The College Hill Independent: November 10, 2011

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

10 NOVEMBER 2011 VOLUME XXIII ISSUE VIII BROWN/RISD WEEKLY

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT FR O M T H E E DITORS: Last week, our watches, phones, computers, and clocks stood still for an hour. While most delighted in this extra rest, others lamented the loss of daylight. Despite its annual appearance, few question the logic behind Daylight Savings Time. So this week, the Indy takes a look at the history of DST. DST is less than a hundred years old. During European industrialization in the latenineteenth century, there was a need to install a more regimented system of time. With railroads and large-scale production, industry required a standard means of accounting for labor hours and keeping precise schedules.

In 1895, the British-born George Vernon Hudson presented the first version of DST to the Wellington Philosophical Society in New Zealand, hoping to extend his daylight leisure hours so he could spend more time on his insect-collecting hobby. Then in 1905, the English outdoorsman William Willet proposed an idea to Parliament to reduce summer daylight, outraged that Londoners were wasting the season away sleeping, rather than playing golf.

However, it was not until 1916 in Germany that DST was ever fully institutionalized. During WWI, Germany—and subsequently many other warring countries—began to use DST as a way to conserve coal. After the war, the United States struggled with DST, repealing it under President Warren Harding, who called it a “deception.” It was not until 1966 that the U.S. saw the revival of DST, and it was not until 1987 that—with the funding of Clorox and 7-Eleven—the Daylight Saving Time Coalition successfully pushed for a national DST, which drew heavy support from Idaho senators who argued that fast-food restaurants in the state could sell more French Fries during DST. As the leaves turn orange and red and yellow, and the cold winds begin to blow, we hope you all can enjoy some autumnal French Fries, too.

-DA

EP H E M E R A

NEWS WEEK IN REVIEW

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FEATURES BERLUSCONI BOWS OUT

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LITERARY AMERICA

BY KATE WELSH

Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The College Hill Independent is published weekly during the fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI press in Seekonk, MA. The Independent receives support from Campus Progress/Center for American Prgress. Campus Progress works to help young people–advocates, activists, journalists, artists–makes their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at CampusProgress.org

X DOLLS

BY AUDREY FOX

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

CUBA CRIBS

by Barry Elkinton

L

ockeans, get out your party horns.

Cuba, one of the world’s last communist holdouts, announced on November 3 that private property rights are returning to the island. Under a new, widely anticipated law, Cubans will be able to buy and sell homes for the first time since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Though this privilege will only be extended to permanent residents of the island—global capitalist marauders need not apply—the law will allow Cubans to own up to two houses; one in the city, and another in a government designated “vacation zone.” After all, as Tim Padgett of Time sardonically observes, some weekends “you just need to get away from your neighborhood’s Committee for the Defense of the Revolution.”

The new rule, effective November 10, is the latest in a string of reforms by President Raul Castro aimed at encouraging limited free-market activity on the Caribbean’s largest island. Since he took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, Castro has granted Cubans new privileges, such as the right to have cell phones, operate private businesses, and sell used cars.

This past summer, the Cuban government even issued preliminary approval for the construction of sixteen luxury golf courses—a shocking decision given the country’s longstanding animosity towards the quintessential game of bourgeois decadence. One of Fidel Castro’s first acts upon taking power in 1959 was destroying all but one of the country’s golf courses.

The spared course was later used to mock golf-loving President Dwight Eisenhower when Castro and Che Guevara famously staged a photo shoot of themselves hitting the links in full military uniform.

Though the new golf courses were symbolically notable among the recent reforms, the right to buy and sell homes is expected to have the most significant impact on the Cuban economy. What that impact will be is the subject of some debate. Certainly the new system will remove much of the bureaucratic delays and under-thetable exchanges that defined previous housing exchanges, where homes could be traded as long as they were of roughly equal size and quality. Whether the legislation can alleviate Cuba’s housing crisis or encourage significant free-market activity is less clear. In a country where the average salary is $20 a month, and the government is the only recognized contractor, the new law’s effects may initially be limited. Few people other than those with relatives sending money from the US will be able to purchase homes, and the cashstrapped government is unlikely to build many new housing developments.

But, looking down the road, many analysts see the new legislation as the strongest sign yet that change is in the air in Cuba. "The liberalization of these markets will ignite new demands for reforms," economist Arturo Lopez-Levy told the Associated Press. "In the long run, the question will be: ‘How long can the economic genie be out of the bottle without people asking for more substantive political reform?’"

NEWS

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WEEK IN REVIE REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIE REVIEW F O O D F I G H T WEEK IN REVIEW I

by Alex Ronan

WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW WEEK IN REVIEW

n the wake of the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) proposed changes to the federal lunch program last May, the National Potato Council (NPC) challenged the call for potato reductions in school lunches, launching the “Tell USDA to Keep Potatoes in Schools!” campaign. The proposed changes to the federally funded lunch program are a push to improve health amongst American children. According to The New York Times, approximately 40 percent of calories eaten by kids are consumed in the school lunch period. But with a third of American children either obese or overweight, the first overhaul in fifteen years seems well overdue. In addition to limits on fat and sodium, the USDA has called for reductions in potatoes and other sources of starchy carbs in favor of more fresh apples, peaches, spinach and broccoli.

Unlike past federal suggestions (see the Reagan Administration’s proposition that to save cash, ketchup be considered a vegetable,) the USDA’s rules reflect the latest research from the Institute of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health. For example, under the new plan, a ¼cup of tomato paste on pizza would no longer count as a vegetable. Although more stringent, the guidelines are also more costly: the proposal calls for increased spending on federal lunches totaling $6.8 billion over the next five years— approximately 14 cents per lunch.

Despite the fact that a potato isn’t biologically a vegetable—it’s a tuber—the NPC has positioned potatoes as a “gateway vegetable” capable of introducing students to other vegetables “in, around, and on top of the potato.” It remains unclear whether or not they consider bacon bits a vegetable.

The NPC’s tactics also include passive aggressive swipes at competitors, with the assertion that a single serving of baked potato is “an excellent source of potassium— far more than a banana. It’s also a good source of fiber—more than a serving of broccoli.” Hot potato, indeed. The NPC has also argued that potatoes are “kid pleasing,” adding that “familiar shapes make lunch fun.” Backed by $5.6 million from food companies, the movement has quickly gained traction.

With the help of Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), who once worked picking potatoes, and several farm-state senators, an amendment that struck down the USDA’s plan to limit starchy foods achieved unanimous approval on October 18th.

While the bill is still pending in the House, Senator Collins told POLITICO, “I am delighted, and I have won.”

IN

3 FEATURES

10 NOVEMBER 2011

TH E CL

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ilvio Berlusconi was first elected Prime Minister of Italy in 1994.

He was re-elected in 2001, and again in 2008. Mired by legal accusations of corruption and tales of “Bunga Bunga” sex parties thrown at his many houses, surrounded by embarrassment at home and reduced to the butt of jokes abroad, he remained the defiantly smiling face of a crumbling country. That is, until last Tuesday.

The People of Freedom, Berlusconi’s political party, has been hanging by a tenuous thread in a coalition that finally snapped. On November 8, a Parliamentary budget vote showed that Berlusconi no longer held the majority—more than half the members had refused to vote.

After over fifty separate no-confidence votes and even more calls for him to step down throughout his reign, Berlusconi announced his imminent resignation.

As Europe worries about the bailout of Greece, its second largest debt is miring across the Adriatic in a country too big to bail out. Berlusconi’s government is paralyzed in the face of the economic crisis.

Berlusconi himself has brushed concern aside. In an October 24 statement, Berlusconi responded to the deficit, 120% of the nation’s GDP, by saying, “No one has anything to fear about Europe’s third largest economy.”

Berlusconi has done little to assuage the fears that do exist. Where he has seen success—plans for future school and prison reform, a crackdown on illegal immigration, a slowdown of national spending—he has ignored or failed to solve rising unemployment and rising bonds. One of the laws he did manage to pass granted himself retroactive immunity from the many accusations against him, protection that was only just overturned at the beginning of this year. As his reign is com-

ing to a close, and the national image and economy are deeply threatened, Italians and foreigners alike are wondering how he lasted so long.

On November 2, in another city that has seen jovial government corruption, another Italian who knows the art of flattery came to Brown University with some answers. Giuseppe Severgnini is a journalist for Il Corriere della Sera, one of the Italian newspapers not controlled by Berlusconi, and he came to Providence to talk about his new book. Mamma Mia: Berlusconi’s Italy Explained for Posterity and Friends Abroad is exactly what the title suggests: hairpulling exasperation amid an attempt to break down Italy’s long-standing political situation for those pointing and laughing, or scratching their heads. The author kept a crowded auditorium chortling as he explained the ten factors he uses to explain why Berlusconi remained in power for seventeen years, despite a failing economy and seemingly never-ending scandals.

The factors range from the Harem factor to the psychology of The Truman Show, but essentially, Italians keep reelecting Berlusconi because they see a bit of themselves in him. It is a funhouse mirror, exaggerating and distorting the similarities to embarrassing proportions, but a mirror nonetheless. Berlusconi represents the vices that everybody secretly harbors, and the financial and social success that everyone desires in vain.

Even Severgnini is not immune to a sweet-talking Berlusconi comparison. He treated his “very nice interviewer” to coffee before the event, hung back with the girls to discuss it after, and later tweeted how much he loved Brown, complete with a disclaimer that he was not being flattering—Berlusconesque. But his score

would still register low on the Berluscometer. “If you’re over 50 percent,” Severgnini hypothesizes, “you probably vote for him.” Even non-voters cannot avoid the man who represents “the best and much of the worst of Italy.” One Italian reader who didn’t much care for this assertion declared vehemently at a book talk that he had zero percent of the prime minister in him, to which the author replied, “Let me have a word with your accountant, your confessor, and your wife. Then we’ll talk.”

Born during the reign of Benito Mussolini, Silvio Berlusconi, the child of a bank employee and a housewife, grew up to become a mogul of media and politics. In the 1960s, he launched a residential complex, Milano Due, in the outskirts of Milan. He went on to create a small cable company made specifically for the residents of his housing project, his first foray into television which soon morphed into his first media group, Fininvest. Today, Berlusconi sits at the top of a mountain of gold that comprises MediaSet, which controls over half of Italy’s public television and major advertising; the country’s largest publishing house; several newspapers, magazines, and production companies; and the AC Milan soccer club to boot.

The tenacity with which Berlusconi rose from nothing to excess rivals that of a winner of the American Dream. Where others attempted entrepreneurism and failed, Berlusconi succeeded, although not without a little help. His television empire and subsequent political success was in part due to the patronage of Bettino Craxi, who ranks among his protégé and Mussolini as one of the twentieth century’s more controversial Italian politicians.

Craxi was eventually convicted of corruption and bribery and fled to Tunisia. It remains impossible to trace the exact origins of the money that funded Berlusconi’s endeavors.

Berlusconi has paid the nepotism forward. His siblings and spouses, past and present, have holdings in his companies, and an attractive Italian girl might plan on a career in either TV or politics, or both, either way appointed by ‘Papi.’

The cover of Severgnini’s book shows the Prime Minister gently fondling Botticelli’s Venus. This anachronistic defacing of cultural capital is not too far from truth.

Last year, the Prime Minister reportedly did some sprucing up of second-century statues in his office in Palazzo Chigi. Venus was given back her hand, and Mars was gifted a brand new penis. The cultural ministry assured art conservators around the world not to worry; the cosmetic improvements are only attached by magnets.

Italians were perhaps waiting out the last days of Berlusconi’s regime, anticipating the moment when they could pull off the magnets and restore a sense of national pride. The lasting repercussions of Berlusconi’s comportment remain to be seen.

Now that Italy has voted to stop placing fig leaves over the Prime Minister’s indiscretions, the effects of such long-standing inadequacy will have to be dealt with openly, against a backdrop of economic crisis.

To Antonio, Severgnini’s nineteen-yearold son, Berlusconi is like a Sony Walkman. Antonio knows what the dinosaur device is, but it’s just shoved in a drawer somewhere. He has more relevant modes of staying tuned in. Yes, Berlusconi is an analog figure: Internet-illiterate, reliant on the power of TV, a playboy of the past.

Except, as his father points out, “Berlus-

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

FEATURES

4

FALL OF BERLUSCONI’S ITALY ET TU BUNGA BUNGA ?

by Belle Cushing coni is still playing.”

Andrea Back, a student from Venice, is “fed up with Berlusconi.” After studying at Ca’ Foscari University, twentytwo-year-old Andrea has since gone to the United Kingdom for graduate school and an escape from the precarious job situation that awaits university graduates in Italy. To Andrea, Berlusconi is a “firstrate scapegoat.” For all his public failings, the blame cannot be solely pinned on one man. “Italy is a boat losing water from all sides, and if you cover one hole, two more will open,” Andrea told The Independent.

“The problem is Italy itself, and its thousand contradictions.”

The Italian peninsula has an ancient history, but the country itself is still new.

This year, the country celebrated its 150th birthday. To put this in perspective, Berlusconi is half as old as the country. It is only since 1946 that Italy has been a republic (so declared by a referendum in which democracy only just eked out a victory over monarchy). Its democracy struggles against a background of ancient dominion, division, and delusion, and another decline and fall appears to be looming.

Rome is a city of this confusion.

Google (not Gogol, the Russian novelist Berlusconi has confused with the search engine) Maps calculates that 180 meters separate Palazzo Grazzioli, where Berlusconi is known to host underage girls, and Palazzo Venezia. Here, Mussolini inspired Italians from the balcony with glorifying speeches, right up to the country’s impending collapse in 1941. Around these two buildings, both constructed as opulent aristocratic homes during the Renaissance, lie the ruins of one of the greatest empires and greatest republics. Not to be forgotten, always complicit: just across the river lives and rules the Pope himself, a supporter of the Prime Minister who,

during the 2006 election campaign, called himself “the Jesus Christ of politics.”

For many Americans, Italy is a dream tourist destination. To temper the country’s timeless appeal, they tell timely jokes about its prime minister. The situation is distanced, as much from themselves as from the ruins tourists wish to visit. When his talk had ended, Severgnini admitted a concern that his approach was too comical for such a serious reality. Perhaps the only way to reach an attentive public is to wrap the truth in shiny paper, or in a book cover emblazoned with a female icon in the nude. And who else likes inappropriate jokes? Berlusconi’s favorite involves him finally falling from power, hurtling toward the ground from the top of a building with just enough time to catch a glimpse of a woman changing through a window. He has told the joke many times, but now he is in full descent, and keeping his eyes open.

When Americans are the friends abroad to whom Berlusconi is being explained, included in this intended audience are the Eliot Spitzers, the Herman Cains. It’s easy to sit in a Brown University auditorium and laugh about drama playing out on a Roman amphitheatre’s political stage. But what if the Berluscometer were put up to America and to its own politicians? The mirror might show amused but guilty faces. Among Berlusconi’s valued friends—Putin, Mubarak, the late Qaddafi—he counted America’s own George W. Bush. And one can imagine that a Berlusconismo would gain a place in a political dictionary right between a Bachmann gaffe and a Bushism.

Graphic by Alexander Dale

Italy’s next steps will be complicated by one of Severgnini’s ten factors: T.I.N.A. or, “There is No Alternative,” coined by Margaret Thatcher and today applied to Berlusconi in a country where the enduring fear of communism means that voters will choose anything else.

“I support two teams,” New England natives chant with pride. “The Red Sox, and whoever beats the Yankees.” Berlusconi is the team that beat the Yankees.

The Red Sox are currently unavailable, so Berlusconi sweeps in for the title of Cavaliere, the knight, as he has affectionately dubbed himself. Berlusconi is the CenterRight, bordered on one side by Umberto Bossi and the hyper-Right Northern League, whose campaign shouts “Yes to Polenta, No to Couscous,” and the divided, uninspiring Democratic Party, led by Pier Luigi Bersani, on the other. The Left, Severgnini writes, “proposes confused solutions to complex problems with a contrite expression. Italy would prefer simple solutions presented with a smile.” Hence Berlusconi’s official party song, which he also helped to write, which croons to audiences from the TV channels that he owns, “Thank goodness for Silvio.”

According to Severgnini, the public response must go through the necessary stages before breaking its stasis. Italians will feel complicit, then embarrassed, a feeling that will morph into shame, and finally, anger. Frustration and anger have certainly already taken hold, but even as Berlusconi is voted out of office, it is unclear if this will be the overhaul hoped for

by Andrea and the next generation, or another blip in a procession of distrusted politicians. “In Italy,” Andrea told The Independent, “as long as they [politicians] keep coming and supporting the interference of the Vatican, the absurd pretense of the law, the mafia and the code of si-

lence, nothing will ever change.”

Severgnini had predicted last week that Berlusconi’s days were numbered.

“There will be some sort of interim government, with some sort of fancy name.

The Truce Government. The National Reconcilation Government. The Government for Europe.” Berlusconi has said that he will appoint Secretary Alfano to the head, a transition to his right-hand man that would keep power close. Others suggest former European Commissioner, Mario Monti, to whom the President of the Republic just gave a life-long term in the Senate. Also in the cards is a possible referendum to change the Italian electoral law; currently, parties choose candidates, not the people.

Berlusconi may have resigned, but he will not go without a fight, and it is safe to assume that the world has not seen the man’s final smirk. Directly after the parliamentary vote, a photographer’s zoom lens caught the words Berlusconi was scribbling on a scrap of paper. Above the word “resignation,” two more words were also legible: “eight traitors.”

BELLE CUSHING B’13 has less than 50% of the Prime Minister in her.

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10 NOVEMBER 2011

NEWS

STAR WARS Episode: China

by Erica Schweigerhausen illustration by Deepali Gupta

C

hinese citizens reveled in nationalistic pride last week after a pair of unmanned Chinese spacecraft successfully performed the country’s first “space-kiss”—the docking of the Shenzhou 8 capsule with the Tiangong 1 module at an altitude of 340 km over China.

“It’s just like a couple of lovers walking hand and hand in space,” a radio broadcast reported, according to the China Daily.

Despite the fact that American and Russian aerospace engineers mastered space docking technology in the 1960s, Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China’s space program remarked at a news conference that “this makes China one of the few countries in the world that can independently research and develop docking mechanisms.”

The technological advance is well -timed for the Communist Party as it struggles to rally public support before the country’s once-a-decade power shuffle, which will take place next year. The successful docking also represents a considerable technical advance in China’s project

to reach the moon and launch its own space station by 2020—around the same time that the International Space Station may go into retirement (read: have run out of funding).

The US remains wary of China’s advancements in space. The sanctions imposed by Congress limiting cooperation between American and Chinese aeronautical engineers shortly after Beijing’s violent suppression of pro-democracy protestors in 1989 are still in place. Chinese scientists are barred from American space conferences, and China has been repeatedly rebuffed in its attempts to join the 16-nation International Space Station, largely due to objections from the United States.

Current US hesitancy to support Chinese space exploration stems largely from concerns over a Chinese military buildup in space. The People’s Liberation Army runs China’s manned space program and its space vehicles and satellites are often equipped for both military and civilian purposes. However, China has said

repeatedly that its space ambitions are peaceful, and after the docking the staterun news agency Xinhua reported that a Chinese space station would be open to international scientific collaboration.

China is currently investing billions of dollars in its space program, and already has two satellites in orbit in addition to a lunar rover scheduled to launch in 2013.

The Chinese presence in space highlights an unsettling contrast to the United States, as the landing of the space shuttle Atlantis this July marked the end of the US space shuttle program for the foreseeable future. American space shuttles are currently being retired, although NASA claims it plans to use the $4 billion it previously spent maintaining three space shuttles to develop new spacecraft that can travel beyond the ISS’s near-earth orbit, an impossible feat for current space shuttles.

In an era of trillion-dollar deficits, it would seem advantageous for the US to reconsider the potential benefits of cooperation with China, ending what many perceive as a costly and unnecessary space

race. However, many on Capitol Hill remain unconvinced. “Any effort on our part to reach out to the Communist Chinese, to engage them on matters of technology is, quite frankly, not just naïve but dangerous,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, citing a history of technology theft and human rights violations.

Yet John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, asserted in a testimony before the House last week that collaboration with China’s space program could “strengthen our hand in the effort to get China to change aspects of its conduct that we oppose.”

Holdren maintains that aeronautic cooperation could be mutually beneficial, possibly opening up opportunities which are currently too expensive, such as a mission to Mars.

ERICA SCHWEIGERHAUSEN B ‘13 sees stars.

METRO

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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T A H T IS T A H W , E C N E ID V O R P Y HE

The Providence National Bank Façade

by Caroline Soussloff rendering courtesy of Chad Goney

O

n Weybosset Street, there is a point where the sidewalk ends and the density of downtown recedes. At this site stands what was once the historic Providence National Bank.

Now it’s just a redbrick façade, elegant but contained by a chain link fence and supported by rusted scaffolding. Although conjoined with a row of storefronts, it remains the stately entrance to an empty lot.

Soon, however, it may be the portal to a parking lot.

Back in its glory days, when the building still had four walls to its name, its main entrance looked out onto Westminster Street. That façade displayed two tiles, each etched with a date: 1791 and 1929.

The first memorialized the foundation of the Providence National Bank, the second the construction of its new home.

Providence National Bank was Rhode Island’s first bank. As the tile attested, it received its state charter in October of 1791, following in the footsteps of the First Bank of the United States, established that same year. Over the centuries, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, its name and composition changed.

Then, after a merger with Fleet National Bank in 1985, it vacated its Westminster Street address. Today, what was once Providence National Bank is now under the purview of Bank of America. Its affiliated center of operations now lies outside Rhode Island.

DUST TO DUST The vacant lot spanning Westminster and Weybosset Streets has a history of its own. Most notably, in the late 19th century it was home to the Lyceum Building, so called because it housed the Franklin Lyceum debating society. Founded by a group of secondary students, the Lyceum was modeled after Aristotle’s acadmy.

According to the Providence Historical

Society, Rhode Island’s future civic leaders would gather there to hone their oratory skills as they debated questions such as “Ought women be allowed to vote?”

(Their ultimate resolution: No.) The Lyceum sometimes featured lectures by prominent New England public figures, among them John Quincy Adams, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The façade that greeted passers by on Westminster looked quite different then, most notably marked by a 6’5” statue of the society’s namesake, the master orator Benjamin Franklin.

In 1926, bronze Ben was hauled off and the Lyceum Building demolished to make way for the brick Georgian Revival building that became the new headquarters of the Providence National Bank. The façade we see today does not date from this period, however. Despite mimicking the Westminster façade’s architecture, the Weybosset façade was constructed during a 1940s expansion.

When Blue Chip Properties and Granoff Associates demolished the old bank building in 2005, the Weybosset façade was not a priority for preservationists. They preferred the older, more iconic front entrance of the building facing Westminster.

However, the developer had other plans for Westminster Street. The empty lot was supposed to become the site of the tallest building in Providence. The developers wanted to incorporate the bank’s neighbor, the iconic Westminster Arcade building, into the design as a lobby of sorts. Business at the Arcade had declined significantly since the days it made a name for itself as America’s first shopping mall, and the hope was that the increased foot traffic would be a boon for commerce.

There was even talk of putting a Dean & Deluca in the skyscraper to attract the bourgeoisie. But similar developments

at the Westin and Waterplace Park got off the ground faster. Then the economy took a dive, and the blueprints were crumpled.

“I’ve spoken to the guy who owns the site now and he has said to me that the project never really could have gotten off the ground,” said James Hall, Executive Director of the Providence Preservation Society. “It was originally supposed to be all residences, then a residential hotel, but there wasn’t really a market for it.” The past decade has not been kind to Rhode Island real estate.

FAÇADE FACE-OFF So the lot remained a lot, unfurnished beyond the disembodied wall. Years passed.

Local business owners began to tire of the sight of it deteriorating, propped up by crosshatched steel beams. They complained that the barriers blocking off the surrounding sidewalk interrupted pedestrian activity on the street. There were concerns that the wall was a safety risk that could, at any moment, shed an errant brick.

“It’s a hazard at this point,” David O’Brien, the proprietor of Weybosset Street’s Picture This, told the New York Times in a 2010 article about the demolition of historic buildings. “I would just as soon take that lot and turn it into a park, a parking lot—anything—until they have the money to build again.”

“I don’t actually think it’s all that structurally unsound,” Hall said. “There’s an enormous concrete footing underneath the building that acts as a ballast. The only reason there is so much steel on the face of the building is because they were going to do major construction on it…they felt they needed that kind of structural bracing.” He did acknowledge that the back of the façade’s masonry is at risk; interior brick is not made to withstand the ele-

ments, a fact that lends some urgency to improved preservation.

In 2009, the lot’s owner, O’Connor Capital Partners, began vying to install a parking lot in the space. The neighborhood was generally supportive. Local business owners felt they could use the parking space.

Hall and his fellow preservationists fought back. “There’s a 40% vacancy rate [in parking lots] downtown,” he said, “so there really isn’t this need.” The law was on their side: a parking lot in the space would technically be in violation of zoning restrictions. The City of Providence’s Downcity Design Review Committee told the owner that they were unsatisfied with the current proposal, and the project stalled.

This Monday, November 14th, there is going to be a press conference at the site to announce plans for a compromise.

In the short term, at least, the owner will both create a parking lot and conserve the façade. The details are still fuzzy. The Providence Preservation Society would like to see a full restoration and backlighting at night. The owner has agreed to relocate the scaffolding to the back of the building, but is also considering using concrete blocks to close up the windows at the suggestion of his engineer.

Hal believes that though it may not be one of Providence’s most significant landmarks, the façade’s survival is important just the same. “People forget that cities are made of walls. A good city is a strong street edge,” he said. “When you take buildings out of a streetscape, it’s like missing teeth. Which of your front teeth do you want to lose?”

CAROLINE SOUSSLOFF B’12 is prourbanity.

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METRO

10 NOVEMBER 2011

MONEY, POLITICS, CLASS WAR, AND YOUTUBE

A conversation with former Providence City Councilman and Rhode Island State Rep. David Segal Interview by Sam Adler-Bell Illustration by Becca Levinson

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n 2002, David Segal won a seat on the Providence City Council, becoming the first Green Party candidate to hold office in Rhode Island. In 2006, he was elected to the RI General Assembly as a Democrat representing Fox Point and East Providence. During his four years in the statehouse, he won the respect of legislators on both sides of the aisle for his intelligence and tenacity—taking principled stands on progressive issues ranging from workers’ rights and the environment, to criminal justice reform and immigration.

In 2010, he ran for Congress in RI’s First Congressional District, losing a four-way Democratic primary to outgoing Providence Mayor David Ciciline. In 2011, he spoke with The Indy about his recent political work, life outside the public eye, and where to get the best pizza in Providence.

Independent: In your 2010 campaign, you ran on a platform that emphasized your refusal to accept money from corporations or their Political Action Committees. But you lost to David Ciciline, a mainstream Democrat who took substantial donations from corporate interests.

How can real progressives win elections given the pay-to-play structures of our electoral system?

David Segal: It’s obviously very difficult [for progressives]. But it’s notimpossible.

Especially with organizations like Democracy for America and the PCCC [Progressive Change Campaign Committee], internet groups that aggregate small donations from thousands of individuals across the country. The system allows progressive candidates who aren’t taking corporate donations to get funded and compete with their opponents who are.

But, yes, it is overwhelmingly difficult, increasingly so in this moment—the post-Citizen’s United era. We need a public financing system in this country, and we need to get rid of corporate personhood. But to make those changes you have to go through the same Congress whose members have already benefited from the influx of corporate dollars. By definition, if you’re in there right now, you know how to play the game, and its not in your interest to change the rules.

Indy: What have you been up tosince running for Congress?

DS: The first thing I did was cofound a new Netroots organizing group called Demand Progress [Netroots refers to political activism organized around internet media]. We do primarily civil liberties and civil rights organizing, multiple campaigns around Internet freedom. There are lots of progressive Netroots groups, but not many of them are focused specifically on civil liberties or internet-related policy. In the past year, we’ve grown to a membership of about 600,000 people.

Indy: What has Demand Progress been working on lately?

DS: Mostly we’ve been fighting the Internet Blacklist Bill, which would give the government power to block Americans’ access to websites that get accused of copyright infringement. With social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, [and] Twitter, if the site’s users get accused of copyright infringement the site could be taken down or portions of it could be taken down. And it’s really our country’s first foray into broad-based, sort of Chinese-style censorship. If this thing passes I think that we’re really going to start careening off in that direction.

And it gets back to the campaign finance issue because Hollywood [which has a serious stake in anti-piracy legislation] still throws down big bucks every election year for liberals. So we see a lot of Democrats on the wrong side of this. If you’re a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee [through which the Blacklist Bill must pass], Hollywood money, record industry money, that’s your bread and butter.

Indy: Okay. I buy that. But with Occupy Wall Street (finally) starting a conversation in this country about economic inequality and corporate greed, why should we care about net neutrality and copyright right now?

DS: Given the role that the internet and social media have played in democratization movements over the past year or so, the prospect of giving corporations and governments more control over what information people have access to is reallydangerous. It’s obvious that they will skew that information in ways that benefit their continued hegemony. And that’s what we’re starting to see happen.

Indy: Is Occupy Wall Street “class warfare,” as some right-wing pundits have disparagingly characterized it? And would that be such a bad thing?

DS: I wish I had a deeper historical perspective on why that seems to work—invoking the idea of “class warfare” as a way of undermining the movement. If it is class warfare, it’s not unjust class warfare. We know class warfare has been taking place in this country since its inception and we know who tends to win. It’s only when the people who’ve been on the losing side of it start agitating for their rights that we call it class warfare.

Indy: You were a legislator from 2003 to 2011, that is, for most of your twenties.

Has it been a big adjustment to no longer hold elected public office?

DS: Yeah.Well, sort of. There were certain aspects of the political thing I was al-

ways ambivalent about, especially for having started so young. I was a little worried that it would become part of my self-identity. So in some ways, a break from it has been good, and I’ve been able to get other aspects of my life in order. It’s remarkably difficult to find work that pays you enough to get by when you’re also doing that job.

You know, a legislator makes $13,000 a year and works ridiculous, haphazard hours. That’s why there are so many lawyers and family business owners and retired folks in the statehouse; you have to be able to keep your own hours.

Indy: I saw a great picture of you and the late Miguel Luna being sworn in on the City Council together in 2003. How have you felt in the wake of his recent passing?

DS: It’s a huge loss. He’s one of my best friends and my first real political ally. We got elected at the same time and had the same group of people working on our campaigns. He was just such a warm and funny and sarcastic sort of person. And he’s also just very easy to miss; both because of his stature as an activist, and his physical stature and booming voice. He’s someone you actively know is absent, especially, on a picket line or at Occupy Providence.

Indy: You’ve often been described as an activist first and a politician second.

What’s the difference between the two?

What are the possibilities and limitations entailed by working inside the electoral system versus working outside it?

DS: I don’t think there needs to be much of a difference, fundamentally. It’s a false dichotomy that’s been set up because most politicians don’t believe in that much. But in every legislative body that I’m aware of there is a core of solid progressive activists working hard on the issues that matter. And then on the other side, there are conservative activists, who I disagree with but who are at least doing the work out of some adherence to principle and in the interest of an agenda they believe in.

The term “politician” has connotations I’d like to avoid, but still, the skills of a good organizer are very similar to the skills of an effective politician: the ability to communicate, to empathize, to think

strategically and figure out how to pressure people in ways that are most tactical.

There is a group of strong progressives [in the General Assembly] doing that work, and in my time there, the more we organized as a block, the more effective we were at getting things done. We were able to hold back a state budget until millions of dollars were reinstated for cities and towns. At the federal level, that tactic is seen as the province of the Tea Party, but there’s no reason progressives in Congress couldn’t be doing precisely the same thing.

Indy: Are you going to run for Congress again?

DS:I don’t know quite yet. That’s the best answer I can give you I’m afraid.

Indy: David Scharfenberg wrote an article for The Providence Phoenix last week about the restoration of Rep. David Ciciline’s image over the past year. If you or another Democrat were to run against him in 2012, what makes you think you (or someone else) could beat him this time?

DS: I think there’s still a lot of resentment about the straits the city was left in after his administration, and in particular that he wasn’t honest about the condition of the city [when he was running]. He won last time, but as the mayor of the state’s biggest city he only secured 37% of the vote. So in a one-on-one race against a competent candidate, he’s got a very good chance of losing.

Indy: What’s your favorite pizza place in Providence?

DS: Bob and Timmy’s. I’ve got to say. I don’t mean to pan Nice Slice or anything.

They’re number two.

Indy: Don’t assume. I like Fellini’s.

DS: Well, the pizza’s great there. But they tilt their pinball machine up extra high andset it so that it doesn’t give the ball back if you miss right away. It’s rigged.

Sam Adler-Bell ‘12.5 is careening towards broad-based, sort of Chinese-style censorship.

ARTS

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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A REVIEW FROM

THE PRECIPICE RK PROJECT’S ATLAS AT THE COHEN GALLERY

by Ana Alvarez

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tfirstglance,theminimalaesthetic and grey palette of ATLAS, the latest exhibition at the Brown UniversityGranoff ’sCohenGallery,isalmostindiscerniblefromthegalleryspaceitself.The spectacleofpastCohenGalleryexhibitions’is markedlyabsent.Yetastotemicplastercubes risefromtheconcreteasagender-lessvoice eerilydronesfromavideoprojection,somethingperceptiblecomesintofocus.Thespaceis neitheremptynorfull;itisinsteadsituatedin anamorphousandaestheticallyneutralspace.

Theexhibitionisthelatestundertaking from RK Projects, a Providence-based selfdescribed“experimentalexhibitionplatform” thatspecializesinbringinggreatervisibility tolocalartistthroughephemeralDIYshows.

Thegroupconsistsofcuratorialandconceptual headTabithaPisenoandengineeringandinstallation expert Sam Keller. Together, the two RISD alums (2009) decided to stay in Providencepost-graduationtofortifythebudding, yetattimeslocallyneglected,Providenceart scene.Theirideologyiscenteredonusingexhibitionsasplatformsforsocialengagementby locatingtheirprojectsinabandonedindustrial propertiesaroundProvidence.Throughthis, theyhopetobothbringarevivingawarenessto theseforgottensitesandtocreateanalternative communityinwhichtofeaturelocal,site-specificworksthatavoidscommercialization.The arttheyfeatureisoftenperformance-based, makingitasephemeralandexperimentalas thesiteswheretheexhibitionsareproduced.

WhentheGranoffcommitteeinvitedRK to propose a Project for the Cohen Gallery, PisenoandKellerchosetoworkwithlocalperformanceartistandprolific“laptoppop”musicianXavierValentine—perhapsbetterknown X.V., the ever friendly and chic store clerk of ProvidencevintagehavenForeignAffair.One yearlater,ATLAShasemergedasacollaborationbetweenX.V.’saestheticsandRK’scuratorialdrive,usingtheGranoff ’sarchitectureas its muse.

As the show’s curatorial statement attests, exhibiting at the Granoff was a central consideration of the show. RK Projects is, afterall,primarilyconceptualizedasaplatform for projects that want to break from the institutionalizedgallerysetting,soexhibitingat BrownUniversity,ablatantinstitution,became anobviouspointofdeliberation.AsPisenoexplainedinaninterviewwiththeIndependent, it was less about“coming to terms with”ex-

hibitingwithinaninstitution.Instead,RKand X.V.tooktheGranoffand“utilizedthespaceof thebuilding,thearchitectureofthebuildingas apointfromwhichtoaddresssitespecificity.”

ThisisanexceptionalqualityfoundinmostRK Projectshows—theirlackofapredetermined galleryspacegiveseachprojectasite-unique attribute.

In ATLAS this is revealed through X.V.’s useofGranoff ’sarchitecturalquipsasinspirations. As X.V. explained in an interview with theIndependent,theextendedpreparationof theshow,whichspannedawholeyear,focused on how he and RK could“address the inherentbeautyofthearchitectureofthebuilding whilesimultaneouslyreferencing[their]own points.”X.V. retells first visiting the Granoff andinstantlyconceptualizingwhatarenow themonolithicgradientmuralandplastercast totemsthatlinethegalleryspace.Theblackto-whitegradientofthemural,representedin consecutiveverticalbeamsonthebackwallof thegallery,isaresponsetothejagged,pleated metalsidesoftheGranoff. Similarly,theplastertotemsarealsodiedinblack-to-whitegradientsandareplacedthroughoutthegalleryin varyingsizes,fromaone-foottotemthatcould easily be tripped on, to a six-foot totem that precariouslydominatestheotherwiseunoccupied gallery space.

X.V. went on to explain that the works wereconceptuallyframedaroundanattempt tophysicallyembodyRolandBarthes’s1970s lecturesonneutrality.Barthes’snotionofneutrality pointed towards a deconstruction of binaries;theneutralgroundwasseenaspace wheretheseconstructeddivisionscouldcease andtruerformsofunderstandingcouldarise.

Theexhibition’scuratorialstatementfurther explainsthisanalogy;intheworks,neutrality serves“asavantagepointfromwhichtoreconsiderthesuspensionbetweentwopolaroppositesassomethingmoremomentousthanoften assumed.”

Thisnotionofsuspensionaboveneutral groundleadstothesecondunifyingconceptof theshow—thatoftheprecipice.Inthislight,

theseeminglyplacid,neutralspaceischarged withpossibility;theworksarenolongerneutrally secure, but are at risk of plummeting overtheedge,intoanadversaryexistence.Snap ThisQuietSnap,adigitalprintandinstallation featuredintheshow,perhapsbestelucidates thisquiveringdivide.Inthepiece,aminimally designedblackandwhitedigitalprintseeminglyhangsfromthewallbyasinglethread.“It wasideal,Ithink,thewaythattheprintishung tokindofemphasizetheverticalityofthespace as well but [also] the idea of it being about to fall,” X.V. explains. “Everything to me looks likeitsonthebrinkofbeingsomethingelse— thegradientisalwaysonthebrinkofbecoming thenextcolorandthepillarsarealwaysonthe brink of falling to the ground.”

Below the digital print there is a spotlightedstandwithvariousrockssurrounding theexhibitioncatalog,whichwasdesignedby RISD artist Dan Brewster. Such a prominent emphasisoftheexhibitioncatalogaspartofthe artpieceSnapThisQuietSnapwasanengaging choice.Thecatalog’syellowcoveristheonly objectinthespacetobreakwiththestrongly imposedblack-and-white-onlydesignofthe exhibition.Italsosuggeststhatperhapsthereal “workofart”isnotsomuchwhatispresentin theneutralspace,butitscontinuationoutside thegallerysetting,onceitfallsofftheprecipice and into the combatant world.

Thevideos displayedonthewalloppositeofSnapThisQuietSnappresentacollection offoundfootagethatcontinuetoengagewith thesenotionsofneutralityandtheprecipice.

MotionofGildedMomentspresentsa“digitalsea-

scape in perpetual motion.”Each minute of thevideoshowsonehourofrealtimeofwhat appearstobethehorizononanoceanshore.

Asthevideoprogresses,ahumanfigurehangs suspendedfromthelandscape,continuouslyon the verge of leaping, facing a neutral abyss.

WhilesomemightfindATLAStoodependentonitsminimalaesthetictobeengaging, andtooladenwiththeorytobeaccessible,it’s lesstheworkandmorethepossibilityofanexhibitionlikethisthatmakesitbothengaging andaccessible.Thisisanarrestingexampleof collaborationthoughseverallayers—collaborationbetweenanartistandhiscurators,betweenthearchitecturaldesignofabuildingand theworkdisplayedinit,betweenaninstitution and the community it lives in.

ANA ALVAREZ B’13 is on the precipice.

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FEATURES

10 NOVEMBER 2011

RAPPING THE REVOLUTION IN PALESTINE

from East Harlem to the West Bank: Palestinians bring hip-hop back to its roots

by Emily Gogolak illustration by Olivia Fialkow

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n 1970, over a steady drumbeat and the slow stream of a saxophone, the late Gil Scott-Heron said six immortal words and helped kick-start the genre eventually known as rap: “The revolution will not be televised.” Thousands of tracks and two decades later, Public Enemy frontrunner Chuck D was calling rap music the CNN of urban youth in America. Earlier this month, Tamer Nafar, lead singer of the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, told the Independent, “Rap is CNN for us, the Palestinian people. In every village, in every town, in every city—in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank—people are doing hip-hop.”

EAST TO WEST In 1999, Tamer, his younger brother Suhell, and their friend Mahmoud Jreri, also from Lod, Israel’s most notorious ghetto, started the hip-hop group DAM— which means eternity in Arabic, blood in Hebrew, and stands for Da Arabian MCs in English. The first Palestinian rap crew and among the trailblazers of early Arab rap, DAM overlaid hip-hop beats with Arabic melodies and lyrics that brought their music back to the genre’s 1970s roots: protest.

It all started with Tamer, and his infatuation with American rap legend Tupac. In the mid-1990s, the teenaged Tamer started watching music videos by the late West Coast rapper, and what he saw on the screen—the grimy, crime-ridden streets of Los Angeles—looked all too familiar. It looked like home. Nafar hails

from Lod; and though only a 20-minute drive from the tree-lined boulevards of Tel Aviv, the city’s narrow, gray streets—lined with graffiti, broken glass, and crumbling houses—couldn’t seem more removed.

Safety was a luxury foreign to Lod, and during Tamer’s childhood, neighborhood stabbings were routine and shootings were on the rise.

Tamer also recognized the discrimination and racism Tupac decried. Both men were of minority groups with a history of discrimination: Tupac an African American in what he called “A White Man’s World” and Tamer a Palestinian citizen of Israel, an “Israeli-Arab.”

Unlike the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who fled Palestine in 1948, many remained on the land that became Israel and now live as citizens of the Jewish state. Today numbering over 1.2 million, Israeli-Arabs face a tough reality. Structural inequality, unemployment, and crime are constant threats, and according to a 2009 OECD report Israeli-Arabs, who today make up 20% of Israel, face a poverty rate of 50%.

And the Israeli-Arab problem doesn’t end there. Not only do Arabs face discrimination in Israel, but they are also largely unrecognized by the greater Arab community, who see them as traitors for living in the Jewish state. “Israelis don’t like us because we’re Arabs, and the other Arabs don’t like us because we have Israeli passports, because we are citizens,” Mahmoud of DAM told the Independent. But if

he is a citizen of Israel, he only sees himself as a second-class citizen. “Having an Israeli passport means nothing. When I go to the airport, they still think I am a terrorist. It doesn’t matter what you call us,” he said. “We live in a racist country.”

Listening to rap music, Tamer saw a way in: it was a way to resist his circumstances. He started writing, throwing down beats, and telling his family and friends that he wanted to be a rapper.

“They thought I was joking,” said Tamer, a wiry 32 year-old with a sharp tongue and a wit to match. “And, I kind of thought I was joking too.” A couple of years later, however, Tamer was already performing solo in the then-small but burgeoning Israeli hip-hop scene, making a name for himself as the first Palestinian rapper and even sharing the stage with Jewish Israeli artists. “It was a family scene,” he explained, “but it wasn’t political. It was for nice things like peace and all that shit but it wasn’t about reality.”

BREAKING IT DOWN But when Tamer joined Suhell and Mahmoud to form DAM, things changed.

“We opened our mouths” Suhell told the Independent, “We got with reality”—and it wasn’t a pretty picture. The Second Intifada erupted in September of 2000 and violence between Israelis and Palestinians rose to heights unseen in years—eventually claiming over 5,500 Palestinian and 1,100 Israeli lives. Racism between the two groups was as vicious as ever, and

DAM had something to say about it. Taking a line from American rapper DMX, Tamer explained, “We wanted to tell Israelis, ‘Walk in our shoes, and you’ll hurt your feet.’” Arming themselves with their lyrics, DAM called for people to walk in the Palestinian’s shoes before judging the rock-throwing youth of the uprising.

In 2000, they released their first single “Innocent Criminals,” recorded in Hebrew over the beat of Tupac’s “Hail Mary.” And a few months later came DAM’s big break “Mein Erhabi” (“Who Is the Terrorist?”). The track went viral, and was downloaded over a million times after its free online release—quite a feat for a hardly known DIY rap group with no record deal.

The lyrics, rapped in Arabic, were fearless: You jump to say “You let small children throw stones!

Don’t they have parents to keep them at home?”

WHAT?!

You must have forgotten you buried our parents under the rubble of our homes And now while my agony is so immense You call me a terrorist?

When dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians had turned into bloodshed during the Intifada, anything strongly proPalestinan or pro-Israeli came across as threatening to the other side. And Israelis were outraged with DAM, saying that it

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

was supporting terrorism and sympathizing with the suicide bombers who were blowing up buses in Tel Aviv. Subliminal, Israel’s most popular rapper and a former friend of Tamer (they even used to perform together in Tel Aviv), was livid. He told the Guardian, “This f*** got up on TV and said: ‘The guy that blew himself up?

I can identify with him. You wanna talk about the Zionist enemy, homie? Well here I am.”

Meanwhile DAM was gaining more and more fans across Palestine. “When we started, we took any show we could get,” Tamer said. “And then it became three shows a day. We were the headliners.”

And soon, DAM wasn’t just a household name among Palestinians. Rolling Stone in France distributed the song in one of its issues, and Le Monde heralded DAM as “the voice of a new generation”—their music was becoming the anthem of frustrated youth throughout the Middle East. They were doing for young Arab rappers just what Tupac had done for them: showing how rap can work as a means of dialogue and resistance.

DAM’S FIRST DECADE Fast forward ten years to today. DAM is still the Palestinian soundtrack to resistance, only better known with two albums under their belt.

They have made several tours of North America and Europe, where they have gained the attention of the liberalminded university crowd and performed

with the likes of Talib Kweli, Michael Franti, and Dead Prez. Even some of the hip-hop greats—the very artists that got them hooked on hip-hop in the first place—have taken note. “When we were in Brooklyn a few years ago, we met Chuck D,” Tamer said, cracking a rare smile. “We got the King’s blessing.”

They’ve also received Hollywood’s blessing. An award-winning documentary called “Slingshot Hip Hop” premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and tells the story of Palestinian rap, starting with its founding fathers in Lod. The film also features up-and-coming hip-hop ensembles in Gaza and the West Bank—including a female duo, “Arapeyat” (translated as “Arab Women Who Rap”)—and is a testament to Tamer’s statement that Palestinians everywhere are doing hip-hop.

DAM can be seen on stages worldwide, but the trio stays true to their root and its commitment to the Palestinian reality and the struggle of Israeli-Arabs remains as strong as ever. Tamer, Suhell, and Mahmoud still live in Lod, where they help provide the youth in the city and neighboring communities with cultural workshops and opportunities that have otherwise been denied to the Palestinian citizens of Israel. And just like when they started, the trio is keeping up the tradition of early protest rap, arming themselves with words to expose injustice.

At the end of a performance in early October at the Arab-Jewish Community Center south of Tel Aviv, DAM pulled a

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group of young fans on stage. Before an audience that ranged from seven to seventy-year-olds, the kids—Israelis and Palestinians—took the mics and belted the lyrics by heart in Arabic: “To change the situation we need a revolution … But alone I can’t change this Hell to Heaven, It takes revolution to find a solution.”

Meanwhile, the situation for Palestinians in Israel only seems to be getting worse. On October 3, a fanatic renegade group called the “price-taggers” torched and graffitied a mosque in the northern Arab-Israeli village of Tuba Zangaria. A few days later, on Yom Kippur, Christian and Muslim tombstones were defaced in a cemetery in Jaffa, the ancient port city that today comprises the greater metropolitan area of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and has a sizeable Arab population. And just last week, an Arab restaurant in central Jaffa was firebombed.

The events follow a legal blow to Arab-Israelis. In September, the Israeli government approved the Nakba Bill, which bans publically funded organizations from commemorating the Nakba (translated literally as “the catastrophe”)—when over 700,000 Arabs were forcibly removed from land that became the state of Israel in 1948. Scholars and public intellectuals have recently shown a growing interest in the Nakba, and this law—heavily criticized by the Israeli left and civil rights groups— is considered a reflection of the government’s growing fear of Palestinian history being made public. According to Ha’aretz,

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Israel’s leading newspaper, it “encourages the instigators of racism” and is “designed to shut people up.”

DAM, however, has refused to shut up. “This is not a free country,” Tamer said, “And real rap criticizes anyone who denies freedom.”

EMILY GOGOLAK B ‘12.5 has started writing, throwing down beats, and telling her family and friends that she wants to be a rapper.

This week, the phenomenon is moving from Palestine to Providence. As part of their new North America tour, DAM will be live at Brown on November 12th, in a performance coordinated by Brown Students for Justice in Palestine.

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ARTS

10 NOVEMBER 2011

FALL JAMS

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few months back I was driving an old family car and found a series of mix CDs, each labeled with a different date in November 2007. The three mixes were mostly dispatches from the Mountain Goats, Elliot Smith, and the Smashing Pumpkins—a group brought together by their lyrics’ explicit confrontations with pain. Lyrics like the Mountain Goats’ “I played video games in a drunken haze/I was seventeen years young/hurt my knuckles punching the machines/the taste of scotch rich on my tongue” are powerful because singer John Darnielle’s anger resonates with a variety of listeners’ diverse personal experiences, despite the particularity of Darnielle’s own.

Four Novembers later, I’m still drawn to a particular type of telling, though perhaps a more nuanced one. The tension between the rainy temperature drops and gorgeous visual stimuli recalls the coexistence of the melancholic and the cathartic in music. Which seems appropriate for a season defined by a sense of transition and change: these days the space between a tragic story and a blissful one seem especially open to exploration. Accordingly, there seems to be a particular brand of discordant storytelling in the music I gravitate toward during autumn. Here are five album suggestions for the season, each ambivalently articulating conflict in their own way.

5. Invincible - Shapeshifters (2008).

It would be tempting to locate Invincible in a lineage of message rappers, brought together by their socially conscious themes and avoidance of anger as a guiding principle. One imagines an Invincible fan also digging Talib Kweli, KRS-1, and other rappers who are conscious without being revolutionary.

But that would miss what makes this album so special. Invincible covers Israeli/Palestinian relations, corporate greed, racism, sexism and gentrification, with impressive fluidity and cogency. The result, though her lyrical content is specific and substantive, is much more than just emotionally charged commentary. It’s a philosophy of witness and transformation.

The title track begins: “Music is not a mirror to reflect reality/it’s a hammer with which we shape it.” Even though she’s angry, her anger exists within a holistic framework of healing that has a systemic resonance. So it’s not even the overflowing content that’s important here, it’s the act of confession—an articulation of the challenges of community building as a way to break through them.

4.Califone-Quicksand/Cradlsnakes (2003).

Americana. Freak Folk. Soul. Garage.

Raspiness. Vibrations. Feedback. Breathing.

Breathing. The album embodies it.

The record is not a subject as much as a process, the way that sounds—whether guitar/banjo twangs, electric fuzz, or

those ribbed fish instruments—trip over each other in seemingly endless rotation.

There are crescendos but it isn’t clear where they begin or end. Califone’s genius is that many of their songs are best described as a series of memorable moments, yet the transitions to and from those moments are so seamless that they are hard to discern, even after dozens of listens. Like a decontextualized trip into another space triggered by a vaguely familiar smell, Califone’s music is a tribute to the power of the sensory. Their lyrics are heavily associative, with animal descriptions and metaphors often as a unifying trope. This is appropriate, since the music is more instinctive than rational.

However, the album’s power lies not so much in the solutions it offers for living in a heavily sensory world, but in the beautiful, often non sequitur musical possibilities of such a world. Conflicting sounds and styles are the air the keeps the album breathing.

3. Television - Marquee Moon (1977).

Television is generally separated from other NYC punk explosion bands by their complex guitar interplay, which synthesized blues and jazz influences to create something wholly original. And in the context of the 1977 punk scene, this was perhaps doubly subversive. But beyond that, they also transcended their peers in the way their stylistic experimentation complemented their lyrical content.

Marquee Moon is largely removed from the senses of swagger and rage that defined the late-70s CBGB’s scene, instead focusing on alternating paranoia and hysterical joy. Opener “See No Evil” sets the album’s majestically bipolar tone by acknowledging the ridiculousness of what might, in less able hands, be a self-indulgent song about invincibility. Follow up “Venus” is structured like a ballad until Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s interspersed call-andresponse exchanges question the narrator’s reliability just in time for the chorus and riff. And then there’s the title track, which has to be the most economically creepy, suspenseful and ecstatic 10-minute rock song in history. Marquee Moon is then a punk album in the purest sense: by taking elements of classic (even arena) rock, punk, blues, and an indie sensibility that hadn’t even been invented yet, it remains Television’s lasting middle finger to all their influences and imitators.

2. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury (2006).

Much is revealed in a rap album through its use of skits or interludes. The most traditionally ambitious ones use them as breathers, sometimes signaling tone changes or introducing standout tracks (see: Ghostface Killah, Fishscale). But Hell Hath No Fury is different—the first song is a cyclical intro, boasting the Re-Up Gang label name with the looping line “we got it for cheap,” and coming full circle with the same samples at the end. But the second loop comes 3:42 later, after an explosion of Pusha T and Malice’s harrowing

By Bobby Hunter Illustration by Diane Zhou accounts of crack dealing, outlining the thrills, guilt and instability of hustling.

The tactic of embedding stylistic bells and whistles within the album’s dystopian lyrical universe complicates the rappers’ considerable showmanship. The result is a distinct feeling of entrapment within the Virginia beach drug culture, and all its ecstasies and insecurities.

But then, the entrapment is layered.

Malice is Pusha’s older brother, and the album captures the sense of mutual responsibility for each other’s scarred consciences (Malice: “To my little brother Terrance who I love dearly so/If I ever had millions never would you sell blow”).

These days Pusha is collaborating with members of Odd Future while Malice is writing a born-again memoir. I don’t know to what extent their life trajectories were diverging during the Hell Hath No Fury sessions, but the line between art and life seems especially fraught during the brother’s moments of alternating didacticism and bravado. Mid-album highlight “Hello New World” perhaps epitomizes this opposition, as Malice answers Pusha’s golden line “Some people called it crack I called it diet Coke!” with his own “This information I must pass on to my homies/ if hustling is a must be Sosa, not Tony.”

Their tension never compromises their chemistry, though, instead making it even more breathtaking. Since their clashes exist in the same spacey, drugged out world that even the skits cannot escape, each intricate, scary piece of Hell Hath No Fury feels like a step on a downwardly spiraling staircase. Let’s be thankful the descent was so beautiful.

1.TheWrens-The Meadowlands (2003).

The Meadowlands is broadly an album about failure, about fighting the shame of being poor, single and depressed at 30. Which is a pretty brave statement on its own terms: these are not romantic problems to have, and given the individualistic streak of contemporary America, any attempt to first-person dramatize them immediately opens one up to a world of scrutiny. Even braver, though, is that The Wrens don’t try to romanticize these problems, shying away from making their subjects proletarian heroes or wounded souls. Instead, they are more interested in the conflicts of finding a voice. The Meadowlands is about fighting the shame of not knowing how to articulate failure in a meaningful way.

It’s about the profound directionlessness when the system is the problem rather than the individual embedded in it, and bettering your life can never be infused with a sense of vengeance because the problem is an unfeeling system that can’t

experience vengence. And, maybe after that, it’s about the shame of feeling like you need revenge in the first place.

By focusing on failure, The Meadowlands transcends the need to imply a narrative conclusion to the narrators’ suffering.

Instead, the emotional descriptiveness of The Meadowlands makes the passage of time seem downright irrelevant, despite the fact that aging is a recurring theme. Take the transition from second track “Happy” to third “She Sends Kisses. ” The former closes with singer Kevin Whelan shouting “Your lies to me/won’t win again/so don’t kid yourself/it’s better this way/ it’s all back to me,” against the peak of a crescendo of feedback and shredding before a final fadeout riff. However, the immediately quiet and slower “She Sends Kisses” begins with “Ten tons against me and you’ve gone/I put your favorite records on/and sit around/it spins around/ and you’re around again.”

Such a sequence is typical; the band’s perspective often switches between reminiscence, in-time narration, and cautiously optimistic fuck-you declarations with a seeming disregard for coherence, leaving only a swirling sense of working through.

And if the album is as much about the pitfalls of testifying to one’s failures as it is the subjective experience of failure, the album’s most explicit moments of existential confusion come from “This Boy is Exhausted,” which is literally about the difficulties of writing the album itself, including the lines “I’m way past college/ No ways out/No back doors not anymore/but then once in a while/we’ll play a show that makes it worthwhile.” The song became the band’s biggest hit, which shouldn’t be surprising—the Wrens’ biggest strength is their ability to be deeply self-conscious without losing a sense of urgency or sincerity. So, The Meadowlands might be the perfect autumn album because it’s so deeply and essentially processual, the bandmembers’ anguish of articulating their disappointments creates new disappointments to work through. The album is then its own solution. And if that leaves you wondering what happens in between, the answer is conflict.

Bobby Hunter ‘12 is collaborating with Odd Future on a born-again memoir.

ARTS

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

12

OLD MAN, YOUNG SOUL, MODERN LOVER Jonathan Richman is no ordinary rockstar

by Greg Nissan

L

ast month, Jonathan Richman approached the stage at Firehouse 13 in the West End of Providence through the crowd, carrying his own guitar. He mumbled "excuse me" to everyone he passed and looked sincere in the request. He was performing with his long-time drummer and only band member, Tommy Larkins, with whom he chatted throughout the set. Richman seemed rhythmically off all night, but he was not discouraged and continued to showcase his legendary wit.

Richman’s solo career was born out of the instability of the Modern Lovers, the protopunk band that he founded in 1970. The band's only official album, 1976’s The Modern Lovers, was released two years after the original lineup had disbanded. Richman became quickly disillusioned with the high-energy, back-to-basics style of the band after a stay in Bermuda, and the influence of the local musicians there still permeates his music today. For several years, Jonathan retained the Modern Lovers moniker, though he played with a variety of musicians and essentially began his solo career. While Richman's solo work is often intimate and laid-back, he is best known for the chugging punk sound of The Modern Lovers.

In his mind, Richman's career began in 1967, a seminal year in music. Lou Reed was experimenting with noise and chemicals in Manhattan. Mick Jagger was prancing around arenas in painfully tight pants. Brian Wilson and the Beatles were squaring off for the psychedelic pop throne. In the midst of all this, Richman, a bright-eyed 16-year-old from Natick, Massachusetts heard the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" on the radio. He was captivated by the droning two-chord structure, the screeching viola, and the primal drums. Richman left Natick for New York that year. To understand why, one must understand Lou Reed—another punk forefather to whom Richman essentially owes his career.

Lou Reed is a myth dressed in all black, who hated hippies in the 1960s and was bisexual at a time when that was far

less accepted. He hung out with models and artists in Andy Warhol's factory and played guitar in a way that communicated a sonic "fuck you" to popular music of his time. A key element of his current fame is the critical and commercial reception of The Velvet Underground & Nico at the time of its release—hardly anyone outside of his circle liked it. It was largely ignored as an obscene and cacophonous album, only to gain immense popularity and critical acclaim decades later. The disparity between the response to the Velvet's debut upon its release and its current status as an extremely important LP (Rolling Stone named it the thirteenth greatest of all time) makes Reed seem almost prophetic; he’s transcended good musician to the status of cultural catalyst.

"These people would understand me," Richman said he thought of the Velvets in a 2002 interview. In a strange turn of events, that Richman describes as "so ridiculous it had to be fate," he ended up sleeping on the Velvet's then-manager Steve Sesnick's couch. He eventually returned to Boston where he founded the Modern Lovers, a seminal band that recorded distinctly American rock infused with punk simplicity, filtered through Richman’s young, ironic lens. The band holds a similar, though less pronounced, legendary status to that of the Velvet Underground—ultimately very influential to punk rock and independent music, but internally unstable, unsuccessful at the time, and short-lived. After the Velvets collapsed, Reed worked with major names such as Bowie and members of Yes. But what did Richman do?

As a solo artist, Richman became a skilled guitarist rather than one who depended on power chords and noise, blending his old punk stylings with flamenco flutters or light triads. His most popular solo album, 1991’s I, Jonathan, has become the musical template for most of his albums since. Richman sings of backyard barbecues, Boston, summer memories drenched in nostalgia, lesbian bars, and, of course, the Velvet Underground. He describes his love for them

over a rollicking rhythm, and in the middle of the song he does his best Lou Reed impression—changing the tempo to a slow thump and rattling off garbled phrases.

Jonathan makes it clear in one song that he is in many ways the anti Lou Reed —he's not setting trends, but his sincerity is unmatched in music.

There are many bands—the Grateful Dead most famously—who have reputations as "live bands." Their performances surpass their albums, often due to spontaneity, improvisation, and spectacle.

It's not necessarily that Richman’s music is much better live, but he’s extremely charismatic. Seeing him perform is more about catching a glimpse of Richman in real life than listening to his music. In his strange, stumbling monologues, Richman’s essence and childlike nature come to light. He constantly sings off-microphone and approaches the crowd, dancing like a tipsy uncle at a bar mitzvah.

His goofy dances are not satirical, rather they recall a child's first attempts at dancing, and sheer wonder at the joy derived from moving to music. (One of his more famous songs is "I'm A Little Dinosaur," and in his younger years Richman was known to get on his hands and knees and imitate a dinosaur during performances.)

At these moments, his concert feels more like a living-room gathering than a spectacle of fame. He oscillates from seeming like a creepy high-school drama teacher in his theatrics to a stoic commentator, from a little kid to an old sage. He seems to be aware of all these personas, yet calculates none of them.

Much of Richman’s set was reflective. "My Affected Accent" comically detailed his early bratty pretension. He painted himself as a brooding teenager, flaunting awful artwork in Harvard Square and forever in search of the rusted gates to Bohemia. "Old World" remains one of the few Modern Lovers songs he can bear to play, and the words "ancient" and "modern" appear in his songs almost as much as "dancing" does. Despite the general acclaim of the only true Modern Lovers album, Richman is ambiguous

about his legacy. "It had some good stuff on it," he said of the album. "Some of it was just weak. I wasn't good in the recording studio. I was too critical—I had a bad time [when I was younger] but a lot of it was my own fault."

Richman almost doesn't seem to be a rockstar. He lacks the unintelligible hipness (Lou Reed), the egomaniacal bombast (Bono), the inability to ever admit you are not the best musician in the world (Noel and Liam Gallagher), the unfiltered sex appeal (Mick Jagger), and the dangerously wild lifestyle (Iggy Pop). While so much of being a star hinges on distance, Richman’s childlike mannerisms and sincerity seem almost too easy to understand.

That explains why Lou Reed just released Lulu, a collaborative album with Metallica that has been greeted by extreme criticism and confusion for its disastrous aesthetic, while Richman is busy strumming the same chords he's always loved.

He's not projecting an image, not hiding behind anything. Richman’s intimate and conversational display of his personality does not translate to arenas, which is why he’s chosen venues like Firehouse 13. He does not use irony as a shield. He's just on stage, talking to you, singing to you, dancing with you and not just for you. He wants you to love him, not because he feeds on admiration but because he wants you to share in the experience of love. It's fitting that he named one of his albums, Not So Much to Be Loved as to Love.

GREG NISSAN B’15 does not want to have brunch with Bono.

13

INTERVIEWS

10 NOVEMBER 2011

LOOKING BACK AT THE FUTURE

“I

VISIONARY ARCHITECTURE FROM THE PAST AND PRESENT

have seen the future and it works,” said journalist Lincoln Steffens after visiting the Soviet Union in 1919. He was wrong, not because the future he saw didn’t work, but because it wasn’t really the future. “Since nobody’s been to the future, how do we determine what the future looks like?” asks Nathaniel Walker, History of Art and Architecture PhD candidate and curator of “Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future,” an exhibition at Brown University’s Bell Gallery that closed on Sunday after a two-month run. The show presented depictions of the future in advertisements, videos, utopian treatises, pulp magazines, and architectural sketches, among others, from the 19th century through today. “I’m fascinated by how it is that people decide what is and isn’t progressive,” said Walker, “what is and isn’t futuristic.” Certainly not based on accuracy: the images in the show are exhilarating and depressing in turn, amusing and frightening, but none of them fully resemble the world we live in. Can our dreams of the future control it? Can they destroy it? “I have seen the future and it does not work,” read the posters of the 70s sci-fi film Zardoz. It all depends on what you see.

The Independent: What can we learn in the present by looking at how the past imagined the future?

Nathaniel Walker: I believe that a lot of the ways people have been thinking about the future are still dominant today and still bear an influence on our ability to envision tomorrow. If you go back and you look at these past visions, you can see patterns that are still clearly with us.

Indy: What kinds of patterns?

NW: There is an unrelenting, unremitting focus on technology and industry that has been and still is the dominant paradigm for futuristic thinking. From the very beginning in the late 18th century, people began to assume that science would usher in a new world order, that science would be best manifested as the applied science of technology, and that the applied science of technology was best manifested as industry, which is technology at its biggest, most hegemonic scale. And to this day we still think about the future almost exclusively in terms of technology. Exceptions are extremely rare.

Indy: It is hard to imagine a vision of the future without advanced technology.

What are some of the exceptions like?

NW: Number one is William Morris, who thought that industry was debilitating for the average laboring person. He believed that we needed to return to

handicrafts and we needed to return to small-scale commercial enterprise and small-scale nature-connected communities. After Morris you have an odd utopian novel called Altruria, by William Dean Howells, which predicted a future wonder-world of small villages, with everything really rooted in nature. So you do have these counter-visions, but they’re very rare. And in some ways they almost shed more light on the things they reject by nature of their rareness, which of course is this perpetual obsession with every technological trend: extrapolate it to its furthest, biggest possible manifestation.

Indy: Did that obsession ever play out in weird ways? Do any of the imagined futures you found seem completely crazy?

NW: There are some weird ones. There was a guy named John Cleve Symmes who in the early 1800s argued that he had done some math and that he had good reason to believe that the North Pole would actually be a giant hole, and that when we found the North Pole hole we could dive into a chasm that went all the way to the core of the earth. A lot of people believed him: Edgar Allen Poe believed him, Nathaniel Hawthorne believed him.

And a lot of support was actually put behind efforts to find the North Pole partly because they expected to find this hole.

What this hole would do is it would enable you to not only colonize lands near the center of the planet, it would also enable you to tap the center of the earth and the molten core for an industrial complex of unlimited power. All of this sounds pretty insane to me.

Indy: Did any of these ideas, the slightly less outlandish ones, impact the present in ways we aren’t aware of?

NW: People talk a lot about the almost obsessive prediction of ubiquitous urban and suburban flight in the early 20th century. It was only a matter of time before everyone would be flying around all over the place all the time. The simple fact that when you fly around you’re more likely to smash into things didn’t have a dampening effect on these visions. One of the reasons that modernist architecture became obsessed early with flat roofs was because everyone was expected to need to have a place to land their aircraft. The fact that one of the defining features of the reigning architectural paradigm of today was at least partly informed by this idea seems pretty funny to me.

that come from the madness of the past?

NW: Everybody seems to think that our oil-addicted suburban economy in the United States and other countries, is all part of a corporate conspiracy. Which it partly is, but it was also deliberately designed into modernist urban planning by people like Le Corbusier who specifically said: “In the city of the future, I will work in an office building, but I will live 50 miles away under an oak tree. My secretary will work in the same office building, but will live 50 miles away in the opposite direction under a different oak tree. We will drive every day to work, burning up oil, tearing up roads, destroying tires. Work for everybody.” The idea that perpetual consumption itself offered a perfect paradigm for creating the sort of social economic system that was perpetually moving, and that the resources needed to keep this up in perpetuity were inexhaustible, is totally insane.

Indy: Has greater awareness of the material limits of our planet impacted how we see the future today?

NW: I think people are more skeptical, but I think that the typical answer is actually in many ways still in line with the modernist and pre-modernist tradition of future-forward, techno-centric speculation. People are so adamant about not returning to a previous way of doing things that they simply insist that we need more renewable energy, more alternative fuels, more technological doodads and fix-it’s.

As if we can keep this high-stakes game up simply by other means, or by sheer willpower. No one is willing to admit: okay, we actually need to fall back, consolidate, make walkable towns with architecture that is more human-scaled and easier to maintain over time. This kind of commonsense solution evades us.

Indy: Why do you think that is?

NW: Beneath all the pragmatism and beneath all the cynicism there is still this hope that an uninhibited application of technology and science are all that is needed to make, if not a perfect world, something quite near to a perfect world. Once you let go of that it’s kind of like losing your faith. You have to completely reimagine the way the universe works and it’s painful. And for practitioners of architecture and these other design trades, they have something to lose professionally if they suddenly have to

Interview by Timothy Nassau say: “Okay guys, you don’t need me anymore to genius the world into a hypertechno solution. We need to sit down together and open the history books and figure out how to back out of this deadend track.”

Indy: So the cult of progress actually becomes a hindrance to itself?

NW: Taking the lead on a dead-end track makes you last in the race to get back. If you were to look at most utopian visions today, they’re always caveated. The things that people would describe as progressive, as ideal, they’re going to be heavily environmentally oriented because everyone’s terrified by the fact that we seem to be destroying the planet. The problem is, every green architectural vision, with rare exception, is still so completely dependent on high technology that it neglects to use simple old solutions, simple old paradigms, that are proven to work. Andrés Duany points out that 300 years ago, buildings were essentially carbon neutral.

They just were because they had to be.

That’s how they were made and that’s how they were maintained and that’s how they were used. And so many architects today refuse to go back and learn from this stuff, which I think is silly. Now, I don’t think we should go live back 300 years ago. I don’t want cholera; I find the bigotries of today bad enough, let alone those of yesteryear. But I do think that it’s possible to learn from the past and silly to fail to do so.

Indy: Since you talk about learning from the past, did any of the imagined futures you saw seem to be better than the present? Would you choose to live in any of them?

NW: By and large the problem with all of these visions is that they’re so technologically oriented that they lose everything else. They lose brick sidewalks and fireflies and casual encounters with strangers in well-defined public squares. They just lose so much of what makes a city good.

So much of what makes both Savannah, Georgia and New York interesting places.

So I don’t like any of them, to be honest. I wouldn’t live in any of them. But by gosh, I’d pay a fortune to visit any of them for a weekend. They are so wonderfully mad.

TIMOTHY NASSAU B’12 lives in an oak tree.

Indy: Are there any other features of the modern world

JACK SMALLEY, EDITOR / AMERICAN (ACTIVE 1922–1932) / “ENDLESS BELT TRAINS FOR FUTURE CITIES” FROM MODERN MECHANIX AND INVENTIONS, NOVEMBER 1932 / MAGAZINE 9 5/8 X 6 3/4 / PRIVATE COLLECTION

OPINIONS

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

14

I WAS RAISED A BOY.

BUT WHATEVER.

A

by Robert Sandler Illustration by Stephen Carmody

s a term, queer forms the basis of a political identity that is by nature variable. I do not stand to speak for “us.” Most definitions of queer are based in individual preferences and practices. One queer is not like another. Broadly, queer celebrates gender and sexual fluidity. It consciously defies binaries, most commonly the line between heterosexuality and homosexuality. For some, queerness breaks ties to standards of hetero- and homo-normative cultures. For others, it is fisting, orgies, polyamory, and consent. Because of this, queerness is an indefinable entity. This is a contemporary sense of the word in a world where, as Judith Butler has suggested, the category of sex is normative (read: constrictive). However, bodies do not adhere to norms. Let’s get things straight, so to speak: while sex may be viewed as biological, it is a construction of civilization and nature. In parallel with hunger, we all eat, but what, how, and with whom are socially defined. In the same way, sex is structured with regard to appropriate partners and acts, as well as what it constitutes: can kissing be sex? Is it only penetrative?

My queer identity, constantly changing and full of existential crises is rooted in my gender and sexuality. I’ve had sexual experiences with people who are male and female bodied, male and female identified, and those who consider themselves neither male nor female. I am most viscerally attracted to male-bodied people, but this feeling is not constrictive. Sex for me these days operates on empathy. I was raised a boy. But whatever. I found my body on 9 AM trains with suit-and-tie-clad businessmen and progressively feminized it—tighter and tighter pants, smaller and smaller tank tops. I did this because they couldn’t and didn’t. Seeing what they were helped me realize what I wasn’t. I now live in an intentional community that understands queer identities, making the

ever-changing nature of my sexuality and gender more understandable. Being surrounded by people who defy male/female dichotomies has made this a comfortable and natural experience.

QUEER POLITICS Those who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual are a small part of the category called queer, insofar as they stand outside of the heterosexual monolith. However, these labels imply one static sexuality and gender. This world adheres to binaries (namely gender) and generally disregards the fluidity that a queer identity so cherishes. The distinctions between queer and gay/lesbian/bisexual manifest themselves in ways beyond sexual identity. The ways that one views gender and sexuality inform ideas about other predominant structures in life, namely politics.

Because queer politics operate in terms of fluidity and view themselves outside of traditional structures, they overlap with anarchy at times. The two have been bedfellows throughout the ages. Early 20th century writing by Leonard D. Abbott (hot) and Edward Carpenter (even hotter) envisioned a society in which property was common and all sexual relations, from polygamy to homosexuality, would be expressions of comradery. Anarchy and queerness as identities operate through opposition. Part of the convoluted nature of anarchy is the fact that it hinges on resistance to capitalist structures. In the same way, queer identity has arisen in part from reaction to heterosexual systems of power. While both of these identities can exist outside of these given structures (capitalism, heterosexuality), their anxieties largely constitute reactionary impulses to the world around them.

In the latter years of the Spanish Franco regime, a group of activists sought to integrate gay liberation within the larger ideological framework of class

struggle. The Catalan Gay Liberation Front (FFAGC) composed a manifesto in 1977 to articulate these goals. Despite the group’s name, the manifesto anticipates the postmodern conception of queer, moving away from categories of homosexual/heterosexual, masculine/feminine, and male/female. For the FFAGC, the narrative of resistance and revolutionary vision they hoped to actualize was not bound by prevailing binary gender arrangements.

marketplace values. The acquisition of objects as identity makers is also problematic in that the act reinforces the structures that create identities. RSVP Gay Cruises perpetuate the static nature of homosexuality, commercializing and capitalizing on the experience. You can buy it. Being queer is to operate outside these structured environments. In doing so, it shifts the focus towards interactions between people and away from a static category dictated through objects.

SEXUAL COMMODITIES Capitalist structures categorize and bind sexual and gender identities. But an amorphous being cannot be catered to in the same way that a straight pre-teen girl can.

Capitalism applies a gender to both the object (hunting knives are for men) and the subject (women have bonnets). Both the advertising about and the buying of certain objects reaffirms gender identities. Aside from the gendered nature of objects, sexualities have been commodified as well. Absolut vodka sponsors Pride parades. Take, for example, this ad from my Google sidebar:

LABELS & ALTERNATIVES For some, a clear label is useful with regards to gender and sexuality. Identifying as gay can be a liberating experience. Repeated estrangement from heterosexual culture is suddenly replaced with a world which has a rich history and culture. This world is full of support. This type of identification can be empowering. Knowing what you are suddenly validates your experiences and this provides a framework to a sexual void.

Queer has the same affectation, but in more ambiguous ways. Identification with this category fills the same sexual void but with every possibility. This identification process has been constructive for me. The anxiety of my early life was driven by the constructs of gender and sexuality forced upon me. I was supposed to identify with a single gender and a single sexuality. Identifying as a gay male was comforting at first, but ultimately proved frustrating. To always be gay and to always be male provided too finite a solution to my gender and sexuality. It’s also inaccurate. I like my penis, I just want to menstruate. I’m queer and you probably are too, but not in the same way.

RSVP Gay Cruises Alll-gay [sic] cruises from the original gay vacation company www.RSVPvacations.com Its implications are divisive. People consume products and buy experiences that confirm both gender and sexual identity. The man on this cruise, with his stereotypically tanned, coconut flavored glittery body, has bought his gay malehood. This does not detract from his gay identity, but seeks to reinforce it in a material way. This type of experience does not reflect the internal nature of gender and sexuality. This experience makes gender and sexuality an external experience, something to be expressed in terms of

Robert Sandler B’ 13.5 is fluid.

15 F O O D

10 NOVEMBER 2011

SCIENCE

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

16

Birth control shots that blank memory

by Mara Renz Smith illustration by Robert Sandler

F

or some women, the most frustrating part of hormonal birth control is remembering to take a pill every day. To achieve maximum efficacy, oral contraceptives have to be taken at the exact same time daily. For other women with conditions such as congenital heart disease, seizure disorder, migraines with aura, sickle-cell anemia, or a history of venous thromboembolism, the pill can’t be taken safely because of its estrogen content, which can increase risk of stroke and hasten the metabolism of other drugs.

Depo-Provera is a valuable alternative for these women. An FDA-approved contraceptive method which requires one shot every 12 weeks, Depo-Provera has been on the market as an alternative to oral contraception since October 1992. It has its own list of documented side effects such as irregular menstrual bleeding, weight gain, acne, headache, breast tenderness, and osteoporosis, but for some women the benefits outweigh the costs. However, recent scientific evidence has raised the possibility of side effects which the original clinical trials did not test for.

For almost 2 million women in the United States, Depo Provera is still 99% percent effective against preventing pregnancy, like the pill, which has over 17 million users. However, this benefit may come at a greater risk of developing dementia or other cognitive impairments later in life. A recent study by Blair Braden, a doctoral student in Psychology, and Psychology Professor Heather Bimonte-Nelson of Arizona State University, has shown that women who turn to Depo Provera could be at risk of memory defects caused by the hormone medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA). MPA is a synthetic version of progesterone, a female steroid hormone, and is the only active ingredient in Depo Provera. MPA is also commonly found in some hormone replacement therapies (HRT) administered to post-menopausal women to alleviate menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes, changes in sleeping patterns, and anxiety.

The most popular birth control pill contains a synthetic form of the hormone estrogen and a synthetic version of progesterone. Depo Provera is unique in that it only contains one hormone, MPA. Natural progesterone protects the brain, but MPA has shown to have an antagonistic effect, reducing the brain's chemical production, which supports neurons and

helps them grow.

MPA was originally discovered at Pharmacia & Upjohn, Inc during the 1960s. The company conducted clinical trials between 1967 and 1978 in Atlanta, GA, on 14,000 women, most of whom were never given consent forms or information on the experimental nature of the drug. Over half of the subjects in the trial were rural, low-income, African-American women. Depo Provera was approved for use abroad in several countries in the 1970s despite these tests, but was denied FDA approval in the United States in 1967, 1978, and 1983. The denials were based on sloppiness in the clinical trials, increased rates of cancer in beagles who were given the drug, and the higher number of birth defects in fetuses from mothers taking the drug.

In 1991, the World Health Organization released reports on clinical research conducted in Kenya, Mexico, and Thailand that demonstrated that Depo Provera was not in fact carcinogenic. With this new support, Pharmacia & Upjohn continued to lobby the FDA for the right to market Depo Provera, until they finally had their contraceptive approved in October 1992, despite fervent opposition from the National Women's Health Network, the Women's Health Education Project, and the Black Women's Health Project.

By 1995, several women's health groups had come together to demand that the FDA put a moratorium on Depo Provera and regulate the distribution of informed consent forms.

By 2004, Pfizer was the manufacturer of Depo Provera and was required to release post-marketing studies demonstrating women taking Depo Provera have an increased risk for osteoporosis and that the decrease in bone mineral density does not immediately recover after stopping treatment. These revelations led to an official FDA “black box” warning against these side effects and the recommendation that Depo Provera never be taken for more than two years at a time. By 2005, a $700-million class-action lawsuit had been filed against Pfizer.

In the United States, MPA was introduced as a drug therapy to decrease some of the cognitive side effects of menopause. This usage was first tested in the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS) in 1996, which originally set out to test whether HRT containing MPA

would reduce the risk of women developing dementia or mild cognitive impairment between the ages of 65 and 79. But in July of 2002, it became clear that HRT containing MPA had actually doubled the risk of developing dementia. With the increased risk of breast cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke and pulmonary embolism, and with surprising cognitive decline, the study was ended prematurely.

The research of Braden and BimonteNelson has produced similar effects in rats. The animals were exposed to MPA and tested through a series of mazes designed to measure their memory capacity. In a follow up study, rats were given injections of MPA early in life to simulate contraceptive use, later in life to simulate HRT, and both in early and later life to simulate the combined effects of using MPA as a contraceptive and a HRT. They tested the rats’ cognitive abilities with mazes and found that both young and old rats had significant memory and learning impairment, even if they were no longer being treated with MPA. Rats that were given MPA from young adulthood to middle age displayed the most dramatic impairment, suggesting that increased treatment with MPA leads to greater impacts on learning and memory. Collectively, research has led some in medicine to question prescribing Depo Provera.

“What we found was pretty shocking—animals that had been given the drug at any point in their life were memory impaired at middle age compared to animals that never had the drug. We also confirmed that in the subjects that only received the drug when young, the hormone was no longer circulating during memory testing when older, showing it had cleared from the system yet still had effects on the brain,” says Braden.

Although research has not yet proven a consistent theory behind the cognitive impairment resulting from MPA, researchers speculate that it influences the neurotransmitter, GABA. GABA helps to determine what information we remember. When human progesterone is metabolized in the body, some of the remnants bind to GABA receptors, inhibiting GABA’s ability to reduce activity in the brain.

“GABA is important for a lot of things, and we know it is important for memory,” says Braden. “What GABA does is slow the brain down. It’s inhibitory. So if there is too much of it, it can make it more dif-

ficult to produce memories. But then if there’s too little of it and there’s too much excitation, same thing—it makes you not be able to produce memories correctly."

Meanwhile, the synthetic progesterone, MPA, has been shown to enhance the GABA receptors’s ability to produce inhibition, slowing down the brain's circuitry. Braden’s study found that GAD, an established protein marker for GABA and the enzyme that normally synthesizes it, had reduced levels present in the hippocampus, and increased levels in the cortex. Both the hippocampus and cortex are important brain structures implicated in information processing, learning, and memory. This unusual pattern of GABA activity seems to indicate circuit irregularities in the MPA-treated rats. More investigations will be needed to determine MPA's specific molecular effects throughout the brain.

Memory loss and cognitive impairment have never been measured in clinical studies of women who have taken Depo Provera and there are no statistics that indicate that cognitive changes take place in women who have taken it. Long term studies will be needed to establish whether or not cognitive decline later in life is associated with taking Depo Provera at a younger age, or if this side effect is only specific to rats. Over 90 million women have used Depo Provera since 2001, and experts estimate that this number is growing. Perhaps in light of the findings of Braden and Bimonte-Nelson, women might start to come forward with their stories.

MARA RENZ SMITH B ‘12 is an active ingredient

17

10 NOVEMBER 2011

LITERARY

I READ YOUR DIARY,

by Kate Welsh illustration by Robert Sandler

He sat in a Cook County cell for 18 months because he didn’t want to leave the city. I pressed my tongue against the icy skin of the telephone pole and thought about bigger mistakes. Now his words tumble to the floor like beads on a snapped necklace, and nobody wants to pick them up because they are embarrassed by what he might be trying to say.

Regret is like the bag of smooth stones that I gathered at the beach and took home. On the carpeted floor of my bedroom they lie, plain and useless. I can place them on my chest and feel their weight pressing down, suppressing the tide of nausea rising in my throat.

You asked me to kiss your eyes not for the cold but for the rest of the day. I knew I had lost my equilibrium when I could only exist horizontally. Curled up like a shrimp in a red wheelbarrow, dragged past cheap sushi restaurants. I wish they would just tuck me into rice and make a maki roll.

Nowhere to go so I dove to the bottom of a dark glassy pool.You could freeze the water, cut out a cube, and drop me into your gin and tonic in Brobdingnag. Or wear me at the end of your necklace, preserved in amber. Smooth and Heavy. I’d get you all back when our species goes extinct and they recreate the human race using DNA from (yours truly).

The woman in the chair next to mine looks at me with so steady and relentless a gaze that I cannot meet it for long. The intensity of her glare through the perfumed train car brings an acidic taste to my tongue. I turn away, ears pounding. Sunlight filters a nauseating green and orange outside the windows as I stumble down the aisle to the café car. I played with my sugar, holding a lump in my spoon, letting it drown. My feet are sliding even now.

November 11– November 17