Called to Confrontation

Recently I was given the privilege of working in the kitchen at St. Vincent de PaulÂ’s. This provided the opportunity to meet some of the diners as well as many of the people who volunteer there regularly. It is always a humbling experience working with individuals who have dedicated their time month after month, year after year to the service of an organization such as St. VincentÂ’s, and yet at the same time it is a privilege to see the joy they maintain while serving.
My greatest delight, however, was in being able to serve the food we had prepared earlier in the morning to the diners. A few of the volunteers I worked with knew the names of almost every person that came through the food line, and in a few short seconds would generate a conversation between themselves and the diners that would result in a laughter and brilliant smiles. The people we served were so gracious. As they approached us, one could notice the emotional heaviness they carried in their appearance, and yet each one of them reflected a quiet beauty passing by, stopping, asking a little of this please, thank you, smile, a little of that...
I think one of the greatest aspects of service is the growing experience of gradually being able to give up past perceptions of people in terms of a collective identity, and instead beginning to see the faces of real people emerge in one's mind. That is why exposure to injustice is so vital. It forces us to confront important issues we might otherwise dismiss and makes us re-evaluate our choice to compartmentalize the needs around us without fully addressing them. An issue such as poverty no longer exists as purely a political issue, but it becomes a part of an individual struggle to be a voice for the voiceless- for the individual people one serves.

Freedom Takes A Little Magic

I believe Alford best explained freedom on page 34: “Jazz musicians talk about being ‘in the groove,’ a state of improvisation that involves not just me and my music but others as well if I am playing in a group. Although individual skills and talent are involved, they do not create the groove. The groove is created by the space among the players, not too close and not too tight. As such, ‘in the groove’ is temporary creation, as transient as the performance; the negotiation of talents it has been called, each player in tune with himself, the music, and the other players – at least for a little while.”
Alford calls this the magic of freedom or “freedom with.” Freedom is being with people around creating and utilizing each other’s skills for perfection, for freedom. Freedom is to be creative, to be expressive, and to have a will and an environment which allows you to be yourself to the fullest. An environment like this only makes everything better. It allows humans to experience freedom as a whole, with one another, and see each other experience personal freedom. I like this jazz analogy because I think it really allows one to see the image of freedom. While we each bring an essence to this world, it takes an entire population to complete one’s freedom. [C. Fred Alford, Rethinking Freedom: Why Freedom Has Lost Its Meaning and What Can Be Done to Save It]

Art--A Collective and Individual Experience

9-19-06

Volunteering at Art Works Downtown has opened a new chapter in my life. After only working for three hours on Saturday, I can already see that I have immersed myself into a new and exciting network that I will continue to be involved with even after my required service hours are completed.
Through my volunteer service, I have found myself assuming the role of a small part of something much bigger than myself. I think this can tie into the concept of self established by Mikhail Bakhtin. The idea that “we experience the world through a ‘We’ before we experience it through an ‘I’” and also “before we can understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live” can be related in the lives of the artists who I am surrounded by (Charles Guingon, On Being Authentic, 121). Artists express themselves through different media, such as paint, photography, ceramics, drawings, etc, and the most successful of these artists are typically known for self-expression. Art is a great way to look within yourself and discover who you are, and then express this concept to others through the visual world. But often times when artists are beginning to establish themselves, they seek the approval of others around them, and incorporate lessons they have learned from the people in their lives. This is where the “We” comes in. It takes years of practice and refinement for artists to develop a style that is uniquely their own, branching off from techniques that instructors have taught them, shaping them into the masters of today. Thus, these masters of the visual arts had to establish themselves in the public eye, with style influenced by those of their past, before they could experiment with their true self on canvas.
The idea that artists incorporate techniques from others around them into their own style of work can also be related to the philosophical views of Bernard Williams. “It is only through our social interactions that we become selves whose inner episodes are given enough steadiness and cohesiveness…” (155). It is the interactions we have with other people and the choices we make that establish who we are in our inner selves. Constantly, our lives are influenced by those surrounding us, and it is how we correspond with these interactions that determines our true selves. Art Works Downtown is a community of artists working together to introduce the world of fine arts to the community. They hope to make this world a brighter place through awareness of culture and appreciation for creativity. A commons for these ingenious minds, Art Works Downtown harbors all of these individual “selves” in one catacomb of creativity, creating the sense of “we,” or the artists as a community. I am honored to be a part of this amazing establishment.

Making the Impossible Possible
“Strong emotions and motivations can often overcome a lack of resources […]”(James Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest, 292).
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While working with Canal Alliance this semester, I have undergone many new experiences. I have never worked with a non-profit organization of any type nor have I worked with teenagers before. Also, I have never participated in an organization focused on improving their community. As a result, my time at Canal Alliance has literally been a learning experience, exposing me to realities that I was not aware of before. Indeed, I have undergone, as Jasper and other theorists of protest may refer to as, an expansion of consciousness. One way in which my awareness has been increased is by becoming more knowledgeable of the nature of organizations in general. As the above quote states, I have become more aware of how small organizations can still mobilize through “strong emotions and motivations” despite their lack of resources.
I have seen this first hand in Canal Alliance. For, I do not need to have access to their finances to know that they do not have an overabundance of resources. A simple tour of their facilities illustrates that their resources are not endless but limited. However, those involved are highly motivated to overcome this and to improve the lives of those in the canal, especially the youth. Indeed, every time I go to work with the high school students, Vanessa, the leader of this group, reminds and tells these students that they are going to college. With such people keeping Canal Alliance going, from its after-school program for students from kindergarten to high school to its classes for adults wishing to improve their English or computer skills, Canal Alliance is up and running, thriving even.
Yet, it does not have a fancy building of its own out of which to operate nor an endless source of money and other resources it needs to keep going. The only resource that seems to be constant is the strong desire and commitment of its leaders and participants. It is precisely this motivation that has allowed Canal Alliance to flourish despite a lack of resources. The fact that a community organization can operate without many resources to draw from has changed my thinking when it comes to protest. For, I now know from my time at Canal Alliance that one does not need to have many resources to bring about change. I now know that, as the Beatles have sung and as corny as this sounds, sometimes “all you need is love.” Love of one’s cause, community, etc. can give one the motivation they need to make the impossible possible.

doing a disservice

working with kids is important to me. teaching them and playing with them brings back the exciting parts of my childhood, rekindles that childlike spirit i have in me that too many exams and papers have quashed. for some reason when i am working with them i feel like i have the power to change everything that is going wrong in their lives - preserving their childhoods for as long as possible. i try my best to help them, to be that role model they may not have. sometimes i feel like i would give anything for them. so it's only natural for me to feel hurt when one of them thinks i am not being fair to them.

the other day i had to talk to a student about his "bad" grades and "poor" behavior in one of his classes. when i told him that it was disrespectful for him to be rude to students in his classes and in our afterschool program he accused me of only being mean to him. when i asked him why he thought that, he said, "you're only punish me, but never punish so-and-so becasue he was born here." i literally became speechless. i never thought anyone would think that i would show favoritism. (trust me, i do my fair share of yelling and dealing out the punishments!) and then i realized it was less about me and him, and more about him and how he is seen as non-American , non-native, an immigrant, someone who "doesn't belong." in his eyes, what i do to him is somehow a reflection of his nationality and it's not because i show signs of racism or prejudice (as an african american female who stood in the face of racism, i am in no place to judge), it's how people have treated him in the past. the more i thought about it, the more i realized that it's not just him. over 95% of the students in my afterschool program speak english as a second language; those who immigrated to the U.S. where labeled as second-class citizens.

how am i to change this perception that he and so many others have? i talked to him about it the next day and settled the matter, but for others it may not be so easy to settle. how do I, we, stop this type of thinking of continuing? when did it start? As C.G. Jung stated in The Undiscovered Self, "Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche." from this statement, i can only conclude that it is the past oppression of others that pervaded into our society and have affected the psyches' of the young as well as the old. if only we could learn to raise ourselves up, the world would exist in an entirely different state of mind.