Thumbs-up for:

• Making us actually visit some of the CPC sites, it was very helpful for those of us who are not from Chinatown to get a better sense of the low-income, mostly Chinese people that CPC serves.
• The Project Reach workshop. Sorry I fell asleep, I actually went through the exact same workshop with Don when I was in high school.

Thumbs-down for:

• Introduction to the dying Brooklyn Branch. I know that it was probably important to teach us (us meaning all the interns except Sue and Sheena) the demographics of Sunset Park but we honestly had no idea what was going on other than that the Brooklyn interns had to plan a carnival to re-establish CPC in Brooklyn’s Chinatown.
• Keeping us in limbo for two weeks. I don’t remember doing anything productive the second week. We just sat around and went on the Internet or read.
• Making us do identity-exercises but not establishing a safe space.
• Not having a designated space for us or prepared computers/laptops for us.

Brown Bag Lunches: I really enjoyed Wayne Ho and the two people from UNH. I don’t think anything they said surprised me but the breakdown of local New York politics, the city budget and human services was great. Visiting the Century Foundation was also good for learning the difference between human trafficking and human smuggling. I don’t  understand the point of having the Fucia interns or the Arab-Israeli kids visit Central Office though – they would be a lot better off visiting MOCA or going on the same tour we did.  Jenny Lo was a horrible speaker and there was nothing empowering I could get out of our time with her. Meeting her has enforced my belief that because of class, the Board can’t really serve the best interests of the people that CPC serves.

What I’ve worked on:

• Newsletter: It was a great reason to get out of the office and put a human face to CPC. I had fun with it but I would have appreciated a formal introduction to the limitations and freedom I had with it.
• Finding a web designer: I found them but I know that if the website ever does get overhauled, it will take a LONG time.
• Income Eligibility Forms: I would have thought that CPC staff would be smart enough to give translated forms based on the population that they were serving or forms that had everything on it translated but boy was I wrong. When I wore my CPC ID, I got instant respect. CPC is not a very good organization to be young in.
• Staff Recognition Day: I should have been more pro-active about getting meaningful work out of Mabel.
• Getting a hotel for the CISANI Conference: This was a nightmare. A BORING nightmare.
• I was also supposed to help develop the Young Professionals Network to milk the better off people that have benefited from CPC programs and I would have enjoyed this greatly since I milk Swarthmore but I never had ample time to plan and execute this. It would have been fun throwing wine and cheese parties and making people who have climbed the economic ladder feel good and allow them gloat about their accomplishments.
• I was also supposed to figure out what kind of fire alarm CPC legally needed, buy shades for the conference room and look into buying a buzzer system.
• Helping Renee with two volunteer events: I basically just came up with the get-to-know-you games and insisted on name tags. Tagging along on two of the NY Cares events reminded me that I’m capable of working with young people but I just don’t have the patience that it takes.

Final Thoughts: The goal of the internship seemed to be a mixture of you wanting to reflect and learn about our identities within the context of CPC (I learned that I am VERY tired of explaining to people that I’m not Chinese-American), Steve wanting us to get politicized along the lines of race and class and accomplishing things that CPC has never gotten around too, like getting a fire alarm and a better buzzer system. I don’t think I needed the first two and the last was just annoying. Maybe Steve was looking for some kind of administrative innovation but with a few weeks I didn’t want to invest the time, energy or even thought into improving any aspect of CPC given the snail pace and the bureaucracy within the organization. I am a CPC office lackey. A CPC employee who will remain unnamed asked me at Staff Recognition Day, “So what do you think of CPC so far?” and I replied, “I think they’re filling an important gap since the city doesn’t give a shit about providing adequate translation for Chinese people but that’s it.” To which the CPC employee replied, “That’s what we do. We patch things up but that’s it.” Did I get anything out of this internship? I learned how to crop photos on Photoshop, I have samples to submit in case I decide to work for the Swarthmore student newspaper and I became friends with Allan and Yu. I also learned that my ideal workplace would be a “flat” organization in contrast to the CPC hierarchy.

After listening to Wayne Ho and Anthony Ng talk about local New York politics, though, I feel motivated to actually start reading the politics section of the New York Times (I usually only read World, Arts and Education). I am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea what a Borough President does. I am really happy that I’ve gotten an introduction into human services politic-ing and general politic-ing at this internship. By politic-ing, I mean maneuvering around people that are not the greatest to work with or under. It’s an art that I have not learned yet, and it’s not even in my nature to schmooze but I realize that it is useful and makes work easier.

Now that Staff Recognition Day is over, here is what I’m working on:

• Hotel Rates for the CISANI Conference
• Window Treatments for the Conference Room
• Getting Central Office a Fire Alarm
• Getting Central Office a better buzzer system
• Getting the right web designer for CPC
• The second July newsletter and the first August Newsletter

I am excited to work on the latter two.

I haven’t read up a whole lot on the non-profit industrial complex but conversations with my old internship supervisor gave me lots of hints about the difficulties of being committed to social justice but avoiding setbacks:

WHAT IS THE “NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?”

The non-profit industrial complex (or the NPIC) is a system of relationships between:

• the State (or local and federal governments)
• the owning classes
• foundations
• and non-profit/NGO social service & social justice organizations

that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements. The state uses non-profits to:

• Monitor and control social justice movements;

• Divert public monies into private hands through foundations;

• Manage and control dissent in order to make the world safe for capitalism;

• Redirect activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of mass-based organizing capable of actually transforming society;

• Allow corporations to mask their exploitative and colonial work practices through “philanthropic” work;

• Encourage social movements to model themselves after capitalist structures rather than to challenge them

1. Age-ism Rules: During our visit to the after-school program, Renee and I read “Madeline and the Gypsies” to five and six-year-olds, then gave them sheets to color. We both went around to talk to the kids during coloring and I asked two boys how old they were. The first said “Six,” and the second said, “Six and a half.” The second boy then proceeded to stop coloring, raise himself, and then say to the first boy with his finger in his friend’s face: “I am six AND A HALF! I AM OLDER THAN YOU!” I thought this was hilarious at the time but I can see how an age-ist attitude can be deleterious to Chinese-American families in which the oldest person isn’t necessarily the wisest because they’re just not familiar with this country or culture.

White: Bland, Pure, Untouched, Normal, Boring

Ethnic: Colorful, Exotic, Foreign, aesthetically pleasing, having culture

I don’t know a lot about the history of Whiteness except that Whiteness is owned by wealthy W.A.S.P.s and that it is something European-Americans achieve once they have successfully assimilated into mainstream America. Normative whiteness assumes that “White people” have no culture and are a homogeneous group. But White people do have their own culture (www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com) and White people can have some cultural connection to whatever European country their ancestors came from. I guess there are more European Americans that think of themselves of Irish, Italian, Jewish, or German, etc. on the East Coast as opposed to “White” on the West Coast. Here are the “White Ethnics”: Jewish people, Italians, Polish people and general Eastern Europeans, along with Irish people. Of course Whiteness comes with obvious benefits like not having your race and ethnicity in question all the time but at the cost of assimilating and giving up/covering up a culture, i.e. it was popular for a lot of Jews to Anglicize their names during the Red Scare. I’m not sure about the relationship between working class white people and whiteness but it’s probably not a positive onc since they’re called “White trash,” there’s an inherent assumption of class privilege in whiteness then. Is it worth it to be “White” and give up your “roots” for the privilege it gives? Italians and the Irish were never considered White before and Jews and Eastern Europeans still often have their Whiteness in question but if Whiteness can be achieved over time as more immigrants of color migrate to the US, what does it mean for Asian-Americans, the current “honorary Whites”?

I heard Renee describe Edgar as “White” once and it struck me as odd because I’ve considered Edgar Latino since he told us that he was born in Bogota. If Edgar is of purely European descent then he is “White” and since he’s from a Spanish-speaking Latin American country I would consider him a White Latino. I’m sure that Edgar has some degree of White privilege but can still identify with a lot of the issues that people of color experience because of his ethnicity.

Race: Social construct dividing the human species into four races, invented by social Darwinism during the time of global European imperialism.

Ethnicity: Cultural grouping based on geography, i.e. Latino.

Nationality: What’s on your passport.

I went to Ireland over my spring break and it was refreshing to interact with Dutch people, Norwegian people and Irish people that did not think of themselves as “White” and could point out things I thought of as “normal,” as Spanish, or Irish, or Dutch, or Danish, etc.

Looking at some of the Income Eligibility Forms for Child Care Centers made me wonder how to talk to people who may resent other people receiving social services and I’ve even been questioning the fairness of them because some people abuse the system. Imagining a family actually living on the stated monthly incomes saddened me but at the same time I know plenty of people that lied on public school lunch forms so that they could get free lunch. I don’t begrudge people that want to eat though. According to a lot of the forms we looked at, a lot of the families served by Chung Pak are eligible for food stamps. I’ve heard more conservative voices rant about the welfare state and the way it supposedly inhibits people from becoming economically self-sufficient and I disagree although I know that some people abuse the system. I just don’t know how to even begin to respond to that sentiment though.

I know that the newsletter is meant to please the clueless Board of CPC but I plan on having fun with it if I can…I would like to talk to some of the people that Michelle Liu works with.

Calvin: Apparently East Coast Asians are more ghetto?

I am astounded that so few people know of the “ghetto” Asian.

Calvin: Did you just call me a yuppie? LMAO.

Me:

Can break dance.

All of the Fuchsia interns are studying areas that lead to solid careers like computer science and it annoys me sometimes that Swarthmore education is so theory rather than skill focused. However, I’m reminded that Swarthmore students almost ALWAYS go to graduate school to specialize in one area and get actual job skills. Thank God I learned how to photocopy from working at Renaissance.

CPC needs a thorough directory of staff with full names, the site the person works at, their position, e-mail and phone number.

Sometimes observing CPC power politics reminds me of The Office. I’m guessing last week wasn’t the only time that Po-Ling acted out.