Booty oil!!

Hello again and second day of work and more interesting things happened...

First we had our first training on what direct action was and for that we all bought some food and gathered around the meeting tables and ate some apples with peanut butter. The interesting part is that I had some peanut butter from Trader Joe's and that was organically made and since the whole office is trying to be healthier about their food they gave it a shot... So after a while one of my coworkers, Lorena, says "wow, this tastes so different, it gets all stuck to your teeth and to the top of your mouth" to what my boss proceeds to say, " girrrlll you just don't know, its because its got all that booty oil and crap that makes your but grow" ha ha ha, to what Lorena responds, " well I might just want to eat a little more of that then"! and we all cracked up. To me this was just an interesting time and as i said before I feel really at home in the organization, and I really feel that I have the potential to grow here and make an impact, which is important! The great thing about work is that we are a family with everyone and I am truly saying this after 2 days of working there, but it is the truth. Although we could call us a very dysfunctional family, so no brady bunch here :)

Also, today I was able to get my first project, which is impressive. I will be working closely with the community organizers for open space, which tries to obtain areas for public use such as parks, community gardens, etc. I will also continue to work with the community gardens and to be honest my bio class that I had has helped a lot and also my garden that was planted with Laurita at the Belmont. after all that gibberish now here is my project. I am tasked with doing door to door community organizing and making people aware of a site that is supposed to be LVEJO's and that the oil company that owned it prior to us was in the process cleaning it. They had to take out an underground broiler and while they did take it out they also spilled oil in this lot which is supposed to be used for a community garden. So for now I will be going around a 3 block radius knocking on doors and making people aware of this problem and also asking questions as of how it affects their health and trying to get them organized to take action and get it cleaned. The other problem is that the City of Chicago is supposed to take this company to court but instead of cleaning it up and passing the bill to the oil company, they have decided that their solution is to put a plastic tarp over it and wait till it settles in the courts, which obviously could take a couple years and with the disgusting smells, the possibility that it could be flammable, and for sure an eye sore, this is unacceptable! Last but not least between all the appeals and all it could take a couple of years for it to get fixed. So this is now my challenge and I have to act quickly because they want me to be as informed as possible by June 6 so i can attend a community meeting in the area and be introduced to the people living there and get my feet wet in this amazing world. Yikes! But as NAS says" never on schedule, but always on time" I should totally be able to pull this one off.

So this is my work for the next couple of weeks, although I also went in the later part of the afternoon to the chamber of commerce with 2 coworkers and started asking some questions about how we can get the businesses in the sector involved in some of our projects. The organization (LVEJO) recently helped the Chicago Transit Authority receive a grant for over a million dollars that was pushed to them by the hard work of Mike in the office, our CTA and public transportation guy, and now that they have the money the do not want to put in the bus route that the money was given to them for. So we are trying to rally up the neighbors and we will be having a "celebration parade" informing the neighborhood that the CTA got the money by building a 12 foot long bus and taking it down the route the actual bus is supposed to have and getting the media involved to create awareness about this issue. Good Stuff!

One of the things I am mostly excited about is that after We had this meeting with the chamber of commerce is that I noticed that my business mind, because my crazy mind is always flying on ways to make money or think how to approach a business to get something from them, will be very helpful in this setting and the skills that I bring to the table can make a difference and be able to see another angle of things that might have of not been seen before.

After all of this Mike, Eduardo, Pete, and I went to go eat tacos and chatted for a while, and then I came back home on my usual 40 minute commute. On the way back I was thinking about how much I have coming to me, how much I am going to learn this summer and how excited I am about it.