xistential-thought

[xistential-thought]

Understanding the power of social media

Today I had an interview with a digital consulting firm to work on a podcast. It was exciting to get to meet with people who are doing the type of work that I want to do.

One thing that stuck out from this interaction is that social media coordinators are a growing profession that actually pays people!!

Social media literacy is something that I take for granted because it has been something I have grown up with. I forget that there are people who need this type of expertise in order to grow their brand and online presence. This is where folks like myself come in! We provide support and knowledge that some people might not have in order to grow brands.

This interaction reminded me how valuable social media knowledge is. Even though I am not an engineer or computer scientist, my lived experience with social media makes me somewhat of an expert.

I hope that this opportunity works out because it would be a step in the direction I want my career to go.

[xistential-thought]

I got accepted into a Zine Fest!!!

Some exciting news to get me through the rest of this quarter, I have been invited to participate in a Zine Fest in Oakland!

I am beyond excited. This quarter I have pushed myself to try so many new creative writing projects. For those who don't know, zines are small self-published books that people can make. They come in many different forms (short stories, poetry, art, anything!) and are a great way of publishing writing.

The zine I have been working on will officially be printed. I hope that this is a step in the right direction for me as a writer. I hope that it will also be an opportunity for me to get to meet lots of other creative people and learn more in general. : )

[xistential-thought]

Week 9

I am so tired this week and emotionally drained. Being a full-time student is exhausting. Being a student working two unpaid internships on top of trying to care about all my school work perfectly is stressful. I am proud of myself for keeping up with it because I know that it's going to help in the long run but man it's exhausting not being able to do everything and be a fully independent adult at the same time.

One thing I have been reflecting on this week is that I am so close to the end that I just need to get things done. It is not always going to be my best work but half the battle is just turning something in sometimes and making an effort. It is exhausting but with every hard thing I do I feel like it's making me stronger (even if it is just a placebo feeling).

Being the first in my family to go to college also means that I can't give up. There is an entire group of people in my family that this degree and these opportunities are going to help.

I might have to lessen my workload as well (which is going to be hard to figure out) but I know it's going to be ok, I just have to stick it out.

It has been hard trying to get through everything right now. I am so tired. I am ready for spring break already.

[xistential-thought]

6-word poems -DMD

I cried today, it felt good.

Did I tell you the news?

I'm sorry you are sad now.

I cried, I died, I survied.

I'm sorry I couldn't be there.

I hope we can stay friends.

It feels so good to grow.

I'm glad that things got better.

Thank you for being so kind.

It's ok now. You are safe.

If you die, I'll miss you.

Am I crazy? Maybe a little.

Did you forget about me today?

When did you figure it out?

You hurt me, but I'm ok.

Did you always know it sucked?

I'm sorry you had to grow up.

When do we start to heal?

Life is hard, keep it up.

We are unlearning to begin healing.

God I love Jennifer Coolidge, wow.

Which Bob's Burger character am I?

[xistential-thought]

What is was like meeting Bobby Seale

Last month I went to an event on campus where Bobby Seale was the Keynote speaker. For those that don't know, Bobby Seale is the co-founder of the Black Panther Party (BPP). The BPP was a civil rights group that emerged in the 1960s in Oakland, California originally as a well as self-defense group.

Growing up, I learned about the important changes the BPP contributed to communities of color. They inspired me as a child to care deeply about fighting discrimination and empowering communities of color to take change.

I am so proud to be an East Bay native and honored to have gotten to listen to Mr. Seale address our school. When people talk about moments in their life that inspired them, I would say this was one of those moments for me.

I am really honored that I had this opportunity. I am a bit lots for words but I was able to write a piece about it for our local newspaper.

PS: It has been a creatively rich job being a writer but it is also is profitably poor decision on my part.

[xistential-thought]

Got my first article published in a newspaper!!

As some of you might recall, this quarter I got a job as a staff writer for our local newspaper. Today the article that I wrote last week has officially been published!!! The story is on page 3.

I am beyond excited to have taken the first real step toward becoming a writer. If any of my classmates would like to read it and provide some feedback I would really appreciate it!!

[xistential-thought]

Week 8 Update

There are officially two more weeks left for the quarter.

I am pleased to say that despite the sleepless nights and constant wave of work that keeps getting piled on me I'm staying afloat.

Maybe afloat is the wrong word. The waters of academia are choppy and seem to want to pull me down any chance it can. Having done school for almost 6 years now I feel like an experienced sailor who is able to navigate the waters on nothing more than a piece of wood from a capsized vessel. Imagine the scene from the titanic where Rose is floating on the door (except I am actively paddling on top of it).

I just finished my first official article with the Cal Aggie and working on one more for next week. I am proud of myself. I set up a goal this quarter that I wanted to start writing and get some samples published. I think that I am going to request the rest of the quarter off since I just want to focus on school stuff for now.

I need to catch up in most of my classes but I feel like it's doable. I spent all night reading "The Code" for our in-class presentations. I got that out of the way, and now I can go back and make my presentation better.

The book was actually really easy to read and follow along with. As a bay area native, it was fascinating to learn the history behind Silicon Valley. I did not realize how connected Stanford and UCB were to the war efforts and how this also led to an increase in technological innovation in the area.

Reading about the culture at Stanford and the intentions behind its design were fascinating to learn. I was really interested to learn also about the culture at Stanford from the first group of chip creators to the capital venturists of the '60s and '70s. I was also interested to learn about the wave of "hackers" who had leftist perspectives on the use of computers for social liberation.

It gave me a better appreciation for all the technology I have access to. Most people now have access to smartphones or public internet access. We benefit from the technology that capitalism was able to mass produce.

[xistential-thought]

10 Potential Book Titles

In class we created a list of 10 book titles. The titles do not have to be real but it was fun to work on. Here are the titles I came up with.

The history of Cooperatives and social justice within the East Bay 

The White Latina: A history of Spanish heritage speakers in North America

A Dónde vamos desde aquí?: The continue immigration of first and second generation Americans globally

It will be ok: coping with difficult classroom conversations as an educator

California community colleges: the equalizer of education and a social history behind its formation

Oakland Leaders Stand Tall

Where did all the people of color go?: The erasure of communities of color in the Bay Area

California down-and-out: A political history behind the housing crisis plaguing the state

The System is Collapsing: The Future of American Politics

Did I do something wrong?: A book of affirmations for people who suffer from extreme anxiety

[xistential-thought]

Quotes from The Code:

ARRIVALS 

“If you had technical brilliance, it didn’t matter where you came from or how you behaved. Arrogant jerks got a pass, as long as they built and delivered greatness.

That’s how you got to the engineer and the sheep. ” P 115

“[Bob Widlar] He didn’t believe anyone over thirty could design anything worthwhile”

“His lack of an engineering degree became an advantage as he acted as translator and mediator, explaining the tight little world of young chip companies to the broader universe beyond it. You needed to educate customers, building share in existing markets and discovering entirely new ones. You needed to tell compelling stories about the tech coming out of the tilt-ups, and about the personalities who made it.” P 116

Ch 7 The olympics of capitalism

“The guys back in New York and D.C. call this place ‘Silicon Valley,’” a couple of visiting sales managers informed Hoefler over lunch one day. Short, memorable, and a little jokey—silicon was built on sand, after all—the name was exactly what the reporter needed to describe this laid-back, entrepreneurial slice of Northern California to his readers. “Silicon Valley, U.S.A.,” blazed Hoefler’s header on the cover of Electronic News’ January 11, 1971, issue. The name turned out to be a keeper.” P 117

“The charismatic personalities and intensely competitive culture of the semiconductor industry made for great copy, and America certainly needed some new heroes.

The Wagon Wheel was a good place to find them. As big contractors and aerospace companies up and down the West Coast went into their post-Vietnam tailspin, the chipmakers boomed.” P 118

“Wall Street analysts had no interest in following the semiconductor industry (“The computer industry is IBM,” one coolly informed Regis McKenna), and The Wall Street Journal refused to write about any company that wasn’t listed on the stock exchange. Making Silicon Valley more illegible to the wider world was the fact that its firms sold to other electronics companies, not to consumers. An Intel chip might be inside the computer down the hall or in the calculator on your desk, but you wouldn’t know it.” P 119

“Marketed as “a computer on a chip,” the Intel 4004 made its public debut with an ad in Electronic News in November 1971, less than a year after Hoefler’s giddy series gave Silicon Valley its name. Only a few months later, Intel followed on with the release of the twice-as-powerful 8008, followed by the 8080 in 1974” p 120

“ But their blueprint for making microchips at scale wasn’t the mass-production assembly line of Henry Ford. It was the franchise model of McDonald’s hamburgers. Manufacturing grew by building small-to-medium fabrication plants across the country and, increasingly, overseas.8

Within headquarters, chip executives grouped their employees into small teams that competed against one another to develop the best product. “Big is bad,” Bob Noyce declared in a keynote address to a group of businessmen in December 1976.” P 121

“ Intel avoided hiring people over age thirty. But this wasn’t a search for anti-establishment rebels—it was a quest to find people with ambition to create a new industry.” P 122

“If you are a capitalist—and I am—you graduate to the Olympics of capitalism by starting new businesses,” one Silicon Valley executive told Bylinsky.” p 122

“The hiring habits set in place by the semiconductor companies continued over the Valley’s successive technological generations. By the end of the 1990s, dot-com-era firms were filling close to 45 percent of engineering vacancies by referrals from current employees. By the 2010s, software giants were throwing “Bring a Referral” happy hours and offering up free vacations and cash bonuses to employees who helped snag a successful hire. It made sense: topflight engineering distinguished great tech companies from the merely good”p 123

“Everyone knew who came in early and snagged the best spots by the front door. Everyone saw whose car lingered in the parking lot long after dark”p 123

“translated into business organizations where work overtook family life, unvarnished criticism was the norm, and self-doubt was a fatal weakness.” P124

“If we include you, then we need to include all the spouses.” Why is that a problem? she asked. “Well,” he said matter-of-factly, “we only go to these offsite meetings so we can spend our evenings with prostitutes.” Hardy marched off to CEO Tom O’Rourke to complain. The organizer disappeared. Hardy wasn’t sure what happened to the prostitutes.15” p 124

“The organization charts of these growing companies looked a lot like those of typical “old economy” corporations. They featured all the requisite support functions (sales, marketing, human resources) that had become critical to doing business in the modern era. Yet they differed in important ways. For one, they moved through product cycles far more quickly than other kinds of manufacturing,” p 124-125

“Atari took California casual to a whole new level.” (Game company that took off) p 125

“Atari’s products were exactly the right diversion from inflation-wracked family incomes and oil-embargoed hours spent waiting in line for gas.”p 126

“And while all of American society was utterly saturated in politics, the Silicon Valley crowd appeared remarkably (and to many, reassuringly) unconnected to the political. Their politics was an ideology of working hard, building great technology, and making lots of money along the way.”“Nearly all of them were transplants from somewhere else, their loyalties and social bonds all lay with the industry that brought them there, and they remained remarkably untouched by the local political culture.” P 127

“Democratic-led, with a growing minority population, and a strong labor union presence. The political mobilization of its white middle class was limited mostly to pushing for growth controls and land conservation measures that would limit the pell-mell development in the flatlands from creeping up the coastal hills.19” p 127

“From where they sat, common backgrounds strengthened common purpose, and success entailed immersive focus on building the best possible product.

The first generation of tech titans who rose up in Fred Terman’s penumbra in the middle of the century—Dave Packard, especially—later became deeply involved in regional civic and political affairs. Packard chaired the Stanford Board of Trustees, founded a regional economic development group, and was a donor and mentor to a generation of state and local politicians” p 128

“To be sure, the men and women of the postwar electronics scene mobilized politically when it came to issues with a direct impact on their homes and neighborhoods.” P 128

“The volatile high-tech era demanded new agility, and Boston didn’t have it. The horizontal networks of Silicon Valley—a webbing of firm and VC, lawyer and marketer, journalist and Wagon Wheel barstool—did.” P 131

Chapter 8: Power to the People

“To change the rules, change the tools.” This was Lee Felsenstein’s mott”p 133

“Building a tool for a Fortune 500 company would tend not to fulfill me,” he declared. “Building tools that people use to make Fortune 500 companies irrelevant—that’s more my style.” ”“He spent the next few years bouncing back and forth across the Bay between Berkeley and the newly christened Silicon Valley, continuing to pursue his dream of building technical tools that would allow people to escape the establishment’s clutches, and possibly overthrow the system altogether.” P 135

“On top of it all, American schools remained civil rights battlegrounds, as continuing integration struggles had given way to fiercely contested court-ordered busing. These measures prompted some white parents to violently resist, and many others to opt out of public school systems altogether. Alternative schooling movements like Montessori and Waldorf spiked in popularity.” P 137

“But Loop’s lack of formal training in computing ultimately became an asset, enabling her to push past technical jargon and explain to ordinary people—kids, teachers, and especially girls and women like her—how computers could become part of their lives.” P 138

“Many were like Lee Felsenstein: Sputnik-generation boys with science-fair ribbons who’d collided head-on with the cultural liberation of the Vietnam era. They proudly called themselves “hackers,” relentlessly future-focused, suspicious of centralized authority, pulling all-nighters to write the perfect string of code. They demonstrated superior technical talent by infiltrating (and sometimes deliberately crashing) institutional computer networks. Overlapping their ranks were the renegade “phone phreaks” who discovered how to use high-pitched signals to break into AT&T’s networks and enjoy long-distance calls for free”“But a good number were also like Liza Loop: baby boomers drawn to computers by a passion to change the way society worked, especially in how it educated a new generation.” P 138

“Knowledge is power and so it tends to be hoarded,” exhorted Nelson. “Guardianship of the computer can no longer be left to a priesthood” who refused to build computers that could be understood by ordinary people” p 139

“Such technophilia also made this change-the-world movement oddly conservative when it came to disrupting conventional gender roles, reckoning with society’s racism, or acknowledging yawning economic and educational inequalities.”p 140

“For some of these technologists, a singular focus on computing was an escape from identity politics. For others, tech was an answer to social inequities. The overwhelmingly white and middle-class group had faith that “access to tools” would fix it all.” P 140

“We are simultaneously experiencing a youth revolution, a sexual revolution, a racial revolution, a colonial revolution, an economic revolution, and the most rapid and deep-going technological revolution in history.” P 142

“He talked about how electronic communications would enable a splintering of mass culture into thousands of different, specialized channels where everyone could get their own, specially tailored news. He talked of how inundation by information would reduce attention spans and increase skepticism toward expert authority. He pointed out how much the U.S. already had shifted toward a service economy, and how information technologies accelerated that shift.” ““Americans had understood technology as a big-organization tool to solve large-scale problems—war, famine, poverty, education, transportation, and communication.”P 143

“he wrote. “Raw data are now extracted in much the same way teeth are pulled: either under the ether of uninformed consent or ripped out by the roots.” “Programmers might not yet know what to do with all this data, but accelerating computer power indicated that they soon would. As Paul Baran of RAND reminded one inquiring journalist, “Behind all this creating of records is the implicit assumption that they will someday be of use.”P 145 “Congress hurriedly bundled together a flurry of legislative proposals to pass the Privacy Act of 1974” p 145

“But all were pushing the same message: the power of the computer came from its user” p 147

Chapter 9: The Personal Machine 

“For nine days in April 1969, several hundred students occupied the Stanford Applied Electronics Lab, demanding that the university put an end to classified research. Soon after, university administrators cut ties with SRI and its controversial portfolio of classified projects. ” p 148

“As the cash rolled in, Xerox decided to follow the example of its more venerable predecessors like AT&T, and set up a stand-alone research facility. And where better to do it than Palo Alto? Top electronics firms had been setting up labs in Fred Terman’s orbit for two decades by then, and no other place could match the combination of Class A real estate, Class A engineering talent, and Class A weather.” P 150

“Xerox had assembled an all-star team. But its Palo Alto facility first entered the broader public consciousness as a looser” p 151

“It was unlike nearly every other computer in existence, in that you did not need to be a software programmer to use it.” P 152

“If work is to become play,” the spread proclaimed at the top, “then tools must become toys.”

Like so much of what appeared in the PCC, the Tom Swift article wasn’t just a set of engineering specs. It made a pitch for a new political philosophy. ” p153

“As Illich had put it, “Changes in management are not revolutions.” The inequities of society stemmed from the industrial mode of production, and they wouldn’t end unless the platform itself changed.”p 154

“Felsenstein summed up the philosophy in a nutshell: “You don’t have to leave industrial society, but you don’t have to accept it the way it is.” “Despite outward appearances, the generation was remarkably different from that of their parents, continuing on its search for personal fulfillment and freedom from the conformity of their youth. They practiced yoga, retreated to Esalen, and attended EST seminars. They came out of the closet, got out of the kitchen, and marched for women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment” P 155

“Liza Loop wanted to demystify computers, not glorify them. In her view, human teachers remained central to the success of the computer-aided classroom. “The computer is only a medium of communication between teacher and student,” she told the classes she visited. “It can never replace the teacher.” P 157

Chapter 10: Homebrewed

“While high-intensity hackers dominated the Homebrew scene, the stunningly rapid ascent of personal (or “micro”) computing—and the enduring legend of the Homebrew Computer Club—had a lot to do with the Liza Loops: people who weren’t necessarily lifetime hobbyists, but evangelists passionate about the computer’s possibilities and able to translate the insider language of tech to bring the story to a wider world” p 161

“The impact of the personal computer will be comparable to that of a gun,” he remarked. “The gun equalized man’s physical differences, and the private computer will do the same for his intellect.” P 162

Chapter 11: Unforgettable 

“The Valley had its silicon capitalists of the semiconductor and computer hardware industries as well as its distinctive club of venture investors on the hunt for the next big thing. Certainly, the chipmakers had many other things on their minds in 1975 and 1976. Their big customers were the old-school mainframe and minicomputer makers as well as the car companies, watch manufacturers, and other kinds of companies putting microchips”p 163

“ In short order, the hobbyists in garages morphed into entrepreneurs.”p 166

“Apple was the first personal-computer company to join the silicon capitalists” p 170

“The result was the Apple I, a simple wooden box that looked like it came out of a tenth-grade shop class, encasing a circuit board of supremely elegant design”

“On April Fools’ Day, 1976, the two Steves and a third partner, Ron Wayne, started Apple Computer Co. The first logo, designed by Wayne, had the retro-hippie design beloved by techie newsletters like the PCC and Dr. Dobb’s. It featured Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, surrounded by words uttered not by Newton, but by William Wordsworth: “A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought—alone.” The inaugural sales flyer was similarly loopy, with a typo in the first sentence” p171

“Jobs persuaded Paul Terrell at the Byte Shop to buy fifty units of the Apple I, which Terrell agreed to do under one condition: no kits. The machines needed to be fully assembled. In a move that Apple’s marketers later made sure to burnish into company legend”

“These two founders were very young and kind of strange, but the Valley was full of strange tech people, and the Apple II was exciting” “ By December 1976, Regis McKenna had taken on Apple as a client and drafted a comprehensive marketing plan, recorded in tight cursive in a narrow-ruled spiral notebook.” “The people we were trying to reach was very specific,” McKenna explained. “The hobbyist looking to the next level, affordable computer, people who had programming skills and built their own computers from kits.” Yet the Apple II was also for those who weren’t already homebrewing: “professionals such as teachers, engineers, or people who would put in the time and effort to learn how to use this new computer.” P 173

“Despite the proliferation of new entrepreneurs, the first Faire had a program and a vibe that was more Whole Earth Catalog than Wall Street Journal. Panels focused on the change-the-world potential of computing, with titles like “If ‘Small is Beautiful,’ is Micro Marvelous? A Look at Micro-Computing as if People Mattered” and “Computer Power to the People: The Myth, the Reality, and the Challenge.” There were sessions on computers for the physically disabled, and four panels on using personal computers in education (Liza Loop appeared on one of them). Novices were welcomed with their own panel on “An Introduction to Computing to Allow you to Appear Intelligent at the Faire.” Business uses were rarely mentioned, aside from considering “Computers and Systems for Very Small Businesses.�� For $4, attendees could buy an official conference t-shirt that read, “Computer Phreaques Make Exacting Lovers.” P 174

“By the time Homebrew began and Dr. Dobb’s published the code for Tiny BASIC, it was common understanding that personal-computer software was to be shared, “liberated” from corporations, and given away for free.”p 176

“he two had decamped from Boston to Albuquerque, and Traf-O-Data had a new name: Micro-soft” “The young entrepreneur was furious, and fired off the angry note that would go down in tech history as “The Gates Letter.” In it, Gates drew enduring battle lines in the tech world. On the one side, there were the people who believed information—software—should be proprietary data, protected and paid for. On the other side were those who believed in a software universe like Homebrew: where people shared and swapped, iterated and improved, and didn’t charge a cent”.p 179

“The microcomputer might have remained a funny little toy if it hadn’t been for the educators and evangelists and marketers who showed how it could work in the classroom, in the office, and as home entertainment.” “America and Western Europe were awash in data, and increasingly distrustful of the institutions and experts who managed that data. The personal computer held the promise of reclaiming control.”P 180

CH 12: Risky Business

““If tech companies were job creators, then Washington must act to fix the horrible climate for venture investment. ” p 187

“Even though business lobbying was surging in the 1970s, WEMA had only just hired its first Washington representative. Headquarters remained in Palo Alto, three thousand miles away from the corridors of power”p 188

“The tech community sent its lobbying efforts into overdrive. The Californians beefed up WEMA into a national group, rebranding it as the American Electronics Association, or AEA.”“The energetic platoon bombarded the Hill with white papers. They testified at hearing after hearing that high taxes on tech were “killing the goose that lays those golden eggs.” P 193

“The venture capitalists and the Valley could not have found a better spokesman. With heartland credentials and friends across the Hill, Steiger was earnest, methodical, and knew how to land a political punch. He also grasped that the tax issue was as much an issue of psychology as it was of economics. “Capital gains taxes are even more important as a determinant of investment decisions than they are as a producer of revenue,”p 194

“Importantly, Democrats, who’d long considered these tax breaks as something that unfairly benefitted the rich, began to buy into the narrative. One Washington Post op-ed in support of the bill did a clever retake on New Deal rhetoric by calling the American investor “today’s ‘forgotten man.”p 195

“said one analyst. “People want to keep taxes on investments low in case they strike it rich themselves someday.” “It’s obvious,” observed the Post’s editorial board that June, “that there has been a profound change in basic opinions about the tax structure—particularly among Democrats.” P 195

“The White House had to back down. In the autumn of 1978, Carter signed a sweeping tax reform law that looked very different from the populist package he’d introduced only months earlier. And there within it was the work of Bill Steiger: a capital gains tax cut to 28 percent.” P 195

“The same players continued to lobby an even lower capital gains rate throughout the 1980s” ““And the personal computer finally reached the technological and price point that made a large consumer market possible.”p 196

Excerpt From

Code : Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

O'mara, Margaret

[xistential-thought]

Surprised at the lack of interesting careers at the career fair

Today there was a career fair being held at my campus that has been widely marketed to graduating students.

If you couldn't tell by the title of this post, I was not impressed. Of the booths available, a majority were viticulture and local police forces.

The fact that there were so many booths with the same type of jobs was pretty dull. Part of me feels like it has to do with my university not being a target school compared to other local universities. Part of me also acknowledges that the job market is not easy right now, but for a school that claims to best and brightest in the area, it feels like are were given the worst scraps of the job market.

The school could have invited big-name investment firms, groups like Google, giant tech companies like Microsoft and Meta, and even policy firms from D.C. I'm disappointed to say that the only interesting thing about this event was seeing more police booths than effort into youth community outreach. The most comparable thing I could say was it felt like a high school event.

The lack of professional jobs that would be of the caliber of a graduate student from my alma matter did not feel sufficient. It sincerely felt like our school has a total lack of regard for our job prospects.

In some ways it felt like we had been weeded out of all the good jobs and that we should be thankful that these jobs came to meet with us.

Alas, the job search continues and I will likely have to meet with people on my own to figure out what is next for me. And so it goes.

[xistential-thought]

BIPOC artists, writers, philosophers, and leaders to look up to for inspiration.

In recent years, I have been exposed to many influential artists, writers, philosophers, and leaders who are NOT cis-white straight men.

This is a list of people who I find inspiration from that are people of color. Many of the people I have included are also Queer (but not all) and the intersessions of their identities are at the forefront of their work. This is a continuous post and will be added as time permits. If anyone would like to add to this list feel free to send me a message and I can add them <3

Music/ Lyricists

Kendrick Lamar (B: Compton CA, 17 June 1987 – ): He is a rapper, poet, and songwriter. His works are reflections of life as a Black man growing up in LA and the social pressures that surround his community and identity. He is regarded as one of the most influential artists of our generation. His latest album

SZA (B: St. Louis MO, 8 November 1989-): SZA (Aka Solána Imani Rowe) is a black fem American singer and songwrtier. Her lyrics depict the soft and sometimes disheartening parts of love. As of 2/28/2023, her 2022 album SOS has been No. 1 on the Billboards 200 list for the last 10 weeks.

Kehlani

Artists

Mike "Dream" Francisco (B: ?- D: Oakland CA, 17 Feb. 2000) Dream was a Filipino American aerosol artist from the East Bay. He was one of the founders of a group of artists known as the TDK collective. His aerosol art was a reflection of the political and social movements of the 80s and 90s in the East Bay. His writing and calligraphy style was influenced by Hip-Hop books he would read. There are still preserved pieces of his work in East Oakland, Encinal High School in Alameda, and in part of the city ( San Fransisco). In honor of Dream's work, the city of Oakland created Dream day which is a celebration on Feb. 17th of each year.

Poets/ Writers

James Baldwin (B: Harlem NY, 2 August 1942 – D: Saint Paul de Vence France, 22 August 1987): He was an influential author and writer during the civil rights era. He worked side by side with leader with MLK, Malcomb X, Bobby Seale, and many other. He was a gay man who wrote critical pieces on America's treatment of its citizens.

Gloria Anzaldúa (B: Harlingen TX, 26 September 1942 – D: Santa Cruz CA, 15 May 2004): She was a queer Chicana woman who taught at UC Santa Cruz. She was a distinguished feminist poet and writer. Her most famous book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), talks about the intersections of being a queer first-generation Mexican-American woman in America. She officially coined the word Mestiza which historically was a word that most Latine folk previously used to describe their mixed ancestry, despite the creation of the word being used by Spanish colonialists. She taught generations of Latine and Chicano/a/e/x folks about the importance of reinventing identities and how to take back those identities to empower one another.

Ibram X. Kendi (B: Jamaica NY, New York 1982 –): Kendi wrote the book "How to Be an Antiracist" in 2019. He is a researcher and professor at Boston University.

Community Leaders

Huey P Newton (B: Monroe CA, 19 June 1942 – D: Oakland CA, 22 August 1989): He was the Co-founder of the Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale. Newton was an African American Political Revolutionary who helped create mutual aid and community support from within the Black Panters. He was assassinated in 1989 and is buried at the East Oakland cemetery next to the former private women's institution "Mills College".

Bobby Seale (B: Liberty TX, 22 Oct. 1936– ): He was the Co-founder of the Black Panther Party. Mr. Seale is an African American Political Revolutionary who created the party's 10-point program and helped to create massive reform within California and nationally with grass-roots community activism. He is also an engineer, a professor at Merrit college in Oakland, and still an active community activist.

[xistential-thought]

Happy Belated Valentines Day

This past Tuesday was Valentine's Day.

I decide to go back home to the bay for the day. I missed my partner and just wanted to be back with him, even if it meant taking a day off from a hectic school schedule. While I was down there I decided to do something slightly impulsive. I got another tattoo!

I have been wanting another one for some time and researching shops in the area with artists who I liked. Eventually, I landed at a shop in Oakland right below the diamond district. I sat at the shop a bit uncertain if I was going to go through with it. I was amazed as I looked around the shop and saw the different artwork hanging from wall to wall. My partner and I sat together and came up with a design that I felt was relevant to me and my life right now.

There were four artists available. Two standard males and two welcoming and approachable fem artists. I first approached the person who greeted us. I told her about my idea and she volunteered to create the concept in her style. I was nervous at first because her style wasn't one that I was particularly drawn to but I was drawn to her kind nature. My partner and I waited patiently as she designed the piece. We browsed the many tabletop art books feeling both inspired and shocked by the global history of tattoos. One book, in particular, was a charter of tattoos from Russian criminals from the late 19th century and early 20th century. Tattoos were markers of their crimes as well as forcibly placed in prisons on those who were suspected Leninists.

Eventually, my artist back to me with a design that I felt was true to my sentiments. My partner eventually left and I was left with just my artist to talk to. There is a fear that rushed through my head knowing that my skin was in the hands of a person that I had only known for less than an hour. As I sat down with my artist and begin to chat with her I left more at ease.

As I laid down and waited for the first lines of the gun on my skin, the scratching and hizzing sound of the tattoo guns felt grainy and simultaneously calming, almost like the sound of cars passing by late at night on a busy freeway.

The entire experience was memorable. I chatted for hours with my artist. We talked about everything under the sun, she told me about her Bay Area origins and I told her of mine. We bonded over a mutual understanding that life is intrinsically hard in the Bay but the people around us make it bearable. I told her about how uncertain I was about the future and she told me about being my age and how she felt the same. We talked about our mutual love for art and how our higher education background was both a blessing and useless in many ways.

Overall it was a day that was greatly needed. For me, it was the equivalence of a spa day or a fresh cut after feeling so worn by the weight of the world. The tattoo itself came out beautifully. Most importantly it made me feel stronger for it. The pain did not bother me. If anything, the sensation was freeing. I could let myself feel and talk in ways that I hadn't been able to for so long.

For me, it was truly a day of new love, self-love, and community love. The human connection that I made and the significance of that day will forever be engraved on me physically but also within me.

I hope that everyone had an equally memorable Valentine's Day .

[xistential-thought]

Where do I go from here?

This spring I am going to be graduating from Unisedade mas Clafinais. I am excited to be done so soon but also feel stuck in a state of shock.

When I first transferred to the Unisedade mas Clafinais. I had in mind that I wanted to become an immigration lawyer. With that goal in mind, I've worked hard these past few years to be able to keep that within reach. Now that I am so close to graduating, I feel that this is something that isn't really for me.

I have been toying around with so many opportunities in hopes that they can direct me to where I should go next. I am still trying to enjoy my time here the best I can, taking breaths when I can and remembering that life is not a race.

I also worry. There are lots of people like myself who are just trying to get by, but then comes the issue of toxic workplaces. In particular, the issues of sexism and oppression in workplaces are constant reminders of what the job market is like.

In our journalism class, we read a piece about sexism in big tech and the struggles that intelligent women have to endure even in this day and age. I am no stranger to the mistreatment of women in the workplace. Having worked since I was 15 in the food and service industry I am painfully aware of the ugly abuses men put women through.

Through my education, I have worked hard to view myself as an equal in society. I have pushed myself to take on tasks that are equally if not more demanding than my colleagues. The problem is that professional workplaces can't seem to offer the same respect to women who are 10-30 years older than me. What a disheartening thought.

Call me entitled or even childish, but I did not put up with shitty workplace environments for years in order to still be oppressed by them as an adult with a higher education degree. No one should. The issue with toxic work environments is that they are upheld by pro-capitalist principles. Even as the article showed, when these companies are called out for these actions nothing is done. I know there are plenty of people who are suffering in these self-degrading workplaces. The way that workplaces are constructed is innately oppressive. They are meant to make the most profit by disregarding the workers who do the labor for a company.

As a young woman of color and first-generation Honduran American who will soon rejoin the workforce, I feel perplexed. As a graduate, I now have something that makes me more desirable to the workforce. But as an educated person with a sense of humanity, I am aware that my education makes me no less valuable than a child who has never attended school but is forced to work for only dollars a day elsewhere in this global economy. We are all pawns, the only difference is my education now allows me to be exposed to a new level of misogyny and sexism.

Once I officially graduate from this fine institution my goal should be to work for a large company. My goal should be to make money. My goal should be to add value to the workplace. My goal should be to withstand the pressures of competition.

So many women have pushed themselves under these pretenses and have been symbolically rewarded with the offer of a position at a board table. These same women are also the ones writing about how oppressive and degrading these positions have been. Their presence is not seriously considered and they still endure the same disgusting advances that women who work in food service endure.

So why should I want this after graduation? Why should my goal be to break the glass ceiling above me when there is a cement ceiling right above it? None of this seems appealing.

This is not to discount the actual change and far worse oppression that women workers have endured in the past but just a reflection on it. More than anything it has made me think hard about what I value in a workplace and how much I am willing to withstand if I am not being treated in a way that is fitting of any human being.

Why should anyone have to work in these horrific and hurtful systems? The answer is that no one should. The one thing these stories have shown me is that people will continue to fight back against unfair workplaces. When workers' needs are being ignored or treated with a lack of respect they can also choose to leave. Many people, like the women in the article, have decided to make their own workplaces that do not stand for this type of harassment. These workplaces are being pioneered with the idea of inclusion, mutual respect, and zero-tolerance policies. This type of reconstruction gives me hope for what is to come post-graduation.

I sincerely have no clue what my next steps are after graduation. I at least know this: morally I have a personal obligation to not allow myself to be othered by anyone or any workplace regardless of the pay. I pray I will never have to endure this type of treatment. I am also supported by other women workers in this world who refuse to stand for this type of treatment. I hope that people feel empowered enough to speak up against workplace oppression. If people's needs are going to be ignored just knowing that others are coming together to create new workplaces that put human morals at the forefront of their work gives me hope that things will be ok after I graduate.

[xistential-thought]

Too many activities, no time to do any of it

The silly thing about being a senior who has no clue what I am going to do after college is now I am doing it all.

Right before the quarter started I outlined some personal goals I needed to complete. I was feeling stagnant in my life and like I had failed myself by not trying new things last quarter. This quarter I went in the opposite direction and have overloaded myself with a world of possibilities.

It feels like I'm barely getting by. There are definitely moments of stress but I don't feel sick (just yet). I feel like this stress is what I needed. I needed to be so engulfed by schoolwork and extra circulars that I can't do anything else. The bad thing is that all this work is also preventing me from being able to finish any of my work.

So far I have been playing catch-up each week in my classes. It's a silly game of cat and mouse where my homework, job responsibilities, and personal problems keep running away from me and I'm able to hold on for just a second before it runs out from under me once more.

This quarter so far I am taking 4 courses, 2 writing internships for my minor, and simultaneously trying to make the time to work on my personal goals. Even the zine I started back in week 2 is no closer to getting finished. My half-started applications from graduate programs, fellowships, and jobs are all neglected due to my indecisive nature.

It feels like every day I am learning about new and amazing opportunities but I am so interested in everything that I pick up one thing without ever completing it. I am hoping that things will become more clear so long as I can just finish this quarter and at least pass my classes.

[xistential-thought]

Newsjacking: TOL- Update, unsure if this is a topic I should pursue

I think for my next assignment I want to write about Twitter and their supposed fight to stop child p**nography and abuse but how they have done little to nothing to help with this goal. See article from NYT -> https://www.nytimes.com/es/2023/02/08/espanol/twitter-abuso-sexual-menores.html

For my sources I wanna interview a few people who are human rights activists from the area, local parents/ teacher who work with younger folks and community members who have grown up with Twiter as children.

[xistential-thought]

[xistential-thought]

Writing is hard, who would have thought?

As week 4 is coming to an end I can't help but feel like I should be doing more but the issue is I can barely keep up with what I've been doing. In theory, writing shouldn't take that long. It is simply getting words onto a page (much like what I am currently doing), yet it is so much more daunting when it's work.

This is literally my goal right now but time management is not my friend in this instance. Time management is causing me to start a million different projects but not be able to finish any of them in a satisfactory way. Well, I have no one else to blame but myself so I can't harp too much on it.

I feel like this is somewhat of a blessed problem to have... Guess I just have to find the blessing between the stressing hehe.