The McGill Daily Vol104Iss21

Volume 104, Issue 21 Thursday, March 12, 2015

McGill THE

DAILY

Preservers of the matriarchy since 1911 mcgilldaily.com

E R T A E T H OF THE D E S S E OPPR pag e 17

Contents Want to write something other than essays and midterms?

Email an editor and get involved with student media!

The Daily is always looking for contributors.

03 NEWS

15

Occupy SNAX!

Life without oxygen

International Women’s Day

16

SSMU Council prepares for Winter GA Ta-Nehisi Coates on race and violence Bill 20: controversial healthcare reform Restructuring the EUS executive Resistance to Canadian state violence

08 COMMENTARY Solitary confinement is violent, vindictive, discriminatory Re-humanizing knowledge through popular education The Daily and buzzwords

No experience required!

Letter

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FEATURES

14

Toronto universities on strike

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2

SCI+TECH

SPORTS

The rise of CrossFit

20 CULTURE Behind the scenes of the ASA’s Theatre of the Oppressed What to check out this weekend New exhibit from Emmanuel Laflamme distorts symbols of pop culture Concordia art students present their take on modern intimacy

23 EDITORIAL Winter 2015 GA endorsements

Co-opting the queer struggle

all section emails can be found on page 19 of this issue

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

24 COMPENDIUM! SHMU elections campaign is performance art Crossword: (non)fictional assholes

News

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Students stage SNAX sit-in

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Right to sell sandwiches central to AUS’s negotiations with University Emily Saul The McGill Daily

S

NAX employees, students, and supporters gathered on March 11 in the Leacock building to peacefully protest the McGill administration’s current position against sandwich sales at the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS)’s food stall, and to visibly assert that student-run spaces are an essential and valuable aspect of campus life.

A cease-and-desist order on sandwich sales has been in effect since November, when AUS received notice from the administration that it was violating the terms of its Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) by selling the sandwiches.

Since then, the subject has become a site of conflict in AUS’ ongoing MOA negotiations with McGill.

The sit-in, attended by roughly fifty participants, was organized with the intention of attracting the attention of both the administration and the student body at large.

“We want the administration to know that there are other people [than SNAX employees] on campus who think that this is something that’s important,” SNAX Assistant Manager Emma Meldrum told The Daily.

Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens hosted a “meet and greet” style lunch in Redpath’s Premiere Moisson during the sit-in hours, but did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment about the sit-in or to tweets from the sit-in directed at him under the hashtag #SaveOurSandwiches.

Ongoing MOA negotiations Meldrum told The Daily that the inclusion of sandwiches in the official list of things that AUS is allowed to sell is the change that AUS is asking for in the negotiations.

“I think our goals remain the same, and I think the sandwich issue has kind of compounded and reminded us of the goals of SNAX,” said Meldrum.

“We are a service for students, so we’re trying to think of how we can give better service for students, and the sandwich issue has reminded us that part of our role is offering an actual meal to people; they don’t just need snacks, they need an actual, affordable meal that suits their dietary needs,” continued Meldrum.

The initial concern presented to AUS and SNAX by the administration highlighted liability concerns linked to the potential dangers inherent to SNAX’s nature as a food provider and the potential

costs the University could incur if something went wrong.

“It just takes one for us,” Dyens told The Daily in an interview. “If somebody gets sick by eating some food, then most people will go after the bigger pockets, and the bigger pockets are McGill’s.”

AUS President Ava Liu said that AUS has denied the claims that SNAX might become a risk to the University.

“First of all, it’s just plain not true. AUS is a non-profit corporation, we have our own corporate status in the Quebec government, we have our own insurance policy. So that’s not true, and he knows that.”

In response to the initial concerns raised about liability, the SNAX team completed Quebec’s health inspection and certification process and compiled evidence to indicate that liabilities had never been an issue in the past.

Liu noted that the certification process is intended for those involved in the preparation of food.

“We don’t make food, we don’t even serve food. All we do is sell food,” she said.

Dyens also cited issues other than liability. “I don’t have an issue with student-run business, but then they have to work with our current business structures.”

Inconsistencies in the administration’s arguments Liu has occupied a primary seat at the table since the MOA negotiations began in the fall, and has been working with McGill’s Director and Senior Policy Advisor Vilma Di Renzo-Campbell, the University representative in the MOA negotiations. “[The administrative stance] really is evolving,” said Liu. “At first, it was liability and health.

Then it was competition, and then it was ‘slippery slope,’ [regarding] how they don’t want any increases of any rights.”

A recent statement from AUS about the MOA negotiations noted McGill’s tendency to butt heads with student-run services.

Liu also alleged that Campbell had said things like “we do not support any increase in the rights for student-run services” during the negotiations.

According to Liu, Campbell has alluded to AUS representatives that AUS is “lucky” to have held on to SNAX for this long. “There was a lot of that – [Campbell] kept saying, ‘we support you existing, that’s why you still exist, this is a good deal, don’t make it bigger than it is, don’t make it worse.’ She kept saying the University could be re-

SNAX, in the Leacock building. ally creative with the space [...] and she’s said that many times.”

Dyens described SNAX as “pushing the envelope constantly.”

He later said, “If students don’t want us to take a hard stance, then they have to respect the terms of the agreement.”

Dyens also said he was concerned about how SNAX might affect the University’s overall budget, and noted that revenues from traditional food service providers benefit the University.

Student-run space, questions of autonomy “Why is student autonomy so bad? Why [is the administration] linking this to the whole slippery slope argument?” said Liu. She continued, “The position the University is in looks very petty, and to be honest I think that we look petty too, because now this is about sandwiches, and obviously this is ridiculous. Obviously the bigger issue at stake is the issue of autonomy, especially when given proof that there is no issue of liability or risk.”

“It’s not SNAX per se, it’s opening the door to something,” Dyens told The Daily. He later said, “the fact that SNAX is such a big issue tells me that this is something that students want to do with other food things on campus.”

Meldrum touched on this point as well. “In my mind, [greater choice] is not a problem, of course, because it would be wonderful if other outlets on campus could sell anything that they thought that students need-

Tamim Sujat | The McGill Daily ed and weren’t getting from Food and Dining Services.”

“We are a service for students, so we’re trying to think of how we can give better service for students, and the sandwich issue has reminded us that part of our role is offering an actual meal to people.”

Emma Meldrum, SNAX Assistant Manager Misconceptions over the administration’s position Both Meldrum and Liu clarified some common misconceptions surrounding McGill’s motives and stance; namely, correlations between this incident and the Arch Café closure in 2010 and pressure from other food service providers on campus.

“I think we’re in two very different situations,” said Meldrum, noting that the Arch Café had experienced more financial issues than SNAX.

Regarding competition from other food service providers on campus, Liu said that McGill’s Senior Director of Student Housing and Hospitality Services (SHHS) Mathieu Laperle and Food and Dining Services executive chef Oliver De Volpi had debunked allegations of increased competition from SNAX fare, comparing it to an extra samosa sale.

“They really don’t care. They said, ‘that’s between you and the University, it’s negligible.’”

Laperle and De Volpi did not respond to The Daily’s requests for comment.

Next steps Liu noted that, in her personal opinion, the administration has not necessarily been acting out of bad intentions. “I think that, at this point, they’re just unprepared with negotiations, and they’re not really taking it seriously and that’s why they’re going back and forth between these positions.”

Meldrum spoke to SNAX’s future plans. “Clearly we can’t make guarantees about the next management teams,” she said, “but we’re doing our best to have that included in the contracts that they sign, and the training packages that we’ll give them at the end of this year.”

Liu said that their next goal for negotiations is to meet directly with Dyens. “No more meeting with Campbell – meet with [Dyens, and] ask ‘What do you really think, do you really care about this? why is this happening? Tell us what you really think, and we’ll go from there.”’

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News

March 12, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

International Women’s Day 2015

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rotesters gathered at Norman Bethune Square on March 8 to demonstrate against the austerity measures and neoliberal policies of Quebec’s Liberal government as part of a series of global actions to mark International Women’s Day. The demonstrators, representing a wide range of activist groups and communities, called out the disproportionate effects of these measures on minority groups, including women, and especially women of colour. “We also denounce the laws and policies in Canada and Quebec, attacking the rights of immigrant and refugee women and their families, temporary workers who will never get permanent status, creating a permanent class of sub-citizens,” the event page stated.

The event was also meant to oppose Islamophobia, and the specific impact it has on Muslim women.

The protest was organized by Women of Diverse Origins, a grassroots anti-imperialist women’s organization which has been coordinating an annual International Women’s Day march in Montreal since 2002. International Women’s Day was created by women’s movements in the early 1900s in the U.S., and was first recognized as an international event by the United Nations in 1975.

—Jill Bachelder

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING The AGM of the Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, will take place on

Thursday March 19th

McConnell Engineering Building

Room 204, 5:30pm

Members of the DPS are cordially invited.

The presence of candidates to the Board of Directors is mandatory.

CALL FOR CANDIDATES

Activists and ecofeminists march in solidarity with Indigenous women and girls.

The Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, is seeking candidates for

student directors on its Board.

Positions must be filled by up to eight (8) McGill students duly registered during the current Winter term and able to sit until April 30, 2016. Board members gather at least once a month to discuss the management of the newspapers, and make important administrative decisions.

Candidates should send a 500-word letter of intention to chair@dailypublications.org by 5:00 PM on March 19th.

The nomination period opens on March 12th.

www.mcgilldaily.com

Protesters call for a general strike against cuts to social services that disproportionately affect women.

Mert Kimyaci | The McGill Daily

News

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Council adopts simplified General Assembly standing rules

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Interim Board of Directors elections procedure adopted

Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

the 1980s, but has only had its fee increased once since then. […] Since [the fee] has been static for the most part, we’ve become unable to maintain our amazing programs,” said O’Neal.

“We’ve also been unable to adequately improve the physical accessibility of our space and resources. With this fee increase, we’ll be able to ensure the sustainability of our existing programs, while also making QPIRG more active and accessible for McGill students.”

The fee referendum, which ran from February 26 to March 2, passed at both SSMU and the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS).

T

he Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Council convened on February 26 to adopt a set of standing rules for the upcoming Winter 2015 General Assembly (GA), and to discuss procedural changes for elections to the Board of Directors. Councillors also voted to support Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) McGill’s proposed fee increase in the group’s 2015 referendum.

Standing rules At its previous meeting on February 12, Council approved a motion to draft standing rules for the Winter 2015 GA, which will be held on March 15. At its most recent meeting, Council discussed the proposed rules, brought forward by SSMU President Courtney Ayukawa, VP Internal Daniel Chaim, and VP Finance and Operations Kathleen Bradley.

The rules consisted of four key points: a default speaking time of one minute will be enforced, ‘friendly’ amendments will be incorporated to the relevant motion without a vote, the speaker will state all voting options and their outcomes prior to each vote, and all members waiting to enter the room will be given voting cards before any vote deemed “substantive” takes place.

Andy Wei | The McGill Daily The term “substantive” prompted considerable debate, with some councillors expressing concern over which motions it would cover.

Various solutions to this ambiguity were proposed. Physical & Occupational Therapy Representative Yasmine Nadifi suggested that the term be defined, and VP University Affairs Claire Stewart-Kanigan argued that because a primary concern of councillors and their constituents would be motions to postpone debate indefinitely, these should be explicitly included in the definition of “substantive.”

After a lengthy discussion, the rule in question was amended to “any motions deemed substantive by the chair.” The motion to approve the standing rules passed unanimously.

QPIRG-McGill fee referendum After a substantial period of discussion, councillors voted unanimously in favour of a motion to support a “yes” vote in the QPIRGMcGill 2015 referendum. The referendum question, which passed successfully last week, proposed a $1.25 increase to QPIRG-McGill’s opt-outable $3.75 fee, bringing it to a total of $5.00 per student per term.

Medicine Representative Joshua Chin expressed concern about the possible negative ramifications of this increase. “I’m wondering if by [...] endorsing this fee increase, would that not de-incentivize QPIRG members from more proactive [...] searching for [government] grants or fundraising?”

Arts Representative Lola Baraldi disagreed. “I see this fee as impor-

tant because it institutionalizes QPIRG funding and makes it a sustainable option, whereas we can’t rely on government grants, especially in a climate of austerity.”

Stewart-Kanigan concurred, noting that the application process for such grants is complex and extremely time-consuming, and creates what she termed a “climate of uncertainty” within organizations seeking this type of funding. She spoke strongly in favour of the motion, calling QPIRG-McGill “an excellent resource on our campus.”

Cadence O’Neal, a QPIRG-McGill board member and a member of the “yes” committee for the fee, explained the reasoning behind this motion in a message to The Daily.

“QPIRG has been around since

Other business Council also discussed a motion pledging SSMU’s support for the expansion of childcare services for the McGill community.

“This has been an ongoing challenge on the McGill campus,” said Stewart-Kanigan, who motivated the motion. “This is a stance that would not only be supportive of SSMU’s advocacy efforts [...] but it would also be a stance in solidarity with those other groups on campus who are also pushing for more childcare possibilities.”

A motion regarding interim changes for the SSMU Board of Directors (BoD) elections process was also approved. The motion temporarily modified SSMU’s bylaws to allow councillors to be elected to the BoD in April, to ensure that the positions are filled during the summer months.

Ta-Nehisi Coates talks race and justice

Renowned Atlantic writer inspires McGill crowd with charismatic address Emmet Livingstone The McGill Daily

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a-Nehisi Coates’ talent for writing has carried him to a senior editor position at the Atlantic, and has made him perhaps the most influential public intellectual on race in the U.S. today. Last Friday, at the invitation of the Black Students’ Network, the McGill Debating Union, and other groups, he spoke about race and violence, and read passages from his upcoming book.

The event was billed as a followup to the contentious “Discourses of Race: The United States, Canada and Transnational Anti-Blackness” panel in February, where Montreal historian Frank Mackey reportedly made racist remarks. Mackey had replaced Coates, who had to cancel his appearance on short notice.

On Friday, Coates explained that he was “emotionally devas-

tated” after writing an awardwinning Atlantic feature arguing for slavery reparations to the black community. He wanted to express this devastation, as well as his horror at the slew of police killings of black people, in literary form.

“When you see these events, it’s just not a surprise to you,” he said, referring to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. “This [book] is my attempt to tell my son why he should not be surprised [by these events], why he can’t afford to be surprised, and why he has to understand the country that he’s living in.”

Coates spoke positively about the anti-racist protests sparked

by Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson and Eric Garner’s death in New York City, but emphasized that, for him, this kind of racial violence is commonplace.

Prompted by host Rachel Zellars, Coates pointed to the hypoc-

risy of people deploring ‘violent’ protest. He also drew links between violent protest and the violence inherent to racism.

“While I think that non-violence has its own kind of moral arguments in its favour, I find that very often the people who are making those arguments are people who are okay with dropping bombs on Muslim wedding parties,” he said, to applause.

Coates also argued that academic discourse can paint the black liberation movement as non-violent, but that this reflects “a desire to avoid the reality of struggle.” He explained that academic reluctance to clearly tackle the issue obscures violence from the analysis of race.

“When you say something like ‘white privilege,’ it’s abstract,” said Coates. “What you’re really talking about is the right to go upside somebody’s head.”

“You can use these abstract,

academic terms: ‘redlining’ and ‘debt peonage,’ [but] don’t ever forget that at the end of the day you’re talking about violence.

You’re talking about the destruction of somebody’s body.”

Drawing vocal approval from the crowd, Coates emphasized that “race does not produce racism,” and that white identity cannot exist without power.

Whiteness is a “dream of immortality, a dream of godhood,” he explained. “[It’s] just one tool in the toolbox of plunder.” He compared this with black identity, which he argued exists in itself because it is formed around a common experience of oppression.

Coates said further that one of most troubling aspects of white supremacy in the U.S. is that most people are ignorant of black experiences, and unwilling to learn about them. “These people are lost in a

dream,” he said. “These people are not awake, they’re not conscious.”

After answering questions from the audience, Coates received a standing ovation. Helen Ogundeji, a U2 Sociology student, spoke to The Daily after the talk.

“I thought it was really eloquent and thought-provoking, and I’m going back with a lot of thoughts and discussion topics,” she said.

In response to a question about the value of the talk at McGill, Ogundeji told The Daily that “McGill students are a very particular type of people, and I think that a lot of [them] either know this [already], or of course can benefit [from the talk], and will.”

“But I come from a place where I know many people that are, like [Coates] said, asleep – and probably could have used this conversation more than the people I came here with.”

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March 12, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

The expense of health

Major reforms to the Quebec healthcare system under harsh criticism Joelle Dahm The McGill Daily

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n November 2014, Quebec Minister of Health and Social Services Gaétan Barrette proposed a major overhaul to the current healthcare system. The changes, including Bills 10, 20, and 28, are intended to make healthcare accessible to more people, and will affect major sections of the health system, including bureaucracy, doctors, treatments, prescriptions, and pharmacies.

The three bills brought some concerns from the populations likely to be affected by them; however, it is Bill 20 that is currently holding national attention as it is now under review.

The overhaul Bill 10, which restructures the bureaucracy of the health sector, passed in the National Assembly on February 7. The bill will abolish the boards of individual health institutions by merging them into 28 regional boards representing multiple institutions. This change posed a concern for some anglophone institutions, as it might negatively impact their representation on the boards.

The ministry attempted to address these concerns with amendments that secure at least one position for a representative of the anglophone community on each board. The amendments led to a largely positive response, though some professionals remain opposed. Sara Saber-Freedman, president for the MAB-MacKay Rehabilitation Centre told CBC, “What Bill 10 does to achieve [healthcare streamlining] is totally, totally unnecessary and very damaging to our institutions and to our community.”

Bill 28 is most relevant to pharmacists, allowing them to renew common prescriptions such as birth control, aspirin, and vitamin D supplements, which would save the government an estimated $133.5 million per year.

Jean Thiffault, president of the

Quebec Association of Pharmacy Owners, expressed worry that this bill might result in reduced pharmacy hours and job losses, telling Global News, “Pharmacies will close, store hours will decrease, pharmacists will have to cut some staff.” The bill went to hearing on January 23 and is currently under review.

The most controversial of the proposed changes is Bill 20, “An Act to enact the Act to promote access to family medicine and specialized medicine services and to amend various legislative provisions relating to assisted procreation.”

Bill 20 focuses on two things: an increase in patients for family doctors in Quebec, who would have to take on a minimum of 1,000 patients or face a 30 per cent pay cut; and reducing funding of in vitro fertilization (IVF), which Barrette argues to be a non-essential service.

“The phone has been ringing off the hook this morning with single lesbians and lesbian couples who are very worried about this and feel specifically targeted.”

Mona Greenbaum, LGBT Family Coalition Bill 20: how it affects doctors Barrette introduced Bill 20 based on the premise that 60 per cent of doctors in Quebec work less than 25 weeks a year, which is far less than doctors in Ontario, for example. He told Global News: “We would not have to table Bill 20 if doctors were working fulltime and were adapting their

practices to satisfy the needs of the population.”

However, Louis Godin from the Quebec Federation of General Practitioners contested this statement. “The family physicians in Quebec spend more time in the hospitals. [...] The workload of a family physician in Quebec is 50 per cent higher than the workload of a family physician in Ontario or elsewhere in Canada.”

The faculties of medicine at McGill, Université Laval, Université de Montréal, and Université de Sherbrooke have expressed opposition to the current form of the bill, due to concerns with how it will impact the amount of time that practitioners can devote to teaching.

McGill Dean of Medicine David Eidelman told The Daily in an interview that he is concerned about the lack of accessibility of the current health system. “There are changes that are needed to our healthcare system to increase access, and certainly we are ready to work with the Ministry of Health to try and promote that.”

Despite these accessibility concerns, however, he was not supportive of Bill 20. “We have concern about Bill 20 in the way that it is currently structured, in that it doesn’t recognize the role of physicians as teachers. And we depend on community practitioners for a very large part of our teaching, especially in family medicine.”

Julie Miville-Dechêne, president of the Conseil du statut de la femme, also noted that the bill could exacerbate gender inequality. She argued that, because female doctors already earn less than male doctors, “the quotas will penalize women more,” according to the Montreal Gazette.

Eidelman added that, in many universities in Quebec, the number of women medicine graduates is “disproportionately high.” In order to protect the interests of these women and also any other doctors from potential pay cuts, he suggested a model used in Ontario – known as ‘capitation’ – instead of quotas.

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily “Capitation is where a group of doctors is paid to look after a group of patients, not just individuals,” said Eidelman. “We believe that working in a group would be much more effective to meeting these needs of the population. [...] Different people, whether they are women or men, work at different times during their career [...] and this can be dealt with by working as a team in a group, rather than trying to look at individuals.”

Access to IVF Another aspect of Bill 20 that the Conseil du statut de la femme opposed, calling it “paternalistic,” is the restrictions that will be imposed on IVF. Quebec was the first province in Canada to completely include this treatment into its healthcare services in 2010, a progressive step that was nationally and internationally recognized. The initial cost of this provision in 2010 was $32 million, but was estimated to rise to $80 million per year. The current cost of the program, slightly below the estimate, is $70 million per year.

Instead of leaving IVF treatment up to the discretion of the doctor, the bill would restrict the treatment to women between the ages of 18 and 42 who have

passed a psychological evaluation. Further, the bill would require patients to have undergone a minimum number of months of unprotected sexual intercourse and intrauterine insemination before being eligible for IVF. Commenting on these restrictions, Eidelman said, “I think what you’re seeing in the bill is an attempt to put some sort of guidelines and limits on what can be done to try and balance different competing legitimate issues.”

Barrette has said that some exemptions would be added to the bill for women who tried other therapies but failed to conceive.

While these exemptions are unclear, they will not include “women who have had a tubal ligation, men who have had vasectomies, or a parent or parents who already have one child,” according to the Montreal Gazette.

Single mothers, as well as gay and lesbian couples, would largely be excluded from access to IVF funding. Mona Greenbaum, director of the LGBT Family Coalition, commented to CBC, “The phone has been ringing off the hook this morning with single lesbians and lesbian couples who are very worried about this and feel specifically targeted.”

Bill 20 is currently under review at the Quebec National Assembly.

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EUS 2020 proposes governance changes

First town hall held on executive mandate restructuring, constitutional updates Jill Bachelder The McGill Daily

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n February 26, the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) held a town hall to discuss potential changes to the EUS executive structure. The suggested restructuring is part of EUS 2020, an ongoing project aimed at creating new, innovative ideas for making EUS more current and accessible to students.

Last year’s EUS President Carlos Capriles explained the motivation behind the project. “EUS should be shaped over time with the students’ needs – and students’ needs change, [...] the people who come to McGill change, and the organization should be shaped along with it,” he said at the town hall.

The proposed changes would remove the position of VP Clubs & Administration and add the position of VP Student Life, meant to broaden “the scope of our activities to encompass the changing needs and growing diversity

of our faculty,” according to the presentation. The VP Student Life would not only work on social events, but also address issues of inclusivity and mental health.

Moreover, they would work more closely with the EUS Equity Commissioner, who currently works intimately with the president.

The changes also include eliminating the VP Services position and redefining the existing executive portfolios.

To accommodate the loss of an executive position, the plan would create directorship positions, about two or three per VP, to support the executive by heading committees and taking charge of the smaller tasks that the VP currently performs. According to the presenters, the proposed restructuring is similar to changes made at other student government organizations, such as the University of British Columbia’s Undergraduate Engineering Society.

This is the first time that the proposal of the EUS 2020 team has been presented at a public event,

and the vision is subject to change.

The presenters expressed a desire to hold multiple events over the course of the next year, in order to have as much input from engineering students as possible before drafting changes to the executive mandates in the EUS constitution.

“It’s time to change some things in the constitution […] so I want to spread the word and try to get people to voice their opinions so that the changes go in the direction that is the best for everyone,” said EUS 2020 member Stéphanie Breton at the town hall.

Indeed, many at the forum took issue with the proposed changes.

Some of the people present showed concern over the elimination of the VP Services, considering that the current EUS executives are all “stretched thin” and do an overwhelming amount of work.

One audience member noted that managing the General Store (G-Store) and Frostbite, studentrun businesses overseen by EUS, is a big part of the Services portfolio. He argued that because these

Jill Bachelder | The McGill Daily services are so vital to EUS, they should merit their own VP. “[There are] so many managerial aspects - that [in itself ] is [a] reason why we have VP Services and removing it would be a loss to the Society.”

Another widely held concern was allocating a large amount of responsibility to directors, who might

not be as motivated as VPs to stay on top of their work. An employee at the G-Store voiced concern about potential implications the restructuring might have on constituents’ abilities to access VPs. After the meeting, Breton clarified that the submission of these changes will be delayed until the next academic year.

Panelists take intersectional approach to Canadian state violence “Solidarity can be subversive,” says activist Laith Marouf

Marina Cupido The McGill Daily

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our activists from widely varying backgrounds came together to share their experiences and offer advice on methods of resistance during a panel discussion called “N(oh), Canada: Intersectional Perspectives on Canadian State Violence,” hosted by Demilitarize McGill. The event, held on February 25, attracted a diverse group of roughly forty students and sparked a lively conversation that lasted over an hour.

“We wanted to create a platform where different voices could challenge the dominant narrative we hear about the state,” explained a member of Demilitarize McGill in an email to The Daily.

“This narrative – that the state exists to protect us – directly contradicts the lived experiences of many communities.”

The panelists – Mutatayi Fuamba, Clay Nikiforuk, Laith Marouf, and Delilah Saunders – represented four such communities.

Fuamba, Montreal’s Youth Ambassador to the Canadian Council for Refugees and MC and songwriter of Congolese origin, of-

fered insight into the problematic impact of Canada’s immigration laws. He highlighted Bill C-31, which, since being passed in December 2012, has made it significantly more difficult to receive refugee protection in Canada.

According to Fuamba, prospective immigrants are liable to face deportation should they be found guilty of any criminal offence during their application process, however minor. “[Bill C-31] affects a lot of people,” he explained, adding that the criteria according to which someone could be deported are “really subjective.”

Nikiforuk, an activist and writer who specializes in gender issues and Canadian sex work legislation, also spoke at the panel. She explained the negative ramifications of Bill C-36, passed in December 2014, which criminalizes the act of buying, advertising, or profiting from the sale of sexual services.

By driving sex work underground, she said, the bill puts those who participate in the industry – a community already vulnerable to many forms of violence – even more at risk. “I don’t think [it reflects] Canadian values, and I think instead it [plays] on […] sex

trafficking fears,” said Nikiforuk.

“The bill [is called] ‘The Exploited Persons Act,’ conflating sex workers with trafficked persons, which is very dubious.”

Marouf, a multimedia consultant and producer who launched and hosted CKUT’s Palestinian community radio program “Under the Olive Tree,” and has worked with Indigenous and Palestinian solidarity activists across the country, spoke to the audience about freedom of speech in Canada.

Marouf denounced the newly introduced Bill C-51, also known as the Anti-terrorism Act. “It basically says that undermining the Canadian government and territorial integrity of Canada are [considered] terrorism. That’s a very dangerous thing.”

This legislation, Marouf argued, would restrict freedom of speech, silencing journalistic voices judged to be subversive, and repressing Indigenous activists who challenge Canada’s territorial sovereignty.

Marouf also shared his experience with police brutality during the 2012 student strike. Marouf organized a live broadcast of the strike from the streets of Montreal, facing repeated assaults from riot

police. “I was targeted directly by the cops,” he said.

“Every night, they’d come directly to me and pepper spray me in the eyes while filming,” he said.

“They broke my ribs one night […] and that was in front of all the viewers, the Canadian public, the judicial system. […] The truth is, there is no freedom of speech.”

Saunders, the fourth panelist, is an Inuk blogger and activist. Last year, while Saunders researched Canada’s history of violence against Indigenous women, her sister, Loretta Saunders, was murdered. During the panel, Saunders stressed the need for more aggressive attitudes toward domestic and gendered violence from politicians, law enforcement officers, and the Canadian justice system.

Saunders also decried the dearth of infrastructure and basic necessities available to Indigenous communities in Labrador.

“With a lot of Native communities who have suffered the intergenerational impact [of colonial occupation], they don’t have the resources, or the funding, [or] therapists. They don’t have even […] basic medical care,” said Saunders. “How can you make sure that

you’re not psychologically defeated if you’re not given the tools […] or the language to persevere?”

Despite their diverse backgrounds and areas of experience, all four panelists stressed the importance of intersectionality and mutual support between marginalized groups. “Solidarity can be subversive sometimes,” said Marouf.

In a message to The Daily, one audience member, U0 Arts student Sean Nossek, expressed his appreciation of the discussion.

“I think what this panel did well was highlight the intersectional nature of state violence,” Nossek said.

“Whether you’re someone who’s struggling against racial discrimination and police harassment, the destruction of Indigenous territory, violence against women, or any of the manifold ways in which the state tries to hurt us, our struggles do not exist in isolation and we can only fight them through solidarity and coordinated action,” he said. “Demilitarize McGill knows all too intimately how connected we are to state violence as university students, and I don’t think any group on campus could have organized this event better.”

Commentary

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Isolated and left to die

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Solitary confinement is “violent, vindictive, and discriminatory” Gavin Boutroy Commentary Writer

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he use of solitary confinement in Canada is on the rise, but so is the opposition to it. In a legal action, filed officially on January 19, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) and the John Howard Society of Canada argue that the practice constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The principal charge of the lawsuit, however, is that solitary confinement can result in death, and also that it discriminates against people with mental health conditions and Indigenous people.

This legal action follows in the wake of the death of Eddie Snowshoe, an Indigenous man who committed suicide after 162 days in solitary confinement, and a jury’s ruling of ‘homicide’ in the self-inflicted death of Ashley Smith, who had mental health issues and was also in solitary confinement.

Snowshoe and Smith’s fates are but two examples that vividly portray the current state of solitary confinement in Canada, and around the world. This form of punishment epitomizes the problems with the Canadian prison system; it’s violent, vindictive, and discriminatory. Canadians should heed the call for an end to this repugnant practice.

Solitary confinement secludes inmates in small cells, with dimensions “roughly equivalent to those of a Volkswagen Beetle,” according to the Globe and Mail. The cells are without windows, and there is minimal human contact.

On January 27, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) filed a constitutional challenge to solitary confinement with the Ontario Superior Court. The notice of application refers to a widely-held definition of solitary confinement, which adds precision to the idea of minimal human contact: “the reduction in stimuli is not only quantitative but also qualitative. The available stimuli and the occasional social contacts are seldom freely chosen, are generally monotonous and are often not empathetic.” From this definition we can deduce that the evils of solitary confinement go far beyond broad physical and emotional damage. It tears deep into the fibres that make us human.

The lawsuit filed by the BCCLA and the John Howard Society, and the constitutional challenge filed by the CCLA and CAEFS, were certainly in part provoked by the two recent deaths in Canada’s solitary cells.

An inquiry into Snowshoe’s death

Alice Shen | The McGill Daily concludes that none of the prison staff were aware of how long he had been in solitary confinement, even though, according to CBC, that information was readily available. Snowshoe had already attempted suicide three times in prison, yet the prison guards claim they did not know this either. Correctional Service of Canada, commonly called Corrections Canada, was ‘reprimanded’ with non-binding recommendations.

The evils of solitary confinement go beyond physical and emotional damage. It tears deep into the fibers that make us human.

Smith’s death also resulted in non-binding recommendations. She suffered from borderline personality disorder, a mental health condition that caused her to regularly choke herself. One day, after she choked herself for twenty minutes under the watchful eye of prison guards, she died.

Originally, four Corrections Canada staff were charged with criminal negligence causing death.

The charges were dropped when

the Crown and the police learned that guards were acting on orders not to enter Smith’s cell.

The Globe and Mail’s lengthy examination of Snowshoe’s case concludes by saying, “The cell Mr. Snowshoe has endured for 162 days proves too cramped for the personnel necessary to save his life; they drag him into the hallway. […] For all the faults that preceded this desperate moment, there is no questioning the guards’ resolve to save the young inmate that night.”

The same can probably be said about Smith’s guards. But this just makes the case against solitary confinement stronger. The guards’ moral instincts appear in total contrast to what the prison system demanded of them. The instances in which people attribute morally wrong actions to loyal servitude are generally those where the flaws of the institution they serve are most pronounced.

Both Snowshoe and Smith’s deaths have lead to inquests and inquiries. These have led to recommendations, yet the Conservative government has consistently done nothing to curb the use of solitary confinement.

The impossibility of drawing lines of accountability in Snowshoe and Smith’s deaths is unnerving.

People are being pushed to their death, yet nobody can be held accountable. It seems obvious that when everyone is systematically ab-

solved in these horrific deaths, it’s the incarceration system itself that must be questioned.

The stated purpose of solitary confinement in Canada is “to contribute to the safety of staff and inmates and to the security of the institution by providing a safe and humane administrative segregation process.” The problem is that this is clearly unrelated to reality.

The arbitrary, unsupervised, and vindictive use of solitary confinement leads to an increase in mental health conditions, which lead to violence, which, in turn, leads to more solitary confinement. This vicious cycle is actually making prisons less safe.

Unfortunately, the use of solitary confinement is on the rise in Canada. One in four prisoners have been subjected to solitary confinement.

What’s more, people with mental health issues and Indigenous people are targeted the most. The Canadian prison system continues to function exactly per its design: perpetuating harm and discrimination.

A 2013 Amnesty International report about solitary confinement in the U.S. estimated that “between 30 to 50 per cent of all inmates in solitary confinement are mentally ill or cognitively disabled and 20 per cent of this number are severely mentally ill.”

No such data is available for Canada, but the CCLA echoes Am-

nesty International: “Documented cases show a pattern of using segregation as a response to mental health problems, a practice which the Office of the Correctional Investigator has called ‘[n]either safe, nor humane.’”

So much for helping those in need of care. It’s well-known too that Indigenous people, like Snowshoe, are vastly overrepresented in Canadian jails. 25 per cent of male and 41 per cent of female prisoners are Indigenous. An Aboriginal MultiMedia Society article, titled “Solitary confinement crammed with Aboriginal inmates,” states that 31 per cent of prisoners kept in solitary confinement are Indigenous, and on average, Indigenous people spend nearly 16 per cent longer in solitary than non-Indigenous prisoners.

As a practice then, solitary confinement is easy to criticize. All the shortcomings of the whole system are intensified in it, like the sufferings of the prisoners in their steel closets. Discrimination against marginalized communities inside is rife, and the harm this causes is lasting.

However, one has to remember the practice is a manifestation of something more serious. Canada’s correctional services are fatally flawed.

Gavin Boutroy is a U2 Political Science and Philosophy student. To contact him, please email commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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Re-humanizing knowledge

Popular education is crucial for overcoming institutional biases Thomas Saleh Commentary Writer

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s an Environment student living in the Educational Community Living Environment (ECOLE) house on University. I have been exposed to two very different forms of education. After spending years in the one-directional and contained learning environments of lecture halls and homework assignments, I turned my attention to ECOLE, and other similar grassroots initiatives. While traditional classes, predetermined to be ‘important,’ are an effective way to build a base of knowledge, they offer little to no understanding of the world as we truly experience it.

The ECOLE project aims to facilitate a culture of sustainability on campus, including material sustainability, which minimizes our impact on the environment; and social sustainability, which aims to promote social harmony through anti-oppressive practices. Through ECOLE, I’ve acquired an understanding of sustainability through discussion, skill-shares, and lived experience.

You could refer to the experience as popular education.

The term popular education comes from the Spanish educación popular – a term drawn from social organizing often found in Latin America – meaning ‘education for the people.’ At first glance, this phrase conjures up notions of public access to schools; in fact, the concept is far more novel than that. Popular education is an attempt to free education from the rigidities and institutional biases of centralized structures. Forms of extracurricular learning such as skill-shares and workshops are conducted by individuals or small groups, who can freely shape the material and the way it is conveyed. In that vein, community engagement can be a much more effective and real learning experience than anything encountered in a traditional academic setting.

Traditional education has been developed and improved upon over centuries. Thus, it is very efficient when it comes to acquiring very specific knowledge and skillsets. However, it also has some undeniable weaknesses. Firstly, academic settings have a dehumanizing effect on students and the topics that are covered. One can easily feel intimidated, detached, and even isolated, sitting in a lecture hall filled with hundreds of students. Not only does this make learning dull, it also

The Educational Community Living Environment (ECOLE) house. removes students from the social and practical implications of the learning material.

The second problem, arguably more pressing than the first, stems from academia’s hierarchical structures. Traditional education is designed to be centralized. This centralized structure imposes a certain rigidity, which ensures the propagation of institutional biases based on academic ‘objectivity.’ In a university this takes the form of faculties, and in public schools a provincial curriculum. These biases are often at the core of oppressive social dynamics, and they can’t easily be questioned or reconsidered by students or even teachers.

Take, for example, the case of a professor who assigns an author who blames Indigenous people for their marginalization in Canada. Under the guise of academic ‘objectivity,’ students are urged to consider this an ‘equally valid’ view, even though it’s dehumanizing. Some will claim that assessing all the literature is necessary for understanding; however, texts that are plain wrong can obscure meaning and dismiss real criticisms of social problems.

This sort of education gets in the way of solutions.

Popular education, however, attempts to allow learning through dialogue. It brings theory into contact with social realities to create a more practical and dynamic learning experience. Our social nature

as human beings often means that we learn better through storytelling, personal encounters, and lived experiences. This way, not only is learning freed from institutional constraints, it is also targeted at real world problems, and can be put to work in the form of collective action. Through popular education, social injustice can be confronted head-on.

At ECOLE, popular education results from an intentional effort to educate both ourselves and others in ways that the traditional system cannot. ECOLE offers a safe space for open discussion and creative solutions to issues of sustainability. As such, ECOLE has no preconceived agenda. The project is open to be determined by a collective made up of students and community members who want to see change. Institutional biases and rigidities have no place or purpose in a space which truly strives to be safe for all individuals, and free from external prerogatives.

ECOLE achieves this by providing a variety of alternative forms of learning, ranging from bike-powered movies to interactive skill-share sessions. Through these alternative forms, education breaks free of the institutional biases of academia, and becomes more direct – whether the topic be civil disobedience to environmental racism or ways to take one’s finances into one’s own hands. With ECOLE, I’ve become aware of how storytelling can be

used to effectively convey information one-on-one, and of how systems thinking (the process of understanding how things relate to one another in a whole) can be used to analyze an institution like McGill. Clearly, this form of learning is miles from the repeated analyses of market supply and demand in my traditional economics courses.

[Academic] biases are often at the core of oppressive social dynamics, and they can’t easily be questioned or reconsidered by students or even teachers.

Learning at ECOLE doesn’t only happen through workshops, movies, and educational programming. ECOLE strives to help us improve our understanding of sustainability by building community, connecting people and resources in an organic way, and living out sustainable practices in our day-to-day. Here too, we find that the principles of popular education are embodied: education of the community by the commu-

Tony Liu | Photographer nity, focus on applied and practical solutions, and learning by doing and trial-and-error.

Sustainability, both environmental and social, is possibly the most important issue facing our generation. Like most societal problems of such scale, environmental degradation and social oppression have deep cultural and systemic roots. Furthermore, education is one of the means by which such a culture is perpetuated. Students are instilled with a certain understanding of the world that is endemic of the society we live in. How then are we to solve the issues to which our institutions are blind, if we are not even taught how to think outside of those structures?

Popular education offers a way out. It’s an independent platform that allows communities to develop an understanding of the world that is genuine and based in real experience. It’s more adaptable than a centrally-determined curriculum because it’s freed from oppressive structures, dogmas, and biases. For these reasons, popular education is the most impactful, if not the only, way toward fair and effective social change, making it the first step on the long road to sustainability.

Thomas Saleh is a U3 Environment (Water Ecosystems and Environments) student. To contact him, please email thomas.saleh@ mail.mcgill.ca.

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Commentary

March 12, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

Interrogating buzzwords The notion of community according to The Daily

Hera Chan Readers’ Advocate

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he Daily invokes the idea of ‘community’ in its writing time and time again, with an impetus toward engaging the reader to believe that this nebulous and always different concept is what The Daily serves.

The misuse and overuse of words such as community, neoliberalism, colonialism, and misogyny (to name a few) turn what were carefully thought-out, philosophically-backed concepts into mere buzzwords. Two years ago, a Daily bingo game was released online gesturing to this exact critique.

So, let’s talk about the use of the word ‘community.’ For the most part, The Daily intends to use the word positively, and generally tries to apply it to marginalized groups. In doing so, The Daily is contributing to a form of community-building itself. With that in mind, it’s important to think about what kind of ‘community’ it wants to support, and to be careful in using the word community to describe just any group.

The term itself, though, can be described as neutral, for is the silent majority not a community of sorts? The groups of people as included in this term ‘community’ are not so clear-cut.

“Algonquins of Barriere Lake file lawsuit against government,

managers,” (February 23, News, page 7) reports that the “community cites mismanagement.” Community in this piece clearly refers to the members of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake.

In “Diversifying environmentalism,” (February 23, Features, pages 13-15) the writer discusses “community-building” in the context of the Green Belt Movement based in Nairobi that has been planting trees in Kenya. Community here describes the women in this organization and those who will be affected positively in Kenya.

On February 2, “‘Living Laboratory’ seeks community ties” (February 2, News, page 8) outlines the McGill and L’École de technologie supérieure’s social development project called Quartier de l’Innovation (QI), which is attempting to reach out to the “Montreal community.”

Community, when mobilized by the QI project, denotes a sort of charitable status: those in the ‘community’ must be helped and given some form of aid. Basically, it seems that QI is into helping communities in the same way the West is into aiding the developing world. Within the article, QI’s articulation of community was criticized by the coordinator of the Coalition de la Petite Bourgogne as “not very grassroots.”

Is community, then, something that always has to be built? Or

does it exist already?

When using the term community within its pages, The Daily should note the kind of message it is giving. Every single issue discusses different conceptions of community – the vagueness of which is apt, seeing as the boundaries of communities are constantly being renegotiated.

However, the mobilization of the word community can be posi-

tive or negative, and The Daily’s use of the word community is not positive enough. Community is a term that is easily co-opted, and as demonstrated by the news article on QI, it is often by corporate interests. Journalists must question the language they use, especially when it comes to words like ‘community.’ For example, ask the interviewees what that word means to them. Ask representatives of QI

why they are interested in engaging with the ‘community.’

The Daily has no clear idea of what community has the potential to mean. My question is, why?

while I was at McGill they were up in arms to defend free speech “even if it’s not what you want to hear” over a related abortion activism case with Choose Life, so I hope they can apply that here.

Removing these books is also an act of censorship. It also tells members or visitors to the Muslim Students’ Association that they can’t be trusted with such

controversial material, which is the worst kind of discrimination.

The real reason behind the book ‘culling,’ whether Concordia admits it or not, is the fear that they will be read by some young Montreal radical who will then decamp to Syria or Iraq and fight for ISIS, as has happened in Europe and the U.S.. Perhaps Concordia is afraid of this, or worse,

that they might be held liable.

This assumption is a bit misleading because the reason why many of these young people went to fight for ISIS began with deep discrimination they face, particularly in Europe, and economic marginalization. Reading a controversial text was the last step on the road to radicalization, not the first.

If we only read books that “reflect the law and reflect the values of the institution and our society” (the words of the Concordia administration), it would be profoundly limiting, especially in a university setting.

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily

Readers’ Advocate is a twicemonthly column written by Hera Chan addressing the performance, relevance, and quality of The Daily.

You can reach her at readersadvocate@mcgilldaily.com.

Letters

Submit your own: letters@mcgilldaily.com Actually defend free speech I’m writing to encourage students to protest against the removal of “radical Islamic books” at Concordia’s Muslim Students’ Association and hope that they can involve the McGill administration to protest this decision.

While I am dubious of the administration’s actions in the past,

—Erin Hale, BA Philosophy 2012, former Daily editor

Did you know that the “letter” used to be a popular form of communication?

Relive the past! Send us one!

3480 McTavish St. Rm. B-24 Montreal QC, H3A 1X9

letters@mcgilldaily.com

Features

Ro

se

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

ti nt

my wo rl d “ The apa k e e p Pa l r t h e i d w a l l w a s n est o t c re a t e d Is ra e l , a n i n i a n h o m o p h o b e s out of to d t h e re i s gay Pa l e s t i n i a n ns to pass o magic door for gay t h ro u g h .”

– Sami Sham a li , a lQ a w s m ember

On Israeli pinkwashing and the co-opting of the Palestinian queer struggle

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Features

March 12, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

“

Why did you immigrate to Canada, then?” a stranger asked me at a cafe one night. We had started discussing the Israeli occupation of Palestine, when the conversation took a left turn and he asked me why I would support a state that actively persecutes and “stones” its gay population. “As a queer Arab,” I retaliated, “you are speaking over our lived experiences, and the experiences of queer Palestinians living under the occupation.” I was mad. I was mad that a stranger would make assumptions about my own life and my queerness in order to justify the goals of their strawman argument.

“Why did you immigrate to Canada, then? Isn’t it because you were being persecuted in Lebanon for being queer?”

This conversation was nothing new to me. As a queer Arab male (not to speak on behalf of all queer Arab males), I constantly have to explain myself, since being Arab and queer seem to be contradictory to many people living outside of that sphere.

I have to explain that, ‘No, I am not actively being persecuted, and queer people aren’t stoned where I’m from,’ and that I didn’t have a horrible time growing up because I’m queer. That is not to say the latter isn’t due to my class privilege. That is also not to say I am an apologist for oppressive government policies toward queer groups in the Middle East, which still negatively impact a lot of queer people. But while it is important to condemn violations of rights, and to support initiatives that fight them, vilifying a whole people because of this is unreasonable. Homophobia exists almost everywhere. The maltreatment of queer groups is not restricted to the so-called developing nations. Trans people still face despicable treatment in Canada and the U.S., and bisexual erasure is still very rampant in mainstream media, along with the trivialization of sexualities that might not fit the straight-performing, white, or white-performing gay/lesbian binary.

Pinkwashing Pinkwashing is a strategy that utilizes the myth that so-called developed nations are safe havens for queer people. Many countries use this strategy in order to promote themselves as ‘progressive,’ or more ‘progressive,’ than others. In the U.S., for example, Hillary Clinton declared that it is the duty of the U.S. to protect the rights of gay people abroad. In response, Maya Mikdashi, a postdoctoral associate in the department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, critiqued Clinton in an article for Jadaliyya, asking “How and why, exactly, [would] the United States

monitor and regulate LGBTQ rights internationally. Would the American army, for example, start ‘enforcing’ the rights of gay Iraqis or gay Afghanis? Would the United States impose sanctions on governments that were non-homo friendly?”

In an email to The Daily, Toronto-based academic and activist Natalie Kouri-Towe explained that “pinkwashing is a practice used by governments, state institutions, PR firms, corporations, lobby groups, et cetera to draw public attention away from [their] unjust practices by highlighting some token feature that appears to be equitable or just.” Israel, similarly to the U.S. (which uses the queer and feminist issues as an excuse in order to invade countries and wage wars, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq), also uses this strategy in order to build up its image as the so-called bastion of human rights in a ‘dark and savage’ Middle East. This strategy (one of many) aims to maintain a deadly and costly occupation, and to distract away from Israel’s human rights abuses in the territories it illegally occupies, all of which are now evident to anyone with a working internet connection and a critical mind.

For Israel, not unlike many other countries, the queer issue is not just seen as one of the foremost civil rights issues of our century, but it is also seen as a marketing

and human rights seem necessary to uphold and protect the Israeli state,” explained Kouri-Towe.

An integral part of this plan is its comparative aspect. In a ‘clash of civilizations’-like effort, Israel actively compares itself to Palestinian society, thereby placing itself in a superior position – a vacuum for criticism. How could people criticize a state, after all, with an allegedly stellar human rights record that upholds the same values and morals as the ‘West?’ For example, Israeli officials exploit the few cases of queer Palestinians asking for permits to

“Coming out is not a precondition for a vivid movement, we proved we can build a community without everybody needing to be ‘out’ on all different levels.”

Haneen Makey, Co-founder of alQaws tool. The state effectively speaks on behalf of, and over, many queer people and markets itself as a safe haven for queers from both Israel and Palestine. This is all part of an elaborate PR campaign called “Brand Israel,” which was the fruit of three years of negotiations between the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister’s office, and the Finance Ministry in consultation with American marketing executives, with the goal of marketing Israel in a way that would be friendly and relatable to Western* audiences. “Celebrating the out and vibrant gay night life of Tel Aviv, Westerners were supposed to identify with Israel. This aimed to normalize the apartheid system, making the military occupation, illegal wall, and other violations of international law

join their Israeli or Palestinian partners in Israel, in order to claim that Palestinian society is homophobic and ostracizes its queer community, and that Israel, on the contrary, advocates for the rights of queers. This reasoning follows with the assumption that we should “therefore [...] not pressure Israel, because if we pressure Israel we are going against the rights of women, queers, [and] all marginalized groups in society,” points out Samia al-Botmeh, professor of Economics at Birzeit University in the West Bank, visiting professor at the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, and a steering committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

The role of Orientalism Israeli officials and their proponents further perpetuate this discourse by making sensationalist statements such as: “In a dark, and savage, and desperate Middle East, Israel is a beacon of huamanity, of light, and of hope,” as declared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who is currently running for re-election) in a speech at the 2015 American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy (AIPAC) conference. Statements like these are not only offensive, but also erase any cultural differences within the Middle East, with their treatment of social issues and the asymmetric and differential nature between Western and non-Western cultures.

Edward Said touched upon this

wr vis itt ua en ls by

by Ra St lp ep h H ha a ni dda e Ng d o

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kind of rhetoric in his seminal work Orientalism, where he states, “the Orientalist was considered to be a generalist (with a great deal of specific knowledge of course) who had highly developed skills for making summational statements. By summational statements […] the Orientalist would be understood (and would understand himself ) as also making a statement about the Orient as a whole.” Following that logic, Israeli officials are operating in pure Orientalist fashion when they make essentialist statements such as Netanyahu’s about Palestinian society. Therefore, one cannot simply say ‘our treatment of queer groups is better than yours,’ especially if there is an asymmetry of power between the nations being compared, such as in the relationship between occupier and occupied, and when these nations do not operate on an equal platform, such as in the relationship between colonizer and colonized.

In this way, if non-Western society, specifically in Palestine, understands and goes about queer issues differently than the West, then this culture is seen as intolerant of queers specifically, says al-Botmeh. She asserts that this stems from classic Orientalist practices. For example, when a crime is committed in ‘non-Western’ countries, a cultural cause is searched for, while if the same crime is committed in Western countries, the cause looked to is distinctly noncultural – the difference between domestic violence in the ‘West’ versus honour killings in the ‘non-West,’ for instance.

“The manner in which we conduct our society is different from Israel, we are not a Western society, and Israel is a Western [one]. The way we go about our lives in general is different, and that applies to everybody: that applies to men, women, to how social relations are conducted, how society is organized. […] And therefore we do have a difference of approach with regard to queer issues, [one that] is not a Western approach,” al-Botmeh continues.

“Of course Israel plays on that, [in the same way that it plays] on the issue of women for example, [claiming that Palestinian society] is uncivilized, backward, that it violates the rights of women, et cetera.”

What critics of Palestine also miss is the fact that homosexuality has been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s,

Features “when anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow,” according to an article in the New York Times (the situation remains different in Gaza following the Hamas/ Palestinian Authority rift).

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily munal). “We all have friends who know and some family members that know, but others don’t. In different places, we can be different people. We can have this flexibility in our identity without having the ‘ceremony’ of coming out. We are not a Christian culture, we don’t have this tradition of con-

“I often hear the objection; ‘so what if Israel wants to promote its gay-rights policies?’ But it’s not about gay rights, Israel commits human rights violations and occupies another people and then abuses my difficulties and my name by saying my society is backward and homophobic.”

Haneen Makey, Co-founder of alQaws Palestinian movements It is worth explaining that Palestinian society does have its particularities, just like any other society does, and hence has its own way of dealing with issues.

AlQaws, “a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and queer (LGBTQ) Palestinian activists and allies collaboratively working to transform Palestinian society’s perspectives on gender and sexual diversity and struggling for broader social justice,” is an example of one of a few Palestinian civil society organizations advocating for sexual and gender equality, and social justice.

“I often hear the objection: ‘so what if Israel wants to promote its gay-rights policies?’ But it’s not about gay rights, Israel commits human rights violations and occupies another people and then abuses my difficulties and my name by saying my society is backward and homophobic. My struggle is dismissed and my people are demonized. This has a direct impact on our image internationally, but more importantly on Palestinian gay youth who internalize these ideas and dream about running away to Israel, the supposed bastion of gay rights,” says Haneen Maikey, co-founder of alQaws, in an interview with International Viewpoint.

Al-Botmeh explains that the ‘West’ aims to impose its own model on the rest of the world in order to fight differences that might not conform to Western standards “We know from the struggle of feminism [that] that is counterproductive. In the sixties and the seventies many Western feminists tried to impose their values on the [‘non-West’] and the results were catastrophic.” (For more information, see the article Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? by Lila abu-Lughod). In this way, alQaws responds to the needs of Palestinian society and responds to this society’s particularities, without borrowing from already existing Euro-American approaches to queer rights.

Maikey affirms that Palestinian society is much more communal and communitybased than individualistic societies in most of the West (certainly communities of colour in the West could be considered com-

fessing. In the Western context, ‘coming out’ grew organically from its social context. It’s a very individual approach, from an individualist society,” states Maikey.

In Palestine, many individuals value their ties with their communities more than coming out. Maikey continues, “my parents are more angry about me moving away than being a lesbian. Many people are very connected to their families and are not willing [to] break with them by coming out in the Western sense [...] Coming out is not a precondition for a vivid movement, we proved we can build a community without everybody needing to be ‘out’ on all different levels.”

Pinkwashing, then, not only distracts from Israel’s blatant human rights abuses, but also ignores the existence of an active queer movement within Palestine and Palestinian civil society.

The politics of queer In 2009, two gay youth were shot in the centre of Tel Aviv. AlQaws expressed solidarity against this hate crime, and attended the demonstration to denounce this crime.

Maikey recounts, “[The demonstration] was dominated by white men and rightwing politicians. Shimon Peres [the former president of Israel] was on the stage, saying ‘don’t kill’ while two months earlier he was part of killing hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, and the Israeli national anthem was played. So, as Palestinians we were excluded from this demonstration.

We asked to speak from the platform but this was refused with the argument this was not the place to talk about politics – as if the whole issue is not political!”

Of course, a conversation about pinkwashing cannot take place without grounding the argument within the theory of homonationalism, as articulated

by Jasbir Puar, an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Puar explains that homonationalism is not just a state practice. It is the historical intersection of state practices, the flow of queer commodity culture (marketing things to the queer community), and the Euro-American human rights industrial complex (or the imposition of a

Euro-American notion of human rights on the non-Euro-American world), first with each other, and then with broader global phenomena like Islamophobia. The latter now dictates that modern states be judged on the basis of how they treat their queer population (primarily gay men), but from a Euro-American-centric and Islamophobic perspective. Pinkwashing falls under the umbrella of homonationalism as one of its many visible outcomes. Furthermore, pinkwashing intersects with Islamophobic discourse post-9/11, which is characterized by the Western crusade against ‘radical Islam.’ Pinkwashing in Israel, therefore, would not exist in its current form without anti-Arab and anti-Islamic discourse.

Puar further writes that pinkwashing cannot be dissociated from the neoliberal capitalist context of the Western world, as it produces what she calls the “human rights industrial complex” which, when it comes to queer rights, still articulates a Euro-American-centric discourse and tries to impose this on the entire world.

Therefore, Puar states that Israel is at the forefront of homonationalist discourse. “[The] homonationalist history of Israel, or the rise of LGBT rights in Israel, parallels the concomitant increasing segregation of Palestinian populations, especially post-Oslo.”

The U.S., Israel’s greatest financial supporter, is complicit in Israel’s homonationalist practices, as Israeli pinkwashing targets the U.S. lobbies first, and more and more in Canada as well – most notably AIPAC and its Canadian counterpart, the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC), who use the queer discourse Israel co-opts in order to serve Israel’s purposes within the U.S. and Canada. “U.S. settler colonialism is inextricably intertwined with Israeli settler colonialism. Through their financial, military, affective, and ideological entwinement, it seems to me that the United States and Israel are the largest benefactors of homonationalism.”

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do not mean this is in a nationalist way but in the sense that we suffer from the same hardships as other Palestinians. The occupation also affects queers; racism doesn’t distinguish between queers and straights.

So we were already part of campaigns against the occupation, discrimination, and the separation wall. We feel we can contribute a special perspective to this struggle and this is why we wanted to create a separate, independent group that can work to support the BDS campaign from a queer perspective,” argues Maikey.

Kouri-Towe also notes the contributions of queer activism to the Palestinian struggle. “The way that queer activists have revealed the diversion tactics of pinkwashing has gone a long way to expose how the Israeli state is using public relations as its new strategy in denying Palestinian human rights [...] I think queer activism has really shown how important it is to have diverse organizing strategies in social movements.

In the Palestinian liberation movement, the organizing work of queer activists can help contribute to critiques of state practices and normalization discourses, which can [then] easily be replicated in mainstream organizations and groups.”

As a member of PACBI, al-Botmeh states that PQBDS is an integral part of the BDS movement and the fight against the occupation. Queer activists are very wellconnected within Canada and the U.S., for example. For al-Botmeh, it is not about bringing the queer movement into civil society and BDS per se, rather it is only natural to work with queer activists on grassroots initiatives such as BDS. “Within Palestine, the queer movement is comfortable, it has more of its rightful place within civil society. No one would attack alQaws within civil society for example. It is as highly respectable, accepted, as any other organization within civil society. I think that is a very healthy indication of society in general, because civil society does represent the very base of society.”

“I am an Arab, I am a Palestinian, I am gay. My gay haven is not a glittered parade in Tel Aviv. It is a liberated Palestine.”

Fahad Ali, Op-ed writer for Honi Soit Civil rights and self-determination More importantly, and what may also seem contradictory to many, is that the queer struggle in Palestine does in fact have everything to do with the struggle for Palestinian self-determination and the struggle against Israeli occupation.

A prominent example of this is Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (PQBDS). The BDS movement itself aims to put pressure through various forms of boycott and the implementation of divestment initiatives, “and to demand sanctions against Israel, until Palestinian rights are recognized in full compliance with international law,” according to the BDS website.

PQBDS aims to counter Israeli pinkwashing and to promote BDS, since BDS is a grassroots call-to-action from Palestinian civil society. “We consider ourselves an integral part of Palestinian society: we

The issue for Palestine is that the actualization of queer or feminist rights cannot be fully obtained without an end to the occupation. Moreover, queer and feminist activism is an integral part of the anti-occupation movement in Palestine – it is very much within. A Western model of Euro-American queer rights cannot be imposed onto Palestinian society; the queer movement and its politics and demands have to be indigenous to Palestine, of the people, and a response to the specific demands of Palestinian society. In the words of Fahad Ali, an op-ed writer for Honi Soit: “I am an Arab, I am a Palestinian, I am gay. My gay haven is not a glittered parade in Tel Aviv. It is a liberated Palestine.” *By Western, I mean privileged, predominantly white, cis, heteronormative, and Euro-American.

Photo Essay

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Toronto universities on strike

Teaching assistants protest heavy workload, low wages Compiled by Tamim Sujat The McGill Daily

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he teaching assistant (TA) strike at University of Toronto (U of T) has now passed the one week mark. TAs make $42.05 per hour, but hours are capped at 205 per year – much less, according to unions, than TAs are forced to work. Even at that cap, their salary, at around $15,000 on average, puts them below Canada’s poverty line. As of publication, York University is also on strike over similar concerns, but has shut down classes, while U of T goes on.

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Sci+Tech

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Meet the azotosomes

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Researchers explore the possibility of life without oxygen Peter Zhi The McGill Daily

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xygen is a necessary component of life. This has been the common belief within the scientific community and the principle that guides the search for life on extraterrestrial planets – until now.

Researchers from Cornell University have proposed that life could exist without oxygen. Life on earth requires lipid bilayer membranes, that only form in liquid water. In space, where it is extremely cold, water turns into ice.

But liquid methane, devoid of any oxygen and composed of only hydrogen and carbon, remains in liquid form. And there is plenty of it to go around: Saturn’s moon, Titan, hosts seas of liquid methane. Consequently, the research team inquired as to whether liquid methane can sustain life.

The astrobiologists at Cornell discovered that indeed liquid methane can give rise to ‘azotosomes,’ which are membranes that can function in extremely cold temperatures and retain their flexibility and stability as lipid membranes. Flexibility allows membranes to be responsive to environmental changes, and stability allows it to retain its ability to compartmentalize materials. This groundbreaking theory means that future exploration of life forms in space could extend beyond merely the ‘habitable zone,’ where liquid water exists, and farther into planets rich with liquid methane.

In the early years of research on the molecular origins of life, scientists established the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis, which stated that the biochemical processes that ribonucleic acid (RNA) undergoes were precursors to terrestrial life. These processes require the molecular machines, like enzymes, to be in close proximity to the RNA, which is achieved with the help of lipid bilayer membranes. Compartmentalization encloses some molecules together and keeps others out, so processes can occur without external disruptions – in essence, it keeps order

Jonathan Reid | The McGill Daily in the cell. Since lipid membrane compartmentalization was the first requirement for the origin of life, scientists theorized the ‘lipid world’ hypothesis, which replaced the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis.

Cell membranes compartmentalize through their interactions with liquid water. Water is polar as a result of an unequal distribution of charges. Polar molecules attract other polar molecules, whereas nonpolar molecules attract nonpolar molecules. Liposomes, which are spheres of lipid bilayer membranes, form in water due to favourable polarity interactions. Since membranes are composed of two single layers of phospholipids, which are made up of a polar oxygen-containing ‘head’ and a nonpolar hydrocarbon ‘tail,’ they naturally form into lipid bi-

layer membranes in water, with the polar portions of the molecule shielding the non-polar portions.

However, unlike water, liquid methane is nonpolar. As a result, it is a poor environment for the formation of the bilayer lipid membranes which are required for life.

Moreover, phospholipids do not exist in liquid methane because the chemical components needed for their composition cannot be found in atmospheres of planets rich in liquid methane, such as in Titan. Even if phospholipids existed in liquid methane, they would not form into liposomes due to unfavourable polarity interactions, but instead into reverse membranes, where the tails face outward and the heads inward. These long tails (consisting of 15 to 20 atoms) are easily

made rigid by the cold temperatures, decreasing the flexibility of the membranes.

The researchers discovered that ultraviolet light interacting with the methane- and nitrogenfilled atmosphere on Titan produces molecules called tholins, which are similar to phospholipids in that they contain shorter nonpolar tails and polar nitrogencontaining heads.

Adjusting for a much colder climate in space, the team created a computational simulation of a membrane model consisting of tholins. Their polar nitrogencontaining heads, called ‘azoto’ groups, keep them in reverse membrane form compared to the lipid bilayer membrane. Because the tails are short, they are not made extremely rigid by cold tempera-

tures. This self-formation parallels that of a lipid bilayer, except that the directions the heads and tails are facing are reversed. This new membrane is termed ‘azotosomes.’ Computer simulation has concluded that azotosomes satisfy the conditions for a membrane that sustains life — namely, that it is flexible and stable.

Azotosomes seem to be membranes that can feasibly exist at extremely cold temperatures and could in principle sustain life in extremely cold climates and without liquid water, and consequently, without oxygen. The search for life-sustaining planets has always been fascinating, and this groundbreaking research could greatly expand the currently defined habitable zone and propel it to neverbefore-seen territories.

Did you know almost half of the processes that are crucial to maintaining the stability of the planet have become dangerously compromised by human activity?

Write for sci+tech before the world ends. scitech@mcgilldaily.com

Sports

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

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CrossFit is revolutionizing fitness A more inclusive kind of sport

Alice Shen | The McGill Daily Tanner Levis The McGill Daily

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ifteen years ago, Lauren Jenai and Greg Glassman introduced a new sport to the world. They called it CrossFit, which has since then revolutionized the way that many professional or aspiring (and even non-athletes), think of fitness. CrossFit is a sport that aims to improve an athlete’s general physical preparedness, and this can be achieved through the development of ten skills: cardiovascular, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and Accuracy. The sport incorporates elements from other sports and training regimes such as Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, plyometrics, calisthenics, and many others, such as swimming running, etcetera.

In 2005, there were 13 CrossFit -affiliated gyms in the U.S.. There are now just over 10,000 CrossFit affiliates around the world. Over 5,000 of those affiliates are in the U.S., with others in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Australia.

Canada itself has just over 500 affiliates, most of which are on the eastern side of the country. CrossFit can be a financially inaccessible to some as rates are upward of $100 per month. But, it isn’t necessary to train at a CrossFit affiliate to adapt

CrossFit’s methods of training, and this is one of the reasons that the sport has grown so rapidly.

In an email to The Daily, McGill Kinesiology student and CrossFitter Patrick Vellner said, “CrossFit does a phenomenal job of making itself very accessible to all types of people. What allows CrossFit to be so accessible is that one of its major staples is that the training is universally scalable and adaptable to all skill levels. This basically means that all of the weights can always be adjusted, and movements modified to allow any individual to take part, and adjust the intensity of training to be appropriate to them. Because of this, physical disabilities generally do not limit individuals in their potential for participation. Where there is a will, there is a way.”

CrossFit holds an event every year called The Open, where athletes worldwide do a series of five workouts. They can do this either at a local CrossFit affiliate, where they will be judged in person, or they could film their performance and submit it to be judged that way. There are various categories, including ones based on gender (men and women), and on age (‘Teenagers’ between the ages 14 and 17, ‘Open,’ where anyone can compete and ‘Masters’ for those older than the age of 40). Furthermore, instead of participating as

individuals, athletes can perform as a team consisting of at least three men and three women, and do all of their workouts together.

For the first year ever, the Open is now separated into competitive and non-competitive divisions.

Those who wish to compete in the CrossFit Games would do the Open in the competitive division, and those who simply want to be more involved with the sport would participate in the non-competitive division. Those who place highest in the competitive division of the Open go to the CrossFit Regionals. A certain amount of athletes who place highest at the Regionals (which vary year to year) will then be able to move onto the CrossFit Games that are held every summer.

Aside from the CrossFit Games themselves, there are various other competitions hosted by affiliates at their own gyms. This is another way in which CrossFit is inclusive: there can still be a competitive aspect to the sport for those who aren’t quite ready to compete at the Games. There are even competitions for those who are disabled. Kevin Ogar, a very respected CrossFit athlete has excelled at the sport, while doing his workouts in a wheelchair. Ogar is a member of WheelWod, a group of athletes whose mission is to make all forms of fitness adaptable and accessible

for everyone. They also host seminars, done by a system of trial-anderror, for other disabled athletes.

Having said that, I should point out that CrossFit isn’t only about competition; it is also about preparing people for any physical contingency, which is yet another reason the sport has grown so quickly among people. The sport doesn’t set unrealistic standards like many other sports do, meaning people can feel comfortable knowing they aren’t the top athletes in the world.

Vellner said, “I think that it is important to understand that CrossFit is not defined by its big competitions like the CrossFit Games. These are only a small part of CrossFit, a celebration of its elite athletes, but anyone can enjoy it without competing at a high level. The community, camaraderie, and ideals surrounding CrossFit are what really make it amazing. There is universal acceptance and everyone is always trying to help each other out. The main goal is to live a healthier life and the most important competition at the gym is against yourself.”

Vellner has been doing CrossFit since 2013, but even before CrossFit, he said he had a great athletic background in gymnastics that was sure to help him excel. Remembering his first year doing CrossFit

and participating in the Open, he said he “had some reasonable success for a beginner, but it was a big reality check as to what it takes to compete at the next level.” The following year, he continued to train on his own, and again decided to compete in the Open. He qualified for Regionals, decided to compete yet again, and finished in fifth place – only two spots away from making it to the CrossFit Games.

After his successful campaign at the Canada East Regionals, a few athletes from CrossFit Plateau approached him, and asked him to begin training at their gym. He has been training there since the fall of 2014. He says that he loves the sport, and is shooting for the 2016 CrossFit Games.

Training in accordance with the methods of CrossFit, an average person could potentially become a strong and well-rounded athlete, with the foundation of general physical preparedness.

When done safely as a sport, CrossFit provides an interesting and real challenge with plenty of potential for personal growth and achievement, which is why it has grown so rapidly across the globe, and will continue to do so. CrossFit has revolutionized the way people think of fitness, and that in itself proves why CrossFit is perfect for everyone.

Culture

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

Performing change

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Theatre of the Oppressed invites the audience to act Lauria Galbraith The McGill Daily

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s a space where voices are heard and stories shared between actor and audience, the theatre has a unique artistic capacity for fighting oppression. In the 1960s, Brazilian director and political activist Augusto Boal realized this power of dramatic resistance and created the Theatre of the Oppressed, a form of theatre that doubles as a method for promoting social and political change. Today, the techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed are used worldwide and mediated by the International Theatre of the Oppressed Organisation, which serves as a virtual epicentre for those who wish to carry on Boal’s tradition. This month, McGill’s Arab Students Association (ASA) will be adapting the Theatre of the Oppressed for a McGill setting, bringing this political practice to our campus.

The Daily sat down with three members of the Arab Student’s Association (ASA)’s production to discuss their upcoming show.

ASA President Nisan Abdulkader who plays Leila, a journalist in the production, describes the genre as “interactive theatre where there [are] different visions of what oppression means, and we try to cover the reality of a group of individuals.” This ASA show will be done as Forum Theatre, one of the many branches of the Theatre of the Oppressed. It incites an interactive dialogue between actors and spectators through “simultaneous dramaturgy” – a process that includes audience input and participation in the creation of short scenes. In this practice, anyone from the audience can stop the play when they witness something oppressive happening on stage, and then the spectator can direct or act out the change they’d like to

see. As Abdulkader explains, audience members act and become “spectactors” instead of just spectators, transforming the production by taking “the opportunity [...] to change the reality that they see happening on stage [and] to challenge different norms.”

While Forum Theatre usually involves the audience circling the actors as they perform, calling for a change in the scene when they see fit, this particular production will look a little different given space limitations. Instead, the actors will first create the scenes and the spectactors will later deconstruct them. Nicholas Tadeo Montanari Chapman, the director of the show, explains that “at the end of the play [...] it becomes an open forum [...] it breaks with the idea that the stage is separate from the audience.

People can choose the scenes they want to change, there’s a discussion and we’ll ask people how they want to change it.” The scene will be reenacted and then “spectactors” can break into the scene and try to change the instance of oppression.

The forum will showcase “everyday oppression that people can relate to,” explains Léna Wattez, one of two scriptwriters, with a focus on social constraints people may face in their private lives, in their families, and in workplace interactions. “Since it’s the Arab Students’ Association, the characters [also] have some stuff to do with that world,” Wattez adds.

Split between two acts – “Us” and “Them” – the plot follows Leila (Abdulkader), a journalist, and her brother Abdullah (Majid Rasool), outlining the discrimination that follows them and others in their social circles. Characters are oppressed due to “specific identity, physical, and normative traits” and constrained by individual identities such as “Arab” or “woman.” The us versus them dichotomy is a central

Jasmine Wang | The McGill Daily theme that this forum tries to deconstruct, attempting to show that it is empathy and an understanding of the grander “us,” rather that antagonistic divisions, that can bring an end to systematic oppression.

The themes of oppression go beyond just the experiences of the ASA. Abdulkader explains that they wanted to put on this exhibition as “a way to incorporate the greater McGill community” into an ASA event. “Because there is so much division, because there are so many cultural clubs at McGill, this is a way to bring us together, this is a way to bring not just the Arab community, but the people outside the Arab community, make them interact and at the end of the day, see that [which] more unites us than divides us.”

The creators believe that the Theatre of the Oppressed is an important thing for McGill students to participate in and learn from.

show that it’s okay to take a step back and analyze a situation before forming a hasty reaction. “There [is] so much reaction after every event nowadays [...] not even ten minutes after some event, there’s a reaction on different social media channels,” Abdulkader says. The Theatre of the Oppressed lets the audience take the time to reflect on the oppressive situations they witness and take action, instead of just formulating an abstract and distant opinion. The audience is encouraged to “not just stay behind a desk and relay whatever they want, but rather act in the moment.”

Distinguishing between hasty reactions and meaningful actions, Chapman says, “I think some people get too caught [up] with the idea of going back and forth and trying to win an argument.”

He goes on, “we are trying to be thought-provoking, but not in the sense of trying to [get] a reaction out of people, but create action, create something new.”

For the creators, too, the Theatre of the Oppressed has offered something new and meaningful.

For Abdulkader, the process has been eye-opening. “People come in with different ideas [...] for me to be part of that process and to be inspired from the people I’m working with, I think that was the incredible part of it.”

It seems that in the production’s creation, it has already achieved its goal of realizing empathy. According to Chapman, “it’s humanizing in a sense, to feel what the person is feeling and to be in that position. […] When you can understand someone else, that’s when you can actually change it, you can actually make action happen. It’s a collective experience of catharsis.”

“We have lost touch with that human sense of who people are; people are just names or numbers or whatever it is,” says Abdulkader.

This practice of real action can be especially important for students in the context of the digital age. As Wattez puts it, “Today, when you see change, you’re being exposed to change through social media, you can see videos of people doing good things and you can read about them, but you don’t really get a chance to act.” She explains that “in this theatre, you can actually become that person who is oppressing the other person or become the oppressed and change the whole behaviour.” One of the production’s overarching goals is that of fostering empathy, in accordance with the underlying belief that empathizing with and understanding the views of others can ASA’s Theatre of the Oppressed bring about real change. will be presented on Thursday, But the creators also want to March 19 at Theatre Plaza.

Social justice rap & poetry Rosie’s Pick: Sounds of Justice Poetry Night We all need a little more poetry in our lives. Though our computers give us access to some of the best TV, movies, and music, screens can’t compare to sitting mere feet away from a performer, immersed in the sound of their story. This Friday, take a break from Netflix and head over to Café l’Artère for the Sounds of Justice

Poetry Night. Organized by Israeli Apartheid Week and McGill Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), the evening will feature the poetry of Palestinian American poet Suheir Hammad. While political events are often reduced to headlines and body counts, spoken word can help tell the personal stories that go unheard. Hear for yourself what these artists have to say.

Niyousha’s Pick: Workshop: Pipelines & Tar Sands/Raps for Social Justice Start your week on the right beat this Monday with a workshop from Climate Justice Montreal and rappers Waahli and Lou of Nomadic Massive.

Focusing on pipelines and tar sands, this workshop is a chance to expand your environmental knowledge and learn how to compose rap lyrics with a social justice bent.

The workshop also allows participants to prepare for what promises to be an epic event: the Rap Battle Against the Tar Sands, where you can put your skills to the test. It will be more than just a showcase of incredible social justice rap – it’ll also serve as a fundraiser for Aamjiwnaang + Sarnia Against Pipelines (ASAP), a community group that acts as a forum for “action around the toxic reality of living in Chemical Valley” for

Aamjiwnaang First Nation community members. The rap battle will feature some fierce competition, so polish your beats at the workshop this Monday – you’ll learn a lot, whether or not you plan on taking the stage.

Pipelines & Tar Sands/Raps for Social Justice is Monday, March 16 at Concordia (1455 Maisonneuve).

Sounds of Justice Poetry Night is Friday, March 13 at Café Artère.

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Culture

March 12, 2015 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com

An iconic clash

Emmanuel Laflamme crafts new meaning from familiar images Sonia Larbi-Aissa The McGill Daily

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rom the outside, idiphi’s new gallery space looks like any other late-twentieth-century Plateau storefront. However, the architecture firm’s ephemeral gallery delivers much more than you would expect from its exterior.

The pop-up gallery is really an old hardware store that has been sculpted into an art space prior to its eventual demolition and the construction of condos in its place, using only the materials from the original structure. Inside, a white tree snakes up through the exposed ceiling, emerging from a floor mural. The mural depicts Francisco Goya’s 19th century firing squad from The Third of May 1808 shooting into a Roy Lichtenstein-style comic book explosion.

Titled Execution, this installation is one of Montreal artist Emmanuel Laflamme’s many allusion-heavy pieces currently on display as the pop-up gallery’s first-ever exhibit.

While idiphi repurposed an old building to showcase new art, Laflamme is doing the same with images he confronts every day.

Hailing from the animation industry in Montreal, Laflamme is all too familiar with the power and efficacy of symbols to express meaning. “I try to find a language that [is] clear and accessible for people to understand and relate to,” Laflamme tells The Daily in an interview. “To me, all symbols have a very specific and

Emmanuel Laflamme combines Warhol and Haring. Sonia Larbi-Aissa | The McGill Daily personal meaning.”

In a piece called Survival of the Fittest, Laflamme manipulates the established cultural meaning of Mickey Mouse by forcing the familiar character into an unfamiliar context. On a large and imposing diptych, Laflamme stencils a hulking sewer rat caught mid-bite with the severed, yet recognizable, head of Mickey. Mickey’s decapitated body lies bleeding on the neighbouring canvas. The culprit is an obvious allusion to Banksy’s iconic Gangster

Rat, popular for causing anti-state mischief all over the world.

This piece is a bold comment on the distance between the two symbolic rodents. With a touch of humour, Laflamme pits the familiar mouse that embodies such tender childhood memories against the modern and subversive rat – with a clear winner. “It’s one thing to appropriate art and images, it’s another to make it your own,” Laflamme says. This piece reads as the perfect summation of the

artist’s personal manifesto as both destroyer and creator of meaning.

With more clever pairings of familiar icons, Laflamme makes a vast range of popular images his own.

The pop art styles of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring meet on Marilyn Monroe’s mechanically reproduced face as Laflamme replaces her eyes and nose with Haring’s famous cartoon humanoids. The result is both grotesque and intriguing, exploiting Warhol’s aspirations for the Monroe brand by layering Haring’s fig-

ures over Monroe’s arguably most recognizable features. The innocence of the two cartoon figures in place of the eyes reaching for one of Haring’s iconic hearts on Monroe’s forehead cleverly highlights their violent placement on her visage.

Laflamme is relentless in his innovation, as each pair of icons hits the viewer with another wave of shock, pushing us to reconsider how we understand popular imagery. Disney’s Snow White bites into a Macintosh apple, perhaps poisoned with the materialistic addiction that is endemic to Apple customers. Salvador Dali peeps out from behind a Batman mask in the absurd surrealist partnership titled Dark Knight Dali that he himself would probably endorse if he were still alive today. A hand-painted canvas of the famous Twentieth Century Fox logo declares “20th Century Fake,” boldly condemning Hollywood with its own symbols.

Surrounded by memes and minimalism, Laflamme cleverly crafts new meaning through unexpected mashups. Like his Banksystyle rodent, Laflamme dismembers the familiar icons we love and cherish. In a world where brands and icons pervade every aspect of our lives, Laflamme’s witty work is a crucial reminder to take nothing for granted.

Emmanuel Laflamme’s works are on display now at idiphi’s ephemeral gallery, located at 4517 Christophe-Colomb.

Privates made public

Exhibit by Concordia students exposes intimacy in the internet era Megan Lindy The McGill Daily

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s the first to grow up in the digital age, our generation has experienced firsthand a revolution in communication. We’ve learned to navigate the distances between ourselves and others in radically different ways than our parents once did, using platforms that memorialize our interactions across online spaces. “(Intimacy) Limits and Consequences” is an exhibit that harnesses this perspective, showcasing work by young artists who are uniquely placed to explore private lives in public cyberspaces.

The exhibit is part of Concordia’s Art Matters, a festival now in its 15th year that gives Concordia students the opportunity to gain experience working with local galleries and curating their own ex-

hibitions. For “(Intimacy),” eight student artists each submitted one piece to grapple with the subject.

The exhibit mixes traditional artistic mediums and modern digital visuals to dwell on the distortion of what is public and what is private in the internet era. Leah Schulli’s Thanks bemoans the status update that has come to serve as an open invitation to publish the personal and the trivial. Riffing on meme aesthetics, Schulli’s piece displays a Facebook status bemoaning interviews one has to conduct in large red letters across the backdrop of a mountain range. The open landscape points to the way people’s statuses echo across cyberspace only to be drowned out by the mass production of similar anecdotes. The personal, magnified and made available for everyone by the internet’s infinite memory, has its intimacy cheapened and worn away.

Public exposure isn’t always this self-aggrandizing; Katie Stienstra’s I’ll Show You Mine delves into the nude selfie and its easy slip into popular circulation. A long-haired blonde peeks out seductively from a curtain, holding her iPhone up to capture her physique on camera. She is printed in ink jet onto a transparent plastic canvas and her fuzzy, pixeled representation makes her anonymous enough to convey the universality of the situation – everyone is at risk of having these intimate self-portraits plastered across the web. Unlike Schulli’s status, the nude selfie is usually meant for a specific audience – often a romantic partner – with the belief that it will stay within that relationship. When her private photos are shared, the intimacy she intends to convey becomes as commodified and public as that of the models on billboard posters that

her seductive pose replicates.

Other pieces use comedy to access the more confusing aspects of individual identity in contemporary society. Shawn Christopher’s Cochon grapples with sexual intimacy in his dark and humourous work.

This sculpture features about thirty penises of different shapes and sizes standing erect around a statue of a man with a pig’s head sitting on the floor. Some of the penises have had their tops replaced by pig heads; others have been cut down to just the tip. Almost all of the pinkish body and body parts are singed from the fire they were baked in.

The dismembered members, in their quantity and anonymity, bring to mind dating apps like Tinder and Grindr that have the power to make sex another exchange in social media’s gift economy. Nowadays sex is as on demand as Netflix and as a result we often become sexually

greedy – the pig’s downcast eyes are a guilty confession. The singe marks on Christopher’s pig and penises reminds the viewer that sex in the age of the internet makes it that much easier to get burned.

Intimacy is getting turned inside out by our technologies and the cultures that germinate from them, changing forms and evolving into a confusing, complex organism that’s becoming increasingly difficult to define. As we all experience the strangeness of being caught up in the World Wide Web, any attempt to help us navigate what it means when everybody and nobody is our audience is desperately needed. These students’ pieces generously offer a little guidance. “(Intimacy) Limits and Consequences” is on display at the the Yellow Fish Art Gallery until March 20.

Editorial

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phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

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The Winter 2015 Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) General Assembly (GA) will take place on Sunday, March 15. Although it’s on the weekend, it’s crucial for students to attend and to make their voices heard. The Daily is especially excited that debate on Palestine is back on the table, and to see a move to renew SSMU’s existing policy on accessible education, which is set to expire in September 2016.

Maintaining a stance of neutrality is an implicit endorsement of the status quo, which perpetuates the injustices these motions aim to fight.

Motion Regarding Standing in Solidarity with Students and Protesters Demanding a Democratic Government in Hong Kong – YES When this motion was originally brought before SSMU in the Fall 2014 GA, the Occupy Central student protests in Hong Kong were at their height, showing the world the outrage of students against the Chinese government’s inference in not allowing Hong Kong to to elect its own leaders. These protests shed light on the unjust suffrage in Hong Kong, and the effects this can have on a population. The Daily endorses a “yes” vote on this motion, because SSMU is mandated to take a stance against oppressive practices such as these, and because, as students, it is important for us to stand in solidarity with other students around the world who are protesting for democracy at great risk to themselves. Even though it would have been preferable to have this motion passed at the 2014 SSMU Fall GA, The Daily agrees with the decision to postpone the motion at that time, as it was rushed, not advertised to the student body, and did not consult affected students. In its current form, the motion is betther thought out. Most importantly, the struggle for self-determination is always relevant, warranting our “yes” vote.

Motion Regarding Divestment from Companies Profiting from the Illegal Occupation of the Palestinian Territories – YES If passed, this motion would mandate the SSMU president to lobby the McGill Board of Governors to divest from companies profiting from the illegal occupation of Palestine. It would also require the SSMU executive to educate students about the position on divestment, and to mobilize the McGill population through the office of the VP External. The Daily supports a “yes” vote on this motion, because divestment is an important symbolic act of solidarity with Palestinian civil society. In the Fall 2014 SSMU GA, students voted to indefinitely postpone a motion calling on SSMU to condemn the occupation of Palestinian territories; critics argued that the motion was too far removed from student concerns. Yet while McGill profits from the occupation, students are directly complicit, and The Daily welcomes the opportunity for the student body to take a definite stance on the issue. By voting “yes,” students would send the message that McGill’s complicity in the occupation is not in their name.

Features editor Joelle Dahm was not present for, or involved in, the discussion and endorsement of this motion, as she is a member of McGill Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR).

Motion Regarding the SSMU’s Policy on Accessible Education – YES Accessible education is a human right, and we must stand in solidarity with other students in Quebec who are fighting for it via strikes as well as by other means. With that in mind, this motion would endow SSMU with a renewed policy regarding accessibility to post-secondary education, mandating SSMU to oppose any mechanism or legislation for a potential non-consensual tuition hike for all students – Quebecois, Canadian, and international alike – and to work with other Quebec student associations toward that goal. The motion would further reiterate SSMU’s mandate to mobilize against the Liberal government’s austerity measures and university budget cuts, and would also concretely mandate it to oppose all tuition increases for any of its members – this is important in the context of the administration’s push for international tuition deregulation.

This motion is a step toward ending McGill’s relatively conservative stance on this important issue compared to the rest of the province.

As such, The Daily endorses a “yes” vote.

Motion Regarding Unpaid Internships – YES Unpaid internships exacerbate existing social inequalities because they are restricted to those who can afford them. They allow organizations seeking to increase profits or cut costs to commit wage theft, and are illegal in Quebec, with some exceptions. This motion, put forward by New Democratic Party (NDP) McGill, calls on SSMU to take a stance against unpaid internships and to oppose their promotion and circulation by the University. It further opposes the common practice of students paying full tuition to McGill for credits earned working for a third party. In addition, if passed, SSMU will no longer recognize student groups or clubs that promote unpaid internships. The Daily strongly supports fair wages for internships, and endorses a “yes” vote on this motion.

—The McGill Daily Editorial Board

Errata The article “Arts councillors discuss communal student spaces” (February 23, News, 9) incorrectly stated that the redesign of spaces in Leacock and the Ferrier courtyard would cost $180,000 over three years. In fact, a specific redesign project has not yet been chosen, and the $180,000 is one of the three funding sources potentially available to the Arts Undergraduate Society. The Daily regrets the error.

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Compendium!

March 12, 2015 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily

20

Lies, half-truths, and votes for Pedro.

Portrait of an artist

SHMU election campaign revealed as performance art Lucy Peaseblossom The McGall Weekly

T

his year’s SHMU elections are in fact an elaborate piece of performance art, The Weekly has learned. Election front-runner Lexus Centrikov approached the paper before the annual elections debate, dubbed “Let’s SHMUsterbate Together,” and revealed himself as a sophisticated conceptual artist.

The Weekly learned how Centrikov had chosen to interpret the theme of imbecility, hoping to be the first person since Plato to reveal to humankind the true form of an abstract concept.

“This is a really exciting opportunity for me to make my art, and perhaps immortalize myself as a visionary of human cultural expression,” explained an earnest Centrikov.

“Personally, I felt imbecility suited my personality best, so I’ve been trying to embody that in this campaign,” he continued.

Centrikov was keen to stress that his art was collaborative, and urged campus culture critics to remember the important role played

by Conservative McGall, an artis-

tic collective cunningly disguised as a political organization.

“Despite a breadth of experience to draw on in terms of overwhelming imbecility, I really have to credit my friend, FlowerByKenzo Quibbler, whose experience definitely rivals mine,” gushed Centrikov.

This claim has a familiar ring to campus gossip enthusiasts, who have long amused Facebook users with witty retorts to Centrikov’s status updates. The widespread conception is that Quibbler is in fact the puppetmaster.

The Weekly asked Quibbler to respond to the puppetmaster accusations; however, he declined to comment. By sheer luck, Weekly journalist Dan A. Ray came across Quibbler on his way home, reporting that he was easy to recognize because of his “extraordinarily massive head.” When accosted in person, however, Quibbler grabbed a broomstick and flew cackling into the moonlight.

In an interview with The Weekly, Centrikov refused to comment on whether Quibbler was the true artistic visionary.

“You dare accuse me of being Mini-Me to his Doctor Evil?” de-

manded an outraged Centrikov.

“Just because we are spawned from the same demon and fight each other’s Facebook battles doesn’t mean we’re the same person.”

“This is art at its most sublime, and you’re asking the wrong questions,” he told The Weekly.

When asked in what precise ways his SHMU electoral campaign was a perfect artistic interpretation of the theme of imbecility, Centrikov could hardly stop talking.

“Well obviously, first comes my electoral platform,” he said.

“You see, over the past few years I have carefully constructed a reputation for myself as a defender of patriarchal values. And really in this regard I was extremely successful,” he said while referring to his history of vocal criticism of efforts dismantle institutional prejudice.

His electoral campaign, however, features an attempt to jump on the bandwagon and claim ownership of the very efforts he has been fighting for years. Centrikov explained that the true genius of his art was not this dramatic about-face, but rather that he had convinced the stu-

dent body that was serious in the first place.

“It’s actually quite a subtle distinction,” he explained. “Of course it’s totally preposterous that students take me seriously given this carefully constructed record – yet I’ve done it! People think I’m serious. Really, it’s quite exquisite. People are taking my imbecility for granted, precisely as I planned.”

The Weekly also observed Centrikov participate in a protest at SHNAX, in support yummy sandwiches for all. He was seen mingling awkwardly with a group he had also spent years disparaging, giving off a strong impression of being totally out of his depth. According to Centrikov, his awkward attempt at integration was “all deliberate.”

Asked what his final creative act would be, Centrikov advised The Weekly to pay close attention to the “Let’s SHMUsterbate Together” event.

“I’ve developed strong artistic links with the reddit community in anticipation of the piece de resistance of my artistic odyssey,” Centrikov explained. “One user in particular, a certain mc-

gill_circle_jerk, has been particularly useful in prepping for the SHMUsterbate.”

“I’m confident that in this particular race, I will definitely come first, and fastest,” he declared.

Events took a turn for the strange during the interview, however, when a man bearing a striking resemblance to Centrikov, barged in on the interview wearing a banana suit.

“I’ve come to from the future!” cried the intruder. “It is I, Centrikov. I’m here to warn you that your hopes at artistry are a dream.”

“What you’re doing isn’t art, it’s satire, the lowest form of artistic expression. Stop, or your reputation will be ruined. Don’t turn into me. I work nights in a banana stand.”

“I was told there was always good money in it, but that just wasn’t true,” continued Centrikov-from-the-future.

Present-Centrikov despaired, but agreed with his future self he wouldn’t risk his promising career in investment banking in pursuit of artistic glory.

“It will be most difficult to give up on the SHMUsterbate,” sobbed Centrikov. “I was so excited.”

Crossword: (non)fictional assholes Across 3. Pink-wearing Maggie Thatcher who can’t do magic.

4. May the odds never be in the favour of this dictator.

5. Blond terror with a wand.

6. His actor is paid to be a womanizing straight man on TV. 7. All-seeing eye that has a penchant for finger jewelry.

9. Controlling asshole with prop whip.

12. Netflix’s darkest timeline of American politics embodied in one man.

14. The Original Asshole.

Down 1. Where art thou, respect for women?

2. Always repays his debts, still a little shit.

8. The opposite of Jon Stewart.

10. “Will the real

please stand up?”

11. Has the shoulders of a man, was half a virgin when she met Aaron Samuels.

13. Created the happiest place on Earth, but horrible anti-semitic.