Let's Make History.

(I couldn't get the captions to line up with the photos, so they're numbered... you'll have to follow along... any suggestions brother?)


1. Walking towards the first entrance point. All the streets downtown were shutdown and people were milling everywhere. There was all this nervous energy buzzing around. There were some early celebrations; people hoping for the best. There was Obama-gear everywhere in sight. If you were in favor of John McCain and you were in Chicago, you kept your mouth shut. It's Obama Land here.


2. Heading into the first checkpoint. Only 70,000 people got tickets to be in the first section and were some of them.


3. Everyone with a ticket was able to bring in one guest. Since the tickets sold out so quickly and so many people were desperate for tickets. Some held up signs asking to be a guest. We had one unclaimed guest spot in our group so we made Jason, who flew in from the Bronx for the day, a very happy man.


4. I was Ashley's buddy!!


5. Night starts to fall... We waited for hours between the first checkpoint and getting into the rally. It was worth it.


6. The whole group from Wheaton in Chicago (plus our new best friends we stood next to for five hours).


7. Me, Lauren, and Trisha. (I'm wearing my Hawaii sweatshirt in solidarity!)

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8. President-Elect Obama makes his acceptance speech! I saw him in real life!

At ten o'clock the news flashed across the screen "BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT" and everyone went crazy. There was screaming and jumping and crying. It was actually really powerful to stand there and realize I had just seen something so historic. The realization that for the first time in history, an African American had been elected the President of the United States only sunk in half-way. I was completely speechless for a long time.

The last few days have been great ones to be in Chicago. Everywhere people are celebrating the election of a Chicagoan to the White House (I know, I know, he's Hawaii's own...). Today we were on a field trip to a community art center in Kenwood, which is where his home is and we saw his motorcade drive by. There's a spirit of celebration in the air everywhere and I'm so excited that I can be here for this time. It's truly historic.

They're Here!!

My connections at Chevron inform me that my baby has arrived in Kapolei!! My major project this summer was producing this cookbook and it's finally printed! Here's the picture Dad sent me... woo!

Educational Inequalities

Hello... It's been a long time... again. So sorry. I actually have been doing a lot of homework, really I have. And exploring Chicago. That too. :)

We've been learning about a lot of interesting, but difficult stuff in class. In addition to gentrification and everything that comes with it, recently we've talked about educational inequalities. We recently read an article by Jonathan Kozol, author of several books on the public school system, about this very subject. I'll include a few of the paragraphs so you can get a sense of what the article says since it's pretty long, but I'll also include the link in case you want to read more.

"Many Americans who live far from our major cities and who have no firsthand knowledge of the realities to be found in urban public schools seem to have the rather vague and general impression that the great extremes of racial isolation that were matters of grave national significance some thirty-five or forty years ago have gradually but steadily diminished in more recent years. The truth, unhappily, is that the trend, for well over a decade now, has been precisely the reverse. Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now, while thousands of other schools around the country that had been integrated either voluntarily or by the force of law have since been rapidly resegregating."

...

"High school students whom I talk with in deeply segregated neighborhoods and public schools seem far less circumspect than their elders and far more open in their willingness to confront these issues. "It's more like being hidden," said a fifteen-year-old girl named Isabel I met some years ago in Harlem, in attempting to explain to me the ways in which she and her classmates understood the racial segregation of their neighborhoods and schools. 'It's as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don't have room for something but aren't sure if they should throw it out, they put it there where they don't need to think of it again.'

I asked her if she thought America truly did not 'have room' for her or other children of her race. 'Think of it this way,' said a sixteen-year-old girl sitting beside her. 'If people in New York woke up one day and learned that we were gone, that we had simply died or left for somewhere else, how would they feel?'

'How do you think they'd feel?' I asked.

'I think they'd he relieved,' this very solemn girl replied."

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/American-Apartheid-Education1sep05.htm


I'm going to be writing a paper about the disparities in education within the Chicagoland public school system, so I'll probably have more to say about this in a month or two. In the meantime, it's a little food for thought!

On a side, and more uplifting, note, I'm writing this from a great little cafe I found 10 minutes from my apartment. It's cute AND there's free wi-fi. What a find!

Delinquency

I know, I know... I've been terribly delinquent about posting anything recently. I apologize. Somehow, even with three day weekends life has been incredibly busy and there hasn't been lots of time to sit down.

As a show of my desire to make amends, I've decided to post this picture of bonafide Chicago pizza. No Mom and Dad, this isn't Due's pizza. I promise we'll go there, though. This is Giordano's, but still quite excellent.



And on that note I need to get back to writing a paper. This was just a way to avoid studying further. Haha.

We've got this little place in the city...

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I moved in to our little apartment in the city Friday. So here are some pictures of our wonderful place! I love the moldings and the windows. I don't love the need for mouse traps. But I think I can deal with that...

I'm Motivated

I've finally mustered the motivation to write and post pictures. I know, I know... that's a pretty lame statement. You're probably thinking, "How much effort does it take to click a few buttons and put pictures online?" But let me tell you, it's summer; pretty much anything beyond sleeping requires motivation.

David and Holly came to visit. Dad and I took the week off from work. All five of us went to Lana'i. This small island is home to approximately 3,000 people. It was a wonderful, beautiful, very relaxing vacation. We also goofed off around Kailua. Much fun was had by all.

Note in these pictures how beautiful everything is. Also, in the picture of the rock, if you look closely you'll see that it says "JOHN KUPAU - 11/28/29" the day the foundation was laid for the old lighthouse we were standing on. Pretty cool, eh?

Suh-Wheat!

I got a new camera today! And I'm pretty excited about it.

Along with that excitement came in-car picture taking as well as mirror shots. Oh the joys of new cameras...