The College Hill Independent Vol. 36 Issue 8 by College Hill Independent

THE COLLEGE HILL A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY INDEPENDENT

36 • 08 06 APR 2018

THE

INDY COVER

A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY VOLUME 36 / ISSUE 08 APR 06 2018

Green Space 1 Sylvie Mayer

NEWS 02

Week in Review: Facebook Julia Rock, Graham Straus

Oklahoma Thunder Kion You

TECH

13 METABOLICS 08

METRO 05

Roll Call! Julia Rock

Red Light Radicalism Katrina Northrop

Making My Way Downtown Emerson Tenney

EPHEMERA

Newman, New Day Ben Bienstock

Frank's Prank II Maya Bjornson & Gabriel Matesanz

Man on the Moon Seamus Flynn

FEATURES 15

A Grave Concern Eve Zelickson

LITERARY

ARTS 07

Window Shopping Emma Kofman

The Glue Factory Zak Ziebell & Liby Hays

The Way We Were Jorge Palacios

MISSION STATEMENT

FROM THE EDITORS: I romanticize air travel far too much. When I'm slogging through school and work, I fantasize about the departure and arrival screens listing countless distant cities I may never get to see, the microscopic white waves breaking in slow motion from miles above the ocean's surface, the allure of going somewhere far enough that you have to hurtle through the atmosphere in a vaguely bird-shaped metal capsule to get there. In reality, of course, flights are rituals of discomfort and humiliation, from the heartlessness of security and customs lines to the chilly, dry air that seems to make everyone uglier the moment they set foot on the plane. Waiting to board a delayed early morning flight back to Providence last week, I deliriously ordered a double-stacked cheeseburger and 24-ounce cold brew for breakfast, both of which I forced myself to consume to the point of nausea in the terminal—I'd spent too much money on them both to let them go to waste. This week, I'm happy to stay within the bounds of where my feet can take me. -JA

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. 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. 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. SPRING 2018

WEEK IN REVIEW Julia Rock NEWS Isabel DeBre Chris Packs METRO Harry August Erin West ARTS Nora Gosselin Cate Turner Isabelle Rea METABOLICS Dominique Pariso Eve Zelickson

FEATURES Ruby Aiyo Gerber Paula Pacheco Soto Wen Zhuang SCIENCE Liz Cory Tara Sharma TECH Paige Parsons Olivia Kan-Sperling OCCULT Zack Kligler Gabriela Naigeborin EPHEMERA Maya Bjornson

The Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.

LITERARY Isabelle Doyle Fadwa Ahmed LIST Jane Argodale Alexis Gordon Fadwa Ahmed STAFF WRITERS Galadriel Brady Mica Chau Ella Comberg Mara Dolan Soraya Ferdman Liby Hays Anna Hundert Lillian Kirby Lucas Smolcic Larson Mariela Pichardo Ivy Scott

Marly Toledano Sara Van Horn Kayli Wren Kion You COPY EDITORS Shuchi Agrawal Grace Berg Benjamin Bienstock Seamus Flynn Sasha Raman Caiya Sanchez-Strauss ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Eve O’Shea Claire Schlaikjer

STAFF ILLUSTRATORS Julie Benbassat Alexandra Hanesworth Kela Johnson Halle Krieger Sophia Meng Pia Mileaf-Patel Ivan Rios-Fetchko Ella Rosenblatt Kelly Wang Dorothy Windham Katya Labowe-Stoll Rémy Poisson DESIGNERS Bethany Hung Amos Jackson Laura Kenney Katherine Sang Mariel Solomon Ella Rosenblatt

DESIGN EDITOR Eliza Chen X Zak Ziebell SENIOR EDITORS Jane Argodale Kelton Ellis Robin Manley Gabriel Matesanz Will Weatherly BUSINESS MANAGER Maria Gonzalez

SOCIAL MEDIA Fadwa Ahmed Pia Mileaf-Patel ALUMNI RELATIONS Julia Tompkins MANAGING EDITORS Jonah Max Katrina Northrop Signe Swanson MVP Eve Zelickson

WEB MANAGER Ashley Kim

THEINDY.ORG — @THEINDY_TWEETS

WEEK IN FACEBOOK

BY Julia Rock and Graham Straus ILLUSTRATION BY Katya Labowe-Stoll DESIGN BY Amos Jackson

Analog Apology

Zucktown

Much to the surprise of everyone, Mark Zuckerberg apologized to humanity last week for the harm he has caused our species after the news broke that Facebook enabled Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm associated with the Trump campaign, to obtain information about at least 87 million Facebook users in 2016. To add to the surprising nature of this apology, Zuckerberg (“Zuck”), chose to publish the apologies in the form of print newspaper ads, which is ironic given that Zuck’s life work has essentially declared war on print journalism (and maybe journalism in general). In large print at the top of the ad, Zuck writes, “We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.” It was a mistake, and Zuck will make sure that he is the only one who can freely exploit user data in the future. However, given that people don’t read print newspapers anymore because they find news on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sources, the Independent supposes that Zuck didn’t really intend for anybody to read the half-hearted apology. In spite of Zuck’s promise to “do better for you,” users have already begun to turn against him. The hashtag #deletefacebook has been trending ever since the news about Cambridge Analytica broke, and too many op-eds have already been written in the vein of “why I deleted Facebook” or “why I’m not going to delete Facebook.” The Indy has decided to retain its Facebook account because we believe that the best way to challenge the establishment is to remain within (thank you Brown University for funding our newspaper). However, we want a better apology from Zuck, and we are offering him a one-page ad in next week’s issue of the Indy, free of charge. We suggest that the apology should look something like this: Dear Facebook users: First, I would like to thank you for sharing your data with me. It has made me very rich and famous, and I might be able to run for president in 2020 because even though I’ve donated lots of money I have a ton left. Second, I would like to apologize for allowing this data to be used by bad men to do bad things. Third and finally, please send me your social security number in writing if you would like more information about Zuck2020. Best, Big Brother

Facebook has announced its plan to construct Willow Village, a company town à la Hershey, PA, in Menlo Park, California. The “Facebook Community” page says that Willow Village will be an “integrated, mixed-use village that will include housing, retail, and other community services.” There will be bike paths and plazas and lots of nice things for employees as well as ordinary citizens who choose to call Willow Village home. Facebook Community recently hosted three open house events to hear feedback. They were hosted at the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center, the East Palo Alto Senior Center, and the Menlo Park Senior Center. We at the Independent have thought of some problems that Willow Village will face, as well as some potential solutions. We were unable to make it to any of the information sessions, and our grandparents do not live in the aforementioned senior centers, so we have left our comments here.

-JR

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Problem: Public Education. Where are the Willow Villagers to send their children to school? Solution: Facebook can build a school that disrupts the education marketplace by introducing the “react” button infrastructure early in a child’s life. This builds intuition for later life Facebook use and will expedite emotional maturation. For instance, if when learning about a school shooting a student reacts “haha” instead of “sad,” that student can be punished appropriately. This data has never existed in schooling before and the ROI will be massive, undoubtedly. Problem: Religious Expression. Where and what is the Willow Village place of worship? Solution: Facebook should erect one multi-denominational place of worship that serves as a venue for conventional religion, as well as a new religion that disrupts the religion marketplace by putting Zuck at the helm. The Zuck Faith gives Willow Villagers a way to keep their religious practice as modern as other aspects of their Willow Village lives. Without much thought one can imagine Facebook pages for Moses, God, Jesus, Allah, et cetera, that use AI to answer questions and prayers!

initiatives. This hiring drive gives Facebook a means of hiring the brightest, most active young people who may not have a strong coding background. Specifically this is a job opportunity for experienced partiers to bring their charisma to Facebook. Problem: Russian Meddling. Solution: Willow Village Russian Consulate. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Problem: Worker Productivity and Health. Solution: Connect With A Real Doctor (MD) On Your News Feed Or In Your Messenger Application For Quick And Reliable Results! Share Your White Blood Cell Count With All Your Friends! Or something along those lines. Problem: Water Shortages. Lack of H2O. Solution: Given the realities of climate change, especially in California, Facebook can lead the conservation effort. In Willow Village, Facebook can use a progressive, disruptive solution system where water allotment is based on Facebook friend count. I.e. someone with 2,000 friends gets twenty times as much water as someone with 100 friends. This makes sense because people with more friends have more parties. Problem: Public Library. Solution: (Fac)eBooks. Problem: Transportation Infrastructure. Solution: Facebook buys Uber. The self-driving news feed is begging to exist.

-GS

Problem: Nightlife. Life at night. Solution: The Facebook interns can run and inhabit their own nightclub inside Willow Village. Club Willow will hire a new batch of young, talented interns who have a vested interest in building community through nighttime

WEEK IN REVIEW

WHILE THE IRON IS HOT BY Kion You ILLUSTRATION BY Gabriel Matesanz DESIGN BY Eliza Chen

On Monday, April 2, an estimated 30,000 Oklahoma public school teachers converged on the Oklahoma Capitol, coinciding with a walkout that forced the closure of 200 school districts across the state. Protesters swarmed up to the stairs of the building, holding signs reading: “I shouldn’t have to marry a sugar daddy to teach in Oklahoma,” “My two side jobs bought this sign,” and “Certified teachers are an endangered species.” Teachers and students from Edmond Memorial High set up class in front of the Capitol, working on foldable tables and chairs. A group of band directors convened with students to create a spontaneous concert. The previous Thursday, when threatened with the prospect of a walkout, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed House Bill 1010xx into law, raising taxes on cigarettes, fuel, and hotel lodging in order to fund salary increases for teachers. While the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) had previously demanded a $10,000 raise for teachers, a $5,000 raise for support staff, and $200 million in education funding, the revenue bill that passed the state legislature offered only fractions of that: a $6000 teacher raise, $1250 support staff raise, and $50 million in funding. “This package does not overcome a shortfall that has caused four-day weeks and overcrowded classrooms that deprive kids of the one-on-one attention they need,” Oklahoma Education Association President Alicia Priest said in a video statement. “We must keep fighting for everything our students deserve.” Teachers and their unions resolved to continue the walkout. For decades, Oklahoma public schools have been in a mire of financial distress. According to the NEA, the average salary for Oklahoma teachers in 2017 was $45,245, the third lowest in the country. According to the Oklahoma Education Coalition, the state’s education budget had shrunk by 28 percent following the 2008 recession, the steepest decline of any state in the nation, and a fifth of Oklahoma schools had moved to four-day weeks. Furthermore, 17 percent of Oklahoma teachers leave after their first year, causing the number of untrained emergency-certified teachers to increase 35 fold from what it was seven years ago. Catalyzed by the success of the nine-day West Virginia teacher strike

NEWS

a month prior, which increased teacher pay by five percent, the slogan “the time is now” became a rallying point for teachers in Oklahoma. Educators in other states have also followed West Virginia’s lead in what have been termed “red state rebellions” and launched strikes of their own. The Kentucky teacher walkout, happening concurrently with Oklahoma's, similarly saw thousands of teachers marching on the capitol building—the strike came largely in response to the state government passing a reform bill gutting teacher pensions. Elsewhere, in Arizona, a large group of teachers rallied at the Capitol on March 28, threatening to strike if they do not get a 20 percent pay raise. With growing national attention being directed to underpaid public school teachers, and the looming 2018 midterm elections (36 governors and countless state legislators are up for reelection), teachers have backed state governments into a corner regarding the long-overdue issue of public education spending. Using tax increases to fund the budget demands of the striking teachers contradicts Oklahoma’s 1992 State Question 640, a referendum that has made it virtually impossible to raise tax revenues. This kind of economic policy is by no means limited to Oklahoma, or even red states: the watershed California Proposition 13, a 1978 deal that drastically lowered property taxes and made it difficult to raise taxes in the future, notoriously tanked funding for (and performance in) California’s public schools. Thus, these labor actions mark less of a “red state rebellion” but rather signal a rejection of bipartisan fiscal policies which have systematically stripped funding for public services. Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, when speaking to the New York Times, referred to the strikes as the “civics lesson of our time… the politicians on both sides of the aisle are rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.” Overall, while West Virginia stands as the impetus for teachers moving to strike across the nation, Oklahoma will become the bellwether as to whether or not West Virginia was simply a one-off movement, and whether or not states are willing to overhaul decades of neoliberal fiscal policies.

+++ Despite renewed attention to this wave of teacher activism in the conservative heartland, this is not the first time teachers in Oklahoma have walked out. On April 16, 1990, more than half of Oklahoma’s 36,000 teachers went on strike, closing a quarter of the state’s school districts. Earlier that year, West Virginia teachers had gone on strike as well—again, West Virginia and Oklahoma had two of the three lowest teacher salaries in the nation. The Oklahoma Education Association had organized the walkout after the State Senate killed a bill that would have included $212 million in education funding. After four days, Oklahoma lawmakers broke a deadlock on House Bill 1017 and passed an emergency clause for $230 million in funding through Congress. A whole host of reforms were implemented through HB1017: maximum class sizes, progressive increases in teacher salaries, and new statewide curriculum standards all were established. The bill also established a formula to balance aid, with lower-income districts receiving more than their higher-income counterparts. Though the reform remained popular among voters, internal backlash to increased government spending was vehement. Two years after HB1017 and an unsuccessful attempt at repeal, conservative lawmakers chose to pass State Question 640 through state referendum, which mandated three-fourths majority votes in both the House and the Senate, or a public vote, to pass tax increases. As a result, no revenue bills have passed in Oklahoma in the past three decades, forcing educators to face continual spending cuts. Due to this lack of essential funding, it comes as no surprise that state educators have begun to mobilize. However, even if Oklahoma legislators do agree to the demands of the Education Association, the permanence of State Question 640 will render it nearly impossible for reform to be successfully implemented and maintained. A fundamental change to how spending works will have to occur for public education to maintain financially afloat.

APRIL 06, 2018

The Oklahoma Education Association and the fight for a livable wage

+++ The Facebook group “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout” has swelled to 75,000 members, parallelling the extensive use of social media by West Virginia teachers. The group was founded not by union representatives but by 25-year-old Alberto Morejon, a third-year history teacher at Stillwater Junior High School, who told Tulsa World he simply wanted “to get the ball rolling.” The group has been the central meeting ground for teachers to discuss information on logistics, share pictures of school conditions, and start polls to gauge teacher opinion—one such poll aggregated data showing how much money teachers wanted for their salaries and support services. West Virginia’s Facebook group “West Virginia Public Employees United” reached 24,000 members during the strike, and Arizona’s Facebook group featured similar numbers. Richard Ojeda, a West Virginia Senator and champion of its teacher strike, received hundreds of thousands of views as he streamed his opinion on Facebook live. “This strike wouldn’t have happened without the grassroots organization through the private Facebook group,” said Ryan Frankenberry, an organizer with the West Virginia Working Families Party, to Vox. Yet, organizing primarily on Facebook through immensely sized groups, which has and will

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

continue to occur, may lend itself to the spread of misinformation, or the breach of private data. However, as unions have slowly become the victim of anti-union policies, and will only continue to be with the impending Janus v AFSCME Supreme Court case, Facebook has become one of the only ways strikers can organize. +++ While much of the coverage of the Oklahoma walkout has revolved around its underpaid teachers, the actual demands of the OEA equally seek to remedy other pressing issues in the Oklahoma school system, demanding increased budgets for student supplies and a more fairly compensated school support staff. As school supply budgets have dwindled with decades of spending cuts, teachers have dug deep into their own pockets (on average $600 a year for an Oklahoma teacher) to compensate for extreme austerity measures. At some schools in the state, teachers are barred from printing more than 30 photocopies each week. Images of tattered, decades-old history textbooks litter the “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout” Facebook group, and teachers posted comments about how unbearably large their class sizes had become. Moreover, with the cutting of auxiliary programs such as those in the visual and performing arts, teachers continue to fill in these curricular gaps without

compensation. Shawn Sheehan, the 2016 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, recently left the state to go teach in Texas. On his blog, he wrote, “Do other teachers out there really think we aren’t in this for the students? Who in their right mind teaches in Oklahoma for the money? Of course I’m here for my students, their families, and this community, but I won’t apologize for demanding a livable wage.” Sheehan continued that the problem is systemic in nature, built from decades-long policies which have all but ensured “a lack of funding for education and other core state services.” Even after starting a non-profit that focused on teacher retention and running for the state senate on an education-centered platform, he could not stay in Oklahoma and provide for his family as a teacher. Just like in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma often have little choice but to cross into neighboring states, where they can see immediate raises in the range of $10,000-20,000. While stories like Sheehan’s continue to emerge across the country, minor victories like the one in West Virginia and the actions underway in Oklahoma offer up a tangible, realistic, positive vision for the all too often neglected educators in America.

KION YOU B’20 thinks the time is now.

NEWS

WHO COUNTS?

The end-to-end census test in Providence County

BY Julia Rock ILLUSTRATION BY Claire Schlaikjer DESIGN BY Amos Jackson

It is no small task to count the nearly 326 million people who live in the United States and its territories. Matching each person to one of about 126 million households is nearly impossible, particularly when it comes to counting people who rent homes, college students, recent immigrants, and people who are fearful of federal officials. The 2010 Census failed to count an estimated 1.5 million people of color and overcounted white people. The census is tested before the official count is carried out in order to figure out how to collect accurate responses from as many people as possible. For example, new questions that are added to the census will be tested in different formats to see how they affect responses, and the test provides the Census Bureau with an opportunity to train census takers in advance of the true count. If a test is not carried out effectively, it will inevitably affect the Census Bureau’s capacity to count people during the full census. The only “end-to-end test,” or complete practice run, for the 2020 Census is currently underway in Providence County. For the first time, people can respond to the census online, so the dress rehearsal in Providence is especially important for the Bureau to make sure the new technology is accessible and doesn’t create barriers for respondents. Testing preceding the full 2020 Census is less comprehensive than it was in previous decades, due to budget constraints that Congress has been placing on the Census Bureau for several years. In 2014, Congress decided that the budget for the 2020 census could be no larger than the budget for the 2010 census, without an adjustment for inflation. The full test was originally arranged to take place in three different counties across the country, including a test of a Spanish language census and tests in remote and rural areas, but due to the tight budget, Providence County was selected as the only test site. “When you look at Providence, it really is a microcosm of the nation,” Jeff Behler, the regional representative from the Census Bureau, told the Independent in an interview. Behler, who is overseeing the 2018 test, explained that the racial and economic diversity in Providence County reflects national trends and that the high number of renters and college students in Providence County will be good practice for census takers.

METRO

Census test forms were sent to Providence County households this March, and in May, federal officials will be visiting households that have not yet filled out the forms. Community leaders in Rhode Island have expressed concerns that the census test is underfunded and that the Census Bureau has not reached out to community partners in Providence to raise awareness about the test. As minority and immigrant populations have historically been undercounted in past censuses, 2020 threatens to further strip already marginalized groups of their share of the $675 billion of federal funds allocated based on census population data. Even more directly, an undercount would dilute the electoral representation of these groups. This is no accident: critics have asserted that the federal government is intentionally suppressing census efforts to reduce political representation and affect how voting districts are drawn in the upcoming decade, thus protecting the Republican hold on federal and state political power. Undercounting minorities in the census would add to the efforts made by officials within the Republican Party in the past few decades to undermine the voting rights of certain groups through practices such as gerrymandering districts and passing restrictive voter registration and identification laws. The census directly informs the state-level redistricting that will take place in 2020. In Rhode Island, the prospect of an undercount is perhaps more alarming than in any other state. In December 2017, president of Election Data Services, Kimball Brace, conducted an analysis of Census Bureau data which showed that Rhode Island was 157 people away from losing a seat in the House of Representatives (and therefore an electoral college vote). For scale, Rhode Island was 52,481 people away from losing a seat after the 2010 census. +++ In 2017, the federal government made additional budget cuts to the Census Bureau, so there was no budget for a media campaign or official outreach to partners in Providence to spread the word about the census test and encourage people to fill it out. The community leaders in Rhode Island who built an outreach effort in 2010 to

encourage historically undercounted populations to fill out the census were not contacted to spread the word about the 2018 test. As a result, Mayor James Diossa of Central Falls explained, “many Rhode Islanders in our city have been surprised to receive a letter in the mail inviting them to fill out a Census survey online.” He continued, “Since Providence County is the only census trial run in the country, all eyes are on us ahead of the 2020 census.” Many people aren’t aware that the census test is occurring and are understandably surprised to receive inquiring mail from the federal government. Before the 2010 Census, a $133 million, four-month advertising campaign, produced in 28 languages, reached the average US resident 42 times with a message about participating in the census. More than half of the advertising budget was allocated for media targeted at minorities and immigrants. The lack of any funds for a media campaign or for partnerships with local organizations for the census test has been interpreted by Rhode Island leaders such as Mayor Diossa as a deliberate effort on the part of the federal government to neglect these populations in the count. Spokesman Victor Morente from Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza’s office explained in an email to the Indy that the City of Providence was involved in organizing the Providence Complete Count Committee, “a group of civic, community, and higher education organizations working to build awareness and encourage participation in the 2018 Census Test among the communities they serve.” The Providence Complete Count Committee operates independently of the federal government and has partnered with the Providence Public Libraries to make laptops available to fill out the census test. (People who fill out the survey at a Providence Community Library can have five dollars in overdue fines waived.) Behler holds a nonpartisan appointment as the regional director from the Census Bureau, and has held this job for 21 years. He explained that he is disappointed by the lack of funds for the test, but is optimistic that the test and the full census will be successful in Rhode Island because of the impressive mobilization of the Providence Complete Count Committee and other partners in

APRIL 06, 2018

Providence. Behler told the Indy: “The partners in Providence County” have been “awesome and supportive of the 2018 end-to-end test.” Behler is confident that “when 2020 comes around the partnership program that we have in place is going to be fantastic, and we really are going to do our best with our partners that we are sharing our resources… bringing the right people together, sitting down at a table, figuring out how to deliver the resources efficiently…” However, Behler’s partners in Providence County would beg to differ. Mayor Elorza told the Providence Journal this week that carrying out the 2018 Census Test without first giving notice to Providence County residents is “gross incompetence” at best. Lieutenant Governor McKee said at Monday’s press conference that, “If we don’t get it right here, then the country’s not going to get it right in each and every community.” McKee went on, “We take very unkindly from the municipal level unfunded mandates, whether it’s coming from the state or coming from the … federal government.” +++ Counting people has never been a neutral activity in the United States. To count a person in a representative democracy is to assert: the government sees you, you should be represented politically, and you should receive a share of the federal government’s financial resources. From its inception, the US Constitution conducted the decennial census count in terms that make an explicit statement about who its authors considered to be American. The Constitution mandated that the number of people in a state was determined by the “whole Number of Persons… excluding Indians not taxed,” and “three fifths of all other Persons.” That is to say, free people counted, Native people did not, and enslaved people were counted as three-fifths of a person. The census—the foundation for creating a representative democracy—was born out of exclusion. Although public officials and major news outlets have chastised the current administration for using the census as a means to prevent people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized groups from “counting,” this is by no means the first

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

time a census has done this. In the centuries following the first census in 1790, the US has continued to use the poll as a political, and often discriminatory, tool. In 1924, the Congress used results from the 1910 Census, which included a question about citizenship, to justify the 1924 Emergency Quota Acts which restricted “undesirable” immigration from certain regions, writes Shom Mazumder, a PhD candidate at Harvard, in a recent article for the Washington Post. And during World War II, the Census Bureau shared data with the Secret Service about the number of people of Japanese descent living in certain areas, which was then used to place Japanese Americans in internment camps. Thus, the federal government officials that claim a proposed “citizenship question” on the 2020 Census is a benign way to collect more information about the population should be met with great skepticism. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced last week that the 2020 Census would include a question about citizenship status for the first time since 1950, a move which experts from within the Census Bureau, government officials across the country, civil rights leaders, and others have said will lead to further undercounting of undocumented people, immigrants, and minorities. “Even before the citizenship question was entered, every single person [at this meeting] has heard from folks that are scared to be here ... the citizenship question addition to the census will create an undercount. It will cause the census to fail,” Gabriela Domenzain, director of the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University, told a room full of people at a press conference about the Census in Central Falls on April 2. Domenzain explains that immigrants and minorities in Rhode Island and across the country fear federal officials for very valid reasons. The Republican Party in particular stands to gain from undercounting these groups, as the counties that will lose representation from a citizenship question tend to send Democrats to Congress and vote for Democratic presidents. Almost every influential Rhode Island politician, including Governor Raimondo and mayors from Providence County, in addition to organizations such as

Common Cause and the ACLU of Rhode Island, have called for the citizenship question to be removed from the 2020 Census. “The census counts people, not citizens,” James Vincent, President of the Providence branch of the NAACP, told the Indy; “They are trying to put the [citizenship] question on the census for political reasons. We don’t need that. Everybody needs to be counted.” Executive Director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, Steven Brown, told the same audience at the April 2 press conference, “I saw an article the other day about how the Trump Administration is botching this run. I don’t think they are botching it. I think they are deliberately undermining it. The timing of the decision about having this question on at the same time that people in Providence County were getting this is inexcusable.” +++ The census has always been political, and the events of the past few months have revealed that 2020 will be no different. The underfunding of the census test in Providence County and the failure of the Census Bureau to connect with local partners to ensure a full count of minorities and immigrants, in addition to the recent news that the 2020 Census will include a citizenship question, have revealed that the current administration and Congress intend to use the census as a means of holding onto political power. The test already underway in Providence County reveals that the 2020 Census is going to require a massive mobilization by state and local governments and community organizations to achieve a full count. The Census Bureau faces a difficult task in attempting to count everyone, amid budgetary restraints and an executive branch which has revealed its intent to suppress the count of minorities, immigrants, and undocumented people. The stakes are high in Rhode Island, where the slightest undercount might mean the loss of an electoral vote and a US Representative—a prospect that Rhode Island has not faced since the ratification of the United States Constitution. JULIA ROCK B’19 thinks every Rhode Islander counts.

METRO

BY Ben Bienstock ILLUSTRATION BY Eve O’Shea DESIGN BY Bethany Hung I think it’s going to rain today The lyric might be understood any number of ways. Though the promise of rain conjures images of dark and dreary streets, rain can also be cleansing, a natural refresher much needed on difficult days. The full refrain seems to confirm this more optimistic interpretation: “Human kindness is overflowing / And I think it’s going to rain today.” If the goodness of humanity is already full to the brim, then a good rain is all that’s needed to bring all compassion out into the world. Case closed—except there’s more pessimism to be considered. Each verse of Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” first released on his self-titled 1968 debut, depicts a desolate cityscape entirely devoid of human kindness, full of “broken windows and empty hallways” and populated by “scarecrows dressed in the latest styles / with broken smiles to chase love away.” Newman’s streets, where one kicks a tin can because “that’s the way to treat a friend,” will not be washed by a cleansing rain, nor one that brings good things into the world. “I think it’s going to rain today,” ultimately, returns to its expected meaning—bleakness. But take one listen to the record and you’ll immediately feel the song’s despair without parsing a single lyric. Despite Randy Newman’s renown as a lyricist and satirist, his music and arrangements often tell the stories of his songs as much as or more than his words do, often by suggesting ironic contradictions between the lyrics and the meanings he intends them to convey. The lyrics of “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” may be ambivalent and contradictory, but the full extent of their irony and emotional resonance emerges only after putting them to music; in the first verse, Newman’s voice quavers over slow, soulful piano chords that resolve downwards before repeating, creating the feeling of a sort of cyclical finality, underpinning the hopelessness of the lyrics and the certitude of the prediction of rain in its refrain. Other verses see Newman’s voice suspended weightlessly above a skeletal string orchestra that threatens to drown him out but never quite does, like the rain that never comes. The effect is emotionally devastating. Newman uses a similar technique on his masterpiece, 1972’s “Sail Away,” in which he uses the musical tropes of gospel and Americana to accompany his lyrical depiction of a slave trader attempting to lure Africans to join him in the US with a sales pitch of false promises of comfort and freedom. The listener recognizes that these promises will be used against the Africans in America: “In America, every man is free / To take care of his home and his family” is a particularly stinging recasting of the racist logic of the Moynihan Report and its castigation of ostensibly absent Black fathers and supposedly incapable Black single mothers. “You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day” and “Ain’t no lion or tiger, ain’t no mamba snake / Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake” identify seemingly universal ideals of leisure, comfort, and piety as weapons for stereotype and oppression when in the hands of whites. Like in “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” the emotion of the song comes from Newman’s drawling vocal delivery and the use of traditional American and Black music. His incorporation

ARTS

of tropes of these traditions, from the woodwinds and brass of the marchlike intro to the gospel chords of the chorus, suggests yet another irony: that the very music of “Sail Away” is a product of the racist history Newman’s lyrics dramatize. “Sail Away” differs from the Americana of Newman’s contemporaries such as the Band, whose “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a frustratingly beautiful song with lyrics that are sung from the perspective of a Confederate veteran espousing a version the racist Lost Cause ideology that casts the Confederacy as a virtuous and nonracist project. In contrast, Newman’s music embraces history not to pose as authentically “folky” (read: white), but to highlight the contradictions of subsuming and appropriating Black musical traditions under a lilywhite banner of “Americana.” While his lyrics are brilliant and edifying, they might be reduced to didactic political satire if not for the expressive historical and cultural quality of the instrumental. Newman uses irony not merely by singing words he does not mean or believe, but by contradicting and questioning his songs’ meanings through their musical accompaniment. Newman’s music shows the potential of irony in pop music to be radical, in the sense that it both disrupts our emotions and preconceived notions of the relationship between music and lyric and acts as the vehicle for depictions and dissections of deeply complex histories of oppression. In implicating both the music industry and his white audience in his critiques, Newman fundamentally undercuts the anodyne comfort typically native to pop. As his music and lyrics work together to elicit emotions and produce social commentary, he does not provide his listeners the ability to ignore the songs’ meanings by focusing solely on the instrumentals. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that neither “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” nor “Sail Away” was a hit. Newman’s best-known songs (outside of his Pixar oeuvre) are “Short People” and “I Love L.A.,” both of which use irony to critique racists and yuppies using their own bigoted and blithely privileged language with straightforward rock accompaniments. These songs, hummable and driving, are hardly less political than previous Newman songs. But with their big rock and roll choruses (“Don’t want no short people ‘round here”; “I love L.A. / We love it!”) making them ‘radio-friendly,’ the emotional and ironic interplay between music, lyrics, and audience is lost. That “Short People” was in part propelled to the top of the charts due to protests over Newman’s supposed hatred of short people suggests that Newman’s pop allegory for racism was catchy and commercial enough to reach levels of exposure few other songs of such nuance ever achieve. “I Love L.A.,” a critique of Californian pride in the shadow of poverty and homelessness, is played and sung along to when the Dodgers win a game, as if the song is not a condemnation of the arrogance of such a celebration. Once these songs left Newman’s hands and emerged in the public sphere, they became foregrounded not fundamentally as songs of critique, but as pop records. This is all to say that, with commercial success, Newman’s music became ironic in a different sense than before—a better word for it might be ‘subversive.’ The subversive mode, in which critical lyrics are

hidden by joyful and singable accompaniments, is much more tolerated in pop music (a genre in which audiences are rarely compelled to listen closely to lyrics) than Newman’s biting and emotionally complex irony. From the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B”—a peppy proto–jangle pop version of a Bahamian folk song about a hellish sea voyage—to Sia’s “Chandelier” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools (Drank)”—songs whose lyrics denounce binge drinking and alcoholism and yet have been treated as innocuous bangers at countless parties— setting critical or negative lyrics to standard pop instrumentals is nothing new. The subversion of expectations in these songs is not radical, but fundamentally cynical: they consciously attempt to recreate the “I Love L.A.” effect, to compel wide audiences to sing along to songs without considering their ironic meanings. Masking their lyrics with conflicting, conventional music, the artists that create these songs and the industry that turns them into hits are only willing to see their social critiques halfway. Unlike Newman’s critiques in the form of pop songs, these are pop songs that happen to feature critiques. This subverts one expectation of a pop song—geniality and escapism—but preserves an essential element: the profit motive. This should not suggest that only unsuccessful pop can be radical, or that songs with catchy choruses are inherently corrupt. But if we believe—as the music industry has long wanted us to and music critics increasingly argue—that pop music has the potential to be great art, we have to also understand that this is a potential, not a foregone conclusion. Just because a pop song facilely engages with a social issue, or offsets subversive lyrics with upbeat music, does not make it necessarily worthy of praise as radical art if it conceals its message through commercial pop conventions. Newman’s brilliance on “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” and “Sail Away” is his understanding of music and lyrics not as separate entities, but as partners in songs’ forms. Though his lyrics are clever and poetic, they are never the sole focus. Rather, they are in constant conversation and tension with his arrangements, which illuminate and expose the shortcomings of the words and ideologies Newman’s personas use and espouse. Though his songs are ironic, his beliefs are unquestionably genuine. He does not use irony to belittle people or to obscure his meanings in service of a hit, but rather he uses it as a tool to heighten contradictions and imagine new ways to engage with art and culture. Although Americana may not be the chart-topping genre it once was, and Randy Newman may be best known for his super earnest Pixar themes, the only obstacles preventing artists from following Newman in using irony radically to reach new emotional and political depth are profit-enforced genre conventions and the music industry cynicism that has made those conventions the only path to success. BEN BIENSTOCK B’20 thinks Alanis Morissette doesn’t have the last word on irony in pop.

APRIL 06, 2018

GRAVE GOODS The possessions of the passed

BY Eve Zelickson ILLUSTRATION BY Halle Krieger DESIGN BY Eliza Chen

Last month I called my grandma hoping to plan a trip up to Gladstone, Michigan to visit her for Easter. At the end of our chat about the winter storm watch and the salmon at the Freshwater Tavern my grandma made an announcement somewhat suddenly: “Now you can’t tell Mary this...” Mary is my mother. I promised not to tell. “When I die, you make sure they bury me in red shoes.” Surprised, I asked why. “I’ve always loved them—never had the guts to wear them though.” I have one pair of red shoes. They are velvet with a tall but stocky heel. I wore them to my freshman homecoming at which my high school crush, Jeremy Burton, asked me to dance. I haven’t worn them since, but I never got rid of them. I remember feeling daring, bold, and flashy out on the gymnasium floor in my crimson cleats. My grandma is not daring, bold, or flashy. One of seven kids raised in a lower-class Catholic family in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, she is a tough-talking realist and an expert in humble preservation. She never attended college, and married my grandfather when she was 22. The two of them saved up, bought a house in Gladstone, had five kids, opened two laundromats, and built a family-run drugstore open 365 days a year, 9 AM to 11 PM, except on Christmas Day when its hours were 9 AM to 2 PM. I have a hard time picturing my grandma strutting around in red shoes. At first I found her request sad, a hint of a more pervasive regret about how she led her life: anxious, apprehensive. But a modest woman through and through, it was exciting that she wanted to make an extravagant entrance into immortality. The first thing I wanted to do when I hung up the phone was call my mom, but I held back; my grandma can’t be the only one with unconventional requests for the afterlife. Our grave goods—the clothing, personal items, and any other memorabilia we are buried with— function as a final statement of character, one that can be playful, grandiose, heartwarming, or unexpected. Frank Sinatra requested to be buried with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, and a dollar’s worth of dimes in case heaven had pay phones. In a similar vein, Bob Marley requested to be buried with his red Gibson Les Paul guitar, the Bible, and some marijuana. Whitney Houston dazzled the dead, resting with $500,000 worth of jewelry and designer clothes. For a few years following her death, her family hired armed guards to ward off looters from her gravesite. All lighthearted and fitting requests, they commemorate the lives of intriguing characters. But for those of us like my grandma, who are not particularly famous or rich or brilliant, our grave goods can represent a break from our perceived personhood. Death as an opportunity for reinvention. Death as an excuse to buy a new pair of shoes. Tell me about your imagined eternity.

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+++ Selecting grave goods that capture your character is a rather contemporary phenomenon. Bess Lovejoy, author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses writes, “The idea of using your corpse to reflect your individuality is relatively recent.” For a long time grave goods were interred for utility—to help the dead reach the afterlife. In Ancient Egypt, rulers were buried with retainer sacrifices. These human sacrifices, often a former servant or wife of the deceased, were placed with the body to travel with them into the afterlife. The earliest undisputed case of grave goods dates back to the Late Stone Age (some 40,000 years ago) when beads made of basalt were found in graves in the Fertile Crescent, know today as Western Asia, the Nile Valley, and the Nile Delta. For archeologists, the dispersal of grave goods can signal social stratification. Graves in the Later Stone Age contain an equal distribution of goods, suggesting a relatively classless society. Burials in the Bronze Age, however, reveal treasures concentrated in the burials of the rich and powerful. Burial goods can also signal a community’s level of consciousness and concern for the afterlife, sometimes indicating their degree of spirituality. Examples of such lavish burials include the Valley of the Kings in Egypt where royalty were buried in stone-cut tombs engraved with scenes from Egyptian mythology and decorated with jewels and artifacts to aid the deceased’s transition into the afterlife. This trend continued into the Iron Age with burials like the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, whose terracotta armies—estimated to number 2,000—were placed in pits beside him to serve as protection. In the Christian Middle Ages, grave goods were less common, replaced by external signs of status such as expensive tombstones or effigies. Afterlife arrangements can be traced through nearly all cultures, religions, and time periods. As early as the 1600s, women in England were sewing their own burial clothes, which often doubled as their wedding dress. They kept these garments under their beds in case of emergency. At the turn of the century, burial robes, also known as shrouds, were mass-produced by specialized seamstresses. The shroud was a loose-fitting gown with billowy sleeves and an open back. It was secured at the neck and the extra material tucked under the body for a one-size-fits-all solution. Sham burial suits were also common. Shams appeared to be quality clothing, usually a favorite outfit of the deceased, but were actually knockoffs. A man was not buried in his best double-breasted suit, but a cheap replica of the jacket that would be visible during the funeral. While pragmatic death planning in Ancient Egypt emphasized the deceased’s journey, more modern death preparation often prioritizes the living.

+++ Though perceived utility has morphed into symbolic gestures, burying someone with grave goods, or choosing your own, implies a corporeal belief that the whole body moves into the afterlife—as opposed to just the soul. Grave goods are found in nearly all religious and cultural environments, but tradition no longer dictates how the dead are dealt with or commemorated. With personalized memorabilia, preparing for death has become a more intimate experience. However, like the traditions of ancient societies, death practices are an indication of how personhood is conceived of in life. But those practices are changing. Any funeral director today will tell you cremation is the most common current practice, presenting an entirely new set of choices, none of which include grave goods. According to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) 2017 Cremation and Burial Report, 50 percent of Americans chose cremation in 2016, up from 48 percent in 2015. This was the first year cremations surpassed burials in the United States. NFDA expects this trend to continue over the next 20 years, with the projected rate of cremation reaching 78 percent by 2035. The reasons noted in the report included the diminishing hold of religion on American life and the rising cost of burial—with cremations usually far less expensive than conventional interment. With cremation as the hottest ticket into the afterlife, people are finding innovative ways to preserve their remains. Instead of being buried with personalized items, some are opting for their remains to become part of these very objects. A website called creamationsolutions.com offers the option of wearing your loved one on your finger, suspending their ashes in a purple crystal ring. Others have found even wilder applications for their ashes. Timothy Leary, famous for spearheading studies of LSD, had his ashes shot into space where they orbited until 2002. Artist Stephen Irwin left a request that his ashes be turned into graphite pencils. As fewer and fewer people find solace in the ground, there are new options for those seeking individuality even in death. Fewer burials mean fewer grave goods, but the inclination to personalize death remains: ashes are scattered at the deceased’s favorite shoreline, around the bench where they were proposed to, next to the grave of their parents. The trend towards cremation may reflect a shift in the way we view death; we are no longer placing objects in the ground with our boxed-up bodies, but opting for a more fluid integration of our corporeal remains with the environment. I rang my grandma yesterday and apologized for not making it up there for Easter. We gossiped for a bit, and then I asked her what type of red shoes she wants to be buried in. “Red loafers,” she responded. I couldn’t help but smile—zestful and practical, eye-catching and comfortable—they were a perfect fit. EVE ZELICKSON ‘19 wants her ashes to be used in an Ephemera page.

METABOLICS

LEAVING THE DUNGEON Rhode Island sex workers and the prospect of a union

BY Katrina Northrop ILLUSTRATION BY Claire Schlaikjer DESIGN BY Eliza Chen

to close this loophole, Governor Donald Carcieri signed The one-story wood framed building, located just a few a bill making all exchanges of sex for money illegal. The blocks from the Rhode Island State House, used to be sex industry was forced underground, like it is in the home to the Providence Industrial Workers of the World majority of other states, and as a result, the sex worker (IWW) union headquarters. The first floor of the Smith community, including the IWW Sex Worker Union, beStreet building looked like a neglected bookstore—worn gan to mobilize around the legislative battle to decrimipaperbacks lined the walls, along with a red banner nalize prostitution and demand more labor rights. reading “Providence Industrial Workers of the World. Due to a widespread stigma against prostitution as Fire the Boss.” A backdoor in the union hall’s kitchen a form of legitimate labor, this movement is an uphill led to the basement, which served an entirely different battle. As Madeira said to the Independent, “Voting purpose than the floor above. A dominatrix—a type of for legalization is a very bad look according to many sex worker who performs the dominant role in sadomaslegislators.” In January 2018, the New Hampshire ochistic sexual services—named Madeira Darling used House passed a law to establish a committee analyzing the basement as a ‘dungeon’ where she saw clients. As the benefits of decriminalizing prostitution in their state. the main organizer of the Providence IWW Sex WorkThe law, which has yet to pass in the New Hampshire er Union, she was also engaged in the fight to expand Senate, hopes to open the conversation about sex work rights, build solidarity among the sex worker communiand seek to understand different models of legalization. ty, and work towards the eventual decriminalization of This type of legislative action is what some sex workers all forms of sex work in Rhode Island. in Rhode Island are advocating for, although the politThe dungeon was decorated sparsely: a single red ical climate seems less favorable than in nearby New light bulb dangled from the low-hanging ceiling, illumiHampshire. nating a persian rug with various pieces of equipment Despite some sex workers’ focus on decriminalscattered across it. On one side there was a Saint Anization as their activist platform, Madeira believes that drew’s Cross, an X-frame construction with restraining decriminalization should only be a small part of the points for the ankles, wrists, and waist. On the other, a activism agenda. In contrast to many other forms of sex small cage and a spanking bench, which Madeira made work, Madeira’s job as a dominatrix is legal, due to the herself, were hidden under a thick green cloth. A whip lack of actual sexual contact. According to her, there and a pair of handcuffs were strewn across the rug. On are many other unacknowledged barriers in the sex the farthest wall stood a wooden bureau with various work field, including the pricing of sex work—due to wigs and masks adorning white styrofoam heads. the isolation inherent in a criminalized and stigmatized As of last summer, however, the Smith Street buildcareer, sex workers have not been able to collectively ing is neither home to Madeira’s dungeon nor the Providetermine pricing. As a result, the hourly rate for the dence IWW union. After the union collapsed, members services of a dominatrix, for example, has remained voted to give up the union hall, which resulted in Mastagnant since the '90s, according to Madeira. Without deira losing her dungeon space. According to Madeira, a collective agreement about raising pricing among the the breakdown of the Providence IWW—which was entire sex worker community, however, all sex workers also involved in organizing incarcerated workers, retail will be forced to continue working for a relatively low workers, and food workers—was due to a few members wage. Working conditions also must be collectively moving away and a storm of internal drama. Left withagreed upon in order to bring about real change. Madeiout a ‘dungeon’ to see clients, Madeira is now forced to ra hopes that sex workers will formulate basic demands conduct most of her work over the phone or web. And about working conditions, and warns that without stripped of a space to continue organizing for sex worker mutual demand for reform, no individual sex worker rights, she spends time with other “radical sex workers” will be able to effectively work towards a safer and more and focuses her energy on reading and writing activist supported professional space. Even if decriminalization theory. The IWW’s failure, according to Madeira, was is an unachievable goal, Madeira hopes that bringing not inevitable: “We could have been effective if people sex workers together will create solidarity among an just behaved themselves. Radical circles in America are atomized community. just a goddamn mess.” Madeira, however, is not the only face of Rhode Island’s movement for sex workers rights—Bella Robinson +++ is also hoping to change the way the state handles this issue. Madeira is a 27-year-old, physically striking woman In 1980, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed who wears leather jackets, spiky high heels, and cheea law to reduce the punishment for prostitution from a tah-print skirts, while Robinson is a gregarious, raspyfelony to a misdemeanor. The amendment also created a loophole which decriminalized all forms of indoor prosti- voiced 53-year-old woman with a long career of sex work already behind her. Madeira and Robinson both tution, and made street solicitation the only form of sex used to be involved in the IWW Sex Worker Union, work that was a criminally punishable offense. In 2009,

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but differences in management style came between the two women. Robinson now runs another sex worker union in Rhode Island, the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU), a local chapter within a broader national organization. She also runs the Rhode Island chapter of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), a group working against the stigma associated with sex work to lobby for more favorable legislation, which exists within the AMOR network, a coalition of Providence activist organizations. When Madeira and Robinson talk about their desire to unionize sex workers, they aren’t using the traditional definition of a union. Working in an industry that is mostly criminalized, sex worker unions have a different set of objectives than traditional labor organizations. While traditional unions protect the rights of workers who may be subject to disenfranchisement at the hands of their bosses, the particular group of people who sex workers are mobilizing against is more unclear. As Maxine Doogan, the founder of the national Erotic Service Providers Union, explained to the Indy, the police are the first tier of ‘bosses’ because they carry out the enforcement of prostitution laws. The city officials form the second tier, as they direct the police to enforce these laws. The members of the state legislature are the third tier, as they are responsible for the enactment of legislature. Because the policing of prostitution laws varies so much in any given municipality, organizing necessarily happens on the local level. ESPU leaves it up to individual sex workers in different states to collectivize and form local chapters. In addition, ESPU provides funds for sex workers to attend labor school hosted by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), where all types of workers develop the skills of self-organization and communication. Robinson attended labor school, with the support of ESPU, and she credits that experience with her transformation into an active organizer. ESPU does have a few programs that work towards their goals on a national level. The non-profit organization Erotic Service Providers Legal and Educational Research Project (ESPLERP), which was created by ESPU, filed a court case challenging California’s anti-prostitution law. In this case, entitled ESPLERP v. Gascon, the ESPLERP maintained that the criminalization of prostitution is a violation of the right to privacy, the right to associate, and due process. Although they were hoping to set a national precedent with this case, the lawsuit was dismissed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in January 2018. However, the ESPLERP have not given up; following the dismissal, they filed a petition for a rehearing of the case. Robinson and Madeira do not deny that sex workers are a vulnerable population, as they are subject to violence and social stigma while also lacking social service or legal support. However they do not attribute

APRIL 06, 2018

that precarity to the job itself, or the sexual nature of to penalizing prostitutes, and don’t paint an optimistic their occupation, but rather to the criminalization of picture of the likelihood that statutes will be relaxed in the industry. They both moved to Rhode Island when the future. indoor prostitution was decriminalized in search of a The national political climate is also increasingly in safer environment. The 2009 criminalization bill spurred favor of strict statutes and similarly hostile to any efforts them to become involved in advocacy work. “Someto decriminalize sex work. The “Stop Enabling Sex thing in me snapped. I realized that this wasn’t okay,” Traffickers Act (SESTA),” which passed the House easRobinson explained to the Indy. Robinson isn’t scared ily on February 27 and will be voted on by the Senate of being arrested, which makes her a good candidate to in the next few weeks, represents the type of legislative advocate publicly for sex workers’ rights. As she sees it, approach that many sex workers fear. The act would if she were to be arrested, she would be given an even make websites liable for any sex trafficking that occurs bigger platform for her advocacy. on their pages, which would result in major online The rest of the Rhode Island sex worker community crackdowns on any activity related to sex work. Due is not so lucky. Many of the sex workers that Robinson to legislators’ and law enforcement officials’ inability to works with are fearful of even filling out a survey or distinguish between sex trafficking and voluntary sex attending a meeting due to their work’s criminal status. work, many sex workers believe that SESTA will force The reluctance of sex workers to come forward due to them onto less secure and less private web pages. A 2017 fear of arrest is one of the main barriers to labor orgastudy conducted by Baylor University professor Scott nizing. This silence is isolating for sex workers, and it Cunningham found that after Craigslist established also makes it impossible to reach decisions regarding an ‘erotic services’ section, homicides of sex workers the community’s collective demands. Elena Shih, a decreased. Using online pages to post advertisements postdoctoral fellow at Brown University researching allows prostitutes to not work on the streets, which sex workers, commends sex workers’ efforts to demand leads to more dangerous situations, and allows them to rights, but she says that without decriminalization, “It’s correspond with and screen their clients before meeting hard to think of unions as a salient global category that is them. According to Madeira, Robinson, and many other going to change sex workers’ rights.” Due to that, Shih sex workers across the country, SESTA will drastically believes that the first effort must be to push for decrimreduce the number of online platforms for advertising inalization, and subsequently make demands regarding erotic services, and will ultimately endanger members of pricing, work conditions, and benefits. the sex work community. Despite the pessimism of others, Madeira still has Falsely conflating sex trafficking and sex work is not faith in sex worker unions as an effective organizing a new phenomenon. Many activists and policy makers technique. According to her, criminalization, and sex on both sides of the political spectrum assert that volunworkers’ resulting reluctance to come forward, does not tarily entering the sex work industry is a rare path, and make labor organizing impossible. “Unions themselves instead, most people are trafficked. While trafficking is used to be illegal,” Madeira adds, “We often forget that undoubtedly a pressing issue, anti-traffickers often refuse unions have a history of having extremely radical aims.” to believe that doing sex work is a choice that some peoDespite her lofty aims, she seems stymied by the practiple willingly make. While Robinson and Madeira were cal barriers to organizing in a criminalized industry. And both led to sex work by economic necessity and tough while she bemoans the fact that radical circles are very circumstances, both women maintain agency over their unorganized, she does not seem willing to spearhead own career choices. a new unionization effort since the IWW Sex Worker Robinson’s path to prostitution was a convoluted Union was disbanded. one. Because Robinson’s mother was a schizophrenic and an alcoholic, Robinson was moved into foster care +++ when she was five. In order to escape her foster home in St. Petersburg, Florida, Robinson married an abusive The number of prostitution arrests in Rhode Island has 41 year-old man at the age of 17. Once she was a legal steadily increased in the nine years since the criminaladult, she escaped the marriage, and ended up living on ization of the industry. This trend pushes an already the street. Soon after, she was picked up by a policeman vulnerable population further to the margins of sociin St. Petersburg and charged with prostitution, even ety, without any method to seek help in dangerous or before she had engaged in any type of sex work. While life-threatening situations. According to the Rhode still on parole, she became a sex worker as a means to Island Judiciary’s most recent data, from 2009 to 2015, support herself. In this way, her false charge of prostithe number of prostitution arrests per year has increased tution led to a life-long career as a prostitute, two stints from eight to 73. Given that states and localities are in jail for crack cocaine use, and an often precarious life given discretion regarding sex work prosecution, these working in a criminalized industry. numbers prove Rhode Island’s continued commitment Madeira is a high school dropout from Western

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Massachusetts who began doing sex work in a New York City strip club. As a stripper, she didn’t like being forced to acquiesce to the client’s every desire, so she tried out dominatrix work, which she has been doing ever since. Class dynamics are also very present in the anti-trafficking movement; often, those who oppose sex work do not come from the working class background that many sex workers do, and thus do not understand that many people do sex work as a means to survive. Madeira explains her own economic considerations to the Indy, “I’m a high school drop out, and I’m good at this work. I don’t see myself getting a straight job. I wouldn’t be good at it.” While anti-traffickers refuse to acknowledge the fact that sex workers can make a decent living without high levels of education, Robinson and Shih reiterate the imperative to listen to sex workers’ voices rather than implementing policy without awareness of the community’s needs. +++ Prostitution has been a contested issue since its inception. Some argue for its legalization because sex workers should have agency over their own bodies. Others argue that legalization would codify an obvious vice into law. Both Madeira and Robinson speak about sex work less like the carnal employment that many imagine it to be, and more like a form of counseling. “The sex part usually only takes ten minutes,” Robinson says. “Mostly it’s about cuddling, talking, and counseling.” She has many older clients, even some in their '80s, who come to see her out of loneliness. “I have a serious responsibility, and I have to be very careful with that responsibility,” Madeira says regarding her counseling role. She puts her clients in a place of deep vulnerability, and her services provide individuals with a cathartic experience. Madeira and Robinson don’t want to imply that sex work should only be accepted because it mostly consists of non-sexual activities; rather, they say that it is important to acknowledge the actual experience of being a sex worker. “My job is to be a therapist in thigh high boots,” Madeira says. While therapists have the right to collectively organize, sex workers are still struggling to create a cohesive community. Regardless of the complicated dynamics playing out on the national, local, and individual level, to Madeira, it is simple: “Sex work is labor. We are workers. We should organize. What else would we do?” KATRINA NORTHROP B’19 thinks that workers are workers.

METRO

NIGHT OF THE FOUR MOONS Crumb, Lorca and Harmony with Space BY Seamus Flynn ILLUSTRATION BY Alex Hanesworth DESIGN BY Katherine Sang Every US president since the 1970s has announced some new plan to send humans back into space. Besides ‘inspiring millions,’ those advocating space flight do not often specify their reasoning. With ever-increasing advances in communication technologies, the science in space can be completed by robots. Space exploration is much cheaper without the need to keep people alive, which is one of the reasons that humans haven’t been back to space since the ‘70s. Practicality, therefore, is clearly not the first priority driving a push for in-person voyages. Instead, I think this desire is founded in something more malicious: a colonial view of humans as masters of the universe. When techno-aristocrats like Elon Musk philosophize about the need to preserve the human species, I wonder how exclusive their definition of the species really is. A human journey to Mars is a trillion-dollar diversion, making such species preservation available only to a select few: the extremely wealthy and predominantly white. And the discourse surrounding such a trip has long been peppered with references to “New World” exploration, Western expansion, and the like. I’m a lifelong space geek. I’ve always been fascinated by my location, and by the simple thought of existing in a very large universe that also has many cool things in it (like liquid nitrogen geysers, battery acid rain, and ripples in time, for instance). This sentiment led me to spend my childhood checking out stacks of books on stars and planets from the library, and I still frequently plunge down Wikipedia rabbit holes about them. For a while, I was simply too enthralled by the idea of humans experiencing space firsthand to consider the colonialism connected to doing this. But the more I consider it, the more I realize that this idea comes from a human-centered perspective, which is limiting. Not only does obsession with in-person exploration play into the greedy and erroneous idea of being able to know and possess everything, but a self-centered view of outer space limits what humans can learn about space. In my view, space exploration shouldn’t serve to stoke human egos by convincing us of our own meager abilities. Instead, it should remind us of our finite nature, and make us wonder at the vast, amazing structures that fill the universe. +++ Now, imagine yourself in a concert hall: the audience quiets down, and a piece of music begins. Miniature phrases are passed between bongo drums, alto flute, banjo and plucked cello, while a vocalist strikes finger cymbals and quietly declares, “la luna está muerta” (“the moon is dead”). The flutist responds, whispering over their mouthpiece (in Spanish), “but it is reborn in the springtime.” George Crumb is a living composer from West Virginia whose most famous works date from the 1960s and ‘70s. During these decades, when much of classical music was dominated by thorny, detached modernism, Crumb’s music was unfashionably emotional. Even though it’s dissonant, he experiments with bizarre spacings and colors in a whimsical way that draws in listeners more easily than most modern classical music. Crumb has

ARTS

been a key figure in the development of new extended techniques, such as touching strings inside a piano to modify their pitch, playing a gong using a bass bow, or changing the pitch of a timpani while striking a cymbal placed on top of it. Crumb’s song cycle Night of the Four Moons was written in 1969, during the Apollo 11 flight. It’s scored for alto voice, alto flute, banjo, electric cello and percussion. In his program note, Crumb writes, “The texts— extracts drawn from the poems of Federico Garcia Lorca—represent my own rather ambivalent feelings vis-a-vis Apollo 11.” The 20-minute piece that follows is as urgently intoned as it is ambiguous. The second fragment of poetry—“When the moon rises, / The sea covers the earth / and the heart feels like an island in infinity”— is accompanied by slide banjo and Tibetan prayer stones. Their sharp sounds echo forlornly into a seemingly vast openness. Outer space is portrayed here as empty, but in a bleak, inhuman sense. It’s unclear whether Crumb shares my fascination with space itself, but when considering my own passion for space’s vast wonder, and the violent logic that is hard to untangle from this wonder, Crumb’s auditory depictions of space serve as a comforting mediator. This echoing world engages me by saying things that are much harder to describe in words. Crumb has set Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry in over a dozen pieces. Lorca’s verse and Crumb’s sound world share a sensuality and mysticism that feels more than it thinks. “I feel the essential meaning of the poetry is concerned with the most primary things,” Crumb says, “life, death, love, the smell of the earth, the sounds of the wind and the sea.” Lorca describes this sentiment as duende, which he calls a “mysterious power that everyone feels but that no philosopher has explained,” reminding an artist that “ants could eat him or a great arsenic lobster could fall on his head.” This sensual and ominous quality is palpable in the shouts, whispers, and flickers of melody throughout Night of the Four Moons. Crumb’s mysticism, however, is tied to a sentiment of universalism, which has its own problems. “I feel intuitively,” he once said, “that music must have been the primitive cell from which language, science and religion originated.” While it’s very possible that humans sang before we spoke, I bristle at Crumb’s use of the word “primitive.” The universalizing gestures in his philosophy are touched by a similar mindset to the one that champions a human presence in space, even though he expresses skepticism about space exploration in Night of the Four Moons. One of Crumb’s philosophical influences is Carl Jung, who spoke of a universal collective unconscious, but nonetheless differentiated between supposedly civilized and primitive people. Crumb describes Lorca’s words as “primitive and stark... but capable of infinitely subtle nuance”; his use of “but” implying that primitive (that is, less developed) words wouldn’t normally be capable of such nuance, thus separating himself from the “primitive-ness” conveyed in his music. Crumb clearly sees ancient tradition as important, but glorifying the traditional as something that humanity has lost contains an implicit exclusion of those who still practice ancient cultural traditions in the present day. While Crumb’s music remains powerful, it’s important to realize

that this music’s universalism fails to break from a colonial underpinning. +++ The final, longest song in the cycle sets an extended excerpt of Lorca’s “Romance de la Luna, Luna, Luna”. The poem, which Crumb calls “strikingly prophetic,” tells of a boy who is seduced and carried away by the moon, perhaps representing (to Crumb) the deadly allure of outer space to humanity. However, the poem is far from straightforward, the boy telling the moon to run away while the anthropomorphised moon warns the boy to “leave [her] to dance.” Crumb instructs the vocalist to sing the child’s lines “shrill” and “metallic,” doubled with warbling, insect-like high pitches on the cello that reinforce a sense of panic. The moon’s lines are “coquettish” and “sensual,” against a highly rhythmic backdrop, telling the child to “not step on [her] starched whiteness.” In the character of the moon, space may be presented as primordial, but not in a way that can be dominated, rather like Lorca’s arsenic lobster which could fall on the heads of humans and kill them. Likewise, humans may be presented in a universal, primitivist sense, but neither Crumb’s notes nor Lorca’s words cede humans control of their cosmic surroundings. This is particularly audible in the song cycle’s memorable ending. As the dialogue between moon and child finishes, a bell is struck in unison with an icily high harmonic pitch on the cello, which slows down the listener’s sense of time. The next lines of the poem are yelled and whispered with a heightening sense of dread. Then, one by one, all performers except for the cellist slowly get up and walk offstage, playing their instruments as they go. Once all other players are out of sight, the cellist slowly slides to several more high pitches, soon coming back to rest on the original one. Crumb marks this line “musica mudana” (music of the spheres). After more suspended anticipation on the same icy note, the “musica humana” responds from offstage, fading in and out at unexpected times like a radio signal. In a rich, warbling lullaby, accompanied by flute, banjo and vibraphone, the alto sings the final line, “por el cielo va la luna / con un niño de la mano” (“through the sky goes the moon / with a child by the hand”). This quiet, drawn-out closing is analogous to images of the little earth in space, viewed from the moon. Against the icy, dangerous vacuum represented by the cello, Crumb portrays humanity as a tiny, warm, ridiculous beauty. To me, this is more than just a ‘no place like home’ sentiment. Despite the fact that humanity is portrayed in a universal, generalizing sense, this sound world simultaneously conveys the absurdity of the human ego. The colonial subtexts of Crumb’s work create a lack of resolution around the colonialism of space travel, but Night of the Four Moons still reminds us that nothing humans can achieve stops us from being “an island in infinity.” SEAMUS FLYNN B’21 prefers to think of this essay as one very long note outside the range of human hearing.

APRIL 06, 2018

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

EPHEMERA

IN THE MIND OF THE MALL Consumer mazes, online and off I got lost trying to go see what it’s like to get lost in an American mall—the hallmark of teen movies, the corndogs, the sanitized yet unsanitary play spaces. Malls are confusing, and it is not an accident. They are at once familiar and strange. A less-than-logical design and aesthetic makes the alien territory feel earthly/American no matter what state or city or suburb you’re in. Providence Place, a mall in the heart of Downtown Providence, follows in the traditions of the mall space. Its entrances are dark enclosures, some with massage chairs. I enter through one of these portals (known as “transition zones”) and then from dim lights and muted carpets, I’m spit into the fray—the din of the mall, the bright, reflective surfaces and I am bathed in even, fluorescent light and the smell of Auntie Anne’s. The interior is timeless; there are no clocks and the outdoors are intentionally obscured through colored or semi-opaque windows. The similarities permeating mall spaces make them understandable to us: a mall exists as it does precisely because it is a mall. However, this facade of familiarity obscures the intentionality behind the structuring of the mall. Mall organization and architecture use scripted disorientation, decision fatigue, and the invariant right (most people turn right upon entering a store), along with other patterns of human-behavior-turned-manipulative-consumer-strategy to encourage spending. The convergence of these techniques in the shopping mall is termed the ‘Gruen effect.’

Architecture I work my way up from the ground floor to the top floor. Not many people are taking the elevators, and I choose not to either. It would be too exhausting, though, to marathon the circuitous, disjointed escalators. The upward and downward escalators are placed next to each other, meaning to go up two floors I have to walk a frustrating half-circle to reach the next upward escalator—stopping at each level practically becomes a necessity. I notice the elevators are all glass and pasted on the outer glass tube are double-sided ads for a deal: “ONE PERSON. TWO DISHES.” Retail is shrewdly aware of how willpower drops as decision fatigue sets in. Coined by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, the term “decision fatigue” refers to how after making a lot of decisions—whether taxing, like constantly resisting temptations to stick to your diet, or more menial, like choosing what you are going to wear in the morning—your willpower is depleted. By back-loading their questions about custom features, car salesmen net on average $2,000 more from their customers. In grocery stores, the most commonly bought foods (eggs, bread, et cetera) are kept intentionally apart, putting extraneous items intentionally in your path; and when you make it to the register finally, the candy appears, all colorful and shining. When I reach the top of the mall, after I’ve walked the length of the squiggling and swimming carpet many times, I’m met with the food court. At Pinkberry they have more toppings than I remember, and I cycle through permutations. I order the same swirl I haven’t had since ninth grade. It tastes like an icy color. Psychologist Jean Twenge, while working as a post-doctoral fellow in Baumeister’s lab, conducted a study based off the exhaustion she experienced while planning her wedding. She found that willpower was depleted simply through the act of decision-making

TECH

rather than the difficulty of the decisions being made. Participants were able to select a gift from a large pile of options. One group was allowed to pick at random. In the other group, the participants had to deduce their gift by answering a series of questions about their preferences. Afterwards, the participants held their hands in ice water for as long as they could stand to. The second group kept their hands in the ice water for less than half the time of the first group. Another study, conducted by Todd Heatherton at Dartmouth, found that consuming glucose restores willpower depleted by decision fatigue. Perhaps that is double motivation to buy the Almond Joy (or Pinkberry) at checkout. The mall is one great sequence of decisions, some of them overlapping, all of them overwhelming. There are stores to go into, temptations to avoid, brands to choose from—and the mall is constructed so that these decisions become traps we fall into.

Algorithms Online retail is credited with killing the American store and shopping mall. Online shopping not only saves you a commute, but also give you the illusion of control. There’s a reassuring comprehensiveness to ordering something online. You could go through all 64 pages of can openers on Amazon before finally buying the one with Prime shipping that you clicked on originally. I use the web even when I’m shopping in person. I don’t know what knives are the best, so in Bed Bath & Beyond I pull Amazon up on my phone to try to match their best-selling brands to the prices and blades in front of me. Easily overwhelmed, I decide to buy the knives later. I have research to do. However, the web is not simply a tool for its users, as we would like to naively believe; in actuality, the online world and marketplace has repurposed many of the same scripted disorientation techniques as malls to trap, confuse, and suggestively reorient its users. Just as Providence Place removes clocks and uses even lighting to create an illusion of timelessness, Snapchat makes the normally omnipresent clock at the top of my iPhone screen disappear when I scroll through my “Discover” page. I lose track of time surfing, virtually browsing. In Providence Place, there are colorful ads lining the walkways, drawing me into stores with already eye-catching displays. The same loud advertisements appear on the sides of my browser—distractions in the periphery, leading me astray as I try to scroll (or walk) intentionally forwards. Online, reading an article has become a choose-your-own adventure. Every hyperlink encountered is a choice to be made. Do I keep reading? Do I click and see why the word “includes” is blue and underlined? I do; it links to some scientific journal I can’t understand. I return back to the article I was reading, and “includes” is now purple, reminding us both of its allure. The internet-as-mall makes Hansel and Gretel relevant again, a renewed importance of breadcrumbs and trails and finding your way home again. Of keeping track of and being accountable for yourself. Opening things in new tabs and windows as you go down the Wikipedia or hyperlink wormhole, an expansion that makes the spatial dimensions of your screen more complicated to navigate and sort through. Eventually finding your way back to your inbox or article. The web, like the witch, knows how to misdirect you and what to put in your path when it does. Hopefully, I navigate to the end of the article. If I do, I’m often met with a fresh onslaught of options.

Many of these distractions are brought to you by companies like Taboola and Outbrain, which are responsible for the often-sensational row of ads that appear at the bottom, side, or middle of many webpages. Links to articles like: “The Secret Dangers of Coconut Oil” or more ominously (Outbrain clearly has access to my location), “Providence, Rhode Island: This Genius Startup Is Disrupting a $200 Billion Industry.” I get to this point and I’m tired. I’ve said no to the pop-up upon entering the site that asks me to sign up to get a great deal, I’ve clicked to and away from different links, I’ve actually read a whole article. Simply the act of clicking on an ad like the ones offered by Taboola or Outbrain generates money for both the companies involved in creating and hosting the content. Taboola’s founder said in a 2016 interview for the New York Times, “We have been told from major, major publishers that we have become their No. 1 revenue provider.” He also touted a more altruistic message: “The vision is to index the entire web and bring the best, most personalized stuff to people.” Personalization helps create and sustain consumer desires. In Providence Place, the Brooks Brothers is next to the Tiffany & Co. is next to the J. Crew is next to the Michael Kors. Algorithms are similarly predicated on anticipatory design, and have troves of user data to use in their calculations. Netflix and Amazon offer their eerie recommendations; Gmail suggests off-season sales for pirate costumes after my sister jokingly pens an email in pirate-speak. Google results and Facebook feeds are tailored to you, with algorithms determining what content, including sponsored content, is most relevant to you and placing that up top. Mall parking lots are intentionally unnavigable—if you are dreading the “find your car among all the different colored, numbered pillars, sloped levels, and lack of pedestrian walkways” memory game, you will be more likely to postpone it and spend more time in the mall. Algorithms and this mathematical personalization have the same end goal, are also designed to keep consumers in the (online) store for longer.

Interactions In physical stores, personalization comes in the form of sales associates. Despite the growing importance of online sales, most retailers still try to incentivize customers to visit their brick-and-mortar spaces; consumers are susceptible to different things in person than they are online. When I walked into Madewell, a beaming sales representative asked if I needed help finding anything, if I needed a dressing room; they told me that I needed to buy the pants I tried on, which they also told me fit perfectly. It felt like Cinderella’s mice were bringing me all the things I’d ever desire. The personalized attention made me giddy. In Lush I almost bought the “yummy” orange and vanilla lotion that reminded the salesperson of a Creamsicle. The salespeople at American Apparel were told to dress in the company’s clothing and wear minimal makeup in order to look like the models in the company’s advertisements. Walking into the store, customers saw real, beautiful people effortlessly looking that good in the clothing and wanted to also look that good. Employees are often incentivized to use these tactics. American Apparel salespeople were paid partly on commission. Some stores with greeters hire people to enter the stores and make sure the greeters are saying their “Hello!”s enthusiastically enough.

APRIL 06, 2018

I’m online shopping and it wants to help me. Its name is Linda, and Linda is sitting in the bottom-right corner of the site, in the shape of a person, wearing an antennae-like headset and wiggling about. When I click to say “hi,” Linda pings back immediately with a full paragraph, a mission statement. I minimize the imperfect replica of an accommodating salesperson; Chatbot Linda is more frustrating than useful, more impersonal than not. Simulated and pixelated hospitality is not as effective as a warm and dim store with the right music and smells and smiles. It’s much easier to tell a chatbot to leave me alone than it is a nice person just trying to do their job (even if a large part of that person’s job is the act of being nice). In person there is still a level of customer service and catering (and manipulation) that isn’t yet possible on the web. Though trying to imitate this aspect of physical retail, the online customer service experience falls short.

Adaptations The mechanisms of internet economies are being used to inform and revitalize physical economies. One’s actual footprints are tracked like one’s virtual footprints: stores use facial recognition software to track how customers move around and to note their demographics. Consumers can be reduced to both digital and live, in-person cookies. In 2015 Walmart began using facial recognition software in order to mitigate “loss prevention” and increase the quality of customer service. The technology scanned customers’ faces as they entered the store, flagging known shoplifters and notifying staff immediately upon their entrance. It also looked out for customers who looked disgruntled or unhappy, making sure a chipper sales associate could come by and offer their assistance (imagine getting an annoying text, sneering, then being

asked if you needed help finding the right cereal). Several months later, without a high enough return on investment, the experiment ended. Since then however, facial recognition technology has vastly ‘improved.’ Facebook announced that their latest facial recognition algorithm can not only recognize faces almost as accurately as humans can, but can also recognize people even when their faces are obscured (using clothing, body language, hairstyle, et cetera). Instead of being arrested, some stores give shoplifters the ‘option’ of having their faces photographed and stored in databases. It is unclear if these databases are used only for in-store loss prevention, or distributed or sold to other parties. Either way, facial recognition algorithms have been shown to be biased; it matters who is writing these algorithms (Silicon Valley is dominated by white men), and it matters how diverse the data is which sets the algorithms. As these biases begin to be aided by technologies whose objectivity and accuracy are often overestimated, public spaces will become increasingly perilous for people already subject to discriminatory practices. Unlike online, there are no privacy settings (however paltry) in the physical world, no way to obscure your identity—especially if you can still be identified when you are faceless. And legislation isn’t on the consumer-as-human-being’s side: privacy advocates walked out of talks with the US Commerce Department that sought to create voluntary guidelines for use of facial recognition software. One major concern is that consumers are often unaware of and uninformed about facial recognition software use; the customer is never asked for their consent. Additionally, the customer is unable to find out exactly what data is being extracted from their existing in public space. Retailers are very opaque about what they are using the software for and who has access to the information it collects. It is possible consumers’ photos are being

put in databases and profiled by third parties, or that the data collected is not protected from hackers. Beyond facial recognition, technology is being used to revive retail and move people (at least partially) off of the web and back into the real world. Providence Place has free Wi-Fi, outlets, and USB ports everywhere. On Thayer, stores like Urban Outfitters and Kung Fu Tea have their own apps, which often come with rewards programs. Groupon helps users find extreme discounts— deals are everywhere, if you know to look for them online. Stores can virtually send you notifications: “We miss you. Take 20 percent off your next purchase,” reminding you of their presence no matter how physically distant you are. The mall is trying to reassert itself and is using the pervasiveness of the internet to do so. +++ The mall is more than just a space for errands, for finding things you didn’t even know you wanted or needed. It is also a simulated space where unsupervised, suburban teens can walk around aimlessly and explore. A commons where you can be seen in a public space and are able to engage in an economy. You go on the internet to similarly stumble around and be entertained, to socialize and exchange ideas in chat rooms or statuses instead of over tables in food courts. Like the quest to the mall, you don’t always know when you’ve found what you’re looking for; rather, you stay in search of information, invested in a rewards system. You may be lost, but these architectures of desire will make sure you make it to the checkout. EMMA KOFMAN B’20 buys the onion-cutting goggles on the way to refreshing her inbox.

BY Emma Kofman ILLUSTRATION BY Franco Zacharzewski DESIGN BY Ella Rosenblatt

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

TECH

WHITE DREAMS AND SOILED MEMORIES content warning: sexual violence I walk outside and am met with morning dew in the grass and morning crust in my eyes. The air is chilled, dirty, and dry—a bulldozer invades my lungs. Weird nostalgia-filled metallic smog flows into my mind as if I am spray painting carcinogens onto hot steel doors. My dad’s memories, fast approaching, make for grimey mornings. I change the station on my phone to Soft Indie Acoustic and cover my nose. Last night’s dream arrives biweekly now: a white soldier clad in steel armor marches into my home, his face obscured through a visor. There is a brown man and child with me and an older woman on a bed. The brown man stands before me with arms outstretched as I hold my child close. The white soldier proceeds to shoot my mother, then a sword appears and spears through my husband and my child. I can feel the tip barely grazing my protruding belly as my clothes are soaked red. My baby dies from the fear inside me. A blanket made of innards. Some of my friends convinced me a couple months ago to get off of my pills. Mom always thought they looked like candies. Bright indigo M&M’s meant to calm the memories impeding one’s pursuit of happiness. My friend’s overprotective mother never let her take them, because they lead to high blood pressure, or cancer, or maybe chronic acne. I take them with accutane every morning. My other friend quit in freshman year on a New Age cleansing spree to commemorate his freedom from parental authority. He would preach that it’s as easy as going vegan, and facing the experiences that hold us back can make us stronger and wiser. I thought maybe it could enhance my life, going ‘all natural,’ and I wanted to see what I was missing out on, so I quit too. Memories overwhelmed me for a few weeks. Memory medication is like a dam preventing memories from overflowing. The internet warned that I would go through withdrawal. My friend offered me bags of weed to get through the initial week, and the dam slowly gave way. I don’t remember much of what happened, but I somehow made it to class everyday and remembered to call my parents on Fridays. I first started my dosage when I learned to talk back. The memories made me even more insufferable in primary school than I already was. Recommended by my teacher. Required, even. I had forgotten what being off medication was like. As if I could reference dozens of past lives through a neural flash drive. I gained an illusion of emotional maturity, and the world had a new glowing aura. Like my retinas grew several layers of recognition. Everything had a connotation, I knew so much about the world, from the plants to the fish in the sea. Making my way to my usual coffee shop, I get a glimpse of black rim glasses approaching me. I make a quick turn towards the entrance. “Hey,” I hear behind me as I lunge for the door handle and I nearly trip—the kind of stumble that my mom would have if she heard my grandma yelling for her to come wash clothes. She’d watch her siblings through the rusty mirror above the sink while she did laundry. I can tell it’s him through the window reflection. I don’t usually go for tall attractive types, but I can't help feeling like my weight just doubled instantly. I turn and am met with a kind smile. “You dropped your wallet.” From somewhere, my parents’ social awkwardness pushes me into further anxiety. “No problem.” And I look over to the coffee shop. “See you around.” I see this boy almost every day but have never

FEATURES

noticed him in this light before. Lately, my grandfather’s memories fuze into my skin and give me sour feelings of obsession. My medication must have numbed those emotions. +++ Before coming to school a few years ago, I watched an award-winning romantic comedy. My sister was working to forget her failed marriage and our mother suggested that we bond as siblings. “Oh, your grandma knitted? My great grandma also knitted, I want to grow old like that one day.” “I want to be with you forever. Let’s have sex like our ancestors did in the Middle Ages.” And they kissed. “I feel like our love is as real as my grandparents’.” “My grandparents fought a lot, but they still loved each other through it all. Just like us. I love you.” My sister sobbed. She lost her husband to a World of Warcraft addiction and once threw a dish at him in a fit of frustration. He pressed charges a year later, and now she’s still on probation, taking memory pills every other day. I can see now why she needed to throw a plate at him. We don’t necessarily have the most iconic love stories in our heads. But one day I will find someone to enlighten me with lifetimes of love stories. I hope that he is carefree, like in my dreams. The guy I run into seems like it. I heard from a mutual friend that he majors in philosophy. Poetry and film are his ‘passions.’ And he never takes pills, only acid. I would lie to my parents that he studies law, just as I had convinced them that I was taking engineering classes, and one day we will escape to backpack the Alps or float on a gondola through Venice. A love story that I will live to see. +++ My neck aches from lying on the library bench. I have a talent for being able to sleep anywhere at any time. I think I got it from my dad, from when he did maintenance in my city’s anthropology museum. The work was far away from my mom and sister, so he lived in the museum, sleeping on the wooden benches he made and taking naps by the blueberry gardens in the courtyard. He told me that dreams in 20-minute naps felt like 20 lifetimes.

+++ I asked him to get lunch together. I imagine us having a picnic on a meadow. Two children and a house. I could cook my mom’s recipes, passed down through centuries, while he would read on the couch. My friends never know what to say about my dreams. And my family doesn’t know that I stopped taking medication, but I never wanted these thoughts to stop. My class was a socratic seminar full of clear faces with a tall white man speaking about colonialism and critical race theory. He spoke of social responsibility and showed images of poor brown children with their mothers. Then he showed a picture of his wife, who he found in Nicaragua ten years ago. It was her birthday, and he was ending class early. I didn’t turn in the writing response; maybe he’ll finally fail me. I just wanted to go to my room to think of all the ways my crush will make me happy. Lately, it’s been hard to watch porn. I have flashes of my dad calling my dead uncle a maricon, which my mom used to tell me were men who wanted to be women. My uncle’s body was caught in bed with another man. Both naked and brown and awkwardly shaped. Then beaten and limp and strewn over the bedside like a Renaissance painting I once saw in another lifetime when I had blue eyes. It didn’t bother me too much because the men in adult films look really good. Of course my father is apathetic now. He’s kind of taken a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to the whole gay thing, so I don’t get offended. I think he just really hated his brother. When I look at the boy with black-rimmed glasses, I kind of forget about our sexual orientation. It feels just like a friendship that blends my appendix in a food processor, and I want to serve it to him with a side of chips. My mother’s face buzzes on my phone. I cancel the call. +++ Lonely nights far away from family are the worst. I miss my family. A month has passed since I began working in these halls. The white men want me to work harder. And harder. My children can’t live this way. They need a better life. My life is over. Every day, I’m working. +++

+++ The last lifetime is always the clearest, close to a dream: I was married to a brown man who never loved me. One day a light skinned man came into my life. He was similar to the white soldier from my other dreams, but this time I could see his face. And he greeted me with a handsome smile and white irises. In the dream, I could not understand him. Retrospectively, I could tell he spoke Spanish. A different accent from my mom’s or father’s. But it was like I did not know any Spanish at all. Or English. I replied, “No, I am a married woman,” in a language foreign to me, yet familiar. He kept coming every day. Teaching me Spanish, and I fell in love. One day the lighter man came and killed the brown man. I moved into a beautiful house in the nearby colonial town with him. But the flowers grew foul when I learned of my love’s temper and fist. Years went by and I bore a green-eyed son. And I gave the remainder of my love to him until I died.

There’s a tap to my forehead and I wake up. My professor’s face hovers above. His glasses glare up the greens in his eyes. People with colored eyes have always looked possessed to me. Like their pupils shot needles that could pierce through my heart. “You all might want to study for the final exam. Perhaps especially those of us who are memorially disadvantaged.” That’s what they called people who took medication in the academic world. The attendance roster listed students who were medicated. So teachers would understand. The green halos glared at my unshaven face. I did feel smarter off of my medication, but never as smart as I should be. “I will be holding my office hours later today.” A kind proposal, and in that, a trap. I wait outside class with my friend. He lights a cigarette and I secondhand smoke. Even though the spark of the lighter does remind me

APRIL 06, 2018

BY Jorge Palacios ILLUSTRATION BY Justin Han DESIGN BY Katherine Sang

of when my mother used to work at the fireworks factory. She saw a child blow his hand off. My friend didn’t hold the cigarette by the bud. “Be careful with the fuse.” “The what?” “The hot part. Don’t let it touch your finger” He rolled his eyes, chuckling. “Thanks. But I like smoking this way. You know, my grandfather used to smoke like this right in front of this door when he went to school. He was a badass.” My mom used to clean classrooms at my middle school. My sister was always embarrassed. Eventually she stopped working there. I took one last smell of the cigarette. I used to do it out of nostalgia, but now I feel as though I am my father. “See you later, I’m running late.” I put my headphones on max to cover up the fireworks popping all around me. +++ I open my eyes. There’s loud music and the floor is shaking. My friend pulls me up. I kissed another guy tonight. His lips felt like a dry lizard’s. Two corpses swapping spit. He tried grabbing me but the touch felt unreciprocated. When I pushed away, someone shoved me, and I landed on a couch out cold dreaming of the time my parents tried conceiving my older sister. My mom was asexual even if she didn’t know what that meant, but she really wanted a child. “We should get out of here,” she said, obviously drunk out of her mind. I don’t usually go out, but I thought I was horny enough, and my friend insisted. She was trying to run into a boy, but drank too much vodka instead. “Hey, isn’t that the guy you’re really crushing on?” I look over and can’t really tell from the shadows

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

across the street. Mom’s anxiety pumps adrenaline into my body. She had an embarrassing crush on her second grade teacher, who had always helped her with math, but my mom never acted on it. Luckily, she had to drop out to work at the local fireworks factory. My grandfather only had enough money to get his sons through school. The streetlight revealed his face for a moment, and I see his black rim glasses reflective, almost metallic. My friend’s weight shifts and she throws up on my shoes. His image recedes back into shadow. I walk her to her room and end up staying the night just in case. I sing lullabies to her. My mom would sing them to my sister every night until she went to sleep. Sometimes she would fall asleep singing. And I dream of the life and children I could have one day. +++ Every morning I wake up more confused, but the dreams have a more real and less feverish quality to them than when I was a child. Today, I imagined wearing my mom’s veil. It’s the last week of the semester. I’m eating breakfast, later accompanied by the boy with black-rimmed glasses, so I brush my teeth. I glance to the white jar with blue pills. They still live here. Sometimes they follow me. We decided to meet at the cafe I usually go to. My parents' wedding always stood out to me from the other weddings. I mean, their memories take up 50 percent of my mind. The other 50 being my mind and occasional dead relatives. I walk down the sidewalk. It’s kind of like a church aisle. The morning light goes through the tree leaves like stained glass. I was baptized once and did Catholic confirmation too. Mom told me that she would go to Hell if I didn’t. I didn’t want that for her. The wind picks up the white veil and reveals my brown face. Mom told me how she used to think that I

would be born with blonde hair and blue eyes because she conceived me here. We have eaten together a few times in the past few weeks. I assume he likes my company. He still looks cute in his glasses, I can tell through the coffee shop window. I wanted to tell him how I feel today. I always liked the coffee shop. The smell of peach incense and dark roasts usually feels devoid of nostalgic meaning and flushed out any other noise. I ordered some coffee with cream and buttered toast, conscious of but indifferent to the newfound fact that lactose intolerance runs in my family. “What did you do today?” “Not much.” Same. The conversations draws on. I can’t tell if I’m boring or just filled with intergenerational love anxiety. I guess I’m not that boring. My parents lived very boring lives. They used to tell me about how their childhoods were labor-filled and miserable, and I remember every day even if I don’t really want to. I remember raising my crap older sister. I guess it’s nice since it makes my life feel well off. I mean, homework kills me now too. Sometimes if I’m bored, I just tune out into the memory of working in a fireworks factory and watching things ignite. I pour some pink packet sweetener into my coffee. My parents’ diabetes made me partial to the taste. His hand takes out the tea bag and dips it into the remaining crumbs on his plate. It was entertaining at first, but then nauseating. My hands needed something to do. I spread jam on my toast. “I did a tab the other day.” I never once did LSD. Maybe I should. I’ve heard that medication and acid are a bad mix. But I’ve heard memories can lead to a bad trip too. “It was so beautiful. I imagined like my great great great grandfather when he first came here with his family. On a boat. Isn’t that crazy.” Crazy. So did my great great great grandfather, before he raped my mother and never came back. My ill mother and a non existent father left me orphaned three years later. I got up, needing to pee before my grandma’s memories made me. I looked at myself in the bathroom and the visual layers of my mind refracted into an infinity mirror. Like a portal into my dark eyes. An abyss lined with red veins and faces I don’t remember. The stall door opens for me, and I sit on the toilet seat. It smells like the apartment that my parents used to live in when they first moved here with my sister and no money. A tear pulls my eyes to the ground. Frantically, I search my jacket pocket. The white jar from my medicine cabinet is small enough to sleep perfectly there for excursions like these. Opening it is impossible for a moment. I forgot how to read but the jar opens with an awkward hand movement. I forgot the accutane, so I make sure to wash my face. He was still there when I came back. Now poking through his leftover blueberries with a fork. One, two, three, four stacked onto the metal prongs. Violet juice stains the white empty plate. He eats them in one bite, smiles at me and laughs a little. I laugh too. He’s so cute. I never noticed that his eyes were so blue. I sit down. “So… what kind of films have you watched lately?”

FEATURES

My slanted strides put pressure forward Air in the space where we fog (our windows) collapsing downhill Letter paper folds over sealed with spit A sink in August We forget how fast leaves become cinders

WALKS BY Emerson Tenney ILLUSTRATION AND DESIGN BY Ella Rosenblatt

In the air hang unbuttoned leaves Underfoot, green mixes mottled brown Wind heaves branch cold heavy sigh A child cries out in a pink coat Street stones glimmer black sand underwater Rush on the heels of a life lived Streams echo cacophonous staccato A hardwood floor in this limpid light On the cracked table a grey bowl of persimmons Over the curb rough brick Apples in the eyeglasses of a bearded man Yellow is the tenor of dawn (like glowing is a word on the corners) Outside is a day for smoke and cider Moons Quills White Cups Wisps of time (lists) A teabag sits on an eggshell saucer The white string stained with brown tea Tree hums to the biggest moon Windowsills (for undressing) A hard hand crumpling paper Cracks in the dirt by the roadside Rustle I am meeting the early morning I pass things shrouded in still last night (and what is it to have been left?) On the horizon, obligation is waking a promise put to sleep How is the right time to begin; when the day blinks In California, a dog lays in the lap of those who love him to love themselves “clutching” spelt backwards is “pentobarbital” East of mourning time has a red hat (because it is cold) I’ve known I’ve lost before you flick the lights on.

LITERARY

APRIL 06, 2018

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

THE LIST CALENDAR Friday 4.6

We Say Enough! RI Jews Demand Justice for Gaza 1:30–3:30PM, Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island (401 Elmgrove Ave) Come speak out against the Israel Defense Forces’ murder of Palestinian protesters during Passover.

Saturday 4.7

Lost Dog // OSSA // Jakob Shaw 9PM, Finlandia (116 Waterman Street) A Bandcamp type of function. $3–5 and maybe you’ll see LW guarding the stairwell ;-)

Sunday 4.8

Greek Easter 2018 11:30AM–5PM, Pembroke Field (171 Cushing Street) The etymology of LW’s last name comes from the giant covered in eyes who guards the goddess Hera in Greek mythology, but this is a good Christian event. Come eat some lamb and do some line dancing and maybe place a hex on Angela Merkel. Free, but consider dropping some donation money because they’re literally cooking a whole lamb.

Monday 4.9

Tatreez & Tea: Palestinian Embroidery Workshop and Talk Workshop 4–6:30PM, talk 7–8:30PM Wafa Ghnaim will be teaching an embroidery workshop. Space is limited, so register if you want to go. After that, she’ll be giving a talk on the preservation and documentation of Palestinian art. Free

Tuesday 4.10

Reproductive Health Care Act Public Hearing 3:30–8PM, Rhode Island State House (82 Smith Street) Come voice your support for access to safe, legal abortion in Rhode Island!

Wednesday 4.11

PawSox vs. Buffalo Bisons 12PM, McCoy Stadium (1 Columbus Avenue, Pawtucket) First game of the season! There will probably be beer! Tickets $6–14

Thursday 4.12

The Famous Wheeler Clothing & More Sale 10AM–8PM, Wheeler School (407 Brook Street) A good place to get a new outfit or a table or something. Free entry.

ASTROLOGICAL WEATHER

Can you say ‘self-sabotage’? Of course you can. Pluto loves instability, and it’s hanging out in Capricorn, which, to say the least, does not. And, of course, it is squaring the Sun in Aries, a sign which cannot handle anything. At least Venus is having a nice time at home in Taurus - a cherry on top of a dessert that does not exist. Put your intense/intensely stifled energies into the We Say Enough! protest to demand change even Saturn knows we need.