The Masons

I really appreciated Paula coming in to class on Monday; her intimate knowledge of Mart and the nuances of community revitalization was unique and interesting, and I was interested to hear what she had to say about identity perception and joint-effort facilitation. 

I don't know what I would do if I really had to answer the question of the Mason Meeting House, and I have great respect for the Paula and the people of Mart trying to come to a consensus. I understand how a physical building can seem so important, as if it is unfathomable to live without. My childhood home was the inspiration for many things in my life, including my career choice, and after we moved away from it, everything about it seemed perfect to me. Every house afterward, I compared to my first house, and all were found lacking. Of course, what I wanted the new houses to have were intangible, emotional connections that were improbable to replicate: that one memory of being woken up by the rising sun streaming through my window, that Christmas morning when we piled on the couch to see what Santa brought, those countless days of swinging from the treehouse onto the trampoline until it was too dark to see. In my mind, those moments and the physical characteristics of my old house were integrally linked. It may have been irrational, but it was definitely real. I wonder if that is how the Masons view their meeting house, if the memories and the actual building are so connected that tearing down the building would be like erasing the memories and rejecting the days spent within its walls. 

I think Augustin's group mentioned something about recording the stories and memories of the area, and I think that's a great idea, but what if they actually recorded the voices of the Masons telling stories and found a way to replay them in the halls? If the old stories were reverberating against the walls of a new building (excepting the secretive ones), maybe it would make the transition to a new building easier and less sad. It seems like the town probably has a lot of open, abandoned lots, so I would be wary to just make a park, but I feel like an intervention that is outdoor-focused and available to the community would be great. A place to gather, cook out, raise the kids, or simply pass the time together seems like something the town might enjoy, and while I know these ideas don't exactly address the needs of the Masons, they do address the presence of the community. It's a shame that it would be so expensive to repair the old building, but maybe with enough volunteer labor, recycled materials and funds from the greater Mason community, the Masons of Mart can meet in their old house again.  

NIMBY

“The public has an inalienable right to know that human trafficking, a barbaric form of modern-day slavery, exists not just in countries half-way around the world but also here in Texas, and there is action that can be taken to stamp it out.”

- TX Representative Senfronia Thompson

Some of you may have heard me mention modern day slavery, aka human/sex trafficking. It's an issue that I was introduced to junior year of high school--Thank you to Ms. Nyman for making us do an intensive independent research project in English III--and hope to incorporate into my career in the future. For the past six years (wow, long time) I have read literature and heard accounts and learned about organizations that interact with the international slave trade while understanding that slavery exists everywhere, but only recently was I introduced to the reality of the domestic slave trade. Not only trafficking foreigners across our borders but selling American citizens for sex and labor. American citizens?? Heck no. I have to share what I've learned with you guys, because it has really opened my eyes. I don't know what it has to do with planning, exactly, but I do think that the stratified economic and social atmospheres of a person's existence do effect their opportunities and life decisions.

This blog is going to be dry because really the facts speak loud enough for themselves.

What is Human Trafficking?

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 defines human trafficking as:

1. the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services

2. through the use of force, fraud, or coercion

3. for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, slavery or forced commercial sex acts

Therefore, underage prostitution and pornography is legally sex slavery. Easy to ignore that. Forced prostitution is slavery. We're so used to singing about ho's and pimps, joking about places like The Landing Strip by the airport and excusing porn, but from what I've read, the every day life of a prostitute/exotic dancer is far from glamorous or sexy. And even if a person "chooses" to sell themselves for sex, the reality of pimping forces the prostitutes into a state of dependency and enslavement. All that to say, it's not like Pretty Woman.

At the bottom, I've listed organizations I've been involved with/know someone involved with, both locally and nationally. I've also listed books I recommend. If you want to do something, these are good resources to start with.

In the world:

1. The United States is one of the top three destination points for trafficked victims and California, New York, Texas and Nevada are the top destination states within the country.

2. Human Trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the 21st century – a $9 billion industry. It is the 2nd most prevalent organized crime activity in the world just after drugs and tied with illegal arms trafficking.

3. An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world this very moment.

4. An estimated 13 million children are enslaved around the world today, accounting for nearly half of trafficking victims in the world.

5. The average age of a young woman being trafficked is 12-14 years old.

6. Two children are trafficked internationally every minute

In Texas:

1. Depending on whom you ask, Houston is the leading trafficking site in the U.S. or very near the top, along with Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, and New York City.

2. The Texas Office of the Attorney General estimates that 1 of every 5 of the 18,000 victims trafficked through the USA travel through Texas along Interstate 10.

3. The Super Bowl is believed to be the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.

4. Austin, TX hosts an annual Human Trafficking Conference in the fall (since 2010) to discuss the slave trade and determine further methods of abolition.

I realize this is not an exhaustive list of facts by any means, and though the numbers are striking, the victims' stories are the most powerful element of information available. I bring it up to get the conversation going, to tell you the truth that we haven't heard about, to ask you to decide how you feel about slavery.

How can you help?

1. Talk about it and learn more about it

2. Donate money, time, energy, talent to anti slavery and after care organizations

3. Buy fair trade products and know your farmer: local foods and foods sold at our farmers' markets are more likely to have been harvested without slavery

4. Support education for the masses

5. Demand stronger laws, especially targeting traffickers NOT just illegals and/or prostitutes

I don't know everything concerning modern day slavery, but I love talking about it. I feel like the more we talk about it, the stronger our voice will be and the faster we can abolish slavery for good.

Fact Sheets:

International Crisis Aid: http://www.crisisaid.org/ICAPDF/Trafficking/traffickstats.pdf

Weave, Inc.: http://www.weaveinc.org/post/facts-about-human-trafficking

The Advocates: http://www.mncasa.org/Documents/svji_facts_17_3570942294.pdf

Organizations' Websites: (There are a ton of other orgs, but these are the ones I have a relationship with)

ALLIES (coalition) http://alliesctx.wordpress.com/

Love146 http://love146.org/

Trade in Hope http://tradeinhope.com/Home.html

International Justice Mission ijm.org

Central Texas Against Human Trafficking http://www.ctcaht.org/

Not For Sale http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

Books I strongly recommend: (again, just type human trafficking into Amazon and you'll find tons)

Not For Sale by David B. Batstone

Half the Sky by Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas D. Kristof

Woman, Child for Sale by Gilbert King

God in a Brothel by Daniel Walker

Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd

Sources for this blog post:

http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/events/09-24-2010/global-human-trafficking-s-dirty-little-secret-it-s-local

http://www.wavy.com/dpps/news/us_news/south/lawmakers-combat-human-trafficking-_3604947

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/super-bowl-sex-trade_b_1198168.html

5 miles to go

Our house recently got a brand spankin new roommate, Evelyn. Everyone, meet Evelyn!

Everyone, Evelyn. Evelyn, everyone.

Great. She's great. She hails from San Diego by way of Abilene Christian University, and has brightened our house with her laid back nature and ever-ready laugh. But the reason she matters for this blog, which I have not gotten her permission to write, is the reason she came to Austin, TX in the first place.

Evelyn is interested in the slow food movement we have seen a rise of in Austin. If any of you took a studio with Jack Sanders, you know about this movement intimately. The term "slow food" refers to the international movement that began in Italy in 1986 as an alternative to fast food. It strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. In Austin, the slow food movement is exemplified by the consistent farmers markets and co-op farms around town, but recently Evelyn told me about an initiative that reminded me a lot of what we talk about in class. It is called 5 Mile Farms, and is a product of a desire for hyper-local food sources.

5 Mile Farms exists in conjunction with Resolution Farms, and both seek to bring our food source to our front yard. As they state on their website, many people would love to have fresh food growing in their own backyard but don't have the time or the confidence to do so. 5M and Resolution seek to bridge that divide and provide first time and seasoned farmers alike the skills and equipment necessary to grow their own food. Austin Green Art founder Randy Jewart, who runs the Resolution Farms non-profit, was quoted in Edible Austin discussing Austinites' receptiveness toward utilizing their underutilized yards. ''We think that the cooperative approach is going to be more user-friendly for people,'' says Jewart, ''because we know what it takes to have a big garden that’s your own. It’s a pleasure, but it’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of stress because things are always trying to go wrong.''

The idea reminds me of our in-class discussions of park proximity because while food is considered "local" if it's grown within a 25o mile or 100 mile radius, 5M and Resolution want to bring that dimension in to 2 feet; so that the vegetables can "walk to where they're going." Most importantly, 5 Mile Farms is working to make pure, homegrown food accessible to everyone. “When you go the farmers market,” Jewart notes, “you’re hanging out with a lot of nice people who have enough awareness to go to a farmers market. But it’s not diverse. So the idea is that you could get people even more involved in a very authentic way that’s based on proximity." Evelyn tells me that their hope is to have a farm within 5 miles of everyone's home, and I love that idea.

I encourage you to look up 5 Mile Farms and Resolution Farms on the internet. I couldn't get the pictures to upload onto this page, but they have helped build lots of different kinds of homemade gardens. They have a lot of information about starting your own garden plot and eating locally. Something that could help us out in a variety of ways.

like forever

I don't know what to blog about this week. I think I have a lot on my mind. Or nothing.

I'm starting to get sentimental about graduating. I can't believe 4.5 years ago I thought that 5 years was temporary. Now I know better than to think more than 3 days in advance, or dream more than a year away. Back then, we were used to 4 year plans, class schedules and sports schedules (well... maybe not sports) that were set in stone and reliable. Even in architecture, they had a 5 year track laid out (suggested) for us. We knew that if we took those classes in that order we would graduate in May of 2012. -- Isn't that odd, by the way? To think that we, who can not definitively say when we will go to bed at night, think we can decide our futures? Really, this whole CRP class exists because in the past intelligent men and women solved wicked problems the best way they knew how and were wrong. Now we have to fix it. -- I digress.

When I left for New York, my Young Life area director (aka Phil/one of the wisest and most ADD men I know) gave me the best advice I got: Live there like you're going to live there forever. He was speaking from experience of being called to Kansas City, MO for a 2 year stint and staying 14 years. Because we don't control our lives as much as we like to think. I took his advice (like I take all of his advice) and lived in NY like I intended to stay.

It was incredible, and in seven months I became so richly rooted in the community I found in NY and the rhythm of the city, that I could stay there for life (as soon as they start working shorter hours). Upon returning to Austin, I regretted not living with the same mindset here. Yes, I've made lifelong friends and yes I have volunteered more than I have studied, but I didn't take the time to get to know Austin as a city. I hardly go to the park or Barton Springs; I have just started spending time on the east side this year; I don't know my neighbors' names or even the baristas' names at Medici for goodness sakes; I never took the step to officially join my church even though I have gone since practically the first Sunday of freshman year; I never mowed, watered or weeded any lawn I have ever lived on in the last 3 years. In my head, I was just passing through, using Austin for it's school and friendships and vibrancy and taking what I wanted when I graduated.

I think that might be how a lot of us feel? Because I feel like if I were going to live like this is forever, I would know about the city's efforts to improve itself; I would know the stories of the people I order coffee from; I would care about the town meetings and bike lanes and traffic, and I am starting to. As graduation draws nearer -- and I inconveniently find more and more that I love being with new friends who are permanently (for now) in Austin, and I assess what type of lifestyle I want, and I hear of local firms that sound great -- I think more seriously about staying. Of course, whether or not I stay here until I'm 25 or 80, I will try to live here like I'm going to live here forever. Go big or go home.

Did I grow up in a suburb?

At the risk of seeming affected, I'm going to write about where I grew up and how I didn't realize it was technically a suburb until class yesterday.

I grew up in Highland Park/University Park, a separate town within Dallas that was established in 1909 under similar motivations as Hyde Park, Austin. I was researching its history and discovered that the designers were hired to "design its layout in 1907 'as a refuge from an increasingly diverse city.' Notably, twenty percent of the original land was set aside for parks." When I first read those sentences, I thought it said "dense city", but it doesn't. IT SAYS DIVERSE! The entire town was created as an escape from other races, classes and types of people! Not the pollution, crowdedness and hustle of the city... and it is notable, and slightly confusing to me, that the town was concieved right as the Model T was coming out. Henry Ford's innovation established 1908 as the year the car became popular, but, as it says above, Highland Park was designed in 1907 and the lots were first sold in 1909. Mabye the first landowners in the town owned cars before the masses, but it sounds like the car was not at all the driving factor of the suburb. The town is still extrememly homogenous today, you can imagine.

The fact that 20% of the land was devoted to parks is interesting. Looking back, there are tons of parks in the neighborhood, and all very accessible. Though I lived in 4 different houses in the school district, I really was always within walking distance of one. Caruth Park was a staple hang out after everything else had closed, and the duck pond at Curtis Park, right across from my elementary school, was constantly peppered with families, couples and exersisers. Besides Northpark Mall, the main shopping areas were outdoors, like the image we saw in class yesterday, and though no one commuted on bike, we kids rode our bikes safely through the neighborhoods past dark.

Reasons it never occured to me that Highland Park/University Park was a "suburb":

The roads are straight and tight and don't end in cul-de-sacs

The lots are small (in University Park at least)

There are businesses everywhere and many people work within the town limits

I didn't go downtown because there was nothing to do there, not because it was too far away

The house styles are very diverse

The lots are so expensive

It is over 100 years old and grew over time

I always put Dallas, TX as my address

When I think of suburbs I think of this:

Reasons I see that HP is a suburb:

We drive EVERYWHERE, no matter how close, no exageration

There are very strict and exclusive zoning policies in place

The first development was Highland Park Village Shopping Center, which is exactly the same idea as the ones we talked about in class yesterday

Everyone has a lawn and the streets are lined with trees--they are just so old, they don't seem implanted

It exists only on one side of Highway 75, the opposite side of downtown

Why is it so jarring to me that it was a legitimate suburb? Probably because the balance of houses, businesses and parks seemed to work. It was small enough that we could have ridden bikes everywhere, or stuck a trolley on the road and eliminated the car. But it was a bubble. The exclusivity of the area, the pretension, the self-centeredness were all detrimental to the inhabitants. Honestly, it's for that reason, not the abundance of cars and commuting, that make me dislike the idea of suburbia in the form of these old developments. I wouldn't care to send people into downtown Dallas to live just so they could walk to work and live in high rises, I would send Highland Park residents to live outside the town boundaries, whether it's in a single family home or not. I think that would be a greater leap toward a better future. The rest can come later.

Obesity

Talking about obesity is such an odd topic. It was interesting to hear that what we see as a normal body weight is actually slightly overweight, and the conversation surrounding obesity is so touchy. Speaking for myself, as a young girl I was constantly surrounded with opposing ideas about weight. On the one hand, people were quick to enforce the idea that everyone was beautiful no matter their weight, and on the other hand society was telling everyone that thin was beautiful. So now what? Now we are at a point when we are raising people who will have a harder physical life because we did not prioritize overall healthy lifestyles. And it isn't any comment on beauty or style, it is an issue of health, of living this one life in a way that we get to enjoy it.

From what I can tell, we find ourselves in this situation because of a variety of factors including ease of lifestyle, inactive transportation methods, unwalkable and unfriendly city streets, overly busy lives, focus on faster, cheaper, longer-lasting processed foods and...television. Just kidding. Well, not really-tv does keep us on the couch. I also think crash diets have aided in obesity: We either ride a roller coaster of unsustainable diets or hate the idea of trying to be thin so much that we celebrate fat.

I think policy and zoning really could do something about it. We could institutionalize healthy lunches in our public schools and increase recess time (my mom is a 5th grade teacher and the kids have 25 minutes for a combined lunch/recess); we could push for better park accessibility, walkable sidewalks and car-alternatives. I think, above all, it starts with the kids, because, honestly, they are at a point in their lives when we can still influence them without having to unteach them lifestyle choices.

The following picture is terrifying...

Zoning and What Not

I have been to Houston more in the last 4 months than I have been in my entire life--which totals me at 4. Before I went to Houston, I literally expected only three things: smog, traffic and humidity. My first visit, last October for a school field trip, I was blown away by the size of it. I seemed to drive forever on curving highways hundreds of feet in the air to allow others to pass below. People drove quickly, turned widely and seemed to traverse the entanglement of construction and access roads with ease. I wondered at the impact the intensity of this city had on me--I grew up in Dallas, for goodness sake, not the back roads of Abilene--but it was also striking when I realized it wasn't as bad as I had pictured. Yes, it was humid, yes it was crowded with one passenger SUVs, and yes, I drove in the wrong direction for 24 minutes before I realized where I was headed, but there were pockets of hope in this city. Sparks of eclecticism folded into the fabric of side streets and neighborhoods. I left Houston having eaten brunch at a local cafe with a new attitude about the city.

The next visits though, for a wedding and subsequent activities, took me to the heart of Houston suburbia. Row upon row of similar houses, slightly curved roads and chain after chain after chain on in the shopping strips. And flatness. It was all very beige. This was bleaker than the Houston I had imagined--it was nothing special, nothing at all.

I feel like I'm ranting about Houston. I shouldn't. I've only spent a total of 7 days there, and my newly graduated friends who moved there have found reasons to love it and stay. So I'll get on with my point...

My friend and I were driving around, and noting the discomfort that we felt in this city--she's used to the parks of Austin--and she articulated the reason quite well: there are just tall buildings everywhere. Not everywhere like NY, where the scale of architecture adds to the rhythm of the city, but simply random big, wide, sort-of tall buildings poking out every here and there like pimples on an bland canvas. They glorified the whim of designers and clients, and sat, stirring within us the sense of purposelessness. For the first time, I saw the negative effects of un-zoned cities. While it seems freeing to have no restrictions as to what business goes where, I think going to Houston showed me how detrimental it can be to not zone cities. I think it would be better to create small zones, to avoid the blanket of housing we see in Westlake and Lake Travis, but also to avoid the sky-poker flirtation we see in the outskirts of Houston.

This blog was too negative, so here's a nice picture.

I haven't figured out sizing yet...