[Xmca-l] Re: Nakesha

Sat Mar 3 23:41:04 PST 2018

Inspiring points Annalisa!

Στις Κυρ, 4 Μαρ 2018 στις 09:39 ο χρήστης Katerina Plakitsi <
kplakits@gmail.com> έγραψε:

> Thanks Helena!!!
>
> Στις Κυρ, 4 Μαρ 2018 στις 06:39 ο χρήστης Helena Worthen <
> helenaworthen@gmail.com> έγραψε:
>
>> Hello —
>> I read the whole NYTimes article posted by Annalisa about the woman who
>> died on the streets in NY — a young woman, 45, Black, mother of two
>> children born while she was homeless.  The story is upsetting for many
>> reasons.
>>
>> One, because living in the Bay Area, I see whole homeless encampments —
>> tent villages, under the freeway overpasses, along the grassy medians of
>> streets lined with nice restaurants, and beside bike paths. At night the
>> door ways of downtown shops become occupied with bodies in sleeping bags.
>>
>> Reason number two is that the article focuses on the help that was
>> offered to Nakesha and mostly refused. Not only old friends from college
>> (she graduated from Williams), but also people who walked past her and
>> talked with her and gave her things,  and then city social service workers
>> who reached out to her. One NYC worker recorded visiting her and speaking
>> with her over 300 times. She was well enough known to be interviewed on TV
>> about whether people on the street should be moved to shelters or not when
>> the temperature dropped. Two men who ran food trucks fed her, sometimes for
>> free. Psychiatrists talked with her.
>>
>> So the overall impact of the article to me seems to say, “Here is a woman
>> with talent and potential who refuses the help that would have allowed her
>> to lead a more normal life: she is schizophrenic but won’t accept
>> medication or shelters.” The article, it seems to me, puts all the blame on
>> her.  It also unfortunately notes that what ultimately kills her is a
>> complication of obesity: she is only 5 feet tall but weighs over 250 pounds
>> at the time of her death.
>>
>> I really don’t want to hear someone say, “I read an article in the
>> NYTimes about this homeless woman who refused help 300 times!” - and
>> suggest that this is typical.
>>
>> So  although this article tells a terribly sad story, it undercuts the
>> brutal fact of homelessness in the US by seeming to say homelessness is a
>> matter of individual choice (you can choose to accept medication for
>> schizophrenia or not), not a social problem for all of us.
>>
>> Should I, based on this story, decide to think that the crowds living on
>> the street are all there because they refuse social services, won’t go into
>> a shelter, won’t take their medications? That’s what the story would lead
>> me to think.
>>
>> The loss of good jobs in academia is part of the homelessness story;
>> maybe I sit in a place in the discourse where stories of adjuncts losing
>> their jobs, trying to live on one class per semester, losing their
>> healthcare when their assignments drops below 50%, art teachers sleeping in
>> their studios, others in their cars are heard more often than elsewhere,
>> but I don’t think so. I’m sure people on this list are aware of the overall
>> deterioration of academic labor, if not experiencing it themselves.
>>
>> But organizers would say, “It’s not what they do to you; it’s what we do
>> for ourselves.”
>>
>> Mike asked a while ago if xmca had a collective response to the challenge
>> of being able to do academic work, given the changes in higher ed — loss
>> of  funding, anti-intellectualism in our government, loss of tenure track
>> lines, explosion of student debt, cost of tuition, grant-dependent research
>> where the tail wags the dog, etc etc.  I think xmcc is a collective
>> response. Add in the journal, Mind Culture and Activity, and the ISCAR
>> conferences, and the partcipants from all over the world, including some
>> with historical memory!!! — that’s a response. Not that it pays for
>> groceries.
>>
>> Kind regards (I love the way Annalisa signs off…)
>>
>> Helena
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>> Berkeley, CA 94707 510-828-2745
>> Blog US/ Viet Nam:
>> helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>> skype: helena.worthen1
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Mar 3, 2018, at 9:25 AM, Jessica Kindred <kindred.jessica@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I also remember my shock at the homelessness in San Francisco. I think
>> part of it, coming from New York, was that so much of it was actually on
>> the street. In New York, it tends to be underground in the subway us or in
>> shelters, and of course, sometimes on the actual street as well.  I
>> recently was in Denver Colorado, and was shocked at the number of people
>> lining sidewalks and I asking for money at crosswalks.
>> > That is to say, American homelessness is shocking even from an inside
>> the US point of view.
>> > Jessie K.
>> >
>> > On Mar 3, 2018, at 12:05 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Thanks for sharing, Annalisa. Really nice case story a la Oliver Sacks.
>> I have yet to read the whole, but, 3900 unsheltered homeless people just in
>> New York City???
>> >
>> > I had never been in the US until I moved to live a couple of years in
>> BC, Canada, and the first time I got the chance to visit the US was San
>> Francisco, for a conference. I was there only the time strictly needed to
>> go to bed, wake up, walk to the conference venue in SF downtown, and back
>> to the hotel in the evening to leave early next morning. In my brief walk,
>> I got to see more homeless people that I had never seen before, and I
>> remember thinking that, if that scene I saw would suddenly occur in a city
>> in Spain (where I am from) or Norway, there would be a social alarm and
>> everyone would be talking about that all the time. Of course, I also
>> thought that letting down the thousands of Syria refugees that the Spanish
>> government had committed to host but never did would also cause a huge
>> alarm and revolt... but nothing has happened. Yet, the issue in the US
>> cities looks totally bizarre for an outsider's sight.
>> >
>> > Alfredo
>> > ________________________________________
>> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
>> > Sent: 03 March 2018 17:34
>> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> > Subject: [Xmca-l]   Nakesha
>> >
>> > Hello fellow Xmcars,
>> >
>> >
>> > I wish there were technology that didn't send us to the moon, but
>> instead refused to let anyone be homeless while fervently advocating for
>> anyone to contribute their best gifts and insights.
>> >
>> >
>> > I noticed this today in the NYT and the sentence below stood out to me
>> in particular. I thought it was a wonderful activity for children. Or maybe
>> adults?
>> >
>> >
>> > "Once, she said, Nakesha had each student invent a holiday and write
>> about how it would be celebrated, the values it promoted and what artifacts
>> would be involved."
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/nyregion/nyc-homeless-nakesha-mental-illness.html
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > kind regards,
>> >
>> >
>> > Annalisa
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
> ............................................................
> Katerina Plakitsi
> *ISCAR President*
> *Professor of Science Education*
> *Head of the Dept. of E**arly Childhood Education*
> *School of Education *
> *University of Ioannina, Greece*
> *tel. +302651005771*
> *fax. +302651005842*
> *mobile.phone +306972898463*
> *Skype name: katerina.plakitsi3*
>
> https://www.iscar.org/
> http://users.uoi.gr/kplakits
> www.epoque-project.eu
> http://bdfprojects.wixsite.com/mindset
> http://www.lib.uoi.gr/serp
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isZAbefnRmo&t=7s
>
>
>
>
> --
............................................................
Katerina Plakitsi
*ISCAR President*
*Professor of Science Education*
*Head of the Dept. of E**arly Childhood Education*
*School of Education *
*University of Ioannina, Greece*
*tel. +302651005771*
*fax. +302651005842*
*mobile.phone +306972898463*
*Skype name: katerina.plakitsi3*

https://www.iscar.org/
http://users.uoi.gr/kplakits
www.epoque-project.eu
http://bdfprojects.wixsite.com/mindset
http://www.lib.uoi.gr/serp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isZAbefnRmo&t=7s