The Other Inconvenient Truth: How Agriculture is Changing the Face of Our Planet - Jonathan Foley

A great video on the future of agriculture

Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20

Some good arguments for 20-somethings to start defining your life right now.

To JK Rowling from Cho Chang

THIS. THIS SO MANY TIMES OVER. We're grown up enough now to challenge Rowling on her racist and closeted writing. I love the story, but damnit we deserve better than caricatures and tokenism.

Poverty in the US

Poverty is more real than you think in the US. What's your perception of wealth distribution?

Worth watching

1 - For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall. From NY Times, an article describing how class differences are leading to greater gaps at college level for students. This is of course complicated by racial links, as more people of color are poorer than whites.

2 - Dear Liberal Allies, what your classes on oppression didn't tell you. A Wellesleyunderground article on the people of color perspective on oppression.

3 - LGBTQ People from India. "Often QPOC get ignored in favour of white people during conversations about gender and sexuality, so I guess this is my attempt to try and push for greater visibility of lesser known people of colour in the LGBTQ movement in other parts of the world and try to debunk the notion that LGBTQ movement is primarily a white one."

4 - Things not to say to Asians. Seriously. We're tired of this shit.



5 - China's Female Imams and Mosques

Last Call to Prayer; China's Female Mosques from sharron lovell on Vimeo.

Experiences of QPOC students at Smith College & Junot Diaz on decolonial love

This was just passed onto me. A great short documentary made by a senior at Smith College on the experiences of queer people of color (QPOC) students on campus. Check it out!!



While I'm at it, check out Junot Diaz's keynote speech at Colorlines' Facing Race 2012 convention. He speaks about decolonial love and the difficulties of facing the privileges that we each hold.



A quote from Diaz's Q&A session:

The funny thing about our privilege is that we all have a blind spot around our privilege, shaped exactly like us. Most of us will identify privileges that we know we could live without. So when it comes time to talk about our privileges, we’ll throw shit down like it’s an ace. And that shit is a three! I understand that. You grow up and you live a life where you feel like you haven’t had shit, the last thing you want to give up is the one thing, the couple of things that you’ve really held on to.

I’m telling you guys, we’re never going to fucking get anywhere—if you want to hear my apocalyptic proclamation which I would never repeat, but which I know you motherfuckers are going to tweet about—we are never going to get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble, more or less, the economy of attraction of white supremacy.

Awesome videos

1 - BONES: Season 8 Episode 6 was kickass for a number of reasons; heartwrenching murder mystery, stories of 9/11, real character development. My favorite part though was this: intern Arastoo Vaziri (Pej Vahdat) relaying an interesting and awesome speech about separating 9/11 from the Muslim religion as a whole.


2 & 3 - Brave New Voices Slam Poetry: Spoken word amazingness! Call out that racism and shadeism.



White hipsters who care about animals more than other human beings? Fuck that shit.


Shadeism of the light skinned brown folk

amazing articles and videos

1 - Glamourbaby Diaries



Ruby Veridiano nurtures young women of color to challenge the fashion world and what it means to be beautiful, especially for Asian Americans. Amazing workshops!! I wish I could participate!

2 - PSY and the Acceptable Asian Man

PSY is the Korean pop star who wrote the song Gangnam Style that mainstream US has caught on. Very interesting article about how Asian pop stars are having trouble breaking into mainstream US music (hint, it's because of the Asian stereotypes/caricatures in American society).

3 - ChristianMuslim



Check out this music video for "ChristianMuslim," written, recorded and performed by Jason Chu and Rah Zemos. It's a really cool hand-drawn stop-motion animation piece speaking out against violence and bloodshed between people who "believe that we're all God's children".

4 - Refusing to Date Asian Men

Essay by Kathy Zhang '11 on the Patriarchy in US society and how stereotyping of Asians as feminine and non-sexual came from the need to suppress the minorities to uphold the dominance of white supremacy. An excellent read.

5 - Islamic History and Women You Never Hear Of

Kahula bint Azwar is the legendary woman you've never heard of. My new heroine!!

6 - PSY's Gangnam Style and what it ACTUALLY means

Analysis of PSY's hit song and putting it into context of Korean history. Excellent read.

7 - Citation Needed by allmypenguins

Article on how China isn't as suppressed as you think it is.

This made my head explode

SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters

Quote from Romney:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Yeah, because only poor people eat real food, everyone else just eats their money. WTF????

Quote from article:

Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real Romney.

My sentiment: How dare someone who claims he wants to be president of an entire country just turn around and diss half the country? Not surprising that Romney holds these views, but what has US politics turned into if a major political party thinks this sort of perspective is acceptable??? The role of government is to make decisions and manage resources for the welfare of the people and if the esteemed leader of said government can't even stand half the country, then we as a nation have a very serious problem.

This and the comments about 'legitimate rape' from Missouri senator candidate Todd Akin just really infuriates me. I want to take the Republican Party candidates seriously because a true democratic system would have legitimate points of view from both sides of the political spectrum, but all they do is alienate voters and make very poor judgements about policies. It's not politics, it's just ideology talking.

Check these out!

A few articles and videos worth checking out!


CinderFella - a twist on the heteronormative Disney stories

Shadeism from ammabia productions on Vimeo.

This documentary short is an introduction to the issue of shadeism, the discrimination that exists between the lighter-skinned and darker-skinned members of the same community. This documentary short looks specifically at how it affects young womyn within the African, Caribbean, and South Asian diasporas. Through the eyes and words of 5 young womyn and 1 little girl - all females of colour - the film takes us into the thoughts and experiences of each. Overall, 'Shadeism' explores where shadeism comes from, how it directly affects us as womyn of colour, and ultimately, begins to explore how we can move forward through dialogue and discussion. Worth a watch!

Sexism, Racism, and Swimming: Article about the "controversy" over Ye Shiwen's world record gold medal swim, which basically amounts to the Western world being racist against the Chinese.

Jessica Colotl: Eye Of The Storm. Jessica Colotl is an undocumented immigrant who was brought to America as a child – and who now faces deportation. Reporter Ryan Schill and artist Greg Scott bring to life the story that has become a flash point for America's immigration debate. Really great comic.

A story of a Muslim lesbian couple. Family can surprise you sometimes.

Remnants of Anti-Chinese Violence. This New York Times photo gallery highlights the work of Seattle photojournalist Tim Greyhavens, whose new online project, No Place for Your Kind, visits and photographs the sites of anti-Chinese incidents and vicious racial violence in the American West that occurred over a century ago. The photos are mundane, but the history behind them are not.

But We're Not Muslim! Article on the Sikh murders and stereotyping. When minorities feel they have to distinguish themselves from the "bad" minorities, what are we actually telling people? It's just perpetuating the stereotypes.

The Other Inconvenient Truth

I've been feeling pretty drained after spending weeks and weeks writing this urban agriculture review, almost to the point of wishing I'd never heard about it at all. But then I watched this following video and now I'm very much determined that the work I'm helping with is important and necessary.

The following is a short video on the HUGE impact agriculture is having on the planet. We need food for the 7 billion people on this earth, but we need to produce it in a way that won't kill the planet. Think that we can keep going the way we are now with agriculture? Think again - we're running out of land, water, and energy to sustain what we have now. There is no silver bullet to this problem so we're gonna need everyone on board to talk about solutions. Every place is going to have a different solution, be it GM crops, local food, greywater, drip irrigation, or vertical farming. But it's important that we all do this.



A more complete version of that video is given here with Jonathan Foley's talk at TEDxTC. Summary from TED shown below.

A skyrocketing demand for food means that agriculture has become the largest driver of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental destruction. At TEDxTC Jonathan Foley shows why we desperately need to begin "terraculture" -- farming for the whole planet. Jonathan Foley studies complex environmental systems and their affects on society. His computer models have shown the deep impact agriculture is having on our planet.

Jame Oliver: Teach every child about food

This is one of my favorite TED talks. It's SO, SO important to teach kids now where their food comes from, especially with supermarkets everywhere and agriculture becoming less and less a tangible idea for kids growing up in the cities. It's not just about the feel-good urban agriculture of community gardens or farmers market, it's about knowing what goes into growing food and learning how to be self sufficient. If this generation of kids can't tell what the basic vegetable names are, society has a pretty huge problem on their hands once the current generation of farmers are gone. Everyone's gotta eat and someone has to grow the food.

Birke Baehr: What's wrong with our food system

This kid is 11 and he's talking about organic farming and the local movement, stuff I never even thought about until college! Man, I wish I had his oral presentation skills at his age! This is what the world needs, more kids like him. That being said, I wouldn't be as quick to dismiss genetically engineered food as he. Genetic alterations happen naturally (think transposable genetic elements) and having some genetic strains that are more drought tolerant will definitely be useful in the future. The problem with such GM food is decreasing the genetic diversity and not having the whole pool of diversity to go back to if something happens (ie flood happens and you don't have any genetic strains that survive better under very wet conditions). And of course, there's always the possibility of introducing a combination of genetic material into the ecosystem that reacts poorly.

Why Art? Community Art Project Video

Ever wondered what the point of doing art was, what benefits there are to participating in the arts, or how you might get involved? You've come to watch the right video!

I've been involved in a year long community arts project with the Centre of Multicultural Youth. The artist in residency project started off as focused on the very broad topics of building relationships between young people of color and art organizations, developing best practice models for art organizations, and ways to encourage families and young people to participate in art. Over a series of brainstorming sessions and discussions, we spoke a lot about of the role of art, identity and labeling, addressing social issues with art, skills developed during the process of art, challenges art practioners and organizations face, and more. Eventually, we narrowed down our focus to getting families and young people involved in the arts through examining why art is important. We interviewed a bunch of people over Nov 2011-Jan 2012 (including me!!) and came up with the short documentary video below. I'll shut up now and let you watch the video because it is AWESOME and speaks for itself.


The long term intention is to build on this short video and develop a feature length documentary on the many issues touched upon in this video. But for now, the goal is to get the word out to as many people as we can about this video. We're planning on distributing it to as many families and young people as we can. But they won't be our only target audience - it's important for city councils, community organizers, youth workers, and funding bodies to watch this video too. If you can forward it to your networks and get them to watch it, it will really help!

Melissa Harris-Perry's Commencement Speech: Wellesley College May 2012

Professor, political scientist, author, Nation columnist, MSNBC host, and rising "nerdland" icon Melissa Harris-Perry addresses the members of the Class of 2012 and an international audience of their families and friends at Wellesley College's 134th Commencement Exercises on Friday, May 25, 2012. Some good words of advice for the women who will redefine success in the world.

Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage

This video is awesome! Very creatively done.