How Not to Reduce Regional Tensions

North Korea is a tough place for peacebuilders. Not so much in the sense that it's tough for peacebuilders to live there though it most assuredly is that. More that the isolation and insularity of the country makes it difficult to even discuss things like civil society capacity building, or public confidence in nonviolent dispute resolution. Institutions such as courts that can provide checks on central government power have very little traction, as do all the other concepts that a basic search of scholarly or organizational literature on peacebuilding and democracy will.

There is often little that can be done to promote peace and social justice in a given country from the outside, and international practitioners are pretty much unable to enter North Korea for the purpose of empowering the populace to build these things from the inside. Even the United States Institute of Peace, one of the thought leaders covering the Korean Peninsula situation from the West, has not been able to advance peacebuilding efforts much beyond state-level negotiations. Building a communication network of state officials and "Track 1.5" personnel in the region is an admirable goal given the circumstances, but truly effective peacebuilding needs to integrate "top-down" and "bottom up" approaches. That way, central government policies can make sense at the local level and small communities are able to communicate their needs/interests to state leaders. At the moment, though, that doesn't appear to be a strong possibility in the DPR of K. 

Imagine my shock complete lack of surprise, then, when I read the headline of this Reuters article yesterday. 

Not long after the election, I used this very blog to prattle on for 80 pages or so detailing my thoughts about the outcome, and expressed some reservations about the Obama White House's foreign policy agenda. Having noticed that the Obama/Romney foreign policy debate was essentially a neo-realist race to the bottom, where the first instinct is to treat those that agitate us as security threats rather than opportunities for dialogue, I wasn't exactly optimistic about U.S. foreign policy going forward. Continuing on the same path seemed more or less a foregone conclusion. Indeed, we've decided to fly some bombers over Seoul in response to Kim Jong-Un's increasingly fiery rhetoric concerning the South and their United States puppet masters (that's us.)

Now, I fully understand the need to show support for our allies. And in a sense, I also understand the "show of force" language that our military is speaking. I recently heard a bit about life in South Korea from Laura in Laurasia. Her take was basically that Kim is a young man, which puts him at a tremendous disadvantage in the Korean culture of seniority, so it's important for him to demonstrate his willingness to lash out militarily at perceived enemies in order to appear as a strong leader.

It's conceivable, within the realist mindset, that a demonstration of U.S. military might and technological superiority would make sense to such an adversary and convince them to back down. I myself don't trust the line of thinking or the notion that "force is the only language they understand," but it has a lot of currency in the public mind, so there we are. In this case, I really think the U.S. response is playing directly into the hands of North Korea's more bellicose elements. Their rhetoric in this most recent flare-up in tensions has been focused on the idea that the U.S. and South Korea are "aggressors" in the region and the North needs/has a right to defend itself. I guess I don't see how flying a bunch of stealth bombers around within easy striking distance of Pyongyang will do anything but convince NK's military leadership that their paranoia is justified. "Too easily words of war become acts of war," as Maester Luwin from Game of Thrones cautioned Robb Stark in the first book/season, and I'm afraid that this Game of Oneupmanship on the Peninsula is headed in the same direction.

Sure enough, Kim Jong-Un has ordered a higher state of missile readiness in response to our exercises, apparently in order to "settle accounts with the U.S." . Of course, we've taken "settle accounts" to mean something sinister, but I can't help wondering whether it was actually meant more literally as "evening the score" of the tit-for-tat threat making  This sounds a lot like a situation that came up in my Culture and Conflict class a couple of years back. When interacting with certain "high-context" cultures where face and honor are important, trying to bully/shame them into changing their behavior isn't likely to work. If we'd just let Kim and his generals have the last word for the moment, they'd be able to save some face and might not have to keep ramping up the rhetoric/military preparedness out of a need to respond to our latest verbal salvo.

That's probably a little too simple a view, and either way I don't suppose the State Department and military are operating on the same schools of thought as a School of International Service professor.  But maybe, just maybe, changing course on this might show the path to a time where some real peacebuilding is finally able to happen. I know, it's a long shot. But it sure would be nice.

- AWG

I'd like to tell you all my bad ideas...

Getting a new perspective

You probably don't know this because you haven't heard from me since December or so, but this year I resolved to basically quit whining about how my job isn't all that relevant to my degree program (past or present,) and start taking steps to correct my attitude by seeking out opportunities to get some more satisfaction out of my current position. Well, I'm pleased to report that this endeavor has been a (qualified) success. And I don't just mean that I've bought a couple blazers to wear to the office in an effort to "dress for the job I want," though that has certainly been a good time, too.

A few weeks ago, my organization sent out a series of surveys measuring employees' interest in participating in short-term (six months or so) placements in other divisions. It just so happens that a spot opened up in an office I'd spent some time with in the past, covering front-desk duties while the usual person was at a doctor appointment or what have you. Considering that I speak probably 50% of my work Spanish while at this office, I accepted almost immediately. Today was my first day in the new spot, and even accounting for the "new office smell," I have no doubt that I made a great decision.

My duties here remind me a lot of my time as a legal assistant/office manager at a law firm, dealing much less with case work and more with people. My first instinct, since I had already basically done that job in the past, was to wonder whether I would be moving backwards, in a way. But really thinking it through, I realized it couldn't possibly be a bad thing to demonstrate my flexibility and adaptable skill set both to my own organization and on the ol' resume. What's more, I'm generally much happier when interacting with and relating to people, helping them to solve problems and find the right questions to seek the answers they want. Sitting at a desk and waiting for somebody to bring me a folder so I can scan some things and mail them out, being a functionary and having little to no agency has its merits, I'm sure, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that that kind of work just does not jive with my personality. Certainly, the first-day luster of the new office will wear off sooner or later, but for now I'm just glad to have been given the chance to try something new.

Meanwhile, the practicum team is plugging along with our project exploring the intersection, or "nexus," as we're terming it, between peacebuilding and democracy building. We've come up with some really interesting stuff so far, one of the central themes of our project will be a "think-piece" for our client. It's going to center upon theoretical support for a concept of trust that underpins both peace and democracy. Basically, it drives adherence to democratic principles and allows people to be creative in building  mechanisms for the nonviolent resolution of disputes. Moreover, if people trust that democratic channels for peaceful conflict management will work, they're less likely to abandon nonviolence the moment that negotiation doesn't immediately get them what they want. That feeling is often absent in new democracies or societies transitioning out of conflict, which makes them more likely to backslide into renewed violence or a system that lacks equity and social justice. All of this is ultimately aimed at movement toward positive peace characterized by social justice and a lack of structural violence. That's a lofty goal, and one that some would say is unattainable, so why fight a battle that you're probably never going to win? Well, a wise man once told me (as often as he was able) that it's better to try and fail than to do nothing and be a success at it. Good mantra for life? Probably. The VERY CORE of a career in peacebuilding? Almost definitely.

Honestly, though, it's a little tough to focus on my capstone research project when I keep hearing all this stuff about American University's campus-wide smoking ban. It was announced this year that AU would prohibit smoking anywhere on campus in an effort to improve overall university health. I can't decide how I feel about this. Sure, I think cigarettes are a little gross except in some very specific circumstances. And what little economics training I do have makes me lean toward disapproval of smoking because it provides negative externalities that are not covered in the price of a pack of butts. How many times has someone (probably not maliciously) blown a cloud of smoke at you while you're passing them on the street? That irritation you experience is what they call a negative externality, one that smokers don't pay for the privilege of causing you. The same goes for the expense to public health when people are treated for heart and lung disease on the system's dime after years or decades of smoking. Tax you pay on cigarettes at the register, I'm fairly certain, doesn't cover that. Which is why you can't trust the system.

Still, I tend to come down on the side of education over legislation- getting people to understand why it's a better idea to do your smokin' off campus (to the extent that's possible, it is a college after all.) The college democrats' link has a much better exploration of the "freedom of choice vs. the public good" topic than I care to delve into, but that tendency is also causing me some angst over the idea of banning giant sodas. The over 16-ounce soda ban for certain types of establishments in NYC, a signature initiative of Mayor Bloomberg, was struck down in court this week by a judge who looks like he could stand to lay off giant sugary beverages for a few weeks himself, if this picture is any indication.

The Honorable Judge Milton Tingling, who needs to fire his PR rep
or whoever took this picture while kneeling at his feet. 

Apparently he blocked the ban because it represented an overreach by the city in its ability to make choices for consumers. Also, he characterized it as "arbitrary and capricious" because it exempted certain places, like 7-Eleven, from selling large-format sodas, and didn't include stuff like milkshakes. So movie theaters and pizza joints are psyched now, because you can still get your 30-oz soda before watching the Hobbit for the 4th time or shoving a bunch of greasy pepperoni down your gullet. I wouldn't recommend the former, because once that soda's in your belly it's going to be really tempting to go make a pit stop by the 3rd or 4th "dwarves fight some guys" scene that's both completely unnecessary and absent from the book. And honestly, who wants to do that?

But saying the law doesn't make sense just because places like 7-Eleven can still sell large sodas, to my mind, completely misses the point because those sodas are, more than likely, going to be in bottles that you can re-close and so you haven't got to drink it all at once, unlike the giant cups in movie theaters or pizza places that encourage you to swallow all that sweet, sweet fattenin' fuel before you leave. The decision would have read much more strongly if it had only been about preventing the city from grabbing too much power and limiting freedom of choice in beverage consumption, and not this silly thing about how a law is ineffectual just because it contains exemptions and caveats. At the same time, I wonder if a better course of action for Bloomberg would be to try and up the tax rates on sugary beverages and frame it as a way to protect freedom of choice while letting the cost of a soda reflect its correllated drain on the public health system. Though come to think of it, we tried that in DC a couple years back and it didn't work out so well, leading some to call for... you guessed it. A District-wide, NYC-style soda ban, which might have more success.(!)

And around, and around we go.

I'm just so glad that we've ended childhood hunger, agreed on a means to combat the human-led devastation of our planet, and stamped out bigotry, homophobia, and religious intolerance so that we can finally get back to  the basic freedom to put liquid sugar into our bodies. Of course, that's basically what I'll be doing when I take down a bunch of warm blueberry soup after the WABA/House of Sweden Vasa Ride this Sunday. Should be a delicious end to a 60-mile ride to kick of "Spring training" or, as I like to call, it, "Riding in the Springtime."

This post mainly involves dogs. There's probably a joke in here somewhere about the word dogpile, and how the Spanish word for pile is a little like the Spanish word for mountain, and a mountain is a larger type of hill, and I live on the Hill.

Just a quick note to get down a couple of thoughts I had while taking a walk this evening to reorganize my brain after several hours of paper writing today...

The smell of the fir trees on display outside Eastern Market almost made me forget about my complete inability to get into the Christmas spirit before finals are done. Almost. I really wish it had happened, even just for a moment. I bought some Christmas colored M&Ms to put in a bowl on the coffee table, maybe that counts?

Saw a woman walking three very dissimilar dogs- a Newfoundland, a lab, and some ridiculous little Cairn terrier type guy. Two things about this struck me as odd....

1. I don't think I've ever seen somebody that owns three different kinds of dog. I've only ever known dog owners with:

• one dog; 
• two dogs of the same breed (like the two adorable elderly gay guys in my old neighborhood walking a pair of identical mini Schnauzers or "old man dogs;") 
• two dogs of a different breed (like a beagle and a Golden, maybe, or a yellow lab/black lab type combo,) or; 
• three or more of the SAME dog (like the guy walking 3 airedales one morning who, when I asked him to remind me what those dogs were called, simply replied "I just call them 'bad dogs!'"

And 2. People who are obviously professional dog walkers seem to be active mainly during the daytime (since folks are mostly at work then and can't walk their own dogs) and usually have, like, a multitude of canines. This woman had only three, and didn't have the requisite high-tech leashes, baggies hanging out of every pocket, or resolute but wild stare of someone who wrangles rambunctious, shaggy beasts for a living. Which led me to believe she was a private owner.

Yeah. Never seen that huge/manageable/tiny combination under one roof before, which got me thinking: I wonder if Capitol Hill is the kind of place where you, as a dog owner, use the listserv to coordinate with the dog owner in the rowhouse to your left and the dog owner in the rowhouse to your right in order to make a schedule of who takes all the dogs out on weeknights. That way, each highly successful couple only has to walk the dogs a couple of nights a week, leaving the others open for dinner at Acqua al 2, alumni networking happy hours, professional conferences with networking reception to follow, and time spent watching the Fox network. Dog owners, how about it?

In case you can't tell...I really want a dog.

-AWG

Cycling in the Andes Round 2: I don't know where I'ma gonna go when the volcano blow.

Been meaning to get to this one for a while, now. Back in early August I had the crazy idea that since there was a volcano nearby, I would like to ride a bike on it. Linked up with a cicloturismo outfit in Quito called Biking Dutchman that leads single or multiple-day bike tours throughout the country. Of course, I would have loved to head out for several days and ride around the Amazon or something, but the petty cash I had budgeted for the trip was getting low by that point and so I opted for a single-day excursion to Parque Nacional Cotopaxi. That's Ecuadorian for Cotopaxi National Park, by the way. The Park, as its name suggests, surrounds Cotopaxi, Ecuador's second largest mountain peak AND an active volcano. The 'Pedia has more here.   

Notably, the peak is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

That's right, I said active volcano. It hasn't erupted for something on the order of 150 years, but more on that later. After leaving work and heading over to the Mariscal to pay for my spot, I then went and dropped way too much money on a pair of hiking pants from the Quito North Face. Unlike my good buddy Jonathan, I had not expected to need any outdoorsy clothes walking around the city and was caught in a dilemma of spend more money or try to ride a mountain bike in jeans. Needless to say, convenience won out over frugality, and so it was that on the morning of Diez de Agosto (something akin to the 4th of July and thus a free day off) me and my hiking pants trundled on down to a coffee shop popular with tourists and backpackers and met up with a group of other internationals and our Ecuadorian driver/guide/cultural expert for the hour-and-a-half trip to our starting point. 

My companions included an Italian engineer helping to design Quito's subway system, a lovely young Kiwi couple on a trip lasting several months, and a semi-nomadic Dutch woman named Pascala who planned to hike up Cotopaxi's glacier the night after the ride. Bonding over our shared love of travel, the outdoors, lack of mountain biking experience, and a few cups of coca-leaf tea at a stall in the foothills, we hoped the somewhat cloudy morning would break and allow us some of the spectacular views the park advertises. Though the clouds never totally went away and we had to contend with the wind pretty much the whole time, our enthusiasm never flagged. 

From our jumping off point just below the glacier that blankets Cotopaxi's peak...

...down the dusty slopes...

                                 

...across the undulating badlands...

The saddle adjustment will not save the dude on the right from 

face-planting soon after this photo was taken (he was fine.)

...through a gorgeous area cut by streams and pools where we stopped for a delicious lunch...   

Ginger tea, pasta and brownies, what WHAT!

...past wild horses...

They got out of Dodge pretty quick once we rolled by,
so I was lucky to get this.

...out the access road and to the end of the ride...

Welcoming committee!

You guys remember Cotopaxi the llama, right?
Yeah, I'ma guess this is probably him.

...we all made some great memories from this rare, incredible experience. So thanks to all the other riders, and to Biking Dutchman for offering restless gringos a chance to explore the outdoors a little more after learning about Ecuador's biodiversity for several weeks. Our guide (Juan? Probably Juan) mentioned on the ride up that the government is planning to pave many of the dirt and crushed-gravel roads around the Park which, while undoubtedly improving the overall experience for the majority of visitors, is going to wreck a significant portion of what makes the mountain biking fun. 

That might not be the biggest worry, however. As I mentioned, Cotopaxi is technically an active volcano, although it hasn't been live in like a century and a half. The thing is, the historical eruption schedule is just about every 150 years, so the seismologists are pretty sure things are due to jump off sometime soon. If and when that happens, not only will much of the park land and infrastructure be wiped out, but the weakest part of the rock faces southern Quito, basically turning the volcano into a 19,347 foot artillery gun just waiting to launch a pyroclastic shell that would more or less wipe out half the city. Of course, the southern part of Quito is where the poorest folks live, so even if the government could take measures to reduce the danger it's by no means clear that  they would. 

I'm not sure what a volcano-evasion plan would even look like, maybe we should ask former mayor and veteran volcano-panic manager Roque Sevilla. Amanda, Jonathan, Faye, Nobu, any of you guys get his number?

--AWG

A Socialist Soliloquy

Look, soliloquies are long, OK? So if you're not in a reading mood, here's a video of a wildebeest getting all "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker" on a cyclist. 

Wha-BAP! Feel free to come back to that if you get bored mid-post.

Now that the post-election hangover is starting to wear off, with the aid of copious amounts of pumpkin spice coffee, a Sons of Anarchy marathon or two, and the prediction of some real nice riding weather this weekend, it's interesting to shut off the news outlets and hear what real, actual people whom I know personally think of the outcome of this year's voting. 

Yesterday I read a very well-done post on a blog written by Amber, an old friend and the daughter of the best professor I studied (and traveled!) with during college. I'll throw in a link if she says that's all right, because I think she speaks to an important perspective, but I also know how quickly internet political debates can turn nasty and I'm not about throwing nasty stuff people's way. Basically, Amber was calling for a more respectful and civilized political discourse surrounding the presidency. That included expressing some frustration and confusion over the dismissal, animosity, or outright vilification of Mitt Romney by democratic voters, as well as the choice made by some to vote primarily based on a few key social issues, primarily same-sex marriage, women's rights, and of course the weed, while there were other pressing concerns to be addressed, such as the economy. So in that same spirit of dialogue, I present my musings on the subject, from the perspective of the center-left camp and a generally democratic voter. I could have just done this in a comment on her blog, but it would have been longer than the post itself and that just seemed rude.

Voting based on social issues has always struck me as a very interesting thing in this country. It is by no means a new phenomenon- like most people probably remember "values voters" being credited (or blamed) with George W. Bush winning a second term in office back in '04. I'll come back to the issue of "values" in a moment.

I think that, in many ways, this election turned out not to be nearly as much of a "referendum on the economy" as pundits and experts predicted it would. So for anyone who's been frustrated by our economic performance under President Obama, I can definitely understand a feeling of smacking one's head against a wall trying to figure out why we'd vote someone back into the White House who hasn't run a business and has little in the way of clear economy-helming qualifications. But I would submit that inheriting a fiscal crisis along with your desk in the Oval Office 4 years ago and helping to turn a job-hemorrhaging economy into 32 months of sustained job growth is a pretty effective crash course in how to wrangle the drunken cave bear that has been the global economic system over the past several years.

Actually, a drunken cave bear would probably just fall over and hibernate, so let's forget that metaphor.

In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I'm a government employee who was very turned off by years of GOP rhetoric casting all government workers as overpaid layabouts leeching off the system, and couldn't imagine MY economic prospects getting better under a Romney White House. But I also detected a measure of hypocrisy in the criticism of Obama. Why were Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan able to insist that Obama was wrong for the country because he's not good at building the economy, and then turn around and argue that government (and therefore the president) should have pretty much no role in building it in the first place?  You can't have it both ways, bros. And don't come at me with this idea that government's role IS to stay out of the way, that's a facile and cynical argument that ignores the complexities of the modern political economy.

But yes, Social Issues! I think it's fair to say they were pretty determinant of the election results. Maine (represent!) and Maryland same-sex marriage, marijuana in Washington and Colorado, you get the idea. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it's not even about the issue itself, but about who gets to decide. There are many Americans who believe, por ejemplo, that marriage should be between one man and one woman, and that is perfectly valid if we're talking about THEIR marriage. The issue arises with that word "should." It implies a sense of universality to a belief system that, to put it bluntly, is not universal anymore. In fact, it's highly contested. And that's great [!] because American society is inherently pluralist, so opposing belief systems can and do coexist. But the death of universality and homogeneity also marks the birth of unequal power relationships. And when the group who believes that something like marriage "should" stay traditionally defined for all attempts to operationalize that belief through laws/amendments/whatever, that limits the freedom of those who wish to change it for themselves, and that I can't get behind. 

Which brings us back to values. "Traditional American values" was a term something the Romney/Ryan ticket loved to invoke, and it's used more or less as a code phrase for a nebulous set of quasi-religious beliefs that would supposedly point the way back to prosperity if we'd only start adhering to them again. Values like self-reliance, responsibility, and unlimited potential through hard work, I suppose. Unfortunately, there is a darker underside, and things like "heterosexual marriage only and only religious marriages count," and "stark, immutable gender roles for men and women" tend to get thrown in there, and people who don't share those values are perceived as a threat. What people value in life is entirely up to them. Want to be a stay at home mom (or dad?) Great, we need people like you. Want to put the family thing off and concentrate on your professional career? Godspeed, we need people like you. Want to have kids never and spend your life and money on travel? I hope you love it. We. Need. People. Like. You. We haven't all got to agree on what's the best way to go. But start, as a political candidate, to spin a narrative where the people who don't wanna do it like you wanna do it are less American, or worse, a threat to what makes us American, well then brother you're going to have some pretty visceral reactions coming your way. 

And I think that's behind a lot of the really terrible talk you hear coming from one camp and aimed at the other, and why social issues came to the fore in such a big way for many Obama supporters, and partially eclipsed the economic dimension and practically everything else.    

As the president likes to preface, "...let me be clear." I don't think Mr. Romney is a bad guy, or even that he would have been a terrible president. He, or at least the party ideology he represents, simply  have a view of government's role that doesn't jive with my own. I can't quite wrap my head around why government should stay out of providing services like health care or levying taxes to pay for social programs, but it can be the arbitrator of personal morality by putting roadblocks up for things like abortion, gay marriage, etc. I've got plenty of bones to pick with the Obama administration, mostly in the foreign policy/defense/national security arena. But I also trust him not to support social policies that I consider regressive in their backstopping of social inequity and legalized dominance by the standard-bearers of "traditional" values over those who choose not to adhere to them. By no means does that give my fellow liberals carte blanche to yell "Romney sucks! That guy is a ("creative" swear word)! I hope he falls on a rock and dies," any more than it did a small country store in Maine to start a pool on when Obama would be assassinated back in '09. Unfortunately, the loudest and nastiest folks on the fringe always manage to deviously make themselves seem like the base.

So thanks, Amber, for reminding us of our collective responsibility to (politely) shout them back down and promote a civil exchange of views that helps us work towards a better nation and world. That's where I'm "HOPE"ing that we move "FORWARD" to in the next 4 years and remind ourselves why it is that we "BELIEVE IN AMERICA." Yeah. See how I did that? Think about it.

-AWG

UPDATED: Cycling in the Andes Round 1

You may, or may not, be aware of this, but I am kind of into bikes. There's practically no better way to get around Washington, D.C., my adopted home city. They're way cheaper than a car, and yes, you manage to get a little exercise during your commute, so you feel a bit less bad about that sausage McMuffin you're chowing down on en route to work. That is, until the sausage grease gets on your hands, you can't brake properly, and you nearly collide with a MetroBus (whose driver might actually have been trying to hit you the whole time, it's hard to tell.)  I swore at the outset of this blog that I would never turn it into a cycling blog, mostly because I could never compete with the likes of TheWashCycle, Tales from the Sharrows, or even a near-unknown underdog like Bike Snob. What I did not swear, however, is not to do any posts about biking. And while I haven't been in the saddle NEARLY often enough over the past 2 or 3 months, I have found a few opportunities to get out and ride. So aren't you lucky, you get to hear about them! 

To begin, let me fill you in on my developing hypothesis that Ecuador is basically a lot like the United States in the mid-to-late 1990s, or maybe just a weird bizarro-verse US. That's not meant to be an unfavorable comparison by any means, quite the contrary, I think I would have liked to have been in my 20s and not an emo little preteen in that time period, it seems like a pretty good one. But anyway, internet is popular here but not quite as advanced. There hasn't been a terrorist attack recently that's forever altered the national consciousness. A lot of people seem to be of the mind that things in general are going to improve in the future. And perhaps most importantly, EVERYONE is into mountain bikes.

Also pretty much everyone is shorter than me, and their bicycles reflect such.

Ill fit aside, Sunday Ciclopaseo, where the city and a cycling org called Ciclopolis close down Avenida Rio Amazonas from the old city to well north of the airport, is a ton of fun. At the southern terminus, you can see girl rap groups:

Git it girl.

An entire city out enjoying the impeccable Quito summer (and just OWNING one of the most important streets in that part of town):

And some truly excellent dog-walking solutions.

This might have been the first dog I've seen not wearing a doggie sweater.

I should mention that part of the gorgeous weather here is a UV index that's up around 11 on the reg (a real bad day in DC is like 9, maybe,)  and the last time I ended the day with a highly delineated farmer's tan and the same burnt cheekbones I've gotten ever since I was a little boy. Yes, Dad, I was wearing sunscreen. 

Seriously, though, I cannot even conceive of this sort of thing happening in Washington, and this is one of the ways that Ecuador (as well as many other places) just seems so much more advanced than my own country, which I love very sincerely but sometimes in the same way that you love that one relative who always manages to embarrass you at family get-togethers. Nevermind the fact that the mean streets of our nation's capital include several thoroughfares that clear right the heck out on weekends, when US cyclists try and take over a street the result is often something like this (though, credit where credit is due, DC drivers were remarkably patient with us when BikeSnob came to visit. People are so much happier/more patient in the spring.) But that bike lane in the 3rd picture is both color-coded AND marked with a rumble strip, something I think we're still arguing over, at least on the East Coast. Also, a coworker informed me that Quito has just introduced a bike-sharing program. Here's hoping the scofflaw cyclist/dangerous drivers debate doesn't become as salient and mod as it did with Capital Bikeshare's inception. 

So yeah, when I get back, I'll be happy to mount up on Winona the Kona and Consuelo de Ruta again. Oh, and to see all my friends. You guys are important too, don't you ever forget it. But I think I'll miss experiencing the growing sense that cyclists belong on the streets of Quito, and the seeming lack of animosity between the users of different means of transport. 

Of course, the death-defying messengers here ride motorcycles instead of bikes, so maybe that's our problem. So how about it, any of you guys wanna consider dropping that fixie with the chopped handlebars for a 750 cc crotch rocket? Just a thought.

Up next: did I ride a bike down an active volcano? You bet I did. 

-AWG

UPDATE: Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, on October 20th I'll be riding a metric century (62 miles) in the DC branch of the Best Buddies Challenge! Best Buddies International works to make a positive contribution in the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. If you enjoy helping people, my blog, or cycling even a little bit, I hope you'll consider making a donation at my page. Thanks for your support!

Less than two weeks left in Ecuador, second post about Ecuador. I'm a machine.

Look, I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while, OK? It took me forever to get this post for school together and I woulda felt crummy updating my personal blog while leaving the SIS one to wither on the vine (except for all the other people posting in it. But then I realized "hey, remember that time you could just copy one onto the other? again?" Yup, that's what we're doing. So enjoy tonight's extra-long post about Ecuadorian vs US politics and me meeting a really down-to-Earth rich guy. 


A few weeks on from the exciting conclusion of Quito Summer 2012, we participants doubtless find ourselves reflecting on our experiences. "Is that because you just had to turn in a reflection assignment for a significant portion of the course grade," you ask? Hogwash, I don't believe it and neither should you. Up to now you've read first impressions of the Ecuadorian system, informative analyses of geography and policy, thoughtful praise, and incisive criticism. Look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Ecuador and the Andes don't have some VAST challenges to surmount, as well as some seriously questionable politicking from President Correa on down.  

For example, my own research and experience (or a cursory glance at any major media outlet) paints a vivid yet all-too familiar picture: a president who rode into the Palacio del Gobierno on a swell of support from the poor and historically marginalized groups who were to receive, at long last, a seat at the negotiating table. Once in office, however, Mr. Correa surged ahead with his own agenda and about sidelining dissenting voices, attempting legal action against opposition media outlets and branding indigenous organizers as obstructionists who wished, above all, to frustrate Ecuador's entry into the 21st century. Almost overnight, those whose struggles Candidate Correa venerated had become political enemies whom President Correa vilified. What social and political strides indigenous organizations like CONAIE have made ring somewhat hollow when we consider the economic dimension: "Indigenous" and "Poor" are two demographic indicators with a strong correlation.  The country has problems, I don't mind telling you. But I'm going to tell a little story- one that, for me, put everything we had learned and seen into excellent perspective and provided an excellent bookend for the program. If you'd be so kind as to accompany me, or, as they say on the Presidential Palace tour "Sigan, por favor, tengan la bondad..."

...the afternoon had gone as many others before it-- fantastic lunch, museum tours, impromptu games of chicken against taxis in the Centro Historico with which Profe was none too impressed. We entered the magnificent Casa Gangotena boutique hotel just off the Plaza de San Francisco in the historic district and sat down for fresh jugo while we waited to meet our gracious host: Casa Gangotena's owner, one-time Quito mayor, and ecotourism magnate Roque Sevilla. Over juice, coffee, and hors d'oeuvres, Mr. Sevilla regaled us with tales of how his various ventures came into existence and what direction the ecotourism industry may take (turns out it is possible to run an eco-lodge where you never have to touch an insect.) He continued with a self-effacing account of the eruption of the Pichincha volcano just west of Quito during his tenure as mayor, and gave us the inside track on automobile admissions standards in Ecuador. 

Late in the conversation, over the course of giving answers to several of our questions, Roque turned to comparisons between this country and the United States. More specifically, he contrasted the sometimes bullheaded manner of the Correa administration with something a little bit more familiar to us: United States Politics. He couldn't understand, for the life of him, why a country whose people had been behind so many of the innovations that have made the last two centuries what they were suddenly seemed lost in a morass of stubbornness, can't-do spirit, and social movements that, once in motion, seemed to go nowhere. We brainstormed over the myriad reasons why Occupy Wall Street (or DC, or Oakland, or pick a city) had failed, or at least stalled. We contrasted the failure of the electric car due to political, industry and consumer inertia with Ecuador's ambitious plan for rising fuel efficiency standards. And we lamented the reluctance of many of our leaders to risk re-election by actually making the progress they avowedly believed in. And just then, something clicked in my head. For all of its many problems, the current mindset in Ecuador still seems to be that hey, we can get. stuff. done. Diversity actually seems like something that people (avowedly) appreciate, and really believe will result in better decisions, even though it might take far longer. Rural communities don't have to simply put up with the harmful effects of large-scale mining operations just because the mining companies and the governments (sometimes) supporting them are powerful. They can mobilize, be heard, and get results. No, not everything will get done, and many things will seem much better on paper than they will actually turn out. But the belief,  the will, is there, and sometimes I think that the U.S. has lost sight of that will. Granted, any compare/contrast between two so vastly dissimilar countries is going to be hugely inadequate, and neither do I have an ear to the ground in the Palacio to really, really know what's going on. Still, ensconced as it is in the omnipresent Buen Vivir, the politics and zeitgeist of Ecuador provides a few points on life in the 21st century which could, I think, serve as examples for many other, more "advanced" places in the world.

Or maybe I'm just jazzed from all that maté de coca.

--AWG