East Palo Alto girls create app to clean up graffiti, trash | Hacker News Reader

East Palo Alto girls create app to clean up graffiti, trash

paloaltoonline.com

26 points_6kat35 comments

They created an Android app called "Tag It!" that allows users to take a picture of graffiti, vandalism or trash in their neighborhood, tag its location and create an event to get it cleaned up.

Estonia did this in 2008, but what I most remember about it is Mahmud's reply to my comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079915

Memory is odd.

In the UK, MySociety launched FixMyStreet [1,2] in 2007 [3]. However, it was aimed at flagging problems to councils, rather than arranging events for community members to fix them.

[1] http://www.mysociety.org/for-councils/fixmystreet/

[2] http://www.fixmystreet.com/

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FixMyStreet

And it's reusable in other countries [1] (I made one that works in Ireland [2]).

[1] http://code.fixmystreet.com

[2] http://fixmystreet.ie

Why does it matter that they're girls?

How would you respond if the headline were "East Palo Alto (minority group here) create app to clean up graffiti, trash"?

This is sexism, pure and simple.

Maybe because there is a lack of girls in engineering due to many reasons, including sexism?

Precisely. There are different stages of eliminating "-isms" - you have to make it actually BE the normal, no-big-deal thing before you can start to portray it that way.

Right now, young women need to see lots of examples of other women involved in tech more than they need people to pretend techies are just techies

Literally two lines into the article:

    EPA Chica Squad places high in a global mobile-app 
    competition

Fourth paragraph:

    Self-dubbed the "EPA Chica Squad," (...)

...which just means the girls themselves are complicit in the sexism, unknowingly, even as they think they're making progress. This is an illustration of how far we've regressed, as a culture, w/r/t systemic sexism. The discourse has been confused probably irreparably at this point.

I don't think your argument holds weight. Do feminist activists make themselves complicit in sexism? Does having a Black History Month encourage racism?

The acts (sexist/racist/-ist) themselves, no. But one can say it is reinforcing the status quo of "Us vs Them" in the context of whatever -ism.

I think it's important to increase visibility of women in tech. There is no "us vs them" in this story! The "us vs them" would be "guy techies vs girl non-techies". As soon as a woman is "in tech", she stops reinforcing the status quo.

I think it is important that if a women/black man/[insert-group-here] person/anyone is excited to work on things in tech, that they realize that people will look upon them with whatever illogical stigmas they have, and move beyond that. Because there will be people in the t̶e̶c̶h̶ world that are able to see beyond the superficial things and connect with them as a person to work on things they love to do.

At least that's how it has been for me. I can't imagine what it would be like if I stopped every time to take offense to someones irrational beliefs they had about me, and tried to form [insert-group here] to do something about it that has nothing to do with my interest with tinkering.

Well Morgan Freeman has publicly commented on that pretty explicitly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s

Black History Month may have not been the best example, but I think there is value in highlighting success of minorities in a field where there aren't as many minority models to look up to.

I think the argument Freeman makes is that that sense of value is misguided and actually serves to perpetuate the problem.

What does that have to do with anything? Have you done a survey of all blacks, or even all black actors, to arrive at anything resembling a consensus? Why do you cite Morgan Freeman's opinion and not others?

Well it's one opinion directly related to the parent comment's hypothetical question.

No I do not have a double blind controlled study on the opinion of black history month, but I thought Freeman's comment was obviously relevant and interesting.

I cited him and not others because this is the clip I had seen and remembered.

Well Morgan Freeman has publicly commented on that pretty explicitly

That's just as silly as stating Lucy Liu's hypothetical opinion on the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (yes it does exist) [1]:

"Well Lucy Liu has publicly commented on that pretty explicitly".

Unless of course you think Morgan Freeman's opinions count more than Lucy Liu's. But I don't think you do, thankfully.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Pacific_American_Heritage...

It was a link to a video making a relevant argument that happened to be by Morgan Freeman.

I'm not sure what your point is?

Should I have just linked the youtube video without any context?

>Do feminist activists make themselves complicit in sexism

I think that the existence of a movement called femi-nism is itself an example of systemic sexism. You can't gender the name of your ideology and then claim to fight for equality between genders. What feminists fight for is a furthering of women's rights vis-a-vis men, not equal rights for women and men. Completely different things.

And yes, having a black history month is complicit in deepening racial divides in a society. Just as having a [insert-race-or-ethnicity-here] history month would also do.

The question isn't "are movements like feminism inherently sexist", because they objectively are. The question is whether or not that sexism is justified.

Back in the 80's and 90's, techies (men and women) felt the same way about society in general. They defensively carved out bubbles of welcoming space for themselves, where they wouldn't be made to feel weird. Eventually it stopped being weird to be a techie. These girls are in a disadvantaged minority, and they're carving out their own bubble where they feel less weird.

Also, according to women hackers, it's important to increase the visibility of women in tech right now so I think they're doing fine. "Lack of female role models" is the biggest deterrent for women in tech http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/30/the-biggest-deterrent...

May be a culture issue but this title worked for me (native American English speaker, urbanite) because of the opposite sexism you didn't mention: most 'taggers' are male. The title implied that the girls are trying to clean up their own neighborhood and provide a counter example to the choices young, male taggers are making.

Would love to see if these girls can reach out to their peers in South San Jose or Oakland.

> most 'taggers' are male

Citation?

Oh common man, would you require a citation on "most murderers are male" as well?

I know of very few if any female murderers. By contrast, I am aware of more females that do graffiti. A citation also would have led to me to the definition of "taggers" fieldforceapp is using.

It's curiosity based. I'd be interested to know if there are statistics for this.

Because usually girls don't create apps. Statistically female programmers are a small minority group. Why are you bickering?

It's not sexism either. Age, Gender, and Race are mentioned when they are out of the ordinary for the situation.

You don't read "45 Year old white male banker's makes billions from hedge funds" in the paper. Instead it's just "Banker from Connecticut makes billions from hedge funds". When Kevin Rose was popular with Digg we read "How this KID made millions" they emphasized his young age.

Other examples include: "Black female banker makes billions from hedge funds", "14 year old starts communications company", "Asian to run as vice president", "91 year old saves kittens from burning building.", etc... You mention people's age/gender/race when it's out of the ordinary for what they're doing. Most people have never heard of a black female banker, or a teenager starting a company, or an Asian running for vice president, or a really old person performing the heroic acts that a normally strong young healthy man would.

I've been reading the comments a lot when they have to do with women in tech. What I want to know is: what's up with all you guys who shit yourselves every time a woman is mentioned? Seriously, I feel like half the insecure and bitter "men's rights" group from Reddit migrated here to spread their bitterness and bickering. And I'm seeing more and more of this. Y'all need to chill.

Because HN == Reddit now. Girl in title -> upvotes

The original title has "girls" in it, so you can't blame the submitter.

I remember a startup that had presented a similar app couple of years back at TC 50 (can't recall the name) it had also signed up a US west coast city as one of their customers. I found it as one of promising ideas of tat year.

[EDIT] this was it http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/tc50-citysourced-lets-you-r...

A great idea. I absolutely despise graffiti, if this were expanded to other cities I would be sure to use this.

Fantastic. Really nice to see students building things with an eye toward actual use.

I tutor at Eastside! (Wish I could take credit for the idea, but I can't.)

The quasi-Baptist Church http://www.highway.org has been heavily involved with the sponsoring institution Bayshore Christian Ministries in the past and I believe they still are. Along with other efforts such as the wells-for-African-villages they run out of the Red Rock Coffee Shop they own in Mountain View, this makes Highway a pretty interesting place.

Where do they stand on same sex marriage?

I wonder what next years clean up trash app will bring us.

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