IMPACT Issue 9: Reflection, February 2018

ISSUE 9: REFLECTION | FEBRUARY 2018

IMPACT MAGAZINE Our mission is to cultivate a culture of student involvement in social change and to bring awareness to the social impact activities of students, alumni, faculty, and organizations in our immediate and global community.

CO-PRESIDENTS

Svanika Balasubramanian Naomi Pohl Tamara Prabhakar

MANAGING EDITOR Kyra Schulman

ONLINE EDITOR Tiffany Sim

DESIGN EDITOR Siyuan Liu

EVENTS DIRECTOR Sherry Tseng

VIDEO DIRECTOR Natasha Wood

Suyoung Baek, Anna Balfanz, Urvi Banerjee, Shelby Barlow, Diane Bayeux, Mariya Bershad, Michael Chang, Sonari Chidi, Vivian Dai, Maria Diavolova, Raksha Donadapati, Adriana Dropulic, Analiese Fernandes, Yasmin Hariri, Eliza Hoang, Angela Huang, Tiffany Huang, Katrina Janco, Juliet Kim, Jessica Li, Corey Loftus, Amanda Nart, Amanda Ngo, Andreas Nolan, Nidhi Reddy, Nina Spitofsky, Abinav Suri, Jacqueline Uy, Lily Zirlin

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Belle Carlson, Morgan Rees, Kyra Schulman, Angela Schwartz

EVENTS TEAM

Casey Lynch, Claudia Akel

VIDEO TEAM Philip Chen

MARKETING DIRECTOR Claudia Kassner

WRITERS

MARKETING TEAM

Matt Cartwright, Agnes Pei, Rachel Pester, Anya Saraf, Maura Schlaff

SPONSORS & AFFILIATIONS

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

W

e are proud to present our Spring 2017 edition of IMPACT magazine. IMPACT was founded in the hopes of giving Penn students a platform on which to expose social issues, both in our immediate Penn community and out in the world. Today, as a still growing student organization, we are continuing our commitment of creating social awareness in the Penn community.

The theme for this edition is reflection. Following our “movement” edition, we wanted to stop, look back, and reflect. Accordingly, IMPACT writers dealt with reflection in a variety of ways. Some wrote personal reflections, others provided societal reflections, and others even discussed how our actions should be reflective of the world around us.

This last year has certainly given us a lot to reflect on. From the election of President Trump to Brexit to Charlottesville to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar, it is certainly not a pleasant year on which to look back. However, at IMPACT, we recognize the need to constantly reflect, identify problems in society, and work for improvements. In this edition, our writers reflect on the pitfalls of decontextualized feminism, changing topography of west Philadelphia, protest efficacy in the Trump era, imposter syndrome at Penn, and “returning” to Auschwitz.

As you read our newest edition, we hope that you will reflect with us on how you too can make a positive social impact.

Sincerely,

The Impact Team ISSUE 9 / 1

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Reflections of a Granddaughter:

Returning to “Paradisus Iudaeorum” | Kyra Schulman

Imposter Syndrome | Shelby Barlow Femicide and #NiUnaMenos in Argentina | Amanda Nart ‘It’s my choice’

The Pitfalls of Decontextualized, Choice Feminism | Maria V. Diavolova

Hacking for Impact:

Exploring the Intersection Between Technology and Social Impact | Abhinav Suri

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From Protest to Wokeness:

A Reflection on Public Demonstration in the Wake of the Election | Vivian Dai

Spoken Word Poetry

A Reflection of Words | Amanda Ngo

Asian Minorities in Classrooms | Jacqueline Uy A Bet on a Greener Philadelphia | Michael Chang

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REFLECTIONS OF A GRANDDAUGHTER: RETURNING TO “PARADISUS IUDAEORUM” Written by: Kyra Schulman

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I

spent spring break in Poland on a trip with Penn Hillel entitled: Jewish Encounters with Memory and Renaissance. We went to Krakow, Oświęcim, and Warsaw. I decided to keep a journal during the trip so I could reflect on the experience. I wrote my first entry four days before departing for Poland. In it, I reflected on the word “return.” To return: to go or come back, as to an earlier condition or place. Is that what I was doing? I had never been to Poland. This would be my first visit. However, I could not quite get this idea of a “return” out of my head.

I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor and the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust victim. My grandmother very narrowly escaped arrest as a part of the notorious Vélodrome d’Hiver round-up in Paris in the summer of 1942. She escaped with her mother and went to Lyon where my great-grandfather had already fled. They moved from hiding place to hiding place including church convents, doctor’s offices, and even sewers. In the summer of 1944, my great-grandfather was caught and sent on one of the very last trains from France to Auschwitz. He arrived at Auschwitz on August 22, 1944. Forty-eight-years-old at the time, he managed to survive selection. At the liquidation of the camp, he was sent on a death march to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. He arrived at Mauthausen frozen and starved. On February 17, 1945, he died in Block 6 of the camp, the “Jewish Hospital.”

When I arrived in Poland, I expected that the trip would be largely an exploration of a lost Jewish past. From 1569 to 1648, Poland was referred to as “Paradisus Iudarorum,” a Jewish paradise.

During this period, Jews exorcised a great deal of autonomy, published important works of Jewish scholarship, and did not experience mass religious persecution as was the case in many other European countries. Poland for a long time was seen as a place of safety for the Jews. To be sure, pre-Holocaust, there were mass

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pogroms, and extreme displays of anti-Semitism. However, there was a thriving Jewish community that called Poland home.

At the eve of the Second World War, according to the YIVO Encyclopedia there were approximately 3.25 million Jews living in Poland. This population was almost entirely decimated with only a meager 100,000 reported living in Poland following the Holocaust.

With post-war pogroms against the returning Jews, the Polish Jewish population decreased even more through murder and emigration.

Today, it is hard to say how many Jews live in Poland, but estimates range from as low as 3,000 (according to YIVO) to as high as 100,000 (according to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). Given the decimation of the Jewish population, I was surprised to learn that there was a growing project for a Jewish “renaissance” in Poland. This renaissance, unfortunately, is problematic in terms of those who are leading it and in terms of the reasons for its revival.

Current anti-Semitism and the Jewish Figurines Black top hat, side locks, large nose, beard, long black coat, prayer shawl, and a large bag of money. I first came across these figurines at Sukiennice, an outdoor market known as a hub for souvenir shopping, in the Old City of Krakow. They lined the shelves of the market staring down at shoppers and all the while perpetuating a Jewish stereotype that has been the backbone of the rhetoric used in many anti-Semitic moments throughout history. And so, I was surprised to learn that these figurines are not considered anti-Semitic in Poland. However, these figurines should be viewed as emblematic of the ant-Semitism in Poland today: an anti-Semitism that does not require real Jews.

We met with Jonathan Ornstein, the director of the Krakow JCC (Jewish Cultural Center) and an American-born New York raised Jew who recently acquired Polish citizenship. Ornstein stressed to us that the Jewish figurines sold throughout Poland are not anti-Semitic. In fact, they are recognizing a Jewish past in Poland.

Furthermore, according to Ornstein, Poland has a relationship with the Jews that other European countries could only “dream

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of ” having. He cited the fact that the gates of the Krakow JCC are always open and that there is minimal security as evidence for Polish acceptance of its Jewish community. When I asked him about reports of anti-Semitism in Poland – such as the Anti-Defamation League’s anti-Semitism index which ranks Poland at 37%, the second highest ranking in Europe – Ornstein responded that such studies cannot be trusted. According to Ornstein, Poland has the anti-Semitism of a country without Jews and therefore their “antiSemitic beliefs” should be viewed merely as ignorance. He argued that anti-Semitism is a broad spectrum ranging from not wanting your son to marry a Jew to calling for a genocide of the Jewish people.

After meeting with Ornstein, I was even more confused about the state of anti-Semitism in Poland today. A Jewish man raised in America seemed convinced that Poland did not have a problem with anti-Semitism. Yet, within our first five hours of being in Poland, we had seen anti-Semitic figurines lining the markets. This was my first introduction to the many paradoxes and perversities of postHolocaust Poland.

Several days later, we visited the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow. There was a section of the main exhibit focused on the “tourist souvenirs representing the Hasidic Jews of Galicia.”

Underneath an image of the souvenirs being sold at a market, a commentary explained why these figurines should not be viewed as anti-Semitic. It read: “although some Jewish visitors see them as post-holocaust anti-Semitic caricatures, they have a long pre-war history in Polish folk wood-carving.” The carvers and shopkeepers, according to the commentary, see these figurines as “nostalgic recollections of a vanished past.”

Over the next week, we would ask a variety of Poles how they felt about the figurines. Most of them responded saying that the figurines were a part of Polish culture long before the Holocaust and should not be seen as anti-Semitic. One woman explained that Polish merchants used to keep the figurines for good luck. I could only imagine the way the figurines were marketed: “buy a Jewish figurine! Jews are all rich and so you will be too.” The people we talked to stressed that the figurines above all were paying respect to the “lost Polish Jews.” It was Poland recognizing a lost culture. Notably, up until this point, we had only spoken with Polish

Catholics and an American-born-and-raised Jew. On our first night in Warsaw, we heard another perspective, a Polish Jewish perspective. We had dinner with Stanisław Krajewski, a Polish Jewish professor of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw and co-chairman of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews. He told us that he finds the figurines to be anti-Semitic. He sees them as offensive and a part of a continued anti-Semitism in Poland. The figurines are perpetuating a stereotype.

Poland, as a homogeneous society that is 87.2% Catholic, must work to better recognize instances where it is further marginalizing its minority populations. A lack of self-awareness and continued anti-Semitism and stereotypes about the Jews has allowed for such figurines to be accepted as a mainstream Polish souvenir.

Lack of Jewish Representation and Voices in the Recreation of a Jewish Narrative On our first day in Krakow, we met Laila. Laila was a volunteer at the JCC and at the Galicia Jewish Museum of Krakow. I noticed on her forearm there was a tattoo of her name in Hebrew. And so, we were surprised to learn that she was not in fact Jewish. Her birth name is Liliane and she comes from a Polish Catholic family.

She explained to us that she is fascinated by Jewish culture and that many of her Jewish friends even say that she is more Jewish than them. Laila is a part of a new movement of young non-Jewish Poles who are dedicating their lives to the revival of Jewish culture in Poland. For Laila, and many others like her, Poland lost more than just its Jewish population during the Holocaust, but also a culture that was a key element to Polish national identity. One of the outcomes of this movement is a lack of Jewish representation and voices in the recreation of a Jewish narrative.

Since 1988 a Jewish Culture Festival has been held every summer in the old Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow. For the most part, neither the attendees nor the performers are Jewish. The founder of the festival Janusz Makuch is also not Jewish, but has described himself as a “Shabbos goy” – a non-Jew who performs tasks that Jews cannot do on the Sabbath. Without a significant Jewish presence, residents of Kazimierz have opened kosher restaurants and sell “Jewish souvenirs” such as stars of David to festival-goers.

The purpose of the festival according to Makuch is “to pay tribute and celebrate real authentic Jewish culture.” However, critics have described the festival as a “museum of an extinct race.” Without significant Jewish participation and a Jewish narrative, concerns have been expressed about the “authenticity” of the event.

There is a fear that without a Jewish voice, Jewish culture is being appropriated and reinterpreted to the amusement of non-Jewish Poles.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in the understanding of Polish Jewish and non-Jewish suffering during the Second World War. Without a Jewish voice, many Polish youth, such as Laila, see the war as a “shared Polish and Jewish tragedy.” Approximately six-million people with Polish citizenship were killed. Half of them were Jewish and half of them were not. It is understood that the fate of the Jews was a shared one with non-Jewish Poles. The problem with this is that the Holocaust, the systematic racially based killing of European Jewry, is not separated out as the extreme exceptional circumstance that it should take. As the Poles attempt to revive lost Polish Jewry and bring them into their national conscience and identity, the Jewish voice is silenced and Jewish suffering is reduced in the national narrative.

A Nationalistic Agenda On our last night in Warsaw, one of the Polish organizers of the trip explained to us why she began working on the Jewish renaissance project. She said that she is Lutheran, another minority religious group in Poland, and that her minority status in Poland was what first got her interested in Jewish issues. Additionally, and more importantly, she added that following the Holocaust, “a part of our [Polish] body was lost.” She described a scene from a famous Polish film where an actor stands in the empty Warsaw streets and yells, “Jews come back.” She continued that Poland is an extremely homogenous society and that she and many others working in the Jewish renaissance movement view this as a problem. She believes that a Jewish renaissance, which notably does not include real Jews, will be good for Poland. It will help draw attention to Polish homogeneity without introducing a group that will threaten that homogeneity.

Photos by: Kyra Schulman Photos by: Megan Lueneburg ISSUE 9 / 7

IMPOSTER SYNDROME

Written by: Shelby Barlow

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asha*, Jie*, and Preston* are Penn students from backgrounds all across the spectrum. Sasha is the first in her large family to attend college, and she spent much of her time in high school working fast food and retail jobs to take some of the pressure of supporting her siblings off of her single mother. Jie is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and while her younger years were spent in a low-income household, she would describe her teenage years and current socioeconomic status as comfortably middle class. Preston was born into a wealthy, well-connected family. Despite their differences in terms of backgrounds, the three juniors have significant commonalities: they have always excelled in school, and they have all felt at times that they do not deserve to be here.

First described by psychologists and PhDs Suzanne Imes and Pauline Rose Clance in the 1970s, imposter syndrome refers to the incapacity of a high achiever to accept his or her success as a result of hard work and ability rather than luck or special favor. People who suffer from imposter syndrome often fear that their colleagues will eventually realize and reveal them to be frauds that do not deserve the success they have achieved. Imposter syndrome is not an official mental health disorder recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); however, according to the American Psychological Association, it is widely acknowledged by psychologists and other mental health professionals as a very real affliction that is often accompanied by anxiety and depression.

In the 1970s when Doctors Imes and Clance coined the phrase “imposter syndrome,” they believed it only occurred in women, particularly graduate students. Since then, research has revealed that imposter syndrome does in fact occur in men and is generally experienced by a wide range of people. Jaruwan Sakulku and James Alexander assert in The International Journal of Behavioral Sciences that nearly 70% of people will experience at least one episode of imposter syndrome in their lifetime (2011). Recent studies have also shown that imposter syndrome impacts people of color more often than their white counterparts (Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 2013).

Imes and Clance contend that imposter syndrome can often be traced to parents who place a high value on achievement and oscillate sharply between high praise and extreme criticism. This makes sense to Sasha, who says that while she was always fairly spoiled by her mom in terms of affection, there were times when the pendulum swung the other way. “She grounded me for two months in the summer before my freshman year of high school because I didn’t win an award at my eighth grade graduation. I had all A’s that 8 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

year. They just weren’t good enough A’s.”

Jie described a different experience, though she says her parents have definitely colored her outlook on success and contributed to her feelings of imposter syndrome. “I never had a ‘tiger mom’,” she says. “My parents have always been chill and supportive, which most people would obviously view as a benefit. But at the same time, I know I wasn’t bred for this the way a lot of my competition was. I wasn’t groomed for the Ivy League. And even if my parents don’t say it, I know what their expectations are. So there is this implicit pressure, but I feel bad for feeling pressured by my parents even though they have never actually said anything to make me feel that way. It’s really complicated.”

Of course, society is also responsible for the fraudulent feelings among high achievers.

“Sometimes I worry that affirmative action had a bigger role in my admission to Penn than my actual ability,” said Sasha, “because black students hear that so often. So much of our success is attributed to affirmative action.

I remember when I found out I had been admitted to Penn, one of the first teachers I told immediately responded that I had made it in due to my ethnicity. I was so shocked and hurt, because here is someone who knows how hard I have worked and what kind of grades and test scores I’ve produced, and still, the color of my skin matters more. Every time I get a subpar grade, I worry that my professor or TA sees it and thinks I’m just another affirmative action kid.”

Jie agrees that societal expectations have contributed to her experiences with imposter syndrome. “When you’re Asian, people just assume you’re smart. I definitely don’t mean to diminish the experiences of black and Latinx students who are immediately discounted by society, but I do think it’s important to talk about why being the ‘model minority’ is damaging too. I had a friend in high school who was referred to as ‘the Asian who isn’t that smart.’ I overheard someone say about me once, ‘She’s not smart – she’s Asian.’ I’m thankful that society immediately judges me to be someone competent, but I would rather have that competence attributed to my hard work and ability rather than my race. If you don’t succeed, people act like it makes you less Asian, and if you do, people act like it was easy just because you’re Asian.”

As asserted by many recent studies, the effects of imposter syndrome are not limited to women and people of color. Preston explained how his more “traditional Ivy League” background has impacted the way he views himself and his accomplishments.

“I know I just happened to be born into a family with educated parents and connections. My parents are not only very influential, but also just genuinely nice, and I had everything I needed as a kid.

I never worried about anything other than doing what I needed

to do to be successful, and even then, I always knew my parents would be there to help. I only got my summer internship last year because of parental connections.

I don’t want to do that again.

I know that if I had been born into another life, without so many resources, I probably wouldn’t be at Penn, and that makes me feel like I need to do more to actually deserve this. Honestly, it was kind of easy to get here. And that’s embarrassing.”

Sasha expressed similar feelings, but for far different reasons. She went on to describe how her background as a low-income, first-generation college student fills her with great pride on some days and great self-doubt on others. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve this. I remember never sleeping in high school because I had to help support my family financially and I remember excelling academically despite that, but sometimes I ask myself, was high school actually that hard? Did I actually work as much as I think I did? Did I earn this? And then sometimes I feel like I deserve this more than so many of the people around me who went to the best schools and had private tutors and parents who could help them with the application process. But then I ask myself, can I compete with them? Can I beat the curve in my classes and secure selective internships without the connections they have?”

While the experiences of Sasha, Jie, and Preston may not representative of others at Penn, they do begin to show the impact imposter syndrome can have across a variety of backgrounds. Imposter syndrome can leave a person with lasting feelings of self-doubt and lead to or exacerbate other mental health issues like depression and anxiety, but Imes and Clance offer ways to cope and eventually overcome.

They suggest speaking with mentors or even a mental health professional, which can help people suffering from imposter syndrome recognize that their feelings are both normal and irrational.

Taking steps to acknowledge your expertise and what you do well can also help, say the psychologists. Those struggling with imposter syndrome can do this by writing out what they know they excel at as well as areas in which they don’t, so it is easier to distinguish between legitimate room for improvement and impossible standards.

“Honestly, even just talking about this and openly admitting that sometimes I feel like I am not as capable as I should be makes me feel better,” said Preston. “I think we all feel this sometimes.”

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FEMICIDE AND #NIUNAMENOS IN ARGENTINA Written by: Amanda Nart

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n the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (el MALBA), Argentina, there is an exhibit that seems puzzling at first. You walk into the room and see a long white wall filled with pieces of paper clipped to strings running lengthwise down the hallway. At the head of each piece of printer paper are photos of eyes with text underneath. The stories are in different languages, although most are in Spanish, and have one common theme: they are all stories from survivors of emotional and or physical abuse.

Once you reach the far end of wall there’s a message that reads: Announcement- to women of any age, from any country: You are invited to send a testimony of any injury you have suffered for being a woman. Write your story in your own language, with your own words.* This demonstration was part of Yoko Ono’s Dream Come True exhibit, which was shown in the fall of 2016 in el MALBA, and is part of a larger international project to give voice to survivors of gender violence. They tell tales that could resonate with women everywhere. Tales of jealous partners that police their dress, confessions of sexual assaults that went unreported or unprosecuted, tales of work place discrimination, and more. These stories are universal, yet they very much exist in their time and place.

Photos by: Angela Schwartz

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Tales of jealous partners that police their dress, confessions of sexual assaults that went unreported or unprosecuted, tales of work place discrimination, and more.

An Argentine audience reading these testimonies in the fall of 2016 would think of Chiara Paez, who was 14-years-old when she went missing. Her body was discovered on May 11th, 2016 under the porch of her boyfriend’s house. Her boyfriend was later charged with murder and with forced abortion, as the autopsy revealed that she was pregnant at the time and that were chemicals associated with abortion medicine in her system. This is by no means an isolated incident. A month earlier, a man slit the throat of his exgirlfriend, a schoolteacher, in front of her students in the Argentine province of Córdoba. La Casa del Encuentro, which is a woman’s organization dedicated to collecting statistics about femicide in Argentina, reports that from 2008 to 2014, around 1,800 Argentine women were killed for being women. The murders of these women sparked the #NiUnaMenos movement.

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The day after Chiara Paez’s body was discovered, there was a march of 7,000 people in mourning for her life and in protest of her brutal death in her town, Rufino. One month later, 300,000 people gathered to protest in the Congressional Plaza in the capital, Buenos Aires. This was the beginning of #NiUnaMenos, which means #NotOneMore (in Spanish, this phrase is gendered, specifically referring to women). The manifestation was supported by prominent and diverse public figures like Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the polarizing former president of Argentina, and Lionel Messi.

This movement was in direct reaction to the death of Chiara Paez, but her death was also a symbol for Argentines of the larger problem of domestic violence and femicide. The manifestation of so many women in the streets of Buenos Aires, and in sister protests in México, Chile, and Uruguay, gave visibility to this invisible crime and brought international attention to the struggle of women in Latin America. This movement draws on earlier manifestations, like the movement in 2000 protesting the homicide of women in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, where feminists adopted the term femicide in order to distinguish the crime from homicide.

By focusing on #NiUnaMenos in Argentina, this article examines a recent movement against femicide that garnered the power of social media in order to bring international visibility to femicide as an issue.

The goal of the first #NiUnaMenos protest was, in part, to push for harsher laws punishing domestic abuse and femicide, but it was also a symbolic effort to push back against the culture of objectification and devaluation of women’s lives, linked with the rhetoric of a media and public that searches for blame in the victims of assault and domestic violence.

The normalization of violent language goes hand in hand with the normalization of violent actions. Every time a media outlet allows the discourse around a woman’s rape or murder to center around her past sexual history, or her manner of dress, or her alcohol intake, it is contributing to the idea that a woman’s innocence, her right to justice, is linked to these

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factors, that her humanity can be measured against these ideals.

The symbolism of women taking to the streets is not to be understated. In Buenos Aires, like in many major cities of the world, cat-calling is normalized. Called a piropodo in Spanish, women are frequently, publicly, and explicitly devalued by men.

By making the street a space filled with women with agency and authority, this style of protest disrupts daily life in order to show those unaffected by this style of violence what it means to feel powerless, while simultaneously showing the power of women to demand change.

The #NiUnaMenos movement is not the first time Argentine women have reclaimed the streets in order to exact change. During the dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s, a group of women, in public defiance to the military dictatorship’s ban on gathering publicly, began to organize the social movement later known as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. Beginning in 1977, they organized weekly to protest. These women had family or loved ones who had gone missing, had been disappeared by the military government’s so called “dirty war,” which justified extrajudicial killings of its population by framing it as an attempt to rid the country of the “enemies within.” Their brave steps in speaking out against the dictatorship helped bring international visibility to the atrocities committed in Argentina. Their movement grew from fourteen women to hundreds of people.

They directly used their identities as women, as mothers who wanted to be reunited with their children, in order to

garner sympathy and support for their cause.

In response, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo were cast by many in the media as crazy women, as hysterical grievers. In spite of this, their status as women and as mothers gave them certain protection, as the military dictatorship was hesitant to crush their resistance as they had crushed that of others. That being said, many members and supporters of Las Madres were disappeared for their participation. But the others continued on despite their knowledge of this personal danger to themselves, knowing that their duty to speak out and to try to find their children and the children of others was more important than their personal safety.

Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo still protest to this day, marching around the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday of the year.

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But the others continued on despite their knowledge of this personal danger to themselves, knowing that their duty to speak out...

There are certain parallels between the portrayal of Las Madres as hysterical and the casting of those involved in the #NiUnaMenos movement as irrational and destructive. Many people have responded to the movement with hashtags like #NadieMenos or #NiUnoMenos, both of which take away the gender of the name to suggest that violence against all people is a problem, not just against women. This strategy is a common one for people who wish to take focus away from a group protesting a particular type of oppression.

Effectively, people who respond in this way are saying violence is universal, and because it is universal, the #NiUnaMenos protesters are irrationally angry, essentially devaluing the movement.

The #NiUnaMenos protests have gained widespread

international visibility and have inspired sister protests across Latin America and the world.

Since the original #NiUnaMenos protest in the summer of 2016, there was another protest in October of that year, in which hundreds of thousands of women in protested in Buenos Aires, as well as across Latin America, in reaction to the murder of Lucía Pérez as well as the deaths of nineteen other women who were killed in October of 2016 due to machista violence. It is clear that the work of #NiUnaMenos is not close to done. These protests have contributed to the larger discussion of femicide in the international community, as well as serving as a powerful example of activism that centers women and women’s issues. As femicide remains a chillingly frequent occurrence in Latin America, from Argentina to Guatemala to México, activist movements that center women, like #NiUnaMenos, will continue to be vital to bringing attention to this issue. *Note: This is my translation. The original fragment of text reads: “Convocatoria: A las mujeres de cualquier edad, de todos los países del mundo: Estás invitada a enviar un testimonio de algún daño que hayas sufrido por ser mujer. Escribe el testimonio en tu propia lengua, con tus propias palabras”

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‘IT’S MY CHOICE’ The Pitfalls of Decontextualized, Choice Feminism Written by: Maria V. Diavolova The blogosphere is jam-packed with opinions that do not cross your radar. Thank god, because the advocate in you cannot bear launching yet another polemic against a bigoted or flawed opinion. Most days of the year, you are thankful that facebook is a well tended garden of agreeable opinions, and the majority of weeds can safely be removed with the click of a button.

On a recent occasion, however, I stumbled upon a blog post of an acquaintance of mine, titled The Power of the Female. This weed pricked me - hard. I thought the article smeared a lot of feminist progress, yet I was surprised to see that young women were lauding the author for her insight in a long thread of comments on facebook. I decided to forgo my usual dissidence at engaging in, what was surely to become, a long rant on facebook, and I left a comment. The author responded, telling me off in a series of bulleted counterarguments. There is nothing that angers me more in an online back-and-forth than a person going low, when you do everything in your power to go high. I suppose I should unlearn my

History tells us empowering stories about popular women’s movements, largely due to an abundance of restrictions and absence of rights all across the globe. We are familiar with the popular works of Barbara Hutchins and Alice Clark, have read about the suffragettes and are inspired day by day to speak out loud about the hardships we face without being silenced. It should never have been like that in the first place – an entire identity being put into a society scared of femininity, women chained to take in the business as little space as possible, almost out of politeness. Thus, we needed empowerment. But the line is very thin between having what you are rightfully entitled to and being happy with it…and radicalizing established ideas.

naïve assumption that education implies willingness for discourse, and recognize that social media is not the ideal forum for discussion.

Still, I’m stubborn. I decided to copy the original blog post into a Word document and offer a series of reflective bubbles against the lines of argument I thought to be counterproductive to intersectional feminism. The author chose the easy way out. She blocked me. If it’s that easy for someone who I’ve known since kindergarten to check out of a critically important conversation, what does that mean for a disagreeing audience of strangers?

My intention in submitting this for IMPACT is not to criticize a person, or an individual opinion, but to challenge the pitfalls of the broader movement of choice feminism. In a gist, I ask that those of us who benefit from certain privileges--racial, socioeconomic, gender-based, or otherwise--recognize that the prism of our world is different and oftentimes less impeding than that of a person who cannot channel his or her privilege on a day-to-day basis.

Society was not scared of femininity; it propagated the feminine values you go on to describe—conforming to socially constructed beauty standards, having a respectful demeanor, etc.

Women did not refrain from taking part in corporate culture out of politeness. Women, across races and religions, were socialized into a domestic existence.

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Feminist theory first and foremost demands for equality of the sexes, however with the increasing role of the media and so-called inspirational Hollywood know-it-alls in it, two very big misconceptions have been given birth to, threatening our female identity and our society as whole. The former being the dropping of “fem” in “feminism” with the abolishment of values that form and have formed the female persona for centuries and the latter that advocates for superiority over the male fraction.

There is no one singular female identity. This is perhaps the most dangerous oversight of mainstream, marketplace or choice feminism.

Why are we ashamed of being feminine?

I come from an Eastern European family, with a mother that has worked both in politics and law for her entire life, yet she has never used her sex as a prism through which she has to be perceived breaking through a stereotype. She never demanded to be treated in a different way. She raised me to be confident of my abilities, without insisting that because I am a woman that strives to deal with politics, I am out of the cliché and should be therefore praised for that, without insisting that I am privileged because I am making a bold stance by being in this world as a woman. With that, I grew up with idols such as Madame Roland – a French revolutionary actor that made her husband a prominent figure through drafting his policies and signing them secretly on behalf of his name. Madame Roland was never a controlling figure, she wanted to inspire men, in fact she supported patriarchy and never put her husband in an unfavorable position, suggesting that advocating for women’s rights went alongside with a sense of respect.

Madame Roland was not a feminist. She believed the male sex was superior. She advised women to hide their talents, intellectual interests and knowledge in public.

We cannot continue to problematize women’s tones. Women are allowed to be loud, to be bossy, to be aggressive, to be controlling.

Her support of the patriarchy is a loud scream against feminism. Patriarchy and equality of the sexes are mutually exclusive.

There is unfortunately a greater problem amongst some radical feminist groups (Yes, Lena Dunham, this is about you girl) – women sometimes stray away from being feminine out of shame that society might objectify them. Articles suggesting not to shave yourself because men don’t or not to dress up with skirts should come with a disclaimer that there is nothing revolutionary nor inspirational about being a bearded lady (excluding those with health conditions) .

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Women who refuse to conform to traditionally feminine ideals ingrained in the female identity by capitalist forces are not doing so out of shame. The idea of ‘femininity’ runs in parallel with commercial marketing practices.

If we collectively step out of the prism of marketplace feminism--that is, decontextualized and depoliticized feminism, intended to be media-friendly--we would open up ourselves to more honest realities of female experiences.

For example, Professor Dorothy Roberts spoke about black beauty at OWN IT: Women in Leadership Summit.

Beauty, she said, has often been defined in opposition to blackness. Black aesthetic choices were labeled in derogatory terms. Beauty, then, was to embody white self-care practices. This oppressed black women first, she said, but oppressed all women too because all women were held to a narrow beauty standard. I use past tense, but this reality has not been done away with. - Today, in many states, black women continue to be negatively looked upon for their physical appearance, while cultural appropriation has allowed for white people to appropriate black culture and be extolled for it.

For others, the rejection of normative beauty standards is out of concern for their physical safety. This is not about shame. - It’s about fearing rape on the way back from school, or abuse at home. In certain instances, diverting the attention from one’s physical appearance is the only weapon one holds against perpetrators.

With or without the inclusion of a disclaimer, this statement reads as transphobic.

The disclaimer itself is a testament that the argument for a “collective female identity” is ill-conceived. It is a way to over-simplify feminism and hone in on a singular reality - that of white, college educated, middle or upper middle class women who welcomed their autonomy as early as second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

It is scary that such propaganda is found as persuasive as a form of social protest – never will I suggest to my future daughters to abandon hygiene or deprive themselves of wanting to put a bow in their hairs for the sake of an unclear cause. I wonder whether such proponents think about the future of imposing such mentality on young girls – possibly even demolishing their chances of a certain interaction with the opposite sex or the same, depending on the sexuality of the child, and in turn potentially scarring them, because as bad as it sounds, a woman’s outer beauty should never be considered as supplementary or a sign of weakness.

This is a problem. If a woman’s personal appearance or grooming practices obstruct her interaction with a person of romantic interest, then the issue lies with the underlining cultural processes, which have affirmed unforgiving normative beauty standards.

Naomi Wolf ’s “The Beauty Myth” claims that even the liberated women of second-wave feminism “do not feel as free as they want to...because the ideology of beauty is the last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that has the power to control.”

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There is nothing wrong with being a woman.

Nothing wrong with behaving with grace and elegance, nothing wrong with smelling like vanilla or dressing up – it is the furthest from conservative to think that femininity is wrong and demeaning.

The argument here is that being a woman is synonymous with behaving with grace, being elegant or smelling like a baking condiment.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong with smelling like a freshly baked pie, or wearing lipstick, as long as we are aware of what these choices symbolize in society. Andi Zeisler, author of “We were feminists once,” could not have said it better: “We don’t exist in a vacuum and neither do our choices.”

Let us not forget how many hearts have been skipping beats when mini-skirts were created, in turn empowering women to enchant countless individuals.

This is not to suggest you aren’t supposed to dress in jeans and look androgynous if it makes you happy, but if you are not, do not let certain fractions convince you that embracing your female identity is wrong. Because the greatest thing about being female is that it inspires us to embrace what we naturally have and be proud of it – we have the ability to give life, we have a high threshold of pain that makes us stronger in times of hardship, we are the embodiment of grace and beauty.

I hope no young girl ever feels compelled to wear something for a boy; not today, not in a decade.

The use of ‘empowering’ in this line of argument is the the basis for the critique of marketplace feminism, and choice feminism. With the onset of changes resulting from firstwave feminism, brands begun to grasp the potential of the changing female demographic.

Beauty is a social construct, and so it’s not a quality that any human being is naturally endowed with.

And it hurts me to hear that somewhere out there a mother is being shamed because she “is not necessarily entitled to give birth and that is giving a wrong image” and it hurts me even more that some women around the world actually believe that coloring your armpit hair as a revolutionary protest is making you more of a woman. Additionally and most importantly, we should not shame women that want to be feminine – women who are feminine, but want to be inspirations for young girls to be excellent mothers and still work hard.

The Hidden figures of Feminism What feminism often does not teach us, is that one of the most prominent advocates for women’s rights were indeed men. During the 1780’s the Marquis of Condorcet, a leading french revolutionary like Roland …and republican, was fiercely defending women and the inequality our ancestors were facing.

What is more, philosopher Jeremy Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose the career of a reformist. He spoke routinely about a complete equality including right to vote, condemning in his works countries’ mistreating women and giving examples of able female regents.

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But why do I need to even bring those figures, when in fact, we have all been personally pushed and encouraged as women by at least one man in our lives – be it father, friend or lover. And as much as we don’t like admitting it, the majority of men have protected us during our lifetime in one way or another – my grandfather taught me how to speak 2 languages, my cousin held my hand when my heart was broken and now my boyfriend comes in the middle of the night whenever I feel the slightest pain somewhere in my body, out of fear for me.

Of course, there are plenty of misogynists in the world, like that Polish MP that said we were weaker and more stupid over the past week, but exceptions are always going to be present, at absolutely every case, and we should not and cannot let them dictate the way we lead our discourses. And if you want to change the world, start showing men like those how powerful you are by embracing what you are, rather than trying to be the same to prove a point.

Our biggest strengths are hidden within ourselves, not based on common social constructs. Hate should not be expressed towards men on a regular basis upon speaking about feminism, superiority over the male fraction has never been outlined in the agenda, because feminism implies equality of rights and freedoms, but does not advocate for abolishment of our traits.

We are stronger and bolder when we stand together and embrace what we have and how powerful we already are, without needing to equate ourselves in the way we take care of ourselves.

As I was talking about feminism with my friend A. last night, I told her – “The most underestimated power in the world is that of the collective female entity”, but what I left out was that what is even stronger is embracing your identity and appreciating the others. However, respect goes both ways and putting ourselves in a mutually destructive position alienates us further and fuels aggression.

We’re all on this planet together – our planet is for all sexes and genders, and is for men, too and any time your feel that an entity is taking away from you, making you weaker, you ought to remember that the world is not composed of one fraction and if you want respect, you have to offer the same.

Disclaimer: Given the context of this article, the LGBT community hasn’t been included in the portrayal of those facts.

My sincere admirations to them for inspiring and creating an equal environment, which should be embraced within all sexes, genders and relationships and most of all, thank you for teaching us that such divisions and superiority should not exist. Written by a female college student at King’s College London

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What an overstatement. I cannot put a percentage on the number of good, respectful, feminist men in the world, but I can say with confidence that men who are in political power today, across the world, are enacting policies against women’s rights.

Women need allies in men, but more so, they need to have an equal share of the voice regarding questions on their own well-being. Women do not need the protection of men, but for men to stop being the reason women need protection in the first place.

Is he an exception or is he the norm? Yes, if you have the financial means, education and support network to tap into that hidden potential. As soon as you don’t, it’s those constructs that dictate your day-to-day.

I had a conversation with Rosemary Clark, PhD Candidate at the Annenberg School of Communications, researching the relationship between contemporary feminist movements and media. I wandered into her office with a burning question about social media as a forum for discussion. Originally, I thought social media can facilitate conversation, but I have also come to realize the importance of one’s written tone in encouraging a reciprocal desire for exchange. Traditionally, women were conditioned to be polite and agreeable, regardless of their sincere views on a subject.

I asked Rosie, then, ‘How do you see social media as a space that both amplifies one’s voice and can simultaneously work to impose new limitations to our means of expression?’ ‘The context of space matters,’ she said. Social media comprises primarily of

acquaintances, friends and family. It is probable, then, that what means to be polite in that space is affected by our social concern for our relationships with the people with whom we are engaging.

Unlike online safe spaces, which encourage the uninhibited expression of opinion, social media remains a space where tone policing is widespread. This is especially popular amongst selfproclaimed feminist essayists, who are known to post diatribes in defense of their freedom of choice. Andi Zeisler is quick to point out, however, that “these essays help drive marketplace feminism not only because they omit other topics--keeping the focus firmly in the realm of the sexy and easily sellable--but also because they invariably conclude with an invocation of choice that forecloses on the possibility of deeper exploration.”

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HACKING FOR IMPACT: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL IMPACT Written by: Abhinav Suri

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t’s 4 AM. I am sitting in front of my computer screen looking at the same four lines of code wondering “why in the world doesn’t this work?” I had scrapped the code and rewritten it from scratch. I even tried the age-old solution of “have you tried turning your computer off and on again.” It was time to 20 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

take a break, but our client had a presentation the next day and getting the project to work was of the utmost importance. We were nearly a month away from the project deadline when we would have to convince hundreds of individuals to entrust us to change the way they go about doing their daily jobs. Notably, this project was not for school. So how did I find myself in a situation, pulling near all-nighters to finish a project for which I would not even receive a grade ? The answer is simple: I had a fervor for creating impact in my community using technology.

The current state of computer science education in the United States follows a general pattern of people being introduced to computer science in college by learning Java, the most used programming language in the industry.

Over several computer science courses, students learn various aspects of Java and other languages, the ideas of computational complexity that allow one to analyze how long programs run, and how a computer works on its most fundamental level. At the end of this intense period of learning, most

students find work in the industry at startups, medium to large sized companies, or one of the “big five” (namely Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple). This system has been a solid model for creating skilled computer scientists who can readily serve in industry professions Only now, over seventy years after the creation of the first general purpose computer ENIAC (at Penn) is the computer science world starting to see the idea of using programming as a way of creating impact in the global community. Initiatives like Internet.org by Facebook to bring the world wide web to areas that do not have the technology are among the fledgling initiatives that companies are taking on to create a lasting impact in the world.

However, at Penn there is another initiative in this area. Something small, yet incredibly powerful as it can create immediate impact for many individuals across the United States and the world.

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Initiatives like Internet.org by Facebook to bring the world wide web to areas that do not have the technology are among the fledgling initiatives that companies are taking on to create a lasting impact in the world.

the Philadelphia, national, and global communities by creating technological solutions for organizations that do social good.

Importantly, Hack4Impact aims to further the idea of Social Impact X Tech, a growing movement that aims to get more engineers involved with using their skills for the benefit of organizations that are furthering social good in the world.

Over the course of a semester, Hack4Impact members contact community organizations, work with them to define a project that will benefit their charitable mission, assign the nonprofit a team of developers from the club to create, and integrate the project into the nonprofit workflow. The model has had success in the past. Hack4Impact has worked with organizations such as Kiva to create a micro-lending platform for individuals in rural areas to crowdsource funds for their initiatives in their community.

Another project Hack4Impact created was an online app made for Community Legal Services to combat wage theft by analyzing Google location history, which generates a timesheet for several years at a time. This app is projected to save the Community Legal Service thousands in paralegal fees. However, the project that stuck with me the most was my very first one, a project to bring the 125-year-old Reading Terminal Market into the modern era with an online marketplace to help new merchants make their way into one of Philadelphia’s most popular destinations.

At the beginning of my freshman year, I joined Hack4Impact.

This community of thirty people, passionate about the intersection between technology and social impact, welcomed me into their arms and I immediately became engrossed in the world of using technology to benefit nonprofits.

Two weeks later, I received my project assignment; I was to work on an online open marketplace for the Reading Terminal Market (RTM). This market opened in 1892, and is now home to 64 different merchants, 10 of whom have been at the market since its founding. RTM has an incredibly dedicated and active community of merchants who serve

This initiative is called Hack4Impact. Hack4Impact is an organization on campus comprised of 30 students and entirely student-led. These people are hackers (no, not in the sense of the individual hunched over a computer, donned in a dark hoodie with a face occluded by a ski mask).

They are hackers in the sense that they are innovators: people who wish to create solutions to problems they face using unconventional means. These hackers are on a mission to help as many individuals as possible in

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thousands of individuals daily, and work with vendors on a weekly basis to source raw materials so merchants can make products.

RTM is an incredibly diverse market with cuisines and products from an array of cultures and countries. In that sense, it is an open and welcoming community to all. However, when I first began learning about RTM I was struck by the process that new individuals to the market must go through in order to join this eclectic RTM community. , For a new individual to make a permanent presence in the market, they have to come in with connections to vendors who supply raw materials which can be used to create their products, making it difficult for newer merchants to get exposed to the vendors in the marketplace and vice versa.

At the same time, new merchants are unable to see pricing from other vendors on similar products, making it difficult for them to know if they are getting a good deal . For new merchants, establishing connections with vendors who can give the best price is crucial to success. However, due to the age of the market, older merchants had much better connections, making it very difficult (and sometimes near impossible) for a new merchant to survive. As a result, many new merchants could not survive in the market after a couple of years.

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For new merchants, establishing connections with vendors who can give the best price is crucial to success.

Our solution to this problem was to create an online marketplace for vendors to upload their products and allow the merchants view prices for all vendors. Merchants would be able to get the best price, and at the same time, the product would be able to expose vendors to a larger audience of potential buyers.

I became heavily involved with the client project, participating in weekly meetings with our contact at the Reading Terminal Market, Steven Safern. At the end of the semester, we had a product that included the ability to add merchants and vendors into the system and upload items into the system, but I knew we could do much more.

I advocated for the Reading Terminal Market project to be extended one more semester of development and led a team of four undergraduates in the club with the aim of extending the functionality of the RTM project. I was meeting with Steven on a nearly weekly basis at this point. Over the course of the semester, I learned more about Steven from his time as a Radio Engineer for Motorola to when he decided to open a Deli at the Reading Terminal Market named after his Uncle Hershel who raised Steven

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after his parents died. After telling us his stories about the times he fought for the military, the talks he had with his uncle, or the people he met while serving his glistening pastrami sandwiches that day, Steven expressed his gratitude for us and our contribution to the RTM community.

Over the second semester of the project, we added the ability for members to create and place orders on the system, rate vendors and items, track status of orders and negotiate prices, and access the web application in areas of weak internet connection by minimizing any external resources we used and compressing requests and responses. Our online marketplace went on to increase transparency in the reading terminal market, encouraging vendors to place thousands of items on the system and merchants to have the best pick of products. The product will benefit the market for years to come. By the time we finished our part , the project 17 different contributors and 12,292 lines of code. We are in the process of helping 89 merchants and dozens of vendors migrate over to the system, amounting to a total of over 100,000 items in the online marketplace with hundreds of transactions happening on a weekly basis.

This idea of connecting developers with nonprofits who want to create meaning software that impacts nonprofit organizations is a rising movement. At the college level, organizations such as Hack4Impact, Blueprint at UC Berkeley, CS + Social Good at Stanford, and Harvard Developers for Development are creating opportunities for university students to engage with companies and organizations that pursue community service initiatives. However, there is much more room to expand. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are approximately 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States that directly impact hundreds of millions of individuals across the globe.

Through the development of the project, I learned how to work with clients, how to develop maintainable software, how to empathize with a cause, and how to form a human connection across generations. Since my time with Steven and the Reading Terminal Market, I have continued to do work with Hack4Impact, creating an application to help combat wage theft for Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and I am now working on a generalized map platform for resource aggregation and display for nonprofits.

Even though I may find myself in the early hours of the morning coding away at my laptop, I do so with the intention of benefiting organizations that need my work in order to better their mission. Developers have yet to explore the intersection between technology and social impact; however, it has the greatest potential to benefit organizations that are doing good in this world.

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FROM PROTEST TO WOKENESS:

PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION IN THE WAKE OF THE ELECTION Written by: Vivian Dai

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n January 21st, 2017, I marched with 50,000 fellow protestors from Center City to the Art Museum. We held signs above our heads and chanted mantras as one. We expressed our dissent against the new administration loudly and peacefully.

We hoped to make a difference.

The Women’s March was a phenomenon that attracted attention by its numbers, as well as its relevant timing. The number of people who marched in protest against the president greatly outnumbered those who attended Trump’s inauguration the day before.

Tamika Mallory, one of four co-chairs of the Women’s March on Washington, came to Penn in late March to speak to students as part of Penn Association for Gender Equity (PAGE) Women’s Week.

She told students she was encouraged and surprised by the turnout.

“We got a permit [for the march] for 200 thousand people,” she said. “I never imagined one million women, men, and gender nonconforming folks would show up in Washington. I never thought five million people would participate internationally.”

For all the attention it garnered and all the people it brought together, however, I found it difficult to determine exactly what concrete effects the march had. Reflecting on the march, I wonder whether I really did help to make a difference.

The women’s march was not the only protest that occurred in the wake of Trump’s election. There have been a variety of protests, large and small, across the country. Most of these protests have

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been concentrated in major cities, including Philadelphia. There is a “Philly Trump Protests” Facebook page that lists a number of protests and marches, including a health care protest, Republican retreat protest, Muslim registry protest, Black Lives Matter protest, and a general Philly Trump Protest for Solidarity.

On campus, a number of student groups, as well as faculty members, have taken the initiative to plan their own marches. It seems after each new controversy, students are taking to the streets-or to Locust Walk--in protest. The campus-wide Solidarity Walk, which was followed by an on-campus open-mic, took place on the rainy evening following Trump’s win. A club called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized a student walk-out and rally on Inauguration Day. An organization called Penn Stands Together coordinated a march to Pennsylvania Senator Toomey’s office in protest of the senator, especially his endorsement of then candidate for Secretary of Education Betsy Devos. Different members of Penn faculty also organized a number of solidarity marches, in the name of supporting students, as well as each other.

Despite the obvious result of bringing people together in protest, I cannot help but wonder whether these political marches and walk-outs and rallies achieve any tangible results. I cannot help but wonder whether such protests could perhaps even be detrimental to a cause. We have only to look at history to see that some of the largest public movements have had little to no impact in terms of

political change.

There have been many examples of protests that failed to achieve concrete effects. The Million Man March of 1995, the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, and the inauguration protests against George W. Bush’s second term in 2005 are just a few. The 2003 anti-Iraq war protest was the largest synchronized global march in human history, yet failed to prevent the continuation of the war. More recently, Occupy Wall Street was a movement that attracted large amounts of attention, yet was ineffective in implementing change. To an extent, it even polluted public opinion of the movement.

On the other hand, however, there are many examples of public protests that have achieved substantial change. The protests against Trump’s immigration ban were examples of successful, goaloriented protests. When the executive order led to the detainment of 12 people at the John F. Kennedy International Airport, protests broke out at over eight major airports across the country, including JFK International. The protests were a nearly immediate reaction to an unpopular administrative action. People gathered with one specific shared goal in mind: to secure the release of the 12 detainees.

When US District Judge Ann Donnelly blocked the executive order, she said: The petitioners have a strong likelihood of success in establishing that the removal of the petitioner and others similarly situated violates their due process and equal protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

This attribution of a judge’s decision to popular protest affirms the power of peaceful protest. Though Donnelly could have been aiming to please the public in her decision debrief, the immediacy of the airport protests across the country could not be ignored.

It is evident that public outrage, when channeled into a pointed objective, can be not only effective, but also efficient. It seems then that public protest can achieve substantial change under certain conditions.

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The attribution of a judge’s decision to popular protest affirms the power of peaceful protest.

Rosemary Clark is a Ph.D. candidate in the Annenberg School for Communication studying feminist social movements. She has conducted research on the Women’s March as well as other movements. “I think, particularly what we just saw with the American Healthcare Act [repeal] sort of failing, there’s been several clear signs that these very public [liberal] demonstrations have been very effective,” she said. “They’re effective in terms of convincing Republican representatives of the consequences in terms of not being able to get reelected if they pass conservative legislation.”

The public’s power lies in their right to vote and in demonstrating this power to representatives, be it judicial, congressional, or

executive. If citizens exercise their right wisely, they have the power to hold representatives responsible for their actions and potentially prevent future disagreeable legislation.

“And it’s not just protests or marches,” Clark said. “People are going to the Town Hall every Tuesday, protesters go to Toomey’s office and stand outside. There’s been outpourings of public action that have sent a message that these representatives can’t get away with passing unjust legislation without consequence.”

This form of protest does not always work, however. Despite the public’s outrage about Betsy DeVos’s candidacy for Secretary of Education and the local effort in Philadelphia to sway Senator Toomey’s vote, Toomey stayed true to his endorsement, and DeVos still won the position in the end. Disappointed as people were, however, they should be comforted in knowing the ends may not be as important as the means.

“For every successful example where we might be able to draw a direct causal line between protest and what happens in Congress, there’s a counterexample that we could point to that failed,” said Clark. “Instead we could think about how these public demonstrations create a culture of wokeness. [This is] when people are paying attention to politics more and calling out their representatives more.”

By being more active and taking actions like calling representatives and writing letters to officials, a culture of political engagement and awareness can be achieved. This would then, hopefully, create an environment in which the citizens will have the knowledge and power to demand just representation from their government.

This culture of wokeness also creates a community of engagement that is valuable. Penn senior Ava Lipatti, a member of SDS, helped organize a rally on the Friday after election day and on Inauguration Day. The rally on Inauguration Day followed a student walk out and featured a megaphone, chants, and an openmic. “I wanted to create a platform for anyone who wanted to voice how the Trump administration impacted them,” Lipatti said. She also had larger goals in mind. “I wanted to build a base for future actions. I wanted to see how this campus would respond to an antiTrump movement, and I wanted to normalize this kind of radical action, this kind of protest.”

It is hard to deny that student protests on Penn’s campus have brought people together, literally and figuratively. Though one rally or even 100 rallies may not have a visible impact on what goes on in Congress, the awareness these events have brought to the student body is undeniably useful in promoting active citizenship.

Though it has been several months since the president’s inauguration, citizens continue to organize public protests. As the administration creates new legislature, the American people will continue to create movements to express their political opinions.

These public demonstrations are contributing, one by one, to a culture of wokeness, and perhaps that is the most groundbreaking change of all.

Photo by: Morgan Rees ISSUE 9 / 25

SPOKEN WORD POETRY:

A REFLECTION OF WORDS Written By: Amanda Ngo

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Calling all poets and visionaries,” read the post on Instagram.

It was a Saturday, and my friend and I had taken a trip to New York to explore for the weekend. She had been scrolling through her feed when she found the post on one of those creative, feminist, empowerment accounts . They were having their first spoken word event and they wanted anyone who had a penchant for poetry or opinions to come along.

So, of course, what else do you do on a Saturday night in New York? We navigated our way to a cafe tucked into the side streets of Brooklyn, hidden behind a long green hallway and a door covered in mistletoe. Inside, the air was warm and buzzing. The room was filled with familiar chatter, everyone waiting to listen, perform, and make a temporary space in their lives for spoken word poetry.

Poetry has its roots in oral performance. Before poems could even be written down, people composed verses that were memorized and passed down through generations. Many of the poets we venerate today (such as Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot) believed in the importance of oral expression, often writing their poems with verbal rhythms in mind. When you listen to spoken word, it is not hard to understand why. This poetry adopts so many more nuances: sounds and rhythm and facial expressions add new layers of meaning that move the listener in a far more visceral way.

The spoken word movement in America gained momentum in 1990 with the establishment of the first poetry slam competition in San Francisco. It quickly travelled across the country, setting up roots in the famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York. It has only grown in popularity since; now, spoken word poetry lives both in small, dimly lit cafes and on a world stage.

Spoken word is far more than a medium of expression: it i’s a movement for social change. Poetry communities give people a platform to voice ideas that may not otherwise be heard. LGBTQI rights, feminism, race relations, mental health - all of these find a home in spoken word. There’s something incredibly powerful about people sharing their experiences through this medium. You get a stream-of-consciousness glimpse into the most personal, raw thoughts of the poet. Emotion drives the performances, giving you the unquestionable reassurance that no matter what problems you are facing, you are not alone.

Spoken word has the power to inspire, to remind you how lucky you are to be alive, or to make your heartbeat to the same rhythm as those who are suffering.

For many people, this is one of the most frightening journeys you can take into the confusing world of our own identities. With spoken word, we feel compelled to share the ideas, hopes, and fears that are difficult to articulate through any other medium. And in the process of capturing these feelings in words (what does it really feel

like? What does this mean? How would others interpret this?) we come to understand them so much better.

I was first introduced to this world by a video of poet Sarah Kay performing her sensation, ‘If I Should Have A Daughter.’ In the short piece, she crafts a story that is beautifully human: hopeful, yet tinged with a world-weary wisdom.

“And I’m going to paint solar systems on the back of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, ‘Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.’” – Sarah Kay Since then, I have found that creating stories out of my vulnerabilities has been the most effective way to figure out and work through emotions that I’m struggling with. Writing a spoken word poem forces you to take a moment to pause and consider a broader perspective; performing one is cathartic.

That night in the café was the first time I had ever performed my poetry in front of strangers. It was intimidating, but also far more rewarding than I anticipated. I felt like the 30 people in front of me had understood a small part of who I was; I felt not only seen, but also utterly accepted.

The poem I performed that night was called “Dance.” While it is t’s so hard to convey the same emotions through text, there is an excerpt from it that encapsulates what it feels like to perform and listen to spoken word poems: “I will dance for you, because I want to understand you.

That is all I have ever wanted, to understand: To transcend our corner of the earth to a place where The way we fit into the world sits like a piece of a puzzle, and others can be weaved into our lives so that we are no longer a loose thread unwinding itself involuntarily.

And at this place, the still point, we can hold each other and Dance until we stumble across what matters.”

While spoken word poetry may seem difficult or uncomfortable, it is worthwhile to consider what you might write in a poem if you were to craft one. What would it feel like to be able to convey that to someone in a way that they fully understand? Perhaps, in the process, you might stumble across a way to share what really matters.

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ASIAN MINORITIES IN CLASSROOMS Written by: Jacqueline Uy

I

n high school, I remember sitting in history class, reading the stories of figures from the likes of Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy. We devoted chapters to early colonial history and spent weeks covering US dominance all over the world. Even when addressing atrocities, US actions were glossed over and sugar coated, never portrayed as an enemy or villain in the wrong. We never once questioned the euro-centric material that we covered. In our histories, people of color were largely limited to the background, akin to a tree in a school play. People of color appeared as figures of the landscape, with virtually no history or contemporary ethnic experience and always having a secondary role. What we did learn of people of color was largely limited to slavery and conquest, as if marginalization was the only term associated with us in the larger American narrative.

Ethnic studies sought to change that. Growing from a college setting, it sought to dismantle institutional racism and systematically examine the factors that build ethnic communities. Most people experience their first ethnic studies class in college, leading students to become more politicized when they reach an institution of higher learning. I was one of these students. During my freshman year at Penn, I took an Asian American history class. It was as if a light had suddenly turned on: everything became clearer and brighter. I saw what it meant to be an Asian American – our history, our contributions, our diversity, our strength and our resilience.

I grew angry that it had taken me this long to learn this vital history about myself and my identity. Why did it take me eighteen years to hear stories of people that looked like me? For most of my life, I had been struggling for the words to put my experiences into perspective and it was not until a college lecture on Asian American history that I found my story was part of a collective whole that 28 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

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I saw what it meant to be an Asian American – our history, our contributions, our diversity, our strength and our resilience.

Photos by: Morgan Rees

deserved to be seen as important.

Not only that, but the flaws in the history we learned throughout middle school and high school became even more apparent. Where were the stories of Japanese internment? Where were the stories of the Chinese railroad workers or Filipino farmers? Why was it that our stories were missing from these pages of history? Many minorities find that their voices and their stories are rendered invisible in textbooks and in classes. We grow up with many blanks that have yet to be filled in, and some are never afforded the opportunity to do so.

So what if we began teaching our children a more diverse history from a younger age?

One school is doing just that. The Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School (FACTS) was created to serve the Chinatown community of Philadelphia. From its inception, it claimed its roots in social justice and in providing for the needs of it’s immediate community. Not only did it integrate Asian American history in its curriculum, but it seeks to teach its students about the structural oppression and injustices that play a dominant role in US history.

Students learn about the stories of individuals who look like them and are therefore empowered, providing them a strong foundation for their identity and their role in a multicultural society.

When students are exposed to ethnic studies from an early age, such as the students in FACTS, numerous benefits can be observed.

Firstly, it forces students to think. It forces students to think about the world that they live in, serving as a corrective to the standard history agendas that have long reflected the stories of white, male, heteronormative stories. Every student gains a greater sense of empathy and understanding not only about their own history, but about the history of other group’s and how all these stories fit into the larger American narrative. It builds a shared sense of community and students are able to develop a sense of confidence and empowerment by understanding oppression and what it means for their own communities, stoking the fires of ongoing activism and civic engagement. The US prides itself as being a place of equality and democracy for all, but this equality is deeply embedded in allowing the diverse groups living in this country to be represented in history books, equally. In order to build a truly inclusive multicultural democracy, we must plant the seeds in our children from early on in an attempt to begin fixing the fractures of our system of education.

ISSUE 9 / 29

A BET ON A GREENER PHILADELPHIA Written by: Michael Chang

J

ust outside the border of Penn’s campus stands a hulking five-story structure on 40th and Market Street. Its edifice and design are simple, but 2.0 University Place, notably not affiliated with any of the universities in the area, is one of the most cuttingedge and environmentally sustainable buildings in the world. Built in 2013, the property, which functions as an office building, was designed by Shraga Berenfeld, a Philadelphia-based architect with previous experience working on the Holmes School building and the Red Cross House in West Philadelphia.

Occupying the corner of the block, 2.0 Place has a brick boxshaped exterior that gives way to smooth-paned glass facing towards the intersection. The interior of the building features 105,000 square feet in office space, leased with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration, and the rooftop serves as space for a green office park. In 2013, 2.0 University Place was the first building in Philadelphia to be awarded a Platinum certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for newly constructed projects.

The building’s sustainability concept includes exterior sun shades on the southern facade and an opaque wall assembly to

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minimize heat transfer. Energy needed to power the common spaces is renewable, obtained solely through wind and solar-generated sources. Sunlight is captured during the day by solar panels on the rooftop to provide electricity for the bathrooms, hallways, and lobby areas.

At the core of the facility’s sustainability highlights, however, is the cutting-edge heating, ventilation, and A/C (HVAC) system, 62% more efficient than its conventional counterparts. While an improved heating and cooling system hidden behind the walls may seem unglamorous, a conventional HVAC system in a commercial

building accounts for 40% of the building’s total energy use.

Considering that commercial facilities - such as office buildings, hospitals, and retail stores - consume almost one-fifth of total energy in the United States, the adoption of sustainable ventilation methods can go a long way in environmental conservation. But more importantly, an efficient and reliable HVAC system improves the quality of the workplace, as noted by Scott Mazo, the developer of 2.0 University Place. “Many of our tenants say they’ve never felt this type of air comfort or atmosphere in an office,” he said. As green technology continues to become more advanced, sustainable buildings will offer a better overall experience for tenantsAn efficient HVAC system can reduce internal air pollution and cut energy costs in half when compared with those of a non-sustainable building of the same size. Coupled with the building’s inclusion of bicycle racks and its close proximity to the 40th and Market SEPTA station, 2.0 University Place received forty-seven LEED credits, safely passing the forty-five credits required for Platinum certification.

However, LEED certification does not end with the use and planning of renewable materials during construction – there are separate methods for LEED approval for tenants in property management. At 2.0 University Place, three tenants have already achieved Platinum status to make 2.0 University Place the world’s first multi-tenant, multi-certified LEED Platinum building, with four more currently pursuing certification.

After compliance with the standards set to receive LEED certification, the price tag on construction for the project came out to a hefty $21 million by its opening in 2013. Last year, in a demonstration of a growing willingness to embrace green projects as profitable investments and optimism in the city of Philadelphia as a metropolitan area, Zurich Insurance Group purchased 2.0 Place from UPA for $41.3 million. Over the three years that UPA held the building, they received more than double their money back – not a bad return for a green investment. Some of its current users, like U.S. Facilities Inc., moved to sign leases at 2.0 University Place for its location within a state-designated Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ). The KOZ allows the tenants to reap tax benefits for their business operations in the area and likely contributed to the $41 million sale price. Introduced by the state of Pennsylvania in 1999, Keystone Opportunity Zones were designed to spur investment in dilapidated neighborhoods where stagnant growth has limited development in the area. Within these KOZs, tenants enjoy reduced taxes from the state and city for increasing business activity in the allocated space.

ISSUE 9 / 31

A Green Philadelphia Harris Steinberg, the current executive director of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University hopes to make University City the “innovation neighborhood.” “[This neighborhood] is going to say tech,” he states confidently.

Considering the city’s historical strength as an industrial center known for its manufacturing capacity, it is surprising to hear such assured claims on its transformation into a hub of science and innovation. But Steinberg’s words are telling of the progressive vision that has been laid out by community leaders and the municipality for Philadelphia.

During his 2008 inaugural address, former mayor Michael Nutter pledged to make Philadelphia the “Greenest City in America” through a series of sustainability steps. His chief idea included the Greenworks Philadelphia plan authored by Penn professor and member of the Nutter administration, Mark Hughes. The year after Nutter entered office, the Office of Sustainability published the Greenworks proposal with the objective to improve public health, promote a clean environment, and develop opportunities to work and prosper for all Philadelphians. The plan was to be achieved through the launch of 164 planned initiatives by 2015. In addition to mobilizing the community through environmental awareness projects, Greenworks set benchmarks for carbon emissions by vehicles and buildings, with the goal to reduce wasteful energy consumption.

Harris’ earnest outlook on the burgeoning technology industry and the Greenworks plan both share a zeal for Philadelphia to grow into a more sustainable and dynamic city ready to lead the 21st century.

Since entering office last year, mayor Jim Kenney has continued to show support for green developments.

“Sustainability is about more than the environment, it is also about tackling issues such as economic opportunity, health, and neighborhood equity,” he said, as he announced the city’s new green plan in November of last year. Emphasizing the importance that all residents should benefit from public spending on green amenities, the Kenney administration is planning to dedicate $350 million towards improving amenities offered by the city.

With over 400 parks, recreation centers, libraries, and other public assets located in Philadelphia, the funds will be used over the next eight years to renew these facilities.

Another $150 million is going towards projects to reduce

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inefficient energy usage in the city’s municipal facilities.

With so much planned for the city, it is hard not to get excited.

How does 2.0 University Place fit in Philadelphia?

Philadelphia is not a city typically known for its sustainability programs, yet residents are beginning to rouse themselves for a cleaner community. It may not be “the greenest city in America” yet, but Philadelphia has made incredible strides to catch up to cities like San Diego in the West as one of the first cities to have required building owners to report their energy usage.

The first of its kind in the world as a multi-tenant certified Platinum LEED building, 2.0 University Place comprises the best that Philly has to offer and is an image of the city’s sustainable future. Local construction managers and real estate developers are already looking to emulate its success, and with Mayor Kenney’s announcement of additional subsidies for projects achieving LEED Silver in 2015, the city is doing what it can to encourage even modest adoption of sustainable materials and planning.

Other efforts by the city, like its designation of East Market Street as a “special advertising district” in 2011, have been more controversial. In its desire to bring Market Street back to its former retail glory, City Council attempted to replicate the seemingly endless energy of Times Square by featuring giant digital billboards along the walls of buildings. After only the first one went up back in 2014, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation quickly moved to undo these efforts a year later due to concerns over flashing advertisements distracting motorists.

While the excessive commercialism might have been a dud, Philadelphia is finally moving out of its comfort zone to rise to the forefront of 21st century urbanism.

While Philadelphia may no longer be perceived as an industrial powerhouse, it is starting to regain a reputation for innovative and sustainable practices. Against a backdrop of abandoned warehouses and blighted plots of land, Philadelphia is regaining its spirit. The city is buying up thousands of vacant lots in anticipation of turning them around for reuse. Tall cranes can be seen along the skyline, pinpointing where to expect the next high-rise construction, and community involvement in sustainable development has gained traction. There is still work to do, but the future is brightly lit for Philadelphia.

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