MoveUrFeetFromHotPavement&IntoTheGrass

Though newly found, my goals were always bound to manifest, and today they were further invigorated. I've been expressing that it's human rights that my adult life is steering my efforts towards defending, and today an artist and activist shared some of her work and passion with us.

Claudia Bernardi is Argentine born and she spends most of her time teaching at universities in California and Virginia. She has dedicated her life to ART, MEMORY, COMMUNAL REMEMBRANCE, TENDERNESS, COINCIDENCE, TRUST. She has been visiting El Salvador since 1992, therapeutically instilling in the survivors of massacres and violation a connection between creativity and testimony. Her students, taught for free, learn to translate their repressed pains onto murals painted by communities of hurting people, healing together. Claudia's work obviously brings her much satisfaction and purpose. Her presentation was an obvious attempt to awaken our young minds to what our efforts can offer the under represented global community.

Already awakened, meeting Claudia was more of a caffeine boost for me. She encouraged me to pursue my activism through Journalism, but to be always weary of the priorities and biases of the media.

When her project was assumed to be an NGO by a classmate of mine, she firmly corrected that her organization is not an NGO. NGO's come and go as they please, contenting themselves with having gifted communities with minimal resources, and then leaving them to their strife once their quotas and consciences are satisfied. This to me harked to the words of one of my wisest friends, who is blogging daily from an organic farm in Jamaica.

These are Fabio's words::

None of us like being considered pirates. Thieves, robbers, criminals. Pirates we are. We are pirates, pirates in big ships, pirates in small boats, pirates on planes, pirates on tractors, in offices, on fishing boats, in machines, factories, pirates taking. taking. taking. taking. and we are the pirates of the earth. quick personal, personal gain with no respect for our earth. Our small planet. Home. Agriculture needs to change, in scale, ownership, marketing, methods, people involved, knowledge. farming needs to come back, farming in its true sense, a man (human) working his field. working his crops. knowing his life. living a life. being alive. knowing the world. Farming needs to get rid of pirates. So does everything else really. Our world needs to retrain, reset, our perspectives on importance. What gets done on PTP [organic farm in Jamaica] needs to be reproduced on a serious scale worldwide, reconnecting the youth, the elderly, the middle aged, the everything, the office workers, the city scramblers, everyone, with nature, with what feeds them, lets them survive, connecting in a direct form. A real form.
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"So does everything else really." Fabio and Claudia are right. The processes that enable our existence cannot be perpetuated much longer. It is destroying our brotherly race and our generous home. But the planet is only so generous to theft and exploitation, and people are only so durable to massacre and rape. What Claudia's projects do in Central America is exactly what Fabio speaks of; "reconnecting the youth, the elderly, the middle aged, the everything, the office workers, the city scramblers, everyone, with nature, with what feeds them, lets them survive, connecting in a direct form. A real form."

I'm proud and lucky to know people such as these two enlightened beings.