Roundup!

I keep trying to brainstorm something weekly to put up on Flip the Globe. Something that really captures the zeitgeist, that's both pop culture and fierce modern statement.

Unfortunately, Lesbians who look like Justin Bieber has already been claimed. Damn!

So instead, I decided to start with things that I already created during the week. I keep complaining about not having enough content for this blog, but really I'm putting out regular content all over the Internet. The series of tubes is full of my literally hamsters. So why not let some of those critters run around on a wheel over here for a while?

So submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society...Roundup!

* I got published in the Dominican Republic this week! La Nación Dominicana published a press release I wrote for the Pan American Development Foundation, about the organization's annual awards ceremony. This year one of the Heroes of the Hemisphere award recipients was Dominican native Amarilis Castillo, who works to improve Dominican-Haitian border relations. Warning! It's in Spanish.

* The same press release was also published in El Nuevo Diario, in the Dominican Republic. Also in Spanish.

* I got printed in Brazil, too! EPTV.com and Rural Notícias published my press release about another Heroes of the Hemisphere winner, Henrique Gelinski. Gelinski works with rural farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. He's amazing! These are in Portuguese.

I wrote two blog posts for American Rights at Work this week as well. In English! The one I'm most proud of is about how Regis Corporation, the company who controls salons like Cost Cutters and Master Cuts, has been issued a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board. Regis was forcing their employees to sign away their right to join a union. Illegal!

A lot of the pressure on Regis started in Ithaca, NY, and I learned about it when I was writing my article about the Tompkins County Workers' Center back in April and May. It's nice to know that justice has been finally been served. Or is at least in the process of being served.

The other piece I wrote was about the recent mid-term election and how the fight for workers' rights will continue. The election definitely did not go in the direction I wanted, but that doesn't mean we lost! Just means workers need to fight harder to protect their rights.

That's all she wrote! And by she, I mean me.

Tune in next week for some really cool slide shows I'm making for I'm United for Haiti!

This tornado loves you

I saw Neko Case perform as the opening act for Rufus Wainwright during his "Release the Stars" tour a few years back. She was kind of a weird choice. Rufus Wainwright tends to be big and brassy during his performances, talking a lot and cracking jokes between songs. Neko Case just hammered threw the music. It was good, not great, although I absolutely fell in love with "Wish I was the moon tonight." I downloaded the song, but didn't listen to much else of her work.

But I recently rented a copy of Neko Case's "Middle Cyclone" album from the local library (yes, libraries are still out there! And they got cool stuff!). And I can't believe what I've been missing. The whole album is amazing. Case transforms herself into a multitude of creatures (magpies, owls, mollusks) and ties her music to the land, sea and air to describe the feelings blazing through her head and heart.

But beyond birds and invertebrates, Neko Case becomes a force of nature. In my favorite song on the album, the opener "This Tornado Loves You," Case transforms into a tornado and goes on a destructive warpath in search of her beloved.

I have waited with a glacier's patience

Smashed every transformer with every trailer
'til nothing was standing
65 miles wide
Still you are nowhere
Still you are nowhere
Nowhere in sight

It's been a while since I've felt really connected to music. Oh sure, I've found music I enjoy, stuff I can hum and dance to. But nothing that spoke to me. Nothing that whispered "this was written for you!" in the background, like a supposed satanic message in the back of a pop song.

Anyway, this is getting very cheesy and prose-y. Thanks, Neko Case, for allowing me to be introspective while sitting in a cubicle hammering out mailing lists.

What I've done, what I'm doing, where I'm going

I can't believe that it's already Labor Day weekend. The hell?

I can't believe that classes started at Ithaca College two weeks ago, and I'm not there. In my mind, it's still summer vacation and I'm just waiting to go back to school. Am I going to feel this way when there's snow on the ground?

It's weird. My super-long winter break before Argentina was similar, because all my friends were in class and I was home. Working at my dad's office translating letters for dental patients into Spanish, and going to the gym every day because I had nothing better to do. But this time there's no classes on any continent to look forward to, and I'm not going back to Ithaca as a student again any time soon (although I am trekking up for apple fest. Nothing can ever separate me from apple fest!).

Instead, I'm working. Two weeks after graduating from Ithaca, I packed two suitcases and made my way down to Washington, D.C. for an internship with American Rights at Work. They're an amazing organization dedicated to promoting the fact that workers' rights are human rights, and that every worker has the right to join a union.

They're one of the main reasons I haven't been blogging here this summer. Because I've been blogging over there. Check it out. I've been writing quite a bit! I really love it at ARAW. I get to write about human rights every day, and I'm learning a crazy amount about labor laws and unions in the United States. My articles about the Tompkins County Workers' Center and Ithaca Coffee have really taken me far!

Next week I'm starting another internship, with the Pan American Development Foundation. They're a really large charitable organization, and I'm really super excited to be working on Latin American issues again. In Spanish! God, I've gotten so rusty with that this summer. I went to a party last night and tried to speak Spanish. Probably didn't help that I was drinking...but boy did I suck.

So this summer's been really crazy. I graduated from college, got my own place in Washington D.C., and am simultaneously trying to act like a grown-up and am waiting for the morning I need to get up at 7 a.m. to register for classes. A morning that won't come again until I decide to go to grad school. But I need a real job and not an internship for that to happen first!

Keep an eye out on the blog, now that I have my life in some kind of semblance of order I'm going to be posting regularly again. In the next few days I'm definitely going to be posting pictures of my fabulous new house and town, and some of the better blog entries I've done for American Rights at Work. Along with a review of the CELEBRITY TWEET-A-THON I helped organize! I certainly miss my old life, but my new one is really turning into an exciting adventure. Love!

Must...stop...being...productive

Sleep? What is sleep? I do not know the word.

Here's what I have done these past two weeks, instead of giving my body some rest.

-I wrote a 5,000 word feature on the Tompkins County Workers' Center for my narrative journalism, which just got picked up by The Ithacan. They printed it on the front page.

-I edited the newest issue of Buzzsaw and wrote an article about a local coffee shop's baristas forming a union.

-Someone's article in the newest issue of Buzzsaw kind of sucked, so I cut out and wrote it myself.

-I took the worst Web design test ever.

-I took a friend to the emergency room. She's OK. But we only found that out after waiting for about nine hours.

-I caught up on Glee.

-I wore a cute skirt.

-I don't remember the rest.

Thank goodness I'm Jewish...

...Because otherwise listening to The Vaseline's "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" while pulling the night shift in the chapel would seem pretty blasphemous.

Concert for Congo

When I was a wee, wide-eyed freshman at Ithaca, the school's chapter of Amnesty International had their first benefit concert. A Jamnesty, if you will. We managed to book the lounge above the Lost Dog Cafe (rest in piece, Lost Dog), and in that tight space managed to fit WAY over the legal limit of people for music, booze, and an awesome raffle. I won twenty-five dollars to the local guitar shop!

That night Amnesty raised over a thousand dollars for a school in Zimbabwe, although Kendra got drunk and told everyone we made ten thousand dollars. Kind of wonderful.

I just remember that line of people fighting to get in, crowding the entire stairwell and wrapping around the corner. It was such an amazing thing to see so many people show up for an event that I got to help plan. Sure, I was the president of my youth group in high school. But this was the first time I actually felt like a leader. And it was when I learned that it's possible to make things like human rights and social justice upbeat and fun. I know I can definitely be a debbie downer with the subject.

Well, I'm a senior now, and we haven't had a Jamnesty since my freshman year. The organization kind of fell by the wayside, then I studied abroad, then we changed over from Amnesty to IC Human Rights. It's been quite the journey.

But the e-board really knocked it out of the park and IC Human Rights is having a huge concert tonight at Oasis. We've managed to carry the theme of womens rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through the whole semester, and tonight it's culminating in this amazing show. I am so excited. I've been pushing for another concert for years and it's finally here! AND, all the proceeds from the door and bake sale are going to the City of Joy!

This is going to be my last IC Human Rights event. It's been a wild ride. This club has become such a part of me...I don't really remember life without it. IC Human Rights and Amnesty International have really been the guiding forces in my life these past four years. These clubs, and the people in them and the topics we've tackled together, have shown me that I want to make the fight for human rights the focus of my life, rather than just a passing hobby.

But it's time to pass the IC Human Rights baton. Whoever becomes the next president is probably going to have to pry my fingers off it.

Be Our "Guest"

Hey all,

Here's the link to an article I recently wrote for Buzzsaw. It's about guest worker programs in the United States, which allow people from other countries come here for a specific amount of time to work.

While this seems like a great idea, you know, giving people the opportunity to make it in America and all that jazz, the program has been poorly executed and has resulted in numerous human rights violations.

Last month, Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) unveiled a new, bi-partisan plan for immigration reform. Unfortunately, it doesn't make any improvements to the guest worker program. It actually expands it! In their proposal they make it sound like the United States doesn't have a guest worker program. But in reality, it's more like they're covering up the failure of the one we already have.

Anyway, enjoy the article. It's a bundle of happiness and joy.