hilos

this study analyses the different immigrant populations that live within the metro chicago area. this area is made up of 13 counties and so is quite big reaching towards indiana and even wisconsin.

the part about the report i thought most interesting was looking at the different levels of education attainment by the different immigrant groups. The report acctually went into more detail then i’ve seen before by having charts that refers to specific nationalities and all the different socio economic stuff they were analysing.

some of the more interesting results to me were that these levels of education varied significantly according to population. Some of the groups that had below avarage completion of the 9th grade and below were people from Iraq (29.2%) and Mexico (46.9%)  with the avarage for all groups being 24.4%. Other groups had super low percentages like even 2%. this points to not just the variety of people who are coming into the country but also to the resources they have available both in the country they are coming from and here in the u.s.

From here i draw a couple of conclusions. one, that the people who are coming here from places like mexico and iraq have low access to education and there are probably ecomomic and political reasons for this. for example there is a war on iraq right now. how do we expect a country to function when it is under attack from the u.s. government and other imperialistic forces? And in mexico the devaluation of el peso, plus the exploitation by both foreign and native companies/governmental agencies, sure don’t help in terms of access to education.

it’s not like these problems don’t exist in other places, but that people find the best means for them to find better situations than the ones they are in, and these vary from country to country. For exmaple one could try to make the argument that it is easier to come to the u.s. from mexico than from guatemala if you are crossing the border, becasue ideally speaking you’d only have to cross once (provided the border patrol does not catch you, and that the coyotes don’t trick you, and that you’re alive at the end, etc) as oppose to having to go through the border on the south of mexico (with the same concerns applied) and then through the border on the north. in terms of non-u.s. gov-sanctioned immigration. not to trivialize border crossing becasue either way it is not a good experience. and really ideally speaking there would be no borders. also there would be a redistribution of wealth and resources so each community controls these.  

the other thing the report brings to my mind is how u.s. policy heavily affects the people who come into the country and those who are not allowed in. The u.s. has a number of visas that it gives out. they vary from country to country and the u.s. gets to pick who gets what. it can give preference to engineers and doctors from certain countries and restric people from others. These laws heavily influence who has access to getting in.

here in the u.s. access to education, specifically higher education and education for people who have other responsabilities, ie work and kids, is severily curtailed. i mean it’s not only like this for immigrants but for citizens as well. more specifically for people of color and lower class people (none of which are mutually exclusive).

it’s hard enough as it is for people who are citizens to pursue a higher education becasue of tuition hikes, lack of access to schools with a lot of resources, racism, etc. Now, imagine coming here and not knowing how to navigate the school system or not knowing the predominant language at school or work. or not having access to government sponsored scholarships becasue of your migratory status. These are barriers some immigrants have to face. There are always those that come having learned english and who have a degree and so are better off and have more access. they still face problems of discrimination but might have an easier time navigating the systems we live in.

my concern is how do we change things so that people have access to higher education? i mean to really address this problem you ahve to address racism, sexism, classism, lack of access to health care, to primary education (with a lot of resources), to immigration laws, etc all this stuff!! the factbook gives some tools to move points forward but we are so far from this goal that there is gonna have to be a big fight around the subject. 

To end on a happier note. education is not a static thing and it is not confined to the educational institutions that are currently in place. Everyone should have access to these institutions but there should be and are alternatives. People educate themselves all the time. through reading, political activity and discussion etc. education is something we need to take up as communities who access are systematically denied. but as to how, well, i think a lot of people are still working on that. but one way is by creating alternative education pockets that spread and serve to connect up people and issues. maybe even coordinate actions. i think this is a positive direction in which to move forward.       

i like to walk around my neighborhood at night. in the summer when it’s hot all the families hang out at their doorsteps. There is the mother, the father, and the little kids. Sometimes it’s the grandmother and grandfather and uncle and the kids. sometimes there is a dog. Sometimes it’s a group of older men sitting and talking. sometimes they drink. Sometimes it’s a group of young men, and women. friends from school or friends that met at school becasue they can’t afford to go anymore. sometimes they drink, and sing, and draw on each other.

this is what i see when i ride or walk at night around the inner streets of little village. But lately buildings have begun to spring up. well, more like their insides have been torn apart and they have been changed and their names have been changed to ‘condos’ and maybe a loft or two.

on the boulevard, where i live, there use to be this old factory like building. i would look at it beause it was on my way to the park. one day i noticed that a light was on at the very top. It stayed on and slowly the windows began to change. i realized the building was being renovated. now each floor is being advertised as a loft, or a condo.

i could see that. i mean it’s on the boulevard. But what surprised me for sure is that one day i was heading towards Arte y Realidad, and as i walked on saywer, there it was. a house that seems to have sprung over night. a condo selling for 269 000.oo dollars. according to the census tract of that are the majority of people make under 49 999.00 dollars a year and the majority of them rent. i don’t see how the re-made houses are gonna help the people who live here stay here if they want.

in class we read and interesting article on gentrification that came to the conclusion that gentrification did not cause people to leave their homes. when the rent went up they just payed more. They did nto want to leave because the transportation was getting better and the community was being provided with more services (i.e. cleaning) now that people with more income, who are usually identified as being of a lighter skin color, where moving in.

i’ve seen these condos in little village, and i’ve seen the changes that come along when people with higher incomes, and lighter skin, move in. One concrete example is what used to be the 54/cermak blue line. it never had great service, i’ll admit. plus the costs really added up when having to make a lot of trips. it did not work on weekends and it took a real long time to come and go. But not too long ago modifications were made to this line. the station was upgraded, which is good for everyone. But the service was changed. The new line was the pink line. and while it supposedly comes more frequently it only goes down town and back. supposedly this would be more convenient for everyone. and i’m sure it was convenient, for those that had to go downtown. not for the people who had to go to UIC or anywhere around there, and it’s not like the bus services improved that much as to make this change negligeble. yea the blue line still runs but only in rush hour during the morning and afternoon.

there is a whole campiagn around transportation, forming a driver-rider alliance to have the community decide how to best work transportation, etc. But anyway, my point was that before more affluent people started coming to pilsen and little village the service was horrible. Now it’s better but only for some. Great.

that’s the way i see gentrification play out in my neighborhood. There are some better services but these only came up when the new people with more money started moving in. The houses are better, the place nicer. But costs do go up, and even if people can pay a higher rent and higher priced services they have to cut back from other things. Their access to resoures is being diminished. More that it already is!

yea i’m sure my friends appreciate that the streets are cleaner on their way to work becasue they don’t have the money to pay for college.

furthermore, even if people who are renting are not moving away in big numbers what about the people who are not renting but were living in vacant houses? they simply get pushed out. how do you survey them and how are they affected? i mean i know it’s doable i’m just bringin up that they might be undercounted in the article i mentioned before.  

the thing is, people should be able to live where they want. and make demands about the services they need. idealy they would make enough money to get all the things they need and even more ideally our society would not be based on buying and selling and consuming, but rather on working together to give everyone what they need and the access for them to develop and create themselves and their communities as they please.                 

it’s dark. the windows are closed. i’m with two people that i know. i should be feeling safe, they are both my friends. i’m with four people i don’t know, two of them i met tonight. i’m with two people that i know. i should be feeling safe, they are both my friends.

they leave for another room. i’m with two people i don’t know. the room is a little cold and parts of the carpet are wet. i’m glad there is no light so i cannot see the stains on the carpet.

the house has been empty for some time. it’s smells of humidity. we don’t mind sharing the house with people we’ve never met. we talk about sexuality and relationships. we bond over it. the two people leave before dawn, so no one sees them. my friends are not back. they probably fell asleep.

by myself. in a house i’ve never been in. no one lives here permanently any more. i get the impression that a lot of people have passed and will pass through here. it’s abandoned from being inhabited everyday by the same people. but new people come in and live a part of their lives. leaving something behind. a hair. a bottle. spilt beer and wine. 

in my world we all share a house sometimes. random people come in when they need shelter. we respect each other. we talk. we come together and apart. the house is never empty. we pass through it.

i probably would not recognize those people if i saw them again. i never really got to see their face. i think about living my life like this. living in many places with people i may only see for that night. laughing and talking.

i sit on the carpet. maybe it’s been half an hour but most likely it’s been two. they have been gone and the sun is rising. they probably fell asleep in  the other room.

why am i still here? i get up and leave the house that seems empty though my two friends are still there. they breath no life into this house. i walk outside. leaving through the basement like we came in. 

it’s cold. it has rained. it’s five in the morning. i walk home. the streets are not empty.  women and men who have gotten up for work are headed their separate ways. they don’t smile and i don’t feel like smiling. they are middle aged. they wait for the bus and walk down the street. 

they don’t have the luxory of working at home.

i keep walking. thinking my way out of how lonely i feel. i don’t need them. there is a whole world of people i can befriend.

i smile now. walking. enjoying the cold air. my neighborhood is beatiful. yea, every once in a while someone gets shot, but at five am it is peaceful.

spanish drips from the store signs. i pass a sticker that says ‘avenida mexico’ on 26th street. i smile. as i get home it starts to rain and pour. but i’m home. with people i love who won’t go to another room and fall asleep leaving me behind.

the abandoned house remains on my mind. the stillness. the bonding. the breaking. the wine.

i tell my mother about it the next day, but not the part about my friends. i tell her about the dancing all night long, and the hanging out with friends. and the eye drops that are suppose to get the red out of your eyes but make them sting.

she tells me it’s dangerous to go into abandoned houses. who knows who’s in there and what the are doing. makes me promise not to do things she considers dangerous and stupid. i say fine. theoretically i see her point. being in the house was not the highlight of that two day odessey. exploring my own neighborhood was. that night i came to the conclusion that abandoned houses are not dangerous. not even people you don’t know. 

what i needed protection from and what i want to erase . . . is exclusion.

this is the tittle of a chapter in the book the house on mango street by sandra cisneros

it starts off like this “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.”

sometimes that is what i feel some people feel about my neighborhood, and neighborhoods that somehow get placed in the category of ‘other’ in relation to yourself. if you live there and know the people you know they are just people. not lurking to rob you.

they are our neighbors. they are the people that sleep outside and look real poor in terms of material things but have an incredible wealth of knowlege and poems in their minds.

but there is some real danger as percieved by my parents and other people i have talked to. for example stray bullets. drunk drivers. etc. but they are not just here they are everywhere.

as a community we have to take up the issues that affect us. the thing is, these issues are part of a global, national, and city landscape. we can’t just isolate them becuase they are interacting through the personal, interpersonal, group and systems level. operating on one level just is not enough.  

this is how the chapter ends: “All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.”

which is true. again dealing with the unknown. these attitudes of fear of each other keep us from communicating with our fellow human beings and it is in the best interest of all of us to fight the oppressive system under which we live. they keep us down through subtle generalizations (and often not so subtle ones).

the worst part is sometimes we play into the stereotypes. i say fine, if you think i’m a scary person of color who might rob you then maybe i will. i mean i don’t really say that but i can understand how people feel that way.

it’s frustraiting to see yourself reduced to an ‘other’ and your neighborhood to a place somehow inhabited despite all this ‘bad’ ’scarey’ stuff that is supposedly going on. 

we have to get past this notion of ‘other’ to get to know the people and beings we inhabit this planet with if we really want to move to a place were we can develop ourselves and contribute as best as we can to a society that benefits us all.  

let’s go from those who don’t to those who do. to those that talk to people on the bus and train and sidewalk and line as we wait to buy groceries. those who take part in mobilizations and movements for human rights and more access to resources for everyone. those who defend each other’s communities and people’s right to self determination.  

one of the intgeresting points the article makes is that there are situations that facilitate our consumption. it does not focus on what we buy more or the places per se. it is more about the conditions that allow us to get more stuff.

example, dysney world has had great succes. according to the article this is becasue it provides fun and entertainment in a safe and clean way. it is a sanitized version of reality which of course does not come cheap. you have to pay for it. this leads to the exclusion of people who can’t afford it or who are not deemed as belonging in that environment.

it’s the brand that is sold. the image. it’s no longer just about the product, but it is a signifier of different things. like having a certain type of watch or purse that may not be that much better then something at a second-hand store but is just really expensive. i never really understood that impulse. 

the article talks about the creation of an atmosphere which results in higher consumption. the creation of malls with fountains and places to sit, places where people are suppose to want to spend their time, is another example. ritzer mentions how malls”are seen as fulfilling people’s need to connect with each other and with nature . . . as well as their need to participate in festivals” (8). but in malls i don’t see people interacting with each other in a way that really furthers their connections with their community. sure it may be a meeting place for people, and there are the interactions you have when you run into someone, but other than that most people in the malls don’t seem to see the other people as people. they are just kind of there. this is one of those places that were tried to be made so they are communal but that does not work by just having people be in the same place. they have to acctually connect.

the transactions with the people who are at the stores are not an example of people interacting with people. i mean maybe there is some small talk but for the most part you can’t take the time to talk because they are working. no conduciveness to community there.

the electronic shopping centers are another way people can consume and separate themselves from other people. you can just be at home or somewhere with a computer and, as long as you have some money, you can go and get whatever. yea you can argue it’s private but in this sense private is just lonely to me.

throughout the article there is a sense that making things ’safer’ and more about getting what you need right away (having things almost at the tip of your fingers), or being able to customize is the type of atmosphere being promoted. for example gated communities have gyms, schools, shopping center etc in them. why would you leave? well, to expereince other things and meet people with new ideas, are some reasons.

it seems to me that we are loosing oursleves in the idea that more privatization is better. shutting us off from the world that is ‘dangerous’ and ‘dirty’. but no. i mean you can’t control everything around you but you can’t just shut yourself in becasue you want to give yourself the illusion of control. that’s a life of predictibilty and boringness. but maybe some people like that kind of stuff. that’s fine. what is not fine is that access is not given to everyone who might want that.

people who’s access to certain resources such as higher education and a well-paying job are seriously hindered by the systems we live and operate in are denied the luxory of being able to choose what they want. they are systematically locked out of a lot of things, including the ‘cathedrals of consumption’ ritzer makes reference to.

i’m not saying that everyone having access to a consumer culture will somehow alleviate the great inequelities that exist in our wolrd and in our societies. i’m just pointing out that people are excluded and that is not fair. i am in no way advocating our consumer culture becasue i do belive that capitalism is what is perpeuating these inequalities.

so i’ll end with this. access to reasources for all!!

and i read this in one of the quotes they have before books begin (in cradle to cradle)

“what you people call your natural resources our people call our relatives”                             -oren lyons, faith keeper of the Onondaga   

before this assignment i had never gone into the census website and been managebly able to look for information. that locations/street address tool is pretty awesome because it lets you look at each particular section of a place, not just some area that was canvassed, but actual streets. It is a concrete place.

i’m part of the census tract that goes from 22nd to 26th stree and from sacramento to california (with a section cut out of this otherwise rectagle at marshall and 24th). What is really awsome about having a physical place that i can walk through it (and have been living through it since i’ve been living here for like 13 years now), is that the changes that take place are reddily observable.

so, on my census tract…

i live in little village, a predominatly latino (mostly mexican) community. some of the things i found interesting are that even in this small portion of land the white people are more towards the north side and the people of color everywhere else.

the majority of households are made up of families, which can be observed when i walk down the streets and see the families just sitting at their door steps while the kids run and play around on the sidewalk.  about a third of the houses are rented, so one quarter of the population owns. that is not a lot of people (189 units out of 772). this makes me worry because as pilsen (very close to little village) is becoming more and more expensive and gentrified, so are we.

i have already begun to see some condos spring up. a lot of our working class population can’t afford higher rents, specially when the majority of the population has kids to look after(over one half of the population has kids). over 50 percent of the population 25 and over got to high school and under. That is a very low number, and it puts us at a great disadvantage because of the emphasis placed on education when getting a job that pays enough for people to live on and has some benefits (though coming across a job that has both is hard enough as it is).  The level of school education limits us not becasue people are not smart but becasue of the way our society is designed to give preferences to people with high school and university degrees.  A man working full time has a median income of 20 861 a year and a womyn has one of 18 194 a year. This speaks to gender inequality, but my point here is that it’s not a very high income community. How can we afford to buy our houses and go to expensive schools, or just higher education institutions, if people are not making that much money?

in terms of the jobs people work, about 40 percent are in production, transportation and something called ‘material moving occupations’. About 22 percent are in the service industry. No one works at home. i though that was interesting because i always hear of how more and more people are working at home, well, clearly not with the types of jobs the people on my census tract have available to them. we don’t have that luxury. and with the low incomes neither parent has the luxury to stay at home with their kids if they so chose.    

something i found surprising is that i thought there would be a lot more immigrants on my tract but about half of the people living here were born in the U.S. (E.E.U.U.). that made me feel kind of lonley. but there are a lot of younger kids here and people have been coming to this country since a long time ago and they had kids born here. so it makes sense that it evens out.    

over half the people (55 percent) had been living where they are since 1995. so while there was some sense of just passing through for maybe some people the majority seem to have settled (lest they now be driven out by higher pricing which i’ve seen rise while i have lived here).

but still we carry our traditions with us. like having the carritos with fruta and aguas and chicharrones on the corners. there is also a higher language retention for latinos then the other people who speak other languages at home. Out of the 70 percent that speak a language other than english in their house, 69 percent speak spanish and .6 speak indo-european languages. out of the spanish speakers 48 percent speak english less than well and out of the indo-european language speakers .4 speak english less than well. that makes sense since there are more people around who speak the language. i like that. in high school i did not have a group of friends who spoke spanish and that sucked because there are thing that don’t really work when they are translated.

it’s fun to weave languages back and forth, using different expressions and words that have different connotations in each language. jumping from one to the other dejando que se salpiquen y teniendo jente que entiende lo que estas diciendo. this is a small area in a big context. we’re not isolated. had the census tract gone over 26th street on california it would have looked very different, since cook county jail stands as a monument to injustice and oppession that our communities face.