Sunday was a great day, before going to mass with the President of the University of San Francisco, I went to the Green Festival in the south of Market which is an awesome place to learn about alternatives for a green holistic lifestyle. They have everything from food products to organically made baby cloths to green energy. Check out the website at www.greenfestival.org. I got to see Amy Goodman speak as well. She talked about Slavery and the President and how this is our opportunity to make our voices heard with everything. There was a booth about a grad school program through SIT in Vermont and some others so that was nice to see. I am super excited to go through the stack of information and free things I got. I actually grabbed a dog food sample that is vegetarian...now bailey can be like me!!

The anniversary of the Jesuit Martyrs in El Salvador

Last night Father Stephen Privett and about fifty students commemorated for this event in our beautiful chapel.


MEMORIAL MASS FOR THE MARTYRS OF EL SALVADOR
St. Ignatius Church, 9 pm
Mass to commemorate the deaths of the six Salvadoran Jesuit martyrs, their housekeeper and her daughter. Followed by procession to the top of the Lone Mountain stairs for a brief candlelight vigil in their honor.

It was the first Mass I had been to on campus and we led a procession with pictures and crosses with the murdered names on them up to the top of Lone Mountain, our upper campus, and had lit candles to remember and celebrate their lives, not those of the killers but those who sacrificed themselves. Father Privett blessed those of us going to the School of the Americas protests this week in Atlanta Georgia and wished us well.

It was very powerful because I have a close connection to two of the people killed after Jesuit Oscar Romero called for human rights help and support in El Salvador during the 1980s 12 year civil war. Ignacio Martin-Baro was killed for his good work helping the people which was seen as being against the corrupt government in place. I am the RA for the living learning community Martin-Baro Scholars named in honor of him and we focus on education about poverty and social justice in San Francisco. Then also one of the American Maryknoll sisters Maura Clark who founded the organization in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua where I worked for three months, working to end injustices. These connections are very powerful and motivating for me even though I don't consider myself religious.

All I can say is how excited I am to go to Georgia!

Monday Night in the Dorms

Oh don't you miss dorm life! If you have never experienced it, you are definitely missing out! Monday night we has a power outage in the city in our quadrant (not just the school thank gosh!) and it was interesting...I was watching Gossip Girl (a horrible teen drama that is sooo unrealistic) and the power just went out. After the ten second screams and running down the halls and flash light tag...it came back on. I was actually reading with my flashlight at this point and the hall lights come on but I continue reading, then on eof my residents comes in my room and turns my room light on...oopps apparently all the lights had come back on. Anyways, it was exciting. Just another night in the dorms...

YES WE CAN

Here is an awesome video with Obama in it....check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

Obama versus McCain- Something Interesting to Consider

Subject: What if things were switched around.....think
about it.

Would the country's collective point of view be
different?

Could racism be the culprit?

Ponder the following:

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the
stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed,
pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard
Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his
graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a
divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife
after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer
measured up to his standards?

What if Obama had m et his second wife in a bar and had a
long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became
addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally
through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The
Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of
corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as
part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late
1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that
included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven
planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display
publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management
problem?

What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money
from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child? You could
easily add to this list. If these questions reflected
reality, do you really believe the election numbers would
be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and
minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and
emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a
color difference.


Educational Background:

Barack Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a
Specialization in International Relations .
& gt; Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in
Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:

Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism


Education isn't everything, but this is about the
two highest offices in the land as well as our standing
in the e world. You make the call.


There has to be a reason that, in spite of the above, we
are where we are today.
Of course, there is a generous dosage of country-wide
stupidity too.