Entry #17: Voting Registration

For this week NYPIRG meeting, we discussed registering to vote. This was one of the issues that NYPRIG has been tackling since the beginning of the semester. The reason was the majority of the students at the campus are not registered because of their viewpoints on the government system as well as who is running the campaign or just don’t have an interest in voting in general. So, NYPIRG decided to throw an open table event to all colleges so students could sign up to vote and also sign up in being part of the NYPIRG program. Friday, May 6th was our City TECH voting registration event on the ground floor in the Namm building that went from 11 am – to 3 pm.

During the voter’s registration event, one of the biggest challenges was getting students to sign up to vote since there weren’t as many students in the building and most of the students have online classes which made it a lot harder to collect a handful of signed sheets. Luckily, we were able to get a decent amount of sign sheets by walking around the school, approaching students about signing up to vote, and persuading them why it is important to vote and register to vote. After the voter registration event, the one thing that I learned from this event was you have to apply pressure to get the mission done.

 

 

 

Entry #16: App Review (TED App)

TED app is a free official application of nonprofit video-driven organization knows as TED Talks. Using the application allows users to browse and explore over 1600 of talks from around the world. May topics also included speeches from various areas including technology, Science, entertainment, design, sociology and many more areas. They also included talks from various peoples including educational radicals, medical mavericks, business gurus, educational radicals, tech geniuses and music legends gathered from TED events around the world. These talks had over 100 subtitle languages.

Since my phone isn’t compatible to install the Sol LeWitt app, I was able to install the TED app. The tap which is available for both iPhone and Android phones is a tool program for browsing, downloading, and viewing TED talks. These TED talks, provide users with thousands of inspirational speeches. The topic of speeches ranges from sociology, technology, entertainment, science, design, and many more.

As I was exploring the app for myself to get a feel of it, I noticed a few things. The first thing that will show as you open the app is asking you two questions. The first question is about the type of topics you are interested in and what are you looking for based on your interest. What I like about this feature is how the program provides customer service and makes sure that the user can get whatever they need happens. As you arrived at the main home page, you are provided with different varieties of videos based on any topic. Also, the videos run time is around 18 mins and less. And a big plus is that the app provides new videos that are going on in the world as the war in Ukraine and has accessibility features such as subtitles that are impressively extensive and, for some talks, available in more than 50 languages.

Overall, I enjoyed this app a lot. From the designs being simplistic and easy to use for all users as well as being very resourceful for individuals who lives in different areas of the world, Korea, India, Mexico, Africa, etc. I would recommend to the people to try the app themselves just to understand how great of an app this is.

 

Entry #15: LL97 Rally for NYC Earth Day

LL97 which stands for Local Law 97 is a regulation set out by the New York City council as part of the Climate Mobilization Act. Thursday, April 21st was the LL97 Act really for NYC Earth Day at the City Hall that nypirg had to attend. The purpose of this rally was to protect Local Law 97 as well as protect NYC’s Green New Deal from buildings that are not 25,000 square as well as meet the new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.

As a person who lives in New York City and have seen gradual changes that occur in our transportation, to the buildings that are being built in an open area available, I believe that the government should take into consideration when it comes to providing eco-friendly energy and fossil fuels with everything not only to the people but to the city itself to prevent collateral damage that may affect everyone in the New York State in the next 20 to 50 years.

Entry #14: Ecofest 2022

Ecofest on April 28th, 2022 was an event that honors Earth Day as well as City TECH’s 8th annual event. This event could be done either virtually or in-person so I decided to do it in the comfort of my own home since they ran from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.  I also went in person but they have canceled it since nobody attended in person which is understandable. Anyway, Ecofest is about highlighting environmental issues as well as the climate crisis that has been researched by professionals who priorly focus on them to spread the information to the students, faculty, and staff members. Also, they explained how they’re going to make changes when it comes to environmental and climate issues such as having programs, forming business alliances, making eco-technology that can prevent those issues so on and so forth.
After the event was over, the biggest lesson that I learned is to always keep your environment clean at all times. These environmental issues have mostly been caused by people. For example, creating buildings that contain toxic chemicals to littering the streets that we live on or places that we visit daily. As humans, we should do a better job in maintaining our environment pollution levels at minimum so it doesn’t affect the ecosystem.

Entry #13: Democracy Meeting

As members of NYPIRG, we not only attended meetings with our supervisor, but we have to attend to meetings with another supervisor of the NYPIRG program. That meant interns had to attend not only chapter meetings but also student leader meetings that were ran by supervisor Kevin Dugan. In these student leader meetings, all of the interns have to attend all of the meetings that are mandatory to go to. For example, one of the student meetings we had to attend was called the “democracy meeting”. During the democracy meetings, we discussed issues relating to political issues. One example talked about voter registration passing an act or Bill that the higher-ups would approve. They also discussed what can we do as a group when it comes to making changes or spreading awareness toward political issues.
A prime example would be making the assembly members sponsor the bill for the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act. To get that message across, we have to call our nearest Senate within our area or call the governor person like Kathy Hochul with a script we must read saying how this bill needs to be passed for whatever reason being. Even though I do not enjoy making phone calls to the people who run the government system in New York, it is part of my job to make sure that they are doing their jobs right so the population doesn’t be affected by it negatively.

Entry #12: Virtual Museum Event

For my museum assignment, I decided to go to a virtual art event. The first Museum that I wanted to check out was the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea. The exhibition event was called “Artists in the Times: Korean Modern and Contemporary Art – Since the late 1970s” which contains a collection of Korean artwork from the past and present. It also included learning and understanding how did it evolve within the Korean culture of Art for the better good and the type of impact it made within the Korean culture in general.

Star with the first piece of artwork that caught my eyes which was called Untitled by Kwon Yongwoo. This art was made with translucent colors of blue and gray paint mixed with ink and gouache impregnated on the back of the paper on the Korean paper to seep through. What made this art piece so special to me was the material used to create it using Korean paper. I decided to research the paper and had no idea that the paper would look organic if that makes sense. Korean paper also known as hanji is a traditional handmade paper made from the mulberry tree ancient style. The Korean paper made the art have more depth in its artwork because of the texture of the paper itself which provided a unique look.

The second piece of art that I like that grabbed my attention was called “Panoramic View of the Eye of the Times” by MMCA. These art pieces show a Korean art style called Minjung Art. Minjung Art was a South Korean political and populist art movement made in 1980 after the Gwangju Massacre (May 18, 1980 – May 27, 1980) which was a mass protest against the South Korean military government for killing the citizen in the city of Gwangju, South Korea.
What I liked about the art pieces related to Minjung art was they don’t follow the traditional art style of Korea. The beauty of art that I always appreciate is you can always bend the rules of traditional styles and make your version of it. This would have multiple influences across the globe and turning something new and refreshing for the viewers to get the message across with your art, which these artists did to represent the debate against democracy and nationalism.

The final art piece that caught my attention was called Deoksu Palace-Seoul by I’m Sangbin.
This artwork showed a mixture of natural and artificial, the past and the present, modern and traditional art, and two different countries. What I like about this artwork is that it does a great job of blending in all of the different elements to where you don’t get confused or feel like one of the elements is dominating or feels like it’s being dominated by others. That is one of the most challenging things accomplished as an artist was knowing that there’s no telling whether you have merged them well or not.

Overall, the virtual Museum event has been a good experience to visit as well as an eye-opener for me knowing that now I can use their art pieces as inspiration for my projects.

Entry #11: Period Documentary

Thursday April 14th at 12:30 p.m. was the last of the menstrual product Drive event and to end it off, nypirg had a documentary showing related to menstrual health issues. This documentary was called Pandora’s Box: Lifting the Lid on Menstruation. The documentary tells stories of many females across the globe dealing with the crisis of menstrual inequality as well as period poverty, and lack of accessibility to menstrual products. The documentary also explained how these females were able to make changes within that issue by being the voice, innovators and an activist so other females don’t have to go through those struggles. It also showed to a degree where it doesn’t affect their lives severely in the long run as well as spreading the word globally on Menstrual Equity. These are women as well as girls who are telling their experiences of menstrual struggles were coming from 3rd world countries like Mumbai, Africa, the United States, the UK, etc.

After the documentary, Jenna and the rest of the interns have to talk for 10 minutes about what we learned after watching the documentary. From what I’ve seen, I learned that every issue needs to be addressed no matter how big or small it is because if we don’t get addressed them as soon as possible, it will cause a lot of chaos worldwide. I would never expect having no access to tampons or tampons, in general, would gradually be a big problem where it has caused many uproars throughout the nation. But then again, female problems were never addressed anyways so I wasn’t surprised at all knowing that society has been treating females unfairly here and there. Nobody male or female should not go through any type of struggles when it comes to getting products that is a necessity that we all must have to prevent accidents that comes from our natural bodies.

Entry #10: New Deal 4 CUNY March

On March 6th, CUNY and SUNY advocates from different schools joined together on this day to have a March based on the New Deal 4 CUNY bill in Downtown Brooklyn, NY. So, what is the New Deal 4 CUNY? The New Deal 4 CUNY is a state bill by the New York State Legislature to increase the ratio of faculty and mental health counselors to full-time students and requires certain amounts of tuition to be replaced by federal, state, and city funds.

As I arrived at the New Deal 4 CUNY March, I noticed how crowded the area was and had people of all ages. This included people my age, kids, parents, and elders. I’ve also noticed government officials like NYC Counselor Higher Education Chair Eric Dinowitz, NYS Senator Andrew Gounardes and Brooklyn Councilmember Justin Brannan attended the March and made their speeches based on the New Deal 4 CUNY bill and event. After 2 hours of many individuals speaking about the deal, the real event began. What I’m referring to was the march itself which was the best of the event. The crowd marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and back chanting passed the New Deal bill. As a result of the March happening, on March 10th, the New York City Council passed a resolution which is a very good start for a new beginning for all college students across New York State.

Overall, I am glad that I participated in this March knowing we the people have made it possible to make sure their message was not only bring awareness, but also delivered the message to the higher-ups to make changes when it comes to having a better educational system, but also a better college lifestyle for all students no matter the age, race, and gender.

Entry #9: Menstrual Product Drive Donation

For this chapter meeting, my supervisor Jenna as well as all of the interns have a meeting about the menstrual product drive donation event. The menstrual product drive donation event was about bringing awareness to menstrual health as well as collecting menstrual and hygiene products for those who are unfortunate to provide for themselves. The reason behind throwing the menstrual product drive donation event is most shelters across the states don’t receive enough government funds to put towards products or any list of priorities that people need. Especially with female products such as pads and tampons since they are the least important necessity items to have but it is as serious and important to have as a female periods can occur at any moment.

So in order for the students to support the issue related to menstrual products, nypirg has thrown an event from 3/21 to 4/11 where we collect menstrual health and other hygiene products such as tampons, pads, menstrual cups, soaps, razors, toothpaste, hair products, and whatever other hygiene products in boxes located on certain areas of the Namm building. Also, we all have to go to classes with a script addressing the issue and how students can help. This was the most nerve-wracking thing I have done so far.