 Hi everyone, I'm here with Tuka Sokai today and she's a master's of public health student at UC Davis and Tuka, thank you so much for being here. Can you tell me a little bit about the media project that you're working on? Yeah, of course So right now I'm doing oral health outreach in Yolo and Sacramento County And I'm doing focus groups to get feedback on oral health information pamphlets and the goal is to make a health resource that can be distributed to clinics to community centers and to the general public about oral health maintenance specifically for older adults and the goal is to do what we call community-based participatory research. So it's you know working directly with the community to get feedback to make health information pamphlets and resources that respond directly to the needs of the community. That's really interesting and in an age where we see so much health-related information going online why was it important to put something in print? Yeah, so this health resource is directed for older adults who may not have access to computers low-income individuals who may be going to a clinic and want to walk out with something in hand, something that can be passed within communities and so the goal is to have something in print because there aren't a lot of resources about oral health that are tailored to specific communities. So some of the things that are on the pamphlet include clinics and phone numbers to these clinics that take low income and uninsured individuals. It also has some basic oral health tips like avoiding tobacco products, having healthy nutrition, avoiding sugary beverages. So there's all these different tips that can be given to a range of audiences. It's all really good health tips. And I'm curious you mentioned community-based participatory research. How is that different than other more conventional approaches to research? Yeah, so a lot of the research that I've done in the past has involved reviewing literature that has been published already and looking at ideas that people have about what the community wants. This way I can go directly to the individuals of Yolo and Sacramento County, which is a very diverse population. We have a lot of farm workers. We have those of all different ethnicities and backgrounds, everyone on every level of the socioeconomic status. So with a diverse population, you want to see what the people want because you don't want to make assumptions and be wrong. And you also want to make sure the information that you're giving is tailored to the audience it's going to be given to. So with that, I'm doing focus groups at community centers like the Davis Senior Center or Knights Landing One Health Clinic. So going to different areas within these communities and seeing what feedback I can get on what people want. So for example, I had a focus group at the Senior Center just a week ago and there was a lot of interest in information about implants and dental implants. So that's something that I'm going to be looking at incorporating now. That's really interesting. So the community said that dental implants were important to them. Is that can you give us another example of how the information you're providing for older adults in Yolo County might be different than just what might be out there targeted towards parents with young children who need braces or something like that? Definitely. So for older adults, there is different health needs and individuals are susceptible to different diseases as well. Specifically oral cancer or tooth decay at an older age. So with that, we're seeing what sort of diseases or concerns the community has. Something that is specific to Yolo and Sacramento County is our fluoridation rates and we have lower fluoridation rates than other counties in California. Not the lowest but still, you know, we have some improvement to do. So the goal would be to advocate for using fluoridated toothpaste or even fluoride-lined floss and that way you can strengthen the enamel of your teeth. And so that's something that is a quick fix and a prevention measure for certain diseases. Great. Thank you so much for that information. So as you're working on this project, what would be the best outcome that you could hope for? So the goal is to create a template of a health resource outreach method that can be used for a range of other diseases as well or other prevention measures. So thinking about the opioid epidemic and making resources about how we can respond to that or chronic diseases like diabetes or heart failure. So by talking to the community, seeing what information they want and then making this template of a way to give quality resource, it can not only be applied to, you know, other dental pamphlets for other counties, but it can also be used for a range of health concerns. Well, it sounds like it's going to be a wonderful resource and a great model for the future. Thank you so much, Tuka, for being here. Thank you so much, Elena. Hi, so we have Elena Marie here today from the Community Development Graduate Group at UC Davis. So Elena, tell us about your research. Hey, Tuka. It's good to be here with you. So my project is a collaborative project under the leadership of the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, which is down in Oxnard on the Central Coast of California. But before we get into that, I wanted to actually ask you if you like strawberries. Oh, yes, I do like strawberries. So I love strawberries also. And for our viewers out there as well, if you buy strawberries that were grown in California this spring, this summer, there's a really good chance that they were harvested by an indigenous farm worker from southern Mexico who comprised now one in three farm workers in the state of California. And in the Oxnard area, with the community organization I'm collaborating with, there's 20,000 Mixteco people who make up the community there, many of them working in the strawberry fields. So we're talking about folks who have come here from Mexico to pursue survival for their families, right? For you, Tuka, for your viewers, what language do you think most people are thinking of when they think of folks who have moved here from Mexico? Spanish. Spanish, right? That's most of us in the United States would assume that families who have moved here from Mexico are Spanish speaking. But for many Mixteco people and other indigenous immigrants, they speak only their indigenous language and very little Spanish and perhaps no Spanish or English at all. So imagine, I mean, if you spoke a pretty rare language in California, where do you think some of the most important places would be to have an interpreter? And I don't mean like your kid trying to work it out for you, trying to give you some information, but a trained professional who can make sure that you get accurate information. Yeah, probably health clinics. Health clinics? For sure. What else? Like public places or political areas? Yeah, so maybe if you want to participate in your community actively. Yeah, what about if you have children going and meeting with a child's teacher could be really important? And then you can also think of settings like the workplace. When people get training about how to handle really dangerous chemicals like pesticides in agricultural work, those are all places where language access or having an interpreter is really important. Now the good thing is that both state and federal law protect the right to have an interpreter in all of these settings, certainly in health clinics, in the courts, in our public schools, for workplace safety trainings, like training is about sexual harassment, and organizations like MICOP, my community partner, have been for over 10 years really pioneering training indigenous language interpreters. Yet what they're finding is that people are still being denied interpreters in some of the most critical parts of their life, like having surgery, or giving birth in a hospital, or getting access to critical information at work about their rights. And so that's really what our project is about. It's about figuring out why is this still happening when there's a legal right to an interpreter and when trained interpreters are available and how can we break through those barriers? And part of that puzzle is making sure that people know when they have the right to an interpreter and how they can advocate for that right to be respected. And in focus groups, farm workers, mystical speaking farm workers let us know that radio was really the best avenue to do that. And what folks explained is, look, I work 12 hours a day, often seven times a week, coming on the evening or a weekend to a Know Your Rights workshop, which is traditionally how a lot of this information has been provided, is not realistic. But Micop runs their own radio station called Radio Indigena. It's a low-power FM station that people listen to while they're at work in the fields. So we're working together. We have an advisory group, not just of Micop interpreters and advocates, but of Indigenous leaders around the state who are guiding the project. And we're working together to develop a radio show that will let people know what their language rights are and how they can advocate for them to be respected. Great. So what are your goals for the radio show? I mean, what sorts of information is most important for you to have on this channel? That's a great question. And we're still figuring that out. That's something that will definitely be up to the community. We're really looking at our focus group data and what people said they wanted. A lot of people in the focus groups expressed uncertainty about when they had the right to ask for an interpreter or what those requirements for an interpreter were. Is it okay if they get an untrained staff member to who kind of sort of speaks their language to come in and help them? What about when people are given a Spanish-speaking interpreter when they actually speak Mixteco? So we really want to make sure that we respond exactly to what people said was most important to them. We're still figuring out, give the creative format to that. We might do a call-in show. We might do some radio theater. We might also include some oral history sharing because language justice, of course, is broader than just getting access to an interpreter, but it's about preserving the language. Great. Well, I wish you the best of success with your radio project and reaching out to your community. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Hi, guys. So welcome to another episode of Davis Night Live. I'm here with Donna Devami, DDS MPH, and we're going to talk a little bit about her project and what's the motivation behind it and what she hopes to accomplish. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. So can you start off by telling us a little bit about your project? Sure, I'd love to. So I'm starting a project working with Syrian refugees who are currently residing in Northern Iraq in a refugee camp. So as you must guess already, their situations are pretty difficult. My focus on the project is intervention of oral health for these refugees who have been displaced from their homes and are currently facing really hard conditions. And we really want to focus on the overlap of oral health and mental health. The reason for this focus is because historically these two fields and just in general, dentistry unfortunately has been very siloed from the rest of the medical focuses and just in general overall body health. And it shouldn't be this way because it really is a critical portion of overall health and plays such a huge role in our functioning and our mental health. And this connection has really been lost over the years and we really want to focus on bettering both of these areas, dental and mental health for these communities. Wow, that's really interesting. So you're mentioning about how social interactions can also be affected, I'm assuming, through this mental health deficit that results as a lack of oral health. Exactly. So these people who are currently refugees in the camp are facing such hard conditions just from being uprooted from their country of origin and having a lack of resources that it's really easy to not prioritize maintaining oral health, especially when all of the resources might not be accessible at the time. And there may be other seemingly pressing issues and that just gets brushed under the rug. But we really want to emphasize how this maintenance of oral health doesn't just have short-term or daily benefits. It really has long-term benefits on your quality of life and your social interactions and your self-confidence and your mental health and your body function and your ability to do everyday tasks. And really putting it into this picture and perspective for refugees, we firmly believe can strengthen their overall quality of life. Wow, that's really noble. We talked a little bit about why you wanted to do this overlap between mental and oral health. Last week, we had Tuka Zukaia here on the show. She talked a little bit about how her target demographic is the Sacramento-Yolo County older adult population. Why did you choose the refugee population? I love that you asked that. There's multiple reasons we want to focus on the refugee population. Well, currently, the refugee population around the world is at a really bit large number. And I believe there's around 60 million refugees and they're constantly being displaced. And we really feel like this population, regardless of where they are, has a very different story. And really it's just so different from any other struggling population because of the fact that they've been completely uprooted from their own countries in very alarming ways. So we felt like they need a really specialized attention because the trends that we find with them and interactions that work with them are really different from other published research that's already out there. So this is why we focused on the refugee population. I'm personally a daughter of two immigrants so it resonates with me in that sense as well because I can really see how lives can be affected when you have to make such major changes. So all that makes sense. My last question for you is, what do you hope to achieve through this project? What are some of your end goals that you would like to see happen? Yeah. So I'm currently working on an informational pamphlet that will be part of a big intervention that will be implemented within this refugee camp when our team goes out there physically and works with these refugees in group settings one-on-one over a span of six weeks. So my small portion in this big picture is to create really easy culturally friendly handouts and just putting together a curriculum that will then be implemented for them. And we're doing this through various collection of information. We're doing literature reviews to see what has been successful in the past. We are studying what sort of culturally appropriate approaches will resonate with our population most in order to hopefully make this a long-term change in their lives, not just short-term, because this is something we want them to maintain for as long as possible. Wow. Sounds really great. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Today we have Deep Bhakti with us. And I first off want to thank you so much for being with us today. Of course. We're really happy to have you. Thank you. Thank you. So I've heard a little bit about your project and I really want our viewers to know more about it because it seems so interesting. Why don't you go off and start telling us about what your project is? Sure. So I will be working with the international medical graduate demographic. And most of them tend to be refugees from Middle Eastern countries. But some are also from countries in Europe, such as Europe, I mean, sorry, such as England. And my project is to kind of locate and see the barriers that are present for that specific demographic to come to the US and practice medicine. Because a quarter of all physicians already have graduated from foreign nations with their medical degrees. But that number is not increasing because the process to get here and practice medicine is getting harder and harder. Very cool. So how do you think this is going to aid our country in lessening the physician shortage that we currently have? Right. So as you mentioned, we do have a physician shortage. And the physician shortage is kind of not balanced in a sense that most of the shortage comes from a lack of primary care physicians. And when you look at the statistic, most of the international medical graduates that do have the privilege of practicing medicine in the United States tend to practice in impoverished areas and tend to practice as primary care physicians. There's also a study that has been done that projects that the physician shortage will be as far as 90,000 physicians in 2020. And we have so many international medical graduates that come to this country and aren't allowed to practice medicine and therefore have to take their talents to a different field. A lot of them end up driving taxis. A lot of them work in gas stations. And at the end of the day, this phenomenon is called brain waste because we are wasting a huge untapped source of potential that can help our country fix this physician shortage. Yeah, that's so unfortunate. So where are you focusing your project? Is this a nationwide approach or...? Sure, yeah. So in the U.S., there's two areas where there are the most amount of international medical graduates that are not practicing medicine. Those two states are Texas and California. My efforts we focused in California. I grew up here. I have a connection to this state and I really wanted to pick this state to do my research. And hopefully by the end, we can not only figure out how many international medical graduates we have here in California, but hopefully we can also bring this to a higher level and kind of show the importance. Definitely. So how do you choose to present your work and how are you guys really getting into this, reaching out to this community and helping them get on their feet? Sure. So there's this organization. It's called ECFMG. And that's the organization that is kind of like the guider in terms of for international medical graduates to tell them what paperwork they need to fill out, what tests they need to take if they're missing any class coursework. So reaching out to that organization to find out how many international medical graduates have contacted them, as well as how many international medical graduates there are all over the country in terms of concentration in California and Texas. So we're trying to work closely with that organization as well as one in Texas. That sounds great. I wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being with us. No problem. Hi there. So today we have Madeline Weeks and she's going to tell us a little bit about her research. So Madeline, what are you working on? Well, Sally, I am a geographer and as a geographer I'm fascinated by global differences and connectedness. And specifically I'm studying chocolate as a lens to understand interlocked human environmental relationships. My social media studies project is specifically looking at how the craft or American chocolate scene is transforming our concept of what makes chocolate. Since over the past decade there's been this emergence of craft chocolate which is trying to transform our concept of chocolate being this very global commodity that has grown thousands of miles away by smallholder producers often living in impoverished situations compared to the chocolate makers who are in North America and Europe. And the craft chocolate movement is trying to make that divide closer by emphasizing social justice, fair trade. And in my research I'm arguing that's not always the case. And I'm looking at social media as the space for on the one hand bridging that divide between the producers and the consumers by making it very visible where the chocolate is coming from. You can see images on your Instagram account of the cacao farmers, the origins, the makers. And on the other hand I'm arguing that this is still a very curated media site that is a representation that may be very different from a lived reality. And in my project specifically I'm actually trying to co-opt Instagram to change how it's used. And that's in three forms. First, I'm using my own Instagram to transform this space as more than just a marketing platform by talking about more of the deeper, the dark side of chocolate, the ethical issues. Second, I'm using Instagram as a way to bring in the marginalized voices by giving room for the hidden narratives to have a story that is unbiased since I'm not a chocolate maker. I'm a student. And third, I'm working with local organizations to get them onto the mainstream media platform so that it's not so dominated by this very Eurocentric or Western approach. That's really interesting. I know that just with the nature of chocolate you're working internationally. So what groups, what communities are you working with? Most specifically I'm working with an organization called Pro Peten. It's an environmental NGO in the district of Peten, Guatemala that has recently started a program to grow cacao as a form of sustainable livelihoods for these peasant communities. And in addition to trying to export that cacao to the specialty or this craft chocolate market the organization has been helping the local women's group actually make chocolate. So that's a really exciting thing where they're not just exporting this raw commodity they're adding more value at origin. And in a couple weeks I will be returning to this organization to do a series of activities and one of them is actually a social media workshop to help them set up an Instagram account or see if this is even the right approach. It's a very open-ended research. What would you, a lot of times we, it seems like your work is really working on like kind of peeling back the layers of what we're shown and then what reality is. And I'm curious what would you want consumers to know? I would say as you've alluded it's never as we perceive and to ask as many questions. For me chocolate is the perfect conduit to be very curious and it can act as a catalyst for change as long as we cannot go along with the norm. It has to be something that we question and we see it as not a one-size-fits-all solution. All right, last question just to just a quick one. Is there a chocolate maker we should look to as a better alternative to the norm? There are so many makers out there and that's one of the beautiful things of craft chocolate is it really is also an artist's movement and to be constantly discovering not only different origins of where the cacao has grown but different makers. There are few in Sacramento, there are few in the East Bay. Chocolate is all around us. Great, well thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to the Geography Community Development Show. This is Sally Neese, the community development student going to tell us about her research. So Sally I'll let you take it off. Thank you, yeah. So my research is all focused around climate change which we know is a really big problem. In fact the biggest problem we have you know ever really faced as a society and within that more specifically the way we educate and talk about climate change is really a problem. We have had 30 years of public education around climate change and people are doing really little. Most people don't move beyond kind of like minimal inconvenience in terms of taking action on climate change. And this isn't just you know this isn't just random. Most of climate change has actually most of climate change education has been based on this idea that if you just tell people about something they'll do something about it. So we tend to think that knowledge equals action on a subject and study after study after study has shown that that's just simply not true. You can give people information on it on a subject and it doesn't necessarily cause them to take action and so especially with climate change there are some really particular barriers to taking action. You know there's been studies that show that have shown that climate change education can actually lead to things like pessimism, apathy and ultimately disengagement. You know if you just educate people about climate change sometimes that can cause them to kind of shut down and so my research has all been focused on how do we do this better? How do we change the way we educate people about climate change? And we know that with climate change specifically in terms of action there's some really specific barriers people have to taking action. A big one is just disempowerment. People generally feel really disempowered and it's hard for them to find opportunities or find the courage to take action. Also there's this phenomenon called psychological distancing which is kind of like out of sight, out of mind. Like climate change isn't affecting my personal life and so you know it's not really a problem. You know we tend to focus on the problems that are more directly in our face. Also the way we've continuously, especially in the U.S. the way we've continued to frame climate change is really problematic. It's become politicized which really marginalizes a lot of the country in terms of mobilization. And also consistently in the U.S. climate change is really centered. The conversation really centers usually middle class white folks which are not the folks who are going to be impacted the most by climate change. And so and then the last, I mean the last barrier, another really big barrier in terms of climate education or climate action actually is just emotional distress. Studies have actually shown that like people intentionally, it's so hard to think about climate change. It has such an emotional toll for people that they actually don't, they intentionally don't think about it. And so my research is all around how do we do this better? And the argument I'm making is that we really need education on climate change needs to shift from being just inform, like education for the purpose of information to being education for the purpose of action. And there's a lot of, I mean this is not totally unique. There's a lot of people working on this but my contribution is really around using digital storytelling. Digital storytelling involves, you know, kind of common people making first person narrative videos. And so it approaches, you know, it allows people to feel like agents who are writing a story and it elicits a sense of empowerment. And it's also expressive so it helps people work through the emotions that they're having. And it shifts the story or it shifts the problem of climate change from being this global thing that I have no interaction with to being like a local thing with local vulnerabilities but also local solutions. Great. And where are you working specifically if it's a local approach? Yeah, yeah. So I'm working with a group down in Watsonville. Watsonville is one of the communities that's gonna, you know, we know that the impact of climate change is not going to be evenly distributed and low income communities are gonna be impacted the most and also youth are gonna be impacted the most even though both youth and low income people have contributed the least. And so Watsonville is an agricultural community on the Central Coast and I'm working with an environmental youth group down there. Wonderful. Well, we would love to hear more about your project and support it along the way. So we'll look forward to updates. Great. Thank you. Hi there. And today we have Inche Chen with us. She is a master's student in the International Agricultural Development Department at UC Davis. And we're here to talk about your research. So we could start and maybe you could just tell me about the problem or question that you're trying to address. Yeah, so thank you, Mac. So we're happy to be here. So my project is about plant spreading in rural area in Japan. So plant spreading this term has recently especially in these 20 years has been popular in Japanese society is because the society in Japan they are facing an ongoing and serious depopulation especially in rural areas. So one of the reasons of the depopulation is because the young people after they graduate from high school they will they keep migrating out of town and move to the big city like Tokyo or Osaka is because the jobs opportunity and or advanced educational opportunity are highly highly concentrated in those big cities. So people just move out of town. That's one reason. And the other reason is that as many as many people know that Japan has a very low burst rate. Yeah, so this low burst rate further goes seen the society the society is facing a rapid aging. So as you can imagine, like some rural area in Japan over half of population are over 65 years old. So a lot of school in Japan they predicted that maybe 20 years or 30 years later like in the near future a lot of many rural area will disappear entirely. So this is the main problem of now rural areas facing. So my project is also related to this problem. Interesting. That's so fascinating. People moving away and also an aging population. Yeah. So tell me how do you plan to research this issue? Yeah. So as I just mentioned the problem now the local government in Japan they are very active and trying to build up the brand the image of the community and try to promote that brand and to attract young people move back not particularly move back move to the rural areas. So but traditionally the problem is traditionally the this kind of local brand building is is dominated by through a more top-down approach like government staff that will invite designer or professionals such as community developers and so on like a small group of people they come outsider they come and interpret how they see the community and then they will design and plan the image of the community. For example they may like develop design the logo or color of the community but sometimes the problem is there's a gap that like outsider how they interpret the community will be very different how local people think about their community. So my project will be like I would like to cooperate with local NGOs and try to build out the more bottom-up approach that trying to build a media platform in the form of like news website that all the local people they can become the co-authors of the websites. So they can like write article about how they think about community what is good to live there so it's not outsider like interpret how this community is but it's like more bottom-up like really reflect the true image of the community. That's fantastic. I just have one last quick question for you what do you see your role to be as a researcher in creating this type of conversation? So yeah it's a good question. So I feel like my role will be more like the main actor would not be me I'm more like like help them if they are needed so I hope the whole actor of this project will be local people so I'm like assistant more like the role. Awesome. Great well thank you so much for telling us about it I wish you all the luck in the world. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hi everyone good morning so welcome to our show so today we're glad to have like our guest Mac Pencook so she's going to introduce like sharing her projects in the community development so Mac can you share this about your project? Sure thank you so much for having me so my project is kind of born out of the question what is shelter for those experiencing homelessness in Sacramento and according to whom and I like to use a little example to like better explain so there was this RV parked in my neighborhood a while ago and people were obviously living in it right and so as I walked by one day I saw a note pinned to the door of the RV that said move it or lose it and to me this kind of really illustrates my research project because that note on that RV kind of is a representation of one of the many ways that we communicate what is and what is not acceptable shelter and so this is a time when more and more people are being ticketed for sleeping in tents or for living in their cars or are assaulted in the middle of the night as they sweep on sleep on the sidewalk and so this misunderstanding about what shelter is is really causing a perilous situation and so that was kind of the impetus for my research project right and so I am trying to communicate with my research this systematic problem in a way that galvanizes an audience to take like large structural change so what specifically you have done with your project sure yeah so I started research in the summer of 2017 and did participant observation and interviews and then I'm also reading a lot of kind of like local media as well as sorry like academic literature and then also doing a policy review and so that kind of like sets the stage for me to really ground everything like firmly ground everything in a historical and socio-spatial context to take a like a to better explain shelter and take a thematic approach to the subject so as to not absolve like systems and structures for their responsibility in creating the spaces that we see today so what do you plan to do in the future yeah so yeah what I have so far is a lot of data and so now I'm kind of compiling it into primarily my thesis for my graduate program but also will be kind of tailoring specific recommendations and disseminations towards specific audiences and this thematic approach is something that's very important to me and that kind of wanting to or you know kind of shine a light on this situation that's very local but then also has lots of kind of it echoes across the nation of course but to kind of put the spotlight on it and not absolve the system of its responsibility for the kind of like current situation yeah so based on the the the thing you just have done I'm interested is there any like important factor you found out or results based on the thing you have done the literature review and your data is there anything it's important yeah yeah thank you and so I so far the the most surprising thing that I've learned is that there's kind of this conflicting attitude towards shelter in Sacramento so kind of the wanting for everything to serve this emergency response but then also creating a very stable and welcoming environment for the guests tends to kind of butt against each other right so there's these the conceptualization and then the practice are kind of in discord with one another so that's been the most surprising thing I've learned so far thank you today for coming thank you thank you hi everyone I'm here with Brittany Arona to talk about their research so if you could introduce yourself in the work that you're doing right now so I am a second year PhD student in Native American Studies and with a designated emphasis in human rights so I was really interested in this class because I do a lot of new media mixed media and I try to do a lot of exhibition work as well my master's project had been on Indigenous environmental justice efforts up in Northern California and so my my goal for this class was to put together a proposal for another project that was similar but just a little bit different than that and so my project is a digital mapping and oral history project that focuses on the high country area in Northern California so if you're not familiar with high country it's in Siskiw County and if you're not familiar with that it's closer to the Marble Mountains near Wai Rika in between Wai Rika and Arcada and this area is sacred to the Hupa Urok and Kuru people and in 1988 there was a Supreme Court case Lingvi Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association Act it's a mouthful that determined that a road a forest service road that was proposed to be built between the towns of Gasket and Orleans what would not impact an area that the tribes considered sacred so this whole road was to be developed and the area ended up turning out to be wilderness recreation area but the Supreme Court set precedent over how land is dealt with with American Indian religion and so my interest in it was that many of the activists were pretty young back in the day and they're now getting older and they might be passing away pretty soon I don't want to like they're not that old but you know like we need to we need to capture those oral histories and to interact with them and to do a mapping project so that's kind of what my the basis of that is yeah that sounds amazing especially the aspects of mixing oral history with digital media so when you imagine the platform what are you kind of picturing for how this will play out and what it will look like so I was actually really inspired by the anti-gentrification project that we had in class a couple of weeks ago and I'm looking at like ARC GIS and mapping out certain spaces on those platforms and then on that platform and then having oral history projects pop up with either a video or a recorded session depending on how comfortable the person is with having themselves on camera but I think that's what I'm looking at right now I do need to get a little more proficient with ARC GIS but I'm hoping that the project takes off in that way and then ideally maybe having some kind of place markers eventually but I'd have to work with the tribes to do that so it sounds beautiful in itself um so I guess just for our audience do you have any examples of specific folks that you want to talk to or certain like oral histories that you are hoping to kind of map out yeah actually something that's really neat right now is Humboldt State and a friend of mine Dr. Kutcher Riesling Baldi who graduated from the Native American Studies PhD program here she's doing a digital archive of this whole case so it'll be a nice like companion to what the work that I'm doing and she's working with a man named Julian Lang who is a Karuk language speaker and he was one of the major activists in this project so I'm hoping that I can do an oral history with him and then connect that information with the Humboldt State archive as well so having like a big exhibition and a big project on this case I think is really important yeah um so I guess my last question for you is uh how how do you think that this work will kind of influence other folks in like either doing similar work or the idea of history through oral stories in a new kind of technical technological way the neat thing about this project is that I mean I would like to think that it's original but it's actually not like many people are doing this type of work all throughout Indian country so I just hope that to have a little bit of that history within the context broader context of Indigenous activism and Indigenous rights oh that sounds amazing okay well I wish you the best and I can't wait to see when it comes out yeah thank you thank you hello we're here with Beans Lee to talk about our community development projects so could you just introduce the project and tell us a little bit about your background and kind of where you're coming from with this yeah uh so my project is called can I say the n-word um which in itself is very kind of controversial and it catches people's eye but I think it's more or so like a platform for Asian-American communities to kind of talk about anti-blackness within like the history but also the present-day context in order to like unpack also the ways that appropriation or appreciation happens through modes of hip-hop in particular and I think for me I have a huge stake in it as a Korean-Philippinex Asian-American in uh growing up around a lot of urban areas such as Los Angeles and then working in Oakland for a short time and seeing the ways that hip-hop is has been integrated as a formation of Asian-American identity when we're thinking about artists such as like Ruby Abara, Dumbfounded, and Aquafina like the ways that social context and uh like ways of viewing the world and ideology is formed through their own relation to the art form which is how I wanted to originally create like a comic book chronicle for people to submit their work and how they've interacted either with anti-blackness or with hip-hop but actually I've kind of taken a step back from that and I'm looking more into creating local platforms for people to set up their own workshops their own zine-making workshops their own jam sessions to kind of unpack and have these conversations about what anti-blackness means within the Asian-American community and including actual art within that so that it can kind of become accessible to all communities around because I think that's the difficulty when talking about a lot of these issues they can often get coded as like elitist because of the ways that they're presented to communities but my hope is that these art forms kind of create a platform for people to engage in these conversations a lot more like tangibly and a lot more naturally can you can you speak a little bit about the inspirations for this project like where did you find your creative outlets or creative inspirational spaces yeah so I think for me I grew up around a lot of sound cloud culture so a lot of Asian-American artists kind of using hip-hop or using song or writing or drawing or street art as a way to kind of like express themselves show the ways that they've been marginalized and the ways that they've been struggling because in this weird way like culturally hip-hop has kind of become this language to understand the ways that communities of color are impacted within the United States or even globally and beyond so I grew up around a lot of that but also seeing a lot of the tensions between various aspects of the Asian diaspora whether someone's like East Asian South East Asian South Asian or Central Asian and how those dynamics also play with how hip-hop is not only taken in with the community but also expressed out which is where the inspiration for the term can I say the N word came from because it that tends to be a huge discourse within the community as of right now and how broad is the range of this project like what are the regional areas that you're hoping to impact yeah so as of right now I'm focusing on SoCal so Southern California where I'm from particularly the South Bay area which includes Torrents Redondo Beach Long Beach Venice and Santa Monica because a lot of the culture down there a lot of the music and art happening there is very different than other areas and my hope is that other people would want to engage in this project and kind of create these kind of artistic hubs on their own to kind of create like a more massive scale understanding of how hip-hop interacts with the Asian American diaspora throughout the United States and just one more quick question when do you plan on implementing the project yes so as of right now I am a fourth year undergrad and my hope is that when I go back to Los Angeles after I graduate here from Davis I can start working with a lot of the other community members that I know in the area and creating the platform a lot more organically as a community organization project well thank you for being on the show I look forward to your project thank you hi I'm with our guest Suher Bhatti and he's getting a master's in public health and with an emphasis in international medical graduates nice of you to bring me on here glad to be here so tell me about your project what are you researching right now so my project is on international medical graduates as you mentioned that's my focus and specifically looking into you know these different international a lot of them are refugees or people who have immigrated usually from countries that are really poor like Syria, Afghanistan and a lot of these people are you know medically trained professionals and have already worked if not already you know had an extensive career in medicine and when they come to America you know either as refugees or immigrants they're unable to find work in the previous line of their career you know they're not able to continue as doctors or what other medical positions they held and a lot of that's because of different barriers they face here you know there's like cultural barriers there's you know informational barriers, language barriers even perceived barriers you know or just not even knowing information and so my research is to focus on you know what are the actual barriers we talk about this all the time like they're not being able to you know find work because of the barriers but what are the barriers you know and what are the ones that are more specifically preventing people from joining the medical forces and on top of that just investigating how you know what steps we can take to reduce them later on you know through policy hopefully well you know pushing that on to state government or federal government because as you may have heard earlier or news within a couple years by 2020 there will be a 90,000 physician shortage and nearly 45 to 50,000 of them will be primary care physicians and you know as we need these many physicians it's really important to know that a lot of these immigrant medical international medical graduates are usually going to work as physician primary care physicians they are willing to work in the rural areas which are the most hard-hit areas and so this is what we and I specifically want to look into make sure you know what can we do to address this rising issue are you going to be working with form of media to get the message out or what kind of media are you working with yeah so definitely we'll be using media because it's such a it's an issue with like such a widespread diaspora the diaspora is spread all over the country I'll actually be focusing on specifically the Texas community especially in the major urban areas like Houston out Austin Dallas San Antonio and the best way to reach out to them that's definitely a challenge to figure out which one is the best way you know television might not be most effective radio might not be most effective so I was thinking that we would you know use little brochures little pamphlets and place them in places where there are a higher concentration of international medical graduates so ethnic grocery shops that's where a lot of them shop for their food like religious services so mosques churches also just community centers or major events that bring large appropriate populations of these medical graduates together so I think just targeted advertisement and the classical forms of this print media is going to be the most effective one though we are also looking into electronic social media you know using targeted ads on Facebook or Twitter that you know based on persons likes and preferences might be able to find out which people are more likely to be medical graduates and kind of have them be exposed to this information that will you know bring them into our study and research yeah that sounds great so are you going to start with a specific subset of the population are you going to start big so it is a national problem but as I mentioned earlier I will be focusing on the Texas population okay and within there there's we are not sure exactly how many international medical graduates there are though we are sure it's the biggest one of the biggest groups in America and within the population we just want to focus on the just all the different medical graduates who are willing to come out and be surveyed and be willing to talk about their experiences and the different challenges they face so hopefully we can gather as many of the medical graduates that live in Texas obviously that will be a challenge so the more the merrier but it's just our Texas population is our focus for now sounds great all right well thank you yeah no problem thank you for having me good luck with your project thanks hi welcome to our show today we have our special guest Daria Tabak she is a design major and she will be talking to us about her project yeah thanks for having me so I'm currently working on a project which is a digital zine web based that will hopefully serve as a both a real time platform as well as a more curated space that accepts submissions the theme of the zine is sort of struggles in late capitalism and I hope that it will be a place where people can make creative projects as sort of acts of resistance using the vernacular that we are familiar with or most connected to in my generation which is often new media and web based I feel like there's nothing that kind of you know articulates the language we speak more than an animated gif so I hope to bring together a variety of work which includes audio video images whatever people can think of and curate it together I will be calling for submissions in the beginning of May and it will be published by the end of May and on display at an exhibition at the Shrem Museum here at UC Davis and so I suppose the goal of this project for me is to kind of redirect the sort of fatalistic nihilism that we often feel in a very unfair system and kind of redirect that as practicing creative resistance and to feel empowered through those creative acts I also hope that it can serve as a sort of community online community platform that doesn't feel quite as alienated and in the service of self branding as a social media site like Facebook so and of course submissions can be anonymous if they want as well yeah so that's the basic structure of my project that sounds really exciting it sounds pretty decentralized you know like online submissions but how's it curated? Will you be in charge or will it be like a collaborative curation? Yeah that's a really good question so the first submission I mean the first issue will be curated by me just because of technical limitations but there is a list serve and I do hope that the recurring community members will get to kind of discuss the structure and decide on what themes will be next and each issue will also have basically a drawing application wherein anybody can write or draw anything and submit it in real time so and that will go through a database and so really there's an element that you know is sort of curated in this top down way because of technical limitations but then there's this other portion that is sort of a a free for all open to anybody and a little more less structured in that way yeah and the kind of the technical limitations that I'm speaking to are you know you can't have a multi-page interactive project that just uploads in real time at least not that I can build myself so and a part of what I'm working on right now is just learning the JavaScript and the code and working with databases to make this all come together but perhaps after my exhibition I'll have the resources to you know hire a team to help me kind of build a more robust platform that will allow for not just me curating material one step at a time but you know a more free for all platform sounds good and you said you maybe wanted to hire a team financially how would you do that would it become like I know you wanted to avoid the whole capitalistic idea of paying right yeah so I'm just curious well yeah I would have to be a pretty limited budget by a team I mean you know maybe one or two engineers to help me just with work the application so that would require applying for grants and you know kind of I'll have to see to the future to see how that will come together yeah and one last question so your project how do you envision it to be in the future like how big do you want it to go like your realistic expectations of what it could be I would like it to be published quarterly so four times a year and I feel like that kind of gives enough time for people to learn about the submission theme come up with material that's that's interesting and submit it and so in that respect it won't be too frequent but I'm starting with my own community I have a very large community of artists and researchers and academics here in Davis and in the Bay Area to start with and I would like to see it grow but I have no there's no need for it to be some kind of global network it's more just of a local experiment although it's available to anyone so I'm just kind of see how that goes yeah sounds good thank you so much for sharing this with us all right thank you for having me and we'll have you back again all right