The College Hill Independent Vol. 38 Issue 10

11 PVD’s of the Vietnam War

03 INDY EXCLUSIVE: An investigation into how court fees and fines trap low-income Rhode Islanders in poverty

Volume 38 • Issue 10

April 19, 2019

the College Hill   Independent

09 soaps and a sob story

the Indy

a Brown * RISD Weekly

R n* A B row

D IS

ly Week

The Indy Contents

From The Editors

Cover Untitled Tiger Dingsun

My Indy,

News 02 Week in Video Giants Alan Dean, Ricardo Gomez, Peder Schaefer, Bilal Memon 13 Towards a New Collective History Wen Zhuang and Dana Kurniawan Court Debt — Special Investigation 03 Caught in Rhode Island Sydney Anderson, Sophie Khomtchenko, Alina Kulman, Nick Roblee-Strauss, Harry August, Julia Rock, Lucas Smolcic Larson, Olivia Kan-Sperling and Matt Ishimaru X 08 Mugshots Jorge Palacios and Alex Westfall

It’s not you, it’s us—the ones that are leaving, the ones with no more pages to fill. To be honest, when you cut that comma, it felt like the last straw. We are moving on, but this sure won’t be easy—we will be scanning the masthead online, hoping that you haven’t found someone better, but also knowing that you deserve the best. It’s unfair, we know, you’ll see reminders of our time together throughout PVD— our visit to the sex dungeon, that time we bowled our first strike, even our Sunday morning walks along Keene Street. We’ve been holding you back, and we know you’ll find other people to write about DARE, gentrification, or the perils of big data. We think you deserve to know: we just couldn’t take not being read anymore, and we cheated with The Journal. It was just one page, we swear. Over the past four years, we’ve simply grown so far apart that long distance could never work—not even Slack could keep our connection alive, and we knew you always liked Will more than us anyway. I hope we can still be friends, maybe we could freelance something? Eternally yours, -KN + HA

Features 09 Days of our Lives Will Weatherly 11 Long Shadows, Smoking Guns Tabitha Payne Arts 15 Creative Strategem Liby Hays

Mission Statement

Literary 16 4 Poems Shuchi and Justine Nguyen-Nguyen

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 17 Toe Tags The Indy Staff

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. 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 Sarah Clapp Maria Gerdyman News Jacob Alabab-Moser Jessica Bram Murphy Giacomo Sartorelli Metro Julia Rock Lucas Smolcic Larson Sara Van Horn Arts Ben Bienstock Alexis Gordon Liby Hays Features Tara Sharma Cate Turner

Shannon Kingsley Lily Meyersohn Literary Shuchi Agrawal Justin Han Isabelle Rea Ephemera Nicole Cochary Claire Schlaikjer X Jorge Palacios Alex Westfall List Ella Rosenblatt Signe Swanson Will Weatherly

Science & Tech Miles Guggenheim

Special Projects Harry August Lucas Smolcic Larson Eve Zelickson

19 APRIL 2019

VOL 38 ISSUE 10

Staff Writers Jesse Barber Brionne Frazier Eduardo Gutierrez-Peña Mohannad Jabrah Nickolas Roblee-Strauss Gemma Sack Sophie Khomtchenko Emma Kofman Alina Kulman Dana Kurniawan Bilal Memon Kanha Prasad Peder Schaefer Star Su Copy Editors Grace Berg Seamus Flynn Sarah Goldman Matt Ishimaru Sojeong Lim Yelena Nicolle Salvador Caroline Sprague

Design Editors Lulian Ahn Bethany Hung Designers Amos Jackson Cecile Kim Ella Rosenblatt Katherine Sang Christie Zhong Illustration Editors Pia Mileaf-Patel Eve O’Shea Ilustrators Alana Baer Sam Berenfield Natasha Brennan Natasha Boyko Bella Carlos Julia Illana Angie Kang Halle Krieger Katya Labowe-Stroll

Signe Swanson Will Weatherly

Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Rémy Poisson Mariel Solomon Miranda Villanueva Claribel Wu Stephanie Wu

Managing Editors Ella Comberg Tiara Sharma Wen Zhuang

Business Maria Gonzalez

MVP Claire Schlaikjer

Web Ashley Kim Social Media Ben Bienstock Pia Mileaf-Patel

*** The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

Alumni+Fundraising Katrina Northrop Senior Editors Olivia Kan-Sperling Katrina Northrop Chris Packs

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

WEEK IN VIDEO GIANTS BY Alan Dean, Ricardo Gomez, Bilal Memon, and Peder Schaefer ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea DESIGN Amos Jackson

STUCK IN THE TAPE DECK

time yet before the last Blockbuster goes round the bend.

If the mediocre 2013 Arnold Schwarzenegger action other effects of climate change that just aren’t as sexy. flick The Last Stand had been released in 2004, the -AD But even if we’ve commodified the walrus, maybe DVD would have been available for rent in over 9,000 that’s not entirely bad. The walrus clip has engaged Blockbuster Video franchises across the world. In 2013, CAN THE WALRUS SPEAK? millions of people—likely in disgust and horror—but that number would have been closer to 1,400. Today, still perhaps prompting some to realize the precarious in April 2019, Blockbuster itself is making its proverbial Have you seen it? plight of the walrus. That brings up another question: last stand, with its once-continent-spanning empire Flippered mammalian behemoths, flailing as Is the only way to engage the public with an issue to shrunk down to a single outpost, following the folding their bodies pound against jagged rocks. The crea- find a clip so overpowering and abrasive that it has the of its last Australian location in March. The company tures make a taxing journey up a precarious cliff, only ability to worm its way into our social consciousness? If once accused of killing the movie theater now finds to fall in a tragic miscalculation. There are hundreds not for the walruses and their deaths, would anyone be itself on its own last legs, with one small, final torch of walruses, and while not all of them fall, the bodies speaking about the sea ice at all? held high in a Bend, Oregon strip mall. of the ones that do—750, according to the director— And now think of us, your humble writers. Perhaps This last, lonely Blockbuster has clung to life pile up at the base of the cliff, bloodied and bloated. the only reason we felt this was worth making into through a renegotiated licensing agreement with After months of feeding on clams on the seafloor the a Week in Review was because a friend of a friend the DISH Network, which bought all the remaining walruses need to find a place to rest. Lack of sea ice due shared a two minute YouTube video. As we write our Blockbuster locations after the company declared to warming oceans forces them to travel hundreds of two-cents cultural critique, we fall prey to what we bankruptcy in 2010. While corporate support is no miles until they’ve reach the fated cliffs. speak against: sensationally commodifying the death longer provided, DISH has let franchised locations This incident aired on Netflix’s original nature of the environment. attempt to go it alone, trying their luck in the dicey, show, Our Planet. While the show is narrated and (The Indy writers look to each other uncomfortably.) but ever-growing nostalgia market. For a time, these filmed in the same style as the popular docu-series We are the Indy and we speak for the walruses. fringe franchises held on: In 2013 Alaska still boasted 13 Planet Earth, Our Planet sets out to highlight the Blockbuster locations. By 2016, however, that number destructive effects of climate change rather than just -PS, BM, RG had shrunk to nine, and by August 2018 the frozen showing polar bears cuddling. The show’s website north, too, had lost all of their franchised locations. argues that “if we act quickly, we Even celebrity intervention, the great American deus have the knowledge and the soluex machina, couldn’t save the Alaskan Blockbusters, tions to make our planet thrive BY Aayushi Khowala when in a deeply confusing but surely well-intentioned again.” move, John Oliver purchased Russell Crowe’s leather The scene has gone viral. jockstrap worn on set in Cinderella Man (2005) from Inserted between shots of the actor’s “divorce auction” and donated it to the last walruses plunging to their deaths Anchorage location. While the jockstrap was allegedly are cuts to the scientists and film worth nearly $7,000, its intended use as an in-store crew expressing their shock at showcase seems more fit for padding trivia questions the carnage. Dramatic music than saving a dying business. Nonetheless, it’s always plays while the walruses fall in good to know someone cares. slow-motion. The sight of the Following the fall of the Alaska location, the penul- walruses hanging on the edge of timate Blockbuster, next to shut its doors, was also far a cliff recalls an action-adventure flung across the Pacific, renting out videos at the ends blockbuster, complete with quick of the earth. At the end of March, sales stopped at the edits between the faces of bereft last Blockbuster in the suburbs of Perth, Australia, and humans and the flailing of hopethe final Blockbuster down under, went down under. less pinnipeds. It’s a perfect soundPerhaps at this point it would be appropriate to clarify, bite—another nugget of slickly puns notwithstanding, that the Indy finds Blockbuster’s produced climate porn. But is this slow death deeply saddening, and not merely as a gasp twisted eco-erotica a necessary of sentimentality. As noted by Lyn Borszeky, owner of tool to bring climate justice into the last Australian store, Blockbuster played a genu- the public discourse? Or do we inely important role for “film lovers who had no or need soundbites to inspire action? poor internet connections, and seniors who found the Netflix, as an entertainment new technology too complicated.” Even for those of us company, is primarily motivated by who didn’t rely on Blockbuster for such concrete needs, generating profit from distributing there is something important we lose by the death of and creating engaging media, and physical video stores, and the discoveries and memo- in doing so the multi-billion dollar ries they created. streaming giant has radically There is, however, a glimmer of hope. Despite the changed the way people consume rapid rise and fall of the mother company, the Bend media. Their content targets the location shows no signs of closing anytime soon. Due individuals’ specific preferences, both to the ethos of “pure stubbornness” espoused promoting binge-worthy and by general manager Sandi Harding and the booming easily digestible material. cultural market for Y2K nostalgia, the floppy disk– So then what does it mean for wielding strip mall spot has proven that it has life in Netflix to produce an environmenit yet, turning its supposed obsolescence to its advan- tally conscious educational series tage. This embrace of its role as a lost slice of the early as commercial media content? 2000s, from the popcorn ceilings and yellow/blue Netflix’s commercial motivacoloration, to rows and rows of un-updated shelves tions necessarily conflict with stocked with titles like I Am Legend and Galaxy Quest, any altruistic desire to spread the reveals not only fierce loyalty to the memory of what word about our warming planet. Blockbuster once was, but a highly tactical awareness Insofar as capitalism reduces all of the marketing power that same memory holds. A experiences into commodities, variety of merchandise branded with the slogan “The our empathy and will to act upon Last Blockbuster on the Planet,” including Sandi’s our deteriorating environment is hand-knit beanies, have regularly sold out as tourists conditioned by the prerequisite from all over the country, and the world, come to Bend economic transaction necessary to snap selfies and pay respect. Regardless of where in order to watch Netflix. In other the Blockbuster saga leads, those working the Bend words, in order to maximize profits, location intend to keep their tape reel business records Netflix sensationalizes our climate spinning on as long as they can—we may have some crisis, dulling our sensitivity to the

FOR KEVIN

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

02

CAUGHT IN RHODE ISLAND

ILLUSTRATION Pia Mileaf-Patel DESIGN Bethany Hung

An investigation into how court fees and fines trap low-income Rhode Islanders in poverty A "SPECIAL PROJECT" BY Sydney Anderson, Sophie Khomtchenko, Alina Kulman, and Nick Roblee-Strauss EDITED BY Harry August, Julia Rock, and Lucas Smolcic Larson DATA BY Olivia Kan-Sperling and Matt Ishimaru

When Roberto Torres appeared in District Court on a failure to appear at a payment date) is a leading cause February 14, 2019, and plead no contest to a reckless of incarceration in Rhode Island, accounting for 15.5 driving charge, he was unemployed, on food stamps, percent of all commitments in 2015. Officially, debtor’s and already $1,417.32 in debt to the Rhode Island prison was abolished by the federal government in 1833, Judiciary for a litany of past violations. and the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution This legally qualifies Torres, 27, as an indigent protects against excessive monetary sanctions. But defendant: someone with a severely restricted ability for people who pass through Rhode Island’s state to pay his fines and court fees. This also qualified the courts, debt can be all-consuming, deepening poverty, judge, Joseph T. Houlihan Jr., to remit—eliminate— damaging employment prospects, and threatening the some or all the court costs. Instead, in an arraignment ability to hold a driver’s license. that lasted only a few minutes, Houlihan Jr. sentenced Taking stock of this system, the Indy decided to Torres the maximum fine: $500. And beyond that, document what is happening every day in our state’s Torres found out after the arraignment that this courts. Our nine-person investigative team spent sentence included an additional $142.75 in court costs many hours in the courtroom, interviewed lawyers, and fees—bringing his current outstanding debt to advocates, and defendants, and compiled a year’s $2,144. worth of the Judiciary’s online court payment records. Each month, Torres and the other 48,026 individOver three months, we observed over 100 arraignuals in debt to the Rhode Island District Court, must ments and 11 sentencings involving the imposition submit a minimum payment to the court of $10, or as of fees and fines at the Sixth District courthouse in much as they can afford. On April 2, Torres paid $6.07. Providence. We documented little to no efforts by At that rate, with no further convictions, Torres will judges to assess low-income defendants’ ability to pay still be in debt until at least 2038. And Torres knows these sums, as is required by state law. (In a handful the stakes are high: “If I can’t afford the payment, of cases, judges waived court costs, imposed on top of they issue a court warrant,” he told the College Hill a fine, at the request of a public defender.) And remitIndependent last week. tances must happen from the bench: Clerks, who If a defendant misses a monthly payment, the actually handle the money, said they could easily put court will automatically issue an arrest warrant, drag- someone on an installment plan of just a few dollars a ging him back before a judge, and, if that judge finds month but couldn’t waive costs themselves. “willful nonpayment,” to jail. What’s more, the costs Data we obtained by public records request from of this arrest warrant—$125—could be tacked on to the Rhode Island Judiciary show that just over half Torres’s debt, a process he has already undergone twice of all court fees and fines imposed in criminal cases in the past five years. (District Court Administrator in Superior Court and nearly 20 percent imposed Stephen Waluk wrote in an email to the Indy that this in District Court—some $50 million in total—are only occurs “after multiple incidences of appearing outstanding, as of last year. In Fiscal Year 2018, and being unable to pay.”) Superior Court collected only eight percent of court Torres is now part of what many call a “two-tiered costs assessed that year in criminal cases, while the justice system.” In Rhode Island and across the country, District Court’s first-year collection rate was just 24 the well-off easily pay court costs, dodging prison percent. This indicates that defendants are overand further involvement with the legal system, while whelmingly unable to pay their court costs. low-income defendants, disproportionately people Furthermore, judges are ignoring state laws on of color, are cast headlong into a cycle of debt. Often, the books that empower them to end the cycle of debt. these individuals must choose between meeting basic According to our analysis of online payment data for expenses, like rent, and paying the courts to avoid over 28,000 separate cases in 2018 (85.8 percent of being locked up. Within a criminal justice system that criminal cases filed in District and Superior Court time and time again produces punitive outcomes for that year), when people are brought before a judge for low-income communities, subjecting them to harsh an “ability-to-pay hearing," costs are remitted just 0.35 policing and incarceration, fees and percent of the time—only 25 of 7,160 hearings in 2018 fines are a quiet but far-reaching resulted in debts being lowered. burden. These numbers paint a picture of a court system “If we are forcing someone to hell-bent on trying to “squeeze blood from a stone, choose between feeding their kid to wring these costs out of people who simply cannot or paying their court fine and not pay them,” in the words of Natalia Friedlander, a staff Rhode Island’s system of court fees and fines creates going back to prison … that is a attorney at the Rhode Island Center for Justice. How what many call a “two-tiered justice system,” where the violent choice that we have forced did we get to this point? And what needs to change? We well-off easily pay court costs while low-income defensomeone to make,” said Jordan asked these questions of everyone we talked to, from dants are cast into a cycle of debt, coerced by the threat of Seaberry, director of public policy defendants to defense lawyers. Their answers indicate incarceration. and advocacy for the Providence- that Rhode Island’s situation is far from inevitable and based Nonviolence Institute and definitely not irreversible. It’s the story of squandered Rhode Island’s District and Superior Court judges are a long-time advocate for a more reform, where an undergraduate thesis from 2016 supposed to determine a defendant's ability to pay fees and humane justice system. stands as one of the only thorough accounts of how fines—and can waive many courts costs at their discreIt’s a decision enforced fees and fines excessively punish the poor in Rhode tion—but rarely choose to do either. by coercion, he said. Studies Island. Three years later, our investigation shows this published in 2008 and 2016 is still a reality. The state led the nation with a fees and fines reform bill in showed nonpayment (technically, 2008, but 10 years later, the courts struggle to recover even half of the $50 million in court costs still outstanding from more than 48,000 defendants, five percent of Rhode Island.

KEY FINDINGS

03

COURT DEBT

19 APRIL 2019

CAUGHT IN RHODE ISLAND

Dollar amount

Average amount assessed Average outstanding debt Average median payment $134.61 assessed on average

$102.13 outstanding debt on average

$23.50 median payment on average

Misdemeanor 12,432 cases

Felony

Civil Violation

8,961 cases

6,589 cases

Case type

When people are brought before a judge for an “ability-to-pay hearing,” costs are remitted just 0.35% of the time—only 25 of 7,160 hearings in 2018 resulted in debts being lowered.

Total amount outstanding from criminal cases in District and Superior Court

$50,616,042

Fiscal Year 2018 collection rate for costs assessed during that period District Court

(Source: RI Judiciary's online court records)

23.84% 8.07%

Superior Court Data Explanation We used several sources of data to report this story. Breakdowns on ability-to-pay hearings, transaction amounts, where cases were filed, and types of charges for 2018 were extracted from the Rhode Island Judiciary Public Portal using a web-scraping program built for this project. This program used the web-browser automation tool Selenium to input case numbers taken from a list of all criminal cases filed at the District and Superior court level. (This list was obtained by public records request from the Judiciary by Megan Smith and shared with us; it is linked in the online version of this article). Our program then retrieved the corresponding case file publicly available through the portal and downloaded relevant information to a local database. Of the 32,756 individual case numbers for 2018, we were able to retrieve 28,088 records (85.8 percent). Somes cases were missing from the portal, though an unknown percentage of failures were due to requests being blocked by the server—likely because of the high volume of requests being made. We attempted to minimize this latter case by running our program on the failure IDs until the process no longer yielded significant returns. We used this database to create the above data visualization for 2018. We also obtained data describing how much money is owed, or currently outstanding, for fees and fines related to criminal cases for each branch of the courts, broken down by fiscal year. This information came from a public information request made by the national Fees and Fines Justice Center to the Rhode Island Judiciary. You can access all our data and the web-scraping script via the online page for this article, available at www.theindy.org.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

(Source: RI Judiciary)

48,027

Individuals currently with balances owed to District Court

4.5%

of RI's population COURT DEBT

04

CAUGHT IN RHODE ISLAND

order in the courtroom. Each case, from the description of the alleged crime to the plea Each weekday morning, the same scene repeats itself and sentencing, takes only a few minutes. inside the Garrahy Judicial Complex, the imposing red-brick home of the Sixth District Court in down+++ town Providence. After shedding belts and watches to pass through the metal detectors at the door (a pile Rhode Island law instructs judges to consider of contraband pocket knives tends to develop under a a defendant's finances. Section 12-21-20 shrub outside the main doors), people mill about the reads, “In district court, the judge shall fourth floor, outside Courtroom 4C. There are lawyers make a preliminary assessment of the defenin dark suits, police officers in uniform, and friends and dant’s ability to pay [fees and fines] immedifamily of defendants in street clothes. Arraignments ately after sentencing or nearly thereafter….” are scheduled to start at 9 AM, although the hearings Whether this happens in practice seems to are often delayed for half an hour or more. be entirely at the whim of whichever judge is When the doors are unlocked, a small crowd presiding that day. files into the rows in the back half of the room. A low Angela Lawless, a former public defender wooden barrier cuts the room in half, separating in district courtrooms in Providence and observers from the bench. Defendants who have been Newport, has represented many people with held overnight in Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional histories of repeated legal involvement—and Institute (ACI) are then brought in through a side door years of accumulated debt. “There’s a decent by police officers, walking slowly to the jury box, as number of judges on the District Court bench they are handcuffed and chained to each other in pairs. who are amenable to listening to what your Other people charged with minor offenses, like driving client’s circumstances are and potentially on a suspended license, sit in the rows, waiting for their remitting or waiving court costs,” she said. names to be called. Based on our observation, some judges Before long, one of the police officers in the court- are more willing to negotiate than others. room rolls out an enormous cathode-ray television set The same day Judge Houlihan gave Roberto that plays a grainy VHS tape narrated by District Court Torres the maximum fine, he waived the Judge Robert Pirraglia, who retired 15 years ago. As court fees for a defendant charged with ’90s-style animations show the scales of justice and driving with a suspended license, on the wooden gavels, Pirraglia begins to explain: “Anyone basis that he found the defendant's car model, charged with an offense has certain legal rights. Here a Toyota Corolla, “so sad.” (The Judiciary they are....” He outlines the different types of offenses did not respond to a request for comment in defendants may be charged with, the different types of response to his statement.) Cases likes these bail, and, most importantly, their constitutional rights show the arbitrary nature of waving court in the courtroom. Then, the video repeats in Spanish— fees and fines, which often seems to be as not that the courtroom’s occupants are necessarily reliant on the judge’s whim, or the presence of a public in full at the time of sentencing (which District Court paying attention to the tape. Defendants are still filing defender, as it is on the defendant’s actual ability to pay. Clerk Jim Plante estimated to be the reality for about in, and many are not even present at this point, missing But time and again, we observed defendants half of all defendants), they are put on a payment the opportunity to hear a clear, albeit dated, explana- accept fines with no inquiry into their ability to pay plan. Month after month, they have to make small tion of their legal rights. them, no elaboration of what fees would be attached payments towards their debt, at the court, or online if The video outlines defendants’ right to legal to the fine, and no discussion of the possible conse- the case is in District Court (plus a 3.25 percent credit counsel. Nationally, 80 percent of criminal defen- quences of nonpayment (notably, incarceration). card surcharge). A defendant who repeatedly misses dants can’t afford a lawyer. But many days, there are Lawless said that costs are “really only discussed if the a payment date has a bench warrant put out for their no public defenders at arraignments in District Court, defense attorney brings [them] up and asks for [them] arrest for “failure to appear.” They aren’t notified when as they often have to prioritize cases that are going to to be waived” during sentencing. this happens, but once a bench warrant is issued, any trial. They are, like public defenders everywhere in the After a defendant pleads guilty or nolo contendere police encounter, even without an offense, can result country, incredibly overworked. A 2017 study of work- at the initial hearing, they go to the clerk’s desk, where in an arrest and commitment to the Intake Service loads in the Rhode Island Public Defender’s Office they are assigned a fee, which is a user cost the courts Center at Rhode Island’s ACI. found that it would need approximately 85 additional charge defendants on top of any fines they receive for Ronnie Walker, 53, has been on a payment plan full-time attorneys to fully attend to its nearly 300,000 breaking the law. Ideally, a public defender should be of $10 per month for the past year. When we spoke to hours of work per year. So if defendants plead guilty or present to help them understand what the fees mean him in the Sixth District Court clerk’s office, he said he nolo contendere, meaning they agree not to contest and how payment will work, but this depends on the had six or seven months remaining to pay off his debt. their charge, judges guide the whole arraignment, and availability of the Public Defender's Office on any “[You] just gotta pay to keep warrants and police out of defendants are forced to navigate negotiations over given day. your hair, because if they pick you up on a Friday [for their court fines and fees on their own. Court fees are minor compared to a large fine or nonpayment], you’re locked up for the weekend,” he And so they do. All morning, judges call out the long probation, but they are frequently a huge hidden said (2008 reforms mandated a 48 hour cap on imprisaccused by name and birthdate, summoning them to cost—sometimes adding hundreds of dollars in extra onment before defendants are brought before a judge, the bench. There, the judge reads out charges. Rhode debt. Take driving under the influence, for example. with exceptions for weekends and holidays). Island is one of about 14 states in the nation that let The fine for a first violation is set at $100 or greater. But For others, small debts compound into insurpolice officers serve as prosecutors in district court. on top of that fine, a $500 “Highway Assessment Fee” mountable obligations. “It’s a fear that lives inside (Two local legal experts, Roger Williams law profes- is added, which goes into the state’s general fund, just you,” said Tarah Dorsey, a senior streetworker at the sors Andy Horwitz and John Grasso, maintain that like a fine, as well as an $86 court fee. Thus, the total Nonviolence Institute who has been in debt to the this is illegal since cops are not licensed to practice law. sum owed is more than six times as much as minimum Rhode Island Judiciary since her first court appearThey wrote in a 2006 article in the Rhode Island Bar the fine alone. In addition, defendants have to pay ance in 1996. For 23 years, court debt has been another Journal that police prosecutors practically make Rhode hundreds of dollars more on a driver's education class anxiety on top of “the problems of not being able to get Island an “unsupervised police state.”) and license reinstatement costs. Over the course of our a job because of my [criminal] record, problems of not Cops cycle in and out of the courtroom, reading time in court, the Indy observed two first-time DUI being able to keep the lights on, or pay my rent,” she from police reports: domestic disputes, traffic stops, pre-trial hearings, and on both occasions the judge, said. assaults. Defendants are instructed to listen quietly, Associate Judge Christopher Smith, only mentioned While jail is one of the most serious consequences as the police prosecutors outline the alleged crimes. the $100 fine during the hearing—leaving the defen- of nonpayment, it isn’t the only one. Rhode Islanders Then the judge asks how they choose to plea. If a defen- dant to discover the additional hundreds of dollars in can lose their driver’s license if their court costs go dant chooses guilty or nolo contendere—and many do, costs after pleading guilty or no contest. unpaid. As of April 15, 2019, the Rhode Island Division forfeiting their right to a trial in favor of a plea deal and of Motor Vehicles (DMV) reported a total of 28,528 quicker resolution of their charges—fines are assessed +++ drivers (3.7 percent of the state’s licensed and permitted according to statute. The process is a finely-tuned drivers) with unresolved license suspensions as a machine, with a handful of bailiffs channeling defen- Fees and fines together comprise the debt an indi- result of failure to pay or appear in court. Licenses are dants to the bench and disciplining those who disrupt vidual owes to the court, and if they are unable to pay suspended for a failure to make court payments in the

A Day in Court

05

COURT DEBT

19 APRIL 2019

CAUGHT IN RHODE ISLAND

of the bill, and Black found in her 2016 research that these stipulations were being enforced. But, according to her thesis, debtors still represent a large portion of the incarcerated population. The rest of the bill required judges to consider “ability to pay” when assessing court debts, but did not require them to remit any costs if they found a defendant indigent. Despite its weaknesses, the bill marked the first time that Rhode Island judges were explicitly empowered to waive an indigent defendant’s court costs. The bill stipulated that judges use a “financial assessment instrument,” specifying what counts as evidence of indigency, including receiving many forms of public assistance. Apparently, encouragement to assess indigency was not enough. Black found in 2016 that, in practice, ability-to-pay assessments happened sporadically at cases heard by the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal and to the state of $4,000 for his time at the ACI. Graham best, and only around three percent of jailed debtors for a variety of driving-related offenses, like DUIs, in found himself subject to Rhode Island’s debt collec- had all costs waived—a tiny fraction of the debtor District and Superior Court. If a defendant continues tion system: warrants and imprisonment for those who inmates who were unemployed and likely should have to use their car—a daily necessity for many—charges miss payment dates, even when the cost to the state qualified for cost abatement. of driving with a suspended license bring a whole new far outweighs the debt it is owed. He lost his job while Still, the reforms set the stage for incremental round of fees, fines, and court obligations they must behind bars. change. A coordinating law, passed simultanemeet in order to get their license reinstated. Advocacy by OpenDoors RI (then the Family Life ously, incentivized the Judiciary to reduce jail time Marcy Coleman, assistant administrator for safety Center) and other organizations brought public atten- for debtors by crediting $150 towards court debts for and regulations at the Rhode Island Division of Motor tion to the problem of court debt collection. In 2008, each night they spent in jail, later reduced in 2012 to Vehicles (DMV), advocates for a move away from using the Family Life Center published a lengthy report $50 per night. Research by OpenDoors RI found that suspensions as a punitive measure in non-driving revealing that failure to pay court debt (or appear at the credit system immediately reduced the amount of related offenses, like nonpayment. She observes a payment date) was the most common reason for time people were spending in jail on court debt-related a “downward spiral” of suspensions in cases where imprisonment in Rhode Island, accounting for 17 charges. Despite its success, the measure essentially people are unable to pay court costs. “We have horrible percent of all jailings. In 15 percent of all cases, the amounted to massive spending by the state to alleviate public transportation,” she said, “a person needs their amount the state spent incarcerating people was more small debts it was never likely to collect. license here in Rhode Island to get to and from work.” than the amount they owed to the court. In an interview, Jordan Seaberry of the Each court-ordered suspension incurs an additional Judges, who were supposed to consider ability Nonviolence Institute highlighted the “need for the $151.50 fee to the DMV, on top of the requirement to pay in assessing court costs, typically did not, as a law to state clearly and directly that our courts must of paying off outstanding court debt or going on a result of merely suggestive statutes and large case- meaningfully assess a defendant’s ability to pay in a payment plan, to reinstate a license. loads that limited time they could dedicate to indi- standardized, comprehensive, and good-faith way.” Legislation passed in 2016 reduced penalties on the vidual defendants. (Indy reporters witnessed a judge “The tools are there,” he told the Indy, “but the responfirst two offenses for driving without a license, catego- in the Sixth District court with 65 arraignments on his sibility is ours.” rizing them as civil offenses rather than misdemeanors, docket on one day in April.) It’s not exactly clear why lowering fines, and eliminating criminal charges. After judges weren’t prioritizing an ability-to-pay determi- 2019: Court Costs Return to the State the first two charges, the offense becomes a misde- nation in assessing these fines, but Rachel Black, in House meanor, with higher fines and the added potential of an interview with the Indy, said “at the time [in 2008], jail time in addition to further license suspension (we at least, the Judiciary didn’t seem to think it was their Much of the national conversation around court costs observed many defendants with six or more driving problem.” can be exemplified by an exchange in the Rhode on a suspended license charges). Coleman reports this The lack of financial assessment tools for judges Island State House this past February. On a busy day shift meant a significant reduction in suspensions. In and statutory protections for indigent defendants before the House Judiciary Committee, Nick Horton, 2018, out of 7,097 people convicted of driving with made it difficult to get out of a courtroom without being who also worked on the 2008 legislation, testified in a suspended license, only 16 received an additional sentenced to some amount of court costs—a minimum support of a new law, House Bill 5196, which brings the suspension as a result of these new charges, she said. of $93.50 in fees for misdemeanor charges and $270 for failed 2008 reforms back into focus. He said that the These changes came too late for Tarah Dorsey. She felonies, a statute that still stands. Based on decades legislation would “maximize [both] the cost effectivewas unable to hold a valid license for most of her life, of experience with court debt, Dorsey said that she ness of the [criminal justice] system and the rights of buried under her debt to the courts. But two years ago, learned early on to expect being penalized with fees in the indigent defendants.” at age 39, she finally got one. The total costs involved, any interaction with the courts, even just setting foot in The new bill seeks to enforce the requirement that to the courts and the DMV: $1,800. the courtroom (she plead out most of her charges). judges routinely take ability to pay into account and The under-resourced state, dependent on funds makes qualifying for the services of a public defender— How We Got Here raised through the courts, began to act as a collection being unable to afford a private lawyer—legal evidence agency. By issuing warrants for “failure to appear” at of indigency. Significantly, it provides that “no costs The Rhode Island legislature has been increasing the a payment date, rather than “failure to pay,” Rhode shall be ordered unless procedures for determining use of fees and fines as a punitive measure since tough- Island was able to skirt a 1971 Supreme Court ruling ability to pay are followed.” House Bill 5196 has found on-crime rhetoric became popular in the ’80s and that prohibited states from incarcerating those unable supporters in Rhode Island who have long championed ’90s. “As mass incarceration grew and criminal justice to pay court debts, and requiring that judges must the poor and worked with the legislature on various agency budgets exploded, state and local politicians inquire about a person’s ability to pay and consider criminal justice reforms, from community organizers were either unable or unwilling to fund those agencies alternatives before incarceration. to the Public Defender’s Office. through public revenue, so fees being regressive taxes At the February hearing, proponents testified to [were] sort of a politically easier imposition,” Jonathan the inefficacy of the 2008 reforms, demonstrating that Ben-Menachem, policy and communications associate 2008: A First Attempt at Reform stronger steps must be taken if the courts' cost assessat the national Fines and Fees Justice Center, told the ment system is going to change. Before the Committee, Indy. A combination of anti-crime and anti-tax rhetoric In response to attention generated from the Family Director of Legislative Initiatives for the Public encouraged politicians to pass what were essentially Life Center report, the Rhode Island legislature passed Defender’s Office Michael DiLauro said that of the 150 taxes on the poor to raise revenue. a bill in 2008 that, at the time, led the nation in court lawyers that he reached out to, only one reported ever Since then, court fees and fines have become a fee and fine reform. The legislation aimed to protect seeing a judge use the ability-to-pay instrument. (The broader means of funding state governments. In her low-income debtors from punitive debt collection instrument exists as a one-page form on the Judiciary’s 2015 Brown University undergraduate thesis—the systems managed by the state and reduce the number website, but we never saw it in the courtroom. The most recent comprehensive report on fees and fines of people in jail for court debt. Seven years later, defendants we talked to didn’t recognize it when we in Rhode Island—Rachel Black tracked the way legis- however, Rachel Black published her thesis, in which showed it to them.) lation was amended to redirect specific fees into the she found that the law, Senate Bill 2234, yielded only Jordan Seaberry, a driving force behind the new state’s general fund, while maintaining their original moderate results due to weak implementation. bill, implored the legislature and the Judiciary to take names. (A $100 “lab maintenance fee,” still tacked The bill restricted the amount of time debtors spent a human-centered approach to debt. “When we are onto drug possession charges, no longer goes directly in prison, limiting debtor incarceration to a maximum talking about this bill we are not just talking about the to any lab.) of 48 hours before seeing a judge for an ability-to-pay experience of the Judiciary or the process of being in Court costs add up. In 2007, Ricardo Graham assessment. It also required that debtors arrested the courtroom, we’re talking about actual lives. We’re spent 40 days in prison as a result of his inability to pay during court hours be taken to court immediately. This talking about human beings, who impact their families court debts amounting to $745, at an estimated cost stipulation was the strictest and most measurable part and their communities,” he said.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

COURT DEBT

06

CAUGHT IN RHODE ISLAND

The Judiciary’s lobbyist, Elizabeth Suever, mandated the application of the constitutional prohi- widely. responded to Seaberry’s call to humanize debtors with bition on excessive fees and fines to the states, tracing San Francisco, heralded as a leader in court debt her own call for criminalization, telling the committee, the issue back eight centuries. The Magna Carta, reform, has attacked the issue more directly. In 2016, “we’re not talking about innocent until proven guilty, Ginsberg wrote, required that “economic sanctions the city launched the Financial Justice Project, a these people are proven guilty.” She added, “We’re now ‘be proportioned to the wrong’ and ‘not be so large branch of the city treasurer’s office aimed at auditing talking about these people paying restitution to people as to deprive [an offender] of his livelihood.’” These local fees and fines’ effect on the poor. Its first success that were harmed, paying for the costs, paying for all protections were enshrined in English law, adopted came in May 2018 with the abolition of all locally-conthese other things … we’re not talking about innocent in the American colonies, and finally written into the trolled criminal justice administration fees, including people anymore.” (Others who testified emphasized Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which a monthly probation fee that had had a collection that the bill would not affect victims' restitution). states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor exces- rate of just nine percent. Getting rid of this fee elimSuever claimed that the bill would exempt far too sive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inated $32.7 million of outstanding debt overnight. many people from having to pay fees and fines to the inflicted.” Additionally, the project created a lower fee for towed court, pointing out the necessity of these payments in But Ginsburg also recognized a centuries-long and booted cars for those with incomes below 200 generating the state’s general revenue. “We do want to practice of casting these lofty legal protections aside. percent of the poverty line. The project created a datamake sure that if they have any capability whatsoever The 17th century Stuart kings used “large fines to raise base of low-income residents, so court officials could that they do pay … that’s important to the maintenance revenue, harass their political foes, and indefinitely assess their incomes without the need for paperwork of the system, that’s important to keeping taxes low, so detain those unable to pay,” she wrote. After the US and documentation filed by the arraigned. The project everyone doesn’t have to pay for the system,” she said, Civil War, states in the South weaponized fines against eases court debt for many defendants, yet it fails to gesturing towards anti-tax rhetoric reminiscent of the newly freed slaves. The “Black Codes” employed standardize ability-to-pay hearings. If judges’ discretough on crime moment of the ’90s. broadly-defined crimes (“vagrancy,” for example) tion does not act in service of the poor and in conjuncWhen a committee member asked Suever if she and draconian fines to force African Americans back tion with these programs, the poorest residents will would be able to provide statistical evidence that into involuntary labor when they could not pay these still end up in debt to the court, even for reduced (often ability-to-pay assessments are being conducted on a penalties. halved) fines. For many arraigned San Franciscans— regular basis, she responded, “Maybe? I’ll look into Today, advocates refer to a system of “cash register and Rhode Islanders—any fine at all is enough to it. I can’t make any promises.” A spokesperson for the justice” that “target[s] poor citizens and communities disrupt their ability to meet basic needs and place them Judiciary did not respond to the Indy’s questions about of color for fines and fees,” according to a 2017 report on the precipice of destitution. whether financial assessments are conducted on a by the US Commission on Civil Rights. As Megan Outside the US, Germany offers an even more regular basis. Smith, a longtime caseworker for homeless people in innovative approach to equalizing criminal justice. Ultimately, the hearing spoke to an uncom- Rhode Island said about court costs: “Fines and fees Rather than assigning a flat fine for a misdemeanor, municative system that has evolved out of years of are definitely one of those things that are implicitly, if like in the US, courts scale fines in proportion to one’s piecemeal legislation in which numbers, figures, and not explicitly, classed. They just fundamentally don’t daily income. In Germany, the cost of a misdemeanor spending are poorly tracked—a system held account- affect rich and poor people the same way.” To her, “it is not measured by the ‘cost to society,’ but rather able only by watchdogs on the outside. definitely feels like one more way that the system has by whatever is considered an appropriate inhibitive While there is hope that the bill will reduce the its thumb on certain people that it doesn’t like and that penalty on a specific person. After all, traffic violations burden on low-income people sentenced to onerous it wishes would disappear.” are committed across class lines. court debt, Ben-Menachem from the Fees and Fines In the United States, a justice system without puniCenter told the Indy that “reforms tend to last longer or Where We Go From Here tive fees and fines is, at this point, still beyond reach. be implemented more robustly if they happen through The debate around court debt extends beyond Rhode The fees—intended to cover administrative processes— litigation because that’s the courts recognizing their Island, and national conversations about reform have could be replaced with funding from states’ revenue. obligation.” ramped up over the past few years. The National Task Fines, however, are meant to serve a separate function: It’s one thing for the legislature to make laws insti- Force on Fines, Fees and Bail Practices, for example, inhibiting future crimes through fiscal punishment. tuting fees and fines in a courtroom—a power exerted released a set of principles with which each state But, in practice, these penalties fail to deter criminal on defendants—but it’s fundamentally more difficult should assess their own judicial systems. Among these behavior and, in doing so, define poverty in criminal for the legislature to tell judges what to do on the bench. are key recommendations: provide court funding in its terms. In Rhode Island, judges and clerks conduct busi- entirety through state government funds, standardize ness as they always have, in a system separate from statewide ability-to-pay processes, and abolish interest +++ and parallel to the legislature. According to Rachel on court-related debts. But many of these reforms Black, “[judges and clerks] weren’t surprised nor did place an emphasis on altering the particulars of court On Monday, the same scene will repeat itself again they have any problem telling me what’s happening debt rather than changing the underlying reality that at the Garrahy Judicial Complex: People mill about right now because they didn’t see it as being illegal or fees and fines act as a hidden tax on the poor. waiting for court to open, bailiffs prowl the aisles as the problematic.” One such reform is alternative payment. In VHS tape rolls, judges call names, clerks hand off stacks April 2018, a criminal justice reform bill, signed by of papers, and the defendant approaches the bench. A Nation of Cash Register Justice Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, implemented Plea agreements are taken. Fines are levied. Fees are Judicial action on court debt may not be far away. A community service as one such alternative to court assessed. And more Rhode Islanders enter payment recent Harvard Law Review article argued that Rhode costs. The bill also ups the amount people are cred- plans, adding to the millions in statewide court debt. Island’s ban on debtor’s prison covers incarceration ited towards their debt for time in prison to $90 a day. To Jordan Seaberry, this debt can be an unspoken life for nonpayment of fines for regulatory offenses, costs, However, the legislation still relies on judges deter- sentence. “We never hear a judge sentence someone and civil debts because the state constitution does not mining “substantial financial hardship” for alterna- ... to a lifetime of economic servitude, but that's the distinguish between private debts and those owed to tive payments to even be considered. And mandatory reality.” the state. community service still limits the poor from working, This February, Justice attending school, and SYDNEY ANDERSON B’19, HARRY AUGUST B’19, Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote caring for children. MATT ISHIMARU B’20, OLIVIA KAN-SPERLING the Supreme Court’s While Governor Baker B’20, SOPHIE KHOMTCHENKO B’21, ALINA decision in Timbs portrayed the law as KULMAN B’21, NICK ROBLEE-STRAUSS B’22, v. Indiana, relief for court debtors, JULIA ROCK B’19, AND LUCAS SMOLCIC LARSON which it doesn't gaurantee B’19 hid their pocket knives in the shrub outside the that judges will assess courthouse. their ability to pay, or that alternative payment methods will be implemented more

07

COURT DEBT

19 APRIL 2019

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

X

08

DAYS OF OUR LIVES

BY Will Weatherly ILLUSTRATION Nicole Cochary DESIGN Amos Jackson

On soap operas and suffering

Like the plot of any good melodrama, my relationship to straight people in heat began to feel less like a guilty shots, and out-of-nowhere dancing routines, construct to The Bold and the Beautiful was a matter of fate, and pleasure and more like self-annihilation. women as passive and “to-be-looked-at,” and men a part of my life before I was even born. A little over And yet, for every part of me that wants to rip apart as both the the audience and directors of this female 30 years ago, my mother was working alongside my the B&B—and thinks that would be a worthwhile spectacle. Essential to Mulvey’s point was that these grandmother at a gift shop in Illinois, when my mother political project, for myself and others—there’s a part films elicited this objectifying gaze from both women realized that my grandmother kept disappearing from of me that doesn’t. My mother is no dupe; she can see and men; this is certainly true of soap operas, which, work every day at the same time and without a word these problems too. After I came out to her, she started ever since their inception as serial radio broadcasts, of explanation. After a few such absences, my mother to invite the possibility of picking apart the B&B as have almost always been marketed and addressed to confronted her. My grandmother admitted, a little secretly sort of queer, for my sake. We laughed at the women. sheepishly, that she had been sucked into the soap way that kisses between some couples resembled what Much of the B&B centers around women being opera on one of her lunch breaks and couldn’t stop happens when a small child smashes Barbie’s and fawned over; a few years ago, it tried out a storyline watching. Ken’s faces together, or how the show’s male star tells about women’s empowerment, which led to one of the Years later, when my mother was put on bedrest women sweet nothings like a high school production of on-show fashion companies starting a lingerie line during her high-risk pregnancy with me and my Romeo and Juliet, batting his pretty eyelashes to sell the called “Hope for the Future.” But as much as soaps brother, she and my grandmother would call each line. fixate on sexy spectacles, they also work to construct other after the end of each episode, ostensibly to hash But for my mother, the B&B has also been a life- feminized gazes, not just male ones. The first radio out the plot, but really to provide each other with a bit line: a way to keep in touch with family thousands of serials, first broadcast in the ’20s, were in part adverof company. She tells me that, after I was born, my miles away, and, when thinking about her life becomes tisements for literal soap; the implication was that head would swivel towards the screen whenever I too stressful or painful, a way to spend 22 minutes every their audiences were largely housewives, looking for heard the show’s theme song, a cascade of schmaltzy day with something that doesn’t require much thought products to lighten their load. For decades after, soap saxophones and strings. There, I became the third at all. That these 22 minutes might be filled with patri- operas were broadcast at a timeslot designed specifgeneration enraptured by the B&B’s sexy escapades archal/capitalist/moronic ideology is one thing, but ically for women living domestic lives—the middle of every weekday afternoon. their importance to me and my mom, if only in terms of the afternoon, when everyone else was off at work. This couldn’t have been good for my pliable the sheer amount of our lives spent watching, is quite You could thus reasonably attack women’s media baby brain. The premise of the B&B is, essentially, a another. What we might need, then, is not a critique, for characterizing women as at home in the home, few families in the Los Angeles fashion scene doing but a reckoning: what has become of our lives, eked out laboring and spending to uphold post-war family terrible things to each other and to themselves. For 18 at the pace of daytime television? values for a country that simultaneousy excluded years I watched its characters fake their deaths, steal them from the political sphere. But there were some each others’ spouses, sleep together, sleep together on +++ critics who wondered if women, going to the movies desert islands due to tropical aphrodisiacs, throw EDM to watch narratives that spoke to their lives, were only masquerade parties where they sleep with their chil- Within the massive body of scholarship loosely called passive recipients of patriarchal ideology. Figures dren’s partners, stab each other with cocktail swords, media studies, it is strangely difficult to find one vocab- such as Berlant and Linda Williams proposed a sort and kill each other with snakes and poisonous lemon ulary that could define the effects of regularly watching of recuperative reading of genres such as melodrama bars. awful TV. Our dependence on the B&B might be a films and soap operas, positing their viewers not as I watched the show with my mother, jeering at it case of what the cultural theorist Lauren Berlant calls unthinking victims of political manipulation, but as next to her on the couch for 18 years. We would often “cruel optimism,” or “the condition of maintaining an women looking to media to find ways to make sense eat dinner with the TV on, offering each other more attachment to a significantly problematic object.” She of the pain of being a (mostly white and middle-class) commentary on the show than on whatever had doesn’t mean “problematic” in the millennial, politi- woman in the mid-to-late 20th century. Was there a happened in our days. Our phone calls with my grand- cally-aware vernacular—though the B&B is certainly way that women’s media represented women’s social mother after the final credits had rolled sometimes that—but rather a kind of object that actively works labor and exclusion, not to promote this state of affairs, lasted hours into the evening. “Do you think Brooke against your better interests, whether you know it but to critique it? and Ridge are ever going to get out of that bed?” my or not. Cruel optimism can be anything from an One of the places critics found this form of subvermother would laugh into the phone. “You’d think unhealthy investment in a shitty job to dreams of ‘the sion was in the work of Douglas Sirk, a German émigré they’d need to reapply makeup by now,” I could hear good life’ that may never materialize. Here it might be who came to America during the rise of the Third my grandmother respond via the tinny sound from the an attachment to the reliable pleasure afforded by a TV Reich and began making some of the most famous phone’s speaker. For the three of us, the show was a bit show that fills your life with images of the most repre- American films of the ’50s, with wonderfully flowery of shared excitement, and something easier to laugh at hensible people in Los Angeles. (There is, in fact, one titles like Imitation of Life and Written on the Wind. Sirk than the tiring banalities of our lives. ‘therapist’ on the show, but it seems far-fetched that she was well versed in the avant garde techniques used by I kept watching with my mom until I left home and could offer any of the characters advice on how to live German Expressionist dramatists like Bertolt Brecht, lost my cable access. Subtract two days from the seven less dramatic lives, seeing that her storyline leads her who presented life as farcical and strange in order to in a week, multiply that by 22 minutes a day, multiply to cryogenically freeze herself after running someone rouse their audiences for political action. Adapting that by 52 weeks in a year, multiply that by 18 years, you over with her car.) his approach for the genre of melodrama popular get 102,960 minutes, or 1,716 hours, or a little over 1 Since the ’70s, some feminist film critics have led among mid-century American women, Sirk translated percent of my life. If the trend continued and I lived to a long and storied campaign against such pleasure, Brechtian absurdity into a wry sense of camp, suffusing be 100 years old, I would have spent a year watching analyzing how media objects are formally constructed his films with an emotional intensity that verges on the bronzed television stars make out. to mark women as spectacles to be looked at and manip- obscene. His female characters wander their clausAs I got older, I started to wonder whether the show ulated, and to make you implicitly identify with male trophobic (but beautiful) homes as if in a dream; each wasn’t just bad, but bad for us. I went off to college and characters who take pleasure in looking and manipu- piece of décor looms with untold emotional signifilearned all sorts of ways to criticize TV shows, which lating. One such polemic, from Laura Mulvey’s 1975 cance, as if a curtain blowing in the wind could speak isn’t hard for a show that comes apart in your hands. essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” is held the depths of their despair. These women are trapped, The B&B trades in the most egregious sexist stereo- dear by film students across the country (including not only in their homes, but with their thoughts. There types, the most vapid displays of LA wealth, and the myself). “It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, they wait, usually for terrible things to happen to them: most obvious sidelining of any character who isn’t destroys it. That is the intention of this article,” Mulvey miscarriages, murder, abandonment. “The world is white. Growing into my own queerness, I became writes, aiming for “a total negation of the ease and closed, and the characters are acted on,” film historian more sensitive, too, to how relentlessly heterosexual plenitude of the narrative fiction film.” Thomas Elsaesser writes of melodramas like Sirk’s. the B&B is; in a show that’s all about romance, the only That essay coined the now-ubiquitous term “male “The progressive self-immolation and disillusionment queer characters I can remember are a pair of chiding gaze,” arguing that traditional narrative film, through generally ends in resignation: they emerge as lesser lesbian aunts. Devoting so much of my consciousness techniques such as camera placement, editing between human beings for having become wise and acquiescent

09

FEATURES

19 APRIL 2019

to the world.” Somehow, after living through disasters More than merely being terrible, this is the formal When you look at the field of TV shows that will that are achingly sentimental, Sirk’s women discover quality of soap operas which sets them apart from remain after soaps operas are gone, it can be starsomething that isn’t sentimental at all: their inability melodramas, or any other genre for that matter: they tling just how peculiar soaps’ infinite narratives really to escape conditions over which they have no control. never end. Just as generations of my family have grown are. Following the age of high-profile bad guys—think This hopeless conclusion means that these melo- up with the B&B, my mother and I have watched the Tony Soprano or Walter White—a whole slew of shows dramatic women are, by definition, passive. But by rise and demise of multiple generations of its charac- cropped up in which characters gradually learn how analyzing how directors like Sirk staged female char- ters, a cycle of cycle of births and deaths, marriages to become wiser, kinder, more meaningful people. acters in forms of extreme abjection (victims not only and bitter divorces, affairs and heartbreak. Any other The TV critic Aisha Harris, in a recent New York Times of terrible circumstances, but also of their own power- show is measured by episodes and seasons, but I can editorial entitled “Breaking Good,” diagnosed the lessness to stop them), critics pursued the glimmer of only think of the B&B in terms of years and decades. trend. “In the mold of educational children’s shows, hope that the women watching them could begin to The show was there before I was born and—if CBS human decency is the premise,” Harris writes. “Unlike critique their own station as abject too. Melodrama’s never pulls the plug—the plot could hypothetically in other series that explore the dark depths of human entire raison d’être was to, by the saddest means avail- march on after I die. The timescale of a soap opera is, in nature, the characters in these shows actively try to able, practically force you to cry. But in doing so, the this respect, also the timescale of a life. suppress their selfish and harmful impulses in ways genre also took the most painful aspects of its female Because of this, soap operas allow you to pattern both minor and profound.” Shows like The Good Place audiences’ lives—their relegation to the home, their your life by their rhythm. (To this day, my grand- and Russian Doll take this at its word; both place their lack of political and social agency—and displayed mother will not leave the house until after the B&B’s flawed protagonists in cartoonish versions of eternal them in living color. 1:30 time slot.) The show is more reliable than a pet or damnation, where turning from antihero to hero is a day job: there’s always a cliffhanger on Friday and a the only way out. Along the way these characters over+++ development on Monday, a constant stream of events come adversity and give dignity to suffering. By the that in fact never changes. I think my mother likes this grand finale, they have adjusted from their mistakes I am drawn to this sympathetic reading of the melodra- rote novelty. She is lulled by the idea that, on any given and learned how to lead less painful lives. matic, if only because my mom often feels powerless day, she could turn on the show and feel like something I’m sure somebody has gleaned a moral from these too. Over 30 years after working alongside my grand- new is happening. And after the next shitty day at the shows. I prefer the soaps. The B&B may not tell you mother, she still works at a gift shop, now at a small museum, exactly the same as the last, the excitement how to live—and if it did, you certainly would not want children’s museum. The job, which often entails hours will be there just like the day before. to listen—but for my grandmother, my mother, and of standing on a bad ankle punctuated by occasional There is more than a touch of the melodramatic me, it has helped us live nevertheless. The TV scholar eruptions of the kids’ bodily fluids, can be grueling. in the notion that soap operas are about, quite literally, Ien Ang, in her book Watching Dallas, describes this The B&B, once only available to those who were home endless suffering. No sooner is a child born than it’s purpose of soaps well: “There are no words for the during the middle of the afternoon, now sits waiting killed in a horrific jacuzzi accident; no sooner does a ordinary pain of living of ordinary people,” she writes. on her DVR for when she gets back from work. Large character make amends with his mother than she goes “By making that ordinariness something special and swaths of my childhood were spent with the TV as and shoots somebody again. Disaster strikes, and yet meaningful in the imagination, that sense of loss can— the only noise in the house. After a day filled with none of the characters get any wiser, life never gets at least for a time—be removed.” There is something screaming children, my mother was often too tired to better, and the next episode always has more pain in more honest, I think, in recognizing this ordinary pain talk much. She called the duration of the show “her store. This is ridiculous, of course, a sustained sense of than in a television show that teaches you how to be a moment of peace.” drama to keep you perpetually hooked. But I think of hero. For those of us trapped in jobs we hate, living in There is, however, one important difference my mom tuning in every weekday as a reprieve from a conditions that don’t sustain us, sometimes there are between earlier melodramas and the B&B. Sirk’s job that feels just as endless, and wonder if there might no heroic choices, only hard ones. Isn’t thinking othermovies, as much as they were kitschy, were also impec- be some truth to it too. wise the cruellest optimism there is? cably made; their sheer stylishness was what allowed I am, of course, being melodramatic. My mother critics to read sorrow in its lavish settings. The B&B, +++ would be the first to tell you that things aren’t all bad. however, is nothing of the sort. The acting isn’t just If a soap opera is as long as our lives, both can be somewooden, it’s fossilized, as if the casting crew discov- To say that soap operas are endless might be, in one times sweet, and sometimes tragic. Away from home, I ered a few vaguely attractive people buried deep in sense, an overstatement. In reality, their ratings have still relish when she calls to tell me about the plot, and the La Brea Tar Pit and put them in front of a camera. declined dramatically since their heyday in the ’70s, she loves to keep me updated. In this way the show The plot, too, moves at the pace of geological time. and the B&B is one of only four American soap operas continues: three generations finding a way of getting Characters have sex for weeks. The rest of the time, that are still on the air. There will be a day, maybe through together. Survival might not always be bold, they sit around talking, rehashing the same verklempt soon, when my mom will have to stop watching. I can’t but I would like to think it can still be beautiful. conversations over and over until someone dies or imagine how the show might end—perhaps a cliffthere’s a Christmas party. hanger would be true to form. WILL WEATHERLY B’19 loves a bit of schmaltz.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATURES

10

BY Tabitha Payne ILLUSTRATION Zev Izenberg DESIGN Lulian Ahn

LONG SHADOWS SMOKING GUNS Legacies of the Vietnam War in Providence

I think many people who live in Downtown Providence When Saigon fell, Hmong people became targets of experiences of an unbroken, continuing state of war and on the East Side would be surprised to discover extreme violence and continue to face marginalization and capture. His ethnography is a testament to the that a Fortune 500 weapons manufacturer is head- in Laos to this day. 200,000 Hmong have fled Laos as remarkable resilience of Cambodian refugees in the quartered just off of Kennedy Plaza. Textron, which refugees since 1975. face of state neglect and violence. Today, Vietnamese, raked in $2.738 billion in profits last year for selling These are the forgotten offshoots of the Vietnam Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian Americans remain things like aircraft to the Israel Defense Forces, oper- War. Even this incomplete titling of the conflict, “the among the poorest ethnic groups in the US. ates out of the nearest high-rise in the skyline. The Vietnam War,” reinforces the forgetting of these The Carter administration’s 1980 Refugee Act corporation made a name for itself as a major weapons devastating proxy conflicts by framing the war as if ushered in the largest refugee resettlement program manufacturer during the Vietnam War—and massive it only took place in Vietnam. (Some academics say in US history. Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong and profits. With a staff of 35,000 in 25 countries, making “Indochina War,” which uses a little-known, colo- Laotian émigrés spread across the nation. Many put hundreds of different products for warfare, Textron is nial term.) American political discourse has reified down roots in Rhode Island, in places like Providence, a mammoth operation. And it lives close by: It stands such obfuscation. Eric Tang, author of Unsettled: Cranston, and Woonsocket. Those in Providence just across the street from the RISD library, a five Cambodian Refugees in the NYC Hyperghetto, names concentrated in poor neighborhoods like Upper and minute walk from the Brown Public Health building. the US government’s talk around their ensuing Lower South Providence, Elmwood, West End, and You would recognize Textron Tower immediately. It Southeast Asian resettlement program as “state-sanc- Olneyville. With some 12,000 residents tracing their is that browning, blockish building—designed by the tioned amnesia and selective memory.” Without histories back to these legacies (the majority of whom same architects as the Empire State Building—sleepily dismissing the reality of the Carter Administration’s are Cambodian Americans, the next biggest group reminiscent of an old-moneyed America whose time concern regarding the humanitarian crisis, Tang is being Hmong Americans), Rhode Island is home to has come and passed. You might be looking at it every mindful of the opportunism of America’s intake of an especially high concentration of Vietnam War day as you walk westward on George Street or catch a refugees. Particularly, he critiques this move’s attempt refugees. salvific glance at the sun setting behind the city. at “political vindication, justifying the much-maligned US intervention in Southeast Asia”—which looks all +++ +++ the less authentic when one considers the widespread urban poverty, unemployment, racism, criminaliza- Without a doubt, Textron owes its wealth to the In 1965, a decade into the war in Vietnam, the US set off tion, deportations, gangs, and housing crises asylum- Vietnam War. Originally a small Massachusetts textile a secret bombing campaign in neighboring Cambodia seekers would come to know. Tang connects the company founded in 1923, “Special Yarns” expanded and Laos. The goal was to target North Vietnamese militarization in Southeast Asia to the militarization of into a major manufacturer of parachutes and other forces feared to be traveling down the Ho Chi Minh urban neighborhoods in the US, delineating refugees’ textiles for the US government during World War Trail and spreading communism in the region. The result was mass casualties and displacements that spiraled into further tragedies. Some 150,000 to 500,000 Cambodians died under the carpet bombings. American B-52s dropped more munitions on Cambodia than had fallen in all of World War II. The Khmer Rouge communist guerilla group grew in time with people’s outrage over American aggression. Fearing it would lose Cambodia to communism, the US helped overthrow the Cambodian Prime Minister in 1970. A civil war ensued. When the Khmer Rouge stormed the capital as victors in 1975, they pointed to the sky and warned the city that the Americans were now going to bomb them too. Forced to become laborers under agrarian extremist communist rule, a fourth of the population—approximately two million people—died. The regime lasted 4 years, before Vietnamese forces pushed them out in 1979. This displaced millions. 260,000 Cambodians were resettled from Thai refugee camps overseas. Laos too suffered a terrible fate. The US showered the nation with 2 million tons of ordnance—that is, a plane full of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years—making Laos the most bombed country per capita in history. Eighty million tons of ordnance remain. At least 20,000 Laotians have died from stepping on unexploded cluster munitions since. In what was described by the CIA as the largest paramilitary operation it has ever undertaken, the US capitalized on longstanding ethnic tensions in Laos by recruiting the Hmong to fight against the communist-aligned Lao.

11

FEATURES

19 APRIL 2019

II. Once those contracts fizzled, the corporation with a journalist of the weapons industry, anxiously before 1995 were legally un-deportable. rebranded itself “Textron” (“tex” meaning “textile”) scribbling notes as it dawned on me how tiny I was The deportation crisis has hit the community in and began to absorb other types of companies. beneath this whole thing. I fell into anti–Southeast Rhode Island hard. In January, Sophorn Sun, who was Textron's 1960 purchase of Bell Helicopter launched it Asian American deportation activism after attending the youngest of deportees last December, died in a into the war industry and into Vietnam. Its Bell UH-1 a community event at the Providence Youth Student traffic accident in Phnom Penh. This was devastating Iroquois Helicopter, affectionately nicknamed the Movement (PrYSM). I even visited Textron, though news to his family and the Cambodian American Huey, was met with legendary success. The Huey was I never got past the lobby. (The security guard didn’t community in Rhode Island. PrYSM is now pushing favored for its lightweight design, ability to navigate really know what to do with me. A suit laughed and forward a campaign to lobby for amnesty for those difficult, montane terrain, and efficiency for medical shook his head, as if to say, “She’s never gonna get in.” who have found themselves on ICE deportation lists in evacuation and close firing, and 7,000 flew in Vietnam. I felt a little ridiculous. In hindsight, I should have also Rhode Island, leading community meetings, protests This was larger than the helicopter fleet of other any worn a suit.) at ICE check-ins, and free legal clinics for those country in the world. Remembered as one of the few The irony of it all captured me: how war’s spiraling affected. American successes of the war, the Huey has indelibly processes could make its profiteers and refugees The treatment of Southeast Asian Americans in marked popular memory of the conflict. Perhaps no unlikely neighbors, what war makes invisible (black Rhode Island is egregious, particularly considering other aircraft has been so celebrated by Hollywood. and brown people) and hypervisible (helicopters!?), how much Rhode Island has taken from and owes You’ve seen it before: the Huey is the green, agile heli- how war lurks in the terribleness beneath everyday life. this community. For one, the remarkable, dynamic copter of Forrest Gump, Call of Duty, and Apocalypse In particular, how close war is, as much as mainstream activism of Southeast Asian American-founded and Now (remember: “Ride of the Valkyries?”). There is America would like to forget it, to deem war as some- -led groups like PrYSM and the Alliance of Rhode Island even, in fact, a name for this trope: “Every Helicopter thing that happens to other people, to a time that is not Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE) has shaped is a Huey.” The vehicle’s versatility and low cost make now, to a place that is not here. When I moved from the social landscape of the city. PrYSM, for example, it the movie standard. Even when other helicopters Cambodia to the US for college, I thought I left the played an integral role in the writing and passage of the are used, they might be dubbed over by the sound of a legacies of that war behind. And then I found that war Community Safety Act in Rhode Island in 2017, which Huey. The Huey is so embedded in the popular imagi- is still proximate. It is a ten minute walk from the Main restricts the police’s ability to racially profile and harm nation that it is probably what you’re hearing when you Green. It is 40 years ago, and it is right now, selling residents—an invaluable contribution, to say the least. imagine the sound of a helicopter. drones to the US air force in Afghanistan. Textron After thinking through all these histories of war, In 1972, Textron Tower completed construction executives sit on the Brown Advisory Committee and it’s critical to ask: who gets to stay here, and who goes? in Providence. (This timing makes me wonder if the Corporation. As urgent campaigns like Brown Divest The state invests in Textron’s growth, as it expels Tower was built on Vietnam War profits.) In the years have brilliantly laid out, Brown is invested in war. As a those it took in as refugees: people for whom the legasince, the $14 billion company has branched out into student there, where does this place me? cies of war are more than just capital, or realizations I an aerospace, automotive, and defense conglomSo what irony my bewilderment is loaded with: can write about in an essay, but are lived realities and erate whose myriad products range from specialized living on a hill of knowledge production that is traumas that move intergenerationally. Even 40 years armored tanks to advanced information systems deeply intertwined in a system of knowledge erasure, later, the war has never really ended. for intelligence agencies. Textron expands more by my surprise is an inevitable product of where I am the year. So, too, does the American weapons manu- standing. Indeed, for those here for whom this war is a TABITHA PAYNE ’20 is organizing a teach-in on facturing industry as a whole. With U.S. defense daily reality, this story—of systems of power displacing Southeast Asian American Deportations with Brown, spending rising consistently from the Bush adminis- them and their stories from public view—is wholly RIC, and RISD students at 5:30 PM, May 4th, at the tration through to the present, the lucrative business of unsurprising. Providence Youth Student Movement, 669 Elmwood warfare is not going anywhere anytime soon. Of course, I could not find the smoking gun. But Avenue, Suite B13. I think this is the genius of the “defense” company +++ (better, as many are now calling them, the “war” company): that there never is a smoking gun. There is I fell down this rabbit hole many months ago. I heard just the gun. And without the smoke, apparently, the offhand from a professor that the last American gun is no longer a “political instrument.” company to stop producing cluster munitions bombs was headquartered in Providence. Textron was +++ selling them for use by the Saudis in Yemen. Thanks to a marriage of Quaker-led local action and interna- Today, Southeast Asian Americans are facing increased tional pressure, Textron ceased production of cluster deportations under the Trump Administration. munitions in 2016. I immediately wondered if Textron Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has had anything to do with the cluster munitions bombs put some 16,000 people who were granted asylum as that rained on Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War. Of Vietnam War refugees and have since acquired crimcourse, I knew my logic was reductive. But I wanted to inal records at risk of exile to countries they may not find the smoking gun; I wanted to draw a straight line even remember. Thirteen thousand of these mandates from Textron, which enriched itself on the Vietnam are for sentences already served. But the problem War, to the refugees in Providence of that conflict living here is not one of individual “criminality,” but of the in the long, long shadow of Textron's own building. bizarre logic of a state deporting back asylum seekers— I began a research project on all this for class. I many of whom fought for U.S. in the Vietnam War. For scoured through weapons contracts from the 1960s. Vietnamese Americans, this represents the reversal of I started a book club on Tang’s Unsettled. I connected the state’s promise in 2008 that those who had arrived

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATURES

12

COLLECTIVE Sri-Lankan youth confront inherited narratives of the Civil War

BY Wen Zhuang and Dana Kurniawan DESIGN Wen Zhuang

On October 31 of last year, the campus of South Asia the 1944 recognition of Sinhala as Sri Lanka’s official remains inaccessible both geographically and finanUniversity (SAU) in New Delhi, India, glowed pink language, diminishing the widely spoken Tamil, and cially to most Sri Lankans, presents the potential for a and blue. A field of students posed silently in the center the 1948 Ceylon Citizenship Act, which made it virtu- nationwide political movement. By building solidarity of the courtyard, each behind a sign written in either ally impossible for the ethnic Indian Tamil minority to with Sinhalese and Tamil students who share his English, Tamil, Sinhala, or Hindi. Some messages obtain citizenship in the country. vision for a more democratic Sri Lanka, Anukuvi and read as specific commands—“Restore the Democracy In 2002, due to a rising fear among LTTE that the his peers attempt to navigate histories they’ve been in Sri Lanka”—others less so—“No More Violence.” US would support the Sri Lankan government as part of forced to inherit. Thavarasi Anukuvi, one of only eight students of the ‘war on terror,’ the liberation army began exploring As a result of his family’s displacement from their Sri Lankan descent studying at SAU, organized the peace talks and signed a permanent ceasefire soon- home in Batticaloa near the end of the war, Anukuvi’s demonstration. Anukuvi spoke with the College after. However, Sri Lankan leaders’ corruption and parents sent him to live and receive supplementary Hill Independent about the long tradition of polit- violation of the ceasefire agreements culminated in a education in St. John’s Mission, a boys’ orphanage ical protests against the Sri Lankan government. He 2005 election framed by threats from both the LTTE run by the Church of the American Ceylon. Under discussed the place that students, many of whom grew and the Sri Lankan government to reopen combat. the direction of Darshan Albamavar, who previously up during Sri Lanka’s nearly 30-year civil war, hold in Initially, Rajapaksa styled himself as a man worked as a settlement worker in Toronto, the boys’ the national conversation of a post-war country. “All of peace and portrayed his campaign platform home has made long-term connections with several US we demand is a government that is fundamentally as one based on negotiation. However, unlike and global universities (RISD included) and allocates built on democracy. And the acts by our president are Wickremasinghe, Rajapaksa called for a tougher line funding through donors each year for several boys, like steps away from that.” against the LTTE and decided, in an ongoing refusal to Anukuvi, to receive a college-level education. Distance However, the path to democracy, and the goal of continue peace talks between the two groups, against away from Sri Lanka has afforded Anukuvi the opporthis democratic desire, do not exist within a monolith. the division of the country into federal states. A year tunity to re-evaluate “who were the victims and who For students of Anukuvi’s generation, contending with following his appointment, a series of orchestrated were the beneficiaries of the war,” while recognizing a war-torn upbringing can often only happen through mine blasts killed a number of off-duty servicemen an ultimately unresolved reality: “Ordinary people distance from the country's history—a distance that and civilians of Tamil descent, an attack the Sri lost a lot from the war—they did not participate in the grants a double-edged comfort. One that allows Lankan government later blamed on the LTTE. In war, but the war participated in their lives,” Anu tells students like him to process a collective trauma, yet response, the LTTE “renewed their struggle” and the Indy, “and some people, even Tamil people, still precludes him from organizing a political reaction pushed the country into the last phase of the war—a believe in violence as a need to regain their rights.” that aligns with the material and ideological realities period that would become infamous for its war crimes. of those still in Sri Lanka. Students organizing outside From 2006 to the LTTE’s eventual defeat in 2009, the of Sri Lanka, then, must grapple with the challenge of war saw heightened human rights violations and mass mobilizing from afar, while also rejecting narratives civilian casualties: in early January of 2006, five innoof communal violence that have emerged from their cent Tamil students were killed by the Sri Lankan army. homeland and from their families. Furthermore, the last phase of the war saw a refusal The October demonstration at SAU came a day of foreign aid intervention and signaled a start to the after the sacking of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil state-sanctioned media suppression that prevails Wickremesinghe and the subsequent appointment of today—14 media workers have been killed in the ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place. For Sri country since 2006. The UN and several human rights Lankan people of both Sinhalese and Tamil descent, groups still cannot determine a clear casualty count, this move was not only unconstitutional—by law, a with many groups estimating up to 40,000 civilian politician can only be appointed if they hold a majority deaths just in the last four months of the war. in the parliament—but also a chilling reminder of a government that has repeatedly acted without due +++ process. This is not the first time that Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa found themselves in contentious oppo- Anukuvi’s family grew up in Batticaloa, a city in the sition: Rajapaksa ran against Wickremesinghe in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka with a largely Tamil 2005 presidential elections and won by a slim margin population. Though the war had been 10 years in of 50.3% of the vote. At the time, Rajapaksa repre- power when he was born, it wasn’t until this fourth sented the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, a group known for phase—when armed conflict moved further east—that having a democratic socialist economic agenda, and war atrocities became synonymous with everyday Wickremesinghe the United National Party, a right- life. “Growing up as Tamil in Batticaloa, I did not yet leaning, pro-capitalist political faction. have the maturity to understand what was happening, By the time of Rajapaksa’s appointment, the even though I witnessed bombings every day and the country had been in a Civil War for 22 years, with LTTE’s were visible on the streets. They speak our armed conflict beginning in 1983, when an intermittent languages; some are even relatives of civilians.” It's insurgency was brought forth by the minority Tamils likely that civilians like Anukuvi have close ties to (known as the LTTE) against the majority Sinhalese. members of the liberation army. At the time of the This insurgency followed a series of discriminatory insurgency, many youth joined the LTTE to pursue a acts of displacement and erasure of Tamil identity desire for Tamil self-determination. This is also why by an increasingly nationalist government­—namely, the university space, which although unfortunately

How can education deepen the recognition of human costs from the civil war while accounting for its susceptibility to rely on incomplete narratives?

13

NEWS

17 APRIL 2019

+++

Similarly, Nethmi is working on additional scholarship in relation to the Sri Lankan landscape and similarly Nethmi, a student of Sinhalese ethnicity who grew plans to return home post-graduation. up in the city of Matara, a town south of Colombo, Nethmi’s predominantly Western education, and now attends Macalester College in Minnesota, howwever, has sowed frustrations that extend beyond is of this same generation. Speaking to the Indy, she her Sri Lankan roots and toward a fear of global said she can still clearly recount waking to the sound amnesia. For as much as we want to acknowledge of firecrackers signalling the reclamation of Tamil- that the youth of today were too young to understand controlled territory by the Sri Lankan army. Although the war’s implications, the lack of public history gives she was brought up amid deep-seated Sinhalese way to a more serious concern of political apathy: the nationalist sentiments, moving to Colombo around danger of not examining the legacy of civil war with the age of 11 exposed Nethmi to much greater political sufficient reflexivity and self-critique. diversity, where she began delving into the history of the civil war and reading widely on the topic. Although +++ she recognizes the privileges she derives from being an ethnic majority, she cites systemic and unlawful Even after a Civil War that spanned over three decades, violence against minorities as one of the reasons why the trials are far from over for the Tamil population. she, like Anukuvi, was fervently against the appoint- While recognizing that both Tamils and Sinhalese ment of Rajapaksa to PM last October. Nethmi’s higher were persecuted during the war, Nethmi laments that education was funded by a donor of Tamil ethnicity the Sinhalese majority “still don’t understand how who has ancestral roots in Sri Lanka, a gesture that many Tamils were persecuted during the entire war.” took her by surprise and helped to transcend the ethnic The Tamil diaspora around the world has repeatedly divides clearly defined in her upbringing. Higher called for the Sri Lankan government to be brought education has pushed Nethmi and Anukuvi to recon- before the International Criminal Court for its war sider the differing politics of their identities. While crimes and delayed justice for human rights violaspatially further away from Sri Lanka, they’re concep- tions. In response, politicians have instead instilled tually closer to confronting their shared trauma and fear through the invocation of nationalism. This past history of violence. March, Rajapaksa warned that external adjudication with international judges could potentially signal a +++ diminishment of Sri Lankan sovereignty by the UN, urging the country to move forward while ignoring In writing this article, we are asking what it means to active discrimination against Tamils: “We have all The conditions of exile, activism, trauma, and politinherit a legacy of a Civil War in this generation as a been affected—let’s forget the past and move forward.” ical corruption that plague post-war Sri Lankans have student and as a citizen. How can education deepen Anukuvi and Nethmi are two young Sri Lankans consistently been absent in the political and global news the recognition of human costs from the war while who have matured in the diaspora. The factors of time discourse of the U.S. The circumstances of a country’s accounting for its susceptibility to rely on incomplete and space have offered them a way out of the histo- geography should not determine the level of urgency and narratives? Moving from his undergraduate studies ries of ethnic conflict and government repression that necessity for global attention and response. “Towards a at Eastern University in Sri Lanka to graduate studies have shaped the identity of modern-day Sri Lankans. New Collective Memory” caps off a brief series in which at SAU, Anukuvi expressed that “one cannot critically This distance has also tasked them with a different contributors, editors, and staff at the Independent have think about the situation [the Civil War] through a burden, one of spiritual and idealogical awakening, examined the role of historical trauma, war narratives, state-sanctioned education, which always romanti- the processing of self-identity in relation to intergen- and generational memory in contemporary South Asia. cizes the history,” pointing to the syllabi in Sri Lankan erational traumas of war. Though for Anukuvi and It is an attempt to investigate, analyze, and report on public schools as lacking. “We need to look at this Nethmi, these awakenings took place outside of Sri political events that have consistently been sidelined by as an education issue. In Sri Lanka, everything is to Lanka—by virtue of their having benefited from insti- the narrow scope of mainstream Western media and to establish a state-sanctioned ideal—the people who tutions of higher education—but they have the desire see them through the momentum of political protests, are making these syllabi and all, they are part of the to return home and reshape deeply entrenched narra- before and after, in history and in real time. state or government and are attempting to establish tives of ethnic conflict. However, in order for student this vision.” Although reading beyond assignments organizers to galvanize political change in Sri Lanka at The breadth of narratives highlighted in News at has offered Anukuvi more clairty, both he and Nethmi large, the burden of redefining historical memory must large this semester—from Sudan to Kashmir, France have lamented the rift their scholarship often creates extend beyond diasporic youth. to Guatemala—is an appeal for a radical shift in when returning to their home in Sri Lanka. But both global news coverage stateside. In order to move past have begun to imagine ways in which they might a Eurocentric discourse that pushes an isolationist further conversations with Sri Lankan natives. In WEN ZHUANG R'19 AND DANA KURNIAWAN B'22 and nationalist agenda, we must work towards a wellBatticaloa, Anu has started and facilitated a number believe democracy doesn't have to be a dirty word. informed and better connected populace—one that of progressive groups that regularly meet, read books, critiques the places of privilege from which we think, and host discussions. He plans to return to Batticaloa write, and observe. after his studies and bridge conversations of the war’s history with the young boys at St John’s Mission. Nevermind Thomas More, utopia is not an island.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

14

CREATIVE STRATAGEM Upping the maker’s pace

BY Liby Hays ILLUSTRATION + DESIGN

Liby Hays

chief advantage of modernist furnishings: fewer decorative facets allow for speedier dusting…) The infinite coastline problem applies to finishing artworks as well. Like the meticulous cartographer, one can always continue adding detail. Slavish processes of surface refinement can continue on indefinitely until you hit a deadline…And this lack of finality She asked me if it was okay if she used a pre-extant can produce jarring psychological effects. template and I said it was fine, without looking over her For instance: in the encroachment of the deadline design. The result was this neotenic plush: hour, the work may appear in the creator’s eyes (now finely attuned to correcting minute flaws) as a collection of tangencies, scritchinesses, cliched stylizations, compositional oversights, muddied colors, and disproportionate forms. Best to accept this as a transient perception, and wait until later to reflect on the piece.

Detailed below are a host of creative strategies I picked up over the course of my RISD education. I came upon them through the process of making things, collaborating with others, or reverse-engineering the things others have made. The approach to artmaking detailed here requires little technical prowess. Many of the examples revolve around scraps, secretions, memes, or other transient artifacts which take no skill to produce. These techniques will not afford the lushest or most ‘resolved’ artworks. It would be more accurate to say that these are practical, conceptual and/or managerial strategies by which artistic labor can be circumvented, and time conserved. 5. Loss-2-Gain I know that overwork can be enobilizing, as RISD’s When making something, in my experience, the main hyper-competitive work culture attests. But perhaps things you’re subject to lose are time, money, heat, with a bit of cleverness, we can reach a judicious In this instance, I wished I had screened every frames, and resolution. But if you take these factors medium between laziness and grueling labor. We can step of the process. I felt the ‘Chibi-fication’ and addi- into account initially, the loss can be reconfigured as produce great art, with plenty of time left for other tion of ears made it too difficult to recognize this as the a positive, and negative feedback can be re-incorpohobbies and self-preservative functions. Non-player Character… perhaps this is the NPC in a rated into the work. For example, in a class on projecflashback episode, or his infant son… tion-mapping video, a classmate created this setup in 1. Icon Mods which a time-lapse video of rotting apples was digitally Entities derive authority by implementing a consistent projected onto a pile of vanilla ice cream scoops, which design language, but who sets the standard? were themselves melting from the heat of the light Lately I have been intrigued by the lack of standardizabeam. tion in the way the sickle handle is drawn in different iterations of the Communist Party’s hammer and sickle logo. 3. Vampirism The previous example portrays collaboration in a (mostly) positive light, from the perspective of the initiator, but the dynamic can easily become warped. For example: people often portray the relationship between artists and their assistants as feudal in charIn this case, the icon maintains its power and legibility acter. The exploitative artist or studio will supposedly despite these inconsistencies. reap not only labor but ideas from its trainees without The piece was at once taking advantage of the loss Graffitoes and burgeoning pop artists often modify attributing proper credit. It’s said that older animators of heat by the projector beam (by utilizing it to melt the an existing logo, to subversive ends. (Admittedly, this benefit ‘vampiristically’ from the ‘youthful vigor’ of ice cream) the loss of intermediary frames (within the move feels far from fresh, and often amounts to unso- the new animators they employ to draw their interme- time-lapse movie) and the loss of resolution in downlicited publicity for the brand in question.) diate frames (The older animator draws out key parts loading the video (insomuch as detail is rendered illegI have defaulted to this technique on multiple of an action, and the younger animator fills in the extra ible when projected onto milkfat). occasions, in the interest of time. Once in design class, drawings in between them). we had an in-class assignment to produce a piece of I haven’t witnessed this type of vampirism first- 6.Bonus Pun conceptual art in under an hour. I went around taping hand, but I did once see a group project in which two One of the nicest things about 3-D models it that the a lozenge-shaped piece of paper to the decal on the freshmen collaborated with a grad student in her geometry/basic form of the model is separate from back of everyone’s laptops, so as to revoke the bitemark late-thirties on a performance piece. The piece dealt its surface texture, allowing for ‘reskinning.’ (For of original sin (and its epistemological, sexual, and with the sanctions of their Christian upbringing instance, a fly-by-night game developer might repurconsumerist ramifications). and involved elaborately staged baptismal rites and pose a desert racing level as a candy world, by attaching hundreds of laser-cut crosses suspended from the a different set of painted textures to the same 3-D primcross-beams and groveling on the floor and enacting a itives.) I asked a boy I knew in high school to send me host of other repentant actions, spanning almost half the file of a 3-D scene he made of worms in dirt, so I an hour. could borrow the same shader (the combination of The grad student stood to the side. Her algorithms used to calculate how light behaves on a contribution was bringing in these Fig Newtons: surface, simulating shininess, matteness, Instantly created, instantly metabolized. I had ~50 transparency etc.) on a model of internal organs. A few minutes to spare for a walk around campus. years later I used the worms themselves in a paper bag charm I designed to 3-D print. 2. Commissions Commissions and work-tradeoffs are a great time conservation strategy, as untold hours of trial and error are folded into another person’s technical expertise. It’s just important to maintain transparency throughout every step of the process. For example: I have a working relationship with a once-classmate who produces high-quality, custom-embroidered plush keychains. The first plush I commissioned from her was a We associate bibles with vampire-slayers, not I guess you could say I was, uhm... ‘taking the bait...’ wounded rabbit’s foot, based on an online ‘Judy Hopps vampires—yet this woman, in her unassuming way, (nooooooo….) Foot Surgery’ game. was also contributing to the vampirism issue. She had not put herself on the line in the same way the 7. Demarcations freshmen had, yet everyone in the group received the In my glass-blowing class we learned a fun, folksy trick same grade. to determine the focal length of a lens you’ve ground and polished by hand. You wet the lens thoroughly and 4. Surface Treatment prop it against a wall. Then you close one eye and hold This strategy relates to finishing work, which can be a lit candle next to the other, and back up slowly until more of an emotional issue than anything else. you hit the point at which the reflection of the candle in You might be familiar with the paradox about the the slick lens flips upside-down. At this point, you spit contours of a map—because you can always draw a directly onto the floor. The distance between your spit I was more than satisfied with the final product, which coastline at a higher resolution (using a longer and puddle and the lens is its approximate focal length (at she got to me, bizarrely, in under two days and for longer line to weave about coves and inlets) every which it produces the sharpest image). under ten dollars. coastline is technically infinite in length. Surface area It reminded me of the charm of spit-gluing, or I ordered another commission from her in the increases with convolution and resolution…one thinks licking your finger and holding it up to figure out which fall of the next year. I wanted a keychain based on the also of the bumps on the walls of intestines, waffle-cut direction the wind is blowing from. ‘Non-Player Character’ (NPC) meme popular at the french fries, and the ruffled collars of the 16th-17th time. century Northern European well-to-do. (Or one of the LIBY HAYS B/RISD ‘19 fosters artistic sympathies.

15

ARTS

19 APRIL 2019

4 POEMS

DESIGN Justin Han & Isabelle Rea

pantoum Justine Nguyen-Nguyen

if an email falls into a pine box—if a tree falls in love—does anyone hear it?

twenty years from today , i still love you

Dovetail’s shirts are wool-windowed, soft, like fuzzing out to the tv (are you still watching?) each night windowed, the shutter blinkblinkblinks (are you still watching?) each night with hands clasped the shutter blinkblinkblinks too slow to catch with hands clasped behind the back too slow to catch a fever dream behind the back yard of your head is still a fever dream -ail unsent, the yard of your head is still , in my hands, familiar grass

Shuchi

with

intent

,i

limb

my swollen gesture in your ventilator dreams, spill white coffee till you metronome

falling fatalities from the cool whip suite

in this room-like container you trace bright outlines, i trace thin skin moving under hand [kaɽak]

L’s husband’s havingneverdonethelaundry spills into a third room but not his conference call1 & when2 the dress returns with button -holes wrenched open, I find it

forehead zits rashscab your facets, bones

Justine Nguyen-Nguyen

too empty to mannequin

the only answers to this are familiar: this is my only outlet you say inward

grotesque3 will they suspect the translator of foul play4 we have a way family of callously forgetting looking straight at a sun too bright, crowning from a murder of branches and no matter how much our eyes perch, sensation is always a threshold sidling

if this today was your last, unspool

?

1

the overabundant underoccurrence toes the party line, apparently 2

would you

behind steering wheels and almirahs

?

L’s boy-next-door spills into a third degree burglary 3 forgivable I can remove myself from my room, but not his tom’s from the sinkside 4 & when

untitled Maya Bjornson

[Written on the wall, upon entering the House]: A different time, sitting at a sticky bar counter, not knowing which hour it is, remembering the disillusionment of a black and mild, thinking how I too was drawn to the ocean but how I will not see the ocean tonight. I don’t know what it would’ve been like to be a sailor, but I have been on a boat. I heard a story about a sailor who had every inch of his entire body tattooed, and everyone always immediately thinks about his dick, and what he must’ve gotten tattooed there, but I never think about that, I never think about his dick, no I just wonder what he has between his buttcheeks, and what it would’ve been like to be the guy who had to hold the buttcheeks firmly apart so that the guy with the needle didn’t get messed up by the involuntary clenching that would necessarily have happened, because let’s be honest, that whole affair’s a three-person job, at least. Ever used a hairbrush to scratch the back of your calves? it’s great, it’s great, my grandfather couldn’t get enough of it, had me scratch the back of his calves till they were bright red n raw, and then he’d turn over and make me do his shins. Truly, we like to forget the thinness of membrane. We like to believe that substances hold consistent boundaries, that I know what shape this knife is—but truly, even concrete isn’t objective, and the heat from my fingertips is enough to swell the glass of a mirror. THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

LITERARY

16

TOE TAGS LH

BY Indy Staff ILLUSTRATION BY Julia Illana DESIGN BY Nicole Cochary & Claire Schlaikjer

To my favorite artist, and also my muse Though it’s hard to believe that there was a time before Liby knew how to use Blender, she used to be just like you and me: twiddling her thumbs, waiting for death, too unskilled to 3-D print. That all changed when she encountered System 2.79’s encyclopedia of command terminology: “Child: An Object that is affected by its Parent.” Since then, Liby has become the Earth’s premier psychoanalyst of kitsch objects and renderer of aesthetic materials with tormented relationships to themselves. Her art is perfect, even though the philistines (haters) at crit say otherwise. In 2056, once her tenure as poet-laureate of The Container Store is up, Liby will retire to her cave automatic virtual environment, surfacing only briefly each afternoon for a nice, relaxing jog. Unfortunately, like all true geniuses, she will still have haters, who’ll be like, “How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” Liby won’t budge: “I don’t chase after anyone. If you wanna walk out of my life, then I’ll hold the fucking door open for you.”

JR There is the act of taking classes at Brown, and then there is the act of taking classes with JR at Brown: sitting quietly beside her as she fights Calabresi (and then gets asked to TA!), fighting Nabers on the greatest love story of all time, fighting (or, in his words, “knocking out”) Gould for making a strained argument, fighting Butterball on his spelling. Pollack’s anecdoty, that kid’s TV voice, “slippery slopes” — to sit next to JR is to experience how to do Brown right. But beneath this truculence JR is a loyalist — the first to cook you some cauliflower, or fetch you a bottle of Gatorade, to reaffirm your grievances, and, one friend says, apparently, “to complement your ass.” Beyond just fighting professors, JR fights for her friends, for the seals, for the kids she won’t have, for a better Twitter discourse. Now that these classes are ending, find JR dreaming of moving to the Vermilion Range, Denvir, Colorado, and the Boundary Waters, scouring job boards for boiler room attendants and, considering even staying in Prov, an A+ player rising to the top of a B+ state. CW Claribel makes us imagine, as we never might have otherwise, what it might be like to delicately pull open the door of a miniature washing machine, or pull the soft (if buttery) blanket of a giant pancake around our shoulders. Her stickers will stick in our memories the way they never could on newsprint, and her illustrations made the Indy a little sweeter.

SC

JM

Dearest SC,

JM will probably save the world, but she’s too woke to be a white savior. Sure, she is intelligent, diligent, and discerning and can be found in the early mornings, hours before you even have woken up typing away about some fascinating phenomenon taking place in Sudan or Israel or Cuba or somewhere that Al Jazeera still hasn’t picked up. But she also makes eye contact and actually cares, which is odd. She listens with utmost care, but will never agree with you just for the sake of inflating your big ass head. She always comes through with tea, but it’s steeping, coming on slow, but getting stronger by the moment. This speaks to her magnificent poise—she lets the world offer up its crock of shit and then she’ll fire back with grace. It’s hard to find a word that captures her acumen—she’s a paragon? Influencer? No—maverick.

Subscribers keen on hard-hitting and side-splitting Reviews of the previous Week must now despair: you are ditching the Indy for something called ‘graduation.’ From eco-Legos to TéléGarfields, the wacky world of weekly wonders is your uncontested domain. With the sharpest eyes, the fullest heart, and the world record for most vanilla lattés expropriated, you bring joy and biting satire to this paper like no one else. Before you wiped the bowling alley floor with the entire staff, you dubbed yourself “WiR LADY,” but you’re more than just that. You’re the Time Corner maven, a caring editor, and an endlessly warm and loving friend. You light up Conmag with your smile and your impossibly soft and impossibly yellow sweatshirt. You’ll be missed by everyone here, especially by me. Happy retirement, SC! LM

HA

Where is home for Nicole? It’s a question that’s been on her mind ever since she was born in the Grand Canyon and christened by a big ol’ smooch from saxophonist and adulterer Bill Clinton. Growing up, Nicole made a life for herself wherever the National Park Service sent her: the wilds of Maine, the Bae Area, and most recently, right at the crest of the Grand Tetons. Each has held its own promise: a cavalcade of identical, smelly boys (never “the one”), high-class waitressing gigs, the entire North American garage rock scene… but she’s always hungry for more. Lately, she’s been seeking out shag carpets, the loving embrace of the sun, lava lamps, those weird frosted glass showers, the peculiar green glow of a pool table at closing time. Coming upon her in Scotland, she seemed equally at home out on the heath as she was with a pint at Nice N’ Sleazys. In a little black dress she stole from her mom, Nicole crooned Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much” at a karaoke bar off the Vegas strip. It was the sexiest performance we’ve ever seen, and the sentiment rang true: nothing’s too good for Nicole. So, then, where is the place she calls home? Maybe, just maybe, she’s finding it along the way.

The sex symbol of the Indy, the man in the hat, the tall one, the patron saint of metro, the climate-wokest, the nokia devotee, the roommate who you forced to write eons ago, only to discover that he can really, I mean, really, write. He taught us that the Indy, and life, are supposed to be fun! Biking to banquet – fun! Making dinner with the full contents of the fridge – fun! “Being cool” – fun! Making us laugh in front of the whole lecture hall – very, very fun. HA, you have everything it takes: curiosity, kindness, childish glee. Now go do it! We can’t wait to watch you #ChooseRI and get that discount at Seven Stars (but only on Mondays).

Sometimes, in highly skilled and individualistic sports, it is common practice for athletes to perform one season in college before they go on to execute business on a professional level. The Indy is not a sport. Its is much further from anything real like that. But the sure-footed, organizational grace Lily brought to Volume 38 could be considered as an athletic feat in its own right. For her editing, her leadership, and her writing, she will missed. Indeed sometimes fleeting things leave the greatest impression. She was here and then she was gone. Like a face in the golden frame of a train window. SS

NC

SA Please, SA, will you edit my life? Read me like you read a prose poem, suggest a few line breaks. What’s working? What isn’t? We want your input—we also want that large drink you are holding, its green? Pink? Not tall like starbucks but tall like maybe I could have some? SA smiles. Actually, she was already smiling, and now I am too, and also we are laughing a little and I still am as she walks away (floats?) up the street. Floater in the perfect sense: that’s someone who has the grace of the floating movement but nothing empty or airy: pure substance, honest words, very pretty words!! You can see when someone wears their heart on their sleeve, because you can see their heart on their sleeve, similar to the way one feels like they can watch SA’s mind at work while talking to her. You like the lit section? Well what about a walking poem?? A poet, nonetheless…

Don’t you see her? Here she comes, passing you the maypole at the peak of midsommar, flowers in her hair. She is too fast for this world, reeling past its edges; catch her if you can. There she goes, off to the club in St. Petersburg— she’s not worried about getting back before dawn. You thought you glimpsed her in a Cadillac SUV passing over the Verazzano Bridge, but the windows were tinted and you could only tell by the Erasure blasting from the stereo. During a trip upstate,you hear the echo of a distant trombone, a sign that at last she has infiltrated the nerds’ clan. You’re following her now to a cursed party, but it’s alright, you’ll steal a beer and a boy and dip. On a rooftop in Vegas, was that her with the promoter? Whoever it was, she handed you a card for a good time. One time the sky opened up on the plains and you thought of her dancing on the beach in Newport; people were watching, but she didn’t care. All these sights you never imagined! Sometimes, it feels like there is only a thin film holding back all of the darkness in the world, a shimmering bubble, precious because it is fragile. Our friendship with Signe feels like this: that rare thing that has taught us how to make sorrow light as air. In case she calls this corny, we’ll phrase it like this: her laugh is the surest proof in the world that it’s all going to be OK. Can you hear it now?

BH B altimore is calling and E verything good must come to an end T hough Providence weather is not one to miss, H opkins, I’ve heard, is hardly better A Lime will drive by and we hope she’ll think of us (they’re in B’more, I checked) N atty Light / on the stair / my heart is full Y es, her attention to detail was reassuring. She caught all our missing indents and looked good doing it. It isn’t often that you come across someone with such an enthusiasm for snack food. Catch her in ten years slicing into our souls. Not much will have changed.

MB

LSL

What I would give to have her vision, to see myself through Maya’s eyes. Once, I came upon a box she had made; It has peephole on the side, and I think it was smooth. When you looked inside, there was a whole world with details I strangely don’t remember; it lets me imagine the world is that box, a macrocosm of her creation. Sometimes, when I’m at a convenience store, I cross my eyes and picture the shelved goods like she described them once in a story—gelatinous, glistening, products of a consciousness attuned to different frequencies. Our writing professor called her writing trippy; she didn’t get that this world could be real if you were with her. The closest I ever got was when we were together, journeying together through Providence until dawn found us. We shot a film, she made me silently dance; we watched a telecast of an opera in a diner as the sun rose. I’ll divulge one of her secrets: when she writes a story, she always includes a character who is named, but never appears. This is an apt description of what she’s given me: the possibility of greater wonder, just out of sight.

LSL keeps me on my toes. When I said this, standing on my chair at Apsara a few months ago, I meant it as a way of saying that, in a world where it feels like Granoff Dinners are closing in on us from all sides, few honest, hardworkers like LSL remain. And of course, no one knows how to do a last minute phone interview in conmag while the rest of us whisper and gesticulate wildly, how to how to make a public records request, how to use a cordless mouse, how to make everything about Brazil, how to eat 6 almonds from a Tupperware quite like LSL. (These feats of course, are made all the more impressive by the fact that LSL has humble roots in central Pennsylvania’s longstanding Amish community.) But I don’t want to harp on all LSL can do, but instead focus on who he is: if you can get LSL to crack a smile, theres a whole world of silliness—terrible march madness pairings notwithstanding— below the surface. In 10 years, when LSL is sitting in his corner office at The Nation HQ, I’ll swing by and make a crack about PA Governor Larry Krasner, and if I’m lucky, LSL will smile then too.

JB

EZ

Oh, JB? The boy who spawned from the hills of Berkeley? Who was originally handcrafted from collectively-owned artisan cheese (plus great granola)? The quiet bowling champ (you should see his two-hand spin)? Who broke the Internet with his total takedown of Brown’s elitism and complete administrative complicity in a nepotistic system that only serves to perpetuate and exacerbate the class-based inequities already present on our campus??? Who’s one half of a narrative POWER (MOVING) HOUSE of a couple? Who desperately tried to entice everyone within Portland’s city limits to visit the renowned, one of a kind International Cryptozoology Museum, just to learn more about Bigfoot? The Twitter-economics expert? Who’s shopped, but never taken, Feathery Things 12 times? The incredibly indirect descendent of Roger Williams himself? Who contacted every officer of this university to track down the unseen force responsible for lowering our Main Green flag? Who we have every confidence will leave us only to go on to do great things? From killing it on pickup courts across our nation’s cities to telling untold stories, our young Dormouse will go far.

The thing about EZ is that she seems a lot cooler than anyone you’ve ever met. She can dance like everyone wishes they could dance (the only reason she isn’t dancing at Coachella right now is because she isn’t thicc enough), she can write (about voodoo/affective labor/her grandma), she can even code! She does everything with flare, and sometimes it feels like you can’t keep up.

Why, what’s up? WZ WZ (Weezy) is a vision in a dream—and only dreams could do her justice. She is so charming, she gets free drinks at Bolt Coffee. For those who’ve been lucky enough to have a ~meeting~ with her there, you know how she walks through those glass doors in her crisp linen outfits and her wispy cropped hair, and finds the large booth table no one else could. By the way, if she could wear one outfit for the rest of her life, it would be a cream Cavalli two piece set with silver Ferragamo heels (and no, the world is not, and never will be, ready for her in this look). She has a courage no one can imitate, reprimanding drunk, white-ass, boisterous diners when they disturb her meal: “Hi, there are people trying to eat here.” This is a woman who could ruin your life in two seconds if you crossed her. But make it past her Virgo shell and you’ll discover the softest Cancer heart, generous with her laughter and her words and her time, but only to those who deserve them. If you visit her home, she will brew you fresh coffee and will thaw dumplings in a steel pot for you. When the clock strikes midnight, you’ll both abandon your work (yours, untouched and hers, finished with time to spare, of course) and she’ll partake in every drop of tea there is to pour. She will give you just as much love as you give her, and that is all you will ever need. Precious reciprocity. KN I try endlessly to get KN to identify a tendency of mine that has rubbed off on her. I plead, please KN, please, there must be something, one faculty I’ve added to your repertoire. She pauses, nibbles on a nail, untangles her headphone nest… let me think about it. I should have known; thoughtful, deliberate, reflective. OK. She just needs time, give her time. I imagine what the answer could be. I taught KN to use the microwave (ppl in Brooklyn are afraid of electromagnetic waves). She put a slice of refrigerated apple pie in for five minutes and pulled out a mushy pile of pudding. Yummm. KN ushered in—what do you call it—a paradigm shift in my life; I got up early, I bought produce, I phoned my mom, I even went for a run to East Side Marketplace. Perhaps I am just malleable to her ways, susceptible to her character, but I’ve racked up a number of her penchants, from the piddling to the paramount. I don’t know under what witchcraft she did it, but she teased out a brighter me. If only I had a few more years, months even, maybe I’d start studying a fringe ethnonational movement, publish in the Times, or stop wearing athleisure. As I wait eagerly for her response I question, why, why do I care she adopts my proclivities. Of course, I know the answer: I fear KN has given me much more than I could ever return her. And so, as I sit down at this wooden table, for this last copy, I fold my hands and give thanks to KN and her wondrous predilections.

WW

But what you realize about EZ, if you drive around Providence in her volvo or let her feed you bacon-wrapped water chestnuts on a Tuesday night, is that she isn’t cool at all. She hung an Elizabeth Holmes poster in her high school bedroom, she brought a difficult-to-carry volume on surveillance capitalism to the beach, she puts truffle salt on everything, and she can’t go anywhere without her teddy bear. Once you crack her code, you wonder how she makes uncool look so cool, and you love her all the more.

When you google maps search “Olney Pond,” the first image that shows up is a picture of an unidentifiable figure looking away from the camera, walking barefoot into the water in a teal dinosaur suit. There is a certain melancholia to this image—the droopy brontosaurus looks pretty bummed out—but the whimsical costumery lends the photo a certain joie de vivre. Will, this digital artifact contains your spirit. Not, like, to suggest that we think you’re going to walk headfirst into a pond eight miles north of PVD to get away from your problems; rather, we love how you naturally affect silliness, solemnity, and care for the people and principles you hold dear—all in the same breath. The license plates in New Hampshire may read “Live Free or Die,” but WW has a visceral aversion to both of these concepts. Things certainly move very fast for WW, with a frantic, day-to-day absurdity that is impossible to describe, but so familiar to all of us (as illustrated by the dinosaur). Still, despite his facade of antics (some say WW’s not gay, he’s attracted to drama), when I locate a memory of Will, it’s remarkably calming. I think of a Providence late-Spring evening; we’re holed up in a stuffy apartment with lead paint peeling down the walls—a Gansett in hand after another damn day. Or riding on I-95 Southbound from Providence towards the Bay, 70s euro disco blasting and Will giving his best Cher impersonation. The camera pans out and fades to black on WW’s storied time at Brown, just as Blossom Dearie’s rendition of Rhode Island Is Famous for You comes on. It’s no coincidence you used this song to audition for your 5th grade play, Will. It is famous for you. You’re our best friend, and wherever you are, from NH to RI, we’re all a little freer for it. JI From the roller rink to the computer screen, there’s nowhere Julia’s powers of illustration cannot take us. Her versatility of style and deft visual interpretations are indicative of her skill and experience, and we can rely on her to send us all out with a cheerful “See ya.” One time, under a stairwell in a shadowed corner of campus, we came upon a creation of hers, a little lizard called Crusty. We’d like to think we became friends. MG Movement ten of Camille Saint-Saëns fourteen part musical suite Le carnaval des animaux plays softly in the background as a newt stirs in newt-town. Newt awakens, sits up beneath their 250-dirt-count sheet, and stretches their gooey newt-arms. “It is a beautiful day for a frolic or a gambol,” Newt thinks, strapping on their trusty satchel made from a pen cap and a piece of floss, while slipping their moist toes into aluminum foil-tipped barbie shoes. Newt struts their stuff across Newt-town, collecting human fingernail clippings and humming the intro theme to human children’s show Caillou. Amidst the rubble, amidst the rabble, Newt’s plastic heels—deformed long ago by a teething child—slap the ground decisively as they skip past the dehydrated carcasses of other, long-gone newts. The sun rises, a slug yawns, and Newt squints up into the predawn of this new eternity with the brave and singular thought: there has never been a better time to play.

Friday 4.19

Tuesday 4.23

Starting Friday, Providence will become the first US state capital to incorporate state-of-the-art marina trash skimmer technology into its waterways. Though we’ll miss watching used condoms and dead fish float down the canal, we can’t help but look forward to trying the specialty cocktail Hot Club is serving up in honor of ecotechnology. Osmosis-filtered martinis, anyone?

The full title of this podcast is “How to Survive the End of the World,” but the premise is really that the end is already here, and we are already surviving. Hosts Autumn Brown, a queer activist and founder of a radical health exchange in NYC, and adrienne marie brown, a writer and activist, draw on a wealth of social justice experience to guide you through all of the world’s apocalypses, from climate change to colonialism.

The Hot Club Marina Trash Skimmer Launch Event Hot Club (25 Bridge Street) 1-5PM

Migos, 21 Savage, & Flipp Dinero Dunkin Donuts Convention Center (1 La Salle Square) 7PM-until the band rolls outta town... $89-$375

Ok, like… this concert is a. probably sold out and b. prohibitively expensive. Mostly just including it here so that everyone knows 21 Savage has *not* been deported, and will actually be right here in RI this Friday. Shoutout to anyone who finds the afterparty.

Reimagining the Future: A Live Podcast Taping of How to Survive 154 Angell Street 6-7:30PM

The End of Policing: A Conversation with Alex Vitale South Providence Library (441 Prairie Avenue) 5:30-8:30PM

Join the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee in conversation with Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of The End of Policing, a book which indicts “the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society.”

Saturday 4.20

Square Foot Gardening Cranston Public Library (140 Sockanossett Cross Road, Cranston, RI) 2-3PM

This 4/20, storm your local library’s gardening teach-in and demand that its underpaid staff teach you how to grow! that! loud! (Alternatively, show up high out of your mind and use their desktops to browse /v/ on 4chan, like a proper cretin.) Wrestle Party: The Four-Twenty Saturday Extravaganza! Black Box Theater @ AS220 (95 Empire Street) 8-11PM

By 8PM, your 4:20 high might be dying down. You’ve used up all your Visine, eaten an entire pizza, and proven to yourself that you are, in fact, disgusting. Be who you are, and stop by this super fun wrestling-themed party featuring a live (pseudo) match between returning champion “Reel Catch” Ashley Vox and the formidable D.L. Hurst. Bleeding strongly discouraged!

Sunday 4.21

Spring Break (Open for Two Weeks) Six Flags New England (1623 Main St, Agawam, MA) 10:30AM-8PM

This is the last event description I’ll (Signe) ever write for the List, and also the last issue of the Indy I’ll be around to read before graduating from college. With tears in my eyes and a hole in my heart, I leave you, reader, with this advice: this Easter Sunday, ditch your morals and ride a roller coaster instead.

Monday 4.22

Easter Monday Celebration & Petting Zoo The Duck & Bunny (312 Wickenden Street) 3-5:30PM

This is the last List I (Will) will ever write, so maybe it’s time to make amends: Duck & Bunny, I fear I’ve been unkind. It’s easy, perhaps too easy, to mock a “snuggery.” You know that feeling that passes over you when you see something cute? That feeling of wanting to squeeze it until it dies? Anyways, props to living up to your name with actual ducks and bunnies. Perhaps I’ll bring a dove.

Wednesday 4.24

Whistleblowing in American Empire Smith-Buonanano Hall (95 Cushing Street) 5:30-6:30PM

Chelsea Manning is still incarcerated, an appalling indicator of just how far our country will go to crush any citizen who speaks truth to power. This panel, with Naoko Shibusawa from Brown University, Lida Maxwell from Boston University, and Sonali Chakravarti from Wesleyan University, is in solidarity with her, reckoning with the costs of speaking out. Healing Circle (Past Life) Ascension NXT (176 Main Street, East Greenwich) 7-9PM

This is not an exploration of reincarnation in the Buddhist tradition, but it is an opportunity for a hypnotherapist in East Greenwich to fix disruptions in your “energy field.” This event asks: “Ever wonder why you are attracted to certain time periods, places in the world you have never stepped foot in physically, or have certain fears or phobias that do not resonate with any experiences in this lifetime?” I have a feeling that if you go to this… you were probably at Woodstock.

Thursday 4.25

Providence Movement Festival AS220 Black Box Theatre (95 Empire Street) 8PM // $15

The start of a three-day showcase of over 20 dance acts from throughout New England. As this is the final List item for the final Indy, it’s time for me to quote the immemorial words of Peggy Lee: “Is that all there is? If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing!”