no sam, YOU are! :)

women. flying.

smoothcruising:

Blank Walls Are Criminal

1) What is the theme to be discussed and explored?

• Xenophobia in America. Focusing particularly on anti-Hispanic and anti-Muslim xenophobic attitudes and incidents in the US.
• How did a nation made up of immigrants, established as a “Melting Pot,” come to be so opposed to their presence in America?
• How did a nation created by stealing land from and slaughtering indigenous peoples come to feel indignant about “their” presence in “our” land?
• What are the actual fears about immigrants living in America? Where do these fears stem from? How can we transform these attitudes and perceptions?
• Especially discuss how this affects women immigrants in America.

How can we go from focusing on this:

to realizing this:

?

Why do we think this:

and this:

not this:

?

2) How do I want the “class” to demonstrated what is being learned/discussed?

• Watch Fox News clips on Arizona’s Immigration Law
• Discuss in the group as a whole: How is immigration discusses in our class? What are the questions we ask about immigrants and immigration in the US?
• Have people break up into small groups and discuss: What are the fears regarding immigrants? Specifically, about Hispanic immigrants? Muslim immigrants?
• Look at these statistics:
• • In 2010, there were 15.4 million refugees around the world—an estimated 80% of these refugees are women and children (http://www.refugeesinternational.org/get-involved/helpful-facts-%2526-figures)
  • Of this number, 70,000 to 91,000 are granted asylum in America every year. They are granted public benefits, and they ability to work (http://www.brycs.org/aboutRefugees/refugee101.cfm).
  • On a typical day, 117,600 people are looking for day labor at more than 500 sites. 75 percent of these day laborers are illegal immigrants. (http://www.ceosforcities.org/blog/entry/28)
  • From 2003 to 2007, the number of Anti-Hispanic Hate Crime Incidents rose from 426 to 595 per year (http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/escalating-violence.html)
  • “I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done.” —Hal Turner, American Citizen (http://www.adl.org/main_extremism/turner_own_words.htm).
• How do these attitudes carry over toward beliefs regarding and treatment of Hispanic and Muslim citizens?
• What are ways to face these attitudes head on? How do we address them, respond to them, debilitate them, and transform them?
• Read the sonnet “New Colossus”

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

• Was this once the standard of welcome to immigrants in America? Has it ever been?
• Take time to individually write: either a response to this sonnet, or a sonnet of what our “National Welcome” is now, or what it should be now.

Final Project:

Seek out an example—video, news article, photo, rally record, law, blog, etc.—of xenophobic attitudes exemplified in the US today. Respond through written narrative (poem, essay, letter, scripted dialogue) or an artistic exploration (video, photo, dance). Response can be directly to the author or creator, can address the attitudes and fears expressed, can take the questions being asked and transform them into the ones we and they should be asking, can 

I am not my skin,

but the freckle constellations I trace across my arms,

whispering the myths of my own gods and heroes

I am not my hair,

though I like to think

I’m a natural purple

I am not this face,

though the 

green-grey-hazel-brown

of my iris

tells the way I

change-alter-switch-turn

Away and Inside and Toward and Around myself

I am unspeakable,

but only want to speak.

Immovable,

but only want to run.

I am overpromised, underestimated,

bet against, sworn to win

conciliatory, too set in my ways

Blindly perceptive

Wandering found.

feeling

tragic joy,

silence in sound

I am contradiction;

the You you’ll never see

The I of yesterday

is not the I of now

the I Tomorrow

sings sirens late in night

swearing blessings, answers, fire and truth

pretty words for pretty dreams

I am not the night terrors,

but daydreams of the sun

Imagined in an image

Awake,

asleep,

all one.