(Picture of an El Puente Youth operating the camera, sound, and computer during videotaping.)
My Major Activities relating to ending extreme poverty today:
1. Daybreakers Toastmaster Meeting.
a. One member answered a table topic question about jokes. She responded it was difficult to understand jokes. Because English was her second language. I can remember trying to understand a joke in German. It was more difficult to understand a joke. I have not even learned enough French to be conversational. So it will a long time before I understand a Congolese joke in French.
b. One member gave a speech about Illegal Aliens or Immigrants. She won the best speech for the meeting. She started by talking about her hit and run by a Guatemalan. Her speech turned to compassion for the Guatemalan. She told the story of his journey from Guatemala to Mexico, swimming to get around the border into Mexico. Next, he rode across Mexico holding onto the top of tanker train for seven hours to the US. Then the hit and run in Indianapolis without driver's license or insurance. He is being deported on a bus back to Mexico. Now he was going backed to poverty. She thought out aloud about the American sense of justice.
2. On a news report on TV, Martin Luther King III called on the presidential candidates to form a cabinet level position on poverty. Surprisingly, it was the last democratic administration (March 1993) that spelled death to the House Select Committee on hungry. Tony Hall, author of Changing the Face of Hunger, tells about the end of the committee in his book. He went on a fast to highlight the hunger in America. A noble idea that may not get more than lip service.
3. At 1st Friday at the Harrison Arts Center, Provocate helped El Puente Project's "I am a Camera". El Puente mobilizes and empowers Latino/a youth to achieve their goals. The El Puente youths were videotaping another video tonight on the impact of film. I got interviewed. Also, I watched their first video. The video told the story of immigrants in Indianapolis. The immigrants escaped poverty in their home country. They compared it to immigrants from Europe.
