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Next time you want to pick up new school apparel, get it from School House. Trendy designs and top quality material brought to you by an ethically responsible business. Check out the School House story:

In 2007, Rachel Weeks traveled to Sri Lanka as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar on a mission to bring better collegiate apparel to her alma mater. Not just better designs, better fit, and better quality, but with a better story.

So she teamed up with Colleen McCann, fashion designer extraordinaire, and ALARM, a Sri Lankan coalition of labor rights organizations and trade unions, to launch a brand that brings ethical fashion to universities everywhere.

First and foremost, School House is about people. We pay premium prices to our suppliers to ensure that living wages are being paid in the manufacturing facilities producing our brand. Why? Because School House believes that a free but fair fashion market is possible, and that when it teams up with quality design, it's unstoppable.

Of course, we have a long way to go on the road to running a sustainable business. But we're learning - every day, and t-shirt by t-shirt - how to build a better brand. 

 School House

Similar to School House, WE AR3 CHANGE is a clothing company dedicated to continuously providing for people in need. Stanley, the founder, is in the process of receiving a $50,000 grant from Pepsi.  Help Stanly's dream come true and vote for him: http://www.refresheverything.com/wear3change

Iran's Human Rights Violations "Unfounded"

Mohammed Javad Larijani is a part the most powerful family in Iran. Ali Larijani is the Speaker of Parliament and his other brother, Sadegh Larijani, is the Head of the Judiciary. In addition to the control of two out of the three branches of Iranian government, the Larijani’s father, Mirza Hasen Amoli, was a Grand Ayatollah. Mohammed Javad Larijani is a mathematician, former parliamentarian, foreign minister who is now, among other positions, head of the human rights council.


On November 18, 2010, Dr. Larijani appeared in New York City to defend Iran’s human rights record at the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. He was unsuccessful and the United Nations approved a draft resolution, condemning Iran for severe human rights violations. Mohammed Javad Larijani placed blame on the United States and other European countries for using the concern of human rights to politically attacking Iran. The passage of the resolution will mark the seventh consecutive year the United Nations has cited human rights offenses in Iran.

The Iranian official continued his efforts to persuade foreigners of Iran’s misperceived human rights allegations by appearing on various media outlets, including Fareed Zakaria GPS. Mohammed Javad Larijani described the issue surrounding human rights in Iran as a “media blitz” and the accusations were “unfounded”. The subsequent links discredit Mohammed Javad Larijani’s statement by providing many incidents of human rights infractions reported from diverse publications (by Iranians and Non-Iranians).

 Amnesty International
 Human Rights Watch
International Campaign for Huamn Rights in Iran
 The Green Voice of Freedom

Sources: Upon request

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear: Experience and Analysis

“For tonight, I announce the Rally to Restore Sanity,” a statement proclaimed by Jon Stewart on the September 16, 2010 episode of The Daily Show. In the following moments, the Rally to Restore Sanity would be accompanied by Jon Stewart’s devil’s advocate, Stephen Colbert and his “March to Keep Fear Alive”. Ultimately, these two events would be consolidated into the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and would bring together tens of thousands of people at the National Mall in Washington D.C. on November 30, 2010. The purpose of the rally was to gather sensible people whose ideologies are not reflected in extremism of politics and the media. The following will describe my personal experience and analysis of the rally.

The Drexel Student Alliance of the United Nations Association, a student organization of Drexel University, arranged a bus to allow students to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I am president of this student organization and took advantage of the opportunity to attend the rally.

As we entered Washington DC, we were greeted with a great deal of traffic. This trend only continued as we approached the National Mall. In fact, our bus driver had trouble finding a place to drop us all off. But eventually, we were off to the rally.

Filled with excitement, we quickly walked towards the site of the rally. Our presence was quickly engulfed by chaos, which became a theme for the remainder of the rally.

The majority of the chaos was caused by the poorly planned facilities not being able to accommodate the vast unforeseen attendants. According to CBS News, the Jon Stewart rally attracted an estimated 215,000. The huge crowd overwhelmed the National Mall starting from the Capitol Building to the Washing Monument and overflowing into the closed off side streets. Personal space was a luxury many did not have. As I recall, people were posted on the top of trees and even porta potties. Sadly, there were too few large screens and loud speakers to project the rally effectively. Much of the crowd, including myself, could not see the stage or any video screens, while the audio was at a whisper. In fact, the huge turnout forced much of the audience to leave the rally early.

And so the rally began. The Roots kicked off the rally with an engaging musical performance. John Legend also joined in on the fun by performing with The Roots. The rally took a scientifically turn with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, the host of Myth Busters. The Myth Busters humorously conducted various experiments interactively using the crowd as a sample size. For instance, one of their experiments was testing the characteristics of “the wave”.

After the opening sets had concluded, the rally then segued to the host. Jon Stewart embraced the crowd and began making fun of the logistics of a rally. Sarcastically, his staff attempted to count off the audience and identify specific demographics. Suddenly, Jon Stewart was interrupted by an all too familiar voice of Stephan Colbert. His face appeared on screen as he replicated his entrapment in a “fear bunker”. Eventually, Steven Colbert was convinced by the crowd to come out of hiding, but of course he emerged in a ridiculous fashion by replicating the Chilean miners’ rescue earlier this year.

The hosts carried on by exaggerating the differences of sanity and fear through an array featured guests and musical performers including 4troops, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples, Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, Ozzy Osbourne, Yusuf Islam, The O’Jays, Tony Bennett, Don Novello, Sam Waterston and Kareem Adbul-Jabbar. The diverse guest list appealed to essentially all demographics present. Furthermore, the guests’ performances symbolized the message of unity. For instance, Yusuf’s peace train was derailed by Ozzy Osbourne’s crazy train, but resolution came about when the two hosts boarded the O’Jays’ love train.

The hosts also presented medals of reasonableness and fear to further dramatize the difference of sanity and fear. Award winner Velma Hart justly earned a medal of reasonableness for the critical questions she directed at President Barack Obama in a town hall forum. Although Ms. Hart may not have agreed with the President on all the issues raised, she conducted a series of questions with an understood level of respect. On the other hand, medals of fear were issued to a number of news media outlets for barring all employees from attending the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. The news media outlets included ABC News, CBS News, The Associated Press, The New York Times and NPR. Award winners of both categories provided the audience with concrete examples of individuals and organizations who promote reason or fear.

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was concluded with Jon Stewart’s speech. His powerful closing remarks highlighted the multiple messages embedded throughout the rally. Stewart acknowledged the current political and economic atmosphere is difficult, but not impossible. He related his message to the Holland Tunnel linking Manhattan and New Jersey. Each vehicle contains a driver who is a part of the diverse United States. Leading up to the Holland Tunnel, the vehicles are spread amongst multiple traffic lanes and ultimately must come to a consensus to file one by one through a single lane tunnel. Individuals may have contrasting views, but there is an understood level of courtesy which allows the vehicles to achieve their decisive goal and reach the other side of the tunnel. Although there may be individuals who “cut off” other vehicles, these instances are rare and do not represent the majority. The host went on to draw more conclusive parallels to the current state of affairs.

We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day.

As with most of the messages presented at the rally, this statement is direct to the working middle class: the average American who wakes up everyday committed to his or her job. This vital segment of the population is the driving factor, which allows the United States to continue to succeed.

On the contrary, this statement does not hold true in Washington D.C. or on cable television. The current political arena suffers from a great deal of partisanship. Most Americans do not share opinions solely with one political party. Politics have strayed away from their goal to serve the people and now have a general focus to serve their party instead. The battle is not so much between parties, but corruption versus non-corruption and extremism versus non-extremism. Both the political left and right are guilty of shutting down debates and creating conflict. It has proven difficult for the Obama administration to accomplish their projected goals due to the extent of partisanship.

Adding to our problem, most news media outlets create barriers for Americans to have a knowledgeable opinion on domestic issues. Media outlets are well versed in inspiring fear to attract high ratings to their program. Often, such programs will use controversial labels, such as terrorist and racist, to identify political figures when it is not appropriate. Fear propaganda is prevalent on nearly on all news programs, including Fox, MSNBC and CNN. The general consensus among news programs is that there is polarization in Washington. By having fear has as a featured part of news programs, major news media outlets continue to unjustly force the public to divide themselves amongst extreme democrats and republicans and in turn causes much of the political struggles that are present today.

Undoubtedly, the message of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is valuable, but was the rally successful? A rally can be measured in three main ways: size, demographics and ramifications.

As stated above, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear attracted an estimated 215,000 . Glenn Beck’s similar Restoring Honor rally had only 87,000 in attendance. Although Jon Stewart claims the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was not created to compete with the Restoring Honor rally, both demonstrations used similar tactics to promote and clearly Jon Stewart’s rally was more successful. Moreover, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was broadcasted on Comedy Central and C-SPAN and drew 2,000,000 total viewers with an additional 570,000 live video streams on the internet.

To date, there has not been proper evaluation of the demography in attendance. Therefore, I must solely rely on my experience. Going through my photographs, I can identify by profiling that there was a crowd of mixed demographics. Young, old, liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, Caucasian, African American, Asian American, Latino American, heterosexuals, homosexuals and others were all represented. On the Drexel Student Alliance of the United Nation Association bus, undergraduates, graduates and faculty were present.

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear purpose was to bring together moderates to combat the extremism of politics and the media. After the rally, Keith Olbermann, prominently featured in the fear video montage, decided to suspend his “Worst Person in the World” segment on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to avoid high tensions. He would later announce that the segment would return on November 17th as the “Not Really Worst Persons in the World." Political satire Bill Maher criticized the rally, as he believed insanity derives more so from the political right. However, most were mislead by Jon Stewart’s intentions. Stewart’s rally was not to simply point out increasing polarization in politics, as most news programs do. On November 11th, Jon Stewart appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to clarify the message of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, “The intention is to say we have all bought into that the conflict in the country is left and right…both side have their way of shutting down debate and the news networks have allowed these two sides to become the fight in the country.” The following day’s news headlines reflected that many people did not understand Jon Stewart’s message. As Bill Maher assumed, many people focused too much on the political left or right.

Although Jon Stewart was able to attract 215,000 attendants from a variety of demographics, he failed to successfully communicate his message during or after the rally. The flaw of the rally was the result of poor planning and execution. The National Mall was not equipped to accommodate the guests present. As a result, the majority of the audience did not feel as active participants of the rally. Also, the rally lacked cohesiveness due to the numerous amounts of guests and musicians. At times, guest and musicians captured the audience’s attention more than the message of the rally. Jon Stewart’s message was not definitive in the content of the rally. Stewart’s closing remarks could not effectively coincide with his message. I decided to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear because I had true confidence that this event could inspire change in our political system and media outlets. Indeed, Mr. Stewart did make some waves in the politics and the news media in November, but disappointingly I have yet to witness any notable change today. Jon Stewart’s goal was a tremendously ambitious task, and some would argue to be guaranteed failure. He felt that after “12 years, I’d earned a moment to tell people who I was.” Jon Stewart has his opportunity at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, but unfortunately he was unsuccessful. Sorry Mr. Stewart.

Sources: Upon request

No alla Riforma! (No to the Reform!)

This past week, students have been protesting throughout Italy. University buildings, piazzas and historic monuments have been subject as locations to these protests. In Rome, students forced entrance into the house of the Italian senate armed with tear gas, eggs and stones. Down the road, the Colosseum was obligated to close due to student occupation. As a form of demonstration, university researchers have been sleeping on roof tops. Clashes with the police are all too prevalent. Comparable protests have occurred in Pisa, Florence, Milan, Palermo and dozens of other cites and towns.

The students are protesting the Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini’s proposed bill. The bill reorganizes the governance of institutions and will result in many universities closing and university professors losing their jobs. Additionally, students are protesting the cuts in funding imposed by Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti. The bill will be voted on Tuesday.

Currently, Italy is in an economic downturn, government spending is tight and it will be difficult for the ministry to avoid cutting the education budget. Similar protests against education cuts are happening right now in Austria, England, the U.S. and other countries. So can countries afford the modern cost of higher education? They most certainly can! Governments' budget can often afford many luxuries, but education is always given the short end of the stick. The suggested education reform does not target the true problems at the universities. The very existence of Italian universities is now at stake.

Check out this link directory:
World Advocacy- Education

Sources: New York Times, La Repubblica, Youtube

Czech Dream: A Glimpse of Change the Czech Society has Undertaken Since the 1980s.

Czech Dream is a documentary film directed by Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda. The film recorded a large-scale hoax on the consumers of the Czech Republic. The hoax consisted of an opening event to a fabricated hypermarket, Czech Dream. A hypermarket is a superstore which combines food and retail items to optimally satisfy all consumer shopping needs. Czech Dream reflects the drastic change consumerism in the Czech Republic since 1989. At the time, Klusák and Filip Remunda were film students at the University of Prague. Their final project was Czech Dream.

Czech Dream came to life through a massive advertisement campaign. The two directors posed as businessmen to persuade an advertisement and public relation agencies to participate in their experiment.

Marketing Czech Dream began with a series of focus groups. The responses given by the focus groups would be similar to Karl Marx hearing the sound of screeching fingernails down a classroom blackboard. In fact, a response given by a young girl was particularly stunning. After her mother described how their family hike was interrupted by her daughter’s impatience and temper, the daughter was relieved and most certainly content once at the hypermarket. She was then prompted with the questions, “Can you tell us about the relief? Can you describe it?” And she answered, “Well, it was like I don’t know, like it was raining all day and then I suddenly saw the sun come out.” Other responses further illustrated the powerful growth of modern Czech consumerism. When asked, “how did you spend your Saturdays together as a family before there were any malls?”, the instant response was laughter. Then comments followed such as, “At home”, “In the garden” and “We hardly remember what it was like before the hypermarkets.”

Previous to 1989, the Czech Republic had a command economy and consequently consumerism did not exist. Shortages and lack of product variety were common characteristics of the economy. However, the Czech Republic is credited with a successful transformation to a market economy. The economic growth rates of the Czech Republic are among the highest of Europe. The unavoidable presence of consumerism have resulted from prosperous economic growth: hypermarkets are sprouting throughout the country and the common Czech finds them submersed with advertisements. But is this what all Czechs envisioned before the transformation?

I am not not at all advocating the return to a command economy, but there is a need for regulations to prevent business, such as advertisement firms, from infringing the law. As the conclusion of the film indicates, such high levels of consumerism have drawbacks. The goal is not combat consumerism, but to target certain businesses that have bad practices. Check out these links:

Consumer Goods Advocacy Groups
Better Business Bureau
CCFC

Sources: Czech Dream,  Central & East European Politics by Wolchick and Curry, and Google Images

America's Native Prisoners of War

Since the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas, Native Americans have been subjected to incredible abuse, ranging from simple neglect to relocation, and even extermination. The made up notion of "manifest destiny" has allowed the US government to successfully complete an ethnic cleansing. However, do not be mistaken. This dilemma is not only an occurrence of the past, but also proceeds the present.

Native Americans had their land stolen and were forced to live on "reservations", or more adequately put: prisoner war camps. Frequently, prisoner war camps were strategically placed in areas of land not valuable, making it difficult for Native Americans to survive.

Today, many reservations are considered ghettos. The quality of life on some reservations is comparable to the poorest of developing countries. Issues of infant mortality, life expectancy, nutrition and poverty, and alcohol and drug abuse has a strong presence. For example, Shannon County, South Dakota

Shannon County, South Dakota

Shannon County is a county located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. The population was 12,466 at the 2000 census. Its largest community is Pine Ridge....

, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is an Oglala Sioux Native American reservation located in the U.S. state of South Dakota...

, is routinely described as one of the poorest counties in the nation.¹

In Aaron Huey's study of the Lokata people of the Pine Ridge Reservation, he further documents the unjust acts of the US government. Definitely check out his Ted talk. Prepare yourself  because it is powerful video, but it will leave you completely stunned.

Modern Native American inequalities are also evident in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and the Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. One of the central themes highlighted in Alexie's text are the difficulties of leaving the reservation. Past the expected discrimination outside the reservation, there is a psychological barrier the city poses for some Native Americans. As one character describes, "It's like a bad dream you never wake up from. Stuck in one of those revolving doors, going round and round while the white people are laughing. Stuck in an elevator between floors with a white woman who keeps wanting to touch my hair. There are some things that Indians would've never invented if given the chance." ² The majority of Native Americans continue to live on reservations.

We must not merely except the unjust acts of European ancestors, but become inspired to adopt different policies and change for a better future for the natives of this land we call our own. Please visit the following websites:

NAAP
DLN Coalition
AIM

Sources:  Wikipedia ¹, TED Talk, Aaron Huey: America's Native Prisoners of War , The Lone Ranger and the Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, Page 207 ² and www.aaronhuey.com

Falling Whistles

Falling Whistles is a campaign for peace in the Congo.

Believe it or not, the Congo is home to the world's largest war. Over 6 million people have died since 1996. To put this number in perspective, there has been more deaths in the Congo than Jewish victims of the Holocaust. An additional 2 million people have been displaced form their homes. Even now, 45,000 people die every month as a result of this conflict.

Why is this happening?!? Besides inescapable factors of the past (colonization, a corrupt government, African wars), this conflict is now considered a resource war. The Congo's natural wealth (in terms of natural resources) is considered to be worth 27 trillion dollars. Minerals needed for the production of cell phones, mp3 players, computers, digital cameras and etc. are found in the Congo's vast natural environment. Sadly due to high demands of globalization, there are not many enforced regulations to protect the Congo. Large scale companies to local leaders are guilty of stripping the Congo of precious natural resources and stirring up conflict.

How do you help? Purchase a whistle and tell everyone you know! The more people that are aware of the situation, the better. The consumers determine what products companies produce. Ethical production of technologies is possible. We can put a halt to this resource war!

For further information and to support the cause, visit: www.fallingwhistles.com - This past week, I actually met this organization. Great people, with a truthful message.

Sources: www.fallingwhistles.com and Falling Whistles' literature