a once in a lifetime thing

my dad told me to lighten up today.

holy cow.

doing our part

Created by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti:

Half-Hour for Haiti: Cancel Haiti’s Debt This Summer

Update: First of all, I’d like to welcome everyone who has joined the Half-Hour for Haiti program over the last few weeks, especially all the folks who signed up at the U.S. Social Forum. We’ll look forward to working with you to obtain justice for Haiti! Thanks to everyone who wrote two weeks ago asking Prosecutor Gassant to free political prisoners as part of his efforts to reduce the prison population. Mario Joseph, the prisoners’ lawyer, appreciates your making his job easier. Mario does not have good news to report yet, but he’s still working on it.

Coming Attractions: On August 18 there will be a Grassroots Music and Arts Festival at Bethel Farm in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. The festival will feature music, art, films, hiking, swimming and other summer fun, with proceeds going to the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.

The Jubilee USA Network (IJDH is a member) is organizing a 40-day fast for debt cancellation and economic justice from September 6 to October 15. There will be events focused on Haiti, including a lobby/call-in day, the first week of October. Jubilee USA is looking for organizations to commit to participating in the one-day fast on September 6. Joining the fast will help get the mobilization off to a good start, while also demonstrating that you care particularly about Haiti (we’ll be fasting at IJDH). For more information, see http://www.canceldebtfast.org/.

This week’s alert: comes from David Smart and Amanda Pacheco, two law students with the Center for Law and Global Justice at the University of San Francisco:

Contact your representative in the House about cosponsoring the Haiti Debt Cancellation Resolution (House Resolution 241) urging the World Bank, IMF, Inter-American Development Bank, and other financial institutions to immediately cancel Haiti’s debt.

Use the August Recess to Show Your Support

Your local representatives will be working in their district offices during the upcoming August Congressional Recess. Much of this time will be spent listening to constituent concerns so it is an ideal time to show your support for the bill. 17 new cosponsors have signed on since the beginning of June, making a total of 62. We are getting close to having enough support to force a hearing, and the August recess is our opportunity to get over the top.

Why Existing Debt Relief is Not A Solution: In April of 2006, Haiti reached the “Decision Point” under the World Bank and IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), making it eligible for debt relief programs. If Haiti were to reach “Completion Point” under HIPC, it would qualify for cancellation of around $586 million of its total $1.4 billion debt. But because of the harmful economic conditions reaching this “Completion Point” entails, it is doubtful that Haiti will see much debt relief, and will have to continue making large repayments until 2010 at the earliest. By that time, Haiti will have repaid $270 million to financial institutions.

Many leading economists consider the conditions and required economic, social and political targets being forced on Haiti misguided, and frequently harmful, as evidenced by the results of HIPC conditions in other developing nations (click here for more on the problems of HIPC conditions). These conditions will mean that, between now and 2010, in a country of only 8 million, 100,000 children will die before reaching the age of 11 months, 40,000 will die before the age of 5, and 6,000 women will die during childbirth. Immediate debt cancellation will not save everyone, but it will have an immediate and dramatic impact on the health of millions.

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and simply cannot afford to pay $270 million between now and 2010. Even more unjust is the fact that over half of the loans were granted to dictatorships that used them to buy luxury items and subjugate the majority of Haiti into submitting to their rule. How can we ask the poor citizens of Haiti to pay back these loans?

By unconditionally ending the debt now, millions of dollars could be invested in health care in a country where 50% of people are chronically undernourished and only 1 in 10 has access to clean water near their home. Haiti has the worst prevalence of adult HIV outside Sub-Saharan Africa and with the current infection rate, 1 in 10 Haitians will have the disease by 2015. Life expectancy in Haiti is only 53 years and falling, compared with 74.9 in Mexico and 77.3 in the United States. Haiti also has the worst infant mortality with almost 1 in 10 live births ending in death.

Immediate Debt Relief Will Save Lives Immediately

Acknowledging the need for immediate debt relief, 62 representatives from both sides of the aisle have already co-sponsored the bill. By canceling the debt immediately we can assist Haiti in the improvement of the healthcare, education, sanitation, and other essential services and infrastructure. Not only must Haiti be freed of the oppression of dictatorships, but also of the oppression caused by the onerous and odious loans they incurred.

Contact Your Representative Today!

The best way to reach your Representative this month is at a town meeting or other public meeting in your district. Members of Congress will be trying to see what their constituents care about, make sure Haiti makes the list. Last year several Representatives were convinced to sign on at these venues. Email info@ijdh.org for an information packet you can hand to your member of Congress.

Call your representative in both the district and Washington DC offices. Ask them to cosponsor the Haiti Debt Cancellation resolution in the house (H.Res.241) if they have not already done so. To co-sponsor, the member’s staff should contact Kathleen Sengstock in Rep. Maxine Waters’ office at (202) 225-2201.

To find your Representative go to visit http://www.house.gov/. For more information, and to take action, visit the website of the Jubilee USA Network, www.jubileeusa.org or the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, www.ijdh.org.

A FEW MINUTES OF YOUR TIME COULD BENEFIT THE LIVES OF MILLIONS

For more information on debt relief, human rights in Haiti and the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, see www.HaitiJustice.org. To sign up for bi-weekly action alerts, send an email to HalfHour4Haiti@ijdh.org.

new levels of stress and exhaustion

so i forgot to send in my spring transcript to KSBE. my scholarship counsel just emailed me tonight saying that my scholarship is going to be delayed until i send in the transcript and they can review it. funny thing is that i had just printed out the KSBE address to put in my bag so i can order the transcript tomorrow when i'm on campus. even funnier thing is that KSBE has a gpa requirement of 3.0 for grad school scholarship recipients. so i may not even get the scholarship in the end.

PERFECT.

i have enough money to cover tuition and BARELY scrape by for the year. and i do mean absolutely bottom of the bucket BARELY. so it would definitely suck if they didn't give it to me in end. and i just totally don't think the grades from your first year of law school is any indication of how good of a student you are. all it tells you is how you do compared to a bunch of other people.

whatever.

in other news, i just rediscovered "hey there delilah" by the plain white t's. forgot how much i loved this song. and how...melancholy...it made me feel. the good ones always do. did you know that the song was written for a real girl? she was a student at columbia and an olympic hopeful. they never dated, she was never interested. but he thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, so he wrote the song from the perspective of a "what if". that almost makes it worse.

embrace the mob mentality

three words: harry. potter. tomorrow.

flashback to 2nd grade

my contact lenses ripped and now i have to use my glasses.


AWESOME.

the halfway point (of summer, not of life)

i know i haven't been keeping up! i'm sorry! but i've been updating my myspace with pics practically daily! that has to count for something, right?!

and honestly, i've just been really out of it lately. i feel like i've been walking in this heavy...fog, and there's no where to really go because you can't even see the shit that you're about to fall over. it's just been an off sort of week, i guess.

i don't know. i feel...trapped? well, no...stuck, i think is what i'm looking for. and not in my personal life, but more in my professional life. i mean, i'm on this track, right? this "law school" track, this "elite" (whatever the hell that means) track, this friggin' ONE WAY track to some sort of future that is just so damn SET that i feel suffocated half of the time. on one hand, i have these GREAT internships this summer, working on human/indigenous rights and debt relief and things that are going to be sent to the UN, and that's the whole reason i'm in law school, to get to do these things. and on the other hand, when i think up a dream job, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the law. NOTHING.

and i know i've always told myself that the law degree is a means to an end, a way to getting my life into a position where i can actually DO the things i want to do (and if you know me, you also know that this has something to do with a small town near the ocean, and a bookstore owned by yours truly), because let's face it, i don't exactly come from a background where money is just flying out of bulging pockets, do i? but this is just taking so damn LONG. and what if it never happens? what if i never get the job that will bankroll my dreams? what if i end up poor and up to my ears in law school debt, with a job i hate but can't afford to lose, and no time whatsoever to do any of the things i've always wanted to do?

i want to travel.
i want to read.
i want to write.

i want to settle.

and i just want to get out of this horrible mood. i'm exhausted.




eew. N.'s dog just farted in my room.

welcome to the 21st century!

so i've totally updated my myspace (everything except my userpic and travelogues i think), so everyone should check it out. especially the AWESOME vid i put up. i'll give you a teaser: it involves N., dancing, and lots of alcohol. note for B.: this was our pre-party before your bday-bash!

and i thought i'd post some pics up here too!

the law school gang, minus R. (who i think is at a bar on the haight). we had just finished finals our first semester, L. got engaged about 20 minutes before this was taken, and B. was about to get engaged the next day!

the city from treasure island. it was such a great day, so N. and i decided to drive around sf and marin for a while.

harry potter night!

i think it's funny that N.'s shirt says "youth leadership, racial and social justice." if you know him, you kinda realize how spot-on that is. i think we were in sf when we took this.

part of the quints during our traditional lets-hang-out-when-i-get-back-to-hilo nights. we did the requisite cafe pesto, had salmon linguine, and then went back to A.'s place to hear some of her knew music. she truly, TRULY blows me away. and i stand by my previous statements that SHE NEEDS TO MAKE AN ALBUM!

check out myspace for the rest!

everyday's a first...

so today was the first time i ever quit a job.

i don't know how i feel about it yet. granted, it definitely was NOT a good fit for me (or for my employer, apparently), but i still feel like i disappointed someone (my employer, myself, who knows?). because even while i felt that my employer was rude or hypocritical or inconsiderate (and i do think all of those things), at the same time [i'm guessing] she thought i was...incompetent?, disrespecting of her practice, and that i handled the situation poorly.

do i feel like i could have handled our...confrontation...better? don't we all, in retrospect, feel like we could have handled uncomfortable situations differently? i can see how she would have preferred i respond to her in another way, but i was doing what was suitable for me at the time. self-preservation, anyone? furthermore, i feel like, as an employer and a professional, she SHOULD have handled the situation much better from her end. she should have respected me more, made less assumptions, and alloted time for training.

so either way, i should be really happy that i'm no longer there. but i still feel like i've done something wrong.

i've never quit a job before. i've never been ill-received by an employer. i've never really had an employer be happy to see me go.

i guess there's a first for everything!

eh. i'll get over it.

v.i.n.t.a.g.e.

disclaimer: this is gonna be short, and may be just a little shallow. kinda like me! ha! (i'm joking)

so i got a pedicure this passed week for the first time since thailand. it's a nondescript place on broadway owned by this middle-aged asian woman who i just love to pieces. she smells like my grandmother. i don't know if it's her lotion or her lipstick or something, but it's uncanny.

anyway, my pedicure. i was choosing my color and kept hearing marj, linea and kendra (of the famous new zealand brown-crowd) saying that i need to be more adventurous. apparently, i never stray too far from beige or light pink.

so this time i chose red. "golden ruby" to be exact.

and can i just say that i LOVE my red toenails? everytime i look at my feet they cheer me up. is that why those beautiful women of the vintage era always wore red nail polish and red lipstick?

it's really the most amazing pick-me-up.

go and paint the world red.

Stepping onto my soapbox as we speak

Today I start my first ever legal internship at the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley. The plus? At least it'll only take me about half the time to get there as it takes me to get to USF. The minus? It's a new job.

Wish me luck! I'll continue this post tonight to update on how the day went.

P.S. Welcome back B!

*********************

Alright, so day 1 down...the entire summer to go! I guess I can say that I like what I'm going to be doing this summer. Right now, Ann (our director) has me working on a flyer for the US Social Forum happening in Atlanta at the end of June (I think). This means that I've been poring over the UN Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the first mandatory report the US submitted on this treaty (although the US actually combined what was supposed to be the first 3 reports into the first 1 they submitted, and did so extremely late), the UN Committee's conclusions and recommendations to this report (in which the UN requested that the US submit its 4th and 5th reports by 2003 --which the US did not do), and the US 4th, 5th, and 6th report (again, combined into 1) submitted in April of this year. My job is to look over the changes - if any - that the US made in accordance with the UN's conclusions and recommendations, and any changes they did not make that they should have, paying particular attention to "Katrina" and Guantanamo Bay incidences. And I work with a really great girl from U of O that knows some people I knew in high school. Such a small world sometimes. All in all, pretty interesting stuff.

I celebrated by going to Bay Street and buying 2 pairs of work-pants. Fun.