#one day people will stop calling eastern europeans colonisers

[fabioquartararhoe]

.

#one day people will stop calling eastern europeans colonisers #the fuck we colonize??? #we are other things but colonisers lol #like everyone wanted romania the romans the ottoman empire the austro-hungarian empire oh and ofc mother russia and y'all call us colonisers #bye #meli talks shit

[jo-shanenewzealand]

Queenstown to Haast

Day 6 – 4/10/2019

Queenstown farewelled us with a lovely cloudy morning, and a brisk seven degrees. No breeze early on meant that it was still quite pleasant. Packed and out of the Novotel by eight thirty with Jan in tow, Brett and Justine were to join the trip from here on in so there would be five of us now in two vehicles.

First thing first, we had to fuel up. Not knowing where a servo was, we headed out of town toward our first stop Arrowtown, running into a Shell a few kilometres out along Frankton Road. The cost of fuel here was ludicrously expensive, $2.51 per litre for 91 Unleaded fuel. Almost twice the price of home. We put $144 in the car.

Located in the Arrow Basin, the Arrowtown area was originally frequented by Maori tribes looking for food and pounamu, a variety of jade or greenstone. Sometime around the 1860's, a couple of Europeans turned up and established farms in the area. By 1862 a Maori shearer and a couple of others found gold in the Arrow River and a small shanty town called Fox's soon appeared. Fifteen hundred miners took up the cause by the end of 62 and during January 1863 the first escort of 340 kilograms of gold left town. By 1865 much of the "easy" gold had gone and the miners left for the newly opened West Coast Goldfields. With the town's economy on the ropes, the local government invited Chinese miners to take up residency on Arrowtown's outskirts and mine what was left. This arrangement lasted until 1928.

Arrowtown was less than half an hour from Queenstown so we were there for breakfast just after nine. We parked just around the corner from Buckingham Street, the main street and had a brief look around. The first place we passed, the Old Post Office Café looked good for a feed so we settled in for a hearty meal, followed by some window shopping up the main street on our way to the Chinese shanty town up the other end. Jan wasn’t up to the walk and stayed behind.

The Old Post Office Café

Queen Justine

The main street with all of the old shops (touristy) was only a couple of hundred metres long. It didn't take too long to get there as much of the stuff we weren't interested in. At the street's end, the road dropped away to a dirt track that led down to Bush Creek Reserve where a business or two, toilets and a car park provided facilities for people there for a look or to embark on one of the many walking trails that commenced there. We were there for a look around and at the western end of the reserve was the remnants of the Chinese shanty town.

A section of the Chinese settlement

A reconstructed local dunny

Apparently, as previously mentioned, the Chinese workers were invited by the local government to keep the fossicking alive. About eight thousand Chinese came to this and other gold mining sites around the Otago and Southland areas between the late 1860's and the 1880's to seek their fortune. They came not as settlers but to make money and return home. Early Chinese came from the Victorian goldfields but they soon started streaming in from the Cantonese province of Guangdong, mostly young blokes with poor upbringings. They came from the tropical and monsoonal south of China to the bitterly cold south of New Zealand. All for five to six times the annual wage that they would earn at home.

At first, they were welcomed but as their numbers swelled and their commercial interests expanded, resentment set in. Fearing that New Zealand could be colonised by an inferior race, the New Zealand government introduced laws discouraging Chinese immigration which culminated by imposing a one hundred New Zealand pound entry fee.

As the gold ran out and the European goldminers left the town, the harassment lessened. By the 1890's most Chinese miners had returned home with many others heading to find gold elsewhere. Many had been in Arrowtown so long that when they returned home, they lost touch with their families and had outlived their own generation. Some of them returned to New Zealand. By 1900 less than twenty miners still occupied the shanty town, the last one, Ah Gum dying in 1932.

Located on the banks of Bush Creek, the settlement is now a mix of both relics of which no more than foundations and a few rocks remain and reconstructions of the original humpies giving one an impression of what the Chinese had to endure during their gold mining days.

Bush Creek

Having finished looking around, we walked back through the main street to the vehicles and headed back to Arrow Junction, turning left along the Gibbston Highway and within a few hundred metres was again turning let onto Crown Range Road where The Zig Zag, a series of hairpin bends, took us up over six hundred metres to where the land plateaued out to Crown Terrace. At this point, where The Zig Zag finished, a parking area off of the last bend provided plenty of room for us, and plenty of others, to pull over and get some great views back down to Arrowtown, Queenstown and the airport runway. While we were there a large passenger plane flew between the peaks surrounding the Kawarau Valley, buffeted all the way down to the airport.

Arrowtown from halfway up The Zig Zag

View back to the airport from the top

The next part of our journey took us through higher territory and ski area, travelling along the Cardrona Valley until we reached Wanaka, a small town on the southern fringe of Lake Wanaka. We stopped here for another break with the intention of food and a drink. The place was quite busy with tourists though, with parking spaces at a premium. The first impressions were nice with the carpark being on the lake's edge and surrounded by lovely landscaped parkland and gardens. Once we crossed the road we had a different impression. The town seemed like another alpine village that was geared up for the ski season. Not much else there except a couple of bars, places to sign up for bungy jumping, white water rafting and such and the usual souvenir shops. Justine needed some stuff from a seven eleven type shop and was given some advice about the place from Wendy, pronounced Windy. She did her shopping and we moved on. Jo bought some outfits for the upcoming baby.

The shores of Lake Hawea was just outside of Wanaka, through Albert Town and past the outskirts of Lake Hawea Village. The lake lay parallel to Lake Wanaka only separated by Mount Bourke and Isthmus Peak on the southern end and Sentinel and Terrace Peaks to the north. Further up the Hunter River flowed into Lake Hawea and the Makarora River fed Lake Wanaka. Due to the friendlier topography, the road skirted the western shoreline of Lake Hawea to about halfway along where it cut through the peaks via The Neck and then followed the eastern shoreline of Lake Wanaka until we reached, and passed Makarora.

Lake Hawea from the roadside viewing area

It was at this point we separated. Brett and Justine travelled ahead while Shane, Jo and Jan stopped at a couple of places to look around. They were going to stop with us but were put off by the rain. After looking at our photos later, Justine regretted not stopping.

The first stop was recommended a week or so earlier by the barmaid in Timaru. She couldn't remember exactly where the Blue Pools were but they were up near Haast Pass, just follow the signs. And so we did. Although not knowing what to expect, before long the signs appeared as she had told us. The weather by this point was miserable. Windy and a constant drizzle tending to rain. We braved it anyway and headed to the Blue Pools, a fifteen to twenty minute walk through wild looking forest that belonged in Jurassic Park or something, densely vegetated and covered in thick moss.

Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings? The large downhill pathway to the pools

A half a kilometre along the track through the forest, we hit a suspension bridge that took us across the Makarora River and further on to a second suspension bridge that sat on top of the Blue Pools.

The pools weren't too blue today, the weather didn't allow their azure colour to dominate. It was a darker and greener colour but no less impressive with salmon swimming around. The pools were created by rocks and sand being washed down in flood from the glacier fed waters of the Blue River, where it intersected the Makaroa. 

 The not so Blue Pools

Just beyond, a large gravel bank adjacent allowed people to climb down the embankment and access the water. The wet weather made it amazing. A young couple were doing just that, posing to each other for some memorable photos. The bank was also covered in small towers of the rounded river boulders that were scattered around. This was a common sight through these areas. We must have picked a good time to arrive as although the carpark was fairly full, the track wasn't. It was a different matter on return. As soon as we stopped on the second suspension bridge we started to get crowded out. By the time we were back at the bridge over the Makaroa, there was a queue on both ends of the bridge to cross it. After a little bit of toing and froing, we managed to cross and within fifteen minutes were back in the car and continuing our journey.

The large gravel bank at the confluence of the rivers

Within no time we were out of the thick vegetation and forest for the next stop, Cameron's Flat for a brief toilet stop. The flat was low enough to have signs warning of flood risks. Named after Charles Cameron, reputed to have crossed over Haast Pass two days before its eponym, Julius von Haast was supposed to have crossed, the area was wide and relatively flat and was a popular camping area for the more modern explorers. A little further on again and we crossed the ranges through an unassuming Haast Pass and into West Coast territory. Here we left the Makaroa headwaters heading south,  passed Thunder Creek Falls and followed the Haast River headwaters heading north. Within a few kilometres the valley opened up and the Haast River collided with the Landsborough and pushed west, towards the coast. For almost forty kilometres, we followed the river along the southern bank to the Haast township.

Thunder Creek Falls

The weather had turned for the worse, well and truly heavy enough to get us wet. Only one road led into Haast, it intersected Highway 6 from both ends of the town. We entered from the southern end, past a couple of motels and ended up at the Hard Antler, the local pub. Just as we pulled over, so did Brett and Justine from the other direction. They had travelled over the river for a look and turned back. After a short conversation it was decided to look for our accommodation, but not before a quick beer. Women had to park their broomsticks at the door.

Hard Antler

It just so happened that the Heritage Park Lodge was right next door, about a hundred metres away so we booked in, unpacked and headed back for dinner. In the rain. Good feed, good night and good atmosphere. Particularly the lamb shanks that were recommended by the chef to Justine when they were both having a durry outside during our afternoon visit.

She hasn't eaten all day. Not a bad appetite for an old girl

One of the locals

Tomorrow, we head back north to Hokitika and looking forward to it.

[travelworldnetwork]

The Micronesian island of Yap has a famously unusual currency: hundreds of giant discs of rocks scattered all over the island, many of them too heavy to move.

By Robert Michael Poole

3 May 2018

Arriving on the tiny Micronesian island of Yap will fill even the most jaded traveller with a sense of awe. The single daily flight comes in over dense forests, taro swamp, shallow lagoons and a web of mangroves, all surrounded by fringing reef. But the real wonderment doesn’t come from the idyllic scenery, nor from the greeting by a Yapese girl in a traditional hibiscus skirt. It’s when you first come face-to-face with a piece of giant stone money.

View image of Hundreds of large stone discs can be found across the Micronesian island of Yap (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

Hundreds of these extraordinary, human-sized discs of rock are scattered all over the island; some outside the island’s few hotels, others in rows close to the beach or deep in the forests. Each village even has a stone money bank where pieces that are too heavy to move are displayed on the malal (dancing grounds).

“My family owns five stone money of a good size,” said Falmed (Yapese just use one name), a taxi driver I flagged down to take me to Mangyol stone money bank in Yap’s eastern province of Gagil.

Five, it turns out, is a good haul, since many islanders don’t own any stones.

View image of The Yapese people have used the rai stones as currency for centuries (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

The unique stone currency has been in use here for several centuries, although no-one is quite certain when the concept began. What is known is that each one is different, and they are as heavy with meaning as they are in volume of limestone, carved and voyaged by the Yapese all the way from Palau, an island nation 400km to the south-west. The very first pieces were used as gifts and shaped like a whale – thus named ‘rai’ stones – but they’ve evolved to become currency, including holes carved through the centre to make them more transportable across the oceans.

“My forefather Falmed, he is the one who started to go to Palau first by canoe, and make this connection between Palau and Yap. So I carry his name,” Falmed told me as we hurtled along dirt roads past the sleepy capital of Colonia. Despite his sun-worn T-shirt and rickety car, his lineage is surprisingly significant. His distant forefather Falmed was a high chief powerful enough to commission a boat to Palau where he met with locals and gained access to a quarry site.

“He came back and called a meeting where he told the village to gather tuba, the local alcohol, to trade,” Falmed said. Within a month, he was back in Palau to start carving the stone as money.

View image of The Yapese travelled 400km across the sea to carve the limestone discs from quarries in neighbouring Palau (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

The issue was that Yap had no durable rock or precious metals with which to make coins. Instead, experienced Yapese sailors, commissioned mostly by wealthy high chiefs, would sail to Palau on bamboo rafts, and eventually, schooners, to load up with limestone from their quarries. Initially small, as techniques and tools improved, the coins became even larger than the people who would painstakingly carve them. When metal tools were introduced by European traders in the late 19th Century, quarrying was made easier, and reports from the 1880s claimed 400 Yapese men could be found working in just one quarry in Koror, Palau – a significant proportion of the population, which would have then been about 7,000 in total.

On their return from Palau, the sailors would give the carved stone money to the high chiefs who would gather from different villages to welcome back the sailors and the stones. The chiefs would keep the larger ones and two fifths of the smaller ones. They would also give names to some stones, usually choosing their own name or that of relatives, and confirm the stones as legitimate by giving a value based on an even older currency system: yar (pearl shell money). The stones could then enter circulation and be bought by anyone.

“If the chief says OK, 50 shell money for each stone money, if I have that I will make the trade and own one,” explained Edmund Pasan, a canoe builder from the northern province of Maap.

View image of Some rai stones measure more than 3m in diameter (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

Today, shell money has been replaced by the almighty US dollar for day-to-day transactions like grocery shopping. But for more conceptual exchanges, like rights or customs, stones remain a vital currency for Yap’s 11,000 residents.

Falmed’s family has only used its money twice, and one was as an apology. “We used it for one of my brothers who made trouble for another family,” Falmed revealed remorsefully. His brother’s marriage had failed. “One of the chiefs, his daughter got one piece of stone money as an apology, and they accepted it. When it comes to high ranks, you have to use stone money.”

When it comes to high ranks, you have to use stone money

The value of stone money has always been fluid, challenging the Western concept that currency value is pre-determined and fixed. The coins are valued by their size – they range from 7cm to 3.6m in diameter – as well as their ornateness and even for the sheer difficulty in obtaining the rock. How much a coin is worth also depends on who you give it to, and what for.

In addition, Yapese factor oral history into each stone’s value, as there’s no written record of what belongs to who. Families rarely move from their villages, and the tribal elders from the around 150 villages pass down information of each piece, meaning they act as a reminder of the past and help to reinforce relationships and transactions that date back to times of warriors and clans. In some cases, the stones have engravings marking battles from more than 200 years ago.

View image of Each village has a stone money bank that displays pieces too large to move (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

Falmed and I finally arrived at the Mangyol stone money bank after a 40-minute drive from Colonia. From large to small, the few dozen stones were lined up in front of a p'ebay, an open structure in the village centre where the community comes together to do their trade, celebrations and sometimes their schooling too.

Falmed explained that the rai are specifically placed, each encoded with secret connections, village relationships, and stories of marriage, conflicts and deep apologies that have seen the stones change hands over centuries. It’s those stories that only the local villagers know that truly determine which is most valuable. There’s no need to make more rai since the island essentially has a permanent number in circulation, and few are ever moved. Even broken ones retain their oral history that give them more value than a new piece. New pieces are occasionally made, though, simply to ensure the skills of past generations are not forgotten.

It’s those stories that only the local villagers know that truly determine which is most valuable

But if the stones are so valuable and so public, I wondered, what’s to stop someone making their own, or simply stealing one?

“Most matters are common knowledge and secrets among local people are rare; thus theft of rai is relatively unknown,” writes Cora Lee C Gilliland of the Smithsonian Institution in her paper The Stone Money of Yap.

Not that some haven’t attempted it. “They tried to do that in Yap, and they laughed about it because they broke,” Pasan later told me with a chuckle. “Then they did it with the stones in Guam, but they are not that strong and are more difficult to get at – it’s much easier to quarry in Palau.”

View image of Each stone’s worth is determined by its size, ornateness and history (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

Yap’s neighbours, Guam, Palau and Chuuk, are all heavily affected by European and American colonisation, and all bear conspicuous scars of World War II. Guam remains a US territory with a significant military base on the island that has shaped its culture, while Chuuk Lagoon is home to around 60 sunken wrecks, a result of the devastating Operation Hailstone in 1944.

Yap, though, was largely bypassed by US bombing as the early 20th-Century Japanese occupation came to an end, and the rai stone’s sturdiness and longevity seem to represent the long-lasting authenticity of Yapese culture over the centuries.

“In Yapese culture, if something [important] is going on, and there is nothing else suitable to use, then you use stone money,” said Falmed, who has already ensured the next generation retains his wealth by passing one piece to his son at his first-birthday ceremony.

View image of No matter its location, the Yapese know to whom each stone belongs (Credit: Credit: Robert Michael Poole)

“When my girlfriend was pregnant, we [came here] from Hawaii,” he explained. “On a child’s first birthday, if a clan is of high rank and has some small stone money, they will cut a chicken and drain the blood on the boy’s head to recognise the moment. It’s a gift, and a lot of people came [to the ceremony].”

Falmed’s son is 12 now and lives in Hawaii. But the stone is in his family house in Yap. And even without written record, everyone already knows whose name is on it.

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from bbc.com/travel/columns/adventure-experience

The post The tiny island of giant money appeared first on Travel World Network.

#Discover - Experience

[dasquarebear]

Alameda’s Racist Monuments

The East Bay Express recently published a feature series about racist monuments in the East Bay. The article discussed efforts to Rename Barrows Hall at UC Berkeley; critiqued Jack London for white supremacist views; highlighted the hidden racist monuments in Claremont and Rockridge, areas designed to be “whites-only”; and resurrected the connection of the KKK and the Albany Cross. 

The series also mentioned how spaces like Emeryville’s Shellmound glossed over genocide, as former burial grounds for Ohlone people became marketable for development.

Alameda’s own “Mound Street” is named for a shellmound that was removed in the 1800s. Ohlone remains have been found at least twice in the past 10 years on the East End.

Which monuments in Alameda reflect the United States’ racist history?

Alameda recognizes racist white supremacists by maintaining public schools, parks, and streets bearing their names and memories.

ALAMEDA PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Lincoln Middle School 

Abraham Lincoln is known as the U.S. President that “freed the slaves.” While there is debate about Lincoln’s intentions for signing the Emancipation Proclamation–emancipation or winning the Civil War to unite the Union–there is no doubt Lincoln was a white supremacist. During the Douglas-Lincoln debates for Illinois Senate, Lincoln opposes racial equality. Lincoln said: 

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

The Mound is recognized with a monument at Lincoln Park.

Henry H. Haight Elementary

Henry Haight was the tenth governor of California. After his term as governor, Haight moved to Alameda on West End Ave (now Fourth Street). Haight School is named after him.

In his inaugural address in December 1867, Haight decries post-civil war reconstruction as depriving white people of their rights, and declares Black and Chinese people as inferior.

This is briefly the nature of the reconstruction policy of Congress. It takes from the white people of ten States their constitutional rights, and leaves them subject to military rule; and disfranchises enough white men to give the political control to a mass of negroes just emancipated and almost as ignorant of political duties as the beasts of the field.

He continues in his opposition against suffrage for Negroes, Chinamen, women, and minors. “The aid of Africans and Asiatics would be an evil, not a benefit. It would introduce the antipathy of race into our political contests, and lead to strife and bloodshed.” Extolling the virtues of free (white) labor ideology, he calls on white people of Europe and the eastern U.S. states to emigrate to California, since mixing Black and Asian peoples in the “free state” of Claifornia would be a “contravention of natural laws.” He concludes his point by highlighting the benevolence of white people towards Blacks and Asians in California:

These inferior races have their civil rights, as all good men desire they should have. They can sue and defend in the courts; acquire and possess property; they have entire freedom of person, and can pursue any lawful occupation for a livelihood; but they will never, with the consent of the people of this State, either vote or hold office.

And a school for children is named after him. 

John Muir School 

During World War II, John Muir School was erected in the Estuary Housing Project, a segregated housing project. Muir is known as a father of environmentalism to many, and for his anti-Indian views by many non-white people in the environmental movement. Muir cared more about “Indians, most of them are dead or civilized into useless innocence.”

Alameda has other public spaces are named after white men with racist views.

ALAMEDA PARKS

Jackson Park 

Jackson Park is Alameda’s first city park, opened in 1895 as Alameda Park. Originally a private promenade, is one of three named for U.S. presidents, all in the early 1900s.

Jackson was a slaveholder that earned a reputation fighting Native Americans during the Creek and Seminole War. Jackson advocated exterminating these groups. As president, he signed legislation–the “Indian Removal” act–that forced indigenous people from lands of the Mississippi River, so white people could settle and African enslavement could be practiced.

The Hermitage–Jackson’s 1,000 acre plantation–had nine enslaved Africans when he bought the land in 1804. When he died in 1845, he held about 150 people captive. Jackson purchased two Africans when they were children–Aaron and Hannah–and after Jackson’s death, during the Civil War, they escaped to Nashville with their daughter Martha.

Washington Park

George Washington. General. Statesman. Founding Father. And, Racist, White supremacist. Slaveholder.

Washington inherited 10 enslaved Africans when he was just 11 years old. He later gained more when he married a wealthy widow, Martha. He owned about 200 human beings. He benefitted from Black labor, but saw it as causing him “injury” through his own idleness. Although some historians depict Washington as benevolent and against slavery, he never stopped pursuing enslaved Africans like ‘Harry” and Oney Judge that escaped captivity at Mount Vernon. Washington also supported the Fugitive Slave Act, although he also signed the Northwest Ordinance.

Washington Elementary School was renamed Maya Lin in 2012.

Lincoln Park

Notably, Lincoln Park has a small stone marking the shellmound near the Park on Mound Street. Lincoln Park is located on far east side of Alameda, between High Street and Fernside.

Franklin Park 

Benjamin Franklin. Renowned polymath. Scientist, writer, and politician. White supremacist. In addition to his beliefs of Manifest Destiny (icymi: colonialism is racist), he called for excluding the “black”, “tawny”, and “swarthy” from the British Colonies in order to increase the small number of “purely white people in the world.”

And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.

Perhaps it was that partiality that led Franklin to publish advertisements for Runaway Slaves and the sale of enslaved Africans in his publications.

Franklin Park is located in Alameda’s Gold Coast. Known as the wealthiest neighborhood in Alameda, it was the site of the 1966 Estuary projects camp-in, which low-income residents protested their removal from the only housing they could find on the island by protesting in the park near the home of then-Mayor William Godfrey.

Godfrey Park

Milton Godfrey was mayor of Alameda before World War II. In 1943, as shipyard workers migrated to the Bay Area, apparently some concerned in Alameda about Black migration came up. Alameda Mayor Godfrey said keeping “Negroes” seeking to migrate to the island contained would "receive the unceasing vigilance" of government. 

Godfrey Park is located on Bay Farm Island, old Bay Farm, next to the Golf Course, off Beach Rd. 

Note: Alameda’s Tillman Park is not named after Benjamin Tillman, the violent South Carolina governor and white supremacist.

ALAMEDA STREETS

Clay Street 

Henry Clay was a Congressman, three-time Speaker of the House and Senator representing the slave-state of Kentucky. His father was a slaveowner, holding two dozen people in captivity. His brother Cassius Clay became a leading emancipationist. Clay, a federalist (states’ rights) leader and later Secretary of State, Clay was an early supporter of the American Colonisation Society, an organization that sought to expel free colored people from the United States and send them to West Africa. Liberia was part of their early efforts. Clay saw enslaved Africans as “ignorant, uneducated, and incapable of appreciating the value, or enjoying the privileges of freedom.” In his 1827 speech before the American Colonization Society, Clay argued that if free and enslaved Africans were exported, the potential threat to the European race would be dismissed. “The African Colonists, whom we send to convert the heathen, are of the same colour, the same family, the same physical constitution.” Clay also sponsored the 1850 Compromise bill.

Calhoun Street

John C. Calhoun was a staunch defender of the enslavement of Africans, a “positive good:”

But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding States is an evil:—far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.

Fillmore Street 

Millard Fillmore was 13th president of the U.S.. He called slavery evil, yet signed and enforced the Fugitive Slave Act.

Madison Street 

James Madison was a slave owning president.

Van Buren Street

Martin Van Buren was a slave owner growing up. While President, he apparently supported forcing the Africans enslaved on the ship Amistad to be returned to Spanish Cuba, where they would be re-enslaved.

Garfield Street

James Garfield is known for supporting the abolition of slavery, but also held anti-Black sentiment. He once confided privately that he held “a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the negro (sic) being made our political equal and I would be glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way…”

Jefferson Street and Monroe Street were renamed in the 1900s to San Jose Ave. Currently, Washington and Jackson also have streets named after them in this area. 

The West End has a few questionable street names. 

Jack London Ave

The Bayport Homes contains Jack London Ave. London’s wet nurse, Jennie Prentiss lived in Alameda on Pacific Ave in the 1880s. London called himself her “white pickaninny.”

Webster Street 

Which Webster is Oakland and Alameda’s Webster Street named after: Daniel or Noah? Daniel Webster supported the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. Noah Webster, of Webster’s dictionary fame, and Congressman, notably opposed slavery. However, he once said abolitionists belong in the penitentiary and viewed slavery as the sin of the South, not New England. He also had disparaging remarks about Native Americans.

Taylor Street 

Zachary Taylor was a Southerner and held slaves captive. He gained prominence for his role in the Black Hawk War, the conflict that led to the Indian Removal policy.

Haight Ave also runs from Pacific east to Ninth Street. (See above)

Lincoln Ave – Once called Railroad Ave, Lincoln is one of Alameda’s major “east-west” thoroughfares on the island. (See above)

Are there others?

Updated: This post was updated 10/23/2017 to include Godfrey Park.

#alameda #alameda california #racism #city planning

[abbindkataskea]

  2017 is being an intense year for the Western world, marked by the rise of nationalist movements. Anyone with a basic understanding of fascism, xenophobia and white supremacy would have probably seen this coming in the last few years. When politicians across the spectrum use migrants as a basketball ball to score points, when challenging racism becomes a bore-some activity for so called progressive/liberals, when dealing with inequality and xenophobia is seen as a matter of “overrated identity politics, when people pretend only white people are working class and suffering since the financial crisis of 2008, when the media is still unable to check their biased language, and when all of the sudden everyone wants to pretend we are all equal as if a few decades of brown and black people seen as human (debatable) erases the effects of centuries of genocide, slavery and colonisation, well…. You get this. A region in which racial supremacy and discrimination are okayed again (to be honest, were they ever not okayed?) in the name of freedom of speech.

At the same time, everyone willing to challenge this bigotry is called a “regressive leftist” by people who genuinely believe they are progressive leftists, while being moderate centrists, if anything. Neo-Nazis and conservatives might refer to them as “easily triggered snowflakes”, which is ironic since they turn purple and angry whenever you call their statements ‘racist’. “Clueless social justice warriors” is another label used often by people who still don’t know their right to freedom of speech can only be violated by governments and their agencies/bodies, not by fellow citizens counterarguing what they say. And lastly, my personal favourite one: “entitled millennials”, a tone-deaf term used by adults who believe young people under 30 years old are all middle-class babies who had everything handed to them (working/lower class young people don’t exist anymore), were rewarded for mediocrity (seriously, where are all these awards? I didn’t get mine) and can’t live outside safe spaces (apparently young people live in protective bubbles away from the cruel real world, I can’t believe I didn’t get one!).

I’m not going to go any deeper into the political situation in the West, I’m still on an indefinite break from writing about social issues at a non-personal level. I just wanted to give a brief look at the context in which this personal article is set. The ongoing discussions about nationalism, patriotism, culture and ethnicity have made me think deeply about my own identity. How I identify and how I am identified. I struggle to determine to where I belong and to which countries/regions I should be loyal too. My national, ethnic and cultural identities are complicated to the point in which I’m uncertain I have any of these.

I was born in the Basque Country, an autonomous region in Spain. I lived there till 2012, the year I moved to England, where I currently reside. My nationality is Spanish and despite living in Britain for over four years, I still have a strong (Northern) Spanish accent. At the same time, I have adopted various British customs, such as saying “sorry” non-stop without an actual reason, eating roast on Sundays, being passive aggressive and drinking a lot of tea throughout the day (just joking!). Despite all this, I was born (and I live) in a different place to where my parents and grandparents were born. Hence, my nationality and place of residence say little to nothing about my ethnicity and heritage.

My mother was born in Equatorial Guinea, located in Central/Middle Africa. Her mother (my grandmother) is from there too, while her father (my grandfather) was originally from a West African country, either Cape Verde or São Tomé and Príncipe (I can’t confirm which one it is since I have been told different things). As you can see, simply in my mother’s side there is already a mixture of ethnicities, which would be even bigger if specific ethnic groups/tribes would be considered (which I won’t do because I don’t want to overcomplicate this article).  Although it might seem confusing, describing my maternal heritage is easy compared to my paternal heritage: my biological father  (from whom I inherited my genetic traits) differs from my legal father (who legally recognises me as his daughter). I have never met my biological father and I know little about him. Meanwhile, I was raised by my legal father and he is the only person I consider a “father” in my life. I was told that my biological father is Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean (both West African countries). My legal father is from DR Congo and his parents (my grandparents) migrated there from Angola. Both countries are in Central/Middle Africa.

I learnt most of this information about my family during the last couple of years. Growing up, I was never curious about my ethnicity and heritage. I never even tried to define them. The only things I was sure about were my race (black) and my nationality (Spanish). While I grew up immersed in Spanish culture, I never felt part of it: it wasn’t something I could claim as my heritage. While Spain is a “colourblind” country in many aspects (when I lived there, race and ethnicity were not officially recorded as in UK), racism and xenophobia are common. People always give you subtle and not-so-subtle reminders about you not being “originally” from Spain.

It was also hard for me to feel attached to my African background because I didn’t grow up with my family (except my siblings). Now and then, I did have access to my parents’ cultures, mainly during family celebrations and spiritual rituals, but these were limited. I can name some basic Congolese food dishes, some basic Equatorial Guinean food dishes. I can understand some words of Lingala (Congolese language) and Pichinglish (Creole language in Equatorial Guinea). I’m aware of some rituals and customs. But my position regarding these cultures is the one of an outsider, rather than someone actively involved in them. In addition, till no long ago, I silently rejected my African background because of the gender roles that were being forced on me in the name of it.

Moving to England and becoming a young adult triggered in me an interest to know more about my roots to define my ethnicity better. In England I saw how most black people, even if British, embraced their ethnicity a lot, not just as “African”, but as Nigerian, Ghanaian, Jamaican… Or even specific subgroups, such as Yoruba. I felt a lot of envy about this, I wished that was me. Meanwhile I realised that I would never be considered Spanish and I wondered if I wanted to live in this continent forever. In addition, when deciding what to study at university, I remember how my dad pushed me to go for something that could help people “back at home”, meaning DR Congo for him.

All this inspired me to learn more about my roots. I asked questions to my family, and I did an Ancestry DNA test to proof-check their answers. While Ancestry DNA isn’t 100% accurate, it is an indicator, and I’m hoping to do a 23andMe check soon, since it is considered more reliable. Here are my Ancestry DNA results:

(*Trace regions are regions/countries which are only possibilities and might appear in the results by chance.)

My reaction to this data was a mixture of confirmation and surprise. I suspected most of my ethnicity would be African. I knew I had some European ancestry because my maternal grandfather was creole/mulatto. I thought I would get a small percentage for Native American (defined by Ancestry as indigenous groups from North to South America) because I was told my maternal great-grandmother has an Indigenous Cuban ancestor (the ancestor might be too distant to appear). I definitely have Afro-Cuban ancestry, something common in my mother’s home country, yet it isn’t reflected on the test since Afro-Cubans, as other Afro-Latinos, are direct descendants of black African slaves sent to the Americas.

I was surprised by the percentage for the Middle East, and although it is just a chance, it might be true due to extensive presence of Middle-Easterns in Africa, particularly in countries that make up my ethnicity. Regardless of this, I’m happy with being just black African, that’s how I have always identified. (Black) Afro-Hispanic is a label that wouldn’t bother me either, since linguistically speaking, I’m indeed Hispanic, which is not the same as Latino by the way (though I do have Latino [and Caribbean] heritage since I have Cuban ancestry and I grew up quite influenced by it).

When comes to individual countries, I already knew I had Senegalese roots, though I didn’t think it would be my biggest percentage. Conversely, I knew I had Bantu background, since my maternal grandmother’s ethnic group is Bubi, a Bantu subgroup, but I didn’t think the percentage would be so small. I was dazed by the rest of African countries and for the lack of mention of Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde or/and São Tomé and Príncipe, in the list. However, a small look at African history helped me to make sense of this. Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe were supposedly uninhabited islands when the Portuguese arrived to colonise them. They were populated mainly through European settlers and slaves from continental Africa. That’s probably why countries like Congo and Benin appear in my Ancestry DNA: many slaves were taken from there. A similar logic can apply to Equatorial Guinea: that country was inhabited prior to Portuguese and Spanish colonisation (by ethnic groups like the Bubis), but there was a lot of migration from neighbouring areas afterwards.

Except for two, all the African countries/regions in my results are in West & Central Africa. Considering how European-made national borders in Africa don’t respect ethnic groups and tribes, the variety in my ethnicity makes more sense: the ethnic groups I belong to could be found in various countries in the area. Nationality might not be the greatest indicator for ethnicity in Africa. It is also important to keep in mind I don’t have full access to knowledge about my biological father’s family background. And, as I mentioned earlier, Ancestry DNA isn’t 100% accurate, although my results look more right than wrong.

As you can see, my ethnicity and heritage are heterogeneous. My mother, my legal father and my biological father are all from separate places, even different to their own parents. It is important to mention that while I didn’t inherit genetic traits from my legal father, his heritage and ethnicity still influence my cultural identity. Now, add my nationality (Spanish) and my place of residence (England). To which country in the world am I supposed to be loyal? To which country in the world am I supposed to show patriotism? I identify as black African normally, but I’m aware I’m legally Spanish and I’m a citizen of England.

Having a transnational, multicultural and mixed background is supposed to make me richer in knowledge and experiences, which is not untrue. Yet, it doesn’t make you richer in company. It can be very isolating. You belong to so many places that you end up belonging to nowhere. And more nowadays, when nationalism and ethno-supremacy are such a trend worldwide. It is easy to force nationalism upon people when you haven’t been rejected by your country of birth, when the country where you live doesn’t hate you and when you don’t have a transnational family.

My nationality is culturally and ethnically meaningless. Living in England matters to me, but the current war on immigrants and Brexit make things harder. While I’m trying to learn more about the countries that compose my African background, I still don’t feel attached to them. That’s the main reason why I can’t get behind any person or idea that doesn’t consider that who I am comes from more than one country or region, and tries to shame me for not being nationalistic. I simply have a borderless identity not confined to a single culture or place. And I wish people understood this, just as I respect their right to be patriotic. Hopefully one day, people like me will be considered during political discussions about culture, ethnicity and nationalism. Hopefully.

NEW POST=> Journal Entry: Nationality, Ethnicity, Heritage and Me (About my complex identity) 2017 is being an intense year for the Western world, marked by the rise of nationalist movements.

#ancestry #basque country #blog #england #ethnicity #heritage #journal #national #nationalism #nationality #personal #Politics #post #race #racism #social issues #spain #story #uk #united kingdom #xenophobia

[konvolutes]

So much good stuff by CEU colleague Mariya Ivancheva, but this bit on CEU is a wonderful self-critical history of the institution.

Mariya: Interestingly, between the time you asked me the questions and the time I answer them, things have changed dramatically for CEU – the Hungarian government of Victor Orbán targeted CEU with a bill that challenged the very operation of the university within the Hungarian polity. Despite an outpouring of international and national solidarity, including from very conservative Hungarian institutions and actors, and a 10.000 strong bilingual rally in Budapest on April 2, 2017, the bill passed the National Assembly on April 4th without much discussion, through a fast track procedure, and with over 75% vote of Fidesz MPs. Now, let us be clear, Orbán and his political allies have long shown they have no mercy for vulnerable populations — they have criminalized the homeless, caged and barb-wired refugees, and imposed disciplining workfare measures for the unemployed, while also not opening up new jobs, homes or futures. Universities and individual academics in Hungary have also long been under threat and exposed to growing repression and precarization, without much support from us in the international scholarly community.

What is really crucial in this instance is that Fidesz is not aiming for the “low-hanging fruit”, for the most vulnerable and precarious. It is targeting one of the strongholds of liberal thought (in both senses of “liberal,” but particularly in the European sense in terms of the institution’s senior management and branding). And this time, it seems no petitions, statements from political figures, op-ed-s in leading world media, and who-knows-what diplomatic bargaining behind the scenes can stop the reaction. How this battle will be decided seems to be less and less about CEU itself. On the one hand, the stakes are higher now that the Hungarian academics and students – in much more precarious situation income-wise and also in terms of their vulnerability to the Hungarian state power than most people at CEU – have stepped in firm support of the university. So the CEU community is not alone in this but the responsibility is also higher. On the other hand, the bigger question is whether the liberal establishment still holds any institutional leverage, or whether the future before us is rather that of existent and upcoming Orbáns, Putins, Trumps, and Erdoğans of this world…

But knowing how this same liberal establishment has acted when it was their time to save the homeless, the unemployed and the refugees, I wonder if it is their support that CEU should be eliciting … What steps will we take, as students and academics, to make sure that next time they come for another vulnerable group, we are there to support it with our own bodies, not half-heartedly and tongue-in-cheek-ly as it has too often been thus far? And yes, I ask this as self-criticism as well… Dark days…

But back to your question. The similarities between CEU and EUI that you mention are true, indeed, but there are differences worth exploring – perhaps a PhD thesis that someone else can write one day. The design of the two institutions was quite different. Unlike EUI’s endowment through EU funds and the understanding it would produce knowledge and expertise for the European Union, CEU was a privately endowed university. It was not initially designed to be limited to just one campus…The story goes that millionaire philanthropist George Soros conceived the idea of CEU after visiting the Interuniversity Center in Dubrovnik, which held summer schools including neo-Marxist social theorists from both East and West. Initially, those who developed the idea pictured the first campus in Dubrovnik, with more to open across the region. Yet the war in former Yugoslavia started, the building of the Interuniversity Centre was destroyed, its summer school practices were interrupted, and the Western Balkans became a non-viable context for a new university. So the first campuses opened in Central Europe, which was more politically stable and more acquiescent to demands by international organizations for a transition to liberal democracy and the free market.

Budapest and Prague were the two first campuses. Later the Prague campus closed, and some of its programs opened in Warsaw, but by the early 2000s the Budapest campus remained the only one in function. CEU had two key characteristics in that era. First, its faculty included many former dissident intellectuals from East-Central Europe – liberal intellectuals who entered politics in the 1990s but then withdrew either into academic or into expert careers. Second, for the first fifteen years, CEU’s mission statement said that CEU was to train the new generation of political decision-makers in the post-socialist world. So there was this understanding that through short-term post-graduate degrees, students from the region would absorb Western liberal ideas about democracy, law and order and free market society, and then they would go back home to implement these ideas in their own countries.

I entered CEU in 2006 at a very specific time, when all these three components – the multiple campuses, the dissident core of faculty, and the idea of CEU as training ground of post-socialist political elites – had been taken off the ‘menu’. Under the late Rector, Yehuda Elkana, the university adopted a new identity: that of a research-intensive university that competes for global ranking and produces globally relevant scholarship, moving outside the narrow focus on regional political and social processes. The focus on 1 year MA programs gradually declined, while doctoral programs and research-intensive 2 year MA degrees were expanded, sometimes in consortia with other European universities. This helped satisfy the requirements of the Bologna Process, and of national and international accreditation processes.

So then, with few exceptions – faculty members recruited at the university were increasingly those who could live up to the ever more demanding and geographically uprooting standards of an international academic career. Thus, former dissidents were marginalized within the university. The student profile and career trajectories were changing as well. By the time I entered the university, the majority of the students were also not aiming at a political career, but were decided to stay in academia or work for the public sector. These were, more often than not, children of professional classes from the region: people ‘downclassed’ income-wise either during state socialism or at some or another point after 1989. Many of us had stayed completing a first degree in our home country, and could not afford an MA or PhD abroad unless fully funded. At that point in time, both Western and Eastern European public universities were increasingly introducing fees – so CEU became one of the only universities which offered a scholarship to most MA students and fully-funded PhD programs.

When I arrived, the Department of Sociology had just been moved from Warsaw and all its faculty had been dismissed. It had reopened as a Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology in Budapest, attracting scholars with geographical and topical expertise far beyond the region and with degrees from top American and European universities. Instead of emphasizing regional expertise and policy-oriented knowledge, students got introduced to debates on neoliberal capitalism, globalization, international urban and rural development, memory and religious studies, and this ranged across sites as distant as the US, Latin America, Africa, and South East Asia.

Entering this department at this time has been extremely formative for me in many ways. In the first class I audited, one of my professors, Don Kalb, described himself as ‘crypto-Marxist’ and spoke against capitalism. That was a shock for someone like myself, coming from a liberal personal and intellectual upbringing in post-socialist Bulgaria. Other faculty were no less radical in their statements and political lines, excavating concepts of class, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, bourgeois state, political resistance, revolution, and further notions that the post-socialist universities in the region have swept under the rug of the ‘transition to liberal democracy’. During my Masters’ degree, I was one of the students who initially rebelled against what I thought was an uncritical acceptance of Marxist theory and the dismissal of the department’s regional focus. I initially saw it as diminishing the local relevance of CEU for the region and the region’s relevance for CEU students after graduation.

Yet, in a steep learning curve, I was soon to realize how the new approach — coupled with sensitivity to issues of gender, race, and a more refined contemporary world-systemic reading of concepts such as class and capital — gave us critical tools to explain our Eastern European reality. This was a reality that we as students and intellectuals of the periphery, in what Alexander Kiossev has called auto-colonising gestures, simply discarded and looked down upon as ‘shameful’, ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘backward’. Staying at CEU for my PhD, I was one of the first students of the department to leave East-Central Europe as a field-site and focus on Latin America. In my PhD thesis I used Marxist theory, comparative historical sociology, and political anthropology to critically examine Venezuela, a new socialist regime in the making. Although I’ve shifted fieldsites subsequently to Ireland and now to South Africa, East-Central Europe has remained always my key intellectual and political context, which I speak back to through my scholarship and activism, e.g. through the political platform LeftEast, where I am a member of the editorial collective. But I have also realized the importance of breaking through geographical divides in knowledge production, in search of comparable or contrasting historical processes.

The new cohorts who have entered CEU’s PhD program in Sociology and Anthropology after the economic crisis in 2008 often come with already shaped Marxist political thinking. Perhaps this is a combination of their getting degrees abroad with the opening up of Eastern European academia to this Marxist theoretical legacy, which was condemned or left in oblivion for two decades. Many of us – regardless of the geography of our field-site – have been using our scholarship for applied interventions in political and social struggles in the region. And it is, interestingly, precisely CEU – a privately endowed, elitist institution – which, through its generous funding and open intellectual atmosphere, has allowed a lot of quite radical debates to take place. Even though portraits of liberal thinkers as Karl Popper and Ernest Gellner still hang in the halls, to remind us of its past and the strife of its senior management.

But for me – as I recent said to an academic in the region decrying CEU as an outpost of neoliberalism – CEU is as any other university, a site of struggle. I prefer to have Popper and Gellner listening to student defences – where neo-Marxist and second-wave feminist thinkers are not even the most radical authors cited – and rolling in their graves. As an unintended outcome – perhaps of what Nicolas Guilhot has called Soros’s dialectical thinking – CEU has allowed the majority of people who call themselves Left in the region to emerge from its halls as faculty or students, without political repression. So when defending it today, it is not the institution as an uncriticizable bloc that need to defend. Rather, we need to defend our right to carry on challenging it from within, against the whim of an autocrat to just close it overnight.

On autonomy in the university

Eli: I loved your problematization of academic “autonomy” (particularly in “The Discreet Charm of University Autonomy” and in your joint paper on academic freedom with Kathleen Lynch). This has been a major issue in French higher education as well, where “autonomy” has been construed in very deeply opposed and ideologically laden fashions — new autonomy for institutional management has come very much at the expense of the collective autonomy of the traditional scholarly disciplines. What’s been the reaction to your efforts to produce a more politicized, feminist, anti-racist, “caring” notion of autonomy, or to show how it can in fact end up becoming a conservative tool (as in the anti-revolutionary “autonomous” universities in Venezuela)? Do you think that recent anti-precarity efforts, like #precanthro, can help revitalize the notion of autonomy in spite of the uncertain economic underpinnings of the current academy?

Mariya: So, in both papers, the main thesis – seen through my fieldwork in Venezuela, and through processes happening in traditional academic institutions in Western countries such as Ireland – was that current debates on academic autonomy speak only of autonomy from the state, but not of autonomy from the market. So, while academic autonomy and freedom are especially treasured in struggles against authoritarian regimes, often movements which demand them are much less alert about market processes that enter higher education. Thus even in liberal regimes, academics demand autonomy from the state, but often to avoid regulation and public responsibility, not to get a respite against market forces. In liberal market regimes, academic autonomy often becomes a way to perpetuate privilege and refuse public responsibility. This is especially visible in Venezuela, where it was used by anti-Chavista academics to entrench themselves in the traditional higher education system, and to refuse reform and massification.

And then, not to flog a dead horse, but to bring my own cherished alma mater, it was sad to see that when the CEU senior management came to struggle against Viktor Orbán, they did not underline their extended service to the community and the relevance of their programs, but rather their international ranking and their standing on the prestige market. And this while the university community – CEU but not only – has been put under increasing pressure to (self-) monitor its ‘research excellence’ through meaningless or narrow quantifiable criteria. There’s pressure on permanent academics to fundraise and publish-or-perish. There’s pressure on temporary research and teaching staff to follow these incentives and work almost for free. And there’s pressure on students to be happy they are given an education despite the often outdated and colonial curricula, and the demands to pay fees that put especially ‘nontraditional’ students at risk of ever growing debt. So academic autonomy is already under massive threat from the market, but the only threats we notice are the ones from the state even in instances when it tries to regulate against the market… Of course, if we discarding the relevance of academic autonomy, we deny the struggles of academics working in repressive regimes. But hyperbolizing and extending it beyond proportion contributes to keeping the university in its own elite confines. So then, what autonomy do we want? How can we achieve another as you put it, politicized, feminist, anti-racist, “caring” notion of autonomy — or I would add, a decolonized one? It’s a challenge, but a worthy one.

#academe #bookshelf #CEU #higher education #Central Europe #Hungary