You must...

...go to Ted.com and find out how to make a difference. Check out Dave Eggers, one of this year's TED prize winners, because he's really really cool.

My first grad school project

After being very busy this week, last night I finally finished my first paper for grad school. Go me.

Since I've put a lot of work into it, I thought I had to share it with yall (You both? You singular?) in the blogosphere.

My study is Brownfields. If you don't know what that is (you probably don't), Brownfields are former industrial sites. Unused factories, abandoned buildings, shuttered businesses, etc. If you want a dictionary definition, it's:

brownfield |ˈbrounˌfēld|
adjective [ attrib. ]
(of an urban site for potential building development) having had previous development on it. Compare with greenfield .
noun
a former industrial or commercial site where future use is affected by real or perceived environmental contamination.

Thank you, mac dictionary. But anyways, I'm looking at ways to redevelop these, so that they're not such a socioeconomic black hole. This project that I've been working on is a literature review: I look at what other scholars have done on the subject and try to find holes in the research--errors, but mostly just what they've missed out on.

Most redevelopment that gets done is residential--in fact, most of it is really nice luxury apartments and condos in downtown areas--because developers (and cities that tax them) can make a lot more right away. Building factories is way riskier, and the return is lower. This is good, right?

But the problem is that the actual poor people who lived in these really shitty neighborhoods can't afford these really nice houses. So basically, poor neighborhoods basically get moved (the people of the neighborhoods, not the buildings). So instead of nice apartments fixing the problem of urban blight, they're just moving the problem. And no geographer is really focusing on building new factories, which could at least help the problem of urban unemployment. And in Milwaukee, we need that: unemployment among black men here runs a little over 50%.

So my methods and my ideas will probably be savaged by my professors. And really, my research is shite. But hopefully I can improve that, and make it an even bigger research project.

I have been bothered...

ioofai@mykumagaya.com / yo buddy / yo Knife through hot butter Symbol-A F D M, African Diamond Co., Inc (Precious Metals)

is the inexplicable txt I was woken up by at 3:43 AM this morning. First of all, it's hard enough for me to sleep in with the alley right next to my window and the permanent flock of starlings in my neighbor's back yard, so waking me up really early on the weekend (when I still have a lot to write for school) is NOT cool.

Secondly, African mineral/diamond/mining companies (which I think this is) are probably the worst businesses on the planet. Investors, jewelers, and mine owners make enough money to kill a horse, while the people who actually do the mining work in dangerous and difficult jobs without a union, and get paid in peanuts. See realizingrights.org, Oxfam, and nodirtygold.org for more information. Also not cool.

I googled African Diamond Company, and couldn't find a website (the closest I could get is this. Apparently it's an American company), but apparently you can reach them at 888-418-2112. OR you can write to them at 2325 Dulles Corner Blvd, Suite 500, Herndon, VA 20171. Anyways, their lack of website seems shady. I did track down some photos of their mining operations here.

And THEN I went to mykumagaya.com, and found a Japanese website, which seems a bit like Yahoo (but I don't read Japanese, so I'll need someone to verify this for me). Not cool.

So for waking me up at 3:45 AM, for contributing to the abuse of human rights in Africa, and for using a very annoying anonymous Japanese website, I have now declared a Holy War against ioofai@mykumagaya.com and African precious metals.

The upshot is, don't wake me up with foolish txts at 3:45. I get really self-righteous the next day.

Dude, we were JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS.

So I'm involved with a Catholic group called JustFaith (you can find these good people here), and basically it's teaching people about the Catholic doctrine of social justice. The upshot is, Jesus went out of his way to help to show love to and the poor, the sick, the lonely, the hurting, and the marginalized, so as Christians we HAVE to do this too.

So today I met an old drunk bum on the bus. He didn't seem quite all there: he slurred his words, didn't quite hear what I was saying, and he smelled plainly of old liquor. And I just went to JustFaith last night, so our discussions were still fresh in my head, so I talked with him. He told me he recognized me from 5 years ago (he's either lying or mistaken, since I was in Arizona until 2004), and he talked about his childhood in Milwaukee.

Then he asked me if I could spare some money for breakfast, so, again, thinking about what we JUST TALKED ABOUT last night, I offered to have lunch (actually, it was brunch, about 10:00) with him at McDonalds, which was like 2 stops away.

So we get off the bus, this man (whose name is Larry) and I, and the first thing he does is pee.

On the curb.

In front of everyone going by on North Avenue.

He peed on the curb, in front of everyone. And we were just going into McDonalds, which HAS A BATHROOM.

But then I wondered what Jesus would have done, and I decided that Jesus probably still would have bought the man some lunch. I wonder if anyone peed in front of Jesus. He asked me then if I could get him a Big Breakfast, and I told him he could get whatever and it was on me.

So then Larry and I go into McDonalds, and he orders his Big Breakfast. The clerk reacts with suspicion, asking Larry if he's paying. I tell her that I'm paying, and she asks if he begged me (he did, after all). But I tell her that I'm just taking my friend out to lunch. A second later the manager goes up to Larry and kicks him out. I guess I don't blame her: I used to work retail and have had to kick out many vagrants and beggers (and I didn't see it, but there was even a public pee-er in our music section once. I guess public peeing is a bigger problem than I thought). So Larry waits outside and I ask for our meals to go.

So I get outside, and Larry and I have our brunches on the curb outside, and we just have a conversation about small stuff: just shooting the shit, basically.

He seemed very thankful about this. I mean, like, really really thankful. What we're told over and over again in JustFaith is to decrease the distance between ourselves and the poor (and everyone else). Just as Jesus didn't send off checks, but went directly to people with the problems, we should do the same thing too.

So I don't know if I helped Larry out. I feel a little bit better knowing that I at least tried to show love to someone who probably doesn't see it much from other people. But I also feel guilty, because there are thousands of other people just like Larry in Milwaukee, probably much much worse-off than him too. And I might have been completely taken for a ride, too. Maybe Larry goes home to Fox Point because he scams ignorant liberal do-gooders like me. (I am an ignorant liberal do-gooder, by the way. Just in case some conservative libertarian is reading this. Don't want to have to argue that.) But what if Larry really did need help?