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A world we imagine post#3

Having a criminal record has a profound impact on the formerly incarcerated long after they exit the lockup. For example, finding meaningful employment post-prison can be extremely difficult. More than 70 million people have criminal records in this country. This represents a huge pool of untapped talent, that could be leveraged in awesome ways. My organisation, Breaking the Bars , would provide an avenue for ex-prisoners to grow their own business through a series of seed investments. A seed investment would provide the initial capital to budding ideas, giving individuals the confidence and resources to pursue ventures that might otherwise go unexplored. These investments would range in size from $2,000 to $50,000, catering to the spectrum of ideas and projects that come up. A challenge to implementing this project could be struggling to find a large enough pool of applicants for investment. An elegant solution to this could be partnering with existing business schools and entr...
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A world we dare to imagine post #1

Deciding what issue to tackle isn’t trivial; the amount of suffering and unfairness in this world is huge; however, if we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the impossibility of the big picture, nothing will ever get done. With that said I decided to brainstorm a topic that I found passionately about-- choosing to focus on our prison system as a avenue for profound social change. The prison and criminal justice system in the United States is plagued with a broad range of issues. For example, tough, reagan-era drug laws and mandatory minimums ensure that people get locked up more often and stay in prison longer. Private-run prisons also exacerbate the problem by incentivizing the retention of prisoners. Additionally, as Michelle Alexander notes in “The New Jim Crow,” mass incarceration has become a modern version of the actions previously taken to disenfranchise large amounts of black men. Rehabilitation of prisoners is also an extremely pressing issue as recidivism of prisoners...
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EC 10/12 free write

Fountains In preparation for the cross-town rivalry game, me and the rest of my freshmen class in the drumline were assigned a set of tasks to complete. One of these items instructed us to visit every fountain on campus and take a group photo with it. To my surprise there was an unreasonable amount of fountains on campus; more than 30 in total. This trip around campus got me thinking about the symbolism fountains and motivated me to learn more about what made them so ubiquitous on our campus. For this blog post I will talk about about fountains. In times of ancient greece, fountains served a much more functional purpose, allowing people to easily access water from nearby aqueducts for drinking washing and bathing. There was definitely a decorative element to these fixtures; however, they actually filled a need. Later, as indoor plumbing was introduced, the need for these types of fountains decreased, relegated now to something now much more ornamental. In developing countries wh...
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Born on 3rd base post #2

In this second half of the book I noticed a distinct shift from justifying and framing the fight against inequality to actionable advice for readers whether they are in the 99 percent or top 1 percent. Collins started this section by showcasing some of the secrets of the “charity industrial complex.” I knew to an extent that wealthy people made charitable donations to reduce their tax burden, but I had no idea about the depth to which in went. He spoke about pseudo fraudulent behaviors within large foundations that allowed them to donate a tiny percentage of their intended charitable funds and instead spend it on expensive retreats and huge salaries for trustees. I never thought about how donations to wealthy schools influenced poor schools before this book; that tax deductable donations to affluent schools takes money away from poor schools who would have received a share of those funds through taxation. As someone who goes to a school heavily supported by its alumni body it was d...
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Born on third base post #1

This book was very reminiscent of my senior of high school. During which, I enrolled in a contemporary literature class that opened my eyes in remarkable ways regarding topics like privilege and institutional racism. I also recognized parallels to concepts that I learned about in my “psychology of prejudice and discrimination” class that I took at my CC last year.  Reading this book was an excellent complement to my previous experience with this topic area-- providing me with interesting new perspectives and ways to think about hidden advantages that allow me to succeed. What I took from this book was not that I should squander the opportunities I have in my life; rather, to better appreciate the institutional and historical advantages that have made these opportunities possible. I particularly liked the reference to the myth of deservedness. It is incredibly difficult, but equally important to recognize the help that we received in obtaining our position and successes and life...
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Random post #2

I’m sitting on a dirty laundry floor, waiting for my clothes to finish their cycle. The constant “woosh” of the washer’s and “thrum” of the dryers do not allow me to forget my place or the moment I am in. My predictable procrastination persists in all aspects of my life, so I am forced to wait here as 3 separate washing loads spin and toss my sweaty shirts. Lucky me—each floor is allocated 3 washer-dryer sets, unlucky me—all of the ones on my floor are occupied. In a stroke of lazy ingenuity, I decide to take my roommate’s skateboard and push my towering pile of clothes down the absurdly long hallways that connect my building. I hunch over, like a struggling father pushing his son on a balance bike; huffing and sweating into clothes that were clean just minutes before. A girl quips as I pass by “oh haha dude, I’ve totally done that too.” This is little comfort to the struggling laundry crusader. Ultimately find that I can put my clothes in washers in the 4 th and 5 th floor. The...
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On the Road Post #2

This post will be devoted to the second of the “My Life on the Road.” Like the first post I chose to read through the chapters and reflect where I found sections particularly intriguing or relevant to my own life. Beyond the sections I reference directly, I also found a great deal of interesting topics in all genres, but there simply isn’t enough time in my study schedule for me to write about everything profound that I happened upon. I enjoyed the short story she told about a time when she was a student. She picked up a large snapping turtle off the side of the road and putting it “back” into the water-- an action she thought would help to assist the turtle in surviving longer and fixing some sort of predicament it was in. While she was well-intentioned, she didn’t consider that perhaps the turtle wanted to be in the position that she thought it needed to rescued from when it may have actually been trying to lay its eggs. This leads her to an important lesson; to address problems...
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