The College Hill Independent Vol. 37 Issue 2 by College Hill Independent

NO ADS! 21 SEP 2018 VOL 37 ISSUE 02 A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY

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LOCAL!

FROM THE EDITORS COVER

Eve O'Shea

We’re one week in and feeling the pressure.

NEWS 02

Shiny Objects Roxanne Barnes & Sara Van Horn

Free the People Paula Pacheco Soto METRO

Blue Wave Baby Joshua Waldman

"My Favorite Bar is There" Colin Kent-Daggett FEATURES

Let Them Eat Cake Raina Wellman SCIENCE & TECH

Soft Wood Giacomo Sartorelli

Cryptocapitalism Galadriel BODY

Right Out the Oven Emerson Tenney

As Gatehouse media squeezes the ProJo dry and lays off reporters, the void of local news in Rhode Island is only growing larger. (It doesn’t help that their subscription office won’t pick up the phone). Adding insult to injury, RIFuture.org lost its third lodestar correspondent ( WW) and the fearless leftist publication of College Hill (East Side Monthly) is siding with the elite re: zoning. And if the kids in our Intro to Journalism class are any indication, there’s no end to our media misery in sight. At what point does faking it start to feel like making it? Or are we just faking it? Either way, we’re trying to stay current in a post-print world by interviewing state reps over text, creating a Mastodon account with two followers, and arming our paper boys with JUMP bike subscriptions. And even when the weather is bleak, our Rapid Weather Response Team (@theindy_tweets) is on the streets reporting like it’s the Hurricane of ’38. We’re hitting our stride, so keep on reading. We’ll give you Providence news, even if it’s a week late. - HA & EC

LITERARY 17

/rift/ Liam Carpenter-Urquhart

2+2=5 Anna White

MISSION STATEMENT The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/or classism.

EPHEMERA 14

A Grand Day Out Claire Schlaikjer & Nicole Cochary X

Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond.

As Fat As Butter GerdyBjörn

The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.

WEEK IN REVIEW Sara van Horn NEWS Mara Dolan Lucas Smolcic Larson Paula Pacheco Soto METRO Jacob Alabab-Moser Harry August Ella Comberg FEATURES Ruby Aiyo Gerber Tiara Sharma Wen Zhuang

ARTS Nora Gosselin Isabelle Rea Marianne Verrone

LIST Alexis Gordon Signe Swanson Will Weatherly

SCIENCE & TECH Mia Pattillo Julia Rock Eve Zelickson

WRITERS Ben Bienstock Mica Chau Jessica Dai Eduardo Gutierrez-Peña Liby Hays Jorge Palacios Giacomo Sartorelli Ivy Scott Alex Westfall Claribel Wu Kayli Wren

LITERARY Shuchi Agrawal Emma Kofman EPHEMERA Nicole Cochary Claire Schlaikjer

BODY Pia Mileaf-Patel Cate Turner

X Maya Bjornson Maria Gerdyman

VOL 37 ISSUE 02

21 SEP 2018

COPY EDITORS Grace Berg Seamus Flynn Miles Guggenheim Matt Ishimaru Hannah Ngo Sasha Ramen ILLUSTRATORS Natasha Brennan Natasha Boyko Julia Illana Jeff Katz Halle Krieger Katya Labowe-Stroll Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Rémy Poisson Katherine Sang Mariel Solomon Ella Rosenblatt Miranda Villanueva

ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Alex Hanesworth Eve O'Shea DESIGNERS Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana Bethany Hung Amos Jackson Katherine Sang Ella Rosenblatt DESIGN EDITOR Jack Halten Fahnestock BUSINESS Maria Gonzalez WEB Ashley Kim

THEINDY.ORG

SENIOR EDITORS Eliza Chen Katrina Northrop Signe Swanson Will Weatherly MANAGING EDITORS Olivia Kan-Sperling Chris Packs Erin West MVP Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WEEK IN SHINY OBJECTS BY Roxanne Barnes, Sara Van Horn ILLUSTRATION Carly Paul DESIGN Bethany Hung

SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW Just over 13 years ago, a pair of iconic ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz was swiped from a Minnesota museum in Judy Garland’s hometown. For the past decade, the quest for the red shoes with magical transport abilities has proven fruitless. But this past week, to the delight of film and footwear enthusiasts alike, FBI investigators revealed that they had located the missing slippers. At a press conference announcing the return, the shoes were concealed under a black velvet curtain, one we were actually meant to look behind this time. FBI Agent-In-Charge Jill Sanborn stated, with some apparent excitement, “Under the Rainbow,” and with a flourish revealed the long lost icon of American film. Whether she got the quote wrong on purpose, or whether it was an intentional play on the fact that the shoes were hidden in the dark all this time, the FBI has yet to clarify. The FBI also hasn’t yet released any details about the culprit, who is still being pursued, because the shoes were recovered in a sting operation not involving the original thief. Some believe they were swiped by initial owner, Michael Shaw, who collected a handsome insurance. Others think it could have been a crime of prejudice, considering Judy Garland’s cultish embrace by gay fans of the campy film. As valuable as these slippers are to Dorothy–– snatched from a squished witch and gifted to her by a good one––their value in our world has grown to match. Experts believe the shoes may be worth up to three million dollars today. Pilfered from a Warner Brothers’ set, the shoes were purchased by Shaw, who had been hired in the 1980s to help the actress Debbie Reynolds, set up a Hollywood Memorabilia Museum. After their purchase, however, Shaw had a change of heart and kept the slippers, loaning them to the Grand Rapids museum. In 2005, the box containing the slippers was smashed and the shoes disappeared. No alarms were

triggered, and no evidence or fingerprints were left behind. Unlike the museum’s other valuable items, the shoes hadn’t been locked in a safe at night where they might have been safer than just a glass box in the open. Aware of the shoes’ value, Shaw wouldn’t permit anyone besides himself to handle them, and, perhaps a bit smitten with the idea of the shoes being in Judy Garland’s actual hometown, was unaware that the shoes were totally vulnerable to all the lions, tigers, bears, and oh mys that might want to possess the highly valuable slippers. The next day, museum staff were “literally crying,” according to the highly remorseful museum owner, who once stated in an interview, “France has the Mona Lisa, we have the Wizard of Oz.” Unfortunately for the search, however, media coverage was sparse, because, though the fictional twister that steals Dorothy from her home is a legendary natural disaster in American lore, the slightly more important actual disaster of Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans the day after the theft. Regardless of the thief ’s identity, the slippers were tragically unable to click their own heels together and whisk themselves back. Instead, it took a whole federal investigation to accomplish what Glinda told Dorothy she had the power to do all along. Lovers of the whimsically weird movie can breathe a sigh of relief that the shoes have finished their little journey and found home again, because what Dorothy says at the end of that film holds true for people and slippers alike––there’s really no place like it.

flashdrive, a charger, or another one of those damned Apple products—is, indeed, a form of nicotine. After banning USBs, installing vaping detectors, and removing the doors of high school bathroom stalls, the tools of the adult world have finally revealed what has been obvious to anyone with an Instagram account for the last two years: #juuling is now a thing. And while discovering Big Tobacco in a sleek, millennial disguise may be troubling, the Indy urges our adult readership not to worry: our Federal Government has something bigger than a Juul up its sleeve. Juul Labs, the multibillion dollar company responsible for the popular success of this “iPhone of e-cigs,” is currently under investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration. In the FDA’s own words, their “large-scale, undercover nationwide blitz” seeks to prove that the marketing of the sleek and successfully addictive cigarette alternative purposefully targeted underage consumers. The CEO of Juul denies these accusations, claiming that a massive teenage nicotine addiction is “antithetical to the company’s mission.” Yet the evidence, unlike the discrete size and style of the Juul itself, is difficult to overlook. Juul’s original media campaign, promoted at music events and featuring young models dancing against brightly-colored backdrops, certainly appeared to be charming potential Juulers below legal age. Although Juul has undergone a significant media transformation since its inception in 2015, Instagram accounts of high-schoolers across the country proved that teenage addiction started with the company’s first advertising attempts. As sympathetic as one may be to the futur-RB istic exterior and subtly suave aesthetic of America’s vape of choice, the explicitly childish design of this previous marketing, paired with the youthful appeal of flavor names like ‘Jolly Rancher’ and ‘Blow Pops,’ make Juul’s innocence hard to defend. This past spring, Attorney Generals, scientists, and The wider vaping industry has certainly capitalized FDA investigators discovered that the small, handheld on the teenage popularity of #doit4juul. SourinUSA, device known as a Juul—previously misidentified as a for example, sells candy-themed E-Juice varieties on their website and VaprWear, a new production line for clothing and backpacks, markets their products’ ability to conceal a vaper’s activities. Juul’s presence on social media also remains strong: in addition to the flaunting seen on Instagram and Facebook, a faux-Juul was featured in the highly popular YouTube video: “I walked around the club pretending my USB was a vape. *laughing emoji* *laughing emoji*.” According to the New York Times, the Massachusetts Attorney General is also investigating the company that now owns 72% of the e-cigarette market. “From our perspective, this is not about getting adults to stop smoking,” said Maura Healey, “this is about getting kids to start vaping, and make money and have them as customers for life.” And as the investigation’s provocative word choice reminds us, the stakes are high. A National Institute for Drug Abuse survey from last year showed that a whopping 19 percent of 12th graders, 16 percent of 10th graders, and 8 percent of 8th graders had vaped nicotine within the past year. Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death nationwide. Nicotine, a highly addictive chemical, is more concentrated in vape pods than in cigarettes and while the e-cig industry has stressed the health benefits accorded those smokers who switch to tobacco-free alternatives, research shows that Juul is causing many teenagers to experiment. After receiving criticism and public scrutiny, Juul has supposedly taken steps to curate a more sober— and more adult—online presence. They have simplified their flavor names, downgrading ‘crème brûlée’ to ‘cream’ and ‘cool cucumber’ to simply ‘cucumber,’ and increased the ages of their advertising models. While it is hard to call smoke and mirrors on a product releasing a benign cloud of vapor, the Indy remains unconvinced about Juul’s professed efforts. Instead, this literary publication prefers to applaud the company’s perhaps truer achievement: the creation of a new, albeit corporatized, English verb.

BLITZING JUUL

PERSONAL EFFECTS BY Liby Hays

-SVH THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

WEEK IN REVIEW

KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER (IN DETENTION) A ‘new’ Flores Settlement and the move from family separation to family imprisonment

cw: suicide, state violence, sexual assault The names and biographical information stated below have been altered to protect the identities of the children and their mothers who were detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX. Some of the drawings displayed were made by these children.

The South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) is located an hour south of San Antonio, less than 100 miles from the border. The 2,400-bed facility opened in 2014 under the Obama administration, as part of Obama’s family detention policy. STFRC sits on the side of Texas State Road 85, next to the Briscoe Unit state prison. Only its misleading name (“Family Residential Center”), and the disturbing image of an empty playground that appears upon a simple Google search, obscure the reality of this facility and the families living inside it. The facility, managed by CoreCivic, a private prison company, houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees––mothers and children. It is composed of several large metal trailers. The tan color of the buildings could almost blend into the pale glow of the desert, if it wasn’t for the blinding flood lights that invade the landscape at night. Although the weather in South Texas was in the hundreds throughout the summer, the buildings are cold and heavily air conditioned. I was lucky to carry a sweater with me at all times, while my clients were made to wear the bright t-shirt and dark blue jeans that replace the orange uniforms of a “normal” prison. While not as violently cold as the infamous Hielera—a US Customs and Border Protection facility where adults and children are forced to lie on the bare ground with aluminium blankets and are fed frozen mortadella sandwiches—the family detention center is merely an empty promise that the worst has passed. On September 6, the Trump administration revealed its new proposed rule by the Homeland Security and the Health and Human Services Departments regarding the “apprehension, processing, care, and custody” of immigrant children. The document is meant to replace the Flores Settlement, a 20-year-long agreement which set national standards regarding the treatment and due process for all children in government custody. The proposed regulations, among other things, contain language that minors placed in “expedited removal” or facing imminent deportation would be under the same strict standard as adults. The result would be the unparalleled expansion of immigrant detention. +++ The 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement was the result of over a decade of litigation responding to the detention policy towards an influx of unaccompanied migrant children in the 1980s. At that time, immigrant children in Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) custody were being detained in prison-like conditions, often with unrelated adults. Since its resolution, after an appeal to the Supreme Court, the Flores Settlement has allowed children first detained at the border to be promptly released to family members, or otherwise held in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Since the INS ceased to exist, the Department of Homeland Security, and consequently ICE, have been made responsible for providing these crucial guarantees to immigrant children. Following an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit fought on behalf of separated families, District Judge Dana Sabraw mandated that immigrant parents be reunited with their children. The deadline to reunite families separated under the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy was July 10 for children

NEWS

under 5 years old, and July 26 for children between the ages of 5 and 17. The summer I was in Dilley, TX, it was expected that many of these reunited families, maybe hundreds of them, were still under ICE custody, and would be transferred to STRFC for imminent deportation or prolonged detention. On Monday, July 16, attorneys, paralegals, advocacy and project coordinators, and long-term interns of the Dilley Pro Bono Project gathered for an emergency meeting. There is an extreme quiet in the room, a strange stillness from our normal 13-hour work days of quick turnarounds, screaming guards, and crying children wanting to go to dinner. In preparation for the transfer of reunified families into Dilley, the largest immigrant detention center in the United States has slowly emptied out. We want to prepare for the worst (that the children will be detained indefinitely), but the truth is we don’t know what to prepare for. This policy of “keeping families together” is unprecedented, just as family separation was. In order to be reunited with their children, immigrant parents were coerced into signing a waiver that ultimately waived many of their rights and many of the protections entitled to their children. The main fear of the attorneys and paralegals at Dilley was, among many other fears, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would no longer adhere to the guarantees of the Flores Agreement for previously separated children, and that ICE would resort to detaining these families indefinitely. By August 31, over half of those families were still detained at Dilley with no end in sight. Some of these women and children had been detained by ICE for close to four months— long past the 20 day limit imposed by the Flores Settlement. The danger anticipated by our team of legal advocates is now closer to being a reality than ever before, as the proposed rules would override crucial guarantees that currently impede the long-term detention of immigrant children. Following the public outrage about the family separation policy that took ground this summer, the current administration seems to have found a suitable compromise: keeping families together in detention. The only thing standing in the way of that is Flores.

were forced to walk around with broken shoes and clothes that were too small, given ICE’s inability to provide appropriate clothing. Kathryn Shepherd, National Advocacy Counsel for the Immigration Justice Campaign, described in a recent webinar that “one of the main concerns of advocates and the legal community is that the proposed regulations would permit ICE to self-license and inspect family jails.” Currently, under the Flores Agreement, none of the family detention centers in operation are approved childcare facilities. Some of the minimum standards for licenced facilities, as outlined in Flores vs Reno, are “suitable living accommodations, food, appropriate clothing, and personal grooming items, educational services appropriate to the minor’s level of development, and communication skills in a structured classroom setting, outdoor activity, and a reasonable right to privacy,” among others. The proposed regulations would now allow DHS to licence these facilities as established by each state or, in the absence of any licencing in the jurisdiction, to contract its own licencing entity. As Shepard puts it: “it’s like the fox guarding the henhouse.” In the context of policy changes that strive to leave ICE’s power unchecked, we must remember that ICE was formed as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The institution was effectively formed in March 2003, only 15 years ago. As much as Republican discussions of ICE have aimed to draw attention to its role as the investigative arm of Homeland Security, the truth of the matter is that most of its operations are in regards to the arrest and removal of ‘aliens.’ Concretely, in 2018, Enforcement and Removal Operations claimed a $4.8 billion budget, as opposed to Homeland Security Investigations’ $2 billion budget. Currently, given the looming repeal of Flores, it is to be expected that the capacity of the “deporting” arm of ICE will expand to an unprecedented extent, given the unparalleled expansion of its detention capacity. +++

I met Pedro early in June this year. He sneaked in and out of the consultation room where his mother and I spoke for the first time, upon his mother’s transfer from La Hielera (the icebox) to Dilley. I was getting to know her case in order to prepare her for her “credible +++ fear interview” the next day, where she would have to show to an Asylum Officer fear of returning to her During my time as an intern at the Dilley Pro Bono country of origin, in accordance to US immigration Project, which provides legal services to mothers detained at STFRC, I had several clients complain about law. Pedro was a nine-year-old boy, who had fled Guatemala with his mother. Back in their home country, the detention center’s living conditions. One of my his mother had experienced verbal, physical and sexuclients stood in line under the sun for hours, several al assault, as well as extortion and threats of death. days in a row, in order to get her daughter registered Because of a series of unfortunate circumstances for school—only to be told that they “didn’t have any (including an Immigration Judge’s refusal to release spots.” At the time she was also preparing for the interview that would determine her ability to apply for the family given the illegality of detaining a child for over 20 days), I continued to encounter Pedro asylum in the United States. I had several clients who throughout the two months I spent working at STFRC. reported that healthcare providers inside the prison had refused to attend to their children’s needs. Some- I worked extensively on his mother’s case, and, in the process, can attest to the endless love and care she had times children fainted, or were carried around under for him, which he reciprocated in all the ways a ninethe sun with high fevers only to be given popsicles when they were brought to the clinic. Many of the chil- year-old forced into life too soon could express. Unfortunately, that came along with witnessing dren who were separated from their parents and were the effects of detention on Pedro and his mother. I saw transferred from the Office of Refugee Resettlement him grow thin and tired. One afternoon, his mother to Dilley received the same vaccines twice or even three times, although they had paperwork proving that came into the visitation trailer looking to talk to me. they had already been vaccinated. A few times, clients She said her son has been asking her to “go sign,” ask-

21 SEP 2018

BY Paula Pacheco Soto ILLUSTRATION Alex Westfall DESIGN Amos Jackson

ing her to voluntarily deport them both back to their death sentence. He could not stand the jail anymore. He hated the food and hated the school. He felt constantly ill. One night, Andrea confided in me months later, Pedro experienced extreme panic in the room he and his mother shared with six other detained families. “Everyone in the room got up because of his sobs. The other mothers would ask him what had happened and he said he wanted to die, “the only thing I want is to leave this place, I can’t… I can’t take it anymore,” he said. “I couldn’t stop crying seeing him like this. That was definitely the worst day,” she told me. The effects of detention are devastating for child and teenage development. As professor and researcher Dima Amso told the Independent, sub-optimal detention facilities can lead to “the early biological embedding of stress, which changes learning and memory, behavioral regulation, probability for anxiety and depression and even physical health decades later.” Pedro and Andrea were released from detention after two months and are now fighting their case outside. In May, CNN reported that “the average length of the asylum process, from application to decision,” could take up to 180 days. That estimate does not even consider a person’s right to appeal this decision in front of the Board of Immigration Appeals. The proposed changes to the Flores Settlement would mean that immigrant families could be kept in jail for several months, even years. +++ The Flores Settlement was the result of over a decade of litigation responding to the detention policy aimed at an influx of unaccompanied migrant children in the 1980s. Originally, the decision only protected unaccompanied minors from indefinite and inhumane detention. It wasn’t until the Obama administration instituted harsh ‘deterrence’ policies, indefinitely detaining Central American families seeking asylum so as to deport them more ‘efficiently,’ that immigration advocates used it to challenge the prolonged detainment of families. Now, even the rights of unaccompanied minors are under threat from the Trump adminis-

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

tration’s attempts to modify the Flores Settlement. The new regulation would allow Immigration officers to redetermine if a child meets the definition of Unaccompanied Minor—and hence whether they are eligible for the corresponding immigration benefits— every time they encounter the child. As Shepherd explains: “this means that vulnerable children who arrive at the border alone at a tender age could be stripped of the minimal due process protections that they are currently entitled to.” Further stipulations made in the new regulations threaten unaccompanied minors’ rights, even the right to be considered a “minor.” If no corrections are made to the proposed regulations, DHS could re-detain children with no burden to prove a change in their circumstances, even after release from custody. Any DHS employee or ICE officer could treat a teenager as an adult by way of a medical or dental examination that declares them 18 or over, regardless of the child’s testimony of their own age. This could allow ICE to assign ages to detained children so as to override crucial guarantees for minors. Finally, the proposed regulations provide wide discretion to waive all protections for children if the government deems that there is an emergency. Given the catastrophic discourse surrounding a ‘tough hand’ on immigration—particularly coming from Central America and Mexico—this is an extremely dangerous stipulation, putting the lives of children and teenagers on the line. +++ Family detention centers like the one in Dilley are unsuited to provide care to any of their detainees, let alone a child. As opposed to the statement made by an ICE top official to congress that family detention centers are “more like a summer camp,” the reality inside family jails is cruel and heartbreaking. In the visitation trailer, I regularly observed CoreCivic employees scream at and diminish these families. Coloring books, crayons, and even diapers are managed and controlled by the guards, making it impossible to escape the reality of imprisonment that these families are subjected to. Basic access to education and healthcare are impeded by the bureaucracy

and unresponsiveness that operates these detention centers. As Dilley Pro Bono Project Managing Attorney, Shay Fluharty, put it, the bottom line is “[ICE] cannot have the agency of being the deporter and the institution responsible for the protection of these children.” While the discourse around immigration and the protection of immigrants should center all of those affected, regardless of age and gender, there is a particular cruelty embedded in the latest move by this administration. When President Donald Trump claims that if “you get rid of ICE, you’re going to have a country that you’re going to be afraid to walk out of your house,” he shows nothing but his deep ignorance regarding the institution’s history, as well as the bulk of its operations. Calls for the abolition of ICE are intrinsic to availing the protection of immigrant children, their families, and all immigrants seeking rightful asylum in this country. While the effects of these regulations is concrete, they are just a proposal of what the lives of immigrant children could become under this government. The proposed changes to Flores include a 60-day period for the public to submit comments and amendments regarding its content and impact. The public comments process will close on November 6th. If anything, this is one of few possibilities to keep this government accountable. If for anyone, for the 12,800 immigrant children currently detained by this government. +++ I speak to Andrea, Pedro’s mother, on the phone; it’s been little over a month since their release from detention. She says: “I am a mother that left her country of origin fleeing the danger we faced there, hoping that everything would be okay soon, that my son would finally be in peace… when we were transferred to Dilley [after being in the icebox and the dog pound] my son became depressed and would cry asking why did we come here, saying: ‘they will kill us in Guatemala, but they kill us here too.’”

NEWS

THE WIZARD BEHIND THE WALL Rhode Island Democrats' turbulent year BY Joshua F. Waldman ILLUSTRATION Katia Rozenberg

Last week’s Democratic primaries in Rhode Island capped a year defined by party dysfunction and statehouse discord. The state party followed Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello’s lead by punishing dissent from critics within the Democratic caucus— namely, outspoken progressive incumbent State Representatives Moira Walsh and, to a lesser extent, Marcia Ranglin-Vassell. Both are political outsiders. Ranglin-Vassell brings 18 years of experience as a teacher to the State House (she works as a special education teacher in Providence); Walsh was a waitress before she ran for office. As their first terms ran out and they faced re-election last Wednesday, the State Democratic Party and Speaker Mattiello were less than welcoming to the pair—both did not recieve the Democratic endorsement in their primary and the Speaker endorsed Walsh’s opponent. Democratic voters, however, rebuked both the Speaker’s and their party’s endorsements by re-electing Walsh and Ranglin-Vassell. The two legislators’ roads to reelection reveal systemic flaws in the state’s party endorsement process and shed light on Speaker Mattiello’s vindictive uses of power. However, the two legislators’ victories fail to fit neatly within the broader nationwide narrative this 2018 primary season, in which outsider candidates such as Andrew Gillum and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have successfully challenged Democratic establishment candidates. Instead, their climactic paths to the nomination are more characteristic of Rhode Island's political dysfunction and infighting in its Democratic Party. The State Democratic Committee did not endorse more moderate alternatives to Walsh and RangellVassell; both of the endorsed candidates in Walsh and Rangell-Vassell’s races oppose abortion rights, and Walsh’s opponent, Michael Earnheart, voted for President Trump. +++ The conflict between Rep. Walsh and the Rhode Island Democratic leadership took root in political and personal battles. Walsh fought numerous bills the Speaker put forward and passed, including what she described to the Independent as the “draconian Kristen’s Law.” Signed by Governor Raimondo in June, it allows life sentences for drug dealers whose drugs are involved in an overdose. Rep. Walsh “fought the law hard… even [asking] the Governor publically to veto it,” as she wrote in text messages to the Independent. “That’s likely the grudge [Mattiello]’s holding,” she elaborated. But the grudge isn’t just about policy: Walsh made national news when she publicly accused legislators of drinking while at work, with “file cabinets full of booze.” These actions were equivalent to sticking her “thumb directly in the Speaker’s eye,” Walsh told the Independent. Speaker Mattiello struck back fiercely, endorsing Earnheart, and donating $1,000 directly to his campaign. Furthermore, because there was no Democratic district committee in place to make an endorsement, the state committee got to decide whom to endorse. Despite Earnheart’s public support for President Trump and tweets that ranged in topic from “Pizzagate” to denigrating portrayals of undocumented immigrants whom he referred to as “illegals,” State Rep. Joseph McNamara, the Chairman of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, echoed the Speaker, endorsing Walsh’s opponent and then only retracting

METRO

the endorsement when it received national pushback from news outlets and high-profile Democrats including Congressman David Cicilline. As Rep. Walsh put it, “this is what happens when you challenge authority” in Rhode Island. Ranglin-Vassell’s endorsement saga falls within the norm of Rhode Island politics—it was defined by the familial politics that the district Democratic committee process allows. In an interview with the Independent, Ranglin-Vassell called the endorsement process “silly” and “corrupt.” As she explained, members of her district Democratic committee included both her opponent and the brother of the former legislator whom Rangell-Vassell unseated in 2016. She went on to describe how legislators often use this strategy of “stacking the deck” to lock up the Democratic endorsement. Under state law, district committees—the local arm of party politics in Rhode Island—hold the power to decide who wins the Democratic endorsement for state legislature races. The committee members are theoretically elected, but more often than not, they run unopposed. Despite the national coverage that these endorsement controversies caused, the state Democratic Party has yet to outline a clear solution to avoid cases like Walsh’s. In fact, state party leaders contradicted each other when asked if the Party would endorse candidates in future races that do not have a district committee endorsement. On one hand, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye told the Independent that “as long as [McNamara’s] chairman, barring unforeseen circumstances, the Party will not endorse” candidates in a legislature race in which the district committee fails to endorse or does not exist. He called it an “internal policy change” that would not require a bylaw change. However, when asked about the same issue, Party Chair Joe McNamara told the Independent, “that’s yet to be determined.” In addition, the state party does not see district committee cronyism as a problem. According to Olasanoye, it is “super simple to get on [district] committees.” He emphasized that most candidates for district committees run unopposed, and that like other elected positions, there is no regulation of who can run. Furthermore, he said it promotes “grass-roots” involvement in politics and shows constituents that there is “no wizard behind the wall.” As it stands, however, the district endorsement system benefits more organized candidates who know the party system better. As Rep. Raymond Hull, an eightyear veteran of the State House, told the Independent, it is increasingly difficult as a candidate to find people to run for district committee spots, even though they often run unopposed. In fact, Hull’s own son and daughter serve on his district committee. But instead of calling for reform, Executive Director Olasanoye believes the party should better disseminate information about setting up and joining district committees. He maintained that under Rhode Island law, “the state party doesn’t have a role in the committee process.”

against the legislative priorities of the Speaker saw their parking spots or desks moved to inferior locations, a trend that other legislators confirmed. State Representative John J. Lombardi told the Independent that leadership “did move Ray Hull and myself to the front of the room, and those are punishment seats. I’m not intimidated. It doesn’t matter.” He believed it was in direct response to his votes or speaking out against the speaker. He told the Independent that “if your chair is gonna be moved or if you get thrown off a committee, that’s proof positive” that the speaker is acting in direct response to dissent from legislators. Hull confirmed the existence of the “punishment seats,” and told the Independent that “everyone in the room” knew about them. He also mentioned that he was removed from a committee shortly after he voted against Speaker Mattiello’s truck toll bill. Whereas Walsh has criticized the structural power the job of the speaker holds, Hull argues that this speaker behaves especially egregiously. In other words, it is the man, not the job alone, that is responsible for much of the toxic political environment that defines the Rhode Island State House. Hull expressed to the Independent that the “childish tactics [the Speaker] uses—I have never come across them in 28 years of police work.” The State House veteran thinks of Mattiello as a “tyrant” and a “bully” whose conduct is considerably worse than that of speakers past. Speaker Mattiello’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. +++

Intimidation of legislators, punishment seats in the State House, Democrats endorsing a Trump supporter, and a state party that refuses to stick to one answer on potential reforms to its endorsement process present problems for legislators and candidates, especially those pushing for progressive change. But they have broader implications—straining the legislature’s ability to govern, muddling its priorities and limiting the potential for progressive change in the Ocean State. With a disappointing primary showing—Mattiello won fewer votes than the Republican nominee he will face +++ in November—and a growing number of legislators The district committees and endorsement process calling for new leadership, his grip on the State House, are only two of the avenues through which Speaker and its seating arrangement, might be short-lived. Mattiello and the Democratic Party have used their political and administrative power to suppress dissent. JOSH F. WALDMAN B’20 is sitting comfortably in his punishment seat. According to Walsh, those who spoke out or voted

21 SEP 2018

BAKED There is a dichotomy surrounding bread, and this is especially true in the United States. Cultures all across the globe consume ground grains in some form or another, whether as bread, pita, naan, masa, or rice paper. Because of this, we often think of bread as something so essential that it is just there—on the table of a restaurant, in the basket of a kitchen, as the unquestionable cornerstone of a meal. But by expecting this of our bread, we also discount its true value. Bread isn’t just the food you eat while you wait for your ‘real’ meal to arrive; at its core, bread is one of the most human expressions of fundamental nourishment. In the US, commercialized bread dates back to 1849, when Boudin Bakery first opened its doors in San Francisco and began selling sourdough using a starter borrowed from local gold miners, a starter that, over 169 years later, still serves as the base for all Boudin sourdough loaves. Nearly 80 years later, thanks to the advent of commercially-produced yeast and Harvard chemist Eben Horsford’s recipe for baking powder, the Chillicothe Baking company in Missouri became the first bakery ever to sell pre-sliced bread. By 1931, Wonder Bread took the scene and quickly became America’s first nationally-distributed sliced bread, bringing with it a new source of fast and cheap food for families across the country. What does bread look like now? Well, it’s a mix. Over the last one hundred years, bread has undergone an incredible industrialization that has made mass-produced bread products widely and inexpensively available to all consumers. While today this wide availability of bread may seem something to boast about, the rapid industrialization of growing processes also brings with it the pressing issue of sustainability. According to a recent study from the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield, in which researchers tested the environmental impact of one loaf of store-bought bread, the use of ammonium nitrate fertilizer contributed 43 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Ammonium nitrate is a synthetic form of nitrogen that can be easily absorbed by plants. However, industrial agriculture’s excessive reliance on this plentiful, artificial source of nitrogen opens up avenues for many long-term environmental liabilities: namely the destruction of soil's original organic matter, as well as the seeping of excess nitrogen into streams, rivers, and oceans, eventually feeding massive algae blooms that suffocate sea life. It is in large part due to these concerns that the industrialization of bread, and of food in general, has been met with equally fast-growing resurgence of artisanal, small-batch food production processes, which culminated in the farm-to-table movement of the ’70s and ’80s. These chefs and bakers believe they are rediscovering the art of food, real food made from minimally refined ingredients using methods that date back to a time when cooking was, at its essence, an articulation of what made us human. Not only did these growing practices promote a more harmonious relationship with the earth from which we were taking, but the act of cooking also became the unavoidable time of day when we needed to stop and slow down, gather together and make a ceremony of our nourishment. While much has changed in our pace of life today, bread has the potential to be an intersection of these two ideas. Unlike the high price tag of raising sustainable meat, the cost of locally-sourced, organic grains to produce bread comes in at 10 cents a pound. Compared to the $6.50 per pound it costs to buy organic beef, bread is a far more accessible starting point to reintroduce the widespread consumption of whole, artisanal foods in the country. +++ One pioneer on the bread frontier today is Lynn Williams, wife of Jim Williams and co-owner of their family business Seven Stars Bakery. The epicenter of their bakery’s production process is nestled in the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a massive mill building turned lively community space. Inside the bakery, the air is hot and rich with the smell of yeast and proving croissant dough, which is raw THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

BY Emerson Tenney ILLUSTRATION Natasha Boyko DESIGN Katherine Sang

Because bread is fundamental and has been set in temperature-controlled lockers to ferment before being baked in order to ensure a full and fluffy croissant comes out of the oven. Lynn and her husband started Seven Stars Bakery in 2001, after spending their twenties cooking along California’s coastline. Jim grew up in the city of Orange, and when he graduated from San Diego State with a degree in English, he had, as Lynn puts it, a “What The Hell Am I Going To Do With My Life” moment. All he knew was that he was passionate about two things— beer and bread. So he did the only reasonable thing he could think of and dove head-first into the world of yeast. More specifically, this world of yeast meant the sphere of bread-making, an industry that had been experiencing an artisan revival since the 1980s, when Steve Sullivan opened Acme Bread Company in Berkeley, CA and became the champion of a return to the use of natural leaveners and wood-fire ovens. Lynn smiles. “I always kind of knew I was going to open a bakery.” Lynn has a particular glow about her; she’s a free spirit who exudes a fundamental joie de vivre. It’s contagious. She walks through the bakery where young employees mix a sourdough and fold kalamatas into the beginnings of rustic olive loaves. She slows when she reaches Jim. He is crouched in a back corner of the space mixing a small batch of brioche for his line of “Back Door Bread” that he’s been selling out of Seven Stars’ office front every Saturday during this year’s Pawtucket Wintertime Farmers Market. When I ask him about the dough, he hardly looks up. It’s clear that this is what he loves about bread—the back of house, the getting your hands dirty, the creation. His passion for bread service is also evident in the practices Jim has adopted to set Seven Stars apart from other bread producers, both artisan and commercial. Since 2012, Seven Stars has sourced its grains from the Maine Grain Alliance, a nonprofit organization birthed in Skowhegan, Maine with the mission of preserving and promoting the use of locally-grown and milled grains as a means of connecting people and supporting sustainable growing techniques that promote food independence and provide local job opportunities. Seven Stars’ regional activism, alongside the work of nonprofits such as Farm Fresh RI, points to a growing trend amongst the New England community to grow local food systems that value environmental health and the quality of life of the farmers and eaters in the region. Jim and Lynn don’t cut corners on the quality details because they treat their customers like an extension of their family. “Our intention in opening the bakery was to be a bread bakery,” Lynn tells me, “but very quickly we learned that what people really wanted was a community spot. A place where they could gather with their friends and sit and have coffee.” Walk into any one of Seven Stars’ three locations today, and this changed intention is obvious. Large communal tables fill the space, offering seemingly endless prospects for the cultivation of neighborly gossip, and the front counters overflow with an assortment of pastries—sticky buns, cinnamon rolls, savory scones. Unlike most coffee shops, Seven Stars doesn’t supply its customers with wifi, so once you walk in the door you’re forced to focus on what’s really in front of you: the food and the people. Behind all the pastries and coffee machines sit

loaves of bread lined simply against the back wall—a stoic, if small, reminder that they are the foundation from which this community has grown. Had it not been for their initial interest in bread, Lynn and Jim may never have found the right medium for their deep love of fostering community. So if bread has the potential to be the beginning of this crossover between artisanal food and a wider community outreach, how much can you actually charge for it? It’s a tricky question, and there’s no definitive answer. By selling loaves that range from three to eight dollars, Jim and Lynn have made a commitment to provide a wide swath of the Providence community with good food that’s filling, organic, and delicious. But the bakery’s commitment to community doesn’t stop there. Since opening their doors, Seven Stars has recognized that it caters to a higher echelon of the Providence population and therefore has made it a core priority to donate all leftover products at the end of each day to local food shelters and pantries. +++ Bread is of the body. In the biblical sense, it is quite physically the “body” of Christ. But even outside of that context, there is something deeply foundational about bread. It’s comforting to believe that there are cornerstones of our lives that have existed well before us and will continue to connect humanity long after our deaths. It certainly informs our memories. Asking Lynn about her taste memories, I was transported alongside her to a time when life felt full of beginnings. “I have this memory of one of my first bakery jobs. I had been cooking for a while and I got a job working at a bakery in New York. So I was relatively new at it and my job was as a bread mixer. I was there relatively late, and I was mixing and I remember this bread came out, it was this semolina bread. And this bread came out of the oven and I remember breaking it open and just smelling it and tasting it and feeling like this is why…” Lynn trails off as if, for a moment, she has been taken back to this New York bakery at that time in her life when everything was still a discovery and lay before her, outstretched and promising. Soon the phone rings and we are both brought back to our surroundings—the office and the sound of the milling next door. Lynn shakes her head and laughs, writing her story off as “just a goofy memory.” But there is more to it than that. For many, these indelible food memories come in snippets of time, sometimes whole years, defined by sensation—taste and smell and feeling. Bread has always been that first food and, luckily, with the help of bakers like Jim and Lynn, these sensory experiences of real, carefully-crafted food have the great possibility of becoming universally enjoyed.

EMERSON TENNEY B’20 is eating bread right now.

BODY

THE URBAN LANDSCAPE RE-IMAGINED IN WOOD A humble building material soars to new heights

It is a rare and special occasion when a truly novel building material is made widely available for commercial use. The last time this occurred was at the turn of the twentieth century, when large-scale steel and concrete manufacturing revolutionized the global building industry. Now, a century later, architects and engineers are finding a renewed interest in one of our most ancient building materials: wood. At the microscopic level, wood resembles a dense network of straws held together within an organic matrix. When a force is applied perpendicular to the direction, or grain, of these straws, they come apart much like the end of a paintbrush or a bundle of hay might. If a force is applied parallel to the grain, all the straws work in tandem to resist snapping along their longer axis. For millennia, this was the basic rule of building with wood: structural load must always be applied parallel to the grain. This ostensibly simple rule contains within it a host of conditions that have historically limited the use of wood in modern buildings. As wood is only capable of withstanding load along the axis in which it grows, the maximum dimensions of wooden structural elements have been restricted to the size of the largest trees; a wooden column could only ever be as tall as the tree from which it was harvested, and wooden beams only as deep as a tree’s diameter. This limitation is further complicated by natural variations in the quality of wood. The occurrence of knots, the age of the tree, and its rate of growth all drastically increase or diminish the strength of the lumber produced from it. The relative lack of control that architects and engineers have over the material made it unsuitable for use in buildings taller than a few stories. However, recent breakthroughs in synthetic resin technology have enabled engineers to overcome these natural limitations. It is now possible to fabricate wooden structural elements whose size and strength are comparable to those made of steel and concrete. This man-made wood, commonly called engineered lumber, consists of pieces of dimensioned lumber glued together in configurations designed to maximize the structural qualities of wood. Wooden beams and columns once hewn from forest giants can now be made from many small pieces of lumber, while walls and floor slabs can be made to resist multi-directional loads by cross-layering panels of wood perpendicular to one another. These large engineered lumber products, collectively called mass timber, dramatically increase both the strength and efficiency of wood construction and signal the possibility of building with wood at an unprecedented scale.

It is clear that the AISC and NRMCA’s resistance to market competition colors much of their criticism of mass timber construction, particularly mass timber’s Mass timber has also become the model material for ability to withstand fire. The attacks are often comiarchitects and engineers concerned with developing cally reductive. Two weeks ago, the advocacy arm of more environmentally sustainable building practicthe NRMCA, Build With Strength, released a video of es. Building construction and energy use account workers attempting to burn a block of concrete with a for more than a third of global energy consumption blowtorch to demonstrate the material’s resistance to and nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As urban populations around the world are heat. The AISC, on the other hand, summarizes their criticism of mass timber in this way: “Wood burns, projected to reach a staggering 6.4 billion residents even though the wood industry and the Department by 2050 and the global building surface area is set to double, proponents of mass timber construction point of Agriculture want you to believe it only ‘chars.’” Though technically true, the AISC neglects to mention to wood’s ability to sequester carbon as a means of offsetting the GHG normally emitted during the man- that charring is the very process that enables mass timufacturing, transportation, and assembly of construc- ber to resist fire. After initial combustion, the charred exterior of thick engineered lumber products insulates tion materials. Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and once the wood is harvested and protects the unburnt wood within. In fact, untreated mass timber performs measurably better in twoand used in construction, the carbon absorbed over the tree’s lifetime is locked away and isolated from the hour fire tests than untreated steel, which quickly loses its rigidity when exposed to high temperatures. atmosphere. The steel and concrete industry’s skepticism of The difference in total GHG emissions between the environmental benefits of mass timber is substanmass timber construction and conventional steel and tially more difficult to dismiss. Chief among the critconcrete construction is difficult to quantify, but the growing consensus is that there are real environmental icisms is the mass timber industry’s assumption that all trees felled for the manufacturing of engineered benefits to substituting steel and concrete with mass timber. A 2007 study funded by the US Forest Service lumber products are sustainably harvested. Without this essential precondition, the effects of deforestation concluded that “net GHG emissions associated with negate any short-term reduction in GHG emissions by wood-based houses were 20–50 percent lower than undermining the potential for forests to absorb carbon those associated with thermally comparable houses employing steel- or concrete-based building systems.” dioxide in the future. While more effective forest management policies have begun to reverse deforestation This is supported by a 2017 study conducted by rein the US, only a one percent increase in total forested searchers at the University of Bath and Harbin Instiland was recorded between 2007 and 2011, and the tute of Technology comparing the energy efficiency of four-to-seventeen-story residential buildings made effects of climate change threaten even this small achievement. Wildfires, rapidly changing ecologies, from reinforced concrete (RC) and cross-laminated disease, and outbreaks of parasitic insects kill millions timber (CLT). The study estimated that net energy consumption and net carbon emissions were between of hectares of forests each year, and though the wood 9.9 and 13.2 percent lower when using CLT as opposed industry often harvests dead trees in order to sequester their carbon before it is released through decompoto RC. sition, deforestation continues to be a serious concern. However, trade groups in the steel and concrete Calculating the benefits of carbon sequestration is construction industries are funding research to further complicated by what is perhaps the most basic challenge the structural viability and environmental sustainability of mass timber construction. The Amer- criticism of the building industry as a whole: the environmental impact of demolishing old buildings and ican Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and the erecting new ones far outweighs even the most susNational Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMtainable techniques. The amount of energy expended CA) have independently formed advocacy groups to and the volume of GHG emitted during demolition, lobby against the standardization and codification of mass timber construction in the International Building in addition to the release of any carbon previously Code (IBC). These groups have also lobbied in the US sequestered by now discarded lumber, handily tip the scales against the sheer volume of carbon sequestered against The Timber Innovation Act of 2017 (S.538), by new mass timber construction. Though it should be which seeks to secure United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants for research into mass tim- reiterated that steel and concrete construction, which are more energy-intensive and GHG-emissive, do not ber construction. have the added benefit of carbon sequestration, we should keep in mind that the greenest building is still the one that is never built. +++

Large engineered lumber products dramatically increase the strength and efficiency of wood construction and signal the possibility of building with wood at an unprecedented scale.

SCIENCE&TECH

+++ While the competing industries are locked in a debate over their respective environmental impacts, mass timber advocates are steadily gaining ground in the US by means of a separate line of argument: economic incentive. Mass timber construction advocacy groups such as ThinkWood, the American Wood Council, and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council have made the potential for job creation in the American and Canadian economies a major component of their arguments for increased investment in mass timber construction. Citing a study from the USDA, Think-

21 SEP 2018

BY Giacomo Sartorelli ILLUSTRATION Rémy Poisson

Wood has argued that sustainable logging practices will provide a stable source of employment for rural communities in the decades to come and that engineered lumber production will make up a substantial portion of the projected five percent growth for employment opportunities in renewable natural resource industries between 2015 and 2020. Other agencies are not so optimistic. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a modest growth of 7.2 percent in jobs related to forest management between 2016 and 2026, it expects the logging sector to contract by 21.4 percent. Veneer, plywood, and engineered wood product manufacturing are expected to remain relatively stable, with a net job loss of 0.4 percent, but the Department of Labor does not seem to share the wood industry’s expectations for reliable growth in jobs related to mass timber production. Nonetheless, the wood industry has enjoyed a series of decisive victories in the arenas of domestic and international policy since 2015. In spite of the steel and concrete industry’s protests, the International Code Council (ICC) added engineered lumber products to the IBC in 2015, and is expected to further standardize them in 2018 upon the acceptance of code change proposal G108-18. The proposed code change would update previous definitions of Type IV (heavy timber) construction to include engineered wood products, and would create three new subcategories specifically for mass timber construction. In late June of 2018, a bipartisan coalition in the House of Representatives narrowly passed the Agricultural and Nutrition Act of 2018, which includes the research section of the Timber Innovation Act of 2017. The Senate, meanwhile, has placed its own version of the farm bill, the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, on the legislative calendar, and is set to debate it later this year. If passed, the Senate’s bill would secure further grant funding for research into mass timber construction. While trade groups are focused on defending their market shares from one another, engineers and material scientists are finding new and clever ways of building with mass timber, steel, and concrete. In fact, the steel and concrete industries may actually stand to benefit from further investment in mass timber construction. Research into cutting-edge hybrid construction techniques utilizing all three major building materials in complementary configurations could secure a market share for each industry. The John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been celebrated by the wood industry as the first academic building in the United States incorporating mass timber construction, but the most innovative aspects of its structural system are the wood-steel hybrid truss supporting the green roof and its wood-concrete composite floor slabs. Engineers at the University’s Building and Construction Technology department, whose research provided the basis for the wood-concrete composite deployed in the building, argue that the appropriate use of a wide range of materials allows for flexible construction methods and generally higher material strength and stiffness.

While trade groups are focused on defending their market shares from one another, engineers and material scientists are finding new and clever ways of building with mass timber, steel, and concrete.

GIACOMO SARTORELLI RISD’19 is learning to love his creaky New England apartment.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

SCIENCE&TECH

CAN YOU GENTRIFY A The Jewelry District and the myth of the American urban utopia During a Providence Ordinance Committee hearing this July, opponents of the proposed 46-story Fane Tower framed the project as a referendum on the city’s future: would the City Council cave to the whims of a wealthy New Yorker and sacrifice Providence’s skyline, along with a $15 million tax credit? Or would it hold out for a developer willing to respect the existing 100-foot height restriction and ongoing park and pedestrian projects along the Providence River? Few groups are as opposed to Fane Tower as the Jewelry District Association (JDA). Though the neighborhood—nestled between Johnson & Wales to the north and I-195 to the south—has few residents, the JDA’s members are knowledgeable, passionate, and devoted to a well-planned future. The Jewelry District Association’s brochure describes its members’ utopic vision for their neighborhood: “a rich future in a walkable, bikeable, livable environment that’s welcoming for business and residents alike.” This mission statement represents the unified vision of planning professionals and scholars of an ideal city. After decades of prioritizing cars, sprawl, and suburbia, American architects and planners have recently rediscovered what many of the world’s most romanticized cities have long known—that an active, inviting street makes for a better community—and, with no hint of irony, coined it New Urbanism. What city planners and the JDA agree upon are obviously worthy goals for a community—knowledge, education, and innovation. More tangibly, walkability, bikeability, mixed-use developments, and riverside parks promote healthy and socially cohesive neighborhoods. The JDA, like any neighborhood association, is right to pressure the city for investments in sustainable, thoughtful, and cohesive additions to its community. But the aspect rarely considered in debates about Fane Tower, and New Urbanist projects more broadly, is whether the rebranding and rapid redevelopment of one walkable, bikeable neighborhood is a positive for Providence as a whole. A broader investigation into investments in the Jewelry District and the history of the city suggests that the new Jewelry District is an extension of, rather than a cure to, the redlining, urban renewal, and deference to moneyed developers that gutted the neighborhood in the first place.

house Brown’s School of Professional Studies and the Cambridge Innovation Center; the Johnson & Wales Science and Innovation Center; Chestnut Commons, a mixed-use development with 91 “upscale, urban [as opposed to…?] residential units;” River House, the 174-unit luxury housing development marketed to students; and, of course, Fane Tower. Though not visible from Dyer Street, a survey of the funding behind these projects reveals that there is big money behind walkability and mixed-use design. Fane Tower, the potential recipient of a $15 million tax-credit, was proposed by the New York City-based Fane Organization; South Street Landing was developed by CV Properties LLC, a Boston-based commercial real estate firm; the Innovation Center is managed by Wexford Science & Technology, a Baltimore-based firm that develops “Knowledge Communities” and received a $18.8 million tax incentive; River House is funded by GMH Capital Partners, a Pennsylvaniabased real estate firm with $8 billion of assets and an $8 million tax credit. In all, these developments represent a massive state and private investment into the new Jewelry District—as the “Innovation & Design District” and Providence’s neighborhood of the future. Notably, Fane Tower is the only one of these projects not encouraged by the Jewelry District Association. Olin Thompson, a member of the JDA and a Jewelry District resident since 2007, told the College Hill Independent that he and other members support large investments “for the right projects.” But while

VACANT Thompson asserts that “Fane Tower is out of step with this community and the rest of the city,” a second look at current projects in the Jewelry District shows Fane Tower as just a particularly egregious (and unattractive) example of an otherwise-supported trend: tax credits to wealthy developers and institutions who follow the New Urbanist requirements laid out by the Jewelry District and the I-195 Commission. +++ For most of Providence, a model neighborhood is out of reach due to the ruthlessness of previous eras of urban planning. In urban communities of color throughout America, the 20th century brought successive waves of segregation, divestment, and displacement. In Providence, a 1939 Residential Security map rated Wayland Square as the only green zone within 3 miles of the city center, while the majority of Southside and Westside were yellow, or “definitely declining.” The rating system—called redlining—incorporated housing stock, sales, and “the threat of infiltration of foreign-born, negro, or lower grade population,” and was used by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to determine mortgage availability. Redlining resulted in an artificial suppression of wealth and stability for a generation of communities of color and impeded longterm investments into their surroundings. In the 1940s and 50s, “slum” clearance and urban renewal came to Providence. Traditionally African American neighborhoods such as Lippitt Hill (now “University Heights”)

+++ In the context this new vision for American cities, the 2007 relocation of I-195 to the Fox Point hurricane barrier is akin to a modern miracle: huge swaths of completely vacant land, close to the city center. In the Jewelry District, Providence has the opportunity to develop an addition to its downtown core from scratch, and the city is keen to “leverage all that [it] can and all that [it has] to offer to collectively move Providence forward,” according to Mayor Jorge Elorza in a September press conference. The walk along Dyer Street from Downtown to the JDA’s September meeting at South Street Landing showcased the incredible transformation taking place in the Jewelry District. The I-195 Redevelopment Commission, responsible for the “sale, marketing, and oversight” of the new land, boasts about the variety of current projects, as a neighborhood that was recently a moonscape of surface parking lots is brimming with construction projects: South Street Landing, a 270,000 square foot office and academic center; the 120,000 square foot Innovation Center, which will

METRO

21 SEP 2018

BY Colin Kent-Daggett ILLUSTRATION Jeff Katz DESIGN Pablo Herraiz García de Guadiana

and West Elmwood were deemed “blighted” and subsequently razed. Finally, the construction of I-195 in the 1950s and ’60s destroyed hundreds of homes and separated the Jewelry District, the Southside, and any neighborhood West of downtown from the city center. The Jewelry District’s industrial past might appear to disqualify it from this history of persecution and dislocation. But excluding its near-vacancy, the neighborhood’s recent history follows the script of gentrification and displacement. The Jewelry District endured rapid divestment after the collapse of the jewelry industry in the 1970s, followed by the characteristic “pioneers” of gentrifying areas. Bunny Harvey, a painter and professor, bought a loft on Chestnut Street in 1985 to use as her studio when the Jewelry District was still, in her words, “a wasteland.” But like gentrifying neighborhoods around the country, others eventually caught on to the prospect of low rents and open space. According to Frank Muhly, Harvey’s husband, these pioneers—primarily artists, activists, and architects— met for coffee in the refurbished Imperial Knife Company. By the time Harvey and Muhly lived in the space full-time in 2011, a community had emerged. Since then, Olin Thompson—a JDA member and resident since 2007—described “an influx of successful (as opposed to struggling) artists and an increased demand for residential space” in the wake of “excellent investments in rehab and recently new construction.” And in response to this residential demand has come the Innovation & Design District, luxury student housing, and Fane Tower.  For those not sold on the idea that historical processes of residential displacement can also apply to vacant land in a formerly industrial neighborhood, a look back further into the past may suffice––to when the Jewelry District was not always full of jewelry. Before its industrialization, it was a dense, residential community, primarily home to immigrants. Irish, Poles, and Eastern European Jews moved to the Jewelry District in successive waves before they were displaced by mills producing the textiles, jewelry, and other goods that made Rhode Island prosper. What is now Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, for example, housed the Little Nemo costume jewelry company until the late 1970s and seven individual homes from the earliest maps of Providence through the early 20th century. The Jewelry District is currently in the midst of a similar reinvention, this time being remade in service of tech and biomedical research rather than industry.

Orleans, San Francisco, and New York City have all prioritized the development of restrictively expensive, if well-designed, housing and amenities for their wellto-do populations. Moskowitz attributes this shift to an evaporation of a city’s tax base itself due to deindustrialization and white flight. With little industry and fewer middle-class taxpayers, contemporary American cities have been forced to generate income in other ways. Thomas Deller, the Director of Planning

LOT?

Whether displacement and rent increases are inevitable consequences of otherwise beneficial economic improvement is beside the point; Providence officials first need to recognize that the principles underpinning the redevelopment of I-195 and the Jewelry District are not the keys to the urban utopia they are imagined to be. Like other chapters in the history of American urban planning, New Urbanism has its flaws. And while bike lanes and parks are, in many ways, better than suburban sprawl, their benefits rarely reach the Providence residents who have suffered time and again from redlining, ‘slum’ clearance, and freeway construction. This broader approach to city planning and economic development is potentially challenging for both planners and residents: it requires accepting that Fane Tower is out of touch not because of its design or its height but because it is luxury, and gifting tax credits to the rich inevitably means not focusing on those most in need of resources. As garish as the proposed Fane Tower is, it is not all that different from other projects in the Jewelry District and projects across the country in its catering to the wealthy. Jewelry District residents, for their part, welcome the renewed attention to their neighborhood. Muhly told the Independent about the need for more retail and how his neighbors are “desperate for a Whole Foods.” Again, Muhly, Thompson, and the JDA can hardly be blamed for wanting retail and grocery options in their price range as well as for parks, bike paths, and pedestrian safety. The issue lies not with them but with the city and state institutions and agencies content to pour resources into projects of limited benefit in pursuit of a New Urbanist, revenue-generating utopia. While Rhode Island and the City of Providence are certainly strapped for cash, their desperation for tax revenue should not hide the fact that the walkable, bikeable, livable Jewelry District of the future will not be accessible to all. No part of the neighborhood’s revival exemplifies these divergent outcomes better than the relocation of I-195. For Jewelry District residents like Thompson, the move meant finally becoming “part of the city” after decades of being walled off—the pivotal event in the neighborhood’s redevelopment. But for their neighbors in South Providence, the wall and its noise, pollution, and displacement only moved closer. Rather than relieve Providence from the wrongs of previous urban planners, the redevelopment of the Jewelry District has burdened the same communities with the consequences of another romanticized phase of American urban planning.

and Economic Development in Central Falls, told the Independent that, “Rhode Island’s economics are so bad that if we don’t give tax incentives we get zero development, and if there’s zero development it gets worse.” The solution, according to Deller, lies in more profound economic restructuring. That restructuring has to start with giving people more stability in their homes. By denying low-income communities of color access to the stability, financial equity, and generational wealth of homeownership, government and real estate developers partnered to create neighborhoods with little control over their surroundings. An organic grocery store or hip coffee shop—both standard markers of a gentrifying commu- COLIN KENT-DAGGETT B’19.5 heard that Philly is +++ nity—would be less problematic if their neighbors still pretty cheap. weren’t acutely susceptible to fluctuations in the The Jewelry District is one of several examples of this housing market. Rent control, vouchers, and public accelerated redevelopment and rebranding in Rhode housing projects are all potential remedies that have Island. Providence’s own nickname—the “Creative been largely ignored in favor of building at any cost. Capital”—was born out of a $100,000 rebranding campaign in 2009, per the Wall Street Journal. Before +++ that came “the Renaissance City” after Providence’s economic resurrection in the 70’s and 80’s. Or take In the meantime, cities continue to change under the the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, itself built in 1972, where weight of reinvestment. Though different circumtargeted investment turned a declining corner of stances have pushed Detroit, New Orleans, Providence, downtown into a tidy strip of hotels, restaurants, and and other changing cities to the brink of economic corporate events when the Convention Center and collapse, the effects are largely the same: unchecked Omni Hotel were completed in 1993. All of these investment in luxury housing and amenities that are efforts resulted in Providence being named the only inaccessible to an area’s most vulnerable residents. The American city in the Wall Street Journal’s “Top Ten zero-sum reality of investment and land-use means Up-and-Coming Travel Destinations in the World,” that a luxury apartment building in the Jewelry District according to the Convention Center website. The negates the possibility of a housing project, a commu‘redevelopment’ of Lippitt Hill into University Heights nity center, a shelter, or a school. When this choice is was a similarly calculated effort. Across these various repeated citywide, South Providence, West Elmwood, projects, the focus of local government on creating an and other neighborhoods on the outside of the new image of Providence as a modern city worthy of tech I-195 are never included in the city’s “Renaissance,” and real estate attention becomes clear. its “Creative” reawakening, or its newest “Innovation Providence is not alone in its push to attract capital and Design” phase. When they are included, the city’s and cater to wealthy investors, and it may not have well-to-do—backed by an extreme wealth gap—drive much choice. As detailed in author and activist Peter marginalized residents out of their homes. Moskowitz’s new book How to Kill a City, Detroit, New

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

METRO

CRYPTO CONTRA CENTRAL CONTROL Within the past week, the apocalyptically-named “Crypto Crash of 2018” has reached new lows. “Crypto’s 80% Plunge Is Now Worse Than the Dot-Com Crash,” reported Michael Patterson of Bloomberg on September 12, as investors in virtual “cryptocurrencies” face a flood of payouts that threaten to further destabilize a once-booming market. While 2017 saw a meteoric rise in the value of currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, the “bitcoin bubble” began to burst in January 2018. To critics, the crash has represented what was already obvious: that the decentralized, bottom-up investment in currencies detached from any material value is financially unsustainable. While there are signs of a Bitcoin recovery that may lead to a stabilization of cryptocurrency values, controversy around the financial viability of cryptocurrencies persists. To some, however, the true worth of cryptocurrency is in the political promise that comes from its technological premise. Currencies like Bitcoin use peer-to-peer networks, which were developed as an alternative to the traditional model of information storage in computer networks. In the classic ‘ client-server’ model, information is stored on a central server from which users request information. In peerto-peer networks, users communicate with each other directly instead of through central servers to locate and receive the information they want. In this manner,

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cryptocurrencies share information known as a ‘blockchain’ (essentially a digital transaction ledger where old entries can’t be erased or modified) between all users, without any central control over or storage of this information. Because the transaction ledger can be used to track ownership of cryptocurrency, but is not controlled by any central financial agency, a handful of enthusiasts see cryptocurrencies as a revolution of the state’s role in the financial system, and a way to subvert government authority more generally. +++ Today, cryptocurrencies have made their way into the mainstream, but initially, their circulation was primarily restricted to the kinds of commodities ‘big government’ didn’t want you to buy. The first novel, practical, and widespread application of Bitcoin was an illegal online drug marketplace called Silk Road. Founded in early 2011, Silk Road was hidden in plain sight on the “Dark Web”; anyone who downloaded an anonymous browsing software called Tor could access the website. The front page listed a variety of drugs, which could be sorted by type (“opioid,” “psychedelic,” etc.) and arranged by reputation of seller. All transactions were paid for with Bitcoin, which could hide the identity of the buyer and seller when used

carefully. Payment was held in escrow until the buyer confirmed receipt of their order. Buyers could then rate their seller and leave comments about the quality and purity of the product. The result was an encrypted, anonymous version of eBay for drugs. On the bottom right corner of the homepage was a link to the Silk Road forums. These were frequented by the creator of Silk Road, who went by the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts (a nod to 1987 classic film The Princess Bride). Dread Pirate Roberts, or DPR, was a curiously enthusiastic character. Unlike what might be expected of a shadowy international digital drugtrade kingpin, he was garrulous and idealistic. He alternated between posting political manifestos about freedom from central authorities, juvenile jokes about drugs, and proclamations of love for Silk Road users (whom he called “comrades”) in random displays of bizarrely sweet affection. DPR believed deeply that the site he created, and every transaction that occurred on it, was “a conscientious objection and act of rebellion against the state.” DPR was not particularly fond of “the state,” which he saw as “a tax-eating, life-sucking, violent, sadistic, war mongering, oppressive machine.” Detailing his evolving attitude toward the state in a 1,000-wordlong forum post, he shared why he started Silk Road: “Everywhere I looked I saw the state, and the horrible

21 SEP 2018

BY Galadriel ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea DESIGN Bethany Hung

Silk Road and the failed 'revolution'

withering effects it had on the human spirit... All of the sudden it was so clear: every action you take outside the scope of government control strengthens the market and weakens the state.” Silk Road was, from the outset, an ideological undertaking, a promotion of the radical freedom and anti-establishment individualism so prevalent in Silicon Valley. DPR’s democratized drug network, by freeing producers and dealers from the constraints of physical interaction, was on the path to creating the “open-ended universe, self-governing and self-designing... cybernetic ecology of minds” dreamed of by infamous techno-hippie Stewart Brand. The post signs off, “I have no one to share my thoughts with in physical space. Security does not permit it, so thanks for listening. I hope my words can be an inspiration just as I am given so much by everyone here.” While DPR drew inspiration and purpose from running Silk Road, he was increasingly lonely and paranoid. He was beginning to form a trusted inner circle online, comprised of an anonymous security expert who acted as a technical and professional mentor to him, a paid informant advising him on law enforcement investigations, and several reliable sellers and forum users whom he hired as moderators. He could not take the risk of sharing his real identity with any of them. Offline, he could not speak honestly with anyone he knew. He lived with roommates in the Bay Area who met him on Craigslist, accepted rent in cash, and thought his name was “Josh.” His real name was Ross Ulbricht, and his story, though akin to that of other tech-moguls, presents a shift in the imagination of what the internet can provide in real terms. Out with the CEOs pulling the levers of power, and in with the people, or so the story goes. +++ “Who knew that a softy could lead an international narcotics organization?” Ulbricht wrote as DPR on September 22nd, 2012. Silk Road had been operating for almost two years at this point, and was gaining notoriety after coverage on sites like Gawker. “Behind my wall of anonymity, I don't have to intimidate, thankfully. But yea, I love you guys. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being my comrades. Thank you for being yourselves and bringing your unique perspectives and energy. And on a personal note, thank you for giving me the best job in the world. I’ve never had so much fun!” This “softy” always had strong principles, and an interest in doing good. Ulbricht’s kindness and generosity were the first traits anyone seemed to notice about him. One hundred letters testifying to his character were presented at the trial that would end his career—and the Silk Road—in 2015. People who had known him throughout his life shared anecdotes from how, as a child, he helped a blind Boy Scout in his troop finish a hike, to how he started a yoga practice with his fellow inmates as a prisoner. Before creating the Silk Road, Ulbricht got a Master’s in materials science, founded a short-lived book sales company that donated 10 percent of its proceeds to inner-city youth, and tried his hand at day trading. After growing disillusioned with science and failing at entrepreneurship, he finally found Silk Road as the work he believed was changing the world. But occupational stress was beginning to get to Ulbricht, and he didn’t know whom to trust. Meanwhile, the FBI was uncovering his identity and the DEA was infiltrating his inner circle. In a bizarre twist, a DEA agent on his case named Carl Force became one of Ulbricht’s trusted confidants. According to Force, after the DEA arrested one of Ulbricht’s moderators, Ulbricht believed the moderator absconded with

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stolen Bitcoin and sensitive information, and attempted to order an assassination through his paid informant. The “paid informant” arranged to have the hit carried out: he staged a gory photo, sent “photographic evidence” to Ulbricht of the moderator’s death, and charged Ulbricht $80,000 in Bitcoin for the “job.” According to Force, Ulbricht was actually paying him as his informant the entire time, and the moderator’s death was staged by the DEA. Ulbricht was charged with, on top of everything else, conspiracy to murder. Message logs from the court trial show him conspiring with a member of Hells Angels shortly thereafter to order five more murders. Bizarrely, although Bitcoin transactions for the amounts discussed changed hands, none of these murders ever took place according to law enforcement, so it appears Ulbricht was being defrauded by the DEA and an anonymous party posing as Hells Angels simultaneously. Ulbricht has maintained that he was never involved in a murder-for-hire, and that he was framed. DEA agent Carl Force was arrested for corruption shortly after the case. By October 2013, Ulbricht was arrested. The FBI had tracked him down through a simple Google search that turned up a question on StackOverflow, a Yahoo Answers-type site for computer programming, with lines of source code from Silk Road, asking for help fixing a bug. His real name was linked to the username. With overwhelming evidence that he was the creator of Silk Road, Ulbricht—who helped popularize what would be one of the most radical (if fraught) breaks from centralized financial capitalism since the invention of derivatives in the 1980s—was sent to prison for life without a possibility of parole. In February 2015, he was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics (but notably, not for murder-for-hire; those charges were dropped due to the confusing evidence and corruption involved). His second appeal was rejected. +++

ample, share anti-government sentiments, Silk Road undermined the government's pro-central banking, anti-drug agenda, whereas “Surface Web” companies undermine citizens’ rights to privacy and exploit our obsessive and addictive tendencies in only inoffensively illegal ways. Flouting the law to gain users and profits seems to be a rite of passage for any startup worth its salt, and the biggest tech giants get to break the law in a massive and entirely state-sanctioned manner when they provide user data to agencies like the NSA. As Ulbricht’s arrest and imprisonment exemplify, there are consequences to breaking from centralized economic models and refusing to cooperate with government agencies. While more corporatist tech start ups flourish—and are even licensed by regulators to ‘self-govern’—Silk Road’s architects were prosecuted. What differentiates Ulbricht from figures like Jobs and Gates is not what they believed (they all are deeply committed to individuality and personal liberty), but how they chose to manifest their politics. Perhaps this is a simple result of US cultural norms and legal frameworks: drugs are highly stigmatized and are illegal to trade. It’s worth noting that a network of drug trading, while potentially harmful in its own right, does not differ greatly from the harms of censorship, election tampering, and fearmongering of which Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are accused. Still, as is the predictable pattern in the US legal framework, Zuckerberg remains a billionaire while Ulbricht—though certainly no victim himself—is imprisoned for life. Bitcoin, the currency the Silk Road helped popularize, has since been incorporated fully into mainstream financial trading. While dark web transactions account for just one percent of Bitcoin transactions today, down from 30 percent in 2012, the present allure of cryptocurrency is still rooted in its history. Criminal markets can no longer claim to be the primary purpose of Bitcoin, but not because the number of overall dark web transactions has gone down. Actually, that number has increased—the dark web is thriving more than ever—but it has been drowned out by general public interest in Bitcoin investment. This interest is due in part to its romantic “Wild West” appeal, where value can be mined to indeterminate limit, and its relative accessibility. The dream of cryptocurrency now is merely a modulation of old capitalist reveries—profitability, and its attendant power—rather than any oppositional utopia the Silk Road purported to represent. The recent collapse of cryptocurrencies encourages a new understanding of their long-term role in our financial system. Specifically, one that understands their history, and thinks about the ways in which cryptocurrencies have been nearly fully incorporated into the canonical boom and bust economic cycles which increasingly characterize our global economy. Perhaps cryptocurrencies—though nominally alternative and decentralized—represent simply another embrace of widespread insecurity in the name of elite economic freedom.

The naivete and arrogance that fueled the ideology of Silk Road feels eerily familiar; echoes of it resonate throughout Bay Area tech culture. It is the same nearsighted self-assuredness that empowers kid-geniuses to build our social networks and search engines in their early twenties as college dropouts, without concern for what might happen as a result. This dream of decentralized control and peer-to-peer networking is apparent in the business strategies of Airbnb and Uber, companies which broke numerous laws, and fundamentally undermined the taxi and hotel industries, by removing the necessity for those industries’ central authority. These companies often reek of macho and youthful hubris, and upend society in hugely transformative ways with a terrifying lack of regard. While then-20-year-old Mark Zuckerberg might be characterized as politically irresponsible, other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Ross Ulbricht founded their startups on an explicit ideology of individualism GALADRIEL B’20 buys her drugs irl. and anti-regulatory fervor. The history of the Silk Road is inextricably tied to a political philosophy that rejects central authority in favor of unchecked ambition. The Silk Road—and the blockchain currencies it used to trade—illustrated what the techno-utopians of the 1960s thought the internet could be: a democratized space free from government supervision, a public commons. In a sense, Ulbricht’s alleged assassination attempts are merely the “dark side” of Silicon Valley’s romanticized notion of the Internet as “Wild West”— lawlessness pushed to its logical extremes. Even though the Silk Road and Facebook, for ex-

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TWO AND TWO BY Anna White

LITERARY

21 SEP 2018

A Grand Day Out s j

COMMUNICATING THROUGH TASTE AND TEXT Cake fixes everything (I hope) Prompted by a request from her parents, Rachel Gelmis received an optional drug test from her Alabama high school. As reported in an article by Michael Hafford of Refinery29, her mother was worried and felt that Rachel had been acting weird. Surprisingly, her results came back positive for everything including THC, cocaine, heroin, meth, benzos, and barbiturates. The school shared the results with her mother, who immediately began to research rehab facilities until the school called a second time to report that they had read the report incorrectly. To make up for the uncomfortable situation, Rachel’s mother made her a cake with caramel apple frosting that read “Sorry we thought you did meth & heroin & coke & pot.” As the treat was created upon her request, Rachel appreciated the gesture, later posting it to twitter with the tagline, “Sometimes you have to admit when you’re wrong #apologycake.” Rachel confirmed on Twitter that she had no hard feelings. Apology cakes, both edible and digital, serve as tools for many things. To make friends laugh, to gather likes, and sometimes to create true resolution. Physical and virtual, fraudulent and genuine, apology cakes can deliver morally troubling content, but they also serve a purpose, revealing the humorous and uncomfortable side of apology-making and generating a tasty addition to meme culture. Traditionally, cakes are only used as a medium for written messages of “Happy Birthday” or the occasional “Congratulations.” Apology cakes appropriate the cake as a device to mediate awkward apology conversations or at least poke fun at them. More social media engagement means that more people are showing off for the screen. Online engagement has taken an earnest, classic, and often simple gesture and given it a chance to be flashy and exaggerated, which is notable considering the embarrassing nature of having to admit wrongdoing. Interestingly enough, no matter their delivery, these cakes are able to express that the gesture of apologizing is itself awkward, clumsy, and performative. The apology cake, once a physical gesture, has come to be co-opted by online memers. On social media sites like Tumblr, users will even superimpose custom apologetic messages set in the Comic Sans typeface over images of cake. Cakes are meant to be consumed for one’s enjoyment, and apology cakes, no matter their form or content, are no exception. Both online and off, apology cakes are meant to entertain, which means that they can be sweet and kind, but also upsetting or calculated. Our engagement with the web has created a situation where gestures as sincere, intimate, and genuine as the apology have become a production for the benefit of online viewers. These cakes may be heartfelt, or they may be meant for online popularity (virtual likes) and humorous effect, since the juxtaposition of icing and seriousness gives each cake a comical edge. Offline, in more traditional apology-making, apologies still can serve to sweetly augment a more private conversation. When apology-making is done online, in public, the meaning is inherently compromised and its goals become less clear. In the world of the digital apology, the questions of intent (on the part of the apologizer and baker) become far more critical. The reader may be very removed from the author, thus generating misinterpretation about the author’s intentions. Or, in other cases, the author may indeed be using the platform for offensive communication.

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Rebecca Reid, a writer for the Metro UK wrote, “How does screwing up and hurting someone become amusing when you put it in icing?” It’s because many people using social media are there primarily for recognition and entertainment. Amongst the cat videos, memes, and ironic humor, the sincerity of gestures, apologies begin to lose value. The trend of apology cakes is infused with the attention-seeking focus of internet culture.

for a better letter grade or a recommendation letter. The message recognizes that a bad deed has occurred, and the extra effort—to say it via cake—suggests creativity and effort. I assume it was better received than a remorseful email, but that all depends on the teacher's degree of gluttony and appreciation for sugar.

+++ Dave Stopera, a member of Buzzfeed Staff, “believes that every apology should be a cake.” And that the apology cake phenomenon is spreading in many ways. Recently, Bravo created a web series called “Baked Amends,” in which people bake and give cakes to people they have wronged. Offenses include, “Sorry I Broke Your Thesis Project (and blamed it on the dog)” and “Sorry I Made the Realtor Unsell Your Dream Home.” The episodes usually end with cake getting smashed into the apologizer’s face. Due to its novelty and popularity, the apology cake has even played a role in social media-based advertising. It’s business as usual. Companies picked up on this internet trend and used it to provide entertainment, build perceived need, and exploit people’s sense of propriety. Using this consumer-based trend, Budweiser posted a series of sorry cakes on Imgur to celebrate Super Bowl Night’s designated drivers. The messages included, “Thanks for DD-ing Sry I made you stop for tacos… twice” and “Sorry about that thing with the chicken wings.” In another corporate ploy, Bake Me A Wish!, a gourmet birthday cake delivery service, offers Apology Gift Deliveries encouraging shoppers to “sweeten the forgiveness by sending your apology with a delicious bakery gift!” These cakes— including the Tiramisu Classico, Chocolate Mousse Torte, and New York Cheesecake—are not accompanied by funny text; instead they serve as delicious tokens of regret. In its physical form, an apology cake provides an opportunity for one to literally swallow their pride; it is an apology that can be chewed and digested, homemade or store-bought. However, with the addition of the internet, digestion can become a cerebral adventure as much as a gastronomic one. +++

In one of the most well-known incidents of an apology cake yet, this past April in Mercer County, New Jersey, a Hamilton Township police officer, Darcy Workman gave firefighter Rickey Wagoner a “Sorry I Tased You” cake to smooth over an accident they had when working together. Posted to Facebook and liked 2.2k times, commented on 246 times, and shared by 1.9k people, the occurrence was a social media hit. People loved the camaraderie and “sweet” action. A cake with the same sentiment (pictured above) was made in another incident involving two Massachusetts police officers, coworkers Jay Maloney and Katie Ross. However, this type of apology cake has also been used inappropriately. A Florida Cop, former deputy Michael Wohlers, texted an image of a “Sorry I Tased You” cake to his former friend, Stephanie Byron, saying that he had baked it in order to “show remorse.” As reported by Kevin Robinson of the Pensacola New Journal, the event occurred following an incident in which Wohlers used a stun gun to shoot Byron in the chest and neck without provocation. The pair had allegedly been arguing over a glass of sweet tea. Though she only received the cake digitally, she believed it to be real. Byron, who goes by @IAmSteph_1 on Twitter, understandably did not appreciate his gesture, instead posting, “Pretty bad apology, considering the offense. And the cake just makes me sad.” Byron filed a civil lawsuit against the former deputy. He was given one year of law enforcement probation, which barred him from working with any Florida law enforcement agency.

Cake apologies vary as much as the individuals that make and receive them. These apology cakes were all once edible, but have since been shared and distributed online. Take a look at a few—dealing with subjects ranging from the mundane to the illegal.

“Sorry I think I might have peed in your dryer by accident”

“Sorry I was late to your class every day.” In the case of the academic apology cake, the student is likely trying to get something more than a reconciliation. The cake is meant to mitigate past indiscretions

Aren’t cakes taken out of context awkward? Accidents happen, and perhaps an apology cake is the best way to mediate the awkwardness that comes with them. In the world of apology cakes, it’s not unusual to find crass language or gross situations illustrated or written about atop a cake. Most people will agree that it’s unappealing to read about peeing on a gift of this kind. Alongside or instead of cake, someone in this sort of situation should bring cleaning supplies. Or, if the intention is to be gross, a jar of lemonade.

21 SEP 2018

BY Raina Wellman DESIGN Pablo Herraiz García de Guadiana

“Sorry for fucking your boyfriend.” “Sorry I ate all the ham.”

“I’m sorry I blacked out, tried to kill you, and almost got us arrested”

Apologizing for loss of food using a different type of food is generally the wrong way to go about it. Ideally, the ham would be replaced, and an apology cake would not be needed. However, if this cake were to accompany a delivery of ham, it could be a nice and thoughtful gesture. Thanks to the decorative elements and absurdity of the offense, this cake is humorous without being biting or cruel.

Ideally, this cake lessens the severity of an earlier intense situation between close friends, poking fun at an absurd and over-exaggerated event. This cake could essentially embody the saying, “You’ll laugh about it later.” However, the extremity of the situation suggests that the apology cake may need to be accompanied by further efforts (like perhaps a cupcake promising to drink more responsibly) in order to have the desired effect of reconciliation. By taking the time to make and decorate the cake, the apologizer is able to physically show their contrition. “I’m sorry you’re on your period.”

Some might find this cake cute or sweet, others gross or patronizing. Something about it is embarrassing and something about it is good, as long as the maker was not attempting to use this biological event to create shame. Anyway, why apologize for something that we have no real control over?

“Sorry I never refill the BRITA” In this case, the grievance is just the right amount of offensive. It’s a delightful and deliberate joke. The cake serves as the perfect apology, it’s honest, relatable, and forgivable. This is a thoughtful response to minor thoughtlessness.

“Sorry I accidently removed your roof. –Roy Co.” In incidents like these, the financial cost of the accident does not equal the cost of the cake. An apology of this kind would need to be accompanied by further monetary compensation, but the cake may soften the receiver and displays the shame felt by the Roy Co. in a more physical and personal way. The potential litigation may go a little bit sweeter.

Does this cake really suggest that one is sorry, or does it just seem that they are gloating? These kinds of incidents likely take a lot more than an apology cake… This cake is at risk of getting smashed into the apologizer’s face. However, the dessert could be a greater gift than the recipient truly knows.

“Sorry Day 2014” A very different kind of apology cake—rooted in history and politics—this cake was made in 2014 in honor of a large-scale public apology dealing with the long-term consequences of colonization. During the 20th century, Australian government policies resulted in what’s known as the “Stolen Generation.” Aboriginal children were often forcibly separated from their families under the pretense of assimilation. Since 1998, Australia has held National Sorry Day on May 26. The day is meant to commemorate the mistreatment of the country’s Aboriginal people and it was originally held in absence of formal political recognition. 10 years later, this popular movement helped to result in the historic public apology delivered by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In a 2018 media release from the Australian government, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, said that “we must never forget the historic injustices and struggles experienced by First Australians.”

“Happy Birthday Dana :-) Sorry I gave you crabs.” Shockingly common online, the STD cake exists in many variations. Due to its prevalence, I’ve come to think that they are hoaxes, but that doesn’t change the importance of sexual health. It’s important to get tested regularly and it is absolutely necessary to share details about your sexual health with your partner before engaging in sexual activity. I wonder whether sensitive topics like these are ruined or trivialized with the proliferation of cakes. Ideally, these types of cakes are not intended to stigmatize. Instead, I hope that they are shared between two delightfully silly, cake-eating lovers who have happened to catch an unfortunate, but also very treatable STD.

“Sorry for being fabulous” You don’t have to apologize for that! And to be honest, the person who created this cake probably isn’t. Some might think of themselves as rainbows, sunshine, and pink icing, and they shouldn’t feel guilty for loving themselves. With this kind of attitude, you might bother some people but your confidence should serve you well in other parts of life. This is a cake to enjoy with a sense of tolerance and unconditional love.

“Sorry”

“So sorry that you’re leaving. We’ll never forget you err… um… Sorry… what was your name?” Light humor and cake is typical of an office goodbye. This is one instance where the concept of apologizing is stretched to include two different types of “sorry.” The inclusion of the cartoon icon (Bugs Bunny) suggests a shared interest and further enhances this cake as a true and genuine item. No foul play on this cake; I have no doubt that it was enjoyed by all.

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“I’m sorry I watched an episode without u although I promised I’d wait.” Perhaps there are things that we shouldn’t have to say sorry for? But some people hold shared television watching very dearly to their heart. An easier and quicker way to resolution would be an offer to rewatch the episode together, but if you enjoy baking cake and light, relatable humor, perhaps this is the cake for you. There’s also an interesting relationship between the addictive qualities of sugar and television. Who hasn’t committed this minor transgression against someone?

This is a very common message; it’s been utilized on many different cakes with many different types of icings and languages. In terms of cake, writing a simple “sorry” perhaps delivers the message best. It’s less public and is hopefully delivered with a note or other type of message that goes through the ideal steps of an apology: confessing, taking responsibility, and offering amends to avoid future bad conduct. RAINA WELLMAN RISD ‘19 is the founder and director of The Museum of Apology. She also runs an apology consulting agency on the side.

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DO YOU EVEN RIFT?

BY Liam Carpenter-Urquhart ILLUSTRATION Katya Labowe-Stoll DESIGN Katherine Sang

Hellnoser Forums Rifter discussion and community news. We can deal with demons, but don’t be a dick. ---

Some morons will blubber at you. The best way to rift is to live and breathe the shadows, they’ll say. Fuck them. ... Because, and this may surprise you, the undying depths are not on your side, They don’t want to help, and They Word limit reached. Am I doing a good job? PM me if you hated you even before you tried to bridle them. The have suggestions, and my creator will see what she can dark is not your fucking friend. do.

Quick Guides for Beginners Discussion in ‘Help’ started by DreadRocks5 Posted at 13:43 on July 6 Feeling frightened? Good. Rifting is a stupid and scary thing to do. So why, and this is important, do you want I want to start rifting, but none of the gyms are inter- to do it anyway? ested in showing the ropes to a total beginner. I’ve looked at some of the mainstream guides, but they If you want to be like Ravyn Green, then make sure you all require months, and I don’t have that much time. really understand the kind of commitment that you’ll Where can I go to know what I need to know? need, and just how much you’re risking for aesthetic. I ain’t here to judge you, but you’re an idiot. -- If you’re chasing courage or thrills or both, try anything Eaten3ice | Mod 13:45 July 6 else. If you’re training to be a professional, drop the “The Dark is not your Fucking Friend” money for a personal trainer. If you just want to fight, then stop. Right now. Stop it, and walk away. Especially NoBody | corporeal where it counts, ladies 13:46 July 6 if you’re looking for revenge, do not walk into a gym. ^ You will make stupid, reckless mistakes, and you will 8faces | No fear, no career 13:46 July 6 kill someone. If you’re very, very lucky it will only be Required reading. yourself. It certainly won’t be the person you want to die. DreadRocks5 | noob 13:50 July 6 Link? “What does this guy know about me?” you’re thinking. “I know what I’m doing.” Your sister was murdered or AzazelY0 | Ravyn haired mystique 13:52 July 6 something. How could I possibly know what that feels noseless joe is a little too antagonistic for me like?

NoBody | corporeal where it counts, ladies 13:53 July 6 So, hypothetically, you ignore my warning and join a mmm.joelessnose.net/readings/notyourfriend.pdf gym. You lose your temper with 5-pounds, and blow out a cage. No one’s hurt: that’s why we start with AutoScribe | New bot on the block 13:53 July 6 5-pounders. The gym manager, though, sees where Beep boop. I’m a bot. You’ve linked to a popular external you’re headed, and kicks you out with the same webpage. The first 950 words are displayed below. warning I’m giving you now. But you, an irredeemable assclown, decide to try again. With 20-pounds. At The Dark is Not Your Fucking Friend home, in a makeshift cage of bamboo bars and half-sincere prayers. 1: Getting in the right headspace You open a rift. The spawn condenses from the I don’t know who you are, and I don’t really care. No shadows, larger than you expected, but you’re handling one does. But as an emissary for the culture, I want a It, It’s under your control. You start feeling comfortgood, long career for you. able, but your comfort is part carelessness, which means you lose. Who’s the best rifter, in your esteemed opinion? Phil Solace, maybe, handling 2000-pounds on live TV. When you come to, It’s forcing you to follow as It Or Sarah Yanway, ending the war by ending ten key slithers through your home. You watch It devour your people. Probably it’s Ravyn Green you’re thinking of. wife, and then your son. Skin first, soul last. Then It The quiet-confident, shadow-eyed look we all love. prostrates you and puts Its glowing teeth through your The one she forcefully injected into the mainstream. nose. It’s too small to have a voice, so It plays back your son’s screams as a laugh. It’s running Its black tongue Well clear your fucking bangs out your eyes. Those over your cornea when a hunter finds you and shoves It were big careers, not good. Certainly not long. Solace’s back through the rift. eviscerated ribcage is now an interstellar ribcage. Yanway’s disembodied voice now belongs to that thou- You’re alive, by a straight up miracle, but you’re left sand-pounder with 1000 eyes. And no one even knows with nothing. What do you do? what happened to Green. They’re dead, and worse. Well, I don’t know anything about you, right? But if it The best rifters, listen, are the guys you see showing up were me, hypothetically, I would try to teach people at the gym every other day, handle 100-pounds, and go how to do this shit right. home to their living families. They even get a shot at one of the afterlifes, when they die. There are brighter paths for your anger. Like becoming a monk, or highwayman, or dying any other way. No So if you think the most important quality for this shit is matter what you’ve lost, or how much, there’s always ambition, or courage, shut up and try to be less stupid. more that you can lose. It’s patience that keeps you alive. And fear. Like I said, I want a good, long career for you, or no When a novice says, “I handled a thirty-pounder on career at all. I want you to have the decency to die in my first day, and my technique was killer,” what they your own bed. So that no one has to shove your spawn really mean is, “I manifested it, and then It hid in my back through the rift you left behind, and clean the shadow on my way home, and now my children's soul- mess of you off the cage walls. I want you to be less bodies are rotting in my attic. It speaks with my fucking considerate, and live. voice, my god, why couldn’t I be less stupid and start low, like everybody else?” OK? Then welcome to the culture.

Eaten3ice | Mod 3:56 July 6 Can @AutoScribe learn to cut off when sections end instead of after a hard word limit? It’s kind of awkward to have a new section cut off so soon. inMackUletz | digital warlock 14:00 July 6 @Eaten3ice, that’s actually a really hard problem. Different pages use different formats for section breaks, etc. 8faces | No fear, no career 14:07 July 6 @AzazelY0 You mean because of the way he addresses the reader? I think it’s mostly in jest... AzazelY0 | Ravyn haired mystique 14:12 July 6 @8faces I mean, he had a bad time when he started off, so he dismisses a perfectly valid approach offhand because it scares him. Eaten3ice | Mod 14:19 July 6 @AzazelY0 Are you talking about Immersion? That’s not a “perfectly valid approach,” it’s the worst of us. AzazelY0 | Ravyn haired mystique

14:40 July 6

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Eaten3ice | Mod 14:43 July 6 @AzazelY0 You don’t see fitness forums entertaining starvation cults, either. It’s self-destructive, full stop. If you really feel censored, feel free to frequent someplace else. apexRedditor | deaf to demons/politicians

08:16 July 8

What happend to OP?

NoBody | corporeal where it counts, ladies

10:20 July 8

She PMd me yesterday. Joined a monastery. Eaten3ice | Mod 10:25 July 8

Thank gods

4teenKittens | remembers the bad old days

11:58 July 8

One less noob taking up the cages. noPaintnoFaint | what are we preparing for?

01:05 July 10

One less noob eating up my gainz.

This thread has been closed.

If you thought that was a joke, stay home. There ain’t a 2. Gym Culture ghost story, here, that didn’t kill someone and eat them first. All the worst you’ve heard is real. While They’re Forty years ago, a teenager decided to set up here, if you fail to feel threatened, you’ll die. a homebaked cage in one of his school’s unused bathrooms. That school doesn’t So start low, build slow, and remember that we were all exist any more. Neither does the noobs. That guy in the cage beside yours, comfortably town. “Asheville is ashes.” handling 400-pounds? He started with 5 too. Before gyms "civilized" the 17

LITERARY

21 SEP 2018

ur own friend, list FRIDAY 9.21

Express Your Psych Open Mic - AS220 (115 Empire Street) - 5-7PM

The group ‘Arts to Reduce the Mental Health Stigma’ invites you to share your expression of mental health in all forms and in any medium. For example, your list writer (LW) once detailed his attempt at going to therapy on a podcast! Sure wish I had spun my tale over some AS220 chickpeas instead of into the void of iTunes.

Workers Leaving the Factory. Where Are They Going? - Granoff Center for the Creative Arts (154 Angell Street) - 5:30-7:30PM

This installment of the Magic Lantern Cinema series focuses on archival and contemporary representations of labor. It promises to “[shift] from images of the factory to imagine how these images are being fabricated and therefore part of another factory that can be imaged…” A fun spin on “working for the weekend”!

SATURDAY 9.22

Downtown Rising Fest - 38 East Avenue, Pawtucket - 11AM-7PM

This is actually a combination of three Pawtucket music festivals: Rocktucket, River Bend, and Culture Shock. More bang for your buck than all your ‘chellas and ‘paloozas combined! Except it’s free, so no bucks involved.

Lizzie Bordon’s Overnight Ghost Hunt - Lizzie Bordon Bed & Breakfast/Museum (230 Second Street, Fall River, MA) - 4PM - $249-329

Massachusetts’ “most haunted bed & breakfast” invites you to stay a night while attempting to find clues for an unsolved double-homicide from 1892. Lizzie, the alleged culprit who was tried and acquitted, is played by Chloë Sevigny in an upcoming biopic about the murders. Your LW once saw her on the street but was too scared to ask for a signature. Presumably because she’s a ghost! The real ghost here, however, is your wallet. Psychic medium included.

SUNDAY 9.23

The Gay 5k/Walk - Warwick City Park (Steven O’Connor Boulevard, Warwick) - Starts at 10AM

A personal problem, but for your LW, ‘gay liberation’ explicitly means the liberation to not run long distances like I’m in gym class. But as this is a fundraiser for Options Magazine, a nonprofit outlet for LGBTQ+ people, you can run/walk so that queer writers like me… can not.

MONDAY 9.24

Monday Matinee: The Motorcycle Diaries - Pawtucket Public Library (13 Summer Street, Pawtucket) 1-3:15PM

Go catch this biopic on Che Guevara’s early years after he dropped out of medical school to travel across South America with his bud Alberto Granado. Sounds like a leftist Thelma and Louise! And what better place to celebrate the proletariat than a public library?

SFAC Dodgeball & After Party (Adult Co-ed Social Sports) - Boys & Girls Club of Pawtucket (1 Moeller Place, Pawtucket RI) - 7-9PM Bullies need not apply.

TUESDAY 9.25

Irish Dance (for Adults!) - The Kelly School of Irish Dance (71 Sandy Bottom Road, Coventry RI) 7:45-8:45PM - $18

May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back... After sharing a Ryanair flight to Glasgow with a fleet of Dublin-based dancers in April, this LW fell in love with the humble charm of Irish line dancing. All of the girls on the plane were wearing grass-green spandex bodysuits and Dolly Parton-sized red-hair wigs! Might not be as much costumery at this class, but it still sounds fun.

WEDNESDAY 9.26

Hip-Hop Brunch - The Duck and Bunny (312 Wickenden Street) - 8-12PM

Never bore witness to the hashtag #snuglife before reading the fb event advertising local snuggery Duck and Bunny’s recurring hip-hop brunch kickback… never want to see it again! Come to watch scrawny beardos vocalize the titles of a culturally appropriative breakfast-for-dinner menu—consisting of dishes like “Nuthin’ but a L.O.X. Thang” and a shitake-filled egg crepe known as “The Big Poppa.” Stay for the dope vibes!

THURSDAY 9.27

Bike Night - A&W Root Beer (460 Putnam Pike, Smithfield RI) - 4-8PM

If you like recalling the post-war days when America was all about drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants, consider pulling up to “Bike Night” at critically endangered chain restaurant A&W Root Beer. There’s nothing more refreshing than a cold root beer float except maybe… the prolonged and tumultuous decay of America(na).