Class & Power

Issue 57, April 2013

BROAD Class Power &

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Cover art: “Land of the Free” by Jeremy Van Cleef

A Feminist & Social Justice Magazine

A feminist is a person who answers “yes” to the question, “Are women human?” Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it’s certainly not about trading personal liberty--abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression-for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It’s about justice, fairness, and access to the

BROAD

range of human experience. It’s about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, the “family,” men. ~ Katha Pollitt

broad | brÔd | adjective 1 having an ample distance from side to side; wide 2 covering a large number and wide scope of subjects or areas: a broad range of experience 3 having or incorporating a wide range of meanings 4 including or coming from many people of many kinds 5 general without detail 6 (of a regional accent) very noticeable and strong 7 full, complete, clear, bright; she was attacked in broad daylight noun (informal) a woman.

broad | brÔd |

slang a promiscuous woman

phrases broad in the beam: with wide hips or large buttocks in broad daylight: during the day, when it is light, and surprising for this reason have broad shoulders: ability to cope with unpleasant responsibilities or to accept criticism City of broad shoulders: Chicago synonyms see: wide, extensive, ample, vast, liberal, open, all-embracing antonyms see: narrow, constricted, limited, subtle, slight, closed see also broadside (n.) historical: a common form of printed material, especially for poetry

Broad’s mission is connectartists, the WSGS program Our witheditorial communities of students, communities ofto scholars, and activists. mission is to provoke faculty, and staff at Loyola and beyond, continuing and extending the program’s thought and debate in an open forum characterized by respect and civility. mission. We provide space and support for a variety of voices while bridging communities of scholars, artists, and activists. Our editorial mission is to provoke thought and debate in an open forum characterized by respect and civility.

WSGS Mission: Founded in 1979, Loyola’s Women’s Studies Program is the first women’s studies WSGS Mission: program at a Jesuit institution and has served as a model for women’s studies

Founded in 1979, Loyola’s Studies Program is themission first women’s studies programs at other JesuitWomen’s and Catholic universities.

Our is to introduce program at to a Jesuit institution and has served as a model and for women’s studies schools; students feminist scholarship across the disciplines the professional programs at other Jesuit and Catholic and universities.

Our mission is to to learning; introduceand to to provide innovative, challenging, thoughtful approaches students to feminist scholarship across the disciplines and the professional schools; promote social justice. to provide innovative, challenging, and thoughtful approaches to learning; and to promote social justice.

Activism and Academia: Y Class & Power This special themed issue on Activism & Academia explores: how activism and

academia are related, whether or not theyand areclass compatible, it means This issue explores the topics of social class identity, what including the to be a part of the the middle academy, what of education lacking from academic working class, class, thetypes working poor, etc;are global definitions and disciplines, access to education and rights to education, how academia relates to conceptions of poverty and what it means to “live in poverty”; poverty alleviation; the real world, if there is a disconnect between universities and society at large, systems of wealth and power; globalization; consumerism; capitalism; socialism; and how we can what we learn matter.

Look for the [A&A] symbol marxist theory; and make wealth accumulation and distribution.

Look for the [CP]for contributions on our theme! symbol for contributions on our theme!

BROAD People: BROAD People: Karolyne Carloss

Abi Wilberding

Editor

Editor

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BROAD Mission: Broad’s mission is to connect the WSGS program with communities of students, faculty, and staff Mission: at Loyola and beyond, continuing and extending the program’s BROAD mission. We provide space and support for a variety of voices while bridging

Jenn Miller Editor in Chief

Brandie Madrid Consulting Editor

Julia DeLuca

WSGS/WLA/Gannon Coordinator

Natalie Beck

Archives & Website Coordinator

J. Curtis Main Consulting Editor

CONTENTS FROM YOUR EDITOR A Farewell

by Jenn Miller

INTRODUCING BROAD’S 2013-2014 Editorial Team

Katie Klingel, Karolyne Carloss, & Emma Steiber

VISITING EDITORS

Nicole Carrasco & Natalie Beck

[CP] The Working Class Academic

by Nicole Carrasco

BOOKMARK HERE Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America

by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, contributed by Nicole Carrasco

MADADS The Normalization of Abnormal Luxury

by Natalie Beck

[CP] Househunters International: American Class Values Abroad

by Natalie Beck

MADADS Unrealistic Portrayals of the Luxury Lifestyle

by Natalie Beck

[IM] You Know I’m Gonna be Like You

by Bryan George

MIDDLE EASTERN MUSINGS She Has a Voice

by Abeer Allan

QUOTE CORNER Kurt Vonnegut QUEER THOUGHTS Privileged “Girls”

by Emma Steiber, with guest writer Samantha Steiber

WLA RE-ANIMATED 1963: March with St. Dorothy’s Parish

by Julia DeLuca

[CP] Why are Unions Being Demonized?

by Vernon Beck

FEMINIST FIRES Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Natalie Beck

[CP] Conscious Consumerism: Raising the Issue of Poverty to Consumers

by Ashley Lindemann

BROADSIDE Fridays

by Peter Browne

QUOTE CORNER Rose Schneiderman WORDS ARE USELESS Haymarket Series

Jeremy Lundquist

SAVE THE DATE Bodies of Memory

by Ginny Sykes

[CP] What Do You Do All Day?

by Andrea Schaefer

QUOTE CORNER Arundhati Roy BROADSIDE On Becoming Silent (Silenced)

by Sharon Caldwell

INSIDE R OUT?

by J. Curtis Main

Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts on Hoarding and Sharing

EX BIBLIOTHECIS Connecting your Ipad to your Library

by Jane P. Currie

MADADS When Luxury Meets Reality

by Natalie Beck

SUBTLE SEXISMS Taxing Our Degrees

by Karolyne Carloss

BROADSIDE Don’t Let Me Go.

by Andrea Schaefer

by Bryce Parsons-Twesten

WORDS ARE USELESS Land of the Free

by Jeremy Van Cleef

ALUM ALERT Brandie Rae Madrid CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES

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PEOPLE TELING STORIES Corey

BROAD A Feminist & Social Justice Magazine

The Green Issue Seeking submissions on the topics of: environmentalism, eco-feminism, environmental activism, alternative fuel options, fracking, reducing, reusing, recycling, regulation, respecting nature, vegetarianism, veganism, the intersection of class, race, and environmental issues, social/economic/environmental sustainability, and how our bodies are related to the earth.

Send your poetry, artwork, and reflections to broad.luc@gmail.com by May 24th!

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WSGS graduate student Nicole Carrasco’s podcast series, Negotiating Space is an experiment in feminist media and storytelling, focusing on facilitating narratives from marginalized communities. The idea was born from Nicole’s desire to use media as a means to make feminist ideas and dialogue accessible to everyone. You can follow Negotiating Space on Twitter, @ NegotiateSpace, read the blog and listen to episodes at http://negotiatingspace.tumblr.com/, and connect on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ NegotiatingSpace.

From Your Editor

A Farewell In a matter of days, I’ll walk across a stage in a hood and gown and become the first person in my family to receive a Master’s Degree (well, two really - one in Social Work, and one in Women’s Studies & Gender Studies.) Neither of my parents even completed a Bachelor’s degree, actually.

You’ll read more about this topic later in this issue, but I, eventually, through lots of hard work, encouragement, and support, was elevated from a working-class family to the realm of academia.

For most of my life, my Dad worked in the auto

industry, while my mom held various jobs (usually more than one simultaneously) in food service, retail, child care, office management, and pre-k education. My parents couldn’t afford to put me through college, but I earned high grades, received scholarship funding, and worked at least part-time throughout my undergraduate and graduate careers. And now, for a time at least, I will transition out of the role of student and remain solely in the world of work.

This is a position in which I will use my Women’s Studies & Gender Studies background in combination with my specializations in Immigration & Migration and Children & Families within the field of social work to combat the intersectional systemic oppressions that immigrants and refugees in the U.S. face. And I have the opportunity to do so while being a part of something bigger than me, a Labor Union (another featured topic of this issue!), in which my fellow union brothers and sisters stand in solidarity with me to protect and defend our rights as workers. My new union button, that I wear proudly, reads, “Justice for those who seek Justice for others.”

Seeking justice for others is, of course, what BROAD is all about - giving voice to those who have no usual outlet for their opinions and perspectives, raising critical awareness around feminist and social justice issues, creating dialogue about these topics to create an online community of readers and contributors who are working together to fight injustice and oppression in all of its many forms. Indeed, serving as Editor in Chief of this magazine has been a rewarding, sometimes taxing, usually stressful, and often touching experience, just like any other justiceseeking work. I feel fortunate to have had this opportunity to seek justice for others through online publishing, but now, BROAD readers, I’m moving on to seek justice for others in another way.

But, while I am moving on, BROAD is here to stay! The Women’s Studies & Gender Studies program at Loyola will continue to support this effort as leadership is passed to new media activists who will carry on the mission and vision of this publication, and continue to encourage contributions and dialogue.

Our incoming leadership team has varying levels of experience and familiarity with BROAD, as a reader, a contributor, a columnist, a staff member. And they have an exceptional range of knowledge, interests, and experience beyond BROAD that will serve them well in continuing to expand the breadth and depth of themes and topics covered each issue. While many aspects of the publication will likely continue in their present form, expect some changes to be made - I’m looking forward to seeing them!

On the following two pages, it is my pleasure to introduce the new team to you: Katie Klingel, Karolyne Carloss, and Emma Steiber! Three women in whom I have great faith.

So, farewell readers! And thank you for being a part of the BROAD community, without which, BROAD would not exist. Thank you to all who have contributed their articles, opinions, ideas, artwork, poetry, feedback, comments, questions, and answers. Thank you to the 2012-2013 BROAD team for your hard work and dedication to this effort. Thank you to all of the Visiting Editors who have been a part of the BROAD team.

Thanks to all the columnists who have shared their voices each issue with all of us. And thanks to everyone who understood when I took 3 days to respond to an email, or sent 5 emails in the same day!

And most of all, thank you to all those who seek justice for others.

In solidarity, Jenn P.S. Special thank you to Nicole Carrasco, one of our Visiting Editors on this issue, for encouraging and revitalizing my work on this magazine, and for your work on this issue. And to Natalie Beck, our other Visiting Editor, for being the voice behind this theme from the beginning and making my last issue a great one. This issue goes out to my great-grandfather, Serafino Scarnato, an Italian immigrant who came to Pennsylvania to work in the coal mines and organized a labor union to protect miners’ rights.

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And with my graduation from Loyola comes the time for me to switch one title for another. I’m passing on my position as Editor in Chief and taking on the role of full-time employee and union member in the Immigrant Family Resource Program at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights - a position I’m proud of and excited to begin!

Introducing

BROAD’s 2013-2014 Editorial Team

Co-Editor-in-Chief

Katie Klingel

Hey readers!

My name is Katie Klingel, and I am super excited to introduce myself to you as the new Co-Editor-In-Chief of BROAD Magazine! I am so honored to be a part of this publication, and am really looking forward to working with you in continuing to make BROAD a comprehensive, diverse, and quality magazine.

My fellow team members, Karolyne and Emma, are two incredibly thoughtful, knowledgable, and powerful women, and I just know we have some great times ahead of us in working together for BROAD. That being said, I am also really looking forward to talking with all of our columnists, contributors, and future team members who truly make this a thriving publication.

While this will be my first year contributing to BROAD, I have followed all of the issues, and am truly inspired by all of the amazing articles, poems, and art pieces that have been published. I will take all that I have learned from your contributions and put it to good use as I pave my own way in establishing a presence in this magazine. To that end, I thank you, I thank you all for your determination, your drive, and your

countless efforts towards furthering the goals of feminism and social justice, while battling inequality. The work that you all have done helps inspire many people like me to stand up and make a difference.

What fuels my enthusiasm for BROAD is my background in cultural and feminist issues. As a junior at Loyola, I am a dual Anthropology/Women and Gender Studies major, which has really helped further my education in these interests. I hope to bring to BROAD a continued focus on diversity, helping to make sure that all voices are represented, and that we truly embody all aspects of social justice. My personal areas of interest include third-world feminism, queer and transgender politics, and sex positivity.

Another important facet of feminism and social justice for me is activism, and questioning power and privilege.

This is the fuel that feeds my fire, and I am incredibly excited to stand up with BROAD as we challenge authority, inequality, and privilege as a collective group through insightful and thought-provoking publications. I look forward to working with all of you, and learning more and more about these controversies from voices that deserve to be heard.

Happy patriarchy-smashing, Katie Klingel

Karolyne Carloss

Hello BROAD people, my name is Karolyne Carloss. I am a rising senior at Loyola University Chicago majoring in Women and Gender Studies and International Relations, with minors in Political Science and Islamic World Studies. I hail from a powerful family of ladies and owe much to my fiercely devoted four sisters and strong mother. As a youngster, I dressed up as Barbara Bush, quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, and dreamed of the days that I could marry my best friend Christine and enter the workforce as a garbagewoman…because well, no one ever said garbagewoman.

I am thrilled to be entering my second year with BROAD and can’t wait to start working with the lovely Katie Klingel and Emma Steiber to get working on bringing new topics, authors, and artists to you! I hope to bring a few more issues on queer thoughts and the intersection of religion and sexuality to the pages of BROAD. We have a lot of ideas we’re passing around, but we would love to hear from you, our faithful readers. Please don’t hesitate to suggest a theme, a visiting editor, a column that you would be interested in writing, or an author that you would like to see featured. We want this magazine to embrace and amplify the voices of those often rendered silent, and we need your help to get as many as we can. We hope to hear from you!

Broadly yours, Karolyne Carloss

Hey there BROAD ReadersI am Emma Steiber, a Women and Gender Studies major at Loyola University. An important aspect of my life leading up to this, though, is that I have been a barista in the Chicago coffee industry since 2010. In addition to being a coffee enthusiast, I, as a Loyola transfer student, have found yet another passion in queer and gender studies. “Queering” ideas, exploring marginalized voices, and looking in-depth at the intersectionality of women and gender studies brings great discourse to the table at Broad and its community, as well as to its readers. I am excited to continue providing a discourse on subversive and transgressive educators and doers alongside Karolyne and Katherine, my fabulous co-editors. I hope to bring a plethora of thoughts in addition to these fellow editors’ great and expansive minds.

Content & Section Editor

Emma Steiber

While my brain is wrapped around theory and discourse, I additionally write short fiction and creative non-fiction, which I plan to bring into the voice of BROAD. My ultimate desire is to continue pursuing my education and work ethic in the coffeehouse, while pursuing my education and focus within gender studies. These are what I hope to combine or simultaneously do in a future endeavor I, while seeking, have yet to figure out. Being a co-editor, I am excited and thrilled to further immerse myself as a contributing part to BROAD’s subversive and discursive whole. I am committed to expand the letter “Q” of my “Queer Thoughts” column, whether it represents the pronoun “Q” or the societal/individual “Qs,” throughout this dynamic magazine.

Look forward to the next year, Emma Steiber

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Co-Editor-in-Chief

Visiting Editor

Nicole Carrasco

About Nicole:

Nicole is a soon to be graduate of the Loyola Women’s Studies Gender Studies MA program. She created the feminist podcast, Negotiating[Space], because the idea of knowledge being hoarded in the academy pisses her off.

She whole-heartedly believes in the mission of BROAD, and it has been her semester-long dream to be a visiting editor. “Thanks to the internet and social media we have more access to knowledge and community now than has ever been possible. We are living in an amazing time for communication, and doing the world a serious disservice if this technology is not used for the good of humanity. I think the successful inception of BROAD and Negotiating[Space] in the same academic year has opened up new opportunities for scholarship and activism in our program. The professors have been completely supportive of the endeavors and my hope is that these and other non-traditional forms of scholarship remain part of the WSGS program.”

Nicole is originally from Shafter, California and holds a BA in History and Gender Studies from California State University. When she’s not having nervous breakdowns over schoolwork you can find her adoring pit bulls, collecting frequent flyer miles, listening to country music (not ironically), partaking in dinner parties, and Skyping with her three year old niece. She has no idea what she is doing with her life after May 9, 2013.

Visiting Editor

About Natalie:

Natalie Beck is a graduate student at Loyola in the dual degree program for social work and gender studies. Her interests include gender-based violence, morphing perceptions of class and power, and the intersections between multiple identities as they affect romantic relationships. Natalie is a staff member of Broad magazine and contributes by spending her time getting angry at magazine advertisements. She once picketed in Washington D.C. with a steelworkers union, which eventually led to her interests in unions, class divides, and theoretical work about class. She found Karl Marx along this journey and has since spent time defending his honor from those who would cluster him with the likes of dictators like Stalin.

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Natalie Beck

Class & Power

The Working Class Academic

By Nicole Carrasco

I was born and raised in a small farming town in central California. It’s the kind of place where most people marry their high school sweethearts and get blue-collar jobs right after high school.

The railroad tracks that ran through the middle of town divided the “good side” and the “bad side.”

I grew up on the bad side. Very few people in

town qualified as anything above middle class, so by comparison I thought we were doing okay.

For most of my childhood my father worked the night shift at a manufacturing plant and my mom was a waitress. My family of five lived in a twobedroom apartment and for a period of time got by with the help of food stamps.

My parents had slowly and painstakingly lifted us into the middle class. I was still doing well in school and going to college was not even a decision to be made. I had to leave and move onto bigger and better things, because I was full of potential and belonged in the big city with other smart people. At the time I loved the whole plan, and I couldn’t wait to get out.

I was the first person in my entire family to earn a bachelor’s degree. It was a communal And from what I understood at the time, the poor accomplishment, and meant just as much to kids weren’t supposed my family as it did to to be smart. I was smart. me. I beat the odds and Eventually I learned that I loved learning, and I was living up to that wealth and education went loved going to school. I American dream of the was in the enrichment hand-in-hand. If you had one next generation having program for the gifted more than the previous. without the other, you were kids. I was in band, and It was a long and painful on the swim team, and journey for me. The most an exception. If you were a got honor roll certificates difficult thing about smart poor kid, you were the at school assemblies. All college was caring for my friends were smart my psychological and pride of your social class. too. And all my friends emotional wellness. My You would be taken in by lived on the good side family was unable to of town. They had better relate to my experience the better off people and houses and their parents because no one had ever groomed for college and had better jobs, but as the faced the challenges of unaware child that I was college life. I had been success - something your I did not see them as any nurtured and supported in people knew nothing about. my small-town-achieverdifferent than me. of-the-family bubble, Eventually I learned that wealth and education but once away from home I felt alone and went hand-in-hand. If you had one without the misunderstood. other you were an exception. If you were a smart poor kid, you were the pride of your social class.

Everyone I met always just assumed I came You would be taken in by the better off people from a well-off family because middle class kids and groomed for college and success—something always go to college. I fit in on the outside, but your people knew nothing about. But what my on the inside it didn’t always feel right. I got people did know is that hard, backbreaking labor incredibly homesick a lot, leaving my dorm in was something to be proud of, that sometimes the middle of the night to make the two-hour making sacrifices paid off in the long run, and drive home just so I could sleep in my own yes, that if I kept studying and doing well in bed. There were times when everything seemed school I would end up better off than my parents overwhelming and the only way I could cope had. was to retreat back to my comfort zone. I was stuck between two identities that were at odds By the time I reached high school my mom and with each other and I had to make a choice. Was dad had both gotten better jobs. We were able I going to be working class Nicole, or was I going to buy a three-bedroom house with a big yard, to be academic Nicole? At the time it seemed and I even got a truck on my sixteenth birthday. like the two could not coexist. Everything around

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One afternoon when was eleven years old, I was sitting in the kitchen while my mother washed the dishes. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but during the conversation I asked, “We’re middle class, right, mom?” She just looked at me, shocked that I was so unaware.

“No, Nicole, we are poor.” I couldn’t believe it.

There was always at least one person in my class that was worse off than my family. They were poor, not us.

me had me convinced that being intelligent and educated qualified you for a free pass to middle class respectability, and to gain entry I had to abandon where I came from.

where they came from. They should be taught how to use their opportunities and gifts to bridge communities and make knowledge, success, and progress more inclusive. Intelligence is for everyone and it’s time for classism to get out of the way.

Over the past few years I have done more reflecting on my life than I ever thought would be necessary. Growing up poor, bridging We need to change the way communities, defying we serve and encourage notions of class, potential, and opportunity have children from low-income made me who I am homes and communities. today, and I’m pretty damn okay with that. I We need to change the “made it out” just like attitudes we have about everyone expected me to. I was able to pass as gifted children from middle class because working class backgrounds.

I was educated. Even though my parents are now financially comfortable and I have a master’s degree, I know where my roots are. I am thankful for the opportunities I’ve had in life, but personal gain isn’t a high priority for me. I want to use all the knowledge and experience I have to make the community that raised me a better place.

There are other kids like me—smart kids from poor families that are being pushed out. Kids that feel out of place because they are learning that poor people aren’t smart and smart people aren’t poor. There are hundreds of rural and urban communities in our country that feel like they can’t support and nurture their smart kids and the best thing they can do is give them over to people better suited to cultivate their potential. The best and the brightest leave, ending up in a place that is unfamiliar and scary.

We need to change the way we serve and encourage children from low-income homes and communities. We need to change the attitudes we have about gifted children from working class backgrounds. Their communities should be moving up with them. Instead of handing promising kids over, we need to be raising their communities up with them, devoting resources and infrastructure that creates a self-help environment. The goal shouldn’t be to get these kids out. They should be taught to be proud of

[CP]

First Published: 2009

Current Publisher:

Bookmark Here

Beacon Press

MSRP:

Topics:

Genre:

Non-fiction

Summary:

“In the end, young people from the countryside (just like the ones in the city) who have talent and earn scholarships get air-lifted out to fulfill their potential someplace else. Back home, those with the fewest options and resources face trying to compete in an economy in which the rules keep getting changed in the middle of the game.”

»» »» »» »»

Rural studies Labor studies Education Economics

»» Class »» Migration »» American Sociology

Sociologists Carr and Kefalas moved to a rural Iowa town in 2001 to document the phenomena they dubbed, “hollowing out the middle.” Small towns in America’s Heartland are losing their best and brightest to metropolitan centers with devastating results. Left with an aging population and an unskilled workforce, many rural communities are facing a crisis of survival. Carr and Kefalas collected demographic information on nearly three hundred former high school students, and personally interviewed one hundred. Each fit into one of four categories: Achievers, Stayers, Seekers, and Returners.

by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas

$9.99

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America

The book is a balanced combination of a well-cited academic study, and accessible language and personal anecdotes. The authors do an excellent job arguing that hollowing out is not just a rural problem it is an American problem. Much of our identity as a nation is wrapped up in Small Town, USA, but “despite the iconic place the Heartland inhabits in the national psyche, rural policy remains the most obscure of concerns.”

Like all well-written case studies Carr and Kefalas outline possible solutions for these dying towns, addressing each of the four groups. “Part of the solution must be not only to change the prevailing way of investing in young people but also in coordinated efforts to raise overall levels of human capital.” Carr and Kefalas believe the hollowing out can cease if rural communities readjust to keep up with the times.

Cons:

The solutions tend to talk around the young people that are the subject of the issue. Most solutions detail how educational, economic, and political systems can be changed or improved to prevent the drain and be more nurturing to Stayers, but there is no mention of what high school graduates facing these decisions should consider.

Bookmark Here contributed by Nicole Carrasco.

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Pros:

MADADS Busted Advertising, Bustling Economy

The Norma Abnorma

Do these advertisements accurately portray the life experiences of the majority of the population?

Are these ads unnecessarily lavish for the products they are attempting to sell?

What intersections of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and orientation do these ads touch on and do they portray upper class lifestyles as white, heteronormative, and gendered?

How do ads and campaigns about appearing “expensive� place value on class distinctions and possessions?

Do these ads fuel the fires of consumerism and materialism already present in contemporary American society?

What do you think?

MadAds contributed by Natalie Beck.

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alization of al Luxury

Class & Power

House Hunters International:

American Class Values Abroad

By Natalie Beck

I have an unusual attachment to HGTV and their show House Hunters International. I record it, I watch marathon episodes, I force my friends to watch it, I create drinking games around it; I’m obsessed. But it isn’t because I love real estate or because I have an overwhelming urge to buy a

house abroad. I watch it because House Hunters International is, unintentionally, the best research project conducted on American social values that I have ever encountered. The subjects include Americans from diverse ethnicities and races, genders and sexes, ability, and orientation, but

dominant cultural values around class and possession pervade. Take this case as the example:

We have more stuff now.

Our essentials list has grown. Our “must haves” lists are getting longer.

These long lists are only curtailed when they enter cultures where the lists are impossible.

A law professor moves to Rabat, Morocco for a job.

She tells her Moroccan real estate agent that she wants a “traditional Moroccan” apartment. He takes her to the first place and shows her around, pointing out the inlaid stone tile and the carved wood furniture. He seems proud of himself.

“Everything seems so… old,” she grimaces.

“This tile is really… dated,” her sister remarks.

“I was really hoping for granite countertops,” she sighs.

The infamous granite countertops. They are on the unsaid list of “wants” that Americans have tucked away in their brains. It shares a list with “open concept kitchen” (read: big) and “a modern feel” (read: stainless steel appliances).

The real estate agent understands the codes and takes her to a “modern apartment for young people.” It has the check list, including American brand appliances. She loves it and signs the lease.

the 1920’s is laughable in contemporary society. We have more stuff now. Our essentials list has grown.

Our “must-haves” lists are getting longer. These long lists are only curtailed when they enter cultures where the lists are impossible.

So we want more? Is it so bad that we want nice things? A basic argument against bigger being better is that it wastes resources. Beyond that, what are bigger houses providing in our lives besides more space? Is it improving our relationships? Is it making us more in-tuned with others? More intelligent? Happier? Peaceful? A backyard patio that is big enough to entertain all 879 of your Facebook friends doesn’t ensure that your friends will be there for you when life throws you through the meat grinder. It just means they’ll be there when you have a pool party with an open bar made out of granite.

I once told a friend that the subtitle of House Hunters International should be “Dumb shit Americans say abroad.”

In fairness, maybe it isn’t that they are saying dumb things, but are making comments that don’t take into account cultural considerations of what a necessity is. House “make-overs” and human “make-overs” and car “pimping” and any other genre of upgrading have become normalized. Old houses with “small” rooms and “limited” storage space are torn apart to be bigger and somehow better. A closet in a house from

[CP]

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Drink.

MADADS Busted Advertising, Bustling Economy

Unrealistic Por Luxury L

rtrayals of the Lifestyle

Do these advertisements accurately portray the life experiences of the majority of the population?

What intersections of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and orientation do these ads touch on and do they portray upper class lifestyles as white, heteronormative, and gendered?

How do ads and campaigns about appearing “expensive� place value on class distinctions and possessions?

Do these ads fuel the fires of consumerism and materialism already present in contemporary American society?

What do you think?

MadAds contributed by Natalie Beck.

Tableof ofContents Contents Table

Are these ads unnecessarily lavish for the products they are attempting to sell?

by Abeer Allan

Middle Eastern Musings A Dive into the Dead Sea

She Has a Voice I was so excited when I first saw this month’s issue is going to be about Class & Power. I had an instant thought of how I wanted my piece to be. I wanted to paint a story with rainbow colors and tell you about Laila –the queen of Sahara, and how she fought for women and gave them all their rights, decent jobs and more.

But that was more of a story I created in my head which I played a thousand times! And it was hard, it was hard to put down the words together and have it told the way I wanted, neglecting all the other realistic stories -considering the stories I’ve been hearing lately.

For days I got stuck with words, and the only idea that dominated all voices in my head was that women are in fact treated as second class citizens in most places, companies or even among families and societies.

Society forces women to be home early, and in some cases –if you are not so lucky, a woman can’t go out unless there is a man from the family going out with her to “protect” her.

protected, she can’t be out on her own, she doesn’t have a priority in getting education, she doesn’t get to have an opinion, she doesn’t get to get a lot of things, and yet, one mistake from her can ruin an entire family and its reputation! Who decides that? Who made up these rules? It is the first class citizens in the house, men.

I mean I’m not against the idea, I understand why girls would need to be protected when a lot of men out there just waiting on girls to be out alone so they can grab their chance. But that’s only because we are used to the idea that girls are powerless and they can’t be independent, they can’t be decision makers and they can’t defend themselves against those men who see women as weak creatures- a concept started long ago.

OR women can’t go out alone because they can’t be trusted, since a woman can bring shame to the family if she commits the smallest sin. A woman is an “honor” symbol, in terms of honor and shame not in terms of special respect.

And don’t get me wrong here please, not all families are the same, and this is not under the

I’m switching gears now to a more serious tone, but again this has NOTHING to do with religion, as you all know here in the Middle East we have Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists and probably more. They all live through the same stories, women share these agonies all the same. The stories which I’m about to shed some light on.

It’s the society that gave him the right to judge her according to how she acts and how she is dressed.

Does SHE hang out with a lot of boys? Is SHE dating? Is SHE sleeping with anyone?

Now here is the dilemma, the “him” she is befriending, dating, seeing or sleeping with will often be the cool lucky man, and as for her, she is the slut. She is the one bringing shame to the family. Disgrace!

A woman is so weak that she needs to be overly protected, she can’t be out on her own, she doesn’t have a priority in getting education, she doesn’t get to have an opinion, she doesn’t get to get a lot of things, and yet, one mistake from her can ruin an entire family and its reputation! Who decides that? Who made up these rules? It is the first class citizens in the house, men.

She gets killed in the name of honor – a term misused by the society referring to killing women who bring shame, not women who die for their

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One of the things I remembered which managed to erase the idea of Queen Laila is what they call honor killing, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this lately, and the stories are so heart breaking, scary, and more words stumbling in line in my mind trying to describe the way these stories made me feel.

name of a certain religion -which people tend to use to cover their sick traditions. What I’m about to say now has nothing to do with anything but how traditions and men over the years have been controlling women; the way they should dress, talk, A woman is so weak that laugh and simply the way they should live their lives. she needs to be overly

country or for a good cause. The rest get to live in peace, no damage caused, no sorrow, and no tears to be shed. Like she never existed, the sin she had committed was forgotten too, and was only erased by her death, and if you are wondering what happens to him, well, let’s just say he is VIP, so he gets a free pass back to the society, because men are wiser, stronger and have a say in everything.

Only he has the right to go out late, judge, kill, get a higher salary and be promoted at work (because most men don’t like to be bossed by women at “work,” it makes them look weak!) Only he is allowed to let her go out. Only he has the right to rape, get away with it - undamaged and unpunished, yet to get happily married.

He is given the right to have it all without being called names, judged or looked down at. He is given the right to kill her to wash away the disgrace, as if in her death they will live in purity! As if this “sin” she committed she has done it alone. And even if so, like in drinking or staying out late.

Let it, let her be the decision maker for how she wants her life to be, let her be herself. I’m sure she is capable of making decisions just as any other man in the society if not even better!

Let her have a voice, don’t kill it. Don’t kill her.

When will we free these places from this darkness they live in? A little girl is forced to get married as she is nothing but a voiceless heavy burden on the family, or she’s just being sold under the name of marriage.

Only he has the right to go out late, judge, kill, get a higher salary and be promoted at work (because most men don’t like to be bossed by women at “work”, it makes them look weak!).

Only he is allowed to let her go out.

Only he has the right to rape, get away with it -undamaged and unpunished, and yet to get happily married.

Only he is allowed to choose who to get married to, when to get married, or even not to be

married at all without being called “a man of flaws” that’s why he is not married, or without having fingers pointing at him calling him a spinster – a term created by society or men I really don’t know, just to set an expiry date on women.

Because it’s only (him) that sets the rules

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Quote Corner

“Socialism” is no more Kurt Vonnegut, Writer an evil word than America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor “Christianity.” Socialism Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to no more prescribed be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of Joseph Stalin and men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock his secret police and themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by shuttered churches a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” There will also be an American flag no larger than than Christianity a child’s hand - glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. Americans, like prescribed the Spanish human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most that it is very easy for any American to make money.

Inquisition. Christianity destructive untruth is They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to and socialism alike, come by, and, therefore, those who have no in fact, prescribe a money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward society dedicated to the blame has been a treasure proposition that all men, for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less women, and children for their poor, publicly are created equal and and privately, than any other ruling class since, shall not starve.

Karl Marx got a bum rap.

All he was trying to do was figure out how to take care of a whole lot of people.

Of course, socialism is just “evil” now. It’s completely discredited, supposedly, by the collapse of the Soviet Union. I can’t help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to communist China now, which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are. You talk about the collapse of communism or the Soviet Union. My goodness, this country collapsed in 1929. I mean it crashed, big time, and capitalism looked like a very poor idea.

Any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.

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Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

say Napoleonic times.

Many novelties have come from America.

The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves

By Emma Steiber

Queer Thoughts A Transgressive Approach

Privileged “Girls”

By Emma Steiber with Guest Writer Samantha Steiber In Lena Dunham’s first feature-length film, Tiny Furniture, she plays Aura, a recent liberal arts college graduate who returns to New York City to live with her mother, an established photographer, and her sister, an academically gifted senior in high school. After many days

of sleeping in, not showering, and begging her mother to give her time to unearth her life’s trajectories, she ventures outside their Tribeca loft, walks down the street, and takes a job as a day hostess at an upscale Italian restaurant.

She soon realizes the banalities of working a

know.” But what about the second rule? If we understand Dunham’s first writerly responsibility to write authentically, we must consider if it is asking too much of Dunham to imagine the experiences beyond those of her class and power. In another Atlantic article written by Part of the humor of her Judy Berman, an equally If we understand working this job is that valid point is made in Dunham’s character isn’t regards to this. In a society Dunham’s first writerly forced to work. She has a where race is a defining responsibility to write financial support system that identifier, those who are has allowed her to graduate not in Dunham’s white authentically, we must debt-free, leaving her in privileged position need to consider if it is asking blissful ignorance of the be equally represented. In realities that many Americans its conclusion, the article too much of Dunham to experience post-graduation. posits that a separate, imagine the experiences but equal stance must be According to a September 2012 report by CNN Money, taken until races become beyond those of her the average annual tuition for “meaningless.” However, class and power. a four-year public university one must consider the rose 68 percent from the alternative of whether or previous academic year. not a show can equally In the same year, this source reported that the represent race, class, and “power.” average private college student pays $27,600 annually, even with scholarships and grants At the beginning of season one of Girls, given to more than 80 percent of these students.

Dunham’s character Hannah is interning at a Yet while many receive this assistance, the 5.6 publishing company, while her parents pay her percent increase in private tuition from 2011 is rent. She is living the cushioned lifestyle (again, difficult to ignore. taking place in New York City) that protects her against potential money woes (but not from her In the midst of all these statistics, where does relationship woes). This is a fun aspect of Girls, Lena Dunham fall? Born in New York City, though; watching young women struggle and sort Dunham has a sister who attends Brown out their identities in relation to themselves and University and works as a fashion model. Both others. Nonetheless, it must be stressed that this of her parents are established visual artists. As leaves out problems of bills and bucks. When for Dunham, she attended Saint Anne’s School any of them quit or get fired, questions are raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Oberlin with regarding their personal, emotional well-beings, a BA in Creative Writing. In Girls, one sees that but questions are not asked of how they’re she writes from the perspective of a hip, white going to pay the next month’s rent. Not financial upper-class member of society currently residing annoyances, only personal annoyances. Again, in New York’s gentrified Brooklyn. There are this is a representation of living a privileged New undeniable parallels between her personal life York City lifestyle with only her parents’ income and the life the audience sees in Tiny Furniture to show for it. Yet once her parents cut her off, and her television series Girls. So, why all the anxiety sets in for her. But have no fear; the hating on Ms. Dunham? question of how to afford New York City is left at bay as she eventually gets a seemingly part-time As The Atlantic journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote job at a coffee shop, which is presumed to be in her 2012 article, “On Being Your Authentic not paying her enough for a nice Williamsburg Self,” “We must tell our stories. And others must apartment. tell their’s…The first rule is to write what you

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part-time service job and feels trapped by the monotony of a position she is over-qualified for.

But what if she had to work this job? What if her financial situation restricted her to such a life, even given her creative ambitions?

Returning to the question of what and whom She is a mid-twentyDunham represents something with the world at and what the audience expects her to represent her feet. She is financially as a writer/actress, comfortable, but she is at contentions arise. Critics expect Dunham and her an age where we are not show Girls to be an alloften expected to question encompassing universal.

This is the more important our morals, or values, question. If I choose to as well as our ability to write about my class, I am risking writing about communicate beyond our it from my viewpoint, own experiences. We are just like Dunham writes from hers. Why would I expected to be selfish. And expect her to tell anything yet, while Dunham briefly else other than her own story (white, upperacknowledges her race, she class woman living in a doesn’t fully acknowledge gentrified neighborhood of Brooklyn)? It is all her own class privilege and any of us can do and it its effect on her decisions. is all people can see.

Our appearances and experiences are reflected in our work. However, this is one side out of many within the discussion of Dunham and her show.

To Coates, we can only be who we are, thus we can only write what we know. Would one be expecting too much from Dunham to write beyond her, what some might call, upper-class white experiences? Her lack of acknowledgment of her own whiteness, and her own class, may be indicative of her age. She is a mid-twentysomething with the world at her feet. She is financially comfortable, but she is at an age where we are not often expected to question our morals, or values, as well as our ability to communicate beyond our own experiences. We are expected, in a way, to be selfish. And yet, while Dunham briefly acknowledges her race, she doesn’t fully acknowledge her own class privilege and its effect on her decisions. This could be because she isn’t aware – in her twentysomething-year old bliss – that she needs to. Yet.

At the end of Tiny Furniture Aura conclusively declares to her mother, “I want to be as successful as you are.”

Her ambitions are clearly noted in this statement.

However, the degree to which the viewer can relate to this statement is limited by Dunham’s class privileges. The definition of “success” varies from situation to situation. By having such a show, a socioeconomic viewpoint is presented to us in a world surrounded by multiple levels of class and power. Thus, one could then see Dunham’s show and her “voice” to be a part of a bigger whole that contains many other voices heard and waiting to be heard.

WLA Re-Animated Artifacts from the vaults of the Women’s & Leadership Archives 1963: “March with St. Dorothy’s Parish” Description: Black and white photograph of Peggy Roach (center) with members of St. Dorothy’s Parish at the march on Washington, D.C. for Civil Rights in 1963.

Commentary: Civil Rights Pioneer Margaret “Peggy” Roach marches with others of the St. Dorothy’s Parish in Washington D.C for the Civil Rights movement of 1963. People of different social classes came together to protest a system that created a divide between those of different classes.

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WLA Mission Statement: Established in 1994, the Women and Leadership Archives (WLA) collects, preserves, organizes, describes, and makes available materials of enduring value to researches studying women’s contributions to society.

Class & Power

Why are Unions Being Demonized?

By Vernon Beck

Last year, in 2012, Indiana became the twentythird state in the nation to become a Right-toWork state. The argument by the Republican Party and Chamber of Commerce was the state would draw more businesses if it were a Rightto-Work state. To understand the non-sense of this statement, we first need to understand what Right-to-Work means. This is a clever title to mislead people. A Right-to-Work state means that if you belong to a union, if you choose, you do not have to pay union dues if you don’t want to, but if you get in trouble, the union has to represent you as if you did pay union dues.

Do you know of any other organization that you can choose to not pay dues, but if you need the services of that organization they have to provide you with the services or they could be prosecuted? That would be like your neighbor deciding to not pay his city or county taxes, but

at the same time, want full access to the local library, police force, and fire department. You would say that’s not fair. Why should I have to pay my fair share of taxes for all the services, but my neighbor doesn’t have to? How would you like to have your state mandate it? That is what the Right-to-Work law does.

Speaking of the title, how does a law that is written about union member not having to pay union dues if they don’t want to have anything to do with the Right-to-Work? The name has nothing to do with the law. It is a great name to get state residents all worked up. Who doesn’t think they have a right to work? When the Republican Party conducts surveys, how convenient to ask the public, “Do you think people of this state have a right to work?” Who wouldn’t say yes? But it doesn’t have anything to do with the law. But the

Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, When it comes to drawing businesses to a state, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Indiana. how does the Right-to-Work law draw businesses Only Indiana passed the Right-to-Work to that state? It’s all a big lie! If it were a law that law last year. It passed in Indiana because didn’t allow any unions it would make more the Republicans controlled the House sense. Why would a company care if a union of Representatives, the Senate, and the member paid or not paid their union dues? The Governorship. The unions in Indiana company would still be negotiating with the didn’t stand a chance. Seventy-six percent majority of the union of the state voters claimed workers and would still they were not interested Is it an exaggeration that have to live with the in the Right-to-Work the Republican Party and agreed upon negotiated issue, but it didn’t matter wages, benefits, and to the Republicans. They Chamber of Commerce working conditions with wanted to force the Rightwant to drive the unions into that union. No, there to-Work law through is much more devious since they had the extinction? Just look at a few intent behind this law. advantage and they did. of the recent laws that the • Republicans in The true intent of the states of Florida, Republicans tried to pass or the law is to drive Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, did get passed in the 2011unions completely New Jersey, Ohio, and out of business, into Tennessee introduced 2012 political season around extinction. The more bills to Diminish the nation. devious companies will Collective Bargaining for tell their new union Public Employees. The hires that they work in a Right-to-Work state, bills passed in all those states! which means, if you choose not to pay union • South Carolina’s Republican Governor dues, you don’t have to, but, you get the same signed an Executive Order ensuring union representation if you have a grievance. that striking workers are not eligible for So ask the new hire, why would you pay union unemployment benefits. dues? They will try to convince the new hire that • Georgia’s Republican Senators introduced they get the same benefits if they pay dues or a bill that would criminalize union not. If they can get enough of the union members picketing. It passed in the senate, but did to not pay union dues, then the union will not not make it through the House. have enough money to support the union staff to • Even Mitt Romney, in his run for the fight grievances and conduct arbitration trials. If presidency last year, made it clear that enough union members stop paying dues, then he would attack the unions if he became that particular union collapses. president. At the Builders and Contractors Conference on February 23, 2012, Mitt Is it an exaggeration that the Republican Party Romney stated, “I will fight for Right-toand Chamber of Commerce want to drive the Work laws!” On September 24, 2011, unions into extinction? Just look at a few of the the Greenville News reported that Mitt recent laws that the Republicans tried to pass or Romney stated, “I will use the bully pulpit did get passed in the 2011-2012 political season of the presidency to encourage more states around the nation. to adopt Right-to-Work laws.”

• Trey Gowdy, Republican of South • Republican legislators introduced Carolina, introduced the bill, HR 2926, Right-to-Work bills in 14 states: Alaska, which would abolish the National Labor

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Republican Party can then boost that they have strong support for this law.

Relation Board (NLRB). Twenty other So how does the Chamber of Commerce help to republicans signed on to this bill as coeliminate unions? First, they financially support sponsors. (The National Labor Board is the Republicans in their mission to eliminate the board that gives unions the right to unions. Second, when the Republicans need form as a union, gives the unions the right someone to speak in favor of the union reducing to file grievances, and will determine if laws, the Chamber of Commerce members are a company is the first to step forward to violating a labor speak against unions and Once the unions law.) in favor of union busting are eliminated, then • Between February laws. In Indiana, in every 11, 2011 and legislative labor committee companies can throw February 7, 2012, dealing with the Rightout their pension plans, Republican to-Work issue at the state controlled capitol the Chamber of medical plans, and lower House Labor Commerce proudly spoke wages. Who will be there to out in favor of the Right-toCommittee and Small Business Work law. stop them?

Will a company Committee held continue to pay benefits 10 hearings What happens if the attacking the Republican Party and the and high wages if there is National Labor Chamber of Commerce no one to oppose them?

Relation Board succeed and eliminate (NLRB). unions? Then the overall • John Kline, nation suffers! Even though Republican in Minnesota, House the unions only make up less than 12% of the Workforce Committee Chairman, stated, workforce currently, they help to keep all wages “The National Labor Relations Board is and benefits up overall. They set a benchmark wreaking havoc on the nation’s workforce, for other companies to be compared to. For and it must be stopped.” example, it is difficult for a car dealer to pay its non-union mechanics minimum wage or slightly Is the attack on the unions by the Republicans above when the car dealer down the road is and Chamber of Commerce working? In 1964, paying their union mechanics decent wages and union density in the United States was 29.3%. benefits. Who would not want to work for the In 1983 union density was 20%. In 2008, union union shop as apposed to the non-union shop? density was 13.7%. The current 2012 union density in the United States is 11.3%. That is Once the unions are eliminated, then companies private and public unions combined! Compare can throw out their pension plans, medical plans, that to Canada, who is more like us than any and lower wages. Who will be there to stop other country—economically, socially, and them? Will a company continue to pay benefits politically—it is 31% unionized. In the United and high wages if there is no one to pppose States, we are losing union density by 1% per them? Not likely, they always have their share year. In 2012, the bureau of Labor Statistics holders they are trying to please and stocks they shows union membership in Indiana 9.1%, want to see increase from quarter to quarter. The down from 22% in 1983. Indiana’s recent companies will eventually pay enough to keep Republican Governor, Mitch Daniels, helped to workers from quitting. Back to where we were in lower the union density by eliminating collective the 1920s. bargaining for state workers in his first week in office eight years ago.

[CP]

Feminist Fires Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Writer Major Works: “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892, short story) Women and Economics (1898, nonfiction scholarly work) The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903, nonfiction scholarly work) Does a Man Support His Wife? (1915, nonfiction scholarly work) The Forerunner (1909 – 1916, magazine) Inspired By: Throughout her life she suffered from depression. Treatment for this illness and the way she was treated by others because of the illness would inspire her work, most especially her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Her social theories were also inspired by Charles Darwin in that she challenged many of the assertions he put forward and used his works as a way to question sexist constructions within theory.

Personal Life: Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 on July 3 in Hartford, Connecticut. When she was young, her father left the family and her mother often struggled to take care of her, which impacted Charlotte’s education. In 1884 she married Charles Stetson and together they had a daughter named Katherine.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman had a very successful career as a writer and scholar. In 1900 she remarried to George Gilman, whom she stayed with until he died in 1934. In 1935 Perkins Gilman discovered that she had terminal breast cancer and committed suicide.

Importance to Feminism: Perkins Gilman was known for The Yellow Wallpaper, but was also influential during her time as a scholar and lecturer. She made significant contributions to social theory and to the economic empowerment of women. Perkins Gilman focused her energy and work into fighting for women’s independence. Much of this focus was around economic independence as the key to women’s freedom.

Given her historical context, Perkins Gilman was incredibly successful given the restrictions faced by others of the same gender.

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Was An Inspiration to: Perkins Gilman was involved early on in social reform movements that focused on challenging capitalism. Her theory not only pushed forward thoughts about social class, but she also broke barriers for women in academia. Perkins Gilman also worked on racial and ethnic inequality.

Class & Power

Conscious Consumerism:

Raising the Issue of Poverty to Consumers

By Ashley Lindemann

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” ~Will Smith

What if people start purchasing products that give back? Or donate a dollar at a check out counter to end world hunger or combat breast cancer for example? Does this make us feel better about our extensive purchases and ourselves, in general?

What are the issues causing the need for companies to advertise their social initiatives in the first place? And aren’t we just adding another unnecessary “pair of shoes” into our closets? These systems do not change the dynamic between those who have enough and those who do not. However, if we can learn to adapt our current consumerism so that, whether you find meaning in your purchases or not, you end up helping those in need, that seems like a net positive.

Ashley is a third-year Criminology/Criminal Justice major, in pursuit of the combined B.S./M.A. 5-Year Program at Loyola. She recently transferred to Loyola from a college in Wooster, Ohio, where she played basketball and was a member of Zeta Phi Gamma, and she’s looking forward to studying in Rome this fall!

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Perhaps, people should keep in mind that it still separates consumers who buy such products from those in poverty. What about the lives of those who benefit?

[CP]

Broadside Expressions in Poetry via Street Literature Style

Fridays

By Peter Browne Fridays the day goes by like any other coffee. ketchup. check. all the forks in shiny lines flip the switch tie shoelaces smile repeat long for the night the hour at which your hips hit the dance floor walk into the spolights and fog like you own it in your red shoes moonlight in your hands a familiar song plays and you smile to yourself you and your little secrets it’s the hour when you’ve had too much to drink you should go home but you stay out anyway your heart full and heavy ready to burst at the chorus your life a mess but you hurry on ignoring the phone calls and former lovers who still want to talk to say how are you, how have you been

you don’t talk much lately bottled up all those stories the blank walls broken dreams skipped classes and crumpled cocktail napkins with anyone’s phone number it’s that hour when things blur by or gain focus depending on the alcohol tonight it’s gin and it puckers your lips you crunch on the ice cubes like pieces of stars the music keeps playing the people are laughing you catch your reflection and you are the only one not smiling

Peter Browne is a writer, artist, actor, and filmmaker originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He spent time living and working in Chicago, Amsterdam, and Italy, before returning to Minneapolis, where he continues to pursue his artistic dreams. He has a “day job” as a server at a fancy restaurant.

Rose Schneiderman, Labor Union Organizer After I had been working as a cap maker for three years it began to dawn on me that we I can’t talk fellowship to you girls needed an organization. who are gathered here. Too The men had organized much blood has been spilled. already, and had gained some I know from my experience advantages, but the bosses had it is up to the working people lost nothing, as they took it out to save themselves. The only on us.

way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.

It is the spirit of trade unionism that is most important, the service of fellowship, the feeling that the hurt of one is the concern of all and that the work of the individual benefits all

So we must stand together to resist - for we will get what we can take, just that and no more.

The girls and women by The life of men their meetings and and women is so Surely cheap and property these women won’t lose any discussions come to understand and of their beauty and is so sacred. There more charm by putting a ballot sympathize with each are so many of us in a ballot box once a year they are likely to lose other, and more and for one job it matters than standing in foundries or more easily they act laundries all year round. little if 146 of us are together.

There is no harder contest

burned to death.

than the contest for bread, let me tell you that.

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“

What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist -the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.

Quote Corner

Words are Useless Artist: Jeremy Lundquist

Haymarket Biography: Jeremy has been teaching at SAIC since 2006 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Printmedia department in addition to working in Academic Advising as a Faculty Advisor.

His work in print, drawing, photography, installation, and cut and collaged paper examines and organizes decay, resulting in a body of work questioning contemporary notions of progress and cleanliness by presenting images and texts of loss and disillusion. Jeremy’s areas of research include museum and collection studies, modes of display, print ephemera, tourism, religion, labor relations, erasure, mapping, senses of place, land use and linguistics. He has been an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow, Harold Arts, Spudnik Press, Kala Art Institute and the Vermont Studio Center. As one of the co-founders of Drawn Lots, a collaborative artist group and publishing entity, he participated in a residency and exhibition at Harvard University’s Fisher Museum at the Harvard Forest. His work has also been exhibited at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, the Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois – Chicago, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Heaven Gallery, Lloyd Dobler Gallery, and additional venues nationally and internationally. He is currently the President of the Mid America Print Council (MAPC) and serves on the Board of Directors of Spudnik Press, a non-profit community print shop in Chicago. He received his BA in Studio Art from Grinnell College and his MFA in Printmaking from Ohio University.

Website: https://saic.digication.com/jeremy_lundquist/About_Me

Artist: Jeremy Lundquist

Haymarket: Civilized Lands

Polyester plate lithography, collage, graphite, watercolor, 6’x12’, 2011

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Haymarket: Of All - Unite

Graphite, 22”x30”, 2011

Artist: Jeremy Lundquist

Haymarket: Furniture Workers Union No. 1 Banner

Lithography, 15”x20”, 2011

Artist: Jeremy Lundquist

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Haymarket: Equality Divided

Etching, 17”x20”, 2011

Save the Date

Bodies of Memory

By Ginny Sykes

Bodies of Memory was inspired by my family history. In my mid-twenties I unexpectedly learned about my grandfather’s suicide. My mother and I were watching a made for tv movie with the theme of paternal suicide and subsequent cover up. When I said that was kind of nuts and asked how could that happen in a family, my mom blurted out that it had happened in her family—and ran out of the room, clearly upset. I looked at my father and said, what the hell was that? This revelation started my search to learn what really happened, why it was covered up, and what the impacts on my grandmother, mother, and her sisters were, beyond the obvious.

I was also curious about the concept of

inherited trauma being passed down through the generations, and even repeated in some form-when family secrets are suppressed and not dealt with. I wondered how could I work with these ideas as an artist. Could I frame this traumatic story within a broader question that had been surfacing for me: if there has been ‘feminist progress’ through the generations and if so, what that looks like—using my own family as a point of departure, going back to my great-great grandmother and down to my own daughter.

I circled around this thorny and complex subject for years, trying to paint or write it. Being a grad

The main characters are my grandfather and father of three daughters, and their mother, his wife and my grandmother, and their three daughters. Feminist dramaturgical writings revealed strategic ways to symbolically disrupt the singular (patriarchal) narrative by telling the story through these multiple narrators. It also uses fluid time--thereby challenging the idea that the suicidal event was the singular determining arc of the women’s lives. Instead, while Harry’s suicide’s is a tragedy, it also ruptures patriarchy in productive ways in the family.

Working process with my collaborators in abstract narrative dance, projected images, and original music we explored the tensions between the mother and daughters left behind. Without the constraints of the father these emotions erupt along with their grief and anger. The work also subtly explores the limitations and societal constraints of the historical periods into which they were born. Mother and daughters confront the inherent contradictions of how to support each other, yet individuate and claim lost and new parts of themselves; how to grieve, yet move beyond the father/husband’s death. Mother’s and daughter’s emerging agency becomes a central theme, set into motion by the real (and symbolic) paternal suicide. Thus the “power” of the father is called into question within the family, and by extension, the rules governing their lives in the larger cultural context of the 20th century are also challenged. The biggest surprise for me in developing this work was how the figure of my grandmother (wife and mother) became so central and complex.

Looking at feminist films suggested another narrative possibility: to blur the lines between

fiction and documentary telling. Using overlapping structures of flashback, fluid time and dreamtime allowed past and future generations to have surreal and imaginary encounters. In this way I use the raw material of my family history, not only as an inheritor of it, but as an artist and determining subject to explore my initial questions and posit new meanings.

Program Notes from Dr. Prudence Moylan (former WSGS Graduate Program Director and history scholar), Ann Shanahan (theatre scholar), and Elizabeth Coffman (film scholar): The collaboration process Ginny Sykes used as director of Bodies of Memory extends beyond the performers to the faculty and the Graduate School at Loyola University Chicago. This is the first dance performance created in fulfillment of a course requirement in the Women’s’ Studies and Gender Studies Master’s program. Ginny worked with faculty in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts and in the School of Communication. As a feminist theatre director and scholar, Ann M. Shanahan M.F.A. consulted with Ginny on revisionist feminist dramatic structures, acting methods and considerations of theatrical space. As a documentarian and scholar of dance in film, Elizabeth Coffman provided a sounding board for Ginny’s performance ideas for stage and screen. The representation of the female body in motion and family relationships in experimental films were a part of their discussion. The Graduate School recognized the originality of Ginny’s work in awarding her a Community and Global Stewards Fellowship for her contribution to understanding and overcoming family trauma. As a historian I have learned new approaches to presenting research in historical records and historical memories of family members. In Bodies of Memory the generational family struggle to engage and heal the trauma of a suicide affirms the feminist commitment to embodied knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration The work challenges all of us to a new and deeper understanding of the integral relationship of mind and body that makes us human.

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student in the WSGS program proved the perfect container. The program green lighted my artistic métier of collaborative performance as a viable method of feminist scholarship to explore these complexities. Working with my LUC advisors in history, film, and theatre provided the theoretical frameworks I needed to frame these interlocking stories through artistic, historical, psychological, and cultural feminist perspectives.

Bodies of Memory

By Ginny Sykes

Photo by Joe Mazza/Brave Lux Ginny Sykes’ (Artistic Director) work includes painting, performance, installation, film, and public art.

She returned to collaborative performing in 2007, at the invitation of Victor Sanders, co-creating Velocity, Lessons of Water and Thirst, and Divided Beauty, also with Jeanette Aylward. Her solo Return/Redux was shown at Oakton Community College’s conference Chicago Feminisms: Past, Present, and Future in 2009. In 2012 she made her first film She Wants To Know about her installation work in New Zealand.

Sykes most recently exhibited in Surface at Chicago Art Source, Select Fair in Miami, Supermarket 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden, and Santitos, at the Loyola Museum of Art. Sykes has completed over 40 public art works for communities, schools, and civic spaces such as On the Wings of Water, at O’Hare airport and Arc of Nature at the Open Lands Lakeshore Preserve. She received an award from the Illinois chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, for Rora, an interpretative history of the Chicago River. Sykes has taught in both the Museum and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Evanston Art Center, Lill Street Arts Center, and Illinois Arts Council Art education programs. Her work is in the publications A Guide to Chicago Murals, Urban Art Chicago, and The Chicago Public Art Guide.

She has a BFA in painting from Washington University and studied at Studio Cecil Graves in Florence, Italy. Sykes is completing her masters in the Women Studies and Gender Studies program at Loyola University, Chicago. www.ginnysykes.com

Bodies of

a collaborative performance

Memory

written and directed by

Ginny Sykes

original music by

Victor Sanders

MAY 4

th

Tickets: $12

$5 discount for students and seniors with ID

Tickets/Information: nexttheatre.org Box Office: 847.475.1875 Ext 2

5

th

AND ONLY Saturday May 4th at 8pm Sunday May 5th at 3pm Sunday’s show will be followed by a post performance discussion

Next Theatre, Noyes Cultural Center 927 Noyes St. Evanston, IL 60201 This project is partially funded by a Community and Global Stewards Fellowship from the Graduate School of Loyola University, Chicago, and a Mary Griffin Scholarship Award from Loyola's Women's Studies and Gender Studies Program.

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Developed in collaboration with and featuring Christina Ernst Enid Smith Jeanette Aylward Elaine Bachman Bob Beswick Sophie Gray-Gaillard

Class & Power

What Do You Do All Day?

By Andrea Schaefer

Let me tell you about my average day. I am a stay at home parent. I hum and sing happy songs while dancing and twirling all day long because I have nothing else to do. I am always so well rested because my husband gets up with the kids.

The best part is I can do whatever I want anytime I want to. When the kids need me I gleefully

oblige to all their needs with pleasure, even when I am in the middle of something important.

My hair is all done up, my make-up perfect and I always smell so sweet. Don’t even get me started about the salary, it is simply priceless! Everyone should be so lucky to have such a full and wonderful life especially as easy as this.

Don’t judge me. Don’t assume you know what I do or don’t do on a daily basis. Please don’t tell me I have all day to do what I want. Please stop sending me referrals for jobs and handing out career advice. This is not meant to be seen as a complaint; rather a set of facts and reality. I would also like to point out that I am educated, intelligent, ambitious, goal oriented and never aspired to be a full-time stay at home parent.

Please let me have the benefit of the doubt and trust I am doing the right thing by being at home.

I have learned so much about myself in the last two years from my children that I would not

Let me give you the 411 on what it is really like: I am at work 24/7 and never get a day off.

Don’t assume you know what I I have time shower Ok then. Should one more person make do or don’t do on a daily basis. every two to three days. My uniform is a judgemental or Please don’t tell me I have all old t-shirts and ratty derogatory comment track pants coupled about stay at home day to do what I want. Please with my hiking or my parents or how good stop sending me referrals for rubber boots depending we have it, I just might in the weather. I have snap. I mean it. The jobs and handing out career one jacket. When I stigmatization has to advice.

This is not meant to am sick, I still need stop.

Stay-at-home parents are be seen as a complaint; rather to work and bring my A game because my getting a bad rap. a set of facts and reality. I bosses depend on me for everything. I Personally, I have been would also like to point out am not afforded sick on both sides of this that I am educated, intelligent, days and in lieu time proverbial fence. I am doesn’t exist. My time currently a have been ambitious, goal oriented and is consumed with stay home parent with never aspired to be a full-time constant questions, my two children (ages interruptions, training, 3 and 6) and we are stay at home parent. educating, correcting, surviving (barely) on disciplining and my partner’s meagre crying. Not to mention the usual household teaching wages. tasks i.e. cooking, cleaning, laundry, paying bills, dealing with everything and anything that has to Prior to this, I had a very successful career do with the kids, cars or house. I rarely receive outside the home which I loved. I returned any recognition for a job well done – or even a eagerly to full time work after each of my job done. My breaks are limited and overtime children was born. However when decisions had is mandatory every day. I need to be flexible to be made, I loved my family more. and able to switch gears on a dime and I am always on alert. The pay sucks, it is way below They both have pros and cons. There is no right the poverty line and I will never get a raise. My or wrong when it comes to choosing to stay bosses are brash, full of attitude and have high home and work or work outside the home. Am I expectations. But they are also the sweetest, crazy to think we all want to do what is right for funniest, most loving people in my life. our family?

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Below is a small sampling of comments and questions offered to me on a regular basis.

You’re at home? What do you do all day? It must be nice to relax all day. How can you be stressed? You can do whatever you want. Maybe you should get a part-time job it would get you out of the house. Blank is hiring you should apply. Wow, must be nice to sleep in everyday.

I would be so bored at home, it’s not for me but it’s ok for you. When are you going back to work?

You should volunteer. It’s easy when they are in school, huh?

anything and everything trade this experience for men do. To choose, not anything. My kids trust Earlier this year I put become but to choose. me with everything and everything aside and owned I understand many will in return I have been be of the opinion or in able to show them all of my stay at home status a situation that it is not me. The good and the like nobody’s business.

I financially feasible to bad, and they still love make a choice like this as me regardless. The pros still stand for equal rights, I was and may be again in outweigh the cons for human rights, gender that circumstance myself. our family for a variety However, if you can’t of reasons. We won’t equality. The women who at least open your mind be able to renovate or came before us fought to the idea that being at landscape or upgrade our home with kids is a real home, there will not be hard and sacrified so and a tough job, and that any vacations (unless it’s much to clear a path so we some people actually free!!), I can’t shop for choose this path I would me ever or treat myself could choose to be and do appreciate if you could to new shoes or a cute anything and everything keep your trap shut and purse as every penny is walk away. already spoken for. No men do. To choose, not more spas or pedicures. become but to choose.

Thank you.

I cut down on my hair appointments so I am Andrea Schaefer is a freelance writer and mom embracing the pre-mature grey as there is no money for coloured hair. My husband and I go to to two very busy little girls. She lives just outside the movies separately or bring one child because of Ottawa, On, Canada with her husband and it is too costly for all of us to go at once. No two children. Follow her blog @www.thegreat38. more restaurant dinners, impromptu road trips. wordpress.ca This year all birthday money went to swimming lessons for the kids. Christmas gifts were sparse this year, and we still have the same old small fake tree with an eclectic mix of old and older ornaments and I would not have it any other way.

Being a stay at home parent is hands down the toughest but most rewarding job there is. It is the equivalent to holding three full-time jobs at the same time in different fields. It has taken me two years to even be comfortable admitting I am a stay at home parent. There is societal pressure to be doing something other than raising a family. I tried to run my own business from home which was rough as I have less time now than I did when I was working outside the home. That had to stop. Earlier this year I put everything aside and owned my stay at home status like nobody’s business. I still stand for equal rights, human rights, gender equality. The women who came before us fought hard and sacrificed so much to clear a path so we could choose to be and do

[CP]

The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger.

Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo.

They are the missionaries of the corporate world.

Arundhati Roy, Writer & Activist

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil, but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power.

Twenty-first century market capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by human intelligence, undone by human nature.

It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.

The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination- an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfilment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the water in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain?

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“

Quote Corner

Broadside Expressions in Poetry via Street Literature Style

On Becoming Silent (Silenced)

By Sharon Caldwell

“Excuse me, miss?”

He talks for hours it seems, a string of disjointed words, fragments of a life story (you think you hear him say something about Alanis Morissette).

You mindlessly fumble around your pockets for change (he doesn’t even ask) You throw some nickels & dimes his way and walk on, mid-sentence (he doesn’t seem to notice).

The next day you see that flash of red hair, black umbrella, you cross the street, hoping you won’t meet again at the same corner (head down, quick pace, don’t make eye contact!)

What can you do? You’re running late for an important meeting.

He used to sing loudly on the street while he washed shop windows.

Christmas carols in the middle of summer, subtly improvised, his nasally voice was as familiar to the landscape as the smell of oatmeal, stale cigarettes, and the blinking sign of cheap Chinese food.

Her tiny frame in baggy clothes used to follow us up the main street (voice shrill, face taut, pockets empty).

We called them “the window washer” and “bird lady”.

We didn’t realize how much we ‘Othered’ them, erasing their humanity, reducing them to nameless caricatures.

They both died within the same year.

We spoke words of grief but never learned their real names.

He used to sit on the bench across from my apartment building, obscured by a long grisly beard, head down, a small drum in his hands.

He played a silent rhythm, his fingers barely touching the surface.

I think I saw his eyes once, and in my memory, they were a crystal blue that could pierce through complacency.

One day he was gone, that bench disappearing with him.

I walked by a store-front years later and saw a small poster taped to the corner “Where have all the downtown benches gone?”

Underneath, “RIP Bongo Dave”.

Sharon is a writer, a fiesty feminist, and a recovering social worker from Ontario, Canada. When she is not re-arranging and re-imagining her life, she spends at least some of her time devouring books, dancing in her living room, learning to meditate and how make a good cup of green tea. She blogs at: allthesoftplaces.wordpress.com

They decided to install “care meters” – glorified parking meters staged to help the poor “Don’t put your money into their hands!”, they screamed, “place it into the slots of the machines”, the ones that now stand where they sit (conveniently placed, of course) “We promise that the money will go to (unknown) charity!”

(Patronization at its finest.)

The city wants to gentrify – push ‘em out, displace ‘em!

In come the business executives and young families who only buy organic.

Power means that we define others without their consent (stealing voices, erasing stories, shrinking spaces).

There’s anger and fear in your eyes, entitlement in your words (blanket statements of shame and spite) The look from the woman at the welfare office seems to say, “Make yourself small and we’ll consider giving you a handout”.

Become silent and invisible, and we’ll continue to walk right past you.

*quote is from Jean Swanson (Author of “Poor-bashing: The Politics of Exclusion”) interviewed by Between the Lines Books (http://www.btlbooks.com/Links/swanson_ interview.htm)

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“Poor-bashing is a way of concealing who has the real power”* It’s rooted in the language we use, the structures of individual and systemic privilege.

Underfunding, cuts to programs, lack of capacity, The unemployment rate is 11% and the rate of understanding is just as bleak.

Poverty is blamed on the individual lives it consumes, stripped of its complexities, its multiple intersections of oppression (marked bodies, drawn boundaries, fixed dichotomies).

by J. Curtis Main

Inside R Out? White? Male? Feminist? YES.

Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts on Hoarding and Sharing

Poverty and power are relative. They are relative to one’s surroundings, one’s needs, one’s past. I can recall numerous times I thought my family was poor, that I was poor. And there were many times, increasingly, that I have felt so very privileged. To be born and raised, white and male, in the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world; how poor and powerless have I been, comparatively?

I want to write about power and wealth. But not in any linear sense. Like wants and needs,

my attention to and experiences with power and class have been in and out, waning and strong. I have been very lucky. If it were not for my mom’s state health insurance through her disability, my health issues related to my bad ear would have been potentially far worse. Had I been born just one decade ago, or a century, or an eon, things would be quite different. Chances are, for most of us, that we would have had far less in most regards than we do now. Technologies of all sorts have brought humans much more resources with less effort than ever before. We still have horrid

find some of the pickiest eaters in the world in the U.S. Why? Because we can. Food is everywhere here. We have so much it is literally rotting from not being eaten. We have so much that food is thrown out at nearly 40%. And yet, still, I am a strong believer in lots of people don’t have food on a regular basis in the idea that wealth and the U.S. And when they do, poverty, in the form of it is often crap: flour, sugar, cheap meat, artifical foods, the control of resources, and oils.

inequalities, starvations, shortages, illnesses, and so on, but overall, the quality of life on average around the globe is higher.

have led us to create similar stratifications along physical and social differences. In other words, when and where humans have been able to group “others,” those who assume/take power do so via many identities.

How about food wastes in the U.S.? I used to wait tables and bartend, and would serve people who would order an appetizer at over ten dollars, take a bite, then “send it away” because they just wanted to taste it. I have watched countless people forego taking extra food home with them because they either have no need, or they “just don’t like leftovers.” I have also watched my coworkers and self bite into people’s leftovers. You have heard horror stories about servers messing with your food? They are far more likely to eat what you don’t eat, and hate your sorry ass for leaving a crappy tip.

People in the U.S. have a LOT of power, and LITTLE power. At the same time.

It is baffling, but such an old practice. I am a stong believer in the idea that wealth and poverty, in the form of the control of resources, have led us to create similar stratifications along physical and social differences. In other words, when and where humans have been able to group “others,” those who assume/ take power do so via many identities. Race.

Religion. Age. “Sanity.” Sex. Sexuality. And on and on. We split people into classes by wealth and affluence. And we split them into classes by gender, education, ethnicity, citizenship, and on and on.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks a million. You nearly forced us to eat leftovers that were two to three weeks old. Why? Because it’s wasteful to throw away food. I have had roommates, partners, friends, and so on turn their nose to food just a couple days old. Or live by expiration dates.

Or only buy brand name foods. Watching them traverse food is like watching them burn money and food in a fire. Sure, we got stomach aches and problems from eating older food. So what, I ask? We have stronger stomachs.

As I have written before, I deeply appreciate the !Kung! tribal practices in Marjorie Shostak’s studies. She was at first bothered that whenever the !Kung! people heard of her access to resources, they would constantly question and bug her to share her wealth. It was expected.

She came to understand that in their practice of life, when a person acquired a resource, such as food, medicine, or tobacco, they were to share it with others. Everyone was expected to share, especially those with more. This is a tribe that has existed for 10 to 15 thousand years. When and why did we lose this practice as a base approach to life? SInce when is hoarding a priority over sharing?

I love food. All kinds of foods. I am not picky.

Not at all. I will eat most anything. Why? I am not sure. Maybe it was my upbringing. Maybe it is genetic. I do know that you will most likely

This week I wore another pair of pants to work that were from a thrift shop. They have what appears to be a slight bleaching on the inner left pant. They are light khaki colored, so the “stain”

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And it could be MUCH higher. Calling something a shortage these days seems off. If power and wealth, caring and sharing were spread throughout the world according to need and not so much want, then what? I believe there would be less hoarding, hoarding of resources. For the U.S., for example, to use 25% of the world’s electricity is astounding. Do we need it all? Nope. Is it nice?

Often. Is it wasteful?

Often?

Thanks, Brian from Ale House, for telling your is barely noticeable. But still I feel wrong, and employees to “shut the fuck up” if you ever get judged. There is NOTHING wrong with the robbed or have your things stolen. They are just functioning of the pants. Yet I certainly know that things, he would say. If you have nicer things in my workplace, and in much of this country, worth stealing you probably have the resources we are judged by our clothes. An appearance to replace them within a short amount of time, of uncleanliness and wealth is a mark against he reminded. “Don’t ever someone. To not only forget,” he would strongly spend a lot of money Call me a socialist or conclude, “that most likely, on appearance, but to a Marxist or whatever whatever it took to get that discard anything for minor person to steal from others nonfunctioning issues, in you want, but until a few was probably rough, and my opinion, is a practice people stop owning tough, and in no way easy in wealth and power. To for them; they probably waste is to offend those millions and billions of need it a lot more than you that need. do.” The shocked faces dollars and people, I will I think about people of my coworkers when he making babies a lot. And be uncomfortable. said to “smile, hand over how it seems selfish and your belongings, and say inefficient. Why not take good luck” when you were care of another human already alive? One getting robbed was priceless. down the street, outside in the cold, in a shelter, I suppose I can return to where I started, my own etc.? I can definitely understand the power of upbringing. We were not rich. And when we replicating one’s genes and watching them be had nice things, most of them were on credit. realized. But I can better understand fixing But life was nice, and certainly not poor, and my and helping what’s already around rather than parents tried so hard, at the expense of their own making more. I wish everyone would stop health and futures/retirements, to make us happy having babies until every child, teenager, or and full. I look back now to all the times we baby that needed adopting could be adopted. had no lunch money or the utilities were cut off, Or until every person who needs some love, and I chuckle that I got frustrated. It could have shelter, attention, and education actually got been so much harder. These were minor bumps. these things from adults planning to give them to Maybe my parents have no retirement, no new life. I suppose a blank slate is easier to take savings, and barely a house they paid toward for on than an older project you inherit with little to 30 years, but what they have are several kids who no directions on what to do. But still. New life share like they did. And we share with them, like worries me when there is so much life on hold. they shared with us. It works somehow, for now.

Thanks, Dad, for sharing. My dad will talk to Call me a socialist or Marxist or whatever anyone. He’ll loan anyone advice, his tools, help you want, but until a few people stop owning getting a job, and dinner sometimes. Growing millions and billions of dollars and people, I up, we had people over for meals all the time. will be uncomfortable. If billions of people can If we went on a trip, my father always invited not only survive on hundreds and thousands a people, often people who would not be able year, but also support several other people, I will to go otherwise. Nearly every Thanksgiving, keep asking, who the hell needs hundreds of Christmas, and other times, my dad will invite thousands and millions of dollars? People who someone who would otherwise be alone, or do not mind lighting it on fire in the faces of without a hearty meal. people working for them.

Thanks, Aunt Heather, for teaching me that I can always share money and food. I’ll never forget, when I was less than ten, when you took ten minutes to buy a homeless man a hot meal while we all waited. You taught me that even if I don’t want or have money to give, I should try to share and give food.

Ex Bibliothecis

By Jane P. Currie

From Loyola’s Libraries to you.

Assisting you in your search for information.

Connecting your Ipad to Your Library EBL*, or Ebook Library, is an enormous collection of e-books available through the Pegasus catalog or by searching EBL itself. EBL titles may be read on a desktop, laptop, select e-readers, and mobile devices. To read an EBL title online using your iPad, you’ll first need to add Bluefire.

Search EBL by keyword or browse a favorite subject category—you are sure to find a title that interests you, surprises you, or both!

BrowZine is a curated collection of the library’s e-journals. Early development emphasized

science and social science journals but growth in the humanities is underway. The collection can be browsed or searched; you will notice a subject category for women’s studies, another where future growth seems likely. BrowZine allows users to create their own collection of favorite e-journals and receive alerts when a new issue has been added.

Many research databases and other library resources have a mobile version. E-mail jcurrie@ luc.edu for information about how you can access your favorite research tool on your iPad. This resource is accessible on-campus or offcampus to students, faculty, and staff after log-in with a Loyola Universal ID and password. *

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Your iPad provides another means for accessing e-journals and e-books from University Libraries.

The Bluefire app provides access to the library’s EBL collection of e-books while BrowZine is a new way to collect and read a selection of e-journals.

MADADS

When Luxury M

Busted Advertising, Bustling Economy Do these advertisements accurately portray the life experiences of the majority of the population?

Are these ads unnecessarily lavish for the products they are attempting to sell?

What intersections of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and orientation do these ads touch on and do they portray upper class lifestyles as white, heteronormative, and gendered?

How do ads and campaigns about appearing “expensive� place value on class distinctions and possessions?

Do these ads fuel the fires of consumerism and materialism already present in contemporary American society?

What do you think?

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Meets Reality

MadAds contributed by Natalie Beck.

by Karolyne Carloss

Subtle Sex(isms) Challenging the isms and schisms of politics and culture

Taxing Our Degrees “Food is a basic need, not a means for greed!”, “We came for an education, not a burger station” “No more hidden fees just give us our degrees”.

Creative and pithy, these cries were echoed on the west side of Loyola’s quad by faculty, students, and community members alike on Friday, April 5th. They motivated Loyola Organized in Action’s march as we protested all the way to Burrowes Hall and encouraged two brave freshmen students as they walked a stern, but hopeful letter addressed to Father Garanzini, straight to his office door. The purpose? To demand affordable meal plan options for prospective and undergraduate students.

Earlier this December, Loyola Organized in Action (L.O.A) got wind of a huge hike in meal plan prices for the upcoming, 2013-2014 school year. During the 2012-2013 school year, the least expensive freshman meal plan cost $4,070 per school year.

Next school year, it is expected to rise 12%, or $480. More outrageous is the increase in the sophomore meal plan. In the 2012-2013 school year, the least expensive option was $1,370 per school year. It is projected to rise 150%, or $2,120 in the next year alone. A 150% increase—pretty damn outrageous. What’s more is that the student voice was not even present in the discussion of this increase, and profoundly absent from the final decision. While leadership listened to students

Well Father Garanzini, $2,120 is not just a meal The truth of the matter is, plan. $2,120 is a monthly tuition price increases are salary for many singlefamily homes- families rising disproportionately At this point, I think it’s trying to put several faster than the annual important to note that children through college the university is being income of a lower/middle without driving themselves suspiciously ambiguous below the poverty line. class family. about where the amount $2,120 is often the bi-yearly difference in meal plan amount many graduates are prices is going. You can be certain that it’s not required to pay to settle loans taken out to pay for going to wage increases or pension plans for bullshit like a 150% increase in a meal plan. Father the very deserving dining hall workers, and you Garanzini, and the the Loyola administration more can be certain that it’s not going to food quality generally, is striking a tone terribly disconnected improvement. If either of those were the goals, I from the very students they serve. Though I know wouldn’t be writing this article at all, particularly that our leadership works hard to make Loyola if the increases were going into the well deserving affordable, I’m not sure that an expensive meal pockets of Loyola’s Dining Hall Staff. No, I can’t plan helps advance that cause or Jesuit values. be quite sure at all where the difference will be funneled, despite the very best efforts of Student When administration representatives each make Development representatives to be perfectly more than $250,000 a year, $2,120 feels like transparent and working hard to find a clearer small change. However, in a turbulent economy, way to help me understand. Except it was just $2,120 can mean the difference between a a lot of doublespeak in the meeting, and I didn’t small studio apartment and paying rent out of understand clearly. I was frustrated and I wanted your parent’s basement- especially when you’re better answers. saddled with four years of student debt. The truth of the matter is, tuition price increases are rising We, the students of L.O.A, wanted better answers. disproportionately faster than the annual income With Aramark’s questionable food quality, ethics of a lower/middle class family. $2,120 can very as they profit from the prison system, and ill well mean the difference between a family who is treatment and pay for their staff, why we even able to send their high achieving, well-deserving help them profit more? So we contacted the office child to Loyola University Chicago and a high of Father Garanzini and requested a meeting. school graduate who might have to do without.

His very lovely assistant said she was sure she could get us in and, in fact, there was an opening Such decisions are life-changing, class-changing, coming up that week. She casually asked the economy-changing…world-changing. I don’t purpose of our meeting and when we told her our mean to sound grandiose or naïve, but a college agenda, that opening quickly closed up. When our diploma (that $40,000 piece of paper) often creates registered student organization couldn’t get the social mobility and financial security- can we say audience of Father Garanzini, we sent him a direct the same for a more expensive meal plan? I believe e-mail, detailing the finer points of our agenda the answer is no, which is why I encourage each of and emphasizing our request for more affordable you reading this article (whether you be students, options for incoming students and underclassmen. parents, siblings, friends, lovers, or confused Father Garanzini claimed that there was nothing about how to navigate Issuu) to stand with Loyola he could do about the increases with a very terse Organized in Action and demand affordable meal response, and insisted that well, it was just a meal plan options. We students are not to be trifled plan that we were talking about. with. We know how to organize, we know how to make an impact, and we’re coming soon.

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regarding our incredible new student center, what happened to consulting us regarding the meal plan?

BroadSide Expressions in Poetry via Street Literature Style

Don’t Let Me Go.

By Andrea Schaefer

Who am I? Don’t you know?

I thought I did but…

What don’t you know?

Can’t think, I don’t know, I’m not sure Well then how can you find the cure?

Secrets I’ve kept for most of my life May hurt ones I love, bringing trouble and strife.

The words that you have may safe a life.

Too hard for me so I can’t move ahead, must get out of this place I made my own bed.

Wait. You listen to me.

All the Guilt All the Shame You are not to blame.

All the noise, all those boys, you are not a toy.

It’s not fair and it never will be, Forgive yourself, the pain is too much, now is when you can be free.

I’ve heard those words all before they enrage me to the core. I can never be free. Before I go, hear this from me: A victim I’m not and I did my best Twenty years since and my life’s a mess.

I have it all from the outside you see; I’ve prayed my whole life to find normalcy To speak out now, what is the point?

This has scarred my soul past the point, of return.

If you run again, don’t you see?

Listen again, Listen to me: Take my hand and squeeze it tight.

I won’t let go, try not to fight..

It will be hard, maybe the worst it’s true; Remember I am here and will never let go of you.

Answers are rare, let that go.

Forgive yourself you need to know What they did was wrong, so wrong indeed Now is your time, your time to be free.

They can not hurt you anymore.

You have come so far, you’re almost there.

Keep going one door at a time do not scare.

We are your legs to walk when you are weak We can be your voice when you can no longer speak Come with me now, I won’t let you down Come with me now, you will not drown We stand behind you tall and proud.

This circle you have is one of kind; carved out of people from throughout your lifetime. We love you so much. We want peace for you. Let us shoulder some of the pain.

Can we be there with you? Supporting you, holding you, to walk all the way through?

Andrea Schaefer is a freelance writer and mom to two very busy little girls. She lives just outside of Ottawa, On, Canada with her husband and two children. Follow her blog @www.thegreat38.wordpress.ca

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I hear your words and still I feel alone…

Is this the time to find out about me?

Maybe now is when it should be.

Yes. Yes Please.

I will take your hand and hold tight till I’m free.

All I ask is Please, don’t let go of me.

People Telling Stories

By Bryce Parsons-Twesten

peopletellingstories.tumblr.com

Corey I just started working this job today. It’s pretty cool. I go around sweeping sidewalks, picking up trash. It’s pretty interesting. I’m outside, that’s the best thing. Actually, I ran out of cigarettes. That really sucked, to go the whole day without smokes, because everyone was sitting there smoking. And picking cigarettes up off the ground is just…nah. I don’t know what they had their lips on last. No thank you. I went the whole day without a smoke.

Words Are Useless Featured Cover Artist: Jeremy Van Cleef

Biography: Jeremy Van Cleef is a Chicago-based Art Director, multi-disciplinary designer, and idea enthusiast. Whether it’s in his professional or personal projects, all of Jeremy’s work is unified by a passion for ideas and the creative process that brings them to life.

Website: jeremyvancleef.com

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Land of the Free

Alum Alert Re-connect with WSGS Alumnae Tell us a little about yourself and your time at Loyola.

I was the second editor of the Digest (now Broad Magazine) after the founding editor Curtis Main moved on from his Graduate Assistant duties at Piper Hall (where the WSGS offices and classroom used to be).

After years of working minimum wage jobs and going off and on to community college, I decided I couldn’t let future school debt keep me from my dreams. I applied to Loyola only and was thankfully accepted.

I started off as an English major, but I quickly realized that I was interested in Women’s Literature and then other Women’s Studies/Gender Studies topics. I found out from Dr. Hemenway that I was a few days shy of the cutoff to declare a second major under the old, easier-to-fulfill system, so I went for it. I am so glad that I did! I ended up running the Digest, and all the friends I made at Loyola were other WSGS folks. Some of the other highlights at Loyola were my English honors classes, tutoring at the Literacy Center, and working on my WSGS Capstone project with three people who would become close friends, Liz Anderson, Yasmeen Shaban, and Yoni Siden. We all graduated with honors, and I was proud to be able to walk up that stage with the English crowd one night and with the smaller, more close-knit WSGS crowd another night. Also, I am honored to have won The Women and Children First Book Award through the WSGS program and The James Charles Cox Award for Excellence in Literary Study through the English department.

How were you connected to WSGS? What are some of your favorite memories from the program?

As I mentioned, I ran the Digest, but I also took some amazing courses. I especially loved classes like Queer Theory under Dr. Carina Pasquesi (where I met the Digest’s founding editor Curtis Main), my capstone course under Dr. Beth Myers, Women and Totalitarianism under Dr. Christina Lombardi-Diop, and History of Feminist Thought under Dr. Bren Ortega Murphy. All of these women were very important to my understanding of Gender Studies at Loyola, and both Dr. Murphy and Dr. Myers were integral to my application process for graduate studies. There are so many amazing memories, but I can only share a few

so... I remember early on in the capstone course Dr. Myers said she wasn’t a “hug it out” feminist, and my little group got such a kick out of that! She was a really challenging teacher, in the absolute best senses, and I appreciate when a professor is honest about where they stand, even if it’s that they aren’t going to share a lot of their personal side. It was also incredible to see a play put on in Piper Hall starring faculty from different departments, but especially WSGS faculty like Dr. Bren Ortega Murphy and Dr. Betsy Hemenway. As for moments with other students, I cherished my time with my capstone group, since we spent hours and hours talking about talking about sex. We were so used to talking about “sexual discourse” that it became a verb that we used in place of everything. We would say, “I was going to go sexual discourse some food if you want to sexual discourse over to the restaurant with me.”

Tell us what you have been up to since graduation.

Seeking work was difficult. When it’s not academic inquiry, I can be a huge procrastinator. Not only that, but I sent out dozens of tailored applications and cover letters with not a single reply or interview. It was pretty disheartening. When I got a part-time job at an office, I used a temp agency to find me either another part-time job or a full-time job, but they said I was being “too picky” eventually because I wanted something in one of three fields: academia, social justice/non-profit, or writing/publishing. It was a tough process. Thankfully, I recently got accepted into The University of Chicago’s MAPH program (Masters Program in the Humanities)

Brandie Rae Madrid

B.A. English & WSGS

What do you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your education? What could have been better? What has helped you? How do you apply feminism in your everyday life?

Beecause I spent several semesters at Truman (a local community college), I definitely feel like my early college education could have been more challenging.

However, I did have some truly inspiring professors there, including Mildred Strmic whose Women in Literature course was the impetus for choosing a WSGS major at Loyola. At Loyola, I didn’t feel extremely welcomed as a transfer student. For example, it took me over a year to find out that there was a better dining center than the one in the Student Union.

But overall, classes and professors were wonderful. I didn’t always feel as challenged as I could have been, but the Honors English program was very well done, especially my classes on Toni Morrison and Magic Realism. My WSGS courses were almost always very engaging and eye-opening, and I will always credit that program for providing me with the foundation for my current academic interests. I must admit that

the focus on women felt a little bit old-fashioned, as my interpretation of gender studies comes from a notion that we should be embracing multiplicities of identities and breaking down the gender binary.

But I did learn a lot of that during my WSGS courses, so I know there was still a lot of progressive stuff happening there. I definitely apply feminism every day, and I learned much of that at Loyola. I try to think critically about everything and every ideology I come into contact with, and I try to always challenge and learn from others when I disagree with their views on gender and sex. I have upset many friends when I question them about things like a t-shirt that says, “Dads Against Daughters Dating,” or when I question their lack of inclusion of people of color or trans persons, for example. But being a feminist is never easy, and I don’t think it can be. I must always be ready to have the tough conversations and even challenge my own beliefs when confronted with a way that I might be privileged or non-inclusive.

Do you have any suggestions for current Loyola students? What do you miss or what would you have done differently?

I miss working on the Digest, and I am so glad to see that it has flourished as Broad Magazine. I have taken a big step back from it as I have taken on many responsibilities in my life, and I also love to see new voices writing for and running the magazine. I would encourage everyone to get involved in Broad or other facets of WSGS at Loyola. Beyond that, I would suggest getting more involved in the community and thinking of little ways to think inclusively and intersectionally in your lives every day. I miss all the voices and ideas at Loyola, and if I could, I would have tried to reach out and meet more people. I’d like to have gotten to know some of my professors a bit better, but I have kept in contact with a few of them after. I highly recommend trying to update your professors on how things are going for you after graduation and thanking them for all their support and knowledge-sharing, as they will most likely appreciate it immensely.

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with full funding! Although the job market is still in a tough place, I get to leave that all behind soon to go back to school, which is exactly what I want to be doing.

Alum Alert contributed by Julia DeLuca

We want you to Submit!

BROADContributor Mission: Guidelines Broad’s mission is to connect the WSGS program with communities of students, faculty, and staff at Loyola and beyond, continuing and extending the program’s mission. We provide space and support for a variety of voices while bridging i) Feminist Consciousness: communities of scholars, artists, and activists. Our editorial mission is to provoke

(a) recognizes all voices and experiences as important, and not in a hierarchical form. thought (b) takes for an the self and does not assume false objectivity. andresponsibility debate in open forum characterized by respect and civility.

Principles:

(c) is not absolutist or detached, but rather, is more inclusive and sensitive to others.

ii) Accessibility:

WSGS Mission:

(a) means utilizing accessible language, theory, knowledge, and structure in your writing. (b) maintains a connection with your diverse audience by not using unfamiliar/obscure words, overly long sentences, or abstraction. (c) does not assume a specific audience, for example, white 20-year-old college students.

Founded in 1979, Loyola’s Women’s Studies Program is the first women’s studies iii) Jesuit Social & Effort: program at aJustice JesuitEducation institution and has served as a model for women’s studies

(a) promotes justice in openhanded and generous ways to ensure freedom of inquiry, the programs at other Jesuit and Catholic universities. Our mission is to introduce

pursuit of truth and care for others. feminist scholarship across the disciplines and the focus professional schools; students (b) is to made possible through value-based leadership that ensures a consistent on to provide personalinnovative, integrity, ethical behavior, and the appropriate balance between justice and fairness. challenging, and thoughtful approaches to learning; and to

(c) focuses on global awareness by demonstrating an understanding that the world’s people promote social justice.

and societies are interrelated and interdependent.

Expectations and Specifics: Activism and Academia: This special themed issue on Activism & Academia explores: how activism and academia are related, whether or not they are compatible, what it means to • We promote accountability of our contributors, and prefer your real name and your preferred title (i.e., Maruka Hernandez, CTA Operations Director, 34 years J. Curtis Main, Loyola graduate in WSGS, white, 27 years old), but understand, terms of safety, privacy, and controversy, beold, a mother part ofof4; orthe academy, whatstudent types of education are lackinginfrom academic if you desire limitations. We are happy to publish imagery of you along with your submission, at our discretion. disciplines, access to education and rights to education, how academia relates to • We gladly accept submission of varying length- from a quick comment to several pages. Comments may be reserved for a special “feedback” section. In theto real thereforisa aparticular disconnect between universities andto society at large, order process world, and include aifsubmission issue, please send your submission at least two days prior the desired publication date. howa we can make what we learn Look for the [A&A] symbol for •and Please include short statement of context when submitting imagery,matter. audio, and video. onofour theme!

•contributions We appreciate various styles scholarship; the best work reveals thoughtfulness, insight, and fresh perspectives.

• You may request to identify yourself by name, alias, or as “anonymous” for publication in the digest. For reasons of accountability, the staff must know who you are, first and last name plus email address.

• Such submissions should be clear, concise, and impactful. We aim to be socially conscious and inclusive of various cultures, identities, opinions, and lifestyles.

BROAD People:

• As a product of the support and resources of Loyola University and its Women Studies and Gender Studies department, all contributors must be respectful of the origin of the magazine; this can be accomplished in part by ensuring that each article is part of an open discourse rather than an exclusive manifesto.

• All articles must have some clear connection to the mission of the magazine. It may be helpful to provide a sentence or two describing how your article fits into the magazine as a whole.

• The writing must be the original work of the author and may be personal, theoretical, or a combination of the two. When quoting or using the ideas of others, it must be properly quoted and annotated. Please fact-check your work and double-check any quotes, allusions and references. When referencing members of Loyola and the surrounding community, an effort should be made to allow each person to review the section of the article that involves them to allow for fairness and accuracy.

• Gratuitous use of expletives and other inflammatory or degrading words and imagery may be censored if it does not fit with the overall message of the article or magazine. We do not wish to edit content, but if we feel we must insist on changes other than fixing typos and grammar, we will do so with the intent that it does not compromise the author’s original message. If no compromise can be made, the editor reserves the right not to publish an article.

• All articles are assumed to be the opinion of the contributor and not necessarily a reflection of the views of Loyola University Chicago.

We very much look forward to your submissions and your contribution to our overall mission.

Please send your submissions with a title and short bio to Broad People through broad.luc@gmail.com.