The College Hill Independent Vol. 32 Issue 1

the college hill independent Volume 32

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a Brown/RISD weekly

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Issue 01

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NEWS 02 Week in Deliveries Madeleine Matsui, Ryan Rosenberg, & Gabrielle Hick

Volume 32 No. 1

03 Don’t Tread on Me Hannah Maier-Katkin 06 What’s the Yams Kelton Ellis METRO 05 Follow the Child Shane Potts

From the editors:

07 RIPTAstic Jamie Packs

It’s good to see you. How are you doing?

What are you up to? How are the kids?

Where have you been all this time?

09 Old Buddy Old Pal Lisa Borst, Sophie Kasaskove, & Rick Salamé

We missed each other. It’s alright. It’s fine.

I’m fine.

ARTS

Fraying, dripping, trailing debris, we hold each other— clutching newsprint clinging to fingers.

11 Coming Up Short Eli Neuman-Hammond 14 Document3.doc Jonah Max

CF / AMF / FT FEATURES 08 Dear Indy Mark Benz & Patrick McMenamin SCIENCE 15 Garden of Delights Fatima Husain METABOLICS 16 The Pirate Bae Sam Samore LITERARY 17 There’s Nothing More to Say Liz Cory EPHEMERA 13 Yunghaikuboys Mark Benz X 18 If a Sheep Wore Pants Layla Ehsan, Sara Khan, & Pierie Korostoff

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.

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

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 Rick Salamé

Science Fatima Husain Marcelo Rivera-Figueroa

Cover Elizabeth Goodspeed

Tech Kamille Johnson

Design & Illustration Celeste Matsui Alexa Terfloth Zak Ziebell

theindy.org

Staff Writers Ben Berke Liz Cory Kelton Ellis Liby Hays Corey Hebert Hannah Maier-Katkin Madeleine Matsui Kimberley 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

@theindy_tweets

Week in Deliveries

by Gabrielle Hick, Madeleine Matsui, & Ryan Rosenberg illustration by Frans van Hoek

Come, Gone Turlock residents are wondering if the tennis elbow was worth it. Turlock sits smack in the middle of the Golden State. Home to 70,000 Turlockians, it was founded on December 22, 1871 as a railroad town and came to be known as the “Heart of the Valley” for its dairy farms. Almost a century and half after its founding in 1871, Turlock is mired in an ongoing criminal case tied to its agricultural production.

Late on January 17, 2016, bull semen—enough to impregnate 1,000 cows—was pilfered from a local lab technician’s truck.

The cock-up has caused a $50,000 loss, as prime bull spunk was stolen.

Semen harvesting is a complicated business. Genetically coveted semen is collected two to three times a week and stored in tanks filled with liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -320 degrees Fahrenheit. The semen collection process requires huge amounts of time, labor, and resources.

From there, the precious tanks are shipped to farms across California and the rest of the world. Cow eugenics is not a simple process.

In addition to the three tanks of liquid-nitrogen preserved semen, the thieves also made off with gas aboard the truck, leading investigators to suspect that the semen snatchers had no idea exactly what they were stealing. What did they think they were taking? It’s hard to know. But they most likely were not aware that the purloined tanks contained valuable semen including sperm from the bull with the fifth best genes for breeding bulls in the world.

So where is the semen now? The investigation is currently blue-balled as sheriffs remain stumped. If you have any idea about who got off with some prime au jus, please notify the Stanislaus County Sheriff Department at 209-552-2468. The investigation is ongoing. -MM

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Digested Devotion Located just 30 kilometers from Shanghai and named after the River Thames in London, Thames Town is an intricate replica of an English market town. Complete with weathered cobblestone streets, Tudor architecture, and a statue of Winston Churchill, the community, once colonized by rich families seeking second homes, epitomizes China’s infatuation with Britain. Businessman Richard Craig, who has been trading in China for eight years, said in an interview, “There is a voracious appetite for British culture because it is seen as a status symbol of wealth and success. It used to be something restricted to the higher echelons of Chinese society but it is spreading rapidly.” At a cultural survey event hosted by the British Council in Shanghai, the audience apparently “went berserk” when shown a photo of Dame Maggie Smith. In recent news, Chinese affection towards Britain is exemplified through the soaring sales of McVitie’s plain, digestive biscuits, which have risen by 50% in the last three years.

Beyond China, a global fixation with Britain, especially British royalty, runs deep. The first time Princess Diana of Wales wore her midnight blue velvet evening gown was a November night in 1985, while attending a White House gala. The second time was at the premiere of the movie Wall Street, and the third was when she sat for her last painted portrait. John Travolta, who was also at the White House that night, abided by the fairytale archetype, reported: “At midnight I tapped on her shoulder and said would you care to dance?” And for fifteen minutes danced they did, to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, with Ronnie and Queen Nancy in the background, overseeing the whole affair. Current junkie magazine jewels include specifics regarding the Queen’s snacking habits. A 2009 report in The Daily Telegraph reveals that every day the Queen "likes a gin and Dubonnet immediately before lunch, and tea and biscuits at about 5pm.

'But most of the biscuits go to the corgis,' reveals an aide."

And while the Queen may not fancy biscuits herself, China’s embrace of this British culinary staple and other cultural sensations has geopolitical implications. While recently visiting the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron gifted Chinese premier Li Keqiang an autographed version of Downton Abbey’s first episode’s script. Reportedly 160 million Chinese citizens watch Downton Abbey. But lately, people in China are taking their royal regard to the most intimate level. They are taking their adoration on a voyage down their gastrointestinal tracts, cozying up with their digestifs and their digestives, and bracing themselves for the rather decent dose of fiber within each biscuit. Hey, I hear that bad-boy Prince Harry’s on-again, off-again girlfriend is into pitted prunes.

-RR

Live Slow, Die Whenever The unofficial motto for sloths–the animal, not people who sit around eating Cheetos all day–is live slow die whenever. Last Friday, local transit police in Quevedo, Ecuador rallied against that whenever (not today!) when they shut down part of one of the city’s highways to undertake a rescue operation. For a sloth. Pictures posted to the department’s Facebook page show one of the country’s six kinds of sloth clinging to a pole on the crash barrier that separates the highway’s lanes. Why did the sloth not cross the road?

An average sloth moves at a ground speed of fewer than 10 feet per minute: it is suspected that the cars arrived before he was safely across, leaving the frightened but cute-aggression inducing sloth stuck between one side of the surrounding tropical rainforest and the other. A poor decision, yes, but sloths have also been known to fall from trees, their preferred lounging place. They mistake their own arms as branches and lose their balance.

A close-up photograph on the police department’s page shows transit policeman Officer Aguayo kneeling down to begin the sloth-extraction: the sloth’s face is tilted toward Aguayo, bearing an expression that translates to I’m a sloth, get me out of here. The sloth also looks like he is smiling, but that is merely resting-sloth-face. Aguayo also confirmed that the sloth had not been drinking, and rather was just, you know, trying to get to the other side. After a check-up by a veterinarian, Mr. Sloth was returned to the rainforest, in order to recuperate from his stressful morning commute. Follow-up pictures posted by the transit police show him hanging upside down from a branch, looking peaceful and safe, still smiling.

His world-weary smile says it all, slowly: sloths are not meant to live life in, or in the middle of, the fast lane. -GH

The College Hill Independent

LAST MONTH IN OREGON

White Terrorism and Colonial Dispossession

by Hannah Maier-Katkin illustration by Celeste Matsui

On Tuesday, January 26th, FBI and Oregon State Police officers finally arrested armed militants, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who had been occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural eastern Oregon for a month. The occupation began as a peaceful protest in response to the incarceration of two ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond. The demonstration quickly matured into a hostile takeover of a government building to impugn the federal control of public lands, which the protesting Oregon ranchers would like to see relinquished by the government for private use.

The Hammonds, the men for whom this protest began, were arrested for arson and charged under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 after starting multiple fires and damaging property over the span of several years on land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Dwight and Steven insisted that the fires were started on their own property and inadvertently spread to public lands. Official records from the trial, however, contain the information that, in 2001, the Hammond men illegally killed several deer on federal land and started a fire that eliminated the evidence. In the report from the District of Oregon’s U.S. Attorney’s office, jurors in the trial were informed that Steven, Dwight’s middle-aged son, distributed strike-anywhere matches and stated that he wanted to “light up the whole country on fire.” Dwight was sentenced to three months in prison, while Steven received one year. They both served their full terms.

Upon their release, Dwight and Steven were faced by two federal prosecutors who considered their sentences unconstitutional in their brevity. Subsequently, both father and son were re-sentenced to five years in prison (minus the amount of time they had already served), after an appellate judge reviewed the case and overruled the shorter, more lenient sentencing that the two had initially received. All things considered, a five-year prison term appears generous considering it is the minimum sentence possible for arson under AEDPA—a piece of legislation best known for rendering it difficult to appeal, as the name implies, death-penalty sentences.

The Hammonds have publicly separated themselves from the Bundy brothers and their supporters. They are in the process of requesting a pardon from President Obama that would keep them from returning to prison to serve their remaining years. Aligning themselves with a demonstration in which participants referred to the U.S. government as a “tyranny” would not likely increase the Hammonds’ chances of securing their own freedom. +++ The occupation of Oregon’s Malheur Refuge reignited discussion on an issue close to the hearts of radical conservatives: the transformation of federally-owned property into private or state assets. This rightwing demonstration is the apparent opposite of liberal movements like Occupy Wall Street. In 2011, unarmed protestors occupied private property including Lower Manhattan’s Zucotti Park, private banks, and corporate headquarters to demand greater government regulation of the private sector. Occupy’s Oregonian counterpart is essentially its inverse, in which protestors occupy public land in support of private use.

Ammon Bundy proclaimed that “the people can reclaim their resources” by having the federal government loosen its grip over the public refuge. With this assertion, Bundy overlooked the historical fact that the original claim on the land was not his, but rather that of the Burns Paiute tribe. No one has put it more succinctly than Charlotte Rodrique, the tribal chairwoman of the Burns Paiute Tribe, in an interview with NPR: “[the militants’] theme, of course, was that we’re going to give it back to the original owners, which were the ranchers. This rubbed me the wrong way because that’s our aboriginal territory.”

Evaluating the request from a financial standpoint, the plan to assume control of all of the federal land in Oregon does not seem feasible.

Economists from the University of Utah, Utah State University, and Weber State University performed a study in 2012 concluding that if their state were to take over land management from the federal government, it would cost an estimated $275,000,000 per year. That same

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year, Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act to demand that the majority of public land be transferred to state control. Nearly four years later, the land in question remains the property of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

According to Time Magazine, 53% of the land in Oregon is owned by the government for public use, compared to 65% in Utah. These figures suggest that the costs of assuming control of federal land in Oregon, while presumably less than in Utah, would still be a significant strain on the economy—and might even require the state government to raise taxes. That same article noted that the United States government owns 23% of all of the land within national borders. The majority of that figure lies in the vast expanses of the West. These lands became property of the federal government when western settlers claimed the land as new states—disregarding the indigenous occupants. During the Oregon boundary dispute in the first half of the 19th century, the Americans justified their settlement by insisting upon the legitimacy of Manifest Destiny (a term coined in 1845 for Oregon to defend American interests in the aforementioned boundary kerfuffle), while contesting British claims and annexing Native territory. +++ The government generally allocated the land it seized to state governments and settlers who had travelled out to explore the western reaches of North America on the Oregon trail — especially in the Midwest. The federal government offered free grass as an incentive for settling cattle ranchers until the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, prevented grazing on public land to correct a tragedy of the commons in which the land was widely used but not cared for. It was the first Roosevelt president, Theodore, who converted public lands into national parks to conserve natural resources, effectively setting aside federally owned and regulated land for mining, ranching, and conservation. Teddy Roosevelt was also responsible for the creation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge—then called the Lake Malheur Reservation—in 1908. Even stating that the federal government owns and regulates the land confers a certain legitimacy to claims that erase the history of a people of the Native American tribes who lived there for thousands of years before Christopher Columbus encountered the ‘New World.’

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is composed of 187,757 acres of country. On-site research performed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that oversees the refuge suggests that Native Americans lived off of the land for over 11,000 years. The refuge contains over 4,000 artifacts belonging to the federally recognized Burns Paiute Tribe in Harney County, Oregon. Burial sites, petroglyphs and other remnants of the tribe’s cultural history, including documents and maps reside within the enclosure of refuge property. Members of the tribe continue to harvest the land. Rodrique was outspoken in requesting that these armed militants, who claimed legitimacy over the land (citing a “mission from God,” reminiscent of Manifest Destiny), be removed, stating that she “feels strongly because we have had a good working relationship with the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge [and] we view them as a protector of our cultural rights in that area.” The “protestors,” she continued, “have no claim to this land; it belongs to the native peoples who continue to live here.” The government building that the Bundys and their associates occupied was, among other things, a storehouse of Paiute artifacts for conservation and research.

Relations between the Natives and the federal government have become amicable only recently, and their current cooperation does not atone for the history of injustices that Native peoples have suffered. The Burns Paiute people sued the government in a case that lasted 35 years, reaching its conclusion in 1969. The settlement ended with compensation of $741 for 850 individual members of the Paiute tribe — the numbers were calculated based on the price that the government would have paid for the land when it was taken nearly 80 years earlier in 1890—had it been purchased in a consensual transaction.

The College Hill Independent

Chairwoman Rodrique vocalized her concern immediately, in early in January, that Paiute artifacts, and thereby remnants of their cultural history, could be harmed by the militant occupation. LaVoy Finicum, one of the men occupying the government building—and the only one shot and killed in an altercation with the police—posted a video on the Bundy Ranch Facebook page of himself and a partner earlier last month rifling through Paiute artifacts. He insisted that the government had left the cultural objects to rot in an office on the refuge, and he called for the Paiute Tribe to join forces against the federal authorities.

In the video, Finicum says that he is “reaching out to the Paiute people” to return the cultural objects to “their rightful owners…to make sure we take care of the heritage of the Native people.” Finicum’s rhetoric proved unsurprisingly hollow and deceitful. One of the men involved in the armed occupation used a bulldozer to create a short-access road that extended directly into an archeological site of critical importance to the Burns Paiute Tribe. Chairwoman Rodrique wrote, in her second open letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, that she feared “the demolition and construction activities may have harmed our burial grounds and disturbed tribal artifacts.” She went even further to express the concern that the militants, in search of money to support their efforts, could have easily walked off site clutching stolen Paiute objects with the intent of turning a profit. +++ Responses from the government and legal authorities have not matched the urgency of Rodrique and the Burns Paiute Tribe’s concerns. The local sheriff told those unlawfully occupying the refuge to “go home… [and] be with your families peacefully.” A statement released by the FBI illustrated the government response as “deliberate and measured as we seek a peaceful solution.” Kate Brown, the Democratic Governor of Oregon, took a firmer stance. She criticized the federal government for its impotent, delayed response, stating: “it is unclear what steps, if any, federal authorities might take to bring this untenable situation to an end and restore normalcy to this community.” In a country where unarmed black men—even boys like 12-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland—are shot and killed in the street by police who often do not face charges, it is unsettling to witness a case of white armed ranchers, who were antagonistic toward government officials while illegally occupying a government building, face much less opposition from the authorities.

The hostile takeover in Oregon led by the Bundys is, in its most simplified form, an armed occupation of a government building with the objective of furthering a political agenda. Major news outlets such as the New York Times have used headlines that describe them as “protestors” and called them “a group of armed activists and militants.”

The Associated Press, as well, has described Bundy’s collective as “militia members.” The word “terrorist” does not seem to be considered applicable when discussing a group of white, Christian settlers. Until the arrests last week, these people were more or less free to come and go from the refuge as they pleased to grab supplies and visit community meetings.

This hesitance on behalf of the law to prosecute the Bundys and their followers indicates how the government is much more lenient in pursuing extremism when the extremists are white, even when they’re engaged in a federal crime that has been documented via a steadily updated collection of Facebook videos. Their online presence in the form of videos, rants, and benign requests for snacks has fueled the ridicule they receive. Some requests for donations, for example, have been greeted with shipments of dildos. Angry white people complaining about government control are easily dismissed by people who don’t feel the violence of their claims. Jedediah Purdy, writing for the New Yorker, said it would be “too much to call the occupiers ‘domestic terrorists.’”

Feb 5, 2016

And he is right in pointing out that they have not been as violent or murderous as the Klan or the accused Dylann Roof in South Carolina.

But it does seem more than fair to assume that if those armed occupiers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service building were Muslim or people of color that police efforts to remove them from the land would not accompany the word “peaceful.”

The New York Times published an article at the beginning of January detailing how the Department of Homeland Security has focused greater attention on the threat of Muslim extremism, while ignoring the growing threat of white, right-wing extremists in the States. In a survey conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum in 2014, it was found that antigovernment extremism posed a far greater domestic threat than Muslim Americans, who face increasingly greater discrimination and suspicion, or radical Muslim groups such as Al Qaeda or ISIL. The data was collected by polling a sample of 382 police stations, after which it was discovered that 74% of them consistently “cited antigovernment extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats.” The number of sovereign citizen extremists—loosely organized individuals with strong antigovernment sentiments, who believe themselves to exist outside of the law—has grown drastically since the 2000s and poses one of the greatest threats to domestic safety, but is not treated with the same level of concern.

The knowledge that right-wing radicalism would become a growing domestic threat has circulated at least since the 2009 report from the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of Homeland Security on the issue. The publication of this document only led to the dismantling of the branch, after receiving criticism from conservative lawmakers who considered the strains of extremism addressed by the report to be nothing more than “legitimate criticisms of government.” This tendency reinforces a national narrative in which the definition of terrorism is thrust entirely upon people who do not fit the normative, stereotypical American ideal of white, cisgender, god-fearing Christians. This selective crafting of an American identity, and the criminalization of those who do not fit its expectations, fails to represent the reality of the increasingly diversifying composition of the United States, but indicates quite clearly who it is meant to serve. +++ Ammon and Ryan Bundy are currently being held without bail. There are still four people who refuse to leave the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, despite a request from Ammon to “stand down.” David Fry, one of the few remaining, has stated—through the platform of an active YouTube channel—his intention to remain until supplies are exhausted.

Fry explained, in his own fireside chat, “we believe people should stand their ground.” But whose ground is he standing on?

HANNAH MAIER-KATKIN B’18 is also living on Native land.

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THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE The Call for Ethnic Studies in PVD High Schools

by Shane Potts

“It’s mad cold out here,” yells Patrick Kim of the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM). It’s a chilly afternoon, and the 18 RIPTA bus zooms across Westminster Street. Directly outside of the Providence School Department, the Providence Student Union (PSU) along with other organizations kicked off their #OurHistoryMatters campaign, which centers on a push for ethnic studies classes in Providence Public Schools. Providence, unlike its neighboring districts, has a diverse student body. This academic year, the district is made up primarily of Hispanics, who are 64% of the student body. African-Americans, who make up 17%, are the second most populous group. White students make up only 9% of the total student demographic. Asians are 5% of the student population. Yet, even though there is a clear majority of nonwhite students, there seems to be little education that is targeted specifically to that demographic.

As part of the #OurHistoryMatters campaign, students in Providence High Schools are demanding that ethnic studies classes be offered in all Providence Schools starting in the fall of 2016 and that the classes should be counted as full history credits. +++ Themes of segregation within the Ocean State are not new. In Providence, there is a huge racial and wealth gap in schooling. Though 91% of students in Providence are minorities, a fifth of the schools within Rhode Island are more than 90% white. In fact, the UCLA Civil Rights Project ranks Rhode Island as having the sixth most segregated schools in the 50 states, based on the percentage of Latino students attending intensely segregated schools. Patrick Anderson of the Providence Journal reports that “Rhode Island’s segregated communities are largely a result of the postwar white flight to the suburbs, leaving the urban cores hollowed out by poverty, substandard housing and a lack of good jobs.” Very few schools in Providence have enough funding to support quality teachers and carry out reforms that could positively impact their students. Nowhere is this more evident than in the call for ethnic studies.

“I’m Nigerian, I’m Muslim, I’m American,” said Latifat Odetunde, “It’s not what the history books tell us, it’s what they leave out.” For a surprising number of high schools within Providence, American history is the only type of history taught. To students of color in a vulnerable district, American history education, led by white teachers, often seems like indoctrination. “Of our textbook’s 1,192 pages,” says Afaf Akid of PSU, “fewer than 100 are dedicated to people of color. That’s less than 10% of our history curriculum…and of course, the few references to people of color are problematic as well, often treating issues like slavery and colonialism as neutral or even positive developments. We deserve better.” The history of colored peoples is often deleted exclusively or told inaccurately. There should be history courses targeted at these students so that they can learn something that they feel they have a stake in. “People of color need to preserve our heritage,” says Patrick, “Teachers are speaking with intellect and not dignity. Students need to have a connection with what’s being taught.”

The Superintendent of Providence Public Schools, Chris Maher, believes that now is the perfect time to implement change in high schools. This year, the district is poised to examine the curriculum now that a new director of education has been hired. Chris Maher cites research from Stanford University that states that, “attendance in this course [ethnic studies] increased GPAs by 1.4 points and credits earned by 23.” These facts make many in Providence hopeful, as schools within the district are failing rapidly by national standards. The Partnership for Assessment and Readiness for College and Careers is a statewide exam in Math and English Language Arts and Literacy (ELA) given to students within

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the Providence district. In Providence, 22% of students in Grade Nine met or exceeded expectations in English language Arts. 14% of students taking Algebra I met or exceeded expectations. The rates for Geometry are more dismal: 4% of students in geometry met or exceeded expectations.

Assignment to ethnic studies classes is also useful at “increasing ninth-grade student attendance by 21 percentage points.” The attendance boost correlated with ethnic studies could curb high rates of suspension for Hispanic and black students. In November 2015, the RI ACLU reported, “more than 60% of all suspensions were meted out for low-risk behavioral offenses such as “Disorderly Conduct” and “Insubordination/Disrespect.” Perhaps these “behavioral” affronts are not out of the blue, and perhaps they are linked to a lack of interest in what is being taught. “Right now,” Seena Chhan of the Environmental Justice League in Rhode Island says, “we are being taught about the Vietnam War and how it only affected the US troops but no one knows that during that war, Thai, Laos, and Cambodia were negatively affected by what we call the American War…that my parents were actually part of.”

teachers, “I can build a school that no one wants to leave.”

Both the call for ethnic studies and Wagner’s plan showcase the significant role that choice plays in education.

When students have the opportunity to study courses that are relevant to them, taught by teachers who look like them, they have higher attendance, higher grade point averages, and higher graduation rates. The autonomy and innovation offered from many charter schools within the urban center of Providence tend to have around the same rates of academic proficiency as many district schools. Public schools, if based on a charter system, could offer favorable opportunities to children, parents, and administrators of Providence schools, especially those in poorer districts, already vulnerable due to the flight of students to charter schools. The education system within Providence—charter and district schools—requires significant upheaval, and maximizing choice can provide a way for equality within district and charter schooling. By allowing families and administrators to work together on finding a school that is a fit, Providence high scholars will benefit from having their voices and choices heard.

SHANE POTTS B’17 took his first ethnic studies class in high school.

+++ The call for ethnic studies also significant because it is part of a larger project in enhancing local autonomy within public schools. “Why can’t we give the tools to districts that charters have,” says State education Commissioner Ken Wagner, “This would address the demand for the charter sector.” Wagner’s vision for public education involves giving principals much more authority over budgets, hiring, and even the school day. Wagner calls for the “innovation of schools,” giving parents more control over where their children learn. This move could be better for the state’s educational system overall, since evidence shows that children whose schools are socioeconomically mixed are more academically successful, as wealthy schools are able to secure highly ranked teachers and provide a diverse background for its students. If public schools are more competitive, fewer students would leave public schools, and the funding would not leave with them. The 2010 funding formula for schools previously allowed money to “follow the child,” meaning that the cost of educating an individual student was given to whatever school they chose to attend, while fixed costs like pension and healthcare remained at the districts that the child was sent from, leaving district schools struggling to cut costs. Recently, Governor Raimondo has proposed a new budget that provides safeguards for district schools. “The districts that see at least 5% of their students attend charter schools would receive $300 per student from the state,” Dan McGowan writes for WPRI, “a boost of about $2.6 million to those districts.” The call for autonomy is not just coming from school officials like Maher and Wagner. “If you give me the freedom to build the school,” Wagner recalls hearing from

The College Hill Independent

THE BLACKER THE ALBUM

On Kendrick Lamar, Awards Shows, and Racial Politics

by Kelton Ellis

“Black man, taking no losses!”

That was how Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar, ever tenacious, aligned himself with would-be Maroon Kunta Kinte on last year’s single “King Kunta.” Kinte, for the uninitiated, is the central character of Alex Haley’s historical novel Roots, who attempts a flight from slavery, only to have his foot amputated as punishment. The reference conjures images of escape from the racial strictures that the US and the world at large have placed on peoples of African descent. A number of other such conflations pepper nearly every track on Lamar’s universally-acclaimed third album To Pimp a Butterfly. Here Kendrick transcends Kendrick, becomes a vessel for Nelson, Tupac, Huey, Michael, Wesley, even Barack. Obama himself identified Lamar’s song “How Much a Dollar Cost” as his favorite song of 2015. When Kendrick paid a visit to the President, the two, perhaps knowingly, channeled the album’s cover photograph, which depicts ebullient Black people standing in front of the President’s domicile as an unconscious white man lay beneath their feet—the White House becomes Black. “And when you hit the White House, do you,” Uncle Sam advises Kendrick on “Wesley’s Theory,” and that’s just what he did. The instrumentals themselves sound like a chronicle of African-American music: Lamar shuffles between blues, jazz, and funk beats to craft an idiosyncratic brand of hip-hop that merges these forms just as it merges past and present. The album is distinctly, dauntingly, Black.

It’s as if he saw it coming.

This year, Lamar has a chance to make good on those sweeping claims to historical relevance. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) has nominated the MC for a stunning 11 Grammy Awards, more than any of this year’s other nominees. Before this year, no hip-hop recording artist had been nominated for so many awards in a single night. Had Lamar been up for just one more award, he would have equaled the record for most nominations in any one year—a record, notably set in 1984 by the most popular and influential Black musician ever known, his idol Michael Jackson.

All of this despite the structural disadvantages that Black artists face at the grand, overblown spectacles that we call awards ceremonies, of which we were reminded recently. Last month, widespread frustration flared at the news that, out of the many Oscar nominees for acting awards, not a single one was a person of color. The wildly successful Straight Outta Compton, a testament to the value of Black art, goes into the Oscars with one measly nomination for Best Original Screenplay. And the screenwriters are white. Sadly, when social media activists took to using the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, it was the second consecutive year they felt they had to do so—the Oscars nominated no actors of color last year, either.

The Grammys are similarly beset by these troublesome statistics. Far too often, the Recording Academy has hoisted white artists as beacons of the music industry over arguably more deserving Black ones. The Grammys’ stated aim of “recognizing outstanding achievement in the music industry” seems facetious when a career-making record like Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy can be wholly ignored in the Album of the Year category, even as it sold platinum and became 2010’s best-reviewed album. Indeed, at least twenty major publications, including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Slant Magazine, and Billboard named it that year’s best.

Additionally, when they are nominees, Black artists are often relegated to “urban” categories like Best Rap Album or Best R&B Song, sometimes only to lose these categories to white, mainstream-palatable upstarts like Iggy Azalea or Macklemore.

Feb 5, 2016

Critics and the rapper himself were forced to contend with Macklemore’s place as a white musician in a predominantly Black genre in one of the more startling upsets of 2014’s awards season, when Kendrick Lamar’s lush and turbulent debut good kid, M.A.A.D City lost Best Rap Album to Macklemore’s comparatively safe, easy-going The Heist. Lamar had compellingly depicted the difficult conditions of urban Black life that were the genesis of hip-hop, but Macklemore won for catchy rhymes about thrifting. “You got robbed, I wanted you to win. You should have. It’s weird and it sucks that I robbed you,” Macklemore texted Lamar later that night before posting a screenshot of his apologies in a characteristically self-centered attempt at grappling with the system that allowed the victory. Doubtlessly, Macklemore thought of this awkward episode when he composed his last single, the aptly-titled “White Privilege II” with which Macklemore has continued the pattern of making racism more about himself than about Black lives. As far back as 1989, when Will Smith boycotted that year’s Grammys due to the omission of Best Rap Performance from the ceremony’s television broadcast, the Grammy Awards have been a glaring showcase of that white privilege at work. It seems little has changed at our awards ceremonies in the 27 years since—Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett have been the most vocal boycotters of this year’s Academy Awards.

To be sure, winning big at the Grammy Awards is hardly an accurate indication of a musician’s talent and singular vision; rather, the Awards are an extremely visible spectacle that have tremendous power to single out and legitimize figures in pop culture, for better or worse. As Grammy voter Rob Kenner wrote in Complex in 2014, the voting process for the awards show includes economically-invested record label executives and a secret nomination committee that is typically concerned with high television ratings and a musician’s popularity, not with real artistic value (whatever “real artistic value” means). Still, for the average top-40-listening American who dares not venture onto Pitchfork or Metacritic, the Grammy voters are the tastemakers, and if the committee decides an LP is worthy of Album of the Year, so be it.

Kendrick Lamar’s nomination grab seems a truly bizarre occurrence in light of the Grammys’ mainstream, white sensibilities. Although Lamar is a popular and well-known rapper, To Pimp a Butterfly is suffused with Blackness to a degree that can sound alarming to the unprepared ear. It is an album about police brutality, slavery, violence, colorism, dearth of opportunity in Black communities, and the unbearable burden of history laid upon the Black body daily. No wonder the simple, affirmative hook of his infectious “Alright” serves as the closest thing Black Lives Matter has to an anthem— “we gon’ be alright” might be read as a modern “we shall overcome.” This year’s Grammy Awards, then, have the potential to become more than spectacle. They can become a vital platform on which Black issues are considered and vindicated by a broader American culture.

Can Lamar win, particularly in categories like Album of the Year that are not hospitable to Black musicians, much less rappers? Some facts might suggest not. For one, Lamar faces tough competition in Grammy darling Taylor Swift, whose extreme popularity and lily-white image are ultimately better predictors of victory than his critical adoration and deft social commentary. And as I wrote earlier, the Grammys have failed to give much-deserved accolades to Lamar and his ilk before.

For his part, though, Lamar is an idealist. In January,

when The New York Times asked him for his thoughts on success, awards and Black Lives Matter, he replied, “Ultimately, for the hip-hop community, I would love for us to win them all. Because we deserve that. Period. … I want all of them. Because it’s not only a statement for myself, but it’s a statement for the culture. … Nas didn’t get a chance to be in that position. Pac. So to be acknowledged and to actually win, it’s for all of them.” Stakes is high. On February 15, Lamar will not merely represent a moment, but a movement that stretches back decades and encompasses millions.

And yet, why should it matter? Why should Lamar have to win praise from mainstream white culture, and why can’t his art just stand on its own uncompromising principles? But representation in the broader culture (reppin’, if you will) is a necessary part of the racial healing America so desperately needs. The pioneering Black social psychologist Claude Steele wrote in The Atlantic in 1992: “The particulars of black life and culture—art, literature, political and social perspective, music—must be presented in the mainstream curriculum of American schooling, not consigned to special days … or to special-topic courses and programs aimed essentially at blacks. Such channeling carries the disturbing message that the material is not of general value … it wastes the power of this material to alter our images of the American mainstream—continuing to frustrate black identification with it— and it excuses in whites and others a huge ignorance of their own society.” Steele was writing about the racial insults that stem from American education, but much the same is true of awards ceremonies. When awards committees deny fair representation at the national spectacle of awards shows, they publicly reinforce the longstanding outsider status that has disadvantaged Black people in the US since its inception. It is more than the loss of a trophy; it is targeted and dangerous alienation, part of the same system that enables more quotidian, and more fatal, discrimination.

As I return to that initial image of the runaway slave, Kunta Kinte, I am reminded of the redemptive power of Black music, of the old Negro spirituals that made a life of uncompensated servitude an iota more bearable, of the activists in the Civil Rights Movement who shot their voices skyward in a remarkable feat of hymnal resilience. Kendrick Lamar is the heir to these complex sonic legacies. For now, let’s hope that this year’s Grammys do not replicate the harmful, common narrative that hip-hop is no art form at all. Let’s hope for an awards show that does not repeat the Oscars’ embarrassing mistakes. Let’s hope that when we chant in unison, “Black lives matter,” we mean that Black music does, too, for Black lives are improved all the more when the art they create achieves the recognition it’s due.

KELTON ELLIS B’18 is taking no losses.

NEWS

06

THROWN UNDER THE BUS RIPTA Revokes No-Fare Passes “RIPTA helps seniors get out and be more active, a good way to feel better about life.” Thus begins a video on the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) website explaining its no-fare and half-fare bus pass program for seniors and people with disabilities. The video continues with a scene between a RIPTA representative and a wary-looking senior citizen: “I think every senior should plan a RIPTA trip with a BFF every time they ride,” says the cheery RIPTA representative. After a brief pause, some clarification: “You know, BFF means best friend forever.”

Other than this proposal, however, there have been few alternatives proposed to RIPTA’s current funding model.

This is an area that urgently needs more attention from the RIPTA board as well as state legislators. Considering RIPTA’s deeper structural insufficiencies, the organization’s recent decision to end its no-fare bus pass program looks to be a short-term fix to a much larger problem. And one that is going to have significant repercussions.

+++

Rhode Island is one of the only states in the nation to offer free bus passes to elderly and disabled citizens. The no-fare bus pass program in Rhode Island far surpasses similar programs in other cities such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago, with nearly a quarter of its riders—last year some 15,000 people—making use of the program.

Until June of last year, Rhode Island law explicitly required RIPTA to provide no-fare and half-fare bus passes to seniors and people with disabilities. A last-minute vote in June, however, permitted RIPTA to charge a fare to these communities for the first time in over four decades as a means to help with the organization’s budget issues. “I’m very concerned about the imposition of that fee,” said Rhode Island Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed. She continues: “I was glad the governor delayed it and reduced it from the original proposal. However, I'd like to see it eliminated completely.” Supporters of the no-fare bus pass’ termination have expressed some flexibility. “If the Senate is proposing something that is more sustainable for RIPTA, we would welcome that,” said spokesperson Polichetti. Currently there are no alternatives being proposed.

One thing that is lost in all of this talk about funding and deficits is the lives of those who will be affected by what is being falsely advertised by RIPTA as a small change. Governor Raimondo recognizes the need to pay attention to those she calls “our most vulnerable riders of public transit.” Removing the no-fare bus pass program will have extraordinary consequences for the lives of these passengers. “We must make sure we are weighing all options

On December 14, 2015, the RIPTA board voted unanimously to revoke free bus passes for low-income elderly and disabled passengers. The board settled on charging 50 cents per ride to passengers who previously qualified for nofare passes. Advocates for the elderly and disabled estimate that RIPTA’s decision will cause around 13,000 riders to lose their free passes, according to a recent Providence Journal article.

Fifty cents may sound like a measly sum, but the new fee is a hard blow to some of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable communities, providing a disappointing indication as to where the priorities of the state may lie. Nonetheless, this decision comes as no real surprise given the financial difficulties that RIPTA has faced over the past few years.

It is too easy to make RIPTA into an enemy. Their buses are often comically off schedule, and the organization lacks the sex appeal of public transportation systems in other American cities. Yet it is hard not to feel for an organization that has been tasked with efficiently moving millions of passengers annually but has been chronically underfunded for years.

For an organization that is so deeply in the red, RIPTA’s recent decision to terminate the no-fare bus pass program thus appears to follow a sound economic logic, albeit a chilly one. One oft-cited reason for the discontinuation of the no-fare program is that the state is missing out on federal Medicaid reimbursement that would otherwise be available if reduced or no-fare bus passes were not provided. Medicaid covers non-emergency medical transportation costs for its patients, meaning that the state loses out on millions in public funding by allowing Medicaid-covered passengers to ride for free. Low-income elderly and disabled citizens who are not covered by Medicaid, however, are left out of this equation. And while much of the discourse has centered on the lack of funds available to the organization, there has been no talk of structural adjustments to RIPTA’s funding model or the communities that their decision is going to impact.

+++

by Jamie Packs illustration by Ivan Rios-Fetchko

because mobility is an important part of being able to live independently,” Raimondo says.

The termination of the no-fare bus pass program will come down hardest on the communities that are most dependent on the public transportation system. Unlike some other residents of the state, these communities often have no access to a personal vehicle and don’t have a university to foot their public transportation bill—as is the case for nearly all students of colleges and universities in Rhode Island.

RIPTA’s recent decision shows a clear lack of regard for its most vulnerable customers. It causes one to give pause over the organization’s mission statement, which cites the goal to be “responsive to our customers.” +++ On January 6 of this year, Providence Planning Director Bonnie Nickerson confirmed the end to Providence’s controversial streetcar plan. Amidst concerns about cost and ridership, the proposed streetcar may instead be replaced by an “enhanced” bus line along the same route.

The cost of the new proposal is $20 million, $13 million of which come from a federal grant with the state covering the additional $7 million. The “enhanced” bus line is scheduled to maintain the route of the streetcar from Providence train station through downtown, ending at Rhode Island Hospital.

It goes without saying that this route—which is already heavily serviced by RIPTA—does not propose any major shifts in the transportation infrastructure of the city and doesn’t do much to help those who live outside of downtown or college hill.

While it is not entirely fair to directly compare this project to the termination of no-fare bus passes, the “enhanced” route proposal may provide some insight as to where the state’s priorities lie. Rhode Island’s moves in the coming months will reveal much about how the state seeks to be portrayed. Will Rhode Island be a state that shows support for its most vulnerable populations or one that instead allocates its funds towards flashy and arguably less necessary projects? As of now, the answer is clear.

JAMIE PACKS B’17 is hoping to ride the bus with a BFF.

+++ The decision to revoke no-fare bus passes is predicated on a shortsighted budget fix that disregards long-term thinking about possible costs to the state. Charlie Fogarty, director of the Division of Elderly Affairs, draws attention to the future costs that such a decision might occasion: “If an individual on Medicaid needs to move into a nursing home from home-based care, the cost to the state is thousands of dollars annually.”

Governor Gina Raimondo also understands the farreaching ramifications of the decision: “If your only way to get to the doctor is the public bus and you don't have 50 cents or one dollar, times however many times a week you have to go to the doctor, that's a public health problem."

Raimondo was crucial in scaling back the original proposals made by the RIPTA board, which planned on charging $1 per ride for elderly and disabled passengers. Additionally, Raimondo played a role in delaying the elimination of the free bus passes until July of this year. RIPTA spokesperson Barbara Polichetti points out that this delay in addition to the delay of RIPTA’s other planned fare hikes has already cost the organization one million dollars in revenue. This from an organization whose deficit hovers somewhere between $1.5 and $2 million.

Funding for the public bus system in Rhode Island has long come from taxes on gasoline purchased within the state.

Yet, as people begin to purchase less gasoline as a result of tighter budgets, more fuel-efficient vehicles, or perhaps even environmental consciousness, RIPTA’s funding decreases precisely at the moment in which it is most needed.

In short, the model is backwards. And yet, there has been no serious consideration of any structural changes. This despite a 2010 proposal spearheaded by the Sierra Club to make use of vehicle registration fees that currently go towards Rhode Island’s general fund.

07

METRO

The College Hill Independent

by M & P illustration by Layla Ehsan

I am in a friendship that has become really frustrating and unfulfilling. I really just can’t do it anymore. How do I walk away?

M: If walking away was easy, you’d do it. So start by asking yourself what’s keeping you. Maybe you’ll see more clearly what it is you find valuable about this person. If you can find reasons for keeping this person in your life, try to restructure your friendship to focus on these qualities. That might mean doing different things with x, or seeing x only on Tuesday after three and before nightfall. Who knows? But if you can’t find reasons, walking away might just be a little easier.

But ultimately taking this approach seems disingenuous to a T. How would your friend feel knowing you were weighing their life in such a way? You really ought to simply tell them they’ve failed you to a point where walking away has become an option. They’ll either change or they won’t, and you’ll have to go from there, hopefully with a better understanding of what needs to be done.

P: Paying closer attention to how and why the friendship isn’t working for you will help you both to find a better understanding of yourself/what you want from other friends and the best way to walk away from this friendship.

The weird thing about advice in this form is that I can’t give you what I would find to be the best advice in this kind of situation: something that follows from knowledge of the way your own needs and the day-to-day texture of your friendships. Because what makes friendships work (and also fail) is ultimately pretty specific to the relationship, and so too should be the best way for you both to move forwards.

I am in a relationship with a guy who I’ve been with for a while and I don’t know where it’s going. I’m worried that we’re bad together, but every time I try to cut him out of my life it doesn’t last very long because I still want to be with him. What should I do?

M: Suppose you’re bad together. You seem to think that this will guarantee the future to be worse than the present. But as it stands now, everything seems fine, so you keep coming back. My take? You seem like a perfectly sane person. We don’t throw things away before they break, and for now, this relationship makes you feel good enough to stay. I would wait to see what happens. As a species we tend to be terrible temporal reasoners, and whatever you think is going to happen probably won’t. So what do you do when everything goes south? Go south with it. I hear speed dating in Key West slays.

P: Another idea is to bring this up and make some space within the relationship from which you could see whether or not you find yourself better off with that space. Whether that’s a more formal break period or just a weekend away, you’re not really going to be able to weigh the relationship’s future with your present desire until you get a little space to work from.

Either you’ll figure out how you should move on or you’ll come back more excited to be in the relationship. Absence usually does something to one of the hearts and if not, I’m with M on suspending the judgment. Keep it as local as you want, RIPTA’ll run you far enough south to take a peek at the well-suited young men hanging around Newport.

Consistently wondering how I should send that Dick Pic. What’s the best way to show my little guy to that special someone?

Every decision I have to make feels pretty much life or death. Yesterday someone said it was because I’m a Gemini. The day before someone said it was because I was Jewish. What do I do?

M: I’d say the use of a self-timer is essential. The arm simply isn’t long enough to provide the correct angle. Taking from directly above the groin, the sense of scale is skewed. Your member will ultimately have the appearance of some anatomical monstrosity, especially when seen hovering above what appear to be tiny, hairy feet. This genre of Dick Pic is classically seedy and potentially a bit too jarring for your beloved.

Maybe ask a friend for help.

P: According to one of my friends, advice is pretty much operating on the same level as astrology. As in I’m just going to end up giving you a set of pronouncements that you get to map onto your life in whatever fun way you feel. So maybe just have some more fun in these moments of indecision.

Live with them for a bit, show yourself that you can live with indecision and confusion without it imminently threatening your life.

P: Personally I’m sort of attracted to the lo-fi, low-angle selftaken shot. Maybe taken in the dark with a flash to limit the depth of field. But no mirrors, hopefully we’re past the foggy Myspace-shirt’s up pic that ripples the flash across the glass.

And showing your face is, of course, a bit of a dangerous game to play, though if you feel trusting enough I think there’s a lot of pathos in the face being in there. I’d also generally keep size-comparison objects out of the game, with an exception maybe for clever in-jokes to add some personal charm.

M: Even if you were to discover that your Jewishness was able to explain the feeling of immensity you experience when confronted with decisions, would this somehow aid your ability to manage the situation? I’d also ask yourself the same question with regards to your astrological sign. Instead of trying to explain your anxiety by appealing to the occult properties of either your ethnic heritage or the stars under which you were born, you might want to have a look inside your own head.

You’ll probably find that you have an anxiety disorder. We have a pretty good idea how these work, but unfortunately, not a really great way to treat them. What worked for me?

Quitting school for a while and chilling the fuck out.

M: But really the perfect Dick Pic is like an elementary-school photo, blue marble background and all. Straight-on, no fluff.

The base ought to be near the top of the photo and the tip near the bottom with your hips spanning the width. Nothing but groin. Just keep it simple.

Feb 5, 2016

Someone I was vague friends with in high school was recently convicted of attempted rape. I got an email from his family telling me that they really think he’s innocent, that he’d been fucked over by the criminal justice system because he had mental health problems and couldn’t afford a good lawyer, and that I should write to him in prison. What do I do? My politics tell me that in cases of rape I should pretty much always believe the survivor—but also, on the other hand, that the prison industrial complex is profiting off of unjust convictions and incarcerations of low-income and mentally unhealthy people like my former friend. Should I write him a letter?

M: With respect to your politics and values, what does sending a letter to your friend mean? The answer to this question is neither obvious nor constant across cases. Presumably the family of the convicted wishes you to write with a certain type of communication in mind. I’m thinking they’re probably hoping for you to initiate some sort of friendly correspondence. I’d argue that letters written in this vein communicate a value-judgement on your behalf that doesn’t quite meet the gravity of the accusation. Moreover, I wouldn’t necessarily view the convicted’s family as a reliable judge of their supposed innocence. It seems almost obvious that the family would be reluctant to believe the verdict no matter what evidence was presented.

P: Another way to think of this is in terms of your own emotional commitments. Not only would taking up a correspondence communicate a value-judgment but it also would require emotional and mental energy; energy whose expenditure is ultimately your right and responsibility. It then becomes a question of deciding whether your emotional investment in this person justifies your emotional effort: both on the personal level and that involved in a potential contradiction of your values. I think you can learn a lot about yourself, others, and your values in the conflicts of these investments but I’d only go ahead if I didn’t find myself having to force—or be convinced of—my ability to care about any one of these in particular.

Dear Indy, What should my next tattoo be? Sincerely, Blank Canvas P: Reach out to corporations offering publicly visible advertising space on your body, layer them until they are no longer distinguishable, pass the money along to a good cause.

M: I met a guy under a bridge in Portland, OR with “Cry Baby” tattooed on the side of his face. That’s what we call liberation from the capitalist juggernaut. I’d recommend you head in this direction with your next piece of body art.

FEATURES

08

WHOSE Remembering Providence’s Infamous Mayor

by Lisa Borst, Sophie Kasakove, and Rick Salamé illustration by Celeste Matsui

A corrupt Machiavellian bully, a benevolent populist, a talk radio personality, a marinara-sauce entrepreneur, a meme—rarely does a local politician acquire as many contradictory reputations and distinctions as did Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr., the infamous six-time mayor of Providence who passed away last Thursday. The first Italian-American to be elected mayor of the city, Cianci served a total of 21 years in office. He was twice forced to resign because of criminal charges: in 1983, he assaulted his wife’s alleged lover with a log and a lit cigarette; after returning to office for nine years, beginning in 1990, he was again forced to resign in 1999 after being charged with corruption and racketeering (he was ultimately convicted of only one count of conspiracy).

But despite—or maybe because of—his moral ambiguity, Cianci attained an almost viral celebrity status: the subject of multiple books, a full-length documentary, several fake Twitter accounts, and a federal investigation called Operation Plunder Dome, Cianci was arguably one of the most widely-known local politicians in the country. In the past week, his obituaries have run in national news outlets ranging from CNN to the New York Times.

Curiously, the stains on Cianci’s record have done more to bolster his reputation as a colorful character than they have to discourage support for him. Cianci was always able to deflect criticism with humor: in 2007, after his release from prison, he began his first radio show with the statement, “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…” But the fact remains that many of the details of his life are shockingly violent. In addition to his assault conviction he allegedly raped a woman at gunpoint in 1966, an accusation that was never proven but that was called by a crime lab investigator on the case “one of the most clear-cut cases of rape” they had ever seen.

One thing that was certain about Buddy was his ubiquity: just about everybody knew Buddy in some way or another. So, we walked around Providence and asked everyone we saw to tell us about their experiences with all sides of Buddy Cianci, good and bad. In the name of nuanced and egalitarian journalism, here they all are. +++ Providence had this remarkable resurrection—what was called the Renaissance— which coincided with when Buddy was mayor. We got the new mall, the rivers were moved, we had a national TV show on NBC, which made the city look very appealing… It seemed like a place on the rise, and that happened while he was mayor.

And certainly he took credit for a lot of stuff, and people will debate, probably forever, what his role was in all of that: whether it was all because of him or partly because of him or despite him. But he has a very complex legacy.

—Philip Eil, freelance journalist and former news editor of the Providence Phoenix He was the kind of person who would sit in a restaurant alone and people would come in just to see him. That was his power. He was everywhere. He came into this cafe almost everyday and was treated like a hero. He got free things everywhere he went. You were nobody unless Buddy Cianci came to your wake. The first time I met Buddy I asked him how he knew if someone was bullshitting him, and he said, “I can always tell because I know that no matter what, I’m an even bigger bullshitter than he is.”…You want to know if he was a good or bad man? Who are we to judge him? He’s going to be judged by God now.

—Federal Hill resident and friend of Cianci’s, who wished to remain anonymous

09

METRO

I think it’s human nature to try to label people, and say that they’re either good or they’re bad—but I’m a Shakespeare major, and what Shakespeare teaches you is that people are not black and white, that there’s just so much more to people, and that’s what makes them so interesting. And what I tried to do as a documentary filmmaker is to go back and try and find out what influenced a person to behave the way that they do. He was so intimidating. If he felt like he could say something that would put you off balance, that would hurt your feelings a little, then he would do that in an effort to gain control over the situation for that immediate moment. But also, he was actually very, very generous in how much he let me be around him.

—Cherry Arnold, producer and director of Buddy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Notorious Mayor [Cianci was] the man who gave us 140-character-or-less populist jeremiads before web 1.0. A shaker and mover of the beehive of industry, whom no sting could stop.

Tonight, the sophist ballet leaps along a little more lonesome. There’s a fresh jar of Mayor’s own waiting on the fall.

—the enigmatic figure behind @RealBuddyCianci, one of many Cianci imper sonation Twitter accounts In 1992, when AS220 was hoping to own and develop its own building downtown, I approached Buddy, and he was receptive to my ideas in spite of the fact that we had less than a $100,000 annual budget and were living illegally in the building we were in on Richmond Street. He questioned me on our unjuried and uncensored policy and I told him that it meant that even if he was to help us I couldn’t promise that there wouldn’t be content presented that may be critical of him. His response was that it wasn’t his role to be censoring art. AS220 would have never been able to grow into the institution it is today without his unqualified support. Buddy Cianci gave Providence a personality when it had none. AS220, myself, and the city of Providence will forever be indebted to him and I am sure he will live in conscience of the people of Providence for generations to come.

—AS220 founder and artistic director Bert Crenca I was at the bar at Mediterraneo with my friend and his dad, and Buddy showed up. My friend’s dad was a real estate developer who’d been one of the many developers trying to get Buddy to hire him to redevelop all these of warehouses at the intersection of Atwells and Eagle Street. My friend and I, both RISD students at the time, were challenging him on the eviction of all these artists from these warehouses. I remember him saying, and he was definitely drunk, “Well, there’s some people that have a future in this city and some people who don’t.” Somehow whatever I’d said as a 23-year-old had really pushed a nerve and he was clearly pissed. I was just a grungy artist kid and clearly wasn’t a threat to him, so why bother? That’s just how he was.

—Ian Cozzens, artist Still, the questions hang in the air. Rape at gunpoint is too serious a charge to ignore, even if the victim who leveled it has long since tried to forget. Cianci himself, who is clearly aware of the story that has been circulating around Providence, has tried privately to stop it, but not publicly to explain it. And so, we’d like to ask once and for all, and on the record: Mayor Cianci, what did transpire that morning of March 2, 1966? It is a question that should be answered, and certainly before the night of November 7, 1978.

—Craig Waters, writing for New Times, July 24, 1978

The College Hill Independent

BUDDY? In the early 1980s there was a club on North Main called Allary’s, it was a jazz club. It’s where Olive’s is now. One night a friend of mine was playing there, Shorty Jackson. I go down there to see Shorty and he’s playing and Buddy’s in there, too.

This is just before Buddy was gonna get booted out of office for the first time, so it must’ve been ‘84. He had the face on: he was drinking heavily. Buddy jumped out of the crowd and said he wanted to play the drums. He would jump up on drums at all sorts of places around Providence. Buddy was a really terrible drummer.

—Rudy Cheeks, former Providence Phoenix writer and WHJJ and WHJY radio personality Oh yeah, I knew Buddy. I used to date his daughter. He hated me for a while, but we got to be great friends eventually. I’m gonna miss him—he was a criminal, but he was our criminal.

—my landlord, Danny There’s a law in Rhode Island that limits how large a sign can be, and you have to take them down within 30 days if you violate the law. So Buddy made these giant signs, and put them up 30 days before election day.

—Ian Cozzens

feel like we were successful, he was a charismatic, fun character, he was certainly more interesting and entertaining than just about any other politician you’ll ever see—whether he was the most law-abiding or moral, that’s another question, but he was certainly interesting and colorful and people liked that. Look at the success of Donald Trump!...I think a lot of [Buddy’s success in 2014] was nostalgia, too. We’re kind of in a post-Renaissance—I think we’re searching for what our identity is right now. We don’t feel like a place that’s on the way up, we kind of feel like a place that’s stagnant right now. And I think maybe people wanted more of that, wanted some of that renaissance on-the-way-up feeling. And Buddy represented that.

—Philip Eil He came to the restaurant I used to work at, Mediterraneo, almost every day. He used to smoke a cigar, obviously, in the non-smoking section. We’d have customers complain, “Why is he allowed to smoke his cigar inside?” and we’d just say: “he’s our mayor.”

—Waiter at Caffe Dolce Vita

He brought charisma to the city. He was a supporter of the arts, a supporter of students, and supporter of teachers… That being said, during the time he was mayor he didn’t always get along with teachers. It’s not like we were all “Buddy buddy” all the time. But he got things done, he was an artful negotiator... As far as his reputation, when I think about him I don’t think about those things. He allegedly did things, he pled guilty to those things, he served his time. I’m not perfect, I don’t believe anyone on this earth is perfect, if you do something wrong and atone for it I believe you deserve another chance.

—Maribeth Reynolds-Calabro, Providence Teachers Union President There was a documentary called Vote for Me: Politics in America, which I narrated.

Buddy calls me up—at this point I’m living in an illegal house in the South Side, which he knows is illegal. But he calls me and says, “bring down the documentary.”

I get on the bus right away, go down to City Hall. When I get there he immediately closes the door and whips out a cuban cigar. I put on the VHS and he skips to the segment on him in the documentary. He loves it— he starts buzzing all the people in the office to come watch it too. “We should show this at PPAC [Providence Performing Arts Center],” he says, so he asks me for Louis Alvarez’s phone number.

He calls up Louis in New York and next thing you know he’s telling me to call up the union to make sure we can do a discount, calling up PPAC, trying to make sure the venue is free. He was always like that: barking out orders at people right of the top of his head. And people would all jump up and do it.

—Rudy Cheeks Buddy? I love him. He was one of my closest friends. You know, the first time he got in trouble, it was because he came home and found his wife with another guy.

So he hit him with a log from the fireplace and tried to put his cigar out on his cheek. And you know what? I would’ve done the same thing! I probably would have shot him, because I own guns.

—my Uber driver the other night [In the 2014 mayoral election] I was pretty adamantly opposed to him being elected. I didn’t think it was his city anymore, I wasn’t convinced by his ideas, and I thought that...he had abused the power that came with the office. But I think for a lot of people, he genuinely made them feel good about this place. He made us

Feb 5, 2016

METRO

10

The Language of the Financial Crisis I would begin this article with a *SPOILER ALERT*, if only there were something to spoil about Adam McKay’s Oscar-nominated film, The Big Short: the U.S. housing market crashes, sparking a global economic recession in which millions of people lose their homes, and many more their jobs and livelihood. We know how the film ends, because the reality it represents has only just passed.

Based on Michael Lewis’s bestselling book of the same title—ironically shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award—The Big Short chronicles the story of three investment bankers who bet against the housing market before the press, the public, and most of the financial sector realized they had made a time-bomb of the U.S. economy. It’s a cast of underdogs: the conspiracy theorist who’s been right all along; the rare banker with a scathing hatred for dishonest money; the autistic quant who pits logic against a world that tells him he is wrong. The plot is utterly simple: three investment bankers short the housing market, and we get to watch them tell people over and over again that the economy is doomed, until it is. But while the story is simple, its playing field of securities, subprime loans, and synthetic CDOs is far from it.

One of the principal concerns of McKay’s movie is to explain the crash, and question the opacity of the banking practices that caused it. In this sense, the media industry is at the heart of The Big Short, even though it is about finance. +++ “We’re supposed to be questioning power, we’re supposed to be questioning our representatives, we’re supposed to be questioning everything; now, that’s also the job of the press, and there’s no question at a certain point in this country the press became for profit and for ratings, rather than for questioning” —Adam McKay The Big Short scathingly criticizes Wall Street and the banal greed of the 1% that violently shattered, and continues to shatter, millions of lives. But it’s nothing new to criticize Wall Street greed; what’s truly remarkable about The Big Short is its subtle criticism of the popular press. Throughout the movie, the pop-culture machine interrupts the narrative to explain the opaque vernacular of Wall Street: Margot Robbie drawls on about subprime loans as she sips champagne in a bubble bath; Anthony Bourdain chimes in to explain collateralized debt obligations through cooking metaphors, transporting us to a Cooking Channel from an alternate reality.

The alternate reality proposed by these cuts—in which the Cooking Channel imparts information about the economy, instead of a veal steak—sheds light on the reality in which we live. This is a narrative solution to explain complex economic concepts in an elegant fashion. But more than a stylistic choice, the broken fourth wall indicates the void in the media that McKay’s movie fills.

Both the news media and the movie industry are for-profit, but they’re held to different standards of credibility. The news media—dominated by a short list of companies like News Corp., CBS, Comcast, and Walt Disney Co.—caters to audiences who expect an accurate representation of reality. In fact, in 1949 the Federal Communications Commission issued something called the Fairness Doctrine, which required holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial public issues in an honest, equitable way. But in 1987, the FCC revoked the Doctrine,

buttressed by the argument that it violated the First Amendment--even as many members of congress fought to codify it in law. In other words, there are no checks on the news industry to keep them from pandering to audience’s desires—regardless of honesty or equity.

No analogous laws have graced the movie industry, and while movies based on true stories are common, few overtly acknowledge their important role in shaping world-views and consciousness. It’s refreshing, then, to watch The Big Short, which borrows some of the language of the profit-distorted news industry to present information didactically. Just as news reporters address their audience directly, the actors in The Big Short often turn towards their imagined spectators to fill them in on the jargon necessary to understand the film—and the market crash.

The twist is that some of these actors are direct representatives of the pop-culture machine that’s transformed the news industry. Against all odds, Selena Gomez is here to explain synthetic CDOs in an accessible way, a contrast to the images we usually see of her in the mainstream media. +++ Metaphors heap upon metaphors in The Big Short. The banks that lend money to homeowners transform the language of everyday life into a labyrinth only navigable by economic specialists. Borrowed money to live in a house becomes a loan, becomes a small part of a collateralized debt obligation, becomes a security traded at ultra-high speeds across cross-continental fibre-optic cables by hedge fund managers. The distance between the hedge fund and the working mother of two who pays her bills every month is unimaginable. The Big Short shows us this distance, then bridges it through more metaphors: a Jenga tower becomes the mass of fragile subprime mortgages that are also the houses of normal Americans. The unintelligible, flash-bang conversations on Wall Street juxtapose against cooking metaphors, which then give way to scenes where bankers come face to face with the middle-income families who actually face eviction.

In one of the most striking scenes in the film, the moralist banker Mark Baum takes a trip to Florida to visit a neighborhood full of houses rented by subprime loan borrowers. McMansion after McMansion line suburban cul-de-sacs; big motorboats sit unused in their driveways; every other house bears a red “for sale” sign.

When Baum goes around the surreal suburbia, knocking doors, he meets some of the people on the other side of credit default swap deals: innocent, lower-income families, oblivious to the impending crisis. These physical spaces of the United States, hollowed out by predatory loans, present themselves as the uncanny double of Wall Street excesses, hollow in their abstract capital and banality.

ELI NEUMAN-HAMMOND B’18 is not a metaphor.

11

ARTS

The College Hill Independent

$HORT-¢HANGED

by Eli Neuman-Hammond illustration by Pierie Korostoff

VOCABULARY

Short When someone “shorts” a security, they are betting that it will fall in value at some point after the transaction takes place. The purchaser buys a security from a seller who does not own it, speculating that he or she can sell it back at a lower value in the future, turning a profit.

Subprime loans Subprime loans are loans lent to clients who do not meet the requirements for a loan with ‘prime’ interest rate. They have higher interest rates, and because they are specifically lent to folks who might be unemployed or have a poor track record repaying loans, a default is more likely.

Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) CDOs are products assembled by banks to be sold to investors. A CDO collects thousands of mortgages—some of them good, some of them bad—and then bundles them together. This allows the new product to get a stamp of approval from a ratings agency, and sold at a premium—even though half, or more than half of the CDO consists of loans that are likely to default. The bad loans get lost in the package, like a needle in a haystack; except in this case, the haystack is almost all needles.

Synthetic CDOs An invention of the late 1990s, a synthetic CDO collects swaps and other derivatives instead of more traditional mortgage securities. I could write a novel explaining exactly what this means, and honestly, it probably wouldn’t do either of us much good. This concept is like a computer, and a very select few understand the operating system enough to use, but no one is informed on the level of the motherboard.

Default Fail to repay a loan.

Feb 5, 2016

ARTS

12

DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS The PDF, the STL, and the Future of Documentation

by Jonah Max

In an early effort to digitize their libraries’ vast archive of texts and documents, the archivists and librarians of MIT began Information Transfer Experiments (or the INTREX system) in the winter of 1970. This rudimentary system mechanically retrieved requested flat sheets of microfiche and accompanied them with video signals generated by a flying-spot scanner along with the document’s catalogue information. Rather than more traditional experiments in document digitalization, in which the content or information of a particular document was prioritized, MIT’s INTREX placed a premium on “lookability.” That is, the librarians desired a digital mechanism through which the on-screen and off-screen presentations of a document were nearly indistinguishable—in this sense, a document, even if originally drafted digitally, would inexorably gesture towards the form’s historical qualities as printed, physical paper.

While MIT’s experiments were short lived and ultimately impractical—INTREX devoted most of its resources to documents from the material sciences (cataloguing a measly 20,000 documents in its decade-long lifespan)— it marked one of the many crucial nodes leading up to Adobe’s development of the Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1991.

Much like the librarians and archivists at MIT, software developers at Adobe were fascinated with the idea of creating, as their International Organization for Standardization (ISO) entry reads, “a digital form for representing electronic documents to enable users to exchange and view electronic documents independent of the environment they were created in or the environment they are viewed or printed in.” In this way, the fixed page image of the PDF would seek to point towards both the document’s historical nature as a static, material object as well as something wholly mutable, a form capable of adjusting itself seamlessly across digital and non-digital platforms alike. It is in part due to this blending of forms and the ease with which a PDF file could shuttle between them, media theorist Lisa Gitelman argues in Paper Knowledge, that has led to the format’s current ubiquity.

Seemingly anyone with a personal computer and laser printer can easily and rapidly archive and disseminate thousands of documents, viewable on- or off-screen.

This formal plasticity, however, has at the same time bred a sort of confusion surrounding the document and its finicky definition.

In Suzanne Briet’s 1951 manifesto on the document, Qu’est-ce que la documentation, she comments that an antelope running wild on the plains of Africa should not be considered a document, while if that same animal were to be captured and caged in a zoo, it should be.

That is to say, now that the antelope has been framed and served up as an “object of study,” it has been rendered a document. Considering Briet’s peculiar example of the antelope, it’s worth dwelling on how this object’s documentary qualities shift as it traverses across platforms. If one were to take a film photograph of this antelope and scan the print into a PDF file, what exactly is this digital file the object of study for? What precisely is that digital scan documenting? These sorts of definitional investigations more often than not prove futile or circuitous, but the ease with which they are cast or provoked speaks to

Feb 5, 2016

how unstable this notion of document is. As we find ourselves faced with ever more documents, it is easy to feel that their boundaries are ever more unplaceable and obscure. For instance, this very piece of writing will ultimately be cut from a personal computer’s WordDoc only to be reformatted through InDesign and then circulated both on newsprint paper and digitally as a PDF, where it can again be copied and transferred back to its original WordDoc format. If only to add to this drama of the document and its nebulous definition, it is perhaps worth mentioning that the very nature of the document and its accompanying apparatuses may be undergoing yet another revolution.

CAD software and STL files, the source documents for 3D printing projects, have swarmed Internet torrenting sites and even led to the recent creation of devoted archives such as Thingiverse and Bld3r. From these sites, users can quickly and freely download STL documents, send them to a 3D printer, and fabricate an object according to the document’s specifications. Unlike the PDF, whose accessibility and distribution are still largely governed and regulated by its inventors at Adobe, the STL’s popularity has sprouted from the grassroots of the Internet.

Taking cues from early computer modeling software, such as UNISURF—originally intended for engineers and academics to digitally render complex topological structures—and printing developments in additive manufacturing, the British initiative RepRap set out in 2005 to develop open source software and apparatuses for 3D printing that could be distributed cheaply to the public. While the prohibitive pricing of the PDF’s associated software (such as Acrobat Distiller and Acrobat Exchange) limited its original distribution to large corporations and conglomerates, the STL, with its open source nature, has found an audience among amateurs and professionals alike. Though drafting an STL document or editing the curvature of a particular model requires a degree of expertise, printing one of the millions of pre-set designs can be done by those with little to no knowledge of the systems at hand. Though the democratic ideals of the RepRap project are yet to be fully realized—with MakerBot Replicators still costing upwards of 2,000 dollars—the initiative’s approach to the print market stands in sharp contrast to the practices of Adobe.

It is not only in their targeted distribution, however, that PDFs and STLs differ. Formally, the two file types point towards two distinct notions of the document.

As much as Adobe and their PDF emphasize the appeal of lookability—constantly reminding their users of the document’s material origins—STLs are designed with the intention of both appearing radically different on- and off-screen as well as preceding the material object it inevitably documents. Legible to the computer alone, the STL must, in a way, be let back out onto the plains for us to see precisely what it is in fact sketching, what it serves as the object of study for. Only by executing the document itself are we able to see what it has stored all along.

Historically, as well, these two discrete files gesture towards differing moments. While much of the formatting and rhetoric of the PDF draws on ancient Greek papyrus texts, which one would scroll through seamlessly as they read, the STL points to a much more recent historical period: the American 1930s. With the advent of the photooffset, the mimeograph, the hectograph, and microfilm, American corporate offices found themselves capable of rapidly and cheaply reproducing pre-existing government documents, a capability previously reserved for designated job printers. This transformation not only led to a proliferation of customized yet look-alike documents but also to the blossoming of the secretary industry, as secretaries able to produce and reproduce texts replaced the labor of scriveners and clerks. Similarly, one can imagine, the introduction and broad distribution of 3D printing capabilities will support its own cottage industry of programmers, equipped with the tools to cheaply reprint anything from an IKEA table to a 3D printer itself.

Very soon, if not already, we may find ourselves in a world in which documents manifest themselves no longer as the endless Terms & Agreements which accompany nearly every object imaginable, but rather as something hidden within the object itself, the distinct code designating the curvature of your mug or the dimensions of your armchair.

JONAH MAX ’18 has never contracted an STL.

ARTS

14

T N E C AS Learning to Nurture Nature

by Fatima Husain illustration by Yuko Okabe Yellow petals surprise the curious amidst the sea of Kentucky Blue. My family doesn’t quite understand why I stare out of the windows sometimes and plan my future gardens as they try to plan my future. There, I’ll have a greenhouse, on the side a raised bed, next to that, tomatoes, and maybe, marigolds. I’ll consider the dynamics of the light and the air, how it brushes softly across budding leaves and fertile soils. They find my plans peculiar and rather abnormal.

At what point will I become serious about planning my future, my career, my love, my family, and maybe even my retirement?

Sweet Pea I tried once to teach my sister, my sweet pea, how to grow sweet peas. I chose sweet peas because the seeds germinate quickly—four days in regular seed starter! She thought it took too long, so she gave up. I nurtured the plants as long as I could, moving them to bigger pots, watering them only when they wilted, but they never produced the pods I longed to see. I continued my gardening binges alone, bothered by my mother calling me inside all the time to eat, bothered by my father calling me inside to study, and bothered by my sister calling me inside to play with her.

I do not remember how exactly I discovered my interest in gardening, and did not realize until years later that it marked the beginning of my journey into Earth science. My parents often expressed their confusion as to why I hid away in the garage, bent over my collection of seeds, mapping out my gardens. I understood something they did not, that the idea of nurturing something that nurtures you isn’t unnatural—it makes sense. We owe it to the plants and we owe it to ourselves. I remember my parents crawling over the rocks (rocks, yes, instead of mulch) in our garden, planting tulips, daylilies, and roses all around when we moved into our new home. My parents clearly didn’t understand the rabbits and deer of the area: my mother and father planted the perfect midnight snacks. They only thought the flowers would look beautiful. I thought so too.

Frustrated by Iowa’s finest mammals, I began to concoct different non-toxic mixtures to repel the hungry, ransacking my mother’s spice drawer and stash of onions. I would arrive to school early each morning, just to use the computers in the library to scour online gardening blogs and journals for tried-and-tested methods of natural pest deterrence. An avid member of The Home Depot Garden Club, I would submit questions to the Home Depot gardening blogs, hoping the gardening experts could help me with my woes. Garlic!

Pepper! Onion skins! Sneezes later, I took to spraying a vile concoction of animal urine and garlic all over the plants, allowing them to grow rather than be digested. The spray repelled, all right, and the garden thrived as I watched it from the window longingly.

Things Fall Apart By the time I was 12, my mother finally acknowledged my obsession with hydroponics, and appeased my pleas for pipes and pumps with a miniature hydroponic apparatus. The little Aerogarden promised to grow plants with water and nutrients—no soil! The roots hid underneath the bubbling water, and sprigs of basil, mint, and cilantro reached out towards the lights above. I grew herbs, but I really wanted to grow cherry tomatoes. In a different life, perhaps. The water circulating around the roots supported drosophila, our favorite fruit flies, so I couldn’t use the herbs I grew. The relationship was too one-sided—I gave and gave, and the system gave to the flies. A betrayal of sorts. My mother watched me change out the water religiously, pruning the herbs, coaxing them to recognize the wonderful life they had.

15

SCIENCE

One day, when I came home to check on my plants, I found an empty space atop the counter where the Aerogarden once sat. My mother quietly threw out the water and herbs and returned it, perhaps out of mercy. The hydroponics interest did not last long, though I still think of the idea from time to time. Maybe if I tried something else.

It only made sense that next I carry around daffodil and paperwhite bulbs in my backpack as I trotted around Central Academy, offering to grow flowers in gloomy classrooms with just water! The proudest moment: my English teacher held up the flower in the pebble filled vase for the class to see—look, only with water! I beamed, and the other students turned back to reading Things Fall Apart.

When the flowers stopped blooming, they started rotting.

I learned my lesson. I drained them, and stashed away my pebble-filled vases for use another time. Maybe with tulips.

No one missed the plants, and my once-supportive teacher didn’t even notice their absence.

miles and miles, now provided shelter to life, giving it shade, holding moisture, and protecting it from curious humans like me.

On our last day in Hawai’i, my family stopped by an ice cream shop. In the corner of the shop, the store sold ‘Hawaiian’ plants, though I knew none of them were truly native to the islands. I dreamed of buying the whole rack of tubers, bulbs, and seeds, and yearningly eyed the Ti plant.

When my parents asked me what I wanted, I told them the truth, and they frowned. I settled for Kona coffee ice cream, and as I licked, I thought of my gardens once again.

My gardens will provide shelter to life, and will provide shelter to me. When you discover an interest, nurture it, and it will nurture you.

FATIMA HUSAIN B’17 now often carries rocks in her backpack.

A Dear Friend My best friend from across the street invited me to swim in her pool. As I floated in the water while she talked about Katy Perry, I noticed the yellow snapdragons blooming besides the pink roses on the patio. I watched the colors switch from pink to yellow to yellow to pink to bud to bloom to bloom to bud.

Mrs. Winifred Drislane shuffled out of her basement room in her nightgown and slippers and came to pick off the old blooms—so that the plant saves its energy for the new flowers.

I saw the hydrangea shrubs by the siding, and wondered about the pH of the soil, and if my neighbors ever tried manipulating the pH to reveal brilliant blues or pretty pinks.

Mrs. Drislane would know.

And so Mrs. Drislane, nearly 75 at the time, and I became close: an unlikely friendship. Soon, I found that I went across the street to my best friend’s house to learn flower arrangement in the basement, read word after word on how to plant the lettuce in the victory garden, and how to start African violets with just a leaf! We bought each other plants, and she promised to give me her irises. It was delightful.

Every evening I’d meet with her, she’d send me home with a small bouquet of flowers from her garden, which she’d closely watch me arrange, critiquing me with every cut and placement. I’d discuss passages from Crockett’s writings with her. I memorized the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, and inquired how far I could push the limits with my seed selections. We considered starting more roses from cuttings, and concluded that we did not have the time or materials to do so. Again, in another life.

Now, years later, I still make a point to visit my dear friend when I can, always bringing her a new plant and a recent gardening anecdote. I regularly stay an hour or two more than I initially plan. She often inquires about my schooling, my cooking habits, my explorations of New England. I tell her about how I study the Earth now, and how I now crawl over rocks like my parents once did. An important difference, I tell her: in this case, I know what I am doing.

Shelter Recently, I completed a portion of The King’s Trail in Kona, Hawai’i. My studies in geology allowed me to appreciate the formations I saw, but what truly piqued my interest were the little ferns that sprung up in the midst of such desolation. My sister, still not interested in plants, complained each time I carefully climbed down cracks in the lava rock to get a closer look at the ferns. The lava, which destroyed all growth for

The College Hill Independent

FLY PIRATES The Global Politics of M.I.A, Soccer, and Jerseys

by Sam Samore illustration by Teri Minogue

Those who are familiar with the singer/musician M.I.A., born Mathangi Arulpragasam, know that she presents a certain air of unfuckable-with-ness. This fact may have been lost on the owners of the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club (PSG), who sued M.I.A in January for the use of their Jersey in the music video for her single, “Borders,” released November 27, 2015.

At one point in the video, which shows M.I.A. singing against a backdrop of refugees climbing fences, crowded in boats, and standing on the beach, the singer wears a PSG jersey with the “Fly Emirates” sponsorship logo edited to read “Fly Pirates.”

Now, PSG is suing M.I.A, demanding that she remove the video from the internet and compensate PSG for the alleged harm their brand suffered from its use in the video.

Somewhat bizarrely, PSG also felt it necessary to mention in their cease-and-desist letter that their club has “a remarkably impressive track record,” a “prestigious image in France and worldwide,” and that the club’s charitable foundation donated one million euros toward the refugee crisis (and is therefore absolved from ever again considering the situation). The response suggests a degree of fear, like a group of thirteen year old boys desperate to prove that their soccer team is, indeed, the best, and that they are, indeed, men. PSG is one of the richest football clubs in the world, making their demand for compensation frankly ridiculous from a financial standpoint.

Deeper digging into the politics at play, though, reveals a variety of much slimier motives.

In response, M.I.A. took to the airwaves, giving an interview on Democracy Now. She said, “Obviously I don’t want to talk about fashion, but this is a fashion issue…If you look at Third World countries, not just the refugee issue, but if you just look at Third World countries as a whole…Wearing football tops has been the uniform [of ] the underprivileged people of the world, because that is the cheapest thing we can find.

It’s bootleg stuff. We bootleg the biggest brands.” She’s correct; it is a fashion issue, but one that reflects broader forces in the world of soccer. PSG, in allowing it to exist, implicitly supports the massive soccer jersey bootleg industry insofar as it indirectly profits them by increasing their exposure, but as soon as some manipulation of the symbols occurs, as soon as some representative power is taken from them, they balk. In effect, PSG wants the global underprivileged to know about them, but only on the condition that PSG is not associated with them in the ‘Western’ eye. This exploitative relationship exists beyond the realm of soccer jerseys; in fact, it’s pervasive to the global soccer competition industry. +++ Playing sports in the United States is not cheap. American football requires extensive outfitting; baseball requires bats, gloves, and helmets; and basketball, though limited in special equipment, needs a specialized court with hoops. Soccer, on the other hand, requires only a ball to be played, which may explain, in part, its emergence as the only sport of its kind in terms of global reach: almost everywhere in the world, boys can play soccer.

Feb 5, 2016

Thus the ubiquity of bootleg soccer jerseys, especially amongst young men. They exist at an intersection of cultural relevance, inexpensiveness, and conveyed youthfulness that no other item of clothing inhabits It would be too easy, however, to assume that soccer’s relatively low economic barrier to entry translates to an absence of post-colonial power dynamics on the international soccer stage. It is no coincidence that PSG’s jersey displays “Fly Emirates” far larger than their own club name, nor that to tamper with the corporate logo was seen as equivalent to tampering with the club brand itself. At the outset of the corporate explosion in soccer during the 70’s, the FIFA organized world-cup was at the forefront of the commercial-soccer world, but they have since been outpaced by European and British Clubs and the sporting competitions between them, as opposed to global competitions between national teams. The most famous of them, teams like PSG or Manchester United, have nearly unlimited funds as a result of the corporate sponsorships they are so desperate to protect, which they use to recruit the best soccer players from developing countries around the world by offering salaries that clubs in the players’ home countries cannot compete with.

The practice is so extensive that between the top five African teams who played in the 2014 world cup (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mali), there were only five out of 150 players playing in domestic leagues during the regular season; the rest played for European clubs during the regular season. Clubs in developing nations, especially in Africa and South America, lose their best players, and as a result have had immense difficulty developing successful domestic leagues, while the wealthiest European teams benefit from the domestic league labor expended to train these players. During the World Cup, when athletes play for their home teams, the balance is restored, but from a financial standpoint the FIFA organized world-cup is hardly relevant anymore; it’s inter-club competitions that matter. The phenomenon has been dubbed the “muscle drain.” +++ “Borders” begins with a series of questions so blunt they almost seem banal: “Borders (What’s up with that?) / Politics (What’s up with that?)” However, the constant repetition of that phrase, “What’s up with that,” which becomes more disaffected and meaningless with each line, offers a vicious critique of the West’s fleeting interest in the refugee crisis and the plight of the world’s poor, as the lyrics move on to “Being bae (What’s up with that?) / Breaking internet (What’s up with that)? / Being real (What’s up with that?),” and finally to “Freedom (What’s up with that?) / Your power (What’s up with that?).”

If “Borders” is about the damage that borders can do to our ability to empathize, it might seem that M.I.A. would be critical of the argument that particular countries deserve to keep their best soccer players, that national boundaries should be respected as opposed to transcended. Ultimately, however, this would be a misreading of the spirit of the song.

A couple weeks ago M.I.A. tweeted, “PSG should withdraw B 4 people scratch the surface material and get into the politics of it all.” That is to say, M.I.A. is aware of the broad inequality in global soccer, as well as the two-faced nature of the European leagues’ relationship with soccer in developing nations: they support player development only insofar as it might fill their own pockets, but seem to have no interest in supporting a soccer infrastructure that could benefit the whole nation.

In January, a photo of a five-year-old Afghan boy wearing a homemade Messi (one of the world’s biggest soccer stars) jersey, fashioned out of a plastic grocery bag, went viral.

Eventually, the identity of the boy was discovered, and he has been invited to meet Messi. The story seems to be an example of the globally empowering effect of the soccer industry. In the same vein, “muscle drain” players recruited from nations where they lived in poverty can become millionaires. But these snapshots create an illusion of a warm and fuzzy globalism that the European soccer leaders want us to believe in, so that we ignore the broad exclusivity their practices create by debilitating domestic leagues in developing nations—in effect strengthening the first world/third world dichotomy, that is to say, strengthening the borders between people.

PSG’s reaction to M.I.A’s music video demonstrates the same hypocrisy. In their letter to her manager, they write, “She denounces…the treatment and living conditions of refugees… we simply do not understand…why we are associated to such denunciation. This association is all the more hard to understand that nothing in our activities…suggests that we have anything to do with the problems highlighted by M.I.A.” Even harder to understand is why PSG should be troubled by being associated with such a denunciation, only to turn and mention their charity’s support of refugees. In other words, PSG is attempting to claim both that they have nothing to do with the refugee crisis and that they are intimately involved in the effort to solve it. It’s the same doublethink they practice when they allow the proliferation of bootlegged jerseys in order to increase their visibility abroad, but panic at the prospect of being linked to refugees in a music video whose audience will be largely European.

The instability of PSG’s position, their own lack of confidence evidenced by the overdetermined section of the letter which details the fame of their club, comes from their impossible desire to be completely apolitical. For their charity to not donate money to the cause would be in itself a statement, so they donate. But they refuse to be associated with the actual bodies, with the physical mark of the people who wear their jerseys, who share their love for soccer. Their bodies are too political.

SAM SAMORE B’17 has never flown pirates.

METABOLICS

16

I.

THERE'S NOTHING MORE TO SAY With Quotations from “Song” by Langston Hughes

by Liz Cory

I feel unhelpful sending her poems, but they are all I have. Lizzie emailed me because two of her friends’ fathers are withering away and she is only thirteen and she needed to tell someone.

I loved my friend. He went away from me.

Not even Langston Hughes can untwist ALS. Poetry can’t stop cancer. You don't even have to respond, she said. As I type back, I think of my own dad’s swollen ankles three pillows high on the couch, soccer commentators yammering at low volume, a blue cuff pumped around his left bicep. Blood pressure’s 118 over 80 today. Pretty good, huh? Yeah, you’re doing just fine, Dad. I google the figures later.

II. Vin calls me that night because I’m his best friend and, he says, Things aren’t good.

Gotta keep this hush hush, but Sally’s dad…maybe I’ll have to fly home for the funeral… all I know is he didn’t show up for dinner and all the lights in the house were off. There’s nothing more to say.

I stay on the line as nighttime gusts whisper across my face.

Days later I learn he fell off the roof when cleaning the gutters.

Sally is only twenty, and when she rushes into the taxi that afternoon she doesn’t care how it happened. She calls Vin because he loves her and she needs to tell someone.

III. What do I know about loss? Hearts crack all around as I crawl in the dark. In 1967, Hughes dies of cancer at 65. Poetry can’t stop cancer. At seventeen, I sit at the bottom of the stairs, my sister Caroline at the top wailing to Mom on the phone. Why aren’t you here, she weeps, why is no one here with us? The room is burnt yellow, charred candle wax and aching wood, tired beige wallpaper. The old dog slowing under my palm, his pills salved to the rug with saliva. Thick May air sealing us inside.

The poem ends, soft as it began—His swollen heart thuds under a warped rib cage. I knew when his jaw buckled to the floor and his nose crumpled against the stair. I loved my friend.

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LITERARY

The College Hill Independent

Math the Band + Still Flyin’ + Bellerophon Aurora // 9pm // $7 Math the Band the band is a great band.

Probably one of my favorite bands. Retrosynths combined with non-stop guitars.

Scream along with Kevin and Justine as they ask, “Why didn’t you get a haircut?”

tuesday

41st Boston Science Fiction Film Festival & Marathon 55 Davis Sq, Somerville, MA // $64.50–125 11 days of movies and “schlock” starts today! It all leads up a to 24-hour non-stop marathon of “classic, new and schlock films” from noon 2.14 to noon 2.15. I just found out that “schlock” means trashy and comes from the Yiddish word for apoplectic stroke. Who knew?

saturday

Break the Chains feat. Downtown Boys 549 Columbus Ave, Boston // 6pm–10pm // $10–20 suggested donation Break the Chains is an “all-ages, all gender radical dance party featuring nationally touring queer & trans performers.” This Friday they’ve got Providence punk superstars Downtown Boys and New York synthpop hero Bell’s Roar gracing the stage

Superbee, Midriffs, Lovesick, Willow AS220 // 8.30pm // $7 CD release party for Superbee, a psychedelic piano and drum duo out of Hadley, Massachusetts. Supported by Boston band Midriffs and Providence bands Lovesick and Willow. Expect lots of fuzz.

Cannibal Ramblers, Vudu Sister and the Dead Girls, Dr. Fuzz Dusk // 9pm // $=?

Blues rock. Crunchy guitar riffs, driving drums, and jamming on stage. I’m listening to it as I write and I want to say, “like a steam engine”—does that work for you?

2.09 Film Screening of “Examined Life” and Q & A with Astra Taylor Pembroke Hall 305 (172 Meeting St) // 4pm // free “Filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.” The movie features celebrity intellectuals like Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Cornell West, and others.

Drop-In Chess Club 186 Carpenter St // 7–9 pm // 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?).

Rhode Island Fact of the Week: The Isle of Rhodes has a population of 115,490 people.

Newport Seal Tour Bowen’s Ferry Landing, Newport // daily // $22 for 1hr, $42 for 2hr After 4 years of living in Rhode Island I am just now finding out that you can go on a boat tour and look at seals. I am also just finding out that there are seals in Rhode Island. I’m definitely doing this. Also, Save the Bay is a super cool environmental non-profit and you should feel good about giving them $22 in exchange for chilling with seals.

Tickets at www.savebay.org/seals

Blackballed: The Politics of Race on America’s Campuses with Guest Speaker Lawrence Ross Macmillan 117 (167 Thayer St) // 6pm // free Author Lawrence Ross will be speaking about his latest book, Blackballed, a study of racism on US college campuses generally and, especially, in the fraternity and sorority system. The publisher presents the book as an exposé of “America’s hidden secret” of racism on campus. I don’t think anyone besides the publisher thought this was “hidden” but you should go hear Mr. Ross speak anyways. Book-signing to follow.

Starla & Sons: Coming in Hot Salomon 001 (79 Waterman St) // 8pm // free Starla & Sons is a long-form improv comedy troupe from Brown U. They’re very funny.

Come laugh with them.

Runnin’ thru the 401 Aurora // 9.30pm // free DJ Cathawk and DJ LaNeve will be MC’ing this free dance party downtown. It looks like a lot of people are planning on going, which is awesome, because Aurora feels kind of big to me when there aren’t a lot of people. And then I can’t dance much. But that’s not this night. This night I can dance.

Because there are several hundred Facebook RSVPs.

Free HIV Testing AIDS Project RI, 9 Pleasant St // 12–3pm // free “In observance of National Black HIV/ AIDS Awareness Day, AIDS Project Rhode Island is offering special hours for free, anonymous, rapid HIV testing. Testing will be provided in English, Spanish and Portuguese. No blood is drawn, and results are available in 20 minutes. All are welcome on a walk-in basis.”—credit Motif magazine

wednesday

2.05

sunday

2.06

2.10 Hip-Hop Freestyle Sessions Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, 265 Oxford St // 3–6pm // free Join Project 401—the feel-good, positive vibes hip-hop collective—for some free schooling in “Bboying/Bgirling, Emceeing, Deejaying and Graffiti.”

2.11

thursday

friday

List

2.07

Gentrification is Breaking Our Hearts Rally / Manifestación se llama La Gentrificación está Rompiendo Nuesteros Corazones City Hall // 10am // free (obviously..)

Direct Action for Rights and Equality is hosting this Valentine’s Day rally to protest Mayor Jorge Elorza’s management of the “Everyhome” housing program.

The organizers write, “The Mayor has refused to establish a community advisory board to oversee this program and ensure that it houses the city’s neediest residents.” Come out and support!

Lego Club Rochambeau Library, 708 Hope St // 3–5 pm // free There will probably be a lot of kids at the Lego club. I don’t think you have a to be a kid to go, but I think it’s fair to say you might have to answer for yourself if you are not at least with a child.

So says the library: “All are welcome to build anything from scratch; creations are displayed for the week.”