Music for Justice: Flobots release an incredible album, Fight With Tools

What happens when you mix a violinist, trumpeter, and groove rhythm musicians with a pair of talented emcees able to spin and wrap words and sounds in a package of progressive rap music? You get an up and coming musical group called the Flobots from Colorado that you should be listening to.

By now, perhaps, you are wondering "Why a music review on the Service-Learning website?" The answer is that part of the work that is done in the Service-Learning Center is to equip students, faculty, staff, and community members with the tools to repair relationships and seek a deeper understanding of one another as we serve and learn with and from each another. In short, in the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College, we are about the business of seeking justice . Flobots' new album, called Fight With Tools, is an innovative blend of sounds driven by thoughtful lyrical rhymes and rhythms that bear witness to the work of justice in the world.

Set to the tone of urgency and outrage, the lyrics from the Flobots album exhort us to reflect and think critically about the status quo and systems that prop up our society. On a mission for peace and restoration, hope and faith remain key themes laced throughout the album. In this society filled with noise and sound bytes, the Flobots album is distinctive for its intelligent use of social commentary for the purpose of change. A popular song from the album is called, "Handlebars," which juxtaposes the path of greed and materialistic violence against that of peace and justice. But digging still deeper into the track list reveals a wealth of sound and commentary that will challenge and refresh those committed to critical thinking. With such an incredible lyrical ballad to introduce the album listeners are primed for a meaningful experience.

"There's a war going on for your mind
Media mavens mount surgical strikes from trapper keeper collages and online magazine racks
Cover girl cutouts throw up pop-up ads
Infecting victims with silicone shrapnel
Worldwide passenger pigeons deploy paratroopers
Now it's raining pornography
Lovers take shelter
Post-production debutantes pursue you in nascar chariots
They construct ransom letters from biblical passages and bleed mascara into holy water supplies

There's a war going on for your mind
Industry insiders slang test tube babies to corporate crackheads
They flash logos and blast ghettos
Their embroidered neckties say "stop snitchin'"
Conscious rappers and whistleblowers get stitches made of acupuncture needles and marionette strings

There is a war going on for your mind
Professional wrestlers and vice presidents want you to believe them
The desert sky is their bluescreen
They superimpose explosions
They shout at you
"pay no attention to the men behind the barbed curtain
Nor the craters beneath the draped flags
Those hoods are there for your protection
And meteors these days are the size of corpses"

From first to last this is a great album. If you are concerned about the work of justice and critical thought, and looking for some truly original and talented musicianship, then this is an a album that you need to check out. Click here to preview some of the Flobots' music.

Summer is Here

So the academic year has ended, what will become of the blog conversation in Bryan's absence? Hopefully Bryan will continue to add to our discussion for at least a few more weeks, until his June wedding at least.

Meanwhile, an update. There are several summer projects underway in the Service-Learning Center, including important but tedious work on recovering un-recorded placements and hours served over the last several years, developing a new strategic plan and potential mission statement (!) for the office and its work, following up on contacts with recent agency partners, and recruiting partnership for the next year, particularly for our StreetFest kick-off in early September, and maintaining communication with student staff who are far-flung around the US and the world. We will be reading a series of summer articles, and hopefully having some discussion of these on the blog.

I gave an address this week to the annual conference of the Christian Reformed Campus Ministry Association. There were 40-50 campus ministers from around the US and Canada, and they heard about how service-learning is part program, part philosophy, and part pedagogy.

I am also preparing for my participation in a panel discussion next weekend at the bi-annual conference on Faith and Service-Learning at Messiah College - the panel will be on the topic of International Service-Learning.

And I began reading an interesting article today on service-learning and its use as a way to enable a set of helpful dispositions toward justice in students. The article, by Brad Hadaway, argues that the spiritual disciplines of historic Christianity provide a set of practices that work to either block unhealthy pre-existing dispositions in students that mitigate against the development of a disposition toward justice, or they work to provide a kind of on-ramp in the development of this disposition toward justice. The reading is a part of a larger project in which I will participate this summer, on the relationship between Christian practices and the art and vocation of college teaching. More on this as the reading continues...

Students of Our Surroundings

In the wave of crime scene investigator shows on television, the message has been communicated loud and clear: human beings always leave traces of themselves wherever they go. This is true in both a physical and spiritual sense. Whether it is our fingerprints, traces of hair or other physical relics of ourselves, our presence is written like a text on the landscapes that we travel. But we also leave ourselves behind in the intangibles like ingenuity and creativity that we apply to the spaces and buildings that we create. Like artists that have a unique style and approach, so also do all human persons as they craft and carve out the space of their lives and affect this world that they wrestle with existence in. I wonder, though, do the places and spaces we live in also affect us in turn. That is, are we merely creators of the architecture of this world, writing a story about ourselves, or do we also assume the position of students and open ourselves up to being affected by buildings, rooms, communities, and neighborhoods? Do we not only write the stories of our lives into this world, but also read from some text outside of ourselves, and seek to learn and grow from it?

In one week I will be graduating from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As I reflect on my time here, I consider the ways in which I have contributed to this community with papers, discussions, and other labors. But I am also drawn to thinking about how I am the product of a very specific kind of place and community in a certain design and time. Explicitly I have been shaped by fellow students, professors, staff, administrators, and friends. But more subtly I believe that this physical space, this collection of buildings, the dynamic movement of people throughout, have also affected me. When I first arrived at Calvin, I was disoriented by the layout of the campus because there was no central building. Instead, campus architects had designed the commons lawn to be the center of campus. Over the years I have grown to be comfortable with this arrangement, even regarding it as second nature. I sometimes have to remind myself that when visitors ask me where places are on campus that it in fact is not an easy place to navigate. I wonder though, has this particular example of structure and design affected me in significant ways. Has this campus taught me to be comfortable with ambiguity, and how the absence of physical buildings can in fact make room for the presence of people and all the wonder that that entails?

If it is true that we not only affect and inscribe ourselves on the places we create, but are also affected by those places and spaces as well, then this should give us pause as we consider our building endeavors, where we live, where we work, and where we play. These are not insignificant decisions. There are myriads of things in life that are outside of our control that will undoubtedly affect and shape us, but we can give some thought in advance to the environments in which we place ourselves and also give ourselves up to being affected by.

How do we "read" neighborhoods and communites?

As a media production major, I have learned to "read" films in an entirely different way than I did prior to my studies. Where once I would have payed particular attention to the dialog and actions that compose any given film, I now take special notice of camera angles and camera movement, lighting, set design, the different layers of audio track, and the list goes on. In short, media production studies have immensely enriched film viewing for me, and more especially, have given me some new and powerful tools to analyze films as I discover new meanings that were previously hidden to me. This has led me to reflect some on how people might "read" communities and neighborhoods.

When we enter a new neighborhood or community, what do our eyes travel to, our ears tune into? How do we process the information in such a way as to deduce certain conclusions about the neighborhood or community? What structures exist already in our minds that direct the information that we take in towards certain conclusions? Do we process different neighborhoods and communities differently? That is, do we ever take in less information because we already have developed certain conclusions or assumptions in our minds?

I wonder, just as my film viewing experience was limited prior to my engaging in media production studies, could the same kind of thing take place in how I interact with a community. That is, is there a simplistic way to read communities as well as an enriched way to interact with neighborhoods and communities? If so, how can I develop this enriched way to understand new communities and neighborhoods? Media production is pretty straightforward, you take a series of classes with good teachers, and you are on the way to developing an enriched view of films. But what kinds of classes are there for living well in neighborhoods and communities? If not formal classes, then what?

A film review: Night and Fog (1956)

A short, thirty minute French documentary film, Night and Fog, eloquently describes and shows the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It was produced by Alain Resnais in 1956, and was the first documentary film to be made about the holocaust. Presenting a mixture of black and white newsreel footage with color footage, Resnais invokes a conversation between the past and the present as he summons viewers to always remember this terrible human tragedy, and also stand on guard against future oppressors, tyrants, and murderers. This film stands in the canon of excellent documentary films, and is one worth watching. Be warned, there are startling images in this short film.

You learned what?...

What exactly is it that we are learning when we do service-learning? It is interesting, few teachers would walk into a classroom and be content with students learning absolutely anything. Instead, syllabi are designed and goals are set wherein content is constrained so as to teach students certain things and not other things. The result, no one class can ever provide students with the whole picture, but it can keep the standards high and set those students on a path towards developing a rich and deep body of knowledge. But then we come to the issue of service-learning, wherein the boundaries and goals are not nearly so clear.

To offer some explanation of service-learning, it as a reciprocal exchange wherein the dichotomy of server and learner are deconstructed to reveal that serving and learning happens simultaneously, and so the traditional conceptions of a person helping and a person being helped are done away with in favor of a more dynamic and organic model that reflects the fluid nature of human relationships. It is relationships that are at the bottom of service-learning. In every experience of service we form a relationship with someone, someplace, or something, and therein we consciously or unconsciously set in motion a process whereby we both affect and are effected.

Questions quickly arise, though, as to what service and learning are and look like inside of this model. I would venture to say that for better or worse we have a clearer conception of what acts of service might look like (though in a future post this would be another issue worth exploring), but we are not so clear about the learning part of the service-learning experience.

Each year the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College organizes and implements a large scale event called Streetfest for new, incoming students to the college. During this event, students spend most of the day visiting a local area non-profit, helping them with whatever needs or projects the organization might have for them that day. After completing some work with the organization, students gather in small groups to reflect on their experiences, discussing what they have learned. My question is, what kinds of things are students supposed to learn? I am not asking what students must walk away saying they have learned, but rather, is service-learning so open that any and all kinds of lessons learned are desirable? Or rather, does the pedagogy of service-learning actually intend something, in particular, to be learned?


Perhaps the answer to this question is academic based service-learning wherein teachers utilize service-learning as a tool to accomplish the goals of their course. In this classroom setting, a teacher can direct students to reflect on certain things so as to form conclusions about specific material, issues, or questions. But does service-learning then also take place outside of this structured classroom environment? At Calvin College, beyond academic based service learning, there are also service-learning programs such as Streetfest and community partnerships within the residence halls that students take part in. In these programs, the settings are far less structured and defined. Does this mean that the domain of possible lessons learned is broadened for this type of service-learning? Or could it be that service-learning is not a nuetral practice, and regardless of whether teachers or classrooms are involved, the very act of service-learning disposes students towards learning something particular? Could it be that, just as the pedagogy of service-learning is born out of a deconstruction of the traditional binaries of server and served, and places a subsequent emphasis on appreciating the dynamics of relationships wherein exchange takes place that it also then inscribes that same disposition in students in the form of learning about close analysis, an appreciation for complexity and tension, and perhaps, just maybe, even political convictions relating to seeking justice. If this is the case, then a whole series of questions follow, most interesting among them, though, is whether service-learning is, in fact, the bi-partisan, safe, cute, tame, and nice pedagogy that so many seem to think it is, or is it something that is volatile and risky as it threatens to disrupt the status qou, set practitioners ill at ease in their previously unexamined thoughts and opinions, and call into question the very systems of society that give rise to and support the problems facing any given community?

Food Crisis

This photo was taken by Tyler Hicks of the New York Times. It is a picture of a Haitian gathering food or anything else of any use from the massive dumping grounds outside of Port-au-Prince in Haiti following rising food costs in the capital city and widespread hunger that has sparked protests. For a snapshot of the food crisis taking place in Haiti and throughout the world, see this New York Times article.