The Statesman 02-10-20

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Volume LXIII, Issue 18

sbstatesman.com

Monday, February 10, 2020

SBU professor's book tackles prison labor By Matthew Yan Contributing Writer

Power, race, rape and the carceral system are the pillars of Stony Brook Associate Professor Robert Chase’s new book, “We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America.” The 523-page book, which he promoted at a faculty book presentation on Wednesday, provides an eye-opening look into the endemic exploitation, degradation and abuse of the 2.3 million people who make up America’s prison population — the largest in the world. According to Chase, the United States has effectively enslaved incarcerated people for decades. Every day, thousands of prisoners across the nation labor for big companies to produce daily commodities, ranging from Starbucks cups to microchips. They are paid a pittance — 93 cents a day for their efforts. Eightyfive percent is taken by the prison for their room and board. Their work

RABIA GURSOY/ THE STATESMAN

Toni Blackman freestyling at the art of hip-hop meditation event on Tuesday, Feb. 4 for Black History Month. Blackman hosts a night focused on self-exploration and mindfulness. fuels a $2 billion prison-industrial complex that runs largely unnoticed by the American public. This treatment dates back to the 19th century, when prisoners would work in chain gangs 10 hours a day, six days a week, to build roads, dig in mines and pick cotton on plantations. Beatings and lashings from the guards were commonplace. Some prisoners would slice the Achilles

tendons of their heels to cripple themselves just so they wouldn’t be able to work. Unruly prisoners were sent to the “sweatbox,” an isolated, pitch black cell that left them crouched at the mercy of the elements. Many incarcerated in sweatboxes went insane, suffered injuries or even died after being left there for weeks on end.

The nightmare didn’t end when the workday was done. At night, wardens and “trustees,” mostly white prisoners who were given free reign to roam the premises and move prisoners about, would sell the bodies of their often black, latino and gay prisoners to the highest bidder for labor and sex, perpetuating a system of “state-orchestrated prison rape.” “The prisoners were slaves — that is no metaphor,”

Chase said. “Slaves were property, gambled, sold, and traded like common cattle.” These conditions led to rebellions like the Attica Prison uprising in 1971. About 2,200 inmates took over the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility in New York, taking staff hostage and demandContinued on page 4

Curry Club owners buy the Harbor Grill SBU teams up with NASA By Brianne Ledda News Editor

The Harbor Grill in Port Jefferson, a popular spot for Stony Brook students, saw a change in ownership this past week. Indu Kaur — whose family owns The Curry Club, the Velvet Lounge and The Meadow Club — said that her family signed for the restaurant on Feb. 3. The purchase follows a controversy last spring when a Stony Brook graduate was turned away for wearing a turban, provoking outrage on social media and threats of a potential lawsuit. The previous owners later apologized and claimed that hats and headgear aren’t allowed after 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, but the story still hit national media. “We don’t know what really happened, so we can’t comment,” Kaur said. “We greet anybody — anybody can come,” Kulwant Wadhwa, co-owner of the Harbor Grill and Kaur’s father, cut in. “And that is for the community and it is for the students, for everyone.”

The family started hosting parties at the Harbor Grill during the week after a fire at The Meadow Club. They discovered that the restaurant was “pretty much closed” during the week — currently, the Harbor Grill is only open for limited hours over the winter. A real estate broker eventually approached Wadhwa, and the family decided to buy it. “So we are going to resume what the business has been

doing in here for right now,” Kaur said. “We are planning a couple more exciting events that we are going to be announcing, but we just don't have all the logistics yet because it's just very, very new.” The new owners plan to keep the restaurant open seven days a week with longer hours and inContinued on page 4

BRIANNE LEDDA / THE STATESMAN

Indu Kaur, one of the new owners, in front of the Harbor Grill. Her family signed for the bar on Feb. 3.

News

Arts & Culture

'Gift of Life' brings awareness to child cardiac care.

Lee lectured at the opening of Black History Month.

Non-profit gets new club at SBU.

MORE ON PAGE 4

By Niki Nassiri Staff Writer

Stony Brook University and NASA are teaming up to research snowstorms for the first time in 32 years. Stony Brook University received $1.4 million last January from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to aid in ground research that would help to improve East Coast snowstorm forecasting. NASA’s project, Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS), collects data on what’s happening inside turbulent snow clouds called snow bands as they occur. NASA sends two planes directly into and above the storm to record how they form and expand, while Stony Brook, with help from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), deploys mobile weather trucks and launches weather balloons into the snow bands to help accurately predict snowfall. IMPACTS will collect data over six weeks once a year from 2020 to 2022. The first mission began on Jan.

17 and ends March 1. Scientists on the project plan to analyze the information gathered during the summer. “We’ll be able to take a look at the data and understand what are the mechanisms that lead to some of these fine-scale structures,” Brian Colle, co-investigator of IMPACTS and professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), said. “We’ll be tackling that with the observations from IMPACTS.” Colle, a member of the science and mobile units, acts as a liaison between the ground and flight teams. He relays information to coordinate data analysis and future dispatches of both groups. NASA’s plane, P-3 Orion, launches from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and takes measurements from inside the storm while a ER-2 aircraft from Savannah, Georgia, flies above the snow clouds. The two planes fly vertically at the same time, equipped with a plethora of new weather technology. The ER-2 collects satellite data and the P-3 Orion measures data like water content and particle size in the snow clouds. Continued on page 4

Opinions

Sports

Technology causes caucus results to be delayed.

Stony Brook owns longest win streak in country.

Spike Lee visits Stony Brook.

Iowa Caucus results are out.

MORE ON PAGE 6

MORE ON PAGE 8

Women's hoops win 20th straight. MORE ON PAGE 12


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