kitsch Magazine: Spring 2017

pop culture, politics, college, etc.

meet the editors

JAGRAVI DAVE Editor-in-chief

ANNA LEE Assistant Zooming In Editor

AURORA ROJER Editor-in-chief

GABY LEUNG Bite Size Editor

FAUNA MAHOOTIAN Assistant Art Editor BARBARA ESUOSO Design Editor

MAURA THOMAS Zooming Out Editor Art Editor

JAEL GOLDFINE Watch & Listen Editor Social Media Editor

NATHANIEL LACELLE-PETERSON Assistant Watch & Listen Editor

ZOE FERGUSON Zooming In Editor

JESSIE BROFSKY Assistant Watch & Listen Editor

ABIGAIL MENGESHA Assistant Zooming Out Editor

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letter from the editors

This past year we’ve been saturated with rhetoric surrounding “progress.”

Trump’s election was widely hailed as a “step backwards,” undoing the years of positive change that allowed Hillary Clinton to declare that “America is already great.”

But this semester kitsch wonders: have we really been moving forward? Can we even conceive of history as linear? Jeremiah Kim questions whether the liberal embrace of immigrants is really so “progressive” in his article “Dismantling America’s Immigrant Fetish” (42), and in her review of 20th Century Women, “Why We March” (17), Laura Kern critiques the “progress” made by modern feminism since the 1970s. In “There is Literally No Such Thing as Good English” (56), Jagravi Dave criticizes the demand for standardization in language, while Viri Garcia and Christopher James-Llego poke fun at supposed gains in minority media representation in “Was Cassian Andor Anything Like Me?” (26) and “Final Girl Karla… Sorta” (16).

We question, also, how this discourse of progress has manifested itself in our immediate surroundings—our city and university. Aurora Rojer criticizes incarceration practices in Tompkins County in “Don’t Build a Bigger Jail” (34), Nicole Oliveira interviews CGSU member Sena Aydin about organizing to combat historical and current institutional oppression on our campus (36), and Nadya Mikhaylovskaya questions whether shiny new campus buildings are always better in “The Dark Side of Donations” (32). But progress is about more than just politics. In Andrew Peiser’s “Sisyphean Speech” (11), progress is a personal achievement, and Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson chronicles a cross-country biking trip in an examination of spatial progress in “Aladdin, WY” (54).

So, what can we truly call “progress?” It is clear that forward movement in time (perhaps just a perceptual fallacy of humans) cannot be equated with improvement. But it is, perhaps, in identifying the present as a series of repeating trends—in looking at the past as one large catastrophe, as the “Angel of History” does for Walter Benjamin—that we can identify the cycles in which we are trapped and from which we must break free (see Daniel Toretsky’s art on page 23). Right now, the future seems bleak and not at all a source of hope with the potential for change. Our only hope for progress, in the sense of real change for the better, lies in confronting the present. What could this “progress” look like? That, dear reader, is for you to decide.

aurora and jagravi

In This Issue...

On the Plaza 7 The Modern Bechdel Test 8 Scholastic So White 9 Kids are Sexual Beings Too! 10 Sisyphean Speech 11 Diary of a West Coast Girl 12 Biting Barbie’s Head Off 13 Pretty Little Liars 15 Final Girl Karla... Sorta

16 Why We March 17 The Finsta-gram 20 The Ungraspable Light 22 Why Am I Watching This? 24 Was Cassian Andor Anything Like Me? 26 [Insert Celebrity Name Here] Is Not an Activist 28

The IUD Monologues 31 The Dark Side of Donations 32 Don’t Build a Bigger Jail 34 Interview with CGSU Member Sena Aydin 36

I Am Gagged 40 Dismantling America’s Immigrant Fetish 42 Urban Flavors 45 The L Bench 46 Alternative Structures of Government 48 Why Are You So Obsessed With Me? 50 The Paradox of the Bong Woman 52 Aladdin, WY 54 There is Literally No Such Thing as Good English 56

On the Plaza

What would you have in an ideal world?

“There would always be free time.”

- Lydia, ‘17

“Lots of happy plants.”

- Hannah, ‘19 “Gender equality would be lit.”

- Alex, ‘19

“Make food not have calories.”

- Isabel, ‘19

“We could talk to dogs.”

- Madzi, ‘19 “Would I sacrifice the few men I really love to get rid of the rest of them?”

- Winnie, ‘19

“I would have the right power and agency to do the right things.”

- Sam, ‘19

“Everyone to live in what we equate as ‘indigenous communities,’ so that there would be no higher development and civilization.”

-Molly, ‘19

“Equality.”

- Tim, ‘18 “Hillary Clinton would’ve won the election.”

- Anonymous

“Meritocracy.”

- Andrew, ‘19

“The infrastructure for poor people would be repaired.”

-Angelica, ‘20

“I would have a lactose tolerant digestive system.”

-Claire, ‘19

“To stop having periods.”

- Jenna, ‘17

“Endless bomb-ass sex.”

- O.A., ‘18

“A cancer-free world.”

- Abby, ‘17

“More nice days.”

- Beth, ‘19

“Peace.”

- John ’19 -Meghan ’17

“Friends.”

- Sarah, ‘19

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The Modern Bechdel Test how can hollywood not pass this? art and article

by Gaela LaPasta

In 1985, the Bechdel Test was created to test if a movie could simply portray a woman as a human being.

In 2017, we still rejoice when a movie passes said test, although few blockbusters and big budget films manage to. According to Dykes to Watch Out For, the comic strip where the Bechdel Test originated, a film must meet three criteria to pass: 1. The movie has to have at least two [named] women in it, 2. who talk to each other 3. about something besides a man.

I have noticed that a lot of movies aren’t passing the Bechdel Test. In fact, according to fusion.net, 32% of the top 50 movies of 2016 failed to do so. In light of this information, I think it’s time to make a change. We want our movies to pass! As a remedy, I present a few suggestions of new guidelines that blockbusters should aspire to achieve. It’s 2017, people, we can’t be living in 1985 anymore!

In the style of Congress’s declaration that pizza is a vegetable, I present a list of five modern Bechdel tests that blockbusters might actually manage to pass: 1. The movie has to have at least half of a woman (dead or alive) in it.

2. Have a woman on set somewhere while the film is rolling.

3. Have someone in the cast who has at one point spoken to a woman about something besides a man.

4. Have a man in the movie who looks a bit like a woman or talks about lady things, such as what’s for dinner and how to do laundry.

5. Have a token man with a gender ambiguous name, like Leslie, who is featured in the credits.

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My (Serious) Bechdel Test for 2017 (Alternatively called the LaPasta Test, but that probably won’t be taken seriously so I’ll forget about that dream and live anonymously) 1. The move has to be written, directed, or produced by a woman.

2. Have at least one named minority woman who is not a maid or other stereotype.

3. Star ANYONE who is not a cis, white, able-bodied man.

4. Have a cast and crew that is made up of at least 40% minorities.

5. AND have at least two [named] women who talk to each other about something besides a man. w

Scholastic So White

why we need diverse children’s books

words and art

by Kelly Stone When I was a kid, I didn’t have great taste in books. My choices were dictated by whatever looked good at the Scholastic book fair in school that year—books that tended to be about girls my age and whose appearances were similar to mine. I spent a good six years or so reading nearly identical books, and never once did I really think about what this homogeneity meant. It wasn’t until high school that I began diversifying my reading list. As I became more curious about the book publishing industry, I discovered a movement determined to make diverse stories the norm.

I worked in my library for a year and a half during high school and became accustomed to passing the shelf with Walter Dean Myers’ novels. Myers is one of the most prolific African-American writers of young adult fiction. I came across a New York Times op-ed piece from 2014 by his son, Christopher, and I stopped cold upon seeing the title: “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature.” In this article, Christopher was speaking to a young Black boy, the title referring to the severe lack of Black characters in children’s books; amid books about talking animals, magic, and superpowers, hardly any of them were about someone who looked like this boy.

In clear contrast to my childhood reading experience, I can’t imagine the frustration he must have felt facing the meager selections at his school’s book fair.

BookExpo America, or BEA, is an annual convention in New York City held for booksellers and librarians. In 2014, there was a BEA panel in which all the panelists were white males, which sparked authors of color to voice their thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks, or #WNDB for short. Since this timely induction, We Need Diverse Books has developed, and is still developing, into a grassroots movement that defines diversity on their official website as “including (but not limited to) LGBTQIA, Native, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.” With a mission to produce and distribute diverse books to all children, this team of authors, publishers, educators, and librarians is working to create a literary environment in which any child can read stories about all different types of people and their experiences.

This movement has come so far since my childhood just a few years ago, when it was not yet an organized movement, to now, when the founders have published an entire middle-grade anthology that I purchased in my local bookstore over the last break. Flying Lessons and Other Stories in-

cludes ten diverse stories by authors of color. WNDB has also partnered with Scholastic since 2015, helping to broaden the scope of books that younger readers of this generation will have available to them, particularly at book fairs.

Schools are a natural segue for WNDB to expand into since they assign the books that children, no matter their interests, are required to read. This is significant, because it’s been proven that adolescents who have been exposed to different identity groups are more tolerant and understanding of others, and therefore more prepared for their futures in terms of college and careers. WNDB is working to spread diverse books into school curricula through their relationship with Title 1 schools—those that have a larger portion of students from lower-income families. They’re introducing events so that students at these schools can hear from diverse authors in person and donating free diverse books to those districts. It’s not simple to introduce a diverse reading curriculum into schools nationwide. I’m hopeful, however, that current and future generations will be exposed to more than just the limited books you and I probably had to read in our schools.

This progress towards more diversity in books is beneficial to children who are like I was and who are like the boy in Myers’ example. A popular metaphor is that these books can serve as both a “window” and a “mirror.” For kids like me, these stories offer vital opportunities to, as Atticus Finch would say, “climb into someone’s skin and walk around in it.”

Young people can’t help the circumstances they’re born into, but this movement provides those of us who grew up in more homogeneous settings with the first steps to understanding a wider range of people and backgrounds. It’s like looking through a window and seeing someone else’s point of view.

On the other hand, the many young people who have been extremely limited in their exposure to characters in whom they can see themselves now have more options. They can pick up a book and look into a mirror, discovering a new role model or fictional best friend.

I, for one, am immensely grateful to have stumbled into this movement that has allowed me to broaden my reading choices so much. Whether it is actively volunteering, going to the book store to purchase a book written by a diverse author, or simply suggesting diverse titles to your libraries and schools, every effort counts in the progression of this movement. As stated in the foreword of the WNDB Flying Lessons anthology, these stories are meant for all of us. w

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Kids Are Sexual Beings Too! curiosity, taboo, and innocence

by Keyra Navas

art by Fauna Mahootian

Embracing one’s sexuality is usually considered a loss of innocence. The sexual realm is still one that is “deserving” of shame and criticism. This is not surprising, considering that sexual activity is represented in mass media in erotic and lustful ways. As a result, it is challenging to unsee sexual expression as a vulgar propensity, let alone affiliate it with childhood. Because sexual instinct is ultimately a matter that is shoved under the rug, children and sexuality are rarely thought of as having any sort of association. Nonetheless, kids are sexual beings.

The furthest I can trace back my sexuality is to my childhood. My favorite thing in the world was to play with my dolls. Rather than interacting with other children my age, I preferred to be left in privacy with my Bratz dolls. In retrospect, I realize my ten-inch figures gave me the opportunity to be whomever and do whatever I wanted. Thus, I went wild with my dolls. I cut their hair as short as possible. I covered their bodies with as many tattoos as I could. I made them change outfits every five minutes. Yet, the one thing that made me feel guilty was when I made them have sex.

Jade’s naked body laid below Dylan’s. Both had their jointless, plastic legs restrictively spread, one in front of the other.

They started by making out for a bit and then progressed to telling each other how much they loved one another. Finally, the two consummated their love as I made their not-so-detailed genitals rub furiously against each other. Although the doll couple appeared to be having a grand time, I felt a bit saucy for making the dolls do it. It was undeniable that while I made the dolls rub against each other, I felt a tingly sensation in my lower region. It was a pleasurable feeling and, to my advantage, concealable. If my parents were to walk in on the act, they would not be able to notice that I was aroused.

And this was good, because I was ashamed.

Why did I feel guilty for feeling this way? It was something that brought me pleasure and, at times, seemed uncontrollable. I neither involved anyone else nor hurt myself in the process. Yet, I felt uncomfortable approaching my parents about the tingly sensation, because I sensed that what I was doing was considered inappropriate.

My parents had never spoken to me about sexual exploration, which is why I felt as if I should not be involved in this sexual behavior. According to The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, “Although talking with children about bodi-

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ly changes and sexual matters may feel awkward, providing children with accurate, age-appropriate information is one of the most important things parents can do to make sure children grow up safe, healthy, and secure in their bodies.” That is, it is important to create a dialogue with children about their sexuality in order to encourage body comfortability.

Body comfortability is the ability to feel comfortable with the appearance and functions of one’s body. In hindsight, I was not comfortable with my behavior. I felt ashamed for wanting to arouse myself with doll coitus. This might not have been the healthiest approach for a seven-year-old, but it was the only way I knew how to express my sexuality, for my parents did not establish a relationship in which I felt comfortable discussing bodily changes.

Since sexual tendencies start at a very young age, sexual activity should not be considered to only exist in the adult, hot-minded world. It should not be expected to revolve around sin, sensuality, and sexiness. Maintaining this mindset makes it impossible to associate children with sexual behavior. Sexuality can be less about lust and more about something else—perhaps curiosity. For this reason, sexual embrace is not a loss of innocence. The reason why it is regarded in such a way is because it is not normalized. Sex talk among peers is still spoken in whispers. The media still presents sexual acts as The Forbidden with the use of dim lights and closed doors. Clearly, there is a call to modesty, but to what degree must sexuality be kept a secret?

The solution would be to take the taboo out of childhood sexuality. Childhood sexuality is barely discussed because sexuality on its own is perceived with narrow expectations. The media holds a decent amount of responsibility for portraying sexuality as merely sexy, mature, and romantic.

Although the media is too large of a menace to tackle, the way in which sexuality is regarded in one’s household can be altered for the better. Parents have a lot of responsibility for how children perceive their sexuality. Thus, they should be willing to acknowledge the existence of sexuality in their child’s life. And parents should become comfortable with providing a safe space for dialogue on sexual inclinations and tendencies. Put simply, they should give their children the impression that it is okay to have sexual needs. Parents have a duty to make sure their children know that sexuality is not a matter of shame. w

Sisyphean Speech words, sounds, and reconciliation

by Andrew Peiser art by Aurora Rojer

At thirteen, my life irrevocably changed.

I was on the cusp of puberty.

My broad shoulders and lush beard would soon dispel boyhood. For now, I walked in awkwardness from class to class. Once a week was speech therapy.

After a deaf infancy was corrected by surgery, I could not speak comprehensible sounds. My mouth’s muscles were lax. Around the age of four I began the process of learning how to speak. I would say sentences chockfull of s’s through a straw, straining to sense from exhaled air what signified an s sound. I felt silly, so I didn’t do it. However, when I entered elementary school, I discovered how much sillier it felt to repeat myself in front of teachers and classmates than it felt to blow through a straw. I began to do the exercises.

Soon I could articulate vowels. Then, q’s, then l’s. By middle school I only really had s and r left. At this point, though, the stakes were raised: appearance mattered more, public speaking happened more, and children were cruel. So, I went to speech therapy once a week. I mouth strings of sounds into a tape recorder. Play them back. And repeat; more strained, more ashamed. Progress is indiscernible. But, as a person who does not conceive of himself as someone forever asked to repeat, repeat, repeat: I keep going.

At thirteen, in the eighth grade, my speech therapist told

me, “You can do some more, but you’ll never attain normal speech.” I’m sure I had known that, but I hadn’t been able to tell it to myself. I had wanted to believe that my speech impediment was something that would not follow me. I had wanted to believe that my voice was something that I did have power over. Its defects were a blip in my childhood, not a fact of my life.

Nonetheless, I did not struggle against what the speech therapist told me. However hard one resists, there are issues that will recur endlessly.

Reinhold Niebuhr knew this. His Serenity Prayer articulates it well: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I say that my life irrevocably changed by being told that I cannot change. This was radical to me then, as it sometimes is now. If I spend undue time trying to tongue sounds that I never will, I forsake the opportunity to speak what I can.

To demand oratory precision of myself is Sisyphean, but to strive for precision in diction is something in my power. The process of self-acceptance is long, if there is an end at all.

For this lad, it starts with reconciliation: the meaning of my words when I give them to the world with how those words will always be a little off from their intent. w

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Diary of a West Coast Girl living a new double life

by Elise Cording

art by Rachel Scherman

Alternate universe. Summer camp. Station on the moon.

These are all words I’ve either heard or used myself to describe the strange world encompassing a little more than one square mile: Cornell.

A few months ago, I moved cross-country from California to New York, but I didn’t move fully. I left half of my personal belongings, all of my family, and a sense of identity in California, all of which await my return for a few months a year.

I live in Ithaca now—or so I try to convince myself.

At a trip to the bank back in California over winter break, the bank teller asks me to write down where I live. I am obviously torn. He clarifies: the address where you sleep at night.

I sleep many more nights in Ithaca now than I do back at home, but I can’t say I fully live here. Life here is still tinged with a surreal quality, a bit fuzzy around the edges.

Out of context from what I’ve always known, this unfamiliar life often finds me alone, generally lost in the midst of it all, holding onto a few scraps of my identity in order to retain some sense of bearing.

I’ve come to believe I now live two lives. One life is the semi-dream world I travel through in sleep-filled and sleepless stupor, uncertain of true reality most of the time because of the drastic unfamiliarity and lack of perspective necessary to place myself within it. The other life waits for me on the opposite coast—an old, sturdy, comfortable pair of shoes, real as can be, that upon return I can simply slip back on…for now.

Growing happens fast these days. I feel the growing pains. My friend Lauren Smith, who graduated from Cornell last year, says the challenge has always been being her developed self when she goes back home. Some say college is the time when you finally “find yourself.” But when the occasion comes a few times a year to return to that other life, falling back into old habits is as easy as sliding into those old, broken-in shoes, even if they don’t fit the same way anymore.

Better hold on to that mature, intellectual self you found in college before it falls away while you’re asleep in your childhood bed.

I still don’t know why, but as soon as the plane touches the ground in California, I feel like myself again. Maybe it’s just my old self, the “me” that drove through the hills and down the streets that trigger so many memories. That’s the

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self I know well. I immediately breathe easier when the plane lands me into that life I know; even the air smells familiar. I find my identity in home. But across the country at Cornell, there is nothing outside of myself to remind me of where I’ve been and who I am because of my past. Here, smothered by newness, it’s almost like starting over. People, surroundings, beliefs, and life-attitudes are all brand new. Even the grocery stores don’t show me any mercy—seriously, what’s a “Wegmans?”

At home, elderly couples strolling through my neighborhood and kids chasing after dogs in their front yards help ground me in reality. Seeing people in different walks of life reminds me that the world is so much more than just me. But while living in a bubble full of college students, it’s hard to see the other side. It becomes difficult to remember what life is like outside our isolated little world—what it might be like to be a middle-aged or elderly adult who’s not a professor, or a kid who’s at school for half a day but then comes home to her family. “Seeing a baby on campus is weird,” Lauren told me—a thought every one of us has probably had. My friend Dakota Bragato, a first-year student like myself, describes the unfamiliar feeling as the result of a lack of the full spectrum of life.

I often long for that spectrum of life while I’m trying to put my life within our square-mile bubble into perspective, finding myself listening to my parents’ music just to feel like I can experience more culture than just these college students, this time, and this place. But there is a unique culture here, and as alien as it feels to me right now, many people find their place inside it. It’s an alternate universe, but one full of brilliant minds. It’s summer camp—quickly turning into winter camp—where we get to have sleepovers with our friends every night. For city folk, it’s as isolated as a station on the moon; but hey, at least we’ve got the planet all to ourselves.

With three more years to get used to this place, I might be able to “push the boundaries of what I’m capable of,” like Lauren says living at Cornell helped her to do, and forge my two separate lives into one. I may be able to redefine my identity, create a new home for myself, and not feel like a liar when I tell the banker I live in Ithaca. But for now, I just sleep here at night. w

Biting Barbie’s Head Off thoughts on how childhood play informs ideas about gender art and article

by Anna Lee I was a tomboy. I played with trucks, cars, trains, and Tinkertoys. I enjoyed making toxic goop out of household materials and putting my concoctions in the freezer for my mother to find. I didn’t like Barbie dolls. I made two failed attempts at ballet and tap dancing; I quit after the first class, just a clumsy freckle-faced kid in a leotard.

In kindergarten, my best friend Lola and I were the only girls to play soccer with the boys, and Lola ran the whole operation—she selected the teams and positions, while I was her henchwoman. I was the first girl to infiltrate the all-boys knockout game in recess (most girls didn’t want to get sweaty in their Christian-school uniforms, but I didn’t mind), and Lola and I were the best Lego builders in our first grade class.

Lola had Barbie dolls, but she didn’t play with them the way you were supposed to, and that’s what made it cool. When you went down to the basement of Lola’s house, you’d see headless Barbies , feet bitten and hair chopped, strewn across the floor. I still remember the sound as Lola and her sister bit their heads off— pop! We loved it.

I never bit the heads off, though, or if I did, it’s been wiped from my memory.

Decapitating Barbie dolls seemed a little too anti-establishment for my six-year-old self, and I was never really into

violence. I’ll admit to some foot-biting though, whatever psychological quirks that may imply.

An article in a Women’s Liberation-era journal sheds some light on why girls enjoy mutilating our Barbie dolls.

In her 1973 article for the journal Young Children, writer Edna Mitchell discusses the intended use of toys made for boys versus that of toys made for girls. She writes: “Girls’ toys are not made to be constructed, taken apart, or repaired by a child. Boys’ toys, on the other hand, encourage manipulation, construction, and destruction. They seem to appeal to power, as contrasted with girls’ passivity.”

The common game of mutilating Barbie dolls can be seen as an attempt to render so-called “girls’ toys” able to be constructed, destroyed, and manipulated in spite of the societal norms that do not give girls that option.

Girls are taught to play along with Barbie, dress her up, create backstories.

We are taught to cherish and preserve Barbie—but that’s boring, so instead, we tear her apart. When a girl mutilates a Barbie, she derives power from a toy that was meant to encourage passivity. For tomboys like me and Lola, biting Barbie’s head off was the first of many acts of rebellion, big and small, against a set of gendered ideas that dictate who we are and who we can become. w

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Everyone Should be as Excited as I am for the Last Season of Pretty Little Liars here’s five reasons why

by Aurora Rojer

photos courtesy of freeform

1) They randomly fast-forwarded five years in the middle of last season and now everyone in the show is a grown-up.

That obviously means more sex and drugs and alcohol (excellent). But it also means that the older fans (me) don’t feel like such losers watching a TV show about high schoolers. Aria and Ezra’s “teacher’s pet” relationship looks a lot uglier from this side of adulthood, and the writers knew we wouldn’t be so into pedophilia now that we realize that, no, we were not “mature enough” at her age.

2) PLL is one of the only shows on the air that passes the Bechdel test every single episode.

You heard me right: Every Tuesday, you can watch multiple females get together and chat about things that are not boys. These ladies have more important things to worry about—namely the fucking army of stalkers who are always finding new and exciting ways to utterly destroy their lives.

3) The plot makes literally no sense, and everyone knows it.

You will NEVER guess. This saves you the stress of having to figure out what will happen next. You just sit back and enjoy the thrill. For example, Ali’s death was the mystery of the first three seasons. Turns out, she’s alive and well (and we still have no clue what the heck she was doing for those two years). Also, Ali’s trans sister who we never knew existed was the second A. Also, the fucking dollhouse. Look it up.

4) The people who write this show love their fans.

They love them so much, they read their Reddit threads and steal their ideas. Like, for example, the hated Sarah Harvey was coined by the Internet as “Shower” Harvey because she took so many showers. Shower Harvey was murdered in the shower. The Internet rejoiced.

5) PLL believes in forgiveness.

Basically every main character has done something utterly unforgivable.

Mona, the original A, is basically one of the crew now. Every significant other has at one point been on the “A-team.” Hell, Spencer joined for a hot second! But all is always forgiven, because otherwise everyone would have to move to another country to find someone to bang. Also, because forgiveness is a good thing. w

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Final Girl Karla...

Sort of progress we’ve made in intersectional/ non-white representations of girl power and female strength in the U.S. Teen Slasher horror genre.

by Christopher-James Llego The Final Girl (n): The virgin girl; the female protagonist; the girl who fights and kills the murderer; the one the audience roots on for during the final act of the film.

List of Teen Slashers featuring a black Final Girl: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)*

*Karla (Brandy Norwood) is NOT the protagonist of the film. Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is the main protagonist throughout the film, but dies in a non-canonical surprise ending jump scare. As such, Karla, who happened to also survive the earlier murders, becomes the Final Girl. w

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art by Abby Hailu

Why We March the story of three 20th Century Women

by Laura Kern art by Abby Hailu

20th Century Women chronicles the lives of three women and a teenage boy growing up in Southern California in the changing political climate of the 1970s; the film debuted at the New York Film Festival in October, but its wide release in January brought it to the attention of viewers and awards shows alike. In the film, Dorothea (Annette Bening) is the aging single mother of the young teenage Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann). When she finds herself drifting apart from her son, Dorothea decides to enlist the help of two women, Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Julie (Elle Fanning), to help raise him.

But make no mistake: 20th Century Women is no simple coming-of-age story. True, director Mike Mills crafts an honest, powerful film about growing up—but he emphasizes that this growth does not begin and end as a teenager. Rather, through his anecdotal style of filmmaking, Mills gives equal attention to each character’s journey, careful to show just as

“...her insecurities burn holes in her confident persona like the glowing tip of her ever-present cigarette.” much change in Dorothea, Abbie, and Julie as he shows in Jamie. Mills develops each character with care and precision.

Viewers get intimate peeks into the lives of the women and Jamie, and an opportunity to witness the battles— between strength and weakness, genuineness and hypocrisy, independence and reliance, and more—that constantly wage within everyone, regardless of age or gender. Further, this flawed and often humorous cast of characters complicates the broad label of “feminist”: though Dorothea, Abbie, Julie,

and Jamie are all self-proclaimed feminists, they are each so different in ambition and personality that it seems impossible that they share any identity.

Without a doubt, the movie’s power comes from its talented actresses. Elle Fanning is powerfully vulnerable and candid as Julie—her long blonde hair and wide blue eyes give her an air of innocence that contrasts with her rebellious lifestyle of sex and drugs. Interestingly, Greta Gerwig has the opposite effect: her short, messy red crop matches Abbie’s taste in punk music and radical feminist literature, but as the movie progresses, the audience begins to see her softness. Gerwig’s tone remains tough and caustic even during expressions of her vulnerability, and she allows Abbie’s flaws to come through as clearly as her strengths.

Most noticeably, however, the incomparable Annette Bening shines as the slightly frumpy, brutally honest, and stubbornly practical Dorothea. Most of Bening’s acting makes Dorothea into a humorous, if frustrating, character, but throughout the film, her insecurities burn holes in her confident persona like the glowing tip of her ever-present cigarette. Bening’s performance is most powerful during her interactions with Jamie, and in their scenes together, it is clear that Bening’s talent inspires an unparalleled performance in Zumann as well. Like any real teenager, his character flows between selfassurance and uncertainty. That realness is at the heart of every character in 20th Century Women: each is unapologetically human, which makes the movie timeless despite the specific setting dictated by music, costuming, and cultural references.

Through this timelessness, however, Mills also highlights the lack of social change in the 40 years since the movie took place. He critiques the idea of “appropriate” feminine sexuality, exposes the unique challenges that women face as they age, and makes subtle nods to the benefits Planned Parenthood provides for women (which are, I must stress, wider than access to safe abortions). Unlike the typical feminist movie, which emphasizes change across generations, 20th Century

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Women suggests that these issues are as prevalent today as they were in the 1970s. Admittedly, a movie like 20th Century Women would never have been made 40 years ago, but Mills’s conscious (and often discouraging) connections between the past and the present call into question the notion that the movie’s mere production constitutes “progress.” Even the film’s wide release date highlighted the lack of real change regarding women’s rights: 20th Century Women arrived in theaters on January 20, the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The following day, millions of protesters across the world marched to defend the same rights that Julie, Abbie, and Dorothea exercised in the film.

Modern activists warn against “falling backwards,” but this film innovatively wonders how far we have truly stepped forward.

Not far, responds the film industry. The Academy Awards overlooked the women of 20th Century Women, despite the actresses’ recognition from other awards shows, including Annette Bening’s best actress nomination at the Golden Globes. Of the movie’s cast and crew, only Mills—a man— received an Oscar nod for his work on the screenplay. True, Mills’s writing grounded the film, but the actresses truly made it great; even when presented with three fantastic performers, the academy overlooked the stars of 20th Century Women.

Perhaps the label of “feminist film” was just too inflammatory for the Academy; however, through his careful characterization and inclusion of multiple perspectives, Mills suggests that even putting 20th Century Women in this category is a misstep. In today’s political climate, identifying yourself as a feminist separates you from the majority, just as the term “feminist film” separates 20th Century Women from mainstream media. In fact, modern culture dictates that you must separate yourself—you must work with those who support the cause and against those who try to thwart you.

The anxiety of losing your autonomy is too much to take sitting down, so you become one part in a larger whole, just one marcher fighting for rights that half the country believes you do not deserve. Media and politics have made feminism a major, all-or-nothing life decision. According to popular culture and news outlets, either you must spurn the label and claim again and again, “I am not a feminist”—perhaps because you like baking and the color pink, or because you think men should continue opening doors and paying for dates, or because you want to have kids someday—or you must let feminism consume you.

But Mills reminds the world that feminism is relative.

Julie, the young, willowy blonde; Abbie, the alternative, secret romantic; Dorothea, the aging, fretting mother; and Jamie, the rebellious teen, are all self-proclaimed feminists. However, by telling these characters’ stories from multiple perspectives, Mills shows that even though they exist within the same era, the same geography, and the same house, their versions of feminism are vastly different. Each expresses feminism and femininity in a unique way, and sometimes that expression changes from moment to moment. They are dynamic, deeply human characters with histories and experiences, just like today’s feminists—so why should 21st century women be allowed to be any less individualized?

The label of “feminist” has pushed Julie, Abbie, Dorothea,

and Jamie into the same story—they have become parts in a whole. Mills, however, highlights their differences under this umbrella, separating them and drawing them out from the political collective. 20th Century Women shows the complexities and complications of honest human narratives—but because most of these humans are women, and because they are exercising their sexual and political rights, the movie becomes a “feminist film.” Mills does not

“Modern activists warn against ‘falling backwards,’ but this film innovatively wonders how far we have truly stepped forward.” claim that this label is bad; it is simply misleading, because the film tells a much bigger story. Feminism can be shaving your head and casting off traditional standards of beauty; it can be dedicating yourself to a career; it can be getting married and having children. Feminism is the quest for equality—it is the right to choose your destiny, no matter your sex or gender. “Feminist” is not as narrow and straightforward as modern politics seeks to make it, and Mills sheds light on this diversity through the breadth of perspectives that he represents throughout the movie.

But “diversity,” like “feminism,” is a relative term: the one way in which this movie disappoints is that its all-white cast fails to recognize the intersectionality of race, religion, class, and sexuality within feminism. Women of color, queer women, and transgender women are frequently overlooked in discussions of feminism, despite their inarguable influence on the feminist movement and the development of the “modern woman.” Regrettably, 20th Century Women fails to break this mold and deal with other forms of persecution that relate to feminism. Its late 1970s setting—following the civil rights movement and during the explosion of the American gay rights movement—makes this omission even more upsetting. “Women’s issues” do not start and end with women who talk, look, and love like Julie, Abbie, and Dorothea; this problematic, exclusionary approach to feminism has, in fact, undermined the modern feminist movement and precluded the necessary strength and unity among activist groups to oppose the current discriminatory political climate. Mills celebrates differences among feminists, yes, but he does not celebrate all types of difference—he fails to show his audience that no version of feminism is better or worse than another. This lack of true diversity undermines the themes that Mills tries to set up through his multiple-perspective representation of feminism. Though 20th Century Women is a good starting point, it is far from the inclusive, empathetic story that this generation needs to inspire the 21st century woman to fight oppression of all genders, races, religions, and sexualities.

The solution? Write this story—or live it—yourself. w

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The Finsta-gram where fake is real and real is kind of hilarious

by Jacque Groskaufmanis art by Annika Bjerke

“What should I make my caption?” is a pretty common and innocuous thing that someone might ask before posting on Instagram. Even my friends with the most dedicatedly “I-don’t-care” aesthetics plan out their internet content with a layer of detail and attention that warrants the same crowdsourcing for captions.

But on fake Instagram, there is no question like “what should I make my caption,” because your best friends are your immediate audience.

As social media progresses, it’s allowing young people to tailor different content to different audiences.

I think most people are familiar with Instagram, a social media site on which people can upload pictures to their profile, or their “grid.” The most common association with Instagram is that these photos are artsy, special, or whatever. But as circles grow, from high school to college, and college to real life, an account can accumulate thousands of followers, which narrows the liberty of what one can post without oversharing.

Fake Instagrams, or “finstas” for short, are accounts on which users—usually teens or young adults—make their profiles private and allow fewer people, who they know better, to follow them.

Finsta captions aren’t punny one-liners; they’re abbreviated, comedic journal entries. “I was watching Friends

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on the elliptical and started CRYING because Chandler proposed to Monica. Now I’m gonna go eat Lunchables in bed.” (A real caption, from a real finsta, that I follow.)

When I first heard of the finsta, I thought it was a Cornell-specific trend. The accounts that popped up on my “suggested to follow” page were always the vaguely familiar faces of people in my Government classes, with 30 or so followers and funnier-than-usual bios. But then friends from NYU, UCLA, and even international schools started to follow me on their accounts, and I realized Cornell was just a little hotspot on the map of this weird global trend.

The New York Times did a story on fake Instagrams titled, “On Fake Instagram, a Chance to Be Real.”

Besides being baffled that The New York Times was covering a subgroup of social media users that, among other things, posts stories about getting blackout, I was also a little disappointed by the story’s one-dimensional look at social media. By viewing fake Instagrams as an opportunity to be real, and real Instagrams as inherently fake, the Times painted a pretty simple (and incomplete) binary of what it means to be a young social media user in the 21st century. To understand finsta, you have to break down what the profiles are; which, if you ask me, is essentially just hilarious photo group chats. I don’t talk to my best friends from home every day, but I know how their classes are going and how much ramen they’re eating because they post about it on their finstas.

Finsta was conceived, by users, as a way to splinter online content into different categories for different audiences. It’s a place to air your dirty laundry and make fun of yourself to a group of people who won’t judge you for it. People can post ugly photos with funny (or personal) captions and trust that it won’t be screenshotted or made fun of. This tightness and privacy is where I find similarities between finstas and the conventional group chat. You talk to your friends, and they respond via comment. The only difference is you have all of it archived on your profile; a space in which you can capture pieces of your life, just like on you can on regular social media. The difference with finsta is just that you’re capturing it from a funnier, less manicured angle.

The most obvious irony in the use of “fake Instagrams” is the name. We describe the accounts on which we are less filtered, and maybe a little bit more “real,” as our fake accounts—as pointed out by the Times piece. Usually the people who follow your finsta are your good friends, contrasted with real Instagram, where your cousin’s best friend’s brother is among the hundreds of people seeing that picture of your dog.

All fake Instagrams get super personal, and I feel like that’s what most people would expect. What’s interesting to me is the pretty uniform brand of selfdeprecating comedy that all of these accounts use.

Across the board, whether the person posting is an introvert or an extrovert, fake Instagrams are loud, self-critical, and pretty unfiltered.

I don’t buy the idea that splitting up your accounts is proof of “fakeness” or self-preservation, but rather different audiences in different places. Maybe my aunt doesn’t need to hear about me falling down the stairs at a party, but my best friends from home do because it was kind of hilarious.

Think about it this way: if you’re willing to accept social media as a legitimate “medium,” then it’s just using the same medium to serve different purposes. I write articles for The Sun and I write in a personal journal. What I

“Maybe my aunt doesn’t need to hear about me falling down the stairs at a party, but my best friends from home do because it was kind of hilarious.” write in each, as you can probably guess, is wildly different, but equally legitimate and true to what I think and feel.

Accounts like these are popping up all over the world, and mark a new generation of comedy that embraces the dysfunction of young adulthood—even if it only does so for a selective group to see.

I asked a friend if she thought her real Instagram account was fake, and she responded “define fake.” I thought about this for a while; fake, I said, would mean just generally mean an account that isn’t indicative of what your life is actually like, misleading, and so on.

“In a way yes, because obviously I don’t post every day or when I have like a bad day because I’m not even sure how I’d show that.” She said. “Like if I had a crappy day, would I post a picture of myself with a sad-face caption?

Probably not.” When I asked her if she would post a finsta after a sad day, she said yes. “I’d make it funny, and look on the bright side of things.”

In the end, I don’t know what this says about social media or about our generation or whatever else people like to draw mass conclusions about. I don’t think that the emergence of private social media is a symptom of oppressed youth who feel the need to split their identity to make themselves look awesome on their “real” Instagrams. That view is reductive and judgmental, but also I think it misses a larger point: finstas are an extended group chat and space where people can laugh and say, “Yeah, that’s happened to me too.” w

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The Ungraspable Light poetry and the myth of progress

by Jessie Brofsky art by Daniel Toretsky

There’s a room in the Tate Modern museum in London that displays contemporary art about destruction. On one side is a steel model of a basic apartment building, a rectangle built up and not out. On the other side are photographs depicting the stages of cities falling to the ground in clouds of smoke and debris. In another room is a tower constructed out of radios, each releasing a different sound, collectively projecting a mix of voices, instruments, and static. I watch people walk through—some delighted, some flustered, confused, asking how this qualifies as art.

his poem “Sign Under Test” from his 2006 collection Girly Man on PennSound. However, instead of seeing lines grouped into stanzas with spaces in between, his oral reading blends them all together. Thus, I hear a string of disjointed phrases and a unifying voice trying to make them into something whole. But each line sounds like a mix of a tongue twister and a logic quiz, and it becomes puzzling to think of them in relation to each other when they seem to have nothing but proximity in common.

Steven Connor, a professor at the University of

“When you hear a poem read aloud, you hear one permutation of possibility, cutting off every other direction of reading, of seeing, of understanding.”

It’s ironic that many people find contemporary art weird.

To some extent, we have preconceived notions of what moving forward in art means, and new forms that don’t fit snugly into these notions can feel backwards. In visual art, we expect to find things that make sense in some sort of order based on familiar principles of logic. However, these expectations discard thinking outside the box and the sweeping disorientation of pushing the boundaries of art into uncharted territory.

Charles Bernstein reads, in 12 minutes and 24 seconds,

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Cambridge, said in a lecture I attended a few weeks ago that poetry readings are scandalous. He argued that the scandal happens when we only perceive the poem in one dimension, in chronological order progressing through time. Every time we read a poem on paper or even on a screen, we are able to embrace the ambiguities of words and grammatical structure.

The eye can jump, go back and forth, but the ear can’t. When you hear a poem read aloud, you hear one permutation of possibility, cutting off every other direction of reading, of seeing, of understanding. In Bernstein’s poem, seeing the

physical space between the lines on the page inhibits our tendency to read things in their chronological order as if each would build meaning from the last. It helps us accept that not all things connect.

We’re not quick enough to accumulate meaning in the moment. In fact, there is zero probability of even identifying the exact time as it happens. Even if we go down to the last decimal place, we are still choosing an entirely random number. And when it leaves our lips, we are already beyond that time. Novelist Tom McCarthy said in a talk at the Guggenheim, “So, try to say ‘now,’ I mean ‘now,’ try to say it. Not just to say it, to mean it too. To truly mean it, mean it in the sense of it being true. It’s just not possible. No sooner has the word been formed, a peristaltic movement that breaks down into a grinding thing of the tongue against the wet and gummy place where palate and incisors meet. A corresponding dropping of the lower jaw, contraction of the cheeks and curling outwards of the lips.

A scornful gesture as though they, the lips, are sneering at the very content they are delivering. No sooner has this word been manufactured and expelled than it’s already late, and in its lateness false. As its sound rises to your ears it’s not now anymore.” Like fashion, when you say you’re in it, you’re already out. It is marked, as Giorgio Agamben says, by a “not yet” or a “too late.” It is in the same way that poetry cannot be understood upon its utterance for all that it is.

We expect steady, linear time like a flowing river moving towards an ocean of wisdom. But it was only in Europe’s late medieval period that progressive time replaced recurrent religious time, which did not add up but circled back to begin again almost like a form of erasure. And really the contemporary moment in the virtual world can touch all times. But the assumption that time operates linearly tends to conveniently give meaning to the meaningless, ascribing significance to chance. Poetry, which we want to lead us somewhere, giving us knowledge that extends beyond what we already know, becomes a model for this mistaken temporality and for the assumption and illusion that to read through is the way to discern meaning. It makes us go back.

According to the law of special relativity, if there is a beam of light, it is impossible to catch it. No matter what our relative speed is to the speed of light, the beam will always

appear the speed of light away. This distance becomes a version of infinity like the space between numbers that expands and plunges forever into the microscopic. At a certain speed, the future is unreachable. Agamben says, “In an expanding universe, the most remote galaxies move away from us at a speed so great that their light is never able to reach us. What we perceive as the darkness of the heavens is this light that, though traveling towards us, cannot reach us, since the galaxies from which the light originates move away from us at a velocity greater than the speed of light.”

We can’t read the world as if the present is situated between past and future, as if progress is a straight line or in a particular direction. We as a society value speed so much, but it shouldn’t matter if we can’t manipulate the perpetual delay and outrun time itself.

Understanding the impossible “now” is like trying to catch light or view the galaxies, whose light will always be out of view.

In “Sign Under Test” Bernstein writes, “Like I told her, you can add up all the zeros in the world but it will never amount to anything.

Whereas two plus two, while barely four, suggests progress./ If progress is a process, what is the purpose of purpose or the allure of allure?” He says “suggests” as if suggestion is deception, playing with the irony that drives most of his work. He doesn’t say that it is progress and thus critiques our assumptions. This poem has no progress or process. It is arbitrary, linked by emptiness, moving nowhere. The elements do not add up even to anything as small as 2+2=4. He asks what the point is of building on a moment and going forward in time when it can be more meaningful to go back. Poetry has historically been a memory device, not about changing, moving in some direction that we think will somehow catch the light.

Someone once told me that if you really like a poem you hear, you will remember lines from it. When I hear a poem that strikes me, I write it down; I look it up. When I read a poem that challenges me, I say it to myself in the shower, or before I go to bed. I never seem to be done with it. Bernstein’s poem makes us slow down, move our eyes left to right and right to left. Like a room in the Tate Modern, we can read the world treading aimlessly, indulging in the confusion that lights itself from within. w

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Why Am I Watching This? musings on niche competition shows

by Olivia Bono art by Kelly Stone

Sitting at home this past winter break, I stared half-interested at the screen as my dad flicked through channels.

Usually our go-to idle viewing is somewhere between the History Channel, TNT, or Syfy. This particular day we went with the History Channel. It’s not news that the History Channel has produced some weird TV, from Pawn Stars, the show about buying and selling junk, to Ancient Aliens, the conspiracy theory show that you may recognize from that Internet meme from 2010. But I was taken aback to see what appeared to be a normal cooking show—a small group of skilled competitors, each with their own backstory, giving

“...watching people make the biggest cakes, wear the most outlandish makeup, craft the wildest-looking swords, all appeals to a sense of adventure.” their candid responses to a camera as a panel of three judges voted one out based on their handiwork—on the History Channel.

Every episode of Forged in Fire follows the same pattern: a goggled man spins in a circle, hacking and slashing at stalk after stalk of sugarcane. The blade in his hand twirls through the air, carving through anything and everything it touches, even the air itself. There is a brief moment of quiet, of stillness, as no one in the room dares to breathe. The other judges look concerned, and perhaps the one that looks like

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Colonel Sanders lifts an eyebrow. Three bearded men (two from somewhere in the deep South, one from Portland) furrow their brows, extreme close-ups highlighting the sweat dripping down their foreheads. After this tense interlude, the first man finally speaks. It is time for the quintessential Forged in Fire catchphrase. “This,” he says with a smile, “will cut.”

The thing is, although it holds to almost an identical structure as popular shows like The Great British Baking Show, Forged in Fire isn’t about cooking. It’s about the process and culture surrounding blade-smithing. The contestants don’t bake cakes; they forge swords and knives.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about forgery. The show fills in gaps in the viewers’ knowledge with insight from the judges, history lessons, and definitions, but these facts aren’t exactly the kind of knowledge you’d use in your day-to-day life. According to NPR, there are only between 5,000 and 10,000 blacksmiths in the U.S. In 2016, Forged’s third season received over 1.5 million live views, leading to its renewal.

Over a million people are watching this show about making swords, something most of these viewers likely know very little about.

Until now, I had assumed that this format of competition reality show was so successful because it seemed to be relatable—either normal people competing in tense situations or professionals completing familiar tasks. Of “familiar tasks,” the best example is probably cooking; not everyone is a professional chef, but everyone’s familiar with some of the basic elements of cooking, at least enough to know that burnt food is bad. Viewers of The Bachelor have likely been on a bad date, and viewers of Face Off have seen an old science fiction movie or two. But with Forged, the show educates on trivia that will probably not resonate too deeply with any of its viewers. When the contestants are talking about the bene-

fits of quenching a blade in oil rather than water, we have to believe them. I found myself yelling at the screen when one foolhardy contestant quenched his blade in water, despite my not knowing anything about why this is bad. I found myself feeling vindicated when his blade later failed, as if I were more skilled at blade-smithing than he, despite never holding a real sword in my life (somehow I don’t think the wooden sword from the 10th grade school play would have survived the test).

I see now that these shows’ subjects don’t have to be humble to resonate—it can actually be the opposite. There’s a kind of sensationalism that’s incredibly addicting; watching people make the biggest cakes, wear the most outlandish makeup, craft the wildest-looking swords, all appeals to a sense of adventure. Sometimes these tasks even feel fantastical, and there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from knowing these feats are happening not in a story, but in real life.

The producers definitely know this, dedicating a ton of time to contestants’ backstories.

Even on Dancing With The Stars, in which the contestants are already rich and famous, half the appeal comes from making their sensational situations seem like they could happen to anyone—a person with a relatable origin story participates in overthe-top drama. Personally, I never used to see the appeal in these kinds of shows. I say this in the past tense, as a person who has now seen nearly every episode of this silly knife-making show, who insisted on setting the DVR for the five minutes I had to leave the room to ensure I didn’t miss the results of the historical re-enactment segment.

Being so new to this obsession, I had to do some research.

The earliest American show I could find in this specific competition format was Survivor, which debuted in 2000, making reality competition a truly 21st century phenomenon. But to say reality TV, a modern invention, is shallow is oversimplifying the concept, at least in the case of these televised, incentivized competitions. The contestants have agreed to put themselves on display for the promise of fame and a

modest cash prize, but the audience gets none of this. In this modern social contract, the audience must get something to justify the millions of hours spent in front of the screen.

Having never taken a psychology class, I don’t think I could ever say exactly why 1.5 million other people also love this weird, repetitive show, but some elements are obvious. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle: the oddly specific forgery tips, the thrill of competition, the suspense and curiosity that builds up when the channel cuts to a commercial every time before the results of a test. Even the weapons specialist’s catchphrases, “it will cut” and “it will kill,” feel incredibly manufactured for drama, and while I know this, I let myself buy into the gimmick anyway, as do millions of people every time they watch these kinds of shows. We are glued to our screens watching models, chefs, makeup artists, dancers, hair stylists, celebrities, and bachelors going head-to-head for a vague sum of money.

The only conclusion I can seem to draw is that the success of these shows is not based on the niche subjects they cover—the show could be about anything and people would still watch, as long as there is drama and a sense of accomplishment. Our attention is bought not by relating it to our mundane lives, but to raw emotion.

Whether a grown man is crying over a burnt casserole or a broken sword, the challenge doesn’t matter, only our macabre fascination with seeing him fail. When a dish turns out just right or a weapons expert carves a dead animal apart, we cheer at seeing our favorites succeed, at knowing exactly why they’re winning. It’s only human nature to want to be a part of a competition, to root for your favorites, and to be invested in their success or failure. The question isn’t how we can stop this trajectory, but where it’s going next. The popularity of The Great British Baking Show led to titles like The Great British Sewing Bee and The Great Pottery Throw Down. What will be the next big reality show of 2018?

A competitive birdwatching show called Birdbrained? A contact juggling show called Don’t Drop the Ball? I, for one, am excited to see what crazy combination cable TV has for us next. w

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Was Cassian Andor Anything Like Me? negotiating Mexicanity in Star Wars

by Viri Garcia

art by Maura Thomas I grew up watching minorities and characters of color die on screen. Most often, these were African Americans.

Every time my mom and I would watch a movie with African American characters, such as Scary Movie, The Shining, Resident Evil: Extinction, Kill Bill, and X-Men: First Class, I remember my mother saying, “Mira, se va a morir primero,” They are going to die first. She was always right. I used to question why she was always right, but I came to understand: representation always sucks. We either always get an all-white cast, or one with a few characters/actors of color meant to add “diversity.”

However, in the few instances that there is an attempt at representation, characters are always either unsubstantial, stereotypical, defined by their ethnicity, written solely to demonstrate discrimination faced by a certain race/ethnicity, or tokens to increase a film’s profits. Eventually, my mother and I began to see more minority characters, including

“...it is never shown in Rogue One that Cassian Andor was actually Mexican.”

Mexican ones, in movies. As expected, they were either disposable bodies in horror movies, in movies specifically about “Mexican culture” (which, according to the film industry, is mostly about Día de los Muertos or drug trafficking), or background characters.

In the past several years, Disney has been trying to offer more diverse representation. We can see this in Moana, which offered representation of a Pacific Islander, Elena, a TV series that featured a Latina princess as the protagonist, and The Force Awakens, which featured a cast of Asian, Black, and Latinx actors. Star Wars: Rogue One also follows this

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trend, except (spoiler alert) Disney kills this whole beautifully diverse cast, which not only included Asian, Black, and Latinx actors, but also, a female protagonist.

When I found out Mexican actor Diego Luna was going to have a role in Star Wars: Rogue One, I immediately predicted—as I’ve been trained to—that he would either die or his character would be unsatisfying and disposable.

I was both wrong and right: Diego Luna’s character, Cassian Andor, was a substantial and developed character, but was still killed off. It seems telling that Disney cast Luna in the first and only Star Wars movie in which all the characters in the story die, when they could’ve cast him in the upcoming Episode VIII film. Rogue One may have made an attempt at representation, but unfortunately it just reassured me that representation will always suck. Disney just couldn’t let us have our first Star Wars character portrayed by a Mexican actor and let him live happily ever after as a hero. The politics of Diego Luna’s casting and Cassian Andor’s characterization complicate the shiny, nice narrative of Hollywood’s “progress” in representation—with each fumbling stab, they make more and more mistakes.

Andor’s death, however, was not even what disappointed me most about Rogue One. Worse was that while Diego Luna was the first Mexican or Latinx actor to portray a Star Wars protagonist, it is never shown in Rogue One that Cassian Andor was actually Mexican. After the movie was over, my mother said, “Ya ves? Todos se murieron porque había un Mexicano,” See? Everyone died because there was a Mexican.

My mother is somehow usually right, but for once, I think she wasn’t. Yes, everyone died, but not because there was a Mexican in the movie. In fact, there was no Mexican character in the movie. How was anyone supposed to know for sure if Andor was Mexican? He had an accent, but we know nothing about his past despite the fact that he is one of the main characters. How do I know that this heroic figure is Mexican, and that we really do have something in common? How do

I know if, perhaps, he grew up with a fear of la chancla and ate elotes, raspas, and sopes? The term “Latinx” does not just refer to Mexican culture. “Latinx” can mean Mexican, Cuban, Columbian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, or any Latin American ethnicity. There may be many similarities between these Latinx cultures that could lead to homogenized misrepresentation. As far as Rogue One goes, Diego Luna is Mexican but there are no traces of Latinx culture present in his character.

Rogue One is full of characters with no past and no future, save the protagonist Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones). All that is revealed of Cassian Andor is that he had been fighting the Empire since he was six years old and now embodies the determination and hope of the Resistance. I was thrilled to see a Mexican actor who wasn’t playing an immigrant or a drug lord or starring in another Día de los Muertos film, but instead, leading the intergalactic resistance in Star Wars. That was all I needed to know for him to be my favorite character, even if I couldn’t fully identify with him. Disney may have built a beautiful character and attempted to offer Latinx representation, but failed regardless.

As always, representation sucks; it’s complicated and messy. Rogue One was a good movie, but it was unnecessary to the ultimate Star Wars story, similar to how Finding Dory was to Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo, like the rest of the Star Wars movies, present and resolve a conflict. Both Rogue One and Finding Dory present stories that aren’t necessary to the

ultimate narrative and are not needed for closure. I loved seeing Diego Luna on screen, but throughout the duration of the film, I knew I was watching the most superfluous Star Wars film to ever exist. This made me feel like casting Diego Luna in it was almost a waste of good acting. Ultimately, Rogue One is a complicated film when it comes to representation: it both represented and erased Mexican identity on screen; both excited and disappointed me; both succeeded and failed. Most of all, I just wished that for once I could truly relate to a Mexican character aside from Ignacio (played by Jack Black) in Nacho Libre (possibly one of the worst films to exist even if it does portray Mexican culture in a caricatured but mostly accurate and relatable way), who was not even portrayed by a Latinx actor.

It’s time for Disney to quit killing strong Mexicanportrayed heroes, female protagonists, and snarky droids and, get it right by giving characters of color adequate storylines so their ethnicities are clear, and for god’s sake by letting them live. I’m used to seeing the characters with accents and Mexican roots be tossed aside on screen, but I never thought Disney would do it so clumsily. I want to see a hero that I identify with and watch them live. Representation is too complicated for the film industry, as Disney’s latest fumble has proven once more. It is more than just seeing a character with a familiar face and culture on screen: it’s about seeing that character grow into someone we would want to be and knowing that we too have that same potential. w

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[Insert Celebrity Name Here] is Not an Activist capitalizing on activi$m really $ucks

by Anna Godek art by Aurora Rojer

The question of celebrity culture and what role it should play in our lives is highly debated. Part of the reason that celebrities hold sway in our culture is that many of them are also artists whose work has the power to affect our lives and be meaningful. And art is certainly worth analyzing and discussing. However, we should also consider what exactly it is we are analyzing and whether what we are looking at really has enough depth to warrant analysis. And when it comes to scrutinizing celebrities’ political opinions or thoughts on feminism, your time is better spent elsewhere.

Celebrities are not adequate political or feminist role models because everything they do is well-calculated to bring them more popularity and publicity. They don’t need to read theory to rake in the big bucks, so they won’t.

A simple Google search of “Taylor Swift and feminism” yields literally hundreds of thousands of results decrying Taylor’s failures as a feminist. She’s not intersectional, she’s opportunistic, she slut shames—the Daily Beast calls her “spineless.” My gut reaction? No shit. Expecting Taylor Swift, who is famous for writing and performing pop songs, to articulate flawless feminist theory is like expecting your linguistics professor to give a lecture on chemical engineering. The linguistics professor is undoubtedly an intelligent person, but that doesn’t mean you should trust what they have to say about chemical engineering. Similarly, celebrities may be great singers, actors, athletes, etc., but that doesn’t mean they have brilliant analytical minds or know anything about feminism, politics, or activism.

While it’s true that anyone, including celebrities, can have political opinions or be a feminist (and indeed we

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all should be), this doesn’t mean we should listen to them.

There are people who devote their entire lives to these issues and have some real insight to share. And yet, these Swift-dissecting articles share a tone of betrayal and even shock—how could she, how dare she not get this right? If only these writers would spend some time analyzing the work of people like Judith Butler, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, or Simone de Beauvoir, to name a few, they would find themselves less frustrated and with much more substance to work with. Or, if they’re going to keep dissecting Swift, they should stop being surprised when she falls short. Basically, if Taylor Swift or any other celebrity keeps disappointing you when it comes to feminism or activism, it might be best to start ignoring them and looking to other, more satisfying sources.

In October 2015, Jennifer Lawrence made headlines for going public with her revelation that she didn’t make as much money as her male costars. Her statement was,

at least initially, taken as part of the great fight for wage equality. But Hollywood actresses like Lawrence are some of the most privileged and wealthy women in the world, and acting like their effort to make even more money has anything to do with less privileged or working class women’s struggles for equality is misguided. Yes, technically, Lawrence faces wage inequality and she has a personal right to equal pay, but feminism shouldn’t focus on whether or not an already incredibly wealthy actress makes a few more million dollars, nor should it heap praise on her like she’s a hero.

Instead, we should focus on the issues that working and lower-class women face in the workplace. Any kind of activism or feminism that concentrates on the ultra-

rich has seriously lost its way.

Next time a celebrity attaches their face or presence to some cause or charity, remember the people who are truly disadvantaged, as well as the many unknown people who worked and volunteered on a daily basis to make that issue prominent enough that an A-lister would take some time out of their day for it. Those people don’t get the love or praise that celebrities do, nor do they have the immense wealth that makes it easy to take time out of their lives for a cause.

Furthermore, it’s always good to be skeptical of the genuineness of anything celebrities say or do. First and foremost, they are profit-driven products and will do whatever it takes to be popular and profitable. Whether it’s Ashton Kutcher making speeches about human trafficking, J-Law repping for wage equality, or another star making the obligatory anti-Trump statement, remember everything is a calculated PR move, which probably means that these celebrities should not be looked to as activist leaders.

Celebrities respond to what makes them popular, and we are the ones driving the demand, which means it’s up to everyone to decide how much emphasis our society puts on celebrities’ political opinions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to discuss and think about what celebrities say or do, but it becomes a detrimental distraction from other issues when it receives a disproportionate amount of our attention. w

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The IUD Monologues

by Mikaela Hamilton & Francesca LaPasta

art by Fauna Mahootian

Cesca

I decided to get an IUD because I wanted one. I’m not in a monogamous relationship so there was no other opinion in the matter; I was just done worrying about being pregnant. I went to Gannett for a check-up and my doctor asked if I was happy with my contraception. I wasn’t.

Scary as it is to admit, I really didn’t trust the people I was sleeping with enough in terms of contraception. A Gannett handout with a picture of a woman in a crop top gave me the facts on IUDs: 99% effective, lasts 3 to 10 years, not noticeable in day-to-day life, lighter periods with the hormonal IUD (the copper IUD may make your period worse, but hey, it’s natural!). Also, with the Student Health Plan it only costs ten dollars at Gannett.

Mikaela

The number of IUDs placed here at Gannett have certainly been on the rise—one doctor remarked, “It’s like an IUD factory in here! I placed five this morning!” Just so we’re on the same page, the IUD—intrauterine device—is a T-shaped device, either copper or hormone-releasing plastic, that sits in the uterus. The IUD appealed to me because I was assured that mood effects are rare—the pill and I didn’t get along in high school—and because of its reliability. More importantly, I wanted to ensure that I would continue having access to reliable contraception in light of our current politics.

Cesca

So, let’s get to the worst part: insertion. Yes, it hurts. When I get my IUD inserted at Gannett, I bring my roommate (prevet, stomach of steel). A doctor with a Russian-ish accent tries to put me at ease, but soon she gets down to business, putting my feet in stirrups and trying to dilate my cervix (whatever that means). I’m holding my roommate’s hand to distract from the constant cramping pain when suddenly she’s on the ground. She nearly fainted. Apparently this is common. A bit later the doctor announces that she can’t dilate my cervix, but I’m not giving up. My roommate and I do research on “cervical ripening.” The Internet suggests sex and pineapples. I don’t have any sex on hand but I eat some pineapple. The doctor calls me and tells me I can pick up some pills and try again the next day. The pills make me nauseous, but this time the doctor manages to get the IUD into me.

She’s clearly proud. In the end the insertion only took about 20 minutes. No regrets.

Mikaela

Gannett doesn’t always cooperate with your insurance. Without the Student Health Plan, it could cost over $900 to get an IUD at Gannett. Consider: if Congress stops covering birth control, who can afford $900 for an IUD? Because I had no Student Health Plan, and I didn’t have $900, I went to the doctor in my rural hometown. There were clear attempts to make the situation seem friendlier: butterfly mobile dangling above my head. Happy little clouds on the walls (Bob Ross would be proud). Animal socks placed over the stirrups. This veneer of kindness did nothing to calm me. I think of myself as having a high pain tolerance, so I was not expecting the level of discomfort I experienced. What comes to mind is “dystopian horror film”—cold, strange metal objects inside of me, manipulating my body in unnatural ways—and pain that was both serious and seriously strange. I stared at the red butterfly and tried not to throw up. I thought I was done when my doctor apologetically said, “I have to try again...your cervix is stubborn.” I wanted to give up, but steeled myself for the second attempt. When it was finally over, my oft-queasy sister came into the room, and she nearly passed out just from seeing the state I was in. Soon enough, I felt back to myself, and we celebrated with—you guessed it!—a trip to Applebee’s. While the initial experience was not pleasant, I don’t regret it. Better than childbirth, right?

Pro Tips 1. Do lots of research to determine which IUD is right for you.

2. Leave your emotional support in the lobby.

3. Breathe—especially if you have a stubborn cervix.

4. Buy a heating pad—it will be your best friend post-insertion.

5. Ibuprofen.

6. Enunciate! It’s an IUD, not an IED (Improvised Explosive Device).

7. Get comfortable talking about your own body! Say it with us: “cervix.” “Vagina.” “Uterus.”

8. Give yourself time to adjust. IUD life is a transition until things settle down.

9. Even if you don’t want an IUD or can’t get one, support other people’s right to choose the form of birth control they believe is best for them. w

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The Dark Side of Donations no thanks, Mui Ho: our fine arts library is just fine

by Nadya Mikhaylovskaya

art by Fauna Mahootian

We are used to thinking about donations as helpful acts supporting socially useful causes—for example, buying Girl Scout cookies, investing in higher education for women in Third World countries, being a blood donor, or sponsoring the construction of new hospitals.

Private universities, too, rely heavily on donations.

Many expensive buildings (think Gates, Klarman) are built on Cornell’s campus, and different departments acquire the spaces and new facilities they need, all with the help of sponsors.

So, what could possibly be wrong with using donations to expand departments, accommodate new technical equipment, and renovate and restructure historic buildings?

Nothing, unless we, students, see such expansions as not just unnecessary, but also as forced and harmful. One of these projects is the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library, scheduled to appear

“...we, as students, see such expansions as not just unnecessary, but also as forceful and harmful.” on our campus in 2019. Designed to be built on top of Rand Hall, the new project will deprive students of space, facilities, and comfort during and even after the construction period. It will not have the capacity to accommodate even half of all the books—but it will look grand and sumptuous.

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“Respectfully restored and radically re-inhabited, Rand Hall will stand as a paragon of continuity and change,” comments Kent Kleinman, Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning, quoted on the official website of AAP. “It will be a light-filled, 21st century library, glowing from behind the large industrial windows of Rand Hall—a perfect metaphor for conserving the old while erecting the new.” The student community, however, does not share this excitement, as “conserving the old” does not appear to be a real priority.

The construction means depriving students of two floors of workspace used for weekly reviews and everyday modelmaking, revoking convenient access to fabrication shops, and reducing the number of necessary tools and relocating them farther away from students. “I have not met a single person who likes the new library design,” “it is only for publicity,” “a poor use of space and funds,” shared the students of AAP in an online survey about “student satisfaction” with the College.

I think a university’s priority should be its students, but unfortunately this is not always the case. All the money donated for constructions and renovations are supposed to, at the end of the day, bring students happiness or educational opportunities. The final cost of the library construction has continued to grow since Mui Ho made the original donation and now totals $19.1 million, according to the Dean of AAP. In an informational meeting dedicated to the library project, which was organized in March by student representatives, students found out that the cost of the library would be that high and voiced their concerns: maybe there are more important issues to address, to donate money for? What about our art supplies and architectural materials for which we pay sometimes more than $500 per month? Couldn’t the library be cheaper? And what about the actual purpose of the

“Do we really need a mind-blowing, glazed superstructure with three-story-high book stacks hanging from the ceiling (separating those with acrophobia from art-related books forever), on top of our old building?” building, which is not to create convenient access to the book collection for students, but instead to create an appearance that makes it a landmark of our university?

Do we really need a mind-blowing, glazed superstructure with three-story-high book stacks hanging from the ceiling (separating those with acrophobia from art-related books forever), on top of our old building? Is the strikingly unusual interior worth the cost we have to pay? A poll completed recently by AAP students showed that the vast majority of students in the college are concerned about the library project. “If the library is purposed to be used by students, only they have the right to make the decision about it,” says Jane, an architecture student. Nevertheless, conversations that student representatives have had with the Dean of AAP have shown that the department is not concerned about students’

opinions of the library project.

Administrators may argue that students just don’t have enough foresight to imagine the benefits of beautiful renderings brought to life and turned into landmarks.

Landmarks, after all, attract money, and that is what private universities need. But we students reply, what good is this profit if the university chooses not to spend it on students’ real needs?

AAP students, who literally study how to build and create, were not involved in the discussion of the project. This is not to say that students should have designed the library for themselves, but there could have been at least some communication among the students, the sponsors, the faculty, and the administration. Instead, students are left unheard, our concerns unresolved, and our money wasted on the exterior, pleasing eyes of passersby. w

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Don’t Build a Bigger Jail... just stop filling it

by Aurora Rojer

art by Lucas Whaley and Aurora Rojer The Tompkins County Jail is overcrowded. It was built to hold 64 people, but, thanks to a variance from the State Commission of Corrections (SCOC), for the past few years it has been allowed to cram in an extra 18 people. This was the case until July 2016 when the SCOC hit Tompkins County with an ultimatum: the variance is gone; Tompkins County must either expand the jail or lower the prison population.

Can you guess which way the county is leaning?

In September, the county legislature formed a jail study committee to explore options for dealing with the expiring variance. They hired a third-party company, Center for Governmental Research (CGR), to perform a study to determine the feasibility of adding an extra 45 beds to the jail for an estimated cost of $20 million. CGR, despite having promised “transparency” and “accountability,” have, of course, been totally shady. They never posted the documents on their website that they said they would and allowed the county to begin hiring new corrections officers in preparation for the expansion that hasn’t technically been approved yet. Meanwhile, community members under the name Decarcerate Tompkins County have been organizing around a few questions: would they really build 45 beds if they didn’t plan to fill them?; do we want to expand our jail population by more than 50 percent?; can’t we, as a community, find a better use for $20 million?

Many respond that if we have that many criminals, we really do need to find a way to keep them out of our community. But in Tompkins County, 74 percent of people in jail are unsentenced. That means that they are either waiting to learn their sentence or haven’t even been tried yet (so much for innocent until proven guilty). According to the New York Criminal Justice Agency, one in five defendants charged with non-felony offenses are not convicted, and of those convicted, 80 percent do not receive jail time as punishment. So, for most of these individuals, their time pre-sentence is their only time in jail, and just because they couldn’t afford to pay the pricey bail.

34 • zooming in

Those most economically disadvantaged are the ones in jail, and their time there further exacerbates this inequality. It only takes a few weeks locked away to lose your job, apartment, and mental well-being.

Everything in jail must be bought from the commissary, which naturally has overpriced products like travel-sized toothpaste for anywhere from $3.50 to $4.50. Only twice a week at a different time from visiting hours can a family member bring money to the incarcerated individual. If the incarcerated individual needs more money, they are forced to use an ATM, provided by the commissary vendor, that charges $3.00 per transaction.

An hour’s worth of phone calls costs $25 plus an extra $12 in fees. Indeed, all communication with family members is difficult. In our jail, family visits are limited to just twice a week, for no more than an hour. Visits must be scheduled by phone during another limited time slot (7 – 10 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday, plus an extra 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. Sunday), and are at the discretion of the officer on phone duty. No one is guaranteed a visit. So, not only are incarcerated people unable to work, but they are also forced to spend ridiculous amounts on petty fees while suffering isolation from their loved ones, all without ever having been found guilty.

The first and most obvious step to lowering our jail population would be bail reform. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but it has the potential to make a huge difference, both to the individuals incarcerated and to the county, which would no longer need to expand the jail. It wouldn’t be setting out into uncharted territory: New Jersey recently overhauled their bail system. Since January 2017, judges have been able to use risk assessment to determine whether a defendant is actually a danger to the community who needs to be incarcerated before trial. They have found that most defendants are not: from January 1 to February 14 2017, New Jersey judges saw over 3,600 cases and authorized pretrial detention for only 14 percent of them. Bail reform alone could undoubtedly lower our own county’s jail population

back down to 64.

But Decarcerate Tompkins County knows that bail reform is not enough; why are these people, who are disproportionately poor and people of color, being arrested in the first place? The county could use that $20 million of public funds (which would only cover the cost of building the facility, not even the necessary maintenance and staffing) for alternatives to incarceration that try to deal with the root of the problem: most of the offenders are arrested for drug, alcohol, and mental health problems. All public health officials have recognized that jails and prisons are not adequate treatment for these health issues. Tompkins County could instead invest in heroin injection clinics (already under discussion, thanks to Mayor Svante Myrick), methadone clinics, wet shelters, dry shelters, homeless shelters, halfway houses, and more. Some advocates of the jail expansion claim that beds will be used for detoxing, but Decarcerate Tompkins County believes that jail is the wrong place for dealing with personal health issues, particularly this one in which a nurse is available only one day per week. Instead, we should have a community clinic, open 24 hours a day, which would provide detox supervised by healthcare professionals rather than corrections officers. Indeed, Ithaca already has plans to build an alcohol treatment center downtown, funded not by taxpayer dollars but rather by a grant received by the Alcoholism Council. More resources dedicated to treating our community members’ needs would go a long way towards decarcerating the county.

But even if formerly incarcerated people are able to kick their addictions or get the mental health support they need, there are very few opportunities waiting for them outside the jail’s gates. Finding housing, a job, and transportation from one to the other is difficult for anyone, but is compounded by the fact that employers and landlords discriminate against the formerly incarcerated. If our community wants to ensure

that people who get out of jail and prison stay out, we need to provide support in meeting these basic needs. Ultimate Re-Entry Opportunity, another local initiative, seeks to do just that by making partnerships with community members who can provide housing, transport, or jobs.

“Mass incarceration” is a term now commonly heard in today’s political discourse. We all know America’s got a prison problem, and that it’s racist to the point of representing a “new Jim Crow.” According to the Prison Policy Initiative, we have more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 901 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 76 Indian Country jails, as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories. And, according to the ACLU, America represents just 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its inmates. This has not always been the case: our prison population has absolutely exploded since the early 1970s. It’s great that this is common knowledge now, and even people like Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich are recognizing that we need change. But when mass incarceration is talked about at a national level, it too frequently sounds like a numbers problem: X percentage, X million dollars, etc.

What this discussion leaves out is the dehumanizing nature of reducing incarcerated people to percentages in a pie chart. Mass incarceration is a huge, systemic problem caused by top-down reforms. But even though we need the people in positions of power to support changes, the only way that we can re-humanize our population and truly change the system is to bring punishment, treatment, and prevention back to the community. Decarcerate Tompkins County is about stopping a $20 million jail expansion. But beyond that, it is about fighting at a grassroots level to change how our community conceptualizes and addresses incarceration. w

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An Interview with CGSU Member Sena Aydin

by Nicole Oliveira art by Fauna Mahootian At the beginning of the spring semester, I sat down to interview Sena Aydin, a third-year graduate student studying Anthropology and a member of Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU). CGSU was founded in 2014 as a union of graduate students committed to improving working conditions at Cornell. Its members advocate for the recognition of graduate students as workers and are united by their goal of securing collective bargaining rights with the University.

CGSU represents teaching assistants, research assistants, and graduate assistants. Aydin is also a member of the Rank and File Democracy Caucus, which was created after the election this past March. Made up of 16 graduate students, the caucus is currently challenging CGSU’s tactics.

Pre-Election NO: Why do you think organizing is so important? Why should graduate students be organized?

SA: On the basis of our labor in the sense that it cannot function without our labor. If you present that aspect and say, “unless this power is organized” when you have a problem at the university as a worker, you are alone to solve it. You are one individual against this entire institution with lots of departments, lots of power, and lots of money.

The situation of employment in the U.S. is that you are employed at will, which means you can be fired for whatever reason, and whatever the real reason is can be put under the excuse of some bullshit reason, too.

I mean, the whole reason of firing includes both official and unofficial reasons—let’s put it that way. Unless you are organized you will not be able to solve that and go against that.

NO: Right, I agree. How did you get involved with CGSU to begin with? Is this your first time organizing and if not, when did you first start?

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SA: This is more of a personal question so I will answer it in my way, and this is not representative of the larger CGSU body. I’ve been organizing back home—it’s been more than 10 years.

NO: Where are you from?

SA: Turkey. The first time I got involved with [organizing], I guess it was gradually realizing [that there are] certain systems of power and play and how that creates injustice and inequality among people. I wanted to do something about that. I realized that unless you are organized, you cannot really counter those systems.

And that is the kind of thinking that turns the idea of organizing from political activism that you do here and there when you have time to a necessity. It has become a part of my life, something that actually structures my life and how I think of my life and the future as well. So, where I’m going to go...will there be chances to be organized, where would I be more useful in terms of what I do in the future? It’s been a part of my life for a very long time to the point that I didn’t need any convincing to join CGSU.

When it was first forming, I knew that it was some students who gathered together and thought about the possibility of forming a union and advancing it and organizing.

Graduate students ran the union on campus. I was hearing it from far away because I was on a leave of absence in Turkey, but the moment I heard it I was like: “I’m in, count me [as] a member.” So, in that sense I don’t know how to not be organized for a union.

I can never see myself being against a union because like I said, it becomes a necessity when you see all of these structures in place. It’s not a pastime or a hobby, it’s like what we need to do to be able to get to a more just world and also it makes it even more originally relevant. I mean it’s relevant everywhere, but like here we are an institution that is a corporation, but the main purpose of academic institutions is to produce knowledge to challenge the status quo and we [at the moment] are aiming at that without actually challenging the status quo in our lives, through our own labor...what’s the point?

So, it’s also a way at least within academia to bring theory and practice together. So, we do what we teach— which is fight against the injustice, and [organizing] is one way to do that. And it is not necessarily to say that this is a “front” war or that we hate the administration. We (CGSU members) don’t like the fact that [the university] is anti-union, we think that it is really hypocritical in many ways.

NO: I saw the email from President Rawlings.

SA: I mean those emails they were allowed to send, that one email from Rawlings, because the agreement that we have with the university allowed them one chance to speak up and say what they wanted to say. It’s not them saying it (publicly addressing the issue in an email), it’s just them having an anti-union stance while running a university that is producing critical knowledge; it just doesn’t make sense.

It makes them hypocrites and kind of reveals the corporatization of higher education in the U.S. Their loyalty is more to the profit-driven research that is going to give prestige to the board of trustees than to make sure that people who are producing the kind of knowledge to bring them prestige have their well-being set in place, that they are being paid fairly, that their life is centered at a certain level, that they get the money and the commissions that they deserve.

I would say that may be a generalization, but if I think about it, many graduate students here, including me, are standard normal “students.” That means I don’t have any problems with the administration, I don’t have any problems with my department, but that’s not the point.

The point is not to do something when you have a problem. The point is to organize so that you don’t even get to a place where you have problems. That also makes the reason for organizing not to fight against problems, but really in a normal situation I don’t want the administration to make decisions on my behalf, to make decisions about things that concern my life and well-being and labor here at Cornell without even asking me.

Right now, the situation is [the administration] can change whatever they want about our lives, about our stipends, about our well-being, about workplace conditions, and healthcare without asking us a single question and we will just have to put up with it.

So, that’s the situation that we’re trying to change.

Unionizing means us saying we are the workers of this institution. We are an integral part and essential part of this institution’s functioning and running, and we want to have a say in the ways and decisions that are affecting our lives and labor—that’s it.

NO: That’s reasonable.

SA: You don’t need to have a problem for that, you don’t need to be fired for that, and you don’t need some case or accident.

This is not about fixing a problem—there are many problems ,granted. There are many students that have many problems that are going through various cases that are pretty unsettling, but if you just talk about even the standard normal.

This is why we’re here because we know our interests the best, so we get to have a say in them.

NO: How do CGSU’s efforts affect undergraduates? How can they be more aware of what’s happening?

SA: The way that it affects undergrads I think is two-fold. One is that being a union member and having a graduate student union on campus, as much as it is about improving [grad students] standards and having a say that our lives are governed

at Cornell as graduate students, it is also a political position against the corporatization of education in the U.S. This also harms undergrads and their education—both the quality and the content, but also the way that they receive it. Meaning [undergrads] have to pay higher tuitions and you think that’s okay. [They] pay hundreds of bucks for books and stuff, so the union that we [grad students] have is not going to directly affect any of that. But these kinds of political interventions in higher education are going to have a long-term effect in the ways through which our education is now seen because if many forces challenge universities and institutions of higher education in the U.S., that is going to have an effect on the shape and form that [education] takes. [Universities] cannot be corporations and education should be free. Neither grads nor undergrads should have go through thousands of dollars of debt to be able to get a fucking education.

So, this is one indirect way in the larger scheme of things as to how this will affect you—it is a political statement against the university as such. Another way is also maybe indirect, but that it is an experience that you see happening in front of your eyes and that another reason why we are doing this is so that [undergraduates] don’t have to do this in the future.

That doesn’t mean that all of you are necessarily going into higher education, but the situation that is happening in higher education is even worse in other sectors. You are going to find yourself in a situation like this one way or another because all jobs are under conditions of austerity, crisis, and precarity. All jobs are flexible and insecure. Subcontracting is all over the place, including in academia. If you look at the situation of adjuncts at Ithaca College….

So, this is, again, putting it within the large scheme of struggle of organized labor and struggle against capitalism.

If we don’t do this, you will have to do this, and if we do this we are not just doing it for ourselves. We are doing it for everyone else that comes after because this is not just to get a three-year contract and that’s it. This is actually to set a political tradition in this university where people know how to seek their rights. When people learn that this is an integral part of one’s life, that your labor matters, that you matter, that you need to get a say in the way that your life is governed and your labor is governed...then that’s going to have larger effects.

And in terms of how to help...go out and talk to your peers. Go out and talk to people because one way that the system works when it comes to organized labor, since it’s organized, the best way to break it is to create divisions. So, one way to illegitimatize our unionization efforts is to create a division between us and the undergrads which means “oh okay, graduate students want more stuff so we are going to have to increase undergraduate tuition” and [grads and undergrads] really need to get together and say “What you really need to do is stop caring about the [university’s] profit and start caring about this institution producing knowledge without that profit-driven mentality. You know cut the costs of (this is a stupid example), but painting the street lamps so they can look nice when parents come to visit the university...like who gives a shit about that? Nobody is coming here to have nice lamps.

But I think it’s important for us to stand together in sol-

zooming in • 37

idarity, not just because this is your future. In a way, even if you don’t go into academia, these kinds of problems are in your future so you are already comrades to us. Also, because the best way to stand against top-down power is to stand united. So, supporting meaning talking to people also letting your peers know what unionization and organized labor means because the transmission of knowledge is important.

People being politicized on campus, in general, is also important given the current political situation that we have. We may lose everything in the future. If the [National Labor Relations Board] decision turns and we are not workers, again we can have a collective bargaining agreement which will last however long it lasts. Then after that Cornell has no obligation to renew it and it probably won’t. In which case the only thing that we will have left will be the political power that we helped build on campus and that power doesn’t only include us—it also includes undergrads.

NO: That’s true. What do you think about other graduate students getting organized at different campuses like Yale, for example?

SA: Of course, I support it. I don’t know what more to say, but I think this is powerful. Organized labor has been on the rise in higher education, which actually shows the state of affairs being bad. It’s happening in other places and is not just limited to the U.S.

Post-Election

ing to vote. And I liked the CGSU buttons, but I did not like “I voted ‘yes’” stickers. We should have had “I voted” stickers so anyone could wear it. We created more divisions going the way we did.

NO: How did you feel about the way voting was handled, considering several ballots need to be contested?

SA: There were some ballots that were “yes”, some that were “no”, and some that were challenge ballots. Some people marked “yes” and then scratched it out, so it was not clear what they voted for.

I was not in the room when the votes were counted, but the challenge votes mentioned in the Daily Sun were votes challenged during voting. What that means is someone comes up the voting station, but they are not eligible to vote.

Those ballots were contested because no one can deny the student from voting once they are there. So, those ballots had to be set aside and put in an envelope. They needed to be resolved later. I believe there were 81 challenge votes and 6 absentee votes (from people who were not on campus, but sent them by mail).

The official results are still unclear because those votes are still being challenged. If you do the easy math though, if we have 19 ballots that are being challenged and 10 of those are “no” votes, we would still lose. So, even though the results are not “official”, we lost. I find it kind of ridiculous that some people still don’t want to accept that we lost the election.

NO: Can you talk about how you felt the day before the election? Other than a majority vote ‘yes’, what were you hoping the results would mean for graduate students and the greater Cornell community?

NO: What is your opinion on the involvement of the administration prior to the election? How did you feel about Dean Knuth using “Ask a Dean” to answer questions related to CGSU or Professor Collum?

SA: I was actually one of the people who was overly pessimistic. That requires a background story. One of the reasons we were critical was because we saw the campaigning on campus solely targeting an election rather than building a union. Since the target was election, the purpose of organizing was to vote “yes.” This did not translate to educating people, but rather visiting people over and over again to get one answer. This instrumental relationship started to backfire.

People [graduate students] were more and more alienated because of the way the union came into contact with them.

When a few members criticized this earlier, we were shut down. But people have started seeing that what we were saying was true.

I was hoping that we would win, but I was thinking it would be harder to win. It was more stress and sadness for me, to see something that started so beautifully from the bottom-up just turn into this. I just wanted to get the election over with.

I was also quite reactionary against going up to people and asking how they were going to vote. Asking how you are going to vote may be okay in the U.S., but many of the graduate students, including myself, are international students. For a lot of us, voting is sacred. To me, asking someone how they were voting was offensive.

I never asked anyone to vote “yes” or how they were go-

SA: There was a code of conduct between CGSU and the university that prevented the university from speaking openly against the union even though it was kind of obvious that they are anti-union. I mean, [Cornell was] one of the universities that was against graduate student unionization at Columbia University.

But since [the University] would not talk about it openly, they did that stupid “Ask a Dean” thing. Whether you are a graduate student against or for the union, a majority of graduate students recognize how bullshit those emails were and the discursive tricks used to talk about [CGSU]. The fact that [“Ask a Dean”] tried to maintain appearances made it even more ridiculous.

The “Ask a Dean” emails did us a service though, because it showed how much the university does not care about [graduate students] or know anything about us. When it comes to pointing fingers at individual people like Knuth or Collum, that is when we get away from the structural inequalities and away from the bigger issues at hand. By individualizing the problems, we are making it about people, and not about the power relationships between the people that need to make a living and this institution.

I was always against pointing fingers at them because that takes away from our goal. It’s not about Knuth or Collum, it’s just about people’s titles, and if someone were to replace them it would be the same problem. w

38 • zooming in

I Am Gagged a lesson we can learn from America’s sixth president

by Angelina Shi

art by Olivia Bono

In 1824, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams ran for president. At the start, it seemed Adams was the likely winner; he was the son of a previous president and a former secretary of state with a brilliant international relations background. He was Harvard-educated, while Jackson could barely spell. It didn’t seem like a competition.

Wrong.

Though Jackson won 43 percent of the popular vote and more electoral votes than Adams (99 to 84), he failed to get a deciding majority. Since none of the candidates reached the required majority of electoral votes, by constitutional mandate, the House of Representatives had the deciding vote.

They awarded Adams the majority. And, of course, the presidency.

Believing that some sort of corrupt bargain had taken place and that Adams had stolen the presidency, Jackson began to campaign across the country, telling all how the system had been rigged and how Adams was the root of all evil. Within months, the rhetoric between the two opposing sides turned into vicious personal attacks. In the next election, Jackson’s relentless shit-talking proved effective.

He beat Adams with ease. And during his own presidency, Jackson continued to spread rumors that Adams was a pimp, mentally ill, senile, and morally deficient.

It is not hard to draw comparisons to our current situation. A former secretary of state with an image problem faces off against a seemingly unqualified opponent: a populist, outsider, non-politician. Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump even galvanized support from the same demographics and used similar language to appeal to voters. CNN ran an episode of their 2016 series “Race for the White House” about these very similarities, focusing on how the character of Jackson can be seen in Trump today. Though it was an interesting story, I cannot help but feel they missed out on a more relevant one.

Like President Trump, John Quincy Adams was elected

40 • zooming out

without a majority vote, and therefore did not have the mandate or support of the people. He was cold and stilted, unable to make small talk or conversation. He was arrogant, obnoxious, and dislikable. Sure, as a man, Adams was strange—while he was president, he was known to keep a pet alligator in a White House bathroom. He woke up early every day to skinny dip in the Potomac River to laughable ends. He had such a bad habit of walking through White House guest rooms in the middle of the night that they had to build an entire hallway to keep him out. He believed that mole people were real, that the Earth was hollow, and he had an odd obsession with the metric system.

But what sets him apart from Trump is that as a politician, Adams was genius.

Every fault he had in personality was more than made up for in intelligence. He was a political savant, one of the last stalwarts carrying the spirit of the American Revolution, and one of the finest politicians the White House has ever seen. At the time of his election, he was already a relic of an era past.

But somehow, his spirit lives on today.

John Quincy Adams’s father, John Adams, had been president too, from 1797 to 1801. John Quincy admittedly got his start serving as a secretary to his father during the Treaty of Paris, but his deeds soon outpaced anything that his father’s connections could have done for him. He navigated through the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. He negotiated the Rush-Bagot Pact of 1817, easing rising relations between British Canada and America. He was the main author of the Monroe Doctrine. As secretary of state, his deft actions and diplomacy with Spain culminated in the acquisition of Florida. George Washington appointed him U.S. Minister to the Netherlands; James Madison sent him to Russia.

It seemed his capacity for diplomacy and career growth had no bounds. But then he was elected president, and it was all over.

It should have been the capstone of an illustrious career.

“What Adams teaches us is this: in times of insurmountable odds or opposition, if you stick to your principles, you cannot be silenced. If you persist, your voice can be heard. ” Having spent his whole life in international policy and internal affairs, it seemed he would take to the presidency like a fish to water, using it to effect real change and put important policies into place. Unfortunately, that was not the case: the years he spent in the White House would become the least productive years of his life. The campaigning and rhetoric from the Jackson camp had ruined his reputation. Most of the population saw him as Jackson painted him: a degenerate, corrupt old man. Unable to wrest support from the populace or Congress, his presidency was characterized by stagnancy and internal improvements proposals that were soundly rejected. He ran for the presidency again in 1828, but it was too late. He was resolutely defeated and forced to retire to Boston in hopes of living a quiet life.

Thankfully, the quiet life did not suit him.

Not even a full year later, the next chapter of his life began: a renaissance of his political motivations and a reawakening of the fire that had burned in him in his early career.

By 1831, he was back in public office, this time in the House of Representatives.

Adams had been previously nicknamed “Old Man Eloquent” by his constituents for his brilliant and articulate manner of discussing policy. But in his last years, he came to be known as the “Madman of Massachusetts.”

He began to champion the antislavery movement, proposing piece after piece of legislation. One slaveholder called him the “acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.” When the Southern members of Congress passed a rule explicitly forbidding the discussion of slavery (a “Gag Rule”), it was he who stepped up and spent the better part of a decade trying to repeal it. Just twenty years off from Civil War, others rightly feared that the issue of slavery would lead to an irreparable rift in the country. They sought to keep it hidden, but John Quincy Adams would not stand by. “What can be more false and heartless than [slavery] which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?” he said in a controversial speech on the Senate floor, “Are not fraud and hypocrisy the religion of the man who calls himself a democrat, and hold his fellow-man in bondage?”

In 1841, African prisoners aboard the slave ship La Amistad rebelled against the slave traders that had captured them. Though they had set out to return from Cuba to Africa,

the ship was captured off of the coast of Long Island. Current president Martin Van Buren was content to send the rebels to Cuba and take away their just-won freedom. His former vice president John C. Calhoun made it clear that he sided with the slave traders. But John Quincy Adams saw the injustice and would not be silenced. In one of the first human rights victories in American history, he represented all 35 of the prisoners in the Supreme Court and won their freedom. The men and women were returned to Africa, but Adams refused to grow complacent.

Galvanized by his victories and persistent against his fierce opposition, most of his last 17 years on the House floor were spent waging a one-man war for his ideals. He believed that the Constitution spoke of universal emancipation, and he would not rest until it was freely given. He stirred up dissent and disunion, losing lifelong friends in the process, but he ceaselessly fought against “slave power” and advocated for free speech.

Even at the end, he never stopped fighting. When the vote came to declare support for or against the Spanish-American War, he yelled “no” so vigorously he collapsed with a fatal stroke on the Congress floor.

In February of 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren tried reading a letter by Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor to protest the known-racist Jeff Sessions’ nomination as Attorney General.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell silenced her, stating plainly: “she had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned.

She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

A century and a half earlier, Adams did the same. When fighting against the gag rule, John Quincy Adams was warned of the dangers. He knew the cost. Other representatives told him to leave things alone, that he would only aggravate problems that were being laid to rest. But still, he persisted.

And because of that, his voice and his protest were some of many things that helped lead to emancipation.

He once said to “always vote for principle, [for] though you may vote alone, […] you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

What Adams teaches us is this: in times of insurmountable odds or opposition, if you stick to your principles, you cannot be silenced. If you persist, your voice can be heard.

In this world of polarized opinions and criticism, the most important thing is to be an advocate for what you believe in.

And one person, one vote, really does make all the difference.

zooming out • 41

Dismantling America’s Immigrant Fetish

how rabid anti-xenophobics can still be dicks

by Jeremiah Kim

art by Nadya Mikhaylovskaya

SCENE: A pho restaurant. Amidst the streams of sweat, spit, and speech spilling out between steaming bowls of hot brown broth, a table for two sits silent and spotless.

LOVER: So uh…it says in your bio that you speak two languages…

(Leans forward conspiratorially.)

Does that you mean you’re like…not from here?

BELOVED: Well, I moved to New York six months ago. Before that, I lived in Boston. What about you?

LOVER: No, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant like, where did you come from? Originally?

BELOVED: Oh, my family is from S(LOVER noisily sucks in a spurt of air.)

LOVER: An immigrant! I knew it! Let me tell you—I love immigrants. Immigrants are like—America is a nation of immigrants! Did you know that? We’re a nation of immigrants—I saw that somewhere and it’s so beautiful, and so true. Don’t you think so? If we didn’t have you people, God knows who would farm our crops! I mean, look at me. Farming? Please.

But don’t get me wrong; I know that immigrants are scientists too! And doctors! I bet—you seem like a doctor. Were your parents scientists? Did they have to flee a dictatorship?

That must have been so traumatic for you. So many countries have horrible regimes like that. Some countries...you never know. But you’re here now; you’re safe. Doesn’t that make you so happy? And grateful? I would be—if I were an immigrant, I would be so grateful. You know, sometimes, I feel like I am an immigrant. I know I said we’re all immigrants, but I mean—I feel like I really am one. Sometimes I imagine myself flying into JFK, going through immigration services, and walking out into the sunlight clutching that piece of paper that says: you’re an American citizen! I bet that felt so good. I always say that immigrants really understand how lucky we are to

42 • zooming out

be in this country—because they had to earn it. I wish more people understood that. Anyway, I just think it’s so great you decided to come here. Not that there’s anywhere else you could go. Except like, Canada or something.

(Record scratch, freeze frame.)

It’s time for an intervention. America, it’s time to talk about your immigrant fetish. Let’s parse through this fabricated first encounter as an allegory for your ugly tendency to objectify, commoditize, pigeonhole, ignore, displace, and abuse the people who end up inside your borders.

So you hold up signs in the streets that proclaim, “We are all immigrants,” yet you forget that it’s a far cry between a displaced refugee and a colonizer who, uninvited, forsakes the very “right to property” he holds in sacred regard and settles on land that already belonged to an indigenous population. Even if most of us are, to varying degrees, complicit in the project of settler colonialism, we must also recognize that not all “immigrants” are the same. To lump the invasions of America’s “pioneers” together with the trafficking of black slaves or the coerced migrations of brown and yellow peoples as cheap labor is a disingenuous and dangerous false equivalency. So get this through your thick, sick head: the experiences of every single migrant do not line up perfect and pretty into some sweet mosaic that magically absolves you of your systemic mistreatment towards “undesirable,” “illegal,” “inferior,” and “dangerous” immigrants. Believe it or not, categorizing any individual or group as “illegal” is a fundamentally, intractably fucked-up thing to do. Believe it or not, arguing that those individuals and groups deserve entrance in our society because they fulfill some quota of economic profitability is an equally fucked-up thing to do. Measuring a human life on the basis of what kind of labor or wealth it can offer is no better than—and is in fact historically implicated in—the measuring of human lives by their skin tone, gender, language proficiency, religion, or geographic origin.

Karl Marx once identified a peculiar transformation to social relations in which human-to-human relationships were replaced by market-driven relationships between money and commodities under the developing political economy.

He called it commodity fetishism. Example: if you look at a Big Mac—or better yet, an advertisement for a Big Mac—you don’t see the actual wheat, lettuce, cucumber, beef, etc., that someone had to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, and assemble to produce it. You don’t see the working conditions for the farmers, the butchers, the chemists, the factory workers, the truck drivers. The restaurant employees that you do see are uniformly collapsible into the fold of the almighty Golden Arches. All you see is the Big Mac: no less divine and inscrutable than Prometheus’ gift of fire to mankind. I argue that commodity fetishism can be expanded to include the

“The immigrant journey itself accrues mythological

implications

that deny the human existence of the people it supposedly describes.” discourse that surrounds immigrants in this country. As a self-perpetuating, hegemonic system of symbols and stories, immigrant fetishism assumes immediate priority over any diverging and intersecting experiences lived out by actual immigrants. The immigrant journey itself accrues mythological implications that deny the human existence of the people it supposedly describes.

So when AirBnB plasters a palette of honest, smiling faces glowing with the absolute truth of their ethnic diversity and unfailing gratitude on our Twitter feeds, that grand, swelling feeling in our chests is not so much a tangible realization about the havoc wreaked on the lives of marginalized migrant groups as the result of racist and/or Islamophobic immigration policy as it is a meticulously engineered emotional reaction to a series of coded images functionally divorced from any realities they are supposed to reflect. The fact that AirBnB profits from the gentrification and displacement of low-income, immigrant-rich communities of color gets subsumed under an amorphous celebration of “difference.” Similarly, when a Budweiser Superbowl commercial tracking the hard-scrabble journey of its German-born founder to America concludes with a cathartic revelation of the grimy blueprints for—gasp—the original Budweiser beer bottle, we are more enamored with the aesthetic presentation of a supposedly universal immigrant experience than we are with the historical particularities of working-class European immigrants in the 19th century. That the discrimination young Adolphus Busch faces (“Go back home!” spews one man on period-perfect New England streets) is cloyingly reminiscent of our modern malice is not enough to compel us towards, say, calling our local Congressperson or joining a physical protest against ICE. In fact, the advertisement’s title—“Born the Hard Way”—suggests that xenophobic bigotry and violence might actually be positive in a roundabout sort of way; after all, Busch did end up creating a globally-recognizable brand and multibillion dollar corporation. Imagine if

zooming out • 43

he didn’t have to brave raging seas, belligerent pedestrians, menacing glares, and harrowing river-passages—who knows if we’d still have that most quixotically American of 12-calorie light beers today?

And now, when news analysts and policy experts discuss the effects of Trump’s Muslim ban, they’re merely pushing buttons on a flight pad meant to launch you, America, into a fit of rage or a flight of pity. Lost in the conversation are a number of important recognitions: first, that darker-skinned immigrants are capable of complex emotions beyond fear and relief; second, that ensuring the physical and legal security of an MIT student is just as crucial as ensuring the physical and legal security of an undocumented farm worker; third, that the legal process of immigration was fraught with systemic biases and injustices long before our resident orange toad ascended to power; fourth, that immigrants do not uniformly flock from their respective countries in a collective beeline to your shores; fifth, that you are not as uniquely (or even remotely) adept at providing refuge to those “tired, huddled masses” as you proclaim to be.

Let me indulge your deluded, voyeuristic predilections

with a bit of personal history: my mom is an immigrant. My grandparents too. My grandfather fled conscription to the North Korean Army during the Korean War, and my mom and her siblings were born in South Korea. Working for the South Korean military during the 1960s, my grandfather came into contact with a burgeoning transnational import/export supply chain. At the same time, the South Korean government began to facilitate the emigration of many North Korean defectors and their families in an attempt to quell overpopulation. Consequently, my mom arrived in America—South

“Immigration is a massive, messy, drawn-out process with no clear trajectory or endpoint; any act of migration is not a one-time event but is lived out repeatedly over the course of a lifetime.”

America, mind you—as a young child in the midst of larger, geopolitical migratory channels. The subsequent formative years of her life—childhood, adolescence, high school, college—were spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My mom’s decision to come to the United States as an international grad student didn’t arise from a yearning to obtain that cotton-candy-colored American Dream; in fact, my mom never intended to stay in the States at all. But life happened and circumstances evolved, and in 1996, I was born. I remember asking my mom once what language she dreamt in—Korean, Spanish, or English? She told me it changes from night to night.

Immigration is a massive, messy, drawn-out process with no clear trajectory or endpoint; any act of migration is not a one-time event but is lived out repeatedly over the course of a lifetime. In many cases, America, you are as arbitrary and temporary a destination as any other geopolitical entity. In all cases, the full spectrum of psychological and cultural burdens placed on the individuals who cross your borders escapes the crude fiction you have fashioned in your own image. The implacable creed of Manifest Destiny that has smashed through Native land rights is the same one that plays heavy duty in the calculated destabilization and displacement of Muslim lives on “alien” continents; the neurotic logic that enlisted the entire U.S. South against the Emancipation of black slaves in the name of “protecting economic interests” and a “way of life” is the same logic that wins a presidential campaign on the promise of border walls, immigration bans, and trade isolationism; the hand that pieces together a romanticized plasticine composite of the indomitable, enterprising immigrant is the same hand that picks and pulls apart immigrant bodies, minds, and communities in growing numbers with each passing day.

Yes, migration can be beautiful, terrifying, and ordinary.

No, it does not come wrapped in red, white, and blue. w

44 • zooming out

Urban Flavors religion and urbanization in the Middle East

by Lela Robinson

art by Fauna Mahootian

For those with sophisticated palettes, I recommend the urbanism. Not an obvious choice, but if you’re an erudite progressive who enjoys the bitter taste of sophistication over the hearty flavors of reality, I can assure you, you would like nothing less. It’s on the side, under feminism and above Marxism. Don’t bother reading the description, or do exactly that and fake an understanding. Enticing, is it not? You can taste its exquisiteness even before it’s served to you on a silver platter. Just know that when your watering mouth takes the first anticipated taste, it will be the opposite of what you might have expected.

The creamy richness of unconditional cosmopolitanism is spoiled by large curds of social inequality, neoliberalization, and privatization that consequently ruin its rich texture.

All thanks to urbanism: sour and repulsive. Globalized, rapid, mismanaged, dirty. But is it always? Certainly, we’ve previously tasted the richness of cultural exchange, enlightenment, and beauty. Is it possible that only the most skilled cities can master the timing and techniques of successful urbanism? In its rawest state, urbanism is simply the movement of people from rural to urban areas: bland and relatively tasteless when taken out of context. Then, why is urbanism so frequently rife with issues of social inequality? The world is an urbanizing place, but what are the consequences? Do urban consumers understand the implications of urbanism, or are they merely appropriating the term and basking in the glory of its progression?

In the United States, we discuss urbanization over massive helpings of gentrification, racial tensions, and white privilege. Americans season other cities in similar ways, but globalization and neocolonialism are always the salt and pepper. But is salt and pepper even appropriate to incorporate in these conversations? Most times, it is easy to forget that our conversations don’t have the same meaning when translated to other languages, even though cities are individualized places with distinct histories and cultures. The notion that these are the only forces shaping urbanization is questionable. Aren’t internal urban social politics, most notably religion, a more influential factor than the external influences of globalization?

This question brings us to the Middle East, where religion is such a predominant aspect of life that it must also be considered in relation to urbanization. How have Middle Eastern cities interacted in this global economy, and to what extent? It is difficult to comprehend the gravity of religion in Middle Eastern countries, as it is not nearly infused in American society to the same extent. When studying religion, there is a tendency to hold it at arm’s length, fascinated by its

ramifications yet lacking a true comprehension of its effects, which are only understood through practice.

Religion, as it exists in the United States, does not exert influence over urbanization. As a result, United States becomes an anomaly that avoids this otherwise central and dominating entity. A taboo subject. Religion, as perceived in the States, often assumes an intermediary role that is acknowledged and certainly exerts considerable influence over certain areas, but will never challenge the dominion of urban entities. In the Western context, religion and intellectualism do not see eye to eye. However, in the Middle East, religion cannot be neglected as it is in Western settings. Despite its diminutive role in our prominent cities, it is both unavoidable and integral to urbanization in that region.

Cairo, as a quintessential urbanizing city, shows exposure to the effects of globalization, the abundance of inequality, and the pitfalls of urban disarray. Historically, the construction and urbanization of Cairo are inseparable from religion. Cairo, especially Islamic Cairo, emphasizes its grandeur with the Islamic architecture of mosques, tombs, palaces, and minarets. Traces of religious influence in urbanizing areas of Cairo signal a true sense of representation. Therefore, religion—unlike in the United States—provides an indication of increased social participation on behalf of Cairo’s residents.

Currently, Cairo’s urbanization manifests itself in the informal settlements mushrooming across the city’s historic core and in the elite and spacious construction happening along the periphery. Informal settlements take on their own system of governance, as they do not acquire true representation in the state: an informal system of rule couched in the intricacies of culture. As Salwa Ismail wrote: “...these governance practices are grounded in existing social practices; therefore, in adopting and instituting them, Islamists weave themselves into the social fabric.” Since religion is the cornerstone of the social fabric, its influence on urban spaces remains vivid.

When religion is rejected, the evils of urbanization fill the void. Here, we see globalization’s influence on urbanization and the secularization of new urban areas. The state has embraced privatization and neoliberalism by accommodating private foreign investment to these new areas. Lack of representation and the disruption and reshaping of the city work to separate culture and religion from Cairo’s economic process. Yet religion is an emblem of participation in the city; therefore, it mitigates the repercussions of urbanization in terms of informal development and the planning of space. w

zooming out • 45

The L-Bench a seat for Newton’s alt-boys

by Sophie Galowitz art by Zach Rouse

While many people expect political tension over Thanksgiving break, I thought I would be returning home to my oasis of liberal consensus in Newton, Massachusetts.

I remembered that even as the national conversation exploded in the spring of 2016, in this very liberal Boston suburb, my high school’s mock primary debates were argued with smug irony: “Marco Rubio” and “Ted Cruz” going at it playfully, each from behind a Bernie-stickered laptop.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I picked my brother up from high school and caught up with my film teacher. Talking to Mr. Weintraub, I was surprised to learn how the polarized rhetoric of the “real world” had somehow entered Newton South High School. He described the souring discourse

“With horror, I’ve been fixated on the L-bench for months, understanding it as indicative of a terrible change in our country.” within his own classroom. But the source of the breach occurred just down the hall. Mr. Weintraub’s hallway opens into a lofty atrium that links several wings of the school. This Wednesday, it’s quiet, and my footsteps echoed intrusively. I wasn’t used to it being so empty; I remember chatty students and lunch detritus everywhere. In the center, the “L-bench”— named for its shape—was now clean and vacant. A new paint job masked its usually scrawled-upon surface.

The designated hangout for 11th graders, the L-bench maintained a consistent reputation even as a new class of regulars passed through each year. My brother, a 10th grader, observed that it seemed to be the same rowdy group all day:

46 • zooming out

“you get this sense that they’re not supposed to be there, or they’re supposed to be somewhere else.” This is pretty much how I remember it. The administration had closed it down in the past for noise, garbage, or vandalism—normal stuff. But the fall of 2016 was different.

That September, reports of sexual harassment around the L-bench surfaced at a panel run by FEM club, a student feminist group, with students in the audience coming forward one after another. “Part of the issue was catcalling,” explained my friend Mona, a senior. “A lot of girls complained that they didn’t feel safe walking in that general vicinity, because the guys were shouting ratings at them or moaning their names.”

Mr. Weintraub explained how the harassment, while seeming totally out of place at Newton South to begin with, seemed especially eerie given its parallels to the national rhetoric. “Trump’s words and actions placed sexual assault at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds. I think some young women just put their foot down and said, ‘Out there, okay; I can’t control everyone. Here at South? No way.’” The administration put their foot down as well. Frantic to stem the harassment at its apparent source, they resolved to close the L-bench indefinitely.

“This was a dumb choice,” responded Juliet, a member of FEM club. “Because one, news-flash, catcallers can congregate anywhere; two, it just made the kids who sat at the L-bench angry; three, due to the tremendous lack of clarity, all of their anger ended up directed towards FEM.” The backlash was almost instantaneous. Debates raged in the classrooms, hallways, and, of course, on social media.

Newton South quickly became polarized. While many leapt to the side of threatened students, the L-benchers, feeling themselves threatened by the administration’s encroachment on their right to a space in the school, lashed out. In their attempt to maintain Newton South’s status as an ideological sanctuary within a troubled nation, the administration unconsciously pitted students against one another. Thus, the national discord reverberated through Newton South.

In line with the administration’s effort to shield their students from the bigotry which was running rampant in the country at large, on February 28 of this year the superintendent of the Newton public schools, along with a number of other superintendents in the area, released a statement of the district’s commitment to protecting students from the Trump administration’s threats, namely protecting their immigrant and transgender students. This called to mind the nationwide increase in sanctuary cities. While becoming a “sanctuary” applies mostly to legal protection, it also communicates: “we care about you being safe here.” This is the most important statement a school can make. But, it seems, it’s easier for Newton South to protect its students from a bigoted president than similar threats from within.

So, I lamented the loss of Newton South to an election season so polarizing that it caused the sturdiest bubble to

implode. The L-benchers seemed to mirror the alt-right in their backlash against the “politically correct” administration and against FEM club. For me, the incident represented the end of an era of agreement and clarity—Newton South seemed like it should be the last place to succumb to this ruin. But apparently it just did.

With horror, I’ve been fixated on the L-bench for months, understanding it as indicative of a terrible change in our country. But the more I think about it, the more I realize how the L-bench and its players aren’t simply mimicking the national drama, folding to the vitriolic rhetoric broadcast online and on TV. Maybe they’re just angsty teens being angsty. And, feeling under siege by a “correct” and perhaps coddling administration, they just happen to reflect the same anxieties which underpin resentment towards liberal authorities nationwide. w

zooming out • 47

Alternative Structures of Government

a conversation with Eastern Farm Workers Association

by Sophia May art by Abby Hailu

It may be time to admit that our system is failing us. Economically, our representatives continue to support policies that increase the broad income gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished many. This is perpetuated by a political system under which representation is skewed so that companies can make contributions to political candidates’ campaigns on such a scale that candidates are beholden to the wishes of those companies before the wishes of their own constituents. Under this system, many high-density, urban communities have only a tiny fraction of the political voice that they are due, and no legislation can be passed that will fully protect the huge number of people who have been pushed into poverty to fulfill the need of our economic system for cheap labor and a highly uneven distribution of wealth.

Given this broken system, how could we trust change to come from the top? Instead, I would argue that new systems must be built in large part by those who are most affected by our current form of economy and government. People who are experiencing hardship due to systemic economic and social issues—such as the long tradition of racism in our country, the ongoing destruction of small-scale agriculture, and the displacement of industrial jobs overseas—know best what their own needs are, and thus have knowledge that is essential to creating systems that truly serve those who have traditionally been left out of economic growth and opportunity in our society. They also represent a huge labor force that could have a huge impact through sufficient organization. However, as Ben Lee of Eastern Farm Workers Association says, “People can’t fight for change on an empty stomach.”

Organizations must therefore be built to take some weight that comes with being an impoverished person in this society off the shoulders of individuals, so that it may be borne together and alleviated by the group as a whole.

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The goal would be to create an organization so effective that its members would no longer have to spend all their time and energy on issues of survival. Thus, its members would have more time and energy available to organize for change and to support themselves and their fellow group members.

These systems would ideally both provide a way for people who are not currently being given representation to gain a voice, and would, given enough build-up of support, put pressure on our government to change, or else risk being replaced. Building a new kind of representational government from the ground up may not be easy, but if done successfully, would show the current power structure that its constituents are prepared to empower themselves if the system will not empower them, and would demonstrate the sorts of provisions that a government should be providing for its citizens.

Many organizations throughout history, such as the Black Panther Party and the Knights of Labor, have attempted to build representative bodies with the goal of providing their members the representation and benefits that they were not receiving from the government. Still today, organizations are stepping up to the plate to do the work of building these alternative structures to represent the underrepresented, for example the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, and the New Black Panther Party (NBPP).

Another organization that has had significant success is Eastern Farm Workers Association (EFWA). As their official description states, “Since 1974, Eastern Farm Workers Association has united migrant and seasonal farm workers and other low-paid seasonal and service workers together to fight for better living and working conditions. These workers form the backbone of our economy, yet they are not covered by the dubious benefits of national labor laws. The EFWA benefit program enables EFWA members to stay on their feet, while participating in our organization’s fight against

the detrimental government policies that cause our poverty conditions.” In this way, EFWA enables its members to organize and have political voice by first helping alleviate some of their most pressing survival needs. All members of the organization are encouraged to volunteer with EFWA’s many campaigns and to participate in the democratic decision-making of the organization.

I talked to the members of the EFWA cadre—the fulltime volunteers who keep the organization running day to day—about their organizational model, the goals of their organization, and the difficulties they face in trying to reach those goals. Cadre members Ben Lee, Matt DeLeon, and Barb Munger participated in writing the following responses.

Q: Why do you think organizations such as EFWA, which organize their members to gain political voice but also provide them support in the form of community and benefits, are important to the current and future growth and development of American society?

A: Eastern Farm Workers Association is a membership association of the lowest-paid workers, and because of our close connection with the low-income community, we are very aware of how divided our society is becoming. The divide between the wealthiest one hundredth of one percent and the vast majority of the rest of us has never been greater.

So, millions of people are looking for what the alternative is, where they can unite and have an effect, if the usual avenues of public participation are increasingly closed off to them, and that is why independent organizations that do not rely on government money are so critical, and why EFWA needs more volunteers participating every day to build it.

Our organization was founded on the principle that when a wrong is committed, there is a group of people wronged.

And they ultimately know best what the solution to their problem is because they are the ones suffering from the lack of that solution. People join organizations like this because they recognize that they are not the only ones suffering from the problem and that none of them can cure their suffering alone.

Q: If everything goes as planned, what is the end goal of EFWA? A: EFWA’s goal is to unite Central New York’s unrecognized workers (those who have been excluded by federal labor law: farm workers, domestic workers, independent contractors, temporary workers, part-time, seasonal, etc.) into a strong, permanent, independent organization that can gain a say over the decisions that affect their lives. For working people, the only way to truly have the power to change our condition for good is through organization. This truth has fueled the labor movement for 200 years in this country. However, as the government gained jurisdiction over the activities of labor unions, the majority of workers were excluded from the dubious benefits of federal labor law.

None of us can say we have a blueprint for a perfect society or what form it’s going to take, but any “solution” that doesn’t include the demands of the most exploited workers in the workforce is not ultimately a solution because as long

as any grouping of workers is left behind and allowed to be exploited without a living wage and a say in their working and living conditions, no worker is safe.

Q: In the way you’ve impacted the development of the Syracuse chapter of EFWA during your time there, have you taken inspiration from any other Non-Governmental Organizations, current or historic?

A: (Answered directly by Ben Lee, EFWA’s head organizer) Personally, I garnered all of my organizer training on the job through EFWA and similar organizations with memberships of service workers, temp workers and other low-income workers, at which I have had the privilege of volunteering over the past 14 years. Our organizer training programs draw on successful techniques used by various labor organizations throughout the 200 year history of the labor movement as well as some community organizing and mass political organizing techniques. It is a synthesis we call “Systemic Organizing”—our copyrighted organizing method we teach to all of our volunteers and organizers.

Q: What are some of the barriers faced by organizations such as EFWA? A: Being that we are an all-volunteer, membership organization, the constant process of volunteer recruitment and training is hindered by the growing poverty and economic hardship faced by more and more people in our community.

Often time the EFWA members who are the most willing to give their time and play a leadership role in the struggle and learn to organize are so bogged down in money problems, health problems, family problems, etc. that they are not the most able. To the extent that they are able to play a leadership role, it is usually thanks to the stability they’ve gained from the association’s 11-point benefit program which includes food and clothing distributions, medical, dental and legal sessions, and a lot more.

That is why young people who are concerned and want to make a difference can play such a critical role as an organizer and carry responsibility on a part-time or full-time schedule. You can learn to take responsibility for the future of our community and our economy. The way things are going, the life you save may be your own.

Q: How can Cornell students who are interested in EFWA’s work get in touch and involved?

A: Our Office Central is open 7 days a week 9 a.m. — 9 p.m. and can be reached by phone at (315)-478-1992. All levels of commitment are needed, up to and including full time organizers for over summer break. EFWA is now organizing in a 7-county area including Tompkins and Cortland counties, so there is a lot of work to be done and plenty of opportunities for students to be involved. We will be organizing a meet-up at Cornell University on Friday, April 28th. To find out more details about this, give us a call or look out for flyers around campus. Students who are interested can come or call. We can talk and work out the details to make sure that someone can be a part of this regardless of their schedule or skills. w

zooming out • 49

Why Are You So Obsessed with Me? the conventional wisdom of social media

by Viri Garcia art by Kelly Stone

I confess that I’m on social media most of the day, but I promise it’s not for reasons you would expect. I don’t go on social media to retweet, repost, like, and share things. I go on there to laugh. To laugh at what we’ve become, while I quietly panic on the inside and wonder where we went wrong. Part of the answer has come from somewhere I never expected: an excerpt from a “boring,” scholarly book I had to read for class. The Affluent Society is a book published in 1958 and written by economist John K. Galbraith. It’s one of those books nobody reads unless they’re forced to, or are just really hyped about Galbraith. Either way, it holds social commentary on modern-day society that can be applied to explain our heavy use of social media.

“We have come to worship this one percent so religiously that we appear to have forgotten about ourselves.”

When I first read The Affluent Society, I wasn’t sure what to think of it. But upon taking a closer look, I realized “Conventional Wisdom,” a term coined by Galbraith, gave us the key to answering questions about modern day society, particularly ones about our reliance on social media. He defines

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conventional wisdom as “ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability.” In other words, conventional wisdom is a set of ideas accepted by society—but how do ideas make the transition into conventional wisdom? Galbraith explains that our universal ego and the fact that everyone feels the need for “the satisfaction of knowing that other and more famous people share his conclusions” is ultimately the way conventional wisdom is made. We accept ideas only after we see other people accepting them, which seems reasonable.

However, I’ve noticed just how much social media focuses on making everything relatable to users. I can’t log on to Twitter without seeing tons of people retweeting posts with captions like “Me,” “Literally me,” “If this ain’t me,” or “My life basically,” from accounts with handles like @sodamnrelatable, @commongirl, etc. I began to realize that either social media was attempting to change conventional wisdom (if it hadn’t already), or I had some pretty basic friends. I decided my first thought was right, which led me to my next question: What ideas are we spreading, and what does that say about us?

Upon a closer look at the vast collection of “relatable” posts, I noticed two trends which we have seen before. The first one was the normalization of incompetence, depression, anxiety, a lack of accomplishments, and procrastination. These are all negative traits we would never wish upon anyone, yet we’re now beginning to assume that they’re commonplace and even wish to experience them if we haven’t already, just because everyone else thinks they’re humorous and cool. We

want acceptance more than anything, even when the mold for “normal” includes toxic personality traits that prevent growth.

The second trend I noticed is the idolization of the rich.

We have come to worship this one percent so religiously that we appear to have forgotten about ourselves. People who haven’t worked a day in their life and have attained extravagant lifestyles without educating themselves or holding a steady, hard-earned job—such as Kim Kardashian—are beginning to acquire a massive following (Kim has over 50 million Twitter followers), while other famous figures who have worked hard and put their heart into their work, such as Neil Gaiman, are brushed off by most people in our generation (Gaiman has two million Twitter followers). Maybe Twitter followers are meaningless, but our nation still recognizes Kim Kardashian more than Neil Gaiman or any other author; people accept her ideas and lifestyle more easily, even if we know a life like hers is unattainable.

We romanticize these picture-perfect lifestyles because they are more appealing, and neglect the challenges we face when we want to achieve our goals. This trend of acceptance and worship of an easily attained, luxurious lifestyle has become conventional wisdom. Galbraith also makes an appropriate comparison of conventional wisdom to religion—society becomes obsessed with a set of ideas to the point where they become our religion, and their articulation is a “religious rite.” However, through our own iteration of conventional wisdom, we now demoralize ourselves and worship people

with impossible lives. What does this say about our generation and modern-day society?

This new societal religion may have many negative repercussions, such as the death of self-esteem, but it also has positive aspects if it’s not overdone. All religion involves worship, but this rise in celebrity idolization should also involve worshiping oneself. In elevating such people, we must also remember that they are human—just like us. Their lives may appear perfect, but they go through many of the things that we go through. When it comes right down to it, this worship is a monument to the human individual, rather than to one all-mighty god. However, when practiced incorrectly, this religion could lead to the complete opposite: demoralization of the individual. This is demonstrated in our society in the form of girls being obsessed with wanting to lose weight to look a certain way, twerking to impress someone who will never care, or pretending to be stupid because it’s cool.

The two trends that define today’s conventional wisdom seem to point towards the inevitable death of our self-esteem. Romanticizing incompetence has become cool thanks to social media—and truth is, it sucks. I’m not saying we should quit using social media and live in the woods like Thoreau, but we need to become more aware of what we’re portraying as “cool” and support each other via social media.

After all, social media’s purpose is to spread information. We now hold the power to change conventional wisdom in our hands. It may suck right now because of us, but we can still fix it. w

zooming out • 51

The Paradox of the Bong Woman class divide and feminism in Bangladesh

by Nuha Fariha

art by Fauna Mahootian

A quick Google search of Bengali women, or “Bong” women as they’re colloquially referred to, reveals an interesting picture. Bong women are portrayed as daring, well-read, cultured feminists, partiers, and foodies. In other words, it reveals the perfect reflection of the myth I’d been told growing up. Out of all the countries in South Asia, Bangladesh is hailed to be the most progressive in terms of women’s rights, an image that the country has thoroughly embraced. After all, the Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, Leader of the Opposition, and Foreign Minister of Bangladesh are all women. Yet, these Bong women, who are strongly embraced by the country, only make up one percent of the eighty million women in Bangladesh.

Another Google search shows a different type of Bengali woman. Only 3.5 percent of women own land; 30.8 percent of women over the age of 25 have a secondary education. Over 87 percent of women face domestic violence, but there have never been official convictions for these offenses. While 57.2 percent of women are in the labor force, 45 percent work in garment and domestic work industries, which offer little to no worker’s protection.

How is it possible for both of these conflicting images of Bengali women to exist at once? How can Bengali women be hailed as a paragon for social, political, and cultural progress, while gross gender inequities persist?

Looking into the history of the country, it is clear that such a paradox has always existed. Recently, I read Tahmima Anam’s painful, beautiful, and unrelenting novel The Good Muslim, which confronts the aftermath of the 1971 Bengali Independence War. Specifically, the story focuses on Maya

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Haque, a surgeon who operated on the hundreds of thousands of women raped during the bloody civil war by Bengali nationalists, the Islamic Party, and the Pakistani Army. Maya is the quintessential Bong woman, redolent in her recitations of Rabindranath Tagore and her appreciation of classical Western music.

More intriguing are the women that Maya “helps.” The over 400,000 women raped during the war, officially named the Biragonas, were mostly from the working class. They are, in modern Bengali history, largely forgotten. While any Ben-

“How can Bengali women be hailed as a paragon for social, political, and cultural progress, while gross gender inequities persist?” gali child can recite the name of Sheikh Mujib, they would be hard-pressed to remember a single Biragona. The name “Biragona” began to be a shameful term, almost an insult. In fact,

during the war, Imams and other Muslim religious leaders publicly declared Bengali women as “gonimoter maal”—war booty—and thus openly supported the rape of Bengali women by the Pakistani Army. As a retaliation, the Bengali Nationalist Party condoned the rape of ethnic Bihari and minority Hindu women.

Similarly, the women who continue to be silenced today have low economic means. In my own life, I can see this divide clearly when I compare my grandmothers. My father’s mother was born to a poor family in the countryside. She married at age 14 and has worked her whole life to support her family. On the other hand, my mother’s mother was born to a slightly richer family. Despite being orphaned at an early age, she was able to obtain enough education to become a high school principal and support her family without a husband for several years. Slight differences can impact entire trajectories.

Even more disturbing is the lack of economic mobility. In contrast to its high economic and social growth, Bangladesh has the lowest rate of poverty reduction. In fact, the coefficient for income inequality in the country, the Gini coefficient, has not changed in the last 30 years. Such conditions can have dramatic effects on the female population. Despite the increase in literacy rates from 40 to 60 percent and reductions in infant and maternal mortality, it is difficult to see this inequity equalizing anytime soon. While female labor force participation has dramatically increased by 12 percent between 2006 and 2009 (in large part due to ready-made jobs in the garments sector and microcredit operations), women still face greater challenges to accessing finance and information, and female-headed microbusinesses rarely get the opportunity to compete in the male-dominated arena of trade and commerce.

This

This severely limits job diversity and growth for women.

Women are more likely to be employed in informal arrangements that have no guaranteed protections.

As a result, I have come to one conclusion: yes, Bangladesh is a liberal country and progressive in terms of women’s rights, but only if women can afford to pay the premium for that service. w

zooming out • 53

Aladdin, WY

by Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson art by Yabework Abebe

Kory and I rolled up to the large, brightly painted wooden sign welcoming us to Wyoming at about 7:30 that morning. It was bedecked with something like a state symbol—a cowboy with one hand raised, holding onto a bucking horse with the other—and the state motto: “Forever West.” The road was still pretty quiet, and the rolling pine-covered hills smelled musky in the cool morning air. The sun was gaining force, however.

I took Kory’s picture in front of the sign—yellow safety vest, a grinning face (also grimacing into the sun), and a sticker-covered Fuji steel frame with a neat, streamlined blue pack bound onto the rack about the rear wheel. We each ate a granola bar and drank deep gulps of what was now lukewarm water. It was still dizzyingly refreshing.

A few miles later, I caught sight of another cyclist in my helmet mirror. I shouted something up to Kory—it was mostly drowned out by a passing truck. The cyclist, unladen with tents and cook stoves, was gaining on us. It was hard to watch her, however, as the sun jumped back and forth across the helmet mirror.

“Well where are you guys goin’?”

We ran through what was now a common script: riding to Seattle, from back East, yup, have to eat a lot of food, sometimes it’s miserable sure, haven’t had too bad of weather except in the Black Hills, and of course you have to avoid the heat of the afternoon.

“I’m just trying to get out of the house,” our new cycling friend replied. “We have nine houseguests this weekend and that’s just too much. Have to get up early to sneak out before they start askin’ for breakfast!”

She rode past, and out of sight.

Kory and I arrived in Aladdin, WY, at around eight. Aladdin, which was at least a named location on Google Maps, consisted of a three-story general store, complete with a wide front porch, and a few trailers and woodsheds scattered behind. It was not open when we arrived. The building was covered in signs: cheap beer, cheap gas, cheap cigarettes, post office inside, groceries, weekend karaoke, and “For Sale: $250k.”

The store wouldn’t open for another hour, and Kory wanted to make it to Devils Tower—and our camp for the night—before the midday heat. We took a short break, leaning the bikes up against the porch posts and unpacking some trail mix from our panniers, Kory his collapsible plastic water bottle. I sat in a rusty metal chair, chewing on the sticky lump of mint chocolate Clif bar peeled out of the wrapper. Kory

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searched around for a bathroom.

Surveying the dusty porch, I thought about the future: Aladdin had been in operation for over 100 years; in the quiet cool of the morning, it seemed inexorably permanent—not old, not new, just there. In the quiet of the morning, both the past and the future seemed far off; they felt flimsy in comparison with the physical now, just off Highway 24. …

Last summer I biked from Ithaca to Seattle over the course of two months. It had been a vague plan, hatched during the deep dark days of finals week—what better way to wash away the stress of never-ending, never-good-enough school work than a summer on the road with no responsibilities? But sitting on the porch in Aladdin, that ideation was amusing, even alien. The trip was not an idyllic and carefree journey; it was a slow, sweaty slog through flyover states, and always an experience ruled not by the destination, or the miles I had collected through my pedals so far, but by the present moment. In the saddle, making progress on some grand journey was not something I considered—the journey receded behind needs, like food and water, and the mindless necessity to keep pedaling. But remembering the trip is the exact opposite—it is hard to think of any moment without thinking about where I had been and what would happen next.

Instead, my daily experience taught me that progress is made through the most monotonous kind of work. The route from Ithaca to Seattle is about 3500 miles, a fact I first confronted as a blue squiggle drawn in Google Maps. Traversing that trail is only possible through hundreds of hours of sweat, spinning pedals, patching a dozen inner tubes, thousands of semi-trucks roaring past at three times my speed. None of that feels like progress. But those hard earned miles were also profoundly beautiful. Riding west during cool mornings in the empty space of South Dakota, for hours my only company was found in the agitated birds in the shoulder-scrub and the laconic eyes of cattle grazing along their fence. Or take the day Kory and I rode to to Mount Rushmore through the rain and mist: dodging the bus-sized RVs hurtling around the rock spires and pines I felt completely alive, despite the ridiculousness of the destination.

In fact, just a few days after that strangely lucid morning in Aladdin, I would spend the night camped on a cliff overlooking Ten Sleep Canyon in the Big Horn Mountains. The sun set as I made my dinner of one part instant mashed potatoes and one part cheddar cheese, setting the red rock cliffs above

and below me glowing a deep warm color. The pleasures of the trip were just like the pains: an immediate experience, powerful for overwhelming any sense I had of where I had come from, or where I would go next. …

Before spending the night in Ten Sleep, I would stay in Gillette, after parting ways with Kory at our camp at Devils Tower. I had forgotten to fill up both water bottles at the campsite before I left, and the last three miles before town I nearly fainted in the saddle. I spent the afternoon in Starbucks (air conditioned, wifi-ed), where I met Glen.

Glen was a coal miner; Gillette is a coal town.

“What are the skinny tires for?”

I mentioned rolling resistance on the road. We chatted the usual chat; I followed the usual script. Then Glen asked me where I was staying the night.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out though.”

I ended up staying in a room at Glen’s, after he showed me the sights of Gillette in his big SUV at twice the speed limit, and took me out to his favorite bar with his daughter, her husband, and assorted friends. It was clear to me that Glen’s hospitality was not entirely charity, but a purchase of social capital: I must have explained my trip to at least a dozen people, and always with Glen’s addition that he let me stay in his home, even though he just met me that afternoon.

Glen exemplifies another source of significant experience on the road: the strangers I trusted and relied on. We would cook meals together, swap stories, I would sleep on their couch, and then at 5 a.m. the next morning I would ride away. I became a part of Glen’s world for roughly a dozen hours. We will probably never meet again.

But night after night of staying with strangers and listening to them tell their own stories—of piloting helicopters through war zones, of childhood ice hockey games and of kids moving to Toledo, of sailing across the Pacific Ocean, or of a late wife whose absence filled every corner of the home—I always found myself at an uneasy juncture the next day. Not only were those bleary morning goodbyes the last I expected to see of any of my hosts, but after the day’s ride I would find myself in the candid company of another aged architect or widowed Forest Service ranger. The stories I heard the night before and meditated on all day were unknown to my new hosts; each night, my new friends didn’t know my old ones. …

After I had progressed the 3500 miles to Seattle, I took the train down the coast as far as LA. From there, I took the train back home to Rochester, undoing those months of westward travel in three days. I sat watching the grand landscapes play past in reverse, traveling the distance which had taken me the better part of two months to traverse. According to Snapchat’s speed filter, the train cruised at about 90 miles an hour when the track was straight and open.

I spent those days engaged in a bittersweet task: rewriting a journal. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of a daily journal is that, like my hosts on the road, each day is blind to what comes next; I had recorded how I felt at the end of each day, with a sore body, well-fed, barely staying awake

with a pen and notebook in a tent, or on a stranger’s living-room couch.

I kept a rigorous journal, but on the train I re-wrote it: not because I wanted to process my disjointed experiences into a narrative that made sense, but because along with my bike, my original journal was stolen in San Francisco. I walked out of a Safeway to find my lock cut, swinging on the bike rack. It was a shock. After a summer of casually leaning my bike against gas stations on busy roads, against country diners packed full of the local who’s who, it was gone.

What I have left to reconstruct the journal—which is about half done—are just pictures and maps. I have a picture of that porch in Aladdin: there are four rusted chairs in the sun, a wooden Coors sign, and in a distant corner, Kory’s bike.

It affirms that Aladdin exists; it even reaffirms my remembered sense of what sitting on that porch was like. I don’t remember why I took the picture. Clearly, the chairs and sun were my focus, but it is hard to see their significance now.

I have maps, recorded on my phone, from each day’s ride.

This is an indispensable tool, and sometimes I’ll drop down into Google Street View as I try to remember the day’s landscapes and moods. Street View never takes me back as you might expect it to—the photospheres on Street View cannot do the smells and heat of the road’s shoulder justice, and they frequently take me back not to the sunny summer day I experienced, but to a grainy, pixelated view of a grey October day in 2007.

Pictures and maps are limited. It is hard not to recreate my trip as ordered by its progress across different landscapes, and from photograph to photograph. Inevitably something is lost—the unrecorded moments are conspicuously harder to remember—and something gained, which is perhaps false: that sense of progress with which memory strings together experience. How should those moments like that morning in Aladdin be preserved? How, in remembering, can I avoid the narrative of progress, which, in the tired moments which create it, is so remote? w

zooming out • 55

There is Literally No Such Thing as Good English. on rejecting “standard american english” and embracing language change

by Jagravi Dave

art by Fauna Mahootian

The way we speak ties us to where we’re from. Our speech is infused with linguistic markers, some extraordinarily salient and others more subtle, that identify us as coming from particular places so significantly that The New York Times was able to create a dialect quiz for the United States that identifies, based on self-reporting, the very town to which someone’s speech can be traced. The country is divided fairly clearly into dialects recognizable to most people who have lived here for a significant amount of time, even if they do not extensively study language.

The typical Southern drawl, for example, stands out in the Northeast especially, conjuring up images of fried Southern food and confederate flags, associated with the presumed culture of polite hospitality in the South as well as, more recently, Trump voters. And so the Southern dialect is often perceived with prejudice, given the biases of most of the Northeast and the West Coast against that part of the country. This dialect, significantly different from what is known as “Standard American English,” inescapably identifies its speaker as coming from the South, and would require extensive training to alter. Having these particularities of speech, then, has real consequences for an individual’s experience, and can result in anything from social ostracizing and harassment to being denied employment.

“Standard American English” is the general, unmarked English of the United States that is not associated with any particular region. It is the language used to prescribe grammatical rules and used by “professional communicators and businesses,” according to a PBS article about Standard American English. Some dialects vary from the “Standard” less significantly. They could be defined by only certain

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quirks of vocabulary, which are the source not of immediate prejudice but of friendly teasing (for example, jimmies vs. chocolate sprinkles; rotary vs. traffic circle). These dialects are less salient, less immediately identifiable with a place, and thus less likely to significantly affect an individual’s experience.

“But when and how does difference become constituted as incorrect or lesser?”

Where I’m from in the Northeast, most people speak the same way. It is a dialect not really recognized as a dialect, since this is the speech heard across the majority of television and radio, and the grammar of this dialect is considered standard. Yet I, too, found myself working the particularities of Massachusetts out of my speech after coming to Cornell.

As far as I remember, I did not make a conscious decision to distance myself from Massachusetts. But, maybe because I moved to the United States at the age of ten after living in two other countries, and because I was one of the few nonwhite kids in my suburban school system, I am extra sensitive to comments about the way I speak. I was made fun of by my friends (not meanly) for saying “wicked” and for pronouncing

“Forcing prescriptive standards upon language and rejecting the variation that develops within it is not only oppressive but also futile.” the word “room” with a shorter vowel and more like “rum,” and so these dialectal particularities disappeared from my speech. Dialects are marked; the “Standard language” is not.

We configure dialects and accents as Other in opposition to the “Standard.” There is therefore an implicit and explicit demand, an internally and externally imposed pressure, to conform to the unmarked “Standard language” in order to not be Other-ized. The drive is towards reducing the amount of difference between an individual’s speech and the “Standard.”

But when and how does difference become constituted as incorrect or lesser? What could be inherently better, inherently more accurate, about speaking the “Standard” that justifies the imposition of this way of speaking at the expense of all others? The answer, of course, is power. Difference becomes constituted as lesser when the stakes involve power.

The Northeast is the cultural, political, economic, and educational center of the United States, and has been essentially since this coast was first settled by English colonists. Thus it is the Northeast that holds power over the rest of the country, and has the power to dictate what “Standard American English” is and what constitutes it being produced accurately or inaccurately. “Standard American English,” which is almost indistinguishable from most Northeastern dialects, is the measure by which to mark distance and difference from the Northeast of the United States.

This standardization of the language is internalized by speakers who then strive to emulate “Standard American English” in order to speak “proper English.” There is, however, no such thing as “proper English.”

In fact, there is no such thing as a unified English language.

We can think about this in terms of the fact that there are many countries that have English as one of their national languages, yet the standards for all of these are different.

There is also the fact that many countries formally utilize English in their particular variety regardless of its status as a national language. When studying language, linguists do

not look to the “Standard” but instead rely on the judgments of native speakers, which often deviate from the “Standard.”

Native speakers themselves do not speak standard languages, since they acquire the regional dialect of their hometowns.

“Standard American English,” then, does not exist naturally.

And yet, there is the demand and expectation that people produce “good English,” which in the context of the U.S., is “Standard American English.” This is the expectation that creates prejudice against those that speak differently, both in the context of dialects, but also in the context of nonnative speakers and second-language learners. Immigrants are expected to speak “Standard American English” in order to accepted into American society, and failure to do so results in extreme discrimination and exclusion. Speaking English is, in fact, a

requirement for being granted U.S. citizenship. It is this same rejection of difference that, to a less violently oppressive degree, results in the resistance to adopt the rapid linguistic changes that are developing mostly because of the interactions of young people on the Internet. Only reluctantly are words like “selfie” included in the vocabulary of “Standard American English.” Most particularities of the speech of younger generations—for example, the ironically antonymic use of “literally” or the “because” + [noun] construction—are completely rejected as incorrect, despite the fact that these particularities are used extensively and consistently by a significant portion of American English speakers. This resistance to language change can have important political consequences, such as when the singular “they” is rejected by academia as ungrammatical, erasing the fact of gender fluidity.

The fact is, language is constantly changing. English has undergone centuries of change in order to become what it is today, and it will continue to do so regardless of whether or not we want it to. Forcing prescriptive standards upon it and rejecting the variation that develops within it is not only oppressive but also futile. The imposition of “Standard American English” is nothing more than an imposition of power disguised as an imposition of accuracy. So, let’s just continue to use language flexibly and fluidly, allow variation and other linguistic influences, and embrace these changes and differences. w

zooming out • 57

Thank you to: the SAFC and Terry Ector our advisor, Michael Koch Joe Shelton and Cayuga Press the American Studies department and everyone who worked on the mag!

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