The College Hill Independent Vol. 41 Issue 1

the VOLUME 41 ISSUE 1 25 SEPTEMBER 2020

THE RISE OF @BLACKIVYSTORIES

BODIES MATTER

BEASTS OF BURDERN

Confronting racism in the Ivy League

Pornography and the MPAA rating system

The unbearable mythology of the shark

Indy

the

Cover

Ambika Miglani

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News & World The Rise of @blackivystories: Confronting Racism In The Ivy League Aicha Sama

Metro 07

Progressives Sweep RI Primary Morgan Awner, Uwa Ede-Osifo, Lucas Gelfond, Ricardo Gomez, Leo Gordon, Elana Hausknecht, Evie Hidysmith, Rose Houglet, Deborah Marini, Vicky Phan, and Peder Schaefer

From The Editors There are no Wendy’s in Belgium. Well, that’s not completely true — there are no capital W, square-patty serving restaurants within its 12,000 square miles, but an independent snack bar in the city of Groes has gone by the name Wendy’s since 1986. Every subsequent attempt by the big Wendy’s to enter the flemish market has been thwarted by European copyright law. In this moment of corporate consolidation of global fast food power, it’s nice to see the little girl come out on top.

There are many Indy’s across our country. In Indiana, the best race car drivers compete in the Indy 500 every spring. In Hollywood, Steven Spielberg’s fedora-donned protagonist answers to the nickname “Indy.” And here in Providence, ten times a semester the staff of the Indy stays up until the crack of dawn to make sure the best writing and visual art on College Hill reaches an audience. We might not have a team of lawyers or serve Frosty’s, but we’ll always be your Indy.

Features 10

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Litigating Choice: Radical Feminism, Alan Dershowitz, and the 1986 ‘Brown sex ring’ Izzi Olive

Arts & Culture

Bodies Matter: Pornography and the MPAA Rating System Dorrit Corwin

Science & Tech 16

Beasts of Burden: The Unbearable Mythology of the Shark Ella Spungen

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Afternoons in Bright Rooms Nicole Kim

Literary

Ephemera

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Scientific Analysis of My Cat’s Length Sindura Sriram

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Ad for X Maia Chiu + Ethan Murakami

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Tara Sharma & Sara Van Horn

MISSION STATEMENT 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.

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.

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.

STAFF Week in Review Amelia Anthony Nick Roblee-Strauss | Nation + World Emily Rust Leela Berman Giacomo Sartorelli Anchita Dasgupta | Metro Ricardo Gomez Deborah Marini Peder Schaefer | Arts + Culture Seamus Flynn Alana Baer Ella Rosenblatt | Features Alina Kulman Alan Dean Edie Elliott Granger | Science & Tech Gemma Sack Anabelle Johnston Thomas Patti | Literary Star Su Kate Ok Bowen Chen | Ephemera Sindura Sriram Anna Kerber | X Maia Chiu Ethan Murakami | List Tara Sharma Sara Van Horn | List Designer Mehek Vohra | Staff Writers Uwa Ede-Osifo Mara Cavallaro Muram Ibrahim Justin Han Izzi Olive Bilal Memon Seth Israel Nell Salzman Victoria Caruso Zach Ngin Evie Hidysmith Kaela Hines Ella Spungen Sarah Goldman Alisa Caira Laila Gamaleldin Drake Rebman Morgan Awner Elana Hausknecht Rhythm Rastogi Nicole Kim Lucas Gelfond Rose Houglet Joss Liao Nicholas Michael Belinda Hu Leo Gordon CJ Gan Vicky Phan Tammuz Frankel Amelia Wyckoff Auria Zhang Olivia Mayeda Justin Scheer Gaya Gupta Eduardo Gutiérrez Peña Marina Hunt | Copy Editors Christine Huynh Grace Berg Jacqueline Jia Elaine Chen Sarah Ryan Jasmine Li Nina Fletcher Madison Lease Alyscia Batista | Design Editor Daniel Navratil | Designers Anna Brinkhuis Katherine Sang Kathryn Li Isaac McKenna Miya Lohmeier Pablo Herraiz García de Guadiana | Illustration Editor Sylvia Atwood | Illustrators Sandra Moore Katrina Wardhana Floria Tsui Mara Jovanović Hannah Park Jessica Minker Rachelle Shao Yukti Agarwal Sage Jennings Ophelia Duchesne-Malone Joyce Tullis Charlotte Silverman Simone Zhao | Business Isabelle Yang Lauren Brown Evan Lincoln | Web Designer Sindura Sriram | Social Media Christina Ofori | Alumni Relations Jerry Chen | Spanish Translation Felipe Félix Méndez | Senior Editors Tara Sharma Sara Van Horn Cal Turner | Managing Editors Audrey Buhain Andy Rickert Ivy Scott | Managing Designer XingXing Shou *** The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

25 SEPTMEBER 2020

VOL 41 ISSUE 01

@INDYCOLLEGEHILL

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

FLAMMABLE ‘FORNIA’: A REVELATION When Californication Goes a Little Too Hard

for one of planetary purgatory—their spectacle forces us to reflect on the necessity of such practices at all.

These gender reveal stunts began with one cake.

In 2008, blogger Jenna Karvunidis ushered in an era of performative reveals with one cut into a cake, revealing a slice food-colored to “match� the presumed gender of her unborn child—pink for a girl, blue for a boy, and a brilliant orange if the end is nigh. In a moment of awe, the world of “It’s a boy/girl!� banners shattered, and a host of viral stunts ensued, from alligator fights to plane jumps. Anything short of a Gender Reveal Tsunami now pales in comparison to this month's events.

While quite effective at garnering internet fame, this arbitrary ritual reinforces normative gender values. Caught at the crux of a so-called culture war, the gender reveal becomes a technicolored declaration of a child's assigned-at-birth gender. We at the Indy ask that for future socially-distant festivities, you opt for more gender fluid and less lighter fluid. If you must impose a preferred pastel color upon your child, at least leave them some undamaged land to get away from you on. Beyond West Coast tragedies, this past year marks mass fires in the Arctic, Australia, Indonesia, and Argentina, and as the North American fire season ends, the Southern Hemisphere braces itself for its own wintery inferno.

Next time, try a safer outdoor activity for your quarantine gender reveal party: Break out a pinata. If 100 pennies fall out, you’ve got a boy. If you’re 28 cents short of a dollar, tell the fetus sorry, but that’s all they can find for her—there’s a national coin shortage.

BY Nickolas Roblee-Strauss ILLUSTRATION Rachelle Shao DESIGN Miya Lohmeier

Social media is hard. Every single millennial—aging perimeter under control. What should have been and married in the image of boomers before them— just another pink or blue firework explosion instead struggles to compete in a Gen Z game. However, with recalled a similarly destructive Arizona gender reveal a bun in the oven, couples can put out their own fire fire in 2017. content: a gender reveal party. In a festive and smokeThe orange skies seen up and down the California filled revelation five months before the stork’s arrival, coast quickly hit national news, as if to call fire and one couple’s party was the hottest event on the West brimstone down upon the earth. Day after day, the Coast, as they celebrated their child’s assigned-at- fires roar on, no matter how many firefighters are birth gender this past September 6 at El Dorado Ranch brought to the scene. After firefighter-trained inmates Park in Yucaipa. This gender reveal fire, while clear in were released early to ease prison density during the its verdict, did not leave southern California with the pandemic, the El Dorado fire prompted CA Governor intended message. It wasn’t a boy. It wasn’t a girl. It was Gavin Newsom to sign legislation extending prisoner a climate catastrophe.

-firefighters’ employment after their release—the one NICKOLAS ROBLEE-STRAUSS B'22 thinks Gender Just two weeks later, the expecting couple’s silver lining in an otherwise smoky sky. And as the Reveal Tsunami would make a great band name. “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device� has lit over expecting couple scorched southern California for 22,000 acres ablaze, with only 59% of the wildfire’s a react—exchanging a moment of parental pride

đ&#x;”Ľ

BOTTOM LINE IS, UNIVERSITIES ARE MOST CONCERNED WITH THEIR BOTTOM LINE

A SAFE, HEALTHY, AND FULL-PRICED CAMPUS

BY Alisa Caira ILLUSTRATION Jessica Minker DESIGN Miya Lohmeier

Risking student lives probably makes sense when you get down to the numbers of it. Yet, now, as thousands of at-risk students are returning to campus, a new problem is arising that no one predicted. Colleges, after opening their monetary floodgates, are blaming students for outbreaks erupting across the nation.

How rude! Already, hundreds of students have been suspended for social distancing infractions.

These students weren’t right to party, but their universities might be wrong to pick students randomly out of a (party) hat to punish. For example, at Florida State University, campus police arrested seven students for underage drinking. This was the first time students have been asked to take their red solo cups—wait for it—solo. FSU President John Thrasher stated he was using the party as an example. Thrasher, despite how cool his last name and hypothetical skateboarding brand might be, is considering ways in which the students have failed the system, rather than the ways the system has failed the students.

At Syracuse University, freshmen were criticized for attending a gathering on the quad. The school made many (Syr)accusations toward students for failing to consider other people. Yet, the school took 45 minutes to respond to the gathering of hundreds of students after campus police arrived on the scene. With only

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about two dozen students suspended, the scenario seems more about the imaginings of discipline than social change.

No matter the risks of communal living and rampant fraternizing on campus, colleges were intent on reopening their doors to money—oh sorry, students.

For those colleges making the courageous decision to stay remote (excluding students with a demonstrated need for housing), they are charging near full tuition.

At Princeton, tuition was cut by only 10%—a move President Christopher L. Eisgruber said was spurred by the pandemic being “one heck of a crisis,� which is one way to put it, I guess. Tuition there will settle at around the bargain price of $48,500—though, admittedly, we all knew that college was a scam anyway.

Perhaps it would have been irrational to expect universities to account for emergencies in their budget.

There’s certainly nothing spelled e-n-d-o-w-m-e-n-t that could be helpful. As Brown University's President Christina Paxson wrote, “The basic business model for most colleges and universities is simple‌ Most colleges and universities are tuition dependent.â€? So dependent, it seems, that some schools, such as Franklin & Marshall, are raising tuition. Oh, and keeping the money of the students they’ve suspended, of course.

At Northeastern University, Student Body

President Kate Kuznetsova remarked, “Students think that there is a lot of pressure on them‌ but who doesn’t have pressure on them at this time?â€? Well, maybe the global elite? In the same way that no single person can stop global warming by recycling, sorry to say, it’s time to realize that a global pandemic should not be an individual problem. More than that, maybe bigger players— such as our universities and government—should be alleviating that pressure in ways that don’t, you know, threaten people’s lives.

American college students are dumb, stupid, bad, and so on, but their behavior alone cannot be blamed for an international issue, or the consequences of one country’s response to that issue. The government, more than any frat bro, demanded a return to ‘normalcy.’ Yet, for the government and institutions like universities, ‘normalcy’ starts and ends at money.

For students, it obviously starts and ends at beer pong.

However, none of this is meant to encourage students to party. Instead, let’s wear our masks, but also demand the institutional and governmental accountability that should have been present all along.

ALISA CAIRA B’22 will be enjoying her quarantine crossword puzzle from the safety of her room.

WEEK IN REVIEW

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THE RISE OF @BLACKIVYSTORIES: CONFRONTING RACISM IN THE IVY LEAGUE “During an important meeting, someone told me she was glad I straightened my hair because I looked more ‘professional.’” —Brown University student, Class of ‘21” “After voting on club officers for Penn Democrats, another student said to me, ‘I can’t remember, is yours a full vote or only three-fifths of a vote?’” —University of Pennsylvania student, Class of ‘16” “I was told, ‘you were only allowed in this eating club because you are a pretty Black, and it’s good for diversity.’” —Princeton University student, Class of ‘22” An Instagram account that has amassed over 23.1k followers as of September 22, @blackivystories features the anonymous anecdotes of current Black students, alumni, parents, and faculty at the eight Ivy League institutions. These quotes are a small sampling of the instances of racial injustice documented by @ blackivystories, and only a sliver of the racist encounters that occur daily at elite institutions around the country.

The first post came from a Black student at Harvard on June 15 2020, followed by posts from students at UPenn, Princeton, and Brown. Posts about racist experiences at Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, and Cornell gradually trickled in, and now, three months later, there are over 340 posts detailing first-hand accounts of anti-Black racism within the Ivy League. Stories span from Black students’ racist encounters with professors to Blacks parents’ experiences visiting their kids. According to the account owners, @blackivystories was inspired “by similar accounts that amplify Black student voices, in particular @blackmainlinespeaks (an Instagram account that posts the stories of the Black community at schools on Philadelphia’s mainline).”

Following the murder of George Floyd, an increase in Instagram accounts centered on social activism has accompanied the global rise in protests and renewed public interest in the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). The missions of these accounts include sharing voter information through easily digestible infographics, raising donations for BLM, and amplifying underrepresented voices at predominantly white institutions or workplaces. These activist accounts share the long-term goal of changing the thought patterns and behaviors of people who may have explicitly and implicitly racist views.

Social media has become a ubiquitous tool for activists and has come to shape how people view certain institutions. This June, social media fueled the BLM movement through virtual protests, informative Twitter threads on petitions that hadn’t reached their goals, and Youtube videos that allowed viewers to donate money to the movement by watching ads. Jane Hu, a contributor to the New Yorker, explains that the revival of the BLM movement has “evinced a scale, creativity, and endurance that challenges those skeptical of the Internet’s ability to mediate a movement.”

Worldwide quarantine has likely played a large role in the sudden rise of online activism, which has become a polarizing tool for activists. Since most people are now

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sitting at home and spending more time online, pages @blackivystories illustrate the contrast between how like @blackivystories are gaining more traction. the Ivies tend to market themselves and the reality of the racism that appears to be ingrained in campus life. +++ Central to directly challenging the dominant narrative produced by these schools, social media is now @blackivystories has created an important space for forcing elite institutions to acknowledge reality and Black Ivy League students, especially given that none stop hiding behind the guise of ‘diversity’ that is only of the Ivy League institutions have a Black student showcased when convenient. By bringing the public’s population larger than 10 percent. The account is an attention to racism that occurs within the Ivy League, empowering outlet, particularly for students who have @blackivystories attempts to pressure universities to expressed a desire for more support when struggling address their complicitness. with isolation and racism from professors and peers.

The large volume of posts from @blackivystoStill, @blackivystories may have limitations of its ries has captured the attention of faculty at certain own. Some have argued that the posts can be triggering Ivies. According to the owners of the account, “The for Black followers. As an incoming Black freshman Penn chemistry department reached out to us and at Brown, I personally have had trouble stomaching had a meeting to discuss the department, as they were some of the posts about the racism that other Black mentioned in our stories a few times. One Columbia students experience on a daily basis, especially when professor also made a response on Facebook to a post they remind me of similar moments in my own life. that was speculated to be about them. Outside of those While these posts have not made me regret my deci- two instances, there has been no official response from sion to attend Brown, I do feel more wary as I’ve real- university administrators.” ized that a lot of racism on elite campuses hides behind Alternatively, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Cornell the prestige. have attempted to repress content by “removing our The dissemination of stories like these definitely posts from the tagged posts section of their Instagram challenge the way elite institutions are marketed, and accounts.” Dartmouth has recently reversed this and can shape people’s perception of the schools without allowed the posts to be seen in the tagged section having firsthand experience on campus. This is why The reactions of non-Black students currently the class of 2024 has a particularly unique perspective. attending Ivy League schools have varied, with most Instead of gradually hearing about or experiencing responses being positive. Despite the small portion these issues ourselves, our perspectives on spaces at of “people that want to gaslight the students that are our institutions are already being influenced by these submitting stories and spread hatred,” according to social media accounts. the account owners, there has been an abundance Sierra* ‘24 reported that “the page [@blackivysto- of support, and some clubs have reached out to the ries] has made me a little less naïve about my vision of account owners wanting to educate themselves and Brown. I now accept that incoming Brown students improve their anti-racism policies. have various levels of awareness on social issues, and The account owners themselves have shared I hope that the university creates an environment some shock from reading the post submissions. One that promotes growth and learning about these social team member stated, “I always knew microaggresissues.” sions were prevalent, but I’m surprised by how much Bella* ‘23, another follower of @blackivystories, blatant racism students and professors have managed feels her opinion of Brown has remained the same, to get away with, to the point where it makes me reflect stating, “My opinion of Brown hasn’t changed, mostly on how I’ve been treated and wonder if in certain because a jaded part of me sort of expects this kind of situations racism was at play more than I thought.” A behavior from some of the students. Brown is definitely second team member added, “I’m most surprised by among the more liberal schools, so we don’t really hear two things: the first is the amount of ignorance indiof any overt acts of racism. It functions in more subtle cated by some of these stories. If we give the aggressor ways. I think that’s why some of the posts have been a the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t racist, some of bit alarming.” these posts therefore indicate extreme stupidity or lack of awareness on Black topics. Second, I am constantly +++ surprised by how some people feel compelled to defend their friends in the comment section. Everyone’s woke There is also concern that some people may follow and until they realize their friends have anti-Black bias.” interact with the account to prove that they are “woke.”

Some followers may read the posts as a way to alleviate +++ guilt, or as a means of virtue signaling. The Ivy League itself has a long-standing issue of masking itself In addition to garnering a wide range of reactions from as “woke” and diverse. The aura of intellectualism a large number of students, the account has sparked surrounding the Ivies tends to conceal the underlying conversations on recent racist incidents at the Ivy racism that still exists below the surface. The images Leagues, and led people to take a closer look at the of these elite institutions are maintained by covering institution’s responses. racism up as opposed to addressing it. Accounts like On July 20, a white student at Princeton used

25 SEPTEMBER 2020

An Instagram account pressures the Ivies to take accountability

BY Aicha Sama ILLUSTRATION Joyce Tullis DESIGN Anna Brinkhuis

the n-word in a Facebook comment toward a black commenter, sparking outrage. Princeton’s Vice President for Campus Life responded in an email saying that “while harmful, this use of a racial slur did not violate our University’s Freedom of Expression policy.” The statement was met with widespread criticism, and when Princeton later replied with a link to counseling services, additional criticism ensued because Princeton’s psychological services are known to be under-resourced.

Opinion writers for the Daily Princetonian felt that “[g]iven President Christopher Eisgruber’s own words on the necessity of confronting racism and the abundance of solidarity statements, Princeton’s decision to protect racist rhetoric is deeply hypocritical.”

Referencing Harvard’s harassment policy, which was intended to decrease campus tolerance of racist remarks and stereotypes, the opinion writers called on Princeton to “step up and use your power to protect your Black students [by] “following in the footsteps of peer institutions and explicitly banning the use of racial epithets on campus as codified in Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities.”

In a recent statement, following the revival of the BLM in June, Brown President Christina Paxson provided insight on the university’s policies for harassment and discrimination. In an email to all members of the Brown community, she stated, “In the weeks and months to come, we will leverage the expertise of our faculty, staff and students to develop programming, courses and research opportunities designed to advance knowledge and promote essential change in policy and practice in the name of equity and justice.”

She continued by reinforcing Brown’s intolerance for acts of racism and called for people to continue to demand equity and justice.

The Indy emailed the President’s office to ask if President Paxson was aware of the @blackivystories account and if it has ever informed any decisions surrounding Brown’s policies on racial injustice.

The Indy received a response from Cass Cliatt, Vice President of Communications, on President Paxson’s behalf, explaining that Brown does not monitor the community’s use of social media. There are only

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you know if you’ll be able to pay for tuition and fees?’”

The slew of questions reportedly left Sarah with “a bad taste in my mouth about Harvard.”

Alexia* ‘23 voiced her frustrations about the Ivy League’s lack of accountability, saying, “I honestly feel like we as Black students have tried everything we possibly can to get the administration to take these issues seriously. I’m just tired of asking for the same things and not seeing as many results.”

Hopefully, pages like this will help promote the awareness of BIPOC experiences at these institutions by confronting the misleading ‘“diversity marketing.”’

It’s doubtful that these accounts will change institu+++ tional policies, but they are making more people aware Current Brown students have shared their thoughts of the ongoing racism that exists and pushing them to on @blackivystories and how the university can make conscious efforts to assess their own actions and improve. Jack* ‘23, who follows @blackivystories and biases. has read a number of their posts, told the Indy, “I think the Ivy League has a long way to go! We’ve not prioritized Black and Brown communities and their needs AICHA SAMA B’24 is thankful for accounts like on campus, and I think that has to change. I think that @blackivystories, which provide an outlet for colleges need to confront the fact that they’re histori- hurting and healing black voices, especially at cally built on slave labor, and that’s a legacy we need times when those outlets seem to be few and far to be wrestling with and openly critiquing and criti- between. cizing more.” Jack continued, saying that despite not *Names have been changed to preserve the privacy and seeing many outwardly racist instances on campus, security of the interviewees. “the homogeneity of a lot of friend groups on campus speaks to segregation on Brown’s campus. I think I have a lot of work to do, and I think it has to do a lot with confronting the inherent violence of whiteness and biases internally.”

Some incoming freshmen also report being shamed into believing that affirmative action played a large role in their admission into Brown and having their accomplishments diminished. In one instance, a student, Sarah*, dealt with discrimination in a college interview with Harvard, where the interviewer “ignored my emails, quizzed me about my knowledge of Reaganomics, and made me feel like I would be rejected before I finished the application process. She also repeatedly asked me invasive questions filled with microaggressions like ‘Do you like hip hop and sneakers? You do know it’s really cold up there right?

Maybe you’d be more suited to a southern school? Do specific instances where “activities might be brought to the attention of a Brown office [such as] where a Brown community member is identified and a potential violation is alleged to have occurred.”

Though specific Brown community members aren’t identified on the @blackivystories page, some of the anecdotes featured on the page could be crucial for administrators to gain a better understanding of the issues that marginalized communities at Brown face and potentially inform policy changes to combat these issues.

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We need you!

With our single page each week, X publishes a wide range of image and hybrid text-based work. We accept and encourage all forms of work -- please don’t hesitate to send anything our way or email us with a preliminary idea. While not all pieces must fit within this loose theme, this semester we are interested in the ideas of nostalgia and memory.

Please reach out to us at theindyx@gmail.com if you're interested in publishing any kind of work with us. We hope to hear from you soon!

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25 SEPTEMBER 2020

PROGRESSIVE PERCOLATION A SELECTION OF PROFILES ON THE STATE'S MOST FORWARD-THINKING POLITICIANS

BY Morgan Awner, Uwa Ede-Osifo, Lucas Gelfond, Ricardo Gomez, Leo Gordon, Elana Hausknecht, Evie Hidysmith, Rose Houglet, Deborah Marini, Vicky Phan, and Peder Schaefer -DESIGN Isaac McKenna

On September 8, progressive candidates across Rhode Island swept the local Democratic primaries, upsetting incumbent Democrats in a way that made the national political scene do a double-take. Something big had happened in little Rhody.

With the help of progressive activists and organizations, first-time candidates from all walks of life— educators like Tiara Mack, working moms like Cynthia Mendes, and climate activists like Kendra Anderson— scored big wins against the lawyers and career politicians that constitute most of Rhode Island’s political class.

Here, we profile some of these local progressive victors and the activist organizations that supported their victories. We hope that this piece sheds light on the growing progressive political ecosystem in Rhode Island—the network of organizations, activists, and volunteers that made victory possible.

The progressive infrastructure needed for success took years of work, but September 8 showed that those sacrifices weren’t in vain. By building a path to political power completely separate from the establishment (the RI Democratic Party), these progressives created a dangerous weapon: the ability to effectively attack and pressure the political machine from the outside. Now, progressives no longer have to play nice with the “good ol’ boys” club that’s run the state for decades. They can stand on their own.

Read our profiles to get the perspectives of some of the activists, organizers, and candidates that made these wins possible, and take a moment to reflect afterward on what this progressive political ecosystem means for the future of the Ocean State. -INDY METRO

Rhode Island Political Cooperative: A progressive political machine? Maybe oxymoronic, but it’s one way to see the Rhode Island Political Cooperative (RIPC): an innovative new model for how progressive Democrats in Rhode Island—and foreseeably across the country—can create the kind of electoral power needed to win elections up and down the ballot.

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“For my entire life, this government has been dominated by a corrupt, corporatist, and conservative political establishment that hasn’t served the interests of the people,” Matt Brown, co-founder of the RIPC and a progressive candidate for governor in 2018, told the College Hill Independent. “The reason that our side hasn't won enough seats in the past is not because our agenda is not popular. The agenda is very popular. The problem is that we haven’t built enough political power to win campaigns against all the corporate and lobbyist money, to win against the entrenched establishment.”

Founded in 2019 by Brown, Jennifer Rourke, and Jeanine Calkin (a former candidate for Senate and a state senate-elect, respectively), RIPC gave progressives a new pathway for victory outside of the traditional Rhode Island Democratic Party. The local Democratic Party worked to keep progressive ideas and candidates out of Rhode Island politics over the past few years, actively running challengers against incumbents who don’t toe the party line.

That’s where the co-op comes in.

By recruiting, training, and supporting candidates for office, the co-op plays the role that political parties traditionally play. Brown says the co-op builds progressive power—helping progressives win electorally—in two main ways. First, candidates running on a unified slate can support and advise one another through the ups and downs of a campaign. Second, the co-op provides the logistical campaign infrastructure most upstart progressive campaigns only dream of: campaign manager recruitment and training, a statewide volunteer base, communications support, and assistance developing a unified policy platform.

While 2020 may have been the co-op’s splashy entrance into the local Rhode Island political scene, it certainly won’t be the last time you’ll hear of them. The RIPC supported 25 candidates this election season, with 10 candidates still running in the upcoming general election. When asked about the number of candidates the co-op wants to field in 2022, Brown says “a hell of a lot more.”

“We proved the strength of this model,” says Brown. “It was a stunning victory on primary night, and we intend to grow.” Growing means starting to think about 2022—recruiting candidates, campaign

managers, and volunteers—today. In two years, the co-op could really be the establishment, albeit with a very different model than the one running the state today. -Peder S.

Reclaim Rhode Island: In May 2020, a small group of Bernie Sanders volunteers started Reclaim RI to continue the campaign’s objectives and organizational infrastructure. In the past election cycle, four Reclaim-backed candidates won races for seats in the Senate and House of Representatives. This week, the Indy sat down with Reclaim’s Electoral Coordinator, Dennis Hogan, to talk about those wins and the direction of progressive organizing in Rhode Island.

Hogan set the stakes of these races by emphasizing the importance of the state government apparatus controlled by the Rhode Island Democratic party. For Reclaim, articulating progressive change in terms of acquiring state power is essential. “Part of the task and part of why we exist is because we really do believe that Rhode Island offers a huge opportunity to transform the state Democratic Party,” Hogan told the Indy.

“And what is the Rhode Island Democratic Party? It's an incredibly conservative, very tightly-knit network of people who are closely connected to one another and have been for a really long time. It is overwhelmingly white. It is overwhelmingly wealthy. It is much more politically conservative than even the Democratic Party nationally,” said Hogan.

Because state electoral races are small and organizing has immediate effects, Reclaim sees Rhode Island as being uniquely poised to push for progressive policies. Hogan emphasized Rhode Island’s desire for change, pointing out that many citizens of the state appear increasingly receptive to the values of the Bernie campaign and the popularity of progressive organizations like the Providence Democractic Socialist of America and the Working Families Party.

Reclaim-backed candidates are already challenging Governor Raimondo’s push for a budget that makes substantial cuts to social services and struggling cities. Hogan wrapped up the interview with the Indy

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by describing Reclaim’s vision for the 2022 races, Unlike some of the other organizations that had a where they hope to build upon their organizational hand in the primary’s progressive sweep, the Women’s momentum to continue to win seats and take power in Caucus is “cultivating candidates AND supporting Rhode Island. -Ricardo G. legislation of our women-elected Democrats,” according to a text message from Gledhill. This fall, they are following the lead of pre-existing community organizations, especially those led by women to color, Sunrise Movement: to support their legislative priorities. This includes the passage of the Doula Bill, Medicaid coverage for aborOn the heels of the recent West Coast climate fires, tions, and a $15 minimum wage. Glehill hopes that this the impact of Sunrise Rhode Island—the Ocean State’s platform will organically drive people of more-diverse hub of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led grassroots backgrounds to join the Caucus, which “has always organization pushing for climate justice through polit- been [made up of] privileged white women,” she said. ical activism—can’t be overstated. Rachael Baker, a “Our members said that we should recruit, but until Sunrise R.I. organizer and lifelong Rhody resident, is people see us as allies, they aren’t going to join us.” one of hundreds who contributed to the volunteer-powAfter this election, Gledhill said that she “hope[s] ered movement to flip seats to progressive candidates. that the state party has looked at itself and said, ‘Geez!

Following an application and interview process What are we not doing?’” She told the Indy that the that began in January, Sunrise endorsed 29 candi- Women’s Caucus ultimately wants to improve the dates across Rhode Island’s House of Representatives, party from the outside, and eventually, once its platSenate, and local city councils. The political subcom- form reflects the Caucus’s values again, rejoin the mittee of Sunrise Rhode Island identified strong candi- party. -Deb M. dates as, ideologically, “those in it for the people. They saw something they wanted to change... [because] the people in office aren’t working for them.” Twentyfour of those candidates belong to the RIPC and have Working Families Party: pledged to support a Green New Deal, which aligns them well with Sunrise’s mission: pushing elected As a Providence College student, Andrea Rojas started officials to fight for environmental justice and decline organizing the Safer Rhodes Campaign, which advocorporate funding, or boosting new candidates who cates for undocumented immigrants’ right to obtain will. a driver’s license. After months of advocacy and orgaPassionate individuals like Baker are the lifeline of nizing, Rojas was dismayed when the Safer Rhodes the young but visibly impactful organization. As a full- bill didn’t even get a vote in the General Assembly. time contributor, Baker spent months recruiting volun- Discouraged by legislative inaction, Rojas decided that teers, managing a “volunteer pod” that phone banked the answer was direct service, and she started working for endorsed candidates, and meeting weekly with in immigration law services immediately after college. those candidates. When social distancing concerns After years spent in the field, Rojas was reenergized arose alongside COVID-19, in-person canvassing died to build political power for disenfranchised commudown, but some folks pressed on. nities, joining the Working Families Party (WFP) of After knocking on one door, Baker met a weathered Rhode Island in January 2020 as an organizer. and vocal constituent who goes simply by “Coach.”

WFP is a national progressive political party A long-time Westerly resident, he’d seen “nothing that works outside the two dominant parties to train change for the better,” according to Baker. “Every time ‘people-powered’ candidates to run, often within there’s an opportunity for the representative to [take] Democratic primaries. Famous candidates of the a stand,” Coach added, “nothing happens.” Coach’s WFP include Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and concerns summarized voters’ frustration with estab- Ayanna Pressley. While the WFP has seen a recent lishment politicians, Baker said—the same frustration surge in popularity and success since 2018, the Rhode that likely launched 13 of Sunrise’s endorsed candi- Island WFP was making waves before any of these dates to victory. For candidates who lost their races, national candidates. In 2016, the state’s WFP ran such as Lenny Cioe, Baker pointed to another marker Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, a Jamaican-born public of victory. Despite incumbent Dominick Ruggerio school teacher who successfully ousted the right-wing outspending Cioe 28 to 1, she said, Cioe turned out Democratic House Majority Leader John DeSimone by 45 percent of the vote—another indication that, with just 21 votes.

Ten of the eleven WFP-endorsed candidates won the right push, Rhode Island is ready for a progressive in the latest primary. WFP campaigners and volunwave. -Vicky P. teers made over 14,000 calls and 25,000 texts to voters across the state in an impressive show of organizing force, along with socially distanced canvassing and Democratic Women’s Caucus: fundraisers.

Rojas believes that, most importantly, this was an Last November, the RI Democratic Party’s Women’s election of values. “Things like raising the minimum Caucus split from the Democratic Party, and have wage, a Green New Deal in Rhode Island, or raising since worked tirelessly to change Rhode Island poli- revenue by taxing the ultra-rich are things that we tics from outside its stifling sphere. “The Rhode Island know Rhode Islanders get behind,” she said.

Democrats are moderate,” Liz Glehill, chair of the RI While Rojas remains optimistic about the impact Democratic Women’s Caucus, told the Indy. “Our these newly elected progressive candidates can have national platform is clear and progressive, but we don’t on the General Assembly, she knows the work is far see that reflected in the state party.” from over. “The budget this year and next is going to In this election cycle, the group endorsed 72 be really, really important,” Rojas said, referring to the candidates—55 women and 17 allies (men whose plat- impending budget crisis due to an $835 million deficit forms match the priorities of the Caucus)—for races in the state. The WFP has worked closely with Reclaim throughout the state. From statehouse runs, to town RI to oppose the governor’s austerity budget and its councils, to school committees, nearly 81 percent of cuts to social spending. endorsed candidates won on platforms left of the RI “I really want to continue having people engage Democratic establishment. The Women’s Caucus with the work that we’re doing,” said Rojas, “holding maxed out the donation limit ($20,000) on most of those in power accountable so that folks feel confident their “critical” races, sent numerous volunteers and and empowered to do the work.” -Morgan A. paid canvassers to door-knock, and used their network of over 600 members to recruit phone bankers for the other races they identified as important. “Important” and “critical” were defined by the candidate’s feasi- Sam Bell: bility and the impact that their specific win would make (a progressive beating a pro-life incumbent was Sam Bell is not interested in beating real Democrats. more critical than a progressive beating a moderate A strange claim to make, given that he ran against, pro-women incumbent). They identified and targeted and beat, multiple members of the Rhode Island the Senate as “changeable,” and if all of the general Democratic party in two consecutive elections. For elections go blue this fall, the RI Senate will be one Bell, the word “Democrat” is important, and he thinks of two places in the U.S. with a female-identifying it’s been bandied about by the wrong crowd for too majority (20-18). long.

“Men always have an advantage when running for “I wouldn’t even consider it running against my office,” said Glehill. “That’s why we lift women up and own party,” Bell told the Indy a few days after winning give them more support. And then even more so with his re-election battle for State Senate. Bell, one of only women of color, who are facing more racism than ever a few proud progressive voices up at the State House, and obstacles that white women aren’t going to face.” handily dismissed his conservative Democratic

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challenger, Jo-Ann Ryan, by nearly 1000 votes.

“These people are Republicans!” said Bell, referencing the Democratic establishment that supported his challenger looking to oust him from the State Senate. “They might have a D after their name, but they are far from the Democratic Party.”

Bell has been a member of the State Senate since 2018, representing the northern sections of Providence, and one of the lone progressives in the chamber. Bell was one of the few senators to vote against re-electing Dominick Ruggerio, a conservative, NRA– and Right-to-Life–backed machine politician, as Senate president. Instead, Bell says he’s fighting to dismantle the knot of groups—conservative unions, the state Democratic Party, corporate money, and outside conservative groups like the NRA—that support politicians like Ruggerio. “We need to smash the machine so we can turn Rhode Island into a real blue state,” said Bell.

Bell’s excited for the future of the real Democratic Party in Rhode Island. “People are starting to see that when we fight, we win,” he explained. If progressives continue to focus on taking over the General Assembly by winning local races, instead of wasting energy on expensive and hard to win statewide races, Bell thinks the progressive “real Democrat” revolution could happen sooner rather than later. -Peder S.

Jeanine Calkin: Jeanine Calkin is headed back to the State Senate to continue representing southern Warwick, but things are different this time around. Unlike her last term (2017-2019), in which she was the lone progressive voice in the 38-person legislative body, next year she’ll be re-entering with a cohort of progressive Senators who ran on a shared platform centered around a $15 minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, and free college for all.

Calkin traces much of this progress back to the “political revolution” Bernie Sanders called for during his two presidential runs. “When it became clear that Bernie wasn’t going to win in 2016, he made this plea to people: ‘I want you all to run for office at all levels of government,’” said Calkin. “I was looking around at people, saying, ‘You should run for office, you should run for office!’ and everyone was pointing their finger back at me, saying, ‘You should do it.’”

Calkin heeded the call and subsequently won her 2016 race, but in 2018, she lost narrowly to Mark McKenney, a corporate lobbyist who has consistently voted with conservative Senate leadership. “It was really a wake-up call to me,” Calkin admitted. “I said, ‘What am I gonna do about this?’ Sure, I could just run again in 2020, but it was very difficult being up there [at the Statehouse] by myself.”

Calkin began thinking about another interpretation of Bernie’s political revolution: not just running for office herself, but building infrastructures of support so that regular people —“maybe they’re waitresses, or they work in a library, or they’re a computer scientist”— could do so as well. “That was the beginning of [RIPC], and it just kind of grew from there,” Calkin explained.

Aside from inspiring Calkin’s 2016 run and the creation of the co-op, the Sanders campaign also laid a strong ideological groundwork, preparing Rhode Islanders to positively receive the platform: “When we talk to people [at their] doors about single-payer [healthcare], they get it because of Bernie. When we talk to people about a living wage, they get it because of Bernie,” Calkin said.

As Calkin looks forward to returning to the legislature as part of a robust progressive caucus, she notes that the work does not end with victories at the ballot box. “You need to have activists and advocates out there pushing for these things…holding people accountable, even us in the co-op,” she told the Indy.

“Bernie always talked about how it’s all of us putting pressure on the elected officials, that's really how you get major change done.” -Elana H.

Leonela Felix: Leonela Felix has hustled for years, taking the 5 AM train to Boston for her full-time job as an immigration law paralegal, taking night classes as a part-time law student, and then returning to Pawtucket at 1 AM to do it all over again. So when she decided to run for a seat in the General Assembly in April, she thought she was prepared for the work.

25 SEPTEMBER 2020

“I knew it was going to be hard. But I just didn’t know it was going to be like this,” she stated.

Felix went door to door, walking over 250 miles in her district from June 4 until September 8. That’s equivalent to walking the length of Rhode Island seven times over. The wear on her Adidas sneakers, however, was well worth the stunning electoral victory of 58.7% over incumbent Raymond H. Johnston, Jr. Felix has been in the Rhode Island advocacy world for years, holding positions such as policy director for Progreso Latino, Inc. and deputy director of policy for Mayor Elorza. Felix has been constantly disappointed by the elected leadership’s refusal to vote on bills that many Rhode Islanders support, including driver’s licenses for all. After a particularly frustrating 2019 legislative session, including watching her own representative vote down the Reproductive Privacy Act, Felix decided to run for office herself. “It’s time to get these folks out of office,” she declared back in April. “If they will not fight for the community, then someone else has to step up.”

While Felix may have the miles, she credits progressive organizations in Rhode Island with her win. “Number one shout out to WFP (Working Families Party) and the team. They provided support from top to bottom,” she told the Indy.

Felix knows that with this community support comes a great responsibility, and she is dedicated to working for her constituents on day one. Her first priority? A budget that reflects the values of all Rhode Islanders, along with a rally against the Governor’s proposed cuts to the distressed communities’ relief fund. “I wouldn’t be representing my community like I promised to if I didn’t fight back against these cuts,” she said.

Education, health care, and support for cities and towns would all face cuts under the Governor’s proposed plan. To make up for this deficit, cities like Pawtucket will face a choice between raising taxes or cutting services, both of which will affect low-income class families the hardest. That’s why Felix is advocating that “we tax the 1 percent accordingly, and if we make investments, they are the best investments for the community.”

“I don’t say ‘I won”, Felix said, “because we won.”

-Morgan A.

Brianna Henries:

Near the end of June, Brianna Henries found herself in the middle of a perfect storm: her partner had just contracted COVID-19, she was quarantining, working from home, and trying to raise their new puppy Cooper. Then, out of nowhere, RIPC called asking if she wanted to run for State Representative.

Last Tuesday, just over two months of hard work later, Henries commanded a nearly 2 -to-1 lead over the Democratic incumbent, Joe R. Serodio, after in-person voting finished on September 8. When mail-in ballots were counted, Henries had won by a 23.4 percent margin—a massive upset. But victory wasn’t always so certain.

“I had my doubts, because growing up, politicians never looked like me. They didn’t talk like me, they didn’t grow up like I did,” said Henries, who is Black and Indigenous and has worked for years as a retail manager.

At RIPC’s suggestion, Henries asked friends and family for input, including Tiara Mack and Cynthia Mendes, whom she had met through her church and watched from afar, inspired, as they both began their own primary campaigns. It turned out that Mack herself had given Henries’ name to the co-op. While Henries was doubtful, the two primary hopefuls were confident in their friend’s chances.

With that boost, Henries committed to running just days before the June 24th deadline to file, and the co-op’s infrastructure kicked in. Henries is most grateful for how accessible they made the whole process. “More people should know that if they are passionate enough or have the thought in their mind that they can make a better government and be a voice for the people, they can do it. They don’t have to be rich or wealthy and have tons of college degrees to do so.”

In fact, Henries credits much of her success to her background in retail management. From asking for donations to talking issues door-to-door with constituents, she knew how to connect with people: “We say in my store that people aren’t just transactions, they’re interactions. There is a difference between wanting something from someone and engaging with them, and I think that’s what a lot of politicians miss.”

Above all, Henries wants people to see that if you want things to change, it’s not hard to get involved. “I probably wouldn’t have done it without the backing of RIPC,” she said, adding that the co-op gave her a new perspective. “We often see politics as divisive or shady, Lenny Cioe: but for once you look at the co-op and you see that politics can be entirely collaborative,” said Henries.

Lenny Cioe mounted the first primary challenge for “That’s what it should look like.” -Leo G. Dominick Ruggerio’s State Senate seat since 2012.

Ruggerio has represented the district since 1984 and serves as State Senate president, which gives him the power to block a considerable amount of legislation Kendra Anderson: before it can even be debated. Cioe is not a career politician; he’s a full time nurse in North Providence, and Long unsure about running for political office, the 2020 campaign was his first run for political office. Kendra Anderson felt compelled to campaign for a Ruggerio’s voting record is in-step with the State Senate seat after witnessing the Rhode Island conservative swing of RI Democrats; when same-sex General Assembly’s failure to pass climate legislation marriage was legalized by the state in 2013, Ruggerio in 2019. As a single mother and the outgoing presiopposed the bill. That same year, Cioe married his dent of Climate Action Rhode Island, Anderson felt a partner of 28 years, Mike. “I had dealt with bullies like “sense of duty” to future generations, her cherished him my whole life, and I wasn’t afraid of him. That’s neighborhood in Warwick, and the environment. She what made me realize that I could really do this,” Cioe recalled the accessible and equitable “way of life” that told the Indy. she learned from her mother decades ago at Vietnam Cioe noted that running against an establish- War sit-ins and Civil Rights marches—a way of life ment candidate was difficult; Ruggerio’s $390,000 Anderson felt ready to champion in her race against campaign budget dwarfed the Cioe campaign’s the “entrenched establishment and its consolidation of $13,000, forcing the campaign to be creative and power.” frugal. Cioe praised grassroots political organizations Endorsed by the WFP, Sunrise RI, Planned like Sunrise RI, Climate Action RI, and RIPC for their Parenthood, and RIPC, Anderson sought out the support in organizing and mobilizing volunteers. Cioe support of working people and grassroots organinotes that he met every voter at least once himself zations over that of “political powerhouses.” For during the campaign, either by phone or in person. Anderson, aligning her values with legislative prior“We met a lot of people that were struggling,” he said. ities manifested in making the Green New Deal the “It was a lot of listening, and connecting with people. center of her campaign. “For me, the Green New Deal That’s what’s missing in politics today.” is just an easy way of saying ‘Change everything,’” she Cioe said his two largest campaign priorities were said.

During the primary, Anderson ran against three healthcare reform and unfair taxing on small businesses that prevents their owners from paying living men with ties to the local Democratic establishment, wages. including Steve Merolla, the Warwick City Council While Cioe lost his election by 341 votes, President. She proposed an alternative vision that increasing turnout was a centerpiece of his campaign. contrasted those of her opponents who, she said, “paid Participation in the district’s primary rose from lip service to marginally progressive ideas” without 3,171 votes in 2018 to 3,605 in the 2020 election, a key necessarily pursuing them in practice. With the facet of what keeps him optimistic and eager to stay support of groups like the RIPC, Anderson’s strategy of involved. “Now that I’ve witnessed what people are grassroots campaigning led her to victory with 30.9% going through throughout my district and close to of the vote. She will be one of the few progressives in home, something inside of me profoundly changed,” RI to face a serious challenge from a Republican, Scott Cioe said. “I don’t think I can ever go back to just being Zambarano, in the general election on November 3.

“We always joked in my campaign that we were quiet.” -Lucas G.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

turning the State House into the People’s House,” she said, reflecting on how her outreach methods connect to and necessitate policies like the Green New Deal. “I have this vision that somehow it would be this really lively place of change, activity, and creativity that would benefit s o m any m ore p eople… I f we c an’t l ive on this earth, and we can’t live equitably, we perish.”

-Rose H.

Tiara Mack: On September 8th, 2020, Tiara Mack, a 26-year-old from South Carolina, won the primary for RI District 6 State Senate against 15-year incumbent Harold Metts.

She said one of the hardest parts of her campaign was “to lead with authenticity, lead with bravery, lead with my identities.”

“You see a cis white man on a political ad, you automatically think he’s competent, he knows what he’s doing, he’s a policy wizard. You see me and I say, ‘Elect queer Black women’—literally the antithesis of what you see on a political ad—and you have to reckon with that,” Mack explained.“Yes—elect queer Black women! Why? Because it is an inherently political statement. What ideas do we have about Blackness that are not worthy of being in politics? What are the ideas of queerness that we say should not be at the forefront of policy and of state officials? Let's put it out there and let's make people confront it.”

Encouraged by fellow Rhode Island State Senate candidate Jennfier Rourke, Mack is clear that she never would have run without the Rhode Island Political Cooperative. “I definitely w ould n ot h ave h ad t he tools, the support system or the emotional or mental capacity to run if I didn’t have a group of people who were all like-minded, who were coming from similar backgrounds, most of which were people of color…

Now I have six people that I know I can trust as soon as I walk into the Senate,” she said. Though Rhode Island’s compactness certainly boosted the co-op’s success, Mack thinks this model “can work anywhere.”

“If you get enough people willing to work together,” she insisted, “why not take over your city, your county, your state?” -Evie H.

David Morales: At age 22, David Morales defeated incumbent Daniel McKiernan for his seat in the House. The inequality and struggles he witnessed over twenty-two years motivated him to run, Morales told the Indy.

“Growing up, everyone around my neighborhood was low-income. The fact that I grew up with a single mom who worked multiple jobs, the fact we grew up in poverty—I was conditioned to believe that was normal.”

“Being a young person of color, the establishment will always try to control the narrative of who I am and make [me] seem to be a ‘fringe candidate who had no chance.’ But I can control my narrative directly with our neighbors by showing up to all of our community events, knocking on doors as early as mid-February, and being direct about what our policy ideas were about.”

On his first day in office, Morales said he would fight to raise the minimum wage, revise the education funding formula, reform health care coverage, and work towards universal health care.

“A lot of these ideas that were once considered fringe— like the idea of raising the minimum wage—I believe will gain more traction than they have in previous years. The fact that we have school buildings collapsing and an education system that has been regarded as one of the worst in the entire nation. Our backs are up against the wall… the tide is turning.”

By tide, Morales points to the wave of progressive candidates winning in local and national politics.

“In order for the progressive movement to be successful, we have to make sure that we are intentionally engaging with our communities every step of the way. What if we had 20+ working families showing up to testify [at the Statehouse] in support of a bill that would raise the minimum wage? What if we had families stand up and say, ‘I’m on Medicaid and it is wrong that we’re going to cut it again for the fifth year in a row.’ This year is going to be the pivotal year for [Rhode Islanders] to see whether the state government actually cares about working families or not.” -Uwa E.O.

THE INDY METRO B ’2X are currently accepting applications for their own co-op.

METRO

09

LITIGATING CHOICE

BY Izzi Olive DESIGN XingXing Shou

Radical Feminism, Alan Dershowitz, and the 1986

‘Brown sex ring’

content warning: discussions of rape and consent

One day in 1983, when my mother was a Brown University sophomore, her roommate returned from a jog and announced that she’d met a man on the street who’d offered to pay her to sit for a portrait photo session. She relayed the backstory he’d given to her in his same vague terms: that he was an amateur photographer; that he was working on some project involving female athletes for which she’d be perfect. The roommate told my mom where she was going—to a house on the corner of Angell and Hope—and asked that my mom come knock on the door if she hadn’t returned in an hour. My mom agreed, and when an hour had passed and her roommate still hadn’t arrived, she went and knocked on the door. When the roommate came down, the man accompanied her. The two roommates would leave together, but not before the man introduced himself to my mother as Stanley Henshaw III and offered to pay to photograph her too.

Emboldened by her roommate’s assurances that Henshaw was a “total marshmallow,” my mom sat for five photo sessions over the course of a couple months. “It was easy cash,” she explains to me, sitting in her living room nearly forty years later. “He didn’t seem threatening,” she says, “He was not big, not tall, not attractive, older…” He’d asked whether she felt comfortable at every turn, but the stakes had inched higher. Would she trade her clothing for a men’s shirt? Would she remove her shorts; would she crawl across the floor? She feels that her naiveté, feigned and genuine, offered protection from embarrassment and discomfort even as the photos became explicitly sexual.

She committed herself to his conceit—that this was art, that his interest in her was pure aesthetic appreciation for the athletic female form—to feel okay sticking around for a few sessions more.

In retrospect, she’s amused by the dissonance between Henshaw’s lascivious requests and her awkward, bare-minimum compliance, simultaneously smug at having drawn a line and mortified at how ingenuous she really was. “When he asked me to crawl”—she kneeled down on the floor to demonstrate—“I did it like this.” She starts a neat, perambulatory crawl across the carpet. “I did it, but I didn’t give it to him. I wasn’t doing this.”

She begins throwing her hips and shoulders into a smutty prowl, a sexed-up cat-walk on all fours, looks up at me and cackles.

Eventually, she did grow uneasy and ended their working relationship. During what would be their last session, Henshaw asked that she pose on the bed with her mouth agape and head thrown back, as though she’d just had an orgasm, and she complied in her perfunctory manner. He then asked if he could masturbate her to orgasm so that he could capture the authentic moment of climax on camera. This, evidently, was her limit. She first tried indirection, asking cheekily what made him so certain that he could achieve what he proposed, but he was undeterred. She then said that she would need to ask her boyfriend first. As her boyfriend was a Rhode Island WASP who had looked pained but remained silent when she'd mentioned this latest source of quick cash, and she a Berkeley bra burner to whose identity a

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sense of liberation was paramount, she had no real intention of asking his permission, though it's funny to imagine the scene anyways. Instead, she invoked the boyfriend to excuse herself, and it worked.

She more or less forgot about Henshaw until the Providence Police arrived at her workplace three years later and asked that she come into the station for questioning. Once there, they showed her images of herself, prints of the photographs she’d posed for, three years earlier, along with hundreds of photos of other women, many taken in the same apartment.

The police asked her to help identify the others, which she could not have done even if she’d wanted to as she did not recognize any of them, and repeatedly asked what other involvement she’d had with Henshaw, about which there was nothing to tell. She remembers feeling humiliated gazing at the photos of herself and other women as policemen looked on.

This was not only because she felt exposed and that, even without extracting names from her, the police had implicated her in exposing the others by examining them in the police station, but also because the photos were so bad, artless and silly.

“There was nothing beautiful about them,” she tells me. “Not the images. Not the women, really.”

Spread across the table, the photos were the first representation she’d encounter of what quickly became known in the national media as the “Brown prostitution ring,” or the “Brown sex ring.” I imagine that, had she looked closely, some of the images might have suggested the other pretenses under which Henshaw began photographing the women, while others might have displayed a lack or abandonment of pretense, just frank photographs of partly-dressed or naked women. +++

What my mom hadn’t known at the time was that on March 7, 1986, just a few days before she was brought in for questioning, the Providence Police seized hundreds of photos of 46 women from Stanley Henshaw III’s residence. The day before, the Providence police inspector, working on an anonymous tip, had made undercover ‘appointments’ with each of “two Ivy League blondes” whose services were advertised in the now-defunct Providence Eagle and arrested both women. The women, Dana Smith and Rebecca Kidd, both Brown seniors, were initially charged with soliciting prostitution, a misdemeanor. Smith and Kidd would be the only women charged, and thus the only two named in the scandal. But when their cooperation brought the police to Henshaw’s residence, and the photographs were seized as evidence, the media was apprised of the fact that eight other Brown students and recent alumni had been identified in the photographs.

Though students at other colleges, Providencearea residents, and, most notably, two minors, aged 14 and 17, were also among those identified, media coverage seized upon the Brown students, fixing the public’s attention on the apparently oxymoronic figure of the ‘Ivy League prostitute.’

The legal case against Henshaw hinged on whether he had “harbored prostitution,” as defined under Rhode Island law: did he “cause, induce, persuade, or encourage” either of the women to transact sex for his own monetary gain? Because the charges against Kidd and Smith were eventually dropped, their respective involvements were never put on trial as such. That is, the legal question was not

whether the women had chosen to sell sex, but rather whether it could be shown that Henshaw had caused them to. The verdict, reached nearly two years later, was that he had not. In the court of public opinion, the question of choice was far more complex. The ‘Brown sex ring’ case cut to the heart of 1980s debate surrounding the precise boundaries—or lack thereof—between prostitution, pornography, and rape.

Conventional wisdom held that sex workers chose to sell sex, and therefore had no one to blame but themselves for their social stigmatization. In this view, poor sex workers’ decisions to transact sex might appear rational; but even the worst circumstances didn’t much shift the blame. In the 1980s, some feminists began to question the nature of sexual consent, and, ultimately, whether women could consent to sex at all. The ‘Brown sex ring’ and the figure of the ‘Ivy League prostitute’ provided particular fodder to those inclined to view sex work as a choice. The women appeared so privileged, their circumstances so free of need, that surely they had entered into sex work by choice. But some radical feminists read the situation quite differently. If these women had been so free of need, these feminists reasoned, then surely they must have been coerced by something other than money. That ‘something,’ these feminists reasoned, was the fact of their sex. +++ The New York Times headline referred to the Brown “sex ring case,” while other outlets spoke of the Brown “prostitution ring.” The Washington Post, at least, was reflexive, observing in an article headlined “Brown winces under glare of scandal” the inflammatory tone in national papers, which spoke of a “hooker probe.” The Post’s reporter captured the same image of elite American university life which lent the story its incredibility by quoting from a student who “leaned on his bicycle and looked around him at the expanse of lawns, the 19th century stone buildings and the historic iron gates that are the landmarks of the Ivy League,” surveying his environs in preparation for a languid retelling of the facts of the case, and in brief descriptions of the two accused students: Smith was a “science major and a writing fellow”; Kidd “major[ed] in semiotics.”

The article quoted another student who had “a hard time believing that somebody could do that”—that is, engage in sex work—and whose father had questioned his decision to send her across the country to “such a liberal school.” Such coverage, like the many magazine pieces and digestions to follow in the months after the story broke, saw the sensationalism but still stumbled over it. That a prominent insurance agent was an alleged procurer, that minors were seemingly involved, that sex was traded in Providence— these writers noted, sometimes with dismay, that none of these facts revealed by the case struck the public in any revelatory way. Rather, the intrigue (then as now, for my retelling the story recapitulates the initial interest) revolved and still revolves around the question of what could possibly bring two women of Smith’s and Kidd’s backgrounds—both raised in white,

25 SEPTEMBER 2020

upper-class Connecticut families—to trade in sex.

The piece that captured my interest more than any other was a long feature written by Aimee Lee Ball for the September 1986 issue of Mademoiselle magazine. I’m sure Mademoiselle is carefully archived somewhere, but I found the piece on the internet among the author’s clips as a slightly rumpled scan. The title banner, riffing on the issue’s ‘back-to-school’ theme, reads “School for Scandal: Selling Sex on the College Circuit.”

Below, a tabloid ellipsis—“Talk about carnal knowledge…”—separates headshots of Smith and Kidd. Smith has feathery ‘80s hair and beams off-camera; Kidd’s straight smile sort of reminds me of my mother’s.

Running 1935 to 2001, Mademoiselle forged a certain model of high-cultural all-American femininity. The magazine ran beauty and fashion columns, while Joan Didion and Sylvia Plath served tenures as guest editors. As the Chicago Tribune’s 2001 eulogy for the magazine put it, Mademoiselle was “for women who wanted to write the Great American Novel, but who also wanted to have boyfriends and go to parties and have fun.” But by the mid ‘80s, Mademoiselle struggled to keep pace with the zeitgeist. The ideal reader had so successfully manifested twenty years prior—the stylish co-ed with literary aspirations—no longer resonated with the daughters of America’s upper classes in quite the same way. For whatever reasons Mademoiselle lost touch, we can imagine the attendant corporate soul-searching, the magazine’s grasping at the latest iteration of the American college girl, less who she was than whom she could be imagined to be.

What better publication, then, to publish Ball’s profile of Kidd and Smith, which by combing through the two women’s biographies performed a reckoning with the allegations against them.

Ball described the “lovely-looking” Rebecca who’d once loved to bake with her sisters and listed Dana’s many high school accolades. Ball spoke with “friends and acquaintances of the two women, with teachers and counselors and principals and headmasters, with neighbors and downthe-hall dorm-mates, and, at some length, with Rebecca Kidd’s mother.” Yet even after all this, the task Ball set out for herself, the reconciliation of ‘Ivy League’ and ‘prostitute,’ is made to seem nearly impossible. In one passage, she slips from a reportorial tone to a confessional one, writing: “I hate this story. I hate it because I don’t really understand it and because, even without understanding it, it feels crummy.”

But Ball gives up her performance of incomprehension to offer some theories, beginning with quasi-Freudian readings of both women’s upbringings that find complexes rooted in parental pathologies and neuroses. She wrote that “there were some who knew Dana Smith, her complicated history and self-deprecating ideas about men, who could imagine her feeling needed, feeling desirable, feeling valuable because she was paid for sex. And there was something about Rebecca Kidd, her conventional upbringing, her sheltered background, that allowed one to imagine her being wined and dined and flattered by an older man from the ‘ jet set’ of Providence, thinking that being paid for sex was exciting and different and okay.”

Ball offered her reader a second way out of her own befuddlement which drew on radical theories of women’s agency gaining traction in the mid-80s. This explanation for rich girls’ decision to prostitute themselves rejects its own premise: it resolves that it had not been a decision at all. Citing a book published in 1979, Ball wrote: “I do think of it as Female Sexual Slavery, the title of a book by Kathleen Barry [...], who wrote about the prostitute this way: ‘If she is kidnapped, purchased, fraudulently contracted through an agency or organized crime, it is easy to recognize her victimization. But if she enters slavery, having been procured through love and befriending tactics, then few, including herself, are willing to recognize her victimization.”

Ball offered the notion of coercion as a sympathetic gesture, a way to redeem Kidd and Smith as victims rather than condemning them

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as fallen women. Even if they had considered themselves consenting participants in their prostitution, Ball suggests, no woman can truly consent to sex work under patriarchy. Though Ball says nothing of sexual relationships beyond prostitution, her invocation of Barry suggests the problematic conclusion to which such reasoning could lead: that no woman, regardless of her social position, could consent to any sex—nor indeed to anything, for her subordination to men precluded agency. Stopping short of that, though, we can observe Ball coming down hard at one far extreme of a dilemma laid out in its current form, more or less, during feminism’s second wave: the question of agency in transacted sex. This question, for all its immediate political contexts, actors, and stakes, reduces (or rather expands) to the fundamental question of agency in sex, period. +++

limitations on Lovelace’s allegations had likely passed. MacKinnon and Dworkin, however, began advocating together for nationwide antiporn legislation. If Lovelace’s allegations were true, Deep Throat was a feature-length rape, and civil rights law had proven inadequate to bring the rapist to justice. Lovelace’s case illustrated the pornography problem precisely as MacKinnon and Dworkin perceived it: pornography was indistinguishable from rape, and the law ought to reflect that reality.

I’ll return to Linda Lovelace in a moment, but for now the important point is that in 1986, when the Providence Police apprehended Dana Smith and Rebecca Kidd and seized the photos of some 46 women from Stanley Henshaw III’s residence, there was a contingent of radical feminists—exemplified by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon and their anti-pornography activism—that would have disputed that any of the women’s involvements could have been volitional. Though the women’s respective entanglements ranged considerably, these feminists understood the gravity of the cases as a function of the john’s success in exerting his will; every instance of a woman participating in prostitution or pornography further confirmed women’s total lack of agency. When Aimee Lee Ball ventured in Mademoiselle magazine that Smith and Kidd ought to be seen as victims, she drew on this strain of radical feminism which held that prostitution was rape by another name. +++

In the 1980s, some feminists determined that their best bet to end women’s social subordination was to target violence against women, perpetrated through pornography, prostitution, and rape. This strain of feminism, of which radical feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were central figures, is often named ‘anti-pornography feminism’ after its signature legislative campaign.

But the premise of their movement was more general. MacKinnon and Dworkin’s materialist analysis held that pornography and prostitution were both forms of rape, and this was a fact that neither the mediated quality of porn nor the monetization of sex work could obscure.

In a 2005 article, MacKinnon put it this way: “Throwing money at victims of sexual abuse does not make it a job, taking pictures of it does not make it freely chosen or desired. It makes it pictures of paid rape—rape in the real, if regrettably seldom in the legal, sense.” MacKinnon’s lamentation of the limitations of the law came from firsthand experience. She and Dworkin are perhaps best known, as a pair at least, for pushing civil rights-based anti-pornography legislation throughout the 1980s.

Both women were members of the New York–based activist group Women Against Pornography (WAP) in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, but it was controversy surrounding the 1972 pornographic blockbuster Deep Throat that began their longtime collaboration. The star of the film, adult film actress Linda Lovelace, came forward with claims that her husband had forced her to perform in the film. WAP intended to represent Lovelace in her suit, but the group stopped short upon realizing that the statute of

By the 1980s, discourse surrounding pornography, prostitution, and rape—the question of women’s subordination—had been distilled into a question of choice. Antipornography feminists challenged the status quo by arguing that all shades of transacted female sexuality were coercive, but a vehement ‘Constitutionalist’ liberalism rose to meet the anti-pornography feminists where they were. In 1980, a controversy revolving around Linda Lovelace and the film Deep Throat brought anti-pornography feminism into direct conflict with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz is a useful avatar of this opposition, which he called ‘civil-libertarianism,’ and the clash has all the trappings of a cultural battle from which ‘the culture war’ can be extrapolated. But I include it here also because of Dershowtiz’s peripheral relationship to Henshaw's case. Not only did Henshaw’s defense rely on Dershowitz’s themes, which were clearly resonant with jurors at the time, but it turns out that Henshaw’s lawyer had actually crossed paths with our paradigmatic libertarian.

One night in 1980, Alan Dershowitz showed up at a Harvard dorm for a screening of Deep Throat organized by a group of undergraduates. The students would’ve been hardpressed to select a film that stoked the culture war more effectively than Deep Throat, as Lovelace had just gone public with her allegations that the film was the product of abuse.

Dershowitz supported the screening because he regarded the right to produce and view pornography as a First Amendment issue—he’d even represented the film’s male lead, Harry Reems, in an obscenity charge a year earlier.

But pornography, and all forms of commodified sexuality, raised other concerns for Dershowitz.

Dershowitz argued that feminist activism around ‘violence against women’ encouraged misapplication of the law—that all across America, women were being relieved of responsibility for their actions, leaving men to shoulder the blame.

In 1985, a year before the Henshaw sting, Dershowitz wrote an opinion piece for the Gainesville Sun in which he articulated these views. In what was probably a reference to feminists like MacKinnon and Dworkin, or at least the sort of feminism they espoused, Dershowitz observed that “it has become part of the rhetoric of certain feminists that johns must be arrested in the name of equality and feminism.” He went on to warn that the agitation of this “feminist

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fringe” would result in persecution of “otherwise law-abiding citizen who occasionally seeks the forbidden fruit of sex for hire,” as compared to the painless arrest of the “streetwalker” for whom arrest is an occupational hazard and thus attached to “little stigma or embarrassment.” Like the feminist ‘fringe’ he reviled, Dershowitz argued that transacted sex produced predator and prey, but the roles were reversed: the paying party was figured as the victim in Dershowitz’s strange utilitarian calculus, because, according to Dershowitz, they had more to lose. Such reasoning ignores the fact that sex work—particularly when criminalized—endangers sex workers, even imperils sex workers’ lives. Dershowitz blatantly prioritized the paying party’s property and status over sex workers’ personal safety. +++

On December 11, 1987, the New York Times reported: “Suspect in Sex Ring Is Cleared.” Stanley Henshaw III had been acquitted of all charges related to the prostitution of Brown students. In the trial proceedings, Henshaw’s defense attorney, John Sheehan, had asserted that it was Rebecca Kidd and Dana Smith, not Henshaw, who’d initiated sexual relationships. Money had been transacted, but not, the defense maintained, for sex; therefore, Henshaw had not prostituted these women. Nor had he wronged the many other women, whom he’d merely photographed in the nude. The court found no grounds to convict Henshaw. This verdict, however, could be interpreted in much stronger terms than its narrow legal scope. Legally, it could not be proven that the women were forced; to some, this confirmed that the women must have chosen.

One juror told a UPI reporter that “those girls were asking for sex,” evidently concurring with the core sentiment of Sheehan’s defense: Kidd and Smith “did it because they liked it, and they did it as a lark."

The Brown sex ring case was scandalous, but it was not the highest-profile case that John Sheehan had litigated. In 1982, Sheehan had defended Claus von Bülow, a Newport socialite charged with attempting to murder his wife, heiress Sunny von Bülow, by insulin overdose. The jury moved to convict von Bülow, but due to a technicality, the ruling was overturned and the case was retried in 1985. For the second trial, von Bülow hired none other than Alan Dershowitz to lead his defense team.

Sheehan stayed on to work with Dershowitz. The defense succeeded in arguing that it was Sunny’s own substance abuse, not her husband’s malfeasance, that had harmed her, and the highly-televised trial ended in von Bülow’s exoneration.

Dershowitz mythologized this stunning turn in his 1985 book Reversal of Fortune, later adapted into the 1990 movie of the same name. Published two years prior to Sheehan winning Henshaw’s 1987 acquittal, the book denounced Sheehan as a member of an “old-buddy network” of Rhode Island lawyers and judges open to private deals.

(The following year, Sheehan was appointed to the Rhode Island Superior Court, where he sat until his death in 2003.) The von Bülow trial shows that the ‘Brown sex ring’ case did not only occur in the midst of national debate over whether or not sex, let alone transacted sex, could be truly consensual, but was also, improbably, tangentially related to its two opposing arguments. Sheehan did not satisfy Dershowitz’s moral standards, but he did rub elbows with this forceful polemic. And, in his defense of Henshaw, Sheehan espoused a radical Dershowitzian liberalism, insisting that absent overt coercion, political subjects’ decisions are wholly their own—as it was his job to do, of course. On the other side, the fact that this occurred at an elite college placed it in proximity to the precise antithesis: the strain of radical feminism which equated pornography with prostitution, and opposed both because patriarchy jeopardized female agency.

Radical feminist arguments that neither sex workers nor pornography performers knew what was best for them gained particular purchase in spaces such as Brown, which fostered what could be described as a ‘philanthropic’ feminism organized around ‘saving’ such individuals.

No incident illustrates this better than the 1980 screening of Deep Throat in the Harvard dorms, where Dershowitz appeared to demonstrate his

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support. As a political statement, the screening’s power came not only from its flouting of obscenity laws, but also from its taunting of the actress who said she’d been coerced into performing in the film, and those who believed her. More to the point, the Deep Throat screening flew in the face of anti-pornography feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin who understood sex work as rape, and understood pornography as rape represented. The screening staged the opposition of mirrored positions: choice and not-choice. These were the positions that converged on the Brown sex ring case. +++

saying we’ve never experienced violence or constrained choice, that we love our jobs all day every day, and to be free we only need access to the free market.”

Lee joins other sex workers and activist groups in calling for a framework that recognizes sex workers’ agency while also capturing the range of material circumstances under which people trade in sex. One possibility, coined by sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith, is to substitute a framework of ‘deliberateness’ for a framework of ‘choice.’ To act deliberately is to assess one’s situation and proceed accordingly. To say that an action is deliberate says nothing of the degree of duress under which one acts. This framework lends itself to broad-based organizing around sex workers’ safety and well-being. For instance, sex-work advocacy group Decrim NY defines their coalition as people who have traded sex out of “choice, coercion, or circumstance.”

If the Ivy League prostitute, as represented

by Kidd and Smith, proved easy for the mainstream news media to condemn for her glib renunciation of charmed privilege, she also proved redeemable as a victim by the lights of anti-pornography feminism. In view of her +++ considerable wealth and status, she was often cast as an agent who chose her unfortunate All of this is not to suggest that the Brown fate; but feminists countered that privilege sex ring controversy should have litigated the notwithstanding, she had not chosen, that she question of whether the women acted delibcould not have chosen, despite what her false erately rather than whether they consented. consciousness may have led her to believe. In Instead, I mean to show that although it is fact, it was precisely Kidd and Smith’s extreme possible to think beyond choice and coerprivilege which proved to radical feminists that cion, the binary framing of sex work to emerge the state of womanhood is a state of subordi- from the 1980s culture war still shapes how we nation. They were not coerced along the axes conceive of and legislate sex work. In today’s of wealth or power, the reasoning went; thus landscape, however, the alignments are somethey must have been coerced along the axis of what different. In the mid-80s, when the Brown gender. ‘sex ring’ story broke, academic feminists My mom’s story is the slightest varia- had recently come to the idea that women tion on this one and much less interesting. As couldn’t choose to do sex work—that consent compared to Smith and Kidd, my mom was just was not part of the picture. Their assessment a bit poorer; she probably needed the cash a met the backlash of libertarians such as Alan bit more. Part of the reason why Smith’s and Dershowitz, who countered that all individuals, Kidd’s stories captured national attention rather regardless of social hierarchies, have an equal than my mother’s, or those of any other individ- capacity to choose. This same notion is implicit uals who’d sold sex or their sexualized bodies in today’s ‘liberal-libertarian’ narrative, through for money, is that it’d been decided, by some which choice—with all its pigeonholing and implicit principle of diminishing returns, that potential for liberation—can be attributed to sex Smith and Kidd were above the threshold of workers. need. They therefore must have wanted it. But My mom jokes that her implication in the anti-pornography feminism offered a way out Brown sex ring is my Brown ‘legacy,’ which is by asserting that there was no choice to speak a funny proposition but only marginally true. It of. is true that posing for naked photographs was Porn performer, writer, and activist Lorelei one small part of what sustained her through Lee has written about the absurdity of the college, and that an Ivy League credential choice/coercion binary that governs debate helped to secure an upbringing not unlike and policy around sex work. She recalls visiting Dana Smith and Rebecca Kidd’s suburban a law student classroom and being asked Connecticut origins for her children. She said by one student: at what level of poverty does to me that if I were to sell pictures or sex in sexual consent become impossible? The any way, it’d be as incomprehensible as their student’s question is jarring because of the actions, because it wouldn’t register as an act stark economic terms it applies to the question of economic desperation. But that’s not quite of consent. Lee, writing from her own experi- right. There are many of my milieu who cam or ences as a sex worker and assessing the recent run OnlyFans accounts or seek arrangements history of sex work in the US, shows that this of other kinds. Certainly many would question near-ubiquitous framework is not merely such acts: why, absent extreme duress, would absurd, but also actually harmful. anyone do those things? But there’s another Today, as in 1986, many conservatives and view, increasingly prominent, which does not certain radical feminists still align in the view that cry false consciousness but instead affirms that all sex work should be criminalized. However, sex work works well for some. Patrolling the bipartisan campaigns against sex trafficking distinction between forcible human trafficking in the intervening years have put sex workers and elective sex work, this contemporary and sex-work advocacy groups on the defen- liberal-libertarianism enthusiastically affirms sive, shaping a new perspective on sex work: sex workers’ ‘decisions’ to transact sexuality, what Lee calls the ‘liberal-libertarian’ narrative. perhaps failing to consider how wealth, power, Human trafficking is by definition forced; in this and the specific nature of the work shift the way it is unlike sex work, which is performed terms of exchange. Missing, in Lorelei Lee’s under a wide variety of circumstances. But in words, how lower-wage sex work can be “as the face of stringent anti-trafficking legisla- good and as terrible as other, lower-wage work.” tion, some sex-work activists have insisted on a clear distinction between coerced victims IZZI OLIVE B’20.5 asks that you support COYOTE of human trafficking and independent sex workers for whom the work is always a choice. RI, a local sex workers’ rights organization. For more The embrace of this dichotomy, though a stra- on the history of sex work in Rhode Island, she encourtegic effort to carve out some sphere of exis- ages you to see VICTORIA CARUSO B'21'S article tence for decriminalized, safe sex work, also “From Decrim to Recrim: Ten years of recriminalized sex work in Rhode Island.” limits the means of recourse possible for sex workers.

Lee writes, “Under these constructs, we have only two options: to be victims, which means we need to be rescued from our work— even if that rescue happens in handcuffs—or to be empowered sex workers, which means

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EPHEMERA

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BY Dorrit Corwin ILLUSTRATION Yukti Agarwal DESIGN Clara Epstein

AND THE MPAA RATING SYSTEM

content warning: references to sexual assault and non-consensual pornography

PORNOGRAPHY

BODIES MATTER:

If my great-grandfather Sherrill were alive today, I’d have a bone to pick with him. Sherrill Corwin was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the group that created the national film rating system in 1968, at the end of Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” 52 years later, a single shot that includes full nudity still causes a film to automatically be rated R, which drives children under 17 away from theaters and onto the internet. There, they can illegally pirate R-rated films (or sometimes legally stream them for free) and access content as explicit as hardcore porn without parental permission. In a highly digitized age, there is a yawning disparity between what is considered “appropriate” in film and other media, and what is accessible. As film and the internet rapidly change, so should antiquated systems like the MPAA rating system and certain aspects of the porn industry.

According to the MPAA website, the film rating system “provides parents with the information needed to determine if a film is appropriate for their children.”

However, unlike movie ratings provided by external sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Common Sense Media, the MPAA rating system is not merely a suggestion to parents; it is enforced. There’s a reason why sneaking into an R-rated movie before turning 17 was once a rite of passage, but now this act of rebellion takes place behind a screen at home. Furthermore, with people no longer watching movies in theaters due to the pandemic, MPAA ratings have been rendered even more irrelevant than they already were. This moment has become a live case-study of sorts, in which kids are constantly plugged in, with all the access—explicit and otherwise—that a phone or computer screen provides.

Unlike the often-stringent checking of IDs that occurs when a group of rowdy teenagers shows up to a theater to see an R-rated film, television ratings are much more difficult to enforce because television content is a commodity that is designed to be watched within the privacy of your home. Regardless, the TV Parental Guidelines went into effect in 1997, after being proposed in a joint effort from Congress, the television industry, the MPAA, and the Federal Communications Commission. Despite having been so formally established, these regulations function using voluntary participation from broadcast networks and (now) streaming platforms, which means that the decision to rate a show is determined by individual broadcast, cable, and streaming channels. While most popular networks and platforms do choose to participate in the rating system, the ability to opt out is a luxury that mainstream movie production companies and distributors do not have.

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Modifications have been made since the inception of television ratings, such as the requirement that content descriptors be added and that the size of the icon displayed at the beginning of each TV episode be drastically increased for visibility. The implication here is that the content children consume is determined by their guardians, who will infore the ratings in lieu of a theater kiosk. The same applies generally to the internet, a beast that has evolved so drastically and rapidly over the past twenty years that today’s generation of parents struggle to navigate its intricacies and understand the importance of knowing not simply what their kids are watching, but also what themes, values, and cultural lessons are being espoused.

Curiosity about sex is a natural part of puberty and growing up, and for many, so is watching porn. However, given the inaccessibility of comprehensive sexual education, young people, especially those gendered male (Pornhub’s audience is 75% male and 25% female, according to Psychology Today), often are left with porn as their primary resource to learn how to maneuver real-life sexual encounters.

This sex education ‘system’ is highly harmful because of the commonly disturbing portrayals of women in porn as hypersexualized beings who are completely submissive to men. Many porn videos portray sex as a violent act committed via clear power dynamics between the two actors. Many young viewers mistake the amateur cinematography, lack of overall professionalism, and easy access for a guidebook on authentic sex from which they can and should build their knowledge of how to handle sexual encounters in real life.

I’m aware that I run the risk of sounding reactionary by critiquing pornography (especially the nature of its content), but there is truth to both sides. In presenting sex in a vacuum, pornography omits the consent, care, and emotional connection necessary to maintain a healthy relationship. Consequently, mainstream pornography creates a highly exaggerated and untenable relational model between fictional and real-life sex. The problem with pornography is not necessarily always its content, but rather, the context in which it is found.

Pornhub, perhaps the most famous pornography streaming site in the US, has been accused of sex trafficking and posting non-consensual porn, yet it remains the 10th most trafficked website in the world. Many videos on their site contain brutal depictions of nonconsensual sex, essentially footage of rape. Young people all over the globe constantly derive their sexual techniques from these fabricated performances, normalizing behavior that doesn’t come close to the reality of such an intimate interaction. The way most mainstream porn is made advocates for imbalanced and unhealthy sexual dynamics that can make porn a harmful or even dangerous medium to consume, to say nothing of the absence of workers’ rights for most pornography actors.

The damage caused by the content displayed on Pornhub is compouned by the lack of alternative content that directly discusses sex. The taboo surrounding sexuality in our culture causes a deficiency of alternative models to supplement porn, especially through sexual education programs. According to Planned Parenthood, “Since 1982, the federal government has spent over $2 billion on abstinence-only-until-marriage ‘sex education’ programs.” In nineteen states, it is not a requirement to teach teenagers about condoms, let alone about healthy romantic relationships and dating and sexual violence.

Fortunately, discussions on the conditions of sex workers have recently taken flight. A petition started on Change.org in March 2020 titled “Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable for Aiding Trafficking” has 2.1 million signatures (and counting) and has garnered so much attention that the petition now resides on its own individualized domain within Change.org. However, it is worth noting that while such strides being made towards equity in mainstream porn production are important and long overdue, much of the resistance to porn as a media form using the language of “trafficking” originates from a conservative population that is largely concerned with investing in “family values” by opposing all porn, including that which depicts sex-positivity, legal sex work, and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community.

While the dialogue surrounding Pornhub and sex trafficking can be complicated and difficult to navigate, there are still ways in which equity and empowerment can exist in the porn universe. New feminist porn websites, for instance, are revolutionizing pornography. Bellesa, a porn production company run by women, believes that “sexuality on the internet should depict women as they truly are—as subjects of pleasure, not objects of conquest.” Make Love Not Porn (MLNP), a site that is “pro-sex, pro-porn, and pro-knowing the difference,” hand-selects only the most ethical and consensual videos that are free from porn clichés and depict porn in everyday scenarios to which viewers can more easily relate. Rather than “rating” each film the way the MPAA does, based solely on a set of somewhat arbitrary restrictions for viewers, these companies also take into account how the production of the pornography itself is operated. Curatorial teams at Bellesa and MLNP pay close attention to selecting videos in which actors are having “sex [that they] want to have, not sex they are told to have.”

Additionally, these websites are committed to being more inclusive and less heteronormative than Pornhub. They provide an alternative avenue for viewers to explore their sexuality, without exploiting actors.

Of course, these sites might not achieve the goal of encouraging healthy

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relationship behaviors on their own the way widespread sex education might, but they surely are a start.

The challenge then becomes how to fuse this realistic and humane world of pornography with mainstream television and film, while maintaining ratings and restrictions that are reasonable and consistent across the board. Some new shows like Normal People, Sex Education, and Euphoria have mastered the art form. There have long been formal contractual agreements between actors participating in sex scenes; however, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, many shows have begun hiring intimacy coordinators to help the actors feel even more comfortable while filming intimate scenes. This new role functions as a mediator of consent between the cast and the crew in the hopes of restructering the problematized relationship between the entertainment industry and sex, and reshaping the hypersexualized and one-dimensional portrayal of women in film. Not surprisingly, sex scenes aided by intimacy coordinators often also end up resonating more with the audience and feeling less like aggressive porn and more like real life. In a Los Angeles Times article, Lenny Abrahamson, executive producer of Normal People, said that “Having [Ita O’Brien, an intimacy coordinator] there did loads of important things, even down to the really practical, like: How is it possible to make something look real, and at the same time give the actors the comfort that it isn’t?”

Each of the three aforementioned shows depicts highly explicit scenes in an ethical way. Sex Education features masturbation scenes, Euphoria portrays transgender and queer sex, and Normal People spotlights how power dynamics feed into sex and relationships. All three of these shows are rated TV-MA (intended for mature audiences), but even so, anyone with a Hulu or Netflix account can watch them. While it would benefit younger audiences to consume media like this—if any of these shows were feature films, however, no one under the age of 17 would be able to do so.

There are countless discrepancies between major motion pictures and pornography. For example, when Lost In Translation hit theaters in 2003, the film was rated R due to one brief scene that features a topless Scarlett Johansson. An excerpt from an MPAA meeting in which this scene was discussed at great length reads, “Topless nudity in movies is a problem and must be stopped, especially if the actors are particularly cold on the day of shooting. Not only does this draw more attention to the nipple area, but someone could lose an eye and Lord knows the kids of today aren’t ready for that kind of horror.” Meanwhile, there are more than 20 pages of topless video content on Pornhub from the year 2003 alone.

The future of visual media—explicit or otherwise—should insist upon the ubiquitous presence of intimacy coordinators on set to ensure attention is paid both to the actors’ comfort and to each interaction’s proximity to reality. Every depiction of “mature content” that is readily available on the internet should strive to be ethical and authentic. Ratings given by sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Common Sense Media should carry more weight and play a role in MPAA ratings because public opinion matters, and movies are more nuanced than one “PG” (parental guidance suggested) or “R” (restricted) sticker.

If I could speak to my great-grandfather today, I’d advocate for an alteration to the MPAA rating system as a means of keeping his family business, now 97 years old and run by my father, afloat, in addition to representing sex in a more realistic and less objectifying way. I have spoken to my dad about this subject on occasion.

He agrees that the system his grandfather helped develop is perhaps presently outdated in some ways, but then again, so is his entire business. Keeping children under 17 out of R-rated movies does not prevent them from engaging with explicit content; it merely drives young people away from movie theaters, a declining business that needs to capitalize on its content and bring in as many customers as it can in order to stay alive. The motion picture industry and the porn industry are much more interconnected than they might at first appear; yet there is also a contradiction present when examining the accessibility of both mediums. It’s time to acknowledge that link and make significant changes to both industries, with the goal of educating young people about serious subjects in a way that encourages them to be respectful of partners in their own sexual encounters.

DORRIT CORWIN B'23 recommends hosting a Don Jon watch party in every sex-ed class.

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BEASTS OF BURDEN

At the age of 13, I was shown Sharkwater, a campy but gorily persuasive documentary about shark finning. Through shaky, mostly illegal camera footage, the movie unmasked the underbelly of the ruthless shark fin industry and its devastating impact on global shark populations.

Blood-stained ship decks. Desperate sharks sinking to the ocean floor. Rows of fins drying out on roofs. Shark populations diminishing at unfathomable rates. I became suddenly, unshakably terrified about the state of biodiversity in the oceans.

At first, it wasn't just about this one animal; it was about preserving an ecological balance. I thought a lot about the oxygen humans get from plankton—some 50–80% of what we breathe comes from oceanic primary producers—and how that might change if the marine food web was thrown out of balance. But sharks soon became my main character; they are, after all, more enigmatic than microscopic plankton.

I chose to love sharks. They are my favorite animal, by design: I had stumbled upon an unlikely underdog that I felt was in desperate need of a spokeswoman. Aware that fear and demonization played a principal role in their endangerment, I set out to highlight the ways in which sharks were actually cute and even cuddly. I was an advocate for all things sharks, armed constantly with an arsenal of oft-touted statistics about freak deaths by vending machines and fallen coconuts to undo any misconceptions. I became annoying in my obsession: editing my Instagram bio to read “shark lovers only,” doodling sharks on the back of tests, rocking shark socks and writing letters on shark stationary, organizing a screening of Sharkwater at my high school, and even crowdfunding among my friends to ‘adopt’ a whale shark from the World Wildlife Fund.

Beneath all of that, however, a part of me still feared sharks.

A viral photo of a silhouette below the surface or an advancing fin made my heart skip a beat. At the beach, I stayed in clear, shallow water and refused to swim after dark. I talked of my dreams of swimming with sharks while dreading the day I saw a fin cutting through the waves toward me. I held this fear close to my chest, acutely aware of my own hypocrisy.

But I realized the tension within me was not my own. It was a product of a culture that spotlights animal violence in order to demonize natural behavior, and of a narrative that works to prevent the love I strived for. I feared an artificial enemy fabricated in the mind of the American public, a figure that serves to justify the largescale shark massacre that continually threatens our marine ecosystems. In essence, our idea of the shark is far more dangerous than the animal itself.

Public perception of sharks is a study in contradiction. Sharks are feared and admired, hated and sought out, demonized and lionized. Tourists flock to Cape Cod’s so-called “Shark Alley” for a coveted glimpse of a razor-edged fin, then avoid its beaches after a sighting. We make movie after lurid movie illustrating the vicious cruelty of sharks, all while staining waters with their blood and littering the ocean floor with their carcasses. Undercutting it all is a sensational focus on violence; we fetishize our fear, using bloodshed as a selling point for falsehoods of evil. When it comes to sharks, this violence is where humans, rather strategically, lay our focus: curating a narrative that doesn’t merely excuse but even demands the massacre of sharks.

Jaws, the original thrilling, sensationalist film, paved the way for countless other shark-oriented horror movies (see: The Meg, Into the Deep, The Shallows, 47 Meters Down, and my personal favorite, the Sharknado series). The film’s legacy is unavoidable: Jaws imprinted upon the American consciousness the idea of the shark as the ultimate man-hunter, hungry for human blood and virtually

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invincible, which has persisted for nearly 50 years. It is a myth that is upheld through deliberate ignorance as much as misrepresentation; hiding the true nature of the shark allows for the monster to grow.

But sharks are not the ruthless people-killers we make them out to be. For one, they simply don’t like to eat humans. Our silhouettes floating on the surface—dressed in a black wetsuit, in the case of the first shark killing ever recorded in Maine this past July—often look from below like the seals that sharks hunt. Sharks bite humans, taste us, and realize that we aren’t, in fact, their prey of choice. This isn’t to say that shark bites cannot be devastating, but rather that it is usually not the intention of a shark to hurt us. As with most creatures, sharks will generally leave humans alone if we do them the same courtesy. They tend to avoid crowded beaches because, frankly, they don't like people. According to Dr. Bradley Wetherbee, a shark scientist from the University of Rhode Island, galeophobia (sharko-phobia) “is an irrational fear.” Gesturing at one of his students on his research boat with us, he told the Indy: “We could throw Colby overboard with some of these fish tied to him swimming around for days and never see a shark. It’s like buying a lottery ticket.”

We are far more dangerous to sharks than they are to us. The 10 humans killed by sharks yearly pale in comparison to the 100 million sharks humans kill each year, whether for their fins, as bycatch, or through illegal (and legal) fishing. But through our mythology about sharks, and our obsession with their perceived danger to humans, we are able to obfuscate these statistics and justify the massacre of the oceans’ apex predators—and, consequently, the destruction of the oceans themselves. +++ All summer, as I worked and played in the waters off Rhode Island, I wondered about how little I knew of the Ocean State’s sharks. So, on the third day of Shark Week 2020, a muggy, overcast, August morning, I drove to a shipyard in Wickford, RI to speak with Dr. Wetherbee and his students aboard the boat of the URI Undergraduate Shark Education and Research Program. I quickly learned that Rhode Island sits at a strange intersection: low on white sharks, but high on other shark species. (Scientists have recently removed the ‘great’ from the name to decrease public delusions about the species.) White sharks tend only to pass through Rhode Island’s waters as they travel up the coast; according to the Providence Journal, five white sharks passed through Rhode Island’s offshore waters this summer without taking up residence.

Local scientists’ working theory is that our shores simply don’t have the supply of seals that they crave.

The fussiness of white sharks alone explains why I had previously known next-to-nothing about my favorite animal in the state in which I spend the bulk of my year. White sharks, the media darling of the sea, are the beginning and the end of most of society's shark knowledge. This archetype, whose silhouette alone is a symbol of fear, is essentially the extent to which our collective attention reaches. In the absence of white sharks or fatal shark attacks, it is as if sharks barely exist at all. Media and the public seldom divert their cultish fixation with white sharks and their supposed violence— fear and captivation mingled together—onto other species. And so, those lesser known sharks remain in murky waters, rarely leaping onto our screens, the pages of our newspapers, or our consciousnesses. News media choose instead to amplify white-shark-related anxiety whenever possible. For example, Providence Journal shark coverage has revolved almost entirely around research on white sharks, with the addition of one article on a shark attack that took place in another state altogether. This focus hides the diversity of

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THE UNBERABLE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SHARK shark species that actually share our waters. Dr. Wetherbee rattled off a list of species that frequent Rhode Island: mako sharks, blue sharks, thresher sharks, hammerheads, and dusky sharks are found offshore, while sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks, and spiny and smooth dogfish reside inshore.

Rhode Island’s relationship with sharks is emblematic of a larger, societal way of imagining the animal, as well as a deep cultural fascination with white sharks and shark attacks. When asked how high-profile shark attacks impact his conservation efforts, Dr. Wetherbee was quick to reply, “First thing most people think about sharks is that they’ll bite people… just focusing on one species [white sharks] and one very rare instance of interaction with humans.” On the other hand, he added, “it generates a lot of interest in sharks. You don’t have a Black Sea Bass Week on Discovery Channel, you have a Shark Week.” This attention may be positive in Dr. Wetherbee’s mind, but it is drawn directly from the same mythology that misrepresents the shark. The same curiosity is not granted to black sea bass largely because brutality, bloodshed, and predator power is what piques interest and draws people to sharks, even if these are misconceived notions.

Shark Week walks in the footsteps of stories like the Jaws franchise, feeding mercilessly off human fear in its presentation of its titular character. Calls to action around the fear-mongering nature of Shark Week litter my shark-friendly Twitter feed, demanding less sensationalizing and more on-screen shark diversity. Of the 24 specials detailed by Entertainment Weekly this year, half explicitly mention white sharks. The ‘science’ behind Shark Week is often twisted for increased excitement, and research expeditions are distorted into hunts for “monster sharks.” Titles like “I Was Prey” and “Great White Serial Killer,” coupled with phrases like “killing spree” and “shark-infested waters,” are ubiquitous. (Nevermind the fact that humans are the ones infesting shark habitats.) Scientists and celebrities set out to investigate murders-by-shark and catch close-up shots of white shark teeth gnashing at the air. For a show ostensibly dedicated to helping to conserve the misunderstood creatures, Shark Week is far less interested in changing public perception than garnering ratings through tense music, dramatic camera angles, and ample footage of Mike Tyson wrestling sharks.

This concept of a wrestler in hand-to-fin combat with a shark is emblematic of the emphasis of Shark Week and other shark journalism on a rough masculinity that further perpetuates our fallacies about sharks. Just as Shark Week fails to present the true scope of shark life, so too does the program present a warped and narrow picture of those who study sharks, disproportionately highlighting men. Journalist Andy Dehnart laid out the bleak stats on Twitter: this year, less than one-fifth of on-screen talent was female-identifying, despite women making up over half of grad students in the field, and only two field experts featured were Black out of 88 total features. The predominance of white male scientists on these shows perpetuates their control of the field and upholds a culture of toxic masculinity. In an article published on Reality Blurred, Dehnart suggested that there is a direct connection with the focus on white sharks and similarly brawny species like bull sharks and the lack of scientist diversity. In limiting the species of sharks featured to a narrow niche, Shark Week inevitably excludes diverse demographics of scientists as well.

Early in Shark Week 2020, female marine conservation biologist Dr. Catherine Macdonald published an article entitled “The Dark Side of Being a Female Shark Researcher.” The article detailed the sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination she and her female peers, especially Black women and women of color alongside her, routinely face in their industry—running the gamut from comments about their strength while handling a shark, to being forced to sleep in close quarters in boat cabins with abusers, to having intellectual property stolen by male superiors.

Dr. Macdonald also discussed how Shark Week uplifts not only the voices and perspectives but also the careers of white male scientists, who disproportionately fill senior positions: “Shark Week’s choice of hosts and featured experts systematically enhances or upholds

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

BY Ella Spungen ILLUSTRATION XingXing Shou DESIGN XingXing Shou

the authority of white male scientists while rarely incorporating the voices or featuring the work of women or people of color.”

The notion underlying both the overrepresentation of men onscreen in Shark Week (and in shark-related cinema) and their actual dominance in shark science is that sharks require men to wrangle them. Burly men bellowing at a shark breach overwhelm our TVs during that week in August to prove that sharks are a force to be reckoned with, requiring muscles and gruffness to avoid certain death. Masculinity is presented as a prerequisite for handling sharks because it inflates our conception of the danger of the shark to humans.

There is a direct parallel between the toxic masculinity present in shark science and on Shark Week, and how we mischaracterize the sharks themselves. The fetishization of predatory, violent behavior is promoted through a simultaneous overrepresentation of (often abusive) men and a tunnel vision on ‘great’ white sharks.

These concepts go hand-in-hand, feeding off one another, to create an infallible image of the shark as the ultimate enemy. In this narrative, macho men fight hand-to-fin with beastial sharks; it is a tale of brute force, aggression, hunting, and murder. There is no space here for female scientists, nor for the truth—beautiful, natural, fascinating, endangered sharks. In crafting this story, sharks are demonized to the point where prosecution by way of murder seems reasonable. It weaponizes a grand misunderstanding about sharks and our relationship to them, encouraging our easy slaughter of the ocean’s most resilient inhabitants. By crafting a tale of human weakness, vulnerability, and victimization in the face of animal sadism, we allow for the kind of wide scale environmental and ecological degradation that we perpetuate while remaining somehow ignorant of its scale. Humans have an uncanny knack for hiding the truth of our own predation behind the predatory nature of the animals we massacre. +++ Sharks have been on this planet for some 450 million years. To put that number in context: dinosaurs emerged some 245 million years ago and the first hominids (human-like creatures) lived about 7 million years ago. Sharks spent all those millennia circling the ocean evolving into their ultimate selves, honing their senses and survival instincts to perform flawlessly in their environment. Sharks have survived five mass extinctions, several cycles of glacial and interglacial periods, and even asteroids landing on Earth. They have few natural predators, and have long played a crucial role in keeping the oceans in balance. And yet, despite sharks’ almost supernatural survival skills, it took less than 30 years for humans to decimate many shark populations to the point of extinction.

This is what is at stake. If humans cannot overturn our constructed ideology about sharks, we are at risk of overturning the balance of the oceans, which plays a critical part in keeping our species alive. We must purposefully shift our understanding of sharks away from a tired fiction and towards reality, with a frankness about the massacre that we perpetuate daily below the waves.

Perhaps this will come through deconstructing the unknown that props up these myths and focusing instead on the tangible aspects of sharks—like their incredible immune system—that make them worthy of our care.

As I paid closer attention to sharks over the years, I found that the more I consumed information that challenged the usual shark mythology, the less my fears about sharks made sense. When I finally did see a shark in the open ocean, I spent many moments speechless and unmoving in the water. I felt myself in the presence of something ancient and powerful, demanding reverence. The blacktip reef shark glided past me, tail swaying imperceptibly, and faded soundlessly into the blue.

ELLA SPUNGEN B’23 has a stuffed whale shark named Finn in her bed and another in her heart.

SCIENCE & TECH

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thinking about afternoons spent in bright rooms: a constellation is spilling out from in between your eyes— I wake up again, enraged about nothing at all.

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I remember the street, which is to say, I am putting it back together.* it’s funny how, over time, mundane objects become the markers of memories: two flights of stairs carved from gray marble. the smell of doors swelling in a July heat. a row of 청양 pepper trees overlooking the quiet cityscape. rounding the corner into the coffee shop, I am always greeted by the sign that reads, “책, 만화” although the comic book store closed years ago. other landmarks: a brilliant purple, bleeding into the milky white petals of an orchid flower. faded pink hues in an unfinished puzzle.

I rematch the one thousand pieces every monsoon season, sitting cross-legged in the veranda, a humid, humming quality to the morning… a tingling relief trickles down into my feet. after twenty hours in motion, a stilling. and it’s the end of an un-annual migration home.

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25 SEPT 2020

stillness is difficult in this part of the world.

I take my cup of iced tea at three-oh-five pm after doing yoga in the shadowed living room.

I am trying to learn photography, believing it will help me stay rooted in the moment, but the attempt is futile; there is too much motion in the image, too many blurry faces, overexposed and moving components drowning out in flashes of color (cue a summer memory of daffodils).

I set the stems, calloused over, in a jar of water. the blogs say it may take weeks, and still, the offsets may never root. in my spare time, I write letters. some are addressed to strangers: my baby cousin at age eighteen, my best friend’s future cat-child. it feels good to write.

I make efforts to speak the tongue. I am ‘fluent,’ but my conversations have the quality of role play. we rehearse the jokes and practice the mannerisms, acting out these past possibilities, gathering, then breathing them into being.

“that is so Korean,” we tease one another,

trying to enhance the minor, minute details—

anything we might have overlooked: although they are difficult to perceive with the naked eye, they rise up to the surface for air: my sister bundled up in blankets, the rhythmical sweeping of the overhead fan, low and murky in a five o’clock daze. converging into visible images, momentarily, then disperse again. rinsing out the sand from in between my toes, I expect to find myself in the silence, buried beneath warm earth and sun-soaked waters, but all I see is an empty beach, salt, and the seagulls. healing is messy, she tells me, holding my hand. take as much time as you need.

--the comings and goings always remind me that some seasons will be unbearably short and others, ripe and filled with loneliness.

NICOLE KIM B’22 is already missing the sunshine.

*line pulled from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

BY Nicole Kim ILLUSTRATION Ophelia Duchesne-Malone DESIGN Clara Epstein

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

LITERARY

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HEALTHCARE RESOURCES

These community health centers accept all insurance and have a sliding-scale system based on income for patients without insurance.

Blackstone Valley Community Health Center: Pawtucket & Central Falls : 722-0081 Thundermist: West Warwick & Woonsocket: 615-2800 Tri-County Health Center: Johnston & North Providence: 351-2750 Providence Community Health Center: Providence: 444-0570 East Bay Community Action Program: Riverside & Newport: 437-1008 These clinics provide free and/or low-cost health services: Clínica Esperanze, Providence: 347-9093 Rhode Island Free Clinic, Providence: 274-6347 If you have COVID-19 symptoms, there are several locations in Rhode Island where you can get tested. For more information, please visit: https://health.ri.gov/covid/testing/ Para más asistencia en español, llama a la línea de apoyo de AMOR: 401-675-1414

BAIL FUNDS & MUTUAL AID

AMOR COVID-19 Community Support Fund. Donations go to support sanitation equipment for vulnerable populations, as well as direct financial assistance to families in need. Donate here: https://bit.ly/2UmYJXr To get involved as a volunteer, packaging and distributing mutual aid, visit: h ttps://tinyurl.com/amor-covid-volunteer FANG Collective Community Bail Fund. As jails and prisons continue to become coron- avirus hotspots, they present extremely unsafe conditions for those inside, many of whom are held because they can’t afford bail. Help bail people out from the Bristol County House of Corrections and the Ash Street Jail through this fundraiser organized by the FANG Collective: https://gofundme.come/f/fang-bailfund Project LETS Mutual Aid Fund. Project LETS is working in coalition with grassroots organizations in Rhode Island to provide direct financial assistance to the most marginalized and vulnerable in our community. Donate here: https://projectlets.org/covid19

PROTESTS & EVENTS

Saturday, September 26: AMOR Bingo Night! Join the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR) for a virtual bingo night from 7:30 to 9pm, featuring questions on such topics as Black-owned RI businesses and RI labor history. Tickets are $35 and all proceeds go directly to the AMOR legal fund, specifically to pay the legal expenses and bonds of AMOR’s clients so they avoid deportation.

Sunday, September 27: The annual Providence Sunday Flea Market at 345 South Water Street. Come down to the river to find some of the city’s best vintage vendors, artisans, and food trucks. COVID edition—wear masks and maintain social distance.

Thursday, October 1: 12pm demonstration at Providence City Hall protesting the lack of transparency around the conditions of Rhode Island prisons during the pandemic. Organized by Black and Pink Providence, Never Again, Direct Action for Rights & Equality and RI COVID Response: Decarcerate NOW. Thursday, October 1: Armory Farmers Market at Dexter Park (85 Parade Street), 3:30 to 7pm. Get your fall harvest from local farmers and food-makers, including the African Alliance of Rhode Island, Fearless Fish Market, and Foggy Notion Farm.

Ongoing: The Sunrise Movement is offering online courses on defunding the police and more. Sign-up here: https://bit.ly/2C1T0jb

ELECTIONS

Sign-up to phonebank for the Green New Deal through Sunrise RI: https://bit.ly/2EKZVhF designed by mehek vohra

This week, and for the foreseeable future, the Indy will publish community aid funds and other ways you can contribute to coronavirus relief and mobilize for racial justice, in addition to our traditional event listings.