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Building Resilience and Community in Puerto Rico

Bill in Congress wants a 20% tariff on goods produced in Puerto Rico – like it’s a foreign country and its people not American Citizens – being brown is enough for many white-rights nazis in Congress and White House!

By Carson Bear
Saving Places

With Puerto Rico still reeling from Hurricane Maria, the community there faces an urgent need. During the storm, thousands of buildings—historic and new—lost their roofs. Fresh rain furthers damages to these places, delaying people’s return to their homes, businesses, and normal routines.

To address this need, the National Trust is working with our partner, Para La Naturaleza (Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico) to provide tarps to 200 homes and other buildings in Puerto Rico. Every donation of $75 will provide a tarp to an affected home or other building to protect it from the elements, slow the structural damage, and help our fellow citizens get back on their feet faster.

We sat down with Ivonne Sanabria Pérez, Board and Advisory Council Coordinator of Para La Naturaleza, to talk more about the Tarps Campaign and how Puerto Rico is building resilience in the wake of tragedy.

As Puerto Rico begins rebuilding, what preservation needs are most important to address?

Right now, we are working together with over 50 Puerto Rican communities in naturally protected places. Part our funding is going towards helping community centers serve their residents’ needs. If the community center doesn’t have power, we’re getting them solar power. If the community doesn’t have filtered water, we’re sending them filters. We’ve already been working on that part of the relief effort.

For us, handing out food and water is over. We’ve moved onto the second phase, and we’re rebuilding; we want to build resilience within our communities.

Why are Puerto Rican buildings in need of tarps? How does the Tarps Campaign work?

[Hurricane Maria]—which led to over 20 hours of sustained hurricane force winds—caused major damage to roofs in particular throughout the island. A lot of the roofs [which are usually made of galvanized metal] went with the hurricane. For the next two or three weeks, water kept coming into the homes as it continued to rain.

We originally thought that our organization could set aside zones with buildings in historic areas that had suffered damage to provide them with tarps but, because we weren’t the owners of these homes, we couldn’t really do anything. That part of the relief response is rather slow, and getting tarps to each home depends entirely upon its owner.

“It’s really important to have hope that we won’t have to rebuild on our own. The Tarps Campaign will go a long way in symbolizing that help is coming. ”

Ivonne Sanabria Pérez, Board and Advisory Council Coordinator of Para La Naturaleza

We were also concerned, because there is a sense that we’re all alone in this, that each resident whose home had sustained damages felt they were fighting this on their own. Residents who lost their roofs may be staying with a family member or at a shelter, or may not have food. They definitely don’t have power and may not trust the water, so everything is a challenge.

We want to provide a sense that help is coming, that people understand there’s someone out there who knows what we’re going through. I think it’s really important to have hope that we won’t have to rebuild on our own. The Tarps Campaign will go a long way in symbolizing that help is coming. And all this effort made by people we don’t even know? That’s wonderful.

What can we do in the future to support long-term resiliency, especially because of the lessons we’ve learned from the way natural disasters have been handled in the past?

One of the most wonderful things in coming to the States has been networking with people who already went through this in Katrina and in Florida. They understand exactly where I’m coming from. I know what FEMA can and can’t do because someone who already lived through that [explained it to me]. That exchange of knowledge should be perpetuated, so it’s accessible for those who are making decisions about the next disaster.

photo by:Carlos Giusti/AP

Hurricane damage in Old San Juan.

We also need to train people in the trades of rebuilding, and particularly in rebuilding historic structures. [Para La Naturaleza] was already beginning to work on that, but Maria has really sped up the process and prioritized skills we hadn’t thought were priorities before the hurricane.

There is a place for other nonprofits and businesses in all of this. The people who are overseeing the preservation of Puerto Rico in an official capacity [employees at Puerto Rico’s State Historic Preservation Office, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, and other government organizations] have experienced massive loss, as well.

One lesson learned is that we can all work to support each other. Our nonprofit has something to contribute to state preservation groups. They don’t have to wait for their employees to be able to survey the island because we have volunteers to help out. We can convey information with one voice, and we can decide how we need to tackle the future together.

What is the connection between preservation and human life when it comes to a disaster like Hurricane Maria?

When it comes to preservation, your home is your home. Preserving these places matters to you because they are more than historic places. I am not as concerned with preserving historic institutional buildings because they will get funding and resources. But most of our historic areas are in towns and residential areas, and that’s all they have. This is their sense of place. It’s where they wake up every morning, it’s where they eat. I can’t fathom the notion that preservation is not important or relevant to daily life, or not something that needs to be tackled immediately.

Most people are saying that there are phases to disaster recovery—that we need to get water, food, and shelter first, and that assessment of damages for historic homes and historic properties can wait. But our organization isn’t giving out water or providing shelter, so what can we do? The organizations who handle these two types of needs are separate, so both can work [on addressing Puerto Rico’s needs] at the same time. That way, when our state preservation organizations are ready to move onto the next phase of rebuilding, they’ll have more information than if they had to wait to make an assessment for damages.

Is there a silver lining to all of this?

It has to do with the psyche of surviving a catastrophe. We’re connecting to our neighbors and helping each other out, because we don’t have any devices to rely on right now.

I’ve asked people from New Orleans if this understanding of what really matters will last, or if we’ll regain power and forget what our communities have recovered. The answer seems to be that we can do both: We can keep the human connections and friendships that we’ve made, and the feeling that our community is cognizant of our neighbors’ needs—but we can also use Facebook. The way you grow when you survive a catastrophic event really does inform who you become.

I’m hoping to look back in 15 years and see that we did [the right thing]. The past few months have been very difficult, but I wouldn’t change what’s happened. I wouldn’t change what I’ve learned for the world.

Featured Photo: Adobe Stock Photos

Carson Bear is an Editorial Assistant at the National Trust. She’s passionate about combining popular culture with historic places, and loves her 200-year-old childhood farmhouse in Pennsylvania.

Why I Am Not a Humanist

During a talk yesterday, a Jewish professor of philosophy posed the question of why he was not a Zionist. Clearly, the answer requires no philosophical investigation. Zionism as the national movement for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in historic Palestine is, ipso facto, a colonial project that would be realized only by the ethnic cleansing and the dispossession of the people, who have inhabited the land of Palestine for centuries, i.e. us, the Palestinians. However, while, by virtue of being Palestinian, my entire existence is hinged upon my opposition to the Zionist project and the Israeli state, I am no less disenchanted by the supposedly redemptive undertones of the alternative form of politics this professor was advocating. This form of politics insists that the way to go forward is by embracing our common humanity, a humanity that binds us all together and liberates us from our particularistic identities, be they racial, ethnic, religious, gendered etc.

I attempted to raise the question of whether this form of global humanism was a plausible political vision for the Jewish people at the time. That is to say, it does not seem logical to demand that the Jewish people, who have been the historical victims of European anti-Semitism and had historically been persecuted only because of their Jewishness, regardless whether they truly believed in Judaism or not, treat their Jewishness as secondary to a more global and primary identity, which is their common humanity with others. Jewishness was constitutive of who this community was and it is on this basis that they were persecuted. It seems rather supremacist to insist that the Jewish people had no right to construct a politics founded on their Jewishness. Of course, we can still agree that this politics which should have been purely redemptive has become only another fierce form of European imperialism, an imperialism that was born of the newly formed Judeo-Christian alliance against Islam as the Zionist movement aligned itself from the beginning with the European powers at the time which thus gave birth to a new historical injustice whose victims are us, the Palestinians.

But to deny that an oppressed people, be they Jewish, black, Muslim or otherwise have only one way to do politics and fight against their oppression which is to assert their humanity with the rest, rather than emphasize their particularistic struggles is, at best, spurious. Of course, this is not to say that these people are not ‘really’ human. They are. But that is no reason to regard this common humanness, and not their provincial identities, as the foundation of their political struggles for redemptive power and against oppression. This is what I mean by humanism.

We surely have enough reason to throw into question the universalist claims of humanism. Humanists would like us to believe that the historical and contemporary systematic and institutional practices of racism, imperialism and patriarchy have nothing to do with humanism, and that these are only a distortion of what humanism should be. Humanism can only be good, and it is the best thing for everyone. Only that it has not been. It does not work for most peoples across the globe. The majority of the world population are oppressed, unprivileged, disadvantaged, and disenfranchised. Humanism is based on the human, and the Western idea of the human has been used to legitimize scientific racism and colonialism. Not that we are not human ourselves, but keep your idea of the human to yourself.

It is not coincidental that the boundaries of the human seem to correspond with the West. To clarify, it seems that the closer one is to the ideal of the West, the closer they are to realizing their humanness, that is, their essence as human (whatever this essence is). For example, by virtue of being in, or better yet, from the West, one seems to have more access to what we regard as basic human rights. One’s life becomes more valuable (hence the death of a dozen in Europe is guaranteed to generate more attention and fiercer outcry than a hundred in Baghdad), one’s freedom of movement becomes less restricted, one’s quality of life, generally speaking, is higher. I am not saying here that everyone in or from the West is in an equal position or is in a better position that everyone in the non-West. Of course, some are more privileged than others, but, in general, we are safe to state, and based on personal experience, that one is treated as more human– albeit not as equally human as everyone else– simply by being in the West and thus closer to the West. This is also why humanism is also colonial idea, as it is predicated on the distinction between the West and the non-West.

To conclude, we have strong grounds to reject the demand that any oppressed people can build their political project on the idea of the human, and, as victims, only by asserting our humanity, can we hope for a better treatment by our colonial masters.

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Filed under: Politics & Society

What I Bullsh*t Speech!

“Not a speech to the troops that are away from their loved ones fighting in whatever worthless war they are fighting…..

This was a goddamn campaign speech….but if he had ever served his country he would know this was a worthless waste of time.”

Our Fearless Leader has addressed the troops on this T’Giving Day and it will make you puke.

And he spoke……

U.S. President Donald Trump gave a bullish Thanksgiving address to troops overseas on Thursday, hailing progress in Afghanistan and against ISIS, and telling them they were fighting for “something real,” including a stock market at record highs and his promised “big, beautiful fat tax cuts.”

Speaking in a live video teleconference from Palm Beach, Florida, with military personnel serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, Trump told them they were “very, very special people.”

He called troops in Afghanistan “brave, incredible fighters” who had “turned it around” in the past three to four months.

We opened it up; we said go ahead, we’re going to fight to win,” he said. “We’re not fighting any more to just walk around, we are fighting to win.”

Trump told the troops they could look forward at home to the benefits of “big, beautiful fat tax cuts,” a stock market at record highs, jobs and economic growth.

“We’re doing well at home, the economy is doing great,” Trump said. “You’re fighting for something real, you’re fighting for something good.”

Trump said he had told the troops overseas the country was “doing great,” thanks to his cuts in “regulation and all the waste and all the abuse.”

“I told them … you folks are fighting so hard and working so hard, and it’s nice that you’re working for something that’s really starting to work.”

(politicususa.com)

Not a speech to the troops that are away from their loved ones fighting in whatever worthless war they are fighting…..

This was a goddamn campaign speech….but if he had ever served his country he would know this was a worthless waste of time.

Facebook still allowed race exclusion for housing advertisers

Just interested in the money and pimping for money

Last year, ProPublica revealed that Facebook allowed housing advertisers to exclude races in their campaigns. Facebook said they would address the issue. ProPublica returned to the topic. Facebook didn’t do a very good job.

All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to publish any advertisement “with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.” Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Every single ad was approved within minutes.

Ugh.

Tags: advertising, facebook, people

This paper shows how employees are forced to write down their passwords to their accounts in social media and to their emails. They also have to fill out their family members passwords.

IPS Inter Press Service posted a photo:

This paper shows how employees are forced to write down their passwords to their accounts in social media and to their emails. They also have to fill out their family members passwords.

Turkish Surveillance Invades Social Media Privacy

By Esref Okumus

State employees in Turkey have been forced to participate in a restriction of their own freedom of thought and expression. State authorities, as employers, have demanded that their employees report their own and their whole family’s passwords to all of their social media accounts. Holding back information could lead to imprisonment.

Nov 20 2017 (IPS) – ”The present government has taken measures that go beyond anything the previous military juntas did”, according to legal expert Sercan Aran of the trade union confederation KESK. The army has previously registered personal data and the private political opinions of suspected dissidents, but always under secrecy.

Now there is a form to be filled in: ”Personal details on employees”. The 22 000 employees of the State Hydraulic Works (DSI), which is the state agency responsible for national water resources, are required to share details that include their newspaper subscribtions, which unions and associations they are or have been members of, which bank accounts they have, and which NGOs and charity trusts they contribute to.

Further questions are directed at social media use. Yet not only on their own use, but also of their family members, such as husband/wife and children. Even their passwords are demanded.

http://ift.tt/2hT8EUc…