To: Alderman Arena

In unit two we talked about Gandhi second principal Swadeshi that means self-place/location. What we did in this investigation was to think about a problem that we have in our community. After we decided what problem we have in our community we had to write a letter about it to our local alderman. I decided to talk about drunk people and my local alderman is John Arena. One thing that I learned during this unit is that my community doesn't socialize with each other and kids don't play with other kids for the reason of no safety. Something that I am proud of is my letter format and organization.

November 14, 2013

Dear Alderman John Arena:

Hi, I am KS a student from Global Citizenship Experience high school. In one of my classes, Global Peace I am learning about the principles of Gandhi. One principal that we are learning right now is swadeshi which means self-place/location. I live in the Jefferson park area and I am concerned about the problem that our community is having with drunk people. I see many problems with this in the alley ways on my streets.

I see lots of people drinking on the streets and they don’t know how to control themselves. By drinking too much they become homeless, jobless and lose contact with their family. Most of them are drunk all the time and by being drunk they don’t know what they are doing or saying. I am afraid that they will do something to harm my community.

A consequence that we face, because of the drunk people is that our community/neighborhood is not safe for kids to hang out with friends  or even walking home from school or a bus stop. Another is that since they buy a lot of liquor they don't throw the bottle  away and they leave it on the floor, that will cause the place to look dirty. When the neighborhood is dirty rats come to out allies and houses.

A solution to the problem that I can see is to construct another community center for them to become more mentally stable. Another solution is to send them to Regency Park Nursing and Rehab Center of Jefferson so they can get help from people that have experience for what they are going through. A simple solution could be closing some liquor business so they wont be able to buy that much alcohol.

After all the people that drank a lot have gone to places to help them, our community/neighborhood can be safe. Our community would be clean and kids can go outside to enjoy the weather and company.

Thank you for your time in reading this letter to make our community and neighborhood a better place.

 

Sincerly,

KS

We Are Beautiful

In this unit of my You Are Beautiful course, we talked about private vs. public art. We investigated a little of what it means and if its legal or illegal. After we saw the difference we decided to do a public art piece and place it outside of our garden. What we did for our piece was cut out letters to form the phrase You Are Beautiful and wheat-pasted two pictures of people who we think are beautiful onto them. This artwork was inspired by the artist JR and Matthew Hoffman. I am proud of my work because I had lots of difficulties with the wheat pasting not sticking so I had to do that process lots of times to make it stay. One thing that I learned was how creating an art piece in a group because I do my art work individually.

KIS. You Are Beautiful. (2013)

KS
We are Beautiful
15 inches by 320 inches
Plastic, Pictures, Wheat-pate, wire stick

My definition of Public Art is art that is meant for the people to see and that is allowed to be there (legal).

The purpose of this art piece is to create public art of our own, inspired by the artist JR and Matthew Hoffman.

One of JR’s big project was in New York, him and his team went out to the streets with a truck that takes pictures and prints them out. So what they did was ask random people in the public if they want to take pictures, once they did take the picture it printed and they post them on the floor of the streets or put them on buildings. Matthew Hoffman’s project was a sticker that he created that says “You Are Beautiful”, that started small and now is big with an big installation. So what we did was combine both artist work into one (which is ours).

The way we planned this artwork was get the phrase into big letters, put pictures of people on the letters and place them outside of our school garden as a form of public art.

We started the project be taking 3-5 pictures of people who we think are beautiful, then we had to choose 2 pictures out of the ones we had. After that we enlarged the pictures up using pixlr and we print them out. When we were done we choose a font that we liked (block font). Later on everyone choose a letter from the phrase. When we choose our letter we did the same process as the pictures(we enlarge the letter and printed them out) and we trace the letter onto a plastic. Later we cut it and wheat paste our pictures onto the plastic.

The way we installed them was putting a metal stick through the letter and stuck the letters onto the ground.

Emiliano Salinas Poem

I am Mexican

I am a Vice President

I am a husband, a father, and a son

I am Carlos Emiliano Salinas a civil rights activist

My goal is stop violence in Mexico……

To stop living in fear

To stand up for people

And end violence in a non-violent way

For people to stand up as a community and not let violence ruin their life

Coming together as a community is more powerful than being alone

Ending violence means no fear

No suffering

No worries

And no more crying

Just happiness and hakunamatata

http://www.ted.com/speakers/emiliano_salinas.html

http://www.ted.com/speakers/emiliano_salinas.html

Story of Segregation

During the investigation I had to interview someone that has experience segregation in there life. The person I choose is anonymous but agreed to share the answers. After I wrote a reflection on what I learned about sarvodaya/segregation from the interview.

Reflection

While my interview I learned that segregation is when a person feels that they are different from everybody else, when they are put aside from normality, when the person feels that he/she are not good enough (from my interviewee). My interviewee story isnt that tragic as others but the story is what some kids feel right now. My interview had a hard childhood you can say because he was segregated from the rest of his peers for the reason of his IEP. He was segregated in sports, in academic performance, etc. He was alone in those times but he decided to change himself from the inside. Also he asked for help to his parents and people around him. He didn't change into what people wanted him to change or to fit into but he change for himself to see what he can become. Now in his life he is not segregated and he doesn't segregate other, if he sees somebody being segregated he helps that person during the person's situation.

After this interview i feel that my understanding of sarvodaya has change because now I know that when there is no sarvodaya theres segregation and segregation is a hard thing to live with especially when people treat you different for something that you didn't choose to have or how you act.