Properties in West Jerusalem, texts and arenas

As a young child my dad used to take us to what is now known as West Jerusalem. That area used to be where affluent Palestinian professionals and businessmen resided before 1948 (Al Nakbeh) around 50,000 of them were expelled from their homes, including my Grandfather and his family. My dad used to take us on tours and showed us our family’s properties; the house that my grandfather and grandmother lived in until they were forced to leave, it is now turned into a home for the elderly. Then he took us to what is currently the Greek Consulate building, which was until 1948 known as the Egyptian Consulate. My Grandfather built it in a grand luxurious style to fit the great kingdom of Egypt at that time. When the Egyptian consul left Jerusalem in 1948 my Grandfather handed the keys to the Belgian consul to care for it and who in turn handed it to the Greeks. My Grandfather who after the reoccupation of the rest of Palestine (West Bank) in 1967 went to court to get it back, and after having won the case, the Israeli attorney general refused to abide by the court’s decision.  The Sansur building w is another building created by my grandfather in the center of commercial Jerusalem. After reading Dwyer and Alderman’s article (2008) “Memorial landscapes: analytic questions and metaphors”, I started looking at West Jerusalem differently; I started seeing it as a struggle of memorializing that area. A struggle between what Israel want to show to the world, and a struggle of the Palestinian oral history, and efforts of documentation. This struggle is materialized in the “blue plaques” such as this one below, that retells the stories of these buildings.

The Sansur building according to my family’s history and other documentations was a very successful building with business and cafes prominent prior to 1948.  The struggle in this blue plaque is the text, Like Dwyer and Alderman (2008), “Textual approach understands memorials… as a process of manifesting stories on and through the landscape”.(p169) The simplified version on this plaque eliminates or hides the story behind the success of the building, the only focus for the Built Heritage institute was that there occurred interactions with the Jews and Arabs to reemphasize their discourse of belonging in the Holy land. The text here fails to mention who are the Sansurs? They were just mentioned as a family from Bethlehem although my Grandfather lived in Jerusalem for almost his entire life(with origins from Bethlehem). This indicates that this governmental institution is denying an Arab existence prior to 1948. Arabs according to the Israeli discourse live in East Jerusalem, and that’s where they have been all the time.  Therefore we can also see this as an arena, because this text has been politicized, and reflects a political struggle between the written history of the winner the Israelis, and the oral history of the loser, the Palestinians.  Another example in West Jerusalem is the Italian consulate which is another building that my grandfather built. There is an arena in this building seen in this paragraph taken from the website of the Italian consulate:

“The main building of the Italian Consulate in Jerusalem is located in Katamon, a residential neighborhood in the western part of the city, partially built during the British Mandate. At that time it was meant to host officers of the British army. The three-floor edifice was built at the beginning of the 40s and subsequently rented by the Italian Consulate. Michel Samacha is the architect who designed the villa according to the style of the period: straight and basic forms, a terraced roof, a round window on the upper corner of the facade, art-deco lamps at either side of the main entrance. The Consulate also owns another building in east Jerusalem, in the Sheikh Jarrah quarter, where most foreign Consulates are located. The building is next to the offices of the Italian Cooperation where the ICE department is also situated”[1].

As one can tell in this little paragraph, there is a denial of an Arab population in the entirety of West Jerusalem. There isn't even a struggle in this text, there is an imposition of a narrative on the Palestinians that is too painful to even consider reading. As Dwyer and Alderman (2008) mention in their article, the political struggle here tended to reinvent national history. The consulate always rented out the building from my grandfather, yet there is no mention to that at all.  The only mention of an Arab is the architect that my grandfather always had business with: Michel Samaha who is of Lebanese origins.

The denial of the Arabs in the west of Jerusalem is manifested in texts, and discourses of the media but the evidence can be seen in the architecture itself; there is an Arab print that cannot be erased, which creates a conflict for the Israeli government that tries to reinvent a history by using texts to describe these buildings, failing to mention any Arab identity. I also realized that the actions my father took as he toured us around this area was an act of resistance to that discourse of denial and belonging.

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[1] http://www.consgerusalemme.esteri.it/Consolato_Gerusalemme/Menu/Consolato/La_sede/

Owen J Dwyer's article on collective memory interested me and made me curious about the many collective memory it portrays through its landscape. When Dwyer refers to landscapes as "...open ended symbolic systems(165)" he is referring to the many memories that spaces can convey through memorials and other commemorations. I was beginning to think about the different memorials at ohio university, and was most interest in the Memorial Auditorium. Everyone refers to it as the "Mem Aud" and people seldom wonder what it represents. After doing some research, I found out a lot about this memorial that I never knew before and it makes me respect the auditorium much more.
I first found out it is actually called the Templeton Blackburn Alumni auditorium, named in honor of John Templeton and Martha Jane Hunley Blackburn. Templeton was born a slave and was freed in 1813. He then went on to be the first black man to graduate from Ohio University. Blackburn was the first black woman to graduate from ohio university. 
Since its opening in 1928, the auditorium has hosted many distinguished people such as Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, and US. presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Obama. Memorials in general influence how people remember and interpret the past, and since African American's struggled for an education in the 1800's, the memory of these people should be evident and continue to remind people how far society has come. Dwyer mentions how the location of memorials and the accessibility and visibility are major factors that go into the importance of a memorial. Many people walk past it and don't appreciate its importance, however since it is a very central building on campus and holds so many important events, it places great importance on the people it is named after. The events that occur in the memorial are also reflections of the importance of the place and its attempt to remind people of not only future event it will host, but the past events that were held in the memorial that have left significant marks on the campus as a whole.

Gendercide in India and China

I just watched a documentary entitled "It's a Girl" about gendercide in India and China. I felt that this would make for an interesting post as we've discussed gender inequalities in class before....

This documentary showed how people in India and China do not value women as much as other societies do. This isn't just a small trend....Millions of infants are being either aborted, killed after birth, or abandoned because they are female.

In India, women will often smother their daughters immediately after birth by placing a wet cloth over their faces to stop the breathing. In the documentary, a woman who had killed several of her daughters this way was interviewed about her stance on the killing of her children. She actually didn't see anything wrong with it and felt no guilt because she thought it was more humane to do so than allow her daughter to grow up underprivileged and suffering. Some people will allow their daughters to grow up but they don't receive as good of an education as what their sons would (if any at all). In some cases, women want to keep their daughters but are beaten to death by their husbands because they wanted a boy and a girl is pretty much useless to them. Women are expensive to have, according to societal values in India. Their dowry makes them expensive to raise and marry off. In addition to that, they are not seen as providers like men are. So little is done to protect women because they have little monetary value in their society.

Most of us are familiar with the one child policy in China. The documentary discussed how the one child policy is only for couples who conceive a boy first. If they conceive a girl, they can try once more for a boy but after that they can no longer legally have children. So what happens to the children born illegally? They spend all of their life hiding. They cannot attend school, they cannot obtain a passport to leave the country, they will never have documentation of their existence, they will never work a job legally, and are likely to end up homeless. In many cases, these children don't make it to adulthood without being abducted by the Chinese government.

Because of the one child policy, many couples choose to abort or abandon their daughters. This leaves millions of children without a home or a family to love them. Even the families who choose to keep their daughters will sometimes pay the price too. Because women are becoming "scarce" in China, men have trouble finding a partner as easily now. So, child trafficking is a major concern in China - especially with little girls. They abduct the girls to sell to someone else to raise and then marry the daughters off. In the documentary, a woman who had lost her toddler daughter through this was interviewed. It is a scary reality for little girls and parents of little girls in China. The woman's daughter was playing on the porch and then suddenly disappeared. The parents hired a team of private investigators to find their daughter upon making the realization that she had been kidnapped. It took several years but the daughter was eventually found in a nearby home safe and sound. But for many parents, the outcome is not so good. Few end up finding their children.

In China (and many other countries), there are millions of children waiting to find good, loving homes. Orphanages are packed and the children there receive very little attention because of that. I actually got to see a Chinese orphanage that housed 750+ children in 2008. My sister, Addie, was adopted from China at the age of 2. She lived in that orphanage for awhile. It was nothing like we saw in the pictures. In the photos we were sent of her, she was smiling and sitting on a playground. When we got there, we saw the playground but it looked like the kids were not allowed to play on it. The cribs of the babies were bare with no blankets, toys, or mattress. Many of them were crying but no one came for them. A toddler was trained to go around to the babies and hand them bottles filled with water instead of formula. The nannies didn't do this because they didn't have time. In addition to that, they weren't trained or didn't care about holding the children properly. One nanny grabbed an infant by her arm and lifted her out of her crib. I nearly spoke out but was told by my parents to remain quiet to protect Addie. Being in the orphanage was a surreal experience for me. Seeing hundreds of children with no one their to care for them hurt my heart. As happy as I was to have Addie as my sister, it hurt to leave all of these sweet children behind.

Gendercide is the systematic killing of people based on their gender. This has affected so many lives in both India and China. And the millions of girls who survived aren't in a good place either. I don't know what there is to do at this point to directly make an impact but I find this trend to be extremely upsetting.

Example of Denying Privledge Exists

I know our discussion about privilege has ended weeks ago, but I still wanted to share this video of Bill O'Reilly on the Daily Show just in case anyone would be interested in watching it and/or talking about the issues here. I know I was both intrigued and outraged by this interview. I thought this class would be a group of people to discuss the video with.

In this interview, John Stewart attempts to explain and convince O'Reilly of the white privilege that exists in our country due to historical systems that have suppressed minority races, especially black Americans. Stewart's explanations reminded me of Pulido's article on environmental justice, as both argue white privilege has caused many minorities to live a harder life with fewer benefits granted to them. However, O'Reilly refuses to accept he has any privilege and insists this no longer exists in our society. I found this shocking. The whole time I was watching the video I kept thinking of our class readings and discussions of white privilege and how those in the privileged group refuse to recognize their advantages. I thought this was a clear example of how people deny their privileges. Clearly, this is a large issue in our society. We need to recognize the concept of white privilege, especially those who benefit from it, in order to gain social and spatial equality. Seeing this really made me realize the idea of privlegde can no longer be ignored in order to achieve equality. I'm wondering what others thoughts are on this video and/or how to erase privledge from our society?

Here is the link to the video:

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/10/16/on-the-daily-show-bill-oreilly-refuses-to-back/201181

Here is the link to the movie on the Space of Memory and Human Rights in Buenos Aires:

"wheelbarrow men" – moving homeless in Jakarta, Indonesia

Talked about homeless and homelessness and watched the 'Lost Angels' movie in class, made me recall about 'wheelbarrow men' in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. There is a social phenomenon happens in Jakarta when Ramadan starts. A pattern of urbanization in which many people come to Jakarta with economic motives through the emergence of wheelbarrow men. There are many people milling with their wheelbarrow in Jakarta with the aim to ask the mercy of the Muslims, who are vying to give alms to the needy. The term of 'wheelbarrow men' become popular because they pull the wheelbarrow around Jakarta and make it as their home. They know the right time to earn money. They even bring their family with them to make the 'givers' sympathize and give them the alms. When Ramadan finishes, some of them go back to their hometown, but most of them stay.

Some pictures of 'wheelbarrow men' (manusia gerobak)

The mindset about the ease to look for money in a big city, such as Jakarta, has become a main attraction for migrants from other towns and rural areas in Java islands. They come to Jakarta without any adequate skills and education to venture. Thus, the absence of skills, the needs and demands of life, and the nature of laziness make people choose to become beggars.

According to the 2000 National Census, there were around 28,364 people are homeless in Jakarta. This number has been increasing every year. According to Data and Information Center of Ministry of Social Affairs, there were 61,090 homeless people in 2007 and 194,908 people in 2011. This big number, apparently, including beggars and scavengers because they are also considered as homeless by the government. The ministry of social affairs defines homeless or what they call as 'vagrants', are those who in daily life has no permanent home, although they usually inhabit non-permanent buildings. Homeless people are generally living on the streets, have odd jobs (e.g. beggars, scavengers) or do not even work, they usually move from one place to another place but still in the same region.

The city government of Jakarta has been rigorous in controlling new migrants every year. Nevertheless, they could not control those people who come by pushing or pulling their wheelbarrows (with their family and belongings on it) because they do not have to take a public transportation (e.g. bus or train) where they will be checked, controlled, or sent back home. Once 'wheelbarrow men' arrive in Jakarta, they could not stay in the same place for a long time. Wherever they live, they will be evicted, thus they are always moving. 

The raids of authorities towards the wheelbarrow of homeless people

In our class, we discussed regarding individuals who do not have money as one of many causes of homelessness. I think the case of 'wheelbarrow men', in the context of Indonesia, is highly linked with poverty, further than the issue that individuals do not have money. In fact, 'wheelbarrow men' could earn at least enough money to feed their family as long as they keep moving and scavenging. However, having enough money does not solve their homelessness. Here, poverty I mentioned earlier has things to do with the government. Controlling the homeless people by sending them to shelters (social houses) or back to their towns/villages will not solve the problem. The lack of job opportunities encourages them to move and try their fortune in a big city. Instead of living in poverty in their places of origin, those people leave their hometown in the sake for a better life in Jakarta. Thus, (I know it is easy to say) the government from their places of origin should have to provide adequate job opportunities (in many forms, e.g. through tools provision, capacity building, etc.) to alleviate the poverty and to avoid the high number of urbanization to Jakarta. 

“The Architecture of Violence”

Following our conversations and discussions about spatial (in)justice, how material objects such as walls, borders, settlements, neighborhoods, and highways administer spaces/places. How architecture becomes central for creating spatial injustice? How certain buildings and settlements are strategically constructed to dominate spaces? “To control a space, you need to create a differentiation in speed of movement.” Many of these crucial issues in spatial injustice are explained by Eyal Weizman in “The Architecture of Violence.” The 25-minute documentary was aired on Al Jazeera and an article was published on The Guardian. Both, the documentary and the article, are significantly relevant to our course materials.

The documentary:

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/06/architecture-violence-2014629113556647744.html

The article:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/01/what-can-forensic-architecture-reveal-about-the-conflict-in-gaza

Just for fun.

   Attached is a link and video of an artist, Ian Strange who works with the idea of home. For his work he actually deconstructs weather damaged homes in wide areas. He works with photographers and more to produce these neighborhood size works. He will also builds replica homes/neighborhoods and paints on them, then producing a video as the final product. His work is driven off of the geography of these neighbors and leaves an impact.  Thought I would share, enjoy.

This is a description of his video on his site:

"FINAL ACT is a new a film, photography and installation based project by visual artist Ian Strange.In November 2013, Ian Strange in collaboration with cinematographer Alun 'Albol' Bollinger [Lord of the Rings, Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners] created three new film and photography based artworks incorporating four suburban homes in Christchurch, New Zealand. These homes were located in Christchurch’s residential “Red Zone”, an area containing over 16,000 houses slated for demolition after the devastating 2011 earthquake. FINAL ACT is in part an emotive archive of these Christchurch homes and a continuation of the artist's ongoing exploration of the social and emotional icon of the home.

IanStrange.com"

- From Vimeo about short film 

http://www.kid-zoom.com

- Photo from google- not of Final Act but of other works. 

Spatial Justice & Privilege Comment: CNN Interview with Reza Aslan

I wasn't able to post this video in the comment section on my post about spatial justice & the internet/media as a space, but I think it ties in really well so I wanted to share.

Reza Aslan makes some really great points about the danger of generalizations and corrects the anchor woman over and over as she continues to say "muslim countries", like they are all the same. As someone who decided to move to Turkey I heard a lot of the effects of generalizing via family and friends. People thought that I would be treated less than fair because I was a woman, that something violent might happen to me, that I would be forced to cover my head, etc. All this because I was moving to a country where Islam is the dominant religion.

I'm glad that he used Turkey as an example several times precisely because of that. The danger of using generalizations is that all of these different places get lumped into one group with a defining characteristic like "Muslim". As a result the people and culture are defined by the negative connotations associated with that and their culture gets ignored. Turkish culture is completely different from that of other predominantly Muslim countries, yet when I moved there the dominant religion was at the forefront of everyone's mind. When we generalize and lump many different people together we make their individual culture and beliefs invisible, which is obviously a very dangerous thing to do.

"Home"

The concept or idea of home is an impactful topic to every person I know, even if it an abundance of home or the lack of home. Either way the idea of home is impactful and influential. Attached is a Ted Talk by Pico Iyer where he discusses the idea of home and the effect movement has upon it. Within his discussion he speak of the ideas within Wise’s writing, this idea that “home” is a collection of memories, ideas and habits that are carried with us. Although Wise does also speak of the actual space and place of home, the concept of home as this identity within our self is also shown.

            “ There is no fixed self, only the habit of looking for one ( likewise, there is no home, only the process of forming one).” – Wise, pg 303

Wise speaks of objects within spaces that create the sense of “home”, Pico Iyer also discusses this idea within his Ted Talk. He recalls a time when his family home in California was burnt down; all that was left was himself and his family, no physical items. He says,” If someone would have asked me where was home, I would say I could not literally point to any construction, my home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.” For Pico lyer his home became his family and himself. Wise calls the people around us  “markers”, whom give us the sense of home (pg299).

            The idea of home is different for many people; such as in the reading by Ranjith Dayarathe and Peter Kellett. These authors give detailed discussions with people from Santa Marta, Colombia. It was explained that the understanding of home was only fulfilled by the ownership of land and materials, social standards/acceptance and the community that surrounds the owned land. Not until a place has all these qualities would it be considered a home. Yet with Pico lyer’s constant travels, his home was the memories he held inside him. We all have this ideal society driven concept of “home”, but there is this constant need within all of us for a sense of place and belonging in which to call home.

http://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home?language=en#t-231243