Medley Magazine / Fall 2019

Fall 2019

Collide How cultural organizations at Syracuse University are helping students find a sense of belonging in America // 24

Through the Lens

The Harsh Reality of Racism Abroad

Eastwood resident David Haas shares his love and pride for Syracuse through an Instagram account // 30

Discrimination inside and outside the classroom told by students who participated in the SU Madrid study abroad program // 36 Fall 2019

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Managing Editor

Editor-in-Chief

Yzzy Liwanag

Micah Castelo

Senior Editors

Tara Bolosan Micah Castelo Nhari Djan Rocío Fortuny Andrea Guzmán Mary Olivia Keith Hannah Lees Yzzy Liwanag Stephanie Macrinos Shrishti Mathew Adrianne Morales

Lead Designers

Chantelle Boateng Micah Castelo Katie Hageman Stephanie Macrinos

Contributing Photographers

Micah Castelo Mary Olivia Keith Hannah Lees Stephanie Macrinos Jessica Ruiz

Advisor

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Sophie Hautala

Andrea Guzmán Nhari Djan

Contributing Writers

Social Media Manager

Creative Director

Hannah Lees Melissa Chessher

Medley magazine shares stories from our campus, our city, and our globe that explore the intersection of cultures from a socially conscious perspective. The magazine publishes once a semester with funding from your Syracuse University student fee.

The opinions expressed herein are not those of Syracuse University, the Office of Student Activities, the Student Association, or the Student Body. All contents of the publication are copyright Fall 2019 by their respective creators.

medleymagazine.com issuu.com/medleymagazine @medleymagazine

Cover photo: Andrea Moreno, president of the Puerto Rican Student Association at Syracuse University. Photo by Jessica Ruiz.

Fall 2019

ed i tor ’s n ote

I’ve been thinking a lot more about home and what it means to me as my time here at Syracuse comes to an end. I finish my graduate program in December, and after that, I’m packing my bags and going back to my hometown in Maryland.

I certainly feel the anxiety of the unknown future ahead of me, but I also feel sad to leave the city — the city I’ve come to know, love, and call my home in the last 18 months. I met so many kind people and heard so many special stories while living here. I also learned to come out of my shell, push myself beyond my boundaries, and become more independent while in this city. And even though I’m not sure where I’m heading next after the holidays, my time here has really shown me that home extends beyond the physical. It’s all about the community.

That’s just my take on it. So with this issue, we were inspired to explore the notion of “home.” This includes the challenges, shown in our story about a woman who feels like an outsider in her own family for being bisexual (p. 20) and a father and husband who is physically separated from his family because of his legal status (p. 18). But it also includes the feel-good, inspiring stories, like student organizations that are carrying on their cultural traditions (p. 24) and how much positive influence one man can carry out in this city with an Instagram account (p. 30). Our hope is that as you read through these stories, you think about what home means to you.

Sincerely,

Micah Castelo

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A Taste of Home

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Outreach

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Breaking Barriers

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(Un)Wanted

From a Korean restaurant to an Indian grocery store, Syracuse offers plenty of places for students to find their comfort food.

Legal aid for Syracuse immigrants expands as New York State prioritizes representation.

Mental health professionals work to provide culturallytailored treatments.

Justino Vixtha began the legal immigration process.

Then, he was arrested.

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Out of the Shadows

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Finding Community When Worlds Collide

Jasmine Emery shares her struggle with coming out to her family.

Cultural organizations at Syracuse University are helping students find a sense of belonging in America.

Then and Now Five places in Syracuse that have changed beyond recognition.

To-may-to, not To-mah-to A graduate student’s reflection on moving across the world to pursue her dreams.

Through the Lens Eastwood resident David Haas shares his love and pride for Syracuse through an Instagram account.

The Harsh Reality of Racism Abroad Discrimination inside and outside the classroom told by students who participated in the SU Madrid study abroad program.

Medley Mix Our editors’ recommendations on what to read, watch, listen to, and try.

Moments Abroad International photos from Syracuse University’s students.

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Words by Mary Olivia Keith Photos by Mary Olivia Keith Design by Chantelle Boateng

From a Korean restaurant to an Indian grocery store, Syracuse offers plenty of places for students to find their comfort food.

W

hen people talk to tourists about musthave foods in Syracuse, they probably mention Italian cuisine (Pastabilities or Francesca’s Cucina, anyone?), ribs from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, or vegan burgers from Strong Hearts Cafe. But over the years, Syracuse has become quite the melting pot as people of other ethnicities continue to open up restaurants to share their traditional dishes with the rest of the city. And for international students at Syracuse University, those dishes are just the right cure for homesickness. Here are six local businesses that students turn to when they’re missing home.

CATHY’S COOKIE KITCHEN - 266 W. Jefferson St. Although it’s not an ethnic restaurant or food store, Cathy’s Cookie Kitchen is a spot for sweet treats for those who miss their mom’s homemade desserts. Owner Cathy Pemberton even delivers cookies to SU as part of their “Syracuse Cookie Club.” The bag of cookies arrives the second week of each month — all you have to do is sign up for the club by calling, emailing, or visiting the bakery. “It’s baker’s choice and they get whatever they get, but we take into consideration allergies, likes, dislikes,” Pemberton says. “And then I just bake them specially for the kids at SU.” If you plan on visiting their Armory Square bakery on a weekday, Pemberton recommends getting there right at noon when the store opens for a freshly-baked cookie.

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CHORONG HOUSE - 1121 E. Fayette St. For Korean advertising graduate student Grace Lee, the go-to place for a home-cooked meal is Chorong House. This hole-in-the-wall restaurant is nothing short of genuine Korean cuisine. “The food’s really authentic here, and some of the dishes taste like what my mom makes for me, like [Korean] fried chicken,” Lee says. The menu features a variety of entrees including yuk gae jang, a spicy soup with shredded beef brisket, bean sprouts, and mixed vegetables, and bi bim bap, a rice bowl which comes with mixed vegetables, beef, and a fried egg on top.

LAS DELICIAS - 552 Westcott St. Joaquin Mancera, a journalism graduate student who is a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States, says that as much as he enjoys Alto Cinco from time to time, the dishes seem heavily Americanized.

Currently, 9% of the Syracuse population is Hispanic or Latino, so Mancera has found that white-washed Mexican food is more common in Syracuse than anything authentic. Instead, Mancera enjoys walking the extra block to Las Delicias, a restaurant with Dominican and Puerto Rican dishes like maduros (fried sweet plantains), empanadas of all sorts, and Pollo ala Braza, their take on a Peruvian-style roasted chicken marinated with a special sauce and sofrito.

Mancera says he feels comfortable at Las Delicias because he’s surrounded by the Latino community along with real Latino cuisine.

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INDIA BAZAAR - 4471 E. Genesee St. Journalism graduate student Veer Badani frequently visits a local store that helps him feel closer to his home country: India Bazaar. “They literally have every single Indian food item that you could imagine in this one store, so for someone like me, it’s heaven,” Badani says.

This niche Indian grocery store also has a shuttle for students without transportation to help them with their shopping. Badani says he typically buys vegetables like okra and Indian snacks like Maggi noodles, which are harder to find in American grocery stores. While he saves his spice purchases for when he visits India, India Bazaar makes it easier for Badani to fix up traditional, home-cooked meals when he has the time.

ROYAL INDIAN GRILL - 147 Marshall St. Badani also frequents Royal Indian Grill, a restaurant that serves both Southern and Northern Indian cuisine close to main campus. He enjoys ordering food he grew up eating like roti, a whole wheat bread baked in a clay oven, and chana masala, a chickpea dish with onions and tomatoes cooked in a light sauce. “I just usually go there whenever I’m feeling homesick for some nice warm food, and it makes me feel a lot closer to home,” Badani says. The restaurant also offers two all-you-can-eat buffet options seven days a week: $9.95 for lunch and $10.95 for dinner.

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HOPS SPOT - 116 Walton St. Even though Canada is around three hours up north, Canadian journalism graduate student Mitchell Bannon still misses his country’s traditional meals. “I would love if there were ‘Beaver Tails’ in Syracuse,” Bannon says. While Beaver Tails, which are iconic fried dough pastries that look like a beaver’s tail, are confined to the Canadian borders, poutine has made its way down to Syracuse. The place to try some of the cheesiest, saltiest poutine — french fries with cheese curds, brown gravy, and other toppings — is the Hops Spot.

The Hops Spot serves a variety of poutines from the “classique” and chicken tikka masala to Cajun and Belgian-style.

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Outreach Legal aid for Syracuse immigrants expands as New York State prioritizes representation.

Words by Andrea Guzmán Design and infographic by Chantelle Boateng

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n a far corner of Newhouse 2, a suite of offices known as the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse sits behind a locked door. Visitors are instructed to call or knock to get access to the other side, where a heavy load of data analysis takes place.

TRAC, a nonpartisan data analysis source on U.S. federal immigration enforcement, monitors matters ranging from ICE priorities to immigration judges’ records. Inside the research center, Susan Long, an associate professor of managerial statistics at Syracuse University and the co-director and co-founder of TRAC, talks through the intricacies of immigration-related data the office sifts through. She explains how TRAC analyzes data involving administrative and criminal enforcement across the United States — even cases that involve the new policy on the border known as “migrant protection protocols” or MPP. MPP sends people to border towns that the U.S. State Department has placed a travel advisory on because of crimes such as kidnappings.

This year, TRAC has been monitoring the number of people waiting to have their hearing in immigration court under the Remain in Mexico policy, which has increasingly caused more and more people to wait in Mexico since the policy was implemented in January. Their most recent report shows that more than 11,000 were sent to Mexico in July to await their court date.

Already, this policy has presented challenges for attorneys to represent clients. Regular cases have a 29% chance of representation compared to 12% of an MPP case.

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A tool built into the TRAC website allows users to review specific data regarding hearings in El Paso, Brownsville, Laredo, San Ysidro, and Calexico. “The MPP app is actually a subset of that one where we select off the MPP cases and put it in a separate app just for [the] convenience of people, but then you can see the parallel information for the country or zoom in on New York,” Long says. At the mention of the state, Long adds, “There are some special things about New York. Public monies have been enacted to help provide representation.”

In the past couple of years, New York has differentiated itself from other states with its approach to immigrant representation, allocating $10 million in this year’s state budget, something states with high amounts of immigrants have not done. Grace Beckler, an attorney at Hiscock Legal Aid, a group founded to provide free legal assistance to low-income Onondaga County residents, says the funding increased as the climate around federal immigration changed.

“Deportations have been occurring for decades. But the focus from the federal government has shifted where before it really focused on people who were in some way detrimental to the community and had a strong basis for them to face some sort of deportation,” Beckler says. “That’s no longer the case. We see lots of people now who have valid forms of relief available to them that just need help navigating the system to get that relief. And I think [the change] is that everybody is at risk now.”

The additional risk is coming to a head with additional funds, as Central New

fortunate to have a lot of refugees; they work really hard,” Beckler says. “They have a desire to build a home and build a family here.” \\

Representation Rates by City and County

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100 Number of Cases Represented

York gains more ability to meet the need for attorneys. Of the 65 people in Syracuse who were in immigration court through February this year, 40 had representation, according to TRAC data. “This year alone, we went from three immigration attorneys to eight immigration attorneys as a result of this round of funding,” Beckler says. “So we nearly tripled our immigration legal services, which was awesome.”

But in Buffalo, where the caseload is higher, representation rates are slimmer, with 53% of people receiving representation.

Organizations like the Volunteer Lawyers Project in Buffalo and Batavia have offered representation help for immigration cases.

“When we ask people to do pro bono work, their first question is, ‘How much do I get paid?’” says Executive Director Robert Elardo. He says that it has changed over time; now, they recruit lawyers who are interested in working with them and are readily available to help.

However, they’re more pressed for resources, especially asylum-seeking cases in Buffalo. “We are able to take the majority of the cases that we think are meritorious, but there’s a lot of cases that we think are either borderline,” says Emma Buckthal, an attorney at the Volunteer Lawyers Project. “Or I hear them and I say, ‘Wow, this is gonna lose, and it’s gonna lose hard.”

Meanwhile, in Syracuse, Beckler says they mostly see naturalization cases and refugees. “I find that Syracuse is really

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60 40

0 Syracuse Oswego Buffalo CountyOnondaga Fulton 20 40 60 80 100 120

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Buffalo

Syracuse

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Oswego County (Fulton)

Onondaga

Locations

Source: TRAC, 2019 data

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BreakIng down Barriers

Mental health professionals are working to make themselves more available to people of color and provide treatments tailored to their cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Words by Rocío Fortuny Design and illustrations by Stephanie Macrinos

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t was February of 2018 when Brandie Carlos, a web designer and digital strategist from Los Angeles, California, lost one of her best friends to suicide. She was devastated and mourned the following months after, always asking herself what she could’ve done differently to help him and change the outcome of what happened. When she noticed how her friend’s passing affected her mental and emotional state, Carlos knew it was time for her to get professional help. But she realized she couldn’t just turn to anyone. She felt that she’d be more comfortable unpacking her feelings if she met with another Latino woman from a Mexican American family who shared a similar background as her. She searched non-stop for a Latina counselor in the Los Angeles area, but still struggled to find one.

In the United States, only 16% of active psychologists are people of color, according to a 2016 report from the American Psychological Association. However, around 75% of all adults

who experience mental health issues are in a racial or ethnic minority group, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And even though the ratio of psychologists in a racial or ethnic minority group has almost doubled in the last 10 years, there’s still a diversity gap in the counseling profession, making it harder for people to find counselors who can identify with them culturally and understand their specific mental health needs.

When Carlos heard about Therapy For Black Girls, an online directory started in 2014 by licensed psychologist Joy Bradford that helps women of color find local therapists, she was inspired. She says she wanted to give the Latino community the same opportunity of easily finding a counselor they connected with and felt understood by. So in May of 2018, she launched Therapy For Latinx, an organization based in Los Angeles that assists Latinx individuals and families in finding bilingual therapists and

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accessing resources like crisis hotlines and mental health screenings.

Today, their online directory features nearly 400 counselors and therapists in 25 states who identify as Latinx or a person of color or have worked closely with communities of color.

After creating Therapy for Latinx, Carlos started having conversations with people who reached out through the website, the linked Facebook group she created, or in person. Carlos says she realized people did want to share their experiences and sought help. She was amazed by the responses. “The organization creates a sense of community and for many people, it is the first time they are seen or heard,” Carlos says.

Meanwhile, in Onondaga County, New York, mental health issues ranked second as the biggest health problem communities face, according to a 2016 community engagement survey of nearly 3,000 respondents ran by the Onondaga County Health Department. According to the report, there were no responses received on the Spanish-language version of the survey despite numerous outreach efforts, further showing how the state of mental health in multicultural communities is still vaguely known.

To help combat those issues locally, Abraham Masara, a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner who started a private practice in Syracuse three years ago, launched a clinic in 2017 called I-Mobile Health Mission. The clinic is located in the city’s North Side neighborhood, where high populations of immigrants and refugees live. Masara, who is originally from Harlem but has Dominican roots, explains that if mental health professionals distance themselves from minority populations culturally

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I really wanted my community to understand that it’s okay to seek therapy, it’s okay to seek care.

— Sameerah Owens

Social worker, I-Mobile Health Mission

and physically, those communities are less likely to get the treatment they need.

“I really wanted to bring my services to them,” Masara says. “And I provide culturally-tailored mental health treatment.”

Masara says that the culturallytailored care he offers focuses on how mental health problems and solutions to them can look different from culture to culture. For example, certain cultures may see mental illness as completely incurable, while others may not consider Western medicine as a preferred treatment, according to the National Institute of Health. Masara’s attention to his patients’ culture even extends to how he decorates the clinic. Inside, Masara hung up African and Caribbean art to make sure his clients feel welcome.

He also hired a bilingual woman, who speaks English and Spanish, to work as a clinician, which he says will hopefully break the language barrier between their staff and the Latinx population they serve.

As Carlos says, this is one of the main things Latinx individuals look for when searching for a counselor — to be able to express themselves in their mother tongue.

Today, a majority of Masara’s clients are either African American or Latinx, he says. He says that individuals in a racial or ethnic minority group, similar to the clients he serves, are often reluctant to seek professional mental health treatment because it’s considered taboo to discuss in their culture or because they don’t have the money or time for it.

Derek Seward, the chair of

Syracuse University’s Counseling and Human Services department, says that people of color face systemic barriers that keep them from receiving mental health treatment. These barriers range from the lack of health insurance to pay for treatments to the availability of mental health professionals who can offer affordable treatment to their communities. He also says people of color may come across problems if their counselor can’t understand the cultural and racial nuances of their situations. “[People of color] tend to be misdiagnosed and tend to leave treatment early due to a lack of satisfaction with the treatment they receive due to feeling misunderstood

story is not as different as theirs, and even for myself, I’ve been able to relate and say, ‘I get that, that makes sense to me,’” Owens says. “I think overall, people respect that and are more likely to open up to someone who is willing to listen to them and who look like them and comes from where they come.”

When it comes to counseling and therapy, Seward says it’s important for the therapist to build rapport with their clients. He explains that rapport is about establishing a professional relationship with the client where the client feels the counselor is genuinely concerned about their well-being and is ready to help them in any way. The

lives of undocumented immigrants.

Training both white and nonwhite psychologists and counselors to understand issues that minority groups may face, such as microaggressions, oppression, and racism, is vital to supporting culturally-diverse clients, Seward explains. For example, when working with culturally-diverse people, Seward says counselors must see themselves as a cultural being first.

This means they must be aware of the preconceptions they bring to the table and the way they see the world. Then, they’ll have a better understanding of how to welcome their clients and where to draw the lines of comfort for the client

Being culturally competent is not about knowing slang or phrases, but about the provider being transparent and a great listener.

— Abraham Masara

Founder, I-Mobile Health Mission

by their counselor,” Seward says.

Back at I-Mobile Health Mission, Sameerah Owens, a social worker who started interning at the clinic to complete her hours for her master’s degree coursework at Syracuse University, understands the importance of having a counselor that looks like her.

“The population of [African Americans] that I work with doesn’t trust easily or they’re not likely to seek care whether it be counseling, medicine, prescriptions, or anything of that nature,” Owens says.

“They are not going to go get help. It’s just mainly, ‘We’ll figure it out, we’re gonna pray about it,’ and I really wanted my community to understand that it’s okay to seek therapy, it’s okay to seek care.”

Owens says she has seen women of color working in her field, but it’s not as much as she would like. Working at I-Mobile Health Mission lets Owens see her work’s impact on her community because she’s able to connect with her clients on a deeper level, she says. “My

client should feel understood as a person, Seward says.

Seward also says that in order for a counseling program to be accredited, it must train students in social justice and multicultural awareness, advocacy, and skill development. He says it’s been the norm for counseling, but it’s just starting to bleed into other mental health fields like psychology and social work. Carlos says professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association and the National Latinx Psychological Assocation have also taken proactive measures to support mental health professionals of color and improve treatments for people of color. For example, APA started hosting diversity conventions and initiatives to ensure they’re publishing psychologists from different backgrounds. Meanwhile, NLPA launched educational trainings to inform others of issues specific to the Latinx community, such as how death affects the

and themselves.

“It’s really about the full complexity of diversity. And actually, that includes anything from geographic region, nationality, social class, ability or disability, and LGBTQ [issues],” Seward says.

For Masara, cultural competence is key to working with minorities dealing with mental health issues, especially since those issues don’t look the same for everyone. Two different people may have the same diagnosis but their symptoms could manifest differently depending on their background.

“Being culturally competent is not about knowing slang or phrases, but about the provider being transparent and a great listener,” Masara says. “The therapist should say, ‘Wow, I’ll be honest with you, I couldn’t even imagine walking in your shoes.’” \\

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Last July in Syracuse, Lights for Liberty, an immigrant rights activist group, protested the detention of asylum-seekers.

(Un)Wanted Justino Vixtha began the legal immigration process.

Then, he was arrested.

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ay 21, 2019 began like any other day for the Vixtha family.

Husband and wife Justino and Melissa rose early. Justino got ready for work while Melissa woke their three daughters, Korrina, Rubi, and Priscilla, for school. Justino left the family’s home on the northside of Syracuse at about 6:30 a.m. to pick up his nephew and a co-worker. As he left, he saw a gray truck with two men inside parked at the corner. He had seen the truck parked there before, but this time, when he drove away, the truck followed.

The truck continued to follow as Justino drove to where his nephew and co-worker were. It also followed as he drove to work. He lost sight of the truck when he merged onto Interstate-81, but a white van soon fell into place behind him.

The van followed as he took the exit onto the Onondaga Nation reservation. After Justino passed Firekeepers Restaurant, the van turned on flashing blue and red lights and pulled him over. Other unmarked vehicles stopped on the side of the freeway, including the gray truck.

Men exited the vehicles and approached Justino’s car. They asked his name. He gave it. The men said they were ICE officers, and they

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Words by Stephanie Macrinos Top photo by Stephanie Macrinos Design by Stephanie Macrinos

claimed to have a warrant for his arrest along with a deportation order from 1999. Both Justino and his co-worker were arrested. His nephew was left in the car, and he was not permitted to make or take any phone calls until the officers left.

That is the account Melissa gave of the day of her husband’s arrest.

Justino is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who entered the United States without legal permission in the late 1990s. Since then, he married, became a father, and received legal employment documentation and a driver’s license.

When he started the legal immigration process, Justino’s attorney informed him of his deportation order. Beginning the immigration process red-flagged the order.

The Vixtha family received a Notice to Alien of File Custody Review soon after Justino’s arrest. It reported that Justino’s custody status would be reviewed on or around August 10, nearly 12 weeks after his arrest.

This long stretch of time between an arrest and a preliminary hearing is not outside of the norm.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and analysis organization at Syracuse University, reports that

some immigration courts are so backlogged that they are scheduling out preliminary hearings until 2022. Last month, the backlog grew to 1,023,767 active cases assigned to 442 judges.

This year, TRAC also found that immigrant detention has increased by 22% since September 2016. An ICE official reported in May that over 52,000 people were in their custody.

Justino falls among the 58% of detainees with no criminal convictions. As of June, less than 3% of the thousands of deportation orders filed by the Department of Homeland Security cited a criminal history.

The first 24 hours after Justino’s arrest were filled with uncertainty. Justino was not permitted to call home, and immigration officials could not or would not tell Melissa his whereabouts. Four hours after the arrest, Justino was transferred to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York.

Life stopped that morning in May for Melissa and her three daughters. Her daughters had not yet left for school. She told them, “You’re not going to school today. Dad’s gone.”

Meanwhile, she called off her shift at Colonial Laundromat. Instead, Melissa went to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in

I was scared because we thought he might be deported, and we would never see him again.

— Rubi Vixtha

downtown Syracuse as soon as it opened and began the long process of bringing her husband home. “It’s been a living hell ever since,” she says, choking back tears.

Melissa says no one told her where her husband was detained until the next morning. When she found out, she drove straight there. “It was horrible because he was behind glass, and I had to talk to him on a telephone like he’s a criminal,” Melissa says. “He looked rough. He was scared and upset.

He had bags under his eyes, black circles because he hadn’t slept that night.”

Losing a husband and a father has put an emotional and financial strain on the family. Justino’s job as a landscaper was the primary source of income. Without him, Melissa is struggling to pay the bills. She can’t visit him as much as she would like.

Sometimes she can’t afford the tolls and gasoline — the detention facility is 112 miles away from their home.

The legal fees are also a burden. Soon after Justino’s arrest, Melissa had to pay $2,000 for their attorney to file a motion for bond and custody redetermination. Melissa applied for public assistance, but she was denied based on her gross income.

“I’m getting worried because school is coming, and I can’t afford school supplies. I can’t afford school clothes for all of them,” she says back in July.

She can’t take her daughters to see a movie or to the zoo, she says. A friend set up a GoFundMe page to gather donations, but the family is struggling to get by.

Meanwhile, Justino’s employer Carol Watson, owner of Carol Watson Greenhouse & Landscaping in Lafayette, New York, says her business is struggling without him. He is her strongest and most reliable worker, and he has an admirable work ethic, she says.

But the financial strain isn’t the only thing the Vixtha family is dealing with. Korrina, Rubi, and Priscilla have taken their father’s arrest particularly hard. “I was scared because

we thought he might be deported, and we would never see him again,” says Rubi when she was told that her father was arrested. Meanwhile, Korrina avoids being at home. The house feels strange without her father. Not long after her father was arrested, she started to see a therapist.

Rubi, however, speaks to no one about her father’s detainment. Not her friends. Not her classmates. “They wouldn’t understand,” she says. “Rubi doesn’t like the attention. She doesn’t want them feeling sorry for her,” Melissa says. The youngest, 10-year-old Priscilla, spends much of her time with friends, outside of the home.

Meanwhile, Melissa struggles to find the energy to do anything. When she finishes a shift at work, all she wants to do is sleep. Since the arrest, the family has also missed out on many celebrations: Justino’s birthday, Father’s Day, and Korrina and Rubi’s middle school graduation. Rubi did not attend, refusing to go without her father.

Seeing the children struggle is what hurts the most, Melissa says.

“I just want him back home so we can have our life back. I want my kids to have their lives back,” she says.

The girls miss going to the park with their dad. They miss going to church on Sunday mornings, and they miss

Justino Vixtha with his youngest daughter, Priscilla. Photo courtesy of Melissa Vixtha.

exploring the local farmer’s markets.

And they couldn’t do their annual family trip to the Water Safari Resort in Old Forge.

The state of New York and Syracuse in particular is home to a large immigrant and refugee community. It is also a hotbed for activism. Recent immigration legislation and a rise in anti-immigrant ideology sparked outrage among local activists. On July 12, an immigrant rights activist group called Lights for Liberty hosted over 800 vigils across the world to protest the detention of asylum-seekers.

One of these protests was in Syracuse. Sixteen local organizations planned the demonstration, which took place outside of the James M. Hanley Federal Building downtown.

The protest began with a speech from Yusuf Abdul-Qadir, the director of the Central New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We have an important task in making sure that history knows, when this moment came, that we said, ‘We will not stand for it,’” he says.

Speakers from other local advocacy groups made a call to action, encouraging attendees to call their congressional representatives and demand the closure of the detention facilities. All speeches were translated into Spanish.

After sundown, they lit hundreds of candles and raised them toward the stage as the Syracuse Community Choir sang “Somos El Barco,” or “We Are the Sea,” by Peter, Paul, and Mary. They ended the vigil by reading the names of detainees who died in custody. Hundreds attended, including Melissa and her daughters.

At the hearing in August, the court declined to take jurisdiction of Justino’s case. He remains in federal custody. The Vixthas are holding on to hope that Justino will be released. Their attorney, José Perez, believes Justino’s chances of being released on bail are good.

The family is not prepared, however, should he be deported to Mexico. “I know there’s that chance.

God forbid, if it does happen, I will leave [with him],” Melissa says. Korrina and Rubi have passports, but Priscilla does not. Melissa is considering getting her one now. Just in case. \\

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OUT OF THE SHADOWS Jasmine Emery shares her coming out story as a bisexual woman who grew up in a Southern Baptist, African American household.

Words by Yzzy Liwanag Photos courtesy of Jasmine Emery Design and illustrations by Micah Castelo

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newly rolled blunt lies in between her fingers. The smell of marijuana infiltrates the dark room and bits of the shake scatter on her bed. The lights are off but the pink fairy strings hanging above her bed make the room alive. Living with family problems and mental health concerns, Jasmine Emery, a calling agent for Dial American in El Paso, Texas, is snuggled up in a warm blanket, hiding between her thoughts and a well-kept secret.

In pop culture or social media, the personal moment of coming out can be presented as a fairytale ending. Family and friends gather and accept you, the fear of hiding your self-identity is shattered, and you gain a greater sense of openness about your LGBTQ+ identity.

These are the stories we want, but sometimes, these are the stories we can’t have. Many people in the LGBTQ+ community continue to experience discrimination, prejudice, harassment, and family rejection, which can make it difficult for them to share their sexual orientation or gender identity with others.

According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, around six in 10 adults identifying as LGBT have told one or both of their parents about their sexual orientation or gender identity. Cultural and religious ties to a community can also impact

people’s decision to come out to their family, out of fear that they’ll be looked at with contempt by family members who aren’t accepting of their sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s the case with Emery, who has struggled to tell her family that she identifies as bisexual.

Emery has come out to her mother, but not the rest of her family. In the fall of 2018, Emery started dating a girl who lived an hour away from her when she was a freshman at Louisiana State University. Their relationship started with a Tinder match, and it was Emery’s first time ever being with a girl. She says it was new, bold, and frightening to be matched for the first time with the same sex. And as the relationship blossomed, she decided to tell her mother about it.

“I called my mom and I said, ‘I have something to tell you. I went on a date.’ She asked me who he was and I said, ‘About that…,’” Emery says.

Emery says her mother might’ve known she was romantically attracted to the same sex beforehand because she’s been open-minded ever since childhood and never limited herself to follow a single path. “It’s okay that you like girls, as long as you’re happy and as long as they’re not doing anything to you,” Emery says as she recalls her mother’s reaction.

“But don’t tell anyone else.”

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I just want to be able to wake up every day and have to not worry about upsetting anyone.

— Jasmine Emery

The rest of Emery’s family lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where the prominent religion is Southern Baptist, she says. Being raised in a Southern Baptist, African American household, Emery says her family pushes their religion on her as a way of thinking. Anything that doesn’t follow the Bible — including identifying with a sexual orientation outside of heterosexuality — is immediately outcasted.

But Emery’s coming out story goes further than the Bible. She spent the majority of her life moving across the country as part of a military family. From Louisiana to Texas to New York, she finds herself never staying in the same place. Moving every three to five years and leaving friends behind detached Emery from her family, to the point that outing herself didn’t seem logical.

“I’m a military kid, and I see my family maybe once every [few] years. I don’t want to have that push me further away from what could have happened with them anyways. They barely know me, I barely know them.” Emery says.

As she sits comfortably on her bed with a

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gold face mask on and shares her story, Emery is unphased by the amounts of discrimination she receives as a black woman and a bisexual person. Rather than worrying about what she can’t control, she cares more about the bits of shake scattered on her bed.

Trying to get every piece of the ground bud into her blunt, Emery says she’s aware that her friends are going through the same process of coming out, but are also facing another layer of challenges — their mental health issues. “[The] majority of my friends have depression and anxiety. I know one of [them] has schizophrenia,” Emery says.

LGBTQ+ individuals with mental health conditions may also find themselves facing a double stigma, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The mental health organization points to a 2015 study from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health that found that adults who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual are more than twice as likely to experience mental health issues compared to adults who identify as heterosexual.

“I suffer from really bad anxiety. I get panic

attacks where I can’t breathe,” Emery says. “I’ve also been diagnosed with depression, and I’m working on seeing a therapist. My mom thinks I have ADHD, and I can see that.”

Emery feels her mental health problems stem from her distant family. Their biblical beliefs led her to think they would discriminate against her if she came out, Emery says. “They look at it like its a sin and you’re going to go to hell. There’s a lot of homophobia,” Emery says of the Southern Baptist faith. They’ll be judgemental towards anything they’re not used to.

They’re closed-minded and will drag me through the mud.”

Facing rejection from family members after coming out can lead to other events like being forced to leave home. LGBTQ+ young adults have a 120% higher risk of reporting homelessness compared to youth who identified as heterosexual and cisgender,

according to the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization supporting LGBTQ+ Americans.

There are also countless non-profit organizations across the country that shelter or provide resources for LGBTQ+ individuals after they’ve come out and have been harassed or rejected by family members.

For instance, the Q Center in Syracuse, New York is a case management service available for LGBTQ+ youth who need assistance with mental health services, housing, and other issues.

As she inhales the remnants of the blunt, Emery sits with her back on her bed’s headboard while her face soaks up the gold face mask.

“I just want to be able to wake up every day and have to not worry about upsetting anyone,” Emery says.

“My ideal life is to be happy and to not worry. But I know that’s not realistic. In a perfect world, that would be my peace.” \\

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How cultural organizations at Syracuse University are helping students find a sense of belonging in America.

Words by Rocío Fortuny Photos by Jessica Ruiz Design by Chantelle Boateng

L

Andrea Moreno shows off her necklace, which reminds her of home. It reads “el mar y el sol,” which translates to “the ocean and the sun” in English.

eaving home for school often means experiencing the new, the different, and the unknown. But it also means not being able to go home for months in a row or maybe even years. And for those moving to Syracuse, it also means getting a taste of your first real winter, the one where snow reaches up to your knees and classes go on no matter how frosty it gets outside.

That’s why finding a group in college is essential, especially for students who’ve entered a new environment with a different culture, language, or tradition than they’re accustomed to. It’s a way for them to find community and feel a sense of belonging. And on Syracuse University’s campus, student organizations provide these students just that — a home away from home. SU has over 300 student organizations on campus — from a quidditch club to multiple acapella groups. Within those 300, there are 30 groups focused on culture and international relations, representing countries, continents, and ethnicities from all over the world.

In charge of one of these organizations is Andrea Moreno, a sophomore finance major. This year, she’s serving as the president of the Puerto Rican Student’s Association, which was started by Karina Méndez and three of her closest Puerto Rican friends just a year ago. “To have this organization on campus was what helped me the most to not only adapt to the culture shock [I experienced] the first winter here, but also [to have] a little bit of warmth in the tundra that Syracuse is,” Moreno says.

In an interview done in her mother tongue Spanish, Moreno talks about how the organization serves its members.

“For Thanksgiving, we made a potluck together to get to know

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each other, and for Christmas, we made a parranda, which is very traditional of Puerto Rico, where we make lots of noises and we sing traditional songs,” Moreno says. “[We go] house by house visiting each other and at each stop, there’s traditional food or drinks that each person brings.”

But for the association, keeping Puerto Rican traditions alive doesn’t just mean hosting parties and having potlucks. This group, which has around 45 regular members and others who casually take part in their events, works to keep all their members informed about the political and social issues on the Caribbean island. For example, the organization hosted an event last semester featuring Rosa Alicia Clemente, a Black Puerto Rican grassroots organizer, hip-hop activist, and journalist. Clemente spoke about what it means to be Afro-Latinx. Moreno says they hosted the event because Puerto Rico is very diverse, and understanding those racial nuances is important given that it’s not only part of their DNA, but also their culture.

The organization is also working towards breaching the gap between Puerto Ricans who grew up on the island and those who were raised in the continental United States

by Puerto Rican parents, Moreno says. “One of the biggest missions of the organization is to create a home away from home environment not only for those Puerto Ricans that came from the island, but also to give the chance to those who were born [in the continent] or grew up here to learn more about their culture,” she explains.

Those efforts resonate with the organization’s members. Claudia Varona, a sophomore international relations major, recently joined PRSA. She says one of her favorite things

about the organization is the work they do to mix both Puerto Rican groups — those from the island and those from the continent — because it helps everyone get to know each other better.

Varona explains in Spanish that she joined the organization because she was searching for genuine connections with people who she has in common with. Soon, she realized just how small the world was. “With Andrea [Moreno], for example, in Puerto Rico, I didn’t know her that well,” Varona says. “But we both competed in Modelos Naciones Unidas, so even though we didn’t know each other, we were in the same circle.”

Also, the organization feels familiar and special to Varona because of its use of “Puerto Rican-isms.” “This is a space where I can speak my Spanish and use my expressions, and people will understand me,” Varona says. “It also keeps the culture alive; I remember the general body meeting that we had at the beginning of the semester and [the E-Board] brought tostones, and it’s such a simple thing but it made me so happy. I can’t get tostones like that here.”

PRSA is also active in the local community, giving its members a chance to share their culture with others. The organization works with La Casita Cultural Center, a universitysupported program focused on cultural preservation and creating bridges between Latinx communities in the area. At La Casita, PRSA members assist with arts and educational programs for local youth. For example, they teach young kids, ages 6 and up, how to play bomba and plena — a rhythmic kind of music driven by percussion instruments which people dance to — and hold reading classes in Spanish and English.

And at least once a month, the group comes together to enjoy foods from back home, like the tostones Varona talks about, which are sliced green plantains, fried to a crisp. They also play traditional games with dominos as they do back on the island. This is how we are able to experience the sabor of our people, Moreno says. “Without PRSA, I don’t know what would’ve been of me in this place,” she says.

While PRSA focuses on representing and keeping traditions from one specific region alive, SU’s African Student Union has events and celebrations that represent the whole African continent. Today, the organization has over 100 members, and they’re always trying to recruit new ones, says Oluwafolabomi “Bomi” Olujimi, a senior neuroscience and communication and rhetorical studies double major from Nigeria who serves as the organization’s Vice President of Internal Affairs. “We Africans have this thing where we can see who is African,” Olujimi says. “So we are just like, ‘Hey, where are you from? Join our organization!’”

In terms of keeping traditions going, Olujimi explains they host potlucks or jollaf wars once in a while where “different countries from West Africa compete to see who has the best rice.” She says they also try to give regions outside of West Africa, which is the most populated portion of the continent, equal attention. “We take it upon ourselves to involve basically everyone in the conversation,” Olujimi says. “Every time something happens — Claudia Varona in Madagascar, the North, or the South, we post about it and we reach out to everyone.” They also come together to enjoy activities like teaching headwrap and turban tutorials and playing African Jeopardy.

But their organization doesn’t just prioritize educating others about the diversity of African culture. It’s also important for them to share current events in numerous African countries with other students. For example, Olujimi says they regularly post news about Africa on their social media pages to keep their members and the rest of the community updated on various regions — from a fire outbreak due to a tank exploding in Onitsha, a city in Nigeria’s Anambra State to Zimbabwe’s former president, Robert Mugabe, passing away.

Olujimi also points out that Africans who grew up in the United States may have more liberal views compared to those who didn’t when it comes to issues like mental health and African representation in the media. With those differing views, Olujimi says they hold meetings that encourage debate and highlight clashing perspectives.

Through these types of organizations, students meet new people and learn about different places with other students who they may or may not share a common culture with. Both small joys. like enjoying your home country’s cuisine, and more serious aspects, like talking about important issues back at home, bring people who would otherwise be strangers to each other. For many, these organizations create a safe environment that lets students be who they are, feel understood, and find acceptance. \\

This is a space where I can speak my Spanish and use my expressions, and people will understand me.

Moreno, a sophmore finance major at SU, credits the Puerto Rican Student Association for helping her adapt to the culture shock.

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S

yracuse has a long unique history — from the prosperous salt industry to the first time the New York State Fair was held here — that newcomers may not be aware of. And as the years darted by, the city’s downtown area also went through immense change. In reflection of that, here are five establishments that were once so integral to its identity.

THEN

and

(Left) The Wieting Opera House in 1925.

(Right) The same location in 2019.

Words by Hannah Lees and Mary Keith Left photo courtesy of Onondaga Historical Association Right photo by Hannah Lees Design and maps by Micah Castelo

W. GE

NE

ST.

D. W.

ERIE BLV

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W. WILLOW ST.

N. CLINTON ST.

SEE

Clinton Square

NOW 01

JIFFFY KING SUBS

Located on the corner of North Clinton and West Genesee streets, Jiffy King was a local sandwich shop known for having the best subs in the area. It was inside the Buckley Building downtown, which the government took back in 1995 because of back taxes and was soon demolished after. The vacant space was turned into a public park in memory of Robert R. Haggart, a successful columnist for the Post-Standard newspaper. However, the memorial park is sinking, most likely as a result of Jiffy King being torn down and re-filled incorrectly.

Clinton Square Hanover Square S. SALINA ST.

S. CLINTON ST.

W. FAYETTE ST.

ERIE BLVD. E.

02

WIETING OPERA HOUSE

In the 19th century, the Wieting Opera House, which is where the Atrium building is today, was a premier performing arts venue. It’s had an interesting history — it burned down three times and was rebuilt each time until it was finally demolished in 1930. Before it opened as an opera house, it stood as a lecture hall in a different location and hosted well-known figures including Frederick Douglass, who delivered a speech advocating for the emancipation of enslaved people, and Mark Twain, who gave a lecture on an American humorist. Gustav Mahler, a famous composer and the New York Philharmonic orchestra conductor, performed one of his last concerts here in 1910.

Clinton Square

City Hall

Hanover Square

E. WASHINGTON ST.

05

04

E.W. EDWARDS & SON

This department store opened in 1889 on South Salina Street. It had seven floors and expanded to have a separate building for toys on South Warren Street. Inside, kids could ride on a monorail that went all the way around the building, and there was a tea room on the second floor.

As part of an urban renewal project in 1972, the store moved to Clinton Street where the Atrium building is now. The store eventually filed for bankruptcy and was demolished in 1973.

N. SALINA ST.

In 1982, the Yates Hotel opened on Montgomery and East Washington streets. It was built by architect Archimedes Russell in the Renaissance Revival style and boasted six stories, an elegant interior, and new appliances for its time such as the ice machine. Because of an urban renewal project that brought new plazas and high-rise office buildings, the hotel was torn down in 1971. Its location is now used as a parking lot.

HANOVER SQUARE

Underground “comfort stations” or restrooms, complete with heating and lighting, were installed in Hanover Square in 1915. There were separate entrances for men and women, which led down a flight of stairs to the restrooms. The city couldn’t afford to keep the restrooms in operation so they were ultimately demolished in the 1960s.

The spot where the entrances were located is currently a park with a fountain and sitting area.

S. SALINA ST.

MONTGOMERY ST.

S. WARREN ST.

03

YATES HOTEL

W. FAYETTE ST.

Clinton Square

W. FAYETTE ST.

JAMES ST. ERIE BLVD. E.

Hanover Square

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Words by Shrishti Mathew Photo courtesy of Shrishti Mathew Design and illustrations by Micah Castelo

I

was convinced that living in America was going to be a breeze. But nobody prepared me for being a minority in a classroom.

Being bi-religious, I was always a minority in India. A society smeared by its history of segregation and stratification, people found it hard to understand how I could recite the Lord’s Prayer and Vedic chants in the same breath. But I was lucky and privileged enough to go to a school and move in circles where it defined but didn’t exclude me. I wasn’t your conventional Indian student being packed off for a Master of Science or doctorate with the expectations of the entire family heaped on my shoulders. Nor was I your typical Indian girl being sent to her expatriate husband.

I was a well-adjusted, easygoing person who would fit into American society quite easily. I had read enough books and magazines, watched enough TV shows and movies, and spent enough time on social media to think I would fit right in.

Or so I thought.

I believed America is an easier country to live in compared to where I was before. I moved into a fully-furnished apartment, where my landlord would not care about my religion or ethnicity. I just had to pay my rent on time. My professors were willing to look at re-written assignments, and my grades were private and remained

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between my professors and I. They weren’t put up on a public notice board for all and sundry to see (and judge).

The classroom, however, was an entirely different ballgame. It was where I had my first culture shock. There were refreshing changes like being allowed to use the restroom as I wished without having to spend an hour in agony. I’m also allowed to eat freely as opposed to surreptitiously sneaking bits of food into my mouth behind a book. But there were also changes that took time and, three months later, are still settling in.

Being a minority in America meant that very often, I sat at a table where I looked and sounded different from my peers. There were small hiccups like how I said tom-ah-toes and not tom-ay-toes and larger ones like having to explain everything I said and feeling the need to prove that my education (though from another country) was every bit as valid as theirs. Group critiques were especially confusing because you didn’t know whether the criticism was constructive or given because someone thought you weren’t as good as them and didn’t deserve to be here.

“Do you even know what a food magazine is like?” a classmate once asked me, making me doubt my undergraduate degree, my first master’s degree, and my previous editorial roles in various publications.

It was only later in the day, after talking to another peer, did I understand that it was simply because of the way I looked and not a valid critique of my education and abilities.

I learned how to handle such situations. To inform the uninformed and ignore the badly intentioned. But what I didn’t think to handle was homesickness.

Once the thrill and exhilaration of moving across the world had settled, the realization of what I left behind hit. I watched from afar as festivals I would celebrate at home were continuing without me. I sat in class as friends and family dressed in new clothes and danced to celebrate the ceremonial homecoming of the Hindu goddess Durga. I ran out of class to watch my grandmother perform rituals on FaceTime. Ordinarily, I would be next to her, ringing the bell, passing her flowers, fruit, and incense.

I learned to celebrate what I could, my way. I went shopping, not for sarees and jewelry, but sweaters and boots. I passed around packs of Twix, as opposed to the hampers of sweetmeats we’d give and receive back home. One had to improvise. Toasted tortillas for rotis. Sour cream for homemade yogurt. Halloween for Diwali and Dussehra.

It is still hard to think that I won’t be home for more than a year.

That it will be a while before I can pet my cat, hug my parents, or eat a meal cooked by my grandmother. There are clothes that I don’t wear or wash because they still smell like home. It’s hard, but we’re organisms.

Made to adapt. \\

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T O R

H T

H

E

LE

N

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H

G U Since 2012, Eastwood resident David Haas has been sharing his love and pride for Syracuse with an Instagram account featuring the city’s people and history.

That’s when I started to question where I should be, where can I make an impact, and how do I find my voice again.

— David Haas Founder, @SyracuseHistory

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Words by Micah Castelo Photos by Micah Castelo Design by Katie Hageman

@syracusehistory

I

t’s a Saturday afternoon in late October, and Syracuse local David Haas is driving me around the city’s neighborhoods — from the Westside to Eastwood, where he was born and raised — to show me some of his favorite buildings in the city.

As we pass through homes of unique architectural styles and other structures from various points in history, Haas gives me their backstories, comments on the exceptional detail in their designs, or tells me what they’re being used for these days.

Haas isn’t a tour guide. He’s just someone who has a lot of love and pride for the city of Syracuse, its people, and its history and is eager to share that with others. Before our drive, he shows me a large 19th-century brick red and blue house with multicolored tiles on its roof and an enormous ornamented window on its façade, which was built by Syracuse lumberman, William Gillette, for his family in 1877. Today, it sits next to Salt City Coffee on West Onondaga Street, which Haas tells me is where many wealthy families lived back then. But it’s been vacant for decades and is now falling apart; the build-

ing’s backside has been left open to rain and snow for years.

Yet Haas says he still considers it the most beautiful house in the city.

“There’s a ton of potential here, and it’s just been sitting and waiting,” Haas says. “I even put a sign up on this house a few years ago. I put it on the steps, and [it] lit up at night,” he says. “It just said, ‘Save Me,’ and so anybody who came by after dark [would see] there was a big sign up there.”

He reaches inside his jean jacket for his iPhone and snaps several photos of the buildings exterior.

Haas started taking photos of different places, signs, and oddities in Syracuse back in 2012, the year he got his first iPhone and downloaded Instagram. Out of his own curiosity and desire to explore his urban environment, he took photos of the city and provided little tidbits that retold his subjects’ stories — from the smallest house in the city located on Danforth Street and owned by local resident John Weda, who had four televisions inside his 12-by-16 home, to the tombstone of Winston Churchill’s great-grandparents who once lived on James Street.

Initially, Haas posted the photos and stories on his personal Instagram account. But after his friends told him how they enjoyed seeing his posts on their feed, he decided to launch a separate page called “Syracuse History” where he details and showcases the city’s past and people through buildings, signs, art, and even doorknobs. Ever since he created the account on July 22, 2013, the page has garnered almost 20,000 followers and has been mentioned in numerous outlets, including the Syracuse Post-Standard, Syracuse New Times, and CNY Central, for various stories. His account has even received

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Haas checking out the photos he took of the 19th-century brick red and blue house on West Onondaga Street.

local awards such as “Best Blog” and “Best Use of Social Media by an Individual” from the Syracuse Press Club.

But Haas, who also works full time as the executive director of Sarah’s Guest House, a non-profit lodging facility for patients and families of patients receiving medical care in Central New York, isn’t just running the page during his free time to show tourists and locals interesting or nostalgic aspects of the city. Through Syracuse History, Haas is shining a light on local stories and voices that have been lost through time while inspiring the community to care about the city’s problems and fight for change.

As we made our way to the other side of the city, Haas points out the bridge over West Onondaga Street. It was being repainted as an effort to rebrand the area, which Haas says is going through a revival as new community-minded businesses like the future Salt City Market food hall are popping up. “You still hear people stupidly say things like, ‘I don’t go downtown, I’ll get shot.’ It really does not happen, but some individuals just can’t change their perspectives on something,” he says.

“But that’s what the Instagram account is trying to do — change conversations and change perspectives.”

\\\

Haas is a resident of Eastwood, which is where he’s lived for most of his life. He left in 2005 to study health and

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wellness management at SUNY Oswego and in 2009 to get his graduate degree at SUNY Cortland in hopes of pursuing a career in kinesiology.

But his path took a turn when he was in graduate school. Haas, who has a fluency disorder, says that his stuttering quickly plummeted at that point. He’d been in and out of speech therapy starting from when he was four up until the end of high school when he thought he was “cured” of his stuttering.

But with the heavy workload and additional stressors that came with graduate school, he says he lost control of his stuttering again. “I was in a dark place in my life, and I didn’t know what I would do in terms of if I’d get a job where I’d have to speak and what that would be like,” Haas says. “That’s when I started to question where I should be, where can I make an impact, and how do I find my voice again.”

When he returned to Syracuse, Haas threw himself into non-profit work with a desire to make an impact. It felt like helping people was just in his bones, he says. He had several family members who ended up working a helping profession, including his late mother, who was a social worker for Onondaga County, and his two sisters, one a nurse practitioner and the other a speech pathologist. Haas followed in their footsteps when he joined Launch CNY, a non-profit organization that supports individuals with intellectual disabilities, as a commu-

nity services manager in 2011.

A year later, Haas discovered another way to make an impact outside of his work — inspiring community engagement through the Syracuse History Instagram account. “There’s a lot of people who can talk negatively about the city, certain sections, [and] certain streets,” Haas says. “I wanted to give voice to the positive stories that are never given light.”

Take Private Thomas F. Butler’s story, for example.

Butler, a Syracuse resident who lived on Seymour Street on the city’s southwest side, joined the 13th Cavalry Regiment as the Mexican Revolution was happening. Along with 17 other Americans, Butler was killed at 28 years old in 1916 when a group of rebels, led by Francisco “Pancho” Villa, attacked the U.S. border town of Columbus, New Mexico where he was stationed, Haas says. Butler’s body was brought back to Syracuse, and he was honored the following day with an impressive funeral service, according to a Syracuse Herald paper that Haas unearthed.

Yet Butler was never given a tombstone or marker after he was buried. People in Syracuse forgot about him, unlike in Columbus where his name is read annually at Pancho Villa State Park’s commemoration ceremony of the Battle of Columbus. In an effort to remember Butler and grant him the honor he deserved, Haas started a community fundraiser last January to get him a proper marker. Catholic Cemeteries Syracuse helped Haas pinpoint Butler’s burial location at St. Agnes Cemetery, and Karl Lutz Monument Company, a local memorial business, gave him a discounted price of $400 to make the marker.

Meanwhile, Eileen Hollis, the director of Hollis Funeral Home on West Genesee Street, assisted with the funeral service held last June. With the help of her family, they were able to get a priest from Butler’s original parish and members of the Mattydale American Legion Post to offer a gun salute at the memorial. Hollis likens the experience to the French movie Amélie where the main character goes around Paris and does good deeds for people. “I just love how he’s bringing the community together, and it’s very low-key,” she says.

Hollis has been following the Syracuse History Instagram page for years; she was hooked after seeing Haas’s posts on Oakland Cemetery’s history, especially his features on its monuments like the lion statue that Thomas Haggerty, a Syracuse University graduate, sculpted as a memorial for his brother Michael, who died in a car crash in 1974. Hollis says she’s amazed by Haas’s attention to detail when he crafts his posts. “You forget that these people existed at one point,” Hollis says about the stories Haas shares on his Instagram account. “I hope that someone would be there to shine a light on the amajzing people in our community 120 years later.”

The Butler project wasn’t the first time Haas worked with Hollis. Around four years ago, he asked her if he could do a

write-up on her family’s funeral home, which is where she also grew up. She says he visited the Victorian home, which was built in 1892, and helped them gather its history. “It made me just that more excited for the business and for our own house,” she says. She adds that it sparked her interest in history; she even visited Oakwood Cemetery to find the plot for the architect who designed the house.

Jesse Mosier, a nurse from the Valley neighborhood of Syracuse, also had a chance to give Haas a tour of his family’s house. He says he’s been a huge fan of the Syracuse History account for a long time. “I’m an old house lover too, so I share that with him,” he says. His wife Brandy messaged Haas on Instagram and told him a bit about the history of their 110-year-old house on Valley Drive, which is where they’ve lived in the last 10 years. Mosier says Haas was only able to stop by for an hour and 20 minutes because of his busy schedule, but he snapped a lot of photos and asked them questions about the history of their home and the artifacts and documents they had. “He was like a kid in a candy store,” Mosier says.

Haas ended up featuring their house on Instagram, and Mosier says the post led them to connect with a woman whose great aunts lived there. They were the last of

In January 2019, Haas started a community fundraiser to get Private Thomas F. Butler a proper marker. Several members of the community assisted with his funeral last summer.

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the Harrison family — the family who built the home back in 1914 — to occupy it. “All of these memories of the people who lived here before us started bubbling up from her family,” Mosier says. “It’s crazy to think that we have some items with those ladies’ names on them.”

\\\

The Syracuse History Instagram posts take a lot of time and effort to put together, Haas explains. He likens it to solving a jigsaw puzzle because one piece of information about his subject isn’t going to tell him what the whole story is, he says.

To find the history behind the people, places, and things that he captures on camera and shares online, Haas relies on numerous resources including old census records, city directories, newspaper clippings, and obituaries. He also spends time at the Onondaga Historical Association office whenever it’s open to find archival documents. It gets quite tedious to sift through them, especially when information changes over time, such as street names and addresses, but Haas says he’s developed a process over the years.

When he first started the account, Haas carried a

Haas snaps a photo of the bridge over West Onondaga Street, which was being repainted. He used the photo to talk about the Western corridor’s revival. business card on him at all times in case people were suspicious of him taking pictures of their houses or their street. And initially, Haas’s posts were just a few lines about the photo he took, but then he started telling long-form stories that chronicled the history of the people behind the photos. He makes sure his posts are condensed and clear so his followers can easily read it. He also tries to follow a format — he starts each post with a picture, then shares the address, and goes on to tell the story. “With the stories I tell, it’s like yes, there’s a backstory to it, but know where it is on the street. It’s an approachable history, like get out, go look at it, it’s right there,” he says. “You drive by it, you see it, and you’re a part of it. It’s not just history in a textbook kind of thing.”

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Haas says he also keeps track of when he’s going to post his pictures. He tries to set aside time on the weekends so he can interact with commenters and answer their questions right away. And since he’s passionate about sharing the city’s history and wonder with others, Haas says he doesn’t mind the work. “If you really enjoy something, you make time for it, no matter what,” he says. “And I kind of always make time for the city and its stories because that’s where my interests lie.” He uses his free time after work, during the weekends, and even

I just love how he’s bringing the community together, and it’s very low-key.

— Eileen Hollis Director, Hollis Funeral Home on his lunch break to do his research. And he says that he’s grateful for having a supportive community that opens their doors to him, allowing him to be creative and do what he does.

But telling those stories isn’t always so easy, especially when there’s backlash. When he posted a photo of the bridge over West Onondaga Street and used the hashtag #westsidebestside, somebody made a snarky comment about how the Western corridor’s recent revival doesn’t exist and that it’s still not a good part of town. In response, Haas was quick to give him the facts and pointed to the growth of businesses in the last few years — from Salt City Coffee to the Spa at 500, which are both housed inside 19th-century style homes. Yet the barrage of negative comments continued, so Haas turned off the comments section, which was the first time he ever did that.

“If anybody’s educated enough, and you spend enough time in this area, you’d see and understand that things are changing for the better all around,” Haas says. Meanwhile, Mosier says the Syracuse community has been beaten down for quite a long time economically, but Haas has tapped into a sense of identity and helped create it with the Instagram account. He says he’s impressed with the amount of energy and enthusiasm Haas brings to the table. “It’s infectious too,” Mosier says. “I definitely think he makes other people see things a little differently, maybe have a little more hope for the city and hope that we can do something good in the future together.”

Haas’s storytelling also extends beyond his Instagram account; he also freelances for various local publications such as The Stand and The Catholic Sun. Last March, he even won an award for a story he wrote in the Syracuse New Times about how Interstate-81 displaced hundreds of the city’s residents, such as those living in 15th Ward, known in the 1950s as the slums where many refugees and African Americans resided after World War II. When Haas tells stories — whether it be

posted on his Instagram account or published in a newspaper — there’s always the bigger picture of him advocating for a specific change or building awareness about an issue. “A call to action is important to me,” he says. And he walks the talk; over the years, Haas has worked on several projects to improve the city, including putting up historic signs at parks, getting bike racks, and helping save historic buildings from demolition.

With the help of a non-profit organization called Adapt CNY, Haas is also trying to get a book-shaped bench installed at a park by the house where Helen Durney, the artist who illustrated the original Dumbo, lived.

And when Haas isn’t telling stories, he’s listening to them. At Sarah’s Guest House, the healthcare hospitality home where he works, Haas has conversations with individuals who rely on their services. Most of them are people who live outside Syracuse or New York who either come to the area to get treatment at the local hospitals or help support a loved one who is.

Their stories are too personal to share, but generally, everybody that comes through the house is going through a difficult experience, whether it be caring for a loved one with an illness or dealing with a life-threatening diagnosis, he says. Although everyone’s story is different, Haas says his own experience of dealing with his mother passing away has helped him connect with the guests. “[My staff and I] all understand that there are grim times, but that there’s also good that can be had during those times,” he tells me when I visited his office. “We try to spark that, and we try to keep that positive energy going.”

Back on our drive, we enter Syracuse’s Northside.

We pass by a small tailor shop where his parents first lived after they got married, which, coincidentally, was right next to my apartment. Haas continues to talk about the changes he’d like to see in the near future, like the government replacing I-81 with the community grid and investing in urban corridors throughout the city. And when he talks about the people who are working hard to make the city a better place for all, his eyes sparkle.

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THE HARSH REALITY OF

RACISM ABROAD Students who participated in Syracuse University’s Madrid study abroad program tell stories about how they dealt with discrimination inside and outside the classroom.

Words by Nhari Djan Design by Katie Hageman

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W

hen Tyra Jean was at an orientation for the Madrid study abroad program at Syracuse University, she learned that staring was common for Spaniards. Staff informed her SU Madrid group about this as they were talking about the cultural differences they may encounter when they’re in Spain.

But once Jean got to Spain, she immediately noticed that people were staring at her and her nonwhite friends a lot — much more so than her white peers, who could easily blend in with the vastly white population of the city.

“I automatically thought for the first week [that] all these people are racist. Like they’re staring at me,” says Jean, a senior sociology major with a biology and Spanish minor. She’s now back in Syracuse after completing her study abroad program last spring. “I had to grow into the culture and understand the history. In the specific part I lived in, they don’t see a lot of Black people come around. So, if anything, it was a thing of curiosity.”

Jean, who is Black and of Haitian heritage, repeats multiple times that she doesn’t regret her experience in Madrid and has grown a lot from living and studying abroad. She’s even applying to teach in countries like Colombia so she can live abroad again. But her experience in Madrid also left her feel uncomfortable in her own skin as she and her friends experienced a series of racist encounters during their time there. She became much more aware of her Blackness and how it was perceived in Spain and the other European countries she visited.

Non-white individuals are aware of what their race means in the United States. For example, 71% of Black Americans and 60% of Hispanic Americans say that race relations in the country are getting worse, according to a 2019 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center*. However, stereotypes, slurs, discrimination, and racism in general against people of color is not a cut-anddry concept. These concepts don’t translate in the same way in other countries and cultures. In a city like Madrid where the population is “homogenous,” as Jean describes, anyone who doesn’t fit the mold could face hostility.

“We actually got attacked on the metro. It was me and two brown skinned Dominican girls. [One of them] got jabbed several times by this white man who wanted the seat she was sitting in,” Jean says. “We got turned away from a tapas bar, and there were instances where we were not able to enter

nightclubs. Other white people got to go, and they were wearing the same clothes as us.”

The vast whiteness in Spain might explain some of the treatment Jean and her friends experienced while in Madrid. But immigration statistics about Spain show that the country is open to foreigners. For instance, Spain ranked highest with 83% of people in favor of taking in refugees compared to other countries like Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey. Spain also saw a new record of undocumented migrant arrivals by sea in 2018 with 57,250 people completing the journey across the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration.

In the specific part I lived in, they don’t see a lot of Black people come around. So, if anything, it was a thing of curiosity.

— Tyra Jean Former participant, SU Madrid study abroad

Yet attitudes in the country towards refugees, migrants, and foreigners may not always be as welcoming. Jean was in Spain at the same time as their 2019 general election. The country was also facing protests from Catalonia as people fought for independence from Spain. Jean says people were feeling uneasy about having “outsiders” at that time.

And in Salamanca, where Jean lived, she noticed that people in the neighborhood were more conservative and nationalistic.

Elsa Garcia-Irby, a senior anthropology student at SU, was also in Madrid last spring.

Garcia-Irby has also studied abroad in Ireland and is currently studying abroad in Japan.

“The semester before, I did an independent study about colonial Guatemala,” Garcia-Irby says. “I learned a lot about Spain that I didn’t know. It didn’t hit me until before I left, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to the birthplace of racism.’”

Like Jean, Garcia-Irby also noticed the constant staring every day, coupled with people moving away from her and her friends in discomfort when they rode public transportation. After the first

*Pew Research Center noted that Asian Americans were part of the survey, but the number of respondents was too small to add to the total result.

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day of classes, she and a friend were standing on a street corner when a man on a motorcycle drove by them and called them whores in Spanish while simultaneously giving them the middle finger. One of the Spaniard students from their dorm building witnessed the event and laughed at them.

Garcia-Irby identifies as Afro-Xicana, relating to both her Black and Mexican American

anti-immigrant sentiments around her. “It was little microaggressions here and there,” Jean says. “I knew this woman cared deep down, but I wouldn’t say I had the most positive relationship with [her].”

But the incident that caught SU’s attention occurred inside the classroom. Last March, a professor teaching a class on colonialism in Latin America for the SU Madrid program argued that it

I was like a zoo animal to them. I was someone they’ve never seen before.

— Evan Asante Current participant, SU Hong Kong study abroad heritage. She and Tatiana Hernandez-Mitchell, who identifies as Black and Dominican and also studied abroad in Madrid, both felt as though they were othered not only for their blackness, but also for their Latin American heritage. “I know that in Spain, they look down on the ‘colonies’. That’s what they still call us,” says Hernandez-Mitchell, a senior psychology and forensic studies major with a minor in African American studies.

Spain’s government is leftist, and the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, is in the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. While the country is mainly in support of left-wing leadership, the past election did give Vox, the far-right, anti-immigration party, a platform and a few seats in the Parliament.

Although the party is not largely supported in Spain, Hernandez-Mitchell says some students stayed with host families who were Vox supporters. She says she couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the group’s rhetoric and President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the United States.

“I think it goes to show the harsh reality of America’s influence. Once you go to another country and see the effects of the Trump administration, you’re going to lose your mind because you never would’ve thought that it would amount to this globally,” HernandezMitchell says.

The three women not only experienced singular racist incidents, but also felt uncomfortable with how much their race was emphasized in Spain.

For example, Garcia-Irby says she had issues with the dorm staff and her peers in the dorm, who were affluent and unkind. Jean and HernandezMitchell both did homestays in Salamanca’s affluent, white neighborhoods. Jean hardly ever saw anyone Black where she lived. She was also hurt by comments her host mother made, who shared

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was OK to use the N-word after a white student in the classroom was chastised by her peers for saying it. The professor was already in trouble for allowing the use of the N-word in class before, according to reporting by The Daily Orange.

The SU Madrid Center conducted a forum in May to discuss the issue. Jean says the forum led to her white peers seeing what students of color were going through in Madrid. But for her, the situation didn’t end well.

“I felt like they were supposed to take action on [the professor], but I was forced to leave the class and do an independent study,” Jean says.

The students’ discomfort inside and outside the classroom led to feelings of stress and isolation. Jean, Garcia-Irby, and Hernandez-Mitchell leaned on each other and other students of color in the program who were feeling the same way as them.

They all said that ultimately, that bond helped them enjoy their time abroad.

They found some safe spaces in Madrid’s more diverse and younger neighborhoods, like Chueca and Lavapies.

“The younger generation is so progressive.

They do a lot of protests about the bullfighting culture, there’s a lot of veganism and

expressionistic art,” Hernandez-Mitchell says.

“Specific neighborhoods like Chueca, it’s like the most LGBTQ+-promoting neighborhood. There’s a lot of gay art and couples walking around holding hands. They’re very free in that sense, and it made me feel welcomed.”

Hernandez-Mitchell also had to find other ways to deal with the stress she felt. Like Jean, she does not regret her experience, but she it was hard to enjoy her semester fully because she harbored a lot of resentment and felt discouraged hearing how she was perceived by other people when she traveled.

“When I was abroad, that was the first time I started going to therapy because the center [offers] six free consultations. I recommend that all POC go because you’re going to want to talk to someone about being one of the few Black or Latinx people in your space,” Hernandez-Mitchell says.

Meanwhile, Evan Asante, a junior studying finance and marketing, is currently studying abroad in Hong Kong. Even though he is Black in a country where the population is over 90% ethnic Chinese, he doesn’t feel as though his race affected his experience. “Everyone here has seen a bunch of different races, and there’s people from all around the world here. I don’t feel too different here,” Asante says.

The one time Asante felt that his race really stood out was when he traveled to Beijing, China as a part of a two-week seminar at the beginning of the semester. He noticed people taking pictures and videos of him, especially in the more rural areas where they went to see tourist attractions.

“I was like a zoo animal to them,” Asante says. “I was someone they’ve never seen before.”

Asante took the situation lightly at first, but there were points where people in Beijing did cross the line and made him and other Black students feel discomfort. He says he still understands where people were coming from, especially in the more rural areas, because of how uncommon it was for them to see Black people.

“The only thing that bothered me was the way some people were going about it. I know with [my friend] Dion, a lot of people were touching her hair. The craziest thing that happened to me was when a little kid was walking next to me, and the mother looks and sees me, and she grabs the kid and runs away,” Asante says.

But in Hong Kong, Asante feels like he has been able to adjust well. He says there is a strong African community, so there hasn’t been an issue with him standing out too much.

“One thing I regret is staying in my room a lot,” Garcia-Irby says about her time abroad in Spain. Now in Japan, she says she is having a better experience and hasn’t run into similar problems. She encourages students of color to go abroad in places like Europe to study because people in other countries should start getting used to seeing more non-white people traveling and studying in their spaces. To her, it’s especially important for people of color to have access to the places where colonization originated.

“Although you’re going to experience being othered while you’re abroad, they should get used to seeing people of color and students of color come abroad. Europe’s history is very problematic, and it’s doing a disservice to people of color not feeling comfortable to ‘go back,’” Garcia-Irby says. “Why can’t students of color go and see these histories, and why can’t we also experience Europe?” \\

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THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS: A STORY OF WAR AND WHAT COMES AFTER Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil, her co-author, tell the story of how Wamariya went from living in Rwanda to fleeing during the 1994 genocide, then moving through six African countries before living in the United States.

I couldn’t put this book down, and it had me thinking long after I had finished it. -Hannah

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BETWEEN TWO FERNS: THE MOVIE

SULA

Zach Galifianakis stars in this comedy where he travels across the nation to interview celebrities with rude questions. -Yzzy

Toni Morrison’s novel is a compelling read filled with magical realism, thought-provoking themes, and characters you won’t forget. -Micah

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-UGH, THOSE FEELS AGAIN

PHASING

POCKET

Snoh Aalegra popped off on this album, and it’s perfect for this gray, moody weather we’re settling into.

-Nhari

No Vacation’s newest EP, which brings me back to high school when I used to skip class and hang out with my friends at the Chinese restaurant across the street. -Micah

If you’re also someone who DMs yourself long reads for later, try Pocket.

The app serves as a bookmark so that posts you see on social media can all be filtered to a single spot. -Andrea

THE 1619 AUDIO SERIES I’ve been learning so much about how slavery in the U.S. still affects our society today. -Nhari

BON APPETIT TEST KITCHEN’S GOURMET MAKES It’s a fun light-hearted series where a professional chef attempts to make gourmet versions of your favorite snacks. -Sophie

SECOND LIFE PODCAST

DONE

BIG MOUTH

Hillary Kerr, the co-founder of Who What Wear, speaks with women who made career changes at different ages.

There are over 90 episodes featuring women in various roles from entrepreneurs and fashion designers to actresses and restaurateurs. -Hannah

A tracker app where you can track your daily habits. Plus, it has a soothing, minimalist design. -Sophie

This Netflix show navigates all the cringey moments that happen as pre-teens move through middle school and puberty. The hormone monsters give the show an almost Lizzie McGuire feel, but the elaborate and oftentimes raunchy storylines elevate the show to an immature level of comedy you can’t help but laugh at. -Andrea

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“I went to Beijing, Shanghai, and Annuhi on an international reporting trip with the National Association of Black Journalists.”

— Kyla Wright

“My favorite part of the trip was definitely the food. I loved gyoza, which are seared dumplings. I also drank a lot of matcha lattes.” — Kate Mazade

(Top) Kyla Wright at the Great Wall of China in Beijing, China. (Left) Kate Mazade in front of the Golden Pavilion or Kinkaku-ji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. (Right) Photo of downtown Kent, England by Chantelle Boateng.

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“My favorite memory from this trip was being able to spend time with my family and meeting my cousins for the first time.”

— Chantelle Boateng

MOMENTS ABROAD

(Top) Veer Badani at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland. (Left) Photo of the beaches in the Dominican Republic

by Claribel Rivas.

“My favorite part of the trip was seeing the Game of Thrones live concert in Dublin. It was an experience like no other.”

— Veer Badani

“It was hard not to stop while on the road and take photos of the natural beauty and tree-covered mountaintops.”

— Claribel Rivas

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