wow.

This week has been interesting. coming into this class you never know what you might learn. before class on Monday i used Wal-Mart almost all the time. "Oh i ran out of so and so lets make a trip to Wal-Mart," "Oh i wonder if they've gotten any thing new for the Cowboys," "hey it's 3am on a friday night and we dont have anything to do, lets go mess around in Wal-Mart." simple things like that always make for an adventure at Wal-Mart.

Coming from a small town compared to Austin, Wal-Mart is where you go if you need ANYTHING! Whether it's cheap on school supplies, clothes, food, and even a 30 pack of budlight. yeah don't ask me how i know that :) haha. But anyway Wal-Mart is always there if you need anything. after watching that film on how much of a scam Wal-Mart truly is, i don't know if I can shop there again.

well, you already know what Wal-Mart truly is. i want to know how come i didn't know about this before. i'm still in shock that this is actually happening. with some publicity as to how the corporation is really treating its employees, you would think that it would keep people from trying to get a job there or even the ones that are currently employed there want to quit.? but obviously that isn't the case because there are still just as many employees as there are Wal-Marts across the world.

what really got me is that were paying people across the world to make the things that go in our stores and what do they get in return? about 20 cents an hour. they work almost all day, 7 days out of the week, and to be making that little amount. are you kidding me!!!! not to mention they lie about the reality of these conditions and it works. you would think someone would want to speak up about it but i don't know if that's happened or would.

another thing, the Walton's make all this money from their millions of stores throughout the world and they continue to be greedy. by not sharing their money with charities that really need the money or even their hard workers that are making this much money for them, do not distribute the wealth as they should. greedy people with power these days.


this film has put a lot things into perspective for me. to know that as wealthy as they are, they don't care. as long as they continue to make money they will always have the upper hand. one day this industry will come falling down and i wonder who will be there for them in the end.

To all the hard working employees who continue to work for this bullshit of a corporation, you deserve the utmost respect.

follow up.

so lately in class we've been on the discussion of racism. which is a touchy subject in general. so we had this guest speaker on monday that recalled her experiences from her hometown of Mart, TX. Hearing what she had to put things into a different perspective seeing as though it was her point of view. I never knew that Mart was that bad until hearing her speak and professor G's experiences as well. i'm from waco, tx which is about 20 min away and to be honest, never really heard anything bad about it. all i knew about mart was that it had a good football team and that were many african american people there. and the only reason i knew that was because how the media (the news stations) portrayed it to be. so to hear what was really going was a shocker. but i mean there all places like that all over america so it to me just seemed as another city that was overturn by racism.

then came the discussion after our guest speaker was done. alot of issues were brought up. it was made out be that certain people were being singled out, because of their skin color and experiences, which made people uncomfortable including myself. i was thinking to myself, "did she really just ask her that?" but in return we got to hear what their reactions were to certain questions and it opened my eyes to realize that it was true and why it was. someone said "why did it take a white women to have to go back to that city to try and make things better?" which was exactly true. why did it? why did it take a white women to come to that city to make a change? that got me thinking. you would think someone of your own race would want to go back a make a difference and show them whats going on. but then again maybe they felt so much resentment towards the city and those people of the city that they wanted nothing to do with them anymore. which is understandable. but in general it just makes you think..

racism will always be alive in this country. it's just up to those who will chose to make a difference. 

do you have what it takes to change?.

after watching the documentary on gangs I felt that there needs to be more people out there like Victor Rios. yes we all get caught up in difficult situations but when is enough, enough? what does it take for you to realize that the lifestyle your living isn't the right one. seeing how he changed his life completely around is just a great example of what you, as a human being is really capable of. you have the power and ability to change any aspect of your life and for you to have the strength to do that is remarkable. trying to get out of the gang scene can be very hard. i know most of yall know that in order to get out can be quite dreadful. dying is a strong possibility to try and escape that lifestyle. but if you have that urge and determination in you to leave, then you will. nothing will seem difficult to you once you escape.

victor rios is a true example of bravery and determination in order to re-grasp his life again. he should be a great influence on many other young men that are in his situation. he gives them the opportunity to want to leave that lifestyle and for some young men, thats all they need. hope is what we all need. hope for peace. hope for life. and just hope for change. after hearing victor's story we can all breathe a sigh of relief. that change is possible.

what do you know about black history month?

Ok I know i just blogged by as soon as i got off of here I came across this really interesting video on Facebook from one of my friends. yea Facebook i know..

the title of the clip is, "what do you know about black history month?"

After seeing this clip i was like, wow. They really think like that? They all came up with the same African American Icons too. I just thought it was interesting seeing as though it's not only Black History month but how it tied in with what we discussed in class. The "stereotypes" of the African Americans when it comes to many things. When Diane told us about her cousin getting 10-25 years in jail for murdering someone that broke into their house, who was going to kill them too seeing as though the intruder had a gun too. Then when professor G told the story of her brother in law committing the same charge but got away with it because both her brother in law and the intruder were African American. Whereas in Diane's case, her cousin was African American and the intruder was white. Now you tell me something isn't right! 

Also, when asked in the clip, "how do you celebrate how do you celebrate black history month?" some replied with things like, "i listen to jay-z," and "we like to eat fried chicken and grape-juice." really!?? That just leads me to think. "well damn what do they think about Mexicans?" 

like we said in class, it's not everybody as a whole. just the selected few i guess you could say.. stereotypes are very common and with everything being said and being done just makes the society we live in even more unjust and ignorant..

Guest Speaker

Today we had a guest speaker, Diane, who at first was kind of hard for me to focus on because..well lets just say she was "out there." not in a bad way but just kind of crazy. haha. but other than that she was actually on point with a lot of things. She started off with an exercise in which you determined if the level of seriousness of the social issue was strongly agreed with or strongly disagreed with. the issues varied from poverty, weath, cancer, sexual priority, and mentally disabled issues. I strongly agree with mental issues being a very serious social issue. Not only because "society" is somewhat fearful of these mentally disabled people but because these mentally disabled people are far worse than we think.

About 40% of the inmates in the Austin prisons are mentally disabled. Now just think how many are throughout America! The percentages are outstanding actually. Most of the mentally disabled people are either homeless or just completely unaware of their mental state which can cause them to commit crimes. When those crimes are committed they automatically get thrown in jail and then that's it. Help usually doesn't get provided for them until after they've been in the system for a couple of days; some even more than that. With them being in the prison system their mental state gets worse and then they get sent to a mental hospital and when the doctors feel as though they are capable of taking care of themselves they are released...back into the prison systems! Now that's just going to  keep repeating the cycle over and over again. With that being said, I went to this mental heath in the criminal justice systems in the career center today and the social workers talked about how they give these people different options when dealing with criminal offenses. Basically they provide services dealing with anything they need to try and better the mentally disabled criminals from becoming worse in jail, post-jail, and possibly re-entering the jail system. I think that what they are doing is incredible. To offer these mentally disabled criminals help and provide them services that they need only gives them the hope of getting out of jail, never going back, and the ability to live a normal life.

Overall Diane's lecture was interesting and i took in a lot of what she said.

Music is a form of expression..

    First off I LOVE MUSIC and the different ways that it can be portrayed. "The Mixtape of the Revolution" caught my attention because it had a different side to the typical "rap" scene and it was very interesting to read and see how it related to so many issues we've discussed in class.


     Why has rap, an American music that in its early global spread was associated with thuggery and violence, come to be so highly influential in these regions? Rappers are like journalists. They speak about what's going on in the world but they do it in a way that they love. By using music as an expression they talk about things to try and get their own message and interpretation across. Rapping doesn't only consist of "violence & thuggery," it's about talking about what past experiences happened in your life that you want other people to know. It's about speaking on the issues that are happening in the present and are not only affecting you, but everyone else. Rappers feel like by expressing it through music they can convey their message and their intake on it. Just like the rappers in Egypt, and I'm pretty sure everywhere else, they are trying to get their message out by making music so that it can appeal to others and hope that they understand what's going on and make their own interpretations on things. On the other hand, speaking your mind about certain issues and basically anything else comes with the negative comments and concerns from people.

For example, when Katrina hit in August of 2005, many people of New Orleans were left helpless. Of course there was "help" trying to be made available for those people by doing things such as donating money, volunteering with the Red Cross, and providing as much as they could. With that being said many people out there, including the people of New Orleans, felt as though there was more that could've been done and that it was not being done due to their skin color and where they were from. Rapper Lil Wayne is from New Orleans and was personally hit by this tragedy and to express how he felt the situation was being handled he made a song called "Georgia Bush." It was targeted towards George Bush and how he felt that the President of the United States was overlooking the trouble in the city of New Orleans and that more could've been done. "This song is dedicated to the one wit the suit, Thick white skin and his eyes bright blue.." -first verse of the song. 

 I found that giving Katrina as an example of how rappers express their intake on issues that are taking place, would be great seeing as though we are planning to talk about the incident where there was a "Katrina" before Katrina. Lil Wayne is not the only rapper out there that talks about issues like these through music, as you have read the article it's happening in places like Senegal and Tunis. Rapping is just another form of expression and I feel that no matter what you say or how you say it, someone out there is going to have some negativity towards it.