I am terribly sorry for the lack of updates recently; I am trying to get back into this, but now with school starting up again, it may be a bit difficult. In any case, my past winter vacation was filled with quite some traveling — I returned to Taipei, Taiwan once again for about 10 days to visit family and actually met up with quite a few of my Berkeley friends in Taiwan! The latter half of my break included my visit to New York City.

So it has always been a dream of mine to live and work in NYC after I graduate. Honestly, I think it’s the fact that it’s a large city, and with large cities comes the romanticized view of what life is supposed to be like in a huge city. Anyhow, I hadn’t been back to NYC since fifth grade, which was the first time I visited the east coast. My sister and I went to New York during early January, which is supposedly one of the worst/coldest times to visit, apparently. It was freeeezing cold and I literally felt like I was in a refrigerator whenever I was outside. I wouldn’t say that my visit will deter me from searching for a job there post-graduation, but I think it isn’t a “priority” to find a job and live in NYC after I graduate. Perhaps it’s the freezing weather that is a bit scary for me (seeing as I am a West-Coaster, after all). But, after much reflection, it’s also the fact that NYC may not be the optimal place to find a job in the social entrepreneurship / social enterprise field. SF one of the major hubs for social ventures nowadays, and while I am sure NYC houses some great social enterprises as well, there are just more options in SF. But honestly, who really knows until I start looking for jobs (which will not be until next year anyways) whether or not NYC may or may not be a potential place after all?!

To speak of my future travel plans, I will actually be traveling with two of my best friends to Europe this summer! I am beyond ecstatic, as I have never had a chance to travel with friends (it has always been with family and family-friends, which has also been amazing to have the opportunity to have traveled with them). We will be going to London, Amsterdam, Athens, and Greek islands Ios, Mykonos, and Santorini. I will then be leaving the trip early, and my friends will be journeying onto Rome, which I am terribly jealous that I will be missing but am nevertheless happy beyond belief to have the chance to travel to Europe this summer!

If you have been to any of those places and would like to make suggestions as to what is fun, interesting, and amazing to do, please let me know!

So I haven’t updated in quite a while now… but in the meantime, I visited Taiwan to see some family, went to Guangxi and Yunnan in China, and visited Hong Kong for the first time as well. All in all I had a good trip. Nothing *too* much to say…I could post photos and comment on them, but honestly I’m a bit lazy.

I do want to say though, that for the 1.5 days I was in Hong Kong, I fell in love with it. I realized that I LOVE the “big city” feeling; not just that, but I loved how metropolitan it was, without all the smoggy air, horrible traffic, etc. Hong Kong was densely crowded, but it was just.. nice. I don’t know, I really liked it. I did ONLY spend 1.5 days there,  though, so I can’t quite make any judgments just yet. I want to try and go back..soon, if time/money permits.

Right after my trip to Asia, I flew straight back for summer school. I’m taking three courses: The Social, Political and Ethical Environment of Business, Business Communication, and Marketing. They’re..alright, I suppose. Not absolutely fascinating or anything, but not useless either. I’m halfway done as of the end of this week, thank goooodness.

I’m also interning at World of Good this summer as a marketing intern. I really have only been interning there for about two weeks, so I’m still dipping my feet in the water… But I do hope I learn a lot. We’ll see.

Anyhow, I kind of blogged just to update. I don’t have anything substantial I quite want to say, and I really don’t like updating when I have nothing to say (i.e. this post). When I have something better to say, I shall update again.

Until then…

Coincidentally, tomorrow (June 5) is World Environmental Day 2009…

Amazon Watch is an organization that came to speak at one of my club BEACN‘s events and showed us a documentary a few months ago about the Chevron-Texaco mess in Ecuador and the Amazon, and I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time now.It’s an issue that I think is overlooked, if not even unknown, primarily in the U.S. (I’m not sure about other countries, but at least here, it’s definitely an issue that I had not been aware was going on.)

First, I’d like to give a brief introduction about Amazon Watch and what they do. Amazon Watch‘s mission statement is:

Amazon Watch works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems.

More specifically, Amazon Watch came to my club’s event to speak about the much-too-long ongoing court case between Amazon communities in Ecuador and Chevron-Texaco. So what exactly is the court case about?

The lawsuit, being held in Ecuador at Chevron’s request, will determine if Chevron will be forced to pay for a clean-up of the more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste dumped by Texaco (now Chevron) when it operated an oil concession in the Amazon from 1964 to 1990. A team of court-appointed experts has assessed damages at up to $27.3 billion and a decision is expected later this year. — from a press release 5/29

The fact of the matter is, Texaco drilled for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1964-1990, and because Texaco chose profits over people (and in this case, the Ecuadorian communities), Texaco used the cheapest (and OBSOLETE) environmental methods to do so. Furthermore, Texaco “dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, spilled roughly 17 million gallons of crude oil, and left hazardous waste in hundreds of open pits dug out of the forest floor” (from ChevronToxico).

What really shocked and infuriated (maybe I shouldn’t even be shocked, who knows nowadays..) me was when watching the documentary, I remember that one of the Texaco officials, when questioned about the health implications to the 30,000 campesinos of the Ecuadorian communities that Texaco’s waste has caused (not only including loss of biodiversity but also diseases including cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and diseases that kill humans over time due to the toxic waste present in the Ecuadorian’s waters and streams), the official claimed something to the effect that it was the Ecuadorian communities’ lack of hygeine and their own ‘unsanitary’ practices, such as not washing their hands, that led to their current health problems.

Furthermore, as you’ll hear when you watch the documentary, there has been over 80,000 specimen tested and proven as evidence of the environmental and health damage the oil has caused to the natural surrounding.

And because Chevron (obviously) does not want this to be covered much in the media and does not want to lose this case, they have tried to drag out the case as long as possible and even requested the court case to be held in Ecuador (in hopes of being able to bribe judges/law officials more easily). They thought this was something that could be quelled down, quashed…But they were wrong.

What this truly is, as one of the activists from the documentary says, is a timed-release genocide. The 30,000 people living off the Amazon river are being killed, slowly. Some have no access to proper medical care, others are already suffering from cancer, miscarriages, and other health problem due to Texaco’s doing.

From the documentary, you will also see a woman who found out she has cancer, managed to get enough money for the treatment, only to find out that her daughter also has cancer and thus is forfeiting treatment for her own cancer to her daughter, thereby condemning herself to death because she has no other choice.

The Ecuadorian communities, the citizens, the people have spoken. And they are taking action. But them taking action is not always enough. We need more people to know about this issue, to hear the injusticies and not be okay with it. I’m personally going to keep an eye on any new progress Amazon Watch and ChevronToxico make.

This is not just an environmental issue; it is a social justice and human rights issue. The Ecuadorian people should not have to pay for and suffer from the irresponsibility and atrocities that Chevron/Texaco made.

What can you do? I highly recommend watching this short documentary on the Texaco disaster in Ecuador. It’s online and available for everyone to see. It definitely explains the issue much better than I can in this entry. And it’s compelling. So please, tell your friends about it. Watch it; be informed. That, I believe, is always the first step.

So, to sum it up:

• Watch the short online documentary Justicia Ya on the Texaco environmental disaster in Ecuadorian Amazon
• Visit Amazon Watch to read more about all their projects (they also run many other campaigns in countries such as Peru, Brazil, and other Amazonian countries)
• Go to the ChevronToxico website, which is a campaign with the collaboration of the Amazon Defense Coalition and Amazon Watch and more information about what’s going on in Ecuador in regards to this court case and ways to get involved.

Although it is really difficult for someone like me -  and probably someone like you – to know how we can help, there are a few ways (as outlined by ChevronToxico) -

1. Send a message to Chevron
2. Tell a friend, share the website links on your Facebook, tweet it.
3. Contact your city council (if you are in the U.S.) and encourage them to pass a resolution to ban purchasing of Chevron products (which, proudly, Berkeley was the first city to do so!)

Of course there are many other things we could do, but these are some actions that we can do, right now, as you’re sitting in front of your computer or holding your phone. So don’t make an excuse. Don’t turn your head the other way. From here is where we can start to make change.

The Berkeley Hunger & Homelessness Conference 2009 is an event that I’ve been working to put on, along with other student organizations on campus, for a while now. Although I must admit that throughout the planning process I was never extremely ecstatic nor optimistic about the turnout and the event itself, I think I’ve began to raise my expectations for this conference on Thursday. It seems like (or I hope that) there will be quite a few attendees, and we have a pretty good variety and range of speakers.

A group of students on campus have also made a short student documentary on homelessness in Berkeley. We previewed the documentary yesterday at our meeting, and I must say – it looks fantastic, and I hope that those attending our event will enjoy it as well. The short documentary can be viewed here: it includes interviews with UC Berkeley students, a UC Berkeley professor, formerly and currently homeless individuals, and volunteers at homeless shelters.

My hope is that this conference will encourage dialogue and discussion about just what “homelessness” means, and hopefully address and dispel stereotypes and the stigma around homelessness. Furthermore, I hope that the conference will increase awareness about the food insecurity that exists in West Oakland (53 liquor stores, 0 grocery stores), discuss the inextricable linkage between hunger and homelessness, and address “sustainability” also as an overarching topic –

1. How does the lack of grocery stores in West Oakland affect our local food distribution?
2. Why is “homelessness” as an issue in Berkeley unsustainable?
3. How do we address these issues on a local level so as to become a more sustainable city?

And, most importantly, discuss what students and the community could do to alleviate hunger and homelessness. Although I feel that there are larger issues and steps that must be taken to truly address hunger and homelessness, the first step is awareness and education about these issues, and hopefully this conference will do just that.

As Obama said himself from The Huffington Post article,

“Part of the change in attitudes that I want to see here in Washington and all across the country,” [he said], “is a belief that it is not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

I will update here after the actual conference with (hopefully) positive thoughts and reactions. Until then!

The conference definitely exceeded my expectations. We had over 120 participants, and a diverse crowd. I really enjoyed hearing Osha Neumann speak about the stigma that surrounds “homelessness”: the way people refer to those who do not have houses “the homeless”, even though we don’t refer to people who do have houses “the housed.” I noticed that there was a lot of discussion about being “politically correct”, if you may call it that – otherwise, I guess we can just say our sensitivity, in referring to those without houses “homeless” or categorizing the “problem” as “homelessness.” I can now say that I do feel self-conscious whenever I say “the homess”, and yet I don’t know whether saying “those who are homeless” is any better. I’ve never really been good at being PC…regardless of the term.

One example that Osha Neumann gave that was just so telling of how unequal, corrupt, and fundamentally messed up about our society: someone who was chased, arrested, and jailed for stealing $6.50 worth of food/etc. from a store, versus those on Wall Street that stole millions and billions of dollars and there was so much debate over how to “punish” these people. This is what we call a double standard, and in this case, it should NOT exist! When he put it that way, it was just so dumbfounding and absurd to me…

I also enjoyed hearing Robert Ratner, Housing Administrator of Behavioral Health Care Services in Alameda County, speak about EveryOne Home. I’m not going to lie – I don’t know much about housing policy and legislative policies both regionally and nationally over the years, so I don’t have much commentary about this. However, I do have a description of EveryOne Home’s mission:

EveryOne Home envisions a system of care in Alameda County that by 2020, ensures all extremely low-income residents have a safe, supportive and permanent place to call home with services available to help them stay housed and improve the quality of their lives.

I think that the conference overall was a success: it brought together many different student groups (even more than the three – Cal Habitat for Humanity, The Suitcase Clinic, and CalPIRG - that had planned the conference), people from the community – both “the housed” and “the homeless” (trying to avoid having to be PC when mentioning these “two groups”..blah I don’t know how), and people of all ages. I hope it was helpful, informational, and maybe even inspirational for those who attended… This conference could become an annual event. But we’ll have to see about that.

Until then, please enjoy the new theme I installed, NOT (obviously) made by me. I like what they call a “Life Stream” — it’s like a newsfeed of (almost) everything in my social media life!