VOLUME 76 • ISSUE 10 • JUNE 1, 2021
ONE YEAR LATER PROTESTS, POLICE AND THE FIGHT FOR REFORM P. 8–9
NEWS An end to COVID-19 in Oregon is on the horizon P. 4
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Students share their experience with Computer Science program P. 12–13
OPINION Why you should fight for Palestine P.14–15
CONTENTS
COVER BY SAM PERSON
NEWS HILL TO HALL OREGON SURPASSES 200,000 CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES, EXPERTS REMAIN CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC
P. 3
INTERNATIONAL DESPITE CHALLENGES KAIBIGAN SHOWS UNITY AT CULTURE NIGHT
P. 10
P. 4
OPPOSITION TO TOKYO SUMMER OLYMPICS RISES OVER COVID-19 FEARS
P. 11
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CS PROGRAM STRUGGLES WITH DIVERSITY AND RETENTION
P. 12–13
OPINION WE HAVE A MORAL DUTY TO STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE
P. 14–15
EVENTS CALENDAR
P. 16
ARTS & CULTURE POSITIVITY CULTURE IS A PSYOP
P. 5
INTERNATIONAL THIS WEEK AROUND THE WORLD
P. 6–7
COVER THE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD: ONE YEAR LATER
P. 8–9
STAFF
EDIT ORI A L EDITOR IN CHIEF Justin Grinnell MANAGING EDITOR Nick Townsend NEWS EDITORS Conor Carroll Rachel Owen INTERNATIONAL EDITOR Karisa Yuasa SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Béla Kurzenhauser ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Morgan Troper
OPINION EDITOR Nick Gatlin ONLINE EDITOR Lily Hennings COPY CHIEF Sophie Concannon CONTRIBUTORS Yolanda Baines Alana Baldwin-Joiner Diane Erickson Catherine Kane Analisa Landeros Michelle Moore Mackenzie Streissguth
PHO T O & MULTIMEDI A PHOTO EDITOR Annie Schutz
A DV ISING & ACCOUN TING COORDINATOR OF STUDENT MEDIA Reaz Mahmood
MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Olivia Lee
STUDENT MEDIA ACCOUNTANT Sheri Pitcher
PRODUC TION & DE SIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sam Person
TECHNOLOGY ADVISOR Corrine Nightingale
DESIGNERS Sam Garcia Shannon Steed T ECHNOL OGY & W EB SIT E TECHNOLOGY ASSISTANTS Juliana Bigelow Kahela Fickle George Olson
To contact Portland State Vanguard, email editor@psuvanguard.com
MIS SION S TAT EMEN T Vanguard ’s mission is to serve the Portland State community with timely, accurate, comprehensive and critical content while upholding high journalistic standards. In the process, we aim to enrich our staff with quality, hands-on journalism education and a number of skills highly valued in today’s job market.
A BOU T Vanguard, established in 1946, is published weekly as an independent student newspaper governed by the PSU Student Media Board. Views and editorial content expressed herein are those of the staff, contributors and readers and do not necessarily represent the PSU student body, faculty, staff or administration. Find us in print Tuesdays and online 24/7 at psuvanguard.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @psuvanguard for multimedia content and breaking news.
MAY 26–29 RACHEL OWEN
MAY 26: M ULTNOMAH COUNTY MOVES TO “LOW RISK” COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS
Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced on Thursday that Multnomah County and five other Oregon counties were approved for low-risk COVID-19 restrictions. The lower restriction level allows for a maximum of 50% capacity in indoor locations such as restaurants and gyms, as well as 75% capacity in retail stores. The county was set for approval after 65% of citizens 16 and older were reported to have had at least the first dose of the vaccine.
MAY 28: O REGON BECOMES THE FIRST STATE TO UNIONIZE ITS LEGISLATIVE STAFF
Staff members of the Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO) reached an agreement within its platform to be represented by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 1094. IUPAT serves as a union that represents members of the community that show “an abiding commitment to service.” In a press release regarding the announcement, DPO Chair Carla “KC” Hanson stated, “This is a huge victory, and is worthy of much celebration. We share in the hope and belief that this will be a watershed moment for the rights of legislative staffers not only in Oregon, but in state capitols all across America.”
MAY 28: C ONGRESS BLOCKS PLAN FOR INVESTIGATION ON JAN. 6 CAPITOL RIOT
The HOPE Amendment, or Senate Joint Resolution 12, was approved by Oregon lawmakers in the House of Representatives on May 19, according to a press release from the Senate Majority Office. “SJR 12 proposes that ‘health care as a human right’ be added to the Oregon Constitution,” the briefing stated. SJR 12 embodies the legacy of the late Representative Mitch Greenlick, D-Ore., who was a staunch proponent of recognizing healthcare as a fundamental human right. Greenlick was also honored on the floor of the Senate with Senate Concurrent Resolution 3. The resolution amends the Oregon Constitution to establish healthcare as a right to all citizens, though it has a loophole. SJR 12 states the obligation “must be balanced against the public interest in funding public schools and other essential public services,” which makes SJR 12 more akin to a call to action, and not a specific legislative proposal or policy. Republicans oppose the measure, claiming that since over 90% of Oregon citizens have access to healthcare already, the action is superfluous.
MAY 29: C ITY OF PORTLAND RELEASES PLANS FOR SOUTH PARK BLOCKS
Although the plan for a redesign of the 12-block park has been talked about since the spring of 2019, the Portland City Council will finally address it on July 7. The new design prioritizes bike and pedestrian walkways over roads around the blocks. Statues of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, torn down during last year’s protests, will now be replaced with artwork showcasing the region’s indigenous communities and temporary art exhibits that will be switched out periodically. Despite an undecided start date for the plan, Portland’s Parks and Recreation bureau estimated it could cost between $22.9–46.6 million to build and another estimated $7.4 million to include it into the city’s plan for a “Green Loop.” The loop is a proposed six-mile connected park running through central Portland.
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
NEWS
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OREGON SURPASSES 200,000 CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES, EXPERTS REMAIN CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC
GOVERNOR KATE BROWN ANSWERS QUESTIONS AFTER VISITING THE MARION COUNTY AND SALEM HEALTH VACCINATION CLINIC AT THE STATE FAIRGROUNDS IN SALEM, OR ON JAN. 13, 2021. ABIGAIL DOLLINS/ STATESMAN JOURNAL VIA AP, POOL
CONOR CARROLL Oregon reached just over 201,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases on May 30, while the state’s death toll is 2,668, according to the Oregon Health Authority’s official data. Despite this milestone, according to AAA, travel in the Pacific Northwest is expected to rise at least 64% during the Memorial Day three-day weekend, with air travel nationwide to increase over 500%. The estimated total number of Oregonians expected to travel is upwards of 485,000, and 90% of them will be traveling by car. Oregon state health officials reported during the week of May 17, the number of daily cases dropped 25% from the week previous, and as of May 30, the daily case count, deaths, hospitalizations and positivity rates have all been decreasing. “While case counts are decreasing…in large part due to vaccination, there remains a risk of COVID-19 in Oregon, especially for those
4
NEWS
who are not yet vaccinated,” stated the head of the Oregon Health Authority, Dr. Patrick Allen, in a press release. However, with case counts decreasing and more citizens getting vaccinated, some people across the state are inclined to travel, whether in-state or outside of it. That being the case, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and 26 mayors across the state issued a statement on May 21 calling for people to stay close to home, or at their homes, this Memorial Day. “If you love the coast, stay home for now and plan your trip in the summer,” the officials stated. “If you love the Columbia Gorge, keep it local this weekend and visit later on. If you love Central Oregon, it’ll still be there in a few weeks.” While Oregon lowered COVID-19 restrictions for 5 counties on May 27, including its most populous, Multnomah County, 15 others remain in the “high risk” category, indi-
cating COVID-19 is still a risk to the state, especially when people are traveling from county to county. The 15 counties remaining in the highrisk sector are Republican-run political districts, which have consistently had the lowest vaccination rates in the state, and have also tended to have more of the population viewing masks as unnecessary, and mask mandates as unconstitutional. The OHA encountered the first six cases of the extremely virulent COVID-19 variant B.1.617.2—which has been affecting India for months—in Oregon’s borders. The officials actually encountered the first two cases on May 12, then two more by May 19 and another two cases by May 26. The OHA has noted that at least one of the cases was found in a person that had traveled internationally. The studies being conducted on the new variant are still being compiled from the 17 coun-
tries it has currently been found in; however, several “preprint” scientific papers—papers shared publicly before peer review—indicate that it is at least 50% more virulent than the B.1.1.7 variant, which helped fuel Oregon’s fourth surge. Scientists are unsure if the studies indicate a real-world correlation or not, though they note that in counties with higher vaccination rates and more vaccinated people, community spread of most COVID-19 variants is lower. According to English health officials, in a study by Public Health England, “The PfizerBioNTech vaccine was 88% effective” against the novel variant. Around 44% of Oregonians have been fully vaccinated, with thousands more going through the process every day. However, according to a recent survey of more than 100 virologists and infectious-disease researchers, 90% of them believed COVID-19 would become endemic.
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
OLIVIA RODRIGO. COURTESY OF FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS
POSITIVITY CULTURE IS A PSYOP MORGAN TROPER
WHY CAN’T PEOPLE JUST ACCEPT THAT THEY ENJOY MAINSTREAM ART? PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
When The Ramones released their first trio of highly influential records in the late ‘70s—their self-titled debut in 1976 and Leave Home and Rocket to Russia in 1977—the consensus was that it was sort of dumb music, and that dumb was good. “Stoopidity [sic], both celebrated and satirized,” wrote The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau—a.k.a. the “dean of American rock critics.” In a retrospective conducted by The Guardian in 2016, Richard Manitoba from The Dictators referred to them as “the smartest dumb band you ever heard.” Rolling Stone put it even more pithily back in 1979: “The Ramones are dumb.” This is not the way gleefully-lowbrow art is received by critics today. Massive media corporations have thoroughly co-opted the language of social justice; they would like you to believe that all media has a political and social conscience now, whether or not it was conceived in a boardroom and produced on an assembly line. This phenomenon has given us cringe-inducing headlines like “Captain Marvel smashes the box office and the patriarchy,” or articles in exalted publications such as Vanity Fair with straight-faced titles such as “Star Wars: The Last Jedi Offers the Harsh Condemnation of Mansplaining We Need in 2017.” This is not to say blockbusters can’t telegraph progressive principles—but the idea that a Star Wars film is a trojan horse for the revolution is a fantasy. This has had some terrible consequences for culture writing at large. Things have cooled down a little bit within the last few years, but when the narrative surrounding a piece of commercial media is that it is “world-changing” or espouses some miscellaneous radical idea—even when it is fundamentally dumb or geared toward children—it becomes incredibly hard to criticize in liberal spheres. A good example of this was Pitchfork’s controversial review of Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You from 2019—a publication that continues to more or less play by its own rules— in which author Rawiya Kameir referred to the music as “empowerment-core.” Kameir’s review was misconstrued by some as an attack on Lizzo’s politics, but the point was actually just that the music was a little corny. The positivity culture that is so pervasive in arts criticism has a few notable points of origin. The first is poptimism, the attitude that pop or “commercial” music deserves the same level of critical recognition as other, more “important” forms of music such as jazz, blues or rock—and it’s easy to see this same philosophy applied to other mediums such as film or television. The second is what Tom Scocca refers to as “smarm” in his groundbreaking Gawker essay from 2013, “On Smarm”—an unctuous, “no losers” philosophy that views itself as a response to years of snark and gatekeeping in arts criticism. And lastly, we have essayists such as Chuck Klosterman, who pioneered the art of the “it’s important, actually” lowbrow retrospective. Say what you will about Klosterman—his influence remains palpable in the world of arts journalism. The problem with this positivity culture is that it has resulted in a grand flattening of artistic standards. In other words, if all art is important now, then none is. The latest case study is Olivia Rodrigo, a prefab Disney star-turned-teen sensation who has been slapped with the burdensome “voice of her generation” tag by critics who are probably a little too old to be making that call. Don’t get me wrong: Rodrigo’s debut album Sour is good—great, even—but, with the hyperbole surrounding her album rollout, the accolades are enough to make you wish you were illiterate. “[A] stunning portrait of adolescence,” wrote British newspaper i; “multidimensional,” said the NME. Poptimism is a valuable philosophy—it resulted in the mass reevaluation of tabloid pop and musical forms such as disco, which had been unfairly maligned in elitist, rock-oriented critical circles for at least a generation. It has also helped expose the racist, classist and sexist prejudices that often help fuel anti-pop sentiment. But, as the response to Olivia Rodrigo’s album makes clear, the pendulum has possibly swung too far in the opposite direction, where critics who know better now trip over themselves in an attempt to legitimize and intellectualize corny mainstream tastes. You can like pop music and Marvel movies and Star Wars without needing to convince yourself and everyone around you that these things are “smart”—sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a pop record geared toward children is just a pop record geared toward children.
ARTS & CULTURE
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THIS WEEK
around the
WORLD May 24–29
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INTERNATIONAL
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
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May 24
NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
Tasmanian devils were born on the Australian mainland for the first time in 3,000 years, according to the NGO Aussie Ark on Instagram. Born at the 988-acre Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary in New South Wales, the seven joeys were identified in their mothers’ pouches, being the size of “shelled peanuts.” “We’ve been able to historically, albeit in its infancy, return the devil to [the] mainland,” said Aussie Ark president Tim Faulkner. Tasmanian devils died out in Australia 3,000 years ago, but the predatory marsupial continued to exist on the island of Tasmania. Their population plummeted when a contagious form of cancer called Devil Facial Tumor Disease killed 90% of them. In September 2020, Aussie Ark introduced 26 Tasmanian devils back into the Australian wild, and the marsupials have successfully reproduced. The reintroduction of this native apex predator will help control the populations of feral cats and foxes that hunt endangered species, according to CNN. 2
May 26
THAILAND
Princess Chulabhorn, the sister of Thailand’s king, bypassed government laws on Tuesday and approved a decision to import COVID-19 vaccines from China, according to Reuters. Developed by the company Sinopharm, the vaccines will be imported by the Chulabhorn Royal Academy, an institution the princess chairs. These doses will serve as “alternative vaccines,” until Thailand can produce their own “to a capacity that can sufficiently protect against outbreaks,” according to the academy’s secretary general, Nithi Mahanonda on Facebook. Only approximately 3.3% of Thailand’s population has received at least one vaccine dose in a country of 66 million people. Its government has avoided importing doses from other countries, instead opting to manufacture the vaccines domestically through a company that the king
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
owns. Princess Chulabhorn’s decision has caught much of the government by surprise: but reception seems positive so far. “I just saw the announcement last night,” Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on a local television interview. “But if it is a benefit to the country, we are ready.” 3
May 26
MALI
Malian President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane resigned from office two days after being arrested by the military, according to Reuters. Their detention was orchestrated by their colleague, Vice President Colonel Assimi Goita, a military officer who has since assumed power over Mali. The three men were part of a transitional government which was formed after a coup in August 2020, led by Goita. The interim government’s goal was to restore Mali’s democratic government and hold fair, legislative and presidential elections in 2022. According to a statement read by Goita’s advisor Baba Cissé, Goita had the men removed from office because they had not consulted him on a government reshuffle, which was a violation of the cabinet’s charter. As of Tuesday, Goita’s actions have been met with international condemnation. “After the resignation of the transitional president and his prime minister, the detainees will recover their freedoms. This will be done gradually [for] obvious security reasons,” Cissé said. The Economic Community of West African States described the high-profile arrests as “an attempted power grab,” while French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to take “targeted sanctions against the people involved” if the situation remains unresolved. 4
May 27
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
Two European planes headed to Moscow were blocked by the Russian government because they planned to avoid Belarusian airspace. The planes had been following the guidance of
the European Union, which had just advised European airlines not to fly over Belarus. Belarus faced backlash this week when its authorities diverted a Lithuania-bound airplane to its capital, Minsk, claiming they had received a bomb threat. “I had to protect people, I was thinking about the country’s security,” Lukashenko said in a statement on Wednesday. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, supported Lukashenko’s decision shortly after. Upon arrival, passenger Roman Protasevich and his partner Sofia Sapega were arrested and the bomb threat was deemed implausible, according to BBC. Protasevich is a Belarusian journalist and the former Editor in Chief of Nexta, an opposition media outlet that has extensively covered the ongoing Belarusian protests against the current government. 5
May 29
GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Seismologists recorded 61 earthquakes within a 24-hour period following the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in eastern Congo on May 22. The eruption spewed torrents of lava from a fissure in its side and killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 900 homes and five schools in the city of Goma and its adjacent villages, officials said on Monday. DRC government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya told CNN reporters that these earthquakes are unusual and the country has “never seen this before.” The natural disaster has damaged Goma’s infrastructure, and power was only partially restored on Wednesday. “It is not known exactly how many have now left the city, but approximately 400,000 people are potentially affected by the evacuation order,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Many families have been separated in the displacement, and over 100 children have been reported missing, according to UNICEF. Due to recent data on the volcano’s seismic activity, DRC authorities believe that Mount Nyiragongo could erupt again.
INTERNATIONAL
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THE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD
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COVER
PSU PSU Vanguard Vanguard •• JUNE JUNE 1, 1, 2020 2021 • psuvanguard.com
OPPOSITE: MARCH 4 GEORGE FLOYD PROTEST IN PORTLAND OR, 2020. ANNIE SCHUTZ/PSU VANGUARD BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTER WITH MEGAPHONE. ANNIE SCHUTZ/PSU VANGUARD
CONNOR CARROLL In Portland, protests have diminished and police reform has stalled, leaving advocates for change in political limbo. May 25 marked the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, after a Minneapolis police officer killed him during an arrest. On that anniversary, a crowd of an estimated 200 protesters in Portland gathered at the Multnomah County Justice Center and later Portland City Hall, where some in the crowd set fires and police declared a riot. According to the Portland Police Bureau’s (PPB) Media Relations department, “Based on the criminal activity of people in the crowd, officers gave public address announcements that the assembly was unlawful. People threw frozen water bottles, glass bottles, eggs and metal spikes at officers and fired mortar-style fireworks at officers.” Around midnight, after five targeted arrests, the crowd size decreased to an estimated couple dozen protesters still present in the downtown area, and no further relevant criminal activity was reported. The size of protests currently is far smaller than those that took place in early June of 2020, when a crowd of thousands walked across
or report a fellow officer engaged in misconduct” and S.B.1604 makes it more difficult for arbitrators to “overturn police disciplinary findings.” H.B. 2002, a yet-to-pass sweeping legislative proposal, would scale back the criminal justice system’s authorities and reach, with reforms in minimum mandatory sentencing and what sends a person to jail or simply cites them, among many other alterations to a person’s interaction with the legal and penal system. Advocates for police reform in Portland argue now that promises for change have not been kept by the mayor or Portland City Council, and independent journalists on the ground at protests throughout Oregon have seen the same behavior from police as last year, and even infiltration and disruption of Black Lives Matter protests by far-right activists. “Unfortunately, I don’t even know if we are pointed in the right direction,” said Shannon Wright in an interview with OPB. Wright is the deputy director for the Partnership for Safety and Justice, which fights for criminal and police reform in Portland and Oregon as a whole. As for the protests specifically, from Eugene and Springfield to the streets of Portland, the Black Lives Matter protests and anti-ICE pro-
ground has essentially been condemned from chemical saturation.” Tear gas is prohibited under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, and its use in both warfare and domestically as a riot control agent is often considered a human rights violation by international organizations like Amnesty International and civil rights groups like the ACLU. According to Sven Eric Jordt, associate professor of anesthesiology at Duke University, in a 2018 interview with CNN, tear gas is particularly unhealthy for the underdeveloped nature of a child’s immune system, lungs and other bodily functions and long term side-effects can follow. “Children are especially at risk because tear gas is heavier than air. It is present in higher concentrations closer to the ground, and children, being shorter, are exposed to higher concentrations,” stated Jordt. Cory Elia, managing editor of the Village Portland and podcaster for KBOO, has noted there are further consequences from the protests over the past year, in regard to the tactics utilized by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) and other law enforcement agencies across the state.
Center have sued the Springfield Police Department for colluding with and assisting farright wing militia. “The complaint stems from the events at the now-infamous Black Unity-led protest in Thurston last July, which saw SPD use excessive force on peaceful protesters, while ignoring the violence and threats coming from far-right counter protesters,” Croxton stated in a Double Sided Media article. Croxton was on the ground during these protests in July 2020, and reported on the events extensively. Croxton said he faced counter-protest intimidation and police violence first hand, or watched it happen to others. “July 29 was the most violent day in Springfield in 2020,” Croxton said. “Springfield P.S. essentially caused a riot, they tased people, one of the leaders had a knee on their neck; bones were broken. Then as we were leaving, the fascists showed up and were caught on live stream coordinating with the SPD. There is currently a lawsuit pending, so we’ll see.” This is not uncommon for law enforcement to be affiliated with, or even occupied by far-right groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Boogaloo Boys. The FBI’s Counterterrorism
the Burnside Bridge and took to downtown Portland, demanding justice and reform. Mayor Ted Wheeler gave a press conference the morning of June 2, 2020 and said that he and other political and society leaders must act in order to address the systemic racism at the heart of these types of injustices. “Until we get to the ‘OK, we’ve now heard it, we’ve acknowledged it’, so what concrete actions are we taking next?” Wheeler said during the press conference. “I want to hear more from the community about what they think we should do.” Over the past year, protesters have made it clear the reforms they want from Wheeler and the Portland City Council: less police violence against people of color, re-allocation of resources toward community-focused programs, and more accountability for officers’ actions. At the state level, there has been reform, with a flurry of bills in late June 2020, on the heels of Floyd’s death, coming out of the Oregon State legislature. H.B. 4203 bans the use of chokeholds except when using deadly force is “warranted,” H.B. 4205 mandates officers take action to “prevent
tests are steady, but lack the size and influence they once did, according to James Croxton, the managing editor for Double Sided Media and contributing reporter for The Village Portland. “A lot of these protests have fizzled out into nothingness,” Croxton said. “Most of my time I spend in Portland is now at these ICE protests, which don’t seem to be going anywhere. But even that is often just a couple dozen of protesters, sometimes maybe 100, and even then, it is only the really dedicated ones.” The United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility and detention center in Southwest Portland has been a consistent site for protests over the last year. For Croxton, another concern is the ICE facility’s close proximity to the Cottonwood School of Civics and Science, a public charter school, which has been exposed to many evenings of tear gas and other chemical munitions since when the protests began last May. “Another major thing from the ICE protests is that people actually know what the place is now,” Croxton said. “I mean, it’s right next to a K-8 [charter] school. With schools opening back up, and kids going back to school, the play-
“There are a massive amount of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from all the violence that went on between police, or federal agents, last summer,” Elia said. “But I do foresee that there will be protests this upcoming summer, for sure. They are just going to be severely diminished.” “[It seems like] they are using new tactics... where the police mainly remain standoffish, and utilize targeted and specific arrests to try and quell the protests’ energy and momentum, simply allowing the protests to dissolve internally.” “I’m optimistic that people will show up in numbers [this summer], however, there is a lot of concern within the protest community about the informants being found in individual protests and cited in news reports,” Croxton said. “The truth of the matter is, there are informants, and they are either police, federal agents, or far-right provocateurs, sometimes all three,” Croxton said. “You see this in Eugene, in Springfield, and definitely in Portland.” Croxton was referencing a specific alleged incident in the neighborhood of Thurston, in eastern Springfield, where the Black Unity Organization and Civil Liberties Defense
Division stated white supremacy groups and far-right militia groups have infiltrated on a large scale many law enforcement agencies across the U.S. According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, white supremacists have “produced more fatalities than any other category of domestic terrorists since 2000.” The FBI issued a report in 2017 titled “White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence” detailing incidents of white supremacist violence between 2000 and 2016, arguing such violence would likely continue in the future. “Regarding the future, I have no idea what will happen,” Croxton said. “All I know is that people in our communities are angry and some are willing to act. It has been over 365 days since George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin and, yet, over 1000 people have been killed at the hands of law enforcement—mostly including our BIPOC community.” “If people want to make a change, they need to educate themselves, and they need to get out and fucking protest, let people know how they feel,” Elia said.
ONEYEARLATER PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
COVER
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DESPITE CHALLENGES, KAIBIGAN SHOWS UNITY AT CULTURE NIGHT 10
INTERNATIONAL
PARTICIPANTS AT KAIBIGAN'S CULTURE NIGHT. COURTESY OF PSU KAIBIGAN
MICHELLE MOORE Kaibigan, Portland State’s Filipino American Student Association hosted their 16th annual Pilipino Culture Night (PCN) on May 22. As COVID-19 restrictions prevented the club from performing on campus as it had in the past, the Kaibigan executive board made the event entirely online, creating a threehour show demonstrating Filipino culture. Kaibigan is named after the Filipino word for friend. Kaibigan’s mission is to “unite and empower Filipino American students through educational, social, cultural and political activities while celebrating the Filipino American experience.” Their culture night was meant to accomplish their mission through Zoom by showing a wide variety of video performances. Several traditional Filipino dances were performed in traditional outfits as well as other performances, such as contemporary song covers by Kaibigan members and a slam poetry presentation. The theme of this year’s culture night was “Isang Lahi Isang Puso,” which means one race, one heart. It had the goal of displaying the diversity of the Filipino identity. “For as long as you have the heart for the people, language, and culture, we are all the same blood and heart,” the program invitation stated. The program featured speakers from various walks of life and diverse groups, all united by the Filipino identity. The biggest challenge of the event, according to the organizers, was changing its entire format due to COVID-19 restrictions. In previous years, the Kaibigan’s culture night was held at
the Smith Memorial Student Union ballroom on campus and would center a play or other type of visual performance that would show the lives and struggles of Filipino Americans. However, they were unable to do that this year because of the campus shutdown. Instead, the culture night showed several interviews with current or former Kaibigan members speaking about their experiences with the club and as Filipino American students. The night also showcased traditional dances by Bailed De Jose and Tabilo Gals. According to Kaibigan leadership, “Trying to transition that story to this virtual setting was hard, but we were able to come together and think of new creative ways to do that, and we thought we could best do that through the interviews, capturing as many different Filipino American identities that we could have included.” Over 60 people attended the event, switching their mics on in between every performance to cheer and fill the chat with praise. Even though the pandemic has been hard on the social aspect of attending PSU, clubs such as this enabled people to find community. “With the Filipino culture we are very social, we love being around each other and hanging out with each other and partying sometimes,” said Kaibigan President Kim Louis Rollon. “I think that a big part of COVID-19 was that being taken away from us, not just for us but for everyone. One of the main struggles for me as a president was how to continue or keep a space of community for everyone even though we’re so far away.”
PSU Vanguard • JUNE 1, 2021 • psuvanguard.com
OPPOSITION TO TOKYO SUMMER OLYMPICS RISES OVER COVID-19 FEARS YOLANDA BAINES One of Japan’s largest newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun, published an editorial on Wednesday, May 26 calling on Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to reconsider holding the Tokyo Olympics, which is set to commence in less than two months despite rising COVID-19 cases and public opposition. “It is simply beyond reason to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics this summer,” the editorial stated. “The present situation is nowhere close to making anyone feel safe, and that’s the unfortunate reality.” This followed a survey done by the publication that found 83% of respondents said the Tokyo Olympics should be postponed or scrapped. With less than 2% of the population fully vaccinated as of May 24, physicians like Naoto Ueyama, the chairman of the Japan Doctors Union, have warned against holding the Olympics. “I don’t think they should go ahead while pushing many people into danger or calling
CEO OF THE TOKYO 2020 TOSHIRO MUTO ATTENDS TOKYO 2020 IOC. NICOLAS DATICHE/POOL PHOTO VIA AP on many people to make sacrifices in regard to their lives in order for them to take place,” Ueyama said. With many of Japan’s prefectures already in a state of emergency, Ueyama stressed the Olympics will further strain Japan’s medical system and possibly introduce new variants of the virus into the Japanese population. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) remains resolute in going forward with the games. “The advice we have from the [World Health Organization] and all other scientific and medical advice that we have is that—all the measures we have outlined, all of those measures that we are undertaking are satisfactory and will ensure a safe and secure games in terms of health...and that’s the case whether there is a state of emergency or not,” said John Coates, the chairman of the coordination commission. Similarly, in an interview conducted by CNN, IOC president Thomas Bach echoed that the committee has “put in place comprehensive
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[COVID-19] countermeasures to ensure that the athletes of the world can come together in a safe environment for everyone.” In a statement aimed at reassuring the public of Japan, President of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee Seiko Hashimoto expressed that “230 physicians and 310 nurses would be needed daily, and said about 30 hospitals in Tokyo and outside were contacted about caring for Olympic patients.” However, her statement only supports Ueyama’s concerns that the games would burden Japan’s medical system. Unconvinced by the safety measures taken by organizers, 6,000 members from the Tokyo Medical Practitioners’ Association demanded the Olympic games be canceled in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, as reported by AP News. The letter states, “We believe the correct choice is to cancel an event that has the possibility of increasing the numbers of infected people and deaths.” The New England Journal of Medicine also claimed “the IOC’s determination to proceed
with the Olympic Games is not informed by the best scientific evidence...[t]he IOC’s playbooks are not built on scientifically rigorous risk assessment, and they fail to consider the ways in which exposure occurs, the factors that contribute to exposure, and which participants may be at highest risk.” Undeterred by the pressures to cancel, the IOC is determined to move forward with the games. Even if the host city wanted to cancel, the contract between the IOC and host city “only gives the option for the IOC to cancel, not for the host city.” “The Olympics are the biggest sporting event on the calendar,” said Professor Jack Anderson, a sports law expert, in a statement to BBC. “There are billions at stake for Japan and the IOC in terms of broadcasting sponsorship. It is a huge event, and there are huge contractual obligations for all sides. It’s probably safe to say that if the Tokyo Olympics is cancelled, it would probably be the biggest insurance pay-out event of its kind, there’s no question about that.”
INTERNATIONAL
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CS DEPARTMENT STRUGGLES WITH RETENTION AND DIVERSITY
INTIMIDATING EXAMS AND DIFFICULT COURSES ARE HURTING CS’S DIVERSITY
BÉLA KURZENHAUSER In September 2018, 355 students entered Portland State’s degree program in computer science, located in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science (MCECS), according to student research. By the end of the year, only 243 of them would remain. Out of the 142 students that departed the college, 31 were female students, which together composed 44% of the program’s entering female cohort that year. PSU’s computer science (CS) program has long struggled to retain its students’ enrollment. It wasn’t until the 2017–18 academic year that the program finally managed to retain more than half of its entering students, according to student research data. Although COVID-19 has led to a college-wide enrollment epidemic, the CS department’s troubles extend beyond the events of the past year. While most departments and degrees are separated into lowerdivision and upper-division coursework, the actual distinction between the two divisions largely comes down to student standing or course number. The CS program is unusual, as it is one of the only programs throughout PSU that contains an additional barrier of application between these two divisions. In order to be accepted into the CS program’s upper division, a selection of mandatory course requirements must be met, as well as passable completion of what the department calls a “proficiency demo.” For transfer students coming in from institutions such as CCC or PCC, the proficiency demo is taken several months before starting their education at PSU, but for ongoing students, the demo is baked directly into the curriculum for CS202, one of the program’s required courses. The structure of the proficiency demo is a simple one-hour examination, where students are given a single programming prompt and are given an hour to complete the prompt. The demo is designed similarly to the types of questions often seen in job interviews, thus hopefully preparing students for their eventual transition into the industry. The proficiency demo is still relatively new to the program, having only been first initiated several years back. While many students regard the demo as being effective for learning and testing programming proficiency, its high complexity and erratic difficulty curve make it controversial among the lower-division student body. If students fail the demo, their acceptance into the program can be delayed by an entire term. For students enrolled in a class such as CS202, that can mean having to retake the full class, which can put an undue burden on students’ financial stability and GPA.
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
“The first proficiency demo I took in CS163 was really rough,” said a student who asked to remain anonymous. “I froze from the pressure, and the thought of having to retake the class from getting a question that I wasn’t prepared for really stressed me out. The anxiety was overwhelming.” The demo problems range from being very simplistic to sometimes frustratingly complex. Some students have complained that this structure results in an unfair testing environment, where students are tested on an unequal level. Students draw problems randomly, and are allowed to redraw their problem up to two times if they feel that the question they got was too hard. Despite this, students can still get stuck with highlevel questions, and the problem-picking process “only adds more stress to an already stressful situation,” according to the student. “My proficiency demo question was borderline trivially easy, while some of my classmates, who I considered at the time to be better programmers than myself, had a considerably harder time,” said Blaine Holbert, an alum of the program. “I think that’s exceptionally unfair. Instructors can make the demo seem a lot more daunting than it actually is, which makes students dread it rather than prepare for it.” The demo’s variable difficulty forces students to study extensively in the weeks or even months leading up to the demos, which can be extremely hard for people who have ongoing responsibilities, such as work or caring for their family. This kind of pressure can heavily affect students who have less access to resources, such as female students or underrepresented or marginalized (URM) students. “The demos seem to prioritize students who have had more privileges than others,” said Naya Mairena, a sophomore CS student. “I think they weed out students, but not in the way they intend to. I am Latina with an immigrant parent, and I grew up in Rockwood, which is a low-income area in the Portland Metro area. I had to go above and beyond to push myself and find that success.” Some students feel the department’s silence on its lack of student diversity contradicts PSU’s inclusive mission statement. “I am constantly hearing about how CS and the tech industry lacks diversity, but I don’t see [the department] taking the necessary steps to making CS easily accessible to those who are underrepresented,” Mairena said. “The racial diversity of the program is embarrassingly dire,” said Sarah Haskew, a graduating senior in the CS program and
a student researcher working on compiling data on student retention. “I can say that from the [interviews with students] that students who come from backgrounds underrepresented in computing have a harder time in CS.” Because of student privacy concerns, it’s difficult for researchers to process data on student demographics without potentially violating confidentiality policies. Haskew, alongside fellow student researchers Alyssa Tamayo, Danielle Beyer and Shawn Spears, ran into particular trouble trying to process data on student racial demographics, since most of the data they were able to access only distinguished between URM and non-URM students. Similarly, despite the fact that Oregon was one of the first states to accept nonbinary gender classification, most of the data received was split into either male, female or undisclosed legal sex. “It made it so it was only worth it data-wise to focus on comparing binary gender because it’s the only place we had data, which is super frustrating when you give a whole presentation about representation and struggles to faculty and then someone says, ‘I liked your women in CS presentation,’” Haskew said. “It’s hard to evaluate complex data from multiple sources and draw specific conclusions.” The data also doesn’t include demographics or information about students whose success on the proficiency demo may be dependent on a disability, although the absence of such data is likely due to student protection under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). “I got really sick from my disability during fall term and had to retake 202 in the winter term, and managed to pass with a P/NP grade,” said Sam Zeigler, a sophomore in the program. “I find it incredibly unprofessional how [the department] is running the program. They are being completely elitist and oppressive to many different kinds of students.” The program’s struggle with diversity is not just seen in student testimonies, but reflected in the department’s data. According to Haskew’s data, the retention rate among female freshmen in the program was as low as 28% in 2016-2017, and while there was an increase in years since, the retention rate for women in 2018–19 was just 56%, compared to 68% for men. The retention rate of URM students was relatively on par with non-URM students across the past several years, with URM students even having a higher retention rate than non-URM students in some academic years. Despite this, the diversity of the program remains low. In the 2019–20 academic year, 69.52% of
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SAM GARCIA
all entering CS students identified as non-URM, compared to only 30.48% entering URM students. Gender diversity suffers an even greater gap—in the same academic year, 80% of all entering CS students were male, with an entering female cohort of only 18.41% (the remaining 1.59% of students either identified as gender-nonbinary or didn’t disclose their gender). Between 2014 and 2017, the CS department suffered a retention rate 8–14% lower than the university average, with an even greater disparity when compared to the national university average. “I hear frequently how the PSU CS department is scratching its head with why it lacks diversity, and the answer is because only the people who can afford to fail can keep trying,” said another student who also requested to stay anonymous. “This means people with money. People with already successful parents who can afford to stimulate their child’s education. People who aren’t relying on grants or the GI bill.” Additionally, because the proficiency demo is often taken in the second year of a student’s education, failure is more likely to demotivate or encourage students to drop out because they still aren’t very far within their academic career. Many students consider the proficiency demo to be the most challenging requirement in the entire program, which is directly reflected in the program’s retention rate per division. During the 2017–18 academic year, student retention in the lower division was 69%, with lower-division post-baccalaureate retention at 58% (postbac students also have to take the proficiency demo). In contrast, upper-division retention was 92%, and upper-division postbac retention was 87%. One fact that stands out is that the retention rate for female students in both undergraduate and postbac upper-division courses is higher than the retention rate for male students in the same cohort— the retention rate for female upper-division postbac students was 100% in the 2017–18 academic year. “When you create a program which relies on successful and wealthy individuals propping people up, there’s no wonder those who have historically had a leg up make up most of the current program,” the anonymous student said. “Why make it harder for people? Why add yet another layer of bureaucracy and red tape to peoples’ lives?” The growth of CS as a field in the past two decades has resulted in an over-enrollment epidemic for universities throughout the country. While CS undergraduate enrollment has exploded in the past two decades, the number of Ph.D. candidates has stayed
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the same, resulting in a wealth of new students and not enough professors to teach them. Over-enrollment has led to some colleges holding course lotteries or restricting the number of students who can enter degree programs, according to a 2019 article by The New York Times. Many of the required courses in PSU’s CS program are offered only once a term, which can result in students not being able to take specific classes until an entire year after they’re suggested to. The lack of course openings often results in seniors filling up classes that are intended for junior students. “I don’t understand why they’re only offering one section of CS300 [a required class] this fall,” Mairena said. “The classes filled up so fast and some of my peers missed out on being able to take them now.” According to Ellie Harmon—a senior instructor in the department whose research and teaching focuses primarily on user experience and social and ethical considerations of software engineering—one of the major barriers faced by minority students in computer science is a lack of identification and familiarity with the field, as well as low self-confidence. Harmon notes that STEM professors tend to grade much more harshly than nonSTEM professors, and even though women tend to get higher grades than men in CS coursework, the lack of confidence in female students results in a lower retention rate. “It’s hard to even get to [students] without genuine interest and a sense of self-efficacy,” Harmon said. Outside of student research projects and internal work by instructors such as Harmon, MCECS also has the Maseeh College Values Committee, which is dedicated to improving diversity and equity across the entire college, including the numerous engineering departments alongside the CS department. The committee aims to collect student feedback on issues such as department policies or instructor behavior, and then inform college leadership as needed and make potential suggestions for improvement. “We, as a college, need to come to agreement on what the pressure points are in terms of our community members’ experiences,” said Joyce Pieretti, chair of the committee. “I think as members of the committee, we have a sense of what these concerns may be, but as a college, we have people across the spectrum of awareness, ranging from ‘I didn’t know this was a problem,’ to ‘this is a severe issue we needed to address yesterday.’” The committee currently consists mostly of faculty members from the engineering department, with no professor representative from the CS faculty. Current CS department chair Mark
Jones was the department’s representative prior to his appointment as department chair, but Pieretti said the committee is hoping to secure a CS representative by this fall. “Improvements in student retention are a high priority of the Maseeh College leadership team, from the dean to department chairs and staff who are focused on student experience,” Jones said. “We have met frequently over the past year to discuss the importance of improving retention of our students and are taking a series of measures to do so.” According to Jones, one plan to improve student retention is through the development of a hardship fund through philanthropic giving that has already helped multiple students, in addition to a 250% increase in student scholarships. Jones and the department are intent on keeping the proficiency demo as part of the program, but aim to rework the demo and move it into the upper division. Students will take the demo at a later stage in their education, when they hopefully have more programming experience, leaving them more prepared and less stressed for the demo. “In much the same way that you would check that a music student has some proficiency with their chosen instrument...the proficiency demo plays an important role in our program,” Jones said. “But we also know that the proficiency demo has been a source of stress and anxiety for some students, often because of its prominent place in the criteria for admission to the CS major. After more than a year of deliberations and committee work, the department has developed a new admissions process and some associated curriculum revisions the CS faculty voted to adopt.” Additional changes will include a modernization of the core degree curriculum, as well as a streamlined admissions process. Jones stated the changes should go into effect starting Fall 2022, pending Faculty Senate approval, and he’s hopeful that the new curriculum and structure will make the program “as open and accessible as possible to anyone who might be interested in exploring [computer science].” “I think a good place to start is to make our courses more accessible, creating an environment in our department that is more encouraging of opportunities, and finding innovative ways to re-evaluate [the department’s] plan for increasing retention rates,” said Alejandro Castaneda, president of studentrun organization We in Computer Science (WiCS). “The goal isn’t just having marginalized students in our classes, but rather having a college that empowers them and guides them to a successful career.”
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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WE H OPPO
FIG LIBE WHO
MEMBERS OF A JEWISH COMMUNITY JOIN SUPPORTERS OF THE PALESTINIANS DURING THE NATIONAL MARCH FOR PALESTINE. JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AP PHOTO
NICK GATLIN If you’ve been watching international news lately, chances are you’ve caught a glimpse of what’s happening in the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. We’ve seen video of Palestinians in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah having their homes taken from them by Israeli settlers; over a hundred Palestinian worshippers injured in an Israeli police raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque; and a lopsided fight between the Israeli military and Hamas that ended with at least 12 Israelis killed by Hamas rockets and civil unrest, and 232 Palestinians killed in Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli security forces and airstrikes, as of May 17. You may have also heard of the quality of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from news reports which show more than half of Israelis have received a second COVID-19 vaccine dose, while only 120,000 out of 5.5 million Palestinians have received the same. You may have heard Gaza referred to as an “open-air prison,” where only 4% of fresh water is drinkable, access to electricity is sporadic at best and the movement of people and goods is highly restricted by the Israeli government.
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OPINION
Many people are dissuaded from engaging with the issue of Palestine for fear that it is too complicated to understand. To be fair, the situation of how we got here is politically, historically, and legally complex, as well as extremely emotional for many. Where things stand now, however, is quite clear. The state of Israel exerts control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, but it applies the law very differently depending on where one lives and whether one is a Jewish Israeli or a Palestinian. Human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem describe Israel’s policy as one of apartheid, and looking at the facts it’s hard to disagree. We have an ethical obligation to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, and with Palestine. To do otherwise would be a dereliction of our duty as moral actors.
“THIS IS APARTHEID”
In this article, I will rely largely on two 2021 reports by world renowned human rights organizations Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Jerusalem-based group B’Tselem. These reports, despite any differences they may have between them, agree on one basic fact: Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people.
Before I begin in full, I would like to emphasize that criticism of the state of Israel and its government is not antisemitic. I oppose antisemitism in all its forms; Zionism is a political project that is not, and has never been, synonymous with Judaism. I’ll start with the April 2021 Human Rights Watch report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” As HRW details, approximately 6.8 million Palestinians and 6.8 million Jewish Israelis live in historic Palestine today—the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This area ecompasses the state of Israel and its official borders, as well as the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel holds effective control over all of these territories, and uses that control to systematically privilege Jewish Israelis over Palestinians in most aspects of life. Based on this reality, HRW determines Israel’s actions “amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” Apartheid, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, is a system of “inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Though the term may evoke memories of South
African apartheid, the term applies equally well to the policies of Israel toward Palestinians. From the beginning, Israel was founded as an explicitly Jewish state, rather than a state for all of its citizens. Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence declared the establishment of a Jewish state in “Eretz-Israel”—otherwise known as the broader area from the Jordan River to the Meditteranean Sea, encompassing Palestine. There is not enough space in this article to fully examine the founding of Israel, but in short: with the foundation of a “Jewish state” in a multiethnic land came disaster for the people who lived there. The “Nakba,” or “the catastrophe,” was the process during 1947-49 in which approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland—their towns, villages and cities—to make way for European Jewish settlers who had immigrated to Palestine to found the state of Israel. In the end, only about 150,000 Palestinians remained in the new state of Israel, which took 78% of Palestine’s total land. To this day, Israel’s Basic Law reaffirms Jewish supremacy in Israel. The 2018 Basic Law: Israel— The Nation-State of the Jewish People, also known as the Nation-State Law, states Israel is “the nation state of the Jewish people,” proclaiming “exercise of the right to national selfdetermination in the state of Israel is unique
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HAVE A MORAL DUTY TO OSE ISRAELI APARTHEID
WHY YOU SHOULD GHT FOR PALESTINIAN ERATION, NO MATTER O OR WHERE YOU ARE to the Jewish people.” It also declares a united Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and denotes Hebrew as the sole state language. This discriminatory law explicitly denies even Palestinian citizens of Israel the right to self-determination. This is not “democracy” as I understand it. Israel has long held a policy of demographic control and Jewish supremacy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2003 during his time as Finance Minister, “If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens,” stating that “If their [Palestinians’] numbers will reach 35-40 percent of the country, then the Jewish state will be annulled.” If you said the United States had to remain a majority white and Christian nation, and instituted a policy to expel minority populations or relegate them to second-class status; if you said that the right of self-determination was the right of whites alone; I would call you a fascist. Replace “white” with “Jewish,” and you have official Israeli policy. If you are a Jewish American born in the U.S., you have the right to travel to Israel, live there permanently, and gain automatic citizenship. If, on the other hand, you are a Palestinian born in a country like Lebanon or Jordan—say, if your parents or grandparents moved there as refugees after they were expelled from their homeland—you
are barred from both Israel and the OPT, even if you have family there or if you marry a citizen of Israel. Now I’ll turn to B’Tselem’s report on Israeli apartheid, where they come to much the same conclusions as HRW. It should be noted that they were originally founded as a human rights group focused solely on the West Bank and Gaza; they have since altered their mandate in light of increasingly unified Israli rule from the river to the sea. Here, I’ll recount excerpts from their January 2021 report, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” Again, if you are Jewish, you, your spouse and your descendants are entitled to Israeli citizenship and immigration rights no matter where you live. Jews are even automatically allowed to live in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, despite the fact that Israel does not legally own those lands. In contrast, if you are not Jewish, any rights or privileges you may gain in Israel come almost entirely at the discretion of Israeli officials: The Minister of the Interior inside Israel, and the military in the Occupied Territories. And if you are Palestinian and marry an Israeli citizen, Israeli law bars you from permanent residence or citizenship rights. To maintain demographic control, Israel tightly regulates the land rights of Palestinians, while giving nearly free reign to Israeli Jews. The Absentee Property Law officially allowed Israel to expropriate vast swaths of land and property from Palestinians who fled or were forced out during the Nakba. Israel has used this land to build hundreds of towns exclusively for Jewish citizens, with only a small exception for the Bedouin people. Per HRW, over 30% of land used for exclusively Jewish settlements was expropriated by the Israeli government from Palestinians who had privately owned it. Israeli law also allows Jewish towns with “Admissions Committees” to bar Palestinians from living in them, on the basis of the towns’ “special characteristics”: the law allows towns to ban potential inhabitants “unsuitable to the social life of the community…or the social and cultural fabric of the town,” including towns with a “Zionist vision.” We did the same thing in the U.S., when “Sundown Towns” expelled Black residents and mandated a white-only population. Can any reasonable person say this is different? Palestinian citizens of Israel, as mentioned before, simply do not have the same rights as Jewish Israelis. In 2018, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said, “I think that ‘Judaizing the Galilee’ is not an offensive term,” further stating, “There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights.” Israeli law violates free speech rights as well; the so-called “Boycott Law” prohibits Israelis from “knowingly publish[ing] a public call for a boycott against the State of Israel.” The “Nakba Law” allows the Minister of Finance to fine any publicly-funded bodies that commemorate “[Israeli]
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Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning.” This is a blatantly discriminatory law against Palestinian citizens of Israel who wish to remember the forced dispossesion and expulsion of their people. The law also prohibits events that criticize “the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” essentially censoring anti-Zionist activism. These laws discriminate against Israeli citizens; the situation for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is even more dire. Since 2010, the Israeli military has again begun to enforce the military “Order Regarding Prohibition of Incitement and Hostile Propaganda Actions” from 1967, allowing Israeli Defense Force (IDF) officers near-total control over demonstrations and protests against the Israeli regime in the Occupied Territories. Only Palestinians in the OPT are subject to this order, and they alone are tried under military law; Israeli citizens and nationals from other countries are tried under the Israeli legal system. Furthermore, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are not allowed to participate in the Israeli political system. Most Palestinians are theoretically allowed to vote in elections for the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous government in the West Bank; but Israel still controls, to quote B’Tselem directly, “immigration, the population registry, planning and land policies, water, communication infrastructure, import and export, and military control over land, sea and air space” in all of the OPT. It’s time to be unequivocal; this is apartheid. This is not a conflict; it is an asymmetrical assault by a militarized state against a disorganized, disenfranchised people. Israel has pursued, and continues to pursue, a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, expelling them from their home country and segregating them into densely-packed enclaves. As I said previously, this is only a glancing summary of the full depth of human rights abuses and apartheid in Israel. If you’d like to learn more, I would recommend reading the reports from HRW and B’Tselem in full; read about the history of Palestine from authors such as Nur Masalha in Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History or Rashid Khalidi in The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine; read from Palestinian activists such as Edward Said or Noura Erakat; follow Palestinian journalists such as Mohammed El-Kurd; or even take one of the classes offered at PSU about the history of Zionism and the history of Palestine. Why should we care? Most people reading this are probably neither Israeli nor Palestinian. So the question is then, “why care?” It’s not our country, after all, and we have our own problems to deal with here. The simplest answer I can give is this: the struggle for human rights and international liberation is a universal one. Directly or indirectly, we are all affected by injustice everywhere. To quote Eugene Debs, “Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made
up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” To make it more concrete, the actions of a militarized, discriminatory Israeli state literally coincide with the actions of the United States. According to Amnesty International, U.S. police departments in states across the country have trained with Israeli national police, military and intelligence services, with the two countries sharing policing methods such as “counter-terrorism techniques.” And Israeli police have used tear gas drones since 2018 to put down Palestinian protests from 60 feet in the air—it’s only a matter of time before that kind of tech makes its way here, too. Several states in the U.S. have passed laws that penalize businesses, organizations or individuals who call for a boycott of Israel or refuse to do business in Israeli settlements. While one such law was recently struck down in Georgia, it is imperative that we fight anti-free speech legislation everywhere. I detailed Western media’s bias against Palestine in a previous article, and it’s our job as journalists to accurately and unwaveringly tell the story of what is happening in Palestine. Further, it’s our job as political and moral actors to use whatever power we have to oppose apartheid and ethnic cleansing, whether it’s done by an enemy or an ally. Settler colonialism is an international project. Empire is international. Policing, state terror and apartheid are international. The United States doesn’t give Israel about $3 billion a year out of the goodness of our hearts. Israel is a major guarantor of U.S. interests in the Middle East, and there’s no way the U.S. government will renege on its unequivocal support of the state if it threatens our status in the region. The reason why opposing Israeli apartheid is so important is precisely because they are our ally.
WHAT WE CAN DO
One of the most impactful things you can do as an American is to support movements for Palestinian freedom such as BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. BDS aims to financially pressure Israel, to force them to respect human rights, recognize Palestinian sovereignty and comply with international law. BDS is modeled after the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa, and it seeks the same goal: the dismantling of the apartheid regime, and the establishment of a government that respects equal rights for everyone regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. Beyond engaging with BDS, make it a point to keep talking about Israel’s human rights abuses. Keep uplifting Palestinian voices, and don’t back down from your basic principles. I believe that all people have the right to live safely, with equal rights under law, with freedom of movement, expression and association in the land of their birth. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
OPINION
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EVENTS CALENDAR
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` JUNE 1–JUNE 4 UNMUTED: PCC STUDENT ART EXHIBIT
TUE JUNE 1
PCC Sylvania Campus Free Ongoing through June 4
“Over one year ago, Portland Community College moved to remote operations to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Since then, students, faculty, and staff have been doing heroic work from home, and art students have continued their education remotely, making work in the midst of personal, local, national, global crises and revolutions. This has become a year of raising voices and making art — in spite of, and in response to the challenges of being alive in this time. To honor the art that PCC art students have created during this pivotal year, our first ever college-wide virtual art student exhibition invites student artists to “unmute” themselves and share their art work with the world.”
WED JUNE 2
“Journey back 250 million years to prehistoric North America! Get up close and personal with more than 25 life-size dinosaurs, two authentic massive full body dinosaur skeletons, dozens of real fossils, and more.”
PORTRAITURE FROM THE COLLECTION OF NORTHWEST ART
“Isaka Shamsud-Din: Rock of Ages is an intimate exhibition celebrating the Portland artist’s masterful paintings, rich in a narrative combining personal stories and folklore. Shamsud-Din’s paintings also celebrate and honor individuals by capturing portraits. Tightly composed and with a vibrancy of color, the works invite viewers to be among these individuals and warm settings. The exhibition is titled after Shamsud-Din’s painting of his father, Rock of Ages (1976), the museum’s most recent acquisition of the artist’s work.”
“In the rich tradition of portraiture reflected in Northwest art, there is an exemplary range of individuals and styles of depiction. For this exhibition, the artist Storm Tharp was invited to help select works from the collection through his keen eyes as a fellow portraitist. As he combed through the collection, some themes in portraiture rose to the surface: the selfportrait, artists and friends, family, psychological space, and making present those who have been less recognized. For an artist, capturing a literal likeness is far less important than grasping the essence of a person or the moment in time. How artists in this collection have chosen to do this is remarkably varied, offering an alluring examination in itself. Across the themes and styles in this exhibition, it is evident that portraiture allows for a breadth of expressiveness, a scrutiny of the self, and the occasion to connect with those around us.”
ANSEL ADAMS IN OUR TIME
NURSES FOR BLACK LIVES VIGIL
Portland Art Museum 10 a.m. $17–20 Ongoing through August 1
FRI JUNE 4
OMSI 10 a.m. $8–12 Ongoing through September 6
ISAKA SHAMSUD-DIN: ROCK OF AGES Portland Art Museum 10 a.m. $17–20 Ongoing through August 1
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DINOSAURS REVEALED
Portland Art Museum 10 a.m. $20 Ongoing through September 1
Pioneer Courthouse Square 10 a.m. Free
Portland nurses will honor the life of George Floyd with a silent vigil every Fri“Ansel Adams in Our Time, making its only West Coast stop at the Portland Art Mu- day morning. seum, celebrates the remarkable artistry and visual legacy of the acclaimed American landscape photographer and educator. More than 100 photographs by Adams, from his earliest marketed prints to his world-renowned Western vistas, trace the artist’s development and maturation over five decades while pointing to his continuing influence on landscape photography today.”
EVENTS
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