So, it's been a long time since we've updated this site -- almost 9 months! Whew, my bad. A lot has happened -- some of us have spent time at Duke hosting rallies for health equity, some of us have participated in drawn-out campaigns, and some of us have even spent a semester abroad (looking at you Sagar, Dhrusti, and Pulkit) studying health and development in India and China! In any case, we're back -- and as a reminder, this site is an open forum where anyone can post ideas, thoughts, reflections, etc!
Okay, with that, I'll start off my inaugural post of 2012 with a confession: I love armchairs. Er, well, at least I think I subconsciously do. And no, I'm not just talking about the crazy-shaped stuff you can find at IKEA (though those are cool).
See, there's one plank of common sense that hit me upside the head over the course of the past 9 months: it's actually really easy to talk about human rights and social justice. In fact, it's downright fun. When fighting for ideals of equity and freedom by spewing out passionate rhetoric and prose, it's exhilarating! But, it's also comfortable. Especially for me -- a naive, privileged kid who's grown up on a steady stream of The West Wing re-runs, it should come as no surprise that I eat idealistic language up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Sure, all this stuff sounds pretty obvious (and it is), but this whole concept became really concrete for me over the past year. After writing a post on this blog last summer about the epidemic of sexual violence occurring in conflict-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, a few friends and I were compelled to do something. Anything. I was familiar with the issue of natural resource exploitation (specifically minerals found in consumer electronics) subsidizing armed groups in these regions because of my friends David and Braveen previously -- and now some of us wanted to take action. We wanted to advocate, but we realized we might not have the standing to truly make our voices heard in the international debate. So, in the Fall of 2011, we launched a campaign to lobby our university (Duke) to follow the lead of Stanford and other universities by standing up for responsible supply chains and ethical business practices -- specifically by altering our investment policies with respect to companies sourcing these minerals.
It was my first real introduction to participating in sustained advocacy (not just describing it), even on a micro-scale. Within months, our coalition found ourselves drafting op-eds, making videos, and pressing our administration for action. And, we made a lot of progress. Honestly, it was great. Throughout the highs and lows, I've never felt more vulnerable or alive - I never stopped learning.
But, in the midst of this experience, a curious thing happened. I found myself sitting in armchairs a lot. At first, this was confined to the awkward blue couch in my apartment, where policy requests and editorials were drafted, edited, and trashed because it was more fun than homework. As the weeks wore on, I later found myself sitting in classrooms and study halls, planning strategy and hosting dialogues with a host of other passionate students. And finally, as the year ended, I found myself in really comfy armchairs staring blankly at faculty and administrators in fancy boardrooms. Perhaps that's a measure of success in this stuff -- whether your armchairs get more comfortable over time.
But, all jokes aside, I realized something about myself: I was literally an armchair activist. One of those kids who wanted to "save" the world from the comforts of my own Gothic wonderland. A student with absolutely no connection to a community on-the-ground leveraging a purely theoretical foundation for justice to make a fuss while sipping bubble tea from my comfy seat. This isn't necessarily "bad" -- for a neglected issues and marginalized communities, there's gotta be a gain in starting the conversation and shining a light.
So, you may be wondering, what's the problem? Well, over the course of this campaign, another simple realization dawned upon me: it's really tough to understand anything from the perspective one has from an armchair. We can recite talking points from policy briefs, and we can throw out statistics like it's nobody's business -- but, we can't truly comprehend the nuances of injustice. We are compelled with a black-and-white sense of morality to stand up and act, yet the real-time effects of proposed interventions are much more grey. That's important to realize. For me, it came with the increased knowledge that the push for more transparent resource supply chains could create more harm than good for those dependent on the industry -- essentially, a manifestation of the "good intentions aren't enough" and "do no harm" mantra for all of development.
For the past few months, ethical questions surrounding the nuance and paternalism of advocacy have weighed on me. They've gnawed at my core, making me question my values over and over. The resulting paralysis can't really be addressed because there's only so much knowledge one can derive from an armchair. When strapped to your chair at, say, a university, the only thing you can do is acknowledge your limitations, try your best to find someone who actually is standing in solidarity (not just preaching about doing so) with your community, and let them inform your humble path forward for responsible action. At least, that's all I got.
That's the point of this blog, and the next few months, for me. These questions aren't specific to me -- they're universal to all kinds of advocacy. In fact, all of us interested in social action are probably dealing with these in some way, shape, or form. I'll need your help and your insight -- I have faith these are issues that we can help each other come to terms with.
Over the next few months, I'll be using the protected time over the summer not to advocate for any cause -- but to sit down, shut up, listen to voices I've never heard before, and gain some skills that could make me more valuable than just a kid with a loud mouth. On Friday, I'll be traveling to Juba, South Sudan with my good friend Stefani Jones -- a Duke colleague who helped lead the campaign above -- to learn more about life in a country rebuilding and recovering from (and perhaps preparing for) conflict. We'll be there for about 10 days, and it's my goal to not just learn about challenges in public health -- but to learn about desires for and reception of Western advocacy from everyone, ranging from government officials to regular folks on the street. From Juba, I'll be traveling to Bangalore, India (with a stop in my parents' hometown of Hyderabad) to work on some health economics research -- a chance to actually understand how science and analytical rigor can be applied to questions of development and health equity. I'll be posting all kinds of ramblings and musings throughout!
(Edit: A final confession -- I got tired of sitting in armchairs, so I actually wrote this post from my bed. Who would've thought?)
Okay, with that, I'll start off my inaugural post of 2012 with a confession: I love armchairs. Er, well, at least I think I subconsciously do. And no, I'm not just talking about the crazy-shaped stuff you can find at IKEA (though those are cool).
See, there's one plank of common sense that hit me upside the head over the course of the past 9 months: it's actually really easy to talk about human rights and social justice. In fact, it's downright fun. When fighting for ideals of equity and freedom by spewing out passionate rhetoric and prose, it's exhilarating! But, it's also comfortable. Especially for me -- a naive, privileged kid who's grown up on a steady stream of The West Wing re-runs, it should come as no surprise that I eat idealistic language up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Sure, all this stuff sounds pretty obvious (and it is), but this whole concept became really concrete for me over the past year. After writing a post on this blog last summer about the epidemic of sexual violence occurring in conflict-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, a few friends and I were compelled to do something. Anything. I was familiar with the issue of natural resource exploitation (specifically minerals found in consumer electronics) subsidizing armed groups in these regions because of my friends David and Braveen previously -- and now some of us wanted to take action. We wanted to advocate, but we realized we might not have the standing to truly make our voices heard in the international debate. So, in the Fall of 2011, we launched a campaign to lobby our university (Duke) to follow the lead of Stanford and other universities by standing up for responsible supply chains and ethical business practices -- specifically by altering our investment policies with respect to companies sourcing these minerals.
It was my first real introduction to participating in sustained advocacy (not just describing it), even on a micro-scale. Within months, our coalition found ourselves drafting op-eds, making videos, and pressing our administration for action. And, we made a lot of progress. Honestly, it was great. Throughout the highs and lows, I've never felt more vulnerable or alive - I never stopped learning.
But, in the midst of this experience, a curious thing happened. I found myself sitting in armchairs a lot. At first, this was confined to the awkward blue couch in my apartment, where policy requests and editorials were drafted, edited, and trashed because it was more fun than homework. As the weeks wore on, I later found myself sitting in classrooms and study halls, planning strategy and hosting dialogues with a host of other passionate students. And finally, as the year ended, I found myself in really comfy armchairs staring blankly at faculty and administrators in fancy boardrooms. Perhaps that's a measure of success in this stuff -- whether your armchairs get more comfortable over time.
But, all jokes aside, I realized something about myself: I was literally an armchair activist. One of those kids who wanted to "save" the world from the comforts of my own Gothic wonderland. A student with absolutely no connection to a community on-the-ground leveraging a purely theoretical foundation for justice to make a fuss while sipping bubble tea from my comfy seat. This isn't necessarily "bad" -- for a neglected issues and marginalized communities, there's gotta be a gain in starting the conversation and shining a light.
So, you may be wondering, what's the problem? Well, over the course of this campaign, another simple realization dawned upon me: it's really tough to understand anything from the perspective one has from an armchair. We can recite talking points from policy briefs, and we can throw out statistics like it's nobody's business -- but, we can't truly comprehend the nuances of injustice. We are compelled with a black-and-white sense of morality to stand up and act, yet the real-time effects of proposed interventions are much more grey. That's important to realize. For me, it came with the increased knowledge that the push for more transparent resource supply chains could create more harm than good for those dependent on the industry -- essentially, a manifestation of the "good intentions aren't enough" and "do no harm" mantra for all of development.
For the past few months, ethical questions surrounding the nuance and paternalism of advocacy have weighed on me. They've gnawed at my core, making me question my values over and over. The resulting paralysis can't really be addressed because there's only so much knowledge one can derive from an armchair. When strapped to your chair at, say, a university, the only thing you can do is acknowledge your limitations, try your best to find someone who actually is standing in solidarity (not just preaching about doing so) with your community, and let them inform your humble path forward for responsible action. At least, that's all I got.
That's the point of this blog, and the next few months, for me. These questions aren't specific to me -- they're universal to all kinds of advocacy. In fact, all of us interested in social action are probably dealing with these in some way, shape, or form. I'll need your help and your insight -- I have faith these are issues that we can help each other come to terms with.
Over the next few months, I'll be using the protected time over the summer not to advocate for any cause -- but to sit down, shut up, listen to voices I've never heard before, and gain some skills that could make me more valuable than just a kid with a loud mouth. On Friday, I'll be traveling to Juba, South Sudan with my good friend Stefani Jones -- a Duke colleague who helped lead the campaign above -- to learn more about life in a country rebuilding and recovering from (and perhaps preparing for) conflict. We'll be there for about 10 days, and it's my goal to not just learn about challenges in public health -- but to learn about desires for and reception of Western advocacy from everyone, ranging from government officials to regular folks on the street. From Juba, I'll be traveling to Bangalore, India (with a stop in my parents' hometown of Hyderabad) to work on some health economics research -- a chance to actually understand how science and analytical rigor can be applied to questions of development and health equity. I'll be posting all kinds of ramblings and musings throughout!
(Edit: A final confession -- I got tired of sitting in armchairs, so I actually wrote this post from my bed. Who would've thought?)
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