English

It is strange--I just reflected on how hopeful, joyful, and warm the folks in Camden were the other day. But then, this article on Camden portrayed nothing but hopelessness, anger, and violence. Such contradictory impressions of a place. It makes me wonder just how individuals judge a place, how they make those distinctions. Perhaps it has to do with who you talk to and what you experience. I felt like this article was quite problematic—it only portrayed one way of perceiving Camden. Yes, there is a lot of crime. But that doesn’t always have to define a place, right? But I also don’t want to trivialize the serious issues in Camden. It’s a hard balance to find. And also, if you’re only ever told you are a dangerous person and you live in a dangerous hopeless place, will you ever grow up feeling like you can achieve? Will the kids we worked with the other day get caught in this system of oppression? I hope they hold on to the joy and ambition they found in that greenhouse, regardless of both the physical danger they may face in Camden, and the mental danger they face of being told they are hopeless.  

In the few hours that I have spent in Camden, it is difficult to fully and truly comprehend that 'America's Most Desperate Town' and Camden are one and the same. I had a pretty strong reaction to reading Matt Taibbi's article. I was struck by how suprised I was to read the horrible things that happen in/to Camden, despite the fact that I 'know', or am at least aware of, the devestation that exists there. How can the home of the CfET and the official "most dangerous place in America" be the same city? I am quite aggravated at the way Taibbi chose to portray Camden, and I feel defensive of a city that I barely know. Mostly, I am confused as to what to think about the benefits and detriments such an article can have for Camden. On one hand, the article brings to light the injustice that has been done to Camden by way of external forces such as funding cuts that essentially halt their entire Police department. It is important for people to know how New Jersey chose to deal with Camden's safety problems, such as the "new $4.5 million command center". On the other hand, Taibbi paints a picture of the people of Camden that is only detrimental to the reader's view of the city. He shows a dwindling community that is exploiting the lack of police force, one that is "celebrating the tranfer of power from the cops back to the streets".

Like many of my classmates, I was also taken aback by the Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch From America’s Most Desperate Town article written by Matt Taibbi. Taibbi painted an extremely dark and negative picture of Camden through his writing, describing the city as "an un-fantasy Island of extreme poverty and violence where the police just a few years ago essentially surrendered the city of 77,000". Taibbi continually others Camden, comparing its violence and crime rates to places like Somalia, Honduras, and Iraq. While he incorporates some of the obstacles the city has had to face such as detrimental budget cuts, which were especially to the police force, he fails to address many of the issues Camden faces that we have learned about from visiting the city and hearing more about its history from Michael. This is an incredible example of how powerful and problematic the single story is. As I was reading this essay, I kept thinking about my friends who had been surprised that the 360 was visiting Camden. "Isn't it too dangerous to be there? why would you go there?" many of them had asked me. If any of my friends who asked me these questions had read this article, the image and stereotype of the city would only be reaffirmed. Luckily, this whole 360 class has had positive, enlightening, and fun experiences in Camden, which keep us from supporting the assumptions that Taibbi puts forth, but there are many who haven't had such experiences. 

"If Camden was overseas, we'd have sent troops and foreign aid." -Dramatic much? Having seen Camden and interacting with some of the people, I feel like this article was blown up for publicity. Matt Taibbi claims to write about Camden, but when you write about someone or some place, shouldn't you speak from all the angles and not just the ones that will make people stop in awe and surprise. I too grew up in a publicized part of the city that is known to be one of the worst places to find yourself in. One fulll of drugs and violence and no hope for progress. Yet, I'm still living there, walking the "hopeless streets" and enjoying some of the most delicious food I've had in some of the "shaddiest" and "ugliest" family owned restaurants. Personally, I believe Matt has no right to talk about Camden the way he does. He mentions how corrupt and hopeless Camden is, and my question is- "What do you wish to achieve through this? Making it better?" No! If anything he gives Camden no hope, he gives its people, it's families and children no respect. He needs to apologize and learn to give places a chance based on self experience, not reputation. 

I was somewhat shocked when I read Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch From America’s Most Desperate Town written by Matt Taibbi. Throughout the article Taibbi talks about the negatives of Camden. How Camden has been pushed aside from New Jersey and Philadelphia due to the amount of crime, violence, and drugs within the neighborhood. Even though we’ve only been to Camden twice I still feel that Camden is progressing and isn’t want Taibbi portrayed it as. Yes part of the streets, parks, and buildings have some vandalism or destruction to them, but I feel like I don’t see the violence. I was surprised when Taibbi mentioned that when police officers stopped working the crime rate went up and that now there are all of these hi-tec security cameras all over to detect when different crimes are occurring. The other point Taibbi made was that there were 175 open-air drug markets and that Christie “wanted to go after New Jersey urban schools, which he derided as failure factories.” I think that ways in which to help the community would be by adding more businesses to the neighborhood to increase the job market. Once more jobs are available there will be less tension within the community. Taibbi made Camden seem like a terrifying community to go to, but to me it has progressed more and will continue to progress. 

Why is Camden "America's most desperate town?" And of they are so desperate just what are they desperate for? In his Rolling Stone article, Matt Taibbi expounds much on the horrors of Camden–the crime, the violence, the drugs, the remaining half of the police force that cannot seem to manage a city that seems more like a war zone if Taibbi's article is to be taken at face value. However, in all the stories–of scars and injuries, of people scraping by and trying to their best make ends meet when jobs are few and far between and grocery stores non-existent, and the people who tried to fight tooth and nail against the cement factory and other sources of environmental pollution that seemed anxious to subjugate the city beneath a slew of toxic chemicals–I hear no desperation. The anecdotes of life in Camden reveal to me something far stronger and more powerful than desperation, I hear and see a fierce tenacity in the fighting spirit of each Camdenite, a powerful love for a town the rest of the world had all but written off years ago. My experiece with Camden must have been a fluke or special circumstance following the affirmations of Taibbi. Yes, I saw the dilapadated structures and pot-holes streets and the building of the water treatment facility on every horizon, but the people I met exuded far more hope than desperation. The folks from the Center for Environmental Transformation had so many positive things to say about the people and the city, and that positivity is reeflected in the work they do to better Camden's environment.

First, to say what I liked about this article, brief because I disliked most of it- I appreciated that the author tried to contextualize Camden within larger national and global processes of politics and nationalism.  There was a lot about the history of Camden in the article that I didn't know, though of course I am as skeptical of the historical information provided as I am about everything else in the article.  But otherwise, I have to agree with Ari's letter to the editor in that the article "Apocalypse, New Jersey" shows the danger of a single story by portraying Camden only as a broken and crime-ridden city.  As someone who doesn't know much about Camden besides what I've read and seen on my two visits as an outsider, I don't know enough about Camden to say exactly what is wrong about the article, to propose another story that can be told.  It's not my place, not my right, to tell a story about a place I don't know- if I tried, the story would only be representative of me.  But as someone who is interested in crime rhetoric and our prison system, I am irritated by and skeptical of the discussion of crime in this article.  The article reads like it's making a half-hearted attempt to contextualize crime, to explain that there's more crime in Camden than in other places because a lack of jobs forces people into the illegal economy, but the article still ends up reading like it's villainizing drug dealers and other people who commit "criminal" acts as horrible people.

S.A

Intertwined Threads

Mexican-American, I’m both, not one stepping over the other. My skin radiates historical adventures that trace back beyond what my spoken memories can share. My speaking tongue and my perking ears can understand both sides of the spectrum as I walk on the land of the free, America the brave. I walk each step with fluidity and flexibility, making sure I don’t get too tight on one niche. As a Mexican-American, I carry both threads in me, I’m “heterogeneous and a complex network of entities.” I’m absorptive of both cultures and my existence as a whole is porous and permeable, for both cultures to flow in and out of me but never dissipate.

I have the privilege of being able to jump from one niche to the other. The access and ability I have to be flexible between both worlds is undeniably one of the best advantages of growing up in two different cultures, two different homes fostering me into a young woman with insights in both worlds.

When I was first asked to write about home, I wrote about a place, a school that sheltered me and offered me the landscape to feel safe and free of judgment. But after analyzing the works of Yinka Shonibare’s Magical Ladders and the reading article by Stacy Alaimo: Porous Bodies and Trans- Corporeality, my thoughts on home have altered. My home, my environment, my ecosystem is the intertwined threads of my identification as a Mexican- American.

Since we’ve written our first papers about home, I have realized that there are more factors that go into a home and what defines a home. In my first paper Anne mentioned whether I would consider geologic and natural disasters as part of my home. After reading Exile & Pride by Eli Clare I saw natural disasters as being part of my definition of home. However, in my opinion, natural disasters try to exiles humans from their homes. 

In Exile & Pride Eli Clare talks about his physical disabilities but how he still embraces nature through hiking regardless of the fact that he has a “disability.” People don’t choose to be born with a disability, but if they do have one they learn how to work with it to live a “normal” life. Eli embraces his disability just like he embraces nature. He works with his disability to be able to do what he loves and wants to do. This ties into the idea of where we choose to have our homes and what events will try to “exile” us from them.

Natural disasters are a part of the planet. They affect various areas of Earth mainly along coasts or on plate boundaries where two plates (oceanic or continental) collide, separate, or slide past each other. Natural disasters include volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. In most cases, these events cause property damages, injuries, deaths, and in the long run economic issues due to the rebuilding of the area(s). In particular I wanted to focus on Hurricane Sandy.