uc san diego
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
The Collective Voice
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
HONEST BODIES Let’s be real, academia isn’t the place I have found liberation. Have you? If anything I’ve learned how traumas become normalized anxieties in communal organizations through structures of domination. Poverty and sexual violence, in particular, last generations, and it is sad to see how much of a void these traumas become in our everyday when students engage in types of organizing privileging programming, conferences, and meaningless “checking in” over collective - or more proactive -social healing. It is almost like we’ve become more concerned with building resumes then tending to each other’s stories. Surely, programs and conferences create some space to talk about these social ills, but often times it falls onto the individual survivor to educate the masses. Also, I’m still learning what healing looks like, slowly becoming devoted to the process as other survivors, friends and chosen family, challenge me. More and more I realize that “community” is key to healing but we all know how much of a laborious and futile effort this can be when the same urgency that is met to create programming is not found when honoring trauma. Furthermore, I’ve seen social-cultural student organizations on this campus becoming colonized by a type of heteronormativity that brush over stories like mine. Being LATINO and THIRD GENDERED means my story is not understood relationally to the “norm,” nor do I wish to be legible to heteropatriarichal social order; but if you find a bridge between you and I know you are more beautiful to me than sunshine. I’ll start with this: I will not be reduced to an immigrant success story; my DIASPORIC, QUEER and LATINO body is far too complex, too beautifully traumatized to be another neoliberal-capitalist model for transgressing poverty, sexual abuse, suicide, and depression. The truth is I haven’t escaped these experiences for they are forever etched to the walls inside my chest – shit – I have a plethora of debt, scars and stories if you all wish to see receipts.When my father had a schizophrenic episode I was eight years old. At this point in time I had been struggling with my sexual identity since the age of five. You see some people have a perfect linear coming out story or supportive kinship structures and financial freedom to claim their sexuality, but I was pushed out into the world naked and alone. I came to consciousness about my queerness when another five-year-old boy molested me, my life since then has been a series of starts, stops and generalized dysphoria. My mother would take care of him to make ends meet and he was the son of a close family friend. By now the bible had been beat into my body and my family did a good job of policing me into believing how sinful and excessive queer desires are. But because of this internalization I didn’t understand myself to be sexually violated. After all boys can’t get sexually violated, right? In Olivia A. Cole’s blog titled Chris Brown and a Nation of Raped Boys she grapples with the celebrities’ experience of sexual violence and her relationship with men who are incapable of seeing their bodies as victims of patriarchy, rape and violence. This incident was even spoken in Colorlines, “[Chris Brown] “lost his virginity” to a teenage girl at age eight. He didn’t admit this fact. Rather, it came in the form of bragging—about his virility at age eight, the pornography he watched with his older cousins at age eight, and the way in which “sex” at age eight primed him to be a “beast at it” now.” While Chris Brown, rape culture and our ethics around patriarchy and the male body are highlighted in both articles, I’m relived to hear stories of other male victims because for all my life I was fooled into isolation by society thinking I was the only one. But it happens and it happened to me. I am not an isolated
incident, never have been, never will. Though, what frightened me most was that I actually liked when other boys touched me. This realization made it impossible to tell anyone in my family what had happened engendering me in silence for what seemed like lifetimes. He never stopped touching me until my mom found a better hustle and when my father left when I was eight and told not to cry. Ironically I wasn’t crying because my father was leaving, I saw my mom and dad got at it violently making games out of emotional scarring and gendered expectations. I always knew his leaving was best for the both of them. I was reminded that I had a roof over my head and food in my belly because as an undocumented family our survival trumped the “whining,” but his leaving me pushed me over the edge.
Ultimately, I was crying because I fit the stigmatized demonization of queer bodies: that we are the products of molestation/perversions or products of fatherless and female dominated households. I became what I was taught to fear: a faggot. It was as if someone died at the moment of my father’s self-deportation. My internal reality became shamed and desires muted.
I died and came back to life many times since then. Along this journey back to myself I shed many skins like a weary snakes do slivering through the rough edges of mother earths surface. I can’t go a day where I don’t fantasize erasing myself. I can’t remember the last time the mirror felt familiar. Or the last time I was honest and open about my narrative. But slowly and surely I do the impossible; fashioning translucent quilts from the shedding. I like to hear the responses I get from people when I tell them I want to take my life; it is either they completely disregard my plea for help, think I’m crazy or my favorite “it gets better.” But does it? How many of you really know about queers in diaspora?
At MEChA Nationals 2013, Cherrie Moraga urged us to look intimately at our unspoken - our daddy issues, stories of rape, incest and depression. I found it funny she would call us out in this matter but we can’t forget to reach down into our traumas, fears and inhibitions. Sure the “man” has his foot at our necks but at the end of the day, I truly believe we are the ones keeping ourselves back to a certain extent. What I would like to challenge readers to do is to engage stories like mine inconclusively. Have a conversation with me. Notice the ghosts in the room, those who haunt you and all of our collective memories.
uc san diego
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
Now that I’ve let myself mourn with close ones and other survivors I understand how I came to hate masculinity inside of myself and everyone else, regardless of race, class and gender. I was raised by a pack of female wolves that danced the dance of survival in the face of poverty alone and naked. When I came out to my older sister late last year she burst into tears and proceeded to tell me why she hated religion so much. Apparently in the colonia my parents came from the biggest secret in town was how the priest would periodically molest the boys. My father was one of them. I’m starting to think if this was truly what drove him mad because he never had the space to purge this horror from his body. He once cut out his face out of all our photo albums; I can’t take pictures and feel ok about them anymore. When these words fell from my sister’s mouth I felt a little whole again. I was able to see the little boy who touched me and my father’s mania in a different light. A little less like monsters and more like people. We need to stop telling boys that they can’t cry – til then patriarchy keeps everyone from healing. People don’t kill themselves because they’re mentally ill, people take their own lives because their stories are brutalized, shamed and engendered in silence. But this silence is ubiquitous and politically haunting our transgressions for a more diverse understanding of the human experience. Until we learn to honor this we all come into contact with the limitations of trauma that blind us into believing we are incapable of change. This institution wont save you, these organizations wont save you; “liberation” comes from politicizing pain and daring ourselves to fill all our voids with healing wisdoms, shattered borders and closely paying attention to the ways in which we choose to move away from pain. Do we pretend like pain isn’t there? Do we? Do you?
-Jason Soto
about the
theme
Playing with T r a u m a
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Damneet Kaur Mama says alcohol makes people become beasts. Secrets she only reveals to me, In our native tongue, whispering the word carefully: Sharabi. I ask her how she knows such things, She replies- family tree. Intoxicating her mouth as the words slip out. You see the men in my family have a disease of liquor damaged chromosomes in their genes. Running through their wine tainted blood as they’ve all learned to pour each other a drink. Fathers teaching sons how to mix just the right type of brandy and clog each artery. And the women have been taught to lie to doctors protecting their husbands deeds, A bottle of whiskey behind the sofa for when he needs to let loose, Mothers teaching daughters to silence their pleas Mama doesn’t see that this daughter has a medical degree, Examining wounds is my specialty. A wound so deep, embedded in our history with stories that beg to bleed, She tells me through her eyes, loosing contact everyone now and then, Her iris turns the a color of bruises that covered her sisters as they got beat. As the alcoholics de-stressed and let out their un-controlled temper-soon to reach insanity. A circumstance of mental instability when the bottom of the bottle leaves nothing but misery. She says history won’t repeat itself once we win the lottery, But mama, your nephews and soon your son is already taking steps to leave reality. I ask ‘Why they drink such poison’ They tell me to ‘shut up, it’s just one drink’ Seeing right over me as a woman with no respect or dignity Inebriated in lethality, a habit becoming routinely But our inheritance of addiction is our lottery, And thats why mama says alcohol makes people become beasts.
Trauma and the struggles that we go through often serve as our inspiration or the fuel to our fires. What is this trauma that we have been through and that often haunts us ‘till this very day? However, the flip-side to trauma is healing. We would also like to focus on how we healed through this trauma, if we have at all, as we all have our own personal forms of healing. Healing can be living and loving life in spite of the ritualistic lingering of traumas that have come to pass. Healing through trauma is often what fuels our spirituality. Calling into consideration the way that spirituality may or may not involve religion, we ask you to confront your notions of spirituality. How do trauma, healing, and spirituality come together for you? Or do they even coincide at all? Also, how do our various identities influence our processes of healing or spirituality? In Solidarity, The Collective Voice Co-Editors
Amanda Kay Mannshahia & Paola Pérez
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
Books for Prisoners at UCSD Books for Prisoners is a student organization at UCSD. We are sponsored by Groundwork Books. We receive hundreds of letters each week, containing requests for us to send inmates books. The requests vary, from dictionaries (the most popular) to textbooks, novels, legal resources, magazines, etc. All of the books are donated by community members, and we send packages directly to the inmates who write to us, completely free of charge. We hope that the books we provide help increase access to education, and rehabilitate and empower incarcerated individuals. Although many of the inmates are indigent, they repay us in numerous ways. Each year we have an art show to showcase the amazing work sent to us by inmates across the United States. We have received hundreds of beautiful artworks, along with poetry and stories about their lives inside the prison system. This exhibition allows the public to learn more about both our organization and about the prison-industrial complex. Our goal is to help better educate both inmates and the general public. We would greatly appreciate any support you can provide. We are always looking for donations, books, and volunteers. We meet every Wednesday from 12-2 pm and Thursday from 5-7 pm in the workroom directly above the General Store and the UCSD Bike Shop, on the second floor of the Original Student Center.
All of our members volunteer their time to read letters, write responses, collect donated books, file books, wrap packages of books, and mail the packages to the inmates. Each year we have an influx of new volunteers interested in helping fulfill the huge need that exists. We have also partnered with multiple other UCSD student organizations, such as Alternative Breaks and the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity. Please join us! Please also keep an eye out for information about the annual Books for Prisoners Art Show, which will be held in the Spring!
Note from the Editor: Special thanks to Books for Prisoners at UCSD for sending us inmates’ artwork! Extra special thanks to those talented inmates featured on this page.
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
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A COLLECTION OF WRITINGS Ellen Zacarias
What Are You? One day in pre-school, while we were busy fitting our heads into flimsy, red firefighter helmets, I proudly told a classmate named Cheyenne that I was Snow White. “You’re not Snow White!” said Cheyenne. “You’re Chinese.” She flipped her long, brown hair over her brown shoulders and then we went on to play firefighters. Still enamored with the Disney movie, I continued to secretly fantasize about being Snow White, until my family moved from Sacramento to San Diego when I was in second grade. Imperial Beach was a predominantly Hispanic community, with some Caucasians. The first question my classmates asked me was, “What are you?” I said I was Chinese, and soon enough, my nickname became “Chinese Girl.” Most of the girls in my class followed a girl named Alexa, a slender, blond girl. She didn’t let me join her group because I was Chinese and therefore “not cool.” I ended up playing tag and “Texas Ranger” with a couple of boys in the class—a white boy named Jason, and a black boy named Rodney. Eventually, I befriended others, de-friended others, and found myself in middle school with a group of friends. My middle school was still predominantly Mexican and Caucasian, but there was a significant minority of Filipinos. Still, the question of “What are you?” never stopped being asked. There were bullies who were looking for an easy target. My friends in middle school weren’t really aggressive and were outcasts themselves, so they couldn’t really help me. The bullies commented on my “ugly slanted eyes” and stretched their own eyes until the pink insides of their eyelids popped out. Talking to teachers didn’t solve anything, because there was always another bully. And another one. And no matter what I said in return, their voices were louder. And the rest just stood by and watched. Most people were just curious and fascinated. They continued to ask me what I “was,” whether they were grownups, kids, or teachers. I tried to answer their questions at first, but then the next day three other people would ask the same question. Because they saw my flat nose, broad cheeks, and most of all, slanted eyes, they continued to poke and prod me with the questions and comments about my background: What are you? A human. No, I mean, what ARE you? What’s your nationality? Where are your parents from? Ooh! Tell us how to say this! How do you say ‘I love you?’ What do you eat? Uh, no, I’m not racist, I have a black friend and…and a Chinese friend. So, your people make good cars, huh? What do you speak? I can speak Chinese too--koniiichiwa! What are you? What are you? What are you? Does it matter? These questions lessened in frequency as I went through high school, and I was truly grateful for that respite. I was pleased when my ethnicity didn’t become a conversation topic until the second or third time we talked, or until it became actually relevant, because it signified that they were more interested in me as a person than my background. At that point, I was glad to pour out the rich, red, cultural details of my background, the traditions, the language, the food—anything they desired to know. One day during high school, I was walking home when a teenaged girl, accompanied by a man and his kid, asked to use my cell phone. My parents hadn’t bought me a cell phone yet, so I told her I was sorry, I didn’t have one, and kept walking. From the corner of my eye, I watched her walk back to the man and the kid and say loudly, “She’s lying.” At that point, the kid, who was about seven or eight, began to scream, “GO BACK TO KOREA YOU CHINKY BITCH!” I stopped in my tracks. My blood boiled. I slammed my textbooks to the ground. We were in front of Baskin Robbins.
I don’t even remember what I yelled back at the kid, but I was so bitter that I screamed at the top of my lungs and threw a rock at him. He ran behind his dad and continued to scream racist profanities, mocking my language, my eyes, my skin, my motherland, and a land my mother didn’t even come from. “Ching chong chong chong,” he taunted, stretching his eyes to the point of snapping skin. All through this, the father was just looking at us, making no movement but to block the rock from hitting his kid. Seething, I turned around to gather books, and glanced through the window of Baskin Robbins to find people facing me, watching. Defiantly, using the full force of my rage, I glared at them, making every effort to make eye contact. Most of them averted their eyes and turned their faces away. But I knew they were still looking. From the corner of their eyes. To see what this crazy Chinese girl would do next. I walked past, continuing my way home, as the boy continued to sing tunes that his father had taught him. I became very defensive whenever anyone asked me what I “was” as their first question. It was a very unoriginal ice breaker, I thought. Too easy. Eventually, the stabbing pain in my chest dulled, and I eventually opened up again, a little. I had strongly wished for a world that didn’t have to categorize people by color, a world that focused on the similarities between people instead of their differences. After a while, I began to accept that there were some cultural differences between people of different backgrounds, and it was okay to acknowledge them as long as it was done without hatred or ignorance. The question still bothered me. Years later, the neighbors’ children start singing a stereotypically Chinese tune whenever I walk by. I don’t scream at the top of my lungs, I don’t yell. Sometimes I ask them what’s wrong with them. That quiets them down for a few days. But every time this happens, I come into the house, seething. My husband’s smiling, he opens his arms to embrace me, then sees my face, and falters, knowing what’s about to come. I ask him where they get this stuff, the mockery of the language, eyes, how they learned to identify what was Asian and what was not. He says they got it from their parents. I talk about how young they are. He asks me why I get so angry still. I tell him he doesn’t understand, and never will. Despite his citizenship status, he grew up among others who looked like him and spoke the same languages as he did. He blended in, and never had to explain why he looked the way he did. People just assumed and never asked questions about what he “was.” Until one day we go to Coronado, which is a part of San Diego with a naval base. Lots of Caucasians live here. Walking down Orange Avenue with its touristy shops, we are surrounded by mostly upper-middle class whites. He walks stiffly. I would grab his elbow, and kiss his cheek, and he would reciprocate the kiss with a paralyzed face. At the restaurant, he repeatedly wipes his face with a napkin. Later that night, in bed, I ask him what was wrong. He says he felt brown and Mexican, that he felt like people were staring at him. Then he pauses. He looks at me, thinking. Then, resting his cheek on my shoulder, he says, “I’m so glad I didn’t ask you what you were.” “Me too,” I reply. “You’d hate me.” “Mmhmm.”
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
uc san diego
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That Pretentious Motherfucker That son of a bitch sitting over there in his little sister’s jeans is a pretentious motherfucker who looks like every fucking art major I’ve met here. Probably some pampered asshole with two middle-classed parents who still doesn’t know what the fuck he wants to do and yet is rich enough to blow several tens of thousands of motherfucking bucks to find his “calling.” I bet he spent his first two years as undeclared major until he figured that holding your cock in your hand and spraying a canvas with your student-grade, diluted Titanium White qualified as a piece of modern art, just as long as you could explain it with some bullshit like how the dripping sperm material represents the declining fertility in nations of the developed fucking world. Yay, Mom and Dad, he’d tell his parents, I’m a motherfucking ARTIST! Well, isn’t that just nice, Benny-boy, his parents would say. I’m so proud of you. Why don’t we hang this on the fucking refrigerator and show Granny the vivid colors in your sperm. I mixed it with Kool-Aid, Mommy, he’d say proudly. I’m fucking surprised he isn’t doing this shit in some café. I swear, if I see any other pretentious bastard
Double Eyelids
When she was thirteen, she wore double-eyelid tape to Chinese school. Not to American school, because none of her Mexican friends would notice if she had a crease a few millimeters above her lashes. But her classmates, who watched the same Taiwanese soap operas with wide-eyed actresses, noticed. Her parents drove her out of town to Chinese school on Sundays from 9 in the morning to noon, so she would wake up early to wash her face and peel back the crescent-shaped tape with tweezers before attaching them to where her crease was supposed to be. The sharp corners of the crescent-shaped tape hurt, but they formed the crease that made her eyes look rounder and bigger. The tape was supposed to be transparent but it did look lighter than the rest of her eyelid skin, so she used makeup to conceal the tape. She had heard that a girl wore double-eyelid tape religiously every day and night for three years, and after that she had permanent, surgery-free double-eyelids. Adjusting and re-adjusting the tape usually took her about forty-five minutes in the bathroom because sometimes her lid would collapse over the tape and the tape would pop out, so she would have to fix it. Today wasn’t Sunday, though. Today was Saturday, and her dad was driving her to Anna’s house. She and Anna were going to try out the double-eyelid glue, which Anna’s mom, Mrs. Chen, had ordered from Japan. Unlike Anna, who had creaseless, single-eyelids, Mrs. Chen had large, round eyes with a strong, defined crease. “Sometimes people say I look half Western,” the porcelain-skinned woman simpered as she pulled out her beauty equipment, which consisted of false eyelashes, mascara, and double-eyelid tape. “But I’m one-hundred percent Chinese!” She had a crease already, but sometimes she would use tape anyway to make “triple eyelids.” They began the beautification process. Anna let her go first, so she sat in the chair by the mirror as Anna’s mom pulled out the bottle of eyelid glue and a fork-like object. “Uh, what’s that?” she asked, pointing at the pink, plastic, two-pronged fork. “Oh! I am going to create your eyelid with this!” replied Mrs. Chen. She watched their reflections with one eye as Mrs. Chen opened the bottle of eyelid glue and began to swipe glue over her lid with the applicator. Then she took the pink, two-pronged fork and stabbed her eyelid in an upward motion, adding pressure as she jammed the prongs deep between her eyeball and socket. It stung as Mrs. Chen held the fork in its place and waited. Then, she pulled the fork out and told her to look at her reflection. She saw her reflection. One eye, with the glue, was round, alert, and fully-formed. The other was still un-creased and flat. “Wow,” breathed Anna. “It looks way more natural than the tape.” “Beautiful,” said Mrs. Chen. “Sit.” She pushed the girl back into the seat. “Now let’s create your other eyelid.” With a flick of the wrist and a flourish of an applicator wand, she began the process of swiping glue, eyelidstabbing, and pressing. Thus the second crease was born. The girl beheld her round eyes in the mirror with wonder. This was how she wanted to
doing art or going over their “literary” manuscript I am going to march on over, tear the fucking paper from their hands and rip it into a million little fucking pieces. Go write a whiney memoir about that. See if Oprah’ll humor your hurt feelings until she realizes that seventy-five percent of your memoir was total bullshit. The fat guy to the left of Mr. Pretentious Asshole is picking up his stuff. He looks sweaty for some fucking reason—oh, fuck! Did he just fart? God, that smells fucking bad. What the fuck is up with this school?! A girl just sat down and she’s sniffing as if she likes the fart. I look at Mr. PA. He looks back at me, wrinkling his nose. I take a peek at what he’s working on. He’s been sketching the people around the table this entire time, and there I am! I look like one sexy motherfucking beast sitting with my legs wide apart as if to beckon, Come hither, baby. I could jizz on that drawing. If there’s an erection, well, I have a throbbing artrection here, ready to create my own little masterpiece. Call it No. 6, made in the year of twothousand-fucking-eleven. Fuck yes. Hell yes. Maybe this guy isn’t such a bad artist after all.
look like all the time, the eyes she wished she had been born with. She looked awake, no longer sleepy- or droopy-eyed. She stood up. Anna hopped into the chair behind her and hugged her knees, beaming with excitement. She watched as Mrs. Chen thrust a fork into her daughter’s eyelid. Anna’s eyeball looked like it was going to burst. But when her mother removed the fork, her eyes were beautifully round and big. She looked every bit her mother’s daughter, aside from her remaining un-creased eyelid. Porcelain skin, long, slender legs with a chubby mid-section, they looked like sisters. As Mrs. Chen worked on Anna’s second eyelid, the girl felt a strange, heavy sensation in her right eyelid. It gave way to a loosening of the glue that had propped her crease up. She looked at the mirror. Oh no, she thought. The glue had weakened. She told Mrs. Chen about it. Mrs. Chen finished Anna’s eyelid, and while Anna admired herself in the mirror, her mother re-did her eyelid. Five minutes later, the crease became undone once more. Mrs. Chen sighed. The girl sighed too, and looked at her malfunctioning eyelid with despair. She asked Mrs. Chen if there was a stronger glue. Mrs. Chen shook her head sadly. “No, there isn’t,” she said. “I would recommend an operation.” Eyelid surgeries were not uncommon amongst her parents’ friends and their children. She had suspected such from girls who hid photographs before a certain age from public. “Oh, I was an ugly child,” they’d say sheepishly, blinking their eyes. Anna’s glued eyelids stayed on perfectly. Anna looked at the girl and her one artificially big eye. “You still have eyelid tape,” she said sympathetically. “That’s always worked for you, right?” That night, the girl pulled out a bottle of Nexcare liquid bandage from her parents’ medicine cabinet. That stuff worked like a layer of glue that coated the broken skin. It looked strong. Beneath the fluorescent light, she coated her eyelid with the liquid bandage and sank a toothpick into her eyelid. She felt her eyeball moving around beneath the skin. She waited a few seconds and pulled out the toothpick. The eyelid was fully formed, and the glue felt strong. It felt as if it would never relinquish grip on her eyelids. She applied the liquid bandage to her other eye and shoved the toothpick in, going back and forth to form a deep crease. She looked at herself in the mirror and twirled quietly around the bathroom, batting her eyes at the mirror. Her eyes looked so much more expressive, so much wider, more like those she saw around herself every day and less like the eyes that disappeared every Sunday between 9 and noon. Then the burning began. Something in the liquid bandages—antiseptic?—began to burn. It started with a cooling sensation, like that of blowing on rubbing alcohol as it evaporates from your skin, but escalated into a tingling, burning sensation as if she had doused her eyes with Sriracha sauce. She turned on the faucet and rinsed her eyes. She felt the sticky glue slowly, painfully rub off from her eyelids. The burning sensation continued for hours until she fell asleep with pink, puffy eyelids.
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
Reflections of a stressed out Senior. Remembering why I do In my home, nunca faltaba nada. comida en la mesa, clothes on my back.
I realize now that I would’ve saved a lot of time and suffering, if I simply tried on the small, and not the extra small...
mother breadwinner, brought the benefits of a liberative household. little to no restrictions to what I can do...somewhat so long as I didntdidn’t step out of bounds, where I could make my parents look bad.
but I was confused! convinced that I needed to disappear it’s like my eyes weren’t my own, controlled by something and someone else aside from distorting my reflection, it distorted so much more.
“no ma, I’m not going to be the only girl there”
there was no remedy for this in my mom’s cabinet. no eye drops of truth “si pa, ya hablé con la mama de maria, esta de acuerdo, llegare- no pill of consciousness mos antes de las once” no dose of empowerment In my home nunca faltaba nada es lo que me decía mi apa.
in my home mental and emotional health was never a topic of discussion it wasn’t even perceived as a matter of health
and he made sure to remind me, in any tantrum I threw growing up. That I had it all. it was more a matter of...attitude and our own merit. That I had clothes on my back, a roof over my head, food to eat, internet. tv, books, a backyard, water, toys. I had my health, and the means to protect it, aid it, if I needed too.
so there was no one to talk to but I wasn’t the only one with an attitude problem I knew my older and younger sister had it too. and we knew that mom had it too, but we would never tell her.
You see... my mom’s a nurse. For as long as I can remember we have always had our own mini-pharmacy at our reach the normal size of any cabinet, that seemed to have the remedies to whatever you needed! you name it! It answered only to the touch and attention of the magical hands of my mother. In her magic wardrobe of potions and spells
my older sister’s attitude problem was so bad, that she left home.
It and she cured everything any rashes, swollen bruises, itchy throats, irritation in the eyes, or ANY part of our epidermis. Headaches, ear aches, heart ache…. as in... Heartburn. No complaint was EVER an exaggeration to her, every and any plea of pain we demonstrated, she was always to our rescue. No boo-boo, or co-co, was ever insignificant!
a part of me agreed with my parents. I too was convinced that she didn’t have a reason to leave. that it was irrational. it must be that attitude problem…
We never missed a doctors, dentist, or optometrist appointment.
some parts that only my eyes saw…but was sworn to secrecy like the time I was awakened late one night, by what sounded like sobbing, I found my sister crying, cutting into her flesh in the restroom blood rushing down her wrists, down her legs
Her methods were always in tensions with my grandmothers of course, you can only imagine.
I was 12, she had just turned 18 why she left apparently didn’t matter, my mom and dad never spoke about it. the most they would say was “mala agradecida, todo lo tenía aquí.”
But I didn’t let my parents know that, I defended her. I knew that there were too many missing parts of the story.
my reaction...was only to take out the first aid kit and some What my mother seeked to aid with medications, strict orders of towels rest, and plenty of fluid, all I understood was that her flesh was wounded. my grandmothers insisted to treat our conditions whatever they seeing her tears, I had no immediate concerns. or even quesbe...with pomada, té de yerba buena, and a prayer or two. tions. Different culture, lifestyles, values, and generational gaps waswere the core to many misunderstandings between the womyn that raised me. but regardless of the contrasting visions, mi salud, my physical health was always put first. todo lo tenía. nada me faltaba no reason to complain but of course….. i wanted to complain! especially when puberty hit so uncomfortable in my own skin all levels of confidence vanished I was losing imagination, I was no longer measuring the size of my dreams, instead I measured my weight, the size of my waist. I was so disappointed, in things that just didntdidn’t matter! I would cry because my clothes didn’t fit anymore
or the times I’d see her fight with her girlfriend. and the times I’d see the way people looked at them, mocked them. piercing stares that I knew weren’t directly toward me, but I, scared and intimidated, would hide behind my big sister. And she would tell me “Don’t worry. Don’t be scared...those people just have attitude problems too.”
- Angelica Perez note from writer: I am still in the process of reflecting on my foundations, it’s no surprise that I find my traumas there as well. It is the reason I am who I am. The reason I strive to let myself speak, hear my voice and truth, and the reason I strive to provide the space for others, for my students. Their mental and emotional wellbeing is more important than any grade or number. Being in this institution, I have to constantly remind myself of it too.
uc san diego
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
Juggling Switchblades and Heartstrings There is plenty for me to say. But I will do the one thing that is most difficult for me, be direct. In all my words and the creation of lyrics and spoken words I still can’t find the way to tell you that I am afraid to like you. These emotions I have tried to process and allow to pass through me like a waterfall into the ocean itself have only filled that ocean with emotion. There are things that I will not understand when it comes to trying to approach this properly, and that has been the biggest reason just under fear of pushing you away that I have not told you. If by whatever reason or excuse I have let this go to where it has taken me, well I can’t be more real when I say that I would prefer to be in the dark with my comfortable ideas of letting you be the light. The heartbeat I lost is within the best you have now. I know that I can’t find it the way that I would like to, but I will have to be ok with allowing it to take the course it must. Forgive me for the lies and deception if it appears that way. I just want to be real with you now face to face rather than let even the realness of a rejection go. So this is for you to ponder and hopefully use in some way, shape, or form. But really the only way for me to heal is not to try and feel this one out, but to dive right into the deep end of insecurity.
Signed Someone learning to be real I am not a Literary Mind Because my Mind is not Literally mine Tyler Lindow I am not a literary mind because my mind is not literally mine. I have always been more of the guy to play with logic. Around my mind it works like clockwork, like time. Yet I am not very fond of the technical - I’m really more curious in the general line. Because when I start to make streaks within a canvas I realize that I am still constrained within the boundary I am given. Constrained within the era I live in. This is the time where math, science, and sense rule not only our cents, but our common-sense - A distortion of our own design. Our energy is devoted to produce more energy only so that we can become more tense. Is that even what we meant? The only energy that I feel is efficient is the energy that radiates from my soul. Just because I can solve 42 times 59 while I lay back and pop some soda lemon lime does not mean I am filling the “right” role. What is right for me may not be what is right for society. Neither is me with a hipster fitting beanie. We just don’t fit. So hear me out with the rest of these sounds, because right here I am not trying to break new bounds, I am just trying to understand myself and where I really sit.
La quinta letra
Bryan Constantino Amalgamación de sabores amargos y dulces Lo amargo lo detesto y en lo dulce no confió Desarraigo seguro, comunidades en peligro Soy analfabeto pero sé contarle las patas al perro Tu bolsillo de lana verde y el mío de maracas El tuyo acogedor y el mío de frijol Con la quinta letra acabas con diabetes y sin ella en peligro
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
TOUCH
Bitch. Its like a part of me~ Was just In it for me I didn’t care about kyle and the possibility of not treating him human was just to easy Seductive Kyle was my bottom and I meant to use and manipulate it out of him Power? Maybe not to the extreme but such an extreme disregard I held towards him Was I selfish or not self(ish) Why do I meet you with such disdain Dislike for your character I have no one to blame but me And you So weak Am I playing on my prey Preying I need to pray You cant put so much into relationships Insignificant and incomplete
In between touches The numbness seeps Touch and reverberations of why I don’t feel complete Connection in this moment with you Tainted Its not how it used to be But was it ever something sweet? The bruises on my body My only trophies You marked me without regret A canvas for y(our) pain Inflicted with little thought disdain I am a body to you Colored bronze against your white skin I excite you Entice you Encite wonder in you My beauty is to be won by you Well Fuck You I am no prize
I am a womyn Struggling to win myself over~*
But damn the sex was good The best head ive ever gotten Clit tongue and throbbing Satisfaction
If there is a contest It is one of compromise
How much of me am I willing to sacrifice to stay with you Oh the way he pulsated his tongue and ran along the inside of my grooves In this bed Each nook and cranny explored And salivated With each touch I pay the price On salivating wings He made me mmm With each touch it is I who must sacrifice Push in and out jerking myself off I couldnt help but run He said “don’t get what you want confused with what you Wet and shaky need He was a bitch too To think you can have both is a type of psychosis” Well darling, I choose disorder. I choose desire. Fuck this reality that you have created and this insanity that you have imposed upon me With each touch I lose a little piece of me -Amanda Kay Mannshahia
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
It’s a Good Thing That Looks Don’t Kill Jeannette Perez It’s a good thing that looks don’t kill.. because if they did, I would have died at the age of 5, unable to make it to the age of 12 when my mother’s hatred filled soul left battle wounds on my back that mirrored those in my heart. It’s a good thing that looks don’t kill, cause if they did, I wouldn’t have made it to the age of 14, standing in front of my mother, like Neo in Matrix, dogging ever word that came out of her mouth, like bullets filled with hate that left wholes in my self esteem. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t have made it to the age of 16, when I lost consciousness for 2 minutes, because my ex lover decided to pick hate out of a box of emotions, lace it on his fingers, and wrap them around my neck all because I refused to be stepped on. It’s a good thing that looks don’t kill, because if they did, I would have never found myself in a deserted room with newly sharpened razors and an empty bottle of vodka, dripping it’s remaining contents and the rest of my 18 years of sanity to go with it. It’s a good thing that looks don’t kill, because if they did, I wouldn’t have made it this far. I would have died with my innocence still in tact, never knowing the emotions of hate and sorrow. Never experiencing what it’s like to be the daughter of a Mexican Catholic raised mother with a border line personality. Never experiencing the grip of a man’s hand, while knowing that this was never where you intended to be. Never feeling the lose of breathe, not once but twice, in your life time. But more importantly, after being God’s twisted puppet for 19 (long, hard ass fucking) years...I wouldn’t have ever meet you. The person that lifted me off the ground, shook the dust off my back, and filled my heart with love and compassion. I wouldn’t have ever experienced the touch of your hand that stroked my back, during those long nights when the Sandman forgot about me. I woulnd’t have ever known the smell of your ever so delicate perfume that left traces of you on my sheets and in between the curves of my mind. I wouldn’t have ever heard you whisper back those three words between kisses and tears after a month long fight between our heads and our hearts. I wouldn’t have looked into those beautiful brown eyes and know what it’s like to be home. Know what it’s like to be loved and love in return... “Tu eres mi otro yo”
C O M I C
S T R I P
I’m a Feminist and I wear Mascara Carley Towne I guess I’ve always been a feminist. I used to chastise my PE teachers for calling them “girl” pushups and roundly rejected resorting to them, even though my weak arms could barely hold myself up (but, really, how could adults justify using gendered rhetoric to a bunch of impressionable 12 year olds?). I very clearly remember in sixth grade pointedly asking a particularly well put together classmate how long it took her to get ready in the morning and self-righteously scoffing at her reply. Today, countless feminist rants and BITCH magazines later, I have become my 12 year old self’s worst enemy: I wear makeup. I grew up in a household that harbored a certain amount of animosity towards makeup and the makeup industry. My mom would level harsh and warranted critiques at beauty standards imposed on women while explaining that it would take too much of her time and energy to ever break into the make-up wearing business. I’ve always admired my mom’s hands-off policy and, until recently, followed in her footsteps. In middle school and high school, going natural felt like one of the most rebellious things I could do. I saw girls that spent inordinate amounts of time painting their faces and felt morally superior because I spent the extra time in the morning sleeping in. I think my sans makeup self was trying to reconcile the immense pressure girls that age were put under in order to look presentable to society with her own outward appearance, which looked almost nothing like the teen magazines and TV shows that bombarded her every day. I thought if I put enough distance between what I looked like
and beauty magazines, I wouldn’t care what they said. Unfortunately, the beauty industry’s message is ubiquitous and framing my appearance as the antithesis of their expectations gave the industry much more power over me then I’d hoped. I’m in my third year of college now and only recently learned the actual difference between mascara and eyeliner. I haven’t stopped being a feminist, I have expanded my understanding of the world. One of the greatest attributes of feminism as a movement and lifestyle is the constant opportunity for open dialogue. Before feminism, I saw makeup through one very damaging lens. Now I can enjoy it as a tool for self-expression; instead of using my appearance to work against the harmful images that saturate the media I try to express my own style. The beauty industry’s main goal is to make women feel like they need make up to have any kind of self-worth. I’ve lived the vast majority of my life without it, content. I come to make up with an abundance of curiosity and, some days, go without. In the grand scheme of the feminist movement, debating make-up use can seem trivial- and I concede there are much more important issues-but I think it speaks to a larger theme that feminism embraces. Women should be free to express themselves as they see fit, rejecting makeup and ridiculing women who wear it because it’s part of a problematic industry doesn’t advance the feminist movement. You can be a feminist and wear make-up, too.
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
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Why am I hungry at this hour? 2:57 in the morning and there is nothing that I crave It’s an emptiness settling inside the pit of my stomach. Nothing seems to satisfy this appetite.
Hunger for Something Sylvia
Could I need that soup for the soul? Or mi caldo de pollo?? Better yet get me some vapo roo, esprite and some crackers. Find me a home remedy that can cure an empty stomach that spews nothing but internalized frustrations, lashing out and leaving scars on people. Do I care or do I not? If I didn’t care then I wouldn’t be addressing the issue present, yet this hunger pain growing within keeps hurting..and hurting as time goes… On and on I constantly think about that one time that I was at peace with myself. Was it a dream or was it the death of me that caused me to reflect upon my life, my reality. And as I am going through it, I am slowly realizing that I am re-living in my dreams as my body is laid to rest. Explaining this emptiness inside, the coldness of my hands, the desperation of my soul to feel the sun again. This hunger for the sun, to breathe again; to feel again, let me shine, be free, cure this pain and be liberated from my own body as it deteriorates me. Find me a home remedy that cures the emptiness inside, that cures a wounded soul. Love is key they say; but I show love differently, in that I love to live for me and that’s all, rather than loving to live. As I near the end of my dream I realize I can feel again, i am conscious of what is around me, the defibrillator brings me back to life. No hollow pain & me learning to love life..
Untitled Liza
Some mornings I wake up My body aches to be owned Owned with passion and conviction Declaring its worth Some mornings I crave to adorn my skin And paint my sacred canvas For a temple is meant to be glorified And if I can’t stand in awe of and claim The tapestries and chandeliers as my own How can I worship here? Some mornings I wake up desiring to smash the windows To throw stones through the sacred blue-green lenses Just to see the cracks Some mornings I wake up And my body is a prison And though some walls are penetrable The veins of the system keep me trapped inside The light seeping through the windows tortures me Its warmth mocking my coldness Burning my eyes Some mornings I wake up hollow The echo of my heartbeat
In a prayerless temple A beat of solitude with no audience Some mornings I wake up to a symphony A lilting melody evolving Into an indiscernible cacophony In which my own prayers are lost Some mornings I wake up in a blissful calm The high beams of the sanctuary Basking in the orange sunrise Peeking through the blue-green stained glass windows Splashing colors on the oak walls The art of the soul The temple is my medium My soul the artist Each sunrise anew A new painting on the walls Some mornings I wake up and my temple is my savior Some mornings I wake up and I am its prisoner But I won’t know Until the sunrise
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
uc san diego
MONSTER: ME< MY >MONSTER Submissions from ETHN115
It is hard to claim that my moster is monsterous of them all, but it might just be my reality. My monster is something that resides within me. It lived and thrived as I progressed in my life. Our learnings and experiences were the same, yet are responses miles apart. I grew up in a family where we spoke a different language, but my parents sent me to an “English” school. Where I earned english, true, but British. I came here, sounding different, spelling different, pronouncing different, looking different, also the religion. From a majority, I became a minority, “normal” to “abnormal.” It was a time where I was working hard, physically and emotionally, but my monster was growing strong. Stronger than myself. After taking Professor Wayne’s class I realized what a monster I had already become. Now begins a long journey to dewaponize the monster and empower myself. Healing. No—I am not my monster!
-Syed Hasan
My Own Monster Armando Ruiz A gun shot, a wound, a scream! Someone is on the ground, who dares to dream A dream that you can no longer be woken up from He was shot, and is down on the ground like a drunken bum At the end his body turns into crumbs Change and hunger is my inspiration, a monster A monster that hunts me out of the ghetto for the betterment of self , as its is trying to conquer An educated man, feared by self Hungry for knowledge, and a dream And doesn’t worry about his health A dream that is imposed by this monster Self-failure is what it seems To appear in every dream, but who dares to dream When I control self, so the real question is who is this monster? This monster is me
Aman (JAI MA KALI) Amanda Kay Mannshahia Aman means peace. My other name given by the ones who bore me. No one raised but reared the monster. Devi worship Intrinsic to our culture, to a forgotten past. My soul has been there. Recognizable often in my dreams, lucid. Inner-family politics, the first stage of the monster. Societies first intervention into its being~whispers cre e p s and unspoken policing. Jab pyaar kiyaa to darnaa kyaa when loved then why be afraid Pyaar kiyaa koi chori nahin ki have loved, not stolen any thing Pyaar kiyaa 1
Kali standing on top of shiva
have loved She is Ma Kali. Jai Ma Kali. The goddess of time, destruction and change. With ten arms and hands Mahakali brings us back to the womb enticing us seducing us She is creation. Kāli’s association with darkness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, who manifested after her in creation, and who symbolises the rest of creation after Time is created.2 Kali is movement. An eternal flow of forbidden and forcefully forgotten memories. A black out or more like a black hole. Sucking up time and space, a fissure in reality. Kali is the reckoning. Kali is the prefix. Ever-present. She is the cosmos. But how can such a celestial essence come to be trapped in a body. In a mere physical form? However, Kali’s body only serves as a vessel. As the embodiment of pent up energies festering and bubbling over. Kali is pre-destined. Durga Parvati. Great goddess of power, creation, and victory of good over evil. Hinduisms fondness for reincarnation provides Kali with multiple forms. Parvati is the mothering form, with all other goddesses being her incarnation or manifestation. Kali is in all of us. Anaïs Nin thinks so, too. “I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.” So my story is of how I found my inner Kali. My inner darkness. But. It is forbidden. It is incomplete. I have built the foundations for this tale. Teased you. Set you up. Gave you just a taste and now I will leave you. On salivating wings. Ready to take flight and face an absence. An absence of stories. So what now? To create or destroy or to create through destruction? 1 Excerpt from the song Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya feautured in the 1960 film Mughal-E-Azaam (The Emporer of the Mughals.) 2 From the Wikipedia entrance of Kali under the section Etymology. Signifies how the feminine is related to stagnancy or an utter stop of time. Not relevant or found in the history.
volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
14 The problem of Access: in the Absolute Present, continuous, outside of Time met a verse she screamed walking past by—
And the man sitting outside whole foods is ranting and raving at every passers-by, “I’ll kill you, emotionally,” Mom, I hope one day I’m never like you, I hope I die before you do, I— This sitarist is pissed no one knows what he feels when he looks at you with a smile that says are you feeling what I’m feeling right now. Then suddenly under the moon my consciousness changed, and there was you, yousweet you’re meant to be hallelujah on my feet
My feet are tense and troubled
My feet are My feet are My feet are hairy and flexed and dirty with wild veiny mud and disgust, and they aren’t very happy, just based and wasted.
Like mother love their gradual unfolding is shaped by constraints; experience-determined. but science is catching up with spirituality, they are! slowly coming to the same conclusion, at least! that is, reaching the same conclusions that spirituality reached outside-of-time ago, so—
I’m gasping for air; I’m gaping and bare,
I was spreading jelly on my sandwich and I broke down and cried. There’s you and me, out by a backalley dumpster in Hillcrest, drinking four loko from a gatorade bottle and discussing how to effect radical change in this lifetime. -Adam Netanel
uc san diego
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
Brianna Bradley It’s his body I want to conquer Twice -- coming by sea I want to taste his salted skin mimicking the water sampling the shore and undulating up his body in vibrations only to recede into myself Seduced into a rhythmic understanding Our bodies in conversation An incoherent melodic noise Decipherable only by salted water and sand
It’s not quite the end of the road...
Hope Czbas Dear Mr. Anonymous
March 2, 2012
This is a note to inform you that Ive officially packed my bags. While emptying out all my old board games, Disney movies, and memories; I have filled it Full of your low self-esteem and my will to put up with your shit. Somewhere between the cross streets of What the fuck are you doing Rd. And Your better than that Ct. I lost my dignity and picked up the scum that been scraping across the bottom of my shoe since I left, myself. Who are you? And who am I to put you on a pedestal. 5”7 but when in ur presence, I shrink you to 4”8 and you become 6”11. I packed my suit case, and with you, we cross the bridge to Terabithia; In hope of landing somewhere amongst Oz and the sugar plums palace. Chutes and ladders, I shoot and you keep climbing higher up that d-a-m-n ladder. 4points, triple word score for managing to spell damn without highlighting the importance of m-a-n. Man, what you lack but I as a woman make up for. How you’ve achieved scrambling up the words that one typically finds in Webster’s, only to be discovered within the scrabble dictionary. Monopoly: Monopolize my heart, Buy my body, Sell my soul and collect 200 dollars as you pass go through my front door (vagina). Over the river and through the woods you go…No lions or tigers or bears cross your path. Clue me in as to how you plan for these ruby slippers to get me back to a place where I don’t even remember being in the first place. A packed suitcase and an empty wallet get me no farther than the pride lands. How dare he promise me a whole new world…how dare I believe him. A packed suitcase begins to deplete, as I dump out my endless dreams and childhood memories…how fast we angst to leave our own home. Only to find that the yellow brick road is not really yellow but beige, or lemon, or chrome colored and that the color of the sky is not only an adjective but a descriptive word for one’s emotions. A packed suitcase is nothing without truth!! How fast I aim to grow up, finding myself on the corner of Confusion St. and Regret Dr. when all this time, I was only in pursuit of happiness, no longer do I desire to reside in the outlands. Under the sea I drown and on land I am weak. Freeze tag this moment. Hide, no longer…I seek. I know the beanstalk is not what I need. I let go of the trolls under my bridge, while, Gepetto creates me new so I can live. Mr. anonymous, I write you to know that a packed suitcase full of nothing is the realest I’ve come to finding my own miracle. Jafar is no match for what my genie is able to grant me. Slowly, I learn to play patty cake with reality, and slide with life as I hopscotch my way across innuendos of desensitization. Spell check my syntax errors and download my minds pornography, for I’m done with abusive ever after’s. Once upon a time, There once was, A long time ago, A whiles back, however my fairy tale starts, it ends in a suitcase (p.s. I’m done with the b.s.) yours truly….
Note From the Co-Editor: Reflecting on this issue and the theme, I have never realized more the importance of the academy to tailor to our spiritual side. In my time here as a student at UCSD and as the Co-Editor of the Collective Voice I often struggle with ever oscillating emotions and a constant yearning to search for the intangible. That non physical realm of feeling that can work to keep us stuck within infinite cycles of trauma. There have been so many times that I have felt I should have learned a lesson by now or that certain pains should be kept in the past. But what I came to realize is that these trauma’s are often hauntings. Psycho-physical reminders that we have been tainted, but not broken. Like karmic tidings have told us so I beleive trauma definately does structure our lives. How we heal, how we love, how we hurt, how we survive. What I have come to realize is that despite my trauma’s, despite the heaviness of the pain and the burdens we are wearing, we are alive. And in this life happiness is a choice. It is often undesirable, I mean trajedy always makes for a better story, but it is real. It feels good. It sustains and retains us. So I want to thank you. Everyone who was real enough to share their stories of trauma and everyone who is willing enough to read this issue. But most of all I want to thank those who have helped me in my journey of discovering that I am not freeing my body from trauma but learning instead to return to my body. The body is a vessel and I have had many spiritual teachers here. So thank you. My friends, my lovers, my enemies and my inbetweens. I am eternally grateful. -Amanda Kay Mannshahia
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volume VIII, issue 2, Winter 2014
Community Announcements CO-EDITORS IN CHIEF
FYI: If you would like to see an ad for your club, event or etc. please email it to us at cveditors@gmail.com The Collective Voice is grounded in community collaboration and we would love to help bring attention to your cause.
Calling all readers! SPACES is accepting applications for the next Collective Voice Co-Editors-in-Chief! Applications due April 4th
Amanda Mannshahia Paola Perez
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Books for Prisoners Brianna Bradley Hope Czabas Bryan Constantino Syed Hasan Damneet Kaur Tyler Lindow Liza Amanda Kay Mannshahia Adam Netanel Jeanette Perez Angelica Perez Armando Ruiz Jason Soto Sylvia Carley Towne Ellen Zacarias
ARTISTS Kyle Trujillo
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We want freedom
We want social unity and equality for all people on campus
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We want to promote social awareness and combat social ignorance
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We want to unite student activists and students with progressive values and common struggles
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We want to educate others about ourstories and our true role in present-day society
The Collective Voice is a student-run, student-initi- Voicewillhelpcreateasenseofsafespaceandcommuated publication of UCSD’s SPACES, the Student Pro- nity for students who may otherwise feel unwelcome at UCSD’s challenging campus climate thereby conmoted Access Center for Education and Service. The mission of the Student Promoted Access Center tributing to existing retention efforts of campus. This for Education and Service (SPACES) is to act as an em- newspaperdeeplyvaluesstudents’voicesbyproviding powering dynamic on campus where UCSD students anoutletforopendialogueanddiscussionsurrounding issuesanddevelopmentsaffectingtheircommunities. collaboratetoachievegreatereducationalequity.This Additionally, The Collective Voice allows UCSD’s encompassesequalaccesstohighereducation,undergraduateretentionandgraduation,andmatriculation progressive community to outreach, collaborate and to graduate and professional schools. SPACES values communicate to the greater San Diego communities the power of student-initiated action and organizing outside of our campus. Most importantly, The CollectiveVoice,providesmarginalizedstudentsandunderby providing an environment for student growth and resourced students the empowering opportunity to developmentandthusisafoundationtocreateleaderprotect the representation of their identities and beship and unity through community engagement. liefs, and report alternative news that is not otherwise In line with SPACES’ mission of valuing “the power covered by mainstream media.The CollectiveVoice, in ofstudent-initiatedaction,”“provinganenvironmentfor partnership with SPACES, allows for the creation of“an studentgrowthanddevelopment,”andcreating“unity empowering dynamic where UCSD students collabothroughcommunityengagement,”TheCollectiveVoice ratetoachievegreatereducationalequity.”Itisthrough is UCSD’s progressive newspaper that promotes social this mission that the collective of diverse voices in one unity,justiceandawarenessacrossthemanycommuni- newspaper will actively demonstrate an empowering ties that exist on the UCSD campus. The Collective progressive community on the UCSD campus.
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We want educational equity and to empower under resourced communities
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We want to fight the rhetoric propagated by oppressive forces on campus
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We want our beliefs, practices, and ethics to be illustrated in a correct light
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We want peace. The ability to coexist on campus without fear of prejudice or persecution
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We want to be recognized as equal individuals despite and because of our ethnicity, religious affiliation, race, gender, or sexual orientation c v e d i to r s @ g ma i l . co m