There are two types of human trafficking according to the authors: forced labor and commercial sex. Human traffickers target undocumented migrants by promising “safe passage” and “employment” in the U.S. and later exploit them for commercial sex and forced labor. It is difficult to combat human trafficking in the U.S. For example, authority goes into a prostitute ring that uses and holds human trafficking victims in custody but the traffickers escape (pg. 172). In most cases, the victims will not give any information about the traffickers because they fear punishment. They will be deported immediately.
In order to prevent this dilemma, the government initiated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). This grants a T-visa to victims of severe form of human trafficking. The T-visa gives an individual a temporary non-immigration status and public benefits (food, insurance, housing, etc.). This is beneficial for the government in the sense that the victims will have time to assist in the prosecution of their traffickers. However, the weakness of the TVPA is that even though it allows 5000 T-visas to be passed per year but only about 150 is passed every year (pg. 176). Furthermore, the conditions for an undocumented immigrant to be passed for a T-visa are too strict, according to the authors. It is argued that numerical estimates and types of human trafficking cases must be re-evaluated by the government, at the same time reconsidering the criteria at which undocumented immigrants are passed for T-visas (pg. 181). The government’s actions of the TVPA and T-visa are new steps towards legalizing illegal immigrants in the U.S. but it can be said that at this point, the program is still incomplete.
NAFTA increases the prosperity of some, ruins the subsistence of others, brings more immigrants to the United States, sends more gangs and drugs across the border, enhances the quality of life for many natives and many strangers, burdens schools and hospitals, and binds countries together in ways that will become all the more astounding.
Mexican American historian Douglas Monroy analyzes the historical and cultural relationship between Mexico and the U.S. surrounding NAFTA and transmigration. NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) was a utopian idea that sought to benefit both countries by eliminating tariff on imported products from the other country which would allow both sides to sell more of its products to each other. In the case of corn trade, which has always been Mexico’s staple, its inclusion under NAFTA increased the export of corn by the US. This consequently destroyed the domestic economy of Mexico, costing the welfare of corn producers and forcing Mexican citizens to migrate and look for job across/near the border, ‘developing underdevelopment.’ The transnational migration of workers led to gangs, drug-trafficking, and making Mexico more American. The economical and cultural relations between Mexico and the US today call for greater attention.
Human Rights Along the US - Mexican Border discusses the major issues of sexual violence, human trafficking and indifference of governments along the borders of Mexico. Migrants short on money and legal documents are often victims of sexual violence when trying to cross borders. Olivia T. Ruiz Marrujo, the author of the chapter stresses the importance of recognizing the intensity of sexual violence towards migrants and the increasing trend of femicide along borders.
Distinct from sexual violence of willing migrants, human trafficking involves forced labor and sexual exploitations. Desperate migrants are put into compromising situations in attempts to coerce the victims to be exploited. This leads to many migrants being trafficked across borders to become forced laborers or prostitutes. The biggest issue that encompasses both sexual violence and human trafficking across borders is the government’s inability to handle the issues. Among sexual violence cases, many incidents have been overlooked, undocumented, and the sentence of convicted crimes have been lenient. The same could be said for incidents of human trafficking.
The most important idea the three chapters that Human Rights Along the US - Mexican Border focus on is methods of resolving the issues. Victims have to recognize their civil and personal human rights and should not be afraid to seek authorities to denounce crimes. Governments must recognize these crimes and be readily able to provide help to victims and justly convict the criminals responsible.
The main argument of the reading is how globalization has resulted to benefit the developed countries by exploiting the labors and resources of the developing countries. The author first explains how the global competition of business came about (p. 143-145). In the 19th century, old businesses, including shoemakers and hatmakers started competing against each other. When the globalization came about, such competition began involving developing countries, using their cheap labors. As a result, we see factories such as Maquiladoras, in which people’s labor is exploited and their human rights are taken away. (Hiroko)
As growing globalization of business, advanced countries tend to take advantage of developing countries. For example, since companies in advanced countries are trying to sell product as much as they can at low price, they force labors in developing countries to produce product by working at law wage, unreasonable length of time and treatment in bad work environment. To combat such a situation, the authors introduce the concept of “Grand Bargain” (p. 110). This is an idea of mutual negotiation done by both the advanced and developing countries to come to the solution that benefits both groups. Examples of this type of negotiation are “Earth Summit” and “Social Summit,” formal dialogues about environmental and social issues by many of the representatives of both advanced and developing countries (p. 111). (Akiko)
The world is in the midst of the unstoppable flow of globalization. The main question Jeremy and Tim posed in the essay is “how can those who oppose downward leveling do so effectively?” (Jeremy, Tim 105). Because there is no global government to legislate on behalf of the world’s people, the flow of globalization seems to be in stuck and bring considerable problems. Jeremy and Tim regard the system of nation-based economies as the core cause of the issues. In the essay, they propose the concept which might be silver bullet: transnational citizen action. They believe that this transnational citizen action can call on genuine democracy at bath local and national level depending upon people organizing themselves and acting independently of government. In doing so, the idea they call “Lilliput Strategy” is effective to be applied. Lilliput, described in the story Gulliver’s travel, succeeded to capture and control giant Gulliver by trying him down with hundreds of tiny threads. As this metaphor demonstrates, Jeremy and Tim state that people need to establish the dense network of threads tied around the world which can control the speed and degree of the globalization. If people succeed to do this, they can “utilize the relatively modest sources of power available to them” and “combine them with often quite different power to other participants” in order to deal with seemingly powerful global forces and institutions (106). (Masa)
The history in the reading begins from 1803 and continues through 2007. Nevins presents the concept that controlling the border between the U.S. and Mexico was not natural nor precisely related to national security, but rather a manifestation of centuries of sentiments of racial and economical superiority. “The boundary has always not only about who belongs and who does not, and thus who gets what, but also about the terms on which people and places from either side of the line relate to one another” (Nevins 78). The border developed as a way to separate not only countries, but cultures as well, and as America believed in its “Manifest Destiny” duty to conquer, what once was part of Mexico became America. The U.S. wanted Mexico’s land but rejected its inhabitants, only accepting them on the terms of inferior laborers that must be regulated.
There were certain requirements that Mexicans had to have in order to enter the United States. The United States did not close the door to all Mexicans; there were those who qualified to be part of the work force.
The new practices applied to Mexican migrants attempting to cross the boundary included (depending in the assessment and dictates of the U.S. immigrant inspectors at the official ports entry) vaccination, bathing, and delousing. Medical experts “desirable” or “undesirable” based on their health (90).
According to CIA, unauthorized Mexican migration was a greater future threat to the United States than the Soviet Union because they would infiltrate and corrupt society.
Those who are not welcomed: imbeciles, idiots, feeble-minded persons, persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority---a category that included pathological liars and persons with abnormal sexual instincts (homosexuals)---vagrants, physical defectives, chronic alcoholics, polygamist, anarchists, persons afflicted with loathsome or dangerous diseases, prostitutes, contract laborers, and all aliens over 16 years old who could not read (109).
Those who are welcomed: “Any Mexican citizen of good character may obtain an American Visitors Card, good at any time” (108).
Thus, controlling the border between the two countries has been not only to simply keep the land but also to maintain the pure race and the language. It can be said that the concept of border controlling is based on the roots of American nativism from the English colonial period.
Rank and File: Historical Perspectives on Latino/a Workers in the US explores the history which led to the current situation of Latino workers in the US. The author of this article, Zaragosa Vargas, states that the influx of Mexican workers into the low-skill industrial and service sectors in the US will continue.
Even though Latinos had been racially discriminated in the US, Latinos working in the US auto industry had been considered as middle-class before the late 1970s. However, international competition in the auto manufacturing began and led to unemployment of Latino workers. In addition, NAFTA contributed to the formation of maquiladora in the border area, where companies pay as little as $0.50 per hour and have a low-cost production. This further encouraged the unemployment of Latinos in the US, raising the poverty rate of Latino population to 29 per cent. Also, as Vargas states “For Latinos, blue-collar employment, that previously provided middle-class income and status for America’s workers, was dramatically reduced by deindustrialization,” deindusrialization of the US economy, the shift from an industrial economy to a service economy, has created employment in service sector jobs for Latino workers in the US. Today, many Latino workers are considered unskilled and are working in low-wage industrial manufacturing, service sector jobs, or food processing.
In the next ten year, another 35 million immigrants, mainly from Mexico and other Latin American countries, will be added to the existing 25 million of Latino population in the US, and Latinos will soon become the nation’s largest minority group.
The Closing of the American Border by Edward Alden
The Fence, Chapter 8 of The Closing of the American Border, focuses on the changes that 9/11 brought to border control in regards to immigration as a result of the fear of terrorism. After 9/11 the priority of the U.S. government was to keep U.S. citizens secure by reinforcing the borders, particularly the southern borders diving the U.S. and Mexico. However, many criticized that the billions of dollars invested in securing the border completely was highly ambitious, unrealistic, and had little to do with fighting terrorism. Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), admitted in a Fox Radio broadcast in June 2007 that he did not know a single case where terrorists had used the southern border to cross into the United States (274). Over emphasizing the border with patrols and expensive technology was no longer about preventing another terrorist attack but about preventing immigrants from coming into the United States. “It was one thing to argue that immigrants were overpopulating the schools or draining social budgets or that a new generation of immigrants would for some reason be more difficult to assimilate than the previous generations; it was another to argue that some of them might be plotting to kill thousands of Americans (270).”
In 2004, a program called America’s Shield Initiative (ASI) was implemented, using remote sensors, spy drones, and high-technology to survey the border. However, the equipment proved defective and ineffective after a cost of $2.5 billion over 5 years. A second attempt at border security through “virtual fences” was initiated in 2005, called the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), contracted by Boeing. Cameras, radars, unmanned aerial vehicles as well as more Border Patrol agents were called for. SBI promised to have control over the border by 2013, but at a cost of $8 billion. Again, the equipment disappointed and the plan failed. “When you try to fight economic reality, it is at best an extremely expensive and very, very difficult and almost always doomed to failure (274).”
The goal of the DHS was to make it so difficult and expensive to enter the United States for the sake of securing the country from terrorism, which caused negative effects in multiple ways. For example, in December 2007, the US doubled the cost of applying for a temporary visa to $131. Also, because of the lengthy FBI security background checks, by 2006 more than 1 million people were waiting for their applications for permanent residence in the US. Overseas travel to the US became down nearly 10% from pre-9/11 levels and the number of foreign students decreased greatly, as well. The author mentions that this is due to the difficulties with gaining visas and the perception of American hostility to foreign countries. Companies seeking skilled employees from abroad faced serious problems with getting visas, too. Thus, 9/11 has not only changed the purpose of the border control but also caused negative results in multiple aspects of society.
Transnationalization of Immigration Policy, Saskia Sassen
Transnationalization of Immigration Policy illustrates the conflict of the implementation of immigration policy because of constraints from human rights but also due to economic globalization. Transnationalization of immigration policy weakens the significance of immigration policy between countries. Although the state still has central control over immigration policy, the global economy as well as interested social forces such as agribusiness, manufacturing, labor unions and humanitarian groups conflict with the implementation of immigration policies. These conflicts may continue to arise partially due to these social forces and globalization.
“The shift of governance functions away from the state to nonstate entities affects the state’s capacity to control its borders. New private and public systems of governance are being created that conflict with the state’s capacity to regulate immigration in the same old ways, and that conflict may increase. The ascendance of agencies linked to furthering globalization and the decline of those linked to domestic equity is likely eventually to have an effect on the immigration agenda (Sassen 67)”.
A Quiet Revolution--"The Challenge of Global Empowerment: Education for a Sustainable Future" (Written at the time of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development)
The Need for Change
More than ten years have passed since the holding of the Earth Summit in Brazil, an event that sparked sharply increased awareness of the need to protect the global environment. Since then, the term "sustainable development" has become an integral part of our vocabulary, and on certain fronts progress has been made. Overall, however, the agreements reached in Rio have not been kept and the progress that has been made is not keeping pace with the degradation of Earth's life systems. It is clear that we cannot permit this situation to continue further into the twenty-first century.
Resolving this crisis will require the commitment of more knowledge, technology and funds. But what is even more fundamentally lacking in my view are such intangible elements as a sense of solidarity and common purpose with our fellow inhabitants of Earth, and a real sense of responsibility toward future generations.
Violence against women has increased throughout Mexico and in other Latin American countries such as Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Chile and Peru. Law enforcement officials have often failed or refused to undertake investigations and prosecutions, creating a climate of impunity for perpetrators and denying victims/survivors of violence and their families access to truth and justice.
Terrorizing Women is an impassioned yet rigorously analytical response to the escalation of violence against women in Latin America during the past two decades. It is part of a feminist effort to categorize violence rooted in gender power structures as a violation of human rights. The analytical framework of "feminicide" is crucial to that effort, as Fregoso and Bejarano explain in their introduction. They define feminicide as gender-based violence that implicates both the state (directly or indirectly) and individual perpetrators. Feminicide is structural violence rooted in social, political, economic and cultural inequalities, and should be considered a "crime against humanity."
La diversidad de lecturas que registra el documental colectivo permite “refrescar” el interés: cada cual en lo suyo, los diferentes segmentos van conformando un mosaico tan cargado de significados como las baldosas de memoria que retrata Guarini.
Por Oscar Ranzani, Página 12
Argentina, 2011
Dirección: Mariana Arruti, Ulises Rosell, Carmen Guarini, Lucía Rey y Rodrigo Paz, Miguel Pereira, Pablo Nisenson, Javier De Silvio, Andrés Habegger y Andrea Schellemberg.
Productor ejecutivo: Pablo Nisenson.
Música: Leandro Drago.
Angela y María son dos adolescentes que tienen realidades muy distintas: la primera vive en un barrio carenciado, la segunda es de la zona norte. Ambas están frente a cámara y sus situaciones son confrontadas de una manera impactante, casi demoledora, que busca mostrar cómo influye el factor social en el crecimiento del cuerpo humano y, sobre todo, en la posibilidad de futuro. Los aspectos que se analizan van desde el coeficiente intelectual, genealogía, salud, medio ambiente, familia y educación, entre otros. Esto refleja Informe sobre la inequidad, primero de los ocho cortos que conforman el largo documental D-Humanos, en el cual Nisenson, mentor del proyecto, trabajó junto a otros nueve cineastas. Informe... es el más potente no sólo por la crudeza que adquiere el relato, sino también por el impacto visual de las dos chicas frente a frente y sometidas a diferentes tipos de test.
El de Nisenson puede catalogarse como un corto de denuncia. En el mismo grupo se ubica La tumba, dirigido por Lucía Rey y Rodrigo Paz, que siguen la labor del Comité contra la Tortura de la Comisión Provincial por la Memoria. Nunca mejor elegido el título porque se habla –y con argumentos– de las cárceles bonaerenses como “depósitos” de seres humanos y, al juzgar por la realidad que muestra, no es difícil entender que entre eso y la muerte no debe haber mucha diferencia. La tumba combina la denuncia de los propios detenidos que sufren torturas o malos tratos con un enfoque periodístico, que los cineastas profundizan cuando entrevistan al coordinador del Comité. Dentro del grupo de cortos de denuncia también se inscribe Sangre en el plomo, del jujeño Miguel Pereira. El director de La deuda interna viajó hasta Abra Pampa, epicentro de la Puna jujeña, para contar la historia de los pobladores de ese sitio que sufren todo tipo de trastornos y enfermedades desde que una empresa fundidora se instaló hace mucho tiempo. Haciendo caso omiso de las normas básicas del cuidado del medio ambiente, el “trabajo” de esta fábrica derivó en que el 81 por ciento de los niños de Abra Pampa tengan plomo en la sangre. Si bien Sangre... tiene también un fin periodístico, el relato de los habitantes le otorga un tono intimista a la estructura narrativa, dentro del grave cuadro de situación que presenta.
Para leer el resto del artículo ir a la siguiente página:
By Maiko Miura, Heather Hallahan and Maria Valdovinos
Latinos Remaking America, edited by Marcelo M.Suarez-Orozco and Mariela M. Paez provides an overview of the cultural and familiar role of immigrants in the United States.
Chapter 8 by Wayne Cornelius, titled “Ambivalent Reception,” presents some surveys about public opinion regarding immigrants. For example, two surveys asked whether immigrants are taking Americans jobs and whether they are a benefit or a burden. The results demonstrate that the general public is aware that immigrants are necessary to society, yet it is obvious that racism contributed to how various ethnic groups were more accepting or less accepting of immigrants. Chapter 12, “Families on the Frontier” by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo discusses the toll that these issues have taken regarding family structure.
“The inequality of nations is a key factor in the globalization of contemporary paid domestic work. This has led to three outcomes (1) Around the globe, paid domestic work is increasingly reformed by women who leave their own nations, their communities, and often their families of origin to do the work. (2) The occupation draws not only women from the poor socioeconomic classes, but also women who hail from nations to colonialism has made much poorer than those countries where they go to do domestic work. This explains why it is not unusual to find college educated young women from the middle class working in other countries as private domestic workers. (3) Largely because of the long, uninterrupted schedules of service required, domestic workers are not allowed to migrate as members of families” (264).
Moreover, the hostile attitudes and discrimination that immigrant women encounter while working in the U.S. cause many women to believe that their children are better off raised in their country of origin while they provide money from afar as on- call domestic workers. 75% of domestic workers have their own children. 35% of these women have their children with them in the U.S. 40% of these women have at least one child in their country of origin.
In short, immigrants serve as both a labor benefit and a scapegoat. Regardless of the benefits that immigrants bring with them, they are disrespected and viewed as a burden.
The challenge of Global Empowerment: Education for a Sustainable Future-Ikeda
The Challenge of Global Empowerment: Education for a Sustainable Future was given by Daisaku, Ikeda at the world summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. The first and the second chapter in this article mainly talks about the role of education for people to recognize the importance of sustainable development. In this article, Ikeda defines sustainability as “The concept of sustainability encompasses not only environment but also poverty, population, health, food security, democracy, human rights and peace” (p.39). In order to achieve sustainable development, Ikeda strongly appeals ‘active response’ toward environmental issues. This active response could be “Refusal to be passive observer or victim of circumstances-not only at the governmental level but also at the grassroots level of civil society” (p.36). Through examination of the concept of sustainability and need for the issues, Ikeda concludes that education could be the vital method to achieve a sustainable human society and international cooperation toward the dissemination of environmental information. At practical level, sustainable development should be promoted with the following three goals in mind: to learn and deepen awareness of environmental issues and realities, to reflect on our modes of living, to renew these toward sustainability, and to empower people to take concrete action to resolve the challenges that we face. First, to learn is essential to deepen understanding and awareness. Everything starts from grasping basic facts, as well as understanding the causes and social structures in which the problem occurs. At the same time, it is also important that grassroots movements develop opportunities that encourage a deeper understanding of the global environmental crisis. Second, to reflect on our modes of living is crucial in order to clarify the ethical values we share and improve it. The Declaration proclaimed at Thessaloniki Conference states; “Sustainability is a moral and ethical imperative in which cultural diversity and traditional knowledge need to be respected.” Based on a sense of responsibility toward the future, we need to transform market into friendly competition that makes people realize that they are responsible for community and future generations. In conclusion, cyclical movement – viewing the world from the perspective of the local community, looking at the community through the lens of the world – is vital if we are to develop an ethical understanding, to grasp the concrete realities of community, and to sharpen the awareness of global environment. Ikeda, then, goes on to talk about the third goal, which is “to empower people to take concrete action to resolve the challenges we face” (p. 1). In other words, to take concrete action, people need to be “empowered with courage and hope,” otherwise, we will not be able to practice sustainable development. He further talks about three modes of living, dependent, independent, and contributive. Passive, according to him, is not good as it lacks sense of self and one would like at the mercy of changing circumstances. On the other hand, independent mode of living might sound good, but one would lack the awareness of the realities and needs of others. Contributive way of living, he states, is based on the awareness of the interdependent nature of our lives. Such a mode of living would appreciate unity and connectedness of life and would practice sustainable development.
Latino Cultural Citizenship by William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor
by María Valdovinos
Chapter 2 of Latino Cultural Citizenship, titled The World We Enter When Claiming Rights, discusses how Latinos view their rights. There are two conflicting ideas; that of culture as it relates to the legal system and culture as it relates to a sense of community. To be a part of American society, it seems that one must give up their culture to assimilate, resulting in a confused identity of neither being full American or fully part of their original culture (Mexican in this case). Moreover, assimilation disbands communities, and the Mexican culture feels very strongly about a community. Their strength to stand up for their rights lies in community.
“The American legal system requires one to give up a full personhood to gain another-hence, to make a choice between national citizenship is critical to our sense of participation. Anglo society says that assimilation is a requirement of full participation” (48).
“Full citizenship lacks culture, and those most culturally endowed lack full citizenship” (43).
In order to fully participate and be an “American” in the American society, one is almost forced to move from cultural citizenship to legal citizenship and form new identity, otherwise he/she would be regarded as an “alien,” “Mexican,” or “immigrant.” Lations’claim to the conflicts of cultural citizenship and legal citizenship is that, firstly, the legal system assumes that in spite of profound cultural differences, American society can be identified as an homogenous entity and that, secondly, a recognition of culture rights is absent from the American constitutional system. Thus many Latinos are in this dilemma as to remain “Mexican” or to assimilate to “American” and have been fighting for gaining culture rights.
William V. Flores, the author of the second essay, uses himself as an example of not knowing where one is from. His parents were born in the U.S. therefore; he is third generation Mexican-American. “But in my elementary school teachers often referred to the white kids as the ‘Americans’ versus the ‘Mexican’ or ‘Chinese.’ The point was lost on me. I was ‘Mexican’ even though I was born in the U.S., had never been part of Mexico other than Baja, and spoke very little Spanish” (256). What happens, then, when we are not “fully accepted or welcomed in either world” (257)? “Nepantla” is a Nahuatl term that describes one’s identity being in between “American” and “Mexican.” The author says, “We are both and we are neither” (257).
He also talks about how they should have equal rights since they pay for taxes just like other Americans. For example, they wanted the state to provide bilingual education for their children because language is an important aspect of their culture and is their identity.
“…but rather whether all parents, citizens or not, should have the right to have a determination in the government bodies of their local schools. Moreover, undocumented workers pay taxes without representation. ..Should they as parents not then have the right to vote? In fighting to extend voting rights, Latinos extended both parents’ rights and the rights of the undocumented” (260).
Latin American studies scholars Edna Acosta-Belén and Carlos E. Santiago argue an unavoidable interconnection between North America and Latin America, basing their ideas on 19th century Cuban writer José Marti’s vision of Nuestra America (Our America). Other intellectuals of Jose Marti’s time envisioned Latin America in an “emulation” of “civilized” European and Anglo-Saxon cultures (30), however José Martí’s vision constituted a multicultural society that promoted racial tolerance and harmony and eliminated Anglo-American ethnocentrism. Martí’s vision was not a “struggle of races,” but rather the “affirmation of rights” (30). In arguing the United States’ unavoidable history and cultural ties with Latin America, the authors discuss the Mexican-American War during which the U.S. seized half the territory of what was Mexico. They quote Chicano filmmaker Luis Valdez, “We did not come to the United States at all. The United States came to us” (32). The authors argue that the U.S. does not recognize Latinos in history like the Latinos recognize the U.S. Marti’s vision of Nuestra America is more pertinent today when technological advancements allow for unlimited networking and communication. A ten-year project called Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project strive to compile and annotate literary and historical writings by Latinos that reveal experiences of “border cultures” by Latin American immigrants. These writings play an important role in discovering and publishing “a chronicle of the past and in providing glimpses into the everyday life of the diverse Latin communities at different historical periods” (34).
That is why I will always remain on the margins, a stranger among the stones, Even beneath the sum of summer’s day, just as I will remain forever a foreigner, even when I return to the city of my childhood, I carry this marginality, immune to all turning back, too habanera to be a newyorquina, too newyorquina to be - Even to become again - Anything else (Lourdes Casal, “For Ana Veldford.” P.40)
Norteña music has been a popular form of music for Mexican Americans since the early 1900’s. Usually including an accordion and bajo sexto guitar, Nortena can be easily recognized. Popular films of heroism which included Nortena music became as memorable as John Wayne cowboy films at the time. In addition to the invention of cassette tapes, the music form being memorable and easily accessible was quickly popularized. Nortena however represented far more than just a form of good music and Spanish John Wayne for Mexican Americans. “The popularization and perpetuation of nortena music, along with a clearly defined notion of a global Mexican nation, have helped the Mexican immigrant to rise above class based discrimination, oppression, and displacement imposed by a North American government that continues to criminalize its border zone and blame immigration problems on the migrating Mexican (Ragland 26)”.
Similar to jazz and hip hop, Music Norteña has been a symbol of resistance to oppression and heroism for Mexican migrants. With content familiar to blues, Nortena was often about oppression, social issues, history and hardships of worker life for Mexican immigrants in America. Originating and branching from corrido music, a song and poetry form of Mexico, Norteña was a new form of corrido music for Mexican migrants. With the music, Mexican Americans were reminded of their Mexican heritage while creating a new identity in America as well.
The Triple Bottom Line by Andrew W. Savitz with Karl Weber
Chapter 9 (Masa): Andrew and Karl, the authors of the book, The Triple Bottom Line, state that sustainability in business entails both strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are something to build on – “skill sets, cultural advantages, and stakeholder connections that people can make their operation more profitable” (pg 145). Weaknesses are dangers that people must identify and remedy – “missing skills, resource depletions, and stakeholder relationship whose implications needed to be addressed before they cause real damage” (145). If people want to fix these weaknesses and develop strengths of sustainability, they should seek the sweet spot. Sweet spot is “the potential overlap between the key strategic drivers and the environmental, social, and economic needs of society” (151). Authors suggest that people should think about business’s sweet spot in terms of minimization and optimization. Minimization is aimed at reducing ecological damage, employee accidents, and decreasing harm to the community. On the other hand, optimization is aimed at producing positive benefits in the three areas of environmental, social, and economic impact. The first step is minimization and then, optimization. In short, minimization and new mind-set are leading naturally toward optimization, both I terms of promising new products and in more efficient processes. In conclusion, authors point out that in order to accomplish the ideal concept of sustainability, each company must realize that “well-being of the community is part of the company’s responsibility” (150).
Chapter 10 (Hiroko): Andrew W. Savits further goes on to talk about how a company starts its own sustainable business. The most important thing that the author says in the beginning is to create goals. First, one needs to start from smaller goals. Only after achieving those goals, the company will be acknowledged and should move on to creating bigger goals. Moreover, these goals should focus around on consumers’ needs and working with suppliers. Examples of these are Volvo introducing airbags for the customers’ safety and Nike requesting Delta to become more fuel efficient in exchange for exclusively using its airline. As these examples suggest, the author states that the company needs to consider how sustainability could be built into its existing business goals.
To create such a successful sustainability, the author states that there is a need for “virtual sustainability department” where employees from various departments can share their ideas, insights, and tools related to sustainability. The company also should seek outside source such as NGOs, business partners, and suppliers.
The author further talks about using the indicators to measure the progress is also a key in succeeding the sustainable business. An example of this can be an energy company holding safety lessons before doing dangerous jobs and looking at the relations of the number of lessons and the number of accidents.
By following the method described above, the author states that even starting from just one individual or a department would lead to a bigger and successful sustainability programs. “…many of the most successful corporate programs began by leveraging the efforts of one department or individual within the company. But most companies eventually look to expand those efforts because of the enormous power of those ideas at the strategic level. (p. 170)”
Epilogue (Akiko): Mainly, it talks about the future of sustainability. Now, in mass-consumption society, companies produce product, material things as much as they can. Also, consumers buy product and easily throw it away and buy new one. Our society is throwaway society. So, in this reading, author suggests new ideas, which help moving from a throwaway society to a recycling-style economy.The first idea is the concept of minimization which called lean thinking. Lean thinking came from realization that consumers don’t want the physical materials used in manufacturing, shipping, and using many products. The second idea is that transforming the goods they sell into services. For example, if this idea is applied to business model, the power tool company should sell holes rather than selling electronic drills. As a result, company can provide the same value at less cost; also it could be benefit to environment. It sounds vague but it basically says that people should minimize selling material things in order to avoid wasting. Through introducing these ideas, this reading emphasizes that companies can seek sustainability which without diminishing financial profit. This situation could be win-win society our group explained yesterday.
