The College Hill Independent Vol. 35 Issue 1

35

A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY

THE

SEPT 15 2017

01

COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

COVER

THE

Red, in Hindsight Maya Brauer

NEWS

INDY

02

Week in Review Soraya Ferdman, Eve Zelickson, Nora Gosselin

09

Eyes of the Storm Isabel DeBre and Chris Packs

METRO

A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY VOLUME 35 / ISSUE 01 SEPT 15 2017

FROM THE EDITORS This summer, we were reminded that a lot can happen in the blink of an eye. It seems like we can’t even get up and put coffee on without discovering Ted Cruz’s porn preferences. A Scaramucci: a period of more than a week, but less than a fortnight. There is life before, and then there is life after; every day we feel like we lose a piece of ourselves, like Microsoft Paint (RIP).

Over the summer, the Village Voice, an alt-weekly printed and distributed in New York City for over 60 years, announced that it would no longer publish its print edition. The decision came on the tail of over a decade of its weekly peers—largely free, and often with a healthy dose of political skepticism—shuttering, from the Boston Phoenix to Baltimore’s City Paper. For 27 years, the Indy has been humbled by their example. We’ll always believe in the weekly: every week, thoughtfully keeping pace; every week, keeping watch; and every week, a little rarer.

03

Lasting DREAM Marianna McMurdock, Saanya Jain, Katrina Northrop

04

Building an IDeal Katrina Northrop

ARTS 08

13

Portrait of the ARRtist Jack Manoogian Candle-Face Anna Hundert

FEATURES

— JWR

05

Period Drama Mara Dolan

07

Sands of Time Zack Kligler

TECH

MISSION STATEMENT The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. Our paper is distributed around Providence’s East Side and Downtown, as well as online. In addition to publishing 20 pages of original writing, reporting, and art once a week, the Indy functions as an open workshop in which writers, artists, and designers collaborate and provide feedback on their work.

Through an extensive editing process, we challenge each other to be responsible, intentional, and self-critical.

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.

15

Life Hacks Jonah Max

METABOLICS 11

Stick n' Poke Neidin Hernandez

LITERARY

17

EPHEMERA 12

Chevy Spaceship Marly Toledano

Young Hire Maya Bjornson

X

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.

18

False Dogs III Liby Hays

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.

Fall 2017

MANAGING EDITORS Jane Argodale Will Weatherly Robin Manley

ARTS Maya Brauer Ruby Gerber Jack Manoogian

NEWS Jack Brook Isabel DeBre Chris Packs

FEATURES Zack Kligler Gabriela Naigeborin Julia Tompkins

WEEK IN REVIEW Eve Zelickson

METABOLICS Dominique Pariso Erin West

METRO Saanya Jain Marianna McMurdock Katrina Northrop

SCIENCE Liz Cory Paige Parsons

The Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.

TECH Liam Carpenter-Urquhart Jonah Max

LIST Lisa Borst Fadwa Ahmed

OCCULT Sheena Raza Faisal Signe Swanson

STAFF WRITERS Mara Dolan Soraya Ferdman Nora Gosselin Neidin Hernandez Anna Hundert Mariela Pichardo Paula Pacheco Soto Marly Toledano Kion You

LITERARY Fadwa Ahmed Isabelle Doyle EPHEMERA Maya Bjornson X Liby Hays

ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR Gabriel Matesanz

STAFF ILLUSTRATORS Anzia Anderson Julie Benbassat Alexandra Hanesworth Frans van Hoek Kela Johnson Teri Minogue Pia Mileaf-Patel Isabelle Rea Ivan Rios-Fetchko Claire Schlaikjer Kelly Wang Dorothy Windham COPY EDITOR Miles Taylor

DESIGN EDITOR Eliza Chen DESIGNERS Amos Jackson Sophia Meng Ashley Min WEB MANAGER Alyssa McGillvery BUSINESS MANAGER Maria Gonzalez SOCIAL MEDIA Fadwa Ahmed

SENIOR EDITORS Lisa Borst Kelton Ellis Sophie Kasakove Will Tavlin MVP Katrina Northrop THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT — 69 BROWN ST PO BOX 1930 PROVIDENCE, RI 02912

THEINDY.ORG — @THEINDY_TWEETS

WEEK IN LIFESTYLE IMPROVEMENT

BY Soraya Ferdman, Eve Zelickson, & Nora Gosselin ILLUSTRATION BY Carly Ann Paul DESIGN BY Gabriel Matesanz

Online Browsing

Aw Shucks Since when has keeping up with the internet age meant automating oyster consumption? I don’t know.

But apparently it all started this past spring in Île de Ré, which sounds like a French Martha’s Vineyard.

The “Huîtrière de Ré,” a small oyster shop with touring grounds, lecture facilities, and an alarmingly well-designed webpage was feeling behind the times when Tony and Brigitte Berthelot, the store’s owners, had an idea. It arose from the common customer complaint that the store had a closing time: that the customers could not get their oysters whenever they pleased. What happens if Jean-Louis has a craving after hours? Is he really to wait ‘til they open the next day?

Tony and Brigitte are customer-loving people and they care about whether their customers love them back. To salvage this damaged relationship, Tony and Brigitte had to do some hard thinking. Giving the people what they wanted meant getting creative, one giant step for millennialkind. Hand-crafted goods were in vogue but only if the customers were happy.

The customers were not happy. Determined to find a balance between the store’s artisanal charm and the internet generation, the Berthelots made an unusual decision.

The compromise came in the shape of a 72”x39” vending machine open twenty-four hours a day: one thousand four hundred and four minutes, every day, seven times a week. Mr. Berthelot figured the cost of the machine was equivalent to an employee’s annual salary. Asking a person to work those hours would never work in France anyway, though he does offer the robot vacation days out of habit.

Still, there is tension. Oysters are not potato chips. Will this machine drop Tony and Brigitte’s life work one-by-one down a metal-box, for some fucker, I mean customer, to grab and eat greedily in their Peugeot? Is this the future? So much of oyster eating is about ceremony, about presentation. Food isn’t just food, it’s art! Oysters should be presented on a tray of ice and lemons with an array of garnishes circling the shells like crowns. They should be served alongside hot sauce and minced horseradish, not ketchup and paper napkins.

Despite the Independent’s reservations, it’s clear Tony and Brigitte are happy with their decision. On March 30, 2017, “L’Huîtrière de Ré en libre service”— the L’Huîtrière de Ré’s self service machine—officially opened to the island’s public. The customers were ecstatic. Just listen to Cristel Petinon’s enthusiasm: “Honestly, it’s great, 24 hours a day. We can come at midnight if we want. If we have a craving for oysters, it’s excellent. They’re really fresh.” JeanLouis was also asked to be interviewed but was too busy explaining to Cristel what aphrodisiac meant.

Last week, beauty blogger Promise Tamang rolled out of bed and decided to change the brow game forever. She sat down at her well-lit, expansive vanity, leaned forward and studied the buggers: a hundred little hairs arched at the perfect angle to form two symmetrical frowny faces. But despite their shapeliness, Tamang was displeased. She felt a sinking sense of complacency; everyday she worked her brows into the same humped shape. She needed to shake things up. Reconstruct the twins. And so again she leaned forward, this time armed with Elmer’s glue, concealer, and black gel liner. She prodded and poked and painted for 40 minutes until at last, her mirror revealed two thin, dark squiggle brows. Three admirably smooth tildes along each brow ridge.

Although Tamang appeared confused, she was indeed pleased. She snapped a pic for Instagram with the caption “New brow trend??? When you’re tired of being basic. Somebody dare me to go out like this.”

The photo stirred up the comment section, a mixed drink: one part abhorrence, one part uncertainty, two parts newfound fandom. Soon, followers were gluing their own eyebrows into waves and posting pouty photos.

Our eyebrows are key to communicating emotions. Pluck too far in one direction and you’re stuck looking permanently stressed/bitter/constipated. The squiggle fad takes the raised brow of a skeptic and multiplies it by three. But the good news is the squiggle brow can be achieved without a single pluck; use concealer and liner to carefully form a bumpy hillside above each eye.

If the Independent may be so bold, it recommends you try the temporary squiggle brow first, as the brow bandwagon rolls forward at a steady speed: now thick and manicured, once a bushy, Eugene Levy look, flashback to the sliver brows of the ’20s and the pointy Spock brows Grace Jones wore so well. The annals of brow-beauty tell us Ancient Egyptians used kohl and mesdement, composed of lead, to darken their brows and shaved them to mourn the death of their cats. The Ancient Greeks—fancy folk—wore false eyebrows made of dyed goat hair.

Only time will tell if the squiggle brow will demonstrate the staying power of the greats: the unibrow, moving gracefully as a single unit; the sensual, soft-angled “S” brow; the shakily drawn on grandma brow.

Or perhaps it will fall among the forgotten fads of the rainbow brow, rhinestoned brow, glitter brow, and infamous barbed-wire brow.

The fate of the fad may depend on overcoming the overwhelming criticism that the trend simply can’t be worn out of the house. For those harboring such concerns, here is a list of places to try out the new look: WaterFire Zumiez The ruins at the Colosseum—it could just be the strobe lights!

-EZ

Stripped Tires A swarm of bike riders flooded the streets of Philadelphia this past weekend. Bike by bike, booty by booty, riders gathered at Glendinning Rock Garden. Instead of seeing the standard, polka-dotted jerseys whiz by, onlookers encountered colorful body paint and quite a few bare body parts. These exposed riders weren’t professionals gone wild, exhausted by daily tedium to the point of undressing. Rather, this annual event—known formally as the Philly Naked Bike Ride—aims to promote nudity while highlighting cycling and environmental responsibility.

Organizers estimate that the ride drew roughly 4,000 participants last year. It is the second largest event of its kind, beat only by the ride in Portland, Oregon. Participants bike a 10 mile route through the city, past the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Independence Hall.

One might note the irony of promoting cycling safety with a ride that seems rife with the potential for collision and chafing, but in the nine years of the event, the ride has always gone silky smooth. This past Saturday, the gathered crowds chanted “Only in Philly!” as they rode. What’s not to love? Take your commute, subtract the carpool lane, and make it nude!

While some participants took the plunge and mounted their bikes fully undressed, others embraced the event’s “bare as you dare” motto and rode in underwear. According to event organizers, participants’ creativity in ‘attire’—or lack thereof—is one of the best aspects of the ride. This past Saturday featured bikers in plastic horse heads, clown masks, and superhero capes. Organizers offered only one dress guideline: bring a backup set of clothes to avoid awkward bathroom breaks or pit stops in local businesses along the route. Rumor had it the local Shake Shack was terrified the naked Tour de France would stop by for a ’shroom burger. The official event site also assured riders that sitting naked on a bike seat is not as uncomfortable as one might think! In the event of overheating or discomfort, they encouraged wrapping the seat in a t-shirt, bandana or, for the more luxurious derrière, “a swatch of velvet.”

Along with the costumes, participants also featured a variety of body paint, much of it done by LA based body paint artist Matt Deifer, who held a pre-ride paint session. In a bizarre moment of community, people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds stretched out on a tarp in a public park and were splattered with neon paint. One chest read, “this body beat cancer!” Another read, “bare is beautiful.” But by the end of the 10 mile trek, all slogans had melted into a pool of colorful perspirant.

-NG

-SF

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

WEEK IN REVIEW

02

THE RIGHT TO IDENTIFY An upcoming municipal ID program in Providence Entering a public library, opening a bank account, accessing government social services: to many, these processes seem simple. Carrying a card in a wallet that confirms your identity seems like a basic requirement. But many others—because they are homeless, lack legal immigration status, or do not conform to a specific gender identification—are left without legal identification and thus excluded from important social services.

The new Providence municipal ID program, proposed this spring by Mayor Jorge Elorza, ensures that every Providence resident has an identification card that allows them to receive government services, enter public buildings, and identify themselves to the police. Primarily designed to prevent the marginalization of undocumented immigrants, municipal ID cards can also assist transgender individuals by allowing for card-holders to identify their gender themselves. Other groups who stand to benefit are the homeless community and younger residents who don’t have driver’s licenses.

After President Trump’s September 5th decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the pressure to exclude and marginalize undocumented immigrants has only intensified. Within this national political context, cities are forced to either leave their undocumented population vulnerable to deportation, or attempt to protect the population with programs such as municipal IDs. To the city governments who allocate them, municipal IDs represent the potential of local legislative and administrative power to resist the Trump administration. To the vulnerable city residents who receive them, municipal IDs represent an important affirmation of both their identity and the efforts of the city to recognize their needs as community members. +++ The city budget for this fiscal year, which took effect on July 1, included $150,000 of funding for the municipal ID program, which will be available by the end of the year. After securing funding for the program, Mayor Elorza hosted a community conversation on August 8 at the Southside Cultural Center to discuss the issue, and to solicit opinions from Providence residents about the best implementation method for the program. Mayor Elorza is now waiting to receive submissions from third-party ID makers who will assist the government in the rollout of the program.

The municipal ID program is a part of Mayor Elorza’s ‘One Providence’ initiative, which he launched after the election of President Donald Trump to guarantee that Providence kept striving to be an inclusive community, regardless of Trump’s own policy agenda. This initiative is meant to target criminal justice reform, local immigration reform, police-community relations, and support for marginalized communities. Other ‘One Providence’ legislation includes the creation of a hotline for victims of hate crimes, and the establishment of a Muslim advisory board to foster integration and empowerment in the Muslim community.

03

METRO

BY Katrina Northrop ILLUSTRATION BY Kela Johnson DESIGN BY Will Weatherly When Providence rolls out the municipal ID program, it will join the ranks of other cities like Detroit, New York, San Francisco, and New Haven.

Since New York implemented a municipal ID program in 2015, one million people have applied, and over half of the cardholders use the municipal ID as their primary form of identification. Another contributing factor to the New York program’s success is the addition of cardholder discounts at select cultural institutions and private businesses. According to spokesperson for the city Victor Morente, Providence hopes to use New York’s discount incentive as a model.

By making the program attractive to as many people as possible, the discount model also helps to ensure that having a municipal ID does not become synonymous with being an undocumented immigrant. As Marcela Betancur, a policy associate at the ACLU, told the Independent over the phone, “If it’s only for undocumented residents, there is no point,” and taking part in the program becomes dangerous for undocumented immigrants, as they can be easily targeted by federal authorities. “The goal of the program is as simple as making sure everyone feels welcome,” Morente said, but the specifics of the program still need to be considered.

Providence may follow the lead of cities with already existing municipal ID programs, but substantial differences exist between cities’ implementation of the program. For undocumented immigrants, the most important of these differences is the number and degree of identification and verification methods that the city requires during the municipal ID application process. Some cities allow foreign identification cards to stand in for American documents, thus allowing undocumented immigrants complete access to the municipal ID program. Providence does not intend to ask applicants about their immigrant status, but the application procedure has yet to be established, and will depend partly on the third-party ID maker’s proposal.

Betancur said that, though the ACLU is supportive of the program, they are concerned that Providence will run into the same problems that other municipalities have confronted around personal information collection. Additionally, the ACLU has pushed Providence to widen the accessibility of the program.

For some populations, applying for and paying for a municipal ID is out of the question financially. The ACLU hopes that Providence will confront this issue in their upcoming proposal.

In order to effectively protect undocumented immigrants, municipal ID programs across the country must maintain the right to destroy the personal information and preserve the privacy of cardholders. If this is not the case, the federal government can seize this information in order to target undocumented immigrants. The city’s right to preserve this privacy has been contested in New York, where two State Assembly members from Staten Island filed a lawsuit against the city, asserting that purging the personal documents could threaten national security. This April, the New York State Supreme Court ruled in the city’s favor, proclaiming the right of the city to

preserve the privacy of undocumented immigrants.

In 2008, a similar decision was made by a California judge upholding immigrants’ right to privacy. +++ President Trump’s decision to phase out the DACA program sets the tone for a national immigration policy that lacks any regard for the well-being of undocumented immigrants. In Rhode Island alone, President Trump’s decision will upend the lives of 1,500 DACA recipients in the state. As a part of the DACA program, DACA recipients are able to receive Social Security numbers, and subsequently are able to apply for a driver’s license. Following the end of DACA, this process will be impossible. This leaves even more undocumented immigrants without a form of identification, and will potentially increase demand for programs such as municipal IDs. As Brandon Lozeau, Community Relations Manager at Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, told the Indy over the phone, “If communities don’t do things to make people feel included, the federal government certainly won’t do it. On this issue, it is completely up to the cities to make a difference.”

Cities across the nation have attached themselves to the elusive label of the ‘sanctuary city,’ and Providence is no exception. Earlier this year, Mayor Elorza proudly announced that Providence would be a sanctuary city. However, after Trump threatened to revoke funding from cities who do not comply with federal immigration law, Mayor Elorza backed down, saying that Providence does not technically fit within that designation in order to maintain Providence’s source of federal funding. As he has tried to strike a balance between respecting national policy and resisting Trump’s policy agenda of marginalizing the undocumented community, he has left behind a mixed legacy.

Many activists have percieved that Providence has not taken enough tangible action to protect the undocumented community, made evident by a recent letter sent by 17 Rhode Island organizations calling for more aggressive legislative action following the end of DACA. The letter, sent by organizations including the ACLU of Rhode Island, Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, and the Providence branch of the NAACP, concluded by saying, “If you are as appalled as we are at the federal administration’s cruel actions against these innocent DACA recipients, we ask you to demonstrate your concern by taking… concrete steps…to protect them from the mean-spirited and heavy hand of the federal government.”

If the municipal ID program is implemented, and avoids some of the pitfalls of similar programs, Mayor Elorza might partly restore his reputation as a fighter for the undocumented community, and Providence will take a step towards becoming a model for using local legislation to resist discriminatory federal policies.

KATRINA NORTHROP B’19 wishes municipal IDs weren’t necessary.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

DEFENDING DACA

Collected resources

BY Marianna McMurdock, Katrina Northrop & Saanya Jain PHOTOS BY Jasmine Ruiz

DESIGN BY Gabriel Matesanz

What you need to know: On September 5, 2017, President Trump announced his decision to phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA is a program that allows undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before the age of 16—often referred to as Dreamers—to defer deportation for two years, with the possibility of renewal, and legally reside in the United States. President Trump’s announcement carries the following consequences: —US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will process all pending DACA applications that were filed prior to September 5.

—USCIS will reject new intitial DACA applications.

—Until October 5, USCIS will continue to accept and process renewal DACA applications for people whose DACA expires between September 5, 2017 and March 5, 2018.

—Work permits for current DACA recipients are still valid until they expire or the government terminates DACA status.

—Social Security numbers granted under DACA continue to be valid for education, banking, and housing after DACA expires.

—Requirements for driver’s licenses differ by state, but DACA recipients can still apply for a driver’s license if their DACA is currently valid.

Pictured: On September 8, protesters convened at the Rhode Island statehouse to show their support for DACA and call for state legislators to take urgent action to protect Providence’s undocumented community.

Where to get help renewing DACA: Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island is offering DACA renewal services and general advising about DACA. Free consultations are available at walk-in hours: Monday to Friday, 9AM–4:30PM, running until October 3. Appointments are also available from Monday to Saturday. For a limited time, Dorcas will cover the full cost of DACA processing and renewal, which otherwise amounts to $495.

Location: 645 Elmwood Avenue, Providence RI, 02907 Contact: (401) 784-8621 // immigration@diiri.org

—There are greater risks associated with DACA recipients travelling abroad, and it is not guaranteed that they will admitted back into the country.

How to help:

—Regardless of immigration status, everyone has the right to remain silent when stopped by the police or US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities.

Send checks to:

How Providence has enforced immigration policy: Mayor Jorge Elorza has repeatedly referred to Providence as a sanctuary city, meaning that the city will not cooperate with national immigration authorities in order to target undocumented immigrants.

However, after President Trump’s decision to withhold federal funding from cities which do not comply with federal immigration policy, Mayor Elorza has stated that Providence does not technically fit within the narrow definition of a sanctuary city, due to the city’s participation in a fingerprint database accessible to ICE, and thus will not be stripped of federal funding. It remains to be seen what consequences Elorza’s concession to Trump will have for undocumented members of the Providence community.

After the passage of the Providence Community Safety Act (CSA) on June 2, 2017, no police officer is allowed to inquire about an individual’s immigration status, and all police are required to accept all valid forms of identification issued outside of the US.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

1. Coalition of Advocates for Student Opportunities (CASO) has set up a fund to help pay the fee.

CASO P.O. Box 25118 Providence, RI 02905

Organizations to information:

Make checks payable to: Cesar Chavez Fund (write “DACA Relief Fund” on the reference note at the bottom of your check)

CASO: A volunteer organization working to help undocumented immigrants gain access to higher education in Rhode Island.

2. Call elected representatives and pressure them to pass legislation that protects Dreamers from deportation.

Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island: A Rhode Island organization that advocates for underserved populations as they overcome cultural, language, and economic barriers.

3. If you are a documented citizen of the US, and live in Providence, get a municipal ID when they are released—see opposite page.

contact for more

Immigrant Legal Resource Center: A national organization that provides legal assistance and education to immigrants, as well as advocating for immigration reform on the local and federal level.

We Are Here To Stay: A national movement and action network designed to resist President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and to protect the undocumented immigrant community.

METRO

04

BLOOD BURDEN

Pursuing justice for all menstruating bodies

BY Mara Dolan ILLUSTRATION BY Alex Hanesworth DESIGN BY Sophia Meng

content warning: sexual assault, incarceration, anti-trans violence The tampon tax will not die. In 2015, when President Obama was asked by YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen why tampons are taxed by state governments as “luxury” items, he seemed shocked. “I confess I was not aware of this until you brought it to my attention,” he answered. “I have no idea why states would tax these as luxury items.

I suspect it’s because men were making the laws.”

The tampon tax refers to the sales tax condition that prevents menstrual products from receiving tax exemptions like other medical necessities. These products are instead taxed as “luxury” items, applied to any item deemed “non-essential.”

For the handful of activists who had been calling for the tax’s repeal for years, this was a big break. The President of the United States had just talked about periods on television. Not only had he mentioned menstruation, but he also encouraged activists to mobilize state-level resistance to this regulatory tax discrimination. Soon after, London marathoner Kiran Gandhi made headlines when she chose to bleed freely during her race to raise awareness for disparities in access to menstrual products. Social media was fascinated—she was praised as liberated and revolutionary by some and vulgar and disgusting by others. She responded in a statement: “I ran with blood dripping down my legs for sisters who don’t have access to tampons and sisters who, despite cramping and pain, hide it away and pretend like it doesn’t exist…women’s bodies don’t exist for public consumption.” Days later, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump made an infamously sexist attack when he claimed interviewer Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out her eyes. Blood coming out her—wherever.” In response, the hashtag #Periodsarenotaninsult erupted on social media.

Despite the fact that roughly half of the world bleeds, periods rarely receive mainstream media attention. The narratives of these three stories were dominated by grotesque fascination and stigmatizing language, but also by an air of curiosity. NPR dubbed 2015 “the year of the period,” Newsweek ran the headline, “The fight to end period shaming is going mainstream,” and Cosmopolitan proposed “The 8 Greatest Menstrual Moments of 2015.” As establishment media seemed to be discovering menstruation for the first time, the tampon tax got its long-awaited 15 minutes of fame.

But in the two years since, menstrual activism’s fixation on the tampon tax has generated almost no change in state policies. Thousands of petition signatures and dozens of legislative amendments later, tampons remain a luxury item in 45 states. As the tampon tax taxes on, menstrual activism is looking for a new legislative battle to wage. It could be found in H.R. 972 of 2017, a new

05

FEATURES

bill introduced by Grace Meng, a representative of Queens, New York, that addresses disparities in access to menstrual products. It includes provisions that would grant refundable tax credits to low-income individuals who use menstrual products and allow them to buy products with money from flexible spending accounts. Still buried in the lengthy process of congressional subcommittee review, the bill is truly groundbreaking in its considerations of income inequality and menstruation.

Its introduction suggests that menstrual justice may have finally learned from the lessons of the tampon tax defeat.

It suggests hope for an intersectional future. +++ The menstrual activist movement to end the tampon tax will continue to be an exclusionary movement as long as it lacks an intersectional focus. Eliminating the tampon tax would end one case of taxation discrimination, but it is only one small piece of a broader set of inequalities placed on those who bleed. All menstruating bodies must bear the economic burden of the tampon tax, but many must also bear the burden of social marginalization. For those who are subjected to gender-based discrimination, homelessness, and/or incarceration, the experience of menstruating can be transformed by intersecting with structural violence.

Activist Jennifer Weiss-Wolf first used the term “menstrual equity” while testifying in front of the Chicago City Council’s tampon tax hearing in 2016.

After a reporter told her, “That’s not a thing,” she defined it for the record: “[It means] fairness for how women are treated in society because they menstruate.”

Asserting that the tampon tax—and menstruation in general—is only relevant to women is an exclusionary view of what “menstrual equity” might mean. When Weiss-Wolf first defined her idea of menstrual equity as limited to “women,” it served to further elide the existence of non-cisgender bodies that menstruate.

In July, artist and transgender activist Cass Clemmer posted an Instagram photo of themselves freebleeding, holding a sign that read, “Periods are NOT just for women #BleedingWhileTrans.” Clemmer has worked for years to create a space within menstrual discourse where the voices of non-binary individuals are heard.

“Every time people say periods are just for women, they negate my identity and essentially render me and my experiences invisible,” Clemmer said in an interview with Metro about the hashtag. “I’m not a woman and yet, I still get my period—but all too often there aren’t enough spaces or conversations where I am able to discuss both at once.”

Clemmer wants to bring attention to the needs of non-binary menstruating individuals that go unrecognized in mainstream menstrual activism, including “the

very real access and safety issues we face when we menstruate, including bathroom use, access to period products, fear of being outed due to leaks, and the lack of disposable bins in men’s restrooms for our used products.” They also want menstrual activists to recognize that the pressure to celebrate menstruation can be alienating; for some individuals, like Clemmer, it can be difficult and painful. “Getting my period every month is a really traumatic time for me that involves a lot of gender dysphoria, fear of being outed and stress about bathroom safety and use … [we] have enough to deal with while on our periods without having to face people who refuse to respect our gender identity.”

Ultimately, Clemmer’s art, Instagram account, and their #BleedingWhileTrans campaign seek to disrupt the cissexism in mainstream menstrual discourse. “As an activist in the menstrual health space, I have been working for the past few years to help push the movement towards more gender inclusivity,” Clemmer said.

“Though we have been making internal strides in the language we use when we talk about people that menstruate, there is still not a lot of discussion about trans menstruators in the general public.” The autonomy of non-binary menstruating discourse is critical for an intersectional menstrual justice movement. For this community, ending the interpersonal abuse of exclusion is deeply tied to ending the abuse inflicted by the state.

Non-binary bodies—especially bodies of color— are subjected to unique forms of state violence and control that can drastically change their experience with menstruation. Transgender and non-binary individuals are far more likely to endure discrimination, physical violence, and inappropriate or inaccessible medical care than their cisgender peers. According to civil rights organization Lambda Legal, transgender Americans are far more likely than cisgender Americans to be incarcerated, and transgender people of color are more likely to be incarcerated than white transgender people.

One in every six transgender individuals in the US has been incarcerated at some point in their life. For Black transgender individuals, is almost one in every two. A report prepared by the National Center for Transgender Equality concluded that transgender individuals serve longer sentences, endure more solitary confinement, and are frequently denied adequate medical treatment and services. It is clear that the prison system works to disenfranchise and harm the bodies of transgender people in higher numbers and in different ways than those of cisgender people. This is where the intersection of transgender rights and the rights of incarcerated individuals—and the potential for violation of menstrual rights for both—is ignored by mainstream menstrual activism. +++

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

Within prisons, menstruation often becomes a tool for social humiliation and control. Though it varies widely by state and security level, most women’s prisons fail completely to provide adequate menstrual care for those who are incarcerated (whereas men’s prisons provide none). Even though they are sometimes available in the privatized commissary, they are sold at similar prices as in drugstores, making them incredibly inaccessible for individuals without external income or resources. And that’s if they’re stocked and sold at all.

Personal testimonies of incarcerated people have shown us that cultures of abuse, neglect, and dehumanization already run rampant and unchecked in the prison system. Just this summer, trans woman Eyricka King wrote to her mother that she has endured physical, sexual, and mental violence in solitary confinement in a New York prison. For abuse related to menstruation, the stigma can prevent individuals from reporting it at all, but it is very clear that it occurs. An Amnesty International investigation revealed evidence of coercion among guards, who forced women to provide sexual favors for menstrual products. A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of two women in Tennessee described a guard requiring them to strip naked and “prove” they were on their periods. In 2016, the ACLU of Michigan filed a federal lawsuit against Muskegon County on behalf of eight incarcerated women, citing “health hazards and dehumanizing, unconstitutional procedures.” The suit claimed that male guards consistently “denied access to clean underwear, toilet paper, and feminine hygiene products to inmates.” One of the plaintiffs, Londora Kitchens, testified that when she asked a male guard if he could help her access a pad, he told her she was “shit out of luck.” She'd “better not bleed on the floor,” he added.

The Correctional Association of New York sponsored a study of its state prison facilities in 2015, revealing an appalling 54 percent of women who claimed they did

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

not receive enough pads each month. The Bureau of Prisons released a vague memo this August instructing wardens to provide menstrual products to prisoners in federal women’s prisons. The memo, already limited in its reach—to only women in federal prisons—also has no outlined recourse for wardens who fail to comply or mechanism for even finding out if they do.

In an open letter published by the Committee Against Political Repression, an anonymous incarcerated woman wrote about the feeling of menstruating in prison: “It is an experience that either intentionally works to degrade inmates, or degrades us as a result of cost-saving measures; either way, the results are the same. Prison makes us hate a part of ourselves; it turns us against our own bodies.”

The neglect that prisons show for menstruating bodies is reflected in the neglect shown by public shelters. For individuals experiencing homelessness, having a period can mean choosing between feeding themselves and buying the products they need. The punishments for not prioritizing “sanitation” can be high. In some shelters, individuals who stain the furniture or mattresses are forbidden from coming back. On the rare occasion that a shelter does offer pads and tampons, they have to come from donations or an internal budget. Federal funds from FEMA, which are utilized by all shelters to purchase essential items like toilet paper, soap, and shampoo, cannot be used for menstrual products. This is the logic of the tampon tax striking again: since menstrual products are considered “non-essential” items, they do not qualify for FEMA money.

too great, buying pads means sacrificing a different need: being able to eat. “It costs…half of what I make a day [panhandling],” said a New York City resident named Victoria in a Bustle interview. I could go get the tampons I need, and that will leave me with nothing.” Another woman named Alexa voiced the same choice: “I would rather be clean than full.” +++ Menstrual justice must demand more than the limited pursuits of mainstream menstrual activism thus far. Grace Meng’s new bill—aptly titled the Menstrual Equity Act for All of 2017—is an opportunity for menstrual activism to move away from its exclusionary legacy of the past few years. The cost incurred from the tampon tax is a burden, but the pain inflicted by institutional violence is much costlier. The additional burden placed on menstruating bodies who also experience cissexism, incarceration, racism, and homelessness must be the focus of a new menstrual activism. Conversations that began with the idea of menstrual equity must end with a renewed focus on menstrual justice. There are many bodies that bleed, and all these bodies do deserve menstrual dignity, rights, and services. But bodies that bleed only from menstruation must first listen to those who bleed from systemic violence too.

MARA DOLAN B’19.5 wants periods on every policy agenda. .

For people experiencing homelessness—and thus already lacking access to medical care—the risk of infection is especially concerning. Interviews done last year in a women’s shelter in New York revealed that many menstruating bodies were using old socks, tank tops, plastic bags and rewashed napkins. For those who decide the risk of infection or loss of access to a shelter bed is

FEATURES

06

ZERO GROUND Reflections on collective trauma The Atacama Desert, which spans 50,000 square miles on the Western side of the Andes, is known as the driest place on the planet––so dry that almost no water is present in the air and almost no living thing can survive.

In his 2010 documentary Nostalgia de la Luz, director Patricio Guzmán takes his cameras into the Atacama Desert to explore the cross-pollination of the past and present, and to seek out those who remain entangled between the two.

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military—led

by General Augusto Pinochet—staged a brutal coup to depose the nation’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. What followed was a reign of terror, in which thousands of Chileans—suspected of opposition to the military regime—were detained, forced into exile, or otherwise ‘disappeared.’ Victims were seized in broad daylight, in front of family or friends, or taken silently in the dark of night. Chileans were stolen from their homes or offices by military police, and often never heard from again by loved ones.

During the years of the dictatorship, the Atacama was home to concentration camps that housed these perceived opponents of the regime. Those who died in the camps were buried in mass graves in the desert. Due to the extreme climate of the region, virtually no bacteria can survive naturally; as a result, these bodies are extraordinarily well preserved, mummified in open air, often with their clothing and personal articles still intact.

Today, scattered throughout the Atacama, a number of people, mainly women, search for the remains of fathers, sisters, children, and lovers, sorting through dust and wind for any piece of what once was––any shred of closure.

In 1982, in the midst of the carnage in Chile and other dictatorships across Latin America, Gabriel García Márquez delivered his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to the Swedish Academy of Letters. In the speech, entitled “The Solitude of Latin America,” Márquez asserted that the devastation in the continent was “a reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty.” He continued, “Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.” Thirty years after the delivery of this speech, Márquez’s messages of the compounded isolation of loss, and the difficulty of its expression within any conventional means, echoes in the experience of the women of the Atacama.

In his book Writing History, Writing Trauma, historian Dominick LaCapra also writes of trauma as a force that creates a fundamental and inexpressible solitude: “Trauma is a disruptive experience that disarticulates the self and creates holes in existence,” writes LaCapra, “it has belated effects that are controlled only with difficulty and perhaps never fully mastered.” For LaCapra, historical loss cannot be fully represented through the facts of a situation: the death count of a dictatorship, a terrorist attack, a suicide. Trauma, by its very nature, transcends time and accepted ways of knowing. It tears holes in existence. In some sense, the motivations of those that wander the Atacama are clear to many of us who have lost loved ones suddenly, who have found ourselves adrift. If our loss can be held, perhaps it can be expressed, and if it can be expressed, perhaps we will not be so alone in it. +++ This desire to hold our loss is both individual and collective. Whenever young adults from New York City discuss the attacks of September 11 and their aftermath, there is a frantic verbal scramble to claim their solitary

BY Zack Kligler ILLUSTRATION BY Dorothy Windham DESIGN BY Sophia Meng

piece of this communal trauma. One friend recalls the noise that rang through lower Manhattan, the taut air. One was wearing an astronaut suit and was peeled from the window by his father—told not to look. Another recalls the ash falling in Brooklyn, and dark smoke over the river on the first day of kindergarten. We each want to tell our story, so that we can sit and hear echoed back that it is real. Perhaps more so than older New Yorkers, those of us who were small children in 2001 have found ourselves struggling to lay claim to our one or two memories of the day, to grab hold of a concrete piece of it so it cannot grab hold of us, but perhaps also so that we know that what came afterwards was reality. The sudden absence of friends and relatives, the PTSD of classmates and neighbors, my sister’s separation anxiety, my obsessive compulsion.

In desperately laying claim to our trauma, we seek, in Márquez’s words, “to render our lives believable.”

This desire to grasp something concrete about that day also extends beyond those who were children on 9/11. In a commissioned piece for the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City, artist Spencer Finch ruminates on this compulsion. The piece, titled “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning” consists of 2,983 squares of paper—one for each victim of the attacks—hung together, each painted a different shade of blue in an intentionally futile attempt to approximate the clear sky on the morning of 9/11. Finch’s piece functions as an ode to the simultaneous collectivity and fundamental solitude of attempts to conjure a ‘true’ recollection of September 11. Yet Finch’s piece also cannot be separated from the context of the 9/11 Museum, which posits a specific narrative of a victimized United States which retaliates against its aggressors. Memory is political, and our claims to a continued trauma can be used to further weaponize this loss in service of American militarism.

This is another reason why we try so hard to claim our experiences of 9/11. As the deaths of friends and neighbors have been transformed into a political tool, those that lost loved ones have been robbed of a complex and individual narrative of their loss, and instead have been fed––and in many cases accepted––a promise of closure through vengeance. Perhaps, in holding this trauma as real and ours, in accepting its continuous presence, we can begin to reject these narratives of closure––to reclaim it from those who have used it as a weapon. +++ Not all trauma is alike. The trauma of the Chilean dictatorship, loss caused by gendered, racialized, and state

violence, is fundamentally political. The trauma of 2001 cannot be separated from the boundless violence wreaked in the name of its victims.

The collective trauma that now soaks Houston, the Caribbean, Florida, and Mexico cannot be reduced to simple narratives of perseverance and our indomitable humanity. The narratives of healing, strength, and resilience we so often hear in the wake of disasters often feel like a falsely universal script that elides the specificities of each instance of trauma. This universalism offers us an unearned and uncomplicated empathy, allowing an escape from true confrontation with the realities of loss and violence, as well as their political implications. A shared relationship to loss must not be conflated with empathy. Still, this mutual connection has value in and of itself––if we look between instances of collective trauma, perhaps we can begin to resist the simplified narratives of closure that are often demanded. Perhaps we can give each other space to hold our specific losses.

This week, we pass through another September 11 burdened by loss. As 1973 marked the beginning of a reign of terror for so many in Chile, as 2001 brought loss to New York, 2017 brings a new collective loss to those in Houston, the Caribbean, Florida, and Mexico.

As death tolls and damages rack up in the wake of the earthquake in Mexico and Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, I am reminded of the way that trauma results from these numbers, but cannot be grasped through them.

Writing History, Writing Trauma focuses largely on the inadequacy of traditional methods of historical research in representing experiences of trauma. We are told often, in the wake of disasters, that the loss remains even after the camera crews leave. While this cliché is often trotted out to advocate for continued aid, it also speaks to the ways in which disasters such as these fundamentally reshape the people and places affected in ways that remain long after ‘recovery’ is deemed complete. Nearly 40,000 homes were destroyed by Hurricane Harvey, 80 percent of which were not covered by flood insurance.

Even if homes and highways get rebuilt, the Houston that emerges from this loss will be a different city than the Houston the hurricane encountered. In Mexico, the death toll from last Thursday’s earthquake has reached 90, the vast majority of which occurred in the province of Oaxaca. A generation of Oaxacans will be caught wandering in this absence, entangled in the past. +++ My sister once told me that in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, her six-year-old mind transformed the phrase ‘Ground Zero’ into ‘Zero Ground.’ In her mind’s eye, the site of the towers itself became an absence, a black hole slowly enveloping the island of Manhattan. We are still trying to grab hold of the absence.

ZACK KLIGLER B’20 is trying to untangle.

07

FEATURES

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

AN ARTIST’S CONTRACT Visions toward a more just art economy

BY Jack Manoogian ILLUSTRATION BY Gabriel Matesanz DESIGN BY Ashley Min

On May 17th, New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s piece Untitled was bought at auction for $110.5 million. The painting, sold at Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art, set a record as the most expensive work of American art sold at auction. The work depicts a skull rendered in Basquiat’s signature neo-expressionism, reminiscent of graffiti. Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa purchased the work with the pledge to tour it around the world so that others, too, may have a chance to view the so-called masterpiece.

The veneer of generosity embedded in Maezawa’s promise feels futile in the face of a highly privatized art market, marked by the lack of US legislation to ensure Artist Resale Rights (ARR). Without proper ARR law, artists’ works can be resold at auction for higher values than their value when they were originally purchased. This generates massive profits for dealers, collectors, galleries, and auction houses— while artists, without whom the art market would not exist, receive no royalties. Not only does this unregulated model of artistic and intellectual exchange further economic inequality, it also manages to ensure that the majority of working artists cannot financially sustain themselves solely on their practice. One wonders how much art is stuck unrealized and unmade because a career as an “artist” is often, understandably, taken as a luxury.

In this way, the fight for ARR law is also a fight against the force of global wealth inequality. It is a fight against auction houses and galleries that sell pieces to multimillionaires, fully aware that these works will be locked away to accrue monetary value.In an essay that accompanied performance artist Andrea Fraser’s retrospective L’1%, c’est moi (“The 1% is me”), Fraser argues “it is indeed the money of the wealthy that drives art prices. This implies that we can expect art booms whenever income inequality rises quickly.”

Fraser’s assertion that increased economic inequality stimulates and, in fact grows the art market points to a stark reality: without ARR, a career as an “artist” is only accessible to those who are already financially secure. Under these conditions, the sale of art works often becomes a way for the ultra-wealthy to accrue wealth, incentivizing the growth of the most inaccessible aspects of the creation and circulation of art.

This raises the question as to why resale rights have continuously been ignored in a number of countries where artistic production and output is quite high. It helps to look at the historical trajectory of ARR on a global scale.

In 1920, France enacted its own form of ARR law known as Droit de Suite, or “right to follow.” 97 years later, only a little over 70 countries have followed suit, with most ARR law stipulating that artists receive 3–7 percent of the total profit on the sale of their work. This means that if a work is originally bought for $500 and resold for $10,000, the artist is to receive 3–7 percent (depending on the country’s specific ARR law) of $9,500, while the remaining sum is distributed between auction houses, collectors, agents, galleries, and other players. Notably, the United States, Canada, China, Japan, and

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Switzerland have consistently rejected legislation that would allow artists to receive royalties or have a say in how their works are materially altered, physically exhibited, and publicly accessed. In countries without ARR law, economic inequality tends to be much higher than in those countries that have made use of ARR legislation. Notably, the entire EU adopted ARR law in 2001, with the UK following suit in 2006. Again, because the art market is contingent upon the presence of ultra-wealth, the decision by both the EU and the UK to pass ARR law indicates these countries’ commitment to reducing inequality.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, major auction houses such as Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Ebay have invested millions of dollars lobbying against ARR campaigns, which proves that these monolithic artistic institutions have chosen to heed to the needs of galleries and art dealers over the needs of the artists they represent.

American artists have taken up the fight for ARR law in a number of cases over the last few decades. In 1973, after his painting Thaw was resold at auction for a profit of $84,100, the artist Robert Rauschenberg attacked the art collector Robert Scull, yelling, “I’ve been working my ass off just for you to make that profit!” Two years earlier, artist Seth Siegelaub and lawyer Robert Projansky presciently drafted the the Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement. The “Artist’s Contract,” as it came to be known, stipulated that the artist should receive 15 percent of the profit whenever their work is resold, and that they also always retain the power to choose the conditions of exhibition for their piece, even if it has been sold. Many artists, however, feared that collectors would refuse to purchase works that made use of the contract and the contract was never adopted into common practice. Rauschenberg continued his campaign for ARR law and teamed up with the artist James Rosenquist to help form the California’s Resale Royalty Act of 1976. The CRRA is a modest proposal that ensures a five percent royalty be paid to California artists when a work worth $1,000 or more is resold for a profit. In 2011, a California state court ruled the act unconstitutional. (Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Ebay are the three auction houses that lobbied to nullify the act.)

insecurity. We see this idea at play in a number of other mediums, such as writing, where it is normal for authors to receive royalties on the sale of their books (even though this percentage is often criminally low).

And authors certainly do not sell their manuscripts to publishers under the guise that the manuscript will be locked up and hidden away from both the public and the author so that it might “accrue value.” Similarly, few, if any, musicians make just one copy of an album and trust that the lone buyer will distribute it to the public. Of course, music and writing lend themselves to replication and distribution much more easily than fine art. Yet what is illuminated by this comparison is not the scarcity of fine art, but the economic value gained through its scarcity, and the lack of ARR law that allows this scarcity to be leveraged by the ‘major players’ of the art world.

ARR law is not a godsend that will end economic inequality in the art market, and it definitely will not, in itself, be sufficient means for struggling artists to make a living wage. Still, ARR law is worth fighting for. It is an incremental development towards a society that appreciates its artists as more than just producers of wealth. It is an attempt to acknowledge a fraction of the exponential rise in US inequality.

ARR, through the assurance of resale royalties and a feeling of ownership over one’s work, has the potential to inspire burgeoning artists, for whom creating work might be either daunting or impossible.

JACK MANOOGIAN B’18 would make more art if he didn’t feel so guilty about the economy.

Those who argue against the institution of ARR law claim that resale royalties are not a sufficient way for artists to rent studio space, buy materials, afford healthcare, or even buy groceries—which, considering the small fraction of art profits that ARR represents, is true. Couple this with Donald Trump’s recent threats against the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), one of the country’s chief sources of public arts funding, and one sees why a majority of working artists in the US have chosen freelance work to fund their artistic practice and living expenses.

Why, then, given that there is such little financial value in it, should artists fight for ARR law at all? It is less about resale rights as a matter of fairness to artists and more about what the implementation of ARR law ushers into the collective imagination.

ARR law is a step towards a future in which artists can work and produce without the risk of financial

ARTS

08

THE STORM ON THE GROUND Local and national reporting on Hurricane Harvey

BY Isabel DeBre and Chris Packs ILLUSTRATION BY Gabriel Matesanz DESIGN BY Gabriel Matesanz

Before Hurricane Harvey hit on August 25, panic descended on the Texas coast. “There was a really nasty rumor going around the city of Houston that government officials were lying to the people about just how bad the hurricane would be,” Robert Arnold, local Texan broadcast journalist for KPRC, told the Independent. The story spread on social media and was picked up by blogs around the country. “It wasn’t true, and it was our job as a local news station to set the record straight, calm people down, and make sure they knew the truth.”

With power lines down and communication disrupted in Texas, local reporters found themselves as the sole purveyors of vital facts.

“Obviously, with a situation like a hurricane, there’s going to be a lot of fluid information,” Wes Rapaport, bureau reporter at Nexstar Media Group in Austin, TX, told the Independent.

Hurricanes generate the perfect opportunity for misinformation: the vacuum of credible sources in the chaos of a disaster collides with overcrowded media coverage from both local and national outlets—each with their own agendas and audiences. The stakes of misinformation are high. As the case of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 showed, inadequate media coverage can exacerbate the storm’s impact, delay government rescue efforts, and spread unwarranted fear. In New Orleans, for example, news outlets spread rumors of rapes and murders in the crowded Superdome and Convention Center, which were later proven false.

As an editor of local New Orleans newspaper TimesPicayune reflected, “false and magnified reports of Katrina actually hindered rescuers” from doing their job.

Of course, Harvey’s scope differed from Katrina’s, but in both storms the media shaped the discourse, and thus the reality. According to the Disaster Research Center, what average citizens know about disasters are primarily learned from mass media accounts. “We [reporters] are people’s literal only means of knowing what’s going on,” Arnold said.

“Misreporting, spreading rumors, or highlighting the wrong issues might be a matter of life or death.”

According to the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, the local media considers catastrophes their own, chronicling personal topics like death, injury, illness, and the plight of evacuees.

National news outlets, however, prone to sensationalism and not as emotionally or financially invested in communities, tend to highlight larger patterns of crime, government failure, and police activity more relatable to readers living far away. In the case of Harvey, national outlets such as the Huffpost and Vox initially questioned why and whether Houston residents should have evacuated, while local papers such as the Houston Chronicle dropped their paywalls and published advocacy in the form of editorials, stressing local need for aid and solidarity.

+++

On Tuesday, August 29, four days after Harvey’s landfall, disaster coverage and local politics converged in a flare of controversy when ABC reporter Tom Llamas tweeted that he had reported instances of looting from a Houston supermarket to the police. Local citizens and activists criticized Llamas for coding

09

NEWS

families’ desperate search for food as moral depravity.

Such journalistic tendencies recall reports of looting during Hurricane Katrina, in which numerous news outlets—most notably Fox News—populated the American understanding of Katrina with racialized, classist images of ‘looters.’ Journalists’ accusations of looting invokes their role as privileged, voyeuristic out-of-town disaster reporters, prioritizing civil law over survival. Naomi Klein called Llamas’ actions “reckless endangerment. People taking food from supermarkets in a multi-day disaster are not looters, they are survivors.”

In the midst of tension between local Houstonians and national media, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner issued a city-wide curfew, restricting street access under threat of arrest and police investigation.

Whether or not this measure was designed to be preventative or reactionary is still debated by different media interests. While national media sources focused on the correlation between looting narratives and the curfew, Arnold from KPRC told the Independent that while the national media reported that the curfew was enacted to protect communities from looting, “as I saw it on the ground...it was a [flooding] issue...But of course, that’s not so interesting for people living in cities not affected by the disaster.” In reality, only one person was arrested for looting, mayor Turner told KPRC2.

Arnold similarly criticized the national media’s sensationalization of gun store burglaries. “Only four gun stores were looted and 109 guns were stolen,” he said. “In comparison to Katrina [where there were thousands of guns stolen], that’s nothing. And reporting that without context will only spread worry and fear.” As with looting reports writ large, over-emphasizing a narrative of gun looting in particular invokes a racialized spectre of crime that panders to the preconceptions of white socio-politics.

The fact that national news was the main purveyor of looting reports may speak to the desire of mainstream media outlets to entertain faraway readers rather than impact the lives of Texans braving the winds. Whether or not looting motivated the curfew, reports of looting perpetuate classist images, and ultimately distract from the local community’s efforts to create cohesion and stay afloat in the midst of catastrophe. +++ Many local reporters define their missions in opposition to national ones. “Our [local media] priorities could not be more different [than national]. We’re not about trying to get clicks or revenue,” Rapaport told the Independent. “We’re about genuine conversations with small coastal communities in the eye of the storm...we’re about getting out the necessary, objective information.”

Arnold echoes the fact-based and community-oriented approach of local news stations during the storm. “This kind of stuff would be boring for people reading from afar. We’re writing about road closures, shelter statistics, evacuation zones, donation needs.

That’s why we’re here.”

As national editors deliberated over think-pieces, and CNN invited audiences to “observe the wreckage from a drone-eye’s view,” local reporters roved the

streets, stepping over fallen trees to scout out stories.

“We were trying to figure out what was happening on the ground, using our own eyes and ears,” Rapaport said. Chasms in communication meant that local reporters became their own eyewitnesses, and could pursue creative reporting without heeding to the agendas of larger media organizations. On an average storm-free day, local news tends to replicate national reports and themes, as editors of small papers look to larger papers for guidance on how to fill their pages— what news theorist Warren Breed calls “copycat coverage.” But disasters create a unique chance for local reporters to deviate from national trends. Where national sources showcased the dramatic, visual, or exciting elements of a disaster, local news rushed to fill the gaps and substantiate claims first-hand. ABC, CNN, and FOX got one third of their coverage on Harvey from local outlets, and most national networks lacked interviews of any sort for the first 24 hours.

Logistical problems inherent in disasters make coverage dangerous and complicated for national correspondents unfamiliar with the city, which may explain networks’ tendencies to toss coverage back to the studio and report speculation in the absence of official verification. Amid the flood of compelling victim narratives, “rumors of murders and other crimes circulated but often simply were not true,” Arnold told the Independent. “I’d rather report on an issue I knew would make a positive impact on people’s lives,” Arnold said.

When KPRC visited the Red Cross shelter at BF Terry High School in Rosenberg, Texas, the team of reporters talked to storm victims and discovered a desperate need for bedding for those sleeping in the gym. Within 20 minutes of publishing the story, people poured through the school doors with donations until everyone had a pillow. “It was one of the only moments I teared up,” Arnold said. “That’s what it means to be in a category four hurricane.”

The concrete impact of conveying local needs kept Arnold motivated as other ethical dilemmas surfaced. “It’s hard to be standing there filming while someone stands in their destroyed kitchen and realizes they’ve lost their valuables,” he said. “I didn’t have water, or food, or escape. I had nothing to give them but we were told that just the fact our station was there was a comfort.”

While local news may have a stronger claim to compassion and credibility, national media plays a vital role in expanding the analytical scope of disaster coverage. A study conducted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the Social Science Research Council’s Katrina Hub found that national newspapers were twice as likely as local newspapers to present the larger political and economic impact of the hurricane. While safety must remain the primary concern of local media, national media on Harvey has been discussing the political and economic impact of disaster: runaway development in floodprone areas, the dysfunction of the National Flood Insurance Program, and Trump’s decision to eliminate the Obama-era flood risk management standard.

While Hurricane Katrina made national headlines for exposing systemic state violence, national reporting on Harvey has brought to light the ways in which climate change (particularly the warming of oceans) and political denial have produced monster storms at a scale never seen before.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

+++ While normal journalistic practice preaches objectivity and detachment, Hurricane Harvey field reporters and photographers found themselves intensely identifying with storm victims. Everything happening in the lives of readers and watchers was also happening in reporters’ lives. “We were sharing experiences with these people,” Rapaport told the Independent.

“Our team was staying in a hotel alongside hurricane victims and could relate to most of what people told us because our room walls were ripped off by winds the night before.”

Arnold was in the field interviewing victims while worrying about whether his mother was still alive, as water flooded most of her home. One of his colleagues at KPRC, Investigative Unit chief Shara Roberson, continued reporting while her family fled their destroyed home to a nearby shelter. The office of the local KHOU began to flood, but the station moved its broadcast a few stories up and stayed on air.

“There was a sense of us sharing the same fate, and to be honest, we had to adjust our former professional ideals to fit the circumstances,” Arnold said.

“Sometimes striving so hard for objectivity means nothing if it’s not in service of truth.” While the goal of local media in storms is defined as “the communication of warnings and description of local occurrences” by the International Journal of Disaster Risk, local reporters often do more than inform the public during storms. Just as national outlets may have additional incentive for reporting criminal activity and exaggerating negative occurrences to entertain readers, local news outlets downplayed negative results of Hurricane Harvey in order to contribute to individual and community resilience. Stories of despair rarely made it to their first pages. Instead, Rapaport and Arnold spoke about the positivity they witnessed and reported.

“An old woman without transportation, without family, was sifting through what was left of her destroyed home. She told me the worst was over, and she was ready and happy for anything else that came her way,” Rapaport told the Independent. “That was the most impactful story I witnessed. That was the story I shared with the public.”

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Arnold said the framing of his articles speak to his responsibility and desire to encourage his viewers, and cultivate hope, reminding them of their own innate resilience, and the need to persevere in the face of hardship. “The people need to be focused on carrying on,” he said when asked about his decision not to report on criminal activity or the policy failures that exacerbated the storm, and instead to elevate stories of inspirational rescues. “My job is not retrospective.

We’ve just got to survive.” +++ Because hurricane coverage so directly affects police actions, government relief, and rescue efforts, reflecting on these reports means reflecting on the ways our lives are shaped by the stories of suffering we consume. The contradictory approaches of local and national news (from mutual aid within a community to large-scale official panic) brings to light a dichotomy of disaster, which Rebecca Solnit describes in A Paradise Built in Hell: “Disaster requires an ability to embrace contradiction...there is suffering, there are psychic scars…[and] there are newborn social bonds and liberations.”

Inevitably, as the national eye shifted to Hurricane Irma’s landfall, major media outlets left Houston behind—archived in the long tradition of natural disaster coverage. While CNN tallied up Harvey’s financial toll and moved on to Irma’s destruction, Rapaport, Arnold, and countless other local reporters will continue to remain with their communities, chronicling the Houston area’s long-term efforts to recover and rebuild. “This is my 29th tropical storm,” Arnold said. “My home was destroyed by Hurricane Allison in 2011 and I still didn’t quit. I’m here to stay. I don’t know what else to do.”

ISABEL DEBRE B’18 and CHRIS PACKS B’20 only watch KPRC.

NEWS

10

PINS OVER NEEDLES Radical acupuncture in the Bronx and Providence

BY Neidin Hernandez ILLUSTRATION BY Julie Benbassat DESIGN BY Amos Jackson

The year 1970 marked the height of a heroin epidemic in the United States. The drug detoxification program at Lincoln Hospital in the south Bronx had a waiting list of up to one year for new patients. Established in 1839 to provide treatment for runaway enslaved people, Lincoln Hospital had by the mid-twentieth century fallen into a state of dangerous disrepair, gaining a reputation as “the butcher shop of the south Bronx.” Patients, primarily poor brown and Black people who lived in the surrounding area, described seeing walls and floors splattered with blood, and there were numerous cases of children contracting lead poisoning while receiving treatment. A 1970 report on Lincoln Hospital noted that “the dirt and grime and general dilapidation make it a completely improper place to care for the sick or even run the complex administrative machinery that is required to do this.”

On November 10, 1970, a coalition of revolutionary groups, including the Young Lords and the Black Panthers, seized control of the nurse’s residence at Lincoln Hospital and founded a drug detoxification program called the People’s Drug Program. Through the organization, volunteers trained in political advocacy and community organizing used methadone to wean addicts off of heroin.

Vincente Alba, a nineteen-year old then in an active heroin addiction, received treatment from the People’s Drug Program on the very day it was founded. He soon after drafted into the Young Lords Party, a Puerto Rican revolutionary group fighting for self-determination and liberation.

In a 2013 interview with Molly Porzig in The Abolitionist, Vicente Alba noted that news about the treatment center spread very quickly throughout the greater New York area. “The word spread [about]… the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people, not white professionals but their own people, who had a loving heart and an understanding of things they needed to articulate,” said Alba.

In 1973, soon after President Richard Nixon opened relations with China, the Lincoln Detox Center learned of and began using a new and unexpected method for drug detoxification: acupuncture. +++ In 1972, a Hong Kong neurosurgeon named Dr. H. L. Wen successfully demonstrated the efficacy of acupuncture as a method for treating opium addiction in his patients. A low-risk, cost efficient way to combat drug addiction, acupuncture was adopted in Lincoln Hospital as a drug-free alternative to methadone detoxification.

While methadone was the preferred treatment option for heroin addiction among white Western medical practitioners, it also comprised a large portion of the illegal opioids available for purchase due to its relative ubiquity, caused withdrawal symptoms much worse than those of heroin, and in the worst of cases encouraged chemical dependency rather than easing it.

Contrary to much of Western medicine, which is predicated upon the notion of isolation (isolating the pathogen or disease, and, in one-on-one consultations with medical professionals, isolating the patient from their community) acupuncture at the Lincoln Detox

11

METABOLICS

community as a political formation but [also for] its work in developing and saving men and women of the third world inside oppressed communities.”

Center was practiced in a group setting and informed by each individual’s experience in society. “We understood that an individual’s addiction wasn’t just a physical problem but a psychological problem. It was a widespread problem in our community, not because we as a community were psychologically deficient, but because oppression and brutal living conditions drove us to that,” said Alba.

As a tool that challenged the dominant Western medical framework, acupuncture provided the basis for liberatory self-healing practices espoused by revolutionary groups in the 1970s and beyond. Three drug counselors, including Mutulu Shakur, step-father of rapper Tupac Shakur and one of the first volunteers at the Lincoln Detox Center, began studying under Mario Wexu through the Acupuncture Association of Quebec.

After further studying acupuncture in China, Montreal, England, and Switzerland, Mutulu Shakur co-founded the Black Acupuncture Advisory Board of North America (BAANA) in 1978, which trained over 100 students in the practices of community acupuncture as a revolutionary tool. Through BAANA, Shakur extended treatment outside of the scope of detoxification in order to treat low-income people for general health concerns, including trauma, arthritis, diabetes, and high cholesterol. +++ The Lincoln Detox Center was dismantled in 1979 when over two hundred policemen surrounded the complex and denied entry to anyone associated with the Black Panthers or the Young Lords. Federal and State governments were on a campaign to dismantle the revolutionary organizations, and the Lincoln Detox Center was their next casualty. “The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side,” said Vicente Alba. “We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.”

Nevertheless, the program had already laid the foundations for the practice and expansion of community acupuncture in the United States. In a 1992 WHBK radio interview from Lompoc Federal Prison with Tyehimba Jess, Mutulu Shakur said that the Lincoln Detox Center “became not only recognized by the

In the decades following the dissolution of the People’s Drug Program, the practice of acupuncture became subsumed into dominant Western medical practices. A rise in New Age spirituality sparked an increased interest in medical practices from across Asia. Practices including acupuncture became white-washed and decontextualized in order to satisfy consumer capitalist desires for the exotic. As acupuncture moved away from the community-based model and began to be increasingly administered in a one-on-one setting, the prices of acupuncture soared, making it inaccessible to a large swath of the population. According to a 2012 National Health Interview Survey, 82 percent of all people who used acupuncture in the United States were white. Nearly half, 47 percent, were college educated. +++ One clinic dedicated to reversing this trend in acupuncture and returning to its revolutionary roots is Providence Community Acupuncture (PCA), a clinic founded in 2006 and located downtown at 1055 Westminster Street.

PCA operates on a sliding scale and provides discounted treatment to people in different occupations including teachers, tradespeople, caregivers, and retail employees.

In the tradition of liberation acupuncture pioneered at the Lincoln Detox Center, the PCA takes a necessarily political and holistic approach to treatment. Melissa Tiernan, an acupuncturist at PCA, described the clinic’s philosophy as one that considers not only each patient’s multifaceted physical and emotional experience but also as an occupant of a unique place in society. “There are social determinants for disease. It’s not just about you as an individual having a specific pathogen; it’s about the fact that the conditions of our society are fostering poor health,” said Tiernan. She specifically pointed to spatial inequality, which often forces low-income people of color into food deserts, areas with higher pollution, and places with scant access to affordable healthcare facilities. “It’s our society that is putting different groups in different positions and what we’re trying to do is recognize that in terms of making it part of the medical treatment.”

Tiernan envisions a future in which acupuncture is used in schools, hospitals, and prisons as the first line of defense for treating trauma in people searching for care.

For now, the PCA will continue offering treatment to the people of the greater Providence area and working to reconnect acupuncture to its roots as a tool for radical self-healing.

NEIDIN HERNANDEZ B’19 will return to the PCA for acupuncture.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

EPHEMERA

12

SWIMMING THROUGH EMOTIONAL WORLDS A Conversation with Rachel Glaser

BY Anna Hundert ILLUSTRATION BY Teri Minogue DESIGN BY Ja Yoon Lee

Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the short story collection Pee on Water (2010), the novel Paulina & Fran (2015) and two poetry collections, MOODS (2013) and HAIRDO (2017). She received her BFA in Painting from RISD and her MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Amherst. This year, she was selected for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists 3—a list that has previously included writers such as Jeffrey Eugenides, Nicole Krauss, and Akhil Sharma.

In Paulina & Fran, Rachel works with different textures of emotional intensity to paint a portrait of two fabulously volatile characters and the interior worlds they inhabit. In her own words: “...there aren’t just two moods, there’s a whole range, and the colors are flashing.” Reading her work is like looking at the world through a filter that makes every color brighter.

Rachel spoke with the Independent about Providence, relationships, shifting moods, and candles with faces. +++ The College Hill Independent: I wanted, first of all, to talk to you about Providence. The Indy is a Providence-based paper, and the first half of Paulina & Fran takes place in “a New England city” that’s pretty unambiguously Providence. I’m curious about the role that the city itself takes on in your narrative. How did you come to work with Providence as a setting? And why did you choose to leave it unnamed?

Rachel B. Glaser: The novel started out as a threepage story and it didn’t take place at an art school.

I think, in my mind, I was picturing Providence because that’s where I went to school. It was a really short story that barely mentioned place. Then, as the story became longer and longer—when I realized I was going to turn it into a novel—I thought I might as well set it at art school because I have way more to say about that. So I was picturing Providence, but I realized that to name them ‘RISD’ and ‘Providence’ would only limit it. In the book, whenever it feels placeless and epic, I like the drama of that. And I was picturing all these memories. Providence in general, when I’m there, I feel like I’m in this weird dream of the past. And then it got crazier when I started to go to Providence after having spent so much time writing about it and imagining it. It became even more mystical.

The Indy: Because it’s also the setting of the ‘placeless epic’ that you were imagining?

RBG: Yeah! It’s a just weird mix. In the beginning, I had real street names. In some versions, it would say “Benefit Street.” And then other times, I thought no, maybe that’s distracting, even to the people who know the places. Maybe they would think, “I wasn’t picturing that there!” or “That’s not there anymore!”

But I was picturing Providence, and I think it was a good setting for the drama.

13

ARTS

The Indy: It’s a pretty dramatic book. There’s this line that I love—where Paulina yells at Fran, “I was only friends with you as a novelty! How a child picks an ant from a pile of ants and makes it their pet for the afternoon.”

RBG: Yeah! That’s the kind of line where it’s really fun in a book, and then you try and put it in like a screenplay, and you’re like oh, that doesn’t sound like something someone would say.

The Indy: Well, in the writing itself, all the characters’ emotions are sort of heightened. It feels like reading fantasy even though it’s not fantasy at all.

RBG: That’s the thing I’m going for. There’s this James Purdy book I really like called I Am Elijah Thrush. It’s really funny and dramatic and eccentric and complicated, and when I searched it online, I found this review that called it “social fantasy.” I’d never heard that term, and I got really into that idea, that if you make people’s emotions volatile and strong and changing, it can create an altered reality. Not like a sci-fi reality, but like what you’re saying. Heightened, or dreamy, or strange.

The Indy: It’s like the interior lives of the characters are exploding everywhere—that’s how it felt to me.

In a good way.

RBG: That’s what I was going for! I love switching point of view. Everyone’s feeling something, and I think it’s really fun when you get to switch, and see it all in the same scene.

The Indy: I’m so fascinated by how your characters’ personalities seem to change constantly over the course of a day. Their personalities shift based on how they’re feeling about the bra they’re wearing, or how their hair looks that day. It got me thinking about how in fiction writing, we talk about “dynamic characters” as if character change only happens over the arc of a whole novel. How did this notion of ongoing changes and switches affect your approach?

RBG: I’m really interested in how quickly people’s moods change, and how quickly our realities are changing. Someone asks you, “How are you?” and you say that you’re good or you’re bad. But it’s crazy how you can be having the shittiest day and still have fun at moments. The emotional range of a day is really interesting. Of course big things are happening, but there are these miniscule things that add up to make you unhappy, or happy, or scared, or excited. That’s something I wanted to show in Paulina & Fran—the tedious emotional lives of the characters. What makes them happy or sad isn’t always big things. I tried to show that, as you grow older, it’s not like that chang-

es. The human condition is just crazy, shifting moods.

And so much of fiction is based on the bigger things.

The Indy: But the smaller things matter, too!

RBG: Yeah, and the small can be linked to the big.

When I was editing, I remember there were a lot of lines about hair, and at some point I wondered if I should hold back and not have so many lines about hair. But even though they’re about hair, those are sort of symbolic moments of how the room is feeling, or how certain characters are rising and falling. Small things can act like motifs and drag the reader into this world where it really matters how your hair looks.

And in art school—what you wore was such a big thing then. If you’re spending all this time making art, presenting images, making statements, experimenting, then it’s sort of natural that some of that would come into play when you’re leaving your room.

The Indy: Attraction is pretty complicated in this book. I really liked the ambiguity of Paulina and Fran’s relationship, where they’re pushing and pulling as friends and/or lovers and/or enemies the whole time. How did you approach bisexual representation as you were writing these characters?

RBG: When I was at RISD, I think a lot of people were just trying to figure out how they felt about each other, rather than identify exactly what they were. In the first draft I ever wrote, which was just this weird three-page thing, there was a lot of tension between Paulina and Fran. But in the original thing, it didn’t go as far. Many of the scenes I ended up writing

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

weren’t part of the original plan. It just felt like these characters were gaining lives and opinions and desires, and that was really exciting, to feel like, “Huh, these women are leading me towards this!” or “Huh, now I’m writing a scene like this!” You know? I didn’t set off to say anything about bisexuality.

The Indy: That makes a lot of sense. Do you think that how you approach romantic love isn’t necessarily distinct from how you approach love in friendship?

RBG: People say “This is my friend” and “This is my boyfriend,” or “This person’s gay, this person’s straight.” We like to predict and define what our relationships are. But if you think about your friends and your family, acquaintances and coworkers, each relationship is totally different and has its own set of tendencies, rules, and histories. That’s what was so fun about writing these two people. The way that they felt about each other changed a lot. It goes back to that mood thing—that there aren’t just two moods, there’s a whole range, and the colors are flashing.

Putting any two friends or lovers together, the feelings and the power-struggles, their morphing moods and relationships become this sort of human monster that can be captivating, if you capture it right. That’s what I was trying to do... capture the monster.

The Indy: I don't want to forget to ask you: what’s the origin of your Twitter and Instagram handle, “candle face”?

RBG: That’s from a game of “exquisite corpse” with my friend from RISD, Julio Gonzalez, in 2005 or 2006. Those days, someone would draw the head,

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

then whoever drew the torso would sometimes draw another head. We were doing one and we could see that there were two different creatures emerging.

When we opened it up, there was this crazy creature on the left, and on the right there was this candle-faced creature. It had a flame and two different smiley faces on different parts of the flame. Maybe two flames. And then there was the candle’s body, with a claw-like hand, and it was wearing a Nike racquetball glove. And I just thought it was so funny that this creature had arrived. I thought it was a good character, and at the time I was making hand-drawn animations. I had an idea for an animation with this candle-man doing all this stuff. I did a few drawings, and the animation never happened, but it ended up becoming one of my online names. Around the same time of that creature, I was writing the story “Pee on Water,” in the story collection Pee on Water, and in the very end of that story there’s a line like, “candles coy and shy their hot face.” I can’t remember which came first. But I was definitely, at that point, thinking a lot about candles having faces, flames having faces.

When it’s the anniversary of the death of one of my grandparents, I light a yahrzeit candle. In some way, I like to think that my dead grandparents are watching me through the flame. There’s a connection between flames and spirits in my head.

drawing, fiction, poetry, screenplays, plays, music, collage, and sculpture. All art making informs future art making. I find great freedom in feeling like a beginner at something. When I was at RISD I felt like a painter who wrote, and now I feel like a writer who paints. I’m way more fluent in writing—my painting is less advanced. There’s a lot more I want to try, and need to try, to learn how to make the paintings I want to make. I want to make looser, weirder, funnier paintings. There are things I’m able to do with words that I’m still learning to do with shapes. But yes, working in one genre helps me figure out things in other genres. Last night I was watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, my favorite TV show, and marveling at the nonstop social tension, and realizing how it’s been very influential to my writing, especially a new novel I’m working on right now. I know you didn’t ask me for advice for college writers and painters, but if you did, I’d say, “Try everything! See everything!” and “keep a notebook” and “be sweet and encouraging to yourself.”

The Indy: That’s so cool, how you’re working with overlapping imageries. How do you view the relationship between your visual art and your creative writing, in general?

RBG: The two are very linked. I really believe that artists should experiment with all mediums—painting,

ARTS

14

NEARLY EIGHTY GIGS OF DATA IN MY HEAD DNA, digital storage, and the matter of memory

BY Jonah Max ILLUSTRATION BY Isabelle Rea DESIGN BY Eliza Chen

The world is beset by a global hunger for memory. SD memory cards, solid state drives, CD-ROMs, reels of magnetic tape—these devices drape the crust of the earth in networks of stable and temporary memory, orbit at the very edge of our exosphere in satellites, producing and holding fast to data we deem at once to be both vital and superfluous. By the stroke of the same machinery we use to safeguard climate readings recorded at the tip of the earth, we seamlessly archive our mobile boarding passes and the disappointing slideshows of images captured along the way. We most often save these files to a digital cloud, and often only with the knowledge that we will most certainly never look at any of this junk again.

And yet, behind these processes of nearly mindless digital production and storage lies explicitly material practices which ensnare labor, geology, and the energy gradients which drive the Earth, leaving in their wake unscalable mounds of waste. The rare earth mining operations at the Baotou Steel Company on the border of Mongolia, for instance, expose workers to toxic sulphates and ammonia, flooding the surrounding waters with hydrochloric acid as the corporation bores trenches deep into the Earth to retrieve the neodymium magnets necessary for consumer hard drive production. At the Agbogbloshie e-waste facility in Accra along the coast of Ghana, migrant laborers from the north spark dangerous chemical fires in an effort to strip copper from electronic devices deemed obsolete by largely Western markets. Often these minerals re-enter the global market, finding new use in updated versions of their ghostly selves. In light of these treacherous operations, notions of immaterial “data mining” appreciate an explicitly geological, material, and exploitative hue—appearing more depressive and entropic than cyclic and self-sustaining.

As media theorist Jussi Parikka claims, where the contemporary logic of digital production finds in the Global South a source of heat and labor, it is within the Global North that it finds the cold. As rare earth minerals—now transformed into hard drives and flash drives—ferry towards Europe and North America, they find their home in storage facilities and data centers, often located near or atop permafrost, frozen layers of soil and rock beneath the Earth’s surface. Here deionized water sprays, arrays of industrial fans, and complex cooling ducts ensure that data rests in a near-frozen state, momentarily stilled against the inevitable process of erosion. While popular images of these centers present them as sleek, textureless, and unpopulated zones of pure information, they too rely on highly specific, localized geological conditions and finite resources,

15

TECH

chiefly that of coolness. From the inside, contemporary data centers may look little like traditional factories, but from across the yard, plumes of steam still pour from their stacks, releasing the pent up heat which would otherwise antagonize data’s desire for coldness.

Haunting this entire transnational operation of memory production and storage, however, is the illusion of indefinite continuity. How long can we imagine that conditions remain like this? How long until the water at Baotou is wholly undrinkable? How many years until the Alaskan permafrost melts for good? What timeline can an e-waste site like the one in Ghana reasonably expect? According to a study conducted at Boise State University last spring, even the supply of silicon, an exceedingly common element essential to memory storage, will be outpaced by its global demand as soon as 2040. This systematic excavation of the Earth’s crust and its transformation into consumer electronic goods proceeds along a temporality that artist Robert Smithson deems “fluvial entropy…where everything is gradually wearing down”—an “irreversible process” which cannot be escaped, only changed into new forms. +++ In part stoked by these fears of material depletion, computer scientists and biologists have sought a familiar new home for our digital memories: DNA. Whereas a top-of-the-line hard drive might offer a terabyte or two of data storage and require often hundreds of grams of rare earth metals like neodymium, cerium, yttrium, and ytterbium (as well as various aluminum casings, voice coil actuators, stepper motor actuators, the list goes on), synthetic DNA can hold nearly 215 petabytes (215,000 terabytes) of data in a single gram.

Beyond its extraordinary material efficiency, DNA is startlingly resilient—lasting on the magnitude of millions of years. In comparison, a hard drive might last us a decade if we’re lucky. A brief glance at contemporary schlock like CSI: Miami or NCIS, with their unending discoveries of forensic evidence, serves as a quick reminder. Our DNA, biology’s fundamental and nearly universal storage mechanism, is all but destined to outlive us, our rising tides, our depleting ozone, and perhaps for a handful of our species, even the heat death of our sun itself.

This nearly transcendent quality of our most essential and intimate information, however, does not evade all concerns, or even the most basic material

ones that long troubled more conventional forms of data storage. Rather, it seems to abstract and exacerbate them. For practical storage, DNA still lives best in the cold: artificially chilled data centers will be replaced with cryogenic chest freezers—the already frosty temperatures now turned down to an icy -150 degrees Celsius. Rare-earth mineral excavation will continue, now only to provide materials for the apparatuses of a new sort of cultivation entirely, oligonucleotide farming, where organic chemists tediously string together nucleic acids in solid-state synthesis.

And the crude exploitative practices of electronic waste management will be further distanced behind the sterilized, white-washed walls of the laboratory, which carries its own politics and power structures.

As data storage travels further into abstraction, anthropologist Bruno Latour, writing in Laboratory Life, reminds us that even the modern laboratory carries with it the distorted essence of the factory. A lab relies on the mass production of scientific apparatuses and the adoption of factory-borne bureaucracies and hierarchies to produce its own “material goods,” chiefly scientific writing. That is, though the laboratory may isolate itself from the punch card, the assembly line, and the smoke stack, it quietly leans on these systems of order, repetition, and waste to produce abstract commodities for publication and patents, not fundamental truths. +++ Cast in this light, DNA data storage looks less like some return to the founding ingenuity of biology or the facts of life, and more as a fresh silvery skein to wrap around traditional modes of technological production. At the rudimentary level, this new DNAbased storage will presumably be employed to store the same old junk we cast to the dusty archives in the first place. This is not to claim, however, that nothing changes here in the laboratory, and that the accompanying troubles of DNA storage map seamlessly to our present difficulties with hard drives and magnetic tape. First, and perhaps most importantly, whereas old world data storage endlessly worked against the problem of quantity (diminishing reserves of silicon, increased desire for minimizing data’s cost of materials and space), DNA’s material quandaries circle around the stability of the material itself. To begin to appreciate this problem, it is first necessary to understand exactly how biologists and computer scientists write digital information to DNA.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

As all computer languages are built atop binary strings, any scrap of digital information—be it a .pdf file, a .jpeg, a full-length film, or an operating system—can be represented as a sequence of 0’s and 1’s. From here the operator can divide this sequence into pairs of 00, 01, 11, and 10, which will in turn be mapped to adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine base pairs—the building blocks of DNA. Once a strand of DNA is synthesized according to the binary sequence of the original digital file, a sequencer must simply read the chain of base pairs to reconstruct the binary file, and in turn, restore the original document.

Though this mapping procedure appears elegant in its simplicity, the frailty of the material itself can manifest in unfortunate ways. Chiefly, as binary strings often contain a high degree of repetition (0’s followed by 0’s followed by 0’s), the synthesizer is asked to construct what amounts to a run of homopolymers (in this case, we can imagine [adenine-adenine-adenine]), a chain of base pairs which threaten the structural integrity of the DNA and can cause the entire strand to collapse. Moreover, in its current state, this relatively new technology of synthetic DNA is equally prone to error even when given a presumably stable sequence of base pairs—nucleotides mismatch, fail to traverse the synthesis channel, or lose their correct position in the ordered chain. Last year, in an effort to circumvent these difficulties, a team of scientists at Columbia began employing a procedure called fountain coding, creating quasi-randomized arrangements of pairs from the original binary string such that, given a healthy surplus of pairings, homopolymer chains are identified and discarded before synthesis. This way, an entire file can be successfully sequenced even if particular base pairs are lost in the transmission.

Though computer scientists have long toiled with the problem of transferring data through noisy, leaky channels, the finicky material nature of DNA has impelled the field to move beyond simple error-correcting code and traditional erasure procedures. +++ Although even greater troubles still plague the practice of writing information to and reading from DNA, particularly when it comes to its prohibitive cost, the promises of such a system warrant a degree of consideration. Writing for Science, Robert Service notes the promised scale and efficiency of bio-storage could replace the “giant Facebook and Amazon data centers” with “a couple of pickup trucks of DNA.”

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Moreover, biologists intrigued by DNA’s potential have begun to employ the service of other organic actors to help create more robust bio-infrastructures for digital storage. Leaning on bacteria’s capacity to expand their genome through virus acquisition, scientists at Harvard have successfully transferred files between E. coli bacteria—that is, a week after successfully infecting E. coli with one of the earliest pieces of animation ever created, footage of Eadweard Muybridge’s galloping horse. The scientists were then able to retrieve the very same horse footage from the entire population of E. coli as the DNA sequence had grown, divided, and repopulated repeatedly over the week. This alternate vision of file distribution and document backup, if scalable, would render our current assemblages of remote servers, external hard drives, and USB sticks quickly obsolete.

While a future of chilled petri dishes and ever-expansive memory may seem nearly utopian to some data scientists, others working in the field of DNA storage have postulated much darker futures. This summer, scientists and the University of Washington successfully synthesized a DNA strand with malware, designed to exploit the computer which sequences the strand. Much like a malicious email attachment or phishing site which silently hijacks a personal computer, this DNA malware could seamlessly take control over the receiver’s computer. If one were to send malware-ridden DNA to a popular genome-sequencing corporation such as Ancestry or 23andMe, simply reading the strand could offer one surreptitious access to thousands of private medical records. While little, if any, of this is realizable today, it speaks to a potential future one might glimpse in sci-fi fare like Johnny Mnemonic, where transnational corporations (and organized crime) fight for control of a DNA courier, a man whose brain itself has been synthetically implanted with sensitive files locked in his own DNA. Before any of these futures, be they utopian or apocalyptic, can be realized, corporations have already made their first move. In May of this year, Microsoft announced that in the coming years, users will have the ability to relocate their cloud storage to DNA storage facilities.

JONAH MAX B’18 has never seen Gattaca.

TECH

16

POEMS FROM THE SERIES POSTCARDS FOR MIRA

BY Marly Toledano ILLUSTRATION BY Kelly Wang DESIGN BY Amos Jackson

“It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 26th of July and it’s probably 8:54 in Manhattan but I’m in Brooklyn” -Ted Berrigan, Personal Poem #9

I. MIDSIZE CITIES Dear Mira,

II. MIAMI

I apologize that I called you at 2AM last night to sit with me and listen to me cry and let me stroke your hair so that the holding might fasten me to this life. I apologize but I really need a promise like: you will settle, I will superglue you to a floor plan and make you drink warm milk every day with powdery green vitamins and a calendar.

I know this requires a certain sacrifice but my hope is I think that someone will believe in me that much— Sometimes I see home like a series of scraps placed on a map of the thirteen colonies and Miami and assorted midsize cities.

I drew a map once to convince someone. I made a little loop that traced the coasts and a scraggly line through New Mexico from when we left and we lived in a car. I used to go to a little place like a corner store or a cigar shop where a skinny man in boots sold stones outside of Taos. I bought malachite and amethyst even though my grandma liked turquoise in relation to the orange desert.

Dear Mira,

and we ate pizza in the back of somebody’s F150 and talked about Wally Lamb, waterfalls, and the necessity of ritual.

A lot of times now, I ask for Con Leche in a package for remembering. At a blue rest stop, south of Savannah a good friend of mine and I find showers and pickles in plastic containers. Sucking on green juice like honey sticks, she tells me: you’re not from anywhere. I say: I know that I am a stilt house even though I have been banned by the state of Florida it doesn’t mean I can’t exist a bit longer, if I try to stay still and walk tiptoe.

I guess another time we skipped chapel and we picked strawberries by the barn and listened to Robert Penn Warren. And the boy, he took a long pause, he said: it felt other-worldly, like Anne with Jack by the water, and so we replaced the engine belt in a blue Chevy Spaceship, ruined my white watch, and bought lumber from a clever man back behind the school. Then I took the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band record and left him with his ashtray and an egg biscuit.

The recent ordinance declares: you must leave me for water. Everywhere I am left looking out and over and wondering if in art deco everyone turns into triangles and flat. I lie down on the gloss floor the Britto museum the gallery with plants shaped like rabbits and deer I wonder if rabbits exist here or they are shipped off to stilt city to swamps.

Looking forward,

I am on a balcony at Vizcaya I am making up another story where this is my palace in my story I feel very blasé like the girl on top of the garage with the wind and the camera man. I try to adjust my dimensions for the picture she clicks and then she says:

Most of the time now, I spend trying to make some nostalgia out of experiences I never had.

You are a lump and this is a flat city.

I shared the rocks with my second grade class and then lost them in the move.

Later, I would not enjoy the warm air and the dust at the Rodin Museum but I kept thinking about this one sculpture closed for renovations.

IV. P.O. BOXES Dear Mira,

I suppose I will go to where the ocean looks like a fireplace, the car with beets, blueberries in the back seat, and the ravenous expanse. You and I, we stand on a precipice, perpetually overlooking. For now, I offer you my hand. I will sweat and you will let go.

Looking forward,

III. CHATTANOOGA

In exchange: I will take your irony and your considerations to use for jet fuel on my Chevy spaceship. I love you to discomfort but the water turns orange in a few weeks and besides scotch tape was never made for sticking around.

Dear Mira, I built a little house from an empty atrium in Massachusetts and a soft cheese platter I had once in Vermont and a little wood church we ran to once on Signal Mountain, where Allie said: I want to get married one day and pretty soon. Sometimes I like pebbles and sometimes I throw granite at brick houses so that they might break.

Looking forward,

17

LITERARY

The only time I ever felt okay about Tennessee, I think I might have been in Georgia. I shared a tent with my friend who dresses like a carrot and a boy with long vowels and overalls I never knew before

And I’m thinking: I don’t have it in me to gather powder blue wood. I’m not sure you have the means to trap me, or the will. I understand this now, and I don’t know how milk reacts in space.

I believe we need especially to maintain correspondence in the years to come. I would be grateful if you mailed me a portion of your thinking as well as some vitamins.

Please forward all material to my P.O. box.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

SATURDAY 9 ∫ 16

THE LIST! FRIDAY 9 ∫ 15 OUT THERE ART FAIR

CENTRAL AMERICAN FESTIVAL

SUNDAY 9 ∫ 17

Benefit Street 10 AM to 5 PM — Two art fairs in one day! This one offers a juried selection of works by current RISD students and alumni.

There’ll also be food trucks along Benefit Street.

RISD CRAFT SALE

Resources for Human Development Pawtucket, RI 10 AM to 4 PM — Now in its third year, the annual Out There Art Fair showcases works of outsider art by neurodiverse and largely self-taught artists.

Sounds like the art will be affordable and very beautiful.

DACA RENEWAL CLINICS

Dorcas International 645 Elmwood Avenue Providence, RI — Until October 3, the Dorcas International Institute of RI will conduct free renewal clinics for DACA recipients.

Walk-in hours are 9-4:30pm Monday through Friday, except for Wednesdays after 12:30pm. Evenings and weekends available by appointment. For more info, email at immigration@diiri. org or call 401-784-8621.

LEBANESE FOOD FESTIVAL

St. George Maronite Catholic Church 4 PM — Take a break from East Side Pockets with a weekend of Middle Eastern food and Arabic music and entertainment. This event is ongoing through 7pm on Sunday, 9.17.

Roger Williams Park Temple of Music NOON to 7 PM — This festival invites us to “enjoy the sights, sounds,

PROVIDENCE

ART VISIONING SESSION FOR

IMAGINE ART HERE: A PUBLIC

TUESDAY 9 ∫ 19

HISTORY PROJECT

NEIGHBORHOOD: AN ORAL

REMEMBERING A LOST BLACK

5-8pm — Food truck fests are hard because you probably only have enough cash to sample from one or two. Anyway, if nothing else, go for the logo designs and the found poetry in their names: Shuckin’ Truck, Sarcastic Sweets, Poco Loco Taco Truck, Smoke & Squeal...

WARWICK FOOD TRUCK NIGHT

WEDNESDAY 9 ∫ 20 THURSDAY 9 ∫ 21

THE LIST!

WaterFire Arts Center 5:30 PM — The city’s Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism is in the planning process for a large-scale, city-wide public art initiative, and invites community members to come share their ideas. This honestly sounds very cool.

The List’s suggestion for the city: more sunflowers!

DR. JANE GOODALL

The Ryan Center at URI, Kingston 7 PM — World-renowned primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall will deliver a public talk on such quotidian topics like “Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

Providence Public Library Meeting Room 6:30 PM — Stick around the library for the book launch of ProJo columnist David Brussat’s new history of architectural change in the city, jointly presented by the PPL and the Providence Preservation Society.

LOST PROVIDENCE

RHODE ISLAND BOOK LAUNCH:

Providence Public Library Auditorium 6 PM — In the 1960s, the vibrant, predominantly AfricanAmerican neighborhood of Lippitt Hill was destroyed in a city-sanctioned “redevelopment” effort, which displaced around 5,000 people in the creation of the present-day University Heights. Former residents of Lippitt Hill will share their stories at this public event.

THE LIST! and tastes of all that Central America has to offer.” Catch me there eating a pupusa!

MEDICINAL VINEGARS

Historic Watson’s Farm, Jamestown, RI 1 PM $20 — An interactive lecture about the health benefits of various vinegars. Apparently they can boost your immune system, among other things!

My roommate takes a shot of apple cider vinegar every morning, and he is indeed very healthy and strong.

MONDAY 9 ∫ 18 WRITE YOUR CHILDREN’S BOOK & GET IT PUBLISHED!

Tiverton Library 6:30 PM — Author Peter Mandel, who has written, among other things, the children’s book Bun, Onion, Burger, will offer a workshop on the ins and outs of the world of children’s book publishing.

This might be my big break for my work-in-progress, Ketchup, Mustard, Weenie!

VIRGO HOROSCOPE

With the sun exiting Virgo this week, you might find yourself facing a fiery flare in the relationships department—a big fight with a friend, or maybe a shocking development in your love life. Amidst all of this, the List recommends: carving out an intimate space for yourself, away from social obligations.

Schedule yourself a solo bike ride on the Washington Secondary Trail, or go to the movies alone.