I’m still struggling with the question I stumbled upon 5 years ago. How can I engage in social change? Meaning, how can I support the proliferation of love, autonomy, and well-being rather than the proliferation of hatred, mass destruction, and inequality? How can I ultimately live with rather than at the expense of others, both people and planet?
For the past 3 or so years, I pursued traditional political activism as the way to positive social change. I was involved in many organizations and actions that I thought would lead to this end. I feel like I did accomplish a lot: feeding some of those who were hungry, providing some shelter to the homeless, creating dialogue/awareness about a lot of issues, connecting with many different people from a wide range of backgrounds, and causing some good ol’ ruckus.
After 8 years of being together, Christina and I are finally getting married. Until recently, I held a negative notion of marriage. It was mostly a reaction to the expected social norm. I didn’t want to be like “everyone else,” thus I didn’t want to get married. How could I fit into this category of being “radical” and be married?
This is an attempt to document how I used Drupal, the popular CMS, to create the website for the Tampa Bay Independent Media Center. While my goal was a community-based news site, I believe this can be useful for anyone looking to create a dynamic yet simple and clean website. No knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP or other markup/programming language is basically necessary, as I was able to build this entire website by simply configuring Drupal from the graphical administrative interface (besides some small optional hacks for aesthetical purposes).
When I think of being “Christian” or the “Church,” pleasant feelings generally do not come to mind. Conjured up are memories of boredom and irrelevancy in the 9 years I attended Catholic school in addition to a few more years of regular church service (before I escaped to “free-thinking secularism”). I had memorized a bunch of prayers and passages from the bible, as well as being able to go through the routines of Catholic Mass in my sleep (stand, sing, sit, repeat 2x, kneel, stand, sing, walk, kneel, stand, sing, the end). But I wasn’t left with much more than that. Sure, I learned that Jesus was a pretty awesome dude, treating everyone really nicely, but he was the Son of God after all.
I highly recommend Gmail if you haven’t checked it out already. The web interface allows you to access your email from anywhere, I rarely get any spam in my Inbox, there’s ton of free storage space, and email conversations are threaded making it easier to keep track and organize messages (i.e. you see a single email rather than 50 “Re: Hello” messages).
After spending the summer in Portland, Christina and I have decided to return to Florida. We experienced some interesting things: a week of communal living and invaluable workshops at the west coast the convergence for climate action, the beautiful Oregon coast, amazing Columbian gorge, inspiring Mount Hood, the stream of bikers commuting in Portland as well as the widespread gardens in the city.
I have decided to quit the sociology graduate program at the University of Florida after my first year. I have definitely learned many invaluable lessons and grown immensely, but most of these were gained from my experiences outside the classroom. It seems many in academia are primarily in it just for the money, status, and cushy privileges. The classes were monotonous and far from challenging; the politics in the department absurdly immature and even down right nasty (there are still many ongoing repercussions of these articles). The students and faculty who I previously held some respect for their ability to critique, proved themselves to be hypocritical when some of us attempted to turn the gaze of sociology back on itself and stand up for the rights of all students to be treated with respect and dignity within the department.
