Street-Level News Exchange

Nina Coomes' poem reflects what so many young people fail to recognize, yet Coomes has found a way to not only recognize it, but realize its importance. In a letter to her unborn daughter, Coomes addresses the struggles we all will inevitably face in our lifetimes. Through literature and television and movies we've somehow learned to think--or at least hope--that our lives will run smoothly, that whenever we fall there will be someone, somehow that makes an effort to pick us up. Coomes is right--nothing about [our] childhood will be storybook. We don't have all the answers, but we can help or at least hold our future childrens' hands along the way and continue to believe that there's stardust in their hair. 

Natalie Richardson’s poem “Egypt” spoke to because it tells how the traumatic experiences suffered during military service affect not only that person but also their loved ones. Natalie's chilling verses really pull on one's heart strings.

Image Credit: By Geoff Wong (Flickr: Homeless II), via Wikimedia Commons

If you were to do a Google search for the internet’s most popular blogs, you’d see the usual topics: blogs following the lives of celebrities and athletes, extravagant cooking recipe blogs and blogs on interesting places to travel. In the midst of all this, one blog caught my eye. It is called The Homeless Guy: There is more to homeless people than being homeless. Kevin Barbieux, a former homeless man, takes us outside the conventional thinking of what it is to be homeless.

Although homelessness is in no way a new issue, ways of addressing this problem couldn’t be less institutionalized. Poorly administered shelters don’t help the homeless get back on their feet, in fact, they barely qualify as a good place for the homeless to rest. Our current society’s policies don’t make it easy for the homeless to qualify for a job especially if you have limited skills and experience, not to mention that their unstable lifestyle makes it that much harder to be competitive in the job market.

Sleep deprivation can be considered the biggest obstacle in a homeless person’s plight to get back on their feet, Barbieux writes in his post, “Sleep”. In another of Barbieux’s posts, “Good Guys And Bad Guys,” he talks about how advocates behind ending homelessness end up only helping policies that alienate homeless people which only agitate the situation further. One such policy is mentioned in “Sleep,” when Barbieux tells us about how policies in metropolitan areas make it hard for the homeless to rest in their cars (If they have them), and in public areas at night.

When advocacy groups donate thousands of dollars to end home displacement it might seem generous but at least from a mindset perspective it can be condescending. It is easy to throw money at a situation and tell others to deal with an issue but hard to actually take time to understand the lives of homeless people and differentiate their being homeless from their personal challenges.

Homelessness isn’t a homeless person’s problem; it’s everyone’s. If the same practices to combat homelessness continue, we only risk alienating them even more with a policy and culture designed to push them away.

I’ll conclude this post with a fitting quote for this kind of this situation.

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. – Lilla Watson, Indigenous Australian

  Image credit to Univision

  The war for power has begun as of July 15. With the arrest of Miguel Ángel Treviño, aka Z-40 the head of the notoriously violent Zetas drug cartel, not only is the Mexican government victorious but so are rivals Sinaloa Cartel and its ally, the Gulf Cartel.  

Since the separation of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas there has been a constant fight for conquest over territory, these two conflicting cartels have unleashed violence all over the country of Mexico. These “battles for turf and confrontations with Mexican forces all sent violence soaring in the past several years, with tens of thousands dead or missing”, according to the New York Times. After the arrest of Z-40 the violence might not take a turning point but rather a turn for the worst.

New Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has launched a counter violence campaign and presumes to target “the top ranks of the country’s drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons”, according to AP. But is this strategy the best? As it has been proved before the overthrow of a leader brings about a race to regain that power.

Such was the case “when Gulf leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen was arrested, Los Zetas began developing as an independent force within the cartel”, according to a blog on the Houston Chronicle. Eventually Los Zetas became independent and rival to the Gulf Cartel. So will the arrest of Z-40 bring about a new cartel? One things is for sure violence will continue to prevail in Mexico.

  Image courtesy of Mattel

As a seventeen-year-old with no little brothers or sisters running around -- thank god -- my minimal knowledge of what kids play with nowadays comes from randomly walking by a Toys R Us store on my way to school. I didn't even think today's generation of kids play with actual, physical toys. Barbies and toy cars? Try iPads and Nintendo Wiis.

Apparently, the popularity of dolls isn't completely lost. Monster High is Mattel's hit new line of seemingly "Goth Barbie dolls," who are the daughters of monsters trying to face the challenges of high school.

In an article from NPR, toy analyst Gerrick Johnson said he was surprised when the toy brand took off the way it did, "I didn't think it would work. Why does Barbie work? Barbie works because she's aspirational. Girls want to be like Barbie. Shrek has never worked in toy format, because no boy wants to be a green ogre from the swamp. He wants to be Luke Skywalker."

Trailing Barbie in sales, Monster High is not only the newest hot toy that parents have to fight over during Christmas, but is also raising questions about the message they're sending to young girls. Mattel's Vice President of marketing, Cathy Cline, said, "The message about the brand is really to celebrate your own freaky flaws, especially as bullying has become such a hot topic."

There are a few things in Cline's statement that raise a red flag. First off, the purpose of the brand is to celebrate "freaky flaws". Oh yeah, Mattel. That makes complete sense. Because I'm sure one in three girls in high school right now have ever had the issue of having your dad be a Werewolf. And secondly, since when is bullying a new issue facing young girls?

The fact that girls are obsessed with Monster High isn't that surprising. It doesn't take long for fads to spread -- girls see their friends with new, cool looking Monster High dolls and they beg their parents to run out and buy the dolls -- but just because something is surprising doesn't necessarily mean it's right. Monster High is attempting to bring a toy that isn't the typical, blonde bombshell Barbie into the spotlight, which is something that deserves applause. However, once you actually look at the dolls, it's obvious that Monster High fails to be progressive when they're trying to celebrate "freaky flaws", but the "freakiest" part about their dolls is their difficulty keeping up their daily beauty rituals.

  Jezebel took a look at the biography section of Monster High's website:

Draculaura, daughter of Dracula:

"Since I can't see myself in the mirror, I have to leave the house not knowing if my clothes and makeup are just right."

Clawdeen Wolf, daughter of The Werewolf:

"My hair is worthy of a shampoo commercial and that's just what grows on my legs. Plucking and shaving is definitely a full time job but that's a small price to pay for being scarily fabulous." 

  Once you can get past the ridiculous names -- it took me a good five minutes to stop laughing--you can see why Mattel's attempt to be progressive ultimately fails. The most ridiculous doll has to be the one named Skelita Calaveras. Her body is literally a skeleton with black and orange hair. Her face is designed to look like a sugar skull used in Day of the Dead Celebrations. Not only do they say the doll is from "Hexico" -- I didn't know the country of Mexico was copyrighted--but despite being a skeleton she still has boob outlines on her ribcage.

I honestly don't know whether to laugh or turn off my computer in disgust.