The College Hill Independent Vol. 32 Issue 5 by College Hill Independent

the college hill independent Volume 32

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a Brown/RISD weekly

March 11, 2016

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Issue 05

the

NEWS 02 Week in Rebranding Maya Sorabjee & Piper French

Volume 32 No. 5

03 Stand with JNU Shreena Thakore METRO 05 Caught in the Hook Kimberly Meilun ARTS 09 Newspupper Liby Hays FEATURES 07 Spirits of the Place Kostis Koutalidis 11 Red Rooftops Sophie Kasakove METABOLICS 06 Black Metabolism

From the editors: How to style your hair this week: 90s era Hugh Grant-esque swoopy/dreamy center part. What to wear this week: try a DIY project. Take your favorite turtleneck and chop oﬀ the neck. Do it roughly, to fray the edges. What to eat this week: your deepest booger. What to watch this week: your lovers!

SCIENCE 14 Back to the Lab Fatima Husain

INTERVIEWS 15 In Conversation with Glenn Greenwald Elias Bresnick LITERARY 17 A Cento Isabelle Doyle EPHEMERA 13 Uncertainty Excites Me Jake Brodsky X 18 Private Weekend Layla Eshan, Sara Khan, & Pierie Korostoﬀ

Managing Editors Camera Ford Alec Mapes-Frances Francis Torres News Jane Argodale Piper French Julia Tompkins Metro Sophie Kasakove Jamie Packs Shane Potts Arts Lisa Borst Jonah Max Eli Neuman-Hammond Features Gabrielle Hick Patrick McMenamin Dominique Pariso Science Fatima Husain Marcelo Rivera-Figueroa Tech Kamille Johnson

P.O Box 1930 Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The Independent, a family-run publication, is published weekly during the fall & spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.

Interviews Elias Bresnick Occult Lance Gloss Literary Marcus Mamourian Metabolics Sam Samore Ephemera Mark Benz Jake Brodsky India Ennenga X Layla Ehsan Sara Khan Pierie Korostoﬀ List Polina Godz Rick Salamé Cover Jade Donaldson

Staﬀ Writers Ben Berke Liz Cory Kelton Ellis Liby Hays Corey Hébert Hannah Maier-Katkin Madeleine Matsui Kimberly Meilun Ryan Rosenberg Staﬀ Illustrators Teri Minogue Yuko Okabe Ivan Rios-Fetchko Web Charlie Windolf Senior Editors Sebastian Clark Rick Salamé Kim Sarnoff Maya Sorabjee MVP(s) Sam Samore Ivan Rios-Fetchko

Design & Illustration Celeste Matsui Alexa Terfloth Zak Ziebell

theindy.org

@theindy_tweets

WEEK IN REBRANDING by Maya Sorabjee & Piper French illustration by Alec Mapes-Frances

Black is the Meanest Color

Vegan Animal Farm

Stand before his Cloud Gate in Chicago and watch your reflection twist across its curved surface, light rebounding off the polished bean in every possible direction. Walk up to his Turning the World Upside Down in Jerusalem and see the space around you somersault, collapsing into your own body. British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor is the contemporary king of mirrors, patron saint of all things gloss. But he’s had it with the shiny shit. He’s done pandering to the Gram. This month, Kapoor has acquired the patent on Vantablack, the blackest black known to mankind. He alone will be able to use it in his art, effectively monopolizing the black hole ~aesthetic~. Vantablack, developed by British company Surrey NanoSystems and introduced for commercial use in 2014, “holds the world record as the darkest man-made substance.” It is not a paint, Kapoor indignantly stresses, but rather a fine coating made of microscopic vertical tubes that trap light, absorbing 99.6% of the rays that strike its surface. Until the artist came along, its use was limited to military and aerospace applications. But Vantablack’s intense darkness also produces disconcerting optical effects à la Anish, rendering the sculptural surfaces it coats perceptibly two-dimensional. Anish has been enamored by the substance since it came on the market: “it’s so black you almost can’t see it!” he told BBC Radio 4 in a 2014 interview. Thrilled about his new acquisition, the artist posted a pitch black square to his Instagram last week—the caption, “Kapoor Black.” And just recently, the darkest substance got even darker. On March 4, Surrey Nanosystems uploaded a YouTube video of a sheet of metal coated in the newest version of Vantablack. They shine a high-power laser pointer onto it and the light completely vanishes into the rectangular abyss. Look! they cry. It’s blacker than original Vantablack! They prompt you to compare to previous video demonstrations of the substance’s might: Vantablack vs Water, Vantablack vs Liquid Nitrogen, Vantablack vs Humans. Its trickery knows no bounds. Kapoor’s little stunt hasn’t gone unnoticed by the art community, which is suddenly up in arms, wanting something it knew nothing about five minutes ago. Artists have decried his actions as “weird,” “immoral,” a “gimmick.” “I had no designs to ever use it,” said one, “but then it was like fuck you, you asshole.” But Anish Kapoor doesn’t care. Once you own the exclusive rights to the blackest black in the world, you can paint your critics into oblivion. After bending the world into every possible shape, he is now out to flatten it, to suck the light in rather than bounce it back.

Marriage is a tricky balance. No matter how similar your tastes and opinions, certain ideological divergences will inevitably surface between you and your spouse. Perhaps you’re voting for Hillary but your husband’s a certifiable Bernie bro. Or you’d like to send the kids to public school but your partner prefers private. And maybe, just maybe, you own a successful cattle ranch but your wife’s a closet vegan. Tommy Sonnen of Angleton, Texas faced this exact dilemma. Soon after their marriage six years ago, he noticed that his bride was spending a suspicious amount of time hanging around the cows. Perhaps wary of this precise outcome, Tommy warned her against getting too attached: “Renee, don’t name those cows.” Undeterred, Renee even started serenading them, guitar and all. Everyone has that one vegan friend who can’t keep his mouth shut about it. Renee did your self-righteous buddy one further. Unbeknownst to her husband, she started a blog called “Vegan Journal of a Rancher’s Wife,” amassing thousands of followers. Eventually, their philosophical conflicts reached a boiling point—“either the cows go or I do.” Actually, though, what Renee really wanted was for them to stay: Tommy offered to sell the herd in order to save their marriage, but she knew they’d be headed to the abattoir regardless. And that’s when Renee revealed her full hand. Her secret life online had paid off, to the tune of over 30,000 dollars Crowdsourced from fellow supporters of animal rights across the country—enough to buy her husband out of his own ranch. When faced with a fundamental conflict of ideology between you and your spouse, what’s there to do? To me, compromise seems like a reasonable choice—consider charter school, or Martin O’Malley’s candidacy (RIP). Tommy, on the other hand, opted for total conversion. Unwilling to let death, in whatever form, part him and his wife, he allowed Renee to take over the ranch and even became a vegan himself. Today, the farm formerly known as Sonnen Ranch has been rebranded “Rowdy Girl Vegan Farm Animal Sanctuary.” Not only do the cows there have names—each one has an individual profile on the sanctuary’s new website. The site also features t-shirts and bumper stickers for sale, a portal for donations (Pay-Pal accepted!), and quotes from the Buddha himself—whose laxer dietary restrictions (jury’s still out on whether he was even a vegetarian) may have made him persona non grata at the farm.

Take a selfie, I dare you.

-PF

–MS

March 11, 2016

NEWS

THE QUESTION OF DISSENT Nationalism and Student Politics in India “Dismantle the casteist Brahminical patriarchy.” “Humein desh se nahi, desh mein azaadi chahiye.” (We want freedom in the country, not from the country) The walls of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University are colorfully loud. Every brick, every grey square of cement has been painstakingly adorned with paint, posters and slogans. Inscribed upon each inch is a resolute cry for freedom, a cry meant to mobilize the masses against a right wing, nationalist Indian government. I go to JNU for the first time in October 2014 to visit a friend. The sheer force of campus activism is overwhelming. The voices of impassioned students echo in whispers from trees and remnants of chalk-dust on the pavement. It is impossible to be detached from student politics in a university where you are part of a larger political conversation just by speaking, sitting, walking, being. In late February of this year, as violence erupts on the campus in response to a series of student protests against the Indian government’s occupation of Kashmir, I can’t help but reflect on the long tradition of protest at JNU and the continued importance of its activism. +++ The current ruling party in India is unabashedly majoritarian. Its very name—Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—translates to Indian People’s Party. It roots itself in an imaginary nostalgia—a grand vision to return India to its former, pre-colonial glory. It refuses to acknowledge that the nation-state of India is in itself a British invention, a reproduction of the colonial project. It writes a history that is deeply unfaithful to chronology; a history that romanticizes “Akhand Bharat” (Undivided India), an attempt to reclaim the lost homeland of the Hindus. Akhand Bharat boasts of a unified Kingdom that blurs geopolitical, mythological and diasporic boundaries to encompass Aryan Hindus in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is the product of a historiography that is sharply atemporal; a nationalist project that posits united citizenship—an imperial organizing tactic—as embedded in Indian heritage. For the BJP, the distinction between Hinduism and nationalism is deliberately blurred in language and ideology. The two are conflated in a single word, Hindutva—the only ideology fit to run Hindustan. Hindustan is etymologically derived from “Hindu” (the Persian word for the Indus River) and “Stan” (place). Hindutva proponents conveniently replace the evocation of the river with current connotations of the term “Hindu” to legitimize religious ownership of the territory. “Hindustan,” or the Land Beyond River Indus, becomes “Hindustan,” the Land of the Hindus. The BJP and its wings Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organization) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) collectively embody a theological nationalism. Principles of Hindu morality now underlie previously secular domains, such as law and citizenship. While the constitution is formally secular, religion informally influences governing practices. The BJP’s rise to power saw a parallel rise in instances of extreme moral policing. There was a dramatic increase in policeled sting operations in motels where unmarried couples were charged for “public indecency” and socially shamed. Self-appointed Hindutva vigilante groups organized operations such as mob-lynching a Muslim family and murdering a Muslim man for suspected consumption of beef. The BJP legitimizes itself through a juxtaposition against its own

NEWS

constructed enemy. Given the complicated nature of Hindu social organization, however, the enemies of Hindutva are not merely other religions, they are also other Hindus. Hindutva thrives on casteism—a system that hierarchizes individuals upon birth and provides no scope for upward social mobility. It is justified by the metaphysical assertion that Hindus are reincarnated and their present circumstances are determined by their actions in previous lives. Lower-caste Hindus are systematically oppressed in order to maintain a power imbalance that is beneficial to the upper castes. Thus, it is entirely possible to be part of the Hindu majority and still be a politically oppressed group. The BJP’s war against internal dissent in India is not simply a war against non-Hindus; it is a war against non-conforming Hindus, against all those who dare to push back. +++ During my visit to JNU in 2014, I make my way around the campus, occasionally asking strangers for directions. The sheer breadth and variety of people I meet amazes me. Students at JNU come from all walks of life. There are fresh high-school graduates from urban cities, pregnant mothers from suburbs, senior citizens, survivors from war-torn regions in Kashmir and the North-East, exchange students from European countries, refugees from Tibet. JNU is a city within a city. JNU occupies a unique position in the Indian education sector. Most Indian universities are either entirely public or entirely private. Public universities are funded by the State and have State-designed curricula; private universities are paid for by students and may hold autonomy over curricular decisions. JNU stands as a publicly funded university with a private curriculum. JNU’s position as a prominent liberal arts institution in a country where higher education mainly veers toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields makes it a strong contender for aspiring students of the humanities. Its heavily subsidized tuition allows it to cater to individuals of marginalized caste and class communities. Its institutional philosophy places strong emphasis on inclusive scholarship—an approach to knowledge production that resists the linguistic and cultural hegemonies prevalent in India’s high academia. As a student helpfully explains to me over an evening cup of chai, JNU is perhaps the only place in the country where a non-English speaker with barely any financial resources would be encouraged to produce compelling academic work in the humanities. Understanding JNU’s structure is key to understanding JNU’s politics. The university welcomes students from underrepresented communities in India and equips them with the theoretical tools to make sense of their life experiences. It is at JNU that many of these students encounter for the first time a conceptual framework and an accompanying rhetoric that allows them to connect their own lives with larger narratives of oppression and injustice. JNU provides a space for individuals from systematically silenced communities to practice politics. It is no coincidence that JNU students and faculty are among the most vociferous critics of Brahminical casteism. It is also no coincidence that JNU students and faculty are among the strongest opponents of the BJP. +++ In late February, I find myself scrolling through my Facebook feed at 3am from a combination of insomnia and homesickness. It is 1:30pm in India

The College Hill Independent

by Shreena Thakore

and my home page is in a state of absolute chaos. There are posts about the unlawful detention of a JNU student leader, debates about what to do with “anti-national terrorists,” critical takedowns of the illegality of “sedition”—a “crime” invented by the British colonial regime to suppress dissent that was later adopted by the Indian government to use against its own people. Friends at JNU have shared photos of protests and violence, of posters and marches and chants and slogans. Friends not at JNU have shared videos of speeches about the importance of punishing “anti-national elements” made by various politicians and celebrities and celebrity-politicians and politiciancelebrities. Friends who have recently been employed have shared angry commentary on how taxpayer money should not fund “student drama” and that students should focus more on “education” and less on “timewasting activities.” Friends who self-identify as devotedly patriotic share commentary on how tax-payer money should go to the army instead of young troublemakers. Confused, I turn to Indian news outlets for context. I find myself inundated with official news articles that mirror the ruckus of social media commentary. Media organizations in India have intricate ties with political and corporate powerhouses; unsurprisingly, most news outlets are unsympathetic toward the “internal terrorism” that wants to see “the destruction of India.” I message my friends at JNU to ask for clarity on the situation. I am met with frenetic responses about a protest that was violently crushed by the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (or ABVP, the student wing of the BJP) and the unlawful arrest of three student leaders. My friends tell me that one of the student leaders has a Muslim name and was born into a Muslim family. The fact that he identifies as atheist does not matter: In India, religion is not what you actively practice, it is what you are born into. Religious forms of social organization do not rely on individual beliefs; they are, among other things, effective tools to maintain nepotistic forms of wealth continuity among generations. JNU is in a state of panic. My friends are in a state of panic. What was once a virtually untouchable space that allowed the free exchange of ideas had fallen vulnerable to the forces of state-sanctioned silencing. JNU became a national spectacle; it was the live theater show that Hindutva needed to strengthen its own legitimacy and justify its own existence. It allowed Hindutva to construct a “we,” to affirm a sense of nationhood and define a moral citizenship. It allowed Hindutva to establish a cultural consensus against a common enemy and justify increased military spending. It allowed Hindutva to mobilize “true citizens” to wage a war against anti-nationalism, a war to make Hindustan great again. +++ History tells us that a political regime threatened by its intellectuals is a political regime that cannot stand to scrutiny. The BJP, perhaps aware of its own contradictions, is fiercely anti-intellectual. It markets itself as an advocate for the “common man”—the quintessential middle-class, semiurban, working family man. In speech, the BJP condemns the upper classes; in practice it facilitates economic coalitions that make the rich richer.

March 11, 2016

It denounces all intellectual activity that exposes its hypocrisy as “antinationalist.” It is unclear whether the BJP truly believes its own anti-intellectual propaganda or whether it is a deeply ingenuous strategy to keep the “common man” ignorant of larger issues. Its method of berating intellectuals is to accuse them of being “elitist” and dismissing issues that affect the “common man.” This has an astounding effect on the populace. Individuals, in an attempt to identify as truly patriotic, fight against the very people that are trying to make their lives better. Taxpayers revolt against the use of their funds to support humanities students and scholars. Activists, intellectuals, and reformists who work to dismantle social and structural inequalities are publicly reviled for compromising the well-being of India. The student leaders at JNU are met with violent opposition from the communities they are trying to uplift. In a deeply tragic turn of events, the “common man” is taught to hate his own advocates. +++ The incident at JNU and its aftermath bring to the forefront many important conversations, as well as an especially critical question: What is the role of intellectual activity and the university in political dissent? Before we can even begin to answer this question, we must unpack our rhetoric and its consequences. To call the student protest at JNU an exercise of “free speech” is to simultaneously ask for its state-sanctioned legitimization and dismissal. To relegate protest to the realm of speech is to make it an act of individual expression, rather than a form of structural resistance. It is to trivialize it, to make it counterproductive to its own cause, to say, “words don’t matter, everyone is entitled to an opinion,” and to move on. For the State to allow for dissent is for the State to find within itself a place to accommodate alternative viewpoints. That is, for the State to adopt dissent into its machinery is for the State to not feel threatened by it; for the State to ensure that it can go on functioning perfectly well alongside the dissent, even despite it. The protest at JNU derived its power from its unsanctioned status. The State was affected enough to be jolted into defense. Its fear was apparent in the strong wave of propaganda that followed the incident, in the amount of effort that the State put in to kill JNU’s ideas. The act of dissent must be, by definition, impermissible for it to be effective. If the legalization of dissent renders it impotent, how then must we grapple with the question of free speech? The common rhetorical construction that pits “free speech” against “censorship” is a model illequipped to answer broader questions about the role of intellectual activity in political dissent. We must search for a theoretical vantage point that can account for the nuances of intellectual activity, the different strategies that confer power upon acts of dissent, and the necessity of remaining unsanctioned by the State in order to successfully stand in opposition. SHREENA THAKORE B’16 stands with JNU.

NEWS

THE RIGHT TO POWER Fighting For Utility Justice In Rhode Island by Kimberly Meilun illustration by Ivan Rios-Fetchko “I want to make sure that National Grid will pay for my funeral please. Make sure that they will pay for my funeral, okay? I haven’t been on my breathing machine for two nights and I am very sick.” This is the voicemail message that Woonsocket resident Ramon Rodriguez left on the Rhode Island Center for Justice’s answering machine. His is just one of the hundreds of stories of unjust, life-threatening utility terminations in Rhode Island. Low-income, medically vulnerable households across Rhode Island are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, utility termination. For residents who rely on respirators, refrigerated insulin for diabetic treatment, or stabilized indoor temperatures for certain health conditions, these utility services are essential; without electricity, these residents face potentially fatal situations. The Rhode Island Center for Justice legally represents medically vulnerable clients facing utility termination. This endeavor, entitled the Lifeline Project, is a partnership project between The Center for Justice and the George Wiley Center. The two organizations work to ensure that National Grid and the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers (DPU) follow fair termination policies regarding their medically vulnerable households. +++ The Center for Justice, the George Wiley Center, and Brown University undergraduates produced The Lifeline Campaign, an online documentary film—presented at Brown's Granoff Center on December 15, 2015—that describes the daily struggles of individuals who suffer health complications from utilities shutoffs. In the video, Rhode Island resident Moryama Tirado states, “I have a hard time breathing without this machine. I’m like a fish out of water.” She has five children, one of whom has a severe mental illness. Tirado continues, “I couldn’t bring my mentally ill daughter home because the lights are off, and that’s not good for people with a mental illness.” National Grid and DPU are approving illegal utilities shutoffs despite awareness of certain consumers’ severe illnesses, failing to provide consumers with advanced notice about utility termination, terminating utilities in the winter period, and enforcing harsh repayment plans. Ramon Rodriguez also appears in this video; he has diabetes and relies on a respirator for breathing support. Rodriguez describes the unjust practices of representatives from the Division of Public Utilities in conducting utility shutoffs: “[The DPU representative] said, ‘See, I wouldn’t like to [shut off your utilities] because your life depends on it, but it’s my job and I have to do it.’ And I had to run to the hospital right away. They kept me in the hospital for 15 days.” Rodriguez goes on to say, “How many diabetics do you know who go without eating? Sometimes I don’t even want to eat because I don’t have enough money.” Though tight budgets and mounting bills concern many medically vulnerable individuals, these consumers are not trying to get out of paying bills. In the documentary, Pawtucket resident Shane Ward states, "We want to pay our bills. We want to be a part of this community. But I had to come up with $1,100 in two days. I put the money towards the bills and towards [my mother's] medication." Ward goes on to explain the life-threatening repercussions of unpaid bills, stating, “I asked [the DUP representative] if I could first move my mother over to the tanks because she’s on a respirator machine. He didn’t listen. He shut us off. My mother started having the jerks, having a seizure.” The Center for Justice estimates that 3,000-5,000 medically vulnerable households in Rhode Island are at risk of utility termination each year. According to a report published by the Center for Justice entitled “Power Lines: How Rhode Island Utility Policy Fails Medically Protected Households, and How Communities Are Fighting Back,” utility bills of low-income households comprise an average of 17 percent of the total household income. This percentage is even greater amongst Rhode Islanders living below 50 percent of the Federal Poverty Level—over 100,000 according to the Center for American Progress—with energy bills comprising 44 percent of total household income. National Grid controls 99 percent of utility service in Rhode Island, holding a monopoly that it doesn’t have in other states. Thus, utility prices are

METRO

steadily rising and medically vulnerable households cannot simply reduce their utility use to accommodate higher rates. National Grid raised rates by 54 percent in January of 2015, providing no time for consumers to figure out utility payment plans. Moreover, current Rhode Island legislation hinders DPU, which is responsible for regulating and approving utility terminations, from controlling National Grid rates. National Grid’s monopoly and focus on protecting corporate profits result in an energy crisis. To alleviate rising energy costs, certain states have adopted a Percent of Income Payment Plan (PIPP), under which utility payments correlate to household income. In 1988, Rhode Island implemented one of the first PIPPs. However, state legislators ended the program in the late 1990s due to funding concerns. Rhode Island currently endorses LIHEAP (the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program). According to the LIHEAP website, the program allocated $23.8 million in 2014 to help 31,088 households pay their utility bills and devise affordable payment plans. LIHEAP assists households that are at or below 60 percent of Rhode Island’s median income. However, according to the PIPP program report, 74 percent of working people preferred the PIPP plan to LIHEAP. The Rhode Island Center for Justice reevaluates utility termination practices and energy policy in Rhode Island. In an interview with the College Hill Independent, the Center's Executive Director Robert McCreanor stated, “For over a decade, the George Wiley Center has been at the forefront of consumer advocacy in Rhode Island to ensure that all Rhode Islanders have access to utilities. Thousands of people experience utility shutoffs that have severe repercussions, such as insufficient housing and missed school. We set out to work with the Wiley Center and bring legal advocacy to bear on this issue.” A Harvard Law School graduate, McCreanor has over ten years of experience in non-profit legal services provision and management. McCreanor described how “The George Wiley Center has been doing tremendous work educating consumers and addressing this issue through policy change. But what had been missing was access to justice. There’s never been a law office for low-income consumers for utility shutoff.” +++ On September 29, after providing legal representation for several termination cases, The Rhode Island Center for Justice filed a lawsuit on behalf of five low-income, ill, and/ or disabled plaintiffs. The plaintiffs were Ramon Rodriguez, Laura Bennett, Penny Medeiros, Albert Mucci Jr., and Shane Ward. Each of these plaintiffs experienced unjust utility shutoffs more than once in three years. Rhode Island General Law 39-1-1 restricts utility termination for medically vulnerable individuals who cannot pay their utility bills. Such individuals are entitled to a 21-day delay in termination, after which residents are entitled to a hearing to discuss payment plans and service needs. According to the lawsuit, National Grid violates these regulations by providing misleading and inaccurate information to residents, failing to distinguish between handicapped and seriously ill and failing to provide the necessary protections, illegally applying to DPU for permission to terminate utility service to medically vulnerable households during the winter period, and failing to provide households with a precise date of utility termination. DPU

faced similar accusations in the lawsuit, such as discouraging vulnerable households from the hearing processes they are entitled to, rubber-stamping cases during residents’ first hearing, and pushing for standardized arrearage payment plans rather than case-by-case payment plans. Mucci, one of the plaintiffs, is a 63-year-old veteran of the United States Marine Corps who suffers from herniated back discs, sleep apnea, Type II diabetes, severe arthritis, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and depression. In the lawsuit, Mucci describes how National Grid did not inform him about his right to seek protection from termination, refused to figure out a payment plan specific to his needs, and failed to provide him with termination notice. When National Grid requested that Mucci’s service be terminated, DPU failed to investigate National Grid’s unjust termination request and approved the termination. At the outset of the case, the Center for Justice requested a temporary restraining order from National Grid to prevent service turn-off for each of the plaintiffs. The court granted this request for the named plaintiffs and their service was turned back on. The case then went back to court in midNovember, before the cold winter weather set in. McCreanor states, “We asked the court to expand that release to other houses in the state. We asked that these households receive the protections they’re entitled to.” On November 15, National Grid restored utilities for two dozen medically protected households until April 15. Center for Justice attorneys and co-counsel Lynette Labinger successfully expanded the protections of the restraining order to households across Rhode Island. However, there is still much to be done. The Center for Justice ultimately hopes to bring National Grid in full compliance with the law. Moreover, the Lifeline Project is a result of a larger utility problem in Rhode Island. Low-income consumers, particularly medically vulnerable consumers, will continue to struggle to pay their utility bills. McCreanor states, “This lawsuit is not going to solve the larger problem of utility justice and service in the state. Good policy is to reduce incidents of utility shutoff. Beyond this lawsuit and Lifeline campaign, the George Wiley Center is aiming to make utility access more affordable. The Center for Justice supports this goal.” People like Ramon Rodriguez have to worry every day about losing the electrically powered resources that keep them healthy and alive. “I think the state should have an investigator before they shut the electricity off [for] anybody else like me,” says Rodriguez, “Because I’m not the only one.” KIMBERLY MEILUN B’17 is not on LIHEAP.

The College Hill Independent

BLACK THOUGHT(S) ON METABOLISM The global Black experience post-1492 has been inextricably tied to the dehumanization and subordination of Black bodies. For centuries, Black and brown bodies have faced physical, sexual, and psychological violence in and outside of the United States due to enslavement, colonialism, and state-sanctioned executions. In a ‘post-racial’ Obama era, it is a mistake to believe that violence towards Black bodies is a thing of the past. In 2006, the Women of Color Network found that 40 percent of African American women have experienced sexually coercive contact by the age of 18. A similar study by Black Women’s Blueprint in 2011 found this number to be 60 percent. In 2015, the Washington Times found young Black men 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. During that year, more than 1,000 American lives were lost at the hands of the police force. Despite the passage of time, Black bodies continue to bear the brunt of America’s tormented past, beginning with the colonization of Indigenous land. If metabolism is defined as the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life, then Black Metabolism is the set of processes that work to preserve Black bodies in spite of overwhelming violence. The following poetic conversation, written by Black undergraduates at Brown University, engages with the sensory experiences linked with this metabolism. While each stanza does not grapple directly with issues of Black survival, the various voices work in conjunction to discuss personal notions of the Black body, whether it pertains to romance, loss, or (emotional) paralyzation. We chose to publish this anonymously because we prefer to explore these issues as a collective body rather than as individuals. Here, the voices of a few confront the circumstances of many.

black me·tab·o·lism

blak/ məˈtabəˌlizəm/ noun 1.

the chemical, spiritual, physical, and psychological processes that occur within a Black body in order to maintain life.

All those nights I talked away In basements (and addicts) My body remembered I found them on Sunday mornings Wrestling to quiet Shaking knees Grass and gasoline tugging at Narratives tucked in my pocket as I found myself Among bodies Laid to Rest

i’m filled to the brim with ghosts tonight. them pale creatures found refuge on my back: jumping out of my mouth, crawling 'round my skin, dark brown body so tired. i can’t move a step without one of them old phantoms grabbing some part of me, taking hold and voice of me, tightening the grip they got on me... real comfortable in me.

I sometimes find my mind Awake before the rest of my body A presumed agency over myself soon to be invalidated I can't move my own body At times I simply lay in bed As my body contends with itself For control over my very own limbs But other times I simply give in And take the easy way out Exiting my own mind In the hopes that I can awaken To a blissful ignorance So far I've always managed to wake up It's less so that I try to remembers these instances But more so that the exact feeling In these moments never leaves my being Nevertheless I try and focus on rejoicing In the ability to move My hands and feet as freely I please And my sense of self Returns.

surrounded by ghosts like memories. i still see fragments of you in my sheets: if i wanted to, i could look over right now and find you standing in the spot where the cheap xmas lights made your empty eyes look like altars. i start to pray and hands, not mine, trace circles on my shoulders. but then i blink. ghosts of you are back under my skin. never imagined i’d learn to crave the company of something dead.

These days your grasp was barely real Your memory I relish in (dark rooms) [nightmares] Where I circle round white castles Searching for anything to breathe into Cold silk draped over Meat: Thick skin A helmet of bare bones growing through tears Tension in (our) upper middle back Cradling the fears and memories Of (our) livelihood

I lie here Strapped to train tracks Between the conscious and unconscious I’ve already been run over Several times Do I get up—? I think I’d rather lie here Stretched limb to limb.

illustration by Margaret Hu

I would wake up and feel sunlight Penetrating through the window I would wake up and feel like sunlight Warmth enveloped me under the blanket The feel of his bare skin Soft, would awaken my senses I would turn over Align my body with his Calibrate my face with his He’d open his eyes Right, then left “Good morning” Before I knew it I was falling into his eyes And then his lips

Distress. He spreads his fingers. Clutches nothingness. Releases his grip. Relaxes. Solace? Soon his arm contorts. He rests his left hand upon his right. His fingers slide through the cracks. Then fall dead. But very much so alive. Will it last? Torso twitches. Sends a wave through his body. His toes receive the message. Bend. Crack. Stop. The wave ricochets back up. His legs intertwine. Connect. Together? His entire body reconfigures. Legs spread far apart. Separated onto opposite sides of the bed. Arms flow away from his head. Isolated from each other. He listens intently to his breathing, As if it’s not his own. Almost as if he can hear someone else’s He focuses Listens more closely Breathing in and out. Out and in He begins to drift into the bed. His eyes begin to fall into his eye sockets And his mind follows. Tunnel vision. He imagines a scene Then another Contrived. They collapse onto one another Free flow? Soon he is asleep Mindful and mind full Muscles relaxed His body still. At rest.

sometimes I start crying before i've realized why i look into my eyes for two minutes and follow the trail of glass tears down my cheek for the rest. i ask "why?" when i look at my lips and if they press shut, tighter, pouting but revealing underneath the graceful corner has already started the phrase my voice will not say.

March 11, 2016

METABOLICS

MISTERS KHAMENEI AND JAMSHIDI, A LETTER4U Although no one can individually fill the created gaps, each one of you can construct a bridge of thought and fairness over the gaps to illuminate yourself and your surrounding environment ... Attempts to find answers to these questions will provide you with an appropriate opportunity to discover new truths. Mr. Jamshidi, whose name I won’t actually think to ask until much later, is nowhere near as eloquent. His English is more German than English, and he badly needs new dentures. He spends all of breakfast trying to explain to us how, if we take this one bus from this one square, and then this other bus from that township, we can get to Persepolis for much cheaper. He overestimates my Persian, which is more Turkish than Persian. “Thank you, sir, I am very grateful,” I say, and I am. Then we take a cab. Mr. Khamenei is everywhere on the way. As Farhad changes lanes with alarming grace and flies through pedestrian crossings, Mr. Khamenei smiles from posters, from murals street after street, from portraits mounted on government buildings and junctions. Beautiful smile. That lush silvery beard every boy wishes for in his grandfather. Benevolent, hopeful eyes that confirm what he has already told you with words: I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and your countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts. If only he knew. Soon the car darts out of the city and it is barren brown hills as far as the eye can see, discolored only by the occasional pale gas station or military complex. I think of Mr. Jamshidi’s vitiligo-eaten face. Persepolis, in return, makes me remember America. It is the kind of place that makes for happy tourists. Opulent, high-stakes, well-organized. Unfinished gates leading to enormous palaces. The foundation for a proper and honorable interaction. ... a bridge of thought and fairness ... the edifice you have erected will spread the shadow of confidence and trust over the heads of its architects, grant them the warmth of security and clam—I have to say I do not always understand Mr. Khamenei. He must have slipped here, he must have meant calm; typographists these days, and radiate the rays of hope in a bright future on the world. But how, Mr. Khamenei? Look at what happened in Persepolis, how Alexander burned it all down, almost the sky with it, how he pulled down the columns one by one. Fabio likes Necropolis much more, and I thank God I am travelling with him. One doesn’t half-expect a double decker to roll around honking in this place: it is just cliffs, cliffs that dwarf even the royal graves carved into them. Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes I, II, perhaps III. I realize that no one has thought of putting a portrait of Mr. Khamenei somewhere here, or of carving his gentle smile into the mountainside. I shiver, the secret heavy in my stomach, half wanting him. Farhad takes selfies with all of us in front of the graves and then rushes us on. A few days later, he will send all of us the wrong photo: the Polish girls will each get a different selfie of his with Fabio, and I’ll get a photo of him with a completely random kid who is not even a tourist. A photo taken not even in Necropolis but in the beautiful Holy Shrine of Shah Cheragh, onion-domed jewel of pilgrims, the place where I had picked up the two pamphlets called Message to the youth in Western Countries. Or, to use the alternative titles proposed on their front pages: LETTER4U and LETTER4U-2. Authored by Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei. +++

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GODRATEASGHYAASGHEGODRAAAAT MODERNITE YA SONNAAAAT? I look around to see if anyone knows of my crime but I do not turn down the volume. I almost break into a grin; there is almost something thrilling to this, but a quick glance and it is too clear that no one cares. I don’t know if they know, it seems impossible to me that they do not as one rock riff blends into another and the exile sings time after time from inside my ears: THEPOWEROFLOVEORTHELOVEOFPOWAAAH MODERNITY OR SUNNAAAAH? But no, these people are just getting home, like they would in Istanbul or Providence, shoulder to shoulder in the failing light, tired faces, the occasional bobbing head. But Mr. Khamenei cares. I remember this, mural after mural, bright smile after smile, the keen eyes that know and teach. I consider the imposition of the Western culture on other nations and belittling independent cultures as a silent and very harmful act of violence ... the two elements of “aggressiveness” and “moral promiscuity” ... unfortunately turned into the main components of the Western culture ... If we block the flood of destruction, which is streaming towards our youth in the form of different quasiartistic products, will we be guilty? “Of course not, Mr. Khamenei,” I want to reply, “And believe me, I am neither aggressive nor promiscuous.” I am confused, I want to say I once met the writer of the song, and he wasn’t aggressive either, he was so nice and thoughtful, but the keen eyes hush me. We follow Mr. Jamshidi out of the bus. As he hobbles on ahead of us I turn to Ewa: “So who really is he?” She doesn’t know. “Do you think he minds me and Fabio joining in?” She doesn’t think so. “But wait, if you don’t know him, how did this invitation thing come about?” She shrugs. He just came into their dorm room around midnight last night, chatted with her and Tabetha for a bit, then crashed on an empty bed and snored through the night. Persian, English, German and Turkish clash once more on the way and a little is uncovered: he has lived in Europe for many years. Germany, mostly. Italy, as he tells Fabio. Switzerland. A brief stint in France. Upon hearing where I am from, “Oo, Istanbul. I lived there for two months, jaa, near Sultanahmet, the Old Bazaar. Beautiful. Beautiful.” But he doesn’t speak much, steadily hobbles ahead. Are we late? We’re not, as we soon learn, for what we understood to be a concert of classical Persian music turns out to be a rather classy and modern restaurant where the waiters badly outnumber the diners. Mr. Khamenei greets us approvingly from up above. The promised Persian music is all the more sad because of how unhappy and dejected the quartet in the corner looks. The manager approaches, registers first the shabby old men and then our own confused quartet, TOURISTS!, this will without a doubt be costly, and leads us with a Cheshire smile to what must be his VIP table. “Well played, old man,” I think, looking at Mr. Jamshidi. The pain endured during these years by the Muslim world due to the hypocrisy and insincerity of the aggressors is no less than the material damage. +++ Why are we not clapping? I can see the question replace smug amusement on faces around me as we keep looking at Mr. Jamshidi. Arms high in the air, entire body turned towards the tiny stage in the corner, he keeps clapping so loud he could be cracking a whip over and over. We all stare at him, tourist and Iranian alike, then wake up, notice the sad tired musicians, and follow Mr. Jamshidi’s lead, almost embarrassed. Only Mr. Khamenei keeps looking on calmly in his corner. The musicians nod and smile at Mr. Jamshidi. There is something more alive, something more proud, in the way they begin the next song. Many countries in the world take pride in their indigenous and national culture; cultures that fed human communities for hundreds of years at the same time that they have been flourishing and reproducing. That is indeed what Mr. Jamshidi does, I think, flourishing and reproducing, as he claps along with the songs, as he eats with unhidden pleasure, as he tells us about the beauties of Shiraz, the gardens washed in birdsong, the brilliant poets, the wide tree-lined avenues, the warm nice days even in the winter. Yes, he was a postman in Germany, he knows Germany well, but he is so much happier here. How long are we staying in Shiraz? Leaving in a few hours? For Yazd? He pushes my Persian to the brink and finally beyond as he fires off about some address in Yazd. I ask him to wait, I’ll forget, please write it down, which he does in Persian script—a whole little paragraph, a letter4U of his own. His odd, beautiful, completely irregular handwriting, of course, I cannot read. We talk about another famous beauty of Shiraz—its wine. Mr. Jamshidi is a non-drinker at first, but a little later we make eye contact; he leans in, grins, halfwhispers: “A little.” I can’t help but look at Mr. Khomeini, half embarrassed. The same smile. I can’t tell if he is chastising. I don’t insist that you accept my reading or any other reading of Islam. I love the smile, I love the defiance of the knowing eyes, but he is lying. I know it as I imagine Mr. Jamshidi caught drinking, a whip cracking on his back, unable to tell us that the song is over and the musicians deserve our clapping. Soon, as he mumbles along with the singer on stage, I ask him without knowing why: “Do you not sing?” A little. In a few minutes he is on the stage, not very good but holding his own. The entire restaurant is watching him with the microphone in his claws. Soon after he is dancing to a rapid lively dance as we watch his gnarled limbs turning and twisting in the air. What kind of tree is this? In its shadow I

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by Kostis Koutalidis

hear the music a little better, I taste the sumac on the kebab a little more intensely, I make eye contact with people and do not break it. I see better, I see how in Mr. Jamshidi’s little plate there is nothing but hot buttered bread and goat cheese, both complimentary mezes. Edward Said goes flying out of the window for a moment and I think instead of Zorba the Greek. I have to stop and remind myself that no, he is not the Spirit of this Place or of this Beautiful Country, that places and countries do not have such spirits and frankly, neither do people. I know that behind his fake smile and flattery the manager is quite annoyed by the old man in the ridiculous tattering jacket, but for a minute, as everyone in the restaurant smiles at one another and claps along with the old man’s dance, these things do not matter too much. All of Mr. Khamenei’s entreaties and complaints, threats and promises, and those of his enemies across borders and oceans who are, in truth, so much like him, are forgotten for a minute. +++ “Why are we here?” I shrug. “He wanted to show us.” “We have a bus in an hour!” “He said five minutes.” Tabetha falls silent and I hurry to catch up with Mr. Jamshidi. He hobbles on and on, his hunched back bobbing on a sea of light and sound and human. “It is very new,” he says. “The construction site across the street will also be like this. Eight floors. This one’s got three. A good friend of mine has a store on the second floor.” Adidas. Nike. Polo. Abercrombie & Fitch. Converse. Swatch. Apple? Rows upon rows of I consider the implementation of the Western culture on other nations and belittling independent cultures as a silent and very harmful act of violence. Except it is not silent at all: Behind the beautiful glass windows, shop after shop, business is ticking. Mr. Khamenei nowhere to be seen, but I am sure he is watching from someplace. “But,” Mr. Jamshidi says, “It’s not cheap. Not at all.” He hobbles on, a mixture of pride and disdain on his face, clutching his half-empty water bottle. A few last details as we walk through well-lit, crowded avenues and find a taxi. A son in Tehran, a cardiologist. Relatives, many relatives, near Abyaneh, in Esfahan, in Kashan, in Yazd—perhaps this is what his little letter is about. I miss more of what he says than I understand but he likes that I am trying. After all, It is you who should break through the outer layers of society, find knots and grudges and do away with them. Instead of being widened, the rifts must be narrowed. So I ask him, finally gathering the courage a few steps before the hostel door: “But sir, why do you live here?” “Oh,” he smiles. “The owner is a relative of mine. Extended family. It is easier for me.” We go in. The receptionist and Mr. Khomeini greet us, something similar in the warmth of their smiles. A new guest in the lobby. The receptionist speaks a few words in Persian to Mr. Jamshidi, hands him a few keys. One doesn’t need much knowledge of Persian to realize how the warmth turns off and then back on as the receptionist first addresses the old man, then turns back to me. “Will you be needing a taxi, sir?” “No, we have a driver coming,” I say, as Mr. Jamshidi hobbles away, the new guest following him hesitantly. “Who is he?” “Who?” “The old man.” “Oh,” the receptionist sighs. “He’s not a relative of the owner of our hostel at all.” It reads like bad writing but I swear this is the first thing he utters. “He spent some time in Europe; and had no place to go when he returned, homeless, you see.” He pauses, turns up to warmth a notch. “Our owner took pity to him and lets him stay here. He helps out with the little things.” Mr. Khamenei smiles from above the receptionist. All the knots and grudges return, all the rifts widen, and I think, where is the inner layer of anything? I turn to catch Fabio’s eyes but the old man is back, saying goodbye, getting a little too cozy with Ewa. Then it occurs to me, the question so appealing not to ask. The question Mr. Khamenei wants me not to ask. I go to him. “Sir,” I say. “It was so nice to meet you. But what is your name?” “Jamshidi.” he answers. “Jam-shi-di.” I have him write it down for me, his full name. His address—that is, the name of the hostel. Handwriting barely legible even in the Latin script. It joins LETTER4U, LETTER4U-2 and Mr. Jamshidi’s earlier note in my satchel. “Thank you.” I tell the old man. “I will send you a letter.” Soon Farhad comes in and rushes us all to his car. Mr. Jamshidi and I hug one last time and I am so happy I can hug him, that he is a man in my arms, an old hunch-backed man, perhaps a liar, perhaps half-senile, but a man and not an Iranian Zorba, not a perfect smile on a wall, not a set of principles, not a ridiculous title on a brochure that I can quote but cannot understand. We rush through Yazd, where I never look for someone to decipher Mr. Jamshidi’s letter or track down his relative. Then Esfahan, then Tehran. Mr. Khamenei keeps smiling from everywhere but I avert my eyes. Then Providence. They ask me: “How was Iran?” I want to say: “I don’t know. How’s America?” but instead keep answering: “Oh, beautiful country, very welcoming, excellent food, lovely people.” KOSTIS KOUTALIDIS B’17 cannot be reached for the obvious reasons. Jamshidi is also a pseudonym.

March 11, 2016

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ARTS

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March 11, 2016

ARTS

A CONCRETE TENT Architecture and Occupation in Palestine by Sophie Kasakove illustration by Pierie Korostoﬀ

Tranquil dwellings Chapter 32, verse 18 of the Book of Isaiah reads, “My people will abide in peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places.” When British financier Moses Montefiore— a staunch promoter of Jewish “self-sufficiency”— built Jerusalem’s first exclusively Jewish neighborhood in 1860, he invoked Isaiah, calling the development Mishkenot Sha’anim—“Peaceful Habitation,” also translated as “Tranquil Dwellings.” But Jerusalem’s Jews were not convinced. To many residents of what would become known as the ‘Old City,’ the new neighborhood across the valley of Hinnom was dangerous: wild animals and thieves were said to roam outside its walls. Plus, the new neighborhood was far from the holy sites and its European-style streets too different from the Old City’s familiar winding alleys. However, conditions inside the Old City were worsening: by the mid-19th century, 15,000 Jews, Muslims, and Christians were crowded together within the walls, and disease was rampant. A massive cholera epidemic in 1866 motivated many to follow Montefiore into the spacious homes of Mishkenot Sha’anim, which he offered to Jewish residents free of charge. Montefiore and other proto-Zionists hoped that Jewish-only communities such as these would begin the process of Jewish colonization in Palestine. Montefiore imported red tiles from Marseilles to cover the terraced row-houses, leading residents to nickname the neighborhood tarbush—the Arabic name for a felt cap (usually red) worn by Arab men. A stone wall surrounded the neighborhood, with a heavy door that locked at night. It was reported that some residents would climb over the wall at sunset and wander across the valley to sleep in the Old City, whose walls were higher.

The air becomes clear A 1998 essay on Israeli architecture by Ran Shechori begins: “Wherever they settle, migrants tend to build the land of their origins.” Assuming this to be true, early Ashkenazi settlement architecture in Palestine reveals a people deeply confused about its origins. Settlements in Jerusalem’s neighborhoods of Mea Shearim and Nahlaot, as well as Neve Tzedek and Neve Shalom in modern-day Tel Aviv, were built in the European style, which came to represent the idealized “home.” Jewish communal agricultural settlements (kibbutzim) were often built in this style as well—small, standardized white-walled houses with red roofs deliberately differentiated these communities from the more scattered layouts of nearby Arab villages. This differentiation was solidified by the exclusion of Arab Jews (mizrahim) from these communities. At the same time, other immigrants built in the “Oriental” style, featuring typical Arabic elements such as narrow, arched windows, a truncated dome-shaped ceiling, and biblical-style ceramics. Within these settlers’ discourse, Arab culture represented the conservation of biblical tradition, and the use of Arabic architectural elements represented a return of the Jewish people to its own land and ancient Mediterranean roots. Both styles had their challenges: the European sloping roofs, designed for maximum insulation, proved less than ideal for the hot Mediterranean climate. At the same time, some European Jewish settlers who had once dreamed of integration into the Middle East came to reject both this dream and its embodiment in Oriental architecture after the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. Today, few remnants of Arabic-style architecture remain in Israel: Palestinian scholar Walid Khalidi estimates that some 436 villages were destroyed in the War of 1948, with 70 percent completely razed. Although Oriental romanticism has been largely removed from the physical landscape, it lives on in Israeli geographical imagination. A settler wrote of the Yitzhar settlement in 1989: “As we rise and approach Yizhar, the air becomes clear. You reach the roof of the world and you imagine yourself in another place and time: young women walking barefoot…” A systematic unseeing— a Biblical scene disguising the violence below.

Knock on the roof The picture of her brother-in-law is just where I remember it, slipped between the mirror and its frame. Miri adjusts her sunglasses in the mirror. Do you know what ha-kesh ba-gag means? she asks me. Roof-knocking. I’ve heard of it, I tell her, but ask her to tell me what it means. I’m always scared to tell Miri that I know things. In 2008, Miri was serving her twenty-second and final year as a commander in the Israeli Defense Forces (the IDF). That year, the IDF launched what is known in Hebrew as Operation Cast-Lead and in Arabic as the Gaza Massacre. In a stated attempt to stop rocket fire into Israel and weapons smuggling into the Gaza strip, IDF forces attacked police stations and military targets, as well as administrative and community centers in densely populated areas. Before dropping a live bomb on a civilian building, the IDF would fire a low-explosive ‘teaser’ bomb or missile onto houses to warn inhabitants of a coming attack, a practice they called roof-knocking. Miri was part of the team that designed the system, she tells me and asks: Now, what other army in the world does that? What other army goes to such lengths to protect its enemy? I could ask her where else these civilians had to go. I could ask her if the minutes between the warning bomb and the real bomb were always enough time for parents to gather all of their children and get them to safety. I could ask her if part of the intention or, at the very least, an effect of roof-knocking, is to change the legal designation of a victim from a ‘non-combatant’ to a voluntary ‘human-shield,’ or even a ‘combatant,’ within minutes—turning civilians into legal military targets and reducing the official casualty count. Instead I nod, sip my coffee. Miri adjusts her sunglasses in the mirror on her way out.

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Flyover For decades, the red slanted roofs of Israeli settlements scattered the hilltops, and the flat white roofs of Palestinian villages lay in the valleys between them. This pattern still dominates the view, but now red roofs are scattered across the villages in the valleys, as well. Haifa-born, Londonbased architect and writer Eyal Weizman attributes this development to the “urban euphoria” of the Oslo years—a real-estate boom in Palestinian cities fueled by “wealthy returnee elites.” The neighborhoods built by these Palestinians on the peripheries of existing cities and towns resembled Israeli settlements in more than just roof design—the concentric, enclosed layout responds, French theorist Sylvain Bulle argues, to “the anxieties that drive the middle class everywhere to seek privacy and security away from the congested and potentially dangerous city centers.” Further, the slanted roof demonstrates that a family has the means to build out instead of up: one of the prime functional uses of the Palestinian flat roof is to provide a base for upward house expansion as the family grows (you can tell if a family is awaiting grandchildren by the sight of exposed beams on the roof ). However, it seems that the red roof may in fact be more than just a status symbol. In the September 2014 film The Architecture of Violence, Weizman claims that the red roof is in fact a military strategy: “The red roof is something mandated by law because this allows the military to navigate the landscape—understand what’s ours, what’s theirs, what’s friend, what’s foe, where we can bomb and where not.” In his book, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, Weizman clarifies that the red roof was recommended to settlement councils by the military as part of “the settlement planning bylaw” in the 1980s. He adds that, in light of this military directive, the Palestinian use of the red roof can be understood as an attempt at camouflage. This argument was echoed by Finn Erik Thoresen, Chairman of Norwegian People’s Aid, as well as in a 2012 article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and was publicized in an article in the Guardian titled “What can ‘forensic architecture’ reveal about the conflict in Gaza?” The claim spurred outrage from the Zionist press, with critics arguing that their examinations of both Israeli or Palestinian law revealed no mention of roof-building. The Guardian amended its article to remove any mention of mandatory red-roofs.

Water tower This “camouflage” can only hide so much. A Palestinian home can be easily distinguished from a Jewish one by the multiple black water towers covering every roof— huddled in clusters, or even stacked in layers. Israeli settlements, which are connected to Israel’s water utilities services regardless of their location within the Occupied Territories land, either have small white storage tanks or no water towers at all. Amnesty International reports that Palestinians receive only 20% of the water collected in aquifers within West Bank territory, which are controlled by Israel, leaving 113,000 Palestinians in some 70 villages and communities completely disconnected from the water network. Additionally, Palestinians are forbidden from drilling their own wells without acquiring permits from the Israeli authorities, which is a difficult and often unsuccessful process. Through a range of legal mechanisms, the Israeli government has prohibited Palestinians from building on an estimated 70% of Area C (the land under the administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority). Anything built in these areas, whether a house or a well, is subject to destruction by the IDF. Since the beginning of the Occupation in 1967, the Israeli government has destroyed over 28,000 structures belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Consequently, almost a million Palestinians do not have access to the average daily usage amount of 60 liters of water set by the World Health Organization. Draped over water towers, hung between rooftops, running along balconies, the wires connecting homes up and down the road stretch to meet a single electricity pole. Like water, electricity in the West Bank is provided by an Israeli state-owned company. The Israeli government has made the Palestinian Authority responsible for making payments to the company but the on-going Occupation makes fulfilling these demands impossible. In February 2015, Israel’s electricity company briefly reduced the power supply to over 700,000 Palestinians in two Palestinian districts in the northern West Bank after claiming the power debt to be $490 million. As a result, some areas of the West Bank are not connected to the electricity grid at all. In an effort to supplement this system of unreliable dependency, many Palestinians have attempted to develop their own electricity infrastructure, building solar panels on rooftops and in farms. Many of these structures are faced with demolition orders almost immediately after construction. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is currently facilitating the construction of four solar farms on settlement land which will connect to Israel’s grid, each costing approximately $6 million to construct. Settlers will be getting a cut of the profits.

The Landscape The streets of the Aida refugee camp are too narrow for the cab to enter, so the driver parked outside the entrance to the camp. Omar emerged in a colorful sweater and spoke to the cab driver as if they were life-long friends. We drove up a curving street on the edge of the Bethlehem neighborhood of Beit Jala and came to a stop behind a row of cabs, bumper-to-bumper and honking loudly. Omar suspected that one of the cars up ahead was being searched. We got out of the cab and walked the rest of the way up the hill, arriving at an outdoor bar where fairy lights hung low over picnic tables filled with young people (nearly equal parts Palestinians and white foreigners), who shouted to hear themselves over the American-style blues band. We brought our beers over to the table furthest from the music, perched above the wide expanse of shadowy hills. Omar and his friends used to come here to escape the cramped streets of the camp, before it was a bar. They called it The Landscape—the only place in all of Bethlehem, or maybe in all of the Occupied Territories, he laughs, with a view unobstructed by red roofs. He pointed out across the valley. It’s hard to tell now that it’s so dark, but during the day you can see the sea from here, he said. I asked him if he was sad that it wasn’t just him and his friends’ place anymore. It wasn’t ours then either.

Condition of exile In 1948, the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem began as an aggregation of tents, which housed 3,400 Palestinians from an estimated 45 destroyed and depopulated villages in Israel. Families waited to return to their stolen homes, keys hung around their necks, but in the meantime the tents were weak and needed to be reinforced with vertical walls, later substituted with concrete shelters. Today 13,000 people live in Dheisheh, in roughly the same ½ square kilometer their grandparents lived in. The camp appears as a structurally cohesive piece of the urban fabric of Bethlehem. The only clear marker of the camp’s entrance is a giant metal revolving door, left over from the fence that surrounded the camp before it came under the control of the Palestinian Authority in 1995— an enforced suspension. Up the hill from Manger Square, above rows of unfinished concrete structures with exposed beams sits a tent, with sleek sloping walls of concrete, ten feet high, open on either side. The tent is a project of Campus in Camps, an educational program based in Dheisheh that provides Palestinian refugees with the “infrastructure and intellectual space to transform theoretical discussions of ‘space’ and ‘agency’ into practical, community-driven interventions.” The tent is a gathering space for communal learning—it hosts cultural activities, a working area, and an open space for social meetings. It embraces, the founders write, “the contradiction of an architectural form emerged from a life in exile.” The concrete tent rejects the common belief among residents of the camp that to build is an act of acceptance, of normalizing the condition of exile, or that living in miserable conditions brings them closer to Return. The tent asserts that the achievements of the present are not an impediment to Palestinians’ right of return, but a step towards it— that the refugee is not just a victim, but an architect of history. SOPHIE KASAKOVE B’17.5 thinks the walls are too high.

March 11, 2016

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THE LAB

A Story of Compression by Fatima Husain illustration by Peggy Shi

The glass wool flies towards the vacuum in the back of the fume hood in futility—a constant regular nuisance caused by the negative pressure produced by the hood to prevent volatile chemicals from leaking out as they evaporate. Before it can touch anything and become contaminated, the flying wool is caught between the thin metal of my tweezers. Once secured, I carefully wrap the wool around the sterilized metal, bid the little bundle of glass I’ve created farewell, and push it down the pipette. I take a sterilized metal rod, stick it down the pipette, and hit the bundle multiple times, crushing the wool until it cannot compress any further. My hands tire—the small instruments I work with demand complete attention and careful control. Working with small samples— mere milliliters and microliters in quantity!—requires small, compact setups to minimize sample loss. This effort, preparing columns for chromatography, separating samples into their different organic constituents, requires a patience I do not possess most days. After securing the crushed glass wool in the pipette, the next step begins. Silica gel must fill the pipette over the plug—carefully funneled in, and carefully measured. The 40-63 micrometer silica gel—the perfect size and polarity to achieve optimal separation of organic compounds—is baked in an oven and covered in aluminum foil, and must be used in the hood. Don’t inhale it, of course. Silica gel’s polar properties make it most useful for the separation of compounds based on how well silica attracts and filters the organic molecules we hope to separate. The different solvents used in chromatography manipulate the attractiveness of the silica gel to the sample, allowing us to separate whole samples into their individual parts. The silica gel works particularly well in chromatography, but not in lungs. Do not inhale the gel. Use the hood. Inhalation of the gel may cause respiratory tract irritation—like nearly everything else in the lab. I slowly dip the little metal spoon into the beaker of silica gel, collect the desired amount of dangerous dust, and gently tap it into the column with the funnel and spatula. The rest of the procedure poses no difficulty, unless you break the glass when settling the gel. Glass pipettes have no give. Many individuals despise making chromatography columns—the careful measurements, the broken glass, the time and time and time that it takes, frustrate them. I’ve taken quite a liking to making columns when I’m in the mood. Column preparation—a process both methodical and discrete. And, if it’s done right, there are no questions afterwards.

March 11, 2016

Questions about methodology, no. Questions about health, well, maybe. +++ My advisor approached me a while ago to offer me a job in a geochemistry lab. A strong opportunity to break into a science in which I was unfamiliar. Not biology, not chemistry, not geology, but geochemistry—a hybrid field melding all three fields to understand the environment that surrounds us. I met with the graduate student leading the project I would work on, and then I realized the great importance of the research— reconstructing a record of temperatures in Northern Alaska thousands of years ago. I graciously accepted the offer, and I felt proud and hopeful. Unbeknownst to me, I made a fine glass wool bundle, soon to be pushed and compressed. +++ The mandatory general safety and hazardous waste training teaches all those who work in the lab about the chemicals and risks they encounter. Unsurprisingly, the trainings draw in stone crowds, but you get free lab glasses at the end. I began to learn how to work in the lab by meticulously reading procedures and by watching the graduate student demonstrate multiple techniques and preparation processes. After each technique or process was finished, the graduate student would take a step back from the hood and watch me recreate his work five more times, critiquing the way I held an instrument, how much chemical I used, or how I handled sample, until he felt I was ready. Soon, I built a rapport with the others who worked in the lab. Soon, I realized, we all had the same fears. +++ Through practice, I’ve started making 12 columns at a time, dedicating entire mornings or afternoons to making columns so that I can award the process my full concentration. After I finish preparing the desired number of columns, I sit there, and re-gather my surroundings while stretching my tired fingers. Then, I carefully place the columns into a clean beaker, cover them with aluminum foil, and put them in the oven to rest. I return to the shelf the stands I used to hold up the pipettes as I created the columns, and crush the aluminum

foil I placed on the workbench to mark my work area before I recycle it. What’s left? The small metal instruments I manipulated so carefully to create the perfect columns, as well as a squirt bottle of dichloromethane—the most necessary evil of the lab. After I put the metal instruments away, hang the dichloromethane by its nozzle, and close the hood, I examine my gloves. On good days, the dichloromethane does not touch my nitrile gloves while I sterilize the metal instruments. On most days, it does. Thankfully, I did not get any on my skin this time. On nitrile gloves, dichloromethane feels cool at first, almost calming, as it evaporates quickly from the sleek surface. While some dichloromethane evaporates, some of it attacks the nitrile that makes up the glove—when that happens, there’s only a minute or so for the glove to come off and for the hand to be washed before the stinging begins. If this happens during sample processing, that minute does not exist—especially when the sample is at least 10,000 years old and going through a time-sensitive chemical process. In those cases, we delay removal of the gloves until the sample allows it. While waiting, the stinging sensation takes over the parts of the hand the dichloromethane touches—and no questions remain. Small exposure, no big deal. Some people use special, thick gloves when working with the dichloromethane. Sadly, those gloves only fit hands much larger than my own. +++ Using volatile chemicals and working with dangerous materials are risks I’ve agreed to take, perhaps. I find the research interesting, and I find organic geochemistry interesting. I like watching chemicals flow down the columns I create when I run samples. Just as I contemplate my decision to expose myself to dangerous substances, my column breaks when I lightly tap the glass of the pipette to settle the last bits of silica. I hope it’s worth it. No one wants to expose themselves to things like this for hours each week. I shouldn’t think while on the job—it affects my performance. The broken glass pieces don’t hide in the hood. I pick them up, and move them to their final place of rest—the broken glass box. It has to be a box, you see, or else the janitor will get stabbed. No one is safe in the lab. FATIMA HUSAIN B’17 does not like to be pushed down pipettes.

SCIENCE

SURVEIL THE SURVEILLORS In Conversation with Glenn Greenwald

In 2013, Glenn Greenwald published a series of articles in the Guardian outlining the stunningly invasive and widespread data-collection tactics of the NSA. The information released—highly classified and previously unknown to the public—unleashed domestic as well as global uproar, and placed questions of mass-surveillance and the security-state squarely in the public consciousness. The documents Greenwald published were supplied to him by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, codenamed Citizen4, who has since become a fixture in the history of U.S whistleblower lore. Snowden is often spoken of in the same breath as other unforgettables such as Watergate informant Deep Throat. Many have drawn the parallel between Greenwald and journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Greenwald won a Pulitzer for his work, and he continues to write and speak vociferously in defense of the right to privacy. Aside from his award-winning journalism, he has written numerous bestsellers, including his most recent No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S Surveillance State. Greenwald currently lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he continues to do journalistic work for his website The Intercept. He agreed to a phone call with the Indy—the transcript of our conversation appears below. +++ The College Hill Independent: So while on the one hand your campaign against intrusive mass surveillance has been successful—in that it’s made people aware of the issue—in another sense it seems to have failed to make people care enough about NSA overreach to actually do something to curb it. A recent Pew poll says 54 percent of Americans disapprove of NSA surveillance while only 42 percent are in favor. Two questions come to mind—why hasn’t more been done, and what can people do? Glenn Greenwald: Well, first of all, I would dispute the premise of the question—in two regards, actually. One is that not much has changed beyond just making people aware. If you see for example the very significant dispute currently taking place between Apple and the FBI over whether the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter should be bypassed by having Apple create specialized software that would enable the FBI to access it and therefore all of their iPhones—this is the kind of dispute that never, ever would have taken place prior to the Snowden revelations; where all Silicon Valley companies, certainly including Apple, were very eager to cooperate in every way with the surveillance state because they were able to do so in secret and there was no cost, and there was no customer or user demand that these companies should protect privacy. And now the world has completely changed—Apple perceives that it’s very much in their own interest to demonstrate to current users, but also future users of the Internet, that they’re very serious about safeguarding the privacy of people’s data, even if means being perceived in this case as preventing the FBI from accessing the telephone of someone who engaged in mass murder on American soil. So they obviously are willing to incur some pretty high costs, because they perceive that the benefit of being depicted as privacy protectors is worth it. And the reason it’s worth it is because so many people do care, in the wake of Snowden, that they not feel their data is being turned over to the U.S government by companies that are collaborating with the surveillance state; and that is a huge change, in that there is a much broader conflict and a wedge now that has been insinuated into the relationship between government and Silicon Valley, over the extent to which those companies are now protecting user data with things like encryption rather than just handing it over wholesale to the NSA. The other thing I would say is that the idea of people being aware of the extent to which their privacy is being compromised isn’t just a matter of education or changing the way that people think about the government—it has very real consequences, in that there are actually really effective tools of encryption and other means of concealing what you do on the Internet that have skyrocketed in terms of usage, in the wake of the Snowden revelations. There are studies that have shown that [the use of these tools has] tripled or quadrupled, and that puts a real wall around what people do on the Internet and the ability of governments to spy. And then finally there’ve been ruptures to diplomatic relations and international efforts to create new privacy safeguards that are also really significant. It’s true Congress hasn’t passed a bunch of laws restricting what the NSA can do—they’ve passed one that was pretty mild—but I don’t think that’s the right metric. I mean, of course governments don’t like to admit their own power, but if you look to other realms you see some really substantial changes due to the fact that large numbers of people have cared enough about the extent to which their privacy is being invaded. The Indy: Do you see, in the near future, any kind of diminishment of NSA power and reach? Is anyone campaigning against that issue directly? GG: Well, interestingly, we’ve seen politicians in both political parties making limitations on NSA a central part of their campaigns. In fact, one of the really revealing aspects of the fallout from the Guardian reporting was that we received

INTERVIEWS

support in equal measure from the right and the left—from Republicans and Democrats. It was one of the very few highly contentious political issues that didn’t break down along ideological or party lines because a lot of the support came from across the political spectrum. And just today, actually, Bernie Sanders, who’s obviously in the middle of a really contested political campaign, tweeted some kind of absolutist declaration against the NSA’s collecting data about American’s telephone records and other communication information. So he obviously perceives it to be in his interest to take that position as well. I think you’ve seen a lot of political actors tending to side with privacy for the same reason that Apple perceives it to be in their interest. The Indy: I’ve read and listened to many of your arguments that cite Bentham and Foucault and the kind of coercion people may unwittingly be subject to, just by feeling that they’re surveilled. Do you worry about being surveilled yourself, and do you feel like it affects the way you live your life day to day? GG: Oh, yeah. I mean, when I began doing the Snowden reporting it was pretty much 100 percent certain that my communications were being surveilled. It would be shocking if they weren’t, right? I was in possession of—and still am—a huge number of top secret documents. Of course governments around the world had an interest in knowing A) what I had and B) what I intended to do with it. Then when my partner was detained in Heathrow, there was the question of why British government detained him. And as part of the litigation that he commenced against them, they filed papers essentially saying, we believe with a very high degree of likelihood that he would be carrying materials that I (Glen) and Laura Poitras and the Guardian were working with that the British considered a threat to national security. The only way they could have known that he’d be carrying that stuff is if they were monitoring my communication, and/or his, and/or Laura Poitras’. Probably all of ours. And yeah, when you have a suspicion that you’re being surveilled, and when that transforms into an essential certainty that you are, it absolutely changes your perception of your own ability to say things, even in your own home, and the choices that you make; you’re constantly aware of the fact that what you’re doing is being monitored and recorded, and it absolutely provides a confining mental limitation on how you think of your own place in the world. The Indy: Another thing that comes to mind is that we make trade-offs between security and privacy all the time, and you’ve spoken a lot about that. Most agree that a nation without privacy wouldn’t be somewhere we’d want to live. With that said, what do you think is the proper level of NSA involvement and surveillance over the American people? GG: Well I think what’s really interesting is that this question was answered so

The College Hill Independent

by Elias Bresnick illustration by Ivan Rios-Fetchko

long ago, you know, during the founding of the country. One of the primary grievances that the American revolutionaries had against the British crown was the idea of general warrants—that the crown’s police forces could issue these documents essentially subjecting entire neighborhoods or towns to surveillance, and then the security forces of the monarchy would go from door to door intruding into people’s homes in search of evidence in connection with a crime and some kind of indication of who was involved in dissent or agitation against the king. This idea was incredibly offensive to all basic notions of post-Enlightenment liberty—it was essentially a form of collective punishment. You could have done nothing wrong, no one would have had to think you’d done anything wrong, and yet the police just had a right to bust into your house. And that was why the Fourth Amendment was so aggressive in barring the police from searching—even though there was this recognition that if you place those kinds of limitations on the police it’ll be much more difficult to catch dangerous criminals. Obviously, if the police are looking for murderers or rapists or child molesters or whatever, people that’ve done horrible things, they’re a lot more likely to find those people or even to prevent crime in advance if they can just barge into any house they want. But instead, the Constitution says ‘no, you have to go to a court first and demonstrate evidence that this person likely has evidence of serious criminality before you can do that.’ And the distinction there is between mass surveillance and targeted surveillance, right? I mean, the debate was resolved by saying you cannot legitimately engage in mass surveillance where you subject entire communities of people who’ve done nothing wrong to being monitored; you have to instead target people for surveillance once you demonstrate to an independent body that there’s evidence proving they’ve done something wrong. So that, for me at least, continues to be the relevant distinction: mass surveillance is inherently illegitimate, but targeted surveillance, where you actually have an adversarial judicial process and the government body can convince the court that there’s a legitimate reason to target this specific individual—that is legitimate. And had the NSA been engaged in targeted surveillance instead of mass surveillance, there never would have been an Edward Snowden. The Indy: You practiced law until around 2005; how essential do you think that’s been to your position in the journalistic world and the work that you do? GG: I mean, it’s important for a couple reasons. I think that in order to be an effective journalist you need to develop expertise in the areas in which you’re reporting, because it prevents you from being manipulated and makes it so that you’re not engaging with shallow superficial analysis. And a lot of the early reporting that I did when I first started writing about politics was, you know, related at least to the law. One of the big issues on which I originally focused was the controversy over the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program in 2005, which involved a lot of constitutional and statutory questions. And so the expertise I had, I think, gave me credibility in writing that and developing a readership. But then beyond that—I think one of the things you learn in law school is how to make arguments in a logical coherent evidence-based manner. You know, to break down arguments into logical steps and make certain the each step has evidence supporting it rather than skipping over things or being kind of muddled. I think Internet journalism is really conducive to that and actually demands that, because there’re no space constraints and being able to provide links means that not only are you able to show people the evidence for what you’re saying, but people want and expect that, and if you don’t provide it they start questioning what it is you’re saying. So I think that kind of legal training of always providing evidence for what you’re saying and going in that step by step methodical process has really helped me create a certain form of journalism that not a lot of other people are doing. The Indy: In your current work with The Intercept, you advocate for, and practice, a kind of openly subjective style of news writing, arguing that publications like the New York Times and Washington Post’s kind of vaunted objectivity is a myth. My question on this is, in moving away from traditional established media outlets, how can we be sure of maintaining standards of journalistic integrity, and does having a name people trust—yours, for instance—play a role in that? GG: Well, for one thing it’s really fascinating that a lot of people call this kind of faux, feigned objectivity traditional journalism, especially if you actually look at the history of journalism as it’s been practiced in the US. Journalism as it originally flourished was of a very partisan, crusading type. You had left wing press and right wing press, pro-business press, pro-labor press, and everybody knew what their position was and what their viewpoint was—and yet they uncovered scandals. They tried to uncover the scandals of their adversaries, but at the same time the reporting tradition was steeped in this kind of honesty about perspective. And it wasn’t really until the 1950s and 1960s, when large corporations

March 11, 2016

started buying the most influential media outlets and became petrified of having any position—because their goal in life is to offend nobody—that this idea of the neutral, objective, viewpoint-free journalism was created. It’s actually a new concoction, not at all the traditional model. And I think that this [current] model has failed, not just because it’s boring and because people know that it’s deceitful, since nobody is objective or opinionfree, but also because it produces shitty journalism. I mean, the New York Times has probably the single worst journalistic disgrace on its resumé, which is helping the Bush administration sell lies about the war in Iraq, and the reason for that was because this feigned objectivity just meant that all they did was just write down what the government was saying and then publish it, without any kind of commentary, without any sort of real scrutiny or debate. Similarly, they along with a lot of other media outlets refused to call torture torture, so they used government-created euphemisms for it like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ even as they were calling identical techniques torture when used by adversaries. Ultimately what makes a good journalist or a bad journalist is not ‘do we have opinions?’—it’s ‘are we honest about our viewpoints?’ and then, ultimately, ‘is what we’re reporting reliable?’ And that’s the test. I mean, the reason I was able to do the NSA reporting with credibility isn’t because I hid the fact that I thought mass surveillance was evil. I’d said that over and over for years, including as I was doing the reporting. It is because the facts that I was reporting ended up holding up, and that really is the only thing that matters in journalism. The Indy: What would you say The Intercept is doing that other papers aren’t, and are there other publications like it? Also, where does someone like Glenn Greenwald get news? I know you’re big on Twitter… GG: I’m not going to make the claim that there are certain things we’re doing that nobody else in the world is doing. But I think that one of the things we set out to create, in terms of our journalistic identity, is that we wanted to be very adversarial to the people who wield the greatest power; and not do reporting by cozying up to them and using them as our sources, but instead reporting from the outside on what it is they’re doing. I think our goal is basically to look at whoever has the greatest amount of financial, political, or social power and subject everything they say or do to the greatest amount of scrutiny that we can. And, then as for your second question, I think there’s a lot of great journalism taking place in a lot of different places, including the media outlets I most criticize like the New York Times or the Washington Post. But there’s a lot of horrible journalism at those places too. So I do think one of the great benefits of the Internet is that you can kind of curate your own news by following the reporters and the individuals and the writers that you most trust. Twitter is a very good way to do that—other forms of social media are as well—and I tend to rely on that kind of a method rather than saying ‘here are the newspapers I like,’ like it’s 1971, putting that on my breakfast table, and reading from back to front. The Indy: But do you worry at all about shoddy journalism or misinformation in moving away from traditional media outlets? Is that an issue for you? GG: I mean I think it’s sort of a double-edged sword. There’s been really damaging, destructive journalism on a systemic level by the largest and most well-regarded media institutions for a long time. It’s fascinating, if you go back and read I. F. Stone, the left wing media critic who was writing in the ‘50s and ‘60s, in so many ways he was, like, the first blogger, in that so many of his media criticisms about how the New York Times and Washington Post and NBC News were covering the Vietnam War, the lies they were telling and the pro-government stance they were propagating, are very similar to the media critiques made by people like me and others now. So I think it’s a big mistake to say too soon that just because there’s a media organization that’s large and has a good reputation, that it means they’re doing good journalism. There’s been a lot of terrible journalism, and in a lot of ways the proliferation of new voices is a really important check on that, it’s an antidote to that. But sure, the Internet, because it’s unregulated and because it’s so vast, also produces its own really unreliable, crappy forms of writing, and I think it’s incumbent upon the reader to make certain, as I said earlier, that whoever it is you’re reading is providing evidence for what it is they’re saying and that you’re constantly critically evaluating everybody, including the people you’ve come to trust, because that’s what makes a healthy citizen and a healthy consumer of news.

INTERVIEWS

I CANNOT COUNT THE ALTERING THAT HAPPENS IN THE VERY LARGE ROOMS THAT ARE THE GUTS OF HER by Isabelle Doyle

My wife with the sex of a mirror like a fireball through the fog at a new kind of atmosphere. There are meteorites, snippets of filth music, cars on collapsed veins, the scent of her immense body. She and dawn fall together and I am made more beautiful by losses and nothing since matters. A bullring of the silent and girl-circled island, the moonlight, a bright stream. There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on fire. I make a whole life out of it, lights on my shoulder drifting up to the lip of matter to life again. The roofs, astonished by my appearing, awake, the hour of my birth arriving between cock and calm, the place that scripts such jazz stunning my tongue. At least the city pretends: River beds. Fire between the mattresses of the bed I was born in. Fire in my bed, fitted, naked, almost I leap into kerosene Moving is a white lie, a soft arrow Electric pony light. There will never be more of me to heel. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m the path so cut and red. These are my hands. I may be skin and bone, now, I am stirring like a seed in China. O wake me in my house in the mud to the woman I am becoming. Leading, always, to my fear are our bodies, simmering, clasped. Her hand as in a farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prayer for earth. I walked, walking warm and vital breath, while stones watched, and wings rose, then, one by one, I lifted her veils. In the long walk, waving my arms, my wife whose hair is a brush fire, my wife with the sex of an iris.

March 11, 2016

LITERARY

Friday 3.11

Saturday 3.12 Workshop on Citizenship, Immigration, Refugees, Cross-cultural Competency Refugee Dream Center, 340 Lockwood St, Providence // 10am // free Join New Bridges for Haitian Success, a nonprofit organization serving the Haitian community in Rhode Island. This workshop will go over naturalization and immigration procedures and tenants’ legal rights here in RI. π Day Pie Eating Contest 1005 North Main, Pawtucket // 11am–1pm // $5–$20 Come eat a bunch of pie with the Humble Pie Company. Kids, singles, and doubles competitions. Proceeds support DownCity Design, a youth-powered design lab in PVD. New Shanghai Circus Stadium Theatre, 28 Monument Square, Woonsocket // 7.30pm // $21–$36 Come see the culmination of more than 2,000 years of Chinese circus traditions. “And let no one overlook an act called the nose balance, on which a young woman balances a glass of water on her nose, covers it with a glass plate, adds four small glasses, covers them with a plate and proceeds to build a lofty, glassy structure before beginning a series of acrobatic moves and then walking across a bridge of light bulbs.”—NY Times Naytronix, Young Nudist, Tapestries, Yuna Aurora // 9pm // $7 Experimental pop, shoegaze, sounds. #INEEDADRINK The Dark Lady, 17 Snow St // 10pm // free Party with Yolandi Fizzure at this LGBTQfriendly party.

Rhode Island Fact of the Week: the cult of Artemis used to worship on the west side.

Work it Out: The Work and Labor Play Manton Ave Project, 55 Putnam St // 7pm // pay what you can A play written and performed by children from the Manton Ave Project’s TAG Team afterschool playwriting course. Performances Friday at 7pm, and Sat/Sun at 2pm. I think it’s so cool that these kids learned about Rhode Island labor history. Strange Machines, Bujak, Chicken Ghost House Tribe The Spot Underground, 180 Pine St // 8pm // $10–$12 Boston-based Strange Machines play reggae-funk-rock-jazz stuﬀ.

Got tips on events? Send your leads to ListTheIndy@gmail.com

What is a Refugee Crisis? Pembroke Hall, 172 Meeting St // 9.45am // free This academic conference, which is free and open to the public, focuses on the way the current refugee crisis has been and is being represented in media sources, and what the impact of those representations are. Features talks by a number of media scholars, political theorists, and architects.

Sunday 3.13 Speed Sisters with Director Amber Fares Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA // 2.30pm // $9– $11 Speed Sisters is a documentary about the first all-woman race car team in the Arab World. Watch as these five Palestinian women navigate gender boundaries, Israeli occupation, and the racetrack. It looks super cool.

Tuesday 3.15 Yoga for Music Lovers The Spot Underground, 101 Richmond St // 7pm–8pm // $5 “The practice is comprised of attainable poses and a loving demeanor, and also contains live musician accompaniment.” Drop-In Chess Club 186 Carpenter St // 7pm–9pm // free 186 Carpenter is a small gallery and performance space out in Federal Hill. They have nice concerts there. Anyways, this is an open chess club. Beginners are welcome. Assholes are not. Go play some chess. It’s the sport of kings (fact check?).

Monday.3.14 Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis, Protests, and Grassroots Journalism Photonics 8 Saint Mary’s St, Boston, MA // 6pm // free Co-founders of independent Lebanese media outlet Beirut Syndrome Kareem Chehayeb and Sarah Shmaitilly will be speaking about the anticorruption protests in Lebanon sparked by the garbage crisis there. They’ll also be talking about how it has led to an uptick in grassroots and citizen journalism in Lebanon. Thee Amazing Andy California, Party Pigs, Far Corners Aurora // 9pm // free Guitars grunge-ing in garages, garaging in grunge, guitaring in garages.

Thursday 3.17 Idiot Glee, Murals, Twenty Four Hours, Host Aurora // 9pm // $7 Ambient rock, psychedelic pop, alternative, post-punk.