Julie Jochum Gartrell is a truly remarkable person, aside from her being my grandmother. She is proud to be volunteering for an inter-church homeless shelter. She is part of Project Home. She has spent many nights at the shelter in the past ten years. She is proud of the work she did teaching teachers how to accept differences, and even after retiring from her job as professor of education with a focus on special education, she focused and acted for homeless children or ones with special needs. Also, she has given persons with Down syndrome a safe place that has not been given to them by people who were uneducated in how to deal with people with Down syndrome. She volunteers at Gigi’s Playhouse, a place where children with Down syndrome can roughhouse, do crafts, or even go to a Build-a-Bear workshop as a group.
At the homeless shelter, she works with the St. Paul Council of Churches. Last year, a family that had come to stay with at the shelter got an apartment and moved in after a month of staying at the shelter. There was just one problem: when they moved in, they moved into a completely empty apartment, and they had no furniture. My Grandma found a futon she had been meaning to get rid of and thought it might be nice if the family could have it. She wondered how many other people had anything they didn't want any more. She asked around, and at once, people volunteered dishes, a chair here, a desk there, a vase at the other place, and so she filled her friends’ apartment with furniture My grandmother helped to furnish the home of a family who really needed the help.
For the past year at Gigi’s Playhouse, the twenty-five programs enriching literacy, math skills, and motor skills are completely free o f charge. My grandma (who also happens to be on the Board of Directors) has taken people to a Build-a-Bear workshop so that they could do something as a group, but also to integrate them with the general public. She not only works there, but has the feeling that what she does is an extension of two years of work, ensuring that there was a place where there were supportive mentors for children she knew needed such a safe place. There are currently17 Gigi’s Playhouse affiliates across the country.
All in all, My grandmother has definitely done more than most people to do her part in changing the world. She has been working at a homeless shelter for more than ten years. She is on the board of directors for a safe place for persons with Down syndrome. She has helped light a little light in the life of everyone around her.
I watched episodes of Leave It to Beaver, The Wonder Years and Family Ties. I definitely saw a lot of inaccurate portrayals of teens. Throughout all of these shows, teens were always in the white middle class. Also, all the main characters were male.
In Leave it to Beaver, which was produced and aired in the 1950s, the main family is a set of parents and two boys. One boy is in the eighth grade, those other is in the second grade. The mom is a stay at home mom who lives in a beautiful house wearing pearls and cocktail dresses. The dad wears suits and ties and goes to work early in the morning. They most likely want to be associated with a high social class. The two boys go to the same school. Wally is the older brother, and Theodore, or Beaver, is in the second grade. All the kids are white. The gaping difference between the boys and the parents affects the relationships that the boy has with people versus the relationships the parents have with people. In Leave It to Beaver, the main character gets a note from his teacher asking his parents if he can be Smoky the Bear at the next play, but Beaver thinks he will get expelled for doing something bad. He skips school and his parents get his brother, Wally, to find him. They search town - places only the boys know. The boys know mechanics, veterans, and old people that the parents have no idea existed, so they have trouble finding him.
The Wonder Years was produced in the 1980s about a family in the 1960s in the suburbs. The main character is a white boy who is in school on his first day of seventh grade. His parents are normal stay-at-home mom and office job dad. He has a friend who dresses like a hippie for the first day, and another childhood friend he used to call Winnie but now wants to be called Gwyneth. At lunch, he eats his food in the cafeteria and then walks out holding an apple. A guard stops him and tells him there's no food allowed outside the cafeteria. He throws the apple back into the lunchroom. When he gets home and finds out that Gwyneth's brother died that day in Vietnam, he finds her where she always is in the woods on the outskirts of town. The reason why he doesn't want to admit that he's looking for her is because he still feels weird about having a crush on her, since they're childhood friends. When they kiss, it seems so natural, but it also has a sad undertone because he knows where she is when she's depressed. They know each other so we'll that it seems like they shouldn't have a crush on each other.
In Family Ties, the family consists of a boy, his two sisters and their parents. The boy, Alex, is a middle class kid in middle school, and his little sister is in elementary school. Although his mom and dad dress up, the father doesn't wear a full fledged suit, and the mother doesn't wear pearls. In the episode, Alex has known a girl in his grade, and they have gotten to talking. At some point, he gets her to come over for dinner. The problem is that he wants the entire family to act rich, smart, and together, making them something they're not. When she does come over, she is pretty, but really stupid. When asked what she wants to do as a career, she says she wants to help the needy by being a cheerleader. Also, when his parents ask her what she does in class, she simply says," Oh, y'know." Alex ends up at an exclusive country club with her for dinner that weekend, and his dad is really paranoid, because he doesn't like him to be in an exclusive place without any sort of diversity. His dad comes and takes him home again, and the main character decides it isn't worth it. He learned that he should take his family for what they are.
The problem really is that the parents are hippies who are all about equality, and the main character, Alex, is a complete conservative.
I had heard this song before and it made me really emotional, so I thought it would be a good song to write about. The song is a rap song by Macklemore mixed with a song by Mary Lambert. This song is about gay rights.
Macklemore says that the LGBTQ movement is "the same fight that lead people to walk-outs and sit-ins." The singer is saying that is that fighting for gay rights is no different from the fight for women's rights or civil rights or in some other way an oppressed group. All of these groups fight the battle for acceptance by the people who hold all the power. My interpretation of his point is that group after group has partially gotten most of what they wanted, so why not this group?
With the lyrics,
“The right-wing conservatives think it's a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made, rewiring of a pre-disposition
playing God,”
he addresses the fact that some people believe being gay is a choice and that they have the means and the right to try to talk you out of a trait. I believe they are bigots who think anyone who isn’t the way they are should be changed if possible. He really tries to make that clear, although I think that not only right-wing conservatives think it's a decision. There are many others who really can't accept the fact that we are all just people who love people of the same sex. That's it. Then, he brings up something very important that has just become a normal part of speech:
"Have you read the YouTube comments lately
"Man that's gay"
Gets dropped on the daily "
That really talks about how people don't even think about how what they say affect the people around them. They equate the word “gay” with “bad, weird, stupid, dumb,” or “lesser”.
These lyrics make me extremely emotional because I know that this is just like any other movement, may it be for women's rights or the civil rights movement, The movement that I really want to partake in and that I have been the victim of has been pushed down and made me see my non-straightness as a weakness. I am strong, but sometimes it's hard to see that when everyone tells you you're somehow not good enough or inadequate. I identify with this song because I’m not straight. I hope that the people around me will at some point realize that I am in no way different from them, necessarily, except for my love for other people. Essentially, that's what most of us are: people who love other people.
Progress, march on!...
We turn our back on the cause...
Kids are walkin' around the hallway
Plagued by pain in their heart
A world so hateful
Someone would rather die
Than be who they are
This is another thing that is a major issue, especially in small suburban town where people may not be as accepting as in New York, the Hub of Diversity. People have been killed for coming out. People have had their parents evict them for being gay. So in that context, being who you are comes at a price some people are not willing to pay.
The entire text:
Same Love - Macklemore
When I was in the 3rd grade
I thought that I was gay
Cause I could draw, my uncle was
And I kept my room straight
I told my mom, tears rushing down my face
She's like, "Ben you've loved girls since before pre-K"
Trippin', yeah, I guess she had a point, didn't she
A bunch of stereotypes all in my head
I remember doing the math like
"Yeah, I'm good at little league"
A pre-conceived idea of what it all meant
For those who like the same sex had the characteristics
The right-wing conservatives think it's a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made, rewiring of a pre-disposition
Playing God
Ahh nah, here we go
America the brave
Still fears, what, we don't know
And God loves all His children
Is somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written
35 hundred years ago
Don't know
[Hook: Mary Lambert]
And I can't change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can't change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
My love, my love, my love
She keeps me warm [x4]
[Verse 2: Macklemore]
If I was gay
I would think hip-hop hates me
Have you read the YouTube comments lately
"Man that's gay"
Gets dropped on the daily
We've become so numb to what we're sayin'
Our culture founded from oppression
Yeah, we don't have acceptance for 'em
Call each other faggots
Behind the keys of a message board
A word rooted in hate
Yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is synonymous with the lesser
It's the same hate that's caused wars from religion
Gender and skin color
Complexion of your pigment
The same fight that lead people to walk-outs and sit-ins
ABC World News Tonight on Wednesday, November 27th, had a frightening story about a group of hostages captured recently by Al Qaeda. I thought this would be interesting because it had to do with an ongoing problem, but was directly associated with the United States.
When US soldiers were sent to an Al Qaeda stronghold in Yemen on Monday to rescue hostages from Al Qaeda, I was genuinely scared for them. The soldiers’ arrival was scheduled as soon as al Qaeda militants were observed lugging hostages covered in blankets into pickup trucks that were then transferred about 68 miles away from al-Saiyer to a cave. There was a shootout in the open with the terrorist group before the American militants could advance to the mountainside cave. There, they escorted them to their chopper and flew them to safety. If I was in their shoes, I would be terrified. I would be the first to reenter the helicopter and the last to leave it.
Nevertheless, I would probably still have tried to save the hostages, because were I a hostage, I would have wanted someone to at least try to save me. I would have been even more terrified that I would never come out of there again.
Were I in the shoes of a hostage, I would probably have fought back at first, but ultimately, I would have accepted it and fallen into a deep, sleepless frustration and sadness. I would have tried to comply with my captors so that nothing would happen to me. I would have kept my head down. I would have been scared that I wouldn’t be found and that I would just stay here for years. I would have been frustrated because I would ot have known what to do, much less been able to do it. I would have been hopeless.
Some people focus on different issues with our world and try to change that one thing. If everyone did that, amazing things would get accomplished. I wanted to know what my grandfather focused on because he used to be a professor of education, and still writes about early development for children, so he might have a more educated opinion than someone else.
My Grandpa Dan thought the best thing about the world was that when a baby is born, it has vast and infinite potential. Anything that robs the child of these possibilities and this potential should therefore be stopped.
That includes poverty. He believes that poverty causes stress about where you are going to sleep tomorrow night, what you will eat, how you will get clothes on your back. The parents of a toddler now also have one more mouth to feed, not to mention the amount of hardships poverty will cause once the child is in school. Making a bright future happen for a kid from a bleak past seems extremely challenging. These are no living conditions for a toddler, according to him.
Thus, he said, as would be logical, poverty is a major priority on his list of unjust things about the world. The way to stop this is to increase support by any means possible, and reduce poverty to almost nothing or as far as we can go. When asked how a single person can make change, may it be small or large, he said that that's up to the individual. He changes poverty by writing and teaching about stress levels. His wife works at a homeless shelter. In these ways, they have together found a way to make a change.
I observe social injustice in my neighborhood every day. I see that there are no ramps up and down the subway station for people in wheelchairs. I hear people calling things “gay” interchangeably with “bad, lesser, or stupid.” There are people who say “I’m special” and make funny faces to make fun of the mentally disabled. All of these things are examples of my observations.
But there was one that I found particularly noteworthy. There was a homeless person sitting underneath a tunnel of scaffolding next to a car wash when I saw him. I was on my way home from school, heading to my Dad’s house. He was an older man sitting on a grimy green crate, his hands shivering under worn mittens. The man was wrapped in an old jacket and his torn winter boots had duct tape on the front where the sole had come off. He was dirty and cold and his beard was yellowing. He had bags under his eyes and yellow, rotting teeth, and he looked hungry, like he had given up long ago. When he saw me, he asked me for any spare change for something to eat. I wish I hadn’t only given it to him because I felt pity for him. The fact that middle-class people in suits and ties and makeup and dresses walk by knowing he is sitting there, but act like he doesn’t exist, is really unfair, because poverty has reduced grown men to begging a thirteen-year-old girl for money. Social class is completely off whack in this situation. There should be no reason for me to feel pity towards a grown man, because he should have someone to get him to his feet rather than kicking him down. All the powerful rich people who could be out there supporting others are doing the opposite because they want to keep getting richer, no matter what effects this may have on much poorer poverty-stricken families with possibly hungry children who are ashamed of who they are are. All they want is to stay on top of everyone else so that they can continue to be the elite. This made me think about how much I take for granted, knowing only subconsciously how lucky I am. I have a steady home, two loving parents, the prospect of college, I always have something in the refrigerator, and I have many, many possibilities. I had something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I feel really guilty about living in a world where I have everything I want or need, knowing this man is suffering and in the cold. He looked like he might freeze to death. I wanted to change that, but how is a thirteen-year-old going to change big things like that? How would I be able to make this man’s life better? I still have no idea. All I know is that the least I can do is give him the coins I had left over at the bottom of my purse and hope he used it for something good.
I read a New York Times article from Wednesday, November 27th, 2014, about police reaction to the riots in Ferguson. The riots were going on because Officer Darren Wilson did not get indicted. It details about how officers tried to break up the riots. On August 9th, 2014, Michael Brown was on his way to Dorian Johnson’s house after what appeared to have been shoplifting cigarettes. He was walking in the middle of the street with his pal when he was stopped by a police car whose driver, Officer Wilson, told him to get “the f*** out of the road,”(or something along those lines, witnesses say.) He continued to walk. And at this point the story splits.
Officer Wilson’s family and friends say that Brown attacked the officer, pushing him back into the car, and the officer felt his life was being threatened. He fired a few shots, the one killing him being the last of several. This is supported by blood on the seats of Wilson’s car. Brown’s family, supporters, and Dorian Johnson, the person walking with him, say something completely different. They said that at some point, after a couple of shots were fired with Brown outside of the car, he put his hands up and was believed to say,”O.K.,O.K.,O.K.,” meaning that he was going to surrender. After Wilson was not indicted, there have been protests going on in Ferguson, and the police have been trying to stop them. This is a cause for outrage, though, because according to my morals, when an eighteen-year-old boy is shot dead by a grown man, may it be after shoplifting or not, this is murder, and killing someone is never okay. No matter what the circumstances, when a human being has killed another human being, they should get life in prison. The fact that this officer got no sentence whatsoever is very alarming to me.
