WEAPONS: FEM Winter 2020 by FEM Newsmagazine

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Our oppressors preach nonviolence to us while they murder people in the Global South and annihilate our planet for capitalistic gain. In short, our opposition remains violent and organized while they pacify us with ‘nonviolence’ as the only “respectable” approach. We have to hate the status quo enough to free ourselves from it and must understand that disruption and disorder are sometimes necessary in order to achieve the liberation we deserve. As Anthropologist Anton Blok asserts, we must not define “violence a priori as senseless and irrational, we should consider it as a changing form of interaction and communication, as a historically developed cultural form of meaningful action”

The Haitian revolution, the first success-

ful slave revolt, and the blueprint for many revolts thereafter was successful because enslaved people took it upon themselves to burn down plantations and kill slave masters. The rebels led various uprisings to not only liberate themselves from slavery but also liberate themselves from French colonial rule. Many movements of our time can learn from the radicals of the Haitian revolution. We must understand that the tools we need to dramatically undermine the systems of oppression are not going to be handed to us. We are never going to appeal to the empathy of our oppressors because our oppressors have no empathy for us. We cannot just ask them kindly to liberate us from the systems they benefit from. There is power in peace and there are many movements that benefit from peaceful and nonviolent approaches. However, other movements against larger systems of oppression such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism require radical anger, radical optimism, and radical approaches in order to liberate the billions of people who suffer under it. The concept of nonviolence has been appropriated by our oppressors and forced down our throats as the only acceptable tactic to attain meaningful change.

The Weapons issue aims to look at the anger of marginalized people and the ways in which our anger has been stifled and pacified in order to maintain the status quo. The artists and designers involved in this issue work very hard to discuss the weapons that marginalized people wield everyday in order to survive and the weapons that have been stolen from us and manipulated against us. From the ways in which hyperpop forces us to look at the absurdities of the status quo, to the methods in which Muslim Indians have been fighting against Hindu nationalism, this

print issue finds a way to collectivize the anger and direct it towards something meaningful. Thank you to Jana Lang and Chelsea Dyapa for cultivating the idea for weapons as a theme during a long and hilarious conversation in our living room. Thank you to my ancestors, family, and friends for being my support system and passing down the weapons I use everyday to survive. Enjoy the Weapons Issue.

Chiamaka Nwadike, Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief Chiamaka Nwadike

Lauren Cramer El Gomez Sonia Hauser Logistics/Managing Editor Malaya Johnson Helen Zhong Birdie Li Sophia Muys Art & Design Directors Karina Remer Shannon Boland A Wold El Gomez Malaya Johnson Contributors Princess Amugo Arts & Creative Editor Marion Moseley Meg Anderson Julia Schreib Anjali Singhal Campus Life Editor Savannah Cinzia Spatafora Lia Cohen Ky’tavia Stafford

Video Directors Alana Francis-Crow Jem Garcia

Dialogue Editor Alana Francis-Crow

EIC Portrait Andri Santos-How

Gendertainment Editor Kayla Andry Politics Editor Heidi Choi Writers Meg Anderson Lily Bollinger Tessa Fier Jem Garcia Shannon Kasinger Jasmine Kaur Ashley LeCroy Nia McClinton Chiamaka Nwadike Maya Petrick Catherine Pham Devika Shenoy Taryn Slattery Eva Szilardi-Tierney TongZhi Jackie Vanzura Chloe Xtina Elliot B. Yu Designers Shannon Boland Grace Ciacciarelli Joie Cao Magnolia Casey Joy Chen

Content Editors Natalie Eastman Shanahan Europa Jem Garcia Emma Jacobs Ashley LeCroy Paloma Nicholas Catherine Pham Rhea Plawat Devika Shenoy Helen Zhong Copy Editors Maribella Cantú Kelsey Chan Deirdre Mitchell Leila Modjtahedi Amanda Nelson Taryn Slattery Marlee Zinsser Finance Directors Alice Blackorby Jessica Cen Neha Dhiman Maya Kramer Radio Manager Marion Moseley Social Media Manager Brenna Nouray Social Planning Manager Cindy Quach

Web Managers Haley Kim Ophelia Yang Front Cover Photo Sonia Hauser Inside Cover Photo El Gomez Back Cover Illustration Elliot B. Yu

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fem@media.ucla.edu FEM, UCLA’s feminist newsmagazine since 1973, is dedicated to the empowerment of all people, the recognition of gender diversity, the dismantling of systems of oppression, and the application of intersectional feminist ideology for the liberation of all peoples. FEM operates within an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist framework. Our organization seeks to challenge oppression based on sexuality, gender, race, class, ability, religion, and other hegemonic power structures. We create a wide range of compassionate multimedia content that recenters narratives often rejected or ignored within mainstream media. Beyond journalism, FEM engages in actionable praxes by building coalitions with other campus and community members. As self-reflective feminists, we are committed to unlearning and relearning alongside our global audience as the socio-political landscape in which we are situated continue to transform. FEM Newsmagazine is published and copyrighted by the ASUCLA Communications Board. All rights are reserved. Reprinting of any material in this publication without the written permission of the Communications Board is strictly prohibited. The ASUCLA Communications Board fully supports the University of California’s policy on non-discrimination. The student media reserve the right to reject or modify advertising whose content discriminates on the basis of ancestry, color, national origin, race, religion, disability, age, sex or sexual orientation. The ASUCLA Communications Board has a media grievance procedure for resolving complaints against any of its publications. For a copy of the complete procedure, contact the publications office at 118 Kerckhoff Hall @ 310-825-9898.

On Militancy TongZhi 7

U.S. Military Imperialism Ashley LeCroy

UC’s Role in the U.S. War Machine Maya Petrick

Police Militarization Tessa Fier

Militant Feminism Flowchart: Should You Shoot Them* in the Kneecaps? Nia McClinton Chiamaka Nwadike 11

should the peace come Lily Bollinger 31

I’m screaming laughing:): Hyperpop is Campy Self-Defense Eva Szilardi-Tierney

Walking the Pink Panther: The Gender Politics of Protective Weapons Jackie Vanzura

The RSS: Something Sinister in America’s Backyard Jasmine Kaur

State-Sponsored Feminism: TV’s Women Cops Shannon Kasinger 15

The Consequences of Surveillance Catherine Pham 17

No Persecution For The Young Lover Elliot B. Yu

The White Dude Inside the Marginalized Body: Tarantino, Voyeurism, and a Body that is Not Our Own Chloe Xtina 39

History of School Shootings at UCLA Jem Garcia Devika Shenoy 42

Leaving a house alone Meg Anderson

A Story Is A Sword Taryn Slattery

Weapons Issue Playlist FEM Radio Power in Abundance Photo Series

On Militancy by TongZhi

art by Magnolia

Midori Casey

Both inside and outside Amerikkka’s imperialist cradle, militarized police violence is inescapable. The spelling of Amerikkka highlights the white supremacist roots of this nation. On Turtle Island, the Indigenous name for North America, police brutality primarily affects Black people and is a legacy and continuation of the U.S. institution of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was the supposed abolition of slavery, but incarcerated scholars have long pointed out that it does not apply if someone has been convicted of a crime. Therefore, slavery is legal as punishment.

This has resulted in a prison industry that profits off of the exploitation of incarcerated people, who are disproportionately Black.

When Michael Brown was killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, Black people of Ferguson took to the streets. They were met not with compassion but with militarized police force. Perhaps the most iconic photo from this movement was Edward Crawford Jr. throwing a tear gas canister back to the police. Respectability politics, which are embedded in racism and anti-Blackness, would characterize this as a riot, but when the government deprives your community and your ancestors of any chance at justice

and abundance, who cares about what is proper? Propriety is the privilege and power of whiteness that recognizes violent and oppressive systems as peace. Generational anger and its

expression against oppressors is always just.

The logic of “rioting” is not unique to the Amerikkkan sphere; it is part of a colonial legacy that brutalizes people of color and characterizes any non-peaceful form of resistance as “rioting.” In November 2019, the Siege of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University by Hong Kong (HK) and Beijing militarized police began. Following weeks of protest against Beijing’s extradition bill, students occupied HK Poly-U to take part in this mass action. They were met with tear gas, water cannons, and pellet guns (a newer weapon that blinded many HK protesters). The students responded with impressive organized militancy: stealing from the University’s chemistry labs and fashioning gasoline bombs to combat the military-grade state weapons. After 12 days of protesting, all protestors were arrested. Today, militarized police are everywhere in HK, and just being young and wearing black can invite accusations of rioting, resulting in arrest. Accounts of rape and abuse have been rampant in detention centers. The carceral state

Politics

is inherently violent and further brutalizes marginalized people, enforcing racial, class, gendered and ableist violence. I bring this to your attention because besides sharing humanity, we are also students. Yet many don’t know about these atrocities because Amerikkkan media actively ignores genocides and war crimes outside its white bubble. This is a deliberate means to uphold empire. From Rwanda to Darfur, from Somalia to Palestine, from the Philippines to Cambodia, from Kashmir to the Rohingya, from Sudan to West Papua, the white and imperialist worlds use mass death and trauma to fill their pockets with high profit margins. Within Turtle Island, violence against Black and Indigenous people resides in the white consciousness, but it is fetishized and sensationalized. Victims are criminalized, and their trauma is discredited. State sanctioned assassinations are made legal and proper.

onist feminists, promoting genocide and apartheid. They also exclude Black Lives Matter, displaying anti-Black politics. White leftists, on the other side of white liberalism, do the opposite: romanticizing militancy and instigating violence with the police at protests. They are protected by their whiteness while their actions endanger racialized people.

We must rid the binary of non-violence and violence from our consciousness! Civil disobedience and militancy have the same goals. They are merely different methods. Neither is morally superior. We must not glorify non-violence to the point of discrediting militancy. In the case of the BPP, their militant tactics effectively protected their community from police brutality. When violence is traumatic and unrelenting with no accountability or respite, taking up arms is the only reasonable choice.

In Ferguson, we see sudden, suspicious deaths of protestors, according to the Chicago Tribune; Rev. Darryl Gray, Deandre Joshua, Darren Seals, MarShawn McCarrell, Edward Crawford Jr., Danye Jones, and Bassem Jasri. Many of these deaths were characterized as suicides, but the reality is more insidious.

Militant revolution has been done by the Viet Cong in their fight against U.S. imperialism and French colonization, and they won. Militant revolution has been done by the Chinese People’s Red Army in their fight against Guomindang and US/ UK/French imperialism in mainland China, and they won.

The Ferguson deaths are a 21st century COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was a 1960s project under the FBI that primarily targeted Black activists, most notably killing Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party and Martin Luther King Jr (MLK). It dissolved in 1971, but its practices continue today; then and now, Black power is such a threat to Amerikkka that the state commits such heinous actions.

Militant action has been done in the past, and it has worked. It’s true that many die in militant revolution, but even more are already dying in imperialism’s clutches. I urge you to prepare for taking up arms to protect yourself and loved ones. I urge you to act in solidarity with those currently taking up arms to protect themselves and their loved ones. I urge you to hold compassion for those who have taken up arms to protect themselves and their loved ones, and have died or are incarcerated.

Today, liberal historians dilute MLK’s politics by placing his non-violent tactics as antithetical to the BPP’s militancy. This erases the BPP’s free breakfast programs and health programs for Black people with sickle cell anemia. Such history revision plays a role in our current era of liberal protest. In the Women’s March, white/ non-black women engage in a faux-resistance with witty posters and transphobic pussy hats. The march’s organizers include pro-Trump Zi-

I close with a quote from Black revolutionary Assata Shakur’s autobiography:

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Politics

UC’s Role in the U.S. War Machine The University of California system has become intertwined with the military-industrial complex in complicated and damaging ways. According to Britannica, the military-industrial complex is comprised of individuals and corporations that produce weapons and advocate for increased military spending. Essentially, corporations involved with the military-industrial complex fuel conflict for profit, creating an economy that relies on prolonged violence and human rights violations. Unfortunately, the UC system has a long history with the military-industrial complex. Through an analysis of UC’s research practices, corporate connections, and investments, it is evident

that UC is contributing to the creation of new technologies meant to murder and oppress. As a result, the UC

system is actively participating in U.S. imperialism (that is, the country’s unjust practice of extending its political and military power over other regions, particularly those with populations of color) and America’s anti-immigrant agenda. According to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, The Department of Defense (DOD) has been funding research at UCLA for a long time. An article on The Stack entitled “Breakdown of Where UCLA Research Funding Comes From and Where It Goes,” explains how in 2015, UCLA received $45.1 million dollars from DOD for research. Furthermore, maths and sciences (especially engineering) consistently receive more research funding than social sciences and humanities. For example, UCLA spent 7.6 times less money on social sciences and 88.7 times less on humanities compared to engineering in 2014. While this disparity in funding is not only due to DOD funds (substantial funding also comes from the National Institute of Health and other government agencies), Barry Smart notes that “[DOD] is the leading federal sponsor of university engineering research.” This implies that DOD plays an

by Maya

Petrick

important role in UCLA’s funding disparity. DOD’s sizable contribution demonstrates a disturbing trend outlined by Smart: DOD is increasingly able to shape university agendas and decide which types of research receive funding and which don’t. DOD’s involvement with university research is a problem for multiple reasons. For one thing, it leads to a need for research to be “marketable” to the vested interests of DOD. As a result, universities are increasingly tasked with designing weapons used to implement U.S. imperialist agendas. DOD-funded research at universities provides tools for U.S. imperialism in other forms as well. Although they were not specifically conducted at UCLA, Smart describes several DOD-funded studies in 2014 that researched “political protest movements and social activism around the world.” In an official statement, DOD explained that these studies were meant to “increase the Department of Defense’s understanding of what causes instability and insecurity around the world.” In essence, Smart claims that

DOD is using universities to “collect operational tools” in order to “target peaceful activists and protest movements around the world.” This is not a system in which UCLA should be participating in.

UCLA has also become enmeshed in the military-industrial complex through its involvement with weapons manufacturers. The school facilitates interactions between students and weapons companies and funnels talented students into careers related to the military-industrial complex. For example, October 1, 2019 was Boeing Day at UCLA, an information session and recruiting event where students could learn about jobs and internships at the company. Boeing held on-campus interviews with students multiple times over the following days. According to its website, Boeing is a “leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners, defense, space and

Campus Life

and deprive Palestinians of their land through the construction of a wall inside the West Bank. SJP also describes how companies such as Lockheed Martin have been accused of “fueling conflict” within the region. Many of these companies (Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics, to name a few) also provide weapons and technology to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which uses them to intimidate and incarcerate tens of thousands of people of color at the U.S. border with Mexico, according to Amnesty International and openDemocracy. Amnesty International states that ICE’s human rights abuses include “physical violence, the use of restraints, and substandard medical care” for those in detention at the border, along with disregard for the right to due process.

art by Lauren

Cramer

security systems.” CNBC places Boeing as the second-largest defense contractor in the world, producing weapons with far-reaching consequences. Similar information sessions have occurred at UCLA for other weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

UCLA has a history of directly investing in weapons manufacturers. In addition to the companies menFurthermore,

tioned above, UCLA has invested in Caterpillar, Cemex, Cement Roadstone Holdings, General Dynamics, General Electrics, Hewlett-Packard, Raytheon, and United Technologies, according to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UCLA. SJP’s website also outlines how these corporations have contributed to the violation of Palestinian human rights. Their weapons and construction materials were used to attack civilians, demolish Palestinian homes and property, illegally remove resources from occupied territory,

Students have been taking action against UC’s unjust involvement with weapons companies, but these efforts have led to few tangible results. SJP reports that in 2014, UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association Council passed a resolution encouraging the UC Board of Regents to divest from weapons manufacturers, entitled “A Resolution to Divest from Companies Engaged in Violence Against Palestinians,” due to the work of UCLA’s chapter of SJP. Similar resolutions have been passed by UC Irvine, San Diego, Riverside, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara to date. Even so, an article in the Daily Californian outlines how UC has exhibited a lack of transparency when it comes to its investments. The current information available about UC investments does not make it clear what corporations the school is investing in, so it is unclear whether or not the UC system continues to profit off of violence and oppression.

Advice to UC: prioritize curiosity over profits. Educate students about the industries of war rather than mindlessly funnel them into the military-industrial complex. Be more transparent about investments, and consider the implications of working with corporations capable of producing technology with the power to destabilize entire regions. Stop turning our education into a weapon with which to silence, oppress, and murder.

Campus Life

! !

* **

*This is a satirical piece.

Dialogue & Opinion

Why is militant feminism necessary?

Militant feminism is the radical practice of feminism that employs the use of justified violence as a means of liberation. This branch of feminist ideology encourages the arming of marginalized people everywhere in order to protect themselves against violent systems of oppression. Whether it is fighting back against violent cis men o n the streets or fighting back against hostile, misogynist i c work environments, militant feminism is necessary in various realities as a means of survival.

by fatal hate crimes. Black trans women report high rates of harassment at the hands of police, and many trans women of color have a life expectancy of 35. In addition, Native American women experience some of the highest rates of domestic violence in the United States. The National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) reports that 15.5 percent of Native women experience violence or severe violence in their marriages. These statistics reflect the ways in which violent systems of oppression are present in the lives of marginalized people. These systems affect the quality of their livelihood, wellbeing and personal freedoms.

For many marginalized people, practicing feminist ideology goes beyond aesthetic value and is a matter of survival under systems of oppression. While

It is evident that trans women, Native women, and other marginalized groups often need to employ violence in order to themselves, protect their autonregain personal safety. These when facing life or death, have for feminist values that rein the theoretical realm. They militant feminist ideology that tionable and offer protection systems of oppression.

theorizing is a crucial and important component of developing feminist values, tangible and applicable feminist actions are absolutely necessary for those who need feminism on a more immediate level. For example, Black trans women face an epidemic of institutional violence and are disproportionately affected

What is violence?

defend omy and groups, no use m a i n require is acagainst

And how can violence be utilized in a feminist way? Merriam Webster defines violence as “the use of physical force to cause injury or damage.” We think a better way to define violence is to view it as any tool or idea that a person utilizes to seize power from others. Violence is about power. Violence is the main method in which western imperialists have gained power and suppressed groups such as people of color, womxn and nonbinary folks. Whether it is through physical, ideological, financial, or intimate acts of aggression or displacement, the livelihood of marginalized people from varying identities have endured violence. The moment that we live in now is not one of peace. “Peacefulness” is a concept used by dominant culture to pacify our experiences and tranquilize our acts of resistance. There is a false negative connotation attached to “non-peaceful” and radical movements, and the dominant culture has convinced many people that movements that utilize violence are not worthwhile movements to support. But our very existence as marginalized people

has been plagued with violence since the day we were born. So, when we utilize justified violence as a part of our feminist practices, it is not out of vengeance or retribution. It is out of defending our lives and our communities. Yes, it also stems from anger. Our rage and anger are justified under these systems of oppression. The goal is to obliterate these systems of oppression, but until that moment comes, we should find ways to take hold of the power that will allow us to survive and navigate the existing systems of power. We are simply asserting that as you consider how you are going to make change for all marginalized people, you should consider feminist militancy. Creating a world that aligns with militant feminism inherently calls for a radical shift in the power structures of our society which means we must take up radical means of resistance. We are simply pointing out that the historically bloodied web of injustice that we exist within today has our blood on it, not the blood of our oppressors. So the path to our freedom, we believe, might just require shooting out a few kneecaps.

Dialogue & Opinion

art by A

Wold

It’s human instinct to protect ourselves in times of peril. However,

if you don’t have an internal radar scanning areas and maintaining distance from unwanted pursuers, it probably means you’re not threatened by the world around you. For womxn, measuring the levels of safety in any setting is a constant reality. So what happens when you’re constantly tested by unsafe environments you’re forced to live in? Facing the daunting task of a casual walk home in the dark and all alone is a risk we didn’t ask to take: it’s a result of a pandemic of sexual violence against womxn. What measures can be taken not only to protect ourselves, but to dismantle the scales tipped against us?

We arm ourselves. I’m

by Jackie

Vanzura

art by Birdie

talking weapons. I’m talking pepper spray, blades, instruments for breaking windows, instruments for protection and reclamation of a violence used against us. Every day the media plagues us with depictions of womxn subdued: helpless victims of our circumstances. Wielding weapons is

a way to take the power dynamic of the situation into our own hands. In a world

where legal and political institutions have yet to collectively address the rampant epidemic of violence against womxn, protecting ourselves becomes a right. In a world of fight or flight, we’re equipping ourselves for the fight.

Even so, the presentation of such weapons is just as embedded in the politics of gender bias as the sexual violence that fuels them. A taser hidden in the chromatic gloss of a pink lipstick container. A knife concealed in the rim of a wedding ring. The list goes on: combs, hair brushes, makeup mirrors, mascaras. The popularization of these weapons has caused the artillery to follow a common theme: pink,

pretty and concealable.

Femininity itself is not the problem—degrading than acknowledge its existence. feminine objects for their feminine aspects is another way in which people degrade womxn. It’s On the bright side there are many retailers of not the femininity that disempowers, self defense weapons that are unrelated to huge but the expectation of this feminini- corporations and owned by womxn. Self defense ty. The weapons womxn are expected to wield retailers such as WomenOnGuard and Defense follow a particular formula. They must show in Divas sell self defense weapons free from the visual terms that this weapon is feminine and funding of corporations like Amazon. Unfortuconcealable because it is used for protection nately, while free from the economics of oppressive corporate regimes, such companies still rather than for offensive purposes. cater to the concealable, cute, feminine trope This results from the media’s impulse to equate we’ve seen time and time again. This is a refeminine violence with defensive violence. Wom- minder that while having our own agency in the xn can have weapons, but only concealable and economic exchange of goods is empowering, it stylized kinds. Cis men are glorified for their vio- is also important to understand the implications lence and weapon idolatry. Masculinity is inter- behind the products themselves. Womxn are twined with praise for brutality spanning leisure susceptible to engaging in economic exchanges activities to wars. There is a legacy of idolization that fuel gender bias when the bias embedded in associated with violent men, from characters these products goes unaddressed. in movies to historical leaders. Men have never been questioned for their motive in possessing and using weapons. In contrast, womxn cannot carry weapons as a statement of identity and power. Womxn can use glittery pink, sickly sweet hidden weapons just as informed by gender constructs as our fearful walks home. They are defensive, protective and seen as separate from the realms of pleasure and sport in a way that violence for cis men never is.

Even the economic exchange involved in these weapons serves to fuel power imbalances against womxn. One of the biggest

retailers for such weapons is Amazon. Amazon is a company built off of its exploitative actions toward marginalized groups: the multi-billion dollar corporation is built off of the backs of underpaid, underserved and overworked employees. Amazon, as a capitalist mega corporation, benefits from the plight of womxn. Amazon does not care about our protection and safety. Amazon cares about our money. They are gaining revenue from weapons used to defend sexual violence without any care for womxn who face sexual violence. Yet we buy them because these weapons are necessary despite their source. This cycle of exchange promotes stagnancy rather than progress: we feel threatened, so we buy weapons, but these weapons follow strict gender expectations and support corporations that would rather profit off of sexual violence

How can we find a solution when the situation is so complicated? It feels like justice

to engage with aggression when the expectation is nonviolent resistance. Even so, this justice is paved by exploitative mega-corporations using marketing and branding tools that are fueled by the same traditional gender norms as the plight we’re fighting against. In doing so, the strict gender binary constructed and formed to oppress us is now seamlessly woven into the weapons we use to protect us. We can embrace weapons, but what weapons are we embracing? Weapons that are palatable to the depiction of feminized violence: unthreatening and shy of brashness. So let’s embrace the brawn. Let’s embrace the steel. Let’s claim weapons in their bold, brash and fear-invoking glory. If weapons concealed in feminine packaging work for your lifestyle and protection, by all means, carry on. But let’s not be subjected to the feminization and gendering of these weapons. We have to take the

power back by not only reclaiming weapons, but reclaiming the ferocity of weapons. We don’t have to submit to pink packaging framed by disempowering economic dimensions. We should not feel the need to conceal and stylize our weapons in order to fit the mold of our social status. Let’s embrace the cold and the callous. Wield your weapon, because we will win the war against us.

Dialogue & Opinion

State-Sponsored Feminism:

TV’s Women Cops

by Shannon

Kasinger

State-sponsored and state-supporting content is everywhere, especially in social mediums like television and movies, that young people are comfortable using. From romanticized military recruitment propaganda to police department Twitter accounts cracking jokes, we are constantly bombarded with media intended to normalize the ever-present existence of police and government agents. Communicating this concept of patriotism in formats that are intentionally visually-divorced from images of state violence is never more effective than when it is manifested in fictional celebrations of cops and federal agents. Often involving their personal lives and problems, cop shows parade endless state-approved nonsense intended to make us forget the United States’ ongoing imperialism abroad as well as its domestic suppression of racial minorities, low-income people, queer folks, undocumented communities, and other underserved people. However, the state has a prerogative in diversifying the image of what state agents look like in order to garner 21st century liberal support in those that tolerate cops. By depicting “empowered fem-

inist” women in copaganda television shows and movies that push images of “positive” state control, a form of feminism that permits state violence and weaponry is normalized. This is a direct contrast to notions of revolutionary, abolitionist, anti-capitalist feminism that demand an absolute dismantling of

art by Shannon

Boland

the United States and all its oppressive powers. Police glamorization in media is effective because it is slyly manufactured and inserted into many different genres, including comedy and drama. Many laud the increase of diverse representations of women in police shows as positive in showing women’s capacities for being physically strong and conventionally badass. But in luring viewers with the promise of more women on TV, we are manipulated into forgetting the violence that police perpetuate on the daily, that women in law enforcement are a part of. This further reminds us that

representation in media is not liberation, especially when it is in direct

agreement with systems of power that feminists are trying to fight. State violence at the hands of women is no more acceptable than at the hands of men, but somehow these depictions are commonly established as empowering images of women within “feminist” media review.

Take Rosa Diaz from NBC’s “Brooklyn NineNine”: an edgy Latinx detective who comes out as bisexual in the show’s fifth season, and is often praised as a great example of a character who balances deadpan comedy and tenacity. But under the guise of this badass detective trope, her personality of practiced intensity is often established through her use of excessive force and harsh interrogation methods. Despite the majority of cops being cis white men— as the New York Times reports in “The Race Gap in America’s Police Departments”—Rosa paints a specific image of a non-white, nonstraight woman as a normalized executor of police violence under the guise of comedy and liberal feminism. While she is part of a larger conversation of showing questionable police tactics on the show while “speaking against them” in the plot, Rosa pulls guns on non-violent and unarmed suspects, enters res-

Gendertainment

idences without warrants, and overall perpetuates systems of state oppression. Because of her identity, her character is a visible tool that the NYPD uses to carry out violence through militarized police weapons (often glamorized on the show) or by her own hand. While the need to represent more bisexual people of color on TV is past desperate, portraying them as cops is the opposite form of empowerment that revolutionary feminism requires. As so much of the inner-workings of federal agencies are deliberately kept from the public, the “glimpses” shown to us are often fabricated to portray well-intentioned, hardworking individuals and teams instead of an imperialist federal government. Shows like “Criminal Minds” attempt to paint a picture of unity and teamwork amongst federal agents to distract from the FBI’s (and other state agencies’) proximity to injustices like assassinations, illegal wiretapping, and surveillance of civilians—and the show uses characters that are women to do it.The tenacious portrayals of Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau combined with the innocent femininity of Penelope Garcia and the quiet empathy of Tara Lewis all work to paint a picture of the divergent ways one can be a tough woman who uses the oppressive power of the FBI to carry out seemingly noble tasks. The combative women characters fulfill the “badass woman fighter” trope as a way to appease liberal feminism, while actually using their physicality as weapons of the state. “Criminal Minds” often uses “kind” women detectives to intentionally distance itself from the imperialistic and political aspects of the FBI. These diverse representations of women are supposed to distract us from their true roles as federal cops with the power to enact great harm.

Because this propaganda is often deceiving, it is important to utilize an abolitionist feminist lens to see through this façade. This glorification of state power in media extends to foreign affairs too—especially in justifying American imperialism abroad and framing non-US figures as enemies of the state (and thereby, the nation). In “Zero Dark Thirty”, the United States’ hunt for Osama Bin Laden post-9/11 is headed by Maya, whose character —as reported by the New Yorker in “The Unidentified Queen of Torture”— is modeled after a real CIA agent who participated in the torture of suspects after 9/11 and apprehending terror suspects globally. Maya’s image as a woman of the state is communicated through the film’s use of torture methods (including waterboarding) and its glorification of military efforts in a war we should have never started. Yet, this harshness is softened to a seemingly “acceptable” standard of violence because the protagonist is a woman, although she is characterized to be work-obsessed and numb to the violence she is perpetuating. In the call for more representation, we shouldn’t

compromise our values and allow ourselves to be desensitized to the evils of state power. This is not good representation, and aligning feminism with state violence, weaponry, and control in any way is antithetical to the revolutionary, anti-capitalist and anti-state efforts of feminists. Our passive acceptance of media that depicts agents as kindhearted do-gooders as opposed to weapons of the state sets a dangerous precedent in how far some interpretations of feminism will stretch to permit the influence of state control.

Gendertainment

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The Consequences of Surveillance by Catherine

Pham

art by Joy

In this contemporary digital age, we are constantly sharing personal information: our interests, photos, consumer history, location, desires, and countless other facets of our digital footprints. Technology is developing faster than it can be controlled and there is a lack of regulation in how our private information is sold. But what happens if

technology enforces the law, weaponizing our personal data to uphold a white, capitalist surveillance state? In January 2020, the New York Times revealed that over 600 law enforcement agencies have been using Clearview, a facial recognition app that is still in its covert start-up stage. Clearview’s facial recognition algorithm compares uploaded photos to similar photos in its comprehensive database, along with the links to the photos’ source. The database is a collection of faces from across the Internet: news sites, employment sites, and social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Venmo. Many companies ban this scraping of users’ data from their websites, and Twitter has explicitly prohibited use of its data for facial recognition. But Clearview has deliberately disregarded these other companies’ data privacy policies in order to capitalize on the pervasive police state. Clearview’s massive photo network, which stores photos even after accounts are made private, gives its clients an unprecedented efficiency in identifying subjects, whose faces can even be partially covered in the photos. When testing out Clearview’s technology, one Indiana State Police force was able to identify a suspect from a fight filmed by a bystander within 20 minutes of using the app. Many fear the release of this invasive technology to civilians, but placing this power

in the hands of the police already renders it ripe for abuse. Police officers may use this technology for personal reasons without consequence as they have historically done so with other weapons granted by the state. Multiple stud-

Chen

ies show that 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence in comparison to 10 percent of families in the general population. Furthermore, this technology facilitates the racism that has long pervaded law enforcement. Police are now able to identify activists from one picture, or figure out the location of any citizen they racially profile. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses Amazon’s Rekognition software, which matches photos to real-time footage of police body cameras and city camera networks in order to identify and arrest undocumented immigrants. Yet studies have found that Amazon’s software is more likely to misidentify faces with darker skin, and similar gender and racial biases have been found in facial analysis software from Microsoft and IBM. The solution to these inherent biases is not to improve the accuracy of surveillance technology, but to eliminate its use as an instrument of oppression and injustice entirely. Personal surveillance technology like Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance technology, forces people to exhibit police behavior in their own communities. Law enforcement agencies are allowed to access people’s Ring surveillance footage without a warrant, and as of July 2019, more than 200 police departments were partnered with Ring. These police departments have special access to Ring’s accompanying app, Neighbors, where people can share their surveillance footage with anyone else

Dialogue & Opinion

16 24

that has the app. Police can request access to an user’s Ring footage on the app, and specify a date, time, and location of the footage to notify the app users in the surrounding area.

Mass surveillance has become automated, and individuals are never able to escape from the overreaching police state. The advancement of technology and its infiltration of private data is a powerful tool to supposedly increase public safety. But the police do not exist to defend people, they exist to defend the structures of the status quo and maintain the power of whiteness and capitalism. This conversation about data policing extends beyond facial recognition software: What are the consequences and definition of free speech? How do companies, the government, and other monolithic entities track our digital footprint? And for what purposes? These questions seem hypothetical, but these fears are grounded in reality. The

government and different corporations already manipulate data to target and silence marginalized communities, such as pro-Palestine activists and sex workers.

More often than not, the Internet is an unsafe space for activists to organize and share anti-establishment ideas. For instance, user-run platforms such as Canary Mission publicly condemn students and faculty who express pro-Palestine ideology, and post all public information for future employers, colleagues, and universities to see. The openness of the Internet once presented a haven to sex workers, but recent legislation has caused social media platforms to ban users that made their sites sustainable and profitable in

the first place. Legislation such as SESTA/FOSTA claims to protect against sex trafficking by penalizing and pursuing websites that “promote or facilitate prostituion” and “knowingly assisting, facilitating, or supporting sex trafficking,” but these broad claims lead content platforms to overpolice and censor their content to avoid any risk of civil or criminal liability. However, generally criminalizing platforms that host sexual content criminalizes safer, independent methods of sex work. Without the community and safety of individual online profiles, sex workers are subjected to the demands of third-party companies and authorities who do not grant them as much agency in their labor.

Companies have enacted site-wide bans on NSFW content to protect themselves against

criminal charges instead of actually discerning between child sexual abuse and other forms of nonconsensual sexual trafficking that should be restricted differently than consensual sex work. Yet sites like 8chan and Tumblr still allow cesspools of white supremacy to form and organize, which has led to real-world consequences, such as the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Poway, California. Independent networks of connection allow sex workers to evade criminalization and exploitation, especially when many sex workers, like trans sex workers or undocumented sex workers, are locked out of other forms of labor due to discrimination. Sex workers are able to organize online and communicate about safe work methods, dangerous clients, community meetings, and other information that gives them more safety and stability. The criminalization, and the consequent surveillance and erasure of sex workers takes away their agency and means of survival. It bans them from participating in labor to survive in a capitalist society, while those who uphold these unjust standards are still allowed to participate in the Internet, and in fact, govern it.

Surveillance technology brings us closer to a dystopian panopticon, where individuals are constantly being watched without their knowledge or consent. Already, citizens pay for software to police their own communities and hundreds of police departments scour personal Internet profiles and city cameras to pursue their violent agendas of whiteness and capitalism.

Dialogue & Opinion

No Persecution For The Young Lover by Elliot

B. Yu art by Joie Cao

pose an interesting dilemma. These stops along the tracks are just a hint of what’s to come. An appetizer before the main course. Small bets before the high stakes.

You are a conductor. You bear a heavy burden. Today, my duty will be to guide you through a series of predetermined steps. This afternoon, five people will wait at a split in the track. But before we can begin we must wait for one more, a young man with dark eyes and blond hair just long enough that it curls over the tips of his ears. He takes the trolley to work you see, but he was born running late. Though today he has a very important appointment to keep; he just doesn’t know it. We three weary travelers have quite the battle ahead of us. Before we approach our stop, might we take a quick detour? It think the scenic route will

Consider this, you, reluctant leader that you are, are a soldier, the last of your company. You carry a fire that will end the fight, but not without cost. You see, the war is all anyone knows now, and they love it. A young man lays in a half-submerged grave, and through the cracked line in his helmet you can see a crop of blond hair. For the few, you settle a debt. The trolley clicks as we approach a split in the tracks. Once again we return to the road more traveled. Later, when we arrive at the station the young man will be on time — for the first time — in what seems like forever. We are still a ways away, but I think once we reach our destination we may not know him very long. For a conductor on a predetermined route, you are asked to make quite a lot of choices, aren’t you? I imagine that the weight of all those options sits heavy on your brow.

Arts & Creative

Consider this, you lead an empire from your courts, heir apparent, anointed by God. He is just a young man. The one to save the people, late even to his own execution. The crowd grows restless, worried and afraid, but they look to you for guidance. Your divine hand does not shake when you cast him aside. The desperate dark eyes of a commoner do not sway your judgement. For the many, you pay a small fee.

it? You suffer in a way that only philosophers do. Perhaps you will die like one too. A worry for another day I assure you, as it is not you who finds themselves on the tracks. Not yet at least.

You hope that he is not young. Not kind, nor honest. Not worth grieving.

You hope his face is not one you will ever find in a frame on someone’s bedside table. But you hope that you will honor it with that same gentle fondness. We know better though, don’t we? A moment of hesitation does not a hero make. Even executioners take a breath before the final blow.

But he is. If I were you I would try and accept that not every player, nor conductor, can win in every game.

You could kill the engine. Cry mercy for the trolley boy! Take the wrong set of tracks, and skip all the fanfare.

Consider this, you sit starving at a banquet. One touch and you will be trapped here forever. A young man sits close enough that you can see the fine lines of sweat on his brow, but he picks pomegranate seeds out of clay bowls like he doesn’t know he’s on trial. It’s not so easy anymore, is it? To pick and choose who gets the happy ending. To take the next ferry out and know that he waits, blond hair glowing in red sunshine, for a trolley that will never come.

In fact, why don’t we prove the old professor wrong? Forget the young man, we’ll travel together, you and I. Share a laugh and a glance like two strangers who meet daily for the long commute, not a blond hair in sight. Legs pressed close in the driver’s seat like reminders, hands pressed tighter still against the control panel. Turn left instead of right. An early lunch instead of a long shift. It’s only our cruel fascination that allows things to get as bad as they are. A dilemma for dilemma’s sake.

Your fondness for him grows. We veer back onto the main tracks.

The final stretch of our long journey almost to an end.

You tor, ver, throat.

are a conduchand on the leheart in your It’s hard, isn’t

What will come now lies in restless nights. For you, oh weary conductor, carry the same burden of philosophers and kings. Doomed to a life of trading lives for the best hand on the card table. Are you worried about the choices tomorrow will force you to make? Don’t be. The future sits in wait, but for now there is nothing to be done. You are traveling safely to a new destination, while six people wait for a trolley that will never come.

Arts & Creative

19 by

Maribella Cantú, Marion Moseley, Chiamaka Nwadike, Julia Schreib, Anjali Singhal art by Grace

Ciacciarelli

A huge shout out to La Gente Newsmagazine for inspiring the weapons issue playlist. This eclectic mix of artists works to encompass the empowerment, rage, and anger of marginalized people through music and powerful language. The aggression that comes from cis men has been historically normalized and accepted as a necessary part of masculinity. On the other hand, the anger and aggression that comes from people who are not cis men is often discredited and disregarded as hysteria. This playlist attempts to No one looks back at the Civil War and condemns enslaved people for using violence to rebel against their oppressors. FEM Newsmagazine hopes to give a platform to womxn and queer/marginalized identities to explore the violence they have experienced and the means they see fit to combat their oppression. Julia Schreib

Issues/ Hold on

Teyana Taylor

In this song, Teyana Taylor explores the feeling of wanting to maintain a relationship despite all of its faults. Throughout the song there are virtual gunshots being fired, signifying the toxic and deadening nature of the relationship. The song and its lyrics explore the various problems that exist within the relationship and the way that has affected the singer. The singer sings about how despite all of these trials they still want the relationship to last. This commentary on tools and weapons that are used in a relationship to destroy and weaken it are powerful. The unapologetic acknowledgment on the behalf of the singer of her partner’s faults is empowering and highlights the idea that power is in the hands of those who hold the weapons to control it. Anjali Singhal

Latch Key

Kari Faux

Corashe

Nathy Peluso

Latch Key is an unflinching, bold song from Kari Faux’s album Cry 4 Help - 5 songs that guide us through Faux’s traumatic journey as a young woman navigating drug addiction, mental health, and sexual assault. In Latch Key, Faux lays out her trauma in a confessional style of rap, reflecting on her experience with sexual violence that turned into an unforeseen pregnancy and an eventual miscarriage. The violence is not said outright and is woven into the broader narrative. The listener can hear the pain and the impact of the assault has on her life, by taking a deeper dive into the lyrics. Julia Schreib Corashe translates from Spanish to English as courage. The song is sung by an Argentinian artist and throughout the song, she encourages the person she is speaking to have courage. The first part of the song is intense rap and then as the song progresses there is the intense repetition of the word Corashe. Nathy Peluso creates a song that urges one to have courage, no matter the situation. This song is a call to have courage and be powerful. Anjali Singhal Radio

Make America Great Again

Pussy Riot

This song is largely a commentary on the political state of America and the prejudiced nature of the ideals that the political party of the current President holds. The song takes notions of immigration and violence in America to create a narrative about the inane nature of the slogan “Make America Great Again.” The song also challenges gender norms and highlights the violence that is perpetuated systematically against black communities. Anjali Singhal

Friendly Fire

French Vanilla

Queer punk band French Vanilla takes a stab at the topic of toxic relationships comparing them to friendly fire as a “violent threat.” In this fast pace spunky song, the artist reveals the emotional abuse that occurred where the partner did not relent and persisted to psychologically torture. As queer people continue to navigate same-sex relationships and abuse within relationships, there must be safe spaces and their voices should be heard. Julia Schreib

PAPER PLANES

M.I.A

Literally all she wanna do is *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot* *gunshot* and *ching* and take your mon-aay! I was about 10 years old when I first heard this song and remember hearing this voice that sounded so strong and full and hearing literal gunshots in a song next to a womxn’s voice. As a kid, I couldn’t fully understand her critiques of imperialism and xenophobia but I could grasp that this song was for brown and Black kids.

STFU!

Rina Sawayama

Pata Pata

Miriam Makeba

Three words: Fuck Kill Bill. This song is just a deliciously explosive rage fest that is so indulgent and loud and reminds me to let myself just get really angry sometimes and turn up some loud music and feel that emotion. The music video is brilliant, it starts with a 2-minute intro of a date with a white man exotifying Rina and then breaks into this burst of energy and rejection of all things Eurocentric and this is really where we see weapons being displayed and used as resistance to the stereotypes she was forced to sit through and swallow. Miriam Makeba became well known for openly opposing South African apartheid through her music. This song is a joyful Afro-pop dance song that was released in 1967. Given this context, this song was able to bring joy to many people in the face of apartheid, which in itself is powerful. Maribella Cantú

Way to the Show

Solange

Solange uses this song to pose necessary and obviously rhetorical questions. Are you on your way? Can we count on you? Will you show up? This song demands attention in all parts from the lyrics to the gun clicks hidden below the guitar, Solange takes no prisoners. These lyrics offer no compromise. You’re either with us or you’re not. The rhetorical questions leave no room for hesitation as she requires the listener to decide. The song makes us think of the demands we make and how much we are willing to make room or compromise in order to get the things we want. Chiamaka Nwadike

We Will Bury You

Bags

In this 1978 song, Alice Bag captures collective anger and its power. She screams at the person she directs this song to that they hold no power because all they can do is vocalize their anger. Meanwhile, she and whoever else is included in this “we” is going to take action. This is even clear with the name of the song “We Will Bury You” because it is not just a threat or a game to them, they will outwardly express their anger. Maribella Cantú

Baby I’m Bleeding

JPEGMAFIA

In this song, JPEGMAFIA expresses anger towards ways in which whiteness has caused harm. What is most important, however, is that his anger is active. He aims to do something with his anger. In his narrative, he rights wrongs through the power his anger has given him and he conveys this through reference to slave rebellion and the consistent sound of gunshots. He fights back. The main message of this song is resistance through any means. Maribella Cantú Radio

scan to listen

FAT POLITICS “My fat politics are centered around wellness, love and appreciation. I think it’s important for fat folks to be able to love themselves without outside judgment or interference. Health doesn’t always correlate to body size, fat folks should be allowed to breathe and do anything they want.”

KY’TAVIA STAFFORD

“My fat politics is a future for plussize people that doesn’t stop at only loving others, but also loving yourself. Big-bodied individuals are constantly asked when they’re going to lose weight and the world is never satisfied with the present moment. Weight fluctuates just like mental health which is why it’s vital to love yourself at whatever part of your journey you’re at. Personally I love my body and I love myself, but I think I am also so much more than my body. I’m a writer, an artist, a student, and a person. It’s so empowering for me to both love my body and myself but also remember that I am so much more than my physical form.”

SAVANNAH CINZIA SPATAFORA

“My fat politics are based on critically unlearning fatphobia while also using radical education and building community with other fat people as tools for liberation. I believe that creating space to talk about our varying experiences whist intentionally humanizing ourselves is a healing, transformative, and powerful process. We are allowed to reimagine together what a world would look like outside these oppressive fatphobic structures based on white supremacy that condition us to hate ourselves, our beings. I want to be dedicated to unfolding myself, coming into my fat body (as it is right now) with others after being told to dispose of it for so long.”

“My fat politics is really seeing and learning to love my body, and allowing myself to take the time I needed to do so. I have learned that outside validation will never be as powerful as validation from yourself. To be fat is to often feel alone, to often feel invisible. Being in a community with other fat folx, people who really see you, is so important.”

SOPHIA MUYS

PRINCESS AMUGO

collaborative project by Princess Amugo, Savannah Cinzia Spatafora, Ky’tavia Stafford, Sophia Muys, Esmeralda Aldaz

U.S. Military Imperialism by Ashley

LeCroy

art by Grace

Motivated by greed, armed with a massive budget and the most technologically advanced weapons in the world, the United States military perpetuates violence and destruction everywhere it inserts itself. These pursuits are motivated by impe-

rialism, which can be defined as the maintenance of unequal power structures through the plundering of territories and homelands of Indigenous peoples. The U.S., therefore, uses its military as a way to enact its imperialist agenda around the world — forcing itself into foreign governments and imposing its will onto nations in the global south. Lasting effects of U.S. military imperialism are felt continuously after the first involvement. U.S. involvement in Central America and the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region are especially timely, as both regions are still reckoning with these unwelcome advances in ways that are still relevant to U.S. foreign policy. U.S. intervention in Iran began with a military coup in 1953. Following then-Prime Minister Mohammed Massadegh’s attempt to nationalize Iran’s oil reserves, U.S. and British forces sent covert operatives to Iran. They overthrew the democratically elected prime minister for cutting off Western access to Iran’s resources. Thus began a decades-long pattern of unwelcome intervention and violence throughout the SWANA region. Scholars such as Suleiman A. Mourad of Smith College refer to U.S. intervention as the spark that ignited the fire of war and instability across the SWANA region over the past several decades: “The genealogy of ISIS can, no doubt,

Ciacciarelli

be traced a good way back in Islamic history. But it includes a very prominent and recent pedigree: the Sunni jihadists that the US sponsored and armed to fight its then-ideological enemy, the USSR, in the 1980s and 1990s.” Despite the fact that the U.S. military is in many ways the aggressor in this ongoing conflict, the U.S. government and Western

media has continued to push Islamophobic narratives that place the SWANA

region as ann immoral wasteland, propagandizing the U.S.’s destructive intervention as a force for peace. These arguments serve to further marginalize Southwest Asian, North African, and Muslim people living in the U.S. and abroad by encouraging hatred and violence against them in insidious ways—characterizing them as dangerously conservative religious extremists. Ironically, these

narratives are pushed by the U.S., the number one terrorist state in the world.

According to a study by Brown University, the U.S. military has been directly and indirectly responsible for upwards of a million deaths in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001. The current rising escalations between Trump and Iranian leaders are just the latest progressions in a long history of violent military intervention disguised as “defense.” U.S. intervention in Central America has been another devastating campaign over the past several decades. Beginning with the Monroe Doctrine in the early 1800s, the U.S. government has maintained a policy of “international police power” in South and Central America. This means that the U.S. military has given itself the authority to enter Central American

Politics

countries against the will of their governments in order to enforce policies of neoliberal capitalism. This political and econom-

ic philosophy grew out of free-market ideas from liberalism, placing an emphasis on the globalization of Western ideas. One of the most notable examples of the U.S. military executing this kind of “police power” came in 1954, when C.I.A. operatives entered

Guatemala to overthrow the first democratically-elected president the country had ever had. This coup was — you guessed it — motivated by capitalist greed. Juan José Arévalo, the democratically-elected president, supported policies of land redistribution and social programs. These policies mainly benefit the largely Indigenous populations of Guatemala that had been subject to economic repression since the Spanish colonization of the region centuries prior. Part of his new policies included buying back unused land from American companies for the same price they had been purchased for — plus interest — and redistributing it to non-landowning Guatemalan people. In an attempt to maintain their land interests, the U.S. gov-

ernment staged a coup in Guatemala and started a chain of events that plunged Central America into decades of political instability and civil war, the effects of which are still being felt throughout the region today. Policies of U.S. military intervention throughout the twentieth century remain one of the main reasons for mass immigration from Central America to the U.S., and is largely responsible for the refugee crisis currently taking place on the U.S. southern border.

As people “seek refuge” in the United States from imperialized nations in Central America, a great iro-

ny remains that the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the damage it directly caused that led to the current crisis. This irony is compounded by the fact that many of these refugees belong to Indigenous groups Politics

from Central America, and have a greater ancestral tie to the Americas than the white forces trying to exclude them. For immigrants lucky enough to obtain legal status such as residency or citizenship, the fact remains that many are working-class and must rely on government services to survive. For those who were denied citizenship and were forced to enter the country as undocumented immigrants, the economic situation is often more dire, seeing as undocumented immigrants are legally barred from receiving government benefits. This argument is usually supported by the misconception that undocumented immigrants are exhausting limited government resources. The dark irony of this perceived lack of funding is that the U.S. government has plundered the wealth out of their homelands, generating the need for migration.

Over 50% of the federal discretionary budget in 2020 will go to funding the military, while social services such as education, housing and healthcare suffer from inadequate funding. This vi-

olent government structure often places people who live in underserved communities — including many immigrants and their families — in the difficult situation of having to find a way to provide for themselves and their families all the while living with the ever-present threat of deportation. The true nature of this exploitation is evident in several ways that the U.S. government operates, most insidiously in the fact that undocumented immigrants still pay federal taxes, the social benefits from which they rarely see. The money that these people pay to the government does, however, go to funding the very same military that has historically — and continues to — ravaged the home countries that they were forced to flee as a direct result of U.S. military imperialism. Another way the U.S. government exploits and plunders innocent communities for its own personal gain is through military recruiting. ROTC programs and military headhunters set up shop in high schools, offering a way for working-class youth to “escape” the cycle of poverty that is perpetuated by a lack of social

services from the U.S. government. According to NPR, these military recruiters usually undergo sales training before they infiltrate the schools, further demonstrating the commodification of young working-class bodies. Recruiters tell youth all sorts of lies, ranging from the allegation that if they enlist, their college education will be paid for (it won’t), to claiming they can quit anytime they want (they can’t, unless they want a “dishonorable discharge” stain on their record). Many of these young students are Black and Brown, which demonstrates the fact that non-white people are often disposable to the U.S. government. This cycle is yet another example of the United States government disarming people of color in order to gain more power for its seemingly all-powerful white supremacist weapon: the military.

The U.S. military is nothing short of a terrorist organization. It uses taxpayer

dollars — many of which are collected from people with close emotional ties to the states it ravages — to conduct a series of violent military campaigns across the world for its own personal gain. The viciousness of these acts are echoed in the fact that it actively recruits working-class people domestically to kill working-class innocents abroad. Only the wealthy are truly safe from this imperialist machine. This, however, is precisely why anti-imperialist feminist perspectives on this issue are so important. If we want to actively fight against this superpower, we must take the power into our own hands. We must

reject the violent perspectives that Western media perpetuates about U.S. military campaigns, uplift the voices of those directly afflicted with the wounds of Western imperialism, and strive for an end to this violent U.S. military machine.

And it is absolutely essential that this fight be ongoing. In the words of famous anti-imperialist feminist Angela Davis: “Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.”

Politics

photo by Malaya

Johnson

Police Militarization by Tessa

Fier art by Malaya Johnson

In 2014, images of police equipped with military-grade weapons, vehicles and armor rolled across American media, shocking people across the country. This disturbing display of force was the law enforcement response to demonstrations following the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson Police Department Officer. While this coordinated campaign of suppression was particularly widely-reported, it was not unprecedented. The militarization of the police is

an ongoing process, disproportionately targeting Black and Brown people, with deep roots stretching back to slavery. One of the earliest forms of organized policing in what is now the United States of America were the slave patrols of the Southern colonies, created to intimidate and control enslaved people, and to capture runaways. The system was first imported to South Carolina from Barbados in 1704, 85 years after the first slave ship landed in Jamestown, and quickly spread across the rest of the South. Slave patrols were groups of volunteers, each assigned their own area to monitor. Often mounted on horseback and armed with guns and whips, they rode through the South with virtually unlimited power to brutally punish any Black person they came across. These patrols were sanctioned by slave owners to uphold the racial order upon which the entire Southern economy was based. While dominant historical narratives maintain a divide between pre and post-slavery, the current economic system of a white land-owning class exploiting racialized labor contin-

ues, and thus the modern police serve a similar role to that of their slave-era predecessors. Following abolition, slave patrols were officially disbanded, yet the patterns of racist policing created during the colonial slave era remained in both legal and extralegal practices. Maintaining the established racial hierarchy required new forms of repressive enforcement which, according to Professor Larry H. Spruill, â&#x20AC;&#x153;led to the formation of local police to insure white domination and Black subordination.â&#x20AC;? In addition to racist oppression by legally sanctioned police departments, the period of Reconstruction saw the rise of extralegal hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, whose main goal was the terrorization, subjugation, and harming of Black people. Although the activities explicitly tied to the KKK have been forced underground, cases of extralegal policing of Black people continue to occur. One such example is the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin by the captain of a so-called neighborhood watch group who shot the 17 year-old despite instructions from 911 to avoid confrontation, yet was acquitted of all charges by the judicial system. This is yet another example of American institutions implicitly sanctioning violence against Black people. As the Civil Rights Movement gained power throughout the 1950s and 1960s, many of the explicitly segregationist policies that law enforcement had long been tasked with upholding were formally ended. This culminated in the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon B. Johnson. However, these legislative

gains did not end deeply entrenched systemic racism. Rather, government institutions of white supremacy merely changed their tactics to continue their surveillance and punishment of Black and Brown people.

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In 1968, four years after the Civil Rights Act, Johnson signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act in response to fears of a “Black insurgency” triggered by the Watts and Detroit uprisings. These demonstrations against institutional discrimination were villified by mainstream commentators and branded as “riots” to cement their negative reputation with the public. This act created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which allows municipal governments to receive federal money to acquire military resources for “riot prevention.” The dramatic increase in SWAT teams following the passage of this law exemplifies the militarization of the United States police in response to perceived threats to violent systems of racial oppression. Although developed for use against demonstrations, these newly militarized police departments were soon used during the War on Drugs, which ushered in a new era of racialized law enforcement. Despite the fact that all races use illicit drugs at similar rates, Black and Brown people are disproportionately targeted for drug offenses. While the War on Drugs was marketed by the government as a necessary campaign to save the United States from the scourge of illegal drugs, it was in fact a tool of institutional racism created to continue the surveillance and oppression of Black and Brown people— the same job of the 1700s slave patrols. Drugs that are more frequently used by Black people carry harsher sentences, and, as a result of these sentencing disparities, Black people are far more frequent targets of militarized

police activity in drug searches. These para-

military police tactics have caused irreparable harm to Black communities, with innumerable Black people imprisoned, losing years of their life and, in many cases, their access to jobs and housing. Through incarceration, housing deprivation, and barring access to jobs, the legal establishment is still heavily invested in keeping low the economic and political power of Black people.

As we saw in Ferguson, police militarization is continuing. Following the murder of Michael Brown the Department of Justice conducted a report showing patterns of racist policing by the Ferguson Police Department. A particularly illuminating example is the excessive deployment of K9 units, which call to mind the packs of dogs used in the 1700s to intimidate enslaved people and hunt for runaways. In Ferguson, every recent victim of excessive force involving K9 units was Black. In light of policing’s long history as an institution of surveillance and violence, it is no surprise that it continues to terrorize Black people. Police are invested in upholding the racist s t a tus quo and, as such, actively block all attempts at reform. Initiatives like body cameras, while an important tool in increasing accountability for officers, fail to address the root of the problem: the complex web of legislation and institutions that sanction this oppression. The police are not broken;

they are, in fact, doing exactly what they were intended to: uphold white supremacy through continued oppression of marginalized communities. Politics

by Lily

Bollinger art by Sophia Muys

he came to me with hands white as doves he came to me like a silence of the fallen a “peace,” a lingering an ideal, he says he ripped the stick and stone from my hands violence is not the answer yet who struck whom when I disobeyed? at seventeen, violence and love came to me swollen in a fruit of rubies, I ate each seed like Persephone until birth of Spring. my stupid heart lay shattered in then sprouting grass my wrecked body, a collapsed marionette below me and he stood, fist still raised in harmony, dripping with blood he wiped my tears, set a garland of olive in my hair and I sealed myself inside a shell at twenty, virtue and uproar came to me She came to me in the night, She came to me with light as white as the moon mud smeared face, Her lover’s death hung around Her waist like a belt of stars; riot, huntress, bow and arrow in hand and Her voice rang out like the howl of a wolf a shield will not suffice armor will not suffice

Arts & Creative

the opposite of conflict is not the absence of brutality it is instead the victorious, with tyranny perched atop their brows, calling for a moment of silence, calling for weapons dropped as the dying, beaten, abused wail for justice I knelt in the grass, picked up the scraps of my flesh: a shard of my broken heart in one hand a snapped bone in the other a sword to swing, a knife to pierce and for the first time in my life, I was armed should the peace come for me again

Arts & Creative

by Eva

Hyperpop is Campy Self-Defense

Szilardi-Tierney

art by El

From the Golden Era of Hollywood to Paris Hilton to TikTok, the nature of popular cul-

ture has shifted from being an optional part of life to being the bedrock of modern communication. Yet as we settle into lip syncing our most intimate feelings, questions regarding the ethicality of consumption are conspicuously absent. But to begin we must first consider:

even is pop culture?

what

Though we can regard popular culture as simply media, art, and information produced, distributed, and consumed en masse, this definition fails to capture the current popular culture landscape. Popular culture is no longer relegated to just movie screens, posters on walls, or even music passively or obsessively listened to. As communication becomes (more or less) synonymous with pop culture, we begin to express virtually everything through the language of pop culture. Every sentiment is filtered through the jargon of the Internet. So instead of sharing my sadness over lost love in any kind of candid way, I tweet about how I’m “deep in heartbreak… in my Kia Sorento.” Because, you know, I thought this would get more likes. We begin to equate expressing ourselves with maximizing engagement, and so life feels more and more like a constant performance. Every moment has the potential to be captured, edited, and captioned — with the aforementioned internet vernacular — in a way that other people will like. This is a double edged sword. It’s easier to cope with pain when you’re able to package it as a Gendertainment

Gomez

joke, and say “I’m… suffering?? lmao” instead of taking your distress seriously. But this also desensitizes us to the suffering of ourselves and others, minimizing such pain as just more of the white noise of social media. This also makes it far more difficult to critically examine the harm that such jargon, and this attitude of performance more generally, reproduces. This harm results mainly from the absurdity of pairing serious, often painful events from Real Life with this constant drive to impress, and with the endless drive for #content. Someone posts a selfie on Instagram with a caption about how it sucks that he was near a shooting but at least “the sunshine makes me look pretty #fuckguns” and it somehow feels plausible. Or, more relatably, you might scroll past any number of sincere, intense posts about world politics or a friend’s personal life only to then get a targeted ad for Porsche or Pepsi. There’s no context for what is deserving of attention or examination, because everything feels the same. In the modern age of Instagram, Twitter, and the king of mindless reproduction, TikTok, the question of the ethicality of such a constant deluge of images thus becomes increasingly important. We’re left to wonder, how do we approach this wealth of information critically? How do we gain a sense of what is important?

Enter: Hyper pop. Hyper pop is music, fashion, and film that is garish, highly stylized, and absurd. Hyper pop selects specific symbols and traits of modern pop culture and exaggerates them until they’re difficult to look at. But most importantly, it

turns undifferentiated imagery into a weapon that exposes how ridiculous it is to sell your personal life alongside a soda pop and to accept the relentless slog of images as good and fun.

Take the digitized, frenetic music of 100 gecs. It has all the elements of popular club or party music: autotune, fast beats, lyrics about having money (and a big truck) and partying hard. But with 100 gecs it’s a little too much — a little too fast, a little too distorted. The cash cow nature of pop music is turned on its head as Laura Les gasps for air while she sings about having bloodstains in her bathroom and vomit on her floor. This is 100 gecs’ sly way of showing that capitalism is killing her. Or consider the drag queen Juno Birch, who describes herself to Vogue’s Youtube channel as “a glamorous alien woman who crash-landed on Earth in 1962.” Juno’s style is a highly exaggerated version of beauty trends in the 60s: icy-blue eyeshadow painted up to pencil thin brows, three-foot-tall beehive hairdos, cleaning gloves with scarlet fingernails painted on the rubber fingers. Her extreme artifice forces us to reckon with the fact that perhaps all beauty is artificial and clownish (even when not interpreted by an extraterrestrial).

This is why hyperpop is a camp phenomenon. Camp is realizing that

in a world which lacks context surrounding what is important, no one has noticed the discrepancy beGendertainment

tween what is absurd and what is serious. Camp, meanwhile, dares to take the absurd seriously by exaggerating what is already ridiculous. Thus 100 gecs is autotuned to a fever pitch and Juno Birch paints her skin to look like glossy plastic. This is also how hyperpop forces us to be more critical. No one can ignore the contradictions of consumerism or beauty standards when they’re blown up to be this jarring. Hyperpop’s exaggeration grasps our attention precisely because it’s ridiculous. By exaggerating the contradictions of pop culture but presenting them seriously, hyperpop therefore forces the audience to try and take pop culture’s contradictions at face value. And when the spectator fails to take these discrepancies seriously, they then have no choice but to see them for what they are: glaring absurdities. But hyperpop should not be considered infallible. Hyperpop’s critique is effective because it operates outside of the mainstream. As soon as Totinos starts shooting commercials that cast their pizza rolls as washed up rave kids who party mindlessly until they go in the oven, hyperpop will lose its verve.

Hyperpop, therefore, must stay grotesque. Its campiness

will only undermine this meaningless drone of images if it remains a little too much, and infused with irony. As long as it does this, we have ourselves a champion in the fight against passive image consumption. But just in case, enjoy hyperpop while you can. If we subsist on unceasing imagery, then hyperpop is the dessert.

The RSS: Something Sinister in America’s Backyard

by Jasmine

Kaur art by Karina Remer Modeled after the Nazi Party’s quest to create an Aryan nation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1923. The party intended to rid India of “foreigners” because they believed that only Hindus are truly Indian. The RSS, classified as a “voluntary organization” for recreation, openly profess extremist values, vowing to make India a Hindu nation at all costs.

The RSS has continuously served as a springboard for shaping extremist politicians in the governing political party, the

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Examples of these leaders include Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The RSS has been at the forefront of many violent movements throughout India. In June 2019, Hindus influenced by RSS ideology reportedly beat a Muslim man and forced him to recite Hindu prayers for attempting to steal a bike. Many Christian schools have been attacked or forced to incorporate Hindu prayers. In 2008, over 100 Christians were murdered in India. As a party, the BJP changes the names of historically Muslim-named and Muslim-associated towns to Hindu names; Allahabad became Prayagraj and Faizabad became Ayodhya. The BJP claims that changes like these will kick-start the economy and improve life for all Indians.

The RSS convinced the BJP to initiate a beef ban across the religiously diverse country because of Hindu dietary restrictions; the ban has, in turn, been used as an excuse to lynch Muslims and Christians suspected of eating beef or killing cows. Moreover, Indian Spend, a data-based news organization, cites that “Muslims were the target of 51% of violence centered on [cow-related] issues [from 2010 to 2017]...as many as 97% of these attacks were reported after Narendra Modi’s government came to power.” Recently, the RSS has proposed the new Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) and National Registry of Citizens (NRC), which many politicians are calling “India’s Muslim Ban.” India is a secular country: a subcontinent with a richly diverse culture that varies greatly by region. Even Hindu rituals and traditions can vary greatly from place to place. The BJP, however, is flattening this diversity by enacting stricter citizenship laws. This legislation targets Muslim refugees, making the citizenship and immigration process much more

Politics

difficult. It allows non-Muslim residents a pathway towards citizenship, but any Muslim individuals without documentation, are targetted and labeled as illegal immigrants. Muslims living in India have almost no legal protections, and the enactment of the NRC and the CAA contradicts promises of equal rights made in India’s constitution. By the same token, the “media blackout” for over five months in Kashmir is an extension of Hindu nationalism. The Indian government has continuously and forcefully exerted control of their portion of Kashmir to contain the supposed terrorist and militant groups. However, locals claim that the Indian government has been forcing Kashmiri youth to “drop their pens and thus pick up guns.” Furthermore, the BJP Election Manifesto has always indicated that the BJP has wanted to repeal Article 370 that allowed Kashmir’s autonomy, bringing it into Indian control. India’s mili-

tarization of Muslim-majority Kashmir is a violent process designed to one day force them to abide by the nationalist agenda. With the BJP as the

governing political party, India has begun to take away the Kashmiri’s autonomy and power, forcing the nation to submerge and abide by India’s slowly turning theocratic laws. While the scope of these events may seem limited to India, the RSS is steadily infiltrating Euro-American society, through right-wing organizations like Arktos Media. According to The New Yorker, Arktos Media, founded in 2009, is the largest distributor of far-right propaganda in Euro-American countries, . From 2010 to 2014, the organization operated in India. During this incubation period, the founders met with the leaders RSS and BJP. Although they claimed to work out of India because it was easier than working out of Europe, many believe that Arktos targeted India to gain influence in worldwide right-wing groups. After founding member David Friedberg left Arktos Media, he went on to start altright.com, a propaganda website founded through RSS and Nazi ideology. They sponsored several events

across the United States including the notorious “Unite the Right’’ rally. Prominent South Asian Affairs analyst, Pieter Freidrich described the protests in his writing: Several white nationalists, including the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, were in attendance. Another Klan leader fired a pistol at a Black man who was counter-protesting. Six people killed another Black man. A 20-year-old rammed his car into counter-protestors purposely, killing some. White nationalists, like David Fried-

berg himself, looked up to the RSS, a transnational proxy for the Nazi Party. Carrying

RSS’s ideals with him, he has been pivotal in further weaponizing their message to expand rightwing ideology and groups like the KKK in the United States. In an attempt to further tighten its hold on American soil and hearts, the RSS entered the U.S. political scene through a backdoor-progressive democrat, Tulsi Gabbard. Currently campaigning in the 2020 Democratic Primary race, Gabbard is protested as a candidate because of her ties to the RSS and BJP. Gabbard has spent her campaign money to pay for an Indian nationalist political party’s event, celebrating his election. Gabbard continues to meet with BJP and RSS leaders, while also speaking at their events. Western Media has villainized Islam to justify interference in other countries, remaining silent as the RSS’s Hindu nationalism infiltrates American politics through Gabbard. Establishment politics has ignored the voices of non-Hindu Indians who recognize her dangerous affiliations and wish for her to resign. India’s political power as the world’s largest democracy, a strong U.S. trading partner, and an ally in the war on terrorism continues to uphold neoliberal interests in the global imperial core. The media silence on the RSS serves

to allow the unchecked expansion of Hindu extremism and India’s decay into fascism.

History is about to repeat itself very soon. The question remains as to whether we will take steps through education, dialogue, and awareness to be alert and allow marginalized groups to speak for themselves or if we will end up merely memorializing fascist genocide.

Politics

photo by Brenna

Nouray

The White Dude Inside the MARGINALIZED BODY:

Tarantino,

Voyeurism,

and a by Chloe

Body

that is

Not Our Own

Xtina

art by Lauren

Cramer

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of violence, sexual assault, and the usage of racial slurs in film. It’s time to unpack the cultural phenomenon that is a Tarantino flick and our collective consumption of false empowerment. Tarantino

films are false power for everyone but the white man. At the root of chicks in tracksuits killing Bill or freed slaves becoming cowboys, we find a bizarre escapism.

Tarantino’s self-insertion into his films (especially the violence in his films), as well as his own admittance of a demand to become his characters, prove his desire to peel back the skin and break open the bones of the cis woman body, the Black body, the Asian American body and place himself in the casing.

THE AUTEUR

“I kind of don’t have anybody to thank. I did it.” (Tarantino, 2020 Golden Globes acceptance speech) This is the core of the auteur. The idea that the director is the one and only true author of a film. I use this as a way to explore how Tarantino sees himself at the center of his films and characters.

In a 2018 article for the New York Times, Uma Thurman—Tarantino’s muse—reveals the ways in which Tarantino asserted his dominance over Thurman on set. During two respective sequences in “Kill Bill: Vol 1,” on screen Budd (Michael Madsen) spits in Thurman’s face and Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) chokes Thurman with a chain. Off screen, Tarantino is the one spitting on and pulling the chain that is choking Thurman. Evidently, there is a desire by the filmmaker to demand attention back to himself. There isn’t a Tarantino film where Tarantino doesn’t exist. Tarantino exists with his hands choking or lips spitting on Uma Thurman, he exists in his own cameos, he exists within his films’ need to look and feel authentically like a Tarantino mark. Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence is Tarantino’s direct response to director Spike Lee’s criticism of his use of racial slurs on “Charlie Rose”: “As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them.” Tarantino spells it out for us. He demands the right to be any character he wants, regardless of race or gender. And we keep on

Gendertainment

chomping that world up, letting it sink in, seeing our bodies how he’s created our bodies to be. This problematic approach to marginalized characters allows Tarantino to exploit ra-

cialized bodies from the perspective of “the truth” he’s only consumed through mass stereotyping. Tarantino justifies his

use of the N-word because he says it’s ingrained in the Black community. But this justification reduces the Black community to a racial slur. He demands to be his Black characters so that he can reiterate the N-word and occupy a slur he can’t use as a white man, at risk of being called racist. By the need to write characters of color only to experiment with what it’s like to be them keeps stories about people of color in the canon of white male stories. When only seeing films through the white male narrative, we document the history of people of color in that cultural moment as being reflective of said perspectives. We remember a group of people through the eyes of the oppressor.

VISUAL PLEASURE + VOYEURISM

What sparks my voyeuristic analysis of Tarantino comes from my firm belief that he is trying to have sex with himself on screen. The female protagonists in Tarantino’s films exist in two worlds: Tarantino’s “lone wolf badass” and as a sexual object. The “lone wolf badass” is the ultimate cowboy, the ultimate anti-hero: someone you don’t wanna fuck with. He is Lt. Aldo Raine in “Inglorious Basterds” or, more recently, Cliff Booth in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” This archetype

is the white male fantasy of having authority but no consequences. It serves as a blank canvas into which a male spectator can insert himself. He can become the cowboy he is conditioned to desire.

The second world is one ultimately of body. Not one of Tarantino’s female protagonists is immune to the male gaze. She is repeatedly reminded of her looks. From “Kill Bill: Vol 1”

(2003): “Man’d have to be a mad dog to shoot a goddamn good-looking gal like that in the head.” She lives in a world where everyone wants to fuck her. She is designed to be looked at. In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey writes, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly[; a] to-belooked-at-ness.” This tobe-looked-at-ness enables a sea of voyeurs. Because, as Mulvey later argues, wom-

en in film are trapped in a gaze that is historically a conversation between the male camera, the male protagonist and the male spectator.

Take “Kill Bill: Vol 1” — a classic. In the epic battle scene where The Bride (Uma Thurman) defeats Johnny Mo (Gordon Liu), she pushes him off a staircase. The camera sits directly in between her legs as we watch him descend. In another shot, she looms over the railing, the lighting blurring out her face. With little of her reaction, we consume her body as the focus. 2007’s “Death Proof” is a great example of pulp for the sake of pulp. The film follows a group of women brutally murdered by Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) only for a second group of women to, in turn, murder him. But as Stuntman Mike slams his car into the car of his victims, we see the crash repeated so that we may focus on each of the girls’ deaths. It’s a vicious and long repeated

Gendertainment

act. One girl is thrown out the windshield, another is impaled by glass shards, a third’s face is skinned by a tire, and lastly one woman’s leg is torn from her body. This leg belongs to Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier)—the only Black woman in the group, her body’s mutilation highlighted as one of the more gruesome acts of violence in the film. The second group of women (Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms) hunt Stuntman Mike down. It’s hard not to root for their badass takedown of him. But I can’t help but notice that Russell’s body remains intact. His death is not gruesome at all. It’s comical. We don’t see his leg torn from his body, no tire peeling back his flesh. His body still looks like his own. The female body — and especially the Black female body — is reduced to bits. If this film is for the escapist means of a white man, why do so many marginalized people find empowerment in these narratives? My theory is that we get to see ourselves have rogue power with no consequences. We see characters that look and sound like us but they are not us. We see ourselves doing things we’ve only ever seen the white man achieve. We continue to consume Tarantino films because we subconsciously desire the

power that white men are granted every day. With a Tarantino film (or others like it), we get to divorce ourselves from reality and live in a cartoonish state where we get to “win.” But this social structure finds Tarantino an oppressive contributor. While he weaponiz-

es the marginalized body, Tarantino remains an untouchable figure in Hollywood. Tarantino continues the white male narrative canon but because he helms an overwhelming visual pleasure of violence, sex, and glory, he is seen as a revisionist. He becomes the radical outsider within Hollywood’s power because any marginalized radical filmmaker would be too far outside the mainstream canon.

We don’t have to accept this narrative. In fact, we must refuse that this is the only narrative we’re offered. Two directors Ana Lily Amirpour and Mouly Surya explore genre blending, revisionist film, and violence with women of color at the center. Take Amirpour’s “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” or Mouly Surya’s “Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts.” These films are complex narratives of the rage of women of color and their anti-hero attempts at justice.

These films are more powerful than any Tarantino film because these films depict multi-dimensional people from the perspective of women who have not lived in a world of seedy grit, but in a world of monopolizing structures. Amirpour and Surya have reclaimed this body and having come from this body, created worlds of monstrous women and female cowboys to abolish this grit and honor the rage of a woman of color. There is no white man inside them. There are many other marginalized directors who explore this. But because we’ve created a cult of the auteur exclusive to white men pre-21st century, we have fringed so many directors from a globally seen narrative.

There can be no white male narrative when we radically alter the structure under which stories are told and bodies are looked at. Tarantino is telling the same story of violence and heroism over and over. Fuck that story. Mainstream cinema has yet to catch up.

Gendertainment

History of School Shootings at UCLA

by Jem

Garcia and Devika Shenoy

Campus Life

art by Joie

Cao

On January 28, 2020, students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) received an alert from the campus police: “Assault with a Deadly Weapon.” Two suspects with a firearm assaulted students at Hitch Suites before fleeing the scene. Given limited information, students were left confused. Had there been a shooting on campus?

This 2020 Police Department report joins the list of multiple assault cases at UCLA, both on campus and within the residential halls. While most of these incidents did not involve a firearm, the ones that did exposed UCLA’s failure to properly respond in the case of a shooting. An analysis of UCLA’s history of shootings raises serious

questions about the university’s level of emergency preparedness.

In 2016, a fatal murder-suicide on UCLA’s campus made national news. CNN reported that a UCLA student targeted his professor, Dr. William Klug. The whole campus was on lockdown as authorities investigated, while students and faculty remained at a loss on how to protect themselves. Police vehicles flooded the area surrounding campus in an effort to control the situation, but CNN indicated that many students still lacked helpful information resources. Several students observed peers crying helplessly as instructions and updates were limited. Individuals were forced to stay in the building where the incident occurred. A tweet posted at 9:49 a.m. by Pranasha Shrestha during the active shooter period read, “Doors open outward with no locks,” further revealing unpreparedness in UCLA’s design. Individuals attempted to tie the doors with electrical cables to heavier objects in the room, strugCampus Life

gling to hold the doors closed. In an active shooter situation with fear already spiked, individuals on campus had to protect themselves in ways the infrastructure could not. This problem could have been solved with UCLA’s resources and some planning, yet it remains an issue today. Prior to the 2016 murder-suicide, UCLA’s other high-profile school shooting occured in 1969. According to a 2014 Nommo article commemorating the victims, Bunchy Carter and John Higgins, two students who were members of the Black Panther Party, were shot during a Black Student Union meeting at Campbell Hall. The shooter was never found. In “Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement,” authors Churchill and Wall described several alternate theories and objective reports that have analyzed the shooting. These reports found that the FBI encouraged the violence that contributed to the students’ murders, offering evidence to how racialized policing contributes to gun violence. The 2016 murder-suicide echoed similar feelings to the terror that plagued the campus in 1969, with reactions lasting for days. According to the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), although certain groups are more likely to experience the negative impacts of gun violence than others, general impacts include: “anger, withdraw-

al, and post-traumatic stress.” CWLA details both short- and long-term psychological impacts of gun violence, and concludes that “it is time to … [focus] on the social, emotional, physical, and mental health impact of those traumatized.”

UCLA is not the only campus in the country that has been subject to gun violence. Everytown, an independent, non-profit group that studies gun violence, reported at least ninety-nine incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2019 alone (through Dec. 11). Since 2000, National School Safety and Security Services report that over fifty attacks with numerous dangerous weapons (including instances with no injuries) have taken place at post-secondary institutions, primarily on college campuses.

The CWLA studies contextualize our analysis of UCLA’s response to the 2016 shooting. Scott Waugh, UCLA’s then executive vice chancellor, noted that the school extended counseling services over the days following the shooting to students. Furthermore, classes were briefly canceled. Addressing gun violence on a socioeconomically diverse campus with 40,000 students can be a difficult task, and whether UCLA’s response has been adequate is up for debate. Nevertheless, students like us feel that a satisfying conversation is rarely brought up by the university. Despite the university’s efforts, when instances such as the “Assault with a Deadly Weapon” in January 2020 occur, students are left with the same anxiety that has plagued UCLA in the past.

It can be easy to criticize UCLA for their lack of emergency preparedness, but the feel-

Institutions must provide affected persons the support necessary to move past gun violence for those both directly and indirectly affected.

After an active shooter situation, many pro-Second Amendment politicians and activists pressure everyone to move on so that life returns to normal quickly. There’s an institutionalized

sense of helplessness that prevents people from demanding change. As we reflect on UCLA’s

emotionally charged history of school shootings and assaults, it’s important to note that almost nothing has been done to prevent similar tragedies from happening again. This cheapens every effort UCLA has made to answer for that history, by doing nothing tangible to address the individuals on campus who remain helpless today to potential shooters.

ing of helplessness regarding school shootings can be applied throughout the whole country.

While it is important to keep UCLA accountable for its ineffective response to violence, it is also important to criticize larger structural problems that result in schools being unable to afford the necessary changes to address potential school shooters. How can we expect all universities to respond? The political and socioeconomic implications of gun violence are too vast for universities not to address with policy changes and better regulations. Especially in public universities, where access to most facilities is unrestricted, the task of keeping the community safe is difficult and warrants immediate improvements. UCLA professor Douglas Keller notes that one important step is to expand mental health resources available to students. Providing useful community and therapeutic resources to help affected individuals cope can foster healing.

Universities have a social responsibility to work within transformative structures to help prevent gun violence, rather than just acknowledging it. They should not only ex-

pand mental health resources for students affected by gun violence, but advocate for policy change within and outside of their institution to address the proliferation of gun violence in the first place.

Campus Life

Leaving a house alone by Meg

Anderson

art by Sonia

Hauser

Taping the photo to the ceiling probably wasn’t the smartest way to preserve it. Eventually, the whole coast will flood again, taking every building on the block with it, my house and everything inside included. We’ll meet a new coast again, with new borders, new half-Atlantises waiting to become myth. The water doesn’t reach the ceiling of my house at its highest point now. But that could change. That could change quick. My only photo, too. Stupid, dangerous. But still, somehow, I was surprised to see it flapping in the wind when the low tide crept back and I came home. A note was written out on the back, large. I could even read it from the floor: “She’s pretty.” I knew it was possible to sneak into the house during high tide. I’m always gone for the flood. I spend most days in the cities a couple miles inland, where the water doesn’t quite reach

yet. But all of the shit in the house has been melted by salt water. Nothing worth stealing. More than anything, too, there’s the water keeping people away. The water sucks something out of the air when you stay near it too long. All the muck thrives off the presence of someone nearby to be disgusted by it. It gets worse the longer you look. It asks you to remember the chemicals, the steady forward march of the coastline, the pain. You don’t stick around unless you have to. I know I have to move soon, too. I’ve spent too many mornings waking up to the sea skimming the edge of my skin as I sleep. Too many rashes to tend. Too much money spent on medicine. That someone was here, saw my photo, and

Arts & Creative

wrote on it, terrified me. People carry pain with them like an entourage and want nothing more than to invite you into the fold. Being what I am doesn’t help. Too feminine or not feminine enough. Most people just decide I’m a woman — a safer perception than anything queerer. But then it’s women, too, who cry wolf when they catch me staring for too long. And if I’m a wolf, I’m one they’ll kill with impunity. I try to stop staring. I try to keep all contact minimal. But someone came anyway. They’d written on the photo in heavy permanent marker that bled through to the front. You could read it backwards across her face. My only photo of her. My one photo. Were they watching me right now? I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move inland. I had to act. I decided to stake out my house from another building nearby — taller, so it wouldn’t flood, but dirtier. I couldn’t remember what it used to be. The remaining markers of whatever it was gave me no clue. A washed out mural of hands and an old woman, cackling. All other paint stripped, sun bleached. I was definitely vulnerable there. The floorboards were mush, eager for a reason to finally cave in and abandon their old shapes. I had a gun on me, but I hadn’t maintained it in a while, like an idiot. Anyone who’d been following me would have been able to kill me here, easy. Often it feels like I’ve been surviving out of immense luck. If it were only my own competence keeping me afloat, I wouldn’t have even made it to see the collapse — would have died when all these buildings had names. I staked out on the roof. The building got nicer as you ascended and moved out of the reach of the sea. I didn’t really have a plan, just a gun and a vantage point. This was the first time I’d stayed during a high tide in years. I was nervous. Maybe the sea would come higher this time. Maybe it would take me with it.

Around 3 a.m. I saw a figure swim into my line of sight. I probably didn’t notice them immediately. All the movement of the sea was hard to differentiate. But once I did, I waited for them to get within reach of a shot. They lazed around. Seemed to be trying out different swim strokes. They kicked at some trash: an old fruit crate, a broken stroller. I wondered what the water must be doing to their skin. So much skin exposed. They had no protection. And it seemed like they’d been in the water for a while. Eventually, they swam over to my house. I had a shot, but I wanted to see what they’d do. They held their breath and dove through the door. Maybe they were looking for the photo. Fat chance, fucker. I had it. I gripped my gun tighter. When they came out, I’d do it. But they swam out again, fast. It startled me. They swiveled their head, searching, covered in muck. Spotted me easily. And just stared. I aimed the gun. Tried to communicate a warning. Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back. But they just slowly raised their arm out of water, trailing grease, and started tracing the path of her hair over their head. They drew a strand in front of their face. They pushed the rest of their imaginary hair back, behind their shoulders. They drew the edges of what you could see in the photo. I remembered her strand, her shoulders, her edges. They traced her hair over their head twice, three times, gently, like it was important. Like they knew her. Like they knew her how I knew her. But they only drew what you could see in the photo. I remembered her. Then they swam away, fast. Faster than they came, streaking lines of slime behind them. I slept on the roof for a week, with the picture of her beside me. When I couldn’t sleep, which was often, I stared out of the sea and traced the path of her hair over my head.

Arts & Creative

by Taryn

Slattery

art by Malaya

A story is a sword, brandished by its teller. In the past, stories have often been used to prop up oppressive frameworks. In some instances, they’ve become false realities, warped into weapons of injustice by the oppressors. Let’s recall some of the various characters that have been spun out of that oppressive fabric: the notion of the “noble savage,” the angry, hostile Black woman, the submissive Asian damsel devoid of agency. These harmful stereotypes are propagated and enforced through these narratives, which are meant to cast marginalized groups into positions of inferiority. This is how power imbalance is maintained: these characters have been written in a fashion that prop up racist, capitalist, imperialist, and patriarchal structures.

Western culture is inherently threatened by multiplicity. Its Dominant

foundations are toppled by those identities that resist confinement to its rigid categories or refuse to live in terms of its imposed structures. It attempts to stifle change, opposition, and all that is dynamic: ourselves. This is especially the case for marginalized identities that cannot be confined to a simple binary or a one dimensional label, and ultimately evade the contours of dominant culture. Writing from experience, attempting to navigate society in terms of categories is disorienting and suffocating, especially when these labels are deployed through the lens of others. For instance, my identity is often considered in terms of halves: Korean and white. I’m expected to “choose” one or the other, which

Johnson

ultimately ignores the fluidity of such an identity. In this way, the many facets of my experience have been compressed into a binary to be enacted accordingly. This construction is yet another false storyline that agrees with convention rather than questioning it. In such a setting, selfhood is picked apart, neatly partitioned, and flattened into rigid forms so that it may not transgress the boundaries white culture has attempted to establish as the standard.

Those whose existences threaten these rigid binaries should not ask for, but demand the creation of space. These spaces are for marginalized people; they don’t exist within white, patriarchal narratives. They invite subversive versions and realities to be enacted instead. The act of configuring one’s narrative outside of the conditions of Western culture is a step towards destroying its systems of power. Narrative becomes a weapon to be utilized by both the individual and the collective. In this sense, what does it look like when marginalized groups arm themselves through the act of configuring their narratives? In her book “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,” queer Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa speaks of the multiplicities that arise from her Mexican and Indigenous descents. This entails a reality where multiple identities overlap and at times, even resist each other. These realities present identity as boundless, contradictory, and perpetually evolving. Anzaldúa has coined the term new mestiza consciousness to describe this experience. She embraces identity as an infinite state of being,

Dialogue & Opinion

generating innumerable storylines, rather than a definite. In turn, this prompts “a continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm.” To create new storylines is to reject the previous ones which are scripted from violence and the desire to subjugate. These alternate stories, when encouraged to flow freely, are weapons in and of themselves. They present a disruption to the oppressive structures that have been and continue to be entrenched within our white, patriarchal society. To refuse the stagnancy of self is to refuse the conditions of Western culture. British-Indian writer Bhanu Kapil is especially adept at weaponizing and mobilizing her identity. In her essay, “Writing/Not Writing Th[a][e] Diasporic Self: Notes Towards a Race Riot Scene,” she constructs a self in the wake of a race riot that occurred in her hometown, a London suburb, in 1979. Her writing evokes visceral feeling, mirroring how memory is informed by violent experiences and how these sensations propagate throughout the body. In this way, Kapil prompts us to think unconventionally: “How do you write a narrative of selfhood that is less about disclosure than it is about discharge? About something moving through. As it does. Through the nerve. In a light spasm.” Selfhood transcends boundaries and structures; it flows and never ceases, it cannot be contained or flattened. It does not reside in the margins, it liberates itself. Mobility is key. When there

is movement, structures dissolve. This paves the way for change, liberation, and a complete upheaval of the landscape that enables oppressive machinery to function smoothly.

Kapil refuses to conform to the notion of a one dimensional, undifferentiated self that is assumed to exist on a linear timeline. She declares, “We should therefore accept the paradox that, in order to really forget an event, we must first summon up the strength to remember it properly.” In this way, the violence and overarching structures that have engendered injustice are de-centered from the discussion. It is not about the event itself, but rather the resilience that is channeled in its wake. Great

resilience lies in the act of channeling one’s experience into infinite, burgeoning ways of being. This is what weaponization of

identity looks like.

Anzaldúa and Kapil’s texts offer frameworks of how to situate ourselves within our identities, on our own terms. These two women of color have armed themselves with their words: their modes of storytelling are not merely shared, but declared. They’re fashioning new definitions, sharpening themselves into unforeseen shapes. While accessibility should always be considered, our stories shouldn’t have to encompass nor address all audiences. It is not so much about finding a label that fits, but rather, continuously writing our narratives, rejecting stagnancy, and seeking to disrupt the status quo. Anzaldúa and Kapil enforce that our stories don’t

need justification, they just need to find their way out. They need to be

put down on paper, given birth through voice, offered up to the light, made ferocious. It’s seizing, then subverting. It’s finding the loopholes in the structures and fortifying them.

The point is survival. To survive is to speak. Dialogue & Opinion

photo by Malaya

Johnson

Elliot B. Yu

m T ra n s W o

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th e S t at

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FEM Newsmagazine 2020

WEAPONS: FEM Winter 2020

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The Consequences of Surveillance