The College Hill Independent Vol. 40 Issue 1

A Brown/RISD Weekly February 07, 2020 Volume 40, Issue 01

03 FLIGHTS OF FANCY Zach Ngin

05 CRISIS IN DISCOURSE Emily Rust

11 TAKING 287G AGREEMENTS TO COURT Sara Van Horn

A personal meditation on Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s concept of the undercommons

Suppression, hysteria, sinophobia: coronavirus and the perpetuation of fear through Western media and the Chinese government

An interview with activist Sherrie Andre, who will go on trial for their involvement in avv #ShutDownICE nonviolent direct action

Cover

FROM THE EDITORS

News

We’re gonna be honest. There’s a lot of stuff going on this week. 1917 has 10 Oscar nominations. You’re holding issue one of the Indy in your trusting hands. It’s early in the morning and we can’t think of anything else.

My Own Summer Mia Scarpa Mixed Media

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Week in Keeping Busy Muram Ibrahim, Bilal Memon, Harry Levine & Nick Roblee-Strauss Two Rallies Anchita Dasgupta & Peder Schaefer

Features

We also have a few confessions to make. We’re new to this. We’re a little too patriotic, a little too militant. We’re guilty on two counts of murder in the nth degree. We’re guilty of delivering you the news exactly as promised—no ifs, apps, or Buttigieg. We’re guilty of five of the seven deadly sins.

We’re guilty of green eggs and ham.

It’s early in the morning, but the crowds are cheering in unprecedented numbers, our right hand is on The Undercommons, our left hand raised.

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Flights of Fancy Zach Ngin

09

Nước is Water Agnes Cẩm Ngọc Trần

We swear an oath to you, Indy.

Metro 08

13

Molehills Out of Mountains Ricardo Gomez & Deb Marini Taking 287g Agreements to Court Sara Van Horn

Ephemera 07

Big Girls Cry Big Clown Tears Liana Chaplain & Sindura Sriram

Science+Tech 05

11

Crisis in Discourse Emily Rust

Literary

MISSION STATEMENT

Rabbits Zachary Baytosh

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/or classism.

Arts 15

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This Land, This Land, This Land Isabel Guarnieri

X

Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond.

Home Jacob Alabab-Moser & Ethan Murakami

The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.

WEEK IN REVIEW Emily Rust NEWS Peder Schaefer, Anchita Dasgupta, Tristan Harris METRO Ricardo Gomez, Deb Marini, Miles Guggenheim ARTS Zachary Barnes, Isabelle Rea, Eve O’Shea FEATURES Mia Pattillo, Audrey Buhain, Nick Roblee-Strauss

07 FEBRUARY 2020

SCIENCE + TECH Bilal Memon, Izzi Olive, Andy Rickert LITERARY Catherine Habgood, Star Su EPHEMERA Sindura Sriram, Liana Chaplain X Jacob Alabab-Moser, Ethan Murakami LIST Cate Turner, Ella Comberg, XingXing Shou

VOL 40 ISSUE 01

STAFF WRITERS Anabelle Johnston, Emma Kofman, Eduardo Gutiérrez Peña, Jennifer Katz, Jorge Palacios, Kion You, Zach Ngin, Uwa Ede-Osifo, Kaela Hines, Mara Cavallaro, Leela Berman, Muram Ibrahim, Evan Lincoln, Evie Hidysmith, Alana Baer, Nell Salzman COPY EDITORS Christine Huynh, Sarah Goldman, Muskaan Garg, Thomas Patti, Josephine Bleakley, Ella Spungen, Marina Hunt, Seth Israel

DESIGN EDITORS Ella Rosenblatt, Daniel Navratil DESIGNERS Amos Jackson, Kathryn Li, Anna Brinkhuis, Katherine Sang ILLUSTRATORS Natasha Brennan, Sandra Moore, Eliza Macneal, Sophia Meng, Bella Carlos, Veronica Tucker, Sylvia Atwood, Leslie Benavides Floria, Ryn Kang, Pia Mileaf-Patel ART DIRECTOR Claire Schlaikjer

BUSINESS Caín Yepez, Abby Yuan SOCIAL MEDIA Muskaan Garg SENIOR EDITORS Cate Turner, Tara Sharma, Ben Bienstock, Wen Zhuang, Ella Comberg, Tiara Sharma, Chris Packs, Olivia Kan-Sperling

MVP Emily Rust +++ The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

MANAGING EDITORS Matt Ishimaru, Sara Van Horn, Alex Westfall

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

MEGAN THEE STALLION + G-EAZY = <3 Celebrity gossip rarely startles us anymore.

Impeachment proceedings and foreign assassinations have occupied our attention and chipped away at our sense of propriety until only the basest crimes elicit a response. That said, occasionally the headlines of tabloid news so trouble our preconceptions and shake the foundations of our reality that there is nothing more to do than spend the next eight hours scrolling online and arguing with strangers on the internet.

Our jaws dropped as we perused Twitter while brushing our teeth on Monday morning. Shocked, we accidentally swallowed our toothpaste when coming across what would be the first of countless tweets expressing confusion after videos circulated of rappers Megan Thee Stallion (Megan Pete) and G-Eazy (Gerald Gillum) kissing and cuddling. Megan Thee Stallion and G-Eazy emerge from starkly different spheres of hip-hop. Megan, as she has discussed in the past, comes from a line of Black women rappers who powerfully carved their own space in the genre. Lil Kim, Queen Latifah, and Nicki Minaj paved the way for artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Rico Nasty to be bashful, fun, and sexually liberated. The crux of Megan’s persona and her Hot Girl movement is about doing what one wants, when one wants to, and how one wants to—regardless of other people's opinions, especially those of men. In an interview with the Root, Megan explained the Hot Girl movement, “It’s just basically about women—and men—just being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass time, hyping

up your friends, doing you, not giving a damn about what nobody got to say about it.” For many, Megan is the best of rap’s past and future: brash, upfront lyrics combined with a danceable beat through the voice of a modern woman. She likes anime! She’s in college!

She is the shining star of rap music. ...And G-Eazy is decidedly not. A white pop-rapper from the Bay Area, he emerged from good time, white college rap—Blackbear and Hoodie Allen being the biggest exports of that scene. His music quickly shifted to a more lucrative lane, emphasizing moodiness and sex appeal. With his slicked back hair, leather jacket, and general unkemptness, G-Eazy exudes a Starbucks-branded biker appeal that proved popular, especially with young, white women. His most notable songs include “Tumblr Girls,” an ode to the girls with “skinny waists and drug habits.” G-Eazy’s manufactured aesthetic bled into his personal life.

His previous famous partners, including Lana Del Rey and Halsey (who's relationship with G-Eazy ended in public acrimony), conformed to his style.

Seeing G-Eazy kiss Megan on his Instagram story, people on twitter loudly shouted their criticism and anger at Megan for dating a white man. Twitter user @ilovesmokingmid said “megan thee stallion if you would like to disappoint your fanbase again pleaseee text me.” When relying on stereotypes to fill in the gaps of celebrities’ personalities, anything they do out of the archetype surprises us. Reducing celebrities to their archetypes is particularly harmful to Black

women, who are often pigeonholed and punished when they move away from their predesignated roles. Black women rappers, who redefine femininity through empowering songs and powerful attitudes, are shamed and demeaned from the very start of their careers. Underlying many of these tweets is an entitlement rooted in misogyny and racism to police Black women. Ironically, Megan has insisted that she is not in a relationship with G-Eazy. “Just” celebrity gossip, Megan Thee Stallion became the #1 Twitter trending topic in the world: as soon as a Black woman acts outside of the strict boundaries placed on her, chaos ensues.

Celebrities project a curated two-dimensional persona. However, fans often mistake the two-dimensional for the three-dimensional. So, the public relationship between G-Eazy and Megan—the image of them hanging out and kissing—questions our entitlement to make judgements about them. We don’t know them! And that’s okay.

-MI, HL, & BM

WEEK IN KEEPING BUSY MOOS PAST MIDNIGHT Despite the optimism of hopeful Democrats to put Trump out to pasture, the impeachment process finished this Wednesday to no avail. While the media churned out updates around the clock to satisfy the spectators at home, the nodding-off senators stayed up each night until two in the morning—well past any Boomer’s bedtime. Among the snoring crowd, however, savvy senators fought the urge to drift into slumber with some exciting new focus tactics.

Although the impeachment will be voted almost entirely along party lines, when it comes to passing the time, the distinction between drooping Dems and collapsing Conservatives is insignificant. Weary and without witness, these legislators lighten this lackluster litigation with the latest leisures of the youth.

You guessed it! Those whirling doodahs of yesteryear are back: Fidget spinners have entered Congress. On January 23, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) passed out spinners and stress balls to keep his friends’ congressional claws in motion. The ‘publican posse zoomed their triangular trophies with all the enthusiasm of the tweens who first turned these teacher-taunting toys. Still, not all statesmen join Burr in his Gen-Z joys.

“Sunflower seeds keep you alert and allow me to listen,” says Senator Tim Scott (R-SC). Having described in a Fox op-ed this impeachment as ‘political theater,’ it is good to know that Scott opted for a nutritious alternative to popcorn. Burr challenges this pragmatism by displaying his exposed ankles; this Carolinian elephant needs no socks. Hands and jaws in motion— for hours on end—leave these senators thirsty, but a

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

dry impeachment is no drought for this dehydrated impeachment team.

For most senators, water alone is enough to satisfy a parched throat. And while U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and U.S. Representative Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) announced plans to introduce anti-single use plastic bottle legislation this fall, their respective Hydro Flasks were noted absent. Ukranian diplomat George Kent, alone in remembering his 64 oz. Nalgene, captivated the hearts and minds of plastic purgers everywhere. For the rest of the senators, single-use plastic reigned supreme.

While water is suitable libation for most of our elected officials, some need a beverage with more body to keep their impeachment faces glowing. While Representatives may ask ‘Got Milk?’ to no avail, calcium-deficient Senators, need not worry. Milk has been available to lactase-producing senators since 1966, when Senator Everett Dirksen requested something more nourishing than water.

Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a noted drinker of milk, enjoys his candies, cookies, and cakes with a creamy glass of moojuice. Although his love for the drink is purportedly routine, an anonymous Senate page reassured us that he nevers consumes the fatty beverage without a sweet solid its side. Even Elizabeth Warren was spotted entering the impeachment hearings with a glass firmly in her grasp, Perhaps the presidential hopeful nods to the milk-manic voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, who could possibly swing blue for a Dem who’s pro-moo. As expected, Ted Cruz’s milk

habits are less reassuring. The longtime dairy fan indulges in milk only in the dead of night, guzzling from his goblet just as the session comes to a close.

Going back to 2014, he expressed his family’s love for the mammalian delight in a tweet: “Wow...the first sentence Caroline ever said was ‘I like butter.’” Mitt Romney, rebel as he is, slurped from a spotted plastic bottle of chocolate milk. As the sole Republican to vote for impeachment on grounds of abuse of power, this dig to the milk establishment suits his fresh 2020 image swimmingly.

For the Democrats and their beloved decorum, this impeachment has not been a success. While it is clear that a sitting president leveraging military aid for investigations into a political rival will be tolerated, Americans needn’t worry: the similarly hard-to-digest lactose will certainly be tolerated as well.

-NRS

BY Muram Ibrahim, Harry Levine, Bilal Memon and Nick Roblee-Strauss ILLUSTRATION Floria Tsui DESIGN Anna Brinkhuis

WEEK IN REVIEW

02

Flights of Fantasy

BY Zach Ngin ILLUSTRATION Claire Schlaikjer DESIGN Daniel Navratil

I’m trying to remember where I was when I first read The Undercommons. I don’t remember where I started it, but I must have been somewhere far from home. This book moved (with) me. In a coffee shop on the other side of the country, I was somewhere near the end. And somewhere in the middle, I was sitting on the snowy side of a road, on the other side of a blind underpass.

Out of view, beyond the tunnel, was a detention center.

I had sat down to record the sounds of cars and how they traveled from one side of blindness to another.

Horns came blasting through the tunnel, around the bend; they came as notes and as groans, in short, staccato bursts. Occasionally, overhead, a train went by. I sat and read and listened to the sonic commerce between the detention center and the world outside. I was in my first year of college, and I was sitting somewhere in the surrounding, somewhere between the prison and the university, listening to the distances.

Through the essays that make up The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney ask what lies beneath and beyond institutions of control: the prison and the university, the slave ship and the settlement, systems of debt and credit. Their central concept, “the undercommons,” refers simply to the ungovernable realm of social life, the place where we—colonized, queer, otherwise marginal—make meaning with each other.

It is not so much an excavation of resistance or a primer for revolution as a celebration of their inescapable, improvised fact. The undercommons are ineluctably other but never elsewhere. This is the enlightenment’s shadow archive, its flights of fantasy, its maroon community, the fugitive commons just beyond its blind underpass. And the things we’ve been waiting for: they’ve been here, if you listen; they are here, we are here; just listen.

On Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s Undercommons

+++ The Undercommons was published in 2013 by Minor Compositions, a radical publisher that distributes electronic copies of its titles for free. Since then, it has become a touchstone for academics, artists, activists, and others. The book’s most famous essay, “The University and the Undercommons,” examines the relationship between the university and broader structures of law and order. “The university,” Moten and Harney write, “is not the opposite of the prison, since they are both involved in their way with the reduction and command of the social individual.” In their view, both university and prison are enlisted in the same war against social life—a conquest that extracts what it can (as knowledge, as culture) and discards the rest (as waste, as criminality). Both are invested in a logic of prescription: on one side, an academic program of critique; on the other, a carceral program of correction. In the face of these conditions, they argue, “one can only sneak into the university and steal what one can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in but not of—this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university.” This line is one of the book’s most cited: it offers to its readers a slogan, a clarion call, a shock of recognition.

A shock of recognition. I want to dwell on that phrase for a minute. Those words may come closest to what I’m trying to say about this book. By now, I’ve read and reread its passages countless times, and I could never say that I completely understand it. The Undercommons is a book that creates and sustains its

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FEATURES

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own dense language, more a sound and feel than a constellation of concepts. Refusing to fall neatly into a particular form or vernacular, it invites unsettled readings, unsettling readings. It’s a style that carries as it holds, that makes a home in motion only, never setting down its bags, never settling its debts. Yet it is this very sense of unsettledness that made it feel so welcoming to me. More than anything else, it offers itself as a social space: where phrases and sounds and citations collide, gathered from the world and given to the world. The book invests its hopes in those collisions, in the touch between people and objects and words that—though fleeting—changes everything.

The difficulty of the undercommons is the difficulty of finding connection in an atomized, alienated society.

Their book reached me as an invitation to try. As Moten and Harney write, “This information can never be lost, only irrevocably given in transit. We could never provide a whole bunch of smooth transitions for this order of ditches and hidden spans.”

I see The Undercommons as an experiment: what does it mean to live and write in the wake of slavery and settler colonialism and capitalist modernity? In other words, how do we devise a grammar of brokenness, a language that honors the ruins that we live among? The answers, for Moten and Harney, if they are anywhere, lie in the cadence of their sentences, their sonic proximities, their fugitive intimacy. “Here they meet those others who dwell in a different compulsion, in the same debt, a distance, forgetting, remembering again but only after,” they write. “These other ones carry bags of newspaper clippings, or sit at the end of the bar, or stand at the stove cooking, or sit on a box at a newsstand, or speak through bars, or speak in tongues. These other ones have a passion to tell you what they have found, and they are surprised you want to listen, even though they’ve been expecting you.” There is so much that we’ve wanted to hear from one another, Moten and Harney seem to say. There is so much for us to say to each other. +++ Moten and Harney, who met as undergraduates at Harvard, bring rich intellectual genealogies and languages to their common project. Moten, who teaches at New York University, is a poet and scholar who draws on Black radical thought, particularly Saidiya Hartman’s work on subjection and Édouard Glissant’s theory of Relation. Harney, who lives in Singapore, is a scholar of labor and management who relies on the language of Italian autonomist Marxism.

Together, they ask to read alongside others engaged in this massive project of knowing and living otherwise: a few recent examples are Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, la paperson’s A Third University is Possible, and Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Though this context helps us locate their work, they would probably resist any attempt to situate them in a single lineage or settled position. On the occasion of their book’s translation into Spanish, they said in an interview, “Even within what might be called our own context, as tightly as anyone might ever want to define it, in order for our work to be read at all it will have had to have been translated, moved, displaced.”

From the perspective of the undercommons, all knowledge is a product of these unlikely displacements and entanglements, unsettled in its origins and unsettling in its effects. Moten and Harney’s name

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

for this practice is Black study. Moten offers an expla- the proprietary relations of self-possession. In other nation of the concept in an interview with Stevphen words, following Afro-pessimist scholar Frank Shukaitis included in the book: Wilderson, they remain in the hold of the ship, despite their fantasies of flight—and this is where they find, We are committed to the idea that study is where they are found. “The hold’s terrible gift was to what you do with other people. It’s talking and gather dispossessed feelings in common, to create a walking around with other people, working, new feel in the undercommons,” they write. “To have dancing, suffering, some irreducible converbeen shipped is to have been moved by others, with gence of all three, held under the name of others. It is to feel at home with the homeless, at ease speculative practice...The point of calling it with the fugitive, at peace with the pursued, at rest ‘study’ is to mark that the incessant and irrewith the ones who consent not to be one.” The underversible intellectuality of these activities is commons is therefore neither a settled location or a already present. gathering of individuals: it is the feel of holding and being held, the gathering of a chorus, “an improvisaMoten and Harney reject the distinction between tion that proceeds from somewhere on the other side productive and unproductive activity, between of an unasked question.” All are invited into the ceasecreative and uncreative ways of being in the world with less movement of things. others. They ignore the call to order that separates the chatter in the classroom from the production of knowl+++ edge, the noise of the crowd from the show onstage. By recognizing all social life as intellectual and creative, The Undercommons is an experiment in refusing the Moten and Harney access a riotous, wayward history conditions of logistics: Moten and Harney want (us) to of thought. This book is, in part, a love letter to the think, to pause, to interrupt, to experiment. They are university’s undercommons: its “maroon commu- clear that this project neither begins nor ends in the nities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate university, but this is the place from which they write. students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer Part of what feels so urgent about their work is that they management professors, state college ethnic studies really question why study, in their sense of the word, departments, closed-down film programs, visa-ex- is so difficult in institutions supposedly devoted to it. pired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically “That's what we were trying to understand,” Moten black college sociologists, and feminist engineers.” says in the interview with Shukaitis. “How come we But it also refuses to recognize the university as the can't be together and think together in a way that feels center of study. In fact, its authors are interested in how good, the way it should feel good? Everybody is pissed the conditions of academic labor actively suppress the off all the time and feels bad, but very seldom do you kinds of study that we desire most. enter into a conversation where people are going, ‘why is it that this doesn't feel good to us?’” +++ Moten and Harney insist on having that conversation. They ponder the university’s investments in “To work today is to be asked, more and more, to do isolation and atomization, in instrumental ways of without thinking, to feel without emotion, to move seeing. They insist that we attend to our feelings of without friction, to adapt without question, to translate stress and busyness, scarcity and precarity—in other without pause, to desire without purpose, to connect words, to the sense that we have nothing to give each without interruption,” write Moten and Harney at other, that there is nothing we owe each other. And the beginning of their final essay, “Fantasy in the they insist that we keep moving, beyond austerity, Hold.” The line is intentionally placeless and vague. beyond critique, beyond opposition. “We run looking It describes a dream as old as modernity, the time for a weapon and keep running looking to drop it,” they of “today”: this is a dream of total alienation, beyond write. “And we can drop it, because however armed, human space and time, beyond the work of human however hard, the enemy we face is also illusory.” Our hands. These conditions, which Moten and Harney time and our attention, our care and our love: this is describe as logistical, apply to both the contempo- all we have, “the mutual debt that can never be made rary academy and the founding of modernity. To work good,” our cause for suffering and celebration. today, the authors argue, is to work in the wake of Reading The Undercommons helped me insist on slavery and settlement, to work with their languages having that conversation. This book moved (with) me. and institutions, their desires and visions. It may feel My copy, borrowed on interlibrary loan, began to bear irresponsible—harmful, even—to draw a line from the traces of its movement: all the times I pulled it out chattel slavery to the conditions of labor in the modern of my backpack, the times that someone lent breath to university. But to be clear, they are not suggesting its sentences. It became an occasion to say, We’re here an equivalence or even an analogy: the movement of to study. Why doesn’t this feel good? And to ask, Why their essay is better described as contextualization is the work of being a student so often in opposition and speculation. They challenge us to consider the to practices of care—for ourselves and for each other, violence that founded our world and how it continues for this city, this land, this world? The Undercommons to condition what is thinkable and possible within the became, in short, an occasion for study: for talking institutions that we have inherited. and walking around with others, among others, For Moten and Harney, both the violence and the lingering on benches and in vacant seminar rooms, possibility begin in the hold of a ship, in the trans- listening together to the distances. Another university port of objects, of people enslaved and imprisoned, is possible, and it’s already here somewhere, its cover refugees and laborers, in moving and being made to creased from being passed back and forth, from being move. This movement cannot be reversed or wished held until long overdue. away. The authors refuse offers of assimilation and rites of respectability. They refuse to advance from ZACH NGIN B’22 is convinced that we owe each objecthood to subjecthood, from dispossession to other everything.

FEATURES

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CRISIS IN DISCOURSE

In recent years, China has moved up the value chain.

No longer the world’s cheap factory, it has passed on the manufacturing torch to countries like India, Malaysia, and Vietnam. However, some things are still made in China—which the Western media will not let the country forget.

Of course, some of this recent scapegoating has focused on the wrong target. The novel coronavirus itself was not made in China. Believed to have come from an animal, an outbreak of the virus could have, in theory, emerged in any place where humans do not take necessary precautions when in contact with wildlife. The epidemic, on the other hand, was made in China. This is not because of the Chinese people, or Chinese culinary practices, or Chinese culture—the epidemic has reached the point it has today because of the poor governance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In China, the CCP has the incentive and means to downplay and hide information about the epidemic— primarily online but also in hospital reports. This kind of censorship was initially used by local officials to prevent the central government from catching wind of the problem. However, cover-ups remained after the management of the epidemic was assumed by central authorities. No longer about saving face within the Chinese government, a portion of such a lack of transparency is about saving face on the international stage. This is more than just an authoritarian impulse to control the flow of information. Among the biggest fears of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his counterparts is weakness—the perception that they are no longer in control. As the virus spreads, Xi Jinping’s governance tactics become discredited in the overseas eyes of both his allies and enemies.

The last time an outbreak like this happened in China was in 2003, when severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected over 8,000 people and killed 774. Since then, the media environment has undergone an extraordinary transformation. This, in turn, has changed the way we confront disease and crisis. Relative to 2003, the public has a different role in the way current events are conceptualized today. No longer having to seek out the news, we receive it in a deluge of live updates on social media. Even in China, where social media is limited by the Great Firewall, the ubiquity of news has made ordinary people engage with current events in a new way, on platforms like Weibo and WeChat. For the CCP, the optics of the recent coronavirus epidemic are higher stakes than they were during SARS. This visibility has made the party feel particularly vulnerable, which has resulted with even more draconian control. The Chinese government’s insistence on suppressing discourse about the coronavirus prevents its control measures from functioning at full force.

The discourse surrounding the coronavirus has been suppressed in some places and amplified in others. This swelling virality has only encouraged more fear. In China, due to the fears of the government, the epidemic has been exacerbated by a lack of discourse. In the US, irrational panic has prevented people from respecting the actuality and gravity of the issue. Across the world, this sense of alarm has prompted bigoted scapegoating to come out of the woodwork both online and in people’s actions.

Discourse shapes the way that we conceive of an

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SCIENCE + TECH

BY Emily Rust ILLUSTRATION Sylvia Atwood DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

resources towards eradicating the slightest hint of any person speaking about the virus, and I promise you that any conversation or literature pertaining to the virus will be completely eliminated during the next seven days.” The Onion article is dismally accurate, aside from its absolute blame on Xi Jinping. In reality, it was the Wuhan authorities who stood for most of the “elimination of conversation and literature” during the outbreak’s early stages, as they channeled resources into the containment of discourse rather than the containment of disease. +++ Although Xi Jinping’s policies have worsened the Last week, New York Times reporter Chris Buckley central-local disconnect, this is far from the first time it tweeted a photo of a red banner in Wuhan that reads “ has brought harm to the Chinese people. An infamous 科学防，不恐慌，莫让谣言帮倒忙.” (Scientific preven- example is the economic campaign known as the Great tion, don’t panic, don’t let rumors do more harm than Leap Forward, in which local officials felt pressured by help.) Political banners like this are common in China, their superiors’ unrealistic production goals to falsify usually displaying dogmatic slogans that encourage grain yields. Largely due to this disconnect, the Great leading a “文明” (civilized) life, celebrating the Leap Forward resulted in the starvation of millions of harmony of the supposedly united Chinese people, people in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In December, local officials silenced doctors and imbuing oneself with “Xi Jinping thought”.

‘No panicking’ and ‘no rumormongering’ are and other whistleblowers for warning about what solid standards to live by no matter where you reside. they feared could develop into a SARS-like epidemic.

However, the banners shed light on a deplorable aspect According to the New York Times, officials told doctors of the Chinese government’s initial handling of the not to “use the words viral pneumonia” in their reports. outbreak. While US discourse of the epidemic has One doctor was forced by police to sign a statement involved excessive hysteria, far too much time has that he had engaged in “illegal behavior” for raising passed before any kind of discourse was allowed in red flags. Following an announcement in late January China. The virus was first detected in December, but that the disease did indeed spread from human to the full-scale fight against the epidemic only began human, it was revealed that fourteen medical workers in the third week of January. The government’s more had been infected by a single patient. The city governthan month-long delay in acknowledging and tackling ment’s calculated denial of the virus exposed Wuhan’s the virus results from a problem that has plagued party 11 million people to a danger that doctors had perceived politics throughout the history of the People’s Republic early on. of China (PRC).

The red banners are in place not just to instill calmThis problem is the disconnect between the central ness in the traumatized Wuhan population, but to party leadership based in Beijing and the local officials serve as a warning to people who are tempted to share who oversee provinces, townships, and villages. When information condemning the government. In fact, one it comes to sensitive issues, these local officials err of the whistleblowers who was reprimanded by police towards secrecy for fear of being dismissed or other- has now contracted the virus, a tangible and devaswise penalized, a dynamic that goes hand in hand with tating consequence of the central-local disconnect. As the punishment of whistleblowers. Just as the outbreak reported by the Shanghai-based, online publication and spread of SARS in 2003 was concealed by local offi- Sixth Tone, this doctor, named Li Wenliang, had “been cials for months, Wuhan authorities made great efforts working on the front lines of the epidemic” until he to downplay the virus in December. In fact, Mayor of began to develop a cough and fever. He and his parents Wuhan Zhou Xianwang shifted some of the blame to were hospitalized in early January. In a text message Beijing in an interview with China Central Television to Chris Buckley, Doctor Li wrote, “If the officials had in late January. Wearing a face mask, Mayor Zhou disclosed information about the epidemic earlier, I explained that his delay in releasing sensitive informa- think it would have been a lot better. There should be tion was a result of rules that required approval from more openness and transparency.”

Beijing. Though implicit, this critique of Xi Jinping’s Now that the handling of the epidemic has been top-down leadership style was shockingly blunt. extended to Beijing, it is central authorities who A headline by the satirical publication the Onion are in charge of stifling discourse of the virus. Last captured the dark undertone of Buckley’s banner well: Friday, Hu Xijing, editor of the CCP-controlled publi“Xi Jinping Vows To Combat Coronavirus By Making cation the Global Times, wrote an article criticizing It Illegal To Mention Within A Week.” A fabricated the government for its lack of transparency and delay quote in the article reads, “We are directing massive in confronting the epidemic. Within a few hours, the issue. The flow of constant information that we are subject to has strengthened our feeling that we must always have something to say, for fear of falling behind.

As this Indy editor, however, has learned over the last few weeks, being levelheaded is not the same thing as being aloof. There is no reason to create a sense of crisis when that energy could be spent on individuals and families who are actually impacted by the virus.

Empathy and solidarity rarely sound like hysteria.

07 FEB 2020

article was removed from the Global Times website. +++ Although some might experience a degree of déjà vu based on the similarities between the handling of SARS and the coronavirus, the epidemics differ in the way they were conceived of and made viral by the media. When SARS dotted headlines across the world in 2003, editors at news publications possessed more concentrated power over what stories would be published in the following day’s paper. Armed with their phones and followers, reporters nowadays make more of those decisions on the spot, minute by minute.

In the decentralized media environment of our current moment, readers of the news become a part of the conversation in a far more publicized way. Our newsfeeds provide us with access to other people’s opinions, and the ability to share our own, to an extent that at times does more harm than good.

Less and less do we see a distinction between the coverage of news and reactions to it. To stay informed, users of Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram no longer have to actively pursue the news. Besides, the line between reporter and reader has become blurred.

Although reporters associated with corporate media continue to hold significant sway over news coverage, Twitter makes it possible for anyone with a phone to share information and input on viral stories. Due to social media, people feel a growing compulsion to engage with what is going on in the world through short and punchy commentary. While this kind of news-sharing allows for a communal experience of significant events, tweets and memes often veer in the direction of making light of news that deserves sober respect.

There are things to be said for the benefits of social media on the dissemination of news. For one, the power that small groups of editors once had over reporting has been somewhat dismantled. Moreover, tweets from events like protests can inform and impact what is written after the fact. TV has less of a monopoly on live coverage, as stories that unfold in the moment become more accessible through avenues like Facebook Live. The public serves as witness, reporter, and consumer all at once, giving people not associated with mainstream media influence over what becomes news.

On the flip side, our new relationship with news is not all beneficial, evident in the sense of crisis that has developed around the coronavirus outside of China.

It is natural that the idea of contagion makes people alarmed. Nevertheless, social media platforms and their constant live updates have made the virus feel unrealistically proximate to people in the US. When most of us learn of the latest news through the reactions of others—when memes occupy the same space as reporting—representations of an event encroach on its reality.

After a coronavirus scare at USC, students posted memes about the disease online. As a friend from my high school in Beijing told me, “It’s funny to them cause it’s not concerning them right now. It’s even more frustrating when I hear people say ‘I’m scared I wanna go home’ when I can’t go home.” Although the coronavirus is serious and deserves our attention, its coverage has developed an unnecessary atmosphere of fear in places where people are not at risk. The increasingly intertwined relationship between news and social media invites people to insert themselves into current events. This epidemic is overwhelmingly affecting Chinese people and has so far only claimed Chinese lives. That fact should certainly bring about strong emotions—though hopefully not panic of contracting the virus oneself. Even if people infected with the virus have made their way to this country, there is for the time being no reason for anyone in Rhode Island to believe they are at risk.

News is news for a reason. It is far better to discuss it than to leave it ignored. But the way we engage with news matters; not all attention is good attention. At the time of writing, the virus has taken more than 560 lives. Over 28,000 people are confirmed sick worldwide, but more infections are likely unreported. Needless to say, each of those individuals has a web of friends and family mourning their deaths or invested in their recovery. Health personnel from across China have mobilized, left their loved ones, and

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

travelled to Wuhan to attend to the sick—fully aware that their government is likely withholding vital information from them. Tens of millions of people living in Hubei province in China are living in quarantine. Not allowed out of the cities they were in at the time of lockdown, these people are trapped in their own homes.

The elderly especially suffer from this sudden imposed isolation. And at the backdrop of all of this is the Spring Festival, China’s happiest and most carefree time of year. The outbreak has brought a fierce halt to public and family celebrations of the holiday throughout the country.

In stark contrast, US discourse surrounding the virus has been ridden with a disappointing level of ignorance and hysteria. Disease is not romantic.

Lockdowns are not exciting. Extremes should not be fetishized. The hysteria surrounding the virus in the media has perpetuated the damage caused by the disease.

An effective way of countering these alarmist narratives is to humanize those experiencing the coronavirus on the ground. For example, Sixth Tone has published several articles over the last few weeks that have shed light on the experiences of people affected by the virus in Wuhan and China. James Palmer, senior editor at Foreign Policy has authored a number of thoughtful pieces on the outbreak. For CNN, Nectar Gan wrote an article about how the coronavirus outbreak has made the people of Wuhan outcasts in their own country. Elisabeth Rosenthal, who covered the SARS epidemic in 2003, wrote a levelheaded New York Times op-ed entitled “How to Avoid the Coronavirus? Wash Your Hands.” To shield yourself from the mostly China-based epidemic that mainly endangers the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, staying calm and following Rosenthal’s titular advice goes a long way. +++

and tourists have reported an increase in sinophobic outbursts. For example, customers from the Chinese mainland have been refused entry at restaurants in places like Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Two weeks ago, in the Indonesian tourist city Bukittinggi, hundreds of people marched outside a hotel where Chinese people were staying, protesting against their presence in Indonesia. Similarly, on January 29, protesters organized a rally in Seoul calling for a ban on the entry of Chinese people into South Korea. The same day, a man in Australia died of a heart attack after bystanders reportedly refused to give him CPR in fear of getting sick.

On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency. At the same time, the international body stated that measures interfering with trade and transportation have the potential to impede efforts to address the epidemic. In the week that followed, several countries—including the US, Singapore, and Australia—imposed restrictions and bans on noncitizens who have recently visited China. This disregard for expert advice sheds further light on the ignorance inherent in all the Trump administration’s travel bans.

Although WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared on February 4 that such measures could “have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit,” the US stands its ground. +++ Although the ramifications of the epidemic—and the discourses surrounding it—can be felt on a global scale, it is the people of Wuhan and Hubei province who get the short end of the stick. Even within China, they are shunned—their birthplace has become synonymous with disease. To their government, their health and safety was worth less than saving face. The blame placed on the people of Wuhan and Hubei has resulted in the scapegoating of complete strangers located far away from them. The sensitive nature of all things political in China makes it difficult for medical personnel working at Hubei’s overcrowded hospitals to do their jobs. This epidemic has and will continue to render the province’s poor people and migrant workers most vulnerable. In some tragic cases, the government’s handling of the virus has proved fatal: in a town near Wuhan, a disabled teenager was found dead after his father was placed in quarantine and no one came to take care of him.

These kinds of outbreaks will persist if the structure and governance of the CCP does not change.

Perhaps this one will serve as a rude awakening for Xi Jinping that even microscopic particles have the power to mobilize against the thickest hubris. After the outbreak reaches its peak and the epidemic is stopped, one can only hope that the party will tackle the structural central-local disconnect that they failed to get rid of after SARS. Besides his photo of the banner, some of Chris Buckley’s other tweets emphasize the “unearthly quiet” of Wuhan. As online discourse about the virus amplifies day by day, the people of Wuhan continue to hold their breath. The only sound to be heard in the deserted streets is the barking of dogs, at times in chorus. In Buckley’s speculations about these dogs—"perhaps stressed at being locked inside, perhaps their humans aren’t around”—we are given a small glimpse into the grim silence of the usually bustling city. Soon, the internet will move onto new fixations. By then, maybe Wuhan’s soundtrack will feature something more than stillness, as the city comes to figure out a new normal.

Along with a suppressed discourse in China and hysteria in the US, the coronavirus outbreak has also spurred a worldwide normalization of sinophobia.

In mid-January, when the international spotlight became directed at the outbreak, publications placed an emphasis on a Wuhan wet market claimed to be the origin of the virus. Getting most of its demand from practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, the country’s wildlife trade became the focus of discussions that swiftly broadened into a scapegoating of Chinese people and their cultural practices.

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market consists of stalls selling meat, poultry, fish, as well as more ‘exotic’ animals like rats, snakes, wolves, and bats. Although the role of the market in the outbreak has since come into question, non-Chinese people unquestioningly revived the far-too-common narrative about Asians and their supposedly ‘savage’ eating habits. And while experts have not unanimously agreed on what animal was the source of the virus, a viral video of a woman eating a bat convinced thousands of social media users that Chinese bat-eating was the source of the outbreak.

Chinese people were quick to point out that bats are not a delicacy in Wuhan, nor was the video even taken in China. As Twitter user @rzhong notes,“People are really just telling anyone Asian to stop eating bats like I have a bat granola bar in my purse next to my keys or something.” Wang Mengyun is a travel show host and the video is from her trip to the island country Palau a few years ago. In his article “Don’t Blame Bat Soup for the Wuhan Virus,” James Palmer points out the hypocrisy of this finger-pointing: “Sampling the bat was simply an addition to the well-trodden cannon of adventurism and enthusiasm for unusual foods that EMILY RUST B’22 prefers this political slogan: 武汉 numerous American chefs and travel hosts have shown 加油，中国加油！ in the past.”

Xenophobic attitudes are based in ignorance and fear. As the coronavirus has made its way to other parts of the world, Chinese people have increasingly been scapegoated for its spread. As Palmer explains in the article, it is not uncommon for images and videos of Chinese people eating insects, snakes, or mice to circulate online. People’s sinophobic comments became all the more acute in the context of the coronavirus, when this scrutiny of perceived culinary practices is “mixed with another old racist idea: that the ‘dirty’ Chinese are carriers of disease.”

Across the world, Chinese and Asian residents

SCIENCE + TECH

06

BIG GIRLS CRY BIG CLOWN TEARS

07

I MISS MY MOMMY EVERY DAY

CVS CASHIER A LITTLE RACIST

GIANT EYE ALWAYS WATCHING

EM O WASNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T JU ST A PH A S E

EPHEMERA

07 FEB 2020

MOLEHILLS OUT OF MOU N TA INS

BY Deb Marini & Ricardo Gomez ILLUSTRATION Claire Schlaikjer DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt and Matt Ishimaru

A CLOSE LOOK AT GOVERNOR R AIMONDO’S 2021 BUDGET PROPOSAL Reading budgets is like eating broccoli stems: miserable! Gina Governor Raimondo’s annual budget proposal, released this past January, is a multivolume work whose natural expansiveness—it’s legally mandated to cover every piece of state spending— tends to convolute and cloud a lot of the issues it covers.

This bureaucratic obscurity is only made worse by media outlets choosing to highlight the more sensational line items, such as marijuana legalization and tax hikes.

The College Hill Independent decided to do a deep dive into Raimondo’s FY 2021 Budget Proposal and pulled out two pieces of important legislation—mountains, if you will—that have been tucked neatly within the bill and remanufactured into molehills. One line item produces savings by addressing the cost, rather than the ethics of keeping people in the state’s most inefficiently run prison. The other saves the state money by cutting 5,500 people off of Medicaid. Both turn people into numbers, then numbers into savings. +++ Raimondo proposed a number of changes to the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC), one of which intends to send 24 men to out-of-state prisons in order to save money in the state’s most expensive and inefficient prison: the High Security Facility.

An understanding of the proposal requires a bit of history on the nature of the state’s prisons. Rhode Island contains only one prison for each carceral security level—intake services, minimum, medium, maximum, and super maximum—for men held under the jurisdiction of RIDOC. According to language utilized by the Providence Journal and by the correctional officers union, the super maximum facility, High Security, is meant to house the “worst of the worst.”

In reality, most of the men in High Security are there because they were unable to be rightfully placed in the lower security levels because of “enemy issues” identified by RIDOC, such as rival gang members. The invisible hand of administrative discretion also plays a significant and obscure role in the moving of men from lower-security prisons to High Security.

The facility was built in 1981 at the onset of the tough-on-crime era and, to this day, continues to perform as such. Men incarcerated in High Security spend up to twenty-three hours a day in solitary confinement for indefinite periods of time, a practice known to have extremely negative psychological and physiological effects counteractive to RIDOC’s goals of rehabilitation. In 2017, a Rhode Island Special Legislative Commission investigated RIDOC’s use of solitary confinement and at the commission’s conclusion sent RIDOC a number of recommendations. Some, such as reformed policy statements, were adopted. Others, such as limits on time spent in solitary, were ignored.

Change to High Security is primarily discussed in terms of financial savings, not in terms of common humanity. Keeping over 80 men imprisoned within High Security cost the state an annual $195,244 per person in 2019, while each of the 400 men at Maximum Security cost the state an annual $82,115 each. These costs come from the building’s physical construction; its poor sight lines, outdated design, and lack of proper programming space demand more correctional officers-per-inmate. High Security is founded both historically and physically in inhumane, punitive practices, but the high costs seem to consistently be the key force motivating policymakers to take action.

Raimondo first addressed High Security in her budget report last year. She suggested that the state could realize $5.1 million in savings through a $66 million capital improvements project that would renovate the facility in a way that would reduce the number of correctional officers needed and avoid future maintenance. This plan was met with immense pushback from the correctional officers union, the Rhode

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers (RIBCO), who claimed that High Security is a “deterrent” for violence in the state’s lower-security prisons and one of the strongest forms of protection for correctional officers. The union set aside $100,000 for a campaign to slander the governor and her budget director, Jonathan Wormer, in retaliation for the budget proposal. One radio spot called on listeners to tell the governor to rescind her proposal “because if she doesn’t, blood will be on her hands.”

High Security is one of the easiest locations for COs to get overtime hours and RIDOC has an institutional trend of officers taking advantage of overtime.

In 2018, 37% of full-time employees pulled at least one 32-hour “quad” (four consecutive 8 hour shifts) in 2018.

While Raimondo’s plan guaranteed job security for all COs employed at High Security during the renovations, there was no guarantee for overtime availability.

The proposed renovations were ultimately denied by the General Assembly, who left out $45 million in borrowing that the project hinged on.

In the FY 2021 budget, Raimondo is now proposing to close down two of the 12-inmate units in High Security in order to net $777,292 in savings for the state through the reduction of CO overtime. Consequently, the 24 people in these units would be sent to out-ofstate prisons in return for 24 people from out-of-state, and both groups, now that they are distanced from most “enemy threats,” could be housed in their “actual classification levels.” While the original plan would have saved money and moderately improved living conditions for the men in High Security, this new plan merely saves money. RIBCO has not yet issued a statement against or in support of this new proposal.

While it may be too early to make any predictions, it seems likely that this provision in the budget proposal will slide through the State House this spring if RIBCO or any activist groups representing the people incarcerated at High Security do not speak up. Raimondo’s budget also proposes an elimination of overtime in RIDOC for non-Correctional Officers and a stricter enforcement of sick leave policies among COs, both of which may distract RIBCO from the High Security closures.

Currently, there are about 80 people in Cranston spending up to 23 hours a day in solitary confinement.

Their connections to their friends and family on the outside are already strikingly limited, and the transfer of 24 of them could only isolate them more. While the transfer could prove beneficial to some, it is guaranteed not to benefit the 50 men left behind in archaic, cruel conditions. +++ According to a report from the Senate Fiscal Office, the Governor’s budget also includes an update to health care technology that will deny Medicaid to 5,500 Rhode Islanders. When Rhode Island launched the Unified Health Infrastructure Project (UHIP) in 2016, the system was meant to centralize and simplify the deployment of benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, and child care assistance for hundreds of thousands of Rhode Islanders. Despite a variety of red flags, the infrastructure project was launched without a backup and led to a series of payment disputes, disruptively overcrowded field offices, and application backlogs so immense that the ACLU of Rhode Island sued over the issue. Behind this debacle—which put a hold on the many services essential to Rhode Islanders—was Deloitte, a multinational professional services firm that designed the error-ridden computer system.

Deloitte’s mismanagement of this state project put a serious spotlight on the role of private business entities in the provisioning of vital public benefits.

Additionally, the cost to operate the benefits infrastructure project has grown to more than $656 million after Gov. Gina Raimondo’s administration reached a deal to extend Deloitte’s contract through 2021 despite its serious failures leading to the damaging 2016 launch. Reports in 2019 disclosed that state taxpayers will put up $154 million for UHIP while the rest of cost will be covered by the federal government.

To justify the cost of UHIP, state officials stressed how UHIP would pay for itself by more efficiently removing ineligible individuals from social services.

In 2017, officials set out their vision of optimizing the deployment of social services by establishing the aggressive goal of removing 20,000 individuals from Rhode Island’s Medicaid on a curt four-month timetable. Healthcare means humans lives and here, optimization is being articulated in terms of more efficiently depriving people of healthcare.

That UHIP delivers essential services to some, while depriving others of those very same services, makes reporting on the issue a critical concern to the public. According to the most recent oversight report, “as of January 11, 2020, open incidents totaled 206 – a 97 percent drop since December 2017.” This report implies that UHIP has improved since its launch and is actually mitigating problems of bureaucratic excess in order to help people.

What remains questionable is the state’s commitment to making sure that UHIP’s operations remain equitable and transparent. That the UHIP’s most recent update saw 5,500 Rhode Islanders kicked off Medicaid without proper notice makes it abundantly clear that UHIP still needs to be carefully monitored despite its apparent efficiency improvements. “Why did the Raimondo administration not disclose this?”

Sam Bell, a State Senator, asked. “Now that Raimondo hired the ProJo’s ace health and human services reporter Jennifer Bogdan to run her communications, are there enough reporters keeping track on UHIP?” Clearly, the question of democratic control and transparency remains a continuous source of concern. As Senator Bell explains, “In the previous Medicaid purges, you were supposed to get one letter and a 10-day warning where you had a chance to try and save your healthcare if the information behind the denial was incorrect.” The most recent update—which failed to send those warnings—calls attention to transparency issues. UHIP deals in matters of human life and operates with very little interaction with the lives it effects most.

The absence of clear means to appeal decisions of disqualification and the failure to send out proper notice about terminations mirrors how the budget affects Rhode Islanders immediately while remaining conceptually inaccessible. +++ At the end of the day, these aspects of Governor Raimondo’s budget proposal prioritize theoretical savings over human lives. While it's not emblematic of active immorality in her camp, it does expose the dangers of the “numbers game” she is forced to play by a state that demands savings and a statehouse that is at the mercy of lobbyists and unions.

DEB MARINI B’22 and RICARDO GOMEZ B’22 love Kafka and all things bureau.

METRO

08

BY Agnes Cẩm Ngọc Trần ILLUSTRATION David González DESIGN Cate Turner

N ƯỚC IS WATER

Nước is water.

Nước is country.

The streams and seas of nước that my parents crossed in 1979 to reach a new nước.

When my mom tells me stories of her childhood in Vietnam, the streams and seas of her words flow into veins and a heartbeat. The streams that my great-grandparents floated down to settle in Rạch Giá.

The sea that my grandmother caught in her broken fishnets and small hands. The river that saved my uncle. The ocean that brought my family a new life, but took the lives of others.

After my great-great-grandmother passed into her next life, my great-great-grandfather, heartbroken, took his children and floated down the river in search of their next life. They lived off of the nước until the stream’s fingers carried them to Rạch Giá, where my grandmother would grow up. My grandmother also lived off of the nước, travelling from dock to dock to repair the nets of fishermen with her small hands. She married my grandfather, a lieutenant, and traveled with him across the nước to a small island where he was stationed. When she became pregnant with my aunt, later the eldest of eight, my grandfather gambled away his earnings and drank everything but nước and she stood by the docks and cried and begged to the passing boats until eventually one took pity on her tears and took her across the nước back home to Rạch Giá and she would never go anywhere with my grandfather again. Except once in 1979 across the nước to a new nước called America.

Now when my grandmother presses her hand against my cheek to snuff kisses against my hair, I can feel the wrinkle of her fishnet fingers, as if she stayed in the nước for too long.

Ma is ghost.

Mạ is rice seedling.

Mả is tomb.

Má is mother.

Depending on how you let go of your breath, ma can mean life or death.

My family history is submerged in the smoke of hungry ma and village shamans, in unmarked mả and bony earth, in fields of mạ and leaf houses. My grandfather is still an alcoholic. He comes to California from Ohio every summer and sits in my backyard with all the uncles and drinks everything but nước. As his

09

FEATURES

drawled words mix with the smoke of his cigarette, the smoke begins to flow into the shape of figures, of my grandfather leading his soldiers, of an ambush by the communists, of my grandfather using a grenade to save his men, of my grandfather checking the smoked bodies for anything to send home, of a whole platoon of wispy ma that were only fourteen years old, of a whole platoon of wispy fourteen year old ma that each only owned a fistful of rice to send home. After the smoke of his cigarette and grenade clears, I can begin to understand why he doesn’t drink nước.

After the war ended, my grandfather took his family deep into rural South Vietnam to escape reeducation camps and persecution. There was still nước, in the form of rivers, but there was more land, stretches of sugarcane fields and graveyards between each home.

My má tells me there were more ma than people. I believe her. She tells me of the pebbles that would hit her everytime she passed the leaf house of a widow, where every evening, the widow would sit by the mả and ma in front of the leaf house. She tells me of the legless Cambodian woman that my grandpa pretended not to see while he worked in the sugarcane fields. She tells me of the other shadows and voices that lived in their leaf house with her, my two aunts, my uncle, and my grandparents.

My aunt died in that house. She was younger than I am now. I don’t even know her name. There is no trace of her, no pictures, no memories, no mả or ma. She only exists in the story of her death. My grandmother asked her if she wanted to return to the city to live with her sister. My aunt whose name I do not know and whose face I will never know decided she would return to the city once the season for her favorite fruit came, so that she could eat it before she left. She died before her favorite fruit ripened. On a day that my grandfather left the leaf house to work in the sugarcane fields, she suddenly didn’t feel well. My mom told me that she sat by her bedside with their older brother and talked and laughed with my aunt like normal. They were in the middle of a conversation when she died with her eyes open.

My mom told me that my grandfather’s aura is strong, strong enough to repel the hungry ma. When my aunt contracted her illness, my grandfather was gone. But in the early morning, he returned suddenly, on the basis of a bad feeling. By the time he came back, she was already dead.

They spent the rest of the day breaking the earth.

Digging graves. Digging up graves. Digging up graves in search of a grave for her. Digging mả. Digging up ma.

Digging up ma in search for a mả for her. Every hole they dug was filled with the bodies and bones of others.

Bones streamed through the rotting earth like a river.

They had to bury her in the bones of another, of a few others, drown her in the sea of skeletons because there was no land or nước.

Land broken by an old Cambodian battlefield.

Land broken by bodies of nước. Land broken by bodies

of hungry ma. I wonder what the Vietnamese and Cambodian fought over. It was probably over who owned the nước. The ma own the land now. They make up the land now, the bones and flesh of the earth.

The land owns them now. I wonder if their families lit incense and paper money and put out mangos and tea for them at the altar, honored their memory and fed their hungry souls until their stomachs and hearts were full enough to make the journey to the next life. I wonder if their families didn’t, and if they turned into hungry ma, lost and far away from their nước without even the faintest trail of incense to guide them home or into their next life. They are forgotten and forsaken in both altar and memory, tied in body and spirit to the land that they owned that now owns them. Ma can’t cross bodies of nước. Bodies of spirits, bodies of land, bodies of nước. Bound by bodies in life and in death.

I wonder where my aunt is now, wonder if her bones are under some new private resort construction or if they’re still there, drowning in the sea of skeletons and spirits in a place where there is more bone than land or nước.

Digging mả.

Digging up ma.

Digging up ma in search for a mả for her.

On the same night of her death and burial, my uncle suddenly got the same illness. My grandfather took his family away to the nước that the ma couldn’t cross. He put them all on their little boat and they went down the nước, away from the sea of skeletons. They were in the middle of the river when the boat’s motor and my uncle’s breathing stopped.

My grandmother screamed and cried for help as they drifted. My grandfather cursed and swore and told Ông Trờ—the Man in the Sky—that he would give his life for his son’s. Fate had it so that a woman, in a place where there were more spirits than people, found them drifting in the nước and told them about the famous herbalist who just happened to live nearby.

In the broken yellow light of his home, the herbalist submerged my uncle in a tank of nước.

My má remembers vividly when my uncle started to breathe again. He broke out of the nước and out of death and spluttered, chest heaving again with life.

After coming back to life, my uncle would tell my grandmother that the hungry ma wouldn’t stop following him. My grandmother sought out the help of a shaman.

“Let me take him as my godson,” the shaman told my grandparents. They obliged.

For years after this incident, my uncle would remain in a state of sickness. But whenever his

07 FEB 2020

godfather came up the alley that led to their new home, his illness would immediately clear. But my grandfather’s promise to the Man in the Sky was neither forgotten nor forsaken. For decades after, when one of them became ill, the same illness would haunt the other, regardless of the nước that separated them.

Nước is water.

Ma is ghost.

Ma nước is water ghost.

My grandfather decided they would cross the nước before they became ma and couldn’t. He decided this on a night when he hadn’t drunk nước. “We are leaving this nước tomorrow,” he promised. Come with us and cross the nước or stay here until the ma of you is bound to this nước forever. Die for this nước, die in this nước, die because of this nước.

Only the really desperate believed him and came the next evening. My grandfather, true to his drunken word, stole a small fishing boat that the new government had claimed ownership of. They had to leave those that were bound to the warm land or sweet thunderstorms, those that were bound by too much age or too little age, those that could not or would not swim in uncertain nước to a foreign nước.

My grandfather took his children and my grandmother and a few other families. They floated in the nước for days, weeks. Pirates circled them but left when my grandfather brandished his only grenade. Not all boat people are as lucky. My father’s fishing boat was ransacked by pirates who took generations of wealth and left them nothing but nước. My godmother fell off her family’s fishing boat and drowned and when she was hauled back up from the nước and from the dead, she asked her mother why she could suddenly see so many people on the boat—the boat people who had not been as lucky and had become ma nước, the unfortunate that had died watery deaths, that are bound to the nước, that cannot cross to land.

My má’s fishing boat floated in the nước for weeks until the nước looked like land, like an island in the

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Philippines. When they crossed the nước to the refugee camps, they could have been mistaken for ma. They were hosed down with clean nước because they stank so badly from their time floating.

They spent months on that island, unable to cross the nước like ma because they had nowhere to go, no trail of incense smoke to follow. The only smoke came from black clouds above burning boats in the middle of the nước. Occasionally they saw small boats almost make it to shore, only to be reeled back into the nước by Thai pirates. They saw those boats pulled all the way to the horizon where nước and sky were indistinguishable. For days, those boats would stay trapped at that blur between nước and sky.

There was nothing to be done until the pirates left and those boats slowly drifted back to the shore that they were so close to days earlier. The women had to be carried off or limp to land with broken bodies, and no men ever made it past the nước. Ma cannot cross nước, but the living can, and oftentimes, the living are to be more feared.

forever bound to the nước, haunted by the ma of aunts whose names we do not know whose faces we will never know, haunted by hot summer smoke and fistfuls of rice, haunted by the histories of our families. We are the ma nước, forever bound to the nước between here and there, with Vietnam’s streams and seas and rivers and oceans surging through our veins.

Nước is water.

Ma is ghost.

Ma nước is water ghost.

Ma nước is us.

Nước is water.

Nước is country.

Nước is where

we, then and now, here and there, are bound to.

Some of us are floating, drifting down the streams of nước as we get from here to there or from there to here and try to make here or there home.

Some of us are drowning, struggling to stay afloat in the heavy waves of foggy nước as neither there becomes here nor here becomes there. But some of us are swimming in the nước, almost grounded in the new nước, as here and there become one. Nước has become both home and the space between home and here, or home and there. We are the ma nước,

FEATURES

10

RABBITS

BY Zachary Baytosh ILLUSTRATION Georgianna Stoukides DESIGN Amos Jackson

Alexa could not remember when she began to allow the rabbits to sleep with her, in their bed, when Rob was away. It had been sometime at the end of April, she knew. Sometime after her birthday, which they had spent mostly in the car, driving back from Rob’s parent’s house in the country, but definitely before their anniversary. She knew because she had slept with the rabbits that night—the night of their anniversary.

Rob had had an exam the next morning, early, and so he couldn’t stay. The drive would have been too long, back to school the next morning, and he needed the rest. It was an important exam. So she had slept alone, the night of their anniversary, with the rabbits curled up in their empty sheets. It was comforting, that was all. Like a stuffed animal: warm, soft. Sleeping with a stuffed animal wasn’t that strange.

That wasn’t the first time she had slept with them though—the rabbits. She was already used to it by then, she remembered. She had been sort of looking forward to it, actually, when she’d kissed Rob goodbye as he left—it was long past ten, and he had done the dishes for her, so all she had to do was fold the pile of laundry, still sitting on the living room couch, tidy up a bit, undress, and go to sleep. She had been looking forward to it, that was the point: getting the rabbits out of their cardboard box in the closet, where she kept them when Rob was over. Rob had made up for it in the end—their anniversary. He was sweet like that. He had showed up with flowers the next Friday night. They’d made a weekend of it. They stayed in all day, both days, watched movies; Rob had brought her breakfast in bed. The rabbits had stayed hidden away then.

Hidden wasn’t the word Alexa would have used.

Alexa hadn’t told Rob about the rabbits yet. She couldn’t remember the reason. Maybe there wasn’t one. She just hadn’t told him. It wasn’t like she was embarrassed about it—she really wasn’t. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. Plenty of people had rabbits. Plenty of people slept with their pets. Dogs and things. It was good for you. She knew she had read about it when she was still in school—back when she and Rob had first met—though why or when she couldn’t remember. Rob might have known. They’d been in the same program and he always had a memory for things like that: book titles and birthdays and dates and names.

But she just hadn’t told him. That was all. They weren’t even a secret, really—the rabbits. She had kept them in the closet at first, a space-saving device.

It wasn’t about hiding them. It was a small apartment after all, and for some reason the closet was practically walk in—well, not really walk in, but spacious. It was big, that was the point. It had been a good place to put the box. And anyway, it wasn’t like the door was locked—what was one of theirs was both of theirs, they were both very firm on that—he could have looked inside anytime. She wasn’t hiding them. She just hadn’t told him. They had been a gift.

Rob had been in the city, at his roommate’s apartment—his apartment, rather—when she had gotten

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them. That she definitely remembered. They hadn’t really talked that weekend, not that they had been avoiding each other, they just hadn’t talked, minus a quick call Saturday night to check in—he was always really sweet about that—but that barely even counted anymore. And the rabbits didn’t come up— that weekend, during their call. She was meaning to tell him, to talk to him about them, but what was she supposed to do? Drop the rabbits into the conversation straight away? “Oh honey! how was your day? by the way: rabbits.”

But then, after the hellos, their conversation took a different turn: something his professor had said that he thought she would appreciate, and oh, how that same professor was getting married—married again, that is—to Professor Horrowitz, did Alexa remember her?

Professor Horrowitz from child development, she’d started teaching the same semester that Alexa had declared and—yes, yes she did remember her, though not well, she never did much with child development, and wow isn’t she like, like, twenty years younger than him?—and he said that he knew, right? and he guessed that love really was blind, though not as blind as Professor Horrowitz’s husband would be soon, sorry, only joking, a bad joke—she still laughed—and wasn’t it amazing all these people getting married: even Pete and Anna had gotten married, and, did you know?

Franz and Ellie—wait, really? since when?—and soon everyone would be hitched and there’d be no one left, ha-ha, and that it was time for him to go now. He loved her so much. And where, in all of that, was she going to find time to explain to him how her friend—co-worker— acquaintance really, had given her two beautiful, white rabbits.

They really were beautiful. They were small things: soft and innocent, gentle, warm. They made her feel comfortable, just looking at them. And their eyes could melt your heart.

His kid had won them—he had said—at a fair. But his wife, well she had seen his wife at Clarence’s retirement party: pale and sickly and beautiful—he loved her but...Alexa knew how she was. Pretty picky. Doesn’t do well with “rodents.” He needed to find a place for them, and he’d seen them, and well, he said that they’d made him think of her. So… if she wanted… she could. The offer was always open…

She had taken him up on it. It was an impulsive thing—she hadn’t even thought to check with Rob. Anyway, it was her apartment, and the rabbits were small. Her co-worker—acquaintance—friend helped her move the box from the back of his car to the back of her car. After work, all alone out in the parking lot.

No, don’t worry, he had it, he’d moved her hands, the rabbits’ dark eyes looking up at her.

And after that first phone call, when she didn’t tell Rob, it became harder to bring them up. Rob stayed the night that Monday, but she forgot to mention it—she really did. She’d been excited to see him, to talk. And she had fed the rabbits before he came and they got to talking about other things, mostly about his work and

school, really, and he was already asleep by the time the thought of them crept back into her mind and she got up, careful not to wake him, to check on them and give them food and water. She spent some time sitting in the warm closet, with the soft yellow light on and the door open just a crack, caressing them, gently. He didn’t stir when she got back into bed. He didn’t seem to notice she was gone.

The next morning, she was tired and he said he had a headache and they made and ate breakfast almost in silence—a companionable silence, of course, chewing on toast. He took her plate and threw out the last crust, overdone, which she hadn’t gotten around to eating yet, and washed it and downed three Advil. Then he left, back to university for the rest of the week. Just like that it was a secret. Of course, they didn’t keep secrets, but she didn’t try to tell him about them after—she would have had to explain why she hadn’t told him about them before. She would have, of course. Explained it.

She would have told him all about it if he had asked. But he never asked, and anyway, they were only rabbits.

How long had it taken her to move her late night visits from the closet, to dozing on the floor with the rabbits in her arms, to the empty bed? That was what she could not recall. It was after the first litter had been born. She knew that. Perhaps they were already grown.

Had it been weeks? a month or two? since that night in the parking lot. She could not remember. The litter had been large, and largely unintentional. She had named them at first, the two rabbits, Chester and Evan. They were Chester and Evelyn now. Her co-worker hadn’t told her about that.

She hadn’t bothered to name their children: eight rabbits in all, all pale white with the same deep dark eyes as their parents. The same eyes which made something go soft down in her chest. There were too many to keep straight. She had told her friend—co-worker— about it and he’d smiled. “Well, I guess you’re a grandmother now.” He’d said. She’d never liked that: when people talked about their pets like they were children. It seemed desperate, sad, but she smiled too. There were so many of them, she’d said. Eight children. “Eight?” he’d said. “Better get rid of some of them, three is too much.” He’d been talking about his own kids, joking.

She’d seen them, in the single photograph on the desk in his office, facing inwards, next to the ceramic paperweight in the shape of an apple and a mug full of mismatched pens. The paperweight had a bite taken out of it, sharp edged and glittering in the overhead.

She’d laughed at his comment and she wasn’t sure why.

Two weeks after that—no, maybe three?—had been her and Rob’s anniversary, and the car ride, and the night alone.

So it was somewhere in there then, that she’d started sleeping with the rabbits, that she’d brought them into her bed. At first, it was only once in awhile.

When she needed them—they were a comfort—like on the night of their anniversary. Or when she was cold—it was winter after all. And then slowly it was every night. And at first it was only a rabbit or two, but

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then she began to worry. She began to worry that the other rabbits perhaps felt unattended to, not suitably loved, that they would wander. And so it became two, and then three, and then it was every rabbit, a pile of smooth white fur and dark sweet eyes, that rose and fell in the night with their collective breath.

And it became harder to hide them. Not that she hid them. But it became more obvious that the rabbits were there, in her room and in her bed, and that they were there often, the thick white hairs, first times two, then times ten shedding off and lodging themselves in the cracks in the floorboards, clinging to carpets and to her favorite black dress which she kept hung and ready on the back of the closet door for their dates, just in case—her and Robert’s dates. And then the second litter came. It was not long after the first, but long enough that she had been bringing all of the rabbits to sleep with her at night for some time now, and now there were sixteen, eighteen? Nearly too many to count, all piled in the box in her closet, a wriggling mass of white fur and pink noses and deep, dark, gentle eyes.

The box began to stink, began to reek, and so she threw it out in the dumpster, in the parking lot after work. It stank too badly to use her own trash. And she asked if maybe her acquaintance, her co-worker knew how to

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get the smell of rabbit urine out of a carpet.

But instead he smiled and said he had to go. He had gotten them at a fair, remember? His boy had gotten them. He didn’t know much about taking care of rabbits. And she was left scouring the internet before she finally gave up and used baking soda and vinegar and scrubbed and scrubbed the closet and her car and her clothes until they smelled like slightly vinegary urine and still she slept with the rabbits every night— because it was cold outside that December.

She got a new cardboard box, and then two more, so there were three boxes filled with rabbits now in her tiny apartment. And she put one in the closet, and one underneath the bed, and another in the pantry, and she insisted on cooking when Rob came over even though she loved it when he cooked. He didn’t mind though.

He let her cook, and he did the dishes instead, and he never even came near the pantry. And still the closet smelled. If Rob noticed, he didn’t comment. Anyway, old apartments in out of the way places aren’t known for the fragrant smells. School was busy and so there was too little time to talk about trivial things, and he was gone so fast, and there so infrequently, a few days a week at most, that maybe, possibly, he didn’t even notice the change.

By now all the rabbits were fully grown, and she had lost track which was Chester and which was Evan, or Evelyn, in the wriggling sea of noses and eyes and in the moving of box to box. The next litter was not long to come. Had she wanted to undo what she had done, to give the first two at least back to her co-worker, to have divided up the rest and sold them off or given them away. Had she wanted that, she wouldn’t have even been able to identify the right ones. Still, something prevented her from doing anything at all. She could have done it. She could’ve given them away. It wouldn’t have been that hard. She could have told Rob even, come clean, surely he would have helped—he was sweet like that. But she didn’t and he didn’t and the rabbits stayed and the rabbits multiplied, as rabbits do.

LITERARY

12

Taking 287g Agreements to the Courtroom

BY Sara Van Horn ILLUSTRATION Alex Westfall DESIGN Amos Jackson PHOTO Steve Ahlquist

An interview with activist Sherrie Andre

content warning: police violence Late in the summer of 2018, four activists from the FANG Collective, a nonviolent direct action group, blockaded the entrances to the Bristol County House of Corrections, a detention facility in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts. They used cement blocks and handpainted banners. They scaled 26-foot tripod structures.

By preventing the flow of vehicles, they disrupted the normal functioning of the facility and created a powerful, visual reminder of the daily injustices happening inside. This direct action protest, resulting in the arrests of the four protestors, marked the launch of the FANG Collective’s Shut Down ICE campaign, which seeks to end all collaboration between local law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The action—taken in solidarity with a hunger strike organized by people imprisoned in the facility—aimed to shed light on the horrific conditions inside the Bristol County House of Corrections.

Overseen by Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, the Bristol County House of Corrections has received national attention over its abusive guards, medical neglect, inadequate food, and lack of mental health care, according to the criminal justice news source the Appeal. Unsurprisingly, Sheriff Hodgson—who has famously sent ICE detainees at the Bristol County House of Corrections to help build President Trump’s southern border wall—is facing lawsuits and investigations over the mistreatment of people imprisoned inside his facility. The Bristol County House of Corrections also has extremely high suicide rates.

Bristol County is one of three counties in New England with a 287g agreement, a legal contract that deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration agents within their jurisdictions. This allows police officers to question people about their immigration status and detain people on immigration charges. The Massachusetts Department of Corrections also has a 287g agreement. Additionally, Bristol County has an Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGSA), a federal contract in which local jails and prisons provide space for the detention of undocumented people. (The Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island has also faced increasing protests and public outrage over its IGSA agreement.)

One of the activists from the FANG Collective, Sherrie Andre, will go to trial in the New Bedford District Court on March 4th and 5th. Co-founder of the FANG Collective, Andre is facing up to 30 days in jail for their involvement in the nonviolent direct action last summer. The College Hill Independent talked with Andre about why they chose to participate in the protest, the role of direct action in the Shut Down ICE campaign, and the importance of organizing around a culture of care. +++ The Indy: Could you talk about your experience in the nonviolent direct action last summer and, if you’re comfortable, your experience with Sheriff Hodgson and the police?

Sherrie Andre: Last summer, I participated in a nonviolent direct action where a group of people deployed structures to blockade the exits and entrances of the

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facility. I scaled a 26-foot-pole tripod—which essentially looks like a camera tripod—and climbed to the top of it. The police arrived and were pretty aggressive and violently removed me and the other person who was on another structure next to me. I personally landed on my tailbone pretty hard on the pavement. The police officers then proceeded to try to remove my gear, which essentially was just a bunch of men standing over me with knives as they tried to cut my gear off of my body that was attached to the climb-line to make sure I was safe. Another police officer proceeded to use pain compliance to try to get me to remove myself from a piece of equipment that I had locked myself to. They eventually removed the poles and dragged my body off to the side and removed my equipment and arrested me and the rest of the people and brought us to the Ash Street Jail where we tried to express to whatever medical professional was there that we could potentially have concussions and have been harmed. He just said that we were fine and never examined us. No one ever asked if we were okay. I was never asked if I was okay or if I had been hurt in any way.

The Indy: Why did you choose to be involved in the action?

Andre: One of the reasons I chose to participate in that action is that I come from a mixed-status family.

A lot of my family members are from Southeast Asia or Portugal and it was important to me to target a facility that has a 287g agreement with ICE that the people within my immediate family—but also within the immigrant community of Providence—would potentially be impacted by. They would potentially be sent to the Bristol County House of Corrections. It was important to me to do something about that, to raise awareness about how that specific county has a 287g agreement which essentially deputizes sheriffs so that they can arrest and detain people on behalf of ICE. A lot of people that I’ve been working with locally and in community groups have gone through that process and have been held at the Bristol County House of Corrections. I don’t live in Massachusetts, but they have been holding people who are residents of Rhode Island that the Wyatt Detention Facility can’t hold.

The Indy: How do you understand this action being important to the Shut Down ICE campaign?

Andre: This was not the action that we participated in to raise awareness about these conditions. We did a lot of community-building and had conversations with people who were impacted by this facility, but it was the first direct action that we had done to launch our Shut Down ICE campaign with the hopes that it would bring more attention to that particular facility and Sheriff Hodgson and how he essentially runs this facility in a way that people are harmed. There are high rates of suicide, high rates of solitary confinement, and people who don’t receive their medication. We wanted to raise awareness for people who don’t realize that even though this facility is in Massachusetts, it’s still impacting people who are here in Rhode Island.

And I think it’s just an interesting and ironic thing that Sheriff Hodgson believes so strongly in borders and

wants people to go build the border wall, but his policy crosses these state boundaries by not allowing people to access other people in their community. It’s just a very strange thing. I don’t believe in the borders themselves, but it’s interesting how it plays out for people who benefit from an oppressive system.

The Indy: What are 287g agreements?

Andre: A 287g agreement is an agreement between local law enforcement and ICE. The sheriff has the power to make that decision through policy. The agreement essentially protects the racist actions of police officers so they can pick and choose who they would like to target, arrest, and run a background check to see if they potentially have any criminal charges— which police officers do anyway—but also to see if they have an immigration status for which they could then be detained by ICE. It’s a way of creating these protections for police officers to continue to act racist—to specifically target people of color and black folks and arrest them under the potential assumption that they would have past criminal charges and then expect them to be held accountable for these charges in a different way after they have served their time. I say this without feeling like people should have to serve time in jail at all, but in general, because this is the system that we have, that is how the 287g agreements act out these protections and this continued racism in the criminal justice system.

The Indy: What are the best ways to end these agreements? And what is the importance of direct action in this campaign?

Andre: These agreements can be ended at any time.

It’s very simple. The people within their own communities need to hold their elected officials accountable and let them know that they are not interested in these agreements existing and harming the people both in their immediate community and the communities that are neighboring them. The best way to start that is education: being aware of whether you have a 287g or IGSA agreement, determining who the person was who made that decision, making sure that person is very aware that you do not want this agreement, and working with other elected officials—who have more clout—to get that person not to make these agreements.

I think direct action plays a role here because there are people like me who don’t always benefit from this unjust system because of my racial identity and how I navigate the world. In some ways, I’m very aware of the privileges I do have, but I’m not always going to have access to elected officials or be taken seriously for whatever reason, whether it be gender, race, or age, just because those biases exist. I’m never going to get into a room or sit down for a conversation where my thoughts and opinions are taken very seriously, but I also believe that as a person who currently has bodily privilege and the ability to take action, I should. I want to utilize the resources that I have, which isn’t a lot. I can’t hire a lawyer to sue, I can’t vote in Massachusetts to vote that sheriff out, and I can’t have a say in public hearings as to whether I agree to these agreements, because I’m just not taken seriously. So the best thing I can do is to

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use my body in a way that I can raise awareness about these unjust conditions.

The Indy: What has your experience been through the legal process? their own counties?

Andre: It’s been awful. But it’s also awful for lots of other people who are going through the system who don’t have as much support as I have. I'm very privileged to have an entire team of people who are supporting me through this process. In some ways, direct action makes people put you on this pedestal when you don’t need to be. There is no reason for that to exist when there are lots of people in this system who are not given the attention and resources that they deserve, so it’s good to acknowledge that too. I’m the only one who is going to trial to fight the 10-day sentence. My lawyer seems hopeful, but I’ve just been in the courtroom so many times—and not even how I’ve been treated, I’ve just seen how they treat other people in the courtroom in that system so awfully that I don’t really have as much hope as my lawyer. But for me, it’s another way to raise awareness about these agreements and Sheriff Hodgson and how awful he is and how he is the person who is making these decisions—not only for Bristol County but for other counties—and is also just a really racist person.

Andre: If people are interested in fighting these agreements, I would say a few things. The first is just know who your people are. Be very aware that the ways in which they will surveil you or intimidate you are much different than the ways that you are prepared to deal with. So, just make sure you are very clear with who your people are so that you still feel safe in your community when other people outside of it are trying to make you feel like you don’t have any power or the ability to make change. Also, determine how much you are willing to lose and give up doing this work because there are so many people who have been doing this work for so long who don’t have a lot of the things that you would imagine a 'normal life' quote unquote would look like. Come into this work humbly and recognize that people have already sacrificed so much for you even to participate and just create space for that within yourself. And if you’re somebody who has been doing this work for a really long time and are really interested in shifting your targets and the work that you’re doing, don’t give up, even though it’s really hard. It’s going to get very hard, and it’s very scary, but remember that The Indy: My understanding is that you’re contesting everybody is so appreciative. these charges by going to court. Why are you going to trial?

The Indy: What kind of community support are you looking for?

Andre: I’m going to trial because it’s definitely a privilege to be able to engage in process even if it’s not Andre: I think it would be great if people are able to always the most just. It’s another opportunity to raise come to the trial to support me but also to support the awareness about these 287g agreements and ICE’s other people in the courtroom who are going through involvement with Bristol Country and how Sheriff the court process that day. So don’t feel like you have Hodgson is the person who makes these agreements to spend the whole time in the trial with me. Feel free with ICE that impact people who don’t have a say as to to move about the court and sit in and bear witness to whether or not they even agree to how that will impact what is happening to other people. We’re also asking their community. people, if you are coming and if you are able, to bring cash to help pay other people’s fines who are going The Indy: What advice would you give activists around through the court that day. It’s also just an interthe country who are looking to end 287g agreements in esting time to see so many people I love organizing

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around providing support and not organizing around a campaign. For people to observe and respect that is so important and valuable in our movement work. I feel like it gets undervalued. There are literally tons of people organizing around providing support not just for me, but for everybody who is going to be in that courtroom that day. I just think this is like a learning moment for myself included, and for everyone doing this work, about the ways we can shift how much we’ve been utilizing action culture to actually enact a culture of care. And if people are interested in joining some sort of care team, they can email contact@thefangcollective.org. And people can write letters of support.

There’s a generated one that people can just sign their name, but writing personal ones are also helpful for me. And if people are interested in supporting undocumented people, people can donate to AMOR [Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance] or join one of AMOR’s teams if they are local to Rhode Island. Support other groups or local teams that provide this kind of support to undocumented community members. Do anything.

Do anything. Please.

The Indy: Anything else you’d like to emphasize or highlight?

Andre: I just want people to be aware that these agreements exist—and they might exist where you live—and that we can still fight them. Even though Sheriff Hodgson and other people who are in positions of power are able to make decisions through policy, it doesn’t mean we have to accept them. And we don’t have to accept how they are implemented in a harmful way. +++ Sherrie Andre’s court date was originially scheduled for January 7th. On the morning of their trial, more than 100 people showed up in support. Yet despite the preparation of both Andre’s legal team and the prosecution, the judge inexplicably postponed the trial and court officers agressively removed all supporters from the courtroom. To show up in solidarity with Andre, come to the New Bedford District Court at 8:30am on March 4th and 5th. To show written support for Andre, you can sign an online petition or submit a letter of your own to Support@ShutDownICEnow.org. To donate or join the FANG Collective’s Shut Down ICE campaign, visit shutdownicenow.org.

This interview has been lightly edited and abridged for clarity.

SARA VAN HORN B’21 wants to see another packed courtroom.

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14

THIS LAND, THIS LAND, THIS LAND

BY Isabel Guarnieri ILLUSTRATION Leslie Benavides DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

As a small crowd of us huddle on the cold stone staircase, Lynsea Montanari—a Narragansett visual artist— opens the night with a song. To honor the space we are in, she explains. As Lynsea starts to sing, the atrium of Providence City Hall seems to deepen her bellows, amplifying how her voice rises and falls. Your spirit is watching over me, I know you are in the sky, she sings in Narragansett three times: for the past, the present, and the future.

We were all gathered that evening, January 23, 2020, for the opening of an exhibit in the Gallery at Providence City Hall, entitled “All That You See Is(n’t) Yours.” The collaborative mixed-media installation features the work of two artists: Lynsea Montanari, a student at College Unbound from the Narragansett Tribe, and Anna Snyder, a white RISD alumna who spearheads projects at the intersection of public art and education in Providence. Their exhibit marks the inaugural ACT Public Art Residency, a partnership between Providence’s Department of Art, Culture, + Tourism (ACT) and the Providence City Archives. The project, according to the official press release, aims to “infuse artistic practices...into the operations of the city.” The residency is built for artists to work with and within the City Archives to craft a public art exhibition in response to a prompt.

This year, the ACT’s prompt was “Colonial Providence,” understood to begin with the founding of Providence in 1636. State-sponsored narratives of Colonial Providence tend to center around the figure of Roger Williams and the importance of religious freedom, as Rhode Island was the first colony with a secular government. But this focus obscures the displacement and massacre of Indigenous tribes that preceded Providence’s founding. The official press release states that Lynsea and Anna’s exhibit “interrogat[es] the City’s complex colonial legacies.” But the artists’ pieces, infused with their own identities and interests, do far more than that—they raise questions about the silences in the archive and expose the tensions inherent to telling a story about Native displacement in the seat of city power. +++ When the ACT Public Art Residency program publicized a call for artists in late 2018, it caught Anna’s attention straight away. A graduate in printmaking from RISD, she recently went back to school to pursue a degree in History at the University of Rhode Island.

She had just taken a whole semester’s worth of courses about the history of Colonial Rhode Island and knew that background would be invaluable in the archive.

The Providence City Archives on the fifth floor of City Hall holds a collection of manuscripts, maps,

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blueprints, and images with an emphasis on the municipal government that span from its 1636 founding to the present, according to the city website. Something troubled Anna about the call, even made her hesitant to apply—the prompt made no mention of indigenous history, and required no engagement with Native voices. Realizing she was not in the position to channel that identity herself, Anna reached out to the Director of the Tomaquag Museum, Loren Spears, with whom she’d worked with in the past, to see if the Museum would partner with her during the residency. Spears redirected Anna to her niece, 24-year-old visual artist and Narragansett language activist Lynsea Montanari.

Together, Anna and Lynsea faced a daunting task: use the City Archives, a source of historical knowledge shaped by the structures of power that continue to marginalize Narragansett and other Native peoples, to create an exhibit that would represent Colonial Providence in all of its violence and complexity.

For six months, Anna spent about 15 to 20 hours a week in the City Archives, combing through town meeting minutes and city logs. She struggled to make sense of the dull records—not sure yet what narrative she was trying to tell. But again and again, Anna came across an obsession with borders and demarcating space—map after hand-drawn map scrawled with “Stephen Dexter’s land” or “Joseph Williams’ land.”

She was stunned by the banality of these entries, the “violence made boring” that was concealed in layers of city bureaucracy. “It just looked like a city entry,” Anna told me. “But what it actually means is that someone is dying, or being removed from their source of food.”

Suddenly, it all became clear. Lynsea and Anna agreed on an overarching theme to frame the exhibit: property, and the juxtaposition between Indigenous concepts of collective ownership and the colonial violence of land theft and appropriation.

Lynsea approached the prompt quite differently.

She brought her grandmother to the archives to help guide her research, but found it did not have the information she was looking for. Lynsea was most interested in how to represent not just a period of history, but a people—especially Indigenous women, children, and elders. Rather than what she called Anna’s search for “concretes,” or documents related to land and materials, Lynsea was looking for indigenous voices, which the City Archives lacked. “We have been so dehumanized throughout history,” Lynsea told me, stepping away from the gallery opening, “I felt that what I needed to share was stories.”

The archive is not a neutral collection of historical records. Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s seminal work “Silencing the Past” examines the power relations inherent in the production of historical knowledge, interrogating how monumental events like the Haitian

Revolution have been erased from popular history.

According to Trouillot, every historical narrative contains a bundle of silences. This silencing occurs at four stages: the making of sources, the making of archives, the making of narrative, and the making of what we call “history”—or what is granted “official” retrospective significance. And these silences build on each other. A historical narrative skews when certain voices or populations are excluded in the creation of archives. Entire histories can go unwritten, and for many, forgotten.

What Lynsea encountered in the City Archives’ 40,000 cubic feet of records was a gaping hole, an absence that mirrors the silencing of Native history and voices in museums, school curricula, and history textbooks across the United States. To make up for the silence, Lynsea turned to other sources, conducting oral histories with her grandmother, who passed away while research for the exhibit was underway. Oral histories are a research method often employed by queer, Black and feminist scholars to move beyond the limits of the current archive and re-center personal narratives that have been marginalized from mainstream historical discourse. This in-family archive supplemented the research Lynsea’s family took on collectively using sources like religious texts, allowing her to explore themes like spirituality, family, and the concept of generations. +++ “All That You See Is(n’t) Yours” is divided in three sections across the second floor of City Hall. While the residency was shared, Lynsea and Anna created most pieces individually to explore distinct themes based on their archival sources; Anna relying on material from the white colonist archives, and Lynsea using her family and other research to delve into Native history and spirituality. The two collaborated on one piece, in which Lynsea painted a colorful watercolor of a birch forest over which Anna laid black-and-white colonial houses. The piece, “A Cluster of Colonial Houses,” visualizes settler colonists’ encroachment on Native land, but is also representative of larger clashes in the exhibit: white and Native, monochrome and color, archive and stories, nature and property.

In one corner of the atrium hang Lynsea’s three portraits exploring Indigenous and colonist spirituality. Two are in vivid color and portray distinct interpretations of the Manitou, a spirit that inhabits all life.

One of the paintings, entitled “Manitou,” depicts a face carved into a tree trunk, surrounded by a ring of pink and blue flowers. The painting recalls the historical practice of carving Manitou statues into trees and utensils, a way, according to the exhibit guide, “of

07 FEB 2020

Exhibiting visual narratives of Narragansett indigeneity and settler violence in the house Colonial Providence built.

manifesting the spiritual world into our physical world.” of private land ownership. As detailed in an essay by Lynsea imbues the painting’s details with the memory Brown Ph.D Candidate Alexandra Peck about the of her grandmother, using a holly tree that shares her game’s history among Native tribes in Rhode Island, name and carving the names of her grandmother’s hubbub players gambled valuable belongings—such children into its trunk. Speaking at the exhibit opening, as wampum beads and longhouses, using the game to Lynsea makes constant reference to her grandmother: redistribute wealth and resources across the commu“grandmothers are what ground us in our community.” nity. Staged against Anna’s pigs and fences, the juxtaLynsea’s art practice is rooted in love­­, fusing personal position between family and individual, collective and details into larger Native imagery to portray herself private, becomes even more striking. and her family as part of a community that has been and still is here. +++ On the opposite side of the room, Anna and Lynsea’s pieces are staged against each other to high- In my interviews with Anna and Lynsea, and my light distinct conceptions of private and collective time at the exhibit opening, I feel a recurring sense ownership.Anna portrays the takeover of Native land of discomfort about the exhibit site itself. How can an in large, shallow wooden boxes hanging on the wall that exhibit about settler violence against Native peoples start open and unbound, but become more segmented. ignore the history of the very land it sits on? The offiThe sections in the boxes create little cubbies, where cial press release and exhibit guide do not mention Anna placed hand-painted pigs and models of colo- this gap—another silence that builds on thousands of nial infrastructure like fences. Pigs became a point of others. fascination for Anna throughout the project—another I am not the only one that notices this discrepancy. object she kept encountering in the archive that When Lynsea stands to speak at the gallery opening, seemed mundane but was symbolic of how settler colo- she welcomes the audience by addressing the tension nists thought they were entering an untouched world. directly. “Thank you all for coming today to the land Brought by colonists from Europe, pigs were destruc- of the Narragansett people,” Lynsea states. “I know tive forces on Native land, she explained, destroying we don’t talk about it a lot, but here and everywhere crops and food stores and causing long periods of that you are walking is Indigenous land, not only in starvation over the winter months. For Lynsea, the Rhode Island but in America.” The group of about 20 symbol of the pigs also resonated as one of careless people gathered on the staircase—friends, family, and violence. Speaking at the exhibit opening, she offered, the City officials that had helped bring the exhibit “Everyone cares about the big things. But when you together—nod in acknowledgement, many exclaiming talk about capturing a life, small things like pigs can be loudly in support. I sense a somberness in the air—a so harmful.” I think about what Anna told me about mix of gratitude and pride with an acknowledgement the “violence made boring'' she encountered in the of where we are, and what art can speak to but never archive, how it reduced Native land displacement to resolve. counting livestock, or marking borders. In her piece, Public art is free and accessible, a model that often she transforms the mundane into sinister characters— works to counter the institutional obstacles posed by art the fences appear large and industrial, the pigs almost museums, which are often expensive and perceived as demonic in black-and-white. Here, the pigs stand in for spaces reserved for the elite. According to Providence’s the colonists: leaping and bounding over uncharted “Art in City Life Plan,” dedicated to increasing public land that gets split up as they multiply. art and encouraging collaboration between artists and Enclosed in a glass case in front of Anna’s box of the city, the plan aims to shape Providence’s visual works, Lynsea has crafted seven hubbub bowls—one identity, improve quality of life for every resident, and for her and each of her siblings—used for the tradi- strengthen community ties. However, as a venue for a tional gambling game of hubbub. According to the public art residency, City Hall presents numerous chalexhibit guide, the face of each bowl contains distinct lenges. As Anna pointed out to me, Providence’s City imagery from Narragansett stories, whether that be Hall is only open on weekdays from 8:30 in the morning the stars of Orion’s Belt or the crow, that are inspired until 4:30 in the afternoon, excluding an audience that by each of her sibling’s personalities and demonstrate works any day job. Moreover, many communities are how “we bring spirituality into everything we do.” not comfortable voluntarily walking into the seat of Seven is more symbolic than just the number of chil- city authority. Lynsea’s relationship to City Hall is even dren in Lynsea’s family. Rather, she explains that she more complicated. “This space is not special to me.” has been taught to make an impact long after she is She affirms, “This was Indigenous land; this was all gone, to always think of the next seven generations. Indigenous land.” An exhibit about Native land exproThe physicality of the bowls—a hint of movement and priation in City Hall cannot and does not even pretend play—also ground Colonial Providence as linked to that it aims to change this reality. her lived experience and present rather than an intanThere are many people who have the privilege gible history. In an exhibit setting, the bowls are also of not thinking about history; colonists have not a reclamation of how Native peoples’ everyday objects taken their land, erased their languages, or enslaved are co-opted into museum spaces as items for display their ancestors. History has, in fact, enriched their to be gazed upon and explained. By recreating hubbub lives in a million invisible ways and built the founbowls as artistic pieces, and making them explic- dation of the position in the world they occupy today. itly personal, Lynsea’s work has a clear audience: her History, to many, can be categorized and segmented family and her community. The symbolism of the off­­—delineating a certain period of time that constihubbub game also directly contradicts conceptions tutes “Colonial Providence” as if that differs from the

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Providence we live in today. I wonder if public art functioning within the institution of the city and the state can ever reconcile this. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang write in, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” the language of decolonizing schools and art museums obscures that actual decolonization necessitates the physical and literal repatriation of Indigenous land and life.

I ask both Lynsea and Anna about where they see hope in the exhibit. I ask how they tried to imbue it in the work, perhaps because I want so badly to find it too. And it is there, especially in the stories of intergenerational love and community that Lynsea paints and sculpts, a sense of reclaiming history and making Native art for and by Native people. Telling stories of Indigenous history and present affirms and, for outsiders, acts as an essential reminder that Native people are still here. “It is so difficult to talk about how you are oppressed today when people don’t even know you exist,” Lynsea tells me with a joking frustration. “Our stories are still untold. Just speaking them into truth is activism.” For Anna, the exhibit explains history in a way that she hopes will translate into a call to action, especially in relation to the global climate crisis in which indigenous activists have been on the forefront of demanding an overhaul in global climate policy. “In order to survive the climate crisis, we need to adopt how Native people interact with the earth and planet,” she explains, “Indigenous knowledge is the future if we are smart enough to listen.” Anna hopes that the audience of the exhibit will make the connection between history, the art, and how its significance touches now and extends into the future. But there is so much that remains unsaid. In order to start to fill these silences, Native people need to be brought, intentionally and continuously, to the forefront of constructing nuanced and complete histories.

After both Lynsea and Anna speak, and give their thanks, Lynsea’s family—mother, father, aunt, and siblings—gather on stage. As Lynsea’s father beats a drum, the eight of them sing a song that he explains means We are still here. Together, they sing it through three times: past, present, and future.

ISABEL GUARNIERI ‘20 thinks you should go see this exhibit for yourself.

All That You See Is(n’t) Yours is on view at Providence City Hall until March 16th.

ARTS

16

TWO RALLIES

BY Anchita Dasgupta and Peder Schaefer ILLUSTRATION Eliza Macneal

University students organize against the rise of fascism in India As New Delhi witnessed Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro, Chief Guest of India’s 71st Republic Day military parade, walk down the streets flanked by India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, protests against the government’s new citizenship law surged across the nation. January 26 is usually a commemoration of the adoption of the Indian Constitution and the country’s entry into its post-colonial period. But this year, it was observed as a day of mourning by Indian students—both across the country and in the diaspora—as they gathered across university campuses singing songs of resistance and demanding freedom from fascist oppression by the Hindu nationalist government.

A vigil titled “Stand in for the Pro-Democracy Movement in India” and organized by a handful of South Asian students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design reiterated this sentiment as they stood on the steps of Faunce House, protesting the rise of fascism under India’s current Hindu nationalist regime. More specifically, they protested against the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of India, which has come under fire for making religion a basis for extending citizenship in the country and raising legal obstructions to Muslim refugees’ pathway to citizenship. Since December 12, the day the Act was adopted by the Parliament, students, women, intellectuals, and working-class members have taken to the streets demanding a revocation of this act which they believe violates the secular ethos of the Indian constitution.

Echoing a practice that has grown increasingly popular across student protests in India, the gathered students collectively read the Preamble to the Constitution in an effort to remind the government of the founding ideals of the Constitution that this law undermines. The gathering also sang Hum Dekhenge, an Urdu ghazal written by the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz to protest the military dictatorship of General Zia Ul Haq in Pakistan, which has become the anthem of the anti-CAA student protests.

The protest began with a minute of silence for the 26 people who had lost their lives to police violence while protesting the new law, and was followed by students sharing personal reflections on the law. Aryan Srivastava, a sophomore at Brown, talked about how the student protests in India have created an opportunity for young people to engage with the Islamophobic ideas held by a sizeable majority of the older generation and break down the institutionalsized hatred for the Muslim community of India.

The event also included a call and response to “Azaadi,” a chant—led by a representative of the Brown

17

NEWS: BYTES

chapter of the Kashmir Solidarity Movement (KSM)— that originated in Indian-occupied Kashmir, which continues to resist a brutal 30-year-long military occupation by India. In organizing the protest with KSM, the event recognized that the idea of freedom means different things for people who identify with India and acknowledged their right to not participate in any aspect of the stand-in that does not align with their beliefs.

Meanwhile, not far from Brown, the South Asian community at Harvard University also observed Republic Day by organizing a 24-hour tag-team protest at Harvard Square. Ruha Shadab, a graduate student in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, spoke about the “organic nature” of the event which, she claimed, did not have a core organizing team but was an all-hands-on-deck effort by its supporters. “Everyone gave it their all,” said Ruha, who added that cartons of samosas were brought and shared by the protestors during a day that was celebrated through songs, poetry, and speeches against Hindu nationalist fascism. Ruha emphasized the significance of the protest lasting 24 hours, which had a turnout of over 200 students at its busiest hour and a minimum of six at other times.

Organizers of both events expressed that they were hopeful for the future and thought it was unlikely that the movement would fizzle out. “This [law] affects us fundamentally,” said Ruha. “It is hard to become complacent.” Meanwhile, students at Brown and RISD have said that they plan on hosting teach-ins on the law in the upcoming months to continue building on the momentum the movement has gained internationally, while trying to build cross-campus solidarity among the South Asian student diaspora in the US. When asked about the significance of this diasporic mobilization, Kushagra Agarwal, a sophomore at Brown said, “this matters because the Indian government cares about its public image in the US.” Indeed, if the pressure against the Act continues to mount as it has over the last two months—both at home within India as well as in the diasporic community—it seems unlikely that the government will be able to persist in its indifference to student protests.

night who stressed the transformational potential of a Sanders presidency. Speakers included students from Brown University, the Community College of Rhode Island, Providence College, and local high schoolers from the MET School. A number of students were organizers with Sunrise, the climate justice advocacy movement, reflecting the bottom-up, activist roots of much of the Sanders campaign.

The keynote speaker was Palestinian-American human rights activist Linda Sarsour, founder and director of the Arab-American Association of New York, a co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March, and a longtime Sanders supporter. Last year, Sarsour spoke at Brown University in support of the student-led movement urging the Brown Corporation to divest from companies profiting from human rights abuses in Palestine.

“Nothing about what Bernie Sanders is fighting for is radical,” said Sarsour, responding to a widespread belief that Sanders’ politics are pushing the Democratic party too far to the left. “There’s nothing radical about the idea that everybody deserves healthcare… [or] high quality public education [or] a $15 dollar minumum wage.” She said that the day after a Sanders inauguration (which she would proudly attend), she would be protesting outside the White House to ensure that his presidency remained a movement of the people.

After the event, Alex Gourevitch, a professor of Political Science at Brown University, asked attendees to sign up to canvass for Sanders’ campaign in New Hampshire in the days leading up to the primary election on February 11. Speakers throughout the night, a number of whom had canvassed before, spoke of the direct impact canvassing can have on those who might not otherwise go to the ballot box on election day.

Mary Paolino, a retired elementary school teacher who worked in the Providence Public School system, said that she hadn’t been so excited for a candidate since Robert Kennedy ran for president in 1968. She said that Sanders' support for human rights separated him from the other candidates and that she would be canvassing for him in New Hampshire in February.

In the shadow of a contentious political period— with ongoing impeachment proceedings, rising white nationalism and fears of an imperial presidency—the Sanders rally offered a vision of a brighter political future. In 2016, Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Rhode Island Democratic primaries by over 15,000 votes. Sanders supporters at the rally hope to replicate those margins in 2020 and support the Sanders campaign throughout New England, including next Stepping up to the microphone at a student rally week’s New Hampshire democratic primary where supporting Bernie Sanders last Tuesday, James Callow, Sanders leads in the most recent polling. a student at the Community College of Rhode Island, told the crowd the heartbreaking story of his mother’s PEDER SCHAEFER ’22 and ANCHITA DASGUPTA passing from a preventable form of cancer. Callow, ’21 enjoy watching videos of Bernie shooting hoops. only 16 at the time of his mother’s death, said she was confronted with a choice: sell the family home to fund treatment, or keep a roof over her son’s head and hope for the best. “That is the world that we live in today,” said Callow, a field organizer for the Sanders 2020 campaign. “Those are the problems that Senator Bernie Sanders is fighting to address.”

The rally was hosted by student organizers of the Rhode Island Students for Bernie coalition at the Columbus Theater in Providence. Students and activists from across the state were attracted by Sanders’ promise of a political revolution in America that will fundamentally shift politics. Emotions in the room were high, with hundreds of attendees riveted by an array of speakers—student activists, academics, and organizers—throughout the night.

“Another world is possible,” said Jennifer EppsAddison, the president of the Center for Popular Democracy and one of the keynote speakers. “We’re not just here to return to the status-quo…We’re here building this movement, supporting candidates who will walk side by side with us to help us build the country of our dreams.”

Epps-Addison echoed speakers throughout the

RI students organize Bernie rally

07 FEB 2020

This Spring, X is looking to publish a wide range of image- and hybrid text-based work. Mediums can be photo, documentation of sculpture or painting, and basically whatever can get printed on our page. While not all pieces must fit within this loose theme, this semester we are interested in the ideas of home, placemaking, and belonging, as well as those of diaspora and identity. We accept and encourage all forms of workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;please donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hesitate to send any work or email your preliminary idea to theindyx@gmail.com.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

X

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the list is back!

fri 2.7

2.7 - 2.13

They Might Be Giants Columbus Theatre, 270 Broadway 9PM It’s the 30th anniversary of Flood’s release, the album that every middle school social studies teacher lost their virginity to. Come out to hear the crown gem of the nerd rock genre, alongside circuit board-soldering hobbyists, eBay bidders, and dads with plastic-framed glasses. Sorry, no kids allowed! (The show is 16+.)

sat 2.8

sun 2.9

RI Labor for Bernie Meeting Knight Memorial Library, 275 Elmwood Ave 3PM If you are a union member, join Providence DSA to help pass a resolution in support of Bernie with your local.

The event will also help build a base for the political revolution post-2020. And if you’re not in a union but still interested in organizing for Bernie before the RI primary on April 28, join RI for Bernie which is currently collecting signatures to get Bernie on the ballot.

NOH8 photoshoot Jala Studio Yoga & Art, 285 S Main St. Started in 2009 in support of marriage equality, NOH8 has been plastering duct tape over the mouths of celebrities for over a decade. If you’re a member of the Glee cast or support the right to marry, this may be the event for you. This is also a great opportunity for a professional headshot, so long as having silver duct tape over your mouth in it isn’t a deterrent.

mon 2.10

tue 2.11

The Time is Already screening and training Acoustic Java Café and Microcinema, 204 South Main St. The Time is Already, a new film directed by Providencebased filmmaker Selene Means, will be followed by aW training on legislative advocacy for LGBT rights by several Providence organizations. The film and training are particularly relevant in the wake of the South Dakota House of Representatives passing HB 1057, a law barring medical profession from offering hormones, puberty blockers, or any other gender-affirmative procedures to patients under 16.

The Evolving Image of Shaker Life John Hay Library at Brown University, 20 Prospect St. Join historian Rob Emlen for a talk about the perception of the Shakers. In the nineteenth century, Americans learned about the celebate Christians through printed matter; today, I enjoy their rustic furniture and chunky knits. As I always say: I don’t want to be part of any utopian society that would have me as a member.

wed 2.12

thu 2.13

Alexander Herbert and T. Bloodhound Riffraff bookstore and bar, 60 Valley Street, Unit 107A Alexander Herbert, a doctoral student at Brandeis and the author of What About Tomorrow: An Oral History of Russian Punk from the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot, will speak about punk culture and its politics. He will be musically accompanied by songwriter T. Bloodhound.

DiscoTech 002 The Parlour, 1119 N Main St. This is the second in a new monthly series showcasing Providence House music. Come sweat out your Friday Night freaking Fever with HUGE and Sex on Decks.

In December, the Independent published “Save the BCSC,” an op-ed by Brown alumni standing in support of student activists fighting for transparency in administrative practices to uphold the mission of the Brown Center for Students of Color. That piece was accompanied by a list of signees to the writers’ petition, which they invite all supporters to sign at tinyurl.com/ AlumniBCSCPetition.

An updated list of signees since December appears below.

Aditya Kumar ‘13-‘17 Alexandra Wells Alexandrina Agloro, '01-'05 Alysha Aziz Amelia Anthony Ana Rosa Marx Angelica Johnsen, B’14-18 Anne Fosburg, '13-'17.5 Anne Zhao, '15-'19 Anthony Walley Arisa Lohmeier '10-'14 Arthur Sun, '18.5 Asante Crews '13-'19 Becki Marcus '16-'20 Bee Vang Belinda Zhou, '13-'17 Bethany Hung, '15-'19 Bianca Camacho '12-'16 Brian Elizalde, '15-'19 Brian Lin, '08-'12 Brittany Hodges ‘17 Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, AB ‘00/MD ‘05

Camera Ford ’12–’16 Jason Sperber, ‘92-’00 Carlos Aramayo, ‘10-‘14 Jenny Li Carmen Zheng ‘15-‘19 Jess Brown, ‘12-’16 Chahney Young Hinds, ‘08-’12 Jieyi Cai '13-'17 Christine Shio Lim Julian Chan, ‘88-’92 Cici Osias Justice Gaines, ‘12-’16 Clare Kim, '11-'15, MAT '16 Justin Williams, ‘08-’12 Clarion Heard, ‘08-’13 Justine Stewart '11 Courtney Hoggard ‘15-‘19 Kara Roanhorse '14- '18 Daniel Prada, ‘08-’12 Katelynn Pan Devika Girish, ‘17 Katherine Ferguson, ‘14-17 Donovan Dennis '16 Keith Catone, '00 Emilio Leanza, '11-'15 Kshitij Sachan Emily Sun '14 -'18 Lily Meyersohn Emily Yoshioka ‘15-‘19, Lina Lalwani ‘15-‘19 MPH ‘20 Lytisha Wyatt ‘11-‘15 Erin Malimban ‘15-‘19 Malcolm Shanks, ‘07-’11 Evelyn Nimaja, ‘11-‘15 Manuel Contreras '16 Ezza Ahmed Marc Briz '14 Gabriela Àlvarez Mari Yoshihara, '92 MA, Gareth Chen, '13-'17 '97 PhD Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn, ‘08-’12 Matthew dang 17.5 AB ScB Gio Santiago Maya Finoh, '13-'17 Grace Mano Micaela Burgess, ‘13-‘17 Héctor Peralta ‘12-‘16 Nancy Truong, '13-'17 helen mcdonald Natasha Go, ‘06-’10 Hisa Hashisaka, ‘10-’14 Natasha Lewis ‘96-‘00 Isissa Komada-John ‘10 Naveen Srinivasan, '15-'19, '19-'20 Iyad Owen-Elia ‘17.5 Nicolas Montano, 13’-17’ J. Kirkland Ricw '12-'16 Nicole Parrish Maldonado, ‘08-’12 Jacob Alabab-Moser '16-'20 Nicole Ubinas, ‘14-‘18 Jacquelyn Silva '06 -'10 Nikkolette Lee '14-'18 Jada Pulley '12-'16 Nour Asfour ‘18 Jamie Meader ‘17, MAT ‘18 Olivia Moscicki, '14-'18

Oluwatomisin Onabanjo Victoria Kidd, Oren Karp '12-'16 Paige Aniyah Morris, ‘12-16 Wendy Castillo, Paloma Orozco Scott '18 ‘11-‘15 Paul Tran ‘10-‘14 Yasmin Toney Rafael D. González Cruz Yvonne Diabene ‘19 Rahil Rojiani 09-13 & many others Rakan Aboneaaj who have shown Ralanda Nelson '12 support in their Reva Dhingra '14 own ways Rishi Wagle Roksana Borzouei ‘13-‘17 Ruhan Nagra, '06-'10 Ruth Miller, '15-'19 Saba Shevidi, ’16 Sabrina Whitfill ‘19 Sam Jones, '14-'18 Sana Teramoto Sandra K Haley, PhD '17 Sarah Day Dayon, ‘11-’15 Sharina Gordon, ‘09-’13 Sierra Edd '14- '18 Sofia Robledo Rower Soyoon Kim Stephanie Harris, ‘10-’14 Stephanie Medina '10-14' Tala Doumani ‘17 Tamica Ramos-Robinson ‘00 Tho Phan ’07-’11 Tyrah Green Uche Onwunaka, '15-'19 Urska Manners '00 Veda SunkaraB'19B'20 Victoria Huynh, '15-'19