Campus Progress Magazine Summer '12

CONTENTS

CONTENT SUMMER 2012 3 Student activist: ‘I had the opportunity to be part of something big’ by kristofer dowdell

4 new consumer protection head talks student lending, for-profits by naima ramos-chapman

5 five ways the affordable care act helps young americans by brian stewart

6 shunning medical hoops, transgender patients turn to ‘informed consent’ model by shay o’reilly

8 voter suppression 101: how conservatives are conspiring to disenfranchise millions of americans by scott

keyes, ian millhiser, tobin van ostern & abraham white

13 five minutes with: zach wahls, who defended his moms in iowa’s legislature by jessica mowles

14 welcome to sachsville: my life in zuccotti park by emily crockett

18 how ‘the lorax’ highlights the role of youth in the climate movement by candice bernd

19 six things you need to know about deferred action + dream act students

20 jane lynch talks youth activism, ‘glee,’ with campus progress by brian stewart

22 exiled from america: one student’s deportation story by sydney bouchat

24 campus progress publication wins college

FROM OUR DIRECTOR Dear Friend, It’s been a huge year for Campus Progress and young advocates around the country.

After seven successful years of engaging young people to bring about positive change on issues ranging from economic opportunity, to sustainability, to human rights and justice, we are excited to announce that Campus Progress is reorganizing, expanding and building on our innovative programs in activism, journalism, and events.

As our 90 million strong millennial generation comes of age, enters the work-force, public service and the voting booths, our new programs will create an ecosystem for young progressives, age 18-30, to develop public policy solutions, communicate effectively, gain leadership and advocacy skills and build our grassroots power to create progressive change.

Our commitment to raising our generation’s voices has never been stronger and our new and expanded structure will take Campus Progress to the next level.

As we grow and expand our programs we will have more ways for you to plug in. From our Journalism and Action networks, to policy development, young people can get involved, learn, teach others, advocate and make change on the issues we all care so much about. Together, we can build the more just, progressive country that we all believe is possible.

Thanks for all you do!

journalism’s highest honor by brian stewart

24 two campus progress cartoonists honored by brian stewart

25 american apparel’s plus-sized ad contest sparks controversy by dahlia grossman-heinze

26 meghan mccain: ‘times are changing’ by tara kutz

27 cartoons

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Anne Johnson Director, Campus Progress

CAMPUS PROGRESS TEAM abraham, akbar, AMISHA, anne, brian, carly, carrie, chris, doug, eduardo, eric, greg, josh, khushboo, MOEY, melissa, naima, sharon, shereen, tara, tobin & vicente

STUDENT DEBT

Student activist: ‘I had the opportunity to be part of something big’

By KRISTOFER DOWDELL Kristofer Dowdell is studying Mass Communications at Frostburg State University in Maryland where he will be a senior this fall. On June 5, he spoke at a press conference that was held as part of Campus Progress’ Student Debt Day on Capitol Hill to highlight the skyrocketing student debt impacting young Americans and their families across the country.

How did you participate in the fight for student loan affordability?

I participated in the fight for student loan affordability by sharing my experience dealing with student debt at Student Debt Day. What motivated you to get involved?

I was motivated by the fact that I had the opportunity to be part of something big and was able to raise awareness about an issue that could potentially affect me and millions of other college students around the country.

How important was social media in raising awareness and building support for youth activism on this issue?

Social media was crucial to raising awareness and building support for youth activism on student loan affordability. I couldn’t rely on major media outlets to inform me about the status of the issue, mainly because they seem to only report on the issues they think are worth reporting. I used Twitter and Facebook more often than I normally do.

and beliefs on this issue has motivated me to continue to not only engage in this fight, but to become an even more politically active individual.

What are your next steps in the fight to reduce student debt and ensure access to higher education?

The student loan affordability battle is not over, considering Congress only made a oneyear extension for subsidized student loan rates to be at 3.4%.

Though I’m going into my last kristofer dowdell speaks at a campus progress press conference year of college, I think it’s my with sens. jack reed (d-R.I.) and TOM HARKIN (D-IA) on Capitol hill. duty to tell future students about the issues that will potentially affect them when they What was the most rewarding part start their college careers. about this experience for you?

The most rewarding part about this exHow much of a role do you think stuperience for me was the fact that I stepped dent issues play in the national conversaout of my comfort zone and did things that tion? Do you think they receive the right are normally not in my nature to do; I’m a amount of coverage and consideration? more laid back and reserved type of person I think student issues don’t get as much so speaking in front of many people at a coverage and consideration as they should. press conference was a big thing for me.

Since students are the future of this Additionally, seeing that there are many country, their issues should be made more other people who share my same opinions aware in the national conversation.

What were some of the most surprising things you noticed or experienced during the #DontDoubleMyRate fight?

The most surprising thing for me was getting the chance to meet and stand behind President Barack Obama when he spoke on the issue of student loan debt at a White House press conference.

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AFFORDABLE EDUCATION

new consumer protection head talks student lending, for-profit colleges in the consumer finance market that the normal market forces Richard Cordray, the newly may not be working properly. minted director of the Consumer In this area, sometimes its lack Financial Protection Bureau, is of information—people just ensuring some of the agency’s don’t know enough to make focus is placed on student debt. good choices, or the informaThe bureau announced that tion they have is dense and it will begin taking complaints confusing and therefore impenfrom Americans who borrowed etrable and they’re left to guess. money to finance their educaWe saw the same of thing in the tion—whether difficulties in takmortgage market, and it’s a lot of ing out private loans, repaying the same dynamic at work here. the debt, or managing loans that There are also forces at work have gone into default. The move [in] for-profit colleges where is a particularly important one there is no attention to ability to for private borrowers as nonrepay—because there are other bank lenders had little federal (AP / Manuel Balce ceneta) incentives to making those oversight and often-lax regulaPresident Barack Obama announces the nomination of former Ohio loans. tions prior to Congress passing the Attorney General Richard Cordray, right, to serve as the first director We’ve seen instances when Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in July 2011. some of the for-profit schools are and Consumer Protection Act. anticipating as much as a 50 perCampus Progress spoke recently cent default rate on loans they becoming recognized by people as a large with Cordray and the agency’s new Student make to students. They’re not telling the and growing problem.

It is not a size comLoan Ombudsman, Rohit Chopra, about students that, but they are disclosing that parable to the mortgage problem, but it is the complaint system and what the bureau information to their investors. So there is a significant.

It’s approaching $1 trillion and has in the works to help protect the rights of lot of concern. has surpassed credit card debt. thousands of young Americans who borrow This problem is focused on young people, to pay for higher education.

What else is on the bureau’s radar that who are the ones we should care tremenmight also help young people, aside from dously about because much of the future The student loan debt problem has tackling the student loan debt problem? soared to new heights and is set to exceed of this country rides on their ability to Chopra: Looking at all the financial succeed.

Young people with talent, with $1 trillion soon. Despite this, student products that affect young people in a very ambition, with smarts, who are trying to loan debt hasn’t received as much media holistic approach, and looking at the last get an education—knowing that it’s often attention as other bubble-crises—like the two months of what Director Cordray has a ticket to greater opportunity—lack the housing market crash or credit card debt. launched, they are all things that disprofinances to do it.

If they can navigate the Why do you think that is? portionately affect young people. lending market successfully, they can hop Cordray: Actually, I think that is changHe launched an inquiry of overdraft fees up the ladder to success. ing. One of the obvious reasons why the that disproportionately affect young peoBut if they navigate it unsuccessfully, mortgage crisis received so much attention ple. He has proposed supervising debt colis because the mortgage market is the larg- they’re set back and won’t be able to get lectors, which again touches young people the education they need, or they might est single consumer finance market—and who are saddled with credit card debt or get saddled with debt that they could not it is multiple trillions of dollars. It has student loan debt. He is making sure that afford and did not understand.

We are also been credited accurately with being the banks are complying with all the laws taking some of the real hope of our future the trigger that brought down the entire and provision including the CARD Act, and dragging it into a mire.

That is really economy and sank us into the recession which makes sure there are no predatory something that should be of concern to that has been so hard for young people. practices that go after college students. It’s every American.

Many of these young people are struggling not just student loans here—we’re going to find employment in this tough economy after every single piece of the puzzle where Are you concerned about for-profit so that’s why the mortgage crisis got the young people are falling prey. colleges? attention it did.

Naima Ramos-Chapman is an Cordray: We are concerned about forBut due to efforts like [Campus Progprofit colleges—and we’ve said this repeatassociate editor for Campus Progress. ress’], I think the student loan problem is edly—because we’re concerned in general Follow her on Twitter @NaimaRamChap.

By NAIMA RAMOS-CHAPMAN

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HEALTH CARE REFORM

FIVE WAYS THE

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

HELPS YOUNG AMERICANS

BY BRIAN STEWART

1. Staying on your parents’ plan.

A provision in the Affordable Care Act allows young Americans under 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance plan. To date, that’s resulted an estimated 6.6 million previously uninsured young Americans gaining health insurance.

The benefit is especially important because young Americans have a higher chance of being uninsured than older age groups.

Of Americans under 24, one in five was lacking insurance in 2010.

The under-26 provision ensures that young Americans don’t lose coverage after graduation or between jobs.

By 2014, an estimated 12.1 million young adults will have quality, affordable health care thanks to the legislation.

2. Student health plans are more comprehensive than ever.

Under new regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services, the more than 3 million students on college health plans will receive more extensive coverage. By the 20142015 academic year, these plans will have completely phased out lifetime or annual benefit caps, ensuring that students can afford any necessary procedures.

Additionally, the regulations ensure that colleges and insurance companies aren’t profiting from students’ health issues by increasing the medical loss ratio, or the amount of premiums that must go towards health care costs and quality improvement. By 2014, 80 percent of premiums on student insurance plans must be spent on health care costs.

The much-publicized debate over whether student health plans should cover contraception has turned in favor of students, too.

All college health plans must provide birth control, at no cost to students. Religiously affiliated colleges, which will not have to foot the cost of the birth control, have the option to wait one year before providing contraception.

3. A focus on preventive care coverage makes life more worry-free.

Services that were sometimes not included in health insurance plans are now free under new health plans. These services include smoking cessation programs, counseling on diet and weight loss, and counseling for depression or substance abuse.

Focusing on preventive care coverage not only makes life a bit easier, it reduces the overall cost of health care by helping people avoid health problems in the beginning.

4. Insurance providers cannot discriminate against patients with pre-existing conditions.

Prior to the ACA, 33 states were legally permitted to charge some people a higher premium because of their gender or health status. And companies faced very few restrictions on when and how they applied such premiums.

But the Affordable Care Act works to prevent such discrimination by placing tighter restrictions on companies and preventing them from charging higher premiums to people under 19 with pre-existing conditions and ensuring that older Americans with such conditions also have affordable plans.

A major component of this change is barring insurance companies from charging women a higher rate than men. The legislation also prohibits insurers from considering pregnancy a pre-existing condition and requires certain women’s health services—mammograms, domestic violence screenings, birth control, and others—to be covered without co-payments.

5. Medical students can receive help paying back loan debt and will have a better chance of finding a medical job.

The legislation provides financial support for the National Health Services Corps Students-to-Service Loan Repayment Program.

Through the $12 million program, medical school graduates who agree to work as primary care doctors in under-served communities are eligible to receive up to $120,000 to repay outstanding loans. The National Health Service Corps has more than 10,000 clinicians—including primary care physicians, dentists, and other specialists. The Loan Repayment Program will give 100 awards in 2012, its first year.

The ACA also increases federal investments in the Pell Grant program by $40 billion in an effort to ensure students can afford to pursue medical education.

In addition to helping ensure Americans can afford to pursue a medical career, the ACA increases funding for programs that train and place graduates in health care fields. Combined with investments from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal funding will help create more than 12,000 new positions for doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants by 2016.

The ACA also creates a Prevention and Public Health Fund, which will help create new positions for primary care doctors, fund training programs for physicians’ assistants and nurse practitioners, and push states to invest in health care training and job creation.

Brian Stewart is communications manager for Campus Progress.

Follow him on Twitter @brianstewart.

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LGBTQ EQUALITY

Shunning Medical Hoops, Transgender Patients Turn to ‘Informed Consent’ Model

I

By SHAY O’REILLY n Kai Devlin’s first year on testosterone, he saw five doctors—including one who insisted on manually examining his genitals before renewing his prescription, and another who refused to treat transgender patients because he “didn’t agree with it.” Devlin initially sought hormones using the conventional route, asking a long-term therapist for a recommendation letter which he then gave to an endocrinologist; every new doctor required another long attempt to “prove” his transgender identification.

Finally, the 24-year-old trans man visited Chicago’s Howard Brown Clinic. Instead of requiring a lengthy qualification process, Devlin was processed in Howard Brown’s two-year-old Transgender Hormone Informed Consent program: After a full physical, a meeting with an advocate, and an overview of the side effects of taking hormones, Devlin was given a prescription.

“If a person is walked through the positive and negative effects with a counselor and/ or physician, then they have a right to make their own medical decisions,” Devlin wrote in an e-mail. “I think informed consent is one of the best things available.”

Devlin is one of many transgender patients using alternative clinics to access hormone therapy, a common step in medical transition.

While much media attention is paid to gender confirmation surgery, it’s hormone replacement therapy that often makes the largest difference in the lives of transpeople. Patients frequently report that hormone therapy makes their body feel more comfortable or more like home—more importantly to many, hormones masculinize or feminize the body, helping trans people be read correctly as their gender.

But accessing these hormones can be very

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difficult, even for patients who are assertive and aware of what they want. Doctors often follow outdated standards, requiring a pathological diagnosis, extended counseling, or even a dangerous “real life experience” period in which non-passing individuals must live in their preferred gender role.

Rather than jump through these seemingly endless and expensive hoops, trans people sometimes turn to dangerous black-market alternatives.

Fortunately, there’s an increasingly popular alternative: Clinics like Howard Brown, which offer transgender patients hormone prescriptions using an “informed consent” model that centers a patient’s autonomous choice.

Clients at many of these clinics can acquire a prescription for hormones after basic laboratory tests, a consultation about hormonal effects, and signing a waiver stating that they know the risks of treatment.

“When we’re working with clients as therapists, the goal is to help people self-realize. We want to allow space for that when it comes to people realizing themselves in the context of their gender,” Talcott Broadhead, a licensed social worker in Olympia, Wash., told Campus Progress.

Broadhead works under an umbrella

called Informed Consent for Access to Transgender Health, and educates both patients and medical professionals, including those who don’t have access to a clinic.

Today, transgender patients are often forced to receive a diagnosis of “Gender Identity Disorder” in order to receive care.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition lists the criteria as, “a stated desire to be the other sex, frequent passing as the other sex, desire to live or be treated as the other sex, or the conviction that he or she has the typical feelings and reactions of the other sex,” along with “preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics (e.g., request for hormones, surgery, or other procedures to physically alter sexual characteristics to simulate the other sex) or belief that he or she was born the wrong sex.”

But a Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis can be considered a pre-existing condition, raising health care premiums for transgender people who go the old-fashioned route.

Worse, the criteria don’t fit everyone— and represent a seriously outdated view of transgender identity, which the medical interpretation has struggled with over the last five decades.

LGBTQ EQUALITY As transgender advocate Julia Serano describes in her book Whipping Girl, transgender women were initially required to conform to very specific gender roles—or even judged as candidates for surgery based on their heteronormative attractiveness.

With the pathologizing of transgender identities came a very strict protocol for healthcare providers serving transgender patients, one that centered a gatekeeper model that often included hefty amounts of transphobia.

“Many trans people had to formulate a story to tell the doctors at that time to get their needs met,” said A. Canelli, a Seattlebased counselor who works with Broadhead. “They found that if you go to a surgeon and say, ‘I was born in the wrong body,’ you would get the care you needed.”

Even today, Canelli sees people in self-advocacy workshops who try to force themselves into that narrative—even though it doesn’t fit many, or even most, people who seek transition-related care.

This mischaracterization of the transgender experience has had far-reaching consequences. As the myth took on a life of its own, transgender people desperately tried to conform to it in order to access necessary care. This often included lying about their preferences or feelings, Canelli said, earning trans patients a reputation for untruthfulness or difficulty.

The informed consent model offers an alternative to all that: A healthcare model that allows patients to make decisions about their care, starting with the assumptions that being transgender is not a mental illness and that a person’s experience of their identity should guide their transition.

While informed consent clinics don’t force patients into extensive therapy before prescribing hormones, they frequently require basic medical testing and a consultation. Laboratory tests establish a patient’s hormonal baseline, but also check for liver

function and other physiological factors that can be affected by hormone therapy— going over all the possible effects and side effects of the hormones give patients the chance to make decisions about their own health care.

Transgender people who choose to take hormones take either testosterone or estrogen combined with an anti-androgen, depending on the changes they desire.

Female-assigned people who take testosterone can have facial and body hair growth, a deepening of the voice, and a

Consent Model and [the new standards of care] is that the [new standards of care put] greater emphasis on the important role that mental health professionals can play in alleviating gender dysphoria and facilitating changes in gender role and psychosocial adjustment,” the new standards read.

But not all transgender people want to pursue long-term counseling. Many simply can’t afford it: A National Center for Transgender Equality study from 2009 found that the percentage of trans people living in poverty is twice as high as the national average.

While most insurance companies won’t cover transgender medicine, some transgender patients report that informed consent clinics are willing to work around these limitations. The Howard Brown clinic, for instance, provides a diagnosis of “Endocrine Disorder” on patients’ medical charts, which de-pathologizes trans identity and skirts insurers’ refusal to cover transitionrelated expenses.

That’s what informed consent comes down to: A model of care that avoids forcing patients into long, unnecessary therapy, and instead sees a transgender identity as an individual experience.

“One of the foundations of ICATH is that we’re starting to not only strip the medical community of [the standard] narrative, but give room for people’s true experience of transgender identity to emerge honestly for the good of all, to reject the idea that we need to fit into one of the clever pathologies,” Broadhead said.

It is this honest identity that charts the transition journey for each transgender person. In rejecting inflexible standards of care, trans people are claiming their ability to navigate their personal journey on their own, without having to prove their identity to any gatekeepers.

“Many trans people had to formulate a story to tell the doctors at that time to get their needs met. They found that if you go to a surgeon and say, ‘I was born in the wrong body,’ you would get the care you needed.”

— A. Canelli, Seattle Counselor redistribution of fat, among other effects.

Male-assigned people who take estrogen experience breast growth, a softening of face shape and features, and a reconfiguring of body fat into a “female” distribution, along with other changes. Many of these sets of changes are fully desired and welcomed by transitioning people; others take lower doses of hormones or stop them completely after a short period of time, finding comfort in simply looking more androgynous.

In other words, it’s all about autonomy and patient-directed care—and about treating transgender patients like any other patients.

“Informed consent is implied in every medical procedure anyway,” Canelli said.

“Any time you go to a doctor, you’re already giving informed consent when you walk in the door. Trans people have that extra barrier—which I’m going to call transphobia.”

The definitive World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care were revised last year to explicitly include the informed consent model.

“The difference between the Informed

Shay O’Reilly is a reporter for Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @shaygabriel.

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VOTER SUPPRESSION

Voter Suppression IOI How Conservatives Are Conspiring to Disenfranchise Millions of Americans — INCLUDING STUDENTS

BY SCOTT KEYES, IAN MILLHISER, TOBIN VAN OSTERN & ABRAHAM WHITE

The right to vote is under attack all across our country.

Conservative legislators are introducing and passing legislation that creates new barriers for those registering to vote, shortens the early voting period, imposes new requirements for already-registered voters, and rigs the Electoral College in select states. Conservatives fabricate reasons to enact these laws—voter fraud is exceedingly rare—in their efforts to disenfranchise as many potential voters among certain groups, such as college students, low-income voters, and minorities, as possible. Rather than modernizing our democracy to ensure that all citizens have access to the ballot box, these laws hinder voting rights in a manner not seen since the era of Jim Crow laws enacted in the South to Published on april 4, 2012. for up-to-date news on disenfranchise blacks after Reconstruction in the late 1800s.

voter suppression, visit campusprogress.org/voterid

Talk about turning back the clock! At its best, America has utilized the federal legislative process to augment voting rights. Constitutional amendments such as the 12th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, and 26th have steadily improved the system by which our elections take place while expanding the pool of Americans eligible to participate. Yet in 2011, more than 30 state legislatures considered legislation to make it harder for citizens to vote, with over a dozen of those states succeeding in passing these bills. Anti-voting legislation appears to be continuing unabated so far in 2012.

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VOTER SUPPRESSION Unfortunately, the rapid spread of these proposals in states as different as Florida and Wisconsin is not occurring by accident. Instead, many of these laws are being drafted and spread through corporate-backed entities such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, as uncovered in a previous Campus Progress investigative report. Detailed in that report, ALEC charges corporations such as Koch Industries Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and The Coca-Cola Co. a fee and gives them access to members of state legislatures. Under ALEC’s auspices, legislators, corporate representatives, and ALEC officials work together to draft model legislation. As ALEC spokesperson Michael Bowman told NPR, this system is especially effective because “you have legislators who will ask questions much more freely at our meetings because they are not under the eyes of the press, the eyes of the voters.”

The investigative report included for the first time a leaked copy of ALEC’s model Voter ID legislation, which was approved by the ALEC board of directors in late 2009.

This model legislation prohibited certain forms of identification, such as student IDs, and has been cited as the legislative model from groups ranging from Tea Party organizations to legislators proposing the actual legislation such as Wisconsin’s Voter ID proposal from Republican state Rep. Stone and Republican state Sen. Joe Leibham.

Similar legislation had been proposed during the early 2000s in states such as Missouri, but the legislation frequently failed to be passed. Seeking new avenues, the George W. Bush administration prioritized the conviction of voter fraud to the point where two U.S. attorneys were allegedly fired in 2004 for failing to pursue electoral fraud cases at the level required by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. In fact, three years after first prioritizing election fraud in 2002, Ashcroft’s efforts had produced only 95 defendants charged with election-fraud, compared to 80,424 criminal cases concluded in a given year.

These efforts were dismal in terms of effectiveness and convictions, but news reports from 2007 pointed out that simply “pursuing an investigation can be just as effective as a conviction in providing that ammunition and creating an impression with the public that some sort of electoral reform is necessary.”

With this groundwork laid, ALEC today is

spearheading these efforts anew. These new antivoting laws are being challenged legally by a variety of nonpartisan organizations ranging from Rock the Vote to the League of Women Voters to the Public Interest Research Group. Additionally, the Department of Justice is reviewing some of the new state laws for possible violations of the Voting Rights Act, which freezes changes in election practices or procedures in nine southern states due to their history of voter suppression in the past. *** When speaking about this subject at the Campus Progress National Conference in 2011, President Bill Clinton asked the young audience why these laws making it harder to vote were all being proposed in such a high rate and passed across the country. The answer, he said, was that “They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate.”

Conservatives are scared because each cycle more young and minority voters are entering voting age and their collective impact is growing accordingly. In 2008 about 48 million Millennial generation voters— those born between 1978 and 2000—were old enough to vote. By 2012, that number will be 64 million, or 29 percent of all eligible voters. According to analysis by the Center for American Progress, by 2020, when all Millennial voters are of voting age,

about 90 million of them will be eligible to vote and will comprise around 40 percent of all eligible American voters. This parallels changes in minority voters—from 1988 to 2008 the percent of minority voters increased to 26 percent from 15 percent.

These young and minority voters are strongly progressive. They strongly support progressive staples such as investing in renewable energy and maintaining Social Security. This has translated into elections as well. In 2008 both young voters and Hispanic voters delivered two-thirds of their votes to President Obama.

Taken together, the growing influence of staunchly progressive voters has conservatives scared to the point of extreme measures. Backed by large corporate donors, they are looking for any proposal or law that will help negate this change in voting demographics. While this is their motivation, the right to vote is an American right that should be protected by those of all political persuasions.

Right now, the protection of anti-voter suppression measures put in place during the 1960s is preventing the enactment of the law in key states. And in other states the laws will become ballot measures where their outcome can be decided by the voters.

In many states these laws have already been passed and must be aggressively challenged through legal and electoral measures to put our system of democratic elections back on the right track. » » CONTINUED NEXT PAGE » »

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VOTER SUPPRESSION

IN THEIR WORDS Election day voting leads to “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what i did as a kid, which is voting as a liberal. that’s what kids do— they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.”

— N.H. House Speaker William O’Brien

registering the poor “to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals.”

— Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum

“I don’t want everyone to vote.”

— Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich

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This report focuses on both the current status of various antivoter measures throughout our country as well as the legal challenges they face. Readers will learn how conservatives want to return to past practices of voter suppression to preserve their political power, and looks at several instances where progressives are fighting back successfully.

Registration restrictions

Let’s begin with voter registration restrictions. In a handful of states, legislators aren’t just making it more difficult to vote; they’re making it more difficult for citizens even to register in the first place. Lawmakers in half a dozen states made a variety of changes to the registration process in 2011. These include limiting when citizens can register, restricting who is permitted to help them, and implementing tougher bureaucratic requirements to register.

Nowhere has the war on registration been more controversial than the state of Maine. Since 1973, Mainers have been permitted to register to vote at the ballot box. For nearly 40 years, the system worked smoothly— separate lines for registering and voting are used to prevent congestion—and just two instances of voter fraud were found in the entire span.

Nevertheless, when an unusually conservative group of lawmakers took over both statehouse chambers and the governorship in 2010, one of their primary orders of business was to repeal the state’s law permitting citizens to register on Election Day. Fortunately, in the ensuing weeks citizens of the state rallied to collect tens of thousands of signatures and force a vote on the matter. In November 2011, 61 percent of Mainers rebuked the legislature and voted to restore Election Day registration in their state.

Alas, voting rights proponents in other states have not been

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11 percent of american citizens do not possess a government-issued photo id (over 21 million american citizens) as successful. In Florida and Texas, for example, lawmakers succeeded in placing onerous new restrictions on nonprofit organizations that help register new voters. Voter registration drives by groups such as the League of Women Voters have been a staple of our democracy for years, helping thousands of citizens to register, regardless of their political affiliation.

In the Sunshine State, however, those may now be a thing of the past. Last July, the League of Women Voters announced it would no longer operate in Florida because of new antivoter legislation—including complicated new filing requirements and a mandate to submit completed registration forms within 48 hours of completion or face a hefty fine—made it nearly impossible for them to continue their work.

The Lone Star State also placed unnecessary new requirements on groups and individuals interested in helping register others.

Texas lawmakers in May passed legislation requiring that people who help register voters, known

as volunteer deputy registrars, must also be eligible Texas voters themselves. The new law has a number of unintended consequences. For instance, legal permanent residents who are in the process of obtaining their citizenship would be barred from learning the political process by helping register others. Many such immigrants are currently employed as deputy registrars; this new law would likely result in their firing.

What’s more, disabled Texans who are considered full guardians of the state and ineligible to vote would be shut out as well.

One disabled gentleman had carried voter registration forms in his wheelchair for years, eager to register others for a democratic process he himself could not participate in. Under the new law, it would be illegal for him to continue registering new voters. As of February 2012, Texas’s new law remains not in effect while the Justice Department determines whether it complies with the Voting Rights Act. Kansas, Alabama, and Ten-

VOTER SUPPRESSION nessee took a slightly different route, augmenting the required documentation necessary to register to vote. Each passed laws requiring residents to prove their citizenship before registering, either by presenting a birth certificate or passport.

Less than a third of Americans currently own a passport, and citizens who don’t have access to their birth certificate would be forced to pay for one in order to vote—an almost certain violation of the 24th Amendment’s ban on poll taxes. The problem is not small; at least 7 percent of Americans don’t have easy access to a birth certificate or similar citizenship document.

Arizona and Georgia also passed similar legislation prior to 2011. The Justice Department is currently reviewing Georgia and Alabama’s changes for compliance with the Voting Rights Act, and Arizona’s law is being challenged in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

residency restrictions

Another avenue where conservatives are proposing to limit voting rights is tightening the residency requirements. The intended effect of these measures is to make it difficult, if not impossible, for out-of-state college students to vote where they attend school.

In Maine, young voters are being targeted even more brazenly. In September 2011 Maine’s secretary of state sent a threatening letter to hundreds of college students who were legally registered to vote in the state, implying that many of them were in violation of election law and suggesting they correct this by unregistering in Maine. The list of college students targeted for this letter came directly from the Maine Republican Party Chairman, underscoring just how partisan the voter suppression effort in Maine has become. New Hampshire is now

considering stricter residency requirements for Granite State voters as well.

All of this is especially surprising given the Supreme Court’s decision in Symm v. United States, where it upheld a lower court decision establishing that states cannot place obstacles unique to college students between those students and their right to vote.

Limiting early voting

Following widespread voting problems in the 2000 election that had nothing to do with voter fraud—from extraordinarily long lines to hanging chads—many states moved to ease the burden on clerks and citizens by allowing people to vote prior to Election Day. Ohio and Florida were the epicenter of these problems, and both states moved to prevent similar problems in the future by allowing early voting.

Among conservatives, thenFlorida Gov. Jeb Bush was a major proponent of such reforms, calling them a “wonderful” way to “provide access to the polls.”

As a result, over half of Sun-

shine State voters cast their ballot before Election Day in 2008.

Yet three years later, lawmakers in the state moved to limit the availability of early voting.

In Florida voters had previously been permitted two weeks of early voting prior to the election; lawmakers rolled that back to eight days. Ohio lawmakers went even further, reducing the state’s early voting period from 35 days to just 11. Ari Berman also notes in Rolling Stone that “both states banned voting on the Sunday before the election—a day when black churches historically mobilize their constituents.”

Other states have successfully rolled back their early voting periods as well. Georgia reduced early voting from 45 to 21 days, Wisconsin shortened their period by 16 days, West Virginia by five days, and Tennessee by two.

In one bright spot, voting rights proponents in the Buckeye State are fighting back against the new changes. Hundreds of thousands of Ohioans signed a petition to hold a referendum

on the voting changes, suspending the law until voters decide its fate in November 2012.

Voter ID laws

The most common type of voter-related legislation in 2011 was the mandate that individuals must show certain kinds of government-issued photo ID at the polls before being allowed to vote. To date, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin have all passed such laws, and similar measures have been proposed by 24 more.

But with more than 1 in 10 voters (over 21 million Americans) currently lacking these photo IDs, it’s clear that such laws could have a disastrous effect. Voter ID laws have the potential to exclude millions of Americans, especially seniors, students, minorities, and people in rural areas One example is Osceola, Wisconsin: A small town in the northwestern part of the state with a population of under 3,000 people. The town is 30 minutes away from the nearest DMV offices and both are » » CONTINUED NEXT PAGE » »

CAMPUS PROGRESS MAGAZINE « 11

VOTER SUPPRESSION rarely open.

Defenders of these laws claim they are necessary to prevent voter fraud. In reality they are a solution in search of a problem.

There’s virtually no such fraud in American elections— and it’s not even remotely close to being the epidemic that some elected officials have made it out to be. In the 2004 election, for example, about 3 million votes were cast in Wisconsin—only seven were declared invalid—all of which were cast by felons who had finished their sentences and didn’t realize they were still barred from voting. As a result, Wisconsin’s overall fraud rate came in at a whopping 0.00023 percent.

The only kind of voter fraud that is supposed to be prevented by these laws is one voter impersonating another.

Not only would impersonating other voters one-by-one be an absurd strategy for stealing an entire election, but the alreadyexisting penalties—five years in

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prison and a $10,000 fine—are doing an effective job at preventing such fraud.

Yet, while these laws would prevent few if any actual cases of voter fraud, they could disenfranchise millions of ID-less voters. And they are clearly illegal under longstanding voting rights law. The Voting Rights Act not only forbids laws that are passed specifically to target minority voters but also strikes down state laws that have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. Because Voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, they clearly fit within the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition.

Scott Keyes is a Researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Ian Millhiser is a Policy Analyst and Blogger on legal issues at the Center for American Progress and the CAP Action Fund.

Tobin is the policy manager at Campus Progress. Abraham White is a communications associate at Campus Progress.

LGBT EQUALITY

FIVE MINUTES WITH: ZACH WAHLS, Who Defended His Moms in Iowa’s Legislature

By JESSICA MOWLES Just over a year ago, Zach Wahls— then a regular 19-year-old University of Iowa engineering student—shot to overnight Internet stardom.

The reason?

Wahl’s impassioned testimony before the Iowa House of Representatives opposing a constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage in the state.

Within days of its posting, the video had 1.5 million views. (Today, it’s topped 2.6 million.) Wahls was raised by moms Terry and Jackie, and his testimony emphasizes his family’s normalcy and love for one another.

He’s since appeared on numerous TV shows and has authored a book.

Wahls spoke with Campus Progress last year after his video was posted.

What’s been the reaction to your testimony in Iowa? Why do you think it’s gone viral in the way it has?

The reaction has been unbelievable. A bunch of statewide newspapers have written about me, I did three back to back to back TV interviews on Thursday night and probably about 20 interviews total.

I think part of it is that with my testimony, lots of people have a new perspective on an old issue and see that their own lives aren’t so different from mine, which is definitely something that people connect with. Personally, it’s an emotional topic, and maybe people see some overlap there.

What’s zach doing now? go to outtodinner.org to find out members and community members on these issues and help show that same-sex marriage really isn’t something we should be scared of or is somehow dangerous.

There have been a few well-publicized studies that claim the children of female same-sex parents are happier and more successful than kids of heterosexual couples.

I think that those probably aren’t zachwahls.com controlling for a number of factors that are completely unrelated to the spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about. I had an op-ed published in Iowa’s sexual orientation of the parents involved. largest newspaper right after the ruling in The thing is that for same-sex couples to April 2009, but other than that, my own have kids, odds are they’ve gone through a contributions have been pretty minimal. number of trials and tribulations that heterosexual couples usually don’t experience. The fact is that while there are a few things about my family situation directly tied to the How engaged do you find your peers to sexual orientation of my parents, the biggest be on issues of LGBT equality? Do you things that have affected me are not related think the fight for marriage equality in to their sexuality. Terry and Jackie have alIowa is backed by a lot of youth activism? ways stressed family values, the importance I don’t think a lot of my peers are actu- of living modestly, etc. Those have had a ally that engaged on marriage equality and way bigger impact on me than anything else. other LGBTQ issues because, for the vast majority of us, it isn’t an issue at all. Our How do you think marriage equality and generation is so accepting that we don’t other LGBT rights and protections will even give this a second thought. I mean, it’s why the daughters of George Bush, John fare in Iowa, over time? Have you noticed McCain, and Dick Cheney are all support- any cultural shifts as you’ve grown up?

I’m really optimistic. Like I mentioned earive of marriage equality. lier, our generation is incredibly accepting.

There’s a huge generational divide. The …

Give it twenty or thirty years and I am suright of same sex couples to wed is so obvious to us that we often forget about it. So, premely confident that the validity of sameno, most of us aren’t engaged on these is- sex marriage will be recognized by law.

Jessica Mowles is a former reporter sues. Because of that, however, I actually for Campus Progress. This piece was see a ton of potential for people our age to published on Feb. 11, 2011. engage our parents and other older family

“I actually see a ton of potential for people our age to engage our parents and other older family members and community members on these issues.”

Tell us about your previous activism, such as writing op-eds, or generally being vocal about your family.

You know, I haven’t really been active before. I [wrote] a weekly column for The Daily Iowan, and I’ve written a column about this before, but generally, this isn’t something I’ve been vocal about before. Like I said in my testimony, I really don’t think it’s a huge part of who I am. It’s not something I

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OCCUPY

welcome to sachsville — my life in

ZUCCOTTI PARK Six months after the birth of Occupy Wall Street, a look back at the community that started it all.

STORY & PHOTOS BY EMILY CROCKETT • PUBLISHED ON MARCH 27, 2012

I had been warned that the historic district of Upper Sachsville, near the intersection of Jefferson Street and Trotsky Alley, was on the wrong side of the food line.

“No, no, we’ve gentrified,” Paul Sylvester told me with a laugh. “Cleaned up the neighborhood.”

The 24-year-old Iraq veteran’s “neighborhood” was a cluster of tents about the size of a college dorm room on the southern edge of Zuccotti Park in New York City. Not every occupier called the park Sachsville— as in “Goldman Sachs”—but Paul and his neighbors in the historic district did.

They were all members of the Empathy Working Group, a committee of occupiers tasked with organizing trainings on nonviolent communication to bolster camp security. These were the types of people who you’d find holding a spontaneous meditation circle in a subway car. They were also the types of people who would offer you a place to sleep in their tent without a moment’s thought—and without seeming at all creepy.

“I spent 13 months in Iraq, and this is the first time I’ve actually defended this country,” Paul told me. The numerous skeptics who demanded to know Occupy’s “demands” didn’t concern him. “This revolution is such a baby. It’s changing and evolving every day.”

Sachsville was a full-fledged civilization that rose and fell in just under two months.

Six months have now passed since it all began, and its citizens have since been forced

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Not every occupier called the park Sachsville—as in “Goldman Sachs”—but many did. into a diaspora of scattered office buildings, length of two city buses. The whole encampchurch basements, and private homes. ment wasn’t even the size of a football field.

When media cover the now-global outcry And it was paved. This grassroots moveagainst inequality today, the most popular ment had no turf—astro, or otherwise. question might be this one: “What’s next for Sachsville was tiny, but I quickly learned Occupy Wall Street?” that tiny just meant compact and dense.

But to answer this question, to look for- Charlie Gardner, who runs the blog “Old ward, it can be helpful to look back. And Urbanist,” once estimated that the area had during the brief time I spent sleeping in a population density almost five times that Sachsville last fall as a Campus Progress re- of New York City itself. People who called porter, I saw how it might prove to be the the occupation a microcosm of society hometown of a long-lasting movement. were more accurate than they knew: As I *** became more familiar with the place, walkwas shocked when I first arrived at Zuc- ing a hundred feet began to feel more like cotti Park in late October. crossing a county line.

I’d read about protests there with thouThe images from Occupy Wall Street fasands of people and about the “wild” west miliar to most people—the protest signs side of the park—surely, the space had to and taped-shut mouths (or loudmouths) be sprawling and impossible to take in with on the sidewalk, and of course the drums, the naked eye. the unceasing drums—really only came It couldn’t possibly be this tiny. from the outer borders of the encampment.

The park was only about as wide as the That’s what New Yorkers saw when they

I

OCCUPY walked past on their way to work; that, and a vague mass of tarps and cardboard on the inside.

So the interior geography is what many passersby would miss. The expansion of Sachsville to fill Zuccotti Park was not unlike the expansion of America towards the Pacific: It moved from East to West, and from the seat of an unruly democratic experiment into even more unruly outer territories.

The eastern stairs served as the site of the first and all subsequent General Assemblies (called GAs by occupiers), the camp’s consensus-based decision-making meetings.

Toward the east side of the park, you’d find the knowledge workers at their booths— Info, Media, Finance, Legal Support, Press Relations, Outreach—and the Library, with its several thousand carefully catalogued books, many of which were later destroyed in the police raid.

Near the center, sensibly enough, were the survival essentials: the Kitchen, Sanitation, Comfort (a source of warm clothes and sleeping bags), Security, and Medical tents.

These were often the most thankless, but most necessary, jobs.

One occupier who frequently staffed the kitchen was a union guy, a steamfitter named Teddy. He told me once that he was there because it was his responsibility to make change, and this place re-energized his faith in the human spirit.

“I’ve been hard and cold all my life, and I don’t want to be,” he said.

He talked about his wife, who is Dominican, and how outraged he was when he caught somebody turning her down for a job, seemingly because of her race. (Teddy says she was told the job was filled—but it mysteriously re-opened when he, a white male, came back later to check it out.)

“I have four kids,” he told me, “and I don’t want anybody treating my wife and them differently.”

Move toward the west end and you’d find the anarchists at Camp Anonymous along with a lot of the artists and spiritual types. A small tree covered with trinkets and symbols of every conceivable faith and non-faith became the camp shrine. And here there were the drummers, who brought energy and visibility (or at least audibility) to the site, and

who single-handedly almost brought down the whole occupation due to tensions with the surrounding community over the noise.

It’s also true, as media reports highlighted, that this west side housed the “ghetto,” the place where some local nightlife, addicts, and homeless who didn’t engage much with the movement often came to crash. Every occupier knew it, even though most didn’t like to talk about it. To do so was crude— it was classist and exclusionary, and it was contrary to what the movement was all about. But it was still a daily reality, and one that became increasingly problematic for the camp as time went on.

Sachsville’s transition into a tent city was an accident of evolution—in some ways, an undesirable one as the privacy provided by small tents also made it easier to conceal drug use or assaults. At first, you couldn’t

it—it just sucked them all in.

Sachsville’s heady mixture of idealism and constant activity gave it an air of impermanence, even one of suspended reality.

“It can be a little like summer camp,” Scott admitted wryly. “Except you’re working all the time. I get about five hours of sleep a night.”

If the 1960s were about Free Love, then Occupy is about Free Work.

A full day’s work in Sachsville, depending on where you chose to spend your time, might have included any number of tasks.

Perhaps you were helping sanitation tidy up, volunteering for a shift in the kitchen, going to meetings, talking to tourists, making supply runs, managing donations, organizing marches, going to more meetings, or setting up more meetings. Or, you might have been peacefully “de-escalating” in-camp fights, treating injuries (and even the occasional trench foot), rolling cigarettes, serving as liaison to cops or city workers or local business owners, creating General Assembly proposals to improve the camp, updating the movement’s website, making leaflets or signs or T-shirts, culling news reports for Twitter, filming events, and oh—at some point, finding time to use the bathroom at the McDonald’s across the street.

But no one was alone in his or her labors.

“The distance between strangers breaks down here,” Scott told me. “If I look tired, somebody brings me coffee without asking.

That is the universal ‘I love you’ signal.”

Scott’s job at Info, he said, was mostly to listen. Visitors and newbies saw him as the closest thing to an employee, one whose job it might be to hear their grievances, unsolicited advice, and opinions. Lots and lots of opinions. A running joke at the Info tent was to come up to a coworker and say, without preamble or conclusion, “You know what you should do!”

In reality, there was a lot more to Info than just listening. Much of the nuts and bolts of the camp’s daily organizing and scheduling happened there. Info wasn’t quite designed to be a “central hub” but nonetheless evolved into one, partly because it managed the working groups, which quickly climbed from a dozen to 40 to 80.

“the distance between strangers breaks down here. if i look tired, somebody brings me coffee without asking. that is the universal ‘i love you’ signal.”

— Scott Simpson, 22 put up so much as an umbrella without the cops making you take down your “structure.” But as more rain fell, occupiers would erect tarps at night and take them down in the morning. Gradually, they just stopped taking them down. And then they started putting up real tents. And, for a little while at least, the cops let them. *** n my first night in the park, I ended up crossing the food line from the historic district over to the Info desk. After I spent all night immersed in interviews and conversation there, Info became my campsite and my host neighborhood.

One of the most prominent faces there was Scott Simpson, a 22-year-old college graduate who had quit his enjoyable job at an Atlanta brewery after a week-long trip to Zuccotti Park became something more.

This was a common tale among occupiers, both young and old: Whatever else they had been doing with their time—jobs, school, volunteering—this was so much more compelling. The dirt-under-your-nails satisfaction of building your own community from scratch, the feeling of not only helping to shape history but being urgently needed for

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OCCUPY These tasks got pretty unwieldy, so Info needed people like Cynthia Villarreal, a slight-statured spitfire who held a day job as a movie makeup artist and only slept in the park occasionally, as she was local. Cynthia and a grizzled street musician named Gypsy knew a lot of people and were good at helping the scattered working groups coordinate—so much so that people began calling Cynthia and Gypsy the “Get Shit Done Working Group.” *** aywood Carey was another Info guy (and a Security guy, and a Press guy— really, an everywhere guy) who was hooked by the sense of genuine purpose offered by the encampment. He felt that he’d lost that after a decade of working on campaigns for Democratic and union organizations.

“I started to wonder,” Haywood told me, “Am I part of the problem?”

Haywood was a big, red-bearded, stocking-capped fellow who could be intimidating when he wanted to be. But mostly, he was just a skilled organizer who always seemed to know what was going on.

Haywood said the occupation ran on “campaign time,” which he knew well from his political organizing days: “A day is a week, everything takes forever, and there’s never enough time.”

He was right about that—it wasn’t just space that was tight in Sachsville; time was even more compact. If you’d been there two weeks, you were considered a veteran.

If you’d been there two days, you could attempt to start orienting visitors, as I did.

And no matter what time scale you were operating on, the GAs took forever. Some people stopped going, feeling unrepresented or like their time was being wasted.

There were serious concerns over whether the GA and its facilitators were just another power structure ready to entrench itself and gloss over the needs of those it was supposed to serve.

But the consensus model basically seemed to work, and the movement was always evolving, including its democratic processes. To address the problem of workinggroup-glut, for example, occupiers formed a “spokescouncil” that would address daily logistical camp needs, leaving broader “movement” concerns to the larger, more unwieldy GA meeting.

But horizontal, leaderless, and non-hierarchical democracy can be a strange beast.

H

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Cornel West and Chris Hedges led a mock trial of Goldman Sachs.

Some people are natural leaders, and become all the more so when they gain experience in an area. De facto leaders almost always emerge, as they did in Sachsville— Haywood and Scott among them. And unacknowledged but tangible power relations can breed resentment. Sometimes, “sleeper” occupiers would grumble about working groups with desks, like Info, who’d get served food first because they had to man their posts.

Still, having at least the ideal of non-hierarchy could help shame people back into shape if somebody got too powerful. And the horizontal model’s strength came from Scott’s favorite motto: “You are the suggestion box.” Anyone at any time was encouraged to cook up and implement ideas to help things run better.

The various Media working groups, with their splinter factions and anti-hierarchical battles against fame seeking, were hardly horizontalism’s poster children—and yet, they also knew how to get shit done.

With their massive Twitter presence and innovative use of streaming live video, they gave those weary of the mainstream media a direct window into the camp.

Some of the Media members shared a tent with Info. There, you’d have found Thorin Caristo, who controversially started his

own livestream network and caused a few of those splinter factions. You’d also have discovered Justin Wedes, of Stephen Colbert fame, tweeting to @OccupyWallStNYC’s 100,000 followers, and you’d find Guyanese whiz Quacy Cayasso, who’d be cooking up some new scheme to keep the electricity going. (Tim Pool was probably around there, too, but I didn’t meet him until well after the eviction that he so famously spent 17 straight hours streaming.)

Info also featured Haywood Carey’s brother Joe Carey, who called himself “Info Joe,” and Haywood’s girlfriend, Christine Crowther. Christine, a cheerful, intelligent young woman headed for graduate school, was likely not who you’d think of when you think of someone homeless—but she was, at least temporarily, due to complications with roommates and leases.

Many of Sachsville’s residents were homeless for one reason or another. To some people already in dire straits, taking drastic action against economic injustice seemed not only compelling but necessary. *** ire straits were Sachsville’s specialties.

The community always seemed to be battling some crisis or other: After all, these were a couple hundred people living in a park, making up their own society as

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OCCUPY they went along, and often struggling to meet basic needs like shelter, hygiene, and safety, much less powering both the WiFi and everybody’s cell phones. The weekend before Halloween tested everyone’s resolve—between burnout and hypothermia, fire and ice had pretty equal shots at ending the whole thing.

That was the same weekend when the Kitchen staff went on strike (though without actually calling it a strike) and when the media broke stories about security issues, including sexual assault and drug use. Some of those problems may have been caused by outsiders but still became potent, internal issues.

At one emergency meeting called to address camp security, occupiers discussed how to pursue their partnerships with outside social services. One participant objected: “This is a protest. We’re not here to cater to the needs of addicts we don’t have the resources to help.”

Christine argued back: “Yes, it’s a protest, but it’s also a community. A lot of these problems come from New York City itself, and we can’t help that. But we have an obligation to step up and do better than the outside world.”

New York City had other crises in store even before the shocking eviction that came just weeks later—from harsh treatment and harassment at the hands of the New York City Police Department to the general impatience of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As the saying goes, ain’t no power like the power of the people, but as far as electric power went, Bloomberg seemed to want it stopped. *** ack on my first night sleeping at Info, the Channel 11 News team woke us up at 4 a.m. with bright camera lights and insistent questions. Having been tipped off to impending fire inspections, they wouldn’t leave the Info folks alone until somebody (Haywood) told them whether the generators would be in compliance later that day (sure they would, he placated).

An occupier who happened to be a firefighter (and one of the first responders on Sept. 11, 2001) did his best the next day to help fireproof the area around the genera-

tors, but they were still seized. The National Lawyers Guild argued the confiscation was unjust, and the city eventually returned them. Before that, though, Media’s Thorin and Quacy developed a scheme to hide an extra generator with a friendly vendor that ended in asketchy undercover seizure. I filmed the cops being oddly aggressive towards us, and one tried to grab Paul Sylves-

more sympathy when it saw people being kettled or beaten by police.

Economic inequality is abstract. Poverty, homelessness, or simply struggling to pay bills are not abstract concepts—but they’re not always visible. Many who struggle to survive struggle alone.

But there, in Sachsville, those who struggled or wanted to show solidarity could come out of the shadows and show the world how bad things had gotten. By demonstrating their willingness to live in public in difficult conditions, the Zuccotti occupiers put our national crisis on display while modeling the kind of open dialogue and unity they wish America had.

Sure, you’d find plenty of chaos and absurdity there. You’d find crazies and paranoids and brother-can-ya-spare-a’s. But you’d also find hard-ass dedication and passion, people convinced that what they were doing matters, and those who were determined to make enough mistakes to learn from them and evolve.

“What does democracy look like today?”

I once asked Info Joe, riffing on a common chant.

“Continually,” he said, “it looks like this.”

Sachsville’s people lost their hometown.

Many moved on from the movement after the eviction. (Scott, as far as I know, was one of them.) Things won’t be the same going forward. But if the movement keeps its roots, it stands a good chance of flowering again this spring. *** hen I left to return home to Washington, DC—less than two weeks before it all came crashing down—the camp was still evolving: new, bigger communal structures were on the way.

“When you come back, this will all be rows and rows of militarized tents with banners waving,” Scott joked, before a nasty wind threatened to blow Info apart. The massive, overhanging blue tarp flew into the air with all the force of a sail.

Grabbing ropes, books, crates, giant umbrella stands, and anything else nearby, we all pulled together and tied the tarp back down into its proper place.

CRisis is what gave sachsville its opportunity to shine, and not just because the world paid more attention and showed more sympathy when it saw people being kettled or beaten by police.

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ter’s camera while he was filming.

Looking back, that whole Thursday— the one with the generator incident—was stressful. The day began with the first arraignments of previously arrested protesters. Then Christine and several others were arrested at an anti-Goldman Sachs rally.

Then occupiers were outraged when two Guy-Fawkes-masked occupiers were arrested off the sidewalk for some obscure, decades-old anti-gang law that prohibits wearing masks in groups.

The cops seemed more active, and eviction was expected to come any day. Members of the Direct Action working group—who planned many of the actual protests and marches—hid a bag full of U-Locks in the Media tent that Thursday night while I was there editing video. In the event of an eviction, some brave folks were reportedly going to lock their necks together and defend the park’s interior. Public preparations were made at the GA, where everyone learned first aid for tear gas or pepper spray, and various nonviolent, non-U-Locked techniques of using their bodies to discourage police from taking Sachsville. *** onstant crisis was inherent in the occupiers’ chosen form of protest and, a lot of their time and resources seemed to be drained away while maintaining that. Some felt they weren’t staying focused enough on the real problems of social inequality—or on specific solutions for solving it.

But crisis is what gave Sachsville its opportunity to shine, and not just because the world paid more attention and showed

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W

Emily Crockett is a reporter for Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @emilycrockett.

CAMPUS PROGRESS MAGAZINE « 17

ENVIRONMENT

How ‘The Lorax’ Highlights the Role of young americans in the Climate Movement

By CANDICE BERND I cried when I watched “The Lorax” in theaters for the first time.

So what? Call me a sap for that Truffula tree sap.

It’s just, that quote kept running over and over in my mind. I’m sure you know it well by now: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

I know, I know, the film was off base from the original Dr. Seuss book in a lot of ways.

And yes, the film was criticized quite a bit when it premiered.

For one thing, the filmmakers partnered with Mazda to help push their new CX-5 model car. The whole idea is completely counter-intuitive to what the Lorax story is trying to get across—that industrialization (including the manufacturing of cars) is threatening balanced eco-systems.

And the countless Lorax toys and collectibles also aren’t helping the whole “greenwashing” thing. But that’s almost a prerequisite for a film to get through the Hollywood production circus—which isn’t to excuse the backwards logic at play here.

It’s a systematic problem, and filmmakers should be doing what they can to challenge that system.

But since “The Lorax” has gone through the jungle gyms in Los Angeles and made its way to the big screen in a big way, I found myself really happy that young audiences are watching this film in their local towns—in 3D and with their buddies.

What conversations are they having as they exit the theater?

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Sure, main character Ted may not care a whole lot about the trees at first, but so what? His love interest Audrey does and it’s her wonder that propels him to action.

He races beyond the bounds of the plastic Thneedville to seek out the Once-ler and his story.

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UNIVERSAL

The Once-ler tells Ted about how he came to meet The Lorax and how he came upon making Thneeds—the namesake of Ted’s plastic and artificial town. The Lorax was summoned upon the Once-lers’ first harvest of a single Truffula tree for its tuft, the perfect material for the starry-eyed and ambitious Once-lers’ product.

There’s a great musical number in the movie about how this one small businessman came to consume the entire forest even as The Lorax protested and warned him of the consequences. The song even alludes to social Darwinism in the mindset of business owners.

How bad can the Once-ler really be?

He’s just building the economy, and some proceeds go to charity. But then, the PR people start lying and the lawyers start denying, and well, you get the picture.

It’s a cute song anyway.

The Lorax left the Once-ler with one word—“unless”—and it’s Ted and Audrey that embody that word in the end.

When the Once-ler gives Ted the last Truffula tree seed, he and Audrey have to fight the mega-corporation O’Hare Air to plant that seed for all of Thneedville to see.

Mr. O’Hare is running Thneedville by now

and he realizes that trees would put him out of the business of selling bottled air because they perform the service of cleaning the air for free.

The Once-ler holds on to this seed for years waiting for young Ted to come along.

Ted and Audrey must plant the seed together to show older generations that their philosophy about consumption and the natural world must change.

And there’s the important message: Unless the youth care a whole lot—enough to take the steps to really teach their parents something about sustainability—then nothing will change.

But they have to care an awful lot.

They have to care enough to challenge the big energy companies and their allies in governments. They have to break through the plastic layers of their current reality to search for meaning, and they have to communicate that meaning to a lot of people still stuck in their old ways.

We have to speak for the trees to sow a better, more sustainable, future for ourselves—and that requires some struggle.

Candice Bernd is a reporter for Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @CandiceBernd.

IMMIGRATION

SIX things you need to know about

deferred action + dream act students In June, President Barack Obama announced that his administration will suspend deportation (“deferred action”) and grant work authorization to DREAM Act-eligible youth, effective immediately. These youth, who were brought to the United States at a young age, have been living in limbo as Congress plays political football with their lives by failing to pass the DREAM Act and give them a pathway to legal status. Though the president’s action cannot grant permanent legal status, it is a significant step forward that will give piece of mind and the ability to work to a significant group of people.

The president’s announcement raised some questions, so we offer some clarity below by listing six things that you need to know about deferred action and DREAM Act students:

1. Does the president have the authority to do this?

Yes. Deferred action is a type of prosecutorial discretion available to the president as part of routine immigration law. It allows the president to stop or suspend the deportation of an individual and to grant that person work authorization. Presidents from both parties have used deferred action frequently since 1971.

AP / SUSAN WALSH

“These young people are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.

They pledge allegiance to our flag, play in our neighborhoods, serve in our military, start new businesses that hire Americans, and provide steady labor to farmers and ranchers.”

2. Who is eligible for deferred action?

Similar to the provisions of the House-passed version of the DREAM Act in 2010, anyone between the ages of 15 and 30 (who came to the United States before age 16) is eligible if they have been in the United States for at least five years, are in or have completed high school, are in the armed services currently or have been honorably discharged, and have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or multiple misdemeanors.

3. How many people are eligible?

Roughly 1 million people will qualify. DREAMers not already known to the Department of Homeland Security will be able to come forward and apply for the deferred action.

4. Isn’t this amnesty?

Absolutely not. Deferred action is only a temporary two-year status; it is not permanent residency. It isn’t a reward for anything, and it does not allow any immigrant to bring over their family members. Further, it does not bring a single extra person into the

United States. These youth already live here. DREAMers will be able to apply for this status, and it will be decided on a case-bycase basis. This is not a blanket form of relief.

5. Will this encourage more illegal immigration?

No. This policy is neither a magnet for undocumented immigration nor a long-term solution to the problem. Only individuals who have been in the country for five years before today are eligible to apply for this temporary protection. It merely allows qualifying individuals to stop looking over their shoulder and start looking toward their future until Congress can overcome its paralysis.

6. Do we still need Congress to pass the DREAM Act?

Yes! The president’s announcement gives only temporary legal status to DREAM Act-eligible youth, and it can be revoked with the stroke of a pen by the next president. Only Congress can pass a law—the DREAM Act—to protect these students permanently and give them a pathway to citizenship.

This piece is by the Immigration Team at the Center for American Progress, our parent organization, and was published on June 15, 2012.

CAMPUS PROGRESS MAGAZINE « 19

She PLAYS a cranky cheerleading coach on “Glee,” but off-screen THE ACTRESS IS a new mother and a role model for LGBT youth.

For decades, Jane Lynch has appeared on our TVs and movie screens as loveable, awkward, and unforgettable characters.

You might know her as the cranky but endearing Coach Sue on FOX’s hit “Glee.”

Or perhaps you remember her from earlier days—a gig on the too-short-lived “Party Down” or her hilarious role as dog trainer in Best of Show.

Lynch recently spoke with Campus Progress about her acting work, new memoir “Happy Accidents,” and her role as an openly gay mother and advocate for LGBT youth.

In your memoir, one thing that really sticks out is the different obstacles and struggles you faced while growing up.

You write about how your mom always pushed you toward teaching instead of your true love, acting, and how you grappled with that. Any advice for young folks in the same situation, wondering if they’re on the right path or if they’ll be

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able to pursue what they love?

What I always say is: Wherever you are right now and what’s right in front of you is exactly what you need to put your attention on. And if you find that you don’t love it, that means you’ve got to put your attention somewhere else. Find the stuff that pleases you. I say at the end of the book to find what it is you do best and do your best with it. That’s a Carol Brady phrase, actually.

I kind of went through the trials and tribulations phrase of trying to be a person [that I wasn’t], although it’s almost as if the imprinting on my DNA that wanted my to be an actress was much stronger than anything anybody else told me. And I went with that, ultimately.

It takes a certain amount of bravery, especially when it’s something that’s not socially acceptable, or it’s not culturally the right thing, or you grew up in a family that doesn’t really understand you wanting to

be an artist or wanting to be an engineer or whatever your path is. Literature is riddled with stories of people taking the path less traveled and the amount of courage that it takes to do that.

In your book, you also discuss coming to terms with your sexuality, something you struggled with when you were younger.

Can you talk a little bit about your experiences getting over that anxiety and coming out to your family?

I was going to say it’s easier now, but it’s really not. If you’re growing up in a small town in Iowa, it can be difficult. Again, it’s kind of the same lesson—it was culturally and societally unacceptable, and yet I knew I had it—and I viewed it as a disease—and I just had to find my people. Luckily, being in the theatre and being gay kind of line up. [Laughs] You just kind of have to go where the love is. It’s really about heeding the call from

INTERVIEW

“I think the younger generations have always been progressive, and they lead the way. I think it takes the young idealistic person to move things forward and that’s why we always have great hope in the young generation. And it’s a responsibility, if you’re the younger generation, to step up and create and fashion the world that you want to live in.” the deepest part of yourself and going on that journey that may be fraught with obstacles but, ultimately, you have to go on it and find your people, find the places where people love you for who you are.

You mentioned that it’s not really easier for young people to come out today.

But we are seeing a growing number of openly gay celebrities and people who are advocates in the mainstream—everyone from Ellen Degeneres to Chris Colfer to you. Does that help?

Oh, I totally think it does. And anytime there’s a huge societal shift—like the acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships, which is growing all over the country—the oppositional forces get even stronger. So I think it’s hard for kids who grow up in places where it’s not culturally acceptable.

But the fact that there are now healthy, happy people in great relationships with children that they can see in the media …

I think that’s so important and I wish that I had that.

I’m very happy that my relationship and my family give some people hope. I love Dan Savage’s website, It Gets Better, where everybody—gay and straight—opines and gives these kids hope. I know it’s tough now but you’re going to have to find your people and go to the places where you’re loved. And you’re kind of stuck right now, because you’re a kid, but it gives them hope. We can’t come there and rescue you right now, but you’re going to rescue yourself. Just know that, hang in there until you’re old enough to find your people.

And you’ve also made an It Gets Better

video with your wife, Lara. Are those the same messages you give to the young folks you meet?

Yeah, absolutely.

There’s a lot of youth activism around equality now, everything from work on ballot measures to young folks testifying on behalf of their parents in front of state legislatures. Do you think that’s something that’s unique to our generation, this more progressive attitude?

No, I think the younger generations have always been progressive, and they lead the way. I think it takes the young idealistic person to move things forward and that’s why we always have great hope in the young generation. And it’s a responsibility, if you’re the younger generation, to step up and create and fashion the world that you want to live in.

I think it’s really great and there’s something wonderful about the idealism and the energy and the almost ignorance of youth that makes kids so gung-ho and able to go out there. Look at any great invention, any great movement—there’s a 20-year-old kid who thought of it sitting in the basement.

Do you think, though, that our generation is finally creating the time for true equality and gay rights?

It’s totally possible. And what’s great about it is it’s not just an issue for gay kids, but straight kids, Christian kids— there’s some huge number of Christians under 30 who are so tired of the gay issue and so accepting of gay being just another way to love.

There are some people we’re never going to win over and, luckily, most of the people we’re not going to win over will be dead soon. [Laughs] But some will survive, some are young, but the tide is in our favor. Just look at Barack Obama’s parents— they would have been arrested if they got married in Georgia or Virginia.

In the most recent season of Glee, we saw a pregnant Sue Sylvester. And you’re a parent now, too, right?

Relatively recently, yes.

Has being a parent changed you?

It’s interesting because I was a single person until I was 49 years old. And now, not only do I have a wife but I have a child, so yes, my whole life is changed. I think less about myself and I have a family to consider. This is what I wanted, and I got what I wanted and I’m really happy with it.

[As a parent,] you do start to become concerned about the next generation. I have one of those kids—she’s a progressive kid herself, she’s really fair-minded and she’s a great advocate for other kids and she’s a wonderful friend. I have great hope for her and other kids in terms of fairness and equality and being nice to each other.

So what’s next for you on ‘Glee?’

I don’t know! I didn’t even know I’d be pregnant until I got the script. It’s always a surprise for us what’s going to happen. I have no scoops to share. [Laughs] Brian Stewart is the communications manager for Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @brianstewart.

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CAMPUS JOURNALISM

EXILED FROM AMERICA One Student’s Deporation Story

By SYDNEY BOUCHAT | ETHOS This article originally appeared in Ethos, a student publication at the University of Oregon that recieves funding and training as a member of the Campus Progress Journalism Network.

Hector Lopez is arrested before he knows his crime.

At the age of twenty, the Portland State University sophomore discovers he is an undocumented immigrant while sitting in a federal holding cell in Portland, Oregon.

After spending ten days at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, and before he could find a lawyer, he is deported to Mexico, knowing neither the people nor the language. This is only the beginning of what becomes a grueling four-month ordeal for Hector, away from his home, family, and friends.

You were arrested on August 23, 2010.

What was that experience like? It must have been very difficult.

Absolutely, especially when you’re not expecting anything to happen, and with me not knowing anything about my legal

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status. At first, you’re kind of . . . you think it’s not real. Like, ‘Oh, you must have the wrong person.’ But after you realize that it is you that [the authorities] are after, it quickly puts you into a panic.

So you were not aware at the time that you were an undocumented immigrant?

No. I have a Social [Security number] and a driver’s license. And, you know, usually when you hear about people with immigration problems, you hear of them changing names or doing things to fit in, but I never had to do any of that. I figured if I was [undocumented], my parents would have told me.

How exactly did the US immigration authorities go about taking you out of the country?

I thought that as soon as I talked to a judge, someone would come to their senses and realize that this shouldn’t be happening and everything would be okay.

And then, [Immigration] just said, ‘Hey you, you’re leaving today.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know anyone. I don’t speak the language. What do you want me to do?’ They

said, ‘Well, we can’t give you legal advice.’

At around 9 a.m. [September 1, 2010], I was taken from my cell. I was given my clothes back and then handcuffed at my waist, wrists, and ankles. Then I was put on a prison plane. It made three stops. It was a twelve-hour process. We landed in Brownsville, Texas, at about 9:30 p.m. that same day. From there, [the other deportees and I] were driven to the border and made to walk across.

You were made to transport yourself across international lines?

They kind of just drop you right off at the border. You can’t go anywhere because you’re immigrant of a federal area, so you only have one way to walk, and that’s toward Mexico.

At this time, where was your father? Was he with you?

No, my dad was going to ask for asylum, but when I got deported before him for no reason, he gave up his right to fight for his case so he could be with me in Mexico.

He was deported about two weeks after me because he gave up his case. But this

CAMPUS JOURNALISM OPPOSITE PAGE: HECtor (right) with his mother and brother at Portland international airport on the day he returned to oregon. whole situation when I was deported was by myself.

You were in Mexico for two-and-a-half weeks before your father gave up his right to asylum to be with you. Describe that experience.

That [first] night, I went to the bus station that was a little ways away from the border.

There was a group of about 150 of us that had just been deported. My phone was dead, so I couldn’t call anybody. I couldn’t ask for a hotel. Three people had gotten murdered in that area a couple hours beforehand. I found a gentleman who spoke some English and he told me I probably shouldn’t be leaving the bus station because it was dangerous. So I slept at the bus station that night. The next day, I called my mom, who told me to get a bus ticket to Mexico City, where a lady who was my mom’s old neighbor was going to take me in for a while. I took about a sixteen-hour bus ride from the border to Mexico City.

The lady picked me up when I got to the bus station in Mexico City. I stayed there for almost two months.

What was it like living in Mexico?

I saw moms and children sleeping on the street. They were homeless. And I thought, ‘You know, where I grew up, we don’t let that happen.’ I wasn’t used to seeing things like that. I didn’t want to be there, but I couldn’t leave. The majority of the two months I spent in my room by myself. It was almost like I didn’t even have a life. It was too much to handle, and you just kind of hide yourself and try to deal with it.

What brought about your returning to the border to seek asylum?

I can’t go too in-depth with the reasons of what happened, but after multiple incidents, and you start realizing that you’re the one being targeted, you just lose patience. I know two months doesn’t seem like that long, but every day I didn’t know when I was coming home. That’s what eats at you the most. Around the beginning of November, the panic started to sink in a little more and a little more, and I spoke to my lawyer. She said I could seek asylum.

It was the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place, going back to jail, because I knew how horrible it was. But after we

realized that [asylum] would probably be the quickest and safest way to get me back into the US, on November 17, I took a bus from Mexico City to Nogales, Sonora. I surrendered myself at the border at the walkthrough where people show their visas and passports. From there I was arrested and taken to the detention center, where I stayed for a little over a month.

What was the detention center like?

It’s not technically a prison, though I don’t know what the difference is. I’ve never been to prison, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing or almost the same thing. When I was detained in Seattle, I had my dad there. I had someone to talk to, someone who I knew, so it wasn’t as bad. I went to Arizona by myself because I didn’t really have a choice. I figured I’d rather be here than scared for my life. You get acclimated after a while. You get used to spending your whole day doing nothing. For the first couple days it was rough, and definitely a shock, but you start getting used to it.

At one point, you were allowed to go home to Milwaukie, Oregon, for Christmas. Did they do that special for you?

Yes, the [immigration] let me go home on December 23. It’s not something that they do too often. My case was a higher profile case, and there was an 1,800-signature petition sent in. There were hundreds of phone calls made. They took a little better care of me, I guess. They let me go sooner than most people. I got out without paying a bail. They do it, but it’s on a case-by-case situation, and it’s not very common.

Now you’re back with your mom and your brother in Milwaukie. What is your current legal situation?

I’m waiting for a court date. I should be receiving it in the mail soon. But right now, I’m, I think it’s called ‘out-of-status.’ I’m not really legally here, but I’m not illegally here.

I’m in the middle. But hopefully I can get another start. I start school in the spring, my work application is pending to get a work permit, and I can get my license soon.

How difficult has it been for you to reestablish your American life?

I thought that was going to be a problem. I have a gentleman from Dallas who’s an advocate and he’s been helping me.

His name is Ralph Isenberg. He and my mom and everyone were worried that I

would suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or something along those lines because it was pretty traumatic, what I went through. But I hopped into my life pretty quick. The first few days were a little groggy and weird, but right now I’m fine.

I know it sounds weird, but right now I’m just waiting to get back to work, and that’s probably going to be before I get back to school. And then I’ll just pick up where I left off. What I told everybody is that I’m not going anywhere. I’ve been guaranteed multiple times by some of the best attorneys in the country that I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going back to another country. And that’s always reassuring. I’m going to stay here, so I might as well start my life again.

How do you think this experience has changed your opinion about being an American and living in the United States?

I think I’m an American. I may not be an American citizen, but I think I’m as American as baseball and apple pie. I grew up here. I only know one pledge of allegiance. I only know one president. For all accounts, in my eyes, I am an American, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. The reason I came back is because I believe in the American system. I knew I wouldn’t be in jail for years and years and years. I knew the right thing would be done, and the right thing was done. I’m not mad that I got arrested. A lot of people say, ‘You should be mad at the system. You should be mad at your parents.’ Well, I’m not mad at the system. They were doing their jobs. And now that things have been brought to light, they have done the right thing. They have been very helpful with everything, to release me and get me home. I guess it gives me even more admiration for the country and the American system and everything that it stands for.

Has this experience helped you grow at all, or has it only hindered you?

I don’t think it’s helped me too much, but it’s definitely opened my eyes. I now realize that when you’re talking about immigration, you have one idea of it, like what we see on the Discovery Channel or the news. But, being in it, being in jail and in the country, it’s a sad thing, and it’s not all murders and drug cartels. I saw a little four-year-old kid in a jail because someone had tried to smuggle him over. It’s a really sad thing to see. This isn’t right. So it definitely opened my eyes.

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CAMPUS JOURNALISM

Campus Progress Publication Wins College Journalism’s Highest Honor known drag queen.

Also at the ACP/CMA Convention, University of Oregon’s Ethos was awarded fourth-place in the Diversity Story of the Year contest for Cody Newton’s story “HIV+” which details the struggles of patients who are HIV-positive. More than 550 stories were entered into the Story of the Year contest. Ethos received an Honorable Mention in the Design of the Year category.

Campus Progress continues to be incredibly proud of the young journalists in our journalism network, which provides funding and training to 50 student-run publications on campuses across the country. We congratulate the staff of Yale’s Q Magazine for their impressive work and their much deserved award.

By BRIAN STEWART Campus Progress-sponsored publication Q Magazine, an LGBT-focused newsmagazine launched at Yale University last fall, has been awarded a Pacemaker from the Associated Collegiate Press, designating it one of the nation’s top student-run magazines.

The award was announced during the ACP/CMA National College Media Convention in Orlando, Fla., in late 2011. Ten magazines were named as finalists earlier this year, including two other Campus Progress publications: Cipher at Colorado College and Ethos at the University of Oregon.

Only five Pacemakers were awarded to student magazines this year, with the contest based on the publications’ content; quality of writing and editing; photography, art, and graphics; layout and design; and the overall concept or theme.

Q Magazine submitted its spring 2011 issue to the contest, which featured a story on Damiana LaRoux, an interview with a well-

Brian Stewart is the communications manager for Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @brianstewart.

TWO Campus Progress cartoonists honored

By BRIAN STEWART Matt Bors, a nationally syndicated cartoonist whose work has appeared on CampusProgress. org since its launch, was named a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning this year.

An Oregon-based cartoonist, Bors is one of two finalists in the category. The other, Jack Ohman, produces daily cartoons from The Oregonian. The Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning was awarded to Matt Wuerker of POLITICO, the first for the publication, and was accompanied by a $10,000 prize.

The Pulitzer selection committee said Bors is notable for his “pungent work outside the traditional style of American cartooning.”

Bors was also awarded the Herblock Prize,

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which recognizes “distinguished examples of editorial cartooning” in the tradition of Herbert Herblock, a three-time Pulitzer winner whose cartoons often took a liberal slant.

“Campus Progress is one of my earliest climatt bors ents,” Bors said at the time of the Herblock announcement. “I have been published on CP longer than any online outlet outside of my own website.”

Sarah Alex, executive director of the Herb Block Foundation, said in a statement that this is the first year the group has awarded its top prize to an alternative cartoonist.

“The decision of the judges reflects how the industry is changing and how the foun-

dation seeks to broaden the cartooning reach of the prize,” she said.

The Washington Post’s Tom Toles said Bors’ cartoons are “relevant, smart, surprising, wickedly funny. A completely successful combination of all the elements that make great editorial cartoons.”

The finalist for the 2012 Herblock Prize was Jen Sorensen, another CampusProgress.org contributor who is behind the weekly comic Slowpoke. Sorenson, who one judge said “has a brilliant way of showing the absurdities of ideas and policies that at first glance might seem reasonable,” will receive a $5,000 award.

Campus Progress congratulates Matt Bors and Jen Sorenson and thanks them for their wonderful cartooning.

Brian Stewart is the communications manager for Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @brianstewart.

POP CULTURE

American Apparel’s Plus-Sized AD Contest Sparks Controversy

By DAHLIA GROSSMAN-HEINZE American Apparel wanted plus-sized models—so, the company threw a contest, with the top prize being a modeling contract with the clothing company.

The text of the advertisement read: Think you are the Next BIG Thing? Calling curvy ladies everywhere! Our bestselling Disco Pant (and around 10 other sexy styles) are now available in size XL, for those of us who need a little extra wiggle room where it counts. We’re looking for fresh faces (and curvaceous bods) to fill these babies out. If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the next XLent model, send us photos of you and your junk to back it up. Just send us two recent photographs of yourself, one that clearly shows your face and one of your body. We’ll select a winner to be flown out to our Los Angeles headquarters to star in your own bootylicious photoshoot. Runners up will win an enviable assortment of our favorite new styles in XL! Show us what you’re workin’ with!

There’s a lot to be offended by here.

There’s the word “BIG” in all caps, the word “thing” being used to describe women, and it just goes on from there.

So 24-year-old actor and student Nancy Upton decided to enter the contest to problematize, and ultimately, subvert it.

American Apparel has something of a history of diminishing the plus-sized consumer base. Many, including Upton, suspect that American Apparel only made this gesture towards inclusivity because the company has been hurtling towards bankruptcy for some time.

In 2010, adult film star and model April Flores visited an American Apparel showroom to find pieces for a plus-sized clothing line she was developing. But Flores was told that the company didn’t carry many options for plus-sized women because “plus sizes are not their demographic.”

Nancy Upton took this quote as inspiration for the title of her Tumblr-based ac-

count of her contest entry titled “That’s Not Our Demographic.”

In her fantastic essay, Upton explains that she was infuriated by how the contest was “co-opting the mantra of plus-size empowerment and glazing it with its unmistakable brand of female objectification.”

American Apparel regularly uses highly sexualized (and nearly naked) models to sell their clothes, and Upton argues that the company regularly sends “the message that a subservient, nearly naked woman has always earned a place in American Apparel’s advertising with no trouble, but that larger women need to vote each other down and compete against one another to even deserve a chance.”

So Upton and a friend conceived of and staged photographs and entered them into the contest. The photos are fantastic—they’re interesting, thoughtful, funny, cheeky, and beautifully shot and staged.

While her entry into the contest wasn’t serious—and she fundamentally disagreed with the aims of the contest itself—to her surprise, Upton garnered the most votes and won.

But American Apparel wouldn’t recognize Upton’s win.

Iris Alonzo, creative director of American Apparel, wrote a letter discussing Upton’s win and sent it to Upton and several media outlets.

In the letter, after quite a bit of apologizing for offending Upton and stating that “that’s not our demographic” is not an opinion endorsed by the company, Alonzo explains that Upton will not be awarded the prize of being an “XL brand ambassador.” Why? Be-

Nancy Upton’s ENTRIES. cause American Apparel decided to award the prize “to other contestants that we feel truly exemplify the idea of beauty inside and out, and whom we will be proud to have representing our company.”

Alonzo also accuses Upton of taking the contest advertisement too seriously: “It’s a shame that your project attempts to discredit the positive intentions of our challenge based on your personal distaste for our use of light-hearted language, and that ‘bootylicous’ was too much for you to handle,” Alonzo writes. “While we may be a bit TOO inspired by Beyoncé, and do have a tendency to occasionally go pun-crazy, we try not to take ourselves too seriously around here.”

Alonzo invited Upton to visit American Apparel headquarters, along with the friend who photographed her. Upton agreed to the visit and was told she can write about what transpires.

It’s unfortunate that company executives didn’t take the opportunity to listen to Upton and hear her very real critique about how American Apparel has consistently ignored women who aren’t their “demographic”­—half-naked and size XS. Dahlia Grossman-Heinze is a reporter for Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter @salvadordahlia.

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INTERVIEW

MEGHAN McCAIn: ‘Times are changing’

By TARA KUTZ

published on pushback.org, the politics and policy blog of campus progress action.

Meghan McCain, the vivacious, platinum blonde daughter of Sen. John McCain, is making the rounds in television punditry as a new face for young, moderate Republicans. Often with a flair for the dramatic, she’s been splashed on celebrity gossip sites, criticized for her vocabulary snafus, provocative tweets, lunching with Tila Tequila, and even spending an entire day riding an elephant for the cover shot of her 2008 campaign memoir, Dirty Sexy Politics.

Between TV appearances, the Columbia University alumna spoke with Pushback. org—a project of Campus Progress Action— about her new(ish) role at MSNBC and the second coming of her campaign blog, McCainBlogette. The edited interview below:

You recently became a contributor on MSNBC—tell us about your role there.

Well, obviously, I’m a Republican, and there aren’t a ton of Republicans on MSNBC. I’ve been writing for The Daily Beast for … three and a half years now? I don’t know, a long time. I had been doing a lot of commentary and an opportunity came up to be a contributor. And when I was kind of deciding which network, I just thought that MSNBC would be a little bit of a more interesting choice.

I have the utmost respect for CNN, FOX, and all the news networks, but being a Republican on FOX won’t get as much attention and won’t have the kind of platform for my personal message as much as MSNBC would. … I’ve only been there for three months, but everyone’s been very nice, very warm, very welcoming. I just hope everyone continues to be very welcoming with my message, you know, as the election gets more heated (laughs). It’s very hard, but it’s really fun.

You recently re-launched your blog McCainBlogette.com, and part of your mission statement is that you believe there is room for all walks of life in the GOP. How do you think this generation of young people—who trend progressive on social issues like yourself—find a party alliance with the GOP? You know, people sometimes ask me what I use as my political model or my life model and I’ve never had one, which is

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why I choose to speak out. When it comes to things like gay marriage, and even when Jay Leno asked me about the legalization of marijuana, I think those are issues that young people don’t take quite nearly as hard of a line on. It’s statistically proven that people under 40 view gay marriage more as a civil rights issue than a political or religious one.

I think times are changing. The world is evolving and we need to start evolving as a party or we’re going to die.

I know that gives people so much ammo to say that I’m not a real Republican or whatever, but I cannot imagine what it is like to live your life everyday, especially in a world like politics, and seeing everything completely black and white with no room for gray. I worry about people like that; I think they think very dangerously.

I’m just trying to show that I’m a different kind of person, that I think differently, and that there are a lot of people out there like me.

You write about women’s issues and advocate for access and opportunities for young women. What do you think about our current role models? Should we be demanding more?

I was part of a panel for a screening of the movie Miss Representation. It’s a fantastic movie about why it’s so difficult being a woman, in America, and especially being a woman in the media. I mean, I have made mistakes. I continue to make mistakes. I still struggle with the fact that I like feeling like a sexy, provocative woman and wearing clothes that make me feel like a sexy woman, and the world projects back to me that that means that I’m a slut. So I struggle with these things, even now.

I’m 27 years old and I’m still trying to figure out how I can walk the line of feeling like I have some connection to feeling like a sexy woman and also being a smart, strong voice in politics.

Unfortunately, the media doesn’t make it easy for us. It’s like you can’t be smart and sexy and beautiful all at the same time.

Do I think that there are women out there who are doing it? Oh, completely.

There are women everywhere that are do-

courtesy of noh8campaign.com ing this. But for the most part, the media wants to peg us in this role like we’re either a Hilary Clinton or a Sarah Palin. You’re a strong bitch, or you’re a stupid … whatever stereotypes they’re placing on Sarah Palin.

What do you want to stand for as a young woman in a powerful position? Do you feel like you’re succeeding in doing that?

I’m trying to do the best I can. I’m still a work in progress. I started this when I was young and painfully naïve and didn’t know much better, so there are definitely things that I would undo. But I think a lot of young women like that I am imperfect. I’m here to just say, “This is who I am, this is what I believe in politics, and this is what I’m trying to change.”

For my specific role, I’m trying to change the way we see women in Republican politics. I didn’t really have any role models growing up that really identified whom I wanted to be. I met [former MTV News reporter] Tabitha Soren when I was 13 years old, when she interviewed my father on the campaign trail. She was the first person I had ever met that looked like someone who I could hang out with, who dressed really cool, had a cool haircut, had cool make up on, and was asking my father really tough questions about the election. She was the first person I had met that really gave an example that you could do it all.

So I’ve always tried to do the same thing since and I have this amazing life and this amazing platform. I’ve been handed so much and I always feel like, “Now what am I going to do with it?”

Tara Kutz is a video communications associate for Campus Progress.

Follow her on Twitter @tarakutz.

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