Once the debt crisis of Dubai World appeared on the news, I happily went to my nationalistic friends to ask, "don't you think Shanghai will be the next Dubai?" No, they didn't even think about it. Of course Shanghai is different: Shanghai is not in the desert; it has a big local population; it has full backing of the Chinese government and the Chinese banks...
What Dubai and Shanghai have in common is that all their resources are concentrated in the hands of a few power elites. And these elites can indulge themselves in self-aggrandizement with few public accountability. Just look at the skyscrapers in these two cities. Now that the Burj Dubai is left half-done, the Shanghai Center--the 632m tower--might become the tallest building in the world when it is finished in 2014. Why is it a bubble? Because office buildings in Shanghai are already facing over-supply, the occupation rate is around 50%, and you cannot get your investment back from rent (according to current rent-purchase ratio) within 50 years. The power elites' obsession with erecting tall buildings might be a good case for psycho-analysis, but I will only write about what I know for sure, that they are betting with public money.
In the case of the Shanghai Tower, the developers are three government-owned companies. They are using the public land for free (In China, all lands are owned by the state), and they get their funding from state-owned banks. So what if the Shanghai Tower becomes just another empty building? The banks will write it off as a bad loan. What if the banks cannot survive so many bad loans like that? The government will use public money to bail them out (as it did in 2004). In other words, everyone is blackmailed by the bubble.
Dubai thought it had found a new path to prosperity when it stopped exporting oil. Shanghai is not that different, when it can no longer depend on exporting cheap labor (our unique natural resource), it resorts to credit expansion and construction as the engine of growth. Others have failed in that path, Dubai, Spain, Japan...but somehow many people here have no doubt that we will be the exception.
The Copenhagen Climate Talks is receiving a lot attention from Chinese media. There are debates over whether the US is taking too little responsibility and China is taking too much as a developing country. But you don't hear the kind of skepticism towards climate change common in the US (maybe because the smog in Chinese cities is quite hard to ignore). But certain argument from the American conservation radio shows will not make any sense to Chinese: If you are believe climate change, you must be anti-freedom, anti-America, elitist, and sissy. Some Chinese are against environmentalism because it is not profitable or convenient, but they don't have the moral imagination that they are defending a free-consuming lifestyle, defending normal and moral people against the threats of intellectuals or science, or even defending masculinity (I don't really get that part)...
I am organizing the community action area of Fiesta Del Sol- it will have a hundred volunteers each day- trained to canvass the festival, the three asks they will ask the fiesta del sol attendees:
Yesterday night, we had "La Colleccion: event in Golden Hills At the Marquee and it was beautiful. The Marquee is a great church-turned event hall in Golden Hill. The event started off as a fundraiser mostly for the art pavilion for Fiesta Del Sol and quickly became a family event with music, food and drinks!!!
So my personal goal as an organizer this summer, was to build up the Immigration Task Force group here in San Diego. We have had shaky turn out and continuity for about three years now. I wanted to make the task force a group of accountability and continuity. And After the June 27th summit, we had a great first powerful meeting! In partnership with allies ACORN, SEIU, and our member institutions; key staff/leaders from each organization gathered to plot out what our game plan was with the immigration task force. We had our meeting at the SEIU offices, and we had pretty good turn out about 40 people. We strategized on what it was that we were going todo within the "Community Action" pavilion of Fiesta Del Sol. The Festival has different pavilions dedicated to different issues: healthcare, childrens, education, community action, art. Our plan is to have a training August 1 prior to the Fiesta Del Sol (August 8 and 9) to bring 200 people to a training to learn how to "canvass" during Fiesta Del Sol. This week I am going to be on the Padre Andres show (a catholic radio talk show) speaking about this and the national text message campaign- if you text the word Justice or Justicia to the # 69866, you get updates on where we are with immigration reform, when a politician makes a statement or there is new updates, you get a text letting you know who to call and let them know about your support or disgust :) its a great tool! I will be on the show with Christina, this student who is an amazing mujer, We meet for a few hours today to discuss talking points and it was awesome! I realized that she is very interested in Immigration law, which is something I have been thinking about lately. While the community action area is being developed through the immigration task force, the rest of Fiesta Del Sol is moving right along. It is in the exciting phase, my co-chair and I, just feel so energized after the meetings, like what happens every year, amazing people come out of the wood work to head up and join the pavilions. The energy is tangible, the people amazing, the movement vibrant, I wouldn't be anywhere else, doing anything else!!! I love organizing!
Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson
it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory ofGod that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my
vision, then it becomes less and less importrant whether I am afraid."
This has been an amazing summer, and I am trying to capture it in all of its amazing awesomeness! A week after completing my finals for my first year of Grad School, I began to work on an Immigration Leadership Summit that Justice Overcoming Boundaries (JOB) was putting on. I had not been as involved as I wanted because I was finishing up my finals. So, I was thrown into putting the summit together. Norma, my tocaya, left to DC and the summit was only half planned. Within the week, I was in full force organizing mode with the other organizer, Pedro. We had to get the conference together. Over 50 people ended up attending, leaders, students, church members, all backgrounds and ages! We had speakers from the National Reform Immigration for America (RIFA) campaign (this is the national Campaign for immigration reform that orgs that we as JOB are affiliated with (GAMALIEL and CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE) I have worked with organizers from both organization and love the work and partnership that the do! So we had speakers from the National campaign come out of DC, we had organizers from Oakland, Ventura, Los angeles and from orgs such as CHIRLA- come out.
She said it on her show 30 rock and after a year of grad school, I get it. Grad students and academics kinda suck... the world of academia is designed to create drones within very specific fields which only few people understand. It is made to make people interested in writing and reading rather than DOING. There is a huge amount of narcissim in grad school- grad students and teachers alike are ALL about their own research and little else. Grad students make lousy friends- they are too disconnected from the real world... grad students have continuous lame conversations about theory and other bullshit in front of non academics which is super annoying...academic writing is super dry and uninspiring...
so why do I keep on going?
because unfuckenforutnately I need that damn degree to prove that I know something. And fortunately there are glimmers of hope, those true academic activists, professors and students that apply what they know to the real world and don't keep it reserved to obscure journals that no one but their colleagues read and argue and refute...
In order for academic to truly succeed it needs to be engaged and shared with the real world!
GAH!
dear vox friends, I feel so horrible and guilty for saying this - but I must leave vox. I am still a Movable Type User - and I know that because you made MT you udoubtably have the capacity to make vox just as excellent. Until you do, I'm going to wait out at www.triciawang.tumblr.com.
My hopes are that you invest the same kind of energy in vox as in your other amazing tools - such as typepad and movable type. I hope that your vox support start answering user's messages - I've emailed soooo many messages to the support team but I have never heard back from anyone :( I hope that you will give users the option to export their posts (not just import), fix the buggy servers, fix blog entry section - it's impossible to highlight a few words,editing, give more options to users to customize the side bar and redesign the way advertising is placed.
I love that I can make posts private, or just for friends or just for neighbors. I love that. I love that this has been my personal blog for the last 3 years. Tumblr will be my personal blog and Movable Type will continue to remain my professional blog at www.youmeiti.com. I love MT 4.25 - it's beautiful - can vox be just as well-thought out!!
Bye Vox - and vox friends i will still pull your feeds into my google RSS reader, so I will still comment and read your private posts.
Oh and since you are going to check out my new blog, check out two more blogs that I just launched!:
Cultural Bytes - where I write about my research on new technology users
::Dichos y Vida - where I write about all my favorite quotes!
::Tricia is Reading This - all the things I find interesting from my RSS reader
And i'm going to start blogging again on my movable type blog:YouMeiTI , where I write about Chinese Youth, Media and Information Technology.
To pull ONE RSS FEED of all my blogs, please cick on this soup.io link,
To pull on RSS feed of all my media - from flickr to youtube to vimeo - please use this soup.io link.
