The Local ISSUE - Spring 2016 by ISSUES Magazine

the local 1

Issues Magazine seeks to raise awareness of the intrinsic link that exists between cities, design, and social issues. The spaces we inhabit every day mold our experiences, both by fostering interaction and by putting up barriers. Leveraging the diverse experiences of our contributors, Issues draws connections between both tangible and intangible aspects of the social and the built environments.

Illustrated by Laken Sylvander 3 Cover Illustration by Alice Lee

letter from

the editor

P R E S I D E NT

Dear Thoughtful Readers,

Claire Huttenlocher

At ISSUES Magazine, we believe that an issue is not simply a problem or difficulty. An issue is the intersection of multiple perspectives. It is the beginning of a discussion, something unresolved that needs attention.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

This spring, we have considered the perceptions, controversies, and implications of the term “local.” In an increasingly global world, the local has become an elusive concept. Our attachment to “place” and “community” is rivaled by complex global economies and social networks.

Carrick Reddin

DESIGN CHIEF Libby Perold

VICE PRESIDENT Emma LaPlante

V IS U A L E D ITO R Leora Baum

S E N I O R E D ITO R Alicia Yang

S O C I A L M E D I A D I R E C TO R Yuwei Qiu

Being a local is tied to a sense of belonging and pride. The idyllic notion of a “local” urban community has evolved into a code for trendy, young and cool neighborhoods. Round glasses and rolled-up pants are the trademarks of local coffee shops. Choosing locally grown food has become a successful business practice. The local bluegrass band playing down the street is the place to be seen on a Saturday night. Whether it’s seeking out a food that reminds you of home, exploring a neighborhood of St. Louis, falling in love with a bookstore, or sitting on the porch of your childhood home, the individual and collective experience of “local” raises interesting questions. Should the concept of local be treated as sacred, with a nostalgic tinge? Or should it recognize the brutal social disparities that are sometimes too close to home? Is it necessary to understand the local histories or preserve the authenticity of local foods and experiences? At what point does one become a local? Is it measured in time, relationships, or the elevated awareness of a place? From the Delmar Divide to Paris, Latin America, and Kuwait, this issue challenges what it means to be “local.” We seek to unpack the complexities and contradictions of the word through a diverse array of articles, poems, illustrations, and reflections, and we encourage you to join us in broadening the scope of this dialogue. – Claire Huttenlocher & Carrick Reddin

Illustrated by Alice Lee

t in 6

e u ss i s i th 08

You Wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Remember When You Became a Local

by Miranda Hines

Things You Should Know About St. Louis

by Ashley Holder

Keeping the WashU Bubble Clean

Be Not

Social Cities: St. Louis and Kuwait

A Global Taste of Home

What Does It Mean to be Local?

by Clark Randall

by Emma LaPlante

by Carrick Reddin & Ali Al Yousifi

by Leora Baum

by Alicia Yang

you won’t remember 8

Written by Miranda Hines Illustration by Libby Perold Feeling local is not the same as feeling like coming home. It is not about family waiting for you: instead, it’s the people Who learned your face, your usual breakfast, and your name and you can’t remember when they stopped being strangers. You find yourself noticing and missing These not-friends, not-family when they’re unexpectedly gone. You can still feel alien when you’ve gone somewhere your brain has accepted as a placebo for home. Being busy does not erase what’s missing When you’re surrounded by a micro-culture and its people who, without meaning to, can make you feel like a stranger. Here, you know tourist facts better than faces and names. But then, when asked where you live, you answer with this place name. It’s reflexive at first—you’ve memorized the new address and it won’t go out of your head—but later you find that it feels less strange than it used to. Locals stop asking where your hometown is, although your major remains fair game. These people you meet don’t know that there are things elsewhere you miss.

when

There are cashiers who know you but still politely call you Miss or Sir, yet your favorite coffee shop ceased to have a name because it’s the coffee shop now, where else would you go? People become organic parts of your life rather than the foreign eyes going over you that they once were, politely reminding you that home is elsewhere. You wonder if they still think you are a stranger.

The homesickness is not gone, but now your face and name bring smiles of recognition to the people who do call this place home, and it becomes enough. The absent becomes missed less, and you are not the stranger.

became a local

You come to love this place through the people sitting in the coffee shop, standing in line. You absorb strangers’ stories and connect: that feeling (iamoutofplacehere) shrinks, not gone but counterbalanced by the sense of satisfaction that was missing when you first arrived and realized that no one cared the way everyone did back home.

you

They are still curious, but it’s subtler because now what’s strange is the election—whispered, “can you believe it?” You don’t miss being the other locals’ news. This place doesn’t feel yours like home does, but it makes you happy when acquaintances prioritize your name over your life story. You feel like a local when the thought of going elsewhere stings, because you find yourself attached to here.

A Few Things Every WashU Student Should Know About St. Louis Written by Ashley Holder

Illustrated by Alice Lee

KNOW the borders You might not realize that the city of St. Louis is not in St. Louis County until you notice the “Entering St. Louis County” street signs or look closely on a map. Though you might have just stored it away as “one of those weird things about St. Louis,” the city/county divide has had significant influence over the development of the St. Louis area since the boundaries were drawn in 1877. Initially, the large population of city residents were grateful that their taxes would not support the farmers scattered outside the city limits, but as the county began to receive more funding for expansion, the area beyond the boundary of Skinker Boulevard became significantly more developed. Restrictive covenants prohibited black city residents from moving into these new suburbs until the late 1940s, and later zoning regulations banned apartment buildings, limiting low-income housing in some county areas. Ultimately, most residents with the financial resources to do so moved to the county, leaving the city strapped for cash. Thus, St. Louis County has garnered much more funding for public works projects and therefore a stronger infrastructure.

Another border you may have heard about is the “Delmar Divide,” which divides St. Louis racially and socioeconomically into the two areas north and south of the Loop. The population north of Delmar is 99% black and significantly poorer and less educated while the area south of Delmar is 70% white and contains the ritzy neighborhoods surrounding WashU. Like the city/county divide, the Delmar Divide has formed from the racially discriminatory housing laws and zoning codes that funnel lower-income families into a few neighborhoods. These laws have been overturned, but their legacy survives as poorer neighborhoods remain chronically underserved by local and state governments. Meanwhile, private investment into the Delmar area often results in gentrification.

KNOW the environment Careless human action in the St. Louis area has resulted in disasters that have threatened not only the environment but the survival of entire communities. The St. Louis area has had a disturbing number of incidents with radioactive material. In 1972, the production of Agent Orange during

the Vietnam War left a lot of waste oil to suppress dust. This waste oil eventually made its way to the dirt roads of Times Beach, Missouri. The EPA was aware at the time that the oil contained the toxic chemical dioxin, but it wasn’t until an EPA document was leaked in 1982 that the town learned of the contamination. Just as the EPA finished testing the town’s soil for toxins, a massive flood forced most of the residents to evacuate, and the Center for Disease Control ultimately suggested that the town should be abandoned rather than resettled because of the high levels of contamination. Over eight hundred families were displaced while dioxin-contaminated soil from other parts of the area was introduced to and incinerated in Times Beach. What remains of Times Beach is a ghost town, though some of the land has been turned into a state park where soil samples do not test positive for dioxin. Two landfills in St. Charles County, both linked to Mallinckrodt Chemical Works of St. Louis, received media attention recently for their unusual levels of nuclear waste. The lesser-known landfill in Weldon Springs perches on the site of three towns destroyed to build a TNT manufacturing plant during World War II. After the plant ceased production in 1966, its toxic chemicals sat unattended inside the abandoned building. Ultimately, the U.S. government constructed a waste cell to contain the chemicals, covering 45 acres at the highest point in St. Charles County. The landfill has become somewhat of a tourist site, complete with a viewing platform and plaques describing the history of the site. The Westlake Landfill in Bridgeton has received significant publicity recently because of community outrage over the potentially horrific reaction between 9,000 tons of nuclear waste and a fire that had ignited in the landfill. Though the EPA has agreed to construct a fire wall and begin testing on the site, activists say that the government’s response is both overdue and dismissive of the severity of the situation. In each of these cases, the lives of the community members have been devalued and endangered by a lack of government transparency — and that sets a bad precedent for future environmental crises in St. Louis.

KNOW who represents you The most important Missouri election coming up is the gubernatorial election, which will determine the successor to Democrat Jay Nixon. As governor, Nixon enacted campaign finance reform, environmental regulations, and measures meant to protect LGBT+ citizens from discrimination. However, economic growth during his term faltered, and he faced extensive criticism for his response to Michael Brown’s death in 2014. Some claimed that he failed to enact measures to control rioting while others said he failed to address the issue of police brutality altogether. Two Democrats and four Republicans are vying for their parties’ nomination for the general election, which will be held in November. Missouri’s two senators are Claire McCaskill (D) and Roy Blunt (R). The Democratic incumbent up for reelection in 2018, McCaskill is nationally known for denouncing the Safe Campus Act and proposing an alternative piece of legislation that would ensure greater protections for sexual assault survivors. Blunt is up for reelection this November against Democrat Jason Kander, the Secretary of State of Missouri. Both candidates are in line with their parties’ policies, though GOP strategists worry that the nomination of Donald Trump for the Republican candidate could hurt Republicans, including Blunt, in the election. William Lacy Clay Jr. (D) has represented the city of St. Louis, along with the northern suburbs, in the House of Representatives for 16 years. Though he and his father, who was also a Congressman, are popular and seen as part of the city’s black political establishment, State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal has challenged Clay, criticizing his response to Ferguson and inattentiveness to his constituents. If you’re registered to vote in Missouri, it’s important to be an informed voter, especially if Missouri isn’t your home state. Make sure to research the candidates before you vote in November, and if you’re not registered to vote yet, you can do that right now at https:// www.usa.gov/register-to-vote.

Keeping the WashU Bubble Clean Written by Clark Randall

All names & detailed descriptions withheld by request

wake up ‘bout like three, three-thirty every morning…just to catch the buses so I can get here on time. I go to bed maybe eleven, eleven-thirty. And you know me, I haven’t missed a day of work since 20**. Not one.” “It’s crazy. They treat us like kids—you have to text the manager to take a smoke break or go to the bathroom or anything. And if they catch you you’ll get suspended. They’ll suspend you for anything. If you don’t clock out right on time, even if you’re still cleaning, they get you. It’s just like a one day thing, but if you get suspended too many times they’ll fire you.” “We are fighting for sick days now. The janitors over at Webster University and SLU, they get sick days and some of them even get benefits. They don’t even give us bereavement days. For instance, my [close family member] passed away and I was at work the next day.” “On top of everything they just punish you for the pettiest things. Just the other week [we] ran out of clean rags on the job and my manager tried to tell [us] to use [our] hands—like [we are] going to do that. [We] shouldn’t have to show up to work scared every day that they might suspend me or fire me over petty stuff, because that’s just what it is.” “It is slavery, and I don’t mean to exaggerate the situation, but it is modern-day slavery.”

I know a handful of custodians and lately we’ve been talking about their working conditions. They are hired under WFF Facility Services, a corporation Washington University subcontracts to take care of their janitorial needs. None of their information will be provided though, not even alias names, for protection. I know these custodians today, but for over a year we would pass in silence. The same goes for our grounds-keeping staff, but we still don’t know each other. I know the faces not the names. When we pass each other our small talk, eye contact, and even head nods feel particularly loaded — constructed, constrained interactions. The passing discomfort I feel stays with me. There is a certain level of guilt because I should call it what it is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt a certain silenced resentment at times. My guilt comes from a knowledge that exists whether I am conscious of it or not. The knowledge that there are people on this campus everyday who are exploited in my name, and my passing silence is consent to that apparent fact. I’m the student, the client, the customer for whom all of this landscape, all of these buildings, and this entire campus was constructed to serve. At some point one realizes it all comes at a steep price. And no, I’m not talking about tuition in this case. I’m talking about human exploitation. Underpaid custodians, underpaid housekeepers, underpaid adjuncts, underpaid cooks and dining hall staff. And underpaid is an umbrella term for the lack of respect, lack of job security, and lack of benefits that come with being pushed to the margins of the WashU community. In reality, I want to argue that this contingent of people make up the cornerstone of the WashU community—if we agree that such a thing exists. If it does, it begins with the hundreds of subcontracted workers, the vast majority being people of color, who spend countless hours on campus doing the work that keeps the University functioning day in and day out. And the WashU community, to call it that for now, is a part of the greater St. Louis community— whether we acknowledge it or otherwise. The University employs around 15,000 residents of the city, making it one of the region’s largest employers. Add another 14,000 students in total and we can start to imagine the impact we have on the city. The custodial workers I have met thus far were here before I was and will presumably be here after I graduate this May. 16

As students, we have far more opportunity for interaction with this population than we ever will with administration. Yet the administration creates a bulwark between us — one which I often perpetuate without second thought; buying into my own status as a student. Letting the passing discomfort I felt go unquestioned solidifies the segregated system Washington University has created within its campus. But things are changing and that change is, and will continue to be, inevitable. One thing we are reminded of is that education and humanitarianism are not intrinsically bound. A “research” university—a place where knowledge is literally produced and disseminated from will make no moral strides until they are exposed and forced to. And the question becomes what is the point of producing knowledge if not to improve human conditions? Left unaddressed, the exploitation will reach a breaking point — one which seems to be hastily approaching. A time when the administration will be backed against the wall, wishing they would have acted in hindsight.

One of the root causes of exploitation on campus is subcontracting — the outsourcing of private corporations like WFF, Top Care, Bon Appétit, and formerly Aramark. Currently of the roughly 15,000 employees, 14,000 are inhouse, meaning hired by Washington University directly. Subcontracting workers has become a common practice for colleges and universities; it’s something educational institutions picked up from the business world as the line between the two has become nearly impossible to distinguish. For context, at the turn of the 20th century subcontracting was known as the “sweating system,” defined in 1893 by the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, a state agency, as such: “The contractor (WFF in this case) is the sweater and his employees are the sweated or oppressed.” Subcontracting incentivizes competition between WFF and other corporations like it to offer more work to be done for less money. In fact, that’s exactly what happened in the summer of 2014 at Washington University. WFF lowballed Aramark, resulting in Aramark’s contract being terminated. Custodians told me that their hours changed that summer from 40 a week to 37.5 under their new employer. They also told me their workload had not changed. This is one example of how workers are sweated by WFF to do the same work with less time — and therefore pay.

One thing we are reminded of is that education and humanitarianism are not intrinsically bound. A “research” university – a place where knowledge is literally produced and disseminated from will make no moral strides until they are exposed and forced to.

Subcontracting creates the informational firewall behind which Washington University can hide; turning a blind eye to the conditions they have incentivized. The administration knows subcontracting pressures corporations like WFF into cutting corners to underbid their competition. Washington University has an endowment in the billions, unlike WFF. So why are we passing the responsibility of providing for custodians off to a corporation with the least resources, much less incentive, to do so? Washington University will tell you they subcontract out of necessity. They will tell you WFF has an expertise that they cannot match; that they want to focus on research and education. This disguises the fact that Washington University financially benefits from the declining worker conditions that result from bidding down standards—all while dodging responsibility. Right now WFF is mistreating workers. And when they are exposed Washington University could replace them with another subcontracted corporation, acting as if they didn’t know what was happening—as if they have a right to not know worker’s conditions. Furthermore, attempts at claiming this ignorance should disqualify them from leading our University. There is no acceptable argument for keeping custodial workers subcontracted. And if there is, Washington University must reconsider their slogan, “Leading together”. Because at the moment we are stratified and broken. There is a labor problem on campus. Past that, there is a humanitarian problem on campus. The University can handle this fact one of several ways. They can respect their stated purpose and become leaders in ethical worker conditions including treatment, pay, and benefits. Or they can remain on the wrong side of justice and continue to leave their employees—members of our own often mentioned community—in poverty and fear for their job. Workers are paid roughly $10.75 an hour by WFF. The University will tell you this is comparable to other institutions. But the fact is that we could either remain a part of unjust standards or join in creating a new, higher standard of human rights and working conditions.

be not

Written by Emma LaPlante Illustrated by Libby Perold

just love old bookstores,” I’ll often say, and then I will try to remember the last time I was actually in one. It will probably take a second, because this is not New York in the nineties — bookstores don’t peek out invitingly from every street corner anymore, to say nothing of the fate of independent bookstores, the most whimsical and transportive of all places of purchase. They are expensive. They are old-fashioned. They contain magic. This much I take for granted. Bookstores are sacred spaces, and I believe in them with a religious sort of fervor. But I don’t do enough. Without people to love and read and create communities within their walls, bookstores are mere repositories for the works of people far more productive than us, preserved for a posterity that may finally give them adequate appreciation. Bookstores may be magical, but they could be so much more. They need us to meet them in the middle. I’ve never had my own local bookstore to love, but I’ve fallen for a few others. I visited Shakespeare and Company most recently in 2014 (the eleventh of April, two years ago this week — a gorgeous day to be young and alive in Paris). I was visiting the city with my high school choir during spring break of my senior year, and chaperones were on us closer than the local reporters were on that group of my classmates who were recently caught getting deliriously drunk at an overnight academic tournament. By our last day in Paris, I felt a strong urge to run for it as we slowly suffocated under surveillance. Fate had other plans: divine intervention came into play in the form of a fortuitous chaperone-à-chaperone miscommunication that left two friends and myself alone and unchaperoned. We know we were bound by a strict Chaperone Accompaniment Only policy for the duration of the trip, and an afternoon wandering the streets of Paris with minimal money and no functional cell phone would not qualify as an acceptable way to pass the time. We vowed no adult would ever find out. After walking the banks of the Seine for a while (oh to be Parisian for a day — to breathe in as a native that sweet river smell of pollution and French people), I knew what I wanted to do. I had been to Shakespeare and Company before — once, when I was in fifth grade and wholly too young to understand its abundance of hidden treasures — and suddenly I could feel it calling my soul. “Emma, come fondle all my historically significant pages,” it whispered

seductively. With my two Hispanophone friends in tow, I began using my middling French to carve a path through the city to 37 Rue de la Bûcherie. I approached a Frenchman on the street: “Monsieur, Shakespeare et Company, où est-il?” He pointed and gave me directions that were just detailed enough to satisfy a tourist without overly delighting them. I later had to double check by consulting the owner of a parapluie store — an umbrella store! In 2014! — the charm of which I cannot sufficiently describe except to say that the owner was not at all bitter as we talked in basic French phrases about what a warm and sunny season it had been, not parapluie weather at all. Finally, finally, we made it to the bookstore. Shakespeare and Company, though a fiercely independent bookstore, is actually not the first of its kind. The first Shakespeare and Company was the creation of a bookseller and publisher named Sylvia Beach, an American expat who opened a bookstore for other American expats in 1919 at 8 rue Dupuytren (three years later, it would move to a roomier space at 12 rue de l’Odéon in the sixth arrondissement). Beach had been studying French literature at the Sorbonne just two years before she opened her store. As a student, Beach met a writer named Adrienne Monnier, who owned her own Parisian bookstore called La Maison des Amis des Livres (“House of the Friends of Books”). Monnier was one of the very first women in Paris to own a major bookstore on her own. Beach was inspired and taken by Monnier’s passion, and the two became lifelong friends (and lovers — a New York Times article by Dwight Garner describes the two as “leading figures among the brilliant Left Bank lesbians of the era,” alongside the likes of Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice Toklas). Beach once said that she had three real loves: Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce, and Shakespeare and Company. Let’s briefly turn our attention to that middle one. It would be impossible to overstate how momentous it was that Beach decided to have her bookstore specialize in modern literature. As she and her bookstore grew side by side in prominence and recognition, it became synonymous with writerly creativity and companionship. Famously, Shakespeare and Company became the favorite haunt of writers like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald during the Parisian phases of their Bohemian lives. When publishers found her friend James Joyce’s novel Ulysses too obscene and pornographic to print, she swelled up with literary rage and decided to publish it herself. She had never published a book before, but in 1922

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

The bookstore may be a tourist destination, but it has not lost its sense of community and its desire to be a beacon of â&#x20AC;&#x201D; well, something. Civility sounds too stuffy, and socialism a little too political, but something in between.

she put up her own money and ordered a thousand copies from a printer in Dijon. When you first walk through the store’s green doors, you will be forcefully struck by its eclecticism. Mirrors and drawings hang from the walls, mismatched chairs stuffed in every corner. The place is bursting at every seam. Blessedly, the first room is a bit more open and airy than the rest, but its walls are completely lined with books, and it can make you feel a bit claustrophobic. This is not Barnes & Noble — negative space ceases to exist. Every available inch is used to house books, bookshelves put even where they look rather misplaced, such as nailed to the underside of the stairs. For the most famous bookstore in the world, it is awfully small. You might be somewhat disappointed to see popular new releases in glossy paperback on display (but then again, wasn’t Sylvia Beach always trying to support the new?). Don’t worry. You will get over this. As for our experience, my friend Eric’s facial expression melted when we first stepped across that hallowed threshold. I felt as if I was about to experience something so rare and fragile that its every detail must be memorized rather than enjoyed. I left Emily and Eric in the new books section and climbed up the stairs to the second story, where musicians like Glen Hansard sometimes hold intensely intimate concerts. Upstairs was much quieter, and I wondered if the busybody shoppers downstairs knew a second story even existed. It was home to an extensive collection of books that were not for sale but were clearly meant to be read. Inside her store, Adrienne Monnier started the first lending library in France, and I imagine it looked pretty similar to this one. The books up here were mostly old, but they didn’t smell as dusty as I would have expected. Also upstairs was a piano for anyone to play and several little alcoves — some with a typewriter inside for tapping out sentence fragments, others wallpapered with messages scrawled on sticky notes. They ranged from banal tourist greetings to miniature autobiographies. Way up on one of the whitewashed upstairs walls in skinny black letters was the phrase, “Be not inhospitable to strangers / lest they be angels in disguise.” George

Whitman falsely attributed it to Yeats; it’s actually a paraphrase of a Bible passage, Hebrews 13:2: Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Clunky, I know. You can see why Mr. Whitman shook it up, tacking a dead author’s name onto it for good measure. I wanted to take a picture because I thought it was so beautiful, but a sign nearby asked visitors not to take any, and this wasn’t the sort of place whose requests I felt inclined to ignore. Mr. Whitman was always big on hospitality, and as his store began to take on a life of its own, he realized its potential to act as a dormitory. The Tumbleweed program was born out of his desire to harbor young writers in a place where they could flourish and grow. Mr. Whitman liked to travel himself, and he often described himself as a “tumbleweed” — blowing town to town, never staying long. Now, over 30,000 tumbleweeds have participated in his program. From what I can tell, the program hasn’t changed much since his first conception of it, except that now you apply online. Aspiring writers from all over the world email in, wanting a cheap place to stay while they spend some time in Paris (the tumbleweeds sleep for free on benches and mattresses in the store, pulled out at night from their hiding spots). If they’re accepted, they get a community of friends, access to a kitchen, and time to write. In exchange, they have to read a book a day and help out in the store. As could be predicted, aspiring writers do not always make the most conventional salespeople, but they can make incredibly persuasive ones. When I came back downstairs and joined Eric and Emily, we met Brent. Brent was from Australia — mid-twenties, auburn hair, glasses, and a very hipster-grunge outfit that endeared him to my hipsterloving friends and I at once. He approached Eric and asked if he could help him find anything (he really wanted a Parisian copy of The Sun Also Rises). After he found the Hemingway book, Brent kept talking to us, which was deeply flattering. He was a poet, and when we asked if he’d had anything published, he said he wasn’t into that sort of stuff. “Nah, man, I just write for me.” Instead of finding this pretentious, we thought it was beautiful. Brent told us about his experience as a tumbleweed, going into detail about the time recently when he decided he was too old to have not read Ulysses, so he dragged an old sofa down by

the Seine and refused to leave until he’d finished the book. Friends across the city delivered him food throughout the day to sustain this literary quest. This was the best thing we had ever heard. Brent asked us if we were looking for anything else, and we asked for his recommendations. He led us in the hunt for One Hundred Years of Solitude, Giovanni’s Room, and a copy of the children’s book Madeleine. He asked us about our tastes in genres and authors, and we each listed off the coolest names we could think of. We soaked up his recommendations with an utter lack of discernment, trusting him completely. Wanting him to think we were cool, we didn’t tell him we were in high school, and I think he thought Eric and I were a couple. “Are you guys into erotic fiction at all?” he asked. “Sure!” we said. I had never been asked such a delightful question in my life. The Shakespeare and Company we know today, therefore, has a complicated history. It inherited its namesake’s traditions of independence, progressivism, and creativity, and yet it isn’t quite the same. For starters, it’s become a magnet less for true expatriates and more for American tourists, like my friends and me. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that a little bit of the magic felt lost, as it always did when I looked around some place in a foreign city and saw a lot of people who looked and talked like me. As a traveler, this might be my biggest and most abstract struggle: wanting to experience places in their purest form, but knowing that my mere presence erodes some of that authenticity. These questions are even more complex with a bookstore which, while a vibrant part of Parisian history and culture, was created by and for native English speakers.

love. Brent did not judge us for our tourism or our American ways. When we finally had to take our leave, I felt genuinely sad. For days after, we raved about him to anybody who would listen. It’s almost cliché to say, but I could never have received such a transcendent and life-affirming experience from shopping at Amazon or Barnes & Nobles, no matter how cheap and efficient it was. Bookstores like this one teach us to be more human — we should let them. During the November 2015 attacks in Paris, many shoppers at Shakespeare and Company were terrified, and the store workers said that anyone who felt unsafe going home could spend the night there. They brought out food and blankets and phone chargers, taking in about twenty strangers who took comfort in each other throughout the night. On a night full of terror and suffering, this corner of the city was still pretty utopian. It echoed what a former Tumbleweed named Krystie Lee Yandoli wrote in a blog post about her experience: “I think every Tumbleweed ends up with a more optimistic sense of human nature.” It’s the “and Company” of “Shakespeare and Company” that seems to be the most important part. Not even Shakespeare himself is lifted above his peers as singular or independent. The bookstore may be a tourist destination, but it has not lost its sense of community and its desire to be a beacon of—well, something. Civility sounds too stuffy, and socialism a little too political, but something in between. Good bookstores take in strangers, ask them about their taste in erotic fiction, and turn them into friends. I could take a page from their book, myself: Be not inhospitable. Be not complacent. Be not apathetic. Be not.

It’s not just a historical place, though. Part of the reason why George Whitman loved it so well until his death in 2011 was because it is, as he called it, “a socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore.” The tumbleweeds certainly live like socialists — sleeping in nooks in the store, reading together, cooking up communal meals. But more than that, the store fosters a culture that is also fiercely welcoming and inclusive. Brent, our favorite resident tumbleweed, spoke to us as if we were old friends visiting him on his extended stay from Australia. Although the story was quite busy that day, he never rushed us, and he took a vested interest in finding us books we were really going to

Illustration by Libby Perold 25

SOCIAL C I T I E S By Carrick Reddin & Ali Al Yousifi

ities have long been the center of human communities, culture and commerce. They are the engines of human civilization and advancement. Through the millenniums, cities have faced countless challenges; some natural, such as plague and famine; and others manmade, such as war and social unrest. The cities that stepped up to properly address those challenges are still thriving today, while those who failed to confront systemic issues have faded into history. In order to ensure that our cities continue to develop and prosper, we the city-dwellers need to think critically about our citiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; future, and actively plan for their success. In this article series Social Cities, we aim to analyze the most paramount social issues that are facing cities today, with the hope that a better understanding of the problems will allow for solutions to arise in the future. In each article, one city and one social issue will be discussed. Following are the first two articles in the series discussing St. Louis, USA and Kuwait City, Kuwait.

Form Follows Fear : Visualizing Racism in St. Louis Written by Carrick Reddin Photography by Tori Sgarro and Laken Sylvander 29

we are to overcome the massive divisions “ Ifthat exist in St. Louis, we must begin by

acknowledging the massive role race has played, and continues to play, in shaping the urban fabric of our city.

Beginning in 1916, the city began redlining through a ballot measure that labeled some areas as “Negro blocks”, prompting large-scale disinvestment. Although the ordinance was struck down the following year, realtors developed alternative methods of discrimination. In 1923, the St. Louis Real Estate Exchange adopted a referendum creating “unrestricted zones” in the city’s historically black neighborhoods. In these zones, realtors could sell property to black people; but outside of these neighborhoods, they could lose their licenses for selling to a black family1. By the beginning of the 1940s, the Exchange had created over 380 restrictive covenants restricting the use and resale of properties to black people.

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he history of race in the United States is the key from which to read the built environment. It is, without a doubt, the most pressing social issue facing the country today. The centuries-old history of discrimination has left an indelible mark on the urban cores that we continue to inhabit at ever-increasing numbers. What’s more is the populous’ inability to acknowledge the tragic state of race relations, thereby exacerbating existing divisions. In St. Louis, these divisions lie most clearly between black and white populations.

Alongside these practices, in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) used neighborhood demographics as a key metric for measuring the security of neighborhoods. While “A” security ratings were common in white, suburban neighborhoods, the majority of black, urban neighborhoods were rated “D” and shaded red. This excluded many black families from the mortgage offers of the New Deal, condemning them to decreasing home values in the inner city. Those who could afford to move were trapped by restrictive covenants. At its peak in the 1940s, the FHA financed 80% of all private home construction in the United States. In 1959, the United States Commission on Civil Rights concluded that only 2 percent of all FHA-backed loans had gone to blacks. “Most of this housing,” concluded the report, “has been in all-Negro developments in the South.” The racist housing policies of the 20th century paved the way for ‘urban renewal’ projects- attempts to solve the ‘backward’ areas of the city. The 1955 demolition of Mill Creek Valley, a historically African-American neighborhood, was introduced as “the city’s biggest urban-renewal project.” Local newspapers hailed the vision as a sweeping project to solve big problems. Under the redevelopment plan, this

neighborhood, instead of being invested in and improved, was totally cleared to enable wealthy suburbanites quicker access to the financial jobs and retail outlets available downtown. Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s racist urban history is embodied in the demolition of Mill Creek Valley, where thousands of black households and businesses once stood, a massive urban highway, newly expanded to carry the thousands of primarily white wealthy surburbanites, now stands. To accommodate the displaced population, the Pruitt-Igoe housing project was developed. By the 1960s, as more than half of the white population had fled the City, the complex had become notorious for crime, poverty and segregation. Ten years later, it was demolished.

The 20th century was marked by egregious methods of discrimination and exclusion, resulting in the destruction of black neighborhoods and sprawl of the region. Between

1950 and 2010, the City of St. Louis lost 62% of its residents, leaving 319,000 people. In 2010, St. Louis was the ninth most segregated metropolitan area in the country. Racist policies have also manifested in economic factors. The average black household has $75,040 of wealth stored in its home, while the average white one has $217,150. Overall, the gap in wealth between white households and black ones was $84,960 in 2011. Racism is, without a doubt, the most influential social issue shaping the urban form of St. Louis. Yet it seems we have not learned from the past; recently proposed projects like Riverfront Stadium and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency used the same top-down processes that are advertised as community development, yet systematically divert funding and attention from the most pressing needs of the city. In the first weeks of 2015,

stadium projects as tools for revitalizing cities around the country, the developers behind the projects receive public funding with no obligation to serve those in need. Unfortunately, this paradigm is not rare: in July of 2015, the St. Louis Board of Alderman passed a bill that would provide money to finance the acquisition of land for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to settle within the city’s borders. An earlier bill enabled the city to use eminent domain to buy up any property north of Cass Avenue in the redevelopment area to Montgomery Street6. While keeping major businesses in the city is an important task, the project does nothing to support for surrounding neighborhoods. Just a few weeks ago, the federal government announced that the site in St. Louis City has been chosen for the agency; it is set to be developed over the next few year. The announcement portrayed the project as a formative investment for north St. Louis—an anchor for a struggling area. This serves as yet another example of a largely poor, black area of the city being subjected to the whims of those in charge. If we are to consider this project as an asset for the community, it is crucial that residents are incorporated in the planning and implementation processes. The ‘urban renewal’ and community development projects that characterize St. Louis embody the notion about urban redevelopment whose logic revolves around clearing impoverished neighborhoods instead of investing the necessary resources to bring about a decent quality of living for its inhabitants. The paradigm of racist urban decisionmaking continues into present day. Neighborhoods where white flight and race-based urban policies have led to vacancy and disinvestment, predominantly black communities face police brutality, high unemployment, and a lack of educational opportunities. If we are to overcome the massive divisions that exist in St. Louis, we must begin by acknowledging the massive role race has played, and continues to play, in shaping the urban fabric of our city. Sources:

the former president of Anheuser-Busch, Dave Peacock, announced plans for a new open-air football stadium on the St. Louis riverfront. Peacock called the project more than a football stadium: “We are talking about a revitalization of our downtown.” Citing the proposed buildings and green areas, Peacock said the plan would eradicate blight and turn the area into a crown jewel. While the rhetoric surrounding this project suggested that community development was central to the vision, we have seen that stadiums rarely have beneficial effects on surrounding areas. Economists have long known stadiums to be poor public investments. Most of the jobs created by stadium-building projects are temporary, low-paying, or out-of-state contracting jobs- none of which contribute greatly to the local economy. Although the stadium deal was eventually shut down, it saw widespread support for predominantly wealthy, white suburbanites. By describing

John R. Logan and Brian Stults. 2011. “The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis: New Findings from the 2010 Census” Census Brief prepared for Project US2010. O’Neil, Tim. “A Look Back: Clearing of Mill Creek Valley Changed the Face of the City.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 9 Aug. 2009: n. pag. Print. Gordon, Aaron. “America Has a Stadium Problem.” PSMag. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2015. Pistor, Nicholas J.C. “St. Louis Aldermen Approve Clearing Homes for National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.” St. Louis PostDispatch. N.p., 13 Feb. 2015. Web. 15 Feb. 2015.

The Dual Experience : Life in Kuwait City Written by Ali Al Yousifi Photography by Thunayan Al Thunayan

eing the central business district of the country and the site of most government offices and private company headquarters, Kuwait City is unavoidable to all those who live in Kuwait. This is despite the fact that most of the local and expat population of the country live in the low-density suburbs and mid-density apartment building districts that surround Kuwait City. The modern development of Kuwait City started with the commissioning of its first masterplan in 1951. In the decades since, Kuwait City has developed an extremely patchy urban fabric, creating stark contrasts between neighboring blocks, streets, and plots. It’s common to see sculpted glass towers stand next to decrepit over-populated mid-rise buildings; and wellkept streets lined with trees and historically significant buildings leading into halfheartedly paved routes of no man’s land; and densely clustered buildings with active shops and offices overlooking completely barren expanses of government owned lands and ancient cemeteries. It’s not surprising that this irregular urban fabric has produced equally irregular interactions with the city. One example of such, is how Kuwait City offers distinct urban experiences to its white collar Kuwaiti users, as opposed to its blue / pink collar expat users.

But there are two things to keep in mind before illustrating the previous statement with some examples. First, that most white collar jobs fall under the governmental sector, which is dominated by Kuwaiti locals; on the other hand, blue / pink collar jobs are predominantly occupied by expats. And second, that the following examples are generalizations that cannot be applied to every single user of the city; they are only meant to simplify (almost simplistically) a rather complicated and overlapping network of functions and movements. (White collar) Kuwaitis favor to live in single plot houses in the many suburbs that border Kuwait City, and daily commute to the city to occupy their office jobs; on the other hand, (blue / pink collar) expats that work in Kuwait City would rather live within the city, allowing them to live close to their workplaces. Kuwaitis use private cars to reach Kuwait City and to travel within it; on the other hand, expats, although many of whom also use private cars, make up the entire community of public transportation users, cyclists, and the vast majority of the city’s pedestrians. Kuwaitis use only a handful of outdoor public areas in the city, most of which are comprised of a group of fancy restaurants or traditional cafés with outdoor seating; on the other hand, public parks and open plazas are dominated

by expats. Finally, Kuwaitis prefer shopping in the closed and air-conditioned malls of the city, more of which have been built in recent years; while on the other hand, expats are the main customers of street shops and open markets. As illustrated above, within the relatively small confines of Kuwait City, White collar Kuwaitis and blue collar expats occupy different places and travel in different modes of transportation. It is almost as if the city is a result of the juxtaposition of two distinct urban fabrics whose patterns interweave intricately, yet rarely merge. This leads to the creation of pockets of concentration dominated either by one group of users or the other, causing the amount of interaction between the two populations to be significantly lower than would be expected in fully integrated environments. Segregation, of which this is a mild and indirect example, cannot lead to good things, especially in a country whose people already suffer from a view towards the “other” often characterized by suspicion and contempt. This physical division has political implications, mainly leading the government to spend its resources to improve places and means of transport that Kuwaitis use (the car), while largely ignoring other spaces and means of transport (walking / cycling). This attitude has to large extent helped erode Kuwait City’s livability, turning it into an office park. And this process is a looping cycle, where the less Kuwaitis live in and use the public amenities of the city, the less the government feels the need spend its resources improving its livability, which in turn leads to the city becoming even less attractive to Kuwaitis. But there are two points that inspire hope: the first is that this apparent division is not motivated by racist or ethnic tendencies, but mainly economic. The fact of the matter is that living within the city, using public transportation, cycling, visiting public parks and plazas, and walking

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Segregation cannot lead to good things, especially in a country whose people already suffer from a view towards the “other” often characterized by suspicion and contempt.

around the commercial streets is simply not attractive to Kuwaitis, or in fact to anyone who can afford the available superior options. This can be demonstrated by noticing that expats enjoying similar economic comfort as most locals have experiences of the city closer to most Kuwaitis than most expats. This brings hope because it means that simply by upgrading living conditions within Kuwait City, the two distinct experiences of the city will automatically merge, consolidating the city into a more unified environment. The second point is that there has been a rising interest in the city among Kuwaitis in recent years. This can be felt by the opening of countless new restaurants in the city targeting young people. It is also seen in the growing advocacy for preserving buildings from Kuwait’s Modern architectural heritage, currently facing demolition. Even the government has started a few new projects (slow-progressing as they may be) for renovation and revitalization of public spaces and traditional markets, making them more accessible and attractive to Kuwaitis. Examples of this include: Safat Square, Mubarakiya Souk, and Shaheed Park. If these positive forces continue to expand, then we can hope for a brighter future; a future where Kuwaitis return to using the city as a city, and not an office park, something that expats have been doing for decades. If both the above points are capitalized upon, then Kuwait City will start offering a more unified environment that brings all the people of Kuwait together into a single urban fabric, achieving the most basic function of cities everywhere: uniting people and concentrating their energies.

A Global Taste of Home Written & Illustrated by Leora Baum

cross Latin America, empanadas are ubiquitous. From Patagonia to the Amazon, from the Andean highlands to the shores of the Caribbean, empanadas are the universal local food. In essence, an empanada is a filled dough pastry, either savory or sweet; however, across the diverse regions and cultures of Latin America, empanadas are equally diverse. Many regions fill their empanadas with beef or other types of meat, and in some places, hardboiled egg, olives, or raisins are added. Cheese and corn are also popular, while in coastal regions, you might find empanadas filled with seafood, or even seaweed. Some empanadas are fried in oil, while others are baked, and every region has its own styles for shaping and sealing the dough â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some are twisted along the edges, some pressed with the tines of a fork, some folded into trapezoids or rectangles. My own grandmother taught me to make the small, crescent-shaped variety of her native Argentina, one of the few connections I had to a place Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never been. Each region or community has its own local version with a unique shape, size, and taste; and yet, each of these local traditions fits within a larger tradition that unites cultures and communities around the globe. No matter who we are, where we live, or where we come from, our local food is always something that reminds us of home.

l? a c o l e b o t n a e m t i s e o What d Written & Illustrated by Alicia Yang

ocal is subject to romanticization, superiority complexes, and myopia. It evokes images of farmer’s markets, art galleries, and local businesses deserving of financial and moral support. There are also “the locals,” who claim a special authority on farm-to-table, street art, and the best places to go. But then there’s also Voltaire’s Candide, the ultimate local, who genuinely believes his province is the “best of all possible worlds” only because he’s never been anywhere else. Unlike the word “worldly,” which ranges from mundane and earthly to urbane and sophisticated, the word “local” seems to be relegated to meaning only mundane and earthly. Though it is much simpler to think of local and global in opposition, the dichotomy removes all of the complexity of what it means to be local. The local news is rife with car accidents, murders, floods, and rallies. The gaps are filled with feel-good news: local service projects, community gardens. At the Old North farmer’s market next to Crown Candy, a retired married couple occupies the stand next to the Burning Kumquat’s in the summer. They let the bees fly wherever they want to fly and eat whatever they want to eat, collecting the honey in mason jars to be displayed on hand-embroidered bumblebee displays. The beekeepers are fond of Max, who buys a watermelon from the Soulard Market booth because all of the vendors end up cross-pollinating. He gets kind of annoyed when he realizes the watermelon has a sticker from Mexico like the ones from Schnucks, which used to be a local grocery store but isn’t really local enough anymore. Because local is often opposed to global, it becomes surprising when something “local” is recognized internationally. It was hard for me to fathom how the Wainwright building, considered the first skyscraper by the father of skyscrapers, is on Chestnut Street. Or that Masters and Johnson, the basis of the critically acclaimed show Masters of Sex, revolutionized research of the human sexual response at the medical school. Or even that Thurtene is the largest student-run carnival in America seems a bit absurd. Associated with parochial and insignificant, local never seems to vy for greatness.

During the summer of Ferguson protests, I initially thought the high levels of press coverage surrounding me were due to the proximity to WashU. Then I read about Russian news outlets like Pravda deploring the U.S. for “forget[ting] about democracy, human rights, protection of ‘peaceful protesters’ and people’s right to protest” and China’s Global Times commenting on the irony of the U.S.’s accusations of “China and countries like it of violating the rights of minorities.” Suddenly, “Ferguson” seemed to matter because it was recognized globally. The local issue of race relations in Ferguson was validated as “Ferguson” took on symbolic qualities in the global consciousness. Who are the locals then? They are the beekeepers, the protesters, and students… But I think it’s easy to forget that the internationally recognized are still technically locals too — in addition to the names retrospectively engraved on the Hollywood stars along the Loop. Metro Boomin, 22, is a local from St. Louis who produces for Young Thug, Future, Drake, and Kanye West. Karlie Kloss, 23, fulfills the role of the American supermodel if one exists, gracing countless Vogue covers globally. Originally scouted in a local fashion show, the scope of her iconic moody gait and impossibly long legs has influenced the world over. Nevertheless, they are just as influenced by the racial divides and local communities as the beekeepers of Old North’s farmer’s market, their international acclaim bridging the gap between global to local. Thus, the relationship between the local and the global isn’t necessarily dichotomous, but instead it’s multidimensional, encompassing a range of connotations as broad and contradictory as the allencompassing word “worldly.”

Meet Our Team

Carrick Reddin is a senior and the Editor-in-Chief of ISSUES. He studies International Area Studies and Architecture.

Claire Huttenlocher is the President of ISSUES Magazine. She majors in Urban Studies and minors in Legal Studies. 44

Ali Al Yousifi is a recent graduate from Kuwait University. There, he studied architecture and was the Editor-in-Chief of the design publication T-Square.

Alice Lee is a sophomore majoring in Communication Design with a concentration in Illustration.

Alicia Yang is a sophomore studying Biology and English Lit. Contact her at aliciayang@wustl.edu.

Ashley Holder is a sophomore studying Architecture and Urban Design. Contact her at ashleyholder@wustl.edu

Clark Randall is a senior majoring in African & African American Studies. Contact him at clarkrandall44@gmail.com.

Edward Lim is a sophomore studying Communication Design. Contact Edward at edwardlim@wustl.edu.

Emma LaPlante is a sophomore studying Literature and Global Health. She will be spending next year at Oxford University, and she hopes to visit Paris often.

Laken Sylvander is a senior studying French and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Contact her at lsylvander@wustl.edu

Leora Baum is the Visual Editor for ISSUES Magazine. She is a senior majoring in IPH and Spanish and minoring in Art.

Libby Perold is the Design Chief for ISSUES Magazine. She majors in Comparative Arts and minors in Design.

Miranda Hines is a junior studying English Literature and Political Science. Contact her via email at mirandahines@wustl.edu.

Yuwei Qiu is a senior studying Communication Design and Economics. She is the Social Media Director for ISSUES.

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Photography by Leora Baum