The first event I attended was at Stanford (oooh, fancy!), with an incredible organization called World Pulse. World Pulse is a global media voice for women - they produce a magazine featuring the stories of women around the world. But perhaps most incredible is the online platform they offer for women to globally connect with each other, pulling themselves out of isolation and supporting each other. One particularly resounding story was told by one of the guests at the lecture, one of their "citizen journalists" from Uganda. All her brothers have died of AIDS and her mother was a widow. When the last brother died, the village elders planned to come round (as per tradition) and take her land, as a woman is not allowed to keep property. Despairing, the citizen journalist posted on World Pulse that this was happening and received a flood of emails of support from women all around the world, some of whom offered to come down and sit in front of the house in protest. She told her mother, who stood up to the elders, and said "I am not giving up my land and I have 100 friends from around the world who will come here and support me." The elders reluctantly backed off and she got to keep her house. This incredible evening was topped off by a meal at Calafia , a restaurant founded by the original chef who ran the kitchens at Google, and who now serves awesome mostly local and organic food.
The next day, I went to a conference of the Bioneers. What the F is a bioneer, you may ask (I sure did)? The Bioneers are "inspiring a shift to live on earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other, and future generations." What makes these guys different from most other world-saving groups is that they have managed to connect with folks all over the world and are taking a really multi-disciplined approach to social and environmental change. The conference featured interactive workshops, an indigenous rights and learning track, sessions on everything from young farmers to race in the environmental movement (a panel entirely of women of colour), current campaigns, the potential of mushrooms to save the world, and the BEST plenary speakers I've ever seen at any one event. This included the incredible, funny, super smart and seminal thinker and activist Gloria Steinem who broke (and continues to break) gender barriers and was one of the first women to talk about race in feminism. The other thing that was so neat was how many times the "occupy Wall Street" movement came up. Almost everyone in the conference mentioned it and cheered them on - there's a real feeling of energy that things may indeed be changing. This optimism and spirit was enthralling and for me, was absolutely contagious.
It got me thinking a lot about connectivity, both in terms of the fact that social movements are really understanding that every issue is connected and none can be addressed in isolation, but also, that internet and technology could really be a force for massive change (and not just porn).
Now, you may be saying, who cares about all this "inspiration" crap - tell me about the drug deals! Okay, okay. I may or may not have put that in the headline to attract attention, but it does feed in. During my search for housing, I've started to look at Residential Hotels, places where you can pay weekly or monthly. They usually (but not always) consist of a room, a kitchen and common space shared by the whole building and bathrooms and showers shared by your floor (a lot like university residence without the large amount of drinking and throwing up everywhere...most of the time). In visiting these places, I stopped at one in the Tenderloin which turned out not to be a residential hotel, but the kind woman said a) don't live in this area, but if you really want to, b) there is a place a few doors up which you can check out. So, I marched out, backpack on, smile on my face, and within about 30 seconds (this was around noon on a Monday), the following happened:
1) a dude walked by and said "Damn girl! What you been eating to look like that?"
2) about five seconds later, another dude pulled out a little bag of something and gave it to some other dude in exchange for cash. Drug deal!
Now, not that it's not convenient to have both potential dates with guys on the street and easy access to drugs, but something about that experience made me decide to keep walking. Maybe it was also the fact that a few nights before, in the same area, I walked by a guy squatting on the ground, smoking a cigarette, and wearing no pants. Seriously. I mean, I'm down with no pants dance parties (as some of you may know from a recent Ottawa event), but this was something else entirely.
Long (long, long) story short, I'm still looking for housing. I've seen places but so far haven't been offered anything (even the house that smelled like pot, had stained carpets and life-sized cutouts of Star Trek characters). So I continue to live in the hostel, where the people are mostly friendly and the location is convenient.
In the next episode: I got a bike! Ouch, my legs! Seriously!
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