Poverty

[close] “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” - Lilla Watson Peace Corps and International Development is problematic, and as a returned volunteer, I have been wanting for some time to critically re-examine my overseas experience, to think through its explicit and implicit power dynamics. How do issues of race, class, gender, colonialism, and geopolitics inform the "do-gooder" mentality of volunteer and paid international development work, and what does that mean for its impact on volunteers, host communities, and others? Change begins with learning, and that is why I wanted to start this group where we could read, discuss, and share centered on thought-provoking books that bring a more critical perspective to Peace Corps and ID organizations. One goal is to create a syllabus to be shared with future or returned Peace Corps Volunteers as well as others, something akin to Ibram X. Kendi's anti-racist syllabus for Ralph Northam. What would we imagine for Peace Corps and ID organizations if we incorporated a true grappling with our place in the world, this work, its dynamics, and discourses of improvement?

[close] Do you want to understand how Trump came to Power? Do you want to build a more powerful and inclusive progressive movement? Me too -- that's why I'm trying to read as much as possible from as many different viewpoints as possible. Send in books you think we should read!

[close] The socio-economic changes North Korea has undergone over the last two decade have been almost entirely unreported. Indeed, by the beginning of 2017, mass starvation had long ceased, while more and better-assorted markets emerged throughout the country (and yet you’re still reading that ‘North Korea’s regime is starving its population’). Fewer people are punished for political crimes than in the past (but you still read that three generations of a family are sent to the gulag for the slightest political crime). The rising middle class has been transforming the rigid old political class system since marketization has enabled people from lower classes to build their own business, with some becoming rich and even more influential than many party and government officials from the privileged ‘core class,’ something prohibited two decades ago. Yet, you’re still told by the media that a North Korean’s fate is solely defined by the social ‘caste’ he belongs to and so on. Business people around the world have had no access to any news of positive progress, while any stories of ‘normal’ development are generally considered not to be newsworthy by the media. — How much will the strangulating economic embargo which was imposed later in 2017 reverse this progress and cause suffering to the North Korean people?

[close] This is a space where we can share books related to our course "The Age of Sustainable Development" by Jeffrey Sachs. Other Change Agents are more than welcome as well : D. Feel free to add more goodies to our bookshelf.