The College Hill Independent Vol. 37 Issue 4

SUBMIT TO THE INDY → THEINDY@GMAIL.COM MUST BE A CURRENT RISD OR BROWN UNDERGRAD.

So Me, Now You (2018) by Mackay Hare [risd].

Digital proof for a 3-color screen print.

A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY

05 OCT 2018 VOL 37 ISSUE 04

Cover Art Mackay Hare

FROM THE EDITORS

NEWS 02

Nordic Socialism Sarah Clapp Julia Rock

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Stay Away Maya Dayan METRO

04

Another Gay Night Alina Kulman

07

BlocBail Ivy Scott ARTS

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Leave Your Man Mara Dolan & Mia Patillo FEATURES

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To Show Your Scars Tiara Sharma

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Mahjong Madness Audrey Therese Buhain SCIENCE & TECH

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Noob-Capitalism Miles Guggenheim BODY

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Facile Foodivism Pia Mileaf-Patel LITERARY

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Wen Again Wen Zhuang

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#WhiteMillennialThings Arie Davey

Men of a certain Age, say, the Enlightenment, have often mentioned that certain activities, like sitting on a hillside or eating a small tart, “free the mind to wander.” I want my mind to wander, too, because I feel bogged down by something, and I think maybe it’s the troubles of language. My time and effort spent searching for signs in every word or sentence seems to be getting a bit excessive, and I find myself longing for some opacity—which I think might achieve by giving up this impulse of interpretation.

Yesterday, someone pointed to a sentence that read “the swan is a bitch” and pointed in my direction. It was difficult not to interpret this gesture as an association between myself and the bitch-swan.

But in the end, my new strategy saved me some pain. And maybe I will be a swan for Halloween—I have a long neck and so all I really have to do is wear a white dress.

Now, I look at my left palm and, moving from right to left, fold down my pinky, then hold it while I do the same to my ring finger, then my pointer and finally my thumb. But without my intention, my middle finger can only twitch and squirm in its wilting state.

-IR MISSION STATEMENT The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/or classism.

EPHEMERA 12

Kindle for the Fire Claire Schlaikjer X

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Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond.

Motivational Poster @pmoneyofficial @harrisonfishman

The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.

WEEK IN REVIEW Sara van Horn NEWS Mara Dolan Lucas Smolcic Larson Paula Pacheco Soto METRO Jacob Alabab-Moser Harry August Ella Comberg FEATURES Tiara Sharma Wen Zhuang BODY Pia Mileaf-Patel Cate Turner

05 OCT 2018

ARTS Nora Gosselin Isabelle Rea Marianne Verrone

LIST Alexis Gordon Signe Swanson Will Weatherly

SCIENCE & TECH Mia Pattillo Julia Rock Eve Zelickson

WRITERS Ben Bienstock Mica Chau Jessica Dai Eduardo Gutierrez-Peña Liby Hays Jorge Palacios Giacomo Sartorelli Ivy Scott Marly Toledano Alex Westfall Claribel Wu Kayli Wren

LITERARY Shuchi Agrawal Emma Kofman EPHEMERA Nicole Cochary Claire Schlaikjer X Maya Bjornson Maria Gerdyman

VOL 37 ISSUE 04

COPY EDITORS Grace Berg Seamus Flynn Miles Guggenheim Matt Ishimaru Hannah Ngo Sasha Ramen ILLUSTRATORS Natasha Brennan Natasha Boyko Julia Illana Jeff Katz Halle Krieger Katya Labowe-Stroll Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Rémy Poisson Katherine Sang Mariel Solomon Ella Rosenblatt Miranda Villanueva

ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Alex Hanesworth Eve O'Shea DESIGNERS Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana Bethany Hung Amos Jackson Katherine Sang Ella Rosenblatt DESIGN EDITOR Jack Halten Fahnestock BUSINESS Maria Gonzalez

SENIOR EDITORS Eliza Chen Katrina Northrop Signe Swanson Will Weatherly MANAGING EDITORS Olivia Kan-Sperling Chris Packs Erin West MVP Katherine Sang The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

WEB Ashley Kim

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WEEK IN DENMARK

BY Sarah Clapp, Julia Rock DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

BRICK BY BRICK Conservationists keen on toy block reconstructions of Death Stars and Taj Mahals can finally rejoice: Lego is ditching petroleum-based plastics, and instead will manufacture their products with plant-based or recycled materials by 2030. If we’ve learned anything from the Great Plastic Straw Ban of 2018, it’s that corporations are obsessed with plastic waste, and the elimination of it. But this commercial fad presents an existential threat to Lego’s corporate synergy: Plastic is their product, the stuff of small yellow men and their Modular Poolside Holiday Sets (Product 31067).

“We need to learn again how to do this,” said Henrik Ostergaard Nielsen, a supervisor at Lego’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark. Lego has been manufacturing plastic “elements”—the term it uses for bricks, trees, and dolls­—since 1958, cornering the market on durable, brightly colored blocks and four centimeter tall Ron WeasleysTM. From an engineering standpoint, their current recipe is top-notch: The primary plastic, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (or ABS), is tough, slightly pliable, and retains a polished finish. It is perfect for the foundations of plasticine Parisian restaurants (Product 10243), but less so in carbon emissions. Each year, Lego’s factories add a million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, with around 75 percent coming from raw materials.

Reinventing the Lego-wheel (Product 31706) has proven difficult. It may be easy to dream up a miniature Transformer that is mostly corn, but alas, the bioplastic reality is bleak. Researchers have already experimented with around 200 alternatives, with no success. Colors are dulled, shine is lost, and in an effort to reduce its own carbon footprint, Lego has upped its already pronounced attack on the feet of others: testbricks have broken, leaving sharp edges that could splice an unsuspecting child’s sole.

As Lego continues its experimentations with assorted tuber starches, the company races against its self-imposed clock. Perhaps peer pressure will intensify over the next decade, as Hasbro innovates a GMO-free My Little Pony and Barbie fixes the hole in the ozone layer, or perhaps this leap into material uncertainty has

PERSONAL EFFECTS

an entirely separate motivation: the fear of complacency in the face of an impending, primary-colored hellscape. According to Tim Brooks, Lego’s vice president of environmental responsibility, it is imperative to create “a toy that doesn’t jeopardize” children’s future.

If we are to take Brooks’ immediacy as a warning of what is to come, we may be closer to all-out Legodystopia than we think. It won’t just be Lego-fumes we have to contend with, but the billions upon billions of plastic pieces that Lego has strewn across the world in the homes of tots and the waiting rooms of pediatricians. Soon enough, piles of Lego-dinosaurs and their Lego–extinction event deluxe sets will block the sun.

The sky will ring with shouts of “ouchie!” as innocent civilians trek through mounds of two-by-four bricks.

The only respite in this ABS wasteland will be the latest Lego Movie, in which Lego-Batman cleans up a Lego–oil spill.

We here at the Indy have never and will never trust the head honchos in Denmark to save us from certain doom. Instead, we are venturing into our parents’ storage closets and disassembling our Products 41336 to build a future we can feel good about: one of Legowind turbines and Lego-straw-free lids.

-SC EMPTY NESTERS

He may have then left, and then the [gay] couple had thought, ‘It’s pity, we’ll take it.’”

Denmark was the first country in the world to recognize same-sex unions in 1989, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the nation recognized same-sex marriages.

Penguins, however, have been participating in unions of all types for at least as long as humans have been observing the species. Some political scientists have proposed that the Danish were the first to recognize same-sex unions because they had been observing successful gay penguin relationships for centuries.

In an interview with National Geographic last summer, zoologist and author Lucy Cooke explained that the film March of the Penguins falsely depicted the march across the Arctic as an “epic love story,” which led the “Christian right wing” to adopt “the penguin as a paragon of family values.” Instead, Cooke explained, “...when monogamy in penguins does occur, it can be a fairly rainbow-colored affair. The Christian right wing was perhaps less pleased to discover that a lot of penguins are in same-sex relationships, which are very common in zoos.”

Although the chick in question was returned to its biological parents, the nature of the small, enclosed exhibit at the zoo will leave it vulnerable to future adoptions from childless couples. Alternatively, perhaps the penguins are moving towards a model of socialized childrearing in which the zoo fairly compensates the penguins who do the work of childbearing while the lazier penguins bop around and entertain zoo visitors.

The Christian right in Denmark is certainly going to be displeased if penguins begin to adopt the socialist norms of their human hosts.

The zookeepers took note of the gay couple’s interest in childrearing and gifted them with an egg from a female penguin who had been unable to care for it due to illness.

Last week, a gay penguin couple adopted a neglected chick at Denmark’s Odense zoo. When the chick’s biological parents returned from a swim to find the chick cuddling with its new family, a fight broke out.

The couples waddled to face each other, and the creatures pointed their sharp beaks into the air to scream.

Wings were flapped and chirps were exchanged, but a zookeeper intervened and returned the chick to its biological parents.

-JR Zookeeper Sandie Hedgegård Munck observed the drama: “I think the female had been out to get her bath, and then it had been the male’s turn to care for the kid.

BY Liby Hays

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

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THE BURDEN OF PROOF content warning: sexual assault There were moments in Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s questioning last week when I had to close my laptop out of sheer anxiety. Something about the televised event felt so inexplicably disrespectful; though I was watching the hearing in the privacy of my dorm room, I suddenly felt conscious of the millions of other eyes that, like mine, traced her every movement, dissected her every word. I grew disgusted at the thought that my visual consumption of Dr. Ford, and the larger scopic regime that captured her every angle, waiting for her to falter, associated me with her detractors across the country.

I watched Dr. Ford’s statement and her responses to the senators’ countless questions, hoping that she wouldn’t misspeak. There was, of course, so much on the line—not just for Dr. Ford or her family, but for an entire nation’s ongoing reckoning with sexual assault.

Her testimony against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, like that of Dr. Anita Hill during Justice Clarence Thomas’s hearing, revealed the sheer burden we place on survivors in the age of #MeToo. When asked by the senators if she would like a break during the questioning, she answered hesitantly, “Does that work for you?...I’m used to being collegial.” After hearing this, I couldn’t help but wonder how much more they—how much more we could ask of her. We need, after all, for survivors like Dr. Ford and Dr. Hill to impress us—with their intellect, their collegiality, and, in Senator Hatch’s own words, their attractiveness— even while we expect them to hold their own perpetrators accountable.

Feminist scholar Jacqueline Rose writes in the London Review of Books that, though our attention to sexual violence “may be sparked by anger and a desire for redress” on behalf of survivors, “it might also be feeding vicariously off the forms of perversion that fuel the violence in the first place.” Rose raises interesting questions about the ways in which #MeToo obliges survivors to exhibit and re-live their trauma in order for it to be legitimized. Indeed, the use of Dr. Ford’s teary visage as a promotional image for articles about the hearing reinforces the need for survivors to undertake procedures of justice themselves and to meet corresponding expectations of public testimony and liability.

In order for us to believe Dr. Ford, she needed to publicly articulate how it felt to be violated and, in effect, relive said violation for her spectators. She needed to be composed, but not emotionless, for only performing the right amount of pain and trauma could convince the predominantly male-identifying panel of politicians that she was telling the truth. In an article for the New York Review of Books, writer Melissa Gira Grant notices the “drift in the discourse from violated rights to violated feelings: […] the burden on each

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FEATURES

BY Tiara Sharma ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea DESIGN Bethany Hung

Dr. Ford, #MeToo, and what we ask from survivors woman’s story to concern a man ‘important’ enough to report on, the detailed accounting of hotel robes and incriminating texts along with a careful description of what was grabbed, who exposed what, and how many times.” Grant remarks on something urgent here: the ways in which #MeToo era has almost commodified trauma and the communal spectacle of it. Survivors who come forward must now consider the optics of doing so and whether or not their story is palatable enough to consumers of mainstream media and, especially, social media. The movement has, in effect, produced a regime of proof—one in which survivors’ stories must be retellable in order to be believed.

As Grant continues, she brilliantly names the ways in which the #MeToo movement places the burden on survivors to publicize their experiences of violation and to render their emotions reproducible. In her article, Grant narrates her own experience of assault: “What I remember most, from ‘my story’ is how small the sex talk felt, almost dull. I did not feel hurt. I had no pain to confess in public. As more stories come out, I like to think that we would also believe a woman who said, for example, that the sight of the penis of the man who promised her work did not wound her, and that the loss she felt was not some loss of herself but of her time, energy, power.” Grant’s piece, put in conversation with Dr. Ford’s testimony and the legions of #MeToo narratives that have been published, flags urgent questions about what we expect from those who have experienced sexual violence; namely, how can survivors confirm and validate their experiences, and have their experiences be confirmed and validated, if their testimony can only be legitimized through public authorization?

The panel of politicians and the legions of spectators at home were ultimately as focused on the delivery of Dr. Ford’s testimony as they were on the contents of it. When asked by Senator Patrick Leahy about her strongest recollection from the night of the assault, Ford responded with something so painfully striking: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two [men], and their having fun at my expense.” But what if Dr. Ford had remembered very little from that night? What if she hadn’t undergone the medical training needed to provide psychological corroboration of her testimony?

Kavanaugh certainly never had to prove he had a hippocampus in order to be believed.

It is no coincidence, then, that Anita Hill’s testimony involved a similar degree of physical and medical scrutiny. During Justice Thomas’ hearing, she was accused by Senate Judiciary Committee members of having erotomania, a condition in which individuals develop romantic delusions. According to Dr. Jonathan H. Segal, a who has studied the condition extensively, “Most patients treated for erotomania are young, single women whose scenario concerns an older male, often a boss.” Though younger survivors are often wrongly accused of “asking for” or enabling their own assault, this diagnosis of erotomania was never lodged at the white survivors who worked under, and were assaulted by, Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Louis C.K. That a group of non-medically-trained politicians misdiagnosed Hill exemplifies how the lived experiences of black women survivors, in particular, are pathologized even as they are denied.

The #MeToo movement necessitates public spectatorship and the act of witnessing as an actualizing force for Hill’s narrative—a means through which subjective experiences become objective histories. The movement, though successful in proliferating images and narratives of survivors and their bravery, creates normative expectations of how trauma can be articulated and how processes of justice can be enacted. And even after the public consumption of these narratives, there emerges an expectation for survivors to pave the way forward, to reimagine entire industries and living environments. Through its dependence on survivors as agents of societal rehabilitation, the #MeToo movement has failed to transform practices of collective accountability. Survivors are thereby responsible for seeking their own justice—defending their bodies, morals, and psyches against flagrant attack—all while reshaping a more just world.

TIARA SHARMA B'20 had to look up what the hippocampus was.

05 OCT 2018

HOTSAUCE, HONEY, AND JAM

BY Alina Kulman

It’s the Saturday night championship game for the Providence Roller Derby League, and excitement is running high. “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira blasts through the speakers, and the skaters sit against the wall tying up their laces.

The game is between the Old Money Honeys and the Sakonnet River Roller Rats. The Mob Squad, the other team in the Providence league, came in third this season. The Old Money Honeys haven’t won a championship in years, and given all the homemade signs that have dollar signs on them and “OMH” drawn in red crayon, it seems that they’re the fan favorite. Maureen Seigart (derby name Hotsauce), who’s been involved in the league since 2006, told the Independent, “we love underdogs here.” The Old Money Honeys might be the underdogs in this game, but in a sense, the entire Providence Roller Derby League is the underdog: they've managed to create a robust organization with lots of enthusiasm and not a lot of funding.

The West Warwick Civic Center, where the league held its home season this year, is a multi-use stadium. Tonight, basketball hoops are pushed to the side and the lines of the derby track are delineated by bright pink and yellow tape on the dark green floor.

The crowd, sitting in lawn chairs around the ovular

ILLUSTRATION Rémy Poisson

they would love to be based in Providence, but “we’ve been priced out. Which sucks because people have to drive here.” She gestures to the crowd: “We love that they can all come, but there are a lot of people who can’t.” In a perfect world, they would have their own empty warehouse in downtown Providence that they could deck out for practices, bouts and fundraisers.

Unfortunately, rents for those spaces are twice their budget. So, without a permanent venue, PRD is forced to compete with other club sports for spaces and time slots, doing their best with their limited resources as a nonprofit.

The league is run entirely by volunteers—skaters take on additional obligations on top of practicing and competing (and their full-time jobs), like administrative tasks and coaching the junior league. But according to Hotsauce, they're willing to make the necessary sacrifices: “A lot of times, derby just takes priority.”

PRD’s scrappiness fits in with the modern misfit culture of roller derby. The sport had its original heyday in the 1950s and ‘60s, when it was televised.

In 1969, nearly 15 million people a week watched the sport. But even with its popularity, the National Derby League was disorganized—teams spread out all over the country led to high travel costs and skaters griped over unfair salary distribution. In 1973, Jerry Seltzer,

DESIGN Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana

As derby in Rhode Island has grown, the community has worked to be inclusive of women with different body types, gender identities and sexualities. Derby is often cast as a sport only for queer women—Urban Dictionary calls it “lesbian Nascar.” But beyond the stereotype, Anne-Marie Horne (derby name Citizen Toxie) says that inclusiveness is a core value for the league: “It’s just kind of wonderful that way. It just is who we are, and that’s it—it just is.” Toxie says derby has options for skaters with all sorts of body types. Larger people can be incredibly successful blockers; thinner skaters can sneak through the pack. Although Toxie is small with an athletic build, she says derby did not come naturally to her: “I had to train for nine months before I joined.” But, with some dedicated practice, anybody (and any body) can do derby, if they’re willing to get some bruises.

Derby is a full contact sport—players push each other down and when skates and knee-pads hit the ground, it sounds a bit like bones cracking. On the track, skaters take the opportunity to disregard all societal norms about what to wear or how to act. “We want a sport for ourselves where we’re not constantly being sexualized,” Hotsauce told the Independent. “We do it for ourselves—it’s not for anyone else. And if they don’t like it, that’s too bad.” PRD now brings this message of confidence to their junior league, which has had three official seasons. Hotsauce says she loves seeing the “fresh daisy children” who come through the program.

“Hopefully we’re building some character,” she says.

Toxie—who has helped coach the junior league—also thinks there’s something powerful about seeing how little girls’ views of their bodies change when they do derby. It’s almost a more powerful shift than for the adults who join. +++

track, seems unfazed by the loud soundtrack. It’s a diverse crowd—young women with stretched out earlobes and arms covered in tattoos, old men in polo shirts and khaki pants, lots of young kids running around and dancing. Many skaters’ partners and even parents are there, sporting t-shirts with their loved one’s team logo.

Selah Addison (a.k.a Boones Harm), a skater for the Rats who has painted neon green and hot pink stripes on her face, gives me a quick rundown of derby rules just before the match starts. Each team has four blockers and one jammer. “The positions do kind of what their names sound like they do,” she told the Independent. In short, jammers score points for each blocker they pass, and blockers try everything to keep jammers from getting through.

After both teams have a chance to warm up, one of the announcers—a bearded man in a bright blue dress—shouts into his microphone, “Who’s ready for some roller derby?” The crowd cheers, and the Rats take to the track in their green and pink outfits.

They skate together in a pack to the sounds of a videogame soundtrack as the announcers call out their derby names. “Number 30, Rachel Rayge.”

“SPF9, Sunscream.” Once they do the same for the Old Money Honeys (“Jamie Lee Hurt Us” and “Nutritional Beast,” among others), it’s time for the bout to begin. The jammers from both teams line up behind the pack of blockers. The ref blows his whistle.

OMH quickly racks up a substantial lead—it’s 42-2 at an early timeout. +++ The West Warwick Civic Center is not an ideal spot for roller derby. The track is just tape on the ground and the teams can’t set up concession stands beyond a few booths at the back selling “I <3 Roller Derby” merch. Until 2015, the Providence Roller Derby (PRD) base was the Narragansett Ocean Club skating rink. When that rink unexpectedly closed, the league was left with no permanent place to skate. According to Hotsauce, “No one saw it coming.” She adds that THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

At halftime, the Old Money Honeys are up against the Rats 120-78. The gather sit in a circle in the corner of the arena, passing around a bag of Haribo gummy bears and discussing their offensive moves for the second half. Their red T-shirts are drenched with sweat.

The dance crew for the halftime show runs out to the center of the track and invites the crowd to join in their routine. A few little girls in green tutus and panda t-shirts excitedly bounce along at the sidelines.

The skaters’ children run happily around the stadium holding signs bearing their moms’ derby names and numbers.

Once the performance is over and the bag of gummy bears is empty, it’s time for the second half.

With some successful plays, the Rats start catching up—only down by 20 points. Then, in a key moment, the OMH jammer gets sent to the penalty box, and the Rats start racking up points until they’re only down by one. With less than five minutes to go, the crowd is on their feet, cheering. The game stays neck and neck until there’s less than 30 seconds left. The Rats’ jammer pushes her way through the pack just in time, and she pumps her fist up and down. They’ve won, 183-179.

The crowd gets up from their lawn chairs, and everyone forms a line around the track. The Rats skate by, smiling and sweaty, and high-five everyone with “My House” by Flo Rida blasting in the background.

The Rats form a tunnel with their hands, and the OMH skate through it and high-five the crowd as well, most smiling and all sweaty. The crowd begins clearing out, and some of the skaters leave their teams’ side to give their kids and partners sweaty forehead kisses, towering over them with the extra height of their skates.

The Rats take a picture with the large trophy that the announcer has handed them, and the remaining crowd starts helping peel off the tape of the track. Some kids pocket bits of tape as souvenirs.

Players from both teams stand together in circles, laughing and recapping the game. Roller derby is a competition, sure, and the Old Money Honeys are sad to have lost another championship match. But no one seems to mind too much; they’re just happy to be skating together. Hotsauce refers to PRD as her “tribe.”

And if PRD is a tribe, maybe they’re the Amazons—a strong, forceful, organized group of warriors, in which every member is integral to maintaining and improving the community, and where men stick to the sidelines.

the owner of the national league, was deep in debt, and decided to shut down operations. Then, in 2001, a group of four women in Austin—calling themselves Bad Girl Good Woman Productions, and referring to themselves as She-E-Os—decided to form an all-female roller derby league. But many of the skaters in the new league didn’t like the corporate model of Bad Girl Good Woman Productions, and wanted more control. In 2003, they broke off and formed the Texas Rollergirls—a skater-owned and committee-run collective. And so began the resurgence of roller derby as we know it today: a decentralized feminist project, and a full-contact sport. Sarah Kingan (derby name Sarah Doom), who graduated from Brown in 2002, founded Providence Roller Derby in 2004 after spending time skating with a league in Arizona.

“It was crazy at the beginning,” says Maureen Seigart (Hotsauce), who was living with Kingan at the time. PRD teams skated at the rink by Kennedy Plaza.

Hotsauce told the Independent, “there was just this energy from being downcity, seeing Providence residents be a part of this weird little sport.” The league quickly grew from its original 20 members—some college students, but mainly Rhode Island residents.

Along with the three home teams (the Old Money Honeys, Mob Squad and the Sakonnet River Roller Rats), PRD now has two travel teams, the Rhode Island Riveters and the Killah Bees, that compete nationally.

In the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the Riveters rank solidly in the top third (97th out of 348 teams for 2018).

One factor contributing to the sport’s growth, according to Amanda Chouinard (derby name Apocalypse Meow), is the 2009 movie Whip It. That is, the comedy starring Ellen Page as Bliss, a high-school girl who becomes enamored with roller derby as a way to escape her stifling hometown of Bodean, Texas. “I just saw that movie and thought, ‘oh I want to do that,’” Apocalypse Meow says. She says the "be your own hero thing," epitomized by Whip It, is what hooked her. So, when she saw a Facebook post about PRD, she decided to get involved, and her two daughters joined the junior training program. “We’re such a derby family,” she ALINA KULMAN B’21 would rather be a Rollergirl laughs. than a She-E-O. METRO 04

YANKEES GO HOME

US approaches to the Venezuelan crisis “America stands with every person living under a brutal regime,” claimed President Trump in his proclamation declaring National Hispanic Heritage Month on September 13, 2018. In the same speech, he reaffirmed the United States’ “commitment to liberty and government accountability and to confronting threats to freedom in places such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.”

In recent months, Trump’s comments have kept international attention on Venezuela. An economic and humanitarian crisis under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime has persisted for years. In 2017, opponents of Maduro’s government held protests spanning over 100 days, leading to nearly 100 deaths and sparking international outrage. In May 2018, Maduro won a second term in elections widely considered to be rigged, and in August escaped an assassination attempt carried out via drone. Last month, he made a surprise visit to the United Nations, a day after Trump vowed to “take care of Venezuela.”

In the coming weeks, as the US continues to navigate its imperialist history, its responsibility toward Venezuela, and Trump’s threats, Congress may provide a solution.

worsened because the country had already accumulated significant debt. The government lost revenue paying back loans, and in combination with the fall in oil production, government services and government-run industries suffered. Currently, oil production is at a 13-year low, and the country has even begun to import oil. A large part of the government’s response was printing more money, and inflation is forecasted to reach one million percent this year. Prices double every 26 days. Machu Muci, a Venezuelan student at Brown University, explained to the Independent that many restaurants no longer include prices in their menus as they would need to reprint so often.

Foreign goods have become extremely expensive. As the oil sector came to dominate the economy in recent decades, access to basic consumer goods has decreased. Limited imports, a lack of a domestic consumer staples industry, and high inflation have resulted in a situation where it is cheaper to use cash to clean oneself than to buy toilet paper.

Around 90 percent of the country lives in poverty, and the economic crisis has lead to widespread famine. A poll conducted by three Venezuelan universities found that over 60 percent of Venezuelans had woken up hungry because of the inability to purchase +++ food over the past year. The same poll found that the average Venezuelan reported losing 24 pounds in 2017.

The economic crisis in Venezuela began in 2014, when Water supplies are also low, with only 27 percent having the price of oil dropped dramatically. Oil represented 95 consistent clean water. percent of the country’s exports. Its financial troubles Beyond food shortages, medicine is in extremely

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NEWS

short supply. 85 percent of basic medicine and 90 percent of supplies for severe conditions are not available, according to The Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela. Infant mortality was so high that in 2016, an average of 31 Venezuelan infants died every day.

Muci’s family has left the country, but she explains that, recently, when her mother returned for a visit, “she didn’t even bring clothes because all her suitcase was food, medicines for my grandmother, [and] toilet paper,” she said. Maduro’s regime refuses to allow international aid, worsening the situation. These conditions have sparked a massive exodus—more than 1.5 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014.

This economic collapse is happening in conjunction with a democratic crisis. Nationwide protests for La Salida (“the exit” of Maduro) began in 2014, and have continued until the present day with the support of opposition parties. The 2014 unrest originated in students protesting for increased public security. When leaders of these protests were arrested, student activists around the country spoke up. Soon, opposition politicians joined, and the cause became a general call to end Maduro’s regime. In response, the military cracked down. The protests during the summer of 2017 left over a hundred protestors dead. Human Rights Watch reports that captured opposition leaders were subject to torture including brutal beatings, electric shock, and asphyxiation.

Democratic suppression has also reached government institutions and political leaders. The 2017

05 OCT 2018

BY Maya Dayan ILLUSTRATION Justin Han DESIGN Amos Jackson

election of the Constituent Assembly was determined to be fraudulent by the company hired to oversee it.

33 Supreme Court judges named by opposition parties have been accused of treason, threatened with 30 years in prison, and now live in exile. By the 2017 elections, five of the most prominent opposition parties didn’t run presidential candidates, saying that putting their names on the ballot would only legitimize the rigged results. The regime has even banned certain political leaders from holding public office, such as former VicePresident Maria Corina Machado (the reason given was alleged conspiracy of a coup attempt, although Human Rights Watch reviewed the evidence and found it uncredible). Other politicians are under house arrest. +++

well as other US-backed policies, led to what is known as the “Caracazo.” This anger at the government’s compliance with destructive economic policies fueled Chávez’s coup attempts throughout 1992, which gave him national recognition. It is no surprise that anti-imperialist sentiment was at the core of Chavez’s platform when he won the election of 1998.

Controversy surrounding US involvement in Venezuela continued in 2002 during a coup attempt against Chavez. Had the coup succeeded, the rightwing politician Pedro Carmona would have been president. Top US military officials met with Venezuelan officers behind the coup and Carmona himself met with Otto Reich, the Bush Administration’s Assistant Secretary of State for western hemisphere affairs.

Declassified CIA documents show that the agency was aware of the possibility of a coup, even knowing the general form it would take. The coup only lasted for 47 hours, and while the role of the US is unclear, the event reinforces Chávez and Maduro’s claims that the US plotted against the then-democratically elected regime. In fact, the silencing and removal of political opposition in Venezuela largely began in response to this coup attempt.

But the roots of this conflict go deeper than the Bolivarian Revolution. A Cold War era ideology of US imperialism also underlies the present possibility of US intervention in Venezuela. In 1945, Venezuelan military leader Marcos Pérez Jiménez came to power with a military junta ousting Rómolo Gallegos, who is considered the first cleanly elected president in Venezuelan history. In 1952, Jiménez called for an election, but later cancelled it because it did not seem to be going in his favor and, instead, he declared himself president. Despite the oppressive, undemocratic nature of the regime, the US supported it. President Eisenhower even awarded Jiménez the Legion of Merit in 1954 for his anti-communist efforts. The low price of oil and Jiménez’s policy of open trade with the US was, of course, a factor.

In the same speech where Trump claimed that “America stands with every person living under a brutal regime,” he also stated, “wherever true socialism or Communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.” US intervention in Venezuela has historically coincided with left wing regimes and reduced oil supplies.

This pattern provides reason to be skeptical of Trump’s intentions. When I asked the two Venezuelan students to respond to Trump’s statement of solidarity Muci responded, “I think it would be more that [...] America stands with every country that has oil.”

Venezuela does in fact have the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and oil as a motive for US foreign policy by no means a far reach. From friendly relationships with Saudi Arabia to the CIA’s involvement in the 1953 coup against the Iranian prime minister, oil has been a driving force of US foreign policy.

The second title of the bill focuses on restoring democracy. It calls for recognition of the democratically elected National Assembly, international supervision of elections, and NGO support in rebuilding government institutions. The article has sections dedicated to the involvement of regional international organizations, specifically urging the Lima Group and the Organization of American States to use their collective power to hold the Venezuelan government accountable. This title pledges support to the International Criminal Court investigation of Venezuela.

The third title describes the process of restructuring Venezuela’s economy, but these measures are contingent on the restoration of democracy and rule of law in the country. It calls for the return of stolen public funds to the people, the rebuilding of energy infrastructure, and international institution management of hyperinflation and debt. It includes facilitation of negotiations between Venezuela and the countries to which the majority of debt is owed (China and Russia). It also includes plans for extensive research to track down stolen public funds and to work with foreign governments to freeze those assets. Once identified and forfeited, this money would be held and later returned to a democratic Venezuelan government. This process is not outlined in depth, and the lack of a timeline seems concerning, although one would hope details of the exact process would crystalize as the financial investigation produces findings. One of the actors enlisted in the effort of restructuring the economy is the International Monetary Fund, which is sure to elicit a negative response because of the failure of the 1989 structural adjustment program. When asked about the role of the IMF in restructuring Venezuela’s economy, van Praag says, “I would like to think of an alternative solution, but I don’t know if there is.” Interestingly, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) recently created the New Development Bank as an alternative controlled by the global South.

Maduro has expressed interest in joining this bank in hopes of addressing the country’s debt. As the New Development Bank was only founded in 2014, it is still unclear what the organization’s practices are or how they will differ from the financial institutions lead by the global North.

This legislation is sure to have critics and is certainly not a complete reversal of US interventionism.

It is still a coordinated attempt to determine conditions in a Latin American country. Economic management by the IMF certainly sets off warning bells, but this bill does not stipulate how the IMF plan would be implemented, only that a framework for economic reconstruction should be created. And given the vast humanitarian cost of allowing the Maduro regime to continue unchecked, international action widely called for. “I don’t want to tell Trump or the US to mind their own business,” Muci said, although she does not want military intervention. A recent poll indicated that 84.3 percent of Venezuelans would support multinational intervention if it would bring food and medicine.

Another poll found that 88 percent of Venezuelans rejected the idea of foreign military intervention to overthrow the president, preferring dialogue. This indicates that, although economic sanctions alone have not succeeded, the Venezuelan people want a multilateral, nonviolent international response to the conflict.

The legislation focuses on humanitarian and economic assistance. Unlike the military intervention or support of rebel factions, this proposal does not outline who should assume power, but rather works to force parties into dialogue and into restoring democratic institutions. This bill demonstrates that, although the current administration may not be cautious of continuing a history of US imperialism, there is hope in Congress assuming its duty in the realm of foreign policy.

On September 26, President Trump said, “We’re going to take care of Venezuela [...] Every option is on the table.” Trump had previously spoken of using a “military option, if necessary” to end the oppression of the Maduro regime. Last week, he again hinted at the possibility of armed intervention: “It’s a regime that frankly could be toppled very quickly by the military.”

These statements came within weeks of a New York Times report that Trump administration officials had met with Venezuelan rebel officers hoping to gain US support in their efforts to overthrow Maduro. While Trump has continued Obama-era economic sanctions against Venezuela, the notion of military intervention or military support for rebel groups is a significant shift.

This approach has earned international condemnation.

International organizations, including the Lima Group (whose members include all three of Venezuela’s neighboring countries, Mexico, Canada, and nine more Latin American countries), have come out with statements rejecting military intervention.

President Maduro had his own perspective on the matter. “The oligarchs of the continent—and those who rule them from Washington—want political control of Venezuela,” he claimed in his surprise visit to the United Nations last week. Trump’s discussion of a US-supported military coup legitimizes Maduro’s rhetoric, though this rhetoric is not new in Venezuela.

“Yankees go home” is a very common sentiment throughout Latin America, Muci explained, “The government has always used the US as a scapegoat.”

She went on to say that the US was blamed for everything from inflation to the death of Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor and leader of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Oriana van Praag, another Venezuelan undergraduate student at Brown, described this as “a nationalist, populist rhetorical strategy … [that has] a lot of people very receptive to it nationally and within the Latin American left because it’s not without basis.”

The United States has a long and controversial history with military intervention and backing coups in Latin America, especially against leftist regimes.

In fact, resentment of US-led international imperialism was a key element in the basis for the Bolivarian +++ Revolution in Venezuela through which Hugo Chávez came into power.

A bipartisan bill introduced this week in Congress, sponsored primarily by New Jersey’s Democratic +++ Senator Robert Menendez, may offer an alternative that, through a multilateral approach, could address Both the American and Venezuelan presidents’ rhet- concerns of US abuse of power. oric have significant historical context. In 1989, the The Venezuela Humanitarian Relief, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Reconstruction, and 4 Rule of Law Act of 2018 has a implemented a Structural Adjustment Program to first title focused exclusively on the direct delivery of stabilize the Venezuelan economy––prescribed by humanitarian aid. It urges coordination between UN international institutions led by the global North in Agencies, the World Health Organization, and The the 1980s to (at least nominally) promote economic Pan-American Health Organization, among others. stability and development in the global South. The tool The aid includes public health commodities, basic food has been widely criticized because its drastic neolib- commodities, and technical assistance for their direct eral measures (privatization and removal of trade dispersal to avoid misure. Should the aid be rejected, barriers, for example) left economies vulnerable and the US would urge the UN Security Council to take dramatically reduced public goods. In the initial stages action. As mentioned, this is the only way the responof the program, the Venezuelan government liberal- sibility to protect allows for military action, but this MAYA DAYAN B’21 can’t believe she’s finding hope in ized the price of gas. Removing government controls is considered unlikely. This title also allocates aid to Congress. increased it dramatically. This political mishap, as Venezuelans refugees in neighboring countries.

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NEWS

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THE PRICE OF FREEDOM One bill’s attempt to reform bail in the Rhode Island Judiciary “No human being should be in jail because they don’t have $150,” said Michael DiLauro, Deputy Public Defender of the state of Rhode Island.

DiLauro was quoting well-known RI defense attorney Jack Cicilline. In an interview, DiLauro recounts the story of how Cicilline was in court one day when he saw a man ordered to pay bail money that he didn’t have. Without a lawyer to represent him, the man was headed for jail until Cicilline walked up to the judge’s bench and pulled out three $50 bills. Cicilline’s words echo a growing sentiment in Rhode Island and around the country: people shouldn’t be going to jail just for being poor.

The most recent data from the Rhode Island Judiciary reports that 21,685 misdemeanor cases were filed in 2016. According to the RI Department of Corrections, 927 people were held in jail last year after being charged with a misdemeanor because they could not post surety (monetary) bail. Of those nearly 1,000 people, 388 (or over 36 percent) spent one to two nights in jail because they could not pay. 14 percent of people were held for three to seven days, and 13 percent were held for a week or longer, with one person waiting in jail for 89 nights before they were released: 89 days, or nearly three months, spent in prison without being convicted of anything. These numbers fly in the face of the US Constitution’s promise to a fair and speedy trial.

For decades, the system was similar—or worse— nationwide. According to a report by the Southern California Law Review from 2012, roughly 25 percent of non-felony defendants were ordered to pay monetary bail in New York State. In Maryland, nearly half of all misdemeanants had to pay bail to go home, until reforms were introduced last year. Lawyer and bail reform advocate Zina Makar said in an interview that, prior to reform, Maryland’s bail system “had no rhyme or reason, and there was no assessment of ability to pay.”

With the help of the Rhode Island Public Defender, legislators introduced a bill (S2416) in the Rhode Island General Assembly this past February with the intent of “decriminalizing poverty”—or eliminating the systems which up until now have resulted in hundreds of people going to jail every year simply because they lack the money to post bail. The bill is one of many this year that aims to lower incarceration rates and reform the way the state handles low-level crime. If passed, people charged with most misdemeanor crimes in Rhode Island will no longer face monetary bail.

Misdemeanors are often considered to be ‘low level’ crimes, and include offenses like shoplifting, trespassing, or marijuana possession. However, potentially violent crimes, like domestic assault and drunk driving, are also considered misdemeanor crimes.

When a person pleads not guilty to a misdemeanor crime in Rhode Island, the two most frequent outcomes are that they are released pending trial, or they are held in jail for lack of bail until their trial. Most

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people are released on personal recognizance, a legal term indicating that the individual doesn’t have to pay any money to the court to secure release, but instead promises to obey the law and show up for their trial.

The form of bail most familiar to the public, and the one addressed by this reform bill, is monetary bail.

If a judge orders monetary bail, the person must raise a certain amount of money before they can be released, as a guarantee that they will appear in court. Once they arrive at trial, the money is returned to them. However, if the person cannot raise the bail money, their only option is to await their trial in jail.

Senator Ana Quezada, a Democrat representing Providence, is the lead sponsor for the bill in the Senate, and explained that she supported it because she saw the way that even a few days in jail was harming her constituents, many of whom cannot afford to pay bail money.

“It can change their whole life, just a few days of them staying there for no reason,” Quezada said in an interview. She proceeded to systematically lay out the path by which a minor crime can transform the life of an upstanding citizen into a jobless nightmare.

“Let’s say you have a job,” she began. “You’re arrested, and you’re not able to show up on Monday.

You’re arrested, so you’re not able to call. You can lose your job.” Shaking her head in disgust, she added, “Now you have a record. That’s another thing that could prevent you from going back to your job.” +++ As author of the bail reform bill, Deputy Public Defender DiLauro testified to the research he compiled over the past year showing the harmful effect even a few days in jail has on an individual.

“Studies find that a defendant that is subject to pretrial detention is three to four times more likely to have their case result in a jail sentence, and any jail sentence that is imposed will be for a longer period of time than that of persons who are not detained,” he said.

The implication that time spent in jail prior to conviction impacts the outcome of the case is a startling one. While no causal link has been drawn, the correlation suggests that judges view defendants who have spent time in prison as ‘more criminal’ than those released on personal recognizance.

According to Alexandra Natapoff, Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, a fear of being held in jail indefinitely causes many people charged with misdemeanors to be falsely convicted, even in cases where there would not be enough evidence to find them guilty at trial.

“Many arrestees plead guilty to petty offenses in exchange for a sentence of time served as a way of terminating what might otherwise be a longer period of incarceration,” she said.

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BY Ivy Scott ILLUSTRATION Mariel Solomon DESIGN Katherine Sang

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Quezada added that the problem seemed to be largely rooted in a lack of resources. “A lot of the people in my district are people of color, and a lot of them don’t have money to pay a good lawyer who can take you out in a heartbeat,” she said.

While this issue of adequate legal representation is one that should technically be solved by the presence of public defenders in the Judiciary, Representative Jason Knight noted that in Rhode Island, defenders are so overloaded with cases that they can only address a fraction of the problem.

“I’ve seen this personally,” Knight said. “You have a public defender running around two of the busiest courtrooms in the state on any given morning and… [meanwhile] you could have five other people go before the judge unrepresented.”

Deputy Public Defender DiLauro testified in favor of the bill in both the House and the Senate. He cited Rhode Island state law 12.13-1.3, from the 1990s, which states that if someone is being held because they can’t afford to pay bail, “the Department of Corrections is supposed to take a proactive role in figuring out why these people are detained and if they can be admitted to a lower bail or personal recognizance.”

However, after speaking with officials from the Department of Corrections, DiLauro learned that this law was not being applied. “They do not have the ability or the resources to do what this statute already says they’re supposed to be doing,” he said.

DiLauro’s testimony was supported by the Rhode Island ACLU, but opposed by the State Judiciary. In her testimony in the House hearing, judicial representative Elizabeth Suever claimed that passage of the bill would tie judges’ hands. She took particular issue with the words “may not” in the bill. This language, she said, would severely limit judges’ discretion in imposing bail in all cases where the type of crime was not listed as one of the exceptions proposed in the bill, such as cases of domestic violence. While judge’s discretion––and the ability to look at a situation as more than a collection of quantifiable actions––is a critical component of any legal decision, Suever’s argument seemed to veer dangerously close to an endorsement of racial profiling.

“What if someone appears before you and they seem off in some sort of way, but maybe you don’t have any evidence before you specifically that they are dangerous?” Suever said. “Don’t you want to have that ability to set some kind of financial condition on that person’s release?”

Representative Knight, however, countered that the bill would actually increase public safety by forcing the judge to consider a pretrial services report before determining whether someone is a threat to public safety. The reports are a compilation of information about the defendant intended to assist judges in delivering their verdicts. Reports contain basic information about the individual (name, age, address) as well as any

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

employment, family, and criminal history deemed relevant by pretrial service workers. Judges use this information in combination with what is heard in court to determine whether or not to recommend alternatives to jail (personal recognizance, diversion programs, etc.) for the defendant.

The importance of a pretrial services report was seconded by Senator Harold Metts, a co-sponsor of the bill. Metts said he would rather “spend the money upfront” on pretrial services, than on incarceration fees later on. The senator estimates that in Rhode Island, the average yearly cost of incarceration for one adult is $40,000. That cost more than doubles to $98,000 for minors at the juvenile training school—and, right now, the state is paying far more for inmates than pretrial service employees.

people who get out there and reoffend, the only people to stop them are the bondsmen.” However, given that the current bail reform bill only targets misdemeanor crimes and contains caveats for offenses like drunk driving and domestic violence, it’s difficult to see that any individuals arrested for these offenses would be an immediate danger upon release.

In Rhode Island, it may be some time before the bill becomes law. Both the Senate and House Judiciary committees have decided to hold the bill for further study, meaning that it will not be reviewed again until the 2019 legislative session. In the interim, DiLauro is meeting with both sponsors and opponents of the bill in the hope of finding some kind of compromise.

Although it sometimes takes years of introducing, revising, and reintroducing a bill before it becomes law, the bill’s sponsors are optimistic. +++ “I will do everything in my power to make sure it passes this year,” Senator Quezada said. “It’s someWhile there is no profit incentive for the state to detain thing I will fight for. ” people, the bail bond industry thrives off of the current cash bail system. Nationwide, the lobbying of bail +++ bondsmen has prevented the passage of legislation to reform the current system. Of her efforts in Maryland, In the past three years, the trend in state governments defense attorney Makar said, “The legislature’s been has largely been towards bail reform and elimination. diluted by the bail bondsman efforts. The money has The Brooklyn, New York, District Attorney eliminated just seeped in to so many pockets of legislators that monetary bail for most crimes in 2017. Manhattan it’s been impossible to get any kind of reform passed District Attorney Cyrus Vance followed suit this [through the legislature].”

January.

In fact, in order to achieve any kind of change, “A systemic reliance on bail for low-level offenses Makar bypassed the legislature altogether and sought is out of step with a reformed, 21st-century justice the assistance of the District Court. Makar argued system,” Vance said in a press release. “It is fundamento District Court Chief Judge John Morrissey that tally unfair and does not make us safer, given the range Maryland’s current bail laws violated the “equal protec- of effective alternatives to pretrial detention now at our tion” clause of the 14th Amendment. disposal.”

“If you’re giving somebody bail, that means that This sentiment could not be echoed more strongly you should release them, and if you should release than by those people in Rhode Island who have been them, they should have the equal opportunity to be victimized by the current bail system. In her public able to get out,” she said in an interview. Makar added policy thesis completed in 2016, Brown University that ability to pay must be a necessary consideration, graduate Rachel Black interviewed 21 inmates who “otherwise somebody of lesser means isn’t able to were in jail because they couldn’t post bail. One man, make the same bond and get the benefit of release that whom Black referred to as Jordan, perfectly captured somebody with more means does.” the anxiety and anger defendants often feel at the Now, Maryland law has been changed so that an injustices they repeatedly face in the courtroom: “I assessment of ability to pay is required, and no person don’t want to see no judge when I have no money.” can be kept in prison because they are unable to afford In its existence as an institution, the Rhode Island their bail. Although the law only went into effect in Judiciary promises state residents equal protection July 2017, Makar says that already, “it has made a huge under the law. The fact that it has come to be seen by difference in the name of progress.” some as nothing more than a tax collector to be feared In Rhode Island, bail bondsman Frank Castelli has and avoided is, at the very least, a warning sign to the already seen business drop due to earlier attempts at bail Judiciary––both their promise and their system are reform, like the Justice Reinvestment Initiative signed broken.

by Governor Raimondo last year, which increased the prevalence of pretrial services and introduced several diversion programs in the Judiciary. In defense of his IVY SCOTT B’21 would vote yea. industry, Castelli cited concern for public safety. “The pretrial service monitoring people only work from nine to three,” he said. “So when you have dangerous

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BY Mara Dolan, Mia Pattillo ILLUSTRATION Maddie Mahoney DESIGN Bethany Hung

“WE DON’T LIVE IN THAT KIND OF WORLD”

content warning: sexual violence

Last week, we hosted a dozen women at our house for a screening of Thelma and Louise. None of them had watched it before, though many recognized it as a frequently referenced cultural landmark in film, and when the credits wrapped, it ignited a discussion that trickled into the early hours of the morning. The film resonated intensely with each of us, just as it resonated with women of all ages when it was originally released in the summer of 1991. There was something profoundly cathartic about watching two women seek revenge for, and freedom from, the sexual violence that surrounds them. It gave us affirmation. Watching it together felt deeply necessary, and deeply comforting.

In the film, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon play Thelma and Louise, two middle-aged women, who, trapped by unfulfilling relationships and the confines of domestic life expected of them, leave their male partners behind in Arkansas and set out on a search for freedom. The narrative takes a dark turn on the first night of their road trip as Thelma is violently assaulted in the parking lot by a man she meets in a bar. Catching the assailant in the act, Louise shoots him dead, setting into motion an unstoppable chain of crimes. In the moments after the murder, a frantic Thelma suggests they go to the police rather than flee the scene. Louise looks at her in astonishment, and reminds her that no one will believe her accusation when she just spent the night dancing and drinking with her assailant.

“Who’s gonna believe that? We don’t live in that kind of world, Thelma!” It’s this heartbreaking, despairing line that travels the length of their time on the run and into today. Their ensuing delinquency is spurred not so much by vigilante justice, but by the fact that their only alternative is surrendering to a degrading legal system which systematically dismisses the experiences of survivors of sexual assault. We later discover that Louise, too, is a survivor. The world is undoubtedly stacked against them.

This narrative is driven by the idea that violence begets violence, and when the criminal justice system is an enabler in this violence, seeking revenge is righteous. In a world where the law does not seek justice for survivors, living outside of it—even for a fleeting moment—is worth it for the taste of freedom. There is something incredibly satisfying in each of their crimes: Louise shooting her friend’s rapist, Thelma robbing a store in a confident fashion typically reserved for male characters, the two of them setting their grotesque harasser’s truck on fire. On an indulgent level, the film engages in the ultimate revenge fantasy for women. As two outlaws, Thelma and Louise’s actions are certainly political in their refusal to comply with authorities and imprisonment. But they are also intensely personal, as they seek a different kind of escape: one from sexual violence.

But the fact that the film—and these narratives, indulgences, and desires—continue to carry the same relatability today asks us to examine several unsettling questions: Why has so little changed since the 90’s surrounding the way sexual assault cases are handled?

Why do survivors still feel that the law is against them, that there is no one they can trust? Why do so many vulnerable populations feel that their bodies are taking up space in a legal system that wasn’t built to protect them?

The characters use a clunky Polaroid to take their iconic selfie, eat alone in retro diners, drive a Ford Thunderbird, and are dressed in quintessentially 90’s cat-eyed sunglasses and acid wash high-waisted jeans.

At times it feels like a hokey, oldies classic, but then

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quickly feels too unnervingly familiar and relevant to be relegated to a merely bygone feminist narrative. The reality is, we still don’t live in the kind of world where Thelma would be believed. +++ 1992, the year Thelma and Louise entered theaters, was dubbed the “Year of the Woman” by US popular media in reference to the arduously fought political campaigns of women running for office and the unprecedented bravery of Anita Hill’s testimony. That November, an unprecedented 47 women were elected to the House and four more elected as Senators—tripling female representation in the Senate. As sensational headlines alluded to female domination, the elected women pushed back on the year’s label. Senator Mikulski, one of the women elected that year, said, “Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman makes it sound like the Year of the Caribou or the Year of the Asparagus. We’re not a fad, a fancy, or a year.” Twenty-six years later, the same lesson is falling on deaf ears. In recent months, CNN, Politico, and the New York Times have all run headlines referencing 2018 as the next “Year of the Woman,” citing the more than 300 women running for House seats, the 30,000 women who have registered for office or volunteer on campaigns (a 40 percent increase from the last election), and the triumphant primary victories of candidates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacy Abrams, and Ayanna Pressley. But slapping on the “Year of the Woman” label diminishes the very real struggles that women continue to face. In reality, every year continues to be the “Year of the Man,” as men still dominate the most powerful spheres of our nation and dictate the laws that govern our bodies.

The historical parallels between 1992 and 2018 have only become more pronounced recently. Last Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford stepped into the national spotlight to challenge the most recent Supreme Court nominee, echoing Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony during Judge Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination hearings. Both back then, five months after the release of Thelma and Louise, and today, as we await the Judiciary Committee’s decision on Kavanaugh, the dialogue between the two women in the film before they flee extends into a public, nationwide conversation in which we ask, do we believe survivors?

During Anita Hill’s testimony 26 years ago, the dominance of men in the Senate and their fumbling conception of consent was put on full display as an all-male, all-white Judiciary Committee interrogated Hill, a Black woman, for hours, demeaning her experience of sexual harassment and questioning her integrity, honesty, and professionalism. Thomas, a Black man, denounced her testimony as a “high-tech lynching,” intertwining race into an already complex moment of sexism, the nuances of which American society was not ready to understand. As many feminists ignored the racial undertones that Thomas exploited to justify the abuse of a woman, and many Black males ignored the gender dynamics of a sexual assault case, Hill’s vulnerable position as both Black

and a woman exposed one of the greatest intersectional organization failures. “How do you think certain people would have reacted if I had come forward and been white, blond-haired and blue-eyed?” Hill asked in 2002. Today, Justice Thomas sits on the bench, waiting to hear the results of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Kavanaugh’s fate.

Like Anita Hill, Ford’s name was leaked to the press.

Like Hill, she received death threats and had false and misleading claims spread about her. But Ford is white and blond-haired, eliminating the racial animus Hill faced and meaning she does not have to meet the same burden of proof that Hill had to. “In 2018, our senators must get it right,” wrote Hill recently for the New York Times, advising the Senate on how to handle Christine Ford’s hearings. “There is no way to redo 1991, but there are ways to do better.”

Even though Ford’s testimony was not politicized along the same racial lines, last Thursday revealed that her voice as a woman continues to place her as the subject of debate over her motives and credibility. There are now four Democrat women on the committee, and Republicans attempted to change their optics this time around by hiring a female prosecutor.

But the all-white, all-male Republican members merely used her as a guise, hiding the same exact form of accusatory condescension and skepticism. Ford still had to relive her trauma in front of millions, as she was grilled on ridiculous minutia and asked to give psychological reasoning for the impact of violence. Comprising a majority of the Judiciary Committee seats, Republicans discredited Ford’s story as a partisan political ploy and voted Friday to advance Kavanaugh to the floor for a full Senate vote. As Kavanaugh aggressively denied all allegations, just like Justice Thomas did 26 years ago, it is certainly telling of who is allowed to rage in public spaces.

This dramatic national reckoning comes, just as it did in 1991, mere months before an election in which women have the opportunity to seize more political power than they have ever had access to. +++ When Thelma and Louise was released five months before the Anita Hill hearing, it was deeply beloved by some and struck a nerve in others—mostly men. The New York Times ran a piece that said, “…others have attacked it for what they say is gratuitous violence, for its poor female role models and for deliberately presenting men in the worst possible light. Feminism or Male-Bashing?” It was accused of promoting violence against men and glamorizing sexual immorality and promiscuity among young women. But many women found catharsis in its representation of a reality that so rarely is portrayed on screen. One lesbian activist in Los Angeles declared it in a now infamous quote, “the first movie I’ve ever seen which told the downright truth.”

Thelma and Louise was deeply groundbreaking for its portrayal of Thelma’s journey to sexual freedom and expression. Escaping both her emotionally abusive husband and a violent assault, she begins a playful fling

05 OCT 2018

Revisiting Thelma and Louise in the second “Year of the Woman” with sexy, confident cowboy and hitchhiker, JD (played

by Brad Pitt), whom the two pick up on their travels.

JD and Thelma’s relationship is one of nonchalance, excitement, and consent—a combination that finally allows Thelma to have a sexual experience on her own terms. This scene of the film demonstrates Thelma reclaiming bodily autonomy after having it ripped away, and that initially feels healing and liberating, for both Thelma and those watching. But the duo soon discover that JD has stolen all of their money, propelling them into their second crime of robbing a store out of the necessity for money in their flight from the legal system. The value of Thelma’s sexual liberation in this scene is put in jeopardy as yet another man violates assumptions of respect and trust. However, as Louise breaks down in tears, Thelma assumes the stalwart role of Louise’s guardian in her weakest moment—throwing one last finger up to all the men who have fucked her over. She chooses Louise.

The queer subtext to the characters’ relationship throughout the film offers an alternative conception of bodily autonomy and mutual respect. The film ends with a final kiss, suggesting that the bond between the two women did perhaps transcend platonic friendship.

Not only do they repeatedly refuse a life of male partnership and a life of imprisonment, but they choose to be together. “Let’s keep going!” Louise tells Thelma, clutching her hand tightly. Though their feelings toward each other remain open to interpretation from the viewer, it is clear that Thelma and Louise do choose each other, in whatever form their relationship may take. As such, they pose the ultimate threat to patriarchy: the elimination of dependence on the male.

Thelma and Louise’s feminism is still limited in its reach; not explicitly addressing the queer aspects of Thelma and Louise’s relationship weakens the film’s inclusivity. The suppression of queer narratives from this film’s legacy limits the universality of its message surrounding sexual violence. Many genders, races, and sexual orientations are impacted by a patriarchal system and play a role in the political movements to dismantle them. There is no doubt that this year’s surge in women seeking office is deeply connected to the influence of the #MeToo movement and of grassroots activism that has supported and amplified the voices

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

of survivors challenging the most powerful offices— and the men who occupy them—in media and politics.

But it is a Black woman, Tarana Burke, who originally founded #MeToo as a grass-roots movement to reach sexual assault survivors in underprivileged communities. And it was Anita Hill who first ignited a national discourse around sexual harassment and demanding a justice system that works to protect survivors. In analyzing the powerful legacy of films such as Thelma and Louise, it is critical to remember that the message speaks most directly to certain types of women. +++

Louise refuse to live any other way. They are only able to experience this liberation when they realize there is no turning back, no return to feeling trapped, to fleeing, to hiding. As one of the few true choices they have in their lifetime, the women face death together, by their own accord. Their suicide is a final refusal to compromise their desires. Thelma and Louise choose to leave the world that sought to contain them, first through dominance, then through violence, and finally through a facade of justice. It is significant that the audience never actually sees them hit the ground—they are left in flight, frozen, eternal.

But while such an ending feels like they have chosen freedom of their own kind, this redemption and triumph through suicide doesn’t always translate into reality. Anita Hilla and Christine Blasey Ford are not ready to give up their lives in order to escape the law.

Rather, they confront it, choosing to put themselves through an incredibly painful legal process in order to affect change.

Although we were born years after the film was released, it is bittersweet to watch it and realize that we needed this film in some way. It shows us what liberation looks like in a man’s world—our world—where we are still being silenced, dismissed, humiliated, still seen as incapable and insane and unworthy of being believed. Their series of adventures and crimes over the next couple of days offer us a rare look into a fantasy of choices and freedom, one that is exhilarating and hilarious and feisty and awfully realistic. Twenty-six years later, the film still serves its purpose.

There is a moment in the car near the end of the film, as Thelma and Louise are realizing their chase of freedom is futile, when Thelma interrupts the silence: “I feel really awake. I don't recall ever feeling this awake.

You know?” she says, looking out across the desert as Louise listens and smiles. “Everything looks different now. You feel like that? You feel like you got something to live for now?” For Thelma, simply coming to the realization that she is allowed to pursue freedom gives her last living moments meaning and value. She has woken up. We struggle to think of another contemporary film with a conversation like this between two femme characters. A moment with this type of introspection, this desire to find meaning and purpose after trauma, to feel alive and whole after violence. A moment rooted in futility, and in letting that futility go.

Near the film’s closing, the outlaws are given the choice to surrender themselves or be charged with murder. This is their painful ultimatum, indicating the MARA DOLAN B‘19.5 and MIA PATTILLO B‘20 are law has utterly failed the two women and their expe- planning a road trip together. riences of violence. They choose to keep running, in full recognition that they likely won’t make it out alive.

Thelma solemnly tells Louise, “Something’s crossed over in me and I can’t go back. I mean I just couldn’t live.” Louise nods and replies, “I know. I know what you mean.” The infamous scene that concludes the film shows them ultimately choosing death over capture, sharing a heart-wrenching kiss and gripping each other’s hands tightly as they fly over the edge of the Grand Canyon in the airborn Thunderbird. After a weekend of living on their own terms, Thelma and

ARTS

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OUR KIND OF PEOPLE Crazy Rich Asians and diasporic representation There’s a particular moment in Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians that has left me unsettled for the past few days.

It happens during a mahjong game between Rachel, the film’s American-born Chinese protagonist, and Eleanor Young, matriarch of one of Singapore’s wealthiest families. The two women are seated directly across from each other at a mahjong parlor, skillfully exchanging and discarding their playing tiles while embroiled in tense conversation. From an outsider’s perspective, this parlor may be just another backdrop and mahjong just another game of strategy, but this is a space where Rachel and Eleanor’s identities collide.

Enveloped by the sounds of players chattering in indistinct dialects and tiles shuffling across mahjong tables, we are introduced to a side of Singapore that we haven’t seen before. Delivering on its name, Crazy Rich Asians has spent the last two hours touring us through the lives of Singapore’s elites, from elegant old-money mansions to lavish bachelor parties thrown on colossal container ships. Far removed from these displays of grandeur, this mahjong parlor is crowded with patrons whose t-shirts and denim sorely clash with Eleanor’s designer suit. But beyond acting as a common ground between the rich and middle-class, the physical space of the parlor brings Rachel and Eleanor’s cultural conflict to full light. At the mahjong table, where positions are named for the four cardinal directions, Eleanor places herself as the East while Rachel sits as the West, in direct reference to their clashing backgrounds. As the scene later reveals, Rachel’s Asian-American upbringing has become a point of contention for Eleanor once she discovers that Nick––her son and heir to the Young family fortune–– has asked for Rachel’s hand in marriage. Introduced as Nick’s “Chinese professor” girlfriend (though Eleanor corrects this to “Chinese American”) when he returns home to Singapore, Rachel is instantly deemed unfit to carry on the family’s business and its traditions. After a series of cultural missteps, such as Rachel recklessly hugging Eleanor the first time they meet and greeting her using the informal “Auntie Eleanor,” Eleanor has disqualified Rachel as a potential match for Nick for one simple reason: she’s a foreigner.

But during this particular scene, it’s revealed that Rachel has rejected Nick’s proposal and enabled him to marry a woman who holds Eleanor’s approval, that Rachel tells Eleanor she is now indebted to her: “a poor, raised-by-a-single-mother, low-class, immigrant nobody” and coolly walks out of the parlor.

Despite being an empowering moment where Rachel takes ownership over her social standing, her statement decisively pins Eleanor’s disapproval onto the class-based aspects of her identity, which seemed to miss the point entirely. The plain truth of why Eleanor was so averse to Rachel marrying into her family wasn’t because of class status—it was because she was raised in America, and therefore deemed inauthentically Chinese.

the American aspects of her Asian-American identity might interfere with her ability to relate to Chinese people raised in China.

In the US, cultural assimilation is often presented as a one-directional process, where people of color chip away at parts of themselves until they fit into inoffensive, Westernized molds. But as Crazy Rich Asians shows us, this process doesn’t end once AsianAmericans return to Asia. It can also work in reverse, latent in family reunions filled with laughter at broken translations and relatives’ self-satisfaction at hearing a dialect mispronounced. While these moments don’t constitute all cross-cultural encounters, they can shape the Asian-American experience into one of constant criticism, where individuals are judged for how well one half of their identity can rectify the shortcomings of the other. Having spent her entire life in the US being told that she was too Asian to be American, it’s no wonder why Rachel refuses to believe that her American upbringing suddenly invalidates the legitimacy of her Chinese ancestry—and evidently, neither does the film.

Fulfilling the fairytale promises of its romantic-comedy genre, Crazy Rich Asians ends with a glimpse at Nick and Rachel’s engagement party after he successfully proposes a second time. Among the crowd of dancing bodies stands Eleanor, visibly uncomfortable yet unquestionably responsible for the couple’s reconciliation. When Nick proposes to Rachel in an earlier scene, he uses the family ring customarily worn

by Eleanor, revealing that she has relented and allowed Rachel to enter the family. An American-born individual becoming the face of one of Singapore’s richest families is no doubt meant to be read as a victory for the wider Asian-American community––a validation of its struggles with exclusionary members of the Asian community and a testament to Asian-Americans’ cultural legitimacy. Nonetheless, as a viewer raised in southeast Asia, this resolution felt far more like an overwhelming loss for Chinese culture, mainly due to Chu’s reliance on stereotypes to propel Rachel’s battle against Eleanor.

Rather than opening up dialogues between members of the Asian diaspora and those who grew up in Asia, Crazy Rich Asians entrenches historic EastWest dichotomies by reducing Chinese culture to an oppressive, intolerant system. As a friend of mine recently wrote, no more than a minute into meeting Rachel, Eleanor already dismisses her as a freewheeling American when she describes her career as “the pursuit of her passion.” After Rachel briefly meets other Singaporean socialites at a bachelorette resort party she’s been invited to, they leave a grotesque,

BY Audrey Therese Buhain ILLUSTRATION Stephanie Wu DESIGN Christie Zhong

gutted fish on her hotel room’s bedspread and write the words “Catch this, you gold-digging bitch” on her window, having assumed that she’s only dating Nick to access his wealth. These individuals, all raised under predominantly Chinese cultures, are shown to make split-second judgments over a person’s intentions and respectability––on the other hand, people like Rachel, raised in Western countries, don’t retaliate against this hostility. It’s members of the Chinese community who spent a significant portion of their lives away from their culture, such as Nick, who attended British boarding schools, and Peik Lin, who enrolled at an American university, that show far more compassion towards Rachel, equipped with the capacity to form both platonic and romantic connections with her. Chinese culture is portrayed as an exclusionary entity that actively seeks to drive out those who do not belong.

This polarized sentiment does exist in many Asian countries today––I know someone whose parents withdrew all contact from them after finding out that their girlfriend was Filipino (read: brown-skinned) and not Chinese––and Chu calling it to the public’s attention acknowledges generations who have struggled under similar experiences. But failing to show audiences versions of these values at anything less than their extremes comes dangerously close to throwing all Asian upbringings under this umbrella of toxicity while inadvertently championing Western values as superior.

Furthermore, the reasons why this mentality persists today are never explained to us, and it’s precisely this refusal to recognize the underpinnings of Chinese culture that keep it trapped under an irrational, vilifying lens.

As the first Hollywood blockbuster film to feature a predominantly Asian cast since 1993––and with a sequel already ordered for production––we cannot discredit the fact that Crazy Rich Asians is paving the way for Chinese culture, and perhaps more broadly Asian cultures, to occupy a meaningful space within both critical and everyday discourse. While Chu’s film relies too heavily on flattened caricatures of Chinese mothers and simplistic portrayals of familial obligation to reconcile diasporic narratives with traditional Asian communities, it also creates platforms from which these gaps in our shared knowledge can be filled. Crazy Rich Asians has provided its audiences with an opportunity to share stories from Asia, America, and every other wellspring of Asian identity––now we need to seize it and speak.

AUDREY THERESE BUHAIN B'22 is looking for a mahjong partner.

+++ This idea of the “inauthentic” Asian-American is an undercurrent that repeatedly weaves itself throughout the film. In preparation for her trip to Singapore, Rachel’s mother warns her about being rejected by Nick’s family, reasoning that while she might look Chinese and speak Chinese, her mind unmistakably isn’t. After Eleanor tells Rachel that she “will never be enough” for Nick, her Singapore-raised college roommate Peik Lin rationalizes this with the frank “banana” stereotype: that Rachel is yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. But after each of these comments, we never see Rachel acknowledge them as true, or at least reasoned––she simply brushes them off and moves onto her next course of action. It’s as though Rachel herself is unwilling to accept how 11

FEATURES

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A snuff-boxful of Bibles by Wilbur Macey Stone ; with illustrations from the author’s collection 2 Godey’s lady’s book and magazine. Volume CVII. Number 640. October, 1883 3 Hymn : for the bi-centennial anniversary of the settlement of Norwich by L.H.Sigourney, Manning, Perry & Co., Steam Book and Job Printers, 1859 Courtesy of the John Hay Library 1

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

EPHEMERA

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THE MAKINGS OF WHITE MILLENNIALS A Propaganda Suite

BY Arie Davey

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LITERARY

05 OCT 2018

FIGHT TO TABLE A Pittsburgh international eatery and its politics

BY Pia Mileaf-Patel ILLUSTRATION Ella Rosenblatt DESIGN Christie Zhong

Dawn Weleski is a Pittsburgher. She talks fast and with a purpose, was “raised on pierogis and pulaski noodles,” and has a nostalgic appreciation for the foods her parents and grandparents brought her up on: Jell-O salads and creamed lettuce, “which is iceberg lettuce mixed with miracle whip,” she explained.

These days, Weleski has a more diverse palate. She’s had confetti cake at an apartment complex in Havana during a cooking-demo-turned-salsa-lesson. She’s learned to make barbari bread from a Persian grandmother’s recipe using locally milled Pennsylvanian grains. She’s even learned cooking tricks from North Korean defectors in a hotel kitchenette in Seoul—all part of her research for Conflict Kitchen, the Pittsburgh art installation and food kiosk that closed last summer after a lauded ten-year run.

Artistic partners and co-faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Weleski and Jon Rubin founded Conflict Kitchen with a menu of anything but the type of food they grew up on. Their website defines the project: “Conflict Kitchen only serves food from countries with which the United States is in conflict.”

In their last installation, they even served food from within the US; the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s cuisine was featured during the height of the Standing Rock reservation uprising against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Unlike their other installations, Weleski and Rubin did not take an overt political stance on the issue. Rather, they attempted to start a conversation by simply serving a particular cuisine.

For example, instead of criticising the Dakota Access Pipeline directly, this particular installation focused on a Native American community with origins near Pittsburgh and provided additional resources for visitors to look into on their own time.

Over ten years ago, the duo worked alongside a Persian friend and several local farms to create the first dish that Conflict Kitchen’s inchoate pop-up would serve. Later, stews and technically complicated rice dishes were added to the Iranian menu, as well as lecture series, film screenings, and even Instagram takeovers intended to inspire visitors of the restaurant to do more research about Iran and begin a discourse in Pittsburgh. The conflict between the U.S. and Iran, Weleski and Rubin postulated, was already on the average American’s mind, but their intention was to educate on the “why and how,” as Weleski phrased it, in addition to providing a concrete experience of everyday Iranian culture.

“Food is the medium,” Weleski told the College Hill Independent, offering an opportunity to “break bread.”

She elaborated: “to expand one’s knowledge, one’s palate, one’s experience. It gets you at that gut level and it also becomes that opportunity while you’re chewing and having that experience, you can introduce additional information and complication and nuance to something more than just a sensorial experience, which is what art does anyway.” However, is breaking bread the best means of political engagement? Perhaps its power lies in the ability to inspire an effective response.

Each iteration of the food kiosk took two years to create. A tentative location is suggested, a dialogue starts, and the team launches into research, relying on the generosity of individuals and organizations Weleski referred to as “nodes of collaborators and partners,

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both in the country that we’re focusing on and in the diasporic community in Pittsburgh, as well as other cities throughout the US.” When Pittsburgh lacked a community of, say, North Koreans, Weleski and Rubin traveled to Virginia and Los Angeles. +++ On takeout food and the history of foreign food being adapted to American standards, Weleski said, “I’m not saying that’s not cultural appropriation.” According to Weleski, the appropriation is, “built in because of a number of things: a capitalist society that exists in the States, the opportunities that are or are not afforded to people that have chosen to come to the US or who have been brought to the US not by their own volition.”

Weleski itches to engage, comfortable with self-contradiction for the sake of nuance. “At the heart of Conflict Kitchen, food isn’t the medium.” The true heart of Conflict Kitchen is the relationships formed between people who participate in eating at, working on, or experiencing the installation. “We are very cognizant of trying to be a bridge,” she explained,“that bridge is not a neutral bridge; that bridge is not without editing and curation of voices.” When a customer orders food from Conflict Kitchen, they are handed a pamphlet with a political testimonial along with their food. Voices from that region would speak to US-home country relations in print while the customer ate the meal from that region. But if the customer at Conflict Kitchen wished to toss the sandwich wrapper that had an interview with an Iranian Pittsburgher printed on it, they were free to do so.

In 2014, Conflict Kitchen stirred up controversy with one particular “curation of voices.” After announcing a Palestinian food menu, Rubin and Weleski received a surplus of media coverage attacking them for one-sidedness, as well as a death threat warranting the installation’s week-long closure. This sparked inflammatory headlines in conservative outlets. “Foundation Run by Kerry’s Wife Funds Anti-Israel Eatery,” referencing the $50,000 grant from the Heinz Endowment, which was headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry at the time. This NewsMax article calls Weleski and Rubin’s installation a “radical anti-Israel, anti-American snack bar.”

Simultaneously, Heinz Endowments was publicly disavowed by B’nai B’rith International, an NGO with a complicated history and notable role in the transition of Israel into a state. According to a November 2014 article in Hyperallergic, the controversy surrounded two issues: “Its Palestine themed programming,” and, “text printed on their food wrappers, which included excerpts from interviews conducted in Palestine.”

The conversation sparked in Pittsburgh mirrored the high-intensity of national discourse on the occupation of Palestine.

Pre-death-threats, Weleski and Rubin wrote a response to the uproar in line with what one might expect from conceptual artists: “Promoting understanding is at the core of Conflict Kitchen’s mission.”

Although Conflict Kitchen never capitulated to calls for an apology over centering their programming around Palestinian voices, they fell short of taking a hard stance on Israeli occupation. “If we were an activist project,” Weleski said, “when the BBC reporter asked us, ‘Are you

pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli?’ we might have had a different response than, ‘We’re pro-human-rights.’” In terms of the paperwork for Conflict Kitchen’s financial backing from the Heinz Endowment, they are not an activist project. It is striking that they refuse to be defined as such, as their subject matter is overtly political, and the public response is political and activist, too.

On her own political role in Conflict Kitchen, Weleski said, “I think the project is successful because people can understand it as a food project—whatever that means. Or as a cultural project, or a political project.” As a political project, it drew the most engagement from the public. However, she clarified: “Our main priority is thinking of ourselves as artists.” +++ Conducting honest research to create testimonial pamphlets for Conflict Kitchen is difficult, even impossible, in Weleski’s eyes. “I have a preconceived notion of the answer that you want,” she told me, drawing my attention to any answer that seemed to dodge a question, “so I’m trying to battle that. Imagine someone in a foreign country, where English is their second language, third language, fourth language, who knows?

And then the mistranslations that happen there.”

Conflict Kitchen has been dedicated to ensuring that interview participant volunteers are entirely comfortable with sharing and aware of the means with which their words will be packaged—often on actual food packaging.

Weleski continued, “We’re not interested in getting a particular set of answers. We’re interested in getting to have the time and the space and the interest in working with people.” Ideally, people are open to sharing their culture and cuisine, and have a full understanding of how their words will be applied in the Pittsburgh installation and handed to people via transcribed interview. It is an attempt to start a conversation between different sides of one large community.

According to Weleski, future iterations of Conflict Kitchen, ideally, will travel further throughout the 100-mile radius of the Pittsburgh region to reach people who have not yet experienced their food, and to start the conversation among those who are perhaps less willing to engage than the progressive leaning residents of central Pittsburgh. Although the duo have not announced plans for any such future iteration yet, Weleski said that she and Rubin seek the best way to continue the project, and to preserve it as a “toolbox:” the medium for their political art statement.

Even so, it is crucial to consider the gap between artistic conversation and the impact on the lives of millions of people who live in countries devestated by US military and/or economic intervention. Cultural awareness via food is a humanizing step, and an important, groundbreaking one, but certainly does not encompass the total complexity and high stakes of US military expansionism in the 21st Century.

PIA MILEAF-PATEL B‘20 wonders if the next iteration of Conflict Kitchen should highlight the conflict between the US and its citizens.

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BY Miles Guggenheim ILLUSTRATION Carly Paul DESIGN Katherine Sang

WAR OF

PERFORMANCE Spectatorship and combat in Fortnite: Battle Royale

This summer, in Kazan, Russia, France’s veteran striker Antoine Griezmann stepped up to the penalty spot to score the first goal against the Argentinian national team. Griezmann looks like a 16-year-old boy.

But as he sets the ball and steps back to take the shot, his Bieber-ish handsome features recede into a gaunt 1,000-yard stare. There is nothing technically difficult in a professional goal-scorer like Griezmann taking a penalty kick—the burden is psychological. When Griezmann steps up to take a penalty, he is uniquely isolated and judged. His teammates, once a source of companionship and support, are reduced to the level of millions of spectators at home in their living rooms, leaning in, acutely fixated on him alone.

On screen, the production surrounding a penalty kick highlights this dynamic. The camera frame abandons the tactical bird’s eye view of the field, instead favoring the close up shots that build a good Hollywood drama. Rather than an athlete, he is suddenly a charactor deciding the outcome of a plot blown up in a stadium, injected with ideals of glory and nationalism.

When Griezmann scores, it occasions a moment of pure catharsis. He is a boy again, dashing for the corner flag. There, he beams up at the crowd, and, returning their gaze, he forms the letter L with his hand before placing it on his forehead. He kicks his feet out like a Russian dancer. If you don’t understand the reference, his dance sort of deflates the moment. Out of context, it is an absurd, distasteful motion that does not seem to fit the heartfelt context of the World Cup. However, if you are one of the 125 million people who play the hit 2017 video game Fortnite: Battle Royale, this evokes a feeling of camaraderie. +++ Unlike soccer, the rules of Fortnite do not pit two teams against each other. On this field of play, the individual is perpetually glorified as they attempt to persist within a chaotic mass of rival dog-eat-dog personalities.

In its most popular game mode, a round of Fortnite begins when 100 players parachute into a free-for-all battle ground about four times the size of Vatican City.

Sometimes, players team up in a squad, but most of the time they enter into the fray alone. Once they are on the ground, players have to survive by their own wits––scavenging for guns, gadgets, ammunition, and medical supplies. At first, players find these supplies in the ghost towns, abandoned malls, and creepy log cabins scattered throughout the area; but, as the game progresses, players further equip themselves by killing each other and taking equipment. As all this happens, the map shrinks slowly, forcing confrontation after confrontation until the final climactic moment, when

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SCIENCE & TECH

the last remaining players fight for a Victory Royale. In these last minutes, the game takes on the aesthetic of an Ayn-Randian fever dream, in which the final (most skilled) players frantically construct massive wooden towers to gain the advantage of high ground over each other.

The best players normally maintain a good balance of construction and suppressive gunfire before building their towers into one another with quick constructive outbursts of floating staircases. At this point a dance of creation and destruction proceeds tensely in close quarters. With rapid speed, the final players throw up wooden walls to entangle each other within the existing architectural framework. At every possible opportunity, they blast a round of deadly buckshot or toss an explosive device into the next available open gap. Finally, after a tense minute or so, there inevitably comes a critical mistake: maybe a player falls off a plank, or a wall that was supposed to go up misses its foundation.

An uncomfortable gap of vulnerable space opens up between the two contestants before a brief and vicious salvo of bullets. For the final survivor, Victory Royale stretches across the screen on a light blue banner. The runner up, shot dead, briefly falls to the ground before exploding, like the other 98 losers, into the items and equipment that they were once composed of.

Since its release this year, Fortnite has accumulated a total of 125 million users. According to Forbes Magazine, its tournaments, streamed through Twitch, (like a combination of NFL primetime and Netflix) have drawn a sturdier viewership than most popular television shows. Despite being a “free to play game,” it has grossed more than blockbuster pictures like Jumanji and Solo: A Star Wars Story. Besides being the most popular game of 2017, it has had a massive cultural impact—so much so that soccer players like Griezmann have incorporated it into their athletic celebrity. In America, star basketball players like Paul George, Karl Anthony, and Gordon Hayward have streamed their Fortnite to the public. Rappers like Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, and Drake are also all members of Fortnite community.

There are many reasons Fortnite has seen the success and relevance it enjoys today. On the most basic level, it is free to play and available across almost every gaming platform. Even more critical, though, is

the fact that Fortnite is perhaps the first game to forge a competitive connection between iPhones and video game consoles. Although, previously, the most competitive multiplayer video games were reserved for large computers and $300 gaming consoles like Xbox and PS4, Fortnite players can enter the action from any location with cell service. In the same way that mobile phones decentralized communication, Fortnite has provided new levels of virtual interaction and competition. In groups, friends no longer have to take turns passing the Xbox controller. While one person enjoys the comfort of a TV screen, others can bury their heads in their iPhones, all of them competing in the same virtual space.

The capacity to render such an immersive, competitive environment on iPhones alone has broadened the game’s demographic to numbers previously unattainable to most console and PC games. When there is no expensive hardware required, people normally hesitant to play video games are giving the gaming lifestyle a try.

According to a statistic published in the Chicago Tribune on May 29th, almost half of Fortnite users are women, which is a leap forward in diversity in a gaming world primarily inhabited by men. These new steps in accessibility and diversity, however, have met some resistance from the old guard, a predominantly male gamer community that is perfectly comfortable shelling out thousands of dollars to build the optimal game system.

The article “Fortnite Mobile is Becoming a Battle of the Sexes,” published in March this year, compiles Twitter quotes exemplifying a sexist tone underlying this conflict between console and mobile: “ever since fortnite went moblie, all the girls started playing and now they lag when they text LOL;” “Fortnite mobile lowkey for girls LMAO have yet to encounter a guy playing it, they stick to console;” “girls think they us now cuz they got Fortnite mobile.” These criticisms of ‘casual’ iPhone players read as the latest insecure defense of the male gamer norm.

For, at its core, Fortnite is essentially still a classic shooter game. Its violence and raw individualism are typical of many masculinist mainstream video games–– even if its demographic is expanding. Most of the core weapons in the game portray a visual realism unmatched by the other, more flowery aspects of the game. The

Part of the game’s genius and broad appeal is its ability to drag benevolent cultural iconography into the crossfire.

05 OCT 2018

broadly named “Assault Rifle (Burst Air)” is an exact visual replica of a the FAMAS, military grade and internally distributed French manufactured assault rifle.

Another example, the “Thermal Scope Assault Rifle,” is visually identical to the M4 carbine assault rifle, a military grade cousin of the infamous AR-15 used in the Las Vegas, Parkland, and Newtown mass shootings.

Part of the game’s genius and broad appeal, however, is its ability to drag benevolent cultural iconography into the crossfire.

Upon killing enemies with these weapons, players may choose to ‘hit the dab’ over their fallen victim.

Others, if they are more advanced, can sprinkle salt on their conquest—mimicking the famed motion from the Salt Bae meme. Further, the game’s skins (the way a player’s avatar appears) bear a similar relationship to the world outside Fortnite. One of the most respected and feared skins, “Reaper,” which resembles Keanu Reeves from John Wick, is one of many cosmetic references to popular action films. Another skin, “Alpine Ace,” mimics a Winter Olympics Skier: If the player is from France, the Skier has the blue, white, and red tricolor printed over their spandex and helmet; if the player is from Canada, the colors and symbols change accordingly. Other skins represent broader cultural aesthetics, like “Funk Ops,” which embodies the African-American Funk movement in music and dance. Or “Heidi,” the blond Bavarian woman who reps the alpine cultures of Western Europe on the battle ground. Every new update, the surplus of new skins gets bigger and more diverse. According to a Forbes article published in June, 70 percent of Fortnite players spend an average of $80 on skins. For a game that makes over $300 million a month, this reveals an interesting aspect of Fortnite: The showcase of skill implicit in a Victory Royale is not enough. Surviving to the last man is as much an ostentatious fashion show or display of identity as a game of gunplay and domination. +++ It doesn’t take a lot of investigation to uncover the perceived king of all this action. The gamertag ‘Ninja’ is everywhere in the Fortnite community. The Twitch celebrity comes out on top of the 41 percent of the games he drops into, streaming the action live to over 160,000 paid Twitch users and later posting them on Youtube for an audience of 18 million subscribers. Finding Tyler Bevins, the man behind the gamer tag, is a bit harder.

He lives somewhere outside of Chicago, but won’t give more information than that. Really the only window into Ninja’s life outside the game of Fortnite is the small profile frame from which he narrates his gameplay. He sits in a Star Trek-looking chair with a mini

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Surviving to the last man is as much an ostentatious fashion show or display of identity as a game of gunplay and domination. fridge full of Redbull behind him. The one visible wall is almost always bare. Despite the poverty of beauty in this image, Tyler Bevins makes around $500,000 a month from this paid Twitch following. The Redbull fridge behind him most certainly adds to that figure, and the Fortnite celebrity tournaments he now hosts likely add to that sum.

After listening to a few minutes of Bevin’s fragmented and infrequent bursts of narration, it is clear that his celebrity rests on his pure domination inside the game. In every scenario he broadcasts, Ninja seems to stroll through battlefield. His rivals act in slow motion as he guns them down, one after the other. A skull icon to right side of the screen counts the kills in case you arrive to the stream late. His notoriety has earned him collaborative stream sessions with Drake, Lil Yachty, and Joe Jonas, all of which are all unfortunately far more awkward and uninspiring than the worst Hollywood buddy cop movies.

Still, Fortnite streamers like Ninja have elevated Twitch to a position of immense power in the world of mass media. Since Fortnite’s release, CNBC reports that there has been a 3.2 million increase in broadcasters: a 60 percent increase in content producers across the video game streaming platform. Today, almost 50 percent of the content on Twitch is produced through Fortnite, which has landed Twitch (and thus, Jeff Bezos) a larger viewership than some cable TV networks. The success of Fortnite on Twitch may be in part thanks to the strange celebrity of Ninja, but Twitch really owes its newfound relevance to structures of performance and spectatorship which are already present within the competitive essence of Fortnite itself.

Even without Twitch, Fortnite is itself a platform for streaming media. When a player is killed in Fortnite, they immediately assume a spectral viewership of their murderer, whom they can follow and watch until the end of the round. If that player is killed, the spectator transfers to the new survivor. Often, dead players will only linger for a short time. They stay around mainly to judge their opponent and possibly analyze why they are superior or what gave them the unfair edge.

In some instances, though, when a player is evidently impressive, their dead enemies will become a sort of

audience, eagerly waiting to see how their killer does in the rest of the game. In game, players can see how many ghosts are watching via a little icon on the bottom left side of the screen. After killing someone and noting this active icon, a player will find a safe place to dance, taunting their victim. This dynamic, a strange hybridization of conquest and performance, is the ontological root of “Taking the L,” the dance Griezmann displayed to the world against Argentina. +++ Unsurprisingly, Antoine Griezmann brought his playstation with him to Russia. He believes the video game keeps his nerves under control. Before heading to the World Cup finals against Croatia—an event that would be broadcasted to over 562 million people—he described his daily psychological preparation: “I stay the same, play Fortnite all day…” On July 15, France played Croatia in the World Cup Final. In the 34th minute, a foul is called in the box and again Griezmann is elected to preside over the penalty kick. Again: the dramatic close up frame. Again: visible signs of crippling pressure. Again: the joyful, cathartic release as Griezmann brings France to a 2-1 lead over Croatia.

Griezmann runs to the same corner, he performs the same absurd dance, only this time it looks strangely normal.

MILES GUGGENHEIM B'20 is a member of the old guard.

SCIENCE & TECH

16

I was 12 by the river When I was 12, my uncle took me To the river, so we could Skip rocks. He showed me

BY Wen Zhuang DESIGN Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana

What rocks were easy To carry and to throw Across. Come here, he said And look at the size and

Tomb of the Wrestlers

Feel the surface, do you feel

Magritte, before painting The

How soft?

Tomb of the Wrestlers, Was challenged to paint white

He said, Hey, sit down,

On white—a white rose in a

Reach out your palm, I will

White room. Instead it bled, and left

Show you the force

A great big shadow and, no

You will need to exert

Room to look out the window.

And how quickly you will Then let go

Like the rose, fighters are—they, Fighters, something grandiose

Rage and Return

And when sensitive

I am angry often, not by

To something, one makes it

Fault of my own. My mom

Fill room. And when one fills

Taught me to be. Said

A room, care must be taken that it is

Anger would help me.

A room, and not a tomb.

Anger would be— Near. When she could not be.

Where do wrestlers perish?

Inside this room, or the

I am angry often, and wish

Stamen, choked by the shut

Sometimes I could be gentle,

Window, or the bud

Paw, stroke, nestle, instead Of—

All my limbs

I am angry often

You don’t begin with Dear,

And wish I would not

You address it to me, as She,

Bark, and push.

She was a good girl, I cared About her so I stayed

I am angry often, how, I ask

17

You, do you want me to be?

You write about our wrangle

I am angry often, not by

That time we, in an embrace

Fault of my dad. Or his,

Rolled across the grass. Livid, but

But because I was

Jubilant, and aching—our knees sore

Taught.

The next day

LITERARY

05 OCT 2018

THE L

I S

T ... .... . ur oyster :,-)

FRIDAY 10.5

Seventh Generation Rising: A Discussion with Native Youth Activists

Friedman Hall (on Brown University’s Main Green, 75 Waterman Street) // 4-6PM Indigenous People’s Day Weekend is an opportunity to reckon with generations of colonization on this continent and around the world; this event foregrounds Native activists working to counter this colonization in its most contemporary forms. Featuring organizers who have organized actions at Standing Rock, Bears Ears, and here in Providence at Brown.

SATURDAY 10.6

Shut Down Fascism in RI!

Rhode Island State House (82 Smith Street) // 10AM-3PM Resist Marxism, a white-nationalist fascist group under the guise of 1st Amendment fanaticism, is returning to Providence to promote more vitriolic gibberish after being crushed this August. Part of the reason for their summertime defeat was that they melted in the rain like the witch from the Wizard of Oz. Otherwise, it was entirely due to being outnumbered by anti-fascist opposition. Show up and make a bigot cry!

Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Weigh-Off

Frerichs Farm (43 Kinnicutt Avenue, Warren) // 9AM-5PM After shouting down small, small men, take a countryside retreat to look at a big pumpkin. The Indy once thought of itself as “southern New England’s largest weekly newspaper,” but TBH we haven’t checked up on that in a while. Maybe we need a gigantic gourd to boost our ego!

SUNDAY 10.7

Federal Hill Columbus Day Parade

Atwells Avenue // 11AM We’re not going to call it “Columbus Day” but we WILL take you up on people crawling down Atwells like a festive traffic jam. Word on the street is that the Providence Oyster Bar will be serving its “signature raw bar” at the festival alongside the parade, and we for one congratulate this event for including limbless bivalves in the march!

MONDAY 10.8

Pronk 2018: Providence Honk Festival

South Water Street // 2-10PM “A cacophonous street celebration with out of town brass bands!” This, and also, seriously the most fun outdoor party in Providence.

TUESDAY 10.9

Dollar Oyster Night aka “Buck a Shuck”

Parkside Rotisserie and Bar (76 S Main Street) // 4-10PM Didn’t get your fill of RI’s signature mollusk (and the subtle theme of this week’s list) at Sunday’s public display of Italian-American identity? Worry not, humble reader! Head on down to Parkside Rotisserie Bar this Tuesday and indulge in some cheap, local shucks.

WEDNESDAY 10.10

Flynt Flo$$y and Turquoise Jeep w/ special friends at AS220

AS220 (115 Empire Street) // 9PM-1AM // $12 advance/$14 at door Attention ALL outsider-art aficionados, Weird Al sympathizers & youtube-heads… Flynt Flo$$y, legendary rapper and humorist, will shortly be pulling up to PVD along with some other characters from Flo$$y’s own Turquoise Jeep record label. Expect 2010-era viral hits like Fried or Fertilized (a song about eggs, and morning sex) and Lemme Smang It (smang is a portmanteau of the words ‘smash’ & ‘bang’). The event organizers also promise that, during the show, ‘a professional wrestler named Sully will engage in very real mortal combat with someone in attendance.’ This LW has no idea what this event will *feel* like, and neither should you!

THURSDAY 10.11

Power Plants & New Energy in the Age of Climate Change

William Hall Library (1825 Broad Street, Cranston RI) // 6-7:15PM Public forum concerning the proposed Burrillville Power Plant, a widely-protested natural gas facility in Burrillville, RI. Reporter Tim Faulkner of ecoRI will be moderating a panel exploring how regulators and utilities, namely National Grid and ISO New England, control and manipulate the local energy market. Discussion will center on the toll that natural gas takes in exacerbating climate change, while proposing some alternative energy sources that RI should be funding instead.