The College Hill Independent Vol. 33 Issue 8 by College Hill Independent

THIS IS PAINFUL AND IT WILL BE FOR A LONG TIME. -HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON A TRIUMPH FOR THE FORCES, AT HOME AND ABROAD, OF NATIVISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, MISOGYNY, AND RACISM. -DAVID REMNICK AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION WOULD HAVE BETTER REFLEXES THAN THIS, WOULD RECOGNIZE THE COMMUNICABLE NATURE OF FEAR MORE QUICKLY, WOULD RALLY ITS IMMUNE DEFENSE MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN THE UNITED STATES HAS IN THE PAST SIXTEEN MONTHS. -JELANI COBB FOR NOW, WE NEED TO BREATHE, STAND TALL AND ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY AS BEST WE CAN...WE HAVE TO FIGHT HARD, THOUGH I DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT THAT FIGHT A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY LOOKS LIKE. -ROXANE GAY THESE ARE TRANSITIONAL YEARS NOV 11 2016 33 AND THE DUES / WILL BE HEAVY -DIANE DI PRIMA ALWAYS A THIEF AND NEVER CAUGHT -ZOE LEONARD THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN FOUNDED IN PART ON THE INABILITY OF PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR WHO IS PRESIDENT OF A COLONIZED LAND -REINA GOSSETT LOS FASCISTAS NO PASARÁN! NO PASARÁN! -DOLORES IBARRURI GOMEZ MY RESPONSE TO RACISM IS ANGER. THAT ANGER HAS EATEN CLEFTS INTO MY LIVING ONLY WHEN IT REMAINED UNSPOKEN, USELESS TO ANYONE -AUDRE LORDE IF WE WANTED TO, PEOPLE OF COLOR COULD BURN THE WORLD DOWN. FOR WHAT WE HAVE EXPERIENCED/ARE EXPERIENCING. BUT WE DON’T—HOW STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL THAT OUR SACRED RESPECT FOR THE EARTH. FOR LIFE IS DEEPER THAN OUR RAGE. -NAYYIRAH WAHEED THERE IS NO TIME FOR DESPAIR, NO PLACE FOR SELF-PITY, NO NEED FOR SILENCE, NO ROOM FOR FEAR. WE SPEAK, WE WRITE, WE DO LANGUAGE. THAT IS HOW CIVILIZATIONS HEAL. -TONI MORRISON THERE IS NO BETTER THAN ADVERSITY. EVERY DEFEAT, EVERY HEARTBREAK, EVERY LOSS, CONTAINS ITS OWN SEED. -MALCOLM X I LOVE THE WORD SURVIVAL. IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE A PROMISE WORTH KEEPING. -ALEXIS GUMBS THIS IS PAINFUL AND IT WILL BE FOR A LONG TIME. -HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON A TRIUMPH FOR THE FORCES, AT HOME AND ABROAD, OF NATIVISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, MISOGYNY, AND RACISM. -DAVID REMNICK AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION WOULD HAVE BETTER REFLEXES THAN THIS, WOULD RECOGNIZE THE COMMUNICABLE NATURE OF FEAR MORE QUICKLY, WOULD RALLY ITS IMMUNE DEFENSE MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN THE UNITED STATES HAS IN THE PAST SIXTEEN MONTHS. -JELANI COBB FOR NOW, WE NEED TO BREATHE, STAND TALL AND ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY AS BEST WE CAN...WE HAVE TO FIGHT HARD, THOUGH I DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT THAT FIGHT LOOKS LIKE. -ROXANE GAY THESE ARE TRANSITIONAL YEARS AND THE DUES / WILL BE HEAVY -DIANE DI PRIMA ALWAYS A THIEF AND NEVER CAUGHT -ZOE LEONARD THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN FOUNDED IN PART ON THE INABILITY OF PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR WHO IS PRESIDENT OF A COLONIZED LAND -REINA GOSSETT LOS FASCISTAS NO PASARÁN! NO PASARÁN! -DOLORES IBARRURI GOMEZ MY RESPONSE TO RACISM IS ANGER. THAT ANGER HAS EATEN CLEFTS INTO MY LIVING ONLY WHEN IT REMAINED UNSPOKEN, USELESS TO ANYONE -AUDRE LORDE IF WE WANTED TO, PEOPLE OF COLOR COULD BURN THE WORLD DOWN. FOR WHAT WE HAVE EXPERIENCED/ ARE EXPERIENCING. BUT WE DON’T—HOW STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL THAT OUR SACRED RESPECT FOR THE EARTH. FOR LIFE IS DEEPER THAN OUR RAGE. -NAYYIRAH WAHEED THERE IS NO TIME FOR DESPAIR, NO PLACE FOR SELF-PITY, NO NEED FOR SILENCE, NO ROOM FOR FEAR. WE SPEAK, WE WRITE, WE DO LANGUAGE. THAT IS HOW CIVILIZATIONS HEAL. -TONI MORRISON THERE IS NO BETTER THAN ADVERSITY. EVERY DEFEAT, EVERY HEARTBREAK, EVERY LOSS, CONTAINS ITS OWN SEED. -MALCOLM X I LOVE THE WORD SURVIVAL. IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE A PROMISE WORTH KEEPING. -ALEXIS GUMBS THIS IS PAINFUL AND IT WILL BE FOR A LONG TIME. -HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON A TRIUMPH FOR THE FORCES, AT HOME AND ABROAD, OF NATIVISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, MISOGYNY, AND RACISM. -DAVID REMNICK AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION WOULD HAVE BETTER REFLEXES THAN THIS, WOULD RECOGNIZE THE COMMUNICABLE NATURE OF FEAR MORE QUICKLY, WOULD RALLY ITS IMMUNE DEFENSE MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN THE UNITED STATES HAS IN THE PAST SIXTEEN MONTHS. -JELANI COBB FOR NOW, WE NEED TO BREATHE, STAND TALL AND ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY AS BEST WE CAN...WE HAVE TO FIGHT HARD, THOUGH I DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT THAT FIGHT LOOKS LIKE. -ROXANE GAY THESE ARE TRANSITIONAL YEARS AND THE DUES / WILL BE HEAVY -DIANE DI PRIMA ALWAYS A THIEF AND NEVER CAUGHT -ZOE LEONARD THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN FOUNDED IN PART ON THE INABILITY OF PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR WHO IS PRESIDENT OF A COLONIZED LAND -REINA GOSSETT LOS FASCISTAS NO PASARÁN! NO PASARÁN! -DOLORES IBARRURI GOMEZ MY RESPONSE TO RACISM IS ANGER. THAT ANGER HAS EATEN CLEFTS INTO MY LIVING ONLY WHEN IT REMAINED UNSPOKEN, USELESS TO ANYONE -AUDRE LORDE IF WE WANTED TO, PEOPLE OF COLOR COULD BURN THE WORLD DOWN. FOR WHAT WE HAVE EXPERIENCED/ARE EXPERIENCING. BUT WE DON’T—HOW STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL THAT OUR SACRED RESPECT FOR THE EARTH. FOR LIFE IS DEEPER THAN OUR RAGE. -NAYYIRAH WAHEED THERE IS NO TIME FOR DESPAIR, NO PLACE FOR SELF-PITY, NO NEED FOR SILENCE, NO ROOM FOR FEAR. WE SPEAK, WE WRITE, WE DO LANGUAGE. THAT IS HOW CIVILIZATIONS HEAL. -TONI MORRISON THERE IS NO BETTER THAN ADVERSITY. EVERY DEFEAT, EVERY HEARTBREAK, EVERY LOSS, CONTAINS ITS OWN SEED. -MALCOLM X I LOVE THE WORD SURVIVAL. IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE A PROMISE WORTH KEEPING. -ALEXIS GUMBS THIS IS PAINFUL AND IT WILL BE FOR A LONG TIME. -HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON A TRIUMPH FOR THE FORCES, AT HOME AND ABROAD, OF NATIVISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, MISOGYNY, AND RACISM. -DAVID REMNICK AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION WOULD HAVE BETTER REFLEXES THAN THIS, WOULD RECOGNIZE THE COMMUNICABLE NATURE OF FEAR MORE QUICKLY, WOULD RALLY ITS IMMUNE DEFENSE MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN THE UNITED STATES HAS IN THE PAST SIXTEEN MONTHS. -JELANI COBB FOR NOW, WE NEED TO BREATHE, STAND TALL AND ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY AS BEST WE CAN...WE HAVE TO FIGHT HARD, THOUGH I DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT THAT FIGHT LOOKS LIKE. -ROXANE GAY THESE ARE TRANSITIONAL YEARS AND THE DUES / WILL BE HEAVY -DIANE DI PRIMA ALWAYS A THIEF AND NEVER CAUGHT -ZOE LEONARD THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN FOUNDED IN PART ON THE INABILITY OF PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR WHO IS PRESIDENT OF A COLONIZED LAND -REINA GOSSETT LOS FASCISTAS NO PASARÁN! NO PASARÁN! -DOLORES IBARRURI GOMEZ MY RESPONSE TO RACISM IS ANGER. THAT ANGER HAS EATEN CLEFTS INTO MY LIVING ONLY WHEN IT REMAINED UNSPOKEN, USELESS TO ANYONE -AUDRE LORDE IF WE WANTED TO, PEOPLE OF COLOR COULD BURN THE WORLD DOWN. FOR WHAT WE HAVE EXPERIENCED/ARE EXPERIENCING. BUT WE DON’T—HOW STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL THAT OUR SACRED RESPECT FOR THE EARTH. FOR LIFE IS DEEPER THAN OUR RAGE. -NAYYIRAH WAHEED THERE IS NO TIME FOR DESPAIR, NO PLACE FOR SELF-PITY, NO NEED FOR SILENCE, NO ROOM FOR FEAR. WE SPEAK, WE WRITE, WE DO LANGUAGE. THAT IS HOW CIVILIZATIONS HEAL. -TONI MORRISON THERE IS NO BETTER THAN ADVERSITY. EVERY DEFEAT, EVERY HEARTBREAK, EVERY LOSS, CONTAINS ITS OWN SEED. -MALCOLM X I LOVE THE WORD SURVIVAL. IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE A PROMISE WORTH KEEPING. -ALEXIS GUMBS THIS IS PAINFUL AND IT WILL BE FOR A LONG TIME. -HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON A TRIUMPH FOR THE FORCES, AT HOME AND ABROAD, OF NATIVISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, MISOGYNY, AND RACISM. -DAVID REMNICK AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION WOULD HAVE BETTER REFLEXES THAN THIS, WOULD RECOGNIZE THE COMMUNICABLE NATURE OF FEAR MORE QUICKLY, WOULD RALLY ITS IMMUNE DEFENSE MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN THE UNITED STATES HAS IN THE PAST SIXTEEN MONTHS. -JELANI COBB FOR NOW, WE NEED TO BREATHE, STAND TALL AND ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY AS BEST WE CAN...WE HAVE TO FIGHT HARD, THOUGH I DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT THAT FIGHT LOOKS LIKE. -ROXANE GAY THESE ARE TRANSITIONAL YEARS AND THE DUES / WILL BE HEAVY -DIANE DI PRIMA ALWAYS A THIEF AND NEVER CAUGHT -ZOE LEONARD THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN FOUNDED IN PART ON THE INABILITY OF PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR WHO IS PRESIDENT OF A COLONIZED LAND -REINA GOSSETT LOS

THE

COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

THE

INDY

A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY VOLUME 33 / NUMBER 08 NOV 11 2016

NEWS 02

This Past Week Camila Ruiz Segovia and Marianna McMurdock

The Indy Stands in Solidarity

METRO 05

Veggie Tales Joshua Kurtz and Sylvia Brown

Gina Raimondo Katrina Northrop

Providence Responds Jack Brook

ARTS 11

Moonlit Will Weatherly

Rashaun Mitchell Zack Kligler

FROM THE EDITORS

We don’t really know what to say. Until Tuesday night, the possibility of a Trump presidency felt, to many of us, almost impossibly distant. As Brown and RISD students, we have been among the country’s most insulated from Donald Trump and the bigotry he has incited. For months, we looked around and saw that our friends were voting for Hillary and we felt that that was good enough. Now, with dread, we confront a future that feels increasingly destructive, and we face our complicity in enabling that future. Our feelings are not unique; what we are saying isn’t anything new. Yet we recognize and value the opportunity that the Indy gives us to amplify, in some small way, the voices that we think matter.

— SLJ

FEATURES 15

Order in the Corpse Dolma Ombadykow

SCIENCE MANAGING EDITORS

Roots of the STEM Anonymous Scientists

TBT 14

Sophie Kasakove Lisa Borst Jamie Packs NEWS

Kid Pix The Indy

Camila Ruiz Segovia Shane Potts Liz Cory METRO

LITERARY 17

Sand Mode Hadley Sorsby-Jones

X 18

Duality Adrian Gonzalez and Daniel Stone

Jane Argodale Will Weatherly Marianna McMurdock

LITERARY

Stefania Gomez EPHEMERA

Patrick McMenamin Mark Benz X

Liby Hays Nichole Cochary

FEATURES

Dominique Pariso Elias Bresnick Dolma Ombadykow METABOLICS

Sam Samore Isabelle Doyle SCIENCE

Fatima Husain TECH

Jonah Max OCCULT

Sophia Washburn

DESIGN & LAYOUT

Celeste Matsui Meryl Charleston Andrew Linder Ruby Stenhouse WEB MANAGER

LIST

Charlie Windolf

Malcolm Drenttel Alec Mapes-Frances

BUSINESS MANAGER

ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

SENIOR EDITOR

Gabriel Matesanz

Alec Mapes-Frances

STAFF WRITERS

MVP

Hannah Maier-Katkin Jack Brook Eve Zelickson Saanya Jain Anna Hundert Andrew Deck Signe Swanson Josh Kurtz

Camila Ruiz Segovia

ARTS

Will Tavlin Ryan Rosenberg Kelton Ellis

Dorothy Windham Julia Benbassat Pia Mileaf-Patel

STAFF ILLUSTRATORS

Frans van Hoek Teri Minogue Yuko Okabe Ivan Rios-Fetchko Maria Cano-Flavia My Tran Bryn Brunnstrom

Dolma Ombadykow

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

HOW WE ARE FEELING THIS WEEK BY

Camila Ruiz Segovia and Marianna McMurdock

How I Feel

I like to think that I came here because I wanted to and not because my country expelled me. When you leave from Mexico to come to the United States, your friends understand it but also get angry. You gave up. You couldn’t bear the national tragedy. I knew that leaving Mexico meant leaving my family behind to come to a place that didn’t want me. I knew that but I still came here and against all odds, I found community. One day, my father, who has always encouraged me to return home, told me I was better off staying. This happened after he had gone through a year of receiving weekly life threats, being unemployed, and marginally surviving his illness. And so I began calling this place home. For a while, it felt like it. It is my home but not my country. I’m not a citizen. So on November 8, my heart was beating so fast at the idea that my ability to stay here was being decided and I didn’t have a say. The lady on CNN spoke so loudly: “the first poll results coming in.” And then a long night of being reminded that half of this country does not believe in my humanity. All those states in red. My friends getting insulted in public spaces, hiding, fearing, making urgent calls to family members: Are you safe? Are you at home right now? Don’t leave the apartment. Trump had won. People of color across this country, we weren’t surprised, we were just so fucking angry. All these plans about our future crashed within a night. As Trump was announcing his victory, millions of people of color began thinking about strategies for survival. For staying healthy. For staying here at all. This is my home but this won’t be my home for much longer. Now the possibility of a visa renewal is gone. In two years when my visa expires, I want to think that I am going back home because I want to, not because this country expelled me.

This war has gone on too long, my mother says to me as I fill her arms with tears in July. I wish I could change your skin so I could protect you. I pull away, hard. I am my father’s Black, his earnest laugh and tight curls. She worried when I left our home in California. She worried, too, when she realized she would have a Black and Latina daughter all at once in this world and not the next, not the one of our desert dreams. I am my mother’s olive, Mexican and still afraid, even after three generations of labor, of service to land that boldly accepts disgust for everything we are. I slept and we formed those knots that happen when your mind jumps to a bad spot and replays a gruesome scene over—but these are memories now. I remember being discarded on TV screens by 59,611,678 of my “fellow Americans.” As the night passed phone calls to families flooded the watchroom; they increased with every hour and my friends expressed love to their immigrant parents because no one else would. We broke together in solidarity, hugging and weeping and searching for help while those outside celebrated the continuation of an era of hate and invalidation. Swallow your gut, your grief, your mother and father. Keep moving or be left behind. -MM

-CRS

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

This Tuesday, the United States elected Donald J. Trump as its 45th president. Many peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;though not mostâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;voted in support of his blatant racism, misogyny, islamophobia, xenophobia, and various other manifestations of hate. In a nation built on white supremacy, Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s victory is unsurprising. His election, as many have pointed out, is an extreme articulation of what America has always valued: the livelihood of its white citizens at the expense of so many others. Nonetheless, we reel from the blunt confrontation of these realities that have existed for so long and caused so much harm. The Indy stands in solidarity with people of color, Muslims, immigrants, indigenous people, refugees, queer and trans people, people with disabilities, and people holding multiple of these identities. The Indy also stands in solidarity with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, as well as undocumented immigrants, who were prevented from participating in this election process but who are most vulnerable to its devastating results.

Looking ahead to the next four years, it’s easy to feel paralyzed—targeted by or complicit in a network of near-incomprehensible injustices. We find hope, though, in the recognition that so many people are already organizing, already doing the work of reclaiming the rights they’ve repeatedly been denied. As we continue to learn from the work of decades of writers and activists, we offer some suggestions below—for our readers and ourselves—about actionable steps we can take right now. + Donate our time or money to local or national/international organizations that service some of the groups of people who will be most targeted by a Trump presidency. Here’s a start— this list might feel a bit arbitrary, but we’re not quite sure how to categorize what’s at stake anymore. + Direct Action for Rights and Equality + Planned Parenthood + American Civil Liberties Union + Black and Pink PVD + Providence Youth Student Movement + AIDS Care Ocean State + Trans Lifeline + Critical Resistance + Council on American-Islamic Relations + Sylvia Rivera Law Project + NARAL Pro-Choice America + The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) + Know our rights. + Don’t call the police. + Continue to pressure our councilpeople to pass the Community Safety Act. + Reach out to our friends who are most threatened by the hate Trump has incited. + Read up. Educate ourselves. Many organizations and individuals have been putting together syllabi. Check out: + The Trump syllabus: http://www.publicbooks.org/fea ture/ trump-syllabus-20 + The Standing Rock syllabus: https://nycstandswith- standingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/ + The #BlackLivesMatter syllabus: http://www.blacklives- mattersyllabus.com/fall2016/ + Take care of ourselves. Spend time with our loved ones. Cook a big meal. Take a breath. + Continue to find new ways to resist, transgress, subvert, and repair.

WHO SETS THE TABLE?

Food infrastructure and food justice in Rhode Island Joshua Kurtz and Sylvia Brown ILLUSTRATION BY Kela Johnson BY

A few hundred feet from Brown University’s boathouse in India Point Park is the future site of EatDrinkRI’s Central Market, a market and mixedevent space in a former nightclub. Central Market’s founder, Peter Dadakian, chose India Point as the site of the market for its “sweeping views” of the bay and its proximity to I-95. A number of small businesses have already signed on to take part in the market (an August preview included not one, but two artisanal popcorn companies), which organizers hope will serve as the nucleus for Rhode Island’s rapidly expanding local food economy, an industry that has come to define the ways in which the state brands itself to tourists. In 2012, Travel + Leisure named Providence the second best city for foodies in America, due in part to the city’s established local food movement and the restaurants that have sprung up around it. While organizations such as EastDrinkRI have expanded Providence's array of “boutique” food businesses, the city's broader food infrastructure remains weak. +++ This past summer, Sankofa, an initiative by the West Elmwood Housing Development Corporation, released a comprehensive Community Food Security Assessment of Providence’s West End Neighborhood. Funded by the Rhode Island Department of Health, the assessment strove to “provide an overview of the food access needs, challenges, and opportunities that currently exist in the West End— Providence’s largest, most population-dense and most ethnically diverse neighborhood.” 38.3% of residents in the West End were born outside of the United States, “making the West End ‘home’ to over 7,800 immigrants/refugees,” according to the assessment. Food insecurity in Rhode Island is the highest in New England, and a particularly great problem in the West End—as evidenced by its "much lower median household income and the fact that 33% of West End residents participate in SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) compared to 23% in Providence and 13.4% in RI.” The report finds historically underserved communities tend to have limited access to affordable and healthy foods. According to the USDA’s Food Atlas, 32.9% of residents in the West End live in areas designated as having “low-access” to food. The central criteria for this classification is the distance between residences and supermarkets, taking into account vehicle accessibility in low-income neighborhoods. In these areas, “far” is designated as more than one mile from a supermarket in urban areas. The assessment also notes the direct correlation between higher levels of food insecurity and higher levels of obesity and diabetes. There are several structural factors con-

METRO

tributing to high levels of food insecurity and disease in the West End, including economic inequality, discrimination in the health care system, and cycles of gentrification. Sankofa’s assessment quotes a West End resident, noting: “At home everyone is skinny. Here not so much. When Africans come here there are no issues with cholesterol and other things that are prevalent in the US. How can we eat healthy when we come here?” +++ The modern local food movement had small and dispersed beginnings: a counterculture movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s encouraged a move ‘back-to-the-land’; a group of women terming themselves ‘locavores’ and pledging to eat only food produced within 100 miles of San Francisco for a month; scattered mentions of 'local production' appeared in legislation. Under the guidance of food journalists like Michael Pollan, the ‘movement’ grew into a cultural phenomenon. With the promise of strengthening the economy, the environment, and public health, local eating is now used as a rationale for writing agricultural laws and forming organizations to connect farmers with consumers. Local food’s practical benefits appeal to lawmakers, and for consumers, local food initiatives provide them with an opportunity to express their values while also reconnecting to an idealized agrarian past. As the movement progresses, “farmer chic” becomes vogue, and those who can afford local produce, often pricey due to delicate methods of production and an eager market, can take a piece of credit for creating a more sustainable food system. Food justice arose in tandem with the local food movement, gaining momentum through the ‘70s and ‘80s before staking its place in public dialogue in the 1990s. Though they grew in prominence side by side, the two movements diverge in their degree of connection to non-environmental justice movements. Food justice, like local food initiatives, aims to create systems that benefit farmers, consumers, and the earth. But, food justice goes further by focusing on empowering marginalized communities to shape these systems to suit their needs. Food justice takes culturally appropriate, ethically sourced food to be a right rather than a privilege. Sociologist Julie Guthman outlines the issues that local food tries to address in her paper “‘If They Only Knew’: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions.” In her interviews with California farmers’ market managers and volunteers, one manager remarked that “higher income communities are ‘entertained’ by outdoor markets.” For privileged white people, the farmers’ market is an opportunity to participate in and connect to a collective romanticization of agriculture.

As Guthman notes, this romanticization is hardly universal: “Reconstruction failed in the South, Native American lands were appropriated, Chinese and Japanese were precluded from land ownership, and the Spanish-speaking Californios were disenfranchised of their ranches.” What kind of cultural associations do farmers’ markets then hold for these groups? Guthman notes that market managers not only ignore these considerations, as well as those related to socioeconomic disparities, they were dismissive when presented with them. Market managers’ responses ranged from explicit stereotyping (“Hispanics aren’t into fresh, local, and organic products.”) to colorblindness (“Difference is wrong; it is better to try to become color blind in how we do things...We are set up for our community.”). The message sent by these attitudes is loud and clear: if you don’t know already, if the value of our mission is not clearly apparent to you, we are not for you. In Providence, many people can't afford to shop at boutique businesses—like Narragansett Creamery or North Bakery—that sell products at the Hope Street Farmer’s Market. Sankofa’s West End Food Assessment found that 56.6% of participants never or rarely bought produce at farmers' markets, predominantly because these markets are too expensive and too far away, and because participants do not know when and where they occur. In failing to address issues such as structural inequality and food access, these alternative food spaces are constructed as white spaces, ultimately precluding the enactment of any radical project of food justice. +++ Citing a 2009 study conducted by the RI Department of Health and the African Alliance of Rhode Island, the West End Community Food Assessment emphasized that increasing access to culturally appropriate foods as an essential step in combating food insecurity in diverse and marginalized neighborhoods. According to the assessment, “82% of participants [in the 2009 study] felt that foods related to their culture were important to them.” In large part, the local food movement in the United States has disregarded the needs of these communities, emphasizing the importance of decreasing “food miles” (defined as “the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is ultimately purchased or consumed” by the Global Development Research Center) over access to culturally appropriate foods. Farm-to-table restaurants often equate “ethical eating” with “local eating,” forgetting that the corporatization of food has not only increased food miles, but has also destroyed culturally specific food traditions. Though produce such as yucca or chayote is not local to the Northeast,

NOVEMBER 11, 2016

Providence communities that have emigrated from Central America should be able to access these traditional foods through this emerging “ethical food” culture. While promoting locally grown foods is an effective way of disrupting larger structures of inequality, local food organizations—especially cooperative markets and farmers’ markets—must also incorporate food justice into their mission, striving to increase access not only to locally sourced foods, but also to diverse foods that reflect the communities these organizations serve. In addition to compiling the Community Food Security Assessment, the Sankofa Initiative builds community gardens in the West End and organizes summer farmer’s markets in which local immigrant farmers can sell their produce at affordable prices to the community. In an interview one of the authors conducted this summer, Blia Muoa, a Laotian-American farmer, emphasized the importance of growing a variety of traditional Laotian vegetables, such as Asian cucumbers, bitter melons, and yardlong beans. Muoa noted, referring to Laotian communities in New England, “They were born in a different world, and then they come over here...There’s different food from another part of the world. Then you come here. You crave it. You go to Stop & Shop or Shaw’s and it’s different. It looks [similar] but it’s not the one you used to eat.” Muoa takes pride in his ability to make these vegetables available both to local Laotian communities and to individuals unfamiliar with traditional Laotian foods. As a Laotian customer told him this past summer, “Thanks for bringing me my original food, my homeland’s corn.” +++ The Sankofa Initiative is one of several organizations working to promote food justice in Providence. The African Alliance of Rhode Island, for example, has opened a community garden that aims to “promote healthy eating, environmental awareness, education about African foods and provide work to many low income persons on the South Side of Providence.” The Southside Community Land trust (SCLT) manages numerous plots of land throughout Rhode Island, including several community gardens in Providence and Urban Edge Farm, a 50-acre farm in Cranston that is collaboratively managed by several different farmers, including John Kenny of Big Train Farm and Chang Xiong of Pak Express Farm. SCLT also offers classes for both children and adults who are interested in learning how food is grown and harvested. Additionally, Urban Greens Co-Op is working to open a consumer-owned and -governed cooperative grocery store in the West End. Unlike Central Market, Urban Greens will be a full-scale grocery store, prioritizing affordable and culturally inclusive foods as well as local, boutique items. Finally, in South County, the Narragansett Food Sovereignty Initiative was creat-

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

ed in 2014 by the Narragansett tribe in order to “further tribal goals of sovereignty, self-determination, self-sufficiency, sustainability, and food security.” This is in no way a comprehensive list of organizations fighting for food justice in Providence, but rather a brief illustration of the widespread community-based activism taking place in the city. +++ Last May, Governor Raimondo announced the hiring of Sue AnderBois, a policy analyst with the New England Clean Energy Council, as Rhode Island’s first director of food strategy. In this position, AnderBois will work to draft a comprehensive food policy, incorporating input from all food sectors in the state—from fishermen and farmers to community leaders and restaurant owners. According to Lauren Maunus B'19, who is an intern for AnderBois, “The plan will incorporate the voices of community members who are leading initiatives on the ground, and will serve as a vehicle to stimulate conversation and cooperation between key stakeholders.” This is a demanding task, considering the array of community, state, federal, and corporate actors involved in Rhode Island’s food production, distribution, regulation, and consumption. Hopefully, this plan will support local food producers in Rhode Island while simultaneously addressing the institutional roots of food insecurity and advocating for a more inclusive and accessible food infrastructure in the state. Maunus notes, “While the creation of the food plan is the underlying driver for this project, the objective is to use the plan as a springboard for implementing good policy, raising funds to support new innovations and initiatives, and heightening public awareness of the issues of food security.” JOSHUA KURTZ’17 and SYLVIA BROWN’17 met in a vegetarian co-op.

METRO

AN INTERVIEW WITH GOVERNOR GINA RAIMONDO On her politics and priorities, past and present BY

Katrina Northrop Gabriel Matesanz

ILLUSTRATION BY

Under the vaulted ceilings of her office in the Rhode Island State House, Governor Gina Raimondo lays out her political priorities in a markedly definite manner, clearly accustomed to being taken seriously. Both from the way she expresses her views, and from her policies themselves, it is clear that her approach to politics is pragmatic and numbers-driven. This is not surprising given her business background—after completing an undergraduate education at Harvard and graduate programs at both Yale and Oxford, Governor Raimondo served as a law clerk before co-founding Rhode Island’s first venture capital firm, Point Judith Capital, in 2000. First elected to public office in 2011 as General Treasurer for Rhode Island, Governor Raiwas then elected for Governor in 2015. Governor Gina Raimondo first gained national notoriety when she proposed a groundbreaking pension reform plan as General Treasurer. Her plan attempted to mitigate the pension crisis by combining traditional pensions with 401(k)-style accounts, which are invested in hedge funds. While her seemingly practical solution was lauded as a breakthrough policy in 2011, it ultimately did not succeed, and the Rhode Island pension fund dropped more than half of its hedge fund investments due to limited returns in September 2016. Entering the Governor’s office in 2015, Governor Raimondo aimed to revitalize the economy and increase opportunity for high-skill job sectors. This approach included raising the minimum wage and implementing programs to attract higher wage job growth, such as initiatives to provide computer science education in public schools. However, over the last year and a half, many of her campaign proposals have been confronted with major setbacks. Although she has succeeded in raising the minimum wage to $9.60, the Rhode Island House has been resistant to implement the Governor’s proposed $10.10 minimum wage. She has been successful in creating new jobs, but upscaling the economy has proven more difficult, as Rhode Island’s median income remains low. These difficulties in implementing her agenda has led Governor Raimondo’s unfavoribility rating to rise to 53%. In May 2016, the College Hill Independent spoke to Governor Raimondo in her Rhode Island State House office about her first year as Governor and her policy priorities. In a follow-up interview conducted over email in October, the Indy was able to explore how Raimondo’s political approach has evolved over the last six months in office. Following Donald Trump’s unprecedented victory on Tuesday night, it is important to remember the critical work that is being done on state and local levels.

has the chance to be successful. This means having public libraries, public buses, well-funded and flourishing public schools, and community colleges so people can get a good education and not be buried in debt. This is not popular. Today, everyone wants to say: “government is the problem, government can’t get anything right.” There’s a lot of bureaucracy and government does certainly make mistakes, but I still think that a well functioning government has a huge role to play in making it so people have a chance.

In May 2016, the College Hill Independent spoke to Governor Raimondo in her Rhode Island State House office.

The Indy: The Rhode Island House vetoed the most recent proposed minimum wage hike this past summer. How do you plan to work around the resistance in the House to achieve your proposed $10.10 minimum wage?

The College Hill Independent: You have an unusual background for a politician. You decided to run for the State Treasurer after reading in the Providence Journal about public library closures due to state budget difficulties. What does this anecdote say about your approach to politics? How has that approach changed over your political career? GR: I don’t think it has changed. What it says is that I really do believe that there is an important role for government to play in leveling the playing field and making sure that everyone who wants to work hard

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The Indy: What are the unique challenges currently facing Rhode Island? GR: The biggest challenge is continuing to have job growth and wage growth. The biggest challenge is making sure we have more higher paying jobs. So in my first year being Governor, the economy is back on track, and a lot of jobs were created. But still our median income is going down. We need to upscale people, so they can get jobs that pay. The Indy: Following a national movement, Rhode Island passed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $9.60 on January 1, 2016. You previously supported an even higher raise to $10.10. How do you see Rhode Island’s move to raise the minimum wage fitting into the national dialogue around the wage controversy? GR: Raising the minimum wage was one of the first things I did as Governor. There is certainly a debate, but I come down on the side of wanting to raise the minimum wage even more. Some people worry that it will be bad for the economy, but I do think the evidence is clear that it’s good for the economy. Number one, it’s the right thing to do—you shouldn’t work full time and be living in poverty. But number two, when people get that money, they spend it and that’s a stimulus to the economy. The Indy: How do you imagine your future political career? GR: I don’t know. I have a mountain of work ahead of me in Rhode Island. What I want to do in politics is be the Governor of Rhode Island. That’s what I think about. In October 2016, the College Hill Independent followed up with Governor Raimondo over email about both the successes and setbacks in her agenda, and how the evolving political climate has affected her political priorities.

GR: I believe we need to do even more to help hardworking Rhode Islanders. Too many Rhode Islanders are working harder than ever, and making less money. All Rhode Islanders, but especially those who earn the least, deserve to see their wages go up every year. My team is currently working to determine the best course of action on this ahead of the legislative session. The Indy: State and local governments are a total of $1 trillion short on promised pension benefits, according to PEW Charitable Trusts. As General Treasurer,

you proposed a groundbreaking pension reform plan. Although your plan got national attention in 2011, the Rhode Island pension fund dropped more than half of its hedge fund investments in September 2016, undoing much of the work that you did as Treasurer of the state. Why do you think that the hedge fund investments had limited returns? Is there another solution to the national pension crisis? GR: The pension system is much stronger today than it was when I was first elected Treasurer. Between our pension and Medicaid reforms passed last year, Rhode Island is now able to make record investments in K-12 education and make college more affordable and accessible. Businesses are taking a fresh look at our state because of our more stable, more predictable finances. Treasurer Seth Magaziner and the State Investment Commission are keeping with the strategy of having a diverse mix of investments to protect against risk, and I will continue to support that approach to make sure people’s pensions are there when they need them. The Indy: What does Donald Trump’s most recent “locker room talk” say about persistent sexism in our country? And as one of six current female governors in the United States, how do you think female politicians should respond to this type of rhetoric? GR: I’ve said from the beginning: in my mind, Donald Trump is not fit to be president. Those comments only prove that, and the contrast between him and Secretary Clinton couldn’t be clearer. As for what it’s like to be a female politician, I’ve lost count of the number of girls who come up to me to say that seeing a woman in the Governor’s Office makes them feel they can be a leader, too. Sexism is still absolutely persistent, and it’s absolutely still a problem in our state and in our country. But as my mother likes to say, if you want something done, ask a busy woman. I’m working toward a Rhode Island where everyone has opportunity, and no one gets left behind—and that absolutely includes women and girls. The Indy: Given that you’ve now been in office for almost two years, how has your understanding of governing Rhode Island changed? What unforeseen challenges have you encountered and how have you responded to them? GR: I’m always pushing to get better, faster results. It’s always a challenge to make government move— our system is designed to move slowly and to resist change. Since taking office, I’ve worked to get the gears moving and make state government work for Rhode Islanders. Sometimes it seems like we’re experiencing fits and starts, but we just have to keep pushing forward. And we’ve definitely had success. Some of our big wins, like bringing GE Digital to Providence with hundreds of high-skill jobs, will lead the news. Others, like the Lean Government Initiative, which works with state agencies to cut away the red tape and get government moving at the speed of business, don’t necessarily get the spotlight, but they’re still incredibly important. We’re laying the foundation that Rhode Island will build upon to be an economic hotspot of innovation and growth for years to come.

NOVEMBER 11, 2016

FORWARD THINKING Inclusion and diversity in STEM

AS & PH

The practice of science is not only analytical, it is subjective, emotional, and creative. Our approach to science is influenced by our lived experiences, our identities, and our backgrounds. Without properly supporting efforts toward inclusivity and diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), the bottleneck of what’s discovered and what’s deemed important for society narrows. We lose a wealth of insights and potential breakthroughs. In light of recent events—including Trump’s announcement of his plans to select Myron Ebell, a climate change skeptic, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency—some scientists may feel their perspective has been discounted, made unimportant. It is important, though, to remember that problems with diversity and inclusion in STEM were present before election day and will continue to limit scientific advancement as long as we allow them to persist. Biases against people of color, people living with disabilities, female-identifying, low-income Americans, and first-generation college students are widespread among STEM departments and institutions across the country. In the March-April 2016 issue of American Scientist, Dr. Ashanti Johnson wrote that “while underrepresented minorities comprised 28.5% of the total US population in 2006, they only represented 9.1% percent of college-educated STEM professionals at the time.” One implicit barrier to inclusivity and diversity in STEM is the common notion that students must be innately good at their chosen scientific field in order to succeed. In the January 16, 2015 issue of Science, Sarah-Jane Leslie and Andrei Cimpian detailed a study they’d conducted, which found that gender and minority distributions across STEM fields were influenced by these expectations of innate intelligence and a “you-either-have-it-or-youdon’t” mentality. Their study found that diversity of an academic field correlates to the perception among members of that field that innate intelligence is a crucial factor for success. The fields of physics, mathematics, and engineering were found to be the least diverse. As students pursuing science ourselves, we’ve had moments where we felt the

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pressure of this assumption. Shortly after deciding to pursue a STEM concentration, one of the authors of this article was told by a doctor: “I’m surprised that you are pursuing STEM if you’ve always been so bad at math.” As students progress in STEM from preschool to college and beyond, there are multiple opportunities for scientific learning. The term “pipeline” has been used widely among STEM educators to describe the ideal structural, integrated pathway designed to provide all students with a solid foundation in science. But clearly, the pipeline is only accessible to certain students. Underrepresented groups are lost from the flow of potential pre-college, undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students at every step of the journey. For some students, the issue begins at the very beginning of the pipeline—a sort of narrowing of the entryway manifest in structural problems like a lack of preschool programming, poor access to quality schools, inadequate resources for teachers, and beyond. Once students have made it into the school system—particularly at the middle school and high school level—deficits in STEM education begin to compound. In 2012, The Thomas B. Fordham Institute issued The State of Science Standards, which contained critical reviews of the science education standards for all 50 states written by college and high school science educators. The average grade given in science classes across the United States was a C, meaning that, on average, science education standards in this country were and continue to be unacceptably inadequate. In order to address certain educational inequalities, some institutions, such as Cornell, Northwestern, and Brown University have begun expanding their diversity and inclusion efforts. On February 1st, 2016, Brown released “Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion: An Action Plan for Brown University,” which required that all academic departments draft Diversity and Inclusion Action Plans (DIAPs) for the fall semester. These plans are often written by faculty and the heads of different departments, and sometimes undergraduate and graduate students.The University’s STEM departments’ DIAPs focused on reducing explicit bias through removing

racialized language from course guides (such as the Computer Science DIAP’s suggestion to replace the “master and slave” terminology commonly used to describe the ways devices interact with one another) and instructing professors not to assume students’ genders. STEM department DIAPs also focus on attracting more and more students to their fields, suggesting greater recruiting and outreach in order to attract students to their departments before they even begin their first years. While a few departments included statistics on the demographic information of their students, most lacked concrete data on low-income or first-generation students, and few, if any, provided potential explanations for these numbers. As noted in many STEM DIAPs, students should be able to approach any field out of their own interest, and each STEM department should provide support and education that will give each student a toolkit they can use to build their foundation in that area. While DIAPs are an important start to breaking down the barriers students face in academia, especially in STEM, there remain many biases that DIAPs fail to address. For example, in the November 2016 issue of Nature Geoscience, authors Kuheli Dutt and Danielle Pfaff found that female PhDs in the geosciences—a field that has some of the highest levels of female enrollment in undergraduate studies across STEM—were less likely to receive excellent recommendation letters for postdoctoral fellowships than their male counterparts. Imbalances such as these are rooted in assumptions and biases too deeply ingrained to be fixed in a single document. Continuing to address inclusion and diversity in STEM must be made a priority in order to promote ongoing scientific advancement and widespread scientific literacy. In order to truly break away from the plague of persistent biases preventing the growth of inclusivity and diversity, we must continue to rigorously identify and challenge biases and roadblocks to opportunity. AS & PH are in this for the long haul.

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PROVIDENCE, T BY

Jack Brook

The day after the election, Mary Piñeda, 28, worried about whether or not she would be able to stay in the US. “I came here to work, it’s better here,” Piñeda said in Spanish. A native of Mexico who came to America 11 months ago on a work permit that expires in two months, Piñeda could not vote, however much she may have wanted to. “People have a responsibility and an obligation to vote,” she said. “People who can vote should exercise this right. I would have voted for Hillary Clinton, because she has good proposals to help immigrants.” Looking down at her ten-month-old baby boy, Piñeda teared up. “I have a bit of fear, I’m not sure if I’ll have to return. I’ll have to apply for permission to stay and wait and hope for the best.” The day after the election, Jasmin Lee, 21, a soon-tobe mother and first-generation Puerto Rican American, anxiously touched her stomach at a bus stop in Kennedy Plaza. She’s been having a difficult time finding work recently, with many employers hesitant to hire her at eight months pregnant. Lee said she’s been relying on the Affordable Care Act to cover the costs of her pregnancy. “I just came from the WIC office,” Lee said, “and it’s like, maybe in 2017 I won’t get these benefits or I won’t be able to help my child. I feel like he’s going in wanting to change so much, he has such a hate for Obama and Obamacare, and he doesn’t think, maybe there is a girl in Providence, RI who is benefiting from having free health care right now.” The day after the election, Vatic Tuuama, an art and theatre teacher at AS220, looked at his students and saw their fear and concern, their shock and frustration. But he knew better than to be surprised. “I grew up in Volusia County, Florida, a majority Republican place that went red this year,” Tuuama said. “I already know this America exists, that nearly 60 million people are capable of proactively supporting racism and homophobia. Trump is the best representative of the underbelly of the system, the middle America-type people who only live in a certain kind of area and don’t accept other viewpoints. I hope this will allow liberals to understand how deeply rooted the problem is; not, ‘Oh, we just had a Black president, let’s put these issues behind us.” The day after the election, Jeff Frary, 59, sat on a bench in Burnside Park and thought he was going to be a little sick. Despite once attending Brown University, he’s been staying in a shelter in North Providence for the past few years ever since his business—

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plastic work—caved in. Yet he ignored the siren song of the Trump campaign to help white men like him regain their lost status. “Trump has a reputation for evading his debts, stiffing contractors—my company, we had a stellar credit record,” Frary said. “We paid everybody on time for 23 years. If I could have stiffed people and weaseled around and found tax loopholes, maybe I would have made more money, but you can’t run a business that way.” Frary said he remembered the days when Providence was a manufacturing hub and Pawtucket a booming jewelry district, until all the jobs began to fade away. He missed those days, and understood the nostalgia of Trump’s promises, but he saw them as empty. “He’s promising things to people who are in trouble, but he’s made promises that I don’t think can be fulfilled,” said Frary. “My home is gone, my business is gone, and as of this morning there’s a little less hope in my life.” The day after the election, Daniel Rivera, 40, remained indifferent and continued to go about his work for the Parks and Recreation department as he always did. “I really don’t care, I go with the flow, I’m a follower not a leader. So if the country wants to go with Trump, I go with it,” said Rivera, who didn’t vote. The day after the election, walking through downtown Providence, Anthony Graziano, 33, shook his head at the thought of what had just happened. “I’ve been a lifelong Republican, this is the first time I’ve voted as a Democrat, and I’m just shocked at how everything went,” Graziano said. “People wanted a change, and I don’t think Hillary tried hard enough. Didn’t visit enough of the states that she thought she had locked down. I wasn’t happy with either candidate but it just seemed like the lesser of two evils. His arrogance is worrisome. He’s a businessman, a celebrity, and he’s got no credentials. If he can be President, anyone can.” The day after the election made Roberto Colon question what values he will be protecting when he swears in as a Marine on the same day Trump takes office. “I hope he values America and what we stand for as much as I do,” said Colon, 19. “I don’t want to go into a country where people know our country’s president isn’t the best dude around—they’re going to take their hate for him out on us. If our president stinks, it makes all of us stink. That’s what people will see when they look at us.”

NOVEMBER 11, 2016

THE DAY AFTER

The day after the election, Philip Bonner, 55, worked with his construction crew on the corner of Exchange and Fulton. He felt no dismay. He wasn’t thrilled with Trump, but he was happy it wasn’t Clinton taking office. “I voted for Donald Trump, yes I did,” Bonner said. “What she pulled in Benghazi, with all them military people getting killed—she dragged her feet. They knew weeks in advance they needed more security and she didn’t provide it for them. We’ll find out what Trump’s made of soon enough, we’ll see how soon until they start constructing that wall; everybody’s going to be heading to the border to get work. We’ll see if they start building that wall, we don’t really need it, but we definitely need some change in this country.” The day after the election, Andersyn Costa and Cara Bella woke up to the cries of anxious LGBTQ friends and felt compelled to stand up for their friends and everyone else terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency. They planned a protest, spread through Facebook, with hundreds of residents turning out to the steps of the Rhode Island State House in solidarity. “We’re just glad that people feel the same way that we feel because there is power in numbers,” said Cara Bella, 25. “Our message will get across; we didn’t do this for riots, to cause an uproar or get him out of office, we just want people to know that a Trump presidency is not okay, and my safety is in jeopardy right now because he is president.” The day after the election, Mike Auraujo, the executive director of Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, channeled all the rage, insecurity and resentment of the protesters gathered outside the Rhode Island State House. “Trump is just today’s face of white supremacy,” Auraujo shouted into a megaphone. “This goddamn fight started 50 years ago and every time we get close to the gate, white solidarity crushes working class solidarity.” The day after the election, Moira Walsh, a recently elected state representative, refused to let her fellow protesters start yelling “Fuck Trump.” “This is our time to prove that we can be better than our racist grandparents, and our racist relatives and our sexist neighbors,” said Walsh, crying. “This is our time to prove that we love every single neighbor that we have right here, right now: gay, straight; Republican, Democrat; black, white, anywhere in between, we’re not going to win this by shouting ‘Fuck Trump,’ we’re going to win this by being together, right here, right now, and witnessing the power that we have together, because there ain’t no power like the power of the peo-

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ple and the power of the people don’t fucking stop.” The day after the election, Julia Sicut sat in a wheelchair as the crowd from the State House surged forward, led by the Extraordinary Rendition Band and its rallying cry of bass drums and brass. “I’m a member of the queer community, the disabled community, I’m a woman, and I have extreme disappointment in this country,” said Sicut, 25. “But the one thing I am proud of are those I surround myself with, the people who are here now. I already know people who have already been threatened because of their race or sexual orientation and I think we need to band together and make our voices heard here and that’s why I am here.” The day after the election, 1,500 people marched from the State House, through Kennedy Plaza, down Westminster Street, past the effigy of Trump somebody had placed outside a shop, over the highway, next to the wall with the scrawled handwriting that read “USA we are fucked,” and right under the balcony of Joe Lian’s house as it went on into the night and the heart of the city. The day after the election, in Joe Lian’s eyes, seemed like a smack in the face. “I’m kind of sad,” said Lian, 47, watching the marchers pass under his American flag-draped balcony and heckling them intermittently. “This is a time for the nation to heal and come together and recognize the President; if they don’t like it they got to leave or something.” The day after the election, for Michelle Cruz, 20, meant affirming compassion and strengthening support for those whom Trump had undercut and threatened with his speech. “We’re angry and frustrated but this is still a peaceful protest,” said Cruz. “We’re saying love trumps hate, and we’re trying to say that we’re going to this community and showing other people in the Providence community that we’re against Trump, we’re also scared, we’re also frightened, but we’re going to come together and love will trump hate. There are a lot of people who hate marginalized communities, but they are so important for our society and they belong here and they are loved. We’ve gone back 50 years or more with this election. But we’re on the right side. ” JACK BROOK B’19 voted.

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A DISTANCE FROM Coded empathy in Moonlight and American Honey

Will Weatherly ILLUSTRATION BY Gabriel Matesanz BY

Early in the film Moonlight, released this past week, a young boy named Chiron asks his mentor Juan how he can know that he isn’t defined by the homophobic slurs his mother calls him. “You know what you know,” Juan tells him. It is one of the most generous moments Moonlight depicts in Chiron’s life—one where Chiron is given the chance for self-understanding beyond any outside doubt or description. Moonlight is an adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. Chiron (played by Alex Hibbert as a young child, Ashton Sanders as an adolescent, and Trevonte Rhodes as an adult) is a Black Miami resident navigating both his sexuality and his relationship to his mother. The film follows a chronology in three parts, each titled with the moniker Chiron acquires in each phase of his life: first “Little,” then “Chiron,” and much later in his life, “Black.” Using these titles, the movie dramatizes his shifting identity, and his struggle against the names he is given to understand it. American Honey (dir. Andrea Arnold) is also centered around an individual’s quest for self-determination, that of a Black teenager named Star (Sasha Lane). But where Moonlight is preoccupied with the confines of identity, American Honey focuses on Star’s economic marginalization. In the film’s opening scenes, Star joins up with a band of roving adolescents she meets in a Kmart parking lot in Missouri; the group traveling across the country, hawking magazine subscriptions for easy cash. Star quickly discovers new constrictions in her nomadic lifestyle; she is forced to stay in cheap motel rooms across the Midwest, paid for by an obscure parent corporation and its domineering representative Krystal (Riley Keough). Like a Pied Piper in a sports car, Krystal leads the van of teenagers door-to-door, motel to motel, all of them following a dream of financial security on a path they cannot control. While the critical dialogues surrounding Moonlight and American Honey, two widely acclaimed films released this fall, are separate, they often come to resemble one another far more closely than the films themselves do. This is largely because of a terminology used to evaluate both films’ success, shared among many reviews published in mainstream publications in the last month; in particular, many reviewers raved about each film’s sense of empathy and compassion. The list of such reviews is extensive: In a review published by the Seattle Times, Moira MacDonald claimed that watching Moonlight might feel “as if you’ve spent time in someone else’s dreams and woke up understanding who they are.” Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times wrote that American Honey “will bring you into a world that is parallel to yours.” The New Yorker cites its “empathetic power;” the Atlantic praises Arnold’s “remarkable empathy.” The repetition of the phrase across many reviews suggests some shared sense of what empathy is, and a shared opinion about how American Honey or Moonlight fulfills its value. Yet seldom do any of these writers define what empathy means in the context of the movies they are describing; its meaning is vague, taken for granted, or merely implied. For two films whose narratives rely upon their protagonists’ singular struggles, these claims of empathy carry hidden harm. At best, their vagueness fails to recognize each film’s distinct, urgent project. At worst, their logic works to undo those projects entirely.

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+++ Any use of the term “empathy” requires both a subject and object; Suzanne Keen, author of Empathy and the Novel, provides a model of empathy’s use in artistic creations with her description of “narrative empathy,” the “sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition.” In this definition, someone has to empathize with someone or something else. This makes the term’s use in a film review slippery: the reviewers using it often fail to specify whose empathy they are really talking about, and whether they are empathizing with the fictional subject, or the reality those subjects attempt to represent. While these critics are using empathy as a criteria for these films’ success, a movie, as an inanimate collection of edited scenes and camera angles, can’t have empathy in itself. Its audience, however, can. And many of these reviews are celebrating the ways either film enables the viewer’s empathy with the film’s narratives, while attributing that emotion to the film itself. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post raved that Moonlight’s viewers would see “a perfect film” which has “a capacity for empathy and compassion.” Erasing the audience in this way serves to fundamentally undermine an accurate conception of empathy as an interaction between two agents; that erasure also forecloses a consideration of those agents’ specific identities. Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune wrote that Moonlight benefits from “an observant, uncompromised way of imagining one outsider’s world so that it becomes our own.” His claim, and similar ones made by other mainstream white critics, assumes two falsehoods. The first is a kind of homogenous audience—one that shares a vision of “our” own world, and which positions Chiron’s world as diverging from that norm. The second is a sense of inclusion: an audience which imagines a world in order to collectively enter it, and to embody it while they watch. The viewpoints represented in these two films are so much more than generalized “outsider” perspectives, to be taken on and cast off by an audience over the course of two hours. Watching Moonlight, it is impossible to separate Chiron’s experiences of his sexuality with those of being Black, or of having a mother struggle with addiction, or of living in a low-income neighborhood in Miami; it’s impossible to define Chiron’s experience in these terms too. The movie is far more concerned with his self-definitions in the face of inscribed limitations on identity. Early in the film, Chiron’s childhood mentor, Juan, tells him that he used to be called Blue back in his previous home in Cuba, for the way that the shine of the moonlight reflected off the color of his skin. Chiron asks him if his name is still Blue; Juan says no, and explains, “At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you’re gonna be.” Empathy, as nebulously called upon by many white reviewers, erases such possibilities of individuality within identity, in favor of an emphasis on ‘including’ the audience in a homogenized ‘outsider’ perspective. David Sims of the Atlantic called Moonlight “specific and sweeping… focused and personal.” Sims treats the personal as separate than the specific, a broader category. But if Moonlight is “personal,” who is it personal for?

A.O Scott, the New York Times’ resident film critic, published a review of American Honey that also obscures the truly personal aspects of the film, largely by presuming facets of Star’s self-understanding. He paints her identity in broad categorical strokes: “being young, poor, female and unloved is a raw deal, for sure, but Star’s instinct for survival and her appetite for pleasure inoculate her against pity.” It’s a statement that harms more than it clarifies, declaring aspects of Star’s experience as objects of pity which Star is obligated to transcend. Later in his review, Scott claims that the movie’s “awfulness and grandeur [is] a product of Star’s restless Emersonian consciousness,” and in doing so replaces that understanding with his own. No one is reading Emerson in American Honey. That language, meant to describe Star’s perspective and interiority, is certainly not her own. Instead, her first taste of freedom is dancing to Rihanna with her new friends on top of the Kmart checkout counters. “We found love in a hopeless place,” they sing over and over. In a roundtable discussion the Times published less than two weeks previous to Scott’s review, he bemoaned the fact that “The movies with black protagonists that tend to win awards—to be legitimized, in other words, as mainstream, serious and prestigious—are more often than not about exceptional figures… people whose remarkable accomplishments both ease the consciences of white viewers and mask the collective struggles and communal experiences that sustained the heroes in their work.” His transformation of Star from a teenager looking for a better life into an “Emersonian” hero does the same masking. +++ Examples like these constitute more than just an irresponsible phrase, or lazy film criticism. They are fundamentally skewed perceptions of the relationship between a film’s audience and its represented subjects. For example, what kinds of audiences are presupposed when representations of queer, Black life, or economically marginalized, Black female life, are termed as experiences outside of the audience’s own lives? What experiences do critics ignore when they use these narratives as shorthands for pressures of essentialized identities, to be empathized with while they are misunderstood? Barriers of class and race are implicit in these analyses; they are also determining of who, practically, gets to participate in the film industry on multiple levels. The average price of a movie ticket rose to $8.61 in 2015, and both American Honey and Moonlight are in limited release, a mode of distribution with an often much more cost-prohibitive ticket price. Both films are likely Oscar contenders, one year after #OscarsSoWhite movement decried the Academy’s nomination of only white actors in its top four categories—for the second year in a row—sparking a much wider conversation around the institutional racism such disparities represent. Only 2% of Oscar voters in the Academy are Black, according the Guardian. The paper also reports that only 15% of Hollywood’s top roles are occupied by minority actors. A 2014 UCLA study proposed some explanation: up to 90% of Los Angeles’ talent agents are white. Moonlight and American Honey are emerging in a moment when the conditions of their distribution

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M THE MOON and reception, both popular and critical, are anything but fully inclusive. White critics’ valorizing of their own sense of empathy, which demands an inclusion of an audience they assume to be like them, takes on a different kind of indignity in this context. Why should the audience these claims imagine as empathetic, largely white and financially secure, feel included in what they perceive to be other people’s real experiences, when the people actually experiencing those pressures aren’t included among their ranks? If white critics’ claims of empathy imagine a false inclusion, they also neglect to recognize the real inclusivity both films can foster. Hilton Als, a queer, Black theater and film critic at the New Yorker, was achingly honest about his identification with Moonlight in his review. “Did I ever imagine, during my anxious, closeted childhood, that I’d live long enough to see a movie like Moonlight?” he wrote. “Did any gay man who came of age, as I did, in the era of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and AIDS, think he’d survive to see a version of his life told onscreen with such knowledge, unpredictability, and grace?” Als’ sense of his own empathy is far from other critics’ praise. His empathy, rather than taking the perspective of another narrative, allows him insight into his own. He sees, in Chiron’s story, specific pressures which have denied him empathy in his own life. “Intimacy makes the world, the body, feel strange.

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How does it make a boy who’s been rejected because of his skin color, his sexual interests, and his sensitivity feel?” he asks. Unlike many other critics, he phrases this understanding of Chiron as a question, not an assessment; he feels a connection based on shared identities, but his question leaves room for Chiron’s feelings about those identities, even within a fictional narrative, to be different than his own. He sees the discrete nuances of experience and identity, and the divisions and solidarities such nuances create, as essential to Moonlight itself. “Jenkins’s story is about a self-governing black society,” he writes, “no matter how fractured.” Unlike Als, neither film’s director shared the identities they sought to represent. However, each emphasized the importance letting their subjects tell their own stories, and retaining these stories’ complications in their own work. Andrea Arnold, a white British woman, traveled across America before shooting American Honey, gathering narratives of “mag crews,” casting former “mag crew” members and passersby she met in WalMart parking lots. She told Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air that she was reticent to explain the complicated personal motivations and emotions of her protagonists, because she “wouldn’t want to try and uncomplicate them for anybody who is about to see the film.” In an interview with Complex magazine, Moon-

light’s director Barry Jenkins described his struggle as a straight Black man adapting a stage play by a queer Black man: “I’ve always considered myself an ally to LGBT causes and it was an opportunity to put that empathy into action,” he said. “And what I decided was that if I was respectful to Tarell’s voice, if I preserved his voice, then this was a way that I, as a straight man, could bring a queer story into the world and do it with the same nuance and subtlety and respect that someone who had the first-person experience would.” The two directors’ gestures towards empathy do not try to equate their identities with those of their subjects, or embody those identities from an outside understanding. They instead respect their distance from the struggles they represent, and use it as an opportunity to highlight, even celebrate, the individuality that can emerge from those struggles. If a critic’s sense of empathy ignores this difference between an individual and the challenges they face, it also ignores a possibility of what film can accomplish: to gather a group of people in front of a screen, silent, waiting for another voice to speak and listening for what they have not already heard. WILL WEATHERLY B’19 cried profusely and inappropriately after he saw Moonlight.

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PERFORMING INTIMACY A Conversation with Rashaun Mitchell Zack Kligler ILLUSTRATION BY Julie Benbassat BY

As Rashaun Mitchell speaks to me over the phone I can make out below his voice the faint familiar hum of New York City, a truck passing, an occasional shout. Mitchell apologizes for the background noise, but he has a way of breaking down artistic concepts that makes a discussion of embodiment feel as natural during a stroll down the sidewalk as it might in a dance studio. This skill is deeply fitting for Mitchell, a choreographer especially committed to inverting, translating, and re-contextualizing modern dance. Four years ago, Mitchell’s choreographic career was launched by performance of his first major piece, Nox, a collaboration with the poet Anne Carson based on her 2010 book of the same name. The result was a piece that unfolded darkly and at times violently in the bodies of Mitchell and his partner Silas Riener. Mitchell and Riener’s most recent piece, Horizon Events, performed last winter at MoMA, continues to investigate similar questions of interplay between forms and the limits of intimacy. While both Mitchell and Riener got their starts through multi-year stints as dancers in the prestigious Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the pair have since emerged as some of the newest choreographic voices and bodies pushing American dance forward. Mitchell spoke to the Independent about translation, subversion, and getting lost on purpose. The College Hill Independent: It’s now been four years since the premier of Nox. Could you speak a little in hindsight about what that experience was for you and how, as one of your first major pieces, it influenced your choreography going forward? How has your interest in translating and playing with various artistic forms evolved since then? Rashaun Mitchell: Well that piece was the first [fulllength] work I had ever done, and in many ways I was groping in the dark most of the time and working intuitively and just trying not to, well, fuck it up. It ended up being a really huge success, which was a surprise to me. I did another work the next year with a different poet named Claudia La Rocco, who was also a New York Times dance critic. What we wanted to do was create something that had a little bit more awareness of itself than Nox, which felt like a really pure expression of a thing that had existed already, and that we were trying to translate into dance. We wanted to do text again but this time let the text be produced by the movement or be in response to what we were doing. We were aware of the fact that Silas and I were in a romantic relationship and we were collaborating as artists, so it felt necessary to deal head on with our personal lives as they related to the work that we were making. So that was an interesting reversal of the process of translation, because I feel that dance is kind of a bastard art form; there’s this pervasive feeling that dance is supposed to illustrate something other than itself. It was important to me that all of the content be generated from the body, and that the text then build a kind of frame around what we were doing. I think we continue to talk about translation as a really important tool or way to think about what we’re doing. Because as much as I love dance on its own, it’s always part of a larger context. There’s no such thing as pure abstract dance, because there are humans doing it. The pure fact that there are humans doing this work means that you have to take into account all of the things that a human represents. There is still a lot of translation in what we do, but of a different form, not always text-based. The Indy: You and Silas seem to be very interested in the creation of both physical and emotional intimacy on stage, and the relationship between performance and intimacy. You wrote that your most recent piece, Horizon Events, is an exploration of queer framings of space. Do those two subjects interplay at all? Does your personal relationship with Silas function to enable that intimacy and exploration?

ARTS

the woods, and then at some point each person has to take the lead. We will not speak to each other at all, this will be felt, we will have to somehow intuitively understand when the next person is taking the lead, and we might get lost, but we have to somehow find our way back. I didn’t think that it would be such a dramatic thing, but it really turned out to crack a lot of people open, there were tears. I think people have a sense of certainty in a studio, there are four walls, you come in and you know the arc of a rehearsal. But when you go out into the world, when you go out into the wilderness, there are all of these unknowns. I think that sense of being lost made people feel very vulnerable. It kind of opened up these emotions, but then we improvised immediately after. It turned out to be a really beautiful week, and I think that there would have definitely been a different color to the piece had we not done that. The Indy: On that note of taking dance out of the studio, you’ve done a fair amount of work with public performance. Dance, particularly contemporary dance as a form, is often seen as very removed, as esoteric or elite. What value do you see in taking dance into the public space? RM: I think in general it’s a very intimate thing to actually share yourself with people, which is what we’re doing as performers. There is something very vulnerable about the action of getting in front of people and opening yourself up to criticism, to objectification. On some level all performance deals with a kind of intimacy and a kind of vulnerability. But I suppose because Silas and I are lovers and we are collaborators, there is an inherent kind of interest in partnership and collaboration, how one person can affect another, and a notion of expanding the self, blurring the border between self and other, merging the self until authorship and autonomy become these questionable nebulous things. What we do is take things that might be recognizable and try to shift them, sometimes in a dramatic way and sometimes subtly, but just enough so that we render them slightly askew. For me that reorientation of something that is known is itself a kind of queer framing; but you have to understand the tradition and conventions you’re working in in order to actually stretch those boundaries. So we do still train in a really traditional way, and we try to take all of those accumulated skills and reorient them somehow. That’s what we mean when we talk about the queer framings of that piece. And of course our partnership allows us to explore things that would maybe be difficult for someone else to explore just because of the fact that we’re already so intimate with each other, we can go into places that might be vulnerable, because we’re protecting each other inside of those places. The Indy: I read that as part of the process for your 2013 piece Interface you took your dancers on a silent hike in the woods of rural Connecticut. Could you tell me a little more about your motives for doing that and how it worked out? RM: Well again I was trying to explore something that I didn’t know, and I didn’t exactly know how to get to a place that was unknown, and I thought I would create an experience where nobody knew what was happening. I think I have these utopian ideas about dance as a place where, collectively, we can achieve these things that we can’t necessarily achieve on our own, that we can arrive at these places and stretch ourselves spiritually and physically and mentally. So sometimes when I’m working with a group, particularly, I’m trying to locate this place where we can bond and create a sense of trust around what we’re doing so we can really truly experiment without fear. We were doing a residency in Mystic, Connecticut, and I wanted to go out and hike and explore and try to let the environment seep into our consciousness, into our bodies. So I decided that we would go for a walk and I told everyone: I’m going to lead us into

RM: Well I think it’s so strange that it’s thought of as this elite remote thing because dancing is the most innate thing that we have as humans, and in most cultures dancing is so much a part of the way of life and the way people are raised. Dance in public spaces is not a new thing in most countries. I find that it’s a really big absence in our culture, and for someone who has spent so much time training in a studio and dedicating myself to very Western forms of dance, it’s liberating to take dancing outside and connect it to real things. But we’ve also done public performances indoors or in industrial settings as well, and I think the beauty of dance is that it has the ability to absorb so many different things. I could make a piece like Interface for a theater but then I could also consider how it would operate in a very different setting and that gives it new life. The Indy: It seems to me that you consider the ‘site’ of a piece to include both the physical environment as well as the dancers themselves and their experiences. I’m interested in the way you let your dancers direct your choreography. Where does that come from? RM: What I’m interested in is considering the person first and then building out from there. So it’s sort of a reversal. I feel inspired by the individual, and it’s really important for me to consider who I’m actually working with. These people sacrifice their lives to give their bodies to someone else’s art, and that for me feels like a really important, devoted thing that I shouldn’t take lightly. So I’m always interested in utilizing an individual’s own kind of native movement and their intuitive responses to create movement. Sometimes that ends up getting organized and specified to the point where it’s repeatable choreography, and sometimes it’s more open. But if it’s going to be open, and if there is going to be choice and improvisation, then it’s my job to ensure that that person is supported enough to make choices that are interesting, deeply felt, and nuanced. So I have to come up with strategies, I have to come up with various kinds of imagery, various kinds of potential choices for them to make so that they feel supported. So it’s not just this ‘okay do whatever you want, I trust you, you’re beautiful, let’s make you look beautiful,’ it’s really like, let’s work every day at getting closer and closer to an idea that is becoming itself as we’re working.

NOVEMBER 11, 2016

ART WE MADE WHEN WE WERE LITTLE BY

The Indy staff

This week we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t help but wish we were back in childhood, drawing quietly at our parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; kitchen tables, riding out a dopey but relatively civil presidency, blissfully unaware of what is to come. In the spirit of that sentiment, please enjoy, as a brief moment of levity, a few early forays into art and writing by our staff. Some of these art objects are eerily anticipatory of our current moods (see below).

The Park Slope Woof: A Zine by Sophie K (managing editor), age 9 Untitled (Self Portrait #7) by Camila R S (news editor), age 5

Ultimate Comic Heroes by Gabriel M (illustrations editor), age 8

I already knew everything and have been trying to forget it ever since by Liby H (X page editor)

Moon Thingy by Jamie P (managing editor), age 8

Adventures of the Martian Man Hunter by Will T (arts editor), age 7 Early Experiments in Narrative Form by Malcolm D (list editor)

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TBT

THE GOOD DEATH Reframing the burden of medical death in America

Dolma Ombadykow ILLUSTRATION BY Kela Johnson BY

cw: racial violence and erasure The Order of the Good Death was formed in Los Angeles in January 2011, by the goth-chic and self-described “arty death hipster” Caitlin Doughty. A writer and mortician, Doughty has recently grown in popularity by way of her YouTube series (Ask a Mortician!) and 2015 memoir (Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and Other Lessons from the Crematory). The Order, which is comprised of morticians, other death professionals, artists, and academics, believes that “a revolution [is] afoot” surrounding death care. As part of a larger group of people working toward “death positivity,” the Order “believe[s] that talking about and engaging with [our] inevitable death is not morbid, but displays a natural curiosity about the human condition,” according to their website. The website functions as a blog-hosting hub for members of the Order, as well as a sort of extended advertisement for Doughty’s “alternative funeral service,” called Undertaking LA, which seeks to offer a hands-on option for families who wish to be more involved in caring for their dead by bringing them into the mortuary tasks of cleaning and preparing the deceased for burial. Doughty serves as an unofficial figurehead of the Death Positive Movement, a trend that borrows its name from sex positivity. The Order, which acts as a central axis of the movement, believes that our increasingly “global community” has given rise to new possibilities for the ways we choose to treat death. According to their mission statement, “all of a sudden, we are able to choose the rituals we perform with our dead and how we dispose of dead bodies.” In claiming a globalized, boundaryless world while making references to Tibetan and Egyptian conceptions of dying, Doughty actively borrows from traditions of the ‘other’ to create an ever-expanding menu of death ‘options’ for the curious mortal. The mission statement explains that the name of the group was “taken from the 19th century Brazilian sisterhood of African slaves, Irmandade de Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, or, Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death.” The Sisterhood was founded by a group of former slaves in the nineteenth century in northeastern Brazil and sought to relativize death in order to embrace new modes of living. By thinking of life and death as being able to inform one another, embracing life in the wake of trauma and violence became possible for the Sisterhood, according to a 2011 documentary by Yoruba Richen that followed the few still-living members of the group. In naming her group the “Order of the Good Death,” Doughty blindly repurposes the Sisterhood’s powerful claim of resistance and resilience as a group of women who survived impossible trauma. That Doughty and her Order of 20 almost exclusively white women have adopted this name to service their function as a blog points to one of the major deficiencies of the group, and of the Death Positive Move-

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ment as a whole. In their shift toward universality, the marginalized are actively erased in favor of the ‘standard.’ +++ Doughty speaks passionately about the aesthetics of the movement in an interview with Qeepr, a website that seeks to create space for digital memorial while also providing grief support resources and general death education. In the interview, Doughty explains, “we are trying to start this conversation, and we are... trying to make it cool, in a way.” Doughty explains that for some, the movement is about “aesthetics! It’s skeletons from the 15th and 16th century, it’s bone cathedrals...it’s whatever you have to do.” Imaged by the skeleton or the coffin or the RIP-labeled headstone, the image that Doughty attempts to educate and normalize death by is anonymous, unnamed, faceless. This abstraction of death relies on the simultaneous erasure of the individual and their experiences and propagates a universal body for which death is able to happen positively. The death positive movement also encourages us to think about our imminent death in order to be able to live more fully. This is not a new concept. Memento mori, a Latin expression which serves as a reminder that we must all die, was used as a levelling expression across social classes in ancient Rome. Muttered or shouted to egotistical elite, the phrase was a reminder that we will all die, and therefore, we must all be equal in this life. In this tradition, the Danse Macabre, a genre of late-medieval allegory which Doughty and her group actively celebrate, sought to ruminate on the universality of death, often depicting a personified death (usually a robed skeleton) who has summoned representations of all walks of life to “dance along to the grave.” Each of these modes of embracing death, including the death positive movement, rely on a complete abstraction of personhood, boiled down to its bones, in order to make palatable or stylish or appealing a discussion of mortality. However, in doing so, this personhood is lost, and our discussions of mortality lose their meaning. In stripping the living body of its context—clearing the flesh and faces and fat and scars and melanin from the person—all that remains of the dead worth celebrating are the polished, bleached bones. And it is no mistake that these bones are easily recast as white and as male to remain palatable, trendy, appealing. +++ This contemporary return to thinking about death in its abstraction has happened within the very meticulous medical schema that we are currently living in. In the consideration of death as great human equalizer, the death in the death positive movement

must remain as scalable and ‘standard’ as possible. Similar, too, is our requirement of the medical body: the standardized model that we use to understand our biological functions. This standardization, however, requires a violent and active erasure of particular types of marginalized modes of being. Relying on the systematized, diagrammed, dissected human object, our practical understanding of the body and its living function is sourced and rooted in the stiff, temperature-controlled, formaldehyde-filled corpse. Though often unnamed or re-signified as specimen, this sourcing of medical knowledge in formerly living bodies is inextricably tied to histories of racial violence. According to bioarchaeologist Ken Nystrom in a 2014 article published in American Anthropologist, modern American dissection practices, which date back to the British colonial period in North America, originated “as postmortem punishment for executed criminals.” When formal medical education rose in popularity during the 19th century, a shortage of bodies led to the back-alley sale of corpses by grave robbers who would frequent the cemetery to unearth cadavers. Anti-grave robbing laws that responded to this practice prioritized the dead elite, and were particularly unhelpful for the poor and the marginalized, whose bodies “became vulnerable to the postmortem violence of dissection.” The 20th century saw African American bodies “used in disproportionate numbers to serve as cadavers for medical instruction,” writes archaeologist James Davidson. Davidson explains in a 2007 article in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology that “Black bodies, despite these claims of inferiority, were often used as instructional materials to aid white doctors training to treat white patients.” Today, a vast majority of cadavers used for medical research and education are sourced from deceased prisoners and unclaimed bodies, both populations of which are overwhelmingly Black. +++ At the beginning of the 20th century, virtually all Americans died at home. Partially a result of the multi-generational home and also a product of higher child mortality rates, death folded into the everyday—caring for its stink and its mess were wound into the fabric of the family’s function. A byproduct of the improved medical understanding of germs, disease, and sanitation, nearly 50% of all deaths in America in the 1950s would occur in hospitals. A symptom of this transition, these early medical interventions in death held the clinical goal of “‘protect[ing]’ the [family] from seeing the final moments of dying,” according to anthropologist Sharon Kaufman in her 2005 ethnography of the American end-of-life care process, And a Time To Die. By the 1980s, nearly 80 percent of all deaths in

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the United States would occur within hospital walls. As technical intervention in dying became viable and eventually standard practice, death officially entered the purview of medicine. Death became re-cast as the responsibility of the hospital. Medicine’s interventions, then, worked toward sustaining life by whatever means necessary. This ambiguous goal became an unfettered playing field for physician paternalism, and these efforts took on new severity with the dawn of the ventilator. In 1987, philosopher Daniel Callahan argued that this technological imperative produced “widespread angst [at] hospital bedsides.” Technology produced a new moral dilemma in choosing when to remove the vents and the pumps and the plugs that functionally worked to sustain biological life. Patient advocacy efforts in the 1970s began the trend toward the modern hospice movement, which was “fueled by the emerging expression of desire for individual control over the dying experience,” writes Kaufman. In its formulation as a “patient and family-centered process,” Kaufman argues that hospice has “become the contemporary symbol of the Anglo-American, middle-class idea of ‘the good death.’” Hospice centers serve to provide comfort care for patients who have a life expectancy of six months or fewer with the goal of “maintaining or improving quality of life for someone [who is] unlikely to be cured,” according to the Hospice Foundation of America website. In the focus of personal comfort for the patient, hospice “has become... an abstraction, the quintessential, metaphorical place for the reduction of suffering [and] fulfilled dying,” writes Kaufman. In her discussion, Kaufman also maps the bureau-

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cratic limits of hospice care. With up to 90% of hospice services in the US paid for by Medicare, which maintains incredibly specific requirements for reimbursement and referral, “it is mostly cancer patients and others with a clear, terminal trajectory….who receive hospice services of any kind.” Medicare requirements for billable service mean that more than half of all hospice patients spend less than two weeks receiving hospice services before death, according to data from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. In practice, patients aren’t referred to hospice centers until death becomes imminent. Even so, Kaufman points out that death preparedness and end-of-life consultations in hospice settings most frequently occur in the last 48 hours of life. +++ What does the good death look like in this modern medical constellation, then? Advanced directives, the process of naming a legal power of attorney and documenting a living will (which states a person’s willingness to opt in or out of life sustaining measures) provide one answer. But, the legal fees in filing the document produce financial constraints, and living wills are frequently violated by medical practitioners, especially for patients with marginalized identities who are already subject to disproportionate medical error and treatment bias. Separately, living wills inherently require advanced planning for our own mortality, as well as an implied understanding of the medical technologies referenced

in the documents. The emotional hurdle of negotiating these questions themselves provide an additional barrier, and the question of who can afford to plan for a peaceful, hypothetical death at the age of 85, surrounded by loved ones in the comfort of their own home, produces another set of questions surrounding the viability of death “planning.” The abstraction of the good death, as the death positive movement so too operates within, relies on the fiction of control that is assumed in these documents. Caitlin Doughty, herself a mortician, argues that a good death must also be negotiated post-mortem in the choices we make surrounding burial, embalming, and cremation. Doughty’s stakes in the matter rely on a resurgence of alternative modes of burial, including environmentally friendly options (“ecoburial”) and the re-introduction of the family in the process of tending to and for the recent corpse. This high-touch burial process similarly begs the question of education and class as modes of access—a modern twist continues to reflect the age-old system of values that decides which bodies are worth mourning. DOLMA OMBADYKOW B’17 doesn’t know what she wants done with her body when she dies.

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MONA AND THÉRÈSE An unspoken dialogue in seven parts BY

Hadley Sorsby-Jones Teri Minogue

ILLUSTRATION BY

IV Mona stretches for Thérèse and her fingers. She traces them and exhales through shaded water, rouged necks. Her wrists are dazed like the dream where she was a moth standing inverse from a grasshopper who sought to cut off her legs with his forearms. The body of that past bed held her wrists while she reasoned with the grasshopper, woke her only when she began thrashing away from his incising finger-forearms. By this point the grasshopper had already cut three-quarters of her legs, excised four of the six in semi-circle on the ground. The remaining two raised of their own accord to gesticulate dumbfounded.

I Thérèse is preoccupied in the white gaping of the wall’s flesh. She sees light hits it soft, becomes garish with it. Mona beside her she sees asleep, refusing dawn under their fleeced blanket. The wall ogling waxes clear against the plastic of a mourning window.

but then there are your and my jagged lips

Mona is sunk in dozing touch. Not sleep but a bodied desire after it. A permissive entrance into opaqued madness, denial of the madding light of morning. A night of impotent speaking, eyes running closed, of caress undone. Touch layered and pasted in contradiction of reality. Touch too lacerating to broach in morning. Lightness impacts vision cheaply and her longreaching blanket is heavy.

and we cavort expansive on fractured ankles

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|| III Thérèse struggles to breathe; the white-scraped wall absorbs the entirety of morning. Mourning, Mona tests the weight of going to her. Raising her chin from the cover begs the question of enmeshed knees, of undoing heat. The staggered breath next to her is filtered through deep water; she rises imperceptibly as Thérèse widens her eyes. The wall grows jagged in its serenity and pulls the window aqueous into relief.

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Thérèse sees a woman and an ostrich collide in modes of sand. They peck reasonably through the massed viscosity of a pulse; she draws her forefinger across Mona’s clavicle. The curve deepens with her intake of breath and morning is fuller through the sheeted window. It lights in opaque and transparent layers through the room, most dense against the wall’s bare furrow. Mona’s chest rises as Thérèse outlines broad eggshells, tulips, and a cornered skyscraper from her fingers to her neck. The paper wall exhales and its pale gape inches wider.

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The List is pausing this week to reflect on where to go next. This week’s many protests and community gatherings will surely continue to multiply in the following days, weeks, years. At the time of publication, we’ve heard of the following local meetings: + Friday on the Boston Commons from 2-7pm + Saturday at Worcester City Hall and Common from 12-3pm + Saturday at the Providence Friends Meeting House from 6-8pm + Sunday in Springfield’s Court Square from 4-8pm