War effects

This weekend, I was having a look to the weekly magazine “XLSemanal”, which is published with the diary Ideal every Sunday, when some images beat my eyes and a kind of bitter and sad feeling ran through all my body. Images talked by themselves;  they showed  some little defenseless children whose faces mirrored  the terrible pain that they were suffering. I immediatelly stopped  leafing and started to read the article. It was refered to the dramatic and dreadful consequencies of  Irak war.

 According to the magazine, after the Irak war the number of children born in Faluya with any type of disease - cancer,  neurological disorders, heart problems -  has increased in 12%. But why in Faluya? In the article it is established some connection  between the rise of  children’s disorders  and the noxiou fumes and  radiactive substances with  which  Faluya was  bombarded  by American soldiers in revenge for the death of four American workers who had been violently killed by a group of citizens.

What a great injustice!  While adults are spending money on those expensive devices that later they will explode to destroy lives and hope; while adults are trying  to dominate each other with the goal of having the power; while adults are killing each other under the false conviction of being making a better world; while adults are fighting in the name of a God ; while adults are blinded by hatred; while men are playing this kind of macabre game, children die or suffer in silence the terrible effects of  non-sense wars. How long will this madness?

Lyric and video of the song "Mercy mercy me"

Oh, mercy mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be
No, no
Where did all the blue sky go?
Poison is the wind that blows
From the north, east, south, and sea
Oh, mercy mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be
No, no
Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas
Fish full of mercury
Oh, mercy mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be
No, no
Radiation in the ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Oh, mercy mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land?
How much more abuse from man can you stand?
My sweet Lord
My sweet Lord
My sweet Lord
(someone who needs me yeah)
(mercy mercy me)
(mercy me)
ohhhh
(mercy mercy mercy)
(mercy me)
(mercy mercy mercy)
(mercy me)

Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine

For photography lovers or for those who are fond of photography.

Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine are two photographers mentioned in the article about comporate power that  Emilio gave us last Thursday.
They  used the photography to dennounce the poverty that many people in the city were suffering and against the child labour.
Here you are their biographies.
                                JACOB RIIS

Jacob Riis was born the third of fifteen children on May 3rd, 1849 in Denmark. He was a carpenter by trade when he headed to the United States in 1870. Like a lot of immigrant folks, he was unable to find work when he landed on New York’s hard-scrabble streets, and sought shelter wherever he could– often spending the night sleeping on the floor in temporary police station shelters. Through perseverance and hard work Riis landed a gig with a NYC news bureau in 1873, which eventually led to him becoming a police reporter for the New York Tribune. All too familiar himself with life on the NYC’s mean streets, he made it his personal mission to use his position to become the voice for the city’s suffering poor– especially the children. Jacob Riis strongly believed that the “poor were the victims, rather than the makers, of their fate.”

Manhattan’s Lower East Side, particularly the wretched areas known as Mulberry Bend and Bone Alley were teeming with poverty, violence and disease– “The whole district is a maze of narrow, often unsuspected passage ways—necessarily, for there is scarce a lot that has not two, three, or four tenements upon it, swarming with unwholesome crowds.” Jacob Riis wrote the epic, “How the Other Half Lives, Studies Among the Tenements of New York” published in 1890 (which also featured his iconic photography) to expose the horrible truth.

In 1895, Teddy Roosevelt sought Jacob Riis out, wanting to assist him in his efforts anyway he could. Then the acting President of the Board of Commissioners of the NYPD, Roosevelt asked Riis to personally show him the daily routine of street cops. On their first outing together, they uncovered nine out of ten patrolmen totally absent while on duty. Riis wrote of this, and it got the attention of everyone at the NYPD. The two became great friends, and after becoming President of the United States, Roosevelt said of Riis–

“Recently a man, well qualified to pass judgment, alluded to Mr. Jacob A. Riis as ‘the most useful citizen of New York.’ Those fellow citizens of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City.”

If it were not for the tireless work of Jacob Riis, the city’s poor may have long suffered with little hope. Riis was eventually successful in having the most crowded and dangerous areas torn down and replaced with new public parks and playgrounds. The infamous Mulberry Bend and Bone Alley areas gave way to Columbus Park, the Hamilton Fish Park and a public swimming pool, respectively.

In his last dying days, Riis recounted to a friend, “Now that I have to fight for almost every breath of air, I am more thankful than ever that I have been instrumental in helping the children of the tenements to obtain fresh air.”
                        Photos by Jacob Riis

LEWIS HINE

Lewis Wickes Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on 26th September, 1874. He studied sociology in Chicago and New York (1900-07) before finding work at the Ethical Culture School. Hine, who had purchased his first camera in 1903, employed his photographs in his teaching and established what became known as documentary photography.

Hine also used his camera to capture the poverty he witnessed in New York. This included a photographic study of Ellis Island immigrants. In 1908 Hine published Charities and the Commons, a collection of photographs of tenements and sweatshops. Hine hoped he could use these photographs to help bring about social reform. He told one meeting that he believed his photographs would encourage people to "exert the force to right wrongs".

As a school teacher, Hine was especially critical of the country's child labour laws. Although some states had enacted legislation designed to protect young workers, there were no national laws dealing with this problem. In 1908 the National Child Labour Committee employed Hine as their staff investigator and photographer. This resulted in two books on the subject, Child Labour in the Carolinas (1909) and Day Laborers Before Their Time (1909).

Hine travelled the country taking pictures of children working in factories. In one 12 month period he covered over 12,000 miles. Unlike the photographers who worked for Thomas Barnardo, Hine made no attempt to exaggerate the poverty of these young people. Hine's critics claimed that his pictures were not "shocking enough". However, Hine argued that people were more likely to join the campaign against child labour if they felt the photographs accurately captured the reality of the situation.

Factory owners often refused Hine permission to take photographs and accused him of muckraking. To gain access Hine sometimes hid his camera and posed as a fire inspector. Hine worked for the National Child Labour Committee for eight years. Hine told one audience: "Perhaps you are weary of child labour pictures. Well, so are the rest of us, but we propose to make you and the whole country so sick and tired of the whole business that when the time for action comes, child labour pictures will be records of the past."

In 1916 Congress eventually agreed to pass legislation to protect children. As a result of the Keating-Owen Act, restrictions were placed on the employment of children aged under 14 in factories and shops. Owen Lovejoy, Chairman of the National Child Labour Committee, wrote that: "the work Hine did for this reform was more responsible than all other efforts in bringing the need to public attention."

After his successful campaign against child labour, Hine began working for the Red Cross during the First World War. This involved him visiting Europe where he photographed the living conditions of French and Belgian civilians suffering from the impact of the war. After the Armistice Hine went to the Balkans and in 1919 he published The Children's Burden in the Balkans (1919).

In the 1920s Hine joined the campaign to establish better safety laws for workers. Hine later wrote: "I wanted to do something positive. So I said to myself, 'Why not do the worker at work? The man on the job? At the time, he was as underprivileged as the kids in the mill."

In 1930-31 recorded the construction of the Empire State Building which was later published as a book, Men at Work (1932). This was followed by another assignment from the Red Cross to photograph the consequences of the drought in Arkansas and Kentucky. He was also employed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to record the building of dams.

Hine had great difficulty earning enough money from his photography. In January 1940, he lost his home after failing to keep up repayments to the Home Owners Loan Corporation. Lewis Wickes Hine died in extreme poverty eleven months later on 3rd November, 1940.

                       Somo photos by Lewis Hine

JACOB RIIS

Jacob Riis is a photographer mentioned in the article about comporate power that Emilio gave us last Thursday. This photographer used the photography and his position as a reporter in a newspaper to denounce the poverty  that many people in the city were suffering.

Jacob Riis was born the third of fifteen children on May 3rd, 1849 in Denmark. He was a carpenter by trade when he headed to the United States in 1870. Like a lot of immigrant folks, he was unable to find work when he landed on New York’s hard-scrabble streets, and sought shelter wherever he could– often spending the night sleeping on the floor in temporary police station shelters. Through perseverance and hard work Riis landed a gig with a NYC news bureau in 1873, which eventually led to him becoming a police reporter for the New York Tribune. All too familiar himself with life on the NYC’s mean streets, he made it his personal mission to use his position to become the voice for the city’s suffering poor– especially the children. Jacob Riis strongly believed that the “poor were the victims, rather than the makers, of their fate.”

Manhattan’s Lower East Side, particularly the wretched areas known as Mulberry Bend and Bone Alley were teeming with poverty, violence and disease– “The whole district is a maze of narrow, often unsuspected passage ways—necessarily, for there is scarce a lot that has not two, three, or four tenements upon it, swarming with unwholesome crowds.” Jacob Riis wrote the epic, “How the Other Half Lives, Studies Among the Tenements of New York” published in 1890 (which also featured his iconic photography) to expose the horrible truth.

In 1895, Teddy Roosevelt sought Jacob Riis out, wanting to assist him in his efforts anyway he could. Then the acting President of the Board of Commissioners of the NYPD, Roosevelt asked Riis to personally show him the daily routine of street cops. On their first outing together, they uncovered nine out of ten patrolmen totally absent while on duty. Riis wrote of this, and it got the attention of everyone at the NYPD. The two became great friends, and after becoming President of the United States, Roosevelt said of Riis–

“Recently a man, well qualified to pass judgment, alluded to Mr. Jacob A. Riis as ‘the most useful citizen of New York.’ Those fellow citizens of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City.”

If it were not for the tireless work of Jacob Riis, the city’s poor may have long suffered with little hope. Riis was eventually successful in having the most crowded and dangerous areas torn down and replaced with new public parks and playgrounds. The infamous Mulberry Bend and Bone Alley areas gave way to Columbus Park, the Hamilton Fish Park and a public swimming pool, respectively.

In his last dying days, Riis recounted to a friend, “Now that I have to fight for almost every breath of air, I am more thankful than ever that I have been instrumental in helping the children of the tenements to obtain fresh air.”
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Bandit’s Roost (1888), by Jacob Riis, from “How the Other Half Lives.” Bandit’s Roost, at 59½ Mulberry Street (Mulberry Bend), was the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of all New York City.

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Mulberry Bend (ca. 1888), photo by Jacob Riis. “Five Points (and Mulberry Street), at one time was a neighborhood for the middle class. But when they had water problems because of an underground spring, the area was abandoned to the poor. It was the first American slum. In 1880 there were 37,000 tenements housing nearly 1.1 million people. Most were one or two room apartments.  There was no running water and the bedrooms often had no windows at all.  The buildings were so close together people could hand things across the alley, window to window. Mulberry Bend was one of the worst stretch of slums and in 1896 it was demolished to be turned into Columbus Park. Chinatown and Little Italy encroached, as did federal buildings to the south.” via

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Mullen’s Alley (February 12, 1888), photo by Jacob Riis. “There were thousands of homeless children on the streets (of NYC), often abandoned by their parents… and in the summer months 3-4 babies would suffocate in the airless tenements every night.” via

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ca. 1880-1890, Manhattan’s Lower East Side — Photo by Jacob Riis. “More than 100,000 immigrants lived in rear apartments (behind other buildings) that were wholly unfit for human habitation. In a room not thirteen feet either way slept twelve men and women, two or three in bunks set in a sort of alcove, the rest on the floor. There were also rooms where people could sleep for five cents a night, stranger next to stranger.” via

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ca. 1888–1898 — Dens of Death — Photo by Jacob Riis
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1891 — Portrait of a junk man’s living quarters in the cellar of a New York City tenement house. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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1886, New York, NY — A peddler sits on his bedroll, atop two barrels, in the filthy cellar he lives in. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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1890, New York, NY — A Jewish immigrant cobbler living in a dirty cellar prepares to eat a meal on the Sabbath. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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1885, Lower East Side, NY — Shelter for immigrants in a Bayard Street tenement, where a group of men share one room.  – Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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ca. 1886 — Men sleep on the floor of a New York City homeless shelter. In 1886, the fee for sleeping indoors was five cents a night. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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early 1890s, New York City — A group of women and children make a Manhattan police station their temporary home, ca. 1890. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image by © Corbis

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ca. 1885, New York City — An elderly woman sits in her dilapidated home and sews. She sleeps, cooks, and lives, all in one tiny room. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

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1890, New York City — In the Home of an Italian Rag-Picker, Jersey Street.  An Italian mother sits in an area just off of Jersey Street and holds her baby. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Corbis

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ca. 1880s, New York City — Poor family in one room tenement apartment — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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1888 — In Poverty Gap, West 28 Street: an English Coal-Herver’s Home — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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ca. 1890 —  Interior of a pantmaker’s workshop (sweatshop) on New York City’s Lower East Side, Ludlow Street. The total income of the entire family, working morning until night, is $8.00 per week. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

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1889 — A twelve year old boy works as a thread puller in a New York clothing factory sweatshop — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Corbis

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1902, New York City — A classroom full of children in the condemned Essex Market School. A teacher demonstrates on the blackboard, as students watch attentively from crowded pews. Note the open gas jets near the ceiling used for lighting. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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1890, New York — Homeless newsboys sleep huddled in a corner outside the Mulberry Street Church — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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ca. 1890, New York City — Girl Sitting on Doorstep with Baby on Her Lap — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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ca. 1890s, New York — Three homeless boys sleep on a stairway in a Lower East Side alley. – Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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ca. 1888–1898 – Keep off the Grass — Photo by Jacob Riis

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1888, New York City — Children’s Playground in Poverty Gap. Young boys play at a city playground. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Corbis

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1890, New York, NY –A blind man stands alone on a street corner, offering pencils for sale in New York City. — Photo by Jacob Riis, Image © Bettmann/Corbis

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ca. 1900 — Bone Alley Park Site — Photo by Jacob Riis

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ca. 1900 — Mulberry Bend Park — Photo by Jacob Riis

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Little Italy, Mulberry Street, New York City by Detroit Publishing, ca. 1900 (Library of Congress)

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Italian Neighborhood with Street Market, Mulberry Street, New York by Detroit Publishing, ca. 1900-1910 (Library of Congress)

Experiences

http://www.iicd-volunteer.org/page_view.php?page=57&title=Angola has Changed my life forever!

Corporations: Giants that want to control the world. Or do they control it yet?

When I was a child and the first robots appeared  in comics we were told that these robots some day would dominate our planet and they would do whatever they wanted with us. There were science fiction films  as well, where these metal-body  monsters destroyed men. But not physically (as they needed them to work) but psychologically. I listend to that stories with my childish heart frightened, and my mind became full of terrorific machines which subjugate people destroying their willings.

Many years later  that future has arrived. Metaphorically speaking the huge robots are present now  in our world. What are those corporations but creature without soul, heart or feelings? They are machines to make money. They don´t want men to think. They just want men to produce richness for them. They control crops, trade and laws because  they are so powerfull that politicians and even governments are submit to their  authority.

Hilarious!

Hope you laugh for a while

Traveller or Tourist? That´s not the question

When I take my luggage and set off on a more o less long journey, what I am supposed to be: a traveller or a tourist?
Personally, I do not see the difference when I look at both terms from a present perspective. Nevertheless, there are some people who want to make a distinction between both concepts. Maybe, because they still have a romantic idea of travelling as it was in the past. I refer to travelling two or three or even more hundreds of years ago when it was not a usual activity for ordinary people. So, they may consider those travellers like brave men or women capable of overcaming difficulties and sort out oll type of problems; those who love the risk and  hanker for discovering  other cultures, other countries, other languages...Due to the lack of roads, transport, restaurants, hotels, medicins, etc. they had to find food, bed, or whatever they needed from the locals who called them travellers or explorers, - the word tourists did not exist yet.
I think that  it is for this romantic point of view why  some people want to be identified with them and be called travellers, as well.
On the other hand, tourism is  in my opinion a new concept born to name that so popular movement which is practised for millions of people all around the world and which is closely related to the concept of travelling as we understand it now. These days, travelling is easiar than it was in the past. Everybody _who can afford it, of course_ can travel around the world during a long period of time or go to the most remote lands and only  for that you are not considered a traveller as a traveller was in the past. You  need something more: the intention, the aim for which you do that. And that same intention you can have when, visiting a new country, you are called tourist. So, both terms are mixed and can not be separated. Perhaps, we are obstinated in finding a difference between two words which refer to the same person. When you  travel anywhere, you are seen as a tourist; you are a tourist anywhere because you are travelling.

My quatrains

I first wrote a quatrain about  "Landscape with the fall of Icarus." That day I did not attend the class and I thought that the painting by Bruegel was the topic of the poem. So, here it is:

"Surprisingly the premature death of Icarus comes
when a spring sun is shining in the sky.
Nobody can think of a tragedy
in such beautiful time."

Some days later I wrote another one. It says:

"You have just begun to live.
Not good times to be born.
Feel, love, give. It´s your time: be strong.
Keep faith with you and men. The world will not be always like this."