests_

# data[].attributes.body
As mentioned in the previous post, I never understood taking on the expense involved for having a traditional white wedding. If I blew 30k on a single day of my life, I would spend the rest of my life wondering WTF I was thinking and would totally end up having buyers remorse at the end of the day. I cannot fathom why you would start your life with someone else in debt. The previous post showed you the cost of a wedding in San Joaquin, did it mention the honeymoon?

If you are upper class elite, then sure have a wedding. If you aren't, what single day could possibly be worth a years worth of irreplaceable time spent making that money? Its highly illogical, counterintuitive, and is a total social construct developed by a multimillion dollar consumer industry which has been glamourized by the media networks and reality television.

Many women wear wedding rings, not just bands but huge diamonds adorned upon them. Sure it's pretty, but unless i need to cut through glass a diamond isnt THAT beautiful. Its especially less beautiful when you think about the slave labor in Africa, yep the people forced to claw those stupid rocks out of the earth. But nobody wants to talk about the curruption and subsequent monopolization of the diamond market.

Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity. Reading about how much money is sopent on weddings just made me think idocracy was a documentary and we are all screwed.

# data[].attributes.body
Henslin, Eating Your Friends is the hardest.

5/2/21

Apparently this was also a feature film on the early 90's. What a story! If I were in the same boat (Or plane rather) I would most likely have been the one to suggest eating the dead. Especially if they were fresh cause of the snow. Much like the others did I would have justified it by explaining that their deaths are in vain if we didn't eat them, at least in their death they will sustain others in life. The ground rules of their lil society were rightly established, when you have limited resources work also needs to be divided so that everyone could pitch in. I just couldn't imagine how terrible this would be, or the type of therapy you'd need after eating someone you knew and loved.

This story is so inspiring I am gonna look it up and see if I can watch it on my streaming service!

# data[].attributes.body
Zimbardo
5/2/21

I really would like to get more information on this experiment. For it to have gotten so out of hand that the researcher had to say ok enough says a lot.  We used to do leadership training in my ROTC class, often times in situations where we were simulating environments similar to this experiement.  Once while on a two week stay on  a submarine, our rotc unit were given duties and jobs to preform, and some of them were given officer duties.

Immediately, the (girls mostly) began abusing their power as officers. From giving extra rations and snacks to certain of their friends, to assigning people they didn't like latrine cleaning over and over. One officer even out a boy she liked in the brig, where she had him stay until she was relieved from her priveledge as officer for violating her own rules about cerfew.

In these types of excercise it is amazing how real the situations feel even though they are not. At bootcamp we did a leadership training obstacle course  which involved moving an "injured" classmate across a very precarious obstacle course, and bringing a huge case of ammunition. You had a deadline and other tasks to preform along the way. There was fog and blanks were being fired, even so, our imaginations had us ducking the first few mins. When I reflect on these memories, it felt like we were truly soldiers in a wartime experience.

Learning what behaviors will emerge when a human Is put in
various situations is important. This is one of the reasons the military does war games. To keep your senses sharp and to show the leaders who needs to work on what, because you don't want to find that out when you're actually in a battle.

What I wondered is why non of the inmates simply walked out after their "parole"  request was denied. It would seem logical to just try to leave. Why did they give up and return to a cell? Fascinating.

# data[].attributes.body
On being sane in insane places. ROSENHAN.

5/3/21

This chapter was very concerning. Seeing how the labels attached to mental health follow you, and how you'll continue to be stigmatized even when "in remission" can affect your future. My medical history has me listed as bi polar 2. I wonder if that has affected the way doctors treat me?
I wonder if I ever got really upset if I'd be 51-50'd immediately because of my diagnosis? There were more than a few times in the past when doctors acted differently after finding out I used to be medicated for it.

It also brought up questions like, "if I were to be insane, would I even be aware of this?" It seems that if psychiatrists cannot tell the difference between a sane and an insane person, where do we even draw the line of sanity? Does rejecting the current reality and substituting your own make either one any less real?

# data[].attributes.headline
Hunt- police accounts of normal force . 

# data[].attributes.subject
Hunt- police accounts of normal force . 

# data[].attributes.body
5/3/21

Remember that guy in the above picture? The one who maced and pepper sprayed tons of college students who were peacefully protesting during the occupy movement? I've gone back and forth with how I feel about cops over the years. My uncle (I interviewed him for the race section) is retired Stockton pd.

I've heard stories of the crap they have to deal with. So I suppose I will say this, SOME cops are shady and currupt but the majority really are normal guys who want to protect and serve.

Humans in general will get caught up in the emotion of a moment, especially with Adrenaline pumping. The actions of individuals should not be applied to the group as a whole. Just like with racial prejudice, we cannot judge the many by the actions of the few.

What I would look closer into, much like the author did in this study, is the kind of workload these men carry. Stress can make you do some stupid aggressive stuff. Couple that with financial stress and its a ticking time bomb. Remember when stockton went banrupt? Fun fact, the police here in town had to put gas in their cars, with their own money, because the city had defaulted to all of its creditors. There was mandatory unpaid overtime, my uncle had it really rough some days.

Just remember that not all police are bad just like some crimes are committed for good reason. Not all white girls like pumpkin spice, and just cause you see some homie's on the corner late at night does not mean they're up to no good.

# data[].attributes.body
Something I read recently

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Deviance and mental illness often go hand-in-hand. While not all deviants are considered mentally ill, almost all mentally ill persons are considered deviant (since mental illness isn not considered "normal"). When studying deviance, then, sociologists also often study mental illness.

The three main theoretical frameworks of sociology regard mental illness a little differently, however they all look to the social systems in which mental illness is define, identified, and treated. Functionalists believe that by recognizing mental illness, society upholds values about conforming behavior. Symbolic interactionists see mentally ill persons not as "sick," but as victims of societal reactions to their behavior.

Finally, conflict theorists, combined with labeling theorists, believe that the people in a society with the fewest resources are the most likely to be labeled mentally ill. For instance, women, racial minorities, and the poor all suffer higher rates of mental illness than groups of higher social and economic status. Further, research has consistently shown that middle- and upper-class persons are more likely to receive some form of psychotherapy for their mental illness. Minorities and poorer individuals are more likely to only receive medication and physical rehabilitation, and not psychotherapy.

Sociologists have two possible explanations for the link between social status and mental illness. First, some say it is the stresses of being in a low-income group, being a racial minority, or being a woman in a sexist society that contributes to higher rates of mental illness because this harsher social environment is a threat to mental health. On the other hand, others argue that the same behavior that is labeled mentally ill for some groups may be tolerated in other groups and so therefore not labeled as such. For instance, if a homeless woman were to exhibit crazy, "deranged" behavior, she would be considered mentally ill whereas if a rich woman exhibited the same behavior, she might be seen as merely eccentric or charming.

Women also have higher rates of mental illness than men. Sociologists believe that this stems from the roles that women are forced to play in society. Poverty, unhappy marriages, physical and sexual abuse, the stresses of rearing children, and spending a lot of time doing housework all contribute to higher rates of mental illness for women.
Giddens, A. (1991). Introduction to Sociology. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. Andersen, M.L. and Taylor, H.F. (2009). Sociology: The Essentials. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Sociology of Deviance and Mental Illness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Deviance and mental illness often go hand-in-hand. While not all deviants are considered mentally ill, almost all mentally ill persons are considered deviant (since mental illness isn not considered "normal"). When studying deviance, then, sociologists also often study mental illness.

# data[].attributes.body
5/5/21

I am a stay at home mom, and lately I haven't gone very many places to see anyone out being crazy. I also observed how i was very careful not to judge before telling myself you have to for this assignment! haha!

However at the dollar general by my house, this morning there was a guy doing what i assume was heroine outside. He was rocking back and forth after and by the time i got back outside the store he was stone cold passed out on the sidewalk.

To most, this is crazy, this is a violation of social norms. it isn't "NORMAL" to be sleeping in the parking lot of the grocery store. Adiict, crazy, loser, hobo... many of these labels may spring to mind.  I try not to judge crazy, because when i was on drugs i too had a few psychotic episodes.

Not everyone was lucky like I was.  For the 2 years I was homeless, we had a tent and mostly safe spot on the levee island across from stag. We had a "home" to go to after a day of dumpster diving,  recycling and scavenging for supplies.

Judging by the way the  public treated me when I was homeless, I am sure many deemed me crazy, or mentally ill. After all I was encroaching upon their world, their "civilized society" .

A person must be crazy to be digging through garbage and eating out of dumpsters.   Try it.

Look at it from our perspective. It's rational, in fact dumpster diving is a necessity. Your very survival on the streets, depends on how well you are able to create for yourself base camp. To maximize your productivity and thus make the best use of the energy you have off of the very little food you have, you have so that you  have a place to be safe, and rest.

The rationality of dumpster diving, is that it provides not only food, and many many clothes, but you can re purpose almost anything to take back to your camp. nasty old sneakers, the laces are your rope, you need to find a few items to cook on. You are always looking for recyclables, because on a good day that puts around 15-20 bucks in your pocket.

In addition to usable items, i got into the habit of finding things of collector value.  Dead people's houses have the best dumpsters to look through for this exact purpose. Many times the family left behind throw ALOT of stuff away before they sell the deceased home. We once found a guy who had collected HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of toiletries from hotels. Soap, shampoos, mouthwash conditioners and lotions. It couldn't have been more of a blessing, cause it was summer, we were all always hot and stinky, and  when i got back to camp (we shared the island with 8-10 other people)
i went around handing out care packages.

My point is, while it felt embarrassing at first, after a few weeks of being homeless I realized that I wasn't a crazy trash can lady like the normies viewed me. I was a survivalist making the best use of the limited resources I had available to me. I have some peace of mind knowing if the world went to hell in a handbasket, i might be resourceful enough to get by.

This can also tie into Labeling Theory. Once your a homeless addict, you are judged by those two things alone. The label follows me, and i wear it on my sleeve. I am proud of where i have come up from, and I tell everyone my truth if I am asked about my past. Those were my struggles that I overcame. I someday hope to write a book about my experiences, as i took notes throughout the whole 2 years.

I still am shy about re entering society, and in fact get anxiety about it at times. Cause at the time they were applied to me, those labels hurt. Being hungry, and ashamed and then people spit on you or makefun of you by posting your picture on social media, it strips you of your self worth. You see, when you spend so long  being shunned, scoffed at and made fun of, you realize just how fake a majority of people can be. Shallow, self serving creatures we humans are.

Since coming back from my crazy off streets life, I've found that civilized living is much sweeter. I appreciate the light that i didnt have to gather wood, melt wax and make candles with to have. I can turn on a faucet for water, insteasd of drag a 5 gallon jug on a dolly back from the apartment complex on brookside. The ability to keep cold milk, is a huge thing i am grateful for. Although i will say that our ground cooler we had dug was somewhat capable milk never lasted for more than 2 or 3 days.

In closing, I was the crazy one. The one who lost it all to drugs and misfortune, the bipolar addict who hit rock bottom. But you know, sometimes you don't know how good the water tastes, until you've carried 5 gallons of it for a quarter mile.

# data[].attributes.body
1d
Henslin, Eating Your Friends is the hardest. 

5/2/21

Apparently this was also a feature film on the early 90's. What a story! If I were in the same boat (Or plane rather) I would most likely have been the one to suggest eating the dead. Especially if they were fresh cause of the snow. Much like the others did I would have justified it by explaining that their deaths are in vain if we didn't eat them, at least in their death they will sustain others in life. The ground rules of their lil society were rightly established, when you have limited resources work also needs to be divided so that everyone could pitch in. I just couldn't imagine how terrible this would be, or the type of therapy you'd need after eating someone you knew and loved. 

This story is so inspiring I am gonna look it up and see if I can watch it on my streaming service! 
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The pathology of imprisonment
Avatar of Ashley J. Maslen
Ashley J. Maslen
20h
The pathology of imprisonment 
Zimbardo 
5/2/21

I really would like to get more information on this experiment. For it to have gotten so out of hand that the researcher had to say ok enough says a lot.  We used to do leadership training in my ROTC class, often times in situations where we were simulating environments similar to this experiement.  Once while on a two week stay on  a submarine, our rotc unit were given duties and jobs to preform, and some of them were given officer duties. 

Immediately, the (girls mostly) began abusing their power as officers. From giving extra rations and snacks to certain of their friends, to assigning people they didn't like latrine cleaning over and over. One officer even out a boy she liked in the brig, where she had him stay until she was relieved from her priveledge as officer for violating her own rules about cerfew. 

In these types of excercise it is amazing how real the situations feel even though they are not. At bootcamp we did a leadership training obstacle course  which involved moving an "injured" classmate across a very precarious obstacle course, and bringing a huge case of ammunition. You had a deadline and other tasks to preform along the way. There was fog and blanks were being fired, even so, our imaginations had us ducking the first few mins. When I reflect on these memories, it felt like we were truly soldiers in a wartime experience. 

Learning what behaviors will emerge when a human Is put in
various situations is important. This is one of the reasons the military does war games. To keep your senses sharp and to show the leaders who needs to work on what, because you don't want to find that out when you're actually in a battle.

What I wondered is why non of the inmates simply walked out after their "parole"  request was denied. It would seem logical to just try to leave. Why did they give up and return to a cell? Fascinating.  


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On being sane in ins
Avatar of Ashley J. Maslen
Ashley J. Maslen
6h
On being sane in insane places. ROSENHAN.

5/3/21

This chapter was very concerning. Seeing how the labels attached to mental health follow you, and how you'll continue to be stigmatized even when "in remission" can affect your future. My medical history has me listed as bi polar 2. I wonder if that has affected the way doctors treat me? 
I wonder if I ever got really upset if I'd be 51-50'd immediately because of my diagnosis? There were more than a few times in the past when doctors acted differently after finding out I used to be medicated for it. 

It also brought up questions like, "if I were to be insane, would I even be aware of this?" It seems that if psychiatrists cannot tell the difference between a sane and an insane person, where do we even draw the line of sanity? Does rejecting the current reality and substituting your own make either one any less real? 

# data[].attributes.body
1h
Required, "crazy" post
5/5/21

I am a stay at home mom, and lately I haven't gone very many places to see anyone out being crazy. I also observed how i was very careful not to judge before telling myself you have to for this assignment! haha! 

However at the dollar general by my house, this morning there was a guy doing what i assume was heroine outside. He was rocking back and forth after and by the time i got back outside the store he was stone cold passed out on the sidewalk. 

To most, this is crazy, this is a violation of social norms. it isn't "NORMAL" to be sleeping in the parking lot of the grocery store. Adiict, crazy, loser, hobo... many of these labels may spring to mind.  I try not to judge crazy, because when i was on drugs i too had a few psychotic episodes. 

Not everyone was lucky like I was.  For the 2 years I was homeless, we had a tent and mostly safe spot on the levee island across from stag. We had a "home" to go to after a day of dumpster diving,  recycling and scavenging for supplies.

Judging by the way the  public treated me when I was homeless, I am sure many deemed me crazy, or mentally ill. After all I was encroaching upon their world, their "civilized society" .  

A person must be crazy to be digging through garbage and eating out of dumpsters.   Try it. 

Look at it from our perspective. It's rational, in fact dumpster diving is a necessity. Your very survival on the streets, depends on how well you are able to create for yourself base camp. To maximize your productivity and thus make the best use of the energy you have off of the very little food you have, you have so that you  have a place to be safe, and rest. 

The rationality of dumpster diving, is that it provides not only food, and many many clothes, but you can re purpose almost anything to take back to your camp. nasty old sneakers, the laces are your rope, you need to find a few items to cook on. You are always looking for recyclables, because on a good day that puts around 15-20 bucks in your pocket. 

In addition to usable items, i got into the habit of finding things of collector value.  Dead people's houses have the best dumpsters to look through for this exact purpose. Many times the family left behind throw ALOT of stuff away before they sell the deceased home. We once found a guy who had collected HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of toiletries from hotels. Soap, shampoos, mouthwash conditioners and lotions. It couldn't have been more of a blessing, cause it was summer, we were all always hot and stinky, and  when i got back to camp (we shared the island with 8-10 other people)
i went around handing out care packages. 

My point is, while it felt embarrassing at first, after a few weeks of being homeless I realized that I wasn't a crazy trash can lady like the normies viewed me. I was a survivalist making the best use of the limited resources I had available to me. I have some peace of mind knowing if the world went to hell in a handbasket, i might be resourceful enough to get by.

This can also tie into Labeling Theory. Once your a homeless addict, you are judged by those two things alone. The label follows me, and i wear it on my sleeve. I am proud of where i have come up from, and I tell everyone my truth if I am asked about my past. Those were my struggles that I overcame. I someday hope to write a book about my experiences, as i took notes throughout the whole 2 years. 

I still am shy about re entering society, and in fact get anxiety about it at times. Cause at the time they were applied to me, those labels hurt. Being hungry, and ashamed and then people spit on you or makefun of you by posting your picture on social media, it strips you of your self worth. You see, when you spend so long  being shunned, scoffed at and made fun of, you realize just how fake a majority of people can be. Shallow, self serving creatures we humans are. 

Since coming back from my crazy off streets life, I've found that civilized living is much sweeter. I appreciate the light that i didnt have to gather wood, melt wax and make candles with to have. I can turn on a faucet for water, insteasd of drag a 5 gallon jug on a dolly back from the apartment complex on brookside. The ability to keep cold milk, is a huge thing i am grateful for. Although i will say that our ground cooler we had dug was somewhat capable milk never lasted for more than 2 or 3 days. 

In closing, I was the crazy one. The one who lost it all to drugs and misfortune, the bipolar addict who hit rock bottom. But you know, sometimes you don't know how good the water tastes, until you've carried 5 gallons of it for a quarter mile.  

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