The College Hill Independent — Vol. 44 Issue 10

THE INDY*

03 STARBUCKS UNIONIZATION 09 TOE TAGS 15 TIME IS A SPIRAL

Volume 44 Issue 10 29 April 2022

THE DEPARTING ISSUE

* The College Hill Independent

THE INDY* This Issue 00 “BUNNY”

Brady Mathisen

02 WEEK IN SPOKEN WORD POETRY Masha Breeze & Nora Matthews

03 STARBUCKS UNIONIZATION PROCURED IN RHODE ISLAND Laura David

05 I WISH I DID NOT KNOW HER Nélari Figueroa Torres

07 DISTORTION ON THE INSIDE Lily Chahine & Afia Akosah-Bempah

08 BLEEP AND KLANG AND OTHER NOISES Lucas Gelfond

09 TOE TAGS 12 “EVOLVE SCALES, GEMINI” Augustina Wang

13 A LETTER, A PRAYER Miranda Luiz

13 A BIRD WILL NOT BE A BIRD Ifeoma Anyoku

14 GOODBYE ROCK, OR, MY RUN-IN WITH A SWIVEL CHAIR Peder Schaefer

15 TIME IS A SPIRAL Anabelle Johnston

17 “EGG HEAD”

Lana Hadžiosmanovi

18 DEAR INDY Cecilia Barron

19 THE BULLETIN

From the Editors Final words are the hardest words, so we’ll keep it brief. This Indy was made with love, warm apple juice, and the gentle care of many Indy staffers. We hope when you read it, it holds more as a welcoming than a departure. The promise of a hello. A reminder that the Indy will go and then always come right back through a different door. Thank you <3

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THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Volume 44 Issue 10 29 April 2022

Masthead* MANAGING EDITORS Ifeoma Anyoku Sage Jennings Isaac McKenna Alisa Caira

WEEK IN REVIEW Masha Breeze Nora Mathews FEATURES Anabelle Johnston Corinne Leong Amelia Wyckoff NEWS Anushka Kataruka Nicole Kim Priyanka Mahat ARTS Jenna Cooley Justin Scheer Arden Shostak EPHEMERA Chloe Chen Ayça Ülgen METRO Jack Doughty Nélari Figueroa Torres Rose Houglet Sacha Sloan SCIENCE + TECH Rhythm Rastogi Jane Wang BULLETIN BOARD Deb Marini Lily Pickett X Soeun Bae DEAR INDY Cecilia Barron LITERARY Alyscia Batista Annie Stein OUTREACH COORDINATOR Audrey Buhain

SENIOR EDITORS Alana Frances Audrey Buhain Mara Cavallaro Anabelle Johnston Deb Marini Peder Schaefer STAFF WRITERS Hanna Aboueid Caroline Allen Zach Braner Rachel Carlson Lily Chahine Swetabh Changkakoti Danielle Emerson Osayuwamen Ede-Osifo Mariana Fajnzylber Edie Fine Ricardo Gomez Eli Gordon Eric Guo Charlotte Haq Billie McKelvie Charlie Mederios Bilal Memon Loughlin Neuert Alex Purdy Callie Rabinovitz Nick Roblee-Strauss Nell Salzman Peder Schaefer Janek Schaller Kolya Shields Ella Spungen Alex Valenti Siqi ‘Kathy’ Wang Katherine Xiong COPY EDITORS Addie Allen Evangeline Bilger Klara Davidson-Schmich Megan Donohue Mack Ford Sarah Goldman Zoey Grant Alara Kalfazade Jasmine Li Abigail Lyss Tara Mandal Becca Martin-Welp Pilar McDonald Kabir Narayanan Eleanor Peters Angelina Rios-Galindo

*Our Beloved Staff

DESIGN EDITORS Anna Brinkhuis Sam Stewart COVER COORDINATOR Seoyoung Kim DESIGNERS Briaanna Chiu Ri Choi Adelle Clark Ophelia Duchesne-Malone Clara Epstein Elisa Kim Amy Lim Jaesun M Tanya Qu Emily Tom Floria Tsui WEB DESIGN Lucas Gelfond ILLUSTRATION EDITOR Hannah Park ILLUSTRATORS Sylvie Bartusek Ashley Castañeda Hannah Chang Claire Chasse Michelle Ding Rosie Dinsmore Quinn Erickson Lillyanne Fisher Sophie Foulkes John Gendron Amonda Kallenbach Joshua Koolik Lucy Lebowitz Olivia Lunger Tom Manto Sarosh Nadeem Kenney Nguyen Izzy Roth-Dishy Lola Simon Livia Weiner GAME MAKERS Loughlin Neuert Maya Polsky WRITING FELLOW Chong Jing ‘CJ’ Gan MVP ISIA <3 — The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI in Seekonk, MA

Mission Statement The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures.

Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and selfcritical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

WEEK IN REVIEW

Week in Spoken Word Poetry Hello readers! We tried to apply to be the Voice of Our Generation, but apparently we “don’t have a body of work” and “articles about how to ‘decorate your hole for the holidays’ don’t count.” Surprise, surprise, another instance of revolutionary voices being suppressed! Anyway, we decided to pivot to more literary pursuits to prove that it’s really easy to be like Joan Didion and all those other people who get their picture taken holding a pen. We’ll be on a tote bag in no time—thanks to our poetry, which you can read here!

Uncomfortable Sex Poem

By Masha Breeze when he takes off his boat shoes, i know it’s going down. the smell of love fills the library bathroom. he calls me “tofu nugget,” i call him a homophobic slur. “fuck me,” i shout, “fuck me with that peepee of yours.” obediently, he approaches, his warm panera baguette hungry for my bread bowl. “happy saint patrick’s day,” i whisper. he smirks, starts to say something, farts, apologizes. our lovemaking is silent, hot, lugubrious, public. refried beans, rice grain, wall, galaxy, lil debbie’s. “you’re so pretty for a tr*nny,” he says. “omg you’re so nice lol im so crazy haha :3” i reply. he wears his Female Body Inspector shirt the whole time. i am his Female-Bodied Inspector. he is my Dentist.

Untitled Spoken Word Poem #32

By Nora Mathews The best way to flirt is tell someone u think u have pink eye I need to learn how to draw garfield and figure out how bluetooth works there are dark forces at play lately like a wealthy friend group with a photographer friend or the feeling that makes you buy a headband on depop or post a full page of a book on your instagram story. i’m finding a new way to not do my job i’m wearing my roommate’s pants and i forgot to ask her later today i’m going to look at my twitter drafts until i have a thought again.

Lately it seems like nobody is asking me about when i fainted in the scili and i saw a vision: of how to cure my psoriasis of god telling me that putting a baby in a denim jacket is evil of myself accepting a macarthur genius grant due to my ideas My ideas are about how scientists could do a better job because no one has found a cure for adult acne Adult acne. It makes me brave and important.

TEXT MASHA BREEZE & NORA MATTHEWS DESIGN TANYA QU ILLUSTRATION IZZY ROTH-DISHY

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

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METRO

Starbucks Unionization Procured in Rhode Island

TEXT LAURA DAVID

DESIGN FLORIA TSUI

ILLUSTRATION ANNA WANG

A Conversation with Warwick Organizer and Barista Cassie Burke

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In the popular imagination, unions seem like a thing of the past. Mainstream political pundits point out that union membership has declined over the decades after peaking in the 70s, while pop culture paints them as mysterious organizations run solely by Jimmy Hoffa types.

And yet, over the last few years, a number of high-profile union pushes have shaken big businesses to their core. Workers at Amazon, Chipotle, John Deere, Apple, and many other companies have begun organizing for their labor rights. With their organizing has also come an onslaught of anti-union campaigning from the businesses themselves, turning this workers’ movement into what seems like a battle for the future landscape of labor in America. After two years of pandemic-time employment and rising inequality, most people have, simply put, had enough—longer hours, inadequate working conditions, and stagnating compensation have taken their toll.

This environment, at least in part, is why, on April 6, 2022, Cassie Burke (she/her) and the workers at the 25 Pace Boulevard Starbucks in Warwick submitted an official petition to unionize to company CEO Howard Schultz. They described their petition as an act of self-defense, a way to guard against a corporation that has shown itself willing to malign its workers when profits come under threat.

Their petition was far from the first, and will most likely not be the last. Two Starbucks locations in Buffalo voted to unionize as Starbucks Workers United in December of 2021, setting off a wave of union petitions in company stores countrywide. Rather than bargaining as a collective, Starbucks workers plan to enter union negotiations on a store-by-store basis, allowing each to properly advocate for their individual needs.

Starbucks has responded with hostility, launching an aggressive anti-union campaign on a website titled We Are One Starbucks that has aimed to dissuade its ‘partners’ from unionizing. The company also tried to block stores from being able to unionize individually—a move which the NLRB denied—and has even been accused of firing workers that choose to unionize in retaliation. Still, despite threats and scare tactics, Starbucks store after Starbucks store continues to vote “Yes” on unions.

This interview, therefore, serves not only the purpose of telling the story of one Starbucks store in Rhode Island, but also aims to contextualize a national movement that is only growing. More than that, Cassie’s experiences reveal and juxtapose the efforts of an individual with a corporation protecting its bottom line. This juxtaposition represents one of the quintessential socioeconomic conflicts of our age—advancing

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

the labor rights of workers. This advancement, though, will first require the United States as a whole to reckon with itself and its values. +++ The College Hill Independent: To get started, how long have you been working at Starbucks, and what has your experience been like?

Cassie Burke: I started working at Starbucks in early January. By and large, I think working there is better than working in most fast food environments. But that’s not exactly saying a whole lot. You know, we have a great group of staff here, a lot of very dedicated people who are very welcoming. I really like the people I work with; I like the work I’m doing. I’ve worked in grocery stores before. So, not the same, but similar.

There’s also people at the store who have worked at Dunkin’, someone who has even worked in a Michelin star restaurant, and, you know, they all kind of say they have a similar experience. The work is hard everywhere.

The Indy: So, you were the one who wrote and submitted the petition to unionize your store earlier this month. What prompted you to lead this effort?

CB: I kind of always just believed that unionizing is something that everyone has a right to do and should do if they can. It’s better to have a democratic workplace than one built on the hierarchy that most businesses are. In this particular case, though, our manager left on medical leave and so we had a change of management. I just figured I might as well shoot my shot and see if it works. So, I put out feelers in the store to see how people would respond. And things just went pretty seamlessly from there.

There was a lot of support from the store’s team and a lot of support from Workers United, the group we are unionizing with. Workers United actually makes the process incredibly, incredibly easy—it’s far simpler than I thought it would be. All in all, I’d say it came together in a month, really.

The Indy: That pretty much leads me perfectly to my next question: How do the specifics of this process work? What goes into a unionization campaign, and how does a single store formally become part of a union?

CB: For us, it was a matter of first reaching out to Workers United and talking to the people there. We ended up talking mostly with their team in the greater Boston area, because they’re

the closest to us. Workers United is the group that has been working with pretty much all the unionizing Starbucks stores, at least in the US. There are now almost 31 or 32 states involved, I believe. We made Rhode Island the 30th. I essentially just reached out to Workers United on Twitter and they put me in contact with the right people.

Now, there are different ways to unionize depending on who you’re unionizing with, but our process required we use union cards and needed at least 30 percent of people to demonstrate interest in forming a union. We actually managed to get around 60-70 percent support.

And that doesn’t include people who we just couldn’t get to in time to sign. We have pretty strong support all around. Now it’s just filing that result with the NLRB and going public.

The Indy: I guess on a different level, what has unionizing been like for you personally and away from work?

CB: I think it’s very easy if you’re working in a business like mine for things to become incredibly mundane and circular. Often, every day is the same and you’re not really working towards anything; you’re just working until the end of the day. For me, having a goal and things I wanted to accomplish at work, like getting people unified behind a common cause besides just selling coffee, has meant a lot to me and, I think, to the store as a whole. As I said, unionizing is always something I thought I’d want to do—I’ve always been pro-union—but I never thought I’d get the chance to. Just having this opportunity has been really great for me.

The Indy: Now that you’ve had this initial interest vote passed and are beginning the formal union election process, what are you up against? What corporation-imposed obstacles do you anticipate facing, and how do you plan to overcome them?

CB: Right now, Starbucks as a corporation is using a lot of dirty and dishonest tricks to try and dissuade people from voting ‘Yes’ to unions.

Those tricks haven’t been working, for the most part. There are unanimous ‘Yes’ votes coming in every week or so. But, Starbucks has certainly been making threats: for example, threatening to give those who don’t unionize better benefits than those who do.

As a result, there have been a lot of complaints filed against Starbucks by the NLRB. It’s not just union workers trying to spin a narrative that Starbucks is against us—it’s the NLRB agreeing with us. At our store specifically, there hasn’t been as much of a negative response.

METRO

Obviously, when I’m at work, my ears are out the whole time to see what people are saying.

But so far, it hasn’t seemed like we’re going to see too many repercussions. At other stores, there have been cut hours and firings, but so far we haven’t seen anything that would play to that level.

The Indy: On that topic, Starbucks recently uploaded a website called ‘We Are One Starbucks,’ which is basically an online campaign trying to dissuade workers from unionizing. They’re essentially arguing that unions aren’t necessary, and that workers’ grievances can be better addressed solely by the company itself. How would you respond to those claims?

CB: Well, any company that is willing to fire someone to prevent unionization is a company that needs a union. It’s very clear, if you look across the country, that workers aren’t being treated well when they go to unionize. That just proves the point of a union.

A lot of the reasons corporations give against unionization are things that can be very easily dismissed. They’ll make claims that things are easier without middlemen, or that companies should resolve things internally without lawyers. But, the very obvious response to that is that if you can resolve something without a lawyer, we would probably want to do it that way anyway. You only get a lawyer involved when what’s going on are things at the level of unjust firings. This isn’t just everyday stuff.

Starbucks says that “we’re all one team” and that they “don’t want to be divisive.” That’s hard to buy when they’re not exactly playing nice to get us on their side. They’re threatening things like benefits and pay. Starbucks says, for example, that we could lose anything if we unionize, that everything is up for grabs, but that’s not true. Under a union contract negotiation, anything workers give up is decided by what we want to give up, if anything at all. So, really, we’re just up against lies.

The Indy: This question might seem kind of obvious, but why do you think Starbucks is so threatened by the prospect of unionization?

CB: For one thing, they will make less money.

That’s just the simple big picture. But there’s also the smaller stuff. For example, with firing people and letting people go, they’ll have to go through a lawyer instead of being able to just send someone out the door. There will also be new responsibilities for them in maintaining facilities in a timely manner. That has been an issue for our store a lot. Often, there’s something like a machine that just breaks and now drinks are going out three or four minutes later than they should be.

You know, what we’re doing isn’t just to benefit us—it’s also to benefit the customers we serve. We’re asking for a workplace that is well kept and well maintained. So, there’s a lot of ways that unionizing can increase the costs

for Starbucks in addition to just paying us better wages. But those are all things I think they’re responsible for anyway. We’re not asking for more than we deserve.

The Indy: If this overall effort is successful—by which I mean yours and other stores are able to form unions—what will you be lobbying for in particular? What are the objectives at the top of your list to achieve for workers?

CB: One of the best things about the way we’re doing the union contracts is that it’s not by district, it’s not companywide, it’s store-by-store.

What one store needs is going to be different from others. But, I’d say the main things that we want are just the essential things. Everyone wants stuff like better pay, ensuring our benefits, moving from at-will employment—which allows employers to fire workers for any reason and without disclosure of those reasons—to just-cause employment, which would require employers to disclose reasons for termination and to terminate only for job-related concerns.

And I know for our store, specifically, just having facilities managed in a timely way is something that we want especially.

The Indy: I’d like to talk a little bit about the broader implications of this. Union membership has declined in recent decades, particularly in the US, bBut in recent years, we’ve seen a number of high-profile efforts to unionize like with you guys at Starbucks, with Amazon, John Deere, and now just recently Apple. Why do you think we’re seeing an uptick in these large-scale union movements right now?

CB: I think a big part of why unions came out of decline is that a lot of the work unions used to protect were jobs that companies were previously very willing to move overseas, like manufacturing. But when you look at organizations that are seeing unionization now, it’s places like Starbucks and Amazon, places that can’t just be moved somewhere else. And so I think people are kind of realizing that they actually have power here and that they can be rewarded for their efforts. I think another big factor, obviously, is Covid. A lot of companies really showed their hand during the pandemic in that they are willing to let people get sick and die for the bottom line. People aren’t buying the propaganda anymore and are starting to understand where they stand compared to the dollar, and they aren’t pleased with that.

The Indy: Zooming out even more, what do you think this union push says simply about our current political landscape in general?

CB: Well, if you look at the current Democratic Party and the Republican party, you see ‘two sides’ and, yet, neither of them are really putting in an earnest effort to help the working class. I think a lot of people were very let down by the recent elections, and I feel like a lot of people are seeing that if you want to make

change in your life, you don’t just have to do it through the voting system. You can do it in your workplace, and you can fight for equity in other ways than just casting a ballot every two or four years.

The Indy: In terms of Rhode Island, what do you hope your unionization campaign says to the people of the state?

CB: Well, as I said, the response has been very positive. I had Dave Sweeney’s team reach out to me on Twitter; I had a talk with Seth Magaziner, the state treasurer. I’ve had people come into the store and tip an extra five just because they know we’re doing this. For Rhode Island as a whole, I think this just shows that unionization is something you can do in your workplace.

I’ve had people ask me the best way to support us, and, truthfully, I’ll respond, don’t support us. Figure out how you can do this for yourself because I think that means a lot more to us than an extra dollar or two in the tip jar. So, you know, if another Starbucks joins us, that would be great. I know there’s an Amazon facility being built in the area, too, so maybe that will go toward unionization as well. We’ll see.

The Indy: Well, now my next question feels a little tongue-in-cheek, but what can people who want to get involved do to help and support you?

CB: For our store, the obvious thing is just to come and buy a drink. Let us know you support us and tip if you feel so inclined. And, as I said, look at how unionization might work in your industry. See what resources are out there for you, because there’s often so many unionization resources that people just might not know about yet.

The Indy: Awesome. Indy readers, make sure to stop by! Lastly, where do you go from here?

What’s next for you, for your store? What does the future look like?

CB: Right now, it’s just a game of waiting. We are still waiting on an election date, which I believe we will have by the end of the month.

That kind of all depends on if Starbucks wants to do a hearing, if they want to stipulate, that kind of stuff.

Once we have a date, we’ll just have to wait out the election and stay strong. We expect there’s going to be some pushback from either corporate or just from local management, so we are going to try and make sure people stay informed about the truth of the situation. We know Starbucks is willing to lie to people, and we’re just going to have to try and combat that.

LAURA DAVID B’24 needs many cups of coffee to make it through any given 24 hour period.

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I WISH I DID NOT

KNOW HER FEATS

The Murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano and The Mistreatment of Trans People in Puerto Rico

Content warnings: content warnings: transphobic violence, death My words cannot craft a narrative that is not one of violence. A violence present in Puerto Rico and the world. A violence that lives within transphobic people, that permeates our transphobic societies, and that leads to crimes fueled by blunt hatred. I take this moment to slow down the events before and after the murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano, an unhoused Black trans woman. It has now been over two years since her passing. An event that happened far too quickly, an event that should not have happened at all.

TEXT NÉLARI FIGUEROA TORRES

DESIGN RI CHOI

ILLUSTRATION ASHLEY CASTAÑEDA

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On February 23, 2020, Alexa Negrón entered the restroom of a McDonald’s in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. A woman in the bathroom called the police and accused her of spying on other women in the stalls by using a mirror. The police arrived at 5:15 p.m. to interrogate Alexa. She clutched her black purse as she sat, her black skirt hanging below the McDonald chair’s brim.

Her eyes staring up at the police officer’s face as he muttered words that I cannot repeat because the event was not recorded, only photographed.

The moment was only captured to be mocked.

The caller did not push the case and dropped the false charges.

Alexa frequently held a mirror in front of her face, slightly angled to point above her shoulder to make sure that nobody followed.

After years of domestic abuse, she took care to stay alert. Yet despite her precautions, her life was taken. Hand-held mirrors are for touch-ups, mustache plucking, lipstick application, and fixing hair. But for her, a hand-held mirror was safety. For her, a hand-held mirror was death.

The carelessness with which Alexa was treated in this moment is not lost on me: from the woman who called the police on a Black trans woman, to the spectacle fueled by police interrogation, to the bystanders who photographed and posted those pictures online. These images of her went viral on Puerto Rican social media for every wrong reason. Her virality relied on a culture of anti-transness that permeates the Island, Latin America, and the world. A culture that does not second-guess accusations against trans people because they are inherently perceived as perverted, as unstable. A culture that anticipates trans people will act upon their imagined perversion within fast food chain bathrooms.

People proceeded to stalk and persecute Alexa by finding the locations she frequented, photographing her, and posting new material to hurl virtual hate-speech while harassing her to her face. Although she never saw the online comments, they still took part in ending her life as these manifestations of transphobia prompted the physical aggression that took place later that night.

If you are trans and/or queer, especially if you are also Black and/or poor, I don’t need to tell you what those hateful comments said. You’ve heard it all before. If you are not, this type of violence starts with name-calling,

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

follows with dehumanization, and ends with threats. Threats that lead to murder. There were six trans-targeted murders recorded in Puerto Rico in 2020—five of these victims were trans femmes.

The misogyny embedded in Latin America through the cultural relevance of machismo— Spanish for toxic masculinity—leads trans femme people to be disproportionately targeted.

Machismo encapsulates what men should be like—sexually empowered, violent, dominant— in a society that excessively validates their pride.

This ideology perpetuates gender roles within our society, a society in which stereotypes associated with women are used to belittle them, to reduce them to nothing more than a figure of servitude, a symbol of motherhood, and a prisoner to their own bodies. This ultimately comes at the expense of trans femmes, who are both denied their femininity because of transphobia while still falling victim to misogyny because of their gender expression. +++ We will never know if on the night of February 23, 2020, Alexa was asleep on a graffitied bus stop bench. Or if it was the chipped pavement where her veiled head rested, peacefully—eyes closed, breath still. She might have been under a tent—there was one nearby, after all. She

might’ve been awoken by the singing of the roosters, before deciding to lay back down, face pressed against metal, or cement, or plastic.

Maybe Alexa heard their silhouettes whisking the wind around her, the wetness of their thick shoes slapping the soggy ground. The sky looked sickly, splattered with misplaced highlights and promises of tears. The rain turned the ground into spongy masses of quickmud. A tent stood in a patch of chipped cement with multicolor plastic bunting attached from one side to the other—an unplanned celebration of life and a commemoration of death.

This is where three 18-year-old boys harassed Alexa by shooting her with a paintball gun. This was part of the physical and verbal abuse she suffered before her assassination. The harassment was recorded and uploaded to social media that very morning by her aggressors: Jordany Rafael Laboy García, Christian Yamaurie Rivera Otero, and Anthony Steven Lobos Ruiz.

On August 6, 2021, they were charged with hate crimes. But this attack was only a precursor to the gunshot that would end her life later that night.

Alexa Negrón Luciano was found shot, dead, and lying in a field at around 4 a.m. on February 24, 2020—the day of her 29th birthday. Alexa’s case file has not closed. It has now been over two years since her assassination. It is suspected that her murderer was a friend of the

FEATS

three abusers and that they called him to finish what they had started. +++ Four days after Alexa’s murder, Bad Bunny, a popular Puerto Rican reggaeton musician, sang on The Tonight Show. He wore a double-breasted pink suit jacket, a black flower on the left side of his chest, dangly gold earrings, a plethora of rings, and a black skirt. Later in the performance, he revealed a shirt that read “MATARON A ALEXA / NO A UN HOMBRE CON FALDA”—a phrase which ricocheted throughout Puerto Rican media when talking about Alexa. When he took off his suit jacket to reveal the shirt’s message, the crowd cheered. I wonder how many of them actually knew what they were cheering for.

That night, he was the man in the skirt who got to walk out of his performance alive. He was the man in a skirt who was praised for his trans activism and headlined in numerous news articles about Alexa. He was the man in a skirt who announced his new album moments before. He was the man in a skirt that brought Alexa to national news. He was the man in a skirt that taught the world her name. Because a Black trans woman’s death is not enough. Because a Black trans woman’s death is too common. How curious it is that a cishet man’s tribute was more newsworthy than a Black trans woman’s life.

still be unhoused, neglected, estranged, and fearful of the world around her because it never showed her compassion. There are thousands of unhoused trans people on the Island. Employers deny many trans people jobs, which renders them unable to establish themselves within the bigoted system they are forced to survive under.

Many trans people are also disowned by their families, as was the case with Alexa, which forces them into the solitude of the streets. I don’t need to wonder where Alexa would be if she was still alive because her situation was—is— one of thousands. Until mindsets change and trans people are institutionally protected, I will not have to wonder.

While there was a governmental acknowledgment of the spike in gender-based violence on January 25, 2021 with the declaration of a state of emergency, the most effective methods of community solidarity and recognition take place in the form of protests in the streets of Old San Juan, part of the Island’s capital, as well as through queer collectives, women’s relief organizations, and trans activism groups such as House of Grace and Projecto Matria.

These organizations are fundamental for the subsistence of trans people in Puerto Rico who seldom encounter spaces that embrace, advocate, and protect them. While it is not reported that Alexa was part of these groups in life, many acknowledged her passing. +++ After Alexa’s murder, several trans activism groups in New York decided to host a vigil to honor her memory. There were a series of speeches delivered by the attendees to recount their own experience with transphobia while discussing Alexa’s story. The Queens Newsletter (QNS) reported on Samantha Love, a Puerto Rican trans activist who gave a speech at Alexa’s vigil. I am highlighting her and this vigil specifically because of her description of how members of the Caribbean trans community often find refuge within the United States: Many of our members have been thrown out to the streets, but others have been like Alexa and me and so many others—we have escaped a prison. At an early age we left the oppression of fundamentalism, of fanaticism. We had to face the world at an early age. Thank God we could fly, open our wings and reach the big city, the Big Apple, which has made us the women that you see here today.

+++ Nandy Torres, a man dedicated to independently aiding unhoused people in the north of Puerto Rico, met Alexa in November of 2019. In a CBS news report conducted after her passing, he talked about the moments he had spent with her—how he gained her trust, gave her food, and drove her around. David Begnaud, a journalist who has been at the forefront of American reporting of Puerto Rican news for the past few years, led the interview.

Torres was aware of the comments that were circulating on the internet moments after the police interrogation: “All I saw was hate,” he stated, “and exclusively people saying that she had to be killed…I knew in my heart that something bad was going to get her. And at 4 a.m., they killed her.”

This interview was conducted in Spanish; therefore, the last phrase originally states “...y a las 4 a.m., me la mataron.” The use of “me” establishes a connection between him and Alexa—a siblinghood, a friendship. “They killed that girl” vs. “They killed my girl.” His repetition of the pronoun throughout the interview elucidates how close they grew in the time that they knew each other. “I did not arrive in Alexa’s life, she arrived in mine,” Torres said.

Begnaud concluded the conversation by saying, “In life it seemed as though Alexa suffered silently, and in death she was humiliated publicly and may have been killed because of an accusation that was never proven to be true.” +++ I don’t need to wonder where Alexa would be if she were still alive. Most likely, she would 1.

2.

THEY KILLED ALEXA / NOT A MAN IN A SKIRT Transphobia Kills

Love’s statement is part of a collective history involving transgender and gender-diverse Caribbean individuals and their need to flee their home for the global North in order to be able to express their gender identities. The violence that subjects trans people to unemployment and disownment, like in the case of Alexa, contributes to this need.

These injustices did not originate in the Caribbean. It is recorded that African, Indigenous, and South Asian Caribbean societies embraced queerness prior to colonization. Their use of terminologies for same-sex relationships and gender nonconformity elucidates how normative queerness was in their communities. It was not until colonization that governments from the global North imposed their queerphobic legislature in their territories—this contributed to the creation of heteronormative societies and homophobic citizens. This colonial influence, coupled with the resounding presence of machismo, has hindered queer people from expressing themselves freely within the Caribbean and Latin America at large. While many countries in the global North still perpetuate homophobic and transphobic ideologies, they nonetheless serve as havens for queer Caribbean individuals, creating a dependency between oppressed and oppressor. Even in Puerto Rico, which is considered the LGBTQ+ capital of the Caribbean, there is a clear need to flee in order to exist simply as oneself.

The people at the vigil also embellished the 3.

We are all Alexa and we demand #justice. Puerto Rico, we are with you.

wire fence of Manuel De Dios Unanue Triangle Park on Roosevelt Avenue. The Puerto Rican flag draped upon a large trans flag, lit candles drew light to the otherwise bleak scene. White posters adorned with blue and pink strips of cardstock engulfed the fence. They exclaimed, “Transfobia Mata,” “I am Alexa,” “We never forget Alexa,” and “Todxs somos Alexa y exijimos #justicia. Puerto Rico estamos contigo.”

While these are valuable demonstrations of grief and pleads of unity, we must also reconcile with the reality that we live and die through trending terms, hashtags, and viral posts. Much like Alexa’s memory, her hashtags soon ceased to matter in the public eye. Social media has generated a generation of people that create terms and hashtags in homage to those who have passed. While trending terms do have some power to bring light to a situation, people’s lives should not be treated as microtrends. Just because Alexa Negrón and all of her hashtags are not at the top of the Twitter trending tab, it does not mean that this is not an ongoing police investigation. It is up to us to recognize the lives lost and understand that the tragedy does not end when people stop talking about it. By acknowledging the contradictory potentiality of social media activism, we can bring light to its faults while equipping its communicative power. +++ Alexa’s death has only further highlighted the systemic injustices that displace trans people, especially Black trans people, in Puerto Rico.

To this day, government officials discuss Alexa’s death as if it were a necessary step toward justice and applaud her for initiating a conversation that she never consented to be a part of.

It was not her duty to become a martyr. It was not Alexa’s responsibility to die. I wish I did not know her. I would not know her if she were still alive.

Alexa’s memory lies at the intersection of news reports, hate speech, and a single t-shirt design—at the corner of visibility and prejudice. Many times they were one and the same, as Puerto Rican news outlets regurgitated the hateful rhetoric used online by referring to Alexa as a “man in a skirt,” as well as with the incorrect pronouns. Visibility for the queer community, in this case the trans community, is a double-edged sword. While we yearn for recognition, our being seen is often only prompted by a false accusation, an act of defamation, or a threat to one’s life. Being seen is what often renders us invisible as we are pushed further into the margins.

I want to write about how Alexa Negrón Luciano’s memory lived on, how her death sparked change, how legislation is in place and effective programs have been established, but I would be writing falsehoods clouded by airs of hope.

Much like her case as of today, this piece has no conclusion.

NÉLARI FIGUEROA TORRES B’25 is an angry queer.

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

06

TEXT LILY CHAHINE & AFIA AKOSAH-BEMPAH

DESIGN BRIAANNA CHIU

ILLUSTRATION MICHELLE DING

METRO

How commissary privatization skews the worth of time

07

Rhode Island spends more than $50,000 a year on each person the state incarcerates, but that hefty price tag doesn’t cover basic essentials.

People incarcerated in Rhode Island are subject to a sickening micro-economy comprised of low wages and artificial pricing schemas at the commissary store. Items available at commissary range from envelopes to deodorant to ramen— about the same selection of a small convenience store, plus a scant selection of clothing and technology.

We were drawn to investigate employment and the commissary system at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) through conversations with Cimarron, a formerly incarcerated individual who has been connected to Brown-RISD’s prison abolition organization—Railroad— for years now. He brought the issue of commissary to the group’s attention in early 2021 as we searched to establish a more consistent, sustainable mutual aid network. Railroad’s Commissary Fund was born out of Cimarron’s conversations with Railroad about how we could redistribute wealth directly from the Brown-RISD community to incarcerated individuals in Rhode Island.

on the Inside

outside transfers and wages earned through employment. If someone has no contribution from outside, garnering enough income to pay for commissary items is a losing battle. Prison wages have declined on a nationwide basis—“the average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs [was 86 cents in 2017], down from 93 cents…in 2001,” according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

In Rhode Island, inmates typically earn between $1.00 to $3.00 per day.

‘Specialized assignment’ jobs are the ‘high-paying’ $3.00-a-day jobs, though they are fairly hard to come by and require a unique skill set. The vast majority of jobs start at lower rates. Additionally, high-paying industry jobs

dinner starts at 3:30, and the first breakfast shift is 7:30. Regardless of the three meals offered to incarcerated individuals, the lack of flexibility around eating times suggests that supplementary snack food is a need, rather than a luxury.

Many individuals incarcerated across the U.S. report undernutrition, and the ACI is no exception.

Criminal procedural fees are yet another monetary concern for individuals incarcerated at the ACI. In civil cases, incarcerated individuals are expected to pay their own court fees, unless they can show a six month ledger of their inmate account showing no monetary influx besides in-prison employment. If the request for fee deferral is approved, the court takes 20 per-

at the ACI often have significant drawbacks, such as frequent strip searches, abusive working conditions, and arbitrary firings.

Incarcerated persons employed in the ACI are paid daily, not hourly, wages. In the U.S., the Thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal except as punishment for a crime, which constitutionally upholds exploiting incarcerated labor.

Shift lengths at the ACI are extremely variable, some as long as 12 hours. There is no overtime pay. The mismatch between meager wages and a monopolized private commissary system means that affording even basic, inexpensive goods takes days of work.

Additionally, the quality of the items at commissary is often below that on the normal market. In a process called “phantom buys,” manufacturers sell products (typically clothing) that didn’t fully pass inspection at a low bulk price. The commissary corporation sells those products at rates similar to the outside market, and accrues profit from the difference. Incarcerated individuals at the ACI thus pay similar amounts for a definitionally lower quality product (deemed unsuitable for mass consumption).

RIDOC claims responsibility for only eight personal hygeine items for those deemed “indigenent,” or unable to afford their own products. Those include shampoo, soap, a comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, menstrual products (only in Women’s Facilities), and shaving instruments. All other commissary items are deemed non-essential, “luxury” goods. In order to qualify for complimentary hygiene items, inmates must prove that they have less than $10 in their account. Bureaucratic delays in processing indigency request slips mean that accessing basic hygiene products could take days to weeks.

Due to the difficulties of affording commissary items, a subterranean trading economy has emerged at most U.S. prisons. At the ACI,

cent of an individual’s prison pay each month until the court fees are paid off.

+++ Barred from carrying cash, people incarcerated at the RI Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) are forced to utilize the financial system—a daughter company of the Keefe Group called Access Corrections—which operates the ACI’s commissary. Effectively, the Keefe Group has created an extractive loop in which it profits off the fees family members pay to transfer their money to their incarcerated loved one—money that incarcerated individuals must then use at Keefe’s commissary.

In 2018, the Keefe Group was acquired by H.I.G. Capital, an investment and private equity firm. H.I.G. now owns both Keefe and Trinity Services Group, another large food-service and commissary operator. The combination of these two companies has further concentrated the prison services industry, which was already dominated by a small handful of corporations.

Beyond the monopolistic nature of the industry, privatization of commissary operations makes it difficult to find reliable data on their size and profit margins. The increasing number of prison facilities outsourcing commissary operations to for-profit companies like Keefe and Trinity has a detrimental effect on incarcerated people and those who support them.

When prisons outsource their food service and commissary operations, they are able to cut their budgets for food and subsistence, so commissary orders increase dramatically. As facilities outsource these services, incarcerated people have no other option but to pay for basic necessities out of their own pockets. Moreover, jails and prisons often receive a commission from commissary operators that results in a market distortion: the company that offers the lowest prices for incarcerated people and their families is not always the company that gets a contract. Instead, the prison often selects the companies that will yield the highest commission and profit. In the same vein, the outsourced commissary provider’s profits are directly linked to the number of people incarcerated, and so because they pay a commission to the prison or jail, the combined interests of the private company and the prison are to keep as many people incarcerated as possible. +++ Inmates at the ACIs have two sources of funds:

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

+++ Railroad’s Commissary Fund currently transfers $50 a month to five individuals at the ACI, and we are hoping to expand. Having access to sustainable streams of funds is essential to ensure the consistency of our mutual aid. If you are able, please consider a consistent mutual aid donation by joining our Patreon. You can pledge to donate $1, $5, or $20 a month, all of which will go to our penpals’ commissary accounts.

Any monthly excess goes to emergency mutual aid requests for people impacted by the prison-industrial complex in Rhode Island.

Given the artificial economy imposed on those on the inside, a couple bucks is worth so much more to individuals forced to live in RIDOC facilities. If you can, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/Railroad. +++ Cimarron was recently released from prison and would greatly appreciate any funds for housing and other needs. Please donate to his GoFundMe if you are able: https://www.gofundme. com/f/help-cimarron-get-back-on-his-feet.

A special thanks to Eddie Franco, a formerly incarcerated law clerk, for speaking with us about employment and commissary procedures at the ACI. AFIA AKOSAH-BEMPAH B’23.5 AND LILY CHAHINE B’24 are writing and working in solidarity with those inside, ‘free’ individuals still impacted by the system, and their supporters.

ARTS

EP AND KLAAAAANG

BLE

AND OTHER NOISE

Symposium Records and emergent Providence electronic

+++ Joe Lou, a musician I met at the show who’s lived in Providence for 11 years, says the city is filled with opportunity. “Other places might have an agenda or a certain sound, but nobody in Providence expects anything to be a certain

LUCAS GELFOND B’24 recently caved and bought a DDJ-400.

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

ILLUSTRATION HANNAH CHANG

Since getting to Brown, I’ve always imagined a vibrant Providence underground, a network of gritty DIY venues with out-there noise rock and punk, a vision which always seems to be set five or ten years before the present. It is certainly true that such a scene existed: the legendary Fort Thunder warehouse in Olneyville birthed local cult bands like Mirah, Lightning Bolt, and Forcefield before closing in 2001. The punk community continues to thrive, my editors tell me, but I’ve seldom ventured beyond the Hill or put any meaningful effort into finding it. Its lack of existence seems, perhaps, created by my laziness. In fact, sitting on one of the stools at the News Cafe, it strikes me that I can count the number of non-Brown-affiliated shows I’ve seen in Providence on one hand; the scene’s hypothetical intrigue feels, at once, in front of me.

Just after eight the performance space is almost totally empty, save for a man behind turntables under a large blue neon martini glass, who I later learn is Symposium’s Jacob

DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS

+++

Herschel. Toma Kami, the night’s headliner, still won’t get on for almost two hours. Young people in hoodies who sit off to the side enter first, later joined with Brown students I recognize who are likely here for the openers: Lurch (Constantin Gardey B’22) and Jackson Delay (Jackson Delea B’23), both of who have played a slew of Symposium’s recent events.

The room begins to fill with people, greeted by (what I later learn to be) a mix of UK genres like speed garage, techno, and jungle, propelled by glistening pop samples and elaborate drum patterns, peaking around 40. The music is eclectic and invigorating; by midnight the crowd is joyously entranced, cheering at surprise mixins and dancing through each transition and break.

It’s communal and welcoming. I find myself in dance circles of friends and strangers alike which fluidly open and close across the checkered black and white floor.

The four hours of music are all variations of what music journalist Simon Reynolds famously dubbed the ‘hardcore continuum.’ “I call it a ‘continuum’ because that’s what it is: a musical tradition/subcultural tribe that’s managed to hold it together for nearly 20 years now, negotiating drastic stylistic shifts and significant changes in technology, drugs, and the social/ racial composition of its own population,” he writes in the Wire. “It’s been a bumpy but exhilarating ride, but let no one doubt that it’s the same rollercoaster at every stage of the journey (a ride which most likely has yet to reach its end.)”

It’s this communal spirit that animates the night. Toma Kami’s exit around 12:30 a.m. is interrupted by cheers for ‘one more song,’ which he follows with PinkPantheress’ 2021 song “Passion,” to great excitement. I hear effusive praise for his set walking out, and sense that I’ve just been initiated into some ritual or have left some special celebration. Driving back to campus with three other students, I see Toma Kami’s Instagram story: “Thank you @ symposiumrecords and all the providence ravers for your mad energy, that was special +++.”

I crawl into bed feeling full and block out my calendar for Symposium’s May show.

TEXT LUCAS GELFOND

I walk past the green neon sign and hanging disco ball of Pawtucket’s News Cafe a few minutes after eight. The group of (what appears to be) Providence locals is thinning, leaving a row of black, questionably-leather stools open. I’m here for Bleep and Klang, an electronic music night hosted almost-monthly by Symposium Records, an outpost of the bookstore of the same name downtown.

I heard about the event a few months ago in an overstuffed car en route to a show in Boston.

These trips were necessary for great music, we agreed; most of the artists I loved in high school skip Providence on national tours. A friend of a friend pushed against this idea—they’d met Scott, who’d started Symposium Records in 2019 in hopes of building community around electronic music in Providence. After a pandemic-induced hiatus, they were back hosting regular shows, but I’d always found excuses against going. Few of my friends jumped at the prospect of ‘Rhode Island drum n bass,’ and, pretty new to this kind of music myself, I’d felt some latent anxiety about showing up in a space seemingly made for and by enthusiasts.

Symposium’s April 9 booking is a perfect storm, however; two acquaintances (one graduating this May) are opening for Paris-based musician Toma Kami, potentially the last show until the fall. I grab my jacket and call a Lyft toward Pawtucket.

way,” he tells me. Smaller venues have allowed him to experiment with different ideas, such as a night spinning exclusively “city pop,” a genre of Japanese disco from the ‘70s and ‘80s. He notes we’re in the midst of a new electronic wave. “There’s always been a lot of crossover between the noise and techno scenes, but lately I’ve met a handful of DJs and musicians who are new to the city, and they are doing an awesome job of blending, pushing things forward.”

Some of the aforementioned new DJs are students, like Lurch and Jackson Delay, who I meet at the former’s house a few days after the show. They take turns talking with me and mixing at a large console on his desk. They both got bookings at Symposium after sending Scott McCullough, Symposium’s founder and owner, mixes after a party. Delay has friends who go to school in the UK that can DJ large parties, but he notes that few of them get the chance to venture beyond more mainstream tech house (a common combination of techno and house music), either by choice or at the request of promoters. “It’s a real privilege, I don’t know a lot of people who have the same opportunity I do,” Delay tells me. Lurch, who’s originally from London and cherished the local rave scene before coming to Brown, was surprised to hear hardcore continuum music in Providence. He loves the variety of music they get to play at Symposium events. “You’re tying together way more sounds from different places. We’ll drop South African Gqom next to UK garage,” he tells me. This emphasis on experimentation prompts an interest in community, history, and exploration that places it in the shared history Reynolds invokes. “It’s through digging and taking an interest in the culture and listening to mixes, going through Bandcamp, and finding music that speaks to you rather than just being told it’s a top 40 hit.”

A few days later, I DM Audiofields, a DJ who’s become a fixture in the city’s growing electronic culture. He’s originally from Copenhagen and moved to Providence from New York in 2019 with a partner starting at Brown Medical School. They aren’t together anymore, but he’s stayed in Providence for the scene. He found the community serendipitously, first by approaching a stranger (now his good friend Natasha) listening to drum and bass on a Bluetooth speaker in a local park, and later when he noticed genre labels for UK bass music in the window of Symposium Books. He plays a biweekly residency at Mayday and is currently planning the second installation of DNB at the News, an all-day event at the News Cafe. “One thing that baffles me about Providence is that everytime I think I have a lay of the land, there’s a whole level of other shit I [didn’t] know was happening,” he tells me.

The community’s size means artists across a slew of genres that might otherwise compete for venues are mixed together, and many know each other and collaborate on events. Some of the DJs themselves are also behind events, like Brianna Paon, who founded northeast party series Vertebrae, Scott McCullough of Symposium, and Justin Bosma of Mayday. There’s coordination and discussion in a 30-person Discord server called Paradise Garage, a reference to an ‘80s New York City nightclub hailed for its key role in early dance and pop music. Audiofields tells me he gets goosebumps thinking about the momentum and possibility of the scene. “The overall theme is: we are all just nerds who really like this shit, you gotta do it because you can’t not do it.”

08

TOE TAGS

TOE TAGS

Goodbyes for the Indy’s class of 2022 In an Indy pick-your-fighter scenario, MMC would max the levels out on multiple criteria: magnetic charm, maravilhosa cantora, model of compassion.

She’d do it all in her default rose-patterned dress.

MMC, just like unlocking a new character at the end of a great journey, I lucked out on becoming your friend.

I discover so much in the smallest decisions that you take along the way: how you turn down a Snackpass deal for the chance at a prolonged conversation over a cream cheese bagel, how you would rather let your love shine once and shine bright in unforgettable shades of pink and green than be anyplace. MMC, there are countless precious viewpoints that only you have occupied. Thank you for showing me all the different ways of straying from the path, stopping for conversation, and resuming your stride with a new friend by your side. -ATCB

before i knew ATCB, i knew they were rooting for me. not because i was special, or because i had earned it, but because they so clearly and fundamentally believe in the goodness of people that they celebrate everyone around them. and then, suddenly, ATCB was everywhere, a reminder that indy MEs twerk on stage, that poets scream bad bunny lyrics, that water can pick you up and carry you for miles but it also sometimes begs to be cupped in your overlapping palms. this is when i learned that to be friends with ATCB is to be dancing. by that i mean: you will be truly, deeply, and lovingly seen, it will feel like it is meant to be, and every once in a while you will glance at how ATCB moves and try to mimic the floating, romantic, grace with which they navigate the world. you will hear chirps and know they are robins. you will believe that the clouds can rain coffee. you will be here. -MMC

We’ve all gotten very used to not having to go far to walk with RG, read with RG, write with RG, talk with RG. How, after all this, could RG go? We at the Indy have a list of demands for this outrageous situation we find ourselves in:

DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION ISAAC MCKENNA

Can we have a little more? Could it be after games and books? After coffee and a sandwich? After movies? After one more round of edits? After music and your poems? After another show? One more long drive? Another illustration for an article?

Another chicken man in Philly last night? Another

09

listen through?

Another set of reads? RG has let us push it back an issue before, could we try that again?

Could we draw for a heart for our RG Barille? Like most RG fans, we only need a small eternity, just enough for another spin around the park; is that so much to ask? Just a little crust of garlic bread?

To encounter IA is to sit beside one of the foremost Taylor Swift scholars, to find poetry in the quiet of early dawn but also in sweaty palms and puddles that linger after a windswept rainfall. The cadence of her voice lulls over grass crested hills, frolicking towards home.

No one else holds sisterhood so gently in her pocket as she laughs one beat staccato and lets the giggle

carry over the room.

IA, to know you is a gift, handwritten notes and pop songs, eternally bounding homeward, stretching out beneath the sun. I am grateful you have let me lean on you, and that you are so generous with your soft gravity. v and our lives are brighter, warmer, and ever so slightly sunkissed by your presence in them. -AJ

After all that, potentially, and a few more things, could we maybe play a game of chess and have a little lunch?

-LN

Anyone close to AF has witnessed her dogged meticulousness, a commitment to the particularity of even the smallest and subtlest of things, a devotion to the just so. AF’s just so-ness is not a bland perfectionism or obsession––it is not an involuntary urge for lack of control. Rather, AF is executing a directorial vision; she is the auteur of the AF cinematic universe.

The three defining attributes of the auteur are technical competence, stylistic continuity/distinguishability, and interior meaning. There is no doubting the technical brilliance in AF’s execution of her life-as-film. It’s evident in the exactness, the just so-ness, of all things in AF’s world; when it comes to putting it together, she couldn’t do better.

Nor could one question her distinct style and sensibility (so-called “consistent swag”), unfaltering and coherent day-to-day through her art, writing, and general demeanor (and outfits).

Finally, the auteur’s work contains interior meaning –– something like a worldview, an interpretation or approach to being; in AF’s case, it is an expressive soul, cumulative across everything she makes, does and is. It’s the overlapping center of the multitudinous Venn diagram that is the AF life-opus. Naturally, AF’s interior meaning is difficult to pin down, but it derives primarily from her steadfast adherence to principles, penetrating curiosity and perceptiveness, immense intellect, and infallible emotional intuition.

Anyone close to AF must realize that they are in some sense part of her world.

That is, if AF the auteur opts for your company, she has written you into her cinematic universe, and this was a very careful choice––you should be honored.

-JS

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

TM, we are so lucky that you joined our crew this semester. It has been too short and oh so sweet!

And in honor of that, here is a short and (hopefully) sweet farewell poem: Equanimous craftsman, you Cut carefully through papery blocks of persimmon and indigo hues Wedged colors vibrate Before our eyes.

And your pictures offer to their textual twins a gaze.

-SJ

TOE TAGS

rhythm, time, wonder :: all this magic whirls around LP as sure as if she were a little planet (if planets could be so cool) :: here and there and everywhere :: a wisdomful friend, a careful reader, an artful noticer :: be in LP’s orbit for just a second and you’ll feel charm entwined with gravity :: maybe you’ll float into LP’s cosmic rings, spinning with bits of ginkgo leaf, flotsam and jetsam, strong tea, or yarn :: gathered and arranged with grace, LP’s orbits make music :: she is rally comrade, concert planner, and fire sign extraordinaire :: who else would you turn for guitar lessons, a trip to the tidepools, or an especially brilliant musing about combat chameleons? :: LP teaches us how to revel and wonder, to organize and dance :: LP makes the world go round :: the minute you see her you begin to question why you were anywhere else just the moment before.

-RG

All those who have been so lucky to work on an LN D1, or to parse through the [-ln]s scattered about a messy WiR, or to pencil in and erase and pencil in again the answers to an LN crossword, know that to share a page with him is the Indy’s greatest gift. Providence will be horribly less fun once he’s gone, and we can only hope that he’ll somehow take a wrong turn and end up here again one day, with a coffee, basketball, and chess set in tow.

-DM

Unbeknownst to her utmost casual acquaintances, Wheels is uncannily Wheelsian. She is a forward-moving entity, gliding forth vis-à-vis rotational movement.

This Wheel is both stable and always in motion, and similar to her sobriquet, she sustains dualities: ironic and angelic, charming and cutting, girly and feminist, internet-persona and ever-present, self-deprecating and quick-witted, etc. She spins so fast, you can hardly decipher one spoke from another: is she playful or wise? Dear Indy or a Dear Friend? blonde or brunette? charming or cutting? playful or wise? Result-

ing is not so much a stable object as much as an atmosphere—easily identifiable in a wheelsian knick knack, a blouse, a treat. Nevertheless, we mustn’t forget that Wheels bears a sturdy center axis, for she is a source of stability to many. Not only does she frequent the Rock, but she is a rock to the most fortunate of her contemporaries. This young lady is singular and she contains multiplicities, perpetually unraveling upon each and every forward rotation. We look forward to see where she spins, and can only hope that she might come full circle, rolling back into our lives.

-AF

If you’ve ever taken a trip to the Moominvalley, you might have chanced upon ER traipsing through a glade, poised and snapping photos. A sunflower, an icicle, a friend. ER is a faithful documentarian, capturing scenes that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

To be on the opposite side of her camera lens is to catch a moment of praise from her friendly eye. She knows what looks good—her sense of style elicits Moomin and human gasps! To accentuate her chic blouses and handsome coats, ER often places random trinkets on her head—bottles, oranges, coffee milk—though she would call these hats. Always making new, ER refines what she sees. Cardamom, butter, sugar… her technical prowess with a waffle maker is said to be legendary; the buzz of its alarm touches stomachs and hearts.

BRYSON LEE “AFTER HOURS”

“This doesn’t look like it’s ever been the ‘right way,’” LN said once, as we were following the thread of a wrong turn somewhere near Fremont, Indiana. We asked an old couple for directions: she pointed left, he pointed right, we continued straight. This is all to say: to get lost with LN is what makes a paper map worth its weight in gasoline. On trips short and long, LN is the greatest story teller, and he is always the safest person to store a memory in; some may say that this is because he’s a good friend, a historian, and an Indy writer, but I think it’s just because he’s got the biggest heart. LN is the person that makes a place a Place, and that Place a place you want to be in, and he is the person that can look at Providence, square in her horrible eye, and still find a way to love her blossoms in the spring.

BM and I have been cursed, but we’re working on it. Thankfully, there is no better person to be with through hacked instagrams, many heartbreaks, and losing everything we’ve ever owned.

Meeting BM, which happens only in the eyes of hurricanes, is a gift reserved only for those ready to drive around in their car at midnight or sit with them in any diner at a moment’s notice.

They greet every day with sincerity, and there must be twenty of them because there is no other way a person could do so much with as much love as they do.

I want to watch lore YouTube videos with them until the sun rises. I want to dress up with them like pop stars. I want to buy treats with them because we are cursed, and don’t we deserve it anyways?

Being cursed is not so bad when a friendship is simply too good. It is, perhaps, the fair trade off for having the opportunity to know and love BM at all.

-AC

ER’s time with the Indy inaugurates her brief stay among the humans of PVD. We hope that one day, she returns, reminding us that Moomin magic is never too far away.

LP + RG

From replicating synesthetic washes of pink and marigold, to the moody and painterly scenes of Narragansett, the images that OL crafts appear to me as cinematic stills.

OL’s art has brought a special dimension of tangibility to the texts crafted by our writers.

Thank you for your ruminative creative presence.

-SJ

I picture OEO 20 years from now sitting poolside, in her Spike-Lee-adjacent husband’s home. Her sons are off at Eton, a school she thought only existed in period novels. Her hand is packed with an assortment of golden rings, ones she is sure not to lose in conmag, or in other people’s houses because she can no longer replace them in 2-3 business days. But even with Spike Lee Lite™️ away at his latest film shoot, OEO remains the star of this production. What you don’t see in this scene is that in her gold-laden hand lies a cellphone where she is sending all her friends good morning messages alongside the best places to get jollof rice and plantain in the city––a warm gesture, an attempt to bring home to all those who have gone away. OEO is the physical embodiment of home, a golden embrace. A reminder that you can find kinship in late night copy days, giggling over last-minute edits, and wondering how she’s managed to be the sunshine you need when all the curtains are drawn.

-IA

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

10

NS is on the green, catching a frisbee. She’s huddled by her laptop, writing a story. NS is so sorry she can’t do Sunday, she’s taking the day to drive to the woods and forage for mushrooms.

I did not know until meeting AS that I wanted a wooden duck, a decoy, if you’re in with the vernacular. Yet, when I saw him walking down Benefit with said decoy tucked delicately beneath his arm, I knew that somehow, something in my own life was so deeply lacking.

The life of AS seems full, even when his arms are not filled with duck. His laugh can fill a room better than water can any cup.

And somehow, he never runs out of words, whether in tweets or in March Madness brackets.

I did not know much before meeting AS, but I am learning how the world can be when you reject New York City and follow other feelings and other places. Through him, I am learning to search for ducks and small towns.

-AC

TOE TAGS

When I met NS, I was immediately drawn to her intensity, a dogged devotion to excellence in the things—storytelling, service, family—she cares about, to her candid fearlessness and commitment against apathy. In this, she remains unwavering. However, since knowing her, I am most grateful for her infectious sense of wonder, an inimitable curiosity about the world and people around her.

Meeting her for coffee spans a baffling range, across youth and ambition and the ways we make meaning, a steadfastness in interrogating the world paired with an affirming laugh and awareness of the humor in it all; she’ll earnestly share your enthusiasm, and it’s impossible to leave without believing more in yourself. I’m convinced this comes from her candor, her disarming authenticity; at her core, NS is driven by kindness, unshakeable in her convictions and bold in how she moves through the world. We’re lucky to know her.

-LG

Few words in the English language capture the ethereal presences of one MD. To know her is to feel loved and accepted always.

Her beautiful words and her kind spirit fill a room (and a heart <3) Who better to discuss books and days and feelings and life with than Megan. I am so gratefvul to have shared my time at Brown with her lovely and priceless presence. I will remember fondly the times we’ve spent dancing, talking, and wondering together. With her, life feels a little less lonely and a lot more hopeful. Forever grateful to know her and to be able to love her in such close friendship.

DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION ISAAC MCKENNA

- ODM

11

The blissful resonance of OD's laughter is almost as comforting as her warming hugs. Conversations with her hold a sense of genuine sincerity that can disarm the most cautious of people in the very best way. I feel so fortunate to have endured the strangest of college years alongside her gentle presence—Ophelia reminds me that there are people that understand. In spaces where everyone seems to be glued to an escalator transporting them to some predetermined end zone, Ophelia is happy to take a walk the long way round, stopping for an egg tart en route. The Indy remains beyond blessed to receive the grace of her designer eye, just as I am honored to receive her kindness. Whenever we depart, I always wish to thank her for the time she spends with me, so I will immortalize such thanks here <3 -MD

I think we took things a bit for granted this semester. JG always pulls through at Copy when we need help with emergency illustrations. What will [future ME acronym] do without him? I’m not sure, but that’s not for me to tell.

JG tells a story about his first time coming to copy. He had scaled the stairs of Faunce— up three flights and to the right. The room was empty except for one guy, who he asked: “is this conmag?

Like for the

A flash of pink (or green, or blue, or whichever bottle of hair dye was on sale that week), the all-too-familiar clickclack of platform shoes, the mysterious sound of angels harmonizing in––wait, is that Greek? And suddenly AW is here, there, everywhere, in fact they are the entire room, and we are all just lucky to be invited inside.

AW transforms your universe into a fairytale, one where princesses speak in sapphic poetry, lucrative thrift store finds are emperor’s clothes, and, if you close your eyes and truly believe, the perfect bagel can make you fly! AW, you are a gift––the absolute rarest of all, the type you take a really long time to open on Christmas morning because you simply need to keep the wrapping paper to remember it by. Thank you for teaching us that true poetry can be found in a laugh, or in nighttime conversation, or even (especially) in a steady hand guiding you home. -IA

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Indy?”

The guy said no and that he has never heard of the

Indy.

I don’t know what really happened because I know for a fact that Alisa, Ife, Isaac and I are always at copy and there are never men at Copy before 5.

Anyways, JG will always be able to find his way back to Conmag, and I’m glad he found us.

-SJ

We love you all and thank you for your wisdom! Good luck out in the world, and stay in touch <3 -ISIA

X

AUGUSTINA WANG “EVOLVE SCALES, GEMINI”

Augustina Wang B’22 “Evolve Scales, Gemini” Oil and Conte on Canvas, 60” x 40”

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

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a letter, a prayer LIT

easter sunday, and the couples make me cry. i dreamt, last night, of a secret place between knowing and consummating, between love and lack. i dreamt it twice, innocent interlacing with a body mine hasn’t known. i wake up and see flowers, feel love as it traipsed through my veins, hollow and ghost-like.

TEXT MIRANDA LUIZ, IFEOMA ANYOKU

DESIGN JAESUN M

ILLUSTRATION LUCY LEBOWITZ

and i’m back in the world of others’ love and others’ pain and others’ business, and it’s a holiday today.

13

i miss the old amorphous love who was infinitely foreign to me. we knew each other well. and then the older man texts me, who writes of devour, and i watch my dreams harden and go stale before my wristwatch. the infinite unknown love spoils away, and i am left, alone again. eating a scone at a coffee shop. watching the old folks on the east side hold hands and sip their tea.

i felt it all day, coming over me. like a song stuck in my head. echoes loud enough to leak through the unconscious. the dream: we were in a field of baby green and yellow late sunlight. we were cradled in a bed beneath the slanted ceiling, our feet were by the pillows, our heads almost falling off. we were spelling words: i think it was love: he had followed me here, a home, a displacement. and then our limbs were like letters: the L took my leg over his waist, our torsos collapsed. heads bound to new shoulders, i walked into liminality and saw beyond it. i saw asking for his mouth, without words. but he was gone before my lips could find him. in the day, i will occupy myself with simple things, and this moment will start at the small of my back, in the middle, and sharpen through to the navel, bleeding up. softly, though, with a coldness, like a flower. i don’t know what to do but feel that i’m dreaming, now, instead, that i’m away from that world, that though i cannot comfort you in love i will be back tonight with closed eyes. i will be back in love in a deep inwardness, the most sincere of all absences. walking in the park i will dissociate a little. the grass and the way the sun hits it reminds me of a different grass, and the memory becomes me. i am not in love, i am under the highway by the bay. i am not at the river. i am not with one who makes everywhere feel like river. what would happen if we said the words? what would happen if the language filled your mouth and wrinkled your prose. the betweenness of your tongue and cheek invokes me: would you feel me, then––like a dream, like prayer? a beckoning for the incomplete. i could sit on your tongue and touch your teeth while you talk. you would feel me, then, in an intimate absence, a space between your parted lips.

MIRANDA LUIZ B’22.5 keeps a dream journal.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

A Bird Will Not Be A Bird I am writing a poem today. I am writing a poem, because I have decided to write a poem, and because I have decided to write a poem, a poem is being written today. And every word will have meaning and every juxtaposition will have a just position, and you will take something from these words, from these words, something will be taken because I have written them down for you. If you squint, tilt your head, maybe even close your eyes, you will imagine corn fields or early onset erectile dysfunction or exploding stars or whatever else we can decide has meaning. And a bird will not be a bird, but instead a treatise on the national coin shortage, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or both. If you question where you are or get confused, merely skip to the next line. Who needs to understand where you have been so long as you have something to look forward to?

I am writing a poem today, and there will be line breaks and limited punctuation, capitalization—because we are best consumed in small portions!

I am writing a poem today, and it will be from the perspective of a white woman, using the name of a white man, telling the story of a Black man facing fears she pretends to understand. It will win the Pulitzer Prize, and Congress members will kneel before me in kente cloth, and

AP Literature and Composition classrooms will never be the same. In the back row, little Black girls will tuck their pencils into notebooks and shuffle their feet until one day they decide that they will write themselves a poem, too.

I am writing a poem today, except actually it will not be about forest fires, or taxes, or exploring the Himalayas, or how a scarf isn’t really a scarf but a metaphor for a hat, or police brutality, or the sound a cow makes when it is first separated from its child, or any trauma that is not mine to name. Instead, it will be my mother’s laughter on the Long Island Expressway, the painful accuracy I find in a slow expressway’s acronym being “LIE,” the way my best friend smiles when she dances, the smell of my nephew’s hair, my favorite songs, my grandmother’s name, my brother’s favorite songs that he claims I got from him.

I am writing a poem today because I hate poetry, and I don’t believe that the world has as much meaning as we pretend it does. I am writing a poem today because I love poetry, and language has created the world for me.

I am writing a poem today. I am writing a poem, because I have decided to write a poem, and because I have decided to write a poem, a poem is being written today.

IFEOMA ANYOKU B’22 is saying goodbye to the Indy.

LIT

Goodbye Rock, or, My Run-in with A Swivel Chair “At dusk, the orange glows through the windows, and black birds fly in formation over the city.” corner that looks out over the Bay. On the third floor my world once ended while sitting in a swivel chair. I was convinced that everything was coming undone. It’s not anything! said one with me then. Oh, but it is, I cried. A year later, I was finally able to return to that chair. At least the books were still there.

I like the fourth floor, and have no qualms with it.

I’ve never been to the roof, but once, when taking my place behind the desk for the graveyard shift, I heard a story: two students had found an open door and snuck up. They left the door ajar, an alarm rang, and some adults found

them—escapade over. Someone took down the information of these snoopers, led them to the lobby, then let them go. They leaped down the broad Rock stairs and fled through the night.

I want to go on the roof too, one day, to reminisce on swivel chairs, pooh-bah, and dust motes.

After all, there are only so many things you can learn in the stacks of a library, between the covers of a book.

PEDER SCHAEFER B’22.5 will be back.

TEXT PEDER SCHAEFER DESIGN JAESUN M ILLUSTRATION JOHN GENDRON

The basement is a cold concrete floor, floating dust motes, a gated book bindery, shelvers, and silence. In the bindery, the freshest pages are bound in glossy cardboard covers behind an iron cage, while in the shelvery, the books are slowly sorted until they find their home again, seeking their special place in the thousands of volumes above.

On Level A, the absolute quiet room is full of hissing radiators, comfy couches, librarians eating lunch, a view over the city, and late night naps before graveyard shifts.

I worked for many years on the first floor, staffing the main desk until 2 AM, pulling books for circulation, and whiling away the winter weeks in Providence while I waited for the return of my fellow students. For one friend, the power of sitting behind the desk went to his head. He deemed himself the head pooh-bah of the library, I his assistant, both of us armed only with the alarm bell and threats of overdue fines on missing books. Sometimes, after ringing the bell, freshmen would run up to the desk. What’s happening! they cried. Is it an emergency? We smiled. My friend is long gone. Now, some librarians greet me as I swipe in, or open the gates specially for me. They ask about the latest happenings around campus, eyes peeking out from behind masked faces. They’re kind, always ready with a greeting or a quip in the midst of long hours immersed in the written word.

Avoid the second floor at all costs. The grad students’ chambers—locked to outsiders—are sterile, walled with glass, and I’ve known many who have been locked out of the private rooms, their books and belongings held captive to the whims of the swipe system.

The third floor is my world. Freshman year, we sat in the East Asian section in lumpy chairs, a community of truth investigators armed with youthful naivete. Four years later, we’re alone in the winter months, watching the sun set over Providence. At dusk, the orange glows through the windows, and blackbirds fly in formation over the city. We sit in lonesome carrels—crude jokes scratched into the wood—writing theses on obscure topics, plucking books from the shelves like apples from a tree. We gorge. My desk sits equidistant between the bathroom and the elevator, beside long rows of history. My chosen volumes are aligned in tight formation on the shelves above my desk, my hidey-hole, sitting alongside academic detritus—old thesis drafts, notes from advisors, copies of the Indy, and letters from friends stuffed between wellworn book covers. My jacket hangs at attention.

In the witching hour, security guards dressed in yellow pass my desk, their beepers bopping the bookcases, their feet padding down long hallways. Janitors at midnight move slowly through the rows, and student workers, pulling carts, pull books for far-flung locales. The concrete floor is cold against my socked feet, and I know the number of steps to the stairwell, the bathroom, the elevator, and that window in the

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

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ral

Time is A Spi

ILLUSTRATION ALANA FRANCES

FEATS

A Conversation with Artist Alex Westfall

Filmmaker, visual artist, and writer Alex Westfall B‘20 projects two photographs overhead, nearly identical in composition: against a faded blue sky, her parents gaze at one another from behind a silver camcorder. Images, she explains, are building blocks of the movie in her head.

From a young age, she has tumbled through life with a camera, taking photographs with her sisters and using the lens to make sense of the world around her.

Alex’s film, The Rose of Manila (2020), is informed by her familial relationship to visual archives, though it turns its attention to a political project of collective memory. Westfall combines original footage with archival material to reimagine a beauty pageant that the infamous first lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos participated in as a young woman, weeks before she met her future husband and dictatorial partner.

The story centers around Imelda’s loss of the 1953 pageant, and her closed-doors plea for the creation of a new title, The Rose of Manila. By combining analog and digital footage, Westfall plays with images to disrupt linear expectations of time and narrative. Images are more than an organizing principle; with her care, they blend memory and myth, autobiography and historical investigation, fiction and the otherwise forgotten.

Alex graciously sat with me on a Thursday in mid-April, hours before performing her first public artist lecture about The Rose of Manila, here at Brown, just two years after her graduation. Out on the green and later over email, we discussed how art may expand the archive, responsibility in re-imagining history, and the cyclical nature of time.

TEXT ANABELLE JOHNSTON

DESIGN ADELLE CLARK

+++

15

Anabelle Johnston: Imelda Marcos is a fascinating political figure and person, though much of her legacy centers around the violence and corruption of her political regime. Your film looks at a moment in her early life and I wonder, what drew you to telling this particular story?

Why Imelda and why this particular snapshot of her history?

Alex Westfall: My conception of Imelda stemmed from this existential question of how did I get here? How did I come into this world?

The Marcos regime forced my mom’s family to move from the Philippines to Los Angeles. It was in Los Angeles that she met my dad, so I have always wondered: what if this dictatorship hadn’t happened? Would my parents still have met? Would I exist? My being has always been somewhat entangled in the Marcos regime. It’s a film about her [Imelda], but it’s a film about me—not that I am equating myself to her at all.

It’s so important to examine her through a critical lens and sit with all the terrible things she’s done. But I think it is a worthwhile exercise to consider how public figures become who they are. Everyone has an origin story, and everyone has a sense of time and history within them.

AJ: The film opens with a clip of Imelda Marcos reflecting on her role as a first lady of the Philippines. She expresses that she envisions her position as a kind of homemaker and asks, “What makes a home? Love. What is love made

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

real? Beauty.” How much of the film was guided by this footage?

AW: This archival footage was featured in Imelda, a film I saw in fourth grade by a Filipina director named Ramona Diaz. This film spurred my interest in Imelda as a political figure and person. When it came to my film, I didn’t know if I could access any archival footage, so I wrote the film as a straightforward narrative about the specific moment of Imelda competing in this beauty pageant. Luckily my thesis advisor knew Ramona and connected us, so I was able to tell her about how much her film shaped my understanding of Imelda and the Marcos regime. The Rose of Manila is about looking at someone’s early life through the lens of the present, so it was important to place my ‘new’ footage in contact with archival footage, and to weave multiple temporalities together to tell this story.

So much of this film, and my practice more broadly, is informed by the work of Saidiya Hartman and her theory of critical fabulation. Fully understanding history involves imbuing the archives with fiction or imagination, as they are inherently biased and incomplete.

Just as our memories are selective, I believe archives are plagued by absence. So it was really special to gain access to the footage; it added another aesthetic and thematic dimension to the film.

AJ: Such a lovely answer and you’ve brought in so many of the things that I wanted to ask you about. This existential question appears especially important as a Filipina artist working on this film here in the United States.

How was your time split when working on the film—what was it like working on a project so deeply rooted in the Philippines, away from the Philippines?

AW: I consider myself an artist working (from) within the diaspora, always with one foot in the Philippines and the other levitating elsewhere… sometimes the U.S., sometimes not. The longest I’d been home in Manila in the decade since leaving for school was four months.

We filmed in and right outside of Metro Manila for two and a half days over winter break my senior year (December, 2019). From Providence, I was scouring the pages of film schools in Manila, cold-emailing film students who might be interested in being on set. It was so special to meet, hire, and ultimately collaborate with a local cast and crew. The night of the third day, I flew back to Providence to start senior spring (semester)—and edited until I graduated.

Aesthetically, I am referencing multiple lineages of cinema: Philippine films, films orbiting around ‘bad’ women, and films that merge fiction with non-fiction. Because so much of the film was shaped by thinkers I’d read at Brown, I consider the film to be as much about Providence as it is about the Philippines. In the shot of the retro television, you can see in the reflection of what is so clearly my Fox Point apartment. Moments like these I hope reflect the kaleidoscopic cultural perspective of the film, and of myself.

AJ: In line with this idea of merging fiction and non-fiction, there’s a scene where Imelda looks at herself in the mirror and images of her as a child are cut with actual archival footage of the leader she is yet to become. This feels, at least for me, very much like the epitome of a lot of these questions you raise around memory and adding fiction to an archive. I wonder, how were her imagined memories informed by historical footage? How might you think of narrative as troubling the boundary between memory and imagination?

AW: Oh, that’s so interesting. The historical footage is the future, in this moment, but it appears in the film as a part of Imelda’s inner world. I guess I don’t have a concrete answer. I like to think of my sense of time, and my moving through the world as an embodied experience—my past, present, and future all kind of operating in the same space. I don’t think the past is fixed—it’s always informed by the present, and our present is informed by the futures we envision for ourselves. I think our inner worlds and selves have a jumbled-up temporality as well. Maybe it wasn’t super intentional, but I wanted to include more imagery of the dictator Imelda ended up becoming. Ultimately I think this mirror moment exemplifies how the sands of time fall; how time might look like a spiral.

AJ: I really like this moment because, from our perspective, it’s all in the past but these scenes are interwoven so the past becomes a kind of possibility. It feels very much like a form of critical fabulation, in line with the archival reimagining the film takes on as a whole. The Rose of Manila breathes life into a singular story of an infamous political character and a particular moment of ambiguous truth. How did you conceptualize your responsibility and taking on Imelda’s story? What does it mean to you to add to an archive and what do you see as fiction’s relationship to collective memory?

AW: One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is that this film was made in 2020 and in the years since, Imelda’s son Bongbong decided to run for president. He’s currently leading the polls, and I think what’s really fascinating is that most of his supporters are people who are our age—under the age of 30—because they were born after his parents’ violent regime. I wonder how can film—images and narrative— undo collective forgetting? How can we utilize images to remember? I’m hopeful that this film as a critique can add to the conversation and collective memory of what happened. This is especially important because history is being rewritten by political figures right now.

It’s such a careful line to walk, blending fiction and fact, because one can reach a point of irresponsibility or inadvertently erase certain narratives. With my film, I hoped to critique Imelda’s character in subtle visual ways—the moment of her leaving the turtle on its back or taking up more space in the choir. I wanted these scenes to build towards the overall argument of the project: maybe it wasn’t just her future husband that made her the person she

FEATS

became. Maybe it’s this deep loss of motherhood that made her who she was as well.

AJ: Even though the film focuses on Imelda, the story, in some ways, is defined by the absence of her mother. You had mentioned earlier that writing the screenplay came from this existential question rooted in your family history and geography, so I was wondering how much of the film was informed by your own family? How much of the film was informed by your own conception of motherhood and also responsibilities to a mother land?

AW: Mm, I feel like anytime someone sets out to tell a story it’s always going to be somewhat autobiographical. I brought in parts of my own life into the film, though again, not to equate myself with Imelda. Much of the casting, locations, and production design were little Easter eggs for myself. My mother plays Imelda’s mother, for example, and my father plays Imelda’s father. All of the pageant dresses belonged to my great-grandmother, my grandmother, or my mother.

As for themes of motherhood and motherland, I’m fascinated by how detached Imelda sounds when she speaks of her role in the political throne as a ‘mother to the Filipino people.’ She speaks with such conviction that you begin to wonder, Is this real? Am I being convinced?

Seeing the archival footage on its own, it’s easy to get swept into it. She’s so confident, and kind of endearing and intriguing in a strange and dangerous way.

AJ: Yeah, she’s very alluring, so I find myself often believing her rhetoric even if I don’t believe her feelings.

AW: Exactly. Which is one of the dangers of populism. Another reason I imbued fiction into this story was to dramatize that rhetorical tension and make it feel absurd, which I hope spins it into more of a critique. I hope viewers take these archival snippets with a grain of salt.

AJ: The archival footage makes up one component of the story visually but much of the scene composition feels heavily informed by visual art. You work in a couple different mediums, including photography, visual art, and the written word (including on the Indy). How did they come together in The Rose of Manila and why did you choose film to tell this particular story?

with digital footage, which ended up serving the film’s proposition that multiple temporalities can occur at once. All of these discoveries and ‘mistakes’ ultimately gave the film more depth in my eyes.

AJ: Your many influences feel really palpable when watching the film and it’s so engaging precisely because it does not fall into a singular aesthetic category. There’s a sense of community that comes from such an interconnected practice, and it’s evident in the work you produce.

Who have you been creating in community with recently and how have you built a new community after your time at Brown?

AW: All of my work, creative and intellectual, is activated when I am in dialogue with others. I feel myself becoming a better person, artist, and thinker when oriented towards sustaining a conversation. I also really believe that you get back what you put into a community.

I suppose being intentional about relationships is a byproduct of my childhood spent moving around the world. There are the more ‘public’ dialogues I’ve engaged in as a freelance writer (a secret: selfishly, I pitch in order to speak with artists and thinkers who inspire me).

Then there are the more private conversations— the phone calls, email chains, voice notes—I have with the people around the world whom I love and whose thoughts I value…some artists, others not. I’ve been developing a feature film with my friend Tavi for the last year or so.

That’s been a deep and meaningful collaborative process visiting archives, conducting interviews, and sending notes back and forth.

I moved to Los Angeles after graduating, sort of by default. To be frank, because LA is physically fragmented and spaced-out, I thought that maybe I’d use my time here to focus on my work. But somehow, community has come about without me even looking. I’m mentoring at an after-school photography program for teenage girls—it’s probably the most inspired I am all week. I went to the desert with four friends and we wrote collectively, inspired by the Situationists and Moten/Harney. Before giving the talk at Brown, I practiced my performance in front of the same friends. I love the

neighbors who live downstairs. I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s possible—as an artist or a person—to live in a vacuum, so by nature community is at the heart of everything for me.

AJ: Attending your performance and live screening of The Rose of Manila was so lovely, in part because you situated this film in those larger conversations and the community that was foundational to its creation. The film however can also be streamed on Criterion now, which is so exciting! What was the process of getting your thesis placed on the platform? Additionally, how have you felt knowing that the film can be streamed and asynchronously viewed?

AW: I owe it to our distributor Dedza—they do remarkable work in dissolving the structural hierarchies in the film world. They also support people like myself whose work falls in the hazy space between film and visual art, fiction and nonfiction. I simply responded to an open call for their inaugural release. I am grateful that they saw something in my work and included it in a stellar selection of shorts by young artists of color. At the time, Dedza had partnered with Kino Lorber for a nationwide theatrical release—already a total dream for me. A few months later, when Kate Gondwe let us know that Dedza had closed a deal with Criterion, I was beyond belief. I hope it’s encouraging for others to see that an institution like Criterion can support not only student work, but work that falls beyond and between tonal and formal categories.

To your second question, there is of course magic to the collective experience of watching a film, but I am happy knowing that my work is accessible for people around the world. I like to think that this film is one with multiple points of entry. I hope its longevity on a platform like Criterion means that potential audiences can come to it at different points in their lives.

Similarly, as the geopolitical and social climate continues to shift and sway, I hope a number of conversations can blossom from each viewing over time.

ANABELLE JOHNSTON B’23 regularly tiptoes fact and fiction.

AW: I think that my films are deeply informed by my background in fine art and critical theory.

I’m hopeful that this approach can push and imagine what’s possible in film. Film works for a generalist like me because I don’t have to choose between photography, design, writing, research, fashion, music, performance, working in community…it all makes its way into the process. I appreciate how the medium feels familiar and accessible; how it can operate on the level of story or pure entertainment, but also on a deeper critical level.

I began photographing when I was 11 years old, so I am naturally obsessed with images.

To me, they are projections of the desires and fictions written inside our heads—ways to bring our personal mythologies and logics into the public sphere. Really, the choice to film this project was instant and intuitive. When I encountered a book (Imelda: Mothering and Her Poetic and Creative Ideas in a Troubled World) in which Imelda describes entering a beauty pageant as a teenager, not only did I see Imelda the egomaniac in her early life, but I saw the images in my head right away.

Of course, time is at the center of film.

That’s why it’s such a useful way to interrogate how history spirals and unfolds, in breaking open linear narrative. I learned this through the process of making The Rose of Manila. Like I mentioned earlier, I wrote the script as a straight-forward narrative, and only came to the treasure trove of archival footage of Imelda in the edit. Also, a mechanical failure in my 16mm camera prompted me to stitch together celluloid

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EPHEMERA LANA HADŽIOSMANOVI “EGG HEAD”

Lana Hadžiosmanovi B’24 “Egg head” GIF Animations

17

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

DEAR INDY

’s Guide to a Summer Fling!

T

DO throw grand parties.

You should construct one of those champagne pyramids where the alcohol flows down to every cup. You should have live music, even if it’s you singing a cappella. There should be no jeans, and certainly no Blundstones. All waists should be caged, and all declotages should be showcased. A whole pig should be served with an apple in its mouth. Most of my understanding of this era comes from the Pride and Prejudice mini series, which, according to Rotten Tomatoes, is 87% accurate.

DON’T sit outside in crowded areas waiting for someone to approach you.

I see you, headed to the center of campus the second the bell rings to stake your claim to a socially advantageous section of the green.

Stop. Think twice. Reconsider. You do not go to

DO tell people you love that you love them.

What is more romantic than that? Pour your love into any form: a song, a composition, a letter on parchment, write it in the sand, engrave it into an oak tree, I don’t care. Romanticism is about emotion, about releasing feeling back into the world, about unleashing our imaginations. You’ve walked around town in a billowing gown. You’ve thrown the greatest balls this side of Rhode Island has ever seen. You’ve ditched your phone, you’ve forgotten who Pete Davidson is, you’ve grown out all of your body hair.

By this point, you’ve definitely fallen in love.

So tell this person that you love them, and then run away. Let your dress be the last thing they see as you prance into the sunset, or down the road, or onto the bus. They’ll know where to find you.

DESIGN SAM STEWART

DO take long walks in flowy clothes.

Imagine a sheet draped across your body and a giant fan that propels directly towards your face: that is what you should look like walking across Providence. Your clothes should trail a couple feet behind you as you prance through downtown, or in the woods, or on the beach, or into a train car. If you have short hair, it might be appropriate to buy a wig or some extensions in order to maximize your windswept aura. People should have to form a two foot radius to accommodate your whimsicality. Your aura will be so intimidating both physically and emotionally that while many will want to, only the bravest will enter your orb in order to steal your heart.

You’ll fall in love with them, and you’ll flow away together.

just seemed like people had dressed up as their childhood selves. In this new era, there will be no nostalgia for a decade that isn’t our own. We are history.

This moment is the 1840s. So come in your industrial revolutionary best. Still, no Blundstones.

TEXT CECILIA BARRON

his is the post-hot-girl-summer summer. If 2021 was all about forgetting feeling and embracing the corporeal, 2022 marks a romantic return. We want emotions on top of emotions, poetry on top of poetry, and only then can we have bodies on top of bodies. This will not be the summer of Snapchatting, or taking shots out of a Poland Springs bottle, or only listening to songs released between 2012-2015. Like Europe rising from the ashes of the Industrial Revolution, we’ll reject modernity—BeReal, Zara, air fryers, posting Wordle, Pete Davidson, Trader Joe’s frozen aisle, the “reject modernity, embrace tradition” meme—and embrace tradition—galas, bare feet, Nature with a capital N, Germans, sobbing, long poems, etc.

You’re going to fall in love this summer.

I don’t care for how long—forever, a year, a month, a day, two hours while you watch your soulmate play the drums at an outdoor concert only to never see her again—it’s just important that you do fall. This will be the summer of reading in hammocks, singing around the fire, and staring into each other’s eyes. I’ll let you know how to get there, but you’ll have to delete TikTok first.

people—people come to you. If you’re swinging the bell in a dark and narrow tower surrounded by talking mice, they will come to you. If you’re holed up in your room, writing epic poetry, they will come to you. If you’re playing on a rope swing hooked to a weeping willow overlooking a French coastal village, they will still, even then, come to you.

I understand the impulse to run to where the people are, but that is all very 2021. We had just gotten our vaccines, contact felt very novel. But we’ve all touched each other enough, and breathing into each other’s mouths has lost its allure. People always prefer the romantic recluse who’s too busy dreaming to remember that other people exist. Be that romantic recluse. Force yourself to dream. They’ll find you in the bell tower, and then—obviously—you’ll fall in love.

DON’T feel bad if they don’t love you back.

DON’T throw a decades party.

These were fun—please, don’t get me wrong!— but they will unfortunately have to be left, like the rest of the hot-girl-summer era, in history’s trash can. Most people came dressed in 70s or 90s attire, so it always seemed like the theme was “Bell Bottoms and Chokers” or “Psychedelic Punk.” Concerningly, y2k is now an established decade, so a lot of the time, it

This summer, there will be only longing, never regret. You can long for your lover’s embrace, but you can’t regret having met them. You can long for their company, but you can’t regret having confessed your feelings. Unfortunately, there is nothing more romantic than unrequited love. While I hate to see you sad, I love to see you yearn.

To the summer of yearning!

VOLUME 44 ISSUE 10

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Upcoming Actions & Community Events Saturday 4/30 @ 8 - 2AM: Ocean State A$$ Birthday Fundraiser Celebrate O$A’s 2nd birthday and spend some cash on your local sex worker organizing group. Featuring local DJs, a dance party, and hot merch. Studio 54 theme - dress to impress!

Location: The Salon, 57 Eddy St, Providence Sunday, 5/1 from 1-7PM: MAY DAY 2022 Celebrate May Day with Red Ink and local political and union leaders this Sunday! There will be food! Drinks! And music from Ryan Jackson, T. Bloodhound, Matt Kowalski, Erin Vadala, Cinya Khan!

Location: Red Ink Community Library, 130 Cypress St., Providence Monday, 5/2 @ 6PM: An Evening of Poems and Music at Small Format Mingle and sip at 6pm, followed by performances and readings from Levi Cain, Prior Panic, and John Francis Quiñonez 7-9ish! Masks appreciated inside. FREE! All these very queer artists are ready to offer you a night of intimacy, hits of joy, and queer imagination!

Location: Small Format, 335 Wickenden St. Tuesday 5/3 @ 6 PM: The Fundamentals of Political Economy Reading Group This is an opportunity for free education, networking with fellow leftists in the area, and acquiring the intellectual tools needed to build a better world. Every first and third Tuesday from May 3rd to August 2nd, hosted by the RI CPUSA and Red Ink. Please RSVP if you plan on attending, and let them know if you need help finding copies of the books.

The first meeting (May 3) will be introductions. RSVP at: https://www.eventcreate.com/e/fundamentals-of-political-e Location: Red Ink Community Library, 130 Cypress St., Providence

There are currently 16 outstanding requests for aid, equal to $1600. Help QTMA fill this need! +

Kennedy Plaza Survival Drive (by Wide Awake Collective) Venmo WideAwakes-PVD, Cashapp: $MutualAidMondays Support weekly survival drives on Saturdays at Kennedy Plaza! This drive distributes food, water, hygiene materials, warm clothing and other important items to folks in need.

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Railroad Fund PVD Venmo: theorytakespraxis The railroad fund provides sustainable support to people currently incarcerated in Rhode Island. Please donate and help Railroad support a friend who is in need of continued survival and support this winter.

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Ocean State A$$ Mutual Aid Fund 2022 Venmo: OSA-funds Support local sex workers by donating to the venmo above and consider buying an Ocean State A$$ calendar, on sale at Fortnight Wine Bar, Hungry Ghost Press, Symposium Books, Mister Sister Erotica, and RiffRaff.

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COYOTE RI Closet (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics RI) Now accepting donations of hygiene products and new or used clothing at the Love and Compassion Day Health Center; 92 East Avenue, Pawtucket RI, 02904. Contact Sheila Brown (401) 548-3756 to donate or collect items.

Sundays in April @ 3-5PM: Queer Knitting Circle at Small Format Queer knitting circle is back! Want to learn how to knit or refresh your knowledge? Looking for more queer community? Bring needles and yarn for a lesson! The group will meet every Sunday through April.

Location: Small Format, 335 Wickenden St., Providence

Mutual aid* & community fundraisers

DESIGN SAM STEWART

*Mutual aid is “survival pending on revolution,” as described by the Black Panthers. Join in redistributing wealth to create an ecosystem of care in response to a system of institutions that have failed or harmed our communities.

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Community Support Needed Donate at https://givebutter.com/amor4sol AMOR is fundraising for Sulayman, “Sol”, a Gambian father to an 8-year old boy from Providence. Sol was detained by ICE in late 2018, and ultimately deported to Gambia in March of 2019. Now, his family are beginning the process of getting Sol back to the US to reunite with his wife and son. Any help would be appreciated.

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Support a Black mom who is grieving Donate at tinyurl.com/Black-mom-grieving This fundraiser is intended to raise money for a Providence community member who has faced several trials this past year: assaults on her family at the hands of police, traumatizing DCYF raids, and the passing of close family members and friends, including her father. While battling cancer, she is also the primary caretaker of several grandchildren, and needs the funds to provide for them and pay for her father’s service.

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Queer and Trans Mutual Aid PVD Venmo @qtmapvd, PayPal.me/qtmapvd Support mutual aid for LGBTQIA people in Rhode Island!

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Do you have an event, action, or other information for the Providence community that you’d like to see shared on this page? Email us at theindy@gmail.com!