The College Hill Independent: 2 March 2012

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT V O L U M E

X X I V

I S S U E

I I I

B R O W N / R I S D

W E E K L Y

2

M A R C H

2 0 1 2

the college hill independent

news

3

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

by Alex Ronan and Erica Schwiegershausen

TWO TRUTHS

an

THE ENVIRONMENT

d

A LIE

EUROPE’S “TINY MISSILE SHIELD”

BABY CHIPS Last month, Tutis Industries gained FDA approval for their SecuriChip, an identifying integrated circuit chip designed to be implanted in humans. Tutis spokesperson David Fairfield told the Associated Press that the implanting procedure is “almost entirely painless” and can be performed “in a matter of seconds at a standard doctor’s office.” The chip is scheduled to go on the market in 2013, yet controversy over the ethics of human tracking is already brewing on both sides of the political spectrum.

Reverend John Tasser of the Last Days Ministries is an adamant critic of the chips, citing concerns regarding the biblical “Mark of the Beast,” a mark on the forehead or hand of anyone who “worships the beast.” Fairfield declined to comment on whether Tutis intends for SecuriChips to be implanted in patients’ foreheads or hands.

In Seattle, where the headquarters of Tutis Industries are located, activists have launched the “Chips Belong in Bags, Not Bodies” campaign, taking aim at the suggestion voiced by conservative radio host Tim Seeley that tracking chips should be planted in all guest workers and immigrants. “It’s absolutely Orwellian,” campaign spokesperson Jessie Breggins told the New York Times. Breggins called the chips “a dangerous invasion of privacy” and claims that they “haven’t been properly tested.”

GOOGLEY EYES Google has plans to infiltrate yet another market by the end of the year, the New York Times reported this week: eyewear. According to reports, the Internet mogul’s engineers and scientists are currently developing an innovative line of eyeglasses which will project information, entertainment, and advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses, which should be available for purchase later this year, will serve as a supplement to traditional reality. Through builtin cameras on the lenses, Google will be able to process the wearer’s visual stimuli through its rack computers to provide information to the person wearing them. For example, a tourist looking through the glasses at a landmark would be able to see historical information as well as comments from friends, displayed in an augmented reality view, as opposed to a Web browser page. According to the Times, “If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party.” The glasses, which will also feature motion sensors and a navigation system that will be almost indistinguishable to outsiders, are expected to be in the same price range as current smartphones, ranging from $250 to $600.

Which one of these news stories is false?

After years of development and dreaming, Europe will finally have an operational shield against ballistic missiles, starting this May. Or the beginnings of one, at least. Wired reports that the system, courtesy of NATO, will be “modest at first,” consisting of SM-3 interceptor missiles aboard the U.S.S. Monterrey, which will be stationed in the Mediterranean and enabled by the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system. The shield will be aided by a Turkish radar system. According to a senior NATO official, the system will be an “interim capability” to stop incoming missiles. Although the interceptors on the Monterrey can currently only stop short-to-intermediate range missiles, if everything goes according to plan, the shield will be able to stop intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2020. NATO has yet to discuss how Iran will react to the announcement of a developing missile shield, according to a senior NATO official the shield “is aimed at incoming missiles, not a [specific] country.”

1. “Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children.

[The Lorax is] plainly demonizing the so called one percent and espousing the virtue of green energy policies come what may…The presidents liberal friends in Hollywood are targeting a younger demographic using animated movies to sell their agenda to children.”

2. “This idea that man is here to serve the earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the earth a phony ideal. I don’t believe that’s what we’re here to do...we’re not here to serve the earth. The earth is not the objective. Man is the objective, and I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside-down.”

G.O.P SEX POLITICS 3. “I respect what Mr. Santorum thinks and believes for himself, but I think that it would be wise for the gentlemen to understand, maybe they need a lesson in the birds and bees or whatever it is...”

4. “Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular.”

KORAN BURNING IN AFGHANISTAN 5. “I believe Afghanistan owes us an apology.”

QUOTE MATCH-UP A. NANCY PELOSI B. RETIRED ARMY GEN. BARRY MCCAFFREY C. LOU DOBBS D. NEWT GINGRICH E. RICK SANTORUM F. G.O.P. STRATEGIST ALEX CASTELLANOS

6. “After a decade, and hundreds of billions of dollars and 16,000 U.S. casualties, we see how shallow the impact we have on this primitive society is.”

MULTIPLE CHOICE 1. The New York Times noted “inevitable comparisons to the Madoff case, but also many striking differences” about: a. a recent girl scout cookie Ponzi scheme in Greenwich, CT. b. the new Broadway hit “Made-off with a Dream.” c. accusations of a Ponzi scheme in the Amish community. d. the $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme operated by former South Florida lawyer Scott Rotherstein.

2. Which headline is fake? a. A Tiny Horse That Got Even Tinier as the Planet Heated Up (New York Times) b. Why We Can’t Save Rihanna (The Atlantic) c. Want to Jumpstart the Economy? Stop Shoplifters (Huffington Post) d. In Michigan, Santorum Feels Heat From Within (Reuters)

7. According to the Wall Street Journal, the DC39, which “handled like a hovercraft, following us around like a faithful droid” is: a. the newest vacuum from Dyson. b. the winner of the 2012 MIT Artificial Intelligence Design Competition. c. an autonomous backyard pooper-scooper developed by GE. d. a robot baby seal designed to provide comfort to nursing home patients.

8. The recently revamped Obama 2012 campaign store sells everything BUT: a. a “Grassroots Movement CD” featuring Kanye West and Sheryl Crow ($20) b. the “Michelle Obama Healthy Start” insulated lunch box ($16) c. a tee shirt designed by Marc Jacobs ($45) 3. Which government agency does Ron Paul want to get rid of d. the “Cats For Obama” collar ($12) this week? a. the Air and Radiation Hotline 9. This week, Santorum said J.F.K.’s 1960 speech on separab. the Central Intelligence Agency tion of church and state: c. the Chamber of Commerce a. “gives me the willies” d. the Securities and Exchange Commission b. “induces seizures” c. “has no place in a country founded by the grace of God” 4. Which bad pun headline isn’t real? d. “makes me want to throw up” a. Jesus Christ, That’s Tacky: Christ Portrait Made Out Of 24,790 Pushpins (Huffington Post) 10. The Fiscal Times’ “recession status symbols” include b. Michigan Tree Experts Stumped by Romney Claims everything BUT (The Nation) a. number of twitter followers c. Between Iraq and a Hard Place (New York Daily News) b. Mason jars d. They’re all real c. investing in a tech start up d. TOMS shoes 5. What locale(s) did the New York Times Travel Section feature last Sunday?

11. Which use of scare quotes is “fake”? a. “The Country Just Over The Fence” (The US-Mexico a. Utah state legislators deemed “regular” consumers of border) alcohol too hard to define (New York Times) b.“The New St. Petersburg: Florida ” (St. Petersburg, Russia b. Jessica Alba Opens Up About Her New “Baby” (Huffand St. Petersburg, Florida) ington Post) c. “10 Days in the Middle East for Under $1,500” (Gaza c. rampant bribery in local Chinese “elections” (The New City, Rafah, and Cairo) Republic) d. “36 Hours in the Next Williamsburg” (Detroit, MI) d. [he’s] one of a “growing” number of men pursuing limb-lengthening procedures for cosmetic reasons. (Yahoo 6. What was the most emailed article on Boston.com last News) weekend? a. Slideshow: Boston’s Medical Power Couples BONUS: What is Mitt Romney’s mother’s name? b. Feedback Friday: A Popular Request for Crockpot a. Sharrie Recipes b. Janine c. North Carolina Man Loses $49k Collection of Poisonc. Lenore ous Snakes d. Belinda d. Massachusetts Girl Collects 1,000 Prom Dresses to Donate

ANSWER KEY: BABY CHIPS IS FALSE. QUOTES: 1.C, 2.E, 3.A, 4. F, 5.D, 6. B MULTIPLE CHOICE: 1.C, 2. C, 3. B, 4. C, 5. A, 6. B, 7. A, 8. B, 9. D, 10.

B. 11. C, BONUS: C

4

news

2 march 2012

“D

in the hands of unelected commissioners accountable to the UK Treasury,” he said at LSE. His plan for an independent Scotland includes appropriating these oil profits to create a fund that will help to support the Scottish welfare state.

Ultimately, Salmond envisions an independent Scotland maintaining close economic ties with England through “a sterling zone” that would function like the eurozone—but, Salmond assured, would avoid its recent pitfalls due to Scotland and England’s parallel “prosperity levels.”

However, it has been a subject of debate in the media as to whether the European Union would permit Scotland to join as an independent nation without adopting the Euro; Salmond did not address this question.

o you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”

This is the question that First Minister Alex Salmond of the Scottish Parliament wishes to pose to the Scottish people on a referendum ballot tentatively scheduled for the autumn of 2014. Over the course of the past several months, he has been on an aggressive campaign to convince them to answer “Yes.” Ever since his party, the Scottish National Party (SNP), won the majority in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections, Salmond has been framing independence as an opportunity for economic uplift. In a speech given on the occasion of the SNP’s victory, he decried England’s economic “subordination” of Scotland, and recently, his arguments have taken on an increasingly pragmatic character as he has sought to convince those who doubt the financial viability of Scotland’s independence.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government has been hard at work urging the Scottish to remain faithful to Westminster. As Professor Mark Blyth, a Scotsman and political economist with the Watson Institute at Brown University, explains, it would be politically fatal for Cameron if the Union were to break up under his supervision—“like the South seceding under Obama’s watch.” Thus Cameron has begun to address the issue head-on, including taking a photo-op heavy promotional tour of Scotland earlier this month.

VIVE LA DEVOLUTION! In January, Salmond put forward a consultation document to the Scottish Parliament entitled “Your Scotland Your Referendum,” which addresses the logistics—costs, timing, semantics and so forth—of the referendum. The document proposes that Scotland vote on two issues.

The first, quoted above, is whether they are for or against independence. The second is whether the Scottish people would prefer “maximum devolution.” This arrangement would give the Scottish Parliament greater domestic powers without entirely dissolving its membership to the United Kingdom; for example, it would still rely on the British Parliament to handle national defense and foreign policy.

Scotland has been governed under a system of devolution since 1998. That year, the Scotland Act reinstated the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and delineated the areas over which it held autonomous legal jurisdiction from the British Parliament, such as education and health care. Scotland had not had its own parliament since 1707, the year it first joined its imperial neighbor England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain as part of an economic calculation to bolster its weak economy. The Scotland Act was Westminster’s response to nationalist rumblings incited by the SNP, which decried the increased centralization of the British government and the paltry representation of Scotland within its ranks.

As Blyth explains, Scotland and England have developed along two very different trajectories, “leaving ideological legacies that have become very powerful.”

In Scotland, formerly the heavy engineering and industrial center of the British Empire, politics have long been characterized by a clash between capital and labor, as represented by influential unions. Moreover, says Blyth, Scotland has higher rates of urban poverty and worse national health than England, which “begets very different policy responses and policy interventions and influences what people expect the state to do.” As a result of all of these factors,

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR? The Call for Scottish Independence

by Caroline Soussloff Illustration by Robert Sandler Scotland, unlike its English neighbor, is strongly socialist. Scotland has consistently voted left even as the Conservative Party has dominated in Westminster, leading to a sentiment of political disenfranchisement.

Until the economic downturn, devolution had successfully quelled Scotland’s separatist fervor. No longer.

While the financial crisis struck London a heavy blow, says Blyth, “There has been real private sector job growth in Scotland, and the financial sector did not blow up because they had not been incorporated into English banks…They are doing well, and their local budget is balanced, so the feeling is, why are we paying for the mistakes of your bankers?”

“THE AGE OF EMPIRES IS OVER” Salmond is not a particularly charismatic speaker. Although he does not fit the romanticized profile of an inspiring leader of a separatist movement, he is nonetheless serious about change. On February 15, he gave a softspoken lecture at the London School of Economics, in which he outlined six of the best economic arguments for Scottish independence. The speech was an attempt to dissuade the skeptics who have been raising concerns that Scotland does not have the resources to hold their own in the international economy.

Under the current power-sharing arrangement with Westminster, the Scottish government has no borrowing power

and cannot enact fiscal policy. Salmond argued that with these capabilities, it could stimulate capital investment, prioritize Scotland’s growth industries and incentivize investment in the country more generally.

“Metropolises like London…can exert a centrifugal force which draws power towards them,” he said. “Small countries, and regional economies, need a fiscal edge to encourage decision-making centers to settle.”

Salmond holds a deep-rooted disdain for Cameron’s Tory government. A selfdescribed Keynesian, he despises the recent austerity measures that Cameron has imposed on the British economy. He has repeatedly likened Cameron to fellow Tory Margaret Thatcher, whose liberal policies ravaged Scottish industry in the 1980s, causing unemployment to soar. In contrast, Salmond, like most of his countrymen, is a strident social democrat. At LSE, he said that he envisions Scotland as a potential “beacon in progressive economic policy as well as social policy.”

Another bone of contention for Salmond is Scotland’s energy resources.

Salmond is a proponent of clean and renewable energy, which he called “Scotland’s best growth opportunity of the next generation,” and he believes Cameron’s government is hostile towards it. However, he also has his eye on Scotland’s offshore oil reserves. “The licenses—and revenues— of much of our offshore energy are…

A “GREATER BRITAIN”?

A day after Salmond’s speech, Cameron was in Scotland, attempting to bolster allegiance to the Crown. With picturesque Edinburgh Castle behind him, he spoke of the United Kingdom as one big happy family, literally: “There are now more Scots living in England and English people living in Scotland than ever before,” he noted. “And almost half of Scots now have English relatives.”

He repeatedly evoked a distinctly British history, shared by Scotland and England for the past three hundred years.

“Your heroes are our heroes,” he stated, and characterized maintaining British unity as “a question of the heart as well as the head.”

It is partly a matter of audience and context, of course, but the contrast between his passionate appeals and Salmond’s rational arguments was stark.

This is not to say that Cameron did not employ rational arguments. He argued that in the face of hard economic times, there is value in “pooling risk, sharing resources and standing together.” He underscored the United Kingdom’s influence on international politics through the UN Security Council, NATO, the European Union and its armed forces. Yet he also made it clear that he is listening to the SNP’s demands, pledging a commitment to further devolution and the importance of the British welfare state.

“It is right…that the choice over independence should be for the Scottish people to make,” Cameron said. But it is clear that he is not going to let them go quietly. Amidst promises for a “greater Britain,” he declared, “I’m ready to fight for our country’s life.”

A NERVOUS PUBLIC “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”

As for where the Scottish people currently stand on that decision, recent poll numbers are inconclusive. Indeed, the results from the past month suggest that the country is fairly evenly divided, although support for independence has been growing.

The trend is the same across the border in England; a NatCen Social Research British Social Attitudes Survey this week found that about a quarter of the English were supportive of Scotland’s secession.

Even so, Blyth, for his part, is skeptical that Scottish independence will come to fruition, saying, “They’re willing to vote for the SNP when they know it’s devolution, but will they really be willing to vote for them when it’s for independence? You’re asking people to take all the institutional security they know and throw it away.”

The sun never sets on CAROLINE SOUSSLOFF B’12.

news

the college hill independent

5

SHUTTING DOWN Alabama Closes Mental Health Hospitals Due To Budget Cuts

by Dori Rahbar Illustration by Allison Clark

T

he state of Alabama will shut down four state-run hospitals for the mentally ill by 2013 due to budget cuts, state officials announced February 15.

The state plans to close all but two hospitals, lay off 948 employees, and relocate 524 patients to community centers and private hospitals.

The closures were prompted by a shrinking Alabama budget with cuts targeting Medicaid. Since 2009, Alabama has reduced its budget for the mentally ill by 36%, the second highest rate in the country, and plans for next year will most likely reduce the budget by an additional 25%, the equivalent of $29 million dollars.

According to Department of Mental Health Commissioner Zelia Baugh, the closures are a necessary reality if the state wishes to maintain a mental health department without raising revenue.

The Alabama Department of Mental Health has been shutting down state-run mental health hospitals and relocating patients to community centers and into private care for years. Since the 1990s, Alabama has closed 10 hospitals for the mentally ill. Current mental health budget cuts have forced the state to rush the closures, David Jackson, the Chief Operating Officer of the Department told The Birmingham News. The financial incentive for the state to relocate patients from staterun mental health hospitals to communitybased centers is central. According to The Birmingham News, it costs $60,000 to care for an individual in a community setting compared to $140,000 in a state-run mental health hospital. The Alabama Department of Mental Health opted to close the hospitals in question instead of cutting funding from community centers, which receive more federal funding and treat patients at a lower cost.

The displaced patients will be moved to group homes, private hospitals, and community centers where care is both more cost effective for the state and more personal for patients. Community centers are smaller than hospitals and hold less patients. “You don’t have to send a patient to an enormous institution that isn’t cost efficient and think that’s the best we can do,” Baugh said.

Patients from previous hospital closures throughout the years have been moved to similar locations.

The announcement was met with mixed feelings. “In general, we think it’s a good thing, considering the budget,” Robert Hermes, Executive Director of Wings Across Alabama, an advocacy group that assists mental health patients, told the New York Times. “The hospital tends to be an alienating environment. You often get warehoused and institutionalized. But we need to make sure there are enough community centers for these patients.”

In a letter published by The Birmingham News, Dr. Roxana Stewart, an employee of Searcy Hospital, expressed concern for her clients in their relocation from state-run hospitals to community-based centers. “Are they going to be taken care of on a daily basis as well as we take care of them at Searcy Hospital?” she wrote. “Who is going to follow them around and chastise them about brushing their teeth? Who is going to ensure they take their medications, or they take care of their hygiene? Who is going to protect them from others who might take advantage of them? And, most of all, who is going to keep them safe?”

Colbert County Probate Judge Tommy Crosslin criticizes community centers, explaining that the mental health hospitals must occur in tow with community centers.

“I know they’ve been trying for years to do this community thing, like halfway houses

and to get [patients] to function in society again,” he said. “But you have to get them to that point. That’s what the hospital was used for: to get them back on their meds and going again.”

According to a 2011 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, cutting mental health budgets will unintentionally transfer costly burdens to areas like emergency rooms and homeless shelters; other institutions like law enforcement agencies and correctional facilities will also suffer because feasibility and the logistics of patient relocation have yet to be addressed.

Although private care is more individualized and, according to state officials, provides more freedom, there is concern that the influx of patients might not be met with the appropriate infrastructure to accommodate them. No comprehensive plan is currently in place to coordinate such a big relocation.

There is further concern for rising health care costs since patients will still need treatment, which will put strains on other areas of the health care system that are not prepared for an influx patients.

Dr. William Sullivan, an ER physician at University of Illinois Medical Center, told Businessweek, “Saying that they’re going to save money doing this is kind of shortsighted…[Patients] just don’t disappear.

Their problems don’t get better. They go somewhere for care.”

These cuts come at a time when the government’s role in health care is at the forefront of nationwide attention. According to Ira Wilson, Professor of Health Services Policy and Practice at Brown University, these closures will become more common across the nation as pressures mount on state’s Medicaid budgets, which heavily fund mental health hospitals. Between 2009 and 2011, 11 states cut over 10% of their mental health budgets. States like Alaska,

South Carolina, and Arizona each made cuts of 35%, 23%, and 23% of their respective mental health budgets.

These cuts are felt in Rhode Island as well, which has been cutting its mental health budget since 2008. According to the same 2011 National Alliance on Mental Illness report, Rhode Island has experienced a 65% increase in the number of children suffering from mental illness who use hospital emergency rooms due to insufficient locations for treatment. This scenario could play out in Alabama as well should the state fail to provide enough community centers and alternative locations to provide treatments for displaced patients.

Robert W. Glover, executive director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, cautioned a shrinking mental health budget during poor economic times. “One of the worst times to be taking cuts like this is when the economy is bad and our services are needed the most,” he said. Additionally, a Tuscaloosa article reports that “economic recession corresponds with increased levels of joblessness, home foreclosures, depression, violence and suicide attempts.”

Alabama plans to maintain two hospitals after the cuts are put into effect, one for criminal suspects and one for geriatric patients.

DORI RAHBAR B’14 might not be met with the appropriate infrastructure.

6

metro

2 march 2012

LINES OF CONFLICT Redis

tricti

ng in Limb

by M a lco l m o A f t e r N o Vo t Burnl e ey

the college hill independent

metro

T

he scene was reminiscent of the Wisconsin State Capitol last year.

But the controversy surrounded boundaries, not collective bargaining, and brought the Providence city council chamber to a standstill. A no-show from half the council left one councilman, Bryan Principe, pondering to ask, “What is this— Providence, Wisconsin?”

On February 28, the Chairman of the Committee on Ward Boundaries, along with six other city councilmembers, did not show up to vote on a controversial redistricting map they had endorsed. It was expected to pass until one councilman—the decisive 8th vote—was sidelined in the hospital while recovering from retina surgery that he underwent less than 48 hours before, leaving supporters of the measure without a majority.

Renewed every ten years, the lines separating Providence’s 15 wards have embroiled the council in debate for a month.

Councilmembers are split on a proposed map carving chunks of downtown from current wards, and dropping them—along with the Jewelry District—like gems into Ward 1 on the East Side. Supporters call the map a sensible, census-based solution; detractors frame it as political subterfuge.

Redistricting aims to draw new voting lines, but it’s already drawn new political faults.

A mix of confusion and elation sprung up amongst the opposition when no vote occurred, and protesters from the South End chanted in Spanish, “You see it, you feel it, the people are here.” Cancellation of the vote meant that the March 1 deadline for redistricting, stated in the City Charter, would expire. “We’re suddenly in un-charted waters because people chose not to show up,” said Principe. Other councilmen sounded as if the supporters had conceded defeat.

“They’re retreating for right now. This is only the first step in a victory,” said Councilman Davian Sanchez of Ward 13.

“The Charter doesn’t specify what happens if we don’t pass it by the deadline,” said Councilman Yurdin of Ward 1, the Chairman of the Committee at the center of the controversy. Federal law still mandates the redistricting process be completed, but the city’s timetable is now in limbo. Rather than risk a deadlocked 7-to-7 decision, which would have sent the map back to committee, Yurdin postponed a vote through the no-show until all fifteen members of the council are healthy and present. “The majority of the council believes this is a good plan and important to pass,” Councilman Yurdin insisted, explaining the absentees’ rationale.

Yurdin has received the brunt of public criticism over the map during public hearings over the last three weeks. In the disputed map, Yurdin’s East Side district will add a large geographic swath that includes most of Downtown Providence and the prized Jewelry District, which are currently split amongst two councilmen—Sanchez, and Principe of Ward 13. This consolidation of downtown, and the proposed partnership with the East Side, is the centerpiece of the controversy.

“It’s severing the relationship between the most economically advantaged from two

of the most economically disadvantaged parts,” Principe said. Yurdin sees it another way: “we’re reconnecting all these neighborhoods, so that every part of the city has a voice. You have to look at the bigger picture: is this giving voters more power?”

Internal bickering amongst the council reflects the complexity of redistricting, which occurs once every ten years throughout the nation at all levels of government. The process involves numerical algorithms based on gains and losses in population, but also court decisions and legislation concerning voter equality. Collectively, it makes for a tricky concoction. “It’s not a circumstance of the Chairman of the committee dictating that he wanted it this way,” said Kimball Brace, the consultant hired by the city to work with the council in producing a draft of the map. “The fact is that the East Side is under-populated.”

Brace, who has 35 years of experience working with census data, spoke by phone prior to the vote’s cancellation, and delineated the difficulties of constructing any new map, particularly one in Providence.

All redistricting across the country must uphold two primary tenets. First is the “one person, one vote” rule set by the 1962 Supreme Court case, Baker v. Carr, which requires numerical equality amongst voting districts. The decision outlines that no single district can deviate by more than ten percent from what an average district would hold.

For example, in Providence, the target was 11,869 people for each word, because that is one-fifteenth the total population.

Second, the 1965 Voting Rights Act prevents “retrogression” of minority voting power in redistricting, meaning that the number of majority-minority districts can’t be lowered in a new map. The disputed map increased the number of majority-minority districts, from nine as it stands, to ten in the future.“It’s important to look at the substance,” Yurdin said. “This map does some very good things.”

During four public hearings on the map throughout February, residents from the South Side and West End have dominated discussion, yelling insults like “KKK” at Councilman Yurdin, and criticizing his acquisition of downtown and the Jewelry district as a political land grab. “This is the economic exclusion of neighborhoods in the tremendous financial investment that will be made in downtown,” said Darrell Lee, the founder of BCOG Planning Associates, a South Providence Community Development Organization. He denounced the map during testimony by pointing out that Ward 1 only lost 500 in population. This deficit falls within the target set by courts preventing mandatory re-apportionment, Lee argued, meaning Yurdin’s district didn’t have to gain the financial strength of downtown Providence. Councilman Principe agreed. “When you look at downtown, there’s no voters there. There’s no people there. Statistically speaking, it doesn’t matter.”

But Brace countered that logic, explaining that Wards 2 and 3 demanded a change, and due to other factors, it left

7

them little choice but to alter Ward 1 as well. He cited a 1983 court decision that requires Providence to maintain a border between Ward 3 and Ward 4, which are divided along the 126 freeway. This, along with its population loss, made Ward 3 the logical starting point for 2012 re-districting.

These factors provided the impetus for the pinwheel-shaped direction the map took, folding downtown into Ward 1 and the East Side. “But when you get to the other side of the territory,” like Wards 11, 13, and 14, where much of the protest has come from, Brace said, “you’re usually left with the dregs of what remains.”

Anthony Scionni is a resident in Ward 14 on the North End, and has organized online and written petitions against the map. Scionni attended each public hearing, and if it’s passed, plans to call upon Mayor Taveras to veto the proposed redistricting plan. While the new lines angered him, how the process unfolded was worse for Scionni.

“There was no transparency, everything was rushed,” he said.

Redistricting this year was hamstrung by inaction from the State Legislature, which left City Council just three weeks to draft its own new map. Until state redistricting is complete, which didn’t finish until February 9, the city council can’t begin. With the shortened timetable, only one proposal emerged from committee to be shared with the public, irking some city councilmen who were left out of the drafting stages.

Principe called the streamlined schedule “atrocious.” Sanchez said, “the process itself has been horrible. It hasn’t been transparent.”

The two councilmen currently controlling downtown worked together to produce an alternative second map, which was presented at the fourth and final public hearing on February 22. Its most central difference was preventing the consolidation of Downtown.

“Why give all the new redevelopment— probably the biggest project we will have in the next 100 years—and give it to the East Side?” asks Sanchez.

Yurdin and Brace insist economics plays no factor in redistricting. “My understanding of the councilperson’s role is to represent people in the district and give them a voice.

And right now the people downtown don’t have a voice,” Yurdin says.

Both sides remain dug in, while the future of the map is dubious. Yurdin claims a vote will occur immediately after Councilman Zurier recovers from his operation. If the map is somehow forced through, Sanchez is prepared to block the measure by any means necessary: “We are definitely going to the court if we lose,” he said.

Brace admits that the nature of dialogue has been distasteful at times, but the reaction has been “par for the course” when it comes to re-districting. “Any time you make any kind of changes, people have a reaction to it.

They don’t like change.”

MALCOLM BURNLEY B ‘12 is straddling Wards 1 and 2.

8

metro

2 march 2012

TAKING THE HILL Libby Kimzey Challenges for Rhode Island House District 8

by Jesse Towsen Illustration by Alexander Dale

L

ibby Kimzey wasn’t pulling punches at a public town hall meeting on February 6 with Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox and State Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed, hosted by The Rhode Island Young Democrats. Kimzey, a community activist, is running to replace a Democratic incumbent to represent Federal Hill and parts of Olenyville and Valley in the State House. At the Town Hall, facing the two leaders she hopes to have a chance to work closely with starting next year, she asked, “Will you raise taxes on people who earn more than $250,000?” The answer was simple: no.

Kimzey is a self-proclaimed progressive Democrat. She’s challenging first-term incumbent Michael Tarro in the Democratic primary in Rhode Island House District 8.

That night in early February she highlighted what many already know about Rhode Island politics: that much of the battle is fought under the tent of the Democratic Party, rather than between Democrats and Republicans. Rhode Island is a traditionally Democratic state, but it is not always politically liberal. Elected Democrats range from unabashed leftists to those who would likely be Republicans in most other states.

Kimzey is amongst a group of statewide activists that can loosely be defined as the “progressive community,” who share ideas in places like the blog Rhode Island’s Future and often work with groups such as Ocean State Action and Marriage Equality Rhode Island. Both chambers of the Assembly have progressive caucuses. Kimzey said that the caucus in the House needs to grow slightly larger in order to become more effective.

“A caucus of about 25 can effectively stop a budget from going through,” she said. “If you’re talking about a caucus of 30 or 35, then you’ve got a huge amount of power.”

Her campaign stands out not only because of her progressive identification, but also because she did not grow up on Federal Hill, or even in Rhode Island. She is a 23-year-old former Brown student who chose to run for office rather than graduate from college. She prefers to be active in the community, and says that she will not go back to Brown unless they allow her to do so on a part-time basis.

EARLY ATTENTION Kimzey’s announcement of her campaign garnered attention across the progressive community. Her platform features policies like public transportation to help lowincome families, improving the environment, and publicly financed elections. In addition, she had already made a name for herself with local politicians and activists through her work with Rhode Islanders for Fair Elections, as director of programs at the Capital Good Fund, and by working last election cycle as campaign manager for now-Representative Teresa Tanzi, who successfully challenged incumbent David Caprio in House District 34 (Narragansett, Peace Dale, and Wakefield).

The attention she received translated

quickly into support for her campaign.

Kimzey announced in January that her campaign had raised an impressive $13,000 in its first twelve days. According to numbers from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the average Rhode Island State House campaign in 2010 raised just over $13,000 over the entire election cycle.

At the time of her reporting, Representative Tarro announced a balance of $452 in his latest filing.

FROM COLLEGE HILL TO FEDERAL HILL Kimzey first worked Federal Hill in 2008 as a Brown student when she managed Project 20/20, installing environmentally efficient light bulbs in Rhode Island homes.

She moved to the neighborhood in early 2010, after leaving Brown. “I moved here because it was interesting, it was close, it was attractive,” she said. And she is not alone, as many young people have come for the art scene, another key feature for Kimzey: “It was close to the center of the art scene, to the steel yard, Building 16, and that whole scene.” Out-of-town students are exactly the type of people many Providence and Rhode Island politicians have been trying to attract in recent years, especially through support for the arts and the development of the Knowledge District. Whether or not an eager convert to the area is the ideal representative for its communities, however, remains an open question Kimzey described her district as, “mixed income, mixed racially, and facing a lot of economic stresses.” She does not believe that enough efforts are being made by the state government to address these stresses. When she brought that concern to a meeting with Representative Tarro, she was disappointed to hear him supporting, in her words, “whatever the Chamber of Commerce wants to do,” a body which she said, “doesn’t stand up for the interests of small businesses.”

Mr. Tarro did not respond to requests for comment, and he does not yet have a public campaign. In his first term, he has opened discussion about improving safety on Atwells Avenue, introduced legislation financially assist the construction of the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program’s independent public schools, and helped coordinate the Hardest Hit Fund, which helps homeowners facing financial hardship.

He also sits on the Judiciary and Municipal Government Committees. Kimzey said that in their meeting, his stated issue priority was to require “pet restraints on motor vehicles,” also known as “doggie safety belts.”

After deciding that Tarro did not represent the community to which she had moved, Kimzey found herself asking whether or not she was fit to run: “I’m 23. I didn’t graduate from college. I’ve only been living in Providence for seven years.” What’s more, she worried about the “tremendous sacrifices from family and friends, and political and professional friends” which running for office necessarily entailed. When asked how she raised so much money so

quickly, she responded, “I’m not really sure.

I got a lot of $25 gifts from friends of my parents who I hadn’t talked to in years.” This was not the only time when her youth was made clear. She is undeniably a policy wonk, but not one who claims to have all of the answers. When considering a complex tax issue, she stopped herself, smiled, and said, “I have a lot to learn.”

Managing Tanzi’s campaign in 2010 provided a blueprint for potential success.

Caprio, the incumbent, was then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and is a member of a powerful Rhode Island family: Caprio’s father is chief of the Providence Municipal Court and his brother was the state treasurer. Tanzi was, like Kimzey, a rookie politician and a Brown student, though not an undergraduate, and still managed to win the District 34 seat.

Tarro’s name carries similar weight to Caprio’s, as both his grandfather Anthony and his father Richard once held the District 8 seat. Although Tarro is not a Caprio, and is only in his first term, this race has a similar feel. Tarro fits the perhaps stereotypical image of Federal Hill, Providence’s Italian cultural center.

Kimzey risks appearing as an outsider who is not connected to her district; or at the very least, she must contend with the possibility that her connections within the community will be insufficient—both in the campaign and, if successful, in office. On her campaign website, she promises “to bring accessible, community-centered leadership to my home district.” Indeed, the race may hinge on her ability to convincingly call this her “home district.” As for challenging a member of an old Federal Hill family, she points out that the district is now more Latino than Italian. “The more time you spend here,” she said, “the more you realize that the big names, the big families, just don’t live here anymore. They’ve all moved to Johnston.”

GOOD LITTLE GIRLS Although she does not see a return to Brown in her near future, Kimzey said she developed a lot of useful relationships as a student, especially through Project 20/20 and the fair elections student group Democracy Matters. Zack Mezera, Brown ’12, has signed onto her campaign as field director. “She’s actually listening to the people she’s working with,” he said when asked why he chose to work for Kimzey.

“Which I think is radically different from the old style of politics, which is saying, ‘I know how to run things.’ I have a lot of faith that if she were elected she would be extremely accessible to the district.”

Despite her connection to Brown, she admits that she was not a perfect fit for the school. “I’m just not an academic, she said. “I want to make sure that my energy is going to real-world solutions. Brown is a very academic institution, so in that way our relationship wasn’t a match.” On the other hand, she is grateful that, unlike some undergraduate experiences, Brown did not

try to train her to be “a good little girl.”

Because, she said, “Good little girls don’t run for office.”

Nor do good little Democrats, not against Democratic incumbents. She said she was aware of “the idea that what a good Democrat should do is wait for their turn, and wait for an open seat. That’s not what I’m doing, because I don’t think that works.”

In the long-term, she said, we have to ask, “Why is our general assembly all private-sector lawyers, white men in their forties and fifties?” One solution Kimzey supports for creating a more diverse electorate is to install publicly financed elections, a proposal she began pushing for when still a full-time student. “[State Representative] is kind of a crappy job,” she said, and this reform would “make that more palatable.”

For many, there are more structural barriers to running for office. Representatives earn a salary of just over $13,000, and so it is very difficult to juggle with a full-time job, especially one with an inflexible schedule.

“One of the reasons it’s a bad job is it’s 20 hours a week,” she said. “Making it a little bit easier to reach satisfying levels of healthcare, income, housing, transportation, and education makes it easier to run for office. Yes it takes a candidate, but it also takes a stronger social safety net.” Kimzey believes that many potential representatives are not able to run today. Government policy that helps protect less-well-off citizens would begin to open up candidacy to a wider range of Rhode Islanders.

A RACE TO WATCH It is clear that Kimzey is passionate about policies that would seek to help the concerns of all Rhode Islanders, including those who are least represented in government. Her knowledge of and experience in the district are less convincing. Her campaign website lists thirty groups, societies, and projects of which she is or has been a member, making it read somewhat like an extremely active high-school student’s resume— evidence both that she is highly skilled and enthusiastic and that she lacks the key accomplishments in the district that a more experienced candidate might herald.

As for the citizens of District 8, they will have to decide whether her experience and knowledge of the community are enough to be a good representative. And the race could still take on a new shape entirely.

Former Acting Mayor and President of the Providence City Council John Lombardi, who lost in the Democratic primary for mayor last year to Angel Taveras, is rumored to be considering a run for the seat as well.

Whether or not he joins this September will be closely watched by politicos, Democrats, Progressives, and the Brown-RISD community.

JESSE TOWSEN B’12 designs doggie safety belts.

the college hill independent

opinions

9

REBELLION IN MALI

Independence for the People of the Azawad, With or Without Statehood

by Ben Tucker Illustration by Timothy Nassau

O

ver 100,000 Malians are reported to have been displaced since late January, in the wake of a violent insurrection in the northern regions of the country where the nomadic Tuareg people are claiming independence. On January 24, Tuareg forces in one town summarily executed 82 civilian village leaders and Malian troops. French Development Minister Henri de Raincourt responded to the incident by linking the rebels to al-Qaeda tactics, a misleading association that is nonetheless typical of the Tuareg’s portrayal in Western press.

Mali’s northern regions, sparsely populated zones stretching into the Sahara, are a world away from the southern capital, Bamako. Rebel forces claiming the territory have repeatedly clashed with the military, managing at times to drive government forces across the border into Algeria. Protesters outraged at the state’s weak response shut down the capital, with the families of killed soldiers mourning in the streets. President Amadou Touré acknowledged the gravity of Tuareg problem and suggested that it would likely persist for the next three or four presidents.

With armed Tuareg rebellions having recurred intermittently since resistance against the French in 1916, Touré’s estimate seems reasonable. The Federation of Mali gained independence from France in July 1960, as an area including presentday Senegal. Though Senegal became its own state in August of that same year, the Tuareg-inhabited north remained split principally between Mali and Niger.

Dissatisfied with their subordination within the Malian state, Tuareg rebels claimed the region’s independence in 1962. By 1964, the Malian army had defeated them and installed a repressive military regime.

What has happened since might be thought of as a continuation of colonial rule, with the capital relocated from Paris to Bamako. Despite the relative success of democracy in the country’s south, the centralized government’s legitimacy in the north may be as questionable as oldfashioned colonial governance.

CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES Deteriorating natural conditions in the north have helped bring the issue of sovereignty once again to the fore. While there’s reasonable debate about the macrolevel causes of climate change, policy choices have exacerbated scarcity in the region just south of the Sahara, referred to as the Sahel,

a name derived from the Arabic word for ‘coast.’ More than a dozen African leaders recently met in Mauritania to discuss growing tensions in the region, and the heads of state may have good reason to be worried.

Colonial economies—plantations of coffee or cotton arranged for export in regions that for centuries had survived on low-intensity production and trade—didn’t end with independence. Banned from market intervention by Euro-Americandirected ‘structural adjustment’ programs in the 1980s, West African states were hamstrung in their efforts to promote development and prevent destructive agricultural practices. The plantation-toport model that colonial powers had put in place before banning market intervention remained intact.

Preserving this model entailed throttling up unsupportable high-intensity agriculture at the same time that droughts became more frequent. Export prices fell and farmland crept north, displacing grazing nomads. Having replaced forests with crops, residents harvested the remaining trees for firewood, pulling up the root supports that kept the desert at bay. Though droughts are seasonal, desertification is permanent, and the vicious cycle of an increasingly dry climate and an encroaching desert made the physical conditions of nomadic life dire.

Threatening to make matters worse, the continent’s population has doubled since 1982, and the region may be ignited by hungry generations. With their arable land allocated to exports that other countries produce at (or subsidize down to) a lower price, and lacking physical and financial infrastructures for manufacturing, Sahel economies are on an unstable path. The governments that emerged from structural adjustment were unable to look after the long-term needs of their people.

THE TERRORISM QUESTION Understanding how the Tuareg rebels fit into this situation demands making a distinction between a terrorist organization and a liberation movement, one of the most politically urgent questions currently.

The Tuareg rebellion goes under the name MNLA, Mouvement National pour la Libération de l’Azawad (the Azawad is the Sahara-Sahelian region that the movement claims as its sovereign nation-state—the Senegal that never was).

MNLA’s slogan is “Unity, Justice, Liberty.” Its website posts descriptions of

Mali’s human rights violations against the Tuareg: unlawful arrests of the leaders of the Women of the Azawad, aimless gunfire from a Malian army helicopter that left seven civilians wounded and two dead. One of the movement’s founders, who vividly describes his people’s starvation in the brush as one of his motives for action, reports 18 days in the custody of Malian secret service after the movement’s 2010 congress.

The site also details the organization’s political program, calling for the “restitution of the [Azawad] land,” and noting that restitution “is not at all a haphazard term but is a fundamental notion that refers to something moral or material that once existed and must be resuscitated.” For the MNLA, Mali continues to occupy their homeland: “it remains within the logic of colonization, contemptuous towards human value and lacking respect.” Half a century after Mali’s formation, the MNLA states its discontent: “Fifty years of promises of development, the Azawad hasn’t seen any infrastructure, not a meter of paved roads, fifty years of talk of peace and security, the people of the Azawad have seen only more insecurity and more soldiers fueling fear and terror between peoples.” The MNLA makes no reference to Islamic rule, as Tuareg variants on Islam are generally moderate, and an MNLA spokesman recently suggested that Azawad independence would be the surest path to stopping al-Qaeda activity in the area. The organization calls, rather, for the self-determination of the Tuareg people, citing the charters of the UN and the African Union.

The MNLA’s rhetoric depicts an oppressed people, though this image is hard to square with mass displacements and summary executions. These periods of scarcity prompt immediate actions to reclaim power in the face of helplessness.

When the official boundaries of the state fail as measures of common suffering, assertions of local power remove those boundaries’ practical sense. Terrorist or liberator is a false opposition: the first describes today, the second hinges on tomorrow.

LESSONS FOR LIBERALS There’s no reason to think of the Mali we know today as a meaningful or permanent entity. Like the economy that has driven the Sahel’s hard times, the nation is another piece of colonial heritage. The crisis in the Sahel may demand reformulations of common welfare that are unfriendly towards colonizing logic.

Fortunately, in a democracy like Mali’s, there are non-violent ways of dismantling the state. Although all election projections are dubious, Mali’s current presidential “front-runner,” Yeah Samaké, is a Malian and American-educated Mormon mayor who revolutionized Malian local governance.

His apparently successful platform focuses on decentralizing power to equip local governments to serve people well. It’s unclear whether this would overcome the challenge of the widely varying ways of life and needs from the government posed by the inclusion of the Azawad within Mali, but it’s equally hard to say that an independent Azawad could feed its people without selling somebody else out. Localism only goes so far in the face of global economies and ecologies.

The most democratic thing to do would be to treat the Malian state as less of an authority. Right now, a Malian official reporting rebel violence stands better odds of having his story repeated than does an Azawadian leader with the opposite claim.

Putting too much confidence in either side disenfranchises all of those without guns.

Even focusing on the guns, one might add, distracts from the real disenfranchisement of those without money.

The centralization of power often appears to entail the centralization of responsibility, and for a democracy, this is a dangerous thing. Our sense of responsibility is our political attention span. As it vanishes, we come to rely increasingly on shorthand.

Among the group of things called ‘terrorist’ are many different, complex things, and to homogenize them dismisses what they really are. Our shorthand is the manner in which we commit what philosopher Jacques Rancière calls the original wrong: hearing roaring masses in place of people speaking.

BEN TUCKER B’13 is anti-skub and he votes with his dollar.

HEARTS

ON

Self-Immolation as Political Protest

by Kate Welsh Illustration by Robert Sandler

W

hen a Tunisian fruit seller named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 17, 2011, he sparked the Arab Spring, a protest movement that eventually spread to Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Bahrain. He set himself ablaze to protest his treatment by police, who had harassed him and threatened to take away his cart—his sole source of income. Mohamed’s cousin Ali filmed the immediate aftermath from a mobile phone and posted the video on his Facebook page. On the same day that Mohamed killed himself, hundreds and then thousands of Tunisians saw what, for many, was a reflection of their own sense of despair in the face of political oppression.

In the year since Bouazizi’s suicide, men and women have participated in a wave of self-immolation across the region. Five men self-immolated in Morocco in January, and on February 4 two Pakistani employees of the Karachi Electric Supply Company set themselves alight in protest of the company’s unjust labor practices.

The self-immolations has not been confined to the Middle East. In recent months, a 56-year-old Russian woman selfimmolated in front of the Moscow White House, apparently to protest the Putin regime. In China, three Tibetan herders selfimmolated in protest of the government’s political and religious oppression—adding to the 23 Tibetans who have publicly set themselves on fire this year. In the town of Aba, where more than half of the selfimmolations have occurred, Chinese police officers in fire trucks park outside the main monastery.

In the Arab world, these selfimmolations have provoked horror and wonder. Some commentators declared Bouazizi a martyr, a representative of the crowds of students and unemployed protesting against poor living conditions.

But others, including many clerics, disagree.

Al Azhar, the Cairo university that is the oldest and most prestigious center of learning in the Sunni Muslim world, issued a fatwa in January reaffirming that suicide violates Islam even when it is carried out as a social or political protest.

THICH QUANG DUC Burning oneself as political protest is not new. One of the most infamous moments of politically motivated self-immolation was that of Thich Quang Duc in 1963.

Protesting the religious repression of Buddhist monks by the Christian (and American-backed) South Vietnamese government, Quang Duc doused himself in gasoline in the middle of a Saigon street and set himself ablaze—thus creating one of the most enduring images of the Vietnam War.

David Halberstam, one of the few reporters at the scene, wrote in the New York Times, “I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh. Human beings burn surprisingly quickly… I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.”

Malcolm Browne’s photograph of the burning Duc was featured on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. In Europe, the photographs were sold on the streets as postcards, and the Chinese government distributed millions of copies of the photo throughout Asia and Africa as evidence of “U.S. imperialism.”

Many Buddhist authorities say that suicide cannot be reconciled with their religious tradition. But in the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, scriptures exalt burning as a form of religious devotion. The Fire Sermon, one of Buddha’s most famous teachings, uses the metaphor of burning body parts to emphasize the impermanence of the human body. An ascetic strain among Chinese and Korean Buddhists embrace gestures of painful self-sacrifice, from the burning of fingers to self-immolation. But although the trope of all-encompassing flame pervades Buddhist thought, before Duc’s act self-immolation had never been so public or explicitly political. Dr. Robert Shard, chairman at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, told the New York Times, “Fullbody immolation is rarely done solely as a religious practice. It is more typically a form of political protest.”

BODY AS SITE OF PROTEST Halberstam’s sense of confusion and bewilderment reflects a visceral reaction we all have: how could someone do such a brutal thing to herself ? Perhaps a way to understand is through comparison to the hunger strikes. Unlike suicidal terrorism, these forms of protest are not impelled by the promise of salvation. The Irish hunger strike of 1981 provides illuminating comparison. Five years prior, imprisoned Irish Republican Army members enacted a so-called “dirty strike” in order to regain their status as political, rather than criminal, prisoners. This distinction underscored the point that they were soldiers in a legitimate war and deserved to be treated as enemy combatants, rather than as common criminals. Their insistence on retaining their warrior identity sent the message to all Irish Republicans that they were still fighting the same struggle that transcended the walls of the infamous Maze jail. During

the Dirty Protest, prisoners refused to wash, wear prison uniforms, or clean up their own excrement. After five years of this protest, about 20 of the prisoners began a hunger strike lasting 217 days. When the tenth prisoner died of starvation, the British government finally acceded to their demands.

The prisoners at Maze demonstrated that while the imprisoned body is at the mercy of its external environment, it still retains a stunning communicative power at the service of its owner. They recognized that pain is one’s own to bestow. The stench of their excrement oozing throughout their isolation cells mocked their guards, who could lock away the prisoners’ bodies, but not their bowel movements. Deprived of food, they fed on the manna of moral triumph.

Self-immolation is dying with a message, for a message, and of a message.

The body becomes the site on which selfdestructive replication denounces the wrongs that humans have wrought.

WAVE OF IMITATION As a result of Quang Duc’s act in 1963, selfimmolation entered the global repertoire of protest. Within South Vietnam, it galvanized popular discontent and set off a series of copycat self-immolations. Four monks and a nun burned themselves to death before the regime was toppled by a coup. In 1966, another wave of selfimmolations protested the Americanbacked military regime. Thirteen men and women set themselves on fire in one week, and laypeople soon began to follow suit.

Three Americans, in explicit imitation of Quang Duc, burned themselves to death in 1965—perhaps to denounce their country’s guilt, perhaps to alleviate some of it by their sacrifice, perhaps simply to urge an end to the slaughter. By the end of 1969, Quang Duc’s act had been repeated over eighty times, and in many places far removed from Saigon, according to a study by Michael Biggs of Oxford University. The model of sacrificial protest by burning was now truly available for any cause.

EFFECTIVE? Since the Vietnam War, there have been many politically motivated self-immolations, but none have been as effective in attracting media attention or galvanizing resistance.

In some cases, the authorities have been too powerful. Few people today remember Homa Darabi, the Western educated child psychiatrist who set herself on fire in a crowded Tehran square in 1994. A month earlier, a 16-year-old girl was shot to death for wearing lipstick, and Darabi—who refused to wear the veil—had seen enough.

She shouted, “Down with tyranny, long live liberty, long live Iran!” as the flames engulfed her. If any pictures were taken, none remain. The news media barely covered the story, and the Ayatollah denounced her as mentally unstable. In 2001, five Chinese citizens and alleged members of Falun Gong set themselves alight in Tiananmen Square. Ultimately, the Chinese government turned the 2001 self-immolations against the Falun Gong, using it as further evidence of the group’s status as a dangerous cult.

When at least three Americans in 1991 selfimmolated in protest of United States policy in the Persian Gulf, many people recoiled from the protesters as lunatics.

Why do some politically motivated self-immolations have such a widespread effect, while others are denounced or slip into oblivion? Despite the horror of any of these stories, the suicides of Quang Duc and Bouazizi provoked by far the most public outcry and political reshuffling.

The notoriety achieved by these two figures seems to rely on a perfect storm of media attention, a wave of imitators, and simmering widespread public discontent.

In Tunisia, Bouazizi’s immolation and the subsequent demonstrations were precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, and political oppression. Within hours of setting himself on fire, residents of Bouazizi’s town, Sidi Bouzid, began rioting. Video clips of those protests spread like wildfire throughout Tunisia and the rest of the Middle East.

Five-thousand people attended his funeral, and protests continued to build for the next two weeks, until President Ben Ali fled the country for Saudi Arabia. Bouazizi’s grave has become a shrine, drawing a stream of visitors with flowers and Tunisian flags.

The symbolic build-up to his funeral and the memorialization of his grave made the protest easily accessible to Tunisians and provided them with continual opportunities to remain involved. Three weeks later, another man’s burnt offering in Algeria further amplified Bouazizi’s voice. The perseverance of the Arab Spring protesters prevented the immolation from becoming yesterday’s news. They claimed kinship with the spirit of his sacrifice—they, too, were willing to sacrifice their bodies in Tahrir Square. As a political tool, self-immolation is rarely successful, except in the rare instances that others take up the torch— figuratively, and, perhaps, literally.

KATE WELSH B’12 is media attention.

12

arts

2 march 2012

ON FRENCH FILMS OF A CERTAIN AGE The French Film Festival runs until March 4 at the Cable Car Cinema 204 South Main Street, Providence, RI

by Gillian Brassil, Belle Cushing, Sarah Denaci, and Caroline Sagalchik

LES DERNIERS JOURS DU MONDE [HAPPY ENDS], (2009)

d i r. A r n a u d a n d J e a n - M a r i e L a r r i e u

H

ow would the apocalypse happen in France? It would happen slowly, and everyone would be irritated and arguing and taking their shirts off and having orgies in abandoned hotels.

Train passengers would be sprayed with disinfectant by men in yellow hazmat suits, and they would sleep with their estranged fathers or their fathers’ ex-lovers. Waitstaff would poison wealthy douchebags with blue martinis and an annoying siren would never quit wailing in the background. A man named Robinson (Mathieu Amalric) would his family and hometown on what

initially seems to be a search for safety, but what is actually a search for his lost Spanish mistress, Lae, who once caused him to lose his right arm and fuck up his life.

Everything would be exploding—especially in one very red, very startling scene at The Running of the Bulls—and every person and thing would be trying to have sex with Robinson, but it wouldn’t matter because Robinson really needs to find Lae. She might be kind of a whore (in fact, she is; that is her job), but she is all Robinson cares about. And of course none of Robinson’s friends understand, because it is a little hard

to understand or to sympathize with, this flabby middle aged man obsessed with a woman his friends call that “charming little whore” while the world falls to pieces around him. But in this movie, everyone is desperate and horny: love—or lust—is all anyone really cares about, especially when the world is ending. Or so this well-filmed, carefully plotted, sort of scary movie suggests.

–SD Les derniers jours du monde screens Friday, March 2, at 9 p.m.

L E J O U R D ’AVA N T [ T H E D AY B E F O R E ] , ( 2 0 0 9 )

d i r. L o ï c P r i g e n t

I

n the first few minutes of Le jour d’avant, a narrator buoyantly describes Fendi, a fashion house known for its furs: “It’s about luxury; it’s about money; it’s about Italy.” Pictures of expensive handbags flash onscreen. Watching this, I was baffled; I had been expecting a documentary about high fashion, but what I was watching bore a strange resemblance to VH1’s The Fabulous Life. As it turned out, the movie’s roots lay somewhere in between.

Le jour d’avant was originally shown on the Sundance Channel in 2009 as four one-hour episodes, each documenting the backstage preparations for a different major fashion show. In its film version, the episodes featuring Karl Lagerfeld (for Fendi) and Jean Paul Gaultier are played back-to-back.

So there’s a good explanation for why this movie feels like a reality TV show; what makes less sense is why anyone thought this material belonged in theaters. Event planning is boring, y’all.

Prigent’s main problem is that he has mistaken activity for interest: people run around and talk tensely and cut fabric, all to the strains of extremely dramatic music, but the stakes just don’t feel high. You always know that the show will go on, that the result will be ten minutes of models strutting down a catwalk (of which you only get to see a minute or two). To make up for this lack of intrigue, in some places Prigent has added snarky, all-caps captions: “KARL LAGERFELD IS LATE TO HIS OWN SHOW.” But neither Lagerfeld

nor Gaultier is as compelling onscreen as they apparently imagine themselves to be, and Prigent’s vague attempts at deeper commentary—These models are really young and skinny! These old Italian ladies sew a lot and Lagerfeld gets all the credit!—are halfassed and quickly forgotten. Prigent should have stuck to the juicier side of fashion: the Fabulous Lives of people buying €100,000 sable coats.

–GB Le jour d’avant screens Sunday, March 4, at 4:30 p.m.

the college hill independent

arts

13

L E S P E T I T S R U I S S E A U X [ WA N D E R I N G S T R E A M S ] , ( 2 0 1 0 )

d i r. P a s c a l R a b a t é

& MAMMUTH, (2010)

d i r. B e n o î t D e l é p i n e a n d G u s t a v e Ke r v e r n

F

rance is in a late-life crisis: when old-manhood hits, how to reconnect with the passion in sex and art that French films hold dear? The answer will be found on the road, cruising below the speed limit in a bizarre vehicle, and fraternizing— preferably while naked, preferably with a joint—with members of the younger alternative generation.

That is, according to two films, Les petits ruisseaux (Wandering Streams) and Mammuth, which arrive at remarkably similar conclusions to this same question.

In Les petits ruisseaux, Émile (Daniel Prévost) comes to question his own sterile retirement when he discovers his late fishing buddy’s active sex life and extensive oeuvre of pornographic paintings. Prompted by a sudden tendency to mentally disrobe all clothed women, Émile sets out in his bright orange oversized toy car to “re-learn

happiness.” The graphic novelist Pascal Rabaté has, in his directorial debut, adapted his own book of the same name. Each shot seems a panel from a comic reproduced in real life, so that any qualms over watching septuagenarians being seduced by dreadlocked teenagers are quickly calmed by sheer delight at the composition.

If Les petits ruisseaux is a graphic novel in film form, Mammuth is a mixed-media painting. The camera switches from grainy Super 16 reversal to a hi-def handheld in the same scene, following Serge, (a corpulent Gerard Dépardieu, with a lot of curly blond locks and a little bit of intelligence), as he tracks down old employers to ensure his retirement pension. Traveling through the countryside on his motor bike (Mammuth is the bike’s model, and also Serge’s nickname), he shakes off insults, relives a tragic memory with a dead ex (Isabelle Adjani, reappearing

intermittently to chat in bloodied splendor), and reconnects with his niece, who makes sculptures out of dilapidated dolls, considers writing her resume on toilet paper in menstrual blood, and eventually teaches Serge to see love. The writing/directing duo, Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern, may get carried away at some points—a session of male bonding masturbation between two geriatric cousins provides more shock value than thematic importance—but they have managed to create an eerie and endearing surrealism within a tired life. The journey is oddly static. There is no epiphanic climax at the summit of the narrative arc to show exactly when and how the transformation occurred, but by the time Serge and his niece are floating in a bean-shaped swimming pool on the sea, it is clear that that Serge has discovered the poetry of an existence previously considered idiotic.

Both films elicit cringes and heartstring twinges, and throughout their saturated absurdity celebrate unbridled, nude joy at any time in life. The films reinforce the life motto upheld by Émile’s randy pal: “The present does not exist. Only the future passes.”

Which, of course, means nothing at all.

-BC Les petits ruisseaux screens Sunday, March 4, at noon.

Mammuth is no longer showing.

B U S PA L L A D I U M , ( 2 0 1 0 )

d i r. C h r i s t o p h e r T h o m p s o n

“I

t felt like I was high,” one audience member exclaimed at the Q&A that followed the screening of Bus Palladium, the directorial debut of Christopher Thompson B’88, which opened the French Film Festival last Wednesday.

Bus Palladium is a movie about sex, drugs, and rock & roll, accompanied by all the clichés you would expect. The sensation of being high that the audience member felt probably stemmed from the intoxicating filming style, which contrasted vivid and blurry cinematography, as much as from the subject matter. Five young guys are striving to make it in the music business. Their band

name is “Lust” and their music, while solid, is as conventional as their name. Yet, they dream of being contemporary Beatles or Rolling Stones and describe themselves as “little white guys with a black soul grounded in the Delta mud.”

Bandmates and best friends, Lucas (Marc-André Grondin) is the guitarist, and Manu (Arthur Dupont) is the singer and frontman. Lucas, the good, sensitive, hard-worker, advises Manu to get down from dangerous heights, while Manu, the daredevil, womanizing heartthrob, urges Lucas to get up there with him. Their harmonized relationship is threatened by

the arrival of the archetypal dream-girl—the sexy, free-loving Laura (Elisa Sednaoui).

Not appreciative of ‘groupie’ or ‘muse’ labels, she sees herself as an icon for the band, comparable to Penny Lane in Almost Famous.

At the Q&A, Thompson himself said, “I didn’t try to avoid the stereotypes. Many kids have this dream.”

The film brings up questions that young people often ask themselves at this age. At one point, Manu asks Lucas, “Have you ever felt that you’re important—that you’re meant to do something special?” Lucas says, “No, not really,” and throws the question back at Manu, who responds, “All the time.” At

another point Manu gets asked, “Do you feel satisfied?” Manu counter-questions: “Sexually? Financially? Intellectually?”

Beyond being a story about making it as musicians Bus Palladium is a story about the difficulties in friendship, parenthood, love, and lust. Unexpectedly, in not trying to avoid clichés it manages to captivate and elevate— without the residual munchies.

-CS Bus Palladium is no longer showing.

14

arts

2 march 2012

ALL IN THE FA M I LY A Conversation with Artist David Mramor

by John White Illustration by Katy Windemuth

C

uriously, David Mramor, a painter with an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts, is making his professional debut at a closet-sized gallery.

The gallery is called Family Business and is a tiny rectangle of space sectioned off from Anna Kustera Gallery in Chelsea.

The brainchild of the artist Maurizio Cattelan, who announced his retirement from making art last fall, and Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Family Business opened all of its 125 square feet on February 16 with The Virgins Show. The exhibition is curated by Marilyn Minter and devoted entirely to four “virgin artists” who haven’t shown professionally in New York before.

With disproportionately high ceilings and a glass storefront serving as one of its two long walls, Family Business’s layout makes the task of exhibiting a difficult one, to say the least. To create the four paintings of his that appear in the show, David manipulates digital images and prints them on fabric.

He then attaches the fabric to canvas and stuffs it so it bulges out at viewers. David then paints and draws abstract lines over the images in a process he calls instinctual.

The paintings energize the small space, as do such works as Eric Mistretta’s Balloons, party balloons that have endearing phrases and images scrawled on them, taking adavntage of the space’s height. It is not clear how long The Virgins Show will run or what Family Business will exhibit afterward, although Minter told ARTINFO that Cattelan “explained the project as an altruistic gesture” for artists in general, not just new ones like David. The Indy sat down with David in his Tribeca studio to discuss his art, Family Business, and what it all means to him.

school in New York. I think this educational system has a lot of ideas about painting.

Like, “You can do this kind of painting, but you can’t do this kind of painting.” There are so many formal rules to it. So I think these artists are trying to push it. They want deeper content, but they want, too, some of that formal beauty.

Indy: Marilyn Minter told ARTINFO that she was starting to notice an increase in the number of painters in graduate school, a trend that she feels the artists in the show represent. Can you add some insight to this trend?

DM: Yeah, so I returned to painting. But then that “formal” issue with all its rules was still coming up for me. So playing with photos—manipulating them, making them more abstract—really started to interest me. And then, in this big pivotal moment, my mom passed away in September. At her service we collected all of these photographs of her to display so everyone can see her, the many faces of her. When I came back to New York, in this grieving space, I had all these old photographs. I started scanning them because I was just gonna keep them. And as I was scanning them, they just looked amazing on the computer.

It was kind of accidental. What came first was printing these regular photos of her.

That’s what a lot of these are. Like this one. [points] It’s called New York City, but my mother had never been to New York until I

DM: There’s a real connection to the work—an intimacy with the work—that’s happening. I know a lot of artists who are really disconnected from their work and like it that way, but a lot of this new work is very personal. And it seems like there’s this resurgence of—I mean, there always is, but it seems there’s this new resurgence of painting. Because I think a lot of people were told or were influenced not to paint, even though that’s what they were supposed to be doing. I know a lot of people that that happened to, especially that went to grad

Indy: In that vein of “pushing it,” in this show artists are even painting on panty hose. Even though you were trained as a painter, three of your four works in the show use fabric. Do you have any particular background or interest in textiles?

DM: Yeah, big time. After I had my thesis show at Ohio University, where I got my BFA, I was making new work and had applied to all these grad schools. In my mind I was like, “What am I gonna be when I go to New York?” It was a really good time to put on a whole new face with my art and everything. So when I came here I put painting down for a while and was just making these fabric installations, and a lot of really interesting stuff happened. It felt really good, but it got a little crazy. I didn’t really give myself any limits, which is fine. But everyone in grad school becomes a goddamn installation artist. [laughs] So one of my old professors from Ohio moved back to New York, and she came to my studio and was like, “Why aren’t you painting anymore?”

Like I said, there are so many rules to painting. But what I did find, then, was I didn’t need to push it. I thought, “I’m gonna just try a little bit to maybe live in these parameters.” Saying it out loud sounds really boring. [laughs] But that felt really good.

Indy: So then you returned to painting?

moved here so there’s no way that it could be here. But when I was looking at the photograph it looked like she was in New York, and I liked that idea of bringing her here before she could come.

Indy: I had no idea they were all her!

DM: Yeah! From those I figured out that I could also print on fabric. Because the fabric has always, like I was saying, had something about it for me. So I started wanting to give the paintings more life and thinking about upholstering, like furniture. Being able to print onto silk has this sexiness to it. It’s like water flowing—you know, when fabric’s against the body. And stuffing the fabric on the canvas gives it this volume, this life.

Indy: What do you stuff them with?

DM: Just cotton bedding. So then they get that poof that gives it something… else.

And for me it’s so much, too, about illusion and reality. Because putting the paint onto the surface is literally creating this reality— like the material reality of the paint—on top of this photograph, which is an illusion.

A photograph is just light hitting things.

But then in another way the photograph becomes the reality because it’s a literal thing. And the paint is this illusion of something else. I really enjoy that. There’s a balance that I’m trying to find. And I think that’s maybe what some of these artists who Marilyn was talking about are trying to find.

Indy: A balance between literal and abstract?

DM: Yeah. And nostalgia, that seems to be another thing that a lot of these artists are connecting to. Look at the show at Family Business, like Eric’s Balloons. They’re so childlike. But there’s more to these things.

Indy: Which, I think, is what Family Business is trying to point out with the fun and light but still substantial, meaningful art.

DM: Right, yeah. I think that is what Family Business is all about. It’s experimental space. And it’s really trying to show new, interesting things. Or just show interesting things. A lot of stuff isn’t new.

Indy: Well, it’s new in the sense that—at least for this show—none of you have shown professionally in New York before.

DM: Right. And everything happened very organically, too. When I met [the other

three artists] I felt like I had known them a long time. The five of us—the four artists and Marilyn—would go around to each other’s studios and just look at each other’s work to get an idea of what we were going to do once we got over there. We had picked all this work, and we go over there the day to install and it was like, “Oh my God, what happens now?” Because it’s a different type of space.

Indy: It’s only 125 square feet!

DM: Right? And it’s really a project space.

It’s not a gallery. I don’t think [Cattelan and Gioni] want it to be some salon gallery. So we had to approach it in an installation kind of way, like “how are we going to connect to each other?” And that’s what’s so interesting about being called Family Business, too: it’s grassroots, in a way. But it also questions how grassroots can you be in a place like Chelsea or New York? It still has a name in big letters on the outside of the gallery, and there’s still a monitor, somebody in there.

There’s still a press release. I’m still making paintings.

Indy: How else has your involvement in the gallery and show affected you as an artist?

DM: It’s been great in the way that it was put together—that we all connect so much.

Because I think that what is really important is a community. Connecting with other artists who are doing similar things. The history of art always has that. You compete with these people. You learn from these people.

Indy: The family.

DM: Yeah, the family. I’m glad that this is the way that showing in New York has been opened up to me.

Family Business is located at 520 West 21st Street, New York, NY. The Virgins Show features work by Andrew Brischler, Eric Mistretta, David Mramor, and Rebecca Ward.

the college hill independent

sports

15

“THEY BUMP HIPS” Lacrosse and Native Americana

by Drew Dickerson Illustration by Robert Sandler

O

n Saturday, February 18, over the course of an afternoon, Brown University’s Men’s Varsity lacrosse team faced off against the Iroquois National under-19’s in an exhibition game on Meister-Kavan Field over the course of an early afternoon. To someone who has never seen the sport before, it comes across as at once very aggressive and very fast. This violence and speed, however, is belied by the fact that the sport’s requisite shoulder-padand-shorts combination will gives even a sixfoot-tall athlete the proportions of a twelveyear-old boy. Helmets lend the impression of heads too big for bodies and oversized protective gloves suggest a wearer that has yet to grow into his hands. This my general and unsettling impression: watching the game was like watching a case of playground politics gone horribly wrong.

The match was the second of two lacrosse-related events to take place over the weekend. The night before, Oren Lyons, Faith Keeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation and Professor Emeritus at the University at Buffalo gave a talk at the Granoff Center. The turnout was a mix of interested students, lacrosse players, and local Native Americans, and Lyons received a standing ovation from many members of the audience upon his introduction. The 81-year-old Lacrosse Hall of Famer, academic, and advocate for indigenous people took the stage to lecture on the relationship between lacrosse and the Iroquois people. In his two-hour address, Lyons discussed issues both lacrosse-related and otherwise—speaking in equal turn about the need for a shot clock in collegiate play and the plight of native populations all over the world.

The purpose of Friday’s lecture and Saturday’s game was to raise awareness of lacrosse awareness regarding both its rules and history. This mission is particularly salient considering that the sport is one of the fastest growing in the nation, especially in the northeast. There are currently 300,000 youth players in the country, representing a 138% growth since 2001.

In light of this growth, Lyons was sure to remind his listeners that it is important not to forget the sport’s history. The Onondaga word for lacrosse, he said, means “they bump hips.” Lyons noted that the hip check is now illegal in college play: “They took the name of our game and they made it illegal.” As it is known now, lacrosse roughly resembles the sport played by many tribes indigenous to North America. Originally, lacrosse occupied spheres recreational, spiritual, and diplomatic. Many historians believe that the activity was integral in keeping together the Six Nations of the Iroquois (of which Onondaga is a member).

The games could number up to 1,000 players and were used in rituals, for resolution of inter-tribal conflict, and as training for combat when such resolutions failed. Given the vast array of lacrosse’s functions in American Indian culture, Lyons has trouble

classifying it as a game: “Is that a game? Is that what the coaches tell you at halftime? I don’t think so.”

Lyons grew up in the Onondaga County of upstate New York, and has been playing lacrosse his entire life. The Onondaga start their children on the game at age four, contact and all. The fact that the Iroquois introduce their players to lacrosse so young gives the nation’s athletes an unprecedented maturity in their technique. “They play this game with a sophistication of stick work that you just don’t see at the collegiate level…

The Iroquois team is well-schooled in how to handle the ball,” men’s varsity head coach Lars Tiffany said of the Iroquois Nationals.

This mastery of touch was evidenced at Saturday’s game, when seventeen- and eighteen-year-old players held their own against Division I college athletes.

Lyons went on to play lacrosse at Syracuse University. While there, he earned All-American status and graduated from the school’s College of Fine Art. He would later be inducted into the Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1993. This trajectory is all the more incredible considering that Lyons dropped out of school in eighth grade, saying that he did not much care for his teachers. That he is now a college professor seems to surprise him more than it does anyone else. “I always allow my class to chew gum,” he cheekily began his address. “Indians love to chew gum.”

As a former athlete and unconventional academic, Lyons enjoys an odd position from which he can afford both to talk about a game with a unilateral intensity and, in equal turn, to joke about serious matters. Far from being rhetorical, his couching the issue at hand within the context of a game is at once pointed and sincere.

Lacrosse is integral to Lyons’s worldview.

Since his playing days, Lyons has turned to activism.

After spending a good deal of his career working on behalf of Native American causes, he has now turned to more global concerns. He presented before the United Nations as the official opening speaker at the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People in 1992 and served as member of the Indigenous Peoples of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.

Oren Lyons is interested in the healing of damage done—healing to be understood as an activity that takes place on both local and global scales. Coach Tiffany introduced Oren Lyons, telling the story of his first encounter with Lyons nearly 40 years ago.

Brad Tiffany, Lars’s father, entered into a

treaty with the Onondaga nation in 1973, lending the tribe eleven buffalo so that they could start their own herd—one of only six treaties between the Iroquois and non-Native Americans in the 20th century.

“My father grew up having a great deal of empathy for the buffalo,” Tiffany said over the phone. “If he could have his own buffalo range, he would.” This empathy stems from the fact that buffalo populations thinned from tens of millions to a few thousand after the United States’ westward expansion. The elder Tiffany shipped in the herd from the Midwest to his family home in Lafayette, New York in 1967. It was Oren Lyons who negotiated the treaty.

“I remember Oren Lyons being in the farmhouse where I grew up,” Tiffany said. “Oren remembered me…probably because of my father.” From the Tiffany family’s eleven buffalo, Onondaga’s herd now numbers over ninety.

Lyons advocacy is wide in scope. His most recent work is in raising awareness of climate change. In explanation, Lyons talked about snow snake, a traditional Native American game in which a stick is

hurled down a trough plowed of snow.

“What do you need for snow snake? You need snow…This is the first time I’ve seen no snow in February.”

Saturday’s audience, however, appreciated the warm weather from MeisterKavan’s aluminum bleachers. The players on-field looked comfortable in their mesh shorts. Conditions not great for snow make for great lacrosse, despite Oren Lyons’s warning: “There’s no mercy in nature, and it’s going to teach you something whether you like it or not.” Despite scoring twice in the early minutes of the game, the Iroquois lost to Brown, 11-7. While their stick-work and drive was admirable, the younger players could not keep stride with college athletes.

Even still, to watch the Iroquois’s youth players is to watch the tribe’s young people engage with the Nation’s historical legacy.

To call lacrosse a “game,” wherein teams win or lose by virtue of what’s on the scoreboard, seems crass. Lacrosse, for these players, is a given.

DREW DICKERSON B’14 is what you need for a snow snake.

16 science

2 march 2012

MOLECULAR BRAINSTORMING The Emerging Theory of Neutral Constructive Evolution

by Eli Scheer Illustration by Diane Zhou

W

hen you think about evolution, perhaps Darwin’s finches come to mind—and along with them, the idea that adaptations propagate in a species based on their ‘selective advantage,’ allowing only the fittest organisms to survive long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. Darwin’s theory of natural selection, having withstood rigorous testing for over 150 years, remains the bedrock of modern evolutionary biology. However, as we delve deeper into biology on the smallest level, we may get a gut feeling that it cannot capture the richness of molecular mechanisms that gave rise to all life around us today. After all, natural selection does not decide the fitness of individual molecules, but rather the organism as a whole. Inside an organism, natural selection couldn’t care less how a particular process is carried out, so long as it works. Over millions of years, organisms can become highly adapted to their environments, but on the molecular level, proteins often have multiple subparts that each carry out specific functions, making these molecules more closely resemble Rube Goldberg machines than a simple lever.

CONSTRUCTIVE NEUTRAL EVOLUTION But how and why does such staggering molecular complexity arise? Over recent years, a theory known as ‘constructive neutral evolution’ has gained traction for its ability to explain how high-probability genetic changes can cause more complex protein structures to evolve. Gene duplication, a relatively common genetic event, can increase the number of genes that code for a specific protein, even if the protein structure itself does not change. This opens the door for mutations to accrue in these genes, since there is a greater buffer against complete loss of function with two genes encoding for a protein in the place of one. These mutations can, however, create mutual dependencies between the protein molecules for which they encode, increasing the number of

necessary molecular actors to carry out a particular task. This process constructs molecular complexity without necessarily conferring a positive or negative selective advantage on the organism as a whole.

The mutual dependencies made through constructive neutral evolution are thought to act as a ratchet for complexity, meaning that it is much harder to become less complex than more complex over time.

This is all fine as a theory, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that a group of researchers led by Dr. Joseph W. Thornton at the University of Oregon, used a stunningly direct method to show experimentally how exactly neutral constructive evolution works.

The article, which appeared in Nature, had an equally direct title: “Evolution of increased complexity in a molecular machine.” Dr. Thornton, a self-described molecular archaeologist, tries to understand molecular evolution through statistical inference of ancient protein structures followed by direct experimentation on those inferred structures in the context of the modern organism. Using an alignment of modern protein sequences from distantly related species and known phylogenetic trees, which show the divergence of different organisms over time, the researchers can infer the ancient protein sequence with a high degree of confidence. They then simply synthesize this protein by reverse engineering its DNA sequence and introducing that sequence transgenically into the organism of interest (yes, that is possible now!). This allows them to test the ancient protein’s function in a modern context with or without historical mutations that caused it to evolve. Dr. Thornton calls his approach ‘the functional synthesis’ because it pairs “the reductionist culture of molecular biology... with the historical realism of evolutionary biology.”

FUNGUS AMONG US In their article, the researchers began from the observation that a protein found in all eukaryotes (all organisms with nuclei,

comprising all life except for bacteria) called a V-ATPase, which performs the critical function of acidifying specific subcellular components, has a markedly more complicated structure in fungi than in animals or plants. In fungi, V-ATPase is composed of three smaller proteins, whereas in animals and plants it is made up of only two. Following their approach, they reconstructed the sequence of the V-ATPase protein as it existed in the most recent common ancestor of fungi, plants, and animals. They were able to infer both the protein sequence of this ancient protein and its structure, which was composed of only two smaller proteins, similar to the twocomponent V-ATPase system in animals and plants.

When the researchers resurrected this ancient two-component system into mutant yeast strains lacking the modern V-ATPase, they observed that it could functionally substitute for the modern protein. So if a two-component V-ATPase functions essentially the same way as a three-component one, why would evolution spend 800 million years making this more complicated protein? In the case of the fungal V-ATPase, the researchers showed that a gene duplication in one of the two subunits in the ancient V-ATPase molecule was followed by complementary mutations in each of these ‘daughter’ genes, which resulted in these two protein molecules needing each other to do the task where one protein had once sufficed. These two subunits, in addition to the one subunit that remained unchanged, yielded a three-component system, a more complex arrangement that worked no better or worse than the original arangment. This is the perfect validation of neutral constructive evolution!

DON’T NEED INTELLIGENCE TO BE COMPLEX Thornton’s research was hailed by the evolutionary biology community for its directness and for its ability to undermine

one of the biggest arguments of intelligent design proponents, the so-called problem of ‘irreducible complexity.’ Michael Behe, the biochemistry professor at Lehigh University who coined the term, uses the same observation of molecular complexity to argue that modern-day complex molecules could not have arisen from simpler ones in the past because their function only arises when all of the parts are put together in the current arrangement. Instead, he claims, such machinery must have been “designed” by an intelligent being. But we don’t need to start a culture war over such a trivial argument: we can see from research like Thornton’s that complexity can arise through high-probability genetic events like gene duplication and point mutations, which increase the number of molecular actors involved in any given process. And since a three-component molecule works as well as a two-component one for a fungal V-ATPase, it would seem that in this case, the complexity is indeed reducible. In the theory of neutral constructive evolution, we have a biochemical rationale for molecular complexity that complicates our previously held notion that evolution acts only to economize and simplify biological designs.

It may in fact be just as important for the process of evolution to increase complexity to provide enough raw material that can be later honed by natural selection. This phenomenon, known as exaptation, can find adaptive uses for structures made purely through the random molecular jumble of evolutionary history. A notable example of this also comes from Thornton’s lab, who showed that hormone receptors evolved before they ever interacted with a hormone molecule. This was a fortuitous interaction: it enabled the animal endocrine system as we know it today, which plays a role in growth, metabolisim and human moods.

ELI SCHEER B’12.5 can arise through high probability genetic events.

food 17

the college hill independent

THRILLING FOOD Eating Bugs to Revolutionize the Food System

by Katie Parker Illustration by Diane Zhou

C

hallenge: watch The Lion King and decide that bugs do not look tempting. The multi-colored, neon grubs, beetles, and caterpillars look damn good, even as cartoons. But the closest most Americans get to consciously ingesting insects is a cricket in a lollipop. Unconsciously, it’s is a different story. By the nature of the US industrial food system built on largescale production, efficiency takes precedence over purity, and bugs are an inevitable part of a daily diet. 60 mites per 100 grams. That’s the acceptable insect-to-weight ratio set by the FDA for chocolate. For peanut butter, 30 fragments per serving. US food production has a problem, claims Dave Gracer, founder of SmallStock Food Strategies. But it is not that there are too many bugs. Rather too few, and the US is failing to capitalize on the efficiency, nutrition and taste that bugs have to offer.

SmallStock Food Strategies is part of a growing movement for entomophagy, the consumption of insects. It is a movement made up on environmentalists, human rights advocates, gastronomists, and even largescale agriculture organizations. The main draw is that insects are a low-input form of protein. Protein sources that dominant US plates (e.g. beef, pork, and chicken) require a lot of resources in the form of food, water, land and ultimately petroleum.

Large-scale animal production is a major contributor of greenhouse gases, leading many environmental organizations to call for a reduction of meat consumption to mitigate climate change. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization also characterizes meat production as unsustainable, and states that alternate food production methods must be utilized.

Insects provide this alternative. Marcel Dicke, an agricultural entomologist, outlined the ecological advantages of bug production claiming it would soon become inevitable.

It is 20 times per pound more efficient to raise insect protein than beef, because of the few resources needed to sustain insects and the fact that almost the entire body is edible. This is especially dramatic in terms of water, as it takes up to 1000 times less water for cricket production than beef production.

Insect meat also provides more nutritional benefits. Insect meat has greater percentages of not only protein, but also amino acids, iron, and zinc than regular meat, and it is also lower in fat. A study from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, a hub for entomophagy research, has found that just 100 grams of insect meat satisfies an adult’s daily requirements for protein, iron and vitamin A. The idea of insects as a sustainable food source is not new, or even radical.

Insects are a part of local diets in 80% of countries. A University of Wisconsin study

“Insects as Food: Why the Western Attitude Is Important” identified countries where studies have shown that insects make up a substantial percentage of rural protein sources, providing everyday subsidence and cultural delicacies. In Thailand, fileted water bugs are said to taste like nothing else on earth. In Papua New Guinea, grubs wrapped in banana leaves are relegated for special occasions. Candied fly larvae are popular in Japan. According to the FAO there are over 1,700 insect species that are eaten. Traditionally, these have been obtained through gathering, both in the wild and on agricultural land, offering a form of organic pest control. However, as pesticide use increases and access to undeveloped land becomes more difficult, insect husbandry is becoming an alluring option as a means to promote rural livelihood. In Malawi, programs are being developed in national parks to promote sustainable collection of insects in an effort to decrease illegal poaching. In Zambia, communal caterpillar husbandry is being promoted as a means to foster rural livelihood. The income from one week of harvesting caterpillars, which are sold in urban markets as snacks, is equivalent to a month’s salary for the average worker. Gracer would like to see such industry arise in the US, but in urban settings, such as abandoned warehouses and vacant lots. He spoke of his aspirations to Brown University’s Fossil Record class, outlining bug production as a means to feed the world. The question arises whether a food culture built on bugs can

be transported to the US, a question which relies mostly on taste.

“Nutty” was the adjective of choice for Jackie Feiler, who recently tried crickets after Gracer’s talk. Fried in olive oil and served whole, the crickets provided a whole lot of crunch. Chloe Fandel and Gina Roberti both used the word “delicious,” and were surprised by its similarity to meat. “There were distinctive flavors I was surprised by, but can’t describe,” said Chloe when trying to remember her reactions to water bug filet and fried crickets. “Anything fried will taste good,” Gina went on to say, “but these tasted wholesome.”

Some food companies have picked up on this, such as Hotlix, which sells food to gift shops and novelty stores. Hotlix offers salt and vinegar cricket snacks and chocolate covered ants, and a variety of other bug candy. Some restaurants also offer bugs, but the Blue Elephant, Providence’s bug source, has closed. For interested bug connoisseurs of Providence, the main way to get bugs is from pet food supply stores. The best way to do this seems to be online, where you can get live crickets shipped to your door at the low price of $13.90 for 1,000. Stick them in the freezer and you’re good to go, says Daniella Martine, a blogger for the Huffington Post who writes about the culinary potential of insects. She recommends Fluker Farm’s 5-year old crickets, as their exoskeletons aren’t too firm or too tough. They taste like a cross between a shrimp and an almond, she writes, and contends the best way to eat

them to is sauté frozen crickets with garlic, oil and salt. Simply fry them up till they’re golden looking and eat them plain, or add them to tacos, salads…anything that needs some crunch. Just be sure to floss after, as bug eaters will tell you cricket legs are notorious for getting caught in your teeth.

Aside from having a deal with a local pet store, however, getting bugs on a regular basis is not yet practical. While Gracer proclaims that warehouse bug lots could feed the future, students were dubious as to whether his claims were realistic. “The infrastructure for acquiring bugs to eat is undeveloped…until someone with a lot of money decides this should happen, it won’t,” said Chloe Fandel, expressing doubts about the rigor of Gracer’s methods. Furthermore, reducing meat consumption is not an easy task, even with options eliciting less squeamishness than bugs. Without a culinary culture and history surrounding bugs, the consumption of insects will remain a novel activity in the US. Until climate change and environmental reality force a shift in the food system to low input methods, it seems doubtful that insects will be consumed en masse. However, where there is already a culture surrounding entomophagy, insect consumption offers to promote local food culture, support rural livelihoods, mitigate environmental damage and provide some tasty grub.

KATIE PARKER B’14 is a gross arachnid.

18

literary

2 march 2012

WINDOWPANE

by Michael Mount Illustration by Annika Finne

W

hen we were driving they caught us. When I was doing nothing but looking straight through the glass and watching the road slide under us and Tommy decided to open a can of beer in the driver’s seat they caught us. When we were in a box of aluminum in the summer they caught us.

I am wearing my overalls, the big ones that show the world my chest. It’s hot on the highway and we are sweating in the car.

Tommy cracks a beer and there’s a state trooper, sitting in a little patch of shade by the highway. Blue lights come on instantly and Tommy edges the car into the gravel.

“Where are the doses?”

“On my chest.”

“What about the crystal?”

“Right here.”

“Get rid of it.”

When you swallow three grams of meth at once you feel like a woman who learned she is pregnant, who learned that the conception and waiting and birth are all happening a bit ahead of schedule. Slow down and breathe. The baby will be fine.

Breathe and slow down and relax and you will make it through this just fine.

We are sitting beside each other like dolls in the crash test. The door slams somewhere behind us and step by step the officer comes to the door. I can hear sweat.

There is a little pocket on the front of my overalls close to my heart. A mother keeps her child close to her heart. Tommy’s pupils are so still they might roll out of his eyes.

The cop comes up to his window, mustache fluttering.

“License and registration.”

Those are the words that end us. The officer finds empty beer cans and a burnt out roach. His eyes are the color of limes.

He tells us to step out. I let him handcuff me, hanging my wrists behind my back and not even feeling the touch. He shepherds us into the backseat of the car and he slams the door. He grabs the six pack from our car and brings it to his own.

“What’s that for?”

“Evidence.”

“Can I have one?”

He probably thinks I am trying to trick him.

“You know drinking and driving is against the law?”

“Yes.” “You know that car is not registered in your name?”

“Yes.” “Where’d you get it from?”

“A friend.”

“Well you’re friend might not be too happy.”

“I’m not too happy.”

He does not ask about the sheet of windowpane taped to my belly. The road is sliding under us in the police car now, as we cruise into infinity.

“Where are we going?”

“Jail.”

“Shit.”

The fender of the police car eats the long yellow line.

“When can we go home?”

“That’s up to the judge.”

“Shit.”

The officer chews the edges of his mustache. I feel my throat drying up.

“Can you turn on the radio?”

Jail is a very unpleasant place. I can feel the new sweat starting to crawl out of me over the old sweat. Tommy gets his mug shot and then I walk to the wall to get my mug shot. Something about a stolen vehicle.

They hand me a sign and the crown of my head rises up to the six-foot notch. Flash goes the bulb.

F•L•A•S•H and my brain rattles. Sweat squeezes its way through my skin. That must be gram two. The world is cut into individual frames and the reel slows down and the film flutters. One box slides away to make room for another over and over, like the film was spinning on the reel too slowly.

“You’re clear,” the man behind the camera says.

“I know,” I say, “I’m going home, I’m going home.”

“You’re clear,” the man behind the camera says.

“I know,” I say, “I’m going home, I’m going home.”

“No, you’re turning clear,” the man behind the camera says.

“I know,” I say. “I’m going home.” And I look at my skin, which is the color of a soap bubble. “Just relax,” he says, and his lips are cut off of his face and spliced into every slow frame unreeled of his face.

I make it to the changing room and I can almost feel the windowpane sliding down my belly. The walls laugh and shake.

The white grout between gray tiles is widening and voices are leaking out. I am alone. I turn the water on and pull the windowpane off my belly and tape it to the

wall. I am alone. The shower comes down like a waterfall, one hundred feet above, cold and sharp. The cold crawls over my skin like millipedes. My teeth are cracking, the way that glass cracks under water. The waterfall is high and I am ready to drown in the little lake of tiles.

But soon the lake evaporates, leaving me like a grain of salt on the bottom of the tiles and I am breathing air again. Breathing hard. The insects fall off of my skin, into the drain. I am cold. I am sweating again and the salt swims into the last drops of cold water. I am dry as a desert and then I put the windowpane on under the orange suit, like it’s my skin.

I hand the guard my clothes and he leads me to the end of a hallway, a hallway stretching out forever like the inside of an accordion. By the time I reach the end of it, I am three inches tall at the base of the castle door. The door opens and I am face to face with Tommy. His eyes are open so wide that I am falling right through them.

“Hello Tommy.”

“Hello.”

In a jail cell there is no time. No seconds, no ticking hands, no melting clocks covered in ants. Only when the lights in the hallway slam into extinguishment is there a closure. A single line drawn around the frame of day. I do not remember going to bed. I remember standing there until I wake up in a puddle of sweat.

A thousand waves of light in my eyes. I am cold and hungry. The windowpane sticks to my belly. It’s Sunday so not a single judge in the county is on his velvet ass. There is a room where prisoners wait. We walk in. A slow and rumbling hum.

“Look we got a whitey!” someone calls.

“What’s up whitey?”

“How’d you get set up here?”

“You look scared.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You ain’t comfortable here.”

Voices melt together. Then: “Don’t touch him. He’s the magic man.”

A big black man walks out of the crowd. He puts his wrinkly hand out to me. I lift my shirt and show the doses. The windowpane is damp on the edges. I pull it away and break it just as Jesus may have done in the last supper. I break a piece and hand it to the black man. No one says anything. The hum gets louder and the black eyes narrow on the paper on my chest. Deer hungry for the salt lick.

Then, it’s time to go. Before leaving the room they shackle us all together like a sleigh team. The door to the outside opens and the first sunlight crawls inside. Across the lot we march, climbing into the big bus with grated windows.

It peels my eyes apart so that colors are smeared lengthwise and then heightwise and then I am moving through the traffic like an arrow. I turn to a man next to me and moustaches are growing out of his eyebrows and his face is turning paisley. Everything is bright, bright and twitching. We are in a candle. I turn to another face beside me and he smiles and the corners of his lips swing away from his face like licorice, writing cursive all over his face. We are having quite a ride! The guard at the front hollers at us to be quiet but his words congeal into orange flowers that are sucked into the barrel of his shotgun. Everyone is laughing and the laughter is ringing so hard that the entire bus frame is shaking.

They have a hell of a time getting us untangled. We are vomited out of the bus and onto the parking lot and fall to writhing in one big clattering mass. I am swimming in this bucket of hot molasses trying to rescue my buddies from drowning and the guards just kept kicking at us. It is just like them to ruin a good time, and I feel ready to vomit at their vulture behavior. Somehow we are all standing again and walking like a drunk caterpillar to the courthouse.

Someone behind me is chanting Magic Man, Magic Man. I am there all at once. All the props and pieces of the set have been arranged as a courthouse and I suddenly wake up in the middle of the stage. The judge is a large black gumdrop with a lollipop hammer.

Behind me rows of folks sit waiting, waiting to hear God knows what. Most of the faces melted together like syrup but one stands out clearly, crystal clearly. Holy Jesus, it’s my mother. How does she know I am in jail?

The judge starts talking. His words crack and rain on me like cracker dust.

Silence falls and I can feel the weight of the courthouse pushing me in the back of the neck, waiting for me to say something.

“Your honor,” I say, “I’ve been a good boy.”

The rest of it was quite simple really. He said that they didn’t have any charges to hold me under, so they let me go.