Writ Large Volume 4, Issue 1

W L

RIT ARGE

UMASS BOSTON FALL 2016

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1

2 Are We Missing the Point?

by Nina Roxo

4 Positivity Paired with Progress

by Patrick Shaw

6 Charter Schools: The Facts

CONTENTS

by Philip McLaughlin

8 Thirteen Years

by Samuel O’Neill

10 Dear Aunt Rose

by Widmaer Fleuransaint

12 A Problem Too Big to Solve

by Mason King

14 The Transgender Community in Modern Media

by Edym McKelvey

16 Undercover Minority

by Kaitlyn Solares

18 Islamophobia: A Media-Created Monster

by Burooj Mushtaq

20 Conflict, Art, and Black Lives Matter: An Interview

by Kellie Ruccolo

24 Five Points to Engage People in Social Movements

by Tendai Meda

25 Immigration Policy, Race, and the Central American “Illegality”

by Meredith Gamble

28 Pluralism: The Much Needed Light of America!

by Kacy Granitsas

30 The Fight Against the Dakota Access Pipeline

by Laura Saucier

32 The Heroin Epidemic Nationwide

by Brittney Santos

34 95% of Childhood Sexual Abuse Victims Know Their Abuser!

by Kristin Connor

36 A New Stage of the Cold War: A War of Ideologies

by Mohammad Hassan

39 "What is Aleppo?”

by Jacey Taft

41 American Apathy

by Charlotte Burlingame

Foreword

WAILIN’ IN-EQUALITY

by Timothy Musoke Illustration by Jyoti Sharma

How glad shall I be, to stand among the privileged?

Or better yet, seek solace in being a statistic.

Maybe I’m better off as The Invisible Man, Or the all too familiar In-Visible Wo-Man. How glad shall we be, to permeate our socioeconomic class?

To toil on endlessly, clocking every possible hour, That we may see our offspring wear the gown one day.

And watch them wage not by the hour, But seek momentous joy in a prized paycheck, That knows not the grind of Minimum Wage.

How glad shall we be, to contend not with hunger?

To know of surplus, and think not of deficit, To know not of the harrows of biting cold, To know of an address, and to have a home, In which we all so gladly bask, When the night time comes and fierce winter arrives.

They say beauty is skin deep, Oh my! Is beauty so rich!

Black? Brown? Or… White?

Are there any Gray areas?

“I can see through the color!” they say, Or are my eyes a little tainted?

How glad shall I be, to be seen as an insider among outsiders?

“Immigrants!” “Illegals!” they sometimes say, It seems the history is unclear, A great country founded by outsiders.

How glad shall I be, to have my faith respected?

To defend not, that in which I believe, And practice freely, that which my forefathers practiced, To utter my name, oh so loudly, and hear not that familiar cringe.

“Equality,” they say, “is like a panther!”

Much so elusive, much more cunning.

Just when its whiff grabs you, It vanishes like dust…right into thin air.

STAFF

SPECIAL THANKS

Editor-in-Chief Kellie Ruccolo

Managing Editor Samuel O’Neill

Layout Editor Donna Kimmel

Copyeditors Burooj Mushtaq

Donna Neal Michael Metzger

Contact us:

Rajini Srikanth

editor@writlargemag.org

Jason Roush

Theme:

Erin O’Brien

You.S.A., Our Opinions on the Issues in the U.S.A.

Cheryl Nixon Welina Farah

Front cover and back cover photographs courtesy of Caleb Snyder DiCesare.

Honors College

Kelly O’Donnell Laura Saucier

English Department Political Science Department

Letter from the Editor With each passing year, I realize just how many changes the United States needs to make. We need to unite, not tear each other down because of fear and anxiety of the unknown. We need to support and defend our neighbors, who may differ from us in skin color, religion, sexual orientation or identity, ability, and beliefs. We cannot hide behind the cloak of the unknown. We cannot sit back. We cannot be silent. Hate cannot win. We need to learn from each other’s experiences—we cannot let fear blind us from the truth. We need to finish what we started; we need total acceptance. We need love. Maybe we can make America great. I won’t say "again" because America was never great for everyone. We need America to be great for everyone, with equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of what makes us different.

We need to celebrate these differences, not shy away from them. We will make America great if we can learn to love each other. In light of the recent election, I would urge that you remove hatred and fear from your heart. I urge you to speak up and out about the injustices people face everyday, even if you yourself are not facing those injustices. I urge you to learn from this magazine. We all experience different things, but we are all human. America is a work in progress. We can only move forward if we are one nation, with liberty and justice for all.

This magazine covers many issues that you or someone you know may be affected by. If you are seeking help, please contact University Health Services at www.umb.edu/healthservices or by phone at 617-287-5690.

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ARE WE MISSING THE POINT?

by Nina Roxo Illustration by Margaret Gillis

T

he short answer to this question is yes. “By a mile” would certainly do to answer the question “By how much?” Earlier in the semester, I was reading

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through news headlines on my commute to school, and I was struck by one in particular which said, “That’s rich, Amal! How Mrs. Clooney’s worn £34,000 of clothes in 14 days while grandstanding as a champion of the downtrodden.” This set me off, and for

a while, I couldn’t figure out exactly why.

The whole thing repulsed me. A human being, just doing her job, was scrutinized so heavily to the point of having an entire piece written just on what clad her body.

The problem isn’t that we feel a certain

type of way about the way a person looks; everybody is going to have an opinion regardless of whether or not it is expressed.

The problem is, however, that insignificant things such as wardrobe become the main focus of what is put out and consumed via media. Why do we care so much more about what someone is wearing than we do about what someone is doing if what this person is doing isn’t shocking or scandalous? We long to be shocked. We, as consumers of media, are desensitized.

So, what do we do? Does anyone want to read about Amal Clooney’s work on sex trafficking? No? Okay, let’s talk about her sunglasses instead.

This isn’t a piece taking any stance on Amal Clooney, and this isn’t a piece functioning to put down celebrities and those who get attention in the media. This is a piece calling for an acknowledgement that we, as consumers of media, are the problem. We are perpetuating the output of media nonsense by continuing to consume it. With acknowledgement of this problem can come change to make us a hopefully less-ignorant, better-working society. Becoming more conscious consumers of media would help us filter out what information will not arm us to deal with the societal issues at hand today. To answer the question of why we care so much, I have come to a single answer: we’re scared. We’re happy in our bubbles. We’re happy going about our days listening to our songs, scrolling through our timelines, reading about our celebrities, and ignoring the rest of what is around us. What’s around us is scary, and nobody wants to acknowledge what is scary if they don’t have to. It’s so much easier to go home, lock the doors, and exist without having to think about our societal issues so long as they are not immediately threatening to us. It’s part of our human nature to gravitate toward things like this on any media platform, and while they are not necessarily constructive to our society, they are more relatable on a daily level.

As social creatures, we’re programmed this way. At this stage in our evolution, we consume what will entertain us, and maybe even increase our social status.

We are so affected socially by media output, that in us, it gives a false sense of security by enveloping us in a reality that does not actually exist. This reality often ignores the pressing issues of the times, favoring stories and people whose presence in the media do not represent the

real issues we are facing. Because of this, it is much easier to write off reports that hold real societal weight, as we have the help of the media in creating our own distorted realities. What is actual reality does not necessarily have to be our individual realities with the influence of media.

This is why we need to be mindful when considering what sources of media we choose to let into our lives. With constant exposure to nonsense media, we are doomed to succumb to the fate of agendasetting, where the most frequently covered stories will become the most important to us, even if they are not the most relevant or constructive. We need to monitor the media that we allow to stream into our lives because if we don’t, our reality will be distorted in such a way that we believe there are fewer societal problems than there actually are.

In today’s society, we have the means to reach an immense number of people via media. Most people have access to news and social media outlets on a daily basis, if not on an hourly basis. Many of those who put out material working for social media outlets are extremely gifted writers and researchers, and these resources are being used by media outlets for insignificant reports much of the time. Imagine if those who had such talent actually used it to write about and expose things significant to our development as a nation, such as politics and medicine. Though cognizance of these things is often hard to swallow, it is important that we, as citizens of the United States, keep ourselves informed by consuming media from unbiased and unfiltered sources. Media outlets have incredible power in influencing the American people, and it is up to us to decide what is worth our time. Reading a piece on Kim Kardashian’s bravery for leaving a visible patch of psoriasis on her calf is not worth our time. While one could draw from this a message that it is important to accept yourself for what you are and not be self-conscious over things you cannot control, there are also people dying because their healthcare is inadequate.

If we opened our eyes to what was really going on in our world instead of hiding behind copies of People magazine, the levels of brilliance we could reach on an individual and societal level would be higher than ever before. We now have the means to affect so much change, and this energy and intellectual capacity is

being wasted if we’re spending it worrying about what celebrities ate for lunch yesterday. Millennials are stereotyped as lazy, narcissistic, and even unintelligent individuals, and while this is far from the truth, this view is in part due to the emphasis many place on concern for the superficial qualities possessed by the idolized. Entertainment is a part of our lives, but it shouldn’t be all with which we concern ourselves. It is what helps to save us from feelings of helplessness and despair that develop from a knowledge of disparity and mistreatment in our country. Knowing the realities of the millions of Americans who do not have health insurance is bound to affect many who may have the means to do something about it, but because of the great concern for what doesn’t matter, not much is being talked about on our part. If something doesn’t immediately concern us or affect our lives in any way, it is not a priority. What doesn’t concern us gets put on the back burner until the fire goes out completely, and all is forgotten. This isn’t done maliciously; it is just a trademark of our busy lives in making sure that what we need to do is done. In this way, we are inadvertently perpetuating the production of superficial media material.

Not only is there so much information not relevant to our development as a country in circulation, but information about important things is being internalized by people from sources that are not meant to be news outlets. Because the purpose of sites like Facebook and Twitter is purely social, what is broadcast on these sites is biased and filtered by those with whom we associate ourselves. Many people check social sites and use these as their main source of news, which contributes to the distorted, and sometimes completely wrong, view of occurrences in our country.

Many of us accept the material we see at face value instead of evaluating media sources for their credibility, allowing ourselves to be entirely misled in some cases. This is another way in which we perpetuate an unfitting use of media, and in doing this, we are doing an injustice to ourselves and to our country. So, now what do we do? We need to follow our leads, refusing to accept things at face value. We need to arm ourselves with the correct information using media outlets meant for such material. Using this knowledge, we will more effectively be able to handle all that will be thrown at us in these upcoming years, and maybe finally get the point.

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POSITIVITY PAIRED WITH PROGRESS

by Patrick Shaw Illustration by Elizabeth Grover

In a society where ninety-one percent of women aren’t content with their body image, there lies a much-needed tool to repair repressed self-esteems.1 The Body Positivity Movement is a trend that encourages people to love themselves regardless of their physical appearance. In 1996, Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott created this concept to further empower women who let their weight and health issues negatively affect their productivity

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and social lives. The goal of the movement is to enable women to feel comfortable in their own skin, which in theory will motivate a continuance of constructive habits toward living a healthier life.

However successful the movement may be in empowering a woman, her opinions are naturally influenced through mainstream news and advertisements.

Whether we like it or not, mainstream media controls our perspective

regarding the ideal body types. Behind the expensive lighting, spray-on abs, and expert Photoshop skills are normal individuals who are edited to appear much more attractive than they are. We are constantly consuming advertisements, which set a bar for the perfect human being. In most viewers’ minds, the comparison between the depicted celebrities and models and themselves yields an increasingly deplorable self-

image. The notions associated with perfect health are more often than not images of professional models that rely on their physique to earn their living.

While the paid actors are indeed a representation of what a healthy human looks like, the more realistic examples are never given spotlight. While a specific woman may have a rounder stomach and thicker thighs, her level of health may very well surpass the model that she aspires to be. For these reasons alone, the placement of curvy and so-called plus-size women throughout tabloids and magazines help to break the barrier between healthy and happy.

A concerning figure has surfaced, citing that “twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed eight percent less than the average woman. Today, she weighs twenty-three percent less.”2 This information is a startling representation of just how influential the pressure to achieve a petite body figure has become. When women in the media are this much thinner than women in real life, young women who view these photos are being taught that they too should be this thin.

It’s well known that young minds are shaped greatly by the adults they want to be. If a model is extraordinarily skinny, the young women who view her image foster an ambition to attain that very shape and size. It was found that “in 1991, forty-two percent of first-through-third-grade girls reported wanting to be thinner.”3 Media is controlling the desires of these young girls and evoking feelings of disdain for their individual body frame. The mentality of these young women can be altered through revision of the models that inspire via pop culture.

In present day America, the message of the Body Positivity Movement has remained the same, however it is mainly a social media trend. Two Instagramfamous stars, Blac Chyna and Jordyn Woods, display the utmost confidence despite being what we consider plussize. When the two upload risqué photos depicting their curvy figures, followers not only worship their confidence, but begin to accept their own thicker bodies as beautiful. The inclination of body

acceptance is a powerful notion for young women, mainly due to the ease of influence in adolescent minds. Fifteen years ago women were taking drastic measures to achieve the popular skinny physique of stars like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.

When women looked up to these stars as role models, a notion was drilled into their conscious, relaying the message, “If I’m not as skinny as them, I cannot be a gorgeous woman.” The increasing number of shapely stars in present day have been slowly encouraging girls of all sizes to never let their body shape affect how they live life. The unrealistically thin models of the early 2000s have been replaced by women who proudly accentuate and own their curves. Around the country, women of all shapes have been flaunting their confidence and feminine energy.

Many people agree that the Body Positivity movement supports a higherquality peace of mind in individuals who empower themselves. Individuals who adopt the given mindset are generally more forgiving to their bodies, ceasing any negative connotations regarding their weight or fitness level stunt their positive affirmations. For once in their life, feelings of oppressive guilt and sadness aren’t transpired. The size and shape of a person’s anatomy is no longer an excuse for a lack of confidence or pride. Behind the layers of happiness and acceptance lie an equally detrimental issue, which is physical health.

Throughout WordPress and other health-oriented blogs, a trend has begun.

Many overweight bloggers have come to love the body they live in, squashing any insecurity or thought capable of hampering their success. A female blogger, Briana Hernandez, argues that if “shame was ever an effective motivational tool, [she] would have put down the fork a long time ago.”4 Hernandez expresses a powerful notion: her past negative thoughts never inspired weight loss. Instead, because she was accepting of herself, she was actually able to take those steps to happiness and a fulfilling life. Hernandez realized that feeling sorry for her current state wasn’t providing an incentive for weight loss, but further worsening her situation. When she comments on her current body image, she

attests, “This is my body for today and I am celebrating it. Every pound, inch, dimple and stretch mark. We all deserve that.”4 Increased feelings of positivity undoubtedly yield a mentally healthier person. While all of the steps point toward a destination of complete favorable reception, the issue of physical well-being is most certainly still viable. Some people are so significantly overweight that their bodily systems experience severe adverse effects.

All the body positivity in the world is not a strong enough force to fight the inevitable repercussions of nature. Food is one of the larger facets that control everyone's health on this planet. The phrase “you are what you eat” applies perfectly to the debate at hand. When a majority of food a person consumes is processed and full of trans fats and sugars, their health level will continue to decline. On the other hand, a person who continues to fill their system with nutrient-dense meals will see an upward trend in the way their body feels and their mind engages. It goes without saying that frequent exercise of any form is beneficial to muscular and cardiovascular health.

Not only is it impossible, but also highly unfair to judge an individual’s health through comparisons of body mass index readings and especially through physical appearance. There are far too many factors contributing to each and every individual’s health to gauge an accurate reading.

Regardless of anyone’s level of fitness or health, there is a lesson to be learned from Hernandez. Nobody’s body will ever be perceived as perfect. People will always find flaws in appearance and character, making arbitrary judgements based off angled viewpoints. It’s crucial that we all learn to love our bodies for the sake of learning to love ourselves. No badgering or bullying can affect an individual who truly loves themselves, and self-appreciation goes a long way. When a positive self-image is established, weight loss and strides in nutrition must follow. Whether you are overweight, underweight, or just right, it’s important that you accept your body the way it is and begin admiring yourself with no restraint. Every single one of us deserves happiness and peace of mind.

“11 Facts About Body Image.” DoSomething.org Lovett, Edward. “Most Models Meet Criteria for Anorexia, Size 6 Is Plus Size: Magazine.” ABC News. ABC News Network, 12 Jan. 2012.

Miller, Kelsey, January 26 2015 7:40 PM, Diet & Nutrition • Wellness, and Photo: Image Source/REX USA. “Study: Most Children Start Dieting At Age 8.” Children Dieting.

4 Hernandez, Briana. “I’m Body Positive, But I Made The Decision To Lose Weight.” Thought Catalog. 04 Sept. 2015.

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CHARTER SCHOOLS: THE FACTS

by Philip McLaughlin Illustrated by Elizabeth Grover

Education in Massachusetts is undergoing a monumental and historic shift in response to an ever-changing world of growing complexity. As skill sets change and technology advances, schooling must adapt or Massachusetts and the United States will slip further behind the rest of the globe in education.

Since the No Child Left Behind Act and the subsequent Every Student Succeeds Act, education has been designed around standardized testing in order to receive funding from the Federal Government.

While developing a changing curricula, school systems have become desperate for more sources of funding as the tax base decreases and property values decline.

This has resulted in a tale of two systems, wherein wealthier communities with more financial resources for education are able to stay ahead of the curve and working class communities gradually fall behind. Increasingly, parents look outside customary public schooling and into charter schools, which offer themselves as an efficient and qualitative educational alternative to failing public schools.

Every parent, of course, wants the highest quality education available for their children, which has created a niche environment for charter schools to develop. In Massachusetts, this led to this year's ballot question 2. It asked whether Massachusetts residents would allow a cap to be lifted on the amount of charter schools allowed in the state, or if the cap would remain and funding to traditional public schools would continue. Charter schools fill a hybrid place between the quality education of private institutions and the diverse experiences of a public school. These hybrid schools incorporate some good things from public schools, in that they are usually free and cannot discriminate against students based on their ability or racial and gender identities.

These schools are also subject to federal and state educational regulations because they are, in fact, public schools and are publically funded, though parents usually have to apply for children to have a shot at being placed in these institutions.1 These schools occupy a unique niche in society and can provide a rare opportunity for traditionally underserved populations.

Charter schools often use a lottery system, which can sometimes result in

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disproportionate demographic makeups of students in the school vis-à-vis the neighborhood they are located in.

Opponents of charter expansion note that the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) call charter schools “separate and unequal.” The NAACP claim that charter schools have a lower than average population of special-needs and English language learner students, and therefore charter schools take away educational resources from populations that need them more.2 Proponents of expansion claim instead that because charter schools are under the same state and federal regulations as public schools, they provide education to a similar percentage of special-needs and English language learning students.3 Looking at data from the Massachusetts Department of Education, charter schools often have more students from low-income and economically disadvantaged backgrounds compared to public schools, as well as a higher than average population of students who are English language learners or of students who have a first language other than English. The report notes flaws with this data however, as “a statewide comparison may be more favorable to charter schools, particularly with respect to low-income and English language learner populations. The proportion of students with disabilities enrolled in charters also has steadily increased, though the level remains below the statewide average.”4 Specifically addressing the issue of a lack of diversity in racial and ethnic demographics in the populations served by charter schools, it is clear to see that charter schools actually serve black and Latino communities that traditionally have been underserved by local school

districts. For example, charter schools in Boston had a disproportionately high amount of African-American students— twenty percent higher than the traditional public schools. In Springfield, it was the same with Latino students. Overall, Massachusetts charter schools serve more women, along with more racial and ethnic minorities than do traditional public school systems.5 Charter schools, owing to their exclusivity, often have a smaller class size, but suffer from lower than average levels of public funding per pupil than traditional public schools. Charter schools differ from state to state, but Massachusetts does things differently than say New York or California.

Teachers at charter schools are often subject to less stringent regulations and have more flexibility in regards to their certification requirements compared to public or private school teachers. This difference of interests and backgrounds allows for a more diverse faculty, but varying levels of teacher quality. For example, to teach at a Massachusetts charter school, a bachelor’s degree in the field you are looking to teach is required per the No Child Left Behind Act. According to the Department of Education: “NCLB [No Child Left Behind Act] requires all public school teachers of core academic subjects to be highly qualified. Core academic subjects are defined as English, reading/language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography. In order to be considered HQ, non-charter public school teachers of core academic subjects must: possess a bachelor’s degree, demonstrate subject matter competence in each of the core academic subjects they teach, and possess an active and valid Massachusetts license to teach. Teachers in Commonwealth charter schools must meet all of the same requirements, except that of licensure.”6 This can result in varying levels of educational performance on the part of educators in charter and public schools.

However, the regulations for teachers in Massachusetts provide that charter school teachers must also be “certified or pass the MTEL (Massachusetts Test(s) for Educator Licensure) within one year of their date of employment.”7 Though Massachusetts allows for lower levels of certifications for charter school teachers, they still hold their teachers to the same educational standards as traditional public school teachers.

Beyond the educational performance, there are also growing concerns over accountability for charter schools, as they run independently of the local school district. As they are chartered by the state Department of Education, authority over charter schools is removed from a local school committee and delegated to a state authority. The Department of Education holds hearings that are open to the local community to try and get feedback on charter schools. However, opponents of charter expansion claim that “[i]n Massachusetts, the state can—and often does—approve new charter schools over the strong objections of local elected officials and a majority of the local voters and taxpayers—the people who actually have to pay for the charter schools—who testify at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education charter hearings.”8 Proponents, however, argue that because there are public hearings and a public chartering process, as well as rigorous checks on educational performance every five years, the charter school will remain a viable organization if it is also holding to its charter.9 As such, it would seem that though there is no local control, but there is still accountability through the state and public input available through the chartering process. More important to both sides, however, is funding.

The single largest issue in the charter school debate is on funding for public schools, plain and simple. Funding in Massachusetts is on a per-pupil basis, wherein funding goes to a pupil’s school based on the number of students there.

Under this system, funding for a student would follow them to a charter school and therefore take money away from the traditional public school system.

Opponents of charter school expansion therefore argue that money would be

taken from school districts and funding for things like STEM and the arts would be lost.10 Proponents of expansion, however, note that the funding follows the pupil and does not unfairly take away money from public schools at the gain of charter schools. Moreover, it should be noted that under Massachusetts state law, charter schools are in fact public schools, stating a charter school is a “public school operated under a charter granted by the Board…a charter school is considered a local education agency for all purposes.”11 Funding should be reimbursed if a student leaves a public school for a charter school, resulting in no loss of funding for the school district. In fact, were it to be fully funded, it would result in an increase in funding because of the reimbursement aid. However, for the last few years, Massachusetts has made cuts to its budget that have led to less reimbursement aid for public schools. Were the schools funded 100 percent on the reimbursement aid, they would receive funding for the student that left for a charter school in the first year at 100 percent, followed by a twentyfive percent per year funding in years two through six. This results in a 225 percent increase in the six year time frame, rather than a loss of funding.12 However, that is assuming Massachusetts fully funds its reimbursement aid commitment, which it has not done since the Fiscal Year 2012.

Instead, it has funded the reimbursements at ninety-six percent in 2013, ninetyseven percent in 2014, sixty-nine percent in 2015, and sixty-three percent in 2016.

Under this lesser aid funding scheme, the school districts, instead of getting 100 percent of the money it should get in the first year and the additional 125 percent it would receive in the following years, get ninety-five percent the first year followed by no percentage in the following five years, which is a loss of funding.13 Herein lies the center of the debate over funding. According to opponents of charter school expansion in Massachusetts, charter schools are already taking away $450 million from public school districts, and with potentially twelve more charter schools authorized by a "yes" vote on 2016's ballot question 2, there are estimates that $100 million more could have been

taken away.14 Proponents argue that this is inaccurate, and that with reimbursements factored in, school districts have been funded $356 million over the past five fiscal years, including more than $71 million in Fiscal Year 2015.15 According to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, 3.9 percent of students in Massachusetts attended charter schools and 3.9 percent of funding went to charter schools.16 This seems good on paper, but opponents argue that this data is biased because it removes any analysis of the costs to educate specialneeds students from the report,17 which would heavily distort the data. Data from the state Department of Education finds however that for districts that send students to charter schools, in Fiscal Year 2017, it will still cost public districts $451 million even with reimbursements earmarked for funding.18 This means that the losses from charter schools are increasing the same time as the state cuts budgets and funding for reimbursements, and diverting critical capital investments away from the state’s school systems.

The charter school debate has become more and more fueled by debates around financial resources as the needs of students and the student population has increased the need for money.

Charter schools have long enjoyed bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. The Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, is a wellknown supporter of a vote to expand charter schools in the Commonwealth, but people like the Democratic Speaker of the House of Massachusetts, Robert DeLeo, also support the expansion of charter schools. The contention in the debate has been mainly about money for school districts, with fights also over accountability for charter schools and the quality of charter schools. This debate has led to Ballot Question 2 for 2016, asking whether or not the people of Massachusetts support lifting the cap on charter schools or not. Charter schools are not unique to Massachusetts, nor are the issues in this debate, but other states must keep in mind one thing when it comes to this debate: it’s all about the money.

“Frequently Asked Questions About Public, Charter Schools.” What Is a Charter School? https://saveourpublicschoolsma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SOPS_OnePager_NO_8-23_prf3.pdf “Great Schools Now.” Great Schools Now. 17 Oct. 2016.

4 Corcoran, S. P., and J. Jennings. “The Gender Gap in Charter School Enrollment.” Educational Policy (2016): n. pag.

5 Details from the Dashboard: Charter School Race/Ethnicity Demographics.

6 “Massachusetts Charter Schools.” Technical Advisory 07-01 - AMENDED February 2011: Teacher Qualifications in Massachusetts Charter Schools - Massachusetts Charter Schools.

7 http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/new/2015-2016QandA.pdf 8 https://saveourpublicschoolsma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SOPS-4page.pdf 9 “Massachusetts Charter Schools.” Accountability - Massachusetts Charter Schools.

10 https://saveourpublicschoolsma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SOPS_OnePager_NO_8-23_prf3.pdf 11 “Education Laws and Regulations.” 603 CMR 1.00: Charter Schools - Education Laws and Regulations.

12 “Charter Facts MA.” Macharterfacts How Are Public Charter Schools Funded Comments.

13 “Charter School Funding, Explained - MassBudget.” Charter School Funding, Explained - MassBudget.

14 “The Facts.” The Facts.

15 “Charter Facts MA.” Macharterfacts How Are Public Charter Schools Funded Comments.

1 ⁶ http://www.masstaxpayers.org/sites/masstaxpayers.org/files/MTF%20Charter%20School%20Funding%20September%202016.pdf 1 ⁷ “Biased Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation Deliberately Ignores Special Education Costs, Impact on School Budgets.” Biased Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation Deliberately Ignores Special Education Costs, Impact on School Budgets.

1 ⁸ http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/finance/tuition/fy17/projection-distsum.xlsx 1

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THIRTEEN YEARS

by Samuel O’Neill Illustration by Natalia Mirabito

Boston Cannabis by Natalia Mirabito

Thirteen years in prison. Thirteen years behind the bars of a Jackson Parish Correctional Center cell in Jonesboro, Louisiana. This is the fate that Bernard Noble, a forty-nine-year-old father of seven, currently faces.1 The question then arises, what could Noble possibly have done to be given such a sentence? In the state of Louisiana, a perpetrator could be given five years in prison for committing

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battery with the motivation of a hate crime.

So, Noble’s offense must be more heinous than a hate crime. In the state of Louisiana, a perpetrator could be given ten years for assaulting an on-duty police officer with a motor vehicle.2 So, Noble must have done something even worse than hitting a police officer with a car. Well, the unfortunate truth is that Noble was given thirteen years in prison for an entirely non-

violent offense. Granted, Noble is a repeat offender, but every one of his offenses were non-violent drug charges. Bernard Noble is staring down the barrel of thirteen-year prison sentence for the possession of the equivalent of two marijuana cigarettes, colloquially known as a couple of joints.

But why? Why is marijuana so heavily penalized in America, and should it be?

In 2010, per the American Civil

Liberties Union (ACLU), fifty-two percent of all drug arrests were for marijuana. This means that law enforcement agencies, both state and federal, are putting most of their drug enforcement resources into restricting the use and distribution of marijuana. Now, given that marijuana has a Schedule 1 drug designation per the U.S. Controlled Substances Act,3 it makes sense that American law enforcement agencies would spend so much time and effort on policing the drug. But, many have called into question that designation. To be classified as a Schedule 1 drug, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the “substance, or chemical [is] defined as [having] no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”4 Marijuana shares its place in the Schedule 1 category with drugs like LSD, codeine, MDMA, GHB, and even heroin. But is marijuana, a drug that over fifty percent of Americans support the legalization of, really as dangerous as drugs like heroin and GHB?5 Now, don’t get me wrong. Marijuana is a drug, that’s not up for debate. And like any drug, marijuana can be abused, it can be dangerous and harmful in the hands of children and minors, and, as a federally illegal drug, it finds itself at the center of a black-market economy that has claimed thousands of lives. But whether or not marijuana is a potentially harmful drug is not the question that needs to be asked.

The truly important question is: Should people be getting thirteen years in prison for the possession of a small amount of marijuana? At this point, I realize a few questions have been asked, and all of them have gone unanswered. Why is weed so heavily penalized? Is weed as dangerous as other Schedule 1 drugs? Should the possession of marijuana carry such heavy penalties? The reason I ask the important questions before answering them is because to solve a problem, one must first know what the problem is. And the problem is that we don’t truly understand marijuana. We don’t understand why it’s illegal or how harmful it really is. Allow me to shed some light.

The prohibition of alcohol ended in

1933, effectively leaving the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) with nothing to do. The commissioner of the Bureau at the time, Henry Anslinger, had previously kept the FBN away from cannabis because he knew it would be impossible to eradicate.

But as the Great Depression and the legalization of alcohol saw to a dwindling budget for the FBN, Anslinger saw an opportunity to create a new demon for Americans to be afraid of, in “Marihuana.”

With no supporting medical evidence and brandishing newspaper clippings filled with “facts” he himself provided, Anslinger went before Congress in 1937 to ensure the ushering in of a new era of prohibition. Only this time, it was on marijuana. But, the most important thing to understand about Henry Anslinger and his push to make marijuana illegal is that he was an unabashed racist and his crusade was unabashedly race-based. Anslinger is quoted as saying that most people who smoke marijuana “are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. The marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”6 And this racial bias is still seen in American marijuana law enforcement today. According to the ACLU, white and black communities use marijuana at roughly the same rates. Across the nation, however, African Americans are four times more likely to be arrested for possession of weed than are whites.5 In Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, African Americas are 7.5 to 8.5 times for likely to be arrested for possession than whites. So, in any attempt to answer why marijuana is illegal and so heavily penalized in America, race will inevitably come up as a factor. There’s a separate discussion to be had about the racial biases within the American justice system as a whole, but as far as policy surrounding marijuana, the trends are clear.

Now to determine if marijuana’s Schedule 1 designation is justified. As I said, marijuana is a potentially harmful drug, and as such, certain health risks are associated with taking it. The National

Institute on Drug Abuse, or NIDA, reports that, in the short term, marijuana can cause “altered senses of environment and time, changes in mood, impaired body movement, difficulty in thinking and problem-solving, and impaired memory.”7 And when used habitually by teenagers, marijuana can “reduce thinking, memory, and learning functions and affect how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions.”7 What’s more, withdrawal symptoms from long term use of the drug can include “grouchiness, sleeplessness, decreased appetite, anxiety, and cravings.”7 If one looks at the effects of long-term use of heroin, though, a different story is found altogether. Per NIDA, “Chronic users [of heroin] may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, constipation and gastrointestinal cramping, and liver or kidney disease.

Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health of the user as well as from heroin’s effects on breathing.”8 So, clearly marijuana use has mild side effects when compared against another Schedule 1 drug. And the National Institute on Drug Abuse even concedes that marijuana has some possible medicinal applications, contradicting the drug’s Schedule 1 designation. According to NIDA, scientists are “conducting preclinical and clinical trials with marijuana and its extracts to treat numerous diseases and conditions, such as autoimmune diseases, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation, pain, seizures, substance use disorders, [and] mental disorders.”9 The final question left to answer can’t be answered by fact and historical trend.

The question of whether marijuana should be penalized so severely, and whether men like Bernard Noble deserve thirteen years in prison for possessing the drug. This question must be answered individually, by each one of us for ourselves. But I hope that we come to an answer soon, for every year that we wait, more than half a million people are put in prison for possession of this drug that we know so little about.

Newman, Tony, and Daniel Abrahamson. “Louisianan Given 13-Year Prison Sentence for Possession of Two Marijuana Cigarettes.” Drug Policy Alliance. Drug Policy Alliance, 16 Apr. 2014.

Wheaton, By Drew. “Felony Assault and Battery Louisiana | Criminal Law.” CriminalDefenseLawyer.com. NOLO. “Controlled Substances Act.” Controlled Substances Act. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

4 “DEA / Drug Scheduling.” DEA / Drug Scheduling. U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

5 ACLU. “Marijuana Arrests by the Numbers.” American Civil Liberties Union. The American Civil Liberties Union.

6 Gray, Mike. “The Devil Weed and Harry J Anslinger.” The Devil Weed and Harry J Anslinger. Common Sense for Drug Policy.

7 “Marijuana.” DrugFacts:. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

8 “Heroin.” DrugFacts:. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

9 “Is Marijuana Medicine?” DrugFacts:. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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DEAR AUNT ROSE

by Widmaer Fleuransaint

It has been a while since we talked and I just want to say that I miss you so much. I know the family often forgets your rightful place at the dinner table, but just remember that I value you and I value the life lessons you taught me as a child.

My most fond memories of our adventures together were when you taught me the meaning of acceptance.

I remember you saying, “Total acceptance means the total maturing of a person’s character.” I didn’t understand this then but I know exactly what It means now.

After taking this trip to Washington D.C., many of the lessons that you taught me became more apparent.

Through this trip, I began to understand why I often found you on the street instead of sleeping in a house.

My whole journey toward accepting the fact that I wouldn’t see you again all started when my school was advertising a trip for students. The trip was advertised as an alternative spring break or service trip to the country’s capital. The trip to Washington D.C. was designed so that students like myself could obtain life changing experiences through community service. There were only a few spots on the trip, so everyone who wanted to attend had to interview for their spots.

Since I had no formal plans for spring break other than satisfying my addiction to video games, I decided to interview. Of course, these interviews weren’t going to be easy because they were intended to weed out all the students that the administration felt didn’t fit into the team.

After a series of three interviews the administration decided that I did not fit into the team. They decided who they wanted on the trip and clearly it wasn’t me.

They said that I came close to making it into the list but someone else made a better case for their attendance.

After a couple of days, I received a phone call informing me that the same

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girl that had been picked over me was unable to make the trip due to unforeseen circumstances. She said that since I was the next immediate person to make the list I would be able to make the trip if I chose to. With great excitement, I said YES! The

next thing I knew, I was signing papers and paying my deposit for the trip.

A month later, several other students from Massasoit Community College and I left Boston’s airport on a journey that would enrich our lives for years to come. In four hours, we arrived in Washington D.C. and received directions to an old church in the middle of the metropolitan area. When we finally arrived to the place where we were going to spend our spring break, we were greeted by our hostess. She took us to the floor we would be sleeping on, and it literally was a floor. The administration felt that the less we had, the more we would understand the goals of the trip.

Aside from the several community service missions and the soup kitchen visit we were scheduled to take, the administration encouraged us to explore Washington D.C. as tourists. During that time, we visited multiple museums and various other tourist attractions, including the zoo that was in the city. It was a fun experience and that is where I bought multiple souvenirs.

The most memorable part of our tourist trip was when we visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural Science. There we explored the premises and we were amazed by the countless treasures we found. The best part of the museum had to have been the butterfly exhibit. There we frolicked through the garden while countless butterflies attached themselves to our clothing.

After all the tours, museums, and group dinners, we returned to our main mission of community service. So, the next day we ventured out to the heart of the city to find our first community service site.

The soup kitchen we arrived at was called D.C. Central Kitchen. When we arrived at the site, our group was spilt into teams and then dispersed throughout the kitchen into several posts. We separated evenly into either cutting carrots, cutting chicken, or mashing tomatoes for soup. After preparing the meals, we were directed to package the meals into designated bags for delivery to their intended family members.

The D.C. Central Kitchen and other soup kitchens often package specific bags for people with HIV and other illnesses to strengthen their immune system. Elderly people would also receive special items in their bags that were compatible with their digestive tracks.

Aside from a central city distribution location, the D.C. Central Kitchen also supplied food to similar assembly kitchens that served the surrounding community.

One of the kitchens supplied by D.C. Central was next on our list. It was located on Virginia Avenue next to a little brick red building that served as a small dining area. It serves as a daily site for homeless people to come eat, get a haircut, and wash their clothes.

Did you know that in the month of January 2015, on any given day, 564,708 people were experiencing homelessness?

This means that they were either sleeping outside, in an emergency shelter, or in a transitional housing program. Aside from that, 7 million people were living doubled up with a family member or a friend and were considered at risk for homelessness.

Every day, the little soup kitchen on Virginia Avenue opens its doors at 8 o‘clock in the morning to serve breakfast.

Afterward, the people who had been served would stay longer to converse with others and, if time permitted, get their head shaved by a barber for free. Aside from the free haircuts, the soup kitchen also had an industrial-sized washer and dryer.

When we arrived at the site, I was given my service detail to be the soup server. I would fill everyone’s bowls with tomato or squash soup. Like other sites, I was grouped with someone from my school. Her name was Jasmine and she had a great appetite for collecting corny quotes. In the middle of our bonding as friends she was suddenly overcome by the sadness at the sight of a child that was in the line. She cried and I comforted her by telling her that the child looked happy.

Something I realized about the sad reality of poverty was that even little children could suffer. After completing our duty as soup servers, we introduced ourselves to the child to make her time at the center more enjoyable. To our surprise, she played with us as if she knew us all her life. Although I don’t remember her name, the feeling she left us with will never be forgotten.

The highlight of the whole trip was when our school, along with two other schools, held a community dinner for the people in the area. We prepared everything from scratch, even the dessert. As a team, we decided that we would make the guests rice and beans with a side of carrots. Two students were in charge of making the rice and beans while the other groups oversaw making the desserts. For dessert, the students made two whole cakes.

We were assigned to serve tables once the guests arrived. Jasmine and I were paired together on the far left next to two men. Their names were Silvester and Muhammad. They both had very diverse backgrounds. Silvester was a poet and Muhammad was an immigrant from the Middle East.

Silvester was also a writer for the street newspaper in the community. Like many other individuals, he submitted works to the street newspaper in the hopes of selling the paper on the street. He had a copy of the newspaper and showed me his work, which was, to my surprise, very interesting.

At the time I was on the D.C. trip, I was also writing for my school’s newspaper.

I was approaching a deadline to submit

a story so I decided to post some of Silvester’s poetry. I told Silvester to email me his work and that I would post them on the site. I made a small space for Silvester to post his work. For weeks, we emailed each other on other possible works he was interested in publishing.

Muhammad moved to the United States several years before in the hopes of starting his own business. It was going fine for a couple of years, but three years into the venture he lost everything. He lost his business, his house, and his money. After moving from motel to motel, he finally ended up on the street. Since he had no immediate family members, there was no safety net to keep him from being homeless.

Muhammad was a peculiar person, unlike any I have ever met. He was in complete control of his appearance. From the hat he wore to the polished shoes he walked in, it seemed that everything he had was kept in mint condition. He told me that even though he was on the streets, he was going to dress like he had always dressed.

He also told us about the life he used to live back in his own country. He told us that back in his home country, he was a mechanic. He used to fix cars and sell them to the highest buyer. After the economy went bad in his country, he decided to move to America for bigger business ventures. He assured us that even though he was poor at the time, after a little while, he would start another business to get back to the life he was accustomed to.

The trip ended that night and we went back to our rooms to pack up so that we could catch our flight in the morning. I said my goodbyes to everyone that I met and we had one last breakfast as a group. The last part of the trip was the reflection. As a part of the experience, the administration at our school handed us journals in order to write a required reflection entry. During that time, all I could think about was you, Aunt Rose. All I thought about were the days when I let you into our house because

it was raining. All I could think about was how hard it must have been living on the street with no place to call home. I still don’t understand why you refused our invitation to stay with us, but what I do understand is the strength it must have taken to survive all those years on the street. I am so sorry that I never got to say goodbye when you died and I hope you know I never had the proper closure. I am writing this letter not because I think you will read it, but because it will be the closure I needed after

all these years. Thank you again for all the values you gave me.

Yours Truly, Widmaer --P.S. All of the students were so enthused about the service trip that we weren’t ready to let it go. A month after the trip, several other students and I established the Social Action Club at Massasoit Community College. The aim of the club was to service our community through volunteering.

During our first year, we collected a large amount of food for the food pantry and we also gift wrapped Christmas presents at My Brother's Keeper. Even though I no longer go to Massasoit, the spirit of community service still echoes through the efforts of the Social Action Club.

Photos provided by the author.

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A PROBLEM TOO BIG TO SOLVE

by Mason King Illustration by Rixy Fernandez

What do you think of when I say Friday night? You are probably thinking about going out with friends and drinking or going to a bar to meet people. Most nights out are centered around alcohol because the United States glorifies drinking. We portray drinking as part of the college experience. It is also excessively displayed in the media, with constant posts on social media and commercials on television for

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every type of alcoholic beverage.

A statistic from the Center of Alcohol Marketing shows that between 2001 and 2007, there were over 2 million alcohol ads. During a football game, there is no chance that a Budweiser commercial will not be on at one point or another. An Instagram account called “totalfratmove,� which has over 1 million followers, posted a video of a young man drinking an entire

bottle of Smirnoff Vodka. This video has received around 500,000 views and 8,400 comments. Most followers of this account are teenagers and college students. This glorification makes the impressionable youth want to try this. They will think it is an okay thing to abuse, although they do not see it as abuse.

Furthermore, drinking is often sung about in songs, especially in country and

hip-hop music, which are very popular with young adults and children. In an article written by Gayle Thompson for theboot.com, she discusses Luke Bryan, a very successful country singer, who has a song called “Drink a Beer.” In 2014, it was number one on Billboard's Country Airplay. This very popular song is about losing an important person in your life and predicates the idea that drinking a beer is the fix for this issue.

When was the last time you attended a restaurant that did not have an enticing poster of an alcoholic beverage? These posters or ads are out in the open for all ages. From a young age, we are introduced to alcohol, which raises the chance for us to associate ourselves with drinking. This has become a huge unnoticed problem in the United States. In fact, it is more uncared for than unnoticed. Alcoholism is a nasty epidemic, which potentially takes the lives of the drinkers, takes the lives of people affected by the drinkers, and tears families apart.

Based on an article by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), alcoholism effects over 17 million adults in the United States, and with over 3 million new cases of abuse per year, this is a serious problem. Because this habit is glorified, most people do not see it as a problem or realize they are addicted.

They do not even understand that they are hurting themselves and those around them. Because of this, only a little under nine percent of people affected seek help.

Drinking is so accessible and legal that people become blind to its effects.

I have a lot of personal experience dealing with people that are affected by this because multiple people in my family abuse alcohol. When confronted, these people have avoided the subject or have showed anger when there was any chance of getting through to them about the subject. Serious alcohol problems turn a person into a shell of a human, making them seem almost inhuman.

In my experience, I have seen someone become a complete recluse who rarely left the house except to re-up for their buzz. Completely abandoning any responsibilities, they created an open schedule to drink, sleep off the effects, then drink again. From this inactive lifestyle comes a deep depression that can only be “solved” by continued drinking, which worsens the situation. The abuser is usually blind to the fact that their

depression is caused by drinking; they think that drinking is the solution to their depression. I’ve experienced that their depression has sometimes also spread to the ones around them, like the abuser is toxic to their environment.

Elements Behavioral Health has a piece on the emotional effects of alcoholism that correlates to these effects I have experienced personally. “Normal, everyday activities and conversation are impossible around the alcoholic, since a word or a look may be perceived by the drinker as a provocation.” This causes the abuser to become a recluse and to keep to themselves. This solitary unconscious confinement aids to cause the depression.

Alcohol abuse can also cause many diseases, according to a WebMD feature written by David Freeman. Freeman lists over sixty different diseases, including anemia, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, cardiovascular disease, and eventually, after prolonged abuse, dementia. With these mental effects and diseases, it is hard to believe that alcohol is not considered as bad of a drug as something like heroin, which is talked about at length in the media.

People are overdosing and dying in numbers that continue to increase because of heroin. However, when this terrible street drug is compared to alcohol, it is hard to believe that more people are not just as concerned about alcoholism. Alcohol could even be considered worse than heroin. A study done by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs ranked 200 different drugs by their dangers, taking into account the health risks, the risk of addiction, and the death rates. Each drug was given a number between 0 and 100.

On this scale, alcohol is the chart leader at seventy-two; heroin is listed at fifty-five, then crack at fifty-four, and meth at fiftythree.

Time Magazine has recorded more than 200,000 cases of heroin use a year.

According to the CDC, the annual death toll of this drug is also recorded at 10,000 deaths in 2014. Alcohol has 88,000 annual deaths, recorded between 2006 and 2010.

The withdrawal symptoms of these two substances are very different as well.

Alcohol and benzodiazepines (Valium and Xanax) are the only substances that risk the chance of death once the addict stops using them. They must be hospitalized to detox safely. Opiates (heroin, oxycodone, and morphine) cannot kill someone once

they withdraw, but the person can become sick.

Another medical reference by WebMD describing the withdrawal symptoms caused by alcohol says, “Alcohol withdrawal symptoms can begin as early as two hours after the last drink, persist for weeks, and range from mild anxiety and shakiness to severe complications, such as seizures and delirium tremens (also called DTs). The death rate from DTs—which are characterized by confusion, rapid heartbeat, and fever—is estimated to range from one percent to five percent.” With that said, alcohol could be considered a more dangerous substance.

Why is nothing being done about this?

The economic factors are too large to shut down the distribution and consumption of alcohol. Given the similarities in danger for heroin and alcohol use, why is one portrayed in the media as an epidemic and the other is not? This could possibly be because the pharmaceutical industry makes a huge profit off of the distribution of opioid prescriptions. The use of heroin takes away from these prescription drugs, making it an epidemic in their eyes. This causes the users to consider seeking help, which brings them back to receiving these prescriptions from the pharmaceutical industry, which in turn, ultimately makes them more money. An article by the Huffington Post, written by Alex Lawson, states numerically how many opioid prescriptions were given out in 2013. The amount was around 207 million.

The economy has a very large effect on what is highly regulated and what is not. In 2010, over $400 billion of economic activity was brought about by the consumption of alcohol and over 3.9 million jobs are created from this as well, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. There are also over 65,000 bars employing over 350,000 people who rely on this substance for their income.

By these statistics, this industry is too powerful to put regulations on it for health risks. This explains why alcohol is glorified rather than ostracized and why it is often overlooked as being a problem in the first place, creating a serious problem that is too big to solve. To combat alcoholism, we must first realize that it is an issue. Then, we must end the glorification of drinking.

This way, people will realize on their own that they must change.

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THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY IN MODERN MEDIA

by Edym McKelvey Illustration by Brianna Nguyen

Say what you want about her—everyone has an opinion on Caitlyn Jenner. Whether she is regarded as a celebrity to look up to and aspire to be or a misrepresentation of the entire transgender community, everyone has their thoughts on her.

I’m not the best with keeping up with celebrities, but as someone who considers myself to live outside the boundaries of “traditional” gender, I do live well within the boundaries of the transgender community. As far as I can see, it’s a matter of representation, which, in most cases, is a win-lose situation.

Representation is incredibly important for all communities. There has been a giant push for gay and transgender rights over the past decade, and a good part of that comes down to representation in the media.

Gay and lesbian characters have been popping up left and right, even in children’s shows and cartoons. And trans characters are on the rise.

With the acceptance from social media, there has been a rise in celebrities coming out and movies being produced that advocate for queer characters and show their plight throughout the years. This representation is key; it gives hope to those who think that their perspective on their own gender will prevent them from achieving dreams and reaching goals. It’s part of the fight for our rights. The more we normalize it, the more acceptance the community finds.

However, representation can only do so much if it’s deemed to be inaccurate.

There are a lot of people in the transcommunity who aren’t happy with the way their struggles are being represented in the media. Some view Jenner’s transition to be a publicity stunt. Others praise her for her bravery, but claim she doesn’t deserve to be put on a pedestal.

And it’s not just the present that isn’t represented correctly—it’s the past as well.

Last year, the movie “Stonewall” came out in theaters. For those unfamiliar with the movie’s subject, the Stonewall riots in of June 1969 were in response to the unfair treatment of transgender people of color within the community in New York. While it wasn’t the first riot of its kind, or of its time, it’s credited to having helped start the Gay Pride movement in New York. And like how there is no way of knowing who fired the first shot of the Revolutionary War, no one seems to know who threw the first brick at Stonewall.

brick at Stonewall, it certainly wasn’t a gay, white, cis-gender male.

This is why representation becomes a win-lose situation. On the one hand, we have actresses like Laverne Cox, who is not only one of the few openly trans celebrities, but is also a huge advocate of LGBTQA rights and extremely well known for her role in “Orange is the New Black.” That’s good representation in the media. But then we have films like “Stonewall,” which stand to be an abysmal representation of the community.

So, where does that leave us with Jenner? Jenner made a huge splash in the community, publicizing her transition and getting the conversation started, particularly in sectors of the public who hadn’t thought about the plight of transgendered individuals beforehand. On the other hand, she chooses to almost glamorize it at times, especially on her show “I Am Cait,” and her actions seem to fit the headlines of tabloids rather than the text of history books.

According to recent surveys, a majority of people believe that due to her appearance and portrayal in the media, the population will become more accepting toward transgender people. However, a large majority adds that this acceptance will not come without a negative stigma toward the community as a whole.

Personally, I am proud of her, as I am proud of any individual who chooses to come out as transgender in a community that is still somewhat hostile toward them.

And I do consider her brave. However, I think I’d need to see her as an active advocate in the LGBTQA community before I would be able to consider her a good person to represent our plight.

This representation is key; it gives hope to those who think that their perspective on their own gender will prevent them from achieving dreams and reaching goals.

The movie itself was a terrible flop. It was boycotted before it even hit theaters, as the queer community was outraged by the misrepresentation of not only the historical events, but also the trans characters portrayed in the movie. The plot itself revolves around a gay, white, cis-gender male who finds himself in New York for the riots. The trans characters that were in the movie were background characters, and while they were the most entertaining and interesting, they seemed to lean on stereotypes more often than not. And having the main character throw the first brick at Stonewall was a complete misrepresentation of history. While no one knows for certain who threw the first

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UNDERCOVER MINORITY

by Kaitlyn Solares Illustration by Ariana Figueroa

For the past few years, I have been telling the same inside joke to my friends.

It originated in high school when I noticed that my classmates were more than comfortable with telling insensitive racial jokes around me. It always happened in the most interesting way: the joke teller would begin the set up, realize what they were doing and look to make sure there were no people of color around, then whisper the punch line with a smile like they were getting away with something. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m right here. Why do you think I’m okay with this?” People would always get surprised when I pointed out their racial insensitivity, as if they had no understanding of why it would bother me. Because they assumed that I was just as white as they were, they never cared to censor themselves around me. Not only did they misidentify my race, but they

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assumed that, even if I was only white, I would not be offended by their jokes. Thus, my identity as an Undercover Minority began.

To be clear, I identify as mixed race or biracial. My father immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala with his family while he was in high school. Eventually, he met and married my mother, the fair- haired, blueeyed granddaughter of Irish immigrants, and they had me. My parents divorced early on in my childhood, and my father was deported to Guatemala with half of his family while the other half stayed in the United States. The remaining members of his family spread across the East Coast, and as a result, I was raised by the white half of my family. My skin was darker as a child and the pigment lightened as I got older, but I always was, and still am, the only person of color on my mother’s side of

the family. I was raised in a suburban town and went to school with primarily white classmates. People constantly questioned my mother’s relation to me, something that has always been a point of contention for her—she gets just as angry today when people remark how little we look alike.

I was raised immersed in my Irish heritage but actively rejected my Latina heritage until late in high school when I met a close friend who identified as a biracial Mexican-American and was minoring in Latino studies at Cornell University. She served as a point of reference for me while I began to explore my Latina identity. With most of my Guatemalan family estranged, it was a struggle to begin to grapple with Latina issues. Even when I was a child, my father refused to teach me Spanish, fearing that I would have difficulty learning English because it is a more difficult

language to learn. From the beginning, I was predisposed to live in only one half of my culture.

I identify as a white-passing Latina. In my experience, most other people of color recognize that I am something and usually ask me about my heritage. Most white people that I have spoken to about my race usually just assume that I am Italian with olive-toned skin. The tricky thing about being Latina is that it is not actually a race—it’s an ethnicity. The skin tones of Latinas all vary, and their ethnicity is not dependent on their race. However, this leaves tanned-skin Latinas without a racial label. My father has tanned skin, but he is completely Latino—how does he identify his race? This is even trickier when it comes to biracial Latinos, but biracial Latinos are not the only ones who find difficulty when identifying themselves. In fact, it is a common feeling amongst mixed Americans.

As a country, America thinks in terms of binaries and has very little understanding of what may exist in between. You are either straight or gay, white or a person of color, male or female. The irony of this is that America boasts its status as a melting pot. In theory, we are an accepting country, but the reality is different, and anyone that does not fit into our preconceived box can attest to it. When a mixed-race child is told that they are either too much or not enough of their culture by both sides of their family, how do they reconcile their identity?

I have been told that I am too white to be Latina by other Latinas. I do not speak Spanish or have an accent; I did not grow up with Latina traditions. I was so removed from my culture during my upbringing that it invalidates, to them, my embracing of it now. Most surveys do not have a multiracial option for racial identity, and I remember specifically being questioned by a classmate when I checked off white during a questionnaire.

Distant Guatemalan family members that I have met have clucked their tongues at me in disappointment when I tell them that I cannot communicate with them in their native language. There are no words exchanged, but I know what they are thinking: “Oh, right, she was raised white.”

I am certainly not the only biracial American experiencing this. Two of my Guatemalan cousins are Afro-Latino and often find the Latino part of their culture erased by others. They are only seen as

black. Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, has recently faced backlash over his biracial identity after his protest of police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. Because he was criticized for not being dark enough to care about police brutality, he grew his hair out into his natural Afro and has gone on record about feeling that he was different from his parents and older siblings when he was growing up. As if his biracial identity invalidates his ability to care about issues concerning his fellow black Americans.

Americans are also increasingly fetishizing people that are biracial as the demographic—the most rapidly expanding racial demographic in the country—grows. Light-skinned people of color are often overrepresented in the media, often played by biracial actors, although their characters have no traces of mixed-race representation. On a personal level, I have noticed a large number of people cooing over biracial babies, touting them as more beautiful than single race babies, which is problematic behavior on several levels. This is the objectification of people of color, not the appreciation of diversity.

Toward the middle of 2016, rapper Kanye West tweeted about a casting call for his fashion show for “multiracial women only.” At first glance, it sounded like a wonderful call for diversity, but it was more like dog whistle politics for people of color with darker skin. Because of the increased fetishizing of mixedrace Americans, many were familiar with exactly what West was calling for: mixed black and white women with light skin and European features. Furthermore, how can we tell upon first glance who is biracial?

Biracial comes in many different skin tones. West's call is harmful to biracial women for its fetishization of them and for its discrimination against women who are considered "too dark."

There is an inherent privilege to being light skinned and biracial even though there is discrimination on a personal level. As a whole, light skin always has and continues to be favored. For myself, I find it a difficult line to walk. It is hard to explore my identity as a Latina and speak on Latina issues when I feel that I am too white for it. Lacking an accent and being what I consider white-passing gives me certain allowances that other Latinas do not have. I appeal to those who favor

people of color who are light skinned with European features, fluent in English, and assimilated. I am the kind of woman of color that those with explicit and implicit biases are comfortable having around.

I am very aware and cautious while speaking about Latina culture because I know that my experience is different than others’ experiences, and I would never want to imply that we share the exact same struggles. It is a tricky situation to want to be able to express yourself on behalf of your culture while also trying to make sure that you are not speaking over others.

This privilege does not cancel the unique discrimination that biracial Americans face, but it adds to their multidimensional experience. If we are rejected by both cultures, where do we belong? For those with lighter skin, how do we express ourselves on behalf of our cultures while not using our privilege to silence others? How do we strike a balance between the different directions that we are being tugged in and pushed out of?

According to a study done by the Journal of Social Issues, multiracial children are more empathetic and accepting of cultural diversity than single-race children but are still likely to face discrimination by them.

I can speak to the quiet embarrassment of being told that you are too much or too little to belong to your race. I can speak to the frustration of trying to determine when your input is useful or harmful. I can speak to the anger of having important parts of who you are erased by people who lack the capacity to include them. Humor is an incredible defense mechanism, and humor is where my Undercover Minority joke was born. Latinas are often fetishized for being passionate and full of emotion in a way that invalidates their feelings, so I am often conscious of how I act out my anger. Through my Undercover Minority joke, I am able to express my annoyance and outrage in a way that allows others to stomach it without seeing me as an overly sensitive minority. In a way, I resent having to resort to telling jokes to be listened to, but it is not entirely bad. I do find it funny. The sad punch line, though, is that others do not see me for who I am—they only see half of my racial identity. And it is through their ignorance that they trap themselves when I call them out on their offensive rhetoric. At the very least, I can use my white passing privilege to protect and advance the rights of other Latinas and people of color.

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ISLAMOPHOBIA: A MEDIA-CREATED MONSTER

by Burooj Mushtaq Illustration by Tucker Gaye

Breaking News—tragedy has hit soand-so town as a devastating attack has been made on so-and-so public place. This headline has been displayed on millions of TV screens across America far too many times in the last few years, each time more difficult to stomach than the last. Upon hearing about these tragedies for the first time, most people question how—how can a person do such a thing? Most people question why—why would a person do such a thing? Most people question who—who would do such a thing? My reaction to these tragedies is a little warped, for the first thought that comes to my mind does relate to who but it tends to be framed as: please, don’t let the suspect be a Muslim. This thought is one that is undoubtedly shared by members of the Muslim community as time and time again we suffer from repercussions of the extensive coverage of such instances.

Modern media is a marvel— news of an incident that could have happened an hour before is made available on the television screens of most Americans, if not placed directly in their palms via smartphone. Rather than wait around for the evening news to come on, people now expect to receive their news in real time or scroll through their social media feeds to read up on current events. It is because of this fact that news outlets have become even more voracious in their search for details for their stories.

When people expect news in real time, it is the purpose of the media to give them what they want in order to stay relevant.

This is the reason that newscasters and outlets dig for the tiny detail of a story they know their audience is expecting to hear, the reason they look for a scapegoat and cling to it desperately. Recently, Muslims have been the most common scapegoat.

This is not to say that Muslims are never related to terrorist attacks—the occurrence is just not as common as the average

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person believes. The FBI reported statistics relating to terrorism during the years immediately after the attack on September 11, 2001. In this report, it was stated that between the years 1980 and 2005, ninetyfour percent of terrorist attacks in the United States were carried out by non-

Muslims.1 According to Wired, in the year 2011, there were twenty-one acts of terrorism that were executed by a Muslim, a number that decreased in the year 2012 to fourteen acts of terrorism.2 Considering that the 2010 United States Religion Census reported there to be 2.6 million Muslims living in the U.S., the number of Muslims involved with terror attacks in 2012 was less than 0.0006 percent of the entire population.3 This percentage has not fluctuated very much since, which makes one pause to think—why does an entire

nation of people get blamed for something less than one percent of them are involved with?

Americans are so concerned about acts of terror in the United States but are not aware of the fact that the threat is not as prevalent in their country as it is in many other parts of the world. Even postSeptember 11, America does not qualify to be considered on a list of the top ten most attacked countries and territories in the world. The country at the top of the list was Iraq, with 25.77 percent of all attacks in the world, and the country at the bottom of the list was Nepal, with 2.55 percent of all the attacks in the world. Americans believe that their biggest threat is terrorism, when in fact, less than three percent of terrorist attacks in the world are directed towards the United States.4 In the year 2014 the leading cause of death in the United States for people from ages one to forty-four were unintentional injuries5— perhaps if Americans were less focused on the highly unlikely chance of a terrorist attack and more aware of the realities of their world, this would not be the case.

Instead, they turn the news on to get their racial misconceptions reinforced by the media, thus finding ourselves in an intolerant society.

If an act of terror is committed by a Muslim, the story ends up being repeated over and over on the news for weeks. The same words tend to be recycled by all reporters—extremist, “sharia law,” jihad, and so on. The word jihad really means struggle but tends to be wrongly related to “holy war.” Therefore, it connotes a negative feeling when it is used in relation to Muslims. This is because the erroneous definition implies that the religion of Islam encourages such acts of terror.

The negative spin by the media only

reinforces this incorrect interpretation, which further pushes people to believe that all Muslim people are like the ones they see on the news. In the history of Christianity, there were many wars waged for religious purposes; from the crusades to the exploitation of people in their native lands, millions of Christians took up arms in the name of God. If the definition of jihad is “holy war,” then these Christians would have been jihadists as well, yet nobody is calling those incidents in which many died “acts of terror”—just as nobody is blaming all Christians for those violent attacks. Most people in the world do not understand what the word jihad actually means, including some Muslims, so I want to take a moment to dispel some of the misgivings some may have regarding my religion.

The word jihad is an Arabic word that is defined as “struggle,” with the most agreed-upon interpretation being that this struggle is with oneself to refrain from sin and to better oneself. The Islamic Supreme Council of America (ISCA), an organization dedicated to educating both Muslims and non-Muslims about the religion of Islam, states that “[t]he concept of Jihad has been hijacked by many political and religious groups over the ages in a bid to justify various forms of violence. In most cases, Islamic splinter groups invoked jihad to fight against the established Islamic order. Scholars say this misuse of jihad contradicts Islam.”6 Whoever commits an act of violence in the name of Islam with jihad as their justification simply is not a true Muslim for this act contradicts all that the religion stands for. This sentiment is shared by millions of Muslims in the country, Muslims who agree that 0.0006 percent of the population is not a proper representation of the community as a whole. Therefore, the community should not face repercussions for the actions of a few extremists.

On the other hand, if an act of terror is committed by a Caucasian, the blame is immediately placed on a mental illness or even the suspect’s “loneliness”—a pass not

available to any person of color, despite the actual circumstances behind an incident.

This media-influenced hate is not only directed towards the Muslim community.

If there is any crime involving a black person, all 37 million black people are blamed. If there is any incident involving a Latinx person, all 51 million Hispanic and Latinx people are blamed. If there is any situation involving a Muslim person, all 2.6 million Muslim people are blamed.

So why is it that whenever there is an act of terror involving a white person, all 196 million white people in the United States do not face this same blame?7 The result of the anti-Muslim focus of the media has been, of course, backlash against Muslims everywhere. The Pew Research Center organized a survey in 2014 in which they asked Americans to give members of eight religious groups a rating from 0 to 100 on a “feeling” thermometer.

The results displayed that Muslims were rated “rather coolly” and averaged at forty, which ended up being the lowest rating out of the eight, despite the fact that fortyseven percent of American adults claim to not personally know a Muslim.8 The last thing the Muslim community needs is reason for more hate, though we can’t seem to catch a break. From the east to west coast and everywhere in between, hate crimes and attacks on Muslims have increased unprecedentedly, something that is evident in just the instances that have been reported. An arsonist started a fire that destroyed the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce in Florida, a man in Connecticut fired a high-powered rifle four times into a mosque near his home, and an Imam in Queens and his assistant were shot on the sidewalk and killed.9 A pregnant hijabi Muslim woman in San Diego was pushing a stroller with her child in it when a man assaulted her using the stroller, all done with the child still seated in the stroller.10 A Muslim man was punched in the face outside of a mosque in Florida, two Muslim men were shot on their way to a mosque in Minneapolis, and two Muslim teenagers were assaulted outside

a mosque in Brooklyn.11 These gruesome reports are only a few of the attacks on Muslim people that have been reported and even those reports do not include the verbal abuse Muslim people, particularly female Muslims who choose to wear the hijab, hear on a daily basis from the people surrounding them. Why have these hate crimes not been extensively covered by the media? Why is it that the only time a Muslim appears on the news they are the suspect of a crime rather than a victim of one? The extreme and unjustified hate the people of America have toward the religion of Islam and its followers is a direct result of the media’s reinforcement of a negative perception of Muslims.

So how do we fix it? How do we as a nation help stop ourselves from negatively viewing those who are different from us? The most important step to take is education. Rather than just assuming whatever is seen on a Facebook timeline is correct, why not take a moment to find out if it is? The beauty of the 21st century is that the most accessible thing in the world is information—everything you could dream of asking is just a Google search away. If people were to do a simple search and find a reliable source, they would be so much better informed on topics that matter in daily life. If people were to take matters in their own hands, if people took the time to discover the truth about the people they have negative views of, this alone would lead to a more tolerant nation.

Members of the Muslim community are tired of seeing such negativity relating to their religion—I am tired of seeing such negativity relating to my religion. It is inevitable that the people of a nation will feel angry and hurt after an act of terror takes place in their home. We as a nation need to focus on using this anger and hurt to work together and solve the problems that lead to these incidents rather than pointing the blame at a group of people experiencing the same pain.

1 "Terrorism 2002/2005." FBI. FBI, 21 May 2010.

2 "Report: U.S. Muslim Terrorism Was Practically Nil in 2012." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital.

3 Neal, Meghan. "Number of Muslims in the U.S. Doubles since 9/11 ." NY Daily News. N.p., 03 May 2012.

4 "Terrorism." Our World In Data.

5 http://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_of_death_age_group_2014_1050w760h.gif 6 Administrator. "ISCA." Jihad: A Misunderstood Concept from Islam.

7 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html 8 Lipka, Michael. "Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and around the World." Pew Research Center. 22 July 2016.

9 Lichtblau, Eric. "Hate Crimes Against American Muslims Most Since Post-9/11 Era." The New York Times. The New York Times, 18 Sept. 2016.

10 Levin, Sam. "Hate Crimes and Attacks against Muslims Doubled in California Last Year – Report." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 28 July 2016.

11 "New Wave of Attacks on Muslims in America." CBSNews. CBS Interactive. Web.

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CONFLICT, ART, AND BLACK LIVES MATTER: AN INTERVIEW Interview with Clifford L. Odle, Lecturer

by Kellie Ruccolo Illustration by Gabrielle Park Clifford Odle is a Professor in Theatre Arts at UMass Boston. He is a playwright, actor, and director. I sat down with him to discuss Black Lives Matter.

What is Black Lives Matter?

It is now an organization—but before it was a very loose movement—of people that felt that the problems of police brutality were not being looked at essentially, or not being taken seriously. Of course, it comes out of what happened in Ferguson.

I believe that is where it starts, with that situation, where an unarmed black man is killed by the police. There are big questions about whether or not that individual was threatening or not, but the thing is, soon afterward, you saw video after video of other unarmed black people either being killed by the police, or in the case of Sandra Bland, being mistreated by the police. It kind of points to a type of institutional racism that a lot of people felt that we had gone beyond.

I really trace some things back to the election of Barack Obama. [He] did bring on a lot of good feelings and I think a lot of people thought that the last vestiges of institutional racism were not going to be there. Unfortunately, nobody told black people.

Black folks have always known that [institutional racism was] there for a long time, but for a good long time their protests had fallen on deaf ears because a lot of people felt that...[we] have a black president, so we’ve obviously moved beyond that. Social media and the invention of cell phone cameras have showed that those effects are still there…

And when people see these officers not having to answer for their actions because [we] have juries that are finding this lawful, it further points to a really big break in how people see the law and how people see racism in society. If you don’t see the law, you don’t see the racism, then shooting an unarmed black person may seem perfectly

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reasonable to you. The person looks scary, looks different, and in many cases is not following the social conduct you become expected to [follow]. Why not shoot the person? What that does is dehumanize people. It puts up these barriers and when these juries are coming up with these sort of barriers already, you can see how these officers will wind up not answering for their actions.

Black Lives Matter is a movement to, for the first and foremost, make people aware of these situations that are happening.

But also I find it’s a movement, at its best, that allows people who are people of color to bring some pride in of themselves. It brings the energy of the old black power movement of the ‘60s combined with the technology of today. Many of the things they look for are really very common sense things. You know, social and racial justice, people being given a fair shake, very basic things that, if you take race out of the question, actually would look fairly reasonable. But because race gets involved, people often feel they immediately need to draw a conclusion, or some people get on the defensive about this because they’re thinking well, black lives matter, so nothing else matters, which is so ridiculous. That’s one of the reasons why counter-movements like All Lives Matter are an insult to what Black Lives Matter is supposed to be about.

To say black lives matter is not to say no lives matter, only black lives matter, of course. It’s ridiculous…They’re saying there’s a problem, a problem that needs to be addressed. It needs to be taken seriously on a national level.

The job of being a police officer is not easy. But it is something we decided as a society is necessary. That’s also going to mean certain things. I think we need to take a look at nationally how we view the police.

And I would never say we need a national police force, nobody wants that, but I do think there does need to be standards that do go across the board when it comes to the police interacting with the public. I think that all comes down to communication, how people communicate with each other.

What are inherent and institutionalized racism?

The idea of an inherent racism is different than what people think racism generally is.

People think racism is just black and white water fountains and segregation, and looking at a person and simply deciding they are a bad person from looking at them. Inherent racism, and that kind of

goes along with institutionalized racism, is taking those biases that you have and internalizing them. They become the engine for how you react with other people. It’s not overt. It becomes a default, and it doesn’t show up easily...It shows up very subtly.

A couple of examples. Hiring. They’ve done studies where they would take two different applications of two different applicants with similar backgrounds and similar strengths, but give them different names. One person is named Jane [and] the other person is named Shaniqua, for example. And time and time again, the person with the “Africanized” name… more often than not doesn’t get the job or even a call for an interview because whoever makes those decisions has already made the decision on what kind of person this person is based on an internal bias— what they think they know about black people especially. They think this is the best way to head off trouble. All sorts of things that comes preloaded with all these images. That’s just a small example.

If you take a look at just the idea of segregation or desegregation in schools, many people assume that when you look at desegregated schools, the problem is mainly in the south, when the fact of the matter is, the south has made great strides in desegregating their schools better than New York City has. Much better than Boston has. Much better than Milwaukee has. The reason is because the south has [been under] such a microscope in terms of racism, because when people say racism, [the south] is what people think about.

They have been forced to deal with it in a way that northern institutions have not been forced to deal with it. So it becomes an example of how that sort of institutional racism is allowed to continue. It’s very easy not to see because in order to deal with that, you’ve got to make some really big decisions, and you’ve got to make a big commitment. It is a big commitment a lot of people feel is very inconvenient.

And race has always been inconvenient.

Race is the big unanswered problem in this country.

Going back to the days of Reconstruction, when this country had the best chance to actually have a society with racial parity, a society with racial equality, by 1877 they gave it up. It just went on too long. It just took one political deal during an election deadlock and all of those representatives and black senators and governors who had

been elected into office suddenly found themselves out of office, and black people suddenly found themselves with no rights and no people to appeal to. From that point on, there were several steps where we see the country trying to deal with racial issues, and almost getting tired of it.

I think it happened again after the Civil Rights Movement, after the Voting Rights Act. After the Civil Rights [Act was] passed, you get another sense of people just getting tired of talking about race. So if we’re tired of talking about it, that must mean the problem is solved. And what I think Black Lives Matter showed is that we’re not at a place where it’s being solved. We have to keep going; we cannot rest on this issue. It is going to mean making some decisions that people may not feel too comfortable with, but may be necessary to bring about a country that actually is fair on those issues.

Inherent racism is not just certain bias.

We all have certain biases. As soon as we see each other we assume certain things.

I do it all the time…What we’re talking about is how we treat each other in a more institutional way. How we teach to each other, how we hire each other, how we pay each other, how law enforcement [and black people] deal with each other. Those are the things we’re talking about. I’m not talking about those little petty biases, but we’re talking about those larger sort of biases that work their way into the system and keep people from achieving, really.

Case in point. We look back at Ferguson where the Black Lives [Matter] movement really started, with the riots that take place there. They say, “Oh, those riots, it’s a shame.” And they are. Property is destroyed, innocent people [are] losing their businesses. On the other hand, the people that are destroying those businesses…don’t own those businesses that are in their own neighborhoods.

[The owners] are strangers for the most part. Not in every case. But in many cases we’re talking about large institutes— convenience stores, things like that. They don’t have a stake in the neighborhood except for getting money from the neighborhood. Those rioters are not seeing themselves in those businesses. They don’t know the owners in those businesses. They don’t have that sort of connections with them. So to them, they’re rioting against strangers really.

One of the reasons why is that many people of color who find themselves trying to get loans find themselves being

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denied. They’re being denied…that kind of access that other people are [not]. That’s often because, unfortunately, you have a disproportionate number of people of color who have a criminal record, who have shaky financial backgrounds. So when they try to step out of that, they’re carrying that with them, and they find themselves denied employment, denied loans, denied the chance because they have either made those mistakes or did those things beforehand. At that point, what do you have left? It’s important to look at not just the individual incident, but what inspired that incident. The more we are able to approach that in those terms as opposed to just looking at individuals and locking them up, the better we will come to dealing with problems of institutional racism.

Who can help and how do you think they can help?

Anyone can help. Now, there is a line of thought that since these issues are issues that involve people of color, only people of color can solve these things. There certainly are issues that happen within the community of people of color that do need to be addressed [by white people].

But I think it’s ridiculous to say that people cannot help, that people cannot come into a community and understand and help.

The very first thing is to listen to people.

Be willing to hear what people have to say, without judging. And that’s the tough thing…to be an unbiased listener. Now if you can accomplish that, you [can] get a lot of good information that will help to guide you on what you can do next. So maybe you listen to people, you say, “You know what, maybe I need to go to a protest,” or you listen to people and you say, “You know what, maybe I need to write some letters.” You listen to people and say, “You know what, I need to volunteer with the police or do some police benevolence kind of work.” But I think it starts with listening to people.

So anyone can help, just understand [that] everyone helps with what they can do. Not everyone is going to be a community organizer. Not everyone is going to be a protester. Getting on social media and reaching out to people that way, sometimes that’s what people can do.

I don’t knock “media hacktivists.” Some people say you’re just sitting at home and typing some things, [but] I don’t knock that, because they’re communicating and getting the message out there. And they’re

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helping to counter a lot of other people in social media who have a completely different message about this. People are completely willing to dismiss what all of this is all about. So having a presence on social media is important.

First of all, you have to understand what you can do. If you are a person who is well spoken, speak out. If you’re a person who can write, write about it. If you don’t do either of those things but you’re good at meeting people, meet some people.

If you’re good at childcare, take care of some kids within the community. I think we all can find ways to help and express ourselves, it’s just a matter of taking the steps to do that. It’s the kind of thing that’s open for everyone.

I know sometimes when people see a white person with a Black Lives Matter button, they want to make assumptions about that person. I say stop making those assumptions. Ask them. If you are a black person and you see a white person with a Black Lives Matter button and you don’t think it’s right, ask that person what their stance is, why they feel they should wear that. Ask and listen to what they have to say.

Because if there’s anything the movement needs, it’s allies. Things don’t happen in a vacuum because these problems that we’re talking about here are not just black problems. They’re not just police problems.

They’re not just white or Latino problems.

They are American problems. And they are problems that affect us all directly or indirectly. So, a part of that listening is to get people to understand where they have a stake in things, because we all do. We all have a stake in things. Getting people better educated means something.

How can people deal with this through art?

My background as an actor, playwright, director—it’s theater. I am a theater artist.

When I approach things, one of the first things I think about is how to respond to this artistically. In other words, how can I write about it, how can I speak about it, how can I sing about it, different ways of dealing with things. It’s great to sit down and talk about things, but we all don’t express ourselves in the same way. I think that’s where art has a place, in trying to help people to express themselves.

We start with people who are dealing on the front lines of these situation. I’m talking about the person who feels they are constantly persecuted by the police. Art has, I believe, a way for them to express

themselves in that situation, whether it’s spoken word, dance, rapping, singing, what have you. It allows for that sort of outlet.

But also, it’s there for…law enforcement themselves, as a way of trying to come to grips with the things that they had to deal with and a way of trying to get people to understand what they deal with. Because often I think these things come down to understanding and who is listening to whom, because talking about things is very easy to do. We talk about things all the time. I often hear people say we don’t talk about race. We talk about race constantly.

I talk about race every day…What we don’t do is listen. And that’s part of the problem…Artistic expression [allows] people to express themselves in a way that other people may actually listen, and they may actually get what’s going on.

I find many of the incidents that happen between police and the public often have to do with communication. The police believe when they give an order, it needs to be followed immediately, with no question. And a lot of people are raised that way, particularly if you come from a majority white neighborhood…and you’ve learned to always trust in the police. So you assume whatever the officer says is in your best interest. Now there are a lot of people who don’t have that sort of feeling. They’ve had bad run-ins with the police, and they don’t feel that [the police] have their best interest in mind. They may not listen immediately. We have to figure out how these folks [can] communicate with each other in a way that allows for the citizen to feel that their rights are intact, but also allows the officer to understand that his position is still being respected.

I think this is where a type of artistic expression coming between two can actually—I’m not saying solve the problem, but at least give a [platform] for people to actually try to get the other side to see where they’re coming from. And I think that more people who feel they’ve been accosted by the police will understand the kind of pressure that [the police] go through, and if police understood why there is some distrust against them, maybe it can give people something to think about and [they can] take steps toward dealing with problems…

Art is not going to save the world. Art is not going to end world hunger. It’s not supposed to. Its purpose is to express, to bring about beauty into the world. It can also be a catalyst for change, however.

It can be a start where change actually happens. You’re not going to solve the problems in a song, but if you get people thinking about the problems, you take a big step toward solving those problems.

Ultimately, work has to be done in the halls of our government. Ultimately, work has to be done in town meetings and the people will come together and express themselves. But I think with being able to put those issues onto a kind of a forum where everyone can sit and understand and sort of get it for themselves, it will add, I think, to the conversations that will happen in the halls of government and political forums and things like that.

What is the ultimate goal of Black Lives Matter?

I don’t speak as a regular “member” or representative, just a person who has been involved and has observed quite a bit and is trying to gain an understanding himself in many ways. I think the ultimate goal is equality, is a true sort of racial equality and a respect that goes beyond just being polite.

It is not a political correct movement, it’s not about being polite, it’s about being fair. It’s about getting our institutions to understand that they are broken, that they are not fair, that things need to change and approaches need to change. That a system that was once built on the backs of slaves is a system that is not going to easily change.

It has not changed as much as people think it has. It’s changed, certainly. The fact that I’m a professor sitting here talking to you is proof that the system has changed. That does not mean, though, that those engines that still rely on racial oppression have gone away. The fact that there is a whole prison business is proof of that.

I think the Black Lives Matter movement is ultimately one that tries to address these issues and tries to get movement toward solving them and [tries] to bring about a kind of a change that will allow people of color to view themselves in a different light, to view themselves as a greater part of America, because I think ultimately that’s what you’re looking for is access and equality and justice. That’s probably simplifying things because there are also many more specific goals that are connected to Black Lives Matter. But I think, ultimately, you’re looking at access, equality, and leveling the playing field for people in a serious way, not one that sort of pays lip service.

Do you think this is the final push to end inherent racism

and reach true equality?

I would be a fool if I said “yes” because there have been so many pushes that seem like the final push. Reconstruction, that seemed like it was going to be the final push. Every civil rights bill that came after it seemed like it was going to be the final push. Barack Obama seemed like the final push. Every time we see the final push, we realize that there’s more to do because we go to sleep.

I think the final push happens when you have a movement like this and people don’t go to sleep after there are some gains.

There are gains and people are like, “Oh great! We’re all done.” And then we go back. Power does not concede easily. So I’d be foolish to say that this would be the final push.

Unfortunately, my kids are going to be dealing with this to an extent. Probably their kids, too. What I hope, though, is that when my kids deal with this, there’ll be a little more understanding, so when their kids deal with it, it gets even better.

We make a big mistake when we look at any sort of panacea, any sort of immediate answer that’s going to solve everything.

That’s a big mistake because you’re always going to overlook something because you’re invested in this one thing that’s going to solve everything. It’s the problem with bussing in the 1970s here in Boston.

People thought, “We’ve got an answer that’s going to settle everything, we’re all good,” without looking at specifically how those things work and how those things are affecting communities. So it’s not about looking for the final solution. It’s more about looking for what is going to keep pushing us toward the next step. And then what’s going to be the next step after that.

With a country as young as ours, there are things to actually applaud. Electing someone like Barack Obama is something to applaud, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. You’re taking someone who is a political minority within the country [and making him] a leader, and that is pretty much what America should be about. So there is much there to applaud.

Just don’t get lost in the applause. Just realize when the applause dies down, there’s work to do. A lot of people made a big mistake in thinking that, boom, here we are, we’re in the precipice; this is where everything gets better. There’s a lot of people that do look at the past as

idyllic. There are people who look back who have influence and say things were a lot easier back then. This whole idea of making America great again. You have to ask yourself great for who? Who are we talking about here? Because yeah, it was great, for white people. For quite a while, it was awesome being white...But at the same time, there’s a price to pay for that. And I think that price is coming due.

And I just would rather that price be paid benevolently than violently. I would rather it be that we all are moving forward with this idea than [to think], “Oh, you’ve got to stay back while we move forward.”

That’d be a big mistake. The idea is [not] to get black people moving forward and hold white people back. Nobody wants to hold anyone back. It’s just that we all need to be moving forward.

This being the final push: absolutely not.

This is a step. But I hope that would not be a discouraging thought, because these steps are important. There are a whole lot of places that are actually moving backwards in many ways. So if we can at least say we are pushing things forward, that’s huge and that’s important. We just have to understand that struggle is important. It is important in getting us forward. So as long as we focus on moving things forward, we can take pride in our accomplishments and weigh that against our frustrations, because there’s going to be frustrations. We just can’t let that sort of mud slow us down.

What is your advice for people dealing with this issue in the future?

I would say judge us by our faults and our virtues. By our virtues, take those and build on them. By our faults, take those and learn from them. There is no era in history that is perfect. There is no idyllic era. Everything looks great in the past when you have those sepia goggles on. The fact of the matter is, when you look at any period of time, someone is getting screwed over. And when that happens, it means that you are not great. As long as someone is getting screwed over, you are not living in a great period. I would say please build on the virtues. There are virtues that we have that I think are worth building on.

There are many faults that are downright crippling. I would say look at those faults and please learn from them. Don’t repeat them…Learn from the things that we do, both good and bad, and pass that on to people.

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FIVE POINTS TO ENGAGE PEOPLE IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

by Tendai Meda

What is a social movement without people to support it? Here are five points that will help you bring attention and support to a cause you are passionate about.

1. CLARITY OF ARUGMENT When interacting with people, it is so important to have clarity. Two big reasons people don’t protest are because they don’t know there is a problem and they don’t care.1 Clarity offers people a reason to be involved in contributing toward the cause. Being clear about the movement you represent is important so people can understand why you fight for the cause, and this understanding could inspire them to join you. Just how important is clarity? A lack of clarity has caused people to question parts, or all, of the Black Lives Matter movement even though it has existed for a couple of years. Social media fuels Black Lives Matter, which both helps and hurts the movement. Because many people use social media, the Black Lives Matter movement has a wide reach.

However, without a Martin Luther King Jr.-type that is the face of the movement, this leaves room for a lot of ambiguity when it comes to the message. There have been many misconceptions, including “the movement does not believe all lives matter, only black ones,” “the movement hates white people,” and “the movement encourages a hatred of the police.”2

Effect is the idea that small actions can lead to drastically different outcomes in the future.3 Small actions that can help your cause include giving a donation or signing a petition. You can also ask for people to share things related to the movement on social media. A powerful way for people to protest without much effort is to boycott groups that perpetuate the problem.

3. STEER CLEAR OF VIOLENCE While people may have the same goal in mind, there are some people who take their passion too far. They will take the time to attack people both verbally and physically. Violence shouldn’t be used because it gives people the impression that the movement you support is associated with hurting others. There is even evidence that supports this idea of nonviolence.

According to a study, “nonviolent campaigns have a fifty-three percent success rate and only about a twenty percent rate of complete failure. Things are reversed for violent campaigns.”4 It is important to emphasize to people in the movement that they represent something bigger than themselves and because of that, they must remember that their behavior is a reflection on the movement as a whole.

2. SMALL ACTIONS HAVE A LARGE IMPACT

4. LISTEN TO BOTH SIDES

Emphasize that small actions can have a large impact. Some people might think that they can’t change society because they are too small. This isn’t true! The Butterfly

When you meet verbal opposition, take the time to listen to what others have to say. Arguing with others promotes anger, not understanding. Oftentimes, people

who are against your movement will point out flaws within the movement that should be fixed. Listening to the opposition can also give you the chance to correct any misconceptions that people may have about the movement. We all want our voices heard, so just as it is important for you to express your opinion, it is important that you let others express theirs. This is an important idea to remember, especially when you are communicating with people online. With that said, BE RESPECTFUL! When talking about the importance of your cause, there is a good chance that the opposing person will threaten and insult you. Unfortunately, this is how people are online and in real life. When it comes to this point, simply say that you no longer wish to communicate with them and avoid them. If the person you are talking to wishes to argue against your points respectfully with evidence, then go ahead.

This could turn into a learning experience for both you and the people you’re talking to.

5. SPEAK UP! At the end of the day, your cause can’t grow if you don’t do anything. So to answer the question from earlier, a social movement without people to support it is nothing. There are many ways you can speak up. It can be done through speaking at public demonstrations or by simply making a post on social media. Whatever platform you have, use it to bring change to the world because without you, change can’t happen.

WakingTimes, By. “5 Reasons Why More Americans Don’t Protest Against The System.” Waking Times. Waking Times, 17 June 2016.

Ung-Kono, Veronica. “9 Misconceptions About The Black Lives Matter Movement.” Odyssey. 11 July 2016.

Pros, Damian. “How a Little Choice Can Impact Your Entire Future & Change Your Life.” Pick the Brain Motivation and Self Improvement. 06 July 2015.

4 Kenrick, Douglas T. “Violent Versus Nonviolent Revolutions: Which Way Wins?” Psychology Today. 7 Apr. 2014.

1 2 3

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IMMIGRATION POLICY, RACE, AND THE CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANT “ILLEGALITY” Meredith Gamble, MA by Illustration by Dominique Tran

Under the Obama administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported more than 2.5 million people—an all-time historic high in deportations. While border enforcement and deportations have ramped up, media outlets and politicians stoke fears that the United States is battling an “invasion” of “illegal aliens.” Fears of dangerous, criminal, undocumented immigrants from south of the U.S. border dominated the recent presidential campaign. Claims that undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. to commit crime, drain social services, and deserve to be uniformly deported,

although unfounded, continue to be touted by powerful institutions and political leaders as fact. What this perspective fails to acknowledge is the long and entrenched history of racism and criminalization of immigrants and the legal and social production of immigrant “illegality.” These policies have devastating consequences, particularly for undocumented Central American migrants in the U.S. today.

RACE, DEPORTATION, THE MAKING OF A WHITE AMERICAN RACE

To understand the treatment of undocumented immigrants today, we must look to the past. The first U.S. immigration

policies molded immigration flows to reflect the interests of white settlers from Western and Northern Europe, and their desire to artificially construct a white American race through immigration legislation.1 Early immigration laws achieved this through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the JohnsonReed Act of 1924, both of which enforced outright bans of immigrants according to their “race,” specifically Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian immigrants.1 These acts also denied people of Asian descent the right to citizenship, even those who had been born in the United States. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 furthered the vision of a white American race through the quota system, which, until 1965, regulated immigration to the U.S. based on the ancestry of the U.S. population.1 Under the act, the number of immigrants that would be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. in a given year was calculated according to the proportion of the American population either from, or with ancestry from, a given immigrant’s home country. However, excluded from these numbers were groups ineligible for citizenship (most Asian descended people), countries from the Western hemisphere, and descendants of slaves. This law effectively excluded most non-white people from the immigration quotas and privileged Northern and Western European immigrants. Thus, the quota system of immigration control was, from its design, an “instrument of mass racial engineering” that conflated non-white immigrants (or those barred) as racialized “others,” not likely or even capable of becoming “Americans.”1 These blatantly discriminatory laws drew a racial line between who is a desired “American” and who is not.

Although the early immigration laws did not instate quotas for countries in the Western hemisphere, these policies produced racial and social cleavages that are critical to understanding the social and legal position of Central American immigrants today. In the early 20th

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century, the U.S.-Mexican border was quite open and Border Patrol did not aggressively pursue undocumented immigrants. However, in the 1930s, the U.S. government launched a massive effort to “repatriate” Mexican immigrants to Mexico. This effort was a systematic rounding up of Mexican immigrants and non-immigrants alike, and resulted in the deportation of between 400,000 and one million people, including thousands of U.S. citizens.1,2 Later, in 1954, the U.S. government launched Operation Wetback, another large-scale deportation project that resulted in the deportation of about 800,000 Mexicans over three years.1 While Operation Wetback was targeting Mexican immigrants, the Bracero program (1942-1964) was bringing temporary Mexican agricultural workers to the U.S.1 In the context of mass Mexican deportations on the one hand, and the Bracero program on the other, the message was clear: Mexican migration would be tolerated so long as these temporary migrants remained just that—temporary, unable to obtain permanent residency or citizenship, kept under employers’ tight control, unprotected by labor laws, and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Not dissimilar to the exclusion of Asians in citizenship laws and immigration quotas, U.S. immigration and labor policies cast Mexicans as outside the ideal, desirable “American.”α The systematic “otherizing” of Mexicans laid the groundwork for legal and social processes later in the 20th and into the 21st century that would result in an unprecedented scale of deportations and define Central American and Mexican immigrants as “illegals.”

CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRATION AND THE RISE OF ANTI-IMMIGRANT POLICY

Central American migration from Guatemala and El Salvador to the U.S. began in earnest in the 1980s.

Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, oppressive military dictatorships backed by the U.S. government terrorized citizens, led scorched-earth campaigns and death squads against mostly rural working-class and indigenous peoples. These conflicts led to deep disruption of social life, and created the conditions for corruption and violence to flourish.3,4 Additionally, weak economic conditions meant a lack of jobs, low pay, and high rates of poverty.2 Fleeing violence, persecution, and economic unviability in their home countries,

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Central Americans began to migrate to the United States.3 Although most migrants at the time were essentially refugees, the U.S. government did not categorize them as such because the U.S. supported the regimes inflicting violence in Central America.2 Without legal avenues to escape violence in their countries, many migrants from Guatemala and El Salvador during this time period were undocumented.2 The majority of Central American migration—upwards of seventy-five percent—occurred after the 1990s.5a,5b,5c The legacies of civil war, corrupt governments, and extreme violence have been the main drivers of migration from the region. In 2015, El Salvador had the highest murder rate in world, Honduras and Guatemala not far behind at third and fifth place.6 Corruption and incompetence in law enforcement and the government breed impunity—in Honduras, only two percent of homicides result in convictions, only five percent in El Salvador, and 8.2 percent in Guatemala7,8,β. Like the migrants that came before them, Central American migrants today have very few options, if any, to immigrate legally. Because of their relatively recent arrival to the U.S., Central American immigrants have not benefited from the laws that allowed Europeans to gain citizenship at the beginning of the 20th century, or the 1986 immigration reform during the Regan Administration that granted a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and thus a pathway for sustained family-based, legal migration.9 As a result, Central Americans are the most at risk of being undocumented: an estimated seventyseven percent of Hondurans, seventyone percent of Guatemalans, and fiftyseven percent of Salvadorans in the U.S. are undocumented.9 These high rates do not reflect the “criminality” of these immigrants, but rather the dire situations in their home countries that force migration in the first place, and the selective immigration laws that disadvantage Central Americans, and give them no option to migrate legally.

The criminalization of immigrants escalated in 1996 when President Clinton signed into law a sweeping immigration reform called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). This law was instrumental in framing immigrants, and especially non-white immigrants, as criminals and threats to the American public.10 The

law increased the number and kinds of criminal offences that could result in deportation, and mandated deportation of non-citizen immigrants. Not taken into consideration in these cases was how long a person had been living in the United States, their ties to the U.S. (like family), or the conditions of their home country.

Additionally, this law was retroactive— meaning that even immigrants who had been convicted of crimes prior to the 1996 law could be tracked down and deported.2 Like the immigration policies at the beginning of the 20th century, the IIRIRA has been instrumental in defining the boundary of who is deportable, disposable, and unwelcome in the United States.

While IIRIRA produced criminalized immigrants, another major reform— the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOR) heavily restricted immigrants’ use of social services. This welfare reform presents immigrants, and especially poor immigrants, as a threat to U.S. society.

Taken together, the two 1996 reforms— the IIRIRA and PRWOR—effectively constructed poor, racialized, and criminalized immigrants as undeserving and undesirable. Since the 1996 reforms, immigration and social policy have only limited immigrants’ options. Policies like Secure Communities, the Priority Enforcement Program, and E-Verify have increased surveillance and deportability of undocumented immigrants, while breaking down immigrants’ trust in law enforcement and public institutions.2,10 Stereotypes of immigrants as drains on society, criminals, and alien invaders feed the criminalization and “illegality” of Central American migrants.9,10,11 Unfortunately, the policies and rhetoric that target Central American immigrants have a real human cost.

THE HUMAN COST OF IMMIGRANT “ILLEGALITY”

Despite the dire life-and-death decision that many Central American migrants must make when deciding to come to the United States, undocumented migrants are cast as deviant, dangerous, and subhuman; so sub-human that we use the term “illegal alien” to describe them in our legal code, which is repeated and reified through media and public narratives.

This message is not without consequence: In the year prior to the 1996 reforms, Central Americans made up only nine percent of deportees.10 Today, although

Central Americans make up only 6.7 percent of the immigrant population, they account for more than thirty-nine percent of all deportees per Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of 2014.12 The overrepresentation of Central American migrants in deportation statistics is not accidental. We can trace the targeting of Central Americans to popular narratives and laws that cast them as “illegals,” whose humanity is of no concern to our laws or our conscience.2,10 Donald Trump’s recent remarks about “Mexicans”—which might as well be a placeholder for Central Americans—being rapists, drug dealers, and all-around “bad hombres” are precisely the rhetoric that allows for the racist targeting and lack of protections offered to Central Americans by the immigration enforcement and the U.S. government.

The consequences of these immigration and deportation policies are severe: immigrants are frequently abused, denied medical treatment, and sexually assaulted in immigration detention centers.2 For others, deportation is a death sentence.

While no official statistics exist, at least eighty-three deported Central American migrants were murdered in a span of less than two years between 2014 and 2015.12 For those who are not detained or deported, Central Americans’ high rates of undocumented status shut them out of most social services, including health care.9 In fact, an estimated forty-six percent of Guatemalans and Hondurans, and thirty-seven percent of Salvadorans do not have any access to health insurance. These migrants also suffer higher rates of poverty: twenty-eight percent of Guatemalan and Hondurans, and twenty percent of Salvadorans live below the poverty line.5a,5b,5c,γ More than being ineligible for social services, political and social hostilities toward undocumented immigrants generate deep-

seated fear of detection and deportation that forces undocumented immigrants into the shadows.2 This fear discourages immigrants from seeking medical attention, reporting crimes to the police, or speaking up about workplace abuses.10,11 In my research with Guatemalan immigrants in the Boston area, one undocumented man I interviewed said that he had given up accessing health care “out of fear of the situation that you are in without papers.

You can have problems with the law. How everything is computerized [in health care and immigration], they have everyone in there. Although I am not a criminal I have been afraid of this.” This experience embodies the consequences of policies that criminalize, illegalize, and incite fear in Central American immigrants.

The threat of deportation by ICE is also linked with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal thoughts.13,14 Some undocumented Central Americans even come to accept or believe the stereotypes that they hear in the media, and the hostile message they get from the law. This can be understood as “symbolic violence.”

Symbolic violence occurs through the internalization and normalization of inequalities and social injustices.15 For example, another undocumented Guatemalan man I interviewed said in reference to the treatment of Central Americans in the U.S. that, “It’s normal that there are some people who don’t treat others well. Racism, this has always existed against immigrants.”

CALL TO ACTION

While the social, political, and legal context for Central Americans in the United States is grim, there is resistance within undocumented Central American communities to their categorization as “illegal” and “criminal.” Organizations like the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM) are pushing institutions of higher

education across the country—including the University of Massachusetts Boston— to admit and provide financial assistance to undocumented and DACAmentedδ students, who in most cases are denied financial aid and scholarships. Immigrant rights organizations, like Centro Presente, where I am the Adult Education Coordinator, are also engaged in a critical anti-racist, pro-immigrant fight to expose the consequences of immigration and deportation policy and empower Central American immigrant communities to take a stand.

As with all social justice causes, there is strength in numbers. For the students, faculty members, and staff on campus (and beyond) who are disturbed or outraged by the U.S. government’s response to Central American migrants, I urge you to support efforts to end the criminalization and illegalization of migrants. First, be an ally. Join the UMass Boston chapter of the SIM and help push for more inclusion and support of undocumented students at the only public university in Boston.

Keep in mind that you may have students or classmates that are undocumented themselves or have family members who are undocumented. Attempt to embrace—not alienate—these students. I also urge you to learn more. You could start by reading the books and articles in the footnotes below.

You can also learn a tremendous amount by volunteering with immigrant advocacy organizations like Centro Presente. Lastly, VOTE. Pay attention to the positions of your local and state representatives, city council members, and mayors, and vote for politicians who support immigrant rights.

Because immigrant rights are human rights, and supporting immigrant rights is taking a stand against racism, xenophobia, and the unjust criminalization and illegalization of all people.

Ngai, Mae M. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ. Golash-Boza, Tanya Maria. 2011. Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions, and Deportations in Post-9/11 America. Boulder: Paradigm.

Menjívar, Cecelia. 2000. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. University of California Press: Berkeley, CA. 4 Menjívar, Cecelia. 2011. Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala. University of California Press: Berkeley, CA. 5a López, Gustavo. 2015a. “Hispanics of Salvadoran Origin in the United States, 2013.” Pew Research Center. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/hispanics-of-salvadoran-origin-in-the-united-states-2013/.

5b López, Gustavo. 2015b. “Hispanics of Honduran Origin in the United States, 2013.” Pew Research Center. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/hispanics-of-honduran-origin-in-the-united-states-2013/.

5c López, Gustavo. 2015c. “Hispanics of Guatemalan Origin in the United States, 2013.” Pew Research Center. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/hispanics-of-guatemalan-origin-in-the-united-states-2013/.

6 Gagne, David. 2016. “InSight Crime’s 2015 Latin America Homicide Round-Up.” In-Sight Crime. http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/insight-crime-homicide-round-up-2015-latin-america-caribbean 7 Eguizábal, Cristina, Matthew C. Ingram, Karice M. Curtis, Aaron Korthuis, Eric L. Olson, and Nicholas Phillips. 2015. “Crime and Violence in Central America’s Northern Trian-gle.” The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/FINAL%20PDF_CARSI%20REPORT_0.pdf.

8 Kahn, Carrie. 2013. “Honduras Claims Unwanted Title of World’s Murder Capital,” Na-tional Public Radion, June 12. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/06/13/190683502/honduras-claims-unwanted-title-of-worldsmurder-capital 9 Massey, Douglas S., and Karen A. Pren. 2012. “Unintended Consequences of US Immi-gration Policy: Explaining the Post‐1965 Surge from Latin America.” Population and De-velopment Review 38(1 10 Menjívar, Cecilia and Leisy Abrego. 2012. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants”. American Journal of Sociology 117(5):1380-1421.

11 De Genova, Nicholas, P. 2002. “Migrant” Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:419-447.’

12 Department of Homeland Security. 2014. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report, Fiscal Year 2014. Retrieved Augustt 5, 2016. https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/ero/pdf/2014-ice-immigration-removals.pdf.

13 Hagan, Jacqueline, Nestor Rodriguez and Brianna Castro. 2011. “Social Effects of Mass Deportations by the United States Government, 2000-10.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34(8) 1374-1391.

14 Capps, Randolph, Rosa Maria Castañeda, Ajay Chaudry, and Robert Santos. 2007. “Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children.” Washington DC: National Council of La Raza.

15 Bourdieu, Pierre.1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Clarifying Footnotes: α Unlike people of Chinese, Japanese or South Asian descent, Mexicans were never denied citizenship under the law, although they were deported in spite of it. β Compared to the U.S. homicide conviction rate of 64.1 percent. γ Compared to sixteen percent of the general American population5a (Keep the 5a exponent on this one) δ DACAmented refers to immigrants with “Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals”, a temporary stay of deportation issued by executive order by President Obama in 2012 1 2 3

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PLURALISM: THE MUCH NEEDED LIGHT OF AMERICA!

by Kacy Granitsas

America, why can’t we all just get along?

This is a question that I think we need to ask ourselves again. Why can’t we get along?

The answer is simple, yet complicated. It is simply complicated. America is the most diverse country in the world. We speak several languages, we host a number of religions equal to the number of options at a salad bar, and we represent cultures from around the world. With so many different people inside one nation, how can we all get along? I’ll take this question one step further. How can we all get along without compromising our beliefs? Not easily.

Only pluralism is the answer.

Pluralism is an idea in which people who differ in political and moral views—especially religious ones—can coexist in harmony. In this context, religious means those who follow an orthodox religion, such as Christianity, and those who don’t follow an orthodox religion or consider themselves part of a religion, such as Atheism. You might be thinking this sounds a lot like tolerance. Well, of course. We all want tolerance. What is the problem?

The word tolerance has become so ubiquitous that when we say it, it no longer carries any meaning. For example, if I told you I was sorry a grand total of one hundred times within the first ten minutes of meeting you, my sorry no longer means anything. The same principle applies with tolerance.

Pluralism is not what the everyday person would call tolerance, so since it’s obscure, since it is a concept that doesn’t come up in our dictionary anymore, we need an explanation for what it is. David Kinnaman explains, “True tolerance is an ability to acknowledge and permit other people’s views.” This is what pluralism is.

Permit is the key word. Let’s simplify this.

Pluralism is the ability to permit any and

all beliefs different and contrary to our own.

Pluralism is like a potluck dinner.

Everyone brings homemade dishes to the table. Whether they are your favorite or least favorite, they are brought to the table. Everyone can look at these dishes and can make the conscious decision on what tastes really good to them. Even the things you don’t like get brought to the table, and no one tells the guest to leave it at home. It gets to the table regardless, even if ninety percent of the people there don’t like it. Someone may be enticed to eat it because it is appealing to them. I hate squash. If you bring squash to my potluck

of so many groups living together trying to coexist, but regularly failing to do so.

How do we fix it? One problem is that there is little room for free thinking in any sector, meaning that when there is one set of beliefs, the people believe that belief, whether it be religious (this has gotten Christians in a lot of trouble) or secular.

If everyone has one collective mind, it is a restriction on our free thinking, and having a moral code is one of those restraints.

There is a moral code in the United States and it is also prevalent in most first world countries. From a religious mindset, it is an Atheist or Agnostic idea, both referring to the person who is not sure if there is a God, or gods, a person without any religious affiliation, and includes nominal or fundamental Christians.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims follow a different moral code, which greatly contrasts the one of the new world. David Kinnaman, the President of Barna, defines this code.

It includes: 1. To find yourself, you must look within yourself.

2. You should not criticize another’s life choices.

3. To be fulfilled in life, you should pursue the thing you most desire.

4. The highest goal in life is to live.

5. You can believe what you want as long as it doesn’t interfere with society.

These are the five ideals that allow a person to live a self-fulfilling life. This is individualistic thinking, as in every person is responsible for making his or her own decisions. Now, what does this have to do with pluralism? If we are too caught up in ourselves, we can’t actually look beyond ourselves. I’ve tried; it’s impossible. If we can’t look beyond ourselves, we can’t understand what everyone’s beliefs and convictions are. Without being able to determine our neighbor’s convictions and personal beliefs, pluralism cannot survive.

We house many groups inside one country, and one should look at it as one soul, or one body.

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dinner, I will place it on the table for you, but I will not eat it. I’d much rather have cherry tomatoes. This idea of a potluck is designed to show you that every belief and view has a place on the table, where every belief is one item. If you take one item, you take that belief.

We house many groups inside one country, and one should look at it as one soul, or one body. In the series “The Wheel of Time” by Robert Jordan, Rand, the main protagonist, houses two souls in one body.

He goes insane. This is one way of looking at the way America is turning out. The year 2016 has seen some very weird and very horrible news headlines. Because of this, we could contend that America is insane, just like Rand. These things are the result

Listening and accepting those who disagree with you is part of the moral code that everyone ought to live by, but very few do. Almost no one who matters in the public sphere goes by this rule. The large part of it is when people hear something they don’t like, they tune out or shut something off. How many times have you changed the channel because the news was featuring a school shooting or a riot or some other thing that you don’t like? I will admit even I have done so, but even less so now. The only reason I don’t tune out as much when I’m watching something is because I rely on other information, which is actually easier to dissect for me. This is an example of what not to do. We ought to listen to the primary and secondary sources from the news, and then make our decisions based on what they tell us and credit to them credibility or falsifiability, and then we reserve the right to call them idiots or saints afterward.

I have an example in my life that illustrates what I think should be the American mindset in order to live in social harmony. I have had a coworker for about three years now where in just about every sense, we are polar opposites.

Our religious and political beliefs are opposite from each other. However, there is one thing that we have in common with one another.

We do not believe that any group of people should have dominion over another. Yes, this is aimed at the Christian superiority that has been ruling parts of the world for centuries. It’s a tragedy. You may be asking, how do we not come to blows, how do we get along? The answer is this: love. He and I constantly make fun of each other, much like the way one brother picks on his younger brother.

The example above an idea of what pluralism looks like. Just because you and Joe Shmoe from Idaho have different beliefs and different moral views doesn’t mean you can’t coexist. It also doesn’t mean that either of you have to compromise on your personal convictions. However, pluralism isn’t practiced much amongst anyone else and it requires effort from everyone for it to work appropriately. It can’t be halfassed.

Why don’t we have pluralism? Because

no one loves each other anymore.

Why don’t we love everyone anymore?

Unfortunately, that is a question that may be too complicated to answer. However, I can offer the answer that here in America, we are the narcissistic nation. We are only focused on ourselves.

The Pledge of Allegiance was the heart of the nation. During his presidency, Teddy Roosevelt, who I believe to be the greatest president of all time, said that in America, there is room for only one language, the English language, and only one flag, the American flag. He said all other things ought to assimilate. Right now, this idea is very laughable. So now, I offer this new pledge: I pledge allegiance to the flag Of the Divided States of America, And to the Republic, for which it dies, One nation, under death, Divisible, with Slavery and Injustice for all.

or empathize with one another. This makes relating ourselves with one another impossible.

Pluralism can only exist when America accepts every belief, political view, and personal morality. Pluralism comes and goes, and these things must be allowed to thrive, not survive. When something is surviving, it is on the cuff of its death.

When something thrives, it continues to bless or curse others who it lives among.

In the case of pluralism, it must be allowed to thrive in our society so we can, in this world, keep all the junk from infesting our arteries. Religious views, whether they be Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Atheist, and so on, should not have to be kept in the privacy of your own home. They should be in the public sphere. People shouldn’t be afraid to express what they openly belief.

People shouldn’t be afraid to express themselves without restrictions. Don’t walk on anyone’s toes maliciously. Our expressions should have no restrictions.

Love, which is the epitome of pluralism, can be expressed in many ways. One form of love is sometimes unwelcome because it can be seen incorrectly as the criticism of someone else.

I have experienced this kind of love. To make a long story short, while love is beautiful and can help us through the day, just like everything else in the world, it hurts. There was a time that I was caught doing something I shouldn’t have done and one of my friends called me out on it. Of course, it was very uncomfortable: it hurt and it was embarrassing. I was blind to something in my life that needed fixing. However, I have benefited from this tremendously. I believe it is very important to tell someone if they are doing something that could be considered harmful to themselves or others.

The absence of pluralism, in what I hope to have illustrated to you, is the reason why our world seems to be crumbling to bits. Let’s all hope we can learn from our mistakes and make the drive towards pluralism, or else no one can live in harmony with each other.

This all being said: Peace be with you.

May God bless you all.

The answer is this: love.

If you look at this new pledge side by side with the actual pledge, one has a more eternal, united aspect, with the heart of America inside. The other, which is being supported by terrorizing clowns, insane candidates for president, riots left and right, and increased reportings of school shootings, reflects the discourse and individualism of the United States today, which is more about every person for themselves. Everyone for him or herself is not humane by any means, and oddly enough, I compare the citizens of the United States to Grendel! Such a poor and wretched creature, who can think nothing of pain, and to him, pain doesn’t exist until Beowulf came along. If we don’t know pain, we can’t understand it, and if we can’t understand, we cannot sympathize

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Black Snake Dakota Pipeline by Natalia Mirabito. “There is an old Lakota prophecy of a black snake, a creature that would rise from the deep, bringing with it great sorrow and great destruction.� The Sioux view the Dakota Pipeline as this prophecy.

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THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE

by Laura Saucier Illustration by Natalia Mirabito

As tensions rise on the Dakota Plains, the facts become increasingly difficult to see. The main source of conflict is between the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the Energy Transfer Partners over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). According to the Energy Transfer Partners website, the pipeline would stretch over 1,170 miles and travel through four states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. The thirty-inch diameter pipe will transport 500,000 barrels of unrefined petroleum a day.1 Although the pipeline does not directly cross into the land that belongs to the Sioux, it does come within one mile of it. The pipeline has raised many concerns, not only from the Sioux tribe but from the general public as well. There is a new story in the news about the protests that are going on almost every week. The biggest concerns are the environmental impact of the pipeline and the ethics of the Energy Transfer Partners, especially with respect to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their land.

The biggest environmental issue is the possibility of contamination of drinking water for people living near the pipeline.

Not only would this be dangerous for every person living in the area, but for every living thing as well because there are many farms that also use the water.

The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, David Archambault II, alarmingly revealed that the pipeline was granted a No. 12 National Permit which allows them to bypass the environmental examination that is mandatory according to the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Policy Act.2 The pipeline comes dangerously close to the Missouri River, which is a major source of drinking and irrigation water for people and farms.2 If that river becomes contaminated from an oil leak

from the pipeline, the consequences would be catastrophic. Although there is no way to know for sure if anything will happen to the pipeline to make it leak, it is still one hell of a gamble.

The Standing Rock Sioux are determined to protect their water. They call themselves the “water protectors” and carry signs that read “Water is Life.” For centuries, they have told prophecies of warning about the contamination of their water. They predicted that a large black snake would come and destroy the natural world.3 Well, they weren’t wrong because this 1,170 mile long black snake is carrying hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil that would run right below their feet.

The Sioux understand that water is the essence of life. Without it, they would be forced to flee from their homeland and sacred places in order to find clean water and a safe place to live. But the Energy Transfer Partners seemed to have thought they made the process a little easier for them by destroying some of their sacred burial grounds and mistreating their protesters.

The Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) have been unethical in how they have been addressing the Sioux and their worries about the pipeline. The Sioux have been engaging in peaceful protests in order to stop the construction. They have been unarmed and gathering everyone that they can, including men, women, and children.

In response to this, the ETP used attack dogs and pepper spray on the protestors.4 This is no way to treat people who are peacefully trying to protect their land and drinking water. In addition to that, the ETP had demolished one of the sacred and ancient burial grounds that belonged to the Sioux.5 Although their burial grounds aren’t technically on their land, according

to government policy they should have consulted them because “circumstances of history” may have displaced tribes away from their “ancestral homelands and places of importance.”6 Therefore, the Sioux burial ground should have been protected from destruction. This disrespect for the Sioux culture and American history should not be tolerated, no matter how rich and powerful the ETP is.

Although the DAPL appears to be completely immoral and unethical for the environment and its treatment of the Sioux, there are a few positive aspects to it as well. This pipeline will make America less dependent on foreign oil because it would be sourced domestically. The construction of the pipeline will provide many jobs for Americans as well as a safer form of transportation of oil rather than transportation by truck or train.7 But are these worth the risk of contaminating a river that people and farmers rely on for clean water? These positives seem insignificant in comparison to the possible negative consequences if anything goes wrong.

President Barack Obama has asked the ETP to voluntarily stop construction in the Standing Rock Sioux area but no such actions have been noticed. The pipeline continues to be built. Journalist Amy Goodman and actress Shailene Woodley have been in the news for being arrested for being a part of the protests.

Native Americans are the least represented minority group in America and this was their land first. They are fighting to protect what we have systematically destroyed since taking control of their land. I urge you all to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux and protect our water.

“Dakota Access Pipeline.” Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners.

Archambault II, David. “Taking A Stand at Standing Rock.” The New York Times.

Ravitz, Jessica. “The Sacred Land at the Center of the Dakota Pipeline Fight.” CNN. Cable News Network.

4 Marchese, David. “Amy Goodman on Why the North Dakota Pipeline Standoff Is Only Getting Worse.” Daily Intelligencer. New York Magazine.

5 Meyer, Robinson. “The Legal Case for Blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline.” The Atlantic.

Atlantic Media Company, 9 Sept. 2016.

6 “ACHP | Consulting with Indian Tribes in the Section 106 Review Process.” ACHP Consulting with Indian Tribes in the Section 106 Review Process. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

7 "Dakota Access Pipeline." Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy Transfer Partners.

1 2 3

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THE HEROIN EPIDEMIC NATIONWIDE

by Brittney Santos Illustrated by Ariana Figueroa

Helpless, scared, lost, depressed, hopeless—just some of the many emotions the well-known addictive opiate, heroin, floods its victims with.

Near my hometown, in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, an epidemic has

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spread, seemingly infecting its residents and destroying families daily. It appears that with each passing day, the problem worsens.

Twenty small purple flags outside the Acushnet firehouse represent the drug overdoses in Acushnet and its

neighboring towns this year. In 2014, twenty-one flags were posted reminding residents and those driving by just how serious the heroin epidemic is.

“Now we’re seeing that it really knows no demographics anymore. It affects

every age group,” Acushnet Fire Chief Kevin Gallagher said in a recent article in the Standard Times, a newspaper from the greater New Bedford area.

In addition, police departments have reported collecting needles at various public beaches that families found in the sand. Needles have even been found at New Bedford’s Flagship Cinema. In March of 2016, a woman was pricked in the theater by a hypodermic needle used for a heroin injection. The cinema later closed.

In 2012, South Coast Today, a news outlet in southeastern Massachusetts, published that “Southcoast Hospitals treated a total of 219 heroin overdoses…

With four months remaining in this fiscal year, the Southcoast had already seen 116 overdoses as of February 21.” Last spring, in a mere twenty-four-hour period in New Bedford, fourteen overdoses occurred.

Lately, drug abuse has exploded into the mainstream, especially in the context of heroin. Excluding Worcester, Springfield, and Boston, who compile their data separately from the rest of the Commonwealth, 185 heroin-related overdoses, all fatal, have occurred in Massachusetts since November of 2013.

Boston, in 2012, had a total of sixty-four fatal heroin-related overdoses, and in 2015 that figure increased to 138 deaths.

And one year prior, the Massachusetts Department of Health reported that 684 people died of overdoses, resulting in a six percent increase from the previous year.

That being said, it’s evident the heroin epidemic that troubles Massachusetts has been present for a few years. So why is it just recently being talked about?

Massachusetts isn’t the only state seeing a rise in heroin usage—the whole country is. Addiction to prescription painkillers may be fueling this rise in heroin use. Time Magazine reported that people who are addicted to painkillers may make the switch to heroin since it’s cheaper, doesn’t require a prescription, and offers a similar high.1 “Most heroin users have a history of nonmedical use of prescription opioid pain relievers, and an increase in the rate of heroin overdose deaths has occurred concurrently with an epidemic of prescription opioid overdoses,” the Time study author 1 2

writes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those who are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are forty times more likely to be addicted to heroin. Public health officials find that heroin addiction often begins with prescribed painkillers, which can be adictive. When the user runs out, renewing their prescription is not always an option. This leaves heroin as an easier and cheaper way to attain the same high.

The question now is, what’s being done?

How can we solve this epidemic and give those addicted the proper care and help they so desperately need? The purple flags that the Acushnet fire department displays truly give people the opportunity to look at the problem from a new perspective; with each flag representing a life, people can grasp the gravity of the problem.

According to Independent, a United Kingdom news station, Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001.

Of course, drugs are still illegal. However, getting caught possessing drugs leads to a minor fine with a possible referral to a treatment program. This is instead of harsh jail time and a permanent criminal record. From marijuana to cocaine, and yes, even heroin, Portugal decided to treat the possession and use of these drugs as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one. In other words, Portugal decided to care for its drugaddicted citizens rather than punish them.

Among Portuguese adults, there are three drug overdose deaths for every 1,000,000 citizens. In contrast, according to the Washington Post, “Comparable numbers in other countries range from 10.2 per million in the Netherlands to 44.6 per million in the UK, all the way up to 126.8 per million in Estonia. The United States’ average is 17.3 per million.”2 To the surprise of many, the decriminalization of drugs lowered Portugal’s drug abuse and drug-related death rates dramatically. We need a greater understanding of people who suffer from drug addiction so that they’re not treated as if they were the “scum of the Earth.”

I sincerely doubt anyone dreams of becoming a heroin abuser. These people don’t wish to deal with the daily struggles of feeling lost and hopeless. They are people

after all, and they crave success in life just as everyone else does. An individual may try heroin simply because they aren’t educated on the severity and risks of the drug. Maybe heroin users try the drug as an escape from a bigger problem. I don’t believe that an individual who is addicted to drugs is a “loser” as many people may unfortunately declare, but rather, is in desperate need of mental care.

Personally, my friends and I have debated about what should be done to alleviate the high rates of overdose in Massachusetts and across America. I feel that no matter the reason an individual wound up addicted to heroin, they need assistance. I believe addiction to be a disease, and therefore, mandatory rehabilitation programs should be established in place of jail time. This would allow addicts to feel that the law is for them rather than against them. Although I’ve never used heroin myself, I feel that if I ever were to deal with an addiction problem, I wouldn’t want to do it alone. The fear of being arrested would most likely cause me to stay clear of the police and not try to seek the help that I would so desperately need.

In other words, a heroin addict probably would never approach an officer for help, simply because they’re aware of the fact that they could face possible jail time or worse, be interrogated and manipulated to confess about others. I feel the only effective way to go about dealing with and correcting this addiction epidemic is to treat it with complete compassion and to attempt to understand the individuals going through such a time of crisis.

We must facilitate a more open conversation to achieve positive change.

By educating more people on this topic, the community would be likely to seek a solution. At this time, heroin is an enormous problem, not only for Massachusetts, but for America. Perhaps we should take Portugal as an example and decriminalize all drugs. Nevertheless, education on the matter is what our society truly needs, and with the knowledge that that would provide, we could come together with understanding and sympathy for all human beings and end this tragic opiate epidemic.

Sifferlin, Alexandra. "Heroin Use in U.S. Reaches Epidemic Levels." Time. 7 July 2015.

Ingraham, Christopher. "Why Hardly Anyone Dies from a Drug Overdose in Portugal." The Washington Post, 5 June 2015.

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Repairs by Cullen Bryant

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95% OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS KNOW THEIR ABUSER!

by Kristin Connor Illustration by Cullen Bryant

This is my story.

I was six years old. I went to bed every night knowing that my neighbor was watching me through my Disney Princess curtains. Monday nights would come and I knew that I’d be going to his home for dinner. I knew what would happen and I knew I couldn’t tell.

Every time, I would walk back to my home and act like this eighty-year-old man didn’t just do to me what no one should do to a child. I had to go home, act like a normal six year old, and not show that I felt ashamed and disgusted because this man who my family loved and trusted took away my innocence way too early. I did not know that twenty percent of the children who are sexually abused are abused before their eighth birthday. I was in that twenty percent.

I was labeled a “bad kid” because I was acting out. I was labeled without anyone taking the time to figure out what was really going on. Teachers didn’t know that I was molested last night. They certainly didn’t know that I was molested almost every night. They didn’t know that I lived in constant fear that someone might find out. They didn’t know I kept it a secret because in my mind, it was my fault.

Imagine protecting this secret for seven long years.

After many years battling a mind that had convinced itself that what was happening wasn’t “so bad,” the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal was on the front page of every newspaper. People were speaking out and describing some of the things that had happened to them.

Psychologists were describing the trauma, and my mother expressed her disgust

for the individuals who victimized those children so many years ago.

The next day, I went to school. I walked into my counselor’s office.

“I have to tell you something,” I said to my counselor. “You know my neighbor?

The one I’ve talked about that lives next door?”

“The older man, yes?”

I sat silently and began playing with the strings attached to my sweatshirt.

helped me.

This individual was allowed to remain free even though facts and statistics have proven that a single pedophile abuses roughly 148 children.

I am speaking out now because almost fifteen years later, we still live in a world where sexual abuse is kept silent. Fortyfive percent of child sexual abuse victims do not tell that they are being abused for five years—some never tell. It is too uncomfortable for people to talk about, so it is ignored, which only helps the perpetrator continue on with the abuse! Abusers rely on their victim's silence. We need to talk about it, we need to be open about it, and we need to let children know that it is not their fault and if someone is violating them, they need to speak up. They need to tell a trusted adult and be reassured that they did absolutely nothing wrong!

There are clear warning signs that children who are being sexually abused may exhibit. These include suddenly changing behavior, avoiding a specific person for no obvious reason, expressing knowledge or interest in sexual activity and behaviors beyond that of their peers and drawing sexually explicit pictures, among many more.

Most importantly, if a child comes to you and tells you that they are being sexually abused, believe them! One in three adults do not believe children when they report sexual abuse. In ninety-eight percent of reported child sexual abuse cases, children’s statements were found to be true.

In order to stop child sexual abuse, we need to start talking about it!

Most importantly, if a child comes to you and tells you that they are being sexually abused, believe them!

“Kristin? Is something wrong?”

“He touches me...”

My counselor closed her office doors, pulled her chair closer, and said, “Kristin, what do you mean? I need you need to tell me.”

I took a deep breath and said, “He has sex with me. He’s been having sex with me since I was little, about six or seven.”

--I sat in the District Attorney's office for countless hours, went through every graphic detail, and was forced to relive some of the most traumatic moments of my life. For what?

My neighbor was given a warning and told not to come in contact with me again.

I reached out for help and no one

If you or someone you know is seeking help, tell someone you trust. For more information or assistance please contact Kristin Connor at: Email: Kristin_Connor87@yahoo.com Phone: 857-523-9498 or visit www.facebook.com/AwarenessEqualsPrevention

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A NEW STAGE OF THE COLD WAR: A WAR OF IDEOLOGIES

by Mohammad Hassan Illustration by Cullen Bryant

This picture appears in the Middle East mass media, in which it not only imitates the Statue of Liberty, but American foreign policy in the Middle East as well. It is not a real statue, but a “photo montage” by a fine Syrian artist, Tammam Azzam. In fact, the picture was made in 2012, though it is still relevant in social media today. According to Al-Mayadeen news channel (a Lebanese Arabic/Spanish news network), Azzam insisted, “The picture illustrates that the US Statue of Liberty does not represent the US foreign policy.” But why did the artist speak on behalf of the Statue of Liberty?

I. INTRODUCTION Whether American foreign policy in the Middle East is representative the Statue of Liberty or not, such an artwork provides an idea to a new generation in Syria—and perhaps the entire Middle East—that for certain political or economic goals, the U.S. and the West have intervened in their lands for monetary gain, often times destroying the country in which they intervene. As a result, a wave of hatred—or a rising ideology—has increased the chance that U.S. supremacy in the Middle East will decompose. In fact, U.S. supremacy in the Middle East has, arguably, already declined as a consequence of dealing with allies that are not interested in regional stability. Yet, this decline is not only due to the poor quality of America’s allies, but also because those allies are suspected of funding radical

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ideologies opposed to American values and liberty. Accordingly, the World Order has been challenged, so has the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty distorted.

What’s more, President Vladimir Putin of Russia has entangled his country in the Middle East and reinforced ties with historical U.S. opponents, Iran and Syria.

Therefore, U.S. interests are challenged by Russia’s, not only because Russia could challenge American supremacy, but also because America’s allies are ill-suited to oppose Russia’s moves for supremacy. In this respect, it has been argued that Putin exploits the weaknesses of America’s allies as he aims to establish a multipolar, or great power balancing, system.

This article provides analytical examples of the chaos in today’s Middle East, where the myriad of crises is indicative of a new cold war, or perhaps, the beginning stages of a new world war. Nonetheless, making an enemy of Russia is an easy process, whereas working without Russia to defeat the common enemy, the hatred ideology, creates obstacles. The common enemy is threatening both powers, nations, civilizations and even religions. The enemy is not a militia that can be defeated by arms, but an international expanding ideology. Thus, I argue that as Great Britain defeated Nazi Germany by allying with the Ottoman Empire’s (or the Sick Man’s) opponents—so too should the United States cooperate with the adversaries of today’s “sick actors” (e.g. Saudi Arabia) to defeat the hatred ideology; and, as Great Britain bolstered Western values by dealing with the Soviets, so too should the United States deal with Russia to help preserve the image of Western values abroad.

II. AMERICAN SUPREMACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST An Image of American Liberty Abroad United States foreign policy in the Middle East is pragmatic, therefore, interests and values are always in conflict.

Being the world’s superpower, the U.S. on one hand has been charged with upholding Western values and symbols of liberty abroad. On the other hand, though, America is accountable for maintaining Western economic hegemony. To put

it another way, the U.S. must sustain Western economic hegemony at the same time as maintaining the image of Western liberty. So, the U.S. employs a double-standard policy in the Middle East.

Yet, while liberty is a human interest and hegemony is an economic or political interest, the language used to describe the two has been conflated. Subsequently, communities abroad cannot distinguish between political and human interests.

While the U.S. and Russia are not directly related to the root of all conflicts in the Middle East, these societies tend to put blame not on their broken political structures, but on the powers who supply the opposing belligerents with arms—an economic interest that brought both the U.S. and Russia to the arena. In this way, hatred for the West took its first step.

Likewise, in Yemen, where the U.S. has been on the supposed frontline in providing humanitarian assistances to Yemen’s war victims, many Yemenis recognize that America is in fact responsible for the war to which they have fallen victim, and the hypocrisy of the aid they receive from America. According to the U.S. Department of State (August 25, 2016), the U.S. has spent “nearly $189 million in additional humanitarian assistance in response to the crisis in Yemen,” and the total of U.S. humanitarian assistance was, Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “more than $327 million in Fiscal Year 2016.” On the ground, by March 2015, “more than 3.1 million Yemenis [had] been displaced and more than eighty percent of the country—or 21 million people— [were] in need of humanitarian assistance.”

On the contrary, and because the U.S. is the kingdom of freedom of speech, its own mass media and intellectuals have repeatedly criticized their misleading policy in Yemen. Without the U.S. providing political and intelligence supports to Saudi Arabia, the war in Yemen would be limited.

But if wars were limited, then arms deals would be limited, too. That is, if the U.S. does not provide Saudis with arms, they could easily buy it from other producers, such as the Chinese, consequently

challenging the U.S. as the “largest provider of arms around the world last year.” According to the New York Times: “American weapons receipts rose to $36.2 billion in 2014…bolstered by multibillion-dollar agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea…Those deals… ensured that the United States remained the single largest provider of arms around the world last year, controlling just over fifty percent of the market.”

III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HATRED The Development of Sickness Whereas the real-world statistics of those arms deals are visible to the victims, Yemenis do not essentially denounce the offenders—Saudi Arabia—but instead whoever backs the offender to make the offense possible, in this case, the United States. This is how hatred takes hold. This is how hatred creates serial wars and this is how wars create lasting societal conflicts. On how hatred begins to exist, according to the New York Times, numerous Yemenis “see” the U.S. as the “hidden hand behind the Saudi air war.” In fact, it is not “hidden” anymore.

Albeit Congress has made efforts to “block a $1.15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia,”1 no single sovereign state in the Middle East could challenge Saudi Arabia since it is the wealthiest American ally in the region. Subsequently, the gap emerges among interests and values, and the media expands that gap. However, interests are the priority in world politics, not values. The problem is, though, that interests may conflict with our values. In this case, interests are problematic and should be sacrificed in favor of values.

Saudi Arabia, for example, has adopted a course of religious identity (or an ideology) that opposes the Western liberal vision. The problem is not found in whether the Saudi regime is linked to this ideology or not, but in their exportation of this ideology, the claim that their religion is the only true religion. To give an illustration, because Saudi Arabia’s use of force in Yemen has not succeeded yet, they have begun to use religious ideology against its political opponents.

In particular, Saudis’ main opponents in Yemen are the “Shiite rebels from the north, the Houthis, [who] seized the capital, Sana, and sent the government into exile.”1 Since Sana is under Houthi control, the Saudis have included religion in their politics in an attempt to remove them from power. And given that the Houthis are backed by Iran,

according to the Wall Street Journal, “Saudi Arabia’s top Cleric says Iran’s leaders ‘are not Muslims’…in response to rancorous remarks from Iran’s supreme leader.”

Here, the ideology of religious superiority begins to shape public opinion—where the limits of hatred begin to expand—when a single actor excludes his political counterparts from the entire religion to further the state’s political interests. Zooming out to a broader view, the followers of Saudi Arabia’s top Cleric will continue his ideological conflict, since he represents Islam’s birthplace. Therefore, a great number of individuals have adopted the cleric’s ideology, Wahhabism. But does the Saudi regime associate with this ideology? From A History of the Modern Middle East, William L. Cleveland—late of Simon Fraser University—insists: “Wahhabi movement were set by a scholar from central Arabia, Muhammad ibn al Wahhab (1703-1792)…In this regard he labeled Sufism, with its veneration of saints, as a form of polytheism and branched its practitioners as apostates and thus deserving of death…ibn Saud’s warriors and Abd al Wahhab’s reformist message merged into a powerful politico religious force that expand throughout northern Arabia and succeed in capturing Mecca in 1803.”

IV. THE CONSEQUENCES OF SICKNESS Universalism From a realist approach, the Saudi regime’s historical goal has been to rule a territory from behind the religious veil of Wahhabism. I call it a veil, since on one hand it distorts the real image of Islam, and on the other hand, it conflicts with Western values. Thus, the real danger behind Saudi Arabia’s history is that a conviction to radical religious tradition challenges the state’s expected modern future.

More importantly, the ideology is not only a national concept, but a growing global one. The expansion of such an ideology inevitably creates more rivals to that ideology because the purpose of such an ideology is, essentially, to attack other ideologies or beliefs. In fact, one obvious target of this ideology, beside non-radical Islamist beliefs, is Western values, which are found in much of the international community. That is, as Kissinger argues in his book, World Order, given the fact that the essential goal behind the Saudis’ existence is to rule and expand by religious justifications, it has been a “challenge” against the international community, not only because

they adopt an antagonistic ideology, but also because they make it “universal.”

Consequently, a “main challenge” to the World Order emerges. Kissinger observed: “Saudi Arabia has adopted a course as complex as the challenges facing it… [they] cannot afford deviation from Islamic orthodoxy…it has attempted to co-opt radically resurgent Islamist universalism by a tenuous amalgam of modern statehood and Westphalian international relations grafted onto the practice of Wahhabism, perhaps the most fundamentalist version of faith, and of subsidizing in internationally.”

V. THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGICAL GAP IN THE MIDDLE EAST A New “Stage” of the Cold War America’s double-standard policies in the Middle East have led to an ideological gap that makes Eastern societies—who are ideologically closer to Western values than Russian values—create barriers of hatred against the United States. That gap has, consequently, been filled by Russians influence. And because the U.S. supplies antagonistic actor[s] (such as Saudi Arabia) in the Middle East, Russia’s allies can exploit their antagonistic nature to turn more people against America and its values.

Furthermore, when the antagonistic allies that America has in the Middle East have acted in contrast to Western values, they did not only compromise America’s leadership position, but also the image of American values—via the influence of the hatred ideology. Russian friends, Syria and Iran in particular, have exploited the fact that the U.S. has left an ideological gap in the region due to its association with such antagonistic states. Subsequently, Putin has substantial geopolitical influence in the Middle East. From this perspective, we cannot deny the fact that although Iran is a non-Arab state, it has obvious influence in numerous Arab territories such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.

The influence Iran implements is not economical as much as it is ideological.

But as long as Iran has strong influence in the region, so too will Vladimir Putin.

Accordingly, Syrians have sent their message to the U.S.—their artwork, a new message that differs from the current language of violence. Yet the artwork does not only represent an individual’s belief, but an artist’s, a group’s, a society’s, a nation’s, and a new rising ideology that has challenged American values. In the long run, U.S. supremacy in the Middle East is likely to decay,

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not by economic factors, but by foreign nations’ resistance to accept Western values as a tool of America’s soft power.

In the Return to Cold War, The Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, Robert Legvold, claims that “If a cold war passes through stages, the United States and Russia are still in its early stage.”2 Indeed, President Vladimir Putin is creating a new silent “stage” of a Cold War. In 2003, Putin proclaimed, “Russia can survive and develop within the existing boarders only if it stays as a great power.”2 To put it another way, Putin’s essential goal has been to create a barrier between the U.S. and Russia, recreating the great power balancing system, or a multipolar system that was favored by the Soviets. But because Putin (yet not all of Russia) demands what the Soviets favored, the common consideration of current events has been concentrated on the belief that Russia and America are enemies.

VI. A POSSIBLE SOLUTION A Prevention of the New World War I do not see the U.S. and Russia as enemies though, since cooperation with Russia is beneficial to both states. It is true that Putin created some political and economic challenges to the West, but he does not challenge Western values as the “hatred ideology” does. That is to say, Putin fights an enemy that is common to the United States. Yet the problem with that is public opinion has already been shaped by the mass media, which establishes that we should not deal with our political enemies.

Although it is justified that the rebels we supply in Syria are moderates, I do not believe that there is such a concept in the theater of Jihad. The course of history proves that bin Laden was not as moderate 1 2 3

as we thought, as following the fall of Communism, he turned against the West.

Jihadists cannot be trusted in the long run, because those rebels, in essence, are adopting the idea that theirs is the only true ideology, and they too will turn on the West

Jihadists to expand their hatred ideology on the ground.3 Hence, the U.S. should deal with its political adversaries, such as Russia, to stop the expansion of the hatred ideology, since interests can exchange, whereas values cannot be altered. Likewise,

as soon as they reach power. To that end, American cooperation with Russia would allow for the prevention of the spread of the “ideology of hatred”—an enemy of both Eastern and Western civilizations— that should be defeated via multilateralism.

When former adversaries unified to counter Nazi Germany, it was not because they wanted to attack Adolf Hitler himself, but instead, wanted to stop the rising of an ideology of hatred that had challenged the world’s civilizations. So, does Putin want to cooperate with the U.S., although his demand of a multipolar system is clear?

Putin, I conclude, should be contained by the U.S., especially, within the “no-fly zone over parts of Syria,” that have been agreed on by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, because opposing Putin in Syria could well be exploited by the

in Yemen, where although the economic interests may decrease, the US should deal with Saudis’ opponents—to put a counter pressure against Saudis attack—to stop the current humanitarian catastrophe.

An ideological threat against both Eastern and Western civilizations must be prevented, hand-in-hand, by Americans and Russians. Although the threat of a cold war will remain, at least the hatred ideology will be defeated before it creates another world war. Then, is it right to cooperate with Putin—as President Franklin D. Roosevelt allied at the end of World War II with the Soviets’ dictator, Joseph Stalin?

It may be too early to expect a new world war, but it is not too late to find future solutions. That is what international politics is all about.

Mazzetti, Mark, Ben Hubbard, and Matthew Rosenberg. "Yemen Sees U.S. Strikes as Evidence of Hidden Hand Behind Saudi Air War." The New York Times.

Legvold, Robert. Return to Cold War. United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2016.

CFR. "Compare the Candidates See Where the next Commander-in-Chief Wants to Steer the United States on the Most Pressing Foreign Policy Issues." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, 2016.

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“WHATbyIS ALEPPO?” Jacey Taft It was during an interview with MSNBC that 2016 presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson, was asked the question, “What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?”1 Johnson responded with the question, “And what is Aleppo?” This blunder has hung over his head since the interview, but it has also been a stark reminder that the situation in Syria is not well understood by most of the 2016 presidential candidates.

The lack of awareness of the conflict and oversimplification of the factors at play have led to overgeneralizations about the Syrian people inside and outside the country. We have now heard politicians call for a ban on Muslims immigrating to the U.S., more intensive bombing in the area, as well as even stricter vetting procedures for refugees entering the U.S. This lack of awareness has also led to a decrease in sympathy for Syrians internally and externally displaced, who have faced attacks by their own government as well as foreign governments for nearly five years.

Over 470,000 people have been killed thus far, further propelling this war as one of the deadliest in recent history.2

A BRIEF HISTORY OFTHE SYRIANCIVIL WAR

The civil war has been years in the making, as the Assad family has violently maintained power since 1971. Prior to the current president, Bashar al-Assad, his father, Hafiz al-Assad, ruled until his death in 2000. The constitution was then rewritten to reduce the age requirement of the president to match Bashar’s age, and he was reigned in as the new president.3 Over the years, there have been many clashes between the government forces and different opposition groups. One gruesome example took place in 1982, when Hafiz al-Assad’s regime attacked the city of Hama where the Muslim Brotherhood was orchestrating an uprising against the government. What resulted was weeks of artillery fire and what is estimated to be between 10,000 and 40,000 casualties in the flattened city of Hama.

Following this massacre, the Muslim Brotherhood was exiled from Syria. In 2001, there was another uprising known as the Damascus Spring, where advocates for political and social reform emerged across the country.4 Again, the regime stepped

in and squelched the movement through violence and imprisonment of activists.

Increasingly, proponents of democratic progress in Syria were scattered within and outside of the country, causing challenges in organization for reform advocates. The Assad regime has ensured this fragmentation, especially because it has strong support from the military.

What would eventually morph into the Syrian Civil War began as protests in 2011 during the wave of uprisings in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring.

Protests originated in Dar’a when fifteen children were detained after spray painting a wall at their school with an anti-regime slogan. The protests disseminated across Syria as calls for the resignation of Assad and the release of political prisoners rang out. Assad’s regime increased their violent attacks on protesters while attempting to erect a façade of political reforms that were rejected by the protesters. While there were protests across the country, there was still the challenge of fragmented leadership and an inconsistent message, which benefitted the militarized regime as they continued suppressing the protests.5 While there is no one reason why the protests and eventual civil war broke out, it is clear a major component is the lack of political freedom and representation, as well as the oppressive and brutal Assad regime that has reigned over Syria for over forty years. It is important to note that there are also many international actors that have played a significant role in the political situation in Syria that have not been explored here.

THE CANDIDATES PERSPECTIVES ON THE CONFLICT

In 2014, the U.S. began its airstrike coalition in Syria against the Islamic State, which has caused a significant amount of collateral damage. The U.S. has bombed villages and hospitals where innocent civilians reside, causing international outrage. During that time, and since the start of the acceptance of Syrian refugees into the U.S., there has been a cascade of xenophobic and misguided coverage of not only Syrian refugees, but also Muslims.

Since the U.S. is already involved in Syria, it is important that the presidential candidates have plans in regards to actions they will take if they are sworn in as

Commander in Chief. But how much do the other candidates understand about Syria, and how much thought has gone into their plans regarding the coalition towards Syria?

Green Party candidate for 2016 Jill Stein, at one point, had on her website that the U.S. should “be working with Syria, Russia, and Iran to restore all of Syria to control by the government rather than Jihadi rebels.” This stance by Stein disregards the carnage and war crimes committed by the Syrian government.

What’s more, part of the reason for the civil war was because the citizens felt oppressed and underrepresented by the current Syrian regime.6 In addition, the Syrian and Russian governments have both been accused of war crimes against the people of Syria for using things like cluster bombs and sarin gas on citizens, as well as bombing the roadways where food aid was being delivered to starving communities. Stein also calls for an increase in human rights and international law. While it is a vague reference to the Syrian civil war, she claims that decreasing the bombing campaigns in Syria, freezing bank accounts, and promoting weapons embargos are the method forward. She makes almost no comment on what to do in regards to Syrian refugees being accepted into the U.S.7 Donald Trump, president-elect, has also made comments about supporting Russia in the fight against ISIS. While Trump has stated in debates that Assad’s regime and Russia are targeting ISIS, this is, in fact, not the situation. The main objective of those governments is to retake territories like Aleppo back from the opposition to reinstate power to the Assad regime. The opposition called for Assad to step down, not ISIS. For this reason, there is a greater threat from the opposition toward the regime than from ISIS. In turn, Assad and Russian forces have killed far more civilians than members of ISIS and have done a significant amount of damage to Aleppo, a city where ISIS does not reside.8 Assad’s regime has also been accused of multiple war crimes, including attacking civilians with sarin gas, attacking hospitals, and attacking aid convoys.

In addition, Trump stands committed to the statement that there is not an extensive

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vetting system already in place for refugees, and that he will implement “extreme” vetting. In addition, and misguidedly, he stated in the third presidential debate that if we accept more Syrian refugees, we will see an increase in “radical Islamic terrorism.” Important to note is that in 2015, the Migration Policy Institute stated in an article that in the fourteen years since September 11, only “three resettled refugees have been arrested for planning terrorist activities.”9 This is out of nearly 800,000 refugees that have been resettled in the U.S.10 This data directly contradicts Trump’s fear mongering, showing that refugees pose no actual threat to American citizens.

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State during the beginning of the Syrian civil war. At the time, she had called for the resignation of President Assad.11 Since then, Clinton has been calling for nofly zones and safe havens within Syria to protect the besieged civilians. Clinton, known for her hawkish policies, has called for an increase in the aerial campaign against ISIS, while also increasing support for ground forces around Syria, including the Kurdish forces and other Arab opposition. Finally, she has called for greater diplomacy to end the civil war that is based on sectarian differences within the country.12 There are many critiques of her plans though, including her call for a no-fly zone, as it would require substantial U.S. force, as well as an unrealistic level of cooperation with Russia to enforce it.

The U.S. and Russian agendas are vastly different, so the logistics of implementing a no-fly zone would likely be strategically contentious.

Clinton has also suggested that she plans to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the country. While she has not come out explicitly stating how many refugees she would admit, she did say that she would likely admit around 65,000 per year. There has not since been new information on her plans to admit

refugees.13

WHAT IS ALEPPO?

In response to Gary Johnson’s question, Aleppo is one of the largest cities in Syria, where half a million people still live. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its immense history and remarkable architecture. The varying structures and intricacies of the city come from its extensive history of rulers from different cultures who influenced the city during their reign. Some of the most notable structures, such as the Great Mosque, which was built in the 12th century, have been destroyed during the conflict. An ancient covered market, one of the largest in the world, has also been destroyed by the war. Many of the structures that were once erected have been around since the beginning of recorded civilization. Aleppo has experienced some of the heaviest bombardment throughout the conflict, and continues to be bombed mostly by the Syrian and Russian governments.14 There are five other UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Syria, all of which have been significantly damaged or destroyed during this conflict.15 Aleppo is also a city where a group of heroes, known as the White Helmets, have been created as a response to the carnage.

The White Helmets are a volunteer group of individuals who follow the cascades of bombs that rain down on the city, and assist in rescuing trapped citizens from the rubble. Since they started their mission in 2013, the White Helmets claim to have rescued over 60,000 people. They have also been nominated for awards to honor their bravery and hard work in the city.

This attention has negatively affected the group though, as bombings have been directed at their operation centers, as well as their other resources in Aleppo.16 There are doctors that remain in the area as well, despite the numerous attacks on hospitals that have ravaged infrastructure and killed many doctors.

In addition, the last road connecting

to Aleppo, known as the Castello Road, has been essentially shut down by the Syrian government. During the cease-fire negotiated between Russia, Syria, and the U.S. that lasted about a week, multiple aid convoys destined for the besieged city of Aleppo were bombed, killing a dozen people. Aleppo is one of many areas in Syria that have limited or no access to food, water, and other necessities.17 As a result, people are starving to death across Syria.

Millions of people still reside within Syria and are directly impacted by the decisions politicians in the U.S. and abroad make.

Rappeport, Alan. "‘What Is Aleppo?’ Gary Johnson Asks, in an Interview Stumble." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Sept. 2016.

Boghani, Priyanka. "A Staggering New Death Toll for Syria’s War — 470,000" Frontline. PBS, 11 Feb. 2016.

"Bashar Al-Assad." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica.

4 Lefavre, Raphael. Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2013.

5 Abboud, Samer Nassif. Syria. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2015.

6 Blake, Aaron. “The One Issue That Shows Exactly Why Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Haven’t Caught on.” washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post, 6 Oct. 2016.

7 Stein, Jill. “Jill Stein: After US Airstrikes Kill 73 in Syria, Time to End Military Assaults That Breed Terrorism.” jill2016.com. Jill Stein.

8 Osborne, Samuel. “Syrians Are Accusing Donald Trump of Lying.” independent.co.uk. Independent Digital News and Media, 10 Oct. 2016.

9 Blake, Aaron. “The Final Trump-Clinton Debate Transcript, Annotated.” WashingtonPost.com. The Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2016.

10 Newland, Kathleen. “The U.S. Record Shows Refugees Are Not a Threat.” Migrationpolicy.org. Migration Policy Institute, 07 Oct. 2015.

11 “CNN’s Reality Check Team Vets Trump’s Claims.” CNN.com. Cable News Network, 22 June 2016.

12 “Hillary on Combating Terrorism and Keeping the Homeland Safe.” Hillaryclinton.com. Hillary Clinton, 2016.

13 Valverde, Miriam. “Trump Says Clinton Would Bring in 620,000 Refugees in Her First Term.” Politifact.com. Politifact, 27 Sept. 2016.

14 “Ancient City of Aleppo.” Whc.unesco.org. UNESCO. 15 “6 out of 6: ALL of Syria’s UNESCO Heritage Sites Damaged or Destroyed during Civil War.” Rt.com. RT International, 15 Mar. 2016.

16 Malsin, Jared. “How the White Helmets of Syria Are Being Hunted in a Devastated Aleppo.” Time.com. Time Inc., 25 Sept. 2016.

17 “UN Confirms Aid Convoy Bombed In Syria Near Aleppo.” Huffingtonpost.com. The Huffington Post, 19 Sept. 2016.

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CONCLUSION

President-elect Donald Trump will have to make the decisions on what to do next in the coalition against ISIS, and most importantly, what to do in regards to U.S. relations with Muslims and Arabs. We live in a time where there are not only terror attacks taking place, but also religious attacks and an increase in Islamophobia in the U.S. Moving forward, we must choose how we portray individuals from different religious groups in the media and what type of rhetoric we use. Today, there are thousands of children who have been born in Syria. All they know is war. They have seen foreign jets flying overhead, dropping bombs and killing their neighbors and family members. When listening to politicians and individuals from other countries, there is a sense of being unwanted. And it is possible that these individuals who have lived through the regime’s aerial attacks may in turn join ISIS or other extremist groups. It is important moving forward to promote and support inclusionary programs that will enable refugees to relocate to host countries during times of war if they choose. These programs will need to include positive rhetoric and an abandonment of the fear mongering that has demonized a population facing dire conditions in a country that was never expected to fall into this degree of turmoil.

AMERICAN APATHY

by Charlotte Burlingame Illustration by Dominique Tran

I have never met someone who has endorsed abuse to women. I have been fortunate for that. In my hometown and my high school, endorsing abuse was unheard of. People I knew took a stand against harassment in general but no one was ambivalent about violence specifically towards women. High school was not the real world; in our country, violence against women exists. As I enter college and the adult world, I realize that rape and other forms of sexual harassment against women have become an epidemic. Rape and sexual harassment are especially prevalent on college campuses. Among undergraduate students, 23.1 percent of women experience rape or sexual assault through

physical force, violence, or incapacitation.1 Fortunately, some schools recognize the situation and are making efforts to educate students to identify and prevent potentially harmful situations. At UMass Boston, incoming freshmen complete an online course about harassment, which teaches them what constitutes different forms of harassment, how to identify potentially harmful situations, and how to prevent violence from occurring.

This effort to prevent rape on campus is admirable, yet we still need to change is everyone’s attitudes about rape and violence toward women. Although we would like to believe everyone wants to prevent rape, help the victims, and

prosecute the offender, this is not always true. Rape culture promotes victimization, degradation, removal of autonomy, and explicit violence. In this culture, it is not only acceptable to make jokes about rape and sexist attitudes, but rape is also hardly treated as a crime. In a world where there is rape culture, victims of sexual assault need as many allies as possible.

One in every six women has been a victim of successful or attempted sexual assault.2 It is essential that people be entirely against rape so that we may eradicate it. Because our country has a political figure essentially “promoting� sexual violence, because there are little consequences to the actions of rapists,

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and because sexual violence can affect someone for the rest of their life, victims need as many allies as possible and cannot afford for anyone to be indifferent.

The release of Donald Trump and Billy Bush’s recorded conversation from 2005 recently caused national uproar. In the tape, Trump is heard saying, “I’ve gotta use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing [the publicist]. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”3 Although this is not direct evidence of Trump sexually harassing women, his dialogue and manner show what he accepts as behavior towards women. There is explicit disrespect, implications of kissing women, and “doing anything” without their consent. Regardless of politics, Trump is a celebrity and a person with a large audience. Anyone with a similar status would be scrutinized in the same manner. The issue is that an example is set not only for Trump’s followers, but also for anyone who has listened to this tape.

People should resent the attitude Trump has toward women. Being indifferent about the dehumanization of women is only aiding rape culture because it implies it is okay to tolerate this behavior, even from a person under high scrutiny.

It is malicious behavior like Trump’s that causes a culture where people like the Brock Turner can go unpunished in order to preserve his reputation. More often than not, the victim will also be blamed.

In March of 2016, Turner, a Stanford University student, faced up to fourteen years in state prison and was convicted of three felonies that he committed in January of 2015. These were: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.4 The prosecution had asked for six years, but the judge ordered a sentence of six months. Turner only served half of this sentence because of good

behavior. Turner was given a light sentence because Judge Aaron Persky, a Stanford alumnus, believed a harsher sentence would have severe impacts on Turner, a swimmer with a supposed shot at the Olympics. In this specific case, a criminal was convicted of three crimes against a woman and only served three months in county jail. Turner’s punishment was reduced to preserve his own reputation, which should not have been a priority since he committed multiple crimes. We should have been worried about the reputation and emotional stability of his victim.

The emotional trauma a victim of sexual assault endures is immeasurable.

Although it is hard to imagine what it must be like to be a victim of sexual assault, Brock Turner’s victim read her story out loud at his sentencing, which provided details of the psychological toll her sexual assault had taken on her. In one part of the 7,244-word letter, the victim explains the helplessness she felt throughout the entire trial since she was under the influence of alcohol when she was raped and was therefore blamed for the incident: "When I was told to be prepared in case we didn’t win, I said, I can’t prepare for that. He was guilty the minute I woke up. No one can talk me out of the hurt he caused me. Worst of all, I was warned, because he now knows you don’t remember, he is going to get to write the script. He can say whatever he wants and no one can contest it.

I had no power, I had no voice, I was defenseless. My memory loss would be used against me. My testimony was weak, was incomplete, and I was made to believe that perhaps, I am not enough to win this. That’s so damaging.

His attorney constantly reminded the jury, the only one we can believe is Brock, because she doesn’t remember.

That helplessness was traumatizing."5 When asked about Turner’s light sentence, the victim expressed contempt for her attacker, saying he deserved to be behind bars. She said that “the probation officer’s recommendation of a year or

less in county jail [is] a soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of his assaults, and of the consequences of the pain [she has] been forced to endure.”

The Brock Turner case is the epitome of rape culture. The victim was questioned, if not outright blamed, for her own attack.

The perpetrator did not apologize or take responsibility for his actions. Not only was the woman victimized, but her autonomy was removed as well. She is merely one of the 88,820 victims age twelve or older who are raped and sexually assaulted each year in the United States who happened to gain national attention.6 Each and every one of these victims has to cope with the same emotional trauma that is caused by their rapist. This victim blaming that exists in rape culture can be reversed, or at the very least combatted, by people taking a stand against criminals who refuse to take responsibility for their actions. In this case, Stanford has expelled Turner and many people have utilized social media and the Internet to express outrage and spread information about the case. By putting the spotlight on Turner and the crimes he committed, people are now informed about rape, sexual assault, and their implications. This type of publicity allows people to express unrest and put pressure on those who commit acts of violence toward women and the authorities that punish them.

For these reasons, I urge you to take a stance on sexual violence against women.

The victims cannot afford for people to stay out of the issue. In a country where rape culture is the norm, women need as many allies as possible. By spreading information about the existence of rape and violence, educating people on how to prevent dangerous situations from occurring, and taking the position against it, the acceptance of rape culture can change. Do not ignore the signs when you see them because it “isn’t your business,” because it might involve confrontation, or because you think it is a battle not worth fighting.

There is a price to your indifference.

David Cantor, Bonnie Fisher, Susan Chibnall, Reanna Townsend, et. al. Association of American Universities (AAU), Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct (September 21, 2015).

2 National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey (1998).

3 Rowles, Dustin. “Donald Trump Private Conversation With Billy Bush Reveals He’s as Gross As You Thought.” Pajiba. Pajiba, 08 Oct. 2016.

4 Koren, Marina. “Telling the Story of the Stanford Rape Case.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 6 June 2016.

5 Buncombe, Andrew. “Stanford Rape Case: Read the Impact Statement of Brock Turner’s Victim.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 2 Sept. 2016.

6 Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010-2014 (2015).

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